Uncapped #29 | Thomas Laffont from Coatue

Summary

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Podcast Summary: Uncapped #29 | Thomas Laffont (Coatue)

Host: Jack Altman (Alt Capital)
Guest: Thomas Laffont (Coatue Management)
Recorded: October 22, 2025

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Overview

In this episode of Uncapped, Jack Altman sits down with Thomas Laffont, co-founder of Coatue, for a rich, in-depth conversation about tech market cycles, the evolution of AI infrastructure, investment strategies across public and private markets, founder qualities, firm culture, and life lessons from golf, mentoring, and working with family. The discussion is candid and spanning, offering insights into how one of the world’s leading tech investors navigates seismic industry shifts and personal development.

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Market Cycles, Capital Deployment, and the State of AI (00:25–10:43)

• Market Cycles and Structural Shifts:
  Thomas reflects on his experience seeing multiple tech cycles over 25 years—from the iPhone’s impact, Nvidia’s exponential guidance, to Oracle's reinvention and the acceleration of AI investment.

  • “The stakes to me feel different [now]… companies are saying, no, it feels more existential. I’m actually willing to invest significantly more, maybe even more than the cash flows that I’m producing...” —Thomas (04:45)

• AI Infrastructure Build-Out:
  The host and Thomas discuss how AI was initially funded by public tech giants using positive cash flow, but now even cash flow–negative companies like OpenAI and Anthropic are making huge infrastructure bets. Oracle is now a meaningful and competitive entrant in cloud, aiming for double-digit market share.

  • “You could see [Oracle] getting to maybe 15% market share of cloud in a few years from essentially zero.” —Thomas (03:40)

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Investment Approaches: Thematic Buckets and Building Blocks (06:45–12:32)

• Thematic, Layered Approach:

  • Thomas describes using a “wide aperture lens”—being thematic but opportunistic across public/private and geographies. He sees AI’s foundational stack as having three key components:
    1. Semiconductors: Absolute necessity for AI; major players like Nvidia and Broadcom; innovative startups like Cerebras (06:45–08:28).
    2. Data Centers & Power: Nuclear (e.g., Constellation Energy) and liquid gas (GE Vernova) as critical enablers—reflecting a view that, “you’re not going to be able to have AI without that foundational layer.” (08:32–09:30)
    3. Foundational Models: He believes there’s consolidation around a few model labs (OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, and possibly Meta).
  • The data layer, with companies like Snowflake and Databricks (and app integrations, e.g., Workday), is also becoming foundational to transform business operations.

• “System of Record Is Dead” and the Future of Enterprise Software:

  • Thomas predicts a big shift away from traditional SaaS platforms locking in data. Instead, data will flow more freely between best-in-class tools, and every enterprise interaction will be recorded and queried for intelligence, changing the compliance and HR landscape (13:00–15:02).
    • “Every interaction within the enterprise within three years will be recorded. I think the default is going to be record on.” —Thomas (13:00)
    • "The role of Workday will [be to] sit on top... as a validator... Workday is going to be able to make HR and coaching decisions based on the entire data set.” —Thomas (15:02)

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Navigating Public vs. Private Markets & Old vs. New VC Models (18:46–23:01)

• Not a Typical VC:
  Thomas positions himself as an “investor” rather than a traditional VC—bundling public/private investing and shifting between stages and geographies.

  • “I don't tend to think about whether my time is spent between public or private because some of the best research that I do for my public investing is by meeting private companies—or vice versa.” —Thomas (22:06)

• Flexible Model:
  He likens traditional VC to “plots on the river,” while his approach is to roam up and down, fishing for the best opportunities, irrespective of being early, late, public, or private.

• Competition and Zero-Sum Thinking:
  Thomas disdains the prevalent zero-sum mindset in early-stage VC and instead prefers knowledge sharing and mutual benefit.

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VC Tribalism, Rounds, and Learning from “No” (24:17–27:17)

• Tribal Culture:
  Thomas describes VC as tribal—he maintains relationships across “villages” (firms), trying to leave each better than he found it.

• Round Dynamics and Second Chances:

  • One of his key insights is that for his 10-15 top private investments, the first opportunity was always a ‘no’—either Coatue or the company passed, but second chances led to great wins.
    • “Without exception, my first opportunity to invest was a no…What ended up happening is opportunities to invest later came around, and as it turns out, they were very successful.” —Thomas (25:00)

• Private vs. Public, Thematic vs. Stage:
  He cautions against overfitting to stage or geography since opportunities and markets change rapidly.

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Conflicts, Firm Scaling, and “Second Call” Investing (29:25–33:38)

• Conflicts in Venture:
  Thomas distinguishes between real and perceived conflicts and emphasizes disclosure and trust as foundational principles, especially since Coatue is SEC-regulated.

  • “First thing is I’m going to tell the entrepreneur first... The second is trust and reputation. The trust of making sure that information doesn’t leak.” —Thomas (31:39)

• A Scalable Role: The Entrepreneur's “Second Call”:

  • “As a founder…I’m trying to be your second call…The first call you’re going to call, your VC…then you think, okay, what do I do about this now? Who can I turn to help? I want to be the second call.” —Thomas (30:15)

• The Value of Crossover Investors:
  He underlines how his experience across public/private and being able to assist at later stages is especially helpful for maturing companies.

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Decision-Making and Firm Culture at Coatue (41:18–46:39)

• Deal-Making by Internal Momentum:
  Rather than a strict investment committee, Coatue relies on open, collaborative process. Early feedback from various internal experts is integral, and deals build momentum over time until consensus is clear.

  • “The way we've tended to work is just momentums of deals…very collaborative from the very beginning…by the time you get to a yes, it’s like, come on, we got to do this as a firm.” —Thomas (41:28, 42:00)

• Organizational Model:
  Coatue operates somewhere between a West Coast VC and an East Coast hedge fund—meritocratic, promoting high-impact young people quickly, but still collaborative.

  • “Your contributions better match the economics that you have in the business.” —Thomas (45:34)
  • On Andreessen Horowitz vs. Coatue: Both imported “competitive metabolism” into venture but from different sources—Coatue from hedge funds, a16z from founder energy (46:49).

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What Makes a “Star” Founder? (36:44–40:28)

• Star Quality is Real:
  Drawing on his time at CAA, Thomas compares startup founders to movie stars—some have an “aura” or magnetism that is simply unmistakable.
  • “Tom Cruise…shook my hand and looked me in the eye and we talked for three minutes. And for three minutes I thought, wow, no one cares more about me in the world right now than Tom Cruise does… I do think that, to me, I do look for that in founders.” —Thomas (37:05)
  • On Snap’s Evan Spiegel: “The way he built SNAP as a platform, as a reflection of those trends. So what was it? Well, everything disappears. No one kind of stores your data. You can't trust institutions to look out for you. I think it ended up being incredibly prescient...” (38:28)
  • Magnetism needn’t be universally positive—polarizing characters (like Travis Kalanick) can also succeed (39:42–40:28).

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Golf, Presence, and Building Relationships (48:25–54:25)

• Life-Changing Power of Golf:
  Thomas credits golf with changing his life, teaching integrity, presence, handling adversity, and building genuine social bonds.

  • “Golf changed my life. Just point blank, without exception, my life would be completely different if I had chosen not to play.” —Thomas (48:52)
  • “There’s so many opportunities to cheat in golf where no one would really know… I love the continuous test of integrity and character.” —Thomas (49:14)
  • The “defined end” of a game fosters authentic, unhurried interaction, which is rare elsewhere (50:33).

• On Learning and Mentorship:

  • Golf and other interests like surfing, video games, and vinyl serve as analogs for slowing down and being present.
  • “Do yourself a favor and learn how to play. You're just going to spend incredible time with friends…and meet new friends of different ages.” —Thomas (51:34)

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Working with Family & Trust at the Top (54:25–57:19)

• Working with His Brother Philippe:

  • Complete trust, transparency, and absence of politics underpin the partnership; discussions of economics have been minimal due to inherent trust.
    • “We don't question each other's motives…We know we're kind of stuck with each other…So it completely eliminates a whole waste of energy around the politics...” —Thomas (54:56)

• Cost of Success:
  The negative side is that work can dominate the relationship, but shared activities and external interests (e.g., golf) help balance it out.

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Mentorship, Apprenticeship, and Gift Wrapping (57:19–62:34)

• Importance of Mentorship:
  Thomas credits early mentors (notably Brian Lord at CAA) with shaping his values and leadership—emphasizing learning from mistakes and sharing success.

• Apprenticeship Lesson—Gift Wrapping:
  He tells a story about standing out as a mailroom assistant by perfecting gift wrapping for agents—showing how focus and craftsmanship on “small” tasks compound into recognition and opportunity.

  • “If I saw an agent a gift, I would take it. I’d be very meticulous on how I gift wrapped it…I became, like, the gift wrapping guy…Turns out that being known for having attention to detail…served me really well.” —Thomas (60:39–61:10)

• Career Advice:
  When starting out, focus is a luxury; treat “small” projects with utmost detail and pride, because they build your reputation and skills for bigger opportunities ahead.

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Notable Quotes & Timestamps

• On Changing Market Stakes:
  • “The stakes to me feel different. The intensity and the criticalness is increasing. And so I think our vigilance has to increase as well.” —Thomas (05:10)
• On ‘Second Call’ Investing:
  • “I want to be the second call where it’s like, gee, why don’t we call Thomas and see if he knows somebody or has a point of view on a market or can make an introduction?” —Thomas (30:15)
• On Magnetism in Founders:
  • “Star quality is real. Most people don’t have it, some do.” —Thomas (37:05)
• On Life Lessons from Golf:
  • “At the end of the day in golf, you’re responsible for your own score.” —Thomas (49:14)
• On Apprenticeship:
  • “Focus is a luxury…think of that model the way I was thinking about gift wrapping. Watch over every cell, every line, the formatting, what font you use…” —Thomas (60:01–61:10)

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Selected Timestamps for Key Segments

| Segment | Timestamp | |--------------------------------------------------|-----------------| | State of tech/AI infrastructure & cloud | 01:20–05:31 | | Roadmap for capital deployment in AI | 06:45–10:43 | | The end of traditional SaaS/system of record | 12:32–15:02 | | Zero-sum VC & public/private investing | 18:46–23:06 | | VC tribalism and “no” on the first round | 24:17–27:17 | | Conflicts and scaling venture | 29:25–33:38 | | Founder selection and star quality | 36:44–40:28 | | Coatue’s deal and firm processes | 41:18–46:39 | | Golf, presence, and relationship-building | 48:25–54:25 | | Working with family | 54:25–57:19 | | Mentorship and “gift wrapping” principle | 57:19–62:34 |

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Tone and Wrap-Up

Throughout, Thomas is frank, analytical, and self-reflective, with anecdotes and philosophy drawn from Wall Street, Hollywood, and the startup world. The atmosphere is collegial yet thoughtful, with Jack Altman picking up threads from Coatue's operational DNA to personal philosophy.

This episode offers a window into both the macro mental models of a world-class tech investor and the highly human side of investing, leadership, and lifelong learning.

Transcript

[Thomas]

I looked at maybe the top 10 to 15 PL winners that I've had over my career. On the private side, without exception, my first opportunity to invest was a no. It might have been a no from me to the company passing or vice versa. The company passing on me.

[Interviewer]

I am really excited to be here with you today, Thomas. Thanks so much for taking the time for this.

[Thomas]

Very excited.

[Interviewer]

So my note to myself on this first topic is this time it's different and a lot of people recently in the last few weeks have been saying things that are implying that a bubble might be going. And it's like there was a tweet from Brian at Sequoia that was like, this is a good time to sell your company. There have been a lot of blog posts written behind closed doors. It's a frequent topic of conversation like valuations are expensive or back to 2021 multiples for a certain flavor of company. Obviously CO2 has gone through over its last 25 years of existence, a bunch of cycles. So you've seen this happen many times. And so I'm curious, sort of your spot temp check, fall 2025, how do you make sense of where we are in the cycle and sort of in capital deployment?

[Thomas]

Yeah, so I've been lucky to be doing this for a while, almost 25 years now. And there are a few seminal moments that I recall as a tech investor. The first was the iPhone and Apple and the quarterly earnings that would come out and the absolute blowout if consensus was one, they would print three or five. You just didn't see those kinds of beats and the magnitude of the transformation that Apple was bringing into the market with the iPhone. So that was kind of one. The second I remember, like it was yesterday was Nvidia when it guided its data center business to be up 100% year over year. And no one thought that that could be possible. So that was obviously that and the ChatGPT moment kind of happening at the same time. Right. I do think the Oracle announcement from two weeks ago was really profound and important as well. Just a fascinating story of how long Oracle's been around and how it's been able to shed its skin and reinvent itself. What was interesting about that specific company is if you look at the AI infrastructure build out up to this point had really been funded with cash flows from big companies. Right. So Meta, Google, Apple, Microsoft, generating incredible amounts of revenue, having very high operating margins, very high cash flow margins, and the ability to invest some of those cash flows into this AI build. What was different about The Oracle announcement is now you're seeing some leverage come into where it's actually not just the free cash flow positive companies that are investing, it's actually free cash flow negative companies that are investing. OpenAI as an example, is making a huge bet. Right. It's not producing free cash yet, but it sees a version of the future where demand for its products keep increasing. I do think that's something that we spend a lot of time looking at and thinking about. The question now will be, does the competitive intensity between the hyperscalers really start to intensify? Right. We kind of had a staid oligopoly, I would say, where Amazon kind of started, then Microsoft and then Google kind of crept in and it was kind of the three of them for a bit. Boy, does that feel different. Today you've got Oracle putting its foot into the ground and now I think establishing itself as an absolutely key player. You could see them getting to maybe 15% market share of cloud in a few years from essentially zero. You have companies like Core Weave, GPU only cloud. I do think the market competition is intensifying. There's more companies now. It's not just cash flow companies that are investing. Both OpenAI anthropic are making huge investments. So I do think the stakes to me feel different.

[Interviewer]

Right.

[Thomas]

Than they were maybe two years ago. So that's one how I would change the element. The environment feels a little bit different to me. It's one thing if Meta is saying, well, I'm so profitable, I have so much money, I'm just going to choose to sprinkle some of my cash flows into AI. That's one thing. Yeah. We've now moved into a different phase where I think companies are saying, no, it feels more existential. I'm actually willing to invest significantly more, maybe even more than the cash flows that I'm producing in the case of some players in the ecosystem. Right. To go and win this market. So I think it's a sign of multiple things. Right. And to me, the biggest one is the intensity and the criticalness is increasing. And so I think our vigilance has to increase as well.

[Interviewer]

The companies that you just talked about, for the most part, huge behemoth public companies. And what's interesting is if you look back at the ZIRP bubble, the private company bubble happened, but I would argue that the QQQ, the Mag 7, I think, looks like they were undervalued and they took a dip. But it's much higher now in a way that's different. Than what happened in private markets, and particularly early stage private markets. Obviously CO2 invests from inception round through IPO. And so when you're thinking about this AI transformational moment that you're talking about that I think we kind of all agree is real, you could look at that and say, okay, I can invest in these huge public companies, I can invest in Oracle, I could invest in the labs, I could invest in growth private, I could invest in seed. You've got a big team that's capable of walking and chewing gum at the same time. To what extent do you think at a high level about the market and where should buckets of capital be deployed versus finding just individual. I like this seed and I like Oracle. And I'm not thinking about the buckets, I'm just thinking about birds.

[Thomas]

Yeah. So we do tend to be very thematic and I use this often, but having a wide aperture lens into the world of technology, globally, public and private, us and kind of rest of the world. So I think about, okay, what do I know and have conviction in? Right. Well, I started my career as a semiconductor analyst for CO2 partially because I was trying to find a semiantly and couldn't find one. And Philippe one day came into my office and tried to dropped a universe which was essentially like all the semi names in a spreadsheet that was printed and said, well, we can't find anybody, so you do it. And so I just took it upon myself to kind of learn the semi business. This was in the early 2000s. So what do I know? I know that we're not going to have AI without semis. So semis are kind of a foundational layer. So when I think about AI infrastructure, I think about we're going to need semis, we're going to need data centers and we're going to need power. So all three of those to me present really interesting investing opportunities across both actually public and private. If you think about semis, obviously Nvidia to me maybe the other great tech story that I think very few people know about. But hock tan at Avago, Broadcom, 1.7 trillion of market cap might soon be as big as Meta. I think meta is 1.7 and I think avago is 1.4. So he's kind of closing in.

[Interviewer]

Wow.

[Thomas]

Which is an amazing story. So I know that. And then private companies like Cerebras that are innovating and doing interesting things. Right. So I'm a big believer kind of in that layer.

[Interviewer]

How would you play power? Out of curiosity.

[Thomas]

Nuclear is One fusion or fission or I would say we don't quite have the conviction yet on fusion and whether it's going to work or not. But I do think there's two technologies today that are critical. So one is nuclear. So Constellation Energy as an example, has now done what's called behind the meter deals with Amazon and Microsoft where those can tie directly into some of their plants. They just did a deal with Josh Shapiro in Pennsylvania to kind of reactivate one of the reactors there. So that's one. And then G Vernova with liquid gas generators. So as it turns out, we have a lot of liquid gas in this country. It's clean, it's extractable. The issue is they're basically sold out of capacity for the next five years. But that's an example of the trend and I think we have a lot.

[Interviewer]

Of.

[Thomas]

Belief that value is going to accrue there and you're not going to be able to have AI without that foundational layer. So that's kind of maybe kind of layer one. Right. High conviction. I think layer two now moving up the value chain, one is we definitely think models are going to be important. It does feel like the world is kind of coalescing around a handful of companies. I would probably put OpenAI anthropic, I would definitely put Google kind of in there and maybe we'll see what meta ends up doing. We'll see what kind of Microsoft and Amazon end up doing. So I think that's going to be. The foundational models are going to be incredibly important. They're going to power transformative apps like ChatGPT, which, you know, as you know, has completely transformed, you know, how we work and our expectations of how software is going to work. So I would say very high conviction in kind of each of those. Right. I think now as I start to get to layer three, you know, my lens probably gets a little bit fuzzier.

[Interviewer]

Now we're talking applications, correct? Yeah.

[Thomas]

Right. So what do I know there? Well, I do think the data layer is going to be foundational and really important. I think. Curious to get your view as a SaaS founder, but my view is the era of data being locked into SaaS platforms is over. There was an under reported but in my opinion very significant press release put out two weeks ago by Workday where it essentially came out and said we're giving up on trying to keep all of our data inside of our locksass ecosystem. We're going to plug into Snowflake, we're going to plug into databricks, Right. We're going to give customers the ability to merge their workday HR data with some of their other data to kind of power an objective future, Right. To me, I think that's critical. And Carl, the CEO of Workday, was on the board of Snowflake, so he understands the data landscape really well. I think that's going to unlock now Workday. Its future is about building the best Fortune 500 grade agents for HR and finance, not where's my data stored? Do I even really care about that? I mean, of course it's got to be secure and stuff like that, but boy, I want an amazing agent and stuff like that. So I do think that data layer, I think Snowflake and Databricks and other companies like that is going to be kind of foundational. Now I get to the apps, right? And one area where I'm spending a lot of time personally is trying to think through what does this mean for a workday, for the whole SaaS ecosystem as we've known it, right. Is software dead? As a lot of people have kind of been writing about over the past 12 to 18 months, a bit of what you're describing, does it get reinvented?

[Interviewer]

It almost sounds like what you're describing. Is the system of record dead? Kind of what I'm imagining as I'm listening to what you're saying is you've got Snowflake or Databricks, there's a system of record that traditionally stores the data that then integrates with a lot of ecosystem apps. And many of those ecosystem apps today might look like companies that are agents or doing work for you. And so then the question is, what's the role of where that data is stored? Does it just go straight to the databases?

[Thomas]

So I do think the system record is dead. I also think, by the way, another belief that I have is that every interaction within the enterprise within three years will be recorded. I think the default is going to be record on versus ironic since we're taping right now. But the default is just going to be an assumption that this meeting is being recorded. Why is that? Because if you think about the intelligence of an enterprise that should get fed into a system of record, it's all coming from interactions that are in meetings that are over email or slack or over zooms. Right? How's my customer doing? How's my sales process doing? All of that is by and large captured and even in person meetings, right? I think people will start recording. So all of that can be fed into, right automatically. Why do I even really need to write a note on what was just discussed. Right. Actually the system is listening, will extract all the information and knowledge and then it can just be kind of quarried later.

[Interviewer]

It's an interesting prompt about the system of record. So obviously one of the things that a system of record does is it holds the data, which I agree with you. I don't think that is like, that doesn't seem like that important in the future. I'm thinking through in real time right now. But like other things it does is coordination between the other apps making sure the data is consistent.

[Thomas]

Yep.

[Interviewer]

It makes it tamper proof, you know, so security is a big deal. You know, it gives the customer a central place so that they're not working with 9 million vendors all the time and they have some sense of how their business systems are working. So there's some other things there and I'm curious how that could shake out otherwise. I mean maybe you could see a world where like the databricks Snowflake layer become massive companies because they start kind of really being the hub of all of that stuff. But it does feel like there's some ecosystem as I think about a workday, a service now a salesforce. There are some functions of those products that aren't just databases.

[Thomas]

I agree. So I do think the databases of and I think Snowflake and Databricks will be very large companies. I think the role of Workday will a sit on top of it as a validator of okay, this is, this is like important data and you know, we, we validate it and kind of stand by it. But the future will be okay now actually think about Workday that in the past only saw kind of its own data. Right now Workday is going to be able to make HR and coaching decisions based on the entire data set. Right. Potentially even the recorded meeting data set, yeah. So yesterday we hosted for one of our early stage companies an AI compliance summit. So we had the head of AI for the SEC and the GCS and compliance of all the kind of major kind of investing firms. And we had the chief compliance officer of Meta as an example. And I was discussing with him my view that meetings will be recorded. Right. And his mind as a chief compliance officer went like, oh my God, this is a nightmare. I don't want to know, I want no transcripts, I don't want the data. And I said okay, well let me give you two scenarios. Scenario one is you have a bad actor in your enterprise. He's belligerent in meetings, says completely awful Things he's demeaning to other people, all the vile things that you can imagine. No one speaks up because they're too afraid. And turns out six years later one person actually speaks up. Now everybody comes out of the woodwork. Now you're on a defense, you have to go and well, why didn't you tell me? Well, I was afraid because the boss likes him. Now you got a whole shit show to deal with. Right. So that's version one of the world. My version of the world is actually the meetings being recorded. Right. And the compliance agent afterwards seeks out that individual and says, by the way, your behavior wasn't appropriate. Right. And for this reason, and I'm going to suggest some coaching to you or it's not even just necessarily like an HR thing. It could be what you actually talked about is anti competitive and it's not something that we can do. Right.

[Interviewer]

So only the agent's reading this stuff. It's not something visible to employees.

[Thomas]

That could be kind of step one is the agent just goes to the actor and offers remediation. Assuming it's not so egregious that it has to be stage two might be, I'm sorry, that's your second violation right now you have to go through a mandatory three day compliance process. And step three is actually now it's been flacked to hr, right? Yeah, I'm just kind of inventing the system. Right. But you can see that now companies are going to be able to diffuse issues before the grenade's gone off, right?

[Interviewer]

Yeah, I mean definitely the, the trend line here is comfort with this stuff. Like you know, years ago if somebody had a recorded meeting and you didn't know about it or somebody brought an agent into a Zoom meeting, people would be like, what, what are you doing? And now I just, even if I don't see the granola agent, I'm just like anything I say on a Zoom is recorded. And that's just like the plan now.

[Thomas]

Yeah. So one of our portfolio companies, gong, which is in sales intelligence, right. And listens to the calls of salespeople, has completely re accelerated now because generative AI has enabled that corpus of data to be so much more powerful. So now if you're a great salesperson and you know exactly how to sell against company X, I can extract what makes you so good. Is it that you pitch the company this way, that you pitch the competitor that way. Right. So they're seeing significant increases in ramp of lower ramp time for reps. Right. So I just think we're going to start seeing that through the whole enterprise.

[Interviewer]

So I'm curious as we've been talking about public private, early late stage. I asked you before, if you identify as a vc, you're like, no, not really an investor. That includes making investments that look like VC investments. When you sort of look at the world around you and sort of how VC is evolving. I'm curious your read on what's the winningest strategy or strategies in venture today. When you think about who's really doing venture in the right way in your estimation today, how do you think about that? Who do you sort of look towards or what are the models that make the most sense to you now?

[Thomas]

Yeah, so look, we started which is a couple of million under management. Right. So we kind of grew the business organically by kind of compounding over time. Right, right. And Philippe and I have always run the business in a way where we just try and think what's in the best kind of long term interests of our business. Right. And don't make kind of short term decisions. We never had the luxury in venture of. I sometimes use this analogy of venture and investing is kind of a river and the good investments are kind of swimming in the river. Right. And if you got there early, you got the best spot that protrudes into and you capture the best fish. We didn't get there early. So I don't have the best spot on the river like some of the firms that have been doing it for a really long time or a founder that started a generational Internet company. So we had to just try and rub shoulders and elbow and be the seventh player on that. That was kind of interesting to me as a founder. I'm sure when you decided to do your podcast, well, there's a ton of podcasts out there. So I'm not going to just do what the 17 other people are doing. I'm going to try and do something different. Well, we kind of brought the same approach and we thought that what was uniquely suited to us was, well, since I don't have the best plot of land on the riverbank where maybe Benchmark and Sequoia sit, I'm actually just going to be the fisherman that just travels up and down. I'm just gonna try and find the best opportunities kind of as I see them. And I think it's more common now. But back then it really was no, you stay in your place. We're gonna be here on our part of the river and then there'll be another cast of characters on the other and then and so forth and so on. Right. And then to their credit, players like Yuri, Milner and Tiger came in and said, well, hold on, why is that the case? Right.

[Interviewer]

Yep.

[Thomas]

So as it happens, it also tends to suit my personality, which is I don't tend to think about whether a company is private or public. I don't tend to think about whether my time is spent between public or private because some of the best research that I do for my public investing is by meeting private companies or vice versa. So sometimes investors will ask me. Investors in our place platform. Right. They'll ask me, well, how do you kind of spend your time? I think from a research basis, I don't think about it that way. I really talk to companies, find big themes, find big trends, and then find companies that can kind of benefit from them.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. I think in venture, one of the things that has morphed recently, that probably has moved, I would imagine directionally more towards your way of thinking is it's okay to scale and there are many ways to be successful and you don't just have to have 20x small early stage funds like a lot of venture capitalists who I think maybe started small, have gotten much bigger and are saying we're still going to get very good returns but it's going to look different. It's given a much bigger capital base and it's okay if we didn't hit it at the seed because we can get it at the B or C or D or.

[Thomas]

And that's certainly my thinking. And the thing I dislike the most about venture is the zero sum nature of the business at times. Right. Where there's a round, there's only X amount of dollars. And every dollar that you take is a dollar that I don't have.

[Interviewer]

Yes. Which is the source of competition between firms, obviously. Correct.

[Thomas]

And it feeds into a lot of different types of behavior and things like that. My approach as a public market investor was always like, great, if you have a great idea, let's bat it around. Because guess what? We can both do it, we can both benefit. So I have built my whole life and business model basically against being a zero sum thinker. Right. So that's the piece that is the toughest for me. Right. Is when I run into on either end a situation where somebody has to win and somebody has to lose.

[Interviewer]

Yep. So how do you navigate that? Because I guess in your public world, maybe to some extent in your very late stage private world, there's probably more supply or there's probably more demand for dollars from the companies Than, you know, any given firm, even as big as code 2 is going to supply it. The early stage rounds, more competitive, obviously, like VC is like somewhat tribal in nature and there are these kind of like coopetition friend circles and venture where even people who should be economically competitive decide to play a repeated game. So how do you operate on the early stage side?

[Thomas]

Yeah, a couple things there. One is, you're right that VC is really tribal. My view is I like to visit all the different villagers. So I'm not one of the villagers, but I'm accepted by most of them. And I come in and I try and kind of leave the village better than when I walked in. So I have a lot of friends at different firms and I always try and tell them that the bar of whether we were successful or not is we had a positive contribution on the company or the board or whatever, but that tribal element is just kind of part of it. What I was seeing a tweet from Keith Raboy, who I love his brain and how he thinks, and he had analysis of his deals that he had looked at year to date by geography. And it's actually something that I do as well. I look a lot at my own P and L in both public and private. One of the elements of my private P and L that's interesting is I looked at maybe the top 10 to 15 P&L winners that I've had over my career. On the private side, without exception, my first opportunity to invest was a no. It might have been a no from me to the company passing, or vice versa. The company passing on me. What's funny about both of those moments is you kind of think like, wow, it's over, you know, and in fact, what ended up happening is opportunities to invest later came around and as it turns out, they were very successful. So I've tried a lot to think about, well, what's my learning from that? Right. And to me, the way I've thought about it is sometimes it just takes a while for an investor to understand a company and for a company to.

[Interviewer]

Understand an investor, obviously we don't have nearly as wide an aperture of rounds, but we have a little bit. And I often will say we didn't miss a company, we just missed a round. And that if it's going to be great, hopefully there's another way. And whether you passed or they passed. Yeah, obviously it changes the return multiple, but in many situations it doesn't really make that much of a difference in the exit number of absolute dollars that come out.

[Thomas]

Correct.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Thomas]

And so to me, that mindset is one where, well, if I'm only doing series A, then I have to think differently. Right. Because almost by definition of those types of firms, I only get one shot. I get one bullet. So I got to be really careful. So that does tend to lead to a more zero sum. Like, this is my one chance to be in this company. I can't afford to lose it. I can't afford to give a single dollar to anybody else, because this is my one shot. I think that's an increasingly difficult game. Right. My way of doing it is, okay, well, I may never be the best, but at any individual point, but I do have the ability to kind of float around and try and find the best opportunities.

[Interviewer]

Have you ever looked back on the piano or geography question? Have you ever looked back and just been like, ah, we've made the most money at venture stage or growth stage, or like, do you know where you end up doing the best?

[Thomas]

I do.

[Interviewer]

And does that influence your behavior then? Are you changes?

[Thomas]

You know, like, there was a time, as an example, where China was an incredible market for investors, and we were very successful in that market. That market is functionally not available to us anymore. So you do have to just kind of adapt. Right. There was a time where SaaS was everything. Right. And the future. And now it seems like AI is kind of. So I think you have to. I don't want to read too narrow into it because sectors change. Right. Like consumer Internet as an example was fascinating, foundational for us. Yeah.

[Interviewer]

And it's a super lagging indicator, I guess.

[Thomas]

Yeah. And now what would we say is the greatest consumer Internet franchise of the past decade? New ChatGPT. Correct. Right. So I'd throw ChatGPT in there. I might throw Robin Hood in there. Right. I might throw Revolut. But it's just different than when the phone came out and it was Uber and it was Airbnb and it was Spotify and it was Snapchat and it was Instagram and it was like all of these apps that were coming around. Explosion of Internet apps. Consumers changed. So I don't want to anchor too much on that. So that's why I look more at round composition, patterns of meeting founders, things like that.

[Interviewer]

Because you think thematically, I assume. And because you invest late Sage, I would assume. A lot of times you want to invest in multiple companies in a sector and clearly the public side, that's totally fine. But you probably also want to do it at the private side. And you and I chatted a Little bit before. And a lot of the people I've spoken to on this podcast have said that in venture conflicts are a big challenge. And particularly as venture firms scale, it's actually a really big challenge.

[Thomas]

I remember Mark's quote on that. His, his biggest stumbling block towards scaling.

[Interviewer]

Was, yeah, I said, what's your number one problem? Scaling. That was the one. And I think you have a divergent view here, so I'd be interested to hear it.

[Thomas]

Yeah, look, I do think traditional venture capitalists have set themselves up to be the entrepreneur's first call. And so think about it. As a founder of my own business, do I want to try and compete with every other person that's trying to be the person's first call? Well, no, actually, I'm trying to be your second call. So the first call you're going to call, you're a VC that's been with you for a long time. And then you're going to think, okay, well, what do I do about this now? And who can I turn to help? I want to be the second call where it's like, gee, why don't we call Thomas and see if he knows somebody or has a point of view on a market or can make an introduction?

[Interviewer]

So it's a lot more scalable for you. A lot less phone calls.

[Thomas]

Different types of phone calls.

[Interviewer]

Right.

[Thomas]

Different stakes on the phone calls.

[Interviewer]

I assume they're. They're trickier phone calls if they're getting there.

[Thomas]

So, look, I still believe that if you're a 20% owner and on a board of a series A company that to back another company that does the exact same thing in the exact same framework, I think that's a legitimate conflict, and we don't do that. But I do think that the position of conflict that I have has also a lot of benefits. Right. It might mean domain expertise, because I'm able to see the whole playing field. It might mean a very deep network in a certain industry. So I think there can be significant advantages there. Now you have to do it the right way. And so to me, there's a couple foundational principles of if I'm going to invest in conflicting companies, the first thing is I'm going to tell the entrepreneur first. So I am a big believer in disclosure. Right. So if I'm in two companies that might have or might be perceived. Right. Because then you get into, well, is the conflict real or is it just imagined by the founder? Right. And sometimes we might have a different view on what a conflict is. Right. But I'm Mostly going to kind of disclose it.

[Interviewer]

Right.

[Thomas]

So that's kind of number one then. The second is trust and reputation. The trust of making sure that information doesn't leak. We take information, actually security really seriously. First of all, we're regulated by the sec. If you think about a bad piece of information that could come into the firm if a trade happened on our public side, even if it wasn't related and it was never communicated, could immediately implicate you in something, really.

[Interviewer]

By the way, I also think when you design for this from the beginning, you can manage it like yc, invest in tons of competitive companies, but you're never gonna see them share information across. It just will never happen.

[Thomas]

So people know we have a very stubborn and intrusive compliance department. And we would have a zero tolerance policy on anything like that. Again, if I'm in the venture business, I can afford to do things differently. And I think for that business model, it works. But again, we're trying to do something different. I always thought about rounds in venture. It's like, God, I got the best at my first round. And then the second or third. Now I'm starting to get a Xerox copy of a Xerox. And by the fifth round, you can barely tell. So I'm like, well, why don't I just add a complimentary point of view? A complimentary business. We have the opportunity to think really long term over multiple rounds, over an ipo, over a company going public. So it's just about adding a different perspective and network to a cap table.

[Interviewer]

I also think companies in their later stages really need somebody around them who understands the transition from private to public and what happens in public markets and things. It becomes like a very different set that people who traffic in series A's all day just don't spend their time on.

[Thomas]

Yeah. I also think, look, public marketers, just public market investors think really differently, right? They don't mind going to a company and saying, I don't understand your business, or it makes no sense or why. You know, they can be very direct, they can be very confrontational. Because at the end of the day, it's a transactional kind of relationship. Right. Venture investors might feel really differently, Right. If I've invested in your company, I really want to make sure that the next founder that I'm trying to invest in calls you. And, boy, you better say something really nice. Right? So the incentives can really start to get murky. So I've always prided myself on being direct and at times saying what everybody else, the Room is thinking but not saying.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. What I think is refreshing. You talked about the wide aperture lens of investing and what it means to have this kind of broader mindset. I'm curious what that particular phrase means to you because when we were catching up, you used it a couple times.

[Thomas]

I really love technology. I just have a curious mind from when I was a kid. I was the youngest in my family and so I read a lot and played a lot of video games. So I was just really curious about the world. And I think almost every great investor I've ever met, from Stan Druckenmiller to Marc Andreessen, are just deeply curious about the world. And so I'm just lucky. Where I don't have to be bound in my curiosity, I can just go out and seek out people and information and then I kind of figure it out later on, what does it mean or where is it relevant. I don't have to use a filter, right? And say, well, because I can only do this, I probably have to focus now. That can have a downside, right? It can mean that in crypto as an example, I think that served us poorly because I think crypto was an area where deep specialization actually in the beginning really helped you. Right? So it's not a perfect formula, right. It's got trade offs, right? And I think the investors who early on, when crypto came around, right, and were willing to deeply go down the rabbit hole and specialize and really understand something that was brand new, right. That had no equivalent in the public market or anywhere else in the world, right? It was almost like this big bang. I always think of Bitcoin as like a big bang that just kind of happened, right? So I think those investors kind of benefited. So it's not foolproof, but I do think it's kind of how my mind has tended to work. And I've always kind of made bets on myself and, you know, on the parts of how I worked that I thought were the most productive. And, you know, that's one of them.

[Interviewer]

We'Ve talked so far mostly about markets and themes. Obviously you care a lot about like the founder and the person you're investing into. I'm sure this is true at all stages. Like, I would guess even at the, you know, latest stages of private, public companies, you're still thinking quite a lot about the person what guides you on people.

[Thomas]

A lesson I learned at CAA is star quality is real. Most people don't have it, some do.

[Interviewer]

What is it?

[Thomas]

You just know it when you see it in A room. Tom Cruise is maybe my favorite actor growing up. I've seen Top Gun a zillion times. I'd love Maverick. I had the opportunity to meet him one day in a very kind of random setting. I was delivering a package to him and he shook my hand and looked me in the eye and we talked for three minutes. And for three minutes I thought, wow, no one cares more about me in the world right now than Tom Cruise does. The way he just commands a room in his presence. But also when Colin Farrell came to us and he had never been in a movie before and you spent 30 minutes in a room with him, and he just had so much magnetism about him. The way he composed himself and talked to you and looked at you, and just his general kind of Persona. So I do think that, to me, I do look for that in founders. It's the combination of a mind at work and an opportunity that they're addressing. Right. I remember when I first met Evan from snap, he basically was making the argument that, look at the generation of young people coming up with the Iraq war, essentially having been, you might say, a hoax. Right. The WMDs were never there. Rolling into the financial crisis, oh, you told us we had the best economic system, and then it almost collapsed. And then Covid, he built SNAP as a platform, as a reflection of those trends. So what was it? Well, everything disappears. No one kind of stores your data. You can't trust institutions to look out for you. I think it ended up being incredibly prescient of where we are today as a world where the institutional breakdown that we've seen. So I think that magnetism about a person in a room and an idea and a market that they're going after.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. One of the things I often think about with the magnetism quality is there's examples of people who are pure magnets where everybody loves them and everybody wants them to succeed. And then there's examples where people are highly polar, where half the world loves them and half the world hates them. And both of those work. But I think you gotta at least have the strong pull, if not the whole thing.

[Thomas]

Well, Travis Remuber is an example. Right.

[Interviewer]

Polar.

[Thomas]

I think if you referenced him to your point, half the people liked him and half hated him. Right. I remember meeting him at the Goldman Sachs technology conference in Vegas and. And we were in like a little cubicle. We had like 20 minutes, right. But, man, I walked out thinking, wow, that is someone who's going to dominate.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Thomas]

Right. So it doesn't necessarily mean magnetism. Like, you know, it could just be. Yeah. Their aura, their energy, you know.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. It doesn't have to all be positive.

[Thomas]

Yeah, yeah. A competitiveness.

[Interviewer]

It does have to be strong, I think.

[Thomas]

Absolutely.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. Yeah. When you're making these investment decisions, one of the things that is often hard is some of the great founders are not to everyone's taste. And so a lot of the best investment decisions were extremely contentious in a firm. I think this probably relates to how a firm is run overall. Where you have, there's the investment decision process, which can either be single trigger or fully unanimous, or somewhere in the middle, there's how a whole firm is run, which can be a CEO hierarchical model or an equal partnership. I'm curious just to hear your reflections after being in IT and around both at the decision making level and at the firm level, especially as you think about the fact that a lot of what needs to happen is kind of counterintuitive a lot of times.

[Thomas]

I've always envied firms that had this investment committee where the wise men and women would get together and decide yes or no.

[Interviewer]

Then the smoke's gonna go up the chimney.

[Thomas]

Exactly. We've tended not to do well in that environment, what I would say, and we do have an investment committee, but it's the way we've tended to work is just momentums of deals. And we're very collaborative from the very beginning. So people will come in and pitch an idea. The public market team's going to opine, you know, Philippe's going to have a point of view. You're going to be fielding information, points of view, possible connection.

[Interviewer]

You're talking about internal momentum. Like there's a groundswell inside code of like, by the time you get to a yes, it's like, come on, we got to do this as a firm.

[Thomas]

Right. So it's not any single meeting. And we do have like these check ins over time. We pitch the idea, but it's incredibly collaborative where we solicit opinion incredibly early from a wide variety of people.

[Interviewer]

That's similar to how we do it. Actually. I've never heard it described that way, but by the time you get there, it's like, there have been so many conversations and you've worked so many kinks out that you're not like debating the.

[Thomas]

Investment committee is more like, okay, it's been a process.

[Interviewer]

Correct.

[Thomas]

Or the opposite is that the nos tend to not necessarily happen by then. It's just an idea peters out and it loses momentum. So the way we found, more or less it works Is. And it's. You know, the number one thing I tell people when they join is realize that when people want to come in and chime in about something or help you with something, that's not credit being taken away or that's actually what makes us better. So yeah, if we're pitching a software idea, the software analyst who covers our public business is going to chime in with an idea and with point of view. Right. And in fact, if we don't, because you don't want to, then be in that meeting and say, well what, what does so and so say? Oh, well, I didn't ask him. What do you mean you didn't ask him? He's an expert in this space. He works at CO2 and you didn't ask him what he thinks about this idea. So I solicit input really early on. I want to get that feedback, whether it's positive or negative, how to improve the idea, how to make it better. I want to iterate it in real time. Right. Versus just having this holy grail moment in a meeting. The perfect deck where all of the data that you need is there to make this decision. And all the council of popes of cardinals has gone together. We just don't work that way.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. When you think about that's at the decision making level. When you think about at the firm level, because obviously you also need to say, hey, this year we're going to slow down our pacing or we're going to focus more on this area, this theme, this stage. Obviously you guys are sort of run in not like an equal partnership model. How do you think about the trade offs of those two? And obviously you guys are running code to a certain way and have a preference. But when you think about what's the advantage of each, what comes to mind?

[Thomas]

I think that because we can run kind of incremental, you, you can get promoted and have an impact, I think faster at a firm like ours. Because we don't have to say, gee, we're going to have to wait eight years for you to become a general partner. And by the way, there's these other 12 general partners around and we're going to have to wait for them to term out of this fund. So we don't have any of that. I think we offer an opportunity for young people who want to have an impact quickly. They can probably do so at our firm. That's going to be a great opportunity for someone like that. Now the converses, we also don't suffer debt weight. And by the way, by Debt weight. I mean, two kinds of debt weight. Younger people that come in and just aren't good, they're just not going to last long with us on the flip side. Also, we don't want a lot of dead weight at the top either. So it cuts both ways. The expectation has to be whether you're new, whether you're young or whether you're old. Your contributions better match the economics that you have in the business.

[Interviewer]

I think from my time, I was in New York for a few years after college and spent time around a lot of people in private equity and hedge funds. Contrasting that with venture, I would say it is maybe ruthless is a negative word. Meritocratic might be a positive word, but it is much more clinical, I would say, than the way venture firms are run. And I think that comes with both positives and negatives. But it's definitely different. Is CO2 run like a West Coast VC, an East coast financial firm somewhere in the middle?

[Thomas]

It's in the middle. And I will say I think it is very difficult to run an east coast firm and a West coast firm because they are very different. Right. Look, if you think about the hedge fund business, right. The hedge fund business is one where every single year, you know, if someone.

[Interviewer]

Did well or not, you do.

[Thomas]

And you know, we get paid out on a yearly basis, right?

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Thomas]

So we know at the end of the year, did we do well? Did we not? And who did and and so forth and so on. Right.

[Interviewer]

I mean, there's so many examples of a venture firm like firing a partner because they thought they were a bad investor and then five years progressed and that was the best investor they had.

[Thomas]

Right. And venture plays out maybe in six or seven year cycles. So it's just different. Right. So we definitely, what I think, like if I think about what the crossover funds brought is I think we brought a competitive metabolism to the industry that I think might not have been there before. Right. I think what founders like Andreessen brought is a competitive metabolism born from being an entrepreneur. Right. I think both of those energies kind of collided at the same time into the venture market. Right. In the. Call it late aughts. Right. 2000 post financial crisis. Right. Like 2009 kind of timeframe. So they both kind of collided into the world of venture. And I think what we're seeing is kind of the outcome of that. Right. Like what I love about what Mark and Ben have built and ironically we shared an office building when they first started. So, you know, I just really, really like them and what they've built. And Mark's father in law was someone I care deeply about. But their ability to think as an entrepreneur and say, we're just gonna think about this as a business and a company, ironically modeled after the company caa, which was the only other job I've ever had, was that we love that. So they brought that competitive metabolism from being an entrepreneur, and I think we brought it from a bit of that kind of hedge fund culture.

[Interviewer]

Okay. Total gear change. It turned out we have some similar interests. I got into golf last year, which I'm kind of embarrassed to admit, but here I am. Started becoming an investor, and I picked up golf, and I think it's awesome. I'm still really bad, but we chatted a tiny bit before, and you were actually talking about it in a much deeper way than like a excuse to just, like, get out, have fun. What. What has your experience with golf been?

[Thomas]

Golf changed my life. Just point blank, without exception. My life would be completely different if I had chosen not to play. And I think that can sound strange to maybe people that don't play or don't understand the game. Like, what do you mean it kind of changed your life? Well, it really has. The amount of people that I've met, mentors that I've had through the game of golf has just been incomparable. The game is so layered. Right. There's. There's an integrity layer, which I really like, which is at the end of the day in golf, you're responsible for your own score. There's so many opportunities to cheat in golf where no one would really know. Yep. Right. Moving your ball slightly out of a divot. Right. Sometimes an inch can make a complete difference. So I love the continuous test of integrity and character that it shows. Right. The competition. At the end of the day, you're not really competing against anyone else. You're kind of competing against yourself. Right. The ball doesn't move. It's right there. You just have to kind of decide on how to execute the shot. So there's dynamics of the game that I love, but to me, those are entirely secondary to the social element.

[Interviewer]

Right.

[Thomas]

And the opportunity to spend four hours with either a close friend who's having a difficult time or someone I've just met and who I don't know. And we're not looking at our phones. Right. We're actually kind of in the open air. Right. Walking.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Thomas]

Is so rare in this world.

[Interviewer]

Right.

[Thomas]

There's a defined end. Right. So it's not like you're having a coffee with Someone and someone's wondering like, oh, gee, you know, do I have to go to my next meeting or is it time to go? Right. So we know we're on hole one.

[Interviewer]

Yep.

[Thomas]

We're gonna go through 18. And by the way, afterwards we're gonna sit and we're gonna have an iced tea or a beer and we're gonna just kind of catch up.

[Interviewer]

Right.

[Thomas]

It's an incredible test of character.

[Interviewer]

Oh, yeah. I mean, it's so frustrating. You have to like, have such.

[Thomas]

How to respond. Right. To adversity sometimes the. The inherent randomness of golf and where your ball's gonna bounce. So. But for me, fundamentally, it's about the people.

[Interviewer]

Also, just the presence to not be on your phone is so hard to come by. We actually talked about a couple other interests that we both, you know, like video games. I love video games. I think partially similar reason. I love, like, listening to vinyl records. I think things that force you to just be present are so valuable because we're all just addicted to our phones all the time. Otherwise.

[Thomas]

Yeah, absolutely. Surfing is another really important part of my life and very similar traits to golf. Right. You're kind of out in the water. You're not looking at your phone. You're kind of in the moment. You're kind of meeting other people in the lineup. So I always encourage people, do yourself a favor and learn how to play. You're just going to spend incredible time with the friends that you already have and you're going to meet new friends, by the way. You're going to meet new friends of different ages. Because what's also unique about the sport is you can compete with anyone at any level. So if I'm an expert, I've been playing my whole life and you're brand new and you've been playing a month. You and I can have a competitive match. Think of how many sports in the world that's actually possible to do. Tennis, ufc, fighting, like Zucker, anything like that. Impossible. In golf. You can pair people through the handicap system. Yes, right. Of completely different abilities and have a good match. What does that mean? It means you can play with people that are older. It means you can play with people that are younger. It means you can play with men and women and kids. You can all be paired up and you can all be competitive and have fun.

[Interviewer]

What's funny is when I. So I grew up in like a know suburb of St. Louis and I had like, I. I don't know why, but I. I grew up with like, sort of like an aversion to things that felt pretentious or snooty or country clubby. And I think I had golf bucketed there. And then when I learned that it's. I do think it's associated with some of that stuff and that's like a separate thing, but just the game itself and the experience itself is so good.

[Thomas]

Look, no question, it doesn't have to be. Yeah. You know, something else I get is I gotta be good. It's like, no, you don't.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Thomas]

You just gotta understand the rules. And to me, you gotta play fast.

[Interviewer]

And if you're not good, you actually have to bring a stronger mentality because it's so frustrating when you're not good.

[Thomas]

Yeah. It also, it rewards great teachers. I've been incredibly lucky to have amazing teachers. Right. I love. There's a lot of benefits of doing well and being successful financially. For me, one of the greatest is the ability to seek out true experts in a field and learn from them. I have an amazing teacher actually based at Stanford, and I'm just so lucky to be able to kind of learn from him. Right. And I kind of bring that to the different approaches that I bring. Is seeking out amazing people in their field and be able to learn from them. Right. Golf is a game where you will get better with a good teacher. You will not get better by just going out on your own, just trying to make stuff happen. So I've been lucky to have great teachers.

[Interviewer]

Another question, just about sort of your life experiences, you gotten to work with family, you work with your brother. I think that's like a super enviable thing. Another example I think of is, you know, at SV angel, you know, Ron.

[Thomas]

Came to work with the Conway's sons.

[Interviewer]

And I think like that's just like special to work with family like that. And you've done it for a long time and you've done it in a obviously very successful and sort of hyper competitive together way. Just like what has that meant for you? Like what has it meant for the relationship?

[Thomas]

I mean, Felipe and I talk every day. I mean, I can't even count right. How many times. Right.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Thomas]

I think to me the biggest positive by far is we don't question each other's motives. So there's no politics. Why? Because we know we're kind of stuck with each other. Right. No matter what, even whatever happened with CO2, we're still going to be brothers. Right. So it completely eliminates a whole waste of energy around the politics and all this kind of stuff that can happen at Other firms, like, we just have none of that, he and I. I always laugh about this. I think we've talked about economics. That is what he gets and what I get over the 20, almost 25 years we've been working together. If you accumulated the amount of time that we've discussed that topic. Right. For himself and for myself, it probably adds up to 30 minutes.

[Interviewer]

And it's just because you trust that it'll be fair.

[Thomas]

Absolutely.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Thomas]

So we just. I just never think about it.

[Interviewer]

That's amazing.

[Thomas]

And I go to everybody else and I'm like, look, I want to keep contributing. And, you know, and if I don't, then, you know, my economics have gone diluted over time as others have come on. And, you know, I'm delighted by that. So it makes a lot of things simpler. Right. So that's. That's good. The bad is that it just. But I think that's just part of being a founder is. Yeah, it's. It is kind of almost all you think about. Kind of all day long.

[Interviewer]

Yep.

[Thomas]

You know, so it's.

[Interviewer]

So it dominates the relationship, basically.

[Thomas]

When you're at a family dinner, you know, when there's a prom at the end of the day, it's, you know, it's kind of upon us. Right. So it can become really overwhelming and it can be difficult to turn it off. Right. When we're together because it's kind of a lot of what we. We. We think about. Right.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Thomas]

So we've learned to modulate that and find actually activities like golf and others. Right. Where you can kind of turn the volume down a little bit on that. But, you know, I was chatting with Jensen about this one day, and, you know, it's like, what does it matter where you work in an office this. That way we're kind of working all the time. Right. I mean, it's always on my mind. It's always something I'm thinking about. So that can be the downside.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. Makes sense. Maybe. A final question I would ask is, you spent a lot of time. You talked about the importance of mentorship for you. Obviously, you spent a lot of time mentoring people. You talked about sort of young people coming up in CO2 elsewhere. Any sort of things you find yourself repeating often when you're speaking with younger people.

[Thomas]

First of all, I think having a mentor is a blessing. I was really fortunate where the first job I had out of college was, I went to caa, which is a talent agency in Los Angeles. I got promoted to the desk of an agent. I ended up Working with him for almost three years and to sit with someone in a room for that period of time. This is Brian Lord, who actually still runs the agency to this day. To watch the integrity with which he pursued his career and the way he just treated me as someone who made mistakes and just said, just don't do them again.

[Interviewer]

Right.

[Thomas]

Is something that, yeah, it's kind of helped me my whole life, and I just think it's a more interesting and rewarding way to lead your life. I do find sometimes in tech, we can be, you know, very focused on the mission that we're driving, and I think the ability to kind of share it with others is so much more rewarding. So it's both being a mentor and then being a mentee.

[Interviewer]

Right.

[Thomas]

It's something that I take a lot of pride in. And I always tell people when they. They think about coming to Couture, investing in us, I'm like, talk to everyone that's worked with me, whether they still work with me or not. I think that's how people kind of define themselves. So, yeah, for me, it's a fundamentally kind of a core principle that I live by.

[Interviewer]

You mentioned something about gift wrapping.

[Thomas]

Yeah. So when I was at caa, before you got to work on a desk, you had to work in the mail room, and that's literally what it was. We would kind of sort through mail, we would copy scripts. And I'm so grateful to have had that job, because when you're starting out, I kind of tell young people, I'm like, focus is a luxury. Think about Jensen at Nvidia today, the amount of things that he has to worry about. He's got China and what's going on there, and he's got Amazon trying to build competing chips, and he's got to run his own company and he's got to the government. I mean, every day there's something new that he's got to think about.

[Interviewer]

Right.

[Thomas]

And he can't afford the luxury of just thinking about one thing. Well, generally when you start in the workforce, you have the luxury of actually focusing on one thing. So I always tell people, I'm like, that is a luxury. Enjoy it. So the example that I use is during the holidays, we would send out a lot of gifts to our clients. And so we kind of had a gift wrapping station. And the way mostly it worked is an agent would put a gift in their outbox and say, gift wrap it for me. So you would take the gift, you would go down, you'd kind of wrap it as Quickly as you could, this, that, and you'd bring it back to the agent.

[Interviewer]

Right.

[Thomas]

So I looked at it as an opportunity to differentiate myself. So if I saw an agent a gift, I would take it. I'd be very meticulous on how I gift wrapped it. And I started experimenting with different techniques. And one that I really liked is actually putting cellophane around the paper. And it just kind of gave it a really glossy feel, and it looked really nice. So I went. I bought the, you know, the film myself, and I would put it, and I would kind of make these really.

[Interviewer]

Nice dreams of sushi.

[Thomas]

Yeah, exactly.

[Interviewer]

For gift wrapping.

[Thomas]

Well, what ended up happening is that agents ended up seeing, like, the nice gifts, and I ended up being pulled out of my regular duties, and I became, like, the gift wrapping guy. And so what was nice is I no longer had to run around everywhere. I had, like, my own little station. And, you know, for two weeks, I was just responsible. And, well, as it turns out that when a desk opens, you know, think of an agent who's got, you know, like, 15 different trainees that he can. He or she can pick from. It turns out that being known for being really having attention to detail and doing something well, it turns out that that served me really well. And so I always think when I tell an analyst and they're just starting, I'm like, you might only have one or two companies. Think of that model the way I was thinking about gift wrapping. Watch over every cell, every line. The formatting, what font you use. Every line has to have a purpose, because you might live in a world of 10,000 lines, but when you pitch the idea to Philippe, he's got 17 other things he's thinking about that moment. So your ability to crystallize that model in a way that's simple, that shows that you understand what you're talking about and that you can do it in 50 lines, not 10,000, is an incredible skill. Right. And so a lot of how we mentor our analysts are derived from kind of some of those principles.

[Interviewer]

I love it. Thomas, this was really fun. Thanks a ton for making the time. I learned a ton.

[Thomas]

All right, thank you.