Bloomberg TechBloomberg's Caroline Hyde and Ed Ludlow break down the state of the banking system and how higher rates are impacting the tech sector ahead of the FOMC Rate decision. Plus, a look at VC investing in generative AI with Khosla Ventures and Sequoia Capital.
From Marhart where Innovation, Money and Power Collie in Silicon Valley, NBN. This is Bloomberg Technology with Caroline Hyde and Ed Ludlow.
I'm Caroline Hyde at Bloomberg's World headquarters in New York.
And I'm Ed Ludlow in San Francisco. This is Bloomberg Technology coming up.
We count you down to the FED rate decision and get a real look of you on the state of the banking system and the FinTechs have helped speed up deposit flight adding to crisis concerns.
We're going to dive deep into the world at Venture Capital and speak with Sequoia general partner Constantine Beula and Coastladventures founder Vinode Coastler.
Plus how malware operators are caching in on the AI height.
To target your businesses.
We'll talk CHATCHYPT and cybersecurity with let Us.
Head of Security later this hour.
Let's turn towards, of course, what else the Federal Reserve is really trying to navigate how you can hight rates amid what is an ongoing banking crisis in part brought through of course higher interest rates. Also, though, is there a bit of an acceleration of some of these crises because of the ease with which we can pull cash out of our deposits. Joining us now to discuss all of this cannis known us OURGP management consultant.
You've got what.
Sixteen years in career of risk management, you worked at the FDIC. Canis I put it to you of how much of a worry is at the moment fintech is the ability with which we can withdraw our deposits from banks. Does that sort of speed up some of the anxiety and the crisis cycles we're seeing?
Yeah, thanks for having me. It certainly plays a role. I think we have fintech technology to pull out our deposits very quickly. But what really is the problem with this particular banking crisis is the high concentration of uninsured deposits we have banks. Silicon Valley Bank had over ninety percent exposure to uninsured deposits. And by their very nature, uninsured deposits are not sensitive to the FED insurance, the FDIC insurance. Rather, they're very opportunistic, so they move fast on to a better opportunity, or they get spooked, and they kind of all move in tandem. And that's what we saw in this most recent banking crisis.
Are you expecting a change to whether all deposits end up being ensured by the FDIC.
Well, if all deposits end up being insured by the FDIC, that means that the FDIC bank fees. The fees that the FDIC charges for deposit insurance is going to have to increase and is going to have to be distributed differently among banks. I mean, I suppose that's an option, but I think that there are so many more prudent decisions that can be made beforehand to improve revision, including the use of technology and supervision, such that we don't have to ensure all deposits. It kind of really doesn't make sense when there are so many other interim things that you can do.
The regulators can do.
And if you've read their most recent reports by both the FED and the FDIC, they admitted their shortfalls. They admitted their short but I think that that can be ameliorated with the use of technology, among other things.
Interesting ed almost technology at the heart of this, but also what's at the heart is the fact that we have neobanks fintech able to offer higher returns. ED to that extent, we're seeing a bit of a stampede. It keeps being the watchword.
Yeah, stampede or herd mentality. I mean, kend this. I go back to what happened with SVB and more recently with First Republic, that it's an issue of confidence, right, Depositors lose confidence and pull their money. The point that Caroline raised this morning is so smart that now you have so many means technologically speaking to transfer funds. I just want you to try and give us some granularity on how much that has changed the game. How much is contributed through the risk of a bank run.
Oh, I think it's contributed greatly to the risk. I mean you can have a bank run from your cell phone, as kind of what you're suggesting. Back in the olden days, people stood in line and waited for the banks to open in order to pull out their physical cash. Now you can have a bank run from your living room. So I don't think payments are not going to slow down. Payment technology, fintech technology, that's not going to slow down. I think as a result of that, risk managers need to be more prudent with regard to their concentration and their distribution to exposures of things like uninsured deposits, so you're going to continue to have advances and payments. I think they're healthy for the economy in a lot of ways. They make our lives as consumers very convenient. But that's not going to change, and we're still going to be exposed to the risk of rapid withdrawals from bank and financial institutions, given our ease with which we can do it.
Candice, what have you been advising your clients since Silicon Valley collapse, since First Republic was acquired by JP Morgan. What have you told them to do from a tech perspective.
Yeah, I think that you know, this is unlike our last crisis, where it was a credit crisis. This is an asset liability mismatch. And we always advise our clients even despite this, and admittedly we've worked with the more larger and mid size clients in my particular space, but we always advise them to stay on top of stress testing and be very prudent about managing your risk and managing your exposures to shift in the macroeconomic market. Look for macro hedges to whatever it is that you're taking exposure to. We're still giving the same good risk management advice despite what's going on here in the market, because these things were foreseen and they continue to be able to you can you can gauge them, and that's what we're revising our big clients to do.
Right.
Candice, knowness of our GP, thank you so much for your time. Now coming up what to make of the rapid evolution in the generative AI space, will bring you that conversation with Sequoia Capital partner an AI expert, Constantine Buler.
Caroline.
Yeah, and of course we have got to keep our eyes on all things chips, on all things MD. After a really tepid set of numbers coming out of what is the second biggest PC chip maker, and we know the woes, we know the concern about the PC market we saw in an Intel. We move it to AMD, but all eyes there from Qualcom after the bells, as that particular chip maker has really diversified, perhaps away.
From just PCs. We're off by more than eight and a half percent.
As a Bloomberg, let's talk artificial intelligence with AI. Jeffrey hidden Hinton leaving Google and adding his voice to a growing chorus of experts really warning about the dangers of AI.
What does this mean?
His departure for Alphabet's efforts and its Deep Mind AI lab or Deep Mind CEO Demis Hasabis sat down with Bluemberg Originals and talked about how the industry is not just losing people but also attracting a lot of talents.
To take a listen, it's an incredibly dynamic field right now, all sorts of new things happening, research going on, you know, literally, I would say in the last six months, probably hundreds of thousands of people, very talented engineers and others, have got into the field. You know. I think they've come from many other fields and they've decided maybe they weren't interest in AI for long, you know, until very recently, but they've decided this is a this is a great growth point. And so that's brought in a lot of energy into the space and a lot of dynamic ideas. And so even for us, who are you know, right in the middle of it, it's hard to keep track.
Of all of that at once.
So you have to try and take into account and look at the main trends and the main threads and sort of focus on that. I would say, but it's almost like you need an AI system to help you keep track of all of the developments that are going on. Google deep Mind CEO Demis Hasavis and you can watch more of that interview on Bloomberg's Originals AI IRL and stream new episodes Wednesdays eight thirty pm Eastern five thirty Pacific time.
Let's keep the.
Conversation going about AI with Sequoia Capital partner Constantine Buler, who's been immersed in the world of AI for a decade already. We've got some catching up to do with you. That was an interesting move because the history of AI is very closely tied with deep Mind. They've kind of brought Google and deep Mind together. You heard Demis there. Can I just get your reaction to the landscape and that in particular.
Absolutely, First, thanks for having us to pleasure to be here always. So we are in the middle of an incredible revolution in AI. It is probably most similar to the personal computer revolution of forty years ago, and Demis alludes to this briefly in his comment when he says we're in the middle of something very big here. Why do I say personal computer revolution because of the impact it's having. Imagine, right before the personal computer revolution, you were a typist and every time you made a mistake or you had to make a change, you'd throw away the paper. You have to put the type exactly exactly. You throw away the paper, you have to put a new one in and you have to start all over again. And then the personal computer comes around and everything is faster, it's easier, it's way more streamlined. But there are some changes, there's some retraining that needs to be done. You have to learn this new technology. Same kind of thing is happening here in AI. So there's this massive potential. We're right in the middle of it. It's been the cornerstone of my career for thirteen years. Sequoya, it's been a cornerstone for us for thirty years, and it is just the early innings of what's going to be very.
Brings us to hear in now though.
So you are principally a seed stage and series A investor. Yes, you know there are many that echo your sentiments. How do you actually invest? Yes in that moment.
So the first thing is founder driven, Okay.
Founders are always the lifeblood of the venture capital industry, the technology industry at large, and definitely the AI industry. So think back to when Sequoia started its venture in ai, which was nineteen ninety two when we backed at the Series A, the first investment in arguably, if not the most important AI hardware company in the world in Nvidia. That was a founder driven investment. That was a founder driven investment because Jensen Wang was an exceptional engineer from a previous Sequoia company, So founder driven as always with Sequoia, and then in nineteen ninety nine, arguably the most important at maturity AI company, Google was also a Sequoia investment, and that brings us all the way to today, which is a lot of great AI companies that are coming up, hundreds at this point that we're meeting. We're excited to get to know and finding the most brilliant founders for what they're building in the future is what Sequoia is all about.
You know, Caroline's Constantine's point. We see that activity on the show every single day, the hundreds of new companies that he's talking about.
That energy.
It came from open Ai in November of last year, and then Microsoft's investment at the beginning of the year.
And of course the Quoia backs open Ai.
But I'm interested to dig in hugging Face and then others in your portfolio. Constantine, it feels as though the rest of the VC community is rushing. It feels that regulators are having to be forced to rush. It feels as though this has taken us all by complete surprise. But you've been studying at Stanford AI. As you say, it's been Cornerstone for thirteen years. Why have we suddenly been sort of had the rug pulled a bit?
Okay, so you're exactly right, Caroline.
This is actually decades in the making, and for us, it's sekoya for me, for our team.
There's.
This is something that we've been training for and excited for for decades. But there is a big, exciting change and it is exactly what you described, which is this new user interface. When I talk about the user interface, I'm harkening back to the personal computer when you had the graphical user interface come out, and that was the advent of the first Microsoft Windows, that was the advent of a lot of the first Apple computers. And the point of the first graphical user interface in the personal computer revolution is that anyone could just use their mouse and click, as opposed to the old terminal based MS doss that only engineers could use. Similarly, the lms that open Ai and others have introduced make it so that anyone can use AI.
You don't have to be an AI engineer.
That's why we're in an incredibly important moment because all of a sudden, AI is accessible to everyone, and that's what shows.
The data which it runs on is still in many ways not perfect. BI sees within how are you thinking about the startups you invest in and the overall regulatory environment that's going to have to play catch up in some way.
Yes, no doubt, it's the data and you're referring to hallucination is the term that's often used. This is absolutely top of mind for the enterprises that we're talking to, and there's several ways that are currently being addressed from an engineering and a company building perspective to improve that. And in terms of policy, there's a couple responses. One is to step back and say hey, too powerful, too dangerous, not me. Another is to just say hey, let it run. And the third way, which is what we take at Sequoia, what I believe is the right approach, is to say, hey, this is incredibly powerful, let's be in evolved let's take actions to help form it safely. Let's let's be a part of this evolution of this technology so that it can be a powerful force of good for humanity.
You're sounding positive, you're sounding optimistic. In fact, we went to our own viewers. We did a Twitter poll, as we tend to do every single day, conserting. Just take a look at the results, because we ask them whether they're pessimist or optimists around AI great for humanity.
Actually, Ed.
Said yes, yeah, yeah, And look, they're too early to tell. We hear it so often, so constant. You've been in this field for a long time. Broadly society is catching up. His guest Caroline's point. There's a parallel I want to draw with crypto because you are been an active investor in the crypto industry. I think the latest was edX markets, right, that is a froth and bubble burst cycle. Why will we not see the same thing play out here in AI?
Yes, so first I am a believer in crypto as well, But that is a separate trend for you know, further discussion, because there's a lot of depth there too on AI. This too early to tell point is a critical point, and I encourage your audience to use AI and to actually start making it a part of their lives. You know, there's this kind of trite quote which is AI is not going to take your job.
A human using.
AI will, and I think that is a lot of there's a lot of truth to that. The action that should be taken is to start harnessing the power of AI. If you're not using AI tools, try them out, see how they can make you better internally.
It's aquoia.
We talk a lot about augmented intelligence as opposed to artificial intelligence.
Constantine absolutely great to have you. Thank you, Saquiah Capital partner Constantine Bula with the optimistic point of view.
There.
Time for Tokien tech.
Across the pond, the United Kingdom's Competition of Markets Authority has officially started a merger inquiry into Adobe's twenty billion dollar purchase of startup Figma. The agency set a June thirtieth deadline for its phase one decision. The deal, of course, also ander scrutiny from regulators here in the US. Now, TSMC is drawing up plans to build its first chip fabrication plant in Europe. According to sources, the chip maker is in talks with partners to spend as much as eleven billion dollars on the new plant, which would be based in Saxony, Germany. And finally, Goldman Sachs is just named Kim Posnet as Global head of TMT Banking. According to a company memo, she is a veteran deal maker whose recent work includes Endeavors Group Indeavor Group's nine point three billion dollar takeover of WWE Carrot.
A great array of news there.
Meanwhile, let's dig into another part of the news agenda that we've got to touch. Because the latest in the war on Ukraine, Russia actually saying it is able to avert an attack by a pair of drones aimed to hit President Vladimir Putin's residence in Most Tuesday night, and blame was immediately placed on Ukraine, but without providing evidence. State Department Secretary Anthony Blincoln said that he couldn't validate the reports and warned to take any Kremlin claims with.
A large shaker of salt. For now.
Selinsky has said that this is untrue. Welcome back to Blue Blow Technology. I'm Caroline Hyde and New.
York and I met Lovelo in San Francisco.
Turning back now to AI ed, of course, we've got to do it. Microsoft chief, in fact, the chief economist for that particular company, Michael Schwartz, was out with a warning about the extent to which artificial intelligence will actould be dangerous in the hands of bad actors. He spoke earlier at the World Economic Forum panel in Geneva.
I'm quite confident that yes, AI will be used by bad actors, and yes it will cause real damage, and yes we have to be very careful and very big to avoid they all the means possible, we have to put saveguards.
Let's talk about that mix of cyber and AI. Meta out with its quarterly threat report, which showed that malware operations using for example, chat GPT, AI help tools as phishing links to target businesses and consumers. Joining us now as metas head of Security Policy, Nathaniel Gleischer, I just want to dig into how new malware strains you're finding are basically including posing as chatchypts, browser extensions or productivity tools. It builds as though malware bad actors are getting in on the AI hype.
Yeah, thank you so much for having me. I'm here today because we are releasing a series of threat reports on threats we've countered around the world will help keep people safe. One of the threats that I think is particularly useful for this business audience is malware, and to be thinking about malware are malicious tools that are designed to look innofant, but focus on compromising personal devices, compromise in your accounts, and we know that they target businesses. And as you say, malware developers always try to get it on buzzwords. They're looking for ways to trick people into downloading malware. We've seen to do it with cryptocurrency in twenty twenty two. They try to get people to click on links suggesting that you would get access to new cryptocurrency apps. Today they're trying to use generative AI, suggesting you could click on a link, you might get access to chat, GPT or another genderate AI tool, and actually you'd be downloading malware.
Fascinating just who within a business is the most vulnerable, who are going to be being sent these links.
I think businesses should be conscious that malware actors target indiscriminately. They will target across the business, including maybe people who are connected to prominent leaders or individuals that might just be operating in the business and for example, maintaining or administering the businesses social media pages. The good news for all of this, though, is that there's a number of things, fairly simple things that people can do and businesses can do to keep themselves safe, whether that's turning on two factor authentication or using strong and unique passwords across their online accounts. And we are rolling out a series of new protections for businesses to help them strengthen their defenses on meta and also to help them protect against malware wherever it might target them, whether that's on their devices, on their other online accounts, or on our platforms.
The fact out this is a story about bad actors posting ururls that purport to take you to attract GPT like product. Right, that's what you've detected. What I want to know is have you detected threat actors who are actually using the technology using generative AI to make the content they post on your platforms harder to detect.
We haven't seen significant sophisticated campaigns relying on genitive AI today. We do know that bad actors try to abuse every new piece of technology, so we expect that they're going to try to abuse generative AI, just like they've tried to abuse other innovations in recent years. That's why it's particularly important that defender teams at Meta and at other companies around the world, including in government and civil society, are thinking about how these abuses might happen and steps we can take that protect people and counter the bad actors.
Cisco warned that AI would make phishing attacks harder to detect. Do you share Cisco's concern.
We've seen some limited examples of people using AI based tools to, for example, create profile pictures that of people who don't exist but look realistic. We've seen some cases of people trying to use generative AI tools to produce deep fake videos. So these threats are certainly out there, and it's important to be ready to counter them. That's why you need to have analyst teams that hunt for this type of thing. And the other side of generative AI is that generative AI has a lot of incredibly positive potentials, and one of them is helping defenders who are looking to protect public debate improve their detection and response systems so we can keep people safe.
Does it particularly matter where it's coming from, Nathaniel, you identify Ductail in particular, that's a Vietnam based cyber criminal operation.
Is a lot coming from there.
Can you see where a lot of this attack is stemming from?
Malware development happens all over the world, and it can be hard to tell exactly where the actors are where they're coming from. When we are able to identify a particular company or a particular actor who's behind it, we'll take additional steps to deter them and impose cost on them. So, for example, for some of the people developing this malware, we referred them to law enforcement for further investigation, and we send cease and assist letters. We often see or sometimes see companies that try to seem legitimate but also operate on the dark side of all of this and try to share malware. And for companies like that, you can impose a lot of cost on them by highlighting this, by exposing what they're doing, and by bringing law enforcement and government to bear against them.
Of course, what's thing is, we're wondering about a very global cyber attack threat. We're thinking and talking to a global company that of course has rechanged its name, talking itself about the metaphors, but also deeply ingrained in investing in AI in some way.
Ed.
Yeah, I mean if Aaniel I covered Meta earnings, Mark Zuckerberg really emphasizing Meta's competence in the field of AI. Right, So, how do you and the security team use artificial intelligence as a tool? How can it help you?
GENERAI is a novel and fast development technology. There are a lot of places where I can have real impact medicine, education, But I do think one of the interesting opportunities is in what we would call integrity, trust and safety, keeping people safe. You can quickly be able to identify and track and counter threats around the world. When we're moving in a global environment where there are many many countries, and there are billions of users, and there are many threat actors. Everything we can do to help move more quickly encountering these threats is effective. We work to pair those types of automated tools with expert human investigators who can track and counter the most sophisticated threat actors and tinys together. Pairing them up has been most effective encountering the bad Guess all.
Right, Nathaniel Gleischer and Meta, thank you for bringing us your latest report. Another story that we're following TikTok's head of trust and safety for the US is leaving the company. The senior official in charge of ensuring user safety is departing amid increased pressure for the US government to ban the app. Eric Hahn had been one of the most prominent officials in TikTok's efforts to convince lawmakers that the app is safe for US users.
Carolyne I.
Meanwhile, look coming up, we're more on tech, more on competition between China and the US.
With someone who calls it the.
Most important war in the next two decades, the techno economic war would of course be joined one another than Koslaventure's founder Venov Kosla. Time now for our VC round up and starting with LinkedIn co founder and Read Hoffman and DeepMind co founder Mastuffa Sulliman, who have their own AI startup. Who would have thought, And they're rolling out a chatbot called PIE, which stands for Personal Intelligence and it's intended to serve as a supportive personal companion that gives friendly advice.
Meanwhile, let's look at the VC firm Accel.
It's refocusing its India Accelerator program on who.
Guessed at AI startups?
Now the firm will choose as many as half a dozen early stage startups to fund, to mentor in that starting this month, is also targeting companies that use technology to make conventional industrial processes all the more efficient.
Ed let's stick with all things bench capital, things AI. With Coast the ventures founder Vinode Coaster, who joins us for today's VC Spotlight here in San Francisco, Let's go to AI. It's all that anyone wants to talk about. I mean open ai was the first big check that he wrote, right, and.
We wrote the first very large check in open ai that we've done, Yes, first venture capital firm, along with some individuals.
So fast forward to present day. There is a hype cycle around US Fisher Intelligence and half of your field of vcpaers talk about, well, we've been doing this for a decade, and then half getting into it, and you how do you assess what's happening?
Well, everybody wants to get on the bandwagon because it is a major trend, and it is a major trend, so not surprising people claiming they've been doing it for a decade. I wrote about it extensively about ten years ago, and then four years ago we invested in open ai. Five six years ago, we had a whole bunch of other startups we invested in in the same area.
And so it is an exciting trend.
It is hard to predict exactly how fast it is developing or how fast it will develop. Every day you see new changes, but it is exciting, and it's exciting.
From both a business point of view.
As well as the technology capability point of view.
Is open AI the only game in town? Is it just a clear leader in this field right now?
No, in America, there's a lot of interesting startups in this area. Google of course is a very credible player, and then there's other startups that are credible too, trying to make a go at it. I think the leader always has a huge advantage.
What about leadership coming from China, because I know you keep a keen eye on what you really see as a competitive threat, the new war in the next couple of decades, techno economic.
Oh absolutely, I probably worry more about a Chinese AI doing bad things than anything to do with AI itself going sentient or the kinds of things a lot must talks about. Not that that's not a concern. China is going to be a big enemy in this. I believe we are in a technoeconomic war with China for economic dominance and hence dominance of political systems to go with it.
Okay, So do the risk reward for us here at the moment or balance the risks when you're talking to regulators as you have done if you talk to people in power. You've been over there in Washington. You had coming together of course the Hell and Valley Forum, where you gathered vcs and tech community to talk to Well, government, do you want them to regulate how we use AI in the wild in the US at the moment? Or are you more worried about the regulation of China and money flowing there to build their own AI.
Well, I'm much more worried about the competitive picture with China than about regulation here. I think it's too early to regulate AI. We don't know enough about it. I do think we should heavily fund safety research, especially in the universities and third parties, but regulating it would be a real mistake and put us behind China in the race.
And the race it does feel is something that vcs that Peter til that Venola you're talking about ed and also a relationship that's being built a little bit more firmly between DC and Silicon Valley.
Where you sit, Yeah, I think for me.
You know, the question Vinode is what was the upshot of the Hill and Valley forum. You know that we reported on it. We discussed about the relationship between DC and Silicon Valley.
What has happened as a result.
Well, there's clearly a lot of interest in this question, not only AI and AI regulation, but equally importantly on our AI race with China. My interest is highlighting how important that issuers and how much we should focus on the race with China for technology supremacy here. I do think there'll be multiple players, but I do think there will be winners that take a disproportionate part of the economic pie. And I think the US model is well set up for it. But it's not obvious that we can win or we will win in twenty years from now.
He said economic pie. So I'm going to do a small pivot. There is a FED meeting today. We expect a twenty five basis point hike. We talk daily about tighter financial conditions. VC of your experience in your scale, how does that impact the ecosystem that you are operating?
In well fed.
Rate hikes affect short term things. You know what we invest in open AI four years ago. We don't expect liquidity for six, seven, eight years, So I'd have to predict the market in twenty thirty and the federate in twenty thirty to really have it impact our.
Very popular within this organization, if you could.
So, my goal is really to focus on what adds substantial societal value and because of that economic value and what will be true in terms of real value active society in twenty thirty if I'm going to make good investments. So our focus is much longer term than short term interest rate types and not it's not that enable more or less financing to happen in the interim, So we do pay attention to it, but mostly we ignore it.
Yeah, financing an interim, I mean caroline for all the volatility in public markets, and from a policy perspective, we see checks getting written by vcs to venture founded startups.
And largely in the realm of AI at the moment of VINOD To that extent, are you writing a lot of checks? What sort of size of company you're most looking for at the moment? In this new.
Environment, we are writing a lot of checks. We are being aggressive.
But I would say there's many more bad AI startups than good startups, and it's very hard to differentiate if you're not experienced with AI. So I do think lots of bad investments will be made, but overall more money will be made than lost. What even if ninety percent of the startups failed, which they.
Will interesting and of course that's often the bet, no, that you will have failures, but you'll then have from those absolutely extraordinary success that gives the money and the returns to vcs. But you know, in this current environment, we're talking a lot about so called zombie companies, the companies that have massive valuations that can't vindicate the growth at the moment, having to make cutbacks, having to think more about revenue driving, profit driving. What are you doing with those companies at the moment that just had huge valuations that perhaps don't have the run rate that they used to.
Well, there are clearly founder choices to be made. Good founders are responding to the environment by saying, let's ignore what happened in the past, let's ignore our old valuation and focus in on how we create value for the next few years. And not worry about what the valuation was. So founders that fundamentally decide whether to cater to investors or to the reality of the business they're in. And most of the good founders I know are really focusing in it in on what they need to do to build a great business and hope that investors will get on board later and not worry about short term perception of valuation.
There are other deeply technical areas that you are passionate about and that you are investing in climate or energy related and one of them is fusion. You've written op eds about this because AI is dominated headlines. We talked about it less, but can you just explain why you're so focused on that area.
Well, if you look at Commonwealth Fusion, which is an investment we made about four years ago, five years ago before there was a company. Actually we started working with Bob Mumguard when he was a senior fellow at the MIT Fusion Lab.
It was very clear if you cracked.
Fusion as a technology, it was one of the largest markets in the world, much much larger than for example, Google's market. Because energy markets are very large, and so that is exciting. You can lose one time, So your money you can make a thousand times your money.
That's a pretty good trade off.
Then I brew up against commercial breaks very quickly. Is it a good time to be a bench catalyst.
I think it's a great time to be an a venture capitalist.
Most of the large companies are cutting off their advanced projects, and so the best people leave start companies. That's the raw material. We need great talent, and there's plenty of capital. So it's a great time. The next five years will look really, really good.
You've got to be optimistic in this game. It's great. Tows in time with you. Thank you.
Vernodekoes of Kosler Ventures, the founder there. Of course, it's been going viral. Nordstrom plans to give up its store in downtown San Francisco. The company will vacate more than three hundred thousand square feet of space at Westfield San Francisco Center that's on Market Street, shopping and tourist area in the heart of downtown. It also plans to get this shut it's nearby Nordstrom Rack Now. The move follows others like Office Depot Anthropology also shutting down the Market Street adjacent locations. It says the city just struggles with empty office buildings and crime concerns, and ed I felt that like having lived there briefly in twenty sixteen and then coming back to see you as I love to do, Market Street is just an extraordinary place. Nowadays, there is nothing to go to, nothing to buy, and when you do go into the Macy's there, for example.
It's empty.
Yeah, and you know it follows on from the Whole Food's decision right to close that downtown store around a year after it opened. There is a big discussion in this city about what went wrong on Market Street. Remember they tried to bring in tech Twitter and Uber's offices. They gave them incentives to do so to regenerate the area, but it hasn't worked.
What do you make though of the cynicism that you see.
In social media as it goes viral, everyone sort of wringing their hands. Do we need to be as desperate as some of the sentiments seems?
Yeah, Look, I think that there is a lot of people calling on the mayor in the DA to take action at street level to fix that part of town. But there is definitely a tech and broader economic story there that will continue to cover on this program.
And that does it for this edition of Bluebow Technology.
