20VC: Howard Marks on How COVID-19 Impacts Our Economy, Liquidity and National Debt, Why The Theory of Falling Knives and Market Bottoms is Wrong & Why The Best Investors Are Fundamentally Unemotional

Howard Marks is the Co-Founder and Co-Chairman of Oaktree Capital Management, a leading investment firm with more than $120 billion in assets. Prior to founding Oaktree, Howard spent 10 years at The TCW Group, where he was responsible for investments in distressed debt, high yield bonds, and convertible securities. Previously, Howard was with Citicorp for 16 years, where he served as Vice President and senior portfolio manager in charge of convertible and high yield securities. Howard has also written two books, most recently Mastering the Market Cycle: Getting the Odds on Your Side, and it was Warren Buffet who said, “When I see memos from Howard Marks in my mail, they’re the first thing I open and read. I always learn something.” In Today’s Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Howard first made his way into the world of finance over 50 years ago? How did not getting an investment banking job change the course of Howard’s life? 2.) What does Howard believe is the fundamental economic crisis occurring today? How does Howard expect liquidity availability to change over the next few years? What analogies of prior downturns and recessions can we look to learn from? How does this downturn differ and align to prior recessions and downturns? What policies would Howard like to see governments enact to prevent the worst-case scenario? 3.) In conditions of such uncertainty, how does Howard think about how to manage and move forward with such volatility? What are Howard's frameworks and mechanisms to analyse crises events like this? Taking the analysis one level further, how bad does Howard believe this could get? If short of The Great Depression, are there scenarios that could lead there? What are the leading signals? 4.) Being proactive, how does today's situation change the mentality and activity at Oaktree? Why does Howard not agree with the notion of "the falling knife"? How does Howard think about market bottoms? How does Howard determine the right insertion point? Why does Howard believe the best investors are unemotional? How can one manage the psychology of catching a falling knife that falls further? 5.) What advice would Howard give to the may millions of working professionals today that have never seen a recession in their professional career? What makes Howard the most nervous when he looks at and assess the landscape today? What does Howard believe is the biggest misconception people believe with regards to the current economic crisis? Items Mentioned In Today’s Show: Howard’s Fave Book: Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets As always you can follow Harry, The Twenty Minute VC and Howard on Twitter here! Likewise, you can follow Harry on Instagram here for mojito madness and all things 20VC.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Harry Stebbings?

  You are listening to the 20 minute VC with me, Harry Stebbings at H Stebbings 1996 with two Bs on Instagram for all things behind the scenes. But to the show today, and we're in a very unique, incredibly unsettling and uncertain time today. And thinking through who'd be the best person to discuss the current market and market cycle with. It was a very obvious answer for me, honestly. He's the master of market cycles. He's a personal hero of mine and I couldn't be happier to welcome Howard Marks back to the hot seat today. Now Howard is co-chairman and co-founder of Oak Tree Capital Management, a leading investment firm with more than $120 billion in assets. Prior to founding Oak Tree, Howard spent 10 years at the TCW Group, responsible for investments in distressed debt, high-yield bonds and convertible securities.

• 0:42Harry Stebbings?

  And previously Howard was with Citicorp for 16 years, serving as Vice President and Senior Portfolio Manager in charge of convertible and high-yield securities. He also writes the annual memo, which is always my must-read and it's one of my favourite things there is. Also, he's written two books, the most recent Mastering the Market Cycle: Getting the Odds on Your Side. It was Warren Buffett himself that said once, "When I see memos from Howard Marks in my mail, they're the first thing I open and read. I always learn something." But before we move into the show today, I want to take a moment to mention HelloSign, a great example of a company that found success in building a product focused on user experience. HelloSign is an effortless e-signature solution, used by millions to securely send and request legally valid digital signatures and agreements.

• 1:25Harry Stebbings?

  They raised a total of $16 million in funding and recently got acquired by Dropbox for an impressive $230 million. Check out hellosign.com/20vc to join the thousands of companies and founders who value fast, secure and simple e-signatures. And speaking of signatures and getting deals done there, you really need to build that relationship and there's nothing like meeting face to face. And there's nothing like Zoom to make that happen. Zoom lets you connect and do business across town or around the world. Zoom ties together all of your communication needs into one easy platform for video conferencing, phone calls, group chat, webinars and your conference rooms. And connect easily from anywhere, your mobile phone, your laptop or conference room. Zoom is how business gets done. Get your free account at

• 2:10Harry Stebbings?

  Zoom.com today, meet Happy with Zoom. And finally, I've always been a big history man, and so I want to talk about Cooley, the global law firm built around startups and venture capital. Since forming the first venture fund in Silicon Valley, Cooley has formed more venture capital funds than any other law firm in the world, with 50-plus years working with VCs. They help VCs form and manage funds, make investments, and handle the myriad of issues that arise through a fund's lifetime. So to learn more about the number one most active law firm representing VC-backed companies going public, head over to Cooley.com and also check out Cooleygo.com. But now, without further ado, I can't wait to welcome back to the hot seat the wonderful Howard Marks.

• 2:54Speaker 01

  You have now arrived at your destination.

• 2:57Harry Stebbings?

  Howard, what can I say? I'm so excited to have you back on the show. Although not the nicest of economic conditions, I always love our chats and I so appreciate you joining me today. So thank you so much for joining me once again.

• 3:08Speaker 02

  It's my pleasure.

• 3:09Harry Stebbings?

  I would love to quickly dive in there. And for those that maybe missed our first episode, how did you make your way into the world of finance and come to found Oaktree in a very succinct one to three minutes?

• 3:18Speaker 02

  In other words, 60 years in three minutes. I went to college expecting to be an accountant. I switched my major to finance. I took a graduate degree at University of Chicago. And while in school, I had a summer job at Citibank's Investment Research Department, and I enjoyed it. And when I got out of school, I had several choices, but having had a favorable experience, that's what I chose. I was an equity analyst at Citibank for several years, unit head, and then the Director of Research from 675 to 78. In 78, I was asked to start a high-yield bond fund. And high-yield bonds have been the, shall we say, epicenter, although it's an advised word today, for almost everything that's happened, interestingly, in finance in the last 40 years.

• 4:03Speaker 02

  So I went from Citi to TCW, and there, with Bruce Karsh, I started the distressed debt investing activity, which is very important to us today. And in 95, Bruce and I and three other colleagues left to start Oaktree. So we are within a couple of weeks of Oaktree. Twenty fifth anniversary and that's the short version.

• 4:24Harry Stebbings?

  And what an incredible twenty five years it has been. You know, this show normally we have a little bit of chit chat before diving in, but I can't wait on this one. And so they're fundamentally quite scary times. We've had the dot com. We've had the tech bubble with the lack of business fundamentals. And then in two thousand eight, obviously with the liquidity and housing crisis. The thing I've been thinking about constantly over the last few days and excited to see your thoughts on is what in your mind is the fundamental economic crisis that's occurring here today?

• 4:48Speaker 02

  Well, we have a couple of things. Number one, depending on the ultimate severity of the disease, the present time, we have a total stoppage of the economy. You know, stores are closed, restaurants, movie theaters, nobody's going to entertainment events, nobody's on airplanes, traveling, hotel occupancy is very low, no business trips, no pleasure trips. So the economy is in a deep freeze. And then in addition to that, given the fact that we had eleven years of prosperity and declining interest rates in the world, people used more and more debt to buy assets of lower and lower quality to lever them into palatable returns.

• 5:25Speaker 02

  But the combination today of the high leverage and the low asset quality has come home to roost and a lot of companies are over levered and a lot of investment entities are as well, and they may not survive. And in the meantime, they are having their liquidity withdrawn by lenders who need the money back. So there's on top of an economic freeze, we have a withdrawal of liquidity and the combination is very serious.

• 5:52Harry Stebbings?

  Can I ask you, as you mentioned, the incredible sixty years that you spent in the industry, is there an analogy that you can point to where you draw lessons from this time? Or do you see this as fundamentally a completely new paradigm?

• 6:03Speaker 02

  Well, it's similar in some ways to oh eight and it's different in some ways. The main difference is that this is life and death. This is a health crisis. That was a financial crisis. And the other difference is that that crisis came off a bubble in which the banks were levered thirty two times their equity and many highly levered entities had invested in subprime mortgages, which had no real substance.

• 6:30Speaker 02

  This time around, we are not coming off a bubble. The banks are much less leveraged and there is no analog as deficient in substance as the subprime mortgage. So those are the differences. The similarities are that it's a financial problem for highly levered entities which own assets that are declining in price.

• 6:49Harry Stebbings?

  Absolutely. Can I ask you, you know, a lot of people that I speak to, a lot of the concern is around the fiscal and monetary policies that have been enacted over the last seven to 10 years, meaning that when we look at the toolkit that we have at our disposal to reengage the economy when the health crisis does subside, you know, one hopes as soon as possible. But we've used all the tools at our disposal. Do you think that's a fair concern, given the fiscal and monetary policies that we've used over the last seven to 10 years, meaning we have little to enact such growth again?

• 7:16Speaker 02

  Well, it is a concern. The main areas in which we have exhausted our resources are interest rates, which historically interest rate cuts have been the central bank's main tool for stimulating economies. The problem this time is that the normal regime of interest rate cuts in the past covered approximately 500 basis points, which is what investment people use to say mean five percentage points. So interest rates in the past might have gone from nine to four, or from seven to two, or something like that, or in the global financial crisis, they went from five to zero. Well, the problem is that in this instance, the interest rates at the beginning of the problem were one and a half percent.

• 7:59Speaker 02

  So clearly, if it's one and a half, you can't cut by five. So that's a problem. And then the other problem is that governments, as opposed to central banks, governments' main tool for stimulating economies has been deficit spending. And thanks to the Trump tax bill that was signed in December of 17, we were already running a trillion dollar deficit in times of prosperity. So further deficit spending then is similarly unpalatable. So the ability to do deficit spending should be limited in some way, and obviously the ability to cut rates is limited. There are other things that the Fed and the government can do, and they'll do them all to try to bring the economy back.

• 8:40Harry Stebbings?

  Kind of bringing the economy back, the unprecedented levels of government stimulus that we definitely seen in the UK with paying eighty percent of salaries in the UK. And then also kind of thinking about the potential twenty five percent plus levels of unemployment that one could see over the ensuing twelve, twenty four months, depending on the timeframes associated. I asked actually Bill Gurley at Benchmark before the show, what would you ask Howard? And he said, given the potential levels of unemployment and the unprecedented levels of government spending, how does that impact and affect markets for the next fifteen years in your mind?

• 9:10Speaker 02

  Well, Bill asks a good question. It's not unrelated to your prior question. But starting out from trillion dollar deficits, if you go back to when I was a boy, maybe that's sixty years ago, Harry, believe it or not, there used to be debates about whether it was okay for governments to owe money, to whether there was proper to have national debt. And of course, that debate has been forgotten. In more recent decades, everybody assumes it's okay to have national debt. The only question is how much, what percentage of GDP is okay? Now, given this problem and where the rescue is starting out from, and how much will have to be done, it's clear that we're going to run huge deficits and add greatly to the national debt. And at what point is it too much?

• 9:52Speaker 02

  And the answer is, we don't know. Given that people used to think that any national debt was bad, and countries have done rather well anyway, now we kind of think in some quarters that national debt should be limited, but there's no way to figure out what it should be limited to. And there's a theory called modern monetary theory, that it doesn't matter, which I find that hard to accept. So the point is, we're going to be going through the next years, saddled with an enormous national debt that will never repay. That's don't get repaid for the most part. And we don't know what that means for the functioning of the economy. And deficits and money printing to service them seem inherently inflationary. The world has been a deflationary place, or a low inflation place, should I say,

• 10:36Speaker 02

  from eighty two till now, which is almost forty years of declining or absent inflation rates. And in recent years, many countries have wanted some inflation and haven't been able to get it. Now, who knows? Maybe it's going to come back. And I think that would be the worst possible outcome.

• 10:53Harry Stebbings?

  Absolutely, I do agree. I guess my question to you is, with such uncertainty ahead, how do you think about how to manage and move forward with such uncertainty? And are there frameworks one can use to analyse crisis events in moments like this?

• 11:05Speaker 02

  There are frameworks through what you tried to do at the beginning of the show, that is analogies. But when you're living through something that is unique, as we are, both in terms of the health crisis, and there's never been, I don't think there's ever been, two million new unemployment claims, which is what some of the brokers think there's going to be next week. There's never, I don't think there's ever been a quarter with a 20% decline in GDP. So you can't say you know how this is going to end, given the fact that it's a unique experience. I think for Oaktree, Harry, all we try to do is figure out what companies will stay in business, some idea of what they're worth, and then invest in them on a senior level. And if investing in what we think are viable companies in

• 11:49Speaker 02

  senior debt, if that doesn't work, I think maybe nothing will. So we have to operate on the premise that will be successful, as it always has been in the past.

• 11:58Harry Stebbings?

  You mentioned pricing there. I'm really interested. How long do you think it will take for the ripple effects of this to really impact valuations? Because, you know, obviously I invest today, and bluntly, it hasn't rippled through into the valuations that I'm seeing in markets today. How long do you think it will take for valuations to correlate to the crisis that we're seeing?

• 12:14Speaker 02

  Well, I don't know. I'm not watching the UK market, and presumably you are. In the US, we have had that effect. As before today, I don't know where the market closed today, but it was up substantially, like eight or so percent when I last looked. Before today, I think the market was down about 35%. So I wouldn't agree with your premise that valuations haven't been affected. Maybe they haven't been for real estate, and maybe they haven't been for private companies, but they certainly have been in the public stock market.

• 12:41Harry Stebbings?

  Can I ask, if one kind of projects themselves forward and thinks about how this could go, and I don't mean to be pessimistic here, how bad do you think this could get, Howard? And if short of the Great Depression, are there scenarios that could lead to a Great Depression-like environment?

• 12:55Speaker 02

  You know what, my partner Bruce Garsh and I, talking, I would say, middle of last week, were afraid of a meaningful probability of a depression with millions losing their jobs and businesses shuttered for long periods of time. Now, I think with the government having done as much as they've announced, it feels like the probability of a depression is down, but you never know. And, you know, I always hasten to point out that economies do not operate according to a schematic diagram. And this is an engineering where you figure this input and that input is sure to produce that output. But I must say, most people probably believe today that the government's swift action has precluded a global depression.

• 13:39Speaker 02

  But since the last one started 90 years ago, and very few people who are alive today were there, and since the circumstances for every episode are different, I don't think we can be cavalier about that. But I must say that at the present time, it doesn't seem likely.

• 13:54Harry Stebbings?

  You mentioned that kind of very swift actions. I am interested, what policy changes would you like to see, especially in the US, but your home market? And how would you see that in terms of minimizing the economic damage? What would you most like to see that you think would be beneficial to the economy moving forward?

• 14:08Speaker 02

  You know, the analogy I use, Harry, is that sometimes when people are very sick, they put them into a coma so that the body can heal itself. And I think we need a freeze on certain things so that the economy can heal. And I think that the new government actions will have a freeze on evictions, for example, and maybe there has to be a freeze on debt collections, and maybe there could be a freeze on rents. Now, the problem is, everybody says, oh, that sounds like a great idea. Why don't we tell everybody that for the next six months, they don't have to pay their rent? That would be a real help to the guy who's lost his job. Sounds like a great idea. But where do the rent payments go? And they go to landlords. So that means that the landlord loses his income. And can he live?

• 14:50Speaker 02

  And can he maintain the building and pay the central costs and so forth? So the solutions aren't easy, but I think the answer is that there have to be temporary actions to mitigate the short-term damage. You know, in our country, we have unemployment insurance. Twenty six weeks, maybe it has to be made longer or something like that.

• 15:08Harry Stebbings?

  Can I ask, does it change anything about how you act and operate within Oatry and maybe Oatry more broadly? Given the longstanding bull run that we've had, given the very, very swift changes today, does it change the operations and the mentality at Oatry?

• 15:21Speaker 02

  Well, I mean, for us, it just makes us more aggressive. We've been defensive for the last several years. We have thought that practices in the financial world were too undisciplined. So we've been trying to operate in a reduced risk fashion and buy higher quality assets. And I would say now that prices are down so much and the marketplace is more disciplined, I think we can turn more aggressive. When there's a lot of money in everybody's hands and they're all eager to put it to work, then everybody bids for assets. And they bid for opportunities to provide financing. And as a result, the prices rise, the prospective returns decline and the risk rises. And that's the process I call the race to the bottom.

• 16:04Speaker 02

  And it's very, very dangerous for people who participate in the race. On the other hand, if we have a market where people aren't bidding to put their money to work, then maybe the few people who will invest or will lend can get a good deal with low prices and high returns and safety. So Warren Buffett, great quote, he said that the less prudence with which others conduct their affairs, the greater the prudence with which we must conduct our own affairs. And I interpret that to mean that when other people are carefree and risk oblivious, we should be terrified. But on the other hand, when other people are terrified, we should turn aggressive. So in times when other people are terrified and step away from the market, we tend to step in. And I think we would be doing that now.

• 16:48Harry Stebbings?

  I'm really interested to hear your thoughts. I was speaking to a friend of mine, he runs a large hedge fund in London. And I said to him about kind of public markets and being more aggressive over the coming months personally. And he said, Harry, the biggest danger that you will face, do not be the one to catch the falling knife. And my question to you is, how do you think about detecting market bottoms versus temporary market bottoms? And how do you know when something's fallen enough to engage?

• 17:10Speaker 02

  Well, in answer to your last question, it's fallen enough to engage when it's cheap, when it is. selling at a discount to its intrinsic value and offering a high prospective return with the risk under control. And how do you know that that's the case? Judgment. There's no place to look. You can't look it up in a book or you can't Google it. There's no formula. You can operate no algorithm to tell you when things are cheap. Personal judgment. That's all there is. And in my opinion, that's what we get paid for. We are value investors and we try to buy things when they're cheap. And the cheaper they become, the more we buy, hopefully. Now, let's go back to what you said earlier and your friend in London. And I believe that when the going gets tough, many people say, I'm not gonna try to catch a falling knife.

• 17:53Speaker 02

  They back away from the market and they say, we're not gonna buy until the dust settles and the uncertainty is reduced. It is my opinion that when the knife is falling, it's terrifying. Buyers get great value. And when the knife stops falling and the dust settles and the uncertainty is resolved, the bargains are gone. I believe it is our job as professionals to catch falling knives carefully. Now, if your friend runs a hedge fund, he has to worry because he has to worry about redemptions. And if he gets a redemption, he has to sell assets. So he may, number one, hold a lot of cash so that he won't show big declines and he won't get redemptions. Or he may hold a lot of cash so that if he does get redemptions, he'll be able to meet them without selling assets.

• 18:35Speaker 02

  So in his position, given the realities of his business, cash may be highly desirable. It may be imprudent to buy for his business, not for his investors. Because the investors who gave him money and will leave the money with him probably wanna see him buying now at these improved bargains. So the great thing about Oaktree's position is that a good bit of our assets are in closed-end funds where the clients can't withdraw. They've committed money to us. We have it for up to 10 years. And we can do what we think is smart without having to worry about withdrawals. So we can catch falling knives. And most of the time, Harry, when you catch a falling knife, it goes further. So you buy something because you think it's cheap, it goes lower. We know that.

• 19:18Speaker 02

  But we don't know how much lower and we'd never know how close we are to the bottom. Now, I think in your preamble, you said your friend says we Wait for the bottom. How can you know when you're at the bottom? What's the definition of the bottom? The bottom is defined as the day before the market starts to rise. And since it's the day before, how can you know you're there? I put out a memo on Thursday and I said, Oatry rejects the concept of waiting for the bottom. It's impossible intellectually to know when you're at the bottom. And I think that terms like don't catch a falling knife and wait for the bottom are cover for inaction during crisis.

• 19:54Harry Stebbings?

  Can I ask you, how do you manage the psychology of not knowing where the bottom is? And as he said, it will always fall lower than when you catch it. And there's always that ensuing timeframe where it does drop. How do you manage that psychology where everyone else panics and worries and is concerned and sells at a loss? How did you manage that psychology, especially in the early days, I guess?

• 20:12Speaker 02

  Well, in the early days, I wasn't managing money. I was 44 when I lived through my first debt crisis in 1990. By that time, maybe I had grown up and learned a few things. Bruce Karsh and I, I think, are both unemotional people. And in terms of living with these ups and downs, it helps to be unemotional. Number two, we support each other. And I think that each of us can do a better job of resisting the emotional ups and downs because we have the support of the other, which is very important. But the point is this, think about the average investor. The average investor gets excited when things go well and prices rise and wants to buy more. And the average investor gets depressed when things go poorly and prices fall and wants to sell.

• 20:57Speaker 02

  In other words, the model should be buy low, sell high. And the average person's psychology tends to get him to buy high and sell low. So the average person's psychology is a big enemy. It's our job to resist that. What that means, Harry, is that if you operate emotionally or psychologically like the average person, you will have average results, which for the most part means buying high and selling low. In order to be an above average investor, among all the various requirements, one is that you not follow average psychology. You have to resist it. You have to try to. To buy when things are low and people are depressed and panicking.

• 21:39Speaker 02

  And you have to try to sell high when people are giddy and optimistic about the future. And if you can't do those things, then you can't be an above average investor.

• 21:48Harry Stebbings?

  Absolutely, I agree with you on that. I think incredibly succinctly put. I do have to ask though, Howard, I'd love to move into a quick fire round. So as you know, I say a short statement and you give me your immediate thoughts in about 60 seconds or less per one. Are you ready to dive in?

• 22:01Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 22:02Harry Stebbings?

  So what's the common misconception you hear with this economic period that you'd like to maybe dispel?

• 22:07Speaker 02

  The important misconception is always the same, which is that it's possible sitting here to know what the future holds. We have to invest despite the absence of foreknowledge, not in reliance of foreknowledge.

• 22:20Harry Stebbings?

  Tough one here. Who will fare better, the US or Europe? And why do you think so?

• 22:25Speaker 02

  It's a mixed question. The US has a better underlying rate of growth and more economic vitality. On the other hand, I think that the US lacks the national leadership, which might be required to get us through this. My guess is that the, well, in this little instance here, I'm going to guess that Europe will do better.

• 22:42Harry Stebbings?

  As a European, that does make me happy to hear. The final one I have to ask Howard is we chatted about it before the show. And we said, a lot of people have been kind of looking for a downturn for many years, including me, thinking that assets will be priced more efficiently and better priced. And this is kind of so much harder and worse than anyone could have expected in terms of those who've never experienced a recession or a downturn. What would you advise me, having seen many downturns before, although this is different, but what would you advise me? And the generation of people in the workforce have never seen anything like this before.

• 23:10Speaker 02

  You know what I would tell people is that this is not a typical recession. We've had recessions in the past that were much milder and we will have recessions in the future. This one is particularly exacerbated because number one, the disease. And number two, it comes on the heels of such a long and unmitigated period of prosperity and market rise. But I would tell people not to be discouraged and not to assume that all the experiences in the future will be like this one.

• 23:35Harry Stebbings?

  Howard, as I said, when I was doing this topic and wanted to have someone on the show, it was obvious. I was absolutely desperate to have you on. So thank you so much for joining me once again today. And I really have so enjoyed chatting.

• 23:44Speaker 02

  I hope it's helpful to you and your listeners, Harry.

• 23:49Harry Stebbings?

  I want to say a huge thanks again to Howard for joining me on the show. If you haven't read his book, Mastering the Market Cycle, it really is a must. It would also be great to see you behind the scenes here at the show. You can do that on Instagram at H Stabbings 1996 with two Bs. Love to see you there. But before we leave you today, I want to take a moment to mention HelloSign, a great example of a company that found success in building a product focused on user experience. HelloSign is an effortless e-signature solution used by millions to securely send and request legally valid digital signatures and agreements. They raised a total of $16 million in funding and recently got acquired by Dropbox for an impressive $230 million. Check out hellosign.com/20vc to join the thousands of companies

• 24:31Harry Stebbings?

  and founders who value fast, secure and simple e-signatures. And speaking of signatures and getting deals done there, you really need to build that relationship and there's nothing like meeting face to face and there's nothing like Zoom to make that happen. Zoom lets you connect and do business across town or around the world. Zoom ties together all of your communication needs into one easy platform for video conferencing, phone calls, group chat, webinars and your conference rooms and connect easily from anywhere, your mobile phone, your laptop or conference room. Zoom is how business gets done. Get your free account at zoom.com today. Meet happy with Zoom. And finally, I've always been a big history man and so I want to talk about Cooley, the global law firm built around startups and venture capital. Since forming the first venture fund in Silicon Valley,

• 25:16Harry Stebbings?

  Cooley has formed more venture capital funds than any other law firm in the world with 50 plus years working with VCs. They help VCs form and manage funds, make investments and handle the myriad of issues that arise through a fund's lifetime. So to learn more about the number one most active law firm representing VC-backed companies going public, head over to Cooley.com and also check out Cooleygo.com. As always, I so appreciate all your support and I can't wait to bring you an incredible episode with Ben Rubin, founder at House Party on Friday.