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Because business is everywhere, prepare here. Stocks are fluctuating. We've got the SMP up two points to four. That is a gain of one tenth of one percent, as stack up nine a gain of two tenths of one percent. Down Industrials lower by a point now to eighteen thousand, five hundred seventy three. The ten year of five thirty seconds yield one point five three percent. Gold up eight thirty ounce the thirteen fifty three in advance of six tenths of crude oil West Texas Intermediate traded in New
York up three point three four. Brent is above fifty dollars a barrel, first time since July of two percent now fifty nine. I'm Charlie Pallotte. That's a Bloomberg Business flash. You're listening to taking Stock with pim Box and Kathleen Hayes on Bloomberg Radio. Eat or Be Eaten, Acquire or
Be Acquired? M and A madness in the startup universe, and our next guest says, if you want to survive and thrive, you better pay attention to a very major trend, the move from the information age into the intelligence age. Joining us the studio day is gust Tie. He's general partner at Trinity Ventures in Menlo Park, California, the heart of the valley, and he's here today to join us
to talk about this. Gus, welcome, Thank you. So, uh, there is certainly a lot of M and A activity what is driving in and we're talking about trends, but is there anything about people uh getting more confident, financing being cheap? What's behind it? Yes, Kathleen, I think we're in a super fascinating time right now where you have Microsoft buying LinkedIn for six billion, you have Walmart buying Jet for three point three billion, and even GM bought
Crews for billion dollars. I think that the trend is driving. All of these are large corporations seeking to bring in DNA and capability to move from the information age to the intelligence age. Hey, Gus, you know, just to give some context here, at Trinity Ventures, Zu Lily initial public offering, that would be you, Blue Nile initial public offering, that would be you. If I always keep asking myself, if these are all such great companies, whether it's publical private,
why sell them? Sure? Well, from a venture capital standpoint, when we make investments in companies, we do make agreement with the management team and the other shareholders to have some form of liquidity. And so if the liquidity comes in other forms such as dividends, that would be possible. But in general, when a company is acquired or goes public, it makes their capital liquid and then we could we buy in and we liquid eight and we distribute those
profits back to our LPs. That makes sense to me. You want to put some money in your pocket when you put all that work into starting up a company. What about this? What are you talking about? Information age to intelligence age? What does that mean? It's it's very it's very compelling. What does it mean? Yeah, we view this as as transformative from moving from the industrial revolution
to the information revolution. And so now over the last twenty years, we've been aggregating all of this information about things. So if you look at Amazon when they pulled together all the things you could buy, that's pulling together information on one particular place. However, the information overwhelms all of us, whether we're individuals or businesses, and so you need to add intelligence to be able to sort through that information.
So you've seen this intelligence revolution where you makes sense of the data in in information technology companies, but you haven't seen that shift yet in all the other industries. And that's what we're arguing is taking place right now that if these large companies don't add intelligence to all the information they have already, they may become dinosaurs. Does that same strategy apply to the venture capital world? Well,
because I understand that what is it you know? You do ten investments, seven dive, three maybe live on, and one is the thing that you know puts the roof over everybody's head, it sure does apply to venture capital in all other industries. And you are seeing innovation at various different types of venture firms, particularly the newer ones that have this fresh look A dear friend of mine who who inspires me in the valley is Dave McClure.
He has five startups, and he would argue that firms that are traditional, perhaps even a firm like ours, as a dinosaur, and and we have to pay attention to that because you need to sort data better. I mean, seriously, what does that mean for you? If you're a dinosaur?
How could you be a dinosaur? Well? You know, I would argue that venture firms are more resilient to this trend because we actually are competing to understand and makes sense of data we already have and put it in the forms of or what it's it's the model of so so a thesis for a disruption for venture capital what pim the way, what I inferred from what Pim was saying is that the traditional model is you make
two investments per partner per year. And if you have a firm of ten ten partners at investments per year, from a portfolio theory basis, it may make sense to make a hundred investments per year. If you have a strategy for feeding the winners and calling the losers, that's a legitimate strategy. And if you have information that that you can transform it intelligence to understand that trend better. You could have a leg up. I just want to
go through some recent deals to get your thoughts on this. Gillette, Dollar Shave Club. Yeah, I mean Dollar Shave Club, as I understand, doesn't make money necessarily, at least not yet. Is there a strategy or a theme that we need to understand here? Yes? And and so? Uh the theme and Uni Leaver purchased Dollar Shave Club for a billion in Gillette, which is owned by PNG, had a lawsuit
against Dollar Shave Club. If I understand the public information properly, the theme would be that Uni Lever, being a hundred and thirty billion dollar, hundred forty billion dollar company, would be interested in developing a deeper relationship with end consumers and collecting information from them and serving them. Dollar Shave Club innovated in moving from a product to a service and using analytics of understanding the customers and how to
tune products for those customers. So it's very savvy. So what what do you make of I just have to ask you. Just Walmart just seems like a match made in heaven potentially, sure, yes, Uh, it's I think it's a very savvy strategic move and strategic moves have to play out operationally. You have to execute. But why so savvy strategically is that Walmart is a four billion is revenue company. Last year it actually shrank from the previous year.
It's online business last year was fourteen billion dollars. And if you think online revenue retail is important, that fourteen billion dollars barely matched the growth of of Amazon, so they have to do something to catch up. You remember a dollar Shape Club? I am not no would you invest in that? Would you have invested in Dollar Shape Club? I made the mistake in passing, and I regretted, but you were offered Yes both, Thanks very much, Gus, general
partner at Trinity Ventures. They're based in Menlo Park, California. You're listening to taking Stock. This is Bloomberg coming up. Designers on a dime, a global consignment business selling merchandise via e commerce platform. I'm gonna take a look at how it works and why small business and focus something of the radio