E108: Doxing debate, Nuclear fusion breakthrough, state of the markets & more

The fusion breakthrough was real, but it was not net electricity production. The National Ignition Facility delivered about 2 megajoules to a deuterium-tritium target and got roughly 3 back, while its 192-laser system consumed about 322 megajoules overall.

Thoma Bravo’s $8 billion Coupa deal became the panel’s clearest benchmark for the SaaS valuation reset. It priced Coupa at about 8.4× forward revenue and 10.4× trailing revenue despite a bidding war, versus roughly 5.5× for median public SaaS and about 8× for higher-growth names.

Coupa’s headline cash generation looked much weaker after accounting for stock compensation. Friedberg cited about $170 million of stock-based compensation over nine months against roughly $210 million of operating cash flow over twelve months, leaving the business near break-even once employee equity pay was treated as a real cost.

Late-stage private valuations had already collapsed far more than early-stage valuations. Citing roughly 1,000 Cooley-tracked deals, Sacks said Series D valuations fell from $3.5 billion to $527 million, Series C from $520 million to $130 million, Series B from $164 million to $90 million, and Series A from $58 million to $45 million.

Sacks’s operating advice was to preserve cash because software demand could deteriorate on three fronts at once. His rule of thumb was 50% less new business, small-business logo churn rising from about 15% to 25–30%, and fewer paid seats as customers froze hiring or cut staff.

Chamath argued that inflated venture marks could hand future upside to private equity instead of founders and VCs. Using historical gaps between paper marks and realized returns, he estimated roughly $1 trillion of global venture value—and about $600 billion in the U.S.—could disappear if recent marks regress toward older norms.

Friedberg admitted he removed his claim that Google could cut roughly 75% of staff because Google is a partner and investor in his company and he has friends there. The panel criticized the edit because the remaining material made his position appear closer to the opposite of what he had actually said.

Calacanis said five webinars produced about $45 million in commitments from hundreds of investors for his current fundraise. He said institutional LP conversations had shifted toward secondary-sale strategy, earlier entry, larger ownership positions, governance and board seats—signs that cash realization and control now mattered more than paper marks.