A short excerpt of a YouTube talk by Jason M. Lemkin about the market for very large private-company deals in 2023. Lemkin argues that, except for AI-related transactions and certain insider-led financings, few deals with valuations above $200M closed in 2023; insiders or large funds sometimes invest at much higher valuations for strategic reasons.
If you, if you take AI deals out of the equation, I, I think in 2023, very few deals got done north of 200 million valuations. Very, very few deals. Now they're inside LED deals. Right? And inside love deals have their own dynamics, especially if the companies are doing well. Right? If I already own 20% and I'm a multi billion dollar fund, I might as well put money in at 600 or 800 or a billion for a whole host of reasons. But I didn't see a lot of with the average public SaaS company trading at 2 billion, I just didn't see a lot of outside growth investors rushing to do deals north of 200 unless it was a bargain.
