Lucas Swisher co-leads the growth fund at Coatue where he has partnered with iconic companies like OpenAI, Harvey, Deel, Canva, Openevidence, Anthropic, and others. Prior to Coatue, he was on the investment team at Kleiner Perkins, where he focused on growth stage software businesses.
AGENDA:
04:23 Why Public SaaS Is Getting Crushed in the AI Wave
06:01 How to Find Value in the Deluge of Public SaaS
10:34 Durability of Revenue in AI
17:42 Market Size vs. Founder Quality: What Wins?
19:04 Why Price is the Last Thing to Matter
24:58 Mega-Funds Math: Can $5B+ Funds Still Generate Venture Returns?
28:04 What Returns Are ‘Enough’? Why 3x Isn’t Exciting at Growth
30:34 When Double-Downs Go Wrong: Overestimating TAM and Multi-Product Expansion
33:03 Margin Matters… But at Scale: AI Gross Margins, Cost Curves & Efficiency
36:42 Why it has never been harder to be a seed investor
39:25 Is ‘Kingmaking’ a Myth: When Capital Helps (and When It Hurts)
44:12 Is Canva Really a Platform Company? Multi S-Curves and Leaning into AI Early
46:05 Lessons from Mary Meeker: Modeling, Storytelling with Data, and Not Missing the Forest
48:27 Lessons from Mamoon Hamid: Spotting Inflection Points with Minimal Data (Figma Story)
49:54 LP ‘Pick One’ Games: Mamoon Hamid, Mary Meeker, Insight Partners
51:41 OpenAI vs Anthropic: Who Wins?
56:52 Most Memorable Founder Meeting: Harvey and Founder-Market Fit
59:00 Career Decisions & Misses: Leaving Insight, Missing Anduril, and Looking Ahead