What is Blackstone?

Blackstone's market cap grew from roughly $1 billion (when AIG paid $100 million for 10%) to $170 billion by the time Tony James departed.

“AIG had just put a hundred million dollars into Blackstone for 10% of the company and the rights to invest in our at best it was worth a billion dollars and when I left it was worth 170.”

Tony James explains how Blackstone's 8-year lockup and clawback structure on unvested stock eliminated unwanted attrition entirely for eight years, illustrating how compensation design can solve talent retention at scale.

“We didn't lose anyone that we didn't want to lose for eight years.”

Josh Pristaw on the scale mismatch between private capital and data center construction.

“The biggest and the most successful you know global private equity firm raised a couple billion dollars which is very you know impressive but that's 2% of what's under construction today.”

AI is depressing the expected ROI of rebooting failed SaaS companies, creating a market where acquiring them from private credit firms for one dollar and splitting cash flow is now viable.

“They're going to all the SAS companies that have died that are now owned by the private credit right the Blackstones and the black rocks or you know where you're hearing about you know why the market cap in SAS is down 90% and they go to him and they say, 'Look, you have two choices. You either can put another 10020 million into this SAS company that's gone and reboot it or you can just sell it to us for a dollar and we'll split the cash flow.'”