Adam Steiner

@admsteiner

Oct 27

biglawbro

@biglawbro

Oct 27

Weil, the storied New York firm that is on the verge of collapse, is known to have approached Vinson & Elkins, the largest firm in Texas, about a potential merger. but the talks quickly broke down. below is a depiction of how i imagine those talks went

[leadership of the two firms sit in a conference room overlooking the Houston skyline]

V&E 1: well, we appreciate y'all coming down here. enjoyed dinner last night

Weil 1: yes, we did too. you all have an impressive office here in Houston. and everyone's excited about the potential here

V&E 1: yes, adding Weil to what we've built in Texas over the last decade--with that New York presence, we'd be in a position to compete with anyone

Weil 1: well, that's... you said "adding Weil to V&E." but our revenue is over $2 billion and yours is just over $1 billion

V&E 1: your revenue WAS over $2 billion. but one has to wonder where it'll be after these departures, which are still accelerating--we saw you just lost Chris to Paul Weiss

Weil 1: we suspect that's the last of the major departures. we've really opened up comp. we're showing a lot of flexibility in terms of attribution credit--to make sure people are happy to stay here with their books

V&E 1: well, we hope that's the case. and we'll be sure that once y'all come on board with us, the Weil partners will continue to be treated very fairly. and there'll be the stability and future prospects to keep people around, too

Weil 1: see, you seem to be talking in terms of V&E controlling the firm. but again, we're larger, and our profits per partner are closer to 5 and a half million, while yours are at 4 and a half. our assumption would've been that Weil would hold a majority of seats on the board, or there'd be co-management between the legacy firms at least

V&E 1: now, that's where we see things differently. we don't think that profits figure... well, it's the same point regarding revenue. that WAS the profits per partner. but also, just stepping back at a narrative level, we're bringing the access to Texas. we've been going gangbusters with energy and data centers down here, and we view those as the two jet engines of the firm going forward. so we view V&E as the natural pilot, so to speak

Weil 1: well, we see you continuing to control Texas, but again, this is a combination of two firms, not an acquisition of Weil. there has to be a way to structure co-management

V&E 1: well, the buck has to stop somewhere. and we think that somewhere should be Houston. but, although we already have a strong and growing presence in New York, we would be open to you co-managing that office

Weil 1: co-management of the NEW YORK office??

[the Weil partners look at each other. one leans over to the other.]

Weil 1: i don't think we're going to get a meeting of the minds here

[discussion winds down.]

The Weil Partners Talking After The Meeting:

Weil 1: the combination really makes sense. bridging New York and Texas. it would be big

Weil 2: yeah, but the others aren't going to sign on to taking orders from a bunch of guys in cowboy boots and ill-fitting suits

Weil 1: yeah, V&E really wants us to bow down

Weil 2: i didn't go to Harvard and work till midnite all my goddamn life to take instruction from some pig fucker who went to SMU

Weil 1: yeah, i guess that qualifies as a good school down here

Weil 2: these guys don't operate at our level of sophistication

Weil 1: ai operates at the level of a Texas lawyer

Weil 1: hearing "y'all" at that first joint meeting will send another half of the partners for the door

Weil 2: why do they say that? it's so affected. i guess they can't give up the gimmick now

Weil 1: and what's with the deep voices? that one guy was half my size and talking in a deeper voice than me

Weil 2: i know. ridiculous. but somehow the people down here are simple enough to say fuck you to pencil head bureaucrats. that's the only reason the V&E guys are doing so well. we've really outsmarted ourselves with all our liberal bullshit

Weil 1: Kirkland, Latham, Gibson. everybody's been moving down here. but they're coming down here on their own terms

Weil 2: yeah, i'm not looking forward to flying to Houston every quarter

Weil 1: there was nothing special about that steak last night. i mean, it was good. but nothing you can't get in New York

Weil 2: and Jesus, these guys are fucking drunks

The V&E Partners Talking After The Meeting:

V&E 1: it's gonna be hard to bring those prideful fuckers to heel

V&E 2: co-management my ass. looking down their noses at us in their shiny black shoes and german glasses or whatever the fuck those were. condescending dandies

V&E 1: these yankee fucks still can't get their head around the fact that we know what we're doing down here

V&E 2: the dollars don't lie

V&E 1: these Weil jokers couldn't keep up with their New York counterparts--or their Chicago ones, for that matter

V&E 2: and it's not our fault they let their city plunge into socialism

V&E 1: and they think we stop working at 10 because we're dumb. we stop working at 10 because we're smarter

V&E 2: i don't know if these guys have the business touch the way we do down here. these New Yorkers will kill a deal making a show out of their negotiating

V&E 1: they don't understand how far relationships go down here

V&E 2: yeah, they're killjoys

V&E 1: what'd they each have? a glass and a half of wine at dinner?

V&E 2: yeah. they're gonna be a lot of fun to take out on business development

V&E 1: the oil guys are gonna hate 'em

Zach Abramowitz

@ZachAbramowitz

Oct 26

Scott Stevenson

@scottastevenson

Oct 24

Harvey is now offering a lower price to customers who promise not to trial a competitor. Not very customer-friendly!

Ryan Carson

@ryancarson

Oct 24

Block

@blocks

Oct 23

Meet Dessa, our speech model trained from scratch on human conversation.

Hear it for yourself: block.xyz/dessa

Zach Abramowitz

@ZachAbramowitz

Oct 23

Polymarket

@Polymarket

Oct 23

JUST IN: Palmer Luckey's genetically modified military dog startup, Warhound, comes out of stealth, aiming to create enhanced canines for the U.S. military.

Community note

This is NOT Palmer's company at all, his company Anduril is only supplying the tech for the dogs, and this is a wholly owed Collosal entiity
x.com/palmerluckey/s…

Zach Abramowitz

@ZachAbramowitz

Oct 22

Dominick Pandolfo

@DomP_9

Oct 21

@ZachAbramowitz The AI did the first draft. The term sheet got redlined.

Zach Abramowitz

@ZachAbramowitz

Oct 21

Claude

@claudeai

Oct 21

We’re opening a research preview of Claude Duet, a new app where Claude works as a proactive agent.

It comes to you with what needs your attention, completes tasks you ask of it, keeps working when you step away, and checks with you before it acts on your behalf.

Keith Rabois

@rabois

Oct 21

james hong

@jhong

Oct 21

Lots of VCs kindof sound like this: "Your basketball team doesn't have a moat, any healthy human can throw the ball into the basket thingy. "

People who have not run companies before don't understand how much the team matters more than some imagined structural moat.

Zach Abramowitz

@ZachAbramowitz

Oct 21

Amit Segal

@AmitSegal

Oct 21

Ofer Winter in an interview on “The Daily Edition” with Almog Boker: “It may have been a mistake to announce at the beginning of the campaign that we would only endorse Netanyahu.”

I don’t know who gave Winter the stupid advice to say this now. It’s as if he’s voluntarily confirming all the suspicions Netanyahu has been trying to pin on him.

Ryan Carson

@ryancarson

Oct 20

Mo

@atmoio

Oct 20

20-year devs can't find work anymore

Zach Abramowitz

@ZachAbramowitz

Oct 20

Will Chen

@willchen500

Oct 20

Interesting post - why no IPO of CLM software players?

Clio, ironclad etc.

Riley Brown

@rileybrown

Oct 19

Simba

@SimbasJungles

Oct 19

Eu vibecodei minha TV com a Claude.

Todos os bloatwares pré-instalados e anúncios foram removidos, além disso recriei o OS dela e fiz um design clean inspirado na AppleTV.

~70% menos uso de RAM e interface 3x mais rápida.

Zach Abramowitz

@ZachAbramowitz

Oct 19

Molly O’Shea

@MollySOShea

Oct 19

NEW: In 2021, Apollo acquired a massive internet business for ~$5B.

Just 5 years later, it's become *one of the fastest-returning deals in the firm's history.*

700M monthly users. Billions in revenue. And an enormous distribution advantage that would be nearly impossible to o's Reed Rayman recruited Jim Lanzone (@jlanzone) to lead the turnaround.

The company? @Yahoo.

I sat down with CEO Jim Lanzone, one of the internet industry's most accomplished turnaround executives, to go inside @apolloglobal's PE M&A playbook for Yahoo, the economics of the acquisition, & why this may be one of the most underrated assets in tech.

The numbers:
› ~$5B acquisition
› 700M monthly users, including 100M+ each across Yahoo Finance & Sports
› 75% direct traffic, with ~75% of daily users logged in
› Hundreds of millions in annual ad-tech losses addressed through restructuring
› Major divestitures including AOL, TechCrunch & Edgecast
› One of Apollo's fastest-returning deals, with Jim saying they're now "playing with house money"
› Newer search companies valued at 6X Yahoo despite having a fraction of its users, revenue & profitability

But the most interesting part of this deal is the operator.

Before Yahoo, Jim helped drive a 50X stock increase at Ask Jeeves, grew CBS Interactive from 70M to 220M users, and led Tinder.

And unlike the traditional PE playbook of aggressive cost extraction, PE micromanagement, Apollo backed an experienced product executive to restructure the business, rebuild its leadership, & reinvest in growth.

Now Yahoo is moving from turnaround to comeback, with an entirely rebuilt product ecosystem, its own AI search engine through Yahoo Scout, and a potential path back to the public markets.

We get into what it's really like operating under Apollo, the leadership decisions behind the turnaround, the value of internet distribution at scale, and why some startups with less than 0.1% of Yahoo's users command higher valuations.

𝐓𝐈𝐌𝐄𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐌𝐏𝐒
(00:00) Jim Lanzone, CEO of Yahoo
(01:33) How Apollo bought Yahoo for $4.8B
(04:16) Taking over a company in the middle of COVID
(07:22) Is private equity really the villain?
(12:42) The mistake that handed Google the internet
(16:09) Where Yahoo's 700M monthly users come from
(17:07) Why Yahoo sold AOL & TechCrunch
(21:21) "You can't skip levels of the video game"
(27:58) Why people still trust Yahoo in the AI era
(30:26) How Yahoo Scout competes with ChatGPT & Perplexity
(33:48) Saying no to the AI gold rush?
(37:31) From turnaround to comeback
(39:42) One of the fastest paybacks in Apollo history
(42:50) The biggest mistake companies make at scale
(44:21) Silicon Valley startups are now worth more than Yahoo with 0.1% of its users
(46:25) Why Yahoo is ready for the next crash
(48:57) Barry Diller, Tinder & the tweet that predicted Yahoo
(54:36) Is Yahoo finally back?

Zach Abramowitz

@ZachAbramowitz

Oct 18

Keith Rabois

@rabois

Oct 18

Spellbook is saving a Fortune 100 company $21 m in outside counsel legal fees with autonomous contracting. Want to save wasted $$$ on legal costs instead of buying software? spellbook.com/reduce-outside…