The 100 Year Thinkers: Chris Mayer on SpaceX, AI Reckoning, and Why Early Is Overrated

**SPEAKER_1** (0:00)
The SpaceX IPO has been a major story in markets recently, but much of the story has been about the short term. In this episode of our new show, The 100 Year Thinkers, Chris Mayer joins Matt Zeigler to look at it from a different angle. They discuss what its valuation means, the story around its business, and what we can all learn from the experience about the characteristics of great growth companies. We have included this episode in the Excess Returns feed, but if you want to keep receiving new episodes, you can subscribe to The 100 Year Thinkers on all major podcast platforms or our YouTube channel using the links in this episode description. Thank you for listening.

**Chris Mayer** (0:24)
Google was trading at what you said seven times or something like that. It was definitely less, you know, less than 10 So SpaceX is trading at like, when it hit 2.6 trillion, it was like 145 times revenue. 82% of those stocks lost more than 50% of their market value and the average decline of them, the average drawdown was 65%. And yet those companies had returned 533 times on average from their starting point. It's the latest, greatest thing, and everybody wants to have it, whether it makes sense or not. And so I think at some point, there's gonna be some sort of reckoning. If it is the real deal, you have plenty of time.
So there's a lot of urge with investors, like they want to get in like really early, and there's not necessarily any need for that.

**Matt Zeigler** (1:14)
You're watching Excess Returns, the channel that makes complex investing ideas simple enough to actually use, where better questions lead to better decisions. I'm Matt Zeigler and 100 Year Thinkers, they're dropping like flies. I mean, this is, I don't even know what to think of this.
How you doing?

**Chris Mayer** (1:29)
We're last men standing, Matt. Last guy standing.

**Matt Zeigler** (1:33)
You know, Lord of the Flies style.
We are the survivors, Battle Royale. We have come out on top. We are the 100 Year Thinking tag team, that is at least gonna venture to have a little bit of a conversation here with everybody else on different versions of vacation. So, Chris Mayer, ladies and gentlemen, resident 100-bagger explainer, co-founder Woodlock House Family Capital. New book. New book is officially out yet or not just yet?

**Chris Mayer** (1:56)
Not yet, but any day now. I hear books have been printed and are in transit. So, should be any day.

**Matt Zeigler** (2:03)
Baited Breath.

**Chris Mayer** (2:04)
Yeah.

**Matt Zeigler** (2:04)
With Baited Breath.

**Chris Mayer** (2:06)
And a timely book, I should say. Very useful for this market, let's say.

**Matt Zeigler** (2:12)
All right. Well, let's give me that. Why is the new book timely? By the time this is out, it might even be available. Say the name and why is it timely?

**Chris Mayer** (2:19)
The name is called The Investor's Odyssey.
And it's about the subtitles, Resisting the Sirens and playing the long game. So, yeah, the book is about getting past all the noise and the concerns of the moment and trying to get in the proper framework for owning businesses for a long time. So that's why I think it's timely because we're in a time where, I don't know, seems like a lot of stock prices have moved around an awful lot for reasons of the moment. And we're in the middle of an AI-fueled boom, which I'm sure we'll get to. We've just seen the initial public offering of SpaceX for not just one trillion, but two trillion. The ultimate public is historic.

**Matt Zeigler** (3:12)
Yeah, really historic. The sirens, the sirens, Pete. I want to come back to that. Let's start off here.
If anything says siren call, it's freshly minted shares of equity, of shares of a company. It's big marketing.

**Chris Mayer** (3:27)
Certainly would.
You know, first thing I always think about, though, because I've been in financial markets now for 30 plus years, is, you know, I've got a lot of scars, and that induces a lot of humility. So I remember, for example, when Google went public and it was in 2004, and I remember being on stage at a financial conference, basically mocking the valuation at the time. So I don't have the numbers right in front of me, but if I remember, it was something like 20 billion, so market cap, and it was trading, I guess, something like 80 times earnings, something like that. And it popped on the IPO and ran a bit. I think at one point, it was trading over 100 times, 120 times earnings, something like that.