Welcome back.

I'm really fortunate to serve on the board of directors of the Markel group.

Prior to joining the board, I had been a Markel shareholder and Thayan and student for over a decade.

So it's been really fun to see it now come from the inside.

And Tom Gaynor, Markel's CEO, truly one of my favorite humans, just a remarkable individual.

He has a saying that I think is so smart, so simple but so profound.

He says, the two most important time periods in life

are forever and right now.

Those are the two time periods that matter more than anything else in the world.

What's going to happen forever and what you're doing right now at this moment.

Every great idea in the world can be taken too far.

And I think one of those ideas that might be good but could be taken too far is the idea

that investors should ignore the short run.

Many years ago I was speaking with an investor and I mentioned that venture capital like all

successful in forms of investing is a long-term game and the person I was talking

to said well that's that's really surprising.

Because all we hear about in venture capital is that it's a short-term oriented game.

Companies that only have enough cash to last them for six months in the bank before they go out of business and need to raise more seems very short-term oriented.

And I said, look, those points are not mutually exclusive. The fact that VC is a long-term game and those

companies need to focus relentlessly on the short term. Those are not contradictions.

If a company only has enough cash in the bank to cover six months of operations,

then the short term is absolutely imperative.

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