October 8, 2025

Welcome everybody.

As you all know, this year is Catalyst’s 25^th anniversary.

When we started Catalyst in early 2000, the NASDAQ had just peaked at 4,700, and over the next two and a half years, it fell nearly 80%. Our timing was impeccable. The good news is that today it’s up 20 times since that low.

One obvious parallel to 25 years ago is the AI and data center boom of today versus the dotcom/telecom boom then, with Nvidia as the new Cisco Systems.

Looking back at those days, it’s clear the dotcom hype overestimated the short-term potential of the internet, but it underestimated the internet’s long-term potential.

Will it be the same for AI? We’ll see.

We’ve witnessed and invested in a lot of change over the past 25 years.

Let’s reflect on how much the digital economy has changed since 2000. Back then:

• Most internet connections were still dial-up and there was no mobile internet.
• Media content was linear and analogue, and software was sold on CD-ROMs.
• Social media, online gaming, cloud computing, the iPhone, mobile apps, Spotify, Zoom, YouTube, Uber, DoorDash, and Airbnb didn’t exist.

We have also had a lot of volatility. Since 2000, we’ve gone through a series of crises, including the dot com crash, 9/11 and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, Hurricane Katrina, the Global Financial Crisis, the Euro crisis, Covid-19 and George Floyd, the Wars in Ukraine and Gaza…throughout it all, as worldwide governments have gotten more dysfunctional, technology has marched on. And, I might add, Catalyst has delivered steady returns throughout.

So here we are in 2025, at what is likely a great pivot point in history. Given the news flow, it’s easy to be pessimistic, and there may be more crises ahead. But there are many positive trends as well.

Let’s think about the next 25 years…

One big trend will be demographics and aging. Over the next 25 years, the working age population in the US will barely grow. In the rest of the developed world, it will fall. In China the working age population is expected to fall by nearly half. The way we think about economics today takes population growth as a given, so what happens when it stops?

With more old people and fewer workers, the advanced economies will need a ton of investment in automation to drive growth through increased productivity. This is where I think the AI doomers have it wrong…AI and robotics are coming along at just the right time.

We are headed into a world where the marginal cost of knowledge is going to zero, and where value creation will come from human intelligence and creativity. AI will make it easier to be a lawyer, easier to be a doctor, easier to be a teacher, easier to be an investor, easier to run a company…and we won’t have to spend so much time and money on education to get into these fields.

Let’s also think about upcoming changes to the physical world. While in the past 25 years there have been big changes in the digital world, the changes to the physical world have been relatively minor. Think about it, if someone from the year 2000 time-travelled to today, and looked around, the only real differences they would notice are the flat screen TVs hanging everywhere, the iPhones in everyone’s hands, and the fact that you see people walking around seemingly just talking to themselves.

Looking forward 25 years, however, even just taking technologies that already exist or are being developed today…think about how different the physical world will look in 2050:

• Virtually all cars will be driverless, and we’ll see “flying cars” as well;
• Robots will be everywhere, performing a variety of tasks;
• Consumers will routinely take supersonic flights;
• There will likely be permanent outposts on the Moon and Mars, and space travel will be common;
• Small nuclear reactors or nuclear fusion will produce most power;
• All money will be digital and transacted via biometrics;
• We’ll have personalized medicine, gene editing, robotic surgery and much longer lifespans;
• We’ll have more time for leisure in general, so the “experience economy” will continue to grow; and
• Quantum computing will be the dominant compute platform

We are already investing in many of these trends. Our most recent investment, Procurement Sciences, is an AI-native platform. We have Burro in agricultural robotics. Breezeway in the experience economy. Tava, CoachCare, Rivet and Sevaro in personalized medicine, with many more to come.

With the advances of some of these productivity- and lifespan-enhancing technologies, we could be on the cusp of one of the most glorious times to be a human being. We are excited to be building this future right here in the United States.

Plus, with our extended lifespans, I’ll expect us all to be here in another 25 years, celebrating Catalyst’s 50^th anniversary, debating whether the quantum-fusion boom is really a bubble. Thank you all for investing with us as we help build the next generation of great, growth companies. Here’s to the future. I hope you all enjoy dinner.

Note: this transcript has been slightly edited