In a recent Panic with Friends podcast, Howard discussed some things investors should be looking out for, and looking forward to, with Jeff Richards, Managing Partner, GGV Capital. Their last chat took place at the start of the pandemic in March of 2020.

Jeff believes March of 2020 is really a low point for investing, or even the bottom. Having lived through 9/11, and the financial crisis of 2008/2009, he'd witnessed things go down and down and down. You'd buy the dip, and it'd go down another 10 percent. But we ended up with an incredible ten to eleven year bull market run.

Jeff had seen the movie before when the pandemic reared its head, so he still believed in the underlying trends, and knew things were going to get better. At the time, he couldn't say if it'd take 90 days or three years, but with his firm's global perspective, he'd seen things improving in China, Japan, and Singapore as early as the April, May, June timeframe of last year. He says back then you could have thrown a dart at anything on the wall in cloud, digital payments and ecommerce; and you'd have done fairly well.

There's been a recent pullback in high-growth tech over the last 90 days or so. Nothing seems cheap right now. SAAS multiples, on high-growth, are at a crazy 44x sales. Mid-growth is at 10x, and looking at the historic mid-growth averages of all software right, now it's 10.9x forward revenue. The average post 2014 multiple is 6.7x, and the average multiple pre 2014 is 3.2x; leaving us with what are still historic all time highs in terms of the next 12 months revenue.

Having said that, Jeff is seeing companies dramatically outperform on a consistent basis. For instance, Twilio, knocked earnings out of the park with 62 percent growth. Yet the stock trades below where it was on January 1, 2021.

For Howard's part, things aren't as exciting as they were in 2017, 2018, 2019, and especially March of 2020. He feels there are still rolling tiny bubbles in the market. We may never see March 2020 type panic levels again, so it's hard to back up the truck at these prices.

Jeff is super bullish long-term, and continues to see strong demand. He notes if you have a long-term perspective of three to five plus years, there are still some buying opportunities out there. You can listen to their full conversation here.

Pete Weishaupt DOES NOT own shares of Twilio. Disclaimer: All information provided is for educational purposes only and does not constitute investment, legal or tax advice, or an offer to buy or sell any security. Tao of Pete has a disclosure policy.