Trendlines: Blueprint 2025

Dear Friends,

At Bowen, we are adherents to the Decade Theory of Life which states that true progress by the human race is best measured in 10-year increments. Using conventional time measures, this decade began on January 1st, 2020. Accordingly, as 2024 comes to a close, we are officially halfway through the 2020s.

What has been the story of this half-decade? There is just one answer: Covid-19.

From premature deaths to nationwide lockdowns to the decline in major city office occupancy rates to hardening of political views, Covid has arguably had the most lasting global impact dating back to the end of World War II – and 99% of Covid-19’s impact has been negative.

As we turn our attention to the start of the 2nd half of the 2020s, we believe this will be a strongly positive period of time on a relative basis and the story will be driven by one acronym: AI. So much has been written about AI – including by Bowen – that our year-end message will not try to add to it. Just know that the howling wind that has been in our collective faces should turn to a helpful breeze at our backs.

So what is our 1st half 2020s end / 2nd half 2020s beginning message?

The Blueprint

Recently, we have been listening to The Knowledge Project podcast with Shane Parrish, and his guest Adam Karr claims that the easiest way to be great at something is to find something that you are obsessed with. This has invited us to engage with the question, what are we obsessed with?

Accordingly, we submit to the theory that creating a blueprint starts with an obsession.

To our venture capital colleagues, we invite you to be obsessed with liquidity. Although most firms and funds tend to personalize their situations, the reality is the venture asset class must send money back to LPs or the industry will be stuck with neverending 10-year funds.

To our sub-$10M ARR entrepreneurs and CEOs, we invite you to be obsessed with go-to-market. As AI progresses into new areas including writing code, it strikes us that bringing a quality product to market has perhaps never been easier, while selling it at scale has never been harder.

To our regulatory colleagues, we invite you to continue to be focused on Big Tech’s ever-increasing market share, but find a way to become obsessed with small tech companies. As a starting point, perhaps revisit Sarbanes-Oxley, which has cut tech IPO volume in half over the past two decades.

To our underwriting colleagues, we invite you to be obsessed with IPOs. While we appreciate that the Unicorn backlog needs to be cleared first, we find a minimum revenue threshold of $400 million to file an S-1 to be ridiculously high. Obsess about building your IPO pipeline with growth companies that are exceeding $100 million in annual revenue.

Finally, at Bowen, we intend to be obsessed with our swim lane. Our swim lane is sellside M&A in 3 sectors – Cloud & CX, Sustainability and Defense Tech – at transaction values between $50 million and $300 million. Internally, we talk about being the Michael Phelps and Katie Ledecky of our swim lane. This is our obsession.

On a personal note, I am obsessed with hitting my driver farther. Swing speed, ball speed, spin rate, carry distance…these are my obsessions. You would love my training regiment…regardless of my daily workout, the obsession is to hit it further.

I look forward to engaging with you in 2025 and the 2nd half of the 2020s. Whatever your obsession may be – tell us, we care deeply. Blueprints start with obsessions.

Paul Bowen
Founder & CEO
Bowen