We bought Hilton for $26 billion right before the world ended. Everyone said we were idiots. We made $14 billion in profit. The best deals are always the ones that feel the worst when you do them.
I do not buy buildings. I buy themes. E-commerce needs warehouses. Cloud needs data centers. Demographics need rental housing. The building is just the physical expression of the thesis.
I joined Blackstone at 22 years old and never left. People ask me if I missed out by not going anywhere else. I went from a junior analyst to overseeing a trillion dollars. I think I did okay.
The best time to invest is when capital markets are frozen and nobody else can write checks. That is when our balance sheet becomes a weapon. We do not compete with other people's money. We compete with our own.
We grew Blackstone Real Estate from $300 million to over $300 billion. That is a 1,000x increase. And the opportunity set is bigger today than when we started because the world needs more of everything we invest in.
My wife carries the BRCA gene. That is why we have given over $100 million to cancer research. Some things are more important than returns.