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Marshall Sandman: What It Takes To Win In Venture Capital | Trailblazers Podcast Episode 47 · Trailblazers by Erica Wenger

0:00
[SPEAKER_01]: Today on the show, I am so excited to be joined by Marshall Sandman.
0:03
[SPEAKER_01]: Marshall is the founder and general partner of Animal Capital, the seed stage venture firm he launched in 2020.
0:09
[SPEAKER_01]: Out of the gate, he identified and backed four unicorns in his first fund.
0:12
[SPEAKER_01]: Klausel biosciences, whatnot, underdog sports, and while.
0:15
[SPEAKER_01]: landing animals debut vintage in the top 1% of seed stage performance by both M.O.I.C.
0:20
[SPEAKER_01]: and D.P.I.
0:21
[SPEAKER_01]: Animal is backed by some of the most prolific celebrities in entrepreneurs of the 21st century, Mark Wahlberg, Paris Hilton, Pete Davidson, and James Corden among them, alongside the founders of Netflix, Twitch, Tinder, and Android, a lead director of Apollo in the former president of Disney.
0:34
[SPEAKER_01]: Before animal, Marshall attended Cornell's School of Hotel Management, worked as an investment banker at Goldman Sachs and went on to lead private investing at Time Warner.
0:41
[SPEAKER_01]: Beyond the fund, he's also a film producer and a longtime philanthropist, having raised more than a million dollars for the American Cancer Society over the years.
0:47
[SPEAKER_01]: A North Carolina native, Marshall lives today in New York City.
0:50
[SPEAKER_01]: That's welcome Marshall.
0:55
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm so excited to have you here.
0:56
[SPEAKER_01]: What an epic bio.
0:57
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you.
0:58
[SPEAKER_00]: I had a, you asked me to write one and I had not written one and so long.
1:02
[SPEAKER_00]: I was like, you know, this is the moment.
1:03
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm gonna write one right now.
1:04
[SPEAKER_00]: See, you have the first fresh bio in many years.
1:07
[SPEAKER_01]: I feel honored then I can say with confidence it's a great one.
1:10
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you very much.
1:10
[SPEAKER_01]: You want to, you want to balance the name drops with the like what we've actually done and you I feel like you have a great balance of that where it's like, oh, he's done cool stuff.
1:19
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, wow, he knows cool people.
1:20
[SPEAKER_01]: Wow, he's done cool stuff.
1:21
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, he knows cool people and I think that's a lot of the bio.
1:23
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, you just want to be able to copy paste it for the next five years.
1:28
[SPEAKER_00]: I wrote it when I started in my capital.
1:30
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
1:30
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm now six issues in and I've now written a second one and when I'm 34 when I turn 40, it will be time for my third bio.
1:36
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
1:36
[SPEAKER_01]: So timeless.
1:37
[SPEAKER_01]: It sounds like that's a real goal.
1:38
[SPEAKER_01]: Quality.
1:38
[SPEAKER_01]: I like it.
1:39
[SPEAKER_01]: I like it.
1:40
[SPEAKER_01]: Cool.
1:40
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, before we get into all the questions I have, would you like to start every podcast with a bit of a nice breaker?
1:45
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
1:47
[SPEAKER_01]: So if you look back on your journey so far,
1:50
[SPEAKER_01]: Personal or professional, what has been the hardest part, the part that you look back on, and you think almost broke you.
1:57
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, sure.
2:01
[SPEAKER_00]: I think the question I ask myself all the time is if I had to go back knowing everything I knew now could I do it again?
2:08
[SPEAKER_00]: Like if I had to go back to square one, could I run it back again?
2:11
[SPEAKER_00]: And I don't know that I could.
2:14
[SPEAKER_00]: When I started the business, I had a handful of,
2:18
[SPEAKER_00]: sort of celebrity TikTok folks that were around and they wanted to take a lot of founder calls with me and investor calls with me, but I was in charge of setting them up.
2:26
[SPEAKER_00]: I wasn't trying to gain them on the phone and then guiding them and making them look smart.
2:29
[SPEAKER_00]: But also looking like a thoughtful conduit for capital and capital allocator and leading with fiduciary responsibility and at that point, I took a
2:40
[SPEAKER_00]: anywhere from 14 to 18 calls a day in 20 to 40 minute blocks and I burned out my vocal cords.
2:47
[SPEAKER_00]: I could not speak for about 90 days.
2:50
[SPEAKER_00]: They said if I'd come into the you know some third doctor any later like he said within days they would have to freeze my vocal cords and I might not be speaking to you with the same tonality that I speak to you now.
3:02
[SPEAKER_00]: And that time that I wasn't really speaking and I kind of hungered back down and we had made some progress and so it was just a lot of emails and texts and no time on the phone and no time talking to anybody
3:13
[SPEAKER_00]: It was a, that was like the coming to Jesus moment, was that that sort of 90 day period and looking back and saying like, have I actually made it far enough that I've done anything?
3:21
[SPEAKER_00]: Uh, I turned down job offers at Major Sports League, I turned down an offer at a family office or at that, what he fun all while I was raising the money.
3:28
[SPEAKER_00]: But it was that that back on my mind, itch of what if this doesn't work, I should still be interviewing for jobs.
3:35
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm running a startup that doesn't exist yet of my fun, which you totally understand.
3:40
[SPEAKER_00]: And at the same time, I'm still interviewing for jobs that I'm turning down.
3:43
[SPEAKER_00]: That was by far the darkest period of this and then I think you're going between fun one and fun two And it's again, it's an experience.
3:53
[SPEAKER_00]: I think any emerging manager has is You will raise in an up moment like when the market is good and you are absolutely the last thing that your LPs are going to write a check-in to They are going to do every other thing that they're gonna do equity debt real estate
4:12
[SPEAKER_00]: nutritional private equity and then venture you are the last thing that they're going to do and to when you raise and a nice market It's a fairly positive feeling and you're like, oh great.
4:22
[SPEAKER_00]: Like it's going okay.
4:23
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm kind of hitting you know 20% right or 30% whatever it is in that moment and then you fast forward and I
4:29
[SPEAKER_00]: on paper I was already in the probably like three and a half four xish realm and we were north of a fifty percent hour like couldn't raise a dollar for fun too and I think that it's a it's a it's a moment when you look in the mirror and you feel how I expect the founders we invest in fuel which is like what have I done here I have made no money personally not a dollar and even to this day like we're just crossing a one a one in dpi so we're just about to be able to you know I'm just about to be able to pay myself
4:59
[SPEAKER_00]: not making any money burning through my savings.
5:02
[SPEAKER_00]: Mark up some paper.
5:03
[SPEAKER_00]: It looks like a bunch of businesses that are unicorns.
5:06
[SPEAKER_00]: Will they be able to raise again?
5:07
[SPEAKER_00]: Will they not be able to raise again?
5:08
[SPEAKER_00]: Do they do anything real?
5:10
[SPEAKER_00]: I didn't know.
5:13
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's a really long answer, but it was.
5:16
[SPEAKER_00]: It was really dark and there was a lot of just a lot of sleepless nights and I'm really thankful that I have support of people in my life Did tell me no like this is this is worthwhile and I don't know like it's a bad probably a bad answer But like that I think that's the part the founders
5:32
[SPEAKER_00]: respect the most about you and me, which is we've been there.
5:35
[SPEAKER_00]: We've been there and you're not talking to a partner at light speed or best summer or great craft or wherever.
5:41
[SPEAKER_00]: We're like that's just a job for them and if all goes well for them they will eventually be in our seats.
5:47
[SPEAKER_00]: we're actually on the same page with them on many ways and understand that that exists in Joe crisis.
5:53
[SPEAKER_01]: Wow, I mean I appreciate sharing all that.
5:56
[SPEAKER_01]: There's like two hard moments in there.
5:58
[SPEAKER_01]: There's like the 90-day silence.
6:00
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
6:00
[SPEAKER_01]: And then there's the like fundraising.
6:03
[SPEAKER_01]: Maybe let's jump back to the 90-day sense.
6:04
[SPEAKER_01]: I want to talk about both.
6:05
[SPEAKER_01]: So at what point in your there's like a fly here.
6:07
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know if you can see.
6:10
[SPEAKER_01]: It.
6:10
[SPEAKER_01]: One point during your fundraising journey.
6:13
[SPEAKER_01]: Did you have that sort of like vocal fry?
6:15
[SPEAKER_01]: Can't do it anymore burned out?
6:16
[SPEAKER_01]: Like how long had you been doing that?
6:18
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, 14 to 18 calls a day.
6:20
[SPEAKER_01]: Just so we can understand timing.
6:23
[SPEAKER_00]: eight months probably.
6:24
[SPEAKER_01]: Wow, eight months of that.
6:25
[SPEAKER_01]: You don't think you're going to break with then you just know one day.
6:30
[SPEAKER_00]: And again, I think anyone that has raised money in any capacity, whether you are the professional fundraiser at an art museum to a founder to us, it is
6:43
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a momentum game and when you feel the thing that like X factor moment of like someone just committed money to me I remember the first time and I'm sure you do remember the first time someone wrote me a check It is electric I get it pulsing through your fucking veins and that's spectacular and so I had had some of those positive moments that it fueled me forward But you you realize how much easier it is really early on to write a check than it is to have her get money back from something
7:07
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I know, especially like six years and two, you're probably like checking the clock.
7:11
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
7:12
[SPEAKER_00]: 100%.
7:13
[SPEAKER_01]: Who was the first person that wrote you that check?
7:15
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh gosh, uh, his name is Madger, due to that, she's a super nice guy.
7:18
[SPEAKER_00]: He's, he's like, closer to our agent.
7:21
[SPEAKER_00]: He was just a successful investor in Pekron.
7:23
[SPEAKER_00]: He was like, I'm making a bet on you because like, you would make a bet on me.
7:26
[SPEAKER_00]: And I was sitting, like, peak, peak of COVID.
7:30
[SPEAKER_00]: I had isolated myself and Los Angeles without any, you know, by myself.
7:35
[SPEAKER_00]: And then went to my friend Jack Davis's house, which is a beautiful Malbu house that burned down in the palace.
7:39
[SPEAKER_00]: It's fire that does not exist anymore.
7:41
[SPEAKER_00]: and it's got Matt called me and he was like, you know what, I mean, like someone's gotta take a bet on you and like, why not me?
7:47
[SPEAKER_00]: Electric, right?
7:48
[SPEAKER_01]: Shut up, Matt.
7:49
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
7:50
[SPEAKER_01]: Shut up.
7:51
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, electric.
7:51
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, it's funny.
7:52
[SPEAKER_01]: I actually had a phone call, or I say Zoom call last week with someone who, I'm not actively fundraising, but they sort of preempt, they were like, whatever you do next, I'm in, kind of thing.
8:03
[SPEAKER_01]: And it was one of those moments where like you get off the call and you like physically, like I was just like, did my own little dance, you know?
8:08
[SPEAKER_01]: Like you have to, you have to express it.
8:10
[SPEAKER_01]: It's so exciting.
8:11
[SPEAKER_00]: people it is I think it is not to some more than being in high school and being in a play.
8:16
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
8:17
[SPEAKER_01]: Where you an actor?
8:19
[UNKNOWN]: Big time.
8:19
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
8:20
[SPEAKER_01]: You really give actor vibes.
8:21
[SPEAKER_01]: Could you have gone that route?
8:22
[SPEAKER_01]: I know you have a huge entertainment network, but was that the plan at one point?
8:26
[SPEAKER_00]: That was the plan going at the end of high school.
8:28
[SPEAKER_00]: That was the plan and I got into the hotel school, which was a kind of a different dream and the plan changed, but also I got a lot of time left.
8:37
[SPEAKER_01]: you do have a lot of time.
8:38
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's the beauty of running the following actor and then he ran for president.
8:41
[SPEAKER_01]: Totally listen.
8:42
[SPEAKER_01]: If Reagan can do both, you can do both.
8:43
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's also the beauty of building your following the way that you are is like you have optionality.
8:47
[SPEAKER_01]: Not to say that the fund is not going to maybe be the last job you ever do because it totally could be.
8:52
[SPEAKER_00]: Do you want the fund to be the last job you ever do?
8:54
[SPEAKER_01]: you know it's funny like a hundred percent yes but they i think of my firm so differently than most people think about venture yeah that i think of it is all encompassing with my interest because i'm building it my way so like a hundred percent slash i'll have but it's i'm doing this whole media thing in a way that like i don't think anyone else is doing it agree
9:09
[SPEAKER_01]: One thing I've learned talking to GPs on the show, and in my own experience as a GP, your back office is a signal.
9:15
[SPEAKER_01]: How fast you close deals, how clean the LP experiences, how your K-1s land, and besters notice all of it.
9:22
[SPEAKER_01]: The more buttoned up you are, the more likely they are to give you more money in the future.
9:25
[SPEAKER_01]: That's why I want to talk about Sidecar.
9:27
[SPEAKER_01]: Sidecar is the SPV platform built for fund managers who want institutional quality execution without hiring a full back office team.
9:35
[SPEAKER_01]: They'll review your deal with an hours, handle full secondary transaction support, and give you transparent pricing upfront.
9:41
[SPEAKER_01]: No platform carry.
9:42
[SPEAKER_01]: Also, your LP RelationshipScape Private, which is super important, it is not a marketplace.
9:46
[SPEAKER_01]: If you're running a professional fund, your infrastructure should look like it.
9:50
[SPEAKER_01]: Sidecar makes that possible without the overhead.
9:52
[SPEAKER_01]: Check them out at sidecar.io slash partner slash trailblazers.
9:56
[SPEAKER_01]: Let's talk about fundraising.
9:58
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, you know, how did you make it through those hard moments?
10:01
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, you feel like Markups are a great on paper.
10:04
[SPEAKER_01]: You are a few years in, you're raising your second fund, the market's totally crappy.
10:08
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, what makes you get through that?
10:10
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, I took...
10:13
[SPEAKER_00]: This is advice I've given to so many friends that have raised funds over the years.
10:18
[SPEAKER_00]: And from successful entrepreneur that's like, I'm a good reason fund to, I, I won't docs the person, but there is a very, very successful first employee of a multi-billion dollar public company now, who is our age and went to go raise a fund.
10:36
[SPEAKER_00]: And I went over to his beautiful home in West Village and it was a, I mean, it was like a,
10:41
[SPEAKER_00]: a home in West Village.
10:43
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I was going to say the word home is never a new work.
10:46
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, it was a long time.
10:46
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm from North Carolina and when I say home, I think about my parents' house.
10:49
[SPEAKER_00]: This is, this is a home.
10:51
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes.
10:53
[SPEAKER_00]: And he said, I'm going to raise $25 million.
10:55
[SPEAKER_00]: And I said, that's great.
10:56
[SPEAKER_00]: How much are you committing?
10:57
[SPEAKER_00]: Because there's an expectation, no expectation, really, of me or of you, you know, we raise a very small first fund of, maybe you do a little bit, but like,
11:06
[SPEAKER_00]: So you, everyone in the room with you, the first cover of the cover of your deck is, I help build a multi-billion dollar public company that trades nicely in the New York Stock Exchange.
11:16
[SPEAKER_00]: So how much are you committing?
11:18
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, I wasn't planning on committing.
11:19
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh my God.
11:20
[SPEAKER_00]: And he ended up never raising the fund.
11:21
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I've given this advice many times to friends that have ended up doing it not doing it, which is when you don't get to the number you want.
11:27
[SPEAKER_00]: But you've got some money, and it's enough.
11:30
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, and I think any, I genuinely think any number from a million dollars to 30 million, it doesn't matter.
11:35
[SPEAKER_00]: As enough, you just divide it evenly and you run the strategy, you're gonna run, stop raising.
11:40
[SPEAKER_00]: Put a pin in it, be done.
11:42
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a pride thing.
11:43
[SPEAKER_00]: It doesn't fucking matter, you're not making money from it for four to five to six to 10 years.
11:47
[SPEAKER_00]: When you start to fund, you are 17 years away from being at the end of the fun cycle, which
11:52
[SPEAKER_00]: and you're earlier on in that than I am.
11:54
[SPEAKER_00]: And as we have launched fun three, that was my biggest thought.
11:58
[SPEAKER_00]: So that's what I did.
11:59
[SPEAKER_00]: I took my own advice.
11:59
[SPEAKER_00]: And I said, just sucks.
12:02
[SPEAKER_00]: I just hired my best friend Dylan to come work with me.
12:05
[SPEAKER_00]: And as the best decision I've ever made in my entire life,
12:08
[SPEAKER_00]: And we just decided to be done.
12:10
[SPEAKER_00]: We just put a pin in it and said, we wanted to raise, I think we said we wanted to raise 25 and I think we raised 18 and we had written one check.
12:18
[SPEAKER_00]: There's probably a little bigger than it should have been based on that fun size.
12:21
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, that's it.
12:22
[SPEAKER_00]: And we redevided the fun math and we went forward that way and it ended up being the right decision for us because the market absolutely sucked in 23 and 24 when we were writing most of those checks and you know, even into 25.
12:35
[SPEAKER_00]: but that depresses valuations that gives us an opportunity to get a better entry price and by sitting around, we weren't looking in the mirror and being kind of intellectually honest with ourselves.
12:44
[SPEAKER_01]: Totally and also, you know, it takes up so much time from the actual work of meeting founders, like fundraising is so time-consuming and so there's something to be said too for sort of like, you're in or you're out, our priorities meeting founders will come back to market when things are better and we have more to show, bye, like you have to do that.
13:00
[SPEAKER_00]: your expectation of founders is the same expectation that our LP should have of us.
13:04
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, total.
13:04
[SPEAKER_00]: Which is, get it done.
13:05
[SPEAKER_00]: Which is, decide that you're in or out.
13:08
[SPEAKER_00]: By the way, it's pretty helpful to me to even say that you're out.
13:11
[SPEAKER_00]: Like it sucks, I'm gonna hate you, but I'm gonna be frustrated.
13:15
[SPEAKER_00]: Yep.
13:15
[SPEAKER_00]: But let's move on from this so we don't have to talk about any more because you are hiring me for a service that services to find early stage investments to go right checks and to maybe provide some co-invest and send me more money that I sent you.
13:26
[SPEAKER_00]: That's the job talking to you is literally the last thing.
13:30
[SPEAKER_01]: And it annoys them because they already know they're in.
13:32
[SPEAKER_01]: Like every extra time, every extra call, every extra minute you spend with someone else, it's time away from the thing that they've already paid you to do.
13:39
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not sure if you feel this way or not, they have gotten to this place six years and where I so fortunate to have so many LP's that did for month and two and from three.
13:48
[SPEAKER_00]: And my closest LPs that have become like family and feel like uncle, you know, antinuncles They like say sorry on the phone like I'm sorry like I know that like you know you offer this convest like I'm asked you so many questions about it Whatever sorry sorry sorry, and it's not the English you ever apologize to me I don't need an apology, but it is funny because it is a it's actually a implicit recognition that Yeah, this is how I should be spending my time
14:12
[SPEAKER_01]: Hmm, they know deep down on some level.
14:14
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, you're trying to manifest in the, I'm sorry.
14:16
[SPEAKER_00]: It's somewhere in there.
14:16
[SPEAKER_01]: Somewhere in there.
14:17
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
14:18
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, so I want to talk a little bit about team.
14:20
[SPEAKER_01]: So you just mentioned hiring your best friend, Dylan, who's lovely by the way.
14:23
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, she did the go.
14:25
[SPEAKER_01]: The go and, like, totally random aside, she's like, best friends with, like, my, the family, sister-in-law kind of thing.
14:32
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm going to do the specifics, but like, we have, like, personal life connections too, which is really fun.
14:36
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, so I know Dylan's obviously very involved now with Animal Capital.
14:40
[SPEAKER_01]: But when you started, you had a lot more of these celebrity GPs, celebrity advisors, Noah Beck, Josh Richards, Griffin Johnson, talked to me about the evolution of the team and how you think about bringing new people now and using celebrities to your advantage.
14:58
[SPEAKER_00]: There's two pieces.
14:58
[SPEAKER_00]: So one, there's like a broad, there is a broad misconception that even this many years in, like, as you talked about, what not, what not, WOP underdog and colossal.
15:07
[SPEAKER_00]: Classals entirely be to be business, WOP is technically entirely a B to B business, what not is a B to B to C business.
15:15
[SPEAKER_00]: And underdog is the only, others force all nutritional B to C consumer internet business.
15:19
[SPEAKER_00]: We're not really a consumer fund.
15:21
[SPEAKER_00]: We are 85%
15:23
[SPEAKER_00]: B to B to B to C and we do a little bit of consumer with spectacular founders that were like oh damn like I got to write you a check You're gonna do something awesome So when I started the business that that was and that's also I that was always the plan That was never to be super consumery so I've been saying people we don't write creator economy checks We don't do we don't do consumer.
15:42
[SPEAKER_00]: We didn't do crypto.
15:42
[SPEAKER_00]: We don't do dot A I
15:44
[SPEAKER_00]: We don't do media production, all these things that you might think we would do because of who's around the table, but that's the whole point is that we are a diversity play for the people that are around the table.
15:52
[SPEAKER_00]: They already do those things.
15:55
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't want someone to invest in energy drink with me because there's an opportunity cost to that, to Griffin.
16:01
[SPEAKER_00]: Griffin has a really big deal of Celsius.
16:03
[SPEAKER_00]: If he comes in and invests in some energy drink or doesn't do the Celsius deal for me, like that opportunity cost is really, really big and the chance that he beats
16:11
[SPEAKER_00]: his internal IRR metric based on that investment really low.
16:17
[SPEAKER_00]: It's basically 0% chance that's going to work.
16:19
[SPEAKER_00]: It's going to work out to where it beats a really big, you know, traditional brand deal.
16:23
[SPEAKER_00]: So when we started, that was the plan was, you know, Noah Griffin, Josh, and we're going to take founder calls and we're going to set them up for a certain level of like looking smart.
16:35
[SPEAKER_00]: And it brought sexiness, right?
16:37
[SPEAKER_00]: Like it brought a level of sexiness.
16:40
[SPEAKER_00]: the founders look cool that celebrities are on their cap table it's make the celebrities look smart okay it is put them in the room together so that they the celebrity looks and feels smart like their engage in interesting B to B business which by the way
16:54
[SPEAKER_00]: that worked and on the other side let the founder feel cool and interesting and create this validating moment and also it often puts the founder into rooms and we did this we've done this many times over the years where we took one of our celebrities and we put them on stage it like south by south west with one of our celebrities or the astronaut ideas festival or up fronts all to make sure that that room is full of great people so that there's B2B relationship they want to go make we're facilitating this because
17:20
[SPEAKER_00]: Nick Braun from succession please cousin Greg and succession like he's in the room so of course I'm gonna go see this crazy space B to B tech data center whatever founder and then people end up learning cuz they're in the room
17:33
[SPEAKER_01]: So you are lending the fame in some way.
17:35
[SPEAKER_01]: It's just in a very thoughtful way, like on a speaking stage, not in a, hey, I'm going to be a public co-founder or like, show this on my Instagram kind of way.
17:44
[SPEAKER_00]: The whole goal is, if you, the whole goal is for us to not do any Instagram social media, it is to create that, oh, you're going to the,
17:55
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm making this up.
17:57
[SPEAKER_00]: Actually, no, this is, this is just a story.
17:59
[SPEAKER_00]: I went to the Sports Illustrated Formula One party a year, two years ago, and something I don't really do anymore.
18:04
[SPEAKER_00]: And I was walking through the party, and I saw LeBron James, who, like, I absolutely obsessed with LeBron James, I'm the biggest LeBron James in the entire world.
18:14
[SPEAKER_00]: And I like walked towards a security area where he was, and, um,
18:19
[SPEAKER_00]: no one, like the big security guard was like, you are not getting anywhere, close to us.
18:22
[SPEAKER_00]: And someone yelled my name from inside the wrong area.
18:25
[SPEAKER_00]: Inside the wrong area, and it was James Corden and he had invested in the fun but we'd never met in person.
18:30
[SPEAKER_00]: And I was with one of my founders.
18:32
[SPEAKER_00]: And so my founder got great photos with James Corden and with the bronze James and they were in James's...
18:38
[SPEAKER_00]: you know, reposting the stuff on his Instagram, whatever, all of a sudden he's now I completely engaged with the founder that he wasn't going to be engaged with before.
18:44
[SPEAKER_00]: And he beats my updates and he's been a really thoughtful investor.
18:48
[SPEAKER_00]: But that founder is always going to take my call when they have a multi-billion dollar unicorn because of this really interesting experience that we had.
18:54
[SPEAKER_00]: It sounds dumb, but it is true.
18:55
[SPEAKER_01]: There's also something with a human experience where we look up to Lebron James, we look up to James Corden because they're in our pop culture ecosystem and we're just gonna find it cool.
19:05
[SPEAKER_01]: Like don't you think that sometimes you just want to like, I'm seeing this a lot, take money from cool people.
19:10
[SPEAKER_01]: people that you're my, I mean, I just had Jeff we won, who runs, you know, Logan Jokes, I'm sure you know.
19:16
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, and like so much like, yes, of course, it's a thoughtful investing strategy, like they're doing some really cool stuff, but also there's a lot of founders that are just like, I kind of want, like, the chainsmookers are like, Logan Jake Paul, my cap table, or James Corden and directly getting my updates founders.
19:29
[SPEAKER_01]: Like most founders want that.
19:30
[SPEAKER_00]: they all have pressed they're good at their job because they also have passions that they're in their personal life and yeah I mean I'll give a lot of credit to Griffin and to know because like the the models evolved a lot right I think that anyone that's been watching for a long time can see that my models evolved was Griffin Josh Noah
19:46
[SPEAKER_00]: between fun one and fun two Josh and I made a mutual decision to part ways which is fine and he's gone on to be successful doing other things and you know Griffin I Griffin know and I started a A parallel brand together called E-Fee's and it was a gender neutral underwear and it was a Slog we don't do consumer, but here we are incubating a consumer brand.
20:07
[SPEAKER_00]: Why did you do that?
20:08
[SPEAKER_00]: because I didn't know them that well at the time that we started it and I needed to do something that would tether me to them.
20:14
[SPEAKER_00]: That would get us closer.
20:16
[SPEAKER_00]: That would make us feel closer and that we would be in the trenches together because if they weren't a part of my business for what I call it two years of echelaking back,
20:25
[SPEAKER_00]: Did I have enough juice to go raise another fund to have enough juice to go raise a third fund and and like on your own to look at their own merit on my on my own mirror on the back of my own of the success of my investment on the back of Dylan's mirror on the back of like what we've actually done in our track record.
20:38
[SPEAKER_00]: I needed to kind of say yes to whatever the hell they wanted to do we we went through a process with silly bands I helped them do their investment and poppy which ended up being really successful was not a fund investment.
20:49
[SPEAKER_01]: I just have to say, I have not heard the word silly bands in about 10 years.
20:52
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, well, we tried to didn't go very well.
20:54
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, I mean, the founder of it was a really cool guy, and he has a business podcast, too, like it just didn't go.
20:59
[SPEAKER_00]: And Noah was in the trenches on calls about the silhouettes.
21:04
[SPEAKER_00]: How is the photo shoot going to go?
21:06
[SPEAKER_00]: What's our CAC, the LTV ratio on Facebook?
21:08
[SPEAKER_00]: Love that.
21:09
[SPEAKER_00]: One Facebook, who's running that strategy?
21:10
[SPEAKER_00]: Do you need me to take more photos that you can run ads behind?
21:13
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, he stepped all the way up.
21:17
[SPEAKER_00]: And it sucked for three plus years.
21:19
[SPEAKER_00]: And we just this year are doing the business is 10x in the last year.
21:24
[SPEAKER_00]: And obviously, as a firm, we invested at a $1 million value.
21:28
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, we love an incubation at the one or two.
21:30
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah.
21:30
[SPEAKER_00]: And huge success today.
21:33
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's all sewn again now.
21:34
[SPEAKER_00]: We did a rebrand and we're working with, you know, Australian team and they're doing an amazing job and Noah's, it's working really nice because Noah's on day watch now and like, well, I ever do that again.
21:44
[SPEAKER_00]: Fuck no.
21:44
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
21:45
[SPEAKER_00]: Absolutely not.
21:46
[SPEAKER_00]: Like no chance on this earth.
21:47
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know if you've to believe me, but like no say it.
21:49
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, like.
21:50
[SPEAKER_00]: Holy cow, no, but credit to Noah, and Griffin on the other hand, like, has been on more B2B calls.
21:59
[SPEAKER_00]: He is showing up at breakaway music festivals.
22:01
[SPEAKER_00]: He's helping them figure out DJ's for last minute shows and using his network to make sure that the VIP section is full.
22:09
[SPEAKER_00]: That's not something he's doing on his social media.
22:11
[SPEAKER_00]: That is
22:12
[SPEAKER_00]: You guys are launching in Tampa this year.
22:15
[SPEAKER_00]: You don't know anyone in Tampa.
22:16
[SPEAKER_00]: Let me go make sure that your social media when you do show up in Tampa is gonna look amazing.
22:20
[SPEAKER_00]: And we're six years into this.
22:21
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm going to an egg farm with Griffin tomorrow and Kentucky that we have invested in.
22:27
[SPEAKER_00]: That's what I'm doing tomorrow.
22:29
[SPEAKER_00]: It's called Sunnyside Eggs.
22:30
[SPEAKER_00]: He's got a B to B.
22:31
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a good name.
22:32
[SPEAKER_00]: It's going to be to be to be business and to be to see business and Griffin and I and Andrew East Sean Johnson's has been the three of us are going tomorrow to the ag farm and this is what we do like this is the best part.
22:43
[SPEAKER_00]: So yeah, Griffin and I know I've not involved every day.
22:45
[SPEAKER_00]: They're graded vice or so the business welcome to death, yeah, but like like this it evolved and they have found their the right place within our ecosystem and now it's.
22:56
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a little bit more even, like, between our sort of 25 celebrities, everyone kind of does a little bit of something.
23:03
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
23:03
[SPEAKER_01]: And it sounds like they really found the thing that they are uniquely good at.
23:06
[SPEAKER_01]: And that is, that's what happens when something scales.
23:08
[SPEAKER_01]: Like when you start, you are all figuring it out.
23:11
[SPEAKER_01]: Everyone's doing things that they don't really know.
23:13
[SPEAKER_01]: They're wearing multiple hats.
23:14
[SPEAKER_01]: Everyone's just trying to get comfortable.
23:15
[SPEAKER_01]: And now you're six years in.
23:16
[SPEAKER_01]: And people are really sliding into their spots.
23:18
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think it's awesome that that made room for someone like Dylan.
23:21
[SPEAKER_01]: And so that now you two can really like be at the helm of the ship and have these amazing
23:26
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and I think that those celebrities, we've been a referral business now for five, you're not six years, but for five years, and so Pete Davidson's a net new investor to us, and there's we have a couple of MBA players that have participated in the recent fund, and I haven't talked to them about what they want their public relationship to the firm to be, but like they
23:45
[SPEAKER_00]: genuinely want to do something that they don't do in their day-to-day.
23:49
[SPEAKER_00]: And so there's an edge, and I know you feel this way.
23:51
[SPEAKER_00]: There's an occasional piece, which is really, really big.
23:54
[SPEAKER_01]: They want someone they can text, that they can just say, like, hey, I saw this other thing, too.
23:58
[SPEAKER_01]: Tell me how it's going, yeah.
23:59
[SPEAKER_00]: And by the way, the answer to that 99.99 numbers of them is, no, please don't invest in investing.
24:06
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, Lil Brown is not an investor.
24:07
[SPEAKER_00]: I would have said that, the being of the podcast 15 times.
24:10
[SPEAKER_01]: It would be wearing shirts right now, saying like LeBron is like that way.
24:11
[SPEAKER_00]: That way, that way, that way, that way, that way, that way, that way, that way, that way, that way, that way, that way, that way, that way, that way, that way, that way, that way, that way, that way, that way, that way, that way, that way, that way, that way, that way, that way, that way, that way, that way, that way, that way, that way, that way, that way, that way, that way, that way, that way, that way, that way, that way, that way, that way, that way, that way, that way, that way, that way, that way, that way, that way, that way, that way, that way, that way, that way, that way, that way, that way, that way, that way, that way, that way, that way, that way,
24:30
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's valued at 500 posts.
24:31
[SPEAKER_01]: They've done nothing, yay, yeah.
24:32
[SPEAKER_00]: Correct.
24:33
[SPEAKER_00]: They've done absolutely nothing.
24:34
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
24:34
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, like, someone from their founding team was in YC once.
24:38
[SPEAKER_00]: And you're like, and you have to remind people like, like, actually, there's going to the second that you forget about this.
24:44
[SPEAKER_00]: There's going to be five more deals that you want to do.
24:45
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
24:46
[SPEAKER_00]: There's more.
24:46
[SPEAKER_01]: Well also if you spend time and this is what I always say to like if you spend time in the industry you'll meet the other 50 teams working on this like when you don't have the time and you don't have the reps you're like wow this like data center and space thing seems cool and you're like oh there's so many of those and this is what's happening and this is the pulse that they don't have the energy to spend.
25:04
[SPEAKER_01]: time on.
25:04
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25:07
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25:14
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25:18
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25:20
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25:22
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25:30
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25:33
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25:36
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25:39
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25:48
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25:57
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26:02
[SPEAKER_01]: So I have a confession.
26:03
[SPEAKER_01]: I used to be a compulsive note-taker.
26:05
[SPEAKER_01]: Every single meeting I'd be half listening and half scribbling and still leaving with gaps on next steps, details that were shared and more, but Granola completely changed that for me.
26:13
[SPEAKER_01]: It's an AI-powered note-pad for meetings, and it's connected to every single call on my calendar.
26:18
[SPEAKER_01]: Before each call, it shows me a well-researched brief, so I knew who I'm meeting with, and the full context going in.
26:23
[SPEAKER_01]: During the call, I jot down whatever stands out, maybe it's a key word, or a decision I make, and Granola handles the rest.
26:29
[SPEAKER_01]: It'll transcribe in the background on the call and then turns my rough notes into clean, structured takeaways the second we hang up.
26:36
[SPEAKER_01]: There's also no bots joining calls.
26:38
[SPEAKER_01]: It just works in the background.
26:39
[SPEAKER_01]: I use granola for several things.
26:41
[SPEAKER_01]: If I finish a meeting with the potential investor in my fund, I'll ask granola, what could I have done better to get my point across?
26:47
[SPEAKER_01]: If I'm meeting with a founder I like, I'll ask granola to point out any major green flags or maybe red flags I may not have already caught.
26:53
[SPEAKER_01]: For people with a lot of the meetings and decisions that require endless context, Grinola is a game changer.
26:58
[SPEAKER_01]: Actually, we're running Grinola on today's episode so you can read the full show notes at Grinola.ai-slash trailblazers.
27:04
[SPEAKER_00]: New users get three months completely free that's Grinola.ai-slash trailblazers.
27:08
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, the obvious question I have for you is, like, how did you meet all these celebrity people?
27:13
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, so I, you and I both, like, very deep in this industry.
27:17
[SPEAKER_01]: We know all the LPs.
27:18
[SPEAKER_01]: There are a lot of the firms.
27:19
[SPEAKER_01]: I would say 90% plus of the firms have the same types of LPs.
27:23
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like endowments once you get bigger, pension funds once you get bigger.
27:26
[SPEAKER_01]: Fund funds, some family offices, high networks, but it is certainly not the role of X that you've put together.
27:31
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, like, it's insane.
27:34
[SPEAKER_01]: It's absolutely insane.
27:34
[SPEAKER_01]: So, like,
27:36
[SPEAKER_01]: What can you share about how you met these people?
27:37
[SPEAKER_01]: Pete Davidson, good wine, James Corden.
27:39
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, these are not peer-selled in investment funds.
27:41
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
27:42
[SPEAKER_01]: But the other is like, Talk to me.
27:44
[SPEAKER_00]: We talked to Paris in the way here.
27:46
[SPEAKER_00]: Love that.
27:48
[SPEAKER_00]: The, it's funny because I'm going to do, I'm going to talk about this on my socials this week, but we're going to do it right here.
27:55
[SPEAKER_01]: Yep.
27:57
[SPEAKER_00]: I code called.
27:59
[SPEAKER_00]: I had a sense not for Paris or James or Mark Wahlberg or any of those folks.
28:05
[SPEAKER_00]: When I started I actually thought that the ideal LP for me that was a celebrity.
28:11
[SPEAKER_00]: Because this was all rooted not and I wanted to be around famous people all the way just obviously cool now.
28:17
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not gonna act like it's not a school.
28:20
[SPEAKER_00]: I came from, from time Warner in a big him Warner media while I was there and we were supposed to be helping our founders that we invested in and we have this huge ecosystem right?
28:31
[SPEAKER_00]: We aren't just, we don't just own the NBA on TNT, we own Blutcher Report, we also produce the Bachelor and we produce Casa Peral and we're also one of the best, best and biggest B to B tech partners and clients for any business that you can freaking imagine.
28:46
[SPEAKER_00]: And so, but then we would write a check and then we wouldn't help.
28:49
[SPEAKER_00]: We would dig.
28:49
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, that's very CBC, like corporate venture firms are sort of notorious for not really being all that in mind.
28:55
[SPEAKER_00]: And I took the job to be involved.
28:57
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, it really, really clear my energy process.
28:59
[SPEAKER_00]: That's the part of what I want to do, writing a check anyone can do, getting involved as something that it takes, I'll pump your tires, takes, takes, and Erica, good do.
29:08
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
29:09
[SPEAKER_00]: So I wanted to build a network that could provide us a similar style of help that Warner Media could have, but didn't.
29:16
[SPEAKER_00]: And I thought the perfect LP for me would be like a bravo liberty Carl Radke Ramona singer Bethany Craig and Austin from summer house like that vibe and like I'm so fortunate that today that like Ramona Austin Carl all people that I know and are you know, Kyle might moderately friendly with and
29:41
[SPEAKER_00]: I got them in the phone.
29:42
[SPEAKER_00]: COVID hit.
29:43
[SPEAKER_01]: So what happened?
29:43
[SPEAKER_01]: Give me like Ramona.
29:44
[SPEAKER_01]: Give me like the Ramona.
29:45
[SPEAKER_01]: Like how do we get in with Ramona?
29:47
[SPEAKER_01]: Is it like friends of friends?
29:48
[SPEAKER_01]: Is it we get one?
29:49
[SPEAKER_01]: We get others?
29:50
[SPEAKER_00]: The Ramona story is an old story, but I'm happy to tell it.
29:54
[SPEAKER_00]: This is in people magazine many years ago.
29:56
[SPEAKER_00]: What about the say?
29:57
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
29:58
[SPEAKER_00]: For five, six years ago.
29:59
[SPEAKER_01]: We'll try to find in the archive.
30:00
[SPEAKER_01]: You know what?
30:01
[SPEAKER_01]: I did it.
30:02
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not that hard to find.
30:03
[SPEAKER_00]: Really?
30:03
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
30:03
[SPEAKER_01]: Tell me.
30:04
[SPEAKER_00]: I did a COVID fundraiser and I called DM to every singer, Ramona's daughter.
30:11
[SPEAKER_00]: Yep.
30:12
[SPEAKER_00]: and we had this live Instagram chat, and we were raising money for a great charity here, called Harlem Grown, and every kind of out of nowhere was like, yeah, the best thing about COVID is kind of been dating in silos, like I feel like I have three boyfriend right now.
30:25
[SPEAKER_00]: And it was a very innocent comment, and she obviously didn't have three boyfriend, but she was like outdating in the Hamptons, was its own sort of like insular community, and people magazine picked it up and basically like shredded her.
30:36
[SPEAKER_01]: The three boyfriend's comment, it pulled that, okay.
30:39
[SPEAKER_00]: I had no clue that they were watching.
30:41
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, I had 1800 followers on Instagram.
30:44
[SPEAKER_00]: I had no clue in it was watching.
30:46
[SPEAKER_00]: People were watching because she had a bigger following and that was being brought to the show, obviously.
30:51
[SPEAKER_00]: And it blew up.
30:54
[SPEAKER_00]: I felt horrible, felt completely responsible.
30:57
[SPEAKER_00]: I was in New York for a job interview while I was raising for animal capital and still wasn't sure what I was going to do.
31:03
[SPEAKER_00]: And I drove out to the Hamptons and I went to Ramona's house.
31:07
[SPEAKER_00]: And I apologize to Avery's face and I apologize to Ramona's face and I took a tennis lesson with Ramona.
31:11
[SPEAKER_00]: This was in like, is one of the weirdest days of my entire life.
31:14
[SPEAKER_00]: And Avery and I've been wonderful friends since.
31:17
[SPEAKER_00]: But like that's a relationship that's now cemented for forever.
31:20
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, and then how do you go from being embarrassing Avery to becoming be a theft of the Avery and friends with the mom to then having the mom be the L.P. Like what's the,
31:28
[SPEAKER_00]: they did not invest I would they're more than welcome to invest but it built it just built one to the next and and then meet the next person you're like oh yeah like I know Avery or Avery might see just something and it just kind of girl Carl Radke saw the Avery thing and for whatever reason was then responded to my DM about helping me raise money for Harlem Grown he said on on on on Instagram with me that he was sober
31:51
[SPEAKER_00]: So this whole thing needs done now, here's a sober bar in Brooklyn.
31:54
[SPEAKER_00]: The literally started with him announcing he was sober.
31:57
[SPEAKER_00]: My Instagram lie with me in 2020.
31:59
[SPEAKER_00]: Also, you can go find some people magazine.
32:01
[SPEAKER_01]: I love that like everything stems from Instagram lie.
32:03
[SPEAKER_01]: It feels like a very COVID thing to do.
32:05
[SPEAKER_00]: It was a very COVID thing to do.
32:06
[SPEAKER_00]: But it was the best way for me to start this process.
32:09
[SPEAKER_00]: And it literally went one by one until I ended up on the phone with the founders of cameo.
32:15
[SPEAKER_00]: And they had seen my Instagram.
32:16
[SPEAKER_00]: I was pitching them to invest.
32:17
[SPEAKER_00]: They actually didn't invest.
32:18
[SPEAKER_00]: but they brought the founder, another founder, the first employee of Masterclass on the phone, and this was like the seminal moment of my entire career, and we did a pitch call.
32:27
[SPEAKER_00]: He called me after because my self-enembers and my email sent to them and he said, hey, I can tell from your background you're in LA, why don't you come over to the house?
32:34
[SPEAKER_00]: I definitely want to invest.
32:35
[SPEAKER_00]: Uh, but I want to meet you first.
32:37
[SPEAKER_00]: So I got in the car.
32:38
[SPEAKER_00]: I drove up there.
32:38
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm Googling him on my phone, which is not been texting and driving.
32:41
[SPEAKER_00]: Sorry, Mom, but I was looking out my phone.
32:43
[SPEAKER_00]: And it turns out I'm going to Christina Aguera's house.
32:45
[SPEAKER_00]: This is Matt Rutl or Christina Aguera's husband.
32:47
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, and I'm going to their house.
32:49
[SPEAKER_00]: And I look whole.
32:50
[SPEAKER_01]: Do we find a cell on Google?
32:52
[SPEAKER_01]: Do we find a cell?
32:53
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
32:53
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
32:53
[SPEAKER_01]: Google.
32:54
[SPEAKER_01]: We look at his name.
32:54
[SPEAKER_01]: And then we see, like, marry to Christina Aguera.
32:56
[SPEAKER_01]: Correct.
32:56
[SPEAKER_00]: And a bajillion photos of the two of them.
32:59
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, at,
32:59
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, at the American musical or Zenitha Grammys and whatever and he's this, you know, big deal executive who had produced, I think the was her executive producer of the voice.
33:09
[SPEAKER_00]: That's how they met.
33:10
[SPEAKER_00]: Wow.
33:11
[SPEAKER_00]: And he's one of my best friends now.
33:14
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's like so crazy.
33:14
[SPEAKER_00]: Look back on this weird moment.
33:16
[SPEAKER_00]: He walked me down the street after they decided to invest down their street in in their neighborhood to Paris and Carter's house and said you have to meet this guy and like basically watch you and they invested and every single person was a referral
33:30
[SPEAKER_01]: I love that.
33:30
[SPEAKER_01]: It shows how hustle is everything and the people who have the fancy names and the big followers, whatever.
33:37
[SPEAKER_01]: They're all hustling.
33:37
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, I'm sure still to this day, you're sending cold emails all the time, cold the ends all the time.
33:41
[SPEAKER_01]: Of course, maybe the ones that convert are more warm, but there's got to be still a cold practice.
33:45
[SPEAKER_01]: How do you think about it?
33:47
[SPEAKER_00]: It's funny because we work with one of our businesses and you need to salesperson.
33:54
[SPEAKER_00]: And I someone followed me on an Instagram and then I saw that they also connected me on LinkedIn.
33:58
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm sure you feel this way too, which is like, most of the time people's names sort of get lost, but everyone's like, oh, the name sort of stands out to me and like I see the mile on LinkedIn and like, what's the deal?
34:06
[SPEAKER_00]: And do you end up kind of clicking through?
34:07
[SPEAKER_00]: And he was not traditionally a salesperson and we have been linked in messaging for like a week now that including today.
34:15
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm probably going to see if he wants to like maybe leave this job and see what he wants to do next.
34:19
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
34:19
[SPEAKER_00]: And so it's nothing's cold anymore.
34:21
[SPEAKER_00]: It just isn't.
34:24
[SPEAKER_00]: There's so few, there's so few people, what, what you, one of our founders, and I will not am back in a docs.
34:30
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm super hard has a very B to B data security business.
34:33
[SPEAKER_00]: And he really wanted Timothy Shaolin to invest in his business.
34:36
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's like,
34:37
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, I don't get why he would do that, but like, Timothy's not investing the fun to never met him, whatever.
34:42
[SPEAKER_00]: But I was able to get the phone call and have the conversation, and he said no, and that's fine.
34:46
[SPEAKER_00]: But like, it's very, very rare if there's someone I can't get on the phone now.
34:51
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
34:51
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm gonna knock on what?
34:52
[SPEAKER_01]: I know, I hear you though.
34:53
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like, once you reach a point too, everything feels lukewarm.
34:56
[SPEAKER_01]: Like that's what I say.
34:57
[SPEAKER_01]: Like once you've got enough of like the really like warm signal people in your corner, and once you yourself have enough of a brand, then everything kind of feels not too far out of reach.
35:06
[SPEAKER_00]: How many times has someone said to you that you got on the phone with?
35:10
[SPEAKER_00]: LP founder, hey, I love your content before you start the conversation and you already know that the conversation is different from that moment.
35:16
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, because you really have to also do the like, explainer, they already trust you.
35:20
[SPEAKER_01]: I think that's so much of business, too, is like, you know, you want to find creative ways to build trust quickly.
35:24
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
35:25
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think content is really obvious way to do that.
35:27
[SPEAKER_01]: I want to ask you about your approach, too.
35:29
[SPEAKER_01]: So you talk about obviously you do a lot of B2B stuff, even just listing off your portfolio companies.
35:33
[SPEAKER_01]: But you have a very public facing persona and people think you do a lot of creator and your
35:40
[SPEAKER_01]: How do you think about communicating to the world what you do?
35:44
[SPEAKER_01]: And I'd love to hear a little bit more about that because I'm dealing with that dissonance as well.
35:48
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, I can't get pitched into their consumer social creator economy, whatever.
35:52
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, I just can't.
35:53
[SPEAKER_01]: So tell me about how you're messaging all that.
35:57
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a couple different versions of this.
36:00
[SPEAKER_00]: I think that the most important thing and it has been probably like the sacrifice of some followers on Instagram and LinkedIn and TikTok and wherever else is I am, and I know that you see me do this, I'm brutal.
36:14
[SPEAKER_00]: Like I'm just brutal.
36:15
[SPEAKER_00]: Like you will, I posted some like clickbaity chat where people are like, give me your idea, I'll respond to you.
36:21
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think I had like,
36:22
[SPEAKER_00]: That wasn't comments or something freaking crazy like oh my god, like and I think I responded like the verse 300 of them I did a good job.
36:28
[SPEAKER_00]: I was on a plane and I got the motion and I said flat out to people like this is net start over like try again like I When it comes to this isn't what I do
36:39
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, you have to scream it from the freaking rooftops because the reality is his, you probably will never completely change the narrative.
36:47
[SPEAKER_00]: It's true for me, it's true for you like, you, there will be some piece that people will think because you went through the experience and worked as hard as you, as you, Eric, I have worked to build the following that you haven't built a career that you have, that you will have an appreciation.
37:00
[SPEAKER_00]: for the thing that they're trying to do, and that they are special.
37:03
[SPEAKER_00]: And by the way, we want our founders to be narcissistic.
37:06
[SPEAKER_00]: We want our founders to be selfish.
37:08
[SPEAKER_00]: So you actually want crazy people to believe it.
37:10
[SPEAKER_00]: True, true.
37:10
[SPEAKER_01]: True, true, true.
37:12
[SPEAKER_00]: And I took a call with a founder today, an hour ago, and he exited founder that's building in this sort of, like, AI, media agency, advertising space, which I would tell you, cold, hard, no.
37:24
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, hard, no.
37:25
[SPEAKER_00]: Violent, no.
37:27
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm, I'm considering it.
37:28
[SPEAKER_00]: So like, like, he's really, really smart and he's completely aware of the competition he's up against of how duplicate it.
37:37
[SPEAKER_00]: It could be how quickly someone could come and chase him and that self-awareness is like, so, you say no, I say I don't do consumer, I say I don't do things that need FDA approval and then you end up doing them.
37:48
[SPEAKER_00]: And sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't, but like, the complete other side of that is like,
37:55
[SPEAKER_00]: you also will have, you'll just use it into being surprised.
37:58
[SPEAKER_00]: So from a messaging perspective, you got to scream your feelings from the rooftops.
38:02
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
38:02
[SPEAKER_00]: By the way, that's your verbounders.
38:04
[SPEAKER_00]: If there is something that you're doing and a way that you're versus the way that you're being perceived, you have to scream it.
38:10
[SPEAKER_00]: Like you can't, don't try to keep the quiet part quiet.
38:13
[SPEAKER_00]: Say the quiet part out loud, because otherwise,
38:17
[SPEAKER_00]: Otherwise, you're going to be misconstrued, or people are going to think that you don't know enough about yourself and your business.
38:23
[SPEAKER_01]: We're not confident.
38:24
[SPEAKER_01]: I think that's so much of it, too.
38:25
[SPEAKER_01]: Like you said, we look for obviously you need to be self-aware, but true confidence.
38:28
[SPEAKER_01]: Like you know exactly what you're building, you know exactly what you're up against, you know exactly your market.
38:32
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think that when you hide things, you stay too quiet.
38:34
[SPEAKER_01]: It gives the wrong impression.
38:35
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39:38
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, so a quick experiment.
39:39
[SPEAKER_01]: Think about the last long message you typed.
39:41
[SPEAKER_01]: Could be a Slack thread, a prompt into claw, maybe it's a detailed email.
39:45
[SPEAKER_01]: It probably took you 10 minutes, maybe even 20 to get it right.
39:48
[SPEAKER_01]: Now imagine you just set it out loud instead.
39:50
[SPEAKER_01]: That is the whole pitch for whisper flow.
39:52
[SPEAKER_01]: whisper flow is voice to text that actually works in every app on every device.
39:56
[SPEAKER_01]: You speak naturally and outputs clean, formatted text that's ready to send.
40:00
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40:04
[SPEAKER_01]: And it works across Gmail, Slack,
40:08
[SPEAKER_01]: And unlike the built-in dictation on your phone, whisper flow removes all filler words, mid-sentence corrections, and jargon.
40:14
[SPEAKER_01]: What I personally love about it too is that it perfectly matches my style.
40:18
[SPEAKER_01]: So I often type in all lower case letters, so it'll type like that.
40:21
[SPEAKER_01]: I also say things like LMK, which means let me know in shorthand, and it'll auto adjust it from let me know to LMK.
40:27
[SPEAKER_01]: Like many of you, I also do a lot of brain dumping into LLMs.
40:31
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40:39
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40:44
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40:50
[SPEAKER_01]: One thing we talk a lot about is the role of like founder led brands and the importance of founder led brands.
40:54
[SPEAKER_01]: And I would say the same for like founder led firms, which obviously you and I have taken that approach.
40:59
[SPEAKER_01]: What's your take on like the future of content, the future of like, you know, this like founder as celebrity GPS celebrity?
41:04
[SPEAKER_01]: I feel like you've a really interesting take here because you're doing it yourself, but you also see it from like a pure entertainment standpoint with all your LPs and advisors.
41:13
[SPEAKER_00]: It's funny because you're a couple of years I'm going to be a couple of years later and starting a firm and been so successful thus far and you're kind of building amazing.
41:22
[SPEAKER_00]: We're figuring it out and this is V2.
41:27
[SPEAKER_00]: This is hard the second time around.
41:29
[SPEAKER_00]: Like I started in the first time around with Alex and Drew at Mantis and the Chainsmokers and the V1 of the Antifund.
41:38
[SPEAKER_00]: The, you know, when it was Jeff was kind of coming on there and it was Logan and Jake and now and more of one less of the other now, both, whatever.
41:46
[SPEAKER_00]: Sean tell Jeffries who I think is like a DJ.
41:48
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, vision ventures.
41:49
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't think that's still.
41:50
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't think it's a thing.
41:51
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
41:52
[SPEAKER_00]: I won't comment on the success or failure of it, but the Demelios had a fund.
41:56
[SPEAKER_01]: I actually remempt for something.
41:58
[SPEAKER_00]: Four, four, four, four.
41:59
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah.
41:59
[SPEAKER_00]: Four, three, one.
42:01
[SPEAKER_01]: No, I think four, four, four.
42:01
[SPEAKER_00]: That sounds right.
42:02
[SPEAKER_00]: That sounds right, yeah.
42:03
[SPEAKER_00]: Which like, we had, you know, they had a lot of conversations with me about what my relationship to that should be a did not matriculate into anything.
42:10
[SPEAKER_00]: And,
42:12
[SPEAKER_00]: and it's original V1 form, I'm it, and Alex and Drew are at, that's it.
42:20
[SPEAKER_00]: Everybody else has gone, and there's reason for that because Alex is- Well Jeff's still around, Jeff and the Paul's.
42:27
[SPEAKER_00]: Jeff and the Paul's, the their model is different than their model was five years ago.
42:31
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, I see we were saying you're saying stuff.
42:32
[SPEAKER_00]: Like true, we were.
42:33
[SPEAKER_00]: No, it's not, I mean, it's not like a, you're saying they say consistent.
42:36
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
42:37
[SPEAKER_00]: It was, what the strategy was in 2021 is the same as our strategy today.
42:42
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, not some like major evolution of whatever and we we're doing it this way now we're doing it this way.
42:48
[SPEAKER_00]: just mantis and animal capital.
42:50
[SPEAKER_00]: And I text Alex about it all the time, but at least once a quarter we have like something happens where overlapping in a deal and we have like a little bit of like a, well, it comes so far, moment.
43:00
[SPEAKER_01]: How has it been five years, yeah?
43:01
[SPEAKER_00]: We are old, it was more fun when we were at the Vegas clubs together than, and now we're just old.
43:07
[SPEAKER_00]: And they're still there.
43:08
[SPEAKER_00]: And as you know, I have largely stopped drinking.
43:11
[SPEAKER_00]: So like different planets, but this version is different.
43:17
[SPEAKER_00]: because it's harder to raise money, and that's not going to go away.
43:22
[SPEAKER_00]: The more institutional investors are going to invest in more institutional firms, which I find to be uninteresting, and I think is largely against what they should be doing.
43:31
[SPEAKER_00]: I think that the whole point of venture is the emerging manager practice and the platform practice and how those things interact with each other because inherently,
43:40
[SPEAKER_00]: your performance and my performance from a mathematical perspective.
43:43
[SPEAKER_00]: This is not indicative of future performance, but we will be better.
43:48
[SPEAKER_00]: The math.
43:48
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, just math.
43:49
[SPEAKER_00]: The math bears itself out.
43:50
[SPEAKER_00]: The smaller the fun, the better the chances you're going to smack it.
43:54
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I think that that's the most important thing and people weren't paying attention to that six years ago.
44:00
[SPEAKER_00]: I think that it's not to send more than like in the last five or six years and put AI aside, private equities entirely different, right?
44:06
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's entirely different, not because just because money got more expensive or money got less expensive or there's more or less assets out there if you guys markets mature.
44:16
[SPEAKER_00]: And private equities now have been around for, you know, probably 60 to 70 years and ventures really only been around for like 35 to 40.
44:22
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
44:23
[SPEAKER_00]: And so that you actually have to do the history, let's say, we are heading towards that moment where delivering alpha is going to get harder and so.
44:34
[SPEAKER_00]: that's one is it's evolved and I think that you've done it the right way and you had the benefit of watching people blow it.
44:42
[SPEAKER_01]: I think I came in at the right time.
44:43
[SPEAKER_00]: Completely.
44:44
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I was able to miss the whole crazy bowl, the whole crypto thing.
44:48
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, I obviously was at another firm doing that, but I wasn't in my own helped.
44:51
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, and now your track records completely your own and that is very different feeling.
44:54
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
44:55
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, and then the second piece, which is content super important.
44:59
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, I don't think that it matters for the large firms and they really seem to believe that it does And I think that's a really big misconception light speed hired into the space and and drew some higher into the space and one of my dear friends.
45:16
[SPEAKER_00]: I think you're probably a
45:21
[SPEAKER_00]: all the time.
45:24
[SPEAKER_00]: And he's been offered like a boatload of money by firms to come help them with their business development.
45:29
[SPEAKER_00]: The numbers that are being tossed because it is crazy because there are hundreds, if not thousands of AI startups that overreased, they can't deliver, that maybe had a spike in ARR that it's not coming back down to Earth or the margins bad or the compute power that they have to deliver to exist in the frontier model and whatever token I was holy shit, the margin math isn't working anymore.
45:54
[SPEAKER_00]: So what do we do?
45:55
[SPEAKER_00]: We got to go spend this money on the marketing
45:59
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't think it makes any sense for a large firm because the large firms are so different than you and I and they're different for one reason, which is you and I are venture capitalists and they're asset managers.
46:09
[SPEAKER_01]: We should actually change how we call them, like I think they should not be called VCs.
46:12
[SPEAKER_01]: It should be a different category.
46:13
[SPEAKER_00]: It's time for a rebrand.
46:15
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
46:15
[SPEAKER_01]: Or maybe we need to rebrand.
46:16
[SPEAKER_01]: You know what I mean?
46:17
[SPEAKER_01]: Maybe that's actually venture capital and that's like its own thing and we are its own asset class.
46:22
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know, something.
46:23
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and there's some word out there.
46:26
[SPEAKER_00]: Because I think that the, I think that can conceptually what we do is completely different.
46:31
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
46:32
[SPEAKER_00]: When you, and I just talked about this on social media, but, you know, the biggest firms out there, the global venture capital firms and the, you know, the endreasons of the world, the writing, you know, across all the different portfolios, thousand checks a year.
46:47
[SPEAKER_01]: People don't know this, but like Sequoia was the highest check writer in terms of like quantity of companies last year.
46:53
[SPEAKER_01]: So, yeah, people think it's going to be some like random spray and pet prey fund, but it's Sequoia.
46:57
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and by the way, how different is that than Goldman Sachs going and doing it?
47:03
[SPEAKER_00]: It's one of the largest asset managers in the world.
47:05
[SPEAKER_00]: JP Morgan, I think is
47:06
[SPEAKER_00]: to Morgan Chase and was far too the biggest asset manager to some players that that's what they do is you are you are building up you're building the world's biggest bell curve statistically and that's what's actually happening versus for you in me we have to so I think that the math bears out to something like two or three percent of those thousand a year or in the being unicorns that has no relationship to the exit moment.
47:32
[SPEAKER_00]: you and I have to beat that number.
47:34
[SPEAKER_00]: We get, and it's not that we have to smack it past the number, but we need to beat about 5%.
47:37
[SPEAKER_00]: And similarly, thinking about rebrand, the other rebrand is a hate unicorns hate it.
47:43
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't like it.
47:44
[SPEAKER_00]: The fact that you know, people judge me based on my unicorns is cool because I have some, but if I didn't have some, I would be like absolutely fuck that.
47:53
[SPEAKER_00]: I look at it now and I say, how many of my businesses have ten acts?
47:56
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, so this is why I wrote this whole article on Elephants Not Unicorns because I could not agree with you more, and some of these firms, by the way, when they come in, the first rounds that a hundred posts.
48:05
[SPEAKER_01]: So when it hits a unicorn, that's a 10x.
48:07
[SPEAKER_01]: Now, the company that you started with Noah, like you came in at a one.
48:10
[SPEAKER_01]: As long as you get it to 10, it's the same.
48:12
[SPEAKER_01]: Same is like equivalent of a return, and people don't understand this.
48:15
[SPEAKER_00]: It's comfortably worth about 30 million dollars today.
48:17
[SPEAKER_00]: We don't we're profitable.
48:18
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, so that's a 30x.
48:19
[SPEAKER_01]: That's the equivalent of joining in, Jason at a hundred and seeing you go to three.
48:22
[SPEAKER_01]: And by the way, you guys also might not even
48:26
[SPEAKER_00]: 100%.
48:26
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
48:27
[SPEAKER_00]: And as an investor in class, I am inclined to call it a woolly mammoth.
48:32
[SPEAKER_01]: Love that for you.
48:33
[SPEAKER_01]: Love that for you.
48:34
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
48:35
[SPEAKER_01]: I think we can all pick our animal.
48:37
[SPEAKER_01]: We can all be happy with our own animals.
48:39
[SPEAKER_01]: But I think it's this concept that's about like a month ago.
48:41
[SPEAKER_00]: Go through a branding.
48:42
[SPEAKER_00]: You need to sit in a room and go through a branding site.
48:44
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not venture capital where it acts.
48:46
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not you don't want to see more.
48:47
[SPEAKER_01]: We're going to publish like a whole new like this is what our industry is after this episode.
48:50
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
48:50
[SPEAKER_00]: And then people are going to come back to our white paper.
48:52
[SPEAKER_00]: Correct.
48:53
[SPEAKER_00]: 10 years from now.
48:54
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh my God.
48:55
[SPEAKER_01]: They were right.
48:55
[SPEAKER_00]: They changed everything.
48:56
[SPEAKER_01]: They changed the whole industry.
48:57
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, OK, so you bring up a very interesting question.
48:59
[SPEAKER_01]: And this is the last one before our lightning round.
49:01
[SPEAKER_01]: But there's like the multi-stage platform, which is a very interesting product, but it's different than you and I.
49:07
[SPEAKER_01]: And then there's like the emerging funds that's called it Sub 100, maybe $750 million.
49:12
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, what's the, what's the future animal?
49:14
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, do you want to grow into a multi-stage?
49:15
[SPEAKER_01]: Do you want to stay?
49:16
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm, this is kind of a leading question because I do know the answer here.
49:19
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, but like, talk to me about where you want to go.
49:21
[SPEAKER_01]: And I was at a little asterisk that I did see something about an acquisition you guys recently made.
49:25
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know how public you're making that.
49:27
[SPEAKER_01]: It seems like it's been a little bit scrubbed, so like you can either answer that or not, but talk to you about the future and any potential acquisitions you want to share.
49:35
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah.
49:35
[SPEAKER_00]: Um,
49:37
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a great question, and I appreciate you, Matt.
49:39
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think you know what I'm talking about.
49:41
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it was hard to miss, something I couldn't, I couldn't stop in the moment, which was interesting on its own.
49:48
[SPEAKER_00]: Very Googleable, I'm not going to talk about it.
49:50
[SPEAKER_00]: I...
49:52
[SPEAKER_00]: think a bunch of things.
49:55
[SPEAKER_00]: I think number one, we are great at what we do and I know you well enough to know that you feel the same way and you deserve to feel the same way about yourself and I am very fortunate that the single Greedis Venture Capital Investor in the History Planet Earth is my partner.
50:13
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm happy to be number two to her.
50:15
[SPEAKER_00]: She's the goat and I think the
50:20
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, I don't know, like she's the sick of really weird comparison.
50:24
[SPEAKER_00]: She's like the, the woman that's the carving on the front of our pirate ship and the captain of the ship, you know, and I'm, you know, I try to be as good as good as a first mate to her as I can be.
50:35
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's a constant north stars really the word I'm looking for.
50:39
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a constant north star of what do we most enjoy doing.
50:42
[SPEAKER_00]: And if you enjoy doing it, then you're going to probably be a little better at it.
50:47
[SPEAKER_00]: And.
50:48
[SPEAKER_00]: I'll embarrass Dylan really quickly, even more, Dylan was going into labor with her second child in January and- Wait, quick aside, she's the most beautiful children.
50:56
[SPEAKER_00]: And human history, the most beautiful children.
50:58
[SPEAKER_01]: No, it should be study.
51:00
[SPEAKER_00]: It's really unfair because I also think that the government knew they'd be like, you must have ten more children.
51:05
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, they're like, like, models.
51:06
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, these are the ones you knew.
51:07
[SPEAKER_00]: We need to populate the world with these.
51:08
[SPEAKER_01]: No, I agree.
51:08
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, keep going.
51:09
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, so you're saying which is going to labor.
51:11
[SPEAKER_00]: It's going to labor and disont January 19th and I'm planning going up there the next day and giving her and her husband's space, but her husband also knows that she's married to me.
51:20
[SPEAKER_00]: And he and I have it.
51:22
[SPEAKER_00]: We've been in a really nice double date, thropl for many years now.
51:25
[SPEAKER_01]: As it should be.
51:26
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
51:27
[SPEAKER_00]: And
51:28
[SPEAKER_00]: one of our founders that we convinced to raise venture capital money was not going to raise money.
51:33
[SPEAKER_00]: It's called by Wanderer, their out in Spokane, Washington.
51:36
[SPEAKER_00]: We invested a sub $10 million valuation.
51:40
[SPEAKER_00]: They have raised well clear of a 10x of that, but that round was going on and they did not understand how to calculate customer churn in the way.
51:49
[SPEAKER_00]: But in a traditional sense, because it's an interesting auction platform, and so it's not like people are churning really, it's really that you want to see how many repeat customers you have and how often someone that did's on it in this auction, it comes back whatever.
52:01
[SPEAKER_00]: And I couldn't quite articulate the math, and like, it makes me bad at my job, and Dylan got on the phone with them from the hospital bed, like 90 minutes before she had her daughter.
52:13
[SPEAKER_00]: and walked them through the math and did the math for them.
52:17
[SPEAKER_00]: That's what we are good at.
52:18
[SPEAKER_00]: And so anything that we do that distracts from that is a waste of time.
52:25
[SPEAKER_00]: So as we grow and we think about what we wanna do, we want to do things that give us the opportunity to build better relationships with our founders that are more trusted, where we can be thoughtful providers of capital and advice and network.
52:41
[SPEAKER_00]: And so what we have to do from a fundraising strategy beside that and from a investing strategy said that is very clear to me.
52:48
[SPEAKER_00]: We will buy the things that we want to buy that we think that us owning makes the most sense with the right leadership team that we are not that leadership team, but with the right leadership team in place, we will invest in the things that we want to invest in where we think we can lend the biggest hand with the biggest opportunity and I want to be a flexible capital source, not a traditional capital source.
53:10
[SPEAKER_01]: You're being vague.
53:11
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm pushing you to be more specific.
53:13
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm putting you on the spot in the last three years and this, I mean, I'm not breaking news.
53:17
[SPEAKER_00]: It's my own news.
53:18
[SPEAKER_00]: In the last year, we've provided non venture capital money to three different founders.
53:24
[SPEAKER_00]: We provided structured notes to founders who were profitable and needed what I would consider to be a line of credit style investment.
53:34
[SPEAKER_00]: With a little bit of an equity kicker because we believe that that is what certain founders need and then going out and building a deck and building a data room to do around When what you really need is a hundred and fifty thousand dollars to make one higher who's going to be a million dollars a revenue and a hundred and fifty thousand dollars higher Just give them part of my language that give them the fucking money Like I don't make them go out to net new people and have that conversation like that's what follow on capital should really be about Very interesting to you structure your vehicles for that, or do you have it as part of the fund?
54:03
[SPEAKER_00]: It's, I, we have 100% discretion as to how we spend the money in the fund and that love we do.
54:07
[SPEAKER_00]: We love a good LP, LP, we know, we love a GP friendly LP, yes, and our, my, my L pack is thoughtful, mining entrepreneur, a former name partner at Wilson Cincinnati and the GP of M13, Carter room, who's like my work dad.
54:24
[SPEAKER_01]: Part of Paris's husband.
54:26
[SPEAKER_00]: Paris's husband.
54:27
[SPEAKER_00]: Probably a part of it.
54:27
[SPEAKER_00]: Like my work dad and we're very close.
54:30
[SPEAKER_00]: But we go ask them.
54:32
[SPEAKER_00]: We get the peace paper signed and then we do what we want.
54:34
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I love that.
54:34
[SPEAKER_01]: I love that.
54:35
[SPEAKER_01]: I think also that's the beauty being emerging as you can really have flexibility and you don't have the endowments and more institutions kind of like breathing down your throat.
54:40
[SPEAKER_01]: So staying with the high-end network family office card makes sense.
54:43
[SPEAKER_01]: Here's a problem.
54:43
[SPEAKER_01]: I hear constantly from operators.
54:45
[SPEAKER_01]: The data exists.
54:46
[SPEAKER_01]: The answers are somewhere in there, but getting to that actually pulling a useful insight without bugging the data team or learning sequel takes way too long or just does not happen.
54:55
[SPEAKER_01]: Hex solves that.
54:57
[SPEAKER_01]: Hex is an AI analytics platform where anyone on your team can ask data questions and plane English and get real answers backed by your actual business context.
55:05
[SPEAKER_01]: No sequel required.
55:06
[SPEAKER_01]: And the best part is that Hex shows you exactly how it's data agents think, so you can see where the logic comes from and trust the output.
55:13
[SPEAKER_01]: The more your team uses it, the smarter it gets.
55:15
[SPEAKER_01]: From seed stage founders running lean to larger works dealing with serious data complexity, Hex is built to scale with you.
55:21
[SPEAKER_01]: It's game-changing for people like me who want to understand what's going on under the hood, but we are not the data experts.
55:27
[SPEAKER_01]: It's funny too because I feel like every time I look over my operator friend's shoulders, whether they're in product, or marketing, or ops, they often have a Hex dashboard pulled up.
55:34
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a great tool.
55:35
[SPEAKER_01]: True Blazers listeners get an exclusive 30-day free trial at Hex.ai slash trailblazers.
55:40
[SPEAKER_01]: We're going to do some lightning round.
55:42
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay?
55:43
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, clearly that's not my strong suit.
55:45
[SPEAKER_00]: You're going to do your best.
55:46
[SPEAKER_01]: You're going to expand if you want.
55:48
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
55:48
[SPEAKER_01]: But give me whatever comes to mind.
55:49
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
55:49
[SPEAKER_01]: And you can't see both.
55:50
[SPEAKER_01]: That's the one rule of this game.
55:51
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
55:52
[SPEAKER_01]: Trailblazer tradeoffs.
55:53
[SPEAKER_01]: Book in hand or podcast in ears.
55:58
[SPEAKER_00]: Podcast in ears.
55:59
[SPEAKER_01]: Do you have a favorite side trailblazers?
56:02
[SPEAKER_00]: Besides trailblazers, right now probably the town, the Matt Bellany entertainment podcast.
56:06
[SPEAKER_01]: Hmm, you really, you've got this like entertainment thing, which we need to do enough.
56:09
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, but we really... Matt, I'm looking right in the camera.
56:12
[SPEAKER_00]: Matt, I want to be on the podcast.
56:15
[SPEAKER_00]: I know that you know that I want to be on the podcast, put me on the podcast.
56:19
[SPEAKER_01]: Love.
56:20
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, can I just as a quick aside?
56:21
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, more people need to ask for what they want in life.
56:24
[SPEAKER_00]: Totally, they're never going to get it on the line.
56:25
[SPEAKER_01]: Never get otherwise.
56:26
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, do you want someone to give you money?
56:27
[SPEAKER_01]: Do you want to be on a podcast?
56:28
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, just ask, direct.
56:29
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
56:29
[SPEAKER_01]: Love.
56:30
[SPEAKER_01]: Great.
56:30
[SPEAKER_01]: Higher, slower, fire, fast.
56:34
[SPEAKER_00]: Higher, slow.
56:35
[SPEAKER_00]: OK.
56:37
[SPEAKER_00]: I have had experiences within our founder ecosystems, where we are kind of hiring engine, especially earlier on, when we had more time to do those things.
56:46
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think that,
56:49
[SPEAKER_00]: I'll use a quick example, which is like I hired my was my chief of staff is now a principal on my team Sam and Sam was like talent Not but not a refined investor like that was that was the I knew that was a trade off and I hired her when she was 20 years old and now she's 20 sections has been with me since day one She's been with me longer than Dylan by a long time and
57:11
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, we pick talent and we, I'm not joking.
57:14
[SPEAKER_00]: I would say I am the Sam mechanic.
57:16
[SPEAKER_00]: I invented Sam.
57:18
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm looking back at you.
57:19
[SPEAKER_00]: I invented the engine and that she would agree with me.
57:22
[SPEAKER_01]: Like I love that.
57:23
[SPEAKER_01]: How gratifying is that, right?
57:24
[SPEAKER_01]: Like there's so much of our job.
57:25
[SPEAKER_01]: We taught her accounting.
57:26
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
57:26
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
57:27
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
57:27
[SPEAKER_00]: She's a computer science major from Sanford.
57:28
[SPEAKER_00]: She did not want to learn accounting.
57:30
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I think that hiring socials that you know that someone's willing to go through those moment to learning moments is a lot more important.
57:36
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, than firing fast, I guess.
57:38
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I love that.
57:39
[SPEAKER_01]: And also keeping people for a long time.
57:41
[SPEAKER_01]: Like I'm a big like everyone I've hired for the most part, so with me.
57:45
[SPEAKER_01]: And you need that like commitment on both sides.
57:48
[SPEAKER_01]: Ted Small wins or one big win shot.
57:52
[SPEAKER_00]: both screw it.
57:54
[SPEAKER_00]: Sorry.
57:54
[SPEAKER_00]: No, that's not the game.
57:56
[SPEAKER_00]: We don't ten small wins definitely.
58:01
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
58:02
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, we just switched it up there.
58:03
[SPEAKER_01]: Both to definite.
58:04
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
58:04
[SPEAKER_01]: Tell me more.
58:05
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, I think that I think that my small wins for this like all on a from a scale perspective on that small.
58:12
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm making an a trick question.
58:14
[SPEAKER_01]: You are.
58:14
[SPEAKER_01]: You're going to 10 big wins.
58:15
[SPEAKER_01]: That's basically what you're doing.
58:16
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
58:16
[SPEAKER_01]: Fine.
58:16
[SPEAKER_01]: Thanks.
58:18
[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you.
58:18
[SPEAKER_01]: Being early or being right.
58:21
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh God, I love being right, being right.
58:23
[SPEAKER_01]: It feels good.
58:24
[SPEAKER_00]: It's so...
58:25
[SPEAKER_00]: I know.
58:26
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh my God, I got into an argument with an investor yesterday.
58:32
[SPEAKER_00]: And I was, he ended up like flat out apologizing, like six hours later.
58:37
[SPEAKER_00]: And I was so spun up about it that I called my dad, which is like, sorry, I'm 34, I called my dad, like, get over it.
58:44
[SPEAKER_00]: And he was like, just, you're good, it's, it's not about being right, come on dad.
58:49
[SPEAKER_00]: It's about being right, and it felt great when I was right.
58:52
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it never gets old.
58:53
[SPEAKER_00]: My parents always listen to whatever I do, and they're going to heat bad answer.
58:57
[SPEAKER_01]: They're really good at teaching you literally now.
58:58
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, and yeah, one more for the camera.
58:59
[SPEAKER_00]: Happy birthday, Dad.
59:00
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a birthday on Saturday.
59:01
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, 65.
59:03
[SPEAKER_01]: I love that, but this is not the count as birthday.
59:05
[SPEAKER_01]: But you know, it was starting to get close to his birthday.
59:06
[SPEAKER_00]: It doesn't matter when it comes out here, he'll still feel the thing.
59:09
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, he'll feel it, he'll feel delayed.
59:10
[SPEAKER_01]: Fine.
59:11
[SPEAKER_01]: It'll almost be more nice, because he'll get like two birthdays.
59:13
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
59:13
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, what's the best teacher, a mentor or a mistake?
59:17
[SPEAKER_00]: definitely a mistake.
59:18
[SPEAKER_00]: Not, I mean, that's not even close.
59:20
[SPEAKER_00]: I, you know, I would consider my like, I've said this so many times, but like, Carter, and then David Beck, who is my boss at Warner Media, who's now one of the things like the co- Global Head of Streaming at Disney, who's my old boss at Warner Media.
59:33
[SPEAKER_00]: like they're definitely my like mentors that I go to consistently for questions and whatever and they're awesome and they keep me from making mistakes but those lessons don't impress themselves into your brain the same way that a mistake does.
59:48
[SPEAKER_01]: I almost think that they would want you to make the mistakes you learn it for yourself sometimes like they're almost like I could step in here and tell him but he's got to learn this one thing and like a controlled way or in an early way you know.
59:58
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and you'll, they're just, there's so many things about this job and any job I'm sure, but like this is now the job I've done more than any other job that you aren't going to forget.
1:00:10
[SPEAKER_00]: Some of these mistakes, they're going to keep you up in a, and you're going to like, re-live them in your dreams and wake up in a freaking sweat and they get a reminder.
1:00:18
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, won't do that again.
1:00:20
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, is the future of AI abundance or chaos?
1:00:25
[SPEAKER_00]: It's going to be chaosful at a longer.
1:00:27
[SPEAKER_00]: And then it's going to be abundance.
1:00:28
[SPEAKER_00]: So I'm going to say, I'm going to say abundance.
1:00:31
[SPEAKER_00]: I genuinely don't think that people understand from a venture capital perspective, because that's what this podcast is here for.
1:00:40
[SPEAKER_00]: The end state.
1:00:41
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think it's our job to understand it.
1:00:45
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's why it's so disappointing when you see some of these like, why
1:00:55
[SPEAKER_00]: public media support.
1:00:57
[SPEAKER_00]: I find it disheartening because I am including in this room.
1:01:03
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not the smartest person in this room.
1:01:04
[SPEAKER_00]: You are not close.
1:01:05
[SPEAKER_00]: No, not true.
1:01:07
[SPEAKER_00]: And in most rooms, like I do a good job of like not being that person.
1:01:11
[SPEAKER_00]: I try to surround myself with people that are not like ha-ha smarter than me, but genuinely like
1:01:17
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm like smarter than me and it's so clear to me what the future is of injury because like the table came out and it's this big thing this week whatever and someone did like a whole snowboarding video game with one prompt and you're like oh my god the video game industry is dead
1:01:33
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's like, no, it's not actually it's going to get way more efficient and what's been really interesting for six years, which is a totally different podcast for an hour, which is a different hour, is AAA video games was a very interesting venture capital play, probably eight and years ago, and in five, six years ago it died.
1:01:50
[SPEAKER_00]: and it's still dead.
1:01:52
[SPEAKER_00]: This actually brings it back, because you can run a more efficient platform to that moment where you test and demo the game.
1:02:00
[SPEAKER_00]: I've been saying this now for just a few months that AI will create more jobs than it destroys, and it is about looking through those all those prompts and all what the outputs might be, and where's going to be made more efficient, what's not, and being intellectually honest with yourself about what we're the innovations
1:02:19
[SPEAKER_01]: I also think there's such a responsibility that now we're actually check writers to put it in the things that we wanna see actually work at scale.
1:02:25
[SPEAKER_01]: Like I always think about like alignment and just like, if I really want my founder to do well, I want my LPs to get super rich.
1:02:31
[SPEAKER_01]: I want it to be the business that I actually also want to see more of in the world.
1:02:34
[SPEAKER_01]: And I agree with you.
1:02:35
[SPEAKER_01]: I think sometimes this stuff that gets funded doesn't always match the thing that I would like to see at scale.
1:02:41
[SPEAKER_00]: 100% yeah, and that's why we're here.
1:02:44
[SPEAKER_00]: It's the same thing that we expect of our founders, right?
1:02:46
[SPEAKER_00]: Which is a definitive level of selfishness, narcissism, single track-minded.
1:02:52
[SPEAKER_00]: We have to be that way, too.
1:02:53
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, totally.
1:02:56
[SPEAKER_01]: Killer product or loyalty shonians.
1:02:59
[SPEAKER_00]: loyal niche audience in every time.
1:03:02
[SPEAKER_00]: We backed a handful of killer products that our businesses don't exist anymore.
1:03:08
[SPEAKER_00]: It's sad.
1:03:09
[SPEAKER_00]: It happens.
1:03:11
[SPEAKER_00]: I, you know, I actually don't know, Kerem and I talk about it.
1:03:14
[SPEAKER_00]: We invested in a business called Bessel Health with Monogram.
1:03:17
[SPEAKER_00]: Monogram, I would consider at the time to be a tier one firm.
1:03:19
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know.
1:03:20
[SPEAKER_00]: She don't know what venture they do now.
1:03:21
[SPEAKER_00]: No, I don't know either.
1:03:22
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, don't come across them.
1:03:23
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
1:03:24
[SPEAKER_00]: And five years ago, it was like, um, an every deal.
1:03:27
[SPEAKER_00]: And it was, um, it was a urine test strip.
1:03:30
[SPEAKER_00]: And it was patented.
1:03:32
[SPEAKER_00]: It was far ahead of the, far ahead of the curve.
1:03:34
[SPEAKER_00]: And the, uh, I think 12 core biomarkers on a CP on the stick.
1:03:38
[SPEAKER_00]: You scan the QR code on the stick with your phone.
1:03:40
[SPEAKER_00]: in your supposed to do it every day once week, whatever, and they were so far ahead, years, no audience.
1:03:49
[SPEAKER_00]: And we invested, and then we invested again, which we talked about mistakes, one of the dumbest things that we've ever done, and the signals were not, they are to invest again, and I did it anyway.
1:03:57
[SPEAKER_00]: So I believed in the product, I used the product, I thought it was excellent.
1:04:01
[SPEAKER_00]: So a loyal niche audience is always more interesting because at the end of the day like you'd much rather have a business continue to exist and have longevity than flame out.
1:04:14
[SPEAKER_01]: 100%, and I think also that's with so much of a shifting adventure, is it used to be the common consensus, like you need a great product, and it's so hard to build something, and there's such a capital cost to do so, that actually is supreme, and I think we're starting to see more and more like distribution go to market that's all the matters.
1:04:30
[SPEAKER_00]: It's why marketplaces, as a venture backed business, are always a hot topic in any venture cycle.
1:04:37
[SPEAKER_00]: It's always interesting to talk about marketplaces because you have two jobs to do.
1:04:43
[SPEAKER_00]: And I find that to be totally compelling in this market, because AI...
1:04:50
[SPEAKER_00]: makes like matching people a little bit easier it makes building the products a little bit more easier but it doesn't change anything about demand.
1:04:57
[SPEAKER_00]: It's why the dumb pitch that you get today that I'm sure you get 10 a day and I get 10 a day is I built the thing where the agents talk to the agents and these agents are out there with a budget and they get to spend this much money and this is where they're gonna go spend it and they're like, yeah, okay.
1:05:12
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, I don't know.
1:05:14
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, not anytime soon.
1:05:16
[SPEAKER_01]: Mm-hmm, I hear you.
1:05:19
[SPEAKER_01]: Marketplaces is a whole other conversation.
1:05:20
[SPEAKER_01]: I want to get deep on that with you because I have a lot of thoughts as well.
1:05:23
[SPEAKER_01]: VC or bootstrapping.
1:05:26
[SPEAKER_00]: Bootstrapping.
1:05:27
[SPEAKER_00]: If you can do it, I think you've done this on Instagram.
1:05:30
[SPEAKER_00]: I've done this on Instagram.
1:05:31
[SPEAKER_00]: Don't take money from us.
1:05:33
[SPEAKER_00]: Don't take money from us.
1:05:34
[SPEAKER_00]: Don't take money from us.
1:05:35
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
1:05:37
[SPEAKER_00]: We are predators.
1:05:40
[SPEAKER_00]: It is our animals.
1:05:41
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a mice.
1:05:43
[SPEAKER_00]: We certainly are elephants and woolly mammoths.
1:05:45
[SPEAKER_00]: Exactly.
1:05:46
[SPEAKER_00]: Our goal is to get the lowest valuation to own as much of your company as we can to get money out when it makes sense for us to get money out without handicapping you or your business.
1:05:55
[SPEAKER_00]: If you can bootstrap, you should.
1:05:57
[SPEAKER_00]: I think the only, I mean, there's a lot of times not bootstrap, um, when you're chasing, um,
1:06:04
[SPEAKER_00]: when you're chasing a market like when there's like this is a moment and you can prove to me or prove to ARCO why it's a moment.
1:06:11
[SPEAKER_00]: That's I think that's when you need to raise venture capital money and when it and then the other side that would be like some sort of like an arm's race like like there's lots of competition here I have a reason to believe that with this money I can move out ahead of the competition and here's why again that's reason raise venture capital but like I'll give you a
1:06:31
[SPEAKER_00]: dumb example, like, I'm obsessed with window pain manufacturing.
1:06:34
[SPEAKER_00]: I have no investments in the space, I would love to have an investment in the space.
1:06:38
[SPEAKER_00]: I think it's a really compelling story.
1:06:39
[SPEAKER_01]: Shout out to all window pain manufacturing vendors, you know?
1:06:42
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
1:06:42
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
1:06:44
[SPEAKER_00]: And the reality is it's a very capital intensive business to get started but then your margin profile windows is awesome.
1:06:50
[SPEAKER_00]: That's why I like it so much because it's hybrid entry, great margin after that.
1:06:54
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think that's the interesting place where it's like, you should be able to boot
1:07:00
[SPEAKER_00]: What, this isn't a wonderful life from 100 years ago.
1:07:04
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, you can't go out and get like a small business loan and bring your papers to the bank.
1:07:10
[SPEAKER_00]: Like put a second mortgage or house like money doesn't work that way anymore, unfortunately.
1:07:14
[SPEAKER_01]: Mm-hmm.
1:07:14
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I think you had to know the times we're in too.
1:07:17
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think that's a lot of the stuff that we can help educate on too.
1:07:21
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
1:07:21
[SPEAKER_01]: Right over here.
1:07:22
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, never post on social media again, or never fundraise another dollar again.
1:07:27
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh gosh, I mean, what, I mean, both of those have extreme mental burdens that they place on both of us, never post on social media again.
1:07:42
[SPEAKER_01]: I see you'll be able to fundraise.
1:07:43
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, and tell me why I think that what I'm
1:07:48
[SPEAKER_00]: most passionate about today is the scope of the impact that we can have on founders.
1:07:56
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
1:07:57
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think that being able to write checks puts me that position to do more than posting on social.
1:08:03
[SPEAKER_00]: That said, posting on social media has been an extraordinary blessing.
1:08:08
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, game changer for a lot of us.
1:08:10
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I hear you.
1:08:11
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, the dream is that you can have so much money yourself like the home room guys and you can just like funnel your money back into what you're doing.
1:08:16
[SPEAKER_00]: Uh, if I had a dollar for every time I said to Dylan, do you think the animal capital ever just be our family office?
1:08:21
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
1:08:22
[SPEAKER_00]: The Marshall and Don't Family Office?
1:08:23
[SPEAKER_01]: At some point, it could be.
1:08:24
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, I think also our strategies, I mean, at least someone's running now can be run with like less capital than a billion dollars.
1:08:30
[SPEAKER_01]: And so you don't necessarily even need to be at that level.
1:08:32
[SPEAKER_01]: And so it could make sense.
1:08:34
[SPEAKER_00]: No, but how nice would it be for you if you're like, listen, like, I,
1:08:37
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't have this but I'm saying like I'm gonna be you.
1:08:39
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm Erica.
1:08:39
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
1:08:40
[SPEAKER_00]: I have been running.
1:08:41
[SPEAKER_00]: I've been running funds.
1:08:42
[SPEAKER_00]: I've raised fund 1, 2, 3, and 4.
1:08:44
[SPEAKER_00]: I have made $100 million.
1:08:46
[SPEAKER_00]: And now every two years, I'm gonna deploy $8 million to venture over two years.
1:08:51
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm gonna write.
1:08:52
[SPEAKER_00]: What is this?
1:08:53
[SPEAKER_00]: 32 $250,000 checks no follow on.
1:08:57
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
1:08:58
[SPEAKER_00]: And you say like, as time goes on, if you're as rigorous as you are now, you'll never run out of money doing it that way.
1:09:06
[SPEAKER_00]: And you don't have enough to fundraise again, and you get to end, you don't have to.
1:09:10
[SPEAKER_01]: You don't have to talk to any investors, it sounds awesome.
1:09:14
[SPEAKER_01]: I know.
1:09:15
[SPEAKER_01]: It's definitely enticing, especially when you're deep in fundraise mode.
1:09:19
[SPEAKER_01]: And you think about what all the potential opportunities are if you don't do that.
1:09:25
[SPEAKER_00]: 100% you think, I mean, constantly you think about that.
1:09:29
[SPEAKER_00]: But I think that your ability to fundraise and your ability to write checks, even with the right them and you don't write them, just the ability to put you in a different position, two post on social media.
1:09:39
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, 100%.
1:09:40
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's also something that I've been really talking to a lot of people about is we need a lot more people on socials like you and me who are actually in the game, writing checks.
1:09:47
[SPEAKER_01]: There's a lot of like outsiders who are so well-intentioned and like really want to participate.
1:09:52
[SPEAKER_01]: And they should absolutely be there too, but we also need people that are like playing the game, writing the checks, like in the circles.
1:09:58
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a extreme disparity in...
1:10:04
[SPEAKER_00]: The extreme disparity in veracity between what we do and what many others do and it's really difficult to watch and you see people have you know a viral posterior viral post there and you're like
1:10:19
[SPEAKER_00]: You, I don't know if you thought this way I'll speak for myself, feel some jealousy, like damn that was a good idea, and then you like it a little angrier because you're like, you're even right checks, you never raise money, like you're your road checks and you sucked at it, like what are you what are you doing here and it's
1:10:35
[SPEAKER_00]: But the reality is they have ever right to fake it until they make it too, and so you have to kind of like measure it with that.
1:10:41
[SPEAKER_00]: I think that I do think that you've done a really nice job of garnering an audience of folks that have a deep appreciation for how hard you're working.
1:10:51
[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you.
1:10:51
[SPEAKER_01]: I appreciate that.
1:10:52
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I think that changes your relationship with the audience in a really nice way.
1:10:55
[SPEAKER_01]: I hope so.
1:10:55
[SPEAKER_01]: I think also I love that venture is so meritocratic.
1:10:58
[SPEAKER_01]: And like I think sometimes social feels a little more not that it's not a lot of hard work, but it can feel like a little bit like random or like you can talk, but you don't have to do.
1:11:05
[SPEAKER_01]: And in our business, I feel like adventure.
1:11:06
[SPEAKER_01]: It's really action based and I love that.
1:11:08
[SPEAKER_01]: I love that like if I'm bad at this job, people will know and if I'm really good at this job, everyone will also know.
1:11:13
[SPEAKER_01]: And I love that, you know?
1:11:14
[SPEAKER_00]: Completely.
1:11:15
[SPEAKER_00]: It's why platforms like TradedVC are so interesting.
1:11:18
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, that's a different podcast of like, is that good or is it bad for the space?
1:11:22
[SPEAKER_00]: I really like those guys, they've always been so supportive of me and they always, yeah.
1:11:25
[SPEAKER_00]: Even though I'm filming the teeniest Chinese check in this big rabbit.
1:11:27
[SPEAKER_00]: They toss you in the air.
1:11:28
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
1:11:29
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I text the guy, I'm like, thank you.
1:11:31
[SPEAKER_00]: It's really nice.
1:11:32
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yeah.
1:11:34
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I don't know, it's, I think it will.
1:11:38
[SPEAKER_00]: I do think that our hard work will pay off.
1:11:41
[SPEAKER_01]: I agree.
1:11:42
[SPEAKER_01]: I agree.
1:11:43
[SPEAKER_01]: We'll see.
1:11:44
[SPEAKER_01]: Is AI overhyped?
1:11:45
[SPEAKER_01]: This is the last question.
1:11:46
[SPEAKER_01]: Is AI overhyped or underhyped?
1:11:51
[SPEAKER_00]: It's overhyped.
1:11:55
[SPEAKER_00]: I think that people, I'm sorry, I keep not doing what you asked me to do.
1:12:01
[SPEAKER_00]: It's overhyped because it's misunderstood.
1:12:05
[SPEAKER_00]: I think that what AI today boils down to is the top 150 to 200 use cases for the regular person.
1:12:13
[SPEAKER_00]: And then the thousand use cases for the frontier closed model, the like engineer of the engineers, Nobel, science, prize winners and anthropic and an open AI and a perplexing these places that are pushing the boundaries and looking for government contracts and whatever.
1:12:28
[SPEAKER_00]: But the business model, the token business model versus the open source business model, what Elon Musk is doing, and why SpaceX keeps trading down and down and down and down, and next week, the payment was recorded might be last week, but they, their first lock-up for their stock will have passed, and they IPO'd, and they sprinted up to about $2.25 trillion, and I think as a recording, maybe they're at $1.53 trillion, which for people doing the math, that's a 33% discount.
1:12:56
[SPEAKER_00]: And the reason for that is because there's a supply and demand thing going on.
1:13:02
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a marketplace thing going on.
1:13:04
[SPEAKER_00]: There's $7 trillion of committed capital on planet Earth to rest real planet Earth where we live for data centers.
1:13:11
[SPEAKER_00]: And more and more in the geographies where these days are supposed to be built, Eastern Tennessee, Northern Texas, Nebraska, you're looking for places that are flat that don't have tornado warnings coming.
1:13:21
[SPEAKER_00]: Where electricity is trading as a commodity is trading flat to at a discount.
1:13:29
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a lot of reasons why people pick the places that they pick, but you see in this town, city council is a rejecting plan for data centers.
1:13:35
[SPEAKER_00]: And so what they're doing is they're going to have they're going to have to take that money and they're going to have to go try out the space data center thing and what that means is the Elon Musk is going to put some amount of hardware on his Falcon X rocket and it's going to go to space and without heat water electricity.
1:14:02
[SPEAKER_00]: you know, actually winding it on time despite the fact that there's no battery in it.
1:14:07
[SPEAKER_00]: And the hope is going to be that the amount of compute power that is delivered
1:14:12
[SPEAKER_00]: can meet the demand on Planet Earth and people just don't understand the basic economics of that.
1:14:20
[SPEAKER_00]: It's getting less expensive because more supply is coming online.
1:14:23
[SPEAKER_00]: Demand is going to go up and demand is going to stop going up and between the prices are just going to fall and fall and fall and it puts you on an interesting position where his thing works
1:14:33
[SPEAKER_00]: It's going to freaking crush because it will take 10, 15, 20 years.
1:14:38
[SPEAKER_00]: That's how long these things take to have Republican to Democrat, pro business, to not pro business, city councils turn over.
1:14:44
[SPEAKER_00]: You'reocracy to prove these to prove these data centers.
1:14:46
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, you can't have a bureaucracy to send the rocket to space.
1:14:49
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I say it to overhyped because the
1:14:53
[SPEAKER_00]: the extraordinary lack of understanding from really, really smart people about how it actually works in the actual use cases that will take up 99% of my mom Lisa who I love to death going on Google and using Gemini because yes, she'll use chat GBT to pick interesting fun cafes and Paris, but like most of the time she's just going to use Google's Gemini because it's just easier.
1:15:14
[SPEAKER_00]: That's what most of a high is going to end up being for a little while.
1:15:19
[SPEAKER_01]: So interesting, I think what people have a hard time seeing is the 10 years from now vision.
1:15:25
[SPEAKER_01]: And like, how does the tension and bureaucracy within city councils have anything to do with what Elon's doing?
1:15:31
[SPEAKER_01]: I think a lot of people, we don't go five steps ahead.
1:15:34
[SPEAKER_01]: We stay right where we are.
1:15:35
[SPEAKER_01]: And so I think it's up to you and I, and I, you're encouraging me even with this conversation to like make more content that is more future predicting.
1:15:41
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a lot of what we talk about behind closed doors, why are these things happening, why are we investing the way that we are?
1:15:46
[SPEAKER_00]: It's because we're talking about 10 years from now, we're not talking about tomorrow because that's completely not relevant anymore No, it's completely not relevant and you sit and look and and I mean there's there's so many things out there They're gonna have a relationship to what we do and like one of you know one of the interesting
1:16:04
[SPEAKER_00]: I think themes of 2026 and we'll be 2027 adventure is deco civilization and it's okay.
1:16:11
[SPEAKER_00]: Lots of people are paying attention to supply chain like they were during COVID because of the straight or straight or poor moves and the Trump war not war, what's the relation between that and Israel and what's the politics between Zohra and Netanyahu like they're looking at this like micro thing and they're saying
1:16:27
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, I can't invest in something that needs to get through the show here.
1:16:30
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm just like, sure, like I get that, like that's going to get more expensive, or you don't know the things going to show up.
1:16:35
[SPEAKER_00]: Can you take a huge step back from that and think about, all right, well, who's going to build a manufacturing plant in the United States, to our manufacturing plant venture back old businesses?
1:16:45
[SPEAKER_00]: That's for a different podcast.
1:16:47
[SPEAKER_01]: Did you get sent consent?
1:16:49
[SPEAKER_00]: I know what it is, I didn't look at it.
1:16:50
[SPEAKER_01]: OK, OK. Like, I'm very in up, you're early right now.
1:16:53
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
1:16:53
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
1:16:54
[SPEAKER_00]: Is that a venture-backable business?
1:16:55
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes or no?
1:16:57
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know.
1:16:58
[SPEAKER_00]: What's the future of private equity?
1:16:59
[SPEAKER_00]: Because it used to be that our hope are dream would be that 20 to 25% of our winners, more IPOs and more second year shows.
1:17:07
[SPEAKER_00]: They went to private equity, but private equity, not hiring the same way they used to.
1:17:11
[SPEAKER_00]: Not raising money the way that they used to.
1:17:12
[SPEAKER_00]: It is Apollo, BlackRock, Blackstone, and Aries,
1:17:16
[SPEAKER_00]: Almost no one else anymore.
1:17:17
[SPEAKER_00]: Middle market private equity is just being, how does that affect our jobs?
1:17:19
[SPEAKER_00]: And so many people are just getting so hung up and staring at CNBC and squawk box that they completely forget that our job is not about investing for today.
1:17:29
[SPEAKER_00]: It is about the fact that we invested in it, I'm Jewish and like, cremations like not a very Jewish thing.
1:17:34
[SPEAKER_00]: It's actually really supposed to get very sensitive.
1:17:36
[SPEAKER_00]: We invested in cremation business anyway.
1:17:38
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't have to get cremated.
1:17:39
[SPEAKER_01]: There's enough people that want to get people to get to find it.
1:17:41
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's actually a cremation nine to one is the most popular form of death care in the country.
1:17:46
[SPEAKER_00]: We invested five years ago, our founder's name is Tom Harris.
1:17:50
[SPEAKER_00]: He's been in death care for 20 years.
1:17:51
[SPEAKER_00]: He's really successful and wonderful.
1:17:53
[SPEAKER_00]: I invested in Tom in 2021.
1:17:56
[SPEAKER_00]: Tom's business has grown every single quarter since I call it March 2021.
1:18:01
[SPEAKER_00]: And he has never asked me for anything.
1:18:03
[SPEAKER_00]: He sends me a quarterly update.
1:18:05
[SPEAKER_00]: He sent me my Q2 update yesterday.
1:18:06
[SPEAKER_00]: He grew another 36% congratulations.
1:18:09
[SPEAKER_00]: He doesn't need anything from me and I'm going to be invested in Tom and 34.
1:18:13
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to be invested in Tom when I'm 44.
1:18:15
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know if he's going to exit.
1:18:16
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know when he's going to exit.
1:18:18
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe he will go ring the bell at the New York Stock Exchange.
1:18:19
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe that'll be a virtual experience one day.
1:18:22
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know when you write that first check to the last time that you exit your last business, it'll be 17 years minimum.
1:18:29
[SPEAKER_00]: So
1:18:30
[SPEAKER_00]: stop watching like don't stop watching the news because it matters, but like how does that of actually impact the founders that show up and the founders, the best founders, they're thinking about it too.
1:18:40
[SPEAKER_01]: 100%.
1:18:41
[SPEAKER_01]: And this is also not even just with like venture and investing, it's like in general in life, we do need to take a few steps back.
1:18:46
[SPEAKER_01]: and think about things in like broader time horizons because I agree with you.
1:18:49
[SPEAKER_01]: I think a lot of things when we get so up close to it, we get confused.
1:18:52
[SPEAKER_01]: We get lost.
1:18:53
[SPEAKER_01]: We we can't see clearly.
1:18:55
[SPEAKER_01]: And when we step back, that's when we actually get the answers.
1:18:57
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's when we get paid to do.
1:18:58
[SPEAKER_01]: But I think in general, as a consumer, like a lot of people should do that, too.
1:19:02
[SPEAKER_01]: So I'm getting so consumed in that day's story, you know?
1:19:04
[SPEAKER_00]: How many people out there invested millions if not 10, if not billions of dollars in an open AI?
1:19:14
[SPEAKER_00]: 32 hours later, it's like, it's actually about open source.
1:19:18
[SPEAKER_00]: And actually the charge for tokens is going down.
1:19:21
[SPEAKER_00]: The secondary price of open AI has gone down 40% because they want to make a quick buck.
1:19:26
[SPEAKER_01]: They want to talk about it at the dinner party.
1:19:28
[SPEAKER_01]: Like that's the other thing.
1:19:29
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like it's more about ego than long term returns because it's short term versus long term.
1:19:33
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's like so much of the root of it is just like, can we think bigger picture here?
1:19:37
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
1:19:38
[SPEAKER_01]: Anyway, you and I could go on and on about this.
1:19:40
[SPEAKER_01]: But thank you for being here, Marshall.
1:19:41
[SPEAKER_01]: This was so much fun.
1:19:42
[SPEAKER_01]: Great to go.
1:19:43
[SPEAKER_01]: You're hot takes.
1:19:44
[SPEAKER_00]: I, they're always, I always try to make, I'm making sure we're giving a good podcast to your folks.
1:19:49
[SPEAKER_01]: You crushed.
1:19:49
[SPEAKER_01]: You crushed.
1:19:50
[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you.
1:19:50
[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you.
1:19:50
[SPEAKER_01]: They tried to be.
1:19:51
[SPEAKER_01]: Thanks so much for listening to the Trailblazers podcast.
1:19:54
[SPEAKER_01]: If you found this conversation valuable, please follow along on socials, share with a friend, leave a review, all the things.
1:20:00
[SPEAKER_01]: Most of all, please subscribe to our channel.
1:20:02
[SPEAKER_01]: It helps more constrained builders find us and supports the work we're doing here.
1:20:06
[SPEAKER_01]: To learn more about what we're doing, you can visit trailblazerspod.com or my venture capital firm parkrangerscap.com or just follow along on socials at Erica Under School Winger.
1:20:15
[SPEAKER_01]: Until next time, keep trailblazing.