Latest / The Learning Corner by Precursor / Episode #43: Two Silicon Valley Modalities, Are VCs Independent Thinkers?, 20 Somethings Swarming SF

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Episode #43: Two Silicon Valley Modalities, Are VCs Independent Thinkers?, 20 Somethings Swarming SF · The Learning Corner by Precursor

• 0:00
  We anoint winners sometimes and people stop paying attention to the market, and then things
• 0:04
  change.
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  And you come back five years later, like, oh, I thought that company was gonna win.
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  And somebody came out of nowhere or somebody who had been working with a different thesis
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  was ultimately proven right.
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  And you're like, who knew?
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  It's the week of August 4.
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  Welcome to the Learning Corner, a Precursor Ventures podcast.
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  Welcome to the Learning Corner by Precursor.
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  I'm Mia Farnam, and I'm joined by RGP and managing partner, Charles Hudson, where we will
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  be talking through the articles and Goodreads that caught our team's attention over the past
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  week.
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  Our first piece is a LinkedIn post written by Aditya Agarwal, GP at South Park Commons, who
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  walks through two current modalities of competition when building in Silicon Valley
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  today.
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  So essentially, archetypes of startups plus the spaces they choose to build in and the
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  resulting competitive strategy.
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  The first modality involves founders working on something legible, where success depends on out
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  executing everyone else.
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  These are spaces where what you're building isn't necessarily contrarian yet, but you'll
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  face multiple competitors.
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  The strategy here is to win as quickly as possible with speed itself becoming the moat.
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  The second modality is working on something completely illegible and contrarian.
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  Aditya notes that some people should absolutely laugh at your approach, and that's a good
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  thing.
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  The upside is that you can take more time in the early days to build thoughtfully and avoid
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  prematurely drifting into modality one.
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  I have a few questions teed up here, but wanted to know how you felt about the post since it
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  does echo a lot of our internal conversations we've been having on the team.
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  Specifically, I feel like a lot of investors will say that they wanna see modality two
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  companies, these out there contrarian concepts, but really be creating more of a frenzy around
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  modality one companies.
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  Oh, yeah.
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  I mean, I I really like this post because I've been thinking about, particularly with these AI
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  companies, how do you think about which bucket you're in?
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  And it feels to me that there's one pattern I'm observing over and over.
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  And I think about these companies on two dimensions.
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  One dimension is the obviousness of the idea, and we'll we'll stick with AI.
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  How how obvious is the application of AI?
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  And how famous and well connected the founder.
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  And I meet people and I'm like, okay.
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  Well, my assumption is obvious ideas where AI can be applied are going to attract really well
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  connected, well pedigreed founders who gonna have lots of access to capital.
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  So think about Bret Taylor Sierra.
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  I could name, like, a bunch of other companies where I'm like, oh, wow.
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  That's a very well known founder going after a big, but I would describe as obvious
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  application of AI.
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  So there's that model.
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  And that to me is like the world of big seed funds.
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  And if you're gonna do a big obvious problem like that, there's gonna be a lot of
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  competition, not just in number, but they're gonna be well capitalized competitors.
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  And you have to go into it knowing that that's the case.
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  And it seems like right now, for those modality one companies, the moat seems to be like your
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  willingness to do nine nine six and, like, the speed at which you can execute.
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  I don't know that those are great moats, but it seems like those are the only ones people have
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  expressed to me on a regular basis.
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  And I think if you think about this two by two of how famous the founders are and how obvious
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  the idea is, The companies that I think have the hardest time raising are the somewhat naive
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  founders who are doing an obvious idea with no particular advantage in terms of expertise,
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  insight, or access to capital.
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  I just assume, unfortunately, that many of those people are gonna face far more
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  competition than they realize even if they don't know who those competitors are.
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  And for me, the interesting companies are the ones where the founder doesn't have sort of all
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  that access to capital and where the idea isn't intrinsically interesting or obvious or
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  consensus good.
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  And we do those companies all the time.
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  And I find, to your point, Mia, everyone's like, I wanna see the things that are weird and
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  wonderful and different.
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  And then you show them, and they're like, oh,
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  but Not that weird.
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  Not not that weird.
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  Not that different.
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  And so I think pick your problem.
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  If you're modality one, it's brutal competition.
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  You might have other people with very similar or inferior products who raise a lot more money
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  who are going to really, really make the landscape difficult.
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  And not just the operating landscape, the fundraising landscape becomes difficult.
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  Or you can have an idea where you work on it for a while, potentially in obscurity, where
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  people don't get what you're doing, but with significantly less competition.
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  And I think those modality two companies are great for first time founders because it gives
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  you time to figure out the surface area of the problem, and it gives you a chance to maybe
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  learn how to operate a company without the, like, brutal pressure of competing in a hyper
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  competitive market.
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  And so, I don't know, I'd say we do a lot of modality two companies, but I think the
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  challenge as an investor is you don't get quick markups on those companies.
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  You know, we have three astro witchy companies, and in every case I've made one of those
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  investments, people have, like, made fun of me.
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  And I'm very happy to be an investor in all three of companies, but you have to be willing
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  to sit with that weirdness for a while and it has to, like, not bother you.
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  And I think there's some investors who they want the good cocktail party conversation.
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  They wanna be in the hot deal, or they wanna be in the thing that sounds, like, intrinsically
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  interesting to people.
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  You feel like there's a stage for those modality two companies that we've mentioned of
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  which they suddenly become the cocktail party companies?
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  I think usually one of two things has to happen for that to be the case.
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  One is something shifts in the macro, and the thing that you're doing suddenly becomes way
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  oh, you know, there were a lot of remote work tools before the pandemic, but the pandemic
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  sort of shone a light on those and made those things really useful.
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  Now some of those things went up and came right back down.
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  But I think, like, that was a a moment that took things that felt obscure and made them
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  feel important.
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  I think the other thing that happens is problems that people thought were small or
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  uninteresting, it turns out that they are much larger and more interesting than initially
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  understood to be.
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  I'm thinking about all the book companies too that we've been spending time with across our
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  portfolio.
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  I think if you weren't looking in those corners, you'd be like, this is a very small
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  market and there's a cap on bookish I guess it depends where you're spending time.
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  Question for you, I guess, how different are these modalities today from modalities that you
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  saw in, I guess, ten years ago, fifteen years ago across venture?
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  Have they changed that much?
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  Yes.
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  I think as the venture industry has gotten bigger, if you're gonna do a modality one
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  company, there are just going to be more competitors in the beginning because I think a
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  lot of people are like, oh, this is a big obvious category.
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  I wanna have play.
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  Like, we'll take an example, like, expense management.
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  There were a ton of companies that were created there.
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  Now it feels like Ramp and Brex have been the two on the startup side and maybe Nirvana on
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  travel that have really broke out on the end.
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  But, like, there were a lot of experiments that were funded because it was a big category.
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  And I think what you see is capital concentration around the perceived winners.
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  I emphasize perceived winners because the the customers decide in the end who really wins.
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  And just the scale that the private winners can raise now is much bigger than it was ten or
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  fifteen years ago.
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  And I think also the pressure within venture to anoint, declare, or identify the winners
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  earlier has gone up, which I think ironically is gonna create a lot more false positives with
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  people saying like, well, this is the one that's all lined up behind this company.
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  I'm curious to see how that plays out.
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  And is the need to anoint these companies earlier coming from people wanting to validate
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  the amount of money that's being put in them, or where is that need coming from from your
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  perspective?
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  I think there's an investor desire sometime to just, like, sort out the market so that you can
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  move on and spend time on other stuff.
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  And if you're like, okay, we already know who's gonna win in expense management.
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  I don't have to spend any more time on that category.
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  It's these three or four companies.
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  They've raised all the money.
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  The perception is they're gonna win.
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  That's a settled category.
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  I can now go spend my time on other categories that are less settled.
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  And I think especially if you're trying to put large amounts of money to work and you're
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  trying to find category winners, once you've identified the winners, you can kinda move on.
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  And I think what ends up happening is we anoint winners sometimes and people stop paying
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  attention to the market, and then things change.
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  And you come back five years later, oh, I thought that company was gonna win.
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  You're like, oh, we all did, and then something changed, and somebody came out of nowhere, or
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  somebody who had been working with a different thesis was ultimately proven right.
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  And you're like, who knew?
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  Well, it's a good talent for our next topic.
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  It's a piece from PitchBook written by Rosie Bradbury who shares data that challenges the
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  commonly held belief that VCs are independent thinkers.
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  According to one PitchBook analysis, the top 20 US firms as ranked by PitchBook collaborated
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  with at least one peer in that top 20 list in an average of 38% of their deals.
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  That's nearly two out of every five deals.
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  This figure has increased over the past few years, and there is a wide range in how
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  inclined firms are to co invest, with some collaborating on as many as 55% of their deals,
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  while others do so in just 19%.
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  I think there's a lot of ways to interpret this data from Yeah.
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  Specific strategies of funds wanting to syndicate deals together, growing fund sizes
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  requiring larger ownership, to growing round size requiring just more folks involved and
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  more.
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  Any other things that came to your mind looking at this data?
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  Yeah.
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  I think there's two things.
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  But the data is like, one, was like, oh, I know specific people at that pair of funds who
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  really like each other and enjoy working together.
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  And I think it's important to remember that, at least for now, this is a human business.
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  Individuals are making the decision.
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  And these are all firms where, in addition to investing capital, you're gonna take a board
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  seat, and you're gonna work on this company for eight to ten years.
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  And I think a lot of people are like, I really care who else is around that table if I'm gonna
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  sign up and do that.
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  And there are certain individuals at certain firms who have a real affinity for working with
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  other people, and I think that shows up in the data.
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  I think the other thing is taste.
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  And I think a lot of the larger firms are essentially looking for the same types of
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  companies, and they're looking in the same places, and they're looking for the same type
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  of people.
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  So it's not that surprising to me that they end up in the same companies because they're
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  looking for the same things.
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  I think the interesting thing is, like, to your point, as fund sizes increase, it gets harder
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  and harder to invest in the same round in the same company, but also it becomes more
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  imperative to get into the winners.
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  So I think you will continue to see these companies where one firm was fortunate enough
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  to win the deal at the a, somebody else comes in at the b.
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  Because if you did the a, as much as you might wanna hoard ownership, it is also nice to have
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  a new person come in and price it and, you know, as long as you can continue to maintain
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  ownership.
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  And then you might have another really high profile firm come in at the sea.
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  Like, I think a good example, like, this week was Clay.
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  We saw, you know, GV came in and led the sea, and, like, they'd had some really good
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  investors previously.
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  And so I think, again, as you continue to see capital concentration in smaller number of
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  names in venture, I think you're gonna see more and more of the top firms needing or wanting to
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  be on the cap tables of those companies.
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  And it's gonna look like, oh, wow.
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  How did Sequoia, blah blah blah, these five firms all end up even just look at Figma.
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  Figma has most of the great venture firms.
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  In on their cap table, Index got in first and made the most money.
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  And others, Kleiner, Sequoia, also did fine too.
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  But if you look at that cap table, you're like, wow.
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  These are all blue chip top tier names co investing together.
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  But the amount of money that they will make from those investments is a function of how
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  early they got in and the total number of dollars they put to work.
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  For listeners who are checking out the reading, you'll see like an interesting heat graph that
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  shows the percentage of collaboration from across these top 20 firms.
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  I was thinking it would be interesting to see I don't even think you could do this because I
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  don't think the data is there.
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  But basically, that same heat graph applied to sub 300,000,000 in AUM funds across the board
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  because, I mean, this is something that happens all the time with Preseed is new funds come out
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  every single year who have great competitive edge of being able to find founders.
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  And so I find we definitely have our friends that we love to collaborate with.
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  But I will say there's always new funds that introduce new founders and have interesting
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  access to deals.
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  So that percentage is always shifting in our landscape.
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  Yeah.
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  And I and I think the big funds are in a much competition world with each other than we are
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  with other pre seed and seed funds.
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  And there's also just more companies.
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  So I think it's more common, I find, that, you know, we'll go on a run.
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  We'll we'll do a bunch of investments with a given firm because we're meeting the same
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  people at the same time, and we have a like, know, think about Bloomberg beta.
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  We do a ton with them.
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  Yeah.
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  And I think it's because we tend to like the same type of founder.
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  We tend to meet them at the same stage.
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  And there are other firms that are like, I'd love to do more with with those folks, but
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  they're looking at a different founder profile than we are, and it's less likely that we're
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  gonna we're gonna find the same things interesting.
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  The piece also included a quote from Kelly from Sandana claiming that LPs do wanna see that GPs
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  can see around the corner and have unique perspective and access that other fund managers
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  don't.
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  I feel like this is a widely discussed concept amongst VCs, especially in smaller fund manager
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  circles that you want to illustrate access and relationship to funds that LPs clearly
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  recognize on paper Yeah.
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  While also showing the classic proprietary deal flow that makes their strategy unique.
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  What seems to matter more from your perspective?
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  I think we live in a world where it takes twelve or fifteen years to figure out if you've
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  really made a great investment.
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  I mean, you look at Figma's first five years, that wasn't really that impressive in terms of
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  observable external performance separate from management's execution, same thing for Clay.
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  The first few years were kind of like being in the woods from what I know from my friends who
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  were involved in that company.
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  I think most people's dream pitch would be, I do all of these seed rounds and Sequoia and
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  Andreessen do all of my a's.
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  And there are there are people who can credibly make that claim.
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  Think about Rompton at Abstract and other people.
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  And I think that is an easy heuristic for LPs to understand because if the things that you
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  fund early end up being interesting to those funds, on average, those big funds have very
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  good judgment and see the whole market.
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  So if they're picking your companies, you're doing something right.
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  I think what's harder for LPs is if you're like, hey.
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  I'm picking these great companies, but none of the people leading the a are firms that you
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  know or have heard of.
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  It doesn't mean that those companies aren't good.
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  It just means that it takes more work to understand why they're interesting.
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  And then the sort of reflexive questions, if they're so great, why didn't one of the great
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  multistage firms do the a?
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  And oftentimes, there's a good reason why they didn't do it.
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  They didn't find it interesting.
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  The TAM wasn't that interesting to them in the moment.
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  There can be lots of reasons why they don't do it, but I think if you want the easy path as a
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  fund manager, it's to show that the companies you fund the next I think if you're like, hey,
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  we invest alongside these people all the time at the CDNA, then I don't think that's as
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  compelling a story as, like, we're finding things that those folks find interesting later,
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  but we're finding them first.
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  And I guess there is some, but not like a clear correlation of those funds jumping in, which
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  means longevity wise, those companies will succeed.
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  I'm thinking also about companies within our portfolio who found their series a investors
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  as, like, family offices who are the best in class at this small niche area that's extremely
• 14:28
  important in unlocking for a portfolio.
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  If you were an LP, you would never recognize those names.
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  But they're extremely important to the future success of the company because they have the
• 14:37
  expertise and entire verticalized supply chain knowledge on the exact space that they're in.
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  And so I would have probably picked that family office or that investor over a better known
• 14:48
  investor any day of the week because for the specific portfolio company, it's going to
• 14:53
  change the game for their long term success.
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  But that's hard to storytell to LPs at scale, I think.
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  It's super hard.
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  And I think the other thing is, and I've seen this in our portfolio, venture tends to move as
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  a herd when it comes to interest in categories.
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  And so if you want to get the maximum number of markups from the big series a firms, you need
• 15:13
  to be making investments today that will be in categories that they will find interesting in
• 15:17
  the next twelve to eighteen months, which right now means you should only be doing AI.
• 15:20
  Yep.
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  But I don't think AI is the totality of where all of the interesting companies are being
• 15:24
  created at the moment, but it's where all of the energy is being focused.
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  So if you have the bravery or naivete, whatever term you wanna use, to invest outside of AI,
• 15:34
  you have to accept that you're gonna have companies that are gonna be less interesting to
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  big multistage firms today because all of their energy and attention is focused on AI or
• 15:42
  defense tech or whatever whatever the theme is of the moment.
• 15:45
  I think you have to have the courage over conviction that, like, if it's a good company,
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  you will find somebody in the ecosystem who will also see in the company what you see if it
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  executes well.
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  And my experience at Precursor has been that's the case.
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  Even when sectors are really out of favor, if the company's doing really well, you can find
• 15:59
  somebody who believes in that company.
• 16:01
  And I think about, like, all the consumer fintech companies that kinda had a really rough
• 16:05
  go in '21, that category is kinda back now.
• 16:09
  Yeah.
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  And if you were able to ride it out as a company and continue to operate, competition
• 16:13
  went down, capital was hard to get, those businesses probably got better.
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  And now people are open to looking at those again.
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  Our last topic of the week is a good one.
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  It's a piece from the New York Times titled, the 20 are swarming San Francisco's AI boom,
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  talking about the massive wave of young talent flocking to the Bay Area to start their AI
• 16:31
  companies.
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  Companies like Scale AI, Cognition, Cursor, all started by young college aged founders are
• 16:38
  examples of what success looks like for most of today's college students.
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  With some folks rushing in right after they graduate, there are some founders who are even
• 16:46
  in their teens, both building and getting funded by large venture capital funds.
• 16:50
  For folks who dropped out of their undergraduate colleges, their argument was
• 16:53
  simply around the fact that they couldn't afford to not take advantage of the opportunity
• 16:58
  that is building in today's AI market.
• 17:00
  One notable quote from an undergraduate Stanford student was, quote, it's kind of this
• 17:04
  AI inflection point where it felt like almost everyone I knew at Stanford was dropping out to
• 17:09
  cofound a company.
• 17:10
  Charles, I wanted to get your honest opinion about this massive wave of younger founders
• 17:14
  opening up shop in SF and also see if it resembled any sort of boom during the February,
• 17:19
  or does this feel palpably different?
• 17:21
  No.
• 17:22
  It feels the same.
• 17:23
  Well, the funny thing is Marina and I were talking about this earlier this week because I
• 17:28
  was a college student during the Internet one point o boom at Stanford, and my classmates
• 17:33
  were dropping out of school to start companies.
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  I lived in a house with a bunch of guys, and we thought about dropping out of school to start a
• 17:40
  company, and we decided not to do it.
• 17:42
  We had eight COFA.
• 17:43
  We had over six COFA.
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  It would it wouldn't have worked for a bunch of reasons.
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  But there were people in my class who did decide to drop out, including some of my very
• 17:51
  good friends, to pursue ideas that they were excited about.
• 17:53
  And the logic was the same.
• 17:54
  It was okay.
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  This Internet thing is happening.
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  This feels like a once in a lifetime boom.
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  And if I stay in school, I'm gonna miss my window.
• 18:02
  And my sense as an undergrad was this was even more pronounced at the business school, at the
• 18:06
  GSB.
• 18:06
  Like, it was even more pronounced.
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  People were dropping out to start companies.
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  And on average, none of those companies mattered.
• 18:12
  You could say, oh, Mark's like a birk at Facebook.
• 18:14
  Facebook.
• 18:14
  The the of course, there are examples of, like, where this worked out.
• 18:17
  On average, most of the people I know, the thing they dropped out of school to do did not
• 18:21
  turn out to be Yahoo, Facebook, Google.
• 18:24
  That doesn't mean it wasn't a great experience for them to raise money and try out most of
• 18:28
  many of those people have become life lifelong entrepreneurs as a result.
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  And I think I feel really awkward saying this, but I'll say it anyway.
• 18:35
  I think some of these people, these these entrepreneur students are also being, like,
• 18:40
  ruthlessly cynical, and they're like, listen.
• 18:42
  It's not as important that I graduate from Stanford as it is that I got in in the first
• 18:46
  place.
• 18:46
  Some of my friends who dropped out to do startups eventually came back and finished
• 18:50
  their degrees, graduated.
• 18:51
  Others were just like, I got in and I attended and I didn't get kicked out.
• 18:55
  I dropped out.
• 18:56
  Being a Stanford dropout is not a huge liability if I'm pursuing a career in venture
• 19:01
  capital.
• 19:02
  Now if I wanna, like, try a startup and then maybe go into consulting, maybe the stigma of
• 19:06
  being having not completed your degree, I mean, you would know better than I would about, like,
• 19:10
  that world.
• 19:10
  But my hunch is there are worlds where it's a stigma, but not in entrepreneurship.
• 19:13
  Ironically, I think this ties back to some of these articles about these really
• 19:17
  entrepreneurial students being mad that they weren't accepted by top colleges.
• 19:20
  And they're like, well, maybe the top colleges read your essays and also concluded you weren't
• 19:24
  really coming there to learn.
• 19:25
  You were coming there to start a company, and they're not incubators or startup studios.
• 19:29
  They're universities.
• 19:29
  And so I hope that many of these people are more successful than the late nineties
• 19:35
  entrepreneurs were who dropped out and started companies.
• 19:38
  And I hope for many of these people that they discover entrepreneurship as a lifelong career
• 19:43
  path.
• 19:44
  I also worry that some of them are gonna miss out on a really amazing social and
• 19:47
  developmental experience.
• 19:48
  For a lot of people I know, including myself, a lot of your maturation starts in college.
• 19:53
  You're on your own.
• 19:54
  You're outside of your house.
• 19:55
  You're meeting new people.
• 19:56
  You kinda only get a chance to do that once.
• 19:59
  Yeah.
• 19:59
  And I hope these people aren't making a trade that they someday regret.
• 20:03
  Yeah.
• 20:03
  Also, like, the Valley has always been obsessed with, like, young Wunderkind geniuses and, like
• 20:08
  That's not new.
• 20:09
  That's not new.
• 20:09
  Me and Marina talk about it a lot too.
• 20:11
  Mark Zuckerberg is an anomaly.
• 20:13
  I was wondering, anomaly.
• 20:14
  Yes.
• 20:15
  They are young, but that's only a small factor of why they are wonderful founders.
• 20:19
  And I think sometimes people are confusing, I guess, being young with being successful and
• 20:24
  excited.
• 20:25
  And again, I meet really wonderful and very impressive young founders all the time.
• 20:29
  I do think about and I do wonder what things will you miss out on if you do drop out of
• 20:33
  school for the wrong reasons.
• 20:34
  Yeah.
• 20:34
  So to your point, if a lifelong career in entrepreneurship is what you would like to do,
• 20:38
  then I can more so understand it.
• 20:40
  One trend I am seeing a lot for a large majority of these companies started by younger
• 20:45
  founders, and I wonder if this is a difference between what you saw in the two thousands.
• 20:49
  Is this massive social media and marketing presence
• 20:51
  Oh, yeah.
• 20:52
  Which the article also talks about.
• 20:53
  Like, I'm talking really flashy ads, loud and wildly colorful Instagram accounts dedicated to
• 20:58
  almost like meme content.
• 21:00
  And the purpose seems to be solely to grab the attention of users, whether it is for positive
• 21:05
  or negative reasons.
• 21:06
  I think they think about that value add equally.
• 21:09
  Any thoughts on how this feels different from generations prior?
• 21:12
  I do think a lot of this has to do with AI where, like, a grab for customers is extremely
• 21:17
  important in the beginning.
• 21:18
  So having this sort of virality on the platforms that already exist because those
• 21:22
  rails exist today is available.
• 21:24
  I think it clearly is probably the big example I can think of.
• 21:27
  I think the ability to break out from the noise of AI and this the dim of start up like, people
• 21:33
  who can break out from that noise, that is a skill.
• 21:36
  And I think a lot of investors say, the group of people who can do that have probably a good
• 21:39
  chance at succeeding when it comes to distribution and GTM.
• 21:43
  That's a big problem, especially in a world where a lot of these products feel commoditized
• 21:47
  or similar.
• 21:47
  People who can make a marketing splash, mean, it's obviously it's different because we didn't
• 21:51
  have this stuff twenty five years ago.
• 21:52
  Like, these channels didn't exist.
• 21:54
  And it was more like the Whisper Reputation Network.
• 21:56
  Oh, this person in our class is gonna be a good founder.
• 21:59
  That somehow bubbled its way back up to Conor Perkins or whatever venture firm.
• 22:02
  That was kind of more how it worked.
• 22:04
  There was no harmonic.
• 22:05
  There were no tools to mind Twitter.
• 22:07
  But I also think some of these founders have gotten smart, and they know, but, like, VCs are
• 22:10
  looking for these signals on Twitter or TikTok or whatever.
• 22:13
  So if I create these signals, I will be found, which is separate from whether or not I'm
• 22:16
  creating anything of value or of interest.
• 22:19
  So I think we have this feedback loop where founders now understand that creating content,
• 22:24
  creating signal creates the opportunity to get the attention of investors, and that attention
• 22:28
  of investors gives you the chance to to get in front of them.
• 22:30
  And I think we're gonna continue to see people who fund them, I think, like, you the Dollar
• 22:34
  Shave Club ad was, like, a big Yeah.
• 22:36
  Breakthrough moment.
• 22:37
  At a certain period of time on the Internet, you have these flashpoint things that happen,
• 22:41
  and then and then you get people are like, oh, I wanna copy that too.
• 22:44
  And I'm like, it kinda worked for a bunch of reasons that are hard to recreate.
• 22:47
  Like GoDaddy, Arby's, etcetera.
• 22:50
  Like, any other sort of viral moments.
• 22:51
  And it also feels like this younger group of founders is driving the rebirth of September
• 22:55
  culture too.
• 22:56
  Oh, yeah.
• 22:56
  Which also is not new.
• 22:58
  Like, that that existed in the February.
• 23:00
  I think I'm trying to figure out nine nine six, like, works for younger generations.
• 23:03
  Why would you not wanna be around the people that you work with all day, that you are like
• 23:07
  minded with, that you're excited to create with?
• 23:09
  Again, like all more things that I'm excited to watch, and again, that people are in it for the
• 23:14
  right reasons.
• 23:15
  And then I also hope that VCs are also exploring relationships with those young
• 23:19
  founders for the right reasons as well.
• 23:21
  Yeah.
• 23:21
  That I think about a lot.
• 23:22
  The last piece is the one that gives me a little ick, which is I worry about people
• 23:27
  encouraging people to drop out.
• 23:29
  My view is like if you've been building something and it's starting to get momentum,
• 23:33
  and you're like, I'm having a hard time keeping up with school and keeping up with my startup,
• 23:37
  that's a different framing than I wanna drop out of school to do a startup that has no
• 23:41
  momentum, that's an idea, and I wanna be able to work on it.
• 23:44
  To me, that's like a very different calculus.
• 23:46
  And I worry that I've met some people who've been encouraging people to drop out.
• 23:50
  And I'm like, that person's not yet at a place with that idea or business where more time
• 23:54
  spent on it is going to accelerate progress.
• 23:57
  I like asking the investors, are you prepared to be their safety net for some of those kids
• 24:00
  who do not have any financial safety net Yeah.
• 24:03
  And worked all their life to get to x y and z's college, and that's the pinnacle for their
• 24:07
  entire family's generation of seeing their child be there.
• 24:10
  So I'm having more conversations about that with our friends and always curious to kinda
• 24:14
  see their different perspectives.
• 24:15
  We are all out of time today.
• 24:16
  Thank you, Charles, for stopping in.
• 24:18
  We are taking the week off next week, but we will be back the following.
• 24:22
  Thank you to all of our listeners for jumping in.
• 24:24
  Please like and subscribe, and we will talk with you all in a couple weeks.
• 24:27
  Thank you.
• 24:27
  Bye.