Latest / Lab to Market Leadership with Chris Reichhelm / How to Spot a Deep Tech Founder Worth Betting On with Adam Draper

Transcript

How to Spot a Deep Tech Founder Worth Betting On with Adam Draper · Lab to Market Leadership with Chris Reichhelm

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_01: Whenever you in a conversation with someone hear an idea and you laugh, or if you hear an idea and you get mad, you should be listening to those because that's the future.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the Lab to Market Leadership Podcast.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_00: Too many advanced science and engineering companies fail to deliver their innovations from the lab to the market.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_00: We're on a mission to change that.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_00: My name is Chris Reichelm, and I'm the founder and CEO of Deep Tech Leaders.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_00: Each week we speak with some of the world's leading entrepreneurs, investors, corporates, and policymakers about what it takes to succeed on the lab to market journey.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_00: Join us.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_00: For those of you in the early stage investment game, or those entrepreneurs amongst you who are considering raising your first round of capital, you are going to want to listen to tonight's Lab to Market Leadership Podcast.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_00: We are talking about capital raising at the earliest stage, the seed stage.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_00: And we're going to be talking about it from two different perspectives.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_00: On one hand, we're going to be looking at investors.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: We're going to be looking at what a seed stage investment fund within deep tech is all about.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_00: How is it structured?
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_00: What are the average ticket sizes?
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_00: How are you making decisions on which companies to back and which companies to leave?
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_00: What kind of service do you provide beyond the capital to your portfolio companies throughout the investment cycle?
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_00: And we're also going to be looking at it from the entrepreneur side, helping them understand a little bit on how decisions are actually made and what kind of progress is expected of them during that investment cycle and the kind of service they should be expecting from their investors.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: Helping me understand this, I am delighted to be joined by Adam Draper.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_00: Adam Draper is the managing director and co-founder of Boost VC.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_00: Boost are one of the world's leading seed stage deep tech venture funds.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_00: They have a phenomenal track record.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_00: They are an incredible fund returner.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_00: And Adam is something of American venture royalty, which we'll come on to in a little while.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_00: This is going to be a great episode for those of you thinking about seed stage capital raising or those of you already in that game.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_00: I hope you enjoy.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_00: Let's get into it.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_00: Adam Draper, thank you so much for joining me.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks for having me.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_00: Excited to be here.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I love talking deep tech.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_00: Well, we're going to do that today.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_00: So today, in my intro, Adam, I kind of teed up this discussion that we're going to have around the earliest stage of capital raising, the seed stage.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_00: And we want to understand it from two perspectives.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_00: One is the investor's perspective, your perspective.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_00: And so understanding what actually is seed stage investing within deep tech.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_00: Lots of people know what seed stage investing is, but what does that actually look like in the context of the kind of moonshot themes that we see prevail in deep tech?
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_00: So that's one piece.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_00: And the other piece we want to look at is also the entrepreneur's perspective.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_00: Lots of our audience are made up of young founder CEOs.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_00: They want to get some insight into how decisions are made with regards to early stage capital investment.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_00: So any kind of insight you can share on that is going to be super cool.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_00: But before we do any of that, I want to kind of address, I feel I have to address at least this the subject of your surname.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_00: Now, for those like me who are of a certain vintage, we've been around long enough within the technology world and within the VC backed world to understand the importance or the history around your surname.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_00: And if there were a set of founding fathers for the US venture industry, I think your father and grandfather and your family basically would be part of it.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, the way I generally like to say it, well, one is I'm very proud of what my family's done.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_01: Our business has always been championing others to succeed, which is kind of a cool career.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_01: And my great-grandfather was the first venture capitalist on the West Coast, so in Silicon Valley, he was kind of one of the original people out here.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_01: My grandfather institutionalized venture with a venture fund called Sutter Hill Ventures, which is still around today and well known, most recently for Snowflake.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_01: And then some other stuff.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_01: I think they did NVIDIA also.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_01: And then my dad, he took venture capital global with DFJ, where its peak set up 27 different venture funds across the universe.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_01: And then my whole family's venture capitalists.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_01: I feel what I've been able to add to it is really a I try to back founders who are doing something that is otherworldly or what we call making sci-fi a reality.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_01: So we take it to a step further in a different way.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_01: But I'm very proud.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_01: I think if my family were farmers, I'd be a farmer.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_01: It's one of those things where we ended up just enjoying the concept of championing people's successes.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_01: And that's really at the core of what Venture Capital is.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm also kind of sad.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_01: My grandfather passed away two weeks ago, and he was an amazing guy.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_01: And he was an icon.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_01: He would be on the Hall of Fame Mount Rush more of Venture Capital, or I would at least pitch him hard for it.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_01: He was always a true gentleman.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_01: He was an incredible guy who always wanted the best of others.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm sad because he was my best friend at the end, but he was 98 and lived a great life.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_01: So always happy to talk about him too.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_00: That's a wonderful life.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_00: My condolences, too, to your family.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_00: Was your path always predetermined, do you think?
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_01: I tried everything else.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_01: So I tried, I was a telemarketer for a comic book company.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_01: I started a company.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_01: I tried to be a tennis player professionally for between in my 18 to 19-year-old time frame.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_01: So I've sort of tried a bunch of different things.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_01: I was always interested in like people doing interesting things and who were curious.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_01: And it turns out those happened to be founders.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_01: I had a lot of founder networks.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_01: When I started a company, I learned a lot about how to help coach others into not making the same mistakes I did.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_01: And so I'd say it wasn't predetermined.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_01: My family would have been happy with me doing anything.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_01: I would say, as long as there was some creative and economic slant, we try to see what was sort of builds a sustaining business or pursuit, a worthy pursuit.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_01: And I think we spend a lot of time trying different things.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_01: But my dad, the rule was essentially just like if you're going to do something, go for it.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_01: So I started a company called Expert Financial out of college, actually, while I was still in college.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_01: It was a secondary market for private securities.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_01: We ended up selling it for parts after four, four and a half years, but I learned an insane amount.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_01: Like that was a really big part of it, was just learning and learning and learning.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_01: And from that, I just found I started to meet other founders and I started to realize oh, well, hey, this might be able to help you.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_01: And I was able to, I started to invest small investments into a couple of companies.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_01: A couple of those companies, six of my first 20 investments ended up being billion-dollar startups.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_01: It was things like Coinbase or Amplitude or Wave Mobile Money, or I mean Bitcoin was one.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_01: Plan Grid was almost a billion-dollar company.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_01: So just a lot of really exciting companies.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_01: But at the benchling, they didn't look incredible at the time, or they didn't look like default successes.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_01: Most of those companies didn't successfully raise their pre-seed round or their seed round, but they endured and they just were talented and they kept going.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_01: So I've just always loved championing people.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_01: So I think I would have had to be in sort of a role in which I got to see other people succeed bigger than me.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_01: And like that's what this role is at the end of the day.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_00: I really like the way you put that.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_00: I do wonder, too, if there's almost like something that's passed down in families, especially in your family, almost via osmosis.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know that you're sitting around a table every night discussing all the insights and lessons with family about investing and building businesses and so on.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_00: I'm sure you've got other family things to discuss too.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_00: But I do wonder, given that kind of provenance and given the history, if some of that, even four or five really key lessons somehow just end up inside of you so that when you are thinking about a market and you're thinking about these opportunities from the perspective of an investor, they're almost naturally there.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_00: You don't have to learn these things because your family's been doing it for a while.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_00: And I wonder if that's an advantage.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_01: I would say there are a couple of things that pop up in my head.
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_01: One is I'm incredibly competitive with my dad.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_01: So like being in a game that I get to play against him or with him is kind of a fun endeavor.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_01: So that is sort of a fun thing.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_01: I was raised on a chess, risk, and monopoly.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_01: And actually, venture capital is kind of the perfect amalgamation of those three games.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_01: It's about understanding strategy, ownership, and helping people dominate the world in some way.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_01: If it was one thing, it would probably come from my grandfather, which is actually there are two quick lessons.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_01: One is this is a people business.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_01: I think a lot of people still come at it thinking about numbers or pedigree or anything, and it really is people.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_01: And if you're good with people, venture capital comes pretty naturally to you because you end up wishing for the best in people.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_01: The other is the best deal is one where both sides of the table are happy.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that that's something where in venture you have a chance to create infinite upside.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_01: And so when you're negotiating a deal, you want to be able to make their side happy and your side happy within range.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_01: And when you do that, it's helpful for both sides.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_01: It's kind of a one plus one equals three situation where both sides are happy, trust has been built, and you get to sort of champion each other going forward.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_01: So I would say those would be like some of the things.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_01: There's a lot of inherent osmosis, probably.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_01: Like we did talk a lot about deals.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_01: My dad would come home talking about the network effects of Skype growing really fast, hotmail being the fastest viral product.
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_01: He used to talk about viral marketing a lot because he invented the term and the concept of viral marketing, which is like at the bottom of every email, it would say, get free email at hotmail.com.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_01: And so it spread very quickly, like wildfire.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_01: But my dad always wanted it to say PS I love you, your free email and hotmail.
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_01: And they didn't add the PS I love you, but he thinks it would have been a more happy world if they had.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_01: And I also think it would have spread more virally.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_01: I think it would have been a funnier, like yeah, you know, that's kind of funny that the company is saying PSI Love You.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_01: So there's a lot of, I'd say sometimes I'll talk to someone and I'll be like, hey, a new venture capital has become an industry, right?
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_01: Like there are a lot of people who are in this industry, and sometimes, and I actually wrote a book because of this.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_01: It's called Breakfast with Pops.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_01: Every week for the last nine, 10 years, I had breakfast with my grandfather and talked about venture capital and other stuff, but like venture capital, the state of the world, technology, whatever, our family, like a bunch of stuff.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_01: And so I ended up writing a book just summarizing the things about venture capital that have not changed because there are a lot of things that have changed, like the technology scales faster, it's much more global.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_01: There are a lot of things that have changed.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_01: When you hit a winner, it goes up higher.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_01: But there are a lot of things that haven't changed.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_01: It's a people business driven by the trust.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_01: There is luck that's involved.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_01: One of my favorite quotes from my grandfather is life has a way of presenting you with luck.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_01: It's those who take it who succeed.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_01: And so this doesn't need to be all about my grandpa, but my grandpa was a big influence on the last 10 years of my career.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I can see.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_00: I think the insights are welcome.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_00: They're wonderful.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_00: Why seed stage?
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_00: Why deep tech?
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_01: That's a good question.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_01: I had an affinity for the rebels, I think, where you could define my career interests in terms of you could probably just say it in like two words, sovereign technology, where it's like where the institutions get really fat and lazy, I like to invest in the alternative for that institution.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_01: So with banking, it was Bitcoin.
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_01: With government contractors, it was startups.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_01: With hospitals and academia, it's longevity and bio.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_01: So there's these alternative paths that the consumer gets a better service if they succeed.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_01: Otherwise, monopolies end up just getting fat and lazy.
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_01: And so what we do is the beautiful thing about Venture at its best, is that we build out alternative markets that enable new services.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_01: And I've spent my entire career, 14, 15 years, like essentially doing that.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_01: And it was kind of a natural thing where if everyone's focused on one thing, I find the other thing that is being not looked at.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_01: And it's just a discovery mechanism that's been built in.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_01: If there's one thing that's been inherent of like maybe driven by my family, maybe not, is just I love trying to find the overlooked and underserved markets of talented people.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_01: And because then the question you have to ask, let's say in bio, is there new technology that can enable new solutions to cancer or neurodegenerative disease or whatever?
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_01: Is are those technologies ready?
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_01: That's the question at the end of the day.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_01: If all of them are talented, let's say in every market, everyone's talented.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_01: What we need to decide is whether or not that technology is ready.
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_01: And in the industries, I happen to have been very lucky to be willing to wait until they're ready a lot.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_01: And I've been wrong on industry, but we're generalists with a deep sci-fi slant at Boost VC or a deep tech slant.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_01: And we happen to keep uncovering new incredible founders, is it's a people business.
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_00: The rebel theme that you highlight is, I think is representative of the original Silicon Valley spirit.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think that's unique.
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_00: I think too few are doing it these days.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_00: But I think when it started, I mean, we can even think back to Fairchild.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_00: Fairchild was the incumbent, and they thought they would start this little company called Intel.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_00: And these were gonna be the guys who escaped and get away and HP kind of in the same boat.
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_00: Even Stanford setting up in California way back at the beginning of the 20th century or end of the 19th century, you know, to get away from those damn East Coast universities and colleges.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_00: We're gonna set up on our own and we're gonna do things a little differently out here.
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_00: And it always had a bit of that theme.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_00: I think these days we kind of forget that venture was about supporting the alternative and the emerging and helping the little guy, but the one that might get overlooked in favor of the incumbent.
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_01: And I'd like to think, or I have chosen to think, and this is something I definitely have learned from a career with and just having conversations with my family and everything, is that I mean, venture capital has become a real asset class, right?
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_01: And it wasn't always.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_01: When I was growing up, you know, when I was in high school, no one knew what a venture capitalist was.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_01: It was like, okay, what does your dad do?
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_01: He helps small companies to like get going.
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_01: Now, if you're a venture capitalist, there's kind of like this prestige that people imagine it to be, or whatever.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_01: I think there are two different asset classes, though.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_01: I think that when you say venture capital, you actually mean two different things.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_01: One is you could call it product market fit or like pitch market fit, where you're optimizing for access.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_01: So you're trying to find because you kind of know what the five deals in any market are that have legs, and they're not that many surprises about which companies are in that elite few.
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_01: And then there's the optimization of luck, and it's about finding people who have the right commitment level, intelligence, energy, excitement for whatever they're working on.
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_01: And it's really about giving as many people as possible a shot.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_01: And so I think the term venture capital, to your point earlier, is just it's evolved.
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that it means a lot of things now.
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_01: And sometimes people are picturing private equity when they say venture.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_01: I also think that there's also the new age family angel investors who are coming into the early stage market, and then there's a bunch of bankers who are coming in to venture from the top.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_01: And so, like the cultures of all these things are clashing together, and it's making for a really interesting market where when things are good, they're great.
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_01: And you hope that you're still just helping people in the best way possible.
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_00: Let's talk a little bit about Boost VC, your firm.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_00: You mentioned earlier, you referred earlier to the kind of sci-fi thesis, and you guys have bets on things like nuclear reactors and 10-ton satellites and de-extinction, longevity, we mentioned, to name a few, beyond the moonshot theme.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_00: Is there an underlying pattern?
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_00: Or is it actually just the moonshot theme?
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I'm okay with just being the moonshot theme.
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_01: Like if I were to end on a note, that would probably be like the perfect way to think about us.
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_01: The question is, how do you just find all the moonshots?
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_01: It's kind of like if I say moonshot, everyone thinks they're a moonshot.
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_01: So, what we really do is we have a couple theses internally where we go out and we say, Hey, we're looking for the new age of bio, or we're looking for the new age of government contractors in 2019, so seven years ago, I wrote a post that was about the new age of government contractors, how I believe that the five prime government contractors are going to turn into$500 billion prime contractors.
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_01: So there's this opportunity for these earlier stage startup contractors.
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_01: And it was driven by a couple things.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_01: But the reason that we stumbled upon that thesis was because we were just starting to see the early stages of talented people leave SpaceX, start companies in this space, leave Blue Origin, which was also around, leave academia, believing that they could start something in space or aerospace broadly.
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_01: And we weren't really focused there.
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_01: Like at some point, you aren't focused in a category, and then you're like, oh, the world's changing a little bit.
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_01: Do we believe that these technologies are changing and are going to be important?
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_01: And then when we're focused there, you start to see when you're open to crazy ideas.
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_01: Other people just go, Well, you like crazy stuff.
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_01: So here's a company that's going to make you live for to be 120.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_01: And then as a VC, if you're curious, you go, is this a data point or is this a movement?
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_01: And if it's a movement, we want to back all those.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_01: I want to cure cancer, I want to cure neurodegenerative disease, I want to take it all out if it's ready.
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_01: And so you start to see using one data point, you try to determine where the movement is and where all the talented people are building where people aren't looking.
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_01: And that's what we do.
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_01: And so we call it deep tech, we say making sci-fi a reality, but it's really just being on the cutting edge of social and technical movements.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_01: And we spend all of our time thinking about those.
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_01: And if you listen, you can find those things.
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_01: I actually would suggest if you're a venture capitalist or if you're just like interested in technology, whenever you in a conversation with someone hear an idea and you laugh, or if you hear an idea and you get mad, you should be listening to those because that's the future.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_00: Wow, that's pretty cool.
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and you'll know it like Bitcoin for me was such an amazing movement to be a part of because as a gateway to venture capital, I got to see mini bubbles burst.
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_01: I got to see people fight.
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_01: One of my favorite memories now was this there's this conference.
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_01: And for people who are listening, we were in Coinbase in 2012, and I was kind of just a part of the philosophical movement of Bitcoin for a long time.
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_01: We were the first fund to ever focus on Bitcoin.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_01: I believe that it is deep tech, and it was one of the earliest software pieces for sovereign technologies.
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_01: But I was at this conference in Half Moon Bay in California.
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_01: We were invited, like very nicely invited, to talk about Bitcoin.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_01: And it was myself, Mickey Malka, who runs Rubik Capital, Barry Silbert, who runs TCG, like three people who are pretty well known in Bitcoin, but then were not known in really anything.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, well, they were accomplished in their own rights.
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_01: I wasn't well known in anything else.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_01: And so we go on stage, and you know, it's a financial conference, and we're put in the smallest room, smallest room.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_01: No one wants it.
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_01: There are like 14 people in the entire space, and we get heckled.
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_01: We get like people get mad at us about this idea of what Bitcoin represents, which is challenging their idea of like trusting the bank.
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_01: And we're like, hey, like it's an alternative.
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_01: We're not even saying bring down the banks, but like we're saying we should have an alternative way to be able to hold the capital.
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_01: And just remembering that battle between us at like the new age and them, it was so valuable to me to understand, hey, you really want to be doing something that's hitting a philosophical edge of society where there are people who dislike it.
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_01: And if they dislike it, how vehemently do they dislike it?
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_01: Do the decor dislike it?
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_01: And so I always think about that.
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_00: That is a really great example.
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_00: I think Bitcoin definitely fulfills getting angry about it because Bitcoin definitely divides opinion.
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_00: You mentioned something else about.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: About tracking people, tracking ideas.
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_00: What kind of systems do you put in place if there is a system?
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, how do you find out about these individuals leaving to start up new things and which ones are going to be the most interesting?
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_00: Is the filter, do they laugh or do they make me angry?
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_00: Tell me a little bit more about that.
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_01: One thing is we've been doing it for 14 years.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_01: And so now, as much as I'd love to be hunting every day for new deals, it's really we have a lot of fish in the net, which is great.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_01: Like, which is kind of the best of everything.
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_01: Every once in a while, we'll do something like I'll give an example.
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_01: One week, it was probably two years ago, we saw four companies.
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_01: So, four companies pitch the exact same thing.
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_01: And all four companies were pitching, we're gonna mine the moon for water.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_01: So, four different companies with the exact same pitch, all talented teams, most leaving SpaceX.
• 22:55
  SPEAKER_01: And I was like, what is happening?
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_01: Turned out there was a fifth team.
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_01: So I went out and I said, Well, I should probably meet the fifth team, right?
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_01: Like, I gotta go meet the fifth team in this category.
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_01: And so I think one of the things is it signaled the noise thing, like we're willing to look at the crazy.
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_01: You look at our portfolio, it's nuclear reactors, de-extinction projects, longevity companies.
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_01: It's a wide range of talented people doing impossible things.
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_01: And so, whenever we talk to another investor who might refer us a deal, we say, Hey, whatever's too crazy for you guys, just send it over.
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_01: And that actually has been a very great thing for us.
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_01: Like where we're willing to take a risk that other people are not willing to take, but everyone is filtering for great talent.
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_01: And if they're great people doing important things, we'll say yes before other people.
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_01: We believe one of the highest, like our objective is to be a first check because we think it's the most important check.
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_01: It's we believe in you, we'll build trust with you, and we'll help you.
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_01: And on the other side, they're going, they believed in us, they trust us.
• 23:55
  SPEAKER_01: Hey, let's figure out how to make this work.
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_01: Like, I get to go do the thing I want to do now.
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_01: I got$500,000 to do it.
• 24:02
  SPEAKER_01: And so that's what we do.
• 24:03
  SPEAKER_01: We write the first 500k checks.
• 24:05
  SPEAKER_01: And so there is sort of wisdom in just we've been around long enough that we see a lot of really, really great things.
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_01: When people hear about us through podcasts, through anything like this, this is one of the ways in which we like we do attract great founders.
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_01: The other is we have a huge portfolio, we do a lot of deals.
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_01: So we do a deal and a half a week.
• 24:23
  SPEAKER_01: We have a network of a thousand founders we back, two thousand founders we back, 600 companies, so 2,000 founders, someone like that, who had a good experience with us and refer us deals.
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_01: We do a lot for the venture ecosystem.
• 24:35
  SPEAKER_01: We're ranked number one as early stage deep tech fund by our peers.
• 24:40
  SPEAKER_01: And that's because we do so much groundwork working with others, referring others deals, doing deals with others.
• 24:47
  SPEAKER_01: We put on demo days, we put on events, like we do a lot of things for the network.
• 24:51
  SPEAKER_01: And so those two, and then the like brand awareness are kind of the main ways that we attract founders and we get referred the type of founders that we like.
• 25:01
  SPEAKER_01: And I mean, just right now, someone just texted me and said, Hey, you'll love this deal.
• 25:06
  SPEAKER_01: It's insane.
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_01: That's like the ideal.
• 25:08
  SPEAKER_01: That's the ideal message to me, where I go, okay.
• 25:10
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 25:11
  SPEAKER_00: But what is the difference between a yes, we're gonna do this deal with this mining for water company on the moon versus that one?
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so we are willing to do all of them, but is one thing that I should say.
• 25:23
  SPEAKER_01: Like, I'm happy if I'm like, hey, these are all really great people.
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_01: So you're gonna spread the bets across all of them, all the major companies that are doing that.
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_01: I'm willing to spread it across all of them.
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_01: In that context, we did choose one, and the one we chose was there's one thing that has driven successful deals for me, and it's commitment.
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_01: And it's either the founders are committed to the mission against all odds, financial and otherwise, or they're committed to their team.
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_01: And it doesn't matter what they're working on, they'll just win because they like their team and like that, and they don't want to stop working with each other.
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_01: They do need to be curious, they do need to be high energy, they do need like there are a lot of like little basic things.
• 26:05
  SPEAKER_01: They need to be an animal you've never seen before.
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_01: It's like seeing, I think the unicorn thing means something else now, but like it needs to be like seeing a griffin in the wild, like uh seeing a mystical creature in the wild where you're like, I've never felt the feelings this person's making me feel in this meeting right now.
• 26:24
  SPEAKER_01: Intensity is always good, but I think being able to pitch well is important in deep tech.
• 26:29
  SPEAKER_01: So, like a good simple way of being able to communicate is really important to deep tech.
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_01: Visual learning is very important to deep tech.
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_01: There are a couple things that are just inherent in the pitch, but what determines one over the other is like in that context, we ended up investing in a company called Argo.
• 26:45
  SPEAKER_01: So, Argo, three brothers all worked at SpaceX.
• 26:49
  SPEAKER_01: One of the things that we love is when you're like, oh hey, there's an extra added trust exercise just because there's three brothers who want to work on this together.
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_01: They were insanely talented, they were clear of speech.
• 27:01
  SPEAKER_01: And so we ended up investing in them over the other teams.
• 27:04
  SPEAKER_01: However, we probably should have just backed them all because they're all still around and they're all still doing great, and they've all evolved into different pieces of the market.
• 27:13
  SPEAKER_01: And so one of the things that you kind of learn are these markets are bigger than anyone thought they were, like these infinite markets where it's like space.
• 27:21
  SPEAKER_01: We don't know how big it is because it's really big.
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_01: Like really big.
• 27:25
  SPEAKER_01: Everything's a space company on some level.
• 27:28
  SPEAKER_01: You use a phone, GPS is it's satellites, cell, it's all space.
• 27:33
  SPEAKER_01: So I think it's finding teams and just asking basic questions to figure out are they committed to this or are they visiting to figure it out?
• 27:41
  SPEAKER_01: Are are very important to us.
• 27:43
  SPEAKER_01: And then I always think they're kind of two different types of checks that we write.
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_01: And I kind of described them right there, but one is like, hey, the upside potential of this person is very high, but they've never done this before.
• 27:56
  SPEAKER_01: But we would love to be a part of their story and figure out if we can help.
• 28:00
  SPEAKER_01: And then there's the person who's like been doing it for like this is their life, like this is everything to them.
• 28:07
  SPEAKER_01: They've never imagined they only want to solve hard problems, and they have spent the last five years getting to the point where they feel they can start a company.
• 28:16
  SPEAKER_01: And like they didn't want to start a company is always a good sign, and like that would be great.
• 28:21
  SPEAKER_01: Where they didn't want to start it and they had to.
• 28:23
  SPEAKER_01: They tried everything else, and then no one's letting them do what they need to do to be able to solve this problem.
• 28:28
  SPEAKER_01: So that's sort of what we look for is commitment in different forms, and we try to be open-minded about what that looks like.
• 28:36
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, young, old, different countries, different places.
• 28:40
  SPEAKER_01: We've backed it all.
• 28:41
  SPEAKER_01: I've backed 600 companies over my career, and like I'd say success has been dictated by the di there's this commitment thing, but other than that, it could be anything.
• 28:51
  SPEAKER_00: What kind of progress do you expect during the investment cycle?
• 28:55
  SPEAKER_01: In deep tech, every company is kind of on their own path.
• 28:58
  SPEAKER_01: But what is expected is that they define what success looks like and they tell us how close they are to it.
• 29:06
  SPEAKER_01: So it's a very important thing where once we've invested, they continue to communicate about what success is over the next six months, year.
• 29:15
  SPEAKER_01: And nuclear reactor is a good example.
• 29:17
  SPEAKER_01: Like Radiant Nuclear, Doug Burnour gave us a six-year plan.
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_01: And he said, success is having this nuclear reactor ready in 2026, which is crazy.
• 29:30
  SPEAKER_01: He hit his mark.
• 29:31
  SPEAKER_01: But when we invested, it's a trust-building exercise.
• 29:34
  SPEAKER_01: They need to be able to build trust with the government, they have to be able to build trust with commercial, they have to build trust with investors.
• 29:40
  SPEAKER_01: Deep tech investors are an important part of this ecosystem.
• 29:44
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm not saying that because I'm an investor, I would rather someone be able to just like build a nuclear reactor and sell it, but they have to raise hundreds of millions of dollars to be able to do this.
• 29:54
  SPEAKER_01: And so you got to be able to build, you can't build in a cave.
• 29:57
  SPEAKER_01: You have to be able to articulate and communicate visually as well as simply in your speech.
• 30:02
  SPEAKER_01: And so, look, whenever we're good doing a deal, you said what we expect that they did their best.
• 30:08
  SPEAKER_01: Like at the end of the day, that's all we can ask.
• 30:10
  SPEAKER_01: Like, hey, we do want them to like live this project.
• 30:14
  SPEAKER_01: We want them to, I think it's very telling if a founder wants to talk about something other than their company to me.
• 30:21
  SPEAKER_01: Like, it means that there's something else.
• 30:22
  SPEAKER_01: And like some of my favorite founders, all they do, I want to talk about something else, and they just bring it back to the company.
• 30:29
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm like, oh man, that's awesome.
• 30:31
  SPEAKER_01: But like I've heard about this, you know, like why, and they're trying to find is there a piece of information that I require to build this thing that I don't have yet.
• 30:43
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, whatever you guys are doing, and you've listed a whole bunch of really helpful features that I guess are part of your process that maybe have been codified into your process, but it's working because your results are really good.
• 30:55
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, early stage deep tech funds are hard from a DPI perspective and in terms of investment, and yet you guys are returning cash.
• 31:02
  SPEAKER_00: You're returning capital.
• 31:04
  SPEAKER_00: You guys have been really successful at returning capital.
• 31:07
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, you mentioned earlier in doing a little bit of research, I saw this ridiculous stat, like five out of the first 25 companies you invested in became unicorns.
• 31:16
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, that's insane.
• 31:17
  SPEAKER_00: So is there a structural piece to this too?
• 31:20
  SPEAKER_00: In other words, is there something at the seed stage in writing half a million dollar checks that actually struck that in terms of the ratios and the probabilities actually makes it more likely you're gonna have success than not?
• 31:34
  SPEAKER_01: Someone once asked a question like this, and they gave a very cheeky answer, which was like, Well, you just invest in the good ones.
• 31:41
  SPEAKER_01: But the real answer where we've made all of our money is we've invested in things that no one else was looking at.
• 31:47
  SPEAKER_01: And that ended up being really, really, really important where we were able to build when everyone's investing in the same thing, there's a market rate for it, and so it reduces your ability to return the fund.
• 32:01
  SPEAKER_01: You end up at 50 million in times like these, 50 million dollar valuation versus uh five or whatever.
• 32:09
  SPEAKER_01: And so finding those markets, those talented people who are going to build the future in a different market that no one's thinking about is really the secret to our venture success.
• 32:20
  SPEAKER_01: It's doing, and the reason that people don't do it is because it's hard to resist peer pressure.
• 32:26
  SPEAKER_01: Like peer pressure is really the thing you're fighting against because we have a need and a desire to fit in.
• 32:32
  SPEAKER_01: And what we always talk about is when we're at a dinner with a bunch of venture capitalists, if we're all excited about the same thing, we're in the wrong room.
• 32:41
  SPEAKER_01: Like, I should be excited about things that no one else at this table is excited about, and I should understand why.
• 32:48
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that that's a desire and it's a difficult thing for people to do, it's very, very difficult.
• 32:54
  SPEAKER_01: Also, I think a lot of people are good money managers on a time frame.
• 32:58
  SPEAKER_01: It's just sometimes you don't know what the time frame is, and it's literally just you can't do what other people are doing at the earliest stage.
• 33:05
  SPEAKER_01: I think there is a spot where you can be doing what everyone else is doing because it's about access.
• 33:11
  SPEAKER_01: It's that series B, series C, you just win the access, but you cannot like at the earliest stages, if we're all looking at something and we all think the same about it, it's hard to be like, oh yeah, we still do those like deals every once in a while.
• 33:26
  SPEAKER_01: I would say they end up doing well, but not the best.
• 33:30
  SPEAKER_01: When we're taking the biggest risk, not the biggest risk, but normally there's a social risk, a moral risk, or like an obvious founder risk.
• 33:39
  SPEAKER_01: It's like, hey, they've never built a company and they're 17 years old or whatever.
• 33:43
  SPEAKER_01: Like those types of things are acceptable risks for me, where it's like, hey, they can earn this.
• 33:49
  SPEAKER_01: We'll figure out whether or not that's gonna happen.
• 33:52
  SPEAKER_01: They seem to like they have a good head on their shoulders and they're obsessed with this.
• 33:55
  SPEAKER_01: We should let them go for it.
• 33:56
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm saying him, but I mean them, and I mean him or her.
• 34:00
  SPEAKER_01: We've backed so many, there's so many female founders in bio and health that's sort of a new, that's been awesome.
• 34:08
  SPEAKER_00: You also need, I think, bold V LPs, people who believe in you, because I think from the other side, you line up a bunch of other seed stage investors who tend to go a little bit more with the flow.
• 34:19
  SPEAKER_00: And it may be on account of I've got to report back to my LPs at some stage, and I'm gonna report back, yeah.
• 34:25
  SPEAKER_00: We're I think gonna back a company that's mining water on the moon, and then you've got to worry what the LPs are gonna think.
• 34:31
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, think about my job.
• 34:32
  SPEAKER_01: My job's hilarious.
• 34:34
  SPEAKER_01: I have to translate like the most insane idea, right?
• 34:38
  SPEAKER_01: Like, I have to translate, hey, we're gonna bring back the woolly mammoth.
• 34:41
  SPEAKER_01: And then I have to tell really smart financial people who are trying to manage their money and mitigate risk broadly, and that's why they invest in venture funds.
• 34:51
  SPEAKER_01: I have to translate that and make it sound kind of like, well, yeah, this is this makes sense, right?
• 34:57
  SPEAKER_01: Like there, but there's obviously gonna be a business for bringing back woolly mammoths, and it's so funny because I'd say right now, colossal, that deal is probably the most contended, like a fought over deal in my portfolio where people are still in disbelief that that could be a thing, which to me means this is awesome.
• 35:17
  SPEAKER_01: Because I remember being someone on my team was at a dinner with a bunch of VCs and they said everyone was making fun of it.
• 35:25
  SPEAKER_01: And remember what I said about if you're laughing at it or fighting it, those are two great feelings to have about whether or not you're in a winner.
• 35:33
  SPEAKER_01: And that is a perfect example of it.
• 35:35
  SPEAKER_01: So my answer is my LPs are incredible.
• 35:38
  SPEAKER_01: They don't tolerate me, they champion me, they champion what we do at Boost.
• 35:43
  SPEAKER_01: And because we try to translate the insane people who are doing these insane things, and they're rational, I say rational people doing irrational things to people who are we attract a very specific type of limited partner, and that limited partner just loves what we do and they're very excited about it and they want to learn, they're just wanting to learn about whatever it is we do.
• 36:05
  SPEAKER_01: So you're right, they're bold, but really they're just crazy champions of what we are.
• 36:10
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm very thankful.
• 36:11
  SPEAKER_01: They're awesome.
• 36:12
  SPEAKER_01: I've been very lucky to get attract a specific type of LP.
• 36:16
  SPEAKER_00: And so championing again, championing that next wave of success, coming back to the point we made at the top of the show.
• 36:23
  SPEAKER_00: Again, LP's championing you, you championing that next generation of talent, and so on.
• 36:29
  SPEAKER_00: It's a virtuous circle.
• 36:31
  SPEAKER_01: It is, and you know, Silicon Valley, we get a bad rap for some things.
• 36:36
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know what they are, but I hear about them every once in a while.
• 36:38
  SPEAKER_01: But I would say, like, in general, we're an economy that was built this way.
• 36:43
  SPEAKER_01: It was people who are giving back from their success, and it enabled us to be able to take more risk on that, on the crazy ideas, which end up working because someone was determined to make it work.
• 36:55
  SPEAKER_01: And that's sort of what the society in Silicon Valley is all about.
• 36:59
  SPEAKER_01: We're built on taking risk.
• 37:01
  SPEAKER_00: Are there specific areas without wishing, obviously, to kind of divulge some of the competitive secrets, but are there particular opportunities that most are shying away from right now that you think beyond bringing back the woolly mammoth and so on, that you think are particularly interesting?
• 37:18
  SPEAKER_01: We were just talking to a limited partner yesterday, and I've said what I'm about to say.
• 37:23
  SPEAKER_01: And that he's like, Well, what's next?
• 37:25
  SPEAKER_01: Because we're saying, like, hey, we're bringing back the woolly mammoth and all this stuff.
• 37:29
  SPEAKER_01: And they're like, Well, what's the next thing?
• 37:30
  SPEAKER_01: You've been very good at the past that what's the next thing?
• 37:33
  SPEAKER_01: And after I said the thing, he goes, That's pretty crazy.
• 37:38
  SPEAKER_01: And so I was like, Hey, I'm onto it.
• 37:40
  SPEAKER_01: So again, it's back to exactly what I said before, which is hey, what service or institution is delivering a very high cost but low quality service?
• 37:50
  SPEAKER_01: Is the question.
• 37:51
  SPEAKER_01: Like, you just want to back things that are creating alternatives in those spaces.
• 37:55
  SPEAKER_01: And so what I said was, I have shirts that say short academia.
• 37:59
  SPEAKER_01: So the university system is obviously being targeted.
• 38:02
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and Drees and Horritz just launched a university.
• 38:05
  SPEAKER_01: My dad launched Draper University 15 years ago.
• 38:08
  SPEAKER_01: Like, this is about to be privatized into something great.
• 38:12
  SPEAKER_01: But the thing I said that made this limited partner say that's pretty crazy is I believe that there's going to be a movement of new governments.
• 38:20
  SPEAKER_01: And those new governments are going to, you're going to be able to invest in special economic zones as startups where you're going to be creating new constitutions and new systems.
• 38:32
  SPEAKER_01: And that was where this limited partner was like, oh, that's pretty crazy.
• 38:36
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 38:36
  SPEAKER_00: Well, God, that's a whole other podcast in and of itself.
• 38:39
  SPEAKER_00: Actually, I'd like to learn more about that, please.
• 38:43
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 38:44
  SPEAKER_01: Because it's like we live in a world where people feel that things are fixed in stone.
• 38:49
  SPEAKER_01: And everything's up for it's not about like, hey, I think that most it's not like this country is going to take over every country.
• 38:56
  SPEAKER_01: It's just like we're going to deliver a better service.
• 38:58
  SPEAKER_01: So people are going to want to live there.
• 39:00
  SPEAKER_01: That's the idea.
• 39:01
  SPEAKER_01: And most of that is geographic.
• 39:03
  SPEAKER_01: Like, you do need to own space to be able to do that.
• 39:06
  SPEAKER_01: There are a bunch of these that are starting up already.
• 39:08
  SPEAKER_01: We're invested in one called Prospera.
• 39:10
  SPEAKER_01: That's an incredible one that's in Rowatan and Honduras.
• 39:13
  SPEAKER_01: I've been there.
• 39:14
  SPEAKER_01: It's wild and awesome.
• 39:15
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 39:16
  SPEAKER_01: I there move in California, which is probably the hardest regulated state to do anything positive in, yet we keep attracting the greatest people because we have Silicon Valley.
• 39:26
  SPEAKER_01: There's a guy named Jan Schramek who's starting California Forever.
• 39:30
  SPEAKER_01: That's an incredible project, just to push the limits of what a city could be in California built today.
• 39:35
  SPEAKER_01: Like I just see little things that are starting to blossom through that are like big ideas changing the way we work.
• 39:44
  SPEAKER_00: Adam, thank you so much.
• 39:47
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, God, I could keep on talking.
• 39:48
  SPEAKER_00: I know you gotta get it going, and so do I.
• 39:50
  SPEAKER_00: But wow, I mean, this has been a mind-expanding journey and much bigger than just kind of the conventional deep tech stuff that we talk about, but a much bigger opportunity and in a way, like a wonderful lesson to go back and explore the whole purpose of venture in the first place.
• 40:07
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what really sticks with me from this.
• 40:09
  SPEAKER_00: This is kind of what it was about.
• 40:10
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, granted, wild back then was supporting guys who were trying to get their kit into Radio Shack.
• 40:15
  SPEAKER_00: And that was pretty wild back then.
• 40:17
  SPEAKER_00: And today it's backing new forms of government or Bitcoin or variety of these, you know, or nuclear fusion or whatever it is.
• 40:25
  SPEAKER_00: But it was kind of returning to the roots of venture in its purest form.
• 40:29
  SPEAKER_00: And it's wonderful to see that that hasn't been lost.
• 40:33
  SPEAKER_01: I appreciate that.
• 40:34
  SPEAKER_01: I thought about technology today.
• 40:36
  SPEAKER_01: And if you think about it like telling yourself 10 years ago that your car was gonna drive itself, your code was gonna write itself, rockets are gonna land every day.
• 40:46
  SPEAKER_01: You'd be like, that's a crazy future.
• 40:49
  SPEAKER_01: You're telling me crazy things.
• 40:50
  SPEAKER_01: And you're saying that's in 10 years.
• 40:52
  SPEAKER_01: I like we live in this asci fi future of 10 years ago, and it's only accelerating.
• 40:58
  SPEAKER_01: Like there's only more that's happening.
• 41:01
  SPEAKER_01: So imagining further is becoming more difficult for people, and that's exciting to me.
• 41:06
  SPEAKER_01: So, like the industry is still exciting, it's still got energy, it's still got great things going on.
• 41:11
  SPEAKER_00: That's great.
• 41:12
  SPEAKER_00: Adam, thank you so much.
• 41:14
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you so much, Chris.
• 41:15
  SPEAKER_00: You've been listening to the Lab to Market Leadership Podcast, brought to you by Deep Tech Leaders.
• 41:21
  SPEAKER_00: You can find out more about us on LinkedIn, Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts.