Latest / The BioHub - by Avetix / Episode 115 - Simeon George - CEO & Co-Founder of SR One Capital Management

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Episode 115 - Simeon George - CEO & Co-Founder of SR One Capital Management · The BioHub - by Avetix

• 0:06
  So welcome back to the episode of the Biohub.
• 0:08
  Today we're thrilled to welcome on Simeon George, who's the CEO,
• 0:12
  Co founder and Managing Partner of SR1SR1.
• 0:16
  Simeon leads one of the industry's most respected
• 0:18
  biotech investment teams, partnering with founders who aim
• 0:21
  not just to treat disease, but to change the course of it
• 0:24
  entirely. Simeon's backed marquee
• 0:26
  companies such as CRISPR Therapeutics, Principia
• 0:30
  Biopharma, Turning Point Therapeutics and Co founded
• 0:33
  Encarta Therapeutics and Arcelix, companies that are
• 0:36
  pushing the boundaries of patient medicine.
• 0:39
  So join us today. Simeon will give us an insight
• 0:42
  into SR1 and how the firm has evolved, SR1's approach and how
• 0:47
  much support is given to companies upon investment.
• 0:50
  So Simeon, thanks so much for coming on.
• 0:51
  How are you? Yeah, I'm well, thanks.
• 0:53
  It's good to see you. Thank you for this opportunity.
• 0:55
  Yeah, look, it's a pleasure. So look, let's just start with a
• 0:58
  little bit about your journey through the field.
• 1:00
  So you've moved from neuroscience to medicine to
• 1:03
  strategy, and now it's a biotech venture.
• 1:06
  Can you walk us through that journey and ultimately what
• 1:10
  pulled you towards building companies rather than practicing
• 1:13
  medicine? Yeah, no, you know, it's
• 1:15
  interesting. It always looks when you read
• 1:18
  the bio, it looks like it's a linear story and it all was
• 1:20
  planned out and I had this idea for what I wanted to do.
• 1:23
  And in general, like, I think probably what has drawn me to
• 1:27
  the work that I do is I like uncertainty.
• 1:29
  I like working on things where it's unclear even what I'm going
• 1:32
  to be doing that day, let alone months or years or decades.
• 1:37
  And so medicine for me was always sort of the calling from
• 1:40
  the time I was my earliest memories.
• 1:42
  I've always been fascinated by medicine.
• 1:44
  My parents were both physicians. And I always have the sense of
• 1:47
  like problem solving in a moment in time that is most crucial to
• 1:52
  someone's life, their family's life, etcetera.
• 1:56
  So that was the draw to medicine.
• 1:58
  You know, I'd say I was, I guess, fortunate enough to
• 2:01
  realize early on in that medical training that I wanted to kind
• 2:04
  of mix things up. I wanted to figure out how to
• 2:06
  use that training, but do it in a way that was less defined than
• 2:10
  just a pure clinical path. And that led me to to do a
• 2:15
  concurrent MBA alongside my medical degree.
• 2:18
  And that led me to work in in finance and consulting and
• 2:21
  investing in start-ups. But it was sort of one of these
• 2:25
  things where one door opened up another.
• 2:27
  There wasn't like a plan like I needed to get here.
• 2:29
  I needed to be in venture. It was always just trying to
• 2:32
  make a decision at that moment in time that I thought was the
• 2:35
  most interesting where I would learn something, where I had the
• 2:38
  sense that the quality of the people was going to allow me to
• 2:41
  learn and develop. And that's frankly where I am
• 2:46
  today. And that's if you were to ask me
• 2:47
  the next 3571015 years, I would give you a similar answer.
• 2:51
  Like I'm just going to continue to follow intuition, have this
• 2:54
  focus on clinical like patient impact and now being able to do
• 2:59
  it at a scale that is truly just, you know, sometimes you
• 3:03
  have to pinch yourselves to think about the way some of
• 3:05
  these medicines are going to transform patients lives.
• 3:08
  And the beauty of the work that we do is as you know, when we do
• 3:10
  that, we can have this tremendous financial outcomes
• 3:13
  and success. So it's just like, I can't think
• 3:15
  of anything more rewarding that I'm able to spend my time on.
• 3:20
  Nice. And just to delve into SR1 and
• 3:24
  how the firm, I guess from your perspective, how do you think
• 3:27
  the firm has evolved from its origins to guess, so I guess
• 3:30
  where it is now? Yeah.
• 3:32
  I mean, it's an incredible journey.
• 3:33
  I mean, I feel like there should be a book or a case study done
• 3:36
  on SR1I mean, it was started initially as the venture arm of
• 3:39
  Smith, Kline and French, I think in the mid 1980s.
• 3:44
  So it's one of the oldest corporate venture capital arms
• 3:47
  set up at a time when biotech was just emerging as a new
• 3:50
  industry. And and you know, the firm under
• 3:55
  sort of that GSK umbrella lasted for 35 years.
• 4:00
  And it did so first and foremost because it generated outsize
• 4:04
  performance. So it was a profit Center for
• 4:07
  the for the parent company and it also shone a light on
• 4:10
  obviously all the incredible innovation that was happening
• 4:13
  externally. And so I joined in the late
• 4:16
  2000s and was there for over a decade, really learning the
• 4:20
  craft of investing. And then in 2020, you know, I, I
• 4:24
  led the spin out and the creation of the independent
• 4:27
  fund. And so we are very much, you
• 4:30
  know, independent. We're founder LED, you know, as
• 4:33
  you mentioned my bio, I've been involved in sort of helping to
• 4:36
  craft the new fund, the new set up.
• 4:38
  We're incredibly proud of the history of SRO One and the
• 4:42
  support that GSK gave us, call it during that Chapter 1.
• 4:46
  Chapter 2 was really the spin out, creating this independent
• 4:49
  business, setting it up with a foundation both across capital
• 4:53
  from, you know, new investors as well as building the team.
• 4:57
  And now this next chapter, I would say is really about taking
• 5:00
  SR1 and taking it to the next level and hopefully creating a
• 5:03
  firm, a truly elite firm that is backing world class science
• 5:08
  entrepreneurs and founders. And again, the playbook of
• 5:11
  science to medicine, really transforming the way we think
• 5:13
  about human health from the clinical side is, is really the
• 5:18
  mission that we're on. Nice.
• 5:20
  And the latest fund that SR1 closed was $600 million in 2023.
• 5:26
  Can you share the vision behind it and where you see the biggest
• 5:29
  opportunities where this capital is meant to or maybe even some
• 5:33
  highlights of companies that you have invested in since that
• 5:36
  latest fund as well? Yeah.
• 5:38
  So we are, I mean we've raised, we manage over $2 billion now
• 5:42
  across 2 venture funds and a growth fund and we are an end to
• 5:46
  end platform. So if you know like when
• 5:47
  investors ask me like what what makes us different or unique.
• 5:50
  So 1 is that DNA of pharma heritage and we'll talk about
• 5:54
  why that's so important. The second is we are a platform
• 5:57
  that is end to end. So we are doing everything from
• 5:59
  early stage company creation. You mentioned our Selex and
• 6:02
  Encarta. Those are companies that we
• 6:04
  started from a piece of paper with incredible founders
• 6:09
  alongside us. And then you know we're
• 6:11
  investing through that venture sort of entry point and again
• 6:16
  companies like CRISPR, Principia you mentioned are are good
• 6:19
  examples of that. And we have added a dimension
• 6:21
  now which is later stage investing both private and
• 6:24
  public to really take advantage of.
• 6:26
  You know, what has been a really challenging market environment
• 6:29
  for the last few years in biotech, which on the flip side
• 6:32
  has created in our, in our opinion, dislocation and an
• 6:35
  arbitrage in terms of being able to access high quality companies
• 6:40
  with product focus with proof points that we believe are truly
• 6:44
  valuable that the market isn't seeing yet.
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  And so we've been able to invest in some of those later stage
• 6:49
  companies. So it is, it's an end to end
• 6:51
  platform. It's also transatlantic.
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  So I'm sitting here today in London, my team is split between
• 6:57
  San Francisco and and London. So we are looking and sourcing
• 7:01
  ideas that are coming West Coast through the US East Coast, UK,
• 7:05
  Europe. And obviously now with
• 7:07
  everything that's happening in China, we've been quite active
• 7:09
  in terms of sourcing assets to put into our into our into our
• 7:13
  start-ups. So you know, it's an incredibly
• 7:16
  busy period and we've had some great, this year's been just an
• 7:21
  amazing year. You know, we've had a handful of
• 7:25
  partnerships, M&A events as well as public companies that have
• 7:29
  traded incredibly well. And so just to give you a sense,
• 7:33
  you know with eight RX, which is our RNA focus company out of San
• 7:38
  Diego that we've been involved in for the last five years, it
• 7:42
  truly is just a spectacular founder platform that is now in
• 7:46
  really the product development stage.
• 7:48
  So we have multiple clinical programs that are showing really
• 7:52
  a best in class profile. We have a deep research engine
• 7:58
  that we ended up actually partnering on with AbbVie and
• 8:03
  it's one of the largest research deals that's ever been concluded
• 8:07
  in the history of biotech and pharma. 335,000,000 upfront
• 8:11
  multi billion dollar milestone on the on the back of a research
• 8:15
  collaboration as an example through to things like
• 8:20
  Mineralis, which is from our last fund, which has a product
• 8:25
  that is now through phase 3A new medicine for hypertension for
• 8:29
  patients that aren't well controlled on the existing
• 8:32
  treatment paradigms. And so that's a company that
• 8:34
  we've been involved in pre IPO, through IPO, through follow ONS
• 8:38
  that is now, you know, I think trading at an all time high like
• 8:42
  a 4 billion plus company. So again, like through
• 8:45
  partnering through M&A, we've been able to really realize
• 8:48
  significant value. So we're excited about what
• 8:50
  we're doing, you know, but also acknowledging again, this is a
• 8:54
  very volatile, fickle environment.
• 8:57
  So you're only as good as your next deal, right?
• 8:58
  So you have to continue to hustle and and find ways to to
• 9:02
  identify the next ATRX, the next Mineralis and everything that
• 9:05
  we're doing. You, you mentioned then that
• 9:07
  obviously there's some of the team that are based in London,
• 9:10
  some of the team that are based in San Francisco.
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  How does that sort of synergy with the team work given that
• 9:15
  you're in, what is it 8 hours apart?
• 9:17
  Does that work well managing different time zones?
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  It's hard. I mean, there's no getting
• 9:22
  around it, you know, it's a hard.
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  Ideally, we would all be sitting in one room together and, you
• 9:27
  know, storming and thinking through and making decisions.
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  Again, we do see the benefit, as I mentioned, of having network
• 9:34
  access that is local, that allows us to take advantage of
• 9:38
  incredible science and start-ups that are in these different
• 9:42
  ecosystems. The challenge is how do you sort
• 9:44
  of meld? As for us, we lean heavily on
• 9:48
  teamwork, organizational design. We talked about one Team 1
• 9:51
  dream. And so you could be sitting here
• 9:53
  in London, but you're still very much plugged into what's
• 9:56
  happening in the Bay Area. The way that we work on sub
• 9:59
  teams, it's across geographies. So what that means practically
• 10:03
  is there's early mornings for the the West Coast team and
• 10:07
  there's late afternoons or evenings for the UK folks to try
• 10:10
  and find ways to cross talk. We're together a handful of
• 10:14
  times during the year. So you know, as we were talking
• 10:17
  about before we came on air, Jeffrey's next week, the
• 10:20
  investing team from the US will be here, JP Morgan, the team is
• 10:24
  together on the West Coast and then we have a couple of off
• 10:26
  sites during the year. So we find ways intentionally to
• 10:29
  be together, which is important. And then the last thing again,
• 10:34
  because we are end to end in terms of entry point, we do
• 10:37
  think it's an advantage to have those that are focused on early
• 10:40
  stage have a perspective coming from the late stage in terms of
• 10:45
  where the competition is, regulatory, pricing, all those
• 10:48
  things that you don't necessarily think about as
• 10:50
  intuitively if you're working on a start up, just being able to
• 10:53
  cross talk in both directions we think is an edge for us.
• 10:57
  So there is a method to the madness again of having this
• 11:01
  sort of eight hour split and it's working so far, but it
• 11:05
  takes, it's a practice, you have to lean into it.
• 11:08
  Otherwise it can easily get into like two different silos, which
• 11:11
  is not what we're about. How, how would you describe Sr.
• 11:14
  1's investment approach? I think just before you
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  mentioned that there's obviously some company creation, there's
• 11:19
  obviously some Series A, Series B.
• 11:21
  Should you just go into that a little bit further?
• 11:23
  And are there any particular therapeutic spaces where you
• 11:27
  find yourself particularly excited about at the moment?
• 11:29
  Like what areas are you seeing that I think are quite hot that
• 11:32
  are out there? I mean, so it's the pragmatic
• 11:35
  answer is again, given the flexibility of our platform, our
• 11:38
  entry points, we're looking for ways where Sr. 1's edge can
• 11:44
  really materialize. So edge through the network
• 11:47
  access, the founder entrepreneurs that we know that
• 11:49
  we think highly of or that we want to work with.
• 11:52
  So leveraging that access point to be able to identify great
• 11:57
  ways to invest and again, going across the spectrum like early
• 12:00
  through late. So that's one we, we spend quite
• 12:04
  a bit of time on what we call prepared mind.
• 12:07
  So really thinking about, you know, whether it's disease area
• 12:10
  modality, what are the scientific sort of breakthroughs
• 12:15
  that we think are ripe for really innovation in the context
• 12:20
  of startups and productization, right.
• 12:22
  And so we have that sort of map, if you will, head to toe.
• 12:25
  So we have a sense of where we want to play, what are the
• 12:27
  areas? And then I'd say there's a
• 12:30
  bucket that's in AI touched on this earlier sort of leaning
• 12:33
  into the pharma DNA. You know, we have been building
• 12:37
  incredible and deep ties across the board now large pharma, mid
• 12:41
  pharma to really understand the those stakeholders, those buyers
• 12:45
  of our product, if you will. And so we have a sense, you know
• 12:50
  of where they are, where they thinking, where do they want to
• 12:52
  go. So that's incredibly helpful.
• 12:54
  And then the last category is probably what I would call Yolo,
• 12:58
  which is like, it's not like you're planning it.
• 13:01
  It's just like you see something and you fall in love with the
• 13:03
  founder, you know, the science, the program.
• 13:07
  And you say, like, I have to do this deal, right?
• 13:09
  And so you're sort of putting all those forces together to
• 13:11
  create a portfolio of, call it, 20 companies and, and it works
• 13:17
  out. I mean, it's interesting that
• 13:18
  without necessarily engineering it, the portfolio reflects a
• 13:22
  bucket around early stage novel science platforms, a bucket
• 13:25
  around venture driven by founders, entrepreneurs that we
• 13:30
  want to work with, and a bucket around the late stage largely
• 13:33
  driven by products that we believe can be transformational
• 13:36
  medicines. And that's, you know, that's how
• 13:37
  we spend our time. Fine.
• 13:39
  And I know probably every VC is is different with this in terms
• 13:42
  of like once you invest in a company, you know you're going
• 13:45
  to be hands on or do you leave the company to it?
• 13:47
  What's SR1's approach to that? When you invest into a company,
• 13:51
  do you be pretty hands on as a firm?
• 13:54
  Do you have people that will will help out on an operating
• 13:56
  basis or do you leave the the sort of founders and management
• 14:00
  to it like how, how does that work from the from an investment
• 14:02
  side? Yeah.
• 14:03
  I mean, again, I'd say intentional is a word that I
• 14:06
  think about a lot and everything that we do.
• 14:08
  So it really is courses for courses, if you will.
• 14:12
  So it depends on what the company, the founders need, if
• 14:16
  we are, if we feel like there are ways that we can be helpful.
• 14:19
  And we do have these incredible and particular venture partners
• 14:23
  on my team, Chris Chai, Iqbal Mufti, I mentioned in particular
• 14:27
  that have deep experience when it comes to capital raising,
• 14:30
  both private and public or pharma engagement like those two
• 14:34
  areas obviously become critical for most startups.
• 14:37
  And so our portfolio companies and the executives lean heavily
• 14:40
  on those two individuals as the companies are evolving as an
• 14:43
  example, right? But we also don't want to be too
• 14:46
  prescriptive. Like, you know, if companies are
• 14:49
  well resourced to have a clear sense of how to execute on those
• 14:52
  aspects, we don't want to come in and then manage them, right?
• 14:56
  So we start with first principles like we are trying to
• 14:59
  create the most valuable company that we can, working alongside
• 15:03
  the founders. We're there to help the founder
• 15:05
  and entrepreneur realize their full potential.
• 15:08
  If we can be helpful beyond just the capital that we're
• 15:11
  providing, then we're all in and and we will do whatever we can.
• 15:14
  But we don't want to necessarily insert ourselves if that's not
• 15:18
  needed. And then lastly, I'd say, and
• 15:21
  I've seen it just frankly in the last week with some of our
• 15:23
  companies, we want to be the first call to our when, when
• 15:27
  something is going wrong, you know, when something's going
• 15:29
  right, obviously it's easy. But when things there's a
• 15:31
  challenge and invariably in every company there is, we want
• 15:35
  to be the first call that the founder entrepreneur is going to
• 15:37
  make, in part because we want to be there and seen as someone
• 15:40
  that is going to be objective, not necessarily just thinking
• 15:43
  about what does this mean for SR1, our fund.
• 15:47
  He's gonna problem solve. He's not gonna just criticize.
• 15:50
  He's going to find a way to hopefully work through this.
• 15:54
  And that's, you know, I feel like we, we shine in this
• 15:58
  category. Like if you were to talk to our
• 15:59
  founders entrepreneurs, I think you would hear this pretty
• 16:01
  consistently. We're there to help them and
• 16:03
  we're there to really our view is if we can align around, how
• 16:06
  do we create the most valuable company?
• 16:08
  Everything else takes care of itself.
• 16:10
  Just onto the market, like how, how are you seeing things that
• 16:12
  are it's obviously super volatile still.
• 16:15
  Are you seeing any changes in the market going into 2026?
• 16:18
  Do you have like a general perspective on on how I guess
• 16:22
  the the future of biotech looks just given how how difficult
• 16:25
  it's been over the past two or three?
• 16:27
  Years. I mean, listen, the last few
• 16:29
  months have for sure I'd say been more uplifting for the, the
• 16:34
  sector, right? If you just look at the indices,
• 16:36
  XPI is up, I don't know, 4050% there's been 20 plus billion
• 16:42
  worth of M and AI think I just saw an some news today around
• 16:46
  another exit potentially of Sedera.
• 16:50
  As I mentioned, we've had a handful of really important
• 16:52
  milestones. So there's things that are
• 16:54
  happening, right? The market is, is rewarding some
• 16:57
  of the, the ways that biotech is, is showing proof points.
• 17:01
  So that's important. Capital is getting recycled
• 17:03
  because of these liquidity events, follow ONS are happening
• 17:08
  for companies. Companies are raising large
• 17:10
  rounds, new funds are closing. So I think all of that is good.
• 17:16
  I mean, against what continues to be a really challenging or
• 17:19
  dynamic, I should say, market backdrop, you know, can just
• 17:23
  point to everything that's happening in the US on the
• 17:26
  regulatory side, pricing, tariffs, what's happening in
• 17:29
  China like this, You know, it's hard to imagine that the world
• 17:33
  that we are, the playbook that we're using today is going to
• 17:36
  look the same in 20-30 as an example, right?
• 17:38
  It just feels like there's so much that is moving pretty
• 17:41
  quickly. And so we just need to be, our
• 17:43
  job as venture capitalist is to live in the future.
• 17:46
  So we have to form a view and be courageous and sort of make
• 17:49
  some, make some investments and bets that sort of reflect where
• 17:54
  we think the the future is going to move towards.
• 17:56
  Yeah, I think what's been interesting I think from a
• 17:59
  recruiter that's on the other side of the fence and sees the
• 18:02
  market in some in terms of number of companies hiring and
• 18:04
  number of roles available. I think there's there's
• 18:06
  definitely been a shift. There's we're having a lot of
• 18:09
  conversations at the moment with private companies who are
• 18:12
  looking to go IPO next year. So I think that that window
• 18:15
  potentially could open up next year, which I think is exciting.
• 18:18
  And we're fortunate to have LB Pharmaceuticals and Map Light on
• 18:21
  the podcast recently as well. So hopefully there's there's
• 18:24
  optimism that that the IPO market will open up next year as
• 18:28
  well. I think that's we need that
• 18:31
  market to work right. We need companies to be able to
• 18:33
  continue to raise capital, lower their cost of capital.
• 18:37
  So that I think that's another proof point that we need to
• 18:40
  watch going into 26. As you said, there's been a few
• 18:43
  IPOs, but not many, right? I don't think we're going to get
• 18:46
  back to like where we were in 19/20/21, but there's probably a
• 18:50
  middle ground where we need to hit.
• 18:51
  Yeah, for sure. And just from your experience
• 18:55
  with SR1, what signals or tells you that biotech is ready for an
• 18:59
  acquisition versus being better positioned to grow
• 19:03
  independently? Like is there a point where you
• 19:05
  think, right, this is the time or how does that work from a
• 19:09
  venture perspective? I mean, it's really hard to be
• 19:11
  honest. Like I think, you know, I guess
• 19:14
  my view has always been you just have to continue to build.
• 19:17
  You have to give yourselves options, right?
• 19:19
  Ideally, you want to be in this incredible position where
• 19:22
  there's a route that says you can continue to remain
• 19:24
  independent, which means you likely need to be able to
• 19:27
  continue to raise capital to support development,
• 19:30
  commercialization of your products.
• 19:31
  Which means you likely need to go public at some point to
• 19:34
  continue to broaden out your shareholder base, lower your
• 19:38
  cost of capital. And if you're doing those things
• 19:41
  and if you're continuing to make technical progress as the
• 19:44
  medicine really starts to reveal itself and there's clarity
• 19:47
  around regulatory endpoints, what the commercial opportunity
• 19:51
  looks like, that's when you can start to engage meaningfully
• 19:55
  with strategics and hopefully create some level of scarcity
• 19:59
  around. The product, the company that
• 20:02
  can maybe turn into something that opens up the door for
• 20:06
  partnering with M&A. But it's hard.
• 20:08
  Like, you know, the adage is like great companies are bought,
• 20:12
  they're not sold, right. So I think you have to kind of
• 20:15
  live in a world where you you need to be able to control your
• 20:18
  destiny until someone comes and knocks on your door and gives
• 20:21
  you an offer and you can't refuse.
• 20:23
  Just on a more personal note, obviously biotech and venture
• 20:27
  can be intense, high pressure, stressful, etcetera.
• 20:31
  How do you sort of manage work life balance and and manage the
• 20:35
  demands of the field? Yeah, I mean, I don't think
• 20:39
  there's any easy way. So a couple of things, like
• 20:43
  practically, you know, I'm now spending more time in the UK,
• 20:46
  which means my mornings now I have more time to think, more
• 20:50
  time, you know, to drop my kids off at school as an example.
• 20:54
  Just sort of be present and trying to be intentional.
• 20:58
  Because again, when the West Coast comes online in the
• 21:00
  afternoons and it gets quite busy and I'm I'm in the office
• 21:03
  or in meetings, etcetera. So there's a way practically
• 21:05
  like I'm trying to manage at least my days.
• 21:10
  And then, yeah, I mean, again, I think it's just, you know, and
• 21:14
  when you're a founder, when you're building a business,
• 21:16
  whether it's an investment firm or start up the business, you
• 21:19
  have like you're sort of 24/7, I think wired to be thinking about
• 21:22
  it. So it's like finding ways to
• 21:24
  disconnect at least for some period.
• 21:26
  And you know, whether it's family, friends, exercise, all
• 21:30
  those things that, you know, we want to do, try and do those.
• 21:33
  And, and sometimes I get that mixed right.
• 21:35
  And sometimes I'm intentional and a lot of times I'm not.
• 21:38
  So it's a work in progress. Yeah, Finally, final question.
• 21:43
  We'll finish on. If you were to have dinner with
• 21:47
  any free people, past or present, who would you go from?
• 21:50
  Why? It doesn't necessarily need to
• 21:52
  be people in biotech. It could be someone from
• 21:55
  sporting world, entertainment world, wherever you want.
• 21:58
  But yeah, free people you'd like to have dinner with and why.
• 22:01
  Yeah, it's a good question. So I've been inspired by Vincent
• 22:07
  van Gogh for the longest time. I was an art history major in
• 22:10
  university and I just love his work and I love the story of Van
• 22:14
  Gogh. A struggling artist only sold
• 22:16
  one painting in his entire life, but obviously he just had a way
• 22:20
  to see things and do things that were just, again, truly
• 22:24
  transformational. So usually whenever I'm in a
• 22:26
  city, I will go to a museum that has a Van Gogh painting and I
• 22:29
  will take that in and get inspired by that.
• 22:31
  So to have dinner with him would be amazing.
• 22:36
  I would say, you know, the candidly, regardless of
• 22:39
  politics, I think someone like Azoran Mamdani is a pretty
• 22:43
  interesting figure. You know, for me, it's how do
• 22:46
  you go from like, no one knowing you having like less than 1%
• 22:50
  name recognition in January of this year to not only winning
• 22:54
  the mayoral race in New York, but doubling the vote, like
• 22:57
  literally increasing by twofold the number of people that came
• 23:01
  out to vote. And so just his marketing
• 23:04
  skills, his charisma, his ability to tell his story, I
• 23:08
  think for all of us, I think we can learn something from that.
• 23:11
  So I'd be interested to have a meal with him.
• 23:15
  And then lastly, who would, I mean Aretha Franklin?
• 23:24
  No other reason than I was last night again when I was trying to
• 23:28
  like unwind. Just it popped up on YouTube.
• 23:31
  This video of her. She was performing.
• 23:33
  It was some I think Presidential Medal of Honor or something.
• 23:36
  I think she was receiving, she was performing in front of a
• 23:40
  bunch of luminaries, including Obama, and she was like, this is
• 23:43
  late in her career and man, she just walked onto the stage and
• 23:47
  just owned it. And the voice was there.
• 23:49
  She playing the piano. At one point Obama was crying.
• 23:52
  Like it was like truly like inspirational moments.
• 23:56
  I again, like, I, I think just spending time with her, hearing
• 24:00
  her story, what she's lived through, I think would be also
• 24:03
  pretty inspiring. So those would be my 3.
• 24:06
  Nice. Yeah, we'll look 3 great answers
• 24:08
  there. And yeah, thanks for coming on
• 24:09
  and helping us out with this. I think what you, you're
• 24:11
  obviously building at SSR one is, is super impressive.
• 24:15
  Obviously a venture firm that I have been very familiar with and
• 24:18
  will continue to follow going forward.
• 24:20
  So yeah, congratulations on, on the work that you're doing and
• 24:23
  thanks for for helping us out with this.
• 24:24
  It was a it was a pleasure. Thank you.
• 24:26
  No, thanks for your time. Thanks for the questions.
• 24:28
  I enjoyed it. And yeah, hopefully look forward
• 24:29
  to seeing you in the future.