Latest / The Learning Corner by Precursor / Episode #63: Sequoia Breaks Portfolio Conflict Rules, Pre-Seed Is Dead?, FAANG to Startup Regret

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Episode #63: Sequoia Breaks Portfolio Conflict Rules, Pre-Seed Is Dead?, FAANG to Startup Regret · The Learning Corner by Precursor

• 0:00
  I think the not enough traction piece is just an easy pass excuse for early stage investors.
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  It just means that you're not interested in a deal.
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  You have a pre seed company that we've invested in.
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  They hit great milestones.
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  They were maybe too early for other investors to come in.
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  They get to the seed.
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  They hit all the benchmarks that they were supposed to, and then they're like, I actually
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  need more.
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  And I'm like, there's something about the deal.
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  Just be honest.
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  You don't have the team.
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  You don't love the business.
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  You don't like the market.
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  That's all fine.
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  But at least be transparent because I'm not gonna waste their time peddling around.
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  It's the week of January 19.
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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 our GP 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 topic of the week is TechCrunch's article from Connie Loisis about Sequoia's
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  decision to invest in Anthropic, a move that's raising eyebrows because it breaks with
• 0:58
  traditional VC norms around backing competitors.
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  Sequoia already has stakes in both OpenAI and XAI, and now they're joining a GIC led round
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  that could see Anthropic raise $25,000,000,000 or more at a $350,000,000,000 valuation.
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  Sequoia has a history of taking conflicts seriously, so this feels like a real departure,
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  especially coming on the heels of major leadership changes at the firm.
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  And it's all happening as Anthropic is reportedly gearing up for an IPO that could
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  come as soon as this year.
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  We talked about this happening in the beginning of the summer, actually, and you wrote a piece
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  around it.
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  So wanted to ask you if there's any surprises that you felt like you saw from your
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  perspective.
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  No.
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  I feel like we're in this new era of venture.
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  And maybe it's not that new.
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  But we're in this era of this weird combination of extremely large mega funds and really
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  concentrated you know, the guys at Vintage had this better articulation than I could have had,
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  Concentration Squared.
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  We have these really big venture funds that only wanna compete over 10 or 15 really high
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  conviction assets.
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  And if you're a big venture fund north of, we'll say, $2,000,000,000, you have to be in
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  the most consequential companies.
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  And if you're adhering to some conflicts policy that probably has, like, a really strong moral
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  or business justification and missing out on the companies that will generate the returns
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  that will keep you in business, I think most venture firms are gonna opt for the returns.
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  And I think this will become even a bigger issue as companies stay private longer.
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  I mean, the other thing that used to save people with conflicts policies is you're like,
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  oh, eventually, the company that's creating the conflict will go public, and we can get rid of
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  the shares, or it'll get so big that, like, we won't have any influence.
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  And when a company is saying private longer, it's harder to find these off ramps, especially
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  if you're a majority owned if you're a significant shareholder not majority.
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  Most venture firms aren't.
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  But if you're a significant shareholder and you're on the board, I think it's gonna get
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  complicated, and I think firms are gonna think harder and harder about in what cases will we
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  have conflicts?
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  And and one of my friends told me something interesting who works at a big fund.
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  He said, we worry more not about our own ability to manage conflicts, but we worry that
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  a founder and a company that we should see that sees us in one of these companies, that that
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  founder will opt out of even pitching us because of their perception of conflict.
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  We might not even get the chance to explain how we'll manage it.
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  So I think we're, in many ways, in venture.
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  I think we've said this a lot.
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  We're in a new era, and I'm very curious to see how this all plays out.
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  But I think there will be other cases in categories that have multiple winners, all of
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  which are of venture scale that you'll see this this phenomenon happen again.
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  On the founder point, you mentioned actually in the sub sack you wrote in July that you're
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  curious how founders will respond to this bigger shift on portfolio conflicts.
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  Mhmm.
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  As in, do founders feel comfortable to have somebody join the cap table when they see that
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  they've invested in a competitor?
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  But for a round of this size, I guess if we're talking specifically about Anthropic, but we
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  can go more generally also just on portfolio conflict, do you think Anthropic is really in a
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  position to push back or care at all, or does the scale of capital they're raising change the
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  calculus entirely from their perspective?
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  I mean, I think what we don't know is and I think the only people who know this are
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  Anthropic and Sequoia.
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  What internal guardrails, if any you can think of lot of ways to manage this.
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  If you're Anthropic, you're like, hey.
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  We're not gonna tell you about our product strategy, but we'll give you the bare minimum
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  financial reporting information you need, and we expect you to keep that private.
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  You know, we want a separate team of people.
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  I'd imagine they've already solved some of this with OpenAI and Grok just out of necessity.
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  But I think, increasingly, companies are gonna say, well, this is gonna be our new operating
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  model.
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  We already have ways to limit access to information through information rights and
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  who's on the board and who gets access to information, and companies just might have to
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  be more thoughtful about how do we segment which of our investors get what.
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  But that's like overhead that creates no value for the company.
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  And I and, you know, if I were an investor in that company, I'd be I don't want management
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  spending time on this.
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  This is not value add.
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  And I was thinking too from the founder's perspective, if you had your choice of
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  investors, why would you go to somebody who you know has competitors?
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  But then you kind of see the pool for folks who can move capital at that pace.
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  I mean, they're investing alongside GIC.
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  Yeah.
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  That number is smaller and smaller.
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  So if you're raising a $25,000,000,000 round, there's only so many venture funds who can
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  participate.
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  So if that person has raised their hand to do it, you're kind of like, alright.
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  Like, I'll take your capital if that's what I'm looking for.
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  And if you're like a sovereign wealth fund, if you're GIC, if you're Adia, you're probably not
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  thinking I'm gonna get on the board of Anthropic and make all of these changes.
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  You're like, no.
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  I wanna put a lot of money to work, and I want to know that the fiduciaries are gonna take
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  good care of my money.
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  And maybe I need some oversight, but you're probably not looking for operational insights
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  on what comes after the Opus 4.5 model.
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  That's, like, probably not your focus.
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  That's actually a good point.
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  So I guess if you're sovereign and you're jumping into these traditionally venture
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  investments, and this is not the first time you're doing it, but maybe you're doing it more
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  and more because the round sizes are such you can finally participate.
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  Yeah.
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  I would assume that you would maybe lean on your traditional venture partners to have the
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  thumb on the pulse of how things are going.
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  But if things happen how you described, if maybe they don't allow specific information
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  rights to those folks because they have competitors, like, who is who is watching?
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  I guess Yeah.
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  That that I mean, the question is, like, if you're gonna write a check of this size with
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  the conflict, what's the minimum amount?
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  And look.
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  I think there's information rights that you're legally entitled to, and then there's the cloak
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  and dagger way that you can get access to information you're not supposed to have your
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  hands on in Silicon Valley.
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  And I would like to think if you're Sequoia, you're like, well, if we don't get it in the
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  front door, and we should, of course I assume that they did it above board.
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  I there are enough people in and around the Anthropic ecosystem that I'm sure if there's
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  something that Sequoia really needed to know, they have someone in their network who could
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  find a way to make sure that they were I'm sure.
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  Thought that the crazy thing was, like, you when you had to remember Uber and Lyft, like,
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  well, this company in this country is at Uber.
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  This company is I think we're gonna end up with a lot more overlap because it couldn't that
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  OpenAI and Anthropic end up being the two big private winners in all AI.
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  It it's not guaranteed.
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  But if that's the case and you're a big venture fund, you kinda do wanna be in both.
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  You wanna capture all of the opportunity.
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  Because if you're Sequoia, you're like, I'm being compared against Founders Fund and other
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  and MENLOW now and other funds that are in these names.
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  And if we're not in them, we have to find equivalent assets that are gonna generate the
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  same return.
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  I don't know what those companies are at the moment.
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  Well, think it'll be the first of many articles published in the same theme to come.
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  Moving on to our next topic, we're looking at a LinkedIn post from Andres Cano where he is
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  declaring that pre seed, as we know it, is dead, at least in LatAm.
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  His core argument is that the market has completely redefined what pre seed means
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  without telling founders.
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  So back in twenty twenty one, twenty twenty two, pre seed was team plus idea.
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  And these days, you need what he says, 300 k in ARR and proven unit economics just to get a
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  meeting scheduled.
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  He breaks founders into these three tiers.
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  The top 1% are unicorn builders who can still raise on reputation alone.
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  The next 9% are proven operators, so people who've scaled companies to 10 plus million in
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  ARR, and they can still raise pre traction based on pattern recognition.
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  But the remaining 90%, he says they need what used to be seed level traction just to raise a
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  pre seed round.
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  His advice to that 90% is pretty clear.
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  Stop fundraising.
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  Start building to 300 k ARR and bootstrap as long as possible to prove your unit economics
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  work.
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  I agree that the bar has never been higher for pre seed fundraising, especially if you're not
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  building the typical AI startup that every VC wants to see right now, which is incredibly
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  discouraging.
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  But I do think what's missing from Andres' take is that location matters enormously here.
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  He's specifically talking about LatAm, and I'd imagine founders building outside of SF and New
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  York City are experiencing similar dynamics, maybe not as quite extreme.
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  So, Charles, what's your perspective on how much geography is actually driving these
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  dynamics?
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  Yeah.
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  I mean, when we talked about this as a team, there's, like, another lens.
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  It's also the market you're in.
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  And, you know, there's a market you and I both have have invested in CPG, which has similar
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  dynamics.
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  And I think anytime you're in a category where capital is scarce, capital sets the rules.
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  And if I think about our US CPG companies, there are not that many people who are willing
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  to do very early CPG investments.
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  And so those people can say, hey.
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  I only wanna invest in companies that have gotten somehow by hook or crook to 5,000,000 in
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  sales before we take a meeting.
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  And they're like, well, that seems unreasonable.
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  And you're like, but who else is gonna fund them if I don't?
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  You're like, I know the other three people who will write this check.
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  We're all gonna hold out for the same thing.
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  That's the market.
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  And I think in LatAm, you see the same thing.
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  There was a boom of pre seed funds in the beginning of this decade.
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  Now I'd say some of those funds were very successful and have grown and scaled, and
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  others have gone away.
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  And I think you've gotten back to the pre 2020 level of activity where there are relatively
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  few people who will write pre seed checks in LatAm.
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  And so I think they've decided, hey.
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  We're just gonna raise the bar because, again, unless a bunch of US venture funds flood LatAm
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  again, they kinda rule the roost.
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  And so the thing I've always thought that's funny is I see this in I don't mean this in a
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  bad way, but, like, second tier venture cities too.
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  People are like, we hold these companies as high bar.
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  I'm like, great.
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  So you end up creating these companies that are just not interesting on venture scale.
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  They do you know, they bootstrap.
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  They get to some arbitrary amount of ARR.
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  It takes them three years to get to a 100 k in ARR.
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  And you're like, how is this company ever going to matter given the way that venture math
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  works?
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  And the answer it doesn't.
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  You've constrained the ambition of these companies by forcing them to do things that are
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  inappropriate too early, and the end product you get is not interesting to anybody else.
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  And you get this, like, vicious cycle where the second tier markets create companies that can't
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  raise, so they bootstrap and they become uninvestable.
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  And then they go to raise and everyone's like, well, congrats on getting 250, 300 k.
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  It's a great accomplishment.
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  I don't care because I'm focused on this other company over here that has no revenue but has,
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  like, this hugely ambitious plan and is building something big, and that's the business
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  that VCs are in.
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  And so I've always found this advice weird because we have a bunch of seed companies that
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  are between $2.50 and 500 k in ARR when they raise.
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  And so I understand.
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  It's funny.
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  I think what he said is probably true of that environment, and that makes me feel bad for the
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  state of LATAM pre seed.
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  Going to your comment of things that are kind of inappropriate for pre seed stage, like,
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  would go out on a limb and say, if you're in a second tier market that's more difficult to
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  attract VC attention and you're profitable at pre seed, I would say that's that's not gonna
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  move the needle at all in the conversations.
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  I don't think having that unit economic means all that much from a venture scale perspective,
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  which, again, I understand it's like inverse of, but I'm running a good business.
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  And I would say for most investors, running a good business or profitable business certainly
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  isn't something that I need as a metric at all for you to hit in the first years.
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  We just had yesterday I won't name the company, but a company that we use a lot at Precursor
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  came by.
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  Their management and product team came by and spent an hour with us, and we talked about
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  them.
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  And they are, like, very profitable.
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  And as a customer of that company, I feel great.
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  I'm like, this thing is not gonna go away.
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  Right.
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  It's a core part of our workflow and infrastructure.
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  And that team has such clarity around what they're trying to build.
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  I think they will eventually have a huge outcome, but it will be on their terms and on
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  their timing.
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  Yeah.
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  And that's the other thing that I think is the pro of running a good business.
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  And I think about our CPG folks.
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  I think about the benchmark when you used to go out and raise a series a for a CPG company.
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  Like, four years ago.
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  If you did it at 10,000,000 in ARR, you're great.
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  You could raise around with a wonderful term sheet.
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  Now I would say it's, like, $15.20, which is crazy Yeah.
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  To go out for most CPG companies.
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  Now there are exceptions, of course, for, like, celeb round CPG companies, but I'm hearing that
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  that is what investors are looking for.
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  And so while you have to kind of figure out more creative ways to find capital, you're able
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  to focus on parts of the business that allow you to be more sustaining in the long term.
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  But I do feel for these companies who are both out of market or out of, you know, industry
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  focus for the majority.
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  The one thing that I I do think about this piece that comes to me is I think the not
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  enough traction piece is just like an easy pass excuse for early stage investors.
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  It just means that you're not interested in a deal.
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  Because I I I have literally done that where you have a pre seed company that we've invested
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  in.
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  They hit great milestones.
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  They were maybe too early for other investors to come in.
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  They get to the seed.
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  They hit all the benchmarks that they were supposed to, and then they're like, I actually
• 12:53
  need more.
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  And I'm like, you don't there's something about the deal
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  You it.
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  Don't like it.
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  And that's fine.
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  Just be honest.
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  And I think that's what I would ask more investors is, again, there are some things that
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  you just won't say to founders in the past email.
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  But to me, at least, you don't have the team.
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  You don't love the business.
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  You don't like the market.
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  That's all fine.
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  But at least be transparent because I'm not gonna waste their time peddling around.
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  This weekend, I was emailing with one of our portfolio coming founders, and he sent me this
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  past email, he said, can you believe this?
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  And someone I noticed said, I'm just not interested in this category.
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  And the founder was, like, so offended.
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  I'm like, that's one of the most honest past emails.
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  You can't help the fact that he's just not interested.
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  He's just not that into you.
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  He just doesn't care.
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  And he's like, I have this great business.
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  And I'm like, there's nothing wrong with your business other than that person doesn't like
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  it.
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  Yeah.
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  Two things can be true.
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  You can have a great business, and they can be uninterested.
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  I read that, and I was just kind of like, you can't argue with that.
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  The person's like, I just don't find this that interesting.
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  Yeah.
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  And no amount of me advocating for you is actually gonna change their mind, I've learned.
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  It's not gonna be me sitting on the phone with them for thirty minutes to get them excited
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  about the industry.
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  Their focus is completely rerouted.
• 13:53
  Oh.
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  Well, our last topic is a Substack post written by Lawrence Chang about leaving Amazon for a
• 13:58
  startup and regretting that decision shortly after joining.
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  Lawrence had put in a handful of years at Amazon, and while he felt comfortable, he was
• 14:06
  also frustrated by the slow pace, the bureaucracy, and the sense that they weren't on
• 14:10
  the cutting edge.
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  After getting an opportunity to join a growing startup, he accepted immediately and moved his
• 14:15
  entire life across the country to SF.
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  He explains that the startup environment was the complete opposite of Amazon.
• 14:20
  It was scrappy and high energy.
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  But Lawrence says the biggest difference was the need to approach the job like a mission, a
• 14:27
  complete departure from how most people talk about approaching big tech roles.
• 14:30
  This shift was admittedly difficult for Lawrence.
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  And three weeks in, the founders asked him point blank if he felt motivated and connected
• 14:37
  to the work.
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  And it really was impossible for him to lie at that moment.
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  He replied no and was told to pack up his things and finish out his time there that day.
• 14:45
  His reflection is pretty honest.
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  Maybe he should have done a work trial first to see if he actually clicked with the team in the
• 14:51
  mission, but his biggest takeaway is that startups require a level of dedication that
• 14:55
  goes beyond just being smart and eager for something new.
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  You have to be all in on the mission, and he wasn't.
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  While he's still processing the regret and bitterness, he also acknowledges it was
• 15:06
  transformative.
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  It takes a lot of courage and humility to write a substack with as much transparency as he did,
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  but it shares the same tone as so many conversations I have with friends who are
• 15:15
  always eager to explore what's on the other side and considering new opportunities?
• 15:19
  I wanted to pause for your thoughts here first, Charles, because I know you face these
• 15:22
  exploratory conversations a lot with folks joining our portfolio as early hires.
• 15:28
  I meet a lot of big company people who romanticize startup life.
• 15:32
  They're like, it's gonna be all of the things that I like about my current job and none of
• 15:36
  the things I hate.
• 15:37
  So it's gonna be fun and exciting and it's gonna be less bureaucracy and smart people, and
• 15:42
  then they get there and they're like, oh my god.
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  Everything is broken.
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  I have to fix everything.
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  I'm like, no.
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  No.
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  No.
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  That's just gonna stay broken.
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  It's broken but functional.
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  This thing is on fire, so we're gonna focus on the it's on fire thing.
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  Well, we gotta build this thing to scale.
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  And actually, we need to build this thing to ship on Monday.
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  And I I find a lot of people struggle with with two things.
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  One, the tolerance of things that are imperfect but functional in the name of speed, which
• 16:07
  would get you in a lot of trouble in a lot of big companies.
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  And also, I think a lot of people have this notion that like, oh, I'm gonna like work way
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  harder.
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  I'm like, hey.
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  I worked at a big company.
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  I had friends with her.
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  You spend a lot of time if you work at an Alphabet.
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  But the problem is a lot of the time you spend is on internal matters.
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  Oh, I'm trying to get head count approval to ship this feature, so I've gotta go work the
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  system internally to get the rack and the billet, and then and you the those some of
• 16:30
  those things aren't important, but that's a skill set that doesn't apply in a five person
• 16:34
  startup.
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  That's, like, not that's not the game.
• 16:36
  The other thing I realized when I was at Google one day, I was doing email late, my boss was
• 16:40
  like, what are you doing?
• 16:41
  I'm trying to get these emails out.
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  He's like, well, the person you're emailing isn't working.
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  So whether you send this email now or you send it in the morning, like like, nothing is gonna
• 16:48
  happen Yeah.
• 16:49
  Because the other end of this chain is offline.
• 16:51
  Yeah.
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  And we've been a five person startup.
• 16:52
  If everybody in the company stays in the office till 10:00 and works together, you can actually
• 16:57
  solve problems and make progress.
• 16:59
  And that compounds day after day after day, which means if you'd rather go play tennis at
• 17:04
  6PM or whatever time I figured or time you said you wanna go play tennis, that's gonna be an
• 17:07
  affront to the people who are like, don't you understand that our big advantage is that we
• 17:12
  are small and tight knit?
• 17:13
  And that if we all make the commitment to be here together, as much as I have criticisms
• 17:18
  over some of the nine nine six stuff, there's a practical reality to it, which is if you're a
• 17:22
  small team and everybody shows up and works, you can actually move the ball after
• 17:27
  dinnertime, before bedtime, every day in a way you cannot at a big company.
• 17:30
  And you can't hide at a
• 17:32
  You can't hide.
• 17:32
  In the same way that you can hide at a large company.
• 17:35
  And I think there's also this unspoken truth about moving from a big company and say you've
• 17:41
  spent multiple years there.
• 17:43
  So I have friends who spent more than ten years at a large company.
• 17:46
  And you move over to the startup side, and you realize that there's two things that are true.
• 17:49
  One, the work environment has shifted completely since you've been out and you've
• 17:53
  just been in one company alone.
• 17:55
  And the jobs and what's important are, I remember my first couple weeks at attention,
• 18:00
  Grace.
• 18:00
  I came from consulting, so everything was all about proposing options as opposed to moving
• 18:05
  the ball.
• 18:05
  And I remember, like, Mia and Alex were like, oh, can you, like, set up us some options for
• 18:08
  three PLs that we could decide?
• 18:10
  And I was like, sure.
• 18:11
  Just tell us which one we should go.
• 18:12
  And I was like, amazing.
• 18:13
  I remember my first deliverable, also, that's not a thing in early stage startups, also, was
• 18:18
  like a slide with seven different options that they could pick.
• 18:21
  And me and Alex were like, I definitely didn't want seven options.
• 18:23
  I just wanted you to tell me what was the one.
• 18:25
  Oh, I had no idea that was the that's the biggest value add you can add is just creating
• 18:29
  less decision burden on people and just have them drive, drive, drive.
• 18:33
  One thing that I I have been thinking about recently is some of my friends who are wanting
• 18:37
  to leave to go to something different and who are from big tech companies, I think when
• 18:41
  they're ready to go to something way more risky, they argue that if it doesn't work out
• 18:46
  and say, don't love this job, this startup job in two, three years, I'll just come back to
• 18:50
  Google, come back to Meta, insert whatever big tech company.
• 18:53
  Given where the market is today and how priorities and strategic planning is shifting,
• 18:58
  do you think that that boomerang is is available anymore?
• 19:01
  I wouldn't.
• 19:01
  I certainly wouldn't.
• 19:02
  I think for a long time, that was available.
• 19:05
  Maybe once for people.
• 19:07
  You can't mean, you can't just keep leaving and coming back.
• 19:09
  I think that was in an era where tech jobs were largely secure.
• 19:12
  Layoffs were, like, episodic and driven mostly by macro.
• 19:17
  And now we're in a world where tech feels more to me like finance and that there's just some
• 19:22
  annual rebalancing based on which business units are up.
• 19:25
  So, you know, Gemini needs more people, so we're gonna shed people in some other
• 19:30
  department in the same way that at a bank, you're like, well, sales and trading is up this
• 19:33
  year, so we're gonna hire some more trading people and banking is down, so we're gonna let
• 19:37
  you're like, well, if you just kept it flat the whole time, you probably would have ended up in
• 19:40
  the same place.
• 19:40
  And I think it's not clear to me that I think tech jobs used to be safe.
• 19:45
  And the challenge now is I tell people, like, well, nothing safe.
• 19:47
  It used to be like, hey.
• 19:48
  If you need to downshift a little bit, go to a big tech company.
• 19:50
  You'll work hard, but if you're not focused on becoming an l whatever or an e whatever
• 19:55
  leveling system these companies if you're not focused on that, you can work hard.
• 19:59
  You can make a good living, and, like, you'll be fine.
• 20:01
  And now I'm just like, those jobs aren't aren't really safe.
• 20:04
  I'll also say not to discourage folks to go and explore a startup.
• 20:07
  I would just say to follow, I guess, what Lawrence was kind of saying throughout the
• 20:10
  piece, which is, like, really diligence the team.
• 20:12
  Really be obsessive over the mission, say, is this what I want to be working day in, day out
• 20:16
  on?
• 20:16
  Because that is certainly the schedule you'll be operating on.
• 20:19
  And the one thing I'll say is I always tell my friends when they're thinking about making
• 20:23
  career pivots that feel really large for them.
• 20:26
  It's a seasons of life conversation for yourself.
• 20:28
  What season of life are you in?
• 20:30
  You can always rotate out.
• 20:31
  But is this the right season for you to be making the change?
• 20:34
  Or should you spend a couple more in the seat that you're in?
• 20:37
  It's funny.
• 20:37
  I like, I interview a lot of people for our portfolio.
• 20:39
  And one of the things I'll often ask people is, what other things are you considering?
• 20:42
  I'll never forget.
• 20:43
  I met somebody who was interviewing with one of our fintech companies when it was, like, sub 10
• 20:48
  people.
• 20:48
  And he's like, I'm looking at this company and SVB.
• 20:51
  And I was like, as somebody who doesn't know you that well, it's impossible that you are
• 20:56
  equally interested in both of those things.
• 20:58
  Yeah.
• 20:58
  You're just looking for a new job.
• 20:59
  Yeah.
• 21:00
  I was like I was like, but, like, one of these things and I found for a lot of candidates,
• 21:04
  there's this gap between the aspirational version of themselves that wants to be in a
• 21:08
  startup and wants the risk and wants the adventure and the realistic view of them, which
• 21:13
  is like, I have a mortgage or I have a family or I'm not in a place where I can, like, take
• 21:17
  this amount of risk.
• 21:18
  And I'm like, you have to reconcile those two things.
• 21:20
  And sometimes I'll meet candidates and just like, you need to get clear with yourself about
• 21:23
  what you want.
• 21:24
  If you wanna go to SVB, like, that's fine.
• 21:26
  I'm not judging you for making that choice.
• 21:28
  That very well might be the right choice for you in your life.
• 21:32
  But these two things are there's a conflict here Yep.
• 21:35
  Between like, if someone tells me, hey.
• 21:36
  I'm looking at five start up jobs.
• 21:37
  I'm like, cool.
• 21:38
  You're you're ready to go join it.
• 21:39
  You still might be wrong, but you are focused on joining a start up.
• 21:43
  I found that question for me is, like, very illuminating when I ask people, because usually
• 21:47
  I get a sense of, like, what are they actually considering.
• 21:49
  And sometimes I'm like, wow.
• 21:50
  The thing I'm talking about is the outlier.
• 21:52
  I talked to somebody last week who's looking at, like, I won't name any companies, three or
• 21:57
  four very late stage b to b SaaS slash infrastructure companies, and then a startup.
• 22:01
  And I'm like, well, this seems like most of your energy is over there.
• 22:04
  Maybe that's really where you wanna be.
• 22:05
  Maybe this is just like an outlier or a tire kicking thing.
• 22:08
  Maybe you should investigate why you're spending 90% of your interview cycles on
• 22:12
  companies that are four stages later than this one.
• 22:14
  The last thing I will say too is, especially for folks who are leaving big companies who
• 22:19
  have never worked anywhere else, I just had this conversation with somebody.
• 22:21
  I said, there's only really one time you can leave that company.
• 22:24
  And that story is so easy to tell somebody of like, I've worked at McKinsey.
• 22:28
  I've worked at BCG.
• 22:29
  I've worked at JPM for the last ten years.
• 22:31
  You don't need an explanation.
• 22:32
  Once you leave and you start going down the super, super early stage path, you have to get
• 22:37
  ready to bring people up to speed on what your company does, what your role is, what space it
• 22:41
  is, and that's different.
• 22:42
  So I would say, like, think really, really deeply about are you interested in this role
• 22:46
  because it sounds great Yep.
• 22:47
  Versus are you ready for what it all means?
• 22:49
  Yeah.
• 22:49
  Well, we are all out of time today.
• 22:51
  Thank you, Charles, for stopping in.
• 22:52
  Thank you to our listeners and subscribers.
• 22:55
  Please share with friends, and we will talk with you all next week.
• 22:58
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• 22:58
  Bye.
• 22:59
  Bye.