Latest / The Learning Corner by Precursor / Episode #58: Charles Schwab Acquisition of Forge Global, Holding "Venture Zombies" Forever, What Is Burnout Actually?

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Episode #58: Charles Schwab Acquisition of Forge Global, Holding "Venture Zombies" Forever, What Is Burnout Actually? · The Learning Corner by Precursor

• 0:00
  Try very hard not to make your startup company too central in who you are.
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  Find other parts of your personality or being that have meaning.
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  I find the people who have other things that transcend their startup have an easier time
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  dealing with setbacks.
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  If the startup doesn't work out, it's not this totally ego destroying activity.
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  And I find that there's a handful of people, I've worked with, where the startup became such
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  a big part of their identity.
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  They didn't know what to do without it.
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  It's the week of December 1.
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  Welcome to the Learning Corner a Precursor Ventures podcast.
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  Welcome to the Learning Corner by Precursor.
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  I'm Mia Farnam, and I'm joined by RGP and managing partner Charles Hudson.
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  And also this week, we've got one of our graduate interns, Missy Martin, here to talk
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  through this week's Goodreads and articles.
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  Welcome, Missy.
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  Thank you so much for having me.
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  Really excited about today's conversation.
• 0:56
  Awesome.
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  Excited to have you.
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  Well, our first piece is an article by Tyler Brown at eMarketer titled, with Forge Global
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  acquisition, Schwab taps demand for alternative assets.
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  Last month, Charles Schwab announced that it will acquire Forge Global, a platform that lets
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  retail investors buy and sell shares in private companies for 660,000,000.
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  This move came closely after Morgan Stanley's announcement to acquire private shares platform
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  EquityZen.
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  And in the piece, Tyler argues that these acquisitions signal a clear shift.
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  Alternative assets are going mainstream for retail investors.
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  What was once the domain of institutional investors and very wealthy individuals is
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  trickling down to the rest of the population was a quote from the piece.
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  This article builds on a pattern we've seen across the financial ecosystem.
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  Just a few episodes ago, we discussed Goldman's acquisition of industry ventures on the
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  institutional side.
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  Now we're watching similar momentum unfold on that retail side as well.
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  Charles wanted to ask you how will the mainstreaming of private markets reshape
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  liquidity conversations and expectations, and what new responsibilities might GPs face as
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  retail investors enter?
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  Oh, yeah.
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  I think private markets I don't know that we'll call them private markets for that much longer
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  with all the capital that's coming into them.
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  But, look, I think venture's going through one of these scaling moments, and I think anytime
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  you wanna scale a subsector of finance, you find yourself in a situation where you just
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  need to find access to new pools capital.
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  So for private assets to grow, you look at some of the traditional sources, pension plans and
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  institutional endowments.
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  Like, most of those folks are pretty well exposed to privates.
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  So to grow the industry, you have to find new sources of capital.
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  And I think, you know, we've tapped into sovereigns now.
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  Sovereigns all have exposure to privates.
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  And so in some ways, the final frontier is always the public.
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  The question will be, what will it mean?
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  You know, historically, part of the reason we've had private markets manage the way we do
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  is because there's a feeling that you need to have a different level of sophistication,
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  whether that's because of the illiquidity or because of the lack of formal reporting.
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  So I'm very curious to see what changes, if any, happen or whether what really happens is
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  instead of going directly from institutions to Main Street, you go from institutions to
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  sophisticated but, you know, slightly less wealthy, more accredited investor type folks
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  getting exposure.
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  It's pretty clear to me that the money train for private assets is not done yet.
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  There's gonna be more and more money piling into this asset class, and that money's gotta
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  come from somewhere.
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  And I think we've exhausted most of the traditional sources.
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  The only way to grow the the pie is to bring in new people.
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  And within your GP circles, did you feel like this announcement was seen as good news,
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  neutral news, bad news, or nothing to kind of talk through?
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  I I think a lot of people I talk to recognize that secondaries are gonna be a more important
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  part of how we all get liquidity and venture.
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  And it might be because simply because some of the best companies choose not to go public,
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  maybe even ever.
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  And so, like, the only way you'll get out of those names is to sell those shares to somebody
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  else who wants to hold them.
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  And so a more robust secondaries ecosystem is good for all of us.
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  Mhmm.
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  It really is.
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  And I think it's funny if you'd said five years ago, hey.
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  Do you think there'll be three secondaries platforms in venture that trade for meaningful
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  sums of money?
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  People would have like, no.
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  Venture secondaries is too small a business.
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  So it's just a good reminder that today's TAM is not tomorrow's TAM because the world can
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  change.
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  And people's perception of the market size can really change as the world changes.
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  Charles, do you think that the broader investor participation will influence aspects like
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  valuation dynamics, governance expectations, or even just founder behavior more broadly?
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  I think I'm a big believer of, like, be careful what you wish for.
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  And so I think historically, most of the money in private markets has been in the hands of
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  people who can afford to bear those losses, who understand what they're signing up for.
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  And as we move to more mainstream investors, I'm not sure that that's the case.
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  I mean, a lot of people are like, I wanna get into private investing.
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  I wanna invest in venture.
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  I'm like, you might not get your money back for twelve to fifteen years, and there's nothing
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  you can do to get it back.
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  It's not like you can go to the manager in most cases and demand liquidity.
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  How much money would you be interested in tying up potentially for twelve to fifteen years with
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  no recourse to, like, not that much?
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  Then that's the amount of money you should put to work in private markets.
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  Mhmm.
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  I think the more retail it becomes, I think the more investors become a part of the
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  conversation.
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  And right now, one of the nice things about raising money from accredited or qualified
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  purchasers in the private side is they're sophisticated.
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  And so it it makes life easier for you as the GP, and I wonder how different that will be if
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  the money comes from less, quote, unquote, sophisticated investors.
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  It'll be interesting to see what happens in the future.
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  We're not done by any means.
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  Moving to our second piece, why hold forever investors are snapping up venture capital
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  zombies.
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  Maria Temkin at TenCrunch spotlights a growing wave of investors, firms like Bending Spoons
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  and Curious who are buying so called venture zombies or once VC backed software that have
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  lingered without rapid growth.
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  These investors follow a buy, fix, and hold forever model.
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  They acquire underperforming businesses at a fraction of high growth startups.
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  They centralize operations across their portfolio companies and really focus on
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  profitability.
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  And then they hold them indefinitely, earning steady recurring cash flow rather than chasing
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  those unicorn style returns that we like to see in VC.
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  So similar to private equity in some ways, but these firms have no plans really to sell the
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  businesses.
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  And Andrew Dumont, CEO of Curious, argues that this hold forever strategy will become much
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  more important in the coming years as AI native startups make older VC backed software
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  businesses relevant.
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  So, Charles, before we go deeper, I'm just curious.
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  Do you agree with Andrew's argument that this hold forever strategy will become more
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  important in the coming years?
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  I do.
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  I think it's an opportunity for people for those who didn't read the article, part of
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  what's important here is, like, these are not people who are acquiring these businesses with
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  the intention to flip them.
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  These are people who are like, hey, I'm happy owning this business forever.
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  And I think if you're gonna innovate in markets, I think it's helpful to understand,
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  well, what's something you're willing to do that other people aren't willing to do?
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  And I think what's interesting about Bending Spoons and Curious and other folks here is if
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  you're willing to hold an asset forever, that's very different than someone who's like, I
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  actually need to generate liquidity by selling this asset to somebody.
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  Either has to go public or has to get acquired.
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  And if you think about it, if you're like, look, I have something that I think is gonna
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  produce money for a long time.
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  If I can buy that asset and hold it and it can soon generate cash, that's great for the person
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  who owns that asset.
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  But, you know, sometimes as a fund manager, you have to think about what are the tax situations
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  of the people who gave you money.
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  Like, what do they care about?
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  And without turning this into, like, a deep dive on venture tax, there's a lot of things
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  that I think venture capitalists realize if you were to do them, for example, cash dividends,
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  have all kinds of weird tax consequences.
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  There's all these, like, features of venture capital funds that make it hard to do things
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  that are outside of the lines.
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  You know, if you think about it, venture funds are closed end funds.
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  At some point, you're supposed to return all of the money, liquidate all the positions, and the
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  fund is over.
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  That is at odds with a I'm willing to own this asset forever strategy.
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  And so I do think what's gonna happen is, one, most people don't think this is a good idea
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  yet.
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  And so the competition to buy these assets will be minimized because there's only so many EM
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  bending spoons.
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  There'll be a very small universe of bidders.
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  And second, in many cases, you're buying assets that are pretty mature, you don't have to spend
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  a lot of money on r and d.
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  The real question is, like, can you retain the customers long enough to pay off the purchase
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  price?
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  They I think they just announced spending spoons that they're buying Eventbrite.
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  Again, if you think about, like, what are the aspects of products that fit this model?
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  Very sticky customer bases over a long enough period of time that you know people are
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  unlikely to churn.
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  Not a ton of pressing need to keep up with a super aggressive feature development roadmap.
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  These are all, like, good things.
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  And so I think there will be a class of business that are a great fit for this model,
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  and it'll be a great way for those founders to find an off ramp, and it'll be a great way for
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  those holding companies.
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  I know a little about Bending Spoons.
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  These are fantastic businesses.
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  If you choose the right asset and if you can buy the asset at a price that makes sense.
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  Now look.
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  The problem is if this becomes a consensus good strategy, and there's 10 of them it's funny.
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  Like, I talked to a friend of mine who was doing one of these.
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  I'm gonna buy a bunch of tax firms and AI f y them, and he's like, the problem is there's too
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  many people who wanna do this.
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  So all of the assets I wanna buy are, like, two x minimum what the model said they would cost
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  me, and the model doesn't work as well at two x as it did at the original.
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  And so I think it's interesting that this article didn't come out when vending spoons and
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  carriers are getting started.
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  It's coming out on the back of some
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  Yep.
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  Pretty successful transactions on their part.
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  On the threat of creating newer off ramps, which we've talked a lot about on the podcast
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  of just trying to figure out new ways to usher startups into the next chapter that didn't
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  exist in earlier versions of venture, at what point do we as investors need to have these
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  conversations with founders that this is a possible route?
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  Ironically, sometimes these zombies were oftentimes seen as a funds value driver at one
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  point or the other, I can imagine, before it hit plateaued growth.
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  So at what point do you have
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  then Bright went public.
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  Yeah.
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  Evernote was once probably the king of note taking app.
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  I mean, the the irony is, like, in order to be interesting to this model, you have to achieve
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  some level of success that generates enough recurring cash flow that someone says, if I buy
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  this, it's not going to zero tomorrow.
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  And, you know, I've started doing this with our portfolio companies.
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  It's somewhere between the steed and the a to figure out what are you.
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  Are you a rule of 40 company?
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  Are you a rocket ship?
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  Are you something that's different?
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  I think what you don't wanna be is a venture company that's spending money like a venture
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  company, but not growing like a venture company.
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  I think that right now is the dead zone, which is like, oh, we're growing, like, 50% a year,
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  but, you know, we're burning a lot of cash to do so.
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  I'm like, there's no market for that company.
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  There's markets for profitable companies that are growing, like, at good rates, but not great
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  rates now.
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  We have another option for established companies that maybe aren't growing that
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  quickly Yeah.
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  But have really stable user bases and predictable cash flow.
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  And so I think increasingly, ironically, it's gonna be you just don't wanna be like a bad
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  venture business, a high burn, medium growth business.
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  I just don't think that's that's tenable right now.
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  I know Missy kind of asked a similar question yesterday, but when you think of the term
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  venture zombie, you typically mean that it doesn't have this hyper growth that VCs look
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  for.
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  I mean, gave good examples.
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  Some of these companies went public, so it's kind of in complete odds with what we're
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  talking about.
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  But does that mean that a company wasn't ever a VC backbull business to begin with, or were
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  there deeper reasons these companies stall out?
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  You know, I was an early investor in Eventbrite through during my time at EMCOREC.
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  There's a period of time where, like, Eventbrite was the part of all Luma.
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  It was, like, the modern event software, and it turns out building event software is a very
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  complicated enterprise business.
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  And, like, the world changed, and it it was a hard product.
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  But but, like, that was a company that was absolutely venture scale.
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  And for a while, Evernote was this magical note taking app.
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  Back when, like, working across all of your devices and staying in sync was actually a
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  really big deal.
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  And if you were an Evernote user, you were very avant garde in the same way that maybe when
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  Notion came out or or some of the or, you know, we could go back to the history of note taking
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  tools, Roam, Obsidian, all of these things.
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  It was the the Vanguard, and then it it wasn't anymore.
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  And so I think there's gonna be a new end of life scenario for a lot of these companies
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  where it's gonna be you hit this point where you're simply not growing, but you have an
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  established user base that wants to continue to pay for the product.
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  And someone needs to step in, and I I think if it's private equity, you're only gonna buy
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  these businesses if you think you can turn around and flip them back to somebody else or
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  take them public versus if you're one of these other folks, you might be like, hey.
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  I'm happy to just operate this thing.
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  With AI, it seems like there's just so many people coming into entrepreneurship and
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  building startups.
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  And I think that we're gonna have a lot more people reflecting on whether or not, you know,
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  they are a VC backed up business and having to, you know, reflect between the seed and series a
• 12:37
  what what they are?
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  I probably, in the last year, told more people.
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  I just don't see how you get on the VC trajectory with this business.
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  And it lands better than it did a few years ago.
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  I've usually been like, how dare you say something mean about my company?
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  I'm like, I'm not trying to say something mean.
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  I'm trying to save you from a bunch of wasted effort raising money.
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  And then if you are successful, a miserable experience running a business that isn't suited
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  for the type of capital you raised.
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  And I think in the last few years, I think there has been a subtle evolution.
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  And and I think some of this is there are founders who are less interested in venture
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  capital in some cases.
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  So telling somebody that our capital isn't the right fit for their business lands differently
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  when the person's like, oh, I'm not even sure I'd want it if you gave it to me.
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  So
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  And there's no need to publish the stories of all the founders who raised sub $5,000,000 and
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  are doing close to 90,000,000 in revenue, but they exist.
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  And, like, there's a reason why they're not in the media.
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  It's because they don't wanna be in that space at all.
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  No.
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  I mean, we have a handful of companies that by the time that the dust settles, they will be,
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  like, remarkably capital efficient.
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  But there's just not an interesting headline.
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  Company gets
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  It's profit.
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  Really, really huge and raises very little money in the process.
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  Like, that's a harder story to write.
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  If if this is gonna become more of a thing, somebody needs to figure out, like, how do you
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  write?
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  And I think the stories about the people in these businesses are very interesting and the
• 13:53
  way that they were able to achieve it.
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  It's funny.
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  I've almost never read a boring profile of a CPG founder.
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  It's like almost never they're almost never boring.
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  There's always some interesting insight.
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  They had to do one or two, like, kinda wild or crazy things to keep the business going.
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  Those are great stories, and so I'm I don't know.
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  I think there are many ways to build a great business, and venture is only one of them.
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  I think we can move to our last piece, which is an essay by space and defense economist and
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  investor Sinead O'Sullivan titled Out of Office When You're Burnt Out and Hollowed Out, A
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  Definition.
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  And Sinead pushes back against that popular idea that burnout is simply about doing too
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  much or really needing more rest.
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  Instead, she argues that the real burnout feels like a collapse of meaning or a hollowing out
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  of your emotional and internal world where structure, motivation, and identity just
• 14:44
  suddenly disappear.
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  She uses high intensity advanced programs, high apps, as the clearest example of how this
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  happens.
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  And these are extreme environments, such as elite sport programs, conservatories, military
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  pipelines, high pressure academic labs, and even certain finance and tech firms.
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  And these are places that compress time and meaning and identity and performance into a
• 15:07
  single very, very intense channel.
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  People in these systems can perform at an incredibly high levels because the external
• 15:15
  pressure really gives them clarity in structure.
• 15:17
  But when that external pressure disappears, the aftermath can really be disorienting and
• 15:23
  destabilizing.
• 15:24
  Without the extreme external demands, many people find they have no internal scaffolding
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  really, which is why just this rest that is often given as a prescription often makes
• 15:36
  burnout worse and not better.
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  So Sinead's really larger point is that burnout isn't about exhaustion or failure or stamina or
• 15:43
  really a lack of discipline.
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  It's about what happens when the only thing holding your identity together is that external
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  pressure.
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  So recovery then isn't about time off and more rest.
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  It's about slowly rebuilding an internal foundation and meaning and purpose through
• 15:59
  small self directed activities that can really reconnect what's actually fulfilling to you.
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  And so, Charles, I'm curious from the founder side.
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  How can investors recognize when a founder's burnout isn't about workload, but about the
• 16:12
  loss of internal meaning or structure?
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  And what does constructive support look like from a VC perspective when Yeah.
• 16:19
  A founder is hitting that kind of identity level burnout?
• 16:23
  Boy, miss, that gets a big topic.
• 16:25
  A couple of things.
• 16:26
  One, I often tell our portfolio company founders, there are effort problems and there
• 16:31
  are thinking problems that you're gonna face in your startup.
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  Effort problems are problems you can overcome simply through, like, sheer force of will and
• 16:39
  hours spent.
• 16:39
  That, again, effort problem is Cyber Monday, Black Friday, and you're an ecommerce retailer.
• 16:44
  You're just gonna be busy if you have a popular product.
• 16:46
  That is about can you actually get enough stuff in boxes?
• 16:48
  Can you, like, respond to enough sport tickets?
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  And then thinking problems are ones where spending more hours on it won't actually change
• 16:54
  the trajectory.
• 16:55
  And I find a lot of founders, I'll ask them, hey, think you're applying effort level energy
• 16:59
  to a thinking problem.
• 17:00
  And I'll say, hey, like, you've been working seventy hours a week and nothing's yielding.
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  I don't think the seventy first hour of work is the answer.
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  It's probably not the unlock.
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  Because you're already spending enough time that if time were gonna be the unlock, you
• 17:13
  would have unlocked the problem.
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  Maybe you need to take a step back and think about what are other ways.
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  And it's very hard to find people who are naturally action oriented and tell them,
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  actually, what I need you to do is to push less hard and I think you will see something.
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  And it's very counterintuitive to those people.
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  But I try really hard to convince them that it's the case.
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  And sometimes it's like, oh, I got sick and I couldn't work.
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  And suddenly I realized I was worried.
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  I was like, yeah.
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  Well, like, life intervened.
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  The other thing I will say is this is the whole reason I tell people I don't like doing rebound
• 17:38
  startups.
• 17:39
  Mhmm.
• 17:39
  For many founders, so much of their identity becomes being a startup founder of such and
• 17:45
  such company.
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  And when that goes away, it does leave a hole.
• 17:49
  You know, for a lot of people, the goal is, like, I wanna fill that hole as quickly as
• 17:52
  possible with something new.
• 17:54
  I'm gonna start a new company, so I have a new identity as the startup founder of this new
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  company.
• 17:57
  I'm like, yeah.
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  But you gotta, like, process everything that happened in your last company, and you gotta
• 18:02
  reestablish who you are before you use it again, which is why I tell a lot of our
• 18:06
  portfolio company founders, try very hard not to make your startup company too central in who
• 18:11
  you are.
• 18:12
  Find other parts of your personality or being that have meaning and that are important to
• 18:17
  you.
• 18:17
  It could be being a partner.
• 18:19
  It could be being a parent.
• 18:20
  It could be a hobby.
• 18:22
  It could be another passion.
• 18:24
  Find something else about you that transcends your startup.
• 18:28
  And I find the people who have other things that transcend their startup have an easier
• 18:33
  time dealing with setbacks.
• 18:35
  If the startup doesn't work out, it's not this totally ego destroying activity.
• 18:40
  And I find that there's a handful of people, I've worked with people, where the startup
• 18:43
  became such a big part of their identity.
• 18:45
  They to your point, missy, they didn't know what to do without it.
• 18:47
  When you give that feedback to founders, do they go and find that purpose and meaning
• 18:53
  outside of the startup?
• 18:54
  Do you find that they take your advice?
• 18:56
  Not usually the first time I give it to them.
• 18:58
  Because oftentimes they're like, a, that feels abstract.
• 19:01
  B, I don't actually have the problem that you're describing.
• 19:03
  Other people have that problem.
• 19:04
  At Z's like, oh, No.
• 19:05
  No.
• 19:05
  My startup's not my whole identity.
• 19:07
  It's trust me.
• 19:08
  Like, it isn't.
• 19:08
  And then the startup fails, and they're like, I feel like a failure.
• 19:12
  You know, I spent a lot of time with founders on on the other side.
• 19:14
  And I think a lot of them realized, like, oh, I had allowed this to become too big a part of my
• 19:18
  identity, and it has become too much of who I am.
• 19:21
  And, like, I didn't realize it in the moment because I was trying to make this thing
• 19:24
  successful.
• 19:25
  I was trying to, like, force it or will it to succeed.
• 19:28
  Now it's interesting with Precursor.
• 19:29
  We have a couple of folks who are on their next thing within our own portfolio, and you can
• 19:34
  feel the palpable difference between the rebound concept that you were describing,
• 19:38
  Charles, and I have really taken time to absorb what happened, reflect, and I am ready.
• 19:46
  Conversations with those founders who are like, but I'm not ready to take on investor capital
• 19:49
  yet.
• 19:50
  I'm just ready to start tinkering with the idea and wanna sound board with you, but I'm not
• 19:53
  ready to take on those people into my circle yet because I'm still recovering.
• 19:58
  And I've found, like, it's very clear when you're ready versus when you're like, I'm just
• 20:02
  itching to get back in.
• 20:03
  Let me out there.
• 20:04
  You know, in dating, only a handful of people are aware when they're in a rebound
• 20:07
  relationship.
• 20:08
  Like, no.
• 20:08
  No.
• 20:08
  I'm ready for love again.
• 20:09
  And I've had a handful of founders of our in our portfolio have been like, I cannot work on
• 20:13
  this company with you.
• 20:14
  It is too soon for me.
• 20:15
  I still don't know how I feel about your last company and my contribution to it, maybe not
• 20:21
  succeeding.
• 20:21
  Like, I don't know how I feel yet.
• 20:23
  And if I don't know how I feel, I don't know how you can be fully ready.
• 20:26
  And so I've told some people, like, I think this is too soon.
• 20:29
  It's one of the hardest things to do in venture.
• 20:31
  I find it it's hard to say no to people that you don't know.
• 20:34
  That's hard to use.
• 20:35
  So it's very hard to say no to someone that you worked with before who didn't, you know, commit
• 20:40
  a crime, who comes back to you and asks for money for another try.
• 20:44
  And I find myself in some cases just saying, I don't wanna do this.
• 20:47
  It's more of a not now, not a not ever.
• 20:50
  Mhmm.
• 20:51
  But probably the least fun conversations I have.
• 20:53
  This one's for Missy.
• 20:55
  I mean, naturally, we think about this through the lens of founders being burned out.
• 20:59
  But in a lot of the circles I've been sitting in, it's the individual contributors and more
• 21:04
  middle career folks who really feel very paralyzed by burnout and what to make of it.
• 21:09
  And Missy, I know you've had great operator experience across different emerging markets,
• 21:14
  so I wanted to pause and get any personal takes on this one from your perspective.
• 21:18
  In the article, there was a brief mention of startups where Sinead says that in startups,
• 21:24
  people often confuse belonging with martyrdom and treat chronic self sacrifice as evidence of
• 21:31
  the vision.
• 21:32
  And I deeply resonated with that.
• 21:34
  I've worked at three early stage startups now, and there were definitely times where there was
• 21:40
  a lot of self sacrifice from both me and and the team.
• 21:44
  But it stemmed, I think, more from fear than purpose and meaning sometimes.
• 21:48
  And Charles, you actually had mentioned this a few episodes ago when you and Mia were talking
• 21:53
  about the nine nine six working culture in San Francisco, that there are a lot of high
• 21:58
  achieving people in high stress environments in places like San Francisco that are working
• 22:02
  really hard, but they're doing it out of fear and anxiety, and that's just not really a good
• 22:07
  reason to hard.
• 22:09
  And I think in startups, it's just so intense, and there's so much to do that oftentimes it's
• 22:13
  really hard to recognize where the work is stemming from.
• 22:17
  And I think it's really important, at least for me when I was reflecting on this, for people to
• 22:21
  remember to check-in with themselves and ask, does what I'm doing make sense?
• 22:25
  Why am I doing what I'm doing?
• 22:27
  Does it actually add value or am I just working to work?
• 22:30
  And I think, Charles, you you touched on that a little bit earlier.
• 22:33
  And in my personal experience, even if I was working a lot, there were times that I was so
• 22:39
  energized because I had purpose and it added value.
• 22:41
  For example, Mia, we were talking about this a little little bit earlier, a couple of weeks
• 22:46
  ago.
• 22:46
  There was a week where the former CTO of Coinbase, Biology, he had posted a list of
• 22:52
  startups, And my startup was on the list, the startup I was working at at the time.
• 22:57
  And I got this idea that I was going to reach out to all the organizations on that list and
• 23:02
  within a week, and host this huge roundtable on Twitter Spaces.
• 23:05
  And I had to work a lot of hours and reach out to a lot of people and do a lot of relationship
• 23:10
  building.
• 23:11
  And it was incredibly intense.
• 23:13
  But I had purpose in a way that added a lot of value.
• 23:15
  And in the end, we actually got Balaji on.
• 23:18
  We got 14 organizations and 5,000 people tuned in.
• 23:22
  It was like such a a proud moment for me.
• 23:25
  I think that if that event hadn't made sense though and I was working all those hours and it
• 23:30
  didn't happen in a way that was meaningful and there were definitely many events and
• 23:35
  initiatives like that at startups I've worked at, then I think I would have felt more
• 23:39
  burnout.
• 23:39
  But in this case, with the Twitter space, I think that it added value in a way that I love.
• 23:44
  I love relationship building.
• 23:45
  I love connecting with people.
• 23:46
  I love learning and asking questions.
• 23:48
  And so I think in that case, it kind of touches on the point.
• 23:51
  Like, you can work a lot of hours, but if it adds that value in a way that's really special,
• 23:55
  yeah, then it feels really good and it doesn't feel like burnout.
• 23:58
  Perfect way to end the pod.
• 24:00
  We are all out of time today.
• 24:01
  Thank you, Charles, for stopping in.
• 24:03
  Thank you, Missy, for joining us this week.
• 24:05
  Thank you to our listeners for popping in as well.
• 24:08
  Please like and subscribe, and we will talk with you all next week.
• 24:11
  Thank you.
• 24:11
  Bye.