Latest / Earn Your Leisure / Study Hall: How to Become a Venture Capital Investor with John Henry
Transcript
- 0:00Speaker 1: Coach, the energy out there felt different. What changed for
- 0:03Speaker 1: the team today?
- 0:03Speaker 2: It was the new game day scratches from the California
- 0:06Speaker 2: Lottery players.
- 0:07Speaker 3: Everything.
- 0:07Speaker 2: Those games sent the team's energy through the roof.
- 0:09Speaker 1: Are you saying it was the off field play that
- 0:11Speaker 1: made the difference on the field.
- 0:13Speaker 2: Hey, little play makes your day, and today it made
- 0:15Speaker 2: the game.
- 0:16Speaker 4: That's all of now, Coach, one more question play the
- 0:19Speaker 4: new Los Angeles Chargers, San Francisco forty nine ers and
- 0:22Speaker 4: Los Angeles Rams scratchers from the California Lottery. A little
- 0:25Speaker 4: play can make your day. Peace made responsibilit must be
- 0:28Speaker 4: eighteen years or older to purchase late or claim.
- 0:30Speaker 3: What's going on?
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- 1:50Speaker 6: All right, so now we're gonna talk about VC. So
- 1:52Speaker 6: we talked about vcs before. Previously, we had an XNFL
- 1:54Speaker 6: play shot out to Mike Brown and he's doing equity
- 1:57Speaker 6: crowdfunding and he went to Duke he used to work
- 2:00Speaker 6: work in Silicon Valley, so he's Silicon Valley and so yeah,
- 2:06Speaker 6: he told us about the whole VC process and all that.
- 2:08Speaker 6: But like I said, one of the good things about
- 2:10Speaker 6: Ernie Lisia is that it's kind of turned into like
- 2:11Speaker 6: a college course in sorts where it's like you know,
- 2:14Speaker 6: a lot of these things you hear about, but nobody
- 2:16Speaker 6: really knows the inner workings of it. And from his perspective,
- 2:20Speaker 6: he told us from the outside end, but you actually
- 2:23Speaker 6: have a VC firm. Yes, so this is we're just
- 2:27Speaker 6: getting the apple sauce from the apple orchard. Yes, so
- 2:30Speaker 6: this is dope. So all right, all right, so we
- 2:33Speaker 6: gotta tell a story on this. How did you How
- 2:34Speaker 6: did you come into the venture capital world?
- 2:37Speaker 8: Okay, so after I sold my business, I at that
- 2:43Speaker 8: time was very passionate about building some kind of startup
- 2:46Speaker 8: community in Harlem. So I did that and it initially
- 2:49Speaker 8: started as like a little meet up that we call
- 2:51Speaker 8: co found Harlem, and it just kind of turned into
- 2:54Speaker 8: you know, at that point, because I sold the business,
- 2:56Speaker 8: I had a lot more bandwidth and creativity and runway,
- 2:58Speaker 8: and I wanted to make some shit happen, and so
- 3:00Speaker 8: we added a little business model behind it. It was
- 3:03Speaker 8: not a great one, but it turned into incubator of sorts.
- 3:06Speaker 8: I convinced a developer to give me space for free.
- 3:10Speaker 8: By the way, this is a thing you can I learned.
- 3:13Speaker 8: I learned a lot through co Found Harlem because it
- 3:15Speaker 8: was a non for profit that focused on economic development
- 3:18Speaker 8: so improve in the area. And so that that got
- 3:22Speaker 8: me to interface with politics.
- 3:24Speaker 6: So clpful because people might not be familiar. Co Found
- 3:27Speaker 6: Harlem was an initiative that you started to help small
- 3:31Speaker 6: businesses in Harlem get capital right.
- 3:33Speaker 8: Yes, it was the first incubator in Harlem, and so
- 3:35Speaker 8: that kind of project I stepped up a little bit
- 3:40Speaker 8: in my thinking. I got a little bit more macro
- 3:42Speaker 8: because I was going from just operating a business.
- 3:45Speaker 7: Now I'm helping other people operate.
- 3:47Speaker 8: So I'm interfacing with politics because I discovered, oh shit,
- 3:50Speaker 8: politicians care about the area getting better, but more.
- 3:53Speaker 7: Important than politicians.
- 3:55Speaker 8: Politicians have power, but real estate developers have a very
- 3:59Speaker 8: long term interest in the area. I discovered longer term
- 4:02Speaker 8: than politicians because politics are just like looking for the
- 4:05Speaker 8: quick election.
- 4:05Speaker 7: Yeah, these momokers are here forty fifty years.
- 4:09Speaker 8: And so I pitched a developer to give me free space,
- 4:13Speaker 8: and you know, it was a very.
- 4:14Speaker 7: Bold thing, and she was like, why would I do that.
- 4:16Speaker 8: I was like, well, because I'm gonna incubate businesses and
- 4:19Speaker 8: the only thing I'm going to ask for them is
- 4:21Speaker 8: that they stay in Harlem.
- 4:22Speaker 9: Yeah, I think that's one of the things you said
- 4:23Speaker 9: right that the businesses had to put their headquarters in Harlem.
- 4:26Speaker 7: Yes, for four years.
- 4:27Speaker 8: It ended up it started as four I ended up
- 4:29Speaker 8: being two Oka and so anyway, so yeah, so we
- 4:32Speaker 8: were able to get free space because they were like,
- 4:34Speaker 8: all right, bet, like, we want the value of our
- 4:36Speaker 8: proper our main business residence is to go up. So
- 4:39Speaker 8: they had some retail that was opened, so our bet
- 4:41Speaker 8: cool take that. So yeah, so we got the space,
- 4:43Speaker 8: we got mentors, we made a little bit of buzz,
- 4:45Speaker 8: we got companies applying. All of a sudden, I'm running
- 4:47Speaker 8: an incubator. It's a non for profit incubator. I'm raising
- 4:50Speaker 8: money through grants and fund you know, and sponsors and
- 4:54Speaker 8: shit like that. And I inadvertently got into running kind.
- 4:58Speaker 7: Of an event's business. We had a little bit of
- 4:59Speaker 7: event That's.
- 5:00Speaker 8: When I really started dipping my toe into content and
- 5:03Speaker 8: building a community type business. And then eventually one of
- 5:06Speaker 8: my biggest donors, who I didn't know. His name is
- 5:12Speaker 8: David Rose. He's a very prolific angel investor. He's one
- 5:16Speaker 8: of the most active in New York City. He pretty
- 5:18Speaker 8: much was like, yo, I come from a big real
- 5:20Speaker 8: estate family. You might not know that, but I want
- 5:23Speaker 8: you to do what you did for cofound Harlem for
- 5:25Speaker 8: us and learn the investment side.
- 5:27Speaker 7: Can you describe what an angel funder?
- 5:29Speaker 8: Yes, So an angel investor invests in startups with their
- 5:33Speaker 8: own money. A VC of venture capitalists invest in startups
- 5:39Speaker 8: with other people's money. And that's really the key distinction.
- 5:43Speaker 8: And so David Rose is a prolific angel and he
- 5:46Speaker 8: wanted me to He wanted to recruit me and help
- 5:49Speaker 8: him run a fund, as a real estate technology fund.
- 5:53Speaker 8: So we invested in real estate technology, not physical stuff,
- 5:57Speaker 8: property management software. And I told Dave, I was like, yo,
- 5:59Speaker 8: I don't really know any of this. He's like, John,
- 6:01Speaker 8: we know real estate. You bring your energy.
- 6:03Speaker 7: So anyway, fast forward a year.
- 6:05Speaker 8: We learned, you know, we made some good investments, and
- 6:09Speaker 8: like I sourced the deals on my own, like I
- 6:11Speaker 8: did everything on my own because they was too busy
- 6:12Speaker 8: to really give me guidance. But the most important thing
- 6:15Speaker 8: I learned had nothing to do with the job itself.
- 6:19Speaker 8: It had to do with like the family had generational wealth,
- 6:23Speaker 8: Like they controlled thous dozens of thousands of units in
- 6:27Speaker 8: New York City. I mean truly a legacy family, man.
- 6:31Speaker 8: I mean, when you go to you know, Dizzey's Club,
- 6:34Speaker 8: That's that's the Rose. You know the Rose Hall. If
- 6:37Speaker 8: you go to the American Museum of Natural History, it's
- 6:39Speaker 8: the Rose Planetarium. Like they're embedded in what it means
- 6:42Speaker 8: to be New York. Mister Rose, as David's father, large
- 6:45Speaker 8: and part funded Martin Luther King Junior's original Millienmire March
- 6:48Speaker 8: in nineteen sixty three. I mean, we're talking about a
- 6:52Speaker 8: legacy family. And so at that point, man, I really
- 6:54Speaker 8: caught the bug. I was like, yo, I gotta go
- 6:56Speaker 8: do this for us. So I went back uptown. I
- 7:00Speaker 8: met the fellas whom are now my partners at ACP.
- 7:04Speaker 8: They had their own background. They come from a more
- 7:07Speaker 8: academic background, and they were fortunate to be exposed to
- 7:12Speaker 8: finance early. You know, I learned this shit through being
- 7:15Speaker 8: an entrepreneur. They learned this through like there are pathways
- 7:18Speaker 8: and programs in place. There's one called SEO and there's
- 7:22Speaker 8: one called MLT. These are placement programs specifically for people
- 7:26Speaker 8: of color to break into investment banking. That's only in
- 7:29Speaker 8: New York or this is nationwide, I want to say.
- 7:33Speaker 8: And and yeah, these brothers actually all you know, they
- 7:37Speaker 8: the group was bigger back then.
- 7:38Speaker 7: They all met in these.
- 7:39Speaker 8: Placement programs, all working for banks, Goldman, Bank of America,
- 7:43Speaker 8: shit like that, and they decided like, yo, let's put
- 7:46Speaker 8: our bread to work. So that you know, they started
- 7:48Speaker 8: doing that, and they kept hearing about me, because that's
- 7:51Speaker 8: one thing. If you are top of mind at whatever
- 7:54Speaker 8: you do, you're going to get more opportunities. And so
- 7:58Speaker 8: you know, eventually they came on my radar, we met,
- 8:01Speaker 8: and we started investing together. And one thing to clarify,
- 8:04Speaker 8: and this is really important because you know, people want
- 8:08Speaker 8: to get into VC like they think, if you don't
- 8:10Speaker 8: have a million dollars, you can't do it. But in reality,
- 8:12Speaker 8: our first few checks were like ten or fifteen K
- 8:15Speaker 8: by the way, split between like five guys, so it's
- 8:19Speaker 8: like it was like literally two or three k each.
- 8:23Speaker 3: So that's what you all came to the table, like
- 8:25Speaker 3: three thousand piece.
- 8:26Speaker 7: Yes, that's enough right now. Now, Look, if you.
- 8:32Speaker 8: Can't make slash save enough to make two or three K,
- 8:36Speaker 8: you're not ready. But if you're not bullshitting and you're
- 8:40Speaker 8: serious about your shit, you can stack two K, two
- 8:43Speaker 8: or three K.
- 8:43Speaker 9: So five of you come up with three thousand, got fifteen,
- 8:47Speaker 9: We put together fifteen and then what's the vision now?
- 8:49Speaker 8: Like and then and then it's like, all right, bet,
- 8:52Speaker 8: now where do we put it?
- 8:54Speaker 3: You know?
- 8:55Speaker 8: And so the quality of your deal flow increases over time.
- 8:59Speaker 8: But at first, you know, we caught word of a
- 9:02Speaker 8: local cafe that was looking for money.
- 9:05Speaker 6: Cool.
- 9:05Speaker 8: We put a little bit of bread into that, got
- 9:07Speaker 8: to experience what it was like to be invested in
- 9:09Speaker 8: small business. We caught word of a dental practice. A
- 9:13Speaker 8: guy that was buying in dental practice is looking for money.
- 9:16Speaker 7: Ooh.
- 9:17Speaker 8: You know, because you start communicating y'all, I'm looking for
- 9:19Speaker 8: businesses to invest in, you do get deal flow back.
- 9:22Speaker 8: You put it out and you start getting deal flow back.
- 9:25Speaker 8: We caught word of a venture company, and so we
- 9:27Speaker 8: invested in a couple of different few different assets.
- 9:30Speaker 7: The initial fifteen. No, we're grossing as we go.
- 9:32Speaker 8: No. So it was like we did capital calls, which
- 9:35Speaker 8: is like, hey, we found a deal, it's time to
- 9:37Speaker 8: put bread up.
- 9:39Speaker 7: So that's a capital call, and you hit the whole group.
- 9:40Speaker 7: Between all the five of you, there was like six six,
- 9:43Speaker 7: So there was like six all right.
- 9:44Speaker 6: So now it's like, okay, we put the first fifteen,
- 9:46Speaker 6: but you you have to put five more in.
- 9:48Speaker 8: Each Yeah, I mean five was a lot for me
- 9:50Speaker 8: at the time, but like you know, it was like, hey,
- 9:53Speaker 8: we found a deal. Who can put what was really
- 9:56Speaker 8: the question? And like if I was more liquid at
- 9:59Speaker 8: that time and really liked the deal, I might have
- 10:01Speaker 8: put four.
- 10:02Speaker 7: And then we might've had.
- 10:03Speaker 8: A partner who was like, ooh, I can only put
- 10:04Speaker 8: one right now, and so it would vary and so yeah,
- 10:08Speaker 8: over time.
- 10:09Speaker 5: You know.
- 10:10Speaker 8: The interesting thing, and this is credit to my partners
- 10:12Speaker 8: at harm Capital, is like we always treated twenty five
- 10:16Speaker 8: k like it was twenty five million, and now we've
- 10:21Speaker 8: closed on twenty five million. So you know, so it's
- 10:24Speaker 8: just crazy because you got to treat the baby step
- 10:28Speaker 8: with as much respect as the end goal.
- 10:30Speaker 6: So how did you all right, how did that work out?
- 10:32Speaker 6: As far as the first early like look at even
- 10:35Speaker 6: the first deal that you had a dentist office or
- 10:36Speaker 6: the bakery. You gave him like what like five thousand
- 10:39Speaker 6: dollars something like that or yeah.
- 10:40Speaker 8: So so the way the actual mechanics is, I know
- 10:43Speaker 8: Yl likes to get into that is so the way
- 10:47Speaker 8: you do it is you form an LLC.
- 10:49Speaker 7: Okay, okay, and so each of the partners become members
- 10:53Speaker 7: in that LLC.
- 10:54Speaker 8: You name that shit whatever you want, and yeah, so
- 10:57Speaker 8: it ends up being what we call an SPV, which
- 11:00Speaker 8: is a special purpose vehicle, which is pretty much fancy
- 11:02Speaker 8: talk for saying like, hey, anytime we invest in said company,
- 11:07Speaker 8: it's gonna come through this entity, right, And the LLC
- 11:10Speaker 8: is a fascinating legal entity because it's a flow through entity.
- 11:14Speaker 8: So it's like, you become members in that and like
- 11:18Speaker 8: you on the company. Let's say we invest in you know,
- 11:22Speaker 8: the cafe on that company's docs, on the formation documents
- 11:26Speaker 8: for that company, they're going to see Harlem Capital Partners
- 11:30Speaker 8: LLC on there.
- 11:32Speaker 7: But then you.
- 11:33Speaker 8: Know, if we make a profit or a loss, the
- 11:37Speaker 8: profits and or losses from that entity flows through to
- 11:40Speaker 8: each of the individual partners. So it's really just like
- 11:43Speaker 8: a like a shield. It's like a step step away
- 11:47Speaker 8: is removed. So anyway you make an LLC, you invite whomever,
- 11:51Speaker 8: for anyone listening who wants to create a little syndicate.
- 11:53Speaker 8: That's what you call it, an angel syndicate. You invite
- 11:57Speaker 8: homies that you think are serious, you join the l
- 12:00Speaker 8: see you brand it, come up with a cool name,
- 12:02Speaker 8: and then you start communicating into the world at large
- 12:05Speaker 8: that you're looking to invest, and you know, and then
- 12:08Speaker 8: you look for deal flow, and that's you know, that's
- 12:10Speaker 8: how it works. And so we would put ten k,
- 12:12Speaker 8: and then I think we ended up doing like six
- 12:14Speaker 8: deals as angels, ten, fifteen, twenty if it was a
- 12:18Speaker 8: hot deal, ten if I was low on cash, and like, man,
- 12:24Speaker 8: it's not really about We haven't seen a dollar, by
- 12:27Speaker 8: the way, from any of the Angel investments we've made.
- 12:30Speaker 8: In fact, we've lost money. Yeah, the cafe closed down.
- 12:34Speaker 8: You know, we've seen some distributions from the dental practice,
- 12:36Speaker 8: but not really a lot of stuff doesn't work out
- 12:38Speaker 8: according to plan. But the most important thing is being
- 12:41Speaker 8: on the ride. Like I don't listen to anyone in
- 12:45Speaker 8: business who hasn't lost more money than me. Like, you
- 12:49Speaker 8: gotta get skin in the game. I can't take you
- 12:52Speaker 8: serious if you don't have skin in the game. Like
- 12:55Speaker 8: you guys got cameras, you got mics.
- 12:57Speaker 3: Lost a lot of money if this shit.
- 12:59Speaker 8: Wouldn't have worked, Like you know, you got the focus right,
- 13:03Speaker 8: you got the mac butt, Like you know what I'm saying.
- 13:05Speaker 8: Like you guys are putting bread in you put bread
- 13:07Speaker 8: up to buy the shirts. You're putting bread in right,
- 13:10Speaker 8: and and so anyway, with the angel investing thing, it's
- 13:13Speaker 8: a lot more important to get in the game.
- 13:16Speaker 7: And you will not know this why.
- 13:18Speaker 8: At the beginning you asked me, like, yo, if I
- 13:19Speaker 8: got any book tips, and I said, I don't really
- 13:20Speaker 8: fuck with books, because you will not know what acid
- 13:24Speaker 8: class you like until you invest in it.
- 13:27Speaker 7: I thought I loved.
- 13:28Speaker 8: Investing in small business, and then I discovered I really
- 13:30Speaker 8: don't like this ship because when I was meeting with
- 13:32Speaker 8: the business owners, we were talking about napkins and forks,
- 13:34Speaker 8: and I'm like, dude, you know, I want to talk
- 13:36Speaker 8: about scale, and you know, like this just wasn't It
- 13:39Speaker 8: wasn't for me.
- 13:40Speaker 7: I discovered that I like real estate a lot.
- 13:43Speaker 8: I love real estate. I wouldn't have known that unless
- 13:46Speaker 8: I jumped in. So I'm a really big fan of
- 13:48Speaker 8: jumping in. And if you can't jump in a big scale,
- 13:50Speaker 8: you're jumping in a small scale.
- 13:52Speaker 7: Just jump in. So how does that work when it's
- 13:54Speaker 7: six of you?
- 13:54Speaker 9: Right as far as decisions, is it like majority or
- 13:57Speaker 9: if it's like you know what, you don't like it,
- 13:59Speaker 9: you're just not part.
- 14:00Speaker 7: Yeah, So it has changed over time.
- 14:02Speaker 8: So when we were an angel syndicate, it was like, hey,
- 14:05Speaker 8: are you interested.
- 14:06Speaker 7: Some folks might have said no.
- 14:09Speaker 8: But also, you know, going back to this business is
- 14:11Speaker 8: really a people first thing. You know, it's also respect
- 14:14Speaker 8: for your partners, because your partner might find a good
- 14:16Speaker 8: deal and you know, might have gotten in a good
- 14:18Speaker 8: rapport with that founder and then two months in it's
- 14:22Speaker 8: time to invest, and like, you know, I want to
- 14:25Speaker 8: support the fact that my partner's excited about this deal,
- 14:27Speaker 8: and I'm gonna put I'm not going to step up big.
- 14:30Speaker 8: I might put up a thousand and be like yo,
- 14:32Speaker 8: all right, cool, you know, put that in the deal. Conversely,
- 14:36Speaker 8: when it's a hot deal, when it's by the way,
- 14:39Speaker 8: hot deals, you're not they're not pitching you, you're pitching
- 14:42Speaker 8: them to get in. Hot deals are oversubscribed, meaning a
- 14:47Speaker 8: company typically will raise a finite amount of capital that's
- 14:51Speaker 8: what we call around at a fixed evaluation. Okay, so
- 14:55Speaker 8: they'll say, hey, I'm raising one point five million dollars
- 14:58Speaker 8: at an eight million dollar valuation, i e. They're giving
- 15:01Speaker 8: away twenty percent of the company. And then if it's
- 15:04Speaker 8: a high deal, you get good funds in investing, and
- 15:10Speaker 8: so like a fund you know, is like for anyone
- 15:14Speaker 8: maybe doesn't know, is like you know entrepreneurs who go
- 15:17Speaker 8: out there and rate.
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- 16:03Speaker 8: Erners.
- 16:03Speaker 3: What's up?
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- 17:10Speaker 1: Coach, the energy out there felt different. What changed for
- 17:13Speaker 1: the team today?
- 17:14Speaker 2: It was the new game day, scratches from the California
- 17:16Speaker 2: Lottery players, everything. Those games sent the team's energy through
- 17:19Speaker 2: the roof.
- 17:20Speaker 1: Are you saying it was the off field play that
- 17:22Speaker 1: made the difference on the field.
- 17:23Speaker 2: Hey, little play makes your day, and today it made
- 17:26Speaker 2: the game. That's all for now, Coach, One more question.
- 17:29Speaker 4: Play the new Los Angeles Chargers, San Francisco forty nine
- 17:32Speaker 4: ers and Los Angeles Rams Scratchers from the California Lottery.
- 17:35Speaker 4: A little play can make your day. Peace made responsibily.
- 17:38Speaker 4: Must be eighteen years or older to purchase plate or claim.
- 17:40Speaker 8: Paise money from the market. You know, in institutions and downmns,
- 17:44Speaker 8: shit like that. And you know they have a great
- 17:47Speaker 8: brand name. And over time, especially from Silicon Valley, you've
- 17:50Speaker 8: had prestige funds emerge. These are funds that have proven
- 17:54Speaker 8: track record that they know how to spot winners Sequoia, Benchmark,
- 17:58Speaker 8: Kleiner Perkins.
- 17:59Speaker 7: Whenever you see them on the cap table.
- 18:02Speaker 8: The cap table is short for capitalization table, which is
- 18:06Speaker 8: the page on your company's documents that shows who owns
- 18:09Speaker 8: what and so the cap table, you'll see a list
- 18:12Speaker 8: and it'll say NAS invested fifty K owns too PID. Yeah,
- 18:18Speaker 8: and so he also invests an angel you know such
- 18:20Speaker 8: and such invested this.
- 18:21Speaker 7: So the cap table. So we have this thing in VC.
- 18:24Speaker 8: You want to be on cap tables, you know, like
- 18:26Speaker 8: a lot of motherfuckers talking shit.
- 18:27Speaker 7: But I never see you on the cap table. You know,
- 18:30Speaker 7: you might be at.
- 18:31Speaker 8: The club table, but I don't see you at the
- 18:32Speaker 8: cat table at the crap table. Yeah right right, so
- 18:37Speaker 8: that's good on the cat table.
- 18:39Speaker 7: You ain't on the cat table.
- 18:41Speaker 8: So so so anyway, Yeah, when you see a marquee fund,
- 18:48Speaker 8: meaning a top fund on the cat table, it's a
- 18:50Speaker 8: competitive deal. That founder has options, and we were fortunate
- 18:53Speaker 8: a couple of times to squeeze into a very competitive deal.
- 18:57Speaker 8: And in those deals, when a deal is hot, you
- 18:59Speaker 8: want to make sure you as much as it costs you.
- 19:02Speaker 8: I don't care if you got to pawn your fucking watch,
- 19:04Speaker 8: get in the deal in as big of a way
- 19:06Speaker 8: as you can.
- 19:07Speaker 7: You might lose that money. I'm not gonna lie.
- 19:10Speaker 8: But when you can get a good amount of exposure
- 19:13Speaker 8: into that deal, you know those deals that end up
- 19:15Speaker 8: doing ten twenty.
- 19:16Speaker 6: X, I'm an ask you a question for some good
- 19:19Speaker 6: deal before I forget this. The reason the reason why
- 19:22Speaker 6: I like this podcast is that we get to interview
- 19:23Speaker 6: people and nobody. Like the last guest that we had
- 19:25Speaker 6: was talking about stocks shot the Wallstreet Trapper and he
- 19:28Speaker 6: was saying how it excites him and like you I
- 19:31Speaker 6: could see like it's like you've seen paid in full before.
- 19:33Speaker 7: Yeah, okay, so so and.
- 19:37Speaker 6: Mitch, he was like I love a game. Obviously he
- 19:39Speaker 6: was talk about illegal game. But business is like a
- 19:42Speaker 6: it's like a competitive sport. So it's like, that's what
- 19:45Speaker 6: I really loved, Like even with Steve Jobs when he
- 19:47Speaker 6: said that it's the process that really excites him, not
- 19:50Speaker 6: even getting this is the journey. And it's like for
- 19:53Speaker 6: people I really want everybody to understand, even like with
- 19:56Speaker 6: the podcast, it's like it's ups and downs, but it's
- 19:59Speaker 6: an exciting ride.
- 20:00Speaker 3: Sure, and I could tell it.
- 20:01Speaker 6: I could see the excitement when you're telling a story,
- 20:03Speaker 6: and it's like for people that have never been entrepreneurs, I.
- 20:07Speaker 3: Just encourage just to have that feeling.
- 20:09Speaker 8: Yeah.
- 20:10Speaker 3: Man, it's like a natural.
- 20:12Speaker 7: The feeling is everything, bro.
- 20:13Speaker 3: But I wanted to ask you, so, how do you all?
- 20:15Speaker 8: Right?
- 20:15Speaker 6: So you started as Angel investors and you said that
- 20:17Speaker 6: didn't really work out for you guys for the most part,
- 20:18Speaker 6: it wasn't profitable.
- 20:20Speaker 8: Yeah, I mean so, so one thing to know is
- 20:22Speaker 8: like when you make an angel investment, the yield curve
- 20:25Speaker 8: on it, meaning the amount of time with which you're
- 20:29Speaker 8: expected to make anything back, if at all, is typically
- 20:32Speaker 8: seven to nine years because that's the average life cycle
- 20:35Speaker 8: of a business. And so when I say we haven't
- 20:37Speaker 8: made any money, it's like a chance for sure, and
- 20:41Speaker 8: we're in some companies that were expecting to make some
- 20:43Speaker 8: money back. But like you, I quickly found out, like
- 20:48Speaker 8: it's funny because you know I'm making you know, we're
- 20:51Speaker 8: making deals and every time we make a deal, and
- 20:53Speaker 8: we announced that deal, and so my social was blowing up.
- 20:55Speaker 7: Yo, your angel.
- 20:57Speaker 8: I'm like, yeah, yeah, you know, and then I'm I'm like, fuck,
- 21:00Speaker 8: I'm not seeing any money. Like it just literally feels
- 21:04Speaker 8: like you're just like your money's just disappearing because it
- 21:08Speaker 8: goes to work. And then what happens for anyone who
- 21:11Speaker 8: doesn't know how you make money adventure? You only make
- 21:14Speaker 8: money in venture on a liquidation event, which is the
- 21:20Speaker 8: company is sold. You do not contrary to small business investing,
- 21:24Speaker 8: if you invest in an ice cream shop, barbershop, restaurant, whatever,
- 21:28Speaker 8: you're yielding.
- 21:29Speaker 7: Profits, so you have a profit split.
- 21:31Speaker 9: So because the example would be like when nas Or
- 21:35Speaker 9: in his firm invest in Ring and then Ring gets
- 21:37Speaker 9: put by Amazon.
- 21:39Speaker 8: Or pill pack correct right, pill pack. So if you
- 21:43Speaker 8: invest in a restaurant, you're making quarterly dividends. You get
- 21:46Speaker 8: cash flows in venture because you're typically reinvesting profits in
- 21:52Speaker 8: the business because growth and profits are inversely correlated. If
- 21:55Speaker 8: you want to grow, you got to sacrifice profits, and
- 21:58Speaker 8: so it's a very different kind of investing game. So
- 22:01Speaker 8: you don't invest in a startup with the pretense that
- 22:04Speaker 8: you're going to get profits.
- 22:06Speaker 7: You would be hurting that business. So the trick.
- 22:09Speaker 8: Is jumping in and getting in early at a nice valuation.
- 22:13Speaker 8: On average, we invest in businesses along the businesses that
- 22:17Speaker 8: are coming from the Midwest are on average valued between
- 22:19Speaker 8: four to six million inventure and businesses along the coast
- 22:22Speaker 8: are valued between eight to ten million. So now eighty
- 22:26Speaker 8: percent of m and A, which is mergers and acquisitions,
- 22:30Speaker 8: are happening right now between the one hundred and fifty
- 22:32Speaker 8: to two hundred million dollars price point. Like gimblet Media
- 22:35Speaker 8: got acquired for two hundred million by Spotify or whatever.
- 22:39Speaker 8: If I would have gotten into Gimli Media when they
- 22:40Speaker 8: were worth ten million, you do the math on that.
- 22:42Speaker 8: You get in at ten, they get sold at two hundred. Whoop,
- 22:45Speaker 8: you know you got a twenty x. So what money
- 22:48Speaker 8: did you put into that deal? You know, if you
- 22:50Speaker 8: put in one hundred, that'll tell you what you net
- 22:52Speaker 8: at the back end. So anyway, I'm just clarifying how
- 22:56Speaker 8: you actually make money in venture. You get in into
- 22:58Speaker 8: the sweet spot, and then that business grows and if
- 23:02Speaker 8: you're fortunate, it gets acquired and then you net.
- 23:05Speaker 9: What's the difference between the valuation of cities that are
- 23:09Speaker 9: inland and the ones against the coast.
- 23:11Speaker 7: That's a great question.
- 23:12Speaker 8: And the real reason that businesses are priced differently based
- 23:16Speaker 8: on geographies is due to cost of living.
- 23:19Speaker 7: Okay, so like.
- 23:20Speaker 8: Businesses make, you might make more as an individual in
- 23:23Speaker 8: New York, and so as a result, employees are more expensive,
- 23:27Speaker 8: offices are worth more and so, and there's also more
- 23:30Speaker 8: capital in that market, and so you can usually justify
- 23:33Speaker 8: a higher price point, Whereas I love investing in businesses
- 23:36Speaker 8: from the Midwest because they're reasonably priced.
- 23:38Speaker 7: In fact, they say this is a nugget.
- 23:40Speaker 8: Vcs say that the actual valuation, the true valuation of
- 23:44Speaker 8: a business is the Midwest valuation. And then when you
- 23:47Speaker 8: go out to the coast you get inflated because when
- 23:50Speaker 8: you're in Silicon Valley, those motherfuckers will pay any price
- 23:52Speaker 8: for any business. And so we actually rarely invested, We
- 23:56Speaker 8: haven't invested in a single business from the valley, because
- 23:58Speaker 8: by the time they come to us, they're like, oh, yeah,
- 24:01Speaker 8: we're worth twenty million dollars. I'm like, show me a revenue.
- 24:03Speaker 8: They got one hundred k revenue. I ain't paying twenty
- 24:06Speaker 8: million for one hundred k revenue. So, like there's one
- 24:09Speaker 8: thing to know as well. It's like there's actual different
- 24:12Speaker 8: investment climates among the coasts. The West coast is very like, yo,
- 24:17Speaker 8: we're looking at scale by any means, and the East
- 24:20Speaker 8: Coast is a little bit more like conservative, We're looking
- 24:22Speaker 8: for revenue and a little bit more modest growth, but revenue.
- 24:25Speaker 6: So how did you guys go? You have twenty five
- 24:28Speaker 6: million dollar war chests right now.
- 24:31Speaker 8: Yeah, yeah, it's a little bit beyond that. And we
- 24:34Speaker 8: get this a lot because people say, yeah, I want
- 24:36Speaker 8: to break into VC. Well, there's a number of ways.
- 24:38Speaker 7: You either.
- 24:41Speaker 8: Work at a venture firm, good luck breaking into one,
- 24:44Speaker 8: they're very exclusive, or like the path that we took,
- 24:48Speaker 8: we started as angels, and eventually once you have enough
- 24:51Speaker 8: of a track record you can you can go out
- 24:54Speaker 8: to the market as a whole and say hey, here's
- 24:57Speaker 8: my thesis, like here's my idea, and it could be
- 25:01Speaker 8: like our shit is around investing in the you know,
- 25:03Speaker 8: diverse founders, like we invest in women and minorities. But
- 25:06Speaker 8: that doesn't have to be your thesis. Your thesis could
- 25:08Speaker 8: be around sports, Your thesis could be around music. Yo,
- 25:10Speaker 8: I want to create a fund that invests in you know,
- 25:13Speaker 8: music companies, sports companies, sewage, you name it. And the
- 25:20Speaker 8: true test of whether you can raise a fund or
- 25:22Speaker 8: not is if you can convince enough people to believe
- 25:24Speaker 8: in your ship. And what I found out raising money
- 25:27Speaker 8: is there's a lot of montherfuckers with money for wealth.
- 25:32Speaker 9: You said you said that the founding the goal is
- 25:36Speaker 9: to invest in one thousand companies over the next twenty years, right, sir,
- 25:39Speaker 9: So that would mean like fifty companies, is that the goal?
- 25:41Speaker 9: Like you're doing fifty companies, we're.
- 25:43Speaker 8: Doing a thousand founders over twenty years. So like if
- 25:47Speaker 8: we invest in one company has four founders, we're counting
- 25:49Speaker 8: that as four. But yeah, the way our fund model
- 25:52Speaker 8: is structure. Right now, we're looking at doing uh, you know,
- 25:56Speaker 8: thirty deals out of this first fund and then you
- 26:01Speaker 8: know it'll accelerate, so it's not very linear. It's like
- 26:03Speaker 8: our first fund might be twenty five to forty million
- 26:06Speaker 8: our second fund is going to be one hundred million,
- 26:08Speaker 8: then court you know, then quarter billion and then a billion.
- 26:11Speaker 7: You know, we're you know, we're thinking pretty big.
- 26:13Speaker 6: So it's our relationship people. You build relationship people when
- 26:15Speaker 6: they invest in your fund.
- 26:17Speaker 7: Yep, that's right.
- 26:18Speaker 8: The same way that entrepreneurs are asking for money, we're
- 26:22Speaker 8: doing the same ship.
- 26:23Speaker 3: Okay.
- 26:24Speaker 8: And so the biggest misconception, like when we close our
- 26:26Speaker 8: fund and we make the announcement, I think it's gonna
- 26:28Speaker 8: make a very big splash because we're gonna be like,
- 26:31Speaker 8: you know, young of color, and I think we we're
- 26:34Speaker 8: gonna raise a considerable amount. People are gonna look at
- 26:38Speaker 8: the headline and automatically think.
- 26:40Speaker 5: That you.
- 26:42Speaker 7: Our bread.
- 26:43Speaker 8: Okay, full disclosure, not our It's very important that.
- 26:47Speaker 6: A lot of times people that Angel in the VC
- 26:50Speaker 6: they kind of get that mix and they think, if
- 26:51Speaker 6: you have a VC firm, all of that money is
- 26:53Speaker 6: your money that you're putting up.
- 26:55Speaker 8: Yeah, and if you want so, I'll just break this
- 26:57Speaker 8: down quickly. The fund my all right, this is how
- 27:00Speaker 8: you make money. When you cross over from ANGEL to VC.
- 27:04Speaker 8: You get paid a what's called the two and twenty.
- 27:07Speaker 8: That's the fee structure. So the two refers to your
- 27:11Speaker 8: management fee. So whatever the total size of your fund is.
- 27:15Speaker 8: This is why your incentivized to go for a big fund.
- 27:17Speaker 8: Whatever the total size of that fund is, two percent
- 27:21Speaker 8: of that annually is what you make as your fee.
- 27:25Speaker 8: So on a twenty five million dollar fund, two percent
- 27:28Speaker 8: of that is five hundred grand, So you get five
- 27:30Speaker 8: hundred grand every year to pay for a salary, office, travel, everything. Now,
- 27:37Speaker 8: if you know, with a team of four in office
- 27:40Speaker 8: and stuff like that, like you know, you might make
- 27:41Speaker 8: one hundred g's on salary, Like that's nice, but you're
- 27:44Speaker 8: not going to get rich off of that. You're not
- 27:46Speaker 8: meant to get rich off of that.
- 27:48Speaker 7: The LP. There's two kinds of partners in the fund.
- 27:50Speaker 8: There's the GP, the general partner, which is the partner's
- 27:52Speaker 8: putting in the work, and then there's the LP's a
- 27:55Speaker 8: limited partners, the person who's investing. So your LPs do
- 27:58Speaker 8: not want you to get rich off the fees because
- 28:00Speaker 8: then you would never work. You get rich on the
- 28:03Speaker 8: other side. I remember I said it's two and twenty
- 28:05Speaker 8: too is a management fee. The twenty is what we
- 28:08Speaker 8: call the carry, and the carry is your share of
- 28:12Speaker 8: the profits. So now because we can, because we can
- 28:18Speaker 8: get in a little detail.
- 28:19Speaker 7: I'll just explain this.
- 28:21Speaker 8: Typically, you as the GP, if you set out to
- 28:23Speaker 8: go raise a fund, your commitment to the fund. You
- 28:27Speaker 8: put up one percent of the total fund. Okay, So
- 28:31Speaker 8: if my partners and I are set out to raise,
- 28:34Speaker 8: as an example, twenty million, one percent of that is
- 28:37Speaker 8: two hundred thousand. So we have to come up with
- 28:39Speaker 8: two hundred g's across you know, the four of us. Okay,
- 28:42Speaker 8: bet now, but here's a mind blowing ship. Remember I
- 28:46Speaker 8: said the twenty is that refers to your share of
- 28:49Speaker 8: the profits, which is twenty percent. So we're making twenty
- 28:53Speaker 8: percent of the profits on twenty million. So it's just
- 28:58Speaker 8: like you know, I guess it might be complicated. It's
- 29:01Speaker 8: like ingrained in me now, so it's not the complicated
- 29:03Speaker 8: to me now. But like in a nutshell, you're if
- 29:07Speaker 8: you can put together two hundred g's, it's buying you
- 29:10Speaker 8: a ticket to get the profits on twenty million.
- 29:14Speaker 3: Like, so that's two million.
- 29:16Speaker 8: Well, it depends on how much money you make with
- 29:17Speaker 8: the twenty million, and that's the incentive. So it's like,
- 29:20Speaker 8: can you make this twenty million and turn it into
- 29:22Speaker 8: one hundred million. If you do, you get twenty percent
- 29:25Speaker 8: of that, you get twenty million millions.
- 29:27Speaker 3: Yeah, you know.
- 29:28Speaker 7: So it's like it gets complicated, but like.
- 29:30Speaker 6: How can people if they want to move on to
- 29:32Speaker 6: the next segment? But I want to So if people
- 29:34Speaker 6: are interested in like pitching their business, It's like shark tank.
- 29:39Speaker 3: How realistic is shark tank?
- 29:41Speaker 8: Shark Tank is to angel investing what Indiana Jones is out.
- 29:50Speaker 10: So they're not coming in front of you and you're not,
- 29:53Speaker 10: So how do they Jones to Indiana Jones?
- 30:00Speaker 7: Nothing like that shit?
- 30:02Speaker 8: Yeah, So yeah, the real way is like people send
- 30:06Speaker 8: in a pitch deck and we you know, and then
- 30:09Speaker 8: you know, if the pitch deck looks good, then we
- 30:11Speaker 8: will sign apart. There's different levels of a deal screen,
- 30:14Speaker 8: so you know, pitch deck looks good, If not, then
- 30:17Speaker 8: we'll we'll we pass pretty quick. And we see a
- 30:20Speaker 8: thousand deals a year. We invest in ten deals a year,
- 30:22Speaker 8: so we're talking about a one percent investment rate.
- 30:25Speaker 7: So if we see a hot deal.
- 30:28Speaker 8: One partner's jumping on the phone with that founder, then
- 30:31Speaker 8: that partner reports back with about a page of notes
- 30:33Speaker 8: to the rest of the team.
- 30:34Speaker 3: Yo.
- 30:35Speaker 8: Cool, And then if there's interest, then another partner will
- 30:39Speaker 8: jump in as many partners as are interested. Then we
- 30:41Speaker 8: jump in with the full with the full team, we
- 30:44Speaker 8: try and get a fuller team situation, and we learn more.
- 30:47Speaker 8: We have interns, so then our interns might go and
- 30:49Speaker 8: do market research and analyze what we can expect to make,
- 30:52Speaker 8: and then interest grows. And usually you have every partner
- 30:56Speaker 8: leads their own deal at the fund. So it's all
- 30:59Speaker 8: about like a right, what deals? What deals am I getting?
- 31:03Speaker 8: Versus Brandon versus Jerry versus on reed, We're all looking
- 31:06Speaker 8: for our own deals. And to your question about voting,
- 31:09Speaker 8: we have a conviction over consensus philosophy. Like it's not
- 31:14Speaker 8: like all of us have to agree. It's like if
- 31:16Speaker 8: someone really worked up about this deal, and can you
- 31:18Speaker 8: get people excited, You're.
- 31:20Speaker 7: Judging off the passion of one of your partners for.
- 31:22Speaker 8: Sure, and their ability to defend the deal. And we'll
- 31:25Speaker 8: test you. We'll he check each other and grill each other, like, yo,
- 31:29Speaker 8: I don't know if this deal is gonna make it.
- 31:31Speaker 8: Like like I try to get a media deal through
- 31:33Speaker 8: and I couldn't get it through. It got shut down
- 31:35Speaker 8: because my partners were like yo, you know, the media
- 31:38Speaker 8: climate is really hairy right now. You know Vice and
- 31:41Speaker 8: BuzzFeed and Refinery twenty nine. You know they're not doing
- 31:44Speaker 8: too well and they're the big dogs, so how the
- 31:46Speaker 8: small dogs and you just it's a mental game.
- 31:49Speaker 7: And if you can get people excited, then.
- 31:53Speaker 8: We close the deal and we say, all right, bet
- 31:55Speaker 8: we're gonna invest X amount and then we just wire
- 31:57Speaker 8: them the money and then we put the prayers up there.
- 32:00Speaker 6: You have it, ladies and gentlemen, one O one, one
- 32:03Speaker 6: O three, one o four on one oh five. That
- 32:05Speaker 6: was it, right, Venture capital and Angel Investments.
- 32:10Speaker 2: My graduates from my school being forced bad drops drop,
- 32:15Speaker 2: Mike drop.
- 32:16Speaker 3: Bad drop drop.
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