Latest / Founder F**K ups / 5 Red Flags Killing Your Startup (Before You Even Know It) - With Admond Lee
Transcript
- Ben Bagg: time out guys. Lots of you are watching, ⁓ of you are learning from the founder fuckups that ⁓ all gone through, but please do me one little teeny favour ⁓ subscribe so we can keep growing the channel and get more great founders on. ⁓ Back the episode. Today we have a special episode of Founder Fuckups. taking a break from ⁓ failure stories to zoom out and look at the patterns, ⁓ repeatable mistakes that kill startups time and time again. ⁓ we have the perfect guest to guide us. Admond is the founder of The Runway Ventures, a weekly newsletter that has become required reading for over 60,000 founders ⁓ by the anatomy of startup failures, across Southeast Asia. physicist turned data scientist turned founder himself, ⁓ has a unique lens on what goes wrong. He's just reporting on the failures, he's reverse engineering them to find the signals. Today, we're talking fuck up, we're talking about the five most common red flags Admin sees in his research. The critical signals that startup is on the path to failure. ⁓ This is a master in pattern recognition for every founder listening. to the pod ⁓ Admond Lee: Hey man, thanks so much for having me today. I'm super excited to be on today's session. I mean, ⁓ these are just five patterns that I've observed so far. I believe there could be more, But after writing more than 100 failed startup stories, I came to realize the patterns keep happening again and again. Every time when I write another story, hey, it sounds a bit familiar and similar to what I wrote before. That's why slowly I kind of condensed that into this. five points but yeah excited to share that with your viewers. ⁓ Ben Bagg: Yeah, absolutely. So the five red flags we're going to go through grow too fast, spend too much, pivot too slow, unsustainable business model, lack of governance. These are the five and let's start with the one that sounds like ⁓ good problem to have like growing too fast. ⁓ does rapid growth become a red flag instead of a victory? Can you ⁓ give us an example from your research on on the runway where ⁓ company speed was its downfall? Admond Lee: Yeah, mean, this is very common, for VC-backed companies, but this also happens to bootstrap companies, right? But what that means is really when you first started, want to go fast, right? Because your investors love you, ⁓ customers love you, stuff like that. Especially for VC-backed companies, what I realized is once they raise some money from investors, they have this kind of pressure from investors or board members to keep expanding, keep growing, keep hiring. keep building products and stuff like that. They move very fast and this is what people love there, right? But at some point of time as they grow the hockey stick graph, things to break. For example, the costs ⁓ are ⁓ and when they grow too fast, they keep burning their cash, their runway, thinking that once they that growth milestone, they can use that and raise another round. ⁓ But a very dangerous assumption to have. ⁓ And that's why there's so many VC back companies. fail because, simply because they couldn't raise another round, not because they don't have product market feed. So PNF and ⁓ are two separate things. Most people want growth, even though they achieve PNF, but then they don't have cash to continue running. think in Singapore, because I'm based in Singapore, One company that is quite interesting, it's not VC back, but it's a local company called 12 Cupcakes. Ben Bagg: Yeah. Admond Lee: They sell cupcakes and yeah, they are pretty big food chain, cupcake food chain here in Singapore. So when the two co-founders started, you know, they only have two staff selling cupcakes, you know, for working professionals and stuff like that. Then slowly one outlet became like three outlets and then three become five, become 10 and then become 17. They started franchising, expanded overseas. They, you know, they do a lot of things. Ben Bagg: Okay. Admond Lee: And along the way I realized after writing the story is that their payroll actually sustain the growth. They burned a lot of cash and then they didn't follow the compliance strictly. lot of oversight happening and ⁓ this minor ops issue actually compounded. Eventually they ran out of cash. didn't pay. They had these unpaid wages with their employees ⁓ and their employees also submitted their complaint to the Ministry of Workforce and stuff like that. Ben Bagg: Mmm. Admond Lee: It's a very big thing here back then in Singapore. And eventually after all this saga that happened, 12 cupcakes, even though it was well loved by us, eventually it shut down. They went into liquidation process simply because they just grew too fast. And this is just one of the many examples that I've seen so far. Ben Bagg: you Yeah. I mean, it's a great example because like, I mean, there's product market fit, people are buying their cupcakes, but that grow at all costs mindset go from one to three to five to 10 to 20 to 70 to franchise to multinational. It's very. very costly, very different set of skills, lots of operational problems. Yeah, I can see it. And what's, what are like the first signs that growth has become unhealthy? Because like you said at the beginning, you know, you're VC back, you've got to grow, you've got to get to the next round, you've to get to show a certain rate. ⁓ there like specific metrics ⁓ burn rate that founders should like ⁓ like a hawk? Admond Lee: Thanks. Well, I think the metrics wise really depends on the kind of business that you are running right? But I would say the general metric is when you feel like everything is breaking at certain stage, you no longer juggle the balls, you keep going and then suddenly you miss the payroll, you miss the product, you miss all this finance stuff, compliance, different things you are hiring and all this. I think that's the Ben Bagg: Hmm Admond Lee: stage where you have already grown too fast and you really have to force yourself to not grow so fast and be sustainable. I've seen a few founders, they intentionally not to grow too fast, they keep their pace small and slow so that they have all the different, I think system and workflow in place before they started scaling. they just keep growing but a lot of things just start breaking. Yeah. Ben Bagg: Mm. Yeah. Admond Lee: Adding system is one thing, yeah, system. Ben Bagg: So the old tale of the tortoise first, the hare, right? Slow and steady wins the race in some cases. And obviously a lot of the reasons why these guys who've been growing so fast have burned through their capital, haven't been able to raise the next round. So this comes to kind of red flag number two, which is spending too much, right? And I kind of see it obvious, but founders will often justify it in we're investing in growth. And that's the whole red flag. ⁓ your analysis of failed startups, what's the most common way founders perhaps waste money? Is hiring, marketing, or something else? Admond Lee: Yeah, would say so spending too much is a byproduct of going too fast, right? That's why there's a hierarchy of that. If they go too fast, very likely they would spend too much because of growing, scaling and all this. And usually the way that I see happening before is this usually happens to VC back companies. It doesn't really happen to put your companies because you are using your own money. When you are using other people's money, it's not your money, right? And then you tend to... Ben Bagg: Yeah. Mmm. Admond Lee: spend yeah blow it and then spend what you don't have and usually the VC money hits the bank suddenly and both you know ⁓ risk and the blessing is that especially for first-time founders who have been so frugal all the time suddenly you receive five mil in your bank and ⁓ suddenly it's it very differently as a founder especially you don't know how to handle this kind of money And that's why when you don't have money, it's not good. But when you have too much money, it's also not good. If you don't know how to handle that kind of money. And that's why I see so many VC-backed startups that fail because the founders couldn't handle that kind of money when they see a huge amount in their bank. then they just use it on hiring, maybe moving to a bigger office. Ben Bagg: Yeah. Admond Lee: traveling, joining more conferences, doing all the PR shows, and getting them themselves more like building their founders brand, Forbes 30 under 30, you know, all these who-ha thing, but of really spending on the business. ⁓ And would if there's one thing where I see they spending on burning too much cash, ⁓ I would hiring. They over hire a lot. Ben Bagg: Yeah. ⁓ Admond Lee: When they first started, ⁓ and then suddenly they reached five and then got some money at 10 and then from there they just keep hiring. And happened a lot to many VC back companies before COVID. They over hire, right? Maybe they got hungry people on their payroll, ⁓ COVID Suddenly, you you ⁓ lost lot of revenue, your clients, ⁓ and still have to pay all your employees, know, hungry plus people. and you can't just fire them immediately. You have to do a lot of compliance checks and stuff like that. So I think over-hiring is probably the first place where I see a lot of startups spend too much money on. All these are fixed costs, right? So yeah, I think this is the main thing. Ben Bagg: Yeah. And I guess I'll just add to that. mean, I don't have the same analysis as you, but on the hiring, think a lot of people also then hire sort of what I call the gray hairs, the experienced people that cost a hundred, eight, 200 a year who are going to come in and change things, but they're, they're coming from like that corporate world. And I've seen so many people waste money like that. And Admond Lee: Hmm. ⁓ yeah. Ben Bagg: You've covered companies that have raised kind of huge rounds and we've already been talking about that have still failed. How, I guess, how does that massive influx of cash create a blind spot because becomes reckless spending, why do we, like the story where suddenly you get 5 million, ⁓ but you were frugal, why do many founders stop frugality or at smart ⁓ spending? Why do suddenly just go, holy shit? Admond Lee: Yeah. Ben Bagg: I've got so much money, I'm gonna go buy this thing, I'm gonna buy that thing, I'm gonna invest in this thing. do you think that is? it a similar psychological as winning the lottery? know how most people who win the lottery end up going bankrupt? think there are studies on it because they just get so excited and spend all their money. Is it like that? ⁓ Admond Lee: Yeah, well, I think that could be one of the reasons, fundamentally speaking. Again, this is my opinion, right? After all this research, I think there are fundamentally two reasons why they behave so after receiving huge sum of money. First reason is internal. could be due to their upbringing. Whether or not you have or don't have money, ⁓ when have money, it just amplifies. Ben Bagg: Of course. Admond Lee: who you are, your identity. so internally speaking, if your upbringing you a different or a money mindset, when you have the money, you're just going to blow away. You're just going to think, ⁓ it's not my money, I'm going to blow that. ⁓ I'm going spend this because I struggled so long time. I should deserve better, all ⁓ these things. So it's internal. The second reason is external, peer pressure, environment. And one example, I'm sure you heard of this news by E-Fishery, right? The company got into huge news because of financial scandal and double bookkeeping and fraud, right? All this. if you look at the interview, Giban, that he did with Bloomberg, I remember one line that he mentioned why he behaved that way, why he did all these things, is because when he first started, he got a huge sum of money he tried to get advice from his peers i.e. the high growth founders in Indonesia and advice that he got from his peers is you should know, scale this, do that and do this ⁓ do more shady and stuff like that and it's very dangerous because effectively when you are high growth founders and you look up to certain founders, that kind of role models tell you to behave a certain way. It's very easy to get swayed by their advice or so-called thought process. And I really think that is something wrong with not just the founders, but really the ecosystem. Because people think this is the right way to do things when it is not. Ben Bagg: Yeah. Admond Lee: And this happens to many other founders too, not just Indonesia. So yeah, I think in summary, it's an internal and external ⁓ environment. Ben Bagg: Yeah. And I can see how you get all that cash. You were mentioning like 30 under 30 Forbes, all these nonsense things that actually mean very little, unfortunately in the reality. ⁓ then all your peers are basically saying red flag one, grow, money, build that team, let's grow at all costs, we're gonna hit that next step. I can see why that external. pressure, ego as well, you raise money and everyone's talking about you, that definitely plays into it. a founder coach, I definitely know that ego plays a big part of these things. Admond Lee: Mm, yeah. Ben Bagg: And so when you're, you've been spending money, right? We've been growing at all costs with, with perhaps spending too much. We're trying to figure things out. And then the next red flag is that pivot, the pivot too slow. And the pivot is a celebrated move in startup culture, right? But you say pivoting too slow is that major red flag. What, what does a slow pivot look like? Is it about indecision or is it about founders maybe just being a bit too attached to their original idea? Admond Lee: Well, I this huge. This happens to both startups and corporate ventures. But as we know, startups is all about experimenting and testing different hypotheses. And when it doesn't work, they move on to the next hypotheses. So this OK. For all these startups, this shouldn't be any problem. But usually, pivoting too so happens to those companies that found early PMF. Ben Bagg: Yep. Admond Lee: But when shit happens, something huge that's happening, tend to pivot a bit slow. So one example is Hook is a company that's a corporate venture in Singapore. So Hook is like a Netflix in South Asia. It is spin-off from one of our tail costs, CostsSyncTail. HOK, H-O-O-Q, right? But ⁓ it's already shut down now. So what happens is when they first started, they tried to become the next Netflix in Singapore and South Asia, but market shifted very fast. Netflix came to Singapore and beyond, and Netflix moved way faster than they are, and moved when they first started, they literally copy pasted the Western movies and shows Singapore's audience, but that doesn't work. Hoop realized that they need to do what Netflix does, is create their own originals, their own shows, their own movies. Like Netflix created different originals shows, right? ⁓ And so ⁓ Hoop this very late, by that time, they burned a lot of cash, and they tried to raise more money from Singtel, their parent company. The stakeholders said, no, they burned too much cash. They don't want to... Ben Bagg: Yeah, yeah. Admond Lee: keep pumping money into this little baby because of that they died right so this is one corporate venture another example I can give is ⁓ a from Hong I forgot the name ⁓ but it quite some time ago when they first started they actually sort of I forgot their name so basically the companies ⁓ rented their handphones Sorry, not handphones. They are physical phones to hotels so that whenever people in hotels, the hotel stayers, want to order food or call someone else. Back then, they didn't have handphones at all. There's no handphones. It's only physical phones. They can just stay in a hotel, dial their phone, then make all the calling and all these. And then, internet becomes cheaper. Handphones become way cheaper. Ben Bagg: Yeah. Admond Lee: And ⁓ they didn't realize that soon enough, our time handphone and Wi-Fi became very cheap and everyone just got a handphone to do all the calling. They pivot fast enough and because of that, even though it was the first unicorn in Hong Kong, they eventually just because they pivoted too slow, ⁓ even though found early PMF. Ben Bagg: Yeah. Yeah. first mover advantage doesn't always give you a long-term advantage, ⁓ Admond Lee: Yeah, I'm gonna present. In fact, think sometimes first mover advantage could be a curse. Because, you get what I mean, right? Yes. Yeah. Exactly, right? Yeah. Ben Bagg: Absolutely. In every industry, my space. Do you, if you were to shake those two examples up, was that just lack of market understanding of vision or was it indecision do you think, know, in these two cases? Admond Lee: I think indecision is the main thing, ⁓ especially when you are getting certain size. You've got early PMF, you've got a team, you've got investors, you've got a board member. It's no longer just you, hey, let's move to another idea tomorrow, right? When you are just one man team, you have a team to feed, have investors to answer to, you have customers to answer to. weight becomes much heavier and it's to switch unless you are like Elon Musk, right? Ben Bagg: Yeah. Yeah. Admond Lee: screw you I'm gonna do this. Yeah. Ben Bagg: I guess then, ⁓ you know, it's indecision, but when you get to a certain size, then it's also that internal struggle of decision-making. Because, okay, we've got investors, board members, customers, decision-makers across the team, unless you like the Elon Musk type of leader who's just like my way or the highway, ⁓ you get board and get out, ⁓ right? Or... Admond Lee: Yeah. Yes. Ben Bagg: going to be much harder to make those ⁓ decisions. Especially you're ⁓ a copy in Singapore, you're not TV company. And ⁓ how you pivot to creating content? That's complex. I'm not sure how Netflix did it, whether they bought a studio or something, but it's an incredible investment. ⁓ And to make decision. And then having corporate backers who are much more risk averse, I can see why pivoting too slow can be really, really challenging. And I think sometimes pivoting ⁓ too can be a problem. ⁓ Admond Lee: ⁓ yeah, yeah, for sure. There's always a balance, right? If you keep changing your idea every other day, will still go nowhere. So I think self-awareness the key that you, as a founder, needs to have a foresight to know when to pivot or when not to pivot. ⁓ Sometimes a bet. Sometimes it's an educated bet. Yeah. Ben Bagg: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, agreed. sometimes like to ⁓ to a founders ⁓ bets and educated best as your weather castor. I I know that we're pretty good at telling the weather now with ⁓ the satellites and sophistication. ⁓ If think back a little bit of, you know, it was an art and a science because the weather can shift and change. And so you have to make that judgment call that bet. ⁓ You're like shepherd on, ⁓ you know, was it? ⁓ We have saying in the UK. Red in the morning, shepherd's warning, red at night, shepherd's delight. So like if you have a beautiful sunset, the idea is that the next day it's gonna be, or it's gonna be a lovely night, right? You're not gonna have rain and misery. Admond Lee: Yes. Ben Bagg: And I think founders do have to be those weather forecasters. And I think it's even harder for founders today because there is so much innovation and change happening. because we're in that AI echo chamber where we're seeing it all happening constantly, because we're all obsessed with it, ⁓ get this... I I think it creates indecision, but you have so many little decisions to make. So pivoting ⁓ starts happening way too frequently ⁓ or at all. ⁓ It's wild west right now. Admond Lee: Yeah, I just have to be self-aware and strategic about each of the bets. think, especially, we all limited runway, right? And if every single time you pivot, you burn another few more months or whatever, money, time, those are important. I think now in AI, ⁓ companies got disrupted. good thing is of AI, they can pivot pretty fast. But if they got huge enough, a certain size, it gets... Ben Bagg: Yeah. Yeah. Admond Lee: slightly harder even though with AI but it's possible. I really move fast is really like one of the key advantage for any other company not just more but also ⁓ &C. Ben Bagg: Yeah, that agility, right? ⁓ And obviously when startups begin, in cases, they start up with an unsustainable right? ⁓ And kind with, ⁓ to talk Red Flag for unsustainable business models, when we're building growing, we're kind of like trying to figure it out. We're going to figure it out later. We're going to figure out the unit economics, et cetera. ⁓ At what point this become a fatal flaw? Admond Lee: Yeah. Ben Bagg: At what point we know, you do realize that our model is fundamentally broken and what are some of the unsustainable business models or models ⁓ you've of witnessed? ⁓ Admond Lee: I've seen so many. Again, I think this usually happens to VC bear companies because if you a bootstrap company, you have to make your first $1 from day one. You cannot wait. So this is the good thing about bootstrap business. But this tends to happen for VC bear companies. again, this ties back to the past three points that we talked about. You go too fast, spend too much, pivot too slow. All this because you are trying to hit the hockey growth stick. Ben Bagg: Yeah. Admond Lee: and you just put the business model aside because you think like, ⁓ you are like Facebook or Meta, you get the user base first and then you can monetize it later and those later might never come because you might not have even the runway to see that coming if you run out of cash just remember okay so just now the Hong Kong company that I talked about they called Pink Labs Pink Labs okay Ben Bagg: Yeah. Admond Lee: they put three smartphones in hotel So their model back then was to charge hotel rooms for every single smartphone that they rent to them. Okay, so it's a more like subscription model for hotel rooms. Ben Bagg: device rentable subscription type thing. Admond Lee: Correct, correct. And they raised $170 million in total and then got the unicorn status, the first unicorn in Hong Kong. So they were pretty big back then. But one thing is because of one single dangerous assumption that... Okay, first of all, when you bought a smartphone back then, it was not cheap, it was quite expensive. and you've got to it there, including all the maintainments. Even though you are renting to a hotel room, actually you were burning a lot of to reach that scale. So because of that, they were burning cash, even though they were everywhere in hotel rooms. And then when roaming, Wi-Fi and eSIM, they got cheaper. Suddenly, whole business model didn't work. The hotel room just didn't want to use their smartphone anymore because they can just use Wi-Fi wherever, right? Ben Bagg: Yeah. Admond Lee: So their business model worked when it first started. But suddenly, when the whole industry changed, it didn't work anymore. And because of pivoting too slow, they couldn't figure out their business model. So this is one of the many examples. Another example is there many companies, for example, let's say, I don't know whether you know dark grocery like India, Tsepto, right? Ben Bagg: Yeah. Okay, mom. Hmm. Admond Lee: This company, especially doing P2C, the whole business only works when you reach a certain economic of skills. So when you first start, you're going to burn a shit ton of money, and the unique economy just didn't make sense at all. You must spend $10 to acquire a user that will only give you a lifetime value of maybe $1. So you lose $9 to acquire one user. But that's the only way that you can do that. Ben Bagg: Yep. Yeah. Yeah. Admond Lee: given your own business model because you can only dominate the market when you capture enough market share for the profitability to come in and this goes back to Grab as well even until now Grab the taxi, the GrabCat they are not profitable yet they are trying to hit their positive ⁓ but point I want to make is a lot of these companies that only figure out the business model at a later part of the game Hopefully, they can reach the economic scale. While a very small part of the companies may work out, like Grab, right? But a big part of the companies may not even have the time to see the day to come. I think these kind of businesses are very dangerous if your assumption is false or becomes false down the road of your business. So, yeah. Ben Bagg: Yeah, okay. So, I mean, all these red flags are fully connected to each other in a business that's kind of grown, grown, sustained, near sustainable, and then the market shifts immediately unsustainable. And then there are, course, these models where you have to get... You know, you have to have reached a big scale before you can even consider making a profit and you have to keep growing and surviving. Like, Grab made it because they were able to keep raising the rounds to keep themselves alive, right? Through that growth. it's, it's really interesting. And so I guess the classic example ⁓ sort of what looks great on a pitch deck and in reality is a bit of a disaster. ⁓ these. Admond Lee: Thank Ben Bagg: These businesses that require you to scale, right? You have to hit scale before you make money. These are the ones that are ⁓ waiting to happen. Admond Lee: Yes, and this happens, this tends to happen to B2C company. If you're in B2B, then it should be fine because you can easily get your revenue, long-term sustainable business revenue from one or two single contracts. That should be fine. But B2C, yeah, you have to, if this is the model that you want, then that's the risk that you'll see. But I think with AR now, think a lot of tech startups Ben Bagg: you Admond Lee: they're able to monetize pretty fast without hitting the economy of skill. I think that's why this problem will become less and less moving forward because founders nowadays, they just realize they have to become profitable as a SAP. They cannot wait or they don't want to take investors' money to keep going and they figure out a business model later. And yeah, I think this more Ben Bagg: Yeah. Admond Lee: Maybe in future this mistake will be less and less obvious, but for now it's still there. Ben Bagg: Yeah. guess the of the cost of buildings coming down, which obviously can make these a little bit more sustainable at the beginning, like, or survivable maybe is a better word. And then our last, but very much not least, is lack of governance. And I guess that can kind of sound like a boring corporate problem, right? Governance, right? But why is that one of the critical red flags, especially for an early stage startup? What's the most consequence of poor governance you've seen? ⁓ Admond Lee: eFishery is a very good example for that. I mean, I've written too many startups that fail because of lack of governance, fraud, bookkeeping, compliance stuff. But let's ⁓ eFishery as the example ⁓ Because what happened to eFishery due to lack of governance, it changed entire ⁓ Ben Bagg: Hmm. Yeah. Admond Lee: startup ecosystem market right now as I talk to more investors, family officers, limited after what happened to e-fishery a lot of these investors actually no longer want to deploy their capital in South Asia for two reasons first is they lose confidence after this second reason is they don't see any meaningful exit after 5-10 years. So far the only unicorn they received is Grab, maybe Tokopedia or some other. But in the last 10 years, most of the VC funds are not returning that money to the LP. ⁓ It's not like LP don't have the money, they have shit-ton of money. They don't want to deploy that money to VC now because they don't see the return. Ben Bagg: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Admond Lee: Because of that, it creates a domino effect to the future startups that they could no longer fundraise from VC or investors because VC don't have the money. ⁓ Second reason is founders just don't want to take money from investors anymore because of this pressure created from the investors. One of the why officially Ben Bagg: Yeah. Admond Lee: did this race because of the very intense pressure from the board of investors to grow fast and all this. Because of the pressure, the founders made the wrong steps. So a lot of factors. think this is probably the biggest consequence of lack of governance that created in our ecosystem and is still happening now. Ben Bagg: Yeah, yeah. And I mean, stories of fraud and things, I think when you're a family, well, you wouldn't do that. That's odd. But I guess it's not just about fraud, right? It's also just about general governance of managing the finances in the business, having good practices. What for like a small team, like a family? listening here, maybe has five to 10 people. But what does like good governance even look like for someone of that size? What maybe one or two simple practices founders could implement to avoid finding themselves in an e-fishery Admond Lee: Thank Wait, for a team of 10, that's the... Okay, I think just to get... Okay, if you're talking about 5 to 10 people in a team, then it's pretty straightforward. Just get your bookkeeping ⁓ correct, know, yeah, get someone to audit that properly from time to time. If you not raising any funds, you wouldn't have any board members to answer to. Ben Bagg: and Admond Lee: But think the founder yourself, you yourself have to make sure all the financials are correct. I think I'm not a finance guy right but I think fundamentally just do the right things. think okay so know what the right things to do if you are the founders without people telling you what to do like bookkeeping, getting financials in place, getting compliant you know these sort of things that you probably know you should do and it's the right thing to do as a We have 5-10 packs in a team question is ⁓ don't you do that? Do the ⁓ things There's always a right time to do the right thing Just don't wait Because it will come back to you in a very very bad way Especially if you screw up in a big time Ben Bagg: Do the right. Do the right. Absolutely. Admond Lee: The lack of governance. I think usually the impact is very larger if you have many stakeholders to handle. you are just one manager 10 employees, your lack of governance is maybe just mistreatment of your employees. That's it. That's the impact. But if you have investors, have board members, you have employees, you have customers which they are fun. ⁓ is tucked under your company. Things get very complicated and those impact tends to be larger. Another example is if you run a business, five to ten people, suddenly you got a JV or new business to launch and then suddenly you cold mingle both funds together. You invoice from your own company to another new venture you set up. Now this is the wrong thing to do but a lot of people tend to do... this, know, but instead of writing to do, no, but why do you do that? So. Ben Bagg: not the wrong thing to do, but do it the right way. ⁓ be dodgy. The is, don't be dodgy. ⁓ Admond Lee: Yeah, I guess. and do long term and do the right thing. yeah, that's the thing. Ben Bagg: Yeah. Admin, I really appreciate you coming on the pod and walking us through these five red flags. And I've been Runway maybe two or so, I when I first subscribed. And I've learned lot from it and I'm sure many of your readers have and I hope my listeners do too. you so much. ⁓ Admond Lee: Thank you so much for having me man, appreciate it. Hope this helped you.