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Yeah, it's a great question. We, I mean, we think about it on the two ends of like the consumer side, and on the on the retailer side, there's basically so much value that can be delivered to both at the same time. One thing is the most basic foundation is navigation. I want to find some item. I'm not sure where it is in the store. It could be a grocery store. It could be a much larger department store or something like that. You can type in any item and you can be guided step by step, turn by turn to find the item. Okay, great. So then you take it a step further. Now, can I put in my shopping list? Can I put in a recipe? And I can actually find all of the things that I need for that recipe.

And it could make the most optimal route through the store to pick up all the things you need for dinner. I'm dying. Exactly. I'm so excited about this.

Yeah, well, first of all, mapping the layout of an overall store. Turns out that was quite a time consuming process. People would spend months building a map and using complicated software. It would be really expensive for retailers. And so our goal, obviously, is to take this to every store in the world. And so we've built an automated mapping platform, where right now we can map... Have one person working on... Per person working on it, they can map one store in half a day. So they could do 2 mega stores, basically, in the space of a day. We want to get that down to a few minutes. So we're continuously improving that. And we've done that by automating away most of the steps. The second part of the problem is how do you locate which shelves the products are on? That's something that we do by integrating with the retailer. They typically know that information, they've got the kind of identifier of which shelf everything is on. And so as long as we can keep track of where those things are on the geographical map of the store, we can link up those two systems. And then as they update things at head office, and they send that detail down to the store, so the staff can move things around. Similarly, they send it to us and we update the maps live so that the next person who walks in the store, they instantly get an updated map.

Alright, so nuts and bolts here. How do you onboard the products in the store? And how do you make sure that they stay where they were when you mapped them?

Sure. Yeah, like if the staff in the store went rogue and said, we're going to move everything. Actually, the way that it seems to happen in most retailers, certainly the ones that we've worked with, is they decide that at head office, they say, hi, we would like you to move this item or this display is going to be Easter themed. And we're going to send you all of these graphics and stuff to put up. And we're going to ask you to move these items. So they send that down to the stores. And at the same time, they bring it to our system as well. Got it.

So on some level, you are a little bit at the mercy of the inventory system at the store that you're working with. Like, if they decide we're moving all of the peeps to the Easter display and they don't sort of update that, you wouldn't know. It's not like there's RFID in a

Right now, we're working with a handful of really big retailers to roll it out at scale. And these are like really big national or international retailers with really big stores.

Okay. And then how does, how do, is it a consumer app? How do people find out about it and become onboarded? What, what sort of status of rollout are you at right now?

Pretty much. I feel like I get into, you know, one of the things you learn when you become a kind of I started out just as a founder putting stuff out, and it's great to build new technology, which people find really awesome, and just put it out there. And what you find is you start to build a business, which is B2B or B2B2C. You're building a really great consumer interface, but it's ultimately B2B. And suddenly you find yourself in a position where you lose some of that control. You're not able to as much put stuff out there at free will. You have to work with each of your retail partners to put things out when they're ready to put things out. And that's something which is interesting, because it gives you a huge opportunity to work with these really big names. But at the same time, you're limited in how you can share. So that's a really interesting problem as a founder. How do I keep putting the word out there about my business, whilst also working with these brands who are very image conscious and everything, and you can't just turn up to the store, record something and post it online. So yeah, on that note, I probably can't say the names of anybody that we're working with right now.

And so I think... And like none you can hint at? Any like big red dots? No hints?

Yeah, exactly. So the retail market on this is super clear. What they're looking for is they're looking for an SDK that they can drop into their existing apps. A lot of them have really high uptake on their apps. A lot of them are at more than 50% of the people walking in the store are using their app because it does different things as part of the in-store experience. And so we build an SDK. It integrates there. The next time somebody walks into a store, when that store goes live, they get the full shopping experience and they can now navigate to any of those items. So it's really cool when it becomes activated. And they can always scan it. If they don't have the app on their phone, they can scan a QR code or an app clip code when they walk in the store. And so they can get it super easily.

I understand, and I would never want to get you in trouble, to be clear. Yeah. But I appreciate that context, because I think that really is interesting for founders, right? You just want to be like, I built this cool thing, I want to tell everybody about it. And yet, to build a business at scale requires these partners. So what will happen? So you're working with these partners, you will integrate this system, and then will I get a notification when I walk into the store? Or will you then start advertising the app for people to download and have ahead of time?

Well, we think I think about the market in two ways. So we raised Yeah, we raised a seed round in November 2021.

What you've raised money for this, right? Like, how do you look at the overall, how hard is it to build this technology? Because like you said, you're doing a degree of accuracy that, yeah, you know, we have not seen. And how do you think about the potential market for this?

We raised less than that. I actually think... I don't know what the rules are generally, like how you work in VC circles and stuff like that. I feel like I'm open enough to say that we're looking right now actually at raising like a C2 and actively looking at that right now. And, you know, I'm pretty open as a founder. We're raising it super quickly. And if any VCs, any partners at VCs, just DM me. Like, we don't mess around. We move pretty quickly and we're raising over the next few weeks. So if you want to get involved in that, we're happy to have you. We've got most of our existing VCs involved in that round as well.

Okay, I see. About $10 million, it looks like.

Yeah. And we've got some really awesome VCs and I love what you get out of that. So yeah. So the opportunity, we look at it in two ways, right? We look at, first of all, when we do these videos, we get exceptional amounts of inbound. The reason we're raising money is that we have retailers sitting in our inbox who I won't name, but we can talk offline. We have retailers sitting in our inbox who we just can't address because we need to boost up our sales. We need to increase our sales capacity so that we can bring on new retailers into our funnel. And so that's why we're raising a bit more money so we can really bolster that effort. Those retailers all come in because they want to bring digital experience into their stores to enable all of this stuff. They're seeing it work incredibly effectively on their online stores, and they just want to bring the same level of customer experience, customer data and information and apply that in their stores. It's pretty simple. It's a thing that they want, and they just haven't found a technology before ours that actually works for that. Right. And so that's the opportunity that we look at today. And then long term, we want to build this infrastructure that enables all of that interaction on the real world.

Okay, well, we're definitely going to talk after about that. Okay, perfect.

100%. I'd say I'm a pretty resilient founder. And I think a lot of people who've worked with me would say that everything that we do, there's a lot of really interesting opportunities, which are really great, but they're distractions. They would send us off in a different direction. And every decision we make, every partner we work with, every new interface, every new technology or upgrade that we roll out is all pointed towards that big vision that we want to achieve in 10 years' time. we want a big piece of that pie. We want to be the infrastructure to power that interaction across every location in the world. And so everything we do, everything we build is always with that in mind. And so that's how we think about it. I'm really excited about where we are, though. I love the journey every day. I love that at a certain point, we were four or five people. We had one person on web, one person on mobile, one person on this. And now we've got teams of people on these things. I just love the entire growth and That entire journey is so great.

Right. I mean, it's your vision, your personal vision, it sounds like from the way that you've described it in this kind of like a long obsession you've had with it, is much more than shopping in retail stores, which is very valuable. And I cannot wait to do it. But talk to me a little bit about that. Yeah, like you want that. I mean, I want it in the glasses. I want to everywhere I look, I want to see it all.

Yeah, well, we've went with a pricing model that seemed a bit unusual to us, but is the industry standard for indoor maps, which is that they charge on a square meter basis. So you've got a big store and we can calculate square meters per year and they charge on that basis. So right now, we've decided, okay, well, let's follow the same. Let's just give them an industry standard pricing for our customers. sort of settles the debate easily, makes it really easy for them to go, great, this follows anything else that we could find out there. It's a no-brainer. And then over time, I think what's really interesting is, as we start to really demonstrate value, and we start to show how valuable it is, I think we can find a new pricing model that works best for us and for the retailers. And that makes a lot more logical sense of, great, we're charging you this because we are making you this. So that's how I think about it. But pretty much like a SaaS business model.

Incredible. And then finally, with this product today, what is the business model? How do you make money?

Yeah, well, I guess first of all, the consumer gets to decide if they're going to use it and which permissions they want to enable. And so they're always in full control. If they don't want to use it, they don't have to use it. If they don't want to enable the location part of it, or they just want the map of the store, they could do that as well. So it's entirely up to the customer and the user on what they want to share. And then I think further than that, because we provide an SDK, it's up to the retailer how they want to capture data on their customers and all of that kind of stuff. Thankfully for us right now, it is just left up to the retailer to sort through all of the privacy policies and stuff. But yeah, in our context, we're working with retailers and enabling them to do what's powerful for them. So I find it really interesting to You know, one area that is really interesting is a lot of people would like... We've heard from a lot of customers who want heatmaps, as an example. And that's really interesting, and I think there's a huge amount of potential in getting heatmaps, definitely, as they collect that data anyway, in a far more kind of like manual way.

Right. Great. So SaaS margins, roughly, I would imagine, too. Yeah. And then, finally, from the consumer perspective… I keep saying finally, but I have a million questions for you. From the consumer perspective, how do you think about what is the data play here? Like, can I opt out of letting you know that I bought the trashy junk food soup? for example, do you know at all, you know, I would imagine retailers want some insight into the data, or at least even just for the flow of the stores, like, what is the value that you can potentially bring in terms of those insights?

So I find stuff like that super interesting. But it's also interesting and going, okay, now we've got the super advanced technology, which knows where a customer is in the store, we know who that customer is, and loads of background information about them, or the retailer does in general. I'm more interested in what's the next generation of those heatmaps. How can you really bring incredible value to those? Because you could just ship a standard heatmaps feature, or you could build one, which is really incredible. So I think there's a lot of opportunities like that to really bring value to the consumer and to the retailer.

But... Yeah, I could imagine individual brands wanting that even, you know, if they're maybe testing a label. Yeah, exactly what works. Yeah.

Awesome. Thanks, Molly.

I respect your discipline so much because it is clear how easy it would be to get distracted by a million different options. Sure. Of course. Andrew Hart is co-founder and CEO of Hyper. You can find his tweets at at Andrew Hart, H-A-R-T-A-R. Go watch the videos and get hyped up because I cannot wait for my shopping to change. Andrew, thanks. What a pleasure.

Humphrey, thank you so much for joining me today on this segment of OK Boomer. So for those of you who don't know, Humphrey is pretty freaking big on the internet. You have almost a million people subscribed. That is kind of insane. I found you through a friend of a friend, Humphrey. I think Nate O'Brien was the first person to show me your videos and Nate has actually been on this week in startups before. So again, thank you so much for coming on.

No problem. Thanks for having me. Yeah, I definitely saw Nate's version of okay, boomer as well as his brothers. Yeah, he did both the O'Brien's I did. And then I had Nate staying with me here, I think two weeks ago, and he was like, you should do it too. Or whenever I reached out to you. So I'm

I'm super happy you reached out because Nate actually told me about you beforehand. So it was perfect. Um, I didn't even know Nate and his brother were related when I first started looking at their content. Cause I actually saw his brother over on Twitter first, I think tech. Yeah. Reviewing like, or rings or something like that. Like it was some like physical product might've been an Apple watch, but So super happy to have them both join again. Pumped to have you here. I think my first question would be, but it has to cover, honestly, the space that you're in. So you are a formal financial advisor. You previously worked in gaming, but now you cover topics like personal finance, self-improvement. But those are huge genres, like giant. And you've somehow still managed to gain this many subscribers. How did you kind of make a name for yourself in these fields that almost feel like hyper saturated?

Yeah, that's a good question. So I had my start on TikTok. I don't know if you knew that, but I originally wanted to make YouTube videos in 2019, actually way before then, but I was just still working in a corporate job. And so in 2019, I decided to try three YouTube videos in the summer of 2019 that went nowhere. You get like five or 10 views max, and they're all your friends that you send them to. And I was definitely just trying to do like a Graham Stephan style. Like that was the inspiration. And they went nowhere. So I kind of gave up for a bit, but I was watching TikTok in the fall of 2019 a lot, just as a personal user. And I was just like, I was addicted at night. And at this point, I think on TikTok 2019, mostly teens were on it and maybe younger, younger twenties. And I didn't really see anyone my age. And then the, the, the moment that I had was I searched for the hashtag personal finance at some point. And as a kid, I was trying to do market research and there were no videos of personal finance. And I knew that if I was first to market, you know, I said, Oh, maybe if I just try to talk, maybe I can be the, you know, I can be the big personal finance influencer on this, on this platform, especially because the market seemed to want that type of content. Like I made one video in November of 2019 about what credit is. And it was a really bad video. Like I just, I'm literally like talking, you know, I got a lot. Um, so I'm just like, this is what credit is. And I got like 4,000, 5,000 views.

Like that's a ton.

That's a lot. And, uh, that's a ton. The quality of the content was bad. It was, you know, dimly lit. And, but what it showed me was like, okay, the algorithm is really good on Tik TOK. There's no one making these videos on Tik TOK and I was getting genuine organic comments. So it was definitely getting more traction there than it was obviously on YouTube. And so my whole game plan was to make 30 straight Tik TOKs at the end of 2019 as like a new year's resolution. And I just started on Christmas. I started the day after Christmas. I think by the 15th day, I'd had like 100,000 followers. So this was like January 10th, 2020. I had like 100,000 followers already. And at that point, it just becomes like a self-fulfilling prophecy. You're just going to keep making videos because that's what tick... I mean, you're getting so much exposure and so many views, you feel like, oh, well, I'll just keep compounding this. I got to just keep doing it. And so 30 days became 60, which became 90. And then I was like, I might as well keep going for 100. And then after that, I think the streak ended at like 243 days of a TikTok. And by then I had like a million followers. And so I got a lot of my base from that. Right. And then at the same time, I was creating YouTube videos probably in starting like May, 2020. So I was like still bad at YouTube, but I was at least trying to get my TikTok audience to go convert to YouTube. Cause I knew like that would be the future. And I think two years later, I mean, it's three years later now. And I definitely, now the YouTube channel is growing quite nicely, but it was a struggle there for the first one or two years. Like, You know, you would get a disproportionate amount of views on TikTok, you get like a million views on TikTok, and then you go make a YouTube video, you get 500. And that feels really crappy as a creator. But then you kind of have to realize like, yeah, this will compound over time.

So what is your experience in converting people over to another platform? I know that like you just said, that's extremely difficult. Um, no, only like morality wise, is it like really, really hard? Like kind of kicks you down when you see those numbers convert. Like I know we, for example, started a tech tech account and we had it like going for quite a while before it really picked up steam and shout out John, who's our editor that makes our tech talks. But, um, it took a while and it's hard when you see those numbers on one platform, not reciprocate over to the other. Like, how did you eventually make that work?

Oh man. I think it's just like consistency over everything. Like, throughout my time making TikToks, I was hoping that people would eventually find that I have a YouTube and that would always be in my bio, like, hey, link to my YouTube channel or hey, my link to longer form videos. So that's definitely number one. But early on, especially when I was getting a lot of views in 2020, I was definitely calling out YouTube a lot more and just at the end of certain videos, not every video, but I would have a call to action. And I saw that my subscriber count would actually go up, but no one would really watch the YouTube videos, if that makes sense, like from TikTok. And I think I had like 10,000 subs at the time and they're all from TikTok and no one was watching. And so I knew that if I kept calling it out on TikTok, that's not exactly fruitful. What you really have to do is you have to make good content. Number one, it has to get surface to those people. And also, I just started making searchable content too. So that way, as long as I did that, I would have a base of views at all times. And it was my hope that some of those subscribers that came from a short form platform might check me out one day. But I wasn't expecting it. But to answer your question, just consistency, everything. Constantly beating that into the short form content audience. Like, Hey, I got a YouTube. Hey, I just did this on YouTube. Those strategies really helped. But I would say the conversion rate is very bad. It's very hard.

You're right. It is really, really hard. But I think you said 2 things in there that are pretty notable. I mean, everything you said is pretty notable. But 2 key aspects I think you pointed out was that CTA, that call to action. You've already said Graham. Graham has a great finance. Was it Graham Stephan? Is that it? Phenomenal finance YouTuber. And he always says, smash the like button. Like button, yeah. Or smash the subscribe button, something like that. He always has a CTA. And I think he says it in a podcast, I believe. And he might also say it in some of his YouTube videos that that is actually a key point in a lot of his content, actually having a CTA. And he also talked about making searchable content. SEO, I feel like is every... everyone's hot word, hot acronym. It feels like everyone's trying to create searchable content. How do you know what that searchable content is?

How do you pick the topics?

How do you make a topic around something that's searchable? Because something that's searchable to me might not be searchable to the masses. A question that I want answered might not be a huge question to that many people.

Yeah, I think that's a tough question. I think that, you know, you can obviously look at tools like Google Trends, or you can look at, you know, TubeBuddy has an extension that shows you the search volume for every phrase that you type in. But sometimes you don't really know if it's actually going to actually be searched, like you just said. It's almost like knowing what people are thinking ahead of them. And that's hard to do unless you have a good pulse on the internet. And you're always watching YouTube. You're always on Twitter. You're always on TikTok. So if you consume a lot of content, you get a pulse for what people are probably looking for. Right now, it's February 21st. I bet you can make some searchable content about the Ohio trade derailment. And it would actually do pretty well right now. Like I just saw a YouTube video that just came out where a YouTuber traveled to the Ohio train derailment very timely, by the way, and was like, just trying to be an investigative journalist. It's doing pretty well. But like longer term searches, like I'm always just going for like, really boring ideas. So, you know, one would be like, top tax write offs. And if you think about that, top five tax write-offs, every February, March, April, you're going to get some viewership to that topic, just because that's what people are thinking about during tax day. Or even, you know, towards the end of the year, when people are trying to take write-offs for that calendar year, like you're going to get that traffic. And so if you have a library of like a hundred of these, they just all of a sudden just kind of like start producing new views. And that way you have a strong base layer of viewership. And Graham actually told me once, Graham Stephan, that most of his subscribers all come from evergreen content. They don't actually come from his news and more timely things, but if you make evergreen content, yeah.

Sounds like this might be a trend with you guys.

It is, uh, I think it's, it was definitely under, like, I definitely understood it as a small YouTuber, but as I get bigger and bigger, like the value of it is not like diminished, it's just increasing. So like, I feel like it's even way more important now than ever, like.

I completely agree with you. I mean, it's really difficult to when you're a creator to really think of content and like, it almost feels like a binary way where it's like, okay, is this going to be evergreen? Or is this like, content have have a time limit. So for example, at this beacon startups, what we tend to do is in the beginning is something that is like very timely. Normally, we're covering the news, or a topic that recently happened, like the Super Bowl commercials, and then we go into a really awesome interview. Very rarely is it only just an interview, we're only just a news topic that, if it is a news topic, it's a news topic that you can go back and listen to. And it'll probably be something that is still relevant today. And we try to mash in both aspects of it. But that is creating content that is extremely long form. A lot of our episodes, we're talking about over an hour. These aren't necessarily episodes that people are normally making. um how do you feel then about creating content as or how do you feel about people that are creating content i guess just to have it become monetized or searchable who aren't doing it for the love i guess of creating

Oh, yes, definitely. Okay. So on your first point, I've watched a lot of like the This Week in Startups episodes. I think that like having the long form stuff at the end is very powerful so that people continue to come watch you. Because the name This Week in Startups is very... It lends itself to timely, right? Like this week. Kind of stuck in there with the name, right? Yeah. It's kind of stuck in there. So I like that strategy with what you guys are doing there. To answer your question, yeah. I mean, I know a lot of people that, you know, personally that have channels that aren't really doing it for the love. They're just doing it for searchable content, getting a lot of views, getting a lot of referrals and stuff like that. And. you know, more power to them. It's, it's just kind of like, how do you want to do YouTube? And YouTube offers you so many different avenues on how to pursue it. You can be like an Amber Chamberlain type where it's just like a vlog and people like you want people to come just for you. Or you could do a news channel. Like I think Philip, Philip, Philip DeFranco used to do a news channel, right. Or, um, There's people that just make commentary videos. There's people that make reaction videos only. And then there's like people just trying to hit the algorithm to get as many views as possible. Like if you think, you know, Mr. Beast or Ryan Trahan or something like that. Or just telling a good story and giving a gift to the audience. That's always so inspirational. But then there's just so many ways to do it. And I have no problem with people that want to do it just as a business if that's what they like YouTube for. Because as long as they're serving people that need that content, that's good. That's a good thing. I agree with you.

And it was a realization that I didn't come to until over the past few years. When I was younger, it used to really bug me when I saw... Especially, I guess, when I was in high school. When you see somebody's content, you're like, I'm like, why am I even watching this? The person obviously doesn't even want to make this. It's such a cash grab. But as you get older, you realize everything is a job. You could love your job and love what you do. Or there are people that don't love their job or what they do and they're just really good at it. Or there are people that don't like their job and they're not very good at it. And if you're on YouTube and you're in that section of you don't necessarily love doing it, but you're good at it and you're making money, it's a job. And I think it was really hard for me to separate that creating process from it being a job process because you see the first people in those self... Those really big self-help videos. I want to say there's one, it's called Better Ideas that I really, really like.

I've seen that.

He's huge. Yeah, he's great. Great content. And it's just like really artistic, like great shots and everything like that. Or Matt Davelas, like another example. And then you see other people in that same style of content. And you're like, wait, your heart's not in it. I see the level that these people are putting out. You got to realize some people are just there to answer the questions and go about their day. But your content does not feel like that to me. Because One of the things that I like about your TikToks is how much heart it feels like you have in them. I think the format is really interesting. I don't know if you coined this format, but I think you might have been one of the creators I see do the most or first, where you act like there's an issue and you're still the one prompting the question and you're the one prompting the answer, if that makes sense. Like the skip format? The skip format, exactly. I really like that. But your content on TikTok and your content on YouTube feels kind of different.

Yeah.

How were you able to bridge that?

Uh, so first let me respond to the skit thing. The skit thing was actually, I mean, a lot of comedy TikToks were doing skits in 2020. And so like you always saw like the comedy people doing it. And then the first person to do it with business was Edmoni. His name's like Edmoni Explains, Zade. he was doing them for more like business news. And he still does them today and he's really good at them. But I remember asking him like, Hey, can I just do a skit about an evergreen topic? Like what's a dividend? And that was like July 2020. I remember I made it and it did phenomenal. So I was like, Oh, well, I'm just going to keep doing the same thing. But it's funny because I made like maybe 90 of those in that fall, like July to fall of 2020. And then Uh, they all did great. But then I noticed like as more and more people did them, like the efficacy of my skits went down and I think people just on TikTok. Yeah, they just got, I think people on TikTok, they saw the format so many times and they get tired of it. Right. Cause like once you see it, you kind of know like, Oh, this is a finance TikTok. He's going to tell me about, he's going to have this problem. This person's going to answer it. This person's going to like prompt them some more. And then, you know, you get a resolution. It's a great way to teach concepts for sure. But I think is in terms of performance, it doesn't do good anymore.

Got you. Um, you, like I said before that you sound extremely passionate about on both sections of, um, your social media, whether it be to talk on YouTube about finance and personal finance, how did you really make that jump from your full-time job, um, to being a content creator? Because you were working in finance before, but how did you even figure out that like creating content was another part of, um, I guess your journey as somebody that really enjoys finance.

Yeah. So I've always enjoyed money and finance and talking about like how to best allocate your money. So that was like never a problem for me. It's always been a big interest. And then, um, you still had your cap on. And then, um, I had a lot of friends that would ask me questions about personal finance. I love answering them. I still love answering them to till this day, but the transition was interesting. So I always thought so. Okay. So I worked at the gaming company, corporate gaming company. I always liked gaming. I'm always growing things too. I'm always... I love seeing things grow. And after I left the gaming company, I had a startup, my own little eCommerce dropshipping business. It's not even a dropshipping. It was real shipping. We had a fulfillment place in Dallas, Texas. Oh, wow. That I went to go... Yeah, we were printing posters online. That's not dropshipping. That's a shipping company. Yeah, I had a printing, uh, like a poster printing business. Okay. And so I found the supplier in Dallas and, you know, we would get orders online for certain types of posters and they would get routed to him. And then that, that printer would print and ship them. So technically it's drop shipping, but I was fulfilling it from the United States and I knew the person, it wasn't just like coming from China. The ship time was like three days. And at that time, I was growing an Instagram meme page. I had a high school friend of mine. He had his own meme page. He got like 160,000 followers on Instagram. This was in 2016, 2017. And this was right when maybe Fuck Jerry came about.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Later on then. And so I created my own meme page. Yeah. Yeah, huge. I created my own meme page and I wanted to grow it too. And I was just making conversational memes. But I was able to get it to 12,000 or 15,000 followers, which I thought was pretty good at the time. And it taught me how to grow social media, if that makes sense. Definitely. I was using that meme page to reach out to other memers. And we were doing Instagram ads with influencers for my poster printing business. So immediately, I saw this connection that, okay, I can use this as marketing. It's cheaper than Facebook ads. It's cheaper than Google ads. I'm getting a really good return on my ad spend here. So I learned how to grow social media through that. And then at the same time, I'm watching a lot of YouTube and I love watching YouTube. I was watching Marques Brownlee in 2014-2015. Same with Casey Neistat. That was like... I really just want to be a YouTuber. And I feel like, okay, now I know how to grow an Instagram page. It's probably really similar to growing YouTube or an Instagram for a TikTok, I guess now. And that's how I kind of took those skills and started to grow the social media accounts. And plus I always like gamified things. So I've always liked video games. And so like, for me, it's just like, feels like a big video game. And I like, I like kind of seeing numbers go up and that's trying to like figuring out like how to make a good video is like fun for me. Like, Oh, like.

What's that process like? Like, are you batching content while you're doing this? Like what's, how's this creation, um, I guess process go through?

Yeah, the creation process has changed a lot since I started. Initially, it was just like, let's just create ideas that have been made before and try to do our own version of it and make them a little bit better. But now what I'm trying to do, which is very new, is I'm trying to attack broader financial topics and tell them in a really compelling way. So I'm trying to think of an example. Have you ever watched Veritasium ever?

Um, much different. And it's even more evergreen one could say, and it appeals to even more people because there's those people that really enjoy those like deep dives and there's people that are interested in finance.

Yeah. So now, yeah. So now I would say the strategy on YouTube is just to do everything financial related. So it'll still have a mix of like top five credit cards and stuff like that. And then, um, it'll have, you know, like these deep dives on different types of topics. I also want to do some commentary on big news items or news pieces. Like, so for example, if FTX crashed tomorrow for the first time, I probably would have covered, would cover that. Um, and then I also want to do interviews. So like, that's my last piece is I want to interview, uh, like long form interview, like big names in the tech and business and finance space.

Alright, so there's multiple different places that you want to try to take a job at. I really like that. I'm really bullish on long-form content. Not that I don't really enjoy short-form content, but I feel like it's a lot harder for me to create a connection with somebody. There's very few entertainers in the short-form content space that I create a connection to compared to a long-form creator. So for example, there's a podcast I really like called Celebrity Memoir Book Club. Trash. I don't know if it's like... It's not trash. I like it. It's a good podcast, but it is not in tech. It's not in business. It's not something that I'm listening to it. And I'm like, wow, today, I learned something new that's going to make me more successful or benefit my life necessarily in a huge way. It's just a funny podcast. But I really like the host and I would totally consider going to a meetup. But I don't... I was trying to think if there's a TikToker, there aren't really any short-form creators that I would be like, you know what, this is an event or a meetup I want to go to. So I think it's smart to be, I don't know, taking a job at a bunch of different spaces within YouTube in particular, moving forward. And that's my... I'm putting it... Whatever. What day is it? February 21st, 2023. Bullish on YouTube.

Multiple years late, but... I think you're right on the money there. Nate had a really good tweet yesterday or something like that or 2 days ago. It was like... He went to VidCon last year and a TikToker with 20 million followers couldn't fill a room versus someone on YouTube with 100,000 followers was selling out the room, right? Yeah. And so it shows you the difference in deeper connection. He also had a hot take yesterday. Uh-oh. He was like, I'd rather have 10,000 long-form views instead of 10 million short-form views.

I guess it depends what your angle is.

I don't know. I disagreed with him. I think 10 million of anything is going to be better than 10,000 long form views. Wait a minute there.

Bullish but not that bullish.

No, I understand what he's saying, but I definitely would take 10 million views over 10,000 long forms, but I just don't know where the break even is. Is it 2 million? Is it 5 million? I don't know. It's really tough.

I think of it as with short form and long form, the short form would almost be like if you watched a documentary about something versus if it became your major in college. I really like learning about religions. Theology is something that's super-duper interesting to me. There's an account that's commentary that I actually found through, I believe, Celebrity Memoir Book Club, because they had them on their Patreon, called Fundie Fridays, and they explore the world that is fundamental religions. I'm like, oh, this is really interesting. This isn't something I necessarily learned about before. If that, for example, was like my major in college, I probably would be even more like passionate and I'd want to go to like more events about it versus like this is somebody that I've heard at like one Patreon video. I don't know necessarily if I would, I don't know, go to a huge speaker conference with it. So if somebody is going to start like social media today, my advice would be like, yes, have a TikTok, but almost use TikTok as like build up on TikTok, but keep them over on YouTube. But I feel like you're already doing that, right?

Yeah, yeah, definitely already doing that. And to your point, which was... Sorry, not to your point. I have an elaboration on my first point for you.

Oh, let's hear it.

Which is, in terms of monetization on YouTube, what I found is that 250 short-form views is worth one long-form view for me in terms of AdSense.

There you have... Wait, that is a really good metric.

Yeah. So for me, it's 250. For someone who might have a lower RPM, it might be like 150 times or a hundred times.

And explain what an RPM is too, to people listening.

Yeah. It's a metric that tells you how much you make per thousand views. So on a thousand views, a finance channel might make $15. monetized. And then on a more lifestyle video, it might be $5 per 1,000 views. For tech or something, it might be $8 to $10. So if mine is 250x... Sorry, if one long form is worth 250 short forms for me, then for someone else with a lower RPM, it might be worth a little bit less. But still, it shows you the magnitude.

Yeah. And RPM is, um, is revenue per million or mil, milli, right? Yeah. Yeah. Um, and I think that's like a really, really interesting metric to go off of too, because we're starting to see, like, I've noticed what metrics really matter. Um, because a lot of times when people are seeing like views on Tik TOK versus followers on Tik TOK versus like you see Twitter, which has like an engagement of its own, what, um, number do you find to be most important on TikTok and on YouTube? What should we be paying attention to now? Because I feel like that number has changed or that metric has changed a lot over the years.

What do you pay attention to? Cause I, I know my answer, but what do you guys pay attention to?

Well, for podcasting, I guess it's a lot different. Um, so we have streams. Yeah. So we can see that over on a different platform. More people listen to our podcast on like audio platforms than over on YouTube. So we tend to focus over there, honestly, but we, we only have one metric.

I think so for me on YouTube, it's watch time and that's all I care about. Like total watch time because You know, I don't know what the study is, but there's definitely a study that says, you know, how much time you need to spend with someone before you develop some sort of parasocial relationship or some strong connection to them.

I have that with Emma Chamberlain. I don't know what the number is, but I bet you I have that with that girl.

I think it's like four videos, four or five videos. Four videos?

That's low. You think four?

Four full-on, like, full-minute videos if I like the person.

Yeah, I guess you're right. Cause that's like, that would be more than like 45 minutes to have like a 45 minute discussion with somebody. Okay. I take, I take that back. I take that back. I think it's like kind of just, it's interesting because like, I was going to say an hour, an hour conversation, but I guess that's six.

I mean, I was trying to think like, you know, if you're having a conversation in person with someone that you've never met, like we've never met today before today, but like after today's conversation, if we talk for an hour, might say, okay, I like Rachel. I like her mannerisms. I feel like I understand a little bit about her. I'm willing to talk with Rachel again. And same if you met someone in person, right? Yeah. If you like their vibe, you're like, oh, I'd like to spend more time with that person. And online, it's a little bit similar. I feel like you want to see someone's... A little bit of their personality, and then you want to see a little bit about what they're about and some of their thoughts. And then you develop this this like relationship with him. I know with me, when I watched Casey Neistat, I watched like five or 10 of his videos. And then I was like, oh, wait a minute. I watch every, every video whenever it pops up. So I might as well subscribe to him. Right. And then at that point I'm like, okay, now I'm becoming a Casey Neistat fan. Same thing with Marquez. I remember watching like five videos. Yeah. I watched five of Marquez's videos and I was like, okay, well he seems reasonable.

So easy to like, yeah.

He, he seems reasonable. He's not like crazy either way. He kind of just tells you how it is. It's, it's very good. And he understood, and he explains it very like, um, in a way that anyone can understand and like, okay, I like, I like what this guy's about. I like his vibe. And then, and then, you know, you subscribe to him, then maybe you check him out on Instagram. And then all of a sudden, like his biggest fan now. So, you know, you know what I mean? It's like, it builds up over time. And I think, So yeah, I think it's like watch time really matters because if you can get people watching you for a long time and your content is good, then that's all that, that's all it really matters. Yeah. Awesome.

Well, I think that is a great number to be looking out for. The reason I asked is I just started a newsletter, where I am looking at how many people subscribe to me, but I'm realizing I feel like the people that click my links that I have, or would be if I was going to monetize it one day, that would be like a super interesting number to give people rather than the amount of people that are subscribed, because how I post on Beehive and how that works, I can use it as a link, almost like a blog, and people can read it without subscribing. I'm like, ah, wait a minute. These late, these, uh, these link clicks, this might be another, but anyway, thank you so much for coming on the segment of okay. Boomer. Last question I have for you, if you have any advice to give to content creators, aspiring content creators, what would it be?

Uh, so I, I really like what you said earlier, which is like, take a jab at everything. So like, if I was an aspiring content creator in any niche or maybe no niche, I would try like five to 10 different videos and just see which one. one, you know, which one did I like and which one did I enjoy making the most, like the process, because you go on, you're going to have to be able to do this for like years on end. Right. So you want, you want to be able to like, make sure it's repeatable enough and like not so much friction where you're like, for example, I spent like two weeks researching a video before that's just not sustainable before making the video. So you kind of want something in between and then, uh, which one performed the best. So it's like, which one performed the best and which one did you enjoy making the most? And then you can take those two and maybe make more of those.

Awesome. Great advice. Love it. Cool. I love that. Great. So Humphrey, again, this is like a huge, like, learning episode for this Beacon startup. So I hope if anybody's listening to this and wants to become a creator, you go check out Humphrey. Go check out his pages over on TikTok, over on YouTube. Subscribe over on YouTube. Help him grow over there. But yeah, if you want to become a content creator, reach out to Humphrey. And Humphrey, where can people find you? Do you have an app across all your socials?

Yeah, it's usually Humphrey Talks on the short form stuff and every social platform there is. And then on YouTube, it's just my name, Humphrey Yang. But if you just type in Humphrey, that's my username too.

Oh, Humphrey. One name? You got the short one? Yeah.

It's also not that hard to get because there's not that many people named Humphrey.

Okay. Awesome. Thanks. Thanks, Humphrey.

No problem.

Yeah, so I've invested over a million dollars of my own money into over 20 startups, including kind body and public and pipe and liquid death early, and realized how much I really love doing it and how much I just love working with founders. And so that's why I started business class, which is my online program for entrepreneurs, of course, in a community. And at a certain point, I was like, okay, I think I'm actually pretty good at this investing thing. Angel investing is different than running a fund. So I absolutely have a lot to learn on that front, but realized I'm sitting on this arsenal of assets that I didn't really realize until I was like, wait, I have great deal flow. I can have a material impact on the outcome of these early stage companies and help these founders see around corners that sadly nobody's showed me around while I was building my first company. And I have access to amazing LPs and people to send, you know, deal flow my way and also to be helpful to the portfolio founders. So I was like, you know what, I'm done starting businesses. I'm a zero to one founder. Now I get to work from zero to one, over and over and over again, and not be the person that has to manage the team of 20 and hopefully 40 and hopefully 100 as these companies grow. But I've seen it and I've tried it. And I know I can help. I just don't want to do it again.

All right, Sophia Amoroso is here. She is a serial entrepreneur, content creator, author, and now she's raising her first fund called Trust Fund. Get it? Trust Fund. You're so good at branding. Thank you. Trustfund.vc if you want to check it out. second time on the program last time was four years ago 2019. Episode 962. If you want to go back, for those of you who don't know, she founded nasty gal, the clothing retailer. And she wrote an amazing memoir girl boss that was made into a TV show and did some girl boss rallies. Then you did what was the um, What was your school of first class? Business class. Yeah, so still doing business class. Still doing business class. And now she's rising up and welcome back to the program. So thank you. Hi, Jason. Hello. So how's you decided you wanted to start investing in other people's company? Had you done some angel investing before raising this fund?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's a different job.

I hear that over and over again, from founders, there is a group of folks who love that zero to one, hey, I have an idea. And now it's manifested, it's in the world. But boy, the going from 100 employees and a couple of million in revenue to a billion in revenue. It's a lot of repetitive stuff. It's not for everybody. So it's good that you figured that out.

I find it's like Repeating yourself over and over again and then refining the same 20 things Yeah, yeah, I mean your job in the beginning is like you're doing everything and then you know how to do everything you train people how to do everything and then you bring people in And they're like, here's how you need to do everything the people who've been doing it are like Hey, we have our way to do it. There's like new leadership that's like no this is how you do it and it's you know it's just your job becomes managing timelines and inspiring people and hiring and managing their expectations and building culture which is also really fun but it's not, it's not the job that you sign up for that you think you're going to have when you start a company and think it's going to give you a bunch of freedom because that's not necessarily the case.

It is a different job.

Yeah, I don't remember how I heard about it. I know Ryan Hoover did it. And he's a good friend of mine. So Ryan found a product hunt. He's now has a fund called weekend fund. and they did their most recent raise as a 506C, or he called it a community raise, so I just used the same term. And it's something that allows you to raise in public. So typically when you're raising a fund, you can't talk about it. The SEC won't let you. You can only have 99 LPs with a 506C, or maybe that's a separate thing. There's like a parallel fund. There's a bunch of like acronyms for different things. But essentially, you can raise in public, you can talk about it, and it means that anybody, if you want, can apply. You can use it as a way to amplify the fact that you're fundraising and get million-dollar checks or five million-dollar checks, but you can also use it, like I did, to say, hey, I want to give access to people. I didn't have a trust fund, so let's make a trust fund. And I shouldn't be here. And I don't have the pedigree that people who have my access or experience typically do. how can I bring people who could be accretive to the fund, who could be helpful to portfolio founders, who can bring deal flow to me, who can help amplify the products and the companies who wouldn't otherwise have the opportunity. So a few weeks ago in January, I announced in TechCrunch that I was doing, that I was raising in public. I made a website in Webflow, which I'm like learning and I really love and I made a type form and I made an application. And I said, hey, we're allocating up to a million dollars. for people to apply, tell us why you can be helpful, tell us about you, where are you, you know, tag the different categories where you could contribute, tell us about your experience, and would you like to write a check between $2,000,000 and $20,000,000? So, I allowed people to apply to write checks between $2,000,000 and $20,000,000, which in this world is very, very, very small. That doesn't exist, yeah. For a $5 million fund, and We got, in a few weeks, not a million in applications, but $6.1 million in applications for checks between $2,000 and $20,000. So it was over 800 accredited investors, people who were self-identifying qualified because they have to be accredited investors. And so we've taken the fun from five to 10. I've, I know it's really exciting and have a list of amazing LPs like Marc Andreessen, Chris Dixon, you Jason, Andrew Chen, Rob Hayes, Paris Hilton. I don't know. It goes on. It's a great, it's amazing. So feeling like I have wind at my back, which is a great feeling because it always felt like that. I'm sure we'll talk about that.

And then there are the chores and you must do your chores, hiring, firing, culture, accounting, legal, scaling, open up this office, whatever it is, it's just, it never ends. And, you know, some people love it. They're operate and they're God bless them. There's operations people out there who can't get enough of that. Yeah, stage of a company. Yeah. Yeah. So you're raising the fund publicly? Yeah, like I am, I'm raising my first one publicly. Curious. How did you find out about the concept of raising publicly? Why did you choose that?

so fun i think i just make things so i have an excuse i start businesses and do things i have an excuse to name them or i just name them and i'm like what should this be and like will it into existence no i'm a lot more deliberate than that i'm kidding

Yeah, I mean, in any career, there's headwinds. And yeah, you're a bit of a very public person. So that's why you should do 506. See, I chose to do it in this fourth one, because I was like, we'll have a podcast or two. And I have a Twitter following like you and why not democratize venture capital, give more people access to it. And yeah, I did a couple of webinars, I didn't do any press, I should have done that. And maybe I should. And I'm taking a year to do it. I'm like, you know what, this whole idea of like high pressure going on the road, pitching people really hard. I'm kind of over it. At this point in my career, the first one was 10. The next one was 11. The third phone was 44. And the fourth one, we had 52 million in demand already. The problem is there are some caps on accredited investors, you can only have 250 up to 10 million that are qualified, you can have 2000 people in the tickets. But it's pretty high. So I, I did a very similar thing to you. I just talked about it publicly talked about on the podcast. And I should have done the thing where I said, How can you be helpful, but I filled up while the accredited and that's what you'll experience, I believe, is once you have a track record, which you'll have quickly after this first one. And Or I should say, you'll have it in three to five years after this one. So let's talk about, we'll assume you hit 10 million. And if people are interested in something like this, once again, the URL in Webflow, which is a cool product. Yeah, I know a lot of people using trustfund.vc. You're great at design, by the way. Thank you. I think like your zone of excellence is just design and branding. As somebody who is into branding and design, I'm just in awe of your ability to make great brands.

What do you do? Weed makes me kind of weird. I don't know. I can't do, I can't follow conversations. It makes me a little dumb. It makes me slow.

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Yeah. I don't have time. Yeah. The learning curve is high. So Nasty Gal, I was like, okay, what do I name it? I almost named it I Heart Vintage, which was like, oh God, it would have just been so, yeah, I know. It's not even my, I was like, oh, it's memorable. I think I can get the name or something like that. Yeah. But then I was like, okay, there's all these girls selling hippie stuff on eBay, and I want to do something different. And my spirit is not hippie dippy. My spirit is like, I don't know, the word edgy also feels kind of dated. But there was this, I worked in record stores and was really into music and music was the thing that like, I played bass in high school, but I just loved collecting records and downloading stuff in these weird private servers that record nerds had and would rip stuff off of vinyl that wasn't re-released on CD yet. It was just like, it's what I love. And I remember when this album was re-released, it's called Nasty Gal by a woman named Betty Davis. And Betty Davis was married to Miles Davis for a little while, and she was allegedly too wild for him. And her music is... Is that saying something? Yeah. Her music is so good. And she was so stylish. And I just absolutely loved it. So I was like, I'll name it Nasty Gal. And I didn't think it was a word I'd be saying for the rest of my life. It was an eBay store. I wasn't like, yes i'm gonna go out and you know i'm gonna somehow get on this weekend startups i'm gonna. I didn't know what TechCrunch was. I don't know what investors were. It was just it was like an eBay store. And it cut through the noise, you know, the first website. So it was NastyGalVintage.com. When I had to buy NastyGal.com, you can imagine what kind of website I had to buy it from, which was like... It might have been adult in nature.

I think that's kind of what it's known for.

Never owned NastyGirl.com. Haven't been there in a while, but there were definitely like girls who were like 20 years old being like, Grandma, look at this dress and typing the URL in wrong. There was like upset parents looking at their credit card statements, being like, what is this? Which is like, if you have your parents credit card, I don't feel bad for you. I'm sorry.

Yeah.

Uh, and then boss, where did, where did another dank reference? So girl boss, uh, I took from the name of a film called girl boss, gorilla G U E R R I L L A from the seventies, which is a very little known, uh, female Japanese revenge film of a genre called pinky violence, which, um, Tarantino has taken a lot of inspiration from. Admittedly. And they're just, again, super stylish, really fun. It's like these super cool Japanese girls like knife fighting in the street. Yeah. It's so good, right? So I was like, girl boss. Yeah, girl boss. There it is. Yeah. So that's where I was just like, cool. I'm going to call it girl boss.

It's hilarious.

And then business class, I was like, Oh my God, naming of entrepreneurship course so difficult. So it's like, Ooh, do I call it Founder Academy? Do I? There's just the common all the combinations of words like Academy, University, you know, the circle, the club, they would be in there. So generic descriptive is good, because you don't want for something like that, you do want it to sound relatively straightforward, like you want the title to kind of tell you what it is, instead of be like, You know illumination. I'm just looking at this like coffee cup intelligentsia illuminating coffee But like, you know, that's no one's gonna know. I will say it's great coffee. Mine's super cold, but i'm just sitting here camping It has a great logo as well.

So that's that's interesting the genre films that tarantino is obsessed with I just read or I listened to I should say his audiobook cinema speculation. Did you get it yet? Or no, but I heard it's so good It's great. And then I started watching some of the films that i'm like These films are uh what they would call a genre film, right like horror revenge Yeah, female revenge whatever. Yeah, and um, they're not exactly for me I like thrillers. I like mysteries. I like a little more going on there sci-fi uh, but I get why he likes it because They're they have a certain as the word says genre films, they have a certain purpose, which is to excite you and delight you and make you uncomfortable in the theater. And I highly recommend this book. But yeah, that's interesting. Yeah. Mining old media from the 70s to find interesting words.

Yeah, try your boss um can't trademark that but um I was on a walk and was with my ex and I was just like, okay, I was just stringing together words. I'll just do that. I'll just shoot, shoot. And I was like, business, business class. And I got, that sounds so basic. And then I was like, business class. And then I was just, you know, started putting Pinterest boards together of like old Pan Am kind of ads and just like all the, you know, uniforms and fun puns and references. So in business class, there's modules and there's lessons and a course and the modules are called flights. There are seven flights. Over the course of a cohort that lasts 10 weeks, people get lifetime access to the whole program. But it's really, it's self-led, but we also drop one flight a week so that people are kind of taking, consuming that content together and not overwhelmed. Within those flights, the lessons are called legs. And over those 10 weeks, because there's only seven flights, there's three layovers, which are catch up weeks. It's just like endless.

We found our university and it's it's problematic because people keep Calling their own things found a university and i'm like, hey, uh, that's our trademark.

I don't know where the trust fund came from. But in business class, I go through naming and branding and visuals and, you know, finance and legal, everything. But I do take people through, well, obviously, like the thesaurus. So anything you think it is, like, what's just one degree away? What's the kind of like asymmetric um reference that isn't the thing that you're necessarily talking about you don't have to be super on the nose about it and then just because i love rhymes and puns i go to rhyme dictionary.com oh so great and i'll just like jam out on like okay here's one thesaurus word and then how can i turn that thesaurus word into like something that rhymes with that and it can be a what's that called when you put two words together there's alliteration it's uh portmanteau i don't know it sounds fancy it's when you combine two words to make a new word portmanteau yes i've heard this something like that i didn't know that when i was doing it someone told me that recently so uh but it sounds fancy alliterations when you have two of the same letter to beginning sound yeah letter or sound kim kardashian

It's just like endless, endless things to build. Well, I mean, that's the thing when you strike a theme. And I remember seeing it and I was like, oh, she's doing a business class. And then you always do photo shoots of yourself and, you know, great logos and everything. And I saw you doing it on Instagram or something. And I was like, ah, Yeah, pull it up. It's businessclass.co to my producer.

Yeah to make like a new one. So what would an example of that be like, uh, yeah, uh normcore

Oh, yes, there are better ones. There are there are better ones, but that's that's a fine one as well. Yeah. Uh, yeah portamento is uh When you blend words together, right?

Completely untrue. None of the above. I tried to build a billion dollar direct to consumer fashion business. It's really hard. I've watched my friends try to build billion dollar direct to consumer businesses. And while some of them may be valued at a billion dollars, it's doubtful whether or not any exit will ever happen remotely near that price. And doing a billion dollars in revenue is like a whole nother question. So I put enough stuff in landfills. I don't want to do stuff. Liquid Death was a great investment, but in general, stuff is not interesting to me. Consumer and the consumerization of enterprise or B2B is really interesting to me. So that's one area I like to invest in. It's seed and seed, pre-seed, and maybe seed plus, whatever. I'm not investing in anybody's bridge rounds from having raised their seed a year ago. new companies that are just starting now because it's going to be a great vintage because valuations are very much in line with think where they should be. And the word profitability is finally in the mix. And I bootstrapped my first business with no investors or debt to 12 million in revenue. So I get what that means. But I'm also investing in companies that I think can become billion dollar businesses and are tech enabled. So they don't have to be purely technology companies. It could be As far as products go, probably the only thing I would invest in that's a physical product might be something like a wearable. So my investments will be across B2B and the consumerization of enterprise. So workplace products, largely stuff that entrepreneurs can use because I was the C when I started on eBay. eBay was a B2B business. It was a marketplace. Nobody knew was using that term. It was the average person starting a business. eBay gave me this framework that said, here, fill in these blanks, and you have a business. And that was a very new thing. Would i become an entrepreneur or opened my own vintage store on what hate street no like no one would have given me the money but i was able to call together my skills and you know my computer and a little digital camera and buy some vintage from vintage stores and there was i had a business. So, today, the people using the Shopify's of the world, or the Calendly's of the world, the Calendly user could be someone who is an eyebrow, like a brow artist who does people's brows, but she's also a business person. But she doesn't know what SaaS is. Calendly SaaS, Shopify SaaS, like every person that read Girlboss, the 500,000 people who bought it in this entire generation, if they're not entrepreneurs, they're entrepreneurial. And they're probably using B2B tools, even if it's a sorority using Slack for something, right? So people are hacking these, what would, at one point have been considered enterprise tools for their personal use, they're using communities that were meant for individuals for professional use. And what was the B2B, I think, is the C2B, I guess, in that these are brands that people are, that are getting into the these products that are supporting entrepreneurs or the business of one or ones that are attractive, because they're also great brands. And there's something you want to align yourself with. And they're great tools like Webflow is cool. Like I'm like, I want to say I use Webflow, I want to say I use notion. And someone who's not necessarily running a business can use notion. But for the most part, it's marketed as like a as a B2B tool.

Oh, yeah, no, there's a, there are some of those words now that I listened to a podcast called Red Scare. And they are into this kind of normie culture, whatever. And they use all these hip words and stuff like that. Okay, imagine this, you got an idea for a great tech startup, and you think it's going to change the world, but you got a problem. You just don't have the engineers that you need to make it come true. Why? Well, it's obvious. It's hard to find engineers. There's a lot of competition. And hey, you're trying to keep your burn rate low. You need to conserve cash. Now, imagine you had a partner who could provide you with more than 1000 on-demand developers, right? As many as you need. And these developers were all vetted experience result oriented. And they were incredibly passionate about helping you grow your startup. And what if they charged, you know, competitive rates, things that you could afford? Does this sound too good to be true? Well, let me introduce you to lemon.io startup shoes lemon.io because they only offer handpicked developers with three or more years of experience. and who have strong portfolios. In fact, only 1% of candidates who apply to work with lemon.io get in a couple of our launch founders have worked with lemon.io and they had an amazing experience. And listen, I have used outsourced full time teams for decades, whether it was way back at weblogs, Inc. Mahalo on to inside.com at launch, This is the way to do it. Go to lemon.io slash twist and find your perfect developer or tech team. And you can do that in 48 hours or less and twist listeners get 15% off for the first four weeks. Stop burning money, hire developer smarter, visit lemon.io slash twist. So what stage are you going after with the fund? Yeah. And then what stage? And are you vertical specific? Because I think people would say, Oh, Sofia morosa, girl boss, nasty gal, this, that they're like, she's gonna do content. And she's gonna do fashion. And is that true or not?

Yeah, people ask all these questions. And I guess I just want to clarify because I mentioned wearables and that has nothing to do with entrepreneurship, healthcare and fintech. money faster, more accessible, more convenient, more beautifully designed in a new way, doesn't have to reinvent the wheel. But FinTech and health, digital health are also two areas that I find myself really attracted to. So businesses that make people's lives better, just through technology, entrepreneurs and individuals. So It's a $10 million fund. We'll write 150k checks into probably 60 or 70 companies, and I'm not planning on having any reserves. I may do follow-ons through SPVs, never done an SPV before, but I expect to offer those SPVs to my LP base. And yeah, so that's something that they'll have the opportunity to invest in along with me. if those companies, when those companies go raise subsequent rounds.

And this is a great observation. Yeah, think about it. You just said, raising your fund, you talked about nasty gal. And now you did that with the tools. And you look at raising your fund, you're using, I believe, angel lists platform, which has made it like that abstract 90% of fundraising. Typeform webflow the press and your social media following right and then when you did You know, uh business class i'm sure you some collection of technologies and printing all kinds of stuff So yeah, I don't want to reinvent the wheel never ever again Yeah. Have you thought about your how many portfolio construction, let's talk about portfolio construction, and then follow on funding. This is a lot of lessons I learned with the $10 million fund, I think 10 million is the perfect solo GP number. It's constrained. And have you thought about how many names you're going to put in there. And the average check size, we know you're going for the scene, stage, great, maybe series A sometimes, and you're going for tech enabling tools, you're not going for fashion or whatever people might pigeonhole you into because your previous success. Got it. Check, check. What is the check size going to be? How many names and then follow on funding because that must have come up a bunch when you were doing the fundraising. Totally.

I'm very much an introvert, but I'm also really curious. So I love meeting people. I mean, I've been on like a full listening tour for the last year before I even decided to raise a fund because I know what comes on the other side of doing something successfully and, okay, this is going to be a 10. Now it's real. I've heard from enough solo GPs and people like, okay, fundraising is a slog. It's not as fun as just having conviction and writing a check into a founder you like. It's very different. have a lot of deal flow just through the website, which is interesting. So yeah, Trustfund.vc. And then stuff from other folks, like founders that I've invested in in the past, people I've met over the years. uh some of my LPs other GPs and in big funds you know you've sent me deals sometimes I get invited to SPVs and I'm like hi can you make a direct intro um I've also just gone cold to people and you know for kind body when I invested I went just to their DMs and I was like hi can I talk to the founder so people will just get on the phone with me it's if I need to if I want to source something it's not hard that's such a huge advantage that I have huge advantage.

It's a nice way to do it. That's how I did it in the early days was just, hey, there's a round coming up. Does anybody want to participate? LPs go first. It works. It becomes a lot of paperwork, and a lot to manage. So the funds might be a more efficient way to do it. In terms of operations, you really need to have a lot of operational people. When you start getting into SPVs is what I've learned after 260 of them. Sounds like a nightmare. Do you use AngelList? We started on angels. I was the first one famously. And the first one we ever did was calm calm. So I think that's the most successful one ever done to date. I put in 50k I think from our fund and 328,000 from the syndicate. Again, it was a $10 million fund, we were making 50k bets. And a meditation app seemed like a crazy stupid bet at the time people criticize me pretty hard. And it's a $2 billion company. So that worked out, we own 5% of it. I think it's the most successful syndicate ever done, certainly on AngelList. I don't know if there's other ones, but in terms of a multiple, it's probably the most successful ever done. And then we did Asure, but Asure Fund Management went out of business. And so I just hired the top three people from Asure in the tax department, and I created SPV Solutions, my own SPV company, because none of the ones out there I think are going to be long for the universe. With the exception of AngelList and CARD, I think they'll stick around, but those are super expensive. CARD is $40,000, I think, to maintain an SPV for 10 years. Oh, wow. That would be a big SPV, yeah. Super expensive, yeah. So then no follow-on reserves, got it. 60 names. Talk to me about how you're going to process all this deal flow, because you're kind of legendary. You're going to get a lot of inbound. Yeah. How are you dealing with that? And from what I know of you, are you an introvert or an extrovert?

So I've never gotten allocation. But again, 20 checks, this will be very different. And my checks are small. And the check size, and I'm sure, I mean, maybe you thought about this when your fund's much larger now. And so I'm curious what size checks you're writing. But What was easy for me was getting as an angel, okay, $25K, $50K, $100K, $150K allocations, where I had to go raise a first time fund and have all the glory and be like, I'm gonna raise a $50 million fund. It's my next move. I'm the girl boss. That's not what I'm going for. I want to do a really good job. And there's enough of a learning curve with managing a fund and managing the deal flow. But also, when you have a much larger fund, you're fighting for allocation. So if I was trying to lead seed rounds and put in million, $2 million checks. all my friends that are sending me these great deals, they may be people who are trying to write million and $2 million checks. Yeah, now you're bumping into each other. So that was just like a really easy layup for me to be like, Okay, this is already happening and working at this size. Let me just keep doing that. And, you know, formalize it beyond angel investing. And in terms of managing the deal flow, I actually hired someone I've like, my fees, you know, it's a small fund, but I found the two and 20 kind of situation, two and 20. Yeah.

You're underestimating deal flow, I believe proprietary deal flow is the name of the game. And so what's great is having sold 500,000 books, and you know, you're following, you're just going to get deal flow, other people aren't. And then the second thing is, in deals that are of high quality, the founder wanting you on the cap table is a major thing. So you're going for you.

Yeah. And that's like travel, entertaining, taking a founder to dinner, you may or may not invest in, it's like, everything.

So for people who don't know, 20% carry 2% fees a year, basically 10% fees, or 20% over the life of the fund or something, it probably tails off, there might be an upper cap, but that's only 200k a year.

So I just found someone who's been living in PitchBook and at somewhere else and worked for a friend of mine. Do you know James Vincent? He founded Media Arts Lab and then and now does this... I've heard of him, yeah. a strategy firm called Founder. They also have a venture fund. So like a researcher, an analyst, associate... Yeah, she's been working for him for the last six years. And... Okay. Great. Yeah. So she was on her way out anyway, and came to me, a known entity. And so people I don't know, I don't know. Um, and, and also with deal flow, like I'm looking for really high quality stuff as much, you know, as much as like cute that I was a community college dropout. And yes, I'm giving access to people who maybe don't have like the pedigree of the typical person who would, you know, invest in a fund or be invested in as a founder. I've already over-indexed on the community college dropout side. For the first time in my career, I'm going to be a little bit of a follower because again, I have a lot to learn and I don't need to be finding the diamonds in the rough. I'm going to be investing alongside top-tier firms who can see the landscape. Because if I'm looking at a fintech product, I'm going to see some of them. Yes, I have great deal flow. I'm not going to see all of them. They're going to see all of them. And I can be like, this is so cool. Check this out. And if I send it to any of these guys, chances are they're going to be like, yeah, we saw 10 things like that. This is why we passed. And I'm like, oh, cool. I have an opportunity to learn rather than be like, I'm excited about this thing. They've got a partnership that sees the full landscape. They're also doing diligence on the founders. and on the on the companies, and they're possibly taking board seats. And that's just like a much safer bet for me. And with money, I want to make safe bets.

It's nothing. This is the challenge. You have to have a when I did the first fund. The first two funds, I think I had no fees, third fund, I finally put fees on. And I paid for all my team out of the podcast revenue I have. And just starting to change that a little bit as I went to the last two funds.

Do you do you ask for pro rata rights? 100% Wow.

And with a $10 million funds, investing in that many names, if you do wind up doing 40 5060 names, given the staff side, you're also not going to have the ability to do deep due diligence, you're not going to have the ability to do governance, you don't have, you know, three managing directors to put on, or two managing directors to put on boards to represent you. So you know, it's, it's, I think the approach you're taking is perfect. Learn, deploy 510 million, 15, whatever you get to, and learn the only thing I would edit in it would be to save 1 million for reserves. And, you know, maybe do five less investments, because I do think when you hit 30 or 40, you have enough diversification, that you'll hit a winner. And the thing I'm trying to learn, because I have 350 investments over 12 years, is how do you find out which ones are the winners, and then get more money into them before other people figure out their winners and take all that opportunity. Because man, the, the ability to invest in the series A, B and C of Uber or Robin Hood or any of these, which I didn't, because I was one and done. Yeah, that was the big challenge for me. And now we've kind of fixed that we're I think that's what most fund managers do if they enjoy being a manager, which you'll find out in the next 24 months. If you're listening to this podcast, you clearly have an interest in startups and technology. But do you have the skills and knowledge you need for a career in tech? And if you do have those skills, are you still learning and growing because everyone in tech knows if you're not building new skills, geared towards the latest platforms, well, you're falling behind. And right now, that platform is AI artificial intelligence. AI isn't just the future. It's the present. We see that happening. We're talking about it every day on this podcast. And to be part of the tech revolution, you need to understand the core concepts behind AI. You know, things like neural networks, machine learning, these are complex terms, you can guess what they are. But why not go learn about these concepts at brilliant.org. org. This website helps users learn math, science and computer science interactively. And right now, they feature some amazing courses geared towards AI like an introduction to neural networks, 15 lessons in that one and search engines, which includes 20 lessons on the core idea behind search engine technology. So here's your call to action. You can try everything brilliant has to offer for a full 30 days by heading to brilliant.org slash twist to start your free trial and for a limited time only twist listeners will get 20% off an annual subscription. I'm an investor in the company. It's a brilliant company. And I really want you to try it for you and your company for kids college everybody in between. Everybody should get smarter. Let's all get brilliant together brilliant.org slash twist for 20% off today.

Oh, I told my LPS. I love that I can blame my boss.

Yeah, I wouldn't, I would advise you to not do that either. And they'll say, Oh, well, I'll just be a handshake agreement. Previously known as the gentleman's agreement, the handshake agreement, you don't want to do, you want them to do a side letter and say, Listen, I'm Sofia Amorosa. I can help you with tweets, I can help you with introductions. I need prorata, my LPs, I told them I get it. And then almost universally, they'll do it for you.

So yeah, I was gonna ask you about that.

Oh, basically, cool. In my case, it happens to be the truth. Yeah. And here's the next card that'll happen. The founder will give you pro rata, a series A will occur, the term sheet comes in, they're like, Oh, this big venture capital firm says they'll put in 5 million at 20 million posts. But everybody has to waive their pro rata. And then so what I do, after this happened to me over and over again, maybe four or five times, I called those VC firms, I said, Hey, listen, do you really want to run me over? Because I need to get this prorata. And they would say, No, no, no, no, of course not, Jake, we love you. Yeah, you're like, because I have weight to throw around. Well, and you do too. And the greatest way it is, um, I will not pass you the ball. And I literally said that to somebody, I said, listen, I'm Chris Paul. I'll bring the ball up to the court. I'll pass it to you where you like it. If you don't, if you try to screw me and take my prerogative away, I will ice you out. I will never pass you the ball, which is what you would do in Brooklyn. If somebody was a jerk, you just don't pass them the ball, you pass it to the other people, let them score the ball. People get the point real quick. So you can use that. And then the thing I started doing was I started preparing founders for this. Later stage VCs will try to screw your angels and seed investors. Be prepared for it and understand that I have your back for all time. And if they screw me, there's only one person after me, because I'm one of the first investors, it's you. So if somebody is willing to screw your angels and seed investors, guess what? They're going to screw the founders next, or the team, you know, it's just the nature of some sharp elbow people in this business. Yeah, it's You have to stand up for yourself. And then you have to have information rights is the other thing.

Yeah, that's the thing. It's like, let me be helpful before the **** hits the fan. That's why I'm here. Don't email me telling me your company's falling apart because like that's happened with two of my portfolio companies. So frustrating. In the, you know, last few months and it's, it's there's, it's a bloodbath. People are overvalued and they can't raise their bridge rounds and they're, you know, even down rounds, whatever. It's hard, but don't tell me when it's too... And then I'm like, okay, well, here's someone who might be able to buy it, but I'll get wiped out anyway. But I still want to help. Even if I'm going to get wiped out, I want to help. I can help. It's harvesting all of the **** that I've done for the last 16, 17 years. for free, it's not like for free, but the founders aren't paying me, right? Like, I'm giving them money, I'm giving them money to harvest my expertise to like, it's, it's, I love it. It's what I love doing, because I don't want to keep learning. And of course, I'm going to continue learning all the time. But there's so much that I can add that I would much rather give to someone else to apply to a startup than for me to do after again, after building companies for so long. Use it, like use me, like text me, text me at 11pm, just use me, ask for things.

I just put in our documents and I say, write a monthly update in the first couple years of the business. And then, you know, when you get your series A, series B, maybe it goes to six times a year or quarterly, but we actually put it in there, we track it, we follow up with them. And if somebody, this is my best advice, month one, I'll have somebody on my team say, hey, we didn't get January's update. Month two, hey, we didn't get February's. And then in March, hey, we didn't get January, February's, we checked our spam folders. Did it get sent or do we miss it? And how about we do Q1 with you? Well, I said, How about we do a q1 and I have them and then they CC me. Or they CC, you know, my wags, aka Mike Savino. They say, Hey, Mike would love to jump on a call with you or Jason would love to jump on a call with you. Yeah, how did the first quarter go? And then I'll just tell them right up front. I know how this is as a founder. If you're not sending an update, it's either because you're so busy, things are going so well. Or there's a lot of problems that you want to fix them before you send the update. Am I right?" And they're like, yeah, you're right. I'm like, which is it? They're like, the latter. I'm like, okay, what are the problems? How can we help you fix them? Yeah. And that's the early warning system. But you know what? Nobody does it in our industry anymore, especially not the seed investors. They put a bet in and they disappear. is not I think, that's the that's the problem in the industry right now is all these new GPS. A lot of them have never run a business like you and I have. Therefore, you know, they've never hit 1020 you must have hit 50 million in revenue much more than I did over 100 over 100. Yeah. So like, you've run a business with 100 million in revenue, like, you know what you're talking about? Like, that's why they want your money.

The thing people don't realize is that they're not, of course, you want to, you're going to stick it out as long as you can, but not every idea is going to work out. And sometimes you make mistakes as an operator, you hire the wrong people, or you're overvalued, or there's macro things happening outside of your control. and like hopefully we're all going to have multiple lifetimes and we can all be cats that land on our feet after you know with nine lives right yeah um but a lot of people think that because they attach their identity to something that if that's no longer part of their you know who they are then they're not worth anything or they're a failure and it's just like that just comes with the territory and i haven't learned anything from six i mean i've learned from success but i've learned the most from the challenging times it's like when when the tide is high you're like oh cool like there's no like weird crabs shells and you know cans and bottles stuck in the mud and then the the tide recedes and Then you're like, oh, all this crap was happening under the surface in my organization. I had no idea. And then you get to see all the crap that was like hiding out under, you know, all the, you know, celebrations and champagne clinks and you know, you know, milestones and accolades that was like, it was still there, even when your company, you know, even when business atrophies or plateaus, like that stuff's there all the time. And it's a gift to see it. Because then when you do company number two, you know what the what the murky looks like.

I did something early on, where I told founders, you know, again, language matters. And then saying something two or three times, like you really care about words, like I do. And I came up with just a little phrase, like, and I just said, at some point, everything is going to be a complete, utter disaster. It always is, especially for the successful companies. When that happens, you can't tell your employees because they're going to get scared and they're going to quit. Well, that's your fear. Can't tell your board because then you're going to get scared and they're going to fire you or try to replace you. I said, just call me and just tell me exactly how it is. And I will tell you 10 stories, I guarantee you that are more effed up than what you told me. And then I can just give you candid advice of how I would approach it. And, you know, at one point I had somebody call me and he's like, I can't take it anymore. It's a Saturday afternoon. So you just call you. I said, where are you right now? I said, I'm in my bathroom. I just threw up in the shower. I'm so anxious. I said, okay, you wanna get coffee or something? He's like, I got the kids and my wife waiting in the car. I gotta go take everybody to brunch. I said, okay. have the best brunch ever. That's the most important thing. And then meet me for coffee after. Just tell your wife, your investor needs to see you. You had no choice. Okay, great. We talked. It wasn't that bad. Yeah. And I always tell them the same thing. Listen, if this company doesn't work out, You shut it down, we all take a loss, and then start a new one. That's what you learned here. That's the great part of this.

Let me just paint a picture from June of 2016 to April of 2017. So, June of 2016, I'm on the cover of Forbes magazine, named one of America's richest self-made women with a net worth of $280 million, allegedly richer than Beyonce. On paper, my company was worth $350 million. I bootstrapped it, so even after raising $60 million, I owned 80% of it. The first money into Nasty Gal was out of the growth fund. July of 2016 my husband of like less than a year like bails and it's like we've been together for like four or five years like what's going on what were you like emotionally could you just give me some warnings or something that was really that was that sucked and then November of 2016 while I'm standing in front of a thousand people at a conference in Australia, promoting a book that I was like, you have to go on the book tour, right? Like the wheels are, you know, and I had hired a CEO for nasty gal two years prior. So I had a CEO running the business because I didn't like being the CEO. Cause I know my strengths and one of my strengths may not be hiring CEOs turns out. And it was on the day that Trump became Trump was elected in November of 2016. that I'm on stage in Sydney moments after having had a board call saying, all right, like, we have to send this thing into chapter 11 because it was like Hail Mary after Hail Mary after, you know, down rounds being cock blocked by, you know, you could guess who, whatever. And then April, and then it's just like the girl boss is, you know, she's not the girl boss. You know, she had to make tough decisions. How dare she, you know, ask people to work hard and toxic culture. And it's like, guess what? I'm like 20 something and I've never even worked in an office. the only office I've ever worked in, my name has been on the lease of. It doesn't say that I'm not responsible for having, you know, for anything, right? And so that was just all the conflation of who I was as a CEO, the person who wrote this book, you know, this girl, millennials, 20-something-year-old, With an edgy haircut, standing at Kimbo, looking like she knew what was up, inspired so many people. And then, oh wow, watch this slow face plant. And then in April of 2017, the Netflix series came out. So four months after Nasty Gal fell apart, I left, I stepped off the board and I was like, cool, I'm 10 years, you know, it was like, it sucked. But it was also at that point, I just was like, I don't know what to do with this thing. It was my entire youth, I was like, kind of ready to move on. It's hard to quit. And it's hard to be fired when you're a founder, and you've raised money, and it was torture for the last few years. And now there's this scripted comedy. I mean, it was amazing. It was a Netflix series was produced by Charlize Theron. It was like amazing talent. called called girl boss with a girl who's 22 in san francisco starting an ebay store called nasty gal being streamed into 130 million homes in 195 countries in almost every language a few months after i have like divorced myself from the thing and the person i was for the first, for the last decade. So now there's this, all this new awareness of this nasty gal and the girl boss and Sophia, her name was Sophia in the show. And it was like, well, who is she really? The character's kind of abrasive. Is Sophia really like that? It was just like, the show was the thing that really kind of like, you know, and there's people whose jobs are literally critics for television. Like I've been critiqued, like I've been put through the ringer, but you know, there were headlines like, um, the worst thing about Netflix's Girlboss is its source material.

Also, you know, you mentioned like your, you become identified with this. You were the nasty gal. You were the girl boss to an extent that like people wanted this to be your identity. They made a TV show about you. Like talk about how you put those things to bed. And yeah, just or how you manage it now. Because listen, I had the same thing. I was the Silicon Valley reporter for my first magazine. I was mahalas and gadget. I was this week at startups. Now I'm all in I was angel investor in Uber, yada, yada, yada. I mean, the public wants to pin you and put you in a box forever. You want to move on and do the next thing. So how does Sofia Marosa handle that?

It's someone evaluating you who's never done what you're doing that has no idea what that's like. And it's like, they've never been in the ring. How could they, how could they understand what's that like enough to even criticize you, right? Like you have to be an expert. Um,

Yeah, I mean, the what I think of when you tell the story, and thank you for sharing it, by the way, I think it's good to be honest like that, because other founders, especially when you're investing can see like, they build you up, they build you up, they build you up. Yeah, the press, the public, the social media, everything. And then, yeah, they love they love the face plant. They love when you trip and fall. But I think about our discussion about creating great brands, right? And great names. You create this a great name, girl boss, and then it's like, Oh, well, that just writes the headlines for the critics. These critics mean nothing. they literally mean nothing in the arc of history. There have been like three or four critics who actually matter. Roger Ebert was an exceptional, thoughtful critic, who was a super fan. Quentin Tarantino's book of criticism is actually very thoughtful, but almost universally, critics don't matter. And their their life's work is often to take other people down. You know, once in a while they support something, but most often, they get a real kick out of kicking people, or laughing when they trip and fall, and they risk very little. And this is plagiarized from the Anton Ego speech at the end of Ratatouille. Have you ever seen Ratatouille, the Pixar film? Yeah, it's been a while. But yeah. Watch the, just type in Anton Ego. He's the, he's the food critic. And he does an incredible speech at the end, just about the creators versus the critics. It's just like, consider the source.

It was like Natalie Massonet from Net-A-Porter. I mean, It was, it was like Tony Schaffer. I started an e-commerce business in 2007, right? Pre-Glossier, pre-Away, pre-Outdoor Voices, pre-Bumble. Amazing, amazing women. I've had, you know, been really lucky to watch, you know, have their own awesome rides, build great companies. So it was really weird and lonely, and I was kind of heralded as this poster child because there was no one else to point at. Also, I probably sold magazines. I knew very well, just the whole kind of thing. The machine, let's face it. Yeah. At that time. The headlines when Nasty Gal fell apart was, does the failure of Nasty Gal mean that millennials aren't ready to lead? And it's like, I'm sorry, an entire generation? How am I responsible for an entire generation? That's wild. That's I mean, it's like if I to be and especially with the word girl boss, and you know, maybe we'll talk about that. But you can only hope that the brands you create or the mark that you make is such a part of the zeitgeist that's representative of whether it's good or bad, or becomes warped by culture or ages poorly, or, you know, becomes the coolest thing ever and stays the coolest thing ever forever, which nothing really does. Like leaving that kind of a mark and putting something out there.

Well, then gender plays a huge role in it, too, because you were pioneering in the tech industry. And the name of the book is Girl Boss, Naziel. So then gender comes into it. And they're like, Oh, look at this little lady. It was like, yeah, totally.

But speaking of accredited investors, there is a limit. And I have a lot. So QPs call me.

That is so ubiquitous It's like it's a win no matter what like it's it's such a fascinating thing to do glad to hear you say that sofia because the way I look at it is lean in and girl boss both of these Okay, and I have three daughters. So I care very deeply about this it came at a time where people were like women tech industry. And both of them, I think, gave permission in different ways. You know, one is more like, I think, you know, what Cheryl was doing was saying, Hey, listen, if you're in that board meeting, if you're in that meeting, and you're one of the few women not forget about being a founder, forget about being the boss, just you're a woman in the tech business. know, stand up for yourself, stand up for your thoughts, you know, own it, lean in and take responsibility for pushing things, right, is my interpretation of it. And she was sort of saying, like, she didn't lean in enough, and she wish she had. So she was trying to pass it on there for you. quote, unquote, nobody like me, you know, not from the Ivy League. It's those people, and this informs a lot of my investing. It's those people who are, you know, outsiders who actually make the biggest impact. If you just look at the history of this, we remember Zach and Bill Gates, you know, dropping out of Harvard, because it's so notable, and it's seems like such a great poetic story. But what you'll find as an angel investor for anybody listening, who chooses to do this, is it's people who have skills who want to change the world who are irritable and unsatisfied. And, you know, maybe not the most balanced, but who also are obsessed with customers and products to a point that they want to change the world. And I think that book and just even the term gave permission to a lot of people like you were saying, and you get those DMS. And so the critics and all the nonsense does not matter. What matters is the legacy, the legacy is amazing. And the legacy, it's just starting. I mean, you're still very young. And this, the big thing that I see in our industry is a lack of people with check writing ability, who are not white guys from Harvard and Stanford's business schools. And that's the revolution right now. I was talking to Molly on this week in Starbucks about it just the other day, of how now it's 16% of decision makers wants that in venture are women. Still, you know, whatever, a third of what it should be, it's got a triple, but it'll get there. And I think the way to do it is to start your own fund. So it's to give me money. Well, bottom line, if you want to see the change in the world, I actually think this is important for rich people. And I've had this conversation, especially not just with women, but women of color, you do a lot of people who should they virtue signal all day long on Twitter, they, they put a Black Lives Matter, you know, BLM, or, you know, some shown of support, and they're supporting the next thing. And the next thing, they don't write the check. You got to write the check if you actually want to see the change to happen. It's not enough to just tweet or retweet or like, take a checkbook. I'm stoked for you, Sophia. I think you're gonna be amazing at this. Thank you. And anybody who's a founder, go to trustfund.vc.vc slash invest.

Purchasers call me. I mean, you have a lot of money.

I am in the QP phase as well.

Yeah, I think that's a revolution. And I know we're probably out of time. And I'm just gonna ask your advice on this. How long do you plan on deploying this next fund for? I think just the fund cycle is such an interesting thing.

So the people listening who have like over $5 million in assets, family offices, high high net worth people can write 100k 250k check. Yeah, this is this is what you need to do next. I trust fund VC, trust fund VC, go there if you're a founder, go there if you're QP. If you're accredited, sign up just so you have them for next time I did. Yeah, well, you're going to be on your second and third fund is where I am now on my fourth fund, which is the lottery. So accredited investors who did three or four webinars, I collected all the interest I had so much I said, Okay, existing accredited investors go first, then everybody else's in a lottery. So you have to this date, call your allocation. And then I did the lottery people dropped off, they didn't full of paperwork, no problem, everybody else. And then I took the people who are credit investors that in the launch fund five, since you did four, I will allow you to go first and launch from five or if we do another lottery, you'll have three ping pong balls to new people's one, let's say so you have three x the chance of getting in. And I think the future of this is not the big endowments for folks like us. I think this public thing, my thinking is, well, maybe instead of going for 150 million, just do 25 or 50 million every 18 months. And just allow access to people who don't normally have access to this venture class.

My management company is called Picking Winners, LLC. I've got an Amex This is picking winners LLC. That's the goal.

Yeah. So I it's such a great question. I sat out a lot of 2021 and 2022 2021 because of the valuations. It didn't make sense people want to 50 million before they had product market fit or customers or had even launched their product. And I was like, well, that makes no sense. There's no chance for I like a 50 x. Anytime I make an investment, I want in my mind, to be able to map out a 50 x, we're investing a 10 million. Okay, 50 x is 500 million, we might get diluted a little bit. How do I get what kind of revenue with this company to have? And then I do what's called a total addressable market, but I do it a bottoms up. So I just, with my team have that very thoughtful conversation about entry price. And to your question about deployment, it is based on market conditions. My belief is in 2023, I'm seeing so many good companies that have, you know, five to 50k a month in revenue, which is my sweet spot. And they're priced at five to $15 million. And then I see these other companies come out of certain accelerators. I'm not going to dig anybody for getting a great price, but they've built people up, they've built up such a frenzy, maybe some accelerators, that, you know, raising at 2030 40 million before you have a product in market, not for me, those companies inevitably come back to market at the same valuation with five customers. So I'm patient. I think the right deployment schedule, according to everybody I talked to is 30 months, 24 to 30 months for primary investment, you save a little bit for reserves. That's what I hear. But I think you could do it in 18 to 30 months as well, if you have great opportunities. The most important thing is portfolio construction. Picking winners. If you have 40 names, you have a chance of an outlier. I hit outliers every 25 to 50 and as best as I can tell. So, and I think this is the vintage where it's gonna be extraordinary. If you can invest at 5 million, that's when I invested in Ubercom. Robinhood was under 20, I think. When you invest in those kind of early valuations as a seed investor, and you maybe can put in a second bet and the winners, this is why I think the one flaw in your game is the follow on. And so I'm going to keep pushing on just save 10% for follow on. Because what if you hit an Uber? What if you hit a Robin Hood? What if you hit a calm, you really want to put that 500 k check in or 250 k check in and be bold. That 250 k check, it might only go 30X, whereas your 150 might go 100X, but 30X on 500K, whoa, returns the entire fund plus 50%. And you're going to know it's a winner. That's the paradox. Yeah. So my management- You know the winner.

This is like all I do. I'm just love it. I love it. I love it. um that's why i do a podcast better to talk to you i know right you get to like learn for an hour

You're good. You're good. I'm just learning.

Yeah. How much of your investment at this stage is in the idea or the founder? Like 5 million is sometimes pre-revenue, 5 million valuation is like, all right, there's some traction, but it's still the chance of that becoming, you know, an Uber. It's slim. So is it the founder? Is it other people's cosigns?

I have people who wouldn't give, you know. With Frank Slootman on from Snowflake again. You know Snowflake, the crazy company? Yeah, yeah. This guy, Frank Slootman, have you read his book yet, Amp It Up? Read this book, Amp It Up. This guy's a maniac. He's like, I call him General Slootman. Incredible. Just like, I don't care what you think of how I run my company. I'm here to win, not make friends kind of situation. And he's just about building the energy in a company and the pace of a company. It's awesome. And I'll send you the podcast with him. It's worth listening to. This guy's a beast. Cool. You have one more question, go ahead.

How do I know any family offices?

It used to be founders. I don't trust anybody else. more. There's too many funds. There's too many games going on, people are sending you deal flow that are the ones that can't raise money, and they invested in the winners in their portfolio. So they're sending you the negative portfolio. Because then you get to extend the life of their losers, or I should say losers. There are companies that are destined to not be able to raise money, they want you to fund them. But they didn't tell you about the ones that they funded and did an inside round on. So then be careful. There's a little gamesmanship going on there. know, as best as I can tell, now, people have decoded what it means to be a founder based on books like yours, mine, Y Combinator, content, podcasts, So people can put on a pretty pretty good show. So your ability to Get snowed is pretty high now, right people know how to tell a story to know how to pitch all that's been decoded Um and gamed and hacked so I look at what my eyes tell me product velocity product design customers And team members if you look at those it's kind of you can't fake a team member who's a winner joining a company, you can't fake a customer being delighted. You can't fake a product that looks gorgeous and is functional and beautiful. And so I'm trying to believe from first principles what I can see, as opposed to my ability, which I think is great, or I thought was great to read people because I have in my later years as an investor been snowed so many times now. where people, you know, told me some great story and they just, the products never hit 2.0, 3.0. They never advanced. They never hired anybody. And man, they burn money like drunken sailors. So, anyway, just one theory is that founders have figured out how to snow people like us, capital allocators. They know how to put on the show. Yeah.

Yeah, I did TechCrunch, I'm doing this, but it's, you know, your team reached out to me and I'm so excited to get on here with you again.

you know, great question. There's a database of them. But I think the best thing for you to do is to do what you're doing, do the media tour. And every time you do a media tour, you come on this podcast, go on other podcasts, you're a great podcast guest, you're honest about your time at nasty gallon girl boss, that's super fascinating. So I would just lean in. So yeah, into the media thing, which I am giving you the advice I need to take. I don't do media because I have so much stuff going on. But I do need to do some more media. I haven't done one press story about raising this fund, but I should do more.

I can't afford a publicist. So I'll just like DM some. You don't need a publicist.

And you're a podcast shy. And I'm like, well, if I'm gonna put money into this fund, at least I should get a podcast out of it.

Yeah, a little bit. Friendly? I'm closer with Carter, her husband. They just had a baby. Yeah. Yeah, they're great.

Here's what you need to do. Yeah. have to do it yourself. Now, you dm somebody who's a podcaster, this is my technique. I just tell people when I like something they do. So I just texted or a dm rain Johnson, the guy who did knives out. Cool. Yeah. And he's doing this new thing called poker face, which is kind of like Columbo, the TV show that I just love. Oh, cool. Yeah, Ashley own. And I just dm them. And I was like, I'm two episodes in this is great. And I'm just sincerely telling him that and like, I think you just sincerely tell somebody you like their podcast. Yeah, next thing you know, you'll be on it. Yeah, you're Sophia. I'll get a list. Thank you. All right. This has been another amazing episode of this week in startups. Everybody go to trustfund.vc if you want to get money or if you want to support Sophia's new fund. I'm in it. Marc Andreessen's in it. Paris Hilton's in it. How much more do you need to know? Paris Hilton's in. You're friends with her.

I think it's like playing in pop culture. I don't know. She made pop culture. She invented... That's hot. She invented the first meme. It was like the first reality show. You know, the simple life, the simple life. Yeah, no, she was like pioneering. And the baby voice is like, like she admitted when I interviewed her on stage at the Girlboss Rally, like, yeah, there's a baby voice. Like, that's not really a thing.

She's kind of a genius. She's really smart. She's very smart. What is her genius? Is it brand? Is it... I don't know.

She's just smart. She's a, you know, I mean, I'd rather her

Oh, really? So that's like, interesting.

Yeah, that's but I want to use that word savant. But it does mean like, yeah, you're like, idiot, savant, whatever.

Describe you should have her on I you know what I should I went to her house once I had a couple conversations with her She's very uh intelligent. She's so interested in people and lovely and I just think there's something there that is Um, I don't want to say savant because savant kind of means like you're deficient in other areas. Yeah, I think there's a zone of excellence

So warped. Yeah. Well, I guess I'll go on a media tour and hope they don't skewer me.

But like, you'll put the idiot automatically. I know. So is what I would say. There is a zone of excellence, where she is unrivaled, which is capturing attention. Like even when they did a fake meme. There's one picture where she's in a club, and she's got her arms up like this. And it's just like a blank t shirt. And somebody put on it stop being poor. I'm like, It's not her. I didn't know that. I swear I've seen that. The not being poor meme is like unbelievable. And she's just like, yeah, that, I don't own a t-shirt that says that somebody photoshopped it. Oh my God. Yeah.

Oh, yeah, I've been on Tim's, but it's been so long.

I would say like you should be on Tim Ferriss, Lex Friedman. Um, I just did both of those in the past year. They're really smart. Um, you should be in, What would be another? You put it, pull up the picture. You'll see it. You'll, you'll recognize this immediately. This is like from the eighties. Uh, yeah. Oh, Ryan Johnson, by the way, it's not rain Johnson's Ryan Johnson. Yeah, there it is. Stop being poor. That's my, by the way, when I was broke, I just had a picture of that on my desk and I would just look at it and be like, Jake, I'll stop being poor. He's not being desperate. Oh, is that the original? It was stop being desperate. And somebody replaced it with where I see and stop being poor. Yeah, for sure. Stop being poor is the one here. But yeah, we do. I think Lex Friedman would be interesting. He's like, like the ultimate AI interviewer robot. Tim Ferriss is like the soulful.

I know. Yeah, I was gonna be on it. Harry actually, what's up? When I sent him my first deck, he made a loom video, like tearing it apart and was like, here's what you need to do. And I was like, this is for him.

And I don't really want a second time that often stayed in touch with him. Yeah. 20 minute VC would be good if you've done that.

He's nuts. He's so that guy is always.

So cool. Amazing. He came to six years ago, he said, I just want to let you know, I'm, I'm a huge fan of your podcast. And I'm going to start a podcast that's kind of derivative or like inspired by what you've done. And I don't know if that's true or not. But would you be a guest? And I'm like, of course, I'll be a guest, kid, whatever you want. And now this is like, You know, I know like eight thousand episodes a year. I'm like, I know.

All right. I'm going.

All right, everybody. Great to see you. Great to catch up.

All right, everybody, thanks for joining us. I'm here with Mark Schuster, my friend from upfront ventures. Thanks for coming on the pod. So much to discuss in this series, I've been trying to talk to folks, Mark, who have lived through seat three cycles. Now, you've been doing venture since For this is my 16th year, 16th year, and we're sitting here in 2023. Yeah. And so you got started 2007 2007. So right before the great financial crisis, but the market right before the great financial crisis, correct me if I'm wrong, it wasn't out of control, like it got in 2020 2021. In this cycle, correct?

Let me say it this way, like, because I have my annual meeting in just over a week. So I've started gathering data and looking at the past. I think there's a few distinct cycles, obviously, 97 through 2001, we went through one big cycle. dot com dot com cycle. And during that cycle, we started overfunding paying really high prices, things were kind of bonkers. And then it cooled between like 2001 to say 2005. From oh five to early 2008. It did start to go bonkers again. But it was in the super early innings of going bonkers before GFC, global financial crisis. And it went off a cliff, and it went off incredibly hard. I mean, I think a lot of us were, oh, my God, is society going to change? That's how bad it was. And I think people don't understand how bad it felt. And this is the first correction, real big one since then.

Yeah, I mean, if you were to look at the NASDAQ, during that period of time, I think we had peaked at maybe something like 5000. And it came back. And when it went down, boy, did it come down, maybe 1800 or something, it was two thirds of its value, the entire index. And there was a sense amongst people who are capital allocators, or who, you know, had their net worth or their endowments net worth in the NASDAQ that, hey, this is a great reset. And paradoxically, it kind of ended pretty fast.

It ended incredibly fast. And we started a new epoch. And I'd say from 2012 to 2015, you had the birth of a lot of interesting companies and a new epoch. And then in 2015, for a brief moment, it seemed like we were going to correct again. And just when it seemed like we were going to correct, we had another acceleration and everybody was calling the top. And then all of a sudden we had COVID. COVID hits and everyone's like, okay, it's time to reset. I mean, I think Sequoia did their compulsory, everything's going to be different now kind of post, which they do every cycle. And, and then we had this really weird, RIP good times. And then we had this, unexpected new boom. And the boom in 2021 and 2022 or 2020 2021 was the biggest we've had yet, I think, in terms of a quick acceleration of a whole bunch of capital coming into the market with totally undisciplined prices. And that's come off a cliff.

Yeah, it's fascinating to look at each of these cycles. And the truth is, great founders start companies anywhere in the cycle. The starting point is when a founder decides, this is a great idea. This is a great market. This is a great product. This is a great team, we're doing this. So this is, I think, what you and I have both learned as capital allocators. And let's be honest, you were a founder before this, I was a founder. you get to choose as a founder when you start. Now, what do you think the market conditions are for a founder starting in 2023? Versus let's say you started in 2020 21? Which founder would you rather be? And what are they going to face out of the gate, they just got on the starting line, they built a team, they got an MVP, what's life like?

So I think people are probably slightly tired of hearing this because it feels like a convenient thing to tell people, but it's actually true. And that's this Jason. Raising capital and building a startup is always better in a more difficult, less capital available market. And here's the obvious reasons why. Number one, it's easier to hire and retain amazing talent. When you have a product that starts to resonate, you don't suddenly have six competitors that raise five times the amount of money at you. When you have six competitors that have all raised way too much money and everyone is slugging it out for trying to get marketing dollars, trying to hire staff, trying to win customers. It's really hard to charge a fair price and earn a good margin for your product or service. And it's really hard to retain employees. So paradoxically, if you can raise capital when other people can't, you have the opportunity to build a much better business. And the same is true about venture capitalists, by the way, like the best vintages are the vintages where there's not like way too much capital competing with you for deals and valuations.

Yes, this is something we've both learned firsthand. It used to take when you and I were kind of grinding it out in the right after the great financial crisis that 2009 to 2014 window. How long did on average did it take for somebody to raise their seed or series that would you say in weeks or months?

Well, if I so seed has always been relatively straightforward, you know, seed investments usually come together in let's say, three, four months. It was the A rounds that really accelerated. So an A round might've taken you four to six months before and A rounds accelerated to two to three months. And then A rounds, suddenly it was, you could get term sheets in two to three weeks and those days are done.

Yeah, what is what happens when VCs are forced to make decisions in a compressed timeframe? What happens when founders are trying to pick a VC in a compressed timeframe? Obviously, it's great that you can get the money in quickly. That's not bad, necessarily, or on the surface, it's not. But what does it qualitatively do in terms of relationships, selection process, etc?

Again, I know this is going to sound counterintuitive, but paradoxically it's better for entrepreneur if it takes longer. Okay. Here's why is let's take a typical venture capital fund and let's say like our funds, we do about 40 investments per fund. If I get it wrong, because I rushed on two or three founders, I take a $3 million, $5 million write off. And in the scheme of $300 to $500 million, it's painful. And we don't try to lose money anywhere. But I have 39 other companies. And that's if I back the wrong team. We just realized, hey, we should have done more diligence or waited to fund these people. But the flip side is if you rush and you get a bad investor who either is not supportive, won't follow on, doesn't attend board meetings, loses interest, or is just an asshole, there's no divorce clause. Like you're stuck with them for the next five to seven years, unless you just want to quit your company and start fresh. Right. So in a way, paradoxically, rushing for entrepreneurs is worse.

Listen, if you're running a startup right now, this is the best possible time to find that amazing talent. There are hundreds of 1000s of incredibly talented tech workers, and they became free agents in 2022. Okay. And they're out there and they're waiting for you to give them an opportunity. And you can find an all star right now. If you want to nail your hire, you want to fill that position with an all star, you need to use LinkedIn jobs. I'm going to make this really simple. LinkedIn has 875 million users almost a Billy and all the best people are LinkedIn. Obviously, you can add a purple hiring frame to your profile and that increases inbound immediately don't know it. Sometimes I post a job right now and it's too much I get too many talented people. I mean, I have a lot of followers. You can add a purple hiring frame to your profile to increase inbound immediately right now. Here's the best part, you can do it for free. Why? LinkedIn loves this podcast. We've had a great partnership for years, and they love giving you free job posts. So go to linkedin.com slash angel, and you get your first job post for free. We've hired some of the best people on our teams at Launch and Insight on LinkedIn, and you're going to get better engagement you get better candidates and you do that faster. Let me say it again better candidates faster. That's all you need to know. It's the best hiring platform bar none. Post your job for free at linkedin.com slash angel that's linkedin.com slash angel to post your job for free terms and conditions apply. It's so clearly is it is something where you can't. I can't as a former entrepreneur and you're a former entrepreneur. If somebody wants to pay you a high price for your startup, and they want to close the deal quickly. Those two things are fantastic, again, on the surface. So we can't blame a founder for wanting to get a great price and minimize dilution. In fact, it's good for all the previous shareholders, including investors. And you know, getting things done quickly and getting back to work. That's laudable, too. But man, if you if you make the wrong pick, that's the problem. So you and I, as we invest in startups, we saw some weird behaviors in the 2020 21 people coming in, making very quick bets, but not wanting a board seat. And they wanted us, I'm a seed series a you're, you're actually you went back to seed, you were series A. And I think sometimes you'll you'll dabble and dabble in a beer, certainly go prorata.

So our strategy at up front ventures is we have what we call a barbell strategy and a barbell strategy meeting we do seed. When we write a seed check we're usually the first institutional capital let's call it a three to five million dollar check. But our median first check is usually around 3.4 or 3.5 million dollars and then we tend to skip the A and B rounds and then we have a separate fund that does what we call early growth. And early growth is between $100 to $500 million valuation when you have truly found product market fit and we're writing $10, $15, $20 million checks. And there's a reason we skipped the A and B rounds, or have. I mean, we could adjust our strategy as new information comes out. But let me give you the data, Jason. In 2010, the A and B markets combined were $9 billion. $9 billion went into that. Fast forward by 2022, that was $82 billion. It went up nine X. Okay. And then it's totally nuts. And, uh, then when you look at the CD rounds, that was nine X capital. The CD rounds also weren't increased, but it was only a six X increase. Now if I give it to you in terms of valuation, okay? So seed investments went up between 2010 and 2022 by 68%, okay? So what we did at upfront is we raised 50% larger fund size. We went from a $200 million fund to a $300 million fund so that we could write slightly larger checks because valuations were coming up. But check this out. A rounds went up by 260% during that period of time and B rounds went up by 431%. And I want to explain to you why that phenomenon happened. It happened because venture capital funds that used to be 300 million raised a billion and a half dollars. And if you raise a billion and a half, Writing a $3 to $5 million check doesn't move the needle. There were disciplined people, Josh Kopelman at First Round Capital, Bill Gurley, who you mentioned at Benchmark, they didn't raise the $1.5 billion fund. But if you raise a $1.5 billion fund, you start writing $30 million checks, and you can't write a $30 million check at a 15 pre. No. Right? You're buying two companies. Yeah, right. So instead, you pay 90 pre. Well, take your next company as well. Yeah. Right. No sense.

Supply was out of whack. It was too much supply.

Too much supply. And I'll, I'll give you, I'm sorry, Jason, just to give you a little more data and then I'll stop. Um, the late stage investments went from 2 billion total to 58 billion in that timeframe. And by late stage, I mean pre-IPO. So here's what happened. It used to take six to eight years for the best companies to IPO in the era of Google and Salesforce and companies like that, eBay. And sometimes there were even three years, Amazon. Fast forward, it then shifted to 10 to 12 years at a minimum. So when you think Uber, when you think Airbnb, when you think Dropbox, right, it started to push up. So the public market investors had FOMO, fear of missing out, and they shifted their dollars into privates. So you had mutual funds. hedge funds, sovereign wealth funds, family offices, everybody's saying, hey, we need to get in. But they're not saying, let me go fund some enterprise company I've never heard of. They're saying, we want to be in the top 10 deals. So the money piles into the perceived winners. And then when those companies IPO, and they're all up into the right, everyone feels smart. But then the public market corrected. So that $58 billion, Jason, in one year, went to $24 billion.

this is the problem. I think when people are following other people's betting, so said another way, you have to make your own decisions. When you place these bets as a capital allocator, I think you tell me if you you believe this as well, or if this tracks with your experience. But I have been very concerned over my, I'm right behind you as your little brother here with like 12 years, I think making these bets. And it, it was really troubling to me at times in my career where people said, just tell me what you're investing in, and I'll invest. just tell me what you've invested in, and I'll mark it up. And I'll do the next round is I'm like, well, I can introduce you to a founder, you should get to know them, you should meet multiple founders, and you should pick the one that you think is got the greatest chance of getting you a return based on your profile, please do not blind bet. I literally had some folks who said, just tell me all your bets. I'll send you a million dollars. I'll every time you do a syndicate, next 20 syndicates put 50k. And I said, No, I don't want to have you set it and forget it. I want you to make decisions. And I think that is one of the reasons we've gotten ourselves in trouble here. Because the founder is rightfully you and I would do the same thing. You want to give me money? You want to give me a money at a 10x my last valuation? Great, I'll deploy it. They all say the same thing. rainy day fund, I'm going to save it. I'm going to deploy it slowly. You know, where it's not going to be a distraction, I can have 100 million or 50 million or 25 million sitting in a bank has not going to distract me. So I got to take it and you're like, yeah, 10 X, pretty good.

Let me, let me give you an example though, Jason. Um, again, these are the things that only come with age when you've sat through the investment cycles. And I'm sure you've seen this yourself. Let me give you a real world example, but I have to mask the name of the company and make a composite, as we say in the business of fiction. I had written a check along with a seed investor, let's say a dozen years ago, maybe 10 years ago. Um, we each wrote, I think $3 million in the first round. Then along comes an investor. The company's trending up into the right. They wrote like a 12, $15 million round. We wrote another three or four. So we're in for 7 million that investors in for like 15. Then a super late stage multi-billion dollar, very respected name came in and just says, I want to take the deal off the table. Here's $30 million. And we said to the founder, actually, we like that investor, but like run a process, get to know multiple people. He didn't want to because the price was so high. So what he did was he went back to that investor and he put a F you price up there and said, this is the price I want. And that found that investor said, sure, I'll take it. Right.

He's already a great deal. And he said, let's just see if I can goose it even more.

Now let me tell you what happened. Okay. Like I have to fast forward time. So then all of a sudden our business started to struggle and it happens in the course of businesses, right? Okay. So what that late stage investor said is I paid such a high price. I don't think I'm going to get a return on my investment. So they started agitating at the board to sell the company. And here's why they had senior liquidation preference. So they're like, we don't want you to run out all the money on this company. We want to sell it today for whatever we can get it for and get our bait back. And it became a real distraction at the board. So you have early stage investors who are saying, I want to go long here. Let's cut costs. Let's lengthen runway. Let's fix our problems. Let's get through this. And late stage investors saying sell. So we would get in board fights and, you know, you had agitation and we couldn't get aligned. That board member started not coming to board meetings. We were doing like emergency weekend meetings, like you do as an investor. Right. And I have all these early stage people showing up for these calls on weekends saying, what the hell are we going to do about this company? Cause it's a great technology, but the market moved. When you get misalignment of investors, it will affect you. Yeah. It will affect you. And so like, just be careful.