The Psychology of Great Founders with Tony Conrad

31:56The Hidden Gems serves brands like Dr. Squash, Monster Energy, Gorilla Mind, Figs, and Sattva to achieve some of their biggest growth. And here's the best part. David Drexler, the founder, is offering his service free forever to anyone in the Consumer V.C. community who mentions the show. So if you're thinking about hiring an agency, talk to the hidden gems first. It's free service, biggest bang for your buck. You simply can't lose. Link in the show notes. How do you think about, because I know you also have an extraordinary angel investment portfolio. How do you think about what makes sense from an angel investment perspective, like flower and water and trick dog versus, you know, fund investments like blue bottle, sweet, green um what's actually different and do you know when you talk to a founder and if you're interested in the company which bucket something kind of goes into i do i do i do um and we try we try not to do a lot of personal investing right especially anything that can be around the edges and as we've done things like blue bottle and these you know it makes it harder and harder to find a kind of unique edge out there.

33:02So over time I've done less, less so. But I think on the personal basis, for me, it's about taste driven. They're often smaller, sometimes non-scalable ideas, but they're things and they're, they're people I want to back. They're people that I can turn a very modest amount of capital into a three X, you know, or maybe a four X, five X in a reasonable timeframe. And, you know, it's great. And it's, it's fantastic. On the fund level, there needs to be a path. You got to really believe on every investment you make that if things went right, you got a few lucky breaks and you got the right team, you know, the, the right founders as, you know, protagonists that you could return the entire fund.

33:46Like in each one of our funds we're now on our eighth fund we've always had a company you know well let's just go through the first four funds which are the mature funds we've always had a company that does that that returns the entire fund right um and and so that's you just have to you have to have a real understanding nuanced understanding of the different buckets there i know it all depends about check size and that sort of thing. But when you under it, I know if thing goes right, as you say, it has to return the whole fund. Does that mean like a 10X return, for example, based on the portfolio or maybe based on the actual company specifically or is that upwards?

34:31I think it's upwards. I think it's 25X and above. 25X. So you're underwriting. If everything goes right and you have a couple of lucky breaks, that you can get a 25x on that return on that investment. We have investments where we've made 75x. Yeah. Yeah. That's amazing. That's extraordinary. It's extraordinary, right? But you've got to really push for that. You've got to make sure. And by the way, when we've got it wrong, which is most of the time, and that's the nature of this, most of the time you're kind of – I mean, we even have lower batting average than probably, you know, the the like low end of a baseball, you know, professional baseball player.

35:17You know what I mean? But when you get it right, it's just so crazy good. And when it doesn't go right, you know, there's two things that well, one thing one thing is inexcusable to me to get wrong, which is the founder that we back. And, you know, that is the thing where we need to over-index and make sure that we're getting the right founder. Now, obviously, we don't get 100%. We have misses there, too. But when that happens, when we have a miss on a founder, that bothers me. Like, that really upsets me. When we have a miss on a market because the market didn't develop or kind of become something that we didn't, you know, it didn't become what we envisioned that it might be able to become.

36:03that's okay. Like, that's okay. That's just, you know, you just, you just, there's a why in the road and you just ended up on the wrong side of it. And that's okay. And execution, that's okay too. Like if you know, if you mis-execute, you know, it's a bummer, especially when that market is real and you just mis-executed, that is a bummer, but I can live with that, but I can't live with it when we get the founder wrong. It's just that, that to me is like, that's basic one-on-one stuff that we got to get right. How do you know if you have the wrong founder? Well, the first, well, how do you know if you have the right founder?

36:42Let's talk about that. All right. Now I'm like my mother. Let's keep it positive. I'm an optimist, right? You know, You know, I like it when a founder is not rushed, is does not think of this as a game, is incredibly thoughtful, as thoughtful as we are about working with them as they are about working with us. Like I like a founder that asks questions. And it's always a telltale for me at the end of a pitch if they actually ask any questions. If they don't ask, you can't tell you how many times people don't ask questions. And I may have even liked the idea up until that point in time and the founder, but then they didn't ask any questions and it gnaws on me.

37:31And I've learned that that's a pattern recognition moment. Like you got to ask questions. like otherwise they're not going to ask the right questions to their partners to prospective employees you know teammates you know all kinds of stuff right they're just they're just not they're just going to be so in their own head they're not going to be curious about what makes you tick and so I like that I like a founder that understands storytelling I mean, and not like a fictional story, but like help, help me understand your narrative. Like, I'm really interested in like the humanity of all of this.

38:09Like, who's the human behind, you know, the, the, the name. And, you know, sometimes I'll walk into and you'll have a founder that's maybe less experienced or nervous or whatever. And, and they'll have their presentation up, you know, on the screen by the time you walk and they're ready to just kind of jump into it. And I'm just like, let's just spend 10 minutes, 15 minutes. Let's just talk. Not doubt about the Chicago Cubs, you know, but let's talk about like, you know, like who are you? Like tell me a little bit about you so I can understand, you know, the journey that you've been on, how you ended up sitting across the table from me.

38:48And I also like to share that back, you know, in a much more cryptic way, but, you know, I like to share that back So I don't want to waste their time. This is their show, not my show. But I do want to share a little bit about that. So that's it. That's how I know if we've got the right founders or not. How in this age where it seems like some categories like AI, for example, are moving super quick and founders are raising so much money and things are just going really quick and maybe they kind of have to be rushed in a lot of senses. what's what's your view on that when it comes to talking with founders if they have to move really quickly you have to work you have to move in a calculated way so you do have to have a certain cadence to the way that you you know process and you kind of the the decisions that you make and the boobs that you make.

39:46My partner, John Callahan's pilot, and John, by the way, is one of the top venture capitalists in the world. You know, we don't talk about it because we don't publish our data, but I know the data and John is exceptional. And he always says, no quick hands is one of the first things he teaches you as a pilot. And so when you're up there and something goes wrong in your aircraft, you, you, you gotta like, you gotta like process very quickly, but at the same time, you just can't help just panic. Yeah, panic, right? And so you really, you really need to do that. You need you need people that are going to move with a strategy in place and tactics, but in a very calculated way.

40:29And I think that what we see is that, you know, like certain things like fast high valuations, you know, fast rounds, you know, inflated, you know, this, that, blah, blah, blah. You know, it only compounds the pressure later, right? And it shows up, it's harder to fall on rounds. There's less room to grow into the story. It's misaligned expectations. It's just all this stuff. And I've been seeing this now for 30 years. And it's hard in a moment like this, in particular, where like, yeah, you got an idea, let me value it at$50 million. But like, be careful, you might get what you ask for. Like, and founders, if you're that one founder, and every founder thinks they're that one, right?

41:15Unicorn, we're like, damn it, I should not have given away 20 % of my business early on for 5 million bucks, right? You know, or even worse. it's like you know seriously just slow down and like structure your business in a way that is smart and creates an opportunity for you to to to be able to capitalize that company with the right people at the right valuations um that makes sense right that create an opportunity for you to have exits later or to eventually become a you know a sustainable you know public you know standing company. Like all that stuff is really important to get right. And in this moment, I think most people are getting that wrong.

42:03I really do. And that's not being self-serving. Like I go back to my own companies, you know, Sphere and About.me. Like I was an accomplished person already in the community. I could have named valuations much higher on Sphere than I did. I could have certainly when I did about.me, I could have named kind of whatever I wanted in terms of valuation, because it's a success of sphere and the stuff that we were doing with WordPress and automatic and Matt and Tony. Right. Like, but I didn't like, I valued my company at$5 million. I took, you know, I took 20 % dilution for a million dollars. Like I didn't need to do that.

42:40I could have taken 5 % dilution, you know, but I'm glad I did because it presented itself. It presented, there was an early opportunity to have a great exit that was accretive to all of us and meaningful to my co-founders and team members. And we were in a position where we could go do that, right? And feel great about it. And so we, you know, you just got to be really careful about the way you structure your company in this era. No, totally. I mean, I've, I've heard you on past shows say that founders should resist overheating their early valuations. And, you know, I know that you obviously as you mentioned pat um you priced your own last last company very modestly um and when he could have gone higher talk to me about like what seed is currently at and because it seems like it's pretty in inflated and if that's the case how do you compete um it is inflated for sure and the there's lots of things where we just we're going to be disciplined and we're not gonna to, we're not going to succumb to the pressure, but luckily because of our reputation and our, you know, our performance, you know, in the marketplace, we have an amazing flywheel of founders that we've worked with in the past who either go on to create new companies and they want to come back and work with us, or they're sending us, you know, team members that spun out of their successful company, right?

44:09And so those type of founders, I think are the ones that we're working with. I think they're a little savvier in a lot of ways. And they're over-indexing on getting the right partner at this stage because it changes everything. If you get the wrong partner at this stage, it just, your world is going to suck. I can't say it any better. I've just been on too many boards where I've seen the wrong type of investment partner come. And I always say, thankfully, we're there because we can help protect the cultural DNA of the company. We can make sure that we buy. I mean, we have so many crazy stories, Mike.

44:52Companies that have gone public where the growth investors want to throw the founder CEO who got us to that spot, you know, overboard, like six months, nine months before they went public, like just crazy, crazy stories where we've had to say, like, we're not voting for that. No way. They've earned the right to take this thing public. You're like, we're going to go all the way. Like, so there's just a lot of behavior out there that, that I think people Or they want their people in. I want my people in to run this. And I think that you just have to be careful about as a founder and make sure that you're getting the right partners around the table.

45:35So I think we're able to get our deals still. We've never had a median ownership under 20 % in any of our funds. Well, at what point does it make sense to oust the founder? What do they have to do? If there's anything fraudulent where we've had, you know, we've had that. We've had founders that are not collaborative and are hiding. They're not transparent. They're not open about what's not working and what, you know, what is working is easy, but what is not working. You know, just like in life, there's certain people that know how to manage up, but they don't know how to manage laterally or down.

46:21and so they're really good managing their board but then we'll start to hear horror stories about how they're interacting with their executive leadership team or the culture is toxic those kinds of things those are areas where i think it's like it's not so much like outsting but but it's evolving you know moving away from a founder you know like this episode is brought Brought to you by The Hidden Gems. Let's be honest. There's a lot of bullshit in the marketing agency world. So much under-delivering, overcharging, and incompetence. You truly don't know who's good until you engage. And by then, it's too late.

46:59That's what The Hidden Gems solves for. Powered by deep agency insider knowledge, they provide founders and brand operators with only brand-beloved, highly-vetted boutique agencies at preferred rates. Agencies across media, creative, dev, design, events, social, and beyond, all well-covered. The Hidden Gems serves brands like Dr. Squash, Monster Energy, Gorilla Mind, Figs, and Sattva to achieve some of their biggest growth. And here's the best part. David Drexler, the founder, is offering his service free forever to anyone in the Consumer BC community who mentions the show. So if you're thinking about hiring an agency, talk to The Hidden Gems first.

47:35It's free service, biggest bang for your buck you simply can't lose. Link in the show notes. I mean, I'm still of the school of belief that there's never a scenario in which a company benefits by not having its original founder or founders involved in the company. That may be an advisory role. It might be in a board role. It might be an operating role. There's all kinds of different ways that can happen. That doesn't mean that they're CEO. And that's OK. Like I like I'll I will line up on that if I think it's the right decision for the company. Um, but rarely, rarely does that come to that. Most of the time, I think that the founders that we've worked, that we're working with and why I say selecting the right people that you want to work with and then getting them, convincing them to want to work with you is that they're going to have a lot of self-awareness, you know, the type of founder that we like working with.

48:32and they're going to know even before I do most of the time that it's time for them to to maybe step aside and I would say in over 80 percent of the cases when somebody has stepped away from being or when somebody we have made a change in things I've been involved with where we've made a change at the CEO level they've been driving that or co-driving that with us right as opposed to us kind of like hey this is not going to be a good day we're going to sit down and have a bad tough conversation with you right i just that just almost rarely it never that almost never really happens you know but it but to be clear it has happened i've been doing this for 30 years and yes there's a handful of people out there that probably if they were listening to this go like, well, wait, that wasn't my case.

49:26But that's not the norm here. How do you think, though, balancing that with your fiduciary responsibility with LPs and obviously investors to obviously get the highest return on your investment? I think if all you're trying to do is get the highest return on your investment through hardcore execution,

49:58that's going to present problems later. Without naming any of these companies, I'm sure there's like five that just flashed in front of your mind where we know these kind of CEOs that just drove, drove, drove, drove, drove, and then everybody kind of knew. Everybody swept it under the rug because they're executing really, really well. and there's a massive price to pay down the road. And so I think that's not a healthy company. That's not a good company. And so you either pay the price now or you pay the price later in those situations. That's fair. That's fair. I want to talk a little bit about DotMe.

50:44You've described About DotMe as a capital efficient win. You've had two exits, a loyal user base, even if it didn't quite become the identity layer of the web that it was supposed to. What did that outcome teach you about how founders should define winning for themselves?

51:06I'm proud of the work that we did at About.me. And as you noted, we did have a very successful outcome, bought it back, then had another successful outcome. Which is so rare. I mean, it is rare. And we're lucky that that happened. Or maybe we were skilled in making that happen, you know, hopefully a little bit. But I felt like it was a colossal failure for a bunch of different reasons. One is I shouldn't have sold it the first time, even though we had a great outcome, because it was way too young and it wasn't ready. And AOL bought it. AOL was fantastic. I have nothing but nice things to say about AOL, Tim Armstrong, their team there.

52:00They over-delivered everything from what we expected. But the reality was it wasn't even a year old. It wasn't ready for that. It needed more time to become. Why did they buy it? Why did they buy it? Well, because I think Tim, you know, Tim had built the revenue business at Google on the ad side. And then he became, you know, very high profile CEO, you know, for AOL. You know, AOL still had juice. It had a lot of assets and a lot of potential. and you know so so you know he came in and i think he looked around he's like okay i've got a bunch of legacy business here that are that are good but i gotta find my my you know my ipod um you know and i need to take some shots on goal and so i was you know they had also bought sphere and so i was leaving as he was coming in.

53:02And I think he said, Hey, you know, like, but you're the kind of person I need to have here. And I'm like, but Tim, I'm a, I want to go, I want to go start another business. And I've stayed longer than, you know, my lockup, like, you know, I was above board here. He's like, well, how about you be an advisor to me into the AOL? And I'm like, okay, sure. And so we just stayed close. And then just kind of over the course of that year, kind of working on this idea, Yeah, he just loved it. He totally rocked it and loved it. And I really liked him and respected him. And so he made us offer. And it's one of those moments where for me that that offer, it was meaningful because it was like second time success.

53:44So like from that, but the financial rewards of it, I didn't need those. You know, and I don't mean that in a disrespectful way, but I just did not need those. I had enough money already at that point. But I had co-founders and I had team members and other people that this was going to be their first exit and it was meaningful to them. And so I just felt like, you know, let's do it. And so I kind of talked myself into it a little bit. Yeah.

54:12I still think the premise, like somebody out there, I wish if I had more energy, I'd go do it again.

54:22Because I think the way that we learn about each other, we're just kind of outsourcing our identity to Google. And who knows, you know, AI, I guess, you know, here in the future. But we're just really outsourcing it. And I don't know, like, you know, if anybody's listening to this, I don't Google myself every day. So, in fact, I don't think I ever Google myself. I have no idea why it might come up. But you really want you want to control that narrative of how you see yourself. And by the way, I don't want to also I don't think of LinkedIn as my I love reading in that team there. But that's my professional identity.

55:05That's not who I am as a holistic person. And Facebook was kind of in that era was like, that's my social that's my social graph. and all that kind of stuff. And that also doesn't cover the professional side. So about.me was just like this little simple idea that you could put it in your email signature, put it in your Twitter bio, put it wherever you are on the web. And people who are curious like, oh, who's Tony Conrad? They click on that. There's a picture of me. And here's a little bit about me. And then here's all the links to the things where you can find me on the web. And that's it. And I just think that that idea is still relevant today.

55:44So somebody go out there and do it. And then we had the name about.me, which was amazing to have that name. So that's why. For sure. For sure. Thank you so much for explaining it. And also the premise and the thesis that you had that you still don't, you still think there's an opportunity there in terms of building something for it. Absolutely. Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. I just think your identity is so much broader than any one of these social kind of vertical channels that we're in. I know you're a generalist investor. I know we talked a lot about your consumer portfolio, which I really do appreciate you talking about it.

56:32Over the years, consumer has kind of constantly been out of favor, at least the past few years. what's your view and do you feel like you're spending more time looking at b2b versus consumer i am right this second um so consumer may go in and out of favor with investors but it never goes out of favor with consumers right like literally so you know pause on that and then you're like okay, consumer has this twisted relationship with tech where it kind of comes and it goes and it comes and it goes. Right now, though, we're clearly in a platform shift to AI. In fact, that shift has already happened now.

57:17It's not even happening. Where I think the infrastructure layer and the tool layer is the most interesting here in the beginning, but soon it will be the application layer, both on the enterprise side and on the consumer side. And what we do know is that if you look historically in any of these, you know, big waves, the infrastructure layer, excuse me, the application layer is about 10x the value of the infrastructure layer. So there's a lot of amazing outcomes that will happen, you know, around applications. But right now I think it's important for us to double down on some of the bigger kind of infrastructure type problems, you know, security being like, you know, foremost in our mind right now.

58:13And the entire stack, as we all know, like it's boring. Anybody's listening is like, yeah, I already know that dude. Like, like the entire stack is, is being rewritten. And, And so, I mean, there's just incredible opportunities out there. And so that's what we're a little bit focused on. Now, we have three investments, or I have three investments that, you know, on behalf of True, that I've kind of co-sponsored or sponsored, that I'm very excited about that start to, I think, they're kind of like prosumer. business and i know a lot of people hate that word and i kind of hate that word but it's the best way to describe it so there's a company called autos another one called pulsia both these companies oddly enough are chasing the same idea which is using ai as your co-founder right and you know you know it's kind of the idea is you you click once give a few prompts and you go to bed and you wake up in the morning, you've got a company.

59:16And then that company, all the ops around it, the infrastructure stuff, all the marketing, consumer acquisition, videos, ads, all that stuff is just being created by the agents. And these companies are growing incredibly fast. So Autos and Pulsia are the two that are both, they're coming at slightly different angles, but they're both attacking kind of the same, same area. We can talk a little bit about how that happens because we don't typically do bets in the same space. And then the other one is Nectar Social, which I know Mizba. Well, she's great. Mizba and Farah are, wow. You know, ex-meta, you know, they, they know their, they know all this social stuff incredibly well.

1:00:04And if you think about like websites being the, you know, the, the consumer engine, you know, the DMs are now, you know, where the consumer is, you know, interacting. Right. And interacting. And so Nectar Social is, I think, I mean, I think all three of these companies are going to be monster sized companies. And they all have great, you know, Henrik and Nicholas at Autos, Ben, who's a solopreneur at Pulsia, and, you know, Ms. Benvera. They're just all fantastic founders to work with. So anyways, I think we're starting to move closer to this maybe consumer application area. So why are you able to make two bets in the same space?

1:00:57Well, we invested in one of the companies. We'll go into the total history here, but this happens sometimes where, you know, you invest in a space, you invest in a company. It's really clear. Company A, you know, going after that idea that I just described. And you invest in something that's over here and really not at all there, but they're working on some different stuff. And they kind of pivot a little bit and pivot a little bit more and pivot a little bit more. And the next thing you know, like, oh, you wake up and you got two companies in the exact same space. And that's what happened in this particular case.

1:01:36And so, you know, it's a little tricky. But luckily, you know, all of those founders understand, you know, nothing was done intentionally. And now we've got these companies in our portfolio, and our job is to be as supportive to both of them as possible, right? And to have great guardrails around no sharing of information and all that kind of different stuff. So it's working out. I think it's always tricky. You've just got to be in open dialogue. And on our end, we have to not overreact. I think if I was in their seat, I'd be a little bit upset, right? I'd want to understand. But once I think I understood what happened or how that happened, then I'd be okay with it.

1:02:30It'd be like, okay, I got it. Let's move forward here. This is not what we should focus on. Focus on our own company and go for it. This episode is brought to you by The Hidden Gems. Let's be honest. There's a lot of bullshit in the marketing agency world. So much under-delivering, overcharging, and incompetence. You truly don't know who's good until you engage. And by then, it's too late. That's what the Hidden Gems solves for. Powered by deep agency insider knowledge, they provide founders and brand operators with only brand-beloved, highly-vetted boutique agencies at preferred rates. Agencies across media, creative, dev, design, events, social, and beyond, all well-covered.

1:03:06The Hidden Gems serves brands like Dr. Squash, Monster Energy, Gorilla Mind, Figs, and Sattva to achieve some of their biggest growth. And here's the best part. David Drexler, the founder, is offering his service free forever to anyone in the ConsiderBC community who mentions the show. So if you're thinking about hiring an agency, talk to the hidden gems first. It's free service, biggest bang for your buck. You simply can't lose. Link in the show notes. Yeah, well, I mean, it's great that you're being upfront with it, by the way. I mean, you're saying it here even publicly. So that's really impressive.

1:03:39I will say it because, you know, it sucks. It does suck. It sucks for me. It sucks on one level. But once again, any fund of our size, and we have$4 billion under management, you're just going to have things that end up overlapping. It's just the reality. I remember there's been lots of times where we did not invest in things because - Being so concerned that it would be overlapping. Well, we knew it was overlapping and yet there were big outcomes. Like, so, you know, when I was on the board of Automatic and WordPress, you know, we did not invoke Best and Tumblr and we could have, you know. Oh, that's interesting.

1:04:22There's things like that out there because it was so clear to us that that was whatever. It turns out that Tumblr and WordPress are kind of very different. Very different. Yeah. But in the time, it felt like they were the exact same thing, you know. And I know Andreessen had some stuff around Instagram and some other company. And they think they, yeah, I can't remember what happened, but I think they kind of had a falling out with the Instagram guys. And so they ended up having a stronger relationship with the other company. That other company went out of business in Instagram, we all know, had a fabulous success.

1:04:57So, you know, I think it's best if you can just avoid getting to a, you know, we're going to detonate the nuclear option here. You know, there's a reason we're all working well together. And, you know, these hiccups happen and, you know, it's part of life. And so you move on. Totally. What's your view on megafunds? Have they been really hard to compete with? Yeah. Yeah. I think more money you have, the sloppier you're going to be on valuations and rigor. And I also think like in some of these mega funds, you know, buyer beware. You know, you take what feels like maybe, you know, what feels to me like a very large round now, you know, 15, 20 million dollars.

1:05:50You're taking it from one of these mega funds. but it doesn't mean you're going to get the attention because it's such a small amount of their capital, right? And so as soon as your idea isn't working that hard, they're just going to focus on other things. And that's not the way we work. So, you know, we want to be here for all the iterations of it because once you finally get to the kind of promised land, that's what's rewarding you understand all of that it it's just it's messy it's murky all the m words it's all that and then when you get there you're like yeah like on a day like today with modern animal i mean you know that was that's not a straight line by any stretch of the imagination you know but it is a very successful straight line at the end yeah i mean i know you're also in slack with stewart you know just seeing how how he's been a couple times too and the monster that obviously it's amazing he did that twice where he pivoted and there's a good example like you know like you know he's working on both times he's working on gaming companies and one he ends up being a internal messaging system and the other ends up being a photo annotated photo app you know So these are really different ideas that evolved out of these other projects he was working on.

1:07:25And I'll bet you, you know, you might've had some overlap. His investors might've had some overlap with other companies. That happens. Totally. Totally. What's one book that's inspired you personally and one book that's inspired you professionally? Oh my goodness. I don't think we can go with one. I mean, it's a stupid personal. Love it. Love it. So, In Praise of Shadows is absolutely probably my favorite book of all time. It's a very easy 100-page-ish, kind of-ish read. Perfect for me. I have trouble reading, so it's just amazing. But it's about design. It's about, you know, kind of early 20th century Japan.

1:08:15hand and it's just incredible, incredible book. And Tony Fidel, you know, who invented the iPod and the iPhone and Nest and a few other things, he had recommended it to me years ago and I'm so thankful that he did. I've read that book. I'll bet you I've read that book 50 times. um and then uh shackleton's journey to me is the most mind-bending um story of leadership ever ever written you know yeah i don't know if you know that story yeah i'm actually currently reading it uh are you really okay like i'm like halfway through yeah i would just hear it's a little bit of spoiler alert but you can handle it um we all kind of know that they all yes yes yes every single person survives which is unbelievable Every single person, 100 % survived.

1:09:08The most gnarly expedition that you could ever imagine. But within, I can't remember, you'll get to the end of this book. I think it's within three years, over 50 % of them, once they're back in England and wherever they go to, they die. Over 50%. Alcoholism, drug abuse, scurvy, all kinds of different things, right? But it's just, it's like the human capacity to persevere with a set of really incremental goals, like really modest incremental goals, and just day by day to get through it, get through it a little bit, just get through it, just get closer, get closer, get closer. you know you know once they get there then they fall apart you know when they get home and that part is sad but the to me the the leadership that it took is crazy uh and it's just an amazing story as you know for sure i hearing about how he's done i mean just what I find amazing was just how he man manages people.

1:10:21Um, you know, in terms of he should have this person, for example, be by his side because he thinks that this person would disrupt the rest of the group because he's like kind of negative, you know, just, just all these managing all these different personalities on top of obviously getting people out to, to, uh, to survive the whole thing. It's, it's really incredible. I'm going to Antarctica in November and I cannot Wait, so I probably will reread this book. Oh, my gosh. Report back. Oh, my gosh. I'll send you some photos. But on the professional, the innovator's dilemma, I think, if you're in this business, is still the best lens on disruption, how disruption actually happens and why it happens.

1:11:02I think that's an amazing book. And then one that I'll just throw an extra one in here just for fun is Andrew Sorkin, who I have tremendous respect for, wrote a book called 1929. I just read that. Yeah, yeah. And I think that's just so fascinating to me. And I think the parallels with, I'm not saying that there's going to be a depression by, you know, so I want to put big asterisks on that. But I do think there are a lot of interesting parallels here, right, with what we're experiencing. And it's, you know, it's about at that point in time, the, you know, the residential investor, you know, could get very easy, you know, interest free, not interest free, but, you know, low interest, you know, loans and get leverage.

1:11:51Right. And so, you know, it allowed a whole generation of retail investors to kind of come in that weren't accredited investors. And so that's why we have a lot of the rules that we have today. But, but the most fascinating thing about that, Mike, was when you understand the things that kind of pulled us out of the depression, one of the key things was at the end of, I think the secretary of commerce or whatever, had this thesis that he wrote up that we should move from a six day work week to a five day work week. and you're like oh that doesn't make sense yeah but why that works is that he the thesis was that it would create a whole cottage industry but a large cottage industry around hospitality and travel and all that and it worked it literally worked because when you went to a five-day work week and then on friday night you could leave and still go to church on sunday but when you were working, you know, Saturday afternoon and you've got only Sunday off, you're going to church.

1:12:57Like there was no travel, there was no hotel industry. I mean, you know, to note. And so I'm kind of wondering, you know, every time I, the reason why I like that book, why I think it's instructive for us, I know there's a lot of panic about job loss. And by the way, I have that same job. I used to have that same panic. And I think that's real. And I think there is going to be like a bad moment for us. But I also believe in humanity's ability to problem solve and to kind of figure out unsuspecting ways to get through things shackle the journey and i think you know this idea around travel and so i don't know what will happen in the age of uh ai but i'm optimistic that it'll it will work itself out yeah that's fair i yeah i yeah that was such a great such a great book i actually got it for for christmas and I couldn't put, I just couldn't put it down.

1:13:51I just kept reading it. And I'm actually not, I actually don't really read a lot. My wife is, is really like the reader in the family. She reads like 160 books a year. I read, I read like, gosh, I don't even, I don't read that many books a year, but I just, I couldn't put it down. And then we'd also listen to like audio book and stuff like that in the car and just, just loved it. Loved it. It's amazing. I mean, I lugged that book, I got it at Christmas too. And I lugged that book to New Zealand. I mean, that's a, that thing is, you know, that's a, that's a hefty, hefty book to lug around, but I did, I finished it.

1:14:25You know, that's amazing. That's amazing. That's awesome. That's awesome. Uh, Tony, this has been so much fun. Thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate it. Likewise. I, uh, I, I know my answers are never that crisp, but hopefully, uh, the narrative So it helps everybody to kind of frame their own perspective from this. Great. Thank you so much.