E271 | NEUVC | The inside story behind Prayingforexits with Mr Exits, Managing Partner of Exits Cap

0:07Welcome to the latest episode of the special series new VC hosted by Freddie an analyst at Isomer Capital and Linda, an associate at Karma Ventures. A guest whose name we can't share. Today, we're thrilled to welcome Mr. Exits, who runs Exits Capital, a new fund based on the Silicon Valley. You may know the name from the infamous social media accounts Praying for Exits. With over 80 ,000 followers on Instagram, we all know his memes. Today, Mr. Exits lifts the lid on the US versus Europe, why he set up his social media accounts and how it's been useful to him on his journey. This episode is brought to you in partnership with Zero 100 Conferences, which organises networking events connecting LPs and GPs in private equity and venture capital firms across Europe.

0:51Their upcoming event, the Zero 100 Conference DAG, will take place on February the 28th to the 29th, 2024, at the Hotel Savoy in Vienna. Attendees will include major LPs and GPs like Atomico, AXA Venture Partners, Early Bird, Ers Group, Dawn Capital, Unica and many other LPs and GPs. Save the date, February the 28th to the 29th, 2024 at Hotel Savoyan. Join us in Vienna. Are you tired of only knowing what European VCs sound like? Yawn no more. Leap over to eu.vc where the episodes come alive. Now with every new episode featured in full video, high def, pristine lighting, emotions up close, and men and women who pick their boogers, don't settle for eavesdropping on Europe's best investors.

1:43Join the peak show instead at eu.vc.

1:51Mr. Exit, super excited to have you on the new VC podcast. I'm sure many people are aware of who you are and your social media platform, But please, could you, you know, give us a quick overview of yourself and the man behind the smoke and mirrors and tell us, you know, what is your superpower and how do you use it? Yeah, I mean, thank you very much for having me on, first and foremost. And I guess I think, you know, it's very kind of you to call them superpowers. I don't necessarily see it that way myself. But, you know, I think that my background generally is I'm somebody who's been doing venture capital investing for seven or eight years now.

2:31I've worked at a variety of different firms, both sort of small and slightly more institutional, invested in, you know, a variety of companies at this point, probably over 80 plus in my time in venture. And like superpower, you know, I think that that's like an interesting word. And I tend to shy away from like, sort of focusing on myself versus the founder, because I think that, you know, In VC, the founder really is the most sort of the person gifted with the superpowers and VCs sort of just augment that in my opinion. And so for me, I think that the thing that I really am passionate about and I genuinely wake up every day really enjoying and looking forward to do is working with the next generation of amazing founders and entrepreneurs who are building really interesting and important things.

3:19and doing everything that I can to help their goals and dreams become a reality. Cool. And we don't really know how old you are or how much experience you've got, but how did you end up in VC? I presume it wasn't your first gig. Can you give a bit of color to more of your backstory? Yeah, it was definitely like a fall into the industry sort of thing. I graduated university and I still really didn't have a very good concept of what VC was. it wasn't actually after until working in the financial industry for a little while and sort of starting to look at tech companies invest in tech companies and then like sort of realize oh there are people who were invested long before me like what how does that all work and so yeah it wasn't until I was like you know in my early 20s that I even was aware of what venture was and then I was lucky enough to end up getting to work in tech after finance and from there that just sort of deepened my interest in what these people were doing and this group of people were doing and yeah I got very lucky in that um you know some people who were VCs really believed in what I was doing and just gave me a shot and yeah I kind of fell into it.

4:28Funny so lots of people I speak to you know if they joined sort of five plus years ago they almost didn't know what VC was uh prior to joining so it's I suppose it's not an uncommon uncommon story but but on to sort of praying for exits and um the social media account you know kind of why and how you know what's what's the backstory to it and and how did it start and why did you set it up yeah for me it was really the the initial sort of spark was it was actually just a journal for me i think that as a young vc there was a lot of things that i was experiencing that i'd done didn't feel was very well represented in traditional forms of media around vc at the time so these were things like tech crunch axios post-information, et cetera, large publications dedicated to VC and early-stage technology.

5:13And I felt that a lot of the types of content that was being posted around that subject matter was a little bit disingenuous. And what I mean by that is, for instance, I would see a glowing review on TechCrunch or the information about a company that's doing so well and it just raised so much money, et cetera. But from my own personal experience and my own knowledge, I knew that the company was doing quite poorly and probably didn't have a long sort of runway to survive. And so, you know, there were just these moments where the delta between what I believe to be the real world and what I believe to be reported on was just so large that it became very cathartic for me to sort of find an outlet to kind of like post my own opinions and thoughts about how venture capital was functioning.

5:56And that was sort of the impetus for praying for exits and honestly from there it's just been this weird snowball that keeps rolling down a hill yeah that's where it all started okay so it was more on the sort of the transparency piece and what you felt you know knew wasn't really highlighting but in in sharing this knowledge did you feel you got any you know pushback from from your colleagues or your peers you know what it's been kind of weird it's it's only been really like a ton of support and i think that that's like very indicative of the fact that that experience is probably something that we all as venture capitalists probably you know have at one point in time I know you know there's probably an example for everybody where you know somebody gets like a glowing review somewhere of themselves as a venture capitalist and you're like well that guy or girl sucks to work with you know like there's tons of that you know that exists in any industry but I think it's especially prominent in VC just because you know people of the nature of the industry but um yeah i think that there's just this all there's always been this wide delta and uh i i always felt like the onus was kind of on me for some reason to just bring light to it naively you know i i just assumed it was it was to get you know to make people laugh or you know build a bit of a following um you know on the surface it is just a meme account right no no no it was literally just like this is my genuine feeling about something this is my perception of it uh meme is like a meme to me is like in a very effective delivery tool right because it's very democratic like memes are incredibly democratic in the way that they spread information and so for me it was just like a good format with a underserviced idea and you know uh like finding you know thank thank you to the facebook algorithms for finding an audience and how do you see your influence now do you think that people understand you know the the intent behind it or your meaning behind it do they take them literally um how have the the reactions been and and then how do you how do you see them i try not to be like too egocentric about like what i'm really contributing here because at the end of the day you know like it all is just funny pictures on the internet right but i think that like the point of it all i think that like for a long time this sort of broad thesis that i had was that like venture capital kind of lacked a culture that made other industries cool.

8:20If you think about something like fashion, or you think about something like, you know, anything, media or whatever, there's a sort of like underpinning culture that kind of like ties the industry together, and makes it like somewhat interesting to the outside world looking in. And for me, I never really felt like venture capital had that. I always felt like venture capital, if you looked at like what the culture of venture capital was, it was like, really shitty happy hours on like boats in Oakland, like, you know, people dressing in like very one-dimensional ways and just like conversations that were really just you know myopic in nature and you know I just didn't think venture capital had like a very interesting culture which is kind of ironic because if you think about like what the actual profession is it's really fucking cool it's like you're working with the coolest newest technologies the youngest people ever and to me from the outside looking in and just appeared to be this sort of dry like crusty industry that was like very opaque in a lot of ways as well and so I thought like you know me and a lot of like my friends who are sort of in my age range, I felt were like really interesting people, but I didn't think that they were representative of the industry very much.

9:24And so the idea has always been kind of like in the broadest of strokes to just push the culture forward and make sure that there's like an attributable cool thing with venture capital so that we're not just looked at as like the pariahs in mainstream media with from people who like barely understand what private equity is. But do people get it? As in, obviously, it should build self-awareness, making fun of the things that, you know, tend to be more or less prevalent or that you see around. So it's kind of like a similar phenomenon, like people who watch, you know, American Psycho or Fight Club, you know, they're both satire and people sometimes don't get it.

10:04So do you see the people understand your intent or is the other people who think it fairly literally as well? How do you see it? Yeah, I think that like there's always people who get their feelings hurt generally, you know, when they're the like target of some sort of public ire in a way. And it's never meant to be mean or like malicious in that kind of way. Like I'm never really trying to make people feel bad. I'm always just trying to be like as honest as my perception sort of sees things in a way. the reaction has always been good because i think that most people understand that i'm not coming from a place of trying to put people down but rather you know just try and like shed light on things and actions that are you know done in our industry that just you know could be could be handled better maybe is a good way to put it quite a raw truth behind you know your memes as i've got to ask i mean is it just you i mean is there a team behind you yeah it's just me just one person again you sort of uh you create these this imagination of what you think's behind this this account and and and in building this this what's now very impressive following you know can you pinpoint a single meme or an inflection point you know how do things really take off for for for the account yeah no i don't think that there was like a singular inflection point it's been five years now so it's been kind of like you know a pretty slow and steady grind there were certain times where things were faster than others.

11:25But I think right at the beginning, the inflection point that really made people care was, you know, a lot of the guys, and I'm really grateful for this, a lot of the guys at Founders Fund, like Trey and Delian and these kinds of guys, you know, found the page and really started evangelizing it quite early and really started pushing it into like a very native, you know, group of people who work in the industry. And, And, you know, from there that made things, you know, it just started to filter into the right groups and center around the right circles. And yeah, that just kind of like sort of built it into what it is now.

12:00And how do you do business meetings? And overall, like do your LPs know who you are? Do your founders know who you are? Like how do you even like operate as an anonymous figure? I'll start with, you know, I actually tried to raise the fund anonymously. And I would highly recommend that nobody ever tries to do that because it's not a very good idea. And so, you know, that was an interesting learning experience. So my LPs certainly know who I am. You know, most of my companies know who I am because at the end of the day, like I sort of alluded to earlier, one of my favorite parts of all of this is actually getting to work with founders.

12:37And, you know, like to try and build that relationship is, you know, there's novelty in remaining pseudonymous. But at the end of the day, we're operating very real businesses and doing very real work here. And if that stands in the way of us accomplishing something in any sort of way, like I kind of want to make sure that I'm just focused on the work at hand. And so, you know, most of my founders know who I am, but a lot of them, you know, accepted my money without knowing who I am. So at the end of the day, we start to build those relationships. But, you know, the initial conversations, I'm always introduced soon anonymously by whatever VC is introducing me.

13:11and the conversations are started from that lens. But over time, you know, I really do enjoy building a relationship with my founders. And probably there's a huge element of trust as well that comes into play because, you know, one thing is being kind of like a pocket of money and the other thing is once you start working with them, then you actually want to know the person behind the brand and et cetera and long-term relationships such as me, C tends to be, I guess that trust is vital and anonymity probably doesn't help with that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, no, it's interesting. It's like most of the founders don't care if I remain anonymous.

13:53And I think that the reason for that is because like, I think that the strength of the ideas that I'm able to supplement them with is strong enough such that, you know, that there's integrity there and that that provides enough trust because the ideas are so good. and that was always the intention of the pseudonymity it's like it's not because like it's like amusing or whatever it's like it's because I believe that if you can remove the surface area away from who a person is then all the only thing that you have to interact with is their ideas and the things that they stand on and put out into the world and you know if you know if you can maintain a very like high level of that I believe that you know that speaks a lot louder than what school you went to or what your first job was etc so my founders don't really care that I'm anonymous, but I think that in the interest of really just loving working with founders, it just naturally turns into a relationship where we're just closer than pseudonymity would allow.

14:50And how does that work for you with regards to deal flow? Do founders come to you? Is there a specific type of founder that comes and finds you? Or do you have a data driven engine? As we know, you're tech savvy. So have you built something incredible in the back end that kind of spits out the best, best company. So how does that work for you? So it's a combination of all three, you know, investors in my fund are also some of the largest and most well respected funds in the valley. And so I've built quite a strong relationship with them where we share deal flow back and forth. And so I have a very proactive inbound sort of pipeline from a bunch of the VCs, a bunch of the founders that I've worked with in the past.

15:30and then people who I've just become friends with by the nature of the page over time. On the outbound deal flow, it's actually quite interesting. Because so many people are aware of the platform, I actually have a really high conversion on cold outreach. So if I reach out to somebody on Instagram or Twitter or something and I sort of explain to them, like, hey, there's a fund underpinning all of this. These are the types of companies that I invest in. This is how I like to work with my founders. I would love to just learn a little bit more about what you're doing. you know, that has a pretty high conversion rate just because so many people are like, at least interested by the novelty of it all.

16:05It's like, well, why is this meme account reaching out to me about my round that I'm doing? Like at the very least, you know, they're like, what's going on here? And, um, you know, that often translates into like, you know, being able to work together, which I feel very fortunate for. Um, and then the third idea, the third way that I sort of sourcing is, yeah, I, uh, I like everybody else and proactively building in the artificial intelligence space. And so, yeah, I have a bunch of tools that I've built for myself and for other funds that are proactive in surfacing and doing initial diligence on companies that fit within a specific set of parameters that I've sort of predetermined to be interested in.

16:46So obviously, you got a background in investing prior to your social media fame. hasn't changed the way that you invest your kind of approach as an investor or has it kind of just been a side gig that's been you know putting you more towards the public eye but necessarily hasn't changed your way of thinking about yourself as an investor or kind of overall the fund that you've created yeah I think that the only thing that I can really point to is that when you're in the public eye people are just a higher level of scrutiny of everything that you do and so i think that most vcs are just people that like barely exist on linkedin and nobody really cares about what they do or you know what their ir is what their tracker is how they're working with their founders like at the end of the day they're sequestered in some small cubicle somewhere like within some large organization you know the fucking vc arm of aig like nobody is really checking in on what you're doing besides like the internal processes that be and so you know for me it's just been interesting like if I do something like a lot of people seem to hear about it within our specific sector of the world and so you know I just have to kind of be on my like P's and Q's a little bit more maybe and also like at the end of the day if I don't do a very good job at this fund like there's a high quantum of people that are probably going to be laughing at me and like you know taking the piss out of me on Twitter and stuff and so you know it's just a different thing but like I'm not saying it's better or worse it's just doing it with an audience is a little bit different than doing it without an audience I would say I can imagine it's a tall ass being in the public eye for it you know that level of success that you put on your own shoulders and what success probably looks like to the outside world must be much higher but you know kind of getting to the heart of it what is the core benefit of having built a social media brand behind your fund in your opinion Yeah, I think that's a great question.

18:44I think that it's increasingly surrounded me around better founders. And what I've consistently noticed about better founders is that they have bigger ideas and are willing to be more patient around them. And I think that that's something like as a younger man, at least, I wasn't very good at like patience. I was actually listening to this Invest Like The Best with Joshua Kushner yesterday and he talks about this idea of like impatience and patience as well like obviously as a venture capitalist you have to be patient, you invest kind of like on a 10 year time horizon, right? So you have to be willing to sit there for a decade and really, you know, sit with your investments and understand what you did but there's also like a level of impatience which is, you know, consistently feeling like you're always missing out on the next deal always wanting to see more, always wanting to meet more people, etc, etc.

19:30And I think finding the balance of that is like what's really important is like be willing to, you know, sit alongside the decisions that you've made that you have high conviction on and sit with them for the long term. But also, you know, be putting processes in place that give you the best chance to see as many of those sort of quote unquote shots on goal as possible. Is the platform, you know, opening doors for you into rounds? Are people bringing you in and, you know, and going back to sort of, I suppose, inbound deal flip, right? Yeah, I mean, I can say that all of the publicly made investments that I've done out of the Exits Fund have been via inbound.

20:07And so that includes companies like Anduril, that includes companies like Varda. There's a variety of other sort of blue chip later stage companies that we can point to that have all allowed me to have the ability to invest as well. And so that's kind of what I point to when I say like these great founders. I get to talk to people like Enrique from Brax or Parker from Rippling or any of these great guys who are just building these amazing companies just because of the platform. And I feel very lucky about that. How is the quality of the deal flow? So often we hear that the inbound is not as good as the outbound for these seeds.

20:46So having this platform, have you been impressed by the quality of deal flow that you're getting? yeah i mean i personally find it to be super high quality deal flow but i think that like it's important to think about when you're creating content like this who you're magnetizing and why they're magnetized like that's a kind of like a sort of theme that i think about a lot is like when you're putting something out there like who who is your actual like who is the audience that you're actually getting and then who is your intended audience and what's the gap between the two you know i think that a lot of people just like fire kind of like intermittent bullshit into the ether, you know, like, they're just like, Oh, like, this is the random thing of the day that I think that, you know, will get me some engagement.

21:28And I think that that's a bad way to go about it. I think that building a brand and like, being having high level of integrity around what you say is much more interesting, and like, is much more sort of gravitational than, you know, just being like, Oh, this is the fucking, you know, room temperature semiconductor perspective that I have today, or whatever it might be, right. So yeah, I don't know, I think that most people are pretty short-term thinking in the way that they put content out there into the world especially on the VC side of things and I think that they would notice probably a lot better deal flow and you know general value being created out of that endeavor just if they were to think about it from a little bit of a longer time frame.

22:09And so can you share any tips or tricks you've learned on the way you know is there anything that you're actively trying to do because you see the benefit from it? I don't even think that there's really any tips and tricks. I think it's just like being honest with yourself, right? It's like, you know, it's like being like true to you and like being okay with putting something out there in the world and you not being correct, right? Like, I think that so many people are preoccupied with like always looking correct online, you know, like, oh shit, I don't want to put something out there, get ratioed on Twitter, get dunked on by etc.

22:43Like, you know, I think that that like level of sort of paranoid anxiety has permeated people's lives to the point that they're like unwilling to sort of actually like go to the edges and like put things out that are on the edges and to me that's like much more boring content if we're just putting things out in the middle of the distribute like the bell curve like you know who the fuck cares to be honest and so yeah i think that i think that people should really think about being more honest with themselves and that in turn will build better content because when you're sort of trying to placate yourself to whatever the you know middle middle of the range It just creates average returns as far as what you're getting back from doing that.

23:26So actually, it's increasing the authenticity that you have online will benefit you more than tailoring a certain persona for a targeted viewer. 100%. So how do you differentiate between being anxious for the right reasons versus for the wrong reasons? because you should still think what you're putting out there. For example, such as yourself, you have a massive following. So obviously there's some thought that goes into it. But also, how do you keep yourself from overthinking? Yeah, I mean, I don't know if this is necessarily the best strategy and I wouldn't maybe recommend this for everybody.

24:05But like, I literally just stopped believing in like the negative aspect of it all. Like I just stopped believing in like the possibility of being cancelled and whatever else like people tend to preoccupy themselves with from an anxiety standpoint. like I genuinely believe that I'm doing my best to like put myself out there in the most like honest and genuine way possible with a good heart about it all and like not really coming from a bad place or like a negative place in any kind of way at least that's what I'm trying to do and so you know I think that the only people that really need to worry about that sort of thing like being wrong is one thing but being like a bad person is a completely other thing and I think that that's oftentimes what people are really kind of worried about is that like some fatal flaw within their character will be you know like exposed via social media somehow and some you know inquiring detective internet sleuths will be able to piece together some like fatal disgusting aspect of themselves and so you know I don't really feel like I have that or maybe if I do I'm not really that worried about it and so you know I can't say that this is a great advice this is just like kind of how I think about it so the advice is don't be a bad person because otherwise everybody will know.

25:13Yeah, don't be a bad person. It'll be all good. Like, I think that that's really it. It's like, you know, if you're honest, and you're intellectually honest, and you're like, even if you're wrong, if you're showing that there's a level of intellectual honesty, there is a level of curiosity, you're coming from a genuine place, you're a good person. I don't think that there's that much to worry about. Considering your experience to date, would you be recommending that, you know, this next generation of BCs or these younger BCs, do you recommend that they be using social media as a tool to benefit them in their career?

25:46The way that I think about it is that social media is just a tool and the actual resource that we're all fighting for is attention. For me, I found that having the attention of early stage technologists and venture capitalists was very valuable to the thing that I wanted to do with my life, right? And so I think that most people, and it's not like a very, you know, fucking Harvard business school type idea really but like attention is actually i think probably one of the more valuable resources that we have available to us in venture capital capital is pretty commoditized a lot of the things that we actually offer the founders are commoditized but your ability to get people to care about things as a vc is a very underrated and oftentimes underdeveloped aspect of the business for a lot of people i think that social media was just a means to an end like I don't love fucking social media.

26:38My personal Instagram hasn't seen a post in three years. This is not the thing that I really love to do. It's just that to me it was an effective tool to be able to communicate messages and in return barter that for attention over the long term. And for me, I always believe that if you could have the attention of these types of people over the long term and get them to care, you could actually put together quite a powerful vehicle, whether it be through investments or whatever else. and so for the next generation of people thinking about doing stuff like this i would think i would say do whatever honestly makes you happy if you enjoy social media and you find value in creating content like 100 do that but the lens that i always approached it from was there was an end goal here which was to get people to care about what i had to say within a very specific sort of segment of the world so is the feedback from this figure out how to get people's attention and that varies person to person in a way because you probably need to generate some value with what you're posting or what you're sharing in order to get that attention because if you're doing the same thing that everybody else is doing that's not attention wordy as such and how did you figure out that your kind of you know uh angle was was memes or it was jokes or it was humor and and and and maybe there's something there that you know the rest of us can learn yeah i mean the way that I looked at it and I kind of touched on this earlier is that I saw the landscape as like basically simply kind of monochromatic it was just very like uninteresting uninspired um you know like I would go on to TechCrunch every day and I was like what am I even reading here so to me it just seemed like a very obvious opportunity that like a little bit more honesty and like if I looked at like where the world was going generally um and this was like relatively after like Arab Spring This was relatively after like Julian Assange.

28:33Like it was all of these people that had been like basically going into these large systems or structures and being like, hey, there's actually a level of honesty around these things that you're not aware of. And like, let let the onus be on me to like kind of sort of elucidate or like demystify what you guys are looking at here. Right. And by no means am I comparing myself to Arab Spring or Julian Assange. But I think that there is there is a level of opaqueness that has always existed in venture capital that nobody has really tried to proactively, you know, take away. And I think that in taking away that sort of veil of like prestige and, you know, like interestingness and whatever else you kind of are left with like a group of people that are by and large pretty corny, pretty one dimensional, you know, don't like have too much interesting things about them.

29:23like and so uh yeah that's like funny to me to be honest that's just kind of hysterical actually and so that's that's um that's really where where it all sort of stems from it's fair to say the the platform has been a success in the the you know the figures you got at the very least you know when you think about building praying practices what have been those three big learnings and using social media that you know listeners to this podcast could could take away and try and leverage themselves? People that you look up to probably feel the same way that you do about things. And if you find a way to communicate to that, you'd be surprised at what a bond you can build.

30:06I think that that's one. The second is that there's a lot more people that care about venture capital than I thought there were. I really thought this was some small segment of the industry. But every day, every week, I see increasingly interesting and diverse groups of people paying attention to either what I'm doing or different, you know, points of the VC surface area in general. And then the third thing that I learned is that at the end of the day for all its flaws and all of its like, you know, shitty aspects of everything, like I really generally, like I came into the venture capital industry, not really loving the, um, venture community.

30:43Like I felt sort of ostracized by it in a way and didn't really feel like I was a part of the sort of white hot center of where I needed to be. And so I always felt kind of like othered in that way, which is like, I'm sure cancelable for me to say that in some jurisdiction somewhere. But, you know, I found that like when really becoming more central to the VC community, I found a lot of the beauty in it and like really started to appreciate like the actual mission of what everybody's trying to do here, especially when you're looking at founders who are building like really important and sort generational companies it's like inspiring and i feel lucky and you know all the thing all the all the platitudes how do you find balancing humor and business because i think personally for myself you know when you meet new people or overall in a you know environment people take that work very seriously they they kind of identify with you know the industry that they're in you know they're very connected to that so how do you introduce humor into that and is it a dangerous game because if you look around in tech conferences sometimes it feels you know that you're surrounded by people who know more than you and it's a very serious kind of environment overall how do they go together do they go together to me it's like a form of gallows humor like that's that's kind of the way that i view it like for as long as you know as long as people have been sort of like putting other people to death there's always been like a sort of levity at the end of it all right um you know like there's there's nothing you can do when you're sitting in that cell waiting for the hang man so you gotta crack some jokes every now and then and i think that to an extent there's some level of this that's that's sort of the same here like you guys are vcs as well you know how stressful it can get you know all the amount of money that can be on the line at some times you know people's livelihood and their family's livelihood can be on the line at times and like unless you're a complete fucking sociopath like that weighs on you you know like making decisions that affect other people have to weigh on you right and so to me it's like the same sort of thing is like you know holy shit i'm waiting to i'm waiting for the hangman it's like oh my god like there's so much on the line here for my own self personally for other people for people that i care about for people that i don't even know like it's all on the line and so you know the one of the ways that I've been able to like process the weight of that in a lot of ways is by making sure that you know at the end of the day no matter what happens at least we could all share a laugh out of it so so tell us some details behind the being figures what's the split of readers you know how many are actually VCs or founders do you know yeah yeah and so I would say 30 to 40 percent VCs I would say probably 50 percent founders and then I would say the rest are like people who are either tangentially interested in venture or like you know have done a seed deal through a 40 carry spv you know 11 years ago coming to that point of of quick fire questions we're asking guests the same same kind of questions at the end of the podcast and maybe just slightly changed up because we've touched a lot on you know i think the platform itself is is your surprisingly crucial day to day piece but what out of praying for access has been surprisingly crucial to your fund one of the things that i think is most interesting is the application that i've noticed from getting attention just on the medium of you know instagram or whatever and how that can be applied to early stage companies i think that early stage companies there's a couple of things where you know capturing attention becomes very valuable for.

34:20One is hiring, right? So obviously the talent market, especially in specific verticals like artificial intelligence is white hot and impossible to hire anybody. And so it's how do you get people who are looking for jobs within specific verticals to care about the thing that you're doing, the thing that you're building, right? It's a function of attention and how you capture that attention, whether it's through, you know, your LinkedIn job posting or whatever else, what you're trying to do is increase visibility into what you're doing, right that's like one way to think about it then the second way is for vcs right like obviously when you're going out to raise around you don't want the cold start problem of hey we haven't talked to any vcs in 18 months you know like they don't know anything about us or progress what we're doing etc let's go and hit a bunch up from the from and sort of cold start that problem that's not very effective and so maintaining a sort of level of attention around your financing partners is also very important.

35:14And then I think the third is just like basic product and service adoption. Like you want to, you, like I work with a bunch of people who are incredibly technical and build beautiful things, but like at the end of the day, to get people to care about the beautiful thing that they've built is not necessarily their wheelhouse. And so how can I step in and utilize what I know about the internet and what gets people's attention, uh, to be able to get people to say, Oh shit, this guy has, or girl has built this thing. Like, well, why don't I go check it out why don't I go use it and at least give it a shot right and so those are kind of like the three pillars where I think that you know attention as a function becomes like an interesting thing and that's that's one of the things that has been especially useful that I've learned about sort of running the page and applying it into to venture as a whole.

35:56Having been in venture for now over 10 years looking back at your own career in in vc and obviously having taken the piss out of many who are currently obviously in the middle of it. What advice would you give to people who are just now starting in VC in 2023 or in the last few years where they've seen the market being very, very high and the highest it's probably ever been to now being at a very interesting stage? So what are the few key pieces of advice? I think that like integrity is everything and your word is everything and the valley by all intents and purposes is a very small place and people are very happy to talk about bad actors in the valley and it doesn't take very much to become a bad actor so i would say that like operating from a level of very high integrity coming from a good place and we sort of talked about this like earlier just don't be a dick be a good person like have good intentions about this don't be greedy don't you know like all of the basically all of like the biblical no-nos, you know, if you can just avoid all of those by and large, you know, you can, you can have a good career in venture.