How to Stand Up a Venture Capital Arm

24:27It sounded like the contractors of the experience are essentially a band-aid to get the early deals going. And then after you started getting some reps in, you're building that experience in-house and really having more of that organic capacity. The contractors all did a fantastic job. But again, they transition off at some point. When you're dealing with integration, you want continuity. You want institutional history and knowledge because they know where things are, why they were done the way they were done. And in some cases, you do things temporarily. You know that's a temporary fix and you're going to change it.

24:59But if the person who knows it's temporary leaves, and then somebody else is like, oh, that's how we're doing it. No, that's not how we're doing it. We just did that because we had no choice. We now need to clean it up or fix it. So it's not a criticism or critique of anyone. It's really a reflection of going back to what I said. M &A is firefighting. You wouldn't want to run into a burning building if the people had never been in a burning building before. You want them to at least have some basic knowledge of the regulatory regime, the tax consequences, the HR requirements, the people, the cultures.

25:33We were dealing with onboarding people from three geographic regions. We were a Japanese company ingesting people from the U.S. and the U.K. our HR team in Japan didn't have experience dealing with US visas. It just wasn't part of their job description or their day-to-day requirements. Again, that's where really making sure you've got the talent in-house before you make the commitment is probably the biggest learning for me. After five acquisitions, does the strategy change much? The strategy changed mostly because Woven's strategy changed. Like I said, Woven went from Woven Planet to Woven by Toyota.

26:05We really doubled down and focused on supporting Toyota in terms of delivering the things that Toyota needs. You may also recall that earlier this year, and so our transition happened right at the same time too, is that Akio Toyota, who was formerly the chairman and CEO of Toyota, he recognized that Toyota needed to transition. Our parent essentially needed to transition and he stepped back from the CEO position. He's still the chairman, but he appointed a new CEO, Koji Sato, who came from Lexus. basically the next generation of leadership. And Koji Sato came in and that brought a new CFO, a new CTO, new executives, and a new organizational structure, which you typically see when you have a CEO change.

26:50And that set in motion the transformation of Toyota, which then had follow-on effects for Woven. Yes, it's really a reflection of Toyota's strategy has changed. And so our strategy has evolved to align with their strategy. You're still building an autonomous city? Oh, you mean Woven City? Yeah. Yes, we are. It's on track. Daisuke Toyota runs that. It's a project that's actually run here within Woven by Toyota. I believe by the end of next year, they're going to have phase one with people starting to move in. Wow. Yeah. Tell a little bit about it. This is actually a really cool project. So Woven City is a test track for mobility.

27:26When you think about mobility, it's not just cars. It's every step in the process. But we think of mobility in a more holistic sense. It's not just a person going from point A to point B. It could be goods. It could be information. When this podcast goes live, it's going to be digitally streamed through various platforms and people will then download it or stream it and listen to it. And that's a form of mobility. Humans are essentially mobile creatures. Mobility is part of the human experience. Everyone listening to this podcast moved in some form today. Or if you just think of what did you have for breakfast?

28:02How did that food get to your house? Or how did you get to the restaurant? And how did the food get to the restaurant? all the different steps in that process. And so it's very difficult to innovate sometimes within the existing infrastructure. So one of the things you want to be able to do is if we were to design this from the beginning and from the ground up, how might we do that? And how do we test some of these technologies? We actually think of Woven City as a test track for mobility, and it's a living laboratory. The idea being that you'll constantly iterate. You'll test and see what works, what doesn't, and then you can evolve and you can continue to test.

28:37So it's land that's owned by Toyota. It's a former factory site. Because it's private land and owned by Toyota, it gives us a lot of flexibility. But people will actually live in the city. We'll have senior citizens. We'll have families. We'll have single people and kids. It's really to try to test those different forms of mobility and technologies. One of the things I read was that they include people with impairments in developing technology for that. Absolutely. That is the goal. Again, it's actually a fundamental mission of Toyota is mobility for all. We don't want to leave anyone behind. We want to make sure that we're creating mobility solutions for everyone, whether it's the disabled, the elderly, the young, the professional, the business person.

29:18It's not just personally owned vehicles, but it's fleets, it's transportation, it's data and information. So when we think of mobility, we think of people, goods and information. And frankly, when we think about the direction technology is taking with cars, you hear this analogy often that a car today is like an iPhone with wheels. It's mostly software. The amount of software is only going to increase over time. But it's not just software in the vehicle. It's connected to the internet, which gives it access to data and information. And some of the information that it's collecting and gathering as it's moving down the road may be processed at the edge on the vehicle.

29:54but some of it may go up to the cloud and be processed in the cloud. And that's the goal, I believe, of all the auto OEMs is how do we build that infrastructure and that technology so that we can constantly be improving the experience for our customers and our end users. But also, as I said earlier, we want to make the safest, most intelligent, human-centric mobility. At the end of the day, it's about the person in the middle of it. It's not just the vehicle, but it's creating delight for people so that they can fulfill their personal needs, whether that's going to school, going to work, going to the doctor, just going for a drive, traveling, seeing the world, whatever it might be, whatever gives you delight, we want to be able to empower and enable that.

30:37Exciting. I'm looking forward to doing the sequel list interview at Wolven City when phase one's ready. I got two things I want to touch on. One is culture differences. And I'm doing a few interviews. I'm going to talk to your colleague, Alex, about cultural differences. And I've got another gentleman from Nissan, but I'd love to hear it from the leadership part of it, specifically like dealing with the board and those things. And there's things that you hear of, things move slower and that sort of culture around getting real consensus before things move forward. I'd love to hear from your experience around what's that been like?

31:09Yeah, I have a point of view. I've lived here for over 15 years. I was here in the Air Force. I worked for Dell Japan, Yahoo Japan, Yamaha Motor Ventures, woven by Toyota. Lots of different experiences, different types of companies. When I first came to Japan, the way it was explained to me, and I've come to find that this is true, this is what I believe, is it's really around the decision-making process. In the West, and that's a broad term, but in the West, generally speaking, we like to extol the virtues of the strong CEO who just says, you know what, we're going to do X. Sometimes the team is caught off guard.

31:46The CEO is like, we're going to go do that and go figure it out. So quick decision, and we look at that person and say, that's a visionary leader. They just made that quick decision. But the team is sometimes like, how do we do this? We don't know. We haven't given it any thought. You didn't give us any time to prepare. And so they then have to spend a lot of time. Okay, how do we actually execute on this? And the execution may take a long time. The decision-making process in Japan, from my experience, and again, I believe this to be true, is the exact opposite. You start by consulting with everyone.

32:15You go around and you talk to legal, you talk to HR, you talk to facilities, you talk to the regulators, you talk to everyone and say, this is what we're thinking of doing. If we do this, how's it going to impact you? What are you going to need? You get everyone's consensus. And it sounds like it's a time-consuming process. But by the time everyone's on board, the decision is actually really simple because everyone knows what they need to do. So the execution doesn't take as long. So it's really a question of how long does it take to make the decision and how long does it take to execute? You still get to market just as quickly.

32:50It's just, it looks like the Western decision-maker, oh, wow, that was great. But they don't actually roll it out and deploy it any faster necessarily. So I think that's one big difference. But there's a lot of advantages to it because you identify the challenges up front. In fact, one of the things that we do here in many meetings, we do it with board meetings, we do it with the Loven Capital's Investment Committee, and we do it in a lot of different scenarios where we have what are called GZEN meetings. GZEN literally means pre-meeting. And you'll meet with, let's say, each board member one-on-one.

33:22And you'll say, look, we're thinking of bringing this resolution to the board meeting. What are your questions? What are your potential objections? So that when you actually come to the board, you know everybody's potential objections, concerns, or what they like. And then you can make sure you address those in the board meeting. It's a much more efficient meeting. And then you can get to consensus faster because you've already talked to everybody. To the outsider, it may look like it takes more time, but I think it's actually more efficient than throwing an idea into a board meeting. and then somebody says something and then the whole discussion goes off the rails because nobody was prepared and nobody really knew what was going to be discussed beforehand.

34:00So that's one thing when it comes to the decision-making process. The other thing that is a challenge at times is sometimes in our meetings, depending on who's attending the meetings, we have to have simultaneous interpreters. That can be a challenge if the interpreters are not familiar with the vocabulary and the technology that you're talking about. So often what we have to do is we have to submit materials to them in advance so that they can make sure they understand the gist of the discussion. Sometimes we even submit scripts to them so they know what we're going to say. But that also means that in the meeting, sometimes it looks like we're reading a script because we actually may be reading a script.

34:34Because if you deviate, you can lose the interpreters and it may not be tracking to the materials you've already shared. So you have to be really thoughtful about what do you put in the materials and how do you present it. And that's probably the bigger challenge is simultaneous interpretation is really difficult if you're not used to it. In fact, sometimes some of the new team members, they speak so fast that the interpreters can't keep up. And at some point they miss things because they have to skip ahead or they'll just completely fall behind. And actually, if you sat in a meeting, I'm maybe a typical American.

35:07We're speaking both our native languages and we're speaking English. But if I was in a board meeting, for example, I would be speaking like this and I would be talking very slowly, very monotone. you would notice it. You'd be like, wow, good. But it's all about understanding at the end of the day. If they understand the message, they're very thoughtful, very intelligent. What it really comes down to is you have to be willing to be humble and change the way you present the material and the way you pitch. There's got to be mindful. I know you got a hard stop. I know how they are about time here in Japan.

35:38But before I let you go, I got to ask you, what's the craziest thing you've seen in M &A? I think the craziest thing I ever saw was when there was a discussion around compensation and there was just a clear disconnect between the acquirer's HR team and the acquirer's HR team. And without going into details, it was around how big the stock option grants should be. And they were valuing it at the face value of the option, but only 25 % of that's per year. And they were like, no, you need to give that value every year. So you literally had to quadruple the stock option grant to hit the number that the acquired company required in order to agree to the deal.

36:22And again, it was just a lack of experience, not understanding how to do M &A and how to think about stock option grants and the vesting schedule and things like that. Expectations, especially when you don't have experience in the deal. George, it's been awesome. Yeah, likewise. And I do want to end by thanking you again for the introduction to Justin Trudell. And actually, I know we've had on and off conversations over the last couple of years. So I really appreciate the support and the guidance. And I read your book too. You sent me a copy of your book a couple of years ago and I read that and I've recommended it to other people as well.

36:54I wish you the best of luck. Hey, it's just beginning. It sounds like you're just getting started. So I'm looking forward to continuing collaborations, George. Likewise. Again, I know you got a lot going on. So thanks so much for taking the time to have this conversation. Thank you. My pleasure. Joining me today is Alex Baum, corporate development lead at Woven by Toyota. Alex, how are you doing today? I'm doing well. Thanks for asking. How are you? Hey, I'm doing great. I talked to your colleague George earlier, had a fun conversation about the things that you're up to, but you got a bit of a different story.

37:24I get the narrative in terms of how things started and the view from the top, but what I want to hear is from your perspective, as more boots on the ground, being firsthand, seeing the chaos, But you have a personal story, born and raised in the U.S. And you spent this past year here in Tokyo working on M &A deals. I'd love to hear more about that experience and just expand into what it's been like learning the culture and the differences and things for others that may go through it and what they can learn from your experience. Thanks for that. I've been with the company for three and a half years, give or take a month.

37:57And I've been here in Tokyo since April of 2022. So about a year and a half. The story there is when I first joined, there was no U.S. operations. We actually expanded primarily and organically into the U.S. I started as a contractor. And by the time I decided to join full-time, it was peak COVID and the border was closed. The border was closed for about a year and a half. I started as a contractor in August. And then that, let's say January, I signed my employment agreement. And they said, probably three months you'll be able to get over to Tokyo. It took a year and three months. So it was the next April, not the current April.

38:28That was interesting. I gave up my apartment in New York City. I traveled a little bit. I spent a couple months at my parents' house, a couple months in different cities. But also from the perspective of knowing nothing about Japanese culture, I did get the opportunity to work day in, day out on urgent, time-sensitive, very complicated things with many members of the team. I eased into it a little bit. I had a year and a half of learning a lot about Japanese culture from a work perspective and working with my Japanese colleagues every day, 24-7. That was helpful. I moved out here last April. I found probably the fastest in my life I've been able to make friends and find community.

38:59And I love it here. It's super clean. The food's delicious. It's a really good quality of life. Everybody's kind. It's really safe. You leave your book bag somewhere in New York, you go right back to get it. Here, you could go get it in the morning. It's still going to be there. It's been a great experience. There's definitely challenges being someone who comes from a Western background, a New York investment banker, and fitting it in a culture that's a little bit different from a work perspective and how they make decisions. But here for the challenge. Early on, it started remote. You've had some colleagues.

39:27And I'm curious, what were some of the things you started interpreting early on as cultural differences from that experience? My first remit was to get a budget policy and process approved as a contractor to do M &A. And I believe George will tell you this as well. Within 48 hours of getting that done, we had a live deal. And for me, the first thing I noticed was the uncertainty avoidance. We were working with a team that had never done M &A before. We were doing a large complex acquisition. And there was just someone who is at Toyota. So if you are an employee at Women by Toyota, you're probably here for the rest of your life.

39:59The attrition is incredibly low. We have a very safe job. The culture here is not to let people go. You do a good job and you continue to advance to the company. And this was seen as a huge risk to a lot of my colleagues. And it took a lot of effort because we had nothing when we first started. And it's like Japanese generally don't work without a policy, a process, a procedure, a playbook. And we had none of that. And so we had to build that as we were going and give guardrails to people so that they could do their job. And they were very hesitant to just jump in. I think that would be generally the case without having that experience in the background.

40:26but it was much more here for me. We were put in a lot of situations where you have just enough resources to get it done. So you just sometimes have to make decisions. And for me, what I found was like, okay, folks aren't going to do that. What my process would be is like, get the executive person or the person in charge to give you that top down, always top down. And then from there, you can go make decisions quickly. And so we were kind of in a situation where I would describe it as having to operate outside of the normal operating procedure of a Japanese company just to get things done. And it just had to be that way.

40:54Getting to witness that tension was fun in a way. Wow. So it's actually really unique in that regard that it was more about you trying to help your colleagues manage the situation and then certainty as opposed to you sort of conforming to it. Well, it's come full circle. More recently, I have a lot more of experience working in what I would call a more traditional Japanese environment and getting things done by collective support. I think that's how you can surprise it, right? Here to get something done, you have to have all of the decision makers and then all of the stakeholders get their input, make sure things are flushed.

41:23When a decision is made, you're expected to know from A to Z how it's going to go, and then it's like a domino. Getting to the decision is the hard part. Once you get to the decision, the whole entire structure is done. Generally, my experience has been in the U.S., it's like you make the decision first, and then you figure out how to do it. And so when we first started, we made a decision, and then we figured it out, which was more Western. And I saw some of the challenges with that and gained some appreciation for the way the Japanese do things. And then now I have the opposite, and I also feel the frustration.

41:45And so I think for me, people are generally the same. It's their expectations that are different. That's what I've learned in the last three years. And so it's just managing and finding that middle ground. Let's take it to coming to Tokyo. Like from the beginning, what was it like moving in? I had to go through learning how the subway system works. And I think that was a fun little journey to get used to. Once you figure it out, it's a piece of cake. But yeah, I'd just love to know just getting acclimated in the whole new environment because it's not just the country next door. We have a really good relocation service and they were really helpful.

42:14And my first day that I came to the office, before I went to the office, I actually met them at my city ward to help file some paperwork. And when the relocation team member that was supporting me found out that I hadn't raided the train before, he actually walked me all the way to the office. He took the train with me and took me to the office and wouldn't take no for an answer. And that was like my first taste of like how helpful and kind Japanese people can be, which is not something I would have expected. I don't think that's something you would expect as an American that I was like super grateful and blown away for.

42:40And then because I had already known a lot of my Japanese colleagues, but there was a lot of people coming at the same time. There was like an immediate camaraderie. We would all go out together. We'd do dinner. We'd do drinks. we do all sorts of fun things. And it really wasn't so bad. I'm also kind of an adventurous person just by spirit. And so for me, look, a lot of challenges around. There's a lot of paperwork and I don't even know what I'm reading and I'm using Translate and I get frustrated. And I've definitely had things not done the best way because I didn't feel like dealing with the paperwork or whatever it might be.

43:05At one point, I missed a Wi-Fi payment and I just canceled it instead of trying to figure out how to get it again and paid for the hardware. Just things like that. But really, I've been blown away by how kind and hospitable people are. And it's been a really great experience for me. Okay. You got settled in? You got a place, you got, you figured out how to do and from work. Yep. Socially, it seems like you started meeting folks, you got work colleagues and things like that. And yeah, again, the relocation company handled everything, getting me an apartment. I just had to go look for apartments and the guy spoke English.

43:32And even the contract was signed by Woven. And I found it to not be that difficult. I think if we didn't have the relocation services, it would have been a nightmare. I also say, I don't know how people did this for cell phones because Google Translate is my savior. But yeah, I've been really fortunate. I came in, having worked really hard for a long period of time and was the deal-making cycle. It peaks and valleys. And within around a month of me getting here, we were slow for a few months. And I used that opportunity to really explore and make some friends. And yeah, I just really, I would say out of all the moves I've made in my life, this was one of the smoothest, which is really surprising to say.

44:00But I think I just was in the right mindset. How would you contrast it like New York? Because I feel like that's our episode in the US and here you got it in Japan. Yeah. So the first thing, I go back to New York regularly. The reverse culture shock I had was just like, oh crap, I can't make eye contact with people. Because you don't think about that. just like walking around in Brooklyn or wherever it might be. You don't make eye contact with people. It's a bad idea. And things like that don't exist here. You don't have to be aware of your surroundings. I don't feel like that. But then it's cleaner, safer.

44:26The trains run on time is like the normal things. Most of my friends are expats. I have work colleagues that I have dinner with once in a while, I have drinks with, and I consider them my friends. But people that I hang out with on a regular basis are mostly expats. They call it the Japanese wall. It's where it's a little bit more difficult to make long-term Japanese friends. And I think that's probably true. Getting out there, finding like the cool events and things. But it's a huge city. you can entertain yourself forever. I've gotten to travel and explore Southeast Asia a little bit. For me, I would say really positive.

44:51I love the city. I think it has the best food in the world. It's clean, safe, and affordable. So it's really nice. But then I was in New York City for... I grew up in New Jersey about an hour out of the city. And then I lived in New York City for like seven years. And the people that I was friends with there are like my lifelong friends. And so here, I've been here for a year and a half. I've traveled a little bit during that time. I think I've met a couple of people that could be that way too. But they're mostly expats. And making the deep connections with Japanese people is much harder. Okay.

45:12Very interesting. Especially I don't speak any Japanese really at all. So I'm studying, but it's quite difficult. Yes. I got very discouraged after about five months. What were the things that you learned when you actually are working in person in the office in terms of the difference between the working culture? The first thing was I had to wear my mask in the office for much, much longer than everybody else in the US did. I'm trying to think of like the major differences. We work on such an international team. So the thing that's really interesting about Woven is that, and I don't know that I'm just going to ballpark.

45:41I believe that two thirds of employees are international. That's roughly, we're around 2 ,500 people. I would say around 1 ,500 are international, give or take. And so there's a very large international, it's like a melting pot of a company. I don't really love that term, but lack of a better one. And so for me, probably half the team that I work with on a regular basis is Japanese and half is from some other part of the world, wherever it may be, American or French or Spanish. And it's been easy for me. Woven was designed to be a mix of Silicon Valley and Japan. And there's definitely challenges.

46:08We've seen some hard times. We've seen some huge misunderstandings, misaligned expectations. But the work culture that I was warned to be afraid of and that I know people that deal with where it's their working hours are nine to nine every day and you don't experience it here. It really feels like working in a Silicon Valley company. Now, getting consensus and decision making is different and more challenging. Also, transparently, I'd spent small investment bank, startup, a little bit of time at a big company like this. I find the most challenging thing for me is now as I've stepped up into the corporate of lead role, it's getting the consensus across a bunch of different people and a bunch of different orgs.

46:39And in Japan, And when a decision is made, you go kind of double click on that. It's like, it's a rubber stamp. All the stamps have been collected. And then the actual decision is a rubber stamp, or at least that's the ideal. And that is very challenging. It's time consuming. You have to think in years, not weeks. We're trying to establish a global corporate development platform to take some of the learnings and lessons that we have here across Toyota. And we've been working on that for, I've been in this role since April. So that's eight months now. And I've gotten a slide or two that I've seen.

47:04And that's really excited about that. So it's like we're being told in a few more months as we work a few things out, we can start moving up the chain and talking to people. And that's eight months worth of work. And I think that was like what the expectation was. It was like, if we're going to go for this, measure it in six month increments, not in whereas in the US, if you were like, Hey, let's go create a global corporate development platform. And you hadn't seen progress in three months, you'd probably scrap it. Yeah. I mean, I found stuff to do other ways to stay busy and contribute and add value.

47:26But that kind of like the process, being patient, and then also communication. So while the work culture here is a blend, there are a lot of colleagues that don't have great English speaking ability. or I should say their English isn't incrementally better than my Japanese times a thousand, but you have to speak slowly and use like vocabulary. And for someone like me, it's, you can't use fancy M &A terms. The ability to distill your information into like bite-sized executive level quick hits, taking these complex ideas, topics, tasks, and making it digestible for someone who's not a native English speaker on first go and getting them to actually read it and retain it is probably the biggest challenge that I have.

48:04It's been a great opportunity to learn. And the Japanese have a term that I was networking and having lunch with a guy who also lived in New Jersey for a while. It's nobushiro. And it means to stretch oneself. So that is like, I've seen this experience. Yeah, it's nobushiro. Can we break down the rubber stamp approval? It sounds like you need to identify all these different stakeholders and then get their buy-in individually. And then once you do that, you can actually formally get a form of... Does that sound right? Yeah, it's interesting. That is correct. So you should have all of the key stakeholders and then all of the process level people like, yes, this would work.

48:38And yes, the stakeholders are aligned. There's a balance. There's like this push and pull, though, because it's a lot easier to get things done if you have the top person, the executives, the decision makers on your side. And what I find is I try to socialize with kind of the senior level people that I have a good relationship with, my boss, and then try to get top level. Yes, this makes sense. Let's go figure it out. And then go and get all the rubber stamps before going back to them. Because you might also get, hey, you're a junior. or how are you going to get this done? And it's a balance of being like a top-down culture, but then also needing all the rubber stamps and being here for a year and a half.

49:08I think hopefully I'll have more perspective in another year and a half, but I'm still just learning. That's so fascinating. So you get at least some initial buying at the top level. And then you take that narrative with you to the other stakeholders and said, hey, I'm having a conversation with the big dogs here. And we're looking at this thing, but I want to understand your perspective. I want to understand how this impacts you. Exactly. And then get onto it. If they have some big objection, you'll hear it out. And then you work on addressing that. You go around the next day. This is why it takes so long.

49:34And I don't know. I can't. I don't have patience for this. So given fundamentally, that's how this works. How do you balance this when we're looking at doing these deals between the Japanese culture and American culture? Where like you just described earlier, we want to get things done. We make the decision. Let's go. Yeah. The cultural relationships between the first thing that we did was when we started making acquisitions, we let people operate as is. We didn't go in immediately. There's a reputation that I've heard other people talk about for Japanese acquirers to go in and say, no, this is how we do business.

50:04We did not do that. We said, you're going to continue to run your business. The engineers are going to get to know each other over the first six months. We're going to figure out how we're going to work together. That had its pros and cons. Pros, we didn't create a ton of frustration and stifle the business. And we've been able to have pretty good attrition metrics. And so I'm proud of that. Cons, there wasn't as much strategy alignment in the beginning. There's a definite balance there. And for us, we have OKRs. We want to know what the acquisition, what that is going to be working on. and then we want to give them some freedom to slowly integrate over time.

50:32And so I think that's the key. And then pace of decision-making, I think, can be frustrating for people. It can be frustrating for myself. But when you do have the alignment and you know what the objective is, everything just goes boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. And so once you have that alignment, and ideally by the time we acquire the company, we have that alignment, things actually move really quickly and decisions get made really quickly, which is, I think, super efficient and really cool to see. You have to see it, I think, first. But when you see how long it takes, but then it can be more challenging from an American perspective.

50:58it can be frustrating but then when the lever flips it's cool and you say okay i understand why they do that it's just like polar opposite of how things are done in the us part of me is like is there like a hybrid i get it i think that's really cool that you get that level of alignment because then you don't run into those friction points that we typically have that hey here's stakeholders that are misaligned and how do you deal with that and all those people issues but the speed you're sacrificing a lot of speed i don't know there's a way to combine it so we have moved pretty fast here. In terms of the middle ground, this is it.

51:30And there's a push and pull. Some of the stuff we're trying to work on right now isn't priority. We're trying to hit objectives. We're trying to go into vehicles. Me trying to create a corporate development platform for Toyota isn't everyone's number one priority and have to be respectful. But when the decision was, we need to accelerate, we're behind, we want to deploy capital, it took us three months to get a billion dollar budget approved. And then we went and over the course of a year and a half, we did five deals. And for really any corporate that doesn't have a long M &A experience, that is very fast.

51:54I tell people all the time, a lot of times you build a corporate team, you don't get a deal done in the first year because you have to build out everything. When the decision is made, the company can move pretty quickly. And those are a lot of decisions that were made quick. So I think this is the experiment. This is the attempt to find the middle ground. And it's fun to be here and see it happen. Great experience. Yeah. What's the craziest thing you've seen in M &A? So the craziest thing I've seen in M &A was, it's been a while since this happened. I think it was the exact same day that the wires were supposed to be transferred.

52:17I got a call. It must have been 6.30 in the morning. Hey, Alex, are you planning to call me into the office today? Yeah, what's going on? Okay, I need you to be at the client's office. Go there now. I'll send you an email. Essentially, they had contracts with a lot of the leading, like a lot of real estate buildings in New York City to have equipment in their building, on their building, whatever it might be. None of those contracts were signed. They were handshaking Christmas gifts. So the big relationships, in this case, in the Jewish community and all the equipment was just like, there was a contract agreement of terms.

52:45Nothing was signed. It was all handshake. And he'd send them a Christmas gift every year to keep them happy. We had to create a stack of, I went through the data room. I said, these are the contracts that aren't signed. And every couple hours as the day would go on, hey, Alex, how are we going? Like, you know, there's the founder and the chairman making phone calls, getting them all done. It took us three days. So it was just delayed it. Awesome. That's such a crazy story. Hey, those of you still with us. Until next time, here's to the deal.

53:18Thank you for taking the time to explore the world of M &A with our podcast. We love hearing feedback. Tag us on a LinkedIn post, add a review on Apple Podcasts. We'd love to hear from you. If you need help standing up an M &A function or optimizing one that you already have, we're here to help. And if we can't help you, we probably know someone that can. You can reach out to me by email, Kisan, K-I-S-O-N, at mascience.com. Or you can text me directly at 312-857-3711. If you just want to keep learning at your own pace, visit mascience.com for a lot more content and resources. That's where you can also subscribe to our newsletter.

54:03Again, that's mascience.com. Here's to the deal.

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