jakob diepenbrock / discipulus ventures

0:00If you went into Silicon Valley 10 years ago, if you were building defense or you're building manufacturing or whatever, it's either already solved problems, which is not true, or they're actually bad. That was the whole thing with Project Maven at Google when they refused to work with Pentagon, and I think that's stupid. You only exist as a company in America because of the fact that we were able to protect the country.

0:22Jakob, we have a little present for you. Oh, the mini. I got a bigger one earlier. Thank you. three milligrams what is this it was the lowest right it's my first time ever buying zins and i panicked they were like which ones i was like what does that mean i don't know and then i got lowest because i got nervous one dollar off too there you go a deal a lottery ticket thank you where do you get these boxes actually we make them they're custom made just for the zins oh just for you this is just for you interesting well actually where do you get them those actually We do make them. We do make custom.

0:58But like where? There's online pizza box. Our designer has a workshop. You actually made them. He made them. Oh, like you're, okay. You printed them and everything. Wow. Impressive. We folded them ourselves. We got a 3D printer too in case we needed to do. If you open it, you can see the laser cut. Yeah. Wow. See, we're hardware people. Apparently. That's funny. Thank you. Jacob, welcome to the SlicePod, where we uncover the stories of fresh emerging managers across the early stage venture landscape. You're the founder and general partner of Discipolis Ventures, an early stage fund where you run cohorts of talent and El Segundo backing hardware founders, building for the American interest.

1:35Yep. Now on fund two, writing 175K checks into 10 companies per cohort, two cohorts a year, and a demo day that has become the hottest ticket in hard tech. We can personally confirm this, hottest and sweatiest ticket. Jacob, before we get into anything, fans, please, next demo day. And you'll also notice a new face today sitting next to me. She's extremely decorated from her time collecting all sorts of infinity stones across the valley. And most recently at A16Z has joined the Slice team. She's quite possibly the most genuine and personable human that you'll ever come across. And we're very lucky to have her as a partner in Slice.

2:12So welcome, Carissa. Thank you. Very generous. Before American Dynamism, before the warehouses, you're the stock market personal finance kid, which I can relate to as an early entry to venture. Public markets, Young Investors Network in 2019, deep enough into personal finance in high school that a national financial literacy nonprofit had you on their podcast. As a high school student, was there someone who sparked all of this for you? Thanks for having me. I appreciate it. I started that when I was in high school. I started doing stock trading when I was in middle school because of my grandpa who did a lot of that stuff.

2:47He was a banker. so that was kind of the original thought there young investors network was basically like i had a social media thing i was doing as well at the same time and that was like a way to leverage that until something was actually real the social media thing wasn't that i don't think valuable for society the young investors thing was like we'll get much young people in seattle together we did some events with a bunch of like students basically and then brought in some people from like the investment world in seattle so i actually met i don't know if you had the acquired podcast But like Ben from that was one of the first guests we did at one of the events we did.

3:18And then met a bunch of other people in like the VC ecosystem there, which is pretty cool. Got some like cool invites to some stuff for like venture stuff in Seattle from that. So it was like a good way just to meet people basically. Got it. And was grandpa the one who told you to invest in Dramira or was that something else? That was just me on like stocked footer actually. Oh really? I did pretty well when I was that day. Yeah, I know. But he was very much like the long term, which actually now I don't really do any of that stuff. Put it in index funds, low cost, whatever. And also you can like all the Warren Buffett stuff.

3:53Most people aren't actually good at picking stocks in reality. So like the best bet is put in index funds, which like actually outperform most like actively managed funds. How old were you when all this started? The stock stuff was when I was in middle school. I started my first proto company. I made not that much money off of it when I was a sophomore. in high school and then the young investors network was during covid so i think i was a sophomore high school junior in high school what were your parents making of all of this they supportive were they scared i'm pretty chill about it i don't have any like notable memories to be honest about that so all of that somehow turns into you working at steve ballamer who is the former ceo of microsoft's family office while you're in college how did that come to be basically so i was into like watches when i was in high school i think just like through TikTok originally.

4:45I was like trying to work repair some old ones and then my my grandpa actually had an old Rolex that he gave me that was like destroyed basically which was worth like nothing at the time and I met this guy his name's Brandt and I was like hey like he had a cool watch I like pointed out this cool watch and then we started talking about him like oh this old watch I want to repair because he also worked in Switzerland as like a watch repair guy. We just became friends through that and then I would go over to work on it and then at the end of the time like working on that i think this is like after high school i was like i think what you do is cool like you manage like money for one of the richest men in the world i just come work with you and then that was how it came to be what were you initially brought on to do did you have a role no no that was i didn't really have an intern program so i was like the only intern at the time and i did a lot of stuff the coolest thing was they gave me like a i did a lot of the venture fund of fun stuff which was super exciting the weirdest thing was like they gave me like they found some wells fargo portfolio they had forgot about it was like a hundred million dollars they're like can you like three million can you rewrite this and i like did recommendations and they end up doing it so that was that was pretty cool but he owns the clippers worked on some of the intuit dome stuff for that like mostly around they have a walk-in walk-out thing there so i helped like price optimization for that worked in the fun to fun stuff there we also actually invested in a you guys know mac ventures have you heard of them there in la okay but we invested in one of those guys which i ended up like co-investing some stuff with afterwards and you're like what freshman sophomore freshman from college doing this in northeastern right and you grew up in snohomish watching 30 minutes out of seattle so you're at northeastern 2023 you met augustus at a calm okay and something ticks off in your brain that says i should go move down to this little town that's like under LAX's flight path.

6:34How did that transpire? I met him. We just got along. He was just starting Rainmaker. We had wrapped the pre-seed with 1517 at the time, or just were about to. So I had this rough idea. We could get young people who want to build companies that come from a place where let's solve real problems matter for the country and have that kind of root as why they're building a company. That's a unique thing, honestly, for the tech world. That's what I saw in Seattle. If the reason you're starting companies you're really gonna make money not a bad thing but you will build companies that can very quickly do that versus if you want to build let's say for augustus the company that completely changes the american farm landscape as well as a bunch of other important areas for the us you will go much harder and if he has what he says he wants to do like that's going to be a trillion dollar company same with like i met isaiah from bellartomics at the same time if you want to transform like energy production america that could also be like a much much bigger company like i just want to make a quick buck and flip it off and do something else i kind of thought that That made a lot of sense both economically as well as I think it's a good thing to do.

7:34I like people like that versus somebody who just was like, oh, I'm going to start a company just because I want to make quick money and then go and do something else. And then he kind of told me about El Segundo and all of his friends that were in El Segundo doing similar stuff. And I was just pretty aligned with what I'm trying to do. So I went there, spent time with him, met Isaiah. They were sharing a spa at the time. Descapolis originally was basically like actually a nonprofit originally, where it's basically like we will raise money from like other VCs and basically help them get access to this like up and coming hardware deal flow that is in El Segundo.

8:05And the first color was basically through that. We had some great companies come into that. And it was like natural of if we help them and they went on to raise the ground, if we were able to get in beforehand at lower prices, which I asked everybody like, would you let me do that? And we got some stuff signed saying like they would let me do that. Then that's a pretty good strategy. And there were no other investors in El Segundo kind of like the origin of how i ended up there so it started as a non-profit and then you switch over after the first the first go it went well and we're like oh like if this is work we should we should invest these companies sweet what was that phone call like to your friends and to your family that you're going to los angeles dropping everything and starting this one like for me at least i didn't tell anyone until i bought my plane tickets my parents always knew i was going to do something like this to be honest they kind of like oh it makes sense i don't know just kind of felt natural to be honest there's not really like oh this is super hard like there's people here i want to be around and opportunity here i should just do it i don't even know if i told my parents that's how i'm here i didn't really care that much but it felt right usually when it feels right you gotta just go and do that when you got down here it sounds like it felt like it was early for gundo you were like this is obviously augustus and there's a builder mentality happening but no investors when you got here were you like oh i'm very early to something amazing or shoot there's a lot going on and I need to catch up.

9:24I think there's so many really impressive things about LA for hardware. When I was there, I was walking down the street and I saw every street, there's another crazy company that's doing something insane. But I was pretty surprised, like, why are there no other investors here? I have some general theses around why that is. Why do you think? I mean, I think in reality, it's most of the GPs of the funds that could pick up shop and just move down to LA. Don't really want to. Most of these GPs are like older, have families like where they're at and the Bay Area is great. The person who could actually just pick up shop and move down there is either a solo GP who is incentivized to do so.

10:01Compared to the number of just general funds, there's not that many people who are like that, kind of the way I thought about stuff. There's a bunch of great funds that do heart attack, but they also are like older and have families that are in this particular place. So there's, I think, few people who weren't married, didn't have families, wasn't locked into a particular area. And that was, I think, why nobody came down. And it was all still pretty early and it wasn't really the name it is today. That's my general thought. And also, if you open up an office, like Andreessen has an office in LA now, but none of the GPs are really there.

10:26It's hard to open up a satellite office unless the GPs are actually there. Totally. And do you think that's shifting a ton with the SpaceX IPO? Now, do you think people who are already down here and understand the landscape are going to become investors? Are you seeing that happen? I think there's already, there's only funds that are like, we're already here. Riot's here. Upfront's obviously here. There's some other ones as well. but i think we'll see i think it's still the same thing like most people like oh i can just fly down and meet people which isn't the same i don't think definitely not i haven't seen anything yet though to be honest with you there's only one fun actually that i've seen it's open up an office and also gonna last wow six months okay so your demo days i've heard a lot about them and even the naming maybe this is not as intentional as i thought it might be it's the demo day for the american interest it seems like there's so much intention in everything that you do is there intention around naming it that and weight that carries how do you think about that i think that is like the core we're trying to do we want to back hard tech companies solving problems for the natural interest there's like tons of demo days out there everywhere and like most of them aren't that special anyway i think if we can focus on okay these companies are actually solving these like the most important problems for the country today and like really emphasize that i think that's what we want to do and everybody who's part of the cohorts are very aligned on that we want show like this is like very critical and like you're invited to this like kind of important part of history so that's how i chose that it sounds like this was always an interest building these critical companies formation is that something like have you had a deep love for america since you were young is this something that was like has been growing since you've gotten more involved in it what's the story there there's problems everywhere obviously but i think there's like nowhere where you can have the freedom and the ability to like just put your mind in something and actually do it.

12:11And I think we defend a lot of those important principles. And I think if we can build a company that actually try to do that versus just like I said earlier, if you went into Silicon Valley like 10 years ago, if you were building defense or you're building manufacturing or whatever, it's either like already solved problems, which is not true, or they're like actually bad. That was the whole thing with Project Maven at Google when they refused to work with Pentagon and I think that's stupid. Like you only exist as a company in America because of the fact that we were able to protect the country.

12:41I just thought like America's good and I want to make sure that sticks. And then it's turned political. This is what you're saying also. Like I feel like some people assume this Gundam movement is a political movement or it has policy tied up in it in like an emotional way. What would you say to people who come at you with that or feel like it's one side versus the other? I think it's pretty dumb as a framing of it. I don't know what about wanting to build companies that are good for the country's political. If you're on the opposite side of that, probably you shouldn't be politically involved in America.

13:16It doesn't make sense. I don't think it should be. I think I was talking to somebody about this yesterday. The most important thing is we get the best founders to come who are building important hardware. That's what it comes down to. And I don't think any of that is, oh, you have to work out or smoke cigarettes, whatever it is. That's not at all. Or if it's as funny as it is, that's not like the reason why it exists. and the reason like let's solve these problems that matter and get people who like actually care about that around the table something i've noticed about else you know just in general too like a lot of you guys have really deep foundational beliefs and your faith is a part of that sure a lot of founders have taken your capital because you're so public about it i think also in whatever way that is what you care about it's also good because obviously there's stuff that you shouldn't say sometimes i don't think it's this i saw this thing of like there's not really this place for people who want to embody these important values and also want to build things to reflect that.

14:04And I think if you are open about that, you'll find people who actually agree with that and then want to be involved with it because of that. If I was just like, oh, we're just building hardware, there's not anything unique really just about that. Again, that's a very core part of what we're doing, but also I think attracting people who culturally want to be a part of this area where these problems that are extremely important are being solved. I think it's like a pretty... There's probably a lot of tourists as well. It helps you weed those out. exactly also when you're that authentic i feel like then it just lets people be authentic and they need to agree with every single thing that you say or do but who come from all over the world now to come we'll come to one of our events or whatever we're doing and they'll be like oh like even if they're not like american or whatever it's like they'll be like oh this is really awesome because one these people are what they're doing you can tell people right away the version if you go to like people compare us to like san francisco a lot obviously but if you go there to some dinner it's like what are you doing like it's all the same thing they're all doing there's no reason why you can just tell it's like a much more like status driven thing which isn't necessarily a bad thing but it's just like a lot of people don't want that as like their core why or want to be around people who have that as a core why if they don't that's not their reason and applications for the next cohort today right as we're recording this jacob five cohorts in like what's different who shows up now is who showed up in the very the first one was pretty crazy like the number we had i don't know applications for the first one and looking back like even the pure like number of companies that raised large rounds i've just didn't number accepted it was like pretty crazy but we're getting like last time over a thousand applications probably more this time it's like crazy how many good hardware companies are being built now and how much like inbound I'm getting it's like actually high quality which I'm obviously great for us like I think it's what we want to see obviously but no I think quality of companies have gone up over time number of companies I think just like being started in this space overall has gone up I think which is obviously awesome you attribute that to the quality number always when people prove something works people will come in to do it because of that which obviously that means there are people who come in for the wrong reasons which you have to be aware of but I think that's good SpaceX is obviously an extreme example of that.

16:18They showed that hardware is really like you can build very large companies. And obviously Elon's a particular person that allows that. But there's plenty of other companies now that have been able to raise lots of money and actually mash that expectation of growth. And I think a lot of investors, like a lot of fund-to-funds I was talking to, or it was like institutional investors I talked to, oh, like, we're not sure on hardware yet. It's like, what will get you to that point now? I think that's starting to become more clear. I think the culture of Elskino is also appealing to people. Again, there's really nowhere where people are focused on, let's actually solve these real problems that matter.

16:53And then it attracts somebody who realizes you can't spend your entire life just focused on, I'm just going to chase money and status. And people want to be around people who understand that. It's the most unhinged application that you've received. That's hard to say. Too many? I get them like literal schizos applying. And it was like in like weird code. A lot of us on Hinge. I don't know what that means a lot of the time, but I've got some crazy people. I got some crazy applications. Any crazy stories from just like the week or the two week long cohorts? The first one, it was in like a small Airbnb, two rooms.

17:35And we had 12 people probably in this like... Did everybody know what they were getting involved in? when they the first one was free so you came it's all free so so you can't complain but we had people like on cot people on the couch people sharing beds nuts can you share for people who are maybe tuning in for the first time never heard of you don't know what these cohorts are can you just give like a general overview what these cohorts are what happens inside it's basically we try to find like the best young hardware engineers who are like usually 22 to 26 i'm in that general age range, whose peer groups are other engineers, and they don't really have a network of amazing founders or even friends who've gone on to start companies and know any of the stuff that goes into building a cardboard company.

18:18That's the first part. The second part is they're usually cultural. I end up like, we want to build these important companies. You go to a company like SpaceX, thinking, I'm going to change the world. Then you realize, oh, I actually aren't doing as much as I thought I would. Obviously, those companies are great in just getting ready to work at the high level, but they want to do something more, usually. and we can be like hey you know this network built out you make sense to be here in el secundo we can kind of be like your plug and point to like the best founders in your industry you can bring in like palmer lucky or tummel or people who built these like amazing companies and if you can spend like one-on-one time with them that's something like one you just wouldn't get anywhere else and then two like that's gonna be extremely helpful like a lot of times palmer's invested a bunch of these companies brought to him or been able to help out in other ways so that's the first part And then also just giving everybody a close-knit community of founders at the same stage, same kind of values, same kind of age as well.

19:06It's helpful to have early on. It sounds good. For sharing cards. Exactly. And you don't really get that if you don't have that network already. And then finally, just being able to have experience helping people raise from the best hardware investors and also knowing what works for hardware. For fundraising is different than what works for software. And being able to walk them through that and just put a brand on them. Like, we have a pretty good track record now of people raising from the best funds. we can be like okay we'll help you just 10x the speed of fundraise and speed of breaking the right networks and i think it's the most important thing and it's quick right two weeks exactly and then demo day for hardware it's like for software you can sit in a house all day and code but you can't really do that forever you want to just raise money meet the right people and just get your own spot and it's i think like the unlock of what we can and to do that fun one was nine mil five cohorts something around there and then fun two is oversubscribed at 30 which is really not so congrats thank you how did you land on 30.

19:58a lot of people go like a number the way they're gonna do the portfolio construction i don't think is like the best emaxing i didn't i didn't think that was like the best way to do it we had way more interest 30 i just had to tell people no because i wanted to make sure like we could actually do what we want to do if i went from 10 companies per cover to 100 that would probably be pretty bad i was just like what can we like adjust into small increments that we can i'm confident that we can do and then that's what led to that number. What do you have in mind for the next one? Next fund. It'll be, I think like the things we can pull lever wise, like scale is like one cohort size to number of companies per cohort and like ownership from companies.

20:34And I guess for like doing more follow on. So all of those things will be pushing up to some extent, but again, like also making sure that we actually can do this well. I mean, if I was already a bit larger check, we're going to try to push it up slowly over throughout the fund too, just to see where we can get to, but keeping the same entry price, but getting more ownership and then number of companies instead of 10 it'll be 13 it'll be a bit more following just because i think fun one was like does this thing actually work and then if it does actually work then you want to be like okay how do we get more in the best companies so obviously at numbers that makes sense which because of our entry price being so low the weighted price is pulled down a lot which makes the math make sense so a bit more follow-on but still the core is like this cohort thing works how do we just like double down that and there's a lot of stuff we're going to do like to make sure the product gets better and better and also build the brand a lot so like hiring somebody right now and also bring on like a media help more with that so i think that's a really big part of this is just getting the word out if you build in hard tech that matters for the country come here and i think that's like a big thing that's worked for us so far you have been very disciplined throughout the past couple funds and you're compounding into something that is bigger and you punch way above your weight so you're doing a great job what makes you good at this like this is an insane thing and it may be experience it may be drive maybe a mix of a bunch of things but like not everybody can run something this intense and between like a cohort and a second one go from a few applicants to now thousands yeah i think like the two things that are unique to me and like me doing this are like one i think i am young and i do know a lot of people who are the same age as me and i'm just spending time with like some of the most like high performing young hardware founders like out there i think if you spend like all of your waking hours with those people, you'll see stuff that comes up across all of them, which I think is honestly what most appreciate investing and knowing what good looks like.

22:19I've spent time with Isaiah from Valor and Augustus from Rainmaker and a bunch of other founders who are around my age and building multi-billion dollar companies now. So I think just being able to do that allows me to be like, oh, when I see somebody else, oh, this guy is very similar in these ways. And you can just kind of pattern match that way. I also think having a lot of these big events with the best engineers and the best companies in the area, being able to have a founder, let's say, building an automated manufacturing or aerospace and go to somebody who's doing manufacturing for SpaceX.

22:46Like, hey, is this guy legit? Like, what do you think? What he's doing? And then being able to have that network now of people, I don't think any other investor really has in this particular niche. I think it's helpful. And then I think a lot of what we do is we are the first check the vast majority of the time of these companies. And I think that means we can supply the later stage investors with this kind of up coming like very curated batch of the best companies in this particular space so just being kind of the right networks and talking to the best investors who can come in after us see what they're excited about and making sure we can match that with the best companies i think is also like a strong because if we did a company that was like i don't know doing it's like a non sexier now like drones are pretty over invested now i think we did another drone like what are these guys doing we don't want to invest in that so i think the three things it seems like what you're really good at is paying attention to what people actually want and need and like filling the gaps that I know that's how I would just yeah the core value of like us to other investors I think if we want companies raised they have to do that so even like two-week cohort we'll be small knowing that versus someone from SF coming down and being like which be a 12-week in person YC carbon copy knowing that's not what people want I think it's definitely a completely model and like we've seen people search to try to copy it so not in our particular niche but like I've like oh that's what people are doing you know your customers very well very well yeah i think that's like the point of it it's like we can know what they want or not just like somebody who came down and just makes it copy and pasted for lps listening to this who is the prototypical lp for you who do you want to work with which is like fun two so it's a different person than fun one i think fun one was like people who just can bet on me to figure it out and bet on this like particular area to be big which i wasn't that picky honestly about who i brought in fun one it's just who's gonna bet and like actually wants to help so that was how that one looked we had one other fund of funds but like majority were just like family offices i know we're fund two we have i think almost half i need to do the math like big chunk of institutional lps and this one a couple more fund of funds raas more institutional family offices but i think like for any fund it's like one you want an LP like actually understands what you're doing and can like be helpful and has a wide scope of funds over their career give you advice and can give you feedback on what you're doing right and wrong and just be there to talk through stuff and then also you can like actually give you money like there's plenty of LPs who give you very small checks and just don't want to tell you everything to do and there's like a fine line between that then you can scale capital wise with us but while also being like aware of how do you make sure the math actually makes sense.

25:28And then also somebody who, like I said, just like understands the space and has spent a lot of time with the best investors and knows, similar to how I mentioned about me, knowing the best engineers and founders, knows what good looks like in that regard and can give advice. How was the raise for fund two? It sounds like fund one was like, hey, please, anyone fund gets into I'm oversubscribed and I need to be like, was that a weird shift for you to go through? It's crazy. Like fund one, it wasn't that long in reality, but like I'd say from starting to try to figure it out in like the fall of 24 like officially closing was probably i don't know nine ten months somewhere around there but again it depends where you like our first close in december of 24.

26:08fun two was like i think i raised the amount i originally went to raise in a month or two from fun one lps but i guess work differently i think fun one i saw this as well. Like the kind of the number of commitments like going like that after like we did our second cohort because we had some good brand names. We got some good press, which I think that's something I think most fund one GPs don't do is get your brand out there. I got a piece written about us just about like literally calling this guy, read a piece about me, like literally giving him the story to write. And like Antonio Garacis emailed me after that, like personally which you have that and you can be like oh and Tony's investor then other stuff just snowballs from there because other people want to come on board and you have other people's names then they see like Forbes or whatever else same with fundraising for like a company like a lot of LPs are also just like kind of momentum driven in a way and then also obviously like being able to have some type of forcing function to get people to actually give you an answer also helps that's how I did that like very intentionally for fund one let's put out clear date so those like the things that went well do you see you doing this at 40?

27:17Totally. I think there's a massive growth opportunity here. I think I really enjoy investing in early stage companies. I enjoy these types of companies way more than anything else out there. So totally. Sweet. Okay. We have rapid fire questions. Okay. Go through them quickly. What's the best advice you've received as a GP? I think really a lot of this comes down to being consistent. I think that was something I was told a lot early on. suck but when you just things keep people updated show real people who are very momentum driven like if they see you going they have you in your head of this guy was consistent for the last year and they see a lot of data points like this article or this tweet or whatever people will just be more comfortable with you and then that's what happened a lot like i had investors who were like 100k check in front of one and then five million dollar check in front two and like that's only because of that especially if you're not like proven out already just being consistent i think is the most important thing because it's like always easy to just oh I'll just go work for somebody else or whatever.

28:12I think just sticking with it and giving updates and staying on the mission that you have is obviously a good thing. Who's an emerging manager that you look up to? How do you define emerging manager? Just who's a manager you look up to? One of my early LPs was Kevin Hartz. He's been super, super helpful. He's a mentor. He's one of my advisors to fund. He worked with all the PayPal mafia guys early on. And then he started Eventbrite with his wife, which is pretty cool. and then that went public, just got acquired recently. And I think it's fun. He's also done some really interesting stuff. And it's the way he thinks about stuff.

28:45And he's been in Silicon Valley since it all started, basically. Yep. And he's part of this kind of core group of investors and founders that's really defined, I think. Which is essentially what you're doing down here. Exactly. This is now the core group. Exactly. I can be able to learn about what that was like and what he learned from how his thinking is involved in investing in other-stage companies. I think it's been really awesome. All right. We got to talk about the hottest event of the year, which is Jacob's demo day. What can we expect in this upcoming demo? What's new? What's different?

29:16You've done a really great job. Like over the course of the demo days that you've run with the different cohorts, like it's substantially gotten better every single time. Like this last time, my joke at the beginning was not a joke. It was truly body to body, dark room, dark warehouse. It was great. And Jacob's done a really good job at corralling the community around there. It's not easy to get a ticket. No, I think obviously for any event you want to make it seem like people have to be there and you want people fighting to get invites to it obviously. Well, it's how it is. It's very like that.

29:46But I guess you have to be intentional in that of you want people who really want to be there. If you just be like, anybody can come, we're going to have 10 minute pitches and nobody wants to listen to. You got to make it exciting and exclusive. That's what makes any event exciting, right? So next one, I think I always try to do something that's special. We had a gundo panel the one before this one with like isaiah augustus teddy this last time we had palmer obviously which was awesome we have some cool people who are gonna help out with this next one and then location wise i think we'll have a cool spot for that we'll have fans as well is this an intentional thing to make it this hot no just fleeting in oxygen makes people want to make decisions quickly i think there is something it feels on brand let's say that i think there is Something to like being in a dark warehouse across from where SpaceX started with like Palmer hiding in the hallways.

30:40I remember somebody said like, I looked over like, is that Palmer Lucky just like sitting there? Lurking, trying to get in. I think it's like a fun vibe. It was in some auditorium. It was like very professional auditorium vibes. Like that's different than the vibe I'm going for. Is it right at the end of the cohort? Day before the cohort ends. Okay. So it should be good.