santiago pliego & josh clemans / vashon

0:00Santiago Pliego: We took some gnarly little hopper planes through Bogota. I slept overnight in Bogota in the airport and then got into Caracas. It was a really interesting trip. And then some of our portfolio companies ended up getting tied in there as well. We ended up speaking with President Delcy and the cabinet there, which effectively is just Maduro's cabinet minus Maduro. So it was a hilarious situation and just really interesting. And it came out of us making ourselves available and talking to people and saying, hey, we'll jump on a plane if you need us. And it was just a few days turnaround from getting invited to going down there.

0:35Ryan Hiepler: So Josh and I had been investing for a bit, and we saw an opportunity to build a firm. Basically, this is the short version, a firm that was as native to the fields and the mountains and oceans as the founders that we invest in. These are founders that are building in the physical world. Pretty much over the last few years of the renaissance of hard tech, A lot of the founders building in maritime or power or robotics, they're relying on, in some cases, still really great software firms and software capital. And we saw an opportunity to be a field partner to these companies. They're out there building in the real world, and the checks that they're getting were from a screen from San Francisco.

1:14Ryan Hiepler: And that's not how capital historically used to be deployed, and we knew that they could use this kind of capital. So we set out to build it.

1:20Santiago Pliego: Yeah, San Diego and I both came from a sort of B2B SaaS background where we saw that playbook had become very dialed in. Like you raise X much, you hire these people, et cetera. And looking back historically at how companies operated in 16th, 17th, 18th centuries, it was very different than the meta the last 40 years or so. And so anticipating sort of a return back to that sort of an era, we set a Vashon to be the capital partner.

1:46Josh Clemens: What's the meaning behind Vashon?

1:47Santiago Pliego: So Vachon is an island in the Puget Sound. So it's in the area that I grew up. Santiago and I had an early adventure. We took... We've known each other since college, so we've done all sorts of things together. So one day we took just basically like toy plastic kayaks and paddled out across shipping lanes to Vachon Island. It's not something you should do. We made it there. We made it back. And so when we were thinking about names for this, it's like, okay, that's an excellent one.

2:13Ryan Hiepler: Oh, that's great. It was definitely one of those early adventures that embodied a lot of the adventure spirit of a lot of the guys that we end up backing and that the firm itself has. So, yeah.

2:22Josh Clemens: Was there a moment when you guys, because you said you've done a bunch of things together, you've known each other since college, was there one moment where you're like, all right, we're starting a firm or a fund or we're going to do one little deal together? Like, how did that become the next thing?

2:36Santiago Pliego: We knew each other in school and then we ended up working at the same startup. And there was like a little like co-op coffee shop thing down the block. and we would, I was a software engineer at the time, Santiago was in product and we would just do like breaks to run and grab a soda, drink or whatever from the coffee shop and just get a walk in, get some stuff, you know, get out of like, get out of Lincoln Reins. Out of the basement. And we would just jam on those walks and brainstorm. A lot of the things that we've done in the last 10 years since then has been just things that we've talked about doing on those walks for a coffee, working at the startup.

3:12Santiago Pliego: And so we ran a podcast. Like, that was something we talked about. We knew we wanted to start something. We didn't know exactly what that would look like. But I think that was probably the earliest inception point.

3:23Josh Clemens: I don't know. I'm just curious to hear some of your thinking on, like, human relationships, how you build them, how you even cold reach out to people. What is that art? Like, all of those things, the special sauce that kind of goes into the human side of all of this.

3:36Ryan Hiepler: Yeah. I mean, I guess some of the stuff we talked about during lunch. the Vashon as a whole is set up to support a value returning to the real, to the physical world. One of the things that's as scarce as cobalt or copper or neodymium magnets or some of the things that these companies need is people. And not in a utilitarian sense, but if you're building a company that doesn't just sell stuff abstractedly through the internet, but actually touches the physical world, maybe you need a door opened in some far-flung country in the world. And the one person that opens that door is the minister of maritime of that country or somebody that just knows that place whatever it can be and so people are scarce a scarce resource in that regard and the way to access i'm sounding utilitarian but we don't think about it this way the way you can call upon that resource when you need it is to build trust is to like steward a relationship over time so i think something that we're very intentional about is developing and stewarding relationships with people who we think will matter.

4:37Ryan Hiepler: It's sort of intentional and providential. People we think will matter and we steward a good relationship. But another is that we just become, we connect with somebody over DMs or randomly or serendipitously. A year or two later, you know, again, we stay in touch with that person. We steward a relationship. That person may be a huge unlock for a founder or for our firm or for an LP or somebody in our network that needs something important done somewhere. Yeah, at a high level, that's kind of how we approach it. And it just compound, especially because the way we're thinking about the company, the firm, I should say, we're in the game for the long term.

5:11Ryan Hiepler: Trust, human trust compounds over time in both directions. If you mystery people, it goes one direction. But if you store the relationships, then relationships that are valuable today, they'll be exponentially more valuable, almost immeasurably more valuable in 10 years or in 20. having a longer time horizon where you could say, I don't know where this person is going to go or how they could fit or how we could help them today, but they're important. And then you play that long game. It always compounds.

5:38Josh Clemens: And I feel like that has naturally shown through the relationships that you guys have with each other as well. This partnership seems very obvious. When was it obvious for the two of you? Or was it from the beginning from college that you guys were like, you know what? We like each other. We're going to be in business together forever.

5:54Santiago Pliego: Yeah, I mean, I think there were signs. There were signs. There were signs, yes. There were signs. We were in a rhetoric class. I knew you were going to tell this. Yeah, yeah. The first assignment was give a speech about your favorite movie. This is like a week into college. This is one weekend. Everyone in the class does a different movie, and Sadia and I, we didn't know each other yet. We both picked the same movie. Christopher Nolan's The Prestige.

6:17Josh Clemens: All right. Did you guys go see The Odyssey together?

6:20Ryan Hiepler: No.

6:20Josh Clemens: We did not. No, no. We're too busy now. I know.

6:23Ryan Hiepler: Three and a half hour endeavor that's not directed to business is a big list. Could be. No, but like Josh, I think, I forget who went first, but it was, we both like, it was like one of those who was like, that's my guy. You know?

6:35Santiago Pliego: Yeah, I think we recognize at some point, like, you see this in startup founders, and I think it's true of people who go into venture. It's just a very non-conventional path. And so there needs to be some tolerance of taking social risk to go into any part of this field. and for whatever reason, I think we recognized relatively early on that we both had a tolerance for social risk and just doing something that could completely fail and be a train wreck in terms of traditional status hierarchies. And so I think that was obvious early on and then we ended up working together.

7:11Ryan Hiepler: That's also, I mentioned earlier, we've done stuff outside of business and I think that's what's so important and it translates both for the Wadavashanist and the companies that we see. The worst example of this is you meet somebody who may be great and they tell you about the company they're building and you ask, oh, who's your co-founder? Oh, it's XYZ. And we met six weeks ago. Good luck. Man, that's just a tough thing to, just a very, very tough pill to swallow. Whereas if you've known somebody and just done stuff with them, that's especially not certainly in business, but outside of business, then you know their strengths, weakness, all those things are taken care of in a sense.

7:49Ryan Hiepler: and then you know exactly what you're getting into. And, yeah, I think that works really, really well internally. And then we look for that same synergy. Yeah, it is a marriage. It is a marriage. Yeah. Really? Yeah.

8:02Josh Clemens: Especially in venture. Yeah, I want to get into the fun details in a second, but you guys were saying you used to go on these walks and this is how you had all these ideas and everything's kind of come to fruition. I know you don't live in the same town. You always see each other a lot. How do you keep that alive now, the, like, serendipitous ideas, thought sharing?

8:19Ryan Hiepler: That's a great question. It's almost, sometimes it's like, how do we, how should we, how shall I even do that?

8:23Santiago Pliego: What are we going to do? How are we going to do it? No, we, I mean, again, Santiago grew up, I guess we talked about this at lunch. Santiago grew up in Mexico City and was very online in terms of his education was online. And so - He was homeschooling, and then we did online school on top of that. He's a native to making and keeping friends at distance online. And so, you know, he's just the type of guy I just like is naturally jumping in like messaging all the time. I think that's like an established cadence where like, you know, DM chain is just like constant throughout the day, every day. And then, you know, we're jumping on calls.

9:00Santiago Pliego: We're ending up in the same location doing meetings. And so we were co-located in Dallas. And then I don't even know if it changed that much once you actually moved away.

9:10Ryan Hiepler: No, we really are in extreme sync. Like it works. It's seamless. And then the other pieces we do, because of the way and the position of the firm, we do travel all over and we do see each other every 10 days or so, 10 days to maybe two weeks. But we end up together a lot in person. In the meantime, it's really being native to new forms of communication like group chats, ability. I mean, there's sort of this great merchant banks for us were a big inspiration, the old merchant banks. And there's a book that talks about how the merchant banks operate it. One of the quotes I remember or one of the passages I remember is where they're comparing and contrasting the way the partners talk to each other.

9:53Ryan Hiepler: And the book is retelling the story. It talks about how the banks in New York, if a partner wants to talk to the other partner, they have their secretary reach out to their secretary and schedule time, et cetera. And he's like, the way the best merchant banks, merchant families used to work, it's just one partner taps the other and says, let's come in. It's very, very unstructured, but it leads to extreme velocity. And I think that even though the team is spread, we maintain that cadence of communication and being in sync.

10:27Josh Clemens: And I feel like you need values and aligned values in order to do that. Like what are some of the things that you guys believe at a foundational level? It could be things that you agree on or disagree on that you guys have talked about.

10:39Ryan Hiepler: Yeah, I think the, again, going back to even knowing each other for a long time and how that translates to ability to move and do things, it's if you have a shared like alignment on the foundational core beliefs or the tenets, you know, then all of that stuff is taken care of and you can really just move and execute. Yeah, exactly.

10:59Santiago Pliego: Yeah, we're interested in the same sorts of things, obviously. We're both interested in history, pick the same move. All those top-level type things, but also have the same underlying moral code. We both believe the same thing religiously. And then have seen that played out over 10 or 15 years. I don't have to wonder what Santiago acts like under a tremendous amount of pressure, because I've seen it multiple times. Like Santiago said, if you can find someone to work with like that, where like you believe the same things fundamentally about the world and then you've seen them like those beliefs under strain and seen them hold up in a good way then you can move incredibly fast with that person the trust is so high you don't have to constantly be like okay like should i like be hedging this or like be stacking this like you can just move forward yeah so then tell us more

11:48Josh Clemens: about at the firm as you said not necessarily just a fund and you're thinking behind creating it what it's going to look like, who you want to invest in.

11:58Ryan Hiepler: Vashon focuses on technology that unlocks the physical world. As I said at the beginning, the opportunity that we saw wasn't just to have another hard tech fund or deep tech fund, but really starting at the firm level, be the kind of firm that we knew that a lot of the founders that we were angel checks to and the kinds of companies that would only continue to be started, to be founded, wouldn't need. That is a firm that looked more like the merchant banks of the 16th to 18th centuries at a time in which capital was deployed not from a screen and you didn't have sort of the necessarily siloing of venture and private equity and a lot of it was disembodied.

12:36Ryan Hiepler: or these firms, these families, these banks would deploy capital into some of it into what we would call venture, but they would do it in the field, like very boldly and very elegant ways where you're, let's say, putting together the best ships. And that we would call that like, oh, that's the technology part, that's the venture part, but the best ships and then underwriting the expedition to go to a far place in the world and then bring back a resource that your country needs. So there would be a venture component to that. But the families by operating in a very specific way. Could it open up trade routes, be the facilitators, the connective tissue between countries, heads of state, and then resources that were far away?

13:17Ryan Hiepler: So we saw an opportunity to build a firm like that, a firm that was as native to the field and mountains, oceans, and deserts as the founders that we backed that wouldn't be investing from behind a screen, but out there, and then doing two specific things beyond just writing a check, because capital is a commodity now, either anticipating critical supply chains upstream of a early stage startup success. And then on the flip side, helping the founders deploy their technology to parts of the world where their tech is sort of the asymmetric unlock for that for that region.

13:48Santiago Pliego: Yeah, I think, too, just because we we did have more of a history background and then we were in startups in the 20 teens. And so looking at, okay, doing like a B2B SaaS company and raising venture and 2.5 % interest rates, you're like, none of this is normal. Right. This is not a normal situation in the history of the world to be like cranking these huge rounds into like efficiency software. Like all of this is new. This is not how things have been for most of time. Eventually that was going to end. I don't know how. Obviously it's changed dramatically in the last couple of years. But looking back and saying, what were like the Lindy long-term industries throughout history and expecting a reversion to that mean?

14:30Santiago Pliego: And then what sort of capital companies should be in place to actually benefit those companies and back those companies? Like Santiago, there's a lot of things that old merchant banks and funders and backers of those companies did that don't make sense in like a ZERP environment, SaaS environment, but that are incredibly like classic methods of operating. And so part of our big picture was saying we're anticipating the move back to that. We're going to set up the firm that backs that ahead of time. And then when those companies grow and they become the Dutch East India Company sized companies of the 21st century, we'll be there to back them.

15:04Ryan Hiepler: It's during those periods of sort of paradigm shift that you historically have the largest companies of that generation emerging. You can think of sort of as the shift to hyper-globalism, outsourcing supply chains, etc. Like the native company to that era was like a Berkshire Hathaway, a massive, enormous company. But if we're moving away from that paradigm to a more dynamic political environment with countries that have their own self-interests and need to transact and do commerce between them, that looks different than just like post-war ZERP America and just general geopolitical environment, then that creates, again, conditions for new kinds of companies to emerge.

15:45Ryan Hiepler: But to Josh's point, then the kind of capital that they need has to be almost as native to this new geopolitical environment as the companies themselves.

15:52Josh Clemens: What's it been like navigating the political complexities?

15:57Santiago Pliego: I think it's been a lot of fun. It's been like a very exciting time. Like there's been political times when things were very stale and stagnant, even like the late 2000s. Like was anything happening then? Did anything ever happen then? Like compared to now, things are so exciting. We've almost gotten numb to it. Yeah, no, it's been complex to navigate. But at the same time, it's like in an environment that's hyper dynamic. If you're a fast mover, that's just all to your benefit. And so the fact that we wake up one day and we went and snagged Maduro out of Venezuela, Just like things like that happening, and then we end up getting opportunities based on that.

16:35Santiago Pliego: And so, yeah, it's been great.

16:37Ryan Hiepler: I was talking to a founder over the weekend. We built a large company, and somebody else in that group was asking us a similar question. Echoing what Josh said, but one of the things that you can choose to go at, and we were saying this to the group, one of the things you can choose to go at is navigating the political complexity. It is a skill as fundraising or as getting to manufacturing. Exactly, as reaching out to people. Well, if you realize my work, if my vision, my objective is to build X, and part of the skill sets that I need to have to reach that objective include getting good at navigating political complexity domestically and abroad, navigating potential regime chains across the world, et cetera, et cetera.

17:16Ryan Hiepler: You can choose to get good at that. And especially if, like that founder and the kids of our firm, you have a long time horizon. You can afford to, again, steward relationships. like you don't have to be thirsty or do things out of FOMO or hype or angst. You can choose to just build faithfully for the long term. That in itself lends it. Usually if you build something that way, it doesn't mean you have to be slow or unambitious, the opposite. But it means you can build something that endures. And that despite political complexity, either here or abroad or else, or whatever else, you can weather those storms.

17:51Ryan Hiepler: I do remember explicitly, amongst other things that we talked about when we set up Vashon was, like being thoughtful of how to build that into the future.

18:00Josh Clemens: It seems like it excites you guys. That could be something that would be debilitating, I think, for some people. But, I mean, Josh, for sure you got lit up.

18:09Ryan Hiepler: It does excite us, I think, partly because I think temperamentally, neither of us tend to be hype chasers or thirsty in that extreme way, where if we were just setting up a firm to arbitrage something that is quick, it would be very different. Like you'll never, literally, you'll never see Vashon pivot to crypt. You know, like the meme goes, you know, if you're in crypto, pivot to AI. If you're in AI, pivot to whatever the next thing is. That's just not going to, that's just not in our nature. And so, again, we can afford to sort of see what's going to be valuable over the next 30 years versus like what's expedient today.

18:43Ryan Hiepler: Let's make a bag. And then, you know, in two years, if hard tech is not the thing anymore and something else, like we'll pivot out of that. That's not what we're set up to do.

18:51Santiago Pliego: So I think it's exciting too, because in stagnant times politically, things are like very locked up. You're like, are you part of this party? Are you part of this party? And in like a much more dynamic, chaotic even environment like we're in right now, you can focus on like, no, this is the right thing to do. This is like the thing that's going to benefit everybody. And you can kind of like weave through the chaos to go to that thing. You don't have to like be in this like lockdown, stagnant environment. So you can say, hey, we like energy is a good thing for the U.S. It's like security is a good thing for the U.S.

19:21Santiago Pliego: You can go tackle those problems. And even though there's like fragments of ship, as it were, in the water, even though it's chaotic, you can just cut through it and go afterwards.

19:29Ryan Hiepler: Yeah, maybe the way to think about it is like if you're in an airplane and somebody has a heart attack, the question is like, is there a doctor on board? And I think in a sense we are building like what matters in that moment is who has the skill set to solve this problem? Not like, hey, where are you politically in the spectrum? That's not the first question that's asked. It's like who has the skill set to solve this important problem? And to Josh's point, if we are known to have a particular skill set as a firm, as a company, then when those problems arise, then you just need the doctor. We'll be there.

20:01Ryan Hiepler: It's your signature. That's right. That is the signature. It's the ability to solve those problems.

20:06Josh Clemens: Do you have any good examples of the skill set coming to life? How this actually plays out that you can share?

20:14Ryan Hiepler: Yeah. I mean, we alluded to some of these over lunch. which I think a lot of that is, again, it's sort of an overlap of different things from actual skill sets of people on the team. We have a phenomenal team in the firm itself, but then also overlapping that with a great network and some of the stewardship stuff we talked about earlier. Back to your question. Yeah, we were able to help somebody earlier this year get out of a very challenging part of the world that was really, really difficult to get out of at that moment in time. Again, it's one of those things we never put up a flag to say, we are the problem solvers.

20:46Ryan Hiepler: If you ever have this problem, reach out to Vashon. But I think, thankfully, we've been able to just develop that ethos and are known for being able to solve those problems. You reach out to Josh in Santiago if you have an interesting, gnarly problem like that. And we were very grateful to play a very, very small part in putting together, as part of our network, a group that was able to help that individual get to safety. So yeah, I have to be a little bit abstract on there, but it was a fun one.

21:12Santiago Pliego: I think part of this, too, is just being willing to jump on a plane too. And that's what we tell people is like, hey, we'll buy a ticket, we'll jump on a plane wherever we need to go. So I alluded to Venezuela earlier. After the events of January, we ended up getting a call because we had made ourselves available to jump in. And we're part of a group that went down in March when they sort of reopened the country to American investors and technology. Ended up grabbing some weird... The transportation to Venezuela was not opened up yet. Like it was still an all like, do not fly, do not go there.

21:44Santiago Pliego: This is not a safe place. So no one was flying there. So we ended up grabbing just like some weird like...

21:50Josh Clemens: Kayaks. Yeah, like two kayaks. That's a great way of saying it.

21:53Santiago Pliego: I'm going to steal that one.

21:54Ryan Hiepler: Yeah, yeah.

21:54Santiago Pliego: We took like some just like gnarly like little hopper planes like through Bogota, like I slept overnight in Bogota in the airport and then like got into Caracas. And it was a really interesting trip. And then we, you know, some of our portfolio companies ended up getting tied in there as well. We ended up speaking with President Delce and the cabinet there, which effectively is just Maduro's cabinet minus Maduro's. So it was a hilarious situation and just really interesting. And it came out of us making ourselves available and talking to people and saying, hey, we'll jump on a plane if you need us.

22:26Santiago Pliego: And it was just a few days turnaround from getting invited to going down there. And that's how it went.

22:32Josh Clemens: It feels like who you guys are as people is very reflective in the fund that you're building because you guys also do the same thing for your portfolio founders. I know we shared stories over lunch, but it's very evident that the same type of skill set is applied across the entire firm.

22:48Ryan Hiepler: Yeah, I think that's partly what we realized when we were writing these angel checks. And especially having built software companies or been in software before, what founders for building in the fiscal world need is very different than what somebody building a B2B SaaS company needs from their investors. Some of those things could be, like, overwhelmingly, they're going to be real things like physical things. Yes. Yeah. Especially in the age of AI where you can code a lot of stuff or just accelerate like actual engineers. Key bottlenecks for companies building in the physical world are things that are mined or grown or, you know, access to actual physical locations in the world.

23:25Ryan Hiepler: And so to unlock those things, to get those things, you can't just trade commodities like, oh, I'm just going to trade copper. Like at some point on the other side of that screen is an actual person pulling the copper out of the ground or with a cobalt whatever you can't ask claw to vibe code you more cobalt or to vibe code you an opening to venezuela i guess if it's not open it's not open i think back to your point we were like man these these founders are they they move at that speed they get on a plane they go to these places and i think the dirty secret of venture is that so many gps just have some like once you raise the fund you have a lot of time on your hands like what are you guys doing all this time just get on a plan and go help the founders like go do stuff out in the real especially like in building in the physical world like go get these things that they need to win i feel like i saw this so

24:09Josh Clemens: correct me if i'm wrong that you guys don't touch defense is this that's right okay how do you what is the line how do you define it that feels tricky yes yes no it's definitely for us it's right to

24:23Santiago Pliego: win i mean we we think these companies are amazing we think they're awesome we also just happen to know or fortunate to know some of who i think are the best defense tech investors in the industry and so we look at them and we see how good they are and we see frankly how mature the space is and how well developed and it's like man there are some there's a lot of spaces in the physical world outside of defense where we're the first ones people call like we're the first ones in the door and defense tech as cool as it is like we know the guys who are first in the door and they're awesome and so it's not you yeah you don't want it to be yeah yeah so so we've we've done some you know and sometimes we'll even yeah piggyback in but but just because that's not our like core

25:06Ryan Hiepler: competency we also think that there is a in again in a more dynamic geopolitical environment historically there's ways to have influence in parts of the world that come after the missiles and drones you know launch or strike or whatever the case may be there's always there should always be a follow-up and great let's say you know an area like the madura raid there's a kinetic event that happens and that guy gets gets pulled out of the country great now there's just a lot of stuff to do there's you know waste and there's minerals and all the telecom is a bunch of things that get unlocked after that kinetic action the kinetic wave that are still a kind of a continuation or projection in some cases of the first action, but they don't require further missiles and drones.

25:53Ryan Hiepler: And they require like mining things or growing things or whatever the case may be. And so in opportunities like that, we're sort of the second wave and the companies that we're investing in still play a critical role there, but they're not going to be the missiles and drones. They're what comes after.

26:09Josh Clemens: Makes sense. Yeah, that's a really important distinction. I see the time. And I could talk to you guys for a lot longer of a time, but I think one of the last questions I have, what are some of the things that you don't get asked that you wish more people asked? Or what's the question that LPs ask you or like a misconception that constantly comes up from a lot of LP conversations that you've had previously?

26:35Santiago Pliego: I think something that LPs do that's fantastic and that I think some of the best LPs do is just saying, hey, like, I want to talk to a few of the founders that you've invested in, which seems like a very obvious thing to do, but not everyone does it. And I wouldn't even say necessarily most people do it in terms of LPs. And you can learn so much just by talking to a few founders like, hey, was this just like a random check into your company or is this a GP or an investor that actually let you guys like really value on the cap table? And so I think that's a that's a sharp thing. And it's we love it, too, because because we love our founders.

27:11Santiago Pliego: And so, yeah, I love the sort of like intuitive and relational LPs and parks. That's how we act as GPs. And so when they can go and sort of just do that high trust verification on us as GPs, it's fantastic. Selfishly, it's like a lot faster of a process to just like gut check it and then go. Yeah.

27:31Ryan Hiepler: Yeah, I agree. Partly because one of the things that, again, in the position of the firm that's unique, I think because we are in the same or strive to be in the same mountains and oceans and deserts as the founders of the Reback. It's one thing to tell an LP, like, no, we are out there, or we have kind of like a peer or a kinship relationship with the guys that are doing the same thing. It's another thing for the founder to say that to the LP, like, no, I was an XYZ part of the world with Josh or Santiago, whatever the case may be. Yeah, that's really valuable.

28:02Josh Clemens: My final question has nothing to do with any of this. Who did your branding? Oh, who did our branding? Y 'all's branding is great. Oh, yeah. It's beautiful.

28:09Santiago Pliego: Thank you. Asimov Collective. There we go.

28:12Josh Clemens: Give him a shout out.

28:13Santiago Pliego: Asimov. Which camera?

28:14Ryan Hiepler: Asimov Collective. They are the guys. James and the crew, they are beautiful. I really was like, oh, wow. They're great. Yeah. Yeah.

28:21Santiago Pliego: Yeah. With heavy, heavy input on our side. We try not to be like too annoying as clients. You got to be a little bit. Full point. But yeah, we, Santiago and I also have very distant design components in our background. And so we got hands.

28:35Ryan Hiepler: In another life, we were designers of different things. So, but yeah, no, they're absolutely amazing. They did branding for Valar and Rainmaker, a bunch of other great companies. So highly recommend. If you could, now they're really busy, but if you can get on their schedule, they're a group to work with.

28:52Josh Clemens: Yeah. Great. The photo, the black and white photo of you was so cool.

28:55Santiago Pliego: The one in, yeah, the suited one, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, fantastic. Yeah, fantastic.

29:01Ryan Hiepler: We wanted a brand that we could extend. Like, we would be excited to be like, okay, we have the bare bones here and then we can just flex. It has legs. It's a lot of fun. Yeah.

29:11Josh Clemens: All right. That's it. We'll let you guys go to Abba Kenny. Thanks for having us.