EP 114: Emery Wells (CEO, Frame.io) on Selling to Adobe for $1.3B, Working with SNL and High Pain Tolerance

30:53So it has nothing to do with like, you know, what do you guys do for fun? And do you hang out after bubble? Like that, that's not culture. Culture is, you know, what are the, what is the shared belief system about how you build, how you make decisions, et cetera, et cetera. um and i you know i just in the first couple years of building frame um when the very in the very beginning i had never even thought about this never never even crossed my mind that you know like this was something i had to care about and i thought well you know you hire people and you're the boss and they'll sort of like follow your lead and um i didn't even understand that there was such a wide range of of ways to like i don't know make this it sounds silly thinking back on it i didn't even understand there was such a wide range of ways to to make decisions that could lead to so many disagreements.

31:41And so I wound up just hiring. Also, I was hiring kind of whoever I could get. This was 2015, 2016, 2017, I'd say kind of early in the sort of ZERP cycle, but very hard to hire. I didn't have a network. You're hiring who you can get. but anyway, yeah, we wound up hiring people that just a large group it wasn't like there was just one sort of cultural ideology that existed at the company at that time there was just a lot of different ideas and it just led to a lot of internal debate you know, in an unhealthy way and so we did wind up having three directors that left in the course of a couple days and then, you know, maybe like a month or two later, I let go of of the VP of Eng.

32:33And so at that point it was kind of like a big, a big reset moment where I had to take in everything that I'd learned and say, okay, well, how do we want to move forward? And, and there was three people I brought in at that time. I brought in a new head of Eng, a new head of product, and I brought in a chief of staff and, um, and, and, uh, and then, well, later a new head of design, but really those three people at that time came in and, and, you know, we really sat down and intentionally started kind of working on kind of repairing, you know, the, the culture and the team that was still there.

33:05It was most, we didn't, we didn't really have that many people leave. It was actually, you know, those three directors left and most, most everyone stayed. It wasn't really like a big exodus. Um, uh, and that, and that was the beginning of a, of a new chapter. Did you all do, was that the group that ended up defining what the cultural values were? Yeah. And, and what, and that was essentially my leadership group through acquisition. And so what did you find, I guess, in going through that process and coming up with the values? Was it things that you think everyone mostly agreed with within the company and you just needed to codify it and make it more explicit?

33:42Or were these more aspirational traits? How did you go about actually assessing what the culture was? yeah i don't think that culture oh i think similar to i i think i think that i think that um i think values need to be potent and come from you know one or a small group of people i think with any type of you know decisions that you sort of like lay on people you want to make people feel like they were part of the process i think that's one of the you know that's like the magic is if you're going to set values, you want to set them yourself, but somehow make people feel like they set them or they were part of it.

34:23And so the way that we went about it is, and I had gone through, actually, this is, we had gone through a few. So yes, we did sort of officially set values as, as part of this exercise. And, um, I had previously tried to do like a, a value setting exercise where, you know, like we had, you know, we had pulled like that we'd sent out surveys and ask people like what they thought the values were and blah, blah, blah. Um, I'd done it a couple of different times. We never, we never had rolled, we never finished it because it was such a, like, I don't know, it seemed it one, it seemed unimportant into the process that we were running to try to like set the values.

34:58We were just getting such watered down stuff. If you do, if you send out a survey to your company and you ask them for values, I promise you, you're not going to get anything platitudes, you get platitudes, you get platitudes back. So, uh, the process that I wound up going through was, we didn't have any, there's no values committee. There's certainly no committee. First of all, if there's ever a committee for almost anything, it's probably a bad idea, but there was no values committee. But what I did do is I reached out to like 15 or so people that were, you know, who had been at the company for a while and, and I thought were kind of, you know, important figures in the company.

35:34And I asked them to, to just over Slack, I just said, Hey, like I'm, I'm, we're working on values again, can you please tell me like the one, only one, the one most important value to you personally or like, you know, an idea or a principle or whatever that's most important to you. And when you ask one-on-one, there was no, nobody could see what these, you know, what, uh, someone else was thinking. And you said, just for the one most kind of potent idea, I actually started getting some, some, some better stuff. So I, I think I wound up asking even more people, maybe We asked like 25 people. And then I took all that and I sort of wordsmithed it and distilled it.

36:15And I actually had a lot of good ideas in that, but I could shape it into kind of what I wanted the values to be. And then I would go back to that person and say, hey, I interpreted it this way or I shifted it this way. Does this still kind of align with the core idea of what you were thinking? And they'd say, yeah, yeah. and say, okay, well, I want, will you be, you know, the, the kind of the spokesperson of this value. And so when we rolled it out, um, I didn't roll out the values. I had, I had a group, I'd have like three people that would speak to each value that they, that they had selected it.

36:49This was the most, this was the most important idea to them. And so they got up in front of the company and said, you know, this is the value. This is an example. This is what it means. So really it was delivered, you know, uh, as if it was all from the company. Um, and if I'm being honest, it really was all from me, but, but, you know, I think that's like a really important part of leadership is you have to make, you know, you, you have to have like clear, potent ideas. And it doesn't mean that people, they, they, they legitimately did inform, inform, you know, those ideas, but I ultimately got to like shape that and, and have it be what I wanted the identity of, of our culture and values to be.

37:31And it was really successful rollout. It took time to kind of work those into the fabric of the company, but we got there. How many values did you end up landing with? Nine. Was there anything you did in the hiring process then subsequent to that to make sure you were... Did you have someone that was responsible for assessing singularly in an interview? Did this person map to those, uh, those values? Kind of. I don't think I ever perfected that, to be honest. You know, we, we tried, I would, um, I think I would, I would continue experimenting with, with better ways of assessing that stuff out.

38:14But we did, you know, we did, we did culture, you know, we certainly did like culture value interviews. The, the number one thing that I would do personally is, you know, over time you learn like what your more controversial ideas are, You know, the things that you get more pushback on and whatever. And I certainly had learned them a couple of years in. And I, when I would interview people, I would just unsell them. I would just say like, these are, I would just, I would unsell them based on all the most controversial ideas, you know, controversial things I'd learned about the way we operate myself and, and, and I would just unsell them on it and make sure that they're signing.

38:51Throw it all on the table and say, Hey, here's what you're. Yeah. Yeah. Like one of the things that was just, you know, I'd say that I probably had a, I'm not comparing myself, but I had a Jobsian obsession with design. I am insane about design. I'm a maniac. I didn't know that about myself until I really got into it. And I have that maniacal, you know, obsession with wanting to have great design. I don't even know. I'm not saying I get there, but I certainly have the pursuit, right? I have the goal and the desire of getting there. And how does that manifest itself for an individual employee in this case?

39:30Is it just constant iteration? Yeah, it's just, I mean, it's a lot of iteration. I mean, I think the difference between, look, let's start with like, there's, if you want to have the world's best design, it starts with, you need some people that are at least capable of reaching there from like a hard skills you know perspective but let's just say that you have those people still getting to that you know kind of apple level of execution creates you know requires a culture of of um of of deeply caring and what deeply caring means is really it's probably just iterating more than other people and and not stopping when this is actually the key difference It's the hardest thing about getting to like 11 out of 10.

40:18It's not even the work. It's pushing through the emotional boundaries of people thinking they've put in the work and we've reached the point where we're done. And it's pushing past those uncomfortable moments and doing it again. And then it's doing that 5 to 10 to 15 to 20 more times where people, they're like you're you push people to their limits right and there's an art to that as well um because there's a way of doing that where people just burn out and and you know don't like you at the end of the day and there's a way of doing that where people get to the other side and say wow i didn't know i we were going to get there yeah because you can get you can do half the effort and get to some to get to 95 of the outcome or something but then you need that other half to get to the last 5 % or whatever, which is unnatural.

41:09Most people say, this is, will this actually, will the customer actually ever notice this or will they ever care on it? So in an interview process, did you, was there any way of teasing that out? Yeah, I would tell people, I would tell people, especially with leaders, because I think I could be a little bit more open and direct with leaders, but I told people, one of the things that I would that I would battle with is that, you know, I would hire people who would be really interested in frame and think it was like a cool, exciting company to work at. And they would, one of the things you'd always say, oh, you love the brand and the attention to detail and the design and everything.

41:45And then they would come in and be at, be in opposition to the very things that, that created those, those outcomes. And often have the experience of like, why would somebody come in and say, we want to make the company worse. We want to pull it down, you know? And so I would tell leaders, and this is something I did, you know, only kind of a few years in, but I'd say the one thing that you can never, ever do, and I just want to be really clear, is that if you ever lower my standards, we're not working together. Your job is to come in and raise my standards. I want you to pull me up. Like you should be pulling us, you know, getting us higher.

42:24And it was hard because my standards are really high, but that was one of the things that I would tell leaders. And it is probably one of the things that is like, you know, where I get probably would make someone incompatible to work with me if they try to lower the standards. The best employees at Frame, if you were to go run it back and start another company, was there a shared characteristic that stood out for the people that you had the most success with? Yeah, I like working with people that have high pain tolerance. And, you know, I think that's, I think that like on the journey to great, you know, and doing like doing great things, I think you need really high pain tolerance.

43:12um yeah i remember that tweet i shared about pain tolerance i deeply believe that i mean i want to work with people that have a high tolerance for pain and i remember when i tweeted that i people said yeah well like pain tolerance sounds painful you could you could say like you know why don't you say uh uh i don't know what were people trying to rephrase it as because it sounds like you're just like rephrasing it in a nicer willingness to do their best or yeah yeah and i'm like i'm like And if it's uncomfortable to you to hear pain tolerance, that's one of the things we look for. That means you don't have a high pain tolerance.

43:45Like if you have to like soften it to make it okay, then I'm sorry to say you don't have a high pain tolerance. Some of the most important things about values that I found is the opposite also. If the opposite also isn't true, it's a platitude. Everyone will agree for it. If you can't frame the counterbalancing thing in a positive way, then what you're saying is probably hollow in some way. And so having high pain tolerance, there's probably there's an opposite version of that, of being inclusive or empathetic to other people's feelings. There's some version of that that's probably also true. And you want people to opt into your way of doing things.

44:26If it's true for every person or the majority of people in the population, then you're not discerning or you're not getting people to opt in in some specific way. Is the design side of building product, when you think about what motivates you and what drives drove you through the ups and downs of, how long was the journey? Seven years before selling to Adobe and now you're nine-ish. Yeah. Is that right? Yeah. Yeah. Was design what you came back to as the thing that most motivated you and most drove you through it? Or was there some other element of building a company? It was probably definitely design.

45:03Yeah. Yeah. As you got more and more senior within the organization, or as the company got bigger, you stayed the same, but your responsibilities started to become more disperse. Was there a structural way that you maintained responsibility for design so that didn't start to be decentralized? No, I think it was something I struggled with. I mean, I did wind up hiring some really good people in the design organization, which, you know, which they brought a lot of intensity to, to design. And so, yeah, I mean, naturally, like naturally when you scale, I mean, you, you just, it's, it's impossible to be like involved in, you know, every minute little detail, but the thing that, so, so this was the big, so, so one of the big turning points that we did and something that was really critical for my continued involvement in, in not just design, but product and just kind of overall high quality execution.

46:04So like after we had the big reset moment and we brought in these new leaders, and then shortly after that, we brought in a head of design. So we had this new leadership team. And, you know, my, you know, my objective with them was like, we want to really elevate the quality of our execution. And so we set up, we set up a pretty simple, a pretty simple framework where we would have on, on Fridays, is we would have what we called stakeholder reviews, which were sessions to kind of review the work. But let me, if I back up, if there's ever a problem within a company, and this is super common, right?

46:42You're like, you sort of expect something of the team and they deliver something else, right? That's just like one of the most common things you can experience as a leader. I have developed what I think is a pretty straightforward, simple framework. And these are ideas that are not new. They probably exist in every management framework. It's just that management frameworks have a lot more steps that I don't think about. So I just use three things, which is the key to changing anything is first you just have to sort of align on expectations. Like what does success mean? If we were to all say, yeah, we knocked it out of the park, what does that look like?

47:15And the more detailed you can be, the better, right? Like write it down in excruciating detail and then get everyone to sign up for it and say, yep, we all understand that this is what success is. looks like. Because now you have this thing you can all point to. If you ever stray from it, you have this shared understanding of expectations. So expectations is one. The second is accountability. How do you hold people accountable? Or how do you ensure that people are aligning to those expectations? You have to do check-ins. You have to do inspections. A favorite quote of mine that I did not come up with is that people do what you inspect, not what you expect.

47:55And so if you're not inspecting the expectations, I don't think you're, I mean, through some process in the organization, I don't think you're ever going to get there. And then the third thing is actually the accountability or the action. Like what happens if somebody is not meeting those expectations, right? You've aligned on them. You set it, you check in to make sure that they're happening. Now what happens when they're not happening. And obviously, firing somebody is the most extreme thing you can do, but usually that's not the right tool. And that's a last resort tool. And so for us, what we did is we set up these stakeholder reviews.

48:37They were held every Friday. We basically took all of Friday and we had every single team had a slot on Friday they could use to present work, but sometimes they weren't ready to present. And so they didn't have to use the slot. But when they did have a piece of work that was ready to present, they would use these slots. And so as we were trying to change the kind of internal expectation of what we were delivering, one of the things I did is when we rolled out this program is that prior to the Friday presentations, the teams would come in and they would present their work, I would have my leadership team do like a pre-inspection of the presentation.

49:20And in this case, let me just clarify, we had two types of meetings. We had what we called a stakeholder review, and that was they could present, you know, work in progress design or kind of anything to get feedback. And then we had something called a build review, which was like, this was a finished unit of work and it had to meet every expectation that meets kind of our shipping criteria and what customers would experience. And so importantly for this builder view, I don't know how many times you've been in a meeting and I'm sure founders can relate to this. The team is doing the demo of the thing they're going to ship, but there's like always a caveat.

49:56There's like 10 caveats. It's like, okay, well, yeah. So there's this, we're still working on this one thing. And it's like, this meeting was to say no caveats. At what point do we have the thing that's going to be the thing that our customers use. And that's what this meeting was for. And so my leadership team would do a pre-inspection of the work to make sure that it met the criteria. And one of those criteria among many was that the execution of the build had to be pixel perfect. And so what pixel perfect meant was not 99.9 % accurate, but 100 % accurate. So that meant if one pixel was misaligned or not centered or whatever the case may be, we actually would cancel the meeting.

50:39And that seems like kind of like not a big deal, right? Like it's not like you're certainly not the same as firing somebody, but it actually was a really big deal. And because what it meant is when we, when we rolled out these, you know, kind of the expectations in this new program, the builder views, we canceled these meetings for months. I wouldn't look at the work for months and months and months the meetings were canceled and it created a lot of tension on the teams a lot of tension internally um but eventually you know we we uh the team had to build the muscle and all collectively we had to build the muscle and ultimately ultimately kind of became part of our our you know culture i'd say um that this is what it meant to ship product at at frame and uh and after those you know sort of three four months of of pain i mean i'd say that we one just like across the board radically shifted our quality of execution up and i think after those three four months i don't think i've ever seen a pixel off i don't like in like years i don't think you just you know and it's one of those things like you experience with apple and it's not to say that apple's perfect but one thing that you know you'll get with apple is like shit's going to be like 100 % polished.

51:52It's going to be polished, right? And yeah, maybe there's other things they didn't get right or idea, but like there is a quality of execution that is just fundamental. Like they can't nothing will ever come out of that company that doesn't have that veneer of polish and that's even just that. Forget about like all the foundational decisions underneath that. That's really, really, really hard to do culturally and at scale. And so we, you know, we we got there and um and that and that whole kind of builder view i think um it was cumbersome on the teams i don't think the teams always loved it um i would imagine getting their meeting canceled was it uh yeah but just overall the the pro like i think you know it was cumbersome on the teams there was we actually wound up getting rid of them as we were trying to accelerate our speed of execution after after working on quality of execution then we worked on speed of execution and one of the things we tried when we were trying to accelerate our speed of execution was to get rid of those meetings because teams wound up putting a lot of prep time.

52:54You know, it's one of those things like when you're, when a team is presenting to a leader or an executive or the CEO, you know, even if you don't want them to put a lot of prep time, you're like, hey, just show me what you're doing. It's impossible. Yeah. They will spend days and days. They spend so much time and I've experienced this like now being at Adobe and I'm not the CEO and I'm not the boss and I have to go and present to senior leadership or to Sean Tenu, the CEO. And you're just like, gosh, I can't just roll in. Even if their expectations are different, you feel like you're not doing your job.

53:30You don't show up like buttoned up professional presentation. It's designed well, the whole thing. And sometimes that's necessary, but a lot of times it's not. And anyway, we tried getting rid of our kind of review process. And I don't think it really accelerated us. Is that right? Yeah, I don't think it accelerated us. And I think that there was a hit. That was like these gates that ensured we were always shipping the quality. The quality that you wanted. Brand is an interesting thing for B2B companies. I think you guys were pretty purposeful about the brand of frame. How did you think about going about building a brand in the B2B world?

54:14You know, I didn't think about it a lot other than the fact that I, you know, I think I probably just instinctually built Frame. I wanted to make it cool, number one. Like, I just want, I want to make it cool. I want to make it a desirable brand. I had never worked in enterprise software prior to, prior to launching Frame. I had really never bought enterprise software because I had a small boutique agency. Any software I ever bought was just something I could sign up with a credit card myself. And I think I built, overall, from the brand to the product and everything, we started by building Frame in the way that, I don't know, I would use it, buy it, etc.

54:58And so we had this kind of very kind of more consumer looking motion, you know, from sign up with a credit card, self-serve, focused on brand. But I've come to evolve my thinking, and I think there's people who think maybe brand is not a worthwhile effort in enterprise software. Design is not a worthwhile effort in enterprise software. I mean, I've shared tweets around how there's such an opportunity in enterprise software. If you just come in, like, just like do like high quality execution, you can basically just win in any vertical. And there's people that are just like hundreds of comments of people saying, nobody cares about the product.

55:35Nobody cares about quality. Nobody cares about design. Like, that's not going to matter to the buyer. And I'm like, guys, this is why enterprise software sucks. You know, because this is, there's a belief system that whether, you know, a brand doesn't matter, design doesn't matter, you know, quality of execution doesn't matter in enterprise software. And I think that that might have been true, truer, you know, earlier. But I think today where one, we've seen this this big shift in the consumerization of enterprise software. And what does that mean? It means that like I think people's expectations of what software is, is just different.

56:12Right. Like we all use much more high quality software and whether you're using software at work or using, you know, Instagram on your phone, you just have like an expectation of what good software is. And I think the end user within organizations has a bigger voice than they've had, you know, than they've had before, like, whether it's IT, or, you know, whoever's making the buying decision, they're much more careful about buying something that their users are going to hate or not use. And, and so I think there's just been this big kind of consumerization of enterprise software. Anyway, you originally asked me about brand.

56:50We built a brand because I love, I mean, it's just fun for me really. And I, I don't know if it's like,

57:26This is what I'd say. I think it was probably more innate. And my background was in post-production and production and post-production and filmmaking. And so I'd want to use that tool set as well. Like we were able to do stuff that maybe less expensively than someone else could do it because I just literally had done that work for years and knew the freelancers and the people to hire and things like that. So yeah, I think it was more innate. You have a methodology or a style of launching twice, doing a pre-announcement and then an announcement. Can you talk about that and what the benefits of it are?

58:03Yeah, I think that you just basically want to milk a launch for everything that, you know, for as much as you can. And for most of our launches, we would always do, we would do a, you know, like a teaser. So you want to let people know that it's coming. And a lot of people do this, but I think we would, you know, maybe milk it a little bit more. Um, so you do, uh, you know, you do some kind of teaser where you get people excited and, and let them know that it's coming. Um, and there's lots of ways to sort of maximize, you know, that experience. I'd say like, if I go back all the way back to our, like actually launching frame for the first time, and we use the same framework for subsequent launches, but, uh, we would do a, uh, we, you know, we do this sort of like an announcement launch and, um, and, you know, build a landing page.

58:53and experience in a teaser video. And then we'd build lots of kind of gamification around,

59:03if I go all the way back to the original launches, this is before anybody had access to Frame. And I'm sure we've all seen these gamified launches. I guess you see less of them now, to be honest. But back in 2015, it was like the era of gamified launches. And so what we did is we had a landing page that wasn't just any landing page. We put a lot of effort into creating an experience of a landing page. And most people, when they're launching something, it's like, hey, drop your email in, right? And then to get notified when it's going to be ready. And that's sort of the end of the journey. But I think that's a missed opportunity because when people are interested and engaged and excited and wanting access to something, you can usually get them sort of do more things on your behalf.

59:46So in the earliest launch, we had this landing page where you could drop your email, get notified when it's ready but then as soon as you put your email in we kind of took you through this whole gamified journey where we had like a point system and we said you can do this for five points and this for five points and this for five points and the more points you gain the earlier you know like kind of you raise your ranks in terms of getting access some of them were like if you send this email and share with five other people that yeah it was it was it was um it was shared on social i think we had i think we had back then uh twitter and facebook so we got you got points for sharing it on social.

1:00:22You got points for, I think you could add friends' email addresses in. You got bonus points. Oh, you had to answer a survey. It was like five questions. And then you got bonus points for following us on social. And we had like 15 ,000 people go through that flow. This was when we were literally zero, no one. I mean, it was just me and my, this was our earliest launch. It was me and my co-founder. I had no one else that were helping us. And, um, and that early launch got like 15 ,000 people to sign up. Um, uh, and then, and what do you think, I mean, was it, were you previewing on the landing page, what frame was?

1:01:04And so we were previewing what, what, what made it, what made it work, what made sort of the, the viral loop work was, um, we, when we seeded it with, uh, it did just like kind of grassroots marketing. Like, you know, we were, we, we come from the industry. So our, my previous industry was in post-production. So knew all, you know, knew all those people in the industry and identified, you know, people that were kind of influencers that were, didn't exist in 2015. I don't think like commonly, but you know, that we identified people that, you know, had a following and asked them, we just asked them, Hey, will you, I mean, like people were, I don't think people were getting paid to do a kind of influencer stuff in 2015.

1:01:39I think. So we just like asked people, Hey, would you, you know, we're launching this thing. Would love your support. Would you share this? Um, And so we kind of seeded, we seeded the, the, the sharing with, I don't know, 50, 75 people that, that would, you know, share the announcement on, on Twitter. And, and then, and obviously we did trade press and we were on the front, we actually were on the front page of Hacker News because we were using a, we were using a front end framework that was new at the time for the landing page called Famous. It was this front-end JavaScript framework that was supposed to...

1:02:19Their mission was to build once, run anywhere, and do iOS-level animation on the web. We wound up using it for the landing page, not for the whole product. But just because we were using that framework, we were front page on Hacker News. And I think that got some... Actually, it probably got more like Silicon Valley-type potential investors. That's where they found us on Hacker News. we were also an early version of product hunt like the one it was back as an email distribution list but it was all just through these like organic seating and then the social sharing flows and and it just kind of worked right so like somebody would would tweet it and another person would see it they go they'd sign up they tweet it and we got that loop going so we had 15 000 people sign up for for that initial launch and you also did a personal touch like automated follow-ups you would reach out after 15 minutes or something to someone?

1:03:14Yeah, that was, that was really, uh, important as well. So you'd sign up and then you would get an automated email for me 15 minutes after. And I think a lot of people do this now. Um, but the email that you got for me 15 minutes after signing up was, it was totally plain text. There was no one subscribed, which I know technically is, you know, not, you're not supposed to do that, But I was really trying to make it look like it was an email that I wrote and it was super plain language. It was like two sentences. I think it was like, Hey, I just noticed you signed up, you know, um, you know, what interested you in, in frame, what pain points do you have?

1:03:48And I got thousands and thousands of responses, um, which I went through every single one of them. And I, uh, I, I went through and read every single one of them. And that was, and in them there were like, you know, there were, there were potential future enterprise customers. There were, there were, uh, investors. Um, and the, one of those emails was, uh, from Balaji at, uh, Andreessen. He was at Andreessen Horowitz at the time. And that was my, that was like first contact with Silicon Valley. I was a total outsider. I didn't know a soul, like not, I didn't know an engineer. I didn't know a founder.

1:04:27I didn't know a venture capitalists, I knew zero people. And sort of like my first contact with Silicon Valley was this email from Bellagio. And I remember getting that first email and I'm pretty mellow guy. I don't really like show a lot of visible excitement, but I was, you know, it was, I couldn't believe that I, one, it was, you know, it was an investor who was voicing interest and it was from Andreessen Horowitz. And it was like, oh, like bingo. And that anyway, you know, of course I responded and And that led to an introduction to somebody. He introduced me to Steven Sanofsky. But that automatic response email really kind of opened up these conversations with VCs.

1:05:12What did you learn about fundraising? So you went in and met Andreessen in the early days pre-products fully launched? We had the announcement. Yeah. So this launch that I just told you the story about, that was an announcement launch. the product was not ready to use. And I, yeah, so Balaji, you know, responded to that email from Balaji and he, you know, he said, you know, not really my space, but I think, but I'd like, you know, to meet my colleague, which was Steven Sanofsky. And so I went in my very, my first, first, first like contact in person, or really, I guess at that point, other than that conversation with Balaji, you know, my second conversation with anyone in Silicon Valley was, was Steven Sanofsky.

1:05:59And for those listening, I think most people know, but you know, Steven was the president of windows at Microsoft. He had left Microsoft and he was now, uh, at Andreessen. So that was, I came in and I, you know, had a, had a conversation with, uh, with, with Steven, um, which did lead to a board pitch at Andreessen, you know, some weeks after that, but I, uh, they did not invest. But you asked me what I learned about pitching. There was a really important thing I learned about pitching, which was when I came in, first conversation with Steven, I mean, he kind of knew a little bit about the industry and the space.

1:06:35So he did get it. But I mean, my original pitches, I think were all bad. And one of the things I noticed is that if you were to sit down and ask me, hey, tell me about Frame, tell me about the story, like on a phone call or just like casually, whatever I would, I would tell you a story of who I am, what I'm doing and why it matters. And when I, but then I looked at my pitch and it's like, well, this, the pitch looked very, looked very different. And so basically my realization was if somebody just asks me about frame, when I'm not doing like a pitch with a deck, I, I'm able to tell a really compelling story, but my, my pitch isn't there.

1:07:17So, um, And one of the conversations I had upcoming with an investor who had reached out, typically when you make first contact, you're like, oh, so tell me the story, right? You're just like, tell me about what you're doing. And I knew that my storytelling that I just would do off the cuff, I couldn't like recreate. I couldn't sit down and think about it and recreate it. Like you just have to do it. There's something about I have a job where I'm communicating to a human this thing that I need to tell and your brain just like works differently. So I recorded my conversation with this investor, just my side of me pitching my story.

1:07:53And then I took that recording and I'm like, okay, this is the, this is the narrative. This is the framework. So I took the story and then I made the, I put slides to the story, which I think other people, it's just, I've done this a lot now. Like I always just want to first, like, let me just, let me just like talk and tell a story. If I'm doing a presentation, I try to just talk and tell a story. And sometimes I would do that, you know, with my chief of staff, I would, you know, just or dictate and talk about what thing I wanted to tell and then go back after I had that story and start working on how the pitch and the slide deck sort of aligns to it.

1:08:24And that made my pitch like infinitely better. Rather than people inevitably speak to slides and they just kind of go slide by slide through it. And ultimately, oftentimes slides are an amalgamation of a bunch of people's thoughts and feedback all going into some version of it versus what you naturally want to communicate. Um, did, uh, in the early days you got an acquisition offer for like 10 million bucks. Oh, this is a great story. Yeah. Why, uh, what made you say no, uh, to doing that? The first two people I ever made contact with was, was first thing was the Balaji that got introduced to Steven Sanofsky and this, and the third or second person was, um, uh, was Aaron Levy from box.

1:09:08And he had also responded to that auto responder. He saw it, you know, or wherever he saw it, he responded. he's just like hey Aaron Levy here like you know think what you're doing is really cool so when I flew out to uh San Francisco which you know by the way when I flew out to meet Steven when I flew out to meet Aaron they weren't like hey come out to meet I you know you're I'm just like hey I'm gonna be out there these dates if you want to meet and I'm like I'm no reason to be yeah yeah and they're like I'm not here and I'm like actually it's these other dates I'm gonna be here yeah so right so i went out and um i think actually i'm trying to think if i what was it was did i meet erin first or did i meet steven sanofsky first i forget which one but i went out same trip and um anyway you know erin was interested in what we were what we were building and uh i met him for dinner at fuki sushi on el camino uh near the box headquarters back then i think they moved and he brought like his whole executive team too.

1:10:07And we had this like long, my first contact with, I think I'd maybe had a phone call with him prior. I don't remember, but we had this like long dinner. And then after dinner, we went back to Box HQ and I gave him a demo of what we had. This was all pre-launch. We hadn't launched anything. It was pre-launch, gave him a demo of what we had built. And that kicked off a series of conversations uh with with aaron who you know um i think was really kind of interesting you know aaron's background i think he's you know famously was like an intern at like a movie studio for like universal or somewhere and he always had this interest in filmmaking and i think saw the angle for kind of what we were doing and how that fit fit into to box so it kicked off a series of conversations and um you know uh i i loved getting to know to know aaron he's a he's a great great dude and someone I've stayed in touch with over the years.

1:11:05But it did ultimately culminate, like I knew that there was a, I knew, you know, the nature of the conversations were like leading towards some conversation around, around an acquisition. And we had met, you know, I don't know, four or five times, different scenarios. And I kept thinking, you know, it's actually funny as I think back about this, this, these conversations with Aaron, I really only had two, I guess, kind of serious acquisition dances. I had interest along the way of the years, but nothing that was really real. It's funny, as I think back about these conversations with Aaron, it was similar to acquisition conversations with Scott Belsky, where there is a dance.

1:11:45Scott's at Adobe, who ultimately acquired. Scott Belsky's at Adobe, who ultimately acquired. There's a dance where you're getting to know someone. And thinking back to those early conversations with Aaron, we had met four or five times. and I'm like, you know, I remember thinking then I'm like, gosh, the next conversation, it's got to, it's got to, there's got to be like a serious, there's got to be like, it's got to lead to an offer, right? Cause the first year you're kind of getting to know each other and all these things. Uh, and so I remember after, you know, several, several meetings with, with Aaron, we had a meeting scheduled.

1:12:17I was back in New York. I'd met him a couple of times in San Francisco. He was in New York. We met somewhere in New York. Um, we had a call scheduled. It was like late my time. It was, I don't know, 10, 11 PM my time. And I'm like, okay, there's only one thing we could possibly talk about on this call. It's got to be an offer. And prior to that call, I called my co-founder and I said, okay, look, Aaron's going to call me. I think there's got to be an offer, right? So I want you and me to be aligned on what's our buy it now price. And by the way, are you dual processing with VCs at this point? are you self-funding as this is uh going on i mean i was just self-funding i mean i was just self-funding i was dual processing with vcs um we didn't wind up actually getting we were not able to raise until after we had actually launched the product and then we had a lot of early traction and everything but um but yeah i called my co-founder before the call with aaron i was like what i just want to be aligned like what's our what's our buy it now price and i think uh honestly i don't remember what our buy it now price was but it was something like north of 20 million dollars or something like that and and mind you this was it's pre-launch you know like we were it was just he and i and yeah i had a company that was doing well but like that would have been yeah that would have been a lot of money for me for me back then for all of us for anybody um and so aaron called and you know we're having our back and forth we're talking and hey let's gotta get to the thing like when's it gonna come out and i think uh i think he had sort of, I think he had offered like, you know, a million dollars was the opening bid.

1:13:58And, you know, I told this story before. And so like, I want to be consistent as I tell this story. I think I've told it like on an interview before, but I don't remember what number I countered with, but it was an absurdly high number. Like it was a number that, you know, he was just inappropriate to counter with. I mean, like 30 or like. I think it was like 50 or something like that you know like something stupid uh and you know i think i remember his his his response was like his response was funny because he's you know he's a very funny guy he always he's got a great joke and he was like he's his response was like god damn it you really are a founder and uh yeah so it um i think that uh yeah he in that conversation he was you know he was pretty i i think we got in that on that phone call he got up to a verbal like he's like look there's there's the highest number that we could ever acquire a company for that's like a pre-launch company with two people um is 10 million dollars like the board would never allow me to do anything above that and it's just probably wouldn't you know and so we and i don't even think i don't even know that that was like an offer yeah for 10 it was just basically like kind of setting uh Yeah.

1:15:10Just so you know. Demarcation of, yeah. But you used that and that was the anchor for the seed round, right? That was the valuation. I used that and I, yeah. So that was my anchor for the seed round when I pitched Andreessen and then later Excel. And that was our valuation. So we did our, you know, we raised 2.2 million in a seed round and a 10 million pre. So I used that as our anchor for the valuation. Flash forward all the way to the actual acquisition. So how did all that come to be with Adobe? It started off with the DM on X, then Twitter, still the Twitter back then from Scott Belsky, who, yeah, he just sent me a DM on Twitter saying, hey, been following you guys, would be great to connect.

1:15:59and I knew getting the DM from him already was,

1:16:05you know, I think I sort of right off the bat kind of knew like, okay, this is probably going to lead to some kind of interest in a conversation around acquisition because I have - Is this the end of 2020, beginning of 21? It is the beginning of 2021. So I think it was March of 2021 when he reached out, the first contact. I'm kind of surprised you guys didn't know each other. Well, that's what I was going to say is that, But, you know, I mean, one is Scott is, you know, a really prolific investor. He's, you know, really prominent, you know, figure in the industry. You guys are both in New York.

1:16:39Both in New York. Both in the same space. But yeah, so I had 15 people along, you know, over the years had offered to introduce me to Scott. And I always said yes. I was like, yeah, yeah. Because every person I would talk to, every VC I would talk to, like, hell, you know who you should talk to? Yeah. Like, do you know Scott? You should talk to Scott. I'm like, great. I'll talk to Scott. But then it would always just go silent. So, you know, I think on the other side, Scott was like, nah, you know, because he was at Adobe and basically, you know, they were competitive, right? So he didn't, Scott doesn't invest in competitive companies and things like that, right?

1:17:12So I never met him, but then he reached out over DM and that kicked off, you know, a series of conversations similarly to the Aaron conversation. you know series of conversations where it was like lots of getting to know each other lots of walks in the park a lot you know there's a lot of um you know over a period of a couple months um before we got to maybe not a couple months it was like uh probably six weeks from initial contact to a negotiating a verbal offer mentally at that point in time you're running a business and you're planning for a subsequent fundraise, an IPO, whatever the things are.

1:17:58And then there's this orthogonal... Well, we were actually closing our Series D. So it was close to$100 million Series D that was all being done by our insiders, our existing investors, when the conversations started. And Scott actually convinced me to pause the closing to see if there was a path to acquisition. That would have been a very unnecessary, dilutive amount of capital taken. And I think, you know, one, my board was supportive. You know, they were like, they were supportive of pausing the round. So we did pause it. And we did pause it for a little bit, but we reached a point in the negotiation where we felt like we were probably too far apart on valuation.

1:18:48situation and so you know i had um you basically thanked scott and you know just kind of said hey like after we eventually did get to that first offer i i'd um you know said hey i think just indicative i think i think the the offer is indicative that we just have more work to do and so i'm going to close the round and um you know maybe we'll you know there'll be an opportunity to speak in the future. And, um, and I, and that, and that was my true intention. I, I was like, I, cause I talked about it with the board and, and it's, you know, we, I needed to capitalize the business. Like we, we needed to get this, this round done and I had been holding it for, for a while.

1:19:26So I reached out to, uh, my, uh, lawyers at the time was Gunderson was the team we worked with. And I told them like, we're good to go, like send out the wire information. and I think this was um it was Friday it was a Friday and I and I told Gunderson to send out the wire information but then I got another I got like another follow-up call from Scott and he was like he's like Emory don't do it it's like just give me one give me 24 hours give me one more day and uh and so I I called you know I called the lawyer back I was like hey did you did you send the wire information out yet like just no don't don't don't send it he's like I was just about to send the email.

1:20:04I was like, don't, don't send it. So we paused it for one more day. And then it was that next day that we wound up having our verbal agreement. Was it hard through that period of time to have these two things going on? Oh, it sucks. It's, I mean, it's really hard. Yeah, it's really hard. I mean, because, you know, the full acquisition took from first contact in April to closing in October. And during that time, I was spending 95 % of my time on the acquisition and 5 % on the business. And then as things progressed and actually we got to the LOI and we signed it, then you have to pull in more people.

1:20:48Diligence is intense. Diligence for an acquisition, I mean, I've only gone through one, so I don't know what other acquisitions are, but it's like a venture capital diligence but like times 100. I mean, it's just like it was intense. We also, as part of the acquisition, we had never done an audit. And Adobe being a publicly traded company, they required that we complete a three-year audit. And to do a three-year audit in the course of like a six-week diligence period, which normally a three-year audit, I'm told would take, you could spend like six, eight months, even longer. It's depending on like how much you want to, how much time you want to spend on it.

1:21:28Like we, we did a three year audit in, in about, I think it wound up taking about eight weeks, um, which was intense. I mean, like it is, you know, you are digging up, I mean, the amount of crap you got to dig up, like some random receipts that like, you know, the auditors pull out some random charge and you're like trying to find some receipt. Cause you know, in the early days you have like, people are just spending on credit cards and whatever, whatever. um anyway yeah it's intense um i mean those that was that was by far the most intense period of the entire journey was trying to do the acquisition uh while continuing to run the business also the business was going through its deepest growth inflection point at that time um uh but yeah it was i mean my i would start i would start i would do like a you know because because we were trying to run the business and the executive my my my leadership team had all their normal responsibilities we would start with a exec team morning huddle at 8 a.m.

1:22:27And then, of course, we're in New York. Adobe's in San Francisco. And our bankers, we were using Catalyst, who were based in San Francisco. And a lot of times Adobe would have their acquisition update meeting around 6, 7 p.m. or something like that, usually late. And then so that was already even later in New York. And then, you know, my team at Catalyst would usually like have dinner with their family. Anyway, I would talk to Catalyst in the evenings at like 11 p.m. midnight. And then we were just dealing with all of the diligence stuff like throughout the whole day. So and I did that for, you know, six months.

1:23:06It was intense. Is there anything you would have done differently in the process? Or if you were advising a founder to be prepared for something that could be, I mean, this is the outcome for 99.9999 % of companies, maybe audit sooner. I don't know what, what, yeah. Yeah. I think there's a lot of stuff you can do just hygiene wise that, you know, if I were doing differently, I would just know that, you know, have a little bit of better hygiene about, yeah, you should do an audit. You should probably do, you know, a yearly audit. Um, I, I think that, um, I'm trying to honestly, like I've sort of purged a lot of this from my, from my mind.

1:23:41There's some trauma compartment in there. Yeah. Yeah. Put you on a couch over here. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But no, there, there is, I I'd have to sit down and think about it there's there's a number of things from from a hygiene perspective like um just keep you know like the how you you know keep all your and just like your enterprise contracts keeping those like making making sure that like you actually have like every executed signed like you know sign both sides the final executed contract like you know in your salesforce database along with the bubble just like you just gotta have good hygiene like you gotta i mean our we you know we're a little messy like we some like we're like a startup your startup yeah like we couldn't like we couldn't find like our fully execute some of our fully executed contracts you know like their side signed but then like we didn't have like our counter signed and blah blah blah yeah just a lot of little stuff a lot of little stuff yeah on the way was there something unique at that moment in time that you felt like uh it was going to be a good partnership with adobe versus going on your own?

1:24:44Or did they just end up making the compelling offer that made it worthwhile for everyone involved? No, it was definitely, I mean, I think a big part of moving forward was Scott. You know, Scott Belsky is a really, he's just, first of all, he's just like a really good, he's a good dude. And anybody that knows him would all say that he's like a good, kind, like honest, like he's the type of person you're like, oh, I want to work with Scott. You know, like he's super likable. And he's a startup guy. His company, Behance, was acquired by Adobe. And so he was able to really relate and tell me about his journey of Behance being acquired by Adobe.

1:25:25He was also really transparent about the things he was trying to change at Adobe, the things that he was like, hey, these are the things that, you know, I think we're not good at. And, you know, we're trying to change and, you know, would love your help with it and blah, blah, blah. so I think a big part of the deal happened I mean no first of all like the reason the deal happened was Scott I mean he sponsored the deal sold me on it sold it internally um and so yeah I mean the the deal happened because of Scott in a lot of way in in more ways than one um but uh for me personally he really he really sold me on it and I you know I think also I looked at it as Adobe was the natural home for frame.

1:26:07We didn't have a lot of natural acquirers. There's always a random like, oh, Amazon somehow thinks they should be involved. But in terms of a company that's like, this is in their wheelhouse, what they do, Adobe was the company. Yeah. So it just made sense. That makes sense. Like maybe Autodesk a little bit. They were sniffing around around the same time. Um, but it was, I really like, and then, but Adobe was the more natural fit. So you've been within Adobe now for about two and a half years, a little more than, little more than two and a half years. Uh, what have you, um, taken from Adobe's culture, way of operating that, um, I don't know if you were to run it back with another startup in the future, just something that you've uniquely learned from working within it.

1:26:55Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know, I think that I'm super grateful for the experience of, you know, of working at Adobe. I think it's a really great company. But, you know, I think that I think the key takeaway is. And granted, I'm not running Adobe, so, you know, it's not like I have the same purview of running frame versus running Adobe. But, you know, I got a seat at the table. I'm in a lot of the important meetings and a lot of the exec meetings I was reporting. I was reporting directly into Scott, you know, who's the I was reporting into the into the E team, the executive team. um so point being i've had some purview and my experience is that it's not that different and if anything it is it's like it's it's all this it's all the same stuff it's a lot of the same problems like of course like you know the bigger the company grows like the the nature of them change a little bit but the problem solving is is kind of the same and and it's funny it's something Scott said to me during our early walks is, you know, he's like, you know, Adobe's a giant company.

1:28:10It's over 20 ,000 people. But at the end of the day, like still just like five people in a room making decisions. And that's true. You know? So if anything, I think it's given me maybe more comfort or confidence that like, I don't know, I guess I, I, I think I could do that. Yeah. It doesn't seem that different. What's that Steve Jobs quote that like you look around the world and like anything you see is created by people no smarter than you or something when you get into these big companies or you meet these people it's uh yeah and i think they're normal people yeah i think they're they're normal people and i think what i'm about to say is not it's not indicative it's you know in many ways the jobs that people have at startups are a lot harder there's a lot more responsibility and you know at startups i think that you know just naturally the scope of responsibility can be much more narrow at big companies at big companies sorry at big companies the scope of responsibility can be much much more narrow and um and you know so i i think that like i don't know i'd like to maybe have somebody have the opportunity i'll come back on and tell you after I've run a 20 ,000 person company, like, is it any harder?

1:29:29But, you know, I think in some ways, startups can be a lot harder. Adobe spent a lot of time thinking about AI. I'm sure you have as well. There's been a number of different tools that have come out related to video, during the video. There's so rare from OpenAI, Runway. There's a bunch of stuff related to that category that seems to be coming out. Um, what's your, any high level thoughts? I know you've tweeted a little bit about, uh, different things related to AI, um, being in the creative world, working with design tooling. It sort of feels like you're in the eye of the storm to some extent.

1:30:09What's your, what's your purview or perspective on like how it's going to impact the creative world? Yeah. Just in general, any thoughts, observations? Um, I think predicting the future is really hard and I don't, I don't, I don't proclaim to be able to do it. But, you know, I think we're a couple generations away from seeing how truly impactful, you know, kind of video generation, you know, can be for the for the creative industry. You know, you it's certainly potent enough to be involved in like a creative process. And you can, you know, sort of do a shot, you know, you can generate a clip and use it as a B roll or, or whatever, but it's still, you know, it's, it's still tricky to kind of guide it.

1:30:52Um, and when you get into really like what, you know, like professional creative workflows, I mean, there's a lot of intention around what they're trying to create. And I think that, you know, AI is, it's hard to, I think everyone's trying to work on controllability. Like how do you, how do you sort of steer this thing? Cause it's obviously incredibly powerful, but I mean I just you know not not speaking for Adobe I I think of like over the next few years

1:31:20um it's like I don't know if it's two years three years ten years but there's clearly going to be a day where it's probably not so far off that you can really just like input a script and output a movie and probably be as good as like great great movies um and how does that change the landscape landscape of creativity? I don't know. Does it lend itself to more, I mean, I guess inevitably it will lend itself to more taste in some ways and more like back to the original point around what motivates you design and some of those considerations as the functional skills maybe get up-leveled in a more meaningful way?

1:32:02Yeah. I mean, I think absolutely. Taste is, I think in a kind of a Gen.AI world, taste becomes a more important skill than creation. There's a lot of people that have the technical skill to create, but maybe their taste is lacking. And if you can put these tools in the hands of people who have great taste, I think that'll be fun to watch. And, you know, back to like great, I think great things in general come from a framework where you have one person driving really clear vision and then, you know, lots of contribution from other people. And, you know, movies are really, really hard to make. I mean, it is a shocking number of people that have to collaborate.

1:32:54and you know movies do have like like culturally it's about like a director driving a vision but still there's just so many people that have to you know come in and be part of that to make a movie happen um and it's so expensive that your ability to iterate or fix something that didn't work well like just doesn't really exist you can't really do that so when you get to the point where you have a tool that one person's mind can, can guide and, you know, create a story around and iterate and iterate and iterate basically for free until they can find what they love. I, you know, maybe the best, you know, maybe we'll have some of the best content we've, we've ever had because you'll have absolute clarity of vision.

1:33:37It'll cost nothing to iterate and explore different ideas. And, um, I think we're going to see a ton of cool stuff. Is there anyone from the outside in that was particularly influential to the business or the outcome? Anyone you would want to shout out or give credit to? I will say that I had a really awesome board. I think that startups go through tons of problems and for many startups, board problems are one of them. And I just never had board problems. I had Voss from Excel, Amish from First Mark and Itai who was a board partner on behalf of Insight, but now has his own fund, LGBP, Ytai Sidon.

1:34:16But those were my three board members. And for a long time, it was just Voss and Amish. And I also had Chris from SignalFire. He was a board observer. He was also involved from, but all of them, I think that I really heavily leaned on my board. And I think there's a lot of conversations around how much value add to investors bring. And I don't know, I thought they brought a ton of value because for me as a first time founder, they really had just like, didn't know a lot about business, especially when it came to really thinking about like, how do we, you know, how do we think about capitalizing the business, setting, you know, success milestones, you know, scaling a sales organization, thinking about like i mean i think a lot of i think a lot of the stuff i did wind up talking to the board with was was on the you know kind of the business side the product side i always drove instinctually but i mean i thought they were invaluable was there anything you did in selecting them that was purposeful or lucky i was lucky yeah i was lucky i think i was lucky yeah i i mean i'd say that I, for our seed round, we had a competitive seed round and I wound up choosing Voss from Excel.

1:35:35And I think I chose Voss because he, um, he did seem to like just truly get the frame IO value proposition the best there's, you know, there's the, the term founder market fit. I think there's also like investor company fit, you know, in terms of like who really understand, like he just, he, he, he really understood it. He was an investor in Envision, which was Envision was similar to Frame. They were kind of like, you know, Frame for design and Envision was ahead of us by a few years. And Amish was as well, right? Amish was as well. So, you know, Envision was a great company that kind of like set a path for us.

1:36:15It can be so much easier when there's a company that's kind of like proven something out, you know? And I think we had a lot to prove in our market because, you know, there wasn't, you know, video collaboration like didn't exist and um kind of the review and approval market was like pretty nascent but but envision had at least charted a path for us and proven like this space can be valuable so yeah um boss and amish were both on the envision board and they were on on our board and but i think that what it what it meant was when i would speak to them they they really they really got it they really understood it so um and they're both great sass investors both great b2b investors, they work well together.

1:36:54That's important too. There's the board dynamics of do your board like each other? Because you might like all of them, but they don't like each other. And that can create tension. So I never had any board problems. The only time I had a little bit of tension with my board was during acquisition. And that was because there was one board member that was really playing his fiduciary responsibility to maximize the outcome. And there was a little bit of disagreement on like when we should like continue to push on the negotiation where i felt i had pushed like i was on the front line of negotiating so i had all the you know kind of easy for the armchair quarterback to say you should push harder yeah and i but i felt like you know i really knew what the limit was of the pushing and i and and so anyway but in retrospect i guess but it's fine we had there was i mean that was just like a little moment yeah small in the small little moment so if nothing purposeful in retrospect uh if you were giving advice to someone and picking a board member, picking an investor, would you probe on how deep they can go into the space and how unique their actual interest is in the space?

1:37:58Would you just spend more time with them and get the vibe check and really pin that down? Yeah, that's a good question. I mean, I think that, yeah, I mean, I think that especially, you know, especially for, I guess, for all board members, it's not dissimilar to hiring, you know, an executive. Like I think it's super important that you like each other. Yeah. You know, like if you don't, if you don't want to hang, if you don't want to go to dinner with that person, this is actually both, this very much applies to hiring executives. And it's something that I kind of came around to a little bit later.

1:38:31Cause you think that like, nah, you don't have to be friends. Like that's not what it's about to like work with someone. I think you kind of do. I think you have to like each other enough where like you, there's some level of enjoyment of spending time with each other. And I call that a friend, you know? Um, and I'm not super, I'm not like, I don't, I don't like hang with my employees a lot. I'm not like friends, but you do have to like each other. And I think that's important for the board. Like you, you gotta like each other. I think their, their conviction in the space, in your space, their understanding of the space, I think really, really does matter.

1:39:05And then, and then I think you want to understand, you know, like talk to other founders. and founders, hopefully founders that have, it's probably much more valuable to talk to founders that, you know, of companies that did not succeed or went through some moment of crisis and understand how, uh, how, how the board would respond to that. We did go through one moment of crisis where I had to like, I think was a, you know, the wrong board maybe would have led to, I can't talk about the moment of crisis, but it was, I think the wrong board would have maybe led to a different outcome. And it all turned out to be totally fine because we had a good board.

1:39:40So, you know, it is a marriage. Marriage with not necessarily the recourse of divorce, I guess. Yeah. It's hard to divorce your board. Yeah. Also, I think, you know, I've heard like other founders where you have like a board member, they're out of fund and like you sort of don't think about it, but like they leave the fund they're at and then you're sort of like giving over to somebody else or whatever. I mean, I think kind of understanding where they're at in their careers and, you know, their intentions of, I don't know, you can really like learn that much by asking because whatever's going to happen is going to happen.

1:40:12But I think it's good to sort of maybe have a conversation around that and think about it. I think the seniority of the person kind of does matter. It matters. I think the seniority of the person matters. There's probably some people that are not a senior that is just as helpful running the business. but the seniority matters in terms of like, let's leverage on being able to get stuff done for future rounds, whether it's them doing a round or helping you do, you know, a round with somebody else or however you construct that. Voss was particularly, you know, Voss was actually kind of early in his career when we started working together.

1:40:47He was pretty young, but one of the things that Voss did do is we worked together on every single fundraising round. We worked together on every single pitch deck. We built every pitch deck together. every single one. I mean, I would go to his house and we'd sit down at his table and, you know, and, and, and go through the pitch and rewrite the pitch and practice the pitch. He was, he was particularly helpful on, on, on pitching. Well, good. Well, Emery, thanks for doing this. Yeah. This was fun. Yeah. Thanks for having me. Thank you for joining this episode of the Logan Bartlett Show with co-founder and CEO of Frame, Emery Wells.

1:41:27If you enjoyed this discussion, we'd like for you to to subscribe on whatever platform you're listening to us on, as well as share with anyone else that you think might find it interesting. We look forward to seeing you here next week on another great episode of The Logan Bartlett Show. Have a good weekend, everyone.