20VC: Foundation Models are the Fastest Depreciating Asset in History, Lina Kahn is a Threat to American Capitalism, PE is Not Coming to Save the M&A Market & How China Could Overtake the US in the AI Race with Michael Eisenberg

23:50And so those will be advantaged economies going forward. So we had allies from scale AI on the show the other day and he said the thing that We're not talking about enough is that, you know, really AI is the most demonstrable power that any country or nation can hold and leverage in a case of war. And we should have closed systems as a result. Open systems would mean that our biggest enemies, Russia, China are able to access the same levels of technology that we are. We have to close the systems and we have to leverage AI to build AI to win wars. Do you agree with that perspective? I agree with that in part.

24:26I think it is true that AI is likely to be a key competitive advantage in wars. Even significant. Look, we're living through war in Israel right now. And so kind of closing the kill chain using AI is a thing. Not just in Israel, it's all over the world. And there's a big European company now. I've said a few hundred million dollars a revenue that uses AI to close the kill chain for European armies. This is a real deal. I said before, if the 20th century was about nuclear countries versus non -nuclear countries. The 21st century is AI countries versus non -AI countries. We shouldn't lose sight of the nuclear ones because there's these terrible people in Iran out there who are looking to acquire nuclear weapon.

25:02By the way, not just to threaten Israel, to threaten Europe. That's to keep people understand. They have missiles long enough to hit Israel. New missiles long enough to hit Europe. And thinking of them as an AI country is quite frightening actually. And they may be, they're very smart people there. What is not even about what Alex said is that you can keep it closed. I just think it's tough. You know, the US put a banner on Nvidia chips going to China. I don't sense it slow China down in a meaningful way. I think there's enough kind of semi -degraighted chips that you can kind of string together or open source designs.

25:32You can kind of figure this out. I think the world is far more open than we give a credit for today. And so it's really, really, really tough to shut this down. I think we just have to be ever more competitive technologically to stay ahead of the bad guys. Someone said recently that China is two years behind the US on AI. Now for that. Would you agree with that? I think there were 10 years ahead of the US on AI and CyOPS using TikTok. I think there were 10 years ahead of the US in sophistication of how to manipulate the minds of young people using AI algorithms in TikTok. I would assume, I generally assume of my competitor of my enemy that they're much smarter than I am.

26:10That's the only way to stay ahead. So even if by some bizarre notion you think that they're two years behind, you should think they're two years ahead. I slightly worry honestly we mentioned a little bit about kind of geopulsets in global conflict. In the investing world, I feel a little bit uncomfortable when I have these like 30 to 35 year old MBAs and nothing against them, but who are like getting super jacked up about the margins of defense companies and how defense is like the best place to be right now. And I'm like, you are aware of the way of your words. I know that we have enemies and people have different rights or whatever whatever.

26:45But this is still about closing kill chains and your like talking in your MBA language about margin optimization. It just feels a bit off. How do you feel about this new wave of excitement towards defence? Also being aware of the weight of what that actually means to fund with billions of dollars more efficient killing? As a father of four children who have served in Gaza and on the northern border which Hisbola has been burning nonstop. It Israel war is a real thing. It's a very serious thing. It's serious because people get killed. It's serious because it shows what you're fighting for, which is freedom and the values of the West.

27:23There are enemies out there. I've written publicly that I think this generation of Israeli kids is the defining generation they've stood up and fought for what matters. I think there aren't enough people who will stand up and fight. Now, these kids because they've been in battle have a level of maturity that your average MBA student does not have. and they understand what it means to hold a weapon. Holding a weapon is a responsibility, you know, is what is a tiny homicide rate, despite the fact that most of the population is armed, and many of them will walk around with automatic machine guns on their back.

27:48Like, you can go to wedding, I was just at one. There are eight girls in wedding dresses of sorts, and they have machine guns slung on their back. But you learn to respect it. You learn to understand that this is a serious matter, and that if you're not careful, and you're not responsible, people be killed. At the same time, I think that there was always and alliance between Silicon Valley and the defense industry and patriotism to use, you know, I'm from the United States originally, is a real thing and it should be in tech. You should be patriotic. I think patriotism is a great thing, a wonderful thing.

28:17People should be proud of their people and proud of their country and proud of their cultures. That's not the same thing as your margin as my opportunity. I think there will be a lot of money made in defense going forward. I think people will underestimate what it takes to sell defense. You know, to government buyers, the regulations, how hard it is to sell. If you've never sold defense technology and you just come out of an MBA, good luck. Palantir to 20 years to crack this code. And real cracked it much faster because of Palantir. Palmer Luck ate people kind of because he's dressed in a Hawaiian shirt.

28:48Don't take him seriously enough. Trace Stevens is there who was that Palantir. Trace Stevens was a founder of some of them. That guy is incredible. And he knows more about selling defense technology than everyone's forgotten. And that's just different. And so people will lose a lot of money chasing the new new thing which today happens to be defensive edition AI. I completely agree with you on Palmer and trade. But we're seeing this like move to hard tech. It's like people seem to agree with you actually. Sass is over proliferated, too competitive, whatever we want to say on that. But actually we need to move to hard tech.

29:18We need to move to whether that's climate but much more physical challenging, start investing. How do you see that Michael? Because I think a load of software investors are going to lose that show that's investing in a completely different type of company. So, I'm unencumbered by any knowledge of technology or software and I've been to a management experience by the way I've never managed anything and I can't write a line of code. That's not a code of what was in the seventh grade. This is the venture business. You're going to lose a lot of money. You're going to lose a lot of companies. The question is actually why does a founder want to take your money if he comes from something else other than software?

29:51And I think that'll be interesting and very Darwinian in that some founders or the great founders are likely not taking SaaS investors money because the SaaS playbook as it's been come called doesn't apply to any of these harder technologies. You said before when we were chatting before the recording that I could just exploit you for your wisdom and your more experience. Let's put it that way. I think you said age. My, yeah, but I increased wisdom is what I've got to say. my five guests of Bizarre I said we should talk about ages and because she should probably get rid of me from the fun I'm told to be doing this.

30:24Listen, I want to start on my big concern right now and I sound like I'm the old one, but I'm wondering what as liquidity are you going to come from? Like I'm looking at the different avenues which is IPO, it's M &A and then it's like P. And I just want to hear your wisdom and experience on this because I'm concerned. M &A seems totally shut. But Lena Khan seems like, you know, the ultimate challenge to the Socialist to M &A. How do you see M &A Marcus? Is it completely shut? Am I right to be right? Lena Khan, I would say it openly is, I think, a threat to American capitalism. Whether Biden or Trump gets elected, she needs to go.

30:57Because we need to be able to have M &A for the big companies. And as best I can tell, she hasn't redefined what anti -trust is. And so I think she's taking a lot of liberties that are bad for capitalism globally. Where's the credit you're getting up from? So I bad news for you. 98 % of people don't get liquid. This is a very difficult environment, number one, but number two, this actually is a hard business. I know there's been like an explosion of venture capitalists. It's a hard business. Let's just go by and stab. You said that most people don't get liquid. One way to get liquid ahead of time is secondaries or to sell positive positions.

31:31If there are buyers. If there are buyers. What do these have to scare? Let's back up. A tiny number of companies get sold or go public. I don't buy that the IPO window was closed. the IPO window is wide open. The question is what's the price you're willing to take? You can go pick Reddit when public. It's done very well in the public markets to deliver to stellar first quarter after going public. It's doing very well. It's like a $7 or $8 billion company right now. You don't need to have a half a billion or a billion of revenue to go public. We took lemonade public with 60 million of revenue. You should go public early and the markets are open.

32:03Take the price to public markets will give you and build your company in the public markets, you will be better off for it. I'm a huge believer in that. But you really set that to, you'll companies today, here at 200 million there and they're like, ah, you know what, I actually, public markets will probably give us two ex premium and 18 months time. I don't know if they'll give you two ex premium eight months time, but go. And by the way, if the bankers are playing this game, we want you to have half a billion dollars instead of find a second to your banker. They're just as good. You don't need to raise $500 million in your public.

32:31Go get Take Your Company public. Let's say a hundred million of revenue. You take your company public at $600 million, raise $80 million, build an efficient business, and go. I think people will forget that you'll Shopify when public at $700 million. Yeah. Some of the best businesses in the world. No, Amazon, the best business in the world went public. Everyone's forgotten that Facebook went down 50 % after their IPO. It's only the biggest companies in the world today. This is okay. And everyone's expecting like P .E. to turn up and buy these companies. I got bad news. Number one, they're gonna buy a tiny percentage of companies.

32:59Number two, interest rates away up. They can't borrow anymore. Number three, they're incredibly price sensitive. most companies waiting for PE to come to you and I hear this is like this whole meme right now that PE is going to be the buyers of the future Well, the citizen we have Mark Suster on the show and he said listen PE will be the primary buyers for the next generation of software companies I just want to talk to them a couple of different components that you mentioned that you said about the cost of capital How does that impact how they think about buying? drives prices down increase cost to capital drives multiples down just what it does I'm just ready to go up multiples go down.

33:27It's a loss of physics They'll pay lower multiple because their cost of capital is higher You know people are just not gonna get liquid the way they think they are and the top part of the capital is happened By the way in oh 2001 or two or three or four the top part of the cap table got his lick prep back people forgotten the lick prep Shmatter and they got the lick prep back in some cases There used to be an 8 % coupon on these things many cases now there isn't they took an 8 % coupon and then what was left went to the rest of the Cap table you can sell me gonna see many more plural sites plural site obviously happen last week Which vista wrote down from three and a half minutes there because you know the cost not concerned and I'm certain it's happening.

34:02We just don't know. By the way, the inventor portfolio is a lot of this also. And I also wonder a lot about how many SaaS companies get undermined by AI right now. And there's a lot of SaaS portfolios sitting in hefty prices and people's portfolios. FD values and people's portfolios aren't worth that anymore. You're certain. So that means that there's a ton of companies that P have bought. Well, the cost of that debt is now way too high and they are in trouble. Does that mean we have a generation of, as I think Jason Lentkin puts it, Mulligan P .Funs, and did they just get that off the hook for it.

34:30I have no idea whether they get let off the hook for it. I don't know if it's a ton of companies, but it's not one. It's not just plural sight. There's a lot more like that out there. There's a lot more like that out there. And we also think about the following. If you were to pee fun, they just took a significant write down on one or two big software purchases. You're going to have appetite to buy something. I don't think so. There's a small number of really great businesses that are built in venture. It's like 10 a year. And some other ones get smaller liquidity events, which is great. We should have that.

34:58But if you can get paid 10 to 20 times on your medium companies or even five to seven times on your medium companies, it's not a bad outcome. You know, we told our own one mentioned company, and we talked before on the show, we just took 100 cent of our equity off the table in a company. I think we did 11x or so. We have a different view of the company than the management of some of the other investors. Do that's fine. It's totally fine. We're very happy. We'll be super happy if the founder makes it into a 30x and we were wrong. We'll be so happy for him. But liquidity is a thing. And by the way, the last thing I would say about the secondary markets, we've discovered you get these emails like you probably get them also.

35:30Two a day that says, I got a buyer in the market for so -and -so company. So, over the last three or four weeks we decided to do the experiment. We reached out to them now. We still ignore them. But now it's interesting because like you discover there are actual buyers there. There aren't. Okay, there are not actual buyers there. It's, hey, okay, we can hold this price if you get us due diligence from chilling the company. These are just people looking for data. I think most of those buyers aren't out there either. Very rally to your heavy advice to sell all of your position. They're kind of canonical advices, wow, sell 33 % at a time in increments.

36:01But selling all of a position is respectfully a strange take. I would never sell all of the position, Michael. I would sell 80%, maybe even when I didn't believe, but I would still want to ride the upside on 20 % in case I was wrong. How did you think about that? 100%. You asked me before we got on the show, was the biggest mistake I made during the show? One of them was not selling 100 % of one or two positions when the prices were high. I'm actually in the opposite camp generally, which is ride your winners. That's the general camp I'm in. I think the question you need to ask yourself if you're a venture capitalist in the board is do I have any information advantage or a unique insight that somebody else does not have?

36:39If I think I have that, I should act on it. And if I should act on it, I should act on it with conviction. It's like when I go into companies, I don't want to have position. If I have conviction, I'm going to take a whole position. This business is an outlier business. It's just the nature of it. So take the whole position and if you think you fit a good return, take the money off the table. I don't think you average into positions in the venture capital business. Can you just sum that up for me? You didn't ride the public market so you kind of average into a position and then average out of a position.

37:06I don't think this is like this. This is a binary industry, very, very binary investments. And I'm in that binary camp. Do you do per -r also? Rarely. Why? I kind of drank the benchmark cool aid. We don't get the same kind of credit the benchmark gets because all of the investors or someone's gonna invest in, we don't have to do one more round. But we try to kind of peel back on it. We think we have to buy our ownership in the first round. Our unique insight is in C2NA. Buy it, write the check, buy it. We wrote this giant check to a company called Dream Security, which is AI infrastructure for protecting critical assets in countries.

37:39It was the biggest check we wrote. Crazy competitive deal, incredible team. When you say the biggest check you wrote, it's like a proportion of fund like 10%. No. Initial check, 6 .5 % of the fund. They're not going to need to raise any more money, it looks like. After the A, they can, but they probably don't need to. If I didn't get my ownership in the A, but right in this big checker, I wouldn't have a position. And I still feel like I'm subloved, I'd loved to have more. I think one of the biggest misnome is, hey, we'll place loads of bats and then we'll be able to concentrate capital into our winners.

38:08Whenever I hear this, I'm like, are you high? Like, when does that have that? that my best performing companies, generally speaking, like 99 % of the time, have sequer and all the best all over the moment. I'm not like, oh sure, I'd love to go travel per order. I was going to venture capitalist, Jesse B. Rudy, at I event, I like him too. I like him too. He made very smart observation. He said that we do prorada into our middling companies. Super interesting. He said the good ones just kind of get, they can become runaways and you kind of can't get more cap on. Bad ones you want to put money into.

38:38But sometimes one out of some number of these kind of middling companies where most people don't see what's going on there at the beginning, but I do. You give them a little extra capital or you kind of double down once or twice and you end up with a winner out of this kind of middle part of the portfolio. It's a giant winner. I thought that was super insightful. I look at my my my phone mom, which is a tiny eight million fund. I have she all best vanny drivers today. We're all in the man. And the worst performing companies were all in the rocket ship category. That one's the one's the best is very quickest.

39:08Those are the ones you should have sold 100 % of as they were on their way up. I should have done. I know absolutely I should have done, but actually I think there's a big difference between consumer and enterprise that consumer sell I mean what I found was like it's much more transient of whether it was or not and surprise you've got a lot more predictability Consumer is a femoral sometimes worse sometimes doesn't sometimes goes out of style So I think of consumers fast fashion in many cases unless you build a mode I think there are rare consumer companies who who build a mode you know after all the AI conversations somewhere from target consumers numbers, it's very hard to tell the difference visibly between open AI and anthropic and many of a number of models.

39:46So you kind of ask yourself, what's the mode? So let's say the modes to data and over time some people will note that it's significantly better. It's like Elon Musk is talking about XAI is going to be the place of truth. I hope he's right. I'm not sure how I'll know. That's kind of a question. How do you build the modes on those businesses? It's not clear to me right now. Google built the mode because they were by far the fastest and then they had this kind of reinforcing the ad business that added on to it. but who gets to build a motor in these businesses? Not obvious to me. We spoke about the three different exit sources, being M &A, IPO, P, when you're making investments, do you think about kind of value creation and pathway to exit?

40:20Nope, nothing at all. So we don't outcomes an area of plan of, okay, if HoneyBook does X, Y and Z, then we have this outcome. We don't think that. Nope, for a variety of reasons, number one, because companies pivot. Number two, because you convince yourself of all sorts of stupid things, by kind of dreaming about the exit. And number three, it never works out like that, so why bother? Do you think we're gonna see a generation of funds die, Michael? Of course. Bruce don't leave you from Missouri to say that venture capital has the highest barrier to exit of any business out there, no one wants to leave.

40:49You know, the management fee's kind of keep coming. I think that's true, so it takes longer than people think, but yes, of course. And which segment is that from? You know, good generation people go up during his ERP. You know, in our reality, he's biting. That's not a bad thing, by the way. So, like startups going out of business, you recycle the talent into something better. Who is that segment? Is that kind of old ailing funds that haven't innovated in the Valley style? Or is it the micro funds where it was like, you know, operators who had five million dollar funds on the side and were doing it part time because it was kind of cool?

41:17I think the first style of funds that goes out of businesses is funds where there is three four or five partners and only one of them is good and that person gets tired of holding everybody on their shoulders and they leave and set their own thing up and everyone knows. I think that's one. There's just some people who don't deliver capital back to LPs and they'll be gone and something big and something small and it's fine. I've been shocked by how much focus LP's still place on TVPI. I speak to a lot of LPs and I thought given the last few years, they would reduce the importance of TVPI and just focus on TVPI.

41:45No, that's still like, oh wow, I'm like, really? You still give a shit about? No, they should actually. I had this tweet back and forth with Ebrahim Ajami of Mubala, the DPI is what matters. That's true. If you didn't take money off the table during, you know, the Zerp era, there's something wrong. Let's just be clear about that. But TVP actually matters because I had this conversation with our LPs at our annual meeting, which is if the thing is compounding at a higher rate and keeps going, that's not a bad thing. I can kind of think through, if I kind of wait another two or three years, that this will be worth a significantly larger amount of money.

42:18The question is one level beneath TVPI, which is how real is it and how sustainable is it? People in the venture business, and this goes back to the previous conversation about competitive markets versus non -competitive markets, underestimate modes on businesses, the value of modes and competitive advantage on business. There is insufficient time spent on how do I deepen competitive advantage in this business. To take a financial rendering of this, multiple is my expectation for future cash flows. So the question of future cash flows is not just how much cash it is per year, but how many years this goes on for.

42:50How many years this goes on for is a function of competitive advantage. So you need to think through how deep my competitive advantage is in a given category. There's a lot of talk about Google right now, does AI undermine their ad model? Yes, but that competitive advantage is actually really deep, I think, for the time being. How long that lasts though is really the question. And that depends on consumer behavior, which is fickle, right? How much of it moves to a different modality than the search? And so the question that I think needs to be asked in TVPI land is these underlying portfolio companies how deep is their competitive advantage?

43:26How sustainable is the growth? I think when you kind of dig that level deeper you'll find that a small number of companies matter TVPI and that matters. He said how sustainable is the growth there? We're seeing this kind of transition from a lot of companies, from hyperscalers or hypergrowth to actually just quite slow growths and maybe sustainable growth but just low growth companies that need to just grind it out. What happens in that world? You know, we talked about like 100 % growth like it was easy for a decade So but it's not 30 40 % growth is great business So let's just say that first of all second very few I'm sorry if you have it 10 to 15 to 20 % growth is tricky That's a tricky middle place if you're a venture capitalist because it's not clear how you get out of it These would have been great businesses if they didn't take venture capital if they took venture capital and you know Stack -due large preference on the cap table.

44:13It's challenging what happens to them? Some of them will grind it out for a very long time until some sort of exit market opens up as long as they're and control their own destiny and their profitable. That's not a terrible way to think about this. Others will be traded in large secondary trades in portfolios. And some of them, if they're good enough, will buy back stock. I just had a company actually that bought back stock from early investors. I didn't sell it because I thought the price was too low, but I have a company that generates more than enough cash. We bought back stock. So I reduced dilution in this company, which already wasn't much, this is profitable business for a while.

44:45We'll see what happens to the asset over time. You know, we will make by the way a significant multiple on our capital whenever it comes out. It's not grown It's probably the Kager's probably 30 35 % and it's how to slow it go through but it generates a lot of casualties See what happens. But one of my bigger exits in my career I we distributed hundreds of millions of dollars of dividends. It's a strange. It doesn't happen But it's never happened to me again But find the one if you would analyze your self status and investa. Why do you most need to improve? That's a great question two areas It has been said about me multiple times that I am very, very direct and therefore an acquired taste.

45:21That should be the name of the poll cost on the quiet taste. It takes time for entrepreneurs to understand that I'm just I'm asking the hard questions and being very direct because this is important and urgent And then you need to get going about this and there's no sense of beating around the bush And so probably I should find a better way to deliver messages. Do you can? And what I mean by that is I know because it's really easy to tell what I find is the best found is take it or not they appreciate the directness and move on. One of the things I've found about myself as I've gotten older I'm getting cranky about board meetings.

45:52There's a lot of pontificating at board meetings. I've come to the conclusion that with good preparation most board meetings can be finished in 45 minutes. There's real governance that needs to go on there. There's core strategic issues that you need to pound on but most can be finished in 45 minutes. Some need two hours, none need three to four hours. It's sharing of opinions for balls that are done in 45 minutes. What is the prep that is done? Is it a Google dot with three cool questions that people think about ahead of time? It's generally a letter and not a presentation. It's rich in data, but it upfront identifies, these are my core one, two, or three strategic issues that I gotta get bored in put on.

46:30You prep for it, you do calls beforehand, and then the conversation is super concentrated because you're attacking the question, I find that people die in a kind of don't expand. All these burdens, they show endless amounts and numbers and people, you don't want to dig into the margins. And they show a product plan. Everyone wants to be the product manager on the board. It's like, just no. I've been cranky about this. And I probably should moderate my behavior. So there's another area for improvement. Do you find the Zoom board meetings are effective as in person? Not at all. I don't think I don't like Zoom at all.

46:56I hate Zoom. This is better. Way better. You know, I didn't invest over Zoom during the pandemic. I just, I met people out of a farm. I met people. And I do everything in person that I can. It's harder now because you have board members who've invested from all over the world. It's just hard to get everyone in one place, but I think in person board meetings matter a ton and by the way I'll spend two hours in person because I like people love the people and I think it's harder for people to pontificate in person By the way, the other area I got to get better at by a long shot You can get really absorbed into these companies and sometimes I need to kind of pull myself out at a high level Because I think you know you could just be too intense around these companies and my job is actually to sit at 10 ,000 feet Why is that bad?

47:39Because I think he can rattle entrepreneurs, particularly first -timers. Second -timers don't get rattled. My Tom Barding get riled by anything. Wrong word and get mad riled by anything. Keepers first, second -timed founders. No, no. I love the whole first -time thing. I have this company that's building the modernization layer for LOMs now in a very unique way using blockchain. This is a company that started during the pandemic. We were about four kilometers from each other and when they were shut down, I had a pass to get around Israel because I chair the largest volunteer organization in Israel.

48:04And I would pick them up and bring them to my house and we'd sit face to face and slowly we built this company Haven't been launched yet, but they have a couple hundred customers already. He's an incredible entrepreneur You know, but he was the first timer and I think it took us time to find out find our rhythm And we spent a couple hours just pounding on this idea Month after month after month during the pandemic I think you probably got and started earlier if I hadn't been so aggressive Final one for a quick five. Do you prefer found as you've got experience in a market or who a net new naive?

48:31Oh, Net New Knife. Net New Knife. The fact that shy and Daniel of lemonade didn't know anything about insurance, I helped the ton. When we first invested in lemonade, I called a bunch of Fintech investors to say, who's the insurance guy? I said, nobody, that's the beauty. So now who wants to invest? Does the credit turn up? These guys have broken every rule, every rule of how you build an insurance company for the better because they knew nothing about it. By the way, everyone told us, don't go to New York first. You'll never get a license there. That's the hardest DFS and we said, go to New York.

48:57Actually, I didn't say, Daniel said, let's go to New York. It was against every insurance experts advice. I generally have a healthy skepticism for expertise Isn't I want to move into a quick fire? So I say a short statement. What if you changed your mind almost in the last 12 months Michael? Younger people I was concerned about younger people being too absorbed in TikTok and Instagram and watching what happened in Israel over the last 12 months And how the younger people went out to fight for what mattered fight for the brothers and sisters and fight for women who are raped Younger people, particularly in Israel, but maybe elsewhere, are going to surprise us, and this is going to be an incredible generation who's going to be forced to stand up and fight because, you know, Israel is one place, but there's Ukraine, and there's more of this going on around the world right now.

49:36And we saw what happened in Germany last week. I think younger people are going to surprise us. What's the biggest misconception of the Israeli -Sledal P .K. system? That's a good question. I'll tell you this, by the way, we've raised an incredible amount of foreign money into our companies since October 7th. An insane amount of money. It's wide open for business right now, investors are on the ground every day. That's right now, but the biggest misconception is people think Israelis know how to scale things and for the most part when you go up in a small country It's harder to think of scale and so when you're a foreign investor you need to help Israelis think in big scale Which compass it you must respect and why them I said before I respect all competitors And I think they're two X better than I am I have to work harder than anyone if I said this to be sure if I'm not the hardest working venture capitalist out there Shame on me, and I'm gonna be it killed These guys are all 2x better than I am.

50:22I was on email with Mimuna, I'm from Clarence Morning. That guy is so good. I think how do I become Mimoon? I just think they're all better than I am. And you know, we're naturally suited for this business. So I got to work harder. What's the biggest piece of BS you have my stuff to board members giving product advice? What's the biggest sin of the Zero interest rate environment? Probably not having sold enough for my portfolio. But generally, you know, when things get too easy, if something is not hard, doesn't matter. This is supposed to be hard and life is supposed to be challenging. And when we succeed in challenging things, whether it's relationships or hardships or defending freedom or building a startup company, that's hard to build like Andrew Ill or, you know, or which is the synthetic chemistry company, we feel satisfied afterwards.

51:03This is meant to be challenging. Life is not supposed to be necessarily easy and you got to keep working at it and keep working at it. The Protestant work ethic is a real deal. It matters and you You gotta keep this hard work matters. The other thing, I think, by the way, I'd never invested in nickel and China. I think China was a Zerp phenomenon also, China investing. Why? People look for yield in other places and ignored the risk, what I call stroke of pen risk. I'm what the only guy who calls it that, where the government just take away your assets. And so, but because people are chasing yield, they just kind of, you know, send it over.

51:36That's like a might drop at the end. Tell me, my friend, why do you wanna be in Tanias? Where is the laugh in Tanias time? You now do the content platform as well. Yeah, and then your partner does the data platform. Yeah. What do you want for 11 days? But I don't know. I hope that keep me around like I'm old for this business at 53. I don't ignore the data, which says there's a get older in this business. You don't do as well. And so I hope that keep me around. Okay. You've got sourcing, selecting, servicing, three components of venture to say, where do you think you're best and worse? So Keith Reboy on the show said he's worst at sourcing and as time relevance and that sourcing is his biggest challenge.

52:11How do you think about it? I've stopped sourcing. I get all my deals right now through referrals of 30 years of being in this business. And so I actually don't do proactive sourcing anymore. I don't know if I was good at it or bad at it, but I don't do it anymore. I need to do two or three deals a year. There's enough that come my way that I think are super interesting. I don't think I provide enough kind of management help to companies because I don't want to manage my way out of a paper bag. I think what I do better in average is networking. I have large global network and I think that is valuable.

52:38I think if you have good hootspah and are not bashful and you know enough people you can reach anyone more old And I think that's valuable. I think at the seal of a fortune ten company in the last 48 hours it took two hops Final one. What question do you not get asked that you think you should get asked more? I get asked the first level question of how do you balance your time? And I tell I think there's no such thing as work -life balance you've heard me say a hundred times I get asked not one thing the second level question is How do other people think about the way you balance your time? That's the better question to ask if I'm self -reflective There are many people who I love in respect who probably think I don't give them enough time And that I don't have enough time for the things I should be having time for whether it's my day job as a venture capitalist community work family Etc.

53:24I think as I say he moved after 120 which is when you go to the pearly gates I'll probably have to give judgment for not having given people who wanted that time the time Michael, I always love our chats. I'm so glad we could do this in person. So thank you so much for joining me. Harry, it's so good to see you. Keep doing what you're doing. You're providing just an incredible service and thank you for taking me as an LP and your fund. God, I so enjoyed doing that show with Michael. He really has been an incredible supporter, friend, mentor. I'm so grateful to him for being an LP in the fund. I love doing that show.

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56:20As always, I so appreciate all your support and stay tuned for an incredible episode this coming Friday with the former head of growth at Ravallute for 20 Growth.