20VC: Raising $126M Across 3 Rounds in Just 6 Months, Being the Youngest Founder of a Unicorn Company | But Everything Was Not as it Seemed: The Real Story of Vise: The Regrets, Mistakes and Mis-Hires with Vise's Samir Vasavada

23:48I'm gonna run my playbook that I did at XCompany, I'm gonna bring it over to Vise. And you've got all these people with playbooks versus first principle sinkers that are trying to actually understand the problem and problem solve with you to actually drive product market fit. So it felt like that was the case and we got so much pressure on us at the time that it was like, we have to keep these people happy. They're gonna solve our problems. That's what you bring executives in. And it was pretty apparent that that wasn't the case. When did that start turning? When was it apparent? Three months in, six months in the end?

24:19I was probably three to six months in. I think we were too optimistic at the time. So three months in, we're like, this is a problem. Six months in, we're like, okay, this is broken. And I think we were optimistic. Are you talking to the board about it at this point? I mean, this is not working. I think the board was kind of like, you had to figure out how to make these people happy and like you. That change. I think the board, as the market started to change, I think the board started to realize, Okay, we actually need to make some changes as a business. Did you feel that you could talk to the board?

24:49Yeah, I was friends with all of our board members. So I feel like we could talk to all of them. I think the challenges, if you have a board member full of VCs, you know, VCs are going to just, they're going to act like VCs, right? What does that mean? They're thinking about their incentives. What do you think our incentives are? Their incentives. Look, I have empathy for VCs in some respect because is you're such a long feedback cycle. You don't know if your investment is gonna work for a decade or longer sometimes. So you're trying to find signals that will show to your partners, your LPs that this investment is doing well.

25:26So when people are, so oftentimes it's like what other people say about a particular company. Like, oh, Harry says, vise is great, my investment's doing well if I'm pick your VC. And oh, like Harry's blah, blah, blah, executive is saying the founders are really causing problems and they're not listening to me. Then the focus on the board meeting is how do you make that executive feel heard? You're not talking about if you had some kind of industry expert or someone who prominent customer or someone who doesn't have the incentives of a VC that is on your board, that is voicing the customer, that is voicing the problem you're out to solve, that is voicing a set of things other than how the VC is perceived the world.

26:07Do you think they were involved enough in your business to advise you? Yeah, but just on the wrong things. Sean rolled up his sleeves, worked super hard. That guy is a total, like just grinds. Like I think he was like a shadow third co -founder. But like we were just working on all the wrong things. He'd spent all this time executive recruiting. He would join all the search calls. He would spend time, you know, making people feel heard. He would spend time defending us to these various executives or team members and saying, no, they're great guys, you just gotta trust them. Were they rising up against you?

26:40100%. Yeah, I think anytime someone doesn't find success in a role, I think they need, like, a lot of people can't take the accountability that it was their fault. They need to point the fingers at someone. You know, because something wasn't working in one particular part of the order or another, they were pointing at us to have solved that problem and that would then elevate up to the board. But I think the reason why we brought them in, which again was the wrong reason, was to solve some of those key problems. When in reality, we should have just been solving it on our own. You take responsibility for that, didn't you?

27:17Yeah, that's not. Again, it's my fault for hiring all of these people. Founders don't realize this because for a long time, you don't get enough advice and then you start getting capital and you have stakeholders and you get too much advice. and the problem is all out of this advice is either bad advice, 99 % of the advice is bad advice, and then the rest of the advice is contradictory to each other. So you don't necessarily know, and like someone who's built some super successful company or is at some world -renowned venture fund, you're going to just assume their advice is good advice, right?

27:46If you're a first -time founder, and I think that for us, like we just assumed all this advice was good advice, And until we stop listening to everyone's advice, and just start figuring it out for ourselves, the business just wasn't working. And then once we figured it out for ourselves, everything turned around, it was great. I think with advice is it's all rooted in context. It could be technology cycles, it could be different teams, it could be different go to market motion, but you know what, everything is so rooted in context. And I always think founders need to be filtration mechanisms for just different pieces of advice.

28:17You need to pass what's good and what's not. I agree. What is some big lessons when you made the decision to let people go and how you did it and what is some big lessons from that? If you feel like you should let someone go, you should just do it and do it as fast as possible. 99 .9 % of the time never regretted letting someone go. It was almost always the right decision. And I think too many people, too many founders, too many managers dragged their feet. And it's oftentimes the incentive of the manager. So when you're the founder and you've got a manager and that manager's managing other people and someone on their team isn't performing, they're not leaving up to their expectations.

28:52The manager is oftentimes not going to say, hey, let me fire them. Rather, it's, let me taste some time, let me really nurture them, let me figure it out, we put them on a pip, something like that. And like, you just don't have time as a startup. You need to keep your bar super high, you're not a machine, you're a basketball team. You can only have five players in the court. And all of those five players have to be really good, they have to work together, They have to uphold the bar for all for each of the other players and I think a lot of people think about their Companies as factories and if a part is broken for for a little bit they can fix the part or you know at some point bring in a new part But that's that's not how you should think about the startup and I think thinking that way is is really really dangerous And oftentimes a lot of managers especially ones that come from bigger tech companies where there are these like a legacy HR Policies They're just not as ruthless with headcount and personal decisions as they should be Yes, I'm a bit ruthless.

29:46Does it come off a little bit cold sometimes? Yes, but like you have to kind of be like that because we are fighting for survival and fighting to succeed every single day and you just can't let anything get in the way of that. Are there any other big lessons in terms of the way that you build that team and what went wrong? Lessons go or I think I want people to do when they come to Vise, I want them to feel like they're doing their life's work. And when I think about the people that are the best performers, And it's not like the most senior people. It's like all kinds of different types of backgrounds.

30:18We had this kid who was like a trader for a year at Guggenheim, was now running, now he's 26, and he's running our entire enterprise product strategy. We had another guy who was just an investment strategy guy at his previous role, and he's now our chief investment officer. People have different irrational motivators, some kind of chip on their shoulders, some drive to win, some kind of hidden fire. The same fire I had to prove myself in building this business. And you need to unlock that in prospective candidates. I don't want someone who was like, I was a VP of engineering, and now I want to be a CTO, and then after that I want to be a CTO.

30:54I want someone who understands our customer problem, who understands our mission, has a deep sense of passion, of desire, as something to prove as to why they're going to work their tail off for us, push harder here than they would at any big company. And you know, there's signals you could find in the interview process, but sometimes quite frankly you just you have to learn as they're as they're at their company. Did you pay people too much too soon? Do we pay people too much too soon? Yeah. Yes, we weren't looking for the right things in the interview process. We were looking for biggest company, biggest role, most status, like what it would will people like follow this person because of how you know, successful they've been and all of these people have a reputation.

31:35And the problem with people who have a reputation is that they're all trying to constantly defend their reputation And if something is going to make them look bad if there's gonna be some kind of something that will potentially damage their reputation They're gonna flee right they're gonna they're gonna they're gonna get off the boat before you burn it That is that's dangerous for startups. Did you worry about being a ton of startup? We did which is why we did for a little while Which is why like so in 2021 when we knew we had this bad executive team when we knew we our culture was wrong When we knew we probably should have everyone just in the office and this remote work thing isn't working out when we knew we had too many people We were like well if we make us at a hard decisions Then like everyone's gonna think we're like a a broken failing You know company and you know we're not gonna raise more money and we're not gonna be able to recruit great people and customers are going to like us and we're just scared.

32:29It's part of the reason why we didn't make the decision sooner and at a certain point I just like this is too much I'm just going to do it. If it doesn't work it doesn't work but how much are you burning a year at your peak? We were probably burning 3 million a month. How much did you raise in total? 128 I think. Okay so you still have a shed light of cash that. Oh we now we have a ton of cash. Yeah we never have to raise again but like if we had kept per burning and kept scaling at the rate we were, then we would be out of money. Like a lot of other growth stage companies that in 2021 that didn't make our decisions.

33:00We just made the hard decisions, basically at the end of 2021, early 2022, before the markets had really reset. And actually, it's funny, I wrote this a year later, I wrote this blog post called ReFoundingVise. And the reason why I wrote that blog post, everyone thought we made the changes in early 2023, and that was like a pivot moment, but it was actually a reflective blog post of the decisions that changes we made in early 2022 to convince all of my founder friends who are running companies who had it made hard decisions that you can make a set of hard decisions and you're going to be just fine.

33:31Everything about Vise after we made those hard decisions was better. It was hard for a month, but then a month later, the team came together, our burn was way down. Okay, but it's with the caveat. It's better if you have a shed load of cash. If you don't have a shed load of cash, you got to go back into fundraising markets with slightly hit brand at the time and a non -hot fundraising story. Right, but you shouldn't get to that point. You should have made the right decision years prior. A lot of founders are gambling. They're like, okay, I believe I can avoid making a tough decision because my business is just going to magically work a year from now and this go to markets, finally going to work, and I'm not going to have to cut anyone.

34:12And then it doesn't happen and they have six months of cash left and they have to make a set of hard decisions. and they're forced to make those decisions. Did your investors ever put pressure on you to return the money? Not necessarily return money, but there was definitely pressure in the sense that, so in 2021, all of our competitors got acquired. And they got acquired for a lot of money. And there was definitely like, you guys could exit this business and you guys could both make a lot of money, number one. And number two, the investor is invested at those high prices. It's going to take them some time to re -for us to re -grow into that valuation.

34:46You know, if we were to sell the company... With the late press, they would get their money back. They would get their money back, right? And again, it creates an incentive mismatch. But would they? Like, with the late press, you go to sell for 125 million. Yeah, we would have sold for more than that. It's a lot. Were you tempted to sell for that? Tempted, did I think about it? Yeah, of course. But the reason why I didn't is because my broad thesis on the space, platform is going to be the biggest thing when it comes to asset management. Like, all asset managers will have to become platform companies.

35:15Investment advice will no longer be delivered through people and investment products, it will be delivered through platform in a personalized way at scale for every single investor. And the DNA of these incumbent asset managers is not to build technology, it's not to build great product. And I know that because I spent times with the senior leadership teams at every single large asset management company, and I knew they didn't have the capability to build what we built. And the rate at which we were building, what we were building, and the rate at which we was improving was going to make it inevitably more valuable year after year after year.

35:46I just looked at it from the standpoint of like I was at the time 21 years old. If I just stick at this for another 5, 10, 15, 20 years, whatever period of time, I'm going to inevitably create a lot of value. It's not about creating the short -term value. It's about sticking at something for the long term and compounding value year after year after year. And I just, I had that principle. The only reason why I had that principle is because we were working on it five, six, seven years prior. And I knew that year after year after year, it got better and better and better. And I would regret for the rest of my life not building this into what I believe it could be.

36:17Did you mind investors selling secondary throughout? We had transfer restrictions. So investors, unless they had special permission from the company, they couldn't sell secondary. But in the cases where we did have either employees or investors sell secondaries, if it was It's like, it was the right reason I get it, but like, if it's like, oh, we don't believe in these guys anymore, then I just kind of thought it was like, okay, I'm gonna like work extra hard to make this company 10 times more valuable. I don't want anyone on the cap table who doesn't want to be on the cap table. So when you think about like advising founders today, what would you advise someone transfer restrictions and how they engage with investors who want to sell?

36:53Well, if an investor wants to sell, you should let them sell, but you need to know who's buying the stock. Because the worst case scenario is you let the investor sell to some rando and that rando ends up being a pain on your captable and like there's someone you don't want on the captable. I wouldn't necessarily want an investor selling to an investor I didn't know and wasn't comfortable having another captable. That's why you have the transfer restrictions in place. When you think about like the impact of investors, you know I think people often say an investor doesn't make a company whatever whatever.

37:23There's a brands of founders fund and sequoia make a big difference. To what extent do they negatively versus positively impact the trajectory of a company? So, it's a double -edged sword. And the reason why it's a double -edged sword is because on one hand, you've got all of this great credibility by association. You have all of this social capital. And that social capital allows you to hire people. It allows you to get great customers. It allows you to get in the press. It allows you to raise money from other investors. Everyone pattern matches to what is Sequoia, what is Founders Fund, what are these prominent investors doing?

37:56The reason why it's a double -edged sword is a lot of people see it as their especially prospective employees see it as their get rich quick. This company's a racquet ship, they raised all this money from Sequoia, I'm going to go join and it's going to work, it's going to be awesome, right? It's an attractor for talent. And oftentimes this is the wrong talent for your business and you need to be extra mindful of is this person joining my company because of my company and the mission and some irrational motivators to why they're going to be really successful here? Or are they joining my company because they see it as a quick path to an exit because Sequoia backed it.

38:31And you don't want those people that are just joining because of Sequoia. Did you sell secondary? Of course. A small amount. I think for a founder to get a little bit of liquidity is really, really important in terms of long -term decision making. Because from an incentives perspective, if you are a founder and you've got 100 % of your net worth in this company and you're going through hard times and like you're not sure if you can afford rent or you're not sure if you can make it through some tough time thus you want to sell or you want to make kind of a personally wrongly incentivized decision that can be dangerous.

39:10Like it can oftentimes force you to not want to take risk. You're holding on to so much risk in the company. But I think there's a zone of reasonableness and I think like selling a million dollars of secondary I think is reasonable for a founder to have a financial cushion. Is that what you sold? around there. Do you regret not selling more? It's crazy because I'd offers to buy a lot more secondary. I just didn't make sense to me. One, we thought it was a bad look to our investors, founders cash out all of this money in secondary. I think it would have been a smart personal financial decision and it's clear that a lot of other founders took sometimes a hundred million dollars of secondary.

39:47So maybe from a personal financial decision it would have been the risk adjusted, correct decision to make to have sold more Do you think you would be a better leader today if you had taken more cash off the table then? No, I think the reason why is I I met Jensen from the video and he's like look like in order to build like true resilience and to like continue compounding You kind of need to be comfortable being miserable and I think if you have 10 million bucks in the bank like It's hard to be miserable and like I think there are points in time where I was miserable and that was like a deeply motivating factor.

40:22And I think that if I was just too comfortable, if I had all this money, if I had all the things that come with all of that money, maybe I just would have been too comfortable and I would have just not been willing to make this at a hard decision. That's interesting. Do you think money makes you happy then? No. And it's fun. But you said it's hard to be miserable with 10 million dollars. I think happiness and comfort are two different things. Comfort can bleed complacency. I think having like no money in the bank being like borderline broke Was our financial situation before we took a little bit off the table is not good for you I think having a little bit of money.

40:58It is healthy. It's good. You know you can sleep at night I think having too much money is is dangerous. At least too much money early on is dangerous So I think it's about the the general reasonableness But I had enough money to the point where I had the chip on my shoulder I needed to prove prove that it could work I needed to prove that I could build a big thing, but it enough so much money that I was like, okay, if this doesn't work, I'm comfortable by mansion and I'll screw off. Do you worry about scaling into the valuation? No, because why does it matter? It would matter if I had a massive preference stack above me, but because we have so much money in the bank and we don't burn very much, I don't necessarily have to, what matters more than your valuation is your preference stack, Right?

41:39If you've got a billion dollar preference stack, not a billion dollar valuation, and you go sell the company for $500 million, then you're still under water. If you don't have all that in cash. Sure. But if you have $120 million preference stack and you sell the company for $100 million, and you still have $80 million of cash, that's $60 million in value that goes to the waterfalls to the whole cap table. And so not worried about skating into it? No. What matters more is the delusion you take in that every time you spend a dollar, you functionally dilute yourself. Do you see investor engagement differ when you're not a hot company?

42:17I wouldn't say it's like investor engagement. I would say it's like generally speaking like I heard a lot about people and like I further affirm my belief of like it's really important to have a core group of like close friends or like your friends regardless of your friends for when you were a child you know onwards it like is your true group of friends because like a A lot of people are going to come into your life, and they're going to come into your life for the wrong reasons. And I think a lot of people aren't aware of that. And when something starts to change, those people move out of your life.

42:44You're like, well, did I do something wrong? Was I a bad person? But it's just like you're not the cool hot thing. They're going to move on to like, crypto -shot, they're going to move on to the cool crypto guy. Now, AI's hot, they're all going to move on to the big AI founders. And they're going to just keep moving from cycle to cycle to cycle. They're going to chase the hot thing. They're going to chase the hot. But for some people, some investors, I think, pretended to be our friends. You know, when incentives were flipped or we weren't as hot, they weren't our friends anymore. And I think that hurt because I thought those people were truly our friends.

43:16I think there were some set of people where I was like, oh yeah, it's just like, like none of this matters. It's just noise, right? At the end of the day, we're going to compound. We're going to build a big business like them not liking us or them losing some favor with us. It doesn't necessarily matter to us. People pretending to be your friends, pretending to deeply care about you. and then, you know, stabbing you in the back in some way, shape or former, we're talking about that, I think, really hurts. Do you think people stabbed you in the back? I think people definitely tried to, at different points in time, they just weren't successful because we wouldn't.

43:45What was the hardest element of the Amestibase then? The mistake I made was underwriting people's emotions, not their incentives. I was like, oh, this person is saying this particular thing to me, they feel this particular way. I don't want them to feel this particular way. I'm going to say this particular thing so they feel happy and like that's just like the wrong way to think the right way to think is What are my incentives? What are their incentives? How do we get to a shared, you know Outcome to the common good which is make our increase our enterprise value of the business if it doesn't right if Their incentives don't line with mine.

44:20I'm cognizant of it I can replay back why their incentives don't necessarily line with mine But like I'm going to do the right thing for the company I'm not gonna like, I'm not gonna like try and change myself for my emotional state or change something about the business to make that person feel happy. Did you, it's repair, it's a depression. Yes, but nothing dwarfs. There was a point in time I was 16 years old. I was living in San Francisco. I was living in the tenderloin and then I moved to this house called the Crypto Castle. I was living with 12 people. We shared one bathroom. My parents didn't really like me because I dropped out of school.

44:56My co -founder was still in high school moving onto college. The business was kind of working. Wasn't really working. We were bootstrapping it. I was like pretty much broke. And I'm like, there's no plan B. Like, if this doesn't work, like, I've fucked. That was the like lowest I'd ever been. And there's no way, like, no matter all the ups and downs I went through post, you know, raising capital and being the hot thing. There's no low. That's ever gonna be as low as a low that I felt at that point in time. What did you tell yourself in that moment? You're 16 out there. I think, I don't know, I just believe in destiny and some like, it's like sounds kind of cuckoo, but like I just believe like this was the thing when I was, there's just no way I would like not figure out how to be successful.

45:40This was the only, only path in life for me. Can I ask who are you trying to prove it to? I don't, I think I try to prove it to myself at this point in time. In the beginning, it was a lot of the motivator was like my teachers at school or like, what's this kid doing, talking about all of us business stuff, he should be focused on school. My parents are like, you know, the rest of the class is, you know, thinking about college applications and getting good grades and extra -curricular activities, and you're just so fixated on this. There's a point in time where they had hired a therapist to talk me out of running the business and just be a normal kid.

46:11And I think for a long time, that had been, like, in this was like years in my life, had been like a motivating factor of like, I'm gonna prove all of these people wrong and I'm gonna be so successful. I think like I did prove those people wrong. I felt like for a while, you know, especially as we started to gain a lot of traction. And then I think it flipped. And I think it flipped, which is everyone's like these guys are foregone conclusion. They're the next callous and brothers. They're the next next big thing. It's just gonna work. Fies is gonna be a $10 -20 billion business. And we're like, this feels weird.

46:43Like for our whole lives, we were trying to prove everyone wrong. And now we're in like, now everyone like believes in us. and it's like I'm approving them right, and there's something that felt wrong about that. There was something that felt deeply wrong about that. And then when it flipped again, then we just kind of felt like we were back at home. We felt like we had our motivating factor that... Do you have a relationship with your parents today? Yeah, my parents and I are super close. Do you know what a hold it against them that they didn't believe in you? No, because I think they eventually believed in me.

47:12When the signals were there? When the signals started to pop up, yeah. But like, I'm not... I mean, comparing my parents have many flaws, but minding him is shit about me leaving law school. I was a scholar at law school, but perfect way to do a very kind of corporate life. And I remember calling my mother and I was like, you know what, I'm gonna leave and I'm gonna do the podcast. She's like, great. I think if you're a parent, I think a couple of things happen. I think what the other parents and the other parents kids say about you and that kind of breed some, like they see the kid who got into Stanford, who won the debate, you know, the debate champion who's like does, you know, a tennis star.

47:46They see that kid and they're like, why can't you be him? Why can't you be that person? They're at the parent cocktail parties and... I mean this in a nice way, dude. Do you not think that is bad parenting? Like one, you are projecting an image of what you should be on your child, which is complete bullshit. Two, it's his group thing. But that's all parent, at least in the US. I don't know what it's like in London, but in England. But... Different thing. In the US, there's so much of this tiger parenting, this group thing. But the pressure on you is pressure on all these kids while all these kids are super anxious and depressed and they have a bunch of They've expectations.

48:23I don't know if they can live up to there's it's just the United States at this point in time And I just never like I just always assumed I was playing a different game than everyone else was And I'm gonna win at my game and they can all play their game and do do fine on it And I just always saw the bigger picture. I'm like this isn't none of this fits into my world It's not none of this fits into my picture And I think the reason why it didn't like cause a lot of damage long term with my relationship with my parents or my family in general is because like I think I had the introspection to believe like if I was them right if I'm a parent in the 2010s US and given the information I know at the time what would I like I don't know anything about this you know startups in Silicon Valley and kids going out and starting company like this is like unprecedented like how am I going to react as a parent so I think like I just had some empathy for them looking back that at the time I didn't have that like they did the best they could.

49:11Do you think you hold vengeance or revenge or do you think you kind of forget it? I remember people that like gave up on me. I remember like I think it's it's not necessarily the people that gave me nose. It's not the people that like didn't believe on me in the beginning. I think it's the people that gave up on me. I think it's the people that were like this kid just doesn't get it. He's not listening to me or you know I think this about him. I'm gonna move on to the the next thing whether that's an investor whether that's executive whether whether it's another founder, writer, or peer, I think I deeply remember those people that I was friends with at one point in time that I thought believed in me, that I thought that told me they were along for the journey, they told me that I could call them at any night, at any hour of any day of the year and they're gonna be there for me.

49:59And those people in the time of need were not there for me. And they turned on me. VCs are gonna be VCs. What piece of advice were you given that you disregarded that you should have taken? That's a great question. I don't regret a lot. Like I think I just kind of had to learn. There was a great piece of advice Ravi gave me that I should have internalized. I think there's a difference in terms of advice that, like I think there's a world of difference in terms of what you know versus what you've internalized. So I think a lot of people compare things of like, you should do this particular thing and it sounds like you should have integrity, right?

50:32And like, yeah, it's like something you should have. You should have integrity, but like often if people know that, but they don't have integrity, right? So I think there's a difference in terms of what people know and what they do and I think you know One one piece of advice that I was given is you can't necessarily learn other people's lessons for them And I would spend so much time on trying to get someone You know, whether it's a team member whether it's a someone to do something to learn something and They wouldn't learn it then they would go when they would make that set of mistakes on their own and and they would learn their lesson.

51:04And I think a lot of that applied to me as well, which is like, I can't just listen to successful founders and all of their advice and blindly adopted. Like I have to kind of learn for myself to some extent. And I think so much of my ethos early on was, I'm gonna go to the smartest people on earth, the most powerful, connected, successful people on earth, and I'm gonna ask them what they did. And I'm gonna just do that, because like it clearly worked for them, it's gonna work for me. And like it just didn't work for me. their businesses were different than my business. Their market was different at that time than it was from me.

51:36I didn't learn the lessons for myself when in reality over time I just the only way to learn was if I learned it myself. I do want to move to a quick fire so I say a short statement you give me your immediate thoughts that sound okay. Who do you not have on your board? Who you would love to have on your board? I would have loved to have someone with deep domain expertise early on when we would build a company similar in shape to ours. So then I think having a perspective like that in the room would have been really valuable. What do you know now that you wish you'd known when you start a device above everything else?

52:11Don't overly rely on others advice. Like figure it out for yourself and don't quit until the job is done. What are you most insecure about today? That I'm gonna give up. You're insecure that you're gonna give up? I don't know, that it doesn't work. I feel like I've put all of my eggs in this basket and like I think they're - You feel a bit trams. Yeah, I think trapped is I mean a trap because it's I love what I do But like I think there's some worry there's some concern that it doesn't work You know if it doesn't work it will be okay. I do I know it I think I rational I know it but I think you know when you work on something for It's been like seven eight years now since we're 15 16 like it becomes your baby it becomes your identity It becomes a part of you one kind of lesson.

52:55I'll give to founders to separate yourself and your identity your personal identity from that of your company. Important to do, and I think it's hard to do. Have you done it? I have not done it. I haven't, but I would really like to. Like, I am vice, vice is me. Like, I'm in it. I think maybe that's a little unhealthy. It's unhealthy, but I think it's a necessity. It's like obsession is a necessity, and it's very difficult to be obsessed and attached at the same time. Yeah. So I completely get you. What leadership skill do you not have that you most like to get? It's something I started to learn as we had a bigger team and I had to manage people and managers but this feeling of deep empathy and the ability to elevate everyone around me more than just on the vision of the business.

53:46Again, it comes with time, it comes with experience It's by, I think, so much of my time. I'm just so focused on the business, on figuring out the solving the problems of the business. And I'm not thinking about elevating everyone around me. I think there's some value in doing that. I think it's important not to over -correct. I think it's important not to get too close to Elon. I think there is some balance where you are, you're really helping support and boost those around you in a meaningful way. Do you think you always did invest in communications, while letting investors know about the status of the business, the progress of the business.

54:22I think it was too optimistic early on, and I think now I see a deep sense of reality. Part of why I was very optimistic is just because I didn't know any other way to be. I was naive, and as a result of being naive, I was very optimistic. And I also knew that in every interaction that investor was re -underwriting me. Now I realized, none of it matters. The only thing that matters is building a great business and making sure that your customers love your product and you have a long -term sensible strategy and go to market that will support your growth aspirations into your vision. For a long time, I was like, how are investors gonna perceive this?

54:54And how are they gonna perceive that? And like, how do I make them feel? And like, I don't care. Like, I'm gonna like tell them what's going on in the business. If it's going well, I'll tell them it's going well. If it's not going well, I'll tell them what we're working on making it, you know, to improve it. And we're all in the journey together for the long haul. We all know this is gonna be a business, but it's gonna compound year after year after year. It's not gonna be a business that just works one day and becomes a trillion dollar business overnight. It's one that's gonna take time final one for you.

55:21It's 2034. Okay, so you'll be 33 you're born in 2020. I was yeah, Jesus. I prefer with your year Where are you then? Why do you want vice to be them? Where do you want to be then? I don't know the time horizon But my vision is to build the asset manager of the future build a platform that enables all investors regardless of their their age their net worth to be able to deliver deeply personalized portfolios across all asset classes, publics and privates, all in one beautiful, elegant software experience. And I think that the path to getting there requires a shift in the industry to move away from people, you know, human portfolio managers and investment products like the Mutual Fund, like the ETF, like the separately managed account, into platform -driven investing.

56:12That's going to take some time and some shaping as an industry. And I think we're going to help that shaping happen. But it's going to take time. In 10 years, hopefully, it will be well on our way to making this new market a reality. Simon, listen, dude, I've loved doing this. I've known you for a while. It's so special to do it in person. It makes such a difference having that chemistry. And so thank you so much for joining me. Yeah, thanks for having me. It was just a great reflecting. I have to say, I so enjoyed that show. It was a different style of shows, more of a profile of a company and really diving deep on those lessons learnt from the founder.

56:44I'd love your thoughts if you'd like more of this type of show. Let me know by leaving a comment on YouTube, you can find us on YouTube by searching for 20VC. That's 20VC and I always love to hear your thoughts there. But before we leave you today, Merge is the leading product integration platform, offering a suite of unified APIs across key software categories, from HRIRS to CRM. That allows organisations to offer hundreds of customer facing integrations. Merge also handles the full integration life cycle from an easy initial build to handheld end user onboarding to maintenance support and management tooling for all your integrations, thousands of customers like Ram, Gong, Semgrab and Sendozo use Merge to power their integrations.

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59:04As always, we so appreciate all your support and stay tuned for an incredible AI -focused episode with Matt Clifford, one of the UK and Europe's leading AI minds coming out on Monday, such a special discussion there.