20VC: The Truth About Multi-Stage Firms; Why Portfolio Services are for VCs not Founders | Why Politics is Rife & Decision-Making is Broken in Large VCs | Why Reserves are Bad for Founders & How Boutique Firms Will Win with Mark Goldberg @ Chemistry

23:43We're probably not a great fit for. For founders listening does the established brand? I don't think the established brand helps with hiring because I think it helps with hiring the wrong type of people. You want people who love the founder, love the team, love the mission, not love the fact that a big brand is in there. Does it help with customers? I don't think it helps with customers. I think it helps with funding. You know, when Sequoia does a deal, there's going to be money that follows it. That's great. That's a feature of the brand equity they've built over a long period of time. Tell me.

24:09When you were doing the fundraise, how did you organize it? I know that sounds strange, but did you go to friends and family style first? People you knew who was super high likelihood? Or did you go for the anxious big names first to solidify the base? Which approach? I think we tapped a rich vein in the LP community that there was some frustration, especially at this point in the cycle. Some of the venture funds that they had invested in 10 years ago, 20 years ago, they felt like had become asset managers. And the idea of being able to invest in a pure play venture fund that had experience, but also a lot of hustle was something that we think resonated in the market.

24:46So I think we were fortunate that we kind of hit a market moment in the fundraise that aligned with a lot of the zeitgeist in that community. When did you start the race? What time of year? We raised this summer, so we went out from June to August, was our fundraiser. It's pretty quick, and in summer is even quicker. We were very fortunate. I think again, we were tapping into some real excitement about a team that, I don't think there's a team of experienced GPs that's come together with three folks in quite some time, and I think that was something novel. Again, at a time where the macro backdrop was a little bit of frustration with how big some of the multi -stage funds the legacy institutions had become, and this sense that the returns you saw 10, 15 years ago from small teams and focus partnerships may not be the same going forward.

25:28What size of check was the largest check? We wanted to keep enough diversity in the fund where we didn't get anybody, you know, kind of much over 10%. That was kind of where we adhere to. So we wanted about 20 LPs and that's pretty close to where we landed. In terms of LP construction, was there any specifically that you wanted? I find some managers get a bit whiny about like, oh, we won't take family offices. is, no. We want a good people. I feel like I've learned so much about being an investor from going through a fundraiser. What did you learn about? Tell me, what did you learn? So I mean, so many things.

25:59I feel, first off, I feel like every VC should have the fundraiser just to be table stakes of the VC. And in some ways, I think my order of operation was wrong where I invested for almost a decade before becoming a founder. I wish though it would have been difficult to have done in the opposite direction, but some of the learnings. So first off, there was so much empathy from having to pitch. For a decade, I heard, you know, I sat on one side of the table and heard the pitches and to be forced to feel the pressure of stepping into a room with everybody's eyes on you and you need to deliver. It's something everybody should do at, you know, in some regular interval to kind of balance the equilibrium of power.

26:33And I think, I don't know if you felt the same way, Harry, when you were fundraising. But for me, I felt tremendous empathy for that. And I'll just give you an example. When you're pitching somebody, this is one of many meetings to them and this is the most important meeting of your day. I mean, for me, there were a handful of meetings like that. I have one meeting where I just couldn't stop sweating. And then it's just the most awful thing in a big meeting room with like 12 people in your standing there front and you're like, and everyone knows you're sweating and it's like, oh, there it is. As we know, it didn't hurt your ability to do something incredible with your own frontries.

27:07And in some ways, I hope to give you a perspective. So when a founder is sweating in front of you, you have that empathy. And that's a lot of what I felt, the sense of, oh, okay, this is a really helpful reminder of what it takes to really put yourself in the shoes of a founder. Did you raise money only from people you met in person? Were there any checks which were non -verts, which were virtual checks? That is a very good question. And I think that we met everybody in person. Now because we're in San Francisco, a lot of people were coming through for different LP events, so there was a lot of kind of the community move through.

27:39but we hustled too. We spent a lot of time on plans. And we were out there, it was a quick fundraiser, but we were out there hustling very hard. By the way, it's a great way to get to know your co -founders better. When we're in equal partnership, all three of us were telling our story. It's kind of like a group interview. And Poor Christina and Ethan, who had to suffer through me telling the same jokes and anecdotes over and over and over, sometimes eight, ten times a day. Well, that's the Tokyo test. I don't know if you know this. I don't know. Okay, the Tokyo test is, can you fly to Tokyo with someone and being aged fully in conversations throughout the duration of the flight?

28:15If you can, that is either the sign that you should marry the more start a company with them. We did many, many tests throughout the relationship and the founding story of the three of us. The Tokyo test was not on there. How many LP meetings did you take? We probably took 100 LP meetings. 100 LP meetings. Yeah. Now, we divided and conquered. And the other thing is we tried to vet those meetings by first screening for the appetite for a first fund. There was I think a lot of interest in a shiny object to say, you know, I want to go meet this team, and we tried to weed that out by saying, you know, what are some first time funds you've done?

28:50If you haven't done anything in the last two years, you're probably not going to be excited about doing things. So we did a lot of pre -screening, but we actually got to probably 100 meetings. Okay, so you have a hundred meetings and so you have like 20 yeses for people who don't understand funders. We were fortunate and that we were we were pretty well oversubscribed so it ended up being more more than 20 yeses and I think we could have raised a fund significantly larger than the one we raised. That said we got a lot of knows as well. I mean part of the LP community and understanding is what are the interest in and if we walked into a meeting and they said our belief in the acid class is that you know venture is no longer a good return or the only way to play venture is to be and five legacy brands, we probably had done a poor job in vetting that meeting, and they were a handful of those that we did not have success with.

29:34Okay, so you have a hundred, and then say, we end up with 20 there, and they can, what was the number one reason in commonality -wise why people said no? Well, it's an interesting parallel to why we say no as GPs, and again to the empathy point, I think a lot of the reasons people gave, as a no, were not the actual reasons, but the biggest reason we heard was the three of you haven't worked together. And there's a lot of team risk and a new fund at this size with three people. And to the credit, there is risk. I feel very comfortable with that risk. In the same way that a VC might say, it's too early for our fund.

30:07You never really know what people are thinking. Did you push back when you felt like they weren't giving you the right feedback? I of course got notes and I of course got bullshit ones. And I would always say, I really appreciate your desire to protect my feelings. But I really want to get better above everything else. Please tell me the real reason why you said no. We did yeah, and we got some great. I mean again back to the parallels of being a good LP is very similar to being a good GP The funds that we most liked working with whether or not the investor or not were clear direct Communicative gave real feedback.

30:38It's a good lesson for me It's good lesson for anyone on the GP side and again Why would encourage anybody to go through a fundraise like we did you know when we tell our friends what are the best? Elpies it wasn't the ones that necessarily all said yes for fun It was the ones that were great to work with and they were great to work with for the reasons they gave great feedback They were very sophisticated on their perspective in the market whether or not we aligned with that vision You know that was what made a great LP and I think ultimately what makes a great GP. What was the single best LP meeting that you had?

31:05We did have some funny stories from the fundraise itself and at one point I remember Christina was having what I thought was her best fundraising meeting She's just you know really doing a nice job with her talking points and I look over and She's and she's you know laughing and having fun. I look over and it's it's not a clock in the morning And instead of a celtar water, we had, you know, we're borrowing somebody's off it is she'd grabbed a white claw instead. And so she's drinking her second white claw thinking that she's drinking celtar water. And, you know, we had a few things like that where, you know, you just kind of have to laugh and hindsight.

31:36And we had a teller afterwards, you know, we didn't want to stop the train at that point, but we had a teller she wasn't drinking, you know, something that was, uh, that was celtar water. Well, did you have any terrible ones? The terrible ones were more misalignment, I would say, where we would get into a meeting and someone would ask us to pitch venture capital as an asset class. We had one or two of those where it was like, why is this asset class still worth investing in? That was more, again, an alignment challenge where if you're starting from that question, we're probably not in the right conversation and we did have a few of those.

32:06Did you find one group more sophisticated, intelligent than others? Foundations, endowments, family offices. One of the best piece of advice we got was build a diverse set of LPs and not in terms of the institutions, you just described fund -of -fund family office and diamonds and foundations, but people that think differently and think independently. And that's why I think we ended up with such an interesting mix of people that we almost didn't want people to correlate with one another. And I think it would have been very easy to do. And for people that go this route, where there's a lot of correlation between, hey, these are all alumni of the same institution.

32:43And so they're going to group things together. We wanted to avoid that. And I think we're very fortunate we were able to. I'm gonna push you. What single LP check meant the most to get to you personally? So we had a few groups that told us this is gonna be a six -month process, you know there's no way to accelerate it and after the meeting we're kind of done in two weeks and we loved that kind of speed to conviction and that meant a lot. Some of those early conviction checks where you know we weren't sure exactly how long the fundraiser would take and having a few people say like we believe so much and what you're doing we're going to make exceptions to do this quickly and to get behind you.

33:17What was your most recent disagreement as a partnership? Well, this wasn't the most recent disagreement, but a really substantive disagreement was about whether or not to build a junior team at chemistry. That was a... Where did that net out? We are doing it, but I'll give you some of the color around it. So, I came in with more perspective that we need to be extremely streamlined. and having a GP -only group is going to be an advantage in terms of the ecosystem. I think Ethan and Christina had a much stronger feeling that working with the junior team is going to add an element and a dynamic element in terms of different ages, different networks that's really gonna complement the GPs.

33:55What all of us were aligned and not wanting to recreate was the hierarchy and institution and bureaucracy of a really large organization. So what we netted out to is just a very small junior team. We're gonna have two folks. We've hired one so far who's fantastic and already making a massive impact on the fund But that was something we really needed to unpack and try to think about the pros and cons Are you doing office? See you doing remote office in office every day is a really important tentative of how we think about building You know, we're a new team. We're a startup right like we need to be shoulder to shoulder if you could choose anyone to join as the fourth partner Who would you choose and why them some of the folks that I respect are the Excel Venture team, Dan Levine, Vast Natharajan, some of the folks that I would describe as similar age to the three of us that are doing a tremendous job in the ecosystem.

34:41There are some funds that I would consider new guard funds a little bit in front of us. I think Sarah Gwo has done a tremendous job with conviction. Jack Altman doing amazing things with Alt Capital is probably the most dynamic moment in 20 years in venture, where you have these legacy institutions that are dealing with generational change, huge portfolios. Fun investing is like a company investing in a couple of ways. One, the best farm managers are like the best founders. They make you feel a little bit uncomfortable with their intensity. And then, you know, second, there needs to be a why now.

35:11There needs to be a moment in the ecosystem that causes this company or fun to be more exciting today than it was yesterday. And I completely share the perspective there. I do worry there's just too much money in this ecosystem though. I lost a deal this week and I lost it because the competition doubled the price and accepted common shares. Yes. Yeah. I think both can be true. I think there can both be a sh - it got that is already happening in terms of the amount of dollars. And I think there can be a turnover between an old garden and a new garden. And I think you and some other funds I respect represent that next chapter in what a new garden.

35:43But I think there's a moment. And I don't think that moment existed three years ago, five years ago, even ten years ago. And I think it's happening now. Are you worried by the extended window privatization by great, great founders like the Colossans, continuously being private for years and years and years? No. I'm not. First off, I think products will evolve to create liquidity for those late -stage private companies that give liquidity options to early -stage investors. So I think the market will evolve. So just because companies are staying private longer, doesn't mean I think the liquidity duration will be as long as it is today.

36:12I think we'll see innovation in that area. So there'll be more secondary opportunities for early -stage invest. I mean, my belief is the capital markets will create new products to solve for that. I do think that you need to have a long -term outlook in this industry. And even when I started fundraising, I thought the duration of a fund was 10 years, and I was surprised to learn that many of the LPs said, we rarely see closed funds before 15 years. Just you have to have kind of the stomach to be in this for a long time. Have you had your first carry check yet? I have. When did you get it? What year?

36:43I was very fortunate to join the venture industry at the end of 2015, early 2016, and I'm very grateful to have been at a fund that did really well in those ventages and was able to get some liquidity. So I'm fortunate that I've seen that. Okay, I'm gonna make a statement. You can agree or not. I don't think many of the 2021 vintage funds will return 1X. Agree or disagree? It's a very... What I would say is I don't think those funds will do very well. I mean, the vintage is gonna be very, very challenged. Will it be a 1X? I don't know. I think it'll be better than a 1X. Maybe they're gonna be tough funds.

37:14What happens to all the companies that are marked up insanely highly within same valuations by many of the multi -stage funds and a worth two billion, three billion, not 10 billion. Well, I think we're already seeing some of the oxygen being sucked out of those companies. I think, you know, as you talk about your frustration with founders choosing to kind of raise at terms that feel unreasonable, I think we're seeing the other side of that, which is many companies wish that they take a more graduated approach to their fundraising. Because the momentum, the cultural momentum, and I've got some companies that have been very thoughtful in this deliberate and this effort, the momentum you lose when a fund, when the employees know that the valuation isn't realistic.

37:53I think really hurts the morale and hurts the ability of the company to do its best work. So I think really deliberate founders that don't overstretch, actually, you're kind of seeing the advantage of that, but everybody has to kind of go their own path. So I kind of have this new approach, which is I say, listen, I will let you choose the price. And they're like, what? And I'm like, there's just one clause. Whatever price you choose, you have to be 90 % confident that you can 3x that by the time you're gonna raise your next. And if you don't, I'm gonna be pissed. Yep. How's that working for you?

38:24Honestly, founders love it. LAUGHTER Are you seeing bigger or smaller numbers than you expected? Smaller. I mean, that's amazing. Is that like, oh shit, the 25? I don't know if we'll be 75 when we're 1 million in ARR. Especially at seed, I'm seeing the 25 is good at 15s. Because they're like, I do 45, but really confidently predicting 80? Yeah, I mean, I think it at least changes the tone of the conversation from one of this is a zero -sum game where the valuation is a reflection of myself worth and kind of a scoreboard win. So one of let's put this in the perspective of a long -term journey. So I think it's, you know, I think it's a really interesting frame in your giving the founders of, let's think about this in a different way.

39:05I'm not literally letting them choose the price. Of course, of course, but it's a little bit of mental jujitsu, wish I will, I will think hard on. How do you think about investing in AI today? Given rounds being the sizes of the AI, being the competition being what it is, how do you think about that? So I think we're already seeing the oxygen in this bubble start to get sucked out. Obviously, there are exceptions. There's still some extremely unreasonable deals happening within AI. But I think what's starting to happen is... Well, what may it all make you say that we're seeing the ocean sucked out?

39:35Because I don't see that. I think that just calling yourself a .AI company is no longer attacking the same premium onto your business as it would have a year and a half ago. And the people that were the same camp of founders that were a .xyz during the crypto boom that have migrated to .ai for the AI boom are starting to recognize that they actually need a sustainable business and that's what they're gonna be evaluated on. Now that doesn't mean that there aren't rounds happening at the, you know, the Red Hot Center of the AI infrastructure ecosystem, but I do think you're starting to see some pullback and some proportionality brought back into the other side of the market.

40:10It doesn't sound like you're seeing that, by the way you looked at me. No, honestly, I see it being more crazy than ever. I mean, I've met three companies that raised it north of 750, pre -product. How do you structure decision -making as a new firm? So we are a single trigger model, which means that any one of the three of us can make a decision on an investment and go with it. Now, the biggest mistake that I have seen from my own personal experience and from other funds is when you try to make consensus decisions at the early stage, I think you end up with consensus funds. And I think it's the errors of omissions at the early stage, where one person or two people have super strong conviction and an idea that end up being the outliers.

40:47If you think about the outliers, you're gonna get, you know, when you open the aperture, when you've got kind of the decision framework that I just described, you're gonna get both. You're gonna get deals that don't do as well, but I think you're also gonna solve for the extremes that do very well, and that was the model that we landed on. You mentioned the sin of a mission there. What miss weighs on your mind most? I really love that business. From a fintech perspective, it was one where I would love to have been a part of the early stage rounds and coot us to the folks that figured that out earlier than I did.

41:17Why is Chi a third the size of Revolute in a market that's five times bigger? I think nobody has really cracked the product velocity that Revolute has. I mean, Revolute's product velocity is just unparalleled in really any market at this point including New Bank. And you know, you could argue the US is a harder market to differentiate on features, but Revolute has had a superpower and you know, they just move so quickly in terms of the breadth of products they're able to offer its customers. I don't think anybody's been able to match that in the US. That said, I think a lot of people get consumer finance wrong in the US and say just because nobody has built a Revolute Size business means that it's not going to happen.

41:55Actually, the last time I was on your show, I think I predicted did a hundred billion dollar neo bank coming out of somewhere. And I think we're a lot closer. I think revolutes the closest we're going to see to that. So I absolutely agree that I think revolute is that, but I would actually place a lot bigger bet on revolute taking the US than China. I would argue that there might be a company nobody's ever heard of yet that actually wins the mantle. You know, we have my moon on the show. He, you know, just lost Tally, brilliant founder Jason, but difficult business in the lending business. And he, his last name told me was just that lending's really, really hard.

42:26But is lending just an uninvestable category? I think lending businesses are very, very, very challenging. And if you look at the way that I've been comfortable investing in Fintech, it's mostly been through the infrastructure, the support, the growth of digital finance. What do you do when you meet an amazing founder in a ship market? Well, you're like, oh, I hate this. To me, it's a very obvious answer. I would go all in on it. That would include lending as well. It gives me heartburn, but at the early stage of the stage I'm investing at, the stage its core to chemistry, finding great people at this stage, they're going to iterate into something that's interesting.

42:59And again, please take the other side of it. Even in my partnership, you would hear Ethan's much more markets focused than I am, but for me, great founders, figure out way to create market. If you look at, I was very fortunate to see some amazing companies from index from the early days, whether it was a Figma, whether it was a Wiz, whether it was a data dog, companies that have been able to build TAM by just increasing the surface area of their products. That's the lesson I draw from some of those businesses that I've seen from the early days. My question to you is what other markets do you like, like for me recruitment software?

43:33Oh, no. I'm like, honestly, I'm pretty sorry, education. Add tech just sucks. Okay. So, it's funny. We just looked at a recruiting software company. I mean, so I'm just laughing about that. But what I would say is one of the dangers of experience and having done this for almost a decade now is shutting your brain off for a category that didn't work in the past. So I have a little bit of an allergic reaction when you say that, not because I disagree with you and any of those specifics, but in this sense of a trap that people fall into. And this happened in Fintech. If you look at the evolution of Fintech, so in Fintech, the most knowledgeable people were a bunch of the East Coast funds that had spent two decades inside of financial institutions and knew the market way better than the West Coast funds.

44:13and they outsmarted themselves from every money making deal in the category, the really, really big ones. And the West Coast funds that have the naivety to lean in, I think, still did really, really well. But I would say the smartest and fintech in Matt Harris and Mickey Malca. Listen, though, I mean... And they've made a fucked -up money. What I would say is Matt Harris is probably the smartest and best fintech investor out there. I mean, you know, Ribbett's obviously incredible as well. But Matt Harris, I think, has kind of set the direction of Fintech for a very long time. But what I would argue is that knowledge can be counterproductive as well.

44:46If you know too much, because the crazy ideas are crazy, right? You can outthink yourself from any good series A by over think, I've done it myself, I've seen other people do it, and I think knowing too much can actually be dangerous. So what industry are you like? Sales tools. The next AI for sales tools company. I have a very hard time keeping an open mind at this point. I did 11x. You mentioned it at the beginning. Listen, I know how well they're doing, but I just have a hard time seeing, I've just heard the pitch so many times. There's a lot of activity that I don't think is going to go anywhere there.

45:21How do you turn people down? Do you say the honest truth or would you rather gloss it over because there's no point being that honest and blunt? My answer to that question has changed by fundraising myself. There were a lot of times where it was easier as a VC just to say something polite to not give people the real feedback and having been on the other side of a fundraise and now felt the other direction. I think it's really helped me understand how useless that is and the importance of giving strong constructive feedback. The other big change though in you is you've moved from a multi -stage fund where you have to preserve optionality and you have to keep them on side.

46:00That is such a good point because you can be wrong and right at a multi -stage fund when you're doing what we're doing at chemistry You get one bite at the apple and that is that's actually for what it's worth That's a new muscle for me But it's also really empowering and it's it's one of the reasons I'm having so much fun right now because it focuses you in a way that I had not done before where the danger of the optionality of being able to do every stage at every time is you have to keep so many doors open There is something that focuses the mind by saying this is the stage we're doing and this is the stage we are not doing and therefore giving yourself the test of conviction of where you are and then being able to adapt and change the operations around that.

46:38What will you break first or more willingly, check size or ownership? The check size. It goes back to my sense of you have to be in the winners. I think that when we feel like we are in a winner, I'm willing to move up on check size to be a part of those companies. What's your capital concentration limit on a per -company basis? I can't remember what legally we have as the concentration limit, but certainly we don't want more than 10 % of the fund in a single company I remember Brian Singerman said to me on the show that the enemy of great venture returns is capital concentration limits on a per company basis And he mentioned that they have 30 % in some funds just for one company Listen, if it's the right company, that's incredible.

47:20That would I would have a hard time sleeping at night with that sort of concentration But you know, I think that if you were Airbnb, I'd probably then you're sleeping just just great but you're probably sleeping on a yacht in Santorapay. So it's different. But I think like having some sense of perspective. But listen, I think one of the advantages of being new fund is taking a lot of risk. I think we are gonna try a bunch of things that don't work and I'm totally comfortable. I'm excited for that. Like we should be doing all sorts of things and seeing how do we push the innovation in this industry.

47:46And I think that's gonna create a better founder experience even when we get it wrong. If I were to give you just one bit of advice, people and that no one will ever want to tell you the opposite, don't be afraid to do brand deals where you do get into brand names with tiny ownership. The most important thing is that you align yourself with incredible founders and incredible companies in this new era, especially in this new era of AI. Just get into some great companies and be aligned with them. So we did. So funny enough, we had some LPs say exactly the same advice, which was one and more surprising moments from our fundraise, where some of the LPs said, it's that important that you're in some of these brand deals to be able to establish yourselves and don't be afraid to lean into that.

48:24We had LPC exactly the opposite too, but it was interesting that even the LPC community was their positive externalities from being in these winners and you should be willing to kind of compromise to do that. Listen, my friend, are you ready to do a quick fire? Yeah, let's do it. So, who outside of chemistry do you learn most from in the venture industry? The person I learn the most from has been Mike Volby, just a tremendous mentor to me at index ventures. and somebody I continue to call regularly for advice as I'm kind of navigating our new fund in the next chapter. What would you most like to change about the world of venture?

48:57I would change the group thing. I think it's bad for founders, and I saw a great meme go around yesterday of, you know, a cheetah, an airplane, a rocket ship, and then the speed at which venture gossip moves between associates. And that resonated with me. I wish there was a little bit more independent thinking in the industry. One thing I do say to founders is like, you are either fundraising or you're not nowadays, sadly. What what's that groups have changed is the ability for associates to communicate very, very fast with large groups that actually, oh, I met Mark, he wasn't great and actually they're not even at half a million in ARR, so we turned it down.

49:31It can really damage a raise when you're not even raising. Hi, Grief. I think you're totally right. I think companies need to be very cognizant of those dynamics. What do you most need to change in yourself as an investor to be better? You know, really thinking about how I spend time and reorienting it 100 % towards playing offense is a new skill for me right now after having been in the large room. That's even possible, dude. I mean it nicely, but like you get board seats portfolio is accumulate. You can't. You have team members. I have culture, moral promotions. So you can't forever. You can when you have a clean slate in day one.

50:06So you don't have it forever, but I have it now. I feel like I'm running with a jet pack on my back right now. It is tremendous feeling. and it's probably what you felt for your fun one before you'd made an investment. I mean, that's the level of energy and the juxtaposition from carrying a very heavy board load and portfolio load and going to that. So you're right, it's not infinitely scalable, but it's very exciting right now. You can invest in a seed firm, a series A firm and a growth firm. Can't be yours or mine, which would you invest in? Pick the fund. This is a good one. So mine would be like, I best ask that seed and when we go to Jason's, A, it would have to be benchmark.

50:46And then growth, I'd do thrive. So growth, I would do Maritech. I think they're doing extremely interesting work right now. Series A. I'm there in strain fun size for growth. And they're a constrained fun size for growth. And they're just doing some really interesting work. So I'm a huge fan of kind of the strategy and the people in the area. A male generational transition with Alex Max and Max. It's a team of hitters. It's independent thinkers. They're gonna have tremendous returns and founders love working with them. So that's an obvious choice for me, though. There are some other great funds as well, including IVP.

51:14At the Series A, I think Excel Ventures continues to just do really interesting innovative work, very independent, very strong crew between Dan Voss, Steve, a bunch of the other folks there, on it. And it's seed. There's so many good, interesting seed funds right now. I have a hard time giving you one off to cuff my head. Come on. I'll tell you what, that we worked out at the Uncork Office to start the fund, and they're a fantastic institution. What's the most challenging thing about starting a new firm? It's hard building something from scratch. Here we are before this interview I was trying to figure out how to get my microphone and lighting set up at a big fund That would have been there would have been a whole team helping me do that.

51:49It's both the fun part It's also hard and that's I think what makes it fun. Mark. Do you think richer investors make better investors? Because you're not afraid you'd reach a light person Yeah, because you're not afraid of downside Nobody has ever asked me that that is such an interesting question My gut reaction is to say the opposite, which is that the well -level correlates with a lack of hustle and therefore, but it's that's actually not in practice what I've seen. I think there is a correlation less about the money and more about the people who are so good at this job that it's not actually the money is the afterthought.

52:24They love the job and they love doing this and I don't know if it's the I don't give a shit anymore because I have so much money that I actually I'm not sure it's that. I think there is to get to that level, There's such a love of the craft and of doing this job that they're probably pretty good at it. Dude, listen, I'm so thrilled for you. Honestly, I'm so happy to see the news and this is such an exciting time. So thank you for doing this with me and it really means a lot to have the friendship. Harry, it's a total pleasure. Like I said, from the beginning, congratulations again on your fun.

52:52Thank you for having me on the show and thank you again. I want to say, thank you to Mark for joining us today. It was the only podcast episode that chemistry have done as part of the release. Such a joy to make that happen. And you can watch the full episode on YouTube by searching for 20VC. That's 2 -0 VC. But before we leave you stay, what to Henry Ford and AI having common? Neither could change the world without automation. In the future, there will be two types of businesses, those that have automated and those that wish they had. Uipath, the undisputed leader in automation, is taking us into the era of a genetic automation.

53:28UIPASS new AI agents don't just follow rules, they think they make decisions, they work alongside the world's most powerful software robots, already trusted by over 10 ,000 businesses. If a gentick automation sounds new, just think of UIPASS as more growth, not more overhead platform, or happier customers, happier employees platform. Whatever you want AI to do for your business, a gentick automation with UIPASS will make it happen. Try UIPASS new AI agents for free at uipath .com. The future of automation is both agentic and robotic, so don't get left behind. And speaking of transforming your business with cutting edge technology, let's dive into another game changer.

54:11Atio. Atio is the next generation of CRN. Setting up Atio takes less than a minute, and in seconds of syncing your email and calendar, you'll see all of your relationships in one place, all enriched with very valuable data. Asia also lets you build zPier style automations, gives you powerful reports and works perfectly for any go -to -market motion from PLG to sales -led. And Asia is designed for the next era of companies like yours, and companies like yours shouldn't have to deal with inflexible one -size -fits -all CR -AMs. So join industry leaders like 11 Labs, replicate modal and more, to scale your startup beyond the next level, head over to atio .com forward slash 20VC and you'll get 15 % off, that's 15 % off your first year at atio .com forward slash 20VC.

55:04And if atio helps you stay ahead by streamlining your relationships and operations. Now, if you're looking to stay ahead on the investment side too, Fund Rises Innovation Fund is taking venture capital to a whole new level, it's a public venture fund anyone can invest in, not just institutions and accredited investors, the Fundrise Innovation Fund is democratizing venture capital which could have big consequences for the industry. The fund is already off to a good start, with a hundred million into some of the largest, most in demand AI and data infrastructure companies. Companies like OpenAI, Anthropic and Databricks, check out the Innovation Fund's impressive list of investments for yourself by visiting funderize .com slash 20VC.

55:47Carefully consider the investment material before investing, including objectives, risks, charges and expanses. This and other information can be found in the Innovation Funds Prospector at funderize .com slash innovation. This is a paid partnership. As always, I so appreciate all your support and stay tuned for an incredible episode coming on Monday with a business that was valued at over a billion dollars and overnight said no more SaaS company, we're going AI first and AI revenue only, an incredible turnaround story on Monday.