Avoiding buzzwords and marketing-speak (feat. Thomas McInerney) | E2236

25:45I mean, you've got to love this business. And we were talking about Elon. People talk about Steve Jobs. I worked at Apple in the 90s when he'd come back. You study the greats, right? If you're in this business, you look at, you know, it's like studying a football player or a soccer player or a tennis player. You know, you watch hours of footage. You hit, you know, hundreds of balls or kick thousands of balls. You know, you're just every day you're in it. Eventually, over time, you make progress. Okay. Red flags. Top two or three that it's not the right investment for Thomas. Buzzwords. You know, SaaS enabled.

26:20When people start using buzzwords, I get, you know, very turned off. I want it in simple English. Because? Because I think that you're taking too much from the outside world, and those trends are sort of like fashion. They change daily. And so I think being able to reduce your idea into a real simple concept that's not using a lot of buzzwords is good. And let's talk about other red flags. Too high of evaluation. I don't know. Yeah, valuation in the sense that you just, not to be greedy about equity, but rather to be focused on getting the right people on board. And if you do that, everything takes care of itself.

27:01If you make something big, whether you own 10, 20, or 30%, it won't matter. Especially in the first company. Yeah, yeah. This is a secret that I normally don't share, but I will for you since it's a good opportunity. I take people out to typically a lunch or breakfast, sometimes dinner. and then I see, are they kind to the staff? Are they kind to the waiters? What kind of human being am I dealing with? Just their little tells like that, little poker tells that you look for. Yeah, that's a great one. The ability to also hire and inspire, that's a really important one for me. Key. Key. How do you suss that out?

27:37You know, when I ask to meet the team or hey, let's have my team meet the team and just, hey, why are you here? What did you do before this? If you look at the pedigree and how they found the person, and hey, how did you meet Jason? Or how did you meet Elon? And it's like, I emailed him. You know, if you were to ask Travis, and we had somebody who worked for Travis at both Uber and show yesterday spoke. He worked at Uber doing recruiting and at Cloud Kitchens. And I said, oh, how did you wind up meeting him? And he's like, I emailed him. You know, I gave him some ideas. And then when he was doing Cloud Kitchens, I emailed him again and he responded.

28:12And how you meet the person, I remember talking with us back to Elon and just some other folks. They typically, it's really weird, but through social media and through their network, they just meet smart people. And they really are good at assessing that. And then they're also really good. I remember we were, Elon was struggling with who was going to be the CEO of Tesla when he, you know, started investing in the company. And then he had to fire a bunch of people. I said, oh, you seem like you have a lot of doubt about this. I said, yeah, I got a lot of doubt. And I said, yeah, what are you going to do?

28:41And he's like, I've been struggling with that. And he said, but at the end of the day, if there's any doubt, there's no doubt. and that was like opened my brain up and he had heard it from somebody else in silica valley but when you have these doubts about somebody on the team yeah as a founder you're a hundred percent right there's never a chance where you're like this person's not the right person i need to get rid of them it's only how quickly do you do it yeah yeah it's hard it's hard to do that but it's better to fire early because you're setting your culture right so when you have the the early founders and bad people in the culture will be rejected almost like an immune system in the body where if someone is not the right fit, they will be.

29:17So it's super key to get that DNA set early. I also think about that when I ask them another secret tell kind of thing is when I ask them, tell me about your first three customers. And they're like, well, we sell into the military and we sell into this. I'm like, yeah, okay, tell me the top three companies, the one you landed first, the second one, the third one, how'd you get them? And sometimes we'll get that during the due diligence process. But a lot of times they're like, yeah, The first two are my friends from college. They're my fraternity brothers. And they did it for me as a favor. But the third one I reached out to through LinkedIn.

29:49And then they didn't respond. So I cold emailed them. And then I met the next three at a trade show. I went, what trade show? They're like, oh, yeah, there's a trade show for lawyers in Milwaukee. I went out to it. And I just couldn't afford a booth. But I just intercepted people at coffee. And I introduced myself. And I got three customers there. And you're like, holy cow, this person is like, you know those dogs that hunt for truffles in Italy? You ever go on one of those truffle hunts? Yeah, yeah. It's wild to watch these dogs. They just, all of a sudden, they just run away, and then they're just pointing and scraping at the bottom of a tree, and then there's five truffles there.

30:18They're like those truffle hunters. Yeah, yeah, that's right. Because that understanding of your customer is super key because it rolls into the product, right? You've got to be, you have a tight loop between how your customer is using the product and how the product is evolving. When we get back from this quick break, I want to ask you, what should founders do with that first$250K,$500K in year one of their startup? Let me get back on this week in startups.

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32:11They've got it deployed. They get into an accelerator. They get another 250K, whatever it happens to be, 125K. What are you trying to accomplish in those first 12 months? Well, don't blow it. That's the first thing. Burn rate is interesting. You would be shocked. The number of companies that I've been an investor in that have gone wrong from overspending, it is crazy. And even one I have now where it was going to do an acquisition. It was a big company. It raised hundreds of millions. The partner on the deal had a medical problem, a serious medical problem, dropped out. They had already signed to make the acquisition.

32:45so i've seen every permutation of companies running out of money so i know it sounds like obvious or pedestrian but really do not run out of money you know and it's pretty rare where i've thought oh these founders are too cheap you know get crappy furniture get a crappy office frugality matters frugality matters frugality matters the way i've said it internally is we're looking for founders who get a dollar of value from a nickel, not founders who get a dollar of value from a hundred dollar bill. A hundred percent. And yeah, when you get that money in the bank, sometimes you just do stupid things.

33:21I had one founder who hired a PR firm because people had told him and I said, how much did you pay the PR firm? I said,$35 ,000. And he had raised like 2 million. And I'm like, okay, yeah, you got to stop that. We don't need that much press. And it's like not important. And he's like, oh, I signed an 18 month agreement. I'm like, okay, I'm going to call them and read them the riot act. And I got them to settle to get it out that to get them out yeah but it was pretty brutal have you seen a company with a lot of money in the bank go out of business yeah oh time and time again right no no company with a lot of money oh right right right no no exactly yeah yeah that that is your that is your oxygen i mean that is like you're in an airplane that is your gas you know you run out of gas the plane is going down you cannot run out of gas you cannot spend your money you know to the end and you and you cannot investors, they'll string you along.

34:08Who knows? I've also seen real misconceptions between where the founder thinks they are in a fundraise and where they actually are. How do they go from saying, okay, I'm about to close this million dollar seed round and you know you're not even close. How do you advise them that you may want to cut half the staff or get everybody to reduce their salaries and take your three months of runway to nine so you have more time to close this because I don't think you're going to close it. You're not going to make it. That's very hard. It's very hard, but they got to do it. You just make the tough decisions.

34:44Ideally, you don't get your burn up that, you know, you're always thinking like, how many months left do I have here? How many, you know, I've got 24 months of runway, we call runway, right? 12 months of runway. And where am I going to, what am I going to accomplish in that time? So runway is super key. Money in the bank is super key. And then the milestones you're going to hit, you know, where you think, okay, I'm going to, cause you're also looking, I mean, look, once you reach product market fit, there are all kinds of guys show up on your door to help you and give you money. Right. I mean, not only just, you know, investors, but also, you know, employees, right.

35:21If you are, if you have a product market fit kind of company, things get a lot easier, but that, that initial, you're drilling for oil, you're wildcatting, you're sort of landmanning. You need to drill as many holes as possible to figure it out. Running out of money is just brutal. So unfun. I tell folks who are like, oh my God, I've got this one person they've committed. And I'm like, okay, can I see the term sheet? We're like, oh, we don't have the term sheet, but they gave me a verbal. I'm like, okay, anything that's not a signed term sheet is a no. So ask them, say, listen, I've got some other investors.

35:54We talked about some broad terms. Would you like to send us a term sheet or should I send you the term sheet? And just be a forcing function. And then if they don't send you a term sheet, when they say they're going to, they're out and proceed as such. And you have to, I mean, in a way it's like ball control or pot control in a poker game. You have to control that process. What is a great fundraising process for a company that doesn't have a hockey stick? And find out what they need to get to that term sheet. Like, okay, I need X data or I want to talk to these three customers or what, what is it they need to get there and ask them really, because they'll share that normally unless they're being really cagey or just keeping, you know, being, I think a good investor will be super candid about a, if they're in or not, like you say, but you've got to kind of really put them, you know, put their feet to the fire and then B if they're almost there or not quite there, what they need to get across the way.

36:50How do you say that to them? Say, what do you need to get to a yes here? Or what do you need to sign the term sheet? What do you need to see from me? And that makes your job a lot easier because a lot of the challenges is communicating what your value is. And people have different things. You may want to see something different at Founder University than I do. And some people might not do reference checks and not even do due diligence. And you're like, okay, well, what's the holdup here? And that's where forcing them to get it in and get that term sheet in and sign it and tell them the timeline that you're doing.

37:22this on. For example, let's say I was raising my, you know, Jason, you said you were going to do, you're interested in about a 200K check size. Is that right? You know, you need to take notes even in the meeting and say, okay, and then what's the timeframe in terms of closing this? You need 30 days. What's your process like? Well, Tom, we need to look at, you know, we need to speak to three customers. We need to look at your code. We need to da, da, da. So that your investors will generally and your customers too, they'll tell you what they need. It's up to you if you ask the issue, if you ask.

37:50And I think maybe some first-time founders are like, wow, I don't want to push them. You actually, they want to be pushed. They want to get this decision made. And sometimes they're just busy. They have a life, these investors. Maybe they are dealing with other issues in their personal life or in their firm. Exactly. There could be dynamics going on you're not aware of and pushing that issue. What do you wish you knew now with 100 investments that you didn't know then? I wish I had been more aggressive. I think I'd taken more risk. For example, Airbnb, I overthought it, you know, it was a second angel deal I'd seen.

38:25So I should have just done it. And I was even, didn't even know how to do the docs back then. And, you know, should I get my lawyer or should they, this is even pre-safe notes. Safes had just been kind of - Yeah, it was back in the convertible note days. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And it was early. And so take more risk, be more of an optimist. You know, I think that's something Mark Andreessen is super, super good at. He's still good at it. I heard that they raised such big funds. People were like, you're going to have to return like$600 billion or something to, you know, or you're going to have to have$600 billion of outcomes or something.

38:56They did it easily. They cleared it. So being an optimist, I think, you know, even AI was quite bullish on AI, but I should have bet bigger into the AI trend. Are you conservative by nature or are you cynical? Have you been burned? Why were you not as aggressive, you think? Was it fear? Well, yeah. You know, when it's your own money, I haven't dealt with, I haven't generally, I've done a few SPVs, but generally I bet my own cash, which is different to most. You know, when I was starting, I thought I need to learn, but there was, that was such a good time. Right. And I bet five years from now, 10 years from now, we're going to look back and we're going to say, this was such a good time.

39:33Right. You know, we might say like, this was such a good time in Tokyo. It was brand new. The ecosystem was just developing. You remember Jethro is holding events in the Arc Hills and you know optimism is key optimism is important there's this great expression that they tell drivers you in race cars look at the track not the wall yeah yeah cuz you look at the wall you drive into the wall that's right you follow the track and I was teaching my daughters how to ski through trees and they love it it's her favorite thing to do a ski through trees yeah mom's not as excited about it as we all are they said well how do you not hit the trees I said don't look at the trees look at the space between the trees.

40:12Yeah, look at your line. Find your line. Yep. And what you want to do is when we start out, we're just going to stop and all three of us or four of us are going to stand there and you're going to tell me what your line is. You're going to point to it with your pole and draw it for me. Think about it. Visualize it. And how many turns is it? You're like, well, I'm going to make like a couple of turns. Nope. One turn here, one turn there, and then you're going to go straight and you're going to pick up a little speed on that straight one. But the speed's okay, but you're not going to look at the trees.

40:38You're going to look at that space. what do they call it, the negative space or something? Right, right. Between the trees. Yep. These girls can ski through trees like you wouldn't believe. And I think that's in some ways what we all do as investors and founders, which is like, you make this big long list. Yeah. These are all the things that will go wrong in a nuclear startup. Right. What could go right? What's on that list? That list is like two things. Yeah. Three things. Yeah. The list of what could go wrong is 300. Yeah. If you over optimize on that, you will talk yourself out of every decision.

41:06Yeah. Yeah, I think, just to your point, it's a super, super point. Like the founders, what we noticed in companies was a founder versus a non-founder is the mind of a non-founder goes first to the risk. First to why it's not going to work. First to what can break. Whereas a founder sees that opportunity and then they're like, okay, these challenges are risks and I can manage them or I can deal with them. But they first go to the opportunity versus going to the risk. What if you could? what if small modular nuclear reactors worked? What would that look like? Yeah, exactly. And then if you stay around, the longer you're alive, and this is back to burn rate, the more chance you have to get lucky.

41:47I mean, now for Radiant, there's such energy demand due to AI. There's no way Doug predicted that, but he knew that energy was important and the demand was compounding. And so now he's in a super lucky place. There's now a bunch of pull in a new way that he couldn't have even guessed. It is a really interesting thing that happens. You have something like COVID. And if you're Airbnb, you just totally get your ass kicked. And you have to figure out how to survive. If you're DoorDash, all of a sudden, everybody's like, hockey stick. Like, how do I get food to my house during quarantine or Instacart?

42:23And people are like, I'll take the 15 minutes to figure out how this works. Exactly. And staying alive to do that is the key. Yeah. Yeah, a friend of mine, a guy, Adam Ross, you may know, a super guy, has an expression. It's like, if you hang around long enough in Silicon Valley, you get hit by the money truck. And so, you know, hopefully... You're looking at me in a very targeted way. Both of us. Well, I mean, even for investors, that is key. It's so key as investors to get lucky. And if you make a certain number of bets and you don't give up, you will eventually get lucky. It's just somewhere around the 20th or 30th investment I find something breaks for an angel, for a seed fund.

43:08But you have to, talking about our business, if you only do five investments, man, the chance is hard. How long did you know before you got the sense you were good at this? Actually, the one thing about Airbnb was every time I'd go to the airport, they'd be on the cover of some magazine, the guys. And that was like, you can only lose one extra money. You learn this later as an investor, but you you you know if you miss out on a thousand X or ten thousand X and Maybe the case of Airbnb that kind of said hey, you know, I was like wow I had miscalibrated my risk, you know This is so key the human brain has a very hard time Understanding the concept of a thousand X It's just so exponential and it doesn't exist anywhere else in finance when you get your credit card bill if you don't pay it and they charge you 2 % that month or 30 % that year, you're okay.

44:00And then if you buy a stock and it goes 5X and you went 500 % in five years, you're like, oh my God, this is incredible. And when I talk to people and they talk about the Uber or the Robinhood investment, I'm like, yeah, 1 ,000 and 7 ,000X and growing. And I still haven't sold any shares of Robinhood. And I paired my Uber position early to Masayoshi-san had some shares to buy. We all did. But I haven't sold any since. I'm like, wow, that is a very bizarre thing to have a 7 ,000X or 1 ,000X. And all the compounding, the doubling at the end, and one doubling at the end is worth all the multiples up until that point.

44:33So Buffett was extremely good at understanding compounding. You're right. It's not like in the physical world, the delta between how much we weigh, maybe 20 % or 30 % or 10%. It's hard to think in these orders of magnitude where, you know, the startup world and the tech world and certain things don't run that way. They run in like exponents and they run in a different kind of math. If you were in a poker game and there were nine people in it and they each put$10 ,000 in and you somehow figured out how to take everybody's money in a cash game, you would make nine times$90 ,000. Exactly. Now imagine a poker game where you put the$10 ,000 in and you made a thousand times it and you're like, how is that even possible?

45:11It's a hundred other poker tables. Yeah. Worth of players. $10 million? No, more. I think it's a hundred million, right? So a thousand, thousand would be one million. No, it's 10 million. You're right. So it's like, how did I put$10 ,000 down and make$10 million? It doesn't make any logical sense. Yeah, exactly. Pretty amazing business. Yeah. Thomas, I asked if you would be so kind as to take very raw pitches from these year zero companies. Thomas and I will do a couple of pitches and we'll just give some candid feedback. Sure. Sounds great. Hi, everyone. My name is Hiroshi Takeuchi. I'm a founder and CEO of Satinamist.

45:43We offer AI native cross-border commerce platform for sake exporters. So here's the customer. Mai, she's the first Misesake, and she's the owner of Sake Export Business. She has some problems. One of them declines Sake Burearies. Due to the decrease of domestic consumption, it will improve that. She needs to enhance export capability. However, it's a lot of paperwork, and then it includes documentation and language barriers. This is why we have a solution, Sakeonomist. Mai, she uploads the product documentation to the cloud, and then in back-end part, validation check is executed. And once it's done, she creates the content on top of that, then publish, and then sell it to the importers.

46:26Then once purchase has been placed, and then she can ship the documentation to the country selected, and then she can trace in orders, you know, what's going on in the order. As you can see, the operation is quite complex and has an industry-specific requirement. This is why Suconimus is a very unique position compared to other multi-places. And then GDM strategy to brand as an alternative wine and then brand into Dubai in the southern US. And then create a new segment aged sake as new asset class. Business model is get transaction fee from the importer's payment to the exporters. No initial, no license cost.

47:03Then we have some government subsidy in the past. And then we identify customer right now. Then we are looking for the importer now. Opportunity one segment is vertical right now. But we have a playbook. we can extend to the other regulatory commerce in the trade. We have a team here, myself, and a tech lead in Masami. We have spent open source in the past, in 10 years. Then we have a GTM advisor, Katsu. With this team, we are going to promote Japanese culture and spirit to the world. Thank you for listening. What are your first thoughts? Key, key point you showed in near the end. Sake is not a big enough vertical of investors, especially the later stage guys like the Series A and Bs.

47:41they're going to look for huge Tam. They all care about Tam. And so I like the idea of starting with a vertical you understand, like sake. And then there's, you know, Indians importing, you know, a certain type of curry to, you know, to Japan or to Dubai. So I like the idea of this going beyond the sake vertical into many, many verticals. And it's really about exporting from one country to another, any kind of product. And it sounds like the regulatory piece is the hard piece, certainly for alcohol, but probably any kind of, really probably anything nowadays, there's a lot of paperwork. So to make this a really big business, if you're good at doing that, I think it's a really good idea.

48:22Thank you. And this was exactly what I was thinking. And we both kind of looked at each other when you showed the other verticals, because I was thinking, wow, this is so niche and it's a declining market. There was a time when the newspapers were declining and everybody was building tools to help newspapers stop declining. And anybody who was in venture was like, you can't stop that. So you're essentially selling into the Titanic that you want to sell ice cream on the Titanic. And it's like, yeah, the Titanic's going down. There's not another voyage. And you tie yourself to it and it goes down.

48:53So you present it as your first market, a market in decline. And we're thinking, yeah, people stop drinking. People are on Ozempic. Like you want to find a beach where the tide's coming in not going out so this pitch had all these signals of no no no no and that at the end it had the yes oh he's going to do it for these other verticals but the name also then you're trapped in the name so i want you and i'm going to give you permission to think big you have my permission so you're now allowed to do it yes yes ditto on the name yeah i was thinking that you could have this name and then do other names but i think try to make more of a general name and this is maybe be all super clear in your head, but for investors, they need to know this is super big right from the start.

49:37And you did explain the problem really well too. So we can fix this. You said, hey, look at all this paperwork you have to fill out. And it's very regulated. A lot of paperwork. This is a great side, the problem side. And what I would say is, hey, we have a big problem. When you do import and export, there are regulations. And there are regulations in Japan we have a lot of rules sake in order just to sell sake to another country you have to fill out how many forms more than tens you have to fill out over ten forms just to sell sake to another country and in that country to import it to Korea how many forms on the other side you have to fill out we need to be that so what we're doing is we're taking this old process and we're going to use AI and our company Trade AI is going to make it incredibly fast and easy and reduce the error rate and take it from costing$50 ,000 in paperwork down to$50 in paperwork from 50 days of work to five hours of work.

50:45And we're going to do it across, we've identified 150 verticals in Japan and Sake is a declining one but the consumer electronics is a bigger one chips is an even bigger one we're going to take every form every antiquated and we're not putting it into the large language models we're putting it into an open source model that we control and this is something that chat gpt or claude or grok or gemini they won't even have these forms we're going to have these proprietary forms and by the way the forms change every 18 months on average now it's like whoa okay there's a big problem and ai is It's perfect for this problem.

51:23So you have the kernel of such a great idea and you have the passion for it. We just have to flip the entire presentation. We can fix it. Awesome. Thank you very much. Okay. Well done. Anything else you want to add, Thomas? No, it's great. Exactly that. Yeah. And especially for small business, right? I mean, God, that's like almost makes it, you go from being, I can't do this to, I have all these new markets. So it opens up the TAM for small businesses in a way that they didn't have before. Awesome. Hi, I'm Jason. Hi Tom, hi everyone. I'm founder of Homi World. Homi World is our social network.

51:56So here's the problem. Meeting the people in the real world, it became so hard, as you know. So to solve this problem, we built Homi. Here's a demo. So we, she's Maria, meet Maria. She just moved to Japan and she was head of an IT company. She was here only, she was looking for the event and the people and the event. So she feels who's coming. So she feels she is interesting because of the same interest and same occupations. So that is why she decided to join and chat to meet her. Not only that our AI understands her and recommends who to meet others and why, recommended by AI. So I want to connect her as well.

52:39So AI creates a personal message for both parties to attract each other. This is not just idea. This we have already launched. This already launched. So this is our business model. This is Omakase friend subscriptions. Our AI matches people every week if you pay. So these are attractions and so forth. So our core value is building an AI-native trust network on a map. That is why I believe we can expand other categories. Imagine the world, wherever you are, where you live, You have AI understand you very well and connect you the people and match you the events and stay places something like that.

53:22So this is our team. This is also our investors. One of them is like legendary consumer app founders before Facebook. And one of them is like a board and also co-founder of Pokemon Go. I have a last question before I leave. What can AI never replace in the 20 years, 30 years later? I believe real human connection in the real world. We empower real human connection in the real world. That's why we should exist for the world. Thank you very much. This is Homi. Thomas, we saw a very good-looking design. I love good design. What comes to mind? I'd want to know your background a little more. You kind of shot past that, but just obviously you've gotten some good people like the co-founder of Pokemon Go.

54:04You must have some pretty good industry experience. Definitely hit on that when you're doing the presentation. I know you don't have a lot of time, but what's your background? I have been managing a startup in Japan for seven years in the past. And that is like homestay matching platform. I know how trust network will happen, how people connect. So that's my background. Okay. I also do hosting more than 100 guest travelers in my home as well. That's perfect because it ties into what you're doing. It kind of demonstrates how you know about this space and why this is your idea. you know why you chose this idea because you you know a lot about it.

54:42COVID hit 19 hit I feel lonely at the time for two years traveling around the world but when I get most enjoyable experience I always meet the matchmakers to connect with people and something like that so when I back to home I host that hosting my guests at my home so they everyone looking for not place but people so I and when I introduce people or bar they feel like amazing so if you just say they if if you experience in the seamless way by the app or something that would be next level so I thought that was impossible because you know I thought of work and work and you know, not business model.

55:30But when I see that GPT launch, oh my God, that became possible. Because that is my story. Yeah, you know, consumer apps are incredibly hard until they're not. And it's very much about finding a behavioral loop that people become addicted to. And that actually solves that problem for them. And I'm not convinced that you've found it yet. But my friend started this company, Meetup.com. we talked about it the last time I was here, Scott Heiferman. And what they eventually found was that there were people who were weird, like you, who liked to be hosts, and like me, I like to host. And those people are called connectors, and they are really good at matchmaking and building people.

56:15How it grows beyond your ability to do it, and learning that loop that becomes viral, and you have this viral coefficient is going to be so critical. And it looks like you're figuring that out. And you just have to bring us along on that journey as investors. If it's for everybody to do anything, as investors, we're like, huh, what's the ICP? What's the beachhead market? Is it book clubs? Is it group dinners? Is it hiking? And you showed so many pictures, so many different things. I think it would be more effective to say, we know here in Japan, And there are three things that people are going to go crazy for.

56:55Everybody is looking for somebody to go on a day trip, get on a train and go to Kyoto or go on a hike. Everybody wants to be active and they're looking for somebody to play pickleball with or to go skiing with. So we're starting with those group activities. Ten people, going skiing, getting on the train. And then everybody loves to cook or explore restaurants. So we're doing a bar hop and going and eating street food. And here's the first one we did, and this grew into 20, and now it's 250, and here are the people who run those groups. I'm very interested in who are the Airbnb hosts of this? Who are the people who will build this, the eBay sellers?

57:36And that, to me, would be the magic, is if you know how to find the other weirdos. And people didn't, everybody thought eBay was like, people would just get rid of junk in their garage. They never anticipated that there would be people who would make it their full-time job. And that's something that now people can imagine because of Airbnb, because of being an Uber driver, because of, you know, all these weird monetizable hobbies, being a podcaster, being an influencer. So I'm very excited about your company. Your strength is design. And then go to market and explaining to us that the next piece for you will be that, I believe that'll get investors to this is for you to show us the growth journey and the top customers, the top verticals.

58:20The go-to market is, and you know, Zuckerberg had one. He's just like, I'm going to go after college campuses and dating and liking and just figuring out the relationship status. Now, if you were to look at the Meta Corporation now, it's not really about relationship status, is it? It's grown to be so many different things. And I'm trying to think of another example like snapchat it was really about people having these friendship streets for ephemeral messaging and making the messages disappear and it was like a private social network there's all these different devices of who the initial group is that builds the foundation my space was I think artistic people in LA who were trying to get you know was kind of pre influencer it was like the original influencers Paris Hilton had one it was like self-expression Self-expression and then maybe trying to even make yourself famous.

59:12Yeah, it was like that sort of combination. Here's a very interesting one. Is there somebody who makes a living doing this in your system now? Or do you know of somebody who makes a living hosting events like this? We're hosting by ourselves right now. So we don't yet have that. I wonder if hiking would be an interesting one. I saw hiking in there. What do you think is the most interesting two? For me personally or in the business? Which two do you think you could get to grow and double every month? I think we need to focus on the expat international and community and founder community in Japan.

59:46In Tokyo. Expat community. Expat community. Perfect. Yeah. That sounds like a great one. I would appreciate it. If you share the perspective, like how should we handle the focusing point in Tokyo or New York? Because if we focus too much on Tokyo, that will not become global standardized product. But your social network, I think we need to create some global standards. It's fine to start here. Yeah, and Tokyo is super in vogue, and it's also hard for foreigners to access Japan. You know, they don't speak the language. There are all these, like, secret spots. So I think you could take advantage of that.

1:00:16Also, I like that you really hit upon trust. You know, in order to meet someone in real life, I mean, especially for women, there has to be a trust component there. So I think that's definitely going to be part of your secret sauce is getting that right. I want to build on Thomas's comments there. Trusted. Right now, one of my theories of these kind of businesses and growth is I call it like hot embers. You know, like coal? I don't know that. Fire, small bits of fire. What do you call charcoal in Japanese? Sumi. Sumi. So if I have a brick of sumi and I put it here, it's hot. When we're sitting here, we don't feel it.

1:00:57That's one person. Then you put five people and you put them next to each other. Now we're going to feel a little bit of heat. Then you put 10 people on, you have 15 coals, they start heating everything up and we're going to step back. Whoa, it's getting hot. Then you put another 15 on. Whoa, it gets really hot. It's raining. It burns the desk. It burns to the floor. And you have to just very quickly build, or very slowly and methodically add that coal to the fire. And I think that would be very interesting for expats. So if there is a German, Germans in Japan, and Americans in Japan, and French people in Japan, that's really fascinating.

1:01:33Because then when I come here, I started a group with the people we had lunch with that time. And I was like, hey, I'm thinking about going skiing. Hey, I'm looking for a place to stay. Hey, I'm looking for this. And I popped up my own little one. And people started giving me good advice. And then people started giving me direct advice. Hey, this hotel is like a secret one. I didn't want to put it in the group chat. But it's really like a little bit less expensive. And here's the person. man if you can solve problems for people like that that feels like a great place to start and you want to start in your own backyard with something you know and you can be successful at and that you're going to enjoy doing expat sounds perfect thank you very much because there's expat bars here in Roppongi somebody took me to one I think it might have been champagne only but all the Americans were going to this one place in Roppongi that was a champagne bar it's very weird but there's a is there American expat are there American expat places here that America yeah yeah is it is it like a specific neighborhood or is it just specific spots well punky but lots lots of spots lots of spots where if you go there you see the Americans is there equivalent for Germans and French yeah yeah that's and where does that exist how would I find that read it maybe there's a subreddit or something how would I ever be aware of it some yep learn from a friend right well especially if someone can take you you and then bring you around I think is and this you know if you trust you met someone on this app and then you can trust that they're not gonna you know that they're like a nice person it figures out mutual contacts or whatever imagine the experience where you're whenever you come to find like place here not only find stay so you can seamlessly group spontaneously group to welcome you like this is the handle by AI so that you know I think I believe but we can change the way to how do we connect people.

1:03:14So that's my strong conviction about how we change the people connect. All right, big round of applause for our presenters and for Thomas.