Mason Yates What gives you the most energy?

0:00Mason Yates:This is my last episode as the host of Wild Hearts and I want to make sure it's worth your time. I have one question that is threaded across 77 episodes. What gives you the most energy? When Melanie Perkins from Canberra answered it, she said, When a customer shares their design with someone else for the very first time, someone so proud of what they've made that they can't help but show it to someone else, the same moment her design students used to freeze in front of now happening hundreds of millions of times every single month when tim doyle from eucalyptus answered it he said when people on the team do something that they couldn't have imagined six months earlier could eucalyptus have been the ones to win the telehealth glp1 moment without their house of brands insights from the very beginning i genuinely doubt it years into both of their journeys both answers sit front and center of their pre-seed decks the reason these companies were born and have created history was because these founders discovered alignment with who they are and the gifts they can share with the world i remember in episode one it was during covid and tim doyle had this like four-worded phrase it was earn the right to exist which hilariously became a meme and then it became a value and then at every hard point over that journey that company had the backbone that had earned the right to exist on another episode tom kelly the co-founder and ceo of heidi health wrote essentially confessing to his investors that he'd failed a super personal moment of failure and then the chat gbt moment happened a doctor scribe feature one of up to 10 features on their pre-seed deck became the product and that was the sole focus it spread wildly bottoms up without anyone pushing it 12 months later after he sent that email there are 10 million dollars of error are the mission never changed to double the world's healthcare capacity but the expression of its product sharpened flabbert fleet spent years building the technology before finding the right customer i remember her sharing how like she uh one there was five of six companies at the same time doing what they were doing and they failed the sixth fleet did not and the answer was to fire the customers until the funnel narrowed to the ones with the biggest unsolved problem.

2:43Mason Yates:She told us, one miner told her, this is the biggest breakthrough in mining exploration since I was born. Again, the mission never changed. The right customer finally heard it. When it goes really right, the mission really changes because it's in total alignment with the founding team but often the zero to one expression of it gets forced into clarity by truth-seeking founders who just discover insights through relentless action i have decided to hang my boots up at blackbird but rather than summarize eight years on the investment team here are just three things that wild hearts has taught me on the craft of interviewing number one the second answer is almost always better than the first the first answer is what someone's probably planned to say and if silence doesn't unlock it try two words what else and you will be surprised at the nuance and depth that they continue to share the second was that last night i was at a flamenco performance which is this like deeply historical spanish uh performance of dancing and singing and guitar and i was sitting there beforehand trying to learn and i found out this idea of duende and it's the moment an audience sees the raw spirit of a performer break through and you just can't manufacture it you can only create the conditions for it and so obsessive preparation earns you the right to go off script but listening is what takes it there And so that combination I found is also what makes a guest feel safe.

4:35Mason Yates:And I guess it feels safe is a conversation that is more alive where they can feel like they can be themselves because they really can. And when they are, it's magnetic and that's what inspires people to join. Number three, I started Wild Hearts for founders to learn from other founders at the front line. And there were podcasts on super successful founders, but I needed that vehicle to find out what are the best doing right now, right at the beginning. And then we learned that 50 % of employees at our portfolio companies had listened to their founders episode before they joined. This was a huge and epic surprise.

5:17And we paid attention to who was actually tuning in and evolved accordingly.

5:21Mason Yates:So we interviewed operators, which were some of our best recorded episodes. I guess what I'm saying is the best conversations I had were the ones where I knew the most going in and controlled the least coming out. Honestly, it was like a high, just like when you meet a special founder. Really listening gives the episode a chance to flourish and just let curiosity lead the way. As I mentioned, this will be my last episode. So the obvious question was, who did I want to see take over? and frankly it was like the easiest decision in the world like Kate Glazebrook I asked her and I'm honored to share that she accepted and she will be the new host and why was it so easy well like I spent eight years asking founders questions what's it like to be in the abyss and Kate has literally been inside it she built applied that it is CEO raised venture capital sat on the board, exited the company after selling it.

6:21And she has answered under real pressure with real money on the line, every question that I and the investment team have asked of founders. And so that changes what she'll hear and that changes what she'll ask. And so I couldn't imagine anyone else taking wild hearts from one to 100.

6:42Mason Yates:She's one of the smartest, most charismatic people I know and so get excited for the episodes to come. I can say this because I've officially left Blackbird. They will go down as one of the best venture capital firms in history and it goes beyond returns. They know the art of people and the science of building companies and their belief in wild hearts with wild ideas right at the beginning is is truly what has made them stand out and and be uh a truly founder-centric community and i'm grateful that they believed in me and they believed in wild hearts uh i'm leaving with mentors and teammates and friends that that i'll be eternally grateful for and have for the rest of my life and so yeah guys if you're listening i'm already missing you um anyway i guess this sort of brings me to the final question that we should all be asking ourselves what gives you the most energy let's build godspeed wild hearts