SPEAKER_00: And I was the bad guy for bringing even bringing it up,
SPEAKER_03: you know, because it's not founder friendly. This is in the past, though, I don't think a lot of that's
SPEAKER_00: happening now. Right? None of it's happening now. Yeah, right. But that that did
SPEAKER_00: happen so that everyone knows in the past five, six years. I mean, that was, I wouldn't say it was common, but it was it was happening. And that's how later stage firms were competing. And they're making their best offer. And they're appealing to some of the short term thinking of the founders. If you want to be generous, you could say short term thinking. It's not a criticism of the founders, because they're just acting rationally. Right. So it's an offering, we have multiple
SPEAKER_00: offers, and we picked the one that's best for us. Yeah. So
SPEAKER_03: you don't blame it, but it's bad hygiene. I think it's as Michael
SPEAKER_03: is saying it doesn't exist anymore. But yeah, wow, that's a good first topic. We went deep on some inside information on
SPEAKER_04: how things work in Silicon Valley.
SPEAKER_01:
This Week in Startups is brought to you by Northwest Registered Agent will form your company fast give you the documents you need to open a business bank account and more. Visit Northwest registered agent.com slash twist to get a 60% discount on your next LLC. Dev Squad, most dev agencies only
offer developers. Why? Because product management is hard. Get an entire product team for the cost of one US developer plus 10% off at dev squad comm slash twist. And open phone brings your team's business calls, texts and contacts into one delightful app that works anywhere. Get 20% off your first six months at open phone comm slash twist.
SPEAKER_03: All right, everybody, welcome to This Week in Startups and the first episode of liquidity is a podcast where I'm trying to put
together a little bit of a mix of GPS and LPS and David Weisberg is going to help me moderate because I as a GP want to contribute and David's done such an excellent job moderating so David, why don't you kick us off? Welcome to This Week in Startups. This week we have a
SPEAKER_05: very exciting episode. We have of course the world's greatest moderator, Jason Kalakanis and a special guest Michael Kim from Sandana Capital, one of the top LPs on the planet. Guys, welcome
to the podcast. Thank you. Great to be here.
SPEAKER_03: Thanks for having me on my podcast, David. Great job moderating last week. No pressure. No pressure.
SPEAKER_00:
Yeah, it's great to see both of you on together. Yeah, we're doing a bunch of experimentation over here at
SPEAKER_03:
This Week in Startups trying to get some new faces involved and some new formats. So here we go. A roundtable with an LP and a GP.
SPEAKER_05: All right, excellent. Excellent. Well, thank you, Jason. Let's get started. The
Wall Street Journal reported this week that LPs are doubting venture fund startup marks. Teresa Hager from Cambridge Associates, which advises over half a trillion in institutional capital, stated in the article that whether LPs can trust valuations from VCs today is a very relevant question. Michael, why don't you start by giving a quick bio on yourself to audience? Sure. I'm the founder of Sandana Capital. I started about 12
SPEAKER_00: years ago, we have about 2 billion under management, and we focus solely on seed and pre seed funds. So we, as an LP are making commitments to these funds. We view ourselves as the lead investor, not only by check size, we do write 10 to $25 million checks, but also because we work so closely with our fund managers and ultimately want to be their trusted advisor. So I think we have a pretty good perspective on how our fund managers are thinking and what they're seeing. And this is globally. So we invest predominantly in the US but also outside as well. Tell me about this Wall Street Journal article. Do you think
SPEAKER_05: that this is commonplace? Is this a one off? How commonplace is it for GPS to overstate their marks?
SPEAKER_00: I think it's not so much overstating it, but rather, perhaps being a little bit slow on the draw in terms of marking things down. I would say that, you know, we talk about this a lot with our fund managers. And for the most part, I'd say that they're they're quite good at marking things down some better than others. And you know, in terms of actual the mark downs that came over the past two years, the bulk of it actually came by Q3 of 2022. Because that's when you know, the Nasdaq was going down 33%. And especially the later stage companies, I think our fund managers did a really good job of actually sort of marketing to market and doing sort of comparables analysis and saying, Oh, this $10 billion company that's that got valued in 2021 at 100x revenue multiples, that's just unrealistic. And it's closer to like 10 times, maybe 20 times. So we saw the bulk of our markdowns come in the second half of 2022. And I'm getting confused by the years. I know it's January. It's going fast right now, isn't it? Yeah, it's 2024. Now,
SPEAKER_03: Michael, okay, got it. Yeah. And interestingly, over the past
SPEAKER_00: four quarters, there's been sort of low single digit markdowns. And in fact, there are newer funds, we've actually had mark ups because, you know, the seed stage companies actually doing the series A's that brings you a markup. And so the punchline is, you know, I think the bulk of the marks came, markdowns came in 2022. But to answer your question more specifically, you know, do LPs worry about this? Absolutely. And in the context, actually, of their asset allocation. So you might have heard about the denominator effect. What that really means is, if you're a university endowment, and you have a big pool of public equities, and that went down, you know, 40% in 2021, suddenly, your private portfolio is over allocated. And so, you know, what generally happens is the private markets in private markets, you know, PE and venture, the the marks start coming down, but so there's a lag time and it's sort of that, that trough or that that period of time where the the private marks haven't really caught up to the public marks that LPs get all twisted up. So I think we're actually past that. And, you know, I think it's very rare to have a fund manager that has, you know, a deck of corn in their portfolio that hasn't at least been looked at in terms of current marks. Let's get to brass tacks on that. Let's say you have a fund
SPEAKER_05: manager and they're marking up their book, you know, or they're
not marking down their book. Would this preclude you from investing in them? Is this like, you know, a deal breaker?
SPEAKER_00: I think it's a red flag, maybe a yellow flag, but perhaps even a red flag, you know, it's either that they're not on top of things, they're not sophisticated enough to know that, you know, they should be looking at the valuations that they're carrying out. Just one easy example is that, you know, does the fund manager mark their safe up to, you know, for example, none of our fund managers do that. But, you know, you see that on occasion, but it is at least a yellow flag. And where we actually have the benefit of sort of our little perch is that, you know, we might have three fund managers in a specific company, and then we can actually see where each one's carrying them. And then we'll actually proactively talk to each one saying, hey, these guys are carrying it at 50% mark down, why are you carrying it at, you know, at the last round. So we have an active discussion, and we don't see it that often. I would say that in general, our fund manager has been pretty good about, about marking things down. But you know, it is it is something that writ large, the venture capital community really needs to keep a better eye on. And I think that's, I think that's why the LPS are sort of on top of it for them.
SPEAKER_05: And Jason, you're an LP and 20 funds. So you both have the GP hat, but also the LP hat. What are your thoughts on this?
SPEAKER_03: When I'm an LP and funds, I'm a very simple individual investor. As an LP, I don't answer to an investment committee. I'm the investment committee. I don't have a CIO or a family office set up as such. So you know, I'm just looking at the moi. You
know, the multiple of my invested capital, the two numbers, how much did I put in, I put 100,000 into this fund, and ultimately, how much did I get out now, of course, you can back into the IRR and everything. And, you know, I
always kind of shocked as I became a fund manager, Michael over time, and started seeing reports back from the people I
was Lping, right, just that there was no standard here, there really is not a standard on valuations. And people were doing all kinds of cute things like, oh, somebody paid, you know, in a secondary market for shares of a company. So I invested in the shares were 10. But there was a secondary transaction that occurred at 15. So where do you mark that company? Right? Yeah. Should you take the high water mark of, you know, some secondary transaction that occurred? Who knows who's buying those shares, how sophisticated they are? Do you take the public market comps that you hear Brad Gerson or talk about all the time for SAS companies, and then apply them to private market companies? Well, the private companies might have different growth rates and the amount of cash they have in the bank while this matters. And so there doesn't seem to be a gold standard of how to do this. I'm just always in favor of being as intellectually honest and
SPEAKER_03: rigorous as possible. And focusing on the DPI eventually,
what do we distribute in terms of cash, that's what's going to matter. And I had all these funds, it was very interesting. I'm sure you had this happen, Michael as well, during this zerp environment, 2019 2020 2021, some of them hit crypto, you know, libraries, and you just people would be like, Oh, yeah, we're, we're, we're six x fund. And I'm like, okay, or 60 shares and close shop. Yeah, we're done here. And they're like, Oh, yeah, there's no ability to do that. There's nobody buying these crypto assets at that price, you know, the two years into the fund, and they're six x, if you were two years into your fund, Michael, and the fund was six x, the correct thing to do would be start liquidating, right? Or start thinking about it, at least. Yeah. And you know,
SPEAKER_00:
there's obviously a discount for private securities, right. And especially with tokens and actual crypto positions, you know, the market in a lot of them weren't deep enough so that they can actually unload. And so the proper thing there probably should have been to carry it at some sort of discount, right? Just to play devil's advocate, I've had multiple LPS, I won't
SPEAKER_05: state them, but I've had multiple LPS, basically telling me that there is incentive for the for for them for the marks to be held higher. You know, Mike, yeah, at a lot of the top LPS, there's revolving doors, there's institutions where every two years, there's a new team, and many LPS actually pay a bonus based on the marks. So it's not only an issue, it's an issue of incentives. Do you not see that in some of your peers? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I know of different LP entities where
SPEAKER_00: the annual bonus is actually based on IRR, which I think is doesn't make sense to me because that IRR, especially if you have a young portfolio can change so drastically, right. And I think, I at least for us, we don't really look at IRR until something's, you know, we might look at something that might be 10 years old. And then that gives you a useful metric to compare against other asset classes. But to look at an IRR right now of you, let's just use an extreme example of a secondary fund, right? A secondary fund is buying something, let's say at 50% discount on their books, they will market back up to what the nav is. And so right there, you have, you know, 1000 1000% IRRs. Now, obviously, that comes down over time. But you know, using IRRs for a young portfolio
doesn't make sense to me.
SPEAKER_03: There's tons of incentives here. And I always try to think about,
do we actually understand our portfolio, this is something I've worked on, as you know, my organization has grown, we're on our fourth fund now, got 21 people, just making sure we actually understand what's happening at our companies. That's the bigger issue in many cases. So sure, you might have one GP getting cute and marking things up another GP being super pessimistic and conservative. Most are probably doing something in between the two. But the more important thing is are you on top of these companies and you know where they're headed, because I've been, you know, I've had friends
who have very large positions in a billion dollar company that suddenly goes to zero. And they read about it in the press, and
they didn't even know what was going wrong with that company. I think we saw envision get blown out recently, right. And that was a company that was worth a couple of billion, I'm sure Michael, some of your funds might have had exposure to it. And then all of a sudden, some top tier firm is now in the one from the first quartile to the fourth. And they didn't actually know what was happening. And I'm really examining myself as a fund manager, right and thinking, today liquidate enough
SPEAKER_03: of these shares early because as a seed fund, we sometimes have opportunities to liquidate at 500 million, a billion and do we
did we do the right thing in terms of getting DPI from TV p.i.
Starting a business used to be a pain you needed a lawyer there were in fees, it was a mess. Now with Northwest registered agent, it only takes 10 clicks and 10 minutes. Northwest provides everything you need to start and maintain your business. Every LLC, corporation or nonprofit and Northwest forms comes equipped with registered agent service, a business address, a website and posting email, a phone number. And this is all covered by Northwest privacy by default. Again, your full business identity will be live in 10 minutes and in 10 clicks. So here's your call to action for $39 plus state fees. They'll form your LLC, corporation or nonprofit and launch your business in just minutes. Visit Northwest registered agent.com slash twist today. That's North West registered agent.com slash twist today. Jason, what's your you have a pretty prolific and
SPEAKER_05: large portfolio? What's your best practice? What's your cadence and follow up? And how do you like to follow up with entrepreneurs? We're building software to do it actually. So
SPEAKER_03: we did two things that are unique. It's great question. Number one, we put into our side letters that we expect 10 updates a year from founders. Most founders do five, we then put in our firm the past year, a primary and a secondary contact for every single startup. We then have every single startup
in a slack room. And we have in our database, their cell phone
numbers. If we don't get an update, we've also started to build software for this. And so this year, we started deploying the software. Very simple. We asked people to answer five questions if they don't send updates. Number one, how many employees do you have currently, you know, on January 1? What's the cash balance on January 1? What was your spend in December? What was your revenue in December? And then answer a question? Are you when are you planning to raise money next? We're raising money, we're not planning to raise money, three months, six months next year. And when we just get the answer to like those five questions, we can do a lot of math. And we can look at over time, how many employees is this company have? When what's the burn? And what's the growth rate, etc. And once we get compliance on that, it works out pretty well. And so it might take us five contacts with the founder to get an update.
Can we just tell him, hey, just give us these answered these five questions, and then I'll call them on the phone. I'll text them. Or can you imagine like, I call somebody on the phone, and it's a you know, startup and I'm like, Hey, it's Jake. And they're like, Oh, this is the first time you've ever called me on my phone. And I'm like, Yeah, hey, we sent like five emails. I know you're super busy. I don't want to be a pest.
SPEAKER_03: I know what it's like to run a company. But sometimes when
people don't respond, it's because they're really struggling with something. We're here to help. So are you struggling with something? Is there anything we can help with? And man, people open right up. Right? They open right up. Ah,
yeah, you know, we lost our salesperson. I lost my ops person. I lost my co founder. We lost his big client. Everything's a disaster. We're thinking about shutting down. And we can just have an honest conversation. Right. And I think
SPEAKER_03: that's kind of the best practice I've come to in my second
SPEAKER_03: decade, which is just giving founders permission to speak freely and not and then build a little software around it to
scale it. Good. It's a great question. It's a two sided
SPEAKER_05: relationship. If you want founders to be honest with you, you have to be willing to take their honesty and to be productive and helpful. Michael, you were gonna say something
SPEAKER_03: about this approach? Yeah. Well, yeah, I mean, I think that's a
SPEAKER_00: very smart approach. And we do some of that as well. You know, we structurally we have monthly calls with each one of our fund managers, they're 30 minutes, they're no agenda, it's not a portfolio review. So, you know, we let the fund manager talk about what they're thinking about what they're seeing in the market, VCs, being VCs, they want to talk about their best companies. So we get a lot of qualitative information around that, you know, new hires, new contracts, what the revenue is tracking to, we actually have a rolling list of companies that are coming up for funding over the next quarter or two. And so, you know, and we have a actually a Salesforce based database. So we use that and we capture a lot of qualitative data that way. But I think that discipline of doing monthly or bi monthly calls is important for us to stay on top of where our fund managers are and actually where all the portfolio companies are, at least the value drivers. Yeah, there was another company
SPEAKER_03: pitch.com I think that was in the news this past week and I you know, I hate to pick specific companies and you know, beat up on whatever but the co founder and the founder were sort of talking publicly about it but they had raised they were valued at a big number raised you know, somebody that I think you know, a small amount of money left and you know, sometimes these things look really great on paper. And then when you dig under the hood and you're looking at the reality of it, you know, somebody got really frisky with that last
valuation and they didn't grow into it. And you just have to sort of accept that and man it sucks when you have to mark things down or remove things from the portfolio but we're in a power law game. So once you accept this is a power law, you're going to hit you know, two or three winners in your fund. And they're going to represent what Michael 99% of the returns. Yeah, that's majority. Yeah. So you just you
SPEAKER_03: have to understand the game that's being played on the field and manipulating these numbers or tweaking them, massaging
them. It's just it's short term thinking. Yeah, I mean, David,
SPEAKER_00: it's just bring it back to your original question. I think it buys a lot of goodwill for fund managers to err on the side of conservatism, being proactive in marking things down and being transparent to their LPS. I think LPS really appreciate it when the fund manager is telling them that we proactively mark this down and hear the reasons why. And that is an order of magnitude better position to be in order of magnitude better dynamic than the LP having to look at a statement of investments and say, Hey, what's this mark and then calling that GP up and say, how come we didn't mark this down? What are you thinking? The other point I'd want to make is that none of our fund managers mark things up unless it's a new round led by an outside lead. You can argue that companies that raised in
SPEAKER_00: 2018 or 19, and they just are doing so well, they haven't needed to mark up and now they're doing 500 million in revenue, and they're profitable, but they're being held at 200 million valuation. You could argue that maybe you should mark that up. What do you do in that situation? Yeah, I haven't seen
SPEAKER_03: that. Yeah, we've we've seen it in just basically two companies
SPEAKER_00: out of 4000 that we were in and we told the fund manager that they should talk to their accounting firm and, you know, get their thoughts on whether they should actually mark the market. But you know, our fund managers actually ended up not marking things up. So I appreciate that. We had that happen with calm calm that we invested at four and a half
SPEAKER_03:
million, about 6% of the company, and they just kept going up into the right but they were so capital efficient, they didn't need to raise money. The second round was 250 million. So
SPEAKER_03: between those two moments in time, we had it at four and a half million on the books. And three or four years, maybe it
was four years later, boom, all of a sudden, they had his $250 million round where we were able to sell some shares. I have a honest amount. But you know, we locked in like a five x for investors selling 10% at 250. It was quite nice. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:
Nice. Yeah, we never it never came across our minds to mark it
SPEAKER_03: up. We're always just focused on helping the companies and not
playing any games with the marks. Yeah.
SPEAKER_05: How do you look at that? Michael use? You mentioned over 4000 underlying portfolio companies? What do you want your GPS ideally to do when it comes to secondary?
SPEAKER_00: That's a really interesting question. Because historically, our fund managers have been pretty active with secondaries. And you know, we were thinking about what what's kind of like the right framework for this? Is it like, are you a 10 10x mo IC on your original investment, or on your total investment, including the follow ons? Or is it a percentage of the fund that, you know, it'll return where the games can start creeping in is where, you know, they're very close to being one x DPI. And they can they can get into carry by being by selling some shares of a company, then we actually have to worry about are they selling too early. But in general, I think our fund managers have been pretty good about actively thinking about how to get liquidity. And I would say that at minimum, they would be they would start considering selling a portion,
not all of it, but a portion at least a 10x. And, you know, in general, it's returned sort of 10 to 20% of their fund, perhaps, I think that's pretty good numbers. We we look to pair our
SPEAKER_03: position when we're 10 2030 40 x by just 10%. And we did that with calm at 250. And then I think a billion in change. And on that 376 $378,000 investment, you always remember the winning numbers 378 in a, you know, we wound up selling 20% of our position, I think it wound up being about 12 or 13 million in total between those two transactions, like a million at the first one in 12 of the second. And I remember having a conversation with one LP Michael, and they said, Oh, my God, this is the best investment I ever had. I'm like, congratulations, or whatever. And I said, Yeah, we still have 80% of our shares. And they said, I don't understand. And I
SPEAKER_03: said, we just sold a portion of our position. And they're like,
SPEAKER_03: I still don't understand. What do you mean? I'm like, okay, we have this many shares 100,000 shares, let's say a million shares sold 200,000. We still have the he's like, what? You're
SPEAKER_03: telling us there's we could do five times that and I was like, Yeah, he just, it kind of broke the LPS brain that we you know,
had this happen. And it happened with, you know, another SAS company we had in peak zerp, they went through our accelerator became a unicorn, I think we're able to clear 16 or 17 million on a million dollar cost basis by selling 14 or 15%
of our position. You really have to take advantage of those
SPEAKER_03: moments. And I kicked myself with Robin Hood, we had so many
opportunities, you know, at 30 and $40. Before they went public, I really believe in that team, I still do. I personally held all my shares, but when we distributed, I think we wound up distributing between, you know, maybe at 15 or $20, something in that range. And it did go to 60 or 70 when it was public. And so it's very hard to time the markets and yeah, you do the best you can. The other advice I would always
SPEAKER_00: give our fund managers don't sell your entire position. So
SPEAKER_00: we've had two cases where our fund managers, one of them sold their entire position at a $300 million valuation, you know, high fives all around. But then we're thinking, Oh, no, but
SPEAKER_00: they're currently their last round was at 9 billion, and they are filing to go public. This would have made a 20 x fund into 100 x fund, which never happens. Yeah, it's Yeah, that would have
SPEAKER_00: been very rarefied territory. We have another fund manager, who was basically the co founder of a company, he sold his entire position at a billion five, the company's most recent round was done at 25 billion, you could argue that maybe it's the true value is somewhere between six and eight. But again, he missed out on multiple turns of DPI. So you got to have schmuck insurance, you can't sell your whole position, just to talk
SPEAKER_03:
personally about my personal Uber position, I still have a large portion of it. It's trading today, a broker record. But I sold a little bit back to the company years before the masa round at $32 a share. Then I sold a little bit to Moss at I think $40 a share, you know, as I was able to pair the position,
take care of my family, buy a home, you know, and do all that important stuff. Awesome. Right. And still have so much skin in the game. And I don't know that I'll ever sell another share of Uber, I just had Dara on the pod. And I just have so much faith in that company that I and I was talking to freeburg about Google. And I was like, what if you held on to your entire position or chamath held on to his entire Facebook position?
SPEAKER_03: You know, it's, you have to think these things through, you know, keep some portion of your position because it's so rare to be on a rocket ship, right?
SPEAKER_03: Going from an idea sketched on the back of a napkin to a robust, stable product requires a wide range of skills. You can spend ages looking for a one in a million developer who can do it all. Or you can quickly ramp up an entire product team to help you build and launch your product with our partner dev squad. dev squad provides an entire development team packed with top talent from Latin America. Your elite squad will include two to six full stack developers, a technical product manager, plus experts in product strategy, UI and UX design dev ops and QA, all working together to make your SaaS product a success. You can ramp up an entire product team fast in your time zone and at rates 75% cheaper than a comparable US based team. And with dev squad you pay month to month with no long term contracts. Take the hassle out of assembling and managing a sprawling team of freelancers and work with a group that's ready to hit the ground running. Visit dev squad comm slash twist and get 10% off your engagement. That's dev squad comm slash twist.
SPEAKER_00: Well, so David, what I'd point out is one way we think about our fund managers is are they sort of like starry eyed, you know, looking to save the world, just dreamers finding great founders? Or are they also and I'm saying also, are they also hardcore investors? Are they actually thinking about making money? And, you know, you would think that VCs are all in it for that, but they're actually not there are people who are just like, in love with companies and what they're doing and the
mission, you know, the sort of the stereotype, but we we specifically look for investors, someone who's actively thinking, how am I going to make money? Does it make sense to actually think about a secondary here? You know, like Jake, how described, that's, that's ideal, you know, you always want someone to be thinking, when is the right time to exit, perhaps not the entire position, but you know, some some portion of it and actually make money. There are contemporaries of mine who I've had conversations with
SPEAKER_03: who have said, I don't want to sell in the secondary round. I
said, Why I'm selling, you know, whatever position. And they
said, Well, I don't want to make the founders feel bad. And I don't want them to think I don't have faith in them. To
Michael's point, like, there are big hearted folks in VC, who he's, you know, what he's describing is not like, a rare case. I think a lot of people feel this sense of loyalty. And when we had a group of founders say to us, Hey, we're selling in secondary, will you pass on selling in secondary so that we
SPEAKER_03: can sell more?
SPEAKER_02:
This is a day and I talked to my team. And I said, let me get
SPEAKER_03:
back to you on that. I talked to a couple of my mentors, you know, very high profile VCs, we've been in it for multiple decades. And they said, Well, you also you also work for the LPS. And so the language I came up with was, listen, we're party pursue with you, whatever percentage you sell will sell
you, it's really in your best interest is what I told them, you know, for the community for me to be able to liquidate so I can raise future funds, so that I can help the next group of
SPEAKER_03: entrepreneurs. So I have to take advantage of this opportunity for my LPS. Just so you know, for the ecosystem, it's good. The founders like, yeah, we totally get it, no problem. But you know, the founders took a shot, they went to all their investors and said, Please don't please decline selling
secondary. And they put a little pressure, not a lot. And I think, you know, probably work with half the investors and the other half were like, the LPS need to get a taste here too. They trusted us with those early investments and took the risk. So you have to be thoughtful. And J Cal secondary has been
SPEAKER_05: controversial subject for decades and Silicon Valley founders secondary. Is there a specific amount of money that you you think is good for founders to take off? Like, you know, I would feel very uncomfortable if they were taking large positions off. Yeah, exact number two founders, what could they take off each
SPEAKER_03:
without you being worried? I have a number in mind. I want to
hear Michaels first, though.
SPEAKER_00: I think that if a founder would take, say 2 million off the
table, by the time companies sort of at the Series B stage,
that makes sense. I think a secondary at Series A is utterly crazy. That's nice. So, so you generally see founder secondary is sort of Series B, maybe, but typically even later stage, right, Series C or later. I mean, ultimately, what you want to avoid is demotivating that founder, they have to maintain that hustle. And suddenly, if they have 100 million dollars in their bank account, they may not wake up every morning, worried about the company, they may not go to bed every night worried about the company. And I think there is, to Jason and Jason's point, there is, and to David, your question, there is probably a number and depends perhaps even on geography, but let's just say Bay Area, I would say that, you know, two to maybe 3 million, maybe helps reduce your mortgage payment or eliminates it helps ensure that you have, you're comfortable that you can cover your kids schools and your living expenses. But you know, double digit millions is just
SPEAKER_00: ridiculous. Yeah, my upper bound is 10 million. Because after
SPEAKER_03:
taxes, it's you know, seven, six and a half, whatever it winds up being, again, it really does have based on geography, as Michael correctly pointed out, that's exactly what I thought of, what is your primary residence going to cost? If it's a family, if it's in the Bay Area, it's two to $5 million for home. I know that sounds crazy to some people who are living outside of New York, LA and the Bay Area. When you start talking
SPEAKER_03: about private aviation or a second home, that's when a founder is completely completely off the reservation, they've jumped the fence, they're distracted. Because I can tell
SPEAKER_03: you, well, you know, and I'm 53. Now, when I got my second home at the age of 50, and I had a ski house, my life became like super complex, oh, there's a second house and I have not gotten private aviation I literally have and I, you know, sitting there with the jet card in my email box ready to sign and just didn't do it because I was like, you know what, I just want to stay focused and be normal. Once I started to
private jets, I'm just disconnected. I kind of like meeting people at the airport. The fact that I can fly business class is a big enough win for me. You know, it's like delightful to be in United or American Airlines business or first good enough for me as a kid from Brooklyn. So I can tell
SPEAKER_03: you the number that was crazy was I don't know if you had anybody with exposure Michael to the Hoppin founder, which my Gerson or had access to he took 200 million off during COVID
SPEAKER_03: great move on his part that was insane. And then there was bird and I think the bird founder somebody whispered to me that they may have taken 50 million off the table the scooter company. He got a nice place place in Miami. There's your
SPEAKER_03: point like how focused are you going to be as a 30 year old person with a mansion or two? Yeah, well, you know, the other
SPEAKER_00: thing that was driving this, at least in the ZURP era was the late stage guys, as a way of competing, were saying, Hey, let's do a founder secondary, we'll buy the shares, and then post money post close, we will give you more options. So to be honest, in a way that's bribery. And that's actually how some firms are competing in order to win a competitive deal at the late stage. And you know who gets screwed in that is the early stage investors, right? And this is like the dark underbelly. And we fought it and
SPEAKER_03:
I you know that now you put me in a really weird position. I'm trying to protect my LPS as the seed investor in the company, we own 10%. You come in and say, Hey, we're going to give the
founders this offer to win the deal. So we're putting 100
million, and we're going to buy 25 million of their shares. And we're only gonna buy the founder shares, not the other employee shares. And then who is the founder going to say they want as their new partner at the board meeting exactly from A or B? Well, B's offering me $25 million. And they said, will re up you in the option pool. So that's a bribe. It's literally
SPEAKER_03: a bad. I was in a board meeting, Michael saying, Hey, guys, we
SPEAKER_03: should fork this conversation. Let's make a pure fundraising
decision for all shareholders, and then make the secondary decision. And the re ups for founders at the first board meeting after we close that. And you know what happened? I lost.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah. And I was the bad guy for bringing even bringing it up,
SPEAKER_03: you know, because it's not founder friendly. Yeah. That's
SPEAKER_00: this is in the past, though. I don't think a lot of that's happening now. Right? None of it. Yeah, right. But that that
SPEAKER_02:
SPEAKER_00:
did happen. So that everyone knows in in the past five, six years. I mean, that was, I wouldn't say it was common, but it was it was happening. And that's how later stage firms were competing. And, you know, they're making their best offer. And, you know, they're appealing to some of the short term thinking of the founders. If you want to be generous, you can say short term thinking it's not a criticism of the founders, because they're just acting rationally. Right. So it's an
SPEAKER_00: offering. We have multiple offers. And we picked the one
SPEAKER_03: that's best for us. Yeah. So you don't blame it, but it's bad hygiene. I think it's as Michael was saying, it doesn't exist
SPEAKER_03: anymore. But yeah, wow, that's a good first topic. We went deep
SPEAKER_04: on some inside information on how things work in Silicon Valley.
SPEAKER_03:
Are you still using your personal number for business? Well, stop such a common mistake that founders make, but you never have to make that mistake again. Because of open phone open phone has read out every single detail of what a modern business phone should look like open phone makes it super easy to get a business phone number not only for you, but for your entire team. And here's the magic. It works through a gorgeous app that works on your phone and your desktop. I can tell you open phone is amazing because all of our sales team and ops teams use it every day. Why? I don't want people using their personal number, then they leave the company and they're still getting phone calls from our customers, clients and partners. No, I want all of that to be professional and open phone is the number one rated business phone on G2 for customer satisfaction, because it's so professional, easy to use. Here's a feature I love, you can create a shared phone number with multiple employees fielding calls and texts from that number. So we want to reply to our founders to our partners really quickly. And we don't want to miss a call, we don't want to miss a text. And that's why we use open phone. And it's already affordable starting at just $13 per user per month. But twist listeners get an extra 20% off for the first six months at open phone comm slash twist. If you got existing numbers, and you're paying through the nose for some insane service, you can put those right over to open phone at no extra cost. So here again is the offer go to open phone comm slash twist and get this all organized get the 20% off as well open phone comm slash TW is T. Speaking of inside information, no longer inside
SPEAKER_05: information and a move that's done the VC community, Keith Herbois is leaving founders fund and going to kosla as a managing director. Keith was previously at kosla for six years prior to moving to founders fund in 2019, where he was a partner for five years. The announcement of Keith Herbois returning came shortly after kosla announced their $3.1 billion fundraise across their main their seed in their opportunity fund. So Keith will have a lot of capital to play with. When asked about the change. Keith stated that kosla culture of weekly partner
meetings, which included debate, and kosla hands on investing approach, and founder mentioned mentorship was a better fit for him than founders funds more individualistic approach. Jason, are you buying this? Is this the reason Keith moved to kosla?
SPEAKER_03: Well, so there's, there's two things occurring here that I think are of note. Number one, this is succession planning. I didn't see anybody mentioned that. But kosla is in his 70s. He's spry he was at the all in summit, he is sharp as attack. But, you know, he's in his 70s. And so I think this will be kosla. Roboy as a firm very soon. And I think whenever
kosla decides to hang it up, this will be Keith Herbois firm.
Number two, there is something to Keith about debate, you see
him on podcast, you see him on Twitter, he made a funny comment on this podcast. You know, while I was on the internet, and
somebody said something that was incorrect, so I felt the need to correct them. Like, literally, that's how he's wired. If
somebody on the internet says something that's incorrect, he will correct them. And you know, like this, you're actually burning. Well, with, you know, four or 5 billion people on the internet. It's a full time job. But you know, Vinod loves Keith
SPEAKER_03: because they're both candid. And they're both like debaters. Now you go to founders fund. And you think about Peter Thiel. And
obviously, Peter and Keith and Sax all went to Stanford together, Stanford review, all that kind of stuff. They're all part of the same click. But there, there does need to be a
recognition of the culture at a firm. How does this firm make decisions? And that's something I've learned being an LP and 20 funds, I always ask about that. And then I've really worked on it at launch. How do we make decisions, we have deal flow locked in, we don't have to compete for deals, because I have a good profile. And I act at the seed stage where this generally it's not as cutthroat, just passing the hat a lot. So
then what's left? Really two things I have to really solve for. Do we make great decisions? And do we double down, which is also a decision. And that's what I'm obsessed with. And I think
founders fund Brian Singerman's approach has been hire really smart people make bets that they're have conviction on or let them start their own companies. And then in every fund, put a third or some crazy number he's told me into one giant bet. And, you know, that's a different culture than say
coastal is going for. And so I think it's great to have that recognition that different cultures work. There's consensus based cultures. They're solo freelancing kind of based cultures. And I don't my question for Michael Kim is, do
you have a preference for the decision making culture? Or do you see one win more than others? Yeah, I mean, a lot of
SPEAKER_00: the platform firms you can say are more siloed partners are more siloed, and they have the authority to go ahead and make a decision founders fund clearly absolutely top tier firm. And they've done very, very well with their model. You know, one example, to just to amplify what Jason was saying, you know, when they raised founders fund three, they immediately put a quarter of that into Palantir. And that was a brilliant move. Wow. And
in founders fund two, you know, they actually sold well, so Yammer was in there, David Sacks company prior company, they took the proceeds from that. And then Peter went and, you know, basically took cash capital out of the different funds that they had, and he put it all into Airbnb. And that was a brilliant move. They recycle it. Yeah, they recycled it. And, you know,
SPEAKER_00: I think that kind of decision making, and non consensus thinking, and high conviction, non social proof investing is
brilliant, but it's not for everybody. And, you know, the typical VC firm does have their Monday meetings where they sit around and argue about specific companies. And that that works well, too, because there's that sort of, you know, pushback that a particular partner might have on a company that he or she might be in love with. And in getting that feedback on additional diligence, or why it won't work, I think is important. But so it really depends on the type of people and how they're making the decision as opposed to this is the all you know, it's one size fit all kind of decision making.
SPEAKER_03: It also depends on you to your point, I think Michael is is
this firm, you know, nurturing and developing talent, which our
firm is doing with teaching people the skill of being a VC we're because we're small, we can't afford to compete for you know, with Sequoia for partners given the scale of their fund. So we know we're training up talent. So we need to have more
meetings, we need to have more debate. That's how people get good at the job. They put out their deal memo, they say, Hey, this is we were having an argument today. non consensus argument, I want to put $25,000, which is our founder University bet, you know, first check into a company to help them form the company for 2.5%. And there was like a nice debate going on
about this company. And I just came in and I said, Okay, the person who wants to make this bet, owns it. We're making the 25k bet, we don't have to over debate it. But I love the debate, great debate. And the debate was so good in our organization. And we have such a high volume of companies as an accelerator and a pre accelerator. We instituted two
investment team meetings a week, every Tuesday, every Thursday, we do an investment team meeting and 130 to 330. You know, it's, this is not a short amount of time, four hours of it a week.
We now record it, transcribe it and summarize it. That's like
crazy Vell. But I want to have on tape, the discussions and the
transcript so we can go do a post mortem. Right? We didn't
invest in Airbnb. What was the discussion? Who is the loudest person in the room saying don't do it? Who is the loudest person in the room saying we have to do it. And so I'm very keyed into this as I go into my second decade and I try to build a firm. Like I'm trying to build a firm right now. Right? That's a
SPEAKER_03: different thing than just a great individually.
SPEAKER_00: But I think, you know, I don't know Keith personally, but my immediate thought was, when I read the news, kosla must have offered him some sort of assurance, if not an agreement that he would be taking over the firm. Yes. 100%. And I think, if you even go further back, kosla was at KP back in the in the heyday, right? Yep. And if you read Sebastian Malabi's book power law, each chapter is about different firms, the KP chapter really talks about how in the early 2000s, you know, there are there KP is sort of on Mount Olympus, and then they started hiring old guys. And you know, like Al Gore, or like Colin Powell, whereas in the chapter on Sequoia makes it crystal clear that they were very focused on generational transitions, bringing in Alfred, and how the senior partners like Doug Leone would specifically put them on high profile boards, and mentor them and giving them more airtime giving them more, more decision making, and basically building their gravitas. And I think those those two chapters really stand out. So my point here is that, you know, obviously, kosla left KP. And I think he probably is a very wise observer of venture capital funds. And so he must be thinking about succession. I would also argue that he's probably a very young 70. If I don't know his exact age, but let's say 70. He probably has another 10 years ago. So I don't think it's an imminent kind of thing. But it's shows a lot of foresight.
SPEAKER_05: With all the longevity investments he's making, I think he's gonna be around for a while. He also reported in the same article that he didn't want to start his own fund due to the operational intensity. How do you look at that? Michael, what are the pros and cons if Keith was to leave and start his own firm? I mean, clearly he could do it. How much do you think
SPEAKER_05:
you'd be able to raise as a spin out?
SPEAKER_00: You know, Lee Fixel left Tiger and raised billion dollar funds every every year almost. So you know, I think Keith is in that league or even above that and are certainly peers. And you know, Keith could raise that kind of capital. I don't I have no doubt about that. The question is, what kind of
investing does he want to do? And what, you know, ultimately, what's the appropriate fund size, right? If he wants to have a barbell strategy where he's investing in a bunch of early stage companies, and then perhaps selectively late stage companies where he can write $100 million checks, you know, so it really depends on the type of investing that he really likes. I might my sense is that he likes to be hands on, and really work with founders. And that suggests to me early stage investing. So, you know, three to $500 million series a fund out the gate with some seed exposure. And the question is,
SPEAKER_03: you know, when you become a fund manager, and you start raising
larger funds, I'm experiencing that in the last six months, I have to go to the Middle East, I have to go to New York, I got to go to Europe, I got to, you know, do phone calls at 10pm, I
have to do relationship calls, you know, and maintenance call. So when you have to take over that function, I think that's a 12 month ramp up. So then does Keith, at his age, want to spend a year raising that fund? And even if he did it extraordinarily
quickly in six months, it's possible, it's just not probable. And the environment right now is really challenged, even if he wanted to go raise that fund, there are people who are pencils down right now. I mean, Michael's active, but that's true, too. I can tell you three out of five, maybe LPS in
SPEAKER_03: the United States are pencils down 60 70% are like, come when your closing date, because we're done for this year, right? And that was 2023. And we're going to open up two slots in 2024. And we'll see what happens from there if we get stripe distributions from bike tents, distributions, etc. So you just got to decide how much of that overhead and then starting a firm, you have to do all this back office stuff, you got to hire operations people. Like this is, it's, it's not
de minimus, it is significant, and you have to do it right. And we had some missteps as a firm. We you know, with back office stuff, and man, I had to do cleanup. And you know, if your if your numbers aren't cleaning, you go to somebody like Michael or, you know, let's say the next year up the Calpers of the world or, you know, etc. It could just be a no based on you not having your package and your data room. Correct, right? Like, like a venture fund. And oftentimes, they won't even tell you why.
SPEAKER_05: They'll just say thank you very much. Yeah, well, one thing I
SPEAKER_00: point out in J Cal makes an excellent point about where LPS are today. You know, I think with someone special starting a new firm, then you might get some FOMO. And it's almost like fuel gauges, the fuel gauge might read empty. But I read somewhere that there's probably another 40 to 60 miles of range. And so yeah, I think LPS will would be able to find the capital to make a commitment to someone special. And I think Keith would probably be in that category. Yeah, I would agree with that they would, but it would still
SPEAKER_03: take three meetings, and it would take a champion. And it
would take somebody saying to the investment board, the investment committee, hey, here's why we're making this exception, right? I'm sure Keith, you know, he just loves to invest. He likes to hang out with founders. I get the sense that he probably doesn't all due respect to my goals, delightful to hang out with, but Keith might not want to hang
SPEAKER_03: out with, you know, a bunch of LPS all the time. It might not be his bag, he might just want to at this point, his career is so successful, he just might want to invest in the next company. Absolutely. I don't think it's a huge loss for
SPEAKER_03: founders fund. I think they're going to do great no matter what. That's one of the things when you have that many great partners, you'd afford to lose one, right? It's like being a team with a stack group of all stars, right? You'll be they'll
be fine, too. Yeah, I mean, Kevin Hartz was there, right?
SPEAKER_00: And for a couple years, and he moved on started a star, you know, nothing against any of these groups. But, you know, that's actually the mark of a resilient firm, a very strong firm, you know, you lose a star partner or someone who's very promising, you will continue on. And I think Sequoia is a very good example of that. Yeah, absolutely. Great. And next up,
SPEAKER_05: Bill Ackman, everyone's favorite modern day conqueror, has decided to go after Business Insider after Business Insider went after his wife, Mary. According to the timeline of events, Business Insider sent Bill Ackman's wife, Mary, a 12 page email on January 5, at 519.pm. Eastern Business Insider then
gave Mary only one and a half hours to respond to a 12 page email before publishing their allegations. Jason, what do you think of this was Business Insider within its rights to go after Bill Ackman's wife, there's kind of a rule like in
SPEAKER_03: the mafia. And in other, you know, areas where respect is
important, you know, you don't go after wives and kids like you would never do that it's it's not appropriate. In this case, because Bill was going after other people for plagiarism and his wife happens to be in academia, academia, it's feels like it's fair game in a way. But I think that broadening the discussion out here for this podcast, you have some very
vocal fund managers out there. And some of them have gotten very addicted, I would say, to social media and being heard. The
all in podcast, you know, has become a bit of a joke to some people like, Oh, my God, what are we going to think about what's happening in this area of the world, this conflict, this crazy thing? Oh, I know, we have to ask some VCs. Like, I can
imagine being an LP, enactments fund, you know, or anybody else's fund who's taking on these really charged issues and wondering, are they focused on their fund, and their companies and their trades? Or are they focused on, you know, dei at Harvard in this battle. So I think, you know, while I appreciate him defending his wife and fighting the good fight and everything like that, I do wonder, I don't know, Michael, if watching, you know, GPS be spicy on social media, or their podcasts, etc, does that factor into the public personas and chippiness and elbows and craziness, your decision making or how you partner with folks, or you know, just part of being
SPEAKER_00:
successful being human. And I think, you know, people might have larger platforms than other people. And if they can use that for good, which I think Bill Ackman is doing, I'm all in favor of that. And, you know, the thing about Bill Ackman and his firm Pershing Square, they're activists, investors, right. So by definition, Bill is someone who's going to lead a crusade. And, you know, I think overall, his, his funds have done well. I mean, I think there are some notable problem, Charles, like valiant, for example, but in her life, but as a person, I think it also October 7, you know, a lightbulb went on, and the the testimony that the three presidents had in front of Congress, that was another lightbulb. And then he started digging in because it's clear that he's intellectually curious, and oh, by the way, a crusader. And, you know, so that's how he got on to that. And then, to your point, Jason, you know, they went after his wife, you know, bi went after his wife. And that's verboten. You can't do that. And yeah, to people's families. So he went after he's, he's on a he's on a warpath.
SPEAKER_05: And Michael, if you turn the tables, limited partners, obviously, there was Harvard, MIT and Penn involved on the other end with the president's could limited partners in what people call an access class could limit partners hurt themselves on their end?
SPEAKER_00: I think so. I mean, I think, you know, certain firms that really have that, you know, really have no issue raising their next, their next funds, you know, sort of the the absolute top tier BC firms, let's just focus on BC, you know, they can pick and choose who their LPs are. And if there is a strong belief that, you know, just to pick on Harvard, that Harvard now is
completely overrun by a 200 person DI department. And it's insidious, and it's permeating through all of the hiring that they're doing the areas, the areas of study that they focus on and the courses that they offer their students. An
absolute top tier firm who does not believe in that could say, Why am I funding this? Because the fact is, a large chunk of a university's operating budget comes from the proceeds of an endowment. It has to be a year, right? Like they have to
SPEAKER_03: but I know universities where it's like half or 40% and and so
SPEAKER_00: the VC returns the distributions that I'm happily sending back to my LPs. Then there's this epiphany that well, some of that
SPEAKER_00: is actually ultimately funding these programs that I don't believe in. So I think it's right. And I think when you become elite at this job, it's
SPEAKER_03: such a good point might be made two really good points. Number one, thank you. Ackman is an activist. Like, what do we
SPEAKER_03:
expect him to do when he sees something that he perceives as unjust in the world? The number two, such a good point. You know, when I as a founder would go to Sequoia's fact, they would have a CEO dinner was kind of like a deal thing, but they would have all the CEOs come to the golf course over there and
Michael Moritz would come up and say, I just would like to tell you what you're working for. And the great returns we
had the returns from Google helped in Ford Foundation do the
following and they show what the Ford Foundation was working on. And here's an email we got from this foundation. Here's what they're doing in Africa, you know, with, you know, malaria, whatever. And he would walk the CEOs skipping the LPS, right? This is just GP to CEO, your hard work, let us make money and
give it back to these incredible causes. And you're just like, wow, capitalism is awesome. And those same people, as Michael's
pointing out, they may not want to give to these endowments anymore. And they might not want to make money for them anymore. So that you know, they could lose two sources of revenue, the donations and I want to have my name on a building. Right. And
SPEAKER_03: number two, I want to take the what are they they're usually
typically 15% in VC 1015%. Yeah, some of them have gotten up to
SPEAKER_03: 20 25% like Yale and
SPEAKER_00: certainly like 30 plus percent for private markets, right, including PE, including PE. Yeah. So I mean, it's it's a
SPEAKER_03:
double. That's why I think this is like an important thing to discuss here is who you making money for. And are you motivated to make money for those people? is a really nuanced point, but an important one.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, but then also sort of a related topic is, and I'll mention it since, Jason, you mentioned the Middle East, you know, how do you decide which authoritarian countries
endowment or sovereign sovereign wealth fund that you feel comfortable enough taking, you know, and, you know, there's
SPEAKER_00: kind of a danger in getting on moral high horse, to be honest, and we don't have capital from any sovereign wealth funds. But I would say that, you know, I hear amongst LPS and us LPS, and also us fund managers, some debate about, should I take money from an authoritarian countries? And, you know, sovereign wealth fund. So there's, I think there's debate about that, too.
SPEAKER_03:
And I've been very public that I've been spending time there. I don't have any announcements of efforts we have in the region, but I did meet with everybody. And it was doing it more to get educated, to be totally honest, I felt when we would have these conversations on all in and you know, I'm kind of thrust into this position of, you know, needing to have an opinion or be
at least educated, or hadn't been to Saudi hadn't been to
Dubai hadn't been to Doha. And, you know, having spent time there now, two trips in the last year, basically in the spring and the fall, I feel really educated. And my first job was working at Amnesty International. Most people don't know that but I'm very passionate about him. Really, it's okay. Yeah, when I was in college in New York, I just felt
SPEAKER_03: passionate about because I had seen Peter Gabriel and Bruce Springsteen play at the Human Rights Now concert. And I was like, wow, I really care about human rights. I just spoke to me as a 1819 year old in college when I was at Fordham. And I was an IT specialist there. And now I'm an adult, and I'm in a position of power or, you know, writing checks. And, you know,
SPEAKER_03: people are knocking on the door, and I've met with them. And I've come to the conclusion, and people can come to different conclusions. And I respect it, that this group of the monarch
states, right? They want to have a seat at the table, they're
investing, they're LP, and they're going to be on the same boards of the companies we're all investing in. They've decided in the next 30 years, and they've said this to him explicitly, we can sell oil for 30 more years is our projections. And in that time, we're going to convert our economies to tourism, real estate, private equity,
alternative fuel, and venture capital. And venture capital is one of their favorite assets. private equity, not so much. They did that game. They really like company formation. They
have a large amount of capital, and they're very smart. And these are multi generational folks who've been educated in the West. Because the other thing I learned when I was there, all the people who are contemporaries, they went to Oxford, they went to Michigan State, they went to Georgetown, they went to Fordham, they went to NYU, because they were all on these scholarships that were set up for the nationals there. They're very westernized. And the countries are making massive progress on personal freedoms, and economic freedoms. Now, they're not democracies, but they've made progress. And so then the question is, you have to ask yourself, do I want to
participate with a group of people who are making massive progress and bending towards, you know, a better world? Or do I want to participate, and then have them work with Putin and Xi Jinping? Because if you just take a look at what's happening
SPEAKER_03: in the region as well, Xi Jinping, and Putin are spending a lot of time there as well. And I think we're at this very interesting moment in time, where either that region is going to tip one way or the other, and it's their choice. And so if we don't participate, and you know, build companies with them, well, then they're going to build them with Xi
Jinping and Putin. That's not a better scenario for humanity either. And they really want to reform. You go to Dubai. Now, it
reminds me of New York in the 90s, I went to Riyadh, and, you know, it has changed more in the last three years than in 30. And
I'm pretty enthusiastic about the entrepreneurial scene there as well. People from Hong Kong, Singapore, India, they're all moving their companies to Doha, Abu Dhabi, Dubai and Riyadh, because there's angel investors and seed funds there and programs there. And golden visas will give you a visa for 10 years. So they're going to be a player. The question is, do we want to participate Mike, or not? And, you know, I think I'm coming to the conclusion that if you build startups together, and
you build businesses together, that's pretty good for the
world. I think one person's belief. One person's belief. I
SPEAKER_00:
totally agree. So absolutely, it's an important topic. And,
SPEAKER_03: you know, I'll probably make an announcement later this year that we're, you know, might be doing something there in relation to the things I'm known for. I'll leave it at
that. Okay, great. Spicy. Well, well, Michael, I really
SPEAKER_05: appreciate you jumping jumping on the podcast and discussing these topics and hope to see you soon. Absolutely. Yeah, great
SPEAKER_03: job. Really appreciate it. Nice to see you guys. Take care. All
SPEAKER_03: right, David. Great job. You've done two great episodes with me. I really appreciate it. And if you don't know about the liquidity podcast, I used to call it the angel podcast. But
because our conference and what I do is expanding beyond just angel investors to include LPS and GPS decided to rebrand. So
the angel summit we do in June will be called liquidity. And we're spinning out this content and having this liquidity podcast, which is a niche niche broadcast for LPS and GPS. David
did a great job today. Awesome. Thank you, Jason. Thank thank you
SPEAKER_05: for mentorship and for for for being a great model for moderation. Oh, thank you. And where can people follow you on
SPEAKER_03: social media? You got a social? Are you on social media x.com? Sure, you could follow me on x D Weisberg, D W EI S B U R D.
SPEAKER_05: And you could also follow me on my podcast where I interview limited partners, including Michael Kim. And I even had Jake
SPEAKER_05: Allen the episode called the limited partner. So check it out. You just had Friedberg on. Great. I did have freeburg.
SPEAKER_05: That's the talk about all in at all. I looked in the chapter. We
SPEAKER_03: did not we talked about we talked about his life as an
SPEAKER_05: investment banker. Did you know I know I heard about that no all
SPEAKER_03: in talk about for sure you were gonna ask him about all in. No,
SPEAKER_05: I tried tried to vary it up a little bit. Keep it interesting.
SPEAKER_03:
Very good. Very good. All right, we'll see. Oh, and so if
SPEAKER_03: you're having a chance, when you get on the liquidity feed, or you search for liquidity podcast and your podcast player, subscribe there, probably once a week ish. And you'll get information about the event in June will be June 2nd, 3rd and 4th, I believe in Napa for LPs and GPS only, and angel investors, high net worth individuals who participate in the space. And we have a YouTube channel search for liquidity podcast on there, you'll probably find it and liquidity pod.com has all the links. So if you have a chance and you like this, subscribe to it or read it, that would be helpful because this is Episode Zero and the handle everywhere. Instagram Tiktok, YouTube, everywhere. Twitter x is liquidity pod liquidity pod and we got a nice beautiful logo for you. All right, we'll see you next time.
