Ignite Startups: Why Diversification Wins in Venture Capital with Arian Ghashghai | Ep189

is some people say this, like, hey, being like an associate at a fund or something, like, you learn a lot. I'm like, I'm sure you do, right? Particularly if you're a good fund or like, you know, super smart GPs. I can say that firsthand, that like a lot of what I think about venture now and how I'm as a fund manager is definitely something that I've learned from other GPs. And so you can make the argument that, well, if I was learning from them on like a daily basis, like, what could that mean? But I think ultimately, like, this is just like an industry where you learn by application. Ultimately, like we said before, like, you know, you learn by just doing the deal, by losing money, by seeing some By like, like being the one that's responsible for literally everything.

Hey everyone, welcome back to the Ignite Podcast. Today we're thrilled to have Arian Ghashghai on the program. He's the founder and managing partner of Earthling VC. He's a former senior ML engineer at Meta, uh, the Reality Labs, and a prolific angel. He's a vocal advocate for probabilistically diversified pre-seed investing, which is how we connected on X. So thanks for coming on, uh, the program.

Yeah, yeah, thanks for having me.

Well, I'd love to just start at the beginning, you know, like, Tell us about your childhood. You know, what did you, what did you want to be when you grew up?

You know, I think of all the podcasts I've done, nobody's actually asked me that question. So it's interesting. Well, but there's actually something that immediately came to mind. I was born in Germany. And so, you know, I came to the US with my family when I was 6. Um, so I think the, the first thing I wanted to be when I was a kid, and so the only reason I know this is because my mother had routinely reminded me of this where I got a bit older still, was that I guess the first thing that I uttered when I was like 3 years old is that I wanted to be the president of Paris, whatever that means, right? So that was, that was, you know, I guess that was maybe a prelude to the fact that I would take a bit of an unconventional, you know, unconventional career decisions. But, you know, because everyone wanted to be a firefighter or whatever, I was like, I wanted to be the president of a city apparently when I was 3 years old. But yeah, I think that sort of started to set the tone. But that's literally, I think what it was. My mom would tell you that.

That's amazing. Do you recall what the fascination with Paris was at the time? I

have no clue. My only guess is that as a kid, I was very interested in architecture to the extent that my mother always insisted, probably until I was about 25 years old, that I should be an architect until at some point she gave up. And, you know, when the Meta paycheck started to come in, I think she started to realize that maybe this is not so bad. But so my guess is, I think that it had to do with like, I would really like the Eiffel Tower. I think is is what it was again. That that that is like vague recollection, but I'm pretty certain that that's what the the kind of like the connection.

They have those like Good Night City, and when we lived in San Francisco, you had the like Good Night San Francisco book. It's like good night, you know, Telegraph, Cory Tower and Telegraph Hill. Good night this. Good night that.

Yeah, maybe maybe Germans watching this, if anybody does, would would maybe recognize this. But there was this like child book series called like you know. It's basically this like stuffed, I guess it was a rabbit technically, but like kind of, you know, anthropomorphized rabbit, I guess you could say, called like Felix. So it was like a kid's book that was like very popular in Germany at the time. And so this was like a, like a lot of the book was him actually, this rabbit going to different places in the world. Right. So I'm like, like, and so I vividly now that I'm talking about, remember like the, the, the, the Paris page, right. Where he's in Paris, die of the tower in the back and stuff. And all of that. And so, yeah, we definitely all said like, I think they had like this kind of like kids' book reference. I think that was probably very culturally relevant at the time.

It's amazing. So walk us through that journey from Germany to Meta. Like, what does that look like?

I mean, to be honest with you, like, I don't look at my like childhood period like really fondly, like in hindsight. And it's not that like I would say anything like extraordinarily bad happened or anything. You know, I don't necessarily want to sit here and say I had this like tragic childhood and whatever traumatic. Whatever. But I think kind of at a high level, it was very like, yeah. So we initially came to the US and DC area because my dad got a job with the World Bank. And so we relocated for, for, for that job, but he didn't last there very long. So both of my parents growing up were predominantly like small business owners. Now, I think a lot of times you hear, of course you hear, you know, immigrants, small businesses, kind of this like success American dream story. I would say ours was a lot more tumultuous. In that sense. And so it was definitely very like up and down all the time. Right. And it was like, you know, as a kid, it was always like, we have money now. So we're going to buy you new clothes and whatever, and everything's easy. And then 3 months later, it's like, oh, actually can't go to the movies with your friends because we don't have money right now and blah, blah. And so I think like, I only mentioned that because I would say like, that's like, it was, it was like, it's a very like salient thing that kind of kept with me, like, like growing up, I think even until now, to some extent where I like hated it because I was always like, you know, I feel a bit, even when I was like, like really young, I was always like, wow, like this sucks, but there's nothing I can do about it right now. And like, this is freaking terrible. And so like when I get to a certain age where I can start to do something about it, I will never, ever, ever, ever want to live like this, right? This is just not, this is just like, so basically, I mean, that sums up to like, I want to get really rich, right? So I don't have to deal with this crap.

So it sounds, it sounds like your, your, your dad was a diplomat and so you didn't have a lot of money. And so that kind

of— I mean, he, he was only at the World Bank for like 3 years or so, and then he quit. He said it's basically from then on, he was like, for the most part, always trying to do his own thing. And then only taking like, you know, like jobs at different, you know, kind of like different small businesses and stuff when like, you know, he needed to basically put bread on the table of the business while doing it for the lack of a better term. Right. And so, you know, but even like, even before that, I mean, even in Germany, he was like fairly entrepreneurial and, you know, had like his own kind of like interesting entrepreneur, like rise and fall and all of that, like even Europe at the, like in the, in the, in the '80s, basically. So, you know, my dad was always kind of like very, like had like the risk appetite, but it just like never really, like it never really worked out, I would say, in like kind of the way you would hope. But he persisted, which I actually give him a lot of credit for. I think, you know, but not a lot of people try once and give up. Like he just did it over and over again. So he had that World Bank, like manager job. Like it wasn't even a diplomat. It was more of just kind of like a technical function inside the World Bank. That was, I would say, more of a blip of what his own career path kind of looked like. Whereas, you know, my mother was basically just like a real estate agent, right? And that business, of course, in and of itself was very like

high beta,

high and low and all

that. Yeah. High highs and low lows.

Yeah. For the most part, you know, my parents actually divorced when I was right after, like not long after we moved to the US actually.

And really, how old are you?

I was going to say 8 or 9 later.

Wow. That's, yeah, that's,

yeah, that's, I was like, really,

it's a formidable age. Yeah.

Yeah. So I mean, to be honest, I mean, I think after that, um, you know, also I was like predominantly raised by my mother and I think most, most of the burden kind of also fell on her. And, you know, also that's just a product of, you know, my dad also at the time started taking jobs that were mostly abroad. Right. And so he just like spent a lot of the time, like all the time.

Yeah. It could be tough on a marriage. You know, you're gone most of the time.

Yeah. That actually happened more like that more after he quit the World Bank. I think it was, it was all kind of like coincided around the same time. You know, that like my parents divorced, like my dad left his job at the World Bank to go basically try entrepreneurial stuff or work in different companies or whatever. And, and, um, so the product of that is, is that, you know, again, I like, I predominantly grew up with, you know, but like my mother being like the—

Me too. My mom was single mom addicted to drugs and alcohol and the whole sad story. And lots of, lots of sad stories, which I've written about and been very public and vulnerable about. So yeah, we all have our—

I mean, I mean, I mean, like, that's, that sounds a lot worse. I mean, it's like in my case, I mean, I do for all intents and purposes say I was raised by a single mother, so to To speak, like in practical terms. I always use that very like cautiously because I don't want to like deride my dad because I don't think he was like some kind of like absentee guy or something. Right. But it was just like practically my mother did virtually all the work, particularly after a certain age. But yeah, like, well, I would say my mother, all things considered, while she had financial issues and was kind of up and down, it was like, I would say it was very kind of, you know, I don't know what you would call it, like mentally stable. Right. And like very kind of like. Well-intentioned and all of that, right? And like, very, like, you know, I don't think she could have done more than she did in her capacity, so to speak. So like, you know, I, I, I say all of this, it's like, you know, I don't hold any kind of like particular resentment towards anybody or anything, right? That's why, you know, I, I'm, I said at the beginning, like, I, I don't want this to come across as some kind of like sob story or something. It's like, it's really not, right? Um, you know, I think it's just, it's just the product of it, right? And subsequently, some of the parameters in which I grew up in. Were irritating. And I think that was also compounded by the fact that I, speaking of diplomats, so we came to the U.S., you know, in the D.C. area, they have like a German International School. And so this is like actually like a school that was funded by the German government, which was actually designed for like all the diplomats and like the court, like journalist correspondents and stuff that get posted out to the U.S. for 4 years to basically not miss the educational track. So they basically just made like literally like a German public school that just like sits in like the D.C. suburbs. So everything's German and all of that. And so the majority of that student body is, um, are again, like journalists or they're literally diplomats, like kids of diplomats. And so these families were always very well compensated there. So they put like, they got them these like nice, like kind of McMansions in the suburbs and all of that. Right. So they're always like very, very comfortable. And so my immediate environment was always very, uh, kind of in school at least was always very, like, I would say well off, whereas like ours was not. And I think that sort of like compounded the, like, The annoyingness of like the topsy-turviness of, of, of, you know, like my household, I guess. But anyway, I mean, like, I don't think I'd actually change it, you know, because again, I think a lot of the kind of like deep-rooted motivation I have now is it kind of comes from that. So I'm like, you know, kind of worked, I guess, you know, but, but

then yeah, for better or worse,

we look at my, like, my, like, kind of pre-work life is a bit of, or like pre-college life actually, like, is a bit of like a one big, like, blurry chapter now. And like, you know, then there's like the college life and then there's like the post-college life or kind of like the 3 big, I would say, like. The way I would divide my life up.

Thanks for sharing that. I mean, that's, that's, uh, I think it gives everyone listening and me a sense of like who you are and where you come from. Yeah. Let's take chapter 2, which is college. Like, what did you study in college? Did you know you wanted to work as an engineer immediately, or did that kind of—

I had actually started first grade a year early. So I graduated high school and started college when I was 17. And so, you know, I, I kind of knew there are 2 things that I knew going into college, right? That I kind of like my pro— like, if you want to put it this way, like my professional or like next chapter aspirations are. So one of those was kind of like I mentioned that like, I want to make money. I need, I need to get a path. I need to be able to put myself on a path to be like, to make myself rich. Right. Like that's like the first thing.

I can relate to that. That was very much my goal in majoring in finance in college.

So I want to get to that actually. The next thing was, well, you know, my parents, like I said, you know, I grew up, they were predominantly small business people, you know, independent. Some of our more immediate friends also were effectively Small business. So I grew up basically around people being like, you know, small business entrepreneur, like not like venture-backed anything, right? But like, you know, running normal, normal people, small

businesses and things like that.

Yeah. Right. For lack of a better term. So, so those are the two things I was exposed to. I, you know, immediately equated that like, okay, I just think they suck at doing it. Right. That's why they're not rich. But it's like, so my goal is to like, I can get rich doing this, just do it better. Right. So it's like, you know, those are ultimately the way to find it. You know, when I was 17, I didn't immediately have much of a concept of like what that actually equates to in terms of like, what is the next immediate step I take, particularly as it pertains to college. I just went to business school. And of course, the mistake that I made was that at the time I thought that business meant like business that my parents are doing, like, you know, effectively entrepreneurship, this kind of stuff where like in hindsight, like, of course, even you can't really study that kind of stuff, but you're 17 years old. It's like the best you got, right? It's theoretical. Of course I should. So I go to Georgetown and so Georgetown, as you may know, is a very big feeder school to like consulting and banking and all this kind of stuff. Right. And so I show up at the business school and like, again, I'm like a 17-year-old kid. I feel kind of liberated that I'm like, great, I'm in college now. And it's like, you know, I basically some of those constraints and like chains I talked about that I felt like I had kind of growing up were off, ton of people, super exciting. And you're like the second day, like some kid, you know, like Let's say freshman with me, like comes up to me and goes like in a suit, right? And it goes like, oh, you just have like the coffee chats with Bain. I'm like, first of all, no. Like, second of all, what the hell is Bain? Right? Like, I mean, for people watching,

is that a guy on campus? Who is that?

Yeah. Yeah. It was like, it was like, like a classmate of mine. Right. You know, it was just like some other like 18-year-old kid. Right. That just started college. And I was like,

is that his first name? Is it Bain or is it Mr. Bain? Like, who is that?

Oh, so Bain, like, like Bain and Company.

Yeah. I know. I know. I'm joking.

Yeah. Yeah. But like the, it's again, I had no idea. I was like, what is that? Like, I have no idea, right? I don't know what this is. And so anyway, so very, very quickly I learned everything about, you know, banking and consulting and got like completely inundated with this kind of like, you know, to use Peter Thiel's word, like zero-sum tournament that already started kind of like in freshman year for business school students for these like kind of like quote unquote blue chip consulting and banking jobs. And I knew immediately like, this is not for me, right? Like, this is like not like, this is not my thing. Like, this is not what I thought I signed up for. So, you know, kind of in parallel to that, I'd started coding kind of on my own time. Cause you, to be honest, at the time I was like, hey, you know, I want to like filter news better. And this is kind of like in a slightly like pre-AI world and like pre-machine learning world, things a little bit more primitive. My RSS reader is kind of crap. Like I'd like to like,

well, especially when they took Google Reader away, that was like, man, I had so many great feeds in my Google Reader and I was so, I was so sad to lose that tool.

Yeah. I mean, it was great, but I was like, I want to do more with it. Right. So basically I started like, like trying to like hack this thing together that like, you know, filters like starting with like sports, right? Starts to kind of like filter more according to my team and like that kind of stuff. Right. And so I sort of started like kind of working on that in my free time. Like I was a bit of an antisocial freshman. And I think even there, there's like a, like me, like, you know, freshman, freshman year and then like junior, senior is like very, very different because I took time off in between, which I'll get to. But, but anyway, so I started Started doing that, and then I kind of realized like, wait a minute, like I don't like this business school stuff. I'm actually having a lot of time with this coding, a lot of like fun with this coding thing. Let's just do that, right? And so, so basically I ended up transferring to the like to do computer science, right? And then you know you kind of ride that wave. So what happened in parallel was, you know, I started like just really spending all of my free time coding. This was like 2012, 2013 or so, and that's I started college in 2012. All of it.

Ruby on Rails and

yeah. And like, you know, just like, you know, I actually started with like WordPress core was like how I did like my first stuff. And then I started

just PHP and yeah.

Yeah. You start like deconstructing it and you learn like HTML and CSS. You actually get into the scripting on the PHP side and, you know, you build up. And then I was like, you know what? Like I should just go do like the kind of computer science curriculum. So anyway, so this kind of spiraled to a point where at the end of sophomore year. I started working on a company with a good friend of mine. And so basically the kind of the backstory there, and this is, I guess, maybe a little bit of fun fact that I don't talk about that much. But so my friend from high school, he'd gone back to Germany and he at the time actually became like a kind of like, I wouldn't say like a reasonably well enough known indie artist, like musician basically, but like where it's not like, you know, It's not like A-tier or something, right? You know, like became fairly well connected and all of that. And so we used to actually make music together when we were in high school. And so like, I used to actually like produce the, like all the beats and stuff and he would go use them.

Like was that in Ableton or Pro Tools or?

I used Fruity Loops.

That was going to be my next guess. Yeah. That's awesome.

No, there's all, there's all, there's all Fruity Loops, which is great. You put all these like plugins and, you know, Mistys and all of that. And so we actually made a song that like got picked up by very big artists in Germany actually. And so that's kind of like a fun fact that like, You know, I've actually like production credit for some like very well-known guy in Germany from my high school days. Anyways, so what ended up happening is, is that like, because of that, we'd always talked about like specifically the German music industry and like how it's like very difficult to distribute. And it's like very driven by like very centralized like blogs and music publications and all of that. And so we had this idea of like, we should try to democratize this. And we sort of came to the point of like, you know, I kind of got to a point where I'm like, hey, I think I can build this. And he was like, hey, I know relevant people that we can sort of like cold start this thing with, right? Because I know all these artists and labels and all of that that we can sort of start to work with to distribute, which in hindsight was, you know, we were in a much better position, I think, than even we like acknowledged at the time to do this kind of thing. And so to make a long story short, like we started it, we built it. And so I actually ended up drop, kind of like dropping out of school after that. Cause I was like, let's just work on this full time. And, you know, kind of gloss over that. Like we did that full time for 2 years and then it kind of like ended up fizzing out and, you know, kind of like classic startup failure story really and packed it up. And anyway, you know, went back and finished my academia, came with like a very different mentality and all of that. And that's kind of like the more of the pivot towards like, you know, I guess what a lot of like my current career is built upon of like doing AI and that kind of thing sort of like emanates from, but kind of like stopped there because I think that, I think now that I'm saying it out loud, I think even like college is like really like a tale of two halves. Right. And so that's kind of like the first half, you know, and then I think after that, it was kind of the more like Yeah. Like I

said, like, you know, it's interesting about your journey as I reflect on my own journey is you did all this in 4 years. It took me, it took me 5 years for each half to figure this out.

Yeah.

You know, it took me about 10 years. You did it in 4 and I did the almost the same journey and it took me about 10 years.

Yeah. I mean, I think, I think, I think everything is like, you know, that's the one thing I try to be careful of particularly like, and I think you, you could probably be sympathetic to this, you know, when you're doing VC and stuff is like not to try to be too, you know, worried about what other people are doing, I guess, or like other people's pace. Like, you know, like I'm sure you've had it sometimes. before where like you see some fund 1 announcement and they raise like $50 million.

You're like, how the hell did they raise $50 million?

Why is my fund so small? Right. And this kind of stuff, you know, but, but, you know, I, I always try to take a step back and be like, you know, I'm kind of playing my own game, but my own pace.

Right. My wife thinks my fund is really big.

Huh? What's that?

My wife says my fund is big enough.

No, I mean, it's, listen, it's all relative. I mean, I've told some people locally here that like, hey, yeah, like $5-ish million fund. They're like, wow, you raised $5 million. I'm like, I mean, yeah, like I'm thinking in the back of my head, I'm like, it's tiny, right? You know, but, but, you know, for some people it's like a lot of money. I mean, I mean, objectively is like one thing not to jump too far forward, but like one thing I think about a lot is I remember when I started, when I first started raising the fund, like I had like, you know, some of the first commits I got were like, you know, $25,000 and, you know, that like, like, you know, that kind of thing. And I remember thinking to myself like, holy crap, like someone's giving me $25,000. It's so much money, right? Like they're crazy, right? For doing that and all that. Yeah. And now fast forward and I literally, I literally typed an email today where I'm like, I'm like, someone was talking to me about potentially being interested. I'm like, listen, like if it's less than $250K, it's just, there's no point basically.

Yeah. It's not a fit.

Yeah. And sometimes I take a step back and I'm like, wow. And in about 2 years, I went from $25K to being like a ton of money from like being like mind blown that somebody would give me that, telling somebody that like it's under $250K, it's not worth my time kind of thing. Right. Which is kind of which is kind of crazy. But so it's, I think a lot about how you can have like, you kind of get like a bit detached to the fact that like in the real world, somebody giving you $25,000 for venture fund is actually a lot of money, right? Like,

like it's a lot of money for a lot of people.

Yeah, exactly. Right. And it's like, it's like the thing we're dealing with is like a very, very, very like, like top, top, top, like 0.001% kind of, you know, money amounts, like that kind of stuff.

So walk me through. So you, you graduate Georgetown. And then I have here that you were a founder at Rapify. Maybe you could talk about that.

The startup, actually. So yeah, I think I might have dated it that I kind of like, because we did technically keep running it until I started working at Facebook. But, you know, it's sort of like the last year or two was kind of like, I would say more of life support maintenance mode more than it was like, you know, than it was like kind of being like my active day job, so to speak, like it was for the first couple of years that we did it. So that, that's probably where that, that kind of comes in. So that's kind of that, that company that I mentioned. But I think that, so when I went back, so I think one of the—

you went direct. So you went directly into Facebook from college or was it?

Yeah. So the kind of the backstory there is, so one of the, like, obviously I had a lot of postmortems on the kind of like shutting, quote unquote, like shuttering the company. And, you know, basically those, I think, really divide into like 2 main things, which is in terms of what it meant for me and kind of like my trajectory personally. Like one was, you know, obviously from doing a startup, you also get exposed to like the investor side of things. things, right? And like, what, you know, that dynamic, what are VCs? What do they do? Right? You sort of start getting exposed to that. And I think one of the takeaways that I had from running the company was like, wait a minute, I think my brain is more like VC-ish in the sense of like, you know, the way I always describe this is that I think as a founder, you have to be like really, really vertical, right? You have to be like, you're focused on like your problem space, you know, almost like like head down, like 100%, like that's where your focus and your energy is. So it's like very vertical where I've always like described like the VC job is like very horizontal, right? Where it's like, okay, like you look at the macro trend of a market, right? You go into certain things, like you kind of dig deep, you pull out, like dig deep, you pull out, right? But it's like inherently more, inherently more of like a, like a, like a, like a horizontal job. And I think one of the reasons the company failed was because my brain was inherently horizontal, right? And so I ended up spending a lot of time on like new innovations, new frameworks, all this stuff that actually was not really like mission critical at all for the company, but I just found it interesting and I could not stop myself from spending time on them.

Same way.

And so I sort of realized from that that like, wait a minute, that's what investors do, right? Or that's what like they actually, they do that. That's like good, good for being an investor. So I'm like, maybe I should try that at some point. So that was kind of like the one thing, which obviously came to manifest a bit later. But the more immediate thing was I started working on some machine learning stuff for the company for like certain problems we were solving. And I think like, and one thing I like to stress is that this was kind of like 2013, '14, '15, where, you know, I think now everybody thinks of AI. It's like, I could just get ChatGPT and it's easy. And it's like one API call and blah, blah. Like, no, no. Like back then, none of this stuff existed, right? Like back then I was like writing like C code that runs on my laptop. And if it blows up my laptop, well, tough shit. You got to do something else, right? Totally mathematical of that. And, and, you know, you had like virtually no kind of like cloud infrastructure or anything for these kinds of things or whatever. It was like very, very primitive. You didn't have PyTorch, nothing, right? So I like to make that point because I think for a lot of people nowadays, it's actually difficult to visualize it. Even not that long ago, like this was like, like doing this practice was very, very different to what it is today. So I also mentioned to say that like, I was like immediately like, holy crap, you can see where this, like what the writing on the wall is for this stuff. Like this is going to change everything. Like, even though it's very primitive now and I'm using it in very primitive kind of ways, but you can see the power of this. But it's also very academic. And so if I'm in a position where I'm like seriously making that consideration to go back to school and do academic stuff, email, you know, they can't, I'm a computer science student. They can't really teach me how to write software anymore, quote unquote, because I literally just did it at production scale for the last couple of years. I figured this out, right? I don't really need to do much here, but this stuff is like sheerly academic. It's completely mathematical. This is probably something that's worth my time, you know, in the classroom, you know, and, and again, not just because, you know, in a practical sense, but again, it's just something I believe in. I think it's something I should know and kind of like lean into. And so I basically found an advisor. in the department that she was like a PhD advisor, but she basically like let me kind of participate in a lot of the seminars and take the seminars and stuff like, which was basically like me and then like predominantly like PhD students. And so I spent most of my time then at the rest of college working on, um, and actually contributed to some research on, uh, natural language in social media specifically. Wow. That was kind of like one of the favorite areas of that advisor. And so it was kind of more ended up in that by like coincidence. I thought it was cool, but it was more like being practical than anything else. So that's ultimately what inspired me into the Facebook job. So I actually got hired by Facebook kind of out of Georgetown for intent to work on integrity issues. And this was around the time when like, you know, like the Russia misinfo stuff was a very big topic and all of that.

Cambridge Analytica and all that stuff.

Yeah, this was like kind of right after that. Right. And so they were trying to hire a lot of these like integrity guys, which is predominantly again, like in a very technical sense, is like a predominantly natural language problem in social media.

Yeah, you're, you're, yeah, you're trying to classify things and precision recall, F1 score, all that stuff.

Yeah. And, and, and, uh, and, and so basically, so that's why it was like a very natural fit, right? To sort of go to Facebook because it's like they had very big demand for the kind of stuff that I was doing in academia. So I knew they actually liked the fact that I was like kind of self-starter-ish, obviously from like past experience with a startup. Actually, 90% of my interview questions were related to the startup and not actually to like the research I was doing, which I thought was fairly interesting. Um, I think Facebook was such a different company back then than it is now. But anyway, so that's how I ended up there. And, um, but not long after that, you know, they put me in the Oculus headset, uh, kind of on day one. And I decided, you know what, I'm going to do this. So I spent most of my career there kind of like working on mostly kind of like spatial recognition, modality detection kind of problems, like within Oculus, mostly on their AR program. So I spent most of my time there then at the end, but, but yeah, anyway, that's kind of glossing a bit over the Facebook time.

Amazing.

It's

an amazing journey. So let's talk about how you got into angel investing and eventually founding your, your own VC firm.

Yeah. So I think the angel investing was like a natural, kind of what I mentioned, uh, one of the postmortems of like the failed startup was, and I was like, you know what? Like, I think that might be like a better way for me to participate, so to speak, in like the startup world, which I've always wanted to do. Like, even after the company failed, I was always like, I still think I'm going to come back to this. I just don't know how yet. I remember, I remember this is actually something I told myself when I, the first day I started Facebook, because I never saw myself as an employee. Even before that, I'd like never intern anywhere. Actually, I tried interning once somewhere, I think in between my senior year of high school and first year of college. I quit after a day and basically did this like sales commission based sales job instead. Like I never, I never was able to like hold like kind of these classic jobs. So I came in and it was like, okay, Facebook is good right now because kind of like I mentioned before, you know, I had this like instability growing up financially, which kind of even haunted me a bit in college. Like you kind of get away from it, but you still felt it.

I'll tell you a quick aside on my end, because, you know, I worked really hard to get to Wall Street in my mid-20s, passed the CFA, advanced degree, all that stuff. And I'm sitting there doing Monte Carlo analysis on mortgage-backed securities, hating my life, working, you know, 80-hour weeks or whatever. And I was asking guys around me, like, that are, you know, my age now, mid-40s, hey, would you do this career over again? They're like, no, absolutely not. Like, get out now. And I'm like, okay, that's interesting because they're making like millions of dollars a year and they're telling me to get out. And then I realized like, I'm not happy. This goal that I had set for myself was not making me happy. I was like, okay, what makes me happy? Well, I don't know. I had no idea. So I started meditating and doing yoga and all that stuff and playing my guitar a couple hours a day. And I worked at a music studio, all this stuff. And I kept asking myself, if I had $10 million in the bank, what would I do? I figured that was enough money that I can have passive income for the rest of my life and never have to work again. And I was like, I had no idea.

Yeah, it's a, it's an interesting, it's an interesting thought experiment. I mean, I kind of, I kind of like, I know where you're coming from because I think I had like a similar kind of consideration. So for me, the question became like more the following. I was like, okay, I'm going to do this Facebook thing because they're paying me a lot of money. I get to move to California. It's a new experience. It's like, it's not a bad, it's a good thing, right? Yeah. But I borrowed time. And so I remember on day one, I told myself, I'm doing this for 4 years and like, I have no freaking clue what's coming after that, but I just know it's not going to be here. Right.

Like, and you're fully vested with your stock in 4 years too.

I didn't even think about that point, but that ended up being like coincidentally like a good, like a kind of like overlapped, right. Where it's like, it ended up being like, yeah, it was actually just a 4-year vest. But yeah, I just felt like, you know, I think it's like, you know, just thinking practically, like, you know, it puts me in a position where I'm getting out of Facebook where I'm still, I'm still in like 20s, uh, I've had a few years to really kind of like, well, that was a gas, but also just kind of like chill out a little bit for like a couple of years, like build up some like kind of like strong financial basis and all this kind of stuff. Right. So it's just going to be very practical. Uh, but I did what I knew wouldn't last. Like I had like zero aspiration ever to be like, I'm going to go on this. Like, you know, a lot of people ask me all the time, like, why would you leave such a job? And I'm just like, I'm not going to care about riding the corporate ladder at a place like Facebook. And it's not to like bash it or the people that do that. It's just not for me. And I think that became very obvious at the end where I was like very antsy to leave. And so I'm glad this kind of like VC thing came together to sort of pull it back to like your angel investing question. You know, so again, I knew from the failed startup that, you know, I think this is, I want to participate in the startup ecosystem as an investor. Like maybe that's something I like and I'm better at. And so when, when I went to Facebook and all of a sudden, you know, I did have disposable income, you can sort of start chucking at companies, basically they make like a longer story short. I started doing it. Right. And so, you know, I'm sure you know how it is that when you first start angel investing, it can often be like, kind of like very, like, you know, you'll get a lot of deal flow and stuff. So you kind of just spray it like random things that you see and a lot of things excite you.

Make a lot of mistakes.

Yeah. I make a ton of mistakes. That's why I actually always tell a lot of young people, you know, like, you know, I even now, so I do some mentoring for like some current Georgetown students that are like interested in VC. I think I tell all of them like, at some point you're going to have to lose some of your own money to get good at this. Like it's just like it's just part of the game, right? It's like the cost you take. Like you have to prepare yourself that you're going to allocate some money that you know is just going to be like incinerated money, but that's the way you're going to learn how to. And you have to accept that. And anyway, so but then I started like focusing a little bit, right? And you know again, like I think I did that at the beginning just to prove is this true, right? And so I started investing in some companies where you know like I'd be very involved early. I'd like deal with the founders a lot. Like I really tried to immerse myself, not just because. Of financial interest, but I'm like, I want to see if, you know, this is like, if this, you know, I want to learn, but also this is something that I really like. And I think the short answer was I realized very quickly that I actually love doing this. And, you know, so over time, you know, I started to just kind of refine my focus, right? Because, you know, kind of in my, in my engineering career, you know, the reason I actually went to Oculus, for example, was I had this idea that, hey, I can do like AI natural language anywhere. Right. I can do it at Google. I can do it at Amazon. I can do it at, you name the big tech company and I can do it there. It's not something that's unique to Facebook.

Yeah. Microsoft had an AR program, all that stuff.

Yeah. But the Oculus thing, you know, I can't do that anywhere else. So I like, I can't have like the nice salary, the nice hours, all this stuff and work on something like this. And again, I tried it. I was like mind blown by it. I was like, I can't unsee this. Like, I think it's awesome. I definitely believe in the long term of like, it's still very rough, but I can see like similar, like I had with AI like 10 years prior, 5 years prior. For that, where it's like I can start to see where this is going. So let me take a bit of a, like, kind of, I don't know what you call it, risk, but like consideration that like, hey, if I move into Oculus now and this becomes a thing, I could like reap the wave of having been like an earlier pioneer in this industry, right? Like having been pretty early on with Meta, blah, blah, blah. If it doesn't work, again, at the end of the day, I'm just like, you know, I'm just an engineer at Meta. Like, who cares? Like, it just, I got my salary. Nobody cares. Right? Like there's, there's, there's no downside to it. So I made that consideration as well at the time, which again, I was very driven by, you know, like, hey, I see a vision of the future and I think there's an upside to be had here. And so that's what I did on the engineering side. So I basically just at some point realized that actually translating that to the investing side makes a lot of sense. And I think more so, you know, I think at the time I didn't know why that was, but I started to realize that what worked for me with, and like the reason actually, like a lot of the things that I've been investing where people just like were starting companies that just reached out to me was like, Hey, like you're an angel investor and like you're at Reality Labs of Meta. And so like we're starting out with this like an insert VR company or like 3D company kind of thing. You know, it would be like great to have like your, basically your logo on the cap table, blah, blah, right? And so that's how it started. But then I realized over time also, like, you know, I sort of started to become like the venture VR guy, right? Because I was like—

Yeah, you have a competitive advantage of deal flow and winning deals because of your Meta experience. Yeah.

And, and so, but it also then translated further, right? Because again, like I dug really much into it. And so from the founder side, it became, before it became this like feedback loop of like, okay, a lot of, I ended up like just working with some really great founders, right? Those great founders like went on to talk to other VCs and all of that. Eventually at some point they tell some VC about me, right? Or like, you know, my name starts to get floated as this like angel, right? Also because I exist on Captain Pickles and Whatever. Then you have some of the people, some of the funds that are investing in these things get interested in you. You're like, wait, who's this like angel guy, right? That's like investing some of these companies that we're really interested in. And so it sort of started to build to this like feedback loop where like I got very popular with the founders. And I think that's because I'm like one of the few investors they could talk to that like genuinely understand and be like at the same kind of—

And that's such a breath of fresh air for founders when they get on a call with a VC that understands the space. Like, even though I'm a generalist, I tend to kind of invest in stuff I know. And they're like, oh, you worked in real estate and finance? Like, oh, great. I can tell you about this, like, fintech, prop tech thing, you know?

It goes such a long way. There's like a whole long tail of that. I think particularly when, you know, we get to the part about like pitching LPs and stuff that I think it's a bit kind of swept under the rug, unrightfully so. But so it starts there and then you start to know the VCs and the VCs like you because they're like, hey, you're also a source of information for them because you're sitting in Meta and you know all these things that we don't know. Right. And so it sort of got into this like feedback loop where like, I think it just kind of got to this point where, okay, I'm an investor that's like very well connected in founder and VC land in this space that both like really knows the technical stuff and like can bond with the founders of that, but it's also very market aware and understands market. Right. And so I sort of became like, I don't want to say literally maybe the only one, but like one of the very, very few people that was doing this. And so I think it just came down to like people on both sides of the aisle just Like me really, really like secret sauce to other than the fact that they just liked me and what I was doing.

It counts a lot just to be a cool hang.

It really does, particularly if you're doing like very early stage VC. It, it like, literally, I think sometimes like people are like, how do you win deals? I'm just like, I don't know. The founders just liked me. Like, how'd you get to take your money when like he was paid? Because you like, like exactly. Like I was just not an asshole. He liked it. Right. You know, that kind of thing. And, uh, it's such an underrated thing really. Right. But because, you know, you try to tell an LP like, You're like, how do you win deals?

I'm not an asshole.

Like, that's a really hard pitch to sell, but that's really what it comes down to, right? Like, and that's uncomfortable. That's why I think people invent other stuff. But, but anyway, so that kind of spiraled to a point where, again, like I started doing more of it because I really, really liked it. And it got to a point where I'm spending way more time on this than my day job. And frankly, I'm running out of time and money to do it. And I think that's when I had the, the first angling that I was like, 'cause I never really wanted to raise a fund. I always kind of liked my life actually. I was like, Meta pays me a lot of money. Like my job's intellectually stimulating enough. And then I have all this time and space and money to just go like play with startups. Right. Like I don't have to respond. I don't have to report to anybody or whatever. Right. It's just easier. Right. But then I got to a point where I can't sustain this. And if I want to actually keep doing this at like, you know, your competitive streak kicks in a little bit too. You're like, you know, if you want to really be like a legend at this, you gotta, you know, I, I, I got to institutionalize. Right. And, and do this full time.

Yeah. I, I almost followed the same. It's almost the same story just from a different angle for me. Like you just sort of start. You know, angel investing or investing in funds or both. And then eventually I really liked this and I'm really enjoying this. And then you just kind of keep leaning into it. And then eventually you're like, you can't, I can't even keep my day job going anymore.

100%. I think it's also, it's also such a litmus test, right? Because I think like there's obviously a bit of a cliché from LPs, which I think like is a very fair one where they're like, well, why does like, why does the world need another venture fund? Or like, why does it specifically need your fund? On a personal—

that's like asking why does the world need another startup?

Yeah, exactly.

But

it's

also, of course she needs another startup.

Yeah. It's, I think it's a good litmus test, particularly when you're coming from like an angel perspective that like you literally have like, hey, like this is working, but I, it's not, it's unsustainable. Like it's hard for me to take that jump to actually sustain doing this is like a good, you know, personal basis. But it's also like, you know, the other consideration I had was, you know, I thought about, well, maybe I could just join a fund, right? Because, you know, there are a few funds that I'd work with very closely. I liked team, et cetera, like maybe it's a fit. And I realized at some point, like also in exploring that, like, okay, there are a lot of shops that I really like, but if I joined them, I would have to compromise on something that I think would make the most money. And so I'm like, you know, I can really only execute this basic conclusion that I can really only execute the strategy that like I genuinely believe in if I do them. And so that was kind of, I think the, the point I kind of mentally came to when I made the decision to be like, all right, like You know, I got to start this thing, think about quitting my job. Like, you know, this is what we're doing now. And fortunately, so that was 4 and a half years after joining Facebook. So I was 6 months late, but, you know, I would say by complete coincidence, that timeline almost worked out.

Yeah, I did the same exact thing. You know, once I realized I was going to lean away from my day job and I really liked investing, I went through the interview process with a few funds, a few very prominent funds. You know, I had AWS AI experience and Microsoft and all this stuff and

Yeah.

I did lots of startups and built lots of AI. So I got the interviews, but as I went through the interview process, I had the same realization. I was like, I'm just going to be a cog in somebody else's system here. Like, and I'm going to have to compromise on things I believe in that are good investments. And I'm going to have to argue with them. I could just tell in the interview process about why we should invest in company A and not company B. And I like, I don't want to have to explain myself.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah. You know, like I didn't want to have to go to investment committees and explain myself to partners. I'd rather just make that decision.

Yeah. That's always like why I loved angel investing. Exactly. One of the reasons I had mentioned earlier that I was like, I was kind of very happy with my existing construct, right? Of like, okay, you know, I have my day job, whatever, but I can just like rip $10K checks, do whatever I want basically. Right. As an angel, uh, it was precisely because of that is because I was like, I don't have to answer anybody. And so I completely agree with you that like one of the things that also turned me off about working for other funds is that you'd have to compromise that to varying degrees, which you get. I don't exactly, like you said, I would not want to do that. You know, and it's just, it like, I started to theorize it would also kill the fun for me in doing this, right? Because I think part of the fun for me is that I could just like drive, like I own everything. I own the relationship with the founder. I own the decision-making process. You know, I don't want to like, you know, outsource that to somebody else. Right. And like, kind of like to use to be a cog for somebody else and like figuring that out, right? Like, you know, some people say it's a good learning experience to do that. And like, I obviously can't speak to that because I've never done it.

I spent, I spent 3 or 4 years doing the angel investing and syndicate before I became a fund manager. So I'd made all the mistakes already, you know?

Exactly. That's kind of the point I was going to get to is some people say this like, hey, being like an associate at a fund or something like you learn a lot. I'm like, I'm sure you do, right? Particularly if you're a good fund or like, you know, super smart GPs. I could say that firsthand that like a lot of what I think about venture now and how I'm as a fund manager is definitely something that I've learned from other GPs. And so you can make the argument that, well, if I was learning from them on like a daily basis, like what could that mean? But I think ultimately, like, this is just like an industry where you learn by application. Ultimately, like we said before, like, you know, you learn by just doing the deal, by losing money, by seeing some success, by like, like being the one that's responsible for literally everything. I think frankly, it's also, you know, this is something I say about like, if I look back at like my own trajectory into where I'm now and kind of in all of this is that this is like an industry that rewards decision-making. Right. And so, you know, as an angel, even though you're not a fund, you're a decision maker, right? Uh, at the very least, because maybe that you're still the one writing the check. Like you're still the one that's taking agency over like the intros or whatever for those founders or whatever. You know, as an associate, you're like, you're like not, right? So

like, no, you're an input into somebody else's decision-making process.

Exactly right.

Even as a partner, you're an input into a broader decision-making process.

Exactly. So, you know, so I kind of was like, you know, that's also something I think I learned that more in hindsight now, but like, again, like when kind of younger people ask me like, well, how do I do this? I'm like, listen, like, You know, you probably want to do this in the most way that your means allow you to, to just be a decision maker for as long as you can, right? Like for, because that's ultimately what will reward you. Again, I'm sure there are a lot of people that may watch this and disagree with that, but that's just kind of like what I put my interpretation of the industry has become is, you know, don't, don't outsource your decision making in this. Like the more of the process you can own, like the more you'll learn. I mean, even as a fund manager, I mean, like, to be honest, like the amount I've learned the last 2 years since I've done this full time is Quite remarkable, even from like other GPs, right? And I'm like, hey, I think the only reason I get to do that now, and there are certain people I get to learn from on a regular basis, is because I decided to take this like big jump of like managing people's money, which is like a bigger decision-making role, right? Than just ripping my kind of like my own $10K checks and all of that, right? And so yeah, it's just something I've seen again, it's very anecdotal, but it's just something that I've seen that like, I feel like the more you stake yourself out into a decision-making role, the more this is like an industry That will reward you for doing all this work. You know, so it's just something I personally encourage.

So let's talk about that transition. So you've decided to raise a fund. What was that aha moment for you and the thesis and the fundraising? Let's take it all.

It's a good question. I mean, the aha moment, I think on the fundraise, I think you start doing it. I think in hindsight, you know, you realize that you actually really know nothing about how this works. Like I can tell you just like the basis that I started on that was like fundamentally wrong, right? Which, you know, now 2 years later, obviously I'm a lot smarter about all of this. At the time, you know, obviously when you're an angel investor, like, you've never worked in a fund, you don't really think about LP. It's obviously, it's not a thing, right? Because they don't, why is it relevant to you? Right. So I'd always thought, hey, I have like things to point to that suggest that like, I am a good, I could be, I can make a good fund because portfolio side, like the co-investors that I work with or the founders, like I have a lot of strong reference there. Right. And like, I'm very popular there. I have very good networks there. Great. Right. Like I have the hard part figured out, right. Which is the

like, yeah, you got the deal flow figured out.

Yeah. Right. So, you know, like raising a fund should be easy. Of course, like you realize very, very quickly that just because, you know, a lot of founders and good GPs does not know, you know, any LPs. Right. And those are like not overlapping, you know, distributions at all. So, you know, that was obviously a bit of a shock and a shear of like, oh shit, this is actually gonna be harder than I thought. Right. So that was kind of the first thing. And then I mean, it's just iteration, right? I mean, you obviously try to do your best to educate yourself in terms of like, you know, what does a good pitch look like? You know, particularly before your first close when you haven't obviously even invested anything where you really just like an idea, like how do you sell it? So I think like the first year-ish of it was definitely like very hard. I'll say like, you know, I kind of made it work and I think there are a few lessons that I have in there. I'm actually like, I have this like Substack that's sitting in my drafts that I'm like writing about like all the like things they don't tell you that I learned about doing So I'll gloss over that for now, but obviously, like, you know, I kind of figure out a way to, like, even with very little, like, very little money to kind of get started and start doing things and make it a bit concrete and kind of like taking the bet that like, hey, even with the small money that I have, like, I think I can sort of like, I'm going to make some good bets that'll pay themselves later in the fundraise because, you know, you kind of have like a tangible product all about. But I think like the seminal moment for me in terms of, you know, when I think like the fundraise really started to turn in terms of like, okay, I think I finally got it figured out. Like, I think I finally got it figured out. Like how to pitch this thing and, you know, how to drive it forward and how to close it. And so, you know, I think I raised like 80% of the fund in like the last like 6 months, you know, 20% of the first like 14 months, right? You know, so like, you know, it was a very, very quick turnaround. And that was actually lessons I took from the first pitch call I had with what or who is now our anchor for this fund. And so it was one of the more, it was probably to date the best LP pitch call that I've had. And for a very, Kind of bizarre reason, you know. So I basically get on, and if he's watching this, like, I wonder if he'd message you about this. Like, what are you talking about? But this is like my, my kind of like interpretation, you know. I obviously give him the spiel and all of that and tell him what's going on, and like, he gets it and whatever. But so he spends like 15 minutes, like, it was a 30-minute call. He spends half the call basically just like shredding my— and he goes like, this is actually terrible. Why are you mentioning this? But see, this thing that you're talking about is interesting. Like, this thing burned in the side. I've never— I've seen 600 pitches this year. I've never heard anybody talk about You know, so if I were you, I would think about maybe like, like making that a bigger part of your story and all of that. And that was really interesting. And so I think in hindsight, what I really kind of took that, and I was like, hey, there's actually like, even though like I thought this car, he's, they're not going to invest or whatever. And they ended up being an anchor, which was super interesting. But, uh, you know, I was like, that was a great call because I think I got a really, really good tidbit from that because I haven't gotten like that kind of like very transparent feedback from somebody that sees a lot of pitch decks. And I think to make like, to drive the point home, like what What he basically pointed out, I think, was the missing, like, why now piece of our pitch, which was always a bit unclear. Like, I think the what and the who was always clear, but the why was a little bit more unclear. And he basically, like, kind of pulled, pulled that out, right? And like, I think highlighted that, like, he didn't frame it that way, but in my head, I ended up like realizing like, wait a minute, this is actually why now, Drokin. And so I think that discovering that is what really, like, Just made it go click. And it's like, now the story makes total sense. Like, now this is like something that I can sell to LPs. I can like justify like why this strategy makes sense, why we should do it now. All this stuff was missing before. So that was, I think, like the very big turning point. Because I think also before that, I was like super freaking stressed out because I was like, I haven't paid myself in like over a year because I had quit my job. And, you know, I have Some money to allocate, bro, but like, it's not enough to pay me enough that I can actually live. Like, fuck, am I gonna do— should I try to do some sort of like contractor consulting on the side? And I think that was kind of the conversation that then led to like ultimately them coming in and anchoring the fund, which was obviously kind of like completely changed the game. But also like, I think just generally is what made the story click where it was just, you know, again, you just saw this big uptick in LP interest and conversions and all of that where all of a sudden it went from being like, Hey, this is going to be like a floundering fund, small fund one to like, you know, a very decent, respectably sized one. I can sustain myself all full-time kind of fund one. Right. And so, so that, that was, that was definitely the central moment, I think.

Nice. That's amazing. And what was the why now? Like, what did you guys identify?

So I think like one of the things, like, you know, we invest in like, you know, robotics, VR, like a lot of 3D and all of that. And, and so one of the, the things that I sort of briefly started talking about pitch deck was that, hey, like we invested in this one company, this VR company, and they're like 4 guys and they've made, they're making like $2 million a year, a month, right? Like from this thing. And, you know, and so like one of the theses that we have is that like it's getting cheaper to build than ever. And so, you know, they're just going to be like, and these guys only raised like $1 million and never want to raise again, right? Kind of thing. And that like, hey, like, you know, this is interesting. And like, also this is really good for small funds because, you know, we think they're just going to be a ton of companies like this that are character Yeah,

they raise one round and

then it's already done. They raise one round and they're done. And like, you know, a big fund can't do that. It's like specifically designed for like a truffle hunting small fund one, like the one that we are. And, you know, and so then that's why, and this is happening now, right? And that's why it's a really good time to try and invest in this, like start really investing in this kind of thing like now, right? And like, that's why like VR studios are interesting like right now, right? And all these kinds of things. I'd sort of like very subtly alluded to that somewhere in the pitch deck, right? But basically I think like, Uh, this LT saw that and kind of like dug it out and be like, hey, this needs to be like a more kind of like, like

you need to put this forward. Yeah.

Yeah. This needs to be like a bigger part of your, your pitch. Right.

And that's a good message to LPs out there listening. If you're investing in venture, you should be really closely looking at your allocation between early stage growth, growth stage and late stage. And I think you're, I think you're, you're probably underallocated in the early stage right now.

I completely agree. I mean, again, not to digress too much, but you know, I, you know, I think This starts to go a little bit into like the whole portfolio construction talk and all of that that we obviously wanted to touch on. I think it's like, like the one thing that I realized for my own self and like, and this is actually one of the reasons that I wanted to do this whole thing that I mentioned earlier about like, let me even close up like really, really, I think I did my first close on like $400K or something like really, really small.

My first close was $700K on my first 10-year fund.

Yeah. So for any GP watching this, that's like starting out and like trying to figure out like, I'm like, don't waste your time for this perfect, like, first close. Just like, if you get a little bit of money to do a deal or two, close, right? And just start doing it, right? Because what ended up happening is, is I'm— the first company I invested in is the one that I mentioned that, like, started, like, doing, like, $2 million a month with, like, 4 guys, right? And so it's only from being in those guys and seeing that journey firsthand was really, like, kind of like the catalyst for me also to realize, like, wait a minute, this is an interesting thing that's going on with the kind of companies And like maybe that's a story to tell. And I only have that because I actually had the substance to take some capital and invest it and like, you know, build the product, right? Through, by virtue of reallocating it.

How much capital did you call down when you closed 25% or? So you basically got $100K sitting there.

Basically, which is like nothing, right? And so frankly, like some of these bets are actually like way below like the target check size I'm doing throughout this fund, right? But that wasn't even the point, right? The point was like, I'm just getting points on the board here. There are other kind of benefits I can point to, like even if we put a little bit of money into them, like just having them portfolio is beneficial for like reasons X, Y, and Z, whatever. But that ended up working, right? And so, but one of the conclusions that I came to also through watching that sort of to pull it back to kind of like the macro picture. And, you know, you mentioned like allocation early stage is I've just like increasingly gotten to this point that like, I feel like there really only gonna be 2 venture models that make any kind of sense. right now moving forward. I think the unfortunate reality is that like this has always been true. Like I think these 2 paradigms I'm about to mention are like always the ones that historically returned the best, but most venture funds are not in that, or like in that barbell, right? And so it's this barbell of, you know, to use the Chris Dixon terms, 'cause I think he describes this really well, right? But you know, on one side you have like the super early truffle hunting, like kind of expert funds, right? They invest in things that they know. They have really strong networks there. They find these, like, you know, these great founders before anybody else does, before they get hot, before they become consensus, whatever. And these are like small funds, right? They're like $50, maybe $100 million, like something in that, right? Like not bigger than that, where, you know, they can go invest really, really early and basically like quote unquote truffle hunt there. And then the other side is like what, like the heat-seeking funds, right? Which are like the Andreessen-style mega funds that can basically like just, you know, find the hottest deal and like the kind of like preconception.

You get to see everything, right?

Yeah. And just, and just, and just concentrate like ownership really effectively any stage into that. Cause I don't have AUM to do that. Right. And, and, you know, so I think it kind of, as I'm looking at that where I'm like, okay, like I think you already have like 2 very strong examples of like, you know, the deal paradigms that, that create that, right? Like if we're talking about this again, this case of like these like raise one seed strap, whatever you call the emergence of that is those are inherently companies that are very favorable to like pre-seed truffle hunting. raising funds, right? Because, you know, like, again, if we assume that the successful ones are only going to raise once, like those are the guys they're going to raise from. And then there's like, you know, so it's like that small capital, like they grow quickly. These are usually like, you know, I call it like applied AI companies or something like that. And then the other side, you see like, you know, all this stuff that you're seeing now with like Thinking Machines and SSI and whatever, where, you know, they're raising $2 billion, right?

Like— Pre-product, pre-revenue.

Literally, they're like, I don't know, like maybe like a couple dozen funds in the world that can invest in that kind of thing. Right. And like, you know, they can move money like Dingreesen's Thrive and whoever,

right? Mira didn't call me. She didn't call me, unfortunately.

Yeah. Yeah, unfortunately, I think our check sizes would be a bit too small. But so basically you already see it, like those are like the 2 paradigms of companies that kind of exist now anyway. And so, you know, yes, obviously some of the first category that I mentioned will still like raise opportunistic rounds, but granted, I would say those will probably also be heat-seeking rounds. So you're kind of like, you know, if you're kind of like a kind of random-ish, like $200 million, like seed Series A fund, like Where do you fall into all

of that? You're kind of stuck in the middle.

And like, and I think, frankly, I think they're toast, right? And I think that's always been true. Like, I think the 2 paradigms that I mentioned are always the funds have kind of like done their job better, so to speak. But I think it's just gonna become more and more pronounced, you know, now that I think kind of like the dynamic of fundraising is actually changing because you have a lot of these companies that can just get to revenue faster and they get to profitability faster and all of that. But if I was like, if I was like a fund like that, I'd be very concerned right now about like, what the hell do I do? Right. 'Cause I'm kind of like a really like a no man's land. Like I'm not big enough to, you know, be in that kind of Andreessen tier, but I'm also too big to do like the truffle hunting. What do you do? So I would not, I would not envy GPs or those in those kinds of positions right now.

Yeah. Tough, tough place to be in venture right now, especially like in that Series A where you don't have enough like pre-seed and seed deal flow. Like your check size is too big.

Yeah.

To play in that space. But you're too small to be a multi-stage, you know, Andreessen, Sequoia, insert your favorite tier 1 multi-billion dollar VC fund.

Yeah. I mean, I think you, I mean, you see it sort of in practice where like, I think like, you know, obviously I invest pre-seed. So I'll say I see this more like at the pre-seed stage. My understanding is that this is something that's actually precipitated down from the Series A funds where Series A is tough. So the Series A funds are like, okay, we're going to invest and see But we're basically going to do seed deals at Series A valuations.

Yeah. $5 million checks with, you know, very little revenue.

100%. And then like, that's also precipitating down to the pre-seed now where you have like some seed funds saying, okay, we're going earlier, but they're basically giving like very, very pre-seed companies like seed rounds basically. Right. You know, like $4 million on like 20 posts or like 25 posts.

I heard, I heard somebody the other day refer to a pre, uh, pre-pre-seed. And I was like, come on. We got, we got to come up with

it, which basically now is probably just means that like your investment with pre-seed actually meant right here.

Pre-pre-seed.

I've heard that. I've heard that one too, actually. So actually for that reason now, I have to actually specify because I've always said we're like a pre-seed fund, but I mean that more in the kind of like, you know, in the, in the quote unquote traditional sense of pre-seed is also a bit of an invented term, but you know, more in the like, hey, like you're raising maybe $1 million, maybe $2 million, not more than that, like top to top Tops on some like single digit million valuation, like very, very early on, basically no traction, right? That kind of stuff. I have to try, I often rephrase that now to like, I invest in someone's first rounds, right? Because I'm just like, you know, or, you know, I invest first check or whatever, because it's like, sometimes people hear pre-seed and they still think like, oh, like that can be like a, like I get all these decks all the time. It's like, great, we're raising a pre-seed. They send me like a deck and it's like, yeah, we're raising $5 million on $25. I'm like, dude, that's not a, that's not a Pre-seed.

That's, that's an A, or maybe a seed, or a seed.

Exactly. Yeah, exactly. And so it's like, you know, so I'm like, I'm like, no, like, you know, you have to kind— I'm sure I'll change terminology too now.

Yeah, maybe we need better like farming analogies, like germinate and, you know, till the, till the field. I don't know.

Like, so when I tell people in Europe, just to sort of illustrate this point, that I invest in pre-seed, and then I tell them like, hey guys, I invest in a like $2 million round on like a, I don't know, like 8.5 post valuation, they're like, that's a seed I'm like, they're like, pre-seed is like smaller than that. I'm like, okay. So like, you know, again,

like in Europe. Yeah. It's 4 or 5 cap kind of stuff.

Yeah. Yeah, exactly. So it's just like, and like, you know, so there have to be better ways to describe.

Let's talk about fund mechanics. How much did you end up raising? How many investments you're going to make? Sector, geo, all that stuff.

Yeah. So I announced the fund as closed at 4.5, but in practice, you know, I've still taken some commitments and stuff. And so it's really kind of closer in 5 at this point. I kind of expected to round, I'm actually hard capping it at this point. I think I kind of getting more interest actually than I could take, which is such a great problem to have, but kind of capping it around 5. So, you know, for all intents and purposes, I call it $5 million. The fund was actually originally modeled to be a $3 million fund. So I ended up oversubscribing. So what I'm currently doing is the following. So the core strategy of that $3 million fund, like exactly 3, it's kind of more like $3.2, $3.3 million was to do $50K checks basically was the core strategy of that fund. So with oversubscribing it, I'm not changing that core strategy. I'm just kind of like bumping up the check size a little bit more to ownership. And, you know, I'm kind of leaving a little bit of space for like opportunistic stuff, right? So, you know, something maybe off thesis, it's really great or like a follow-on or something like that. Maybe just do more investments. But yeah, core strategy is at least 50 checks. You know, I call it basically now like 0.5 to like 1% ownership.

Yeah, it makes sense. And then, so you recently tweeted advocating for probabilistically diversified pre-seed approach. Maybe you could talk about what prompted that post and why VCs hate the spray and pray of early stage investors.

Yeah, I think, I think there's so many layers to this that it's like, I don't even know where to start. I think just I'll start sort of like in my reference point personally. So, you know, I'd sort of mentioned that when I was an angel, you know, I had the chance to, to, to learn from like a few, few of the GPs that were running kind of like, I guess, funds you could say that are structurally like mine, right? You know, they're kind of like, you know, sub $100 million pre-seed funds predominantly, like they invest early, right? All of that. So fortunately, some of these GPs that I got to know and I still learn from today, um, did very well. Like they returned, you know, like, like, you know, like one I'll, I'll, I'll name who's been like a huge help for me is like Adam Draper, Boost VC, right? Like, I mean, they've had a, I mean, like their first fund, I think, I think it's a 2017 vintage. It might be 2018. I'm not sure, but I mean,

who is this?

Uh, this Boost VC.

Yeah. Boosted. Yeah.

Yeah. They, their first fund was 2017 vintage or so. I mean, they're, I mean, absolutely crushing in DPI and stuff.

Yeah. I think I talked to Adam, uh, uh, at Camp Hustle. Um, he came in to give a little talk and I think he made 100 investments and it's like an 11x DPI right now.

Yeah. They're, they're, I mean, they're amazing. Right. And so, so he's one example, but there are other ones too. I mean, even Gary Tan kind of where he's always advocating for this, right? So it's not just like a frame.

Well, the whole YC model is predicated on this. They do 400 a year, 500, like 600 a year.

Exactly. And so the point is, it's just, I like, at least me coming into venture, just anecdotally, what I saw is that people that are making great funds at this stage, and I know personally are doing well, uh, are just ones that are, you know, they all tell me like, yeah, like we're invested in over 50 companies. Like,

well, yeah, 500 startups, their first fund. Was 11x net DPI and they'd made 500 investments.

Exactly. And so

everybody I talked to that does 100 or more in their fund does really, really well.

They do well.

In Calacanitza, it's 109 investments in fund 1. It's 5x DPI, 11x TVPI.

Exactly right. And so this started for me with a very kind of like anecdotal thing where I was like, okay, like I'm new to this, right? When I'm starting out, I don't need to like necessarily reinvent the wheel here, right? Like I have a couple guys that I know that are very experienced and learning from that are all doing it the same way. So like, if it ain't broke, don't fix it, right? But, you know, so you start there, but then you sort of start going into it, right? And it's exactly what you said, right? You look at a lot of the very, very successful funds at that stage. They're all very diversified and you start digging even deeper. And I mean, I do start seeing just like a bunch of, you know, you mentioned Monte Carlos earlier, you know, math that basically goes to the point to say that like, hey, venture is a Monte Carlo experiment. Numerically, and you know what the hit rates are at different stages. So basically you have to model your portfolio construction accordingly to that because it's just very, very, it's just very reliably probabilistic.

Most LPs and especially VCs don't understand probability theory, right? You're an engineer, you worked in AI, I worked in AI. So you kind of look at it like that, you know?

Well, there are a few myths that exist, right? Which I think, and I think some of them make sense and some of them don't make sense. So, you know, the math always points to, if I want to look at a fund individually, you know, at that stage you need the diversification, right? Like that is just, that is just like there is, I have not seen anything that suggests that that's not true. Now, there is a counterargument to this. And I would say that it's not a view I hold personally. And I think this is very subjective, but there are, I think there are 2 kinds of GPs and LPs. And I think this is ultimately where the division on this point comes is there are the GPs like you and I and Adam and You know, there are LPs like that as well that basically believe that like, hey, my duty is if I could just reliably return 3, 4, 5, 6x out of a fund, like I'm doing my job right now. On the flip side, which is what a diversified portfolio construction achieves.

Yeah. Even if you're a monkey throwing darts at a tech crunch, you should hear that.

LPs that want that, right? There are LPs that explicitly want to invest in funds where it's like, hey, I just want a fund that, you know, even if I have a portfolio of funds, it just reliably returns me something in that return profile, right? Like with higher probability, I'm getting that kind of return. On the other side there, and this is where things start to fall apart, where people don't argue the numbers, but they argue like, what are the numbers that are important? Because you and I, I think, would make the argument that like, hey, our motivation is just to 5x DPI, right? Like if we, if we, we cut off either a little bit on either side of that, great, right? But that's like somewhere where you want to be, right? Somewhere in that stage, we did our job. There are other GPs and subsequently LPs for different reasons that take this viewpoint that Well, you know, what's the point of doing venture if I don't return a 10x, basically? There is, of course, math that suggests that you're more likely to hit a 10x fund if you're more concentrated, right? You don't do something diversified. Now the question is, does that trade-off necessarily make sense? In my opinion, as a GP, it sure as hell does not, right? Because like, basically what you're saying is, hey, I'm taking a 10% chance that like my fund will actually be like Great. And a 90% chance that it's completely garbage, basically. Right. Which as a GP, I don't know why you'd want to stake your reputation on that kind of thing. And it gets into a myth I'm about to get into. From a GP side, purely from returns profile perspective, I don't understand why you'd want to do that. From the, from the LP side, I understand it more, particularly from the fund of funds, right? Because you can make the argument that if they—

well, especially from a fund of funds.

Yeah, exactly. Like, because they get their diversification by just investing in a bunch of different funds. Right. So if they—

They do not want, I've, I've literally been told by fund of funds that they're like, You're— I invest $100,000 to $150,000 per fund, and I'm on fund 3. And so they look, they look at my performance like, yeah, you got great performance, you got great deals, blah blah blah, top decile, funds 1 and 2. And then they're like, but you know, like, you're too— it's, it's too diversified for me.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And this is, this is ultimately the point, I think. So, so from the fund to funds, I obviously get it because of course it's kind of the like diversification for me but not for thee is kind of their mantra, right? Where I'm like, Hey, listen, like my job is not to be a cog necessarily, like at least the way I view it, like it's to be a cog in some like fund of funds wheel or like play for their LPs, right? It's like my job is ultimately to make money for like my direct LPs, right? Which is just like, okay, offer the best financial product that I can deliver, right? Which I think again, it's done through diversification. Now, my suspicion is the following. So one of the reasons that I feel very passionately about this is because I'm sure you've had the same experience is that most of the quote unquote, like Professional or institutional LPs or whatever, let's just, you know, typically like these big check writing, like fund of funds, whatever they like the concentrated approach for kind of exactly the reason that we just mentioned.

But you know, you know what's hypocritical about that? Like if you stop and think about the back to your barbell, you know, stuck in the middle, you got the, the truffle hunters and then you have the big mega billion dollar funds. How many startups are in those big mega $7 billion A16Z funds? There's thousands probably, right? Hundred, at least hundreds. So they are literally doing the diversification and succeeding with it. And by the way, only hitting unicorns at the average 2, 2.5%.

100%, right? I think, I think, I think I saw some posts about that, that like basically like hit rates across all these funds is not even different, right? And it's like, it's like, you know, but, but the myth is, the myth is the following, right? There are a couple of things that I think, that I think happen, right? Like one is, again, I completely agree with you, but You know, there's this numeric LP argument there. I think there are other things also, like I've heard that, hey, like a lot of these big funds of funds or these institutions, right? Like they like to invest in funds where like, you know, the fund writes the initial check and then they raise some like big Series B that the fund itself is too small to actually invest in. So they give the allocation to the fund of funds, and that only makes sense if the actual ownership of the portfolio fund is big enough. And so for that, they need to be diversified, blah, blah, blah.

Yeah, you got to have major investor rights. And so you don't lose your pro rata in the Series A conversion from the SAFE and all that stuff.

So there's all that kind of argument too. And so, but you know, anyway, you can make this case to like, okay, like the fund of funds, at least like whether you agree with it or not, have some numerical basis for it. Again, why the GPs would want to play that game, I don't understand. And I think the only reason is, at least in my experience, one of the reasons that I feel very passionate about this whole issue is it's much easier to find like big check writing LPs that like the concentrated approach. Right. And like, so I think my opinion is a lot of particularly new GPs are opting for that kind of a model. 'Cause I feel like I've had some LPs tell me like, wow, it's refreshing to see a really diversified fund than somebody that does this thing. 'Cause everybody wants to be concentrated because I think on average it's just easier to raise for a concentrated fund. It ultimately comes down to fundraising is my personal theory. Now, the other thing that I think lives in this, and I think this is slightly where GPs tend to delude themselves, and I think maybe why you have some of these GPs that are like, Okay, I'm going to go follow portfolio construction that in very, very, very small likelihood is actually going to make it like a, like say a top decile return for me is the kind of like the picker myth and the sort of like idea that I'm such a great picker and I'm just going to be this like extraordinarily good selector of—

I'm Chris Dixon. It's 2009 and I'm amazing.

And it's just like, it's just like not true. Right. And again, it's just because again, there's like, there's like enough Like, like never, this is the thing that I always say, like, never mind, just like the math that this proves that, that like even some of the greatest funds that, you know, in the world are like numerically not extraordinary pickers, so to speak. Like they're hitting rates.

Oh, they're just hitting the index. If you hit the index for venture, depending on the dataset you look at, depending on the stage and sector and geo and all that stuff, it's a 20 to 30% IRR asset class. And so like, if you compound 20%, you should double your money every, you know, roughly 3 years. Rule of 72. And so you should double your, your money 3 times. 2 to the 3rd power is 8x gross. That's if you're just hitting the low end of the estimates of the index.

That's right.

So I mean, if you're not getting an 8 to 10x fund, you are underperforming in my mind.

Yeah. Yeah. And I think, I think a lot of it's also like a time that I think is also like, you know, one of the arguments like I had when I posted this on, for example, the post you're talking on Twitter, right? Was, well, you know, 5x in 20 years is a bad fund. And I'm like, Obviously, like, yes, I agree. Like, you can make the argument that like, you know, 5x-ing your money in 20 years is not great for venture given the liquidity and all of that. But they're like, there are 2 parameters in that argument, right? There's the return profile that you're actually making, like just in absolute terms of the money and then like, you know, the time.

Yeah. Not all the money came in year 20.

Yeah. It's all, it's the time, but it's also the time value proposition, right? Where the other argument I would say is that, well, we could agree that if I return you 5x in 8 years, it's obviously like way better, right? Than obviously returning in 20 years, obviously, right? And so maybe the question we should be asking is like, why are we getting to a point? Because I think that's one of the things that happened in modern venture is that the time to liquidity has just continuously got longer. And I'm like, maybe that's actually the primary we need to fix. It's not the other stuff we need to fix, right? It's just how do we, how do we pull it?

Well, you can take money off the table now too, right? Like if you're a pre-seed investor and you get in a 5 or 10 cap and you're sitting on 100x, you probably should trim that position. I had Ben Black on the program a few episodes ago. He runs the RAISE conference and he does, you know, a venture fund that's all secondaries. And we were talking about when do you exit, right? When do you, and we talked about it for like about a half hour. And he goes, his general advice was, and always stuck with me, or it stuck with me since, is if you have an opportunity to return your fund, take it.

That

was his rule of thumb.

Yeah. And I think there are a lot of frameworks for that and it makes sense. It's just, I think that's like what us as GPs actually have to kind of worry more about. now, right? Because it used to be, you know, venture 20 years ago, like, you know what, the time to IPO was way shorter than it is now. And more companies went public faster, right? Like you as a manager didn't really have to worry that much about liquidity because you knew it was like, you know, a lot more common that like, hey, like I might invest in 5 years, these things IPO and you get your liquidity and whatever, like the game's changed. And so I think as managers, we have to, you know, think about that differently now. And I think like this sort of like taking this passive posture of, well, we got to wait 20 years for IPO now. So, you know, we, we have to. You know, we have, we have to change how much return we're returning out of the funnel, breaking basically by breaking the math, which doesn't make sense, right? It's kind of, you know, again, it takes just none of it makes any sense. But, but again, like the, I think the, the, to sort of pull it to the picker thing, like I think that's the thing that like really agitates me. But, but I think it's also, the thing is it's not just a GP thing, it's also an LP thing, right? Because, you know, the, the, obviously the derision of the quote unquote spraying, spraying prey is Well, that basically means you're admitting defeat, that you actually don't know how to pick anything and you're kind of just, you know, praying and hoping and whatever.

I think what they failed to recognize, like the counterpoint to that is like, yeah, I do an investment every week, but I look at 100 a week.

Yeah.

I'm investing in the top, you know, 1 to 1 or to maybe half a percent of what I see that week.

Also the other thing, by the way, like this is particularly for guys like us that invest pre-seed. Like the more I do this, the more I'm also like, how much time do you even want to spend on a deal at this stage, right? Like, I mean, what is there really to diligence? Like, I don't understand, like, the pre-seed investors that spend like 5 meetings with the founder. I'm like, what the hell do you want to ask them at some point?

Like, I've literally had founders tell me that. I was like, wait, we're not going to do another meeting? It's like, no, I got what I need. Half-hour meeting. Send me your data room. Yeah. I'll have some questions.

And yeah. And usually, like, you know, I've done this enough now where I feel like you just kind of know, like, what you're gauging. But the point is, is that, like, that's to say, because at this stage that we're investing in, like, I always say, you're not really investing in companies. Is it primarily investing in people in problem spaces and you hope they figure it out, right? It's really what they're taking. And there's like so much freaking variability about, I mean, I'll give you like, I'll give you like one, one, like example from our portfolio, which is like, you can do all the diligence in the world. And like, you know, there's a company that almost got derailed for something you could have like zero account for. It's, you know, founder and his co-founder. The co-founder is tech, like the, you know, the, you have a technical co-founder whose daughter had unexpectedly passed away. And so obviously big seminal moment, like very, all these kinds of family issues, whatever that could like came from that. So this found co-technical co-founder who was bringing a lot of the tech that the company's built on at the time basically left the company, right? Because he was like, I have to, I have to deal with my family. Like I can't, I'm not there for this right now. And that almost completely derailed the company. And so like the, the, the founder that left had to like totally pivot and whatever and all this kind of stuff. I'm like, I remember I read the blurb that, you know, I like usually write like a small blurb of investments we do in my LP updates. And I'm like, toss all that out the window. Frankly, it's like completely meaningless because again, ultimately, like there's something that fragile that you're investing in where there's so much variability about.

That's a, yeah, black swan kind of event.

Which you put like stuff like that happens. I mean, you have co— like, I mean, I'm sure you've seen this. I would think.

Yeah. I had a CTO that was shot up 6 times in his chest and became a paraplegic. He could still use his hands and, you know, like 2 or 3 months later, he was back at the keyboard.

Crazy. That's nuts. But it's, that's even more, it's a lot more kind of like normal. Like you just had like a co-founder breakup, right? Like that happens all the time, right? You know, these kinds of things. And of course you could do kind of your diligence to try to assuage that. But ultimately, like, that's why we say you're not really investing in companies because these aren't organizations.

I should have done better due diligence. I should have known that somebody was going to shoot him in the chest, you know?

Exactly right. And then, so I'm like, I'm like, so like, I would almost say that almost every company, like the vast majority of company failures that I've experienced as an investor were related to things that I could have never foreseen. Because it's like some weird founder,

co-founder quits, founder issue,

like a company that shut down once because literally the co-founder freaked out the other co-founder for voting for Trump and basically like detonated the company. I'm like, I can't account.

Sounds like a barrier problem,

right? I know, but I'm like, I can't account, like no investor can account for that. But these are obviously, these are kind of like anecdotal examples, which sort of go to the point of like, and when you invest at that stage, you can't have any certainty about anybody. The only thing that you can be even, you can be sure about is that a lot of them will fail for dumb reasons. that you can't account for. And that, you know, hopefully you're just backing smart people in the problem space that you trust them to figure out. Some will, most won't, right? And so by virtue of that, you're going to need enough shots on goal, right? To account for all those different like variations of outcome, right? And so like, I would never understand the argument for someone to think I'm investing in 15, 1-5, like pre-seed company, pre-seed, like true pre-seed. I have no idea how you expect to make money doing that, right? It's just, it just, it just, it feels— Staying yourself in the foot. Like I have 23 companies, I think the portfolio right now, if I were to close the fund and say like, I'm not investing anything more and that's it, I'd be like, this is toast, right? Even though I like a lot of the companies, obviously, and I feel good about them. Like, if I'm being realistic, this is, this fund is completely toast.

No, it's not enough at pre-seed.

Not enough. No, it's not enough. And again, it's just the math speaks to that. And so I just, it really like, it blows my mind that there are people that like ignore that. But again, I sort of just come to conclude that it's ideological. There's a set of GPs and LPs that like one thing. There is a set of another set of GPs and LPs that like the other thing. And you just have to know where you are and who your audience is, right? And so I've sort of, it was frustrating at first, but I've sort of just come to realize that like, hey, if they like concentrated portfolios, it's just not my customer, right? But like there are plenty of LPs that do like the diversify, right? That's my customer base, right? That's who I'm selling to. That's who I'm selling a financial product to because that's what they want, right? I think the best piece of wisdom that I got through fundraising actually, and I think this applies to this, like it was given to me in a bit of a different context, but I think it actually applies to this is that as a GP, your job is really only to do the following, which is to find LPs that have already decided that they want to invest in venture. Like they made that decision already that like we want to allocate to it. And then, um, and then have already made the decision that they want to allocate to like your, for the lack of a better term, thesis or sector or whatever it is, right, that you're kind of investing in. And then, and so that was, that advice was given to another pre— under the context of Pitching the actual sector thesis and all of that. But I think this also applies very much to portfolio construction and like return profile subsequently because of, you know, it's kind of part of the thesis and it's a very disqualifying or qualifying thing, obviously. Right. But then basically on the back of that, like it's just your job to find those people and just convince them that you're the right guy to solve that problem for them. Right. And like, because if you have to convince them of the other 2 things, you're toast. Like you're already like cooked. And I would say from like the 50-odd LPs that I have now, that's like universally true, right? Like all of them for some reason or other, like those parameters are already the case where it's like they would invest, they're interested, at least interested already the decision they want to invest in venture and that they would generally invest in like the areas that I'm allocating to, right? And so, you know, I think like that's, it's the best advice I've ever gotten. And I also think like, unfortunately, like it's also sort of on the other side, like a bit of a, I think a thing for GPs to sort of internalize that like, hey, I need to do what I think is right and then find the appropriate like LPs For this, right? Whereas I think there are a lot of GPs that, you know, I, where I speculate what their calculation actually is, you know, if I, if I change this thing here a little bit, it's just going to make it easier to raise, which I'm like, I don't actually think is a particularly great motivation for setting up a fund, right? To make it easier to raise, like figure out like in your best ability to try to make money and like find the right audience for it. And you will be able to raise. And like, I mean, again, I haven't raised like a crazy amount of money, but I would say my own fundraise is a fun one. in a pretty tough period, that's what works, right? And like really just nailing that down and being like, I have the story, I have what I want. Like I have this portfolio construction that I'm like, from my own conviction, convinced I'll make the most money doing this. Find the right audience for it. Most people won't like it. You know, you find the ones that do and, you know, you'll convert a lot of those guys and yeah, there you have your fund. Yeah.

I love it. Well, this was an amazing conversation. We barely got through the outline that we had prepared. We'll have to have you back on and we'll shoot the shit some more on some VC stuff. Where can, where can folks find you online?

Twitter is probably the best. Twitter, email. Yeah, I, please no LinkedIn. I try to minimize it as much as possible, but Twitter, Twitter and email is good. All right.

Yeah, we'll definitely include that in the show notes. Thanks so much for coming on.

Perfect. Yeah. Thanks, Brian. Thanks for having me.