The Truth About Consumer Investing: Why the Best Ideas Feel Uncomfortable at First w/Kirsten Green

One of the most challenging but the most exciting things right now is like avoid getting caught up in like what things looked like in the past tech cycle and think about like if you started today with this brand new technology from ground up, how would you put it to practice? Like what would, what would the page look like? What would the experience look like?

The Library of Alexandria was an attempt to capture all human knowledge. Fire and war destroyed it. Today, we try again. Welcome to the Library of Minds, where you'll learn the frameworks and mental models of the world's greatest thinkers. And when our conversation ends, yours begins. Each guest has created a digital mind on Delphi that you can talk to anytime, anywhere. I'm Dara Lajevardian. Let's dive in. Hi everyone. Very excited to have Kirsten Green here. She's founder and managing partner at Forerunner Ventures, one of the most influential consumer investors of our time. And specifically her fund's thesis is really around investing in businesses that capitalize on new consumer behaviors and psychology. And that's led to her being an investor in Dollar Shave Club, Glossier, Away, Chime, Fair, Hims and Hers, and many others. It's great to have you here.

Thanks, Tara. Great to be here. Yeah, I was here early when you guys were just moving in and there was very few people, so it's awesome to see a full room today.

Well, would love to start off at the beginning. You know, you have had a pretty nonlinear career and you also said you never sought out mentors. And so I'm curious, what substituted mentorship in your life? You know, you went from consulting to banking to starting a fund. What guided that path?

Yeah, you know, I'm the one I think that has answered this question saying I had a nonlinear path and I did, but I would say importantly, there's like a through line through all of it. And the through line through all of it has just been my personal journey to grow up and evolve as a person. I think that if I had gone back and revisited myself as a, young student or something, I wouldn't have imagined that I would be in the role that I'm in now. And maybe that's true for everybody, but I think for me, like, that's been very active in my career is that I've been, or in my life, that I've been kind of constantly pushing myself to get to know myself better. And I think through that, following my curiosities, and one experience or challenge leads you to another. And so that has looked like from the outside, like a nonlinear journey, but it's really been kind of all about sort of that path to get to know yourself better, to be able to live with more confidence. So, you know, the question of mentorship, I didn't, I, Forerunner's been my longest job. I do think my whole team is my mentor. I think all the founders I work with are, and I think that's kind of like life. Like there's always an opportunity to learn in whatever environment you're in, whether you have somebody that you look up to that's kind of been there, done that, or, you know, just that you admire, or whether it's somebody who's challenging you in the moment and you're having a disagreement with, or whether it's somebody you're bringing up the, You know, kind of the ladder or the learning curve. I think those are all instances to learn. And that's really what mentorship is. I think that I hope I serve as a mentor, loosely defined, to many people. I always find it like a little, I don't know really what to do when you get this question that comes lately or more frequently, which is, will you be my mentor? I'm like, what is that? You know, I don't have a, I don't have office hours for that per se. I think that really depends on your personal— that's one of the reasons why I love it. So life is my mentor and everybody that I've had the good fortune or the challenge of engaging with.

Yeah. So it seems like I read on your website, your biggest superpower is intuition, which kind of answers the question. You just have good intuition for choosing what to do. Was that intuition innate or, you know, were there bumps along the way that led to that intuition? How do people think about building intuition?

I actually am working on my intuition every day still.

Okay. So constantly evolving.

I think that this is like the challenge, which is one of the great things about progressing through life is accumulating experiences and accumulating wisdom. But it's also one of the big risks because I think that, you know, and particularly in the field that we're all working in, like you really have to stay open-minded. You have to, you have to, I just was finishing our presentation for our annual Investor Day next week. And the last slide was, this is a time period that's about the courage of imagination.

We talk a lot about intuition versus data here at Delphi. Sometimes they're at direct odds. Have there been times in your life where the data has completely conflicted with your intuition and you overrode it anyways?

Yeah. Start a venture capital firm at 40 when you have no experience doing it.

So the data told you no.

Yeah. You know, I think it's a regular rub. I mean, I think that if I was just talking about my work now and doing early-stage investing, there's often not a lot of explicit data. There's more about sort of pure raw data going against intuition. I am sure there are instances that I have actually, now that we're talking about, I can think of a few where, for instance, the data really, yeah, there are instances. I think it's a life process. Sorry.

And do you ever listen to the data over your intuition?

Yes, because I would say that I've made every mistake, right? So part of the process. I have listened to the data beyond my intuition and, you know, that, yeah, missed it sometimes because of that. And so I think that's like a moment to go back and remind yourself like the power of intuition.

You got it, Jen.

And just what you wanna lean with, right?

Yeah.

I mean, there's no way that we're getting through our lives without making a lot of mistakes. And so I think on some level it's like, what do you, like, what ground do you wanna stand on or what space do you wanna stand in with respect to that mistake? And I think if you, you know, you can choose what those are. And I feel like if I lean on my intuition, I lean on my sense of the people I'm involved with and things don't work out, like I'm more okay with that than if I just went with something that was like, just the data and it didn't work out.

Yeah, because then if you get it wrong on the data, it doesn't actually improve your intuition.

It doesn't.

And intuition, that's all you have. Has your bar for patience changed with AI, with companies, you know, overnight successes in 6 months, 8 months? Or do you think category-creating companies still take time to cook? Is it— are these edge cases?

I do think the best things in life, like, take time to percolate and they take time to unfold. And I think that's true for businesses too. I think this idea that there's this, expansive list of companies that are going from idea to tens of millions of dollars in revenue. I think those are more one-off cases than those are realities. And I haven't seen in business in, you know, let's call it 15 years of venture investing and 15 years of kind of public markets investing before, I don't think there's such a story as something going like, you know, straight up and all the way. So you might catch a tailwind or you might catch some early momentum early, but at some point, part of that equation is gonna break down and you're gonna have to kind of work through that. Maybe you have to grind first before you get to that. I think it's, you know, it's a lot like life. There's like a series of stops and starts and they happen, you know, in a different cadence and one might lead differently than the other.

So sometimes patience can have the opposite effect where, you know, you wanna have the perfect product before you launch. Like you wanna have polish, when is enough enough? Like how do you prevent this waiting game for the startups that you work with?

Oh, I mean, I think this is, I can say almost like to a T for every experience I've had, whether I, where there's been a founder who's like, let's just push something out, or whether it's somebody who's waiting to make it perfect. In 6 months you look back, maybe 3 months you look back and you're like, I can't believe I launched with that. There's so much learning that happens all the time. So it's never gonna be good enough. The work's never gonna be done. I think that's like, fuel that, you know, that's like fire that fuels us. Like, I think everybody that's, you know, particularly working in startup world or even just in your life, like you kind of want to keep striving and learning and doing things better. And so like you just got to be courageous and get something out there and start doing the learning because it goes exponential when you're learning in partnership with your customers.

Yeah, I totally agree. So the edge for Forerunner is consumer quotient. I'd love for you to talk a little bit about what that means and an example of how that potentially changed your decision to invest in a company.

So consumer quotient, which you're referring to the CQ, which is our newsletter, is like a marketing thing. It's like there's EQ and then there's IQ. And so we're basically just saying like there's a, you know, in some ways an intersection of those two, but it's really leaning into into people and behaviors as a guiding light for how we approach things or how we think about things. Yeah. And I think that plays, that plays a role in every single decision. I mean, if we're talking specifically about investing that we're making with investing, whether there is always a buyer or a user, whether you have a consumer company or whether you have a small business company or whether you have an enterprise business company. And so really understanding like Who is it that you want to use the product? What are they going to use the product for? What are going to be the most important things to them about getting, you know, getting value or the experience out of it feels, you know, essential to be able to, to answer that question or have a point of view on that question and work towards refining it. And so like the CQ is just leaning into that importance of that in an equation.

Yeah. And part of that is just being aware of consumer behaviors and, you know, where they're going. There are some companies that we're not necessarily capitalizing on a consumer behavior. For example, Airbnb, Uber, a lot of these companies were thought of as weird at first and then they normalized weird behavior. How do you think about a consumer behavior being something that's inevitable versus being something that a company has to will into existence? Does that make sense?

I don't, I mean, I'm of the mindset that anything is possible. And I do think like leaning into your imagination is really important. Being open about that. I think willing things on people is, is a really hard way to go. And I think that, you know, even the weird things, as you referred to, that wasn't willing anything on people that was actually making something okay that people wanted to do. You know, I think it felt weird to go get in a stranger's car, felt weird to go take a room in a stranger's house. But there were a lot of reasons why that was a good solution to a need. And what those teams did was make it okay, make it okay to do that, make it safe to do that, make it accessible to do that. And because enough people then wanted to do that, it started to become a social norm. So, you know, that was really playing into like a latent desire that people had. And the interesting observation was being willing to take a bet on that, a risk on that.

And a lot of consumer companies become social norms, but before that, they usually start with a small group of people. Consumers are pretty broad. How do you think about choosing a group of consumers to focus on versus building for the long term? Everyone's gonna have this in mind.

I think business is a series of actions to earn your right into bigger and bigger things over time. And I think that's true for the consumers, right? I like that. It's very hard to come out and just be everything to everybody or do everything at a company. Having focus is really important. Having focus on the few things you wanna be, you know, what your product is, the few things you wanna be excellent at and who you want it to resonate. And then really, I think embodying this approach of like, okay, I'm on a journey to see how I can learn there and push further, right? And push further in terms of the customers you're reaching and the product core capabilities or use cases. I think we see so many businesses, if you think about like the big, If it's Big Seven or I don't know what it is now for the tech companies, the public companies, they all started in one particular niche and over time kind of grew and earned the right into push into all these other places. And now in so many ways they're cross, they're competing left and right with each other.

Right.

And I think that, that, you know, but nobody started with that expanse. They started with a particular spot.

Yeah. And do you think that it's important to strategize for how you might expand, or it's not even worth it early on?

I think it's important to strategize. I think it's fun to strategize.

It is fun to strategize.

I know, I think it's fun to dream, right? And I think that if you can't get imaginative about it and start to kind of brainstorm and play with what's possible, it's certainly harder to get there, right? When does something just like slap you over the head? Usually it's like you're open for business, like you're thinking like, okay, what else? Who else would care about this? What's the other use case for this? Maybe, you know, particularly if you have a product out in the world, you see somebody unexpected using it. And if you have the curiosity and the humbleness to ask like, why? Why is that person coming here? What are they getting out of it? The chances are you'll find another group of people that align with that too.

Yeah.

Everybody is unique, but there are definitely things that are shared across big groups of people.

Yeah. So a very important part for consumer is distribution. And to the extreme, this has led to this new trend, attention is all you need, where distribution at all costs may be more important than product. I'm curious about your thoughts on this trend and do you think this is potentially brand degrading long-term for consumers. It's strategic for consumers. When does growth at all costs overpower product or just the number?

I think that is less about the consumers and it's more about the business. Distribution is a challenge and it's a really, really important hurdle to get through. And it is one of the things that I'm sure you guys have thought about since day one. I think about it when I'm looking at an opportunity from the sidelines, when I'm, you know, kind of evaluating it from diligence and every day while I'm a partner to it, I think if you could think about a way to create distribution that is, you know, comes from a place of like, you're, you're, it makes your product better. You know, there's, there's good, there's good and better distribution. But the reality is, is like we all do need to grab attention. There is a there is a lot of everything out there, particularly right now. Like, one of the most exciting things is, is that I think this new technology we have to play with makes so many more things possible, and people are showing up with imagination. And there's a lot— we're calling it this, this messy creative stage where there's a lot of experimenting going on, and there's a lot of, there's a lot of people trying similar things but from different angles, and trying to rise above the noise is is really hard and I think it requires creativity and there isn't, there isn't an answer. I've been asked a version of this question since I started investing. I think early on this was not by design. This was like maybe, maybe the output of a selection on companies. But we had a number of early investments from Angel Fund in my first fund that did get a lot of kind of quick notoriety. And so one of the questions we'd get asked right away from any new company in the portfolio is, What's the marketing secret? How did so-and-so do it? How did so-and-so do that? And I long to give somebody like an answer on like the marketing hack or the distribution hack. But the reality is it's like different for every single company and it usually requires a lot of creativity and a lot of nimbleness and a lot of flexibility of leaning into different things over time. Yeah.

Enjoying the conversation? Got a question? You can ask Kirsten's digital mind. Just check the link in the comments or description. And you said a lot of people are experimenting with a lot of these tools because it's a new thing. So it's easier to get the shiny object syndrome. But once the novelty wears off, are you actually building an enduring product? So what can companies do to make sure they're not getting too sucked into the, oh, I have so many users, but it's actually just they're experimenting.

That is happening a lot right now. It's happening a lot.

Right?

I mean, I think that on a very basic humble level, it's like, why are you doing this? Who cares about it? What's the benefit of it? And not losing sight of that. I doubt anyone is going through all of the effort that you're all going through just so you can get some attention. Right? Right. You're doing it because you believe in a product. Some people are. And I think that will run short. I have always like, I have made every investment decision or business decision with the utmost respect for the user. The consumers are savvy, they are smart. Like they will be in business and in partnership with you if you show up and respect them. But like they will try things and move on if not, and they will figure out gimmicks fast.

Yeah.

So I think that while you're on this journey to explore distribution, while you're on this journey to create noise in the market, Why bother doing any of that if you don't have a product that's good, that matters to somebody for some set of reasons?

Yeah. Sometimes consumers and users don't know what they want because especially if you're creating something new, they might tell you something that isn't true.

There's a say-do gap is a real thing.

Yeah, say-do gap. How do you get through the noise? Really understand what the consumer wants, know when to listen to them, know when to ignore them?

I love this question. It's a really hard question. It's a really complicated dance to navigate, I think. And it gets back to maybe where we started, which is a little bit of intuition on this too. Yeah, right. I think that probably if you think about some of the most beloved products or habits you've gotten into, you didn't know you needed those or wanted those before it happened, right? But somebody was able to connect a few dots, put that idea together, have enough belief in the possibility of it, get it to market, listen to a core group of users, continue to make it like ever more relevant. I do think that everybody does. I do think the best companies go on a journey of their product with their users. But you have to start with enough, you know, courage of your own conviction to get it out there and get going.

You've talked a lot about structural design in startups and would love to know what does that look like in practice at a startup seed, Series A, how that changes over time. Is structural design something that you think about once? And then what are the decision-making frameworks for deciding?

Almost never. There's almost nothing that you think about once. I do think that it's a real evolution and I think that requires great teams and great leaders to have a point of view on that evolution. But as we've talked about in a couple of different ways, like you're going on that journey with a user while you're in it too. And I think it, as you grow as a company, you've got more people around the table, you've got more teams working on things. You know, it's one of the biggest challenges, if not the biggest challenge of company building is like, who do you get on the team with you? How do you empower them to do the best work that they do? It looks different at a seed, at a Series A, at a Series B, One of the fascinating, or I think one of the most rewarding things about being at a startup is that like you get to go have multiple jobs during the journey of a company and things change a lot, right? Constantly changes, yeah. So I think that like there's a north star, there's a why are we doing this, who are we doing it for, what do we stand for, guiding principles that really should, I think the most successful companies have reflected in all parts of their process over time. But I think then beyond that, you're going on a journey.

Yeah.

To build.

I have a couple more questions and I want to open it up to the team. One other thing I saw on your website, which I'm sure you can tell I looked at your website. I was like, these are all the things that she's saying.

Reminder, people look at the website.

Yes. You said you were working on letting go of things that don't serve you. I'm curious if there's something that you can share about something that you're referencing to here? And then also to founders and startup teams, what are things that you think they're doing that don't serve them that you think they should let go? So two-part question.

Two parts, but immediate thought was a pretty related, and I think it ties back to maybe what's become a theme of this conversation, which is like this idea of evolution and this idea of kind of always growing up and kind of going on a journey to become who you can be. And part of doing that is being open-minded and learning and flexing in new ways. And part of that is letting go of things, right? And if I kept all the beliefs about myself, all the beliefs about the world that I had two decades ago or even a year ago, I don't think I wouldn't be as present today. I wouldn't be as empowered today to like meet this moment in time. So, I'm letting go of things all the time.

Truly. Beliefs.

Yeah.

With new data and new intuition.

New data. And I just think growing, I think growing and changing that it is possible to do that without losing the core of who you are. I mean, like, let's not mistake that. Like, I think I'm like just, you know, talking about my own self. Like, I have friends since I've been in kindergarten. I'm recognizable then. But I'm also, you know, and I think we all are like wanting to push ourselves to keep growing and changing over time. And again, like that is an accumulation of things and it's a shedding of things all along the way, right? And this moment has really required that. Let's talk about building in a moment of AI. Like one of the most challenging but the most exciting things right now is like, don't get, I think if you can, like avoid getting caught up in like what things looked like in the past tech cycle and think about like if you started today with this brand new technology from ground up, Like, how would you put it to practice? Like, what would the page look like? What would the experience look like? Where would you guide a consumer to go? How would you do that?

Yeah, rebuild it from the ground because all the rules from the past 20 years, who knows if they're right?

Right.

Post-AI.

Right, exactly. I mean, we get to make up new ones. So in order to do that, you have to be open-minded and you have to kind of shed some of the beliefs you had before that like you have to have a dropdown menu that looks this way and you have to only click this many times.

Yes, one important attribute to me is solution orientation, which is what is the best solution and not being constrained by the problems of the previous age. So I totally agree. So one question I ask every person who comes here and every person who interviews for Delphi is, what is the darkest moment of your professional career and what did it teach you?

I'm thinking because I could come up with a few guys. I mean, I do think that like You know, you do learn from being in the company of great people and successes and everything, but you also learn, and particularly a lot about yourself going through really hard times.

Yeah.

And I think, you know, one of the most powerful things of going through hard times is learning that you can get through those really hard times.

Builds thick skin.

So on the professional front, I mean, two kind of come to mind. I was sort of, wanting to come up with something original and new that I haven't said before. But let me, let me touch on the two first ones because they were pivotal for me. My first kind of 10 years of my career, I was a good employee. Like, I really knew how to show up and like, you know, quote unquote, punch the clock and get the promotion and everything. And, and I did everything right. And I got the next opportunity and I was doing great. And then we had like a company had a merger and another merger and they did some shuffling around and like my position was gone. And like on the one hand it was nice because I think I had built enough of a reputation that they were like, where else would you wanna work? On the other hand was I loved that particular job and the fact that like I did everything and played by all the rules and then my job could just be gone like that, I think was really unnerving for me. And it was such a challenge for me to process that. But I would not be here today doing Forerunner or being enamored and unafraid of startups if I hadn't gone through that and realized that like, I can, I wanna be more in control of my own destiny and I wanna do something where I have more ability to zig and zag and not have it feel like that absolute moment of change or failure.

Yeah.

So that was a really big one.

Crucible moment for your life.

A really big crucible moment. And then, I mean, I think even predating Forerunner, I was making some investments in early stage companies and I had one that was the classic, or if there's such a thing as this, but like go big or go home. They just like, they had, they were doing everything at once. Like, you know, new product, new design systems, new supply chain, new stores, new distribution model, like the whole thing. And like that was what was wildly exciting about it. And I just loved the expanse of the idea, the creativity of the idea, and the many different things that were gonna make it super unique and powerful. But, you know, they got caught. It was in a market. The market changed, the funding environment changed, and they weren't going to be able to get all the resources that were accommodating that plan. And there was this inability to refine from where they were. And I think that like they got, you know, I saw the situation where we got ahead of ourselves in terms of just taking like not, not like losing our ability to be nimble, losing our ability to kind of learn as you go and like kind of use that part to control your own destiny. So maybe they're actually really related. I get it now that I get— I'm talking about it out loud.

To try to do too much at once.

Trying to do too much at once and lost the flexibility. I mean, like, I'm sure this is— maybe this is the first startup, probably not the first startup that many of you have worked at. Like, they're hard on like every single dimension. But like the one thing you have that the bigger guy above you that you're competing with, whatever, doesn't have is your ability to be nimble, your ability to be close and in touch with what's going on and make changes. And if you lose that, I think it's really painful.

Totally agree.

That's probably true if you're a big company too. If you look at like right now, these big companies navigating change in AI.

Yeah.

Yeah. So it's a good life lesson.

Yeah. If there was one lesson that your Delphi could pass on to founders, your kids, people 50, 100 years from now, what would that be?

Well, one lesson, I guess also like piece of advice, and I think it's again consistent with this conversation, which is like stay curious, stay open-minded, like find the way to leverage your wisdom to your advantage, but don't get caught up in the knowing because I do think life's a lot more interesting if you're like open-minded about, what tomorrow brings and try to stay hopeful about that. I find myself really like self-talking on that dimension a lot right now. There's a lot of chaos and a lot of things going on that feel maybe a bit scary or dark sometimes. But like, I really do believe in like the resilience of human. And I think things play out over time. So in the fullness of time, we'll end up in a good place through all these things. But, you know, I think, I think staying curious, staying open-minded is really important.

I love that. Thank you for that. Shall we open it up for questions? Andrew? Have there been any changes in consumer behavior specifically as it relates to AI recently that have gotten you excited or maybe even driven investment decisions?

Well, one thing I'm really excited about, generally speaking, is that consumers are like here for it. So if we look back on kind of even like the web adoption or the mobile adoption, like that took a lot longer than what we've seen with AI or specifically around like chat interfaces. The consumer is almost like pulling business along. Like I think they are— one example is I've been speaking with a lot of executives at, you know, at big companies to try to understand like what are their top What are the top, top things they're looking at addressing with AI? And I had some ideas in mind, but one thing that came through in like most 80%+ of them was this reference to search being broken on their site. And that just said to me that like people have like quickly adopted like moving out of keyword search, moving into natural language search and wanting to do things different and then expecting something personalized, expecting a better experience out of it. I think that like that near like two, two, if that's happened over a two-year period, that's like nearly overnight, you know? And the amount of experimentation we're seeing in like new tools is also really encouraging. I think for people just like, I want to be part of this. I wanna see how things can be better or easier. And I think, That's pretty encouraging for possibilities.

Chad, you talked a little bit about intuition and data and how sometimes it doesn't line up. Um, a lot of investing is also trying to explain to other people what gets you excited.

Yeah.

How can you, when the intuition and the data doesn't line up, how can you sort of get better explaining your intuition to other people?

This is a very good question. That is a work in progress because sometimes I'm like, I just wanna answer like, I just know, I just have a feeling. Let me think of it like an example and then we can like play with it in terms of creating an answer to this, which is like, this is an old example and I could tell you this example in many different iterations across many different companies. But the first investment in our first fund was Dollar Shave Club. And before I had met the founder, somebody had kind of pitched the idea and they'd said, you know, razors subscription. I was like, no, like there's a, you know, huge competitive— there's a constrained supply chain. There's huge competitors that have control of that. They have huge marketing budgets. It's not a high-ticket item. There's plenty of places to get it. Like subscription's not enough. Like that's not that interesting. But then I met the founder 2 days later, ironically. And, you know, he didn't pitch me a story about razors. He pitched me a story about how men were evolving and changing, how conversations online were changing, how they were interested in grooming, how they were interested in personal care products, how he could speak to them in a way that made that okay. Just like it was okay to get in a stranger's car and that he could, you know, continue, that he could leverage that initial conversation, which was like a universal thing, the razor, into like all these other products. And I was like, well, that is, that is much different positioning and that's a much bigger and different idea. And I think most of the time like when you're talking about something brand new, there is a data case like the one I said, which is not data how we think about cohort data, but it's like market data that says like, that's not really possible or attractive. But then you have somebody that's bringing like the imagination, the courage, like the belief system, like the observation that they're seeing and pinning it together in a few ways. And you just feel like, you know what, I can buy into that. I can see, I can see those tailwinds coming together and leading up to that.. And I think being able, you know, being able to tell that story is not gonna get everybody involved. I mean, that founder and many of the founders that we've backed at Forerunner have run into this problem. Like, you know, Oura, people were like, no one's gonna wear a ring. Like, do you see any, how many guys don't even wanna wear their wedding rings? They're not gonna wear a ring. Like, that form factor doesn't work. And people don't, like, not for your sleep, people don't really care about that. But, you know, we had like a belief system that kind of was the ring plus and beyond and change that was happening in healthcare. And that was enough to say like, this is a, this is a bet we're willing to take. And I think that's one of the things in this business, whether you're an investor or whether you're going to go work at a startup or start a startup, you have to be okay with people thinking you're nuts, like, or you're not going to go anywhere. You're not going to— you can't go get validation from everybody. It's probably true for everything, but like, it's really true in this space. I think you mostly first and foremost have to convince yourself and maybe a few other people that you really respect, and then you should be good to go. Yeah.

Sam, one of the things I think is cool about a bunch of different investments you've done, especially Aura, is it's taking some sort of technology that was created maybe decades before infrared and putting it in a way that a consumer can use it every day. I'm wondering what— and same with Glossier, like the makeup that they make.

Yeah.

And there's a bunch of examples like this. I'm wondering what consumer goods, whether it's something for robotics or something else that you think will be an influence on, or like a product that people will purchase in the future that could come from AI or any of these technological developments that are happening? Because I feel like a lot of these companies are maybe starting now.

I do. And I think you touched on like a big theme, which is robotics, right? It's like there's a whole new layer of possibility. Maybe we're still early, we're on the, you know, starting point of that. But if you kind of play out like how things might go, how AI is unfolding, like what could that mean for robotics? I think that's really interesting. It's an area where in some ways now we get a little bit of the luxury of time to start to see how things kind of put, you know, put together because it's— I don't know that that happens overnight. I think that AI has a chance to really fuel science in a lot of ways. So the science of, you know, as it relates to healthcare, as it relates to products, as it relates to foods and nutrition and habits that get formed around those things, I think we're getting a lot more information. I think we're getting a lot of efficiencies on how we can test and trial things. I think that will show up in products differently. We have seen a two-decade trend towards people spending more on technology, spending more on technology, spending more on experiences. Sometimes those experiences are, they have technology influence in them. If you think about like the return to like concerts or going out experiences, like on one hand, It's kind of like we went from COVID stay at home and we had the exuberance of going back out, but it's much more than that. It's about kind of having interactive experiences, but we wanna have something new and different like the Sphere, like that's technology driven and something really different. Seen a few things of people doing interesting things about bringing technology into spaces to kind of be part of the experience. So I think that there's a lot of invention happening in those areas right now and it's really fun to see like what what people are imagining.

Yeah. Thank you so much. This was awesome.

Yeah, thank you for having me. Thank you everybody for the question.

Thanks for tuning in. If you enjoyed today's episode and want personalized advice from Kirsten, head to the link in the comments or description to ask her digital mind on Delphi.