#059: How Ellis Fried Went from Snack Brand Founder to Health-Focused Investor

Our firm is also small, it's under 10 people. So it is, we're on fund 2. It is more of like entrepreneurial mindset also where there's not designated roles for each person. We don't have a sourcing team and a diligence team and a—

What are you most excited about right now? Like what micro trends within these categories?

I would say, I think on the psychedelic therapy side is we invest in a company called Journey Clinical. They're basically infrastructure and software provider for therapists to offer psychedelic therapy into their own practices. Safely and effectively.

Ellis Fried, vice president at Vanterra Ventures, made the leap from founding a health-focused snack brand to becoming an investor in the consumer health space. After studying economics at the University of Michigan and launching Simple, Ellis shifted to venture capital. In this episode of Turning Pro, Ellis discusses his transition from founder to investor, offering insights into the skills required to succeed in both roles. He reflects on how his operational experience shapes his current work supporting founders in sectors like branded products and digital health. Welcome back to Season 3, Episode 2 of the Turning Pro Podcast. Today we have Ellis Fried, who is a VP at Ventura Capital. Thanks for joining us today.

Nice to see you guys.

So it's always great to talk to someone who goes from the brand side to the investor side. I feel like I actually don't know which one do you think is more common now that I'm thinking about it?

More common to go from—

to go from like investor to operator, operator to investor.

I will say the funniest thing is when I have investor friends that did it right out of school for like 3 or 4 years and they're like, I think I want to go get some operating experience. I'm like, whatever is in your head about what that means, it's not what you think it means.

I would say that's probably more common going from investor, wanting to get operating experience and going back to investor is probably what I've seen most common.

But just the framing of like operating experience, like you realize it can mean like 100 things. It's like a dogfight every day and it's so brutal. That's not operating experience.

When you go from that to operating, I feel like It doesn't last that long.

No, there's definitely, I mean, I think the overlap in investor skill set is like BD, sourcing, partnerships, probably like some go-to-market, like the skills that you learn sourcing deals and closing deals, maybe sales too.

Yeah.

That's probably the best overlap, right?

Yeah, I would say so. And then just kind of like business model understanding and just like strategy. Yeah. So like understand like red flags that you probably made at the time and that like building a business is hard.

Yeah.

That it's very hard.

I think that above all else, if we simplify things, I think that is the most valuable thing you can get. Going to operator investor, like, no, I understand this is hard.

Yeah.

So I think a lot of investors are like, oh, I want to go get operating experience. I don't know if they really know what that means all the time because like getting on a monthly call with a founder to just like check in. Yeah, it doesn't actually do justice. Like they might put on a smile and be like calm, but the second they get off that call, they're probably like hammering Slack and email and all the other things.

Yeah. Understand like timeline to ship things to. Like you're like, oh, when are you launching in retail or when are you launching the next product? Like you kind of have a better understanding of the timing and sort of steps that go in into that versus like, why aren't you shipping tomorrow? Why isn't it going to stores tomorrow?

So you switch from— I want to talk a little bit about your experience as an operator, but I think I want to start with understanding like what made you switch to the investing side.

Yeah. So I went to Michigan, I studied economics there. I started in like JPMorgan Asset Management. That was my first sort of internship at school. It's kind of what I thought I would be doing is kind of going into finance. I stumbled upon this like business idea in college, ended up winning a bunch of grant money and awards from the business school. and did it full-time after school. So it kind of like stumbled into it in a way. Um, I ran it for a couple years, like was successful for the time, and then COVID hit. Um, basically all of our stores shut down overnight. Um, pivoted a couple times, raised some more money, and decided that when we went out for a Series A, it just like wasn't, wasn't worth raising a couple more bridge rounds and, and sort of, um, going through it that way. And then sort of deciding what wanted to do next. Like I knew I wanted to stay in early stage. I, I, I did love like the building entrepreneurial aspect of it. but did want more, uh, I'll say breadth of opportunities to work on. I did not want to work on just like a food concept all day, every day. There were sort of a myriad of other opportunities and businesses that I was interested in that I wanted exposure to, and then kind of marrying sort of the early stage experience with also some of the finance and economics background that I had, and it was kind of a natural fit.

Where was your mindset at the time? Because we were texting and calling a decent amount at this time when you decided to shut down Simple. And then start thinking about like, okay, I think I want to go into venture. And then what are the good funds that kind of match your skill set? And I remember through that time we were talking and from my lens I was like, fuck, this must be so brutal. And then I remember once you finally made the call, I was like, how are you feeling? You're like, I feel great, man. Yeah, it's such a, it's such a relief. So walk me through where your head was at.

Yeah. So I, I met like a good amount of venture funds while I was building and pitching at the time. So like I had a fairly wide network of venture funds early stage who I knew were sort of like in the space that I wanted to, which was like health, whether it was consumer health or digital health or branded products. And so kind of narrowed it down that way and then kind of just had started having conversations. I kind of knew where my sort of network was. It was like in the branded product space, in the retail space, in the e-commerce enablement space. So like leveraging my network with existing founders and then like going through interview processes was sort of leveraging that network, helping sourcing deals while I was interviewing, which I actually did for the fund that I'm currently at. So that was kind of the end of that sort of interview process.

Is there anything you miss about being an operator?

Um, I feel like I have good exposure to operating today with the portfolio companies that I have sourced and work on and sit on the boards of. Um, so I feel like I have— I get to itch that sort of, uh, want in operating, but not having to sort of not— we're not spending 24 hours a day with one specific concept, able to spread that across, you know, 6, 7, 8 different companies in like animal health, uh, psychedelics, pediatric behavioral health, women's healthcare. So kind of like a couple areas that I'm interested in.

And what does that look like day to day in terms of the operational work you are doing for some of your portfolio companies? I'm curious because my board is my co-founders and I, we don't really have a board. Uh, so when I hear people say that, I'm genuinely curious what that means like tactically.

Yeah, it depends. So I would say each, each of our companies might have, you know, 1, 2, or 3 specific areas that they need help with. Maybe they're like very sufficient in 8 areas, but like 1 or 2 areas they want— they need the most help on. Um, and so one business in particular that I sit on the board of is called MixLab that we've scaled in a good amount of money into. And that business specifically is, is, you know, top-notch on operations, sales, marketing. Um, but there was this sort of like M&A roll-up opportunity where they could actually go acquire a smaller pharmacies and roll them into their business that sort of our firm had a lot of experience doing. And so that's where I'll spend a lot of time, weekly M&A calls, going through the pipeline, negotiating those term sheets of these smaller pharmacies to buy. And so for that example, that's most of my time. I don't go into the pharmacy every day. I don't sort of tell the former CEO of Ro how to sort of manage his internal pharmacy operations. So there's definitely one or two areas you can spend most of your time on.

I'm curious, as a founder, I feel like it's just a constant, you're sprinting, you're sprinting. Like you find a problem, you sprint at it, you try to solve it. Hopefully you solve it. And then another one pops up and then you're sprinting at that full speed. And I feel like that's a lot of our life. It's like at a pretty fast pace when you were running Simple.

Yeah.

Very much. I mean, even just hanging out with you then, you're like pretty wired in. And I was in VC at the time, which was funny.

Yeah.

And then on the investment side of things, yes, there's like hustle and energy and speed. Towards when you— there is a deal you want to do, you have to move fast.

Yeah.

And sourcing new opportunities, you do have to kind of always be in motion, be in the flow. But a lot of an investor's job is to long-term mindset, be more patient. You're supposed to say no to 99% of things and kind of slowly, methodically make decisions. And then when you see something, move fast.

Yeah.

That— those are completely different speeds that you're operating at. Have you seen that be the case, or was it kind of weird getting used to that transition?

Yeah, so our firm is also small, it's under 10 people. So it is, we're on fund 2. It is more of like entrepreneurial mindset also where there's not designated roles for each person. We don't have a sourcing team and a diligence team and a portfolio support team and a fundraising team. Like everyone kind of does do all of the above. So it's, I think I would say closer to my experience as an operator than maybe more traditional investor roles at like a large fund where you might have like, might be sitting in like one silo. So I would say it's more similar to my previous role, which I like. Like I wanted to keep that sort of like startup mindset, which I think we have.

Has your stress gone down?

Yes.

But like how much? Because I feel like people don't talk about that as much, that it's definitely like a lot of people say, hey, I want to go build companies and then maybe when I'm late 30s, 40s, either start a fund, join a fund, and have like a more slightly more relaxed lifestyle. Is it that different?

Yeah, so I have a lot of empathy for founders today, um, and probably more so than I would have if I didn't start my own company. And I don't know if it's less things to do or even less time spent working. It's like the time that you're spent not working that you might not be on 100% in, in a non-founder role, whereas a founder, like, you're at dinner or you're at a family event and like you're probably 90% somewhere else.

Um, 95%.

Yeah, maybe 95%. Where is this?

It's not, it's true.

Just getting Slack while you go to the bathroom, like, oh my God, things are burning.

Yeah. And like, I, I do love, love the job and I'm, I do feel like I'm always working, but there is sort of a less of a stress when you're not on. Whereas as a founder, like, you really don't have that.

I'm also curious, for the role that you're in, was your fund actively hiring for that role when you joined it, or was there an element of like you kind of carve out your own role? Because I think there's this misconception of some people like, oh, I want to go into venture, like I'll go on a job board and like see who's like hiring an analyst or whatever. But I feel like that's not the case, and I feel like that's a myth where you're better off just like adding value to someone where they can't ignore it, and they're like, I want you to be part of my team.

Yeah, they were not looking for anybody. They probably weren't gonna hire anybody maybe for another year or so. So I actually got to know the team while I was building Symbol. So I knew the team for maybe 3 or 4 years and I was talking to a couple other funds as well, but they were not hiring. There was not a job listing for it or probably anytime soon. But I think to your point of adding value to a fund before you join and giving them confidence that you can do the job on day 1 or even pre-day 1 is really important. And so during that time would build out investment thesis decks, help source companies. Um, I actually helped source and like write the memo for a deal that we actually did while I was interviewing. Um, that closed like during the interview process. Um, so like stuff like that I think is—

How's that company doing?

It's doing well, it's doing well. So that was, um, it was called Vividly, uh, trade promotion management software, uh, for retail brands.

For what?

For, uh, retail brands.

They work with a bunch of like CPG.

No way. Yeah, we have a— we have someone starting Monday and I'm like pretty sure they worked there.

Really? They were an old client of ours when they were Cressacore.

Yes.

Yeah. I think they just did a rebrand. I'm curious when it comes to like early stage investors, like I did VC for like 2 or 3 years out of college and looking back, I feel so silly because I had no idea what I was talking about, which is fair. I had no experience. Um, but looking back, I'm like, wow, I was just talking out of my ass for 3 years. I had no idea what I was doing. If anyone ever asked me advice, Where the hell was it coming from?

Yeah.

And so I feel like increasingly the large majority of VCs, especially younger VCs, like, I empathize where you're coming from. I know you're trying to source deals. You have no idea what you're talking about. And then the other like 20, 25% of investors really do know what they're talking about. They do have experience. They are on boards, actively on boards. So do you see that kind of like 80/20 or 75/25 discrepancy?

Yeah, I would say it's more of like a barbell shift these days, more than it was in the past where you might have sort of like IC and more senior roles and then maybe like much more junior roles. So it's a little more disparate or maybe some of the junior roles are taking on more traditional sourcing and thesis building. And then eventually that gap closes and that cohort graduates to the next cohort.

To Harvard B-School.

Yeah. Yeah. Or that. But I think the best thing to do at that age is, you know, just sourcing and tacking on to deals. You don't necessarily need to lead the deals or be that board member, but like, you know, shadow and be there the entire time and eventually you'll pick up enough.

Yeah.

What about like tactical advice for a founder? Because I mean, this might sound terrible, but I feel like as companies grow, you are like less and less willing, candidly, to just like spend your time on a phone with like an incoming analyst at a fund. Right, like, I think if I were to raise money again, I'd go to my friends and like go straight, straight to like GP relationships. I'm like, I respect what you're trying to do, but I know you're not actually going to be the one that's going to move the needle here. So how can I think smart and not hard? And I'm curious if that's just like an ego to actually understand how the like value chain and a venture fund works, and it's actually good for them to try to navigate those waters.

Yeah, I would say it's a split. At least how our fund works is that it doesn't matter who's on the intro call, it will get brought up at IC regardless. And you want like as many people at the fund sort of like being on your side when the decision time comes. And it's also the job of the GP to also hire a team that he trusts, whether it's associate or analyst or whatever role it is, to give that advice and sort of work up the chain during the process. Um, from— I would say repeat founders probably have more of the, the latter take of sort of going right to the, the higher-up source. Um, but sometimes it's preference of GP not, not to take those initial calls, um, because he trusts the team and wants to go through the actual formal process.

Um, I feel like I think about it from like a bottoms-up versus a top-down approach. It's like if an analyst is telling a GP this is a good deal versus a GP is telling the rest of the team it's a good deal. Like, I just feel like there's the reception of that conversation is going to be different naturally.

I think it depends on— I think it's entirely dependent on the fund. Yeah, because there's probably— there's some funds that, like, I mean, you have check writing ability and you had it pretty early on once you had like a couple deals behind you, versus there are a lot of funds like an Insight or something where if an analyst is pinging you—

that's so funny you say that. That's actually what triggered the question. It's like this girl from Insight who like emails me like every month like, hey, I'd love to check in.

I was like, no.

Like, I don't want—

no, that's probably the right call there.

But I was like, I know you have like a quota of how many founders you need to talk to, actually. Nor are you a good fit for us, and I know I'm not a good fit for you, so like, we should probably just not.

So I would say it's fund dependent, um, and, and some funds do have dedicated sourcing roles where you might be part, and it's probably obvious if you're part of a funnel, um, 100%.

Yeah, it's like automated outreach.

Yeah, like we are sub-10, we definitely don't operate that way. So I don't want to speak for everybody else, but for us specifically, regardless of who you talk to on the team, it's someone who has maybe not always checkwriting ability, but authority within the fund and pretty quickly bringing that opportunity to the rest of the team. And pretty quickly the rest of the team will understand if it's something that you want to bring in some more senior people on the very next call, or maybe it's just not the right fit or they're not the right time.

When you think about your work day to day and more broadly, how long you've been there, 2 years?

2 years.

What still gets you excited? Like, end of the day, what do you like doing? Is it helping founders? Is it just like the craft of investing?

I would say one is probably learning new industries. Um, prior to Ventera, had very little exposure or knowledge in how the healthcare system works and insurance and payers and providers like that. Almost zero.

Just curiosity.

Yeah, curiosity and sort of building out And initially it was sort of building out thesis decks and all of these like, you know, subcategories like psychedelics or hormonal healthcare, et cetera. So I think it was like the learning aspect. And then two is like the portfolio support. Like I do still love sort of like working with founders and tactically kind of like attacking opportunities, whether it's the M&A stuff or figuring out their gross margin or supply chain issues. Like I just do still love that concept. So I would say learning and operating are the two.

So when are you going to start your next company?

Not anytime soon.

Not anytime soon.

No, for sure. For sure.

Got it.

What would you say are the biggest mistakes you see founders making when trying to raise money? Um, I mean, I have to think there's a few founders listening to this who are like trying to figure out how to raise money.

I hope there's a few, man.

Yeah, probably setting price and valuation and round expectations off the bat. Like you kind of do, especially in this market, like want the market to sort of decide. You should have a range of idea and a use of proceeds and maybe a couple different scenarios in your head. Hey, I actually do need to raise $10 million to achieve our goals and to give us 36 months of runway, whatever your milestones are, but also being flexible that it's not a set round at a set price and take it or leave it. There is a lot of, you know, give or take based off the partner and the fund, like what are you optimizing for? So I would say being less strict with round dynamics off the bat. Can see some founders going into it like, hey, we're raising 10 at 50 post, let's discuss. And then the market tells you 30 and now you went back out and say, oh, we're actually raising at 30. What happened? It just kind of opens up the door for questions.

What is the state of the current, let's call it like pre-seed market in New York as an example. Like if I decided to, spin out Verbatim or let someone else run it and say, hey, I have this great new content software that I want to raise capital for. And maybe I have a little cash flow. I can build a tiny MVP and get a couple customers. And I take that and I say, they love it. I think I want to raise $3 or $4 million to get us, I don't know, 18, 24 months of runway. What is kind of the current state of the market in terms of how much capital is actually getting deployed?

Yeah, pre-seed. So we typically focus on seed, Series A. So pre-seed, I would say it's still angels for the most part. Maybe there's a handful of pre-seed funds who will write, you know, $100K to $500K checks. So I would say I'm a little less familiar. The only thing I would say is like raising the least amount of capital as possible and extending runway as much as possible and understanding that seed and Series A milestones are not what they were 2 years ago.

What is a seed milestone now?

Yeah, this is a top of mind conversation.

How much did you raise?

$950K.

Okay, for what category?

Commerce enablement.

Commerce enablement. It's hard to give an exact ARR number because there's growth assumptions, there's market, maybe it's a market that investors have been burned on or just not interested or not spending time in. And that bar could be $10 million to raise the seed just because you're losing a lot of interest just off the bat in the market. So I wouldn't say any set ARR range or anything like that, but a couple hundred K, you've proven demand, you've proven there's a market. You've proven your early customers love it, you have some really good case studies that sure Verbatim can help you with. And there is some level of, of, you know, go-to-market motion and proven demand that you can underwrite and seed investor can understand it's scalable.

Underwriting specifically acquisition channels. So like understanding like 1 or 2 core channels that consistently can—

Yeah, even 1 is fine.

Yeah.

What about Series A? I know I, I preface this in saying obviously there's like moving targets because we see things over and over where you're like, what? Like how did that happen?

Yeah.

So I understand it's not like these are the black and white rules. I'm always just like curious to hear from an investor's perspective how they quantify a deal they'd look at to be like, this is a seed round, this is a Series A round. So two questions. The first one is understanding how you think about it from a metrics perspective. And then the second piece is like the amount of money that you're raising.

Yeah. So I would say either way, regardless if you're at $500K or $2 million, like very fast accelerating growth, I think would be one. Series A, probably you're looking at a couple million of ARR with, you know, 200-300% year-over-year growth. Like again, those solid case studies of what's been working and with what customer segment. Is it SMB? Is it, you know, large market home care agencies? Is it small, you know, mom and pop shops? Like what is that customer and what is your strategy to acquire them in a scalable way? So that you could prove that out at a million. It's probably a little hard to prove that out that much at a million. So that's kind of where these like milestones get to like the couple million. That's typically what you need to get, you know, 50, 60, 70 customers under your belt. So I'd say a couple million ARR for Series A, maybe a million or so for seed.

Are you seeing more folks raise like a small round and then never want to raise again or just going like full bootstrap direction?

Yeah, I can't say from like, you know, the 2019 to 2022 era, like obviously wasn't investing back then, but pretty obvious that wasn't the case back then. So I'd say it's pretty vastly different now. You're seeing a couple of these, you know, founders raising a couple million dollars in a seed round, maybe leveraging offshore talent for a lot of the engineering and software side. And keeping burn down to $100K a month and not needing to raise $10, $20 million Series A to be successful. And investors can make a really good return if they get to $10 million or so of ARR and sell. If you get in, if you're also, you're reasonable on valuation at the seed. Like if you are going that route, you probably do need to be more lenient and valuation sensitive because without raising any money, it's just very hard to get to $50, $100 million ARR.

How do you feel like that's changed the dynamic of the investor landscape? Because I think there's two sides of the coin. One is like, I think investors are a lot more cautious now before they're actually writing checks. And I also think founders are trying to be more cautious knowing that money isn't as readily available. So I think— I don't actually know the numbers. You might know this, but my guess is that there's been less deals done over the last 24 months relative to like the 24 previous to that.

Yeah, I think if you— I think the three categories we focus on are CPG, digital health, and commerce enablement. So if you look at those three categories specifically, not going to speak for like sort of fintech and crypto and whatnot, but deal flows or deals done are down significantly. And I would say, I think the time to raise, the milestones are getting pushed out and you just need to go to market with, and back to your question of like, what do founders get wrong going to market? Like you need to have sufficient cash and runway where you're not raising with a couple months of runway left and expecting to close in 30 days. That's just not going to happen anymore. So I would say it takes longer to raise, milestones are getting pushed out a bit. And I would say just like being more capital efficient off the bat versus, hey, we'll get there at some point, like trust us. It's like we actually need to see, you know, 6, 12, 18 months of you doing that to feel comfortable.

When it comes to e-com specifically, both like D2C or retail investing as well as commerce infrastructure or supply chain infra, I feel like we've gone through phases over the past 3 to 4 years where Every other day I hear like DTC investing is dead and like e-com SaaS is like incredibly oversaturated. No one's starting companies or raising money there anymore. But we had, we have people on the pod running brands every day here. They got a term sheet yesterday. Yeah.

We have two of the last three founders had signed massive term sheets in the last couple of weeks.

In the last couple of weeks.

Yeah.

And then same on the e-com SaaS side. Again, this is partially byproduct of like a lot of them are raised money and come to Verbatim once they raise money. But I talk to someone new every day that just raised a few million bucks for their e-com SaaS company with like, I don't know, 20, 30 MRR or something like that. So from your POV, I understand like broadly speaking, volume is probably down and milestones are a little higher to get there. But it seems like from our perspective of just knowing folks in the ecosystem, deals are still getting done.

Yeah, they're definitely getting done. I would say again, deal count I think is way, way down over the past few years. And then I think it, at least on the CBG side, so we've done, I think one deal in the past two years in CBG where the 24 companies that are portfolio Fund 1, I think was maybe 20 out of 24 or 21 out of 24. So now we're one of 8 in Fund 2.

Got it.

Wait, sorry, 21 out of 24 what?

Were CBG brands. Oh. And in Fund 2, which launched in 2023, it's one of 8.

How's that? How's Fund 1 performing?

It's doing great. I mean, I think the aspect of pivoting mindset of high growth at all costs. Like there was a shift of just mentality of, you know, maybe being $50 million profitable is better than $100 million and losing $20 million. And so that shift maybe contracted revenues in some companies and maybe there was a recap in some situations and there was some like cap table manufacturing. But I think overall founders' ability to adapt to the market has been positive. In our portfolio of that understanding of high growth at all costs does not mean you're more valuable than a smaller company with, with real EBITDA. Um, so I think that's the biggest trade-off that they've maybe took 18 months to figure out.

But I think broadly speaking, like, push towards profitability for both B2B as well as CPG brands, and just broadly speaking, being a lot more careful about how you allocate your capital, making sure you're not in long-term deals with SaaS companies or with anything else, or agencies.

Yeah.

And on one hand, I'm like, this is a good thing for the tech ecosystem, especially the early stage market. But on the other hand, like I started Verbatim like end of XRP. And within 3 months, we were, I, you know, when you think about pricing, pricing is nearly impossible for almost every company. You kind of just put something out there, see what they say, and then keep raising it. And we got to a point where I just kept raising it and raising the retainer length. And I was like 4 or 5 months into the business and I had such a skewed vision of the market because we're, like literally tail end of XRP, we were a 4-month-old agency and I was just like, yeah, we're like $15K a month, 6-month retainer and people, no contract. Okay, cool. Once we get started. And now it's the opposite of that, which again, from my POV, I'm like, that's a good thing. Like, yeah, being system and at the same time as an agency.

Does that have to do with investors? It has to do with brands or retailers or whoever the customers are. Like, are they more excited? Are they more excited to spend and buy this software or not? So it's not as much like investors aren't as interested. It might be that brands aren't as interested or brands are pulling back their spend. So instead of this company at $4 million ARR charging $200 grand a year, maybe they're only able to charge $100K a year or they churn a lot of customers because it's not providing ROI for them. So I think one of the big things for e-com enablement is like, what is the ROI that you're actually producing for this brand? Because their e-com owner or their CEO will analyze each vendor contract. And if it's not producing positive ROI, like You're probably getting cut.

Yeah, I like where we sit on that chain.

Can you—

do you know anything about Platter? No, I'd love to give like the 30 seconds.

Yeah, so our business is built around two core theses. The first one is the misalignment between development agencies and brands because dev agencies get paid for their time, so they're incentivized to make things really expensive and complicated. And the second one is that a lot of apps in the Shopify ecosystem are features, not products. So as brands scale, they get stuck with too many apps on their storefront, which is just a slower website, worse conversion. So we build a lot of that functionality into one solution, which is a theme and app bundle to productize a lot of the process of building a storefront so we can do it cheaper and faster without compromising quality.

Okay.

So it's really just debunking this myth that building a high-converting storefront is really expensive and takes a long time. It's not true.

And are you, are you building out some of those like point solution apps in this like all-in-one ecosystem?

Yeah, it's one, one theme and one app. Okay, we don't do subscription, we don't do payments, we don't do email SMS, we don't do reviews. Okay, but everything around like cart functionality, checkout functionality, bundle builders, mega menus. I mean, we have 40+ categories of functionality at this point.

Wow.

Um, and we've done stores as fast as I think 16 days was our fastest.

So I would say like the bundling all-in-one solutions are gaining the most traction because I think for a couple years there were a lot of these point solutions and even if you're running influencer and affiliate marketing, you might have 8 different point solutions all trying to do influencer and affiliate marketing. And so you might have— you might be overspending by 100%, 200%. And so that was our thesis in investing in a business called SuperAffiliate. Yeah.

Andy's a homie. He was on the pod.

Was he?

Yeah, he's like the third guest or something. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

So I mean, they obviously started as, you know, automated co-created or co-branded landing pages for creators, influencers, and brands with a larger vision of creating an all-in-one influencer marketing hub. That takes into account everything from UGC, link tracking, the co-branding landing pages, DM automation. So trying to take those 8 or 9 current point solutions that brands might be spending 10, 20, 30 grand a month on and consolidating all in one sort of modern slick platform. And so that's kind of what we're seeing across the board, whether it's retention or even the big incumbents trying to do it, but it's a little clunky, like the Yapos of the world or Recharges who might get into some other categories and try to consolidate all in one, but it's still very clunky and you probably need a more modern solution to that.

Who just launched email? Was it Yapa or something? Someone just launched email SMS.

Like, well, you know what I was going to say, though, is that the market dynamics have actually been amazing for our business.

Yeah, because a lot of consolidation.

Yeah, because it's a cost savings, but we're also able to prove ROI from like an AOV and conversion rate perspective because we're conversion nerds. Like, that's all. The way we talk to brands is like, you focus on building your brand and we'll tell you everything you need to do on your online store.

Yeah.

Um, and I mean, we just— we've talked about this a couple of times, but we were 10 people at the beginning of Q2 and we're now 25.

Wow.

Uh, because we couldn't keep up with demand.

What, what sort of like, uh, revenue size of brands do you typically work with?

Uh, we focus right now between like $2 and $25 million.

Okay.

So I would say that's middle market in Shopify speak.

Okay.

Um, so it's brands that are doing real revenue already so they can justify like making changes on their storefront. And then on the upper end of that spectrum, when you get into the larger brands, it's a little bit more political. But I will say the biggest thing that's happened over the last month, I don't know why all of a sudden we have more conversations happening right now with brands trying to move off of headless. Yeah, back to Shopify 2.0. So we have like a couple of pretty large brands that we're in like late-stage talks with right now. I also think that signing a few big logos was kind of our jumpstart to move more upmarket because it's a social proof thing.

Yeah, obviously people look to whoever, whoever's winning in their respective categories. What are they doing?

Dude, it's crazy. It's so crazy. They all just look at the guy next to them and then they come and talk to you and like, oh, can I talk to a reference or whatever?

Yeah.

So you'll be like Everyman Jack, NeuroGum, Wild Earth, uh, Bleacher Report, like some of these larger logos that people are like, oh, they work with like real brands, like tell me more.

Yeah. And I think the last thing is, is on that ROI and consolidation, everyone's trying to save money and perform better. And if you can prove both of those things with your app or software, like, you're probably in good shape.

I owe it to him actually, because we crush case studies because I've been able to sit next to him for hundreds of hours and listen to him talk about how the fuck to do it.

Yeah, it's not easy.

No, but, but like, I've been able to be a fly on the wall in his conversations, and now we, we're crushing them right now.

There's finally logos all over the Platter site. At first, okay, this is the most niche pet peeve in the world. I know you're gonna say the amount of clients that come to animated logo bar was in for a while.

I had that in my last brand.

It was The horizontal brag bar.

The horizontal animated brag bar. But if you actually look at the thing, you can only see like 4 logos at a time. And it's like, what are we doing?

By the time you scroll past, you only see like 2.

You, you— and they're moving too. You can't even see. It's like, what are we doing? And so at a minimum, like, please everyone listening to this, move to like at least a 2, maybe 3 row static bar with the little like footer above that calls out your ICP, like trusted by XYZ Commerce. Anyway, I can go on about this, but it drives me crazy.

Yeah.

So Ben, over time, the Platter site, I feel like messaging kind of stayed the same, but now you just see case studies, testimonials, logos everywhere.

Wait till next week. It's our biggest, it's our biggest website update I think since we started the company.

Oh yeah, looking forward to it.

Uh, we have some like massive, massive things that we're launching on the website.

What are you guys up to?

Uh, this will be live. We're having like, yeah, it'll be a lot. It'll probably be different by the time this episode actually airs. Uh, we're releasing individual pages for each of our products, which we had never had before. Like products, like the Platter Bundle will have like a whole page about like what it is. Platter Plus will have a whole page about what it is. Our partner directory program, uh, which is all your partners on like a directory page with like individual pages for each partner. Um, we have a couple more really big case studies that we're putting up and then we're launching a blog as well. We have like a backlog of content, but finally putting that on the website. This has been a project that our product marketer has been working on for like the last month and a half. No, Cam. Elliot's the director of growth. Cam reports into Elliot.

That makes sense. I'm curious, on the venture side, how do you guys think about content?

Um, again, we're a small team, so like everyone's kind of doing everything. So I would say from at least from our team, like it's probably pushed down, uh, to sort of bottom of priority.

You guys push out anything? Like, no white papers.

I think the best funds, it's like word of mouth is the best form of content, where like, if you know, you know kind of thing. And like founders talk.

I think you got to go one direction or the other. You go like Thrive or Benchmark, which don't even have websites, yeah, or they have like a landing page with their logo. Or you go like full Andreessen, Primary, yeah, what Redpoint's doing. I think you either do it all or you do nothing. I think there's so many funds that are kind of in the middle that will like put out it LinkedIn posts every 2 weeks and an article once a month. Yeah, this isn't a good look because you clearly didn't invest time or resources in this.

Yeah, so we, we kind of don't, uh, share much publicly. Um, we develop all obviously our memos and thesis decks on each of these categories and white papers internally and share amongst our investing and LP team. Um, but yeah, it, as our team grows, maybe it becomes a larger priority, and I think there is benefit to doing so, especially For us, we are very thematic investors. We invest across consumer health. So again, that's 3 categories, digital health, branded products, and commerce enablement. And so we spend all of our time in these 3 categories and create subsector thesis decks around, again, women's healthcare, psychedelics, or maternal health, like get very granular. And it could be beneficial to share that publicly. So everyone kind of knows what we're focused on. And if you are building in that space, you kind of think of us top of mind. But to your point, like I think we get really good founder references. Anyone we got on the phone with, you know, we have a roster of founders that we sit on the boards of and can put them in touch with. That's kind of like the last piece of diligence on our company's end that typically works out in our favor. But I think like top of funnel, it is a good sourcing mechanism.

But what are you most excited about right now? Like what micro trends within these categories?

I would say, I think on the psychedelic therapy side is we invest in a company called Journey Clinical. Uh, they're basically infrastructure, uh, and software provider for therapists to offer psychedelic therapy into their own practices safely and effectively. So they're not going— they're not circumventing the therapist, they're not building out their own provider network. They're actually like upskilling and empowering therapists to offer it in their own practice very safely and very effectively. Um, so they've got, you know, 2,000+ therapists on their platform that pay them every month. Um, then their therapists refer their patients to Journey Clinical for all the prescribing, um, elements. So they basically have a $0 coq for all their patients.

I'm bullish on that business.

It's incredible. Jonathan and Miriam.

Yeah, that business is gonna have— you guys are gonna make money on that one.

Husband and wife, um, who are incredible founders. Union Square Ventures led the Series A.

I had no idea.

Yeah.

Wow. Yeah, you guys did the seed?

Uh, we invested in the Series A as well, um, and we'll be participating in the next round.

Oh yeah.

To be announced. Um, but I think within psychedelics, obviously there's a lot of noise. Like MDMA sort of had some, some sort of headwinds with the FDA recently. But I think like the infrastructure play on the category is the right one versus trying to go direct-to-consumer or trying to build your own four-wall. And so basically Journey, they'll do all the prescribing, eligibility, outcome monitoring, education, training, insurance reimbursement, billing, all legal work, and even patient acquisition. For the therapist in their network. And so therapists can keep doing the therapy, they keep their patients, um, and now they're able to offer these like sort of next-gen, uh, therapeutics for mostly right now, uh, treatment-resistant depressed patients, um, and sort of the— that sort of segment. Um, eventually maybe broader.

Is that a company that can do an enterprise deal with like a Talkspace or BetterHelp, or would that be competing?

Um, potentially, yeah, potentially they could. So yes, they don't deliver the therapy, so any, any like therapy provider—

yeah, that's why I'm saying I feel like B2B, you can turn that $2,000 into 20,000. Yeah, with the right deal.

Yeah. So that's like the, the beauty of that business. So I would say on the drug development or like, uh, care delivery side for psychedelics, a little less bullish. But I think if you're betting on the overall category with a business like Journey Clinical, um, I think you could do well.

Do you spend a lot of your time with founders, with your team, co-investors? Like, what do you think the percentage split is there? Because I remember like early days, no one— no founder wanted to hang out with me as a VC like 2, 2 months after graduating. And so all my deal flow was like the left over deal flow from other like 22-year-old analysts. And not only did I have bad deal flow, but I was only spending time with other co-investors that I had just met. And now I feel like if I went into VC, it would be the opposite approach. But tell me more about what your approach is.

For sourcing specifically?

Yeah, for sourcing.

Yeah. So I think from the founder perspective, I kind of obviously was myself for a couple of years. So I have like a good network in that space. I think the big approach we take is like thesis building. So We're very cognizant of what categories that we'll invest in. We could do a deep dive on home care for an entire year and do it like a pretty large, like outbound approach where we try to talk to everybody in one of these like super, super niche verticals that we're very, have very high conviction of and try to talk to the entire landscape, similar to psychedelic space or hormonal healthcare space. So we do, we do do a lot of outbound. And then once we get like a very good point of view, then we'll talk to co-investors, maybe that invest a little bit earlier, a little bit later. Typically not always who are investing in the exact same sort of stage as us. But we found that investors that maybe do, you know, pre-seed and then investors who do Series B, a lot of times it's not the right fit for them. But it might be a fit for us.

Yeah. So to your point, those are helpful to know.

Those are very helpful. To your point of like investors doing the exact same and just passing and then sort of passing, passing off to someone who does the exact same investing, but just not, they're not interested in it. Like probably not the best use of time, but I think earlier and later stage investors have been helpful.

Yeah, if it's not your stage or vertical, that makes sense about like anytime I'm getting sent something from like an angel lens, I'm like, okay, is this person in my stage or vertical? And if they are and they're not doing it, I'm like, why are you sending this to me?

Yeah.

Versus if they're like a Series A and in health tech and they know I do commerce infrastructure like pre-seed and they're sending that, then I'm like, okay, this makes sense about why it's getting sent my way.

Yeah. Like if we come up fintech deal from a fund that we know comes across our table, we're just not— it's just not in our wheelhouse. We're not going to do it. So we'll send to, you know, the other dozen funds who do focus on that. Um, if it was right in our wheelhouse, we spent 2 months with them and we didn't get there and just passed it off, like, probably not the best route.

Yeah.

What percentage of investors do you think actually do diligence on deals that they invest in?

I, I'd like to say the answer is definitely not 100. I think it varies. So our, our partners were in private equity for, for 20 years and have a very high bar for, for diligence. And our IC memos, and back to the thematic approach. If we're not experts in the market, like, we're not going to do it. It could be a great deal. It could be, you know, blue-chip Series A investors around the table. But if it's not our area of expertise, we're probably just not going to get there. So I would say our bar is probably higher than most, if not all to most, just given our partner's background and just like the level of diligence that they require. So I think it depends on the partner, depends on the fund dynamic. We're more of a smaller, more concentrated, high conviction portfolio. We might invest in 12 to 15 companies out of a fund. Some funds invest in 50. And so if you're investing in 50 out of a fund, you just have to have— you naturally have to have a lower bar and spray more than—

dude, I had an investor say to me verbatim, I'm not gonna say names, obviously, their thesis was, we will co-invest in deals that are led by one of these 7 funds. That was— that was like, it was all signal relationship thing. It's like, I get— I have really good access because I have really good relationships, and I'm not as smart as these people, but I trust these people implicitly. So I will go get money from LPs and trust— like, they trust me to put my money alongside the best in the business.

It's crazy.

And I was like, that is bananas, but I appreciate the fact that you didn't lie to me about it because a lot of people who also do that who don't say that. Yeah, I can tell you this on the founder side. Right. Like, I think my best analogy before I started a company was when I went through the recruiting process for hockey in college, where the hardest thing to get is your first offer. Yeah, I got my first offer. I got 7 more offers within 48 hours from schools that I'd never even talked to in the process.

Wow.

Because you got validated by someone else that you were like qualified to be in this conversation.

Was Colgate the first one?

Yeah, Colgate was number 1.

That was the first offer.

And that was the thing. I looked the coach in the eyes and said, I'm coming to your school because you were the first person to take a bet on me.

Yeah, and I would say we don't look for— and we'll typically lead or co-lead also. And also we are quite valuation sensitive just given our partners' background. And so by the time that company has a term sheet from a blue-chip Series A, Series B fund, to your point, they have leverage and now they can go back out and raise the price 20, 30, 40, if not more, percentage. And now you're playing a valuation game and now you're competing with them on price basically. So we try to come in maybe a step before that. Um, maybe even if it's off-market where it's like an outbound approach where really high conviction in a category and we'll, you know, talk to, you know, dozens in the space and maybe can preempt. That's typically our sweet spot versus sort of once a term— once a business gets a term sheet from one of those funds, like, good luck, you're just playing the price.

It requires actual work for your fund. Yeah, which I respect. Um, I'm curious in terms of trends you're seeing in the commerce enablement space specifically. I need to educate myself.

Yeah, so obviously, uh, bullish on, you know, whole influencer affiliate marketing space, you know, growing 30% year over year. Um, outside of that, we haven't honestly spent a ton of time in the category. I would say some on the retail side, um, so like retail analytics, we've looked at a handful. Um, obviously trade promotion management software, like anything that can help brands not only navigate e-commerce but navigate retail and Amazon and some of these omnichannel, uh avenues. So I would say we honestly just haven't spent a ton of time in the e-com enablement space recently outside of influencer and marketing. But curious where we're sort of the— some of the sweet spots are sort of early-stage niches that you're looking at too.

I mean, for me, it's more so honestly from a founder's perspective of just like making sure that I'm always like educated on what's out there and what's working. Yeah, I would say largely speaking, What I see working is like cost savings approach to like, we can actually help save you a dollar while also potentially making you a dollar.

Yeah.

Versus like some, a lot of the legacy players who have big market share are just, they've destroyed their reputation as being known for just absolutely taking people for a ride. And I think there's a lot of incumbents that are now, their thesis is just like, we're going to do what they do, but better and cheaper. And that's actually resonating with a lot of people.

Yeah, we've seen that recently, and some companies are definitely scaling like the single-digit millions. TBD on once you get to, you know, if you can scale from 10 to 100, because 100% of those big incumbents do have a very strong hold on their enterprise customers, and a lot of it's custom-built, a lot of it's, you know, white glove support, and like that's their bread and butter. And they may be okay with losing some of the SMB market share, but they will double down and triple down on their medium to enterprise customers. And ultimately to scale to 10 plus, you will need to crack that market. So it does need to be 10 times better than whatever they're building. And a lot of that is coming from these additional point solutions consolidating in where a Yapo or Recharge, for them to do that and sort of layer on additional point solutions, it's very clunky. You're seeing Yapo do that with emails and reviews and text messaging, I think they're trying to get into now. Whereas It's not great for, for—

I think like a good example for you honestly is subscription. Yeah, I was just thinking like what Kenan— no, but what Kenan did with Skio was very much like, here's a category where there's a lot of, you know, it's the Wild West out here. There's a lot of people that are very unhappy in different situations for whatever reason. I mean, they just hit $10 million ARR profitably.

Yeah, yeah.

Which like, that's— can they get to $100? I don't know. Maybe, maybe not. Like, it's not for me to decide that, but like, the fact that they got to that point, I think, was pretty eye-opening for a lot of people in the ecosystem.

Yeah.

And yeah, I think the crazy part too is that like Recharge as the incumbent is still growing and it still like has a stranglehold on like their huge customers. Yeah, like a massive, massive customer isn't gonna go to— as much as I love Skio and Kenan and the team, they still just probably like— they, they're switching costs involved. Like, they've already gotten up and running. They don't want to mess up their entire subscription by moving to something smaller. There may be outliers. I'd say for the large majority, I would guess they're still going to stay with the incumbent.

Yeah.

I mean, that's actually why people like that love us because we power the base infrastructure of the storefront. So it's like if we've already convinced them to migrate to our product, yeah, they're like, can you just like tell them to also switch to our product in that process?

Yeah.

Which has actually happened with a handful of our larger logos.

There's a lot of your—

because they are— the trust we have with merchants is insane because we power the base infrastructure of their storefront. Yeah, so they're always asking us like, oh, what tools should we use?

What?

Yeah, you know, and it's an interesting spot to be in, um, because like our product is extremely sticky, which allows— I think in a future state our NRR is probably going to be higher than like a lot of average SaaS companies in the ecosystem on like a percentage basis.

Yeah, I think from an agency lens and talking to a lot of other agency owners too, a lot of us kind of similar to you have pivoted the pitch around cost savings. Even if what you're doing can generate like our pitch is like build a content engine that can like generate leads and pipeline and demand, and it can still do that. But a lot of the time what people actually resonate with way more is when I walk them through like hiring a full-time team. So, okay, your head of content is going to be this range, content marketing manager this range. This is what like interview timeline is for the senior one. You need a recruiter that's going to be 20%. You probably— one of them will probably not work out. You're probably going to wait another 6 months than you have to and then pay another month of severance. And like you just add that up And increasingly that's a way more compelling pitch than like we're gonna generate pipeline. And it depends on who I'm talking to.

Yeah.

Like if I'm talking to a head of sales, they want to hear pipeline. But increasingly if I'm talking to the CEO, they know they need to hire someone.

Yeah.

And I'm like, just don't go hire someone for 12 months and then fire them anyway.

Yeah. And I think like a lot of commerce-enabled business or software businesses in general are starting to put themselves in the buyer's and owner's shoes a bit more than maybe they were. We're like, all right, if I was managing this P&L, what would I do?

Empathy is everything.

Yeah.

And it's really—

it's a really good point. Yeah, I think that's something that my technical co-founder is so good at, uh, is like our product roadmap is like built out for the next 12 months because he already knows like very specifically what these people are asking for. So like when you have a really good dynamic where it's like, I know I need to build this thing, I'm like, great, let me figure out how I'm going to make sure like everyone knows that we built this thing.

Yeah. And, and, uh, I think Perry, you, you might work with, uh, DNet Perry, uh, their, uh, workforce optimization software and fintech platform for the home care, uh, industry. And he worked a lot in home care agencies before that when he was at Two Sigma and looked at, you know, hundreds of P&Ls, talked to hundreds of P owners who owned a lot of these home care agencies, talked to hundreds of home care agency owners himself prior to starting this business. And now he understands, all right, what are the top 1, 2, 3 priorities and how do they think about it? And let's go with that approach and lead with it.

I think it's not just empathy that you were talking about of like you actually care about this person. You can put them in their shoes. But very— it's like that radical candor approach to communication. Yeah, just, just being as upfront as possible. So it's very different than just caring about someone. Like I was talking to a client of ours, will go unnamed, and we did like a 30-day beta. I was like, hey, we're going to do something for free for you for a month. And it's like adjacent to content. Do you want to test it? Of course. Like, yeah, of course. Like it's free. Let's do it. And I trust you guys. 30 days comes up and I was talking to him and I was like, hey, what do you think? He was like, it was awesome. And I think it's working. And I was like, okay, just transparently, what do you pay for it? He's like, we don't have budget. And you appreciate that, right? Because on one hand it's frustrating. I'm like, ah, I was excited about this direction. Maybe it's not just them. We're testing the beta with a handful of others. But for people in his state, it makes sense. And you need that candor and that communication because it's not just I'm in your shoes. It's like, even if it's working, it may not work to the extent that there's ROI there for them. And being able to have that communication, like we could go build a huge workflow around this, a writer and an editor and scope it and then realize like no one's even going to pay $100 for it, right?

And try to do the same thing honestly as investors too. Like as a founder, the worst thing is to get strung along in a process where the fund is just not there. Maybe it's not the really right stage. Maybe they're not even investing out of that current fund or whatnot. Um, and so as a founder, like the worst thing is, you know, getting strung along and then Realizing actually the whole time there was actually no intent to invest. And so as investor now, obviously pitched 100 times as a founder, try to be very direct up front after the first call. If it's not the right fit, we know it's not going to get— even sometimes on the first call of saying, love what you're doing, happy to provide you our feedback, but this is not the right fit. Want to be cognizant of your time. And that does go actually a long way.

Uh, some battle scars.

Wait, what were your battle scars?

I haven't— we met during your fundraising.

I have a fund. I have a fund who essentially put me through a Series A diligence for a pre-seed. Uh, you know, I don't think you know the person at the fund, but you definitely know the fund who did this. Um, and one of my largest investors actually reached out to them and was like, fuck off, like, this is, this is ridiculous.

Yeah.

Um, and I, and it ended up like not even— I was like, you know what, if this is any indication of what our working relationship is going to be like with you on my cap table, like, we're probably better off going our own direction. And that person got let go from that fund like a couple months later. Wow. Unrelated to me, but like, it could, it could have been related to broader what they're doing with other founders. Yeah, no, they— it was like, it pissed me off enough that if another founder asked me, like, oh, like, what are your thoughts on this fund? I'm like, fuck them. But honestly, straight up. Yeah, because it's like, I, I'm not gonna lie to you, because then it's like my reputation where that founder is gonna come back to me like, dude, you told me they were great. And I was like, yeah, sorry.

Yeah, and that fund is probably overstaffed. Maybe they have too much time on their hands and going deep into processes that they shouldn't be. Um, we—

it was a good exercise. I honestly, at the end of it, I was like, this is a really good thought exercise for me to like think about my business Yeah, I'll give you like one detail of context. They were literally like, I want you to line item every dollar of revenue like by customer. Uh, I was like, dude, we're at the pre-seed stage. Like most companies don't even focus less than a million dollars on a pre-seed.

Yeah, and we, we try to be very good at that because that's my pet peeve of, you know, going through processes that just had— you knew it was going nowhere off the bat. Um, so we try to be very upfront, and a lot of times that is on the first call, you know. 20 minutes in, like, hey, like, honestly love what you're doing and I could be helpful. Maybe there's a couple intros I can make, but it's really just not the right fit. I just want to be— want to be conscious.

I have a question around lifestyle and stuff outside of Pantera. Yeah, because Ben and I were talking about this on an earlier pod today that we're doing interview rounds right now. And something that I'm starting to ask more folks is like, not being invasive, but like, tell me about your life outside of work.

Yeah.

And on one hand, you have a kid who's at an Airbnb traveling the world. Even though they're incredibly sharp. And then on the other hand, you have married couple with 2 kids and they have a dog and they have a very set routine. And increasingly just seeing from my own internal teammates and honestly who are the most consistent high performers, all the consistent high performers and the real A players all have a very consistent routine. They're always at the same place in their house, wherever it is. I know their routines outside of work. And something that I think it probably improved once you started investing because you were also on the road when you were a founder, like constantly going to stores. But when I think about like when we were hanging out, I was like, I would hire Ellis in a second because we were catching up about personal life and you're getting married soon. Yeah, you have an apartment, same apartment for a while. You know your neighborhood. You're not sprinting around the globe in Airbnbs.

Yeah.

And so I'm curious, how does that impact your work, that stability that you ensure?

Yeah, I mean, Me and my fiancée are very routine-oriented. Even as a founder, obviously you have a million things going on, so it's hard to, but even from a young age, I've always just been very routine-oriented. I get up in the morning, I work out, I shower, I walk to work. We're in the office 4 or 5 days a week in Union Square, so it's a nice 20-minute walk. Spend most of my day at the office, maybe eat dinner at home or at the office, and then maybe finish up some work and watch some TV at night. Maybe it's filtered in with some dinners and stuff like that. But at least like the first part of working out every morning, showering, getting a smoothie and going to the office is like every single day.

Yeah.

And that helps a lot. And even like the stability of obviously getting married this fall. So like not having to, you know, going out every weekend and, you know, finding someone, something like that. I think helps to just like staying focused.

Dating takes a long time.

Yeah. We do have a lot of weddings. So we are like, especially like summer and fall, um, a lot of weddings of our own, and we're kind of on the road for that.

Dating is such a distraction when you're building. Yeah, unless you— I have a girlfriend too, so I'm— it's not a distraction anymore, but definitely at moments of being single while trying to build is like really hard if you actually try to prioritize it.

Yeah, I cannot imagine since I started dating Karina before starting Verbatim. I, I genuinely don't know how I would been able to do it if you're also trying to go out on weekends or go on dates or anything.

One of them would have suffered, either the business or the dating life.

I mean, we've been together for 9 years, so—

wow—

college. So having been like post-college in that scenario, um, so I think the routine helps.

All right, last question for you because I didn't realize we're way over. Uh, turning pro. The premise of the podcast is just double-click into the turning pro moments in your life where you feel like everything changed. What is one moment that you can recall that, that, that happened to you?

Um, I think probably when I was raising my first, when I was raising, uh, money for Simple and got like the first check-in, um, was kind of like that pivotal moment. You're like pitching for so long and like no, like just no for 100 times in a row. Once you get one yes, like it kind of trickle, it's like a trickle effect. Um, same thing investing, like getting that first deal done just makes the next, you know, 2, 3, 4 much easier. And just getting from like 0 to 1 is very hard. Once you get there, I think like the, the route becomes much easier.

Yeah, I can't agree with you more there. Same for acquiring Logos at Platter, what we've done at Verbatim, what you're doing on the investment front. Same thing. I love it. Can you talk to that camera on the left? Tell people where they can find you and your website.

Yeah. So again, Ellis Fried, Vice President of Ventera Ventures. You can find us at venteraventures.com, V-A-N-T-E-R-R-A. Again, investing in early-stage consumer health businesses across branded products, digital health, and enabling technologies.

Oh yeah. Thanks for coming on, man.

Thank you.

Thanks, man.

Appreciate it.