The Seven Deadly Sins of Founders - Michael Loeb - Loeb.Nyc - Episode #101

Either you're gonna greatly raise my salary, or, you know, you're gonna gimme a lot more equity, or I'm just gonna give up.

Today's guest is a legend, a serial entrepreneur who has built, scaled, invested in, incubated, and sold multiple companies over the last 35 years. In 1992, he co-founded the Synapse Group, which became the largest seller and servicer of magazine subscriptions in the world. It was ultimately sold to Time Warner for $800 million. Today he runs Loeb Enterprises, a Startup Lab and Venture Collective. They've invested in, helped found, and scale more than 50 companies, including 5 unicorns.

About 3 years in, right, he had a conversation with me and he said, you know, Michael, I used to make $650,000 a year and then I started this company with you, by the way, and I'm now making $150,000 a year. And when anybody uses those words, I'm just gonna give up, if that is an option, because what you look for in an entrepreneur is that surrender is not an option. And the next day I started entertaining bids for the company. Now, what I did say to him is, "You son of a bitch, the first thing you should know about yourself is that you can go the distance, right? That's what an entrepreneur has to know about themselves. And you raise money not just from me, but from other people who can't afford to lose it.

How dare you have this experiment with somebody else's capital?" Today's guest is a legend, a serial entrepreneur who has built, scaled, invested in, incubated, and sold multiple companies over the last 35 years. In 1992, he co-founded the Synapse Group, which became the largest seller and servicer of magazine subscriptions in the world. It was ultimately sold to Time Warner for $800 million. Inside Synapse, they incubated Priceline.com, which went on to become one of the most iconic companies of the dot-com era. Today, he runs Loeb Enterprises, a startup lab and venture collective. They've invested in, helped found, and scale more than 50 companies, including 5 unicorns. I already know this is going to be one of the most interesting and honest conversations about building businesses I'll have on this podcast probably ever. So, welcome, Michael Loeb.

Thank you very much. I think you say that to all the boys.

Thank you for doing this. Thank you for doing this in person. First question I always ask every guest is, what is the one thing that you've done, big or small, at any of your companies that's had the biggest impact? We're gonna do it a little bit differently after 100 episodes or so. We're gonna do an opposite question. So you've seen so many companies, you've worked with so many founders, so many CEOs. What are the things that the bad CEOs do? The ones that fail, the mistakes that they make. So let's, let's take kind of the opposite.

So David, I'm half Jewish, half Catholic, right? So the good news is I'm Jewish from the temples up, which means business models, you know, computational math skills, shit like that. I can say shit, right? Yeah, of course, of course. Good, okay. Can I say other shit too?

Yeah, anything you want.

So really good at, right? But so Jewish from temples up, but below that, You know, I can bench press, I can do like, you know, like, you know, Goya shit, you know, so anyway, so I was thinking about that as a question and about, because this is, you know, called, right, this is not, what is it called?

Not Another CEO.

Not Another CEO, so we want it to be Not Another CEO, so instead of celebrating and exalting CEOs because a lot of them are unbelievable but a lot are not so unbelievable, and in startups it's kind of interesting. It's, you know, you're just in battle and you see the best and the worst of people at kind of the same time. And what I thought about is, okay, being half Catholic, half Jewish, do I compare some of the not so good experiences with the 10 plagues that the Israelites had on Egypt right? Or do I go 7 deadly sins, right? You know, so do I go Catholic or do I go Jewish? And I had a refresh on both and, you know, the Jewish ones, I mean, blood, you know, frogs, frogs shouldn't count, right? You know, Kermit is cute, right? I mean, frogs shouldn't count. Lice, flies, to me they should combine those things, right? It's still like insects. Then we had insects, then we had, you know, hail, we had boils, locusts, darkness, and then death of the firstborn, which is really kind of severe. And so anyway, I rejected that, but then I thought 7 deadly sins and can we apply those, you know, to founders and kind of, you know, character issues related to those founders. And the 7 deadly sins are pride, greed, lust— we're not going to talk about lust— envy, gluttony— I think greed and gluttony is about the same thing, but anyway— and then wrath and sloth. And actually, a lot of those things are copacetic with founder deficiencies. Right? Founder deficiencies. And one of the most profound ones, there's a guy and he was, right? Pride is the very first deadly sin. This guy was tripped up by pride, right? He had a business. It was a $100 million business. The problem is he priced his product entirely wrong. And by the way, fundamental to that was a math error. He was not Jewish, right, but there was a math error that was fundamental to the business. They just misunderstood, like everybody, we had Harvard MBAs, they just misunderstood the business and as a result they mispriced their product, right, and the right thing to do was either go back to all the clients because they had much too good a deal, right, and even with a less good deal, they were still greatly underpriced. They still had a good deal, right, even the guy raised his price, and if you couldn't do that with enough clients, frankly, you bring it through a bankruptcy so that you shed all the contracts and you start a prepackaged bankruptcy and you do it all over again. Guy refused to do it. Guy refused to do it. He refused to reprice his product. He refused to go back to the people that he sold, and he made many of those sales individually. And again, it was a $100 million business. So how it got to that lofty height, you know, with this error was really very, very interesting and a different story. But because he refused to do that, he is now bankrupt and he's now bankrupt. And it's not an 11. Reorganization, which is what he would have had, right, just pick up the pieces and go back and all the clients, and I talked to one or two of them and they said, yeah, you know what, we're just going to party like it's 1999. I mean, we know that we're getting too good a deal, but you know, as long as we're getting too good a deal, we're not going to complain about it. But if had he only gone back and did that, he would have not only saved his company, it would have been a thriving company right now, but pride prevented him from doing that. We'll go to the bottom of the list, which is sloth. I had one personally. I, as in, I met this guy early in the curve. I thought he was all that. Silver-tongued, very persuasive, had a business concept. I was the first money in to this business concept. And what he had done is misunderstand the lot of the entrepreneur, right? So a lot of times kids in particular coming right out of school think, okay, I'm going to have an idea on Monday. On Tuesday I'm raising capital. On Wednesday it's in the marketplace. On Thursday it's a success. On Friday I'm entertaining bids and on Saturday I'm on a beach in Saint-Tropez, right? And I try to tell them, no, no, that's not how it works. First of all, failure rate of companies that are backed by VCs are about 75%. And when I mean failure, it's extinction rates, right? They're out, right? 75% venture-backed companies go out. A, B, you know, it takes 10 years. It takes a long time and it is bloody and there are pivots. You know, the fact of the matter is most people really don't understand that, and here was a guy who gave every indication that he did, right, and he actually had a pretty good idea. He wasn't Jewish, so he couldn't really do math, and that was kind of a problem, but the real problem was sloth, and it was sloth because about 3 years in, right? He had a conversation with me and he said, you know, Michael, I used to make $650,000 a year and then I started this company with you, by the way, and I'm now making $150,000 a year and we need to raise more money. And again, he had greatly misinterpreted what capital it would take. And by the time we have that raise, I'm going to be diluted down to like much too little for me. So I just, you know, can't do this anymore. Either you're going to greatly raise my salary or, you know, you're going to give me a lot more equity or I'm just going to give up. And when anybody uses those words, I'm just going to give up, if that is an option, because what you look for in an entrepreneur is that surrender is not an option. Quitting is not an option. So as soon as that goes on the table, you have no choice, right? And the next day I started entertaining bids for the company, right? Now what I did say to him is, you son of a bitch, you son of a bitch, the first thing you should know about yourself is that you can go the distance, right? That you can go the distance, that it's not too hard, any burden, not too hard, right? That's what an entrepreneur has to know about themselves, and you raise money not just from me but from other people who can't afford to lose it. How dare you, right? How dare you? How dare you have this experiment with somebody else's capital? You should know that about you, right, that you are 24/7, always on, never going to give up, never going to surrender, right? You're never going to come back to me, and this guy, by the way, was a huge Irish guy, right, and never going to come back to me red-eyed and like practically crying that it's too hard. I mean, hell with you, right? Think of the pockets that you emptied because you didn't know that about you, right? Despite all appearances. So I did have to sell the company because again, once somebody says, I'm going to, you know, if you don't do this for me, one, you know, extortions are intolerable. And two, when somebody lays down that quitting is an option. They're done, right? So I sold the company. I got a fraction of what I put in, and so did everybody else. But, you know, this was not the horse to bet on. He would have lost it all. So at least I salvaged something.

Do you think that— that example, for me, I feel maybe more as the years go on, um, there are more people in the world who see founding a company the way you just described it, because all we see and all we read is this went from $0 to $100 million in a week, and the founders are billionaires, the youngest billionaires. And then this one went from $0 to $100 million in 2 days. And, right, you know, and I think that there is this thing. Yeah, you go to college campuses and you talk to people. I read some articles said people don't want to go to consulting, they don't want to go into venture, they don't— they want to all be founders. Yeah, there's no way that all those people actually know and really understand.

Yeah. And so, um, and yes, I tell young people the message that I just gave you all the time. Right. And it is harder than you can ever imagine. It is longer than you ever think. Right. I mean, you're 20. Okay. You got to, you got to add 50% of life. Right. The pre-money value is 20. The post is 30. Right. So you have just add 10 on a 20 is what it takes minimally right, to be successful and in the middle many, many pivots, a lot of blood on the floor and—

A lot of sacrifices.

A lot of sacrifices and one of the tragedies of being an entrepreneur and I hear this all the time which is Michael my company last raise a year ago $100 million and I own 20% of the company but my Volvo has 288,000 miles on it, my tires are bald and I got a baby in the back. Right. But the problem is illiquidity. You can't get it out. Right. You can't get your money out. Right. So it really has to be a total commitment and it's got to be a labor of love. By the way, one, one illustration of that, the second most prevalent form of funding is that founders raid their own 401s. Right? So they are mortgaging their future. They have that much conviction, that much conviction that they do that. Right? So it is— you lay it all on the field. And if you're not prepared to do that, right, then you shouldn't be in this business.

How do you— you've built all these companies. You've founded companies with CEOs. You've done all this, you know. How do you see if someone actually is ready for that? Because yeah, I think I could tell you that I'm ready for that, but until I'm actually in it, yeah, I don't even know if I can actually appreciate what that— you know, you know, it's like, yeah, I can go run a marathon, I could tell you that. I can't, you know, but I probably won't.

Actually, I could have told you that. Okay, so anyway, the, um, you know, I, I wished I was that smart. I wished I had the decoder ring. I think that one of the reasons why I'm still in the game is that I feel that I'm still sharpening that saw. I'm still getting better. I'm still— my, you know, Spidey sense is getting more and more acute, right? But in the end, it's hard to tell. And if somebody is determined to fool you, it's hard to tell. One of the questions I I do ask, people think I'm kidding. I say, okay, David, tell me about, um, the lemonade stand you had when you were 8. And if you said, I didn't have a lemonade stand, I said, all right, tell me about, you know, the paper route when we used to have papers, the paper route you had when you were 12. And if you go, I didn't have that either, and I said, okay, well, tell me about the lawn care business that you had when you were 15. And by the way, I had all three. And if they say, I didn't have that either, then the answer is you're not an entrepreneur because it presents itself early, right? Early. And it, um, it is not a learned skill. It is innate, right? It is that kid. They love money. And what they love about money, what they say about that, it's true. It's not It's not the money per se, it's what the money represents. But they love that and they love the idea of figuring out ways for people to work for them. So now they're making money in their sleep. They love that. And when I ask that question, I get wonderful answers. Right. And one, I just coming off the top of my head, this, this kid, kid, he was out of college and I asked him that question. I really did ask him that question. Tell me about this. And he had none of that. And he said, but let me tell you about the business I did have. And the business he did have is that with video games and back in the day there were cartridges on video games and his dad would give him a video game if he got an A, right, on his report card and so if he got 3 A's, 3 video games, right, that was a great incentive but then he figured out that he had this big collection of video games and he was only going to be using one at a time, he could rent the others. So he would rent them for like, you know, 50 cents like a day, right, to the kids in the neighborhood. And then he figured out that with enough money he could buy his own video games, and that was a whole lot easier than getting an A, right? And then he figured out that he could get friends on bicycles to deliver and pick up for him. Right? So he blanketed the neighborhood, right? And he was making crazy money by, you know, having like Netflix but earlier, right? I mean, what a genius thing. And the founders that I talked to, the best ones, you know, have built huge businesses while still in college. And I'll, by the way, I'll give you one, I'll give you one example. One of my best entrepreneurs and what we do at Loeb Enterprises when we find— people ask me, where do you get your entrepreneurs? I've been doing this so long. We, by the way, stockpile them and we, you know, have many, many ideas. We say, which is the one you like? And they take it and they run with it and I put them on— they're on payroll, right? And some of my entrepreneurs are on tour of duty number 3. Right, so they come off a project and then they get to pick, you know, they get the pick of the litter and the litter is, you know, right now there's 27 ideas sitting in a freezer that they get to take a look at and they, and there's usually 2 or 3 in a pod, you know, get to pick one and it's theirs, right? But my, one of my best, and I can say this out loud, Bobby Branigan, one of my best, he started his first business in college. Right? And how that happened is he was going to the bookstore and he sees the, you know, clerk behind the bookstore, behind the register, tearing off covers of $200 biology books. Right? And it's like, well, why are you tearing the covers off these brand new books? And the answer was, well, it didn't sell. And he goes, well, okay, but it could sell. And he said, no, no, no, no, they're being sunsetted because edition number 15 okay, is being replaced by edition number 16. So you got to imagine 97% of all the content hasn't changed, right? But, and the publisher didn't want the whole book back because it cost too much, right? So they just took the COVID as proof that it didn't sell so the bookstore can get a refund, right, on those books. And Bobby took one look at that and said, I wonder if 'Cause I'm going to school in Massachusetts, I wonder if in Alabama they're up to addition 16. Turned out they weren't. They were delighted with addition 15. So he did this ARP and he created a $100 million business. No kidding around, in college, just doing that. And that's how entrepreneurs think. They look at something and they say, this is dumb. Why are we doing it this way? And then they do the research and, you know, the best of them do something like that in college. And then, you know, then you know what you got. Then you know what's in the DNA. I love that.

All right, let's go to the next one.

The next one. So we talked about— I like this approach. Yeah, we like this approach. So we talked about pride and we talked about sloth. And there is envy, which is a real problem. And envy is usually not from the bona fide founder. It's usually from the CEO that the board brought in, right? Because the founder appreciates that they eat last. They eat last. Everybody else, the real founder. When you bring in a rent-a-CEO in an early-stage company, what they really, really are doing is they're out for themselves and they really want too much equity, too much pay, and, you know, the notion of that there's a budget and there's only so much money does not resonate at all. And yes, I've seen examples of that as well. Another, which is not a deadly sin, is that I have had cases, and this is, by the way, something that entrepreneurs are susceptible to. They have to be optimists, right? You wouldn't do this if you're an optimist. You wouldn't, you know, you wouldn't say, I mean, if you were fighting a ground war and if you had a rifle on your shoulder and the sergeant said, okay, the casualty rate is going to be 75%, but we're all going to have a smile on our face and we're all going to be singing, right, as we jump into the foxhole. You would say screw that. I mean, that's— can we, can we go somewhere else instead? But entrepreneurs, they do that. So they got to be optimists. They got to be optimists. They got to think this is going to work. But there is a place, a line that crosses over into being delusional, right? And that's a very, that's a very, that's a very soft line. That's a very hard thing to address because if you're an investor, you want that optimism. But then when it crosses over into you're delusional, right? This is never going to work. This is never, this is never going to, you're never going to make that sale. This system is not going to work. You're not going to get it done by April. Right. And, you know, when you find that somebody is betting the ranch on all those things, then you've got to, you got to pull the cord, but you got to do it in such a way that you don't beat the optimism out of it. So delusional is a problem. There is a—

Well, that one, that one, I think the interesting challenges as I've actually been interviewing more investors, it's, you know, investors are looking— venture investors specifically are looking for deals that are gonna, you know, 50x, whatever, 20x their fund, whatever. So you, to your point about that, that optimism kind of thin line to being delusional, you almost need to pitch them something semi-delusional for it to be big enough to be a 20x, a 30x, a 40x. And where it's where you end up with the Adam Neumanns.

And, you know, that's a good example.

That's— I was at— I was there. I met him with this group of founders. It was like 10 10 founders and him, and he was going— each person was going around the table telling what their company did. And I'm not exaggerating, 8 of the 10, he said, why would you do that? WeWork is just going to do that. Like, and it was completely irrelevant, like, like completely nonsensical. And he was with a straight face saying, why would you do that? We're just going to do that. We're going to—

he said, we're going to run you over.

He said, we're going to remove all banks. There won't be banks. Everyone will just bank in a WeWork and WeWork will be the bank, you know. And it was— but at the same time, that helped him raise what he did. That helped him do, you know, and so I think there's that interesting thing where you kind of, you know, the, the line between operator with optimism versus, you know, well, you know, it's funny because what I was going to go into next is sociopaths, right?

Now, Newman, I think— I, I never met the man, but from what I read, I, I, you might just put him in that box, right? And that's valid.

Yeah.

The thing about— they say that sociopaths are 4% of the population, right? But there is a concentration of them in entrepreneurship, in startups, right? Because you need a couple of qualities, and Newman had one of them, which is you need charm, like magnetic charm, right? You have to— I mean, how many times have you seen like 10 companies and only one gets funding, but they all have like very similar business models.

All day, right?

Yeah, all day. What was it? What was the je ne sais quoi? Well, that person just knew how to be incredibly charming, how to paint this picture, this portrait, this fiction, and make it seem incredibly real, right? And they, they, The sociopaths do that. Now the flip side of that is they're only, they're just out for themselves, right? And I think you saw that quality in Newman also, right? It was just about him, just about him. And everything, all this big, you know, this portrait of me and being this generous giant and all this stuff was nonsense because underneath it all he was just looking out for himself. He wanted to make sure that he had bank and investors be damned and employees, you know, also didn't benefit very much. So that is another thing that you got to watch out for is the sociopath because they, one, they, if you read about them as a group, they tend to be very, very smart. They're very charming and they're very good when confronted with facts to layer in more kind of fantasy and fib, and when woven all together with the charm, actually looks plausible.

Right, right, right.

Looks plausible. So that's something else that you got to watch out for. So what have we talked about? We've talked about pride, sloth, and we talked about sociopaths being delusional greed. There is something else that you got to watch out for, which is, which is the founder or the CEO that just doesn't listen, just doesn't listen. And it's a combination of two factors. One, having to be the smartest in the room. Right. So if somebody raises a question, the answer is invariably, we thought about that. We thought about that.

Exactly.

Well, you know what? No, you haven't. You know, you can't be that dismissive. I mean, when a smart person asks you a question, right, an insightful, penetrating question, we thought about that is just not the right answer. I mean, you've got to— first of all, what they're thinking and what they're articulating, or like, could have some nuance between— you got to hear them out. But I have seen, you know, the I thought about it, we already thought about this, we already thought about this, those pat answers. And what that really does, David, is paper over insecurity.

I was just going to say that it's usually insecurity.

It's usually an insecurity. And so that, that is another, another thing that will trip you up. Right.

I had an investor who said to me, he said, Dave, I don't care if you do everything that I say or if you take every one of my pieces of feedback. What I care is that you hear hear, yeah, every piece of feedback, right? And that you listen.

Yes.

And I think that that was a really interesting— because he was a very successful person, his CEO, whatever. And he said, I'm not telling you what to do, but I, but I want the company to be successful. So if I'm sharing something, I just want to see that you're hearing me, you're processing it, and you can decide to do it or not to do it. And that was a really— the way he said that has stuck with me. And I see that with some of these founders where you'll say something and say instant— it literally is instantaneous. No, no, I— we already did that, we already thought about that, we already— and, and it's, it's more of— I think it's the insecurity of, is it possible that I don't know all the answers? I can't show up that way because my investors are going to think I'm stupid, or they're going to think that I'm not, you know. And, and I see— I, I think that is, that is such a good— that I don't think I've talked about that with anyone on the podcast before. That is like such a nuanced thing, but a good indication of someone who won't be successful.

Right. And, and you make a very interesting point. The phrase, you have to listen, right, is really nuanced, right? It's, you got to listen and you got to hear. You've got to listen. And when a very bright person is asking you a question, you should be refactoring, you should be rethinking that question, right, intensively. You should be picking it apart, right? Because they're asking that question for a reason. And you might have— and this is, by the way, something that almost enrages me when I ask a question, when, you know, the CEO founder will say, Michael, we reviewed that in the last board meeting. Okay, but I'm asking it again, right? So, you know, we've already asked and answered. We've already settled that one. Oh, okay. All right. So I'm the stupid one for asking the question. Okay. I also happen to be the one with the money. Okay. So, like, you know, so no, I mean, it's interesting, but they say life is live. Being an entrepreneur is live. I mean, it constantly changes. There's always new facts. There's always a competitor coming into the market. There's always a new regulation. There's something new all the time.

And now fast. I would say now with AI, faster, really faster than ever before. You, you start something, 2 weeks later you have a competitor that just copied, like literally copied your website, vibe coded the competing product, all that stuff for half the price.

You know, that stuff. I would say that a quality that is a non-negotiable quality of an entrepreneur. You have to be numeric, right? If you're afraid of numbers, if you can't do math in your head, if you can't— and the type of math I'm talking about is if somebody gives you a proposition, right away you've got to say, okay, could this possibly work mathematically? Right? Possibly work. This suggestion is the type of suggestion that, you know, I'm going to have a cost of goods of $1,000 and I'm only going to be able to sell it for $100. I mean, you've got to be able to put that together. Yes, that is, that is likewise a requirement.

To go a little bit off this topic here is why did you choose to build Loeb Enterprises the way that you did versus becoming just a traditional venture firm? You know, like, you— I'm sure you could have with your own money and everyone else's money that backed you in the past, you could have had a billion-dollar fund, you know, investing in companies like a traditional venture firm. But you're talking about having this freezer full of ideas and this group of entrepreneurs that's there, you know, in the office, that's on staff, that's doing— why, why did you choose that model?

Right. Um, well, you know, it's kind of interesting. I don't think I made a choice at all. I just kind of built. Right. And the inspiration, because you asked for that, was in the very first two companies we had Synapse and Synapse was a shot out of a cannon generating cash right away. And my then partner, Jay Walker, brilliant, brilliant guy, had one of those brains that, you know, kept on churning out ideas. And about 2.5, 3 years in, came up with the idea for Priceline.com, right? And how that was launched is instead of doubling the team and doubling the space, we just told everybody the good news. You've got two jobs, right? And as long as it was the same pew in a different church, it actually worked, right? So that was a model. That model was more than one company but one layer of infrastructure, right? And it worked out actually quite well. And I thought that when I had the opportunity, I was going to build that. I was going to frame something on that theory, right? And today, Loeb Enterprises, I call it a Tootsie Pop, and the chocolatey center is all the companies and the hard candy shell is shared services. And shared services is meant to be that X-Men and women that will help you build, and they have a unique set of skills, right? Like world-class skills. So they're better at research, they're better at tech, they're better at marketing, they're better, you know, because— and one of the great things is you can hire real high-quality talent and they will stick with it because the scenery always changes, right? I mean, you're working on— That makes a lot of sense. You're working on 5 companies all at once. I mean, we had more than that in the portfolio, but you can only work at like 5 at once. And they— that sharpens their saw, right? And they get smarter all the time and they get to work with a lot of really bright, hard-charging people. And they never feel, you know, they feel like a rolling stone. They never feel stuck.

Right.

And so that is our model now. Now folks try to put it into a Venture Collective box, an incubator box, and I say of an incubator, it's somebody else's ideas, somebody else's team, somebody else's capital, and you're in and out in 90 days. With us, take the somebody else's out and put in, put in, by the way, 9 years. Right. And it's all us. So our ideas, our capital, our teams, and not 90 days, 9 years. So that's kind of our model.

And how much capital do you deploy into these companies?

Oh, that's an interesting question because you're going to have a follow-up question to that question. The least amount I ever put in was about $3 million and the most amount over 30, right? When you get to that level, it's because you got real conviction on the company and you kind of say, you know, I don't want the dilution, so I'm going to continue to invest. So now people say, why as little as 3? Well, there was a Paul Masson, the wine company, had an adage which was no wine before their time. Some companies are ready. After $3 million. They've checked enough boxes that they can get outside capital. Right. So if I may, I'd like to turn the subject over into something else.

Sure.

Something related.

Sure.

Okay. So I started 5 years ago building a network of entrepreneurs that we call Uncharted. And we started with a dinner. My house on 72nd Street, Madison. I got an antique townhouse and we have amakase, which is wonderful in part because the conversation never stops, right? Those little tiny dishes with little tiny pieces of bait kind of just appear in front of you and nobody with string beans banging you in the back of the head, right? Just, you know, that's the thing. So you have wonderful conversation. And we built that into a, you know, a tribe of maybe 3,000, I'm told. Dinner series, New York, San Francisco, LA, you know, other cities around the country. We have a number of events. This summer, we have 3 big ones. The OG is Founders Funders, and we'll have about 700 people there. At my house for an all-day thing, a lot of programming, a lot of meetups, and not a week or two goes by without somebody, you know, kind of writing me and saying, you know, at one of your events I met my founder and he just wrote a $2.5 million check. Thank you very much. So that is very gratifying. But I always thought, David, that I would turn this into the ability of the entrepreneur class to exercise some self-determination when it comes to funding, right? And one of the things about VCs, and I don't want to cast aspersions about VCs, but in the end, everybody acts in their interest, and the interest of the VC is the money. And the money that they're talking about is the Ohio State Teachers Fund because they are serial fundraisers. They're like a shark. They got to keep on going. And the Teachers Fund would put money into Fund 2, 3, 4, and 10. That's the customer. The company they only see once. And they do triage very quickly and they make a decision. Sometimes they're wrong that you're not going to be a 50x, right? Because that's what they're looking for. They're looking for the 25x, the 50x, the 100x. They're looking for that one investment in the fund to pay back the entire fund, right? And that's why the failure rate is— they talk about 2 in 10 working. Their definition of working is not necessarily extinction, right? But 2 in 10 working, in part because they abandon a lot of their babies, right? Early in the curve, they just make a decision, make a call that you ain't gonna get there, right? You're not gonna be, not that you're gonna fail, but you're not gonna be one of the 50Xers, and as a result of that, you're gonna die in the desert because when it comes for you to raise again, the guys who put money into your seed round are not gonna hold your hand into the A, and if that doesn't happen, you're done, right? So the irony to all this is that the entrepreneur class is big enough, smart enough, rich enough that we can fund ourselves, right? We are in the flow because we're building these businesses. We know before anybody else if they're going to work, right? So this group of 3,000, I'm drawing from that group and I'm saying, okay, show me what you're working on. Show me what I'm working on, and then what what we are doing is signing up a bunch of these entrepreneurs that will commit a minimum of $10,000 in capital into a minimum of one company over the course of the year. And my pledge is to show them 200 companies.

Right.

And if again, you got 3,000 entrepreneurs in your network, you'll be able to surface that many companies that we vet. By the way, we don't diligence, we vet for $10,000. We don't have to diligence and we're hoping that it's more than one company and more than $10,000. But that is a minimum. And if I get 1,000 members, if you will, that's $10 million in the room that can be deployed like that. Right. Very different than the VC model. The VC model is I have— I'm raising $5 million and I got 4 checks. Right. And one's for 2 and I got 3 followers. Right. So it's Narrow but deep. This is wide and shallow. And you're drawing from hundreds of entrepreneurs that will like this, the company that they see. And I'd say it's like art. If you like it, you know what, just put your money in. Right. And what is liking it? Liking it is, you know what, the business model makes sense. I like the founding team, the founder. Right, is inspirational, right? I want to back that guy. And the other thing is that they will back things that they understand. I built an adjacency to this. The guys that I'm looking for to write the checks, they've had an exit. Maybe they were the founder, maybe they were the CTO, but they had an exit. So they got some money, right? Maybe not all the money in the world. Sometimes it is. But, you know, they've had something. And they can write a $10,000 check to support their own, to support their own. The other thing we ask is that the deals are unbelievable deals because this is your community, right? This is your community and you have to give to the community when the community has given to you, right? So that is what we call Uncharted Pitches. Everything is under the Uncharted brand, but Uncharted Pitches. And we've gotten it rolling. We have a pitch coming up on Thursday, but we have so far in just 3 pitches raised over $10 million for the pitching companies. By the way, it's 8 at a time and it's not a pitch at all. I have an interview by a world-class journalist because I just think that sometimes founders they could be brilliant, brilliant ideas, great leadership, but you put them in front of the room and you find that they can't effectively communicate what their idea is, right? And so a great journalist will get the best out of, you know, that founder. And so—

So just to completely— so you have 3,000 people. Those 3,000 people have all had some kind of an exit. Maybe they were part of the executive team. They were the founder, whatever it may be. They have money where they say, I'm— I want to invest at least $10,000 every year into at least one company, hopefully more into more companies. And they come to these pitches physically in person.

Yep.

And they watch 8 people get interviewed by this journalist very quickly, very quickly. And then they come out of there and they say, like you said, like art, do I like that? Do I think that that's interesting? And they pledge and they invest that $10,000.

So one or two other steps related to that, but they're important. At the end of the pitch starts at 4:00 in the afternoon. We're done by 7:00, right, through 8 companies. Then we go to my house on the Upper West Side on 71st Street and we have a cocktail party, right? All the interested investors, all the companies. Right. And the companies say, this is not a cocktail party. This is like a shooting gallery because the scrum forms around me. And all they're doing is asking questions. That's exactly the point because, you know, VCs, they'll look at the deck and you'll get questions like, you know, David, in year 4, you're making an assumption that your acquisition cost actually goes down by 7%. How did you come up with that? And it's like, are you kidding? How about year 4 minutes from now, right? In year 4 minutes, I don't know what the hell is going to happen. It's a fiction, right? But Entrepreneurs, they don't look at the horse. They look at the jockey. Can you pivot? Do you have grit and resilience? Are you going to walk through glass and fire? Are you going to do everything that it's going to take? That's what they're looking for. The eye of the tiger. And when they form that circle and they're peppering these people with questions, that's what they're looking for. So what we ask is, you know, if you see it, you like it, make a call. But meet the founders, spend time with the founders, and we set up Zoom calls with the founders. We give them the bat phone numbers so they can call them at any time, and we unlock a data room for them, right? And we say, look, for $10,000, just go with your gut. If you want to put in $100,000, okay, and we've been known to get like quarter-million-dollar checks, right? If you want to put in $100,000, We vet, we don't diligence. We'll give you all the tools that you can diligence. But, you know, at that point, you're on— you really got to do, you know, you really got to do your inspection your way. But yes, that's what we're intending to do. Where it's a little bit of defiance. It's a little bit of— think of the absurdity. Why are we dependent? Why is this entrepreneurial class— think of all the incredible founders with incredible exits, right? Why this dependency on third-party capital when we can be dependent on ourselves, right? Not totally, at least in the early going, right? We can get each other started, pick each other up, and that's exactly what we should be doing. We should— this tribe should take care of itself.

And the next question I have is that group of 3,000, just to make sure I fully understand, they are sourcing those 8 companies out of that group, they'll recommend to you or to your team, and they'll say, hey, I met a founder, they're amazing, can I get them into Uncharted Pitches?

Correct.

And then you'll vet them, you won't due diligence them, but you'll say, we have a— seems like a normal person who's—

right, we have a vetting team, we have a vetting team, it goes into the hopper and the vetting team listens to it. But I mean, how refreshing to have like any idea right now. VCs, they'll be, we only do fintech, you know, seed, or we'll only do healthtech A, right? Little tiny boxes. And they can't have drift because they'll get sued. Because if they invest in something outside of that box and it doesn't work, then the LPs will say, what the hell? That's not what I— but this is The best ideas, the things with the greatest potential, right? The most interesting, fascinating ideas, right? A lot of times they have AI at the end of it, but a lot of times they don't. I'm going to tell you about one. Do I have time for one? Sure, sure. Okay. So there was a company and, you know, you might say, how do you meet all this stuff? And it's a little bit serendipitously. I, you know, I've got some favorite friends. What I look for is guys that, you know, are, are, are, have incredibly generous spirits and I'm going to use a name and that's Neil Bloom. He's out of San Diego. Neil in his 30s had a very robust exit, right? And he decided to devote the rest of his life in helping young entrepreneurs and he teaches at San Diego State but he's got a cabal of maybe, I don't know, 50, 100 You know, people that just ask for his advice and he just doesn't have his hand out. If they want to give him, you know, some warrants, he'll take it, right? But he doesn't ask. And he's the most amazing guy ever. And I, in like spinning some of this stuff out because we're not just in New York, we're in other cities, and I should explain that. But I said, Neil, let's reconnect. And I flew out to San Diego, saw him. And then he said, Michael, I want to show you one of the companies I invested in. And that's where I met a company called Natilus. Natilus. And I met the two founders, young ex-Boeing engineers, brilliant, brilliant, brilliant, AI, devout and committed. And the first thing they do is they show you a picture and they say, Michael, what's that? And I say, gee, I don't know. And they say, that is the first Boeing commercial jet. Now it looks a whole lot like today's commercial jet, right? And they said that jet was made with 500 engineers with slide rules, and it cost $1.1 billion in today's dollars to make. The next Boeing is gonna have 5,000 engineers. They're gonna have all this technology, and it's gonna cost $50 billion to make. And their point is, shit is just over-engineered, right? Over-engineered. Now their next question is, Michael, what's a cargo plane? I said, beats the shit out of me. And they say, okay, it's a decommissioned 737 or 767 and costs $4 million, and for another $6 million, total of $10 million, they'll rip out the seats and make it into a cargo plane. And they say, is it a good cargo plane? And I said, well, I don't know. And they said, no, it sucks as a cargo You're stuffing a bunch of boxes into a cigarette, right? I mean, think of containerized freight, you know, these big containers go from a truck to a train, you know, to a boat, right? You know, a lot of shit goes through those stupid same doors, right? Shitty cargo plane. And, you know, they say, can it land in any airport that it wants? And there's 10,000 private. No, it's got to go in a commercial airport. Can it go at 200 miles an hour and save gas? No, it's got to go at 600 miles an hour. Okay, so let us show you our cargo plane. It looks like a pizza, pizza wedge, right? Triangle. And where the crust goes, the whole back flips up, right? It's called a blended wing where the wing is— where the body of the aircraft and the wing are kind of merged. Right? So just think of a big wedge. Back flips up, pull back, and the loaders just like sock in, right, all these pallets. Boom, boom, boom, boom. Load time a fraction of what a plane is. And then they say, does cargo have to go at 600 miles an hour? No, it doesn't. Okay, it's prop, right? Now you want to build a plane, should it only go in commercial airports? Hell no. The factories are where the tiny airports are, you know, the tiny airports are. Okay. So it can fly in and out of 10,000 different airports around the country. Right. And then Michael, if it's only going to do cargo and it's going to go 260 miles an hour and it can fly into non-commercial airports where there are no people, does it need pilots? I said, fuck, no, it doesn't need pilots. And so they're building this giant drone just for cargo. Right? Now, that was one of the companies that pitched. They only got like checks from like lunatics, right, that, you know, wanted to do this. They hung an incredibly low valuation because this was bros. They were going to their bros. They were going to the, you know, other entrepreneurs. Right? And we raised a couple million dollars for this company, right? Because it was so— now, will it work? I don't know. One other thing. They have $36 billion of conditional orders, right? They don't even have a full-size model of the plane yet. But, you know, all, you know, the FedExes and the Amazons and the UPSes and everybody else are looking at this thing and saying, Oh my God, you know, the cost of shipping freight is now down by like 75% with this, right? This is genius and would revolutionize our business. So that is what the entrepreneur does, right? That incredible thinking, right? Who would spend their time thinking about a cargo plane? For God, it's the least sexiest, right? Sexiest commercial plane. Next sexiest, private aviation. I'm thinking about a cargo plane. Who would think about a cargo plane? But these guys actually properly dissected it and came to the unbelievable conclusion. And that's what Pitches is all about, finding these crazy— it doesn't have AI at the end, although it's kind of created by AI, but it's solving a huge worldwide problem, right, in the most elegant ways. And if they do it, this company is going to be worth whatever zillions. But oh my God, the courage, right, of these guys, these two guys, to take their Boeing careers, put it on hold, and do this, right? Do this. Blood, sweat, and tears. A fraction of what they were getting paid before. 120 hours a week, right? This. And by the way, I met them and I said, I got to bring you to pitches. And believe it or not, they flew in to do that. It wasn't just, you know, they did it by Zoom. They came in in person to share what they were putting together because they're that proud of it.

Love it. I want to pivot a little bit with the time we have left to your story specifically. If you go back and look at the success you've had in your life, your career, What is the one attribute that you have, if there's one? Right, you have many, I'm sure, but if— what is that one attribute?

Ah, you know, that's so hard. There's so many of them. No, I— let me, let me, in the spirit of what we were talking about, right, which is the negative space, right? This was not the great founders but the negative space, right? Because this is not, you know, your CEO. So, um, I'm going to go with what I did wrong. Right. So I did not start my first company. I knew I was an entrepreneur. I was that kid. Right. I followed my dad into Time Inc. My dad was one of the great journalists of all times. Right. And he— I followed him into Time Inc. not as a journalist, but on the business side, because that's all that I heard about as a kid. So, Dad, it's your fault. Anyway, so, but I, you know, I, it was, it was a little bit too comfortable for me and I had too many good jobs. Like I ran Sports Illustrated, like that was a lot of fun. Do you remember the sneaker phone?

Yeah, yeah.

I made that. And the football phone, that was mine too, right? So, and bloopers videos and all that. I mean, that was all premium. Sports Illustrated for kids, I won. So, um, it was— and then I launched Entertainment Weekly, and that was the job that got me fired when I was 36, right? So I should have never gone into corporate America. I sucked as a corp. I was just a— take it down.

You were successful.

Yeah, but successful because they had to make— they had to let me be successful. In other words, the stuff was so effective in creating profits and changing things that despite my errant personality, right, you know, they had to give me big bonuses, they had to promote me, right, but they didn't like doing it, but you know, and as soon as, as soon as, the opportunity arose, which was Entertainment Weekly was a tough launch. That's when I got shitcanned, right? Because I had enough— I created enough enemies that, you know, they took the opportunity to do that. And so, um, uh, so I should have been— I, I shouldn't have been an entrepreneur when I got to be 36, right? I should have been when I was 16. So that was the mistake I made. Now, by the way, I thought 36 was really old, but then I read that Bloomberg didn't start until he I was 38. So I thought, okay, you know, that's okay. I can take some solace in that. But so I would, yeah, I would say that that was my biggest error because I lost 20 years. You know, I'm not going to get those 20 years back. My advice to everybody apropos that, I love quotes, and one good one apropos to this is what Nike says, which is just do it. Right. And that is, by the way, another thing that, you know, you do see entrepreneurs make some mistake. And by the way, it's a bell-shaped curve. Right. But one side of the bell is paralysis by analysis. Right. It just freezes you from making the decision. The other side is it's all totally impulsive with no facts. You really got to be in the middle of the bell, right? You got to have an opinion, should be a strong one, could be very differentiated, even novel, but it's got to be informed, right? It's got to be informed and it's got to be informed. It's interesting. I find I get more out of the people I talk to than the things I read because the people I talk to and what I look for, it's very interesting, David. There is always one and it's just one. Right? And the one is the most brilliant guy in that space, that person who has insight like nobody else. And you'll talk to a lot of— I wouldn't call them dilettantes, but you talk to a lot of people and they could have been in the industry for 10 years, but they don't really understand it. But there's somebody who really, really gets it, really understands it, right? Like, I don't understand gravity. You understand gravity? I don't understand gravity. I don't understand how it works. There's like 8 people in the world who know, and you want to talk to that 8, that one of that 8. And 7 out of the 8 are going to be too esoteric. You're not going to understand a thing that they say. But one of them, right, can turn into baby food and you can understand what it is. That's what you seek.

You, you are at this point in your career, you've made a lot of money, you've built a lot of things, you've done— but you still seem to have a lot of energy. What is it that drives you?

Yeah, so one thing, David, that I have, and this is, you know, a drivable thing, is that I have the privilege— I used to say I have the privilege of working people with people half my age and twice as smart. Now I get to say a third of my age and three times as smart. Being around that energy, being around that intellect, being around that new thinking in a world that is so dynamic is, um, really thrilling for me, right? Really thrilling for me. The other motivation is I want to make a difference, right? I want to put a dent in the world. There's a guy by the name of Kevin Ryan, and if you haven't— haven't had him on here, he is, you know, absurdly brilliant. He and I have similar models. He is as credentialed as they come. MongoDB is one of his biggest ones, but, um, AlliCorp is exactly what he does. And if Kevin Ryan can look at something I did and say, I wished I, I wished I came up with that idea, that is about the highest praise I can ever get. When someone whose brain you I really regard and respect and sometimes a little afraid of when they can say, that was, that was the idea that got away and I wished I had it. That was a Kevin Ryan idea and that son of a bitch Michael Loeb had it instead of me. That's thrilling for me. The other thing that's thrilling is I've had the privilege of starting companies that have saved people a lot of money and also and, you know, a couple of them in the pharmacy space, I think saved lives because I made medicines much more affordable. Like generics, rack rate of generics is 70 or 80 bucks. I got it down to an average of 22, right? By going direct to the manufacturer. And there were tens of millions of people, right? Putting through, I don't know, 100 million prescriptions a year. And some of those were for you know, kind of life-saving, life-altering medicines. And that was the difference between people buying them once every 3 months because that's what they could afford to being able to buy them every month. So that's, that's the things I seek.

Do you, when you built your first company, was it the same thing that was driving you or was it—

Oh no, I needed a job. So I was fired and it was a rather noisy firing. And the Inc., I was shown the door as, and the managing editor was also shown the door. And the question everybody was asking, Time Inc., this can't-miss magazine publisher, did they just give birth to a failure, right? And basically Time Inc.'s position was, well, we've been telling you everything is going along swimmingly. And we didn't quite tell the truth, but okay, we were able to exorcise the tumors from the body and they've been cast out and now everything is going to be fine at Entertainment Weekly. So I wasn't going to get a job in media anytime soon, so my options were, you know, like start a company or jump off a bridge. And, um, you know, the jumping off a bridge, that was was, you know, a little dramatic and it's kind of permanent. So, you know, let's try this.

Was it to prove them wrong?

No, no, it wasn't to prove them wrong. It was— no, it wasn't that. That's, by the way, one of the seven deadly sins, right? Is, um, I'm gonna have to read it here, but one of the seven is, um, I guess wrath, right? Right, right. It's, um No, you, you know, revenge motive, huge amount of energy. A lot of times it backfires. And, um, you know, whoever said that, um, the best revenge is living well, that's, that's exactly right. Uh, and, um, spend your energy on that. Spend your energy on, like, productive things instead of trying to get even. That takes, you know, that takes a lot and takes a lot out of you and you're better than that. You are better than that, right? Invent the future, right?

Was there someone early in your career that was a role model to you or a mentor or someone, you know, that—

Yeah, I mean, my dad was very important in that. He was— they said about Marshall Loeb that when you were in the presence of Marshall Loeb, you felt like you were in the presence of royalty. He just had incredible grace. He was— he grew up in the poor side of Chicago. He was known as "Jewy Loeb" and he joined Time Inc., which was a very patrician place. Didn't go to Yale, which is where they all went at Time Inc. at the time and became one of the world's greatest journalists just by force of will. I mean, this man had the ability to work 120 hours a week and did it without complaint. And so that was a great inspiration to me. It's, you know, the folks that accomplish something and then have their hand out, that's, you know, that is tough to deal with, right? We're all in the same boat. It's heavy seas. There's a lot of rowing to do. And, you know, I just— I don't want to hear about the blisters on your finger. We all have blisters on your finger, right? I mean, you know, it's, it's— and if, if you thought that blisters were going to be a problem, then damn it, you shouldn't have been on the boat, right? You shouldn't have grabbed an oar because you're just taking up space. So, um, yeah, he was, he was a great inspiration.

Um, so anyway, I saw a really good quote that was something like, you know, the lazy people think that they're winning in the winners think that they're being lazy.

Oh yeah, yeah, that's true.

Like that. And I, I feel like that. I showed to my kids the other day and I said that is the one of the truest statements, you know. All the time I think about all the best people I worked with. I would call them into my office and they would think that they're getting fired. And I'm like, what do you mean? You're getting, you're getting promoted. They'd be, I thought you were going to fire me. I'm like, you're the best person at the company. There's this constant feeling of that, you know.

A corollary to that is that if you want something want something done, give it to a busy person because you're right about that. I mean, that the most accomplished people just are saying, well, you know, God, the pile's not— it just keeps getting bigger. I'm not making a dent and I, you know, I could have done it better. I mean, there's an achievement orientation among entrepreneurs like we can always get better. One of the things we think about with Uncharted generally is that entrepreneurs, they have blinders on, right? They are, you know, they self-isolate and they put themselves into a, you know, kind of soundproof container because they just have to focus to get things done. And I tell a story, true story, about last summer's Uncharted Founders Funders, again about 700 people. And I was standing by my, it's at my house in Southampton, which—

that's where that happened.

Yeah, yeah, it happens to be the Billions house, by the way. But, uh, Southampton, and that's, you know, on the beach, blah blah blah. And we have a big tent and a lot of programming. It's really quite, quite something, and people get a lot out of it. But I was standing, um, around my pool, and I look left and I see the founder of Republic. I look straight ahead and I see the founder of Deal and I look right and I see the founder of Bolt and we're talking like left is about $4 billion, straight ahead is $13 billion and to the right is $11 billion. I'm talking about valuations and they're all within arm's reach or close and I grab them, put them in a scrum and I said, have any of you met any of you? And the answer was no. How could that be? They're gods, right? I mean, think of that. I got $30 billion or close evaluation, right? Right there. And none of them met any of them, each other. And that's part of what we're trying to do. We're trying to get, you know, this is one day where everybody can take off the body armor and just lose themselves in their community and make an effort to, you know, meet some other great people that we want you to, you know, to keep those relationships for a very long time. Mm-hmm. And in the end, we all can find somebody who can help us. And that's what we're trying to do. We're trying to create that community, create that opportunity, create that forum that you can meet that person that you can learn from, that you can gain from. And because we all can do it, and you need a humility about this, which is not a word we used before. So it's interesting about entrepreneurs. They need to have at once confidence, arrogance, but they also need a humility. And they also have to appreciate that to be the smartest guy in the room is not a success. That's a fail. Then you're just in the wrong room. You want to be in a room with a lot of people smarter than you because they're going to make your business better. And you've got to be the— you got to have the confidence and the ego to be able to handle all that. And, you know, not everybody can.

Yeah. And that's great. Michael, thank you for doing this with me. I— there's so much in here that I want to cut up and share. And I think for people to, to hear this, I'm looking forward to coming to some of these Uncharted pitches and maybe recording some episodes of some of the founders.

And yeah, that's, that's my one— my ask of you is is that we are looking for folks that want to be part of Uncharted Pitches, who want to, you know, commit to like putting a small amount of money in a great company. We do have— it is face to face in New York. You can't make it at Zoom. You can't make that. It's sitting in a warehouse. We are standing up cities around the country. To do kind of the same thing. But what this is, is an appreciation of who entrepreneurs are. We're a unique class. We should have our head examined, frankly, but we are a unique class. And there's no reason why we can't be supportive of one another because many of us, not all of us, have made money. Certainly enough money to afford what we're talking about. And the other thing we should appreciate is we should appreciate us, because if you look at the United States in 1960, we were China. And what do I mean by that? We were the manufacturer of the world. Most of the manufactured goods of the world came from the United States. No longer the case, right? What has happened? Well, we want— we went from brawn to brains because of the 20 most significant tech companies as measured by market cap worldwide, of the 20 biggest, 16 are American, right? We're 4% of the world's population, 80% of the most wildly successful tech companies companies worldwide, right? Brawn, brains. Where did that come from? Entrepreneurs, right? We're also responsible for most of the jobs. We're also responsible for, you know, most of the wealth creation and innovation. And yet, you know, 75% failure rates. You know, we don't pay ourselves much and we rate our own 401. And so I just think that this country owes us all a big debt, but we also have an obligation to ourselves, right? We got to help. We got to help our brethren and sisteren, right, in their efforts to build a business. And by the way, if they're trying to build something, you know, dumb, that's our obligation too, which is, you know, Sam, Sally, got to tell you, this dog, this dog ain't not going to hunt. Okay. You're brilliant. Right. You're brilliant. Let's reshape this. All right. Let's come up with Plan B. Let's do something else. Work on it together. But let's take that energy and let's not waste it. Right. Let's put it to something that can work. Right. And enrich, you know, all of us. And one, you know, you ask what keeps me going. And part of it is, You know, I paid for hundreds of College of Education. I paid for hundreds of houses. Right. I've paid for bar mitzvahs, birthdays, you know, weddings. Right. Because building businesses, employing people, enriching them with an exit, you know, they're stakeholders too, as well as the people who write checks. That's what makes this country very differentiated compared to all the other countries. And we do things here. The notion that 16 out of 20 are the biggest, most important— that's not an accident, right? That's a preponderance. And it has something to do with our mentality, maybe that pioneer mentality that we just have the courage to do that. One of the things I talk with my European friends is that we're allowed to fail in the United States. And if you're not accepting that, then it's really tough to be an entrepreneur.

Right?

So whatever it is, whatever that je ne sais quoi is, we have it here. It is absolutely necessary. If we don't have it, we become France. Right? Nice to look at. Not much going on. Okay. So we need this. We need this. We need this for the country. We need this for the economy. And entrepreneurs should be celebrated. That's what Uncharted is all about. And entrepreneurs should help their own because we can. And that's what Uncharted Pitches is all about.

Awesome. Michael, thank you very much.

Thank you, sir.

I really enjoyed this.

Good.

I hope everyone enjoyed this. If you did, please share this out with your networks and we'll see you for the next episode of Not Another CEO Podcast.