#6: Mark Hasebroock, Founder of Dundee Venture Capital - Why most people suck at sales, what entrepreneurship really looks like, and how to persevere through failure

We ultimately grew to like 400 people. We had 100 million in revenue. Yeah. Oh yeah, it was, it was in.

Like a 12 month time frame or how quickly.

It was like 18 months. Yeah, it was like 18 months. And we were filing to go public and Bear Stearns was our underwriter. Going to have to Google that people. And you know, we were about a day away from being priced. And what that means is, you know, you've done your roadshow, you've got all the people that are interested in buying chunks of the company, you're ready to go public. And Doug and I are in New York for the pricing. You know, on Friday, Monday, it's gonna go out. Ding, ding, ding, ding, ring the bell. You know, we're sitting there Friday and nobody's calling us back. Our banker isn't calling us back. We're kind of like, what should we be doing? We're sitting here in the bar at the hotel. I mean, should we be, should we be there? And so we're calling Bear Stearns and nobody's answering. And finally somebody at like 12 o' clock gets on the phone, hey, I'm looking for Jim Taylor. He's our banker. He's just not returning my call. Long pause. Jim was fired this morning. I said, oh, okay, well, I mean, who's handling our account? Well, the whole team was fired, actually.

Oh my gosh.

What do you mean the whole team? Well, the entire investment banking division is gone and I don't know what to tell you. She said, I'm in retail banking and you know, there's literally no one here today. But from what I do understand, there aren't any IPOs. So have a nice day.

Good luck. On today's episode, we have the founder of Dundee Venture Capital, Mark Haysbrook. Steve, I, I have to admit something. I love, love what we do. I don't think there's any other job I'd want to do or any career I'd want to do, but if I had to, I'd probably choose what, what Mark does. And here's why. Let me try to defend that real quick. There was something that stood out to me when Mark was talking about investing in startups or even starting new businesses, is that he gets this rare opportunity to look into the future that, that most of us do not get to see. Something happens. A business gets going, a technology starts, we get to know about it after the fact, it's already started. He gets to see from the investor or from the entrepreneur's eyes and mind of what they see. The future looking like and he gets all these different glimpses of the future. I can only imagine how cool that would be every day just to get to see what the future looks like from a business perspective.

You know. And Jake, it was exciting to hear Mark talk about what he sees the next five years with all these individuals that may have worked for a larger company now looking for something to do. Mark's mindset of what the unique and cool businesses that will be coming up in the future are going to be astounding. And hearing him talk about that was very rewarding and opened up my eyes of what can I take away from that in my own business, in life? It was phenomenal.

And he's got credibility too. This is a guy that has started multiple businesses. Some have failed and some have been massive successes. Close to an IPO on one business, sold to Jet.com, walmart, started a venture capital firm. So he, he knows what he's talking about at every level of entrepreneurship. So I think our audience is really going to love this. So I say let's just head west. Let's let them jump in. But stay tuned as we discuss why most people suck at sales, what entrepreneurship really looks like, and how to persevere through failure with our guest, Marc Haysbrook. This episode is brought to you by Skyline Point Capital. If you're anything like me, you're always considering where to invest your money. Stocks, bonds, crypto, a rental home. The list is literally endless. As we've all seen over the past year, the stock market is unstable, the housing market is just weird and inflation is on the rise. In times like these, the clear place to invest my money is in multifamily real estate, AKA apartment complexes. Here's why. Returns on real estate investments have little to no correlation with the stock market. There's lower volatility, stable income streams, and the tax benefits are insane. And let's not forget that the apartments will typically appreciate in value over time, which means you can walk away with a pretty nice return when the complex is sold in three to five years. Best of all, multifamily investing is passive, so you get all the benefits without the hassle and headache of your typical rental home investment. Getting started has never been easier. Head to skylinepointcapital.com to learn how you can start investing today. Well, I thought we'd spend start our time together by exploring your first foray into entrepreneurship. I'm going to read a little excerpt from your bio because I think it tees it up pretty, pretty well. All right, Mark, Got his entrepreneurial start selling colored moccasins to pay for a spring break trip while at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. He paid for the trip, then had to issue refunds upon his return when his customers quickly realized that the moccasins die stained their feet. All right, Juan, that's a heck of an entrepreneurial start. So why moccasins? And what happened with the dye?

Oh, God, it was a train wreck. So my roommate at the time was from Gordon, Nebraska, and he had come back from a trip home wearing these yellow moccasins. And I said, where do you get those? He said, oh, you know, they make them out on the native American reservation where our, you know, it's just catty corner from our house, and they're everywhere. And I thought, those are kind of cool. I mean, a little feminine for you to be wearing, but, you know, no judgment. I wonder maybe. Yeah, no judgment. None whatsoever. Not that there's anything wrong with that. And I just figured, you know, maybe this is something that sorority girls might want to. To buy because they're pretty colorful, and they're red and green and purple and blue. And so we kind of looked at each other with that lightning bolt. Hey, let's go do this. And decided to go sell these moccasins door to door to sororities in Lincoln with the idea that we're going to make enough money to go to Padre island for spring break. You know, super aspirational, big thinkers. And that was it. It wasn't like we wanted to fund our tuition or, you know, things that would make our lives better. It was like, let's go to Padre Island. That's the ultimate objective, you know? So we went door to door, and we met a lot of girls in interesting ways by sizing their feet and sold a ton of moccasins. We were able to pay for the trip to Padre by maybe, you know, $5. And, you know, had a great time. Came back, drive into the driveway of our fraternity, and there were girls outside standing at the door with their moccasins in their hand. And I turned to Jim, and I was like, hey, we're gonna be rich. This is absolutely astounding. Look at. They're waiting for us.

We got something here.

Yeah, well, yeah. And so we get out of the car and kind of like this triumphant return. And this one girl comes up and never forgets. She's poking me. Look at my feet. And they were bright red. You know, I was like, oh, wow, okay. And the other girls were purple, and another Girls were yellow, and it was like, ooh, you know, this is bad. We call the moccasin guy, and he goes, well, they didn't wear them outside, did they? So. Well, yeah, it's kind of a data point. We probably should have known. Yeah, yeah, they wore them outside. They wore them everywhere. Oh, well, you can't wear them outside because the dye will come off and probably stain their feet. Yeah, stain their feet big time. So we had to refund their money in some way, shape or form, or we had to find a way to substitute them out, and it was just a disaster. But, you know, the lingering memory of a great trip to Padre island versus, you know, the disaster of customer service and knowing your suppliers was something in the back of my mind. Like, oh, my God, I. I bet that way more than you want.

No, that's great. I bet it. I bet that stuck with you, though. Quality control, customer service, how to think about those things that you never would have thought to ask your suppliers. I mean, I bet there were some learnings there that you were able to apply in future businesses.

Yeah. Little fundamentals, like, hey, is there anything I should know about these things that could go wrong? Let's ask those questions way in advance.

Yeah, just little things like that.

Who would think you couldn't wear moccasins outside?

Exactly.

I wouldn't have.

I mean, just. It's like, I'm gonna buy a pair of shoes. But you can't walk, can't wear them outside.

Yeah.

Wouldn't think to ask that question. Did the stain come off?

Eventually, but it was like, you know, Drano and Ajax and Brillo pads.

You couldn't show your face in those sororities for months, probably.

That's the guy.

It's Jim's fault.

What's he selling today?

But, yeah, it was a good experience.

I'd love to hear how you were able to get past that failure. One of the things I've heard from other entrepreneurs or people who want to start a business is that their greatest fear is failure. Now you're in college and you have this immediate and not insignificant failure, but that didn't stop you from continuing in thinking about businesses and starting businesses. How were you able to get past that failure and use it to your advantage and then Excel going forward?

Well, I think you guys can identify with this in that I guess I just enjoy the chase and the building aspect, the problem solving, the if, then, okay, if we go to Padre island, then we need this much money. So how do we solve for that equation? And you Know what? If it's a failure, we'll try something else. And I remember looking back on it and my roommate was just devastated. And I remember thinking, hey, this is no big deal. Let's try something else next year. And he just looked at me like I had three heads, like, what are you talking about? I'll never do anything like this again. But just the excitement of it, I think I love a challenge. I love finding something where the world says, yeah, no, that's not going to work. Good luck with that. And I guess it's just the contrary in nature that I realized at that age I sort of enjoy this when people say, this can't be done. Okay, let's find a way to make it happen.

Yeah, that makes sense. And so how did you leave college? And I know there's some things that happened in between leaving college and you starting your first business, but how did. Can you kind of walk us through how you got into starting your first. Your first organization, which I think was gift certificates. Correct.

Right before that it was popcorn, which is, you know, supernatural transition, isn't it? And I had run across this idea for retail popcorn shops when I was. I was actually in the banking business and that I just stumbled into because my whole family had been in banking. And as a typical screw off in college, I get to be second semester, senior year, kind of going, God, this is coming up now what am I going to do? And I stumbled into banking. And while I was in banking with First national bank here in Omaha, I ran across this idea for a customer that had one retail store for a thing called Vicks Corn Popper. And he was like, you know, this is a mess and I don't know what I'm doing and maybe we should just sell it. And I kind of went, ooh, you know, popcorn, retail consumers, gourmet product, you know, moccasins. Banking. Popcorn is the natural transition for everybody.

Sounds like it goes together for me.

Yeah. So anyway, I got into the popcorn business and really enjoyed that because again, it was one of those things where everybody was like, God, is he okay? What's he doing? I mean, you know, nobody wants to go into a store to buy popcorn, but they did. And we opened up about five or six different stores around Omaha, Blair, Fremont, and then got into wholesaling popcorn. And the only reason, Jake, that I bring this part of it up is that that I think is where I really learned to sell something. Because if you've never learned to sell and it's a skill that isn't taught It's a skill that no school says, you know, hey, we have a sales degree. You know, it's just one of those things that. That is in such high demand, but nobody really knows how to do. And I stumbled into this because if you've ever sold anything in a grocery store, it's really tough. And, you know, the buyers, they all have independent buyers, like, for health and beauty and for the meat department and for snack foods, you got to go find that snack food person, track them down in the store, and haunt them just continually. Hey, here's my product. Look, dude, get it. Look at all the Frito Lay products here. Why would I need a popcorn? Well, and you have to be able to, in about 15 seconds, get your point across. And I learned a couple of things with that, is that you really better know your pricing and your costs and how to get and hit the hot button for that buyer in, like, 30 seconds, you know? And here I was, you know, in my suit and tie, and the guy's like, what are my margins? If you give me an end cap and you do a full display on the super bowl, and I need a target of at least 35%, what's my cost per case? And I'm like this.

Good questions?

Yeah, really good questions. I'm glad you asked those. I'll never forget the guy at no Frills that threw me out of the store. Not literally, but, you know, pretty darn close. Just saying, you don't know what you're doing. You don't know what you're talking about. You're wasting my time. Out.

Wow.

That was the end of our meeting.

Did you end up getting into no Frills?

I. We did. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Because I just kept coming back. I said, I got your answers. He's like, I don't need a popcorn out. Okay. And I'd see him outside, and he's taking a break. I'd say, hey, how about just try the popcorn? I hate popcorn. But you're not your typical consumer out. You know, six times that happened before. He's like, look, if you'll just let me sample it with some customers, and if they like it, great, you're in. You know, so the perseverance to just be able to say, I'm going to keep going at this, and keep going at this, because I know it's going to work. That led to, then the other ideas. Yeah.

Mark, one of the things you were talking about, perseverance in the sense of how many no's you had to overcome. But think about the people that give up, that if they would have asked or gone in one more time, they may have gotten the order, but they give up. What advice can you give to people about adversity and not giving up?

Yeah, I think it's just such relationship building with the ultimate decision maker and so taking the time to know who that person is and doing some research on them, what makes them tick, what do they like to do. Just little things that you mentioned, maybe about their family, about their kids, about something that they posted, you know, something that they happen to mention in a conversation or if you're in their office, you see on their wall is hunting or fishing or football or family pictures. Draw all those things in. And I think what I learned is rarely do you have to talk about the product or the service. You talk about the connection and the relationship and you build that because if you lead with here's our product and here's the margins and here's how much money you're going to make, they kind of look at you like, I don't know, there's a thousand other products right behind you. I really don't care, you know, so. But wow, I've dispelled this relationship with Steve here and he's such a great guy and oh yeah, he happens to sell a popcorn product. But, you know, you just have that edge and when they see you coming, they're happy to see you, versus like, oh my God, here they come again, you know, go away. And so I always led with the products and the margins and the this and the that. It didn't dawn on me they really didn't care that much about that. They cared that it was a high quality product delivered with great service and by a person they could sit down and have a beer with. Yeah, it's, it's interesting and I think that relates today to everything.

It's interesting how you would think. I mean, it seems like a logical sales approach that we'll talk about the how and the what and that's the important thing you're interested in, that it tastes good. That, you know, I can get it here in just in time, you know, all these different things. And that's. That is important. There is a hurdle there, like you got to meet this certain, you know, quality level. But it is about the relationship. And kind of, to boil down, it comes to the why of, of this product. And you know, we've probably all read Simon Sinek. Start with why. It's that, it's that why that actually matters the most because that's the. The emotional epicenter of their brain that they can't really put words to, but it's the most important thing in part of its relationship, part of the emotions that come and. And it's the what and the how that actually reinforced the why. And he uses Simon Sinek's. Speaking of which, talks about how he uses Apple as a good selling point for this. If you look at your iPhone, this is not the best phone on the market, but they sell their wise so well that we really don't care. It's a good product, but this is not the best phone.

Right.

And to your point, I think that's the piece that people miss in selling is they start with the what and the how and don't even talk about the wire.

Exactly.

It's a lost art.

The emotional connection that people get with that. And we tapped into that with popcorn to start with, and I just elaborated that over to a variety of other ideas and businesses and so forth. But it's always the emotional attachment that people have to. Oh my gosh, popcorn. I mean, I remember sitting around having popcorn and movie night with my family or going to the movie theaters. Gosh, you remember the old Indian Hills Drive in. I mean, all of that stuff, you just, you draw the emotion into it and the connection that people have. Then they say, this is a darn good popcorn. Well, that's great. But if you can really tap into those emotional ingredients much more than the physical ingredients, I think that's great.

Now I'd love to hear how were you able to do that in your next two businesses who you want to, because they're both E commerce. So you went to gift certificates and then got into hammocks, which then turned into Hay needle, which I'd love to hear that sort of story of both of those, how those businesses went. But how do you communicate that in an E commerce business where you have less of a personal touch, everything's done digitally. How are you able to build that relationship and focus on the why rather than the what and the how?

Well, good question. I think, you know, gift certificates started from there's a problem. And it really was. You remember the old Oak View Mall here in Omaha? So it was kind of a big destination. People would go to this place because it was the next great indoor mall, which now is like, I think a giant Halloween store or something. But anyway. But the idea came from trying to buy a gift certificate at that mall through the customer service people, you know, they had those desks in the middle and you would Just say, I just want a gift certificate to the mall. And there's some 90 year old guy that's, you know, part time security and he's writing down this thing on a piece of paper and then rips the one copy and he keeps a carbon copy. And you're like, what happens if I lose this thing? Oh God, don't lose it. You know, well, this is so impersonal and awful and, and stumbling over to the Eddie Bauer, which was a store there at the time, and walking in with this thing and going, do you ever redeem these things? And the store manager's like, oh God, they're such a mess. I mean, we hate them. We wish we had our own dedicated certificate that people could buy universally somewhere. And my co founder and I at the time, it was that old lightning bolt. Not like the lightning bolt from the moccasins, but, you know, but kind of close. You know, it's like, God, you know what, people really are adopting the Internet here. And maybe there's a way to have a universal gift certificate that you can buy online but take anywhere that you want to to redeem. And so to answer your question, more of the personalization of it, you're solving a problem of gift giving, which should be happy. It should be something that, you know, people are generally enthused about that had all this just pain and anger associated with it and just saying, we're going to make this easy and simple for you. And so the connection on this was first of all to the merchant. You know, we had to get people like Eddie Bauer to say, well, this is great, we love you guys. But to get them to say, we will sell you a gift certificate at a discount so you can sell it online. Took some selling. And again, so it comes back to the connection with the person making that decision. And it was basically one of the people at Eddie Bauer who then kicked it up to one of their regional people. We went and met with them, sat down and just. We didn't talk gift certificates at all. We talked about this guy's love of hunting, where he goes hunting. We talked for about an hour and then like the last five minutes he goes, so wait, what, what are you guys doing again? Yeah, oh, here's what we're doing. We just want you to sell us gift certificates. $100 gift certificate for 98 bucks. And we'll sell them online. Yeah, and we'll sell them online for you. He goes, cool, all right, let's make it happen. So that was our first merchant again. It started with personalization and connection and understanding who that person was versus saying, here's the financial metrics behind this whole model, and here's what this is going to look like. It was just, here's a way for us to drive more sales for you. It's a problem solver for you. You're a great guy. Were great people. And so then it just became a phone call, like, hey, we got to order another thousand gift certificates. So the model behind that was you buy these at a discount. You know, Jake, you go online and you buy one for 100 bucks, and you take it to Eddie Bauer and you redeem it. But we didn't know this. That one guess what the number is of gift certificates that are not redeemed on an annual basis, just percentage wise.

Ooh, I'd say 30%. Steve.

Steve O.

That's what I was gonna say. From my background with our business was around 30%.

It's 75.

Oh, man.

Yeah.

That's surprising.

Oh, my gosh.

These are big cash cows for retailers because you get your certificate and Merry Christmas, Jake. Here's 100 bucks to Eddie Bauer. You stick it in the drawer, and six months later, you kind of go, where's that certificate? Oh, well, it's gone. So they don't get redeemed. And so they get that money, and it just sits there. But no merchandise ever exchanged hands. They call that breakage. And so this. Let's circle back to the guy at Eddie Bauer, and he's like, this is awesome. I mean, we're selling these left and right, and nobody's redeeming them. Well, okay, that's not actually what the intention was. We were trying to drive traffic into your store. Yeah. And happy customers. And this is not a financial transaction, but that's exactly what it was turning into, was something like. So anyway, we went to the Eddie Bauer, and then we went to Sears. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

For anybody listening who's under 20, that is an old department store.

And I bet you, Mark Googling. I bet you when. When you got Eddie Bauer, you had that. That flag in the ground. Eddie Bauer is doing this so as that credibility to get it going with other vendors and kind of companies.

Yeah, totally. Totally. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, wow. If Eddie Bauer's doing it, well, that must be legit, you know, versus, you know, versus Bob's coffee Shop or something. You know, it's like Eddie Bauer's doing. Oh, well, Sears is like, well, if Eddie Bauer's doing it, we're going to. Yeah. And, you know, then lands End did it. And then Kmart. Yeah, what was the other one? I drove by one the other day and I was like, good Lord, they're still in business. ShopCo.

Shop Go. Yeah, Sears, Shopco and Kmart Hangout.

Yes. It was kind of a domino effect. You got some big brands and then there was that old fear of missing out. Some mid level retailers saying, well, if those folks are doing it, can we do it? And then Doug Nielsen, my co founder, came up with the idea of what if we had instead of these dedicated certificates on the website, what if you had a super certificate where you just give us 100 bucks, we'll send you a super certificate. It's got a very detailed code on it and you can redeem that at any merchant anywhere, especially online. Again, so the merchants love that because it's like, wow, now we get to be featured on your website. And so it was a little bit like, how do you get Google placement? Was like, how do you get supercertificate featured on giftcertificates.com you know, and so there was, there was begging and borrowing for placement on the website. And then we started doing these test drive deals with Toyota and that really was one of the breakthroughs where test drive a car will give you 50 bucks and it's a certificate good at 1,000 different merchants. And so people were flocking into the Toyota dealerships to just kind of go, yeah, that's a cool Highlander there, but I want my 50 bucks. And like, yeah, let me sit in it. Okay, it's really neat. Here's my email and thanks a lot but give me my money. So it worked on a number of different fronts that way. And I think the idea for the business I'm in today with Dundee Venture Capital started with giftcertificates.com because we were starting to grow. There was maybe three or four employees. We needed some technology backbone and we needed some more people to sell and we just didn't have the money. And so we put a really fancy four page deck together that was copied and printed at Kinko's for anybody under 20.

We've got a laundry list of businesses no longer in business, like, God, how.

Old is this guy? I mean. And so we went around first of all in Omaha a little bit in Lincoln and told the story to about 100 people and got just so much great support. And Pat's on the back like, good for you guys. This is really a cool idea.

This is cute.

I'm not going to invest, but geez, good Luck to you. And when this thing fails, where are you going to work? I mean, where are you going to really get a job? So. Well, no, this actually is a. This is a big idea. Yeah, I don't think so. You know, Warren says not to do this stuff, and so. But, hey, good luck. And so, I mean, I'm a big believer in fate, you know, and if you start throwing stuff out into the wind, I mean, things start coming back to you. And we were thinking, you know what, we just got to go to another market to raise capital, unfortunately. And through a friend of a friend, we got introduced to Madrona Capital in all places Seattle. And so we fly out there, we meet with Paul Goodrich, who's the managing partner, and Doug and I do our dog and pony. And at the end of it, he just goes, you guys, this is really a cool idea. I love it. But we were trying to raise $500,000.

And when is this? What time frame?

This would have been late 90s. Yeah. Probably 1999. And he said, you know, look, you don't need 500,000 bucks. And we were just crushed. Like, oh, my God, I thought we had this model pretty well figured out. And he said, you need 5 million.

Oops.

He said, what? How do you figure that this for? I mean, if you don't. If you're not a student of history and understanding the dot bomb explosion of the late 90s, you know, yours truly had a front row seat not realizing it was happening at the time, but it was a go, go, go time of cheap money, lots of it, being deployed into really bad ideas. Again, for those under 20, look up pets.com? i mean, okay, so that, that is, you know, the epitome. And these guys said that you got to deploy 5 million and you got to do it in six months. And you really got to just scale this thing like crazy landlord, go, go, go, just. Yeah. And we thought, what are we going to spend it on? I mean, I mean, we needed three salespeople and we needed three more tech people. And so they said, no, no, no, no, this is how you do it. You know, And I got a great lesson, a graduate lesson, really, in how to blow through 5 million bucks in six months. And so, you know. Yeah. Did we grow? We grew rapidly. I mean, really fast. And it was. It was just long days, long nights. We went from a half dozen people to, oh, my gosh, we had offices in Seattle. We had offices in the old Times Square. I mean, not Times Square, the World Trade center in New York. On the 41st and 42nd floor, we had. One of our key investors in our series B was a guy named Bill Ackman. Again, you might want to Google him.

Big name.

He was on. Yeah, he was on our board. In fact, this I think might encapsulate the go go period. I'm walking in Times Square with Bill and he's talking about some stuff we're working on and he stops and he looks up, pulls out his StarTAC flip phone. Google it. And he goes, yeah, yeah, no, we'll take it. That's fine. Just. Yep, Send it to giftcertificates.com Da da da da. Hangs up. I said, what was that? He goes, we just bought that billboard.

Wow.

And a billboard in Times Square for like $250,000. Why do we need a billboard in Times Square? Well, it's just, it's name recognition.

Foot traffic.

Yeah, yeah. Nutty, Nutty. Sophia Loren was our spokesperson.

It sounds like you're not in Kansas anymore.

Okay.

So we ultimately grew to like 400 people. We had 400 million in revenue. Yeah. Oh yeah. It was in like a 12 month.

Time frame or how quickly.

It was like 18 months. Yeah, it was like 18 months. And we were filing to go public and Bear Stearns was our underwriter. Going to have to Google that people. And you know, we were about a day away from being priced. And what that means is, you know, you've done your roadshow, you've got all the people that are interested in buying chunks of the company. You're ready to go public. And Doug and I are in New York for the pricing. You know, on Friday, Monday it's going to go out. Ding, ding, ding, ding, ring the bell. You know, we're sitting there Friday and nobody's calling us back. Our banker isn't calling us back. We're kind of like, what should we be doing? We're sitting here in the bar at the hotel. I mean, should we be, should we be there? And so we're calling Bear Stearns and nobody's answering. And finally somebody at like 2012 o' clock gets on the phone, hey, I'm looking for Jim Taylor. He's our banker. He's just not returned my call. Long pause. Jim was fired this morning. I said, oh, okay. Well, I mean, who's handling our account? Well, the whole team was fired, actually.

Oh my gosh.

What do you mean the whole team? Well, the entire investment banking division is gone. And I don't know what to tell you. She said, I'm in retail banking. And there's literally no one here today. But from what I do understand, there aren't any IPOs. So have a nice day.

Good luck. Wow, Another bear plate.

Sand through our fingers. Yeah. Beer me.

Oh my gosh. What are you thinking in that moment?

Like, oh, disaster.

Everything's breaking down around you.

We couldn't do anything. I mean, it was just all falling apart. It was right before our eyes. Panicking, you know, get Ackman on the phone. He goes, deep breath here. Okay? I mean, this is no big deal. It's a blip. The markets will come back. Geez, Bill, Bill, this thing's a train wreck. We gotta try and fix it, you know. Well, there's nothing to do. Just, you know, I'll call you next week and we'll formulate a plan. Da da da da. Doug and I, on the way home, write a 10 page paper to the board, just saying, okay, here's what we got to do is bring this thing back to Omaha, Close this building, close this deal, close the World Trade center, close everything down and let's have it be like a 70 person company in Omaha, Nebraska. It's going to cash flow. It'll be a great business. Yeah, thanks guys. Not a good idea. You know, they patted us on the head. And the lesson I learned from all of this was, you know, every subsequent round of funding, the more dilution that you take in, the more control you give up. And you know, it's like just clipping a finger off every six months. Like, well, you still got three left. So, you know, clip, clip, clip. And soon you just, you can't do anything. And your ownership is so low that it doesn't have. You just don't have an impact. And that was a big mistake. And yet, you know, here we were saying, God, even at our small ownership, if this thing goes out at. It was priced at $400 million, the underwriting, we'll still be okay. That all just went away. Just, I mean, and it was literally like this FTX deal and 48 hours just disappeared. And so the board kind of thanked us for our input and said, nah, we're gonna, we're gonna keep going. You know, we're gonna wait till the capital markets come back and you guys just keep doing what you're doing. And Doug and I were like, you know what? Screw this. I mean, we really, it was a good ride. We learned a ton. But let's find something else to do and let these guys just kind of take this in the direction they think, because it isn't gonna work, you know, if you keep. If you keep scaling it and growing it like you're trying to, just isn't going to work financially. So lesson learned. Deep breath. And Doug left. He was like, I just got to take some time off. I had seven kids at the time. I didn't have the luxury of taking time off, but I had a big box, and I was kind of cleaning my desk. I mean, literally, like, into a big box. And it was a Friday night, and it was February. What is 2002? And the phone's ringing like crazy, and nobody's there. And I was like, God, somebody answered the phone. You guys remember landline?

Yeah, Dial up.

Landline with the circular dial.

We had push buttons.

Oh, you were.

You were.

You were.

Look it up and ask Jeeves.

Top of the heap.

And again, back to fate. I just believe, you know, because I remember just throwing out to the world and just saying, okay, God, you got some plan here? I'm open to it. You just let me know what it's going to be. I'll just bide my time and. Phone's ringing. Phones ringing. Okay, Giftservigates.com may help you. Hey, this is Dave calling from Yelm, Washington, and I'd love to be an affiliate of your website. I was like, oh, God, this is the last thing I want to be doing right now. I put him on speaker, and I get pens in my water bottle. And, Dave, tell me about your business. What are you working on? With no energy whatsoever, he goes, well, I have a little website. It's called hammocks.com, and I sell hammocks.

Very straightforward.

The very first thing, I was just like. Honestly, it was like, oh, my gosh, that just sounds so great right now. Just to lay in a hammock, you know? I mean, just body blows broken ribs, you know, can't. I'm just so tired. I was like, yeah, well, tell me about it, Dave. Oh, well, my wife and I take our motorcycle down from Yell, Washington, down into Mexico, and we buy hammocks at all the little villages up and down the coast, and we bring them back and we sell them at craft fairs, farmers markets on the weekends. And, you know, I put up this little website about, I don't know, six months ago, and I just think we need to have an affiliate to sell gift certificates to. I pull up his site, you know, and I'm looking at it, just going, oh, my God. I said, dave, this is horrible. I mean, this is. This. This is probably the worst website I've ever Seen. Oh, well, thank you. Yeah. He goes, I don't really know what I'm doing. I just, you know, I love the craftsmanship and the this and the that or the hammocks and. But I don't know what I do. And my whole dream, really, of doing this, Mark, I want to build a drum studio in my basement.

Wow.

Which is kind of like having the goal of going to Padre. I said, cool. So you know what? I'll just tell it to you like it is. I think you should probably just sell this thing. You know, you and your wife can continue to sell hammocks on the street corner, but, you know, this site's bad. We're not going to be. Want to, you know, have you on our website and you don't know what you're doing. And it's just. I was angry. And so he goes, God, I would love that. You know, anybody that would buy it. I said, huh? I said, maybe I'll buy it. What'd you do in sales? He goes, oh, well, we had a good month, and this whole year, we will do about $50,000.

Not quite what you expected?

Not what I expected. I said, well, I tell you what, Just send me whatever you have and whatever inventory you have, and I'll shoot you a number. And one thing led to another, and we ended up buying Hammocks dot com.

Wow.

I remember calling Doug and I just said, okay, I know you want to take time off. It's like three days later. I know you want to take time off. I got the next idea. You know, hammocks.com? he goes, I'm in.

Doug's vacation didn't last very long.

No. He's such a great guy. He is such a great guy. Anyway, we viewed this, quite honestly, as a bridge to, like, whatever our next life was going to be. Okay, hammocks, it's fun. Let's jack around with it. None of us knew anything about coding or really how to build a website. And so we used to meet at Barnes and Noble, which was our office, and we had all the HTML for Dummies books out, kind of like, how do we do this again? We decided to kind of redo his site and make it fun and a little eclectic and. But we spent a ton of time learning about selling on Google. How does that work? This is the early days of Google. Google AdSense and all that stuff. And so we spent a ton of time figuring out, how do we get hammocks.com to be the number one hammock site in the world? And we took his site down, we put the new one up. We paid for rankings to be number one. And you might remember they used to have two or three across the top. And then there was that whole weird side thing. So we were like, number one here, number one here. And then our. Our organic content was number one. And like the first day we did, we sold six hammocks. We're like, this is cool. Six. The next day we sold seven. And then we didn't sell any for like three days. And then we sold 50, which we didn't even have. We're like, oh, my God, we don't even have these new problem, you know, so it's back to the relationships and the relationship selling and going to domestic suppliers of hammocks. And you guys, you got to understand, nobody was selling hammocks online at the time. And so you go to these guys, like Paulie's Island Hammocks in Carolina, and they're just like, wait, what do you want a container of hammocks or do you. What do you want? We said, no, what we want to do, when we get an order, we're going to ship that order to you, and you're going to ship it to the customer. Yeah, no, we're not going to do that. That's insane. Which is kind of what Amazon does 400 million times a day now.

Right?

But that's what we were asking them to do. And we finally found some suppliers who would do that. But those string hammocks, those ones you kind of lay across, we had to buy from Mexico and bring in to the United States. And so then we were in the inventory business and we started selling more and more hammocks. And it was great. We were having a blast. But one day, here's fate again. This guy calls and he goes, hey, I got my hammock. Thanks. You know, and this was customer service was me and Doug, you know, so he's thinking, he's talking to this, you know, enormous company. Like, oh, no, this is one of the owners right here. Oh, no kidding. Hey, God, you know, this. What a great hammock. Great service. It was a lot of fun. Hey, do you guys sell porch swings? And this is at Barnes and Noble, right? So I lean under the table and I kick Doug and I'm like, look up. Porch swings. He looks it up and the domain name was available. And he's like, it's available. I said, well, buy it, you know? And so I said, hey, full time research. While the guy's talking, he's like, yeah, I'm looking for a wood porch swing. I said, okay, let's see, I find a manufacturer. Would that be an eight foot porch swing? The guy goes, yeah, I suppose. I don't know, tell me what kind of, let's see, what kind of wood do you want? He goes, you know, what, are you guys in this business or.

No, he sniffed it out.

Of course we're in this business. I'm just, you know, being thorough. Anyway, so that was our first porch swing sale. And so then we had hammocks.com, porch swings.com and Doug and I said, I wonder what else is out there? And we drove through a neighborhood in Omaha. It's Regency. And we figured, those are rich people, they'll have lots of stuff in their backyards. So we had a yellow notebook and we're peering over people's fences, like, oh my God, bird baths. Oh, there's a wind chime, Adirondack chairs, patio furniture, patio umbrellas. And we just went and bought all those domain names and just started figuring out how to build websites that would sell all those products. I mean, not too complex. Every single one of them, though. We had to get a relationship with the people selling an adder on deck chair, a patio furniture set, anything, because it was new to them. To say, I just don't get it. This is going to be a dedicated site just to patio umbrellas. I don't get it. Because they're used to Nebraska Furniture Mart. I'm going to sell you 1,000 of these and we'll talk next year. And so it was a whole new way of selling. And believe it or not, we stumbled into this idea of kind of what is today called data science. But Jake, if you buy a hammock from us and you lived in Omaha and it was June, we were able to start piecing together. And not me, and it wasn't Doug, but we did have some smart people that figured this out that said, wait a second, there is a pattern here that if Jake buys a hammock in Omaha in June, more than likely he's going to buy bar stools in October. Because there's a correlation between the internal, the entertaining and the external entertaining. And oh, well, let's send them an email on Barstools then. Barstools.com you know, and you know, you would say, how did you guys know I was looking for bar stools? That's nutty, you know, and how do you know I need a pool table light? Well, barstools, dartboards, makes sense. And then yeah. So we moved through the house and then we built all these different stores and we had four or five hundred different stores that then became the brand known as Hay Needle. So, you know, on the one common brand, you had a variety of different products that you could search for. So if you search, typically consumers would search. I'm looking for a hammock. They'd type in hammocks, not hammock, but it was plural, always plural. And it would be taken to either an individual site or to the overall brand. So that was the idea behind that.

I find it so interesting. And, you know, you hear this from entrepreneurs a lot, or, excuse me, people who want to be entrepreneurs is that they think the entrepreneurial early days are glamorous. And it takes a rocket, a rocket scientist to get a business going. But you're talking about at the beginning of Hay Needle, you and Doug are driving around Omaha looking into people's yards about what are the. What's some common. Oh, they've got porch swings, they've got this other piece of furniture. Oh, maybe we should add. You're really just driving around and building a business as you go, and it's not this glamorous thing. And I think that's a big misconception for people who want to start a business.

Just, it's like figuring it out on the. On the way.

Yeah.

You're trying to figure this out on the way.

Yep. We knew and there was a certain amount of pressure. We both had young families and I didn't have a choice. This had to work. And so when you combine that with figuring out on the way to, like, this better work, you just make things happen. And I think it forces really fast decision making. And that lends itself to e commerce businesses too. Like, oh my God, you know, by 10 o' clock in the morning, this didn't work. Let's try something else.

Mark, you were talking about you've got a family and we all have families, and you're an entrepreneur, which takes many hours to get this business up and going. And when you fail, you got to get back up again and keep it going because you've got a family. How do you balance that? A lot of people, business owners, struggle with balancing family and business. And how do you navigate it? Were you able to navigate it?

I don't think so. I don't think so. I think there was certain trade off and it was just like the sacrifice is going to be that this has to work. I wasn't drawing a current income. It was just kind of scraping and clawing to try and make it work and realizing that the choice that Jane and I had made was to have a big family. So we got eight kids, and it's like, okay, that's not cheap. And somehow this is going to have to survive. And it's a survival instinct. But the trade off is. It takes a ton of time and a lot of focus on that. And the trade off is you're probably not going to be at the 3 o' clock soccer game, you know, but at the end of the day, do you want your kids to have a good education? Do they want them to have a springboard to make a decision to either be an entrepreneur or to pursue another career? And that was my goal. I just wanted to make sure they had those choices instead of not.

How Jane, go through this process, your wife, you're working. She's got the eight kids trying to keep it going. How did that all work? Did you guys meet and talk and sit down at the dinner table, 11 o' clock at night, going, okay, here's my day, here's my day, and rinse and repeat.

Really good question, Steve. Because she's the support behind all of this. And the quiet support, I would say, because she's not out trumpeting like, look what Mark's doing. And look at all this. Not at all.

He's selling popcorn.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, a funny side story. When I started the hammock thing, Jane's walking with one of her friends in the neighborhood. And about halfway, her friend stops and puts her hand on Jane's arm and goes, how's Marc doing? And Jay just goes, what do you mean? Like, does he have cancer or something or what? Well, with that hammock thing.

Well, entrepreneurship wasn't a big thing back then. I mean, people didn't leave and start a small business like that, Right?

No, you're correct. And so she was supportive. And I would just unload with the challenges and the successes, and, you know, you both know the terror and elation is there every day. And you know what? At some point, you kind of thrive on it. I hate to admit. You know, it's like there's always that. It's just, you know, and you either thrive on it or it kills you.

Yeah.

And you know what? And Steve, you know that it's just kind of. It's part of the DNA all of a sudden. And she was just super, super supportive always.

You know, you're talking about Jane being supportive. I can remember I'd come home after work, I'd get in the front door. And we have two kids or have three kids at that time, one with special needs. And she'd go, hair, they're yours. And she'd like. And then she just had to get out of the house and just kind of get, you know, and I'm home, and it's like, you know, home late. And so I. So I got to put the kids to bed and everything else. And, And. And we navigated that because as being grandparents with the grandkids, man, you're. I know why you have kids when you're young, but trying to keep track of them. But Lynette during the day was like, I was. She was so frazzled at the end, and it was. It was difficult for us. We had some difficult times.

Yeah, I mean, we had. So I actually had my office in the attic of our house. There just wasn't any space for quiet. So I was up in the attic. And we had the old AOL dial up that, you know, here I am talking to a guy like, okay, you know, we need to have 200 of these lime green fringe hammocks. And they gotta be, hello, Hello. You know, one of the kids had picked up the phone. You know, it disconnects everything. But you do, you know, Steve, you talk about Lynette saying, they're yours. I remember one time I had been. I think this was like a three straight 18 hour days. And I came home just exhausted and wanting to just have somebody say, hey, I know you're just killing yourself here. We really appreciate it. The door opens. I walk in, go in the kitchen. Jane goes, I want you to go upstairs and kill your son.

Your son. Not our son. Your son.

Okay. Yeah.

Yeah.

Had a good day, didn't you? It goes with the territory. And if you don't have that, you will fail.

And I think it's so critical. And you've found the same way, Jake, and I know you too, with your wife. You're a team. You're a team in this deal, and you've got different roles and expectations, and life's not easy, and some people forget that, but it is so crucial for entrepreneurs and business owners to have that balance with family and kids and life and et cetera. And it's because I know guys, Mark, you probably know guys, too, that have done really well, but families have fallen apart, and there's more to life than from that side with your family. Mark, is there any advice you'd give to entrepreneurs that are watching this podcast that what would you change differently if you could do it all over again from the family.

I just think, oh, from a family perspective.

Yeah, go ahead.

I think maybe it, you know, involve your family more. And no matter what age, just say, here's what I'm doing and here's why I'm doing it. Because I think universally our kids have no idea what I've ever done, you know, or am doing today. It's kind of like I know he goes somewhere and does some stuff and then we go on vacation.

He's asking phone and computer a lot.

Yeah, he sends a lot of emails. I don't know, whatever it is. Anyway, I think having that just from a backbone perspective is important. And I don't care if you're a doctor, a teacher, whatever it happens to be, just say, here's what I did today and here's the stuff I didn't do so well. Because we just love to celebrate the victories and none of us celebrate the challenges, and nobody shares in that. And then you wonder why you're alone, you know, because then you bring it up and go, you know what? This isn't going to work. It's going to fail, and we're going to be out of money and life is not good. Like, wait, what? How did this happen? Yeah, So I think that's super important. And the other thing is the value around the dinner table. We've lost that, and it's got to come back. And I say we just collectively, I just don't. I don't see people having family dinners anymore. I think that's super, super important. Because no matter what, I always tried to be there for that. And it wasn't about me. It was about me connecting with. What did you even do today? Did you learn anything? You know, is there anything of importance in your life? You seem to be struggling what's going on here? Or, hey, congratulations, big accomplishment. And then the other kids see that. They feed off of it. It's just important as a family. And, you know, now it's like, I talk to friends of mine who just say, oh, we're so busy. You know, we go from club event to club event to club event, you know, to game, to practice, to this to that. It's like, you know, do your kids climb trees?

I mean, you know, throw tomatoes, throw rocks or whatever. Yeah, yeah, you're talking about the dinner table. One story we. One thing we did with our kids is that we wanted them at the dinner table. And we'd rotate. One would have to carry the conversation for the whole table. So we'd rotate it we'd have Kara do it, and then. And then the next night, Chloe would do it. And they struggle, but they would turn and, hey, Jake, how was your day? Mark, what did you learn today? And try to carry the. It was so much fun because, you know, they were learning how to do that. And then the other thing we did is real early if they want. I don't know if your kids would say, oh, let's get pizza from Godfathers. I said, and we'd go, okay, but you have to order it. You have to call and order it. So anytime we had pizza, we made them order the pizza.

That's awesome.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So just stuff like that. It was fun, but, yeah, if you're not around the table, you miss those opportunities, that family time to decompress from that.

Yeah.

It's funny we talk about this because this is. This is one of our family values at the Prear household is we make time to spend time as a family at dinner time. And one of the things that we do fairly regularly is I got two young daughters, one's five and one's three. And each one of us will go around the table and say, what's one rose for the day? And once, one thorn from the day. What was one good? What was one bad? We just go around the table and it's. It sounds really kind of simple, but at least for me, it's helpful because one, I get a download from my family of what was great and what was difficult and we could talk about it. But I found for me, as an entrepreneur is that. And as. As a guy, I'm naturally. I just don't want to talk about things that already happened in my day. It happened once. I don't want to rehash it. Despite the. You know, as much as my wife wants to hear what was the worst part of your day? Let me carry it with you. I'm like, I live that. I've processed it. I'm out. I'm done. But it. Doing that routine actually forces me to say, okay, here's what was difficult with my day. It allows my wife now to be able to shoulder that burden with me, to be able to process it. And then, like you said, there's never anything that kind of catches her off guard, like, wow, business going bad. I didn't know about that. We've talked about it already, and we're kind of managing expectations. But that little thing we do with our daughters has worked wonders in keeping communication lines open in our household.

Yep. That's brilliant. Yeah. Yeah. It's really valuable.

So you eventually. I'm going to fast forward here. You eventually exit. Hey, needle. It goes on to be successful. Acquired by Jet, which I think became Walmart, or was acquired by Walmart. Think you can correct me if I'm wrong on there, but what was the. The reason for starting your. What you're doing now? And was there a need you saw in. In not only funding startups, but also in how it was done? What was sort of the. The impetus for starting what you're doing now?

Well, it goes back to really when we did the first pitch for gift certificates, trying to raise money for it. And then second of all, it came back around. So here we were. We had, I think four or five stores. We're starting to generate some revenue. We had five or six employees. But it looked to us like as we would add a store to Hay Needle, we could predict with relative ease what the revenues would be. And so we went around, we need to raise a million bucks. And we really wanted to scale the inventory and the people and the sales team and the development and the back. The data science behind predictability and all this stuff. Again, went to the same audience like, we're back. And it's like, oh, God, you know, that last thing was. Ended up in a ditch. And nobody did very well on that. Yeah, but this is a different idea. We're gonna sell hammocks online.

Better idea.

Like what? And nope, that's it. That's what we're doing. You know, and it's porch swings and it's this. And it's hard to find goods for your home. Dah, dah, dah, dah. Nobody, absolutely nobody was interested. It was just like, yeah, good luck. But anyway, no thanks. Had to go to the coast to raise money again. And this time went through a friend of a friend got introduced to the folks at Sequoia Capital, which probably one of the white shoe firms in the world. And so Doug and I fly out there and pitch the whole investment team on this idea. And I'll never forget just sweating. Do it. Horrible. Getting interrupted. Why this? Why that? If we finish and Doug and I are standing there in the lobby just going, oh, my God, that was a mess. And Doug Leone, who's the managing partner, comes out and he goes, hey, gentlemen, great job. You know, we're really interested. You know, we'll get back to you today with a yes or a no. And I'm thinking, sure, very kind of you. Yeah. But side story, way more than you want to know. But he goes, so Are you headed back? And we said, yeah, we're headed back. Our cab is coming. You guys remember cabs?

The yellow things?

Yeah, yellow things, yeah. Our cab is coming to take us to the airport in about 20 minutes. Oh, let me show you around. We walk around administration. Here's finance. It's a real understated office and still the same today. I mean, it's a very. It's kind of tucked in on Sandhill Road. We walk down the hall, and there's a room probably not bigger than where you're sitting. There's four guys in there, and there's these wires hanging down, and there's screens everywhere. It looks like a NASA control room. And I go, what is that? He goes, oh, that's a company we just invested in. We're trying to find them some office space. They just don't. They can't find it. But. So they're going to be housed here for probably a month or two. So what do they do? He goes, it's called YouTube.

You might be watching this on YouTube.

I said, what? I said, it's called What? He goes, YouTube? I said, what. What is YouTube? You know. You know that people post videos of stuff they're doing in their life on this on YouTube. And I just remember thinking, well, that's never gonna work. And he goes, yeah, we. We put like $30 million into this thing, and we own about 40. A little over 40%. I don't know where it's going, but it's growing about a thousand percent a month in eyeballs, people watching this.

Wow.

Whoa. That's incredible. Yeah. And so the mindset of how Sequoia, and particularly Doug approached problem solving like that was really intriguing to me because we get to the airport and. And my BlackBerry, Google it, what a BlackBerry is. My BlackBerry is buzzing, so I'm opening it, and here's a term sheet from Sequoia. You know, two hours later, I thought, wow. Speed, simplicity, clarity of thought, aggressive swing for the fences kind of people. And that's Jake. I mean, with the back of my mind, I was like, God, that's what we need out in the hinterland where you can't get any capital, is that thought process. Anyway, so they were our partner. They became our lead investor, along with Insight Venture Partners out of New York. And we had two of the best firms in the world that saw this model that no one else did. And I remember thinking, how come they can do that? Maybe we need to change the narrative a little bit. So fast forward, I kept saying that to People and they're like, you know, just shut up and either do something about it or stop talking about it. And so that's when I decided, you know what, let's, let's try and fix that problem. There's got to be others like me and like Steve and Jake. You know, you're looking for seed capital and, you know, no disrespect, you don't want all doctors and dentists as your investors. You kind of want somebody who has maybe been there as an operator that can help you get out of the gate and give you a chance to run. And so that was the genesis of Dundee Venture Capital was, all right, I'll take some of my own capital first. I'm not going to take anybody else's. I didn't want to screw this up and have people lose all their money. And I just went around and talked to a zillion entrepreneurs and bankers and attorneys and all sorts of people just saying, is there a need for this? And then started seeing some deal flow and then started seeing some opportunity to make early stage investments. And so that was just the beginning of why we started it.

And how many are you invested in now?

So we have about 50 companies that we've invested in total. We did an institutional fund in 2012 that was, you know, out, not my capital, part my capital, but other investors invested in the idea. So Dunny Venture Capital was officially then a venture fund. And then we did a. That was $18 million fund, and we would invest a couple hundred thousand to maybe a half million into a company. And then we did a 2016 fund which was 30 million, and brought in a whole bunch of different investors. And then we just closed one in 2020, which was 42 million. And we're writing just a little bit bigger checks and we're following on to the early stage investing. That's it.

Mark, is there an industry segment you really like to invest in as compared.

To one or the other? Yeah, we're focused on anything related to commerce. And so, you know, my focus is direct to consumer because I think I know it. And I just will sit up a little straighter when I see a direct to consumer idea of some kind that's unique. Really, really unique. An example of that is a company called Somersault Women's Swimwear, which I don't know a lot about, but I do know the problem they were solving in listening to both my wife and my sisters and my daughters say, I hate trying on swimsuits. They're uncomfortable, it's awkward. It's a bad experience. Da da da. So somersault was started for, you know, what's called today the body positive movement. You know, not everybody's a Victoria's Secret model, you know, and so they're like, look, I'm not a size one. I might be a 12, and I'm embarrassed to admit it, but I do want to get a suit that's comfortable and flattering and kind of cool. And Somersault geared themselves towards every size and different color shape you can imagine. You know, we'll send you seven or eight or ten suits and you send us back the ones you don't want with the whole hook in saying, boy, once we get you with swimsuits, we're now going to own your suitcase. And it'll be, what do I wear down to the pool? What do I wear at the pool? What do I wear to the beach? What do I wear to cocktail hour? What should I wear to dinner? What should I wear to go to bed? You know, and that type of stuff I really thrive on. And I can see that working. So anything related to direct to consumer is stuff I'll take. My partners will focus on other things related to moving stuff for consumers. You know, whether it's into a warehouse, out of a warehouse, while it's in the warehouse, you know, from port to consumer and back again because returns are a big problem. And so things like that. I think the consumer is what makes the economy go and it's not going to end anytime soon.

And since you have a tune into the E commerce consumer, the economy is the big talk right now. Amazon's down, E commerce is down. What are you seeing in your portfolios? Or for the entrepreneurs that are watching, what do you foresee in 2023? What e commerce. Is it going to come back up?

Is it.

What are you thinking?

I think what we're going to see is probably the next couple of years is going to be one of the greatest creation of ideas and businesses in American history. And I think a number of reasons that I believe that. Again, it's contrarian. Not a lot of people believe in that. But there's been so many layoffs and so many people poof out of a job that they used to love and now hate and now they're wondering, what am I going to do? Do I want to be beholden to the man again? Well, there's problems all over the place. I'm just going to solve them myself. The ability is to start a business is so easy today with not much capital required to really, truly prove out an idea. And so I think we're going to see thousands of ideas and businesses created as a result. Many of those revolve around the consumer because I think the consumer has so many avenues with which to choose, online or brick and mortar. And the more of those, the better. And so I just think you're going to see a lot of creativity and then all the things that surround those, whether it's data, whether it's SaaS models, whether it's platforms, whether it's marketplaces, I just think there's going to be a renaissance. And despite what our government's trying to do to just pour more money into everything and create this inflation, that's going to absolutely continue to go through the roof. I think what's going to happen is that's going to moderate and the creativity is going to be just eye popping.

And those new companies that people are starting, those would be a, a great target company for Dundee Ventures. Is that correct?

Right.

Those new, those new companies that are, that are going to come out in that marketplace. That's interesting.

Yeah. What do you. Yeah, I think there, I think you're gonna. It won't be headlines because that doesn't really sell, but I think what we see, and it's a little bit of a vanity metric, but on average about 100 ideas a month. And when we started, we used to hear about and see about maybe two or three a month. And these are all, you know, not Nigerian prince ideas. These are legitimate companies that are selling products and, or selling services where you kind of go, huh? Well, that was interesting. And that's what just continues to get my engine going because I thrive off the energy I get from those founders and just sitting and listening to their story. It's a little selfish, I guess, but. But I get my energy from them. Where they leave and I may go, you know, that's probably not something we're going to invest in, but good grief, what smart people, you know they're going to succeed.

When you look for companies out there, how does it come across that you're from Nebraska, not from the east or west coast, but you're a private equity firm, venture capital firm here in Omaha, Nebraska. Does that help you or hurt you?

Early on it hurt us big time. Yeah, it was kind of like. I remember one guy asking me, so what is Oklahoma like this time of year? I don't know. I suppose it's south of us. It's warmer, you know, it's that type of thing. It's just not Heard of, you know, nothing cool happens out there. What really resonates now and how the pendulum has swung back is we're only investing in and helping companies in underserved capital markets. And so the theme is the same, like, you know, screw those guys in New York and California. We don't care what they're doing. But what we do care is that we have the common respect, hard work ethic, understanding of what it means to build a business, whether that's Salt Lake or whether that's Atlanta or Austin or Nashville. Common theme. And so then all of a sudden, people are saying, boy, that Dundee Venture Capital. Those folks really get it because they know our pain, they understand what we're going through. But it took a long time to get that message out, no doubt.

Wow. What was the thing that flipped it? When did it flip? Where it became it was a negative into a positive, was just. Just time? Or was it pointing out your track record that, hey, look, we can do this as well. We don't have to be on the coast in order to succeed.

Yeah, I think it was. It was both just. I always say we have two things, really. Our cash and our reputation, and that's it. And so I think our reputation is one of. We just do what we say, and we truly do help these founders when they want it. We're not birds on a wire just kind of just chirping at them. It's just, let's help you find the talent you need, and let's support you as you go along this path, because it's sort of like your kids running in the living room. You know, they're going to smash their face on the coffee table. Sometimes you want to. You want to grab them and pull them back, and other times you're like, you know what? Good for you. And so, first of all, doing what you say and just treating it like a community, because it's not a big community, by the way. And then second of all is just, wow, you know, you did some good investments. You actually had some good outcomes. The founders speak highly of you. You've returned capital to your limited partners, and, you know, you just do a good job, and that's kind of it. And so the more we share with upstream, larger funds, the more they share with us. And in fact, two thirds of our deal flow today comes from bigger, bigger investment funds around the country, because they see what we do, and they're like, look, this is a little too early for us, but we know what Dundee Venture Capital does. Keep us informed. Because when it's time for that big round. Next big round. We want to be there. And so it just kind of keeps serving. I tell you what, I've seen other funds come and go that don't try and do that. They try and squeeze, squeeze, squeeze, squeeze, you know, and just do the wrong thing by founders, all in hopes of just that one deal being a big home run. It doesn't work well and they end up going away.

Well, Mark, we're coming to the end of our chat and I want to respect your time. And we tend to end the episodes going through a speed round. But before we do that, in the build up to this, this podcast, you and I were chatting via email and you had dropped a couple notes that I just can't leave without asking. So you mentioned pancakes and face creams. Can you please unpack that? And then we could go to speed round, right?

Great. Pancakes.com. so I love pancakes. I mean, I think everybody likes pancakes, but I don't think people love pancakes. Like, I love pancakes. And I once remarked to one of my kids, I could eat pancakes eight times a day the rest of my life.

Wow.

And he just goes, no, I don't think so. That's not even possible. And he goes, so where's your favorite pancake? And that was the idea. I thought, huh, you know what? Maybe I should do America and the world a service by rating these pancakes that I go and consume at different restaurants. And so I started a site. It's called greatpancakes.com and on there I will review the pancakes that I eat at these different restaurants and give you an unbiased view. They're buttermilk only, you know, no fruit infused cream cheese filling, you know, skinny Jean crowd pancakes. This is buttermilk, butter, syrup, and that's it. And like, again, the same gal that was walking with my wife is like, how's Mark doing with this pancake thing? Oh my God, it's hysterical. It's so bad. It's. I think I like to write, you know, and I think all of us think we have a gift of writing, which we probably don't. But nobody's brave enough to tell you to not do it. And so I just do it.

I love that.

Yeah.

So great Pancakes dot com.

There you go. And there's merchandise on there of course, too.

All right.

Face. And it's pancake face cream. Yeah. So I was in Target. I was in Target a couple of years ago and I think like a lot of guys, you don't give too much thought to what you put on your skin, you know, it might be dove, it might be prel.

It might be WD40.

Whatever is with arms arm's length. But I was thinking, you know, how come there's just not stuff that I would want as an old guy? And I'm going up and down the aisles of Target with my little basket, nobody there. And so I'm pulling the stuff off the shelf and I'm going, what is that? My God, look at the ingredients. And. And it's like the entire backside of the bottle. I said, I can't even read half this stuff. I mean, is it any good for me? And sure enough, another dude comes walking down the aisle with. With his basket. And we make this awkward eye contact, like neither of us wants to admit we're looking for lotions, you know? And so he does this. I kind of look over here, and we sort of pass each each other. I feel like I have to maybe talk about Husker football or something, you know? But then he. He leaves. And then I'm back to the looking at the stuff, and about two seconds later, I see this guy peek around the corner. So I'm thinking, you know what? He's uncomfortable, I'm uncomfortable. But, you know, we're kind of looking for probably the same thing. How hard can it be? Maybe I should just make my own skincare line, you know, famous last word, as Steve would say. And so it's one of those things where you go back to solving a problem. I've got a problem. None of these, at least commercially available things suit my needs. I'm just going to make my own. And so I did some research. I contacted some. Some scientists who put this stuff together. I tell them what I'm looking for, and through all these different iterations, they'd send me these little samples. Okay, is this what you're talking about? You know, And I would try it, and I'd smell it. Oh, God, no. Horrible. You know, and try again, try again, try again, try again. And finally, one day, this sample comes of a lotion. And I don't know if I was either fatigued or super excited, but it was like this, I think, might be it. And I have a handful of people try it. Like, oh, that's. That's nice. Would you buy it? Yeah, yeah, I'd buy it. I think, again, just being nice, but it's like, maybe I got something here. And so I created a line of men's skin care products. It's called Land and Lore, because all the ingredients come from the land. And every one of those ingredients has a particularly interesting story as to why we chose them to combine. And, you know, we started with a lotion, and now we have a cleanser. We have shampoos and conditioners and hyaluronic acids and dry oil, which sounds like jumbo shrimp oxymoron. It's a whole regimen of products, and it's. It goes back to just loving to try and problem solve and build something. Yeah.

Well, your skin looks great, so it must be working pretty well. All right, let's do the speed round questions. So quick questions, quick answers. There's just a few of them, but this is how we like to end every episode. So some guests could or people could understand who you are at a deeper level. So, number one, you. Do you have any daily rituals that you swear by?

Absolutely. I work out and take a sauna.

And yoga every day and a large stack of pancakes.

What's pancakes?

Yeah, there you go. What's one item you could not live without?

Hmm. My iPhone.

It's good. That's a common answer. What's one business you wish you could go back, start, or invest in?

I would go back to gift certificates and do it completely differently.

Smaller or not scale it as quickly.

Yeah, it's good cash flow.

All right. What's one thing in life, business or real estate, which I know you're not in real estate, so you're going to just do life or business. But one thing in life or business that you are really excited about.

I'm really excited about this next generation. I think the next generation is going to really have the opportunity to shape the next hundred years for how life is enjoyed. And I see it every day. I see it every day. And so that really excites me. And I think, as I said, I get my energy source from those people. That's good.

So that kind of dovetails. The next question. In what situations do you find you're the most happy or fulfilled?

Happy. Happiest when Both. Let's see. In business, when we make an investment in a company, it's very, very fulfilling because I can see behind the eyes what I got to experience on so many levels. And it's energizing because I can see what they are just about to begin. And that is really fulfilling to me. When I'm on vacation with my family and everyone's together with their spouses and grandkids, you can't get more fulfilling than that. I mean, that is what all of this stuff that we just talked about is is all about.

That's so good.

That's awesome.

All right, last question. So the, the. The title of this show is called Heading west, and it's really a. A description of we start one place and we head west to our destination. And you learn a lot in the process of heading west, so to speak, and you evolve as a person. So last question is, as you head west from wherever you're starting to, wherever you hope to end up, where do you hope to end up, essentially? What is your legacy? Where do you want to be at the end of. Of this journey? Heading west.

Sure. Great question. Love that I'm 63 on Saturday. You know, you can send gifts if you want. Venmo me. And I figure I'm going to live to be 115. And so I've got roughly 50 years left to accomplish the next great thing. And that is going to be a reinvestment in my family and time with them in unique ways that I wasn't able to do before. And so that's one thing. The other thing I think is just the overriding theme of if you can dial this in, is to relax, because it's not retiring. In no way, shape or form am I going to retire. But I think the relaxing has to be built in to the mindset that you bring to everything you do, from conversation to family to business to people you meet. There's way too much tension in this world for no reason. And I think if everybody just would take a breath and relax a little bit and listen, you know, those are things that I want to do. The next 50 years is just focus on continuing to build things in the right way, whether those are businesses or relationships, but build in an element of relaxation into that. And if you think about it every day, do we relax? Probably not.

Not me.

Yeah. There's too much pride in not relaxing. And I think we. We could all learn from that. It's just a great foundation. And so I'm going to try and do that as well in everything. And it's not like I said, you know, I'm going to quit and just go read the paper and eat croissants. It's going to be. No, I mean, we're going to continue to build and solve problems, but let's do it with family and let's do it with faith and let's do it with fun.

That's a good legacy right there.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

You're going to.

You're going to have a great journey, Mark. Going to have a great journey.

Friends like you I'll get there.

Well, Mark, where can people find you if they want to look you up? Look up Dundee.

Dundee. VC Twitter is @dundbc markundbc, so I'm surprisingly available.

That's great. And great pancakes.

Great pancakes. Dot com.

Yeah.

All right.

I love it. Well, thank you so much for your time, Mark. That was an excellent conversation. Thanks again.

Thanks, Mark.

Thanks for asking me. Yeah, I appreciate you guys.