Debunking Venture Capital for Founders and Startups with Ankur Ahuja
6 Apr 2022 · 36 min
A transcript of a Better Sell Better podcast episode (host Kevin “KD” Dorsey) interviewing Ankur Ahuja (COO, Verona Capital) about how venture capital works and what founders and sales leaders should know. Key points: structure of VC funds (LPs provide capital, GPs invest, analysts perform diligence and write investment memos); what investors look for in startups (TAM, disruptive tech, strong founders/team, product-market fit); important SaaS metrics to track (ARR/MRR, churn, CAC, CLV); how VCs support portfolio companies beyond capital (recruiting, PR, strategy, introductions); fundraising dynamics, typical return expectations (seek outsized multipliers), where raised capital often gets spent (customer acquisition, ads, hiring), and cap table dilution/pro rata rights. The episode also includes practical advice for sales leaders and founders (hire fractional CFOs if needed, know your numbers) and a short personal wellbeing tip from the guest.
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Excited to be here.
So I'm going to open up with a question here. Maybe you know this is coming or not. But like, is VC as sexy as.
People make it out to be?
Because everyone's like, oh, I want to work at venture capital, I want to become part of a firm. You're in it. Is it as sexy as people think it is?
You know, now having done this for seven months and having been a two time founder previous to this, I will tell you that is not as sexy as people make it sound. It's a lot of work. It's interesting in that you get paid to learn. So our fund happens to be sector agnostic, so we invest across a variety of sectors. So I could be looking at an EV company one day or a SaaS based company the next day. So from that perspective, it is really great. You get to learn a whole lot. But it's a lot of work, it's a lot of long hours, it's a lot of spreadsheets and it is not as sexy as everyone makes it sound. TechCrunch makes it sound pretty sexy when they get these big $200 million series raised by XYZ Fund. And that's very sexy. But the things that go on behind the scenes are not so sexy. So sorry to your listeners who are going to be a little disappointed with that.
I think I thought that was going to be the answer and they need to hear it because it is. It's like you see all these numbers and multiples and people think it's like just all glamour and not the grind. And so let's go another layer deeper there. Right. Like what does the workload entail for someone in your position? I think most people don't even understand, like, okay, working, but on what?
Right.
So like what goes into kind of that day to day, week to week type process for you?
Sure. So because I'm the CEO of the fund, my job, I'm kind of connected everywhere. So I help with diligencing potential investments. I'm also kind of the center of our office. So anything that any of the partners or any of the other staff needs and also anything that the LPs might need, the people that actually invest into our fund. So I'm working with kind of all the different stakeholders in the fund. And that's exciting because my day, my day to day is the two days are never the same. And that's the type of work that I like. I can't be a slave to my desk. I like to be up and around and doing different things. So from that perspective, it's really great if you are an analyst at a VC fund, like some of the members of our team are, you are basically diligencing investments. And that could mean you're looking up different markets, market sizes, companies, the founders themselves, what they've done in the past and what other companies in the space might be doing. And that's all to help produce what's known as an investment memo, which is something that we all do. It's a very standard memo that we produce based on each investment that we make. And that's something that we all sit down as a team and review before we make a new investment.
Love that. And so we're actually going to take a step back there. You named a lot of terms that I actually want to break down for everybody.
Sure, sure.
So like the term and then their primary responsibility. Right. So you had partners, LPs, stakeholders, analysts. Right. You're the chief operating officer. So could you down real quick for people listening, like kind of the general anatomy of a VC and what those primary roles are and what they do.
Sure. So a VC fund and its simplicity has a few different moving parts. You have the fund itself and the fund is made up of LPs. LPs are known as limited partners. Those are basically the people that staked your fund. Right. So when you fundraise to raise capital to deploy, you're raising it from LPs. And those LPs could be anyone that's known as an accredited investor, which I'm sure we will touch base on. And accredited investor could be a high net worth individual, it could be a family office, it could be another fund. And so you have these LPs that put in money into a vehicle, a fund. And then you have gps, which is what my bosses, Phil and Ezra are. They're the general partners of the fund who then take that money and make investments on behalf of the LPs into private companies. And what we do is we sprinkle a little capital in these private companies. Kind of like gardening. Right. So we water a little capital. So we, you know, water them with dollars, I guess, is what we do. And we, you know, plant the seeds, we trim the bushes and we try to make these companies grow. Right. Because it takes a village to, to grow a startup. And so, and not every business is going to be a venture business. There's plenty of businesses that are just good businesses and they're not venture businesses. And so these companies need a lot of time, attention, they need a lot of expertise that they don't have. And what we're trying to do is to get them to the next milestone. That's what we're constantly trying to do is hit the next milestone and keep raising funds and potentially have them acquired by another company, go public. That's kind of a very high level on what venture capital is and what we try to do. I love it.
I think that's helpful because I think people hear VC venture capital, but they don't understand all the parts that go into it and the specific roles that people play. And so let's talk about kind of general partners first. Right. You've mentioned the word like diligence and things like that. Like what are things that you. We can talk your firm specifically, but obviously you're well versed in this space and well, like what are things that you look for that make a good venture backed company?
Right.
So you call that out. Not every company is a good venture backed company. It's just a good company. What are things that you or your firm look for to determine if is actually a good opportunity for you?
I mean, so there's a wide variety of things that we look at. Right. And every VC fund is going to be looking for something different for us. We look at things like market size. So what is the total addressable market? That's a term you hear a lot about, tam. We also look to see is this technology new, is it disruptive, how disruptive is it, are we recreating the wheel or are we taking something and just making it incrementally better? A lot of the times when we're investing in very early stage companies, a big thing that we look at is also the team and the founders. It's no kind of surprise that most VC businesses do not. Yeah, they fail. Right. So the majority of VC businesses fail. That's another reason why this is not a very sexy thing that it's made out to be. And so what we need to do is figure out very quickly which companies are going to be outliers. And, and team in the beginning is a really big thing because you're investing in people, right? When someone just has an idea and it's like a pie in the sky, as I call it, you're investing in somebody and a team and a person. And so we really like to get to know the founders that we work with because chances are if they fail once, we want to be there the second time around to back them. And that's the type of fund that we are. And I think a lot of funds have that similar mentality. You're really backing people at the end of the day. I know it sounds cheesy, but it's true.
Mm, let's go a little deeper there then. What are some of those things you look for in a team? And where I'm going on this and for the people listening is we have a wide variety of people that listen. We have reps, managers, VPs, CROs. A lot of the things that he's talking about to analyze a company are the same things you should be using to analyze a company in terms of whether it's a good opportunity for you, right? Because on paper everyone talks about their team, right? Go to any startup website, right? It's all about the team. What are things that you look for in a team, especially early to say, yeah, I'm willing to bet on these individuals figuring it out.
I think the first thing we look for is does this person, why are they doing this? Right? So why are you getting up in the morning and why do you have this idea and what problem are you solving and why are you trying to solve it? And that really relates to like how much industry knowledge do you have? I think that's the first thing we look at a very high level. So if you were in finance and now you're starting a fintech company, that's a pretty easy, it's a pretty easy kind of trajectory to see why you'd be doing that and to see that you have deep industry knowledge, I think that's really important. The second thing we really look for is like how passionate are these people, right? Is this a side hustle or is this like what they're, are they living on their mom's couch and this is, you know, what they're eating, drinking, sleeping every day. How hard do you want to grind? I think that's another really important thing. And then, you know, we go through the kind of, you know, what kind of communication skills do they have? Are they risk takers? You know, what is the ethos that they have, right? What is the ethos they have around starting this company and what are the values that they share and are we aligned in those values? Because at the end of the day, it's a partnership and it's a long partnership, right? It's a 10 year marriage, right? So a typical VC fund is a 10 year structure. And so from years zero to three, most funds make investments and then we grow those investments. And so it's a long term partnership. We, you know, the people that we invest in, we are constantly in touch with them. Yesterday I got a call from one of our portfolio companies, like, hey, I need help to put out a press release, right? And so we drop everything on a Sunday and we try to figure out, okay, how could these guys get a press release out that they need to get out for Monday morning. So it's like in investment banking they call it the airport test, right? Like, who do you want to be sitting next to at an airport when your flight gets canceled? And so those are some of the really high level things we look at. And also like, how permeable are you? Because people think they know everything, right? And the truth is that you don't know what you don't know. I'm a very big believer in that. And so how permeable are you? How open are you to, to new ideas? And that's, you know, at the end of the day, founders make the decisions they want to make. We don't have the right to say you have to do this, but we want to work with teams in a collaborative way. And I think that's really important for us.
And I love that, you know, all those things were just around the people and the team and like how important that is in the success. As someone who's been out, been through four or five startups now you can tell the difference when there's industry knowledge versus not when there's passion versus you're looking to make that buck. Like there is, there's a huge difference and how those companies are run. And but you mentioned something earlier and then even just there around this idea of like collaboration and support, the VC world is way more than just cutting a check. Like if we're that easy, cut checks all day long, right? Like what are some of the additional things you do to actually help the startup? Because it's not just money, right? You mentioned expertise and things like where do you get involved? How do you help them through these early stages?
So look, there are some funds that all they do is cut a check and the game that they play is they cut a hundred checks and hope that 10 of those checks pay off in 100x multiples, right? And if the other 90 go to zero, it doesn't really matter. And I think for us at least we have a very concentrated portfolio because we're a small team and we like to really get our hands dirty with the teams that we work with. And we will never invest in a company if it's only a check that we can provide. So if we don't have an expertise in somewhere or we don't have synergies between other portfolio companies or something else that we could bring to the table. It could be the next zoom, but we're not going to invest in it because that's just not our company's ethos, our fund's ethos. And so we do everything from helping structure new hires, looking for executive hires, putting out press releases, helping them. So once you raise a pre seed and seed, you're already thinking about your series A and B and C. So we start working very early with these teams on, okay, what are the milestones you need to get to to get to that next raise and get to that next capital infusion and get to the next place that you want to get to? And so we're constantly working in a collaborative sense with these companies to do that. Right. Because at the end of the, we're all aligned. If they succeed, we succeed. And you know, most of the founders we work with, we. We really like and we want to, you know, we want to. We want to be part of their families, basically, is what I'm trying to say.
I think that's big. There is, you know, the relationships. I think you said it before, too, that I don't think a lot of people understand. It's like this is like 10 years, which I think people forget because of how fast it shifts. Feels like people move from A to B to C to D to E.
You know, especially these days, things are moving super fast. Right. They're moving a lot faster than they had historically. And that could be seen as a good thing or a bad thing.
Yeah, we don't have enough time to go into that.
Right. It's. It's. That's a whole nother. That's a whole nother call.
Yeah, you got people raising 5 to 10 mil seeds, 50 to 70 A's, and it's like 18 months later, like, not. They haven't even made it anywhere. And it's just, it's crazy to me, some of those things. But again, we don't have enough time there. But I do want to talk about what success looks like. Right. So let's say, well, we'll kind of paint the scene here. You invest, you know, a million dollars into a company that's at. Let's call it $5 million. Right. So $5 million company, you put in a million dollars. What are you hoping to get back from that? Right. So you put in a million at 5. So you're call it 20% ish of the total company value. What are you hoping to get back from that 1 million in?
I mean, we're looking to get back the most we can right at the end of the day. And we're looking to hit home runs because we know in the startup world that a lot of these companies fail. And it's not because they're bad founders, they're bad people, they're bad, bad teams. It's just the way businesses, right? 50% of all new businesses fail. Like everyone knows that fact. And in venture it's no different. It's just a higher stakes, higher pressure game that we're playing and we look for really outsized returns. So we're looking for many multiples of that return back, especially if we're going to be patient for 10 years and wait for that to happen. So we're willing to trade liquidity for those returns. Right. So these investments are not very liquid. Once you make them, you're kind of like 10 years, you gotta wait and see. And you know, we're okay with that if we're getting back a much higher multiple, you know, a 10 or 100x on our money.
Yeah, and I think that's something too. Like, this is fun because like, I had to learn a lot about this, especially as a VP of sales over the last five to six years of like what's happening here and go through it because you said something I don't think a lot of people know is like one, you're shooting for home runs, but the vast majority of VC investments fail. They don't return something and you're aiming for those home runs. It's not like the VC wants you to succeed, but only in a big way. If you're only going to succeed in a little way, it's like, well, what was all that worth versus those home run type hits? And so I guess, well, go a different direction here. Now that you're in it and you see it and you're making these investments, what are things that you wish VPs of sales CROs understood a little bit better about the VC world?
I think for early stage companies, I would hope that they understand the numbers a lot better and really understand what their market size is and really understand what the potential is. I think a lot of people have a bias. It's a very natural bias to have, right. When you have an idea that you think this is like a new original idea and a lot of times it's not. I think that that's a really important thing that these kind of executives should look at at an early stage. And also they should get a really good understanding of how do you package those numbers and present them in A way that's digestible for VC funds. And what are the metrics? Because there are a few very kind of cookie cutter metrics depending on what industry you're in, that everybody shares. And those are things that we want to see, to compare apples to apples comparisons. And I think that's really important. Another really big thing I think that a lot of early stage companies don't do that they should do, kind of going along the same wavelength is if you don't need a full time CFO is hire a fractional cfo. There's a lot of companies like Early Growth and a few other companies that we partner with that have fractional CFOs that know exactly how to package those numbers and set up a data room for us with everything that we need to make those investment decisions a lot easier and a lot faster. I think that's the thing that's missing at a very kind of early stage. And not everyone's good at everything and a lot of founders are good at being very creative and outspoken thinkers. But sometimes when it comes to the numbers and stuff, that might not be their strong suit. So it's really knowing what is your strong suit and having the right team to support those areas that you're not so strong in.
Yeah, I think that's such a great call. I'm shocked sometimes, even with some of these big companies that I go in and I consult on, I go, these are pretty basic metrics that I'm asking for here and you don't have them like how did you make it this far? How did you get to this point without knowing some of these things? And so I guess actually let's break those down real quick. What are some of those key metrics, right, Key things that a VC looks at around like, okay, you mentioned TAM earlier, but what are some of those key metrics within the company that you look at to kind of look at company health potential, all that kind of fun stuff.
So it really depends. So that's a tough question to answer because it really depends on what type of industry you're in, right? So if we're in like a, let's say like a SaaS based model, right? There's some really simple terms that we're looking at, right? So we're looking at ARR, what is your annual run rate, your mrr, what is your monthly run rate, what is your churn, which is basically what is the difference, you know, the percent change in you losing subscribers versus your new addition, your subscribers that you add. We're looking at the cost to acquire a customer cac. So these are all very basic metrics that you should have a very good handle on. If you're in a SaaS related business, right. If you're in a subscription related business where people are coming in and out. So those are some of the ones on a very high level that we look at.
And I think that's important because it's something where people that go in, it's like, oh, we're getting all these customers, customers, but they're all leaving, so that doesn't work. Or we're getting all these customers, but you're spending 4x their lifetime value to get them.
Right. So that's another big one, right? Clv, right. Was the customer lifetime value. That's another really important metric to have a very good grasp on. So you know what the longevity of your business is.
I think that's, that's crucial there. And so if you look at the companies that you've invested in, are there any patterns of the ones that are successful?
Right?
Because obviously, you know, you're doing your due diligence on all these companies. You're looking at all these things, you're always looking at the team, right? So you're making these bets. What have you noticed is maybe some of the patterns or some of things like this, when this starts to happen, or a team operates this way, or a market is like xyz, that really tends to lead to more success.
You know, I think it really comes down if I look at some of the companies and so we've had a few IPOs last year and if I look at some of the companies and look at the founders, it really comes down to their teams and how well they could execute on their game plan. And so these people are always inquisitive, they're open to advice, they're humble, they have a great culture at their companies where people rally around them, right? So when you work at a startup, you know that you're taking a salary cut because you're part of, you have some sort of maybe equity in that company and so you're aligned in that way. And a lot of these people, I will say, is that they're not sheep, you know, so they tend to follow, they don't follow the herd, they tend to shy away from the herd. And they're very passionate about the field or industry that they're working in and they want to change the world. And so two of our companies, one of them are they make 4D LiDAR chips for autonomous vehicles and the founder really wants. He's very passionate about safety. He's very passionate about autonomous, about the world, going to this EV kind of place and saving fossil fuels. And so you could just tell when he speaks that this is his life's work and this is what drives him every day. It's not about the money. There's a lot of ways to make money in this world, and I'm telling you now, the startup is probably not the easiest way. So I think that's some of these qualities that you see weave through a lot of these successful people because they do share some level of similarities. It's actually an interesting. I actually want to sit down one day now and compare some of these founders and see what are the qualities that'd be a good Twitter thread that these guys share that make them so remarkable.
So let me know when that thread's ready because it is something where, like, I'm a huge believer in pattern recognition and like, picking up and like, having those insights to go, okay, like, what really made them successful? Because, you know, you can read the books. It's like, oh, you know, grit, determination, passion. But then it's that next layer when you have close access, like, what is it really that made them successful or made them stand out? And because those are the types of people wanted to work for, but also that you want to work with and go through things. But you mentioned something there, actually, that has me thinking a little bit of like, especially in the SaaS space, and it may be this way in some other industries, but like, I actually feel like some of that, like, startup grit or that startup. I don't know if the right, like, sacrifice has been lost a little bit because so much money has flown in. It's almost like the opposite now, where it's not like, you know, you're taking a pay cut to work at this, you know, startup. It's almost like here, like, we have, we're going to pay you a lot to work at this startup and we've. I don't know if you almost feel like we've lost that a little bit of like, no, I'm in this for something more than the money. Like, have you seen that at all?
You know, we typically don't invest in those sexy deals that everyone that you see on, you know, these big, you know, huge, you know, pre seed and seed rounds. Because we just. It's just not our forte, the companies we invest in. I think that we're happy with the amount of money we're investing in the valuation that we're getting. I haven't experienced this with any of our portfolio companies, but it is something in the larger VC kind of community that people are talking about. And it's a little bit of a self fulfilling prophecy. It's like being on a merry go round that you pump a bunch of capital into the system, the capital becomes easier to attain because we all need to put it to work. So that's part of our fund's mandate. We can't just sit on money, we have to put that money to work. And so I think that some funds feel this pressure, especially emerging fund managers who are new and there's been a lot of those over the last 12 or 24 months. And they have this pressure, this added pressure to put this money to work at whatever valuation just because they want to be on the cap table. And that's not the way that we operate. But yes, I do think that in some of those cases that, that grit, that, that hard work is, yeah, like someone knows that they could have an idea and raise 20 million bucks based on an idea, you know, and it's not, it's not the, it's not the best, you know, especially when it comes to your fiduciary duty to your own LPs, you know. And so we're very cautious about that. And getting kind of drunk in the moment, you know, of what's going on here.
Yeah, no, it's just crazy to me, kind of like, because I've been in this, the startup space now for about 10 years now. I do, I think back like the early that I was a part of, it was that like you weren't getting paid a lot of money and you were, you know, doing all these things. And now I look at like what I was hiring sales reps for fresh out of college. I'm like, Jesus. Like it was more than I was making As a manager 10 years, I know, and coming in, making this money and so. But actually this leads to two other questions I want to dive into before we start to wrap up is one, sure, where does the money go? Because I've also seen this happen, right? I'm at a company, we raise our b, we just raised $50 million. And everyone's like, yeah, like that's going to come to us. And then a lot of times employees are surprised that, wait a minute, where'd that money go? Why didn't we all get raises? Why didn't that all come towards us? Where do most of these companies apply this money? Like, where do they go spend it?
You Know, I think that depends really on the type of company we rarely invest in, like consumer packaged goods or like SaaS companies. Only because a lot of that money goes to our good friends at Facebook and Google. And there was some sort of stat that I saw that it was like 70 or 80 or 60 cents. It was some very large number. More than half of every dollar that one of every VC dollar that these startups get goes to Google or Facebook. You can see that the prices to acquire AdWords and the advertising have gone up exponentially in the last two or three years. And that's because companies are flush and they're willing to pay whatever they can to acquire customers. And so the game is let's burn a bunch of money. It's the Amazon game. Let's burn a bunch of money now in hopes of having a large payoff someday in the future. And the problem with that business model is that most times it doesn't pay off. And so you have to be really good to be able to identify which companies are going to be able to do that successfully.
Yeah.
And so this happened a lot with these like you know, 15 minute delivery companies that you see like in New York like 10 and 20 and get, you know, joker and all these companies, I heard the last week like three of them shut down, you know, abruptly after getting you know, collectively like tens or hundreds of million dollars of VC funding. Because you know, I guess it's cheaper for them to deliver a bag of $100 versus delivering the groceries. Right. Because that's what they're spending to acquire these customers, which is crazy. Yeah.
The cost to acquire is especially, especially digital right now has just been ridiculous because also all the events stopped. So that was another place where a lot of people spent a ton of money. They stopped. So now all that went into digital at patient pop. I mean we were Talking about like 2, 3x increases in a matter of 12 months because there wasn't anywhere else to spend the money. You couldn't spend it on events, you couldn't spend it on flying people all over the place. And so it all FL into that which is just, it's nuts. So okay, last one, I want to touch on cap table. Who gets paid?
Right.
So okay, woohoo. Billion dollar exit. Right. We just got bought by a billion dollars from, from Google. What's the breakdown of like who gets paid what? Right, because there's preferred, non preferred, all those types of things. Can you break down for people like who gets paid and in what order?
So at the end of the day, everyone gets paid. That's on the cap table. Right. And what you get paid is basically at the end after you get diluted, it's what your proportion of the company that you own is. So you gave me an example that we invest a million dollars at a $5 million valuation. So we own 20% of the company. But that's very early on. And as you take new money on, you get diluted. And so at the end you get some sort of calculation that this is what your ownership was after all your dilution. After all this, other investors came in and pumped money. Right. Because you're den denominator is getting larger.
So we break that down real quick for people so they understand like the 20% at the beginning why it's no longer 20% 10 years later.
Because 10 years later, if the company's raised an additional $100 million, now this 100, it's collectively the company raised 120 million bucks. And my 1 million was 1 over 120. Right. And so that's what my proportion would be of that billion dollar payout. And so it's something that VC funds, especially early stage investors, they are really trying to get a certain target ownership in the beginning. So our target ownership is typically like 10% a lot of times because we know we're going to get diluted over rounds. But you do also at every round if you have pro rata rights, which is something that we want on every one of our deals, you're able to keep your same percentage as long as you're investing your pro rata share on follow up rounds. So.
Right, yeah, so that was a learning lesson for me in the first time here you got 1% of the company.
Yes.
Well that's now right A, B, C later, like wait, wait, that's not 1% anymore. Talking about a quarter of a percent or less. that point you just get diluted. Including founders. I think that's something.
That's exactly the next point I was going to bring. Like people in VC think that we're like these greedy, you know, Wall street people, but we're not oftentimes like this is why you need to know your numbers. Like it happens where at the end, eight years later, founders don't really check their cap tables or don't really understand what's going on. And they went from owning 50% of a company to 5. And we've seen this happen. And look, my thing is 5% of a billion dollars is better than 0% of a billion dollars. But knowing your numbers and being very aware of that, both on the founder and as an investor is really, really important. And you have manage cap tables where you don't need to have these crazy Excel sheets like Carta, you know, where you can do this for, you know, relatively inexpensively and not have to have a 3,000 row Excel spreadsheet with crazy formulas going on. And a lot of time I've seen where founders have made mistakes in their formula and at the end, you know, they get screwed, you know, and it's a costly mistake. And so know your numbers, you know, and if you don't know your numbers, ask someone to help you.
Ask someone. You just have to. And it's true, because I do think, you know, again, people look outside and they go, oh, like this company just sold for $100 million. There's a chance that the founder had less than 10% buy that, right? Where they would have been almost better off selling five years earlier without all the bloodshed and toil and everything that comes with it for the exact same amount.
Absolutely. Absolutely. Awesome. My man.
Well, this is, this is great, but I can't lift you off the hook with the question asked everybody on the show, right, because the name of the podcast is Live better, Sell Better. Because I also have this weird idea, right, that if we took better care of ourselves, if we had more energy, more fun, more joy, more fulfillment in life, that the businesses would also do better. What would your live better advice for people listening be?
I would say, you know, build a life for yourself that you want to live, right? Like it's not all about work. I work really hard. We work 12, 13 hour days. But I also have a lot of fun in the office. We have a ping pong table. We, we try to make it as light hearted as possible. Life is short. I think everyone has experienced that after Covid. And so my thing is just, you know, live life to the fullest and you know, in terms of taking care of yourself, I think working out is a really important thing. Something I did not start till I was 30, working out regularly. I'm 30 for now. And it has made a huge difference on my mental health and just like how I'm just less crabby, you know, I'm just like a nicer person. I feel like my endorphins are kind of always going crazy. So that's my piece of advice.
I love that. And it's funny too because there's so much science behind it. Like I actually went to hr this is a couple of years ago and I was like, can I make meditation and exercise mandatory? Like, could I make that mandatory? Could I make that a rule to work here?
I think you should. You know, it's funny. We're raising a new seed fund right now, and part of the ethos is, like, I was talking to one of the founders and said, you know, we want to give everyone, like, a hundred dollar gift certificate to, like, Headspace, right, where you can spend 15 minutes with your team and meditate out and Zen out. And there's a lot of studies done that show that teams that take care of themselves, you know, they perform a lot better. You know, it's just like being an athlete.
It's crazy to me. Of course, the response back was no. I was like, wait, wait. So I can make cold calling mandatory something that just absolutely destroys your soul, but I can't make exercise? This seems backwards to me. But, you know, whatever. That one day when I'm running my own company that'll be built in one hour every day dedicated to exercise and meditation during the workday.
All for it. Sign me up for that.
I'll hit you up, man. I'll hit you up. So, dude, this was amazing. I really appreciate, because this is something I wish more and more, especially on the sales side, they understood more of as they're looking at companies and how to break that down and what good looks like. Are you putting out content? Does your fund put things out people can learn from? Like, where can people go find more? Just around this space?
Yeah. Follow us. We're on LinkedIn. We post a lot of content and white papers on LinkedIn. Just veronicapital, veronicapital.com but that's primarily what we do. We put out papers, we put out news about our companies. And you can also sign up for a monthly insights newsletter through our website.
Hell, yeah. Well, I would encourage y' all to do it because the more you understand the space, the better you can be at making your decisions and hopefully getting a piece of a home run rocket ship disruptor of the space type opportunity. So, Ankur, my man, this was awesome. Thank you so much for your time, dude.
Thanks a lot, bud. Take care. Good talk to you, Kevin. Bye. Bye.
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