Movers & Shakers S2E3: Entering the Venture Capital Ecosystem with Rachel Goddard, Partner at Cooley LLP

Welcome to The Room Podcast. I'm Claudia Laurie, co-CEO and founder of Pryve.

And I'm Madison McIlwain, partner of seed stage investments at Defy VC. Claudia and I are friends first and and business partners second. Living in the heart of Silicon Valley, we know what it's like to be on the inside of innovation, having worked at flagship companies like Gap Inc. and Uber. Now in our roles as a founder and a funder, we're changing the face of technology through our mission to bring more people into the room where it happens.

With past guests such as Shikshir Mehrotra of Coda, Michelle Zatlin of Cloudflare, and Grammy Award-winning Ciara, our past guests' companies are currently valued at over $73 billion. If you're a first-time founder or emerging funder who wants tactical insights into starting a company, venture capital funding, hiring, and more, this is the podcast for you.

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Cooley is a global law firm built around startups and venture capital. Since forming the first institutional venture fund in Silicon Valley, Cooley has formed more venture capital funds than any other law firm in the world. The firm has 60+ years working with VCs, helping form managed funds, make investments, and to handle the myriad of issues that arise through a fund's lifetime. Learn more about the firm at cooley.com and also cooleygo.com, Cooley's award-winning free legal resource for startups. Welcome back to The Room Podcast. Today's conversation is the third episode of our second Movers and Shakers miniseries, where we sit down with on-the-pulse movers and shakers in the tech and venture ecosystem. Today, we sit down with Rachel Goddard, a partner at Cooley Law Firm in their fund formation practice. Rachel has been at Cooley for almost 23 years, helping venture capital funds get started. Today's episode is particularly tactical and geared towards those who are thinking about founding a fund. In today's conversation, we chat about the standard fund formation process, talking through the limited partnership agreement and more critical pieces of the puzzle, best practices on management fees, GP commitments, and more. And finally, advice for aspiring fund managers on establishing a lasting venture practice from your first Microfund, and beyond.

Let's open the door. Rachel, thank you so much for being with us today on The Room Podcast.

Thank you, Claudia and Madison. It's wonderful to be here with you. I'm so excited to have this conversation.

We are as well. And we really like to start at the beginning with our guests. Would love to ask, where did you grow up and how has that shaped your view of the world?

I grew up in Champaign, Illinois, in the heart of the heartland of the Midwest. Madison McIlwain. That is where the University of Illinois is. My dad was a professor at the University of Illinois. He taught school law and my mom was a high school English teacher. So it was a wonderful place to grow up in a small college town, relatively small, no traffic, a lot of arts and entertainment and big time sports in a really small community. So it was a great place to grow up. I grew up the oldest of 4. I have 3 younger brothers. So I tell people it's pretty similar to my life today. We're very busy in this business and there's a lot of chaos and I grew up with a lot of chaos and it all just works out great. And so I'm very close to my 3 younger brothers. That was my early start.

In vain of that early identity, did you always think that you were going to be a lawyer?

Actually, I never thought I was going to be a lawyer. My dad was a lawyer, but he never practiced. He taught school law, but never was a practicing lawyer. So he was an academic. I thought I wanted to be a doctor. When you're young and you have a wonderful pediatrician, I've talked to a lot of people that said, yeah, I agree with you. I always wanted to be a pediatrician because that was like the professional I saw from early on, and I had this wonderful pediatrician, Dr. Peruko, who was an older guy and just fixed all your problems and gave you all your shots and was really somebody to look up to, kind and gentle and warm and caring. And I loved being the oldest of 4. I always wanted to have my own kids, and so I always wanted to be a pediatrician. Didn't work out that way.

Tell us a little bit more about that path into getting into law. What was the pivot in your early career that led to law school and thus becoming a lawyer?

I was an undergrad at Notre Dame. I was pre-med for a few years. I took organic chemistry and thought, you know what, this really isn't for me. That wasn't my class. And thought I wanted to pivot into environmental law. So I switched my major to environmental science, and I was also a history major at the same time I was pre-med. Then did environmental law for part of a summer while I was in law school. And in summer in law school, I did a whole bunch of things. I wasn't sure exactly what I wanted to do. So I did environmental law, real estate, tax, criminal, corporate, you name it. I tried about 10 different kinds of law that summer and I loved corporate law. I love the people that did corporate law. I loved the pace of corporate law. I loved that you could work on humongous deals and you could work on really tiny deals. And that was 1998. From that point I fell in love with corporate law and I've done it ever since. And so I started off as a first-year associate at Cooley in our very first office east of Colorado. It was a much smaller firm then. We have about 1,500 attorneys at Cooley now. When I started, we had just a few hundred, and we've hired more than that in just in the last year to 18 months here at Cooley. So the growth I have seen in my 22+ years at Cooley has been incredible and really exciting. But I've always done corporate law, so I've only ever been at Cooley and I've only ever done corporate. I started off in the ECVC group doing investment work forming startups, doing some debt deals, gravitated towards M&A when my clients grew big and wanted to acquire other companies. And they always want their lawyer to do their work. So I have a tremendous breadth of experience in corporate law. And for the past 15 years, I've done solely fund formation.

From a first-year associate to partner at Cooley, you've had quite the path with the firm, and you've alluded to a little bit of its own growth over the past two decades. But would you tell our listeners a little bit more about Cooley and specifically its focus on supporting venture capital funds.

Cooley actually formed the very first venture capital fund in the West Coast in 1958. It formed a fund called Draper, Gaither, and Anderson. And we had our first Silicon Valley office in 1980. So we've been doing this for longer than anybody else. And we have a very strong group of fund formation lawyers. We have over 60 lawyers in our group worldwide and 30 paralegals. And all we do is fund formation all day, every day. We're a tier 1 chambers firm, like number one firm for this law and venture capital fund formation. We are also Pittsburgh number one firm for forming companies and investing in companies and forming startups. So we do it all. And what I love is I'm at the start of that cycle. So I form the fund, you know, the investors fund that venture capital fund, and then those sponsors like you guys take that money and invest in the startups of tomorrow. So we are the engine that builds the companies of tomorrow. And I work with very small funds, $5 million funds, first-time funds, and I work with very large funds, over $500 million. And we have many funds in— at Coulee that are over a billion dollars. So the scope of our experience runs the gamut of every type of venture capital fund, but that's all we do all day, every day. So that's why we're really good at it.

It's fun that you bring up the first venture capital firm with Draper. We actually had Jessie Draper, who I want to say is the great-granddaughter of the original Tim Jaipur? Correct me on the first name. I can't remember. Which is so fun to see how the evolution of venture has come to where it is today and how Kooly has literally spanned 4 generations of founders and funders. And for a lot of people who are coming into the ecosystem, the happenings of starting a fund feel well beyond them. I know for myself, when I joined Defy, which is an emerging manager in a way, we are in our second fund, although we are $415 million under management, so not quite an emerging manager by some standards. There's so many questions about what does it mean to launch a fund, and if you're getting started from day one, you might not know some of the tactical things that are required to get a fund off the ground and how much complexity goes into it. So from your standpoint on the lawyer side, could you talk our listeners through things like standard fund formation documents? I know one we talk a lot about is the LPA or the Limited Partnership Agreement, but what goes into those early conversations with your emerging managers?

We talk a lot about the stage of a fund formation process, and we try to stage our work so that we're looking at the pitch deck and your disclosure materials up front, and we're getting a summary of terms for the fund that you're going to go out and fundraise with. And so that summary of terms then goes into what we call the LPA, which is a limited partnership agreement, which is the fund document. So the investors sign the limited partnership agreement, the fund manager, the sponsor signs the limited partnership agreement, and that document, we're proud to say at Cooley, is about 55 or 60 pages long. Some of our peer firms' documents are 150 pages long and I think sometimes much harder to understand. So we try to be concise, we try to be business-friendly, we try to write documents that are in plain English that everyone understands. And so then the investors sign that LPA, the limited partnership agreement, the sponsor signs the LPA, and that is the document that is the fund. So we close on that and then you guys call down capital. Over a number of years and make awesome investments. And then those companies grow big and exit and you return the money to the investors. So the LPA is where all the action is at. The other important document is what we call the subscription agreement, where the investors all tell us about their qualifications. There's certain securities law, Companies Act, a whole bunch of different laws we have to comply with. And we just make sure that subscription agreement covers all of those laws and all the exemptions that we're operating under for the fund. So those are the two big fund documents. Then you have a whole set of documents that we call the upper-tier documents. And that is what makes the sponsor firm. DeFi is a venture capital firm, and hopefully DeFi is going to be around. I've represented some clients for 20 years. So those documents last in perpetuity, and they're critically important. So the management company is the sponsor's firm document and basically describes over the life of all of these funds how you're going to form future funds, how you're going to use your track record and let other people use your track record. You know, that owns the intellectual property, for example, your trademark and trade name, right? That is the mothership. So that's an incredibly important document. And behind the scenes, the investors don't sign that, generally don't see that. That is your company at the sponsor level. The other really important document is called the general partner agreement. And every fund has a separate general partner because, of course, every fund you form, once you're forming 20 different funds, the folks that are working at that fund change over time. So every separate Fund has its own general partner, and that agreement is really important as well.

Oh, this is very nitty-gritty and I'm learning a lot. I want to take a step back and ask a few clarifying questions about some of the verbiage that you use to describe these different stakeholders. Could you explain what you mean by the sponsors?

Sure. The fund is just like a company in a way, like a startup is a company. Everybody understands that. You know, go work for a startup. I get options. I get really rich. Your firm, your venture capital firm, is just like a startup company for the very first fund that you form. And so the management company is just like a startup company. It's just, we say it a little bit different. It's formed as a Delaware LLC. Traditionally, it's not a C-Corp. And the folks that sit around the table and make decisions for the venture capital firm, the really important folks that make all the decisions, are partners or managers and members of that limited liability company. So there's a lot of legal verbiage here. But if you think about it, it's like we've got a company, it's a startup, we just call it the management company.

And the sponsors are those people at the table in the firm.

That's exactly right. So the sponsors are the folks that are making the decisions. They're deciding what investors do they want. They're deciding the terms that the investors are going to come, you know, bring their money and invest in. They're deciding how they interact. So if they have a deal and there's maybe 3 to 5 people sitting around making those decisions, how are they going to vote on that deal? The sponsors are the individual managers that are making those decisions.

Because there's sponsors, there's general partners, there's managing directors, and in many situations, all of those terms are used to describe one person. And in contrast, there's our limited partners, our LPs, as is most colloquially referred to, and those are the investors in the fund itself.

That's exactly right. And if you think about it, they're like the money men, the money women. They're just bringing the money to the table. They're not making management decisions. They're not deciding what companies to invest in. They're just bringing in the money and they're expecting a big return. So money in, money out. That's all the LPs or the investors are responsible for.

You've mentioned 4 documents. Can we just restate the 4 documents? There's the LPA. There is the management agreement documentation. What are the other 2?

The other 2 are the subscription agreement, sometimes called the sub book. And the last one is the GP agreement.

And the sub agreement is the only one that lasts across fund cycles. Each of these other three are happening at an individual fund's creation. So if you're in Fund 1, you have these documents. If you're in Fund 3, you have new documents. They might be similar, but they are net new documents to the fund, correct?

Actually, no. The management company agreement is the only one that lasts across all of the funds. The management company, I call it the mothership. Okay. That's the mothership. That's where the trademark, the track record, all of the rights of the firm sit. And each fund has an LPA, a sub-agreement, and a general partner agreement.

This is so nitty-gritty, but I really don't know where you find this on the internet. As someone who is a partner at a venture firm, it's something that I'm learning alongside as I, I grow up in my career. And so just getting to have someone who's an authority in the space like you walk us through is so helpful for anyone who might be aspiring to do this one day. And you've really seen this across a number of different examples in 2021 alone. Cooly worked on over 490 fund clients with closings from over $61 billion in committed capital to these funds. So you definitely know what you're talking about. And in general, that's just a lot of capital in the market. Would you mind sharing what some of the best practices on things like management fees, GP commitments you saw across those 490 funds?

Of course, a lawyer answer is going to be, it depends, right? Because it depends on whether you're forming a first-time fund of $5 or $10 million or you're forming Fund 10, and that was a billion-dollar fund, and you're trying to keep the terms consistent with what were in Fund 9 and Fund 8. So the answer is depends, but let me take an example of a first-time fund manager. And one of my favorite first-time fund managers is a diverse fund manager, someone trying to break into this market that has traditionally been closed to women and racially diverse founders. Basically, what we try to do is stay within market. We want to work between the 40-yard lines on a 100-yard football field. We don't want to start here and get dragged all the way here because that's a lot of wasted time and a lot of wasted money and a lot of wasted discussions. We try to be really business-minded and efficient when we talk to our clients. In terms of like management fee, venture capital funds start at 2.5% a year. So what that means, you take the dollars in the fund and you multiply it by 2.5%, and then the sponsor, the folks running the fund, get that money to spend. And they get to hire employees, they get to hire consultants, they get to pay themselves, they get to keep the lights on in their offices with that management fee. Now, traditionally, there's what we call a step-down of the management fee where it declines over time after the investment period under the theory that you've done a lot of the work upfront to invest that money into companies and you maybe don't need quite as much money on the back end. So that gets a little bit complicated, but we always say 2.5% is what's market for VC. And that's the management fee. And that's the money you get to, again, run your shop. Now, what's really difficult for first-time fund managers is when you're forming a small fund, that amount of money isn't a lot. It's just not a lot. And so, what I've seen some of my successful female and diverse fund managers do is either have another business on the side that they're leveraging like an accelerator or an incubator, and they're getting money from corporate to fund their accelerator. And then they're using that money also to supplement the management fee income that they're doing. Helps their fund because they're seeing more deal flow from their accelerator or the incubator. So there's a lot of first-time fund managers are wealthy themselves. They don't really worry about how much management fee they have, but there's a lot of different ways to balance this because you get the management fee and that is all you get to run your business. Then the upside is the carry. So that's called the carry interest, and that's the percentage you get of the net profit of the fund. So when the fund is a humongous success, what's market for first-time fund managers is you get 20% of those net profits. Colloquially, you hear 2.5 and 20. That's what we say for VC. And that's just market terms. And I always try to start my first-time fund managers at what's market, because that's what investors expect to see. And it just makes everything run more smoothly when you're right within market. And Coolidge, like you said, we formed $61 billion of funds last year. We had 490 clients with closings. We see this all day, every day. So we have some internal surveys and terms that we keep track of. So we can say definitively, this is what we're seeing here at Coolidge in the market.

I trust this vantage point. This feels like a very verified authority figure on the space. And it's great to tease out some of those terms because we've had other young managers on the podcast and they've said things like, I'm a broke VC. And it's like, well, what do you mean by that? It's like, well, I have a $10 million fund. So as you alluded to, 2.5% of that is actually not that much to be able to annually run the business of venture.

That's right. And that's the struggle for first-time fund managers. But what you say is, look, you invest that pretty quickly, $10 million goes pretty quickly, and then those companies are going to grow and you're going to have a great track record after Fund 1. Fund 1 is the really hard part. And then maybe in a couple of years, you're already forming Fund 2. And the goal is to get those investors that were in Fund 1 to what we call re-up and be in Fund 2 and follow you all along the way. And then you get a chance to talk to more institutional investors at Fund 2. But Fund 1 is very hard and a ton of work. And tends to be a smaller fund for a lot of reasons.

So when we think about who is the limited partners into these smaller funds that are getting started, what would be the definition of a smaller fund to Kouli?

The definition of microcap funds is under $100 million, but a lot of first-time funds start at $10 million, and that's because your larger funds, your institutional investors are writing checks of $50 and $75 and $100 million each. That's your fund 9, fund 10, fund 11. Fund 1, you're raising money from friends and family, you're raising money from family offices, a lot of institutions you honestly have a hard time getting a meeting or even getting in the door because they just say, I don't even talk to you if you're in Fund 1. That's just the way the world works.

Taking a step back, if I'm thinking about going out to market to raise my under $100 million fund and I'm looking to bring in some limited partners, potentially institutional, but then as you kind of alluded to, it is hard to get a lot of those traditional institutional investors in. We're seeing a movement or discussion around having non-accredited investors invest into venture funds. And I want to flag, I'm not advocating for non-accredited investors investing in venture funds, but it does bring up an interesting question of access because to be an accredited investor, you have to go through a lot of hoops to get to that stage. And if we want to open the door, if we want to say, hey, anyone can be an investor in a venture fund and benefit some of these above-market returns, you get better returns on your capital than you would investing in the public markets, do we think that makes sense?

That's a really important policy discussion. And I would say, honestly, I'm a lawyer, like, we follow the law. So we're kind of stuck with the law the way the law is right now. And investors in our venture funds today are accredited investors. And that means generally you have $200,000 a year in income, $300,000 with your spouse or spousal equivalent, or you have a net worth of $1 million. And so that is the standard the SEC has set to say you're sophisticated enough. If you have that amount of capital, you're sophisticated enough to understand the risk of investing in this venture capital space. You understand you could lose all your money. You understand that it's risky. You understand that it's volatile. And that's just the way the government has looked at it. And so we're stuck with that for now. A few years ago, there was an expansion, and this is very complicated, so I won't go into it, but there's an exemption we need under the Companies Act in venture capital funds. And if you have this accounting rule, there was an expansion for angel funds under $10 million. You could have more investors under the accounting rule if your fund is under $10 million. So that's helped a little bit. One of my favorite clients formed a fund under $10 million just to avail herself of that rule. Leslie Feinzag at— Feinzag at Grammen Walker. I don't know if you know her, but she has over 100 investors in her fund. Fund because of that rule and the size of her funds. And what I love about her fund is that she had over 470 meetings with investors and she pitched 170 of them one-on-one via Zoom. This was during the pandemic. And at the end of the day, she closed $10 million, two-thirds from women investors, one-third from racially diverse investors, and 40% from first-time venture capital fund investors. So even though they're all accredited, they've literally never made an investment in a venture capital fund. Before. And she's got some great articles in Forbes and Fast Company that I love about why she formed this venture capital fund. She's got two little girls and she's trying to change this industry, and she's going to point her dollars toward female-led startups. And that is the way, fund by fund, client by client, deal by deal, I think we're going to open up the ecosystem and really change the world very quickly.

That's such an incredible story from the founder perspective. That money pitches and conversations you often don't I don't think of the pitching from the investor's perspective, but that's incredibly impressive. So thank you for sharing her story. We chatted a little bit about the details around fund formation and your experience at Kouli, but I would love to just take some time looking forward. What do you think the next 5 years hold for venture funds and entrepreneurs in light of the past couple of years being a very frothy market, so to speak, and having a lot of capital available in the market itself?

Given the fact that the fundraising for venture capital funds last year in 2021 was up 47.5% from the prior year, I'm quoting from PitchBook, but US VC firms raised $128 billion last year. Oh my gosh, I just have to say, like, you have to pause on that number.

Hey, but also that Coulee did half of that.

Crazy.

That is wild.

So the market is frothy, the market is Awesome. And so what happens is when there's so many exits of these portfolio companies, right, all that money is being returned to investors and they want to put it to work again. And so that's part of what's happening. And so there's a lot of exits, a lot of money in the market. This sector has great returns and it just keeps going back and back into more venture capital funds. And then I think for first-time fund managers, maybe they've been a CEO of a successful startup, maybe they've sold that company. Instead of going into another startup, maybe they're like, hey, I want to form my own. Venture capital fund, and then I want to make decisions about a bunch of different companies I want to form and help and grow through my fund. And so we're seeing that route, I think, a lot more than we did maybe 10 years ago. Then we're seeing a lot of young entrepreneurs, diverse entrepreneurs saying, hey, look, I just want to do this. I think this is an exciting way to grow the companies of tomorrow and to have a voice in what those companies are going to look like and who's going to run those companies. And they're joining the market. Get to.

You mentioned some interesting profiles of first-time fund managers, whether you are a ex-startup founder or even underrepresented person in kind of tech and venture industry starting a fund for the first time. I'd love to get your advice that you would have for female GPs, first-time fund managers, underrepresented fund managers in creating that lasting fund, starting with fund 1, and what advice you would give them from your perspective seeing so many fund formations across sizes?

I think the most important thing is relationships, right? Relationships with your investors. And I heard a quote that I always think about, which is that you have these investors obviously that believe in you, that invest in you, and then you do a great job for them and you're coming back to them over and over. You're always fundraising. I think people have this theory that you're maybe fundraising for a year before your first fund, and then you stop and you run the fund. And then you go back to fundraising. At the end of the day, we're always selling, we're always fundraising, and we're selling ourselves, right? And our ability to create great companies, invest in great companies, grow great companies. And so I think the folks that you've got around the table at that first fund are so critically important because they become your investors, they become your backers, they're the ones that believe in you, and then your networks just expand over time to their networks. I've seen, like I said, I've represented some clients for 20 years we started representing this one client I've got, and now we're at fund 10. Some of the same investors are in every single one, and that's the goal. And you just get bigger and you bring more folks into the tent, but you have a really strong relationship with them. They trust you, you trust them, and it's about that relationship.

Plus, it sounds like the role of the VC and the entrepreneur aren't that different.

Yes, exactly. I was just going to say that resonates a lot. There's a lot of relationship building, and that's a critical thread, whether it's a fund or a startup and how ultimately you never stop fundraising, but you're also never halting that relationship development over many years. And what I'm also hearing is if someone is potentially interested in raising a fund, it's probably not too soon to start cultivating those relationships so that when you do want to start a fund, you have some champions in your corner that might want to be included as a part of that journey for many years to come.

I couldn't have said it better, Claudio. That's exactly right. And the other tip I'd give to first-time fund managers is you need a track record. Like, people need to understand, you know, if they're going to give you a bunch of money, what are you going to do with that money? And so it's hard because you've never been a venture capital fund manager before. And so if you have some personal investments that you've made in startups, in private companies, or you can make some personal investments with the other folks that are sitting beside you at the table to form this new fund, you know, it's a sponsor We call those warehouse investments and some of those investments do really well, or they're starting to go up and look promising. Well, then the investors have something to get their hands around, understand how you invest together as a group, even if it's only maybe 3 companies, understand what that looks like, understand the trajectory of those companies that helps. And then we roll those investments into the fund and you still have a bunch of money at the fund to. Invest in new companies, but it gives the investors a little bit of a sense of what you're going to do and how you're going to do it, which I think is important.

I think traction and building that early track record is again another similarity between both investor and founder. I'd love to switch gears a little bit. We chatted a lot about fund formation, some of the tactical details there. We chatted about the future of the venture market and advice for people who might want to start their own funds. But I'd love to circle this conversation back to you, Rachel. Would love to ask what's next for you personally.

I think I'm what you call a non-traditional partner. As I said, I've been at Cooley for 22 years. I had my kids when I was pretty young. I have 3 girls, 20, 18, and 13. And I've raised them while I've been doing all of this. And my husband has a successful career. And I just decided— last year we opened a Chicago office, our first Midwest office. And I decided for the first time, I really want to be a partner in the Chicago office. I really want to grow venture capital funds. I want to grow the startup community in Chicago and in the Midwest. And I'm really excited about it and really passionate about it. And after a few months and some partnership nominating committee work at Cooley, they made me a partner. And so I just became a partner in January, and it's very exciting. And so I think what I love about being a partner is I get to decide what kind of client I can work with. I get to decide who I team on those clients. I get to decide how to train and integrate new associates. We're obviously growing really fast. We have a lot of work and I get to do it in my way. And so that's really fun. Even though I've been doing this a really long time, I'm in a very new stage of my career being a partner for the first time this year. And I'm just really excited about what the future holds for not only Cooley, but for my clients and to see them grow and to succeed and to see our practice just continue to grow and see young folks continue to be attracted to what we're doing and then pass my knowledge on to the next generation of lawyers and obviously clients as well.

We are so excited for you. Congratulations. We'll keep our eyes open for all of the exciting startup fund happenings that are coming out of Chicago with you and Cooley. As we come up towards the end of our conversation, we do have a hero question that we ask to all of the guests on our podcast. We ask just as a flag that the answer not be direct family member, just because we like to spread the word for other folks in your career that you might have worked with. But the question is, who is a woman in your life that has had a profound impact on you and your career?

I would say Sue Stevens Mullen is a real estate attorney in Reston. She started, I think, in 2000. I started in '99. To be honest, there weren't a ton of women in the office. Madison McIlwain at that time, and she's been at Cooley her entire career, and so have I. Her father was Justice John Paul Stevens, and she has had not only an amazing real estate career— she negotiates very high-profile leases around the world for Cooley and for our clients— but she's also really successful personally. Her husband is a very famous partner at another law firm. She's got two wonderful girls. She helped her dad at the late stages of his career. She's written a book. And so I've really always admired her, and we've stayed friends. And I just, I'm really proud for all that she's done, not only professionally in her career, but also personally.

Thank you for sharing that story. And Rachel, thank you so much for joining us on the podcast today. I personally found this conversation incredibly enlightening and fascinating, and I'm sure our listeners will as well. So thank you for coming on today.

Thank you so much, Claudia. Thank you, Madison McIlwain. It was a real honor to be with you guys today.

Awesome.

Support for The Room comes from Silicon Valley Bank. Silicon Valley Bank understands these questions can keep founders up at night like Claudia. For over 35 years, Silicon Valley Bank has helped high-growth companies through scalable financial solutions, plus insights and expertise that many other banks just can't, which could be why 50% of US-based venture-backed tech and life science companies bank with SVB. Learn more at svb.com/next. Silicon Valley Bank, built for what's next.

Cooley is a global law firm built around startups and in venture capital. The firm has been devoted to entrepreneurs and investors, partnering with both to transform breakthrough ideas into successful companies. Cooley works with thousands of entrepreneurs and newly formed companies to ensure that they are structured for growth and long-term success. Since 2005, Cooley has been ranked the number one most active law firm representing VC-backed companies going public. Learn more at cooley.com and cooleygo.com. Lawley's award-winning free legal resource for startups.

All opinions expressed by Claudia Madison and podcast guests are solely their own opinions and do not reflect the opinion of the 5EC. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as a basis for investment decisions.