Founding a Venture Firm in Our 20s Learnings from Behind Genius Ventures Fund 1 with Josh & Paige

Hello everyone and welcome back to Seed to Harvest. Today I have a very special guest on. This is my co-founder behind Genius Ventures, Josh Slisselman. He's also the chief of staff at Sirius Financial, a Forbes 30 Under 30 venture capital standout, and he lives in LA and grew up in New Jersey. He told me not to give him an intro like that, but I'm gonna do it anyways. But I'm super excited to have Josh on to walk through our learnings of raising a venture fund at quite a young age. I was 22 and Josh was 24 when we started. So contrary to a recent tweet that said, if you are 23 and work in VC, you have a fake job, we definitely had a very real job. So Josh, with that, let's talk about how we originally met on the internet.

Um, so It was in October or November of 2021 and—

No, 2020.

Was it 2020? Oh my God.

Wow. Yeah, dude.

Yeah, that's right. Wow. Almost 2 years. So basically one of our mutual Twitter friends—

Go Paul. Paul.

Go Paul. Basically reached out to me cuz I was planning on raising a fund at the behest of Arjun Sethi and Sumit Ghosh. Paul was like, hey, there's this girl named Paige and she seems to be going through a similar stage to you and maybe you two could end up raising a fund together. And I was like, well, I don't know about that, but I'd love to connect with her. It seems like she's angel investing and it'd be cool to like network with someone else who's forming syndicates and doing syndicates while they're young and building a track record. And so we got like connected and it was like an immediate, just friendship just struck up, just like geeking out about the business of venture and like You know, ways to like scale our, our syndicates and scale our angel investing and, and like the deals we were looking at and like what interested us. And from there we started doing like biweekly calls and then biweekly calls kind of just became like daily texts.

I would literally like FaceTime you and be like, do you wanna hear some crazy stuff that I saw in the early stage market? And you're like, yeah, I need, I need the tea.

We really bonded over the gossip for sure. The goss. No, but it was one of those things where like definitely an instant connection and just like very like-minded and like around December or January, it kind of just became clear that we should partner up.

I wanna dig deeper into this. So as we were going through this process and getting to know each other better, it was kind of in the back of both of our minds around like what a partnership might look like in the future. So I, I was reading through my old journals and we actually, in like the, the second big outbreak of COVID we were like, okay, we need to meet in person and hash this out. So we drove, like Josh lives in LA, I live in San Diego. So we drove halfway to Laguna and we sat outside the Montage, like 6 feet apart outside wearing masks with like our little notebooks. It's like, do you remember what the questions were that we talked through? I have like some of my notes here, but I'm Curious to hear kind of like what were the questions in your mind that you were going through as kind of you were evaluating bringing on a partner? Yeah, it was interesting.

Well, first of all, I think we used that photo in our memo, which was really funny. The memo that we sent out to, to LPs where I also look like a goofball. But no, I remember that meeting like very vividly. We met in Laguna. We sat there for a few hours, I think. Yeah. And, and the first thing we were focused on was like, what is it? What does a thesis look like if we work together? And I think we came together on that pretty quickly, what that would look like, which it ended up changing a little bit as we started deploying the fund and realizing like, we could get into that, but we started realizing what we liked.

It's interesting. I think there's a distinct shift that goes from you pursuing your own individual, like investing interests. on angel investing versus managing other people's money, because there's no one like double-checking the decisions. Like it's all us and we're like sticking our necks out on the line and saying like, these are the founders and teams that we have conviction in, which is much different than like if you're investing your capital, you're not necessarily defending it to anyone. And then in a syndicate, those people are kind of opting in or out of those deals. And so at the end of the day, it's not those deals. And so at the end of the day, it's not really your decision, but for a fund, it very much is. So I think the development of the thesis early on was a really great early framework. And then, yeah, what were the other things that we talked through?

Well, just to add on one point to that, I think we also like realized other than managing other people's money and how that frames our investment decisions, for us, we realized the product we were selling to LPs was very different from the product we were selling to founders.

Yeah.

And we were like, let's like align the two. So that was an interesting discovery while at the very beginning of our investing journeys together.

Yeah.

In terms of other things at Laguna Beach that we talked about, it was little things, little things that were big, like such as like who gets paid what. At the time you were going to be part-time while working at WorkOS and I was going to be full-time working on the fund, which ended up flip-flopping, which I'm sure we'll get into and why that happened.

But Yeah.

So there was that. And then there was the, you know, like even hiring in the future, not even for this fund, but like what does it look like?

Yeah. Like long-term, 10 years in the future. I think that's one of the things that's a common misconception is if you, you can't really like dabble in building a venture fund, like you're building one and then you have a fiduciary responsibility to your investors for the next 10+ years. Like it's not something you can go lightly into. So I think it was really important to have those Uh, conversations early on and make sure that we were aligned on values and like how we were gonna treat each other if we were having a tough conversation and things like that. There's definitely like no absence of difficult conversations. But I, yeah, I guess like to set the stage for how things were back in that timeframe. So I think we had gone home from Laguna and we, I don't know, did we say we were gonna work together when we were in Laguna or did we like? We're like, let's give it a couple days where we can, like, I think it was over Christmas, right? We're like, we'll think about it over Christmas.

Basically in Laguna, we're like, okay, we're pretty aligned. We, you know, we have things that we agree on. There's very few things we disagree on, but the things that we disagree on, we can figure out, like portfolio construction and checks, number of checks, et cetera. Let's round up after the new year to see if we're still as excited about investing with each other as we were. Before the end of the year. We hopped on a Zoom call pretty shortly after the new year and we were like, let's send it, let's do it.

We're like, all right, we're gonna do this thing. Tell me more, cuz you had way more interfacing with the legal and like the fund administration side of things on the earlier side. And we'll talk about this a bit as like our responsibilities shifted. As the fun went on, especially when I ended up going on full-time. But what was that like?

Yeah, so the, the fortunate thing was like having worked at like a VC firm from the ground up prior to this. Oh yeah. I, I was like able to know what the process looked like, but I still made like a ton of mistakes and like we still ended up spending more on like legal than I would've hoped. But, but I will say like we also avoided a lot of mistakes and I think A lot of what I did early on when like forming the fund and even choosing a fund administrator and like interfacing with them was ask a lot of questions, which I think sometimes emerging fund managers are afraid to do because there's like this notion that, ah, you should know what you're doing. You should know what you're doing.

Yeah.

Yeah. And it's like, that's not true. Like the amount of emerging fund managers that, especially on the back office side, that absolutely have no idea what they're doing. They need help. There needs to be more education, resources, guides. That was actually originally the reason why I wanted to partner with you was like just the education that you provided to your community. And I think for me personally, there was a steep learning curve for sure.

Yeah.

Yeah. And I wasn't afraid to admit what I didn't know. And I think fortunately we were both able to have resources around us where we were able to be supported and guided. And I will say like most emerging fund managers don't have those like resources and That's like a huge fault in our ecosystem for sure.

Yeah, definitely. Let's talk about how long is an LPA?

I don't know. It's very long. And I, I know you wanna know what makes it even longer when you have to make amendments to it.

Mm-hmm.

Definitely.

No, I have this note. It was kind of like some of our learnings and we can dig in this more 'cause I wanna focus on fundraising next. But it was like we learned these lessons in excruciating detail, so like One of 'em was like, you can't turn off the fundraising lever once you turn it on. So this, this takes away a lot of the mystique, which we can talk about in a bit. The second one, I was like, read your docs. Our LPA was off by 4 letters and 1 word in our agreement, and it cost us $5K in legal bills having to message 90-something of our investors to get them to sign a DocuSign saying that it was okay, we were gonna change it, and almost our salary for a year. So. To all those emerging fund managers out there, read your LPA, which is a limited partner agreement. Basically what you sign and your investors sign in a venture fund that details how you're gonna operate, different like legal aspects of it. But I thought that was funny. It can be off by a little bit and—

It can ruin everything. Read that LPA, redline it. Don't skip over it. Every little detail matters, even like You know, like warehouse provisions and like all these other little things that like don't come in the standard term sheet. Like you have to ask for it. Like legal counsel's not gonna give it to you.

Yeah, it was super interesting. Like now it's like, okay, when I receive legal docs, I'm like going through and I have to write a plain text summary. And if there's anything that I like don't understand of the plain text summary, you go to your legal counsel and be like, can you confirm that this means this?

And it'll save you.

It's way less expensive to do that. Yeah.

Yeah. It'll save you money and time by like, just, again, I think the theme here is like, ask questions. I think like that's ultimately like why we got into venture too, is curiosity, right?

Yeah.

So, yeah.

Okay. So I want to talk about what did it feel like getting your first commitment? I'll share my story, but what did it feel like getting your first commitment for the fund?

Well, Honest. So there was that time period in October where I literally started the fund. I started fundraising and I like, and I remember the first commitment I got, I think was Samit actually.

Yeah. Shout out Samit.

Samit basically, you know, was like—

Oh, Samit. Samit Ghajri is the ex-CSO of Carta and now runs his own venture fund and is CSO at Instabase now.

Awesome. And he was a huge supporter and I think Arjun was a fast follow. Pretty much after that, but they were the ones who encouraged me to go manage a venture fund. I remember when Sumit said it and was like, you should go do this. I was like, dude, you're crazy.

That's like also something that I think is like really important is just having people early on that tell you that you can do it.

Yeah.

Because yeah, just having someone be like, yeah, you can run a venture fund was such a massive, like people started like asking me about it when I was like tweeting so much about venture and I was like, I thought this was in my 10-year plan, you know?

I feel like for you, the person who really like, like you, you had a few commitments beforehand, but the person who really like let you know that you could do it and that you were able to do it was Andy Wiseman from USB.

Yeah.

I feel like, yeah, I remember that very specifically, like you calling me and being, I can't believe it, Andy's coming in. I, I remember that being a huge, huge deal for you.

Yeah. I remember it was reading it to you before we started recording, but I was super excited to have Andy Wiseman from USB on board for the fund. So excited. I refreshed Like our CRM, like 50 million times today to see what he would reply about check size. And I like went on to talk about like different aspects of our conversation, like like being impressed impressed by my passion for like the craft of investing and asking about like how I learn. And then also he talked about writing like investment memos and how like venture is not about finding good businesses, but it's about spectacular ones. I think like. One of the best things that he told me was like the investment process, just that it's a process and that even like 2 decades in, he's still learning things and like adapting to the markets. And I think that was really powerful to have someone who I had looked up to and respected for a long time. Like it's a learning process. You're not going to get everything right the first time and probably not going to get everything right the 20th time. And it's an industry that involves a high amount of luck as well.

For sure. For sure. No, I think his advice was, you know, when you were relaying it to me, I remember sitting there and being like, this makes a lot of sense.

Like, this guy knows what he's talking about.

This guy knows what he's talking about. It's refreshing to hear, to be honest, because especially in the beginning, like when the yeses started rolling in, especially towards the end of the fund, it was kind of like, okay. But at the beginning of the fund, there was that period where it was just like, oh my God, are we gonna even be able to do this? Should we lower the Yeah. One-size target.

Oh my gosh. We were, we were stressed. I think it's like, so we had set a target of, of $5 million and that's what we ended up raising. But I think that there were definitely bumps along the road where we were going through periods. Like I, I was joking with Josh about it being like the trough of disillusionment where you're like, can I, can we actually do this? I think we were sitting at like $2.5 million for like a couple months of fundraising and it's like no one was committing. We were like asking all of our investors for other intros. They were like, sorry, don't, you know, don't know anyone. Or like, we've already talked to them. And we were just like, is this the end? Like, do we just stop here? And I think we honestly like both just went on vacation for a bit and we're like, it's gonna be fine. We're gonna come. It's gonna be fine. It's just gonna take a bit longer. But I wanna ask you, like, how are you feeling the night of our first close? So we closed on April 1st, 2021. And for context, for those of you listening, first close is basically when you are in business as a venture fund. And it basically means that you close on the different commitments that you've had so far, and then you can start investing off of those commitments. So how did you, how were you feeling the night of first close?

So I'll say what I was feeling the night of, which is very different to what I feel now, now what I know now, but it's like, The night of, I was like super stoked. I'm like, oh my God, this is actually happening. Like, we're actually going to do this. Like, we're actually investing. You, at that point as well, it had been decided you were going to go full-time in the fund.

Yep.

I had just started at Ceres and I was full-time on Ceres, part-time on the fund. And I think, you know, for me, I was just excited. I was like, oh my God, this is going to actually happen. He's just going to finally get to live out the investing dream. I'm going to get to operate and It's like the best of both worlds. I think we're both getting what we wanted out of this. Knowing what I know now, I was a little bit, I would say naive in that I wish we would've closed more money.

I wish we would've closed more money.

On first close? On first close.

Yeah.

Because it really helps move the needle for further closes. And also that period of disillusionment, I think was so tough on us because it was like, We, it was like a 4-month period where we only raised like $800K and—

Yeah, we were like halfway through.

Yeah. The $1.6 million came from like our personal network, really, from our—

It was like all the warm intros we had.

Yeah.

Everything else after that was cold.

Yeah. And then it was like, we had to like, for the rest of the fund, really do a ton of networking on top of investing, on top of a bunch of back office administration. It was a lot. It was way too much for just 2 people, 1 full-time person in one part-time person. And so it was way, way too nuts. And so I wish we would've closed more. And I think like that's a lesson learned. You wanna close as much as you possibly can on first close to make the rest of it just from even emotional and mental standpoint, like easier on you.

Yeah. No regrets. What would you like recommend as a fraction to close on first close?

I think like the bare minimum, knowing what I know now, is you should close at least 40% of the— do at least 40% on first close. The ideal amount that you do on first close is above 50%.

Yeah.

And that, that would be like—

You have confidence you're gonna get there at that point.

Yeah. You have confidence, you have momentum, you're able to start investing. You can really split time between investing and fundraising and not focus as much on fundraising. You know, it can come much more passively and casually, and I think The, the problem is, is like if you close less than that, you end up spending more time on fundraising than actually investing. But you close this money and you have to start deploying it.

Yeah.

And that's like a conflict of interest.

Yeah, it's really interesting because it's very much like a 2-sided sales cycle essentially that you go through, 'cause you're pitching to LPs about this product. And fundraising is such an interesting period of self-discovery because I remember like half of, you know, we talked to so many people and we have 120 incredible investors, which I feel so lucky to have like that large of a community that supports us. But I think it was like you're having 500+ conversations with people and they're like, why are you special? Why are you gonna win? Which when you're like at any age, but especially just coming out of college, I think it, for me it was a big period of like, Who am I? Why am I special? And I think that like fundraising in any capacity has the ability to really like challenge your sense of identity and sharpen it because you have to answer that question like 500 times. And then people get behind that story or narrative and their belief in, in your ability to execute on it.

Well, that's why I'd say the most formative conversation that I think we had in our fundraising period was with Connie from, from, uh, Screen Door and called us out for like being like, don't worry about your age.

Like, yeah, to put this in context, before every pitch that we would start out with, I'd be like, I'm 22 and I'm raising a venture fund. You know, before that, no one had really like called us out on it. And then Connie was like, yo, you guys need to figure out what makes you special beyond you being young, cuz you're not gonna be young forever. And it's also not that defensible. Like, you're not gonna be 22, 24 forever. And if you wanna be in this industry for a long time, that's not gonna be the defining fact that carries you through like multiple cycles of institutional investors. Like, figure out what makes you all special and like your perspective. And that was just like such hard feedback to hear.

But it was very disappointing at the time, but it Outta all the passes that we had, and there were a lot, I think that was the best one.

Yeah.

Because there was like actionable feedback that we could work on. And I think one of the things that was like during the, the period of disillusionment.

That's so good. We were, it was like a very significant check and we were like, we got this. It's gonna happen. We're such a good fit.

And then, well, I think, I think what happened was we refined the pitch and, yeah. Once you refined the pitch, like actually it was like within a month of us refining the pitch, like we started closing like crazy and it, it, it just all unraveled after that.

I so appreciate that feedback, even if it was really hard to hear at the time. Also, it's so funny that you were so stoked. I actually kind of had a low-grade panic attack on the night of our first close. I think I remember calling you, it, it was either that week or that night, and I remember calling you and I was like, oh my gosh, Josh, we're managing like $1.6 million of other people's money? What happens if it goes to zero? Thinking through like all the worst case scenarios. And I remember you just being like, Paige, what if it all goes right? What if it like goes insanely well? And I think that that was kind of a period where I think some other fund managers can probably relate to this, but you just like switch from being so emotionally tied to like dollar amounts to like, Then you start bringing on partners and like the check sizes start to become less relevant. And I think that that was one of the biggest switches, especially, and it was helpful to go through that before we went through the trough of disillusionment because I was like, okay, I'm not necessarily emotionally connected to outcomes as strong as I was before.

Yeah.

But okay, let's talk about how our investing strategy shifted and some of our learnings from Fund 1.

Wow. That's interesting.

Yeah.

At the beginning of the fund, so we even like did discovery checks at the beginning of the fund, like these $10K checks into companies to form our investment process.

And, um, wait, let's talk about why we did that.

Well, I think it's obvious just, just 'cause we hadn't invested together. We were like, how do we invest together? Like, who makes the decisions? And it was like, At the end of the day, what we ended up deciding, you know, for everybody who's listening to this is that we decided, you know, and this did change towards the end of the fund a little bit, but we decided to invest together, which was like, we needed both of us to say yes. And if someone said no, the other person had to make a convincing argument to the other person.

Yeah. Like a Socratic discussion for like 3+ hours on some of the ones that were like more—

We're getting very deep. Very, very deep and sometimes heated.

Yeah. I always really enjoyed those conversations.

Those were fun for sure. And I think it was good gut checks, especially because we had only written a handful of angel checks and done a handful of syndicates, and we were still figuring out what does a good deal really look like? And that's why the discovery checks were great because it didn't really affect portfolio construction, but it allowed us to figure out what our sweet spot was. And I think one of those discovery checks we ended up doing a follow-on investment into with a core check and And that was actually the last discovery check that we wrote. And I think it's actually what helped form the core checks the rest of the fund because it was a company we both spoke to and actually had one of those heated debates because at the time, like, not that I had passed, I was like, I had passed knowing them months ago. Like, this is where you invest in lines, not dots. And so it turned out like they just raised a Series A, so it turned out really well. But I think, you know, a few things that changed is one, like, Going back to the way we make investment decisions, now we're comfortable leaning on the other person where if the other person wants to be like, look, I'm going to invest, we just go, okay. We trust the other person's opinion, especially if it's in their area of expertise.

Like, and I think also like building a higher sense of conviction in our own investing theses. Like, I think that that can be a challenging thing as you're starting out investing. You're like going through that period of self-discovery of like, Portfolio construction and investment thesis really dictate your operating model, whether you're an angel or a syndicate lead or managing a fund. And I think that earlier on we had a rough outline, but I think you really find— I remember Connie actually wrote about this. He was like, I think you need to find your magic in the market and really hone in on it as you're investing and reflect on the decisions that you're making. And I think that's really What Fund 1 has, has been about a lot of years.

Yes. So there's that. That's one thing. Even the way we, you know, I'd say support portfolio companies, like at the beginning it was like check-ins like monthly, and now it's like we're just texting with them and forming like really like actually informal relationships with them. And that's the way we keep tabs. And honestly, I think founders appreciate that more and like, I think like one of my favorite stories from the fund is there's this company in, in our fund that, you know, in terms of traction and revenue-wise was doing amazing. And they, they went out to raise a Series A and kind of all the investors from the seed round left them out to dry but us. And we like—

So like to put it in perspective, we were like quite a small check in their like previous rounds. Yeah.

We like, Literally went to bat for this fund and we helped them find a lead. And I, my favorite moment was I had such an informal relationship with the founder and we would text so much, but I remember he called me at like 3 o'clock in the morning before the meeting with the lead investor that he wanted to lead the round, his Series A, and he was like having a full-blown panic attack. And we kind of just chatted him through it and, you know, calmed him down and he ended Absolutely crushing that meeting. And the investor came in later that day and gave him a term sheet. But for me and Paige, it was like one of those things where forming the informal relationship, like if we hadn't done that with that founder, that would've never happened. Like that phone call, that moment that I could share the joy of him raising a Series A with him. I think that's probably the best part of venture is like when the founders are not only like have conviction in the idea that they're doing, but like the belief in themselves that they can do it. And that's like my favorite moment. That's one of my favorite moments from the fund.

I love that. I just got chills when you were talking about it. I think that's been one of my most rewarding, like, I think about this a lot. It's like, when, when do I feel most alive? And I think for me, one of the things that's been so exciting is to see companies that have either gone through pivots or just like had a really tough time earlier on, hit their stride and like grow and From, you know, 1 to 4 person team to like managing a massive team. One of my favorite examples working with Pallet, when I led a syndicate, it was my first syndicate. Josh like helped me with all the logistics. I had no idea what I was doing in their pre-seed. They're called Cardea. And when I met Kai, it was like 4 person team and now I think they're like 12 or 14 and have an office in New York and I got to go visit. It's just like really rewarding to see the team members that are so stoked to be working on the company and that the hypothesis that they pitched when it was like a Figma mockup is like working and in market and driving value for creators. I think that seeing that company growth has been such an intangible and incredible reward of this job beyond like markups and whatever. It's just like seeing the growth of both the people and the companies.

No, 100%. I mean, Pallets has been a fun company to watch. And honestly, you know, there have been countless stories like that. I mean, there was even one literally a month ago where like, we thought the company was like done actually. We were like, oh my God, even though they have this crazy traction, they can't raise because the market went to, you know, buttocks. But, you know, all of a sudden they ended up getting her seed round led by one of the, I would say like premier firms in the ecosystem. And like, absolutely insane. And like, just even the confidence she had after that was just like so much fun to witness.

I'm just like, we're so stoked for you. It's definitely like a difficult market, so it must have been challenging, whatever. And she writes back and she's like, nah, we were like oversubscribed. We had to turn away investor interest. So I was like, let's go.

That was an awesome moment. And I was like, even her, one of my favorite moments with her, that was one of the quickest yeses we actually ever gave. And like, there were a A lot of people who passed. I remember I called you after 20 minutes in the meeting where I was like, oh, we're totally investing.

I think you were still like on the Zoom. You were still on the Zoom and you were texting me and you were like, I just met this incredible founder. Like she will literally like run through walls to build this company. And I think that that's been a, a big through line of our investing is I think this is kind of like an Easter egg on our website, but it says like no lead needed. Like we build our own conviction. And I think that that's been a really rewarding part is like finding founders who we really resonate with that have found a lot of like nos and then taking bets on them when they might not have a lead involved and like kind of rallying our big community of investors to get them connected. That's been, that's been really cool to see.

Yeah. And she's one of the best examples of that because she had a bunch of people pass on her because originally the price that she listed at was too high. And then literally when she Put down the price. Everybody wanted to come in and she was like, no, no, no. And we wanted to come in, we didn't care what the price was, so she allowed us to come in.

Yeah.

I think one of the lessons from that is even like, if you have high conviction in a founder, yes, be price sensitive, but only to a certain point. And it wasn't like there was that big of a jump between the valuation that she went out to market with and the one we ended up investing at. You know what, she had a ton of nos and like, There was no reason for people to be passing on her, to be honest with you, in my opinion. And so I'm really happy for her.

Yeah, me too. So what is next for us, Josh?

It was December of this year. It was shortly before my birthday, I think, actually. And Paige came up to LA. We were doing another in-person meeting. You know, we, we had been doing them like bimonthly or even monthly and mixing between San Diego and LA. And Paige came up and this was a particularly stressful time. Can't go into too much details, but Sirius was like taking off and basically my time has been spread more thin than usual cuz I've had increased responsibilities and priorities. And I've really enjoyed my time working at Sirius so much that I, I kind of found my dream job without even knowing it. Which I never would've like expected or thought. December came around and Paige and I had been talking for months after our final close about what does Fund 2 look like. We kind of came to the conclusion that Fund 2 was going to be done separately between the two of us. And the reasoning is just 2 reasons to be very simple. One, we just have different long-term visions for the fund. Mine kind of changed based off my experience At Series and fundraising. That's not anything to do with Paige or I, it's just like interests change.

Well, yeah, 'cause I think you're just such an incredible operator investor, and I think that your operating brings so much context and value to the companies that you work with. And that wasn't something that, that was something that you were really excited to continue, whereas I was like, all right, I want to be totally full, full-time on the fund and like build a big institutional firm. And I feel like that was, that was just like a a difficult balance to walk because it was non-negotiable for both of us.

I think it was like one of those things that it was the December conversation clarity of that. I think the second thing was like, you know, we invest in the future of work and play at BGV, and I've really enjoyed doing that. But where my interests now lie, again, due to my experience at Series, is in picks and shovel companies, specifically around crypto and fintech infrastructure. I was actually going to be done investing, just going to angel invest, but Again, a few people approached me and so I am doing a separate fund called Picks and Troubles actually. And we'll be deploying from it, but at pre-seed and seed stage. But again, different thesis from BGV. And I think also the way I want to grow the firm is different from the way Paige wants to grow the firm. And honestly, neither of us are wrong. And I think it fits our strat, like Picks and Shovels, like my strategy for Picks and Shovels fits me personally as an investor.

Yeah.

And the strategy that Paige has for BGV and the way she wants to grow BGV fits Paige's strategy as an investor. And I think the one thing that I'm really grateful for is a majority of our LPs were really, really supportive when they heard that we decided to split ways and thought, you know, one, the way that it was handled for the most part was handled very well. And two was, You know, that I was amicable. And I think that's—

As you can see.

We've been trusting. Yeah. As you can see, we're, we're, you know, we're wearing our matching sweatshirts. Of course. But no, I think like the one thing that like, for me that I get to take away, regardless of companies that get huge founders that we get to work with, the potential monetary returns that we see, like for me, I've made a lifelong friend and there's no price that you can put on that. And what I get out of this Fund 1 more than anything.

Yeah, I think it was just like such an incredible period to grow up together. I really feel like I like grew up in venture with you. Like we got to go through this incredible self-discovery journey and I'm excited to like continue collaborating with you in the future. We'll be working together for the next 10 years minimum on, uh, like returning the cash from Fund 1. Um, Which is, which is so fun. It's an excuse to get to talk to you.

It's not like you're not gonna FaceTime me randomly on a Tuesday to be like, hey, by the way, do you think this would be like a good tweet?

I get in my like coffee manic state and then I'm like, yo, like, do you think, what was the most recent one that I sent you?

I don't know, but it was fucking hilarious. It was so funny.

Funny is like, I didn't think I was a funny person until I met Josh and then he just started laughing at all my jokes.

I think I just laugh easily. I, I think that's a thing. As negative as I am, I'm also a really happy-go-lucky guy.

I wouldn't say you're negative. I feel like you're like cautiously optimistic.

There we go. I like to say pragmatic. So one of my friends, his nickname is Mr. Positive Vibes. And, and there's like a picture of me looking angry cuz they used to call me Mr. Negative Vibes. And there's a picture of me being like super like, and there's a picture of him being like, and then side by side.

It was like a, it was like a running joke of us working together is like, I feel like our like dynamic played really well, plays really well off of each other.

I feel like it kind of flipped too, whereas like, you know, at the beginning, like I was like good cop and you were kind of bad cop. You're now kind of good cop and I'm now kind of bad.

Yeah, it was just like about growing into like our different roles and responsibilities. And I think in the, in the beginning, I felt honestly like a bit insecure with like my understanding of fund administration back office stuff. And I feel like you were just like light years ahead of me based on your previous experience. And then as I gained more like confidence that I was like, oh, okay, cool. Like I like understand this more. And so that was definitely helpful. I think that it's something that every fund manager goes through of like having a bit of like Huh. I need to like figure all this stuff out. And there's like no class in school that teaches you anything about it.

Which is crazy to me. I, the one day, like some university just needs to like have a Venture 101. Like, I, I'm just blown away that like—

Dude, I teach one actually at CSUN.

I, I know you, I, I know you do, but it's like, it blows me away that it's not like a thing at all schools that people can opt into and learn about.

Yeah.

'Cause I feel like A bunch of people who go to school specifically in STEM majors, their goal is to either go work for a corporation or a startup or potentially found their own startup. And it's like there's no education on even how to negotiate stock options, what the different types of stock options there are, what does investing look like? Why do people invest? How do they invest? Where does money come from? All these questions that Yeah, that's crazy.

Well, I know we're at time. This has been such an incredible conversation. I'm so happy that we got to have it, and hopefully you all enjoyed listening to it. I would definitely love to hear either if you're a fund manager and you resonate with what it felt like, or if you're getting started in your career and you've also gone through that like challenge of self-discovery and learning more about yourself. And building great friendships along the way. Feel free to tweet at me, Paige Finn with three Ns, or Josh. Josh, can you spell your Twitter please?

Jake Slushy, J S L I S H I.

Thanks so much for tuning in today to Seed to Harvest. If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to subscribe wherever your favorite podcast listening platform is. I'll be releasing new episodes weekly, and if you have any. If you have any questions or comments, feel free to let me know on Twitter. That's Paige Finn, Paige and then Finn with 3 N's. Thanks and see you again next week. Bye.