One Ring to Rule them All: Why We Invested in Lotus with CEO Dhaval Patel | Ep 76

The extreme analogy I'd use is imagine if you were building a spaceship to get to Mars.

Yeah.

You get one shot, right? I mean, you're not gonna keep launching over and over. Yeah. Basically the idea is to not constantly try to grab your attention. It should appear when you need it and completely disappear when you don't need it. You shouldn't even realize technology is there. It should sort of immerse itself in your life.

Welcome back to Seed to Harvest, a podcast hosted by me, Paige Finn Doherty. I'm the founding partner behind Genius Ventures. Which is an early-stage venture firm investing in the future of work and the future of play. Today, I'm very excited to be joined by one of our portfolio CEOs, Deval Patel of Lotus. I'm really excited for Deval to share more of his story, and I think that Lotus represents a really unique opportunity in the aging market, using a simple design to provide agency and independence to people with mobility challenges. Deval is the definition of a customer-obsessed founder. even volunteering to stay at an elder care facility during a pilot with his fiancée for a month, which I think is just so incredible. And I met Deval through the Pitch Experience, so this episode will be airing after the Pitch Podcast. So if you're curious to see more of the, our full investment process, feel free to check out that episode. And yeah, Deval, welcome to the show. I'm really excited to have you on.

Excited to be here. Thank you, Paige.

Yes. Yes, of course. Okay. Do you wanna, I would love to start off with, let's talk about the problem that you're solving as it stands today and why it matters to you.

Yeah. So the nutshell version is smart home technology today is neither easy to set up or easy to use. And as much as it affects everyone, it disproportionately affects people like me, people with limited mobility. And so. Keith and Polly, I was born with twisted knees, and over the years I've been on and off crutches. And one night, actually in this house a few years ago, I had gotten into bed at the end of a long day only to realize I'd left the hallway lights on. But I was too tired to climb out of my bed, hop onto my crutches, hobble 10 feet, turn off the light, hobble back 10 feet, and get back into bed. So I slept with the lights on the entire night. And woke up in the morning thinking, well, if someone like me, an engineer managing a division at Apple with expertise in wall electronics from Lutron and 37 patents, if someone like me doesn't even have smart home tech, who does? And at the time, someone had gifted me an Amazon Echo speaker sort of 3 months earlier during Christmas, and it was sitting in a drawer sort of gathering dust. And so it got me thinking, what are the challenges with smart home technology today? And If you think about it, to set up smart home tech today is sort of this 3-step process, right? If someone gifts you this smart speaker, well, the first step is it can't talk to your existing wall switches, right? So you have to rewire your existing wall switches to connect to the internet to be able to talk to the smart speaker. Just that step itself, sort of rewiring your switches everywhere, can take 11 hours.

Whoa.

Right? It's a lot of time and effort. Um, and, or $2,000 if you get a contractor. And so that's just step one. Then you have to put a smart speaker everywhere, including private rooms like bedrooms and bathrooms, which a lot of people are not comfortable with. And then the final step is you have to set it all up. So you have to download another app and pair every switch one by one to the speaker. And that's, this is all best case if you own the home. If you rent a home, there's no solution. And this disproportionately, I mean, it affects everyone, but it disproportionately affects people like me. There's 27 million people. With limited mobility, you know, soldiers, older adults, disabled persons, and who end up spending up to 4 hours at home on self-care every day. And so that was the problem we were trying to solve. And our thesis was to only build technology when we started Lotus, is to only build technology that is usable by everyone by optimizing for disability first. Because by doing that, you're helping the people who need it the most. But in a way that is ultimately venture backable and scalable. And so that's, that's kind of the genesis.

Oh, thank you for sharing. One of the things that really stood out in the pitch experience was the way that you tell your story and incorporating market insights and your own personal draw to solving this problem. And I was just listening to you talk about it again. I was like, oh, And I, I would love, yeah, I, well, I think like, I, I remember saying that to you at the pitch and you had talked about like how much you had practiced your story. Can you talk a little bit about like what it is like to like practice telling your story as an entrepreneur? Because I think that that's like one of, one of the things that like doesn't get talked about that much is like, it takes a lot of practice.

It's true.

To get this eloquent about talking about it.

It's, it's very true. And it doesn't sort of just happen. And case in point, I'll be vulnerable. When I first asked my very first advisor, Dr. Ambika Bham, to become an advisor to Lotus, it took me 45 minutes to explain to her what we were doing and why. It took us 45 minutes. And I remember the very first, you know, I stopped, you know, 40, after 45 minutes, I paused and I said, okay.

All right.

What questions do you have? Or what concerns do you have? And I'll never forget the very first point she made was, You need to figure out a way to explain this more concisely, which makes a ton of sense. And so over time it came down to 20 minutes and 15, 5 minutes. And I think more recently, I think I figured out a way to say it in 3 minutes and yeah, and sort of just capture the completely new. Yeah, super short. And yeah, it was a ton of practice and Ironically, a bunch of it was helped by writing it all down.

Oh yeah, that makes sense. I've been thinking about that a lot because I, like, a lot of the podcast is conversational, but I'll do some pieces that are on my investing approach that I've written down before and I'm reading them and I'm like, wow, who is she? No, it, it's, so I feel like writing can help clarify because you have to cut out all of the extraneous words.

Yeah.

It's easier to edit.

That's cool. After having written it down and seeing what you're saying, rather than trying to self-edit in your mind, at least for me. Um, and so, and the other thing is then you can add metrics like times, you know, how long did it take me to explain just the problem? How long did it take me to explain the solution? And then you can see sort of relatively speaking, oh, it took me 2 minutes and 45 seconds to talk about the problem, but it took me 5 minutes to talk about this, you know.

Yeah.

They're disproportionate. So how do I sort of somewhat even it all out?

Yeah. Okay. One of my favorite things also is how you write your investor updates, like stories. One of the questions I often ask in our reference calls is like, how is this founder on investor communications? Because one of the things I think about is if I have a lot of clarity on the business that I'm helping, I can brag about you in other conversations. I can like provide help. I have more context for what's going on in the business. And I think you write some of like my favorite investor updates, even though you're a recent addition to the portfolio. So I'd love if you could share maybe some of the stories that you've included in your investor updates, if you're comfortable sharing.

Sure. I think I fully agree with that philosophy. It was basically to make it easy to read and memorable. And I remember at the, when the, when I first started sending out investor updates, I figured, you know, for most investors, they have a ton of companies in their portfolio. They're probably getting tons of these emails all the time. And I, you know, I got to read a few and they're very sort of, you know, sort of business report-like, which is, which is perfectly fine. But I figured if you're going to get 10 or 20 or 30 of them, after a while, they sort of either start to blur out or, you know, they all start to feel the same structure and universally seems to be Everyone resonates with stories. Everyone likes listening to stories. Everyone remembers stories. And so I decided to sort of take a little bit of a risk and go out on a limb. I didn't, I honestly didn't know if it was the right decision at the time. I really thought a lot of investors would write back saying, oh my God, you're the worst founder we've—

It's long. Yeah.

I mean, it's long. This is not professional. You know, you don't know what you're doing and The imposter syndrome still rears its head a lot, but over time I've gotten enough feedback where it's been more good and practically no bad, where most people have said, hey, we really enjoy reading these and it was engaged to the very end. And so I think my rule of thumb is A, to be vulnerable when I'm writing those investor updates. It's just, here's what was going on through my mind and here's what I was thinking and here's what actually happened.

Yeah.

That's one. And the other is sort of to be as raw as possible, to be as unfiltered as possible. And I think, I feel like you really genuinely have a human connection at the end of that. So I think—

Do you go back and read them?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Especially when sometimes when, you know, when you're not having such a good week, I think reading the email is sort of a good reminder of, you know, cuz it's written in your own voice. It's not sort of this third-party passive report, it's Sort of in the voice of this is what I was doing and thinking. And yeah, it, it's a good reminder of sort of how far we've come. I mean, Kate and Boyd, just this conversation, right? Remembering that it used to take me 45 minutes to explain what we were doing to now 3 minutes. Yeah. Feels like we've come a long way. So my favorite, one of my favorite stories actually, to answer your original question, was the Times Square experience. Which was everything to do with how we got onto Times Square, onto a billboard in Times Square, what it took to do the trip and everything that happened in the course of that trip going to our very first pitch competition. And so it was just a crazy rollercoaster ride in that.

Yeah, I love that. I, I'm, I'm reading Andre Agassi's memoir Open, and one of the quotes that really stuck out as you were talking about going back over your investor updates was, He was talking about how he, his mind was like on a backspin. And I feel like oftentimes as a founder, you are more on like a forward spin where you're constantly thinking about the future and how you can improve and things you need to do and like your long-term strategic vision. And I do think that having those very like raw and vulnerable investor updates to go back and read when you're having a tough day is like, okay, reminding yourself why you do it and like things that used to be really challenging for you or were massive roadblocks. So you can look back on and be like, that was, that was nothing compared to this.

Yeah. Yeah.

And like continuously do that. But it made me, it made me think of that quote.

No, it's very true. I also, I think I've read somewhere where I'd heard in sort of, uh, one of the investors saying sort of a forum where over time, if all you see are investor updates from a specific company that is only good news, right? It's just the good news. Then after a while, you're not sure if like, is it going well? Well, I mean, yeah, 'cause it's a startup, right? So something's always, you know, there's ups and downs.

You're like, I know there's gotta be something.

There's gotta be something, right? And so you'd rather it builds credibility if the founder is able to just genuinely talk about, well, these are the things that went well. These are the things that didn't go quite according to plan, but here's how I dealt with it, or here's how the team dealt with it, and we're figuring it out. You know, we. Some things we have answers to and we've fixed. Some things we don't have answers to, but we have plans. And so that, that I remember that sort of stuck with me when I was starting to write Investor Update was more vulnerable and honest I can be. Here's the, here's kind of the reality. And my thesis, which seems to be true more and more over time, was people will appreciate not the lack of problems, having problems, than having the fortitude to push through them. Mm-hmm.

So yeah. Yeah, I love that. Oh, that makes me so— I always enjoy our conversations.

Yeah.

I think, so one of the things that we've talked about so far has been like more about your story and the problem. I would love to switch gears and talk more about the early days of building Lotus. How did you come up with the idea for a universally usable ring paired with light switch covers? Was there a light bulb moment? Was it a long period of experimenting? And given your background at Apple, I would love to maybe have you weave in some of your design philosophy.

Yeah, I, I think the nutshell version is early on I followed sort of the human-centered design process, but I was extremely unsure if that was a smart idea. In fact, case in point, to put this in perspective with actual data, I spent 9 months just interviewing people with different kinds of disabilities. But, you know, if you think about it, you just, you know, you've quit your job, you've decided to do this startup, and you're, you know, you still meet your friends from time to time. And for 9 months you have nothing to show. You have nothing to show. Because all I was doing for 9 months was Interviewing people. I mean, these are very detailed interviews.

Yeah.

9 hours each, sort of spread over 3 days. And they were single blind. So the users that I was interviewing, I didn't know them and they didn't know what idea I had. So, you know, 8 of the 9 hours were just asking them about their day. You wake up in the morning, what do you do? What do you use? How do you sort of do XYZ? What challenges do you have doing XYZ? How do you get around them today? How do you use technology today? Sort of, you know, genuinely immersing yourself just in their complete life story to the point where if you had to close your eyes, you could visualize everything from when they wake up to when they sleep completely, right? Like I get out of bed, here's what happens. I go to the bathroom, here's what happens. I get up to go watch TV, here's what, you know, everything. But for 9 months, I was terrified because every time I would meet someone and they would say, oh, you're doing a startup, this must be exciting. What, what stage are you at? For 9 months, I had nothing to show. Right. I did, I intentionally didn't build prototypes. I didn't hire a team, but as a result, I had nothing to show. Now, of course, sort of present day, present day Devolve sort of thinks previously Devolve, because now we have this massive solid foundation where every time sort of someone asks me for a design decision, I can pull out, you Not just why, but a user quote.

Yeah.

As to why, you know, like Keith's point, why a ring? Well, one of our users explicitly said, hey, you know, I don't really wear anything to bed. In fact, if I wear an Apple Watch to bed or any watch to bed, it gets caught in my significant other's hair. You know, like specific quotes that I can pull out for very clear reasons. And so, yeah, for the first 9 months it was terrific. But yeah, we, the process we followed. Was A, genuinely just falling in love with the problem and not the solution. So I had this idea, but I was also convinced it was a stupid idea at the time. Why use infrared? Everyone else is chasing the internet. There must be a good reason. You know, lots of sharp people have come before me. I'm not the sharpest person in the world. You know, there would be clearly a reason why nobody's doing this. And this is probably one of the stupidest ideas anyone's ever thought. And so. I had the idea, but I was convinced that it was the wrong idea. But at the same time, I couldn't shake it off. So I said, okay, we'll keep it to the side. Let's just interview folks constantly. And so that was part of the process. The other part of the process, and I'll bring in sort of the Apple side, was eliminating things from technology. And so our, one of our big sort of principle Lures is technology should appear when needed, but disappear when not. We actually take pride in sort of not being front and center. And a lot of sort of Apple design philosophy is embedded into that, which is, if you notice, most things with Apple products are actually minimal, where if there's not an LED needed, then they'll take it out. If it doesn't need to sort of be near, it's not. Basically the idea is to not constantly try to grab your attention. It should appear when you need it and completely disappear when you don't need it. You shouldn't even realize technology is there. It should sort of immerse itself in your life. And I remember for Lotus, we started working backwards. So if the problem is rewiring, well, let's not figure out how to make technology that helps you do all the things. How do we make it so that there's no rewiring involved?

No wires.

Yeah. You just cannot. That's the starting constraint. Whatever technology you make, there cannot be rewiring involved. Well, if you think backwards, and I was thinking about this sort of a week ago, the reason everything has wiring is because if it's connected to the internet, it needs power all the time because it has to stay connected to the internet all the time. Well, if it needs power all the time, we need to have wires. So what if it wasn't connected to the internet all the time? What are technologies that, you know, that only pop up when you need them, but they don't?

Yeah.

We connect to the internet all the time. Case in point, your TV remote.

Mm-hmm.

Right? You, you just press the button and it takes power when it needs it, but the rest of the time it's just hanging around, doesn't take power. And so order of elimination, trying to remove rewiring is what led to sort of magnets and infrared. Not needing apps also led to infrared. Not needing, you know, to replicate a speaker in every room led to sort of something wearable. Not needing 2 hands to make it accessible to everyone is what led to a ring. And so sort of the order of elimination is what naturally led itself down this rabbit hole. But again, true to the thesis, if you make something that a blind person can use and then you give it to any one of us, well, we can still use it, but now we can also use it in the dark. You can use it when you're chopping onions in the kitchen. You can use it when you've taken off your glasses and are looking for your glasses.

Whoa.

And so there's all these use cases when you just optimize not for the corner unit, like the worst case tolerance, but the corner case user, as is often referred to. And so solving there helps you solve for everyone anyway, and it helps align financial impact with social impact. So why not do that all the time?

That's so cool. So I, I think like one of the things that I've thought about a lot is like a lot of venture funds. don't invest in hardware, especially like consumer-oriented hardware. And I think one of the things I'm most excited by now, we've made 4 consumer hardware investments across the portfolio. And I think like one of the things I've written down is just all of the founders that we've backed from like Malin at Hearth Display to Shail at The Last Gameboard to Andy Huang at, uh, Averon. Just, you all are so resilient. And I think one of the interesting things I've thought about is like, why as a consumer hardware founder approach the venture world? Like, like how did you think about making that distinction between building the product and selling it to raising venture financing? How did you think through that decision?

Yeah, I think, you know, when you're, when you're used to doing hardware, I was at Apple for about 8 and a half years before this. I managed a division. The one thing you get used to sort of gets trained in you very early on because you're doing hardware.

Yeah.

Is unlike software, you can't constantly be iterating.

Ooh.

You, you, you can't just, that's interesting. You can't launch something and sort of say, okay, tomorrow I'm gonna adjust it and the day after I'm gonna adjust it again, which you can do in software. Yeah. But you can't do that in hardware. Right. You know, it'll take you at least A few weeks, if not a few months to sort of make hardware changes. And so you, it's sort of like, well, the extreme analogy I'd use is imagine if you were building a spaceship to get to Mars.

Yeah.

You get one shot, right? I mean, you're not gonna keep launching over and over. And so you get really, really good at planning and simulating constantly. So you go from iterating the design. To simulating constantly and planning constantly. Like that's all you're doing all the time. Yeah. There's a great quote. I think it was Eisenhower. In the great battles of war, plans are useless, but planning is indispensable. Which is, you know, anytime you make a plan, it never survives.

Yeah.

It changes constantly, but the act of planning is what makes you super resilient to any change that is needed in real time. And, and, you know, it was the same with venture and it was the same with building the product. You know, I took 9 months to sort of really architect it right. But then it's sort of been, it's taken off. It was similar with venture. I didn't take VC funding for literally as long as I could. I mean, we had, I mean, when Paige, when you and I met, we had a team of, and it's grown again since, but we had 7 full-time people, 5 part-time people, and 4 or 5 interns and no one had drawn a salary. And it had been the second person to join the team had been on the team for about 18 months at that point.

Yeah.

And we, we stayed as long as we could, as lean as possible to prove that, yeah, there was definitely traction. There was willingness to pay. There was product market fit. And so as long as possible, we stayed as lean as possible. And then at that point, when we were really confident, that's when we decided to raise, you know, venture funds. And so I think for what it's worth, that's been my mindset, which is plan, plan, plan, plan, plan as much as possible. And then when you're convinced, when you've sort of, you know, dotted the i's and crossed the t's, pretty much every single one, there's nothing left. At that point you sort of go, you know, then you pour in the octane gas and, and yeah, build a rocket ship.

That's super cool. I'm really excited about what you're building. I would love to talk a little bit about like our investment process and then I'll have you maybe ask me some questions about this. So I think some of the reasons why we chose to invest in Lotus is Deval, as you can tell, is incredibly passionate about solving this problem and has been magnetic about attracting a team that was willing to not draw a salary for, you know, 18 months. I think, and the problem is widespread. So just in the limited mobility space, over 27 million individuals don't have this like independence and agency that Lotus offers. And then Deval is a technical founder with years of experience in the hardware space where he has held senior engineering positions at Apple and executive VP positions in the space as well. I think most of the reservations and risks that we wrote about as well is Hardware is hard. Like, that's like, that's, but that's a, that's a risk that we're willing to take because I think, as you mentioned, there's a unique set of challenges as opposed to a traditional software business. You can't iterate, iterate, iterate. It's like you have to continuously plan and produce the best product that you can at the time. And, you know, execution risk is inherent, as with any early stage investment. I mean, it's, it's really interesting. Like the, the total addressable market of like wearables, wellness, home tech space is like over a Yeah. And it should be expected that incumbents may invest in this space, but I think what mitigated that risk for us was your propensity for simplicity in your design. I think you were very, very specific with like this incredible breadth of user interviews that I haven't really heard anyone go as deep into the space as you have. So yeah, we're really excited to be Investing in Lotus and in you, Taval. With that, can you share a little bit more about what it's been like working with me and behind Genius Ventures and what's stood out?

Yeah, absolutely. I can say without reservation, you are one of the nicest, warmest, and most connected to founders, truly a founder-friendly VC that I've ever met. And obviously if anyone's been through fundraising process, you can talk to hundreds of VCs. You were genuinely just, you had the founders' back at all times, and that's what you have at the forefront for all your decisions, which was, it was a pleasant surprise. I wasn't quite expecting that. You know, I was expecting you sort of make an investment and then if I have a problem, I could come to you.

Mm-hmm.

I think while that was absolutely true, and you know, even within, I think one week of the investment, I was already messaging you with like texting you with questions and For what it's worth, for all the listeners, Paige responds in almost real time. It's crazy.

Which is kind of extremely online. Yeah.

Which is, which is kind of shocking to me cuz you have a ton of portfolio companies. I mean, how you sort of help everyone in real time is beyond me, but I mean, it sort of goes to show you're constantly just there to help founders. I don't, I honestly don't know how you do it, Paige.

Oh, okay. Well, I, I will say I am not the best texter. I think I optimize for like, if there is something urgent, I'm really good about replying. I'm not as good to replying about scheduling.

Oh yeah, that's fine.

I mean, but, but it's like if you, if you text me and you have like a thoughtful question, like I'm like, oh, perfect. I can like think about this in my own time and respond. And I think I, yeah, I'm pretty good about doing that, but I'm definitely not a perfect texter. No, no, no. But I do respond.

I mean, for, I, I'll share my experience. Most of our questions were really sort of strategically very important and very urgent, right? Yeah. Should we take this check? Should we take this investor? Is this deal reasonable?

Should we sort of, you know, those are things I have like a lot of perspective on as well, 'cause I've like seen now, I don't know, 38 companies in portfolio, 12 have raised follow-on financing from Fund 1 alone. And it's now I've like been, I've been through like many rounds of financing and how things have played out, you know, a year or two after.

Right. Like in our case, one of the biggest questions that I had to decide on was we ended up getting oversubscribed by a lot. Almost a little over 200%. And, you know, sort of our conversation, Paige, were around, well, should we take more? Should we not take more? How do we, how do we sort of manage that? And, you know, it was my first time through that rodeo, sort of the opposite problem of what, you know, you accept. And so trying to decide, you know, what to do and how to proceed through that scenario was really helpful. And, you know, I think the longest you ever took was 5 minutes. I mean, It was really, really fast, which I genuinely appreciate. So thank you. I think that's, that's been part of my experience. The other thing I've really enjoyed is you're constantly sending resources to all of your portfolio companies and you make such a hard effort to get everyone to get to know each other and bond. So sort of founders can learn from themselves as well, which is really great because it's exponential beneficial effects, right?

Yeah.

All the interactions that you can have internally as well. So yeah, I guess in a nutshell, my description of your VC style is high touchpoint, high support, founder first. Mm-hmm.

Yeah, I love that. I thought a lot about like, you can have like many more operational touchpoints, but I just optimize for like, what will people remember in 10 years that I supported you with? And I think a lot of that is like, emotional space and perspective to make very challenging strategic decisions. Like, I don't think I'm one to offer advice. Like, I can give perspective, but one of the benefits of being young in this industry is I can be like, I don't know what's best. Like, you have to decide that, but here's like my perspective and how I've seen it play out across a handful of different similar situations.

No, I would, I would very much support, you know, sort of the statement you just made, which is 10 years from now, how you wanna be remembered. There's this, you know, there's this really amazing quote from Hamilton. Have you seen Hamilton by any chance?

Yes.

Yeah, there's this quote I really love. I may have already shared this, which is, what is legacy? It's planting seeds in a garden you never get to see. And genuinely, for what it's worth, like all the things you're doing, Paige, right now, it just, it has such an amazing compounding effect. Really, thank you. You're very, very founder supportive. It's really wonderful. Thank you. And it's, I can say as a first-time founder, it's such a pleasant surprise. I mean, it's really wonderful. Thank you. I'm honored to actually be part of BGV. It's really wonderful.

The, the honor is all mine, so I'm very excited to be working with you all. Thank you for that. Do you, what questions do you have for me as we wrap up the episode? Anything that you're curious about?

Well, you answered one of mine preemptively, which is why did you Why did you choose to invest in Lotus? I guess here's another one that's probably my thoughts for center. How could we have made it better? Or what would've made, led to the decision faster or with less, with less frustration?

I mean, I feel like 30 minutes is like, 30 minutes is a pretty quick decision.

That's true. That's fair. Like, that's fair.

As you'll see on the pitch. Well, I think it was interesting because like I had never, the context of the pitch is like you have to make a decision in the room and you can choose to go back on it if your reference calls go poorly or, you know, whatever, you find something in diligence, but you're committing on the spot. And for me, I've learned a lot from the pitch in trying to be better about communicating my decision, whether it's I wanna move forward with reference calls or it's a no, like immediately on the call. Because like, as I learned in my fundraising journey for Fund 1, like it's much better to get a faster—

No.

No than a longer no. And I, and I will say like, I don't know. There, there's like a lot going on and so sometimes I take a while to respond and then I'll feel guilty about it. So I'm not perfect, but that's definitely what I'm aiming for is a quick decision. And I think that in terms of like how it could have been faster, I mean, I think like I had a very strong feeling in the first 3 minutes of like your pitch was so, for lack of a better, like. Way to say like you knew your shit. Like you like had the market details, you had done customer interviews. Like the founder archetype that I think about at BGV that I look to back is like one, great storyteller, like check. 2, mission-driven, check. Like you had like 14 people working for you with no salary. And 3 is high execution velocity. And this is something that I'll spend a lot of time on reference calls because usually when I'm meeting someone, I can't necessarily tell what their trajectory has looked like to date. But if you're investing in venture, you're looking for people with exponential trajectories. And so there should be some cracklings of that before you meet them. And I think for you it was, I did confirmatory reference calls to confirm that that was your path, but it was very clear that you would spend a lot of time in that foundation. To go back to your point on like planting seeds that you don't know when they're gonna land, like you spent 9 months heads down in interviews, which is, very long time on like the scale of things. And like you said, it provided this wonderful foundation for informing all of the decisions that you'll continue to make. And so I had a pretty strong sense in the first like 3 minutes where I was like, wow. So I think, I think it was, yeah. And I would say like the, that's why I asked you like about practicing your story, cuz I think that's one of the strongest skills that founders can improve upon, especially in their fundraising journey as being very, very, very concise. And I think like for me, you as like listeners will see if they watch the pitch episode, like I was asking like very, very specific questions. We were talking about one of my LPs, Pankaj, and how when I met him, he was like asking me like very, very specific questions about the fund. And I was like, oh, he's like genuinely interested. I think if you go back and look at the questions that I was asking I was kind of like prodding around, like, how do you think about your go-to-market and what's your product philosophy? And just kind of like trying to like ping around to figure out what your like overall philosophy of building a company was to confirm my gut feeling that you were a good fit for the portfolio. So, yeah, I don't think you could have done anything better cuz we're sitting here today.

I think you just made my month. You're a true guide. Thank you, Paige. That's very kind of you.

You're welcome. Well, with that, I'm really, I'm so excited to launch this episode. Thank you, Duval, so much for your time, and I'm really excited to be supporting you all in this wonderful journey. And if our listeners want to check Lotus out or think they have someone that could really benefit from Lotus, I'll link your website in the description of this. Thank you. But thank you again for your time.

Thank you, Paige, for having me and believing in Lotus.

Be And a very special thank you to Seed to Harvest podcast editor Tate Doherty for his amazing work on this episode.