Idea to Acquisition: Lessons from Mark Balovnev’s Startup Journey

actually thinking more critically about what would it take, right, for us, uh, to consider an acquisition, right? And that's sort of where it started. And ultimately, I think that what made it very, very attractive was, one, quite honestly, the offer was too good to refuse. Two, the acquisitor was coming from a background in education that was plugged into over 25,000 academic institutions. And three, it was a majority acquisition, but we still had a share in the upside. And so we're still, you know, we still hold, uh, minority stake in the company. And at the same time still participate in a limited capacity to help grow and scale it that way. So there was a confluence of many different factors and it was difficult, especially post-acquisition, because you're no longer the boss in a sense. But in that case, it was really something that maximized the net value out of this marvelous thing that we created. So it's definitely—

How we doing, everybody? Welcome to the first event Here at Founder Institute HQ of 2025. So happy New Year to all of you. Happy, happy New Year. You're already ahead of me on this. Best wishes from everyone. Give me— just give me a shout out on where you're coming from. You know, we were a global organization, been around going on 16 years, and it's always a joy to see kind of just where everyone in the world is at these global events. You know, we've had well over 300 RSVPs already, so you're ahead of the game. Trying to build on your professional career, trying to build that startup if you're not already. So let's keep going. My name is Martin Martinez. I'm hailing from Austin, Texas. It's unreasonably cold right now where we're at. But then again, we're not pretty used to cold. Let's have a look and see who we're going. We got people out in Tunisia, Dublin, South Africa, Germany, North Carolina, stateside, Tampa, Florida, Poland. See, this is what I like to see. Oh, what's going on, Switzerland? What's going on, Manila? Best wishes to you as well, Nadia, out of Belgium. We got a few folks from Tunisia. All right. Just keep that going. I love seeing that. I love seeing that. So as I mentioned, my name is Martin, coming here out of Texas. I also not only run our partnerships here at Founder Institute HQ, I serve as an entrepreneur in residence for our global community, and I also help support and run our Texas programs. So we have 4 Texas chapters, Austin, Houston, Dallas, and San Antonio. All are recruiting. So if you are looking to join a startup in the Lone Star State or build a startup in Texas, please have a look at some of our Texas programs. And we're going to have a great conversation today. So, Mark, let's get you up in center. How you doing this morning, amigo?

All good. Great to be here. Thanks for having me.

I think I'm not getting some audio out of you, amigo. I think we need to unmute him real quick. Sure.

Can you hear me all right?

Make sure we're hearing you, Mark. We had you great backstage earlier, so want to make sure we're getting it as well. Gotcha. Let's see.

Looks like it. Yeah, looks like everybody else can hear me.

All right, so I might be doing something real— All right, Mark, can you hear me all right?

Yep, I can hear you.

You hear me just fine? All right, well, let's get started, Mark. Uh, how— let's see. They can hear some clicks on you, amigo. Give me a hi again.

Yep. Can you hear me now?

There he is. I don't know what happened. The internet gods were testing me today. But it looks like I've proved myself well. How you doing today? How's it going?

All good. Great to be here. Glad we could sort out that issue.

Oh, yeah. Yeah, I guess that was on my side. I don't know what happened. So we popped you back in. My speakers shorted out or something. But We got you. Everyone's happy in the chat and we got the hour. So, so, and I, you know, I love reading through, you know, speaker bios and everything, but I always find it more fascinating when I hear it from the person themselves. So, you know, as we, as we get to know you here at Founder Institute HQ and our global community, love to hear just kind of where that journey was from what we, you know, what we see in just in the BIOS, all that, what's beneath that service layer, right? So tell us, I guess maybe, Stan, what brought you here today?

Yeah, it's a great question. And so to answer that, I guess you have to go back to the very beginning. And I consider myself a builder at heart. So my dad early on was a software engineer at IBM, wrote my first line of code you know, in elementary school perhaps even, and, um, built my first website around the same time. So I always loved building things like with my own hands and solving novel problems. And I think it's that sort of mentality that, that carried over into everything I've done and kind of led me to this point where I've been essentially in B2B, uh, software as a service for more than a decade, right? Building software products to solve novel challenges and provide value to all sorts of folks from, you know, K-12 and higher ed to big banks doing cybersecurity for Fortune 1000 organizations and much more to actually just come together and see like, hey, like, what can we build? How can we provide value and do truth-seeking in a sense? So I feel like the process of discovering and unearthing exciting challenges and problems to solve is almost as fun as actually building the solutions for them. And that's kind of what gets me up in the morning to go out there and kind of build and provide value. So my kind of background is really at the intersection of product and sales. So that's the other thing, you know, if you're technical, there's no getting around it, you got to sell, especially in the early stage. And so that's kind of been bolted on to my resume. But ultimately, yeah, it's led to two exits, over $100 million in deals, and kind of where I am today, which is still building.

Well, thank you for that on that end.

But so, so maybe talk about some of those exits, right?

I mean, if we look just at the— just what, you know, our audience has seen so far, I mean, obviously you've seen— you've seen the accolades, you've been featured in CNN, you've been in Time magazine. But let's start what it took to get at that level, right? So your first startup was EduChain. That's correct. Right. So tell us kind of what that was. What was that journey like? Doing it the first time is one experience. Doing it again is a whole nother, right? So I mean, the first one's incredibly hard. You know, our audience here, you know, many of them are jumping into the entrepreneurial world for the first time. Maybe they are trying to go at it a second time because they just didn't do it right the first time. They want to figure out what to avoid. So I mean, tell us about that first journey going zero to one.

Yeah, for sure. I mean, statistically it's always hard. You know, the odds are always against you. It's always tough, but the first time is definitely the hardest. And it came about very organically, you know. So I gave you the sort of introduction to myself and all the coding I was doing, building throughout school. But actually, you know, at some point in my childhood, I was like, oh, maybe I should go get a real job. So I actually went to university for finance and thought, oh, maybe I'm actually going to get into banking or something like that. And so the backstory there is I actually left in my first year and I thought, you know what, I just want to do something different. And I got a job in Europe. I moved to Vienna, Austria, applied to 300 jobs. All of them require double masters and internships, and I had one year of a bachelor's until I finally found a really cool consulting company that would take a leap of faith on me. And so that was actually the initial trigger. So I did a lot of cool work for banks. We did mobile app development, this kind of thing, helping facilitate M&A between banks and fintechs back when European fintech was blowing up. But at the same time, like, the number one thing that stood out to me personally was how difficult it was to travel with my academic background. So although I didn't have my diploma yet, Throughout the process of obtaining the visa, I had to get transcripts, I had to get a bunch of different credentials, and those didn't travel with me. I had to take all this data, which was stored in some database somewhere in my university, get that in a piece of paper, get it signed, stamped, mailed. And it was an incredibly laborious process. And so while I was actually working there, I met my then co-founder, Marek, and we started thinking, well, hey, like, why hasn't anyone solved this yet? And so that's where it came from. And so it was very organic in the sense that it started with a personal experience. It started with a problem rather than a solution. So the, the pain point came before the technology, and then we started this sort of process of exploration to, one, understand if other people have the same pain point, and two, how we could potentially build something or build a product that could address that pain point effectively. And so that's what kickstarted this whole journey. So it's very, very organic in that regard.

Hi, nice to meet you. You know, which, what you just said, um, really resonates with me. And that's kind of what we, what we talk about when we engage that first-time founder is, you know, in many cases, the experience or the problem that you're facing is something that, again, you have personally gone through. You've seen it over and over again. Now the question is, do more people other than myself deal with this problem? Do enough people at this scale deal with this problem? And if so, then maybe it's worth my time pursuing a solution for, right? You see a lot of folks that come in on the other way around. They're going to like, oh, I have this solution, but they're trying to pigeonhole a problem. So we really, really start with is, you know, focus on the problem, fall in love with the problem, right? Because the solution is going to change. So how did it change if it did at all? You know, and also, you know, kind of maybe take us through that journey of just going from just the idea. Validating it in that respect and then building something that could scale.

Yeah, for sure. And you'll laugh because actually where we landed with the solution was blockchain, something that's seen both a lot of positive and negative press over the last decade or so. But going back to the actual problem that we started with, what we started doing is we just, you know, at that point I would be lying if I said that, you know, we had a framework, that we had a process. We were first-time founders. So all we did was bash our heads against the wall And we were part of the reason people started taking down emails from public domains for universities and then K-12 schools, because we would just incessantly spam people and kind of lean into our background of students, like, hey, we share this problem, so on and so forth. And we came from a position of like, we just want to learn, right? And so we talked to, I think, about 150 registrars who we then found out were really the soul of the institution that Everything from, you know, your first day in class to your graduation is essentially run by the registrar. So they're very much behind the scenes and often most, in many cases, underappreciated, yet they wield a huge amount of power inside the organization. And so as we went through that discovery process, not only did we better understand the actual people that owned and were responsible, kind of that had this challenge, but also started to see that it was something that was coming up over and over again in the sense that there was so much to do and so much responsibility on their shoulders. That really dealing with paper, like additional paperwork, was really not in their top 10, you know, top 3 things I really want to do and, you know, what gets me up in the morning. So, uh, that was kind of the trigger point for, um, just cold calling, emailing nonstop. And really, I think that this is what we've always done, is kind of outcompeting on volume. So just doing the extra call, doing the extra email, the extra step, uh, the extra contact, to always go that extra mile where most people I would imagine would stop. By just, you know, we were young, right? And we just threw ourselves at the problem. And so that's when we started to think, okay, like, there's really something here. The market's big, it's growing, these people have purchasing power, there are solutions that exist but they're not very good, and there might be an opportunity here to, to actually do something. Now, we didn't know about the sales cycles in edtech, uh, we learned about that the hard way later, but, uh, we definitely felt like, okay, like, we really have something on our hands. And that was actually the point where we decided to go all in. So we didn't have the product, we didn't have a single dollar in revenue, but we had a problem that we felt really compelled to go out and try to solve, right? And then we sort of took a leap of faith, and that was a trigger. We both left our respective areas of employment and got to building.

Oh, awesome. So that's how the team started out then. How'd you find— how'd you find your team in that beginning piece?

Yeah, so I mean, it was very organic as well. So we just happened to be in I just got this new webcam, so I apologize. It's going to be—

oh no, it moves. I like it better that way.

Yeah, but, uh, so it actually started in the workplace, right? So I think that— and my wife will laugh at me at this— is that sustained exposure is critical to building relationships. It's, it's a very emotionless kind of summary, but it's very true in the sense that, you know, you need to spend a lot of time with someone to understand who they are. And I think that you need to have that foundation first before you go out and say, okay, we're gonna go and build something. So like, we had a prior relationship in the sense that we were in the trenches doing 80-hour weeks together for months prior. And so we were just kicking around this idea over lunch, over dinner, over drinks, and so forth. And just, it kind of emerged out of that. And so we said, hey, we want to do this together. Like, we're probably going to spend more time with each other than anybody else. And in the early stage, it was just myself and Mark, my co-founder. And it just went from there. All right. So we then found a CTO, again, an old friend in my network who I had known for almost 10 years. And we just got to building. So it was very organic in that sense. And that's something I would never change, right? In the sense that it's such a long journey and there's so many ups and downs. It's truly like getting into another relationship, right, with the person where you kind of bring on, you know, their family becomes their— your family, their biases become your biases, the positives, the negatives. And so being really, really upfront about that from the early stage was critical. And over time, we actually kind of evolved together such that as the company grew, we naturally started to find like, here's my zone of excellence, here's what I love doing, here's what Mark loves doing, and so forth. And essentially came to complement each other over that, uh, 6-year period.

Yeah, but I want to make sure I'm hearing right. Your co-founder is also named Mark?

Marek.

Oh, Marek.

Okay, okay.

Okay, cool. Because I've had, I've had, you know, I've had friends and we have founders in my program, they've had the same name and it's just like, all right, how'd y'all differentiate? They're like, you know, in conversation. But, but on a serious note, um, you know, again, that, uh, the co-founder in the equation is critical in its success, right? You know, if a team breaks down, the company's gonna break down because that— because the team, they're wanting the same, right? You know, and, um, especially in the beginning. So, you know, and like a lot of things that you're saying is stuff that we speak to day in, day out at Founder Institute for our founders in our program. Again, the working dynamics. Again, it's a relationship. That's all. That's all it is at the end of the day. You know, you're going to be spending an inordinate amount of time with this person, maybe more than your spouse. You know, like, how did your family do with having those conversations, tough ones? How are you going to resolve that conflict? So it's really, it's really amazing that you were already, you know, conscious of that, pursuing that, and with the best, you know, you know, with the best mind, best foot forward at the very first journey, right?

Yeah, if I can just jump in there and add to that, because I really love your point there, because it kind of ties into the idea of play and truth-seeking, you know. Like, we may have grown up, but we all have that kid inside of us, and like, we just want to play at the end of the day. And I think some people think, oh, it's not cool, you know, I don't— it's embarrassing, or whatever. And so I think embracing that sort of sense play is also what leads you to finding a good co-founder. Because essentially you're not thinking, oh, who can build the best product, who can do this, who can do that. It's like you're actually basing the foundation on the relationship, and the trajectory or the direction of that relationship is what's most important. So you don't need to have, you know, someone who's already, you know, pedigreed and credentialed from day one. It's more important to have someone that you can relate to and that you enjoy playing with in a sense, and then you have a common direction and you have the hunger and the ambition to kind of build out all those steps or lay out the steps in front of you as you go. Right. And that's what's so important. Totally agree with your point there.

Yeah. And I mean, that's, it's something people don't think too much into on the first go. In many cases, they're just like, oh yeah, I just need to find, you know, a developer. That's it. And then I have an idea. Yeah, I got everything. It's fine. You know, it's like they're just going to listen to what I say and this is— I'm like, oh, wait, wait, wait. The CTO is just not going to come and fall out of the sky for you, right? You know, that co-founder isn't just going to like pop out of the woods and be like, oh, right, let's spend, you know, 80 hours a week together for the next 5 years straight. Like, are you ready for that? You know, again, it's the people in your life that love you and spend a good chunk of time with you ready for that. You know, there's going to be times, those sleepless nights where, you know, maybe it is that spouse, that partner, whoever's next to you, if you have them, is going to be able to relate. You're going to pick up the phone at 3 o'clock in the morning and talk to that, that person who does relate, who you are working through these, these internal problems together so that you can solve the bigger problem that you're building a company for. Right. So, so tell us again, as, as you all built that out, you know, the whole topic at hand is, you know, scaling, scaling to exit. So tell us how that, how you got through those initial hurdles as a first-time founder and then found you know, that promised land of an exit?

How'd that go? I'll try to distill it down into a one clear story. And I think that looking back, so again, there's a very big caveat that we just did whatever, you know, whatever we could, and we threw ourselves at the wall. And actually intuitively, through tinkering, backed into a lot of frameworks. We didn't start necessarily with a very framework than well-learned, like not like the second time around, right? But we intuitively landed into sort of three distinct phases, like acquire, expand, and engage is like what I like to call it now, in the sense that in the beginning, all we wanted was data. We were truth-seeking, right? And so we tried selling and pitching anybody with a pulse. Like if you wanted to listen to us, like congrats, great. Like you're going to hear, you know, we're going to be pitching to you nonstop. So we pitched to everybody and our priority there is given that we learned very quickly how difficult it is. To sell to academic institutions and how long the sales cycle was, our number one priority and sort of North Star metric was just net new logos. We wanted to close deals at any cost. We would do it for free. We would do, you know, POVs or pilots. Uh, we would do whatever it took to get plugged inside of an organization and any kind of organization. And that's essentially what we did for the first two years. What did that mean? Well, huge amount of overhead because we were spending a lot of effort selling to folks who quite honestly didn't need the solution or didn't like the solution or whatever else. But to us, that was great because that was an investment into data. And so that's why I call that period sort of acquire, because we learned like, okay, you don't like us. Oh, and you like us, right? And we would intuitively see by it. And we had high double-digit churn, right? So it was insane. Like, it was a huge leaky bucket, but we were learning a lot by the people that were leaving, just as much as we were from the people that were staying. And so that's what kind of led us to the next phase, which is understanding, like, once we got a really tight definition of our ICP, our ideal customer profile, really narrow, we essentially let one half churn and the other half we fired. And then we doubled down on providing value for that specific ICP initially in the higher ed space. So we, we, for, we went away from K-12 altogether. And that second stage is what I call expand, right? Because once we understood that particular customer and we got to a certain amount of repeatability. And that's kind of like your initial product market fit. What I would call that is essentially if you talk to 100 people and say the same message to those same people, that you'd get a more or less similar response. Like you're looking for that repeatability that, okay, like I built something that can reliably address this particular problem. And so then we got hyper-focused on how can we provide as much value as possible. And so we use kind of average customer value or ACV. As our kind of north star. And we just focused on getting really deep into the customers we had and building out new features like new products and all of this to the point where we essentially 7x our ACV over a year-long period by just focusing really deeply into providing value. And the final stage of that kind of led into, I guess, engaging them. So once we built out all these features, naturally, like we started to get a lot more rigorous and that's when you really have a business, right? Then you're managing by metrics, you're encompassing, you know, your entire product with analytics for usability. And so then we started to get more meticulous and managing by metrics to like, how good is the business doing? Top-line revenue growth, operating margin, churn, and, you know, LTV. And then getting into what features are customers actually using. They say they want this, but are they actually using this? And that was sort of the engage period when we started to get a lot more engaged with our customer base and then making more data-driven decisions. And building systems and processes such that we were really well positioned on exit, that we had all this culture of documentation, of process, of framework already laid out such that— and we didn't get fully there, but such that almost the business could run itself, right?

All right, so, so essentially, again, you, you kind of, you kind of stumbled into product-market fit in a really fun way, an organic way. Right. And that, that churn story is really fascinating. Just saying you're seeing what's working, the communications that's working, right? Let's just filter out, you know, it's a big, to your words, you know, a big leaky bucket, right? You know, let's actually take advantage of this leaky bucket and then figure out what's still pooling. Yeah, exactly. And then we're building for that. And that way we're just going to kind of, you know, kind of tilting it over so no one's going through that hole anymore. But you're pulling things on that side that are a lot more meaningful, that are actually going to be there more sustained than trying to build something for everybody. And that's another common fallacy that people do. They, as soon as they hear, oh, this isn't working for me, it's like, oh, what would work? And then they hear it from one person, they go and build that and they get distracted. Feature creep. And you know this, right? So, so then again, that focus you maintain all the way through. So that led. And that led to something very fruitful for you, you know, led to an exit. How was that process to you? And you've made it now. You've really made it through like 90% of most startups that fail within that. You've seen the product market fit. You're starting to really understand your customer in a deep way. Now that's valuable to a company, or if, you know, however an exit is going to be, that's going to be good, you know. So what was the investment climate for you at that point? Were you raising? Did those raise lead to, you know, tell us what that first that first opportunity at Nexxus look like for you?

Yeah, for sure. And so yeah, I'm really forthcoming about this experience because I think that life in essence is really not that complicated. And sometimes the more abstraction you put around it, the farther away you get from truth in the sense that all these frameworks and processes, if you try to lead with those, you're inevitably skewing your picture of reality. And so, you know, is it applicable in every circumstance? Maybe not. But this process of kind of just throwing ourselves into like getting feedback feedback, especially in an industry that moves really slowly. That was the key for us. If we tried to do a top-level market analysis or, you know, just strategic analysis and a customer analysis, we wouldn't get anywhere. We actually went there and understood, you know, what worked and what didn't. So yeah, I mean, as far as, um, like what happened next, that the investment climate was, was good, but actually the other unorthodox approach is that we actually bootstrapped that entire time, almost. So it was a huge pain, and I actually really advocate that. And we actually did something very similar in the second venture because it forces you to get to truth much faster. Again, and you'll hear me say that a lot, I've already said it a lot, because that's the most important. Because again, the more money you throw at a problem doesn't necessarily mean that, you know, you start to optimize for things that feel good. It's like you raise a bunch of money and then you can start cleaning up the product, you know, CI/CD deployment scripts, and you kind of end up like making the product nicer and feel better and the UI/UX revamps as opposed to you don't actually need a whole lot of money to learn about your market, to actually go and talk to customers, to do those things that, you know, people say don't scale. Money should be fuel for taking something that's already repeatable and then scaling that up. Now, in certain areas like cybersecurity, health tech, like you can't do that. You do require capital. But in our case, we felt kind of in a unique sense like, no, like we can pretty much get to product market fit and then, and then raise. And essentially by the time we got there, we didn't need to. And so at that stage, the only program we went through was Techstars. And so that was invaluable for helping us kind of clean up our business. And that was around that time I mentioned where we were starting to expand inside those existing accounts that we had. And they helped us kind of institutionalize a culture of metrics, reporting, being clear about commitments, things like that, and create that process that really turned us into a business, right? So to speak. And so that's around the 2020, 2021 where another big thing happened, which is the COVID pandemic. And that, although, you know, it was a very difficult time in terms of the business environment, it did also make digital the number one priority for most academic institutions. Institutions worldwide. So it also forced the kind of growing pain for us to really systematize and scale to actually serve all of that increased demand as well.

They had great timing, you know, just point blank too, right? Yeah, it's a point. Fantastic. Yeah, you know, hearing our friends over at Techstars as well, many of our grads will move on to Techstars if that's an opportunity that they, they want to pursue. Um, so it's always nice to hear Yeah, yeah, they're good people, good people over there. Um, definitely friends of the family. Um, so that, that's awesome. So tell me what— so like, maybe let's, let's transition out. And you're— how did you— tell us about, you know, how'd you sunset this in a way that was going to be really exciting for you and just the people you're working with at this point, your co-founders? Well, then what led you to the next one?

Yeah, so there's a whole story to be told about the, the acquisition and what happened there, but As we jump forward to the next one, honestly, it's again coming back to your core principles, right? So yeah, you know, I took some time off, took a sabbatical, explored other interests, and so did everyone else. But at the end of the day, and like, I think this is something that a lot of co-founders will kind of tell you, is that you have this sort of itch for something like a greater purpose or a greater meaning, or just like a simple yearning to build again. And so honestly, that's where it came from. And I think it's also the excitement of, again, truth-seeking, of learning. And so not just building in an area which we've already become accustomed and comfortable in, but actually in an area that until then we knew nothing about, which is cybersecurity. And I also wouldn't necessarily recommend that because that was incredibly damn hard. But it was kind of that wanting to pursue that joy of discovery, of learning, and kind of being dropped in, special forces, into a completely new environment and having to figure out, kind of in a sense replicating that same journey that same high you got through that, you know, ups and downs of company building in a completely new environment, right? And I think it was that sort of novelty and excitement that we were chasing and what initially got us interested. So we started doing some consulting for some big banks, started to understand and advise the pain points of the CISO, the chief information security officer, and from there identifying gaps. And then, you know, the whole story starts again.

Nice. Well, again, so Sam, what was the, you know, VANT here? You know, how did, um, what essentially was it looking to solve? Right. And how did it, how did you, how did you take a lot of the learnings from, you know, company one, uh, one, and then two, how'd you move even faster with it? Because again, doing it, doing it once is hard enough. Do it twice. It's like, all right, let's figure out what we, what we didn't do well and correct.

Yeah, for sure. And so Venter was the kind of the first where we essentially tried to apply a lot of those frameworks and learnings in a more structured manner. And some of it worked and some of it didn't. So I would love to talk about it a bit more. So what Venter was is essentially looking to solve one of the most critical pain points of many large organizations today, which is safeguarding the business-led adoption of cloud and SaaS applications. So in very simple terms, there's no such thing as a free lunch. And moving from on-prem, like, you know, you've got your physical infrastructure to cloud or to SaaS entails completely different environments. And the business is like, oh, we can move faster, save money, we can do all these cool things. But security is saying, well, hey, like, we don't actually necessarily own all of this infrastructure anymore. We can't secure it the same way, the same way we've done before. Now we're actually exposing ourselves to way more risk than we may even be aware of, and definitely way more than our internal risk appetite. And so Bantor was founded out of that sort of consultative approach with CISOs at large organizations to safeguard a very specific and unique component of that SaaS and cloud adoption, which is what's now called non-human identities, or NHIs. And so essentially, for every employee, you know, with a laptop and a phone, you know, there's 10 or 15 or 20 machine identities like that that are all connected to each other, right? So I've got, you know, for a simple example, my Salesforce is talking to my Google Workspace, which is maybe talking to my Mailchimp and so on and so forth. And we're creating an infinite web of connections which grows exponentially more dangerous. And so we started creating a sort of bubble in simple terms, like an additional layer that you could put around those most critical applications and then regulate what was going on between all those different machine or non-human identities and essentially safeguard that whole adoption such that we could at least get the same or similar level of security as we'd come to expect with all our traditional infrastructure.

Interesting. So, so, yeah, there's— where did, where did a lot of the learning, I guess, come in? Again, you're talking about a lot of things that came out of one, or from where, for just the last 30 minutes, um, again, dealing with churn, Right. I mean, obviously, do you have the same team? Was it a completely new team? How'd you build on that relationship? What, in terms of having the investment piece, you know, bootstrapping, as you alluded to as well, you know, what are maybe some tactical things that just you immediately applied that you just didn't do the first time around?

I mean, I think the first and biggest one was, okay, well, there's two. There's actually one which is personal and it ties back to, you know, what would have I done differently? And I say this a lot now, is that you have to go slow to go fast, and life is kind of a marathon, not a sprint. So we definitely burned ourselves out. We needed that sabbatical. And on a personal level, the first thing we did is like really acknowledge the fact that this is not something, you know, you get in and you're done and you build something, you go to market, scale in 6 months. Maybe if you're Wiz, you know, or some select startups, but even then it's like, it's a very long marathon, right? So we can't just grind 100 hours, burn out, and then what are we going to do, right? So there's a huge difference as to the culture that we built around like working with urgency, but also in a more sustainable way. That was one thing. Um, the second biggest thing, and that's more tactical, is actually selling before we built in a sense. So we kind of tried to earn conversations with executives by virtue of having this unique insight or a unique view of the cybersecurity market. And we use that to earn the conversation such that, you know, we built a huge network very quickly with people we didn't know before, you know, through entirely cold outreach. By earning those conversations, providing a bunch of value up front, and then trying to understand their pain points and paraphrasing that back to them such that we could actually sell something, right? So we would sell a solution to a problem that the solution didn't yet exist for. And so that was a really big— sounds simple, but it saved us a lot of pain, you know, that we had with EdgeChain of having to meander and kind of go through that process in a very manually intensive way. So from the outset, we look to try to close first LOIs and then actual contracts as early as possible to use that as our signal of are we building in the right direction. So before where we would kind of lead with product and, you know, throw it at people and see what stuck, here we would lead with assumptions or we would lead with a story or like, you know, hypotheticals and paraphrase what customers are saying back to them in a way that we had contracts closed before we had a solution built. In a sense. And so that was a really big level up, which definitely said, you know, represented the maturity, um, of the approach and saved us a bunch of time, quite honestly. So I think those two were probably the biggest.

Yeah, again, these are really hot. These, especially this, this latter is, you know, it's very complex, you know, very high level, very deep technical questions and conversations. Did you find, uh, like patterns, I guess, or was, was every, every solution that you were hearing from You know, the, these, these chief, like, security, like, information security officers, you know, there's a more bespoke solution for each. Or when you get, when you understand, like, there's these larger overarching patterns that everybody's dealing with. So we're gonna build something that's gonna validate that. Yeah.

So, so, so utilizing that sort of more methodical approach, it gave us the ability to stratify and kind of split a breakdown and cut in different ways that whole landscape. Because even when we say CISO, You know, an information security officer could come from risk, they could come from legal, they could be, you know, in the organization doing network, you know, on the ground, they could be doing network security or network administration, super deep technical work, and then going, like, they might come from technology. So even the word CISO means so many different things. And then you can split that by, you know, size of the organization, by industry, by so on and so forth. And so without having to build a product, by virtue of having those conversations, that's exactly sort of what we did in terms of, understanding the landscape and understanding where exactly we played. So does this make sense for a small organization? No, they have a million other things they need to do first. Like if, you know, if you don't have multifactor authentication, why are you worrying about all this other stuff? So, you know, you have a sequence or a progression that we started to identify and then we could map out kind of along that progression. And again, it wasn't all so meticulously documented, but we kind of, again, intuited our way into that through conversations. Exactly, because it was so technical, like where along in that maturity journey do they have to be from a security perspective? How large the organizations have to be. And we kind of landed in the, the mid-market, so the, the SME, the midsize enterprise, um, and in what industries, like regulated, uh, healthcare, finance, etc., and so on and so forth. And so that's, that's the approach we took. And again, that required almost zero, uh, capital investment in a space that's traditionally, you know, traditionally demands, you know, millions and millions up upfront before you can even get to some sort of market validation.

Interesting. And yeah, this too is to clarify again, you didn't even need to take investment for, again, for both companies at this point. You were able to bootstrap, again, really earn and, you know, conserve resources throughout the duration of both these companies and still found an acquisition from what I'm gathering from the first one. How did the second one Spanish, similar.

So yeah, it was a little bit different. So the first one was, uh, kind of, let's call it business acquisition. The second was a product acquisition. So then the first, the education, we built a business, and I talked about that journey of maturity from, you know, starting off, you know, throwing ourselves to the problem, to learning, to building structure and processes, to systematizing, to getting to repeatability and building processes and systems around to essentially automate a huge part of that business as it scaled. The second was kind of similar but at a smaller scale because the product was so deep into the technical stack of the bank or the organization. It fulfilled a very particular need. And so it goes back to a kind of a principle that we employ— employed when we build the second one, which is sort of building with the exit in mind and not necessarily saying, oh, I want an exit, I want an exit, but rather understanding where does this fit in the landscape and actually taking a step back to think more strategically about, okay, we have tools here, we tools here. Like, this is what they do, this is where they could go if they wanted to, and like understanding a bit strategically where we would fit. And so in that case, it was more about the product than about the business, because the, the acquirer, uh, Arc in this case, was looking to combine that with a previous acquisition they made of a YC company called Sloth, uh, for cloud, uh, identities— the human identity piece, which they're working on, and the non-human identity piece. Now rolling all of those up was going to be a challenge, is a challenge. But, um, essentially it came from a product strategy perspective, whereas the first was private equity, and that was more from a business perspective, the fact of, you know, simplify.

Um, got it. Okay, interesting. And I love, I love this, uh, the strategy that you built out. You know, we see a lot of folks that, again, they're just looking for, again, big, big scale, big, big Big, big exit. And then they just crash and burn, right?

It's not enough to say, yeah, it's not enough to say like, oh, Google's going to buy me. Like, that's not enough.

Exactly, right? And it's also, and also when they're talking to investors and they ask, what's that exit strategy? And they're just like, oh yeah, Google's going to pick us up for billions of dollars. It's just like, wait, how? Like, why? You didn't really thought too much. That's just, you're just saying the things because that's what you think people want to hear. Right. Maybe they do, but there's really, it's it's all smoke, right? So I appreciate, again, there's a methodicalness to your approach throughout, right? And that's something that is definitely, it should be mirrored in a lot of folks that are in this audience right now. Man, we're looking, we're a little less than 20 minutes before the top of the hour, y'all. Thank y'all for sticking around. I've been having a great conversation here today. Promise you we're going to get some questions here soon from all of you. I've just been waiting for y'all to fill up the QA tool. Everybody. So make sure you're hitting QA, not using the chat. We're going to be looking at that. And if you don't have questions but you see an interesting one, give them an upvote, give them an upvote there on the QA tool, and we're going to get through as many as possible. So, so let's get started on that because I definitely want to— there's some really great stuff here. Just having a look at these and y'all are actually figuring out a little emoji tool down there too. So go down that little emoji. Oh, there it is. Yeah, there's the emojis. Go, it's on the bottom. Bottom right, you'll see that little emoji thing, tell them what you like and laugh if you want. I think there's like 5 options to work with, but let's start at the top with some of these audience questions. That sound good, Mark?

Yeah, sure thing.

Right on. So, so let's, let's start right again, right at the top. So Kerem out of Berlin has a really solid one. And again, this is something that I think you can really, you can probably relate to. Is just again, why exit a company, you know, if it's just working fine? You know, very simple on that, right? Thank you.

Oh, awesome. And you can even have it up on the screen. Yeah, that's a great question. Yeah, I love it. So we're gonna have all the questions up on the screen here. So, um, I think that there's like— I'll tell you how we looked at it, right? And so there's kind of two ways to grow a business, right? Like you can— or many different ways. Like, let's simplify, but you can grow it organically, you can grow it through investments, you can, you know, add fuel to the fire, step on the gas pedal and scale up that way, or you can grow through acquisition. And so in our case, it was a confluence of several factors in the sense that we were coming up off a high. So we just got out of Techstars, everyone made digital priority all of a sudden across the entire academic sphere, and so we started growing faster, faster, faster. And at the same time, we started having, you know, at the time, again, we didn't really think about this stuff. So that is a case where we didn't build with the exit in mind. You know, we were just doing our thing. We were building a business, something that we love. And then a lot of offers started coming in, some low, some higher. And we started actually thinking more critically about what would it take, right, for us to consider an acquisition. Right. And that's sort of where it started. And ultimately, I think that what made it very, very attractive is one, quite honestly, the offer was too good to refuse. Two, the acquisitor was coming from a background in education that was plugged into over 25,000 academic institutions. And three, it was a majority acquisition, but we still had a share in the upside. And so we're still, look, you know, we still hold, uh, minority stake in the company and, um, at the same time still participate in, you know, limited capacity to help grow and scale it that way. So there's a confluence of many different factors and it was difficult, you know, especially post-acquisition, because you're no longer the boss, uh, in a sense. But in that case, it was really something that maximized, uh, kind of the net value out of the— this marvelous thing that we created. So it's definitely not the right, uh, let's say, thing to do in every moment. And as well, very particularly, you want to be considering an acquisition from a position of strength, right, rather than weakness. Uh, you shouldn't really be going out trying to sell, per se. So it really depends.

Interesting. So, so again, that was the first one. Again, you mentioned you had— there's some differentiation between these exits, right? So the first one was the business-related one. Second was product. Now, which you also alluded to, you know, after that first exit, you realized that that burnout was there. I need a break, right? Was there, was there any of that inkling in your head as you were approaching that exit too, or did you realize that after the fact? Once the ink was dry, you're just like, wait, I could use some time off?

It was after. So it's the opposite. So actually, when you're running, running, running, you don't feel tired. It's when you stop and you're like, oh my gosh, right? So actually, the whole thing was like, just, it was up, up, up all the way, and it was a real high. And like, it was actually exactly in that moment where, you know, the money's in the escrow, the deal's done, everything is there, and you're like, well, okay, like, now what? Like, you stop for the first time, and you stop, and then you realize, like, oh my gosh, right? So Again, even that realization of you have to go slow to go fast, you have to take care of yourself, you know, physical and mental health are paramount— that came all after. It's only because all the time to face those things head on, and you're like, oh gosh, like, I was using, you know, even I was using work as an escape from a lot of things. Like, now I got to deal with those things because I don't have that much more going on. And so that all came after. That's a whole different story. There's so many communities of founders kind of post-exit that run into this problem. Everyone's like, well, what do I do now?

Yeah, you're liftless, right? I might have to bring you back for a panel discussion on that one. Might be a good topic, team. Listening backstage, might need to think about that for a future, future, future event. Maybe we get you down for Founder X in a couple months. I'll have to do that too. But yeah, let's jump into another one. Man, we got some great questions, y'all. Make sure you're keeping up voting. So thank you for that first one. We got a few more that we want to get through. This next one from Ram Kumar. Based out of India. You know, it's— this one's about pitch decks. I mean, you know, obviously you were— you didn't— you kind of avoided the fundraising. Sure. Yeah, you did go into Techstars. So they still put you through that whole rigmarole of fundraising methodologies and pitch decks and everything. You know, his point right now, and it's very valid because I see it all the time, I hear it all the time from the investment community and the founders who aren't seeing the investment is, you know, everything is focused on revenue and traction. Everything's revenue traction. But if you're just still at that 0.1 stage and you don't have any of that, you know, where's the hope? Where's the silver lining? Or do you need revenue? Do you need traction to even get investors or accelerators to give you a look?

Yeah, look, I could be wrong. And this is my personal opinion, but it comes through many different experiences and anecdotes from many other founders is I kind of think that this is a lie. I think it's kind of an opt-out from investors that are trying to let people down in a nice way. Sometimes it's true, but if we're talking true early-stage investment, uh, there's a great VC that shared this analogy with me, and I forget his name. I'd love to credit him. Chris, I believe, uh, said that investing is kind of like a bingo card, right? And so all you're doing is you're trying to tick, uh, the boxes and get to bingo, right, in a sense. So That's why you see like a lot of crazy rounds to going to, you know, ex-OpenAI employees because they're over-indexing on, you know, the team capacity or the unique market insight or, you know, the market itself. Is the market big enough? And so on and so forth. And I tend to feel that the whole revenue thing is a cop-out for either I don't understand your industry and therefore if you're making money, that's a great proxy for me to understand, okay, you're onto something. I don't understand, let's say healthcare or IoT. But if you're making lots of money and growing fast, I'm in, right? That makes a lot more sense. So that's one thing is that maybe if they don't necessarily understand and it's also an investor fit, like you need to screen them just as they screen you. That's one. But two is also that maybe some of the other, you know, maybe there's not a fit on some other fronts. And this is a really easy way to say, oh, come back when you get more traction because maybe I was wrong. Maybe, you know, you're a great person, you've got a great market and so on and so forth, but I don't have the conviction yet. You come back to me and you're like, hey, since we last talked, we got all these customers, all this traction. Then I can look at it again. Right. But I think it always stems from that. Again, personally.

Again, I feel the same way. And like, there's a lot of, there's a lot of ways to demonstrate traction. I tell founders, you know, depending on what you're working on. Right. And for you, you're dealing with these larger institutional organizations. You said at first, right off the bat on the second one, you know, LOIs were proven before you even built anything. You know, you're getting these LOIs and that counts as traction. 'Cause again, you're not just gonna have this on day one. It's gonna take a lot of time just to get through all that red tape, all that bureaucracy and approvals and legal with a company of that scale, right? So LOIs work just as well as money in the bank. It just depends, you know, again, it's gonna depend, you know, are you selling to a direct customer and, you know, somebody that leads a household or somebody that leads a Fortune 500? The expectations are different. So how you measure that's different. So, but it's, so it's a great question to, to, to kind of really sparse out. Depending on what you're pursuing, what problems you're solving, who's paying you to solve those problems. Thank you on that. So I guess maybe, I mean, changing gears, sticking a little bit on that topic, I'm looking at Vladimir's, you know, the question that just came out of Warsaw. You know, what's, what was kind of maybe the time passing, you know, between, especially maybe with both scenarios, right? You know, like for the first company where you had a product out, you're already starting to solve, you solve, you can prove to solve the problem, but somebody's actually paying you money. What was that delta? Did it change also too when you had a different approach for the second, going from LOI, now we go build it and let's bring it back to them, right? What was that like?

Yeah, I'd have to say for the first company, probably 1.5 years to 2 years, it was long. So it was 1.5 years to 2 years and variety of reasons for that, which some of which I covered, you know, the sales cycle and also us focusing on getting insight. And getting in at any cost because we knew that once we're in, you know, we're in. But, uh, yeah, it was long. So the first was 1.5 years or 2 years or so, and the second was almost 3, 4 times faster, so like 6 months.

Okay, yeah, again, putting those learnings to good use, right? Let's, uh, let's get a little more specific. I got, got Thad out of Washington, DC. This is, again, this is edtech specific, so it's probably, you're probably gonna jam out on this little pretty, pretty deeply. Um, you know, was there any, maybe tell us about some of the headaches you're experiencing building in that space, you know, or there's the barriers to entry selling into schools. I've had a few ed tech companies come through our Texas program. So I'm always curious to hear what your experience is, you know, somebody that's gone through it, seen it, right? You're giggling like you're just like, oh, where do we start?

Yeah. Gosh, it's traumatizing, right? It's, um, actually funny enough, after, after we sold EdChin, uh, we, we made a pact and it didn't last long where like, we're never getting back into like enterprise, like just education, like, traumatizes so much. Like, we don't want to do enterprise or like big business, you know, selling to big companies or big organizations anymore. And we went and we did it again, uh, with greater success. But I think the headaches are going to be all the ones that you already know, right? Which is just sales cycle, um, manifests itself in, well, okay, there— oh, this is a— this is a— amazing, this is a top priority for us, uh, let's talk about this in next year. Right? And you're like, I thought you just said it's a top priority, right? So, so stuff like that, uh, that actually manifests into pretty major challenges with the business, like from a cash flow perspective too, because then if you're dealing with yearly contracts, in many cases as we were, um, it's trying to forecast and understand when that cash is coming in, making sure that you can make payroll, and especially given that, you know, payment terms they don't necessarily adhere to. So there's a huge, like, actual tangible impact of that in the cash flow. Also made forecasting kind of difficult. So kind of the more tactical issues. So selling into the edtech space is really difficult. One of the things that we did to kind of get around that, in a sense, is we really sold to people, and those people became our friends, and we grew much faster through referrals and case studies and influencers, even people like Gartner introducing their clients to us when they were looking for a solution. So this kind of soft influence that we carried. So one of the ways that, that we tried to get around it early on with some success is we went way beyond the actual product. So this is one thing we didn't touch on, like competitive differentiation doesn't just have to be like something you wrote, like it doesn't have to be a piece of software, it doesn't have to be a feature. It can be, you know, your customer support, like your customer satisfaction. It could be, you know, your business model, your pricing model. Like there's so many different aspects of advantage that sometimes people box it to, you know, software, but it's not true. So we co-created, we built a consortium, like an innovation consortium of our close customers. We got them into conferences, We did panels together, fireside chats, we co-authored, we had a kind of entirely separate, like a kind of research or marketing division that would co-author thought leadership pieces with either them or entities that they respected. And so we kind of positioned ourselves as like, you know, we were the person everyone wanted to hang out with in a sense. And so we partnered up with government entities too. So we looked at people that they respected, we built relationships with Gartner. And so that still had a huge lead time. But ultimately, that was the biggest thing that paid dividends down the line, because otherwise it's very difficult to kind of lock in that new logos through just saying, hey, I'm a guy you've never heard of me before and I want to sell you some software, right? It's very difficult. So you try to find out who do they respect, who they listen to, who they talk to. And ideally, you know, if someone else is saying, you know, you're singing your praises on your behalf, that's even better. And it took us a long time, but that's ultimately what made the business work. I would say.

Awesome. Yeah, good points all around. So we got, we got about 5 minutes left before we wrap up here. I always wrap up here a little sooner, so probably like to tackle maybe just one more question. I appreciate everybody, uh, put in some great stuff, um, on this end. But let's go into, um, again, co-founder dynamics. All right, I have a couple questions about co-founders throughout, so I'm just going to kind put them all together in a way that might make sense for these people asking in the audience. First one is just finding one. And then the second piece is, you know, how do you manage the expectations on funding this? And you bootstrapped, right? You know, for both, you know, how did y'all manage the expectations on what's possible, what's actually within reason that we can pay for versus bringing more people? Onto the theme. So I'm kind of mashing together like 3 different questions from this, try to help as many folks.

Yeah, and I'll try to skim through it and like answer them in that way too. So the first one, in terms of, uh, co-founder versus employee, uh, I think you're gonna get a variety of opinions from different people on this. Like, I would say, like, I kind of follow YC and like some other folks and VCs that say you kind of need one. I think if anything, just like imagine going to the gym, right? If it's just you and you wake up and it's like 4 AM and you're tired and it's raining outside, you feel miserable, it's It's hard, right? And that's what building a startup is too. And so even, and of course there's so much more than that, but essentially having a gym buddy and having someone who's gonna be there for you, like with the ups and the downs and that can actually complement like a lot of your different areas of expertise, that's critical, right? And valuable. And that's the other thing. So I wanted to make one very quick point here. There's things that you're really good at that no one else can do. And then there's things that you're good at that other people can do. And trying to solve for that as early as possible is really important. Cause you might be a CTO that's good at sales, and you have to be in a sense in the early stage, but you also like, if having a partner that can kind of fill or complement different gaps that you have early on makes life a lot easier as well, right? So that's one piece. Um, in terms of the, uh, I think it was, uh, managing cash flow, right, and bootstrapping. No, no real, no real answer for this. You know what we did? We just did consulting, right? And we ideally consulted in the same area. Like, we, we also use that as an opportunity for discovery. And so we would just do things on the side to support ourselves. And we did the whole, we did the whole startup story thing, you know, lived off of ramen and, uh, you know, off of credit cards and that kind of thing too. So no real answer to that. I wouldn't advise that for everybody. It was really dumb, but we were young and I think that's when you can do that.

So yeah, that was less liability, less liability.

I wouldn't do, you know, exactly. And then as you get older, as you mature, like, your, your risk tolerance changes also. And like, you have more maturity, more capabilities, more access, more network. And like, so, you know, the scale kind of flips and changes over time. So, uh, what was the third one that you mentioned, Martín?

Um, really, I think, uh, and I guess we're combining as well, uh, not just the co-founder piece, but let's say advisors, right? You know, how are you finding people? And you mentioned for the second, you're building again your consortium of customers, or, you know, customers that are giving you feedback. But how'd you find people that are also gonna maybe not just have, you know, not going to be working on this full-time with you, uh, but they want to help, right? How'd you find advisors that aligned with that, if you, if you have?

Yeah, we had advisors for every venture, and again, there's differences of opinion on this. I think they're great as long as you utilize them effectively. So you don't want people that just want an advisory position, you know, to pad their resume, but actually people that care about you and like would personally invest. And if they can invest, that's even better. And, uh, we just had like very clear commitments with both of them in terms of what can they expect from us and what can we expect from from that. And we also built personal relationships, but we also made it very clear that, hey, like, we want certain advice, you know, certain number of hours, so on, so forth. And we did early on with both EduChain and Venter. And the way that we built those relationships was usually either literal cold outreach, um, as always, it's always been an incredible tool, um, for us. And it's, if you're willing to really push and face rejection, it's incredibly valuable. And introductions through a network at that stage. And in both cases, they were invaluable. Like, they were critical to our personal growth, the business growth. And I would say as early as possible. And, and to go beyond, like, transactional— like, oh, I want you to be my advisor if you didn't throw me to, like, 5 prospects— like, that's— they should just be doing that for you because they, they love you and they care. Uh, but that definitely isn't the way that you build a relationship off of. So they actually need to have, like, unique insight. You need to like them, they need to like you, and so forth.

Got it. All right, well I think, I think, yeah, we're just about out of time, so I want to make sure that we're respectful for your time, Mark. Thank you again for joining us. This was an awesome conversation. Is there any final things you want to share with this audience? Maybe ways to follow you, things you might be working on right now?

Yeah, well, I, I've got some things in the works, uh, very exciting. Can't say yet, but definitely stay tuned. Uh, I think that we have my LinkedIn. That's probably the best way to reach me.

Uh, yeah, put that back in the chat for y'all. Yeah, again, your inbox is probably blowing up in the past hour. Yeah, for sure.

For those questions that, you know, if you really would like to get an answer or have a chat, like, you can also just send me a DM on LinkedIn with the same question because I know that there's loads, and I read through the very good questions that we didn't get the chance to go through in their entirety. But do shoot me a message if you'd like to chat.

Yeah, yeah. Just one final thing before we wrap up, um, question I always like to close out with a conversation like this. If there was something an aspiring founder in this room could do right now before they do anything else? They're just at zero. What would you recommend they do?

It's not a specific thing, but, um, I think that besides the other things I mentioned around like going slow to go fast, taking care of yourself and this kind of thing, and like the meticulous, like, truth-seeking, product-focused, discovery-focused, I think probably consistency is the other biggest thing. People underestimate like what they can achieve with consistency. Like if you, I don't know, if you learn 25 words a day, I do this for languages, you do 25 words a day, you learn 9,500 in a year. You know, if you send 100 emails a day, like you can create these commitments with yourself upfront. But I think that's one thing that we intuitively did a lot of and later kind of built a structure around. And I think that's the single biggest thing. So if you don't know something about an area that you wanna learn And then stick to it, right? If you want to reach advisors or reach customers, make a plan for who and how you're going to reach them, and then just do it. And it's not about like, oh no, this is a huge task, and you know, I don't want to do it. I'm, you know, everyone's the same, right? If you give me a big task, I'm like, oh, I don't really want to do it. I kick it around, I procrastinate. If you break it down into small tasks and you're like, Mark, send 10 emails a day, okay, I can do that, right? And over time, like, that's going to be thousands, right? And that's worked incredibly well for us. So whether you're learning something new, trying to get advisors, soliciting feedback, prospecting customers, that's the number one thing you can do.

Oh, amazing, Mark. I'm looking at my vision board I made for this year. It's got prioritization. Basically, you basically hit them both out. Right in time for New Year's, man. Good stuff all around. Well, Mark, I appreciate this, man. I'm glad you got to join us here this Monday, kicking off the new year right. I'll let you head on out. I want to be respectful of your time, but if you do have some time to kick it over at the networking tables here in a little bit, we'd love to have you. But in any case, definitely we'll be dropping more things in the chat. I'll let you head backstage while I close out this audience. We got a couple of things housekeeping for them just so they're ready for the networking.

Sounds good.

Sounds good.

Yeah, it was a real pleasure. Thank you for having me and thanks everyone for joining and all the best with your own respective ventures. If I can help in any way, do let me know. Awesome.

We'll be in touch and then we'll be looking out for that new— for the news when you drop them, when you drop it. Hopefully this year, sooner than later. All right, everybody. Well, again, I appreciate everything that y'all gave in the audience. I appreciate all the questions that y'all had. Um, it's a couple things that I want y'all to be aware of. We are hosting another event tomorrow. It's a co-founder networking event back here on Airmeet. So if you want to, if you want to connect, a lot of people ask about co-founders in this audience, definitely jump in to that one. We're dropping that information in the chat right now. So definitely sign up for it. It'll be back on Airmeet. We'll have more networking tables for you so that you can connect with other people. Right. Next thing, you know, if, as I mentioned, we're jumping into the networking lounge, I would encourage all of you. To definitely take part in that, connect with maybe some folks that you met, connected with in the chat, but also just make sure, 'cause some technical things, right? Make sure that you have, you know, you're viewing this either on laptop, PC browser, or a tablet. You can't really get that networking experience on the phone, unfortunately. We're just constrained to the technical limitations of Airmeet, though. We believe Airmeet does a really, really great job. So just make sure on that, if you're not having a good time, using it, that's probably the reason. Make sure it's on Chrome or Firefox as well. Other than that, thank you again for joining us. This is always a fun time for me hosting it. My name is Martin again. Hopefully you'll see me soon in another event moving forward, and we're going to have some great ones lined up for the first few months of the year and throughout the rest. So definitely stay subscribed to our newsletter. Keep coming out. Keep coming out, keep building the future. Applications are open for a lot of our spring semesters throughout Founder Institute Global. We have a ton in Texas. So if you are based in Texas, connect with me. You know, our first couple chapters popping up in February, Houston, then San Antonio, newest chapter in Texas. So definitely apply if you're in those regions, you want to turn your dream into reality. But until then, Happy New Year, everyone. Make it a strong 2025. Founder Institute's here to help you achieve that dream if you so need it. And we're always going to be here providing great content and great events just like this. So wherever you are in the world, we hope you're safe, well, warm, dry, and hope you're still as driven to build the future in this hour as you were in the last, maybe even more. So until next time, you take care, keep building.