How This Solo GP Is Redefining Venture Capital With Building In Public (feat. Marc Cohen)

Hello, everybody. Welcome to Build in Public podcast. I'm your host, KP, and I am super thrilled to have Mark Coyne joining us from Guernsey. Did I get that right, Mark?

You did get that right. That was perfect.

Guernsey. Until I met you, I actually didn't even know that place existed, but it does. And I would love to kind of start there, right? What are you doing in Guernsey and where is it? And tell us about what— how your career brought you to Guernsey.

So I'll start early and then come back to— and let Guernsey feed into that. A long time ago, I was a maths undergraduate at Cambridge. I went into the financial markets in the UK. I was an interest rate swap trader at banks for 7 years. And then in 2001, I quit to do a master's in AI. And that's sort of what's now known as the AI winter. There were very few courses around. I called up Cambridge and said, Do you have a master's in AI? And they said, no. And maybe they just didn't want to see me again. I wouldn't rule that out. I maybe wasn't the hardest working student when I was there. But I asked them, you know, where are the good places to go? And one of those good places was Sussex University in Brighton. And I went there and I did a fantastic course that turned out to be run by one of Geoffrey Hinton's mentors, though I didn't know that at the time. Met my wife who was doing her undergraduate, so I hung around until she'd finished. Went back into financial markets, joined a small proprietary trading group and built the systematic trading side of that up from scratch to become most of that business. I've been doing a side project in poker and AI. I brought my friend I was doing that with into the trading business and we actually built the fully AI version of that trading system. And the last 8 years of that I did working from— working remotely from Lugano in the Italian-speaking part of Switzerland. And when that stopped, we had to figure out like where are we going to go next. We didn't want to move back to the UK, which is where we're from originally, but we obviously had family in the UK, knew wanted to do something in business and needed to be in a reasonable-sized business community near the UK, English-speaking, and with like good schools because we'd had problems with the schooling in Lugano because I've got 4 boys. And so we ended up moving here to Guernsey. There weren't many options left actually by the time you'd done all those things. And Guernsey is a small island in the English Channel between the UK and France. We're slightly nearer to France with a population of only 64,000 people. Wow.

And you would say, would you pick that as a business-friendly culture? And like, is this Or is it more of a vacation place?

No, it's a very business-friendly culture. Actually, a lot of venture capital funds are— the administration is done from here, which is not necessarily the most exciting business, but lots of VCs that you may have heard of actually have their funds technically come out of Guernsey. So it is very business-friendly, and there's actually quite a nice business community here.

So, so, Mark, One of the reasons why I wanted to bring you on this pod was the brilliant conversation we had a couple weeks ago, after the first time I ever got to meet you at the virtual judging panel event. I mean, the virtual demo day ran by the NanoFund guys, right? Shout out Igor and team, the Parallax team, where you and I were, you know, on the judging panel. I thought you were questions were super thoughtful to the founders, you know, who were building these startups and pitching them. And I really did some research about you and found out about Unbundled VC, your current firm. And we had that great one-on-one. And one thing that stood out for me, and so it kind of parlays into why you're here and why I've been loving your journey, is you're such a fierce and open venture capitalist. Thank you. in the, in the public realm, you know. And I think that's refreshing. I said this to you last time when I— when we talked, such a refreshing thing to watch because venture capital industry generally, that whole sector is, you know, predominantly secret, you know, worships secrecy and like it's all about like not sharing the deals. And it's like, I don't think build in public is their default mantra. I know it's changing. And I love that you are one of the few who's embracing the change or leading the change for that matter. And so I'm curious to start there about what made you build in public as a venture capitalist? Like what gave you the motivation?

So it's a couple of things. The main thing is that I'm small, right? I'm small fry in the industry and I'm smaller than a small VC. The amount of money I've got to put to work, while it's meaningful for me and enough for me to do this full-time, is still very small for the industry. So I'm effectively a tiny challenger brand in a large incumbent industry, and I have to figure out how the hell is anyone going to even notice.

Let's say you're like the band in the world with like the Beatles and the Coldplay and the U2. You're like a little, you know, yeah,

yeah, that kind of thing. Like any, you know, or you're the startup against IBM or whatever it is. How do you get— how do you get noticed when you're that little guy? You know, the same thing as a founder is trying to do when they're building their business and there's an incumbent and they're like, how do I get recognized? And one of the ways that I figured out that I would do this is I would just talk very publicly about sort of kind of everything that I was doing on LinkedIn because I'd already built something of a network there just because I was at my previous place. I was the sort of front face for the first pitches, and it just seemed like a really natural extension that people would notice that I existed. And I think I mentioned this when we spoke last time was I was chatting with a founder that I'm very close with about this, and he's like, oh, you're going to build in public. And I was like, what? What's that? And he's like, oh, you're building in public. And I went and did some Googling, and it was probably one of those phrases that had sort of wafted past me 5 or 6 times in my life without me ever really paying that much attention. And I was like, oh, yeah, Googled it. That is kind of what I'm planning to do. And it was helpful because it reinforced that this wasn't just some like, crazy thing that I was doing. There were some like solid reasons for it. But you're right, no one's ever done it in VC, or it's very rare. I think I haven't seen it before in VC. And I think what you see there is what you would call a classic sort of innovator's dilemma, right? You've got an incumbent where it's fine for me to go talk about all the things that I'm doing because, you know, if I get to the point where My secret sauce and my deal flow is so desirable that people want to copy what I'm doing. I'm in a wonderful position. But let's not worry about that today. But for all the incumbents, if they've got all that great deal flow and they've got, this is how we do things, they are worried that someone maybe is going to go and copy them. And they do need to go to their LPs and say, hey, look, we do this magical thing that nobody else does. And that's a difficult conversation if you've gone and told everyone exactly what it is that you're doing. So, so it's, it's, you know, it is almost the classic innovator's dilemma where they cannot do it. But you kind of have to do it if you want to have a shot stand out.

I love that. I love that. And also, I'm sure you're self-aware that you're approaching this whole thing like a founder, you know, and that's one thing that I noticed about you is that you're such a founder DNA. You know, when I first talked to you, I was almost surprised that you were actually a solo GP, because I was like, you know, this, He— I felt like we were— I was talking to another founder. You know, the DNA was so there, right? And so this awareness around marketing and how do I cut through the noise and how do I stay relevant, you know, I think it's such a, again, a founder mindset, you know, which I think a lot of VCs and a lot of investors genuinely— I don't think that they think 24/7 like a founder. They serve and help founders, but they're— I feel like they think more like traditional institutions. You know, that's what generally— again, this is like me generalizing some things here. But so that's why you were like a little renegade brand that I thought was fun to follow along and bring you on the pod. And like now 40,000 more people get to see and hear about Mark. So tell us about Unbundled VC, Mark. Like, I'm curious, what was the sort of genesis for you to, you know, start your own solo fund, number one? Number two, why is it called Unbundled?

So the first thing was, I was at a small VC before, and I just felt that I could do it better myself. And actually, all the things that we were just talking about, again, even at a small VC, you just can't go do those within another brand. There are actually sometimes quite good reasons not to do them. Plus, you then need to go and get the buy-in of all the other people, right? So, and people aren't necessarily going to think the same way that you do. And time will tell whether I'm proven right or not. So I was like, this is a thing that I can only do on my own. The brand Unbundled— so I know you're familiar with what unbundling is. You often have industries that contain many different parts, and you don't really think of them as separate parts, but actually they do 10 things or they do 20 different things. It's as much as anything a reminder to me that there are many different ways that this journey could lead me. Because there are lots of parts to VC. And it's possible, yes, there are the more traditional paths, but actually any of those paths could end up being an interesting one.

When I think about unbundling, the things, I mean, the traditional things that come to mind are like, you know, there's these articles around, you know, the great unbundling of Reddit, right? The subreddits and the niche communities. I think that's a huge trend has been happening for a while. Also, the great unbundling of Craigslist has been catnip for investors for a while, as I'm sure you know. And when I worked at On Deck, the phrase was the great unbundling of the university. And that's one of the sort of north stars for On Deck, was about how do you take parts of the universities and re-engineer them, reimagine them in 21st century. 2023, essentially. Um, so I'm fully, fully aware. I love, I love the way you thought about it. And I'm curious, do you believe that the, the great unbundling of the VC needs to happen? And you think, do you think that you're doing some, some version of that?

To a certain extent, right? Because I am being public about my deal flow when I have the permission of, of founders. And so to a certain extent, then it's a Actually, you can go and look at that and go look at that business and see if you want to go and call them. And we've had some instances of that because I just post every day. I've had a number of founders come back to me and go, actually, I've had inbound for investment and I've had inbound for my product just because of that. And I love that, right? It's a beautiful serendipitous thing that for something that I'm doing for to a certain extent somewhat selfish reasons, right? Because I want people to be interested in my journey, actually is still leading to some nice outcomes for other people as well. And so to a certain extent, by doing all those things separately and being publicly about— public about them, if any of those things particularly end up being useful, they could end up unbundling and becoming a piece and becoming a— potentially becoming a business on its own. Do I think VC is going to get unbundled? I think that is very hard to say. There's such a tight ecosystem between sort of LPs and GPs and how everything is structured. I think that's quite hard. It would be such a change that I think it's definitely tricky. Do I think there's things that people can do better? And do I want to be at the forefront of that? Hell yes.

Yeah, my, you know, I'm not super deep in this sector as much as you are, but I'm a mini angel investor. I've written like 9 checks in the last 2 years. A lot more selective now because of the market and just, you know, where I am right now. But my assessment, Mark, has been that there's only 2 kinds of players that I feel like will win in the next 20 years, 30-year span as a venture capital allocator, if you will. One is the ones who already have a great brand, like the Sequoias of the world. It's kind of like the barbell strategy, or barbell metaphor comes to mind. One end is this Sequoia, the Founders Fund, a16z, because they just have that brand. And unless they do something that completely destroys their reputation, I think they will be around for 20, 30, 40 years. Plus they just had a nice— like Sequoia had a great win with Airbnb 2 years ago with IPO. That's a lot of money. Go back into the ecosystem. So that's great. So I feel like that they will continue to win both the deal flow but also great outcomes. At the same time, on the other end of this barbell, I feel like individual renegade brands of people who get 2023's sort of pulse in the sense that now startups and founders are looking for VCs who can relate to what they're going through who can help them with some, you know, marketing help, building public help, distribution help, right? Get them those 20 new leads this quarter or something like that. As opposed to just like bankers and staying back and only looking at spreadsheets, you know. By way of you being on this podcast, and I've seen you've been on a bunch of podcasts, I feel like you are aware of the power of podcasting. So when you talk to another founder, who's about to have a big launch 3 months down the line, and you're like, hey John, you should go on a podcast tour. Go talk to KP because he has community building niche, whatever, and you're building a community product. Maybe there's a nice synergy. Let me make an intro to you. And suddenly this John is on Building Public Podcasts, and now his product launch gets 10x bigger attention than it would have. So I think knowing sort of what 2023's pulse is and like what the modern way of marketing and distribution are, I think, are massive superpowers that I think renegade brands like you or like challenger brands like you will stand out. So what I'm trying to get to is that the middle will be crushed. So if you're not a Sequoia and if you have, I don't know, like a $100 million fund, I think it's going to be very challenging for you to operate in terms of deal flow unless you do this you know, you go to the other spectrum where you're what I was saying, like you're, you're like Mark, or you're like, you know, someone who's, um, super, super founder-friendly and understands the 2023 landscape.

So I couldn't agree more. And I think I didn't say that as one of my motivations, but it was that typically all industries as they mature, at some point, because, you know, there's thousands of players now, right? In VC. At some point, industries mature. There are a few big players at the top, and then there can be quite a number of niche players because they have specific brands and specific reputations for that. But there's— and there may be more of those than there are of the large players, but there still are not going to be— potentially are not going to be as many people around as there were, you know, as there are right now. And maybe what's happened in the last couple of years you know, is going to accelerate that. And I think I saw where I was before, that there was a risk that we weren't aware of that. And I needed to go, how do I get myself in a position where not just today I can do well, but where I can still be doing well in 5 years' time, in 10 years' time, in 20 years' time, in whatever I'm doing? And I actually do need to do something different in order to achieve that. Yeah.

And all all that you're doing now, in the long scheme of things, which I've seen personally with my Twitter when I started 414 followers in 2018. If you just play the game long enough, and now I'm at 45,000. I didn't do anything. I think that's outrageous on Twitter. That I don't remember like you know doing like anything that's like a growth hack. I just persisted the longest, um, compared to many people who started with me. I think more importantly, at every turn I asked myself, how can I add value? I think, which is a very fair question. I'm sure you feel that. How can I add value? What can I do differently today? And all that. But at the same time, it's just pure compound interest, Marc. It's just brilliant. And when you think about that from a— I know this in theory, or I know this like, you know, when I went to college, I heard about compound interest about money. Mm-hmm. And that's why we have the 401 accounts and all that. But like, Thinking about compound interest of content is, I think, highly, highly, highly underrated. Most people don't think of it that way, and most people don't play the 10-year game on content. But if you do that, really, that's the answer. You will have a personal monopoly on a particular niche or a particular channel, either podcasting or it's Twitter or LinkedIn, whatever. And you will be the top 10% or 1% in that particular niche. And it's just so achievable, and I wish more people took shots on that. You know, it takes time, but you're gonna spend the time anyway.

I mean, I, I've not— yeah, well, I felt like I kind of didn't have any other options, and it just made perfect sense, right? And it's like, I'm gonna do this on day 1. It may well be a grind and take a while before it actually, you know, gets going. And actually, Twitter, I've been starting to zero from zero, and I'm still only just over 300 followers. That's fine. It's a grind. I already had over 2,000 people on LinkedIn. So that's been less of a grind. But, and it's been growing.

You're close to 5,000 on LinkedIn, I think I saw, right? You're close to 4,900.

Very, very, very close. And I could easily go over because I've got like 600, 700 connection requests in my inbox. But I actually only connect with people when I've actually had some sort of connection. So, but Twitter, I know, is going to be a grind. And that's fine. And I know it's day one and it takes time, but I just, like you say, you just have to be there every day. Now that doesn't guarantee you success, but you certainly aren't going to get success unless you're there every day. It's important.

The default. I mean, that's the baseline. You got to be there. So actually let's switch gears to one question I had about VIP content. One style of content that I've seen you create on LinkedIn, which I love, is the recap of today. I think you do a hashtag today and then you put 4 or 5 bullet points. I know 99.9% I'm going to be mentioned in your— in your today's update on your LinkedIn later after this podcast, which I'm completely happy with, as you know. Like, I love that. So, I loved it. I love the fact that you take something mundane, as ordinary as like, hey, I just had a meeting, which a bunch of people have a bunch of meetings every day. It's not groundbreaking, but you document them every day with 4 or 5 bullet points. I think— Yeah. But of course, by asking permission. I love that idea. How did you come about that? And second, what are some other experiments you're running on, on this theme?

So I didn't do it on day one. I was just like, I'm going to post at least once a day something. And I think just one day I posted about a few things that I'd done. And then the next day, it was like, oh, it's just way easier if I just do this, and just went like that. And, and people— I had a few messages, like private messages going, I don't really know why, but I really like those.

Me too.

Like they didn't understand it either. But I really like them.

Remember I told you that in our last meeting? I said I love those.

And so it's it's it's a bit weird because I don't quite people do seem to like them. It's the easiest post anyone can write. You literally you go through your list of meet. You make sure you've got permission ahead of time, right? So when I send out my calendarly. It's in the questions. Please tell me if you don't want me to do that. And you literally just list who you met and what company they're from. And if you've had a quiet day, go through your emails and look for like 2 or 3 things that you did just to like pad it out, if you like. Because you always did a lot of things. It's just not always meetings, right? So it's just kind of fill those gaps in. Honestly, it's the quickest, easiest post. that anybody could write. So it was almost by accident. I was just like, hey, these are some things I've done today. And then it was like, I'll try that. And people started messaging me going, yeah. And so I was like, okay, people like it, you stick with it, right? And so, I mean, I think I wrote a few days ago about— and this is still something that I'm learning, right? I'm learning all the time. You talked about that founder mentality. I will back myself as one of the fastest learners out there. I'm learning from founders. I talk to like founders every day, and I'm trying to learn from every single one of them. So you know what? Two three years ago, maybe I couldn't do what I'm doing today, but I'm listening and I'm trying to learn. So, and I posted. So I posted a few days ago about these things called like two-way doors and one-way doors, right? Which you may well be familiar with. So a two-way door decision is one where, right?

You know this, right? You try it. It doesn't work.

The two-way door decision is one, if you try it and it doesn't work, you can just reverse it, right? You can come back through that door. And those decisions, you just should, like, try as many things as possible. If you've got a business, it's completely fine to delegate those decisions without worrying about it too much because you can change your mind afterwards, right? Right. And so almost everything that I do is a two-way door decision, right? So I can try these things, and if they don't work, I'm about to launch, like, just a monthly newsletter. If no one's interested, that's fine. Stop it. Run as many experiments as you can. It's exactly the same as with founders where you go, right, do as many iterations, run as many pricing experiments, all these kinds of things that you can do where you're like, go just find it until you get there and you find what's the closest thing. What is that thing that people want? And so it's exactly that same mindset. Try as many things as possible.

The weird thing is it's almost impossible to predict Or gauge what is that will resonate a lot before you do it anyway. You know, it's like nobody, I think, has the magic wand where they could just say, you know what, I know exactly this piece of content will resonate. So this whole thing about today recap thing we're talking about, right? I feel like unless you did it for a couple days, I didn't even know that thing existed. And so by the time I got to see it, I think you might have done it like 30 times already. And so, and then I gave you this qualitative, you know, sort of avalanche of feedback saying, oh my God, Marc, that's— I love it. Because I think of you anytime I think of an update like that. I'm like, that's Marc's style, right? You've almost signatured it. But you wouldn't know that until you try it, you know. So you have to go through a lot of, um, initial dumb experiments until you get the one that resonates and people say, you know what, that's what you should be doing more of.

Totally. And day one, I did not know I was going to be doing posts that look like that. If someone had said, oh, you're going to do those posts, I'd be like, right, really? And people are going to like them? I'd be like, really? Are you sure? That's weird.

And so this happens all the time and across all platforms, Marc. I mean, I've seen this at Twitter, where some of my best performing threads have been surprising accidents. You know, I'm like, the ones where I put a lot of effort and a lot of thought and a lot of like intentionality sometimes bomb. And so, I mean, this, this, I was reading about Jeff Bezos's, you know, I think it was a note or some kind of an essay earlier, and it was something about how failure and innovation are conjoined twins or something. Basically, he was trying to say like Amazon should have the culture of failure that no other company can ever dare to have, because a lot of big companies want to have failure, but the price that you have to pay is that you'll look dumb or you will have to be embarrassed or you'll have, you'll have some you know, outcomes that you're not happy with, you know. And he was trying to reinforce to the team saying like, that is okay because that is our culture. And please make these mistakes, please make these experiments and failures, otherwise we'll never get out of the innovator's dilemma, you know, like you were saying earlier. And I think, um, often a lot of people who want to get into the game of building in public or growing their Twitter, growing their LinkedIn, podcasting, whatever, they want to do experiments, but they're afraid of the consequences. But they're all two-way doors. I think to me, what surprises me is like, it's not going to impact you as much as you think it does.

Yeah, I think the, like, the one thing I did do was I literally, I was like, I am going to post every day. And I'm going to post at least once every day, working days, weekends, I don't post actually, I give myself, I do work at weekends, but I give myself like, This is going to be family time as well. But I don't post, but I was like, I am just— I have to.

What time do you post? Is there a particular time in the calendar? You have a block? Do you just use that as a block?

I typically try and post sometime in the morning. So this is UK time between 7 and 9. I find if I post— so just some small hacks here. Like if you post too early, what happens is there's no one watching. And this is what it appears to me. I do not know how the LinkedIn algorithm works. What it looks like is if you post too early, then nobody sees it, and then LinkedIn— because my network isn't around— and then LinkedIn thinks this isn't a popular piece of content, and it can take a long time to catch back up again. And obviously before 9 o'clock is kind of just before people are getting into work, and they're— or maybe they get in a bit early, or they've just got out of bed, or they're getting ready, and they flick up LinkedIn. So that 7 till 9 seems to be the— the sweet spot. And then I typically post like at the end of the day, the Today I Post, as we said. I'm going to be a bit late on it today, but I think the sweet spot for that is actually around sort of 4:30, 4:40, because people are finishing at 5:00. Actually, you want to— sometimes people sneak out a little bit early, or they're, you know, it's the end of their day, I'll just go look at this, I don't have much time. And that's the point. And if you post too early, it's a bit weird, right? Because it's meant to be what I did today.

But what's the morning post called? Is there a theme for that? Or you just choose some— something comes to mind?

It's just whatever comes to mind. And I have a post list in my notes list of things that I'm interested in. But then sometimes it's just whatever is on my mind that day. I very rarely actually write the post ahead of time. I have a list of things I might be interested in. And then sometimes it's something completely different. If I've done a podcast recently, that's quite interesting, because I can take Like, worst case, I can go, you asked me like 20 different questions. I could turn each of those, if I wanted to, that could be my post for the next 4 weeks, right? Yeah, absolutely. Be the 20 questions you asked me and a pithy version, uh, rather than the long-winded one that you're getting of, uh, of all my answers. And so it's more something that's on my mind, and it can be about investing, about running a business, it can— or it can be completely random like the one that we were talking about, um, just a few moments ago before we started the podcast. And then the end of the day is always that Today I, and then occasionally there's a bonus post in the middle of the day if, if something has happened, right? One of my companies, something's happened or an investment went public, those kind of things.

They have a launch or something. Yeah. So tell me about, for Unbundled VC, tell me about the kind of founders you want to attract, Mark. What are some traits you look for, especially from founders? And then we're going to go into the kind of businesses sectors that you want to attract?

So the founders that I am looking for, I'm looking for 3 key skills. I'm looking for sales, because they have to be able to sell the product to people like me, to investors. They have to be able to sell actually the product, and they have to be able to persuade people to come and work for them who shouldn't really want to come and work for them. The best people, you know, have choices of where they go to work, and it makes a huge difference if they're going to want to come work for you or if they're going to want to go work for someone else. So sales is like a super critical skill. I think only if there's more than one founder, I think only one founder needs to have it. You don't need it in all of them, but it's possibly the single most essential skill. The other skills I'm looking for are what I would call decision-making skill, which is quite hard to figure out. So when someone pitches me, I do ask your journey, how you got to this point, how you figured out, you know, the product is different today to what it was on day one and how you figured out how you got to that point. And I'm really looking to, can I get some sense that you're actually a really strong decision maker? And the other piece is tenacity. I know we talk about grit, that kind of thing a lot. Again, it's quite hard to figure out when someone's pitching you whether someone really has that or not. Occasionally you hear a founder story and you're like, okay, that person is just going to find a way to win no matter What more often than not, you can't tell. I would say actually on the tenacity, it is really hard to tell. Um, but you do occasionally. But I think it's those 3 key skills. And then depending on the business, also founder market fit, because there are some, some businesses that you do need very specific skills to be able to do. And of course, there are some businesses that almost anyone could do as long as they've got those 3 founder skills.

Brilliantly said. I think the founder market fit is I think often underrated in some, in some domains. So let's, let's talk about the kinds of startups and businesses that you'd like to invest in. Like, what are some traits that they have, um, from, from the lens of like B2B or B2C or verticals and things like that?

So it's early-stage digital tech. Early stage means pre-Series A. My check size, because my first check is just like £50,000, if someone's coming to me at Series A, I'm going to be questioning why they're coming to me, given what they ought to be raising. It's probably not a good sign. Digital tech, because really it's the area I understand. Plus, actually, the whole point of digital tech is it ought to be able to scale fast if things are going well. And that's why people like digital businesses, right? Because they have that potential to, you know, 5x every month in theory, right? Nothing's actually growing that fast for very long, but you know what I mean, because actually all you need is more bandwidth. In terms of verticals, I deliberately don't have verticals. Sometimes the most interesting things are only the things you hear once you've heard them in the founder's words. And so I actually have a reasonably unique process where the first pass is typically a video pitch because I want to hear it in someone's words. I'm not really that interested in the pitch deck. It's a reference material for me. And so I've now forgotten what the other piece of the question was. There definitely was one. And I want to come back to it.

I think it was basically the sort of the nature of businesses and startups that are appealing to you. And you said digital tech would be the broader umbrella.

Yeah, you said B2B or B2C. And I think the answer is that I don't care. And I know a lot of people want to do B2B and not B2C. And the reason I don't care is the underlying principles that you should be applying to this are the same. And it may be the case that those principles don't apply so often in B2C as they do in B2B. But what you're looking for is, you know, a business that is not too obvious, not a tar pit idea, if you're familiar with that, right? One which is so obvious that actually what that means is there are either 20 people doing it or there's 100 people who've tried and done it and failed, right? Anything too obvious probably fits into that category. So it's both not too obvious, but has a huge potential market and actually a plausible path to, to get there at the, at the same time. Um, and so, you know, I'm looking for things with a minimum, you know, 100x potential when I, when I first invest. Right. And actually, one of the things that I've done recently that is slightly different is not just use that as a hurdle, but go, actually, well, if there's a 500 or it's a 1,000 or a 10,000 potential, if everything goes right, You have to weight that into your decision. You have to go, well, yeah, the valuation is a little bit higher on this one. It's got 10 times higher upside on it, right? So basically, those things aren't rocket science. Can you envisage a future where actually this product is that big, right? Right. Plus, do you believe there's a plausible path there, and this person is capable of navigating that path? And if you've got those things, I don't really care whether it's B2B or B2C, right? It may well be that more things that have those features are B2B than B2C, but actually there's no theoretical reason why you should have one and not the other one.

I'm going to ask you a fun follow-up question. Let's take the last 2 decades, Marc, and I'm curious, as an investor, I'm sure you study a lot of the decks, study a lot of the You know, the paths to IPO for all these startups. If you could go back in time and pick 3 startups to invest in, in the last 20 years, what would those 3 be?

Oh, that's a great question. And one that I've not really thought about.

Give me a Building Public answer. Think it out loud and answer.

Yeah, I'll give you the Building Public answer. So doing what I know now, and I'll give you the one that I think I might have missed. So I think I've always been an Android person, actually, but I think Apple has just been such a great business. And Steve Jobs had that vision to go, this is something— we're going to create something completely new. That whole thing that we were talking about, actually, before we were on the call about understanding your customers, you build things that your customers will want. And he had a vision of what those customers will want, even though they didn't exist yet. The one— and we spoke about Amazon. I think that's obviously been a fantastic business. The one that I think of, like the big huge businesses, the one that I think I would have missed is Google. And the reason I think I would have missed it is the same reason that they felt they had to bring in like the Eric Schmidt, uh, at one time.

The adult in the room, right? Yeah.

The adult in the room. Yeah. Which is like, they were obviously great visionary guys. I'm not sure they had that sales skill or that idea of like, How are we going to turn this into a— I don't know whether they had that laser customer focus as much. They may have done. I just don't know those people back then, but it's more plausible to me that they didn't necessarily have that.

Yeah, I think they said a couple of times, you know, even in those early days, like, there was a constant pushback against, we don't want to monetize Google. Apparently Eric Schmidt was sweating every time he heard the words, we don't want to monetize, we don't want to take ads. And he was like, oh, but we have to make money, you know, Google's not a nonprofit, you know, so.

I think that might well have made me miss it, right? I might well have passed because, because of that, because while they had a fantastic product, like, they don't want to make any money. This doesn't seem like a good idea.

So 28th search engine or something, I think 18th or 28th search engine, which is crazy. So which means they were like not the first, you know, to come out with the, with the product.

Yeah. So that, that I think. And so this is a subject that came up when I was discussing with another investor recently is, Sometimes, and this is a really hard problem for investors, where sometimes they say, for example, there's a business recently, they're like, I want to do B2C, right? And you're like, I can tell B2B, or at least I believe B2B would be a better path for this specific business. And say, let's say you pass, and then like they pivot to B2B because they figure it out as well. And you— and then they do incredibly well. And you were right, they shouldn't do B2C, they should do B2B. And you passed because they said they were going to go that. And it's like, well, okay, but I missed it. And I said, well, how do you manage that? Right? Obviously, part of it is like invest in good founders. But part of it is like, I don't— you don't know what's going to happen, what path those things are going to take. This is still something I'm thinking about, by the way. I do not know what the right answer to that question is or how to figure that piece out.

I think especially in the pre-Series A stage where it's even more tricky, right? Because they haven't— Pre-series stage, generally you don't have a lot of revenue to go off of. You know, you have some signs of revenue accumulation, but you know, you just don't have a lot. It's not a growth stage investment, so you really have to still, like you said, take a shot on the founder again, hoping that they will, they will listen to the market and pivot as needed and all that good stuff. Okay, so you told— you shared with me Amazon's one, uh, Google you may have missed. What, what's Pick one more of one of the startups, like your darling startups in the last 20 years that you would have loved to invest.

A darling startup in the last 20 years that I would love to have invested in. This is such a— this is such a—

I actually, I don't think I have an answer for mine too. But while you give yours, I'm gonna think of mine too.

I was gonna say, what's yours? Yeah. Yeah, I was gonna throw it back at you. Look, like if you've asked this question, you must have thought about it yourself.

You would think, right? But I just, you know, as a podcaster, I love to— okay, but my answer would be Airtable. Airbnb for sure, Mark. Now, this is hypothetical, of course. We're not assuming that we would have gotten into Airbnb's cap table or whatever. I'm just saying hypothetically, I just love Brian Chesky's vision. I think he very much has the Steve Jobs kind of design-centric vision. I think Airbnb also, the grit you talked about where they sold these cereal boxes, you know, like they sold cereal for $20,000. I think that just shows commitment and just creative thinking. So yeah, Airbnb is in my top 3. I would have loved number 2. I don't know, it's a tough one. I would have picked maybe like Webflow or one of the— Webflow or Bubble because, you know, I've come in coming from the no-code area for the last 4 or 5 years and watching what they've done has been incredible. You know, I think Webflow has been amazing building community and things like that.

Yeah, here's— I've thought of something, and I've actually got no idea how well they've done, whether it's been a successful business or it's— or not. But I— as it's because I love the tool so much.

Yes.

Uh, and so I don't even know how old it is, but I know—

You know what's funny?

They're from Atlanta, where I live.

They're, they're in the same city.

Yeah, yeah, I pay for it even though there's like an embedded free version in like your Google or your whatever, because they're a bit rubbish. I still want to pay for it because they've unbundled that, that service. They produce something so good that you want to go use it. So I've got no idea whether they've exited or whether they've had a good outcome or not, but the product is just so good that once you use it, you just never want to go back.

I agree. I think, um, just, you know, my answer came to me just now is Figma. I would have chosen Figma as my number 3 because I think Figma is just— again, um, I don't know if they went through the Adobe acquisition, $10 billion acquisition. That's a crazy exit, but But back to Calendly, they— I think the last I know, the last sort of update I heard from the internet is about $3 billion, I think, growth stage round valuation that they had recently, and I feel like they're marching their way to getting an IPO, or maybe they'll get a fantastic exit. I can't imagine, like, they're not— I can't imagine— Yeah. Like, I know that they're feeling a ton of inbound acquisition requests, right? From, yeah, from like any, any big, you know, player like Salesforce or whoever. Yeah, that's good. Yeah.

I think I've got another one I might have missed for exactly the same reason as before, because there was a sort of minor pivot, which I think is an Uber, right? Which for, and I appreciate for some of the later stage investors that didn't go so well, but for the early stage investors, still incredible. Because they were doing the limo service on day 1, right? Which was like, I mean, it's not clear how scalable that is going to be, right? Or how big that can really be. And you're like, you might have quite rationally gone on day 1, yeah, I don't think that's going to work, right? And you'd have been right. But then they obviously pivoted into something incredible. Yeah. And so this is still a challenge, right, to figure out. And I think the bar does need to be higher if you don't— This is my working theory, at least, is if they're not doing the thing today that you think is going to work, right, the bar does have to be a little bit higher on everything else. And you need to see that there's something adjacent that you think could work. Yeah. Right. So, you know, like Slack, for example. Slack's the very famous big pivot example, right? They were building a game, I think, at first, and Slack was the internal console. that they built. And you might have gone, I don't know anything about gaming, right? It's hard to build games. I'm not getting involved in that. And then it turns into this like incredible business because they built all these other tools. Like, there's definitely a certain amount of luck involved when you— obviously the founders had to be incredible, right? To do that, to build that thing in the first place. But you, you know, you can't invest just from the incredible founder when it's early. Right. You have to take Subaccounts of the— of what the business is doing as well.

The counterexample is in the peak 2020, it's also sometimes you can't just invest based on the paradigm shift. I mean, because Uber, I think the paradigm shift behind Uber was the fact that everybody had a smartphone in their hand in 2008, and suddenly GPS was a thing. You know, people were not using the TomTom machines and all these things on the cars. Now they're like, navigation was done through the phone. so you know where your driver is, which I think was a paradigm shift on which this was built. And I mean, every time there's a paradigm shift, I think that opens up opportunities for some, you know, groundbreaking new companies. But with the same analogy, 2020 paradigm shift was everybody were going remote, pandemic, and then Clubhouse came into the scene. Again, incredible paradigm shift and also incredible founder, you know, but it didn't pan out in 3 years now where nobody's like using Clubhouse as much as they used in 2020. So it's like, that's why I feel like it's a 10-year game. It's very hard to predict what might happen. You know,

you can't— you can learn as much as you like, but you can never know that something is gonna succeed, right? So you— all you're trying to do when you're investing is go, I want the thing with the best possible distribution of outcomes. And then what will be will be, and you really can't do that much about it, right? You can help when people want help, and but actually, you know, as an investor, largely you put some money in, and then in five or ten years' time it comes back or it doesn't come back, and that's it. And I think it takes a certain mindset. I was talking to someone about this yesterday, and they're like, "I don't think I could do that," and I was like, "Well." For me, actually, it's a lot easier than I invest in something listed and then you sit there every moment. And that's what my whole career was before. That was like things that not necessarily equities, but things where you could get live prices on them all the time. What that means is you had a little corner of your Excel spreadsheet with your like live P&L every moment of the day. And yes, you get used to it, but it's incredibly distracting. It doesn't matter how good you are, right? There's no way you can switch that off and go, well, I'm just not going to look at that today. Right? You just— it's there the whole time. When you know, and you can get out, right? You can choose, I want to change my mind. I don't want to do that anymore. Right. Slightly different with something systematic. But you know what I mean? It's still there. And it's a big distraction. Actually, one of the nice things about venture for me is that actually, do you know what, whatever, I'm going to try and make as good decisions as I can today. I know it's going to be a long time before that works out or not. And no matter how good my decision-making is, there's still an awful lot of variance on the outcome. And you just have to kind of be comfortable with that. Yeah. And I think actually, having come from a trading background and actually having played quite a bit of poker, it's actually quite helpful to go, do you know what, keep doing the right things. And in the long run, yes, you can go through periods of good and bad variance. But actually, if you keep doing the right things in the long run, you'll get the right outcomes plus a load of variance. Right. Of course.

Okay. So I got the last question for you, which is sort of a prompt that I want you to expand on. Something that I've read and I read out to you earlier that I read from Paul Graham's essay called What I've Learned from Talking to Users. He said something on the lines of, I recently told applicants to YC the best advice I could give for getting in per word was the following: explain what you've learned from users. 6 words. I think it's a great way to assess a founder at the pitch stage, you know, they're pitching you or trying to get funding from you, because it puts the focus on learning. What have you learned and also the focus on talking to users, which I think is somehow a mysterious thing for a lot of early-stage founders. I think they'd love to spend time with the product and the code or anything else but talk to users and face the truth, you know. So I thought that was fantastic. And first, I want to hear your reflection on that, your reaction to that. And second, I want to ask you what you would add to this list of questions that you would love— you use to assess Great founders.

So I think that is— it's an excellent question because you need to know that you're solving a real problem and one that matters enough that people are going to pay for it, and enough people are going to pay for it that you can create a great business. And if you don't talk to your users, you're just never going to figure that out. You have to get lucky if you don't talk to your users, right? So You talk to them the whole time, and maybe you're offering. So there's a business that I've invested in where I had the best answer for that, and it's not public yet. That that that round it will be very shortly. But the product they ended up with was so different from what they thought it was going to be on day one. It's solving the the either the same problem or problem in the same in the same space because it's mission-driven founders and they were really wanted to solve. But they were like, the product— and I was like, how did you get there? And the way they got there, the answers, I heard the best answers that I had ever heard. And it wasn't just them speaking to their users, it was the way they spoke to them, the right— asking the right questions. And they had then found a product which was like, okay, people really want this. And so it's such an important question. I think another interesting question, someone actually gave this as an answer to me. So I have a cheat question that I use. Which is what's the I use at the end of a pitch? What's the one thing that I don't know that would be really helpful for me to know about your business? Right, and it's kind of it's a cheat question because it's almost like I can't think of another question, so I'm just going to put it back onto onto you. So that works for me a lot, and I posted that this was my cheat question, and someone came with a really good answer that they had a really good question they asked, and their really good question was. I can see your sort of revenue forecasts. What needs to happen for those revenue forecasts? What are all the things that need to happen for those revenue forecasts to become true? Right? Which is, which I, it wasn't quite those words, but it was, was a really interesting question because I think it then points, that pointed back to me to like a lean startup methodology, right? And the lean startup for those that don't know is like actually You say you're going to get to here. Today you're here. There's a whole load of things that need to be true for you to get there. You actually— it's helpful for you to know what all those things are, right? And so that question is built on that thing. And actually the answers tell you whether the founders have actually thought about those things. So I thought that was a really good question.

I love those. I love all the 3. And you also touched on sort of earlier, The power of having a network of founders. Mark, do you want to expand on that a little bit? And I, I'm a big believer in that too. And I feel like, um, a lot of what you're doing, what I'm doing, is kind of building virtual networks of, of, you know, with founders and other like-minded people by building in public. So why, why is the network important?

So I think for founders, there's, there's just an awful lot of actual solved problems out there. Right? What CRM should I use? What, you know, should I use Figma? The answer, you know, should I use Calendly? Should I use— and if you've never built a business before, right? For you, I think, what was it you said? What podcast software was the one you used? Yeah. You're like, well, I know what podcasts, and this is obviously better than all the other ones. Why would anyone use anything else? But people, there's so many things that if you are in that are obvious and there's just no need to reinvent the wheel. Obviously, you're going to have to beat your own path, right, and figure out a business that's unique and find a way to get there, and that is not easy at all. But don't make it any harder than it has to be when there are a lot of solved problems out there, and if you've got a network, you can ask those people and they will just basically give you the answer. So, for instance, I'm about to, like, try a newsletter. We'll see whether it gets any traction or not. But I wasn't sure which software to use, and so I just did a post going, you know, I want to do a newsletter. I've got this specific problem that I'm trying to solve with it. What should I use? And you get like a load— it's great once you've got a network, just— you just post that on LinkedIn. And I got a load of replies, and now I know what I'm going to use. Actually, they narrowed it down to 2, and then I made a decision. Right. Right? But it was like super helpful. And it's the same thing once you've got a group of people you can ask, There's a whole load of things that you just don't need to figure out for yourself. Someone else will help you. And people like helping, right? And some of those things, they're literally, they're one-word answers, right? One-word answers. They're really easy. And you do not need to spend like an hour or 2 hours or 3 hours researching those things and still not being sure if you found the right answer. People like to help.

I love that. And there's tactical things that are like literally one-word, two-word answers. Like, What software is better for blogging? Or what tool would you use for podcasting? Things like that, which are like, you know, very, very easy. You can— I can say that in my sleep, right? But then there's also strategic answers that you can attract by asking and being vulnerable in public, which is like, hey, I'm about to have a Product Hunt launch in a month. What are 4 things that I should think about today? And someone like me, for example, I did 82 launches on Product Hunt. So I'm like, this is in my sleep. I can do this. Like, you know, it's like Jay-Z. I can do this in my sleep. And so, but if the founder doesn't ask it or doesn't leverage their social media to go out there, put themselves out there a little bit, you're never going to attract strategic inputs from people. And people who have done things, especially when they've overcome something difficult and then they've done it, they're so proud and happy to share. It's very hard to get a smart person to shut up because they've just done something awesome and they can't wait to tell, you know? Yeah. I think back to the initial point about building in public. I think a big part of building in public to me has been, Marc, being vulnerable in public as well. Not just building and saying I'm the expert, but saying, hey, here's what I'm doing. Here's what I know. Here's what I don't know. Please help. My faith in humanity has always been restored every time I do that because there's always someone like you, Marc, or someone like me out there who would come and just give me the answer.

I also find that actually if it's one where people want to answer, those posts often get more traction. They do. Any other post, right? The, can you, can you help me with this? Normally, at least on the comment side, and often on the views side, they get more than anything else.

See, I mean, and also you turn, you know, I think the other part about social media is I think a lot of people use social media as a broadcasting thing where it feels like you're on the stage and you're broadcasting down at them. Then when you have an open and vulnerable and like curious question like that, it becomes more of a dialogue. where everybody's chiming in, you know, and I feel, I feel like it's more fun that way, you know, but even for impressions and analytics too, it's good for your algorithm. So

totally. I mean, it's about the whole point. I think one of the points of building in public is it's not just a broadcast. It's like you're human, right? And there are things you're good at and there are things you're probably not so good at. Don't be afraid to ask for help or admit that you're not good at those things and say, how do I get better at X? Right? So I did a post like, I find it hard to say no when people ask for help sometimes, right? Yeah. And so I did a post on that, and people put some really useful stuff in. And sometimes you do just have to— I like helping, but sometimes you just have to say no because you have to manage your time effectively. It's not a thing I've historically been good at. And I got like loads of really helpful advice, and I am better at saying no. And I apologize to anyone who's listening that I've said no to as a result of that post. But yeah, just Simple example, like, I'm not good at that, help me, how do I get better at it? And people came up with loads of super useful stuff.

Yeah, love that. I mean, on that high note, I would love to say thank you so much for being on the show, Mark. It's been such a pleasure, and I can't believe we just— what, 55 minutes in? It feels like 20 seconds to me in my brain. So it's been such a breeze. Thank you for being here.

Well, thank you for having me, KP.

I am so looking forward to your shoutouts later. on LinkedIn about the fact that we did the pod, and you have my full permission, of course, always. Thank you so much, and I'll, you know, stay in touch with you. Thanks, Mark.