Startup lessons Mistakes, Capital and People

kind of starts off when I think about the framework of starting a company or, or building what we're trying to do. A couple of things that I try to really focus on. First of all, generally speaking, there are a hell of a lot more nos than there are yeses in everything. So when we're thinking about raising capital, when we're thinking about the companies that we want to form or the companies we want to invest in, it's literally hundreds of nos to get to the one yes or the two yeses. And a lot of what inspires that discipline is the recognition of how hard this really is that all of us do on a day-in, day-out basis. It's not easy. And so when you think about diving in headfirst, a couple of things have become important to us as guiding principles over the years. One is whatever we do, we're really active and deeply involved and engaged. We don't try to do 20 or 30 things. We do 5. And the reason is, is because there's so much energy that's brought to each of those circumstances, that it really has to be compelling from an opportunity cost to walk away from everything else, to make sure that we're deeply dedicated to and committed to whatever it is that we want to pursue. Whenever we've been passive investors or whenever we've been not actively involved in the day-to-day aspects of the business, Generally speaking, those almost uniformly underperform the situations where we are very actively involved and very deeply engaged. And then probably the hardest lesson that I've learned over the years, the most painful mistakes that I've made, are probably around people. You know, it's something I think we always try to get get better at, but it's hard. And what I've tried to get better at about that now, as opposed to years ago, is trying to make sure I have the right people at the right time for whatever the mission is for that next chapter.