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D 4 · C 4 · P 4 · Cm 3 3.85
Q Yeah, I couldn't agree more with them in terms of being diametrically opposed. Scout programs, they're bigger, they're more prominent than ever. How do you feel about them?
A Well, we have a program that isn't a scout program. It's called our Open Angels program, and like many other things about us, it's quite transparent. You can go on our website and see who our Open Angels are, My view is that giving money to individual investors is awesome because angels dollar per dollar are the most valuable investors in the ecosystem, even more valuable than VCs, more valuable than us, especially angels who are themselves founders of venture backed companies. I think the issues with scout programs are if the goal of the program is to discover investments for the big fund, then that's an important dynamic that a founder ought to know about. And second, and this has now changed, but there used to be a real lack Lack of transparency in the scout programs, and I think that's just dishonest, right? Like, if I'm investing in you, I want you to know where the money's come from. Now, in my case, that's easy. The money's coming from Bloomberg LP. By the way, let me also say, it also means that the returns we earn go to Bloomberg philanthropies, and that means they go to an organization whose mission it is to help improve the lives of people around the world and fight guns and fight climate change and fight for education, and so in my case, that's easy, but the opposite of that is A lack of transparency where somebody invests and they say the day before, Hey, the money…
AI assessment note: “I think the issues with scout programs are if the goal of the program”
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D 3 · C 4 · P 4 · Cm 4 3.70
Q Now this was by no means part of the schedule, but you mentioned your investment in the Slack bot company, Howdy. So I have to ask, what use case do you think will be a sustainable million dollar business built on the platform through the medium? What will that first use case be or look like?
A Isn't that the million dollar literally question? I have no idea, and I don't want to have an idea about it, by which I mean to say I could bloviate and tell you, oh, I think it'll be task management or document retrieval or analytics or sales, but sort of like the early days of the software industry, it is too soon to see exactly how this will shake out. I mean, I think we tend to be obsessed with first in the technology industry, and first loses to best every time. You know, the first, um, iOS app companies were not the best iOS app companies, you know, platform after platform, and I think that's exactly what we're seeing here. What I'm excited by is the world is now a grand natural experiment where founders are just building all kinds of stuff, and as the founder of Howdy pointed out to me, Ben Brown, who's extraordinary, he said, you know, it's a different kind of developer that's building these tools. It's a developer that's more interested in Um, human-oriented design, uh, in, uh, the, the, the experience of it as opposed to the technology, and I think that's exciting because we'll have a wider range of businesses. I mean, one of the fascinating things to me about the startup world is how the nature of companies that get started is so similar to the communities that are starting companies. When you have a bunch of young people starting companies, of course, you know, food…
AI assessment note: “I have no idea, and I don't want to have an idea about it”
