The Exchanges

Q Can I ask, and do you say if it's too personal, what did she say that made you change your mind?

A Yes, you can absolutely ask. So she asked me if I had put together a list of criteria for what my ideal next job would be like. And I gave her that list of criteria. I said, look, it has to be a company that's in technology because I've spent many years trying to help traditional companies migrate towards technology or towards a world that software is transforming. And it's very hard to get traditional businesses to do that. They just don't have the mindset. So number one, it needs to be fundamentally about technology. Number two, it needs to be high growth business because again, I have spent the last eight years turning around traditional businesses where a good year was plus two percent and a bad year was minus two percent. I wanted to be in a world where a good year was plus, plus 200%. So the second characteristic was high growth. And the third one was I wanted it to be global because my life has been about building global businesses. And she said, well, that thing you're talking about, which was not even called Dashlane at the time, it's certainly about technology. I do say, yes, it's certainly going to be high growth because when you start from zero, you are going to grow fast. And by definition, the problem you're going after is a global problem. So She ended up telling me, look, it may, it may not work out, but you should give it a try. Give it a few months, give it si…

AI assessment note: “she said, well, that thing you're talking about... it's certainly about technology”

Q Can I ask you a question and final question on the boards and this, you know, I've joined my first institutional board about a year ago now. What can I do from your perspective to be the best board member that I can be? If you were to advise me entering kind of the career of a board member, what would you advise me in terms of being the best?

A I say the first thing is constantly think about this notion of advice and consent and understand when you're stepping beyond this notion of advising and help the founders you're working with understand that That when you tell them something, you're advising them, but you're not asking them to do it. To see founders that take your advice as, I instruct you to do this, immediately tell them that that's not what you're asking them to. So I would start there. Then I think it's also about understanding you're not going to be able to help on every front. There are things you're better at. Is it your network? Is it specific areas of the business? Like typically, I'm very privileged that Seth Fobman, who is the former chief marketing officer of Spotify, and before that of The Gap, joined our board. Obviously, having a marketer of his caliber on our board means that when we have complex, far-ranging, strategic marketing questions, he can be a fantastic sounding board, but I'm not asking him to give me his advice on our engineering stack. And so, knowing where you can help is also really key, I would say.

AI assessment note: “I say the first thing is constantly think about this notion of advice and consent”

Q I would love to kick off today with a little bit on you. So tell me, you went from being CEO at CBS, a very large company, to founding Dashlane. So what was the entry into startups for you, and what was that aha moment for you with Dashlane?

A So I was the CEO of a unit of CBS called CBS Outdoor, their billboard business in France. It was a midsize company of about 1200 people, a few hundred million in revenue, and when I left it after working for a number of years on essentially what was a turnaround plan, I decided to go back in tech because that's my passion. Originally, I'm a software engineer, and I looked for what at the time I called small tech companies of a few thousand people and a few hundred million in revenue, and I met with the people that had started down the path of what would become Dashlane, and I was fascinated by their idea of Solving what was one of the biggest unsolved problems of the internet, how we navigate, how we authenticate from services to services. I was fascinated by that, but obviously from a carrier standpoint, it didn't make a lot of sense for me to join what was almost not a company at the time, and I had actually decided to turn down the very generous offer that Bernal Yoto, who was part of that funding team, made to me to join as CEO, and I was actually on a train from Paris to London on the Eurostar to go meet It was a number of folks, you know, private equity investors who talk about real CEO jobs in real companies, and I was also supposed to meet with Bernard Liotto to give him my answer on whether I joined Dashlane or not, and I ended up on that train sitting across from a ve…

AI assessment note: “fascinated by their idea of Solving what was one of the biggest unsolved problems”

Q Can I ask, and do you say if it's too personal, what did she say that made you change your mind?

A Yes, you can absolutely ask. So she asked me if I had put together a list of criteria for what my ideal next job would be like. And I gave her that list of criteria. I said, look, it has to be a company that's in technology because I've spent many years trying to help traditional companies migrate towards technology or towards a world that software is transforming. And it's very hard to get traditional businesses to do that. They just don't have the mindset. So number one, it needs to be fundamentally about technology. Number two, it needs to be high growth business because again, I have spent the last eight years turning around traditional businesses where a good year was plus two percent and a bad year was minus two percent. I wanted to be in a world where a good year was plus, plus 200%. So the second characteristic was high growth. And the third one was I wanted it to be global because my life has been about building global businesses. And she said, well, that thing you're talking about, which was not even called Dashlane at the time, it's certainly about technology. I do say, yes, it's certainly going to be high growth because when you start from zero, you are going to grow fast. And by definition, the problem you're going after is a global problem. So She ended up telling me, look, it may, it may not work out, but you should give it a try. Give it a few months, give it si…

AI assessment note: “She ended up telling me, look, it may, it may not work out, but you should give it a try.”

Q lot of first time founders that listen to the show and, you know, effective board management is a really different Cool thing to get to grips with essentially. What would you say they can do and how would you advise them in terms of maintaining that dynamic of almost a degree of distance in terms of advice and control? What can one do to maintain that dynamic as a founder?

A So I think there are several elements to that which I learned over the years thanks to some of the people like Rick and Alex and Habib from Ro and now Jim from Sequoia that I learned from them over the years. The first lesson is that a lot of that relationship Is the one that happens outside the board. The board is a very formatted exercise where we go through things we need to go through as a company for good governance. We formally present a number of things and we need to do it. And it's an important collective discussion, but oftentimes the most valuable discussions I've had with my board members are happening outside of the boardroom. So investing time with your board members outside of the boardroom is the number one advice. I'd say the, the second advice is to prepare the board materials a long time in advance. Send to, send them to your board members a long time in advance. We do that 10 days before our boards, and have individual discussions with each of them in advance of the meeting to prepare the meeting, so that you can take off the table all the tactical stuff, all the stuff about understanding the metrics and the details of the reporting, with the objective that the discussion at the board is Purely focused on one, two, maybe three at most really strategic topics where you have the time to present the strategy question, get into a real discussion with the board s…

AI assessment note: “investing time with your board members outside of the boardroom is the number one advice.”

Q When we spoke before there, you said raising a lot of money does not make your life easier. It makes it harder. I think that goes against conventional wisdom for founders that it does make it easier. So why do you believe this? And what becomes harder?

A So, I mean, the funny story is that before we raised the very large round, we raised from Sequoia, which was one hundred and ten million in May. We had raised meaningful sums of money, but in smaller rounds, and when you raise smaller rounds, you have to be relatively frugal about, or you invest the capital, you have to be thinking about the next round, and money is at all times A very important consideration for a founder and a CEO. And you have this fantasy that, you know, oh, maybe one day I'll raise a mega round and then I'll be able to focus on other things than money. And my life is just going to become easier from one day to the next. It's actually quite the contrary because, and I I'm speaking from experience because six months ago we raised the mega round because of a couple of things. So the first one is that obviously when you raise a mega round, you do that at a high valuation. Otherwise it's massive. Massively dilutive. And as a result, you completely change the parameters of your potential exit. You have to exit at a much higher valuation. So suddenly you've raised the bar for you and your team by a massive amount. And it's a one way decision. You can't go back as a consequence. You also, whether you like it or not, the level of pressure on the organization is increasing very, very quickly because suddenly the target has changed and it's a much, much bigger target…

AI assessment note: “You have to exit at a much higher valuation. So suddenly you've raised the bar”

Q I would love to kick off today with a little bit on you. So tell me, you went from being CEO at CBS, a very large company, to founding Dashlane. So what was the entry into startups for you, and what was that aha moment for you with Dashlane?

A So I was the CEO of a unit of CBS called CBS Outdoor, their billboard business in France. It was a midsize company of about 1200 people, a few hundred million in revenue, and when I left it after working for a number of years on essentially what was a turnaround plan, I decided to go back in tech because that's my passion. Originally, I'm a software engineer, and I looked for what at the time I called small tech companies of a few thousand people and a few hundred million in revenue, and I met with the people that had started down the path of what would become Dashlane, and I was fascinated by their idea of Solving what was one of the biggest unsolved problems of the internet, how we navigate, how we authenticate from services to services. I was fascinated by that, but obviously from a carrier standpoint, it didn't make a lot of sense for me to join what was almost not a company at the time, and I had actually decided to turn down the very generous offer that Bernal Yoto, who was part of that funding team, made to me to join as CEO, and I was actually on a train from Paris to London on the Eurostar to go meet It was a number of folks, you know, private equity investors who talk about real CEO jobs in real companies, and I was also supposed to meet with Bernard Liotto to give him my answer on whether I joined Dashlane or not, and I ended up on that train sitting across from a ve…

AI assessment note: “I met with the people that had started down the path of what would become Dashlane”

Q like you said at the beginning, market conditions are super important. Many founders have massive excess of capital available, and they go, you know what, we might as well take it, because a storm could be coming, and we could warehouse it, and it gives us five years of runway. One of my angel investments has got 12 years of runway. How do you feel about the warehousing of cash?

A Certainly that's one of the benefits of raising a large amount of money, but it depends on where you are in your growth curve. If you are already growing very fast and you have access to more capital and with that create a bunker balance sheet that protects you against anything by all means. But if you're not, in other words, if you know the value of your company is going to grow massively over time, even without that capital, yes, you can raise it and put it aside as a safety mechanism. But if you're not growing at an incredible rate, if you are not guaranteed to be worth way more money without using that capital, then you must deploy it because otherwise you will have raised your exit bar. You will have a lot of money in the bank, but you will not have grown the value of your company sufficiently. And the only thing you've done is you've put your equity underwater potentially because you'll never justify the valuation of that ground.

AI assessment note: “Certainly that's one of the benefits... but it depends on where you are in your growth curve.”

Q lot of first time founders that listen to the show and, you know, effective board management is a really different Cool thing to get to grips with essentially. What would you say they can do and how would you advise them in terms of maintaining that dynamic of almost a degree of distance in terms of advice and control? What can one do to maintain that dynamic as a founder?

A So I think there are several elements to that which I learned over the years thanks to some of the people like Rick and Alex and Habib from Ro and now Jim from Sequoia that I learned from them over the years. The first lesson is that a lot of that relationship Is the one that happens outside the board. The board is a very formatted exercise where we go through things we need to go through as a company for good governance. We formally present a number of things and we need to do it. And it's an important collective discussion, but oftentimes the most valuable discussions I've had with my board members are happening outside of the boardroom. So investing time with your board members outside of the boardroom is the number one advice. I'd say the, the second advice is to prepare the board materials a long time in advance. Send to, send them to your board members a long time in advance. We do that 10 days before our boards, and have individual discussions with each of them in advance of the meeting to prepare the meeting, so that you can take off the table all the tactical stuff, all the stuff about understanding the metrics and the details of the reporting, with the objective that the discussion at the board is Purely focused on one, two, maybe three at most really strategic topics where you have the time to present the strategy question, get into a real discussion with the board s…

AI assessment note: “investing time with your board members outside of the boardroom is the number one advice”

Q What's the single best investor meeting you've ever had, and why?

A I'll name two. The first one and the last one. The first one was with, uh, when we were raising our Series A, and I was meeting with Habib Keroos from Roe Ventures here in New York, and I was halfway through my pitch, and he banged his head on the table, and right in the middle of it, I was not even finished, and he said, I love it. How much is it? I want to do it. And it was a great meeting because from that day until today, and it's been eight years, Habib has been a, an incredible supporter of the long-term vision of the company. So that was the best first meeting. And there have been lots of great meetings. And then the best one I had also was the one last February with Jim Goetz when he came to see me in New York, as he had done several times over the last few years. We'd always had great conversations and I'd You know, we had just raised a thirty million round of debt with no plan on taking equity, and in the meeting, Jim made me see the opportunity I was potentially missing by not considering an investment from Sequoia, and he convinced me in that meeting to rethink, because I had essentially decided we would not ever raise equity again, because we had a very powerful access to debt, and we didn't want any more dilution, but Jim forced me to rethink that by focusing me on the bigger picture, and it's a meeting I'll remember.

AI assessment note: “I'll name two. The first one and the last one.”

Q I totally agree with you in terms of the kind of cultural diversity. It's one of the reasons I love London so much. But I do want to finish, though, on probably the most exciting of all, Emmanuel, which is, what do the next five years hold for you and for Dashlane? Can you paint that picture for us?

A So, what we want to accomplish in the next five years for us as a company is Actually quite clear. Our mission is to fix the UX of the internet. The way we transact, the way we authenticate is as broken today as it was 25 or 30 years ago when the internet started. And so in the next five years, we want to build a mainstream consumer brand and a mainstream consumer product that will have made a significant dent in how the UX of the internet is experienced every day by millions and millions of people. If we succeed, we will have created a new category that today doesn't exist. And if we succeed, we will have built a pretty formidable company. So I'm very excited for the journey ahead in the next five years and beyond.

AI assessment note: “we want to build a mainstream consumer brand and a mainstream consumer product”

Q What are the break points in company scaling? Often people say it's Dunbar's theory of a 150 people. To you, when have you been like, Ah, it's broken here. What period is that of growth?

A So you, you, you have break points earlier than that if you go through the whole range. You, you have a first breaking point at, at between 10 and 20, when it's not, you know, the few people that were there in the beginning and, you know, that have cleaned the toilets and built the network. So you have a first breaking point there. I think you have a second one between 50 and a hundred, where you start having a clearer hierarchy structure and you start having more people More management, more managers at that level. Obviously, you have that number or that 150 limit, which is really, really very palpable because it essentially means when you, when you are in an organization where you can't know everyone enough to trust them implicitly, and this is where vision and culture become so critical because you need something that binds people together even when they don't know each other. You need something that makes people People trust each other when they don't know each other. But by the way, that's also the kind of threshold where you need a very strong people function, which is something you may not have at 50 or 60, or, and that's something we waited for too long to build. Now we have an extremely strong one. But the thing is, when you start having a strong people function, which other people call HR, which is a very terrible name for it, then your organization reacts by saying, …

AI assessment note: “you have a first breaking point at, at between 10 and 20”

Q In terms of like the deployment of large amounts of capital, when you think about advising other founders who I'm sure come to you and ask for advice today, what do you advise them when it comes to capital efficiency and burn? Are there Commonalities in what you find yourself saying?

A So the first advice I give to people that ask me advice is to, um, always take my advice or anyone's advice with a grain of salt. Why? Because every company and every set of circumstances is fundamentally different, and you can only benefit from advice if you understand what in it lies to you, or that's number one. Number two, again, I think for me it has to do with Can you build a credible case? Can you convince yourself as a CEO, as a founder, that you are going to deploy that amount of money quickly enough to produce enough acceleration in our growth that the risk of increasing the exit bar is worth the reward? It's, it's really based on, do you have the leadership team? Do you have the business model and the gross margin? Do you have ways? Do you know where you are going to deploy that capital? Do you have investors that are going to be willing to take the level of risk that comes with deploying large amounts of capital? Because if you are very frugal, you may be able to raise lots of capital, but you sure are not going to be able to spend it if you are very frugal. Deploying a lot of capital means stop being frugal. So you need to have the culture that is able to make that shift. And for us, it's a challenging shift because we've been frugal over the years, and now we have to relearn how we do things. We have to learn how to take a level of risk we're not used to taking. A…

AI assessment note: “Can you convince yourself as a CEO, as a founder, that you are going to deploy”

Q I do want to kind of hit on that inflection point. So why did you, at that point, Feel that then was the right time to raise the mega round and go big, and how do you think about when's the right time to flip the switch, so to speak, from the frugal mind that you mentioned to actually, we need to raise big. How do you determine the switch?

A So the first driver is clearly related to market conditions, especially in a case like ours, because what we're effectively doing is we are creating a, you know, mainstream consumer category, and even in the enterprise world, that Doesn't really fully exist today, or didn't really fully exist until I would say we raised this first mega round, which I think was the validation that the category was meaningful. So first it's about, is there a market opportunity that is big enough to reasonably think that we can create a large multi-billion dollar public company at some point? And there are a number of things that happen in the market in terms of its, its maturity, but also in terms of the mobile ecosystems opening up To what we do on Android and iOS that suddenly let us see, and quite frankly, let Sequoia Capital and our existing investors see that the opportunity was actually going to be much bigger. The other thing that was a big indicator of that is that, you know, we now live in a world where clearly these, these issues of privacy, of breaches, of credentials, and password are absolutely top of mind for everyone. You, you can't escape from them. They are constantly present in the new cycle, in the political cycle, in the business cycle. So all of these factors are about the market. The second thing is about, do we think we have a business model and a set of capabilities that w…

AI assessment note: “first driver is clearly related to market conditions”

Q When we spoke before there, you said raising a lot of money does not make your life easier. It makes it harder. I think that goes against conventional wisdom for founders that it does make it easier. So why do you believe this? And what becomes harder?

A So, I mean, the funny story is that before we raised the very large round, we raised from Sequoia, which was one hundred and ten million in May. We had raised meaningful sums of money, but in smaller rounds, and when you raise smaller rounds, you have to be relatively frugal about, or you invest the capital, you have to be thinking about the next round, and money is at all times A very important consideration for a founder and a CEO. And you have this fantasy that, you know, oh, maybe one day I'll raise a mega round and then I'll be able to focus on other things than money. And my life is just going to become easier from one day to the next. It's actually quite the contrary because, and I I'm speaking from experience because six months ago we raised the mega round because of a couple of things. So the first one is that obviously when you raise a mega round, you do that at a high valuation. Otherwise it's massive. Massively dilutive. And as a result, you completely change the parameters of your potential exit. You have to exit at a much higher valuation. So suddenly you've raised the bar for you and your team by a massive amount. And it's a one way decision. You can't go back as a consequence. You also, whether you like it or not, the level of pressure on the organization is increasing very, very quickly because suddenly the target has changed and it's a much, much bigger target…

AI assessment note: “you completely change the parameters of your potential exit”

Q I mean, I find that very interesting, being the smallest company you've ever run. I do have to ask that, you mentioned that, like, if it doesn't work out, and that mindset in the beginning of trying for, like, nine months with that almost trial phase, it makes me ask, like, how would you assess your own appetite for risk?

A So I think appetite for risk is something that changes over time. And I think naturally I tend to like risk. If I look at, you know, some of the sports or activities I've done outside of work, many of them, now that I think about it retrospectively, I've included a fair amount of risk. But I think in this case, it also came at a time where I had not necessarily taken a massive amount of risk in the previous years in my career. And I felt I needed to stay Start something from a size where it was small enough, which certainly Dashlane was, so that, you know, I could really look at this and say I built something from scratch.

AI assessment note: “I think naturally I tend to like risk.”

Q I do want to kind of hit on that inflection point. So why did you, at that point, Feel that then was the right time to raise the mega round and go big, and how do you think about when's the right time to flip the switch, so to speak, from the frugal mind that you mentioned to actually, we need to raise big. How do you determine the switch?

A So the first driver is clearly related to market conditions, especially in a case like ours, because what we're effectively doing is we are creating a, you know, mainstream consumer category, and even in the enterprise world, that Doesn't really fully exist today, or didn't really fully exist until I would say we raised this first mega round, which I think was the validation that the category was meaningful. So first it's about, is there a market opportunity that is big enough to reasonably think that we can create a large multi-billion dollar public company at some point? And there are a number of things that happen in the market in terms of its, its maturity, but also in terms of the mobile ecosystems opening up To what we do on Android and iOS that suddenly let us see, and quite frankly, let Sequoia Capital and our existing investors see that the opportunity was actually going to be much bigger. The other thing that was a big indicator of that is that, you know, we now live in a world where clearly these, these issues of privacy, of breaches, of credentials, and password are absolutely top of mind for everyone. You, you can't escape from them. They are constantly present in the new cycle, in the political cycle, in the business cycle. So all of these factors are about the market. The second thing is about, do we think we have a business model and a set of capabilities that w…

AI assessment note: “So the first driver is clearly related to market conditions”

Q What's the single best investor meeting you've ever had, and why?

A I'll name two. The first one and the last one. The first one was with, uh, when we were raising our Series A, and I was meeting with Habib Keroos from Roe Ventures here in New York, and I was halfway through my pitch, and he banged his head on the table, and right in the middle of it, I was not even finished, and he said, I love it. How much is it? I want to do it. And it was a great meeting because from that day until today, and it's been eight years, Habib has been a, an incredible supporter of the long-term vision of the company. So that was the best first meeting. And there have been lots of great meetings. And then the best one I had also was the one last February with Jim Goetz when he came to see me in New York, as he had done several times over the last few years. We'd always had great conversations and I'd You know, we had just raised a thirty million round of debt with no plan on taking equity, and in the meeting, Jim made me see the opportunity I was potentially missing by not considering an investment from Sequoia, and he convinced me in that meeting to rethink, because I had essentially decided we would not ever raise equity again, because we had a very powerful access to debt, and we didn't want any more dilution, but Jim forced me to rethink that by focusing me on the bigger picture, and it's a meeting I'll remember.

AI assessment note: “I'll name two. The first one and the last one.”

Q No, I totally agree, and I absolutely do not blame you on the Jim Getson Sequoia. It's a very unique situation and person. In terms of the flip side, where do you think many people think that they really help, but actually rarely do? Again, this was Rick.

A So I think it also has to do with, uh, I'm going to tell you something that may surprise you, but I think the thing I wish I knew if I was starting again is I wish I knew how to work with a board in a VC backed company. It took me a while to learn how to do that because when you run companies in a more corporate environment or large divisions and the largest division I had run at 10,000 people and close to two billion dollars in revenue. So it's not like I've never run large organizations, but the dynamics are completely different. With VCs, because your board is not your boss. You are running the company and you're running the board and you have to really understand that because you become effective at working with your board and your VCs. The moment you understand that the board is there to advise and the board is there to consent on certain important corporate decisions, but the board is not there to run the company. And so where VCs and CEO founders build a negative dynamic, Is when they break that model of advice and consent, and when, because the CEO allows it, or because the VCs want to jump in more, they start running the company, and that's a recipe for disaster, regardless of well-intentioned, how well-intentioned the VCs are, because they don't have the context. They are too far from the company. They are on 10, 15 different boards. They spend a few hours a month on …

AI assessment note: “they start running the company, and that's a recipe for disaster”

Q I mean, I find that very interesting, being the smallest company you've ever run. I do have to ask that, you mentioned that, like, if it doesn't work out, and that mindset in the beginning of trying for, like, nine months with that almost trial phase, it makes me ask, like, how would you assess your own appetite for risk?

A So I think appetite for risk is something that changes over time. And I think naturally I tend to like risk. If I look at, you know, some of the sports or activities I've done outside of work, many of them, now that I think about it retrospectively, I've included a fair amount of risk. But I think in this case, it also came at a time where I had not necessarily taken a massive amount of risk in the previous years in my career. And I felt I needed to stay Start something from a size where it was small enough, which certainly Dashlane was, so that, you know, I could really look at this and say I built something from scratch.

AI assessment note: “I think naturally I tend to like risk”

Q of kind of building something of your own. I do want to dive into the meat of the show today though, Emmanuel, and I want to start on the element of mega rounds. It was just yesterday. There were six a hundred million dollar rounds alone. So first, I guess starting from a more macro, you've seen many different business cycles. Are you concerned by the excess capital available today?

A So the first thing I would say is the excess of capital available today is a fact. Like there is so much cash that is looking for places where it can be invested, that whether you or I are concerned about it or not, that capital is still there, and it's still looking for ways to get better return than what treasury bonds or money markets are giving today. And it's not easy in a world where you have negative rates to find places to put your money. So the thing that is fueling that excess of capital Is not about to go away anytime soon, whether we find it good or bad. I think the question of whether raising a large round for a company, the question for whether that's a good or a bad idea, I don't think that there's a general answer. I think it depends much more on very specific circumstances about a given business at a given point in its life cycle.

AI assessment note: “whether you or I are concerned about it or not, that capital is still there”

Q No, I totally agree, and I absolutely do not blame you on the Jim Getson Sequoia. It's a very unique situation and person. In terms of the flip side, where do you think many people think that they really help, but actually rarely do? Again, this was Rick.

A So I think it also has to do with, uh, I'm going to tell you something that may surprise you, but I think the thing I wish I knew if I was starting again is I wish I knew how to work with a board in a VC backed company. It took me a while to learn how to do that because when you run companies in a more corporate environment or large divisions and the largest division I had run at 10,000 people and close to two billion dollars in revenue. So it's not like I've never run large organizations, but the dynamics are completely different. With VCs, because your board is not your boss. You are running the company and you're running the board and you have to really understand that because you become effective at working with your board and your VCs. The moment you understand that the board is there to advise and the board is there to consent on certain important corporate decisions, but the board is not there to run the company. And so where VCs and CEO founders build a negative dynamic, Is when they break that model of advice and consent, and when, because the CEO allows it, or because the VCs want to jump in more, they start running the company, and that's a recipe for disaster, regardless of well-intentioned, how well-intentioned the VCs are, because they don't have the context. They are too far from the company. They are on 10, 15 different boards. They spend a few hours a month on …

AI assessment note: “they start running the company, and that's a recipe for disaster”

Q there. We've mentioned the money a lot, but what about the people behind the money? And as I said, I spoke to Rick and Alex before the show, and both of them asked some questions, and Rick in particular asked this one, which I really liked, and he said, where do you think VCs can meaningfully help, and where do you think many think they can, but actually rarely do?

A So VCs are, if you know how to work with them, they are incredibly helpful. And by the way, not all for the same things. Some are going to be incredibly helpful because they have such a vast network and they are fantastic connectors that if you want to meet somebody to recruit or just for advice, they will know that person. They will give you access to anyone. Some are incredibly helpful because they have seen so many things that you encounter a situation and they are the pattern recognition engine that will give you the, these are the three things companies do when they encounter that. Some are going to be Incredibly helpful because their firm and First Mark is certainly top of mind when it comes to this, do so much in terms of their community of entrepreneurs, particularly in New York, to, you know, create a community of CEOs, create a community of CMOs, of CPOs, to share best practices, and just the other thing that VCs can do a lot is provide you with an opportunity to meet with other CEOs or other executives without them being in the room. Because there's nothing more precious than talking to another CEO and realizing that the challenges you're going through, they're also going through them, and maybe they have solved them in a different way. So VCs, way beyond the money they bring, can be incredibly helpful, and that is why, actually, that was one of the key decisions or …

AI assessment note: “Some are going to be incredibly helpful because they have such a vast network”

Q there. We've mentioned the money a lot, but what about the people behind the money? And as I said, I spoke to Rick and Alex before the show, and both of them asked some questions, and Rick in particular asked this one, which I really liked, and he said, where do you think VCs can meaningfully help, and where do you think many think they can, but actually rarely do?

A So VCs are, if you know how to work with them, they are incredibly helpful. And by the way, not all for the same things. Some are going to be incredibly helpful because they have such a vast network and they are fantastic connectors that if you want to meet somebody to recruit or just for advice, they will know that person. They will give you access to anyone. Some are incredibly helpful because they have seen so many things that you encounter a situation and they are the pattern recognition engine that will give you the, these are the three things companies do when they encounter that. Some are going to be Incredibly helpful because their firm and First Mark is certainly top of mind when it comes to this, do so much in terms of their community of entrepreneurs, particularly in New York, to, you know, create a community of CEOs, create a community of CMOs, of CPOs, to share best practices, and just the other thing that VCs can do a lot is provide you with an opportunity to meet with other CEOs or other executives without them being in the room. Because there's nothing more precious than talking to another CEO and realizing that the challenges you're going through, they're also going through them, and maybe they have solved them in a different way. So VCs, way beyond the money they bring, can be incredibly helpful, and that is why, actually, that was one of the key decisions or …

AI assessment note: “Some are going to be incredibly helpful because they have such a vast network”

Q of kind of building something of your own. I do want to dive into the meat of the show today though, Emmanuel, and I want to start on the element of mega rounds. It was just yesterday. There were six a hundred million dollar rounds alone. So first, I guess starting from a more macro, you've seen many different business cycles. Are you concerned by the excess capital available today?

A So the first thing I would say is the excess of capital available today is a fact. Like there is so much cash that is looking for places where it can be invested, that whether you or I are concerned about it or not, that capital is still there, and it's still looking for ways to get better return than what treasury bonds or money markets are giving today. And it's not easy in a world where you have negative rates to find places to put your money. So the thing that is fueling that excess of capital Is not about to go away anytime soon, whether we find it good or bad. I think the question of whether raising a large round for a company, the question for whether that's a good or a bad idea, I don't think that there's a general answer. I think it depends much more on very specific circumstances about a given business at a given point in its life cycle.

AI assessment note: “whether you or I are concerned about it or not, that capital is still there”