The Exchanges

Q And then kind of the subsequent question from that is, talking of the time at VMware, where you scaled, uh, go to markets from zero to a hundred million in revenue, as you said, the team size there to, I think it was 15,000. What were some of the big learnings from that then operational experience that you've taken with you now to Greylock investing?

A Gosh, yeah. I was fortunate to launch a couple of products from zero. One was something called the virtual desktop infrastructure of VDI, and then our cloud foundry and app Platform team. So as a young product manager, I launched a couple things from start to scale, and obviously the company went from, you know, a hundred million to over five billion. You know, a couple takeaways. One, if you're not the top three priorities for your customer as a founder or executive, you either have to hit one of those top three priorities or convince her this should be a top three priority. Because it doesn't matter if you're the fifth or sixth wishlist on an enterprise buyer's wishlist, they only have time and budget for one or two things. So it's really finding what's that urgency. The second thing I always think about is when you're selling to the enterprise, there's really three axes of differentiation. You gotta do something better, do something cheaper, or do something different, right? So your faster database or cheaper storage, better security, a better application, or enable the customer to do something different. And so either you excel at one of those axes, just to be dramatically better, 10 X better than the status quo, or you have to do some combination of those three axes. And then if you're good enough, You're actually creating value for the customer, and then regardless of the…

AI assessment note: “One, if you're not the top three priorities for your customer”

Q And then kind of the subsequent question from that is, talking of the time at VMware, where you scaled, uh, go to markets from zero to a hundred million in revenue, as you said, the team size there to, I think it was 15,000. What were some of the big learnings from that then operational experience that you've taken with you now to Greylock investing?

A Gosh, yeah. I was fortunate to launch a couple of products from zero. One was something called the virtual desktop infrastructure of VDI, and then our cloud foundry and app Platform team. So as a young product manager, I launched a couple things from start to scale, and obviously the company went from, you know, a hundred million to over five billion. You know, a couple takeaways. One, if you're not the top three priorities for your customer as a founder or executive, you either have to hit one of those top three priorities or convince her this should be a top three priority. Because it doesn't matter if you're the fifth or sixth wishlist on an enterprise buyer's wishlist, they only have time and budget for one or two things. So it's really finding what's that urgency. The second thing I always think about is when you're selling to the enterprise, there's really three axes of differentiation. You gotta do something better, do something cheaper, or do something different, right? So your faster database or cheaper storage, better security, a better application, or enable the customer to do something different. And so either you excel at one of those axes, just to be dramatically better, 10 X better than the status quo, or you have to do some combination of those three axes. And then if you're good enough, You're actually creating value for the customer, and then regardless of the…

AI assessment note: “You know, a couple takeaways. One, if you're not the top three priorities”

Q It's going to be great fun, but not at all. I want to start today with a little on you, and tell me, how did you make your foray into what I always call the wonderful world of venture capital?

A My first foray was actually back in 2000. I was a young investor at Axel Partners at the The peak of the dot-com days. So imagine that I saw the peak of the dot-com, the crash of the NASDAQ, and then, you know, two years of probably the worst venture climate ever. And then, you know, I got to work with the great people back then. I had to spend a lot of time with Teresa Gao, Peter Fenton, Jim Getz. And then after that, I actually never wanted to venture again. I spent, it was 10 years at VMware shipping product from a couple hundred employees to 15,000 and like over five billion in revenue. It was after that long tour of duty that I reconnected with Daniel Bushry, who is one of my partners at Greylock and obviously CEO and co-founder Workday, and Neil convinced me it was the right firm and the right time to get back into venture, and that was back in 2013.

AI assessment note: “My first foray was actually back in 2000. I was a young investor at Axel”

Q It's going to be great fun, but not at all. I want to start today with a little on you, and tell me, how did you make your foray into what I always call the wonderful world of venture capital?

A My first foray was actually back in 2000. I was a young investor at Axel Partners at the The peak of the dot-com days. So imagine that I saw the peak of the dot-com, the crash of the NASDAQ, and then, you know, two years of probably the worst venture climate ever. And then, you know, I got to work with the great people back then. I had to spend a lot of time with Teresa Gao, Peter Fenton, Jim Getz. And then after that, I actually never wanted to venture again. I spent, it was 10 years at VMware shipping product from a couple hundred employees to 15,000 and like over five billion in revenue. It was after that long tour of duty that I reconnected with Daniel Bushry, who is one of my partners at Greylock and obviously CEO and co-founder Workday, and Neil convinced me it was the right firm and the right time to get back into venture, and that was back in 2013.

AI assessment note: “My first foray was actually back in 2000. I was a young investor at Axel”

Q Speaking of kind of what one's not comfortable with and what one is, risk is often a big topic. Me and my partner, Fred talk about, we always agree. We're pretty much happy to take any risk other than the core Founder or team risk. I'm intrigued then. What are your acceptable risks to take, and when does it cross that line of acceptability?

A Like I said, risk, risk from market, execution, product, adoption risk, those are all acceptable. Just make sure you're weighing them correctly. On team and founder risk, you know, I'll take a risk on a first-time founder or a technical founder that's never done this before, and that's totally fine. What I won't take a risk on a founding team is, for example, I'm doing reference checks and There's questions about integrity or honesty, right? And that's, I won't cross the line because these things are long journeys. And at the end of the day, you want to work with people that you trust and vice versa. So I'll take risks on founders and team if they're exceptional in their domain or space. But I think if there's questions around integrity or their behavior, then I think I won't cross that line. You know, life's too short to kind of take a risk like that.

AI assessment note: “There's questions about integrity or honesty, right? And that's, I won't cross the line”

Q Speaking of kind of what one's not comfortable with and what one is, risk is often a big topic. Me and my partner, Fred talk about, we always agree. We're pretty much happy to take any risk other than the core Founder or team risk. I'm intrigued then. What are your acceptable risks to take, and when does it cross that line of acceptability?

A Like I said, risk, risk from market, execution, product, adoption risk, those are all acceptable. Just make sure you're weighing them correctly. On team and founder risk, you know, I'll take a risk on a first-time founder or a technical founder that's never done this before, and that's totally fine. What I won't take a risk on a founding team is, for example, I'm doing reference checks and There's questions about integrity or honesty, right? And that's, I won't cross the line because these things are long journeys. And at the end of the day, you want to work with people that you trust and vice versa. So I'll take risks on founders and team if they're exceptional in their domain or space. But I think if there's questions around integrity or their behavior, then I think I won't cross that line. You know, life's too short to kind of take a risk like that.

AI assessment note: “risk from market, execution, product, adoption risk, those are all acceptable.”

Q No, absolutely. You made, you also said another thing that I could never see myself But you said, uh, I never wanted to do venture again. Why did you, why did you not want to?

A For two reasons. One, it was tough being a kind of a young investor and watching companies get shut down and people getting laid off and me not having the experience to help, right? And I think part of venture you have to realize is you're an advisor, an influencer, you're a mentor and a coach, but you're actually never a decider, right? So I think a lot of ventures getting comfortable with a lot of things being out of control. And I also realized that without being on the other side of the table, without shipping product, hiring employees, firing employees, I was not going to be a great board member, a great advisor to these founders. And so I'm like, you know what? I kind of just want to build teams, lead teams to ship products. And I was lucky enough to find, um, a great company in VMware and a great mentor in form of dying green, the founder and a CEO of the company. And that kind of was really formative for me in the early part of my career. Uh, just watching that kind of hyper growth phase of that seminal company.

AI assessment note: “For two reasons. One, it was tough being a kind of a young investor”

Q No, absolutely. You made, you also said another thing that I could never see myself But you said, uh, I never wanted to do venture again. Why did you, why did you not want to?

A For two reasons. One, it was tough being a kind of a young investor and watching companies get shut down and people getting laid off and me not having the experience to help, right? And I think part of venture you have to realize is you're an advisor, an influencer, you're a mentor and a coach, but you're actually never a decider, right? So I think a lot of ventures getting comfortable with a lot of things being out of control. And I also realized that without being on the other side of the table, without shipping product, hiring employees, firing employees, I was not going to be a great board member, a great advisor to these founders. And so I'm like, you know what? I kind of just want to build teams, lead teams to ship products. And I was lucky enough to find, um, a great company in VMware and a great mentor in form of dying green, the founder and a CEO of the company. And that kind of was really formative for me in the early part of my career. Uh, just watching that kind of hyper growth phase of that seminal company.

AI assessment note: “For two reasons. One, it was tough being a kind of a young investor”

Q Can I ask, do you agree with the prevailing wisdom of it has to be 10 X better?

A You know, I think that's more of a, of a catchy slogan to be, to quantify. I don't know if it's 10 X better, or five X, or 50 X, but it has to be dramatically better, because with every new product, Harry, there's always drivers and drags, right? There's reasons to buy your product, drivers, and there's drags, reason not to, and the drags could be cost, Learning a new product, installing a new application, right? There's, there's always drags, something not to do it. And then if the drivers outweigh the drags, then you have something that was going to be bought, right? And, um, and maybe that's 10 X better than the drags. Maybe it's 50%. Some markets you need to be like three percent, four percent, five percent better, like commodity markets. In software, you, you really do have to be 10 X better. I mean, or some order of magnitude better. How's that? I think when people say 10 X, it means like you're not Or to magnitude of the single digit percentages. You have to be 5203 hundred percent better in experience or usability or value to really get people to buy it.

AI assessment note: “In software, you, you really do have to be 10 X better.”

Q I mean, Jerry, you've set me up with so many questions in about 90 seconds of talking. First is, you said about the dot-com days. What were the big learnings from seeing that kind of boom and very quick bust cycle, and how's that applied to your thinking today?

A You know, in one way, the boom's incredible because it gives you that optimism that anything can happen, and I think to be a good investor, you have to always be optimistic to see the possible Because if you're always focused on what can go wrong, you're never going to put money to work. You're never going to invest. You're never going to believe the founder. And so in those boom days, you felt like anything was possible, right? Like the internet was changing the world and the reach of this technology was almost limitless. Then on the flip side, when the crash happened, we really realized like, okay, you need to temper that optimism with economics and fundamentals. Like, is this business creating value for the customers? Are there a per unit economics to this business that actually makes sense that it's scalable? And so, just like technology changed, domains changed, but there's certain laws of physics and laws of business that matter, and once you realize what that means, you take that to heart, and then you layer upon that as an investor, what it means to be a good board member and good governance, and I carry those things with me, both as an investor at Greylock and for the previous 10 years as an operator at VMware. I spent a lot of time realizing those kind of two polar, polar powers, if you will.

AI assessment note: “you need to temper that optimism with economics and fundamentals.”

Q Can I ask, do you think the pricing today reflects that being the grace of the uncertainty? It would suggest that the lower the price due to the higher risk element and the lack of kind of probable and logical outcomes. How do you think about kind of reflection of price given that ratio of uncertainty, so to speak?

A I think price more or less reflects the risk. For example, A large consumer outcome, or even some of these autonomous vehicle outcomes, are going to be a hundred billion plus or minus companies, right? Or tens of billions. If, you know, autonomous vehicles become a reality, that's going to disrupt a multi-trillion dollar industry. And so, if you're making a bet on that market, and the uncertainty is whether or not this can happen, if you're right, the rewards for that founder, that entrepreneur are going to be huge. If you're attacking kind of an unknown market saying, hey, I'm going to do a better productivity app, a better email app, That's a known market, so you're not really making a bet on certainties, but you're more around, hey, can I execute? Can I build a product? Can I build a channel? Can I sell against an incumbent? In which case, you'll see prices in those investments reflect more of a known market, known outcome. It's really about, hey, can this team execute? Can this product be legitimately better than the status quo? So I think, you know, you'll see the range, and people complain about price all the time, and it's hard to say when they're actually doing the investment right now, But, you know, in the fullness of time, obviously, we'll be able to look back at it and say, hey, Jerry and Harry be doing interview in five years saying, my goodness, like, that was mis…

AI assessment note: “I think price more or less reflects the risk.”

Q Regardless of kind of big or small, you've said before that the goal is ultimately to create this kind of non-linear value. What does going non-linear mean, and why do you want to achieve it so much?

A Yeah, well, the goal for any business is to create a business model that works for you. Otherwise, you're always going to be on that profitable hamster wheel as a founder. And what I mean by that is I love products or businesses that the more you use it, the better it gets. And that could be in the physical world or the virtual world or the software world. But you want to create a business model that the more you're selling, the more customers you have, the more users you have, the more value you create. And that could be simple network effects. For example, like, Hey, the more people on my messaging system, the more value for all the users, or it could be kind of a platform effect where, Hey, now that all my data is in this application, I can start building more applications, more features, more insights off the same product. So as a founder, if you can bend that curve, if you will, so you create nonlinear value for customers, it just encourages them to stay on your product because the more they use it, the more value they get from it. And it also means the more you can probably charge for that product. Or at least keep competitors away, because it's going to be hard for them to catch up.

AI assessment note: “create nonlinear value for customers, it just encourages them to stay on your product”

Q I mean, Jerry, you've set me up with so many questions in about 90 seconds of talking. First is, you said about the dot-com days. What were the big learnings from seeing that kind of boom and very quick bust cycle, and how's that applied to your thinking today?

A You know, in one way, the boom's incredible because it gives you that optimism that anything can happen, and I think to be a good investor, you have to always be optimistic to see the possible Because if you're always focused on what can go wrong, you're never going to put money to work. You're never going to invest. You're never going to believe the founder. And so in those boom days, you felt like anything was possible, right? Like the internet was changing the world and the reach of this technology was almost limitless. Then on the flip side, when the crash happened, we really realized like, okay, you need to temper that optimism with economics and fundamentals. Like, is this business creating value for the customers? Are there a per unit economics to this business that actually makes sense that it's scalable? And so, just like technology changed, domains changed, but there's certain laws of physics and laws of business that matter, and once you realize what that means, you take that to heart, and then you layer upon that as an investor, what it means to be a good board member and good governance, and I carry those things with me, both as an investor at Greylock and for the previous 10 years as an operator at VMware. I spent a lot of time realizing those kind of two polar, polar powers, if you will.

AI assessment note: “when the crash happened, we really realized like, okay, you need to temper that optimism”

Q Can I ask, do you think the pricing today reflects that being the grace of the uncertainty? It would suggest that the lower the price due to the higher risk element and the lack of kind of probable and logical outcomes. How do you think about kind of reflection of price given that ratio of uncertainty, so to speak?

A I think price more or less reflects the risk. For example, A large consumer outcome, or even some of these autonomous vehicle outcomes, are going to be a hundred billion plus or minus companies, right? Or tens of billions. If, you know, autonomous vehicles become a reality, that's going to disrupt a multi-trillion dollar industry. And so, if you're making a bet on that market, and the uncertainty is whether or not this can happen, if you're right, the rewards for that founder, that entrepreneur are going to be huge. If you're attacking kind of an unknown market saying, hey, I'm going to do a better productivity app, a better email app, That's a known market, so you're not really making a bet on certainties, but you're more around, hey, can I execute? Can I build a product? Can I build a channel? Can I sell against an incumbent? In which case, you'll see prices in those investments reflect more of a known market, known outcome. It's really about, hey, can this team execute? Can this product be legitimately better than the status quo? So I think, you know, you'll see the range, and people complain about price all the time, and it's hard to say when they're actually doing the investment right now, But, you know, in the fullness of time, obviously, we'll be able to look back at it and say, hey, Jerry and Harry be doing interview in five years saying, my goodness, like, that was mis…

AI assessment note: “I think price more or less reflects the risk.”

Q You mentioned unit of value there a number of times. From the most base level, how would you define unit of value for someone listening?

A It's really exactly what it sounds like. It's the core unit, the minimum unit that adds value to your customer, right? It's a kind of a product engineering-centric view of what you're selling, and so it's basically not necessarily the bundle you sell to your customer, or the combination of what you're putting through the channel, or selling to their sales force, but it's really The smallest unit that your customer gets value from, and that could range from an individual like you or me, Harry, hey, we get value from using Dropbox to kind of share or save our files in the cloud, or it could range the entire company, like the unit of value for HR software, ERP software is a whole company because it doesn't make sense for a large company to have three or four different ERP systems or four or five different HR systems. So there's a range there depending upon the product, depending on the buyer, and Also, it also depends upon, you know, what makes sense for this product, right? If it's a, it's a single player product, one unit value, one server, one PC, one phone makes sense. But if it's really about the enterprise wide product, then it has to be a very large unit of value.

AI assessment note: “It's the core unit, the minimum unit that adds value to your customer”

Q Regardless of kind of big or small, you've said before that the goal is ultimately to create this kind of non-linear value. What does going non-linear mean, and why do you want to achieve it so much?

A Yeah, well, the goal for any business is to create a business model that works for you. Otherwise, you're always going to be on that profitable hamster wheel as a founder. And what I mean by that is I love products or businesses that the more you use it, the better it gets. And that could be in the physical world or the virtual world or the software world. But you want to create a business model that the more you're selling, the more customers you have, the more users you have, the more value you create. And that could be simple network effects. For example, like, Hey, the more people on my messaging system, the more value for all the users, or it could be kind of a platform effect where, Hey, now that all my data is in this application, I can start building more applications, more features, more insights off the same product. So as a founder, if you can bend that curve, if you will, so you create nonlinear value for customers, it just encourages them to stay on your product because the more they use it, the more value they get from it. And it also means the more you can probably charge for that product. Or at least keep competitors away, because it's going to be hard for them to catch up.

AI assessment note: “the more users you have, the more value you create”

Q Can I ask, do you agree with the prevailing wisdom of it has to be 10 X better?

A You know, I think that's more of a, of a catchy slogan to be, to quantify. I don't know if it's 10 X better, or five X, or 50 X, but it has to be dramatically better, because with every new product, Harry, there's always drivers and drags, right? There's reasons to buy your product, drivers, and there's drags, reason not to, and the drags could be cost, Learning a new product, installing a new application, right? There's, there's always drags, something not to do it. And then if the drivers outweigh the drags, then you have something that was going to be bought, right? And, um, and maybe that's 10 X better than the drags. Maybe it's 50%. Some markets you need to be like three percent, four percent, five percent better, like commodity markets. In software, you, you really do have to be 10 X better. I mean, or some order of magnitude better. How's that? I think when people say 10 X, it means like you're not Or to magnitude of the single digit percentages. You have to be 5203 hundred percent better in experience or usability or value to really get people to buy it.

AI assessment note: “I don't know if it's 10 X better... but it has to be dramatically better”

Q your pieces of work being your framework of unit of value. So I want to delve into that a little today. We had Alex Rampell from Andreessen on the show who said, today it's a race of whether a startup can build distribution before the incumbent can build the technology. So I want to start with, what do startups need to do to compete with the giants of today, Jerry?

A Gosh, yeah, you know, that framework my partner, Neil Bush, said to me many years ago around distribution technology. I think Distribution matters because, A, you're actually trying to kind of leverage your technology in a way that basically their incumbents can't compete against. And the reason why I think about these platform shifts, technology shifts, is they're really shifts in distribution. And what I mean by that is, early days, you sold software to a mainframe, you sold software to a PC, then software through a browser, then through an app store, or ads through a browser and ads to the app store. And those are technology platform shifts, but really they're also Distribution shifts, right? It's why VCs are so excited about AR, VR, or smart homes like Alexa, or smart cars, or whatever, because they're net new nodes of distribution shifts. And so I think as a startup, if you see a platform shift that is also a distribution channel shift, a different way to reach my end users directly through an app store, through a browser, through their home, or whatnot, then you can take advantage of that shift To reach your customers. These incumbents probably own or have control over the prior generation of technology, the prior generation distribution. So it's when we see these shifts in platforms or really shifts in distribution that can create some of the biggest outcomes out there.

AI assessment note: “take advantage of that shift To reach your customers”

Q Can I ask, you mentioned the founders themselves there. I'm intrigued, for them, when kind of considering this kind of data set of options, what are the foundational reminders that they should keep in mind when considering the options and dilemmas with regards to this kind of non-linear expansion?

A I would say, as a founder, it's interesting, because the company often goes through phases, like, you know, zero to ten million, or 10 to 50, or 50 to a hundred to a billion, and you have to be thoughtful, I think, from the beginning, how you Think you create nonlinear value, but realize that the early days you're still on the kind of the flat part of the curve. So don't overthink about nonlinear value. Just make sure you're getting your product used by customers. And then after you get some adoption and kind of the later second act or third act of the company, then be a lot more conscious about bending that curve to create nonlinear value. So I guess would say for a founder, it is a combination of being thoughtful from the beginning, but also understanding timing and the evolution of your business. And how this is going to change over time, because you're not going to create non-letter value out of the gate. Maybe you can. If you could, that's awesome. That's great. But just being thoughtful about like, okay, how do I create value in this first phase, second phase, and third phase of my company lifecycle?

AI assessment note: “don't overthink about nonlinear value. Just make sure you're getting your product used by customers.”

Q your pieces of work being your framework of unit of value. So I want to delve into that a little today. We had Alex Rampell from Andreessen on the show who said, today it's a race of whether a startup can build distribution before the incumbent can build the technology. So I want to start with, what do startups need to do to compete with the giants of today, Jerry?

A Gosh, yeah, you know, that framework my partner, Neil Bush, said to me many years ago around distribution technology. I think Distribution matters because, A, you're actually trying to kind of leverage your technology in a way that basically their incumbents can't compete against. And the reason why I think about these platform shifts, technology shifts, is they're really shifts in distribution. And what I mean by that is, early days, you sold software to a mainframe, you sold software to a PC, then software through a browser, then through an app store, or ads through a browser and ads to the app store. And those are technology platform shifts, but really they're also Distribution shifts, right? It's why VCs are so excited about AR, VR, or smart homes like Alexa, or smart cars, or whatever, because they're net new nodes of distribution shifts. And so I think as a startup, if you see a platform shift that is also a distribution channel shift, a different way to reach my end users directly through an app store, through a browser, through their home, or whatnot, then you can take advantage of that shift To reach your customers. These incumbents probably own or have control over the prior generation of technology, the prior generation distribution. So it's when we see these shifts in platforms or really shifts in distribution that can create some of the biggest outcomes out there.

AI assessment note: “take advantage of that shift To reach your customers”

Q You mentioned unit of value there a number of times. From the most base level, how would you define unit of value for someone listening?

A It's really exactly what it sounds like. It's the core unit, the minimum unit that adds value to your customer, right? It's a kind of a product engineering-centric view of what you're selling, and so it's basically not necessarily the bundle you sell to your customer, or the combination of what you're putting through the channel, or selling to their sales force, but it's really The smallest unit that your customer gets value from, and that could range from an individual like you or me, Harry, hey, we get value from using Dropbox to kind of share or save our files in the cloud, or it could range the entire company, like the unit of value for HR software, ERP software is a whole company because it doesn't make sense for a large company to have three or four different ERP systems or four or five different HR systems. So there's a range there depending upon the product, depending on the buyer, and Also, it also depends upon, you know, what makes sense for this product, right? If it's a, it's a single player product, one unit value, one server, one PC, one phone makes sense. But if it's really about the enterprise wide product, then it has to be a very large unit of value.

AI assessment note: “It's the core unit, the minimum unit that adds value to your customer”

Q Well, let's put a date in the diary for five years' time. I do want to ask, given that being kind of the theory and the foundational elements there, what do you find the most challenging element of risk assessment personally?

A Yeah, I think the hardest part of risk assessment is, A, collecting the data up. And being a servant to the truth, if you will say, okay, what does the data show in terms of what you quantify, what you're willing to underwrite for things you don't know, what risks you're willing to take, the uncertainties, or even the quantifiable risk. And so I think the hard thing is making sure that you evaluate every project correctly with the right framework and understand what kind of risks you're taking. And then as an individual partner, create a portfolio of companies that you are the risk profile you're okay with. And as a firm in your kind of Fund, you want to also make sure you have the right portfolio mix. And every individual investor in every firm is going to be different, right? And so you have individual investors that really say, hey, I like to take these high beta bets, like a lot of risk, a lot of certainties, and that's fine. You have some investors that say, you know, I want to take lower beta bets and, um, a lower risk, and that's fine too. And then the truth of the matter is there's multiple ways to practice the art, if you will, of being a venture capitalist. And what works for you may not work For me and what works for me, not work for the next partner you interview. And so just being conscious of what you're comfortable with, what kind of investments you're, you're go…

AI assessment note: “I think the hardest part of risk assessment is, A, collecting the data up.”

Q Well, let's put a date in the diary for five years' time. I do want to ask, given that being kind of the theory and the foundational elements there, what do you find the most challenging element of risk assessment personally?

A Yeah, I think the hardest part of risk assessment is, A, collecting the data up. And being a servant to the truth, if you will say, okay, what does the data show in terms of what you quantify, what you're willing to underwrite for things you don't know, what risks you're willing to take, the uncertainties, or even the quantifiable risk. And so I think the hard thing is making sure that you evaluate every project correctly with the right framework and understand what kind of risks you're taking. And then as an individual partner, create a portfolio of companies that you are the risk profile you're okay with. And as a firm in your kind of Fund, you want to also make sure you have the right portfolio mix. And every individual investor in every firm is going to be different, right? And so you have individual investors that really say, hey, I like to take these high beta bets, like a lot of risk, a lot of certainties, and that's fine. You have some investors that say, you know, I want to take lower beta bets and, um, a lower risk, and that's fine too. And then the truth of the matter is there's multiple ways to practice the art, if you will, of being a venture capitalist. And what works for you may not work For me and what works for me, not work for the next partner you interview. And so just being conscious of what you're comfortable with, what kind of investments you're, you're go…

AI assessment note: “the hardest part of risk assessment is, A, collecting the data up.”

Q Can I ask, you mentioned the founders themselves there. I'm intrigued, for them, when kind of considering this kind of data set of options, what are the foundational reminders that they should keep in mind when considering the options and dilemmas with regards to this kind of non-linear expansion?

A I would say, as a founder, it's interesting, because the company often goes through phases, like, you know, zero to ten million, or 10 to 50, or 50 to a hundred to a billion, and you have to be thoughtful, I think, from the beginning, how you Think you create nonlinear value, but realize that the early days you're still on the kind of the flat part of the curve. So don't overthink about nonlinear value. Just make sure you're getting your product used by customers. And then after you get some adoption and kind of the later second act or third act of the company, then be a lot more conscious about bending that curve to create nonlinear value. So I guess would say for a founder, it is a combination of being thoughtful from the beginning, but also understanding timing and the evolution of your business. And how this is going to change over time, because you're not going to create non-letter value out of the gate. Maybe you can. If you could, that's awesome. That's great. But just being thoughtful about like, okay, how do I create value in this first phase, second phase, and third phase of my company lifecycle?

AI assessment note: “understanding timing and the evolution of your business”