The Exchanges

Q How did that shift happen? Was it with conversations with other investors? Like, was there one particular conversation with a potential customer where you were like, ah, light bulb, like this is where we need to focus.

A So I'm on the, I'm on the phone, uh, zoom call with a demand generation firm and we're, we're doing this whole like song and pony, you know, this whole So about like how their product can help. And I asked one question on this call that kind of unlocked this brevity role play opportunity. And that question was what's missing in our current state software that would dramatically improve the training and development of your sales development reps. And then that's when that prospect cracked and said, well, every Monday we have company wide objection handling training, and there's a wide variance And our reps ability to, you know, get up the sellable product knowledge and then also just master objection handling. So me and my co-founder looking at each other, you know, we're probing, tell me more, tell me more. And basically reps aren't getting enough practice before go live. And then we looked at each other like, are you thinking what I'm thinking? We had an aha moment. We immediately called our CTO and said, How feasible is this? And within, you know, a six week time period, we whisked up an MVP version of brevity role play.

AI assessment note: “I asked one question on this call that kind of unlocked this brevity role play”

Q So Jacqueline is selling a better bra for small-chested women that cost around 50 bucks. Pretty simple. Now, direct-to-consumer brands like this normally grow by throwing up ads on Facebook, using filters for age, gender, location, a person's interests, but none of those things tell you what someone's bra size is, which makes the investors wonder, how do you find your customer?

A So we have a few theories about who those segments are. So we know that bra size and bust size has a lot to do with genetics. For example, I'm Asian American. A lot of women, similar to me, have very similar bust size. So we'll target that way, and we'll feature Asian American models, for example. Women who finish breastfeeding tell us they used to be a C cup, now they're a double A cup, and they found our bras because they were looking for something that now fits their body as it is today. Um, another community that we recently just discovered who loves our products are transgender women. So during the transitioning process, you know, their bodies are also changing really quickly, and they're trying to find a brand that not only fits them, but speaks directly to them.

AI assessment note: “we have a few theories about who those segments are. So we know that bra size”

Q Kareem, how did, how did your call go with, uh, the kick sense founders?

A It went great. I liked them a lot. So I brought the questions that we had about kick sense to Edward and Anna, who are a delight, by the way. Um, one of the questions we had was like, how many karate studios are there in the country and how big could the market be? Cause on first glance, it sounds a little bit niche. Their answer was That there's seven, about 17,000 karate studios across the country. And there's a ton of tournaments and that, you know, teachers are looking for ways to fit more students in their classes. And they claim that this allows them to do that because they can kind of just monitor more students at one time with this kick sense technology. So that was pretty convincing.

AI assessment note: “It went great. I liked them a lot.”

Q When did you realize like, oh God, like this is like something's wrong here. Like, do you remember the moment?

A Yeah. Um, I remember my co-founder has been really adamant about, you know, let's bring the team together. So we decided to do a team trip to Seattle. We were going to keep it really casual. So not like an official team trip, just, uh, you know, five friends hanging out kind of thing. And, um, It was kind of a disaster. Um, it went to the extent that folks would go out, Together without us and like specifically not, um, respond to our, our, our texts to say, Hey, you know, what, what are we doing tonight? Should we all get together? It was like, clearly it was going to be them together and not us. There was sort of a divide between us and everyone else. And Alex and I were just looking at each other and we were like, what have we done?

AI assessment note: “we decided to do a team trip to Seattle... It was kind of a disaster.”

Q Oh no. Does it have to do with serving alcohol to minors in college?

A No, it actually has to do with labor classification in the context of all of the litigation happening relative to Uber, Lyft, Instacart, these big gig economy companies. We are kind of the small afterthought that was also impacted by these changes. Logistically speaking, this meant we need to have coverage for things like, hey, what if one of our drivers Hit somebody's car. What if a car hits one of our drivers? So we have to get different policies for all these different risk factors, and getting all those policies set up, given that we're doing something that the insurance companies are like, we've never seen this before, just took a very long time, and their gut reaction is, hey, we've never seen this before, so we're just gonna charge you an insane amount.

AI assessment note: “No, it actually has to do with labor classification”

Q space to help Tether as much as she'd like. The rest of the investors were still interested, but only if Lewis converted Tether to that Delaware C Corp. Needless to say, I was eager to see where they landed. A few weeks later, Neil from Techstars Chicago and I hopped on another call with Lewis. Are you guys gonna open up a Delaware C Corp or what? What's going on?

A Yeah, that's the, that's the never-ending struggle of our lives. So, here's the Rundown. We were holding off. We were speaking to a couple of investors in Europe. What we then said was we want to also get into the Techstars program. So Techstars Stockholm, we applied there. We said, this is perfect because it seems like Techstars Stockholm, they want you to do a Delaware C Corp. And then we can have our cake and eat it too. So we can have the European investors. We can have the American investors. We'll be on Techstars and everyone will be happy. We'll be happy. However, there is a new thing that's happening right now. Which complicates things a bit. So Techstars Berlin, they contacted us, and basically they're doing a program that is a vertical only for companies in the EV space, which is great, and it's in conjunction with an Audi accelerator. Now, here's the wrench in the gearbox. This is the only Techstars that we know of where they specifically only want European companies. They don't want a Delaware C Corp. All the other ones, all the other ones want.

AI assessment note: “This is the only Techstars that we know of where they specifically only want European”

Q Kevin, the pitch man, Fola, the fitness expert, Moses, the software engineer, they were a team, and they called their startup Rowvigor. Kevin took their vision to some angel investors in Washington, D.C., and he heard one thing over and over. This is cool, but why rowing? How could he know that rowing would be the next breakout sport in a long line of fitness fads?

A So what we decided to do was like, listen, we're going to prove it. Um, so we said, let's open a pop-up gym up. Let's provide data in the way that we would through the app and let's see who comes. And that's what we did. So we scraped together, I don't know, it was 30 grand from friends, families, and everyone else who would work with us to open this pop-up gym. And Moses was actually able to hack the rowing machines so that people could get individualized data from every workout, which was a big hit. We created leaderboards, all of this done, you know, by basically breaking over the console and, and wiring raspberry pies to rowing machines and then creating.

AI assessment note: “So what we decided to do was like, listen, we're going to prove it.”

Q Well, what's, what's going on? What you calling in for?

A So just to give you kind of like the quick and dirty about me, so I'm a single mom of two, and I started a company called CoTripper, which is an all-in-one community and family travel booking platform for single and solo moms, um, inspired kind of just by my journey traveling as a single mom. So we basically, we would partner with travel companies specifically in like sustainable small group tours. So pre-COVID, I'd landed our first customer with Intrepid, Uh, travel. We had a pilot that was going to roll out in spring and summer of this year, and COVID kind of just put an end to all of that. So I've been in extreme pivot mode since then.

AI assessment note: “I started a company called CoTripper... I've been in extreme pivot mode since then.”

Q Dennis leaves the room with 450 K in commitments from investors. That's when I popped in the room to ask about a few key moments from Dennis's pitch. So I want to start when Charles, you told Dennis he's doing a great job controlling the room. What does that tell you when a founder does that? Like, what does that mean to you?

A It tells me they know how to sell because I think it's very easy even in a one-on-one pitch to let a VC Take you where they want to take you in the conversation, and if you've given your pitch enough times, you know where the deep water is, and you know, hey, I can't let this person drag me into the deep water until we've actually finished this point. So many pitches get sidetracked by the VC going off on some, myself included, half-baked tangent, or they say something that's interesting and you want to spend a bunch of time on it, but it's not really critical or relevant, as Gillian said, to understand the pitch. I think he did a really good job of politely just saying, hey, we'll, we'll get to that. But first we have to finish this. I think part of a good pitch is the entrepreneur needs to control the dialogue. He needs to control the flow of the conversation. I thought he just did a really good job of that.

AI assessment note: “It tells me they know how to sell”

Q shares, she's issuing shares of Popcom using the blockchain, a technology that in this case allows people all over the world to own a piece of Popcom. So, needless to say, I was a little bit excited to dig in and find out why, seemingly out of nowhere, Dawn decided to take such a controversial path. Why do you need to, to do an ICO and raise thirty million dollars?

A The reason why I'm doing an ICO is so that I can get out of the, ah, constant fundraising cycle. I want to build product and I want to get to work. And so this thirty million will get me Many years of runway to be able to build my products, bring it to market, commercialize it and scale it without going back every six months to a year to raise money from VCs. I don't want to sell my entire company to investors. I want to hire the very best talent that I can without restrictions around what I can afford to pay them. I want to expand my business globally without restrictions around, you know, how much money that we have. So, this is not a white paper ICO. We have a real product, we have real customers, we have real investors, and I just want to go out and build product.

AI assessment note: “The reason why I'm doing an ICO is so that I can get out”

Q So, one thing I noticed during the pitch is that when you handed out the Harper Wilde box of bras for the investors to look at, the only one who actually picked up the bras and examined them was Jillian. That really struck me. Was that something you noticed?

A Yeah. I mean, I think that, you know, there was probably all eyes on her given that she was the only one of the four investors that, um, has probably, you know, has worn a bra. Um, so I think, you know, kind of eyes on her to react to it. Um, I think on our end, I mean, we always want people to, um, you know, look at the product, inspect it. Um, it's funny, actually, if anything, that's, we usually have the other, the other side of the problem where, um, we may be sitting, um, Across from a man and he doesn't want to touch the product. Um, so we were pretty happy that, um, not only did she want to feel it and touch it and inspect it, but you know, she wasn't afraid of it.

AI assessment note: “Yeah. I mean, I think that, you know, there was probably all eyes on her”

Q Is that a messed up thing to screen for? Like, does that need to be adjusted?

A I think the issue is if you're an investor who assumes that everybody has friends and family money available to them, it's actually rational to assume that everybody you meet should be working on their company full time and be all in. Because in a world where everybody could raise, let's call it a 100,000 dollars from friends and family, there's really no reason not to be all in on your own startup if that's really what you want to do. Now, if we live in the real world, Where not everybody has access to this. If you, as an investor, expect every founder you meet to be in a position to drop everything and just work on their startup for some arbitrary period of time, as a show of commitment, you're gonna end up excluding people who, for really valid financial reasons, cannot do that.

AI assessment note: “you're gonna end up excluding people who, for really valid financial reasons, cannot do that.”

Q Okay, okay. How does it feel going from like over 800,000 dollars invested on the show to 50,000 dollars was all that ended up coming through in the end?

A Uh, it's a little disappointing. Um, we would have, I would have loved to have had every person in the room fully come through. Um, but, you know, I think it was also good to go through the process with them and to learn a little bit more about how they're looking at our company because we've taken those lessons and we've applied them. You know, at the end of the day, you know, there, there is, there's no bad experience as an entrepreneur. I mean, um, I, I don't regret anything, and I'm very happy that I got to meet you and, and everyone else there, and The funny thing about this whole world is that it's a very small world. So I guarantee you, I will run into Phil Nadel again, uh, and into Jillian Maness. I, I run into Jake a lot cause he actually invested in Howie Diamond. So we'll, uh, I'll, uh, and, and I look forward to that.

AI assessment note: “it's a little disappointing. Um, we would have, I would have loved to”

Q Was it that that really got you thinking about money and personal finance as a kid?

A No. What really got me thinking about personal finance as a kid is, um, so my dad passed away unexpectedly when I was 14, and I remember very clearly my mom, the sort of family finances were split. My mom bought everything. She was the budgeter. She bought the groceries, the clothes, every stitch of anything that was in our house, and my dad managed the investments and insurance and bigger financial topics, and when my dad passed away, I very, very clearly remember my mom Overnight being like, oh my god, I have to, like, go figure out all of our finances. That felt very destabilizing as a fourteen-year-old being like, oh my god, like, how we manage everything and pay for everything my mom's gotta go learn about right now. That's nuts. And Josh, I won't geek out on you, but there's so much history of why, right? Women couldn't have a credit card.

AI assessment note: “No. What really got me thinking about personal finance as a kid is”

Q So I'm, I'm looking at the, uh, Facebook page for Shipt and you can tell how quickly this thing blew up. Like you start in Birmingham and suddenly like Shipt is everywhere. How many cities did you get to in year one?

A 15 cities. Shortly after we launched Birmingham, we said, all right, well, what are we launching next? I mean, it might've been six weeks later, we were looking at launching the next city. We ran the same playbook in every market. We did a pre-sale campaign for memberships, half price if you signed up before launch, and we launched Nashville. It was great. We launched Dallas, and it was a dud. Then we launched Tampa, and I call it, and my team, we, we all call it Kablampa because 2000 people signed up. We launched Miami. We had the same thing happen. 2000 memberships before we launched, and that's when I knew, I mean, this is going to work, and The company just exploded overnight. I remember having to go in the office Saturday, Sunday to answer the phones and talk to customers and shoppers and solve problems. We were all hands on deck just to, just to handle the demand.

AI assessment note: “15 cities. Shortly after we launched Birmingham, we said, all right”

Q What did Graycroft think? I mean, they had just led the Series B. So, presumably, they had a price they wanted you to hit. Like, were they ok with you selling at that point?

A My partner there really pushed me to consider not selling. He said, look, I'm, I'm going to do whatever you want to do. I mean, you're the CEO and, you know, whatever you want to do, we're with you. And that was a tough decision to make, but ultimately what I came back to was If, if I had continued as an independent company and something else had changed or not worked out, how would I feel if I hadn't taken the. Five hundred and fifty million dollars is actually a little more than that. That was on the table and an all cash deal. And I said, you know, this, this makes sense to do this deal because once I've done this deal, then on the next company or the next one, I can hold the cards as long as I want to, and I can do all types of other deals, buy companies, start them up, whatever, I'll have so many options available to me.

AI assessment note: “My partner there really pushed me to consider not selling.”

Q Can you describe the day shipped sold to Target? You were 32 years old, and the company sold for over five hundred and fifty million dollars. Like, what was that day like?

A Oh, it was a great day. So it was December 17th, and I'll back up before the day it was announced, because the day it was supposed to be announced was actually December 18th. And I got a call from the COO of Target, and he said, hey, we actually want to announce this a day early. We're afraid it's gonna leak. So we're sending our plane down to pick you up this afternoon, flying you to Minneapolis. We're announcing tomorrow morning. So, I jumped on the target plane and flew up there. And the next morning, I'm on a call, um, we're doing interviews with the CEO of Target and myself. We're interviewing with CNBC and Bloomberg and the Wall Street Journal. All these things started at six a.m. in the Target headquarters. I'm watching the sun come up. I'm in this amazing office, um, and just, I mean, this is a dream. This is everything an entrepreneur dreams about doing, and I'm doing it. In the Target headquarters, they have a A bullseye, the, the, the dog, the mascot built out of Legos.

AI assessment note: “All these things started at six a.m. in the Target headquarters.”

Q Why did you start with smaller cities instead of the classic New York or LA?

A So at the time there was a company called Instacart. They had raised something like two hundred and fifty million dollars before shipped was even open. And they were very focused on the coast. They were New York, San Francisco, LA type markets, and they didn't do anything in the center of the country. So we just said, all right, well, we're just going to own the south and the center of the country, and we're going to focus on the rest of America. Because You know, it turns out people in, um, Grand Rapids, Michigan want groceries delivered just the same as someone in New York does, and even more than that, there's a lot more families in the middle of the country than there are in, you know, there's people with a bunch of kids, I thought. So, uh, it just worked out that way.

AI assessment note: “Instacart... were very focused on the coast... we're going to focus on the rest”

Q Can you imagine a point where there's Bill Smith not running a business?

A I think about that. I've thought about that a lot. Um, I, I don't believe that'll happen. Um, that's not my desire. Now, when I fast forward 20 years, 25 years down the road, um, I'm 38 today, and I think, you know, would I be a CEO at 65? Do I want to be doing this every single day? I don't know. Um, but I think I'll always own businesses, and that's something that I'm, you know, really am interested in. Um, I bought a business recently. I don't run it. Someone else runs it, and it's really more like an investment, but I can see making that transition at some point to owning companies, uh, working closely with the president or the CEO, coaching them, and kind of providing that guidance, but not being in one single business every single day.

AI assessment note: “I don't believe that'll happen. Um, that's not my desire.”

Q That's awesome. Where did the terms come in at? I assume not a flat round.

A Not a flat round. And that actually, oh man, I'm a little bit embarrassed to watch that part back, but I don't even know why I went in offering that. That was one of the most pivotal learning experiences, not just for a company, but in life in general. That was a very good life moment of don't cut your own legs off if you don't need to. If nobody is selling you short, don't be the one to short yourself. And so, um, when we were in that call with Cyan, she asked me, what terms do you want? And I said the same thing that I did on the show. I said, I want 12 pre, 15 posts, and I'm going to stand by that. And she said, okay. She said, let's do it. 12 pre.

AI assessment note: “I want 12 pre, 15 posts, and I'm going to stand by that.”

Q New investor acronym about to drop. EBITDA. Earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization. But for the purposes of this conversation, you can think of EBITDA like net income, actual profits of the business. All right, back to me. Why do you need to know how this is going to be valued in a couple of years?

A How the do I know what the thing's worth in the future? Like, you've got 300,000 K in revenue. What's that worth? If you value it on like EBITDA cash flow or something, if this is a traditional business, because those people renting businesses are typically valued on multiples of EBITDA, not multiples of revenue. Like, so this is not a SaaS software company that could get 20 X revenue. This is probably like three X EBITDA. And at 300 K, your EBITDA is zero. This is project based, this is like a consulting company. Consulting companies sell at three or one X revenue, maybe three or five X EBITDA. I mean, I just, I'm trying to figure out, like, I'm investing at six. Ok, in order for me to make 10 times my money, it has to be worth sixty million dollars. What kind of revenue and multiple do I have to get to, to get to a sixty million dollar valuation? If you're talking three times EBITDA, they need to be spitting out twenty million dollars of EBITDA. And that's a lot of EBITDA on this kind of business. I just think, and, and it took the competitor 15 years to get to a hundred million dollars, and you probably need to be a hundred million dollars top line to get twenty million of EBITDA, and then your thing's worth sixty million dollars. The numbers. I mean, really, my brain's exploding trying to figure out how the thing is worth, how do I make 10 X my money.

AI assessment note: “in order for me to make 10 times my money, it has to be worth sixty million”

Q nerding out during your pitch. Um, and, uh, speaking of nerding out, there was this particular moment where you mentioned offhandedly that your tech could get humans to Mars in 30 days. And the investors, they didn't pick up on it, but it caught my attention. Now, NASA predicts we can get humans to Mars in about eight months. How are you going to get them there in 30 days?

A So without going into the detailed physics of it, um, the reason is we have Two things that are married together in this type of spacecraft. First, we have highly efficient engines. So we have 10% of the propellant consumption that you would get with a chemical rocket engine. We're using electric thrusters. And secondly, we have a good thrust to mass ratio. We have a relatively lightweight spacecraft that's able to produce high thrust because we have such high electrical power levels. And those two things are really what we need combined to get to Mars in, um, less than two months. So it's The best technology besides fusion, besides a war drive, and all of those futuristic, uh, concepts to get around, which is really why we're focusing on it.

AI assessment note: “we have highly efficient engines... And secondly, we have a good thrust to mass ratio.”

Q What happens there? Do you just, like... Wire funds right away. Like, what do you.

A Oh yeah. So look, I'm, I'm, I'm an irritating investor and I'm going to ask questions forever and you know, give me the tour, show me how the printers works, tell me how orders like get fulfilled and okay. Then who's assembling these few components and how does it work? And then, Hey, you show me all that. He took me to their, their lab where they like, they have a destructive testing setup thing where they just destroy helmets. And I'm like, this is cool. I want to see helmets get broken. I mean, he told me about, you know, he used to have the destructive, the rig in his house, and his wife was like, what, what are you doing in the garage? Like, why are you just smashing things?

AI assessment note: “I'm an irritating investor and I'm going to ask questions forever”

Q at Long Journey Ventures. She's a bit of a legend in the Valley, having invested in companies like Postmates, ClassPass, Uber, SpaceX, Pokemon Go. And now she's the lead investor in Wist. So before writing off this deal entirely, Lisa and I figured it was worth hopping on a call with Cyan. Start at the beginning with Andrew's deal and with Wist. Like, how did you guys, uh, meet Andrew?

A We found him on Twitter. And it was because a bunch of people started sending me, uh, videos of his demo. And they said, um, have you seen this? And, you know, Often I've asked mothers, if there was one thing that you could grab out of the house, if the house was on fire, what would you grab? And it's pretty much the photo book. I've seen people lose it when they've lost photographs. And, you know, right now I have one audio recording of my grandmother, and it is A voicemail that she left me, and that's all I have. And I go back and listen to it over and over again, and I'm filled with regret that I didn't record her or interview her in time. And I think that if I could go back and see her sitting on a couch and relive a memory with her, wouldn't that be profound? And so that's where I think what he's doing is incredibly special. That's why I'm so bullish. You know, I really do think that in the end, that's what's really going to matter to people is the real connectivity they had with real human beings. And wanting to relive those moments and experience them again.

AI assessment note: “We found him on Twitter. And it was because a bunch of people started sending me”

Q What does this look like two years from now? I put on my, my headset. Can you paint a picture of what this looks like?

A Yeah, I would think about it like, you are just living your life, and your kids do something, and you take out your phone and capture a moment, just like you always capture, except it's in Wist, and then you put on a headset, it's already there, you are back in the moment as though, or as close as possible to that time that you were there. Also, like our initial hypothesis is that this is about spatial memories, that that's the, like, critical foot in the door kind of thing. But we, like, build up all of this tech that's hard to piece together, and then we can open that up to other developers to include in their own apps for volumetric capture, especially if we can get to that place where it's give us any to D content, and we'll give you back something lifelike.

AI assessment note: “you put on a headset, it's already there, you are back in the moment”

Q Are you like having second thoughts on your investment or is there still a path forward here?

A Um, that's a good question. I, I'm, I do have hesitation. I think what I would like to do Is say, okay, from the fund we'll commit a hundred K at these terms, but I do want to be able to see that you guys can commit to the fundraise and that you can keep your investors updated and you can run a process, right? And so I would like to see you be able to get additional commitments. And if you get to a certain point and it's looking good and you're getting these commitments and you've got great momentum and you need a little bit to finish it out. Then maybe that's something that, that we can look at doing as well.

AI assessment note: “I do have hesitation. I think what I would like to do Is say”

Q I think, from Elizabeth and Charles, if he gets more equity from his co-founder, Victor. Jason seemed very confident he could get that equity, but conversations around ownership aren't usually that straightforward. We caught up with Jason a few weeks later to see how it all went. In the room, you said, I think I can get the equity transferred in a week. How did that conversation go with Victor?

A So the first started in the car on the way home. So I'm calling him like, so crazy situation. I know you were, you know that I was on this show, but this is the scenario. So a little like, why are we having this conversation on a Friday? What happened in the last two hours to sort of warrant the speed? Because frankly, I was kind of like, I said five days. So we need to do this like this weekend. We hashed it out. We got our attorney to help pretty quickly, got the paperwork, tied some valuations to it too. I think that was fair, which is don't just give me the equity this second. It is let me prove and hit certain company milestones. And then I get the equity, company's worth more money. You win, I win. Investors give us money. That's how it went.

AI assessment note: “We hashed it out. We got our attorney to help pretty quickly”

Q Why is everyone doubling down on this investment? I'll give you a hint. Two words. It rhymes with cervical bass.

A I saw this as a really nice vertical SaaS solution, right? Like, hey, she's got customers. This is, it's checking all the boxes for us. Valuation was competitive. Founding team is really compelling. But as we had conversations with customers, and as we had conversations with co-investors, I think the opportunity and the size of the opportunity became more and more apparent to us. Jamis has a very clear path to a 10 X exit on this type of business, but that's just the baseline. We think, you know, even Entrada will say they think the opportunity is probably closer to a hundred X here. And that has really increased our level of conviction to the point where we wanted to increase our target ownership percentage within the business.

AI assessment note: “increased our level of conviction to the point where we wanted to increase our target”

Q And definitely too expensive for our investors. Shortly after his pitch, I called up Elias to get his take. Your pitch to the investors on our show was more about the numbers than I think you were expecting, and probably more about the numbers than you wanted. Were you disappointed by that? And just in general, like, what are your thoughts on how they evaluated the business in the room?

A Yeah, I mean, I was disappointed. I think that everyone in the room got the value of what we were building and was excited by it. The difference was where our valuation was versus where a fund their size would be able to invest, right? And there's just a natural law there. I mean, everyone there had, no one there had a fund over a hundred million. I think most people had between 30 to 50. And so They're really pre-seed to seed stage investors. The fact that we have product market fit and brands as customers already positions us in a lot of investors mind is kind of post seed and more into the series A, but we're also in a market where even if we can launch products very quickly, brands still move slow and physical product moving into the market can take nine, 1216 months. And so, and if you want to have impact on the physical world and you want to really Change the impact of these legacy industries. You have to, and that's what we're in this for, but it does mean that you're right. There's a 12, 1824 month period wherein you have a ton of traction But not a lot of revenue to show for that traction yet.

AI assessment note: “Yeah, I mean, I was disappointed. I think that everyone in the room got the value”

Q Our vision is to use- In her new pitch, there was no mention of Slack apps or EAPs. Stigma was a social mental health app once again, which made me wonder if Mac, who was particularly excited about the Slack piece, was still interested in investing. So Mac and I got on a call with Ariana, and my first question to her was, what made you pivot back?

A I was listening to a lot of voices in the Techstars ecosystem and also, um, among investors from, from East Coast to West Coast and what people thought were opportunities. There is a lot of appetite in the Midwest for B to B kind of stuff. So people loved the HR angle. I went to San Francisco and met with Sequoia and they were like, this is a bad path. Don't go down it. And so I had to take all of these inputs and say, what is the company I want to build? So I have a piece of paper that is in my kitchen that says, this is the company I want to build. I wrote it nine months ago. I go back to it constantly. And remember that I only want this to work if it's the company that's going to help people. The problem and the sort of bad news for today's call is that it takes time to earn trust, and the moment we take on a big amount of capital, we understand that you all as venture capitalists have returns to make and growth targets to hit, and I won't trade on the trust that we've earned too early, um, to end up losing this audience because what they feel like is all they, all this was, was a funnel to get them to a sale. And so, I actually believe that now is not the right time for us to fundraise.

AI assessment note: “I went to San Francisco and met with Sequoia and they were like, this is a bad path.”