The Daily Stoic - Steve Case on the New American Dream

Episode Date: October 15, 2022

This episode comes out for free on 10/15/2022.Ryan talks to Steve Case about his new book The Rise of the Rest: How Entrepreneurs in Surprising Places are Building the New American Dream, how the pandemic has shifted the cultural landscape, the opportunity gap that is being created, and more.One of America’s most successful entrepreneurs and executives, best known as co-founder of America Online and CEO of Revolution LLC, Steve Case has a passion for building startups that can change the world. Steve’s entrepreneurial career began in 1985 when he cofounded America Online. Steve has been a leading voice in shaping government policy on issues related to entrepreneurship, working across the aisle to advance public policies that expand access to capital and talent. He is also Chairman of the Case Foundation, which he established with his wife Jean in 1997.📕 Ryan Holiday's new book "Discipline Is Destiny" is out now! We’ve extended the pre-order bonuses for the next week—among them is a signed and numbered page from the original manuscript of the book. You can learn more about those and how to receive them over at Dailystoic.com/preorder. ✉️ Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail📱 Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, FacebookSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hey, prime members, you can listen to the Daily Stoke podcast early and add free on Amazon music. Download the app today. Welcome to the weekend edition of the Daily Stoke. Each weekday we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stokes. Something to help you live up to those four Stoke virtues of courage, justice, temperance, and wisdom. And then here on the weekend, we take a deeper dive into those same topics. We interview stoic philosophers. We explore at length how these stoic ideas can be applied to our actual lives and the challenging issues of our time. Here on the weekend, when you have a little bit more space

when things have slowed down, be sure to take some time to think, to go for a walk, to sit with your journal, and most importantly, to prepare for what the week ahead may bring. Hi, I'm David Brown, the host of Wunderree's podcast business wars. And in our new season, Walmart must fight off target, the new discounter that's both savvy and fashion forward. Listen to business wars on Amazon music or wherever you get your podcasts.

Hey, it's Ryan Holiday. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Steal podcast. I just got back. I gave a talk in Salt Lake. I gave a talk in Park City yesterday. Had a nice run in the mountains and then swam after the talk. It was a nice little day. I'm still in an interesting limbo period where all the first week numbers discipline is destiny are in. They were way better than I could have imagined. So all I feel is gratitude and sort of amazement. But I'm in this weird limbo call could come in later this afternoon. It could come early tomorrow, where I know whether it hit the best seller list or not, which has been a weird limbo period that I've known now for 11 years

since Trustman Lion first came out. Like you do it. You write the best book you can. You put in the work. You hope it resonates with the audience. You know how many people ended up buying it or not, but whether or not you hit the list or not is the not up to you, as Epictetus would say. And I sit here trying to work, trying to focus, trying to move the ball forward on the next

book in the series, trying to work on projects, keep busy. Because as Mark Sirrelius famously says that, ambition is time you're well-being to what other people say or do, whether you make it or not. Sanity is tying it to your own actions. I did the actions I could. It got me where I am. You know, now I'm in this sort of Schrodinger's cat limbo where it could be the list, it could not be the list.

I'm not checking all I'm trying to do is work because that's in my control and That brings me to today's guest one of the most successful entrepreneurs in history He's the founder of America online. We might not even be talking podcasts. They list out all the stuff might not exist where it not for him talking podcast, they list out all the stuff might not exist, where it not for him essentially popularizing, we're making accessible internet access. And AOL time Warner would merge in 2000 as the largest merger in American history. My guest today, Steve Case, would then go on to found Revolution, a DC-based investment firm, and he's vested in a million successful companies. But we talk a lot in today's episode

about what you do after that. After you are extraordinarily successful, after you have cultivated immense skills and network and talent, how do you put those skills to work for what the Stokes would call the common good? How do you make sure that that success is shared by as many people as possible? It's as diverse as possible as geographically distributed as possible. And that's what we talk about in today's episode because it is the subject of Steve's newest book Rise of the Rest, How Entrepreneurs in

Surprising Places are Building the New American Dream. And what I do here in Bastrop, this little bookstore I have on this small town in Main Street, is the kind of growth in the investment that Steve is talking about. We had a wonderful conversation. I really enjoy talking to him. You can go to his website at stevecase.com. That's Case with a C on Twitter, at Steve Case, on Instagram, at Steve Case. And do check out his new book. It's really good, really interesting.

And we tease a lot of the important concepts in today's episode. Rise of the rest, how entrepreneurs in surprising places are building the new American dream, here is my conversation with Steve Case. You probably don't remember, but we sat next to each other at a dinner like maybe right before the pandemic. It could have been longer before the pandemic, but I have no conception of time anymore. I don't either, it's completely, it's weird. I was talking to longer before the pandemic, but I have no conception of time anymore. I don't either.

It's completely, it's weird. I was talking to somebody the other day, and I said, so that was like three years ago, and he said, no, it was actually six years ago. So, it was quite a significant factor. Yeah, and then it's weird, and you're like 2023 is three months away. That is true.

That is true. It's a, been a strange, strange couple of years, but I must say the, it's not all bad. I was there, a lot of tragic aspects of the pandemic, but for our family, we went from having no grandkids to three from the beginning of the plan one week to today. So, so, yeah, I've been looking for a silver lining, maybe that's it. Yeah, the joke that I heard is that people made babies, but they were all first time parents. Very few people at the beginning of the pandemic locked down with their kids were like, we should

do more of this. Well, in our case, there was both the first and a second doing the pandemic, although the first was, they were expecting before the pandemic. And sure, and so they've been able to live over a year break. But anyway, that's been an interesting new chapter in our lives. My wife, Gene and I, the grandparents, has been fun. Well, congratulations. And it does feel like some of the trends of the pandemic certainly accelerated or facilitated the possibilities

or the transformation that you were hoping could happen with your ideas in the book and with the fund. Yeah, no, I think you said that we started this journey around the rise of the rest about a decade ago. A lot I was asked by President Obama to share We started this journey around the rise of the rest about a decade ago. When I was asked by President Obama to share something called the Startup America Partnership and I got me traveling around seeing what was happening, understanding some of the regional trends around entrepreneurship.

And understanding this imbalance around how our venture capital goes. In fact, 75% of venture capital goes just three states. And the other 47 states are fighting over, remaining 25% is just kind of crazy. And we started launching these rise with bus tours about eight years ago. I remember the first tour, what city like Detroit and Pittsburgh and Nashville.

And kept doing that. Now we've done eight of those bus tours, 43 cities. And with our rise the rest of our family, then invested in 200 companies, 100 different cities. So over the decade, we've seen it building, but I do think the pandemic, when we look back, we'll see it as being a tipping point because it didn't lead, not everybody, a lot of people to rethink how they want to work and where they want to live and, you know, to unbundling a little bit of work in life and kind of unbundlings.

This notion that if you wanted to be part of a startup economy, the innovation economy kind of had to be in Silicon Valley, and now that people recognize that's not the case. So it's a, it'll take some number of years to see exactly how it all plays out, but this play is pretty clear that some of the trends that we were hoping would continue to build. Over the last decade definitely accelerated over the last couple years. This one I think is probably a permanent change, but Bubble Street. Yeah, for me, I mean, so I lived in Austin and then about seven years ago, I moved to rural sort of piece of property outside the city, but I would commute into Austin for meetings, for work, for groceries, et cetera.

And then right around the beginning of the pandemic, I bought this building and I opened, I was starting the process of opening a bookstore in this little town. And so I ended up, obviously, the pandemic made it harder in some aspects. And then once we sort of got through that, it made it not just more attractive, but it made it harder in some aspects and then once we sort of got through that it made it not just More attractive, but it made it permanent now even though I'm only you know 40 minutes from Austin

I almost never go into Austin because I made the stuff that I want in the little town that I live and I'm finding that to be more and more true The irony is I thought I was sort of moving into this little rural small town thing and then the Tesla factory and now a SpaceX building and a boring company building are all between me and Austin. So I'm not sure it's going to be a small town for much longer. Yeah. I guess the building you bought will be worth more down the road, but we're looking for some sub-relighting there. But now I think this dynamic,

exactly, kind of your journey. I'm going to be in Austin, and then I'll be a lot outside Austin. Is something that people are been thinking about, I think, for years, but I think the pandemic is kind of like the shake the snow globe moment, where not just society started rethinking things, but people and thinking about their families started rethinking things, but people, and thinking about their family started

rethinking things. And what happened initially was some of the people decided to move temporarily to some other place, just figured like, I don't know how long this pandemic will last maybe a few months, but might as well be somewhere else if I'm gonna work remotely. And then some of those people decided, you know what, I kind of like it here,

and I wanna stay. And either continue with mapping remotely for some other companies somewhere else or find something locally that's interesting. And what I've been hearing time and time again now talking to the entrepreneurs around these rise of the cities is most people when they come to town,

Austin is a little bit more developed with some of the places we've been investing in. Like they had the Arkansas or Richmond, Virginia or many apples, places like that, when people arrive, even if they had some connection to the town, maybe they grew up there, went to school there or something, they're actually quite surprised,

almost shocked about how much is happening in terms of the startup sector. And that's partly why I wanted to write this book to tell these stories, not just the entrepreneur building, it's fabulous companies, but these cities that are rebuilding renewing by focusing on more on new companies, startups, and the process of creating more jobs, driving more economic roads. It's been, it's quite a little story going to under the radar for the last decade. They will become much more obvious in this next decade. But really in the middle of what, but it's been, it's quite a little story, kind of under the radar for the last decade, I think it will become much more obvious

in this next decade, but really in the middle of what, I think one of that being a fundamental shift in terms of the American innovation economy, I think that will be good for entrepreneurs, good for city, I think it will be good for the country. We have one version of this story as you move back to your hometown, or you move back to where you went to college, but I have no connection to the city that I live in and certainly not the small town.

But I think you find when you move to these smaller places is that you have the opportunity, I guess, to have so much more impact. There's so much more going on, there's maybe a history or a community that you didn't even know existed before. And it's really kind of inspiring and exciting in a way that just being another person living in New York City or Silicon Valley, another sort of temporary resident of this boom town, you know, it just doesn't match that. Yeah, no, it's a classic case and it's kind of bigger fish and smaller pond kind of dynamic. You know, it's like, I'm just going to New York,

obviously, they're great cities. A lot of people will still be drawn to them for sure. But giving people the option, the flexibility to choose where they want to live and how they want to live and where they want to raise a family and so forth. While still being able to participate in the career path that they want to participate, I think that's what fundamentally is shifting before.

And I do know, based on some of the data, and I wrote about some of this in the book, that for many people in many parts of the country over the last two or three decades, there was a big brain drain. People leaving those places, they felt like they had to kind of get out of Dodge because there wasn't much happening. They wanted to be in the tech sector, start-up sector innovation economy. There wasn't really venture capital there.

There weren't other people building companies there. There wasn't the culture of entrepreneurship there. So they felt like they had to go someplace. And most of them went to the coast. There was a lot of them obviously to Silicon Valley. And that's fine. And obviously Silicon Valley's benefited. But how do we at least give people the options of being in other places and slow that brain drive people leaving an even trigger boomerang of people returning. And in your case, and we've seen this a lot of instances, people deciding to move some place, they had no connection there, they just stumbled into it. When great examples, Tulsa

Oklahoma, a few years ago, they launched an effort called Tulsa Remote and basically created a program where it had set at people, it was $10,000 or something if you'd moved to Tulsa. And it got thousands of applications, they were shocked, it was far more than they thought. Most of the people had were been to Tulsa, most people didn't even know where Tulsa was. But I think there's a couple hundred of them that ended up moving there. And a lot of them, you know,

kind of bought houses and now live in there permanently. And once they were in Tulsa, it's like, yeah, this is really cool. I didn't really, there was a music scene here in Tulsa. And they're like a Woody Guthrie museum, a very small Bob Dylan museum opened and this amazing park, a half a billion dollar privately funded park.

And so suddenly they're like, wow, no idea. And that's the story we're hearing more and more. And some people did have an idea because they did have some connection. A lot of people just hear something about, another example I love as I was in Northwest Arkansas and Bentonville, of course where the headquarters of Walmart is. And they have something called the Heartland Summit talking about some of these dynamics

around the rise the rest. And I ended up getting an interview with the woman who writes the fortune newslier around venture capital. And she at the beginning of the pandemic moved from New York to Benville. So the fortune magazine, this iconic, let me out kind of business magazine, covering venture capital, which historically been mostly covering Silicon Valley,

is now doing that from Benville Arkansas. And she did, I think she and her sisters, Jessica Matthews, were just looked around, what were we going? Let's go someplace, kind of for a month or two. And a couple of years later, she's kind of fall in love with Benville. The position Benville is the mountain biking capital of the world. They've invested heavily in bike paths

and other kinds of place making a meta. Nobody knows this. Nobody knows what's happening in Bentonville or these dozens of other cities that I write about it in the book. So I found these visits inspirational to seeing what companies were kind of being birthed but also communities being rebirth, reimagined, renewed in ways that were striking. And then I'd go talk to people about it, and I had no clue. So that kind of why I felt like I had to write this book, tell these stories.

It's a more optimistic, I think, story of America. And I think people will be shocked about how many places are really, you know, seeing thriving startup communities develop that it just doesn't get the attention of the media historically hasn't got the attention of the venture capital but thankfully that's beginning to change. Yeah, isn't one of the Walmart heirs, like one of the grandchildren really into mountain biking? Yeah, I think he like personally did also.

Yeah, too. Too, Tom Walden and Stuart Walden, they are both brothers and they are both passionate and make some investments even in biking companies. And that's part of the reason that they decided to do that also. They're another Walton air-built crystal bridges, which is considered now on top our museums and the country indeed in the world. So clearly some of the Bentonville renewal is because of some of the money, you know, the team from the success of Walmart, you know, in the hands of the Waltenayers. They have been reinvesting in Bentonville to make it that place.

We see other examples that I write about the book like Dan Gilbert in Detroit brought his company, Cherk and Loans from the suburbs, the downtown bought a hundred buildings that were mostly vacant and downtown, it Detroit, back more than 100 startups. We'd tell investors within companies like Shinola and StockX and others. And suddenly, Detroit is showing real particularly downtown area, real momentum in terms of being a start-up hub.

And so there are other examples of people stepping up and taking the lead. And it's not just in one or two places. It's in, you know, really several dozen places. Yeah. I mean, what you're describing is kind of what happens naturally with immigration, where suddenly you'll be like, why are there so many simoleons living in Minneapolis? And it's because one family moved there 40 years ago and then they slowly sponsored or incurred. And what's lovely about that is not just the cool communities that come out of it, but it's exactly the sort of forcing

function you mentioned, which is the people don't know exactly why they're moving there. They're certainly not picking it because it checks all their boxes, but then they get there, and they fall in love with all the things that that city offers. And I guess what I'm saying is we sometimes underestimate the effect that one person or a small group of people

can have informing one of these hubs, whether it's a business hub or a cultural hub or whatever the thing that the people are connecting around is, it often starts with just a small group of people or one company or one idea. I think that the almost always start that way. It's just something happens that then leads to momentum and, you know, that attracts other people.

I do say it might be as all you immigrant going to a particular city and then other family members come and in friends come and suddenly you wake up 10 years later and there's thousand people and there's, you know, a certain neighborhood in the city and restaurants in the city, you know, that obviously were built by them and teeter to that, you know, that community. And the entrepreneurial sector, which in many examples of this, in terms of cities that were struggling for a while, that then started booming. And it was because of a few individuals.

Seattle is a good example. Microsoft actually started in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and then moved to Seattle for one reason. Bill Gates and Paul Allen, the co-founders, were from Seattle. I wanted to go home. So they moved Microsoft, and I was still just a few dozen people to Seattle. Well, then it became one of the most significant tech companies in the world. And Jeff Bezos, working in New York City, had this idea of starting this company to sell books online,

which of course became Amazon. And he said, where should I start this company? I'm going to move to Seattle because this company Microsoft has a lot of engineers there. I bet I can hire some of those Microsoft engineers to help build Amazon.com. So it gets in a car and drives across the country and sets up shop in Seattle.

Then his success at Amazon, obviously, and Costco and Starbucks. So a few people, a few entrepreneurs really took Seattle, which 30, 40 years ago was struggling. It lost some of its key industries. It was struggling. And now it's a real great startup up it where you are in Austin. I just with Michael Del over the weekend

has happened to be from Texas, happened to be at the university when he was started as a computer business out of his dorm room. It grew and grew and grew and suddenly Dell is one of the anchor companies. And Austin has attracted other people to move to Austin and help set the stage for what is now a very kind of vibrant as you all know. You know, start up up and I had that on the experience at my personally 40 years ago,

almost 40 years ago. In Northern Virginia outside of Washington, D.C. That's where we set up shop with AOL, it was hard because there was no venture capital in the area. Most people were working for big companies or government contractors and there wasn't really a startup sector, so it was hard to get going, but eventually we were successful. Eventually went from being in a relevant company the couple doesn't employees, do an important company with 10,000 employees. And suddenly, the Northern Virginia ended up,

you keep evolving to be a stronger startup hub and even recently Amazon picked that same neighborhood that we kind of started AOL for their second headquarters. That was inconceivable 30, 40 years ago. So these are the, sorry, they tried to tell the book, partly to give us a sense of what's happened and how we got to now in some of these cities, but also inspire others to do that

in other cities. And I think that we do that. We can usher in a more inclusive innovation economy that does bring more people along. There clearly is frustration out there. You see it in the politics, you see it in voting patterns that, well, some of us in some places are doing pretty well and I feel like they're part of the exciting, innovation economy disrupting these big industries and important ways. There are a lot of people, actually probably most people in most parts of the country that are feeling left out,

feeling left behind. You know, they're not part of us and they're frustrated about it and they're lashing out and it's understandable. So how do we create more opportunity for them? How do we create more jobs for them? And my conclusion was the way to do that was to back more new companies there. Many of which would fail, the startups are risky,

but some of which would be the Microsoft or the Dell's or the other companies of tomorrow. And that's what we're trying to do with Ryze Ress, and that's obviously what I was trying to frame out as an opportunity for entrepreneurs and for investors and for just citizens, communities all around the country. This is a moment, and we should seize it and really help these rising cities get to the next level and the process back some companies that really will create some of the jobs that will lift up that community.

Yeah, is this sort of a second mountain for you? Because I mean, one argument would be obviously you have the resources, obviously you have a certain amount of expertise. Obviously San Francisco, New York, Massachusetts, this is where most of the companies are. Why not just concentrate on where you're potentially going to have the biggest ROI? Like, let's say most companies are in San Francisco, or tech companies are in San Francisco, that's where the deals are, that's where the ecosystem is. So you spend your money there, you invest your money there, creating a thousand jobs in San Francisco on paper,

like if I'm an economist, is not really any more meaningful than a thousand jobs somewhere else. Why think about this sort of geographic, geopolitical vector on what you're doing instead of just focusing on the already hard part of picking winners. Well, for all of our bunches, it's very good to start with entrepreneurs basically see problems they want to solve and they do that by creating companies that capitalize on that open and capitalize on that

opportunity. And there's a long history of, you know, people are going to see problems based on where they live and what they're doing and how they're interacting with others. And the problems that, you know, people will see in different parts of the country will be different than the problems you'd see if you're just in San Francisco. An example is I'm right about the book. There's a woman making gloves in Indiana. There's a mom raising kids and not too far from her in Flint, Michigan a number of years ago, there was this water crisis around the quality of the water.

She said, ah, I wonder if, you know, what the water, my kids are drinking, whether it's safe. And she called the water utilities that I want to get my water test and he said, well, where are we going to do that for consumers? And she called some lab and he said, well, we'll do that. But it costs like, I guess, $4,000 or $5,000 to test your water. Well, this is crazy. And came up with something which people could test their water for under $100. And then actually ended up creating more of a of a platform that but some cities,

including by the way San Francisco are using to test water. That's because she was living there and closed to let Michigan out. But necessarily, had that problem, had that insight as she had been in some other place or another example is Craig Fuller and Chad Inuga. You know, he, you know, has had a family in the trucking industry. Now, some of the biggest trucking companies I'm very underrated city by the way. All these cities I'm writing about are underrated. This is my point. There are dozens of cities that are fabulous city that nobody knows about. And in their case, one interesting thing about Chad Inuga is probably no.

A decade ago, the Maryland and the effort to build broadband and it had to have the highest speed broadband connection in the country, in Chattanooga, Tennessee, not in San Francisco, not in New York and Chattanooga. And then you know, this company, Freightways, built the Bloomberg data platform because they knew the trucking companies had a lot of questions in terms of managing logistics and so forth. And of course, it's better to build that company in Chattanooga where you have people to understand trucking and the key customers are in Chattanooga.

So there's some of that dynamic building on kind of industry expertise that drives it. There's also just a classic investor dynamic of diversification. You shouldn't put all your apes in one basket. We did this as a country a hundred years ago the basket was called Detroit The industry was called called the automobile industry and a hundred years ago Detroit was Silicon Valley It was booming if people wanted a part of the automobile revolution and moved to Detroit house-wurping build schools were being built It was rock and rollin By the way when that was happening Silicon Valley was not growing startups, it was growing

fruit. It was all egg-rich. It was not shared, not technology, it was fruit. And so Detroit was going for gangbusters for a while, then in the last half-century, lost 60% of its population. And the year before we rolled in with our rise of the rest bus, which was eight years ago, the city of Detroit went bankrupt. Silicon Valley had an years ago of bankrupt. And so that just showed you the risk of putting your eggs in all the baskets. So continuing just invest in California, just invest in New York, just invests in Massachusetts, like strategically as a bad move for the country. And if this propurely is an investor, trying to broaden your aperture and find these companies in other places that are scaling and creating a lot of value is important.

And this broader societal impact that we talked about before, where if we need to create jobs everywhere, if we're going to have a more inclusive economy that does make more people, more places, you know, the apartment, you'll have to mistook about the, you know, the future. So at every level, it's important to, you know, level of playing. The last comment is that you mentioned and framed the question, is this like your second not yet? It's my second not.

My first fountain was trying to make the internet real for everybody. And when we started AOL in 1985, only 3% of people online. And they're only online one hour a week. And so it was early days and then a couple decades, basically trying to make the internet part of everyday life. And that I think was an important thing to do. Now, and that was kind of about leveling the playing field in terms of access to information, communications,

education, giving everybody a voice, a whole bunch of things. And now it's the second mountain for me is leveling the playing field in terms of opportunity. How do you help more people and more places really live the American dream? And the process, great investment opportunities, been process great lots of jobs and lots of places and the process try to get together very divided countries.

So it is to be important, you know, as important as the role I play along with obviously many others and standing up the internet now, it's how do you create a country that really can lead globally and continue to be a most innovative country, but do it in a more inclusive way. Hey there listeners, while we take a little break here, I want to tell you about another podcast that I think you'll like. It's called How I Built This, where host Guy Razz talks to founders behind some of the world's biggest and most innovative companies, to learn how they built them from the ground

up. Guy has sat down with hundreds of founders behind well-known companies like Headspace, Manduke Yoga Mats, Soul Cycle, and Cotopaxi, as well as entrepreneurs working to solve some of the biggest problems of our time, like developing technology that pulls energy from the ground to heat in cool homes, or even figuring out how to make drinking water from air and sunlight. Together, they discussed their entire journey from day one, and all the skills they had to learn along the way, like confronting big challenges, and how to lead through uncertainty. So if you want to get inspired and learn how to think like an entrepreneur, check out how

I built this, wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen early and add free on the Amazon or Wondery app. Yeah, because I have to imagine you don't have to get on a bus and drive around the country to get access to deals. So there must be something motivating you. Is it been partly sort of rediscovering parts of the country? Has that been an ancillary reward to the experience? Or was it just you were tired of talking to the same people pitching the same five companies,

you know, in the same five cities? Well, it did start, it said before, with some of those work around, start up America, and working with the White House on that 10 years ago, and then that got me traveling around. And I wanted to continue it, one which is why we launched the Ride the Rest, Bus Tours, and then we launched this Ride the Rest Fund in part because we wanted to continue it one, which is why we launched the ride to rest your bus tours. And then we launched this ride to rest fund in part because we wanted to put our money where our mouth was. Really true of it. You can generate top tier returns by investing entrepreneurs in these off the beaten plath path places, release off the beaten path, turn to our traditional definition of the innovation economy. Some of these were back in here, some of them are smaller places,

but some of them are like Chicago and Atlanta and Dallas and other places. You just don't have much venture capital, obviously, or important cities. And then when we started doing it, the more we traveled around, remember that first bus tour we did, which was eight years ago

and it was Detroit, then Pittsburgh, then Nashville and Cincinnati. And we didn't quite know where it didn't end to. It was kind of like a one then Nashville, and Cincinnati. And we didn't quite know where it came into. It was kind of like a one-off, but just hit the road and see what happens. But we were so mesmerized by what we saw. And we did see by being there, in person, being there on a bus, we could use the bus

to get around, but to bring people together kind of the rolling, convening platform. We thought we were playing a role catalyzing more excitement, momentum, sense of possibility in those communities. And we heard that and have to be left as well as identifying great companies to back that turned out to be a great investment.

So we just kept going and we kept heading to it. And suddenly a decade later, we've done these bus tours of 43 cities. We busted in 100 cities and I'm writing a book doing the pandemic, really documenting what's happening all across the country. But it was fun as well. I mean, it's some of these cities I've been to before, many I haven't.

And it just, yeah, every one of them, there's something interesting happening. And almost every one of them, I said, I could actually see living here. There's a lot happening here. It's sort of a mystery. So it's the thing that's most common question I said, I could actually see living here. There's a lot happening here. It's sort of a mystery. So it's the most common question I get when I've been in Trout of Ground or even some of the interviews I've done now that the book is out.

It's OK. What I get at Sam Tiske in New York, off I've heard Austin, Seattle, what are the one or two cities that are really on the rise? And I can't answer the question because it's not one or two. that are really on the rise? And I can't ask the question, because it's not one or two. It's actually several dozen that really are on the rise. And that's I think the big news and hopefully people

reading the book will, their eyes too will be opened up to what's happening all across the country. Yeah, I feel like the next ones that I'm hearing, like sort of my friends or people a little bit younger than me, they're all moving to. It's all sort of the big western states, it's Montana, it's Wyoming, it's Idaho, because a lot of these cities,

I know the New York Times did a piece maybe three or four months ago that was like, the next affordable city is already too expensive, talking about how some of these towns that we thought were small, so many people move from expensive cities that they're not only not small, they're not cheap anymore. But I do feel like people are moving to some places that I never would have guessed people

would be moving towards. Yeah, I think there are several reasons for that. Some of the people visiting those cities said, this is kind of cool. I'd kind of like the, I'd kind of like the lip here. But, you know, if they had that instinct maybe five or 10 years ago, they said, but I can't really, because I'm working for whatever Google or something,

and I started some company and, you know, some other big city, did not weigh active really with there. And then, you know, then because of the pandemic, you know, it was this rethink, this kind of tipping point, and people said, well, you know, then because of the pandemic, it was this rethink, this kind of tipping point, and people said, well, you know, maybe I can't. And because other people, but made similar decisions, you're seeing this costoring of people. Now, some are clearly just working, you know, remotely and not really, you know, together with people a lot. But in most

of these rising cities, there is a clustering happening where even within a city, there's a neighborhood just become kind of where the entrepreneurs gather. You can see this half a century ago in New York City and so that's like where the artists gather. Now we're saying, you know, parts of the cities where the entrepreneurs are gathering. I read about one in Cincinnati called Over the Line, which is now called OTR, which 20 years ago was one of the most dangerous neighborhoods Over the Line, which is now called OTR, which 20 years ago was one of the most dangerous neighborhoods in the country, murderers and other kinds of things. And that was like the hottest part of Cincinnati, the hottest restaurant in Cincinnati is at OTR,

a place nobody'd go to 10 or 20 years ago. And that's because the entrepreneurs decided to know to cluster there. So it's definitely something happening in society here and exactly how it all plays out. I think it was almost like a shake the snow globe moment. Yeah, exactly how that all settles out, still to be, you know, kind of determined. But I'm pretty confident we'll end up with, you know, more dispersion of innovation, more dispersion of jobs, more dispersion of economic growth.

And this book is really trying to document what's already happened, but I think what's going to happen next day gets even more, more important. Yeah, you know, you mentioned earlier this idea of being a big fish in a small pond. I don't think it's just like, oh, hey, you know, your housing dollar goes cheaper in Cincinnati or whatever. It's that particularly for those of us who have worked with these internet tools, which thank you very much, allow things to scale at an enormous level, right? Hundreds of thousands of people listen to this podcast. Even most of my books, at this point,

I think 60% of my book sales are in a digital format, whether it's audible or e-books or whatever. So it's wonderful that you can reach people all over the world like that. But what you end up missing is sort of tangible real impact. And I think one of the things these cities allow you to do or moving to these different places is like, yeah, you can be part of a neighborhood going from a dangerous neighborhood to a great neighborhood or you can go from, you could actually buy a coffee shop and run it as a business on the side,

or you could have your own office building and do something cool, or just, hey, you could participate in local government. You could start a school for your kids and other kids in your neighborhood. It's not just like, hey, you're more important, your money goes further in these places. I think what excites people and where the sort of rapid community building comes from

is suddenly all these things that I think people thought, hey, only the really rich and powerful have access to those levers or can have that kind of impact. Suddenly, if you move to a town with 6,000 people, you're one of the, you know, you're one of the movers and shakers in town, and that's really fun and empowering. Yeah, at a time like that's exactly what you did, moving to a smaller place and opening a bookstore because you wanted to be a gathering place.

Of course, books can be ordered online, but you saw the value of having a physical place for people to gather and build a sense of community. That's exactly what we're seeing happening in different cities, different people focusing on different things. But together, they're creating a sense of community. They are feeling more connected in part because it's smaller, but also because they're more engaged.

They really are trying to figure out how they can play a role. And they really feel like they're not just raising a family or building a company or working for a company or something, but also playing a role in strength in the community, making it a better place to live and work for their kids and their future generation. They feel more they have a stake in it. And so that's, I think, a positive as well. And some of this dynamic that we're talking about here, which essentially is the sense that as these rise

or rest cities rise, it will reduce the dominance of a few places like a Silicon Valley. This is not a new idea. There was a time, either years ago, that you wanted to be in the movie business, you had to be in Hollywood. You had to be in Los Angeles. That's where the action was.

We's now seen part because of internet technologies, but that disperse. And still, it's the capital. There's still a lot of stuff happening there, but nobody making movies or music feels like they have to be in Los Angeles. And a hundred years ago, if you wanted to be in a financial service, you had to be in New York. It had to be in Wall in a mall, where the action was. Now there's still people who choose to be in New York and there's a big financial services company, Goldman Sachs

and JP Morgan, there's headquarters in New York City. But much of the financial services world now has been dispersed around the country and did around the world. And so all we're saying now is we're on that cusp of a similar dispersion in the tech world. And so it we're saying now is we're on that cusp of a similar dispersion in the tech world. And Silicon Valley will still be the leader pack for sure.

A lot of awesome things happening in Silicon Valley, but dozens of other cities are now rising up, giving people more choice. Well, yeah, I mean, you go to your Hollywood analogy. Mr. Beast, who's the biggest person on YouTube, right? That's sort of generational talent for young people right now. He's not making videos in Los Angeles where you would typically go to be,

he's 50, 60 million subscribers, he's based somewhere in North Carolina because he can, the tools allow him to have this enormous international reach. And yet, the tools allow him to have, you know, this enormous international reach. And yet, the actual sort of nuts and bolts, like boots on the ground impact of the people who work for him where he's filming, et cetera, it's, you know, a small town in the south.

And that, the ability to have both is really cool. Obviously, he's making a lot of money for advertisers and making a lot of money for YouTube. So it's like, it's instead of all of that income being concentrated in one place, it's distributed out, which is probably fair and better for everyone. Yeah, obviously, different ways to contribute different ways to work. And exactly what you're doing or what Mr. Beast is doing, it gives you the flexibility to do that conno no matter where you are. Nobody really cares where the videos or this podcast or other things are being made. There are other examples that some of I have in the book where

people have decided to build companies there where there's some strategic reason it's better to build a bear than anywhere else. And in the process, they actually create hundreds of jobs. And one example I love is this company, App Harvest, in Eastern Kentucky, kind of Appalachia, coal country, which for decades has really been struggling, really struggling in terms of unemployment, and opioid abuse, and things like that. And there's such for jobs in the web,

and basically, I said, I'm going to build the largest indoor greenhouse in the country. Doing it there is actually pretty interesting, because 70% of the US population is when the 24-hour drive of this, the location outside of Lexington, Kentucky, he cared a lot about sustainability. So he built it.

So it uses 90% less water than traditional agriculture, which is a big deal. And the process is now created over 500 jobs in Appalachia, which most people thought everybody had given up on. And suddenly there are people in that town that are like, huh, maybe there is a reason to be hopeful. And then you raise a lot of money to the company public, so it's been in a successful investment as well as really transformative in terms of the impact in its community.

So some are the people that are working more in a somewhat more independent way and remote works for that. There's others that are saying, I'm going to build some gigantic companies, some change the world companies. They're going to hire a thousand, maybe even 10 to 1000 employees. I'm going to just do it in places that historically didn't think that was possible. So what about the argument which I'm not super sympathetic to, but it is there, which is, you know, people hear all this

and then they go, but what about gentrification? Or like even where I am, there's some backlash against Elon Musk because, you know, suddenly, like to me, I think it's great that there's a 500,000 square foot space X warehouse, but it's also not next to my ranch, right? So suddenly places where there wasn't a lot of nimbism are now having maybe a reason for some nimbism, or people who are concerned about gentrification are worried like, hey, you're going to change this place that I love that was small for a reason. And in Texas, this is sort of embodied with this idea of don't California my Texas.

I would love for Texas to be a little more California, but I get the argument that I'm moved here because I liked a certain amount, I liked a vibe it had. I don't want it to be like the place that I came from. Well, it's fair. It has some, and often is dealing with that. I don't want it to be like the place that I came from. Well, it's fair. And often, as dealing with that, and there's some other cities that are dealing with that issue, where suddenly it went from being kind of off the beaten path with some exceptions, like we talked about, you know, Vell, the being a major tech city, and, you know, the South

by Festival, all those things. Got to open people's eyes. It was kind of interesting place to get there than increasingly now an interesting place to work. More people decide to move there. So yeah, of course housing prices go up and it gets more expensive for the people who are there to stay.

And that gets into the whole gentrification discussion. And I do think as we see these cities rise up and cities like Austin, you know, brism further faster in the last, you know, 10 or 20 years, figuring out a way to create a more inclusivity. So we don't just end up pushing out the artists and others, so things around affordable housing policy,

and other things are important. But it's also important to note that in most of the, these rise the rest cities that we visited and invested in, that I've written about in the book, they are so far from worrying about gentrification. What they're worrying about is their best and brightest when they grow up elite because there's nothing going on there. And so they're much more worried about the brain drain and the unemployment and the feeling that a lot of people in the community are just left out, left behind. There's no future for them.

There was a Pew Research study, a out a few years ago, that was shocked by it. It said that 70% of Americans wake up in the morning anxious about the future, worried about the future. That's America. Maybe it's been pretty well sitting in the Silicon Valley or New York City or someplace, or Austin, you may not appreciate that. But a lot of people struggling, a lot of people feeling left out. And it's not entirely about economy, jobs, and so forth, but it's partly about that.

And so what's basically happened is some of these broad forces around globalization and particularly automation have resulted in hollowing out a lot of the jobs that really worked to get these communities. And that is inevitable. It's sort of the pace of progress 100 years ago,

90% of people work done farm, about less than 2%. Because technology made it easier to grow more food for more people with fewer people, a lower cost, which actually a good thing for the world. But then we were at least smart enough to say, OK, we better retrain some of these people to move some farms to factories so they can participate in this next innovation,

how the industrial revolution. We've not done as effective a job there in terms of really moving people now from that industrial revolution, the manufacturing jobs, and the sort of the jobs of the future. And some of that, not entirely, but some of that, is because we're only investing with venture capital, you know, entrepreneurs in place like San Francisco, and we're not investing in entrepreneurs in Ohio and Wisconsin and Michigan.

Now, each of those states get less than 1% of venture capital. California gets 50% of venture capital. So guess what? If you're a new company, start if you're a new company scale, and the jobs being lost in those communities are greater than the job being free to in those communities, and then people are pissed off. So this is, we shouldn't be surprised by that.

We need to change that. And when we're successful, and some of these cities do rise up, and there's a whole set of issues around, as you said, gentrification and public policy needs to play role. Create a lot of entrepreneurs need to play a role in some more in terms of building different ways to think about housing and so forth. But most of these cities are desperate

for that spark. Just for that sense of hope and possibility, desperate for that company to start and scale, that really does kind of great the jobs that Bell bit at Austin or App Harvests is doing in Eastern Kentucky. That's really the key story here. I think it could even positively impact our politics, where clearly some of the political divide is sort of this opportunity gap, where we need to figure out ways to address it. to grow ways to address it. Yeah, I mean, I don't mean to be glib about it, but there is a certain champagne problemness

to gentrification, right? When, like you said, not many years ago, Detroit is losing its population and its buildings are falling into disrepair and its tax rolls are depleted. They would kill for some gentrification, right? And so I think it's funny how fast it flips from, oh, we would love people to move here to why are so many people moving here. And it's better to have the latter than the former. Yeah, I think I know. And just as you're saying, I don't want to make light of some of uh... and uh... it's better to have the latter than the former

yeah i think i don't and it just to your say i don't want to be quite a some of the concerns around gentrification which are real but i think it's it's fair also know that that's limited to some cities that if you already merge already risen up and are seeing the momentum that most cities are desperate to see there they're still looking for that that uh... that that spark uh... the slows their brain drain creates a of of boomerang and and so as you say are desperate to see. They're still looking for that spark. It slows their brain drain, reads a boomerang. And so, as you say, it's a high class problem to have.

How do we create an environment where more cities have the benefit of job growth, the benefit of economic growth, the benefit of people wanting to come back and people never lived there wanting to choose to live there. And then once you get that flywheel going, then being smart about policies to make sure that you continue to have inclusive community. Where you have a diverse mix of people.

And if not just do people are pushing out the people that have been there for a while, but we have a lot of work to do, a lot of parts of this country to create that opportunity and to get to the point where gentrification is is a discussion. Yeah, it's you open the book obviously sort of meditating on what America's 250th birthday will be like. And you're sort of thinking about the future, which I think is, it's interesting because I think your point about anxiety in the future,

I think a lot of us just get comfortable thinking that the future is something that happens. Or certain maybe because people are so disempowered and frustrated and feel left behind, that they don't feel like the future is something that they may happen. They feel like the future is something else that somebody else makes happen.

Big, powerful, faceless people, certain types of people, elites, as we call them, and we're just sort of at the mercy of that. I think the idea of getting to a place where you can feel like the future is something that you are contributing towards, that it's not control, because none of us have control, but that you can influence to a certain degree. That's both very empowering, has the potential to make things better. And it also strikes me as a way of reducing some of that anxiety.

You're not afraid of something that you're involved in in the same way that you're afraid of something that might be done to you. Totally, totally. And some of this also, hopefully the book will inspire some people to see things in their lives that could be done better. It's some problem to solve.

Rather than assuming somebody else is going to solve that problem, or somebody in some other place is going to solve that problem, say, no, I'm going to solve that problem. I'm going to do it from right where I live right now. That really is the story of a bunch of great stories. I love this founder, Eklif Kowskiky in Chicago, finally this company Tempest, which now, the emerging is one of the most interesting health tech companies in the country,

basically providing more of a precise way to diagnose disease and then treat disease and you know, started with cancer and down those other areas. And the reason he was doing that is his wife was diagnosed with breast cancer seven or eight years ago. And they talked to half a dozen different hospitals and experts and they got a half a dozen different opinions of what to do. And he said, well, this is

crazy. You know, my wife's life is hanging in the bounds. How could there be so many different yes, potential paths to pursue. And he said, yeah, this is a data problem. And it built a company that basically uses economics and other kind of data to basically be a much more precise and saying, here is exactly what you're dealing with. And here's exactly based on that, what you should do about it in terms of what, you know, therapies might be most effective. He would have had that experience if he, I I don't think if he hadn't had a wife with breast cancer. And he said, I'm gonna do something about it. He got me in Chicago.

Most people don't think of Chicago as this place where interesting health technologies are birth. They think it's Boston because that's a biotech core of an in-it cellophane valley because of so much of the tech has now started to impact the healthcare industry. No, that was in Chicago. Another example in Atlanta is a Pippa Custard

is company called Furmias, is building the mock fight engines. You know, from, you know, I say to Europe in like 90 minutes and guess who one of the first customers is, the Air Force, because they want stuff to fly faster. And they had a big contract, I mean, nearly $1,000,000 contract. He said Atlanta, he was there because it's, you know, aerospace is popular at Atlanta, Georgia Tech,

a great university, graduating a lot of people focused on this. So he said, I think there's a way to solve that problem. I'm gonna do it, I'm gonna do it from right here in Atlanta. I'm not gonna move to San Francisco, even though I'm sure people told me had to. And that's really the story of the rise of the rest. And we just want to have more and more of these stories

over the years to come. Yeah, no, not to belabor the point, but I feel like that's it's so exciting living in a place that's not, you know, New York City or San Francisco or whatever, where you're, you can, you can be like, you know what our town really needs? And then, you know, whatever that thing is, this kind of business, that kind of business, you want this or that, you're not passively thinking,

well, I hope someone does that, right? Like you have the ability to do that because it's cheaper because it's affordable, because it's accessible, because maybe there's less, you know, it's just at a smaller scale. You can be that person. And then when you are that person, you don't know what ends up coming from that.

Just in the same way that the internet allows someone, as you said, to be frustrated with the treatment that their spouse is getting, you know, they're not having to spend billions of dollars in R&D to be able to get something like that off the ground, you know, the internet allows them to take a crack at a problem that they wish was solved in the future. There's this sort of this sense of agency, like, hey, I can do something about this. And that's like, yeah, that's the most powerful force in the planet is people believing in their own agency. And I completely agree.

And in terms of the entrepreneurial sectors, there's so many thoughts, finding something that you think could be done better. And instead of just saying somebody should go do it, you gotta do it. Or instead of saying, if I wanna do this, I need to move someplace else, do it from, you know, kind of where you are.

Another great example of in the book is this company called Spark Charge and the founder, Josh Abid. Actually, was it the White House last month introducing President Biden, who was talking about the Chipson Science Act, and this on-spiric and Buffalo started his company, Spark Charge, and his insight was, OK, electric vehicles are becoming more popular.

We're going to build a lot of charging stations, which make sense. But why don't we build mobile charging? Why don't we build something so instead of people having to go to that station, the power comes to them, comes to their home, or comes to their office, and which makes total sense. It was in Buffalo, and it starts this company.

It scaled nicely. At one point, it was featured on Shark Tank. It's gone on the raise a lot of money. And suddenly he's stood next to the President of the United States at the White House, you know, basically talking about his company because he did something about it. And therefore we're saying more and more and more examples.

And the last one I made going back to your earlier question about how I kicked out the book talking about the, you know, America's, you know, coming up in four years on or America's 250th birthday. The point I was trying to make there is people take for granted what got America to be America. That 250 years ago, it was a startup nation that most people around the world thought would fail.

Just like most people think most startups would fail. But somehow in those early days, and frankly, we almost did fail a couple of times. There were some, you know, kind of near death experience there for that country. This is there for a lot of startups. But somehow survived and then kind of led the way and the, you know, the agricultural revolution led the way and the industrial revolution then led the way and the digital revolution. So that we wake up and we're not only this, not only this no longer a startup nation, but we're deleting economy in the world and the leader of the free world.

That's because a bunch of people decided to start this country and a bunch of entrepreneurs essentially built this country. How do we continue to build on that legacy? Now don't get cocky, don't get complacent. Competition globally, which I and others is intensifying. How do we lean into the future, make sure America continues to lead, and this book hopefully will lead more to say, I have a role to play too. I want to do something to solve a problem

my life to help my community, but also to strengthen my country. Well, to build on your point, not only was America sort of started as, you know, people thought you could do a thing that other people didn't think you could do, but, you know, your point about concentration and the idea of maybe spreading things out a bit more, you know, for all the flaws of the electoral college and its sort of political issues, which are attributing some of the problems we're talking about. There was also, though, a sense that America was supposed to be spread out,

and power was supposed to be distributed, and not locked into just a few major industries or a few major cities. And that's why some of these rural, smaller areas were deliberately overrepresented politically, so they couldn't be ignored. And I think part of, you know, people can complain that one party or the other party has it, but instead of trying to, you know, get rid of the electoral college, I don't think it's going to happen, you could just try to spread some of these ideas out and these industries

out. So you don't have the same level of over or under representation. And I think part of what you're doing is a way to address that also. Yeah, it's a great point because there obviously plus or the minuses the way our political system has been organized, but it is interesting if you look at those instances where each state essentially is getting a small percentage of the senators and a somewhat larger percentage of the representatives, and then you look at the world of venture capital

where one state, California is getting 50%, and most states, with the vast majority of states are getting less than 1%. Guess what? If some of those states, you know, end up not really having the same level of entrepreneurial energy, the same level of economic growth, the same level of job creation. And guess what happens then? Some of these people then get frustrated that they're being, you know, left behind.

And that then leads to elections, including some we've seen recently. I'm not saying that the rise of the rest and kind of leveling the playing field in terms of capital, leveling the playing field in terms of startups, leveling the playing field in terms of job creation, somehow this magic formula to united divided countries. But I do think it's part of the solution. I do think part of the what's that, you know, challenging us is this fact that they're, you know, relating in, you know, kind of almost two Americas, an America that is part of the innovation economy and doing pretty well. And most of America did not, and, and, and, and, and, and feeling left,

left behind. And the way I've said that is the once more new companies, I should say it, not just tech companies. As you know, we're now moving into the as the once more new companies, I should say it, not just tech companies. As you know, we're now moving into the world of more tech enabled companies and every kind of, you know, part of our economy, every part of our society can be reimagined by entrepreneur building new company, we're back to company in St. Louis, where the founders are focused on bathing suits, out to $100 billion business, you know, growing like brazy. And must be that they want bathing suits. A couple would, you know, well, I wouldn't have to be in New York, which is the, you know, the fashion capital. Now it's in Jert St. Louis. So, the, and, and, sorry, I love around Arkansas, because it goes, we talked about some of this earlier.

Sam Walton, when he started Walmart, had this idea of building a store in rural America that would give people better selection of lower prices, happen the work, and happen to get expanded, and suddenly it's the largest company in the world based in Bill Arkansas. Pretty simple idea, executed well. So there are a lot of other ideas like that that probably some of the people listening to this pod right now have, I just encourage them to do something about it. And hopefully this book will help provide some inspirational stories and others like you have done it and also give you a little bit of a roadmap in terms of how to steal it.

Yeah, I have some fantasy. I think it would address some of the same things we're talking about, too. I think they need to decentralize some of the aspects of the federal government. I think the fact that everything is concentrated on the Eastern Seaboard contributes to the same kind of alienation and disconnection, whereas if the Department of Transportation was based in Tennessee, maybe the people there would have a different relationship to that government agency than if it was some far away thing on the national mall that they saw once on a trip when they were in elementary school. Yeah, I agree with that. And even we're seeing some

benefits of that in different cities. One example is Columbus, Ohio, talked about transportation seven or eight years ago. There was a department of transportation challenge in terms of getting different cities to make essentially pitches why they should get some funding around smart cities. Columbus happened to win that. Or recently, the Intel announced about a month ago, they're opening a major manufacturing capability for semiconductors outside of Columbus trying to have to be one of the companies that help build Silicon Valley. They want to build the Silicon heartland. So that's an example of how some cities are starting

to rise up, and how some of the innovation is disporzing. And as you say, putting some of the functions of government in different parts of the country or investing one of the chips act includes some funding for regional help about $10 billion was authorized. That also could help because cities like Austin,

as you know, wasn't just Dell and South Biop, it's also some of the work done 40, 50 years ago with government funding of semiconductors. And similarly, Silicon Valley was really launched and parked based on some government funding. Being in itself was only possible because of government funding with DARPA. So there's a history here. Ultimately, would California be California without the defense contractors in the second world more, probably not also, right? So it's a multifaceted thing.

Yeah. And people in some places like Silicon Valley don't really like to think about government could governments are slows things down and regulations, stifle innovation. No, obviously a lot to that. But the government also has been a catalyst for some of the most important technologies doing that initial R&D government policy around things like immigration have allowed America

to be a magnet for talent around the world's government policy around investment incentives and have helped drive more capital, government investment, investment in different regions over over 200 plus year history has played a pivotal role. Ultimately comes down to the people who start and back the companies more the marketplace, if you will, though we shouldn't lose sight of the role that government plays. And frankly, we'll play even more in the next 10 or 20 years because the sector's up for grabs, things like health care and food and

agriculture and financial service and so forth tend to be regulated at the industry. Because of the nature, how important they are in our lives and so forth, they tend to be more regulated. So I mean, the entrepreneurs have to understand that, lean into that, and be more respectful of the policy makers. Well, Steve, this is fascinating stuff, and I really enjoyed the book, and thanks for coming on. Thanks, Rod. It's great to be with you.

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