The Joe Walker Podcast - Where Venture Capital Meets Social Purpose - May Samali

Episode Date: June 14, 2018

Critical technological and societal changes of the last century have been spearheaded by entrepreneurs and the investors who...See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

From Swagman Media, this is the Jolly Swagman Podcast. Here are your hosts, Angus and Joe. Hello, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome back to another episode of the Jolly Swagman Podcast. I'm Joe Walker, and this is the show where every episode we speak with world-class philosophers, investors, entrepreneurs and academics to try and help you understand a little bit more about the universe or at least what some of the other humans are up to on this big spinning rock. My guest this week is May Somali who you probably haven't heard of but I'm really excited to bring this conversation to you. May is one of those rare and important people whose intelligence is only matched by her sense of altruism. And she's someone who thinks really deeply about everything she does. So I knew this was going

to be a good conversation. And I met May six years ago in Sydney, and fortunately we were able to reconnect but who is my smiley well may is an investor at the urban innovation fund which is a San Francisco based venture capital firm which invests solely in startups shaping the future of our cities and if you want to understand the importance of investing in urban focused companies two-thirds of the world's population are going to be urban based by the year 2050 so how we structure and organize and enrich our city life is a key question for humanity but may's story is is even more interesting because of the path that she took into venture capital, which probably isn't

the typical path. She started as a lawyer, a corporate lawyer in Sydney, and she graduated Sydney University with a law degree and a Bachelor of Economic and Social Sciences, winning the university medal. After a few years of corporate law, she decided to pivot, I suppose, and went to Harvard University where she completed a Master of Public Policy at the Kennedy School. And that has seen her now move into the venture capital space, which we discuss in this episode. So what else do we talk about in this episode. So what else do we talk about in this episode? Well, we speak about exactly why May made that career pivot from Lord of Venture Capital and how she did it. We talk about what motivates her at a deep level. We talk about how she thinks about investing, her criteria or some of the factors that she considers when deciding whether to allocate capital to a company, some of the red flags she

might look for in co-founders, how venture capital is different to law, and why it is a great choice of profession, why it's a great vehicle for someone who wants to have a social impact. And this episode very much continues the theme that rob and i discussed in episode 51 the art slash science of a high impact career in that if you want to have a disproportionate positive impact that need not look like working for a charity or a non-profit or becoming a doctor or a teacher there are dare i say it cannier ways to have a large social impact. And you'll hear why venture capital is one of those ways. So I do hope you enjoyed this conversation as much as I did.

It was great to catch up with May in San Francisco. And just a quick ask before I throw to the episode, if you are enjoying the conversations that we're sharing, please don't forget to subscribe and leave us a rating as well. We'd really appreciate it. So without much further ado, please enjoy this conversation with May Somali. Okay, boom. We're on.

May Somali, thank you for joining me. Thank you so much. It's a pleasure to be here. Yes, and to reconnect after all these years. Yeah. How many years has it been, Joe? Six, I think. Yeah, it's about that. And when I first met you, so we met through something called 180 Degrees Consulting, which we might talk about a little bit more later.

Sure. And I distinctly remember thinking, this is someone who is going places. Thank you. I don't know if I necessarily felt that way at the time, but it was an awesome experience. And I'm glad that we had a chance to connect back then and now as well. Of course. And the other reason I was so excited to talk to you was you've done something that I admire and that I hope to emulate myself perhaps, which is moving from corporate law to venture capital. Yeah, I don't know if it's a common transition, but one that definitely people seem to be interested in. So happy to chat about

that. Yes, of course. Well, before we talk about that, let's introduce you to the audience and talk a bit about your background and your upbringing. So firstly, where did it all begin? Where did you grow up? Yeah, so I'm originally from Sydney, sunny Sydney. I grew up in the northern kind of suburbs with my mom and dad, brother and sister. I'm the eldest of three. So always had that, yep. The older child syndrome of

trying to organize the household and tell the siblings what to do and being told that you talk too much or that you're being too bossy. But I had a really wonderful childhood, actually, really happy childhood and really thrived at school, had lots of opportunities to engage in extracurricular activities. But I think looking back, the things that are really clear to me now is that having a really strong foundation from a family perspective, from a faith perspective, and from a school and community perspective gave me the platform I needed to take risks,

to try new things, to continue to be curious. And I'm really grateful for that experience. So growing up in Sydney, I spent the better part of my 20s there, went to Sydney Law School, became a lawyer for a bit, decided it wasn't for me forever. But that was kind of the early of of asking some of these questions about where I belong and where I want to focus my energies so when you mentioned your faith background growing up what tradition did you belong to your family yeah so I grew up in a Baha'i family and uh I mean looking back I can definitely see that the the teachings in which I was brought up in have had and continue to have a pretty strong influence on the way I live my life. So really, the couple of things that stand out for

me is, you know, growing up as a Baha'i, the focus on continuing to contribute to an ever-advancing civilization through your work and your profession is a really powerful concept to me. So, you know, as Baha'is, we believe that work is worship. So if you can strive for excellence in your profession and be of service to others, that's a form of worship, essentially. And that idea really kind of also linked to this notion for me that education is one of the most important things that we can do to equip ourselves with the knowledge and skills and the ability to give back. And growing up as a Baha'i, the one thing that I was acutely aware of is, so my family's from Iran, we're Persian background, my mom and dad kind of left Iran back in the 70s before the revolution.

And had I been born in Iran, I wouldn't have been had I been born in Iran I wouldn't have been able to go to university I wouldn't have been able to have a lot of the opportunities that I had growing up so that really made me kind of inspired and motivated to make the most of what I did have and I remember hearing stories as a child about my grandfather from my mom's side and spending time in jail as a Baha'i in Iran and what that meant to be kind of firm in your faith, but also what that meant about the opportunities we had in Australia. And the kind of social responsibility, I guess,

I had to make the most of it and to try and be of service and give back. And so those notions of service, of excellence, and also really this idea of independently investigating the truth for yourself were really core to my upbringing as a Baha'i. So Baha'i, that originates out of Iran a couple of hundred years ago? That's correct. Yeah. So the religion is a a couple hundred years old. It's a universal religion. The idea is that we are all one and we all come from one

and that the Baha'i faith is a continuation of the teachings and religions that have been coming from beginning of time. And so there's this real universal aspect to it. Growing up, I was able to travel through many countries and meet Baha'is from all around the world. And the principles and teachings continue to inspire me today. So, you still count yourself as a member? Yes. Yeah, absolutely.

Nice. So, I kind of had, I guess, a similar experience to you in that. So, I was raised a Roman Catholic. And I think that definitely imparted a strong sense of social justice. I've since sort of left the religion, so to speak, but I think that abiding sense of social justice remains. Absolutely. Social justice and for me increasingly spirituality, which is not, I don't think it's specific to any religion. There are a lot of very spiritual people that don't have a religious persuasion. I think living in San Francisco, it's hard to not want to be mindful and focus on meditation and spirituality increasingly.

So that's something that as I've grown older has become an even more important part of perhaps something that was instilled in me from a young age and is now starting to come out. Yeah, absolutely. So fast forward to your university career at Sydney. I think you won the university medal in economics and social sciences. I did. You also completed a law degree. Were there any sort of other pivotal moments during that time that forged that sense of service in you? Really good question.

I guess, you know, working at 180 degrees consulting is probably really relevant here. Do you want to give a brief summary of what it is? Yeah, so 180DC is a, I guess we could call it a volunteer consultancy where students from different universities are trained up in consulting methodology and are paired with local non-profits and social enterprises to help them with the various issues they might be facing so it's project-based consulting and I joined

really on the the team's side not as a consultant but to help grow the organization. And that's where we met, Joe. But the thing that really stood out for me doing 180 degrees, kind of, I guess, as a side hustle or moonlighting, being a corporate lawyer by day and doing this by night, was that I started to realize that I enjoyed that piece more than the day, the daytime work. And why was that? It's because I was working with individuals, helping to empower them, getting inspired by local organizations, and working with students from all around the world, including people like yourself who wanted to start local chapters. And this got me thinking about how I can engage more with the local community. Serendipitously, at the same time, I was a corporate lawyer at Freehills, and I was working with their foundation as part of my

involvement with the firm and had really great opportunities to do pro bono work for organizations on the ground, to work with various organizations that were mission driven, to help them have greater impact, whether it's through helping with their marketing strategy or helping with their business development, with their recruiting. And I started to realize that a lot of the problems that organizations faced on the ground was similar and that the skill sets they required was something that perhaps I could continue to hone and to learn

and that they extended, frankly, beyond law. And that's when I got really interested in how do we solve social problems using a business model and an organizational form that is sustainable that has social impact but that can scale more importantly and isn't trapped by some of the the problems that we see in you know various parts of the non-profit sector and what year did you finish at Freehills? So I wrapped up at Freehills in 2014, pretty much two years to the day that I started. So you're still, you're not a venture capitalist yet? No. So what happens between then and now? Looking back, I can say that it didn't look very neat at the time, right? At the time it was kind of, all right, I'm a lawyer right now. I've just

trained to do this. I love it, but something is missing. Well, all right, I'm a lawyer right now. I've just trained to do this. I love it, but something is missing. Well, yeah, actually, I wanted to ask you on that. So while you were at Freehills, were you thinking, I want to be a lawyer, or were you thinking I'm building up professional skills to ultimately do something radically different? A little bit of both. I definitely entered thinking that I'd be a lawyer. Prior to Freehills, the year immediately prior, I was working with an amazing and inspiring judge, Justice Margaret Beasley of the Supreme Court of New South Wales and the Court of Appeal.

And I wanted to work with her. I wanted to be the best lawyer. And I was very inspired by the work that she was doing. But when I entered corporate law, I knew that there would be amazing mentoring and training there. But there was something missing in my day to day that I couldn't put my finger on at the time. the emotional the opportunity to use my emotional intelligence skills around empathy communication loved the intellectual challenge of law but missed working with people that weren't large corporate entities and that's the point at which I started to really dig into what is it that I am best at and what kind of impact do I want to have on the world and who is it that I want to work with and that's when I started to really think about a career pivot.

I had this interesting exposure while I was at Freehills and prior when I was working with the judge to venture philanthropy and so venture philanthropy is this concept of rather than being a passive philanthropist and giving money to, say, a non-profit, investors take a more active role, like in venture capital. So, you know, an investor might be putting money into the arts law centre for Australia, which I had the pleasure of working with um volunteering for under justice beasley she was the director of their board um but rather than just giving money passively what if we were to equip the management team with other skills that might help and this exposure to this concept and some of the other activities i was involved with on the ground

kind of made me think maybe that this is something for me and maybe I shouldn't be just doing this between 6 p.m. and 3 a.m. but maybe it's something I can make my nine to five and the I guess the venture into venture capital or the adventure began. And so now you're you started Harvard doing a master's of public policy? I did yeah so the way that kind of wrapped up was that, you know, when they say, they say when it rains, it storms. And I had this really interesting week, exactly seven days in March, 2014, where everything changed. Okay. Is this before Harvard? Before Harvard. Okay. So I was at Freehills. I applied to Harvard. I applied to the Master in Public Policy program. Why?

Because it's a program that in my mind brought together business law and policy in a way that was innovative and would give me a platform to explore really important questions I was interested in. Like, how do we build a business sector that is able to solve public policy problems? How do we build kind of capacity for multi-disciplinary problem solving when it comes to really tough and wicked public policy problems? And at the same time, it was a school of public leadership. So they weren't just pushing you to become a bureaucrat or become the prime minister. There were much broader career paths. Having applied to the Kennedy School, I decided that I would hand in my letter

of resignation to Freehills, not knowing yet whether I'd gotten in. So this happens. I wrap up on a Friday, final day at Freehills. Two days later, I come out of a relationship at the time which I thought would never end. So I have two huge life changes. Then on that Monday, the day after, I start one of two new jobs. I was starting that week, teaching 400 students, undergraduates at Sydney University, you know, just the old geopolitics and talking about warfare. And I'm doing that kind of on the highs and lows of what had been the three days prior so this is the Monday that Thursday I then start what was a

life-changing experience working with my now mentor Mehrdad Barai who's a top investor and consultant in Australia has a McKinsey background was at Harvard MPP as well, is someone I respect and admire and look up to. Started internship with him at Alchemy Growth, where he was able to give me opportunities to work alongside some ventures in Sydney and kind of work with him on various consulting projects. And so that was a very exciting day. And then the next day, the Friday, so it's now been a full week since my letter of resignation, it's my birthday. And it's an exciting day, but it's also serendipitously the day I find out I get into Harvard. So in a period of one week in March 2014, everything changed. And I was kind of confronted by the reality of

the fact that I would be moving to Cambridge, Massachusetts, that I was no longer in this relationship and I might never be practicing law again. And when everything changes at once and you get through it, you realize that you're pretty resilient. And I realized that if I can handle this, then other changes in life aren't such a big deal. And that openness to change definitely was sparked at that moment in time. And a lot of things aligned and I'm super grateful for that. Yeah, I think it's so important to collect those reference experiences and really push your limits because once you start, you know, accumulating these experiences, you realize that, you know, accumulating these experiences, you realize that, you know, anything's possible.

You start kind of absorbing them into your self-esteem, into your personality. Absolutely. And you realize that no dream is too big a dream and that there are people around you to support you through the ups and downs, particularly mentors and family and friends. Yeah. So, what sort of things were your mentors and family and friends saying to you at the time during the so-called week of change in March 2014? Yeah. Look, I think I tried to blur out a lot of that week, to be honest. And that makes for a great story.

It was definitely a tough week. I think I was trying just to not cry all the time that week, to be honest. But at the time, my family were very supportive and continue to be. I remember my mom and dad asking me, you know, why do you want to leave Freehills? Or, you know, not even, why do you want to leave law? You've always wanted to be a lawyer. You have a great job. You're good at it, seemingly. Little did they know what was going on behind closed doors. But no, I mean, in all seriousness, I had what was a very happy and fulfilled life. But there was, as I said, something missing and this desire to try new things. And the thing about law that got to me in the end was that a lot of it ended up being reinforcing the status quo and rules i was a i'm a creative person i love dreaming about the future the possibilities being curious and i didn't have a forum in which to do that and so i think my parents understood that this is why i was taking a leap and wanted to go back to grad school

i didn't know what venture capital was at the time. Someone said to me, you're going to be working in venture capital, had no ideas, no idea what those words meant. I think my first real exposure was through Meritard, who was and is a VC. And, you know, he exposed me to this world and said to me, if you want to work, you know, you can do this after Kennedy School. In fact, this is really cool. And you should try and get experience working with startups. So let's expose you to some of those. And it was through MeritDud that I actually got exposed to some other investors who I started to cyberstalk, not actually, but, you know,

via YouTube and watching what they had to say about life in a life in the day of VC. Um, and it really grew on me. And so by the time I got to the Kennedy school, this was something that was already kind of, you know, nagging at the back of my mind, like, may you should try this, like expose yourself to this. Even though really, I didn't think at the time I had the qualifications for it, I thought, what the heck, I've left Sydney, I've packed up that life, might as well while I'm here give it my all and try new things. How did you first meet Meritod? So Meritod actually is a family friend of my father's.

We knew kind of through the Baha'i community. He's someone that had always inspired me because of his alignment between his personal and professional and the values he brings to his work and the way that he interacts with entrepreneurs, companies, members of government. He has a very multi-sectoral approach to solving problems, which I really admire. And I think is something that I would love to also be able to replicate throughout my career. And he has the, frankly, the classic portfolio career where he's doing a bit of everything and is able to have his own non-profits focused on empowerment of young people and women,

have his own venture kind of adventures, and then also does a lot of consulting. And I really kind of looked up to that model of not being defined by one job title, but realizing that as humans, we have different skills and capacities. And he's able to do that. And so that's something that I was able to be exposed to. And he's the one that said to me, look, if you leave Freehills next week, you know, you can come and work with me. And that's kind of what I needed to hear to take that leap of faith and hand in that letter of resignation. Amazing. Yeah. Gone are the days of working to get your gold watch and then,

you know, retiring. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So he opens your mind to the possibilities of VC and then you take off to the Kennedy School at Harvard. And while you're there, I think you have another quite formative experience, which is meeting Ronald Heifetz. That's right. Tell me about that because I've read his book and I love it. I'm very interested to hear how that shaped you. Yeah. Look.

Maybe, sorry, maybe explain who he is firstly absolutely so Ronald Heifetz is one of the most revered professors at the Harvard Kennedy School he was the founder of the Center for Public Leadership at the school which I was really fortunate to have the opportunity to have a fellowship with and and work closely with and he's also the hero that has made a lot of the frameworks around adaptive leadership come to the forefront of thinking across a number of industries so you know we refer to him uh affectionately as high fits around the county school classroom um high fits has two famous courses one is a semester-long course and another is what we call a J-term course, which is

a January course. And it's usually taught in the freezing cold of Boston's winter. You know, it's minus 20 outside. You're putting your snow jacket on and going in for a nine to five, two weeks in a row. And the adaptive leadership course was really pivotal for me because although I'd thought about this throughout my life, it was the first time in which I was really able to understand that who I am and the way I am is not, you know, static and that it's very heavily influenced by the multiple identities i hold that we all hold and that defining myself by any one thing is doing injustice to the various

experiences we've had in the various values you hold and so the way that the january course works is we we look at the individual and yourself as a system and having a number of layers, whether it's professional, social, and ancestral. And these various layers affect the way that we act or don't act in any given situation. And the course is taught in leadership situations. So we each bring a case to the classroom of a moment we failed and you basically get destroyed and then rebuilt and the course asks you to think about how do you create change in uncertainty whether it's in uncertainty within your organization uncertainty in civilization in the government in the community and the the questions you asked throughout this

course and the questions that i was exposed to are ones that i ask myself every day here as an investor kind of thinking about the where is the person coming from that's sitting in front of me kind of what biases are they bringing to the table how might they be thinking about x issue that's affecting the way they present it to me um And then self-checking as well. One of the biggest learnings for me from the, I think, Heifetz-Causson book, which, Joe, you've probably read the Leadership on the Line book, might be the one that you're referring to.

No, the one I've read is Leadership Without Easy Answers. Ah, yes. That's the first one. The first one, yeah. That's a brilliant book too. And so the second book for me there's a chapter i believe that focuses on the distinction between role and self it's been absolutely mind-blowing i mean it's a simple concept when you think about the fact that your role professionally and yourself are

two different things but being able to be reminded of that um particularly in a profession like venture capital where the boundaries between personal and professional often get blurred because it's not nine to five. You live it, you breathe it, you're digesting information with your investor hat on. At any given moment, you might be meeting an entrepreneur you want to get to know better, waiting for a coffee in the line on a Sunday, right? And so, being able to be conscious of this distinction between role and self and having rituals to make that transition on a daily basis from wearing my investor hat to now being May at home or with her friends is really important. And it's a reason I continue to love

the book and the framework. Fantastic. Do you, I mean, apart from taking his courses, did you have any, you know, long personal conversations with Heifetz? Yeah, so he's a man in demand. And we definitely had a couple of one-on-ones. I wouldn't say they were super long. What I did get was uh the opportunity to be in his j-term class which is very concentrated time with him and the rest of the class where it's

a very experiential class um and you have a lot of back and forth and there was definitely back and forth with the professor in a way that helped me to reconceptualize the way I think about myself and my identity and the way I want to live my life. And he's someone that I continue to stay in touch with and read up on his methodologies. And we have a joke that if you see someone from the Kennedy School as an alumni, if they've done high fits, you'll say, oh, by the way, they've done high fits. It's kind of oh, by the way, they've done high fits. It's kind of like you can use the language and the frameworks with this person.

So my roommate actually at the moment, who Emily works at Facebook, is also a Kennedy School alum in the year below me. And when she was moving in or interviewing her to see if she could stay with us, it happened to come up that we'd both done HiFits. So it was this moment of, oh my gosh, you need to live with me so we can geek out about HiFits.

Sounding like somewhat of a cult. Yeah, I mean, it's a bit silly when I put it that way, but it is definitely a shared language and framework. And it's not, obviously, it's not just him, right? It's the whole um interdisciplinary and intellectual profession that's being developed behind this adaptive leadership framework and overlaps a lot with the work of robert keegan for example from the ed school who talks about looks at adult development adult psychology so um the body of literature as a whole

it continues to inspire yeah i mean the fact fact that people have this kind of insider language about Heifetz is sort of just indicative of how influential his ideas are. But we'll link to all those books because people should definitely read them. Absolutely. So tell me about the summer at Tummel and what Tummel is. So Tummel an a fun word actually i got my interest was peaked with tumble just purely based on the name yeah it's great to say as well as a summer at tumble yeah every day we're tumble and uh summer at tumble yeah so tumble was an organization i was exposed

to my first year at kennedy school uh I was very keen to expose myself to social entrepreneurship while I was at the school, opportunities to be around investing, impact investing. And so I volunteered to be a program director for the annual conference we hold, the Harvard Social Enterprise Conference. As I'm putting together the program, we have Julie, at the time, Julie, director and founder of uh tumble on one of our panels um long story short it's february in boston so of course there's a blizzard that happens that weekend um the second day of the conference is cancelled unfortunately never get to meet julie

but have tumble as an organization in the back of my mind and then about a month later I'm thinking about summer internships and Tummel is one that comes up I contact Julie and Clara they say come on over and work with our startups and essentially what Tummel does and the reason for its name so Tummel to to kind of answer the question that everyone's probably asking what what does it mean and what is it it's a Yiddish word meaning shake up and the idea is that Tamil as an accelerator as a venture urban kind of innovation focused accelerator is uh supporting entrepreneurs that are shaking up city living and creating solutions to problems ranging from kind of traffic congestion to homelessness, to access to education, financial exclusion. I was super excited to come to San

Francisco. And it was one of those moments where I had a couple of internship offers on the table from various tech companies in the Valley. And Tumul was unknown to me at the time. And I had a couple of friends actually back at grad school and we had a bit of a brains trust where we would be able to talk through really important issues and help challenge each other. And I kept coming back to this question of,

what should I do this summer? Should I do something that's a bit more tried and tested or should I try Tommel, which I have no idea how it's going to turn out. And they said, look, you're going to be an SF either way. You want to be exposed to San Francisco. But why don't you go for something that is a bit less known but seems to actually be what you talk about wanting to do, which is working with startups. And at the time, I knew that my joy was empowering others to find their purpose and passion. And so when you're sitting across from an entrepreneur and they're telling you about their exciting idea and your role is essentially to help them make that happen in the accelerator, that was something that was really appealing to me. And Tumul's focus on urban innovation and the fact that urbanization is exasperating

a lot of problems in urban areas, and that the current solutions of governments and nonprofits were not enough to solve the intensity of these issues, and that perhaps startups are well poised to step in and take a risk was what allowed me to, to have the confidence that I would probably enjoy not only Tumul and my role there operationally, but its mission was something I really believed in and wanted to be part of. So I started Tumul, I have an amazing summer. And the, the moment I knew it was a summer that changed my life, and I know that sounds very exaggerated, but quite literally,

is I had no intention of returning to Tommel when I joined, right? Like it was just a summer internship. It was going to be a great summer and fun. I'd learn a ton. I'd apply myself. But the moment I met Julie and Clara, was able to work with them as a team and really come alive,

that was something I knew I needed to replicate in my future professionally. And so there are very few moments in my life that I moved to record a video, or sorry, not even a video, a podcast of my own, or a video voice memo, as you would know on an iPhone. There are maybe three or four times in the last 10 years that I've recorded a voice memo to myself. And it was the last week at Tummel. And I recorded a voice memo, which I still have to this day. And it essentially says, Dear Future May, I want you to remember how you feel right now. You feel the most alive that you've ever felt. And there's something really magical about the dynamic between yourself, Julie and Clara. And they've mentioned this venture Kennedy School, don't be tempted to follow something that's been tried and tested or do what your colleagues are doing. If you have any opportunity to work with these amazing women in the future, take it.

And essentially, the gist of the voice memo was that. And that's what happened. I continued to be in touch with Tommel. I did my master's thesis for them as my client exploring questions of how capital is being injected into social entrepreneurs and here I am a couple years later still working with Julie and Clara not at Tumul anymore but at this venture capital fund that they mentioned

they might launch the Urban Innovation Fund we're sitting here in your offices right now in San Francisco I'm curious did you play them the recording when you're The Urban Innovation Fund. Exactly. We're sitting here in your offices right now in San Francisco. Curious, did you play them the recording when you're applying for the job the second time round? It's funny you say that. Literally this morning, I said to Clara, Clara, I think enough time has passed now that I might be able to play for your recording that I recorded a couple of years ago.

You know, I might show them. I think it's one of those moments in time. It's like finding a journal entry you've written to yourself as a teenager, for example. The truths you knew then that you continue to feel now and it feeling so much clearer three years on. I think with Julie and Clara, the vision they had and their ability to make it come true

was something I was very attracted to. And in my second year, it was quite an unconventional way of landing here. And I think this is, you know, when people say be open to opportunities, I think it's because of this reason. I definitely was exploring some other things in my second year, potential job opportunities, just because I didn't know what would happen with Tummel. moment they said to me we want you to come back and run tumble um we're going to be out on the road fundraising for a fund and we'll see what happens from there

obviously we had to work out some of the logistical details but there was no doubt in my mind and more importantly in my heart that i had to do this yeah and that's kind of what led me to to sign the contract pretty much on the spot yeah and land here a couple months later it's very perceptive I realized that you you left that that memo for yourself because there is that distinction between our experiencing selves and our remembering selves and absolutely memories can fade but you need to you need to remind yourself of you know just how good or bad things have been when you're looking back on them particularly if you're an intuitive person who's emotionally driven yeah um as a classic enfj i know i value intuition and kind of i'm an emotional learner and so i need to be able to record those because sometimes I

become rational retrospectively and forget what I felt in that moment. So, I want to ask you now about your philosophy, you know, on venture capital and some of the things you're doing at the Urban Innovation Fund. But just, you know, before we move on, you're one of the most effective people I've ever met. It seems like you've crammed, you know, so much into your young life, very successfully, I might add. You know, if I was to stand in the corner of your office for a day and just watch you work, which would be a bit weird, hypothetically, you know, what would I see you doing at your desk? Well, firstly, you'd notice it's a standing desk. Interesting. You. Take note.

You'd probably also notice my screensaver on a lot of the time and me not being there. You know, we were joking about trying to find an office to record this podcast in. And the reality is very little time is spent at the desk. And that's something that actually really attracted me to this job. It was the most exhausting thing about the job initially when I started, which was the back-to-back-to-back meetings. It's the part that I love now because I'm around human beings every day. And I'm getting to learn about these most amazing things from how you use blockchain technology to make sure elections are more secure

to autonomous vehicles that are doing last mile delivery and taking road cars off the road to educational you know literacy platforms that are giving uh reading and games to the masses these are the things that to me were really really um exciting and to be around founders where i can learn about their mission find out where we can tap in as investors and hopefully work together with them is something that um really inspires me so in terms of the day-to-day um i'm not at my desk much what you will find me doing is probably 50 of my time is actually spent meeting new founders right and this happens through a variety of means a lot of video conferences um a lot of zoom calls uh and for all people out there who haven't tried zoom i

give it a plug it's it's my new skype skype version too um so a lot of time on zoom a lot of time meeting founders in and around offices coffee shops and i had a lot of time on Zoom, a lot of time meeting founders in and around offices, coffee shops, and at a lot of events too. So demo days have great relationships with various university programs, incubators, accelerators, trying to get a sense of what's out there, what's in the market, what founders might we want to work with on a longer term basis and moving them from the top of the funnel down to the point where we might invest and when you're not meeting founders are you i mean do you ever procrastinate absolutely not as much as i used to okay so when i was a lawyer and i definitely did this a lot I would find myself reading blogs about startups yes how

to invest social entrepreneurship and I felt super guilty I don't have to do that as much now because it's part of the day it's part of the job um and I feel very lucky that there's that alignment but what I definitely do is um spend a lot of time also working with our portfolio companies so i'm when i'm not chasing new companies i'll be developing closer relationships with our portfolio companies helping them with problems ranging from or questions ranging from how do we do our next hire to look we are thinking about our business model in this way, to your feedback on the pricing strategy, to we're raising our series A, our next round of funding. We're a seed stage fund,

which means a lot of our companies go on to raise another round of venture funding, helping them with that. And then I would say the remaining time is spent on internally within our team, kind of developing those processes and having our own team meetings and meeting other investors. Other investors are an amazing source of deal flow. They're just

excellent to develop relationships with too. And a lot of the job is around kind of managing the various pieces of your day and making sure that there's enough time for deep thinking and critical thinking too. Because at the end of the day, we're imagining the future and then backward mapping to see what are the kinds of companies that we might want to invest in given the problems we're trying to solve. So talk about venture capital or VC now, because for some people, their level of familiarity with the concept might be similar to what it was for you when you're at Freehills. It just exists out there as something to do with investing. But what is it and how is it distinct from other modes of investing?

Sure. So venture capital is really a financial instrument. You can think of it as one kind of financial instrument or type of capital that's used to get early stage companies off the ground. Now, it's not the only type of capital to help startups get off the ground. There are other forms of capital like debt, so the classic bank loan. There's philanthropy, which usually, as we know, there's no return expectation. It's kind of more of a grant. Venture capital is interesting because there's increasing professionalization around it. So it started about kind of 30 to 40 years ago. And in the last couple of decades, what we've seen is more and more what we see venture capital firms popping up. And these

firms are usually run by a couple of key investors called general partners. And they're not investing their own money, like an angel investor might be, what we call angels, but more money that they're managing on behalf of their own investors, so limited partners. And so a fund, essentially, when you see kind of a VC fund, there's three levels that are working there. There's the investors who have put money into the fund. There's the people doing the investing, so Julie, Clara, and I. And then there are the companies we've invested in. And that process is a really interesting one that without this type of capital would be able to get off the ground quickly. And that if we're trying to solve particular problems, and there might be a solution that works, we want to channel capital into that company to allow it to grow

exponentially fast. And so the hockey stick type growth that you might see on graphs that venture capitalists are looking for is essentially enabled by technology. So a lot of companies that venture capitalists will be investing in are tech enabled. So we're looking, for example, at tech enabled urban innovations, whether it's mobility focused, education focused, financial focused, doesn't matter, but it has to be able to scale. And this is where it's particularly different to some of the nonprofit models you might see, or the more leisure and lifestyle businesses like a restaurant or shop front where it might be run by a mom and pop store, less likely to be able to

scale rapidly. It's been done. And usually when tech is involved, there's the ability to scale components of the business. But venture capital is really to put kind of throw fire. So I guess create a fire and throw fuel on the company and make it grow just that quick, much faster. Now, the reality is that it's high risk. It's a high risk form of investing and venture is done very early in the life cycle. Whereas private equity happens much later before companies usually go public or, you know, reaching a maturity of being around for 5, 10, 15 years. Venture happens in the first five years. Seed stage funds like us are investing in companies that have been around kind of zero to two years usually and what we're seeing is we're investing in these companies they're growing and then the idea is that within five to ten years there's some kind of exit and

that means that they either go public get listed on the ASX or the NASDAQ or New York Stock Exchange, for example, or they're acquired, which is more common by a larger company. And the money that comes from that acquisition or that exit, the IPO is funneled back to our investors. And so it's essentially a form of investing for our investors in the fund, but it's also a way for companies to get access to capital they might never have before. And it's the way that companies like Google and Facebook have been able to get off the ground. And so that's the classic example that you'll hear. Yeah. And how does the venture capital firm have enough money just to keep its operating costs going before those exits? Do you guys have a two and 20 structure or something like that? so the two and twenty structure that you refer to is is really a way of thinking about how the the capital is

divided between what is fueled into the companies themselves versus the operating costs of the the venture capital firm so 80 of any return of and this is a traditional model and our fund follows this model too but any return that comes from an exit 80 of that money goes back to our own investors and 20 comes back to the general partners of the venture capital firm um and that explains the 20 which means 20 of any profit is held by the firm which is why a lot of of general partners at VC firms are incentivized, not just to manage other people's money well, to make them money, but also because there's a huge upside

if they spot winners. The two in the two and 20 refers to the 2% management fees that investors in any VC firm pay the actual general partners themselves so they can keep it afloat. This covers everything from office space to our legal fees to paying my salary. Great coffee. The great coffee, the Nespresso that you're enjoying right now. Exactly. And so that's

where the capital is fueled in the interim to keep the firm afloat. Yeah. Okay. So speaking of picking winners, being someone who's come from a corporate law background, how does the intellectual exercise of venture capital differ from the way people think in the law? So, one thing that's common is that there's this critical analysis piece, right? So, I think definitely the skills required to be a lawyer, which is to delve into the detail and almost that inquiry, that curiosity to find the answers is present in both. I think the thing that really differs between venture capital and law, and I alluded to this earlier really, is that law is more about applying principles to new situations

so reasoning by analogy venture capital is more about actually taking a bet on something where there might be no analogy and you might be actually investing in a company that's creating a completely new market that doesn't exist yet the The thing that's very different about it is also this idea of with lore, I think it's about reinforcing a lot of the status quo and making sure that that, you're risk averse, right? Like you're making sure that nothing can go wrong. You're making sure that you've covered

every potential possibility in in a more of the contract exactly whereas in venture you're trying to increase the upside and you're trying to say like if this in a remote chance that it works how do we make sure that this really succeeds how do we make sure this company can go from kind of zero to one to use Peter Thiel's language. And that is something that I think is much harder to do and to quantify. And I think that in venture, particularly early stage investing, the thing that I love about it is that it's as much about the person and the team as it is about the product in the market. Whereas in law, it's not. It's about the law and it's about the principles

and its application to particular facts. Whereas in venture, the empathy, the emotional intelligence, the ability to understand human behavior and psychology is just as important when making investing decisions as it is to understand the market you're investing in the market opportunity what is the future you're imagining if urbanization is in 81 if you know 81 percent of the population in the u.s live in urbanized areas and this is only an increasing trend what can we imagine for the future what kind of problems are going to emerge and at the same

time what exciting technologies have been created that we can leverage to make sure that those technologies are being channeled into solving those important problems that we'll only learn about in five ten years time so there's this envisioning of the future that takes place in venture that i don't think is necessarily the case when you're kind of working in corporate law. Apart from Zero to One, were there any other books that helped shift your thinking to the new kind of venture capital mindset? Look, I don't know if there was one particular book. I think it was a conscious effort on my part to expose myself to, frankly variety of podcasts videos books that started to introduce this idea of startup methodology kind of the link the classic lean startup methodology

is definitely a book um that that was really impactful but i think while i was at graduate school i took every opportunity to to to others' experiences and to hear about different ways of solving problems. And the one takeaway that, and I think the biggest lesson I've learned is that I know very little and that I have a lot to gain from listening to others versus speaking. And I think there's a reason we have two ears and one mouth absolutely and i think in venture it's even more the case where you're really trying to understand what's in front of you um and not miss anything and and so that's something that i've focused a lot on honing do you listen to the a16z podcast? Definitely have listened to various podcasts from Andreessen. I also love

their email that summarizes a lot of them. So, I'm a keen fan of anything that aggregates and creates efficiencies in my workflow. Absolutely. Okay. So, talk to me now about the criteria you use. I mean, you don't have to cover everything, but some of the main considerations that come into play when you're deciding to take that big step of allocating capital to a founder or a new startup company. Absolutely.

So, I mean, Urban Innovation Fund, we're a seed stage firm that is focusing really on investing in companies that are shaping the future of our cities. Yeah. And just for people who aren't familiar with the terminology, there's pre-seed and seed, which are like the earliest rounds of fundraising. And then after that, you go series A, B, C. Pretty much the alphabet. Yeah. All the way through to, sometimes to Z. Yeah. I know. I think companies like Uber have gotten pretty far down the alphabet. Yeah, they have, they have. So in terms of what we look for and how I invest,

I mean, the first criterion is definitely, it has to be stage appropriate. So are they a seed stage company? Have they been around a couple of years and are usually looking for that first influx of institutional capital as opposed to capital they might've gained from family and friends or individual angel investors.

In terms of what else matters, really it's, I would say a couple of things that stand out. One is the team is absolutely critical. So we need a team and I look for a team that has tenacity, conviction, really cares about solving the problem they're trying to solve. How do you gauge those things from an initial meeting or reading someone's CV? Yeah, so it's not easy, right?

And it's absolutely more of an art than a science. I think spending as much time with a founder as possible and creating ways to keep in touch with them over periods of time. I think you get to know a person and a team, not just through one meeting, but often having had touch points throughout a one year period. Exactly. It's like you need that longitudinal relationship. I mean, a good analogy is, you know, you can't, you can't be doing speed dating in this business if you want to be marrying to a company for 10 years. Exactly. And you might be exposed to a company through speed dating, which a lot of accelerators run for investors. But what to me is more effective than a one-off pitch is to identify startups early on in the process before they're even fundraising,

whether it's at events, through other investors, generally through outreach, and then keeping in touch with them. And you get to know a person quite well through how they respond to emails, their tone, their ability to execute over time, how they build a team, who they decide to surround themselves with. And we're looking for teams that are trustworthy, whose judgment and decision-making ability you really trust. And so that's something you need to see over time. Of course, we don't have the liberty of having that with every entrepreneur that we invest in. So, you know, there's one quick filter is, are they innovating in an industry vertical that we think has the ability to touch the lives of millions and billions of people across cities? And that's an easy one. A lot falls under the umbrella of urban innovation.

But beyond that, then it's really about the team. And as I mentioned, kind of whether the team really wants it, but also is this the right team for the problem they're solving? Why this team for this problem? And to make sure there's a real fit there, whether they've personally experienced the pain point, whether they have worked in the industry and the industry kind of gurus.

And then also in terms of the dynamic of a team, you know, there are quick red flags. You see if co-founders are talking on top of each other in an initial meeting, if they're giving inconsistent stories across one call to the other, that's definitely something that, you know, my antennas go up. They have no prehistory. Exactly.

And absolutely it happens where founders come together and they they haven't worked together before or they like they have speed dating for there's co-founder speed dating yeah that's definitely a thing um but i think more importantly like making sure that the team is solid and that they have similar mind sets as co-founders but complementary skill sets okay got it And then the next thing that I would say is, you know, early on in the fund, we had this positive bias, I think, in favor of revenue. As soon as we'd see companies that have made a lot of revenue, you know, if they'd hit a magic number, we'd get super excited. I think over time, we've learned that while revenue is one

indicator of early success of a company, what's more important is momentum. And so we look for companies that have that kind of ability to execute. Ideas are cheap and there's millions of ideas out there. Someone that can take a mediocre idea and actually execute on it and make it happen are the ones that we look for. And so some of the companies that we are really excited by and that we invested really early on are ones that were actually out there and operating on very little, being able to be scrappy and be creative. And that quality is something that is really rare in an entrepreneur. And so when you see that ability to execute under any conditions, under conditions of uncertainty, that's something you want to be a part of.

Yeah, it's a very admirable trait. Exactly. In a person, full stop. So is it momentum in terms of key business metrics or more just sort of the grind that you're talking about or both? Look, they're interrelated. So I'd say momentum in terms of mostly key business metrics, that their users have grown over time, that they have loyal customers that are renewing contracts, that you're moving customers from, say, pilots to real contracts,

that you're building your team, that you're continuing to focus on the milestones that matter, and that you're not constantly going back to the drawing board or that you're testing hypotheses and going back and rebuilding accordingly that systematic approach to building a business is something that you when you see it early on and you see the early results it's hard to ignore and that kind of traction and momentum is definitely one factor we look for. The other is the market. You know, they've got to be innovating and creating a solution in a market that's big

enough. So, yeah, you mentioned that's one of the initial filters you use. Is that a matter of, you know, market size and revenue potential or social impact or both? I would say both. I'm a strong believer of the fact that you don't have to have a trade-off between impact, whether it's social impact, urban impact, different labels, but similar concepts and financial returns. And I think what we're seeing is more and more funds, venture firms in particular, being established that believe in this double bottom line approach.

And so the best companies that we see actually bake the social impact into the business model. So essentially what that means in practice is more revenue or more sales or more dollars equals more impact. A classic example is, yousaving light bulbs. More sales, more light bulbs sold, more social impact, more energy saved. And that idea is something that we're seeing more and more in companies, and we're seeing that susceptibility to investing in these kinds of companies grow as well from an investor side. So let's consider things from the entrepreneur's perspective now. I had the privilege of going on a lot of fundraising meetings with a mutual friend of ours, Asim, in Sydney, and it's a

grueling experience to say the least. How do entrepreneurs overcome the chicken and the egg problem whereby you need that initial capital in order to prove the concept but the VCs aren't willing to part with their capital until the concept's proved? How do you break that circuit? It's a great question and it's absolutely the conundrum of early stage entrepreneurship how do i have enough to keep me going to get to the proof points that an investor wants to see yeah so i would say the the solution to this problem is actually something that we're seeing a lot more of which is this plethora of what you want to call that pre-seed investors,

the pre-seed ecosystem more broadly. So a traditional institutional investor might not want to part with their money before they've seen particular proof points. Pre-seed investors or accelerators, friends and family, angel investors who are basically high net worth individuals who can usually they've had a tech exit themselves or they just have a lot of money they can dispose of. They're the types of actors that you want around you and to be exposed to give you that early capital to then get to a point where you can approach institutional investors like venture capitalists. And so really that's one way of overcoming the chicken and egg problem, which is

looking for money in the right places. Venture is not for everyone or not immediately at least. And then also being open to living a more scrappy life, frankly, where resources might be limited and being able to execute and show early signs that whatever it is that you're developing might have some traction in the market is something that's hard to do. But the best entrepreneurs we've seen can do a lot with a little and are very systematic in trying to prove the first hypothesis and then go back and might raise a bit then come and prove the second and in doing so are making sure that they're building the right team around them and perhaps that means being on a lower salary for a little while or none if you

can bootstrap in that way but that's not possible for everyone and so often there are these organizations and intermediary organizations like accelerators and incubators that might fill the in that way, but that's not possible for everyone. And so often there are these organizations and intermediary organizations like accelerators and incubators that might fill the gap. Yeah, I suppose that, I mean, another way of looking at it is that initial pain barrier or, you know, baptism of fire is a natural filter for the sort of people who are really cut out to being founders

because it doesn't get much easier. No, and it really just gets harder um as you're building your team yeah as you're you know having customers churn as your products growing and you've got the kind of growing pains of of a company there's there's a resilience that's required in a entrepreneur and you can often get a sense of that in terms of how they're growing the company at that very early stage with very little. So on my way to the offices this morning, I had a first-hand experience of some of the traffic

in San Francisco, which has given me a renewed appreciation for some of the importance of urban innovation generally. Can you just briefly tell us about a couple of the companies in your portfolio at the moment that you're particularly excited about? Absolutely. So we've invested in 14 companies so far over the last kind of year and a half. Sorry to make you single out.

I'm sure they're all deserving you know it's uh you're basically asking me to pick which of my children exactly who's your favorite mom or dad but uh look i i would say a couple of the companies that i'm super excited about that we've actually invested in pretty recently um one is a company called CodeSpark, and it's a learn-to-code app teaching kids the kind of ABCs of how to code. And the founder, Grant, actually came up with CodeSpark after seeing his young daughter not have the right tools and exposure at school to concepts around robotics and computer science that would be important for her development in this sector, for example. And so there's a lot of gamification in the app. There are cool female characters called the foos and you can have kind of a female ninja character and it's really, really awesome. They're the number one rated coding app on um the app store and they have

kind of traction across 180 different countries um so we're really really excited to back them in their latest round and you know another company that's kind of on the opposite side of the spectrum so code spark obviously focused on education and you know future of work uh is is one called Milkstalk. And Milkstalk is the first and only so far breast milk shipping service. And the idea is that as women are returning to work after having a child, there's a lot of transition that's happening. And so Milkstalk and the foundersate and mike are trying to ease this transition by making it easier for women who are traveling on business trips for work to be able to ship their breast milk home to make sure the nutritional benefits are there for the child

but also that the woman can continue to succeed in the workplace yeah and they're two companies i'm super excited about at the moment one that i have a big soft spot for is a founder called nimit um from a company called votes who i met actually believe it or not everything comes full circle at the harvard social enterprise conference where i was exposed to tumble initially so a couple years back i was at the harvard social enterprise conference judging their pitch competition and in walks in nimit from votes with this amazing idea around using blockchain technology to create electronic voting that's audited and secure um which is particularly important given some of the the happenings of around elections and meddling here in the US. And, you know, fast forward a year or two later and we're now investors in votes

and they're working with municipalities, universities, all kinds of elections at different stages and various political parties at the state level on both sides to ensure that voting is available to the masses. It's not compulsory here in the US. So, you know, making it accessible is really important and that it's affordable, but that also it's safe and secure.

And he's doing this with a for-profit, highly scalable model that we're really excited to back. So there are a couple of the companies that come to mind. Again, as I said, picking from the kids is not an easy thing to do, but there's some of our more recent companies. Awesome. So I want to ask you a few quick questions now about what motivates you in venture capital. And your answers certainly don't have to be quick, but I think it's

clear from talking to you just how passionate you are about it. And I'm so glad that you made the jump from law to this because we don't necessarily need more lawyers in the world, but having someone of your talents in venture capital certainly brightens our future. So my first question is, why do you think this is a good area for someone to be working in who is interested in having a disproportionate positive impact on the world? Because it wouldn't immediately come to mind for people who are interested in social justice. They might think about, you know, the charity sector or volunteering or something like that. So why venture capital?

Look, for me, venture is having a bird's eye view of various industries. That in and of itself is really powerful because I think the most complex problems in our society need people who can be well-versed across a number of sectors and industries, right? And not just coming with a legal toolkit or an investor toolkit or a government toolkit, but perhaps being able to see all sides of the picture. So being in venture and being exposed to numerous possibilities every day, hundreds of ideas every month allows you to start to dream about solutions to the problems we see in our society today. So that in and of itself is selfishly inspiring. In terms of the impact piece, and it's an excellent question,

I mean, the first is that there are a lot of funds out there that focus on seeding or giving kind of that early capital to companies that are mission-driven. Yes. So we would call that social impact investing? Yeah, exactly. Impact investing, social impact investing, double bottom line. There's a really great fund called DBL Ventures, double bottom line venture. So, you know, there's that piece.

For me, the impact is quantified on the individual level. What brings me the most joy and fulfillment is empowering others and empowering individuals to find their purpose and passions. And what better way to do that every day with your founders and portfolio companies? And so on any given day with the different portfolio companies, you're wearing different hats. And you might go from being a listener one day to the taskmask for the next, to being a mentor, to being a coach, and being the business consultant, the ability to be able to work closely with people who are truly passionate about building companies that they think is going to change the future is something that brings me a lot of

joy and fulfillment. And I believe that a lot of the work that I'm doing in and around the firm and the opportunities available are just making me better at that core job, which is to help our founders. Because it's not about me. It's not about our fund. It's about the entrepreneurs we're backing. And that's something that I'm really grateful for every day. Do you recall any moments where you've given a founder a piece of advice about something they could fix that actually comes up quite commonly among founders look it actually relates back to um something we we mentioned when we're talking about what we're looking for when we're investing and that is uh to get out there and execute yeah a lot of founders will have these grand plans and

kind of you know go back to the drawing board and these elaborate plans, which are great. You need a plan. But the reality is like getting out there and actually selling to customers or getting the product on the road, getting that autonomous vehicle out and driving, even if it's just to do one delivery, right? Testing the product. There's nothing more valuable than lived experience. And so the biggest advice that we tend to give our companies after investing is like, just go out and do it. Get on the road, get out there selling as quickly as possible.

You're going to learn a ton from that process. And coming back and learning from that is really important. And we want to just put, you know, speed in that process of learning by getting them out there and doing more. And then the second is really that the importance of team, which goes without saying, a founder can never put that on the back burner. And hiring is one of the biggest challenges in venture, but it's also one of the most important and rewarding because you want to build a team around you that also believes in the mission, but has the right skill set. And that is often the difference between succeeding and not. Yeah. Very important. I love that first point though. I mean,

strategizing can very quickly become procrastinating. Ironically, I think one of the most intellectual realizations you can have is that nothing happens without action absolutely and it's part of it is like letting go of perfectionism too yes right yeah realizing that there's a perfectionism is not going to get anywhere yeah uh get anyone anywhere and that um you know. Good is good enough sometimes. It doesn't have to be excellent. Which is very hard for us, some of us, I must say, but we try. So, we've spoken about zero to one in this conversation and for some reason it comes up quite frequently in my episodes.

Peter Thiel is quite famous for his contrarian question. He often asks over dinners or in job interviews, which is what's one truth that you hold that the rest of society doesn't agree with? Do you have a contrarian truth? That's a brilliant question. I'll kind of put you on the spot. I mean, one thing that to me is a truth that is becoming increasingly truthful over time, even though I don't think it's a spectrum, is that we are at our core, spiritual, emotional beings having a physical experience on this planet. And so the focus on helping each other and understanding each other and realizing that

what I do and the energy I bring to this room impacts the energy you feel and the implications that has on the rest of your day, on your life, is really important to me. And I think the piece around focusing on the things that are intangible and everlasting, like how you make people feel, is what drives me and not how much can I accumulate and really trying to live a minimalist life in that regard and a nonviolent life and really focusing on bringing positive energy. And I'm really lucky that I can channel that even in my day-to-day at work through our founders and through the companies I'm working with. But yeah, keeping it real, remembering that we're all just having a physical experience and that at our core, we're all humans and interconnected. And that intuition is something that I don't want to ever ignore because it's what makes us different to other beings. Mace Marley, it's been so great speaking to you. Thanks for joining us.

Thanks so much, Joe. It's been a pleasure. And that is a wrap. I hope you enjoyed that conversation as much as I did. Links to everything may and i discussed including books podcasts companies will be on the website the jolly swagman.com so you can find all of that there and it is winter in sydney building up to our anniversary party which is going to be on the 30th of june that's a saturday 5 p.m at the lord roberts

hotel in darlinghurst so if you're in the area you are more than welcome to come we would love to see your face i will be leaving for a few weeks and my delightful co-host angus will be taking over so please look out for the next episode with angus and i look forward to seeing you sometime in the future this has been great thanks ciao