This Week in Startups - E1066: The Power of Accelerators E6 David Brown, CEO & Co-Founder of TechStars on leading the virtual accelerator trend, benefits of going global, sustained vs. temporary changes from COVID & more!

Episode Date: May 27, 2020

0:43 Jason intros TechStars CEO David Brown 4:47 TechStars leading the virtual accelerator trend 10:21 Will TechStars go with a hybrid model going forward and what key points should remote accelerators focus on? 15:27 How did TechStars settle on the number of 10 companies per cohort? 17:28 What has TechStars seen across their portfolio since COVID started? 21:21 Sustained changes vs. temporary changes due to COVID, will COVID lead to more entrepreneurs? 31:58 How to explain edge-case funding scenarios to founders who have real businesses that are having troubling raising capital, taking a long-term view on accelerator engagement, why B2B is easier than B2C 36:22 Why angels invest in one company over the other? Do metrics matter as much as personal relationships? What are ideal founder characteristics that David looks for? 40:25 How TechStars selects mentors by surveying their mentees, comparison against Y Combinator 51:45 Opportunity for going global, David's relationship with Co-Founder David Cohen 1:00:30 Would TechStars ever go public?

This week in startups, the Power of Accelerators series, is brought to you by LinkedIn jobs. A business is only as strong as its people, and every hire matters. To post a health care or essential service job for free, visit LinkedIn.com slash power. And Twilio runs an amazing program for startups that includes a $500 getting started credit, access to webinars made exclusive for startups and full support via their Twilio Startups team. Sign up now at Twilio Startups.com slash twist. Hey everybody, welcome back to this week in startups. We're recording this in month three of the global coronavirus pandemic.

And we're hoping everybody who's listening to this is safe and your family's safe. And if you are going back to work or going out, please wear a mask. that seems like a no-brainer. And, you know, we are very concerned about people's lives. We're also now starting to see people's livelihoods being impacted. And as predicted, this is having just a tragic impact on society in the suffering from losing a job is not exactly comparable to, you know, being sick and in the ICU, obviously. stating the obvious, but we are seeing, sadly, you know, people falling into depression, mental illness is spiking, and sadly even suicides. And we're starting to just start to see that.

And that is very concerning to me. But one thing that does give me hope is that in these other down markets I've seen when there was despair, when there was serious unemployment, startups tended to lead the way out. And new companies and the entrepreneurial spirit is what creates opportunity in the world, creates jobs, and over the last greater than a decade, actually, now I think going on maybe close to 15 years, David Brown and Dave Cohen have been working tirelessly on tech stars, which has over 2,000 graduates as of this point,

and they run a huge business with their accelerator partnerships. And I've had David Cohen on the pot a couple of times. times. And Brad Feld, I think, also gets counted as a co-founder. He does. He does. And he was, Bradfeld is a bit reclusive. And I'm trying to get him on the pod. And I had a in-person only rule. But now that we're virtual, I think he'll probably do it. And last time he was on was 2013, seven years ago. We've got to get Bradfell back on. But today, for the first time, David Brown is on the podcast. And he's a CEO and co-founder of Techstars. Good to have you on the pod. Thanks for having me.

We actually have a fourth co-founder as well, Jared Polis, who's now governor of Colorado. I didn't know that. Yeah, yeah. So he shows up, he turned up for in-person demo days when we used to have those things, but he's pretty busy right now. How are you doing during coronavirus? Everything, okay, personally, have you been impacted by it? How is Boulder? Yeah, I feel lucky, you know.

I'm home. I have a family that seems to tolerate me okay. And, you know, we're all safe. And, you know, Boulder doesn't have too many cases. And in fact, I don't know anybody in Boulder who is contracted coronavirus. So we're stark crazy. We have a high school senior. That is sad for prom and graduation. But in the grand scheme of things, we're all doing really well. Yeah. I mean, for young people, it's really sad. They're going to lose some. like formative part of their lives, but they're also going to get that grit and realize that, hey, the world is sometimes hard and you have to rise to the challenge. So it could be a great defining moment for them in terms of resiliency and moving forward.

Are they going to have a Zoom graduation? We don't know yet. By the way, I tried that line on my daughter and she wasn't buying it. The grit and resiliency. She wants prom. So, they realize it in 10 years, right?

Yes, right, but it's not helpful today. Not helpful at all today. There's a graduation scheduled in July currently, so we'll see what happens. Yeah, oh, that's great. Yeah, just push it back a month or two, and I think we're all going back. I'm curious just right off the bat, we'll get into the history of, you know, tech stars, but I'm just at the top here. You started tech stars, I think it's called Tech Stars Anywhere, about four or five years ago,

Correct. And I had been lobbied last year by like team members and people like, hey, maybe we should do a virtual thing. And I was like, listen, this is crazy. Nobody wants us to put money in and work from home. They're not going to be able to raise money. It's not going to work. And our last cohort went three weeks in person and then to virtual.

Now we have two more. I'm wondering if you could tell us what you're experiencing and what you learned from that four-year TechStars Anywhere program. Is there some difference between? the founders who go to that and who go to an in-person program, and is there some difference in outcomes, the number one outcome that people are looking for coming to these programs is to raise money. So do you see a difference in outcomes or have you seen over the last four years? Yeah. So, you know, first of all, we started it as an experiment. And the first year, I think we

only had four companies come through compared to our normal 10. And we did that on purpose because we thought it's going to be hard and we're going to have to learn some things and we're going to have to figure out how to do it, you know, over video. And so we wanted an extra concentration of attention on the four companies that went through. And we got some really good learnings. And we've run four, like you say, four or five full classes now. Thank, thank goodness we did, right, because we took all of those learnings and applied it to all of our programs. But one of the learnings, for instance, is the need, the benefit of having at least an in-person bonding moment. And so in anywhere, they get together during the first week. And then again, in the middle.

And then that's it. The rest is virtual. And that has proven to be a huge benefit. So for your cohort, for example, that was together for three weeks, you had that early bonding. I think any time we think about going virtual only, we have to remember that we would be giving that up. The second thing that we learned is it's a much more inclusive program because if you have a family, if you live far away, if you don't have the financial means to relocate to San Francisco or Boulder or somewhere, and your startup is in Timbuktu, you can still participate. If you're a mom or a dad that's taking care of kids, you may not be able to attend an accelerator. And so we have more applications for that program than any other of our programs for that reason.

And what that means is it's giving us access to outliers. And of course, it's still early, right? We're four years in. But we would expect higher returns as a result of that. Fascinating. And so how do they fail? with fundraising because, you know, I think prior to coronavirus, there was a 100% rule that, you know, VCs and seed funds at least, putting aside angels, they really want to break bread,

they want to get to know people, they're investing in people, you and I have heard this for years. Now, of course, the same venture capitalists are actually making investments over Zoom and they haven't broken bread and they haven't spent time with them. So if forced you, they will do it. But previously they said, listen, I'm not interested that. So when you had the program virtual, Were those people able to raise money, or was that a disadvantage? Well, they were still able to raise money, but that in some cases they would still have to travel somewhere and break bread with somebody. And so while there wasn't the in-person demo day, most investors aren't making their investment decisions solely based on an in-person demo day. They want to break bread, as you say.

And at least until three months ago, we could still go on to airplanes and go visit those investors. And now when you look going forward, you have programs in how many cities today, ballpark? Almost 50, 49, something like that, different locations. And that gives you a unique perspective on the pandemic globally. Are programs now coming back online in person? And if so, in what regions? And how are you dealing with that as an organization? Because that's 50 decisions you got to make.

It's almost like your 50 governors or 50 presidents, you're going to have to make a decision on each one. Yeah, although I would say it's been more of an advantage than a disadvantage in that as we went into lockdown, we got all the early warning signs, right? The Singapore accelerator went virtual in January. At a time when, you know, most of us here in the U.S. were thinking this will never come to us.

Right. And then the Italy accelerator, if you remember when Italy went in, to lockdown, you know, we were three weeks into that accelerator. And so that was the first of our accelerators to switch from in-person to remote. And so we were able to practice, if you will, at what does it look like to switch from in-person to remote before the other 14 that we had running in the U.S. and Europe sort of all went to lockdown at the same time. We're being cautious on the other side about not opening up too quickly. And while we're, we're going to be cautious, we're we're considering in person as a possibility,

we're looking at all our future programs for the moment as remote first. If we're able to get together in person, great. But we're assuming that we're going to have to be virtual. Have there been discussions internally about, hey, let's make everything virtual going forward or a hybrid going forward? Yeah. I think, I think, you know, our logic is there may be our four different types of, of accelerators. There's virtual only. There's virtual first. There's in-person first. There's in-person only, the old way, right? Those are the four kinds. And the way we're talking about it internally is let's be

good at all four. And then let's see how it plays out. And each accelerator in the future will be able to switch its label, if you will, or run in a certain modality. Do you think things need to change in terms of what you provide, you know, for this new model. Like, what, what do you think, what new muscle do you have to flex or learn? Because we're, we're starting to figure that out. One of them is AV. And, you know, I'm a stickler for AV, you know, having done this podcast for a long time and events for a long time. We, I just started a rule and it sounds silly, but in order to present, you have to have a computer that's under a year old. You have to have an Ethernet cable, Wi-Fi and you have to have a plugged-in headset from this list of pre-approved ones, you know,

stick microphone kind of situation. And boy, when we did that and we had one or two people maybe who didn't present, people said the AV was perfect. And I'm like, that's because we're not using Wi-Fi and we're using proper headsets, not AirPods. Have you come to any blocking and tackling tactical decisions like the one I made that are helping? Yeah. I mean, I think there are, you know, probably dozens. Yours is a very good one, right? Like figuring, you know, figuring out sound and video and Wi-Fi and network connection is super important. I'd give a different example at the other end of the scale is getting really good at what does a demo day pitch look like over Zoom. And we ran 16 virtual demo days simultaneously. It's fascinating, Jason. It's

incredible, right? Because one of the first ones we did in that grouping was in Abu Dhabi, right? Great program, but far away. You know, how many Bay Area investors, you know, we're going to travel there to go look at the pitches? My guess is, you know, you didn't have your ticket ready to go for that one. And, you know, yet we had 2,000 plus attendees attend, you know, that virtual demo day. And you can see them there at Demoday.com. they're open, you know, open to the public. But figuring out the logistics of all of that and the technology behind it to really have the right experience virtually as different than it would be in person has been, you know,

great. And we've, of course, drafted on the Anywhere program, but improved on it as well. All right. We'll get back from this quick break. I want to get your thoughts on what startups are going to thrive coming out of this pandemic and what you think on a what your best advice is to founders now let's face it you know this 12 bull year run is over and now we're back

in what would be the web 2.0 days like when you started 2006 or maybe even 2008-2009 after the great recession financial crisis when we get back on this weekend startups. Okay now more than ever we need people with the right skills to support our communities especially the frontline workers who provide resources and care for those most in need. And to help, LinkedIn is offering free job posts for health care and essential service organizations that need to quickly fill critical roles with the people who will help all of us. If you or someone you know are hiring for one of these organizations,

LinkedIn's active community of over 675 million members can help you quickly find the right candidates for the front line quickly. LinkedIn jobs screens candidates for the skills and experiences you're looking for and puts your job post in front of qualified people who meet your requirements. So you can find the right person to quickly fill critical roles. Many of our portfolio companies have had success using LinkedIn jobs. One of them, takeoffs.io, is an AI-enabled building materials marketplace. It's very cool. I found them when I was in Australia. And they were looking to hire last year an AI engineering lead, which was really difficult because, well, it's a pretty unique skill set, right? You're an engineer and you know AI. So they used LinkedIn jobs,

and they found the perfect candidate with a PhD in computer vision, and this employee has been with them for over a year and has rolled out several major projects and has been a real game changer for that startup. So here is your call to action to post a healthcare or essential services job for free. I want you to visit LinkedIn.com slash power. Again, LinkedIn.com slash power. Okay, let's get back to this amazing episode.

All right, David Brown, the CEO and co-founder of TechStars is on the podcast. founded the TechStars program in 2006, and now about 500 companies go through it a year, correct? That's correct. Which is more than Y Combinator. People think Y Combinator is the largest accelerator, but TechStars, in fact, is the largest. Yeah, and, you know, it's 10 at a time, right? So it's still an intimate experience, but if you add it up across 50 locations, that's 500. So the max is 10.

That's the number you came up with. Yeah. I mean, have we ever done 11? you know, yes, but it's never 15. Right. Why? How did you come to that number and that realization as opposed to Y Combinator, which is now 150? I mean, they break up into groups or maybe 250, actually, I heard. Yeah.

You know, it's interesting because we randomly picked Best Guess 10 in our first year. And over the years have experimented with larger classes and smaller classes. And really what it comes down to is the. attention. We put a very strong, you know, successful entrepreneur in as managing director of each class. And that person and his or her team are responsible for sort of managing the whole program. And you put in more companies, you dilute the attention. And it turns out that 10 is just about right that you can give everybody enough attention without dilution. And, you know, you could do five, but of course, then you have excess capacity.

Yeah, and actually, interestingly, I picked seven. And the reason I picked seven was short-term memory. I just thought, you know, short-term memory has been, when they studied it in psychology, I always remember when I was a psychology major, seven plus or minus two. And that's how phone numbers became seven. They just did a test of what, if you read off a certain number of numbers, how many can people remember? And seven was the average. So I just wrote seven, but some people can remember 10.

If you're taking notes, you can remember it, you know, 20 or 30 probably a lot easier. So here we are. We're going into this what will clearly be a recession, perhaps an extended recession, negative growth for many quarters to come is what most consensus would be. Of course, companies that are virtual are accelerating their growth, which is a bizarre experience to have. And you must be seeing this inside your own portfolio where you have a group of companies that has absolutely had their revenue go to zero and they've been crushed. to a point at which no model could ever predict. And then you have other companies that are looking, you know, in the mirror and going, oh, my God, I feel so guilty.

We've doubled revenue because of the pandemic. Is that what you're seeing as well in your portfolio? And then what does that mean for going forward your advice to startups? So 100%, right? Like if you're in the business of facilitating business travel, things are not going well for you right now unless you've figured out how to pivot. But if you are a company that is helping triage EMS to do telemedicine and avoid the hospital, you're on fire right now.

And so it very much feels like there are huge winners and there are huge losers, people who are really startups that are really struggling, On balance, of course, it's going along with the economy, but it doesn't feel like that. What it feels like is, are you in the good category or in the hurting category? What do I say to entrepreneurs? I say, you know, we've had this 12-year bull run and everything has been so great and so organized that we've been dotting eyes and crossing T's that didn't need it to be dotted or crossed. Now, the world has taken this big box of problems and dumped it upside down.

And who's going to fix those big problems, entrepreneurs and startups? There is a world of opportunity. And so those problems are big problems. Five years from now, we're going to look back at huge companies, I think, that got created as a result of this pandemic. And if you're the company that was focused on, you know, dotting an eye for business travelers, great opportunity to pivot and pick a new problem to solve. Yeah, and that is pivoting for a founder is one of the hardest psychological emotional

exercises to say, I spent three years, 30 months, even, you know, three months working on this problem and building this product to be able to put it on ice, put it in stasis, and say, I'm starting over. I mean, it just shows you what the sunken, what is that, sunken cost fallacy? you know, you're, just because you spent three, you know, months walking in one direction, if you find out that there's a cliff there, you have no choice but to turn around. You can't just stand at the cliff and go, magically, a bridge is going to emerge, and that's just not going to happen.

Exactly. Exactly. But, you know, founders are a resilient bunch. And it's a great way of separating the wheat from the chaff and figuring out who is resilient enough to walk back from the cliff and go in a whole new direction. what categories are you looking at now and saying this is a big opportunity and will be a sustainable opportunity? Because, you know, if everybody all of a sudden wants to start delivering food and helping restaurants deliver food, I'm not sure that people are not going back to restaurants at the same level in 2021 or 2022 that they did in 2019. Seems to me that people will be going back to restaurants and we're going to beat this.

And it may take two years. It may take one year. So you don't want to rush into something like competing with Uber Eats or Postmates. So how do you know if it's a sustained, what things do you think are sustained change versus, you know, temporal? So a couple of thoughts, you know, first of all, you know, I do think an Instacart, for example, you know, or an Uber Eats. A lot of people are discovering that that's available for the first time. Yeah. Wow, I don't have to go to the grocery store.

How is that possible that people don't know that? It's crazy. I am married to one of those people, right? And there are lots of those people out there. We live in the tech world. Your audience probably doesn't, you know, live in that world, but maybe their spouses do or their friends do. And so I do think, right, that yes, it will snap back,

but it won't snap all the way back. There is an opportunity for the Instacartes and the Uber Eats to grow their business. Yeah. But I compare that, my analogy, when I talk to entrepreneurs about it, I compare it to say if you're a toilet, if you're a company that makes toilet paper. And your business is just on fire right now, right? Like you can't make enough because everything you deliver to the store gets sold out immediately. Well, the world doesn't need more toilet paper. Right.

That's not what's happening. What's happening is people are filling up their pantry. And so for the valley, the peak that exists today, there will be the same valley that exists. Yeah. You know, somewhere down the road. And so know whether you're an Instacart or know whether you're a toilet paper manufacturer. Yeah. It's a temporary, non-sustainable spike.

But the bigger thing is how's the world going to change, right? Let's talk about that. We talked about it earlier in the show. Investors, for example, are discovering that they don't necessarily need to break bread. And that applies to more than just investors. that applies to business people as well. We have a lot of corporate partnerships. I have to fly all around the world.

I flew 200,000 miles last year, last couple of years because lots of people want that face-to-face interaction. But guess what? People are discovering that the Zoom thing works and that you're able to have a video conference and not get on an airplane. And so, you know, I think that's going to change the nature of business in the future.

And depending on what your startup does, you should think about how the world is going to change on the basis of the different things that are going to, that are happening today that may snap back, but may not snap all of the way back. So education, right, is a great example. People are learning how to homeschool their kids. They're finding online tools to be able to use.

I think higher education is in deep trouble because they're relying on the old model. What do you think will happen in not just this fall, but next fall, I mean, if people could really be expected to pay $30, $40, $50,000 for Zoom classes, that makes no sense. What's going to happen to these colleges? I think that's right. And I think they're terrified, right? Because they're terrified. I have a high school senior, right? Her whole grade is saying, you know what, gap year, right?

Like, why go to college in the fall? because I don't want to spend, you know, all that money. I want to go, she wants to go for the college experience, right? Right. Live in a dorm and go to the football games. And she's like, you know, if there's going to be social distancing and one person to a dorm room and no football games and I have to do Zoom classes, I'm going to take a gap year. But I think for everybody that does that, she's going to go, you know, she'll probably go back a year later. Then I guess you'll have a different problem, which is you'll have class sizes twice as big because you have two years.

with the kids going through school. But it's going to crush revenues for higher education in the short run. And then I think people are going to realize maybe I didn't need to be educated in that way. Maybe I could go to an accelerator instead if I want to have a startup

rather than get an MBA and that's a better education. So I think the enrollment overall is going to drop and I think higher education is terrified. Yeah. It does seem to me that everybody re-evaluates the value of each of these institutions, whether it's the office space,

the restaurant, the prom, the college experience. It's just all going to be re-evaluated and examined with fresh eyes and maybe examining $50,000 a year or $75,000 a year all in versus three smart people learning how to code on free code camp or Lambda school, whatever it is, and then starting a company and getting a $100,000 investment is a better move. We need more founders. Do you think this is going to lead to more entrepreneurship? Way more, because the problems are bigger, right? You know, a better way of commenting on a blog isn't what's really needed right now.

It's a better education system, better health care system. I'll give a great example on that. That's my background, my first startup had. Cohen and my first startup did dispatch software for ambulance companies. So I saw firsthand how messed up our healthcare system is and how many people get taken to the hospital for no reason. If you call 911 right now and say, my toe hurts, they're going to pick you up in an ambulance and take you somewhere. Right. And the reason is because they came and you called them and they want to close the transaction.

That's how they're compensated. Yeah. Instead of them matter. don't get paid for no transport. Right. So they're going to transport you and they're going to get thousands of dollars based on that. Right. Yeah.

Right. But, you know, as telemedicine begins to emerge and, you know, today I'm getting notes from, you know, my local provider, doctor, right? If you need a consult, I can do a telemedicine consult. And as insurance providers figure out how to reimburse for that. Yeah. that's going to transform health care. It's going to be amazing if everybody can, in a great way.

I mean, imagine if everybody could have the concierge doctor experience that, you know, people who can afford to spend, you know, whatever it is, $5,000, $20,000 a year on a concierge doctor where you can just text, I can just text my doctor anytime I want and, you know, have like an open discussion about that. That's basically going to be everybody's experience. And it is everybody's experience now because the doctor cannot come. cannot come to the office.

Exactly. And, you know, let's keep the emergency room free for COVID patients right now and take the stub toe people and have a online consult instead. When we get back from this final break, I want to talk about how you manage the relationship and what it's like post-graduation at TechStars. And is that even an important part of what you do or our accelerator is just about that, initial period when we get back on this week in startups. All right, I'm really excited to welcome Twilio back to being a partner here at this

week in startups. If you don't know them, they're obviously the cloud communication platform that's used by people like Uber or Airbnb, Shopify, I use it at Inside. We use it at This Week in startups. And they're joining with us here at This Week in Startups to bring their Twilio and SendGrid startup programs to our listeners. Twilio provides you the building blocks for messaging, voice, and video in your web and mobile applications.

They are rooted in startup culture and they are here to help you on your journey. And they give you the ability to build all of this communication into your product without you having to rebuild everything. So you need all of these to be perfect. You need to make sure they get delivered. You need to make sure you're not falling into spam or getting hits against your phone numbers and your email addresses. Well, SendGrid and Twilio, they do all that for you.

And it works perfectly. So if you want to engage and delight your users while scaling globally, all for one API power platform, from SMS to voice. You can even go into WhatsApp now. I didn't know that, actually. That's pretty cool. And this is where it gets great. And I'm really excited to have Twilio make this offer to you, our listeners here at This Week

in startups. They're going to give you $500. So I'm not going to say they're going to give you a Hyundai. They're going to give you five hundies. $500 in credits right now. Plus, you can get access to webinars made exclusively for startups and the full support of the Twilio startups team. plus that's the 500 you get in Twilio no wait for this they're also going to give you

three thousand dollars in send grid credits this is unbelievable i really am thankful for twilio for doing this go to Twilio startups.com slash twist twilio T-W-I-O-I-O startups.com slash twist we're going to put it in the show notes you have to go there and grab these credits it's $3,500 waiting there for your startup and they're doing this because they love the podcast and they want to support it and they want to support startups because they're big fans of startups and they're big fans of this week in startups which I appreciate. So get the $3,500 now, Twilio startups.com slash twist. All right, David Brown is with us.

He's D. Brown on the Twitter CEO and co-founder of the tech stars. Are you active on Twitter? A little bit. A little bit here and there. Did you see the new feature where you can only have your followers reply? Or you can just whoever mentioned it? Yeah, they're doing an experiment now, which I had actually suggested maybe five or ten years ago. I said, well, if you really want to stop the trolling problem, if you just had a checkbox

that said, only my followers can reply to this tweet and you can do it on a per tweet basis, it's a pretty obvious idea. So if you're not, if I'm not following you, then you cannot. If I'm not following you. Right. So only people I follow can reply to this tweet. So basically it's like putting a little velvet rope. Anybody can read the thread. but to participate in the thread. So it just lets you have your own little self-reinforcing bubble. You know, like... Can I just say, I'm so boring that nobody responds to my tweets

and it doesn't really matter? Yeah, well, you're focused on, you know, like building the world's largest accelerator, and, you know, that's also important. It is a very interesting, yeah. Did you see the clubhouse? It's a pretty interesting feature. Yeah.

Do you see the clubhouse funding? I'm curious what you thought of that. If anything. No. No, I don't know what you're talking about actually. Clubhouse is like the app that kind of got heat here in the valley between venture capitalists

and it's like a little audio experience where you can kind of do talk radio. But anyway, Andreessen Hart has put reportedly $10 million into it pre-launch in a bidding war with Indreason. Indrisen was in a bidding war with benchmark and then they paid the founders two million in secondary to get the deal

or as part of the deal for a pre-launch company. It was just kind of a weird outlier in terms of funding. Yeah. What was that company years ago that raised a million dollars on nothing? What was that? A million or what I'm talking about? I think it was a million, but it was just like a name. Oh, yo. It was yo. Exactly.

Yo, yes. Yeah, it does. Yeah, Lari thinks that. When founders come to you and they're like, how come I can't raise like for Masu Yosh's on $200 million for my idea or my like, you know, nascent enterprise? How do you explain that to them, these weird things that occur? Oh, how do you explain the outliers? Yeah. Yeah. You know, look, I mean, I think one of the benefits of working around the world is breaking out of the Silicon Valley bubble a little bit. People don't always have those big stars in their eyes, right?

They're much more realistic. And they understand, by and large, that evaluation is what you're able to get. And you might think you're worth $200 million, but if the market says you're worth, worth four, then you know, you're negotiating opportunity is maybe to go to five, right? Not to, not to 50. After people graduate, what is it, do you have a philosophy about accelerators and best practices post-graduation? Do you try to continue to help them, or is it healthier that they graduated and, you know,

maybe they can come see the next batch of companies, but it's kind of like, you're done, you left the nest. How do you look at that? No, no, not at all. Like, the way we describe it is the, the, Accelerator is at most half the experience with the rest of your life being the other half. And our expression that we use is TechStars is for life. And it applies to founders, but it applies to staff and associates and any mentors, anybody

associated with the program. And we have lots of activity. We have, you know, internal intranet kind of tools for founders to connect with each other. We have perks for founders that exist beyond the accessibility. beyond the accelerator that they can use for life, discussion forums, FounderCon and annual gathering. We'll see when we're able to run that again.

Yeah, I've been to FounderCon. It's kind of fun. A lot of people come out for that. Why do Angel investors? You spoke at FounderCon. I know. I try to remember which one of which city was it in. Seattle, maybe?

Or was it in? I can't remember. So I remember, you said you had a line on stage. Oh, okay. Here we go. Oh, brace for it. From that founder con that I still quote you on. Wow, here we go.

You want to hear it? I do. It was why you want to be a B to B company instead of a B to C company. Okay. Right. And it's because all you have to do is go visit a corporate, you know, a big corporation. And in the back behind reception, they have this massive diamond. And all you have to do is ask them to chip a tiny piece of the diamond and give it to you.

Like that is your business model. Whereas B to C, you know, you have to big scrape and borrow for every last dollar an opportunity to make money. That's not a bad line, actually. It makes sense. Yeah. It is a much being B to B is such an easier life. I mean, you do not get the outlier of being Tesla or Twitter or Snapchat or whatever, you know, Amazon. Yeah.

You don't get the brand recognition, the household name recognition. Yeah. It's an easier way to make money for sure. Why do angel investors and seed funds pick one company versus another, you know, as you've studied this, and the reason people want to come to accelerate is number one reason given is always I want to raise money. I want to, you know, have that demo day. I want to get exposure. Second reason I want to get advice on how to build my company. I think that's pretty universal. Why is it that people pick company A over company B in your estimation? What are the reasons that investors and angels, and it might be different for each of them, seed funds versus angels? make that decision. Yeah, I mean, let's set aside the FOMO and the excitement, you know, where everybody's piling into the hot deal and pretend that doesn't exist, right? Obviously, it does.

You know, I think, look, and this is my angel experience as well. Angel invested before tech stars don't do so much anymore. But, you know, it's a personal connection with the founder. Like I, you know, I understand. them, we're kumbaya, I think I can help. I understand the business and I do like to break bread with them. They are somebody that I feel like I can communicate with because I will be able to help them and maybe also learn from them. Yeah, see, these are very interesting. You said it in very plain English, but if you unpack it, your ability to like enjoy the business that they're running

and that you feel you can learn from them and that they're likable and that you want to spend time with them. All of these things do add up. And none of it is, and your answer is, I'm looking for the highest return. And this is sometimes what people forget, right? Like, you, if you're going to make this investment, if you're a high net worth individual who has the ability to write a 25 or 50K or 100K check, you're going to invest in somebody who you really are going to enjoy being on that journey with and that you're going to really vibe with and that you're going to be excited, it's not just about the returns. And it's typically that's the third, fourth, fifth thing. And that people say is, oh yeah, I want to make more money because they're already rich. If you're

an accredited investor, you're already well to do. Yeah, I know. You're not doing it, you know, as a charity, right? But you're picking amongst the set of people that you think can generate a return, but can you really evaluate whether, you know, Joe or Jim is going to create a better startup, you know, even if you think Joe is 5% stronger, but you'd like Jim twice as much, you're going to pick gym, right? Because the fidelity on the 5% is pretty low. When you look at characteristics over the life of investing in companies, maybe you see people who are second and third time entrepreneurs and you start to see some really good signaling. What is your signaling for founder characteristics? You know, well, at the accelerator stage, I think being coachable is super

important, right? Sometimes the second time entrepreneur or the entrepreneur that has a a little more revenue than the rest of the companies in their cohort, have a little chip on their shoulder and something to prove, and I've already done this, and I know what I'm doing. And you just know that you're not going to be able to help as much. And look, they have a benefit if they've done it before, because they have experience, and that gives them advantage. But if they're not open to learning from others' experience,

whether it's the tech star staff, managing director, mentors, whoever, they're not going to progress as much. And so I do think that sometimes the multiple-time entrepreneurs, especially if their exits aren't incredible, can be at a disadvantage if they let their ego get in the way and aren't coachable enough.

When you look at mentors, how do you pick mentors for Techstars and are mentors, are you concerned with mentors that the people who have time for mentorship or the people who want to be mentors, like people who ask me to be mentors in our program, we don't have mentors in our program,

which is a bespoke thing, like, I'm the mentor, like, and the other alumni, maybe are mentors to a certain extent, but we don't try to bring a mentors because a lot of times I find that people who want to be mentors are giving horrible advice, and they're giving too much advice.

How do you think about mentors and picking them, and how do you tell your cities, here's how you pick a mentor, and here's who's not a good mentor? Do you give them instructions? unpack it all. Yeah, we do. So we have about 7,000 mentors for our accelerators,

more if you include all the mentors that participate in startup weekends. And so we have a pretty rigorous process for intake and evaluation. We do give them all coaching. We have a thing called the mentor manifesto, which you can Google that David Cohen wrote with one of our early MDs to help mentors, to help guide mentors. so they don't give bad advice. But in the end, the most important thing is to survey the mentees

and find out who are the most effective mentors. And I'll give an example, right? You could be a really accomplished mentor. And, you know, you built a huge startup. You know lots of things. You know lots of people. And really, you just want to have mentorship on your resume for some reason. And you show up late to the mentor meetings and you're checking your email and you take a phone call.

and you don't dispense of any of that advice or wisdom or connections that you have. Well, you're a terrible mentor. Right. And so that active surveying process causes us to rotate out lots of the mentors every year. You know, let the startups pick who was actually valuable. When people are deciding between Y Combinator and TechStars and they say, I have an offer from both, how do you win a deal? What do you say to them in terms of how to pick?

You know, look, Y Combinator is a great program. And so I don't think we're in a position where we want to say, this is better, do this, do that. I think if you want to be in Silicon Valley, if that is your goal, Y Combinator has a great ecosystem there. If you want to be in Chicago, we have a stronger ecosystem there. If you, you know, are comfortable in the large batch sizes, Y Combinator is probably a great answer for you. If you want a more intimate experience 10 at a time, TechStars is better for you. Is that large class size in the best interest of founders? It doesn't work for us.

It clearly works for Y Combinator. You know, they've had great success. So Y Combinator has had great success, but, and you've had great success. but, and you've had great success with the smaller version, but what about the founders who go to Ycompetit? Do you think it's in their best interest to be one of 250 companies or one of 200 companies? It seems crazy to me. I want to hear if you think that.

Yeah, I mean, look, I mean, I don't think it's right because I don't think it's, it's not what we do. So obviously, I don't think it's the right thing to do. If I thought it was the right thing to do, we would do that. Right. Why do you think they do it? Yeah. What do you think why Comedator does it?

I don't, I don't, you know those guys probably better than I do. I don't know that I, you know, I don't know that I know why they do it that way, but I think, you know, it's a big bet on Silicon Valley, right? Yeah. And so our ability to scale maybe is easier around the world because we can just pop up more and more cities and add 10 at a time if you're going to be restricted by geography. The only way to scale, I suppose, is to increase the class size. Yeah.

Yeah. But that's pure speculation, I have no idea. Yeah. I mean, they do break it into subgroups, I guess, but I think it's, my view on it, it might be a little bit cynical, is they've got such a great brand, having been there early, that they're just leveraging the brand love to cast as wide of a net to catch an outlier in that I really think it does a disservice to the bottom third or the bottom half of the class because, my gosh, you know, like what are your chances of real,

really breaking out if you're not in the top half of the class, right? You just get lost. There's just too many companies. And then when you go to the demo days, it's just too many companies pitching. Your mind can never process that large of a cohort. It's just, it will melt your brain as an investor to try to even try. I'm curious your position. Go ahead.

Oh, I was going to say, like I think it's probably a very true statement to sort of be the worst company in YC is a lot harder than being the worst company in tech stars. right because you are absolutely or you know the bottom third right because um you are going to you know you are going to get lost a little bit and that's what the more bespoke experiences you describe it that you provide or that we provide um allows us to you know we love all our children right yeah doesn't mean that there aren't a top third there's absolutely a top third and absolutely a bottom third and people are on a journey too so like the top third might have been at it for six months more or they might be on their second company or they might have one key co-founder who's just an all-star

who got them further in their design or go-to-market strategy, right? I promise you there are also companies that at some point we thought were bottom thirds that wound up being top thirds. Absolutely. The 10th could absolutely. I mean, and that's the thing about being misunderstood. If you're doing something truly revolutionary, you know, the things at the top that have 50K in revenue or 10-K in revenue already are going to look much more attractive at that

moment in time than the person doing something completely speculative. like a meditation app or a cab hailing service or you know whatever it happens to be that you know is just hard to understand um and yeah i lost i had another question i was going to ask you about oh fundraiser i cut you off yeah no no it's okay i that was uh i'm going to say that was an interview technique to get you to comment on it um no the thing i was going to ask you about is uh whyc has a very specific, you do not raise money until Demo Day. Do you have that same rule? And if so, why or why not? We don't, although it's more common than not that they raise money at Demo Day, but we're not prescriptive. You know, our mantra is, it's your company, which means everything from a mentor,

a really great mentor tells you to Zig. If you want to Zag, go for it. Right. And, you know, our coaching to the mentor is lean into that and help them. Don't penalize them. Same for fundraising. You want to come in and fundraise on day one of the program. You know, be my guest and sometimes they're successful. So, you know, we can give them all the advice on how it's going to work and scarcity and FOMO and all of that at Demo Day. But sometimes you have a check and somebody that's willing to write one and it's going to, you know, pay the rent and stuff. And it's worth doing. And I can tell you that those that like were fundraising in February and I feel pretty good about it now, I know a company that closed around while in the middle, in the second week of the program. And yeah, they feel good about it now for

sure. Yeah, I just take the approach of FOMO is just such a bad way to raise money. I mean, it might be effective, but I do think that you might signal getting the wrong investors. And if you only care about the cash, that's fine. But most investors, the elite ones, you can't use a Jedi mind trick on them and try to get them to, you know, Sequoia's not going to get caught up in FOMO, you know, like they're not, or some great seed fund, you know, Alien Lee, a cowboy or Homebrew or Bradfeld. Like, they're not going to get like FOMO'd into an investment. They're just masters at what they do. You're not going to trick them. And so then who are you tricking with some FOMO that, oh, the rounds closing and the SIG file? You've got the docu sign and it.

in your document. You're going to trick a dentist into investing. Yeah. And maybe the broader point there that is accelerators are at a game, right, that you have to play by certain rules. And, you know, sometimes if an entrepreneur says to me, I don't know if I should create feature X or Y, which ones do you think the investor would like that?

Right. And, you know, the answer is build a great business that the investor is going to want to invest in. Don't, don't create a story. don't create customers to be able to, you know, craft a story for Demo Day. It's not a game. I think that's really what the problem has been over this last decade is that with all the blogging and podcasting and books, everybody's unpacked and analyzed founder, investor behavior

so, you know, intensely that the game has been, how do I craft a chart in the 12 weeks I'm in the accelerator, buying Google ads or Facebook ads? and then trying to create this like moment where I manipulate everybody into the round disclosing and it's a party round and you're going to miss out and do the phone moving. And then you're left afterwards with, I don't know, you have 20 people who are investors in your company, but nobody's a lead, nobody's on the board. What do you think about party rounds in general and just the general hygiene of this like manipulation that's going on now? The emphasis on manipulating the system. Or, you know, I mean, I guess maybe I'll tell a story, right? I was talking to a founder a few months ago before all this lockdown stuff.

And he had raised a big ground, right, from a well-known investor who had put a lot of pressure on him to grow the business at all cost. And it hadn't worked, right? And then he had to lay off, you know, a whole bunch of people. And, you know, the investor is probably moving on to the next deal. But, you know, this guy was heartbroken, right? He had sort of, he felt like he wasted a year of his life. He diluted himself, his ownership in the company.

He hadn't acted in a way that was true to himself. And he felt more comfortable growing his business a little bit slower in a little bit more of a manageable way, but in a little bit more of a profitable way. And he's sort of kicking himself for all this advice that he's getting out there in the marketplace that you should grow at all costs. And sometimes the right answer is the answer that's in your heart. Right. And don't be careful not to take too much advice from too many other people. I think this is, I think this advice about taking advice is very important advice for founders to hear because it is your company. And at the end of the day, it will rise and fall with your ability to show up for work and do your best work. And if you're growing it based on the strategy of some investor who's on their 10th unicorn and their sixth house and their second boat or whatever it is, like they're playing a different game.

They're playing to hit another. They're swinging for home runs. Yeah, and you might really care about what you're doing. And you may really care about the mission and the people and the customers. You may be just fine with building a $50 million business in 10 years. And they may only feel fine with you building a $500 million revenue business in 10 years. And at the end of day, it is your company. And that's what happened to this guy.

In that case? Yeah. What do you do? Well, he lived. So he's alive. No, he did okay. Yeah, he did. You know, he laid off a bunch of people and reset and lost a year and a half of his life, but, you know, he's okay.

What do you think is going to happen on a global basis? You obviously took a bet ongoing global. You have this very strong network effect here in Silicon Valley, but the network effect in New York, Austin, Boulder, these are also very strong network effects now. Do we think that the pandemic winds up being the breaking point at which Silicon Valley, as an operating center, system as a mindset now, it's just not contained to this region anymore? Well, I mean, I think that was underway already. And I think that this is an accelerant. You know, the way I describe it as entrepreneurship is a gene and you're born with

it or you're not. And you might not discover it right away. You know, you might, yes, maybe you have a, you know, lemonade stand when you're six years old or you discover it when you're in college like me or you wait till you're 65, like Colonel Sanders, who started Kentucky Fried Chicken, you know, because he couldn't live off his retirement check. But I think that's a global phenomenon. And it doesn't matter if you are born into Silicon Valley or the United States or Bangalore or Singapore or the Philippines, all of which, you know, are places that I've been to. And, you know, TechStars has been a bit, become a bit

of a magnet for entrepreneurship. And like everywhere I go, it doesn't matter the color of your skin or your political sort of situation. You live in a dictatorship. We see our people there. They come out from the woodwork and they're starting businesses and they're solving problems that for India, for Singapore, for Asia that aren't problems here. Like nobody, no entrepreneur in Silicon Valley is going to solve their problems because they don't understand those problems. And so I think investors, entrepreneurs, entrepreneurship in general is a global phenomenon that happened to get started in Silicon Valley, but will eventually level out. And because that ability is everywhere in the world, even if opportunity isn't.

And when you look across the globe, we have a bit of an anti-capitalism, a bit of, you know, socialist movement here in the United States or democratic socialism, however people want to really phrase it. But entrepreneurship here is, let's face it, it's not looked at the same. It's strong, but it's not looked at the same way it was just 10 years ago. Oh, yeah. There are challenges there, right? Where in the world is entrepreneurship, vibrant, and feels like maybe the United States did 10 or 20 years ago where people are just in absolute support of people being successful and building new things?

Where do you see that most? You know, to name one place, India. India. Right. The entrepreneur spirit is just describing it. Oh, my goodness. What's it like? Well, you know, I can't remember the stats, but it's something like, first of all, a million engineers a year graduate from schools in India.

And you go to India and you go watch a pitch competition and the depth of the tech is unbelievable. Now, often, you know, it's in search of a business model or a company right behind it. but I think that's a lot easier to help with and mentor than the other way around. Like you've got a really good business idea, but you don't have a mode at all or you don't have any tech capability. That's a lot harder to defend. But everybody in India wants to get ahead, wants to work 18 hours a day, right? wants to figure out how to conquer the world,

create a startup, make a dent in the universe. You know, we want to watch Netflix and chill. Yeah, why is it suddenly people are like, hustle is a bad thing? I mean, if people want to spend 12 hours a day or 15 hours a day building something that changes the world, isn't that something we should laud? And isn't that aspirational and beautiful?

How did that become a negative thing in the United States? It's so bizarre to me. You know, I remember I read it a long time ago, but the world is flat. Thomas Friedman, great book, right? And he talked about traveling with Bill Gates in China, I think it was. And, you know, how Bill Gates had people like hanging from the rafters to on every word that he, and the line in the book was it was like he was Britney Spears, right, who was big at the time. And then Thomas Friedman's line was, you know, in China, Bill Gates is Britney Spears.

And in the U.S., Britney Spears is Britney Spears, right? And that's our problem, right? Yeah. We've gotten soft. But, you know, in developing countries, people want to make a better life for themselves. They want to provide for their children or their aging parents or themselves and their families. And they're eager to create upward mobility. What do you see in Europe?

I'm curious. It's so pronounced the entrepreneurial spirit in Asia. Southeast Asia, India, even Australia to me is just amazing. I've spent a lot of time there in the last couple of years, and man, the entrepreneurial spirit there is phenomenal. What's going on in Europe?

I see the Nordics doing pretty well. Germany seems active, but haven't seen, you know, a ton of companies coming out of that region. I think it's emerging. Like Berlin is a hopping startup scene, right? Berlin, if you haven't been, is very cool place to go.

It's inexpensive, of very, very strong entrepreneurial ecosystem. You know, we see the same in Scandinavia. For sure. London is great. And, you know, different countries have their problems. Often there's too much regulation. Often it's too difficult to get a startup going or even open a bank account.

But the conversation that you hear is it's getting better. And to me, that's sort of the signal of what's coming. Yeah. Hey, you guys have been, were you and David co-ceos or are you still co-ceeos? How do you say, or does it even matter? David seems to be the front man and you seem to be the person who does all the work. I'm joking, I'm joking, David. We share a brain is how some people describe it.

We were co-CEOs for a while. Yeah. I run the business. He dropped the co-CEO title. it doesn't really matter in real life. The way to think about it is we share a brain. We share an office, right? We talk every day, even in these crazy times.

We've played around with external titles. It's only an external thing. Sorry, we've played around with our titles. It's an external thing because people want to know what's the dynamic, but it doesn't matter what our titles are. We treat each other the same way. We always have. I saw that Silicon Valley Bank invested, or some group of people invested $40 million

in the business of providing accelerators. In tech stars? No. Take of it as tech stars. It's all one tech stars. It's all one tech stars. So there's funds in tech stars like a venture fund. And then there is a for-profit business of providing accelerators to corporations.

Explain that business and what Silicon Valley is investing. investing in the funds to make investments or are they investing in the core business to own part of it? Because this is fascinating to me. I've never seen anybody. I don't know the ownership structure of YC. I assume Paul Graham just owns it. I don't know. I have not yet. I don't know. I know there are funds, but I'm assuming he owns the mothership. I own launch. So how does that work now? Now you have ownership in tech stars. Yep. There's ownership in tech stars. David and I own, you know, obviously a good chunk between us and Foundry has invested. as well, and now Silicon Valley Bank invested as part of our series B.

And we're a real business with 300 employees. We're profitable, see what happens now, but we've been profitable, I think, virtually every single year since we've been incorporated. And how do we make money? We make investments, right? Which could be carry from investment funds, but it's also direct investments in some of our corporate programs. We have revenue from corporate partners that we do things with. We have sponsorships, things like that. But fundamentally, we are an investing company.

Do you see that going public at some point? I mean, that is typically the outcome. I mean, we haven't seen that since Idealab. Did the Idealab go public? No, I don't know. just raised a billion dollars, a $10 billion back in the day. So, I mean, that does seem like a public Ycombinator, a public tech stars would be in inevitability.

Is that, how do you think about that? I wouldn't use that strong, a possibility would be a term I could use. You know, I don't, you know, we're not,

we're not desperate to raise funds on the public markets because we're well capitalized and profitable. We're also enjoying very much what we're doing. but certainly what would being public provide if you were public

because nobody's ever made one of these things public would it create like an evergreen funding mechanism yeah I think that's what it would do exactly

so that you could use the public capital markets to fund ongoing investments that is such an amazing vision if you think about it and I mean LPs would then it's very interesting

because if your LPs were endowments, etc. They have a public market investment team and they have a private market investment team. So now you would have a 15-year relationship with this endowment's private market. Now you're public, they get to just buy the stock or you just issue like a secondary every now

and then raise a billion, put a billion to work. Raise a billion, put a billion to work. It's a credible vision. It's a complicated story though. So it's certainly not something that's on the near term. Has it ever been done? before?

I don't know any, no. There were incubators. I don't know what the right comp is. Remember internet capital group? Was that the name of the one back in Web 1.0? And Vertical Net. There were some kind of,

but it was more of the startup studio model where you make the companies. You guys have that as well. Does a startup studio model work? I think, you know, it's early. We're investors in Pioneer Square Labs, for example.

And startup studios, high alpha as well. We're close to those guys. And, you know, currently what we do is if there are ideas that come in through our network, we have an arrangement, you know, where we can spin those out and do a startup studio. We don't run a separate studio of our own. You know, we've always, you know, it's a great idea. There are great, there are big companies that have huge ideas. that are too small for them to be able to fund.

All right. Well, listen, you've been very generous with your time, continued success, and for anybody out there, you know, TechStars is just as good as it gets in the startup world, and you can't go wrong. Visit any of their cities. Go to TechStars.com. And congratulations on SendGrid. I know that was a big one for you guys.

That's the biggest, right? Yeah, we've had some, yeah, we have, I think, seven, seven unicorns. Wow. Amazing. Yeah, in the portfolio. Pillpack was a great, you know, success story for us. Yeah, Amazon bought that.

I passed on that one and I met them and I was just like, is this a thing? Like putting a bunch of different pills in a packet, is that a thing? And I don't take pills so I didn't know. And it was just like one of these blind spots, but it is a thing. But like TJ, the founder, right? Like his parents were pharmacists, right? and so he knew what he was doing. And I think he incorporated his company

on the day he came into TechStars. He went through the Boston program. Wow, amazing. All right, listen, continued success. Thanks for coming on the pod. Stay safe. And if you're out there and you're looking for a job, I know TechStars is hiring.

And if you're looking for an accelerator, honestly, as good as my accelerator is, as good as why Combinators is, I'll say that, you know, as I always tell people, you can't go wrong with those three names. And I always tell people, do too.

I mean, people, At some point, Sam Wombe was like, I don't know if I like this idea of like accelerator hopping. And I was like, I, that's like telling people like you couldn't get into Harvard or something so you shouldn't go to Brooklyn College or Baruch and then, you know, transfer after two years or go for your graduate degree. Like go to a,

I mean, even the regional programs that aren't tech stars, Ycombinator or launch, like go to, there's no downside to starting a great company. No bad time for a great company. Why not grow? your network, right?

Grow your network. And I have people come from accelerators that took 10% for 25K, provided very little value, and they still go on to do great things. And I'm like, yeah, okay, maybe it wasn't the most optimal decision, but you're going to make a bunch of decisions in the life of your company. Some will be suboptimal. Some will be extraordinarily dynamic decisions that benefit, that you get more benefit than the people on the other side of the table.

That's just the nature of business. Exactly. economically, though, if you're going to go to multiple accelerators, come to launch your tech stars last. Yes. Get those. Yes, we don't want you to dilute us. Exactly. We're the graduate schools in this.

Please, come and let us get credit for you. But I always tell people like, you know, like, do I suggest you go to six? Like, no. I have seen people come to us after four or five. And I'm like, what's up here? Like, are you just a professional graduate degree getter? You know, like there are some people in the world who have four graduate degrees. and like, okay, that's interesting.

You really like being in college. Yeah, I mean, if you're using it as a fundraising mechanism because you can't fundraise any other way, then, you know, that's a problem. That's what it tells me when you've been to six, right? Yeah. You couldn't get any investors. The filling of seats was always a problem I had.

I know, you know, I wouldn't name the accelerator, but another accelerator that was high profile for a time and isn't as much now. like they were just filling seats and I would like go and I'd be like they would be just desperately trying to fill seats and I was like I told my team if we have seven extraordinary companies then we launch the cohort if we do not have seven insurance companies I only have four push it back a month and we'll start a month later and I'll start working with the companies now but I don't ever want to fire off a cohort where I am not all in on all seven companies you know like it's just better to

wait a little bit you know it's better to wait I totally agree it's okay it's awesome Great to see you, Jason. Great to see you, brother. Stay safe, okay. Can't wait to break red with you again and go to Boulder and we'll hit the kitchen and see Kimball. All right. I want to come to your house again.

Yeah, come by. I'll have a barbecue. See everybody soon. Bye.