This Week in Startups - Harlem Capital’s Henri Pierre-Jacques on funding underrepresented founders, insights from raising first fund & getting Apple as an LP, Black culture’s impact on social apps | E1183

Episode Date: March 10, 2021

Check out Harlem Capital: https://harlem.capital FOLLOW Henri: https://twitter.com/hpierrejacques FOLLOW Jason: https://linktr.ee/calacanis

This week in startups is brought to you by LinkedIn Jobs. A business is only as strong as its people, and every hire matters. Post your first job for free at LinkedIn.com slash twist. Mbroker. The Embroker Startup Insurance Program helps startups secure the most important types of insurance at a lower cost and with less hassle. Save up to 20% off of traditional insurance today at Embroker. broker.com slash twist. While you're there, get an extra 10% off by using offer code twist and user testing, real time video feedback real fast from wherever you work. User testing, real human insights. Try user testing free today at usertesting.com slash twist. Hey, everybody, welcome to this weekend startups today on the show. We're going to talk about an issue? Well, let's face it, it's kind of hard for a lot of people to talk about how we allocate

dollars in Silicon Valley, how we capital allocators pick who gets money, who gets a shot to follow their dreams, and let's face it, race, gender, these things are all at play. And I've never seen a change like I've seen in the last 10 years of our industry. The back channel I get, can you please find me, Jason, you know, you do early stage, can you find me a female founder? Can you find me a person of color to invest? in, this is what I hear from downstream VCs, or can you help us get a partner? They were scared to death over the last 10 years that the statistics would come out in our industry about how few people of color, women were actually making investment decisions. And there was a lot of

shenanigans going on over the last 10 years. People would hire a PR person and then call them a partner. But they had no investment decisions and they didn't get any of the level of compensation. Then they would hire a couple of associates who were put them into a group of scouts and then claim those for diversity statistics. And then that kind of got found out. And then something really magical happened, which is people who were not getting a shot as capital allocators started their own firms. Women, people of color. And this has greatly changed the industry. It has been a two to 10x change based on what I've seen. The problem is we were starting from close to zero. So 2 to 10x still means the numbers, the statistics, the metrics are just brutally low for people of color, women, non-traditional founders getting funded.

And so we're going to talk about it today. And we're going to talk about it with somebody who has actually decided to do their own fund. His name is Henri Pierre Jacques. Did I get it correct? My high school French, did it work out okay? It works. Perfect. And you are the co-founder and managing partner of Harlem Capital from 2015 to now.

But you've had a pretty great year. And I kept seeing your name come up. And I saw that Apple committed $10 million to your, I think, 100. You have your firm's $40 million, $50 million in the fund? Yeah, $40 million. So they came in as either an anchor or came over the top to help you with that fund. and they've made a commitment to try to make this change, which I thought was just stunning because Apple doesn't do anything in venture capital.

They've never done this based on what I know. They may have done it secretly, but I've never seen them be an LP in a venture fund. Is this a first for them? To my knowledge, yes. Yeah. So congratulations. Thanks for coming on the program.

And tell me, how did that go down? Yeah. So I won't name the gift specifically for the names, but one of my HBS classmates who was at dorm room front, now he's a partner in Indrisen, introduced us to somebody at his firm last summer. And that person had contacts high up at Apple. And so when Apple kind of had talked to them and said, hey, we're looking to potentially invest in a fund of color. We think this is a good strategy for us. their corp dev team kind of ran that process. That person brought us up as,

hey, we think that they are really uniquely positioned and they were talking to a few funds. So we started talking to them early last fall and we're fortunate after we went through the process that they chose us to be the fund that they partnered with. It's been a great partnership. I mean, it was obviously a capital investment, but we've already done a bunch of stuff

where they're helping some of our companies that have apps and app store. You know, how do you kind of improve it? How do you get more better growth, better ratings? we're helping them on their side. They launch a platform for people of color who want to become coders. And so like last week we had a conversation with them once you actually develop your app as a coder like, what is the fundraising process like from the VC side?

And so there's a lot of mutual benefits. And both of us are, you know, early in the relationship, but excited to build more together over time. What's the mission of the fund? Is it specifically to back people of color, women, underrepresented or underestimated founders of her both terms be used? I'm not sure which one you prefer. Or are you just a black-owned venture firm? No, so our mission is to change the face of entrepreneurship over the next 20 years by investing in a thousand diverse founders. So, you know, diversity for us, like at its core

is black, Latino men and women of all races. Like we think those three groups roughly based off our research, which is probably the most that we've seen in the market, four percent of funding goes to those three groups and those three groups on a dollar basis correct yeah yeah on a dollar basis right and those in those three groups represent 70% of the population and so you know broadly speaking like we were like hey there's alpha here this is clearly not a meritocracy um like we think that this should not be the case and over time you know the next 10 20 30 years that 70% of the population is only going to grow particularly for Latinos which are the fastest growing group in the country and so white women, Asians, Indians, don't fall into that.

They're overrepresented in the numbers, in fact. Well, women of all races. Oh, women of all races, okay? And so, but Indian and Asian specifically left out of that because they're overrepresented in terms of funding today. Correct. So, like, we're not, like, we have less of, like, an exclusionary lens where we, we never say, like, we won't invest in, uh, non, like, diverse founders.

Like, we've actually made two investments into, one was a Jewish-Russian male and one was an Indian male who was one of my friends from school. Like, if we have relationships with non-core founders, like, that was one of the first questions some of our LPs asked. Like, if you happen to know Zuckerberg and he starts another company, you're going to not invest, like, we can't. That was what you cut me off at the past because that's what I was going to bring up is like you went to HBS. And what if one of your like classmates who's just going to crush it is like, hey, listen, I got, I'm a white Jewish guy. Can I? Yeah. Are you to pass?

We're not going to pass. We're not exclusively going to, like, we're not going to invest in non-core founders where we view as non-core founders just because we think they have great businesses. Like, we exist because of what our mission is. And if we happen to know people who are in the majority groups, like, then we'll make those investments. But of our portfolio, 90% of our portfolio is black, Latino women. 43% of our portfolio was women only led.

So like that's like, that's really what we strive to do. how hard was it for you to clear market with this mission with the top LPs in the world? Because although you have Apple, that is a first time, and it's part of their racial equity and justice, you know, um, initiative. I'm curious when you bring something like this to, you know, the big endowments or the fund of funds, did they take the meeting with you? Did they say yes? Did they say they want to wait and your third fund, you know, like they told me, well, we'd like to see you get two funds. And they were like, we'd like to see you have three funds. Now I'm going to talk to when I'm my fourth fund. I mean, and I'm a white guy. Like, they said no to me. So I'm just wondering,

like, and they had problems with my early stage strategy. I'm wondering what those meetings were like. Did they take them? And how did when they said no, what was the reasons they gave you? Yeah, I mean, you never truly know the real reasons, right? When people tell you know, Same is true for founders and VCs. Sure. I mean, so we were fortunate, right? Fund one, we had six institutions in the fund. The publicly disclosed ones are TBG, State of Michigan, Weinberg Foundation, Kellogg Foundation, Vanderbilt.

Those are legit. A lot of those said no to me. And those are, that first fund was how big? First one was $40 million. Oh, okay. And this is the second or third that were? The Apple one. So not, you know, Apple was an investment.

We can't say for which fund it's for. Okay, no problem. But yeah, so like, so we were very fortunate there. I mean, I think three years, I mean, when we started the fund, we launched the fund June of 18. So, J.R. and I were remates at Harvard Business School between our first and second year business school, which was June of 18, instead of taking an internship, we went to New York and we said, hey, we're going to raise a fund, not fully knowing what that really meant. So when we first started like that summer, we raised $3 million.

We came back to campus, right, hey, we had a good summer, but we got to start with recruiting for jobs because $60,000 of management fees is not going to cut it. So we actually started recruiting when we got back to campus. And then we got our first million dollar check from a titan of the industry, one of the creators of private equity. And that for us was, okay, like if this person is to give us a million dollars, like we got to just like take the risk, like that million was worth 10 million. And so even though we only went from three to four million, like September of 18 when we

got back to campus our second year, we stopped recruiting and we said we're going all in. So we did our first close of $2 million, November of 18, and we knew like that was a huge risk because people were like, you want to raise $25 million, your first close should be at least $7.5, 30% of the fund. And we're like, hey, but we want to do deals. Like we want to like show people we can lead, get board seats, et cetera. And we had two deals that were ready. And so we closed our first deal the next month.

And we led the deal and we had a board seat. And so like that second year of business school, we raised $12.5 million in school. TBG came in as our anchor investor, that was a huge signal. And then once we graduated, then we raised $28 million in six months. Like, it was not linear. But having TBG, they publicly announced it the month after we graduated. They did a bunch of reference calls for us. They made introductions to some of the institutions that ended up coming in.

And like our view was, you know, having a brand institution, like, would do a lot of work for us. And it would be that signal point. And when we looked at who our mentors were, you know, we worked at ICB, which is the, the fifth largest black owned private equity firm, they started at American Securities, which is the JCPenney family office. If you look at Robert Smith, like he got his first billion from a large high net worth. So a lot of the top managers of color, like got backed by somebody to start. And that was very clear to us. And so TBG for us, like, was that first backing, that stamp of approval to ensure that we could raise a larger fund than we thought we could buy ourselves.

So you raised the fund while at HBS? 12 and a half of it. And then we raised up in 20. once we graduated. And HPS is a pretty serious course load. Like, that's pretty intense. Yeah. It was Monday to Wednesday. We had class.

So, Jerry and I were in every class together. We both were married to our wives lived in New York. So Monday to Wednesday, we had class. And Wednesday night took the Amtrak to New York. And then Thursday, Friday, we fundraise. And the weekend we spent one of our wives. Excella, get that quick excella. I've been on that route.

All right. When we get back from this break, you heard my introduction. I said, I've never seen a turnaround. like this and the amount of energy being put into it. And I'm wondering if you think we're making progress, dramatic progress, or not enough progress in terms of our industry and diversity when we get back from this quick break. The new year is here and that marks a fresh start for your small business. We're hiring a bunch of people out launch in 2021. We need a second producer, a third video editor, a community manager, operations people, and more. Things are going gangbusters

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T-W-I-S-T for a free job posting right now. Terms and conditions, of course, apply. Welcome back, everybody. We're here with Henri Pierre Jacques. And he is the co-founder of Harlem, Harlem Capital. and he raised his first fund while in school, getting his MBA at HBS. That's Harvard Business School, for those of you who don't know the acronym, you can visit their website, Harlem. Capital.

You heard my introduction. I've been amazed to watch this turnaround. I'm pretty candid about what people tell me in private. I won't put their names on it. But man, people were scared that they were going to get called out and somebody was going to take a screenshot of their team page. So there was like this real fear. of like, oh no, our firm is all white guys from Stanford.

We need to get some diversity on this team page. And as I mentioned, a little bit of like what I'll call like putting a facade on it or, you know, window dressing. We're going to add a PR person and then call them a managing partner and a little bit of shenanigans there. Or we're going to put a scouts program together and do our diversity with people who aren't even on the payroll. That would be the cynical take on it.

I guess the generous take would be, well, it's some amount of change and people are aware of it. What's your take on where we're at now? Do you think the industry is specifically excluding people or just has had a blind spot to it? And do you think we're making a ton of progress or not? And maybe I'm being too charitable. But I just see a lot of progress being made. And it seems to have switched from that like fear base. We're going to get called out to, hey, there's a opportunity here. And actually, this is like a better way to operate businesses to have more diverse people at the table because there's a huge opportunity. And let's face it, black culture, which is American culture, which is what drives a lot of these new platforms. Yeah, I find the,

the team pages, either people do black and white so you can't tell color. Everybody's an investor, so you don't know rank or everybody's a partner so you don't know who true partners are. So I think those are definitely interesting. I mean, I think obviously, like similar to pre-COVID post-COVID, there is definitely a pre- and post-George Floyd world. I think it's a, you know, the fact that it was at the time where it wasn't a post-COVID world was like a double acceleration of what was happening. I remember, you know, being here in New York had not really gone outside until the protests for George Floyd. And, you know, we were pretty, pretty cautious. And at that point, it was like we're surrounding our touch with thousands of people, but we felt like it was worth the risk.

And so I think there was a huge moment that happened there. I do think it's a reckoning and a social justice eye-opening for people. I'm still costly optimistic. Like, I always tell people whether it be, you know, corporations like publicly, whether it be Apple or PayPal, Bank of America, they've all invested in us. Like, so we've had a number of conversations with tons of corporations, C-Sweets, and number of organizations. Like, I always tell them, I'm very frank and transparent.

Like, I want to see if you're around in two to three years. Like, it's very easy to deploy $100, $200 million. I mean, these companies have billions on the balance sheet. So in the day, it's pretty, it's chump change, what I call it. Like, is it meaningful to the asset class and to, you know, historical levels for people of color? Yes. But, like, you know, we come from private equity.

That's kind of what we grew up in in investment banking. These are like people's salaries, like for some firms, right? And so it's all relative, right? Like, is it a lot of money? Yes, but relative. It's still small. And there's a lot more work to be done. And are you going to be around to support people?

And we had these conversations. like if you're going to invest in this fund, like we need you to be around the next fund, right? Because we can't go and try to fill the hole because you were trying to do, you know, some $10 million stamp in the last fund. And so, like, we always ask the question, like, what's your long-term goal? Like, are you reinvesting the care you make from investing these funds back into it because it doesn't really matter for your balance sheet anyway? Like, what are you doing, like, outside of the capital from a partnership perspective

to make sure these funds can be successful? And that's like where I focus. I think it's great to start. You know, we are very fortunate that we already had our first fund. We had a lot of these relationships to make it, but I still see a lot of first-time managers of color, especially in a post-COVID Zoom world, like where it's tough. And it's really hard if you don't have. Like, you know, we were very lucky that our classmate, was it Andreessen,

knew somebody who introduced us to Apple. Like, you have to have been in those rooms. And like, we happened to go to HBS, which was a big reason we chose it. 40% of venture capital come from HBS or Stanford. And so, like, we're very thoughtful around that. but we also understand, like, everybody's not us. And like, although we are men of color, like, we are men of color who went to Harvard Business School

and worked in private equity and investment banking. Like, like, we are elite to some extent within our own group. And so we have to make sure, like, we have the right framework. And like, how do we continue to help others who are smart, who don't happen to have the same background as us? It's very interesting. Like, even though you went to HBS and you worked in private equity, do you think you could have gotten a,

a partner level position or even like a managing director level position coming out of HBS and coming from private equity? Did you have that opportunity? Do you feel you needed to start your own fund? I literally talk about this because when we first started recruiting that first month back after the summer, I was like, I don't even know if I'm going to get like a role, right? Especially I, so I was recruiting for venture capital and Jerry was recruiting for private equity. So I wanted to switch groups. And like we had never worked. I didn't intern in VC. I was fundraising that summer. And so all my prior experience was investment banking and private equity. And you've got a bunch of people at HBS who already worked in VC or were at startups or were founders and they're much

more interesting to funds. And I think the interesting story, so we had publicly, we had a partnership with KKR and a number of the C Suite partners from KKR invested in us. And Jared recruited for KKR. Did not, he got to the final round, our first year summer, didn't get the offer. And that's like, that was his dream job. And so like that was literally the week. We were roommates. We were in the kitchen. We had just gotten our first article in Black Enterprise, which was like our first big

article. And I was like, hey, we got this first article. Clearly this something. I had applied for a fellowship from HBS to have them fund me to raise the fun. I just gotten it. And I said, hey, you didn't get KKR. I got this fellowship. We have a Black Enterprise article.

Like, let's just like do it. Like, I need you with me this summer. We need to raise together. It can't be like you interning and me fundraising. And he was like, all right. I didn't get it, like, let's do it. And then, you know, so that's before. And then, you know, six months later, eight of the KKR partners were pitching at Nine West

Facing Central Park and eight of the partners from KKR came in investing in the fund. Two months later, we created the KKR partnership for our talent side where we've had 5,000 interns applied to our program and we've hired 60. And now we have a formal partnership of KKR where our interns get faster out through KKR's program and two of our interns got hired in KKR's first analyst program. And so like that to me was. the perfect example of like what is wrong with the like the ecosystem like you could not give somebody an offer and then your founding partners will invest in the fund and then you'll take our

interns to work for you full time once like we have a relationship like that kind of shows like the huge flaws that exist in the system which is why I was like I don't think this is going to work like I don't want to go through this process of like trying to prove myself like my goal is to never ever touch my resume ever again yeah I mean this was the thing you know, in talking to a group that was excluded, you know, and has started to get included, which was women as a broad category in venture. A lot of women I spoke to just said, you know, it's easier, Jason, for me to just start a seed fund than to try to wait in line to maybe in 10 years or 20 years get a partner

slot. So I'm just going to start my own fund. What are your thoughts on this sort of what I'll call, it seems to be a very important. me very strange that it took the murder of George Floyd being videotaped for people to realize this change needed to happen. It's a very, it's very strange to me. And I'm curious just as a black man, like obviously seeing somebody murdered that way by the cops, it's just horrific. But also, it just seems like a very weird, that it took that for the business community to realize that we had to make a change. When you're having conversations with other black men or black men in the industry,

how do people reconcile that? It's about time. Yeah. I mean, it's hard, right? Because like, this is nothing new. Like, we've seen this on video before. I think the length of it made it kind of more exacerbated. And I think the moment of post-COVID and people were just emotional and home like accelerated that but like like we've seen this happen tons of times and you know whether it's Ferguson or in New York like it's happened yeah Rodney King like so I think that that was interesting like okay like interesting that this happened now um and I think for us like as the minority it's kind of like you're just like I'm glad that people are recognizing I'm you know I'm glad I had more conversations last summer with allies or non-minorities about

out this topic than I've had in my entire life combined, right? Like people reaching out like, hey, I'd love to hear your point of view, who I never even thought would want to have those conversations. And so I think it really did touch people in a different way. And it targets, like, put what led to that emotion. I'm glad it happened. But, you know, why I said I was costly optimistic before, like, the same thing happened for the Me Too movement.

I remember marching in New York during the Women's March. And every city had it the same day. It was like millions of people marching during the women's march. And then, you know, last year, I think we went back. to like whatever it was, 2013 or 2014, from a percentage of VC capital for women, right? So it's like, it kind of shifted like, okay, we had the Me Too moment for two, three years. Now we're going to focus on the black people. Like there was an immigrant moment a few years ago as well.

And so you kind of feel like there's only like one issue America wants to solve at a given time. And, you know, whether it's the trend of like all lives matter. Like it's not about like comparing tragedies, right? It's like, can we try to solve multiple tragedies at once? And oftentimes it feels like as a country, we can't do that. And so I don't know what the next tragedy is going to be, but at some point when that tragedy happens, my like gut is that like this tragedy of George Floyd and Black Lives will fade. Yeah, that's an interesting perspective, that it takes a tragedy for people to sort of take it in

for a minute and let's face it, believe black men that they're being pulled over by cops and treated differently than white guys. I mean, it's extremely apparent to me as a white guy who's been pulled over for speeding. And out of maybe the six or maybe seven times I've been pulled over speeding, I've got to take it like once. And like every other time, you know, I just got a warning. And I'm driving exceedingly fast when I was younger and did stupid things like that. And if you had done the same thing, it probably would have been a different outcome, right? I mean, it should be obvious to everybody.

But when is the change going to happen? When we get back for this quick break, I want to talk about. I want to talk about that specific All Lives Matter moment, which I'll be candid. I think I failed it initially. I want to talk about that and maybe how I was able to see through my own failure in the All Lives Matter, Blue Lives Matter, Black Lives Matter syntax. And then I want to talk about the founders themselves and how people of color, women, people who are underrepresented, get treated when they come talk to VCs and investors versus there are white counterparts.

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And while you're there, you're going to get an extra 10% off using the offer code. You know it. Twist. T-W-I-S-T. Welcome back to this week in startups. Henri. I just love saying Henri. I know.

I took French for like two or three years and I remember nothing, but I still love France. this is really interesting the the black lives matter moment and the all lives matter i felt like this was and defund the police these moments in time where things become phrases or catchphrases or you know they trend on twitter and the first time i heard it was like well yeah black lives matter of course but don't all lives matter and then i didn't realize that there was at the end of that Black Lives Matter, too. You know, like, they also matter. We know all lives matter, but, like, there's some injustice going on here.

It takes a minute for a person to understand some of these. And I think, I'm not sure how you feel about defund the police as a rally and cry as well. Also, maybe imperfect, but also kind of like a raw shock test in a way. I know for me, like, you know, having friends who I talked about this issue, why I had a blind spot on it. What do you think about the phrases we use and how people react to them and sort of creating space for people to have real conversations about this? I'm curious.

Yeah. I mean, it's very hard because, I mean, the country, I'm only 29, but even for what I've seen in my 29 years, like, the country is more polarized and I was just home in Detroit for seven months. And so I talked to my grandfather multiple times and, you know, he's much older than me. Like, the country is just so polarized. Like, it's even almost more polarized in the civil rights era from what he's told me. And he's the founder of the Black Social Worker Network.

And so I think it's really hard to have those conversations when you're on opposite ends. And, you know, in terms of like the All Lives versus Black Lives, it goes back to the point of like one tragedy does not take away from another tragedy. I think people always want to feel like they, you know, they overcame something. Regardless if you were privileged or whatever, maybe like you were not born, like you couldn't decide where you were born. You still had problems. you may have been rich, but maybe your parents weren't there. Maybe you got abused, like, whatever it may be. Like, everybody wants to feel like they overcame something.

Like, they kind of wore that story, and they don't want that to be taken away from them. Right. It's the classic, when you're in high school, like, you want to write that sob story, but you need to just write your own story. Right. And same for business school. And so I think that, like, I think it feels like people are getting attacked, right? And the core attack would be, like, white privilege, right?

I felt like Emmanuel Ocho, like, put it really well where he said white privilege. doesn't mean that you don't have issues or problems. It means that your problems aren't the results of your skin. And like that is the core difference. Like your issue, like you may have issues. You may be poor. You may be where it is. But like the result is not because of your race.

It's not because of your gender. It's not because you're not American. You're an immigrant. It's not because you're Muslim. Like that is the core thing. It's like we're not saying that you don't have issues. But it's like why those issues exist. It's because of your religion.

It's because of your sexuality. And I think that's where people get at loss. is like it feels as if you're telling me I don't have problems. But the thing is, I'm telling you you don't have problems because of such and such. That's such a good explanation because that is exactly the blind spot I had that my wife and another friend of hers were like, you don't understand your blind spot. And I was like, what are you talking about? I came from Brooklyn. My dad's a bartender. My mom's a nurse. I paid my way through school at night. I was an outsider. I didn't go to HBS. I couldn't get into a good school. I had to take five years of

night school, working as a bar back, carrying ice up from the basement. I had to struggle. And I'm like, yeah, but is there anybody else who struggled more? And to your point, did you struggle because you came from a modest background or did you struggle because your skin tone or your sexual preference, right? And that's a really different existence, right? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's hard to comprehend, right? Because you can't understand the other person's journey. Like, you know, people love that though the word empathy out there. And, to some extent you can only empathize so much. But like in the day, like you don't know, it's like doing like a test where if you had two people

and like you want to try to test it out and they do as many studies as they can, whether it be, you know, resumes with names, etc. But it's still for a personal perspective, it's really hard to like understand that difference of journey. And now in this polarized world, like you, you know, whether you were Democrat or Republican, like you may not have known many people from another party, whether you live in a certain in the country, like, you may not know people of color or you may not see women in certain roles. And so, like, there is this huge separation that we're seeing geographically and

culturally and economically where, like, you don't even have the opportunities to gain the empathy you would need to feel that way. Because when you're in New York, like, nobody thought Clinton was losing. Like, because you didn't know many people who weren't voting for Clinton. And so you're just shocked. And you know, like, how is this even possible? Right. Right. And so it's really hard to comprehend because all you know around you is, you know, six, you know, successful, higher income, you know, liberal people. Yeah, it's like, yeah, it's all coastal elites. And you just can't imagine anybody voting for Trump.

I still can't imagine anybody voting for Trump just based on his inability to run any kind of a successful business or project. I just, I'm appalled by him, not just for all the racist, crazy stuff, but just also his inability to actually have a work ethic or any kind of reasonable work product. Let's talk a little bit about black culture. Black culture's impact on growing various businesses. Instagram, clearly, black culture drove that business. And then Twitter, Twitter so much that they had to like figure out how to deal with black Twitter's taking over trending topics, which is I got the interesting backstory on early on in Twitter.

Clubhouse. But then now we have Clubhouse. and Clubhouse seems to have specifically embraced, curated relationships with black influencers to build a platform owned by two white guys, funded by two white guys that became worth a billion dollars

in the fastest time in the history of Silicon Valley and black people built it. It's pretty clear. I mean, going on to Clubhouse was just an amazing array of the, you know, of black excellence, period. Like, just incredible from sports to arts to business, everything. And how do you feel about that?

How does the black community feel about that? Because there were people who might have been black founders who didn't get funded. And really, there seems to be a very little correlation between the performance of Clubhouse and the valuation. Yeah. Yeah, there's been a lot of, a lot of discussions about this. on Clubhouse and email threads that I'm on. I think the people are pretty split.

I think the fact they allowed some people of color to invest in a business was like, some people felt like, hey, that was a good start. And, you know, Chris Lyons over there runs a culture fund. And so people like that some people of color were directly or indirectly invested to the company. Obviously, it's very different than you having founder equity. I think ultimately what I've seen from most of the debates is, Like, are you going to not use the platform because it's not run by a person of color? Or if we have this issue, like who on this thread or who on this group is going to create that platform for us to go use, right?

And, you know, some people have already created it. It hasn't kicked off as much because you don't have the Andreessen back and you don't get the celebrity pool that they were able to bring on to the platform. So it's hard because it's not just about the product. Like, the product is actually pretty basic. It's more about, like, who really have on the users? and when you can get Elon and others that come on your platform, like that's, you know, Bill Gates was a great talk two weeks ago. Like, that's a huge leg up.

And so I do think. Kevin Hart, people forget was the first. Yeah, Kevin Hart. That's the one that broke it. The first thing. Hattish has a ton of followers. And so I think, you know, to some extent, like this is an example of almost like perfect investor market fit.

Like I think there, you know, Indreason is the fund to have made this investment. And nobody has better prolonged culture. tier 1 v. season injuries in my opinion. And so I think like even if we had backed the black founder to create this, like which would have been the product, I don't know if we could have gotten the pull like that they could have gotten like it's not,

the product is simple. It's a very basic, simple products. Like you have to have overflow rooms because you can't have more than 5,000 people and it gets streamed on me too. I mean, listen, you could rebuild it in, you know, two weeks with three developers. In fact, there's five open source projects. I'm going through all of them because I'm going to back one of them

probably. So I think they'll just be an open source version. Anybody will be able to pop one of these up soon. But in a way, the fact that we're even having the discussion right now, to me, is progress. Because we didn't have this discussion about Instagram. Like I was there. I remember when Instagram was two people. I had Kevin on the show, you know, when he had two employees and they had just launched the product.

And that wasn't even something people would bring up. But now here we are having a discussion about, hey, equity participation, if we're going to build the platform. And really, if you think about the top 10 users on Instagram, people of color, artists, you know, LeBron, business people, I mean, Kim Kardashian. Kim Kardashian. Like, they could, I mean, these are absolutely wealthy folks. If they just partnered with you and were LPs in your fund and they invested in the next one and they just committed to getting on it, I don't know, once a week each, they would beat it.

Is that conversation happening? Because I know Jay-Z is very, you know, investing in a lot of things. Carmelo started a venture fund. I think people are starting on the investing side. I haven't heard as much on the, I mean, a lot of the celebrities are doing like partnerships with existing brands and they're getting like pretty significant equity stakes, 10, 20, even 30 percent sometimes, depending on how big they are. But the investing side is very clear.

whether it's Kevin Durant, Steph Curry, Nas, like people are, you know, Nas is probably going to beat Jay Z's quarter, this quarter when his stuff comes through. So, like, I think that has been really easy and clear because, like, to them, time is their best value. And investing dollars is very quick and easy and you can make a lot of money. I think the next phase will be, hey, like, do we want to start or incubate these companies? I mean, what I've seen is a lot of celebrities are partnering with other kind of, like, usually white guys who are already kind of veterans in space, they're using their name, they're both raising $100 to $200 million fund, whether that was Kobe's partner or Kevin Durant's

partner. Like that's kind of what I've seen. Carmelo's partner, yeah. Carmelo's partner. Like, let's just do it ourselves. Which is what LeBron did. Like, LeBron's like, I'm keeping this in-house. I've done this for all my career. It's going to be us. We don't need to partner with somebody from the outside. So, like, I think, I'm hoping that that happens more in the future, but I think we've largely seeing celebrities partner with existing institutions that they can trust. And it's unclear to me how much they're actually doing or if it's more of a loan my name, make a couple of decisions, but like the day to day probably is still going to be run by

that tier one person who you're partnering with. Yeah. When we get back for this quick break, let's talk about your early investments. And just what founders of color experience now raising their seed rounds? It's the hottest market I've ever seen. every venture firm I talk to says, can you please help us increase our diversity? So I'm curious what you see happening candidly

in these early stage meetings and if it's actually resulting in funding increasing or if there are two sets of standards for different founders who come from different backgrounds when we get back on this week's startups. Are you launching a new product? Are you developing a new prototype?

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Welcome back. Henri Pierre Jacques is here. Jacques, sorry, from Harlem Capital. Harlem. Dot Capital. He's H. Pierre Jacques on the Twitter. What are founders experiencing in 2021 when they go in and meet with venture firms? What is the candid feedback they get? One thing I heard was white venture capital saying, oh, you're so articulate.

That was such an articulate presentation. And as one founder told me, like, did you expect me to, like, be speaking in Ebony? Like, what is going on here? Like, why would you compliment me on speaking English? Weird stories like that? Or is it getting better? What are your thoughts? Yeah, the articulate one's definitely one we hear of a lot.

I mean, I think it's early days, right? I think 2020, like, we just released our diverse founder report two weeks ago. So we do it every year. We track black, Latino founders who've raised a million dollars or more. And this was this year's report was great growth. Like, number of founders, 14 unicorns. you know, 30 founders who raised $100 million plus. And so we're definitely seeing, I don't, like, the volume is going up slightly.

It's a smaller base. But like the late-stageness of those founders and the capital raise is definitely increasing. Like we're seeing 20, 30, 40 million dollar Series A's versus like when we started investing, like we were early investors in Blavity. Like when they raised a $6 million series A, like that was a big deal. You know, four years ago for a black woman founder to raise a six million series A was huge. Now you're seeing $30, $40 million. Right.

And so I think the volume and the stage is definitely changing. The numbers are increasing for sure, but on a small base, it's all relative. 2021 will be the year I think we, you know, we see whether or not it's sustained, right? Or is there a moment and you see a decline similar to what female founders saw last year? Like, that's what I'm looking for. The stories have definitely changed where people are willing to take, you know, the level of risk they were taking on other founders. Because before you kind of had to be perfect and where you were a technical founder, what school did you go to? you're like, now it's like, hey, like, I'm going to give the same level of risk that I gave

to somebody else for you as a woman or you as a person of color. We're definitely seeing that. More people are taking the call, taking the conversation. And so I think that's huge because it's the framing. It's not like you need to, like people always ask us, like, do you think that your fund is going to overperform? We're like, we're not promising that. Like, we're promising that people of color and women are just as good at founders.

I don't need to invest in them because I think they can do better than white men. I need to invest in them because I think they can be top. to your founders. And so I think oftentimes there's just like, why would I invest in you unless I think you're better than what I'm already looking at? And like, that is this huge barrier. And it's a mindset. I think that mindset is shifted where people are saying, like, I think I can get just as good of returns. The conversation needs to stop being that like women need to perform better. I distinctly see that. It was one female founder told me when I said like, you know, you're, you're kind of working yourself to death here. Like, are you going to burn out?

like, Jake, if I don't get this done, I'm never getting funded again. And I was like, that's not sure I'll find your shoes. You just don't understand what it's like to be a female founder.

I get one shot at this. If I fail, I'm not going to get funded again. I don't know if she's right or wrong. But look at NFL coaches. No black NFL coach that has been fired has ever been rehired. Oof. I didn't know that stuff.

It's not the same for white info coach. I mean, like it's definitely true. Like a lot of people feel a lot of people of color in particular in women too feel like you know, like failure is not an option. And when you fail, and especially the whole culture of like fail fast and there's nothing wrong with failure. Like that is a privilege statement. And so I think a lot of underrepresented people do know that like, like, will you have a second chance? Maybe. But the whole like if you fail fast, like you can start your second, third, fourth company. Like that

is not a guarantee for a lot of underrepresented people. And we've seen that happen in other industries for top people of color as well. the types of businesses being built in different communities can be different. And a lot of folks who are first-time founders don't understand even what venture scale is. And they might expect a venture capitalist to invest in something that's just not software. How do you think about that in terms of this? It seems to me some people are confounding like, you know, private equity-based businesses with venture-based businesses. is. What are your thoughts on that? Yeah, I mean, I think part of it, so, you know, we only do

enterprise consumer tech. So we generally like some sort of software. But I think part of it is you got to a point in venture where the old like SaaS software no longer was the case, right? People were funding Jucero, Casper, we work, like tons of companies that were clearly not VC venture companies and they were funded by tier one VCs worth hundreds of millions of dollars. And so the whole notion of like, hey, we're only investing in such and such, like went away five to 10 years ago. I mean, even, you know, even Allbirds. Like, it's a shoe company. Like, are they going to be successful?

It'll probably be a good exit. But like, it's a shoe company. Right. And so, like, I think that's really where people get confused is because people were saying some things. And then it was like, oh, but like for a white guy, like, we will do allbirds, Casper, we work, Ducero. Like, we'll make exceptions because of whatever reason where they went, who's in our network.

And so that like confused the market. And so essentially people were like, oh, well, anything can be venture funded. And that just wasn't true. It was like, you had to be a wide guy in the network. That was like the key thing. I think there was some like confusion there in terms of like the market was speaking wrong. And now I think because so many of those we works and caspers have not worked out well, like people are kind of going back to like what they originally were saying. But most, you know, most and part of the market also is saying if you are a startup and a startup just means you are a new business, people get a confused with like it means it's a tech.

Like, it has to be tech really. Like, most new businesses that start up are small businesses. I mean, majority of the U.S. economy, 80% of companies, I think, in the U.S. are SMBs. Right. And so, like, those are like startups. But because, like, most of the press coverage is like a startup in tech world, people think, oh, I'm starting a new business. If I'm going to get new capital for my new business, it has to be venture capital because, like, that's what new businesses do, right? There's no articles on S&B loans.

There's no sexy tech crunch articles. they're starting to be more rev share models. That's becoming more of a thing. But there's just not a lot of articles that talk about other financing options for new businesses. It's always about venture capital's backing new businesses. And that's 8,000 companies a year, right, when millions of companies are being created on an annual basis. And so it's such a small position of, like, the actual, like, new businesses in the country. Yeah.

And, I mean, if you look at LPs as we started our discussion with, they need venture firms, private equity firms to beat the public markets because they don't get to, they don't have liquidity in private companies. So we need to perform at 20% IRA versus 7% in the public markets. You can't do that investing in, you know, things that are not software or things that are not marketplace or things that just don't have the ability to get to 50 or 100 million in revenue in seven years.

So it seems like there's a, I, a lot of people don't get that. math, though. The venture math, I mean, a lot of venture capitalists don't understand a venture math, let alone founders. Yeah, that's one of the thing I've been trying to unsuccessfully because, you know, it's one of the problems is, you know, as a white male who now has had a couple of home runs, every time I try to talk about this issue, you know, it's, well, you're just a white male who's, you know, had everything handed to them. And I'm like, that isn't exactly my experience, but okay. You know, people are just like, you don't get it, J. Cal, you're white. And I'm like, not productive. I'm trying.

trying to help here. How can people be, like myself, be good allies, without being corny, without asking for, you know, a cookie and can I get a high five because, you know, I changed my Instagram photo, like on a real basis, like, what do you think being an ally looks like for white guys in venture or white women in venture? What's the proper way? I mean, it's just doing real actions, right? So whether those actions are, I'm going to, you know, hire, which is obviously the first one and the hardest one for a lot of people invest. And, you know, whether that's investing directly from your fund or deciding, hey, how do I create other people who can do this better? You know, we have a number of other funds who are LPs in our fund. And I'm an LP and other funds

as well. Like, that's a way for them to get access. Like, hey, let me just like see what you're doing and have more conversation. Or it's like, let me create a scout program like Lightspeed did where I'm going to have diverse scouts or we just create an angel program which will be launched coming up in the spring. Tell me about that. Yeah. Yeah. So we launched the angel program because we were like, we view the whole ecosystem.

Like we've had 60 interns. 17 of our interns now work in BC or private equity. And so we've seen that kind of directly lead to investors. All three of our senior associates came through our intern program. So okay, cool. We got the investor side. Well, the pre-see, like we're not seeing a lot of angel investors with people of color. we were people of color investor angel investors and we initially, you know, and then eventually

launched an institutional fund. Like, we think we're pretty good at this. Like, why don't we teach other people of color who are operated to tech companies or founders how to angel invest, right? And so we got 300. We got 300 applications close on Monday. We're going to choose six people to come in to be in our angel program. And it's a six-week program.

We take some of our lessons from the intern program because it's a 10-week syllabus. We kind of condense it. We bring in outside people to do webinars. and then we, you know, hopefully you have the capital and then you invest on your own. And so, you know, it's like how do you do the actions of the day to day? It's a lot of work. Like the angel program is a lot of work. The intern program is a lot of work for us.

We have an operator program where we have 60 operators our network. Like all this stuff is outside of what LPs are giving you money for. Like they're giving you money to find, pick, and win good companies. And we always tell our LPs, like we're not an impact fund. We don't, like we, I don't think our fund won. we've invested in any company that's only focused on the black or woman community. Right. Like we're a VC fund with impact.

And part of our impact is like how do we ensure the diverse ecosystem grows and wins? Because our fundamental belief is like we think we're market leaders in the space. And if you're a market leader, if the market rises, you rise. Right. And so like if we think we're the best diverse focus fund there is, if we can create more diverse investors and other funds, which we think will lead to more diverse founders, like we will win. And it's a long term view.

and it's a lot more work up front. It's not directly like, hey, LP, here's my like company. But like we want LPs that believe in us. Like we're trying to create a platform and institution to be around for 20, 30, 40 years. Like it's very easy to get an adventure. It's really hard to stay in venture. Like, and I've seen very few people actually stay. I mean, a lot of people can get in that because you only need $5, 10, $20 million.

And no other asset class is that possible. Like private equity, venture, you know, hedge funds, real estate. You need $100, $200, $400 million. to be even a minor player. Yeah. I mean, just to buy an asset, it's like nine figures minimum. It's very interesting that you're doing that Angel program.

It was actually my thesis as well is we were doing something called Founder University, which was just free for people who were, let's say, a little bit before our investment zone, our ideal investment zone, which is, you know, five or ten customers, five to ten K a month in revenue, something like that growing. 5% a week, 10% a month, something we could help accelerate.

And so we just looked for people just before that. But when we made a founder university just for women, and we did one for just for underestimated founders, I think we started saying underrepresented, and then we moved to underestimated. And we let people just self-certify. So, you know, we did have some gay white man or women who were white or trans people, which said, you know, anybody who feels their underrepresenter, underestimated can come.

It tripled the number of people of color and women were. investing in. And I asked them, why did you come to this event versus like some of the not coming to the other ones? They said, oh, well, you know, when we saw that you had a dedicated event just for us, we knew you were taking it seriously. And that that's the thing that I realized, oh, if you're doing something specific where you're saying, hey, I am taking an action here in the world to really help change this statistic and to move the ball forward, people will recognize it, as opposed to just sort of generally putting content out there. So I really like the idea for your angel stuff.

And we do Angel University. So I'd love to be a guest speaker or send some books or whatever. I'd be great. No, definitely. Angel investing out. And there's, and there's, you know,

there's a caveat to it where people were pushing back on these funds that were creating separate funds for diverse founders where it's like, this is 1 or 0.1% of your total assets. Like, I think there's a difference. Like, and people always ask us this, this, like, how do you, what's the response to you guys is a diverse focus fund? And we're like,

the responses were authentic because we're putting all of our chips into this market. So, like, we're very clear that like, we think we're going to make money because if we didn't, we were gone and worked in private directly after business school. Right. And so there is a difference of like, do you have a diversity focused fund? And like, that is your sole mission. Or do you have a subcategory diversity focus fund? And that's not your core mission. And so like we've seen similar to other discussions, like we've seen a lot of pushback. Some people on a community say, hey, it's better than nothing. Some, people say like, like this is fake. Like this isn't real. This is literally one series A round for

their, you know, main fund. Yeah. So like, you know, you have to be aware of like how, how it's going to be viewed. Like, I think overall it's better to do something than nothing. Um, but there is like some negative connotation when you have the separate program. I think what you did, the angel program, that's very different like versus like if you're a large fund and you're creating some $20, $30 million fund. Uh, dare I say, gettization of like black founders. I mean, literally that's what black founders said. Like, why, why, why, Why is there this like ghetto fund over here? You're just like, I want to be in your main fund.

I don't want to be in the side fund. Like, why would you do that to us? Like, it's just weird. Yep. But it's, you're saying some people think it's better than nothing. Yeah. I mean,

there's two sides of every story, right? Yeah. You're not going to be able to please everybody. I think ultimately, like, we live in a culture right now where people are doing things that they think will get the best responses. Yeah. Right.

And they're not doing things because they think it's best for like, they think their best position to do it and they think it's best for their firm. Like, don't do things just because you think it's going to lead to the best response. Yeah. And, you know, it's, I think it's very tough for people to even talk about these issues because everybody's afraid of getting canceled. And that's why, like, we had a little pre-discussion. I was like, hey, do you want to talk about these issues or do you want to talk about your

investments, whatever you said, no, I want to talk about those issues. It's kind of the purpose of our fund. And so I really appreciate you being candid about it. I think it's helpful when we can have a candid discussion and people aren't afraid. I can tell you a lot of white people are like, don't talk about these issues, Jay Gail. You're going to say the wrong thing and get canceled. And it's like, why would I get canceled if my intent is good? Like the intent here is to try to change. We all want to see the world be more just, right? I've yet to meet somebody who was like, I would like the world to be more unjust and to be

more racism. It's just I think people don't know what to do. And having these candid conversations and you're doing what you're doing in the world makes it a lot easier because you're willing to talk about it, right? It's a hard discussion to have for some people. I don't know. I mean, ultimately, if you're at America. Ultimately, like, if you end up getting canceled by some, like, it kind of is what it is, but like you have to, you have to decide, like, what do you stand for?

What conversations do you want to have? Like, how, you know, how comfortable are you taking that? And, you know, we even, like, we've even seen in our progression, right? we're a very public, like, brand to us is, like, key, and we think brand wins, right? And as a result, like, there's going to be, there's going to be a downside to it. Like, and you have to know, as you scale, like, you're going to have, like, naturally, as the numbers get bigger, you're going to have more haters. That's just a part of life. Like, right?

And you have to be prepared for that. And if you're going to change who you are or change your position because you're growing and your platforms growing and more people don't like you. And if you post a YouTube video, you have more, you know, there are more dislikes now than you had before. Like, that's, like, you're not staying true to who you are. I think you have to just be aware of it. And if you're comfortable with it, like, that's fine. Yeah. I mean, at the end of the day, you'll be judged by your returns, not by the mission statement.

You agree with that? Yeah. I mean, one of our LPs said, you know, your judgment will be an Excel sheet. Yeah. See, so that's at the end of the day, I think people have to keep that in mind. You know, Arlen Hamilton and I had this conversation a bunch of times when she said, I'm only investing in black female founders. And I said, well, what about if you like, just, you know, to your point, like, what

have I met the next Mark Zuckerberg when I was at HBO? She's like, no, I'm not doing it. And I was like, okay, that's interesting. That's going to make it harder with LP. She's like, I don't care. And it's like, okay, great. That's your mission. You have a slightly different one.

Like, you could be opportunistic on the margins. And I'm just glad to see this changing in people having the conversation. It was just great to see your success and fundraising. And there's a lot of ways to do it, right? I think we need, it's funny because when we first started fundraising three years ago, like, Arlenet backstage was really the only, like, racially diversity-focused fund, because diversity three years ago was a gender conversation. It was female founders fund, BBG, so-gal, et cetera.

There was no racial funds. Right. And so people are like, oh, well, how are you different from backstage? You know, we were like, there can't be two black-focused funds in the entire country. We already have one of those already. Like, they're on the West Coast. We're on the East Coast. Like, we can split the country in half or something.

But it's just like that, that's, that happens so frequently where it's like, I can literally point to a building in San Francisco where there's five early stage software funds that do the exact same thing and have like some, you know, weird nuances like, oh, I do enterprise, I do software. I mean, like, there's tech stars, there's Y Combinator, this launch, there's a million accelerators. Like, yeah. It doesn't need to be just one. But like four underrepresented groups, like oftentimes, like that is the case where people think that like you have to like, there can't be more than one of you. They're not that many. They're not, they can't, you know, you're looking for 30 companies. She's looking for whatever.

Like, there can't be 50 companies in the entire U.S. at a VC back. It's, it blew my mind when we were fundraising. Like, we didn't, like, we have the data now because we've been doing our research reports. But back then, like, we literally had to convince people that we could find 30 black, Latino or woman of all races in 300 million plus country that were like VC fundable. And people, and even people of color. Like, this isn't just white people. even people of color because you've been so historically trained to hate yourself like that you don't even believe that that's the case.

Yeah, that's correct. That actually is even, that's super pernicious, like when you're actually having in your mind. And that's really why we need to see people in leadership positions change. It's super inspiring to see the heads of a lot of the big tech conglomerates no longer be white guys, right?

And a little more diversity at the top of those companies where you're like, oh, wow, look, the head of Microsoft, the head of Google. It's not just a white guy anymore. It's not just Bill Gates and Sergey or whatever. All right, listen, continued success. Thanks for coming on the pod. Let's do a deal together. Get me in a deal.

I'm going to try to get you into the Angel program. I'll tell the team. Totally. You know, I teach Angel University like four times a year, five times a year. So if you wanted to have the entire group of applicants or whatever come and or you want to speak at ours, it'd be like a really good co-lab, as the kids say these days. We could do a co-lab. but yeah it's definitely the the number of people interested in investing in private companies

is skyrocketing it's great because you know like you think about their investing in bitcoin or nfts or you know doing crazy like game stuff investments i'm still not even up to all the lingo well i'm just like i'm looking at this stuff and i'm like oh my lord like people tell me i'm crazy for doing early stage investing you're investing in virtual currents and Imaginary money, imaginary art. And I kind of dig NFTs. I'll be totally honest. Like, I think that's a thing.

But private companies might be if you can, for every time you buy it. It's a safer bet, I guess. NFTs for startups. I don't know. I think I think I don't know. It's very weird. I've never seen a bubbly environment like this where capital is chasing very weird things. I mean, I wasn't, you know, I was alive at 2000.

I wasn't old enough. but it seems like it might be even created in 2000s. You know, I was a journalist. I was your exact age. I was 29 in 1999 running Silicon Valley Reporter in the, down in downtown Manhattan. And the difference then was people, what people got right was the internet was going to change everything.

They just got the timing wrong because there were only 10 million people on high-speed connections. And nobody had smartphones. So the total market size was like, well, there's 10 million people on a high-speed connection. Some of them are companies, et cetera. And okay, so can this company be worth a billion or 10 billion? It's like, not yet. But when you have 3 billion people online and people have smartphones and supercomputers

with high speed, the connections on the average smartphone today is a magnitude faster than the average connection in that time period. So it was really just the timing thing. The enthusiasm was right. The timing was wrong, right? And so. And then those companies. We'll see if this timing's right.

Well, I mean, the difference now is you think about a company like Clubhouse as an example. I mean, they have 10 million downloads or accounts now. Like, that was the totality of the market size in the late 90s. They literally have what would be the entire internet. And then you look at when you do turn on revenue, companies turn on revenue now. And like, com.com is just one example. Like they all of a sudden have a million people paying whatever, five, ten bucks a month. And then all of a sudden they got two million people doing that.

It really adds up quickly, you know, these app stores and. built-in commerce systems have changed everything. But continued success. Congratulations on the fund. Congratulations on getting Apple. And what's going on with, what's going on with Harvard's endowment? Largest endowment in the world.

You're an HBS student. They make people wait to the fourth fund. Yeah. Unfortunately, unfortunately, they probably have the most alums of fund managers. They do. They do.

It's pretty hard for them. So, kind of just like one of many. See, this is a mistake on their part. if they believed in you to come to HBS, they should just automatically give you $5 million. If you graduated from HBS and you have a fund, they should just be 5 or 10% of it by default. Yeah,

I mean, it'd be interesting to have like a Harvard, a Harvard GPETF, like, or just like some fun you just put in, it'd probably be over indexed. They would probably do well. Oh my God,

what it do? I mean, just for the companies that people join and for, I mean, I went to HBO as well. Twice for speaking gigs. I tried to go back the second day with my visitor pass. It didn't work.

But congrats on that. Wow. And congrats on getting Apple. I think that's a big deal. And kudos to Apple for like stepping up and doing something interesting with their money. That's world positive. I mean, that's such a great company to just say.

It's a good company. Yeah. They actually really care and they take a stance. It's like from diversity and justice all the way over and LGBTQ. And then you look at just privacy. Like, oh, yeah, we're going to just not let people track your phone to the way. Like, Zuckerberg wants to track you. Like, they're just on the right side of history over and over and over again.

And for that, I give them a lot of credit. Tim Cook, shout out. All right. Henri, I can't wait to meet you in person in New York, hopefully, in my hometown. And, yeah, continue to succeed. and let's do a deal. Thanks, Jason. See you next time, everybody.

Bye-bye.