This Week in Startups - Paul Judge on helping lead SoftBank’s $100M Opportunity Fund, future of fundraising, importance of “building your Olympic Team” & more | Angel S5 E9

Episode Date: March 18, 2021

Check out Panoramic Ventures: https://panoramic.vc Check out SoftBank's Opportunity Fund: https://theopportunityfund.com FOLLOW Paul: https://twitter.com/pauljudge FOLLOW Jason: https://linktr.ee/calacanis

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Post your first job for free at LinkedIn.com slash angel. Hey, everybody. Welcome to episode nine, season five Super Angels, the series we do as part of this week and startups. You all tell me you want to meet more investors. You want to meet people who do early stage. And so we created the podcast Angel. And we've done now five seasons.

This fifth season, we thought we would focus on what we call Super Bowl. What's a super angel? It's a term we made up. It basically means somebody who's invested in a lot of companies is at the top of their game and who you can learn a lot from. And what a season it's been. I mean, to just go down the list, episode 10 coming up, Joanne Wilson, the Gotham Gow ventures is coming on. Good friend of mine. We worked together in the 90s. We had Reed Hoffman, Matt Moloa, Gary Tan, Mark Cuban, Howard Linz and Elad Gill, Des Traynor, David Tisch. I mean, this is a lot of lineup of just killers and today will be no different. My friend Paul Judge of Panoramic Ventures is on episode nine. How you doing, Paul? Hey man, I'm great. How are you? I'm good. I miss you. I haven't seen

you in person in over a year. It has been a long time, but it's good to see you digitally and you're growing and becoming more high resolution by the day here. I love it. Yeah, we're getting, this is the thing. I would never do remote interviews. I thought I had to do every interview in person because, Because, number one, I felt I needed to be in the same room with somebody to kind of really get the conversation going, which maybe is true. Maybe it's not. But also, everybody didn't know how to set up their home studio. They would be on Wi-Fi. They'd be on bad Wi-Fi. They'd have an old computer. They wouldn't have a good camera. They have a terrible microphone. And now, in the year of the pandemic, everyone's got a podcast studio at home and things are golden. Now, is it okay if I say where you're based right now? Uh, yeah. Is it okay to disclose? Yeah, sure. All right. So you're part of the Miami crew now. You're representing Atlanta. And now you're spending time in Miami. Yep. So I'm still, I'm based in Atlanta mostly, but I am in my, uh, in Atlanta mostly, but I'm in Miami at the moment. And I've been, you know, coming back and forth and, you know, I used to come back and forth to the Bay Area. Uh, but coming

here is like, it's an hour, hour and a half flight versus the four hours. I used to commute to the Bay Area all the time. And now there's just, you know, there's just, a ton of people there doing internet stuff. Oh, it's amazing. It's amazing. Every week there's someone else that I kind of bounce into that I know that is here right now or thinking about moving or have moved and we've done a couple of investments in the city so far this year.

And so, yeah, I love the energy. The energy is there. The Bay Area no longer has a stranglehold on funding or being the place to form your company. and since we're all living on Zoom, I don't know about you, but I've made a ton of investments over the last year and I haven't even met the founders yet.

Have you invested in companies over Zoom and not met the founders? Yes, I have not met a new founder in person. Who? I don't know in a year, right? I don't know. Same for me. Same.

20, 25, 30 investments in the last year. And I've met two in person after I invested. Um, it happened. Those were two that happened to be in Miami. I met them after we invested. But yeah, 25 decisions that are all, they're here. They're Zoom. They're video. And what can we take away from that in terms of what we thought we needed to do in terms of making investing, an investment, versus what the pandemic forced us to do? And then the second part of that would be, what do you thing's going to happen, you know, now after we all get our shots and, you know, we're yolo in Q3. Or at least I am. I can't speak for you, but I'm going crazy to summer, man. I'm going to

be anywhere but home. I'm going to be racking up the miles. Right? It's almost there. It's almost people are getting more vaccines. So it's about that time. Yeah, the fall is going to be good. There's just All-Star weekend in Atlanta. Yes. Did you go? This weekend. No, I didn't. I think there's a lot of people in the city kind of right now, a little bit too early. Too soon. So I didn't. Tempting. Too soon.

I didn't. I watched it on TV. But my man, Obie Toppin from the Knicks got robbed. The slam dunk contest. Obie should have won. Oh, yeah. You watched the slam dunk contest? Yeah, watched the slam dunk and a three point.

That guy didn't kiss the ring. He didn't kiss the rim. He got up there. He was like three feet from the rim and he just blew a kiss to the, I can blow a kiss to the rim. Obie Toppins like jumping over his dad and Julius Rampens. Randall doing this like crazy windmill. Come on. No, it was, it was fun. It was fun. It was fun. Curry and a three point pulling it off by like one point at the end. I mean, he's a video game. Like automatic. I mean, it was, you know, be able to win with just that last final point and like you see the human side of it that he barely made it.

I love it. So great. He's the greatest shooter ever, right? I mean, yeah. Ray Allen can't come close. I mean, I'm trying to figure out if there's anybody who's even close. I don't, I mean, Maybe Clay Thompson is the only person who's really close. Dave. Yeah. Yeah, and just the way he does it so automatically and effortlessly. Like the other guy who was close behind him by one point, you could tell he was trying to the full extent of his capability.

And in stuff, with a bad kind of round, still pulled it off. On a bad run, he's still better than the best run that everybody else had. That was the crazy part. So, yeah, that was it. I watched All-Star virtually. but then you were asking about, you know, Zoom and meeting people virtually and what happens when the world opens up. And, you know, I think it's, I mean, it's changed what it means to have a meeting, right? It used to be 30 hours of commute, an hour meeting, 30 more minutes of commute.

And now that all goes down to 30 minute meeting. So there's just so many more in a day. I get to see more companies than I would have seen otherwise. 100%. Yes. That's the big change. Yeah, like your top of funnels water. and then from the entrepreneur standpoint, it's a bit easier, I think, to get a meeting with an investor than it was traditionally.

And so that means a whole new generation of entrepreneurs that wouldn't have had access, now have more access to venture capital and to any of investors. It definitely lowers a VCs or an investor's benchmark or bar to take a meeting because it's 30 minutes and you're not coming to my office and, you know, there's always this fear like maybe this person's just really strapped. Who knows, but like if you're doing a 30, I mean, I feel like people want to get off the Zoom in 20 minutes. Like when you start getting to that 20 to 30 minute zone, people are like, all right, I got to be on another one of these in an hour, man. I got to get off this and go take care of my kids or my dog or something or have a sandwich. It really is, you know, the other thing somebody brought up that I thought was so on point that I hadn't realized was it feels like we flipped getting to know the person and then

diligent the company and the opportunity. We used to get to know the person and then try to figure out the opportunity and move into due diligence. So it was like socialization and this performative, you know, here's my deck and I'm answering the questions. Now we get all the information up front. You know, we get all the diligence. And then like you said, you know, after you invest, you're like, yeah, I'd love to meet.

Right. Maybe we'd go for a walk and talk. Yep. So remove some of the bias that exists, right? Like if someone has built a real company and has good customer. attraction and so forth, those numbers can speak for themselves versus do I know to go to the right coffee shop? Do I know to order the right cappuccino? Like some of those social norms that if you're not based in the Bay Area, you have a different background, you might have felt that first part of the

filter. But now you get a chance to go straight into talking about what you're building. Yeah, it's good. I think it's a good thing. I also find people are very, very much upfront, you know, in the email exchange and then going into the meeting. So I have founders who are like, this is the amount we're raising. This is how much we have left in the round. Here's the diligence documents. Here's the diligence folder. Here's the note. Would you like to get on a call? And normally they were trying to get the meeting in person, you know, kind of build that social credibility, build the relationship, and then, you know, slowly trickle out that information. The founders are just like, here's everything. Are you in or out? Let's, you know, cut to the

chase here. And so the efficiency is real. I think it was probably more. more like two hours, three hours to do a meeting. You could probably do reasonably two, maybe three meetings in a day, right? Right. Now I plow through two or three meetings in a morning. Exactly. Exactly. This is so much better. Yep. And this, it's not going to go away, right? Is that your prediction? No, not at all. You keep doing it this way, right? Especially, yeah, for, I mean, top of funnel, deal flow, like, you just, you can see more things. Like, you buy three or four times higher of viewing and meeting and understanding. What I feel. found is, you know, some number of entrepreneurs have built a good business, but they don't know

how to make the deck the right way. They don't know the right ratios. They don't know the right lingo, but like they have like a really good business. And typically like, you wouldn't take those meetings. You would see the deck and like, I don't know. And you just miss it. But now, you're like, let me give it 30 minutes and see. And then you meet them and you see the passion and you meet the and you meet the founder and you hear about it. And so I think it's helped with better deal flow. But it's also helped kind of a set of entrepreneurs that wouldn't have gotten chance. And so I don't think you go back to viewing a third of a number of deals. So you even feel like Paul Judge has less bias in prejudging a startup, right? We all had some bias coming into it,

like the ugly deck, maybe the awkwardness. They don't know the terms to use. They don't got the right connects to get to you. Now it's just like, I'll take the meeting 20 minutes. And now I have three people doing meetings for me now, introductory meetings all week. So they're seeing 20 people, 15 to 20 people each a week. So I have 50 at the top of the funnel and then I get the top whatever, five or 10 of that. So it's like really starting to scale. And it feels just like a lot's, you know, flowing to the system like you're saying, much faster. How much money does your startup spend on all these different software products and how much time does it take you to integrate them all together? Let me guess. Too much time, too much money. Well, O-D-O-D-O. It's a

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And for people who don't know how you invest, how much you invest, and what verticals take us through what you're looking for and what pools of capital you come out of. Yeah, certainly. Certainly. You know, my background, Jason, has been, you know, for first 15, 20 years, I was an entrepreneur building some cybersecurity companies. And so, like, that's what my grad school work is in. We built a company called Cypher Trust and we built Pure Wire.

and then pin drop. And it wasn't until pin drop that I actually like open my eyes to, wait a second. Like there's a world where I'm not the entrepreneur. I'm helping another entrepreneur. And when I met Vijay and we co-founded that company, after it was going along well and we were probably at the Series B, I said, wait, there's more VJs. There's more smart people that need help. And, you know, I met Vijay through Georgia Tech.

And so what I did then was said, I just want to get as close as I can to Georgia Tech's campus and meet students and professors coming out of there. And so I first started this place called TechSquare Labs. And the whole idea was, you know, how do we have smart people walk in the door and kind of co-work and I'll find ones to invest in? And we started doing this thing called startup battle where people would compete in $100,000 investment prize. And I did that for three or four years. And through that, through Tech Square, you know, invested in 30, 40 companies, many that are Atlanta or university-based companies through startup battle invested, you know, very early stage, kind of two people on a laptop.

I mean, what we call nowadays, you know, probably precede or pre-pre-seed. But there's been some good companies we have the fortune of being part of through that. And then fast forward, I've been looking at over the last two years, like, okay, how to do that at more scale, right? How to be able to participate, not only a seed, but across Series A and Series B, but doubling down on that thesis of like, Atlanta and the Southeast and things out of universities and things that are diverse. And so I started building this plan to do panoramic. Along the way, last year, a good friend Marcel O'Clarar who, you know, leads soft bank, he called and said, hey, Paul, we're going to start a fund dedicated to minorities.

It's going to be a $100 million fund called Opportunity Fund and would you help with it? And so I joined the Investment Committee of the Opportunity Fund. And there was an amazing team there, and it's a $100 million fund focus on blacks and Latinos and Native Americans. And then just two weeks ago, Jason, we announced Panoramic. And I partnered with a gentleman named Mark Buffington. He ran a firm called BIP Capital that's been in Atlanta for the last, you know, eight years or so. They're on fund for and been one of the most active firms in the region. And we partnered and we rebranded and called the firm Panoramic with the whole point that, you know, we look where other

people don't. We take in a wider view. And so that is kind of where I'm investing. So I'm a managing partner at Panoramic. And then I'm on the investment committee at Opportunity Fund. And with the Opportunity Fund, that means they're out there, finding the founders, vetting everything. And when you're on that investment committee, they say, hey, here's the ideas we want to invest in. And you just make sure, hey, listen, this is, this is an appropriate investment or you just give feedback and tell me about that process. Yeah, so the investment committee is Marcelo Clark, who this was his brainchild of, you know, how to kind of make impact in the world. And another lady named Stacey Brown Philpott, who was CEO of TaskRavitt previously. And I knew both Marcello and Stacy, we're all in the same class at Aspen Institute, through like Henry Crown Fellow program. So we've been friends for years. And then the fourth person is a gentleman named Shue Niyah, who is at softball. Bank and leaves their Latin America fund. So the four of us are the investment committee and

there's a team of brilliant people who are running it and sourcing deals and analyzing. And we look at a lot of companies and met with hundreds of companies and we've done about 20 investments in the first nine months. Wow. Yeah. All right. Let me ask you the, I don't want to say controversial question, but this is the question I keep hearing when we talk about equality and making sure. everybody gets access to capital. A dedicated fund for people who are underrepresented versus just making every fund more fair, just and having more people of color or underrepresented people in the fund. Are these either or is it an end? What's your take on that?

I think both should be pursued. One has more direct immediate impact. right? And so it's one thing to go take, you know, these funds and firms that have been around for 50 years and go change all the processes. Because you have to change the LPs. You have to change the GPs. You have to change the screening. Like there's years before we get there. But you have to do that work still. But then you take something like Opportunity Fund and it's dedicated, it's purpose built. It's the team is diverse. The mission is there. You know, now you also, you look at the portfolio, you have a group of some of the top minority entrepreneurs that now can come together. And so, you know, other thing with Opportunity Fund is it's not only the capital, but those entrepreneurs get access to soft banks ecosystem and like all the founder support. And so this is an ecosystem and usually you don't get access to unless you're raising $100, $200, $300, $300 million.

Yeah, I don't have access to that ecosystem. I was going to ask you for Connect. I got you, man. I got you. I mean, I know Masa, but I don't know anybody in between. So now I got you. So I'll introduce you to Marcello and Shu and the team. But it's like now these minority founders that we've invested in, you know, can be raising

a million dollars or two million dollars, but also get plugged into this team that helps them grow and helps them with those connections. And oftentimes that's what a minority founder needs in addition to the capital, right? Because they might not come from that same network. They might not have that same set of people to reach out to. And so I think both the need, especially when you're dealing with a problem that is, you know, centuries in the making. is not just one solution.

So the fact that people are debating like, oh, this is the wrong solution, this is the right, it's kind of like we need the, you know, Scott Weiss from our report, he's called the sledgehammer approach, right? Kind of, you have the egg and you just, you need to try all the solutions. And that's what we have to. I mean, it's such a bad problem. And it's, I mean, it's interesting in the making that we have to try everything. And I think this is one approach that I'm watching work in real time. I think that's a really important observation and insight because.

What I find is people get very critical of everybody trying to improve the situation. Right. It's like if there is different ways to put this fire out or there's different ways to build this bridge, whatever metaphor we want to use to solve the problem and make the world more just, more equal and spread these opportunities around, like, all the better. Fantastic. And there is a very specific problem that you very subtly mentioned there. which I think we need to unpack.

Venture firms are very weird. Like, they form almost like a poker group or a sorority or a fraternity or a golf group. You know, they're decades in the making. And they don't change that often. Like partnerships, you know, you have four or five partners. They're chopping up, you know, whatever the fund is and whatever the returns are, whatever the management fees are. And usually it's they only switch out a partner when somebody,

retires. So, I mean, the inertia might be every two funds, three funds, they might change somebody. And I don't think the public understands this concept. This is why new funds are so important, right? It is. I mean, because they have a system that works. Like, if a fund's been around that long, like, there's a reason. It's working. Like, they're delivering returns. And so you're delivering returns based on a certain model, based on a certain prototype and a founder type that works for you, I mean, even though you might think is the right thing to broaden your funnel and go look for, your results are working. And so you're hesitant to go make drastic changes where if you have someone with a very new

fund and you're building an approach from the ground up, you can think about deal flow a different way. You could think about, you know, how you help founders in a different way. And so because that's what it takes. I think how bad the problem is. I mean, you know the numbers, right? Like 1% of venture capital to blacks. Whereas, you know, blacks are like, what, 13% of the U.S. population. So we're talking to art of magnitude deficit, right?

Same thing with women founders. I mean, you're not talking like, oh, we need to tweak it 5% to 10%. Yeah, this is we need a 10x solution, not a 10% solution. Exactly. And the thing, though, is it's not just like, oh, let's do this because it's like the right thing to do. It's like people are missing out on returns. Like you're supposed to be seeking alpha.

It's like, why would you just take? half of the country and not make sure you're connecting with them and paying attention to them, especially nowadays when minorities have a competitive advantage in many of the sectors of technology that are becoming most important. Give me some examples of that. Where do you see minority founders having an edge? I mean, I can think of one right off the bat, which is social. I mean, if you look at Instagram, Twitter, and now Clubhouse, all built on black culture

because black culture, let's be honest here. is American culture, period. Black culture is American culture. That's our export. I mean, whether it's music, fashion, everything, you know, comes out of black culture, period. You nailed it. You nailed it. I mean, from what we wear to how we dance, to how we dress, to what we listen to, you know, the cool, right?

The cool. And, you know, as tech is more consumerized, whether there's social networks or what's happening in gaming or e-gaming. Amy, whether it's kind of, it's as much as community is coming into everything, like community is coming into fintech. Community is coming into kind of where you live and kind of how you think about buying houses. And so as much as that's happening, you know, minority founders and minority influencers have

a competitive advantage. And so if investors are overlooking that, they're really overlooking the people that are going to drive the next generation of technology growth. And it's kind of like what happened in different sports. It's like you start to see this influx of minority founders that are understanding what it means to build a scalable product, understanding what it means to go to market efficiently. And as you learn that skill set, it's kind of like when you saw the first minorities start to play tennis or start to play golf, right? You just let us know the rules. It's like, oh, how is this story going to end?

Serena and Tiger. Exactly. Once it gets really interesting. And so I think anyone who's paying attention and like intentionally adding diversity to their. their deal flow, they're just getting tomorrow's returns earlier before everybody else starts to pay attention. Do you ever wish that you invested in some of the best performing IPOs of 2019 and 2020? Well, our crowd investors did invest early in many of those awesome IPOs.

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Crystal. Yeah. Crystal. Yeah. Crystal. Literally, Jay-Z is including Crystal free marketing in his songs. And they're like, yeah, brown people, black people, not so much. Much for Cristal. He's like, okay. A spades, what's up? He sells half of that to LVMH, takes down hundreds. Yep.

And then title. He's like, you know what? Yep. I wonder if the artist owned the platform, what that would look like. Right. And he what? He 10xed, 510xed? I mean, it's crazy.

About 10 times. And then he had a cannabis deal. Like he was part of a cannabis spec. I didn't even see that. I mean, I can't even keep up. He was also in Oatley, I think. Yeah, he was in Oatley. So it's interesting.

Yeah, music. This is his side hustle and he's killing us. I just, I hate to point it out, but like, I think he was like music was his number one thing. And this is the side hustle and he's just dominating it. I mean, that is the really killer thing. I think when you can mix celebrity and influencer and product because I feel like celebrities and influencers have an inherent understanding of what consumers want and they connect with them so deeply. So this kid,

Dobrick, is doing the camera company Dispo. Oh, yeah. Like, he really understands that generation. And, like, Jay-Z understands, like, when people are popping bottles at the club, like, here's what that should look like, and here's what, you know, the trend is in Otley. I mean, he's

getting it from champagne all the way down to, like, milk alternatives. Right. It's a pretty great moment. It is. What I love is he's going after industries that have, like, traditionally been unfair to, uh, to to the people that have been creating a value, right? So, like, music industry is traditionally unfair to the creators.

And so with title, he went after that. You know, food and beverage. I mean, the Crystal CEO got to shot himself in the foot. And he went after that. And then if you look at the cannabis industry, I mean, it's not exactly tech, but it's creating tens of billions of dollars of value. It's kind of the most valuable crop that this country's ever seen. But if you look at everyone that's going public, there's no diversity.

but we all know this country was built on the backs of blacks tending to crops. And it's like, wait a second day. I mean, I was about to go there and connect that. It's yeah. You got you beat me to it. No, absolutely. Think about this. In one state, you know, a black teenager gets put in jail for selling a dime bag or

an ounce of weed. In another state or in Canada, some white executive IPO is a company for selling weed. Yeah. I mean, where's the justice here? Like, where's the fairness? I mean, it's great to see this finally leveling out. I feel like, I don't know how you feel, because we're both, I think, of the same generation. We're both Gen X.

Yep. And we've been watching this story, you know, for now close to 50 years. I just turned 50. And like, I feel like it's like we got to see it be really bad. Like we got the tail end of just explicit racism and people really being going at each other. And then we're watching it. And it feels like maybe by the end of our life, this might be. feel really equitable. I'm hopeful. I don't know. How do you feel? I think, I mean, because I'm a white

guy. It's easy for me to feel hopeful about it, right? Maybe I'm just painting something that makes me feel better, you know, but how do you feel as a black man? You know, there's this, this Kanye lyric says like people say I'm racist because I only see green faces. And it's, it's, it's that, that part is actually promising, though, because, you know, at the end of the day, if like you can feel the economic impact, you kind of look past the color of the skin. and as more minorities are participating in business, you gain a respect, right? You gain access and people realize like, oh, wait a second, this person's smart in a different way, this person is creative or genius in a different way.

And that helps gain that respect. That helps people get this equality that you're mentioning. And so I think as you see time after time and deal after deal, quarter after quarter of that, you'll get to it and a lot of it will be driven by, there's some set of people that are doing it because it's the right thing to do. There's some set of people that are doing it because, like, the numbers kind of drive you in that direction. And I think that's okay, right? If you look at, like, the work of like Martin Luther King, I mean, he spent a lot of time fighting for civil rights and voting rights, but a lot of his time later in his career was about, you know, economic empowerment and about

more of kind of economic equality. And so I think both of those kind of drive us in the direction. And these things that we're mentioned are just examples of it, right? Kind of, of whether it be, you know, company A or company B, those are all steps in the right direction, ultimately of kind of getting into a world that's more fair and more equal. And then it's against the backdrop of seeing something like George Floyd, right? And then the NBA having to come out and say, you know what? I don't know if we're taking the court unless we can address this, right? So we still have this pocket over here of like just disgusting, like horrific unfairness and violence towards black men, right? And it's still not solved,

right? And that's the heartbreaking part when you try to like reconcile this. But it's all part of the same system, education, opportunity, policing, you know, drug policing and cannabis, all this stuff feels like it's part of the same system that's, at least I feel like it's churning in the right direction. Yep. Yeah. And the thing that that happened this time, and we with the murder of George Floyd is usually the world had become desensitized to it, right? It happened, unfortunately, like almost, you know, monthly, if not weekly. And as a black man, you would see it. You would watch that video on your phone in the morning and you see someone that looked just

like you doing nothing but driving home from work. And you'd have to, like, dust it off and, like, go into the office and, like, act normal and, like, close the deal and write the code and get the customer. And so monthly, you're going through. with this, like, wait, there's someone that looks just like me, been treated like an animal, but I'd have to like forget that for a moment and go perform. This time, the entire world was sitting at home because of COVID, right? So the entire world was holding still.

And I think the timing of what the George Ford murder was so instrumental in the impact, because everyone was sitting at home, holding still, and everyone had to watch and everyone had to digest it and think about it. And it's, I think, caused a lot of the reaction, positive reaction. action and people realizing the disconnect that we've experienced over the last year. But I think that that emotion is part of what we had been experiencing every month for the last several years as this happened. Yeah.

Yeah. And let's be just completely real here. Black man and the black community was telling us this was happening all this time. And it was only until we, you know, as a broader society, had to witness nine minutes of a murder, like an extended, torturous murder that, you know, you watch it and just even thinking about it makes you feel empty inside. It's just brutal to even think about that moment. And but you were saying it the whole time and people didn't believe it.

Right. That's the part that's tragic. Have it. Yep. Yep. So, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

And I mean, it's fueled a lot of good work, right? It fueled things like Opportunity Fund to exist. It fueled a lot of corporations coming really. rethink how they make hiring decisions and figuring out how they can give back. You know, it's filled a lot of things that we're cheering on right now. Like we invested in a company called Praxis that does diversity training to help people with unconscious bias, right? It's caused people like double down on, you know, like I started a cannabis, medical

cannabis company two years ago because it's about, hey, there's inequality in this industry. We can use our business skills to go solve that inequality. And so it's fueled the passion of, I think, this current. generation to just go harder. And so to your point, I think ultimately what will happen is, yeah, in this lifetime, we'll get closer to equality. Along the way, we'll see a lot of kind of good impact around education and kind of feeding the folks that are in need and so forth. 2021 is looking up. Tons of new beginnings, lots of hope. It's going to be a great year. And hopefully, great opportunities for you to grow your business. But if you're going to grow your business,

you're going to need incredibly talented people to do as a founder what maybe you're not great at or you don't have time to do anymore you need to build your team you're only going to be as successful as the team that builds your products interfaces with your customers and builds the culture of your company and lincoln jobs finds the right person quickly to fill your positions and we are going to give you your first job posting free right now you go to lincoln.com slash angel, LinkedIn.com slash A-N-G-E-L-A-N-G-E-L. Angel. Very easy to remember. Hiring is super important. I'm doing it here at launch. Just hired a second producer for this week in startups hiring a community manager. We hired another support executive for the syndicate.

We are booming over here. And we do all of this by going to LinkedIn jobs. 722 million members worldwide, mean business. They keep their profiles up to date on LinkedIn for a reason. You're looking for opportunities and you can post your job with all those great screening questions and LinkedIn is going to get your role, that position in front of the right people with the soft skills, the hard skills, and all the things you need. The thing I've been blown away with is the quality of the candidates. Very simple. LinkedIn.com slash angel, LinkedIn.com slash angel and terms and conditions apply because you're giving you that free first job posting. Thank you, LinkedIn for supporting the show. It's also very interesting. I'll, you know, I can tell you from my

side, you know, just watching other white venture capitalists. And, you know, I'm a seed investor, so I get there earlier. And we made a real effort, as you know, because you speak at all our events, you know, doing Founder University specifically for underrepresented people, doing it specifically for women. And we just changed the ratio of people we were funding. It happened like, I think we did it in two years, like just Jackie on my team doing these underrepresented at founder, founder university is a two-day event. And these downstream investors from us were like, where are you finding all the black women to invest in? Like literally somebody said that to me. Like, can you introduce me some black women? Because I have never invested in a black woman. I've done

47 investments. And this is what person said to me. I'm just terrified that somebody's going to see my statistics at some point and realize I've only invested in two women and they were both white women, you know, and I've never invested in a black founder. I mean, it was like a CTO on one team. and there was just abject fear the last two or three years from some people who just didn't have any diversity. And I said, well, have you actually talked about it or engaged people of color? Have you actually met them where they are?

And they were like, no, how do you do that? I was like, you talk to people? And they're just like, oh, is that how you do it? Like, is this not completely obvious to you? Like, why are you not just any time a black fan If you have not invested in a black founder yet, anytime a black founder emails you, just meet with them.

It costs you nothing. And then just be as helpful as you can be and the ratio will change. But if you're not putting any effort into it, you think it's just magically going to change that you're going to have some 19-year-old black founders come to you and drop out of Harvard with their idea

for a SaaS company and they're just going to call you like some white guy on Santo Road. It's just not going to happen. It's not realistic. Do a little bit of work, right? Yeah. And now people are publishing so many lists. Like Michael Siebel and Waccombinator published their directory of black founders. And I mean, you know, on an opportunity fund site, we have the 20 companies we've invested in. If I mean, if anybody wants to meet more black founders and introduce you

to the ones that we've invested in across different funds. But what I love about it, Jason, if you look at the portfolios, they're not solving like black problems or just, just black problems or just Latino problems, like, they're solving just really some of the most meaningful problems that exist. And if I didn't show you the founder, you would never know, right? Companies, a company called Carbice, this professor out of Georgia Tech that came up with a nano compound to make heat sinks more efficient. And like now it's his compound is on space shuttles and he just raised $15 million, right? Or someone like, like, Vitable that's doing, you know, kind of video health care to kind of make more.

affordable health care or like there's all these problems that are just fundamental human problems that exist. And, you know, while there are some companies that are solving problems that are more specific to minority communities, right? So like Maven is solving the problem around, you know, hair extensions or the guys that Squire are solving the problem around barbershops. But there's so many that are just solving like problems that are human problems and markets that are gigantic. And so sometimes people are looking for black founders because they're only looking in one place. Right. But it's really great, I think.

This is where I think the dedicated funds are doing such great work because when you look at Andreessen Horowitz or SoftBank or what Jackie is doing at our firm with Founder University, when you say, hey, we're dedicated to this. We're we're dedicating time, cycles, money, meeting time, whatever it is. Then it just, it's kind of like putting the shingle out like, yeah, we're open for business. Come, come talk to us. If you don't, and this is my advice to my contemporaries, if you're not explicitly saying we want to meet folks and you're not doing the work, it's just the change is not going to happen. It's or it's not going to happen at the pace we need it to happen.

Like we talked about earlier, this is a 13x problem, not a 13% problem. We need to really, really get moving on this and just shout out to A16Z with their opportunity fund and soft bank. Because you list the company. So if you're looking to make a bet, you can just go to that page, meet with 10 founders. You're going to find a company that's already got product market fit that you could put a million into. Just get to work, you know, cut the check. It's not hard. Exactly.

Exactly. So, no, I mean, like you said, Ben and a team and, you know, Chris Lyons with cultural leadership and Nate Jones, talent times opportunity. I mean, they're doing the work and been doing it for years. And then, you know, you look at what like these celebrities and influence, like we talked about Jay-Z a lot, but like everybody's doing it now. So like quality control, like the label Coach K and the team that run like Lil Baby's career and other artists like that, you start to see them investing in companies like

X-Sat and they just did a partnership with tech stars, right? So you see music labels really become active and then you look at Atlanta like, I mean, people from ludicrous to two chains to TI are all invested in tech companies. And so, I mean, this next few years, I mean, just going to be so impactful. It feels like the, as somebody explained it to me on the pod, really, and Nas has Queensbridge, Carmelo, Anthony had his fund. I don't know if he's still actively doing it, but so he had done a fund. Just it, and then LeBron in my portfolio invested in and became a spokesperson forcom.com.

And I can tell you, I had more people come to me in that month to talk about Com that in the entire six years of being an investor in that company. with like LeBron James uses com. I was like, yeah, he's an investor too. Like he's going to make a lot of money off of com. Like it's definitely happening. I know from the Warriors just being in town, you know, I'm good friends with Draymond. And, you know, he's always like, hey, what deals? What deals?

I mean, he's just really engaged. Durant was very engaged. I mean, they're just looking for deals. And that's just a great moment for me as well just to be like, wow, Draymond Green and I are like talking about deals at the poker table and trying to figure out what we can invest in together. This is like just great for society writ large. You mentioned column and I mean I had to point to what do you call? I got my beat wet a little bit. Oh, you did? From your syndicate. From your syndicate. Oh, you're in the syndicate? Yeah,

a little bit. Oh, fuck yeah. A little wet beat. Yeah. So let's talk about when you're young entrepreneurs or first time founders. What in your mind do you, do you, could all first-time founders do a better job out. We've got a lot of founders listening to these episodes, and they want to connect with folks like us. What can they do less of and what can they lean into more of to close the check and to just close the deal and get the money when you think about it? What makes it really easy for you to fund a company?

What makes it really hard to fund a company? For me, it's this order of, you know, and customers. And like, you know, what effort have you put in to get people around you to join you? Like, what's your Olympic team, right? Not the, I think of it as like not the Little League team. Like you went to got your friends from down the block, but like the Olympic team. Like you went and found like some of the best people in the world.

And you're early. I get it. So like a lot of people are going to tell you no, but have you convinced a few real game changes to join you on this journey? And so team. And then for me, you know, So customers. So too often, first-time founders, I think, want to jump to talking to investors first. And they skip the recruiting the team part. And they skip the kind of, no, really have a real relationship with a prospective customer and get their feedback and understand.

And they're pitching the idea more so than they're pitching like the team and kind of the customer reaction to the idea. They want to go straight to give me money when there's a little bit of legwork that you need to do first. And so I think that order of team, customer investors, too many people want to jump the first two and have investor meetings, I think, a bit too early. See, this is so important. When you go in to meet with an investor and you're talking about what you're going to do, as opposed to talking about who you recruited and who's using the product, your credibility is very low.

But when you come in and say, I got the former, you know, developer from Facebook to leave and he's investing or she's investing 25K and, you know, they've been to the, they've been to the show before, they know what they're doing. Oh, and by the way, let me tell you about our first four customers. Two of them are using the product. They're getting some value. But these two, these two customers asked us for these 17 features. And let me show you what our progress is with those features. Now, for us as investors, we don't have to imagine that you can recruit. We don't have to imagine and believe you when you tell us that you understand the customer. You do understand the customer.

And I am constantly ripping up decks and saying, nobody gives a shit about the total addressable market slide that you found from Gartner Group, Arthur Anderson, Price WarehouseCoopers, all due respect. It doesn't mean anything to anybody. Nobody gives a shit about that. Tell us about those two customers who can't live without your product. Give me a slide on each one. Give me three slides on each one where here's how they're using the product.

Here's how you got into the organization. You met them at a, I had somebody like, I was like, how did you meet these customers? You've got like these like five or six customers and they're like, I went to a trade show. I was like what? And they were selling some sort of product that was for the legal market. Yeah, there's like there's like 10 legal trade shows. And I went to like three of them and I met these people. And then we went out.

There was like a cocktail party afterwards and then I met them again at the cocktail party. And then I met them in their office in New York. And then they said they would give the product. I'm like, oh my Lord, I love you. You went to a trade show and you showed your product to the people who are the target audience and you understand them and you talk to them. that's the kind of stuff that gets guys like us to write checks. Exactly. Exactly.

It's not a kind of, oh, I made this great slide. I think of it. And if I get your money, then here's what I will do. It's kind of show me you're doing something and you just need more fuel for the fire to keep going. So many people get that part wrong with. They would just be better off. Go work on it for a month or two months. It doesn't mean work on it for three years.

Like, go do a little bit of that work. And then from there, I think the other thing that, you know, because I'm sometimes an entrepreneur, sometimes an investor, right? Every few years I help and start a company. And so the one thing that I've been able to see from both sides is the decision of process of an investor looking at a return model, right, looking at kind of what multiple, what I are, am I going to get this money back with friends? And so I often help entrepreneurs understand, especially as you're going to later stages,

series A, series B is explain to investor how you're going to send this money back with friends. right? So in the back of their process, they're doing this return model. They're modeling your best case and your base case and your average and a weighted probability and they're managing an IRA. And so if you think about that as you think about the outcomes and your three year projection, you can help put yourself in the shoes of this person and help them understand. Here's how this turns to a three-time return or five-time return. That doesn't mean you have to turn to VC as an entrepreneur, but it's helpful to understand the framework that's actually driving decisions. super critical because if you're coming to them with a business that in the best case doesn't return their fund and doesn't bring back that money, you know, and every dollar doesn't come back with nine other dollars, why would they waste one of the slots in that spreadsheet on you? They got 30 slots, 40 slots, whatever it is in that model. Every one of those is a chance to hit an outlier. They don't want to waste any shot. Every one of those bullets is precious. They got to hit like this crazy half-court shot. Like they got to hit a shot from like

one of those, speaking of Steph Curry. They got to hit one of those Steph Curry in the tunnel shots. Like that's, that's what we have to hit. You hit Calenderly, right? Right. Right. Like Calendulney is like hitting it from like the upper deck. What was that investment about? How did you hit that one? Tell me the story. Which one? Calently. So yeah. So you know, so that was on my, my anti-portfolio, Jason. I know Tope, he's a good friend, a great guy. I have the text message from five years ago when it said, hey, I'm raising. Calendly, wait, wait, it's pronounced Calendly, not calendar Lee. Yeah, Callend Lee.

Yeah, Callant Lee. Based in Atlanta, minority founder, you know, the reports say they just raised that $3 billion valuation. I have the text message in my phone five years ago. And I looked at the product and I said, it's kind of a calendar add-on, not sure. And here's what I didn't do. To your point of how we used to be too selective for meetings, I didn't even take the meeting. Right? I didn't even take the meeting. That's painful. Right? I have the text message, but I didn't actually go take the meeting.

And so, you know, now I cheer him on and we're friends and so forth. They've built an amazing company, the viral loop of that thing and the number of like meetings and their schedule. Yeah, I missed it. In your backyard. The biggest one in your own backyard, you've been. Missy, this is the blind spot. Even you could have a blind spot. Yeah, minority founder. Sit down the street for me. And you know them. And I know them. But those are the things that keep you going, like keep you aiming to get better in this funny world of been an investor. And it also makes you kind of think about more and more like what could go right versus what could go wrong when you're looking at a potential investor.

Explain that what that means because this is the hard lesson. I've been invested. 11th year of investing. How long you've been actually writing checks? Maybe four or five years now. Yep. Yeah. So more recent. Yeah. This is like something you realize maybe I think in that five, six, seven years when something you dismissed as just being a feature or not big enough, too nichey. And you came up in your mind because our human minds are so not risk taking, right? We're so cautious as humans. We're so scared that we go, you know what? It's a feature. There's got to be something bigger.

But you said it. What could go right versus what could go wrong? You made the decision of like, well, so many things can go wrong here. Like can't Google Calendar or Microsoft just add this? And here we are. It's 10 years later, whatever it is. I've never seen all my team, I'm paying for this product 20 different times on 20 different corporate cards. everything went right.

Or maybe one thing went right. I don't know what it is. But now that's exactly what it is. You realize it's kind of like been an armchair quarterback. It's easy to sit there and critique the place. And some people think that's what makes them a great investor. It's like, oh, if I point out all the things that go wrong, like look how smart I am, I can point out the problems.

And it's like, no, the better ones are actually forecasting what happens when things go right. and then helping the entrepreneur make those things come to pass. And so now it's a great example of, I mean, it's a product that people love. The viral loop is there as a efficient sales cycle. And so you spend the rest of your months and days and years, you know, making up for that. Right? And looking for the next one and looking for the next one. But now in this world, with 30-minute meetings, you do 12 meetings a day instead of four.

And so you don't miss the meeting the next time. Yes. Right. Everybody can improve their game. Well, let's, since I gave you the PTSD now, when I started with, it's so funny because I had my notes here and I glanced over at my notes and I was like, oh, shit, he hit that? Then I realized it was what you didn't hit. Give me, give me some of the big hits.

Give me some, take me through the greatest hits. Right now, you're just like, wow, I can't believe this has gone so well. Yeah, so, I mean, a few, you know, my background has been in cybersecurity. And so like, you know, one co-founded but also wrote a check was pin drop, right? So we're 10 years in, you know, started around a napkin. The first round was a million dollar round. Now there's, you know, 200 million invested into the company and growing. And, you know, probably seven or eight of the top ten banks are customers and that's going well. And then other cyber security companies, like was an investor in company called Cadium that turned into expanse and then was acquired by Palo Alto. for, I believe it was 600, 800 million recently and then company...

And those security companies are like slow and steady, man. Those are just like these nice little $500 million billion. Yep. Just straight. They don't like pop into like the $100 billion things that often, but man, do they become worth $500 million to $5 billion over and over again? Time and time again, right? And problems that you think are solved already.

But the hackers, it's kind of this industry that kind of keeps giving back a bit. The gift and curses, you solve it, and then the hackers figure out a different approach. And so the industry needs a different solution. And so it's one of the few industries where there's an adversary that every few years will create a need for the next generation of your product. And so, you know, invest in a company called emailage that, you know, stops fraud for commerce. They were quite recently by Lex's Nexus. But then, you know, there's, you know, others that are still going. So, like, I was investing like ring.

So some consumer facing things outside of it. Oh, that's my anti-portfolio. Oh, that's so brutal. I was lucky there. I met Jamie and he was kind enough to let me invest. And then more recently, you know, companies like Greenlight, fintech for kids that, you know, met them there in Atlanta. What do they do? I never heard of them.

Oh, so Greenlight is a unicorn based in Atlanta. And they make a debit card for kids. And so if you want to give your kid and pay your kids for their chores, but like on a debit card and they get more allowance depending on if they did their chores or not. Oh, wow. Yep, there's millions of families that use this debit card for kids. So think of it as like a, what's a neobank, you know, like Chime or Money Lion or Vero. So it's like a neobank for kids.

And so now they've raised, I don't know, maybe $100 million, the most recent value was reported. They're worth $1.2 bill, yeah. Yeah. Do they let the kids trade Bitcoin as well? They're allowed. They just announced investing accounts for kids. kids. They did? Oh, that was a joke. Oh, my God. So they combined in the Robin Hood feature set? Yeah. So a little bit of equities. You want to teach your kid how to invest. So there's equity.

So that. Hopefully not options or shorting stocks. Right. Let's leave that for when you, you get to college. At least. At least. Exactly. I don't even, I don't even play with like options or calls and like my nephew and like a bunch of like young people I know. They know more about put options and call options and they're like taking my advice and then making all this money. And I'm like, explain to me one more time how that put call works. How does it work? What are you doing exactly? You're buying options on what? It's like, oh my God. You're doing like a straddle strategy of what? Exactly. It's like, I'm like, all I know how to do is put money in and hope for the best. That's kind of my strategy. Just keep placing bets. I don't know how to bet these things like

In fintech right now, because you're getting all these companies that are becoming like affinity fintechs, right? So like Greenlight is like a fintech for kids. And then I'm an investor and helped start this company called Greenwood. That's a neo-bank for minorities. And you talk about how culture impacts technology. We partner with killer Mike, right? The rapper and activist. And then partner with Ambassador Andrew Young, right?

So great civil rights hero. And people like Jesse Williams and launched Greenwood, which is like this. Neo Bank for Black and Latinos. And like the whole point is, you know, the banks are really unkind and unfair to minorities. There's a decline for loans at a higher rate. They don't can't get the same access to savings. And then think about the fees they charged them. Like when, when you get to where we are, people are like, oh yeah, no, no, that's all free. And I'm sending you tickets to the NICs. And you're all good. And here's a margin loan. When I first heard what a margin loan was, I was like, wait, what? They're like, yeah, well, you can just take out whatever amount of money you need and we'll just charge you

1% don't worry about it's a courtesy and I'm like where was that when I fucking needed it right to like you know you can't have that into you're rich I'm like but I don't need it now I have money and they're like yeah that's why you can use it I'm like so you can have more money for free for free money I was like wait you remember that moment when they explained to you a margin loan so wait I have this account with money in it that's not my money but I can use it just use it for one percent or side they're like oh yeah yeah like whatever plus whatever libor you're So here's what's crazy.

So meanwhile, I have a bunch of friends that are like, that are minorities that, like, they have a lot of money, really profitable businesses, and they can't go to the bank and get a loan for their business. But it's like, but it's doing seven, eight digits a year, is dropping a lot to EBITA, is fast growing, and the traditional bank, they walk in, they get declined. And it's like, wait, where's the disconnect? And so I think that's a problem, like with Greenwood work and to solve. But it's another example, like Green Light of an affinity bank, an affinity bank, an affiliate,

Fintech. They both happen to be based in Atlanta. But yeah. I mean, you could literally flip it. You could be like, you know what? You don't have a lot of money in your account. Checking's free. We're not going to charge you for the ATM. When you get a little bit of cash, then we'll start charging you. That's kind of how the world should work, right? It's like there's not that much money down here anyway. And we're in We're in Wealthfront. And wealth front's like, yeah, the first 10,000, you can invest whatever it is. I think it's five or 10,000. We won't take any fees. We'll take our little chip when you get past 10,000 in holdings or whatever. That's kind of how the world should work.

I kind of feel that's how like taxes should work. I feel like if you're coming up, things should be free. And then when you kind of start to hit your stride, then you start paying into your taxes or whatever it happens to be. And it's the exact opposite in the world. I got famous. And people are like, can I send you a free phone or a computer for free? I'm like, what are you talking?

I don't need a free computer. Please don't send me anything for free. I don't want free shit from you. Like, that was like my, I went to Sundance. My brain got melted. You ever go to Sundance? You know, like, you see these like sweets. They have these things like called gifting sweets.

Okay. And you know about gifting sweets in Hollywood? Yeah, yeah, for sure. Or like other parties. And you walk in and they're like, oh, would you like, we can ship you this espresso machine, we'll send you this. Or would you like these. skis and I'm like, what's the catch?

They're like, we'll just take a picture and, you know, we'll put it in the back of the Sundance magazine. And I'm like, okay, what's the catch? Oh, that's how it is. Like my, my fiance, every day, she just gets stuff to the house. It's like, why do you send you? Oh, you're on this TV show and you have a bunch of followers. And so she gets-

I can say what your, your fiance is on one of the, uh, real housewife show, correct? Yeah, yeah. Okay. I'm assuming real housewives of Atlanta. I don't watch it, but I follow her now. because I follow you. Okay. So I follow your wife to see just for the one out of 20 pictures that include you.

I understand. And I'm like, what's that about now? Does that mean you get, are you on that show? Do you get pulled into this reality television orbit now? No, not really. It's interesting Jason. I tell you why we did it. So I used to come to the Bay every month or so.

And people would say, oh, you live in Atlanta. And they would say, hey, do you know, um, two chains? And then they'll say, hey, do you know, like the housewives? And I was like, what do you mean? Like, that's not Atlanta. Like Atlanta is like, we have these Fortune 500s and we have Georgia Tech and we have, you know, like, Coca-Cola. There's all this other stuff.

And I realized it was the number one representation on the, of the city, right? It's the number one viewed show on Brahma, Bravo. And we said, look, what do we put like someone on there that like really represents our community that does cost, you know, community service and philanthropy and like builds businesses and entrepreneurship? Yeah. Like, could we show, you know, millions of black females technology? Could we show them entrepreneurship? Could we show them investing? And so we did it for that.

That's a good decision. Right? And so it comes with reality TV comes with like some hairy stuff too. So we don't do that anymore. Yeah, for sure, right? They have to make up like weird stuff for storylines. But now she's launching a new show called Making of a Mogul. And what she's doing now is going around and interviewing like entrepreneurs and like tell me

your story of how you built your business. And so, yeah. So she's transitioned to that, but that was really the whole thing about TV. It's like, how can we educate more minorities and more women about business and about entrepreneurship? That's a big win. You know, I was, I had a reality TV show pilot I did with NBC. Luckily, it didn't get on air because some of the people who were involved in the show

were later had personal problems. I'll leave it at that. But I was like, you know what? I'm open to doing a reality show if it does promote. entrepreneurship and inspires people to do it. I think Shark Tank's done a good job of that. Sounds like your fiance is going to do a great job of that. But that's got to be weird for you to be walking next to her down the street and like

paparazzi, like just going crazy. Yeah, I have to regularly take pictures of her with people when we're at the store or something. Okay. Oh, so now you've become an Insta husband. Yeah, so I'm totally like the little. They're just like, oh, can you take a picture of me with you? Okay, fine. Oh, God.

But yeah, to your, you're an in-st-the-husband. It's the fiancé. Fianzae's of Instagram. See, my wife's not on the social, but she's threatening to go social now. So she turned on her accounts. And I'm like, oh, boy, here we go. I'm going to be taking pictures of all kinds of stuff. And she got a clubhouse account now.

And I think it's going to start. Oh, man. I send you a clubhouse exposing these rooms. Oh, I'm loving it. That's like my new pastime. Because, you know, I hated that when we were, when you and I were coming up in the industry, like the demo conference, you'd be like, oh, my God, your product is so good. Give me $20,000. You're going to have five minutes on stage.

And I was like, well, that's bullshit. And I started the TechCrunch 40 conference with Mike. And then eventually we split up and I did the launch festival. We made it free to be on stage. Yep. And we made it free to have a table, you know, in the exhibition area for startups. And we would just charge the big companies, you know, IBM or Verizon. And we'd be more than happy to pay to sponsor.

to the event and it was great that the up-and-comers didn't have to pay. And now you got all these weird coaches trying to sell, you know, seven figure, eight figure, nine figure, ten X your business. And you want to talk about like how horrible these people are. They're specifically going after black women, Hispanic women. You know why? Because there are, a lot of them are just first coming into entrepreneurship. Right. So they look at them like targets. They're like, okay, oh, here's a black woman who's, you know, been raising her kids. Now she's, you know, She's got five hours a day. Her kids are in school or whatever.

And she wants to start a business. Great. Let's charge her $5,000 to teach her how to do this five-ex system. That's not good. It's gross. And it's these like white guys who, you know, live in San Diego or whatever. And then they pretend they have some system where they're going to teach you how to do what you and I do for a living.

Right. But you and I are not taking meetings with people who are curious about entrepreneurship. We're taking, like we said before, like, hey, show us your customers or whatever. So there's this big gap in the market, which is I'm interested in startups, but I don't know anything. But I got a lot of energy. And I might even have a little bit of capital to invest in it or I got some time to invest in. And they come in and I tell you, these guys are such scumbags. They will say, I'll put you on a payment plan for the course.

And they make them sign a contract. Then the person pays 10 times $1,000, $10,000 to take a course. They don't get anything out of it. And you know what they're teaching them in the course? Here's what SEO is. Here's what a click funnel is. You know, here's how to build a landing page. And all they're doing is repeating the stuff that, you know, people in our industry

build web pages for. And they build this like very light course that you could get for free on intercoms website or, you know, HubSpot has all the information for free in videos on their website because they want you to buy their product for $99 a month. So literally, these people could go to HubSpot, but they don't know what that is. And so these people come in and just intercept them, charge them $10,000, make them sign non-disclosures. and sometimes they even get them to take loans out. So they're like, here's a payday loan company.

Go there, get a loan to take my course. Wow. And they fall for it because they don't know any better. I mean, how would you know any better? My mom might fall for it. You know, she's a nurse. She doesn't know how business and startups work. And so I'm specifically calling these people out on Clubhouse and I'm stopping them.

I'm just absolutely just letting people know what the funnels are. And then I'm taking my founder university course. and I'm just going to make it into like, so you want to start a startup, here's like step one, step two, step three, and I'm going to make it just to totally fuck with these guys.

I'm going to charge $1. Hmm. And I'm literally hiring a full-time teacher and I'm going to charge $1 and maybe have 10,000 people do it a year, just $1,000, just to make a point. I'll teach them everything for $1. And then I'll figure out,

I'll get some sponsor to pay for the other stuff. I'll get HubSpot to underwrite it so that if, you know, 10% of them make it to the end of the course, they might become HubSpot customers or I'll get Zendesk or one of my people to, you know, support it. But I tell you right now, I am, I am livid. I'm going to come over the top and I am stopping this. It's not happening on my watch. I love that. Like, just taking advantage of people who want to change their station in life.

I mean, it's just brutal. It just makes me so angry. I love it. Because there's so much of it, right? like these vultures and they're, well, they're slinging real estate courses or trading courses or Forex or found like there's whatever. They've picked some specialty and yeah, it's a good point. They'll put something in their bio that looks real like in their Instagram bio and they'll

take a figure, 10x entrepreneur, eight figure. They'll go rinse them. Here's how you bust them. You say, tell us the name of your eight figure business because you know it's not listed. Right. It's not the business isn't listed. You know, you could put like all, you could literally list all the businesses with the URLs. Yeah.

With your bio page on the website. Like, you can do that. Yeah. I could list it. Like, you know, you could go to crunch base and see my investments. Like, it's not too hard people. But these people are like 16, 7, 8, 9 figure businesses. Just ask them, tell me the number one business.

What's the URL? So I can look it up. What's the address of that business? There is no address. There is no business. It's all bullshit. Yep. No, they just have a couple of renting cars and they, they chartered a jet once or twice

with all their friends and took it, took selfies and they rotate those pictures. It's kind of a bow-wob challenge. They literally will rent cars, put them in their driveway, and take pictures of it. Yep. And then they put it on their Instagram. And then it's really like pernicious techniques they're using, which is if you're affiliated and you're associated with a fast car, you might. have owned a couple of these. I'm not calling out your lifestyle, Paul, but I know that you have some

nice vehicles. But, you know, like, you're not renting them. Like, you own nice vehicles. I own a couple nice vehicles. Right, right. Then, this is where it really gets sick. This one guy was paying like Sylvester Stallone and like Pacino. And they don't know what they're getting into, but they're speaking bureau. I was like, hey, go to this conference. He wants to talk to you about your career. Here's 50K. So then they do that. Then they have a picture and a video on YouTube of them interviewing Al Pacino. And you're like, oh, they're friends with Al Pacino and they drive a Ferrari. Therefore, and they wear a tie. Okay, this person's legit.

But you don't realize they rented the Ferrari for $1,000 for six hours. And they paid Pacino 50 grand to be on their conference. And they charged all this money for the tickets. So they just made the audience pay for Pacino. And they got all the association. Now you pay 10K for the course and we're charging your credit card until your credit card gets turned off. And now you're in debt. And you're like some single mom, you know, out of it.

or L.A. or something, and you got into their click funnel and they convinced you to do it. And then the techniques they use is one person was telling me, they tried to make her feel bad about herself, like, oh, you can afford those shoes in that purse, but you can't afford to invest in yourself. I guess you're not serious about business. And they kept, like, grinding her and like insulting her. And she was like, okay, I guess I got to like really take myself more seriously. And she was like really embarrassed about how she fell for it. And I was like, don't be embarrassed. Like, you know, people pay for college. Like, people have coaches. Like in our industry, there are, Jerry Colon has been on my pod multiple times.

Good friend of mine. He's a great coach. Like coaching exists. Right. But that's not who these people are. Right. I'm taking them all down. Now let's do it.

They need to be moved out of the way because there's so many promising, probably entrepreneurs that could really be successful that are taking a wrong left turn and will be distracted into that. That could have been the next, you know, X, XYZ company. And so, no, I applaud you. You're teaching. I'm going to hit you up again. I'm getting more of your time, Paul.

Let's do it. I mean, I do have to say that while we wrap up here, I appreciate the hour. Just, you know, we're friends, but if I never said it, thank you for showing up for me all the fucking time. Every, you never say no to me. Every time I ask you to show up and speak at a conference, you're like, I'm there, I'm there, I'm there. And if you can't be there, you're like, I'll be there the next one. I really appreciate it, you know, on behalf of the entrepreneurs and everything. It means a lot.

No, my pleasure, man. You're out there, you know, leading away and carving a pass or anything I can do to to support, you know. You've, it's a good friendship and kind of, uh, inspiring. And so, uh, you know, like I say, you know, it's kind of iron sharpens iron and we kind of inspire each other. So anything I can do to be helpful. And now that I see you're on this mission of taking down these, these, uh, fraudulent

clubhouse rooms and coaches, uh, I got your back. Let me know what I can do. Well, we'll run a room like legit guys giving free advice. No, no coaching. Free coaching for life. All right, man, uh, continued success. And I'm, I'm coming out to Miami soon. right after I got my vaccine and I'll see you there.

All right, I'll see you soon. I got a good Cuban place. I've got the name of the place, but one of my CEOs down there took me to this crazy Cuban place with croquettas and like that, you know, those Cuban sandwiches. I don't know if you're hitting those. Oh, yeah. I was looking for one the other day. Actually, I was walking down the street and following Google Maps and trying to get to this place and I never found it. So I haven't had good Cuban yet here.

Yeah, old Havana, Cuban bar and Cochina. I'll email you this. There's like this really old place and it's got a deck on the back and man, they have these sick croquettas. Yeah, that's the name of it. I'm looking at the pictures right now. Old Havana, Cuban bar, and Cochina.

Just hit this place up. The backyard is dope. And the croquettes, you know, those little fried mashed potatoes. Oh, man. If I moved down there, I'm going to have to work out a lot because I'm going to be hitting

so many croquettes and all these. And that Cuban sandwich is crazy. So you're thinking about it. I'm thinking about it. No, I'm going to, you know, if I could see myself living in Miami or in Austin. I mean, I love both those cities. And I live 30 years New York, 20 Brooklyn, 10 Manhattan, that I did 10 in L.A. I've done five or six here in the Bay.

I could see myself doing 10 in either of those places. I could do 10. Yep. I could do my time in Miami. It could be worse. It could be worse. It could be, man. I was coming for a couple of days and I came up for a week.

And so I just, I just leased a condo here. And so I was like, all right, let me try. And yeah, it's delightful. It's good. It's, I can see. Well, if you can lower your costs, these startups were getting demolished here at the costs. Right. The cost of living is too much.

And I would just, like, starting like four years, three or four years ago, I was like, come here to get the money and then go somewhere else. And then just, you know, keep a we work office. Or if you have one of those we work cards where you can float in and out, you know, just come here at one. a month, every other month, do your meetings, you know, meet with your partnerships, and then deploy the capital in Salt Lake, Toronto, or Austin or Miami, but Atlanta, anywhere that's not $4,000 for a one bedroom.

Right. Places. You haven't been here since the pandemic, right? No, I haven't been at San Francisco's going to be over than a year now. It's over. I mean, done. It is over. Like, the apartments went from $4,000 to $2,500.

the city is a ghost town. And I kid you not, seven out of ten restaurants, shut down. The place is cleared out. And the rest of the peninsula is booming. So everybody left San Francisco. Okay.

Came south, east, or north. So they're all going up to, you know, Marin, where they're going to the East Bay, Oakland, Berkeley. So those places have all gone up. Okay. And even further east, you know, like Tahoe. And they're going south to Gilroy and Santa

cruise, but now that you can work at home, people are like, why do I want to be in the city that's overpriced? I can work from home. Why am I paying $4,000 for an apartment when I could pay $2,000 for a mortgage on a house on an acre? It doesn't make sense, right? So I think San Francisco is like a five-year slide straight down. It's going to be crazy. I don't think it can recover in the short term because of the taxes and, you know, and then now they're losing some of these super routers. So like Keith Reboiler, leaves or, you know, Elon leaves, whatever. Like, when those kind of, when that level of person leaves, young people are like, well,

if Keith can go to Miami, I can go to Miami, you know, it makes just total sense to them. What are you going to do about your mayor or Ronda? I know, well, you know, they, I, I, I guess Miami's going to need a new mayor at some point or Austin will. All right. There we go. I feel like I got, you know, I turned 50 and I gave it a lot of thought. I feel like I want to do 10 more years of investing.

Okay. I feel like if I, if I can keep up this pace, 100 to 200 investments a year, I got 14 people in the investment company now, if I can keep up this pace and put another 1,200 investments on top of the 300 I got now and do 1,500 investments in 20 years, I don't know who can hit that track record.

I kind of feel like I'll be Steph Curry with the threes, like, you know, full circle, like, who can catch me now? Like, I don't think you can catch me now. Who's going to catch me? Like, Paul Graham retired. like Ron Com I retired. Chris Saka's doing, you know, carbon. I think I got a straight shot.

Like I'll be Mount Rushmore, you know, that's what I'm going for. I'm playing for legacy. No, it would take an institution, right? I mean, it would take like a, not a person, but an institution to compare. We take Y Combinator, Techstar's type level. Like, they're churning out those institutions 400 investments a year. You know, my little 14-person team doing 100, and I think we'll hit 200, you know, eventually like, I think we're going to be in a good position.

So I'm just grinding. All right, man. Good to see you, Paul. Stay safe. We'll see you soon. Hey, you too, but I talk to you soon. Cheers.