This Week in Startups - Relationship Advice of the Investor Sort with Meghan Reynolds of Altimeter | E2008

Starting point is 00:00:00 there's going to be a lot of really disappointed hands out there. And so you have to show that you're really differentiated. You can access basically any VC fund today. I hate to say it, but everybody's open. And so you really have to be sharp about why you deserve to be at the table. And that comes from these five components. You can't over raise because LPs truly understand and they'll evaluate your deals, your deal size, the markets, they're highly intelligent. You've got to be rational about your fund size. Worst things to do in a pitch, and I'm going to laugh because Jason just did it on stage, is don't refer to deals as bets. Don't worry.

Starting point is 00:00:35 This is the hardest time to raise capital in 25 years that I've been doing this. It is the hardest time for everyone. Full stop. Always be closing, right? Glenn Gary, Glenn Ross. Always be fundraising. This Week in Startups is brought to you by LinkedIn Ads. To redeem a $100 LinkedIn ad credit and launch your first campaign,

Starting point is 00:00:56 go to LinkedIn.com slash this week in startups. Runway. Looking to level up your financial planning? Runway is the moderate and intuitive way to model, plan, and align your business for everyone on your team. Sign up at runway.com slash twist to get your first three months free. And Beehive. Power your newsletters with AI tools, referral programs, and ad network features, all in one platform. Get 30 days free and 20% off your first three months. at Beehive.com slash twist. All right. One of my besties, Brad Gersner,

Starting point is 00:01:32 some people refer to him as the fifth bestie on the online pod and he's got a great new podcast, BG2, introduce me to this brilliant force of nature and Megan Reynolds. And we went to the UAE

Starting point is 00:01:43 and we went and visited some amazing places. And she looked at everything I was doing and I said, I don't know how to manage LPs. And she said, but you've been doing this for 10 years. I was like,

Starting point is 00:01:51 yeah, I just tweet, I'm raising a fund. And, you know, we just raise a fund. But then all of a sudden the world imploded. and I lost my might as touch the ability to just tell somebody I'm raising a fund and they would just hand me money. And I had to actually like explain the strategy and all this crazy stuff.

Starting point is 00:02:04 And then she's mentored me. And so I got a new bestie. And, you know, I asked Brad, is it okay if I asked Megan to help me? And he said, yeah, she'll just ask her. And if she's got time, I'm sure she'll do it. And so not only did Megan help me with RLP relations and structuring and she helped me train my team like Ashley, who at our firm, Ashley is now going to be in charge of just the LP relationships. And so I really appreciate the fact that in Silicon Valley, there's people who just help people for the sake of doing it because it is the right thing to do to help your peers try to get better at the craft.

Starting point is 00:02:38 And so I asked her to talk today. She said, what do you want me to talk about? I said, I want you to talk about what you do, which is relationships. And whenever Brad's going to the Middle East, I'm like, who should we meet with? She's like, I don't know. That's what Megan does. And I said, okay, can I talk to her? She's like, yeah, she's there.

Starting point is 00:02:55 I'm like, well, we're going next week. She's, yeah, she's there at like setting up the meetings and meeting people and vetting them. I said, ah, I get it. So give it up for Megan Reynolds. Thank you so much, Jason, and thank you so much for having me here. I know most of the people in the room, the craft is investing, but truly my craft is relationships. And I am relentless about this craft. And so I'm here to give you relationship advice. And I told my husband asked me where I was going this morning. And I said, I'm going to Napa to talk to a, a room of mostly men and give them relationship advice. And he said, I don't think that you're the right person to be giving that talk, which is true if you're talking about marriage or those types of relationships. But the reality is that I've been fundraising and doing investor relations a lot longer than I've been married. So perhaps I'm a little bit more qualified to talk about relationships of the investor sort, of the LPGP sort. And so what is my background? What makes me qualified to do this. I've been doing it a really long time, 25 years. Unfortunately, it does not

Starting point is 00:04:02 mean I was some sort of prodigy. Yes, I am that old. And I've been fundraising. I've spent the majority of my time at three firms, Goldman Sachs, TPG, and I've been at Altimeter for the last three years. During my time in being in fundraising and investor relations, we've collectively raised over $100 billion, the teams that I've been a part of or me personally. I join Goldman in our private equity group at the very early stages of the development of the fund of funds business, we had about $5 billion of assets under management. We had about $40 billion of assets when I left. We joined TPG when we had $40 billion of assets and we had $120 billion when I left in Altimeter. We're just getting started. So, and that represents not just venture capital.

Starting point is 00:04:45 It's, I've raised over 50 funds from middle market buyouts to real estate, to infrastructure to BDCs, long only equity, I mean, impact, you name it. I've seen a lot in my time. Thousands and thousands of LP relationships of every kind of LP in the world across every continent. And what have I taken away from that? One big thing, which is the best way to raise capital and to keep capital is communication. It's not a surprise to me that some of the best venture capitalists from Mike Moritz, to Bill Gurley, to Jason, to folks like Brad, started their career in media, publishing, or politics. Because communication really matters.

Starting point is 00:05:37 And if you ask any number of LPs out there, and there's some in the room, and I would say you should raise your hand if you disagree, the most important thing to them is actually not returns. Returns are just table stakes. The most important thing is really good communication. and the trust and the mutual value add and shared insights, that all comes from the right cadence of communication.

Starting point is 00:06:03 And why is that? The reality is in the course of your career and especially in venture, you're communicating mostly bad news. The good stuff happens. There will be good exits. There will be good performance years. But there will be a whole host of really bad things that happen. And I've worked at some tremendous firms, and I've listed here, when I thought about, okay, what's been the good that I've communicated and what's been the bad, I could have kept going on the bad list, and I had a hard time. I mean, I have annual meetings on the good list. But there has been a whole host of unexpected bad things that have happened. I'd love to share war stories. It definitely requires a drink or two. We've had fraud. We've had, we called capital for a deal.

Starting point is 00:06:53 that had already gone to zero and the LPs funded it. I mean, there are some really, really bad things, and no one is immune. Portfolio company fraud, like these things just happen. And it's not about them the fact that they happen. It really what makes the difference is how you communicate when those things happen. And this applies to portfolio, company CEOs, people with boards as well. I believe this fully, that it really is about how you communicate when these things go wrong.

Starting point is 00:07:20 And what happens? It's no surprises. you are in a race for me you are in a race when there is about to be press on something that's happening in your portfolio that's happening with your company to get to your most investors before that press hits i was actually on my way here this morning and i spent um i got up really early and spent the whole drive up here calling our klps we had an exit announced this morning for altimeter it's a really big exit super exciting and i was racing against the wall street journal because i just know it means so much if they're a They've already heard from me before they see that press hit. And I know that it seems, I hope it doesn't seem elementary to people, but it's just a really important reminder about how that communication goes a really long way. And it applies to good news and bad news, right? Race to get there first, even if you don't know the answers,

Starting point is 00:08:09 but we wanted everybody to hear just to say, hey, we know that you're going to see this and this is painful. We'll get to you as soon as we know more information. I believe in a communication hierarchy as well. I think it's really important. And I've seen a lot of things go wrong in communication where you talk to your LPs before you talk to your employees. And that's hurtful to your employees. You could have miscommunication because then your employees might be telling something else, some other investor, something that isn't true.

Starting point is 00:08:38 You've got to get it right. So it goes employees, then LPs, then your portfolio company CEOs, and then other prospects and prospective employees and other people. It's important to get to all of them, but I believe really strongly in this exact order. There's a bad news framework when communicating bad news. What's the problem? What's the impact to that company and what's my personal exposure as an investor? You have a company that goes to zero. Communicate it out. It's a problem. This is what happened at the company. It's going to zero, but it's only X percent of your portfolio. And this is what we think the impact would be to the multiple. One of the biggest mistakes that I see GPs make is they assume that the LPs read the annual report. They don't. They're not reading a long email. If you have good news, don't bury it in the report. Communicate it in other ways. Send text, send WhatsApp, send, you know, multiple emails.

Starting point is 00:09:36 Celebrate the good news, but also don't just bury the bad news and report because it's really going to piss your LPs off. If you're a B2B startup, LinkedIn should be your top marketing channel. Why? Because the business marketing playing field is tilted against you. The big companies will always outspend the startup. So your spend needs to be 100% dialed in. You need two things, the right prospects, and a way to reach them. LinkedIn has 1 billion members, 130 million decision makers,

Starting point is 00:10:05 and 10 million C-level executives. So LinkedIn Ads gives you the ability to target them with pinpoint accuracy. LinkedIn Ads lets you filter potential leads by job title industry and even company. So you can build new relationships while reaching customers, where they already are, and you're not going to overspend. In the tech market, LinkedIn generates two to five times higher return on ad spend than other social media platforms. You won't be alone either.

Starting point is 00:10:33 79% of B2B content marketers said LinkedIn produces the best results for paid media. So here's a call to action. Start converting your B2B audience into high-quality leads today. We'll even give you a $100 credit on your next campaign. So go to LinkedIn.com slash this week in startups to client. your credit. That's LinkedIn.com slash this week in startups. Terms and conditions apply. LinkedIn, the place to be to be. I loved that you were talking about founders replying within two minutes earlier. I believe in that from an investor relation standpoint, too. Even if you don't have a response,

Starting point is 00:11:10 just the client service that's involved in investing, I think it just gets lost a lot because people have their heads down and they're so focused on delivering returns that they forget about what client service really means for your own investment firm. And that involves a lot of empathy, sitting the fact that most of your investors have boards and bosses and principals and pensioners that they need to communicate with. And sitting with that and understanding that really informs the way you communicate. And finally, don't burn bridges.

Starting point is 00:11:44 You know, karma is real. I had a tweet about this, but I have a friend of mine this year that told me that he had a 5 million LP from one of his previous funds that he always serviced because his mentor told him that you treat your 5 million LP the same way you treat your 100 million LP and that 5 million LP just wrote him a billion dollar check this year when he spun out and started his own fund.

Starting point is 00:12:07 Karma is real. You treat everyone the same and you really think about that in the way that you develop your business. Transparency bonus points, there's certain levels of just giving a portfolio review, just thinking about what the LPs really need to understand when you're managing a portfolio, it's what's at risk and where's my potential upside? And if you're communicating that on an annual basis, I guarantee you will be getting major transparency points from your investors. So that's really around client service and investor relations, but it's really about fundraising as well. Because if you ask about any LP,

Starting point is 00:12:44 what's the number one way that they source new funds? They'll say word of mouth or other LPs. It's not on Prequine. It's not in the press. It's not in the Midas list. It's who are the other investors out there that are actually saying good things about your fund. And so what does that mean? The best way to fundraise is making your existing LPs happy. And that leads to good investor relations or that comes from good investor relations. You know, people come to me a lot and ask for advice about fundraising or they're, and it's typically when they're stuck. And they'll say, Megan, I just don't understand. Our track record is really exceptional. And we're having a real-time raising capital. And I say, one, don't worry, this is the hardest time to raise capital in 25 years

Starting point is 00:13:29 that I've been doing this. It is the hardest time for everyone, full stop. And there's a lot of reasons that we can discuss of why that happens and why that's happening. But it's a lot around this formula. I didn't make up this formula. Someone showed it to me once, and I thought it was absolutely brilliant and spot on because your track record matters. You got to layer in your differentiation on top of that, but a lot of it is reduced by this underestimated factor called complexity. And what is complexity? It's are you a first time fund? Do you have paper returns, but not DPI? Have you had team changes? Is your performance concentrated around one deal? Have you had changes in strategy, strategy drift? Are you overmarking your portfolio where all of the LPs know? This is like this is an overestimated track record. And then there's something called the bucket issue. A lot of investors have buckets. That's the way they allocate capital. They have a bucket for early stage. They have a bucket for buyouts. They have a bucket for real estate. Are you outside of a bucket? We face that sometimes at Altimeter because we're a multi-strategy. And people sometimes they like early and they

Starting point is 00:14:41 do late. So we have a bucket issue for some LPs. And so I just think you really have to rationalize what you can accomplish when you're raising capital by really taking a firm look at what your complexity factor is and then layer that into your pitch. So face it head on. Don't bury it. Because it's going to come out in the reference calls or as they dig through. And you could really take it on. And I know this is something, you know, Jason and I talk about this. when we evaluate the presentation together. It's like, let's talk about how your strategy is evolved. Address that head on in your pitch.

Starting point is 00:15:19 And I think it's probably that piece of it is probably the biggest mistake that I see GPs making as they put together presentations. And as they get frustrated, the capital isn't coming together. And like I said earlier, everything is achievable. You can get there. If you have a rational fund size, and we can talk about that a little bit. I think one thing, the market will give you what you. need. You can't over raise because LPs truly understand and they'll evaluate your deals,

Starting point is 00:15:48 your deal size, the markets, they're highly intelligent and you've got to be rational about your fund size. VC is pretty simple as far as I'm concerned and how you have to pitch your fund. It doesn't need to be in this order, but how you explain your differentiation, it's not just about track record, but there's five basic components in venture capital. It's sourcing, picking, winning, and I put the picking in portfolio construction, how you add value and exit. I mean, it's basically those five components. You have to define your differentiation at every turn.

Starting point is 00:16:20 Otherwise, you'll be leaving part of your strategy off the table. And this is really what investors seek to understand. Unfortunately, there's about 2,000 VC funds that will raise capital or try to raise capital over the course of the next 24 months. That's an insane amount of product. there's going to be a lot of really disappointed hands out there. And so you have to show that you're really differentiated. You can access basically any VC fund today. You can access Sequoia. You can buy a secondary and get on the list. And I hate to say it, but everybody's open. Even the funds that are oversubscribed, I would argue they're open because there's ways to get in. And so you really have to be sharp about why you deserve to be at the table. And that comes from these five components. So some fundraising dues and don'ts. Okay, this is another mistake that I see people make. They fundraise and they say, Megan, great news. We just raised our last fund and we hit our target at our cap. I said, that's great. What are you doing next week? Start raising again. Always be closing, right? Glengarry, Glenn Ross, always be fundraising. Now, that doesn't mean you have a product in the market, but don't miss an opportunity to build your brand. Have someone in your firm own the brand in the market.

Starting point is 00:17:39 and be thinking about how you're raising capital, the best way to do that is by servicing your LPs, keeping the conversation. Most of your capital should come from re-ups if you already have a fund. So fundraising, the pre-marketing piece, comes in that regular cadence of communication with your existing investors,

Starting point is 00:17:57 but it's also thinking about brand building when you're not in the market. That's that constantly build your brand. And the ownership, I think this is a big mistake that I see GPs make as well, is that they build a firm, and the first thing they do is hire more investors. They hire ops, someone to deal with their back office, and they focus on building out their deal team. And the last person that they hire, they typically try to bring in someone junior to handle

Starting point is 00:18:23 IR, which they define as sending out the capital calls and writing up those notices. And I think I push you to say, when you have a company, at what point in their growth do they hire a head of sales for customer service or client success, probably pretty early. And if not, there's someone on that team that is taking ownership over it. I actually think most investors like it when it's someone on the deal side, someone that's not junior that's not disconnected from the portfolio, but making sure that someone is waking up every day saying, how is the Harvard Endowment thinking about us today? Who haven't I talked to? When was the last time I spoke to family office XYZ or Texas retirement system. Like you really have to make sure that someone is owning that because

Starting point is 00:19:10 that's your sales and you need capital. I know this sounds very basic, but I've seen in 25 years, I still see people make this mistake. As a founder, there are some crucial questions you got to ask yourself. Do you know how your hiring plan impacts your burn rate? Do you know how much cash your startup has right now? Are you living in spreadsheet chaos? Well, if you want to have the answer to every investor question before they ask it, you need to check out Runway. This product is extraordinary. They've completely changed the way startups handle their finances. By the way, what an incredible runaway.com. I'm talking to founders about the runway all the time. Are you kidding me? Good job, runway. So what do they do? It's elegantly simple. Runway connects your accounting HR and all your

Starting point is 00:19:54 data sources so that you map growth accurately. Financial modeling that you can set up in plain English and ask questions to and create reports for investors and your executives that auto update in real time. It's so simple. Any department can use it, not just a finance department. So join a growing customer list that includes superhuman angelist 818 to kill it and revenue cat. Just because your startup doesn't mean you can run your accounts on the back of a napkin. Come on. If you want a personalized demo, very simple, and you're just going to blow your mind, by the way, runway.com slash twist and sign up to get three months free right now. That's kind of a special offer. So let's take advantage of it. Runway.com slash twist. Rationalizing fund size, you just have to rationalize it based on your portfolio

Starting point is 00:20:40 construction. I see a lot of people say how much can I get. The answer is not how much can I raise. It is what is the opportunity in the market? What is the optimal portfolio construction to deliver the highest returns? That is what should drive your fund size. But a lot of people try to back into it. And then I say the last thing is do secure re-ups from your existing investors and then ask for referrals. I see a lot of people not hold back to doing this, saying to your investors, who else should we be talking to that you know? I think some of our best relationships and my best relationships of the course of history have actually come from warm referrals in the investor base. It's not from cold emails. So one of my don'ts is don't expect responses to cold investor emails.

Starting point is 00:21:22 I have most of the institutional LPs I talk to do not answer. emails to people they don't know. And it's just the reality. They are inundated with an overwhelming amount of inbound. Most institutional LPs emails are available on Prequins. So they are totally inundated. So don't underestimate how hard it's going to be in 25 years. It's never been easy. And if it's too easy, you should probably sell everything that's not buttoned down in your portfolio. Don't undersell yourself. That is one of the actually the things that drives me the most crazy when I'm sitting in a pitch with a principal, and they'll say, yeah, our returns last year were pretty good. And I say, Brad, your returns last year were overwhelmingly amazing.

Starting point is 00:22:08 Don't undersell. Tell them what the numbers are. If you had a great year, say it. Don't expect, like people say, well, the numbers are on the page. No, don't. They're not looking at the page. You look them in the eye and say, we killed it. And like people take it. Humility. Yes, humility is important. But when you have something to sell, sell it. It's a competitive market. I think one of the things people get really frustrated with in fundraising and building relationships is they have this great meeting and then it goes nowhere. And you'll have a series of great meetings and then people in your pipeline and maybe they even access the data room and then it's stuck. And what I say is it's time to ask the hard questions and ask them early.

Starting point is 00:22:47 Like you have a pitch meeting. It's okay to say what is the likelihood that you're going to commit to this to something like this this year. And if it's just a relationship building meeting, that's fine. You know to put it on the pipeline for the next fund. But LPs almost always give you an honest answer that question, and it saves an incredible amount of time. And then I'd say finally, don't enforce false deadlines. People know, I see that a lot. They tried, I know scarcity sells, and we struggle with this, but it really pisses off investors when you create. I say, yeah, we're raising and closing in the next three weeks. And in reality, you're not going to activate that fund for nine months, and we've seen that happen a lot in this market. Okay, worse things to do in a

Starting point is 00:23:28 pitch, and I'm going to laugh because Jason just did it on stage, like a few minutes ago. It's number three. Number three on the list, I'll do that first, is don't refer to deals as bets. I actually think investors, even in venture, when clearly you have to have a lot of chips on the table, I don't think investors, particularly institutional investors, want to feel like you're gambling with their capital. So I prefer to refer to them as investments, not bets. The number one thing not to say in the pitch, I'm so rich, I don't need to be doing this. I just want to be here. Don't say that.

Starting point is 00:24:07 People know, people know how wealthy you are, but they really want to see hunger and motivation and that you're going to be here for the next 10 years and that you're not going to mail it in. So it's been said a lot in my presence, so I put it on number one. second thing is this is how you should think about allocate like giving mentorship to the investor about how they should build a venture capital or investment portfolio i see it happen a lot if you were a VC and your company a company founder was telling you how they thought you should invest you would probably find that very offensive um and so i'd say i'd put it back and say you know get you know let the lPs decide how they should think about building a portfolio unless you are asked for your view i wouldn't offer that up proactively. The next would be make sure to show an interest in the investor, take notes. If you, again, I would put it if you're a VC and you're not, and they're not asking you about your firm when you're meeting with a company, you're probably thinking they must really want my capital. You should, you know, showing an interest and taking notes is really important and it's

Starting point is 00:25:11 like important in the follow up. I know this sounds elementary. It doesn't happen. And then just to kind of the way to the way of the interaction. I mean, people are so sensitive to this. I've seen a lot of knows come from investors who are turned off by the way that the fund managers have conversations. And we just are in a market when there was, you know, five funds in 1995 and people were new allocating to alternatives. You could get away with, you know, the way you handled a meeting. It didn't really matter. Today, there's 2,000 funds in the market. People can access anybody this little stuff, I think really does matter. And you'd be surprised how much it comes up in feedback. And then finally, a little bit of sentiment in the market. I put out a tweet once a week

Starting point is 00:25:56 just heard from VCLPs. So what am I hearing right now when in all the LP meetings that I have? One of the really interesting things happening in the market is this single deal SPV dynamic. It's something I'm watching really closely. I saw an SPV letter out the other day that I offered me interest that I can invest in X.aI for $5,000 minimum, which is great for that person managing that SPV, but it shocked me because this is something like, these things are out there, and we now have a dynamic that what we're investing in at our firm is highly accessible to the broader market, and how can you convince someone to allocate to your capital? Now, we also have deals that you could never access in that portfolio, but it is a dynamic

Starting point is 00:26:45 that has changed. And I see, I'm also watching how firms are managing and offloading their risk. Like you're seeing certain VC firms. And this is something LPs talk about. Put $20 million of an investment into a fund and then offer $450 million of that in an SPV directly to investors. And you're thinking, hmm, if they had that much conviction, why wouldn't they upsize the ticket in their fund? And is this around kind of the next point, concern around AI valuations? You want to have have the logo, but you don't want the risk on your portfolio. I think a lot of LPs are just skeptical about this behavior that we're seeing in the market. It might be fine, but it's drawing a lot of what I put kind of going into the red zone and the sentiment meter. You know, everybody's all

Starting point is 00:27:33 like fully bought in LAI, but there is huge concerns about valuations and just kind of the, is this 97 or is this 2002 moment? And that is going to drive, I think, hesitancy from LPs to lean in in venture investing, especially because a lot of them have a lot of dry powder and plenty of capital. A lot of funds can still be deploying plenty of capital into the market. So it's just not a reason.

Starting point is 00:28:01 They say, I have exposure to this vintage. I don't need more of it. I have plenty because there's a lot of dry powder out there. I'm going to hold back. It's not a lean in because I'm seeing these crazy evaluations out there, and I'm going to wait and see how this plays out. You know, LP land, it's a lot of what have you done for me lately and public tech killed it last year. And so we're seeing a lot of momentum for public tech opportunity. I also think it's a really interesting time

Starting point is 00:28:24 that you have a huge amount of the AI value accruing to large public incumbents, and that's going to shape the private investment allocations. A year and a half ago, literally no one wanted multi-stage VC. Zero. No one. Not a single call, which is hard because I sit in a multi-stage VC firm and they'd say, how are you investing, Sidenay? Seed-Nay, that was it. If any, we were investing in Siden A early stage in that, obviously there was a lot of a big bloodbath in late-stage investing that happened in O2 and continues, there continues to be fallout. But you're seeing that warm, like we're seeing that warm up a bit. I think with people realizing the IPO market's opening. We're seeing interesting late, late stage valuations. Frankly, some of them have become

Starting point is 00:29:11 more interesting. And you can invest, I mean, frankly, you can invest in bite dance at 2x forward cash versus investing in pre-revenue businesses for, you know, infinity multiples. So, I mean, there's some really interesting people are rationalizing later stage valuations much easier than some of the earlier stage opportunities. And that's becoming interesting to LPs. Okay, everybody, you know I love newsletters. I have. love sharing knowledge and what I'm up to through my newsletter. And if you've got a newsletter, you got to check out Beehive. It's spelled B-E-E-H-I-I-V. I use it for the Twist Tickr and our Twist 500 newsletter. My team is raving about Beehive because it is an all-in-one platform that not

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Starting point is 00:30:57 Beehive.com slash twist. B-E-E-H-I-V-com. What a great product. Yeah. few people increasing VC allocations. It's hard out there. It's getting harder. It's great if you're in private credit. But that's a boom right now. I'm convinced that's the next big kind of place that will have some fallout. There will be tougher times coming for private credit. They've been the big winners in fundraising. And then finally, a term that I, two years ago, joined Altimeter and Brad brought me to, we went to a dinner with the partners from another store. story venture capital firm. They actually invited Brad in to talk about public markets. And I thought it was really interesting. I said, Brad, so why would they have you in? We're a VC2. And I realized how collegial Sandhill Road is actually quite tight community and people helping people with a little

Starting point is 00:31:51 bit with Jason was talking about earlier than I thought was great. That was one positive thing came out. But the second thing that I thought was really interesting that we were talking to a group people and no one had heard the term DPI. And this is a major VC firm. This is two years ago. And now everybody knows DPI, right? This is now, I mean, I think you could for a long time get away, like there was a people enjoyed paper returns and that was fine, but like cash on cash, managing distributions, how you get capital back. I was talking to an LP this morning talking about this pending exit that we have and they said that's great. We're only committing to people that we can self-fund at this point with distributions coming off of their portfolio. So that continues to be

Starting point is 00:32:35 a really important component of the market discussion. I hope this was helpful. It was really nice to connect with all of you. Super helpful. And you gave my team a ton of ammunition. So that's great of how I can do better in my job. I wanted to go over this one simple sentence you had. Was it, is this a program you're likely to commit to this year? Was that how you said it? Is this the type of thing, strategy program fund? That you are likely to commit to this year. Wow.

Starting point is 00:33:13 Gotcha. So they don't come onto a lot less they want to buy? Exactly. Well, like, people come in a lot all the time, right? Yeah. But you want to find out, are you going to buy a car today? Are you going to buy a car this year? You don't buy this car.

Starting point is 00:33:26 Right. Like, no, like, just is this the type of? strategy, are you, you know, actively investing? Right. In early stage. So, and I think this is probably hard for you because people, you'll get a lot of false positives. People want to meet Jason. That's a big problem right now. It's a big problem. You see, very big problem in my life. But are they actually planning on this year? No, it's such an unlock for me. Just every time we spend time together, it's just like, bink, bink, bank, like just so many nuggets. Like, the best part of my relationship with Brad is you.

Starting point is 00:33:58 Like literally, it's literally like, Brad's fun. We vibe. But like, you're like literally the best aspect of being friends with him. I cannot thank you enough for spending time with my Ashley and my team and mentoring me. I think it's like just really important that people understand that, you know, there are people who are the figureheads in some cases or the founders of the firm. And they do a fraction of the work at the firm. a tiny fraction of the work. And it's so obvious to me how critical you are to his success. And I really appreciate you trying to help us at our firm try to be more successful. I'm always happy to be helpful. Thank you, Megan. Thank you so much. Thank you so much in doing this.

Starting point is 00:34:48 Wow. Just incredible.

This Week in Startups - Relationship Advice of the Investor Sort with Meghan Reynolds of Altimeter | E2008

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