 Kia ora kato, na mai hari mai. Greetings to you all and welcome to this month's EHF Live Investor session. Edmund Hillary Fellowship, for those that don't know, is a collective of entrepreneurs and investor changemakers who want to make an impact globally from Aotearoa, New Zealand. So, these are informal investor interviews and are planned in a way that when you leave here after 60 minutes, you feel you know the investor fellows on a personal level and understand what their intentions are for New Zealand. So, this month, as I was saying earlier to those that came in earlier, we've got two for the price of one, Mike Mesa from Big Sky Health and Kevin Rose from True Ventures. They've got a unique relationship in that their stories have been intertwining, they've worked together and played together for over 20 years. So, first of all, housekeeping, as I was saying before, we are recording the session. So, if you don't want your beautiful faces to be recorded, then put your avatars up, but I hope you do stay. And please stay muted until you have your hand up for a question and we will do Q&A at the end of it. Or you can put your questions in the chat box and I'll harvest those out as we go along. But first up, let's meet our speakers. So, Mike, we'll start with you. If you just introduce yourself and then Kevin, if you can introduce yourself and just tell us what you're currently doing professionally. Sure. Kia ora. Great to see you all and I can't wait to see you in person. I've got my vaccines done. So, the travel wheels are beginning to turn and hopefully it will get over there soon. So, Mike Mesa, I am the CEO of Big Sky Health. We are a company, a distributed company, all over the world. I happen to be in Big Sky, Montana. And our focus is to create digital health apps to increase longevity and health span in broad populations. Kevin. Great. Can you all hear me okay? Great. Yeah, it's nice to see all of you on video. My name is Kevin Rose. I'm a partner over at True Ventures. We are an early stage venture capital firm primarily based out of the Bay Area, but we have employees all over the place. Germany, the UK, Canada. So, we're pretty distributed as well. We have right around $550 million US-based fund that we have licensed to invest all over the world. So, personally, I have some companies and I have one company in Germany and two companies in France. So, it's really where we find innovation that is the most exciting thing, like that we don't really consider ourselves. I mean, we are US-based investors. I'm in Portland, Oregon, but we're always traveling around meeting entrepreneurs and trying to find kind of just like the next founding team that we want to back. We're very, very, very early stage. So, it can be pre-launch, just a back of a napkin kind of idea. Our typical check size is $1 to $3 million. You know, we're investors in Mike's company. And we like to take on a ton of risks. So, every single deal that we do is typically about 1% of our fund or a little bit less. So, in some sense, we'd almost find, rather find the right founding team and have them take on a ton of risk fail and then back them a second time than them not take on enough risk. And for us, that's worked out quite well. So, our focus is—well, my focus is individual. Every partner at our firm invests in different verticals. For me, my interests are health and wellness, also consumer internet, and then all things blockchain, which is a very obviously hot topic right now, but—and confusing one—and there's a lot going on there, a lot to sift through because there's some not-so-good project. There's also some world-changing stuff that's being built at the same time. So, looking at a lot of different deals, a lot of Zoom calls, and very excited to get out to New Zealand again as soon as possible. It's been, for me, I was there a little over—it's about a year and a half ago. I thought there was some friends visiting. I think the last time you and I were in New Zealand, Kevin, was for Adam's birthday. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. So, same wedding, but it was like a three-week thing, and you were in one week and I was in a different week. Yeah, they split it up with their friend groups. And just to plug true ventures before we get kicked off is they were the first checks to be written into my company, and we'll talk about the deep connection with True on my journey, I think, as we go through this story, but just a world-class team. Nice. That's good. Love it. So, as you can see, we've got a couple of heavy hitters here. So, you've already just sort of mentioned a little bit about your connection to New Zealand that you've been here like just before COVID kicked. But what is your connection to New Zealand and why did you join EHF? I can start. So, my connection to New Zealand was really a profound time in my life. I had been kind of going through the corporate ranks in my marketing and business development career, companies like Intel, Electronic Arts, also some startups. But I found myself in 2011 in a job that was paying me really well and I really was miserable. I won't name the company, but if you want to look at my resume, the people were great. I just wasn't happy in my role. And I was kind of early 40s. I guess I was in the introspective part of my career and really wanting to have more purpose. And long story short is I left that corporate job to start a company. My first founding stint at the ripe old age of 41, 42. And in three months, the project that I kicked off and got investor money around, I shuttered. It was a very quick start to failure. It was really for a variety of reasons that I decided to shut it down. But I went back to my investors. I hadn't spent most of the money, thankfully. And they said, well, we invested in you, not your idea, which we didn't even love, but we knew you'd figure something out. So go figure something out. And that was, for me, a really— it was awesome to have that support from these people that I had worked with in the past that trusted me with their money, but a lot of pressure. And I was in Silicon Valley at the time. And for anyone who's in the tech scene, you read TechCrunch and you're 41, watching all these 23-year-olds get $5 million, $10 million of funding. And it was just— I needed to cut the noise out and just get out of dodge. And one of my investors, a gentleman by the name of Roger McNamey from Elevation Partners, said, you need to get to New Zealand. That's my prescription. You need to go to Christchurch, don't have an itinerary, and just get some space. And so I did that. I packed a backpack. I didn't have an itinerary. I flew to Christchurch. I rented a van. I drove around the South Island. And I really didn't have the intention to figure out what I was going to do. I just needed a break from what I had just been through and really could get that white space. But in that travel and in that white space, that's when the ideas began to flow. Without efforting them, they just came in. And what I figured out when I was out on the Milford track is that what I really loved and what inspired me was I was tracking my hike on my watch at a polar watch, checking my heart rate. And this was just when quantified itself and Fitbit was becoming a thing. And I decided right then and there that I want to be in this movement around digital health. I love it personally. I want to help people be more healthy. And I love the technology that was going on. And I came back from New Zealand after two weeks. Really inspired. And within a month, I had a co-founder, a technical co-founder. And we went on to start my first successful company, which was called Fitstar. But I credited all to those beautiful moments of serenity and beauty that I found traveling New Zealand without any itinerary other than just to get some quiet. I feel like from then on, it was a marriage. It was my second home, I guess. And at least in my soul. And so when the opportunity for EHF came up, it was a no-brainer to apply and let alone get in. We're privileged to have you, Mike, actually. And I'm glad you actually got to go around the South Island. That's what a lot of Kiwis are doing at the moment, obviously. Exploring their own country. What about you, Kevin? What's brought you to EHF into New Zealand? Yeah, it's a great question. A little over a decade ago, I was invited during the middle of Web 2.0 chaos that was happening. I had started a social news site called Dig, and I was invited to give a talk in Wellington in a tech conference out there. And I was like, wow, that sounds amazing. I've never been to New Zealand, seen the Google images. I should go check it out. And flew out with my head designer, Daniel Burka. We gave the talk, met a lot of really great people. A same thing, took the little ferry over to South Island, rented a car, did a whole week of just driving around down through Christchurch and ended up in Queenstown. And we got the crappiest car. Like it almost died on us several times in the middle of nowhere. But it was just so beautiful and awesome. And I think part of the reason why I live in the Pacific Northwest here in the United States and up in Oregon is that I'm just drawn to nature. Like it is just like I love all things outdoors and hiking in the woods. And just the respect for the Indigenous tribes and also the land and the land that has actual rights and just everything that is in that ecosystem that New Zealand brings to the table. It's such a very powerful thing to be preserved. And I've always just been drawn to that type of structure. And it's a bummer that we don't have more of that here in the States. And certainly a forest conservation and the things that are going on here locally in Oregon I think are really important to me because I have two little girls, a three-year-old and a two-year-old. And I want them to be able to grow up in that type of environment. So the second thing that brought me to New Zealand was that I started a podcast called Foundation and it didn't have any ads on it. It wasn't a business. It was just to interview entrepreneurs and to really tease out their secrets and what got them started. So I got really lucky to have the founders of Twitter on the show and I had Elon Musk on the show and all these great guests that came on my podcast and with the entire goal of just inspiring other entrepreneurs and is getting them excited and letting them know that these are actual humans. They shouldn't be put up on some pedestal and that they've made a ton of mistakes themselves and actually admitting that they've made these mistakes and actually not beating themselves up about these mistakes but just saying, I've learned something new and I'm going to carry this forward and become a better entrepreneur because of the mistakes I've made. These are the types of things that I was trying to get out on the show and in the podcast. And so I love helping founders and when EHF came up I'm like, okay, a land and a culture that I really respect coupled with the fact that I can come in, invest in the local economy and help other entrepreneurs. Like those are all, that's like the perfect combination of things to come together. So when I heard about EHF it was really exciting. I have a couple other friends that are now in as well. And yeah, it's just like I couldn't ask for a better kind of like dream gig than to help out. Nice. And have you bumped into many Kiwis up in Oregon? Not really. With COVID, we moved out here just a couple of years ago and when we kind of like, we have a couple of little ones. Like I said that three and two year olds, so I had a one year old and a two year old back then. It was all hands on deck and then COVID broke out and we were just in lockdown and haven't seen anybody. So actually I was talking to my wife about this a couple of nights ago. We're like, okay, when all this like loosens up here hopefully in the next few months, like let's make some friends. Like we need to make friends because it's just been like, toaster has been my best friend my whole laboratory a little year for the last couple of years. So I mean, I guess he's always been my best friend, but you know, not many humans. Yeah, no, that's good. That's cool. Mike, now tell us about the special relationship that you guys have and how you guys first meet. Sure. Yeah, I mean, when I was thinking about this talk with Kevin, there were a range of topics that we could talk about, but one that I think, I think can identify with all of us is, and we've all heard that axiom where a lot of us have, don't mix friendship and business. I think my dad probably drilled that into me a little bit and it just was like one of these tabu things. Like, you know, if you become friends with the people you're in business with and if you have to make tough decisions, it's hard on the friendship. And I think those things could all be true, but in the case of Kevin and I and knowing each other for 20 years, it's turned out to be like a force multiplier for both our friendship and the way that we've worked together. And I think I can deconstruct some hypotheses as to why, but it's to your question that we first met in right around 2000. It was the height of the .com 1.0 bubble. I was living in San Francisco. I just left Intel on my first corporate marketing gig and I was a director of marketing for a company you've never heard of, but it was in the furnishings business, online distribution of furniture, which back then was novel. I don't think you had gray hair back then either. You were all brown hair actually. Thank you for reminding me. I think hiring you made me gray. I needed a marketing assistant and I had an ad in Craigslist, which was the job board of the day back then. And Kevin was living in Las Vegas and I think you were 18 or 19 years old or something like that. And you answered the ad. And so we hopped on the phone. I thought you were really impressive on the phone. And I don't think I hired you side of the scene, but I think we flew you up to San Francisco. It was my first time to San Francisco, that's right. Yep, brought you up and then hired him shortly thereafter and he moved to San Francisco and he worked on my team. And that was really the first connection that we had and started out as a working relationship. Yeah, and it was this crazy where it went from there because then Mike peeled off, he left. I started doing really badly just to yes, and you build on me. I did. Yeah. So he built on me when he went to electronic arts was running some of their big massive games. What was it? Game of Thrones? Or no, not Game of Thrones. I've got you Lord of the Rings. Sorry, sorry, sorry, Kevin. Sorry, you're running Lord of the Rings and then and then I started dig and I said I needed a fantastic marketer. Like I should probably hire Mike. So I turn around and I hire Mike to come and work. I mean, technically you were. At that point we decide each other is like great friends and peers and we collaborate on a lot of stuff product wise. And so that was that venture. And then we've all been intertwined ever since working on various projects and things together. Yeah, I think what's been really neat is that I definitely took more of a corporate path going through functional areas like marketing and product development and business development. And Kevin's definitely been way more on the cutting edge, having a nose for trends. Seeing back in 2005 that journalism definitely had a place professional journalism but that with the tools that were coming out online online communities that the general populist could also have a role in surfacing and creating a wisdom of the crowds around what's popular and relevant to them. And that was the insight that led to dig. And I think what was interesting to me is I was at EA and I had been there for four years working on games. Never got to travel to New Zealand for the license of the Lord of the Rings as my team did. But I did get to go to the premier of Return of the King in Berlin with a lot of the actors. So I had a little bit of a connection there. But yeah, Kevin struck a chord with dig and it just took off almost overnight. The traffic was incredible. And I think you saw in me, hey, here's this person that I worked with with more of a kind of a playbook on how to grow this thing, how to establish this business. And when you put that offer out to me, it was kind of the right time for me to move on and get back to San Francisco and get back into a startup that was really changing the world. And we were talked at in those days in the same breath as Twitter and Facebook. It was an incredible time, but things went in a direction that we didn't anticipate. We went through that... Layoffs together and all kinds of stuff. Built along with acquisition. You want to talk about that moment where we were riding high and then the bottom dropped out? Yeah, for sure. I mean, so it did. We got up to 38 million monthly unique visitors that are kind of peak. And we thought Reddit was just over with because they had sold the Condé Nast for $10 million. Their traffic was like next to nothing. But the insight that they had that was so brilliant is they said, okay, well, let's go ahead and open up our taxonomy to be more of a long tail. So that anyone can create a sub-community rather than just a fixed... We had 15 different topics and so did they at the time. But then they opened it up and that allowed there to be very small but powerful niche topics that would spring up and then eventually grow to be very large topics that were the long tail. So that eventually... And by that time, we were very much our investors and everyone were pushing us to be more of a... I won't say corporate entity, but really take on more traditional advertisers that weren't as comfortable with some of the front page news that the community was servicing. Whereas Reddit said, okay, well, let's just kind of like have community advertisers and they didn't care about the general motors and the big brands like that. They were more kind of grassroots effort type advertisers and they kept the team really small and we grew a team pretty too large. So a lot of mistakes, a lot of lessons learned and they eventually overtook us on traffic and we were unable to really gain that back, gain that momentum back. So Mike and I moved on. I moved on more of the investing. That was so I continued a while post dig and you stayed there a little bit. You left around the same time and started another thing. Yeah. Yeah. So I had another company called Revision 3 that ended up doing quite well and we sold out to the Discovery Channel and then I had started a couple other little startups. One of them was acquired by Google and then I was at Google. Long, this is a long-winded answer to your question but that's eventually what got me back into investing is I was a partner over at Google Ventures and I got me back into being a full-time investor. That's great. Loving it. Any other little tip that you want to add in on there on your theme or you want to now get on to talking about your investments that you like doing today? Yeah, I think there's one more piece around the friendship part that can have unintended awesome consequences. So I went on to start this company FITSTAR as I mentioned after AOL. This is we're talking 2012 and it was a personalized video-based fitness app and it was doing really well in the app store and people will really get it. It was basically a modern version of P90X if any of you used to use those old DVDs to work out based on the iPad. And a Michael Chau who is I think on the phone here was a big help in us getting it promoted at Apple. But as I was growing that business that was going well in late 2014 we were had great traction and I begun to feel physically not well. I was having what felt like a really long flu almost felt like it was mono but I kind of wrote it off as being just founder stress and along with that time FITBIT who was just about to go IPO approached us to buy the company and it was an amazing entree for them to come to me and make an offer that was really exciting. And so right at that time as I continued to physically not feel well at all I was jumping for joy at their acquisition offer but then about a week later I was diagnosed with what turned out to be stage four cancer. So it was like this ultimate high combined with this personal very rough situation and I kind of had to navigate that and so while I was working on the term sheet to sell the company to FITBIT I was going through really rough chemotherapy and during that time I discovered some early work by a gentleman by the name of Walter Longo physician out of USC around the application of fasting to chemotherapy with the idea being that if you are in a fasted state for several days your healthy cells going to kind of a protective mode called autophagy where they're kind of cleaning themselves out and removing parts of themselves or basically eating themselves of all the waste material and the chemotherapy peak and then better target the fast dividing cancer cells that don't have any kind of change in their replication when you're fasted. So I did five day fast for all six rounds of my chemotherapy so a total of 30 days of fasting over about four months and you know that here I am six years later it turned out well but that's what kicked me off into really thinking about looking into this intervention not just from a lifestyle perspective which had already been pretty well established for weight loss and mental clarity but also for the more scientific benefits around metabolic health that's really the underpinning of cancer coronary disease etc. So Kevin came to visit me in the hospital he was there with me the whole time and saw not only me going through this experience but also saw that I was fasting and he's always curious himself and he started to look into the same the same science that I did and even I think you even met with Falter Longo or talked to him on the phone as you were getting your curiosity and so he was inspired by my story and this intervention that he was being introduced to and started a nap a very simple app called Zero that just was kind of a weekend project with our friend Daniel Burka and put it up into the world so as I was recovering and I was doing my Fitbit stint after they bought the company Kevin was tinkering with this project and lo and behold in 2018 when I left Fitbit and I was ready to do my next thing which had to be around fasting Kevin was in a mode where he was focused on true ventures that kept him busy and he handed the baton over to me and you know the rest is how I grew the company so a lot there to unpack but it just you know it was a lot of serendipity and the reason that we are here where we are is really due to our friendship together so you're kind of proving the point you can work together and be friends right because I've heard that my whole life is that don't work with your friends don't partner with your friends yeah so it's great nice to see so how about you take us down then each of the verticals that interest you the most and that you want to invest in here in New Zealand and then we kind of move on to more interesting stuff for what else you want to do and then we can go to Q&A Sure Kevin you want to kick off here Sure yeah absolutely I mean for me it's really sticking to the core of what I know and what I invest in a lot of that has to be certainly around mental health and wellness and fitness and you know backing mic and other similar apps I've done a guided journaling app called JOR which gives you kind of like prompts to do daily journaling which is really good for mental health certainly on more of the meditation side there's a project that I built in that space that mic is actually now running as well so that coupled with devices that really can kind of peer under the hood and look into what's going on in the body in real time I think the feedback loops for understanding our body are getting tighter and tighter meaning you know we have things like the aura ring now which I'm also an investor in which is something that monitors your sleep and gives you that data when you wake up in the morning you can see you know the different stages of sleep how well you slept and how that correlates with certain foods that you eat you know when you tie that with your DEXCOM data which is a continuous glucose monitor like I can look on my wrist right now and tell you that actually my glucose is 72 right now actually well it just jumped why I refreshed it 75 right now which means that I have a little sensor that's pushed that's actually a probe that's inserted into my side that reports back my real-time blood sugar and so that can make me help me make better dietary decisions but that's just one of many different sensors that are going to become online here in the next few years so as you can imagine you know it's it seems a little odd to me that our Tesla's know more information about what's going on in our we know more about what our vehicles are doing and the pressure of our tires and we do our own human body so just the idea that you can see that dashboard of tools and react to them and make better decisions I think it's very important so I'll be actively looking for kind of health and wellness companies in New Zealand that are that are going after and tackling those big problems that's a big piece for me I also believe that you know in the next decade we all laughed and bought and sold and you know looked at blockchain and bitcoin and some of these cryptocurrencies is just being like oh that's a funny little odd thing and maybe I can make a little bit of money and I'll buy some now and maybe sell it a little bit later and it was just like you know no one really took it that seriously but it's very clear that a lot of these technologies are not fads and they are here to stay and they're going to bring a level of transparency to everything to supply chain to medical records to fractionalize house ownership like whatever it may be there's going to be an application for that type of tech it was a really very key innovation and I think looking back on things we'll see this historically is a big turning point for how we measure transparency around all things so I'm excited to see more startups in that space as well and certainly I believe there is a lot that you can do to apply those types of technologies to the different existing industries that are already are in New Zealand as it stands especially around supply chain so that is these are areas where I find that are great entrepreneurs are all over the world working on interesting projects but you kind of have to have somewhat of a network and that's why I'm excited about EHF I think I have that local network and get that exposure to what's going on locally is going to be so important and then just like boots on the ground like I need to be there doing coffees meeting with people having these conversations and figuring out what's being built so that that's what's kind of most exciting for me and then of course there's the consumer internet side those are those are dangerous kind of murky waters where when I look at what's being built on the social side it's the data is pretty clear that a lot of it's damaging you know whether it be fake news propagation or just time spent on devices so I'm a little bit more cautious when I think about making investments in that space and the good news is that I'm seeing a lot of entrepreneurs that are saying okay we can do better like what are some of the safety and kind of like what tools can we reinvent in that space that give us you know that that safety net and just really make sure that we're doing this in a thoughtful way versus just building the best algorithm to suck in your time so you're spending less time with your family like those we don't need more of those tools like those we have plenty of those so yeah those are my main areas of focus and and I think the earlier the better like I it's not about for us at least it's true we're not about very late stage companies not to say that we can't kind of fund those once we've already made our initial investment meaning that like we like to follow a company throughout its entire life cycle so you know we were very early stage investors and you know health companies like Peloton and Fitbit and we'll write that very early check so that one to three million dollar check and then as they graduate to later stages like a series B, C, D and beyond we'll continue to write checks into that company to support them along the way but but we won't just like seek out later stage companies that makes sense we have to like you know get in early and make our initial investment in the very early stages yeah that's nice it's good to know because in New Zealand there's not very many players that go in early stage when it comes to health they prefer to go later once all the hard work's done so that's really good Mike what about your venture what sort of sub-sector is interesting for you yeah um I mean summer consistent with Kevin you know because we've worked together and share these interests so we've co-invested in a handful of things together as well cool we have yeah and you know my so there's there's a space that I know that I'm interested in and there's a space that I want to get into so the space that I know is really what I call anything under the umbrella of metabolic health you know metabolic health is really the the staving off of the markers of of metabolic syndrome which I mentioned earlier are the kind of the underpinnings of disease in western culture so we've learned over the last five or 10 years that that things like elevated blood glucose things like high blood pressure but things that are lifestyle choices sleep stress modalities of different kinds of exercise what type of food you intake and also when you're not in taking food the fasting versus feeding window all of these lifestyle you know interventions can coalesce to make you metabolically healthy or the inverse is metabolic in the U.S. 88% of people are considered to have some type of metabolic syndrome some marker of metabolic syndrome and so I'm in I'm interested in companies that are tackling this maybe not directly at metabolic health but you know companies that are focused on you know de-stressing whether it's less screen time meditation better sleep you know promoting different modalities of exercise I'm an investor in a company called tonal which is the strength training peer of peloton and of course I've had my own my own exercise venture so things that promote technologies and insights around exercise and then of course you know things that can that can help people understand what they're putting to their body how foods affect their health and their metabolic syndrome so that's a general area I'm very excited about I am also excited about the biometrics that are becoming more and more available with new hardware so things like continuous glucose monitoring breath-based ketone analyzers lactate all of these markers that can begin to get people a sense of what's happening inside their body that's a that's a thematic area that both from an investor standpoint also advisory and mentorship there it's an area I've got a lot of experience and I've been CEOing in this realm for 10 years and I think there's a lot of different ways that I can help entrepreneurs on the funding side and also how to think about you know growing their company establishing their their story arc etc an area that I that I'm really keen to get into that I haven't made a lot of investments in and this comes back to being boots on the grounds Kevin said I want to get there I wanted to meet people but really around climate I feel like New Zealand is such a pioneer in so many ways around climate advocacy around the way society set up to promote climate care you know I'll challenge Kevin to figure out how can we figure out a way to have crypto not have a direct impact on energy consumption and perhaps climate impacts and just that that general area to me is something you know as I get into my 50s and I also love nature and the outdoors is what we're doing in New Zealand how can we start to protect it at scale and being involved in the ground level of companies that are doing that and so that's something I'm really keen to dig into when I'm when I'm there with New Zealand's leadership state and that capacity I think those are the big areas for me but again mentorship is a big piece helping companies get from zero to one it's what I do a lot of now I'm an advisor to several companies and I just want to do that you know across the pond New Zealand nice love it and we can't wait to have you here so if any of you in this room here can get these fellows in the room I love it we need them in the country so pull all strings that you've got and get all that clout out of your back pocket and tell those ministers to open up those borders right we're going to go to Q&A now who has got any questions you can either put your hand up and I will get or you can put your questions in the in the chat window I've got one first though what just while I'm waiting for others is so you sort of talked about you want to get into the kind of blockchain and sort of environmental type up what else is there as fellows you want to do that's not on the investment side like what other sort of activities then you might want to do in New Zealand I want to well there's definitely personally the first thing I'm going to do is go to the North Island because I've been in New Zealand six times and I've never been to the North Island and so like that's my number I'm going to fly into Auckland and I'm not going to connect to Queenstown I'm going to stay in the North Island and and go visit that's the very first thing on my list yeah that's very unusual Keev yeah there's I you know I was I was talking with Joseph about this I was asking him if there was any like a big a big part of what I I kind of on the non-profit side that I I try to contribute to is actually an important part of my life is my meditation practice specifically around a type of practice called Sambo Zen which is a lineage of of Zen meditation it's like a non-religious non-denominational like very peaceful awesome Zen practice and I would like to see I was asking him like what major cities have like any Zen representation and and where can I go to help support that and and because I would like to see more mindfulness I mean it doesn't have to be Zen it can be there's different disciplines of obviously so many different disciplines of meditation that are helpful but I would love to figure out in a more philanthropic way how I can support and help grow that in the in the New Zealand community hmm nice I like that's funny actually mention that Naraj and Jack other fellows that we've got they run a like a retreat to kind of thing over five days not sure if either of you to have done it there's like 126 types of meditation activeness can actually be meditation as well so which is really good for me because I hate it at the end of yoga where everyone's lying down sleeping I cannot do that that's not my form of meditation I've got a question here actually any reflections on the deals that you've seen to date via EHF like the quality of the investments traction is New Zealand on par with what you've seen in the US um you know I love to be able to answer that I think I'm working at somewhat of a disadvantage is not having to to be on the ground and you know for me personally the way I'm getting my my feet wet in the ecosystem is through funds to start with so I'm I'm in the ice house funds um just to start to get some exposure get a lay of the land you know Kevin maybe you've looked at certain deals but I know that for me personally you know we can do a lot on zoom but you know again it's the plug to get there and start to meet with companies face to face yeah I think Mike spot on I do the same thing I'm investing in ice house ventures as well and it's the same thing we do here in the States like you know I'm I'm they call them like LPs like investors in other venture funds and I probably do a good you know half dozen investments and these other funds both to support the funds and also to get the connections and meet other entrepreneurs because they're they're meeting companies at the very early stage where they say you know in a perfect world someone like an ice house or another fund in New Zealand would say hey we have this company they have about half of their round filled out but they need some additional capital would you be interested in writing a check here as well and so like just those those warm introductions to those founders through a lens that you can trust goes a long way and then those of those will always be the meetings that I'd take and see if it's the right fit for us and hopefully follow on and fill out the rest of the round That's really interesting because we were talking about that Mark Brigham and I actually either yesterday or the day before about are the US investors going to keep doing the remote doing the deals over zoom or is it still going to revert back to how we were before and doing it in person and what percentage you know how what's the likely uptake of maybe 20 percent still staying doing over zoom or is it going to revert back to exactly how we were so that kind of Yeah, you want to honestly, it's a great question. I don't think we know the answer to that yet. I think there's a I think it's a mixture. You know, I would outdoor coffees are now because I'm seeing more of them happening. So that's that's a good sign as people are getting vaccinated. But you know the nice thing to know is that we can do and close deals over zoom. Like that was a weird thing to do just a year ago. Like, you know, it was I remember when we were talking as a fund we're like can we get enough of a gut check on who this person is and really get to know someone over a video a strong enough conviction to where we'll write a multimillion dollar check. And like since then, you know, gosh, we've deployed at least couple hundred million dollars since then and it's been all over zoom. So that the good news is we can do it over zoom preferably face to face though. I still like getting together and grabbing a coffee and hanging out and there's nothing like that kind of both bonding and brainstorming that happens that riffing that happens that's just like more real time there's something about even just like a few few extra like a quarter of a second delay that doesn't afford that. So yeah, I'm excited for the face to face. Yeah. And I think because everyone has been locked up they are hungry for that face to face. So there's 100% instantly cut off the no, let's keep to the zoom. Yeah. But maybe then in a year or two is time when efficiency thoughts come back into it. People might switch a little bit back but yeah, how it works out who knows but Mike there's a question here for you in the chat. Actually, it's for both of you. Brian has his hand raised as well too. I think we have a hand raised for the next one. Cool Brian, do you want to actually yeah, ask your question? Sure. Yeah. Yeah, no, this is great to hear about all this work and after a couple days in Silicon decades in Silicon Valley we're at a field of location here in Australia but you know, we're building founding teams and I'm really interested in both of your perspectives on what makes for an outstanding founding team and what do you look for? You know, how do you what it seems like that's one of the most important ingredients in building these new organizations and new efforts and I'm just curious what your perspective is on this. Yeah, I mean, usually what's worked for me that's been tried and true is you know, typically my founding team is people that I've worked with before that I have there's de-risking that relationship, that chemistry, understanding how they handle stress you know, to me, all it's being equal that's been kind of the number one indicator of a fit and of success but of course you can't always do that and so you know what what we did what I did at Big Sky Health which was really new for me because we started as a remote first company distributed first we never had an office and still don't what I did was a lot of kind of mutual try before you buy so I think my first five hires what ultimately became hires were full-time contractors and it was you know, we were both taking a little bit of a gamble and so this was a way for us to take some of the pressure off see how we work together and we had established up front like if it works well and we we're both going in intending this to move to full time so you have to both be on the same page that you want to graduate to full-time but we already had like what the package would look like so we kind of pre-negotiated a lot of these things but I hired all five of those first people like I was batting a thousand or that's a US baseball reference but you know a total hit rate on on hiring those people and that's a model that we continue to use it doesn't work for everyone that gets really hard to get like a a COO or some VP of product to come in and do that because you're usually trying to pull them out of another gig but that's how it works for me in this latest venture Yeah, we had good luck with that ourselves at Climate Foundation just basically help for us volunteers eventually becoming part-time contractors and then full-time so onboarding that's been a gradual process it's just worked pretty well for us but you know we're really looking at how to transition from what has been development mode to you know transformative products in the health space and and ultimately in the climate space but over to you Kevin Yeah, well thanks for your question I think a couple quick things there in terms of the founding teams and what we're looking for certainly original thinking novel ideas not just me to ideas like it's very very common for some type of theme to appear and especially in the technology space and then there's a bunch of just you know small iterations but not really big leaps order of magnitude leaps forward in thinking and we want really big bold novel blue ocean ideas meaning like that we don't want a lot of other people in and around them like it's it's nice that they're you know first to market or have some insight that no one else does and then in terms of the founder you know someone with a conviction and and and excitement around their idea but beliefs that are you know both strong but but loosely held you know and I'm not the first investor to say this like people that are open to taking in advice from others and and flexible enough to be able to be nimble and and change and and modify and iterate so it's not like I'm just going to this is my idea and if it doesn't work I'm going to burn down the house to to force it through um I think is another important piece of it and then the the last piece is just really making sure you have a complete team and and a team that is signed up to do this you know I have a founder today that I met with and she was seems to be a fantastic entrepreneur and she's just getting off the ground she's got a great idea but she doesn't have that technical co-founder and so my job is an entrepreneur or at well as first and foremost as a fellow entrepreneur not an investor but I said this like you know you can't go out and raise money like this today because you don't have the complete picture you need like the other side of it you need the other person that is going to be have the technical shops to be able to pull off your your fantastic vision and so helping to pair her up with the right person to be able to go and execute on that vision is kind of what where I'm able to help out now even though I can't help out right now on the financing side but but just having and that doesn't mean you have to have someone signed up for your venture but it doesn't mean I'd like to see someone that said this person will join me when we go and close this round of financing so oftentimes I'll get a deck and it'll see the four founding people at the bottom and the entrepreneur will say well actually it's just me right now but these three people are signed up the second I close this round of financing and look at their great pedigrees and they want to jump on board and help me out and we're okay with writing a check if that's the case So the visionary the technologist what are the other key roles that you that round out that team that form that completeness that you're talking about well I think what you're talking about it depends on the industry that you're going after you know obviously in the vertical you're going after but when it's a technology play you want to have the there's the vision obviously is very important and I oftentimes the CEO founder is the Swiss army knife it's the person wearing all the hats initially and that's totally fine they could be the marketing person they could be the HR person they could do all those roles initially but that's not you know I think it's it's the the technical stack needs to be figured out and the idea person needs to be there so if you have those two roles you know you can contract design initially I know Mike's done that very well successfully a handful of times where he has a great idea great technical team but then goes and builds the first MVP through an outsourced design firm and that's totally fine eventually you know you'll want to bring bring someone like that in-house but as long as the the technical team is there and the vision and the the visionary person is there that's that's all that we kind of look for on in a technology company I mean obviously if your life sciences or other arenas where we want to see different types of folks so that's great thank you love that co Melissa hey everyone I'm actually joining you guys from Singapore so it's very very early in the morning it's close to 7am here but I just had to join in and I have to add that I'm just really not a morning person I had to join in because there were so many things that were that I found really relevant so I had applied to join EHF in 2019 and I was shortlisted and I unfortunately had to turn that down because I was diagnosed with leukemia and that was also part of the reason why and the people at EHF were just so just gracious and nice about that but that was the reason why we had to move to to Singapore which is where I'm originally from so that was you know like that was part of your story that got me really interested and then the second part of that was is that I started a mental health start up just before a few months before the diagnosis so that was a bit of a bum that was actually my first reaction when I got the news was just like oh well what about Bravely which is what we're called and and it's been one year since I got as close to one year since I got a stem cell transplant where she planned to launch our open beta on the 29th April which is a one year anniversary of it and Kevin a lot of things that you said just really resonated with me in terms of what we're trying to build what we're trying to do we are still very early stage fully remote team which is something that I've been doing for 10 years and yeah we see that there is a huge I don't even want to say gap for me it's such a huge hole at this point a huge void in the space and I've seen also a lot of people you know trying to replicate digital versions of what they find offline offline therapy now okay somebody's made something for online therapy but I've yet to see something that really fits digital really fits being smart being data driven that usage and a collection of that data and having that serve people so with your interest in the space I guess you know you've talked a bit about what you would like to see what companies you'd like to invest in and I think there's a lot of questions that you get asked this you know how can I get funding how can I get your interest I'm really curious and I hope this is an okay question about what you feel like you could bring to the table as an investor aside from you know the money side obviously but what what would you be wanting to pass me bring to table in terms of you know the mental health space helping these companies not just grow but also fulfill the vision and the purpose that they've they've set out to which I believe is what a lot of these mental health startups just really care about more than anything else yeah well Melissa thank you for sharing your your story with us and and asking the question I appreciate it I I think that you know when you're when you're actually working with an investor it really is like a multi-year marriage because the good investor is going to stick with you through the whole roller coaster and it's it's full of it's not just ups and downs it's loop-de-loops and everything else that that comes with with this ride so when you find the right investor it's someone it's funny because I've been on on your side of the equation where you're raising capital from a bunch of different people some of them you know better than others and some capital is just that it's just capital and you kind of don't hear from the person or they are overly anxious and maybe a little bit too much in in your in the weeds with you and you're like I just want to go run my business like can you back off a tiny bit so for me I've always considered myself someone that is that sits on the sidelines and that is the the best champion for the entrepreneur and and someone that you can just have a real conversation with like I I don't want to be the investor that you can't tell me something isn't working and because you know you oftentimes the CEO doesn't really have anyone to talk to they may have a significant other or something that they go to but there's no one that they can really just say today was a tough day and I I haven't been able to hire this person like and I lost a great candidate or you know I need to do some layoffs and it's like those are the types of conversations where you sit down and you can have a heart to heart with a good investor and they they're not judging you because they've either been there themselves or and they truly want to help out and on top of that if you're finding someone that you know every investor is going to bring something different to the table like there's people that have worked like for Mikey for example when you're doing going for scale and doing traditional marketing or going to to build a brand on that side like I would sit down and as an investor lean on him for that or if you know oftentimes my entrepreneurs like I had someone that I think this morning and said we're doing a design sprint with the firm would you be available next week to sit in on that just like do a brain dump and a random brainstorming session with me because I know you're passionate about the space that we're trying to build and so hopefully you find a skill set that they provide that you're interested in and that also matches their interest in your business so that it's a win-win that they're going to be able to you'll be able to leverage them for that additional value so you're right it's not just about capital it's about capital and plus what they bring to the table in terms of what professional kind of skill set that they can also apply to your business does that make sense is that answer a question all or am I still off yeah I think so I mean it just sounds a lot like it's about it being complimentary not just across like skill sets but also I think a little bit temperament a little bit of ways of working together but most importantly values yeah I mean I'll I'll also chime in first of all Melissa I hope you continue to be healthy and on the road to recovery thank you thank you for sharing that and you know from the other side I'm being an operator and I'm really more an operator than an investor but I do I do investing you know it turned out that behind the scenes the the the board members who supported that acquisition going through when I had active cancer was was true ventures they were on the board of Fitbit and when I found that out I when I said to myself if I ever started another company those are the people if they'll have me I want to work with and I want to take investment from because above and beyond their pattern recognition and sniffing out great deals and being very competent they have empathy right there there they're people that Kevin's point you can open up and not have a fear that they're going to use that against you at some point there's truly an open relationship and they truly have your back and that's pretty rare so you know that's that's a hard thing to find but when you find it you know that's a lifelong relationship right there and something you should stick with and at least that's what I've stuck with also thank you so much thanks Melissa hey Melissa do you have a website that we can check out I would love to it's a fantastic name I would love to check out the site oh thank you um yeah it's getbraveview.com so it's g-e-t braveview.com um the website is slightly outdated I did it between teamarounds just before transplant and it was developed while I was actually in transplant um but I mean sort of the key points are are there and we're really just about trying to empower people with with knowledge wrapped with with a smart interface that's just wrapped around that because the the one of the biggest issues with mental health is really about accessibility you know what you have out there is inaccessible in terms of cost but also it's dry it's jargony it's like so much easier just sit and scroll and read it for two hours then you know pick up a textbook for 15 minutes or be able to afford the therapy and we just really it's like somebody has said you know what you're you're struggling in in in this deep dark ocean here's a ladder and you can climb up that ladder to get you know some help but then the top the top the top runs are there but the bottom half of the ladder is missing and you're like well this ladder is not really useful to me and what we're trying to do is like to bring in that knowledge piece and help people with that bite size like interactive content that that check-in that smart tracking and then just really feed you that relevant knowledge helpful knowledge at a relevant helpful time so you can find the burden website just a little bit of a disclaimer not in the best state of mind when it when it was created look good thank you Melissa and I'll I'll put I'll send them the link as well and it's great to see you as well so early this morning that's so yeah grab a couple of coffee thank you for getting up for this yeah exactly or that nice green tea right that's right time has gone so fast and it is time already so I want to thank Kevin and Mike it's been amazing and Mike we're so glad that you've got through that cancer and you are actually here with us and that you can actually hopefully come over the border and be with us in person very soon so room I hope you have got to know these people a bit more personally and you now have a clear understanding of what they like to invest in as well and next month we're going to have Mark Bregman interviewing Ryan McIntyre so thanks for joining us and the recording will be up on the website and you can see all the other past recordings that we've had as well and Kevin and Mike are here as fellows and they are accessible people so if you need to send them deal flow or anything you can either send it through to me and I can forward it on or you can contact them by their LinkedIn or Twitter or their individual sites that they've got thanks team thank you everyone that was awesome yeah thanks for showing appreciate it to connect