 the some of the things I wish I had known when I first started when I first started investing some quick background yeah I've started and sold three internet companies I'm now working on my fourth startup I'm an investor and an entrepreneur so I've been on both sides of the table over the years I've invested in over a hundred startups and 25 in the last two years so on average I do about one a month and I've had 20 plus exits in total since I first started investing most of the data I'm going to share is data that I've data for my investments up until 2018 for the last three since 2018 most of them are still many of the most of them are still in play and many of them are still the markups are still on paper so I'm not really diving into those investments so sectors that I invest in there's AI and deep tech blockchain so I pretty much invest in sectors in all over the place I tend to be quite I tend to be quite sector agnostic so some of the some of the exits I've had over the years my the best investment by far has been a cryptocurrency company called Ripple so that was a 150x return and then these are all returns in cash and I'll be diving into many of them in more detail in terms of some of the lessons learned from these from these investments and I'll also be covering a few of my misses some of my anti portfolio companies I wish I had invested in and what sort of what lessons I've learned from that so typical investment size this is in US dollars between 50,000 and 100,000 this is my own capital that I invest so I'm not investing through a fund or through a syndicate I invest directly in startups a pre-seed and seed stage so most of them are very early most of them are pre-product or they may have some sort of a early version or beta and many of them are and almost all of them are pre-revenue so come in come in really early I love being the the first check-in and yeah I have some of the investments I'm most proud of are where I was the where I was the first investor yeah something I learned as an entrepreneur is most it's easier once you have the initial investor on board our initial commitment then it becomes a lot easier to to close around very few investors typically want to be the first one most investors like to see it as a bit of a moving train you know they want to be the last one before it catch the trade not many have the courage and conviction unfortunately to to commit early especially if you're a first-time entrepreneur so I love if I when I find a deal that I'm that I where I have high conviction I love to be the first investor on board any any any it's a small group so I can you know tailor my tailor it a little more any is the speed okay is so any questions so far I mean can you doing those initial investments like that you like to be the first on board do you let other people invest alongside you with that initial yeah yeah very good question yeah so so typically so these so I don't lead investment I don't and not anymore I don't lead investment rounds so typically it's so these are relatively small investments of 50k to 100k in done most of my recent investments have been in the UK the typical size of a seed round is about half a million pounds about six hundred thousand dollars or so so it's a small part of a seed round so I typically the way it works is as a lead investor who has negotiated terms and I'm coming in for a part of the round I used to do more I've done some lead investing but I don't don't do that anymore I've just found it to be very very time consuming to do it properly so typically I I come in as as a part of a round so 50k to 100k is usually you know if it's a 500k round it's about five percent of 150k investment would be 10 percent of the round where do I invest I've done 80 so I was based in the US I went to university in the US and I was based in the US for about 25 years so most of my initial investing was in the US and about five years ago I moved to the UK and more many of my more recent investments have been in the UK the rest have been the rest have been all over yet to make my first investment in New Zealand but I'm going to be in in New Zealand with my family for a few months moving actually moving there next week so I'm very excited about seeing some good deals in New Zealand and making some investments in New Zealand yeah it's I have I tend to I tend to invest I'd like to invest in in the in the location where I am so when I was in the US I would do most of my investments when I was in San Francisco I did most of my investments in in the Bay Area and in the UK I've been based in London and I've been doing most of my investments in in the UK now I tend to like to meet with entrepreneurs in person and connect with the founders so which is why I prefer to do investments in the area where I'm based at the time I've sort of traveled all over so wherever I'm based although a few of these other companies I'm talking about have been I met the founders on trips to these countries except for the South Korean one where I met the founder in the UK very much have you found that that will change much now you know how COVID's made more people make investments online yeah yeah so I didn't so I was during COVID of course I made most of my all my investments were made online something I noticed in London this started about a year ago in in many of the deals that were competitive investors who were actually present had a had a big competitive advantage because the you know people were just keen both the founders and other investors who shared deals were just more keen on interacting in person as sort of a reaction to COVID as similar to what's happening from some of the work from home stuff many many employers now are moving going hybrid or going back to the office so I found something similar happening with especially with competitive deals although during COVID I think many US investors many US investors US were investing directly in startups in London and as a result the valuations of the UK also went up a lot because many many startups are getting investments directly from funds and investors from the US yeah so I that's my I was there was also maybe it's also part of it is a little was a little fatigue which is doing it online we just wanted to interact with people in person so but I've always had a preference to meet the to meet the founders in person so in terms of how I've done so far so what about 40 percent of my investments I get I get zero back 30 percent it's close to my money back so some anywhere from point you know 0.7 0.8 x to about 1.2 x that is the other 30 percent that makes it really interesting from a financial standpoint anywhere from 3 x to 100 x and off that off the off that 30 percent you'll see it's about maybe 1 to 2 percent I mean off the about 1 to 2 percent of the total is going to be 100 x so it's you have so it's a very very small percentage of your investments that actually give you a good return when with angel investing it's really it's really really difficult so I'm going to go into a few few investments that I that some highlights investments from where where which have been good financially and from which I also learned some valuable lessons so one of my first when I first got into angel investing which was after I sold my first startup it was it was a little more ad hoc I was just I was investing in investing in friends companies I had been through it was quite it had been quite a struggle for me as a first time entrepreneur to raise capital for my own startup because I didn't have a track record etc so I wanted to I started off warning to help my friends who were starting companies so that's how I first started so I would so this was sort of this was in this was in those days when I did the little after that so AVG I would say was my first sort of more of a professional investment where it was not a it was not a friends company that I invested in and I happened to be in traveling through the Czech Republic at that time and actually I happened to be traveling the Czech Republic a few months before this happened and and met some local investors during my during my trip there and went on to help one of the investors portfolio companies I put the portfolio the founder of the portfolio company with some of my connected him with some of my contacts in San Francisco and kept in touch with this with this investor and then he met mentioned this deal AVG which is a which is now a public publicly traded security software company told me about AVG and I it was actually a very very competitive local deal in in the Czech Republic but I was able to get into that deal because of my because I'd helped one of the investors portfolio companies before so the investor was very very keen on having me on the cap table so I got the deal thanks to good collaboration with local angels so I think if you're if you're if you're getting into early stage investing and want and want to want to get good deal flow I mean deal flow is going to be is the heart of good investing right you need to see a lot of a lot of a lot of interesting deals to be to be able to to be able to make those good bets and one way to get better deal flow is to either directly help the founders where and then founders will tell their friends and tell them tell their their fellow entrepreneurs that you want this investor on your cap table he can add value so that's one way to get better to get good deals and the other way to get good deals is to help investors with their portfolio companies so if it is if it is something you're just getting into this is a good way to sort of increase your chances of getting good deal flow just by being helpful to founders and our other investors so I've got this because the investor was very keen on having me as a shareholder one of the mistakes I did make was and I'll cover this a little more was I had the chance to do a secondary and which is where you can set apart a vacant sell your stake before the company gets acquired or before the company goes public and the mistake I made was various I cashed out my entire 100% stake so what I what I learned from that is you know keep some you know keep some money on you know it's good to getting liquidity is a good thing but it's also good to keep some money on the table for for you know for for you know but Roger moonshot return so it was still a very good return it was still a 25x return but the if I kept even a small fraction of that say 20% of that that would have gone on to have been under the 10x so that's it is it is a tricky it is a tricky one though because it's because the whole evaluation process for evaluating you know a deal that it's at this stage so this was they were being the company was being valued at around 75 million it's a little different from evaluating an early stage a very early stage deal which is less about which is less about the revenues and it's so the the whole criteria was very it was very different which is what made it been harder for me to evaluate but looking back I would still I would always leave something on I would always I'll never cash out 100 a full 100% again if I have the option to do so if I have the option to keep something on the table let you know go continue continue to go for the ride in that situation so that was that was the sort of an early sort of early experience with with sort of a more professional investment this was back I made the investment back in was it it was late 2003 and I was able to was very lucky got able to it was able to you know liquidate my stake about 18 months after so it was a it was a very very good return in terms of in in that in that shot in that shot time frame one of the one of the other investments that I made which is which has been a great sort of return financial return was the was a was a cryptocurrency company called Ripple I invested in their seed round in I think it was March 2013 and Ripple went on to create this the company the company was what was it called at that time they had it it was called some labs at that time Ripple Labs yeah it was called Ripple Labs and they went on to form a to have this token called XRP which became which is one of the which is a successful cryptocurrency token and this was this was through Ripple is still not public so this was actually I've got my return in a series of secondaries where I sold these my shares in Ripple to to other to other investors do you still invest in crypto now very much yes yes I'm still I'm still not I haven't been I haven't been very active recently in crypto but yeah I still I'm still very interested in blockchain and blockchain startups yeah some of the some of the the factors which which led to it being a successful investment Bitcoin was I just I'd heard about Bitcoin a couple of months ago this was in early 2013 and Bitcoin was already on a tear had gone up and it was very very raw at that time so Ripple's their value prop was actually to be a better version of Bitcoin a version of Bitcoin with better settlement mechanics and a Bitcoin plus plus and that was that was what they wanted to apply it to the for the money transfer market for the global money transfer market so they were going after they were going after a huge market and it was also being led by the CEO had had an experience in had had experience before but hadn't had a successful exit under the belt he was super smart super talented very very driven founder and he was hugely motivated to create a big outcome so that was that was a big factor in the success of in the success of Ripple and I also I shared this deal with a friend of mine who has who has formed who has started very successful fintech companies and his his advice to me was not to invest in Ripple and fortunately I didn't I didn't I didn't take I didn't take his advice and brings up an interesting point about you know about getting do you want to get the advice from experts in the domain because when you're doing as an angel investor they maybe they're they're always going to be people who understand the domain are better than you so it's an interesting one I mean I think most you just have to realize that most experts have their own biases so if you if you can understand what they where they're coming from it can it can help it can help with that but in quite often experts can can get it wrong when it comes to especially if it's if it's a company that's going to be disruptive in in their sector I mean the other the one more example that comes to mind is Airbnb if you had gone and spoken to experts in in the hospitality industry or the hotel industry they would have probably many of them would have probably said no it's not it's not a good investment it's going to be it's these are illegal it's going to be they're going to be regulatory barriers it's just not going to work people are not going to want to stay in apartments where the towels are not clean or whatever don't have professional hotel standards so it is you know they can they can get experts can get it wrong I think it's it depends on how you so you have to I know if you're getting into angel investing you have to develop your own sort of style and see what works for you so the lessons the lessons I'm sharing are lessons that work for me so for me it's often the way I like to do it is I would like to get there I would like to get their opinion but you know take it take it to the barrel full of salt the the opinion of a sort of a domain expert so I didn't I fortunately I didn't listen to the advice of a fintech expert before investing in ripple and it's also it's in one of the in a prior investment I think that I had listened to the advice of someone who had much more experience than me and decided to pass on that investment and that was actually that was that was sort of what led me to completely ignore the advice of a fintech expert here and it's it's it's even more frustrating when you when you go against your gut and and then you at least if you invest if you make the decision based on your gut you can say oh yeah I you know this is a tough but if you this is a tough game to be playing misses a part of the game but if you do it because of the because of the advice if you miss on a big investment because of the advice of someone else I'll tell you it's even more it's even even it's even more frustrating you'd be kicking yours a little even more one more another example if most of you have probably not heard of this company company called Isiah this is a company I was based in New York at the time and this is a company that was actually founded by a close friend of mine from university and they were providing data migration solutions for internet service providers so their product would let you this was in the invested in them back in 2000 one of mine was one of my early investments actually as an angel investor and their product let you migrate from one email account to the other so if you had an account with AOL and you wanted to move your move move to say yahoo mail or to hotmail they would they would work with they actually sign deals with the ISPs they're working with with hotmail our MSN and they would transfer all your emails from one account to the other made it really easy to switch their product was called true switch made it really easy to switch from one email account to the other sounds like a bit of a trivial a trivial product but it was actually a very very useful product for consumers and one of the one of the interesting things about their business was they were able to charge both the ISP so they would charge a hotmail $10 to everyone who switched from AOL and they would charge AOL $10 to everyone who switched from hotmail to AOL Google went on to begin to become a large customer of theirs there were a lot of people switching who wanted to switch from hotmail to Google and they would pay they would pay ISIA for that and yeah they went on to be acquired by by LinkedIn for for about 80 million in in cash and LinkedIn stock another funny aspect of this story is LinkedIn was actually founded four years after after ISIA and they went on to be acquired by LinkedIn so it was actually a very it was a very good return one one of the reasons for the for the return being such a good multiple was because it was very little delusion ISIA had not raised much capital and as a result the the founders and the investors did very very well so this has been a better return than many than many of my investments where the exit figures have been much higher where there was there was one company that so ISIA was acquired in 2012 many years after my investment but there was one company that was acquired for a company called Mashery which was acquired for about 180 million around the same time and that was that was a relatively small return it was a 10x return still a still a very good run but relatively small because of all the the delusion that Mashery had found shareholders had to go through because they raised a lot of capital so one more something else is that you should ask yourself as an angel investor is how much capital would the company need to raise over its lifetime before it can be before there's an exit because if a company needs a lot of capital that's going to that's going to dilute you most almost all the time angel investors don't have any anti-dilution rights and and that's really going to bite into your return the dilution can really bite into your return so if a company if you're investing let's say a small amount in a very early stage company that's going to need a lot of capital over its life cycle it has to be a massive exit for it to generate a good return for you sometimes these these smaller exits are relatively small exits like an 80 million exit can be a better return if the company does not need too much capital like with ISIA the company was only four people four founders and they had a team of I think a team of contractors in Mexico and it was so they didn't it was actually a very very capital efficient business which is why they didn't need to raise raise much outside capital after their initial seed road that led to a very good return some other you know learnings from from ISIA that some of these you know obscure niches can be great investments especially if you have a if that's a niche you understand and if you have a competitive advantage over other investors in evaluating such such investments so in ISIA's case it was a very it was not something that most venture capitalists when were interested in it was just not seen as interesting enough big enough return and I mean I was I was in terms of category the category was sort of interesting but for me the the main reason I invested was the was the massive sort of drive with the founders I knew the founder very well from university so I knew he was hugely driven to create a to create a you know a big outcome and which is a which is the main reason I invested so yeah that was that was the that was a major factor driving a good return in ISIA and another interesting sort of learning from this investment was the found since the the company was doing very well in terms of revenues the founders were able to take were able to take something off the table in some of their shares of the table which put them in a very strong position financially and personally so when LinkedIn first came with their initial offer the initial offer was about half of what they actually landed up selling for the founders were able to walk away and really really and negotiate a very very good offer and it's and one reason they've had the courage to walk away was because they were in a strong financial situation so it's in it's actually when when you when the topic of secondaries come up many investors they have this sort of knee jerk reaction oh secondaries are not going to be good because now the founders are not going to be hungry founders are supposed to be hungry to go for this for this large outcome yes there's some truth to that but if they're going to be worrying about paying their mortgage and if they're struggling personally then they're going to make the wrong decisions then they're going to take the first you know you know 10 million dollar offer of even a five million dollar offer that's going to come their way if it's going to read to financial stability so I think as I think secondaries can be very very good both for founders because it lets them now not have to worry about paying their bills etc and now they can focus more better on going for a big outcome and also for early investors it provides some liquidity for early investors so I think secondaries are a very good thing that's and they have become they weren't very common when I started investing I think a big reason for that was because venture capitalists did not like founders to be taking you know cashing out early and but now they're becoming more common and which is a good thing another another investment highlight is a company is a mobile marketing company called first screen another sort of under the it's a company Dutch founders based in Dubai and they provide mobile marketing solutions for primarily for operators and that was that's the return is interesting because it is not not just the the size but it's actually been a return in dividends so the company still has the chance of being acquired and they have been providing it's over the years they have provided a 40x return in terms of dividends which would be very very atypical for a Silicon Valley startup so this was this was sort of more of an under the radar investment not sort of chased by the typical you know Silicon Valley investor so sometimes as I said sometimes these investments can make sometimes these sort of opportunities can be great investments once again I knew the founders I knew the founders well hugely driven founders so it is their drive that has sort of led to this led to the success um one more I mean one more takeaway from from this is I think it's good to have some sort of a mix in your portfolio between these under the radar investments especially if you I mean not all obscured all are going to be going to lead to good returns and these sort of more more competitive very hot deals so ripple ripple on the other hand was a highly competitive over subscribed deal that I that I that I got into and so I think it's good to have sort of a mix see and and and over time you'll have a you'll develop a better intuition of you know where you where you are what's doing better for you and where you want to spend more time and prioritize so I would say have a mix in your portfolio of both these types of deals some of the some of the investment misses one of them was one of them was uber would have been a 5000x investment return if if I of course if I'd held my stake to live in public and it was this was back in I had the chance to invest back in 2000 2010 when they were raising when they're raising a seed round they had a this was the initial email that I got from from Angelist and then I had this shared I mean exchange multiple emails with the with the with the CEO at that time Ryan Travis was not the was not the CEO at that time and it's when I when I when I read this email it's still sort of mind boggling how small they were when they first started 10 dry was doing 10 first rides on week and evenings so I think the main the biggest sort of lesson the you know now I mean I now you know I cry I mean I say I cry almost every time I take a look but I think about this but that doesn't you know that doesn't really matter now right what matters now is finding the next big investment and it's a very very very useful reminder that most big things on the internet start really small really small the other the other miss was a was Twilio that would have been a thousand X return had I investment had I invested I was okay I don't have it I was actually introduced to the to the founder of Twilio by a good friend of mine in Seattle who had introduced me to another startup from Seattle a few months before in which I invested and that startup was I was actually quite disappointed in the communication by the founders and that startup so when I saw this saw this email from from my friend it said another Seattle startup that I want to introduce you to that I just told myself no no more no more Seattle I'm done with Seattle startup no more Seattle startups for me and so really a good example of really lazy pattern matching where I just sort of I didn't even explore it further just because of the fact that they were based in Seattle how are we doing on time so far yeah no that's great and I'm just laughing my head off here at so many of these funnies because even when you were talking back at your 100 times because like we've only had like a couple in that area where the original founders so that's like a trade me and zero you know what I've got a hundred times so it's just breaking out here your your because you've got so many more your choice we have many many more misses unfortunately yeah your choices are so much more your numbers are just so much higher yeah it's interesting keep going this is great yeah there's another another example I mean these are I'm sharing these examples not because of the interest the numbers are not that the returns are not that out in absolute numbers not that interesting but there was some interesting learnings from n relate it's actually run by a very good it was run by a very another friend of mine and they were sold two years after they started for 12 million so relatively a very a relatively quick exit and they had the they were doing phenomenally they had really good traction in what they were doing and they were actually a content recommend one of the early content recommendation companies so when you're on a publisher side they will they will make other recommendations you may want to see this this other article and this these are highly relevant articles otherwise they won't they don't work and they were all sort of a sponsored content company and they were I know they were doing their traction was phenomenal but the the one of the reasons the the founder decided to sell was because this was he he owned a significant chunk of the company more than 50% and I've had this discussion the founder he's happy for me to share this information he owned about 50% of the company so for him it was actually for someone who was still very young it was actually a phenomenal financial return and it was a great return for investors to a six six six return in two years so I think the the for me the takeaway from there was you know fortunately for me the entry valuation was very very low I came in at a two million valuation but if let's say my if my entry valuation had been more like the typical um you know silicon valley seed valuation today eight to ten million would have been a very would have been a mediocre return for the risk you're taking um so the major sort of takeaway for me from this um was that you know almost all the time the find the family the founder has a personal financial goal that's going to determine the size of the outcome so let's say the the founder has a personal financial target of of five million and he owns 50 person a company or he or she owns 50 person a company it's going to be it's highly unlikely that the exit the exit is going to be more than 10 million so it's um so it's something that as an angel it's and it's and this can of course it can it can change I mean sometimes these you know the goalposts can shift once the company is doing really well founders can revisit their initial financial goals but in my experience it's quite rare if the founder has has a personal financial goal um in as a as a as a target that's going to limit that can limit this that can also if it's a if it's a large financial goal it's going to increase the chances of a larger outcome but if it's a small if it's a relatively small financial goal uh in you know it's six million it's not by most standards not but it's all these are all relative right so it's it's going to limit the size it's going to limit the size of the outcome um so something to keep in mind especially especially if the entry it's more of a factor of the entry valuation is high you know I've seen some I've seen some deals where the entry valuations are you know 10 million 15 million dollars and there's a new and you get this and the and you get and you get this impression that and these are really really high and the founders are going to are not going to walk away from you know a 20 million offer or 30 million offer because it's going to be the personal financial stakes for them are just too high um so it's not something that people in Silicon Valley actually even said talk about that much because you know founders are supposed to be the founders read this article uh while back and it's it's where I can I can relate to that founders are supposed to be like Jesus it's supposed to be very very very very very pure they're doing it for you know for good yes I mean that's a big factor but they're there they're all the founders are also you know driven by financial as entrepreneurs they're also driven by the financial return and if they have a lower sort of financial target um it's going to limit your your return and I and I have and I have some you know as an entrepreneur I have some good experience here as well for my first for my first startup one of the uh one of the reasons um you know we decided to sell it was because it more than met the financial goals of our of the founders and it also provided it also provided a good return for the for the investors so once that sort of bar was met for us we were it became a very easy decision I mean the question so this was we we sold this company for this was a this was a 30 this is a 30 million plus exit the question as founders that we asked ourselves is that that was basically the proceeds from the exit was basically all the money we we had we had we had zero savings the question we asked ourselves as founders is was if all we had was this much would be invested all in our startup and the answer to that was no so it became a very easy so it became a very easy position for us to sell so that's something I've asked I've asked myself and as an investor I mean the last thing you want to be doing is trying to come in the way of a young founder trying to achieve you know financial financial stability so um so that's something you just do not want to do so when you invest you want to make sure that in the best case it's going to be a good return so another sort of example where this was a company that was Acquihide by Amazon and I had the I had the feeling that the that the I had this sort of and this is one of this is an investment that actually led I had the feeling that the founder would go for would not really go make an honest attempt at a huge outcome um so we had we had liquidation preferences in the in our investment where there would be at least a 3x return for the early investors um so they so the company sold for less than 3x investors would get investors would still get a 3x and then then the proceeds would be divided and that was actually something I'll never do again in general I want to I want to stay away from uh spending too much time negotiating valuations now that something I've learned uh with with founders because um you know it's an it's an unpleasant it's an unpleasant discussion and quite often these things if the company is going to be if the company is going to be it's these are quite binary so whether you come in for 25 per at a valuation that's 25 percent higher is not really going to matter if the company is going to get if the company is going to get acquired for a massive multiple so it's something I and and plus you know I don't lead I don't lead investments now so it's it's something for the lead investor to do so it's not something but I would sort of uh you know try and um try and suggest not getting not getting too much into these into these uh into these discussions uh with founders and not it's sort of uh not the uh not something that's that's my I'm sure many investors would have a very different perspective here uh but it's not something that uh that I uh that uh that you know that I tend to do now in terms of negotiating the terms of value and introducing all these things like like liquidation preference etc um because uh you know the yes yeah I was just thinking um uh we've just got about 10 minutes left and Lily's got a question here sure so just wondering if I can divert slightly yeah so because you've been angel investing for a long time and we've all grown up with traditional metrics well how are you thinking and acting with impact investing now yes um I'm definitely definitely interested in in impact investing because I think um they are going to be the far more I've done some investing in nonprofits and I uh I think if the and the biggest challenge with nonprofits is they don't scale so if it can be an investment if it can be if it can do a lot of if we can do social good and if it's also scalable it's super interesting to me um so uh it is it's just one which is one more reason I'm quite excited about spending time in New Zealand I think there's a lot of opportunity in the space in in New Zealand that's the key there isn't it's the scaling part of it if you can scale then you can actually then make something happen with it yeah yes yes yes yeah cool make my answer question yeah go for it Lily Kia ora um people can you hear me yes we can Lily great okay Kia ora Ramesh thank you very much for sharing your story very very interesting uh my name is Lily Tolaga Bay I'm one of our fellows I represent our our Maldi Tongata Whinawa styles and one thing I just wanted to ask with you Ramesh is because in terms of many of our VCs that are within the fellowship um but the focus is always financial and I understand that because that's what VC is about financial investment for 10 xing returns uh however within Aotearoa and as part of the fellowship a whole co-papa is about creating um solutions global solutions utilizing Aotearoa New Zealand as an incubation nation so which means we have to sort of think slightly differently to how things are normally done when it comes to Maldi them and Maldi organizations and Maldi businesses the biggest factor is actually building the relationships first before we even talk the money side and and there are many Maldi organizations that that have the ability to scale not as nonprofits but it's really about that relationship building that trust um but also it's about it's a long term and so for for VCs that's sort of not not on your cards is it what are your thoughts about trying to link with Maldi organizations yeah no I'd love to I'd love to learn you know maybe we can have a chat offline uh and you can share some of your your insights here um I'd love to um yeah I'd love to learn more but how you know what sort of how they approach how they approach it um something else that I'm that I uh what was going to cover is that you know even even even for a typical VC that's looking at doing it you know purely the type of for for a financial return you need to be very very patient like the other example I gave the SI example it took it took 12 years for a return so many of these many of these so you need many of these startups takes before you can get a cash return take seven to ten years which is a fairly long long horizon and I wonder maybe let me throw this back to you I mean I'm in in like an Indian Indian culture um you know traditionally it's considered quite you know you don't want it's not something you talk about the finance of the financial return it's it's meant to be a little more sort of subtle in the background it's it's so obvious that you're doing it for a financial return it's not even talked about as you know cat is that is that similar or is that not even a factor uh no that's that that's very similar very similar and because once once again it's not just about but the financial it's everything that encompasses that that um progress but it also brings into the community at stake as well all the different stakeholders within the community so many of our investments involve um supporting the well-being the housing structures the social structures the environmental structures so so when we do deals encompasses the whole um all of those aspects as well so it's not simple but my point is that at the moment and I've been with the fellowship six years now um that the thought pattern of our VCs from my perspective needs to change a little to to working with how we operate and how we think because although they're a slower they're a slower gain um my belief is there a huge gain which can then be duplicated globally um so so yes it's certainly simply not talking about financial in fact that is considered rude mm-hmm mm-hmm yeah I can relate to that from you know from my own sort of uh cultural you know background yeah that yeah it's interesting you mentioned the word rude yeah it's almost considered rude in many disrespectful in some respects yeah you can uh go and visit uh Tolaga Bay um and see Lily with your family so Ramesh is flying into New Zealand on Good Friday so next Friday yeah well safe journey is Ramesh we also have another fellow here living with us he just walked past Tabisto he's helping us correct community development in this region um and Taira for the east coast is one of the regions our government is currently focusing on due to cycling Gabriel and we need to change some of the ways we are operating and find different industries specifically in the tech area so um please hi to my if you're interested in coming to our homelands and meeting our people okay I love that yeah thank you so much Kia ora thanks Lily any other questions okay I think I can skip this one um I think I've covered this enough times and already founders enough um I've also covered secondaries which which uh which I support um it's good for founders and investors um should I uh in my in terms of my summary I would say um make make lots of small bets when I first started I was making I mean I was making larger bets uh and not as many uh I've realized that um you just need to make a we need to make a lot of small bets um and from my from my experience I mean you need to make at least 30 bets to get that one you know 100x return and that's and that's really going to be what's going to if or if you're doing it for a financial return that's really going to be the one that sort of moves the needle on your portfolio not getting that like there's usually one investment in the portfolio 100x return returns your fund um it's something it took me some time to grasp that why why are why are vc so obsessed by that one big you know billion dollar outcome but that's what they need to return their fund even return their fund um and um you know as early stage early stage and early stage investing is very very difficult to size market market sizing is very very hard um for you and I think I gave the uh air bnb example it's very very difficult I mean they actually created a new market made a lot of people uh you know go traveling now as a result of air bnb because it's far more cost effective for them to live in a in a in a in a different destination so uber for example another example I mean how do you size when you when you first see the uber investment deal how do you size the market I mean they started off as a black cap company is it a black cap company and or is it is it is it now a taxi company or is it a technology company they're more of a marketplace so how do you even come up with the so if you if you use sort of conventional market sizing for some of these investments or if you size the market based on what is already there uh it's you you could miss out on some opportunities because it's very hard to size a new market that they're going to be creating um so yeah so it's it's far far uh uh more sort of practical in very early stage investing to invest to make bets based on interesting founders founders are going to be resilient founders are going to be very very motivated and in my this is in my experience I mean obscure obscure niches can be great things that are overlooked by by other investors two of my best investments have been in sort of these sort of you know obscure and unsexy niches um and they need to be very very patient for cash returns I mean some of these Isiah was the example where they've started in 2000 and they exited in 2012 um many of the other investments too uh they're all even even the even the companies that are doing really well a few years later it's all on paper that I haven't received a gotten uh gotten any sort of uh cash return for that these are all many of these many of the investments are paper marked up so can take seven seven seven to 10 years sometimes even 13 13 15 years so you have to be very very patient takes it long to grow something that yeah exactly that exactly it's it's hard work time consuming work um sometimes I mean I've given some examples where where uh you know return I've gotten my return after two years or three years but those are those are a typical if you make if you make you know if you that those are those are probably as I said maybe less than 30 percent of the of my investments that do that uh with uh with 40 percent you get zero and 30 percent you're lucky to get your money back and it's it's a small fraction where you can get those types of returns and many or even those returns can take a very long time the other I mean the other and it's sort of spoken a lot about the about the financial the financial return here I mean the other really uh sort of inspiring lessons from angel investing are you know in in working when you work with these motivated founders especially in categories you don't know much about where a founder has spent a lot of time thinking about a category they teach you a lot you mean pretty much you know they try and teach you everything they know about a category in one hour in 15 minutes which is actually intellectually super exciting and almost exhilarating you know you hear you have someone who spent years and years thinking about a solution to a problem and he's trying to get you he or she is trying to get you up to speed in 45 minutes one hour so it's intense but it can also be very very exciting so that's a that's a huge sort of uh lesson from you know uh sort of inspirational lesson from angel investing where you um yeah where you where it can be an uh an incredible learning experience yeah that's true you do you get to learn a lot about a sector and about watching another entrepreneur go through their their journey exactly it's but it's interesting when you're talking about uber and air bnb because both of those were second to market in that yes those industries they weren't the first in those air bnb also second to market yeah i think they were in the type of thing they were is from what i've heard if i yeah there was actually there was one yeah there was one company in singapore doing it around the same time uh they didn't they didn't raise as much capital uh uber definitely was uh but with air bnb at yeah there was actually i think they were at the same time at least that i know of uh with another company any last questions so you got did you want to do a questionnaire otherwise we will wrap it up no that's good well thank you so much remission it's been really interesting and insightful and it's really good to see how an angel investor is investing in what they what numbers they're dealing with actually from on the other side of the world compared to here in new zealand i hope they have actually found that part quite interesting so we look forward to having your family here next next friday and um and looking forward to having you here for your welcome week okay thank you very much safe travels okay thank you so much nice meeting you bye yeah