 vice president and investor relations at Florida funders. Florida funders is a venture capital fund, an angel investor network that discovers funds and builds early-stage technology companies in Florida and beyond. That's a beautiful thing. Saxon, welcome to TFNN. Thanks for having me, Tom. Super excited to be here. Hope all is well, watching the markets here with you as you just called out. Looking pretty good today. There's no doubt. So tell us about Florida funders and how this works. Yeah, absolutely. We'd love to. So Florida funders is an early-stage technology firm. We are a fund first-type company, meaning we are really focused on raising venture capital funds. But we also have an angel network that's associated with us. So when we go out to do a deal, we only invest in technology and we only invest in early-stage companies, meaning usually companies doing about $100,000 to $3 or $4 million in annual revenue. When we go out to do a deal, our fund will be the first dollars in and then we have the ability for angel investors to invest alongside our fund through our platform for as little as $5,000 per deal. Oh, that's pretty cool. I have this set up. I get it. Okay, cool. All right. I got it. That's smart, man. So tell us what is the environment. I've been down here now 25 years. I'm from Boston and you know, it's intriguing. Everyone thinks Boston was always like a monster. It was. I was actually, my first office was in Mifflin Place and I was right next to when Mitch, what was his name? He did Lotus 123. I remember him. There was only three people in that office. Isn't that wild? And so I saw Boston Cambridge grow exponentially. So tell us about Florida. Tell us about what you guys have been doing and getting people jobs and getting some action going down here. Yeah, absolutely. And the environment, the ecosystem that we're playing in right now is just night and day to what was even five years ago. So let me kind of get you up to speed, Florida, obviously warm business climate. People love to be here. People love the vacation here. But up until about 10 years ago, the resources for early-stage technology in terms of incubators, accelerators, capital and talent really weren't extremely accessible. Obviously, you had a few companies here and there that have been successful and we have some of those older entrepreneurs that are investors with us today that had built and sold companies back in the day. But today, we're playing a whole new game. And really what was the catalyst for this movement was COVID. So when COVID hit, Florida being one of the only states that was really truly open, we had an influx of capital being really tier one venture firms and private equity firms, Blumbert Capital, SoftBank, Founders Fund, that's Peter Teal's fund. All of those funds move their headquarters or at least set up a secondary headquarters in South Florida. And obviously with capital comes talent. With talent comes great ideas and great companies. So at this point, Florida is really, in my opinion, the hottest ecosystem in terms of technology in the United States. We have so much movement here. I think we have well over 10 to 15 unicorns. Those are private companies valued at a billion dollars or more. 10 or 15 unicorns just in the state right now. And we're starting to get extremely active. I mean, we as Florida funders, firms like Founders Fund and SoftBank, we're looking at deals that we were doing. Now we're co-investing with those firms. We're seeing really top tier talent coming out of the major engineering school, Stanford, Carnegie Mellon, MIT, and your hometown coming down here to Florida. And it's really from what we've seen two sort of ecosystems. I think Miami is sort of leading it. And then Tampa is right behind. And then you have some amazing work going on the space coast with the billionaire space race. So it's really a good time to be in the state of Florida and to be in technology and to be investing in technology in the state of Florida. That's pretty cool, man. You know, it's crazy is that the CEO of Know Before, Stu, had- Absolutely. We were right next to each other. I know Stu really well. We had the same office. So this guy, Stu, folks, had already sold one company, started another one. I actually had interviewed him. It was only him and Lars that were together at the beginning. And it was so cool watching this, man. It's like, you're going to be kidding me. And I've been watching you guys for a while because I remember when you guys opened, and it's really cool that you do have someone like you because you know, can you explain a little to folks that, because there's so many things that when a company wants to get going, wants to be public, you know, they need those connections. And I know when I'm on your website, you know, you have a lot of different companies on there, you know, you got a lot of different people on there that can open some doors because so you can talk about that a little. Yeah, absolutely. You know, I think one of the major differentiators with Florida funders and let's start this off with right now capital is cheap, right? There's liquidity across the board. There's a lot of money flowing in and out of the private markets. So we as Florida funders need a differentiator. Why is an entrepreneur going to take a check from us rather than somebody else? And really our differentiator is us helping these companies. It's plugging in our network because we have 1600 plus accredited investors in our network. We have the ability to go out to somebody like a Jeff Finnecke, go out to somebody like a Chris Sullivan, a Bob Aschum, just some of the investors that Florida funders have in the years and plug them into these companies and really, really make sure that, you know, we can help with things like business development, we can help with things like fundraising, we can help with things like recruiting. That is really a core differentiator for us because 99% of these companies in terms of early stage companies probably won't make it. Our hit rate is usually about 30%. We expect 30% of the companies go to zero, 30% of the companies to break even, and then 30% of the companies to really be our big winners. But really to make sure that we can have that 30% be big winners, we need to help these companies. We need to take an active role to make sure that, you know, we're providing them the most benefit possible from us in our ecosystem. So that's a huge thing for us. And I truly believe that's one of the reasons why we've been able to become the most active VC in the Southeast and the most active VC in the state of Florida is because we leverage our network and we plug in the right individuals to truly help these companies be successful because that journey is not easy as we all know. No, it's not. And the thing that's intriguing, there's no doubt because of COVID, as you said, there's how many, you know, Wall Street firms are moving to South Florida for sure. I wish we could get them into Tampa. I mean, I don't know if you saw this this morning, folks, if you know, you know, Harry's is opening in West Palm Beach, okay? So Harry's is one of the, you know, famous bars up in Wall Street. If you want to get a deal done, the bottom line, you at least just go in there and you try to solicit a deal. But it is intriguing what is happening. And I can see, I mean, as soon as Jeff then it came down here, hook up with Gates, that made a big difference, right? No, no doubt about that. That's not putting Tampa on the map. And the bottom line is that, you know, Jeff has a big Rolodex, man, right? I mean, that's the bottom line. That's absolutely. And I know, you know, Miami's in the news, Miami's hot. You know, everything in Miami is all great. And we've got a little headquarters in Tampa, Miami. But Tampa just, you know, we might not be in the news as much, but we've got great technology. I mean, I put our technology companies up against anybody in South Florida. Recently, I saw that Kathy would made a stop here in Tampa. I'm hoping maybe she'll bring the arc funds down here. I don't know if that will happen or not, but that's a rumor that's burning around right now. That would be a game changer, obviously, Tom. Oh, there's no doubt, man, I'm gonna have to give her an I am right now. I'm telling you, man. It takes a city to build the city, right? No doubt about it. It takes an army to build it. I like it. Well, listen, Saxon, it's been a pleasure. We really appreciate the education and I can't wait to have you on again. Absolutely. And if anybody's interested in Florida funders, they can go to our website or reach out to me. Saxon at floridafunders.com. We'd love to have the conversation. Appreciate it, Tom, and have a great rest of the day. You have a great one. A safe one. Thanks so much. Awesome. Talk soon. And the website, folks, is floridafunders.com. It's floridafunders.com. Stay right there, folks. We come right back. We have the Dow Industrial's down 62. NASDAQ is up 56. S&P's up one and a half. Come right back, folks.