 All right, welcome back to the sales community executive event here at Randy Seidl's Abode in Massachusetts. I'm Dave Vellante with Peter Bell from Amity Ventures. Peter, thanks for making some time for us. Thanks, Dave, for having me. What, the Amity Ventures? Jaws? No, no, no. A lot of people think Amity with, you know, the Jaws movie or Amity the Horror. But Amity comes out of the, actually the Latin around love, trust and friendship. And our strategy at Amity is to back founders from inception all the way through. So we're a founder-centric firm, and we spend a lot of time thinking about the name and it's right around this journey with the entrepreneur. Interesting. So, I mean, a lot of VCs will talk about how they're founder-friendly. So convince me that you're really founder-friendly. I mean, you got a track record on. Yeah, yeah. Well, I think that we think about our relationship with the founders, our relationship with the broader ecosystem of venture capitalists and the ecosystem with our LPs. Those three are really the triangle that is the platform that we've built the firm on. So I think, you know, a big thing for early stage entrepreneurs is sort of getting the company off the ground and getting to go to market. And I think we've done a good job. If I look, you know, we've been seven years at it, Dave. And, you know, we just had our annual meeting last week in San Francisco at the Presidio. And it feels like it's working. It feels like our focus on the founders, and that was our whole meeting, was around profiling our founders. And we think that's the core lifeblood of what we do. And, you know, time will tell, but we're off to a good start. Well, you know, Frank Schlupin. Yes. Right, and he's always, he's, you know, taking over companies, but it's always the founder hangs on or stays on. I shouldn't say hangs on, they're there. And he always celebrates the founder. Said that's very important to do that. You know, I'll go do the operations and do the dirty work. But the founders, they started this, they deserve their respect. That's not always the case. But I think Frank, but I think you're just a great example. I think Frank has done such a good job if you look at his success, the companies he's built, but his relationship with the founders and keeping them involved. Because frankly, without the founders, whether it's someone like Frank Schlupin or any venture firm, I mean, we don't exist. I mean, you need the people with the ideas, the guts, the vision, the desire to give up a lot to pursue something. And so it takes a lot of people to build these companies and Frank has been kind of a stalwart as a company builder. Amazing, exact. So what's happened to VC land these days? You hear terms like zombie corns, you see risk assets aren't as attractive. You hear the all in guys saying that they're trying to kill, the Fed is killing VC. What's the real story? Well, it's been a challenging market. You think of the all in guys with the interest rates and companies were overvalued in the zombie corn, all the things you talked about. But I would say, so there's going to be a fair amount of carnage, probably in 2024 where companies just can't get, that where maybe corns, they can't get financed. But at the same time, if I look at what's happening, you can use the buzzwords, but what's happening in early stage AI and what's happening in a lot of the vertical SaaS companies, there's a lot of exciting companies being built right now that are properly financed and at the right valuation. So I'm optimistic for a 10 year horizon, but it's going to be a little more challenging in the next two years. But do you feel like it's, if you got those staying power, it's a good time to be a VC? Or I mean, you remember, you remember 09, you know, we're coming out of that was actually 0807, 0809, it was actually a great time to invest if you look back. Do you think it's similar now or is higher for longer going to create problems? I do, I think there's some similarities. 08 was one of the best, you know, if you look at the vintages, 08 and 09 were phenomenal times to be early, you know, in venture. I think what's kind of different now is that, you know, the IPO, the time to get public is taking much longer. And there's been very little liquidity. So, you know, I'm worried a little bit about kind of when the capital markets get back to where we can take our company's public at a relatively reasonable valuation where you don't need to get to 10, 15, 20 billion of market value to get public. So there's definitely a challenging time, but if you walk on any college campus, I, you know, in the last few weeks, I've been at UCLA, I've been at Stanford, I've been at Harvard, I've been at Boston College, I've been at Northeastern, I've been at NYU, Columbia. You look at the students and like, this is why venture still works. These folks are going to be starting or joining companies. So I'm super optimistic about the long haul. It's like Hollywood, everybody's got a screenplay. Every kid's got a business plan, every idea. And that's exciting. That's exciting. I mean, look, if interest rates are, let's say they settle down three and a half, four, even 5%, you know, when we were kids, that was kind of normal. Normal. And you want predictability. So, you know, once we get some predictability, obviously there's a lot of craziness happening. It's a challenging world, but I think the level of innovation, the level of technical talent and the impact technology can make on a world is still super exciting. What are you investing in from an AI standpoint? Obviously you have the big mega large language models, the Anthropics, the Lama twos, the big cloud vendors. But there's a lot of, I think there's a lot of specialized opportunities. How do you see it? Yeah, we've got companies in the last year or so we've invested in early stage around kind of automating with AI, everything happening in the data center, around root cause and observability. We've got stuff around legal, the sales stack. We just invested in a company that applies AI models to scheduling in fire departments. This kid grew up, his father, his grandfather, his uncles were all firemen. And all this stuff that was extremely complex now you can use software to automate. So there's an amazing amount of opportunities. What do you look for? I mean, obviously look for the founders or the team, size of market, but is that sort of still the same framework? In fact, and I'm maybe dating myself saying this, but I think that venture is going back to its roots. Deals got so compressed in the time we had to meet an entrepreneur and make a decision. We now can spend time with the entrepreneur getting to know him or her, getting to know their business. And then, but I think we're able to see early traction. So we're investing when there's something's already working. So they've built it with very little capital. So back to capital efficient companies. So we look for the basic things but we now have more time to really build that right relationship with the entrepreneur. Now for the audience, a little bit about your history. I mean, you were at EMC, a very successful career. And then you actually, you were one of the companies that started the cloud. I say, right? You think about how Amazon started in 2006 with S3 which was cloud storage. You start, we started storage networks in 1998. And the whole thesis, you go back and read some of the Wall Street reports on your company. I mean, I don't have them now, but I remember reading them at the time. They were basically describing as a service. And then of course it was just the economics weren't right back then, but you had the right idea and that led you into VC, right? No, I think of like storage networks. It's like the old movies of the British army where the front line goes in and just gets obliterated. But they still win the battle, you know? So we got obliterated. We were too early, but the premise was right. And it did show me a lot around and we had a superb team, great engineers, a lot of great people. So that gave me the, I guess the gumption or the excitement to get involved with venture capital. And I've been doing venture now for 20 years since 2003 and it's really been just been a blast. I mean, you're an optimist, so looking forward, you know, you've always been an optimist since I've known you, right? I mean, the power of positive thinking, right? I mean, it sounds like a cliche, but it sort of works, doesn't it? It's important. It's a fine line as a venture capitalist. In some ways, it's maybe like being a parent or being a coach. You have to be an optimist, a cheerleader, but then you have to give the tough love and you have to find the right balance. There's never the perfect balance, but I try hard personally to, you know, balance all that. And, but I really feel fortunate to have worked with so many great entrepreneurs over. Yeah, when the plan is not working, you gotta make a new plan, obviously. All right, toughest question in the night. What do you do with Belichick? Belichick, I would say I love you. You know, thank you. Six Super Bowls, but it's time to move on. Yeah, I think so. Peter, thanks very much. Thanks for having me. Appreciate it. Appreciate it. All right, keep it right there. More action from the sales community event here at Randy Seidl's Abode. This is Dave Vellante. We'll be right back.