 All right, thanks everybody. So you see this this talk is called fundraising in Silicon Valley And the question is why is that relevant? I mean, maybe it's relevant for some people But this isn't this isn't meant to say that all Companies should fundraise from Silicon Valley or even that all organizations should even be companies This is really focused on saying okay. We know this is entrepreneurship day There's going to be startups here that are probably at some point going to look to raise money from California outside New Zealand and so how do you do that or what are the tips that you might not know on how things work there and things you might overlook that are going to be Really damaging if you don't know them. So that's kind of the the lens even for people that will never raise money from Silicon Valley Maybe it's helpful to hear about how Silicon Valley thinks about it How VC is there think about it and some of these tips may actually translate into other realms But before I get into that I think one topic that was brought up earlier that was really interesting was impact investing and And Matthew and I talked about it a little bit I think one helpful anecdote that I can give would like illustrate how How Silicon Valley thinks about this topic or at least how founders find or I think about this And I think the helpful story is You know, this has been brought up before SpaceX and so the backstory of SpaceX and I think Hearing how that happened might be helpful for people to understand why did they turn into like what's now a pretty successful company and hopefully Even more successful down the road So the story of it was Elon had already started Couple companies one was called zip to is in putting content online The second one was x.com that turned into PayPal and so he had already gone through What we heard about earlier as like a couple of the steps in going from an employee to a Manager to an entrepreneur and building up a lot of strength in that area and maybe the next thing for him was going to be philanthropy And so he felt like from this, you know the story that maybe a few of you have heard is We're what happened to the space program. We were going to be interplanetary, you know in the 50s 60s We're working on this awesome space stuff. It just happened what happened and so he figured well Maybe the public interest in space has just waned too much What if we put a probe on Mars and you could have a webcam on that probe and people could see what it's like to be on Mars They can imagine being on Mars Maybe that would be enough to like start the space industry again And if he had stopped there he he would have found well There's this tension between making money and getting people back interested in space and this tension cannot be overcome And I've just got to do something really philanthropic and it won't be sustainable because I'm going to spend 20 million Maybe 50 million on this launch. I'll be out of cash, but at least I did something good And he dug deeper he when he looked into putting this mission together He realized that most of the cost was in these rockets And they were just astronomically expensive such that you would never get commercial space and that you know A spatial launch cost a billion dollars per launch on average and so When that was discovered the core problem actually turned out to be the cost of space launch The fact that rockets weren't reusable the fact that these old companies had been designing them in cost-plus contracts And if we could change all that maybe we could make Space somewhere that we could end up going and so that was the core insight that he came to which alleviated that tension between having a huge impact and having a great business and Then he just became laser focused on let's make this great space launch business That's going to reduce the cost of launch by a factor of 10 and we'll just take over the whole thing And we're going to have a fantastic profitable business as well as getting people back into space And so to do that he had a lot of capital he put in a lot of his own capital at some point He decided to raise money and so the the reason I'm focusing on this today is because There's a huge number of people here that are focused on awesome things and maybe at some point It'll be advantageous for them to be able to raise money. Maybe they don't have to or maybe they don't choose to But if that's another tool in the toolbox then more people doing important things can be having more impact And so that's kind of the framework here. Hopefully some of the tips are helpful So The basic context or lens that that I think is is a useful way to think about this is the life cycle of a company And why it's you know, it's either growing or dying and so you're going to start at some point on this And you're going to run the loop and this is the scaling loop So at some point you're starting with something whether it's just you some time some resources whatever those resources are financial talent Whatever and you're going to invest those you're going to build something and that's going to result in something either profits or a Milestone or some other people helping you and you get more resources And you run this loop and if if you have something very specific that you want to do You would like to be in charge of your own destiny So you want this loop to be sustainable and you want to be the one who defines You know how you want to have impact on a space And so the question is you know, why do you have to run this loop? Well, it's not really optional if you just grow your business very slowly or your organization very slowly It's pretty likely that at some point someone who's running this loop very aggressively is going to surpass you And they will either become known as the thought leader in the space or they'll own the market and all of a sudden all the impact that you could have had and the thing that you want to do in the world maybe kind of It may be jeopardized by by this much larger organization that's going to start sucking up the resources from your project. So Scaling aggressively in some ways is not even an option. It's almost mandatory in today's world. And so One of the critical resources you can go after is financing. And so that's that's what I'm really going to focus on here Running the business is a totally separate thing what you do. What sort of impact you want to have totally separate topic And that's that could be a whole nother talk But today is just going to be about these resources that all the people here with the specific businesses and organizations that they want to be Starting can do that more effectively So if we think about fundraising as a process, it's really multi-stage So you know, you've got to reach investors or whatever the source of your capital is going to be You've got to tell your story in a convincing way and you've got to then that's not enough You've actually got to close the investment So step one you want to get in touch with investors? Well, who do you get in touch with? When do you do it? How do you do it? Seems like it would be easy, but it's it's actually pretty hard for people that aren't already in the network and so The first lesson is you need to talk to a lot of investors need to talk to not like five investors or ten But maybe like 20 or 50 investors at some point There's you know famous stories of people that were rejected from raising money 20 times in a row and on the 21st time someone gave them a few hundred thousand dollars and they grew it into a huge company Question is what are these companies have in common here on this on this page? The one thing they have in common is that they're the huge anomaly even we probably talked to you know a Hundred companies and we invest in two or less of the hundred we talked to on average So you've got to talk to a huge number and I think that's something people don't fully appreciate You've just got to keep going until you find the right match Then the question is when do you actually talk to these people do you do you talk to them when you have an idea or When the company's profitable probably neither it's somewhere in between But you want to have accomplished something because basically you're asking someone for resources So their question back to you is going to be what have you done that proves that you really care about this or that You're really passionate about it or that there's all these risks out there. Which ones have you proven are not real risk What have you done? Going back to this this loop You had something to start with what have you done with that? Why should we think that giving you more resources is going to help you do some of these things? And so have something have some plausible reason why you are now coming for investment why you think that this is the right time? Send the question is who do you go to and in this example? Let's say you're Spotify and you're raising a large growth round You want to go to an investor who's going to get what you're trying to do and in Spotify's case This is this is Sean Parker who at the time of the investment worked with us at Founders Fund and in this case They got in touch and they realized here's the guy who started Napster It didn't work but it was at the very core of the streaming music the very the very beginning of the streaming music space and He understands all our core insights and he can help us in like very important ways beyond capital. So In that case we invest in Spotify Who would Spotify not have wanted to talk to probably? Atomico they were an investor in RDO at that time and so you also don't want to get in touch With investors whether it's institutional or angel who are directly invested in direct competitors There's really no good that's going to come out of it. They can't invest in you. They're conflicted out There's no way that it's even going to happen. So by even talking to them and sharing information You're just you're just giving away, you know, whatever secrets you do have and and you're also looking like you have no idea What's going on? So don't do that know who's invested in your competition before you start contacting people? And here's here's the tidbit that a lot of people actually don't know Even once you find the right people and you've actually accomplished something the time of year matters So this is kind of this is an extreme depiction of the truth, but it's actually not that far off So you do not want to be starting to get in touch with the VCs or other investors in June July August November or December So that gives you very tight windows here and the the reason is this kind of circular logic which I think comes from the early days of venture capital which I'll explain how it happened basically you have VCs taking off long summer vacations and maybe during the entire summer someone from the VC firm is gone And so you can't get to consensus about an investment because not everyone's met with them And so effectively, you know, many of these firms were unable to make good decisions in the summer or any You know confirmatory investment decision and so as a result The good companies who knew what was going on said well, okay We're gonna make sure we don't raise in the summer because it's harder than and now the VCs say well None of the good companies are raising in the summer So let's go on vacation and so it just like it's a circular thing where now You know, you just don't want to try and raise in the summer It's just gonna be harder and same thing goes for November and December. So don't do that Get in touch with people January February March Maybe April you want to have a couple months to close out the whole process get it closed by June if you're doing a fall raise aim for September October By the time middle of November hits people are off on Thanksgiving vacation in the US So this is a US specific thing And as a result you also want to design your runway and your burn rate Basically the amount of capital you have and when you're gonna run out of cash make sure Basically, I would say probably trying yeah, make sure that you don't need to raise in one of these periods have runway They're through that period or or beyond it So once you say okay Well, I want to get in touch with this investor and I know I've done all the right stuff and it's the right time They're gonna love it. That's still not enough The intro you get is gonna influence what they think about you so Worst case, you know, you're just gonna shoot them an email. No one's introduced you You know, it just maybe goes to some online submission form Probably no one's gonna look at that and even if they do their number one question is why did you just email me when we Had this friend in in common. I mean everyone's connected in the valley It's it's probably true here as well And so if we had this intro the fact that you didn't use it probably means that they think that your company isn't that good Because you probably asked them so don't do that. Otherwise people are gonna think this is this is not so good The best possible intro is some CEO that's already made that investor money They're gonna say they know what we like they know how to run a business. They've evaluated this They're sending it our way because they think it's good And for all the things that are in the like above the dotted line category Get as many of them as you can just Simultaneously making intros to these people are saying hey I heard the that you got introduced through this other person But just wanted to say this this is a great company you should talk to him That goes a huge way in getting things started with some momentum so Now actually getting introduced how is that actually gonna happen Let's say that you even have this the CEO here that made that VC money before best possible intro Don't let them just cold email you don't let them just shouldn't emailed to the investor saying hey talk to my buddy That's bad That kind of puts them in a defensive position saying I don't even know who this is you never checked with me Why are you sending me this so you want them to basically pre-check the intro and you provide them with a blurb Here's what we're doing in like three sentences That person who's making the intro will reach out and say hey, this is a great company You should talk to them. Can I make an intro? They'll obviously say yes Then the intro comes through you follow up on the intro email say we'd love to tell you more about what we're doing When's a good time to meet or talk or or whatever it might be? And your goal there is just get a call or one-on-one meeting So now you're in the door all that just to get to tell your story and so next step tell the story you've got to convince people that this is a good thing to do to give you money and I'm not going to get into like all the specifics because each company is going to be so different of what your story needs to be and How it's going to be convincing that it's not even productive to try and explain that here And I think that's going to be something that each person has to go through and crafting that story There's a lot of good online resources about how to do that but the question is what's it going to be like when you tell your story and What you want this to be is like just another day at the office You fundraise before fundraising is a core function of the company. You want to get more resources, so you're used to doing this It's just another day at the office So what you're going to do is you're going to look like the people on the right not the people on the left At least in Silicon Valley, maybe you it's going to be startup formal You know, you're probably going from this pitch meeting You know next to like talk to a customer because this is just another thing. This isn't like the moment of your life You do this all the time so business formal if I think if you're wearing full You know three-piece suits or formal suits and do a pitch in most Silicon Valley VCs They're they're going to walk past the meeting room or into the meeting room and say what if I what if I walked into these people? Haven't really done this before so you've got to you've got to make it feel kind of natural for everybody And it might seem crazy that this is these are all things worth considering but these are all things worth considering Second thing so you want to be a discussion not not a presentation I've heard this said time and time again By people during Accelerator interviews one of the VCs there would always say let's make this a conversation not a presentation any time that the company would start Standing up everyone else is sitting down it creates some sort of weird power structure. And so You basically all just want to be around the table talking about the company the investors Hopefully gonna have some good ideas for you whether they invest or not. They're gonna have valid questions sometimes invalid questions and You just want to kind of learn from them tell them what you're doing Convincing that this is good. It shouldn't be a one-sided thing. You don't want it to be a monologue. It needs to be a discussion Beyond this question is what are you actually going to talk about like I said, it's very company specific, but There's gonna be three traits that you need to convince your investor of one you're doing something worthwhile This is a real problem. You're really creating some value here with what with what your solution is number two you're actually gonna capture value so they can profit from this or Even if even if we're talking in different contexts and I've been about profit, but You need to somehow capture the value so you can keep going So this isn't an an ongoing thing where you're just gonna run out of money It either you have to capture value in such a way that you can either make more resources or you can convince people to Give you more resources and grow that way And that what you're doing is defensible that there's not gonna be a million people doing this next week that there's actually a reason for you to exist So beyond all that there's now gonna be special topics for New Zealand companies because You know for most of the spaces that Investors are investing in there's usually a US company that might be doing it or will be doing it down the road So you've got to convince this US investor that it's a good idea to invest in a New Zealand company Then there's gonna be specific topics that are gonna come up one's gonna be multi-office strategy And and I use the word strategy there and not plan so it should actually be a real strategy If the investors like what you're you know, are you gonna have an office here? If you have a real strategy that says no We do not want to have an office here because of these three reasons and we're gonna stay in New Zealand Or we're gonna market the product from there That's fine At the same time you don't want to you you don't want to say oh we're opening an office here because we think US Investors will like that. That's not a strategy. That's just something you're doing for someone else So every aspect of the business needs to fit into the overall strategy Same thing goes for distribution beyond New Zealand It might be different if you're trying to market in different markets whether it's moving into China or US Wherever it might be even online marketing is gonna vary by geography. So the question is how do you do that? one thing that can sometimes be different in the US then then here from what I've heard is Employee equity so in the US pretty much every startup gives a substantial amount of equity their employees From what I can gather sometimes that's not the case here So I think both understanding are all the employees properly incentivized to really care about this company over the long term That's something that people are gonna want to know and then second How much of the company do the founders have did that did they somehow give away most of it to investors already? That's also a bad sign because you want founders who are very strong and have created a lot of options for themselves and have you know even on the financing side and I think that also ties in to You know as an as an aside ownership expectations from New Zealand investors If you're investing in companies and expecting that after a seed round, you're gonna own more than half the company Maybe that's terms that you could conceivably get in certain situations. I Would argue that that's gonna hurt your equity and the value of that money You're putting in in the long term and you want to basically set things up So it's a long long-term growable sustainable business And don't don't mess things up from the very beginning There's a few ways to do that and figure out how to structure things and then finally global competition How are you gonna handle growing internationally if you're raising this capital to go do that? That might look different than then competing in New Zealand So now you've told your story what's next you want to keep some momentum You're gonna leave the meeting with clear next steps pretty obvious Usually the investors say hey, we're gonna get back in touch with you I would just ask what's the sort of time frame that you usually get back in touch with people when should we expect to hear back from you Otherwise you can just kind of drag on from ever forever with some firms And if they say, you know, we're not a we're not a fit just move on if they're not a fit They're not a fit if they say that you don't want to work with them anyway And keep keep going until you find the people who are a fit One other detail in this don't find another introduction to some other investor at that VC That burns bridges because now one person is now your enemy because you just went around their back After you know, they might have already talked to everyone in the firm it makes them look really bad and Now you're not just not a fit for this round, but you're probably not a fit for that firm even at the next growth round And finally fundraising process So you want to create competition. So unfortunately Investors are pretty much pretty memetic of each other. They really copy what each other are doing and what each other is thinking It's kind of herd mentality So if you think okay, you're gonna raise around what's the odds that a certain number of investors want to lead you Well, a lot of the time nobody does it's very few that you get one investor who's willing to go totally on their own and say We're gonna lead this That's kind of our style, but it's not most people's style And then usually it's like well who who else is investing? How many other investors do you have can we have a syndicate? We want to feel safer by by being in numbers and so You know the upshot of this is well, you want to create competition You don't just want to go with one option you might have your favorite firm that you want to work with Maybe two firms, but you want to get a bunch of people competing with each other keeps everyone honest and keeps it moving So let's say they're moving moving forward. How do you finance this? How do you structure this this investment? one thing I referred to earlier is you know early-stage equity rounds can often be very If you structure them the wrong way and set valuation very low Which is sometimes done the investors end up with a huge chunk of the company and it kind of distorts incentives over the longer term and so for first round or two Below a couple million dollars below maybe three million dollars. It's pretty flexible But below some reasonable single-digit threshold of millions of dollars In Silicon Valley a lot of the stuff is just getting done as notes Which is effectively debt that will convert into equity and ownership at the next round and Well, then you say well, why should I even invest now? Well, that's because usually there's a valuation cap that sets a limit on the conversion price and some discount to the next round And this is usually a document that the company will put together and distribute to investors with their understanding of what these terms look like So that's actually an increasingly popular structure in Silicon Valley for early rounds or bridge rounds in between Equity side usually that's a little bit later stage It can also happen at the seed round if if the company wants it and finally this is an actual illustrative investment that we made and the point here is that you can build relationships over time by letting investors in for very small amounts in Maybe the current round and maybe they come back in in big size in the next round And so this is this is actually a company we invest in you can barely see the amount in 2010 and then in 2012 we actually led something that's far off the y-axis here And by just putting a little bit amount of money into the company we were able to build that trust that we really liked what they were doing and that it mattered to us and By building that relationship and kind of working with them an advisory sort of role We got to see how awesome they were doing and how much we wanted to keep working with them and made a huge investment So I think the lesson here is When you're putting together early rounds think about who you want in the later rounds How can you shape the current financing to to build towards that? And this ties into preparing for that next financing so get global investors before expanding globally If this is something you're going to do with this money get those people who have that perspective at least for part of the financing Consider industry experts for the same reasons I'm gonna skip to the last one build multiple relationships at your VC So you might have had someone that was your primary point of contact if they did a very small amount early on Try and meet more people at the firm talk to them about what you're doing so that way When it's time to raise more money, they all know who you are. You're a known entity They know how you've done they know your track record and they can say hey we like we all like working with this person Let's give them some more money so they can keep going And the final point every round needs to be an up-round if you ever have a down round Or a flat round it can create a lot of distorting incentives where Employees start thinking well my equity didn't get that much more valuable these past couple years Should I be looking for another company? Should I be trying to get more salary? The way that startups really work is by putting everyone kind of on the same boat if this company works and the equity is worth a lot then we're all gonna do quite well and so you want every round to be a steady up-round evaluation so everyone has these sorts of feelings and You do that by never do a round. That's way overvalued. It's better to do one That's like a moderate step up so that next time you can have that step up also as opposed to some weird roller coaster sort of ride and Finally, it's a funnel. You got to get a lot of people interested. You keep lock-stepping them towards a term sheet or a note You know you keep everyone honest by letting them know there's other people in the process and You push toward a close And finally once you've obtained resources the cycle continues now Let's go it's time to go out and do something with it, which is a whole different conversation That's gonna be something specific to every company, but now that you've got your resources go do what you can with them And set yourself up for the next the next fundraise All right, those are that's it Thanks, Scott. That was awesome really appreciated the level of detail and I think a lot of application to other areas as well like raising philanthropic funding I saw lots of parallels with some of my personal experiences. So thanks so much for that. So reflections In New Zealand don't try in December or January because we're all on holiday. I've heard yeah, good to know yeah, you talked about step-ups and Optimal times to raise and could you comment more on on on how to tune that? What range of step-ups at what time because that is something for my own experience? I know that that's like critical to get that right so that you keep momentum going. Yeah, basically when you actually go out to raise So I think there's a couple factors at play. So one is You want to with each new fundraise you want to have some new milestones You've actually done whether that's growing the business to scale more Making a tech breakthrough opening up in a new market something that shows there's a step function and what's happened And the business is therefore more valuable. So you want to wait until you've actually done those Otherwise you might end up with a flat round. That's not what you want So you need to get some of these milestones at the same time. You don't want to wait too long and say Okay, let's let's go down to our last week of cash. We'll just have finished this huge milestone This is gonna be great. Everyone's gonna appreciate it No, you need to at least have like a few months of runway left preferably six months of cash at all times So you have plenty of time to get these financings done Nobody can hold like your cash out date over your head to like push down harder terms So you want to have negotiating leverage so you want both the milestones and some runway left that usually means raise for something like two years from the day of raising and then Raise again in 18 months and or or you can even raise more rapidly and just make sure you always have a nice long runway Then you're always hitting some of these milestones. So I would say Do your next round once you've proven something big and before You're pretty close to running out of cash If that's helpful and then in terms of the magnitude of the step-up, I think it matters How big was this breakthrough that you've done? How much do you feel like this this proves the business more? What does that deserve and then what's coming next because you want to make sure that there's still some room to go later So maybe it's like maybe it could be like, you know double in valuation every every few years or something sometimes fast or sometimes slower It's got I'm wondering if you could speak to the effect and dynamic that exists in Silicon Valley around investor incentive to You know hit kind of grand slams these days and kind of the the relationship is no longer Just ten to one for these large upside companies But you know sometimes 50 to one or a hundred to one and and how how can New Zealand think about that can't just mentioned You know kind of niche companies which may have a smaller return profile any reflections you have on that dynamic Yeah, that's a good question. So if you're gonna do niche companies and it's kind of a smaller return profile And you and that's something that the founders just know is the case. I would say The question is okay. Who will that investment matter to it's either someone who's really passionate about that sort of thing Or someone who has a smaller fund and so even if it has a smaller return profile if it can still return their whole fund and they really believe in this investment then that moves the needle for them if It maybe could return a couple percent of the fund and they have to do that, you know dozens of times It's gonna be hard to convince them that that's something that's that's worth the opportunity cause that's worth the time Worth their limited bandwidth. So I'd say for smaller opportunities Probably do want to target relatively smaller funds But again, even even in general it's about talking to a lot of people And finding the ones who are the right fit and get it reflections Then Hey, Scott, I think me and you have talked about this a little bit offline But I'm still interested in your insights about when companies do come into the valley to raise maybe the next big around or follow-on round Are you seeing any particular issues around maybe having companies given away too much equity or valuations being slightly Unaligned and I think you are saying there's a few things that is only think Kiwi companies can do Earlier in the earlier rounds to try and I guess negate some of those follow-on effects Yeah, I think there's probably two main things and some of this comes down to I think Investors here also need to realize what these effects are and what's going to maximize their investment over the long term sometimes it's not trying to take as much value now, but just playing the long game and so Yeah, I think the specific question often I think Valuations here can be a little bit lower than in the US and so that's a fact. I think is more Investment competition comes here, which is going to happen as everything gets more more globalized and connected then those valuations will become more equal and So, you know in the absence of that the one thing that investors can do and companies can do is say we want to do a convertible note It's too early to pick this valuation. We're going to be going into the US Let's do a convertible note which will let us defer Setting your ownership until the next round and you will still have much better terms than the US investors will get or whoever We raise from next and it'll be fair and it'll be kind of calibrated off of that And yeah, if you give away 80% of your company in the first two years, it's going to cause problems All of a sudden you've lost control of which what direction it goes in and you don't want to do that Yeah, the question is should we be pushing here from an entrepreneur side for more convertible notes I think the answer is absolutely It's what's done in the valley. It's founder friendly gets things started. It's usually lower cost to get them done It's just it's kind of better across the board. There's very little reason to do an equity round is as a first very small round So I'd say I'm I'm put I'll push for it every startup should push for it Everyone's just band together and form a cartel and say no one's investing unless we're all convertible notes. That's that's one That's one sort of approach I'm all for banning to get us any any final reflections You I think you said one to a hundred or whatever companies that you actually sit down with end up getting finance What are some of the main reasons why you would choose not to invest? Yeah, good question It's probably I would estimate that out of a hundred companies were introduced to Probably invest in a few of them a couple of them. That's a rough guess. It might be more might be less. I think the reason why You know the question is why do we not invest in more of them? I think part of it is the point that was brought up, which is You know, it's not just 10x on your investment in some of these cases But like hundred hundred times your money back a thousand times your money back and this distribution between companies is like actually really skewed So a very small percentage of them is going to dominate all the returns like across the board for a fund and So like, you know as an example most of our returns at founders fund are gonna be driven by a handful of companies and we're okay with that We know that's the case But because you know that the whole your whole business as an investor and your job of investing other people's money Responsibly is going to come down to a few good investments You need to make sure that you're only making those good investments You can't average your money across all the companies because you'll just do so much worse because of this really skewed Kind of exponential distribution, so you've got to pick a very very small number of them The specific reasons are going to be different in every case. Maybe You don't you don't think the market's there You don't think the team is going to be capable of solving all the problems You don't think the product concept is right But it usually falls into an absence of one of these three categories either it's not creating value Then are we going to business model for capturing it? Whether that's an execution or the actual model or it's just very copyable And you think that it's going to trend towards Like a zero zero operating profit sort of business as as it reaches like perfect equilibrium Cool final question over here Hey, Scott, I'm wondering if you can comment on when you're going into a relationship with an investor Especially at an early stage How can you tell if there a person that's going to be or the fund is going to be aligned with your vision down the road? I mean two three years down the road when everything's different How do you know at that stage? Who's who to pick? Yeah, good question Um, I think yeah going back to the one side on who gets it So if you know that your investor really understands what you're trying to do and and that there may be Market cycles and at the same time even if there's a market cycle and things are looking bad We know what things need to get fixed and like how we're going to survive this and why this is so valuable in the long Term so having someone who really believes in the mission. I think is important then the second thing is track record So I think looking at that investor and seeing over the long term have they supported their companies in hard times What percent of their company succeed versus fail? That's also maybe another indicator of how how much they're willing to like see them through those tough times So I think it's a lot of it's like anything is reputation and relationships So you need to build that relationship with the person and then hear a lot about their reputation And how they are in working with the companies in good times and bad times Can you just tell us because I'm pretty sure over the last few days It's come out that you guys you and Sam have invested in notable. Mm-hmm. Do you just want to I know that's not founder's fund But maybe just share Why are you guys invested? Yeah, and they had nothing to do with that fish that you caught, right? It was a pretty big fish, but no it actually didn't No, we met those guys in Auckland when we were there heard about what they were doing connected with them back in the U.S. And I think you know the short story is we really like them really like what they're trying to do Feel like online collaboration through a lot of these document types is like a really important thing with everything moving to cloud It's only gonna get more important and they actually had a really cool solution for let's solve this first major problem in kind of cloud Collaboration move out from there and so not only did they have traction But a great sort of business strategy and a way to own this and they were thinking really creatively and aggressively about how do we Scale it how do we get distribution? How are we gonna make enterprise sales both u.s. And in New Zealand so kind of everything checked out And and we really like like the team so you know, I think when when that's the case you usually end up investing That was awesome. Thanks so much