David Interviewed on "Unlimited Partners"
01:13:03 Share

Hello, Acquired LPs. Ben here, and I wanted to share a little bit of context on today's episode. So a good friend of the show, Thomas McGannon, has started a new podcast called Unlimited Partners, and David was one of his very first guests.

Thomas is a good friend of the show, an investor, a deep thinker. He's an LP in venture funds and does direct investments as well. And he works with families to build their long-term investment programs. In a former life, he was a public equities investor on Unlimited Partners. He turns the tables on David. They talk about a bunch of fun stuff. And I actually learned some things about David's background that I didn't know, which...

I don't know. I actually didn't think that that still existed. And so it's fun to hear David interviewed one-on-one without me. And I think hopefully I'll join Thomas to do the same here soon too. So we'll put a link in the show notes to go check out where you can listen to Unlimited Partners as it launches here. And super excited to share it with you.

We want to thank our longtime friend of the show, Vanta, the leading trust management platform. Vanta, of course, automates your security reviews and compliance efforts. So frameworks like SOC 2, ISO 27001, GDPR, and HIPAA compliance and monitoring, Vanta takes care of these otherwise incredibly time and resource draining efforts for your organization and makes them fast and simple.

Yep, Vanta is the perfect example of the quote that we talk about all the time here on Acquired. Jeff Bezos, his idea that a company should only focus on what actually makes your beer taste better, i.e. spend your time and resources only on what's actually going to move the needle for your product and your customers and outsource everything else that doesn't. Every company needs compliance and trust with their vendors and customers.

It plays a major role in enabling revenue because customers and partners demand it, but yet it adds zero flavor to your actual product. Vanta takes care of all of it for you. No more spreadsheets, no fragmented tools, no manual reviews to cobble together your security and compliance requirements. It is one single software pane of glass.

that connects to all of your services via APIs and eliminates countless hours of work for your organization. There are now AI capabilities to make this even more powerful, and they even integrate with over 300 external tools. Plus, they let customers build private integrations with their internal systems.

And perhaps most importantly, your security reviews are now real-time instead of static, so you can monitor and share with your customers and partners to give them added confidence. So whether you're a startup or a large enterprise, and your company is ready to automate compliance and streamline security reviews like

Like Vanta's 7,000 customers around the globe. And go back to making your beer taste better. Head on over to vanta.com slash acquired and just tell them that Ben and David sent you. And thanks to friend of the show, Christina, Vanta's CEO, all acquired listeners get $1,000 of free credit. Vanta.com slash acquired.

Welcome to Unlimited Partners, a podcast on partnership.

I'm your host, Thomas McGannon. I'm an investor on a journey to understand what makes great partnerships. This podcast is my way of recording that process and sharing it. Thank you so much for listening to my first episode. First, some background on me. I've always been an investor in my career. It's a really cool job. I get to meet some of the smartest investment managers, the hardest working entrepreneurs. I tell my wife that it's sort of like getting to go to a capitalism Disneyland.

For those of you that know me, you know that I'm one of the most optimistic, joyful, let's fucking go people. And a lot of times I'm reminded that while I can point to the categorical truth that the world is getting better, a lot of people, they aren't actually happier. And when I look at my job, what is my role? I allocate financial resources. How do I do that?

I go out and I try and find some of the smartest, hardest working, most likely to make an impact people. And I ask, how can I help? How can I give money to you so that you can go and build something in the real world and then eventually pay me a financial return? That's a really fun job. Every time that you're meeting with somebody, you have the potential to make their dreams a reality. I'm

sitting at the allocator table at the party. I want my table to be full of like really rich conversation, really excited people, people that recognize that in order for us to have the world that we're all really excited about in the future, it's going to take everyone. It's going to require the entrepreneur. It's going to require the venture capitalist. And it sure as hell is going to require the full participation and buy-in from the LP community.

And so why the name Unlimited Partners? Well, in my experience, signing up for a partnership usually means a very light commitment to not actively try to screw the other person over. And that's just not consistent with what I see as making great partnership. When I have a partnership, I want somebody that goes all in and says, "Your wins, your losses are mine. Let's go to war together."

I want this podcast project to be about investing, but more importantly, I want this podcast project to be about life. I want it to be about discovering and celebrating partnership. I want to bring to you some of the hardest working, most interesting, insightful, kind people that I meet in my journey. I want to use this podcast as a surface area to do my life's work. And the idea that I get to share it with you is so frigging cool.

I want to bring you interviews with established investment managers, young and upcoming investment managers. I want to bring you interviews with family offices, institutions, endowments, pension funds. And I want to bring you interviews with people that are outside of the investment world. I want community leaders. I want philanthropists. I want people who are building the world that we all want to live in. I want to talk about setting goals that are worth achieving and bring you conversations about that process of self-actualization.

This conversation is with David Rosenthal, the co-host of my favorite podcast, Acquired.

I started listening to Acquired four or five years ago when I was early in my software and internet investing journey. What I loved about David and Ben was their optimism, curiosity, and damn good storytelling. Their podcast talks about some of the best stories in business, from Standard Oil to Berkshire Hathaway to FTX. For many years, I was just a fan of theirs. Acquired, it's not only my favorite podcast, it's also one of my favorite businesses.

Why is that? Well, first of all, it didn't require any money for David and Ben to start this. It's a passion project. They did it because they wanted to, not because they had to or because they thought that it would make money. Secondly, it's an online community. They have over 250,000 weekly listeners, 12,000 members in a Slack community. And as I talk, I've actually used that Slack community as a research and capital formation tool.

So I'd like to thank David and Ben for starting Acquired. I'd like to thank them for the inspiration and education that they've given me and thousands of others. I'm really excited to bring you this conversation. Please reach out, give us feedback, let us know how we're doing, what you'd like to see more of, what you'd like to see less of. Come find us on Twitter or visit our website at up-pod.com. And now I can't wait to bring you my conversation with David Rosenthal.

Hey, everybody. Before we get into today's conversation, I need to give a shout out to some of our sponsoring partners. Unlimited Partners is brought to you by Tegas. It's fair to say that I built my technology investing career on the Tegas platform.

Since joining as a beta customer back in 2017, I've personally conducted hundreds of primary expert interviews. And I've read or listened to more than 10 times that many using their searchable on-demand transcript database. I simply couldn't imagine making an investment or critical business decision without consulting the knowledge that's captured in their platform.

So whether you're a professional investor, corporate development executive, or just someone who's looking for expert insights, give Tegas a try by visiting tegas.com. If you'd like to receive more Unlimited Partners content, then please sign up for our private podcast feed. You can do that by visiting our website or by hitting us up with a Twitter DM. We plan to use this feed for releasing longer form, uncut episodes, live recordings, and experiments with the types of interviews and content that we produce.

This is the legal disclaimer part. Unlimited Partners is not investing advice. The host and members of Unlimited Partners may have a position in the securities discussed. Please do your own research. And now, David Rosenthal. David, tell me about fatherhood. What a great, great place to start the first question of your first interview. Before I tell you about that, I'm going to say...

I'm so happy you're doing this, man. Like, this is awesome. Congrats. Well, I appreciate it. It's very accurate to say this. This would not be happening without your encouragement. I don't think I'll ever forget the burgers and shakes at In-N-Out and talking about this idea. It's really fun. You know, I learned a lot about people that have built businesses and done interesting things with their lives and

and I seek it out, but there's always some story of standing on the shoulders of giants. The specifics of you encouraging me to do this and me having been just so inspired by Acquired and educated and just it

It is my tribe. The fact that I might get to build something on your platform, it's just the most exciting thing. It's humbling too, because as I'm trying to pull this together, I'm realizing, man, this is really hard. It's not natural for me to want to put something like this out into the world. But as we were talking, I kept having these amazing interactions with people that are building and enabling in the world. And

I started to feel selfish that they were only conversations that I got to have. I think if there's anything that has resonated deeply with me about this current iteration of technology and markets, it's that at the end of the day, our identity, what our deep driving desires call us to do, that's where magical things happen. And I give a lot of shits about my work and

And anyways, you encouraging me to start capturing some of this is it's a it's a huge gift that you and Ben who will be on later have given me. Yeah, totally, man. So much of what you said is funny, you know, when you're saying about well, first you asked me about fatherhood, I the minute I think I really realized that how important acquired was in my life. And I think when I realized that someday this was going to be my

my main thing a few years before it actually became my main thing was I was just thinking one day about the impact of what I did in my career and everything I did every day. And I was like, you know, if I were to die tomorrow, nobody would ever remember anything I did in my career except Acquired. And like Acquired would live on. And that was like a huge moment. And it's so funny you say that, you know, so many people like go through their careers and they fall into that first bucket of like...

they're not going to be remembered for anything that happened in their careers or it's not going to have elastic impact. And podcasting and sharing what you do with the internet, the world, even if it's just going to resonate with a niche community, it's just such a beautiful thing. So I'm so glad you're doing it. I appreciate it very much. And I had a similar experience thinking about the ephemerality of

of life. I was on a jog. And I think I've shared this story with you, but I was on a jog. I thought, what would happen if I got hit by a bus? And you kind of go through your mind about how your family would be taken care of. And it occurred to me that my family, at least from a financial perspective, they would be taken care of by the collection of partners that we've brought into our lives. They would be taken care of by you. They would be taken care of by many other people that we've gone into business with. And the depth of what

that meant to me. It was, you know, there's this notion of it takes a village. Like I felt the village around me and having that experience is powerful. But again,

Again, just recognizing that I'm just one little ant here. You want to find something that's good. And then Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, you want to throw that golden ticket up and be like, I got a golden ticket. And then you want to run the printer and share it with everybody. So hopefully the pod can do some of that. Oh, man. Let's do it. Well, so as of recording right now, my daughter turned six months old yesterday. Gosh, which is so hard to believe.

You know, it's so many things. I was just reflecting on this the other day that like everybody says it's so cliche that like you can't prepare for... You have no idea what it's going to be like. And I'm just like, wow, that's so true. Becoming a parent was something I wanted for a long time. I've talked about this, I think a little bit on Acquired, but it was not an easy journey for Jenny and I. My wife...

We went through, gosh, it was three and a half years of fertility issues, broadly defined. In our case, it was genetic related. We found out, thank God we did, as part of the process of starting to think about trying to get pregnant, that we both have genetic mutations that are predispositions to cancer. I've known about mine for a long, long time. I have something called Lynch syndrome, which in men predisposes you to colon cancers primarily genetically.

Jenny has BRCA, which is a predisposition to many cancers, including most often breast cancer. So that set us on this crazy journey with UCSF here in San Francisco, which is just such an amazing medical research institution.

to do IVF with genetic testing on our embryos to make sure that our kids wouldn't have either of these mutations. So we were able to do that. Like I said, that took three and a half years. And so by the time our daughter arrived, you know, I think my wife would say too, we were so ready. We were beyond ready. Such a treat. I quite literally spend, you know, multiple hours a month. I don't know about a week, but I clean up a lot of shit.

And so when your world is cleaning up literal or figurative shit, and when you're doing that in partnership with another person, if you want that partnership to be something that you enjoy doing, which is another way of saying, like, if you want to enjoy your life, you have to make the drudgery enjoyable. I mean, I think where I want to take this eventually is the partnership that you and Ben have and what has come from it

I mean, it's not kids, but it's pretty damn cool, man. We think about our episodes as our kids. And it shows. I think for our partnership, which, you know, really the whole thing was so accidental, but we grew into it. We always assume the best in one another. We are both, I think, extremely positive, optimistically oriented people.

And so I think that comes through in the work that we produce. Every now and then we'll cover a negative story or a failure. And people ask us all the time. But it's just not something that we're inclined towards. We're inclined towards being optimists. And if you can find that with somebody and share that and produce that work together, it's just great. And an

the long term cycles of doing that and trust over now seven years. It's just like kind of in the water for us. I don't know. There's kind of a rambly answer. No, it's really helpful. I mean, it's there's something about like the line of never trust a thin chef, never trust this sober bartender. I don't think you can really trust

a pessimistic venture investor. Because if you're in the business of what can go right, and if you're going to resonate, like really feel in your bones, the mission of a founder, the building of a technology, the evolution of a market that ends up being way bigger than any of us thought, I feel like the seconds and minutes of your day is...

they have to be like filled with optimism and hope and wonder. And you know what I would say, even if they don't, even if it results in mediocre outcomes where, where the optimism, you know, gets punished at the end of the day, like you have one life and do I want to live a pessimistic life? No, like that just doesn't, that doesn't sound like a respectful way to, to receive the time that you're, that you're given. And,

And so I think the fact that you and Ben have built a very successful business around a kernel of friendship and optimism is something that for me has just been really inspirational. And seeing

Seeing now that, my goodness, you guys are doing a friggin' arena show. Maybe we'll land there to talk about kind of what Acquired is, how you guys think about what's gotten you here and where you'd like to go next, what it means for you guys to

host a show like this, to throw effectively a party with thousands of people that have identified into your tribe. I just think it's the coolest thing. It is the coolest thing. It's so crazy. We've

Ben and I have literally been joking about this. We are planning the acquired wedding. Like that is what is happening here. Yeah, we're planning this event. And, you know, we're realizing as part of it, we do this, but it's a very specific, tangible event and reminder that we have close to, well, now above a quarter million people that listen to the show, of which, you know, we have 10, 12,000 people that are active.

active participants in our community in the Slack. And then we have our community of people that we've interacted directly with as part of the show over the years, like all the guests that we've had, all of our sponsors, folks like you, people who've started other podcasts around this whole thing, and just inviting all these people and interacting with them and hearing the

the joy that they have for... Like you were saying, everybody's reaction is like, Oh my God, I can't believe you're doing this freaking arena show. This is so cool. Wow.

we're so happy that this is happening for Acquired. It's been crazy. I feel like once you have an arena show, defining your business or your profession as like, I'm a podcaster, like that doesn't really feel like it captures the essence of what it is that you guys do, what you've built to date. Could you talk to me? I mean, I'd love to go into Acquired as a business. When I look at your 12,000 subscribers,

Slack members. And I know how much of my investment pipeline has come through that community. When I look at some of the questions that I've asked, if it's about getting help with a nonprofit that's looking to receive crypto and stock donations, I don't just get a recommendation. I get an introduction to the founder of the best company doing this. When I had a

medical device company that I was working with. And I asked the community for some thoughts on who I might want to introduce it to. I got somebody from Lux Capital reach out to me and ask for information. So this is more than... I didn't even know that. That's awesome. Yeah, I don't think I had shared that with you. It was so cool. It's more than a company, but it is a company. So I'd just love to kind of talk a little bit about...

What acquired is to you, we can chat about. We can maybe run it through some Hamilton, Helmer. Oh, that'd be fun. Seven powers. We can chat. I think we both have an exceptional fondness for counter-positioning. I think actually optimism is one of the ways that you guys are, and lack of ego and just earnest optimism.

curiosity and joy at seeing other people build. But I'd just love to hear you jam for a few minutes about what acquired is, if that's not a bad question. No, I think it's a great thing to talk about. If the question is what acquired is, I think that is actually different to different people. There's what acquired is to you that you just so eloquently said, which is

Amazing to hear. And I think there are a lot of people who would have a similar relationship to it. Then there's people who are casual listeners. Then there's people who are even deeper in the community and the like. I don't know that I can particularly speak for any of them. You'd have to ask them themselves. I think if what I can speak to is the question of what Acquired is for me on that front,

And I say this, the reason I prefaced it with all the other people's relationship to it is I don't want to say that what Acquired is to me is what it is to everyone else. It has become its own thing. But to me, Acquired is a unique stew of everything that Ben and I love. And love, respect, study, want to be...

And in that, people who are fans of Acquired will know, we cover Berkshire Hathaway, we cover Standard Oil, we cover NVIDIA, we cover Altimeter, we cover Sequoia, we cover FTX. The unifying thread is it's all business in some sense, and it's all great stories. There is a wide gulf between Standard Oil and FTX, right?

out there, or Solana. When I think of what Acquired is, it really is the combination of those things. As a business, it is two-person LLC of me and Ben. And we have a few other people that are part of the team now, but there are no full-time employees. It is not a corporation. It has $0 of investment or funding. It really is...

In terms of structure, it's like the Buffett grocery store back in Omaha that Warren and Charlie worked in growing up. It's a small business on the internet. But amazing thing there is both parts of that statement. It is a small business on the internet. And by virtue of being on the internet, we also look a lot like Twitter or Facebook or Redditor.

Reddit or what have you, obviously not in the nature and tone of our communities, but we are a scaled community out there. And the business has scaled beyond our wildest imaginations. The number of people who listen, who participate in the community has scaled beyond our wildest imaginations. If we were a corner store in a city in Omaha, in the physical world, well, they're not a quarter million people in Omaha who would be shopping at our store.

let alone like deeply engaging with us. It's kind of this hybrid of those. And then it's also, you know, sort of the third piece for me and I think Ben too, of what we love, aspire, study to have done in our careers is investing and being part of venture firms and partnerships. You know, again, this is not a company. There are no employees. Nobody reports to anyone. In structure, it looks a lot like a venture firm and a venture partnership. Yeah.

We love that about that. And in fact, we also get to make investments as a result of as an output of what we do. I think that's my answer is like it is a combination of a Berkshire Hathaway style business, of an internet style business, and of a investment partnership. One of the things that we've both talked about, one of the concepts is just this notion as we...

Think about risk and opportunity. It's never trade something that you need for something that you want. You should say that again. This is, I think, among many profound Thomas statements, this is the most profound Thomas statement that has had a big impact on how I think about things. So say it again, hammer it home. Yeah, this has been really influenced by people like Ben Thompson or Luke Burgess. But just this notion of

We all ought to have a priority stack. And we all ought to respect what being at the top of that priority stack means, being second, third. And I think if you can clearly structure what's important to you and then communicate that to others, you set yourself on a path to having a clear sense of who you are. You set yourself on a path to establishing relationships

rightly considered relationships because people see you for who you are. They know that your yes means yes and your no means no. And if you can kind of continue that waterfall into daily decisions that you make, if it's about investing, if it's about health, if it's about how you spend your time and just ask yourself, am I violating the order of my priority stack by saying,

Am I trading something that I need for something that I want? I have needed that question and answer and kind of internal dialogue to maintain clarity, calmness, and confidence in situations where the world just throws all sorts of shit at you. And so it's been really important to me, the fact that it has found resonance with you and that we've had opportunities to share information

life experiences where we're applying that priority stack mindset. We're asking ourselves what trades that we're making most often in a non-financial sense. I think it's really helped me figure things out that at first glance seem really complicated.

really helpful in the current age and environment that we live in that you and I participate in. And I imagine probably most people who are going to listen to this podcast participate in, which is the internet in this age of incredible abundance that comes with it, which to be clear is an incredible, amazing thing. But it also creates this infinite array of possibilities, of options, of things you could do, of opportunities. And

And so being able to select among them of, you know, which you are going to do or what changes you are going to make, how you're going to evolve and adapt, you know,

I find that question of, are you trading something, making sure that you're not trading something that you need for something you want. It's just a really great framework. Yeah, I'd say one of my biggest frustrations in investing conversation is how often Buffett-isms or other kind of influential investors, how often their words get strictly wrong.

limited to conversations about money. I mean, I think one of Warren Buffett's lines about being a parent is he wanted to give his kids enough to do something, but not enough to do nothing. And in an internet world, we have enough to do nothing. And I think that's kind of what part of the calling for doing this podcast is about. Seeing my own struggles and recognizing like, shit, I do spend...

a decent amount of time doing nothing. I try to move beyond that. And I just want to have some more, some conversations that reflect on some of the anchors, the focal points that people build. And I think that that really is a conversation about relationships. And it is an exploration of partnership. When we first started talking about this podcast idea, I

I was sharing with you like a very split mind where on one hand, I've just been so overjoyed by the spectrum of conversations that I've been able to have in my role as an allocator for a family office, the people that are building companies, the people that are investing into those entrepreneurs, and really learning about the capital formation lifecycle. And I really do think of it

as a life cycle and in much the same way that you can revere end of life, even in bankruptcy,

there are joys and learnings to be found. And so I have wanted to figure out ways of identifying that optimism and that persistent will to be default alive and carry that through the capital stack. And some of the challenges that I've experienced relate to my peers as limited partners.

where I see the enthusiasm, the full giving of oneself in a lot of my interactions, but it is not consistent necessarily throughout the capital stack. And I think that there are a whole host of reasons for that. Namely, there's a big chunk of the decision-making structure where people are agents of capital, not principals of capital. And if you're an agent of capital, your risk reward is likely to be focused on self-preservation and self-sufficiency.

Depending on how you've self-selected into your role or the organization, the assets that you look at, I have experienced just what I would consider general malaise and a lack of a will, a desire to win. I don't think that I'm alone in being an LP that wants to give my full self to the

partners that we're building with. So growing that conversation is something that I think is really interesting. And I'd like to try and change some of the middle management dynamics that I think have encroached on the way that LPs are generally viewed in the market and the ways that we view ourselves. One of my very best friends said to me a long time ago, and I'll be totally honest, I didn't understand what this meant and I'm still learning.

But his line was, Thomas, you aren't who you think you are. You aren't who I think you are. You are who you think I think you are. And I think that there are a lot of LPs. There are a lot of just a lot of us in general that define ourselves by the way that we think that the world views us. And limited partners have kind of failed to attract the same sort of attention and

and glorification that founders and venture capitalists have attracted. And so I thought that being a voice to explore that, because it's my own personal journey, would be kind of interesting. I do want to ask you, because you've had a long career working with investors and seeing the ways that limited partners can play a role that's beyond the check that they write. Are there any such stories or

experiences that you've had that come to mind when thinking about LPs that just seem to do it right? Yeah, it's, you know, sadly, I do agree with what you were saying, you know, in the premise of the limited partner industry generally being, you know, I think I've had limited partners at well-known, renowned institutions, you know, say, yeah, this is not a very competitive industry.

And so generally, my experience has been along the lines of what you were saying. And I don't think that's a controversial statement. I think most GPs, LPs, people in and who interact with the limited partner industry would probably agree with it. And I just want to underline also, that is a big reason why I wanted to encourage you to do this. And I think that this podcast, this whatever it becomes starting as a podcast is so differentiated and important. Yeah.

Which is also to say, I have a hard time thinking of real tangible examples of limited partners who have done the types of things that you are talking about. I would say, I think the one big exception I would say to that as a limited partner, and there may be some others we can talk about too, but that I have both experienced and that I think in the current reality or envisioning of what an LP is, is putting...

firms in business, that is a very, very meaningful thing, power that LPs have and gift that they can give to GPs or anybody that they're investing in to do something. Allocating that first capital to fund one of a new venture firm to get started or what have you, XYZ project or whatever.

to sponsor, do a fundless sponsor. We have a mutual friend who's doing this right now. Buyouts of a business without a fund to be a fundless sponsor and then with goals of building that up into something bigger over time. Those are hard decisions to make. And taking that risk and putting somebody in business, I think any GP who has started a firm and raised a first fund

will tell you that the people that do that, the people who anchor those funds, who really step up and say, I'm going to give you enough capital for this to be viable. And I'm going to set you by doing so and me doing so, I'm going to enable you to then raise the rest of it from other people. That is such a huge moment. Absolutely.

And so I've been lucky to be part of firms in the past where that lore has been passed down to me at Madrona, at Meritech, and the LPs that were their first LPs. The loyalty that those firms have to those people is immense. And then lucky to have experienced it myself now multiple times. That is huge. But that's a one-time event in the lifetime of a fund. I...

think it's what you already are doing as an LP and what you want to do and want to evangelize with this show of, hey, let's go a lot beyond that is would be very welcome in the industry.

I was speaking with the chief investment officer of a food logistics company in North Africa, which given the Russian Ukraine situation is an absolutely fascinating conversation to be having. So he's the chief investment officer. And I asked him, what's your biggest challenge right now? He said, it's talent. And specifically, it's finding the Venn diagram between loyalty and capability and growing that middle ground. And I think

loyalty and capability are very finite, valuable assets that are way off balance sheet. But man, they find their way of making it on balance sheet in a fairly short period of time. The introductions that he's made, the conversations, the education that he's provided to me, putting someone in business and helping them grow that loyalty and capability, it pays all sorts of dividends. And so

I'm sure that I will find myself in situations where I went over my skis and reaching on those opportunities. I think what venture teaches us is that being in the what can go right business is fundamentally about investing in people and finding somebody where you can help them make that zero to one jump. You just put a member on your roster. Well, that's what I think is unique and different about the...

LPGP relationship versus a VC to a company founder. If you're starting a fund, a firm and raising a fund, it's binary. You cannot do anything without capital. The day before you have enough capital to be viable versus the day after you have enough capital to be viable...

is literally a 100% change in your reality. Whereas if you're starting a company, these days, especially on the internet with software companies, you don't really need capital. There are a whole bunch of reasons to raise capital, etc. And obviously, that's the reason the whole industry exists. But you can go build something. You can go get customers. You can bootstrap...

Capital is a ingredient of building the company. But if you're an investment firm, it's the whole dish. It's the whole meal. It's all the courses. And I think that's why it's such a special moment. Yeah, it is something that there's a bond that you form. And I look forward to bringing out some of those conversations. One of the questions that I wanted to ask you, it does relate to the time that you've spent studying businesses, which is really studying people. I think one of

one of my favorite lines on a, on a public conference call was when Matthew Prince, the CEO of Cloudflare, he actually, this was so cool, David, he referenced the conversation that he and I had had a few months earlier where it was really neat. I was asking him, you guys talk about, you know, how hard it is to get hired on at Cloudflare. Can we really talk about what talent, like what people, like what bringing on missionaries versus mercenaries is

is really about. And it was an awesome conversation that I won't forget. In this conference call, talked about, paid homage to the conversation, which again, was just the coolest damn thing. And he said, you know, what we're all about is recognizing that companies are just people. And so as you've studied some of the best companies with the most interesting stories, and you realize that alone you can go fast, together you go far,

Are there any partnerships? Are there any relationships that come to mind as just being really, really outliers? You tell a lot of interesting stories. And so I am asking you to kind of pick your favorite child. Is there any partnership that you had a special fondness for? Ooh, in terms of specific partnership between people? Yeah. So I think one of the best lines in Acquired History is,

was our interview with Doug Leone a couple years ago when we were talking about him shortly after Don Valentine had sort of passed the torch of leadership of Sequoia to Mike Moritz and to Doug was the 1999, 2000, 2001, the 1999 fund and then the tech crash thereafter. And what they did in response to the tech crash about that 1999 fund, which

They cut their management fees. I think they took the management fees down to zero, if I have that correct. And they committed like, we are not going to lose money in this fund for our limited partners. That was a non-obvious and tough decision to make at the time. We talked about it on the episode. Plenty of other firms took a different approach and Sequoia absolutely could have, which is just like, all right, this was bad timing on this one. This was a dud. We'll get it on the next one and make it up to you.

But that ethos of like, we are not going to lease money in on this fund. And as Doug talked about, the partnership between him and Mike in running that firm at the time. And it's really unique that there was a two-person partnership run

running a firm like Sequoia, usually it's one person. And Doug will be the first to say, I think the way he phrases it is Mike was one and he, Doug, was 1A. Mike was the CEO and Doug was the COO. But it was a partnership running that when they were doing it together. And the line about that time that Doug used about why they made that decision and why it was the right thing to do to make sure that they were going to come hell or high water, return money in that fund was...

you could burn cigarettes on our arms and we wouldn't flinch. That it was just the right thing to do. It was the Sequoia ethos. It was the culture that they had that they wanted to build. And it was anathema that they would take a mulligan on that one. Just like the way he phrased it in his Doug Leone way. Like that was such a...

And I think what's cool about that as a partnership is he also alluded to on the episode and it said plenty of other places. It wasn't like... I don't think Mike and Doug's partnership was like mine and Ben's. Ben and I are great friends. I honestly don't know that we've ever had an argument. We're so aligned. We're just very... It is the most wonderful, beautiful thing. I think Mike and Doug fought like cats and dogs and had very, very different perspectives on things. Yeah.

And I think there was a lot of tension there. But like on that thing that like, this is like the core, this is something that is like literally defines the soul of this, of this firm that they were both so aligned that like, yeah, you could have burned cigarettes on their arms and they wouldn't flinch. Like, ah, so great. So that's one example. I love that. I mean,

I mean, I think what's really cool to me about that is it kind of goes back to the priority stack where they had something that was very deep within them that they shared, that they believed in, that they would burn cigarettes on their arms in a show of solidarity. And when you have that very low-level commitment that you have in yourself and that you see in your partner and you respect that, you know that it's there, you can fight like cats and dogs. You can throw shit and...

let things get sometimes a little bit messy in the in the pursuit of advancing the ball because you have that real foundational i know who you are you know who i am and let's fucking do this together yep so cool so i think that's that's the one that stands out to me on human side of things on the company side of things the one that stands out to me the most is nvidia and tsmc i

What amazing stories of each of those companies separately and then together. And for folks who don't know or haven't listened to our episodes or just aren't as deep in the history of those two companies in the semiconductor world, they are so deeply intertwined. And they are both now certainly in the top 10 most valuable companies in the world. I think, gosh, last I checked NVIDIA was like number eight and TSMC was like...

six, maybe five or something like that. But the depth of that partnership. So TSMC is a silicon foundry. They manufacture chips for quote unquote fabless chip design companies. So, you know, back in the old days, it was, you know, there was Intel and there was AMD and they were full stack chip companies. They designed the chips. They had the factories that fabricated them, that produced them. You know, they sold them. They made the end products, all that. It was all full stack chips.

And then when TSMC came along and they said, we're going to do just the production part of this, just the foundry, just the manufacturing, and we're going to enable our customers. We're going to create this new class of things, of customers that can design and market the chips without having to actually make them. They were like AWS or something with regards to software. And NVIDIA, there's a lot more to this history that we talk about on the episodes. At first, they didn't work together, but...

Anyway, then NVIDIA became, once NVIDIA really found its footing, their first major customers. And they were both tiny companies at the time. And just like the way they've grown together to doing billions, billions, so many billions of dollars

of revenue together over the years in partnerships, in partnership and building. Certainly, Nvidia could not have become what it is today without TSMC. I think maybe it's a notch or two less of degree on the TSMC side that would they be what TSMC today is without Nvidia? No, they wouldn't be what they are today.

it's not as existential, but it's still like so important. And like that partnership is amazing. Yeah. I think that trust is, is one of, if not the foundations of a functioning society and certainly a functioning economy. So when we think about that meta concept, specifically trust,

playing out as those two companies who are independently fighting a very tough battle. It is not a foregone conclusion at all that either one of these companies would be successful. Figuring out how to calibrate Presner's dilemma, like where do you compete, where do you cooperate, and having partnerships that do serve the mutual benefit of each company. Well, and the outcome of it too for the world, that partnership together

has dethroned Intel. Not that Intel's totally irrelevant these days, but it's a hell of a lot less relevant than it used to be when it was everything. And it has pushed, not only enabled the continuation of Moore's Law, but accelerated Moore's Law. Moore's Law is Gordon Moore, Intel founder, right? Like what the TSMC, SMC, and NVIDIA partnership has enabled is...

an explosion of computing power and thus the internet and technology and software on a timeline and scale that would not have happened otherwise for the world. That's so cool. One of the other things I wanted to speak

to spend a minute talking about is you have another partner that we haven't talked about. Yes. I'd love to hear the backstory on you and Nat and going into talking about kindergarten. And then I was going to kind of ask, you know, ways that as you're building your pipeline, building out the kind of companies that you're seeing, maybe even a Web3 reference here. I'll put a pin in this. And if you want to talk about Nat, and then I'll come back to some of these other questions. Yeah, Nat and kindergarten. Well, it's funny thinking about partnerships.

whether by coincidence or because there's some causality here.

The best partnerships in my life have all been ones that grew and evolved organically and on a relatively, if you were looking at it in context, slow timeline. So certainly, me and Jenny being the first of those. We met in college. I was a junior. Jenny was a freshman. I was two years ahead of her. We were in the same...

a student dance company together, which sounds silly and quaint at the time. It was like our whole world to us back then. It was so fun. And so we, you know, quote unquote, work together. We were members of that together. And we all took it like this was something that we, everybody who was in it took it very seriously. David, there's no way that I'm just going to let it go. Yeah, dude. So you were in a dance company. Tell me about that. That is correct. There's so much that...

The world doesn't know. I mean, so being in a dance company, tell me, how did you get into dance? To meet girls. So what it was, you know, people who are familiar with, certainly this is a big thing in Ivy League schools and I think a lot of other schools around the country, a lot of other colleges, like they're like acapella groups, like acapella is kind of like a thing that might help explain this.

At Princeton, at least, and I think this is true at some other schools too, but at least at Princeton, I would say the student dance companies are like on the same kind of tier as the acapella groups. Like if you are, there were, gosh, when we were there, three big ones and sort of like five or six in total dance companies, just similar to like the acapella group dispersion. And like if you were in one of them, like that was kind of like your defining thing on campus.

And the way these companies worked, all three of the big ones were the girls who, at least at the time, who were in these companies working.

were generally girls who had been training in dance their whole lives. The guys were washed up athletes, mostly. Well, a small portion of the guys were also dancers. But most of them were washed up athletes who wanted to hang out with those girls. And that was me. Did you guys end up performing? I mean, was that something that... Oh, yeah, yeah. So yeah, it was a big show. Twice a year, once each semester, we would put on the big show. And it was so cool. It was all run by...

By us. It was our thing, the company. And we had...

officers of the company. But we all did it. We choreographed everything ourselves. We rehearsed three or four times a week for three hours each. And then the shows would be huge. They'd be in the biggest theaters on campus and the whole campus would come and there'd be this big party type atmosphere. It was really fun. And then the after parties were... Those were really great. Oh, man. What a perfect representation of what college is supposed to unlock. Yeah.

I find myself getting a little bit negative on most university experiences. But man, that intersection of relationship building and a creative pursuit and the realities of pulling off an event that requires lots of organization, and it produced a wedding and a child out of it. It totally makes sense. So anyway,

Anyway, the long-winded way of saying getting to Nat, I had been making angel investments after leaving institutional venture capital and going full-time on Acquired. One of the companies I angel invested in was Nat's company, Kettle. I had known Nat. We went to kindergarten together, hence the name Kindergarten Ventures, but we'd lost touch after. We went to different middle schools after elementary school. One day when he was starting Kettle, he DM'd me in the Acquired Slack. It was like, hey, I don't know if you remember me, but

I've been listening to Acquired as I'm getting ready to start this company. And we went to kindergarten together. I loved her. And I was like, dude, Nat, amazing. And so we went for a hike in the Berkeley Hills and rekindled our friendship. I was an early angel investor in Kettle that obviously Nat and his co-founders there are building something amazing. And so then about, gosh, maybe a year after that, Nat came to me and said, Ben, you're doing this angel investing. I

I'm thinking about starting Angel Invest myself. I get to see a lot of deal flow as a founder from lots of different sources, but mostly and especially from my VCs on my board who introduced me to founders that they want to win the deal and they want me to sell the founders for them about how great they are to work with. And I'm like, that's great, but I'd love to put some money in alongside this. How do you think about angel investing? And so we started talking about that and this whole concept of...

angel funds, operator funds, solo capital, creator capital, whatever you want to call it, was just starting to happen. You had the Alladgills and the Locky Grooms and the like who started this way and have now built big institutional venture firms. But AngelList had really matured as a platform. And it was now impossible to raise small funds and not have the level of ambition that you used to have to have that I used to have when I went and raised a fund of like...

this is going to be a big institutional thing. This is going to be our full-time jobs. We're going to take over the world. We're going to be the next Benchmark, Sequoia, etc. So we decided to do it together. And just as like, you know, same thing back to the college dance company, back to the beginnings of Acquired.

We think this makes sense. This is something we want to do. We want to do it together. We want to have fun doing it. And let's see where it goes. So that was the origin of kindergarten now, you know, 18 months ago. That's just so cool. And I think that what I've drawn from your building of Acquired and learning more about kindergarten, getting to know Nat is, I think you found really interesting ways of doing what's play for you and

work for others. That's why this works. I think that's why you have the energy to take all of this on. I kind of want to draw a little bit on your experience as a creator. I can't imagine that what your career has become would have been something that you would have predicted, good gosh, even five years ago, which what's exciting about that, what ought to be exciting is roll this forward another five or 10 or 15 years and

That's, I think, what the essence of a lot of this comes back to is seeing where you've come and then knowing that you're at the beginning. Can you talk a little bit about ways that you've, I don't know if the acquired slack has given you insight into this or your time with kindergarten.

But this notion of doing what's play for you and work for others, as we think about the future of work and as I even kind of ask myself, what exactly am I doing with this podcast? It's like, I don't know. I just want to press record when I talk to these really kind, smart people and I'll figure it out after the fact. I'd just love to hear you kind of jam on your experience, what you've seen and what the future of work actually means to you. Yeah, man. Yeah.

It's wild times we live in. Well, okay. So I have a few things to say on this. Maybe I'll start at the beginning and then we can go forward. For me personally, this is my current life and career, quote unquote. Whatever it is I do every day is awesome and optimal. And I love it. While I never, never, as you say, envisioned the specifics of what this would be, this was always the dream of what I...

wanted life and career to feel like. And that goes back to my parents. And when I was growing up, you know, in their own way, in their own time and in their industry, they kind of did something similar. They were lawyers, attorneys, still are. And they worked for big law firms in Philadelphia when I was first born. And then when I was about two, they left. They left their firms and they started their own firm in the little town in the suburbs that we lived in.

And they didn't practice the same kind of law. They just did them. Just them. They took clients they wanted to take. They worked when they wanted to work. They came to my stuff when they wanted to come to my stuff. They were fully in control of everything. And then that evolved when I was in through middle school. Really, it was big when I was in middle school. Through various variety of life intersections, my career has been the result of...

random life intersections, they got the opportunity to first invest in and then help start some minor league baseball teams on the East Coast. My dad loves baseball, but they really did this both together. And so they did. And so then that became kind of like the second chapter of their entrepreneurial journey, unexpected. And the baseball teams did really well. That's kind of the environment I grew up in. So I was just like, well, this is awesome. That's what I know. That's what I want to get to.

And the cool thing about the internet is like, you know, in the creator economy is that that is within reach for so many more people. Like it was nuts what my parents did back in the day. But like now anybody can do that. It's just wild. I didn't know that your family had a background in minor league baseball. One of the guys that I had a call with earlier this week that I'm really hoping will come on the podcast, but he's very private. His family...

owned the Dodgers for several decades. Oh, no way. And talking to him about what an honor and responsibility it meant to him and to his family to be a steward of that team. He said, I didn't look at it as something that was front page news, celebrity news.

I viewed it as, you know, we were, I think his line was like, we were the local theater operator and we just wanted to put on the best show that we could. We wanted to serve the community. And so when you look at, I think the way that you guys are stewards of Acquired and you share with me that your parents built minor league theater.

Baseball teams, there's some really cool... There's definitely a connection there. And man, when I have those conversations with people that are building those businesses, committing themselves to it, it just makes me so patriotic. And it's not even like a US thing, but it's just like, wow. So there are people that really give of themselves to that degree to just make an experience or a sense of identity in others, improving the lives of others through...

a great baseball game and knowing what that fosters in a family. The people who can kind of operate at that meta level and actually get into the specifics to successfully do it. Oh my gosh, it just makes me so excited when I get to be a fly on the wall for that. Yes, all that is true. The other dimension of that is more obvious to me that when I think about back on this is...

comfort and tolerance of risk or like perception of risk. I'm sure to so many of my parents peers back in the day, both the leaving their big firms and starting their own like crazy firm in the suburbs of just them and then starting minor league baseball teams like I can only imagine the conversations that their friends were having, you know, after having dinner with my parents when they'd go back home and be like, man, Ruth and Tony are nuts. But it's just like because of that and

And because I saw it all work down to... Yeah, there were up years and down years. That's part of being an entrepreneur. But in the long run, it all worked out and it wasn't ever. So it doesn't feel risky to me. So like, yeah, I think we can build this podcast into a thing. I'm going to do that. That doesn't feel risky or crazy to me. Yeah. I know that we're both fans of some of the work that Morgan Housel has done. And one of the examples in...

or the psychology of money, he talks about how there's a study that shows that you really should lever your 401k like 2x and be all in. And that is the optimal return strategy. But of course, no one would do that. It's funny to me that no one has what I think is the right takeaway from that situation where if

If you can mitigate your downside, you should embrace risk. You should go all in on this because the scenario where you don't is that you're laying on your deathbed and it's like, oh shit, I didn't take the opportunities that were in front of me. And I think that we live in a world where, you know, this gets talked about a lot from a biology perspective, evolutionary perspective, we're wired to live in a much harsher climate where

We're wired to think that there is a lion in the bush because if we assume that there's not, then the downside is that we get eaten. There aren't lions in the bushes anymore. We've moved beyond that as a society. And the faster I think that we can kind of catch up to being appropriately risk on and doing things that are deeply motivational to us, even if they don't strike us as being like,

necessarily commercial or as something that everybody around you has resonance with. It just goes back to this concept that you and I talk about a lot, which is the internet is humanity's greatest invention. And if you can find a way of kind of presenting who you are and seek out people who want to share in that journey with you, then my God, there are all hosts of ways of building community and

and businesses. I think that what challenges me, what frustrates me a little bit is that it's like this notion of the future is here, it's just not evenly distributed. So I can listen to a podcast where somebody is talking about crypto-enabled societies and this kind of opt-in structured contract world. But then I go out into my regular life and

I don't see the optimism. I don't see the enthusiasm. I don't see the zest for life that is needed as an input to make those systems vibrant. And I think it's simple shit. It's how you treat the people that just come and go throughout your day. I'm not going to be the best investor. I have resigned to that reality a long time ago, but I...

can maybe be like abnormally happy and encouraging and optimistic and trying to help people find what their thing is. And again, I go back to Acquired and the ways that you guys have done that for me, done that for many others. And I can't say enough about how appreciative that I am of this. You encouraging me to take a step to try and do a couple of recordings.

and see what happens with it. You letting me...

stand on your shoulders and build on the platform that you and Ben have put out there. It's exciting for me. And my true hope, like the thing that I really give a shit about, like my metric of success is that, and it doesn't even mean that like my podcast doesn't have to be good, but if somebody sees that knucklehead Thomas tried something, well, I can go and do that too. Yes. Great. You're right about that. That's my hope. Totally.

Another thing that was just like a really impactful experience in my life. You know, we talk about education and experiences and

in school and college and was grad school, quote unquote, grad school, business school. Jenny, who did an actual PhD, is the first to point out that business school and academic grad school are two very different things. But in business school, I went to Stanford for business school, we would have, you know, the classes were the classes, right? Like, whatever, from my perspective. But like all day, every day, Silicon Valley was there. And the actual people, the actual, the partners at Sequoia, Andreessen, and like,

or the CEOs and founders of these companies. Mark Zuckerberg would come. Jack Dorsey would come and talk. You'd watch them talk and then a lot of them, I'd say some large percentage of them would usually stay after and hang out and have lunch with whoever wanted to hang out with them. You just realize these people are just people. They're just people. There is nothing different

from them and you the different the only thing is they started doing something and they kept doing it that's all there is and that was just so empowering to be like oh they're not gods they're not special I can do this too and so can anyone yeah we were talking the other day about I don't know if you got to listen to it but the Lex Friedman interview with Rick Rubin one of the things I haven't listened to it yet I'm so excited oh

Man, this isn't a spoiler alert, but one of Rick Rubin's lines is, there are no special people, there are just special outcomes. It's very true. I think that none of us are actually endowed with talents that guarantee or anything close to guaranteeing an outcome. There's this Emily Dickinson poem,

forever is composed of nows. Your forever is composed of your nows. And so if you want to be somebody that's super fit, then go run. If you want to be somebody that is really wealthy, then... Well, yeah, do what Warren did. The playbook is right there. Read the snowball and be like, oh, great. Start investing when you're young. Have a long-term focus. Yeah, of course you can do that. Anyone can do that. Yes. I think that what's important is...

in my mind, is that you find something that you could do every day for the rest of your life. It's only in that zone that I think that real longevity, and again, not to make this a Buffett fest, you and others have talked about how what's amazing about Warren Buffett's career is not the absolute return number, it's the longevity. And so finding something that is authentic to who you are and just...

hacking on it because that's who you are. That's kind of what you were born to do. That to me is where self-actualization exists. It's finding the thing that is uniquely you and just going all in. I'm going to see, I think I shared with you, I'm going to see Dave Chappelle on Friday. And I can't wait. I'm so excited. I've never been to a comedy show. My college years were the Chappelle show. I have so much respect for

his intellect. But what I really love about him is his just willingness to go all in and to show that he is fully committed to his craft. He does not hold back anything of himself in that pursuit. As I've been working with the family office that I'm the chief investment officer for, I've been thinking a lot about

what makes really great outcomes? And so I've been reading books on Tom Brady or going back and learning more about the arc of Elon Musk's career. And what's occurred to me... He might be one person that actually is special. Well, I think that's true. But for the other... For everyone else on the planet. Billion of us. I think what differentiates, and this is going to sound hokey, but I think we all know it's true. It's not about what you get in life. It's about what you give.

And whoever can give the most in one vertical is most likely going to win. That's where like actual competitive advantage exists. This Steve Prefontaine, there's a movie where he says like, the difference about me is that I can take more pain than anyone else. So finding the thing where you just love it because you're intrinsically motivated to

to go the extra mile because it doesn't feel like the extra mile. It just feels like who you are. I think that's what I've loved about Acquired and how you've shared your time at GSP and Jack Dorsey, Zuckerberg coming in and talking to you. It's not that they're necessarily complete savants with unparalleled access to resources

that the rest of us don't have. It's that they found the thing that is uniquely them and they just went farther than anyone else. When you can walk and chew gum at the same time, when you can have a way of, and this is one thing I look forward to talking with Luke Burgess, the author of a book that I think is fantastic called Wanting. He talks about it as like positive flywheels, finding things where it's an area that you are deeply committed to, where you can show up

really embrace the notion, like you look forward to the idea of there not being any off days, because that's just like what your deep driving desire is. That's to me like where the really exceptional outcomes are produced. And so as I'm going on this walkabout, seeing people that have done amazing things, and then humbly looking back at my own self and thinking, well, gosh, like how I achieved

achieve something that I would be proud of, I've learned pretty quickly that it's not going to be based on my own individual efforts. It's going to be due to the relationships that we can build, the trust that we can facilitate, that overlap of loyalty and capability and the partnerships where you can wrap arms with someone and say, I am in this with you. I think it's

It's been really fun for me to hear feedback from people like you that, oh, gosh, Thomas, there aren't any other LPs like you out there. And after I heard that a couple of times, I went beyond thinking that, oh, this is a nice compliment, like I'm good at my job. It instead was, oh, my goodness. So you're telling me that the rest of my industry isn't practicing their craft this way?

time out, we need to have a conversation about this. What are y'all doing? This is really fun. Don't let the joy of capital allocation, don't let the blessing of resources go to waste. Receive that with vigor. Dance to show God that you're thankful for your life.

And it doesn't mean or excuse anything of recklessness at all. But what it does, I think, require is, you know, just, yeah, just I think it requires going all in. It requires making commitments and recognizing that, especially in an internet defined age, any investment that you make, any partnership that you sign on the dotted line for, it is fundamentally about a relationship between you and

and another person and that person's relationship with their colleagues and their customers. And as soon as we can kind of find that plane for having productive conversation about

what makes us the best version of ourselves, the quicker that we'll all do the matchmaking of what types of companies should we be investing in? What speaks to you? One of my best friends will ask me about an investment. He's a Boston thick accent. He's basically like a real world Matt Damon from Goodwill Hunting. And he's like, Thomas, do you feel this in your bones? And I know what he's asking. And

I know what it's like to feel something in my bones. I think that others do as well, but I think that we have ways of building

protectors around us to not let ourselves, people always talk about not falling in love with investments, not making it be personal. No, fuck that. Only invest in things, in my opinion, where you think, I ask myself all the time, am I the best buyer of this asset? And if I can say that with a resounding yes, then I have confidence and clarity in the investment.

That examination process of like, do I believe in this founder? Do I believe in the product or service that they're rendering? Is this a business model that I can see performing well today and into the future? And then there's something that gets like just deeper where I just kind of look at myself in the mirror and say like,

Thomas, is this something that you want to make part of your life story? And if the answer to that is yes, then great. Let's go. Let's be the barbarians at the gate. Let's go for it. Man, I just, I feel like I have within, I'm 36 years old, I'll be 37 on Sunday. Join the club. Yeah, thank you. Within my life, I have had this intra-generational experience of going from...

A childhood where the realities of my adulthood are very different than those of my childhood. My parents being divorced, being kind of on the outside of...

Feeling like an outsider, I guess, is probably the simplest way that I can put it. I was the poorest kid in my class. I was the fattest kid in my class. I am fundamentally kind of an outsider. Both of which are surprising knowing you now. Having... Yeah, but that's it, man. It's kind of why this concept of doing a podcast makes some sense to me because it is really uncomfortable. You're doing a good job at it. I appreciate that. I feel like my life...

It's why I have four kids. I feel like my life would be wasted if it was just me and my little head dreaming up dreams. And my goal is to enable the family that I work with. My goal is to help them set their priority stack and then work really damn hard to accomplish their vision of what they want the legacy of their tremendous wealth creation to be. I

I feel like I get to be a missionary in many things and a mercenary to none. And the autonomy and the self-awareness that I think that that has facilitated over the last couple of years, it's just something that I would feel like I would be doing a horrible disservice if I didn't just try to share it. Likewise on all of that for being my friend, encouraging me. And dude, I'm just so glad you're doing this. This is great. And I'm honored to be

First guest. So cool of what I'm sure will be an amazing journey for you, no matter what shape it takes. David, thank you so much. Hopefully we can cut this into something that's great. We will. All right, dude. All right. Thanks, man. Well, that's our show for today. Thank you so much for listening. This has been an Unlimited Partners production. The show is edited and produced by Andrew Thomas, and our music was composed by Nick Zamaska. Thanks again, and we'll see you guys next week.

you