Joe Montana Interview Live from Modern Treasury Transfer
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Hello, Acquired listeners. We have a great ACQ2 episode for you today, an interview with the one and only Joe Montana, recorded live at Modern Treasury's Transfer Conference. Before we dive in, if you are in San Francisco September 10th, or you are thinking about being in San Francisco September 10th, we would love to see you at our Chase Center show that we are partnering with our good friends at JPMorgan Payments to put together.

It's going to be a great night. Mark Zuckerberg is joining us on stage. We have a few other surprises up our sleeve, and it's going to be an amazing evening of thousands and thousands of Acquired fans getting together for the first time really at this scale for a night of fun and a live recording. So it's acquired.fm slash sf to join David and I, and we hope to see you there now on The Interview.

Joe Montana needs literally no introduction, but as a refresher, Joe played college football at Notre Dame, leading the team to a national championship. He played 16 seasons in the NFL, which included leading the 49ers to four Super Bowl victories. He was the Super Bowl MVP for three of those.

He's a member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame. And while there is a deep bench of impressive football stats that we can share, we only have 45 ticking down minutes today. So Joe has quite the post-football career that we're going to spend most of our time talking about.

In 2015, Joe founded Liquid 2 Ventures, a pre-seed and seed investing firm. Liquid 2 has been wildly successful in their six funds that have invested in 800 plus companies. Their aggregate portfolio value is now well over $100 billion. They invested at the earliest stages in companies like GitLab, Anduril, Rippling, Rappi, Mercury, Retool, and of course, modern treasury.

So we've got a great conversation today from football to investing and everything in between. Please welcome Joe Montana.

Our first question, I think it's fair to say you are like a top 0.1% venture capitalist at this point in time. You're obviously also a top 0.1% football player. 0.01, 0.001, not sure how many zeros we have here. This isn't supposed to happen, to do this twice in a lifetime at two very competitive, very difficult professions. What's your secret? How do we do this?

I learned a lot of things from Bill Walsh. But the one thing I took to heart as I watched him put together the 49ers is how to build a good team. And right from the start, whether it's our advisory board, including guys, people like Ron Conway and Paul Graham, Jessica Livingston from YC, two of the founders there, and then just assembling the team. It just came to...

We have a large team for the size of our funds. Most funds our size are run by one or two people and we have five partners. But I just think the diversity behind everyone's background really allows us to invest agnostically across all sectors and as early as we possibly can. We try to get in and

before sometimes there's even really a true idea. But I just think that the guys do a great job in hunting down the deals these days and we made a lot of good connections. The nice thing about where we invest, it's not always super competitive. We're more of a friendly foe than anything. A friendly foe. Yeah. We don't try to run in and lead.

We don't mind being the second biggest check. Nobody likes to say that. You see a lot of times two of the big guys will come down and they'll fight over a deal and one wins and then the other one won't invest at all. Well, we don't really care. We'll jump in there behind you. We're not proud. We've had a lot of success doing it that way. Like I said, the guys are great at the areas that they specialize in.

I feel like we're going to go back to your football career here a little bit to start. You said the phrase, we're not proud. I feel like you built a whole career on not being too proud. And I want to go all the way back to your draft moment. Everyone knows you were far from the first overall pick in the draft and yet four-time Super Bowl champion. So what's your take on that?

Can you take us to that moment where the draft is going on, you're deeper and deeper in the draft? What is your psychology in that moment as you're thinking about your football career? Well, it's kind of crazy. You don't really think about it, or I didn't really think about it, but what makes you think about it is that you have teams telling you they're going to take you in the first round, they're going to take you in the second round. Otherwise, I was just happy to get a chance to play in the NFL.

And they put a lot of emphasis on a lot of things I think don't always make a lot of difference, right? I mean, if you put 225 pounds on my chest, I might still be laying there on that bench back then. But they're so in the size. I mean, if you look at the combine, right? Have you ever seen a lineman run a square?

In a game? I haven't. Unless you've been hit too hard. But other than that, why do you run the square? You just got to block that guy in front of you. That's all he needs you to do. And I just think that there's just no real method to it that they've figured out. You can go through the first rounds and see as many first round buses. You can go to the

purties of the world and and see success stories from way down below and um i just i just don't think they have that out but yeah i was thinking well okay everyone goes first round goes the second round i'm going oh no it's going to get through the third and i'm going to be but i got lucky and got snatched at it i got a great opportunity got with a great team great organization and lucky to get with bill also as my first coach and

I didn't really want him to be anything other than only have one coach, but that didn't work out. We're going to come back to Bill Walsh, but to stick with the draft for a minute, I've been thinking about this. I mean, we're living it again now with Brock here in San Francisco, but why is this so hard? I mean, it's one thing. It shouldn't have been this hard back when you were drafted, but now the NFL is the biggest media business in the world. There's so many billions at stake, and it's

How does Brock Purdy get picked last? How do teams get this so wrong despite investing so much money, so much time, so many resources? Why is it so hard? Well, if I knew that, I could make a lot of money. You'd be a GM. I'd have a startup for the NFL. Sometimes they just lose sight of turning on the video and watch the video. They want to

interview you and talk to you and I play with guys who were lucky could speak but they could play football but it's just hard it's hard to tell whether who's going to make that transition if you look you can do the same thing in high school go watch

the guys they pick for what they had that elite 11 for the quarterbacks just watch how many of those guys make it in college and then you'll see that again happening for that transition and there's just something about i mean i i didn't get forced into playing early a lot of these guys get forced into playing and they're not really ready for it and especially in today's game because if you watch the thing drives me crazy is they don't teach the kids today how to read defenses and if

When you watch a college game and you see this happen and then back to the field, they're telling them everything from the sideline. And when you get to the NFL, you can't be trying to learn how to do that. You have to know how to do that. And if you look at a lot of the read option guys, they make it for a few years because they run around and

People finally figure it out and just make him run all the time. Make the quarterback run all the time. Because he's not made for running all the time. And that's what I would do. And I would even say, okay, make him run and then

I'll pay the first fine for the late hit. - That's why you're not a GM. - That's why I'm out of football. But no, I just, it's just hard. The transition that's there, I think some people get caught up in it mentally and they just think, sometimes they think too much of themselves, especially up in the first round. And instead of just going out and playing football,

I was hoping and hoping, the kid who was taken first from USC, I was hoping they passed on him. Just because he was so arrogant about, I'm only thinking about being the first quarterback taken. I just wanted him to go second. - It'd probably be the best thing that could happen to him.

But there's a lot of pressure on that when you get up there because he's going to play right away. They're going to make those guys... I just watched the Netflix series Quarterback. The pressure. Tell us about the pressure and you handled it better than anybody in history. Well, yeah.

I was fortunate because I didn't get forced into playing real early and I had a chance to understand, get an understanding what Bill's offense was all about. And he was kind of on the forefront of what they call the West Coast offense, so to speak. But basically what it was... Why did you just roll your eyes at that? Because it...

I don't know. It's more Bill Walsh's idea than the West Coast. Should be the Bill Walsh offense. Yeah. But he would, if you watch a lot of these games, these guys, like I watched in the 49er game, at one point where I could see, I couldn't see one person in the screen on TV.

And this is in the end of the game. This poor guy's standing back there and he's got everybody 20, 30 yards downfield. Nothing to do with the ball. He's got those guys that he has on the team are sort of like what I had at the end of my career in San Francisco with John Taylor and Jerry Rice and Brent Jones and those guys. Well, Jerry...

could do it, but John Taylor was the only one of only two receivers ever in one game to go 90 plus yards for touchdowns in the same game. And they were very elusive. And so what Bill's offense was about is I'm going to give you somebody down there, but you know what? If it's first down or second down, I don't need you to force it down there. So I'm going to give you this guy and this guy down here too. And

you have a progression to go through and the offense was actually very fun and very easy to run. Not always did it always look that way, but it actually was everything was built in. There was a built-in hot receiver for every blitz that was coming. And so your first thing you do, your eyes come up from the ball, you look for that hot guy and then back to your reads.

It was just fun, especially towards the end there, like I said, when you got guys like John and Jerry made my job easy.

Just get the ball. I was like a mailman. This doesn't belong to me. Put it in the slot. Here you go. So I've heard you in previous interviews talk about how the play calling for the West Coast offense was different than sort of especially how college ball typically plays were called. Can you walk us through sort of simple, straightforward play calls versus then what you had to learn in this new innovative system in the West Coast offense?

Well, when I came out of Notre Dame, we were running a numbered system. So if we were running a pass, the number that you would start on the left, you would say 789. So there's, you had a route tree and they were all numbered. So this guy would run seven, he'd run an eight, and that guy'd run a nine, and so forth. When we got to San Francisco, Bill's offense was numbers and words.

So the numbers really meant nothing but the protection. How you were protected and where the tight end would basically, what side of the ball he would be on. And it also would tell you which guy was hot. The second number told you which guy was the hot guy and where you had to look first. And then the words came after it told you the play. So we would say 20 yards.

Red, right, Tony, Halfback, Reed. So Red was the formation, 20 was the type of protection, Halfback, Reed, we only told the Halfback what to do, so everybody else had to learn what, when they hear Halfback, Reed, they all had to know what their route is, because we didn't tell them. Well, sometimes I had to tell a lot of guys. Almost every play. Okay.

And was this the beginning of really, again, if you watch the Netflix series, really making the quarterback like on the field, having to make executive decisions. Was this the beginning of that with Bill? The only time we really were put in the position is when you would line up and there was just a blitz that you could not handle. And you had to change your play. Otherwise, he wanted you to...

Go with the play he called then the main reason is is we had so many plays in our offense we typically have 125 passes in a game plan maybe 130 35 more runs and all those had two and three formations and You had to know you had to memorize the order of those and that he wanted him in and

and all those because only thing you got signaled was the number, the play. So you got 20 halfback read, you didn't get all the rest of that stuff and didn't have time to tell you what the formation is because we didn't have the earpieces that they talk to him in now these days. So for me, it was from Monday till Saturday night,

I was studying to learn and memorize those formations, but on top of that, I had to understand the play at the same time. And so it was very, very difficult from Monday to Saturday. I did not have time or would I have had enough time to go on and study down and distance for...

for what the other teams do during those periods. I mean, a perfect example, we lost to the Redskins in the championship game. So Bill, back then the losers coach, coaches in the Pro Bowl. So we're in the Pro Bowl and Joe Theismann was there who also, you know, I've known for a long time since he went to Notre Dame also. And first day of practice, Bill puts in 35 pass plays.

And Joe looks at me and goes, oh, this is awesome. Bill gave us all our pass plays in one day. I go, you're crazy. And he goes, he's going to install until Saturday. And he goes, what do you mean? I go, I'm not even studying. I mean, typically we get like 60 or 80 the first day of practice. And he continues to put in until install until Saturday. He goes, there's no way. Sure enough, he installed all the way until Saturday.

And Joe goes, I don't know how you do it. I go, oh, this is easy. I told you, I'm not even studying. So for me, it was easy because it is nowhere near the pressure. So your job was just as cerebral of one as it was a physical one.

Yeah, I mean, and then on top of that, you had to watch video of the defense, right? Because you had to understand, you had to find out. There was always a little key. Usually there was one player that would tell you and give away information

it's a blitz or it's a different defense than what they're lining up. So it took hours and hours of film watch. That feels like an AI opportunity, just find the correlation between. Find the tells. You know what? It probably will be if it isn't already. The surface tablets on the sideline are all running. Yeah, that's a great story. Tablets. You know what we had? We were in New Orleans and there was a wire that came from way up in the boxes,

And you know those metal paper clips? They would take a Polaroid of the play, and a Polaroid right after the ball was snapped, pin it to that thing and slide it down the wire. No! Above the fans? And then it got down to us and then we got a chance to look at it. I would have given anything for an iPad. Oh, that's amazing.

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We want to transition and talk about leadership and teams and investing, but maybe a good way to do that is just tell us a little bit about Bill. What was it about the team that he built? He was such a maverick. What was playing for him like? It was great, honestly. I mean, yeah, you always have disagreements in the way things are done or the way you're being treated sometimes, but in most cases,

We had a blast. He was fun to work with. He had a crazy sense of humor, real dry. But he was very ahead of his time. So guys would come up to us during the season and go, "Okay, seriously, you guys don't wear pads in two days in training camp, yeah? You don't wear pads during the week in practice, yeah?

Why? No way. We wear, they would say, we wear, we hit from Wednesday, they still tackle, have tackle, you know, full pad practices all the way till Friday. And what Bill saw was that our linemen, you could watch, they never wore sleeves. Their arms were always just like a mess of bruises. So his philosophy was, if I see the effort from you guys that I want, we don't have to put pads on them.

And I want you fresh on Sunday. I don't need you fresh on Wednesday. As long as you do that, I won't make you go back in and put the pads on. Of course, he made us go back and do that a couple of times just to prove we could do it. And but he was always ahead of his time and the things that he did. And it helped with Mr. DeBartolo, too, because he was very generous for us. And as long as things were going the right way and and working in that organization and

the things that they do that don't seem like they make a big difference, made a huge difference. Most of you probably don't remember the old DC-8, they were like a big flying pencil, long skinny thing. But we were the most traveled team. And going there is never an issue, it's when you come back after the game because there's ice bags and IVs and everything. And our first away game, I think it was '81, the DC-8 broke down.

We had a DC-10 and everybody was so excited. We go to the game, we win and Mr. Barlow comes in the locker room and everybody's happy and then they see Eddie and they start going, "DC-10, DC-10." He goes, "Make your deal. You keep winning, you can have the DC-10." We went undefeated in the last round.

You show what is the Charlie monger ism you you show me the outcome your incentives. I'll tell you the outcome. Oh That's amazing Well to transition over to your post football greatness Maybe I mean this is obvious maybe too obvious to even ask but like what role did playing in San Francisco? Have with you now doing what you do now Well, I've done it

what I would call the Bill Walsh kind of way. The guys won't agree with me, but this is kind of what Bill would do. In the beginning of when, back in '79 when I got there, we were two and 14. And I swear, every Saturday, it was like a revolving door. As soon as we left practice, like 50 more guys came in to work. And he was trying to build a culture that he knew he wanted and he knew he didn't have it.

Even if how it didn't matter how good you were, if you mess with that culture, you would be gone. He didn't put up with the interfering in the locker room and making that a mess. And I kind of did the same type of thing when I first found my first two partners. I made them work for almost three months without pay.

You show me the incentives and I'll show you the outcome. They laughed about it and now they laugh about it. But as things grew and I realized that, I mean, I warehouse 26 deals and then once we figured out we could work together. And just for non-investors in the room, that means you personally invested in 26 companies that you then put into the fund later. I dropped back into the fund at cost.

As my wife reminds me, one of them was GitLab. So she's not real happy about that one. Do you recall the order of magnitude valuation that you invested in GitLab? We were pretty close to first money. Yeah.

So not a bad early investment. Not bad. No, no. Still not a bad return. But it would have been better if it was all mine. So you're saying they got a good deal by working three months for a firm. Yeah. And so, but eventually, you know, these guys, they'd never invested before. Right? They both had started companies. One company was in mobile feedback space, got bought by Google. This is Michael, your partner? Yeah, Michael Ma. He...

He was a Yale undergrad, Harvard MBA guy. Mike Miller, I gave him a hard time because he's a Notre Dame, Michigan State, always had this thing going. He's a Michigan State undergrad, but he's a PhD in experimental particle physics out of Yale, MIT fellow. His company, he started when both these guys went through YC. His company went through YC when it was still back in Boston.

And there were only 12 companies in the batch, unlike the 285. - Yeah, and Reddit was probably his batch mate, or maybe Dropbox back then. - Yeah, and so he, his company, he started, ended up being bought by IBM and started, basically started IBM's cloud service as it is today. And then my son, who, Ron Conway, started taking

myself and him to Y Combinator when Ron spoke to the batches. We were doing individual investing together and then Nathaniel caught on to a startup like real, real early. They went on a crazy run where it got bought by Twitter and he went to Twitter for a year and a half and then came back to the fund. - So did your interest in startup investing come from Nathaniel's sort of plugged in-ness in that world? - I think Nathaniel's the one that kind of

got the idea going and then because of my family relationship with Ron, he said, "Oh yeah, you guys can come with us." So we followed the SV Angel guys around trying to figure out what their secret sauce was and listen to the questions they're asking and look at the companies they're looking at. He was happy once he left Twitter and he came back and now we brought on one other partner who was one of the original

investing partners at Co2 in the C3C area and then became a partner at Eclipse and then he's been a real close friend to the family so he and Nathaniel were both walk-on quarterbacks at Notre Dame. And Matt had a little different track than Nathaniel did to the fund. - Wait, so how many, what percentage of your employees were quarterbacks at Notre Dame?

60. Sounds like three of the five partners. Well, there's the answer. We figured out how to be a top 0.1% investor. How did you first meet Ron Conway? I can't even remember. It's been so long just by being in the Valley. I originally got into...

Into the venture space by Ronnie lot and Harris Barton. We started a fund of funds in the venture We basically all our friends and neighbors were all guys who ran Sequoia Kleiner Excel and we just leveraged our friendship in access into the funds and you were you raised a fund of funds that became an LP in those venture funds, that's what HRJ was yeah, and so we after a while it became we had a

Venture, leveraged buyout, hedge, and real estate funds. All we did was raise money. The fund to funds was no fun. I don't know how to reconnect with Ron. He's going, this is a lot more fun.

and you get to meet with the founders, you get to see all the new technology and things that are coming up. It was a lot more fun. He just forgot to tell me how much more work it was gonna be on top of it. But yeah, I've known Ron, we actually travel with Ron almost every summer and his family together. So we have pretty-- - Was it a,

So staying in San Francisco after your playing career, what was that decision like? We keep trying to think we want to go somewhere else and we just can't figure out where we'd go that would match kind of where we are. But it helped by staying here because a lot of guys tried to take advantage of it while we were playing. I just didn't have that whereforeall in time in my mind.

I had too many things that I had to work on. - You're spending seven days a week with the West Coast offense. - Yeah, I wanted to play football. And I knew that eventually I was gonna retire and I could find another way to do something that would be fun and maybe as exciting, but maybe not quite. - The next best thing. - Except on IPO days. - You gotta humor the audience a little bit. - Well yeah, yeah, yeah. On IPO days are good.

Yeah, I just and then I realized that I'd missed a lot of stuff while I was playing. And when Ronnie and Harris, I really wasn't looking for another job, wasn't a full time job at that point because I really had just retired. And I said, OK, why not? And off we went and just kind of grew into where we are today. And I've done like I think I've done one of the things that drive a lot of people crazy. And I love the team I have. So.

I made everybody equal. So we all get paid the same, we all get the same carry. I make them buy lunch and breakfast every day. But I just don't, can they make more salary somewhere? Probably.

Can they get the carry I'm giving them? No, they can't get that at another fund. Unless they start their own. Unless they start their own. We've spent a lot of time doing acquired episodes on the big venture firms. This is always the big topic is how do you split up the carry? Wait, wait, wait. So fund one and fund two, I made them earn, I gave them a certain amount of carry and then I made them earn more. From fund three on,

I said, "You know what? I think we're doing a great job. We're working well together. I want to make everybody equal. You guys have a problem with that?" And they said, "No." I said, "I didn't think so." And so off we go. Actually, I make less than they do because I'm paying two other people, a head of finance and a head of operations. So I took the money from me and not from them.

What are the trade-offs? Give us the pros and cons, 'cause it sounds great, but in practice, what do you actually see that do to the organization? - Well, that's the one thing that Bill said from the right in the beginning. He said, "I just wanna tell you guys,

There's no rookie hazing here. He says, when somebody walks in that door and in that locker room, they're part of the 49er team and organization. You treat them and you treat the people upstairs, no matter people who work on the field, you treat them with the same respect you treat everybody in the locker room with. And, you know, I just think that...

He had the hammer though, right? So I had to find a way to get the hammer because I gave up a lot of the things so I just owned the management company. So I controlled where all the money goes. - But I think separating economics and control is a great structure for that. - Yeah, I mean, and we do majority kind of rules on things and

We try to get at least two partners on every deal and usually try to get as many as we can get eyes on deals and There's no bickering over. Well, I brought in more capital. Well, I brought in more companies What's more? I mean, how do you weigh those? I couldn't figure that out and how you put

a price on either one. So I just said, this makes more sense to me just to say, look, it doesn't matter if I bring a deal in and it's not really what Mike Miller should see. I just give it to Mike Miller and there's not an issue of, okay, it's my deal or is it your deal? It's our deal. And so that's the way we operate. And so far we haven't had any issues with it and everybody's still off and running.

It's really, I mean, it's so rare in venture firms, period, that there's this model. We've done several episodes on, you know, Benchmark. They famously have this model and very few others do. I imagine you must be the only venture firm, you know, of a provenance like yours, of there are many other athletes, celebrities, et cetera, former athletes who have venture firms now.

that have an equal partnership model. I think a lot, but I think one of the things that the other athletes didn't realize is that it's a day-to-day world. It's not put your name on something and let somebody else run it. I just can't. I don't operate that way. Do I stick my face in there and say, hey, this isn't right? When it's time, yes. Other than that,

I just let them operate and I just kind of oversee that right now. I mean, if you look at success, fund one was 28 million and we returned the fund 1.8 times X and we still have 21 unicorns in the fund. Do you want to share what the current multiple is sitting around? It's sitting somewhere between 8 and 10. That's pretty good.

And fund two was we raised 53 and we have we returned about I think it's 0.8 of that and we have 13 unicorns sitting in that and fund three we just kind of closed and we already just closed less than a year ago and we have one sitting in there so I think we've been fairly successful with the model.

and our ability to pick companies. Part of that reason is that our guys are so good and understand the growth pattern from what we call zero to one, because they've all been there and understand that. They've had exits to large corporations and they understand what's necessary and what needs to look like. From there, we've gotten so many

accolades from our portfolio companies saying, hey, you guys punch way above your check size. And our check sizes now are between 250 and 500. But I just think that we're on to something good and I want to try to keep it that way as long as

Yes, so you have this new problem. Like the initial problem for any startup or fund one is does our idea work? And you've now proven with the numbers that you just shared with us, okay, it works. So your new problem is we have this magic thing in our hands. What do we do with it? How do we harness it? So what things are different as you look forward to make sure that you don't A, kill the golden goose, but you can B, lean into it as much as you can?

We've solved that problem, but because of the SEC I can't talk. Understood. Understood. We won't push you. We're able to follow on. Great.

Completely different question in a completely different vein. Your fund is not called Joe Montana Ventures. It's called Liquid 2. What was the logic there and where did that come from? To me, when I first was trying to figure out a name, I was going...

came up with all these ideas and then I was going, "Liquid, it's like an oxymoron, right? It's not liquid at all." - It's one of the most illiquid asset classes in the world. - Pre-seed is about as far away as you can get. - And it's funny how things fall together 'cause I said it was liquid,

And it was taken. Liquid one was taken. Liquid two wasn't taken. So I got liquid two. And then I was sitting around and I drew up the logo. I was like, was this a play call or something? Like, where did this come from? And so I drew up the logo and it was just an L and a two like that. And so Mike Miller, our resident PhD, says, how did you come up with that? I go, well, I just...

playing around with the L and the 2 and it looked good. I go, why? He goes, well, because I did a thesis on that and it's someplace in outer space that is trackable, but it's hard to find. I go, perfect. Sounds like venture to me. So things have kind of fallen in place so far.

- It's also, you know, it could name after the L2 cache on a processor. You're really into the deep tech investing. - Yeah, no, they keep, everybody keeps trying to get, the guys wanted, for the longest time, wanted to change the name. I go, okay, so here's the problem. Right now, everybody knows us as Liquid or L2.

why do you want to mess with that? Then you're going to change the name and then no one's going to remember. So they already know it sounds like a crazy name, but we've built something behind it. So we've been going through some exercises to try to update it a little bit, but we'll probably stick with the name. I think I got them convinced that it's not worth the effort of changing it. Was there...

Other than the, you know, obvious Ron Conway connection and learning from him and this is what he did, this type of investing, was there any draw to be like, well, hey, maybe you should pick a little easier style of investing? I mean, you know, all the jokes about the anti-liquidity earlier. I mean, pre-seed and seed is hard. You're talking to two former seed and pre-seed investors here. Like, it's hard. It is hard, man. And I think one of the things we...

We looked for, obviously you guys understand that when you get down there, you're looking at people. In a lot of cases, you're betting on people. And because of our portfolio so large, we get repeat founders now. And we get, hey, my head of IT is leaving and he's starting something new. You should look at it.

So our deal flow comes from almost within our universe that we kind of put together. It helps us get in earlier. And so getting those types of returns, if you're in Pre-Seed or in some cases, friends and family, you're trying to get that, you know, we aim, everybody says, if you can get to 3X, you're doing well.

If you can get to 5x, you're doing extremely well. We try to aim for 5x, but in real honesty, the thing that sticks in my mind was from Doug Leone from Sequoia. If it's not 10x, we don't want to look at it. So your fun one is just barely adequate. So Bill's philosophy always was, hey, if you aim to be perfect and you miss, you can still be pretty good.

So, and if you aim to just be mediocre and get by and you miss, you won't be on this team very long. And so, you know, our bar, we set high for ourselves. And if we miss down there, we're still in the top tier. I think all of our funds are either top 5%, top 25% of venture capital.

It's awesome. David, you've got the closing question. Yeah, so we have one. I don't think you know we're going to ask this. Fun question to wrap up here and transition back to Dimitri from Modern Treasury. We had to look. We were looking up. We do a lot of research on Acquired. And we're like, OK, we go all through Joe's history. And we found this one thing. And we're like, OK, you can't make this up.

Before, after football, but before Liquid 2, you co-founded a bank called Modern Bank. I had a friend of mine who I met when I was at HRJ Capital. And we stayed friends for a long time. And he just came to me one day.

and said, "Hey, I want to start this bank." Actually, we were trying to do what First Republic did. As you know, they had offices into where Sequoia and all they were.

but we could only get a charter in New York. We couldn't get one out here in California, and we ended up finally giving up. And at that point in time, it's still there. It went from a personal bank to a commercial bank now.

and mostly on the East Coast. And I left the board. I said, I can't help you back here. Coming back and forth to New York every month. And it just makes sense for me to get off the board. But yeah, we were having fun. I was only on our board. I was only outbanked by, I think it was

250 years to 300 years of making experience in our board. It's fun. Clearly it predestined you to finding Modern Treasury. Yeah. It's crazy. It was fun to do while we were working on it. I've totally forgotten

I forgot we had found it. I get checks, so I guess it's good, right? That's great. All right, Joe. Well, any, there's going to be, I'm sure on the live stream and here in the room, and for any acquired listeners, a lot of founders. Any advice after working with so many founders over your venture career? I think one of the, a lot of things you have to go with, like your instinct and your gut,

and a lot of people are afraid to ask for help. I think that's where the problems always seem to arise, is that when you know there are issues and you let them simmer too long, you have people who are invested in you early that are there that you let invest early because most of the cases they decide who gets to invest in the startup. Lean on them as much as you can and

they'll help you through it. Our approach is we're not Sequoia, we're not Excel, we don't come in there and try to run your company. But you have an issue on your monthly statement to us, just put an ask section. As soon as we see that, we go to work as fast as we can. If there's 10 of them, we'll pick the top three or four that we know we can go after and we can help on and we'll try to do.

I always say we're in the boat together. You're driving. If you need help, just let us know. We'll help you steer and get to the right place that you need. And if we can't do it, we'll help you find the right people to help you do it. And it's just, you know, most and almost all founders are really proud of what they're doing and with that. And sometimes you just get afraid that really

Say, hey, I need some help, right? Until it's too late. And then help can't come fast enough. Yeah. Well, Joe, this has been a great conversation. Thank you so much. Thank you, Modern Treasury. Thank all of you for being here. And to close out the day, please welcome Dimitri back to the stage. Thank you. Joe, it's been great. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you so much.

All right, listeners, that is our show for today. We hope to see you at the Chase Center September 10th, if you can make it. Acquired.fm slash sf is the link, or you can click the link in the show notes. And I'd say we'll see you next time. But for many of you, we will see you very soon.