Arena Show Part I: Idea Dinner + YC Continuity
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Holy crop.

wow.

Hello, acquire listeners.

You don't tell me you going to say that that's good.

I'm about living. I got up here and I was overcome with emotion, and none of this is scripted. Thank you so much for coming tonight.

I like prepared things, and I should read them off my ipad here. But that only thought that can occur to me right now is how different this is than what you and I Normally do. David, I are very used to being on zoom, talking to each other through the internet, the zero people watching live.

And if we say something wrong, we delete IT. And that's not happening tonight. But more .

important than that .

is we get evidence that people listen in the form of analytics or tweet or anecdotes here and there of someone's ying I list to the show. But there's no human visceral way to feel that likely literally just profession and analytic dashboard. And a number goes up.

And this is so cool to see you real. Well, as far as IT is going to be to like watch the show when we've got some gray stuff plan, I think IT will be much cooler to meet each other for as many. They called para social relationships where you hear us talk, but we don't get to meet you.

We're going to trying to meet as many of you as possible. We want a lot of you to meet as many other people as possible because you have an easy opener like what's your favor episode or how did you hear about acquired like my bird dragged here tonight and I never heard of IT before this, but everyone's got some answer to that question. So meet each other, take self fees.

Enjoy the time together. We have freaking climate pledge arina and and enjoy the time minute. Thank you to pitch book holy crap that john not hitting. Pitch books, a pitch book is seattle like monster, amazing business, hiding in plain site.

And it's been really cool to get another team more and more and more and understand the business and just learn how on four million dollars, theyve been able to build this mult hundred million dollar business. It's inspiring to us. So thank you to john.

Thank you to ky. Thank you to learn and value. Thank you.

Now everyone to work at with that pitch book is is just awesome. So thank you to them. And happy .

star world day.

but happy star words day, may the fourth be with you.

I hear alm .

carton here. Yes, paul, a cartoon is here tonight. We have a great show .

for you was we .

do have a great .

show though tonite. We have jim webber, the CEO of Brooks, running another seattle moster business that we're very excited to talk to about. We have honey Harry haron tonight from why combinator, the informix packing machine, from not boring mario Gabriel, from the generalist two of the internet fine est publications. So very excited to chop IT up with them.

We learned from arena shows, past live shows, very small live shows past that are Normal format of telling a three plus hour story of a business that doesn't work very well in this sort of time where you're sitting down, you know you can feel the audience getting any in those long stories. So we got three, just like fast pace, great stories, great segments for you tonight, be in amount a couple hours will enjoy along the way. But it's going to feel fast relative to your Normal acquired episode.

Speaking of should we start our Normal apart.

said we got to do IT the way that I don't know that feels like we have a way that we start acquired episodes.

So we should do that. I should do that.

Who get the two?

See me down, say a three story on the way. Welcome to season and ten.

episode seven, the arena show presented by pitches ook of acquired the podcast.

About great technology companies and the stories and playbooks behind them. I am then galperin and AMD, cofounder and managing director of seattle based 屋。 Pioneer square labs and our venture fund, p sl ventures.

And i'm David, resent all and most days i'm an Angel investor based in separate co, but today i'm an ideal investor based in seattle.

And we are your hosts, okay? Listeners now is a great time to tell you about long time, a friend of the show service now.

yes, as you know, service now is the A I platform for business transformation, and they have some new news to share. Service now is introducing A I agents. So only the service now platform puts A I agents to work across every corner .

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Yep, with service now, AI agents proactively solve chAllenges from I T H R. Customer service software development. You name IT. These agents collaborate, they learn from each other, and they continuously improve handling the busy work across your business so that your teams can actually focus on what truly matters.

ultimately service. Now, an agenda I is the way to deploy A I across every corner of your enterprise. They boost productivity for employees and rich customer experiences and make work Better for everyone.

Yeah, so learn how you can put A I agents to work for your people by clicking the link in the shower notes or going to service. Now document slash A I dash agents. David, what do we have an act one?

Well, for act one tonight. We start back in february twenty twenty one, when we were all board at home. Clubhouse was a thing, game stop was going to the moon, and we decided to call up our best internet friends, packing mommy and mario Gabrieli, and picks some stocks like everyone was doing, like everyone was doing quick.

This is not investment advice. Do your own research.

I'm glad you remember that. And tonight we are going to recreate that magic live here in person. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome all the way from new york packing mccorry and mario gril. I 嗯。 哇哦， 哎呀， 真的 look up.

beauty, my sneakers are too.

This is the first weird start to just change shoes from the beginning. Let's.

yes. So the only rule, right, you will lose the idea dinner unless you are wearing, you ask for you.

This actually the second most embarrassing thing to the pick that i'm about to me.

what we needed to delay a little bit because we have one more thing. Well, special surprise. We wanted to raise the stakes tonight. So we brought in a judge who is going to grade each of our picks, acquired style, and declare a winner and a loser at the end of the night.

The end .

of loser is .

very yeah.

Please welcome from the capital of silicon valley, miami, florida, great long time friend of the show and form of south fank lad amErica managing director, shoe new yeta.

thanks.

So let's dive in to the idea dinner. I'm happy to report when we were deciding the order that we were going to go in, I came up with the criteria, which was whose pix historically have performed the best. That would be my.

that would be, this is so brick in the way that you chose to select whose pigs have performed the best, yours performing the best? yes. Not private pics, not blended, just public pick. yes. okay.

So i'm going to back clean up. And mister maria gril is gna lead us off before you that yeah, I don't really so hard. But before you tell us, you pick for all two people that don't know about the generalist, tell us about the generalist.

Oh, wonderful. Thank you so much. The generalist is a publication that covers tack, crypto and venture capital. I spired to the level of depth of these two gentlemen and always enjoy collaborating them.

We cannot write the way that you're write. So there's no like aspiration. But so for people who haven't read the generalist, IT is deep writing about technology companies in the most wysong style I can possibly imagine, like mario was an art novel list at heart who covers that companies and very funder ad.

Thank you so much. I feel longer now .

before we grill you on your pic. A little like rules of the game here. We're all coming with our best investment idea starting today. What is today may forth. So the idea is to espouse something that you think would be a profitable investment, not investment advice starting today, going forward on a time frame that you choose to specify. And then shoe ultimately will be the judge because we don't have the benefit of all that time to know how we actually .

play out the god like powers.

Yes, so, yes. So mario lead .

us off well, since shoe is really my audience. All right, gentlemen, my pic is snowflake. Thank you.

Heard of IT.

So for those who .

perhaps are less familiar, what is snowflakes? Snowflake is a managed data warehouse. And their sort of initial genius was that they separated storage and compute, made IT super easy to take in all of this data that a company is managing and to run queries against a super fast you can get the insights and information from IT.

That initial idea was quite brilliant and you know has formed the company into the sophisticated, elegant product that IT is today that made IT something of a pandemic. Darling, if we recall, I was one of the crazy st sort of IPO day pops that I think any of us have have seen in a long time. And the stock traded as high as I think four or three I share today. It's about one eighty three, one eighty five. So IT has taken quite a hammering, multiple .

compression.

as they say. Indeed, especially this first quarter, IT really got like I think, of forty five percent down. But when you look under the hood, what you know the company has been doing, certainly some of the multiple compression is married.

But the growth on revenue, the net retention, the free cash flow, all of those things have moved in a Stellar direction. So revenues up about one hundred and five percent. Net retention is one seventy eight. IT was one sixty eight the year before.

which that I think is like a for a public company. Net k tension IT may .

well be it's pretty wild and yet they are generating eighty plus million and free cash flow. And you know the business in q four of last year actually got contract value of one point four million coming in, which is all of the revenue they had the year prior. So I would submit you that this is would submit .

you summer to you would submit to huge.

I see you don't forget .

that this is a business that has the potential to compound for many years. I think over a three plus year time horizon, IT can do extremely well.

IT is a play that summarizes the growth of data in the technology industry, which feels like a safe bet, and it's run by one of the biggest bowlers in the executive world, Frank slotman, who has done this now at least two and a half times, depending on how you pass IT and who is sort of the quintessential sustainable growth CEO. He is someone who knows how to manage in difficult circumstances. He's compared himself to general pattern and this is a time for a pattern like figure. I would. And so my bigger snowflake IT doesn't come without risks, but does a risk i'm trying to take.

You've come a long way from, I think, your first pick with us back bridge down that we .

put a mrta um on on bringing up people's old picks like nobody's portfolio .

looks good right now yeah except sorry.

David, less negative than everyone.

Ah any any thoughts from the peanut gallery on .

snowing? I mean, you have every sector tail and in the world. And the question is going to be like, so of course, more companies are going to be using cloud, cloud data warehouses in ways that you want to have good U.

X. around. And then the question is, are they going to continue to capture all the value? Like how do they stand competitive? Ly.

yeah. I think that this sort of net attention shows that there are very good at growing with this customer based. They're growing faster than any other cloud company, which isn't super surprising given their relative size. But I think that's A A fair question, but not one that i'm hugely worried out about giving like the overall growth of the of .

the sector. So we no further comments.

Wow, you know.

shoe. So how are we doing?

This is shoe. I'm not going to do real time grade. I will be sued by the first one. And the .

mr.

mr.

Mic, all right. So I think for you, the internet, for your pic, I I asked the internet for for there's favor favorite stock. I ended up going actually with an older but the good, but we're going to get there. So I think one of the most important things about twenty, twenty and twenty twenty one for a lot of people was learning about themselves. And what I learned is that i'm a terrible.

terrible so well.

well, but you're on cnbc.

like all the time.

like I said, a terrible, terrible stuff.

And as we did the rankings, I gave mario a little bit of that. I think we were going back and forth for for last place. And so the safe move that we also decided to only do public ics because we didn't want to share our private market portfolio o companies.

So composer is one of the companies in my portfolio that makes IT really easy to invest in automated trading strategies. I'm going to go with one of the strategies that they have that risk on, risk off IT looks at treasury ies and actually nasdaq outperforms p as an indicator and then puts you in a basket of like three x, like T, Q, Q, Q when things are good. And he puts you in like long dollar when things bad.

So if I wanted to be super safe, that's my pick. And that's actually where i'm putting my my money. Not going to do that because all the way out and settle second thing you could do, but we can invest in this, but maybe there are share is going around. Apparently it's possible to get into the equity trance of elan's twitter .

take pride oh.

at least like he's aggressively trying to find people to take some .

of the equity ties. Any of you a piece of the twitter take private forty three, forty four and a billion dollars minimum check. I think actually they are taking relatively small jets from what i've what i've seen.

Here's the question because tell .

me exactly is not boring capital investing.

not boring capital .

that is outside, not boring capital very, very brought many, maybe all you will check in there.

But do you invested not boring capital's money in buying the constitution? The, and this is too far. This is .

outside. That one was a fifteen billion percent I R R. For a little while. Time has gone on. But that was the billion, not a investment IT wasn't an investment I was donating or contributing to the constitution.

But so the twitter, this is, and this isn't the pic, but the twitter this is, is that everybody in this room, half of us are here because of twitter. If you pulled the audience, the average that I would take to pull people off of twitter has to be in the hundreds, if not thousands or tens of thousands of dollars. Yet they're monetizing like android right now, right?

Twitter need to be the apple of social media. IT has a small but loyal and a valuable user base. The board doesn't use twitter.

Jack is doing whatever jack stuff. But like somebody, he's going to come in to modify that thing. I think you charge for verification.

You get rid of the boat problem. Eighty million people who use twitter in the us. Paid three dollars a month.

You're looking to to get three billion dollar recurring revenue opportunity annually for twitter. He's going to fire her account. He has to to pay his death service.

But like I would imagine, ninety percent of people twitter, if is anybody in the room. And so sorry, but I don't do very much. There's a lot you can do on the cost side. And then I think IT with somebody like elan, it's either going to go horribly, horribly, horribly wrong or it's gonna really, really, really well. And I think that you can kind of build the like missing WhatsApp of the us, kind of become the twitter platform where you have all of these valuable passionate users.

So and forty three billion dollars, do you think, like when he takes the same public again in three years, that he can do that in a fifth of whatever facebooks evaluation is that time like pretty safe to act, not the pink. So we are just a street. We are not getting out of .

here at a pm tonite. There's that chase.

So the .

reason that i'm in the last place is because of a company named open. Yes.

yes.

not the pic.

Open door is the pic. And here's why, because we're in seattle, an open door vanky ized, a seattle company zelos ibi program, owe the ibi market themselves, now did eight billion dollars of revenue last year. And now this is, I came from breather where we counted top line revenue is like anything that, you know, it's a generous top line I saw bank knows about this is, well, the generous .

kind of top line .

shot fired.

just the we work thing and we competed with them. Water, wonderful company. But so billion dollars of home that only did last year.

You're concentrating at a five point zero zero billion dollar market cap. Housing is a multi trillion dollar market. And everybody in the country IT seems like this past year learned how awful that process is.

And so this is a point and I ve written about the company, but this is a point that I am taken from twitter, which is somebody said IT is the worst U I U X customer experience in the biggest market out there and they have the best solution with I buying. Sometimes IT doesn't have be hard. Treating this more like a venture bet.

Like two months ago, five billion dollars was they like serious be evaluation. So treating this like a adventure bet that they're the leader in this huge market that is inevitable. They're Operationally super sound.

They finally turned and adjust ted ebdon profit last year so they can make money on this business. And they like thousands and thousands and thousands of homes, and their biggest competitor is dropped out of the market, and zilla is no longer doing eyebright. So this market is there to lose. Eric wu is an absolute monster and IT can't go any lower. So I am doing with that much to doubling down on my biggest loser open.

ladies and gentleman, right? What about red finish stone in the market? Another great seattle company. Are you concerned about them as a competitor?

Are they are they above below a billion dollar valuation right now? No, think I think I think actually the mistake I made at last time was I did a basket of these real time job. IT is a massive market that is awful to Operate in right now as as a lot of people who bought house of the best year have realized, I think that red fans is going to do really well.

I think that zilla now it's kind of back to its original focus, is going to continue to really well. I still love zillow, and I think that open door is going to do the best, that the biggest in ivan think that's a huge, huge opportunity, particularly because they have the best company value in all of the world, which is bits for breakfast, like they pull every basis point out of Operating these houses. And that is a really, really valuable thing. But IT does remind you of another sea company is on and like you really need to get your costs right and they're the best by r .

at doing that there. Then there is. Then because .

David is theoretically winning, I next so my I did actually were packed y did I I made a list of things that I was contemplating and I thought i'd share some of those just because I think they're interesting things you could buy with with your pic right now, literally anything because everything .

is on sale.

I thought about google again, which was, I think, the best pick any of us made, except salona, still amazing business, still cheap by valuation. You know, any way you want to slice IT Price earnings, Price to sales, whatever? Not my pic.

I kind of like the the theis that's going around, fin twit, right now where people are saying amazon has gone so low that they're basically valuing the retail business at zero and its only AWS contributing to its market cap. I think you can build the models to sorrow show that would I take amazon's retail business as a free option? Absolutely, I would.

Again, not my pic, just like packed y there's a twitter one that I had two, which is by twitter right now because there's three, five dollar bills attached to every single share. And and for folks that don't get that joke, there's there's basically an arbitrage you can run if you think that elon is actually going to close this deal and pay out every single twitter shareholder at fifty four dollars and two twenty cents per share, you can go buy a twitter share right now for like forty nine bucks or fifty bucks. I don't know what market closed out today, but I mean, that's free money if you think iran is actually going to complete the deal, not my tech.

So what i'm going with is one that I know David and I have discuss at length. I can't remember if we've done on air, but I looked back at our idea dinner picks and we haven't actually picked IT on the idea dinner, and that's coin base. This is a value investment, and i'll explain myself, but this is a cyp to value investment.

So let's set the anker r point that we should all think about this business. In the last twelve months, we've done ten billion dollars in free cash flow. It's a stand ship that is money that piled up in their bank account based on the profits of the business that they're Operating. So they're printing money. The market capet closed today was thirty four billion dollars.

Well, so if I was running a business that was generating one hundred dollars of cash per year just to can make them math easy, would you buy that business from me at three hundred and forty dollars? But that seems like a pretty good pick up, especially one that has network effects. The leading brand in the space growing incredibly fast in a gigantic wave.

Now people can think crypt o is going to crash or the bubble going to pop. There are the most establish company in the space, and IT is still the first inning of all of cyp to. So you have the opportunity to do.

Here's where gets kind of interesting a berkshires half way style investment into a crypto company that is the leading crypto brand in the world. IT seems pretty safe to me, favorite last words. But to me, you're like very cheaply valuing their unbelievable business that they today they have today.

And sure, there's going to be marching compression, ensure the take rates. It's going to go down over time. But like I think you have .

a lot of resilience .

based into the Price, not to mention all the free options that comes stapled to that business, which are the NFC business and every other venture that they're going into. And on top of all this, I think a great way to play crypto o in web 3 is to look at the companies that have centralized all the cavity and are able to run web to style businesses or we B2Business mod els usi ng the hea t and lig ht tha t's all sho wn on web thr ee and coi n bas is。 Literally the best example of that, and has I do.

not only that, but coin base and f tx. They make money whether clipt goes up down.

right? As long if IT goes up or down faster, they make more money, right? So my pick is coin base.

I got to say I really like IT.

I think it's really good. Yeah, I was thinking about this one to and I think what talked to me out of IT were a couple of things when I see a lot of pitches from senior x coin base people. And so IT feels like there's a post IPO brain rain happening a little bit, which is natural. And you also don't love to see I think f tx is I think like there's a lot of comparing fx in coin. Basically that rider on the same mark right now if is like two hundred people or something crazy, everything really souring.

Engineers, yes, that was still.

that was one of the most surreal OK. This is the most real moment of requirement that might have been second when we were interviewing sam.

This is same begmand free, the CEO of F T X, who mario wrote a three part unbelievable series on.

And he was just in the middle of his office, and people were like trading behind him.

And I almost certainly playing league of legends. so.

Fair packet Y I mean, the ftc bare case on coin base would be that derivatives are actually a much bigger of market than trading direct equities or direct crypt to I think it's like three x to the volume in any given market is derivative rather than the the underlying asset. And f, tx is Better poised for the derivatives market than coin basis. I still think coin basis of this market caps deal.

I agree. I think like F T X is scary in in lots of ways and are so, so efficient as a business. But especially factoring in the nfl play, I think there's like a really nice upside here. The stuff that they've shown, at least on the nf side, I think, looks pretty promising.

Yeah, I love.

It's a bet that crypto stays big and the decentralized is probably not as important to the next billion users as my first thing, which is a pretty safe bet. I love the bag actually.

Also, would any of us have thought at coin base IPO time that they would be shipping enough to do like a big nf t play, like i'd kind of in my head thought, okay, we sort of have reach product stalest, but we've actually shown like a rejuvenation on IT.

Another way of frame this is I liked this pic so much in january, and other people on this stage did. Two, that there were investments made in the company. And i'm speaking with pack of passive voice for.

I like IT a .

lot more .

today that I like to.

Then me too, me too. A one you feed me nervous. what? For two reasons.

because going to beat you.

That was one the others when you were doing, you're not pics, which i'm not going to do. I got really scared that you are gonna take my pic because my pic is the company that built this arena, which is .

amazon about the naming right, built us an aggressive well.

didn't didn't actually be IT. But and sorry, talking about this, it's trading at about a one and a quarter trillion dollar market cap. Most folks probably know probably a lot of folks here work at the amazon.

The stock got hammed last week after reporting earnings. But just looking at the fundamentals, amazon did four hundred and seventy billion dollars of revenue in the last twelve months. That is the second highest amount of revenue that any company has ever done ever. The only larger one being warmer, which amazon will almost assuredly pass very soon. So that means that amazon is trading at two and a half times revenue, times last twelve months revenue.

What rams on margin, David?

well. I thought about that. About four hundred billion of that is retail revenue, but about seventy five billion, more than seventy billion is aus revenue, which is very high margin revenue.

The rest but so each of those retail and AWS, I think there is a bar narrative around that I just simply don't agree with right now on AWS. I think the the bar narrative on AWS is, yes, it's amazing. High margin business hatts are off to bazo Sandy jack for building IT, but IT stays are numbered.

Azure and google cloud are growing faster, and amazon, despite being the early leader in cloud, might actually end up losing this market. I think that's uteri ridiculous. AWS is growing at thirty seven percent annually on a seventy five billion dollar base.

Google and microsoft are going at forty five percent, but their market share combined is still significantly less than amazon. So yes, it's going slower, but it's bigger than both of them combined. But then just like none of that matters, the market that we are talking about here is the internet.

Like this is the internet. This is the pigs and shovels of the internet, and amazon is the clear market leader. Growing over thirty, growing thirty seven percent year.

I cannot imagine any other asset I would rather own period anywhere. That's a on the retail narrative, like you said, literally, golden issued a research note last week. Now was the thought exercise that would actually mean this, but valuing retail at zero, that's people been doing this for .

twenty years. Second, how does that work? They issued a research report, as I thought exercise.

will they never buy on the stock? And I think they were saying that are like the upside is so much that even if you just valued the amazon based on that, you were still by the stack, they think retail is worth something. But if there was the that exerts.

So let's a has over a thirty three percent market chair of cloud of the internet. The largest application of the internet by revenue is e commerce. Amazon has a fifty six percent market share of U.

S. E. Commerce and fifty six percent market share. So there's a really cool feature.

If you go to your account in amazon, of course, this is so amazon, you can download c sv reports of your own spending. It's scary. I did this.

which they intentionally make IT that you have to download A C sv report. You can actually like, see that in the web. Y, that would be very scary.

So just me over the last five years. I've grown my spent on amazon by thirty four percent a year. And in the last twelve months, I ordered two hundred and thirty items on the amazon because we have a kid.

But yeah, we have garage delivery set up. We have the amazon credit card they're launching buy with prime on the internet. I'm highly influenced by amazon sponsored listings, which is a thirty billion dollar high margin revenue business within retail.

which was approximate zero five years ago.

exactly. So this is my point. The narrative that retail is worth zero completely misses the point. The reason that retail lost a billion and a half dollars last quarter is amazon invest so far ahead of the curve. It's uni magin able to me that I would buy things anywhere else but amazon. And that mode is so deep that if they were to stop investing, they would become incredibly capable, positive and theyd still have years of runway before any competitor caught up.

And to your point, I think their capex last year was something like three or four x any of the other big tech companies because they're just building out these warehouses and data centers totally.

okay. So tomorrow obeys us framework. I think you ve got to think about what's not going to change investing.

And I think what's not going to change is, one, the internet is going to keep growing. So I want to own two. I and others are going to keep buying more stuff online.

So I want to own amazon retail. And I think that on the retail side, we'll keep badding credit cards advertising by with prime leveraging their infrastructure across other retailers on the internet. And all of those are high margin products. No argument.

I know. No.

I gotta .

play to the home. Yeah, yeah.

I mean, what happened though, to to apple stock after Steve jobs? right? I mean.

I think andy Jessie could be the tim cook of amazon.

I love that. I love that analog. That's a good one. That's a little framework.

So you so i'm going to change the rules a bit. first. I'm going .

to make some comments .

or some generalist comments. The first is you all said we're not good public stock pickers and i'm onna posit that the future of investing is people who understand and create narratives and that's what you all do. And you actually are very good stock because period, because you understand the power of stories and narratives. So this is the future of investing in my view.

Back to the no surprise, it's no .

surprise you all have or are launching funds.

I love how this is starting so far.

So that's overall common number one. Overall common number two is you all think like venture investors, nobody talked about .

downside guys. Best advice, right? Like come up time.

No, I was waiting for the fair case and what could go wrong. And for example, coin base over earns from a consumer pricing point of you compared to any other platform you look at that sells to consumers by some dramatic as a total outlier. And so if that collapsed is eighty percent, what happens to the stock? Maybe hundred and twenty years, really expensive.

So there was none of that. Generally, i'm not picking up the and the third thing is you are all focused on companies that are cheap. There was a focused on now a good moment because it's cheap.

Expensive companies can be great investments. Expensive, so to speak, I think is probably because we're in this part of the market cycle. And so everyone's focus on everything's dir cheap at these Prices. Who said that?

Who said that?

Somebody said, by the way, that the consensus biest twitter between the two of you. So I had five criteria. One was upside.

The other was downside. The other was timing right now. The other was novelty a, which you all failed on, by the way.

Snow snowflake could may be the most novel and and there's no science and novell ty and obvious thought can be great investment. And the final one was flair, very scientific criteria. I liked bips for breakfast. General pattern that got me going over. I, hey, what's going in and so I have my ranking, but we're going to we're gna get the audience involved.

Oh, so i'm going to hold I don't if you know this from like an old show, i'm going to hold my hand above ahead and then you clap a certain volume and i'll go one by one and the loudest clap wins and then i'll tell you if that was my picker. Not okay. So we start with random order open door. okay?

Let's go. right?

This nobody hates me. That's open door. okay? I kind of got that clap that feels like a five out of ten clap. Then we go at amazon.

The home time .

really came through there.

That's a solid eight at a ten clap. We are in the amazon arena, so i'd not to down to seven. Home crowd coin base.

Why prety, I was really good.

That was .

Better than the amazon clip. So that's an nate and then snowflake.

Wow.

so just like french elections, this is gonna go to a run off. Between snowflake and coin base, okay.

do we get clap? Oh.

no. Because little .

sound louder .

can do okay. So think .

about IT. Okay, one of these two snowflake coin bit snowflake.

Coin base.

And the winner is going back.

My pic was snowflake for for the record, only because of general pattern.

We got live now right, as excited as I am to be Victorious, and I am excited.

How many people also cry to?

And yes, that's probably why yeah time will ultimately be the judge. And there is a tracker. There is an idea in a tracker sprayed sheet that listener James every I think James started, maintains and so will get to at any given point look back and see who actually want tonight.

And I think open door reports tomorrow.

We're in .

five, five year hold period. I think that's yes. So we reconvene again here. Yes, twenty, twenty seven.

Elect every time and judge .

this contest you'll .

need to use, you know, the rest of the arena.

That's right. That's right. Well packed. Y mario should thank you so much.

Not only we're doing this, but for like flying five hours to do this. Let's get my hand six in the hand. So much.

And even more important than flying cliver hours. Thank you guys for being our friends.

Thank you guys. Not boring.

Dock COO read the generalist dot com. You should follow a shoe on twitter. He should entertaining if you like. Tonight you're in for a treat on the internet. Thank you.

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All right, ready for act to ever act to a story. And I think most of you know, but that we have not yet told on the main feed of acquired itself. And that is why comminatory specifically tonight we're going to tell part two of the yc story.

I think most people know about why he's accelerate or business that produced airbnb, dropbox, stripe, break, friends of the show, modern treasury, vouch, vanka came out of the accelerator business. But most people don't realize that. That is only one half of what I see is today.

There are also one of the biggest and most active late stage growth investors in the valley, and they've ve deployed literally billions of dollars into serious bcd rounds startups, both Y, C. Alumni and non yc alumina alike, over the past several years. Tonight, we have a new harden in the managing partner of this continuity fund, which leads all of these late stage investments here to tell the story with us. Honors had an amazing career. SHE went from a junior engineering cocom great semiconductor company to partners and recent to now running yc, continue where serves on the boards of bricks, local fain favor, convoy, who fair manzo gusta revenue cat rapper, and vote .

and vote.

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome on you, Harry harn.

Well, give you we.

We got to some shoes. So great.

good to have pick you. Thank you for having me.

I don't if you notice what we pick that just for you.

I don't know who can .

save antons of skill just so pp my hand, I think the lead singer of train, I was a little band. I think he wrote that song because he moved up here to seattle. The honors .

for shadowing you, yes.

when I see is ready to move up seattle.

I think. But I see right now is remote first. So we all live in san Francesco, but we don't have in an office.

So the mountain view.

we own the mountain view ability. We have that. But since the pandemic, all our batches have been fully wow. So there is no requirement .

IT used to me before the pandemic, no matter where you are in the world, you had to come to mountain.

Yes, that's not being true for the last three years. Um and we have learned to do everything remote. We always read applications online, but we learn how to do interviews remote.

That was strange for us because we believe in bringing everyone too bound to you for the interview. And we had to learn how to test for that on zoo. And then we also learned how to run the batch on zoom, and we learned how to do a demode on zoo m.

and this is the new Normal going forward.

This is the new Normal going forward, except there will be two weeks for the new batch. IT has not yet been announced, but there will be a little bit of mix of in person as well as you know largely remote. But going remote really helps us fifty percent of our batches. international.

Wow, what's the application deadline for the, the deadline has passed.

but we are still accepting applications. Y, C always accepts, even made up.

Y, C, that comes slash acquired.

Get your great, great, our friend.

Not a really.

You are all right.

So wait, let me let me kick us off here with just like a very let's dive write in. We wanted ask you what is why c continuity? But in a very mechanical way, like literally, what is yc continuity? Is IT a fund? Is that a set of funds?

It's a you know, it's literally the word continue. So the way IT was formed, a lot of our founders, the alan night, came and said, hey, you took us through the twelve week program. This is really why we started a company.

IT would be so cool if vici can continue to support us in the form of investment and in the form of programs down the line, too. Where do you stop at the accelerator? And so that's really how we came up with the community.

So IT is a multi stage fund. We uh pretty much to primarily the growth stage cds b and above. Uh, we have invested in a primarily vici companies.

Actually, we double down in yc companies. We our goal is to be partner a lifelong partner for all the enduring companies in Y C. To the extent possible.

We also do a tremendous amount of post patch programing. So people don't notice if you go through Y C. Today, you get ten times more what you got in two thousand and twelve but or two thousand fourteen batch.

So we run three programs in community. We run the cda program. We help you how to teach and teach you how to raise the cda. So we work with you on pitch tax, how to negotiate terms. She's how to identify investors .

then and that happens yeah after well after the bat.

Usually the city most companies race cra two three years after the back, very few race during the batch. So we we pretty much helped them nine months, six to nine months before they raised a we sit done with them and say, are you ready to raise the cdc? I do you really have metrics that are that you need to see for the typical cities investor how to put the pitch deck together.

We run workshops for how to help you raise the cities, how to identify all the prep work. And we have, you know why they answer, what's that? I don't if you guys .

know that did not .

know that we have around four thousand companies in more than eight thousand, five hundred and nine. So literally every morning my ford is buzzing because I had so many what side groups anyone been that?

So so we actually can vouch for this listener. So you're on the board of revenue cat. So we are doing our diligence and we text to jack. And because jake fellow hio staun, and he actually was that our very first acquired meet up in several cisco. And I was like, we'll tell me about some stuff without you and he was talking about how you whats up him. I don't know exactly how much as that I can share, but that you proactively were WhatsApp him before around was coming together to tell him you were considering an investment.

yes. So we actually know our founders from day one, right? Y, C is one team.

So even though continue was launched seven years ago by the, you know, I see itself for seventeen years old, but we are one team. So we actually know the companies through the batch. So I knew jack up in the revenue, for example.

I think even at the time of demode, when he was strong to fight out which investors to work with, he had reached out to us to say, hey, how should I think about this? You know, whether to raise from seed and investors, the cdc? And then he went through the cdc programs and that's how we held them.

Figure out you know how to um which partner to go with. He decided to go with index. Behind the scenes we had actually helped him a tague with how to pitch, how to negotiate the term sheet and all of that. So by the time I usually say by the time we are investing, i'm not waiting for the founders to come tell me i'm fundraising.

what it's kind of like. I mean, you acquired husband and invest, not acquired. Y combinator has been an investor in these companies for years.

At this point. Before continuity started was, why were there any lake experiments in doing investing after the seed stage before continue? Or was continuity the .

beginning of the was the beginning partners always invested in companies that graduated from demode. So and i'll give you an example, a lot of people may not know this, but coin base, which was the idea winner, did not get any money. Or I think he got to twenty to thirty percent of his ideal goal on demoted, right? He ent went out and said, I want to raise some one hundred and fifty eight only thirty percent of their .

own but felt oh .

my good quality so because no one understood bit going at the time, but our early stage partners have worked with these founders for twelve weeks. So they're not picking uh company. So they don't go by idea. They are going by who are the most earn est founders that I want to give them a shot to built. And so quite a few of the VC partners helped fill bryans round so that he can go back the ability initialize .

being one of them A I remember right.

one thing. So god, in fact, lost the one that accepted brian into the batch. But that was the culture in vy. Before continuing ity, IT was more of the partnership helping out the founders.

individual investors. There was no Y, C, follow on capital. There was individual, this build those relationship .

the first time there was follow on capital.

wow.

So who how did the this idea come together? I mean, it's sort of obvious now. And you say all these things thinking back to IT was twenty fifteen .

and twenty .

fifteen when continue was started, the idea of raising a fund growth funder, my combatted, most people would have thought that was crazy, least of how did this happen.

More people would have been skeptical and been like, then we're picking winners.

yes. So I think that at that time, because growth grow stage, capital itself was frown upon, right? Remember the editor was, you need to go public.

You know what? The late stage investors are just throwing catch. They were really like, I think, less than ten people who could write hundred million dollar checks there. And so but what you saw was there are less than ten funds that could write hundred million dollar checks, but the median time to IPO, can you guess what?

IT was two thousand and fifteen, eleven years, eleven years.

And so Y, C. Alam came to Y, C. A partners often and said, I, you know, you train a sowell a demo to and you teaches how to raise and like then we are in the woods, right and we tell us on us it's never going to be as easy and demonic.

It's yeah like the pier mid has widened. It's still a pier mid but I thought about daily back then yet there were, I don't know, less than number of investors. You could count in two hands that they were writing hundred million that checks. And so feel like I can go public, but I need one hundred million dollars plus to find out this stage of growth in my company. You it's a supply demand equation.

And so he was primarily that. But I think vice mission has always been how do we support our founders more? And right? Vice was learning through its remember, like seven years ago was when drop box had raised in the stage private room.

So I see itself was learning, what are its companies going through? when? When do they get help with us? When do they not? So we saw an opportunity. We saw that these companies still need help. And they, you and we are in A A great place in an amazing platform that really could do to pg and Jessica on how they built IT by second place, a significant role. And you know, one of the things that people don't understand, and I didn't I was there and recent Howards before, right, is the yc founder never views yc as an investor.

You right .

at the parent. So what does that mean? Any time the company is going through any issue, five years after they would ve graduated, they will first come to their voice partner.

They don't have to talk every quarter. They don't have to talk every month. They may not even talk for a year, but they would reach out of the partner and say, I need urgent.

There's an urgent issue. I need you for five minutes. I need you to help such this .

does unity change that relationship, knowing that you are available capital now?

Now I mean, this worked very hard not to change that. So IT goes back to our mission. If you ask venture funds, most of the emission statements are want to own ten to fifteen or twenty percent of the best companies. Our mission statement delivery berates doesn't have that IT is we want to help more founders start companies and more founders but enduring companies. So what that means is there are many times um we may offer term sheet and they would say out of you, we would.

Want Y C this round and we would like Y C in the next round because you're already in the capable and we will respect that you because it's one day we we don't say, oh, you know, let's play all the tactics s that we need to play in the close process. But we also know that if we really helps them and earn the trust, we will earn the right to win. Yeah and so we often internally have a saying that you have to earn the right to IT and as long as it's the right decision for the company, sometimes with the right partners, sometimes we are in and we have to be honest about that for us, VC company is succeeding is more important than what the returns of our fans are. But if we do right by them, we know that we can have incredible returns. History has shown that.

How do you structure the partnership? Like is r yc partners one big pool that sort of comprise one investment committee across accepting into the accelerator making growth investments? Or is IT more like a couple people? Are yc continuity and then a handful of people are the accelerator partners making those admission decisions?

Yeah so the early stage has group partners that run the groups. And on community it's alieni ally organic um who was the pharmacy of twitter and pixar and C F of pixar. So we both run the con unified.

So on the on the early change, it's only one group partner needs to say yes, then the companies accepted into the bats, so they apply. We shot this a bunch of them and they go through the interview process. But as long as one group partner said as strong, yes, I really need them in the batch.

They're accepted. Now remember, the group partner is taking them and working with them for twelve weeks. So if they picked if they didn't take the right team, the feedback loop is really fast.

So they learn and they evolved for the next pge, right? So that's kind of why we went with the model of one years is enough on continuity. It's a three people investing team investment coming. So it's just me, ali, and one early stage vote in case ali and I don't agree, but it's primarily the community decision.

fascinating. And one other question, just to help sort of frame up the continuity Operations. You're not a very high velocity investor that the continue fund, I think, only does a handful of deals a quarter, maybe like leads to three investments a quarter. yes.

So we've done thirty five investments in seven years.

Wow, I was so even less than I thought you.

And we have three thousand five hundred companies that have gone to vices. So we've done less than one percent. Now it's for two reasons. We were. So we pretty much just start up with the so when we first launched, we were holding our investment strategy.

What's right and what makes sense for the broader VC, right? And then I would say we've always been under capitalize relative to the success of Y, C. Company, and we are changing that. But every time we changed that, the bad size grows and they're more successful.

I mean, why is just had a ridiculous track record? If you look at the i'm sure they're some vanity staff that you know off the top, your head is IT like total combined market cap of all I C companies.

It's on the pitcher ook well out there.

What is IT?

Actually all of a five hundred billion .

pitch book has six hundred billion.

six hundred billion dollars a yeah. So I think no matter how much capital you raise, you're probably always going to feel like you're yeah.

we always read the cabalistic also. We do global, right? Our entire team is sitting in differences go. But we have investments in india. We have three investments in india.

In fact, the top three breakout companies in india the last two years, all yc ww, we have investments in london, we have investments in latter, we we have investments in middle east. So we because for us, it's about enable entrepreneurship globally. That's the mission and continuity needs .

to support the so you said the continue is the start up within the this is crazy. Me that I see is seventeen years old. I mean, guess that's true, but like that makes me feel really old in my head.

Is still like an innovation in the venture .

capital landscape. And the problem says more about the venture capital landscape.

Well, that's why we have a new tag eline that I see. Mom, how many of you heard that?

We hear noise about that?

We have never thought of the mob, but I was like, oh.

we were the VC bob.

What it's like? I used to be on the other side of this because I cause I used to compete with yc leading seed rounds and the number of VC firms throughout the whole life of Y. C.

That talk about yc often in, you know, negative terms. Can you believe what they're doing? Can you believe how many companies they are taking? Can you believe they're in investing now? It's like it's just like the endresen story that we told. You know, if your name is on your competitors lips, you're winning IT doesn't matter. So you're waiting IT is so true.

I I I mean, I also think it's really hard to understand and appreciate an organization like Y, C. From the outside, you really deeply understand why. C, only two ways, if you're a VC founder and if you work with ice.

And I mean outside, when I was at and recent horror, I actually did not understand the depth and the cultural nuances with which Y C. Was built. And it's really hard to grass that can we talk .

about that I would like. So I put this in the, in the notes. My current mental model of yc is like a university, a top called an ivy university. It's very hard to get into you take classes you know every year, every six months um there's an endowment attach to IT, which is community now.

And way, way, David, what do you mean by enduring? I want to are you saying that all of the proceeds from yc exerts go into a big pool of capital that then funds continuity? Is that what you're suggesting by endowments? Ment.

no, but i'm curious if that's the case. I was I meant more just like it's really weird that a large part of the private capital markets and the venture capital markets in america, those dollars come from educational institutions, mostly private educational institutions. That is very bizarre. But anyway, that's kind of what I meant. Is that a good mental model?

Is that we say VS university for startup s. So think of the accelerator as the undergraduate program and communities, the graduate school, and we are modeled after university in the sense of we have applications you don't need to know anyone to apply that I see, right? Second, we were the first to do mass production of investments in a batch of starts.

No one had ever done that. Everyone, usually I met a set of companies. We have a monday partner meeting and you pick monedo, right? And vici from dayan was a batch.

They always received investments together. And that, I think, goes to the insight that the founders of vi had at the time, which was, entrepreneurship is lonely. Being in a group is how you motivate each other to learn from each other, and that's your peer group.

And so so fundamentally, IT came from the approach of the university, and conney is graduate as well as I talk to about, like city is just one of the programs we are. We have two others post and growth post day focuses on two months within. You raised the cdc.

There's a six week program. Will we batched you? So now you have a new set of peers, and our scale farms come teach how to form at recruiting team, how to hire engineers because your job changes as A C E. O. And no one is writing a book about how your job changes and how to learn and remember the median age of a VC funders to seven, which means they have probably managed to some total of three people in their life before they founded.

They really like.

so you cannot expect them to know. So how are you going to provide resources so that they do they can learn from others, and they do as few mistakes as possible and as quickly as possible because we are scaling. You just gone a rocky shit.

But the amount you demand out of these founders is a lot. And their ability you will learn in four years is, I mean, the bar, your setting is really high, right? And so in our community, that's why, like branch jokey comes to speak, every body body is the opening speaker of every batch, everybody.

And right now, uh, for all these programs that we run, the grow program is how to scale as a seal. That's literally the program. It's a eight week session.

IT talks about hiring exact performance management culture and so on. And we have scaled funders and scaled exact like tony two comes for that he exists the CFO of dorg, the heads of engineering of doras. They come for the respective session. So it's really good to see the entire community working transfer their learnings to the next batch of companies.

I actually want to ask a thing that I, for some reason, asked David, even though I Price should have asked you when a company exits or has a liquidity event such as airbnb, what is yc do with that liquidity and is Y C and L L P in itself for future community funds?

So right now it's set up just like any other funds right to we have an incredible uh helps primarily university and dams because our mission is more university oriented. So the structure is very similar to other funds. And I think that's a new change for voices in two thousand and fifteen because when Y, C. Was started, this model was improved. So IT was actually self funded by the founders.

yeah. okay. So self funded by the founders, I know. So oil was involved at one point putting up capital, and I think that was the capital invested in two batches for, I know, five five years.

years yeah. So I think the different people there are quite a few elped that came in on a batch basis. Remember the first check in VC, the first batch was twenty thousand.

I know of my gosh.

So in your self funding, something that help you stop, right? And so but then when we asked, ask, time progressed. And when we asked carrots to come to san Frances go, you know, they needed released one hundred to one twenty five k given all the inflation, even if they wanted to stay, in my view, for a period of time. So that's when we brought in, you know, L P, S, based on a batch so that if they could pretty much fill the rest of the gap, that why he was not able.

And so is that still how that works as each batch and each community fund has its own set of l pes, that you go on an individual sort of. Fund raising mission for that specific vehicle?

yes. So what we have only stage fund as well as the late stage funds, and we have pretty much the same set of piece across both funds and asked with because our ambition is to grow the batch. And why is that? Because we actually, you know, we want to keep the bar high, and it's not that.

And when we say the bar high IT is we want the founders to be working on the right problems, not the wrong products. There are amazing founders, but if they're working on a problem because it's following a hype cycle and it's not a unique inside, then accepting them. We are doing a service to them because they're decided to stop doing whatever they're doing to work on this.

But we're not like an ivy league institution that thinks that the bad size has to be only like you know, princeton probably has a fixed class size that doesn't grow. We don't want to be that because we think there are incredible founders everywhere. And if we have a chance to give them that first opportunity, and that really opens up doors for them, we bound to be able to do that.

So we could see batch sizes of thousand, two thousand Y.

C companies in the future. So are great idea as if there are if our application volume keeps going up and if there are that many really good applications, we need to learn how to scape.

I mean, it's not your already approaching the scale where .

you like a liberal .

arts college at this point, like where you're graduating number of companies every .

our acceptance way to still below three percent. But yes, act of this rate or was only decreased. But I mean, I think this is why I think it's very hard to compare why they do adventure fun because if you look at the types of opportunities we've given people in different parts of the world, yes, they would not have stood a chance anywhere else.

That was true for airbnb. That was true for coin base. That was true for dora h. One of the partners at Y, C. Kept funding data because nobody believed in. The idea was the third food delivery started that came out when they came and will be.

say.

IT was the first. I mean, he was a laid application he applied one week after the batch. And we have pretty much like the bad started. And but I think like that's why it's such a powerful and missionary into organization. And you know it's very different.

Well, maybe maybe that's good place to wrap. We talk about powers and acquired. We can speculate a lot. And I think we've probably have on the show about wise's power have very, very pointed time. But love, you know, you're in IT.

What do you what do you think why se's power is soto in the hamilton hammer sense of like enables why I see to enable to earn different, different, different to returns versus your competitors in the ventures he goes system is the traditional VC power is brand. But IT feels I get something else with I C. yeah.

I think brand also comes much later, right? Unless you you know you can either get brand because you have a lot of things you will build before and you watched or you just launch something. And IT takes, I mean, just the way you all started, a quiet IT takes in the amount of time to table run.

It's never a overnight success at Y. C. I would say if I had to pick one thing why is really good at across both early and continuity is we go by based on founders.

And I know this sounds cliche, but I think we also have an incredible advantage in assessing what makes a founder really good founder. And we have incredible about of data and pattern recognition and learning. We have honed IT to a point that we know to spot them.

You know you all, i've heard of the famous ten minutes by seeing to you, and everyone asked, how do you know in ten minutes? The fact is we probably know in the first two minutes, so we actually don't need the full ten minutes. So but you know, sometimes one of people were surprised by the end of the interview. And I think the three things I can articulate what IT is on the fan we look for.

One is um at the continue stage, right often on the growth stage, people I think pay attention to the fund, but they don't like if you are at adventure fund or a growth fund, you probably hang out with the founder for a week or two weeks before the investment, some total of three hours by the time continue to invest. I probably know them for years a month and I had a lot of interaction. So you're .

saying that you're paying attention more to the quality native founder properties even at the growth stage, then you are to their specific growth rate or know what their margins look like or anything like that?

yes. But you know if the three qualities hold, the metrics will show.

I can either .

look at metrics, but sometimes metrics s don't tell you how good the internal sausage making is. Yeah right? And many people can package the metrics s and a under y's deck.

It's very well that I mean to teach you to do IT on that. So we are the expert so so therefore we know it's gonna look great, right? So we also teach them how what points to emphasize on.

We actually do practice runs. We write in demode. We actually even write this scrip sometimes. So we know .

that's how can I help .

me but yeah and so what we look for us, how fast does the founder move, what is how fast do they move mean how fast do they ship, how fast do they iterate is the single biggest indicator and coral lation to how successful they're going to be, how soon? Because you won't be right about me more as many decisions early on, but at least are you learning from them fast and are you making changes? So that's one we measure. Second of the world, see just how well are you hiding?

And if you're .

slop in hiding, IT always hits a lot. So one of the things we look for as how well are they hiding engineers, how well are they hiding exact? Will they be able to convince an incredible except to come join them, right?

That second and third is clarity of talk, clarity of thought in the great stage for us is, are they can they write out two pages? What makes this a five billion or a ten billion dollar company really well? And if you're doing those three things, you're going to be on top of your matrix to your product market faith in your attention.

I'll be rough adjust. But I think because of that, we've had the benefit of watching everyone from day one. We know how tony scaled.

We know deeply well how judge had got to scale. Uh, so we know a lot of those founders. So we then know okay are okay, know these are if .

you're girth investor looking at these companies new, you're like I I know that this is all going great, but you know those companies don't always always go great. Like tony had some serious near her death moment. Airbnb was not a up into the .

right journey. To summarize, I know this is warn reviewing you, not me here, but IT seems like you invest based on the inputs rather than the outputs or maybe the leading indicators rather than the trAiling indicators, where if somebody is Operating with those three principles, the business probably won't consistently produce the results that someone would like to look for in a growth stage investment. But they they have a much higher probability and at a given time of producing high quality results because those are the inputs that matter.

Yes, absolutely. And that's kind of why we feel strongly that inputs can be influenced, right? If you're learning best practices and those are your inputs here, then you can actually influences company building. So when tony comes and teachers our growth program and says this one, my darkness women, these are my mistakes I made, and I sure hope you don't make this day, but these are two things I did really well. That's incredibly .

valuable yeah .

and so that that color is very hard to get outside of .

a yeah all right. As we want to a close, long time listeners know there's a way that we need to close this and that's grading. And with these episodes where we're covering a company in flight, the only real way to grade IT is to try and forecast future pads s that could happen.

So I know i'm curious in your mind paying us the a plus, the c and the f for Y, C, A decade from now. And let's start with if because I think it's interesting like why he is so dominant. How could the whole thing .

go up in flames at this point? I think why he is the only platform that are strong network effects. And as all network effects have shown, if if we mess up the VC community, that that is that is because it's we are we have this platform only because of the VC founders and there are community values.

I mean, we have written down community values. We have an internal book face, we have an etic code, I mean, name one. We see fund that has all that.

So that's why we don't look like a venture fund. So for us, as long as we do right by the community will be good. But if if you in, I know, network affects the a very powerful, but they also desolate very fast. But if if we do any mistake with the community, then that would be the .

f it's almost like Operating leverage, like community. A heavily community dependent business is just heavily levered.

IT reminds me of acquired our community .

exit up.

absolutely.

This is an amazing group that you have and like, congratulations from where how far you have come.

But we feel the same way. It's like it's so amazing, but that that is our fear, like we nurturing the community and keeping IT. The amazing thing that IT is is, is the number of one thing. Yeah, we do okay.

but you the sea boring. So we want to cover IT, but I want to a plus. Like give me the b egg for Y, C. From here, like how do you change multiple orders of bagging de from where you are? Or do you .

want to b or the a.

the a what's .

the a yeah.

we definitely want to. We want to be our mission is to be the partner of the companies for the life of the companies. And cornuta would say, has only strengthen the vici community because before they would reach out whenever they wanted help or once in a while. But now we have a full machine all the way to IPO, and we have programing, as I talked about, and it's really garden the community super clothes. And so I mean, as I said, we are highly under capitalized for the success of this company .

is when you say all the weight IPO. So as IPO, the end. Ten years from now, is there a yc post IPO component .

maybe right? We already have both type. We already have. So it's so funny. So we had the we had we started with the growth program, which was just A C O. Scary program.

The post day companies were like, what we need a program and so we said, OK, we did the post day program. Now are companies have come and said we need A P, I, T, O program. Yeah, you got to get airbnb and kind ways to complete just this free ipu. And i'm sure soon they'll like up.

But it's the magic moment. And tei and ran armstrongs and tony don't have .

problems anymore. We've see it's as .

hard as IT gets. IT never gets easier. I mean, you do IT so many times that you get Better and Better at the job, but you have other questions.

So asking, you need to be a group for IT. Yeah right. So I think our ambition is how do we scale Y C.

To support more amazing companies and to especially also do IT globally. Yeah, because where I think the remote world will show us that companies can come from anywhere. We already see that a lot of btb startups are based outside the us.

But these service U. S. Customers, I mean, i'm sure you all ever heard of deal and alex lives in israel, right? So why he has to learn scale globally because talent is everywhere .

that IT is. Oh, thank you so much.

Thank you for having me.

Thank you.

We want to think our long time friend of the show, venta, the leading trust management platform, venta, of course, automate your security reviews and compliance efforts. So frameworks like soc two I saw twenty seven o one gdpr and hip compliance modeling ing vent to takes care of these otherwise incredibly time and resort training efforts for your organza and makes them fast and simple.

Yeah, fanta is the perfect example of the quote that we talk about all the time here and acquired jeff basis, this idea that the 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 does IT. 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 add zero flavor to your actual product that IT .

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And thanks to friend of the show, Christina anta CEO, all acquired listeners get a thousand dollars of free credit venta come slash acquired our next epo de will be the part two of the arena with jim weber, the C. E. O of Brooks.

I mean, I was just listening back to the segment this morning and uh the truly an unbelievable business growing from like twenty to thirty million and revenue two decades ago to a clearing over a billion dollar ars in revenue last year. Party bircher half away deep personal relationship with warm buffet purpose driven brand. There's a somebody great things about the story.

Ah jm is so wonderful, we realized we had to make IT its own episode.

yes. So we will be launching that in a couple days and we really wanted to give at the space that IT deserves. So if you aren't the acquired, like you should come join the eleven thousand other smart creative members of the acquired community there. Our thanks also to pitch book their whole team.

Oh my god, this was such a life experience. Oh, whoever what I thought seven years ago that acquired would be doing this. There were forty four .

people on and off the stage involved in the production of that event. So too many to think, but definitely the pitch book team came out in full force to put IT on. We're super excited to share the gym story with you and the story of Brooks and what we will be doing that in a few days here. And listeners, we'll see next time will .

see you for the reno show. Part two. Easy you, easy you, busy you who got the true.