00:00:01 [Music] moving the needle on founder failure one conversation at a time i'm your host lucas poles and welcome to startup 2.0 by spark xyz join us each week as we give you access to some of the top investors and entrepreneurs around the country to help you think through and overcome some of the top challenges that start-ups i think there's no better place in the country to be investing than los angeles what is the problem that you're solving and for who like what is that specific pain point sometimes when a company is not

00:00:31 listening to its customers and just thinks it knows better than it customers has a really really hard time finding product market fit i want to see somebody that that isn't gonna stop you know this person you just feel like they're gonna they're gonna they're gonna make it work [Music] a big heartfelt thank you to brex who without their support this show would not be possible we've seen firsthand the difficulties accessing basic corporate credit without providing a security deposit or personal guarantee early on

00:01:04 as companies grow managing expenses has become more difficult and time consuming which is why we've partnered with brex to offer a corporate credit card that is not personally guaranteed offers higher credit limits provides auto reconciliation and integrates with erps using receipt capture brex is the credit card of the start ecosystem and we highly encourage you to check them out andrea welcome to the show great to be here lucas thank you for having me really exciting to uh to have you on uh really looking forward to finding out

00:01:34 more about the new accelerator in long beach uh wild that you started an accelerator in the middle of covid so hats off to you but let's uh let's dive into it uh why don't you start off by giving us uh a quick uh high level overview of uh of the laundry long beach accelerator yeah absolutely and um i mean what better time really to start an accelerator actually um we need to create a lot of economic resilience and and get ourselves out of this this um economic downturn so accelerators are can be a big piece of

00:02:13 that um so we're we're excited to do that right now particularly and because of who we are and where we're located we focus on pre-seed stage companies and places that i'm sorry industries and sectors that is health tech supply chain and logistics and blue tech green tech and clean tech tech and cyber security and we do consider other um sectors and industries but we need to make sure obviously that we have access to those resources we really want to add a lot of value to the companies that come in obviously

00:03:00 and um and so you know we're a lot of high-tech b2b but um we definitely have other resources that we can bring in and and help grow these companies nice super exciting um yeah you're very much right we're gonna need a lot of help uh to get through uh the current market uh turbulence and uh uh out of all the uh typical startups uh generally some of the most successful ones are actually uh born in the middle of uh i don't know chaos or market recession so uh definitely hats off to you so uh let's walk through it so

00:03:38 what uh uh what kind of is your investment thesis what are you kind of looking for for portfolio companies um who's who's your kind of bread and butter yeah we're a new accelerator our first cohort is starting in february 2021 the application process is open right now as we speak but our investment thesis is still a bit in development but the big themes are really the industries that we just talked about we're also really dying into underrepresented founders um and giving individualized attention

00:04:12 and then we have a focus on building relationships for our startups that turn into customers nice very exciting um cool so uh how did you guys ended up end up starting uh i mean yeah it's the it's a general question of uh yeah uh you launched now but when did you maybe when did the plan start uh coming into effect and what made uh long beach itself want to kind of jump into this uh in this arena yeah this is a you know something like this doesn't come together overnight but a lot of times it does come together

00:04:50 with some stars aligning right and some fortuitous meetings between people and that's definitely the case here in 2015 the city of long beach drafted their economic blueprint which identified some great assets in the city of long beach including its globally important tech industries the engineering workforce the excellent lifestyle that we all know about here in southern california proximity and access to all of southern california and the global markets that we have here and an important way for southern california affordability

00:05:27 then they also identified some gaps in the startup ecosystem here including an accelerator so a few people that i mentioned john keisler of the economic development department in the city of long beach wade martin at cal state long beach and john shen of sunstone management which is a local bc firm formed a collaboration and then started up a separate nonprofit entity which became the long beach accelerator so we have a public private academic partnership that leverages all of those assets to fill a crucial part of the

00:06:02 startup ecosystem nice nah that's uh that's great and filling in a gap especially at the early stage i think uh helps entrepreneurs really take it uh take it to the next level a lot of them have challenges kind of starting out and so being able to add in that expertise and provide filling that gap is uh definitely a uh worth uh worthwhile uh cause um so let's walk through a little bit about due diligence so new accelerators so probably uh you've had investment experience before or found it yourself

00:06:40 um let's walk through maybe some of the uh maybe some of the red flags that stand out uh and when looking at applications yeah absolutely so yeah i am uh i have a seed stage investment fintech startup that i've been co-founding for the last couple of years and um you know a lot of experience in terms of selection and committee processes and things like that but um but we're still new and so yeah we are still building out what our process is and we'll be learning as we go about what types of companies apply

00:07:19 how we can best serve them and then creating efficiencies but generally we're looking for companies that are ready to build a beta with an idea uh we believe in we think we can add value to um most importantly a founder or founder team that is resilient and learns quickly awesome where what uh what what type of what type of teams are you looking for so i know that you're looking for underrepresented uh founders uh are you willing to take maybe a single uh a single founder it doesn't need to be co-founders

00:07:57 uh at the early stages let's dive into some of the details yeah we're definitely willing to take on single founders we think that we think we think a couple things about that one is that if we're really serious about um tapping into underrepresented founders their network might be smaller than than others and if we're expecting them to come in with full team that would be a barrier to entry that um that might not be necessary to throw up when um hopefully we'll be able to help them with some of those

00:08:38 um some of that access and um perhaps even help tap into um some co-founders so those we're you know we're focused on not putting up barriers that are unnecessary and that could inadvertently um you know sort of shoot our ourselves in the foot um in achieving our our diversity goals that's uh honestly it's a very good point a lot of people don't think about the unintentional barriers uh that exist within entrepreneurship and so being conscious of that i think is a very uh uh hats off to you honestly for uh thinking it through um

00:09:23 what about a team that does come in uh what if they're missing a couple pieces maybe the team is a little more homogeneous than you would like what uh is is that a big red flag or is it something that it's like hey it's something that maybe we can work with uh to find you those a couple of the pieces or those additional gaps yeah i think our accelerator is definitely focused on the earlier end of um acceleration and so we again still developing investment thesis and and a little bit of trial and error as we go

00:10:03 but we want to provide value where value is is most helpful um you know with it being a public private academic partnership the academic piece is is important um and and helps us think about things in in the way that um you know you don't you don't know what you don't know how how do you how do you build a company with all of the infinite number of of things that you need to know to build a tech company um until somebody sort of shows you and offers you the opportunity to get um gain that knowledge and and so

00:10:53 we we are again we don't think anything is going to change with if if we don't um kind of pull out those diamonds in the rough and enable everyone to have access to learning about how to build a tech business no uh yeah uh it's awesome um so instead maybe some of the red flags like what what is kind of your perfect company like what would make someone really stand out where you're like wow like i want to write a check to you yeah i think it's it's about creating a connection um there's there are many great ideas

00:11:37 that don't make it as a business and likewise there are initially marginal ideas that with the right adjustments do so what we want to see is is that resilience humanity flexibility and a bit of an obsession and you know those are the ways that you can stand out as an applicant and create that connection and help us understand that you as a founder or founding team understand that anything anything can happen in in startup world and usually does and it's about the ability to pull people in help them see what your

00:12:23 um what you want to do and really get on board to help you out with it because there it takes a whole team from you know founders are just the start of the team really but you have to be able to to sell that connection and obsession um to others and you know that needs to show in the application process that's awesome uh is there is there maybe any other way to because i mean pre-copied uh typically maybe you could go to an event or run into someone to try to make even more of like that kind of personal uh connection to to

00:13:00 have a better chance or a better conversation around it uh have you seen founders trying to to reach out now kind of individually maybe through social media or through linkedin to try to have those type of conversations and uh how effective has that been or is it more very much driven through just the application process i i think it's effective um i think it's effective and important for startups to show that initiative and there's obviously a fine line between um you know reaching out and and trying to

00:13:42 make a connection versus you know a little too much a little over the top but um you know i think that even in just the application process um if if you're not actively looking at what whether it's the long beach accelerator or any other accelerator or source of funding um if you're not actively trying to understand what that um accelerator can do to add value to your company then and you're not showing that you understand what they do best in your application then that creates less of a connection so it's it's really

00:14:24 you know can be part of the application process itself even remotely even without that in-person um connection it's showing that understanding of what the value is we can add because we want to add value to you and and if we can't there's no point on on either side yeah no i mean that it's generally the main point kind of of the accelerator i feel like a lot of people forget that it says it's our your entire focus is to kind of take those startups to the next level through the program through the

00:15:00 conversations um so yeah uh very cool um let's talk about uh maybe some of the challenges that founders are going to run into early on so your goal is to add value and to maybe help them not make some of these mistakes so what are some of the biggest mistakes the founders end up making uh kind of very early on i'd say number one on that list is is spending too much money on building a product before they understand the market um there are really so many tools now out there that make it very inexpensive to do your

00:15:42 market research and mvps um that it it's it's a mistake i think to hire any sort of software team even if it's offshored offshore before you really really understand your market and and what you need to build um yeah it's you know one thing a personal um note is that it's important to soul search in um if you're in the software industry to see if if you're a software company um or not or and if if that bespoke software element is really necessary um you know if you're a services company enabled by software

00:16:31 then maybe you can um ultimately get by at least for a while with all of those different tools that are out there and of course that's somewhat different if you're in hardware for example in bio and pharma but but i think that is the main thing runway is so important and um and spending money before and and building a product before you understand the market is going to um really reduce two kinds of runways not just financial runway but also your you know you have a certain amount of um a go in in you as an entrepreneur and

00:17:17 um and and the longer it takes to get that mvp up and running and if you the more that you have to redo your product um then the more uh the more soul it sucks out of you so let's conserve that as well you hit on a lot of uh a lot of very good points uh within that um very much a believer in the uh in the testing the market prior to uh building something i see way too many entrepreneurs that are like uh oh i just need fifty thousand dollars a hundred thousand dollars i'm gonna build my product and then we're gonna get it

00:17:58 off the market and it's gonna just uh go gangbusters i'm like that that's that's not how it works but it's absolutely not how it works um it's tough to try to have those conversations with uh those founders like look there are so many other ways to go about attempting this to find your kind of niche in your beachhead market to be able to then expand out and you can test a lot of your theories very inexpensively like very very inexpensively even something you even something like hardware uh i've seen companies run kickstarter

00:18:33 campaigns that uh help validate that success to be like okay look we pulled in 150k off kickstarter for people who are willing to be early adopters and try this out even though we didn't even have a product and so yeah now kickstarter kickstarter is a really interesting tool from that perspective almost um different than what most people think of it as um it's it's a really interesting um uh proof of concept yeah strategy no i i think it's uh it's one of the best ways to be able to test the market and then if you're in a

00:19:09 services industry i i i tell founders this all the time i'm like just throw up a website i throw up a website and put a place where you can put in uh have a customer put in a credit card and uh just do a pre-order and see if you can actually get stuff going and if people are willing to actually put down a credit card like you you have a potential product that you can build on from there but uh i feel like there's a lot of just too many i don't know we uh from the from the academic standpoint the business model

00:19:48 canvas stuff uh we've been going around around with a couple people just around this idea of uh the entire business model canvas can be done literally through a website uh that you send out to see like instead of spending months to do it like look i don't know let me just test it okay show me your wireframes and uh let's get it let's get an offshore dev team and get us going oh gosh um awesome well yeah no very uh very good points uh from you uh especially on some of the biggest the biggest challenges that they face

00:20:32 um what what are maybe some of the reasons that you ultimately actually end up seeing them fail you've had you have a lot of experience in the ecosystem so what are some of the reasons that uh they just kind of didn't make it there i mean we talked a little bit about the the product orientation or building a product before having an actual market but maybe what are some of the other challenges yeah i think another big one is is that you have the wrong team and the team doesn't learn quickly enough um and that includes the

00:21:01 wrong team around the founders such as investors mentors um etc um a company really has to understand the connections between so many disparate business building pieces and all of them have to be aligned and and quickly um because like i mentioned before what happens is a team runs out of steam and that's you know moving quickly but with purpose matters it will take three to five years really to begin to see real traction um you know sort of mvp aside um but most founders will have at best two years of runway sort of mentally and

00:21:43 financially and and how do you bridge that gap do you have the tenacity to hang on with your fingernails to assess your burn rate to adjust to stay motivated to do the grind if you don't get funded those sorts of things i think that's a i think it's another very good point just especially on the timing that i don't think a lot of people realize how long uh the actual startup cycle takes even if you are successful uh that it's not like a oh it's a quick couple year type of thing like it is a is a long long grind

00:22:21 that you have to be prepared for mean i i know founders that uh that they just raised like a hundred million dollars he's been doing it for like seven years and he's like i'm just i'm done like i don't want to do this anymore like i've been doing this for seven years sure like very fortunate to have success but i am exhausted like i just i gotta get off this treadmill and i don't think that a lot of founders like think through that that uh the time that this is gonna take because especially i think the younger

00:22:56 generations will jump through uh around the jobs a lot more often than uh our predecessors and don't understand that a startup is not a uh a quick kind of uh couple year uh run through so i would say yeah i think i i don't know if you saw the um the article that the founder of barometrics just put out um i think that's a really interesting one because it's exactly it seems where where he was at with the company seven years in um you know in revenue profitable and just out of steam and and sold the company yeah that

00:23:42 really makes sense i mean at a certain point you have to you have to get out one way or the other and so now very uh very true so so let's jump back into one of your earlier points with the team so surrounding the team with good people what is kind of the uh ideal team and what are some of maybe the issues that you see running through uh within the actual team like maybe co-founder conflicts or where those might end up arising yeah i mean the team is yeah like you say it's crucial and i don't i i think we don't necessarily

00:24:23 see different problems with team members than than we typically see in a business or your team members in life really um it could be obstinance it could be hesitant it could be blind spots insecurity low eq um or a tendency to focus on what we know and like best but for the founders of companies those characteristics are on display for all to see um it took me a long time to sort of learn that's what it means when somebody says um you're putting yourself out there right um you're putting out yourself out there

00:25:04 and everything that you say and do has the potential to be amplified and that can have positive and negative consequences but um but of course if you know that you have negative characteristics you're gonna underperform relative to potential um so i think having a proactive practice of reflection feedback good communication self-care and conscious habit forming are essential and making sure that all of your team members are engaged and engaging actively doing team building stuff you know it's um

00:25:48 really important to step back from the the product building the business building to just connecting with your team i think it's really good uh great points in there so i think one of them one of my favorites is the uh is the reflection piece uh simply because founders are constantly on that grind that the mouse wheel the treadmill whatever you want to call it um and taking that kind of time to reflect and and take like a day or two and just breathe because i feel like especially as founders that

00:26:25 a lot of your it gives you time to digest all of the information you've kind of run through and it can spur new uh ideas that maybe you wouldn't have thought through if you didn't take that kind of pause um really like the team building stuff because i it's a yeah it's a challenge i think sometimes with uh with some founders in that if they haven't maybe worked at maybe a large corporate before they haven't been through this before that it's hard to understand kind of the hierarchy and how to get people

00:26:59 to uh to buy into uh the idea of the team and working together and servant leadership all that fun stuff and so uh doing team building exercises and bringing them closer will actually increase your productivity uh if you even if you take a day or two out uh to actually go and do it so um it's not something that i hear uh very often but it's a it's a very good point uh and it's and it's i mean it's it's important always but it's even more important now where we're all online and you can tend to get very

00:27:34 transactional with people um and it's really important to see your team as as humans yeah yeah no yeah it's very yeah especially right now i think my other favorite kind of point when there was the uh the sun is not talked about a lot because the who is public size constantly are the people who have low eq because they're uh probably more entertaining to watch but founders with high images just kind of the way that it works and so uh founders founders with high eq um i i don't think that it's talked

00:28:13 about enough even going back especially to the the team building pieces and having reflection on uh even building that team because it's like it's the ability to recognize where their shortcomings might be and not being defensive about it or being uh threatened by it but more like hey this is a place i'm missing i need to fill this gap how do i actually fill that so be more problem-solving and forward-thinking than uh kind of trying to hide uh deficiencies so i think that's a really another very

00:28:51 good point um awesome um uh so startup landscape uh so obviously it's changed a little bit in the last uh the last year uh future work obviously uh and ed tech definitely got a boost uh here in the last uh call it nine months um but what so uh because it's shifted so much what are maybe some of the places that you're kind of uh excited about looking at right now where do you think the kind of next wave is gonna come from yeah i'm i'm really fired up about uh the remote learning as you said ed tech

00:29:30 um in the sense that we have a great ability to pull entrepreneurs in who have typically been at a disadvantage whether that's demographically geographically whatever and not just entrepreneurs but other resources we can now pull globally and we always have been able to but since it's a necessity now um that's just sort of front and center and so we can source and learn and teach and build and sell from from anywhere at least um to start everything you know at least in part so we're able to uncover and

00:30:08 amplify new ideas that help build important things and um you know the builders of our future really need to reflect on diversity in our world in order to sort of fully consider and be proactive about both the potential and the ramifications of our innovations so you know the the wonderful part about this is you know sort of pragmatically and statistically um this all creates better performance for companies and uh ultimately our world nice yeah um no that's very exciting but uh it's uh it's honestly where we need

00:30:51 to need to go um so i guess jumping in off of that venture capital has been changing and it will always continue to evolve it's just kind of the way that it works because we live in the wawa west where there are really no rules we just kind of make it up as we go which is a wild a wild notion but how do you see it continuing to evolve uh in the coming years yeah i i i love the wild west analogy it's a space that i really like actually so um yeah and but i'm i'm a hopeful person um so i do see absolutely dc

00:31:35 more inclusivity even if our current trends are quite uneven and and even abysmal in an absolute way um excuse me so what i what i see though is as a massive consolidation at the vc and accelerator level driven by um sort of the market dynamics of performance and returns um and i also see better access at the lower end of the the vc food chain angels will have better options i think and and risk reducing diversification through online marketplaces and changing regulations even leading to better liquidity which will

00:32:19 lead to better um a virtual cycle sort of of of more capital i think excuse me there are so many angels on the sidelines right now because they've tried to put money into angel investing and it it hasn't worked out for them because they're they're doing it in a way that um you know doesn't doesn't necessarily adhere to the the best um practices of you know of investing and so there are a lot of them investing in their back own backyards they're investing in one to three companies per year is just

00:33:02 really i always say is a statistical recipe to fail in early stage investing um so yeah so i see new tools and new approaches um enabling better um angel investing more successful angel investing and um more capital coming into the early stage end of the market um and sort of reversing that trend of uh of the last few years of going up market really yeah i think it's a very interesting point that i think everyone's kind of moved up market uh from kind of early stage standpoint and then what's kind of filled that market

00:33:47 has been the incubators the accelerators the new venture studio model which is i've seen more venture studios pop up in the last year and a half that i can even count um and that's the good thing at least there's something filling the void a bit although you know the the rounds um for incubators and accelerators are smaller than typical angel rounds yeah well that's very true um so we'll let's switch gears a little bit so let's go back to uh the the idea of maybe on the other side of the table so

00:34:28 what should founders be so a founder is looking to jump into an incubator accelerator uh maybe take on investment what should they be looking for with uh bringing on a potential investor yeah i mean i think the the answer is is very similar whether it's you know they're at the accelerator level or the vc stage um although initially if you're at the accelerator level i think i think most companies most startups can gain something from an accelerator just because you're a small team you can't know everything and there are

00:35:16 so many things to know about building a business and a tech product so um on the vc side i don't think that bc is the answer for most entrepreneurs especially up front um i think bootstrapping is a viable and valuable way to build and realistically that's the way that most entrepreneurs the vast majority of entrepreneur entrepreneurs build and i think that's not well understood by um many entrepreneurs um not even a little bit uh everyone thinks that they have to go out and raise money and it's like you could just try

00:35:58 building it and just kind of scraping by and if you get some traction like you keep going and uh yeah i agree with that sediment very much yeah that's another another piece of the pendulum that hopefully will start swinging back um a little bit but um you know to the point of question specifically i think you know it boils down to finding an accelerator or vc that has relevance to you and your product and market um an accelerator of vc that's shown that they are proactive about helping you um i'm you know i come from

00:36:44 an operator background so i'm you know i i just think that um you know advisors are great but having somebody who's willing to roll up their sleeves and work in your business is um is is worth a lot at the end of the day and um it doesn't you know it doesn't have to be you know sort of look like another co-founder necessarily but somebody is going to do some work for you and shows that they and has shown that they will and have a track record of working for um entrepreneurs that they invest in and then and then connection i think

00:37:26 that's the other one so um if you are you have to have personalities that mesh your work and energies have to be additive to each other um and if they're not i think that's just um it's just going to burn a lot of a lot of time and energy for you both so um that's something that's that's right yeah no i like those uh i especially like the last one because i don't think it's talked about often enough uh is when you take an investment it it's like uh it's like a marriage like you're gonna be stuck with each other

00:38:04 for a long time um and the likability factor of being of having someone on your cat table like having horrid people on a cap table will suck like it's years years of just angst and unhappiness and i i really don't think people they they see that kind of finish line and the same thing happens with co-founders they see the finish line like oh my god i have one i can bring them on my team uh i'm drowning right now and so like uh someone's throwing me a life raft all i want to do is grab it but grabbing the wrong life raft

00:38:48 will end up sinking you anyways and to have the the wherewithal to be like no this is not the right one even though i'm literally drowning right now is uh can be tough especially from that discipline standpoint so uh i think you bring up a couple great points uh yeah right there it's it's hard to have perspective um when you're in the middle of something and um and and you know again it goes back to the previous question but of being able to really step back and reflect um and make make those decisions very very

00:39:34 slowly yeah no that's true uh so i appreciate that let's let's jump into a little bit uh more from the personal side so uh now during covet or uh when we get out now we finally have a fortunately a finish line of sometime next year maybe early 2022 but have a finish line um how do you typically spend your day prior and uh or during and post uh yeah um i'm trying not to think that far ahead it does seem like it's a way a ways off yet but um i i don't imagine my day-to-day changing all that much but i do hope to get back

00:40:29 to travel um yeah we'll be recruiting globally and and all of that stuff and you can do that um a lot of that online but there's nothing like some some face-to-face time um but anyway yeah my my typical day is up at five o'clock or 5 30 get a little workout some meditation in um on my good days um then i start breakfast and lunch for my eight-year-old he's um he's in a learning pod right now which is really helpful um he sort of uh is able to to help him not just be alone and i i love that um but still sort of limited kind of

00:41:18 interaction with with um other kids outside of the learning pod so at least he has that and um and they lean on each other and they're really getting close so this has been a fantastic experience um in some ways i'm just going on a tangent here but um really an interesting supplement or alternative to um typical school um i think there are a lot of positives that are coming out of that and just learning and understanding where he's at with um and what what education means these days as it's even changing quickly um has

00:41:58 been um fantastic for us to be more involved with as parents um but anyway so after i get him lunch and and uh and all that good stuff then and off to the pod then then i start work um and since i'm building two companies right now um and um i'm the only staff member for one of them i really have to heavily prioritize um i have to prioritize between the two companies and i have to um you know prioritize across the spectrum of wearing the many many hats that um startup founders do um from corporate

00:42:40 development to networking to product and program development to board management funding so many things so you have loads of free time is what i'm hearing like just a ton of free time to be able to just kind of hang about and do i don't mind hanging out but i don't like just hanging out much i'm just one of those people that really really likes to be busy you know i'm one of those people that even if i could retire wouldn't um and i don't know when i'll retire if ever um so it's it's uh it's good it's you know it gets

00:43:26 exhausting of course um like everyone else i get discouraged and then i have to pick myself up by my bootstraps and um you know talk to those people who help keep me energized and but yeah on the day-to-day um i'm i'm busy and happy very nice uh i think that's where a lot of where the uh having good people around you are coming to play with uh not just team members but advisors friends uh having that support circle because uh entrepreneurship is uh tough uh to say the least uh yeah no i think the support of people

00:44:12 in your life are important for everybody um we all rely on so many people to get anything done we don't even realize it you know just so many things we just couldn't get done if we didn't have other people um to help us out in big and small ways and um and we have to like 10x that for an entrepreneur who's trying to make their dent in the universe so um yeah that's a really really key piece of entrepreneurial life yeah very true well on that note uh uh andre where can working people reach you uh to get in

00:44:51 contact we're going to find your application all of that fun stuff yep so you can reach me at the accelerator the long beach accelerator the application is on at lb accelerator.org and um and you can reach me at andrea i'll be accelerator.org all right nice to get your email you know what i think i think it's out there i don't know i think that anybody can get any information that they want anywhere so i might as well put it out there well i truly appreciate you uh coming on the show uh look forward to a very successful uh

00:45:38 first cohort here in 2021 and uh congratulations again on the launch i appreciate that and um yeah i just appreciate our conversations very much you have a lot too a lot to share and um and i also wanna i also wanna plug spark xyz i know i don't have to ask you to do this i'm i'm not being paid for this but um it's been a great decision of the long beach accelerators to start using that and we're we're really seeing some traction from it so so thank you glad you enjoy it absolutely did not have to plug it but i appreciate it

00:46:19 nonetheless [Laughter] oh god awesome well thanks again look forward to having you on the show again sometime in the future and congrats thanks lucas all right