00:00:00 moving the needle on founder failure one conversation at a time I'm your host Justin Gordon and welcome to startup 2.0 by spark XYZ Duras each week as we give you access to some of the top investors and entrepreneurs in the country to help you think through and overcome the top challenges that startups face [Music] today's guest is mini Ingersoll who is a partner at 10 110 which is an early-stage venture capital firm located here in Los Angeles mini was also a product manager early on at Google and she hosts the LA venture

00:00:37 podcast mini welcome to the show and we're gonna start with is with talent ventures what areas is the firm can focus on with investing yes so depends what dimension you look at but we are early stage investors meaning we're writing checks sort of half a million two million dollar checks usually someone is actually raising a larger round so usually that's part of like a one and a half million dollar raise we tend to focus on the how we call it slightly nerdy our side of investing and usually investing in software tech enabled

00:01:11 businesses but for us it's not usually it's never really a like a consumer good it's something that we feel like we can understand and we're all software people so that's always easier for us to understand yeah that makes total sense and how many roughly investments are you making a year that's a good question I'm a little more than a dozen probably okay active and then too with that going a little bit deeper into that what is it your investment thesis yeah I mean just on the 12 it feels very active yes yeah

00:01:40 so we are generally funding engineers turned entrepreneurs so sort of bonus I mean we're investing where there's a tech tech is a moat yeah and kind of bonus points if data is a moat one of my partners Gil Elbaz he is really just deep in the data world that's a bonus but it's not like a requirement for us it's great entrepreneurs it's like everyone else it's great entrepreneurs and I think we all have a special fondness for great la entrepreneurs yeah of course of course begin all right now yeah exactly and then what does that due

00:02:20 diligence process look like for you it depends a lot and I'm relatively new to the investing side of things it starts with like a crazy deluge just this like pounding of amazing people and that's actually probably been the hardest thing for me is feeling I have sort of a I haven't been able to let go of this feeling that I have an obligation to reply to people who come reaching for advice yeah anyway so it starts with a deluge and so for people who don't necessarily get their email answered it's not because they don't have

00:02:58 something great going on it's just because there's a deluge and occasionally like I'm like I just want to like hang out with my kids tonight not do email yeah so usually one of us will get to know someone usually it's a 30-minute phone meeting after that it's usually either 45 minutes on video or an 45 minute in-person meeting usually still with just one of us and then if I've met with someone let's say once on the phone once in person then I'll bring in my other partners and really depending on what there is to diligence

00:03:33 the diligence could go different ways it's often talking to a customer we are usually investing when almost always there is a product in the market yeah usually that means we can talk to customers usually there are revenues as well attached to that product yeah is there any particular red flags in that process or kind of like a pretty much like that no or where are some of those things I mean there's there's both so they're both red flags and green flags if you will in a sense and sometimes there's red flags but I almost feel like

00:04:04 more often there's one of the green flag so it's it's less that there's something wrong with an idea but it's more going back to the the flood yeah it's more like having something rise above the other I mean there's lots of great things so it's just that some only a couple things can really rise above the others and so for me I can probably be diligence in like three to five companies at once yeah and beyond that I just can't do and even five is hard for me too to keep make sure I'm really actively digging in and

00:04:41 writing my investment memos and thinking about these things so so some of it is actually just like finding the green flags that are like the ones that really are hit you for whatever reason yeah and of course then what are some of those aspects of those green flags and what are the things like you're so excited about to invest in and what what are some of those things yeah I mean okay so VC's always say they invest in and let's make sure I got right team product and market okay great you can firm that

00:05:09 thank you so that's what VC say they invest in but like digging into that what does that mean so you know on the team front I think that a lot of good investing in investors have a relationship ahead of time so that kind of goes to this is someone or some team or something that you've been following so like yeah there there are there are a whole lot of things about like the timing of a raise and some of that is ideally I've actually been sort of following the team or the space at least for a number of months yeah and then

00:05:48 it's like now it's go time now we've actually hit some of those milestones now we're raising and so some of that for me like is you know helps when it's not like just a hey there's a random email that came in do you want to give us a million dollars yeah that's a much harder proposition yeah and then we're that to looking at so many different companies and you said you know some have the green flags like yes you want to go into that how are you monitoring or processing the companies that are maybe closed like maybe those next few

00:06:17 ones like how many of those are you kind of watching and it was it look like for you then you know I think it's actually a like decade-long multi decade process I think that the best VC's really have built that where it's a second time entrepreneur who they invested in the first time or this is someone who they saw at the pitch competition who's sort of stayed in touch and been sending updates or you know those sorts of things but you know what everyone's process is different and so I do think there's an aspect of

00:06:52 connecting on a human level and like it's a very weird thing for me I've been a founder for the past six years and before that I was a product manager and now I'm a VC and now all of a sudden it feels like people sort of talk to me different like as if it's a it's a I don't know as if like I walk off a panel and if you like in 30 seconds can tell me everything you're about your business like oh I'm going to spend all night like work I don't know like there's something that's just a human connection

00:07:23 to where connecting with the the founder and understanding why this is why they understand something they're gonna educate me on the thing that they know super well and I can understand why they're so passionate and they're not trying to like reverse engineer like what does many the VC think but just like this is my passion I am doing this thing I want to tell you about it you know people who come and ask for advice it's a tricky run right I guess but people who come and ask for advice as opposed to asking for million

00:07:59 dollars I think sometimes get slightly better results because they're realizing that it's you know it's a multi-step process a lot of times a better way to start that relationship to ask me for advice than asking for oh here's a million dollars gonna have that now and one thing you talk about too with having those like half hour meetings or 45 minute calls with these founders what are you asking or what are you trying to figure out in those in those calls those meetings some of it sometimes it's it

00:08:27 depends so depending on the person sometimes I'm like I can totally understand why this person is working on this thing and why this makes sense a sentence like they are solving a problem they've been experiencing I understand it but it's a small little thing and need this to be a billion dollar exit so then I'm really talking about what is the market what is the bigger vision and sometimes I'm like all sold on the market and I'm really trying to understand you know is this a person who came up with an idea or is this like

00:08:57 their life work like what they were meant to be doing sort of discussion an example that I was using I recently but it was like look my my child's daycare like their whole CRM system is completely broken they don't know like how I pay them how they attract people how they send out their announcing it's not just CRM but whatever it's all broken I need to solve this like I know how to solve it versus I own a dozen daycares I've been working on this I've built these tools myself that I've been using for ten years does a different

00:09:31 level of knowledge and passion about what you're building I mean and everyone has a bit of a founder story because everyone now knows they're supposed to have a founder story right but some just feel much more authentic to me than others yeah so you can tell that from those conversations you can figure that out yeah yeah I've been working on this in my basement and now I need to scale it so that I'm selling it to other daycares because I feel passionate everyone needs this thing yeah something something something along those like the

00:09:56 founders you're working with attend 110 obviously there so it's difficult to build a company to grow a company what are some of those challenges that you've seen the startups kind of face that you've worked with and how do you help them overcome those yeah I mean all sorts of different challenges I think one of the things is you know I'm trying to be a VC who who helps when asked yeah right and and so so kind of being sensitive to that the role we want to play everything from hiring so that's probably what I've done the most of most

00:10:31 of my job when I was running my own startup is I was mostly an executive recruiter yeah so I I feel like I can help on that sometimes it's the the thing that was most useful to me about having a board or which is sort of the VC role was VCS would question my assumptions like I'm so into something and I'm like knocking you know I'm running up against walls and sometimes VC would be like but do you really need to do that and then I'd be like oh I'm like so committed to solving this problem that maybe I don't need to solve

00:11:06 or something so I think feces can ask good questions yeah and I'm sometimes a better talker than I am question-asker but I think that one of my really good friends who sits on a lot of boards she said that she tried to challenge herself recently to go to a board meeting and only speak in questions only ask questions like legitimate questions or question marks right like actual question yeah which I really like that which is you know it's not really coming in and sharing my knowledge it's it's sort of asking

00:11:39 things and helping people think through problems differently and then obviously there's emotional support which is a big part of the process which is an interesting role because very few VCS I know are like trained therapists before becoming like usually they're coming for like investment banking which is not really like different maybe yeah I think it's it's sometimes a different mentality yeah I'm sure they obviously the company we're going to appreciate your perspective and especially cuz you

00:12:02 had that experience at being a founder as well and like even working at Google than for like twelve years as well yeah but you have a lot of experience to offer them yeah so the 90 years and then looking at the surface ooh I mean what are some of those reasons that startups like ultimately fail usually they run out of money and that that's a big one yeah not having enough money is hard and that's very constant for a lot of startups in all phases of startup life unless you're making money which is

00:12:35 always a good sort of startup to join I think there's all of the emotional stuff which is another real reason that startups fail you know I think fighting with co-founder type stuff is hard like and I tell this to like mostly my girlfriend's all over the time like when people come to me and say like whatever I'm my usual answer is relationships are hard yeah and that's that's all relationships that covers you know your mom yeah but working with people in really intense conditions is hard yeah so so sometimes like that aspect of

00:13:12 things and then you know building product is hard because engineering is very hard to hire and so you know a lot of times it's scrapping things together and you know really being able to then get the distribution for the product while the product is still very much like Genki MVP so yeah there's many different dimensions I could go on and on so many things yeah one thing I mentioned earlier actually want touch on you mentioned the hiring part you helped a lot with that like what does that look like for you helping them in terms of

00:13:40 the hiring process it could be like a very common thing might be me meeting with candidates and explaining to a candidate my perspective which is often different than the team's perspective so that might be a very concrete thing but the my lesson of hiring for myself is that most of good hiring is done upfront most of the work is done upfront so it's not actually in like the closing the candidate yeah it's defining what is success in 18 months yeah it's defining Eve if we all agree everyone agrees on what success in 18

00:14:17 months is which is a big part of it then what are the three to four not more than five attributes that we must optimize for in a candidate that we're looking for yeah and everyone has to agree on that and it can't be 10 things and then figuring out so who are sort of the personas you know someone who worked at XYZ sort of company beforehand that have those four attributes let's say yeah and getting all of that alignment you can then actually have a much better process of finding the right candidates yeah

00:14:49 which is difficult but that helps it yeah and so I might come in and try to like be meeting with a candidate to close a candidate or you know maybe even finding people in my network but sometimes it's actually the workout friends which is just making sure you know I can't jump in and just evaluate candidates if I'm not extremely clear on what I'm evaluating someone for yeah for that particular business exactly and then one thing is that you touch on to a little bit earlier just going back to kind of like why startups fail what does

00:15:15 that conversation look like for you and the companies in terms of if they need to either pivot or it's not looking good like how do you tell them what do you was that conversation look like then um it's usually pretty founder driven I think and I haven't luckily been through it a lot but I think it is pretty founder driven so there are times and and some of this to comes from my experience with maybe even not even portfolio companies just like my own friends yeah there are times where someone is out of money and

00:15:43 they are saying I am going to get you know a second loan on my house I'm going to you know maxed out all my credit cards because I know that this is what I ment to be doing and this is what I want to do but you know that can't come from a VC the VC in that situation might be saying look it is okay to move on like but it's you know or there might be the opposite case where a VC still thinks there's something there but if the founder is tired and doesn't want to you know do this like that can be a very

00:16:17 founder driven thing and I think the best role is to be a support and if the founder is like well are there still creative solutions going back to the question the assumptions then the VC can come in and be like let's think of creative ways of approaching this yeah exactly and one thing to it with 10 110 then what is kind of very like either unique value add or like why people would want their investment yeah I think that we are not extremely sophisticated VC's but were really good company builders and so a lot of a lot of people

00:16:54 have started companies at this point I mean in in the tech VC world but when I was looking at funds like one of the things I really valued was a place where people have built billion-dollar companies like venture scale businesses and there's there's not as much of that in LA as there is right now still in the Bay Area and so looking for people who not only figured out how to build businesses but know not just going from seed to a say but how do you get to those big outcomes and so my partner's David Gill and Eitan have all built

00:17:32 massive businesses and so um you know I think that you can learn a lot from failure for sure but to some degree you can you know if you haven't seen what it looks like to have that like doubling in size every six months then you can't jump on that right as easily so yeah I think that we have a lot of value add as operators who've built big businesses before yeah that's obviously huge and with the companies they're trying to get that level right so how do you know if you don't have that experience where someone

00:18:02 else has that experience can definitely help them out and it's kourt's of clear value for 10 110 over other company other funds yeah I mean but at the same time I still feel like the bigger challenge for us like we're not a very weak o invest and I don't know what percent but it's it's a huge percent 90% of our deals we are Co investing so we're often not feeling like we're competing with other funds to be like a better fund it doesn't that's not the way it feels on the inside yeah it's it's more just you know other funds have

00:18:33 other great programs and so like the more support we can bring to entrepreneurs so that's how I usually think about it is in fact we like to have other co investors alongside us yeah and now it's a quick break and hear from our sponsor Breck's a big heartfelt thank you to Breck's who is out there 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 as companies grow managing expenses has

00:19:03 become more difficult and time-consuming which is why we've partnered with Breck's 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 Breck's is the credit card to start ecosystem and we highly encourage you to check them out and back to the show many what areas of the startup landscape are you most excited about right now you know it depends what you mean by areas I think I think it's pretty kind of awesome and I

00:19:39 haven't thought through the implications but it's kind of awesome how much entrepreneurship has become sort of more mainstream in a way and and risk-taking has become more mainstream and the notion of I'm gonna wear a badge and wear a suit and be a different person at work than I am at home like I'm gonna put on my my inauthentic work self yeah that's all changing I think some of that has influence from like this startup way of doing things which is stay close to the customer iterate and rapid iteration

00:20:13 cycles all of that has made it tougher to sort of be like I'm a stiff you know I control every bit about our marketing you know our brand is is so buttoned up and I think that's actually exciting to me to see this change in our workforce yeah and it used to be that entrepreneurship was seen as like this this risky alternative path and it still is risky and sort of low paid in Hawaii but it's so I don't think you want to do it because you're gonna get like the big salary of the googles of the world right

00:20:49 but at the same time what's interesting is someone said risky is safe and safe is risky and I don't know what that means but like yeah I don't know but it's this notion of taking these big risks allows you to learn more and and and and I think we're infusing that into our whole culture where people feel more comfortable taking risks and being sort of entrepreneurial in the way that they approach their careers yeah I'm just fun fun interesting to see that yeah and then and then go into like the venture world since you've been in a

00:21:21 relatively recently I mean how have you seen that evolve already since you've been in the venture lots of sort of different things like I've new to LA and seeing the amount of I can't yet figure out which are the different entrepreneurship and incubators and accelerators at USC let's say yeah just like let's take one University one yeah and I'm not like I'm always like oh that's the Entrepreneurship for the business school and that's the Entrepreneurship for the engineering school and that's the accelerator for

00:21:50 this XYZ and this is the 18 different pitch competitions yeah and that's exciting none of that existed when I went to school and so just infusing people with that sort of mindset which is you can build what you want to build and that means like build your career the way you want to build your career yeah it's fun stuff there's so many different options now there's more and more it seems like everyday being at USC right now I see that there's like so many different competitions and thank you berries

00:22:17 whatever like there's putting options if you want yeah try to build something and you know I think it's also like it sometimes we talk about founders and sort of glorified that but being an employee and an early stage startup is equally I mean it's it's slightly different but you know if you join when there's six people yeah you're still in my mind you know extremely entrepreneurial I'm gonna be drinking from that same firehose so I don't wanna like overhype just being a founder as like being entrepreneurial yeah I

00:22:44 remember I had that someone mentioned that too were like it being the number not everyone's gonna be number one like the CV was a two three four or five six there's all our positions that you might enjoy a lot at being at a startup and be whatever company to give you the experience of being like an entrepreneur a founder that type of that type of thing and then to just with with your career so far how did you get into venture capital well it's fairly new for me so I think the way I got into it was

00:23:10 being around it if you will and so I also think like when people ask me like how could I person XYZ get into it I say well start getting into it as in you know this was I was just being with a student at the passe and Design Center and I was like well start figuring out who at the design center might be building a company and follow those companies and go to the events and you know if you want to impress me this is someone who is sort of like I want to be like an associate or an analyst at a VC

00:23:45 fund I said well one way to get someone's attention is to send them good deals like it's a really like there's you know can we have a mentorship called maybe like it's hard to fit them all in but like sending good deals because look I'm ingrained in the passing and Design Center I'm walking around or wherever you are I'm walking around figuring out everything that's going on everything a professors are doing everything the students are doing and I go to all the interesting lectures on on or whatever it is and then you're in it

00:24:14 and then you start to see things and then you start to send those to your angel friends or you figure out who are angels in the let's say the transportation space because the design center there's a lot of transportation and that's also my space so whatever it is you start to get in there and learn and and ask advice too and just say to every you know person you meet who's an angel you ask you know what other resources are there how could I you know plug in here yeah and getting into pieces may different pass and free with

00:24:41 your path and like is it what do you expected so far getting to venture capital yeah I mean so okay so I didn't really answer your question which is no well I so I was at Google pretty early and I study computer science so I was in the tech sort of world before it was so much the tech world almost and I always just my goal in life maybe not my goal in life that's two terms but like I like being really relevant and in the mix and I like it when there's just stuff going on around me I would never

00:25:12 I'm not good in like the academic world which is a little I mean this okay whatever I want to like trash back but I'm different yeah but so I was it at Google I was in tech I did some angel investing I had friends who started companies and then and then I decided to start my own company and so when I started my company I then got a whole lot of exposure to venture because we raised over 200 million dollars we did a seed in a a BSc addy and so going through all of that you get a lot of exposure to what goes

00:25:45 into fund raising and I spend a lot of my time talking to people who are one stage ahead of me so hey how do you rate how did you raise a three million dollar seed round that sounds great I want to do that then how do you raise a ten million dollar a round how did you raise it whatever and so I spent a lot of my time trying to learn yeah what was coming up down the path yeah and then going to the exact thing of fundraising yeah what are some things people should think about as they're going to even

00:26:11 starting a beginning with a procedure received whatever what should they think about with fundraising and how what kind of questions should they even be asking potential investors yeah what questions they should ask investors as saying that that like one of the hard things about VC for me is giving good feedback and I find that the entrepreneurs who really do the best job of asking for good feedback often get the best feedback and so like being really proactive and open and hearing it so that if I say look I don't think you

00:26:44 pitched really well like you came across as really aggressive like that's a hard thing for me to say without feeling like I'm offending someone unless the person is like did you think I pitched well was I too aggressive and then it's very easy for me to say yeah or something I mean like but so I think you can ask for a lot of feedback and make yourself really receptive or who else should I you know if you don't think you're I'm ready for a seed investment what could I do you know as so so asking a lot of those

00:27:14 questions um I think there were also just like mostly it's like build a good business is the main as always the right answer that's always the right answer yeah that said you know I think your audience might say well I've build a good business but I'm still not you know getting venture funding so yeah what gives what now what I mean and the answer is I mean as I keep saying like there's just hundreds and thousands of businesses that I'm like well that looks good that looks good that you know and

00:27:42 I'd like to do you know 12 a week not 12 a year yeah but like running a good process is one so for me like the the timing aspect was something I wasn't really aware of which is or hadn't thought about as much as an entrepreneur which is like let's take LA it's pretty small pretty small ecosystem so if you're fundraising in LA and you've been fundraising for six months I know it right or I've heard probably heard about yeah but I'll be like you know I'll ask my friend Haiti exit fika hey did you

00:28:14 ever did you ever hear of you know the the Joe Schmo company and and tapes would be like oh yeah I saw them six months ago they're still raising and you're like yeah so and it's not and that shouldn't really matter because if you built a good business and yet somehow in my brain I'm like oh they've been fundraising for six months am I the sucker who's going to fund the after 100 other people have passed even though I shouldn't be thinking that I still fall into that trap a little bit which is on the other hand if they come

00:28:44 to me six months ago let's say and I like I'm not raising yet but I'm building something amazing and I'm like you're not raising but this sounds amazing and then I start to get excited I'm like oh they're not letting me into their round like that hold FOMO thing like and and I feel like I'm probably not as I think sophisticated VC's probably don't fall subject to the FOMO and probably don't care that you've been fundraising for six months but I'm just telling you I'm just telling you that then like when you talk to me for six

00:29:10 months and tell me I can't get into your round and then at the end you're like oh you know what now I'm fundraising do you want to reengage I'm like oh yeah I've been waiting for that opportunity to be engaged you know take it or leave it but I still fall a little subject to that yeah I mean yeah and to that point then if it has been six months of fundraising like they probably need to show some progress in their business wait oh you've been raising for six twelve whatever months why haven't you would be

00:29:32 probably a question of why haven't you raised funds yeah we're like then what's the progress you see in your business how are they going to show progress of them in fundraising for six months and honestly yes so art it's so time consuming like I kind of can't expect them to you know especially if you're raising a seed round and you're a team of four people you're a team of three people and like you're CEO if you're fundraising yeah you're really not paying much attention to the business yeah so unfortunately I don't expect

00:29:57 that they've shown a huge kind of progress well I didn't need going back to your experience that have you having been through that I mean what else would you tell these startups because you have so much experience with fundraising now you're on both sides of it like what else should they know our insights do you have about the the process or even expectations about it yeah I mean you know our personal story sort of my shift shift experience was we did just do a lot of stuff and I think that helped us

00:30:23 so it helped us show a lot of traction because we were just doing a lot of things yeah and so for us it was we were building marketplace shift calm people weren't coming to shift calm neither buyers nor sellers so we were just buying cars on Craigslist and selling them on Craigslist or selling them on auto trader or whatever but it actually allowed us to get a lot of things going and I think sometimes people don't just like charge hard enough I'd get messy broken things going just to show progress and and I think that it's a

00:30:54 weird thing again the VC world is a momentum game and so you know one person one rational person might look at something and say oh they've been working at this for three years they must have figured out a lot about their customers let's say this even okay sure they figured out so much they've iterated they've built a lot of product they've had times but actually the way VCS think is not that way they think like they've been working on these three years they've only got two 500k yearly revenue that's not that much and so

00:31:23 these are all like this like you gotta have hit that 500k or whatever it is in five months and that's exciting and for some reason that three years worth of progress is actually sort of more a negative than a positive anyway yeah well even if the company has that then I mean what are they what can I do this how that story MVC oh yeah it's all a story just gotta tell the story the other thing everything I say like take what works leave the rest right like I could be totally different every every person has their own different

00:31:53 preferences and all that yeah right so so YC just go and watch all the YC pitches right so YC Y Combinator you know they they essentially like you see some company up there and like well we were incorporated sure in 2015 but we did three years of R&D that was the R&D project and then when we launched five days ago it's been you know 80% day over day growth or something exactly but like you know they do they have a ways of telling story like it's been in R&D for three years and then we launched only

00:32:28 four months ago and it's been up into the right for the past four months yeah oh I thought you launched three years ago but whatever like it's a it's still a bit of a story which again it's lame because really what you need to do just build a freaking business don't overthink it build the business but I'm giving you a little bit of that yeah the weird way that that the YC has trained people I think to think well they gotta know and think they'll find it valuable to learn from someone who has done

00:32:54 fundraising like yourself right okay and also and the idea of like unique perspectives I mean we'd probably interview just one if you want just one person wait but everyone has their own that which is the most amazing part everyone has your own perspective on it which can still be valuable for people who are listening you know I find I still find it amazing that it that let's say you've got a panel of experienced pcs you've got six of them judging a pitch competition like a really good pick pitch competition

00:33:19 sometimes you go into the back room to deliberate and everyone's the same but rarely it's usually like everyone has a different number one number two number three which just kind of goes to show it's about like the fit there or what strikes your fancy or something because just like what is your thesis like what do you what is your outlook on the world kind of because yeah six pcs all judging the same looking at the same pitches come out with totally different answers yeah goes to show like just keep

00:33:46 pitching I keep trying keep trying but ask for feedback and make sure yeah to make sure you're not just doing the same thing over and over that isn't working yeah and then for you like what is your what is your day day look like as a venture capitalist well I mean as you know I've got my side hustle which is making a podcast honestly it does take up a lot of my time yes and so I do that like one day a week or something and then I I Drive all around LA and then I take a lot of calls in the car so I do I do some of my first

00:34:19 meetings because I sometimes feel bad that I'm not sitting in front of my desk like taking notes but it's the way to fit in more more swings at bat or whatever so take a lot of calls from the car and and I drive around town and meet with different people and then for me two nights a week I'm is my like family allotment where I do like a pitch competition type thing or try to be a little bit more in the community yeah so and so I live in Pasadena so for me when I'm driving around town like a lot of

00:34:51 venture is still going on in Santa Monica so I'm driving over to to meet with one of the accelerators one of the incubators or those sorts of things we're going with portfolio companies yeah and with the podcast yeah how'd that get started I mean it's my site I so like if I if I were an entrepreneur I would be coming to a VC saying like I am so like all I think about it's like wanting to do this podcast please let me do it like give me $5 I can go do this and the great thing about podcasts of course is

00:35:20 it's a reasonably low barrier to entry and so you can kind of get something going and for me like I had to target audiences and one was entrepreneurs and I think that it actually it's still very opaque to know like for whatever reason you can't go to a venture capital website yeah and just know oh our average text size is a million dollars and people are like just look at our portfolio it's not that easy to look at a portfolio I like it sometimes I look at portfolio I'm like I've never heard of any of the 50 businesses so I still

00:35:55 don't really know whether you write a million dollar check and what's anyways so it's still pretty opaque and I'm still like my other part of my journey is like I still get intimidated not by VCS I mean I guess I do buy B C's but also by like the process of asking for money and marching into Sand Hill Road was very intimidating for me yeah like marching into a big partnership meeting I mean one it's white men and everyone talks about that but even if it's not white men it's still just a bunch of

00:36:25 people who this is their territory and you're walking into their office and they all know and you feel a little out of place and you're like oh my gosh I'm not dressed right or something like but the whole thing is intimidating I actually find that when you put someone in front of a microphone or a video you watch them you're like oh it's a person I know who they are it's not it's like it's a I find it more disarming if you have that interaction rather than just for the first time marching into a bunch

00:36:49 of people you actually don't have that much knowledge of so yeah I think it's actually a great opportunity to make it more accessible to people anyways that was one of my goals and then so one of my audience is entrepreneurs in LA because I'm just doing la venture and then the other one is myself so I want to learn something by being able to talk to the VCS and progress is called la venture yes yeah so people if you don't know already that is the name of the pot yeah check it check it out yeah you have some

00:37:15 pretty awesome guests on there and you learn a lot about interviewing like as a skill like I actually think it's a very good skill to develop is your ability to listen and and actually hear people and then understand and react to they're saying whether it's the emotion of what they're saying or the substance of what they're saying yeah and like be able to go a little deeper than just oh we invest in people product market wrap things up here with your experience on the VC side with your experience then it actually building

00:37:47 comprehend a sec is there anything else you mention or insights or anything else for startup founders you you tell them I said grow their companies I mean so for me like everyone talks about in Facebook you compare your insights to other people's outsides right and so like I've had this grade up into the right you know business but the truth is like super tough at different times like super tough for me so like I dropped out of school I dropped out of college and was like my goal was to go to college I

00:38:14 wanted to go to Stanford but I hope life I and then I dropped out it was like I'm never gonna finish college I moved back in with my mother and I was horribly depressed and then I made it through it and I actually went back to school and then they call it stopping out rather than dropping out there's like oh you stopped out you didn't drop out you stopped out so great then you stopped out you go back and you graduate but those things are part of most startups and most people's lives and just startups right but most people's lives

00:38:41 are you know there's a lot of that tough stuff and yet it makes the successes so much sweeter and it really does and it's like the roller coaster I think not only does it make the success sweeter but it makes you way more resilient because [ __ ] happens in life yeah and and and all sorts of [ __ ] does happen and when you go through it it actually you just you just have to get through it sometimes and so sometimes just the getting through it is just really unpleasant yeah but but usually then makes you like a more sympathetic person

00:39:12 more able to help someone else yeah so my advice is usually like realizing that there's just an aspect of showing up and telling the truth and hoping for the best that you just have to keep doing yeah and what what helps you get through like three lower moments other people have helped me and I think that I mean there are many things that have helped me but one of them was other people but the other was being able to say I'm hurting I'm in trouble whatever and I need help and and that's not always easy to do and

00:39:44 so being able to say it allows someone else to help you and then allows you to feel a lot more sympathy for people who are in situations that aren't the same situation as you but are in need of a helping hand yeah for sure and then many where can people go to learn more about what you're doing connect with you as well uh LinkedIn is probably good I'm kind of promiscuous on LinkedIn I accept a lot of requests and and then la venture my podcast is like where I'm putting some of my energies right now

00:40:13 perfect thank you so much their time and thank you thanks for checking out stir up 2.0 from spark XYZ you want to learn more about startups and investing and check us out join the ecosystem at spark XYZ dot IO