491 - Delian Asparouhov, Principal at Founders Fund

All right, how's it going, everyone. Welcome to another episode of forward thinking investors, where we talk to investors about companies that they like markets, they like and how they broke into venture today. I'm very excited to be talking to DeLeon Asper Rojas, who is the principal of founder's fund.

Welcome to the show. How's it going? Thanks, Matt, excited to be here, excited to chat today. Yeah. I'm excited to have you on. I have definitely, you know, seeing you from afar many times on Twitter, I love your presence, but I'm stoked to have you right here in this virtual conversation for forward thinking investors.

I think to start, I would love to hear, you know, venture is this kind of opaque thing it's not super understood. So the first thing is how did you find yourself on breaking into venture and how did you kind of get to the path where you're at now? So I had been friends with this guy key frat boy for a while we originally got to know each other because I was a Android engineering intern at square would use the CLO there.

And then as I was basically considering starting my company I reached out to him as a potential sort of mentor to the field fellowship. So it started off more as like a mentor of my company ended up like angel investing. But we got to know each other sort of more as friends were actually in soccer team, interestingly enough basically a complained at one of our, you know, regular lunch meetings that I wasn't getting to play in competitive enough soccer games on the weekends.

He was like, well, actually run the most competitive soccer tournaments in disco. Would you like to come play with us? And so. That was actually how we started gotten to know each other. And in the way that I sort of got into venture firm, that was you know, about four years ago, I actually had dinner and we were discussing one of my friends with you know, dropped out.

Of Harvard around the same time that I grew up out of MIT and we had entered the roommates for awhile. He decided to actually go back to Harvard and Keith had gotten to know him sort of like, you know, through me you just had to go back to Harvard, had graduated and was sort of considering what to do and keep at the same time was considering busy hiring his first chief of staff at coastal ventures.

And so during the dinner you know, I mentioned that my friend is coming back asking you to be at any recommendations for roles where my friend. It keeps like actually, you know, you would actually be a great fit potentially for my chief of staff. And I was like, okay, great. Let's talk through like, you know, how would I pitch this to him?

What would the role of your chief staff staffy? I'm sure he'd be interested. So we have like talking about it for like 30 or 40 minutes. And then I, you know, called my friend, you know, basically finishing dinner with ti, literally hopped in my car right outside Keith's house and just like sat in the car and basically called my friend and pitched him on the role for like 30 or 40 minutes, but 30 or 40 minute set, I kind of realized, I was like, Oh shit.

Like I want this world, like, you know, I was in the midst of kind of deciding what I wanted to do next as well. So I literally knocked on the door, like, you know, 40 minutes later, he's like, what the hell are you still doing here? Like, I thought you went home and it was like, you know, remember that like sacral, like, what do you think about me doing it rather than like my Harvard friend doing it?

He was like, great. Like I, you know, I'm in, I'd love to have you and say, you know, here's the question, just like, you know, I, I don't, I don't think you wanted to, or planned on, you know, doing venture or anything in the early stages of your career. And so his request is like, you know, please just do it for a year, at least at minimum, you know, don't leave before that.

It's, it'll take them some time to onboard you and sort of train you in how to help me out. And so, yeah, the original plan was, I just wanted to basically learn from Keith and actually use that as sort of like a launchpad to you know, co-found my next company. And then about sort of six, nine months in.

Through a handful of sort of like small signals and interactions, really. Like, I feel like maybe the world of venture was better suited for me than, you know, going back until founding a company. You know, one aspect of it was realizing that my sort of personality and skillsets and the way that I work are just like a much better fit for the world of venture than the world of being a founder.

I'm just, I'm super intellectually curious. I'm super add. I like jumping around between a ton of different things. Like I'm energized by context, switching. All of those things are like, you know, strong pros as a founder, as a VC versus like they're huge cons as a founder. And so that combined with the fact that I basically was able to relatively quickly and, you know, honestly, somewhat anomalously and very lucky in some ways able to actually like source companies.

Into CA coastal ventures. That's where Keith was at the time. And that's where I was chief of staff and was basically able to like source a handful of companies and like my first sort of like nine to 12 months there it sounds like Whoa, like maybe I should be, you know, good at this. Honestly, if you asked me at month 12, I was like, great, I'm going to be sourcing a company for three months.

We invest in lo and behold, I did a company at month six that had a company in month nine, and then the next one wasn't until like months like 26. So there was a 15 minutes, you know, sort of dark period there really wasn't able to find anything that I was super excited about. But I was like, maybe I'm actually, you know, better at this than I expected.

And then probably the third and most important point was, you know, the long-term goal that I'd always had was to get involved in the commercial space industry. But the path that I thought that was possible was like, you kind of have to do it the same way that everybody from like Ilan, titch, moth to Jurvetson to, you know, sort of everybody that's been, you know, sort of big in Silicon Valley that has done spaced off.

It's like you get successful in like normal Silicon Valley stuff. And then you like use your capital to like do space stuff. And I was like, okay. I feel like do normal Silicon Valley stuff for like a decade or two get successful. And then like, then I can do space versus one of the companies that I sourced early on was actually a commercial space company.

And so I ended up finding this like magical short-circuit where I was like, Oh my God, this is amazing. And like my like early young. Energetic ambitious years. I'm getting to actually influence space today, not like, you know, two decades down the line. And so I was like, man, I should really lean into this.

Like, you know, I get, I'm getting immediate gratification and maybe I can actually have even more impact on space because like, you know, this is a particularly interesting time to be, you know, investing in, working in the commercial space industry. And so, yeah, I mean, I kind of ended up, you know, that early, you know, bat in decision to, you know, year one basically told Keith like, Hey, I actually wanted to do this.

And the way that I want to do it is not just be your chief of staff, but I'd like to actually like eventually like become an investment team member at Cosa ventures. Like what do I need to do to do so and sort of steadily, you know, made the transition and was very, you know, grateful to the folks at coastal ventures including, you know, beyond just key that were both willing to let me do so, and like mentor me through that.

And then, you know, now four years down the line you know, has played out to, you know, the extreme upper end of my, you know, let's say expectations both in terms of the things that I've gotten to do as a VC, but then you know, in particular, you know, the thing that I care about the most, which is the ability to have impact on the commercial space industry in that, you know I've been able to lead several rounds of companies, but then most importantly had this idea that I was, you know, I had been thinking about for almost.

You know, the past now decade which is sort of the, you know, industrialization and commercialization of low earth orbit beyond just communication and imaging satellites. But the thing that I think is actually much larger, which is lower earth orbit manufacturing. And so over the past, you know, six months here now, founders fund the new venture firm that I'm at You know, have been able to basically put together an incubation that called Varta that, you know, I'll be sort of speaking more and more about over the coming years that is getting to tackle that problem because I sort of recognize that sort of nobody in the market was really going after this problem.

And so, yeah, I was definitely somewhat fortuitous. I wasn't really, you know, planning on it. It was, you know, I can entirely claim that it was just the reason I even had the opportunity was because I'd gotten to get friendly over soccer with Keith But, you know, I'm very grateful for how those sort of past four years have gone his mentorship and the mentorship of a variety of people in the venture capital community.

So I feel like when a lot of people want to break into tech or startups they like want to build up a social networking app for college, or they're interested in, you know building like the next Spotify music, social app or something like that. But your interest is space which is, you know, different and you're actually the first, you're the first person that I've ever seen on Twitter.

Yeah. Actively talk about like your, your love for space, which actually inspired me to watch some videos. And now I kind of like, see what's going on there too. But another question for you is how, like, why space and when space, when did you realize that space was an industry that you cared a lot about? And how did that kind of love for it change over time as you spend time as an investor and now as a founder and investor?

Yeah. I mean, the love for space stuff was just, you know I can't even remember. I was like a kid. I mean, you know, I, I grew up in like a heavily Eastern European, deeply technical mathematical scientific family. And so, you know, the, the love for space was I sort of like engineering love for space about like the complexity of the problems you have to go after the extreme environment.

And then, you know, the belief that sort of the, the net benefit of focusing on space is extreme for humanity, right? Everything from like the world of, you know, solar panels to, you know, kind of even had a Twitter thread today where it's just like, if you want to solve climate change, you're actually better off focusing on space.

And that focusing on space will actually help you to solve climate change much faster than actually like trying to focus on climate change. And so I'd always, always been sort of fascinated by it. And then maybe in like, you know, college started sort of, you know, monitoring it, not just, you know, like when I was more of a kid, it was more just like reading scifi books and like, you know, watching press releases.

And then, you know, people sort of asked me like, what was the path? And it was honestly like, You know, in sort of, you know, late college and then sort of after dropping out, it was honestly just like, I just read R slash space, R slash space, X, R slash rocket lab. Like every day I would just like, watch all the launches.

And again, there was like slightly more than just reading side. I find like reading press releases, but like, it wasn't like that deep of a, you know, connection. It was honestly just like these like subreddits and then. It was basically like you know, in that first year in venture, super accidentally stumbling across a super interesting commercial space company.

It's a company called the cost systems and there was like extremely fortuitous, you know, the way that I stumbled across to my literally accidentally emailed like the wrong VC, I was trying to get in touch with one and I accidentally emailed another one that had the exact same name, basically there's two Shriram Christians in the world of venture.

And so I accidentally emailed the wrong one. And then, you know, sort of as an apology, I was like, can I take you out to coffee for accidentally emailing you as opposed to the one that I meant to email. And then during that coffee, I kind of explained like, Hey, I'm new to venture. One of the things that I would like to explore over my, you know you know, period is that I'm doing this kind of experimental period venture is like whether or not there's a world where I could invest in space companies and get to know that industry better.

And I was like, well, I actually have a friend starting a space company that you might be interested in. Like I talked to him, I was like, well, like, I don't know a lot about the space industry yet, but like, this actually does seem intriguing. And it sort of brought that to the node and spend. And both of them were like, yes, don't.

And this is like, actually very intriguing. We should invest in this. And so I got to basically like, Champion that process and, you know, negotiate a term sheet. And it's a very terrifying thing to do is like a, you know, at the time I was whatever 22 or 23 and you know, negotiating a term sheet, you know, that was, you know, millions of dollars when you had like, you know, 15 K in your bank account you know, is not a particularly sort of terrifying process.

But then basically after that, I was like, Oh shit. Like, you know, I can actually take this stuff seriously. I was like, okay, well, like how would I become more of an expert on this? I was like, I barely know, you know, anything about it. And so let me just start talking to everybody. So I was like, okay, I'm going to look at every single company that has raised venture money in the commercial space industry basically started to get to know all these CEOs.

I went and looked up all the big sort of space conferences. I asked this particular CEO, his recommendation, you know, for space conferences that I should be going to. And then, you know, basically over the course of like the last, you know, now, you know, three and a half, four years, You know, it can pretty constantly say that, you know, I have met every CEO that has raised North of, let's say $5 million in VC money that works in the space industry.

I know every single incubator accelerator and you know, most of the seed stage companies now by default, you know, sort of make their way to me. Both because of the amount of sort of groundwork and legwork that I put into. You're getting to know all of these like CEOs and other VCs that focus on this.

But then also I think now Varda has been, you know, somewhat a magnet for it, where they see, Hey, this VC is also putting his money where his mouth is at in the commercial space industry and really, you know, doubling down it's that, that was also part of the thesis behind, you know, incubating a space company was this would actually, you know, although obviously it's a huge time sink would actually accelerate the, you know, VC side of the career.

Because more people would be interested in coming to me with their space companies. I'd be able to like win those deals more often. Yeah, I appreciate your sharing that it's honestly, I think for me, and probably for a lot of the listeners, it's kind of like, it feels like a whole different world. But that's what shows you, how vast, you know, venture and startups are this it's, it's a big world outside of social apps and things like that.

So I wanted to have a little bit into where you're at now, which, which is founders fund for people that haven't. Heard of it and maybe outside of maybe Twitter can you kind of just give an overview of like, what is founders fund? What kind of types of what markets do you cover? What size companies?

Just an overview. If someone's never heard of it before, then we can dive a little deeper into it. Yeah. I mean to touch on the earlier point, you know, about how diversity can be. It's like, I think even as somebody who I thought before joining, you know, Keith at coastal ventures, I was like, I'm pretty sophisticated than this.

I follow these people on Twitter. Like, you know, I'm friends with like I'm friend. I'm like friends with Keith. He tells me about VC all the time. Like I've also been a founder that is like fundraise from VC. I was like, I must understand this ecosystem very well. And you're like on the other side and I was like, I had no fucking clue.

You know what I mean? Like you just have no appreciation for like, there's just like such a, like, you know, In some ways, like the way that I like to describe it as like companies have I set up constraints? Like if you look at the like culture of like a Slack versus the culture of like a space X, like sure.

They are like working on like, you know, fundamentally, completely different products, space sex as much more like technical, bigger swings. But like at the end of the day there, if you look at the day to day is actually not that dissimilar to engineers are doing engineering problems. There's HR people.

There's like the CEO leading it. That's doing like, you know, press releases and fundraisers. Like they're actually like most companies are not that, that they're similar. Like the bell curve is actually pretty tight. Versus, if you look at venture firms, that bell curve is like super, super far and like spread out, right?

Like, you know, somebody that does, you know, seed stage more like, you know sprain prey, tons of like, you know, tons and tons of deals per year, much smaller check sizes, a job like that versus like, You know, symphonies focuses on series a consumer social deals at a firm that only does like, you know, three or four deals a year to like Mike Speiser, et cetera Hill, that does one company a year, but like incubated himself and like, you know, invest North of a hundred million dollars into that company by default versus somebody like myself that focused on the commercial space industry.

Like those jobs are like, I have no overlap. Like there's just zero. Like the way that we spend our time, the way that we like, we, you know, the types of investments that we do, the way that we like run companies through our process, like, there's just like, there's literally zero overlap. So talking about founders fund.

So we're a you know, a venture firm that's been around for quite a while founded in the sort of mid two thousands. You know, our latest fund that we raise is a $3 billion venture fund it's sort of split half between sort of venture and growth. And so what that means is we ended up sort of being comfortable.

Leading rounds all the way from, you know, seed all the way through sort of like, you know, series, you know, F or pre IPO rounds. Obviously one person can't, you know, be sophisticated across all of those stages and across all those sectors. And so people tend to have particular focuses across the team.

I'd say in comparison to most venture firms are things that make us particularly. We're so multistage, we're not necessarily as strict about sort of like ownership criteria at particular stages through a company. So for example, you know, one of the classic ways that we're able to, let's say like when a deal vis-a-vis somebody who does have strict ownership criteria, is that a series a, if a company isn't that capital pensive or doesn't need that much capital, I can offer the company like a.

Offer that's, you know, $6 million at 60 posts versus a traditional venture investor that really wants their 20% ownership or something like that. 25 needs to offer, you know 15 million at 60 posts when that might not necessarily be in the best interest of the company. So we tend to be very, you know, ownership, flexible, which I really like.

We also had to be much more comfortable with sort of big technical moonshots. So, you know, we're one of the largest investors in. You know, space X as an example amongst, you know, sort of many other deeply, deeply technical companies. And then, you know, the other thing that I really like is we're very sort of like, you know, decentralized.

So for example, most venture firms at our scale have a very traditional sort of like Monday partner meeting, where as a company, you get invited to present to the partner meeting and then you basically get that decision that same day. We don't have any sort of either, you know, hierarchy at F F, which I really like, or any sort of regular weekly cadence or structure.

And so what that means is your process is somewhat defined by the point person that you're sort of working with in terms of, you know, sort of how they'll guide you from, you know, initial meeting. You know, through, through, to a term sheet, but because we don't have such a rigid process, we can also be, you know, much faster sometimes.

So, you know, for example, at coastal ventures, there were times where I'd meet a really great company on a Tuesday and there was just no next step that I could do until basically the following Monday versus here, I can meet you on a Tuesday. And sometimes, you know, by Thursday or Friday, basically get you a term sheet.

So yeah, super large, you know, fund that is able to invest across multiple digital stages, super sort of ownership, agnostic stage agnostic sector agnostic. But you know, much more comfortable with sort of, you know, deep tech, you know, swings like the space. X's like the, you know, Vartas of the world where we're doing in space manufacturing much more so than other, other venture firms.

And then, yeah, maybe the fourth thing that I'd add is. A unique aspect of our investment process is the primary filter that we use when considering an investment is basically why won't other VCs like this. Like we, if anything are, you know, hyper indexed against sort of like, you know, super hot, you know, sort of consensus companies, especially in the earlier stages, like later stage for Sur, right?

Like, you know, in order to be successful companies, Please do start to become consensus, but especially in the earlier stages of a company, like primary filter that we think about is like, basically why won't other people like this. And so that's maybe the fourth major point that I make about, you know, what makes founders fund unique.

So diving into that forest point a little bit. I think that at least for like the tech, Twitter crowd, and maybe the San Francisco crowd, you know, a lot of people, maybe don't like it, founders fund, a lot of people might like founders fund, but everybody knows founders fund and everybody respects founders fund, at least in my view, I think they might not like you guys, but I think everyone respects what you, what you all done.

And I think like  position yourself like that, you know, from founding. It kind of takes a lot of like independent thinking. And I think a lot of the people involved with founders fall, you know, Peter teal keeps her boy pretty much everyone is like independent thinkers. So I'm kind of curious, what have you learned about like independent thinking, going against the grain or just like anything in that category while spending your time at this?

It was pretty like contrary and from, yeah. I mean, what I'd say is. I think there are ways to have a very healthy culture that encourages like discourse and dissension. Without like compromising on cultural cohesion. And I think founder's fund does a phenomenal job of that. And I think sometimes, you know, the, the, the public image that you get on Twitter, like reflects that, right?

Where like you will, you know, probably on a somewhat regular basis, see the group of us disagreeing. In public, right? Whether it's like, you know, Trey harping on me for, you know, believing that, you know, VCs should be super involved in the company that they invest in versus Trey believes the exact opposite.

He thinks that they should be, you know, super, you know, disengaged in that the best founders don't want their VCs, you know, getting super involved or you know, obviously the most, you know, frequent ones, you know, more recently as, you know, Keith and I disagreeing on whether it'd be long SF versus short SF.

Right. And so I think, you know, have learned from them how you can still keep a, you know, a culture, like even if you see us arguing on Twitter publicly we're perfectly capable of then obviously, you know, working together quite closely on a very regular basis. And so it's incredible to sort of see that culture.

And I think it, it enforces, you know, the, the, the, the Twitter world shows you also the way that we like, you know, disagree about investments internally, where, you know, I think at founders one, if you were to look, a lot of our best investments were relatively controversial at the time within the firm. But it's important to be able to do both.

Openly discussed that type of controversial. We're the opposite of a consensus driven culture where like you need to basically get, you know, you do not need to get everybody on the line in order to have like an investment be done. And I think that's a, you know, great aspect of a culture and I, you know, would only ever want to work at firms that have that type of what I call conviction driven culture, as opposed to consensus driven culture.

And then probably the third thing that I've learned the most is, you know, being an independent thinker can have it's, you know, faults and downsides, you know, I think. You know, my favorite sort of Paul Graham tweaked is like, if you don't have an opinion that would get you like canceled on Twitter, then if you expressed it publicly on Twitter, then you're probably not a particularly interesting thinker.

And I'd say, you know, I've very much include myself in that, but what I've really appreciated over the course of my time at founders fund is I feel like I have been taught in the way of you know, Tweeting independent thoughts in a way that makes them compelling, but also not so far over the line that you sort of like, you know, get canceled.

And I think pre founders fund, I was not sort of aware of how to, you know, delicately communicate that. Like, I think, you know, Peter's on the extreme end of this. Like, you know, you can see through all of his public talks, he's able to sometimes. Articulate some like, you know, ideas that are sort of difficult to swallow at first glance, but he packaged them in a way that makes you understand.

Ah, okay. Cause like there are just many times where people will exhibit or, you know, explain a idea that is like far too radical that doesn't have some underlying truth, but if you explain it as far too radical, you know, the sort of the Twitter system or the public ecosphere just immediately sort of, you know, Causes organ rejection versus being able to package these types of independent ideas in a way that people can actually appreciate understand them and not immediately reject them.

And it's fine to disagree with them, but at least they can actually sort of like see them with clear eyes as opposed to like immediate emotional anger. I think it's a very powerful skill. And so I think that's another thing that I've been taught and I honestly can say, you know, they're probably primary teacher of that has been actually, you know, Mike Selana I think he's sort of like, you know, world-class at that.

And I really enjoy the fact that we have somebody like that on our team. So one last question on that. And then I have a lot more than what they'll call it, call it a day. I Almost selfishly, this is something I actually struggled with myself. I, I have many opinions. I've always thumb and mint. I don't think sometimes they're palatable.

Actually. I think I put them out and you know, in a way that I wish I wouldn't have put them out that way. Do you have any tips for just straight up media or just other people that maybe were like you have five years ago before founders fund people that like have strong opinions, they want to voice them, but they always get racked every time.

W what, what is a tip or two that you can share with these types of people? Yeah. I mean, I think it's basically just having like a testing group of confidant so that you can like workshop these ideas with, right. Like knowing that these are people that, you know, that trusts you enough, that even if you were to express, let's say in a 10 person, text thread, and extremely radical idea that would get you very canceled, but they recognize that you're sort of, you know, experimenting with the idea of trying to chew on it.

And it's not like a. Not set in stone in terms of your thought and like working with people, because I think it's, sometimes it can be really hard for me to get, sort of get stuck in your own head, how to articulate exactly what you're feeling and how you're thinking about it. Right. And so I think not getting stuck in the sort of like echo chamber of your own head, but instead of having people that ideally also like diversity viewpoints, like I think one of the things that I also like about founders fund is I think those people view us as like this like super far, right?

Like Trumpy job. But if you were to like, look at the actual like way, you know, and I haven't like perfectly analyzed this, but I know how various team members lean politically. Like I'd say that like founders fund is by far the venture firm that just represents America by default, the most like. We have plenty of people here that are like, you know, extremely left in very liberal, rural, and we have people that are on the far, right.

And we have lots of people that are also in between. And I think it actually like, you know, relatively accurately reflects, you know, the status of America. Whereas I'd say most of, you know, most venture firms in Silicon Valley, mostly, you know, represent, you know, the, let's say, you know, politics of San Francisco or California, as opposed to like the politics of America.

And so, you know, in those texts rides where I workshop those things, I have, you know, people that, you know, have a variety of different political leanings and you know, it definitely sometimes when I first initially put the idea into their head, they're like, darling, you're fucking crazy. I'm like, okay.

But like, how do I phrase this in a way, like, you, you appreciate that there's some truth to this. How do I like, you know, pull out the truth from this in a way that is palatable without getting that initial sort of emotional reaction from you. That's that's awesome. I think that's a great tip and I appreciate it.

So let's say someone's listening to this or many founders are listening to this and they're like, wow, this guy is awesome. Founders fund sounds dope. How can I learn more about the firm or the fund? How do I tell him about my space company? How can people learn more about you or founders fund or just get in touch in general, if there's a founder listening there that like, you know, is building something awesome.

Yeah. I mean, I do think they're like eat a Twitter presence that we've developed is like a great way to sort of get to know us, get to know our thoughts and, you know, interacts with on a regular basis. Like, you know, by far the, you know, highest likelihood way of, you know, getting across my plate is like reply to my tweets with very interesting, like, you know, thoughts, opinions, and I'm like, I want to engage with, right.

Like a lot of the founders that I ended up meeting that I don't know. From my preexisting, let's say social network, like for sure. It's just pure cold emails, like work if they're very, very well articulated. But you know, if you have like an idea that maybe, you know, wouldn't quite clear my cold email bar, another great way to clear the bar is just like have interesting thoughts on Twitter.

And there are plenty of times where I'll meet somebody hell even today in this like, thread that I was having on, like, you know, climate change in space stuff. I sort of, you know, I think I'm not, I'm not a hundred percent sure what his background is, but it seems like he's sort of like an early stage founder where like, Yeah.

I don't know if he would email, if he had emailed me about his, like, you know, I think it's like 3d printing thing. I might not have, you know, by default maybe like taking a meeting, but yeah. Articulated smooth, super insuring thoughts that I felt super aligned with. And I thought were, you know, well while sad.

And so I was like, great, like, you know, coffee on me whenever you're in San Francisco. And like, then you'll have a great opportunity to like pitch me and get to know me. I actually saw that on Twitter today and I we're actually connected and he's very, very, very smart. So it's good. I would say your, your good spidey sense there.

So last, last point I realized, I forgot the question. That's the last one you can answer really quickly. So now we're close to time or over time. What's one thing about venture that you wish more founders knew about, but don't that, you know, that would benefit them if they knew. And then, and then we'll, we'll call it a day.

Yeah, I think it's just that. Every investor and every firm is incredibly unique. And so when you sort of read, you know you know, broad you know, pieces of advice that people give around how to fundraise, how to interact with investors, you know, what sort of an investor is looking for that it's never.

True for a hundred percent of investors and that in order to get your company funded and across the line, you only need quote unquote, like person to say yes. And so, you know, don't, you know, don't subscribe too much to particularly dogmas whether it's like docksin versus PDFs, whether it's, you know, meeting with founders between rounds or meeting with investors, between rounds of financings versus not whether it's, you know, being willing to send the deck ahead of time, versus not like.

You know, be careful to not subscribe too much to dogma and then said, you know, Taylor, Taylor, you know, your story and the way that you're interacting with investor to the investor that you're basically like working with. And like, you'll have a lot more success if you actually sort of like get to know them and how they think and what their preferences are, as opposed to just like, you know, sort of trying to very generically approach everyone in the same way.

Awesome. This was fantastic. I really appreciate you coming on to the podcast. Thanks so much for having me, Matt.