SPEAKER_00: Distribution provided by CloudSigma, the cloud that adapts to you. Visit CloudSigma.com slash ThisWeekend for a free $200 credit. Today's episode of This Week in Startups is brought to you by Squarespace. Use the code TWIST7 when signing up to save 10%. And by GoToMeeting. Sign up for GoToMeeting and use the promo code START for your free 30-day trial.

SPEAKER_02: Hey, everybody. Hey, everybody. It's This Week in Startups.

SPEAKER_03: We've got a special treat for you. Mark Souser is here. He's one of the most vocal and active venture capitalists out there,

SPEAKER_04: former entrepreneur, now venture capitalist, both sides of the table, host of This Week in Venture Capital. He's going to talk about everything related to raising money, the current economy, angel investing, and what he's up to. So stick with us. It's going to be an awesome, awesome episode.

SPEAKER_07: Hey, everybody. Hey, everybody. It's This Week in Startups.

SPEAKER_12: But you know this program. We're about 2,790 episodes in. No, 279 episodes in. My God, am I tired.

SPEAKER_14: What is this program about? It's about entrepreneurship. It's about startup companies. It's about making a dent in the universe. It's about trying to change the world by making new products and services that you're passionate about. It's not hard. It's not easy. It's hard. It's very hard. But programs like this are designed to give you a little bit of an edge, a little bit of extra information, perhaps even a little inspiration at times to make that journey easier. And today we have an epic guest. Mark Souser is with me. He's one of my old friends here from Los Angeles, venture capitalist, blogger at both sides of the tables, and, of course, host of This Week in Venture Capital, or previously host of This Week in Venture Capital. Welcome back to the program.

SPEAKER_15: I'm glad to be here. It's been about two and a half years since I've been on your show.

SPEAKER_04: Yeah, it's amazing. God. And things are going amazing for you guys. You have the launch pad. You just graduated a whole group of people, so we're going to hear about that. I want to talk to you about the—I've got a whole list of questions from the audience, number one. Great. And number two, I want to talk about your big announcement, which we'll do after the commercial break. Number three, I want to talk about the explosion of all these accelerators, because you've got your own, and are they really producing great companies or not? What's going on in the stock market with Facebook's shares and Zynga? Is it all over? There's so much to talk about. But before we get started, I want to just take a moment to thank GoToMeeting, GoToMeeting. You take a lot of meetings a week. I'm going to guess you take about 20.

SPEAKER_20: Okay. 10, 20? Yeah, probably 20.

SPEAKER_04: 20 minutes, yeah. That means like three—what's that? That's four a day? Yeah. Something like that? Yeah. Two in the morning, two in the afternoon, something like that. It's never ending. And I'm like a part-time angel, and I take 10 a week. You've got to be taking 20 as a full-time venture capitalist. And when you do them, you ever have anybody like, oh, hey, Skype in, or let's use this free service, and then the meeting doesn't start on time?

SPEAKER_24: Yep, all the time.

SPEAKER_04: And you want to bang your head against the wall? Yep. This is what happens. It's people who use these free services, and they get what they pay for, and then people

SPEAKER_03: are trying to find people's handles on Google Talk or this or that, and it doesn't work. If you use GoToMeeting, you send a short URL. You ever do a GoToMeeting?

SPEAKER_26: Yes. They work flawlessly. Can I just tell you? I prefer GoToMeeting. I don't want to mention other names, but all too often I get introduced to download this, that app. And where the first 10 or 15 minutes gets lost is I have to download some Java applet, and it takes forever. Reboot. Yeah, and I had it installed on Chrome, but they want me to log in on Firefox.

SPEAKER_14: Yes, exactly. And 10, 15 minutes is wasted. And that's 10 or 15 minutes. The entrepreneur could be telling their story, asking you questions. You can't afford to do that. Get GoToMeeting where one click, the meeting starts. It works flawlessly. I don't let other people set my meetings. So here's a little tip for you, either as an investor, angel investor, or as an entrepreneur. Don't let the other party set the meeting. Just set up the GoToMeeting and say, the GoToMeeting is set up. Here's the link. And then let them say, oh, no, no, no, no. We want to use this other inferior product. And you know what? They're not going to. GoToMeeting just works. It's totally stable. They have all these servers dedicated to HD video. And if you use the promo code START, you'll get 30 days for free. If you are a fan of this program, really the number one thing you can do is tweet at GoToMeeting. Thank you for sponsoring This Week in Startups. Independent media like this would not be possible without the fine folks at GoToMeeting. And also meetings would not be possible. Stable, on-time meetings without GoToMeeting. So I just want to thank them for being a great product that I use.

SPEAKER_04: And as you guys know, here at This Weekend, we have our choice of sponsors. People like me and Mark Seuster. We're not going to read any ad. We're going to read advertisements for products that we love. That's our concept here as a startup. That's our little dent in the universe. That's our little innovation. We don't read a commercial unless it's a product we love. And then it's not really a commercial. It's more like me, as Jason Calacanis, telling you about something that gives me value in my life. It's an authentic transfer of enthusiasm. I'm enthusiastic about GoToMeeting. And you will be too.

SPEAKER_32: I guarantee it. And if you don't like it, you know, you're crazy, number one. And I'll buy you a beer. Anyway, so welcome back to the program. You've been super busy.

SPEAKER_04: Yes. A word on the street is your VC firm, GRP, raising another fund. Are you allowed to talk? I mean, I know there's a lot of rules around this. Like when you're raising funds, people are allowed to talk about it, not allowed to talk about it. The SEC, you know, sort of monitors this kind of stuff.

SPEAKER_35: It's strange. Let me just say this, that the SEC has rules for investors not to be seen to be soliciting

SPEAKER_36: or marketing their fund broadly.

SPEAKER_27: And why is that? Why can't you solicit? Like if you're Sequoia Capital and you invested in Google or, you know, you're Excel and you

SPEAKER_04: invested in Facebook, why can't you tweet, hey, we're the ones who invested in Facebook and made a 7,000% return. We're raising a new fund. Why can't they do that?

SPEAKER_39: Well, I think, first of all, obviously the rules are designed to try and protect investors.

SPEAKER_40: Right. So good intent there.

SPEAKER_36: Yeah, it's good intent. But the problem is that regulation seldom keeps up with changes in technology, changes

SPEAKER_26: in industry. So if you look at crowdfunding, for example, everyone's super excited about crowdfunding. I'm a little bit more muted.

SPEAKER_42: Great word. Damn, I was looking for the right word. Does damn require me to kick in money?

SPEAKER_44: No, no, just the 7 dirty words. If you want to say the S, the F, the C. I can't say the George Carlin. Yeah, just go right down the list and that's 7 times 10, 70 bucks, you buy us a keg.

SPEAKER_47: It goes towards the keg fund. I can do that George Carlin routine, but I won't on this show.

SPEAKER_49: If you can do it, I'll tell you what, do it at the end. We'll bleep it. Okay. We'll be like, you'll just be like, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep. So you don't have to worry about saying the C word.

SPEAKER_51: 70 bucks goes in the jar and then you bought the crew a keg. There you go. Anyway, keep going. You're muted on crowdfunding. Why?

SPEAKER_26: But my reason is simple is I think the broad majority of investors are unsophisticated. And I don't mean that in a kind way. I mean it really unsophisticated. Meaning a lot of, even angels, even people who are well-meaning, even people who have a hundred K to blow, often don't understand the intricacies of liquidation preferences. They don't understand the intricacies of preferred rights and the rights that preferred shareholders have to do to common stockholders. They often don't realize that when a company doesn't immediately move up into the right, often early investors get washed out. They don't understand that when you split the pie, it's not split based on the percentage you own. First preference is taken off the top and then it splits. So you could feel like you own one and a half percent of a company and in the end your proceeds might be 0.2 or might be zero.

SPEAKER_56: And if you don't have deep enough pockets to follow your investment, then you also can get crushed. And here's...

SPEAKER_30: These are all incredible nuances that I am experiencing as an angel. Yeah, and I have as well. So I... I like to consider myself somewhat sophisticated.

SPEAKER_26: I will just say this and I don't mean to make it a big plug, but on both sides of the table at the very top, I have a thing called, I think, angel topics or something. And I list what I view as the risks for angel investors. You know, but here's the thing is people are blindly throwing money into companies and in a booming market like we've seen in the tech market from 2009 to 2012, everything feels like it's going well. You only will experience what happens to angel investors when we get our next correction in the tech market. Right. And when it does, I think people will become more sophisticated because we saw this happen in 08. We saw it happen in 2001, 2 and 3.

SPEAKER_61: When the tide goes out, you can find out who's naked.

SPEAKER_26: Exactly. And I would just say one more thing, which is... And I feel this about a lot of the secondary markets for buying shares. As a preferred stockholder in the company and what they call a major investor, major investor usually means you own 5% of the company or more. Right. Sometimes it can be set at 1%, 2%, but often it's 5%. And what major investors do is they demand rights. And the rights is...

SPEAKER_64: Well, first of all, I might say I want a board seat. Therefore, I know everything going on. But if I don't get a board seat, I might demand investor information rights.

SPEAKER_12: I get to see everything. I get to see the books. I get to see P&L. I get to see the minutes from the board meeting, the presentation from the board meeting.

SPEAKER_53: And trust me when I say, as your 25K that goes into a $2 million round, you're seeing bupkis. Yeah. No insights. No insights. And by the way, you might be investing in people in your general community that you can call up and say, bro, what's going on? Right. Now, so the bro, what's going on type investors.

SPEAKER_26: I accept have a little more influence in getting information out of companies than Joe Public. Joe Public is going to have no ability to say, hey, bro, can you tell me what's going on?

SPEAKER_27: If I put $100 in a crowdfunding site in a $2 million round or $200, I don't really have any right to information. Yeah. And let's call it... I am basically just gambling $200.

SPEAKER_53: Let's call it $1,000, okay? Okay, $1,000. And the reason I pick on $1,000 is that we in our... It's a mortgage payment? Well, we in our, you know, white lily world of, you know, $1,000 is like a nice meal out with four friends, right? Right. But neither you nor I grew up with money. Right. And I know that for many people in this country, $1,000 is a lot.

SPEAKER_76: It's a mortgage payment. Sometimes it's rent. Sometimes it's, you know, a quarter of a kid's tuition.

SPEAKER_53: Let's be truthful. Sometimes it's the difference between being evicted and being not evicted. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_26: And so those are the people I worry about. Now, what happened in NASDAQ in 98, 99, 2000 is many people fancy themselves as stock pickers. So they started putting money. My brother was one of them, my little brother.

SPEAKER_53: And he told me, I'm earning more as an investor than I am in my day job. So he was a day trader.

SPEAKER_78: Yeah. So he's buying Yahoo or he's buying whatever. Until he lost everything. Right. Literally everything. He lost everything. Buying the globe.

SPEAKER_53: And my brother can afford to. And he was in his 20s and it didn't matter. And, you know, you live to fight another day.

SPEAKER_64: But for other people, there is no comeback.

SPEAKER_03: But now all these crowdfunding sites are going to have limitations. You're going to be able to only invest 1% of your annual income or something. And the companies are going to have to work with a registered broker dealer, I guess. So there's going to be some safeguards.

SPEAKER_53: But let's go back to regulation. And regulation obviously can have a very negative impact on markets.

SPEAKER_26: But it's designed in purpose to protect. So if I look at, for example, filing regulations on NASDAQ and S&P. Or the New York Stock Exchange, rather, sorry. And NYSE or NASDAQ. They have reporting requirements. And they make you sign the document as a legal representative that the numbers aren't fraudulent and you can go to jail if you like.

SPEAKER_86: Sure, Dennis Kozlowski.

SPEAKER_26: Yeah, and many others. And I look at, for example, the shadow markets. So, for example, you have something called AIM in London. Are you familiar with AIM? No. So in London, you have the LSE, the London Stock Exchange, and AIM, which is the alternative investment management or something like that. I may be getting what it stands for wrong.

SPEAKER_36: But in every market, you have these emerging trading platforms that were designed to not have the same regulation as the big.

SPEAKER_88: Lighter, faster. Yeah. More risk.

SPEAKER_64: And in 97, 98, 99, 2000, all those felt great. So there was one in Germany called the Neurmarkt. The Neurmarkt.

SPEAKER_53: Neurmarkt. And every country had these. And what ended up happening was no transparency. You had no access to information. Limited regulation. So guess, you know, you've probably heard of this term called selective bias. Yeah. Selective bias says that the data or the companies that end up associating themselves with those markets select those markets because they're not capable of being on LSE. And therefore, you end up with worse companies by definition, but unsophisticated investors.

SPEAKER_91: Right.

SPEAKER_53: And I think we blew a generation of retail investors, meaning not the big institutions,

SPEAKER_64: but retail investors.

SPEAKER_92: People don't trust the stock market. I mean, we're seeing it now.

SPEAKER_27: For that reason. Facebook and Zynga and all these companies are getting just crushed in the market. And there is no retail appetite to buy them.

SPEAKER_94: Yeah. And there shouldn't be.

SPEAKER_53: And there shouldn't be. Why? So the best analogy I heard was from a big money market manager. And he said, imagine this. Imagine you are looking at the NBA and, you know, you see LeBron and, you know, his team, Wade and everybody. And you think, God, I can hit some three points. I'm going to get in the game. Right. And I'm going to bet $10,000 that I can play in this game and hold my own. Like you're going to get freaking crushed, right?

SPEAKER_101: Demolished. Demolished. You will get the ball past half court.

SPEAKER_53: But for two reasons. One is they're just physically better than you. Right. And two is they play every day, all day, their entire life. And you're a hack, right? You've got a day job. And the same is true in the stock market. You have these people who have resources you don't have in terms of computing resource and teams of people doing analysis, whatever. And they do this all day, every day. And trust me when I say they're at dinners where I can't say inside information has passed, but they know a lot more than you do.

SPEAKER_103: Right. It's pretty clear they're at the golf course or dinners.

SPEAKER_104: And those are the people who are moving the markets, not you and me. It's not the retail investor. It's a sucker's game. It is a sucker's game.

SPEAKER_14: As Mark Cuban would say. But that being said, if there is no retail appetite for these companies, then the companies are getting valued at bargain basement prices.

SPEAKER_53: If you know, I don't believe that. You may make money on Zynga or Facebook.

SPEAKER_36: So that's not my argument. Right. But the prices are not driven by retail investors. The prices are driven by institutional investors. Right. People who will buy a couple of percentage points.

SPEAKER_64: If you want to kick in our mythical thousand dollars and you can afford to lose that and you have an instinct that Zynga $2.23 billion is undervalued.

SPEAKER_113: With $1.6 billion in cash and a billion plus in revenue.

SPEAKER_53: Knock your socks off. Right. And go.

SPEAKER_26: Just understand that that is a bet. And gambling is legal in Vegas and this is an educated bet.

SPEAKER_116: Yeah. It's worth making.

SPEAKER_39: But you're still playing against LeBron and he's going to kick your butt in general if you think you can pick better than LeBron.

SPEAKER_03: So when you see Kickstarter happening and people picking winners on there, people have

SPEAKER_04: some knowledge of a product they like, does that change it a little bit in your mind? So like, I'm an educated consumer. I know I like Groupon. Well, let's take Ouya. I know I like Facebook.

SPEAKER_93: Let's take Ouya. Do you know Ouya?

SPEAKER_04: Yeah, the video game.

SPEAKER_93: Yeah, I think I'm pronouncing it right. Yeah, it's like Ouya.

SPEAKER_53: It's the Android video game. O-U-Y-A. Yeah. So they broke all the records on Kickstarter. Five million or something. Yeah, well, they, you know.

SPEAKER_120: 5.9. Here it is on my computer.

SPEAKER_53: Yeah, last time when I first looked, in their first incarnation, they had raised 2.7 million. And then I looked again, it was 5 million. Now it's 5.9 million. What I think that suggests is that consumers are voting with their pocketbooks that this is something they would like to see happen. And by the way, it may happen. Right. And I'm a, I would love to see it happen. Right.

SPEAKER_26: So I have called many insiders to ask what they think. Yeah. And they're pretty skeptical on whether it will actually happen. Now, by the way, I'm hoping it will happen.

SPEAKER_03: And when you say happen, you mean be a successful product in business. Well, they don't have a product. Right.

SPEAKER_26: They're taking the money to build the product, to launch the product.

SPEAKER_53: And by the way, skepticism does not mean a company won't succeed. And I'm rooting for Ouya to succeed. And I have actually talked to the founding team. And I'm a fan. Right. Of the idea.

SPEAKER_12: How is this changing venture, though? I mean, as a venture capital, it's putting on your venture hat. Yeah. Obviously, things have risk. You want people with big, audacious goals. And clearly, you want people who can get traction with consumers. And having 40,000 consumers actually take out a credit card before a product exists and put up 5.9 million dollars, that has to be some indication to you that there is something

SPEAKER_130: in this general. Makes your ears percolate. Exactly.

SPEAKER_131: So every VC in the world goes and meets with these folks. Do they need VCs now? Is this going to disintermediate VCs? Some people are saying that.

SPEAKER_53: Well, just like I don't believe angelists disintermediated VCs, and I don't believe seed funding or angels in general disintermediate VCs, let me say it simply this way. The more companies that get started with half a million, 1 million, 2 million, whatever amount it takes to get started, the more of those that are created, the better it is for venture capitalists.

SPEAKER_39: Why?

SPEAKER_53: Because venture capitalists, by and large, it depends on the size of the VC, are looking to write 3, 5, 8 million dollar checks.

SPEAKER_134: For 10% or 20% of the company.

SPEAKER_53: Usually, the minimum most VCs want is 20.

SPEAKER_134: Right.

SPEAKER_135: 20% for 5 million, for 3 million.

SPEAKER_53: If they can't get it, they'll take 15 if it's super hot. But they want a meaningful stake, for reasons I can explain in a moment. But all it gives them is more shot on goal. More shot on goal. More shots on goal. If I have 10 companies in Los Angeles to look at investing in, okay, I've got to pick the

SPEAKER_42: one or two best from those 10. If there are 100 created, more opportunities to pick my one or two deals.

SPEAKER_26: So let's just say my pipeline is wider. Now, here's what you have to understand about venture capital.

SPEAKER_53: In the 90s, the amount of money that went into VCs to then fund entrepreneurs on average was about $15 billion a year. In three years, the late 90s, that went from $15 billion to $110 billion in the year 2000. Now, that money is committed for 10 years. So it doesn't go away right away.

SPEAKER_03: The weird thing... And those limited partners, the people who give the venture capitalists the money to invest, they cannot back out. If they do, it's a huge price to pay. Correct. It's seppuku. Correct. They kill themselves. It's what? Seppuku. Like ritualized suicide.

SPEAKER_142: If I don't make my commitments as a limited partner, I lose everything in the fund. Correct?

SPEAKER_53: Yes. Mostly. It's their technicalities. But you do lose a lot of money.

SPEAKER_48: Yeah. Okay. They call it Harry Carey, right? Harry Carey is another way to say seppuku.

SPEAKER_42: Okay. So I learn something new every day.

SPEAKER_53: Yeah. And the irony about 10-year funds is most 10-year funds last 12 years. Right. I don't know why I call them 10-year funds.

SPEAKER_146: It takes them five, six years to invest it. And then it takes another five or six years to figure out what to do with these companies.

SPEAKER_118: I mean, Fred Wilson still has people from Flatiron Partner Fund.

SPEAKER_53: The normal time horizon is you invest for three to four years. And then you start exiting in years seven through 10. But the reality is you still have five, six, seven companies at the end of 10 years. So you can either sell them in a secondary market and just exit, or you can continue to manage them.

SPEAKER_04: And then the LPs just have to be okay with that. And if the fund is in the black, the VCs, the limited partners, would be like, hey, let it ride. Or maybe they want the gravy.

SPEAKER_39: I think it's nuanced. I think the LPs would take a view. If they believed that there was two or three X the value by waiting, they would say, wait.

SPEAKER_53: If they're growing impatient, they usually, if LPs act in concert, they can act against the VC.

SPEAKER_153: They're usually voting thresholds. But if a certain number of LPs vote, they can force action.

SPEAKER_04: Are they coordinated like that? Do they go and go to Fred Wilson and say, hey, listen, we're looking at the Flatiron Partners Fund from 2001.

SPEAKER_27: And there's three things left. Just sell these for scrap. We want the money.

SPEAKER_36: I don't think anyone says anything negative to Fred Wilson because they're somehow hoping that either they can invest in his next fund or continue investing if they were lucky enough to get in.

SPEAKER_142: Yeah. I mean, his ascension is pretty miraculous over the last decade.

SPEAKER_36: Completely miraculous. I mean, he is. But he's not a one-hit wonder. I am amazed when I look at his.

SPEAKER_45: People thought he was a one-hit wonder when he just had GeoCities.

SPEAKER_36: And I should make it clear. I think USV is talented. I don't think it's all Fred. Fred gets all the credit.

SPEAKER_159: Brad and these other folks are contributing meaningfully.

SPEAKER_36: It's a great team. If you look at Albert and the investment in 10-Gen, which is MongoDB, that's impressive.

SPEAKER_160: That's a half-billion-dollar company now. It's Kevin Ryan's company, right?

SPEAKER_42: They have Etsy. They have Kickstarter. Foursquare. They have Foursquare. They have Tumblr. Tumblr.

SPEAKER_162: They have, I mean, on and on and on.

SPEAKER_161: Pincus and Zynga, Twitter.

SPEAKER_162: Obviously, they had Zynga. Obviously, they have Twitter.

SPEAKER_161: Yeah, it's unbelievable.

SPEAKER_12: Hey, when we get back, let's hear your big announcement. And let me just take a moment to tell everybody about an amazing product, actually out of New

SPEAKER_76: York, Squarespace. Squarespace is an amazing publishing platform that I, Jason Calacanis, used for the launch conference. And they just came out with their new version 6. And it is gorgeous. Look at these beautiful sites here. And that's what you're really getting with Squarespace. A gorgeous, delicious-looking site that is far and above the design templates you'll find anywhere else at a very, very affordable price. I keep telling these guys, too cheap, raise the prices. But they tell me they just want to make the world a better place. Drag-and-drop features automatically resizes for the mobile version. So when you look on an iPad or you look on your iPhone or Android phone or the web, it all just flows naturally. And hey, look, we made, I told my guys like an hour ago, hey, make me Tyler, since Tyler's like too busy to come to work. And he's been like in Sweden. Here's all Tyler's photos. We did this without permission. You can go to insightsfromsweden.squarespace.com. And I got to think Tyler's got a girlfriend in Sweden because I've never seen him go under the radar like this. I mean, he's just totally gone. Nobody can get in touch with him. It must be love. And I tell you, I'm in love with Squarespace for making this beautiful Tyler's Summer Vacation tribute page. Literally, I had a non-technical person put this together in seconds by stealing all of Tyler's photos off of Facebook.

SPEAKER_32: Look, the bi-yearly plan gets you 20% off and Twist listeners get another 10% off with the code TWIST7, T-W-I-S-T-7 and the number seven that is. Go ahead and tell all your friends.

SPEAKER_04: Go ahead and tell your parents, your cousins. You get all these people at the holiday gatherings, at the 4th of July, Memorial Day, Labor Day. I need to build a website. You're in the internet business. Can you build? You have this happen, right? People say like, oh, Mark, you invest in internet companies. I need to build a website for my dry cleaner. Can you build it for us? Or do you know somebody who can build me a website? Sure. And you're like, I'm a venture capitalist. I mean, what? Build you a website? I mean, do you ask your dentist to like buy you toothpaste? Like. That's not normally how I respond, but fair enough. I know, but that's what you think, right? Because I'm thinking like, if I was a doctor and I came, you know, like to Christmas and then you ask me like, do I have Band-Aids? Do I know somebody with Band-Aids? I don't have Band-Aids. I'm a doctor. I'm a brain surgeon. Jeez.

SPEAKER_165: Anyway, you could be, you can really help your family out and get them Squarespace.

SPEAKER_76: Just tell them, go get Squarespace and go ahead and thank at Squarespace. And thanks for making version six. I mean, I know it's been a long time in the making, but what a beautiful, beautiful product. And clearly Tyler's having a great time in Sweden. And look at all these beautiful websites. I mean, just gorgeous, gorgeous stuff. The way it moves around, it's so fluid. It's all that HTML5 goodness, CSS, all that stuff. And they just do a great job. I can't tell you how fond I am of the product. We use it every day here. And I don't have to have technical people. So when I, you know, I don't have technical people at the launch event or at This Week in

SPEAKER_12: Startups. I can just ask them like, you know, semi-technical people, like, you know, people who know how to use Microsoft Office or know how to use Gmail. They're not coders. They're not programmers. They're not designers. But they can make stuff that looks like it was made by a designer or a programmer.

SPEAKER_102: And that's why Squarespace is so special. Go ahead and check out squarespace.com. Thanks, Squarespace.

SPEAKER_166: Okay, so you did This Week in Venture Capital. You got a huge following for that.

SPEAKER_76: And you have a big announcement about that.

SPEAKER_39: Yes. Well, you know, I sort of feel like a rested development. I went off the air for a period of time.

SPEAKER_53: And there's been these grumblings of why have I gone off the air. Right. And I went off the air for my own reasons. It's been almost a year, if you can believe that. Yeah, it's unbelievable.

SPEAKER_16: But we're bringing the show back. Awesome. Wow.

SPEAKER_15: Yeah, and I'm super excited to come in and start doing the show again.

SPEAKER_04: The show was, I mean, it's a really great show. And people love that you were so transparent about everything going on in your life and venture capital. But it's really hard to commit to doing the show, isn't it?

SPEAKER_26: Yeah, I mean, it's a time commitment. I mean, I actually didn't mind the time commitment itself of actually doing the show.

SPEAKER_53: Right. I mean, my feeling was I spend my career either seeing companies, helping existing companies, or meeting new people. Right. And the meeting new people, we're usually doing things like debating what's going on in the VC industry. And what do you think about Facebook and Zynga? Yeah. And how is the world changing? And so all I did was just shift those to on camera.

SPEAKER_04: Yeah. And you record them and everybody else gets to...

SPEAKER_53: Which I thought was great. And there's a weird thing about doing video with people is you do develop this interesting bond. So, you know, two years down the road, I have people still coming back to me saying, do you know how many people have commented about that? I'll tell you a funny thing.

SPEAKER_26: So Camillion...

SPEAKER_04: It is a really interesting because the shows then wind up getting embedded in Google search or YouTube search.

SPEAKER_53: Well, Camillionaire. Yeah. He's a hip hop artist, you know, successful in his niche.

SPEAKER_174: He's a dot com fanboy.

SPEAKER_47: He's an internet fanboy. So he told me that he started getting pulled aside at airports and people said, hey, I saw you on Mark Suter's show. That's fantastic.

SPEAKER_26: He had the biggest laugh about that. It was really funny. But I know for a fact, an individual venture capitalist got a job as a result of being on the show. Wow. Because it turns out that LPs, the people who invest in VC funds, actually watch the show. And I only found that out as I traveled the country, possibly raising money, possibly not. Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_48: When you might have been meeting with LPs, they might have brought up that they'd seen the show. Yes. And I was surprised.

SPEAKER_146: Well, I mean, it is a natural extension of what you did with your blog, right?

SPEAKER_14: Yeah. I mean, you basically were a new VC. I don't want to say nobody VC because you were an established entrepreneur, but you were a nobody in the VC community. Sure. And then all of a sudden, people are like, oh, he's the West Coast version of Fred Wilson. Yeah. Or Brad Feld, you know, in Colorado.

SPEAKER_165: Like the blog really put you on the mat.

SPEAKER_39: It helped.

SPEAKER_53: And I think there's a lot of cynicism within the LP community and within other VCs about the idea of blogging. Yeah. And I've even heard it lobbied against Fred. And I just don't understand that mentality. I mean, one of the things we all compete for is access to entrepreneurs. Yep. What, how does access work? Well, historically in Silicon Valley, it worked that you went to Stanford, you knew the professors, you graduated with a class, you knew a hundred people, and they all started referring to people, people to you. And then you'd been in the Valley for 20 years and suddenly, you know, all the deals find you. Well, that, those days are done, right? Yeah.

SPEAKER_146: Now you can just instantly have a fun. Mike Arrington. Yeah.

SPEAKER_186: Dave McClure, and the list goes on and on of people who have instantly become.

SPEAKER_26: Yeah. Well, instant is not as easy or instant as you think. And you can ask Dave McClure that.

SPEAKER_04: Instant on in terms of profile, but not success. Yeah. Right. Instantly, they got up and running.

SPEAKER_26: Yes. And, and, and I would say this to you, which is when we advise entrepreneurs, we would say technology is changing your industry.

SPEAKER_53: Technology is making your industry more transparent. And it's making it easier for customers to get direct access to you. So my mentality was keeping a blog is just having a way for me to have a dialogue with my potential customers. Right.

SPEAKER_26: Now, here's the other interesting thing is it turns out ad agencies read it. It turned out brands read it. It turns out that other VCs read it.

SPEAKER_04: So it becomes a tool for your portfolio companies to get.

SPEAKER_35: Absolutely.

SPEAKER_04: A little bit of attention.

SPEAKER_14: But Fred Wilson sometimes does, he's a very strongly opinionated guy. And he can have sharp elbows at times. We've been friends for a long time. Yeah. I think while three of us have sharp elbows at times, sometimes technical fouls happen even amongst competitors, you know, when he says like Yahoo's dead to me and he's got a portfolio of 15 companies or 25 companies that might need to have a relationship with Yahoo. Does that make you, does that give you pause?

SPEAKER_36: So it's a very interesting question, Jason, which is that I feel three years ago when I was less well known, I just said whatever I wanted on my blog. And if you've been reading my blog for that long, you'll realize that over the course

SPEAKER_26: of last year or so, I have toned down the negative messages. Yeah. And it's for that reason.

SPEAKER_36: Like if I say anything against Apple or Yahoo or Google, even goodwilled, I hear about it the next day from portfolio companies.

SPEAKER_102: Yeah. So you have to basically be responsible knowing that your, what you say, your behavior

SPEAKER_04: impacts your portfolio companies directly. Yes. And Fred did pull back a little bit on this. He has. Yeah.

SPEAKER_197: And he's acknowledged that.

SPEAKER_04: I have had to because people, you know what? I tell you, I throttled myself and I, it makes me wonder if I'm doing the right thing or not because I made my name by being blunt and honest. That was my brand. Yeah.

SPEAKER_14: And now I find as I get a little bit older, I'm like, you know what? I just don't feel like giving it to Mark Zuckerberg today. I don't feel like, you know, taking out the bat and beating them up on these decisions. And it's not, it's for two reasons. One, I don't want to go to a party and then have a bunch of people want to talk to me about that.

SPEAKER_23: Yep.

SPEAKER_14: And then number two, I feel like I know as an entrepreneur, an entrepreneur, he's busting his ass. Yep. And he's probably got sleepless nights thinking about, my God, my whole thing's going to come apart.

SPEAKER_186: Like, I just don't have it in me to beat the guy up.

SPEAKER_26: Yeah. And on top of that now, am I right or wrong? Um, I think for the most part, you're right. Your brand and what people love about you is that you talk direct when other people

SPEAKER_36: don't. And I think you should continue to do that. But there are ways to do that without necessarily poking people in the eye. And so you can do it. Yeah, it's a hard line. But that's, I would encourage you to be yourself. And I think, you know, that's what people value. Yeah. And I think you are, I mean, I don't need to kowtow to you, but I think you are one of the most insightful writers in our industry for that reason. Like you just say it straight.

SPEAKER_208: Here's what I think Yahoo should do. You know, I killed a piece.

SPEAKER_207: I killed a piece.

SPEAKER_208: Okay. What was it on?

SPEAKER_04: It was on Scout.

SPEAKER_208: Okay.

SPEAKER_04: You know Scout?

SPEAKER_208: I know incredibly well.

SPEAKER_04: I wrote a piece on Scout.

SPEAKER_208: Well, tell me what you wrote. Let's talk about it here.

SPEAKER_209: Okay. I wrote about Scout. Because I know a lot about Scout. That this was absolutely abhorrent.

SPEAKER_26: Tell people first what happened. Okay. So for Scout, you tell them. Okay.

SPEAKER_53: So Scout is a company that is in this social, local, mobile networking or solo mo or whatever they call it. And it's basically a way to meet people around you. Now this became a huge fad prior to South by Southwest. As you know, Highlighter was it called? Yeah, Highlighter. And one or two others, right?

SPEAKER_213: And previously before that, it was very popular in which community?

SPEAKER_53: Yeah. And all of a sudden, you know, TechCrunch and the blogosphere was announcing that this

SPEAKER_26: is what's going on at South by Southwest. The next Foursquare, the next Twitter.

SPEAKER_53: Now Scout had been doing this for three years prior to that. And I had tracked that industry a lot. And I knew that it was going to all end up being hype. But Scout is a way to meet people that are in your near area. They don't allow you to pinpoint and meet someone a quarter mile from you. And what happened was three young women on Scout.

SPEAKER_216: I think it was one boy and two women.

SPEAKER_31: One boy and two women. So three young people, I should say.

SPEAKER_216: Like 12 or 13 years old.

SPEAKER_31: In the 13-year-old and under range were raped through people who groomed them on the service.

SPEAKER_03: And this service told you where they were and gave you a pretext for it.

SPEAKER_04: And this is what I wrote. Grindr, which this service was copied. Scout copied Grindr. Grindr was very popular in the gay community.

SPEAKER_12: People in the gay community were very concerned about people being raped and murdered on Grindr because it was very casual and it was very fast. You're within 100 feet of me. I see a photo of you or half a photo of you. And then we go meet, have sex. And you don't know who I am and I could murder you. Or drug you and then murder you.

SPEAKER_14: Whatever. And there was this big outcry in that community. They copied the exact UI of Grindr. And I said to myself, if I, as an entrepreneur, copied the exact UI of Grindr.

SPEAKER_220: Had people been raped or murdered through Grindr? Yes.

SPEAKER_209: There were cases of people being raped.

SPEAKER_165: Now, if I was an entrepreneur, this is what I wrote and I didn't publish. If I was an entrepreneur and I built a product based on Grindr and then targeted it at 13-year-olds, because they did target the specific community of 13 to 18, I know as an entrepreneur that this is a dangerous service for adults. And then I made it for 13-year-olds. And I know that 10, 11, 12-year-olds sneak in.

SPEAKER_101: Have you met with the company? I have not.

SPEAKER_208: So let me tell you what I know from the inside.

SPEAKER_101: But wait, let me finish my thought about what I wrote.

SPEAKER_165: I literally would shut the company down and I might actually kill myself because I don't know if I could live knowing that I made a product that everybody knew was too dangerous, aimed it at kids, and then three kids got raped.

SPEAKER_14: I would literally shut the company down and I might commit suicide. I'm probably too egotistical to commit suicide, but I would then make my life's work trying to protect kids. And then these people have relaunched the site and they claim that proximity-based social networking is a good idea for kids.

SPEAKER_165: You have kids. I do. I have a kid now. If you have a daughter or two boys, I have a daughter. If your boys came home and said, I found a cool app, dad. It allows me to meet strangers based on how close they are to me. What would you do?

SPEAKER_26: I do want to, I will answer that question, but I do want to take the conversation in a slightly different direction.

SPEAKER_03: But anyway, I took this piece and I didn't publish it because I sent it to three or four people I respect. And they said, Jason, this is so biting.

SPEAKER_165: Yeah. You're just a good writer. Yeah. And you have annihilated this company so fully that this will take over like, just like the

SPEAKER_04: Facebook pieces I wrote, like congressman contacted me about them and wanted me to testify and do stuff. It'll just take over your life. Right. And I said, I don't want my life to be taken off for a year because I wrote something that,

SPEAKER_131: you know, is so insightful or poignant that it decimates another entrepreneur.

SPEAKER_38: Let me tell you what I know.

SPEAKER_36: Okay. And none of this is, I don't believe, super confidential. Okay. First of all, the CEO is a wonderful human being.

SPEAKER_234: Okay.

SPEAKER_36: Okay. And that was one of the reasons I stopped myself. But let me, let me tell you, I've known him for three and a half years. He is from rural Sweden. Yeah. From a not wealthy community moving to the U.S. to launch a tech business is like a dream come true to him. He's a very humble guy. They assembled a very technical team.

SPEAKER_26: When they launched, they thought this was... I mean, you have to have to remember that initially there was... What was the Google product called?

SPEAKER_36: Latitude? Latitude. Latitude. Yep. And there was... What was the other really big... Goala. No, no, no, no. Foursquare. No, before Goala and Foursquare. There was a really big one in the, you know, tell... Publish to people where you're going and what you're doing. The name escapes me. It got sold recently in a high-profile sale, if it comes back to me.

SPEAKER_241: Oh, I think I know. It was the one that Sam was working on out of Y Combinator, Looped.

SPEAKER_56: Looped. Exactly the one I was looking for. Yeah.

SPEAKER_36: So Looped. There were people... A lot of people were trying to solve this problem, and so was Christian and his team. And through the... And it didn't initially look like it does... Like, I don't know Grindr. Right.

SPEAKER_42: I don't know how much time you've spent on Grindr, but I haven't spent any time on Grindr. No, I have not spent time.

SPEAKER_56: I have nothing to worry about. Not that there's anything wrong with that, Jason. It would be okay with me.

SPEAKER_244: Well, it wouldn't be okay because I'm a married man. Yes.

SPEAKER_53: Totally teasing.

SPEAKER_244: Yes, of course.

SPEAKER_26: But what I would say to you is, in my meetings over the years with Christian, here's the things I know.

SPEAKER_36: Number one, he said to me very early on, I realize now that being able to tell people where women are within close proximity is not a good idea. It's not a good idea because women don't want it. And it's not a good idea because of the safety issues.

SPEAKER_26: Number two, they built a product called the Creepinator. The Creepinator has an entire team dedicated in India to reviewing every flag transaction.

SPEAKER_53: And they built technology to review every image that ever goes through their system.

SPEAKER_26: If anyone gets even one black mark in the Creepinator, they ban you based on your IP address of your phone or the MAC address or the UUID. UUID on the iOS. And so they put a tremendous amount of effort into it. I said to Christian, when I saw the app, I said, I understand why you're doing the app this way. For me, I would broaden it a little bit and not make it feel quite like booty call. Yeah. And he said to me, I agree. We're working on that. We want to implement that. The problem is I haven't been able to raise capital yet. And when I raise capital, we're going to start to do that.

SPEAKER_106: Then they raised a fortune from Andreessen Horowitz.

SPEAKER_26: So, but just so you know, they worked hard not to allow creeps on it. They worked hard not to allow you to finger people locally.

SPEAKER_255: But they had a sense, I think.

SPEAKER_26: But just like on Craigslist, and you know that there was a huge scandal with Habbo Hotel in, did you know this?

SPEAKER_39: No. Oh, okay. Well, you should look it up. Habbo Hotel, I think it's called. The online game company. It's based, I think, in Finland.

SPEAKER_53: And they had raised a bunch of money from Balderton and other people.

SPEAKER_26: There was a big expose about a month ago about how young people were being groomed in that game and raped. Wow. And by the way, Balderton gave their money back. They just wrote off the investment. They gave, I think it was $8 million investment. They wrote it off. They didn't get their money back. Sorry. They gave their equity back in the company. Wow. Now, listen.

SPEAKER_53: Craigslist is a haven for people who are grooming other people. Yes. Online games.

SPEAKER_26: It is a safety concern that everybody has. Text messaging services. Okay. So as a entrepreneur. All of these.

SPEAKER_03: So should you have, should the entrepreneur have created a location-based proximity app?

SPEAKER_26: So let me just say, when they found out this happened, he immediately pulled it.

SPEAKER_53: And what they did is they didn't allow you to talk to anyone locally. So they're now, my understanding of what they've done is they've reintroduced it, but you can't.

SPEAKER_64: You're prohibited from talking to people if you're under 13, I think.

SPEAKER_262: Yeah.

SPEAKER_53: Anyway, it's not a good situation. I would just say, please just know that this is a good human being dealing with a complicated situation and trying to make it better. Why would you? Yeah, see, this is the problem.

SPEAKER_209: By the way, he's a parent, just so you know. Which I had emailed him, and then his PR people, the PR people from Andreessen Horowitz, got back to me,

SPEAKER_04: and they were like panicked that I was going to write a piece. And I didn't write the piece because I was like, you know what, I just don't have the energy to deal with this because it will become like hundreds of emails a day and all this kind of stuff. It'll take over my life, and I need to focus on Mahalo. But I do think, why would you re-release the software, and why would you release it to begin with? I mean, there is some indication they knew that this could be problematic, and for me, I would just not release it.

SPEAKER_36: I don't have enough money in my wallet to fund your tip jar to say all the words I would want to say,

SPEAKER_53: which is, go to Facebook, think of the dirtiest, nastiest terms you can, and do a search for them. Of course. And you will be shocked by the images you will find that are available to our youth.

SPEAKER_270: Of course. And so, but the fact that there is. Go to Google without, you know.

SPEAKER_14: Filters. Filters. But the fact that, you know, bad stuff exists in the world, creating stuff that is, you know, an accelerant to behaviors that you would never approve of as a parent, you know, that's the issue I have, right?

SPEAKER_04: Like, so it's one thing, like, you know, yes, Google has porn in it, you turn it off, they can find it. It's another thing, if you release a product, you would never let your kids use this product. I, I don't. You wouldn't answer that question.

SPEAKER_31: I would not let my kids use the product.

SPEAKER_04: And if they came home with that product, would you take their phones away? Or if you found them using it, would you take the phones away?

SPEAKER_56: I would take it off their, but my kids are six and nine.

SPEAKER_04: Of course. So here's the thing, you know, you would, as, as, as, yes.

SPEAKER_70: It's not age appropriate.

SPEAKER_04: It's not age appropriate. And so if a 13, 14, 15 year old came home with this, you would absolutely take it away.

SPEAKER_272: But I do believe it's age appropriate for 18 year olds.

SPEAKER_04: Exactly. So that, that's my point is, I think anybody who's a parent, and he's a parent, you and I as parents would never let a 13, 14, 15 year old use that product. We both think it's an 18 plus product, but for some reason, this guy who made it, who seems like a real nice guy, gave it to people under 18. I think that's the problem I had.

SPEAKER_32: And I, I just have a, but I didn't release it.

SPEAKER_53: Anyway, my guess is that they're dramatically trying to carve back the number of youth using the product. And dramatically trying to carve back what you can do.

SPEAKER_36: I, I, look, I would just say this. The problem with technology is that technology is going to happen. It is going to advance.

SPEAKER_26: Young people do have the tools to reach other young people. Do have the ability to know location. For example, for example. But we as investors. Instagram.

SPEAKER_276: What, what, what, what.

SPEAKER_04: No, but Instagram. What liability does the investor have? I want to talk about Instagram. But what liability does Andreessen Horowitz have in backing the idea? Let's ask the hard, hard question.

SPEAKER_36: Legal liability?

SPEAKER_279: Not legal liability. Moral.

SPEAKER_53: No, I don't think that they morally backed anything that was abhorrent. In hindsight, they look at it. And of course, if we knew rapes were going to take place. Well, yes. One would have put in place.

SPEAKER_281: But as a parent, 13, 14, 15 years using it, you wouldn't have backed it.

SPEAKER_26: Okay, let's come back to that. But let's talk about Instagram. Sure. Here's the problem with Instagram. And I was going to write about this. I just haven't had time. Instagram.

SPEAKER_53: So on Facebook, you had a private community of people you share photos with. Now, I don't, I'm not friends with that many people on Facebook. I think I have 450 friends because I share pictures of my kids. And the deal when I signed up for Facebook was this is private. And then, of course, we know they've tried to make it public.

SPEAKER_26: Now, the interesting thing is that say young people said, well, I'll be friends with anyone who reasonably wants to be friends with me. So maybe I have 2,000 friends on Facebook. On Instagram, pretty much like Twitter, anyone can get access to your photo. So my understanding of what's happening is young boys don't take vanity photos of themselves

SPEAKER_53: and share them on Instagram. Young girls do. Yep. So there are a lot of young girls, 13, 14, 15, 16 years old. Look at my outfit. Putting risque photos, MySpace-like photos of themselves on Instagram that suddenly everyone can access. So my understanding is that a lot of boys, and I'm being generic because I don't have real data, are going and downloading these risque photos of girls. Now, here's the thing. When you take pictures and share pictures through social networks, oftentimes they either have location attached to them, like you can do on Instagram.

SPEAKER_286: In the photo, people don't even know that the camera has the location.

SPEAKER_39: Location in them. Right. Or you're giving some evidence of where the photo is. So these tools are pushing as a society, and as a society, we are going to have to deal with this issue. Yeah. And there's no way to shut it all down.

SPEAKER_53: So we're going to have to deal with how we educate our youth and pressure companies into implementing safeguards for youth.

SPEAKER_32: Let's go to questions from our audience. Well said. I love, this is from Nick. Nick says, I loved Mark's post, and I'm making intros for the sake of intros.

SPEAKER_291: On the flip side, how does Mark manage what must be a huge number of intros requests for his time? How do you deal with that?

SPEAKER_292: Okay.

SPEAKER_83: I want to prepay. Prepay for two.

SPEAKER_53: It's the f***ing bonkers that people just start sending willy-nilly intros. It's only $10 per car, so you have one on account. It's okay. I didn't have a 10 on me.

SPEAKER_294: That's okay. You got one on account.

SPEAKER_53: And I'm going to save some of it that we can put in later when I do my George Carlin routine. Yeah. So, for example. It drives you effing crazy. So, I had this conversation yesterday with a venture capitalist, and he said,

SPEAKER_26: Oh, I just introduced so-and-so to your CEO at a company I invested with. And I said, Why? They said, Oh, I thought they should meet. I said, Why? And he said, Well, there are two local CEOs and da-da-da. I said, Do you realize that I spent all my time trying to get my CEO, not my CEO, but the CEO of the company, to focus?

SPEAKER_53: That I'm trying to get a CEO of a portfolio company. But trying, like hell, to get this person to not be distracted. So, I try not to distract them. Sure. I said, Don't produce any investor reports that you don't already use for management purposes. Don't chase shiny objects.

SPEAKER_31: And you're being undisciplined just sending him an intro. Which now he feels like he has to materialize into something for you.

SPEAKER_101: Of course, of course. No, well, he feels like he has to take the meeting. But not only does that feel like he has to take it, but he feels like he's got to report back to you, or something has to come out of it, perhaps?

SPEAKER_39: So, there is a nuance to intros.

SPEAKER_53: Number one, for the most part, if you know you're dealing with someone super busy, and you know it's kind of a favor to the person who wants to get introduced, ask first.

SPEAKER_302: Yes. If somebody wants to be introduced to Mark Cuban, ask Mark Cuban, does he want to be introduced to that person?

SPEAKER_83: I almost always ask first.

SPEAKER_39: There are times where either I just, I know the people, I know it's okay, and I'll make the executive decision.

SPEAKER_303: You'll intro somebody to me, you don't have to ask me first. You know I'll take the meeting.

SPEAKER_39: Honestly, I don't, Jason. I don't just send you, I appreciate that, but I don't send you random people.

SPEAKER_34: Well, I know that you wouldn't, but I would never want you to have to feel you had to send a pre-email.

SPEAKER_53: If I felt there was a compelling reason for you to meet, and we had enough of a relationship, which we do, that you would trust that intro, then I might say, please meet him.

SPEAKER_26: But I work really hard not to send random intros. There are times where I will write my network. If I know someone's looking for a job, and it's a close friend of mine who I believe in, I might write to 15 people, and of those 15, I might send seven, and I just send it. And I say, please do me this favor. But by the way, it'll be once a year maximum. Please do me this favor and meet. And the other seven might be so busy that I ask first. And that's only 14, so I'm only sending 14 intros.

SPEAKER_241: Yeah, what do you do when you have a portfolio company you've invested in, and they want to intro to 10 important people?

SPEAKER_39: It's my job to do that, right? Your job to do that. So I have to walk a fine line, and I have to say, is the person who's getting the intro to going to get enough value?

SPEAKER_03: How do you say no to one of the launchpad companies?

SPEAKER_188: Let's say you have a launchpad company, and they're like, can you intro to me, to Marissa? And to Larry? And to Jeff Bezos? What do you say?

SPEAKER_26: And I would say it's not appropriate they're too senior. Like, I do get that. Like, can you introduce me to Sheryl Sandberg? Yes, I have her email. Yes, she knows who I am. Yes, I could send an intro. She's the wrong person. You're wasting her time. Right. Two weeks ago, someone asked me for an intro to Ben Horowitz. One of my portfolio companies asked me for an intro to Ben Horowitz. And I sent Ben an email in advance and said, this company would... So I said to the entrepreneur, send me an email I can forward with a description of what you do.

SPEAKER_312: Send me a deck.

SPEAKER_39: By the way, I took the deck, and I cut half the slides out just because I didn't want it to be too long.

SPEAKER_26: And I sent it to Ben, and I said, this is a company I really believe in. I believe it has the attributes that Andreessen Horowitz would be interested in. If you're interested in taking a meeting, let me know. I don't want to create an obligation for him.

SPEAKER_103: Yeah. What I do, Nick, who asked the question, good question, I will tell the person why I invested.

SPEAKER_12: That's what I've started doing. So when I send something to Mark, and I send stuff to Mark Andreessen or to Rolloff or whatever, I'll say, this is a company that I'm advising or invested in. Here's why. I think it's an opportunity. This is why I invested. And if you're interested in meeting the CEOs and CC'd above.

SPEAKER_319: Or here's their contact information, one or the other.

SPEAKER_36: So one edit I might make if I were you is not to CC them. Yeah. Because if you CC them, like if someone CCs someone to me and says, hey, if this is a good fit for you, meet them.

SPEAKER_53: I feel socially obligated.

SPEAKER_12: Yeah, maybe I should stop doing that. It's a good point. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04: I generally only have things that are high quality, and people know that.

SPEAKER_321: You still are creating the obligation.

SPEAKER_04: Yeah, it's true. It's true. It is true. But then I have people who say, like, send me everything you got, anything you invested in. But by the way, if someone says that to you, then you know you can, right? Yeah, that's true. And you know what I found that was really interesting about Andreessen Horowitz specifically? Mark Andreessen started, or somebody who works for him, started writing to me after they met with the person. And saying, we met with blank from blank.

SPEAKER_12: We passed, but we appreciate you sending it, and please keep sending us interesting things that you're investing in. Great. That's an interesting follow-up. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04: Like, we passed, but we're still following up.

SPEAKER_76: Another question from Michael, G. What are your thoughts on having junior employees out on the street looking for deals instead of waiting for the deals to come to the VCs? Is this something that only newer, unestablished firms need to do?

SPEAKER_32: Yeah, let's talk about that, like the hustle issue. Like, you have young people, associates or whatever, going to events. Do you find good companies like that, or do you have enough deal flow that you're pretty sure they're going to come to you?

SPEAKER_217: Everyone has their own point of view on this.

SPEAKER_53: My very strong point of view is that associates, which is usually what they're called, should not be sourcing deals. My belief is that associates should be helping you process, do background checks, do industry analysis, look at competition, make reference calls, and maybe even cast a wide net saying, Mark, here's 15 companies that are in the space you said you're interested in. Do any of these seem interesting? But it's my job as a partner to get my ass out to events and meet with people. And honestly, it's not that I read about something in, you know, on the launch or saw it at launch conference or saw it on Business Insider that really drives whether or not it's successful.

SPEAKER_26: And it's not that I didn't send could invest it and therefore I should chase it because he's a super smart guy, which he is. You know, often it's my judgment of the people. And how can I trust an associate who doesn't have my internal compass to make that judgment for me?

SPEAKER_12: Yeah, that's not really what their role would be. I think it's lazy VC. It sounds like lazy VC to me.

SPEAKER_04: Let's see. Today's is from Jess B. Today's social networks are all about making connections, but the act of communication is still dominated by legacy technologies like email, IM, and text.

SPEAKER_157: Why hasn't there been any real innovation in communication realm for decades?

SPEAKER_181: Has there been? I think there has been. What's an example? Well, think about it.

SPEAKER_53: Let's take 15 years ago. Right.

SPEAKER_26: 15 years ago, the Olympics would be going and they could show us a tape delay of the Olympics because there was no way that we were going to find out the results, you know, because the only source of information was the news, right? And the news wouldn't tell you who won or they would say, spoiler alert, don't watch. Yeah, yeah. You know, think about it. There were no voicemails, you know, well, maybe 20 years ago, there was no voicemail. Well, I think a lot has changed email itself has been a big innovation in the last 20 years for good and for bad. Yep.

SPEAKER_31: I think text messaging, I think text messaging, huge innovation over the last 15 years.

SPEAKER_12: DMs with Twitter seems to be. Twitter DM. A lot of people with a Twitter DM. Are you one of those people?

SPEAKER_31: I'm a Twitter DMer.

SPEAKER_14: God, there's people like, instead of texting, it's like, just let me just start DM conversations. Yeah. And like, I find, I don't look at my DMs and then I'm like, oh.

SPEAKER_36: So here's what I do. I turned on for Twitter, all DMs to automatically text me.

SPEAKER_339: Oh, I need to do that.

SPEAKER_26: So not that many people DM me.

SPEAKER_339: The problem is there's so many, so much DM spam.

SPEAKER_26: Not that many, no, no.

SPEAKER_339: I get a lot.

SPEAKER_26: Well, you follow too many people.

SPEAKER_341: That's the problem.

SPEAKER_26: I only follow authentic people that I want to hear from.

SPEAKER_64: What do you do? Do you use a tool to have like. And the list is who you. Peeps.

SPEAKER_69: I have a list called Peeps and it's like under a thousand people.

SPEAKER_12: And so that's a way.

SPEAKER_26: So that's the equivalent of just having a normal follower list.

SPEAKER_12: That's my normal follower list is my Peeps list.

SPEAKER_26: And why do you follow all the other people?

SPEAKER_12: Because it made people feel better. Like the fans of the show, people who casually were interested in me. And I will look at the mega feed of a hundred thousand people I follow and just scan it once in a while.

SPEAKER_32: Okay.

SPEAKER_12: But it's pretty noisy. Yeah. And so I just look at the Peeps list. But it was just like an early on Twitter thing. Like I'll just reciprocate, you know. Gotcha. But I think it's a mistake. I think I need to go unfollow everything. And there's no like easy way to unfollow everybody. So Path. Are you a Path user?

SPEAKER_26: I'm a huge Path user. We actually are connected now on Path.

SPEAKER_12: Yes. Yes. You just joined.

SPEAKER_27: Or you just started using it.

SPEAKER_26: I did not just join. We just connected.

SPEAKER_27: Oh, is that what it is? Yeah. It's so hard to find people on there. It is. And I have 150 people and then.

SPEAKER_53: They're doing better. Now there's a way where you can click a button and it tells you who to follow.

SPEAKER_14: Yeah. It's starting to do that. And then.

SPEAKER_12: But it doesn't really tell you like somebody doesn't want to follow you. So why? So I don't know like if Evan Williams isn't following me back or he just doesn't use it. Right. You know. Or like I followed.

SPEAKER_208: No, but if you see his stuff then he's following you back because there's not.

SPEAKER_12: No, I know that.

SPEAKER_04: But it says like a waiting reply. Right. And I think what it does is it permanently says a waiting reply. But then I saw I would accept people and then I wouldn't see them. And then I realized, oh, I'm at the 150 person limit. Right. And I got to go through the 150 person limit and figure out who hasn't reciprocated and unfollowed them. Oh, okay. So it's just inefficient. Like and also the 150 number is too low.

SPEAKER_36: What do you think is the magic of path? Because I have my own view on this.

SPEAKER_04: I think it's two things. Conspicuous consumption in children. Okay. So. Because I can't show you a picture. I can't tweet a picture of me on a private jet. I don't have a private jet. Yeah.

SPEAKER_12: I don't have a NetJets card. I never have paid for a private jet. But I have a dozen friends who have private jets. And once in a while I wind up on a private jet. And sometimes you take a picture of it. I don't. But other people take pictures and they publish them. I don't do that because I feel it's kind of gratuitous. But other people I see on path are like, hey, here is my G5 and I'm getting on it. You know, or here are my kids.

SPEAKER_32: I don't never post a picture of London publicly, but I will share it with my friends on path.

SPEAKER_36: So here's an interesting thing is I feel like with me on Facebook, I never chose to increase my network beyond people I knew. I think a lot of people did. And they just accepted everyone. And so I asked on Twitter recently, I said, why do you use path? And I was interested to hear.

SPEAKER_31: And the number one response is I needed to redo on my social network. Absolutely. So it's become what Facebook was intended to be in the first place.

SPEAKER_03: Yeah. And then Facebook got so much Twitter envy. They're like, oh, everything's public. Yeah. Remember they flipped everything public.

SPEAKER_04: And that was like one of the things I sort of wrote about. And one of the reasons they settled with the government was they just moved everybody to public.

SPEAKER_26: The weird thing about path, what I would tell path to change and what I haven't written about, because again, I don't like to be negative. Right.

SPEAKER_36: When path, but by the way, on this week in VC, I will be way more open than I will be on my blog. I think on video, I'm okay.

SPEAKER_04: Well, people can, this is the thing about video, I find. Like I just had that whole discussion about Scout. I'm not afraid to have the discussion. I'm not afraid about having the discussion, period. But I'm much more comfortable with having it, because people can hear the tone of my voice and understand that when I write stuff, people can just put whatever emotion they want on the words. Yeah. So I can write a sentence. I can say, listen, I feel bad for the guy. Yeah. But I don't think he should have launched it.

SPEAKER_45: But if I write, if that's in text, people are like, oh, Jason is condemning this guy without even knowing him, you know?

SPEAKER_26: Yeah. Let me say this, is when path first launched, they had a 50 person limit.

SPEAKER_36: Dunbar number.

SPEAKER_42: But I'll tell you, like my problem with 50 was, I'm like, well, would Jason feel weird if I told him he was one of my 50? Like, oh, Mark, you're one of my 50.

SPEAKER_286: Yeah, like really, like we don't, we've never met each other's kids. So.

SPEAKER_208: We're business associates. Which is weird, because we live so close to each other, right? Like I always see you checking in at restaurants by my house.

SPEAKER_366: Yeah, exactly. And we should change that, by the way. We should either. But at a minimum, wives, right? Yeah, wives. And I feel like, yeah, he's good. I would feel comfortable sharing private stuff with Jason. But I'm like, but I only get 50.

SPEAKER_26: And it's not about me and do I want to see Jason. It's like, well, if I say to Jason, he's one of my 50, do I look weird? Yeah.

SPEAKER_368: It's almost like I want to be too close friends to Jason or something.

SPEAKER_39: And so I felt like I wasn't accepting anyone because, well, no, I would accept close people who connected to me.

SPEAKER_53: I wasn't asking anyone. When they increased it to 150, and when I started hearing more people were using it, then I

SPEAKER_36: felt it was socially acceptable. Now that they've ingrained us that it's really supposed to be a private network, I think they should lift the limit.

SPEAKER_04: And, you know, maybe just they should, I think what they should do is maybe create like

SPEAKER_36: a 300, 400, 500 person limit.

SPEAKER_04: Here's what I think they should do is if you're at 150 for a month, they should add five.

Chamath Palihapitiya: And they basically, as you add people and you're still active, just make it automatically.

SPEAKER_42: Or what they could do is have it be 150, but then there's a button to click request 50 and you get it automatically, but it at least gets in your consciousness or whatever.

SPEAKER_26: The limit could be some big limit like 500. But anyway, it created weirdness, that weirdness has gone away, and now I think it's a very cool tool. What do you use it for?

SPEAKER_299: Well, similar to you, I like, so I'll tell you what I liked about Instagram. You take pictures of your private chat.

SPEAKER_180: You don't have a private chat. I don't have a private chat. You've done well. I've done okay, yeah.

SPEAKER_103: Like you could stop working, but with a bunch of kids and stuff like that, you still haven't

SPEAKER_14: had a huge epic win. Or have you, you've had a double, a single, triple? I've had doubles. You've had doubles.

SPEAKER_229: So you're comfortable. I'm okay. But you're hungry.

SPEAKER_127: I'm hungry. Yeah. I'm hungry because... Are you a successful VC?

SPEAKER_229: Yet?

SPEAKER_339: You know what's funny? How many years has it been? Well, five. Five years. Yeah. And how would you rate yourself? Scale of one to ten?

SPEAKER_26: So the answer is on Quora, because I was asked on Quora and I responded. Okay.

SPEAKER_36: So I believe, first of all, that I have been successful at the first phases of being a VC. Which are? Building awareness of who you are so you can increase deal flow. Absolutely. Understanding how to build a network of people who want to send you deals because they trust and respect you. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_377: I always would. Always do.

SPEAKER_36: I believe I have a pretty good ability to pick companies.

SPEAKER_26: I believe that I have a well-formed strategy that I've formed over the years about the stage I want to invest, the amount I want to invest.

SPEAKER_378: So you have a strategy.

SPEAKER_26: I have a strategy. And I believe I work with my companies very well. I'm pretty hands-on. Yep. And I think that works well.

SPEAKER_53: Now, the second phase of one's VC career is... So first of all, the next phase, which I've now proved pretty good at, is can you get follow-on investments? Yes. And I've done fine on that.

SPEAKER_12: So your companies have gotten their B-Rounds, C-Rounds, D-Rounds? Yes. No problem. In large part.

SPEAKER_53: Now, the two last questions are, one is, can you get exits?

SPEAKER_380: Right.

SPEAKER_26: And I'm going to come to that.

SPEAKER_380: Yep.

SPEAKER_26: Exits.

SPEAKER_56: Exits period. We could define big in a moment. And number two, can you raise funds? Right. Right.

SPEAKER_34: And we're going to get the answer to the fund question, I believe, of what I hear very soon. Very soon. Yes.

SPEAKER_26: Now, with regards to getting exits, I always say, so this was a question that I may or may not have been asked by LPs that I may or may not have met over the last year, is how come you don't have exits? I said, if I had exits, it's because I failed. Yeah. Because I wrote my first check in March of 2009, which means on average, I've been investing for three and a half years. If I had exits, other than Instagram, and like, you know, I would be delighted to have had Instagram. Sure. But other than the smashing successes.

SPEAKER_387: Yeah.

SPEAKER_53: For the outliers.

SPEAKER_389: For the most part, you sell early if it's kind of like. Yeah. You don't believe in it. Goal. Yeah. It was a good company. Should have succeeded. Didn't quite get there. You know, that's not going to create a VC fund, right?

SPEAKER_31: Yeah. So for me, I believe I should be much more evaluated by LPs based on the financial performance

SPEAKER_53: of the companies. And I can tell you our 2008 fund is the fastest growing fund we've ever had.

SPEAKER_31: In 2012, the revenues combined of those investments will cross 300 million in revenue.

SPEAKER_155: You got a lot of e-commerce in there. No. No?

SPEAKER_393: No, no, no.

SPEAKER_53: I think we only have one e-commerce.

SPEAKER_393: What's the bulk of that revenue? Is it SaaS revenue?

SPEAKER_53: Well, so Trucar is a large part of that. Yeah. It's not all of it. It's a large part. We have two financial services companies, both doing very well. Maker Studios. Yeah.

SPEAKER_231: Crashing it. That's in- I hear Maker Studios has 400 people working there.

SPEAKER_83: That's too high of a number for reality.

SPEAKER_112: 200 maybe.

SPEAKER_83: I can't quote exact numbers, but it's a lot.

SPEAKER_112: And a $10 million deal from the YouTube deal. So that's pretty amazing.

SPEAKER_53: So I would say to you that if you look across, all those are doing well. And if I take the 22 companies that will be in our portfolio, you know, I have at least one or two that I think are billion-dollar companies, but it's going to take eight years to get there, you know? Yeah. But some of the proof will be in the pudding. Proof of the pudding is in the eating. Yeah.

SPEAKER_26: You know, I think in the next 60 to 90 days, we'll be announcing major up rounds at two or three of our companies.

SPEAKER_102: Let's talk about accelerators. Yeah. You have done Launchpad how many times?

SPEAKER_83: Uh, we've run it for three years. We're about to do our fourth class.

SPEAKER_32: And, uh, that's about 10 people per class?

SPEAKER_48: It's exactly 10 per class.

SPEAKER_26: So you've done 30. Well, the first class we took more. So we've done 33. Uh-huh. 29 of them have gotten funded. Wow. Funded, defined as more than a million dollars. Yes. 29 have been funded. So seriously funded, yeah. Yep. And of them, uh...

SPEAKER_401: Two common serious funding.

SPEAKER_26: 11 have been acquired.

SPEAKER_401: Okay.

SPEAKER_26: We have raised more than $120 million across the 33 companies.

SPEAKER_302: Okay, so average 3 million.

SPEAKER_26: From 20 different VCs.

SPEAKER_16: Okay, so it's not you just, yeah, boosting. We've had $75 million of exits. Okay, so well done. It's in the black.

SPEAKER_208: It's doing well.

SPEAKER_81: Is it in the black already or close? Sounds close.

SPEAKER_208: So for transparency, and I don't want to mislead anyone. Yeah. For the first two years, we didn't give them money.

SPEAKER_53: We were a mentorship program. We took them in. We introduced them to capital.

SPEAKER_134: So it was more like office space and advisement.

SPEAKER_53: We didn't even have office space. We would meet once a week, either in my offices or in law offices or local.

SPEAKER_407: So the third time was when you... But I did, uh, I reviewed term sheets for people.

SPEAKER_26: I helped them with pitch decks. All the stuff you'd expect to do. You earned it. And on the third one, we did a fund.

SPEAKER_12: I have, obviously, there's, I think, six accelerators in town now.

SPEAKER_32: We have Science, which is a little bit of a different beast, more like Betaworks, Launchpad, Mucker. Amplify. Amplify. Upstart LA. Upstart LA. Start Engine. Start Engine. I have been bombarded as an angel investor, obviously, with, look at all these amazing companies. I can tell you some of them have been really not high quality.

SPEAKER_414: Not fundable, I would say. Right. In some cases, bad ideas, bad stuff.

SPEAKER_76: Not from yours. I really like the one that does the delivery of the high-end sous vide food.

SPEAKER_53: We, GRP, invested in that company.

SPEAKER_30: What's the name of that one?

SPEAKER_53: Pop-Up Pantry. Pop-Up Pantry. This is a really good idea.

SPEAKER_04: Great entrepreneurs. I met the guy at your dinner, and I started talking to him, and he explained what they were doing. And I said, oh, do you do that with, like, sous vide bags and dry eyes? He's like, how did you know that?

SPEAKER_291: Conclusion anybody would come to, because how could you make it work?

SPEAKER_416: We led that round.

SPEAKER_21: Yeah. It's a very interesting idea. $17 a meal, something like that? About there, yeah.

SPEAKER_32: For a gourmet meal that you just put the pouch in water, and next you pour it out, and you got a nice, great meal. Pretty good idea.

SPEAKER_47: It's a great idea.

SPEAKER_32: May or may not work.

SPEAKER_47: Yeah. I like all great ideas.

SPEAKER_32: I think it needs to be a five-pack of food for $40.

SPEAKER_26: Family meals. There are lots of discussions about what the configuration should be, because you deal with issues of, like, shipping, right?

SPEAKER_53: That's why I want $50 worth of food at once. You have to have high order value relative to shipping costs, but you also want a way

SPEAKER_26: for people to experiment and try it without having to hit $40 to $50 purchase.

SPEAKER_291: I think you got to do, like, it's $100 a month, and you get two family-style meals.

SPEAKER_272: We are experimenting with all price points.

SPEAKER_32: Because I would sign up for it on a regular. Right. If I knew it was going to be a great chef, and I knew it was going to be, like, very generous amount of food, that I would have leftovers the next day, I could have people over. But anyway, I love that idea.

SPEAKER_53: The thing is that consumers don't realize just how much money they spend on fast, casual dining at crappy places. Right. And this is an opportunity to get really high-quality food for cheaper and no tip.

SPEAKER_102: Yeah, it's kind of hard for people to grok.

SPEAKER_04: But my point about the accelerators feels to me, I'll just go out and say...

SPEAKER_426: We're in an accelerator bubble.

SPEAKER_04: That we could use two less accelerators in town. The right number is three, not six. Or maybe four. Now, I don't want to take away from those entrepreneurs and their effort. I don't want to take away from those accelerators and their effort. But I feel like we've diluted to the point at which the last 20% are not worthy of funding.

SPEAKER_270: I'll tell you what. Am I right or am I wrong? Or what am I feeling?

SPEAKER_36: The market will sort itself out. I'll tell you what Bill Gross said to me. So Bill Gross founded Idealab. He's a guy smarter than both of us. I think that Bill Gross, if you look at it, really was Y Combinator before there was Y Combinator. He was the original...

SPEAKER_429: Y Combinator, one guy's head.

SPEAKER_36: Yeah, and he's very smart.

SPEAKER_162: So I called him. He might be too smart. I called him. And no, he's got great social skills too. I called him and I said, listen...

SPEAKER_430: Well, no, I was saying maybe he's too smart because he keeps coming up with so many great ideas. But if he just did one, he'd make Google.

David Friedberg: Well, he did create the business model for Google. Absolutely. He invented... But I mean, like he did Aptera. He invented paid search, right?

SPEAKER_04: He did. But then he did Aptera, which would be like Tesla. But he didn't stick with it. He's got that ADD investor. I mean, he's brilliant. But anyway, let's move on. Keep going.

SPEAKER_36: What did he say? So I called Bill and I said, should I do Launchpad again? Right.

SPEAKER_26: When we started, there was no one in town. Now there's all these things. Maybe I ought to just be an elder statesman and try to help them all.

SPEAKER_36: Yeah, you could be the guy who funds them. Which I'm trying to do. I'm trying to be open to all of them.

SPEAKER_53: And what he said to me is he said, Mark, what makes Silicon Valley Silicon Valley is so many people trying. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn't. But what we want to encourage is more people to try. And from that, there will be good ideas and bad ideas. Good accelerators, bad ideas.

SPEAKER_26: But what he said to me was, Mark, you have a mission to try and help more entrepreneurs. And if you pull out of the market, I think you're doing a disservice to that. So I said, if you really believe that, then why don't you invest in Launchpad alongside me?

SPEAKER_39: And he did. Yeah. But I think he was right about, like, sometimes I wish, because you and me, our brains, like, already leap to where we know the end game is. And I just said, gosh, if there could just be three of these. And I sort of feel like that.

SPEAKER_42: I think that's what will happen over time. But the inefficiency is part of the process. But they're all talented. I mean, Mike Jones and Science.

SPEAKER_53: Well, that one's going to be a clear winner. Paul Brico at Amplified. Clear winner. I think we're doing great things at Launchpad. Eric Ranala at Mucker. I mean, there are just talented people in town.

SPEAKER_209: It is. It is. It's growing pretty quickly.

SPEAKER_04: So this week in Metro Capital starting up again soon. Yes.

SPEAKER_209: We're going to do another season. We've got sponsors. So it's not going to start.

SPEAKER_04: I basically, here, let me tell you, because this is like interim CEO of this week in two, talent.

SPEAKER_32: I'm going to take any, because this is my challenge. I've got to get guys like you. Yep. Who are too busy. Yep. To do the shows. Because the shows only work when you have somebody who is a massive expert. Ian Rogers doing music. I'm just making music. Or you doing Metro Capital and me doing startups. It only works with somebody who's really got credibility. But those people with credibility have so many other things to do. Launchpad, Metro Capital, et cetera.

SPEAKER_449: And two kids.

SPEAKER_32: And two kids, et cetera. I have to make it ultra convenient for you.

SPEAKER_450: Yeah.

SPEAKER_32: And ultra worth your time. Because I can never make it worth your time on a monetary basis. Sure. So it has to be for those other reasons. So as I told you, my commitment is whenever you need somebody, I'm going to have people run over with cameras. I appreciate that. And grab it and make it like super pleasurable for you. You have to, the other side of this, you have to tell me what I can do to make you keep doing the show.

SPEAKER_264: So what do you think I should do with this company? Just so everybody knows, monetarily, I don't take anything and never have. No, you never have. Never have taken a penny.

SPEAKER_53: I'm not interested in that. But for me, doing the show is a pleasure. And I'm happy to do it. And I love taking, you know, listener calls or getting tweets, asking questions after. It's the booking a guest, planning their time, writing up the show notes afterwards. Yes. That's why I got producers now. Marketing the show, telling people about it, building up a fan list. That's the time consuming. Right. And I built up the producers.

SPEAKER_210: Now we're going to do time stamps for you. We're going to do emails for you. We're going to book a guest for you.

SPEAKER_53: For this week in VC in particular, I can't do it legitimately without taking the show to Silicon Valley. Right. Because I can call the people and say, yeah. Which is what I learned.

SPEAKER_162: Which is what I learned. I can say when you're in LA, stop by, but it's much easier if I take the show on the road.

SPEAKER_32: I started getting a whole new caliber of guests when I started going up to the valley and just using a studio there. And I'm trying to build a studio there. Okay. I want to get my own studio up there. So I've been talking to three or four people who have space that could give me a studio. If anybody out there has a space, I need about, I don't know, 1,500 square feet, like a large conference room at your space. And then I bring in all these incredible people. So we have one person we're pretty close to. I think we're about 80, 90%.

SPEAKER_456: You need soundproofing. If you don't have soundproofing, we can do it.

SPEAKER_32: As you can see here, this is a conference room where we just make these boards with the soundproofing. You buy the soundproofing, you put it up, and you get the $500 microphones.

SPEAKER_26: But the great advantage for someone who wants to donate this facility to you is really, legitimately, everybody comes in and you have the opportunity before and after the show to say hello. Shake hands.

SPEAKER_04: I mean, I did it at Rocket Space and I've done it at CNET. And boy, did I bring in the top celebrities to each of those places in our world. Right.

SPEAKER_76: Top VCs, top stuff. So yeah, if anybody else is listening, that's what we need.

SPEAKER_461: So we're not going to start the show next week. We're going to start it the following week.

SPEAKER_76: Perfect. And awesome.

SPEAKER_26: I'm really excited.

SPEAKER_462: So I guess that's the week of August the 13th or whatever, 11th.

SPEAKER_04: And what you do is you go up to, when you go up there, I fly up one of the producers. Great. It cost me $200 to fly them. They don't even stay overnight. They fly in the morning.

SPEAKER_32: They come back at night. I get them Ubers. They feel like they're blowing it out, paying for a $60 Uber, whatever. And then we're golden.

SPEAKER_465: Done. All right. We'll see you next time.

SPEAKER_302: Thank you so much to Mark Seusser for being so honest. What a great, great discussion.

SPEAKER_32: Everybody go check out his Twitter feed, msuster, S-U-S-T-E-R. And of course, both sides of the table.com, both sides of the table.com. It's a blog I read regularly. That's awesome. And this being in venture capital, coming back. And he's been doing it since June, 2010. And because, I mean, really, people were hammering you on Twitter. You have to come back. You have to come back.

SPEAKER_372: You have to come back. What a great show. I'm glad I suckered you into doing it. And now you have this fan base that is, like, going to take over your life.

SPEAKER_32: Thank you to, no, not MailChimp today.

SPEAKER_04: But thank you to them. Squarespace. Squarespace and GoToMeeting. Oh, God. Two great products. We'll see you next time on This Week in Startups.