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SPEAKER_04: Hey, everybody. Welcome to This Week in Startups. Today on the show, we're going to talk about an

SPEAKER_06: issue. Well, let's face it. It's kind of hard for a lot of people to talk about how we allocate dollars in Silicon Valley, how we capital allocators pick who gets money, who gets a shot to follow their dreams. And let's face it, race, gender, these things are all at play. And I've never seen a change like I've seen in the last 10 years of our industry. The back channel I get, can you please find me, Jason, you know, you do early stage. Can you find me a female founder? Can you find me a person of color to invest in? This is what I hear from downstream VCs? Or can you help us get a partner? They were scared to death over the last 10 years, that the statistics would come out in our industry about how few people of color women were actually making investment decisions. And there was a lot of shenanigans going on over the last 10 years.

SPEAKER_07: People would hire a PR person, and then call them a partner. But they had no investment decisions, and they didn't get any of the level of compensation, then they would hire a couple of associates who were put them into a group of scouts, and then claim those for diversity statistics. And then that kind of got found out. And then something really magical happened, which is people who were not getting a shot as capital allocators started their own firms, women, people of color, and this has greatly changed the industry. It has been a two to 10x change based on what I've seen. The problem is, we were starting from close to zero. So two to 10x still means the numbers, the statistics, the metrics are just brutally low for people of color, women, non traditional founders getting funded. And so we're going to talk about it today. And we're going to talk about

SPEAKER_06: it with somebody who has actually decided to do their own fund. His name is Henri Pierre Jacques. Did I get it correct? My friend, high school French? Did it work out? Okay, Henri? It works. Perfect. And you are the co founder and managing partner of Harlem Capital from 2015 to now. But

SPEAKER_21: you've had a pretty great year. And I keep kept seeing your name come up. And I saw that Apple

SPEAKER_06: committed $10 million to your I think 100. You have your firm's 40 million 50 million the fund? Yeah, 40 million. So they came in as either an anchor or came over the top to help you with that fund. And um, they've made a commitment to try to make this change, which I thought was just stunning because Apple doesn't do anything in venture capital. They've never done this. Um, based on what I know, they may have done it secretly, but I've never seen them be an LP in a venture fund. Is this a first for them? To my knowledge? Yes. Yeah. So congratulations. Thanks for coming on the program. And

SPEAKER_31: tell me, how did that go down?

SPEAKER_32: Yeah, so names the gifts for something for the names, but one of my HBS classmates, who was at dorm room front now he's a partner in Andreessen, introduced us to somebody at his firm last summer. And that person had contacts high up at Apple. Um, and so when Apple kind of had talked to them and said, Hey, we're looking to potentially invest in a fund of color. We think this is a good strategy for us. Their corp dev team kind of ran that process. That person brought us up as, Hey, we think that they are really uniquely positioned and they were talking to a few funds. So we started talking to them early last fall. And we're fortunate after we went through the process that they chose us to, to be the fund that they partnered with. And, uh, it's been a great partnership. I mean, it was obviously a capital investment, but we've already done a bunch of stuff where they're helping some of our companies that have apps and app store. Uh, you know, how do you kind of improve it? How do you get more better growth, better ratings? Um, we're helping them on their side. They launch a platform for people of color who want to become coders. And so like last week we had a conversation with them. Once you actually develop your, your app as a coder, like what is the fundraising process look like from the VC side. And so there's a lot of mutual benefits on both of us are, you know, early in the relationship,

SPEAKER_22: but excited to build more together over time. What's the mission of the fund? Is it specifically to back, uh, people of color, women underrepresented or underestimated founders of her both terms be

SPEAKER_06: used? I'm not sure which one you prefer. Um, or are you just a black owned venture firm?

SPEAKER_32: No, so our, our mission is to change the face of entrepreneurship, um, over the next 20 years by investing in a thousand diverse founders. Um, so, you know, diversity for us, like at its core is black, Latino men, um, and women of all races. Like we think those, those three groups roughly based off our research, which is probably the most that we've seen in the market, uh, 4% of funding goes to those three groups and those three. On a dollar basis, correct? Yeah. Yeah. On a dollar basis. Right. Uh, and those, and those three groups represent 70% of the population. And so, you know, broadly speaking, like we were like, Hey, there's alpha here. This is clearly not a meritocracy. Um, like we think that this should not be the case. And over time, you know, the next 10, 20, 30 years, that 70% of the population is only going to grow, particularly for Latinos,

SPEAKER_22: which are the fastest growing group in the country. And so, um, white women, Asians, Indians don't fall into that. They're overrepresented in the numbers. In fact, women of women of all races. Oh, women of all races. Okay. And so, but Indian and Asian specifically left out of that because they're overrepresented in terms of funding today. Correct. So we're not like,

SPEAKER_32: we have less of like an exclusionary lens where we, we never say like, we won't invest in, uh, non like diverse founders. Like we've actually made two investments into, uh, one was a Jewish, Russian male. And one was a Indian male who was one of my friends from school. Like if we have relationships with non-core founders, like that was one of the first questions, some of our LPs asked, like if you happen to know Zuckerberg and he starts another company, you're going to not invest like, which is what you cut me off at the pass. Cause that's what I was going to bring up

SPEAKER_18: is like, you went to HBS and what if one of your like classmates who's just going to crush it?

SPEAKER_49: It's like, Hey, listen, I got, I'm a white Jewish guy. Can I, you know, we're not, we're not

SPEAKER_32: going to pass. We're not exclusionary, but like, we're not purposely going to like, we're not going to invest in non-core founders where we view as non-core founders just because we think they have great businesses. Like we exist because of what our mission is. And if we happen to know people who are in the majority groups, like then we'll make those investments, but of our portfolio, 90% of our portfolio is black, Latino or a woman, uh, 43% of our portfolio is woman only led. So like, that's like, that's really what we strive to do.

SPEAKER_22: How hard was it for you to clear market with this mission with the top LPs in the world? Because

SPEAKER_06: although you have Apple, that is a first time and it's part of their racial equity and justice, you know, um, initiative. I'm curious when you bring something like this to, you know, the big endowments or the fund of funds, did they take the meeting with you? Did they say yes? Did they say they want to wait until your third fund? You know, like they told me, well, we'd like to see you get

SPEAKER_49: two funds. And they were like, we'd like to see you have three funds. Now I'm going to talk to them when I have my fourth fund. I mean, I'm a white guy. Like they said no to me. So I'm just wondering, like, and they, they had problems with my early stage strategy. I'm wondering what those meetings

SPEAKER_06: were like, did they take them? And how did, when they said no, what was the reasons they gave you?

SPEAKER_32: Yeah. I mean, you never truly know the real reasons, right? When people tell, you know, same is true for founders and VCs. Sure. Um, I mean, so we were fortunate, right? Fund one, we had six institutions in the fund. Um, the publicly disclosed ones are TBG, state of Michigan, uh, Weinberg foundation, Kellogg foundation, Vanderbilt. Um, so like,

SPEAKER_49: those are legit. A lot of those said no to me. Uh, and those are that, that first fund was how big?

SPEAKER_63: First one was 40 million. Oh, okay. And this is the second or third that were, uh,

SPEAKER_32: uh, so not, you know, Apple was an investment. We can't say for which fund it's for. Okay. No problem. But yeah. So like, so we were very fortunate there. I mean, I think three years, I mean, when we started the fund, we launched the fund June of 18. So Jerry and I were roommates at Harvard business school, um, between our first and second year business school, which was June of 18, instead of taking an internship, we went to New York and we said, Hey, we're gonna, we're gonna raise a fund, not fully knowing what that really meant. Um, so when we first started like that summer, we raised $3 million. We came back to campus, right? Hey, we had a good summer, but we gotta start recruiting for jobs because $60,000 in management fees is not gonna cut it. Uh, so we actually started recruiting when we got back to campus. And then we got our first million dollar check, um, from a Titan of the industry, uh, one of the creators of private equity. And that for us was okay. Like if this person had to give us a million dollars, like we gotta just like take the risk. Like that million was worth 10 million. And so only, even though we only went from three to 4 million, like September of, uh, 18, when we got back to campus, our second year, we stopped recruiting and we said, we're going all in. Uh, so we did our, we did our first close of $2 million, November, uh, of night of 18. And we knew like, that was a huge risk. Cause people were like, you want to raise 25 million. Your first close should be at least seven and a half, 30% of the fund. And we're like, Hey, but we want to do deals. Like we want to like show people we can lead, get board seats, et cetera. And we had two deals that were ready. And so we closed our first deal the next month. And we led the deal and we had a board seat. Um, and so like that, that second year of business school, we raised 12 and a half million dollars in school. Uh, TPG came in as our anchor investor. Uh, that was a huge signal. And then once we graduated, um, that then we raised 28 million in six months. Like it was not linear. Uh, but having TPG, they publicly announced it the month after we graduated, they did a bunch of reference calls for us. They made introductions to some of the institutions that ended up coming in. And like our view was, you know, having a brand institution, like would do a lot of work for us. And it would be that signal point. And when we looked at who our mentors were, you know, we worked at ICB, which is the fifth largest black owned private equity firm. They started at American securities, which is the JCPenney family office. If you look at, uh, Robert Smith, like he got his first billion from a large high net worth. So a lot of the top managers of color, like got backed by somebody to start. And that was very clear to us. And so TBG for us, like was that first backing that stamp of approval to ensure that we could

SPEAKER_30: raise a larger fund than we thought we could buy ourselves.

SPEAKER_27: So you raised the fund while at HBS. 12 and a half of it. And then we raised it on 28. Once we graduated.

SPEAKER_67: HBS is a pretty serious course load. Like that's pretty intense.

SPEAKER_32: Yeah. It was Monday, Monday to Wednesday, we had class. So Jerry and I were in every class together. Uh, we both were married to our wives lived in New York. So Monday to Wednesday, we had class and Wednesday night took the Amtrak to New York. And then Thursday, Friday, we fundraise and the weekend we spent more of our wives.

SPEAKER_21: Xala, get that quick Xala. I've been on that. I've been on that, that route.

SPEAKER_06: All right. When we get back from this break, uh, you heard my introduction. I said, I've never seen a turnaround like this and the amount of energy being put into it. And I'm wondering, uh, if you think we're making progress, dramatic progress, or not enough progress in terms of our industry

SPEAKER_22: and diversity. When we get back from this quick break, the new year is here and that marks a fresh

SPEAKER_21: start for your small business. We're hiring a bunch of people at launch in 2021. We need a second producer, a third video editor, a community manager, operations, people, and more things are going gangbusters for us. The podcast is sold out. We're going to three, four, five days a week. The syndicate is blowing up in a good way. And our fund is hard at work doing the launch accelerator. So we need help. And you know where we're going to find the most qualified candidates, you know it. I know it. We all know it. LinkedIn jobs. Of course, we love using LinkedIn jobs at launch because we can manage all of our job postings and contact candidates from a single view, whether you're shifting business hours or hiring more remote employees. One thing that remains unchanged is the importance of having the right people on your team. When your business is ready to make that next hire LinkedIn jobs can help by matching your role with qualified candidates so that you can find the right person quickly. LinkedIn now has over 722 million members worldwide and they mean business. So post a job with targeted screening questions and LinkedIn will quickly get your role in front of the most qualified candidates. You need speed and you need quality, speed and quality. And that's what LinkedIn jobs is all about. When your business is ready to make that next hire, find the right person with LinkedIn jobs. And now you can post your job for free or just visit linkedin.com slash twist and post your job for free. You have to use that special URL, linkedin.com to slash twist TWIST for a free job posting right now terms and conditions of course

SPEAKER_71: apply. Welcome back everybody. We're here with Henri Pierre Jacques. And he is the co founder of Harlem,

SPEAKER_72: Harlem capital. And he raised his first fund wallet in school, getting his MBA at HBS. That's Harvard Business School. For those of you who don't know the acronym. You can visit their website, Harlem.capital. You heard my introduction. I've been amazed to watch this turnaround. I'm pretty candid about what people tell me in private, I won't put their names on it. But man, people were scared

SPEAKER_74: that they were going to get called out and somebody's gonna take a screenshot of their team page. So there was like this real fear of like, Oh, no, our firm is all white guys from Stanford, we need to get some diversity on this team page. And as I mentioned, a little bit of like, what I'll call like, putting a facade on it or, you know, window dressing, we're going to add a PR person and then call them a managing partner and a little bit of shenanigans there. Or we're going to

SPEAKER_72: put a scout program together and do our diversity with people who aren't even on the payroll. That would be the cynical take on it. And then I guess the generous take would be well,

SPEAKER_07: it's some amount of change and people are aware of it. Well, what's your take on where we're at now?

SPEAKER_22: Do you think the industry is specifically excluding people? Or just has had a blind spot to it? And

SPEAKER_04: do you think we're making a ton of progress? Or not? Yeah, maybe I'm being too charitable,

SPEAKER_06: but I just see a lot of progress being made. And it seems to have switched from that, like fear base, we're going to get called out to, hey, there's an opportunity here. And actually, this is like a better way to operate businesses to have more diverse people at the table, because

SPEAKER_77: there's a huge opportunity. And let's face it, black culture, which is American culture, which is what drives a lot of these new platforms.

SPEAKER_78: Yeah, I find the the team pages, either people do black and white. So you can't tell color.

SPEAKER_32: Every everybody's an investor. So you don't know rank, or everybody's a partner. So you don't know who true partners are. So I think yep, those are definitely interesting. I mean, I think, obviously, like similar to pre COVID, post COVID, there's definitely a pre and post George Floyd world. I think it's a, you know, the fact that it was at the time where it was in a post COVID world was like a double acceleration of what was happening. I remember, you know, being here in New York, had not really gone outside until the protests for George Floyd. And, you know, we were pretty, pretty cautious. And at that point, it was like, we're surrounding ourselves with thousands of people, but we felt like it was worth the risk. And so I think there was a huge moment that happened there. And I do think it's a reckoning and social justice, eye opening for people. I'm still cautiously optimistic. Like I always tell people whether it be, you know, corporations like publicly, whether it be Apple or PayPal, Bank of America, they've all invested in us, like, so we've had a number of conversations with tons of corporations, C suites, a number of organizations, like, I always tell them, I'm very frank and transparent. Like, I want to see if you're around in two to three years, like, it's very easy to deploy 100 $200 million. I mean, these companies have billions on the balance sheet. So in the day, it's pretty, it's chump change, what I call it, like, is it meaningful to the asset class and to, you know, historical levels for people of color? Yes. But like, you know, we come from private equity, that's kind of what we grew up in and investment banking. These are like people's salaries, like for some firms, right. And so it's all relative, right? Like, is it a lot of money? Yes, but relative, it's still small, and there's a lot more work to be done. And are you going to be around to support people? And we had these conversations, like, if you're going to invest in this fund, like, we need you to be around the next fund, right? Because we can't go and try to fill the hole, because you were trying to do, you know, some $10 million stamp in the last fund. And so like, we always ask the question, like, what's your long term goal? Like, are you reinvesting the care you make from investing in these funds back into it? Because it doesn't really matter for your balance sheet anyway. Like, what are you doing like outside of the capital from a partnership perspective, to make sure these funds can be successful. And that that's like, where I focus, I think it's great to start, you know, we are very fortunate that we already had our first fund, we had a lot of these relationships to make it by still see a lot of first time managers of color, especially in a post COVID zoom world, like where it's tough, and it's really hard if you don't have like, you know, we were very lucky that our classmate was at Andreessen knew somebody who introduced us to Apple, like, you have to have been in those rooms. And like, we happen to go to HBS, which was a big reason we chose it 40% of venture capital come from HBS or Stanford. And so like, we're very thoughtful around that. But we also understand like, everybody's not us. And like, although we are men of color, like we are men of color who went to Harvard Business School and worked in private equity and investment banking, like, like, we are elite to some extent within our own group. And so we have to make sure like we have the right framework. And like, how do we continue to help others who are smart who don't happen to have the same backgrounds as us?

SPEAKER_21: It's very interesting. Like, even though you went to HBS, and you worked in private equity,

David Friedberg: do you think you could have gotten a partner level position, or even like a managing director level

SPEAKER_21: position coming out of HBS and coming from private equity? Did you have that opportunity? Do you feel you need to start your own fund?

SPEAKER_32: I literally talked about this because we when we first started recruiting that first month back after the summer, I was like, I don't even know if I'm going to get like a role, right? Especially I so I was recruiting for venture capital and Jerry was recruiting for private equity. So I wanted to switch groups. And like, we had never worked like I didn't intern in BC, I was fundraising that summer. And so all my prior experiences was investment banking and private equity. And you've got a bunch of people at HBS who already worked in BC, or were at startups, or founders, and they're much more interesting to fund. And you know, I think the interesting story. So we had a publicly we had a partnership with KKR, and a number of their the C suite partners from KKR invested in us. And Jared recruited for KKR. Did not he got to the final round, our first year summer didn't get the offer. And that's like, that was his dream job. And so like, that was literally the week we were roommates, we were in the kitchen, we had just gotten our first article in Black Enterprise, which is like our first big article. And I was like, Hey, we got this first article, clearly there's something I had applied for a fellowship from HBS to have them fund me to raise the fund. I just gotten it. I said, Hey, you didn't get KKR. I got this fellowship, we have a Black Enterprise article, like, let's just like do it. Like I need you with me this summer, we need to raise together. It can't be like you interning and me fundraising. And he was like, Alright, I didn't get it. Like, let's do it. And then you know, so that's before and then you know, six months later, eight of the KKR partners were pitching at Nine West facing Central Park. And eight of the partners from KKR came investing the fund. Two months later, we created the KKR partnership for our talent side, where we've had 5000 interns apply to our program, and we've hired 60. And now we have a formal partnership of KKR where our interns get fast-tracked through KKR's program and two of our interns got hired in KKR's first analyst program. And so like that to me was the perfect example of like, what is wrong with the like, the ecosystem, like you could not give somebody an offer. And then your founding partners will invest in the fund. And then you'll take our interns to work for you full time. Once like we have a relationship like that kind of shows like, the huge flaws that exist in the system, which is why I was like, I don't think this is gonna work. Like I don't want to go through this process of like, trying to prove myself like my goal is to never ever touch my resume ever again.

David Friedberg: Like, yeah, I mean, this was the thing, you know, in talking to a group that was excluded, you know, pro you know, um, and has started to get included, which was women as a broad category in venture. Um, a lot of women I spoke to just said, you know, it's easier, Jason, for me to just start a seed fund than to try to wait in line to maybe in 10 years or 20 years, get a partner slot. So I'm just going to start my own fund. What are your thoughts on this? Um, sort of what I'll call, it seems to me very strange that it took the murder of George Floyd being videotaped for people

SPEAKER_49: to realize this change needed to happen. It's a very, it's very strange to me. And I'm curious, just as a black man, like obviously seeing somebody murdered that way by the cops, it's just horrific, but also it just seems like a very weird, um, that it took that for the business community to realize that we had to make a change. When you're having conversations with other black men or black men in the industry, what, how do people reconcile that?

SPEAKER_32: Uh, it's about time. Yeah. Um, I mean, it's hard, right? Cause like, this is nothing new. Like we've seen this on video before. I think the length of it, um, made it kind of more exacerbated. And I think the moment of post COVID and people were just emotional and in home, like accelerated that, but like, like we've seen this happen tons of times and you know, whether it's Ferguson or in New York, like it's happened. Yeah. Rodney King. Like, so like, I think that that was interesting. Like, okay, like interesting that this happened now. Um, and I think for us, like as the minority, it's kind of like, you're just like, I'm glad that people are recognizing, um, you know, I'm glad I had more conversations last summer with, uh, allies or non-minorities about this topic than I've had in my entire life combined. Right. Like people reaching out like, Hey, I'd love to hear your point of view, who I never even thought would want to have those conversations. And so I think it really did touch people in a different way. And it's hard to like put what led to that emotion. I'm glad it happened, but you know, why I said I was cautiously optimistic before, like the same thing happened for the me too movement. I remember marching in New York during the women's March and every city had it the same day. It was like millions of people marching during the women's March. And then, you know, last year, I think we went back to like, whatever it was 2013 or 2014 from a percentage of VC capital for women. Right. So it's like, it kind of shifted like, okay, we, we had the me too moment for two, three years. Now we're going to focus on the black people. Like there was an immigrant moment a few years ago as well. And so you kind of feel like there's only like one issue America wants to solve at a given time. And you know, whether it's the trend of like all lives matter, like, it's not about like comparing tragedies, right? It's like, can we try to solve multiple tragedies at once? And oftentimes it feels like as a country, we can't do that. And so I don't know what the next tragedy is going to be. But at some point, when that tragedy happens, my like gut is that like this tragedy of George Floyd and black lives will

David Friedberg: fade. Yeah, that's, it's an interesting perspective, that it takes a tragedy for people to sort of take it in for a minute. And let's face it, believe black men that they're being pulled over by cops and

SPEAKER_93: treated differently than white guys. I mean, it's extremely apparent to me as a white guy who's been pulled over for speeding. And out of maybe the six or maybe seven times I've been pulled over speeding, I got to take it like once. And like every other time, you know, I just got a warning.

SPEAKER_06: And I'm driving exceedingly fast when I was younger and did stupid things like that. And if you had done the same thing, it probably would have been a different outcome, right? I mean, it should be obvious to everybody. But when is the change going to happen? When we get back from this quick break? Uh, I want to talk about that specific all lives matter moment, which I'll be candid. I think I failed it initially. I want to talk about that. And maybe how I was able to see through my own failure and the all lives matter, blue lives matter, black lives matter, um, syntax. And then I want to

David Friedberg: talk about, um, the founders themselves and how people of color, women, people who are underrepresented get treated, get treated when they come talk to VCs and investors versus

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SPEAKER_104: I know. Pierre-Jacques. I took French for like two or three years and

SPEAKER_06: I remember nothing, but I still love France. This is really interesting, the Black Lives Matter

SPEAKER_21: moment and the All Lives Matter. I felt like this was, and defund the police, these moments in time where things become phrases or catchphrases or, you know, they trend on Twitter. And the first time I

David Friedberg: heard it, I was like, well, yeah, Black Lives Matter of course, but don't all lives matter?

SPEAKER_06: And then I didn't realize that there was at the end of that Black Lives Matter 2, you know, like they also matter. We know all lives matter, but like there's some injustice going on here. It takes a minute for a person to understand some of these. And I think, I'm not sure how you feel about defund the police as a rallying cry as well. Also maybe imperfect, but also kind of like a raw shock test in a way. I know for me, like, you know, having friends who I talked about this issue, why I had a blind spot on it.

SPEAKER_09: What do you think about the phrases we use and how people react to them and sort of creating space for people to have real conversations about this? I'm curious. Yeah. I mean, it's very hard because

SPEAKER_32: I'm in the country, I'm only 29. But even from what I've seen in my 29 years, like the country is more polarized. And I was just home in Detroit for seven months. And so I talked to my grandfather multiple times. And, you know, he's much older than me. Like the country is just so polarized. Like it's even almost more polarized in the civil rights era from what he's told me. And he's the founder. Yeah. And he's the founder of the Black Social Worker Network. And so I think it's really hard to have those conversations when you're on opposite ends. And, you know, in terms of like the all lives versus black lives, it goes back to the point of like, one tragedy does not take away from another tragedy. I think people always want to feel like they, you know, they overcame something, regardless if you were privileged or whatever. Maybe like you were not born, like you couldn't decide where you were born. You still had problems. You may have been rich, but maybe your parents weren't there. Maybe you got abused, like whatever it may be. Like everybody wants to feel like they overcame something. Like they kind of were that story and they don't want that to be taken away from them. Right. It's the classic when you're in high school, like you want to write that stop story, but you need to just write your own story. Right. And same for business school. And so I think that like, I think it feels like people are getting attacked. Right. And the core attack would be like white privilege. Right. I felt like Emmanuel Acho like put it really well, where he said, white privilege doesn't mean that you don't have issues or problems. It means that your problems aren't the results of your skin. And like, that is the core difference. Like your issue, like you may have issues, you may be poor, you may be what it is, but like the result is not because of your race. It's not because of your gender. It's not because you're not American. You're an immigrant. It's not because you're Muslim. Like that is the core thing. It's like, we're not saying that you don't have issues, but it's like, why those issues exist. It's because your religion is because of your sexuality. And I think that's where people get lost. It's like, it feels as if you're telling me I don't have problems. But the thing is, I'm telling you, you don't have problems because of such and such.

SPEAKER_21: That's such a good explanation because I that is exactly the blind spot I had that my wife and another friend of hers were like, you don't understand your blind spot. I was like, what

SPEAKER_06: are you talking about? I came from Brooklyn. My dad's a bartender. My mom's a nurse. I paid my way through school at night. I was an outsider. I didn't go to HBS. I couldn't get into a good school.

SPEAKER_109: I had to take five years of night school working as a bartender, a bar back carrying ice up from the

SPEAKER_93: basement. I had to struggle. And I'm like, yeah, but is there anybody else who struggled more? And to your point, did you struggle because you came from a modest background or did you struggle because

SPEAKER_06: your skin tone or your sexual preference, right? And that's a really different existence, right?

SPEAKER_32: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's hard to comprehend, right? Because you, you can't understand the other person's journey. Like, you know, people love to throw the word empathy out there. And to some extent you can only empathize so much. But like in the day, like you don't know, it's like doing like a test where if you had two people and like you want to try to test it out and they do as many studies as they can, whether it be, you know, resumes with names, et cetera. But it's still for a personal perspective, it's really hard to like understand that difference of journey. And now in this polarized world, like you, you know, whether you were a Democrat or Republican, like you may not have known many people from another party, whether you live in a certain area in the country, like you may not know people of color or you may not see women in certain roles. And so like, there is this huge separation that we're seeing geographically and culturally and economically where like, you don't even have the opportunities to gain the empathy you would need to feel that way. Because when you're in New York, like, nobody thought Clinton was losing, like, because you didn't know many people who weren't voting for Clinton. And so you're just shocked, you know, like, how is this even possible? Right, right. And so it's really hard to comprehend because all you know, around you is, you know, successful, higher income, you know, liberal people.

SPEAKER_49: Yeah, it's like, yeah, it's all coastal elites. And you just can't imagine anybody voting for Trump. I still can't imagine anybody voting for Trump, just based on his inability to run any kind of a successful business or project. I just, I'm appalled by him, not just for all the racist crazy stuff, but just also his inability to actually have a work ethic or any kind of reasonable work product. Um, let's talk a little bit about black culture, black cultures impact on growing, uh, various businesses, Instagram, clearly, black culture drove that business, and then Twitter, Twitter, Twitter, so much that they had to like, figure out how to deal with black Twitters, taking over trending topics, which isn't, I got the interesting backstory on, uh, early on in Twitter. Clubhouse.

SPEAKER_06: But then now we have Clubhouse. And Clubhouse seems to have, um, specifically embraced, curated

David Friedberg: relationships with black influencers, to build a platform owned by two white guys, funded by two white

SPEAKER_49: guys that became worth a billion dollars in the fastest time in the history of Silicon Valley. And black people built it. It's pretty clear. I mean, I going onto Clubhouse was just an amazing

SPEAKER_06: array of the, you know, of black excellence period, like just incredible from sports to arts to business,

SPEAKER_09: everything. And, uh, how do you feel about that? How does the black community feel about that? Because there were people who might have been black founders who didn't get funded. And really, there seems to be a very little correlation between the performance of Clubhouse and the valuation.

SPEAKER_32: Yep. Yeah, there's been a lot of a lot of discussions about this on Clubhouse and email threads that I'm on. I think the people are pretty split. I think the fact they allowed some people of color to invest in a business was like, some people felt like, hey, that was a good start. And, you know, Chris Lyons over there runs a culture fund. And so people like that some people of color, like were direct, you know, directly or indirectly invested through the company. Obviously, it's very different than you having founder equity. I think ultimately, what I've seen from most of the debates is like, are you going to not use the platform because it's not run by a person of color? Or if we have this issue, like who on this thread or who on this group is going to create that platform for us to go use, right? And, you know, some people have already created it. It hasn't kicked off as much because you don't have the Andreessen back and you don't get the celebrity pool that they were able to bring onto the platform. So it's hard because it's not, it's not just about the product. Like the product is actually pretty basic. It's more about like, who are they having the users? And when you can get Elon, and others that come on your platform like that, you know, Bill Gates was a great talk two weeks ago, like, that's a huge leg up. And so I do think people forget

SPEAKER_72: was the first celebrity, that's the one that broke it. Tiffany Haddish has a ton of followers.

SPEAKER_32: And so I think, you know, to some extent, like this is an example of almost like perfect investor market fit. Like, I think they're, you know, Andreessen is the fund to have made this investment and nobody has better pull on culture in tier one VCs in Andreessen, in my opinion. And so I think like, even if, even if we had backed the black founder to create this, like, which would have been the product, I don't know if we could have gotten the pull like that they could have gotten like, it's not the product is simple. It's a very basic, simple products. Like you have to have overflow rooms because you can't have more than 5000 people and it gets free.

SPEAKER_127: Yeah, I mean, listen, you could you could rebuild it in, you know, two weeks with three

David Friedberg: developers. In fact, there's five open source projects, I'm going through all of them, because I'm gonna back one of them probably. So I think they'll just be an open source version,

SPEAKER_22: anybody will be able to pop one of these up soon. But in a way, the fact that we're even having the discussion right now, to me is progress. Because we didn't have this discussion about Instagram,

SPEAKER_93: like I was there. I remember when Instagram was two people, I had Kevin on the show,

SPEAKER_06: you know, when he had two employees, and they just launched the product, and that wasn't even something people would bring up. But now here we are having a discussion about, hey, equity

David Friedberg: participation, if we're going to build the platform, and really, if you think about the top 10 users on Instagram, people of color, artists, you know, LeBron, business people, I mean, Kim Kardashian,

SPEAKER_06: Kim Kardashian, like, they could, I mean, these are absolutely wealthy folks, if they just partnered with you, and were LPs in your fund, and they invested in the next one, and they just committed to getting on it, I don't know, once a week each, they would beat it. Is that conversation happening?

SPEAKER_71: Like, because I know Jay Z is very, you know, investing in a lot of things.

SPEAKER_51: Carmelo started a venture fund. I think I think people are starting on the investing side, right? I haven't heard as much on the I mean, a lot of the celebrities are doing like partnerships

SPEAKER_32: with existing brands, and they're getting like pretty significant equity stakes 1020 even 30% sometimes depending on how big they are. But the investing side is very clear, whether it's Kevin Durant, Steph Curry, Nas, like, people are, you know, Nas is probably gonna beat Jay Z's quarter, this quarter when his stuff comes through. So like, I think that has been really easy and clear, because like, to them time is their best value. And investing dollars is very quick and easy, and you can make a lot of money. I think the next phase will be, hey, like, do we want to start or incubate these companies? I mean, what I've seen is a lot of celebrities are partnering with other kind of like, usually white guys who are already kind of veterans in space, they're using their name, they're both raising 100 to $200 million fund, whether that was Kobe's partner or Kevin Durant's partner, like, that's kind of what I've seen, versus like, hey, it's Carmelo's partner, like, let's just do it ourselves, which is what LeBron did, like, LeBron's like, I'm keeping this in house, I've done this for all my career, it's gonna be us, we don't need to partner with somebody from the outside. So like, I think I'm hoping that that happens more in the future. But I think we've largely seen celebrities partner with existing institutions that they can trust. And, you know, it's unclear to me how much they're actually doing, or if it's more of a loan my name, make a couple decisions,

SPEAKER_92: but like the day to day probably is still going to be run by that, that tier one person who you're

David Friedberg: partnering with. Yeah, when we get back to this quick break, let's talk about your early investments. And just what founders of color experience now raising their seed rounds, it's the hottest market I've ever seen. Every venture firm I talked to says, Can you please help us increase our diversity? So I'm curious what you think what you see happening candidly, in these early stage meetings, and if it's actually resulting in funding increasing, or if there are two sets of standards

SPEAKER_09: for different founders who come from different backgrounds, when we get back on this week startups.

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SPEAKER_09: here. Jacques, sorry, from Harlem Capital, Harlem dot Capital. He's HPR Jacques on the Twitter. What are founders experiencing in 2021 when they when they go in and meet with venture firms? What is the candid feedback they get? One thing I heard was white venture capital saying, Oh, you're so articulate. That was

SPEAKER_06: such an articulate presentation. And as one founder told me, like, did you expect me to like be speaking in Ebonics? Like, what is going on here? Like, why would you compliment me on speaking English?

SPEAKER_146: Weird stories like that? Or is it getting better? What are your thoughts?

SPEAKER_32: Yeah, the articulate ones, definitely one we hear a lot. I mean, I think it's early days, but I think 2020, like we just released our diverse founder report, two weeks ago. So we do it every year, we track black Latino founders who've raised $1 million or more. And this was this year's report was great growth, like number of founders, 14 unicorns, you know, 30 founders who raised $100 million plus. And so we're definitely seeing, I don't like the volume is going up slightly, it's a smaller base. But like the late stageness of those founders and the capital raise is definitely increasing like we're seeing 2030 $40 million Series A's versus like when we started investing, like we were early investors in Blavity, like when they raised a $6 million Series A, like that was a big deal. You know, four years ago for a black woman founded raise a 6 million Series A was huge. Now you're seeing 30 40 million, right? And starting the volume and the stage is definitely changing. The numbers are increasing for sure. But like, on a small base, it's all relative. 2021 will be the year I think we you know, we see whether or not it's sustained, right? Or is there a moment and you see a decline similar to what female founders saw last year? Like, that's what I'm looking for. The stories have definitely changed where people are willing to take, you know, the level of risk they were taking on other founders, because before you kind of had to be perfect. And where you were technical founder, what school did you go to? Like, now it's like, hey, like, I'm gonna give the same level of risk that I gave to somebody else for you as a woman or you as a person of color, we're definitely seeing that more people are taking the call taking the conversation. And so I think that's huge, because it's the framing. It's not like you need to like people always ask us, like, do you think that your fund is going to overperform? We're like, we're not promising that like, we're promising that people of color and women are just as good as founders, I don't need to invest in them, because I think they can do better than white men. I need to invest in them, because I think they can be top tier founders. And so I think oftentimes, there's just like, why would I invest in you unless I think you're better than what I'm already looking at. And like, that is this huge barrier into mindset. I think that mindset has shifted where people are saying, like, I think I can get just as good of returns,

SPEAKER_48: the conversation needs to stop being like women need to perform better.

David Friedberg: I distinctly see that it was one female founder told me when I said, like, you know, you're, you're kind

SPEAKER_06: of working yourself to death here. Like, are you gonna burn out? And she's like, Jake, how if I don't get this done, I'm never getting funded again. And I was like, that's, that's not true. I'll find issues. You just don't understand what it's like to be a female founder. I get one shot at this. If I fail, I'm not going to get funded again. I don't know if she's right or

SPEAKER_51: wrong. But look at NFL coaches, no black NFL coach has been fired has ever been ever been rehired.

SPEAKER_32: I didn't know that. It's not the same for white NFL coach. I mean, like, it's definitely true. Like a lot of people feel a lot of people of color, in particular, and women to feel like, you know, like failure is not an option. And when you fail, and especially the whole culture of like, fail fast, and there's nothing wrong with failure, like that is a privilege statement. And so I think a lot of underrepresented people do know that, like, like, will you have a second chance? Maybe. But the whole like, if you fail fast, like you can start your second, third, fourth company, like that is not a guarantee for a lot of underrepresented people. And we've seen that happen in other industries for top people of color as well.

SPEAKER_85: The types of businesses being built in different communities can be different. And a lot of folks

David Friedberg: who are first time founders don't understand even what venture scale is. And they might expect a venture capitalist to invest in something that's just not software. How do you think about that?

SPEAKER_93: In terms of this, it seems to me some people are confounding like, you know, private equity based

SPEAKER_160: businesses with venture based businesses? What are your thoughts on that?

SPEAKER_51: Yeah, I mean, I think part of it so you know, we only do enterprise consumer tech. So we generally

SPEAKER_32: like some sort of software. But I think part of it is you got to a point in venture, where the old, like SaaS software, no longer was the case, right? People were funding juicero, Casper, we work, like tons of companies that were clearly not VC venture companies, and they were funded by tier one VCs worth hundreds of millions of dollars. And so the whole notion of like, hey, we're only investing in such and such like went away, five to 10 years ago, I mean, even, you know, even all birds other like, it's a shoe company, like, are they gonna be successful, it'll probably be a good exit. But like, it's a shoe company. Right. And so like, I think that's really where people get confused, is because people were saying some things. And then it was like, Oh, but like, for a white guy, like, we will do all birds, Casper, we work your Sarah, like, we'll make exceptions because of whatever reason where they went, who's in our network. And so that like, confused the market. And so essentially, people were like, Oh, well, anybody, anything can be venture funded. And that just wasn't true. It was like, you had to be a white guy in the network. That was like, the key thing. I think there was some like confusion there in terms of like, the market was speaking wrong. And now I think because so many of those we works and Casper's have not worked out well, like, people are kind of going back to like, what they originally were saying. But most, you know, most in part of the market also saying, if you are a startup, and a startup just means you are a new business. People get it confused with like, it means it's a tech, like, it has to be technically like most new businesses that start up are small businesses, and majority of the US economy, 80% of companies, I think in the US are SMBs, right? And so like, those are like startups. But because like, most of the press coverage is like a startup in tech world, people think I'm starting a new business, if I'm going to get new capital for my new business, it has to be venture capital, because like, that's what new businesses do, right? There's, there's no articles on SMB loans. There's no sexy tech crunch articles, you know, they're starting to be more rev share models, that's becoming more of a thing. But there's just not a lot of articles that talk about other financing options for new businesses. It's always about venture capitals backing new businesses. And that's eight 10,000 companies a year, right, when millions of companies are being created on an annual basis. And so it's such a small position

David Friedberg: of like the actual like, new businesses in the country. Yeah. And I mean, if you if you look at LPs, as we started our discussion with, they need venture firms, private equity firms to beat the public markets, because they don't get to, they don't have liquidity in private companies. So we need to perform at 20% IRR versus 7% in the public markets. You can't do that, investing in,

SPEAKER_06: you know, things that are not software or things that are not marketplaces or things that just don't have the ability to get to 50 or 100 million in revenue in seven years. So it seems like there's a,

SPEAKER_154: a lot of people don't get that math, though. But the venture math, I mean, a lot of venture capitalists don't understand the venture math, let alone founders. Yeah, that's one thing I've been trying

David Friedberg: to unsuccessfully because you know, it's one of the problems is, you know, as a white male who now has had a couple of home runs. Every time I try to talk about this issue, you know, it's, well, you're just a white male who's, you know, had everything handed to them. And I'm like,

SPEAKER_06: that isn't exactly my experience. But okay, you know, people are just like, you don't get it, Jake out, you're white. And I'm like, not productive, I'm trying to help here. How can people be like myself be good allies? Without being corny without asking for, you know, a cookie? And can I get a high five? Because you know, I changed my Instagram photo, like, on a real basis? Like, what do you think being an ally looks like for white guys in venture or

SPEAKER_48: white women in venture? What's I mean? I think it's just doing real actions, right? So whether

SPEAKER_32: those actions are, I'm going to, you know, hire, which is obviously the first one and the hardest one for a lot of people invest, and you know, whether that's investing directly from your fund, or deciding, Hey, how do I create other people who can do this better? You know, we have a number of other funds who are LPs in our fund, and I'm an LP and other funds as well. Like, that's a way for them to get access, like, hey, let me just like see what you're doing and have more conversation. Or it's like, let me create a scout program like Lightspeed did, where I'm going to have diverse scouts, or we just create an angel program, which will be launched, coming up in the spring, like, tell me about that. Yeah, so we launched the angel program, because we were like, we view the whole ecosystem, like we've had 60 interns, 17 of our interns now work in VC or private equity. And so we've seen that kind of directly lead to investors three of our all three of our senior associates came through our intern program. So okay, cool, we got the investor side. Well, the pre see, like, we're not seeing a lot of angel investors with people of color. We were people of color investor angel investors. And we initially, you know, and then eventually launched an institutional fund, like, we think we're pretty good at this. Like, why don't we teach other people of color who are operated to tech companies or founders, how to angel invest, right? And so we got, we got 300 applications close on Monday, we're going to choose six people to come in to be in our angel program. And it's a six week program, we take some of our lessons from the intern program, because it's a 10 week syllabus, we kind of condense it, we bring in outside people to do webinars. And then we, you know, hopefully you have the capital, and then you invest on your own. And so, you know, it's like, how do you do the actions of the day to day, it's a lot of work, like the angel program is a lot of work. The intern program is a lot of work for us, we have an operator program where we have 60 operators on our network, like, all this stuff is outside of what LPs are giving you money for, like, they're giving you money to pick and win good companies. And we always tell our LPs, like, we're not an impact fund, we don't, like, we, I don't think our fund one, we've invested in any company that's only focus on the black or women community, right? Like we, that's like, we're a VC fund with impact. And part of our impact is like, how do we ensure the diverse ecosystem grows and wins, because our fundamental belief is like, we think we're market leaders in the space. And if you're a market leader, if the market rises, you rise, right? And so like, if we think we're the best diverse focus fund, there is, if we can create more diverse investors and other funds, which we think will lead to more diverse founders, like we will win. And it's a long term view. And it's a lot more work up front. It's not directly like, hey, LP, here's my like, company. But like, we want LPs that believe in us, like, we're trying to create a platform and institution to be around for 2030 40 years, like, it's very easy to get an adventure. It's really hard to stay in venture. Like, and I've seen, I've seen very few people actually stay. I mean, a lot of people can get in now because you only need 510 $20 million. And no other asset class is that possible, like private

SPEAKER_157: equity venture, you know, hedge funds, real estate, you need 100 200 $400 million to be even a minor

David Friedberg: player. Yeah, I mean, just to buy an asset is like, nine figures minimum. It's very interesting that

SPEAKER_93: you're doing that angel program. It was actually my thesis as well is, we were doing something

David Friedberg: called founder university, which was just free for people who were, let's say, a little bit before our investment zone, our ideal, you know, investment zone, which is, you know, five or 10 customers,

SPEAKER_176: five to 10k a month in revenue, something like that growing 5% a week, 10% a month, something we could

SPEAKER_93: help accelerate. And so we just looked for people just before that. But when we made a founder university just for women, and we did one for just for under estimated founders, I think we

SPEAKER_95: started saying underrepresented, and then we moved to underestimated, and we let people just self

SPEAKER_09: certify. So, you know, we did have some gay white men or women who were white or trans people, which is, you know, anybody who feels they're underrepresented or underestimated can come.

SPEAKER_130: It tripled the number of people of color we were and women were investing in. And I asked them,

SPEAKER_93: why did you come to this event versus like some of the not coming to the other ones? And they said, oh, well, you know, when we saw that you had a dedicated event just for us,

SPEAKER_06: we knew you were taking it seriously. And that that's the thing that I realized, oh, if you're doing something specific, where you're saying, hey, I am taking an action here in the world

David Friedberg: to really help change this statistic, and to move the ball forward, people will recognize it, as opposed to just sort of generally putting content out there. So I really like the idea for your angel stuff. And we do angel university. So I'd love to be a guest speaker or send some books,

SPEAKER_32: or whatever. I agree about definitely angel investing. And there's, and there's, you know, there's a caveat to it, where people were pushing back on these funds that were creating separate funds for diverse founders, where it's like, this is one or point 1% of your total assets, like, I think there's a difference, like, and people always ask us this, like, how do you what's the response to you guys as diverse focus fund? And we're like, the responses were authentic, because we're putting all of our chips into this market. So like, we're very clear that like, we think we're gonna make money because we didn't, we would have gone and worked in private equity after business school. Right? And so there is a difference of like, do you have a diversity focused fund? And like, that is your sole mission? Or do you have a sub category diversity focused fund? And that's not your your core mission. And so like, we've seen similar to other discussions, like we've seen a lot of pushback, some people on the community say, Hey, it's better than nothing. Some people say, like, like, this is fake, like, this isn't real. This is literally one series A round for their, you know, main fund. Yeah. So like, you know, you have to be aware of like, how how it's going to be viewed. Like, I think overall, it's better to do something than nothing. But there is like some negative connotation. When you have the separate program, I think what you did the angel program, that's very different, like, versus like, if you're a large

David Friedberg: fund, and you're creating some 20 $30 million fund, dare I say ghettoization of like black founders, I mean, literally, that's what black founders said, like, why? Why is there this like,

SPEAKER_06: ghetto fund over here? You're just like, I want to be in your main fund. I don't want to be in the side fund. Like, why would you do that to us? Like, it's just weird. Yep. But it's he's saying some

SPEAKER_51: people think it's better than nothing. Yeah, I mean, there's two sides to every story, right?

SPEAKER_32: You're not going to be able to please everybody. I think ultimately, like, we live in a culture right now where people are doing things that they think will get the best responses. Yeah, right. And they're not they're not doing things because they think it's best for like, they think their best position to do it and they think it's best for their firm. Like don't do things just because you

SPEAKER_71: think it's going to lead to the best response. Yeah. And you know, it's I think it's very tough for people to even talk about these issues, because everybody's afraid of getting canceled. And that's

SPEAKER_06: why, like, I, and we had a little pre discussion. I was like, Hey, do you want to talk about these

SPEAKER_09: issues? Or do you want to talk about your investments? Whatever you said, I want to talk about those issues. It's kind of the purpose of our fund. And so I really appreciate you being candid about it.

SPEAKER_71: I think it's helpful when we can have a candid discussion and people aren't afraid. I could tell you a lot of white people are like, don't talk about these issues, Jake. You're going to say the

SPEAKER_06: wrong thing and get canceled. And it's like, why would I get canceled if my intent is good? Like the intent here is to try to change. We all we all want to see the world be more just, right? I've yet to meet somebody who was like, I would like the world to be more unjust and to be more racism. It's just I think people don't know what to do. And having these candid conversations. And and you're you doing

SPEAKER_93: what you're doing in the world makes it a lot easier because you're willing to talk about it, right? It's a hard discussion to have for some people. I don't know. I mean, ultimately, if you're

SPEAKER_51: at America, ultimately, like if you end up getting canceled by some like it kind of is what it is,

SPEAKER_32: but like you have to you have to decide like, what do you stand for? What conversations do you want to have? Like how, you know, how comfortable are you taking that? And you know, we even like, we've even seen in our progression, right? Like, we're very public, like brand to us is like key, and we think brand wins, right? And as a result, there's gonna be there's gonna be a downside to it, like, and you have to know as you scale, like, you're gonna have naturally as the numbers get bigger, you're gonna have more haters. That's just a part of life. Right? And you and you have to be prepared for that. And if you're going to change who you are change your position, because you're growing in your platforms growing and more people don't like you. And if you post a YouTube video, you have more, you know, they're more dislikes now than you had before, like, that's like, you're not staying true to who you are. And I think you have to just be aware of it. And if you're comfortable with it,

Chamath Palihapitiya: like, that's fine. Yeah, I mean, at the end of the day, you'll be judged by your returns, not by the mission statement. You agree? One of our LP said, you know, your your judgment will be an

SPEAKER_195: Excel sheet. Yeah, see, so that's at the end of the day, I think people have to keep that in mind.

SPEAKER_93: Yeah, Arlen Hamilton, and I had this conversation a bunch of times when she said, I'm only investing in black fan black female founders. And I said, Well, what about if you like,

SPEAKER_06: just, you know, to your point, like, what if I met the next Mark Zuckerberg, when I was at HBS, she's like, No, I'm not doing it. I was like, Okay, that's interesting. That's gonna make it harder

SPEAKER_93: with LP. She's like, I don't care. And it's like, Okay, great. That's your mission. You have a slightly different one, like you'd be opportunistic on the margins. And I'm just glad to see this changing and

SPEAKER_06: people having the conversation. And it was just great to see your success and fundraising.

SPEAKER_32: And there's a lot of ways to do it, right? I think we need, it's, you know, it's funny, because when we first started fundraising three years ago, like, like Arlen at Backstage was really the only, like racially diversity focused fund because diversity three years ago was a gender conversation. It was female founders fund, BBG, SoGal, etc. There was no racial funds, right? And so people are like, Oh, well, how are you different from from Backstage? You know, we're like, there can't be two black focused funds, the entire country. We already have one of those already. Like they're on the west coast, we're on the east coast, like we can split the country in half or something. But it's just like that. That's, that happens so frequently where it's like, I can literally point to a billion San Francisco where there's five early stage software funds that do the exact same thing and have like some, you know, weird nuances like, oh, I do enterprise,

SPEAKER_202: I do software. I mean, tech stars, there's Y Combinator, this launch, there's a million accelerators, like, yeah, it doesn't need to be just one.

SPEAKER_32: But like for underrepresented groups, like oftentimes, like that is the case where people think that like, you have to like, there can't be more than one of you like, they're not that many, they're not there can't, you know, you're looking for 30 companies, she's looking for whatever, like there can't be 50 companies in the entire US that are VC backward. It's, it blew my mind when we were fundraising. Like we didn't like we have the data now because we've been doing our research reports. But back then, like we literally had to convince people that we could find 30 black Latino or women of all races in 300 million plus country that were like VC fundable and people even people of color, like this isn't just white people, even people of color, because you've gotten you've been so historically trained to hate yourself, like that you don't even believe that that's the case.

David Friedberg: Ah, yeah, that's correct. That actually is even that's super pernicious, like when you're actually having in your mind. And that's really why we need to see people in leadership positions

SPEAKER_93: change. It's super inspiring to see the heads of a lot of the big tech conglomerates no longer be

SPEAKER_109: white guys, right. And a little more diversity at the top of those companies where you're like, Oh, wow, look, the head of Microsoft, the head of Google, it's not just a white guy anymore. It's not just Bill Gates and Sergey or whatever. All right, listen, continued success. Thanks for coming

David Friedberg: on the pod. Let's do a deal together. Get me in a deal. I'm going to try to get you into the

SPEAKER_93: angel program. I'll tell the team. Totally. Well, you know, I teach angel university like four times a year, five times a year. So if you wanted to have the entire group of applicants or whatever come and or you want to speak at ours would it be like a really good collab as the kids say these days, we could do a collab. But yeah, it's definitely that the number of people interested in investing in private companies is skyrocketing skyrocketing. It's great because you know,

SPEAKER_74: like you think about their investing in Bitcoin or NFTs or, you know, doing crazy like games.

SPEAKER_154: I'm still not even up to all the lingo. Well, I'm just like I'm looking at this stuff and I'm like,

SPEAKER_21: Oh, my Lord, like I people tell me I'm crazy for doing early stage investing, you're investing in

SPEAKER_71: virtual currencies, imaginary money, imaginary art, like, and I kind of dig NFTs. I'll be totally

SPEAKER_218: honest. Like I think that's a thing. But private companies might be if you for every time you buy

SPEAKER_220: it's a safer bet, I guess I NFTs for startups. I think I think I don't know. It's very weird.

SPEAKER_74: I've never seen a bubbly environment like this where capital is chasing very weird things.

SPEAKER_154: I mean, it's I wasn't you know, I was alive in 2000. I wasn't old enough. But it seems like

SPEAKER_187: it might be even created in 2000. You know, I was a journalist. I was your exact age. I was 29 in 1999

SPEAKER_93: running Silicon Valley reporter in the down in downtown Manhattan. And the difference then was

SPEAKER_21: people what people got right was the internet was going to change everything. They just got the timing wrong. Because there were only 10 million people on high speed connections. And nobody had smartphones. So the total market size was like, well, there's 10 million people on a high speed connection. Some of them are companies, etc. And okay, so can this company be worth a billion or 10 billion? It's like, not yet. But when you have 3 billion people online, and people have smartphones, and supercomputers with high speed, the connections in on the average smartphone today is a magnitude

SPEAKER_93: faster than the average connection in that time period. So it was really just the timing thing. The enthusiasm was right, the timing was wrong, right. And so and then those companies

SPEAKER_21: see if this time is right. Well, I mean, the difference now is you think about a company like clubhouse as an example. I mean, they have 10 million downloads or accounts now, like, that was the totality of the market size in the in the in the late 90s. Like, they literally have the what would be the entire internet. And then you look at when you do turn on revenue, companies turn on

SPEAKER_93: revenue now and like, calm calm is just one example, like, they all of a sudden have a million people paying whatever five 10 bucks a month. And then all of a sudden, they got 2 million people doing that. It really adds up quickly, you know, these app stores and built in commerce systems have changed

SPEAKER_71: everything. But continued success. Congratulations on the fund. Congratulations on getting Apple. And what's going on with what's going on with Harvard's endowment, largest endowment in the world, you're an HBS student. They make people wait to the fourth fund. Yeah, unfortunately,

SPEAKER_59: unfortunately, they probably have the most alums of fund managers.

SPEAKER_203: They do, they do. It's kind of just like one of many.

SPEAKER_71: See, this, this is a mistake on their part. If they believed in you to come to HBS, they should just automatically give you $5 million. If you graduated from HBS, and you have a fund, they should just be five or 10% of it by default. Yeah, I mean, it'd be interesting to have like a

SPEAKER_32: Harvard, a Harvard GP ETF, like or just like some fun you just put in, it'd probably be over indexed,

SPEAKER_93: they would probably do well. Oh, my God, would it do I mean, just for the companies that people join and for I mean, you know, I went to HBS as well. Twice speaking gigs. And then I tried to go back the second day with my visitor pass. It didn't work. But congrats on that. Wow. And congrats on getting

SPEAKER_21: Apple. I think that's a big deal. And kudos to Apple for like stepping up and doing something interesting with their money. That's world positive. I mean, there's such a great company to to just say your company. Yeah, they actually really care. And they take a stance like

David Friedberg: from diversity and justice all the way over and LGBTQ. And then you look at just privacy like,

SPEAKER_21: Oh, yeah, we're gonna just not let people track your phone to the way like Zuckerberg wants to track you. Like they're just on the right side of history over and over and over again. And for that,

SPEAKER_181: I give them a lot of credit. Tim Cook shout out. All right, Henri, I can't wait to meet you in person,

SPEAKER_21: uh, in New York, hopefully, in my hometown. And, uh, yeah, continued success. And let's do a deal.

David Friedberg: Thanks, Jason. See you next time, everybody. Bye bye.