SPEAKER_00: This Week in Startups is brought to you by .techdomains. Until July 5th, our partner .techdomains, along with Namecheap, is donating 100% of the proceeds from sales of .techdomains to code.org. So head to go.tech slash twist to learn more and support this campaign with your own .techdomain. Pipe, SaaS companies, this is for you. Pipe helps you unlock your recurring revenue as upfront capital. No debt, no loans, no dilution. Sign up in minutes and start trading on Pipe for free for 12 months at pipe.com slash twist. And Twilio runs an amazing program for startups that includes a $500 getting started credit, access to webinars made exclusive for startups, and full support via their Twilio Startups team. Sign up now at twiliostartups.com slash twist.

SPEAKER_03: Hey, everybody. Hey, everybody. It's another great episode of This Week in Startups. Today, we've got a great interview with the founder of Sugar, which is a CRM enterprise software for landlords and tenants. And before we get into that great interview, I want to talk about a big issue that's going on here in Silicon Valley and probably in your city or maybe even in your company, which is the return to work.

SPEAKER_05: You may have seen a huge brouhaha this weekend with Apple employees in the news again after they wrote yet another letter to management, this time demanding a more flexible work-from-home policy.

SPEAKER_06: Last Friday, this letter seems to have been leaked to the press, specifically The Verge. And this is the third time Apple employees have been challenging the management of Apple in the last three weeks. So every week for three weeks, we've had Apple employees being extremely vocal. This is notable because Apple was known for being a very private company, perhaps the most private company in all of Silicon Valley. People signing NDAs, people in the company not knowing what was going on in the buildings next to them. They have a culture of secrecy. They circle the wagons.

SPEAKER_05: The first one, the catalyst was obviously the firing of Antonio Garcia Martinez, the author of Chaos Monkeys, and I covered that on episode 1215. That petition had 2,000 signatures. The second was asking Apple CEO to take a position. Tim Cook publicly and support Palestine. And that petition had something in the neighborhood of 1,000 signatures. And obviously both of these are, you know, one of them is kind of a private issue for a company hiring and firing people. Probably should it be handled privately. And obviously asking Tim Cook to take a position on Middle East politics. I mean, what are you going to ask him about next? Religion or birth control and abortion? These are really big societal tough issues. Gun control. I mean, does Tim Cook, the CEO of a private company, have to comment on all these things? One wonders. But this third one is actually a really good debate that is happening in society. And this is a letter,

SPEAKER_03: not so much a petition. We couldn't find how many people signed this. So I'm a little suspect on exactly what's going on here. And I think it's awesome for you as a reader to be an independent listener, a reader of journalism,

SPEAKER_05: a listener of this podcast or other ones, to be an independent critical thinker and always question what you read in any publication, be it the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Fox, MSNBC, wherever you're new source, even including this one. And this letter, not a petition, was pushing back on Apple's return to work policy. And it's unknown, as I said, how many people signed that petition. We looked, can't find the number, but according to The Verge, the Slack room, here we go, Slack again, where the letter originated from has 2,800 members. So obviously, people are screenshotting Slack, cutting and pasting from Slack. And these kinds of discussions should not occur on Slack. You've got to keep your Slack and internal communication under control, because what basically we've done is put a recorder into every meeting, into every single conference room, allowing any employee to cut and paste, drag and drop every conversation and send it to the press. Obviously, the press loves this because page views and great stories. You know, the cynical take would be page views and the most generous take would be truth telling and being able to communicate and educate their audiences. Putting that aside, Slack is a disaster for people discussing charged issues, work from home, black lives matter, Trump, Palestine, Israel, all of these things are really difficult, nuanced conversations that cannot occur on email or in a Slack or chat room or with 2,800 members productively. It's just not possible. We all know this is common sense, but about 80 people were involved in the writing and editing of the note,

SPEAKER_03: according to the verge story. The letter was a direct response to Tim cook's email from last Wednesday that ordered employees back to the office from Tuesday to Thursday, starting in September, which seems kind of reasonable. You're working from Apple. The average salary at Apple is a 175 K or so people working down at the mothership there. You could suspect many of them making 500,000 a million that would not be uncommon for a Silicon Valley company and the quote from cook's email. For all that we've been able to achieve while many of us have been separated. The truth is there has been something essential missing from this past year. Each other for very elegant video conference calling has narrowed the distance between us to be sure, but there are things that it's simply cannot replicate also reasonable. Coincidentally, last week on June 1st, I tweeted a thread on remote work because I've been monitoring this at the companies I invest in.

SPEAKER_05: I've had to adopt it obviously in the companies I run. My thoughts is this is going to be unbelievable. As I said, people quitting instead of coming back to offices is very real.

SPEAKER_03: Amazing for startups who will be able to recruit the most talented folks who are well paid. Some might say overpaid at big companies, but who will take significantly less in order to work from home. Executives have figured out how to manage remote workers so well that they need 20% less of them.

SPEAKER_05: Basically, the low performers have and in quotes nowhere to hide in a remote world where folks do an SOD and EOD start of day, end of day, just a little device I created and many other companies use in slack. Here's what I'm doing today. Here's my end of day. It's kind of like punching in and punching out or showing up at the office and leaving the office. It's basically the equivalent of opening the office front door and walking in and saying hi everybody and then putting on your jacket and leaving. And I kind of like that about doing an SOD and EOD. It creates the discipline of people ending their day.

SPEAKER_03: So I did this tweet storm and you know, I have a, you know, I'm kind of independent in my assessment of this situation. Knowledge workers get to pick where they work. They're in high demand. And so if people do not want to go back to the office, they don't have to. And if a company believes that building something like the iPhone or VR AR goggles that Apple is clearly working on, or the iPad or AirPods or whatever device, if they believe that that needs to happen in person in order for it to be great, or they just decide, um, they want to have a culture where people work in person. So be it. A company can make that decision. And what we're seeing here is this great reconciliation. I suspect, I suspect that many of the people who are in support of a letter like this have already left the bay area. In other words, employees who were leaving, uh, their, uh, state and city where they were hired to work. Most of the big companies said, you can leave, but you got to let us know. And then when we go back to work, you got to come back. I think what's happening here is people have left. They basically took the risk of leaving whatever city they're in. And now they are faced with having to come back and they're not going to be able to.

SPEAKER_05: So of course they're throwing the Hail Mary of, Hey, let me work forever from home. Um, in the letter, the employees asked for Apple to leave remote working decisions up to individual teams.

SPEAKER_06: Interesting. And a company wide survey on remote work across teams in the entire organization. So they want to essentially get everybody to chime in on this.

SPEAKER_03: Obviously everybody's gonna say, I want to make the decision, not the bosses or the people writing the paychecks. Exit interviews to specifically ask about employee churn, uh, because of remote work.

SPEAKER_06: In other words, they want to track this, I guess, to build their case that everybody should be work from home or they, the team should decide a plan to accommodate disabilities through both remote and onsite working. I'm not sure which disability they're working towards, but the Americans with disability act is very clear that you have to accommodate people. So I'm not sure exactly what their point is. There, uh, information on the environmental impact of in-person onsite work compared with remote working. I mean, that's ridiculous. Like, of course there's an impact of commuting versus staying home.

SPEAKER_03: Uh, but some of the quotes struck people on social media as extremely entitled and frankly, bizarre or crazy. I'm not saying I'm saying that, but that was a reaction on Twitter. And I'll just give you a couple of quotes. We would like to take the opportunity to communicate a growing concern among our colleagues. I hate this.

SPEAKER_05: I hate when one group of people speaks for all people at a company, everybody should speak for themselves. A better letter here would be, this is how I feel. And the people who've signed this letter, not I am speaking for everybody, uh, or some mythical group of people or amorphous group of people. Always speak for yourself or for the people who've signed the letter.

SPEAKER_06: Um, that Apple's remote location, flexible work policy, and the communication around it have already forced some of our colleagues to quit. Okay.

SPEAKER_05: Uh, well, people have their choice. Uh, without the inclusivity that flexibility brings, that's an interesting use of words, inclusivity, uh, which obviously triggers people to think about, uh, diversity and inclusivity.

SPEAKER_06: So that's a very, uh, unique word to use in this.

SPEAKER_05: Many of us feel we have to choose between either a combination of our families, our wellbeing, and being empowered to do our best work or being part of Apple.

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SPEAKER_06: So this is where it gets a little bit, um, let's say disingenuous and in people's feelings.

SPEAKER_03: And this was the reaction, uh, the, you know, these people are entitled reaction on Twitter. Now, of course on Twitter, there was also reaction is why should people sit in three hours of traffic, two hours of traffic on the 101 or 280, which I've said for a long time is very weird. So, um, but very interesting that they're kind of putting their families and their wellbeing like is going to work like some big suffering going to work at Apple in a multi billion dollar gorgeous new building. Uh, the people who go to the, who work at the Apple store don't have a choice, but to go to that beautiful Apple store and people who work as, you know, who pick up the garbage or who teach your kids.

SPEAKER_05: They're all being forced to go back to work. So Apple employees are going to have to choose between their families and their wellbeing. This is why people were a little tweaked about this and, and sort of framed it as entitlement. Um, I try frame it as personal choice over the last year. We often felt not just unheard, but at times actively ignored.

SPEAKER_06: Uh, okay. That's again, back to the feelings. Uh, it's a little bit much messages.

SPEAKER_03: Like we know many of you are eager to reconnect in person with your colleagues back in the office with no messaging and acknowledging that. These are directly contradictory feelings amongst us feels dismissive and invalidating again to the feelings. You're being paid to go to work. You're being paid a fortune to go to work. This is not about your feelings or your family or your wellbeing. This is a transaction folks. You get paid to work at Apple. One of the great companies in the world. It entitles you to become a millionaire over time. If you don't want that opportunity, you need not work there. This does not have to be so complicated and about your feelings or about being manipulated by Tim Cook's incredibly gracious letter. Uh, it feels like there's a disconnect between how the executive teams.

SPEAKER_06: Again, the quote from the letter thinks about remote location, flexible work and the lived experiences of many of Apple's employees.

SPEAKER_05: Again, when you start using inclusivity and lived experiences, you're kind of saying this is a race issue or a gender issue.

SPEAKER_03: You're kind of using charged language here. So this is where the letter I think got barbecued, um, pretty severely on Twitter is they use this language.

SPEAKER_05: It should have been just very basic. We can get a lot done when we're working from home. We've saved the commute time. Uh, and that allows us to work harder, uh, and we prefer it. So, uh, can we have two classes of employees work from home employees and in-person and maybe the people who work from home get paid differently than the people who take the time to go to the office? Who knows what the situation is, uh, in terms of compensation, but that would have been a better approach here. I think for a letter to make the letter about, you know, your family and inclusivity. It just feels, uh, disingenuous or I think a lot of people felt it was manipulative or even inappropriate.

SPEAKER_03: That was sort of the reaction on Twitter to this. Now, again, it was written by 80 people and I don't know that. And there were 28 people in the work from homeroom. So maybe half of them out of the 150,000 people who work at Apple, uh, you know, are co-signers to this. If they didn't have signatures on it, but maybe it's 1% of employees.

SPEAKER_06: If 1% of employees or let's say even under 10% of employees feel like this, well, then they should go work somewhere else is going to be Apple's position. I can tell you that.

SPEAKER_03: And they're giving him three or four months to come back to the office, but 60% of the time, three out of five days a week. I think it's quite reason. I think anybody would look at that and say it's quite reasonable. It's also quite reasonable for people to say, I don't choose to do that anymore.

SPEAKER_06: I would not, I would rather give up working at Apple as great as it is. And I just want to work from home. I want to work from, you know, Tahoe at a lake or Miami by the beach. And, you know, so be it, but you should probably expect that Apple is going to have everybody come back to the office. Uh, other companies are handling it differently, but Google has a similar policy. They expect employees to, um, return to the office three days per week in September. I'm not saying that people are colluding on this approach, but it does. I would not be surprised if there was back channeling between the management teams of these companies or one saw what another company was doing. And then started the process of this grand negotiation. Both Twitter and Facebook have told employees they can work from home forever. Uh, even if the pandemic ends, Facebook, however, uh, will be reworking people's salaries based on that. And, you know, I got to give it to Zuck for being candid about that. It is in fact unfair. If you and your friend were both developers and you both lived in, you know, Lake Tahoe and one of you decided to come to the office every day and they gave you an extra $30,000 a year. For, you know, your cost of living expense, which is reasonable in San Francisco.

SPEAKER_03: Well, if you left and went to Tahoe and you're making 30,000 more than your friend who didn't move.

SPEAKER_06: You are now getting paid more and you should probably give that back. And actually, in fact, people have been making that choice. And I think that's this grand economic, you know, bargaining is what we're seeing here. And it's very hard to cut people's salaries. Facebook doesn't have a problem with it, but maybe Apple does. Um, and maybe that should be Apple's position. If you work from home, we're going to renegotiate your compensation.

SPEAKER_03: And if you work from the office, you continue at your compensation. Maybe that's the solution.

SPEAKER_06: Uh, but for them, I actually think Apple wants to have a culture. I believe Google wants to have a campus culture and they're going to force people to come back. Pinterest, as you know, uh, probably no paid almost 90 million to terminate a lease on 500,000 square feet of new office space in San Francisco. Salesforce, uh, scrap plans for another 325,000 square feet in San Francisco and adopted a work from anywhere. And so, you know, is this going to add in any way impact Apple? Probably not. They have a ton of revenue. They are printing money. Their global run rate per employee is $2.7 million. If they lost 10% of their employees, if they lost 30% of their employees, 50% of the employees, all it would do is pour money to the bottom line. Uh, it would literally double that number from 2.7 million to over 5 million. And it wouldn't make a difference.

SPEAKER_03: A lot of these companies are massively overstaffed and this is going to sound super cynical, but the back channel I've heard in Silicon Valley and amongst big companies is we are now going to move into the loyalty phase, uh, with the reopening.

SPEAKER_06: In other words, employees are going to be put to the test, come back to work, uh, three days a week. And then in the new year, we're going to go to five days a week and it's going to be back to normal.

SPEAKER_03: If you choose not to do that, we then know you're not serious and we will replace you. And if we don't replace you, we're going to reorg and companies love to reorganize. It's just painful to do so.

SPEAKER_27: So when given a crisis and the opportunity to reorganize companies do it, you know why? Cause they get to fire B and C players without having a reason. I know this is cynical, but this is the real world.

SPEAKER_06: When some crisis happens, uh, you will see like when there's an economic crises, like in 2008, people are go to their managers and they say in a big company.

SPEAKER_03: Okay. You're whatever your head count is. You need to cut 40%. You think they're cutting the 40% that are the top players, or you think they're starting with the players. They were probably had on a performance improvement plan. We're going to cut anyway. They obviously cut the most expensive employees, uh, as compared to their effort.

SPEAKER_05: And so that makes a company more efficient. That's what's going on here. I know it's cynical, but I always tell it to you straight on this podcast.

SPEAKER_03: Never waste a crisis is taught in management theory and in politics for a reason. This is a crisis. I think Apple is basically looking at those people who want to stay work from home. If they're an a player, they will carve out an exception. Oh, this person is absolutely critical for the air pod. You know, 4.0 we have coming out that LeBron James was wearing a reportedly that has no little sticks coming out of it.

SPEAKER_10: Okay, that person we're going to make an exception for them. They're a savant and she lives in Lake Tahoe.

SPEAKER_03: That person is untouchable, but everybody else who's complaining about their feelings and, you know, doing their best work and choosing between their families.

SPEAKER_06: Yeah, that person is probably too much trouble. We're going to cut them. That's literally how this is going to go down. Um, and it will make companies more efficient because anytime you cut the underperforming people on a team. Back to that team metaphor as opposed to a family metaphor that Toby from Shopify used in his memo. It makes the team better. Sometimes you got to cut players to make room for new players. I asked a poll on Saturday and I think this is one for you to consider. Could the iPhone have been created by a team working from home?

SPEAKER_03: Yes, 20%. No, 60%, maybe 20%.

SPEAKER_06: So if we split the the maybes and you just give half those to yes and half to no, it's 7030. Yeah, two out of three people, 75% of people ballpark believe you need to be in an office to create something that amazing and it is a hardware product. And so there were just a ton of hot takes from it. Kara Swisher tweeted. Oh my God. I kind of agree with Jason and when they related news, hell is hella cold.

SPEAKER_34: That's pretty funny. We actually agree on a lot of stuff. Karen, come on.

SPEAKER_03: And, uh, yeah, on Saturday, David Sacks joined, uh, in to drop a bombshell of a tweet on employee petitions, pressuring management. And, uh, he said, if I was still a CEO, I would put out the message. Anyone in the company can contact me privately about any concern they have.

SPEAKER_06: But if they try to pressure me into it by publicly circulating a petition, they have just signed their own termination letter.

SPEAKER_37: That's pretty hardcore.

SPEAKER_03: Uh, but he clarified, you know, to be clear, he loves the free and open exchange of ideas and worked hard to create a culture of dissent at his own company.

SPEAKER_05: And, uh, he has an open door policy, but that's not what it's at stake here. The issue is whether companies can be governed by mob rule.

SPEAKER_03: And I think that this technique of using slack screenshots and petitions and chaos inside of a company to get companies to act. Uh, this kind of chaos is not going to result in great products and services being made in the world and high functioning, high profit companies. There's a difference between privately settling something with, you know, in your family or being the Kardashians and blowing everything up on a reality TV show.

SPEAKER_06: They're basically turning apple into the Kardashians. You know, if you have a problem with your sibling or your parent or something going on in your family, you probably want to have a sit down and talk about it privately, not broadcast it. And this broadcasting of grievances, um, in this, you know, slack culture of cutting and pasting slacks and trying to get people, you know, worked up about these issues. Whether it's Palestine or Antonio's, you know, uh, novel slash memoir, uh, and whatever inappropriate or, you know, dicey quote he had in it. Not that I agree with it, but not that I would hire the person and fire them because of it.

SPEAKER_03: This kind of stuff should be settled quietly internally so that your stock options in the company go up and so that everybody succeeds and wins together. And remember, we're in America where you have the right to pick what company you have to work for. And the company has the right to pick who works for that company and how they work. If you don't like how Apple is doing it or Google is doing it, go to Facebook or Twitter. And that's what's going to happen here. You're going to have a bunch of talented people from Apple join Twitter.

SPEAKER_06: You're going to have a bunch of talented people from Google go to Facebook or you will have people get cut and become consultants or work from home. So stick around. You'll get some of my thoughts on, um, after this interview about valuation.

SPEAKER_03: So I wrote a little piece about startup valuations and the increase of them. And I talk about that in the button at the end of the show.

SPEAKER_06: The button at the end of the show is basically my thoughts on some topic, not news, but just, you know, some random thoughts. And you'll be hearing more of that on this weekend. So stick with us.

SPEAKER_05: I want to welcome Harry Hurst. You know him as the co CEO and co founder of the company pipe. You've been on Twitter over the past year. You've probably heard me and my besties, a number of which got their beaks wet, talking about all the excitement around pipe and their fundraising and the product they're bringing to market. I thought I'd have Harry come on and explain it to y'all. Harry, welcome to the program. Thank you, Jason. The people who are buying these contracts, the annualized contracts are looking to make 10% on their money. And the person who's selling that in advance believes they could put that capital to work that would help grow their revenues more than 10%.

SPEAKER_12: Is that a way to look at it?

SPEAKER_48: The simple math, if you take, for example, 95 cents on the dollar, and you have $100,000 trade, can I take $95,000 today, invest that into say sales and marketing for growth, and generate $5,000 in net new ARR as a result of investing that? If the answer is yes, which I hope it is for any growing company, your cash flow break even on the trade, if not cash flow positive on the trade, and you have the net new ARR. And you know, best of the cloud index, not sure where it is today, but anywhere between 10 to 20x on that additional $5,000 can be seen as your profit on the trade.

SPEAKER_49: So what we're trying to do at Pipe is turn people from having a borrower's mentality where they would traditionally go to say a lender and borrow money to a trader's mentality where they think that their recurring revenue streams is an asset.

SPEAKER_05: All right, thanks again, Harry for coming on the pod and explaining that with pipe.com, there is no debt, no loans, and most importantly to me as an angel investor, no dilution, you sign up at pipe.com slash twist, they'll eliminate all your trading fees for one full year. What a generous offer pipe.com slash twist so you can save up to 10s of 1000s of dollars. Happy piping everybody.

SPEAKER_12: Welcome back everybody.

SPEAKER_51: We've got a great guest for you Fatima Deco is with us and she is the founder of sugar, which you can find at sugar living.com. And I was lucky enough to meet her at something called remote demo day, which you can go take a look at at remote demo day.com. And she participated in the seventh one we've ever hosted on February 24. This is a very simple event. Seven companies we select from a couple 100 who apply and we research pitch hundreds of angel investors live and then 1000s on the replay, who couldn't make it because we have a global community at the syndicate.com. Who in our investment club investing companies, and people love to presentation. So I thought I'd have her on the show. And it's always interesting. How we find these fresh from my team, who is an associate the youngest associate in Silicon Valley history, they reached out to Fatima. And I guess they found her on mercury.com slash raise, which is a startup focused bank. I don't know what that is Fatima will explain to us what that website is. What is that? Welcome to the program Fatima. What is mercury.com?

SPEAKER_55: It's a yeah, it's awesome. Yeah, it's a new bank for startups. It makes it super easy. You can open up a bank account online.

SPEAKER_58: And what they're doing is super awesome because they started a mercury raise program where you can, yeah, host your company, say your fundraising, and then they reach out and it worked out, I guess, because it connected us to this.

David Friedberg: Yeah, so thank you to mercury will give you the free advertisement here on this weekend startups. Startups since you found us a great company. My understanding of sugar living is that managing a residential property is extremely painful.

SPEAKER_51: And you take away all the pain. Explain to us what sugar living is and why you created it.

SPEAKER_55: Sure. Uh, you know, the idea with sugar is all about connectivity. The name comes from this idea of borrowing a cup of sugar from your neighbors. Uh, yeah, we've been doing that forever when you think about it, but as technology has become more advanced, we've gotten farther away from that as a society. I don't know a lot of the neighbors in my building before sugar. And one of the easiest ways to deal with the pandemic is to reestablish a lot of those connections. So that was what, you know, prompted us to start last year. We noticed one in four people were working remotely. People were spending more time at home than ever before. Um, and loneliness was at an all time high. If you look at the numbers of loneliness and the desire to connect, uh, that, that was huge. And as it relates to property managers, the more connected people are and the higher resident engagement is the more likely people are to renew their lease. And so if people know at least two to three people in their building, they're exponentially more likely to renew their lease. And so our whole premise is let's make it easier to connect with your neighbors and turn strangers into friends. And let's make their life easier in the process with things like rent payments and maintenance requests.

SPEAKER_70: And yeah, so I'm happy to, to dive into that further, but that's kind of the story.

SPEAKER_72: And it's also additionally in the story, this is a pivot. You had a company that was doing on campus delivery called jet pack.

SPEAKER_51: If I, if I, if I'm correct here in my research. And so that failed or didn't break out.

SPEAKER_74: Tell us about, um, the original idea and, and that moment as a founder, when you said, huh, this isn't going to get me there. So instead of, you know, crashing the plane into the side of the mountain, I'm going to land the plane and, you know, maybe refuel. Sure.

SPEAKER_55: You know, in a way it was out of necessity. We were pushing through up until schools closed down during the pandemic. And so we were a peer to peer think about it like a hyper local Craigslist, but we also gave students backpacks and they walked around with the most important items in their book bags. And you would ask for, you know, a charger or a painkiller or tampons. And then the nearest student would come by, deliver it in a record speed. Our average delivery time was seven minutes and we were on campuses. Yeah. Really, really cool.

SPEAKER_70: And brands paid us money to give us, um, those free samples.

SPEAKER_74: I am in love with this idea. And I had the same idea of mobile, you know, like basically make the warehouse mobile with the top items.

SPEAKER_51: And, uh, I tried to buy cosmo.com, the, the IP from that.

SPEAKER_15: They wouldn't sell it to me, but I was going to call it mercury club. And the idea was like, we're going to run there really fast. But my idea was instead of on campus, give them Vespas because they used to drive a Vespa. It's such a great idea to solve last mile delivery. It it's a low margin business operationally hard. And obviously pandemic is it basically puts the business down to zero. Do you think that business can ever work? Or do you think it's going to be a low margin too hard with Uber now getting into sundries and stuff like that and Amazon pursuing, let's call it two hour delivery and Uber doing sub 45 minute delivery.

SPEAKER_55: I think it's a great question. It's funny. Cause I, I always thought it was, and I still think it's a brilliant idea. And my dad, he, when I first told him about it, he's like, so you're selling toothpaste out of backpacks in California somewhere. I'm like, yeah, that's pretty much what I'm doing. Um, but you know, I, I still do think that, you know, hyper local and just distributing inventory at a, in a hyper local way is the future. Uh, you know, when you think about the last mile. You know, obviously Amazon is going to continue and will always dominate in a lot of ways. But when you look at less than 10 minute delivery, there's going to be a competitive advantage to people who just know the area. You know, they have access into buildings and they're able to just not have parking be an issue. And so we saw all sorts of things that John Hopkins, you know, people were even like selling homework assignments. So there was like an entire challenge we have there. So I think that the solution will definitely be viable over time. I think whoever will nail it, we'll focus on a few verticals that make the most sense where supply and demand are pretty balanced and not try to do everything. And maybe that's for, you know, a known set of items, right? Like we're going to do these 10 items and we're going to do those very well.

SPEAKER_69: Uh, and maybe it's for a different vertical, but I do think that there's definitely something there still.

David Friedberg: Yeah.

SPEAKER_74: Well, I mean, my understanding from my friend is that the cannabis delivery business, uh, in some cases in the trunk, they have exactly a big giant, um, case with dividers and they, they number them. And so you order a certain type of mint or a gummy or a sour diesel or a girl scout cookies or, or, I mean, just as my friend told me and, um, you know, a tincture, you know, whatever you need. Um, they can just boom, boom, boom, open their trunk and make your little package, seal it and then hand it to you. So like my friend told me Meadow can be like under an hour delivery. And if that's kind of a similar thing and Uber announced that they might in fact go into that business.

SPEAKER_51: What are the most acute, um, problems during your research about running a residential building? Did the, uh, managers of the building have and what were the most acute, you know, annoying. Issues that the residents has.

SPEAKER_72: And how did you determine which one of those to, to sort of be the tip of the spear when you launched the product?

SPEAKER_63: Sure. Um, it's a great way to look at it. Cause that's exactly how we started to figure out the types of features we were going to focus on.

SPEAKER_55: First, we looked at the top problems for consumers or residents, and then the top problems for managers. And we found the intersection, you know, where, where are there overlaps between the two for managers? I mean, the two things they care about increasing asset value and minimizing vacant space.

SPEAKER_70: You know, everything that they care about can be boiled down to those two things.

SPEAKER_55: Um, and when we think about asset value that has changed over time, you know, now includes your ratings on Yelp and Google, your digital reputation. Uh, a lot of times residents are going to Yelp and Google only when something goes bad, but they're rarely going there when things go right. And so making it easier to translate positive experience onto Yelp and Google. Um, over 80% of millennials now will look at Yelp or Google before they decide to tour or to lease a building. And so digital reputation is super important now.

SPEAKER_70: That's fascinating.

SPEAKER_51: So it's in a way stopping and intercepting a bad experience is as valuable as providing great experience. Like absolutely.

SPEAKER_74: Because as you're saying, like, if somebody has a great meal, they don't, they don't just take out Yelp and go, you know what, I got to stick it to these people.

SPEAKER_15: But if your table and, you know, is an hour late and the food comes cold, uh, or it's bad, people are, you know, they're, they're doing their Yelp review and the Uber on the way home.

SPEAKER_19: Uh, so that, that makes a lot of sense.

SPEAKER_08: I remember like it was yesterday when my dad bought me for $1,200, my first computer, the IBM PC junior, I was 13 years old, I think it was 1983 or so. And that was one of the great days of my life. But despite all this computers and code have no gender race or country access to computer science education is very much limited by these factors. Some statistics for you in the U S alone, only 47% of public high schools teach a computer science class. How is that even possible? And at the same time, there are over 400,000 high paying open computing roles nationwide. Only 31% of students that took the AP computer science exam were young women and only 22% were underrepresented students. This has to change. And education is where we can start. So here is your call to action until July 5th.

SPEAKER_05: Our partner dot tech domains, along with Namecheap is donating a hundred percent of the proceeds from sales of dot tech domains to code.org. Think about that. A hundred percent of the proceeds going to code.org. Code.org. If you don't know is a nonprofit that helps students learn to code by developing curriculums, lobbying efforts, and more. We launched a deals directory for founders recently called startup deals.tech. I love the dot tech domain. What a great domain and what a great cause. I want you to go to go.tech, T E C H slash twist to learn more and support this campaign with your own dot tech domain. There's a lot of great sub domains out there. And dot tech is one of them. Go dot tech slash twist. And you can help the cause. All of the proceeds from go dot tech slash twist are going to help support code.org.

SPEAKER_74: Is this a B to B to C business or a B to B business? You're, you're the Stanford MBA. How do you, uh, how do you categorize this?

SPEAKER_15: So did you have Dr. Uh, professor Pfeiffer, by the way?

SPEAKER_81: I did not have Pfeiffer.

SPEAKER_15: Okay. You didn't take the power course.

SPEAKER_81: I did not take the power. I took, I took touchy feely, which, yeah, we could have a whole conversation on that.

SPEAKER_74: Yeah, let's do it. We're here. But anyway, tell me, uh, when you look at this as an architect, is it?

SPEAKER_15: Who, who, who makes the decision to use the platform? And how do you think about it architecturally? Is it bottom up where the consumers adopt it? And then it forces the resident manager to adopt it, or are you going to the people who own the buildings? How do you, what's your go to market here?

SPEAKER_51: And then how did you architect the business in terms of who pays?

SPEAKER_55: Sure. So this is a B2B2C play. And I think it's an interesting thing to note because a lot of the companies, and while I think they've done a phenomenal job of, you know, controlling all aspects of apps and software that buildings will need. A lot of them tend to forget about that NC. So they focus on the needs of the property manager or the owner, but then they don't get to a point where they're designing anything for the end user. And what that results in is that you have people logging into these apps, maybe once a month to pay rent, uh, which isn't the most exciting activity for a lot of people, uh, to, you know, to cause product stickiness. And so, you know, what we're doing is we're integrating with a lot of the apps that property managers are already using so that the building doesn't have to make a huge drastic change. But then we're focusing on the coolest features for the residents, such as being able to unlock doors from the phone. Uh, that's a really big part of our experience because now people are in the app every day. They're unlocking their doors. They're sharing keys with friends and visitors. And eventually with, you know, door dash delivery personnel and just making these experiences a lot more simple. And so now that people are in there, we can now, you know, engage them in all, all of these other features, the events, karma points for interacting with neighbors and that kind of thing. So that's like a big part of our, I guess, secret sauce. If you will, I guess nothing is a secret nowadays. Um, but that's a core part of what we believe needs to be true in order to nail resident engagement.

SPEAKER_108: And do the residents like talking to each other?

SPEAKER_74: Is there like a slack like feature or a chat or email, uh, or does that become, um, a challenge

SPEAKER_15: in that it could create, you know, almost the unionization of the tenants, right? Versus management. I know that some people felt that way about slack. You know, should the employees be able to create their own rooms? What rooms will they create? You know? Uh, we had the same issue on angel list in the early days. I'm not an angel list anymore. I'm on the syndicate.com. But in the early days, we had a message board on profile pages on deal pages. And if a deal didn't go well and the company was shutting down, there became a lot of Monday morning quarterbacking. So Naval was like, you know, we're going to get rid of that and get this way. People are not complaining about a failed company, you know, forever. Um, and we've had to struggle with that. Do we want people in a slack instance or not? We're experimenting with it. How do you think about keeping the community positive and not making it something that becomes

SPEAKER_51: politicized or us versus them?

SPEAKER_55: Sure. With the DM feature, the direct message feature, people can opt in or out on whether or not they're shown up in the directory. Um, but if you are shown up there, you can, you know, message other residents. You can form group chats. If you want to get, you know, a basketball game going, you could quickly organize that obviously in a safe way. Um, of course, during these times, but, um, in terms of your question around like these, I guess, unions and these buildings in a way, you know, this is helping buildings to act more quickly on the things that are causing issues for residents. So if we even go back to the Yelp and Google analogy, people, if you see a bad review on Yelp or Google that alone may not turn you off from leaving the building, but if you see a very, you know, a quick response from the management right after that, that at least shows you the responsiveness to the issues. Right. And so I think that it gives people, the building a sense of what's bothering people in the community. We actually saw that in one of the properties here in Koreatown where there was a wifi issue. And a lot of the users started talking to each other and it was, you know, this entire theme and then ultimately the building then moved to starry. I don't know if you've heard of them, but they're doing a really cool job with super fast wifi and buildings. They're growing pretty quickly. Um, sorry, sorry.

SPEAKER_114: Yeah.

SPEAKER_115: That's very cool. Yeah.

SPEAKER_114: Awesome. As opposed to everybody having to get their own Comcast account, you can have a company

SPEAKER_15: certified and I'm sure people can still get their own, but I'm assuming that lowers cost and pain and suffering in a building. Exactly.

SPEAKER_117: Oh, that's brilliant. It's really great.

SPEAKER_15: For me, if I, I don't know if you've had this experience where you're considering an Amazon product and you see, I just look at the five star on the one star reviews. And a lot of times the one star reviews is it came cracked or it never showed up and things that are, you know, what happens when you ship products by the postal system or by UPS, but then you do see people replying, right? And I, when I see people replying with thoughtfulness and, oh yeah, you know, we did have this problem with, you know, this charger, please send it back to us. We'll give you a new one immediately or throw the other one. I'm like, okay, well, this is a company. Like when I, I, I only buy anchor pro products, a N K E R shout out anchor for all my chargers and stuff like that. And I just love every product they make adapters and dongles.

SPEAKER_51: And they're just so responsive. If there's a problem, even on Twitter, I mentioned them and they just instantly, it's so it lights something up in your brain. Like your dopamine when somebody takes ownership of their product. And I think that responsiveness matters.

SPEAKER_15: Are you operating in San Francisco at all?

SPEAKER_51: And I'm curious if, and if you have any insight into what's happening in buildings in San Francisco?

SPEAKER_55: Yeah, San Francisco is such an interesting market to look at. Um, we're in right now. We're in Los Angeles. We're in New York. Um, we're in Arizona. We're in a lot of different regions around the country, primarily because our customers will have portfolios that. Usually aren't just in one region. We haven't really started in San Francisco just yet. I think that what we could learn in fact, some of the most interesting, um, you know, innovation and resident experience, um, you know, features are happening in markets like North Carolina, some stuff in Texas. So there's some cool stuff going there, uh, going on there as well, that we can take a look at. Um, in San Francisco, I think there's always a lot to learn in terms of the apps that we may want to integrate into sugar long-term. We want sugar to be, you know, this central repository for all these things that you can do in your building. And now because we have this thickiness and people are using it every day and they love the product. We can now embed things like, you know, the grocery delivery, the cleaning services, you know, imagine being able to attach a digital key after you've booked a cleaning service and let them in your unit, uh, you know, right at the time of cleaning. And while that sounds kind of crazy to some people, I think that we're going to get more desensitized to people entering our unit. Um, we've even saw cases where neighbors wanted to share keys to water plants or to walk their dogs. And, you know, how do we think about this idea of literally opening your door and becoming more immersed in your community and building these micro communities where people are, you

SPEAKER_58: know, self-sufficient and interacting with each other. So I do think we are going there as a community.

SPEAKER_127: And it, and it adds actually more safety to have tracking.

SPEAKER_51: It reminds me of a very early discussion where the press were saying, Oh my God, you know, Uber and Lyft is so dangerous. And I said, um, compared to taking a taxi cab or, you know, as we called them in Brooklyn,

SPEAKER_128: gypsy cabs, which were unlicensed, you know, unlicensed cabs.

SPEAKER_15: And I was like, you know, like these cabs don't have medallions, probably don't have brakes that have been serviced in a long time. Probably not. But, you know, and, and the person driving it is probably not even, it might not be insured and person might not even have a green card, you know, and then you look at an Uber situation. Well, every ride is tracked every second by GPS. We have the entire thing and the person's car has been inspected, all that kind of stuff. And so letting people, giving people a time-based key where they can open it for this day, this

SPEAKER_74: week with a smart lock and you know, it's them, et cetera. Um, it's just magical. And this opens up a world of possibilities. What are the, once you have an engaged community, um, what else can they do? You know, are there other ideas that once you hit this, you know, a hundred people in the

SPEAKER_15: system, um, sharing and supporting each other and feeding each other's cats or, you know, you know, making sure the boxes don't get Amazon boxes don't get stolen, a big issue, sadly for a lot of folks, but what, what, what's next? Are there some things you can share with us about crazy future ideas? Sure.

SPEAKER_55: You know, as we think about where we can go, the idea of events, especially on demand events are going to be completely transformed. You know, if someone wants to go on a hike, someone wants to organize a basketball game, you know, a game night, someone wants to grill on the roof, you know, making it super easy, not only to connect people, but to organize that event as well. You know, like, let's say you wanted to have a barbecue on the roof. You know, how do we group order? I think DoorDash is doing amazing stuff with making it easier to order in a group. Um, just, I think that organization to implementation of events is really important. Uh, gamifying altruism, you know, making it really cool to just answer questions and have communications inside the, these buildings. That's really exciting. The future of marketplace is really cool. Um, so if you think about Facebook marketplace now, or some of these other bulletin, uh, marketplaces on these other apps, they're super disorganized. You know, you'll go on there and someone's selling a pot, you know, that's at the top of it. It's like, why do I want this pot?

SPEAKER_133: Yeah.

SPEAKER_55: Um, so, you know, what does the future of rentals look like? You know, if you're looking to play golf and you want to rent someone's equipment or you want to run speakers for a day, how do I quickly find someone? And if that person's not home, you know, can I quickly get access into their unit to borrow it for a period of time? You know, what is the future of rentals and marketplaces inside these micro communities? Um, and then ultimately I think from a manager standpoint, how do you build dashboards that look at all of these interactions? And then predict and just gain a pulse on how happy your community is. Cause right now, if you ask 10 building managers, how happy and how engaged is your community? I guarantee you most of them wouldn't be able to tell you in an informed way, you know, like who's happy? Who's not? Who's likely to renew their lease? Who's not? Who are like the top evangelists in the buildings throwing events? You know, can you incentivize them to do more? They wouldn't be able to tell you these things. So adding that transparency to managers a bit more. Um, and there's also some other really cool future stuff. We're looking at as well around, you know, just the future of amenities and buildings. And what does it look like? I know there's some properties where you can rent. There's like one Tesla for the building and everyone. Yeah. Everyone just rents out this communal Tesla, but I think there's some really cool stuff coming out in resident engagement.

SPEAKER_51: Uh, yeah. I mean, we have seen bike rentals and bike sharing car rental. So it's, you know, you could have your own little get around or your own little bike rental, you know, city bikes in the basement or electric bikes. Um, and boy, that could just be a reason to be in the building alone just to make life less arduous. Um, in a, this, this seems to be like a very competitive space. Um, when I, uh, examined the company during remote demo day, I thought your pricing strategy was quite disruptive. Um, and I wondered, is this too disruptive or is it sustainable? And so talk about maybe or share with the audience what this costs, because I looked at and said, Whoa, that's pretty cheap. Um, so what are your thoughts on pricing? Sure.

SPEAKER_81: So we're at $5 per door per month, and we're definitely a lot cheaper than a lot of the other solutions there.

SPEAKER_55: That's integrating with hardware. That's including the engagement dashboard for the managers. That's getting everybody on board and using the app in the building. And the reason why we're thinking about pricing being so low is that I do believe that over time, these apps will ultimately lose pricing power. I think that, you know, eventually you want to get to a point where these apps are, um, a lot cheaper and almost free in many instances. But the stickiest products, the ones that people love, um, there'll be unique ways to monetize those products in different ways. And so for us, we really care about stickiness more than anything else. Some of these other companies, the revenue numbers may be going up really quickly, but you don't really have, you know, an insight into how engaged people are in the product. And so everything from our branding, the name, the features that we're thinking about, the integrations that we're building in, we're putting products stickiness at the top. And I think if you focus on that and you build something that people love, there will be ways to monetize. I think next door is a great example of this with, you know, what they've done for neighborhoods. I think there's an opportunity to do more of that for these, you know, buildings and micro communities. So that's how we're thinking about pricing.

SPEAKER_69: Um, we don't want that to be a huge barrier for buildings that want to take advantage of this for sure.

SPEAKER_15: And is, uh, and that seems logical and you're using other people's locks. You don't have to build your own lock.

SPEAKER_106: Obviously you partner with some lock maker and integrate it because his API is into your software.

SPEAKER_15: And how much of this has to do with security in people's minds? Because that seems to be a big fear in a lot of communities. Um, you know, either personal safety or property safety. And just feeling like, Hey, my kids are okay when they're in the yard or by the pool or my grandmother or, you know, God forbid other things. You know, it's, um, it seems like these systems will work really well with security and the building I'm in. I put up my own cameras and I got into a big, uh, brouhaha with the, the building management. And I was like, you're saying you don't want me to have the camera that I'm paying for. That's providing security for the entire floor because it has the elevator like, and they're like, no, I'm like, well, what about having a ring doorbell? And they're like, that's okay, but yours is too high tech. I was using one called deep Sentinel, which is a very cool company where you're, this is for our office. There's a camera that has on the other side of it, a security guard and the security guard. Well, if somebody stands in front of the camera for more than five seconds, like the face gets checked. If it's my face, well, that's in the database. Great. If it's somebody else's it's like, um, how can we help you? And you know, if they're like, there's all these deep Sentinel videos, kind of like the ring ones where people are like at 3am, like, you know, checking doors and windows and deep tunnels. Like, can I help you, sir? And the person's like, I'm gone, I'm done. And they just walk away. The great thing about deep Sentinel is they also have a safe word.

SPEAKER_74: I won't tell you ours, but it's Dogecoin. And don't buy Doge. Buy Doge. It's a scam. It's a hustle. No, it's the future of my currency.

SPEAKER_15: Anyway, if you are, you know, if it's definitely your unit, you say Dogecoin and whatever your safe word is, and it gets you out of it. So I'm curious, do people think about that? Because it feels like everything is coming together, right? It used to be security was one system packages, another system, paying your rents, another system. It does feel like if you do this right, you could maybe take over the security piece as well.

SPEAKER_144: For sure.

SPEAKER_55: And I think that it's such an important topic, especially because, you know, people's homes are super, super personal. And, you know, you want to know that you're safe more than anything else. The good part and the exciting part about being able to do all of this digitally is that you get real time data in the event that anything does happen, which, you know, hopefully that's not the case. You're able to track things in ways that you wouldn't be able to track before, right? So then obviously, you know, there's a balance, right? Because customer and resident privacy has to be, you know, of the utmost importance, you know, outside of anything else. But once you have that data and you have access to it, you're able to trace back, you know, something. There's actually one of our buildings, someone was stealing gym equipment. You know, that was a thing. That's deranged.

SPEAKER_74: I know. By the way, there's this website called Amazon.

SPEAKER_148: And if you need dumbbells, they're 16 cents. Like, what is wrong with you? That's like some sociopathic behavior to steal a five-pound dumbbell. I assume they're not carrying out the treadmill. They're taking a kettlebell from the gym.

SPEAKER_55: Yeah, it was definitely, it was like kettlebells and weights and things like that. But you can start to get some more data around some of these things. And, you know, not to, you know, that's like the bad side of things like reprimanding and that kind of thing. But on the positive side, you can start to also look at amenity usage, right? You know, my building, 30% of people are using the gym, right? You know, what does that mean? Do we need to promote it more? Do we need to get, you know, health and wellness up? There's just a lot more that you can do with that data. But to answer your question around security and safety, I think that key access control and taking things, you know, digitally and having that data be more transparent is going to increase safety for people. And we're looking at that as one of our top development priorities. Every feature that we create, we think about, you know, it's implementing this impact on, you know, safety, security and all day, you know, you can increase your network. You can learn about feedback. I think feedback is the breakfast of champions, being able to give feedback, receive feedback, being able to persuade people and hire teams. And then some of the more, you know, like how do you read term sheets and how do you think about cap tables and, you know, the nuances behind the finances and those sorts of things. You know, that's all extremely valuable. But in entrepreneurship, I think resiliency, obviously in a smart way, right? You shouldn't just keep going until you can't go anymore. Right. But I think that there's a lot of that can't be learned in a classroom. So I don't think people need to go to a Stanford business school in order to be a great entrepreneur. I think, you know, Google is the great equalizer now, and you could learn almost anything, you know, if you're dedicated to Googling and learning. But again, just maximizing your network and then thinking about what's the one thing you can do better than anybody else. Right. I think the thing you're the best that with the least amount of effort and then how you're going to just hustle and do that and outwork anybody else trying to do that thing. That's so much more valuable. And so I just like to say that to a lot of people because I'm always surprised that people who think they need to go to a Stanford or Harvard business school to build a phenomenal company.

SPEAKER_69: And so I think that's something important to get across.

SPEAKER_51: I think the way you said that that hustle beats talent. If talent doesn't hustle is just so precise. And I literally have something that I can use as a tagline for my autobiography now.

SPEAKER_106: I love it.

SPEAKER_74: I didn't get to go to one of these schools. And it is so true. You meet these people who have so much talent, but they have zero hustle. And, you know, that great pair of running shoes, like your dad said, like, yeah, but you still have to run.

SPEAKER_15: You can't walk. And a lot of people are just, you know, they got these great Saccone or whatever, you know. Saccone. I don't know. Saccone. I don't know. Those are the ones I used to run marathons in. That's awesome. And, you know, but you still have to run. You can't walk. Uh, listen, it's been delightful to have you on the pod. Thanks for doing remote demo day. And congratulations. I assume you're hiring. So people went to sugar living.com slash careers or slash jobs.

SPEAKER_81: Yep. There's a job posting. We're hiring. We're primarily hiring three senior software developers right now. Okay.

SPEAKER_55: Um, and then we're opening up, opening up some job postings this week. Um, so definitely follow sugar, um, sugar living.com and follow me on Twitter. Fatima Diko underscore and Jason, this is so awesome. I love what you're doing in the tech ecosystem. And this is, this is awesome.

SPEAKER_69: Remote demo day was a blast for sure.

SPEAKER_51: Uh, it's really interesting. You know, you think about the pandemic and what we all learned from it. And one of the things I learned was, you know, keep, even if you're successful, just keep trying to make some new products.

SPEAKER_74: I made about four new products in the, just out of sheer boredom. Uh, and one of them was remote demo day. One of them was the all in podcast. I love it. Remote demo day has now resulted in the four, I think the three or four biggest deals we've ever done on the syndicate. And then the all in podcast is now, you know, twice as big as this podcast. And, you know, the business insider just called it the most powerful influential, uh, quartet in California politics.

SPEAKER_75: And I was like, I'm not sure that's true, but maybe. I don't know.

SPEAKER_58: That's awesome. Yeah. It's pretty crazy. The convos have been amazing with your mouth and just wait, the guests, you guys are, the topics you guys are covering. It's really cool stuff. I, I got, I'm, I'm getting stopped.

SPEAKER_74: Now I was at the drop a moment. I'm at the SNL after party for Elon's thing. And I had three people come up to me and asked to, you know, like, oh my God, you know, I'm a huge fan of, uh, whatever.

SPEAKER_148: And I was, I thought they were going to say, Elon, can I, you introduce me to him? And they all said the same thing. I love the all in podcast.

SPEAKER_75: That's incredible. They're like, oh, I wish I could take a selfie, but they took all our phones from us. It was one of those no phone parties, which is a good idea when, uh, yeah, Miley Cyrus is on the dance floor and everybody's having a great time.

SPEAKER_74: Like no phones, the right call. Everybody had a great time. All right, listen, continued success and, uh, look forward to getting to know you better. Perhaps awesome.

SPEAKER_58: I love it. Love what you're doing. Thank you so much for the convo.

SPEAKER_12: Okay. Uh, I want to do a little button here at the end. I wrote a blog post and I'm going to read it to you. I was getting so many inbound queries about startup valuations, which have raised significantly that I thought I would just write a short 500 word essay. And I was thinking you, you probably would all like to hear this. So I posted this on May 31st, but here it is.

SPEAKER_27: Um, some folks in our angel investing club, the syndicate.com have asked me for my thoughts on the surge in early stage valuations. The market is scorching hot, which startups across all growth stages getting funded faster and at higher valuations. The dollar amounts raised are often staggering, but so are the exits, which are driving this. When there is a large number of meaningful exits from Uber to Airbnb to Coinbase, investors get enthusiastic about investing in the next wave of unicorns. This causes valuations to quickly double and triple with investors reporting. The valuation doesn't matter if this becomes the next unicorn. Of course, it does matter since most companies go to zero and you can invest in three startups at a $10 million valuation for the same price you would pay for one at $30 million. Three swings at bat dramatically increases your chances of hitting an outlier. And if you expand that, making 30 bets gives you a much greater chance of hitting an outlier than just 10 investments. Now, if you could invest in Uber or Airbnb's angel around series A or series B, you would certainly do it. But there is no way to know which startup is the next Uber or Airbnb, at least not with certainty. Our firm and investment club, the syndicate.com are adjusting to this moment in time to focus on four things. Number one, we are investing in high quality startups at reasonable prices, as we have always done. We're sticking to our knitting. Number two, we are investing in select very high quality startups at these higher valuations. Three, we are helping existing portfolio companies raise money during this frothy market. And number four, and perhaps most uniquely, we are meeting with as many startups as possible. And we make a note when we pass because of the valuation so that we can meet with them again in the future. Many times a startup will catch up to a high valuation, and the next round will allow us to engage at a more defensible valuation. We invested in Comm, Uber and Thumbtack for $15 million combined. While the $5 million seed round may be over for now, we have seen several pre-launch startups command $15 million to $50 million valuations. These are pre-launch startups, their products are not yet in market. If those startups are led by a serial founder, it's justifiable. But most of the time, they are first time founders. We are content to sit out these seed rounds and wait to see if the startup gets to product market fit. If a pre-launch startup raises at a $15 million valuation, for example, and then gets product market fit and hits $1 million in yearly revenue, the valuation is likely to be $10 to $25 million in a normal market, $10 to $25 times top-line revenue. This filling in the valuation strategy is acceptable for founders who have discipline, but it does carry the obvious risks of a down round if they don't. Most founders seem to understand this, with many telling me, JCal, I know this is crazy, but we're taking advantage of this moment in time, and I don't blame them. I would do the same if I was them, so no judgments. Just make sure you have enough runway to fill in that valuation. For investors, you don't need to hit every winner to be a big winner. In fact, you only need to hit one. In a hot market like today's, we encourage members of our investment club to evaluate their goals, pace themselves, consider making adjustments to their strategy, and always remain disciplined by focusing on great founders, quality products, and delighted customers.

SPEAKER_174: Great founders, quality products, delighted customer. Those things don't happen by accident. All the best, Jason.

SPEAKER_12: And just to add, a lot of people mentioned to me, including my friend Mike Savino, I didn't mention why the valuations were going up. And it isn't just because of all these great unicorns going public and people being cash rich.

SPEAKER_27: Could also be a macro trend. Inflation. On May 12th, the US Bureau of Labor Statistics reported the Consumer Price Index, which measures the change in prices paid by consumers for goods and services, increased 4.2% over the last 12 months. And here's the quote, this is the largest 12 month increase since a 4.9% increase for the period ending September 2008.

SPEAKER_12: In other words, things are getting more expensive. The index for used cars and trucks rose 10% in April 2021, the largest one month increase since 1953. Part of that is because people were not going out and buying cars. And, you know, they basically pushed those off just like homes. There's a little bit of a spike because of the slingshot effect that I talked about on previous episodes where pent up demand is now skyrocketing. And many attribute this to the increase in dollars circulating the system. This is the M2, which is the total amount of cash, checking deposits and everything that can be quickly converted to cash like savings and money market security.

SPEAKER_27: Since the start of 2020 and the end of May 2021, this number of dollars has increased by 4.7 trillion, the 30% increase. For context, in a normal year, this increases between two to 10%. It's only been above 10% four times in the last 30 years and never above 11%.

SPEAKER_179: So all of this is a long winded way of saying there are many more dollars in the system competing for a similar opportunity set.

SPEAKER_12: So startups are a great way to invest for a decade and to get more alpha if they do break out.

SPEAKER_03: So the other impact might not just be inflation, might not just be all these great exits. It could be also that people think the stock market is a little overheated and they're looking for other alternative assets.

SPEAKER_27: The same reason people are buying NFTs, crypto and other things.

SPEAKER_12: So our friends at pitch book published their US VC valuations report for the first quarter of 2021 and they analyzed all of the Q1 funding data and broke it down into a 25 page report. Just some interesting takeaways and I'm going to just read this verbatim at the early stage, both the median and average pre money valuation hit record highs in Q1 coming in at 40 million and 96.3 million respectively.

SPEAKER_27: That is crazy and they consider early stage series A and series B. So and they classify angel and seed separately just to note. So if you if you're thinking that seed where I operate, it's not.

SPEAKER_12: It's series A and series B at the late stage and abundance of outside deals had boosted the median and average pre money valuations to record highs of 122 million and 1 billion respectively late stages series C and bond. And obviously, when you have these giant rounds pre IPO rounds, think about Uber's round or WeWork's round and you see these billions of dollars going into startups that screws up the averages.

SPEAKER_06: Yeah, it's been a pretty, pretty vibrant market. All right. Thanks for watching the show. And those are my thoughts, obviously, on valuations. Be careful out there as an investor and we'll see you tomorrow on this week in startups.

SPEAKER_183: We'll see you tomorrow on this week in startups. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye.