Courtney Reum - Best-Selling Author & Co-Founder of M13 | Shortcut Your Startup

We're taking an alcohol liquor, a spirit brand to market, super competitive, ultra competitive. We have to build the brand that stands out. We don't know about anything, but we do know that we have to build the brand. What is that thing that allowed you to be successful? You know, I think the thing that's lost that I see is some really young entrepreneurs is just straight up great. Courtney Raim here with him 13. Hard to believe, but over 15 years now working after being a reformed investment banker, my brother and I start our beef spirits and the rest of the game. Advisors, board members, angel investors and the evolution of that led to the creation of M13. I don't think being an entrepreneur is for everyone. I think a lot of it is learned. You know, you can't forget that there's a big element of luck and skill. And you make your own luck. There was a real entrepreneur capitalist who did this big study after his career. Very successful. He tried to look back and go, oh, have I done this? Have I done that? Whatever. And the only thing that he felt was statistically significant, which would have changed his results, is just... Do you have Richard Branson, Tony Robbins, Ariana Huffington, PNG Ventures? So, especially first time, I'm able to track people like this. But if somebody raises money from people of this caliber, what would be the thing that allows you to bring these people in? You know, I think... Welcome to Success Story. I'm your host, Scott Clary. The Success Story podcast is part of the HubSpot podcast network. They've been with me for over two years now. They're one of my favorite tools. And they are starting to roll out AI tools that will dramatically cut your working hours in half. Research shows employees that use AI are cutting time spent on manual tasks, like pulling reports or summarizing data in half from five to 2.5 hours a day. That adds up to almost four weeks a year. 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So, I think I feel like for a long time, I kind of played other people's games, literally certain sports and my parents who, again, are super loving and super trusting would be like, well, if you get all A's, you can have a car. I'm like, okay, sounds fair. Hey, if you're getting all A's and you are good at sports, like that must mean you're trustworthy. Like, you don't really have to have too strict a curfew. I was like, that sounds great too. So, check those two things off. And so, it was a little bit of, you know, it's a different time now. I'm not in a bad way if my mom listens to this, but it's, you know, it was a little sticks and carrots. It was a little bit of like, okay, go to Columbia, go to Harvard for business school, do that stuff and then go work it. Goldman Sachs mainly because that was what you did. And I didn't know what I wanted to do. And so, I think for me, that inflection point was probably the decision to leave Goldman Sachs, which is, you know, not when I took lightly, because your resume is probably never more powerful at that moment. This is also 15 years ago. Let me put into historical context because I do think even 15 years ago, Goldman had a different place in the world than it does now. But I think the decision to go, I'm going to be an entrepreneur. I'm going to do so on my own. I don't actually know what. I don't even know if I have any ideas. It was probably that point for me, especially because my brother, who went to all the same schools and also worked at Goldman two years younger. So, I felt kind of responsible to decide he was going to come with me. And this is a true story. It won't sound like this to people. But in 2007, when I told someone that I worked at Goldman that I was going to be an entrepreneur instead of going to work for a hedge fund, because that was kind of all the rage or private equity, he said to me, straight face. So, what do you mean? Like, you're going to be a snowboard instructor or something. I was like, no, I think I'm going to actually really start something, but he did set thought I was just burned out and going to be a snowboard instructor, which did sound pretty good too. It does sound good, but I mean, somebody who's a high performing individual, that's not going to usually want to build and you want to create. And you weren't burnt out. I mean, it's not easy to work. You did some, you worked on some major IPOs at Goldman, if I'm not mistaken. And that was very impressive work. But speak through some of those pivotal moments at Goldman, some of the companies you worked with, maybe what that taught you about entrepreneurship, what allowed you to, not allowed you to, but what that work did in terms of lighting a fire inside of you. Because all those things that you worked on at Goldman, obviously, funny enough, led you to leave Goldman. So I want to understand that a bit more. Yeah, so you're right in that. Goldman, I think like a lot of things we do that are hard. There's a difference between it being worthwhile and it being hard. Goldman Sachs was very hard. Very hard for me, especially because I think when you have the quality of horsepower there, intellectually and otherwise, especially around a very narrow scope of work. I was always felt like I was trying to catch my breath compared to some people that worked there. But it was very hard, but I do think I have a little bit of revisionist history of how good the experience is, maybe not how good it is. It's a really good experience. How much I enjoy the experience. I think I've kind of romanticized it now. But I'll say this, incredible training, that incredible people was lucky to work with a team that was part of the biggest consumer products merger and history, Proctor and Gamble Gillette. But the things that to me were really formative, working at Goldman in terms of like role models and deals was, I worked with Under Armour as they were getting ready to go public. And when you see someone like Kevin Plain, the founder of Under Armour, who just really has a good idea, has that moxie and just ready to kind of run through walls, but with a great proposition, it just made a really lasting impact on me. And then I also actually spent some time doing work for Vitamin Water, which is maybe not a product that exactly endorsed, but certainly a great brand and positioning in the way they marketed. And so you see some folks like that do it and you say, I don't know if I can, but let's give it a whirl. And at 27, you don't think much else passed that. So was the, I mean, was the first iteration of U as an entrepreneur? Was that Veef? Was that that first iteration? It was with things that you failed at. No, that was it. You didn't fail at five things that no one has ever heard of. I know like exactly, I mean, I tell all these people, and it's true like we saw, like my brother was kind of more on the tech side at Goldman and he did some industrial stuff like KKR's IPO. But he was always a tech. I was kind of like things you can, you know, market and consumer psyche and all that. And so we saw the world meeting in the middle and kind of converging. And now, you know, when we live in LA, that really happens with tech and media and brands and all that. But then we did exactly which something that makes exactly no sense to start in alcohol brand, which is the, no matter how good it is, the lowest tech, most non-pivotable, non-scalable, no direct to consumer thing you could do. So we did that. So, so, so why? Why would you do this yourself? Yeah, exactly. You know, like any good entrepreneur, having, if I knew that, what I knew now, I never would have fun. I think we, well, I guess there was a little bit of a few factors. There is, there is like reading like a 10K or a 10Q financial report when statements come out about, at Goldman, you're reading about these spirits companies and you're like, wow, it's great margin, it's this, it's that, but they don't really do innovation. So me sitting there in my, in my little tie at Goldman, I was like, well, I can do something more interesting. Meanwhile, I was, let's just say a very, a very fervent customer of lots of New York City establishments at the time when I wasn't working, usually clubs that get out of midnight or want to go for a drink. And it was very much like, it wasn't as much the dark experience and Tequila hadn't really taken off. Actually, I had an interesting meeting when I was at Goldman with John Paul Desjore and we went to drink Tequila. And I remember the managing director was kind of like, yeah, I've heard it Tequila. You know, I mean, this is, again, 20 years ago, but not 50 years ago. Whereas, yeah, I heard it Tequila, but I don't think this will really take off. So anyways, it was a Red Bull vodka sort of world. It was a Gregus sort of world. And as a consumer, I went, hmm, I'm bored of my drinking experience. There must be other people like me. Let's try and innovate something both in the bottle and as a company. And I think we kind of felt like, you know, Goldman gave you an incredible training on a very narrow scope of business. And we thought we would be good at kind of the other sides of business, the brand building, the connectivity, the all that sort of stuff. And so we thought, that is probably the one thing we were right about. We had no clue how to go to market with it, but we were really right that you learned a lot about marketing and brand building and kind of the fickleness, yet hopefully predictably fickleness of consumer behavior. So then, so what is that, say, that lesson, the lesson of we're taking an alcohol liquor, spirit brand to market, super competitive, ultra competitive, we have to build a brand that stands out. We don't know about regulatory, we don't know about distribution, we don't know about, we don't know about anything, but we do know that we have to build a brand. What is that thing that allowed you to be successful? I do, you know, I think the thing that I look that I think it look for and that I think is lost that I see is some really young entrepreneurs is just straight up grit. And, you know, I always make the joke like, you know, to spirits, alcohol tends to be something where like your family or your dad was in it or whatever. And oh, my dad was an alcohol salesman or just generating these brands that are passed down generationally. So it's like, we have none of that. I didn't even know a single person spirits. It was like Googling things and asking around. But, you know, in the book, we wrote the first chapter talking about getting in the trenches. And I think we were really good about doing some market research and market sizing and seeing who we know, who knew someone and just kind of chasing up every lead. And, you know, again, you're in your 20s. It's a fun thing to be doing for sure. And so you kind of have motivation to kind of have the grit because there's some other fun things to come with it. So I think it was just straight up, you know, a lot of hustle. Yeah, I mean, so I'm assuming we didn't even bring it up yet. But the book that you just wrote, shortcut your startup, that's learnings from, I'm assuming all the way back to Goldman Sachs, all the way through to Building Veeve, all the way through to M3rd. Like these are learnings along every single function of an entrepreneur raising money, raising capital, selling a product, product market fit. So I mean, it's interesting because you've done all of it. You've been the advisory, you've been the operator, you've been the capital allocator. So the lens that you see entrepreneurship through is super vast, which is awesome, right? It really is awesome. And I think that when you build out like your first company, I'm also curious about one thing in your first company because I think that if I read this correctly, this was one of the first companies to ever, if I'm not mistaken, be a carbon neutral spirits company and you donated 1% of all the sales environmental causes. So this now is not so abnormal. This is very common. But back then, this was sort of new, innovative. When you look at what you did there, I'm assuming you still have the lens of looking for companies that are doing things differently, doing things in a novel way, finding new ways to resonate with the audience in the market. How do you source out that thing that could move the market, make the brand more trustworthy with who they're trying to sell to, like ultimately create that evangelism? Because that's what brand is. Can you ignite that evangelism in your customers, right? Yeah, I think that is funny because for my current holding company called M13, which is you kind of point out, I like to feel entrepreneurial, I like to also invest and I like to just build things. It kind of gives us a container where the main thing we do is consumer tech focus venture capital funds, but we've also launched a bunch of our brands, which I'm happy to talk about. And I think for me and my brother especially, it's a lot of fun to some days be more entrepreneurial, some day have your investor hat on. And certainly it's the virtuous cycle of being an investor has made me a better entrepreneur and being an entrepreneur has made me a better investor. And to stay entrepreneurial, iron sharpens iron, like when I'm talking to someone about a company we invested in a lot of times, I can say it from a place of like, I've tried this recently or I failed at this recently, not just, oh, I hear everyone talking about this, but I'm pretty, you know, pretty hands off and pretty removed. And I think that's kind of mindset we have for our whole firm, which is, which is pretty unique and really important. And I think, you know, in terms of our, so our North Star, what we're looking to be the best at with what we're doing is future of consumer behavior. And so there's not like one way to describe it, but I would say, you know, in the world we live in, the information is here, it's just not evenly distributed. And so to the extent I can have some information, a symmetry on anything, I see some trends myself. I talk to other people, I'm lucky to know X, Y, Z person, you know, like, I mean, it used to be something where like you'd go to the athletes to get the latest supplements or say whatever it is, we try and do that in a myriad of ways. But I do think just a little bit of that, I'll put in hockey terms for, you know, where the public's going is really important, really hard to do, but really important. Yeah, I love that because I think that, you know, whenever you see somebody that has multiple successes and you're not just an investor now, now you spin up your own companies, like I love to ask about the playbook. And I want to understand like what the playbook is for a successful startup because now it's not just grit. I mean, it will be a lot of grit, but hopefully it's not as much grit and a little bit more tactical execution after doing it a few times, but then there's also nuances. So like, you know, in any industry, it's not going to be the exact same playbook. There's similarities, there's a checklist, but there's a lot of things that are like niche and industry specific. So it's like the mindset of sourcing for the knowledge is going to give you that advantage or give you insight into the consumer, or build those feedback groups. I think that's like a super, super valuable lesson for entrepreneurs because there isn't just one playbook that works for everyone. But yeah, and I do want to clarify, because you specifically asked about first company and to your point, I do think it was grit, you know, and I do think I want to clarify something I said earlier because I do think like some of the hustle culture stuff is a little is real good and bad. And I don't believe in kind of hustling for the sake of hustle or busyness with a why, if you will, I believe in kind of velocity, which is like speed, but with direction. And you asked specifically about the first company, which I don't think we had any velocity, because we didn't really know where we're going or what we're doing. So that was kind of more like trying to will it and grit and a little more hustle. Now I think to your point, almost everything we do has some ability, some element of like repeatability or pattern recognition along with some newness because if we're starting or investing in something in the metaverse or web three or AI, not many people have done much with it, right? So we're building the plan as we thought. Yeah, so we'll go into that in a second. I want to, I'm not going to spend too much time on the first startup, but I do want to just walk through. That first startup was a success. You, I mean, you eventually exited it. I wanted to speak about that journey. So as a first time entrepreneur, building a company, the first company, two exit is not common for most people. So the process of building that up, when did you understand how you'd like to carry that company? You know, what was the milestone or the revenue number where you're like, hey, this works. We have product market fit. Let's continue to grow. We don't need to playbook for the entire cycle of growth. But what's that product market fit point when idea is validated? And then also after that, walk me through the exit, the acquisition and then pivot into M13. Sure. I mean, I think the, you know, one thing that really attracts us to spirits on paper was that because innovation was so hard, I won't go into all the reasons it's really hard, but it's really hard for new incumbents. It's really hard to get distribution. There's no pivoting to some other product, you know, something sitting in a bottle, you know, I mean, and you're really at the best, large, I mean, we did spirits, which is a little different in wine, a little different than beer. So what I'm saying is pertains mostly to spirits, but you can't really sell direct to consumers. So I don't really, I don't really, it's harder to get accurate data, especially then of who my consumer was, what their purchase occasion was. I mean, all kinds of things, you have to really, I would say, in many ways, do by hand. And so one of the things that attracts us to spirits was there are companies that sold, you know, an average exit could be easily like eight to 12 time sales because it's that hard to do. So to the victory goes to spoils. You know, there's, of course, there's companies that sold for a couple time sales, but there was, you know, Gregus, I think, I think for CardiBot, Gregus, I haven't said this that out loud in a while, but I think something like 14 time sales, because it was that creative, because it was growing so fast and they need a vodka. I think multiples have come down and things have changed a little, but that's what it was like then. So we saw that opportunity. Of course, we should have known there's a catch that the reasons I can go for 10 time sales is because it's hard as hell to do. Still nothing. Still in many ways, still nothing harder. I've tried to do with lower, lower odds. If you start from, you know, kind of a standing start. I think if you have unfair advantages, which is what we're always looking for or relationships, thankfully, I do now. So I'm put a gun to my head to start a spirits brand, which might be about what it takes. But, but I think, I think the, I think the point where we had something, it was, you know, we never had the total number of distribution points of like an absolute or a gray goose, of course. But we had, we were in the very high-end places. We were in kind of like the trendier. We were very on-premise, which means we were in bar's clubs, restaurants in like major metros, New York, Miami, LA, you get it. So we had it, those places. And I think, I think the simple, simple metrics are stuff like reorder rates and same store sales, because if people are actually reordering Veeve or calling for it, that starts to tell you you have something. So that's kind of the anecdotal stuff. And then, you know, there's a whole bunch of metrics in terms of like cases sold in revenue and reorder rates that kind of let you know that, hey, you might, you might be in the ballpark of something that someone wants to acquire. The funny thing is, I would say, you know, we all read about these companies that like everyone's following or ourselves to buy and this and that. But the reality is, even most things that get sold and we talk about this in our book, is like, most things are a nice to have, not a need to have. And Veeve in all candidness was very much that. Like, people were interested, but no one was willing to like, you know, give up their firstborn for it. So now it's a dance of like, making sure you, we, our last chapter of our book, shortcut, your startups, talks about how, assuming you think you might want to sell, if there's even a chance you might want to sell your company, you need to build it with that in mind, so that you have the option, but not the obligation. And I think what a lot of people do is go, I don't think I want to sell it. And even if it's less than 50-50, then one day you decide you want to. It doesn't mean all is lost, but it means you have some work to do, because there is a whole, you know, art to the, what I'll call kind of like, you know, we did some things to get noticed. We left the breadcrumbs one time. We bought a billboard right by our biggest distributor so that people saw, you know, stuff like that to kind of give the appearance that we were doing well, even though we were, but if a tree falls in the woods. So it's a lot of, it is a lot of those breadcrumbs, and it's a lot of, you know, I joined some industry groups, and went to a couple conferences with people that I'd never met to try to build that relationship just so it wasn't like a thirsty cold email, say, hey, want to buy me a slide of number across the table, right? And there's, there's a whole art to that, which I don't think I've mastered, but I've mastered enough that they've been able to sell some stuff, but I think that's a huge, you know, some people I talk to get really, no one's called me to buy my company. I'm like, and no one probably ever will, but that doesn't mean it's not a good company. It doesn't mean someone won't buy it for a number that makes you very, very happy. You just have to put on the radar and make them, you know, in Goldman, we always say something in the fact of momentum or the appearance of momentum, and you just have to kind of create your own lock and create your own momentum so that people all of a sudden go, wait, I'm here about V of everywhere, maybe I should call them and find out more, you know, that was kind of the goal. Is that something that you look for now? Like, when you put money into companies, do you look for owners that are building to sell that have that mindset from the asset or is that something you train over because they're just walking through like that? Well, I think what we do, you know, in venture, the goal in general is not to, with some exceptions, like you're, you know, I have a fund with a finite life expectancy, so it's not great if someone holds it for 20 years, something they built, even if it's, you know, even if it's a great company. So yeah, we, you know, we have to look for the quid, but I think the flip side is what we do look for is we want someone who has a big vision, someone who, as I said, we want to be at the forefront of consumer behavior. So those companies can be big. So I want someone with a big vision and don't get me wrong. I've sold companies in the tens of millions and the hundreds of millions that I've started, but I'm not, you know, for it to be a venture back company, I can't, like, if it took one check and sold for 25 million, a lot of people will probably be happy. That's not how venture capital works. So it's, it's power laws. We have to, you know, back people who, who tell us they want to build something big, but we have to believe it because occasionally at the person who says they want to build something big, they've got a little lightning bottle and the first offer that comes across the table, then they want to take and you're like, wait, that's not, that's not, that's not as much. It's a lot for somebody who's never gotten a check before, but yeah, I got you. And that is attention. And look, we always want with best for the founders, but that's why we just try to be upfront about like what are, what are both our objectives. Like no one's trying to hang on too long, no one's trying to get you to do something that we can't do. But if you want to build something there, you know, there are, there are things that, who knows how big they can get like an open eye. What was the, what was the, the process between, after you sold V, you're like, listen, I really want to build VC. I really want to go in. I want to, I want to have a vehicle for venture. I, you know, maybe we can bring in some LP money. We can, we can find some great deals, find some great founders. Like your, your mindset or your thesis for what M13 was going to be. What was that? Yeah, I think we, we kind of like, I can't say my, you know, my brother had more of a vision for M13, but I think we kind of in some ways fell into it by based on our activity set in the macro. As I said in the macro, living in a place like L.A. at the time, and now we have offices in New York and some other places. But at the time, L.A. is just having this moment of like how things are built, like harnessing media and social media and influencer stuff. We were pretty well versed in that. And then you're kind of in L.A. And then, you know, tech enabling different brands to grow it at, you know, to scale much faster. And you have the J curve than they ever previously. We're able to. So that was all happening. And the last couple of years of V. We, I think kind of knew it wasn't our, are there, there, a few big future. So we had, we had made some of the angel investments. We had joined some other boards. And so, you know, all in consumer tech and some of those have gone really well. Another couple of color companies got acquired. One went public. And then we had some investments personally that did really well. We had a, you know, we put in some of the first million on ring the video doorbell that's, I think, shark tank, as big as product ever, things like lift and Pinterest. We were early in and then, you know, there was a couple other crazy ones. We had something we made 1,000 times our money on. It's a small personal check, but still 1,000 is 1,000. So, you know, we had made money for some other people. We had done some deals. So all of a sudden, our activity set kind of led itself to what we were doing with V. Where all of a sudden, I'm sure, you know, as you make people a little bit of money, they're like, well, I'd give you more. Maybe you should kind of put it into kind of more of a formalized fund. So it wasn't, wasn't going to say no to that. That's great. You know, I appreciate how you did this because the move from operator to capital allocator is a difficult one if you've ever done it before. But you were kind of doing it. It's like a side hustle before you did it as a full-time thing. You're doing it casually, you're doing it yourself. So, but then, so doing like, I mean, we started with very small personal checks where Mr. and Charger, your own capital, then we did some SPVs meeting, we grabbed other people's money and would go to lift whoever it is and say, hey, can we get a $5 million allocation? I'm going to bring in these people. They're different and interesting to value at and we did some of that. And then, you know, now crossing like a billion dollars in AUM, it is very different sports than what we were doing before. But it's a fun, you know, muscle to learn. As you all know, success story is part of the HubSpot podcast network. The HubSpot network has incredible podcasts like the Goldigger podcast. If you are looking for a new podcast, you have to check it out. It's hosted by Jenna Kutcher. The Goldigger podcast helps you discover your dream career with productivity tips, social strategies, business hacks, inspirational stories, and so much more. I tune into them every single week. They just did an episode on a four day work week experiment that they actually conducted in their own office. A few other recent episodes I enjoyed were on how to hire A players in your organization in 14 days or less. Jenna Kutcher is an OG in the podcasting game. You gotta go check out the Goldigger podcast at the HubSpot podcast network or wherever you get your podcast. How do you differentiate yourself as a venture capital firm? Outside of just being somebody that makes money, which is a great thing to be, but how do you differentiate yourself in terms of the types of founders you work with, the types of companies you work with? What's your vision for that? Yeah, I'm glad you asked, because that is our main point of difference, is that we really, as I said, we're kind of set up as a consumer technology holding company, so we've done some really unique things. We raised some outside money to kind of build out our infrastructure years ago when we were first starting and what that really means is, infrastructure kind of means data and systems, and so we have something that we've spent a lot of time and money on that's kind of like, we call it our collective brain, like how can we harness the institutional knowledge of not just myself or my brother or my other great partners, but everyone at M13 and then how can we harness that collective brain of like everyone who's an LP, and we have incredible LPs and the list goes on, and that's what we're kind of in the process of doing, there's obviously an AI component to that, so that's a big difference here, and then the other big one is that we said, we wanna move away from, the world doesn't need another venture capital for even with great returns, it's nicer, but we want to try to create something different, try to create something that made people, hopefully go wow, 10 years from now, if the evolution of venture, how people kind of add value beyond just dollars is different, and so what we've really done is, we have kind of this middle layer that we call propulsion, and we're trying to propel, obviously, the things that we invest in and build, faster and get them up to j-curve, faster using our unfair advantages, so we try to use that knowledge, and then we actually have a team of dozens of people with different subspecialties who work cross functionally on things that we both start, and things we invest in to help grow them, so we've got a head of data strategy from a Deca corn FinTech company, we've got a head of brand and comms who worked for Richard Branson for a dozen years, directly at Virgin, we've got a culture and people person, so these are all people, they can help you with hire, and they can help you with your press release, they can help you refresh, we have a head of product, so we can look at an app and go, we should redo the product, so we have all these people that can do that, and I think we are really unique that we've been able to get incredible talent that we wouldn't been able to get otherwise, because most of these people, if I said, hey, do you wanna come work for a pre-revenue launch company, no, no, no, I'm not doing that at this point in my career, and if I said, do you wanna go work in a venture capital for them, they probably would have said no, but when we say, hey, you can work for the holding company, everyone that works with us has equity in the holding company, which means they're incentivized across the board, and it's hopefully gonna bear out really great results, so it kinda creates a unique model, and then the best, to bring my long answer full circle, the best thing you can have is founders going, oh wow, I'm 13, went above and beyond compared to anyone else, they actually did what they said they were gonna do, because that founder reference helps us with other deals with other founders, that helps us actually raise money, when we say, hey, I know this all sounds really good in a Docsend link, but why don't you actually talk to a founder or two and see if they've actually, you know, benefit from it and it would have been here otherwise, like that's the proof of the pudding. And I think that that, so like the secret sauce is this, it's a true value add, not the BS value add, that every VC will say they give to a port co, but the portfolio company, but it's a true value add, and I think that part of that is tied to your ability to attract some of these high profile investors, I mean, like you have Richard Branson, Tony Robbins, Ariana Huffington, PNG Ventures. So, you know, if you were gonna give, I mean, not every entrepreneur, especially first time, especially first time we'll be able to track people like this, but if somebody raises money from people of this caliber, because they not only have notoriety, some of them have operational experience, and obviously just massive amounts of wealth, what would be the thing that allows you to bring these people in of this caliber? You know, I think, well, what is the thing? I think it's just, maybe it's you getting up in front of them. I don't know what it is, but there's something there. I think, no, it's good. I wanted to take a second to think about it, because I didn't want to just shoot the, as I like to say, your first thought is often not your best thought. I think it's that, I think it is just relationship building over time, which really comes down to trust. I think a lot of these people, I didn't just call them, I made the money in something else, or we've worth them with some other capacity. And I do think it's not easy to get to these people, but if you take a long view of it, the number of people that I met at Goldman Sachs that I stay in touch with, the number of, you know, we used to serve our alcohol brand, Veeve, on all Virgin America flights, because it was carbon neutral, because it was organic, because it was California based, all these things that perfectly lined up with Virgin. So, you know, I met Richard, I met Richard back then. So, all these things just take time, but I think, yeah, I think there's some things that no matter where you believe A.I. is going, I like to think at least my current thinking, is that it doesn't replace just, you know, having a good rapport with someone and being able to build a relationship. And so, that is something that we, that I think we really pride ourselves on, is that, and just, you know, overall reputation. One more point on, on M13, and I want to flip to the founder side, the founder perspective, and pull out some more insights there, which is really what you're speaking about in the book. But it's everything in the book, but I mean, I also want to not just give the investor a little bit, take away from this, I want to give the founder a little bit of a chance as well. So, the last thing, you know, you have all these data points in your leveraging A.I. At this point, obviously, there's a lot of data that goes into your decision making as to how you invest, but there's also intuition. How do you manage those two things? Yeah, that is, it's a little bit of that Malcolm Gladwell blank. And I think, yeah, we, I would say, I would like to feel like at this point in my career, I have a pretty good picker, I have a pretty good pattern recognition, I have a pretty good intuition, but I think, you know, they just work in concert, right? I don't know, I am certainly not someone that only lives at the data, but I'm not someone that only goes with my gut feel, because even if I think my gut is one of my best traits, but even if you're right, A.I.10 times, A.I.10 times on the person, you know, that's one out of 10 or two out of 10 that you're still way off or missing, so I think you have to balance those two, but we have, you know, there's tools that we use, for example, that bridge that gap, so we love this tool called Accumax, that's kind of a hiring tool, very different than a Myers-Briggs or things that people might have taken, it kind of says, this is your personality, and it's a little more, a little more of a, this is how you are set in stone. The Accumax is a little more of a diagnostic that kind of just shows you how you show up at work, no commentary on how you are as a human being, or as a mom, or as a dad, but it's a really accurate tool, and so it'll, you be shocked, it's a five minute, and I shouldn't even say test, it's like a five minute exercise, you think this could possibly tell anything, and then all of a sudden, I'll be interviewing someone for a VP of Finance role, and they'll say, hey, this person might have some issues with being detail-oriented, we actually had this happen years ago, and there was like an intuition that, that this was gonna be the case, that the VP of Finance probably had some issues with detail-oriented stuff, that the person was really social, right? You don't necessarily assume, some of your people with, you know, being super extroverted, and it was all things that we knew at our gut, but this kind of helped confirm it, and therefore we actually gave this person, like, a case study to do some things, and all of a sudden, it turned out we were kind of in love with their pedigree and the referral, but I didn't actually delve deep into some of the areas that as soon as we got this idea of where to shine the light, it made us go, oh, okay, this is not the right hire, so there's ways to bridge it, and I would say, if things were to jump all, I'd trust my gut, but I think it's, you know, you and any yang, and then the art and science. I love that. Okay, some advice for founders. You're gonna have a completely biased view, but that's why I'm asking it. I'm gonna ask this question, because you have a biased view. So founders, should they raise money? Should they not raise money? What founders should bootstrap? What founders shouldn't bootstrap? Well, I'm definitely biased, but, you know, I don't actually believe, I mean, all of us are biased, so you should, I always say you should start by not pretending like you're not biased, you should start by acknowledging your biases and just going great as well. We're working from right, 90% of us hire people that look and sound like us, because, yeah, it's all good. We know, we know. I should have to take money. It's less about like the results and more about the why. You know, we read a whole book in our chat, a whole chapter in a book called, Know If You're a Sailboard or Speedboat. And the problem with the way society goes now is all we write about are the speedboats, you know, lift, Airbnb, whatever the case may be. These are all the speedboats. We all hear the stories of the speedboats. When really nine, you know, if you're not sure what you are, trust me, you're a sailboat. Ninety, nine percent of companies are sailboats. What's a sailboat? It gets a little wind, a.k.a. sails momentum, gets a little gusts, travels, wind dies down, you kind of plateau, catch another gust, but you hope that over time, that line, you know, is kind of up into the right, even though it's not, maybe it's not exponential, maybe it's not linear, but it's up into the right. And I think in terms of taking money, it just depends what you need it for. We're really big believers that don't take money just to take it, don't take money based on, take money based on like milestones, not time. It doesn't matter how, if you need more money in three months or six months or two years, I mean, three months might be hard, but if you blew through all your targets, you're gonna get money in three months. So it's more what you've done with it and what you've achieved with it. You know, I do think the industry has shifted, even just the last year to a lot more focus on profitability, maybe not outright profitability, but like unit economic profitability or something where someone said, hey, if you had to cut burn or turn a profit, could you do it like that sort of thing, which I think is great. And so I usually tell people, listen, the less you can take until you need to take it great, so you can kind of show some product market fit, I think it is a little bit like the old, I'm sure other people on your podcast have said, I would try not to take the house's money, aka mine, until you need it, but once you start taking it, like you can't stop, you can't all of a sudden be a venture type company and then go, oh no, we're a cash flow private equity type company because I watch all the companies get caught in the messy middle. Oh, now we're profitable, but you're not high enough growth to be a growth company, you're not profitable enough to be a private equity or a cash flow company. And what are you, you're either stuck or maybe on your way to going out business, so that's the thing, I think you just have to decide what you want to be and make sure you don't lose sight of that. What, just, now I just wanted to double check, because I was gonna ask you a question about Founder Burnout, which I think is a great conversation, but I was very curious as to if the founders you're working with struggle from that, I'm sure some do, but I also think you do some later stage stuff as well, where maybe they've already gotten over that, but that doesn't really matter, I'm sure you still have a lot of opinions and advice on it. So Founders You Work With, some of them struggle with burnout, that's the number one reason why I tell people not to build something, I don't think entrepreneurship is for everyone. It's gonna be something you're gonna deal with at some point, so how do you deal with it? How do you stay motivated for 10 years? God forbid, I know that's like, I don't wanna like stress you out, like I know you wanna get out in five, but I mean, say you gotta stick around for 10 years, how do you deal with that period of time, falls to the wall for 10 years? I think, you know, and that, I mean, I don't know I can answer, cause I don't know that I've done it. I think I've, I mean, for seven and a half years, we did Veeve, and that's kind of been my longest gig, and I saw how hard that is. And, you know, we're all different, but doesn't matter if my, my, as you call it, balls of the wall, same as someone else's, all the, all matters is, I thought it was a balls of the wall, and I gave it everything. I felt the burnout, and so what I love about what I do now is there's a lot of ability to kind of like, juggle different things, have different projects, but I think, I think if I had to do it again, and you really know that it's a, I would say, I would try to pace myself a little bit, but I would also just be realistic that, it's just who you surround yourself with, and who you surround yourself out with, because the number of founders that have the exact same role they had 10 years after they started, it's very small, right? And, you know, there's, there's different professors who write things about why that is. I think most of it's just, just the burnout factor, but of course there's a big element of like, the skill set changes and what the job needs, but if you love what you're doing, great, still be with the company, you might not be the exact day-to-day person, or at least you brought in a great COO or president to make your life easier, so it's more about, I consider, you know, the days of the Travis from Uber, who just was kind of a bit of a czar and ran through walls and whatever, I don't think that's how most of people do it now, but it's a best practice, especially for longevity. I think the best practice is to think of it more like a presidential cabinet. No one can know everything, know what you're good at, know what your superpower is, know where most importantly your blind spots are, and then hire for those and put the kind of cabinet together, and the better you do that, the more I think you as the founder or creator will be able to have the longevity. And coming from both sides, advice for the founder, but also from your experience, how do you deal with major disagreements with your portfolio companies between the founders and yourself and sure those personalities at the table? I've never actually heard that discussed on a podcast, so I thought I'd just ask, because I'm sure there's boardroom meetings that I get heated once in a while. We only see it when it gets to Netflix for the rest of us. So how do you deal with this? How do they deal with it? I don't, you know, it's not that we actually just had a situation with one of my other partners where we struggled, the, this is a very, we, I think we pride ourselves at having like very like streamlined aligned open communication with the founders, we back, but of course nothing's perfect. We had a company that was raised a ton of money at a great valuation when things were different. Now they've hit some struggles. Some people change on our side, who was kind of point person, some people change on their side, and we were having a bit of struggle to kind of re-engage the company and add value. And we had one person that was able to add the value and we said though, like we just have to make sure we're having the right conversations because I don't, I don't want to be, I don't want to be like, you know, the VC that everyone hates and doesn't want to work with, but I also don't want to be the most agreeable one because it probably means you're not pushing hard enough adding value. So to me it probably starts with just really good alignment, right? I mean, listen, let's not forget, it's a founders company, not ours, no matter how much we own, then getting aligned both with, you know, their vision and then hopefully a shared vision. And then realizing that like, you know, this is like YPO or some kind of mentoring thing where not that I'm saying we're mentoring them all the time, but like they're mentoring us, we're mentoring them, but you know, there's, I think we've lost the art of like the ability to agreeably disagree. So I love to debate as long as it's in a healthy way, and I think that's the key because where it goes off the rails is, everyone's willing to debate when you're doing well and you're just having kind of a debate. All of a sudden things aren't going well or this happens and now the debate turns personal or you took it as personal, that's where it gets tricky, but it really is about that alignment and that I think, you know, positive discourse, if you will. I love that. What is one of the main lessons that impacted you the most in the book you wrote in shortcut to start and shortcut your start, excuse me, that we didn't go into, that you just would think this is gonna resonate with entrepreneurs, this is what they have to know. I think, you know, I think the main lesson to me is realizing that, you know, most of it, like I don't think being an entrepreneur is for everyone. I think a lot of it is learned, but I think obviously we can probably agree that there's a certain set of skills that predispose someone to be a better entrepreneur. I think for most people, I've had friends going to start stuff where I'm like in my head, this says way lower odds than anything else based on them. And I'm trying to think if there's a time I haven't been right about that really strong feeling, but you know what, I think being an entrepreneur is a little bit like Shakespeare, right? It's better to have loved and to lost than never have loved at all. Like good for you for trying. Most of the ones I've talked to you to have five, 10 years later are glad they tried and it's like a funny dinner conversation versus like lamenting that they never gave it the try. And I think you, you know, you can't forget that there's a big element of luck and skill and you make your own luck, but I really think there was a real unknown venture capitalist who did this big study after his career, very successful. And it basically, he tried to look back and go, if I had done this, if I had done that, whatever. And the only thing that he felt was statistically significant which would have changed his results is just timing. And so I think you can never forget that it's the right idea in the right context at the right time. And I have personally started and been a part of many things that were two out of the three, really hard to find three out of the three. And occasionally two out of the three works to a degree, but very rarely does it work when it's not three out of the three. And those are a lot of things to have, you know, line up. I love that. So I think I think to just make sure I made the point, I think it's that if you had one you started and failed, realize that there are some things in your control and there's some things out of your control. So don't give up. And there's a reason second time entrepreneurs are great to back because it either means they hit it and they know what they're doing or they've learned from those mistakes and boom. They're ready to... And it's a very expensive lesson, which is not easily forgotten. If people want to, if people want to get the book, obviously it's going to be Amazon everywhere you can usually get a book. Where should they go though? Any specific domains as well as your social. So where should they go to follow you connect with you? Yeah, sure. So our book again is called Shortcut Your Startup. We wrote it in 2018, but I've been shocked with how consistent the sales are still. And I say that only because I would hope that mainly through our learning and the other people we bring into the book, there's some great evergreen wisdom. And so that's sold on Amazon and whatever they say, most places that books are sold hopefully for Shortcut Your Startup. For M13 stuff we'd love to hear from you, just M13.co because.com is so passé. And then for me, you know, kind of all over LinkedIn and then on Instagram it's just my just Courtney Reame. So I'm the only Courtney Reame. So if you can't find me on LinkedIn or Instagram, then you might have to hone your entrepreneurial skills. Okay, two questions to close it up. I ask these questions of everyone. If you could tell your 20 year old self one thing what would it be? I don't know that I'm doing it, but I would just probably be like, just don't worry so much, like don't stress. Like just it's gonna, you're exactly where you need to be and it's gonna all be fine and work out. I love that. And then last question, what does success mean to you? It's changed for sure, but I think to me now success probably means freedom. It's kind of freedom to do what I want with who I want, when I want kind of how I want. Like we say notice some great companies. We say notice some great people who come our doors who want to build brands with us. You know, we started a brand a year ago with Tony Robbins as an example, someone I always looked up to got to become friends with him and now started a brand with him. There's people of that ilk who have come to me and I just didn't feel it or whatever else. And so, you know, the barbell to freedom is responsibility. With great freedom, you have to kind of make sure you have the responsibility side. But yeah, I love that because it's taken me 20 years to kind of build something and be part of something where I have still a lot of responsibility but I also have a lot of freedom. So I'm really grateful to all my partners and the ecosystem to help enable that.