Howard Lindzon, Managing Partner at Social Leverage | Super Angel Investor

The only podcast you need for your business, let's do this. Welcome to the sales versus marketing podcast, I'm your host Scott. Join me as we explore and demystify the latest trends, technologies and strategies used to achieve massive growth in 10X businesses. I'll be sitting down with sales, marketing and business leaders. The second, what's work for them, the spell myths and deliver actionable insights that you can use to ensure repeatable, sustainable and predictable revenue in your business. Thank you so much for joining us on the sales versus marketing podcast. I'm your host, Scott Plery and today I am super excited to be sitting down with Howard Lindsey, a fellow Canadian, he is a Canadian author, financial analyst, technical analyst and a super angel investor. So Lindsey manages a hedge fund, he's a managing partner of social leverage, he's a limited partner at Knightsbridge Capital Partners, co-founder of Stocktwitz and has a tenured history in both investing at early seed stages, also managing running and exiting his own companies and just being a general knowledge powerhouse for both financial and early stage venture back businesses, technology, he's done quite a business career and I'm really really excited to speak with him. Howard, if you can, give us a little bit of a 360 of your origin story where you've come from and we can go into that a little bit and then we'll speak about what you're doing now. Well, thanks for that intro. I was born in Toronto, school there went to Western, probably partied a little too hard, back in the day at Windsor, which was kind of like prison for Torontoians, but had a great year there, ended up doing well, spending a lot of time in Michigan at basketball games, fab five era, and always wanted to move to Arizona where I am today, was a ten year stint in San Diego. So out of that background, you came from Western, what were you doing coming out of university that was there anything that looked like what you're doing now, what was your actual background and that you wanted to go into coming out of school? Yeah, I mean, I think the biggest thing back then was, you know, it was, you know, you grew up in a wealthy semi wealthy, I guess, it depends, it seemed wealthy. Jewish community, forest hill, and all my friends were lawyers doctor, I mean, back then pretty internet, and Toronto wasn't like an entrepreneur, I don't think entrepreneur was like a cool thing. So you were supposed to be a professional, you know, lawyer, doctor, accountant, and just ran away from that or sabotage it or whatever I did to, in a way, not be those three things, and my first job was in 1987, coming out of Western with not great grades and not want to go to law school or whatever, just working at a small brokerage in Yorkville. No training, and I was working in the back office of taking orders and back then there was no real computer system, so it was all by hand. So it's pretty interesting, and then like a few months into my job, the stock market crash, and I was basically out of work. So that was my brief stint, and that's what made me have to go back to school. There was no real mentorship, you know, because you had to be a professional, so you had to just keep going to school or just get a job, and I didn't really have a network. So I think, you know, back then it just took a lot longer for people to kind of accelerate themselves forward. Hence, you know, we call our firm social leverage, we live in this area, air at a 30 years later, where, you know, my 20-year-old nieces and nephews are so networked, and have much more knowledge. Like, we keep making fun of this younger generation, but like, oh my god, there's 10 times ahead of where I was at 20. Well, like you said, the access to information, the ability to have any choice in what you do, at any time is just at the, you know, you sign on to a computer, and you can educate yourself for free now. You can go to, you know, podcasts, audibles, YouTube, and learn quite a bit about literally any job you'd ever want to do. If it doesn't require professional designation to actually do it, it's very easy to ramp up. So, like, back when you're speaking about, you had a stint in a brokerage in the back office, went back to school, what actually prompted you after school to, well, actually, what did you do after school? What was your thing after university? Well, school was more school, right? Like, I was just kind of, no one was pushing me, and I had pretty charm life. So, went to Arizona State for my MBA, and a school called Thunderbird for a Masters in International Management. Now, my whole goal was to live in the States, so I had to get sponsored, you know, for a green card, and I ended up becoming a stock broker. Again, well, no, this time I actually got a stock broker and back in 1990-91. So, I became a stock broker, and I was coal-caller, and that was pre-internet, you know, and you pick up the phone and try and get through the rich people and have to go through their secretaries, and it was pretty miserable existence. But I love the stock market, so luckily for me, I just kind of got the bug, you know, for the next 10, 15 years, and even through today, I continue to make mistakes, but I mean, the stock market, getting exposure, good or bad, to that career has kind of became my passion. And just getting a bug for something, you're obviously, you know, you've, I guess, proven out your success at this point in your life. But how, how did you become successful in you were started off coal-calling, I'm assuming you eventually moved to higher level positions, more responsibility, managing larger clients. What sort of propelled you forward? Was it mentorship, or was it just self-like drive passion that you wanted to learn more? Because you didn't come from any formal background, you said you didn't have a network that really supported this at the beginning. So what sort of question? I mean, I was getting my green card. I was, you know, the guy, my first, the guy who hired me for his real job as a broker, trained me, was a really smart guy, and he was like from Minnesota, moving to Arizona, and he Pat Ryle, and the thing that he taught me was just follow a bit, you know, to be successful in the brokerage business, you know, find companies and stick with them that, you know, have great earnings, and that meant nothing to a 20-year-old, 25, six-year-old. Yeah. So we were just trying to survive and get commissions. So the whole business was screwed up. Still is. But he always gave me good advice. He was like, you know, he would talk about metronica back in the early 90s, and probably should have just held onto that stock. So he was from Minnesota where a lot of great companies were headquartered. But I mean, the real thing for me was it was just a stepping stone, right? When you're calling all day and looking at newspaper to find out who rich people are so you can try and be their broker, in the end it was inevitable, you know, I found a company that I ended up, you know, going to invest in and work for. So I really left the business after a couple of years to go work at a startup called the grip, which kind of became the pet rock of the ad specialty business. So kind of my first angel investment slash career move just before the internet started. It was it is like as an internet accompany as possible is a late text. It was a it was a stress ball company called the ground. And we saw millions and millions of of units on QVC. What was QVC was the internet before the internet except the internet of QVC was just thousands of people entering phones with goofball products on TV. So I kind of stumbled into that through a cold call and my own instincts with the very small amount of money. And the grip became kind of a legendary product of the early 90s. And that was like your your kickoff and to start up culture entrepreneurism. Yeah, the worst thing that can happen, I was extremely successful with my first company. It was kind of like, and we made every mistake. I don't think I made every mistake, but it wasn't my company. It was just, you know, I was kind of the COO even though I was yet, you know, because I was the MBA in the room. It was a local entrepreneur named Mark scattered who I'm still friends with him more now and our Q is in his 20s now we're all in our 50s, but he had just invented this product we stumbled and bumbled and got the QVC account. And we just, you know, from there made every mistake because we thought we were so smart. But the key the key takeaway from that very first business and applies to why software is eating the world today is that we had incredible margins. So when you have incredible margins, you can make incredible amount of mistakes. And at the grip, even though we were, you know, non-internet software company, we were a manufacturing company, we would make this product for 20 cents or 30 cents and sell it for $2, $3, $4, at even wholesale. And so we were making money before we ship the product and that conduct all kinds of, that doesn't happen in real life very often. So it was a huge success despite our own ineptness. And, you know, the lesson is when you have high gross margins, you can make a lot of mistakes. So I really like the... Gross margins matter. I mean, close margins, man. Yeah. Well, no, of course, if you're 80, 90 plus percent margin, even if you ship a few widgets, you're still doing quite well. So after that, then you've been massively successful at QVC or at the grip, rather. Is that when you sort of started investing in other ventures, you started to hedge fund and you were looking at, like, sort of spreading your wealth and looking to invest in that kind of thing. Is that, roughly, when you started doing that? Yeah. I mean, we argued all the time about what to do with the proceeds. You know, I kind of now had money to be in the markets and it was the boom in the 90s, healthcare boom, and NASDAQ boom, semiconductor boom, and the internet boom. I mean, it was just... It was the first mania and it was pre-mania. The internet hadn't even started. It was just software and technology in the beginnings of the internet and healthcare. It was just crazy. The 90s were crazy and at least for making money. And you know, the ultimate business was starting to hedge fund. Now I had money at the grip had money and I just went out and raised, I think, about 10 million and said, I'm just going to trade for a living with other people's money and start a hedge fund. But that's... So the second you start... So a hedge fund, you were not actually investing in other companies yet. That wasn't... No, it was just public markets, you know? That was the cool thing in the 90s was to... Even though I had no experience in the markets really, it was just like, people trust me, I'll go... Like what a venture capital fund is today. Yeah. Because the markets were, you know, you had mutual funds and you compete against mutual funds because they had for high fees themselves. And how do you... How do you consciously take 10 million of other people's money when you're not sure what you're doing? And first of all, have the nerves to do that and then also still be successful because that's now there's a lot of onus on you, a lot of responsibility plays on your shoulders. Yeah, I don't know if I was successful. I did it for 18 years. That's successful enough. Well, I mean, I think the lesson of that is I never loved it as the first setting up for the business and competing against everybody in the world for returns is a ludicrous thing. And hence Vanguard exists, which says this, you know, and the same thing will happen one day, we can talk about it at the very end is going to happen to venture capital one days. It'll just get automated. But, you know, there'll always be some alpha and we swing between, but I got into the hedge fund business. Probably the tail end of when it was cool to be a hedge fund and survive. But by 2005, Vanguard, it was clear to me that indexing, clear to me at least, is a trend follow that index. It was a, you're batting your head against the wall as the mutual funds are going away. And index funds were starting and it's like, you can't charge the same fees, yada, yada, yada. The high that I raised 10 million, it's, you know, you have trust, do people trusted me? They thought it was smart. I wasn't going to steal anybody's money. So, you know, you know, as long as, you know, that's how it starts. And to get bigger, you have to have returns. I think people forget that, you know, it's everybody, you know, in a pull market, it's rather easy to raise money. And then, you know, 98, the, I forget the crisis in Japan or the long term debt. There's so many crises over the 30 years or so that I've been investing. But that's when it really comes out and who knows what they're doing. And I didn't, but I survived and survived relatively better than everybody else. And that's kind of how it goes. But it was, it was still not like your passion, you would say, when you're doing it. No, it was, you know, it really was, and then you have a family and kids, so you're not going to just kind of get stuck. And again, without mentorship, I was just kind of surviving. And then 2005, I started, you know, getting into the idea of, you know, because the markets were getting harder. I got into the idea of investing in startups again. And into my office walked the team from golf now, actually the father of the team from golf now. And I was golfer and a passionate golfer. And golf now was a Phoenix company. And they pitched me golf now. And I invested right away. And that became a big company invested in a life lock right after, which was a local Phoenix company. And now it was a multi-billion dollar exit. So I kind of got lucky in a way to great companies were local Phoenix companies. Yeah. I saw them early and had the instinct to invest. And slowly I just became more interested again in doing private investing versus the public markets, which was a good timing to go into the private market. And venture capital. Back then, you know, you startups were valued at under a million dollars. So it was a good time to be doing software media investing. So a lot of this timing and then mentorship, right? At that time, 2005, Twitter hadn't started. But the blogging, everybody was blogging. And and guys that some of the best venture capitalists in the world, I didn't know who they were at the time, but they were showing up in searchers. Also, I searched for term sheet and other things. And luckily for me, they were the best in the world at what they do. And that those that that was the initial kind of aha moment around internet. So aha moment for the internet came for me in like 2005, with blogging and blog rolls and just how people were connected, how smart people were connected. And then how much free information are these smartest, the experts in our industry is we're giving away. Because that that sort of speaks to some of the projects you took on like Wallstrip that used to be CBS. There was so many. Yeah. We're not appreciative. But the big bang moments of YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, all happening kind of at the same time as as access. You know, everybody kind of been on ramp through a while and suffered through the first iteration of the web and Yahoo. And now we have Google search YouTube. You know, soon to follow. Well, obviously the blackberry at the time and then soon to follow the smartphone. I mean, you're talking about, and we're only still 13 years after that. So like, you know, and I was already 40 when the internet became a thing, a real thing, like most bubble. So it's just like, yeah, we rode the wave well. Like more than more. It would be hard not to ride the wave again. I think you have to, yeah, I mean, I got it and I was a little bit lucky in my position myself, but it would be really hard as a 40 year old with an open mind to have gotten rich with that kind of big bang moment. Now, I mean, obviously I've had a great run on top of it, but it's been an incredible opportunity that just happened. I wish it happened when I was 30, but it didn't, you know, and I was 40. I just kind of dropped everything and went all in on the internet. One thing I want to, I want to go back to, I want to speak briefly about stock tweets and you being so bullish on Twitter and that piece of you, but and I'll go back to some of the other companies that you've invested in your portfolio. But what I wanted to sort of highlight here is the fact that you brought up a really good point. None of this really happened until, like, of course, you were successful before relatively successful, but compared to where you're at now, none of this happened until much later in your life. And you mentioned that, you know, your niece has 20, I think you said, and she has access to all this information. And everybody has access to all this information, which is good and it enables you to be successful much earlier. But I also think that everybody is very impatient. And I think that that could be your detriment as well. If you have, you could be the old Angry Simpsons guy waving your hat saying that, but you can't believe it to my son who's 20 for being impatient. I mean, everything works. You know, people say, oh, they're socialists. Well, they are socialists, not because they think everybody should have money, but they have an iPhone, everything in every person should have that ability to at least have a smartphone in this day and age. And once everybody has a smartphone, that's why the wealth is going up. And that's why, you know, maybe wars eventually are not as important obviously technology around wars, you know, with drones and everything. But once people get a taste of making a living, they just lose the interest in fighting, right? Which is why this era, it's so dangerous right now. It's just people are fighting over what seems like crazy stupid things in America. But, you know, going back to my son, when they have, when you have this abundance, of course, people are going to be more spoiled, you know, but they're spoiled in much a way that, like, leave me alone. I don't need things. I don't need the porches and clothes, you know, give me my, you know, I'll shop at Lulu every quarter for the few basic things I need. I'll go on trips and we need to buy a second and first and fourth home. So, you know, it's just different. And that's a great thing. And same with media, right? We started with YouTube videos and cat videos. And now we're, you know, there's endless podcasts. You could listen to podcasts, you know, forever and never get through, you know, a fraction of what's out there. So, so again, you know, this mentorship I wrote about it today, just being the mentor, it's like, you know, all you can do is, is kind of pay it forward. And with my kids and with my nieces and nephews, yeah, they're, they're kind of spoiled, but they're just, you can't blame them when they grew up with all this abundance of product and knowledge and entertain them in Uber and Netflix, Snapchat. And now the AirPods, I think that that will be the next revolution. It's truly one of the greatest products of all time. And so we just, just when you think it can't be topped, it gets topped because yeah, audio is, is, is the new screen. Do you think that, that having all that access so because there's nothing wrong with you, like you mentioned, you don't want to be the old man waving the hat angry at all the kids. It's not, that's not the vibe that you really want to, you really want to have, but you think that it hurts their career expectations or their, their financial expectations from where they, when they're, when they have access to self-information, they, you understand what I'm saying? Yeah, but it's natural order of things. The corporations have got too much power and they deserve to die. So, so the fact that, you know, we hate the corporations. They're wrecking America at many levels, right? They're buying politics in the only way that that, you know, so maybe it's good thing the kids want to hop jobs every three years and say fuck you to the corporations because it's corporate. It's all about getting the talent. And if you don't have the talent, you die. And and so it raises the bar. It's its own way of destruction, you know, it seems like just when it seems like social network are, are, are, are, are intolerable TikTok comes along and kids don't care about the same things they cared about just a year ago, right? They're just leaning back and laughing and sharing videos and creating videos and they don't care how many followers they have and it doesn't really mean anything versus, you know, Facebook became all about your parents and yelling about politics. So just when it looked over, you know, TikTok comes along and then just when the smart just looked like when it looked like Apple was rolling over, they came up with the AirPods. So you never, you got to constantly be on the lookout for, for, you know, what's coming around the corner. And I think you can't blame kids seeing this amount of creative destruction over the last 10 years that they're not going to be loyal to much. So again, it's just, it is what it is, you know, you can't, you can't, you have to kind of take a step back. It's helped having kids go through this and watch them is, this is all so new. But it's also kind of interesting to watch them. No, that's, yeah, that's, it's a good, it's a good perspective. I want to, I want to speak about stocktwits and I want to understand, I want to understand why out of all the social media networks, it seems like you're very bullish on Twitter. And obviously, I think that sort of led to your company. Why was, why, why was that out of everything? Well, I'm not bullish on Twitter anymore. It's the best product other than the AirPods, you know, Twitter is probably the best product. You know, kids today would say TikTok and Snapchat, and I won't argue with them there. But, you know, I'm the last guy to leave a bar at this point on Twitter, but because my investment is in that network, you know, my personal network, you know, is based on WordPress luckily. So, you know, I own my own domain, which every person should do as soon as they get it or every parent should buy their kid their own domain.com so they can control their own, you know, persona. Yeah, you know, Donald Trump does it, but he maybe owns Donald Trump.com because he can afford it. He doesn't need it, but it sure, sure would help any kid today to make sure they own the search of their own name, right? And you can't own the search of your own name unless you own the.com. And it's a big mistake, if you believe in the internet, the kid, you know, so my kids own their own domain, they may own their own Facebook profile, but what's that worth? That's only worth as much as Facebook will charge people to look at it. So, you know, Twitter, so that's my network that I, you know, kind of built my brand that in WordPress. So, I think when I saw Twitter, I was like, oh my god, this is stupid. It took me like 50 times before calling it stupid 50 times before. I had a aha moment and said, well, this is going to be great for financial information. You know, one day the president will be tweeting about the stock market. That's where I kind of wrote in 2007 when I had my aha moment. And then I went in all in on, you know, there's going to be another Bloomberg and it will be free and it will be, you know, all these smart people on Twitter talking about stocks and markets and, you know, set me down this path of stock tweets and all my investing in Robinhood and E-Toro and kind of what I'm doing today. I had this big vision that, you know, CMBC would be on YouTube. So, I started Wallstrip and we sold that to CBS. I had this big vision that Twitter would be the next Bloomberg. So, I started stock tweets and had this big vision that, you know, there'd be another e-trade and that turned out to be E-Toro and Robinhood, which I was a seed investor in. So, kind of just everything that I experienced as a 20-year-old as a stock market and, you know, on the internet boom, I just kind of projected onto the social boom and kind of got it right. So, is that when you look at your portfolio companies now, I think if you look on your website, there's over 125. So, there's much more than just like the ones that are focused on financial markets. So, was that sort of the path you took? You started with something in financial markets, E-Toro, the Robinhood, obviously, your own company and then you sort of branched out from there? Yeah, I mean, the first one, obviously, the grip, which, you know, was pre-entered by this consumer, I mean, I'm really fascinated by consumer products. So, like today, ManScape is like my favorite company ever and it does nothing to do with tech, other than it is a website and is, you know, a great marketing company. And I think that's more the future. It's like tech kind of leads into the background like your AirPods and now you got to come up with creative marketing and not just the product anymore. You got to be able to market it. You know, in an era where Facebook ads and Google ads are expensive, you're meaning they figured out how to charge you paid for the customer. Now you have to go back to the basic, you know, blocking and tackling of building a real business. But I digress, meaning, you know, I love golf. I believed, you know, I'd seen some of the internet 1.0 companies, built huge companies around inventory management. And golf now walked into my room and they were helping golf courses do better yield management. So the best businesses in the world are logistics and yield management, period, end of story. If you look, you know, because the scale and the margins, well, it's endless scale and endless margins, if you can match buyers and sell it, whether it's that's NASDAQ or CME or even, you know what I mean, the best businesses. So golf now just happened to be all that for golf. But there's just not that many opportunities to do that. I mean, generally, we need lots of capital. And I don't have lots of capital. But golf now was just was a perfect, you know, idea at the right time. LifeLock was more about a pure marketing company. You know, obviously they had a product myself, identity, identity theft insurance. So it was like kind of a perfect marketing company, the great, you know, Todd Davis, a great CEO and a great, simple business idea. And it was in my back yard and I did it. They're not FinTech companies per se. But once I started dabbling myself as an entrepreneur, I was definitely going to be in FinTech and that's where I came up with Wallstrip, which was basically let's just build CMPC, which I hated. Let's just put that on YouTube and see what happens. And you know, six months later, CBS acquired us and then was stocked with some Twitter same thing and with Etoro and Robin Hood same thing. And today I, you know, the future for me is more about I built up all this trust. Let's go attack the wealth management industry, which is, you know, my next probably 10 years, 20 years. And when you, because you're your seed states, you're not, you're not in that company. Yeah. So what are you, what are you looking for? Like that's still a risk on your part. So are you, are you founder, are you founder centric? Like what are you looking for when you invest? Yeah, I'd say it's founder centric. I don't think I'm smart enough. I don't have the tech skills to be platform or geek centric. I'm founder centric, you know, domain experience. A lot of us are endipitous, but I have my own, you know, people find me through my blog and through, you know, no one's going to pitch me a biotech peel because if they do, they'd be dumb. What added value am I? I mean, people do, but I don't, I don't have, you know, it makes it easy not to respond. So by putting myself out there, I'm curating. I'm just, it's like dating. It's no different than before the internet. You're dating. If you put on Cologne and you go to a bar, you're going to attract something. Yeah. So by writing every day and telling people what's interest me than other people with those same interests and you pitch me thing. And that's, that's generally how you found like the companies you're working with now. Well, that's my edge, right? I'm not going to have to be on a plane showing up at these events, looking for the hot sweaty new company and paying market prices. I'm telling people what I'm looking for and showing people what I'm an expert in and then the other experts in the field look to me. So it's kind of like you fake it till you make it because you're passionate about a subject and then all of a sudden after 20 years, you're an expert. One thing that I really liked that sort of stood out for me, it's a tagline on your website investing for profit and joy. So I know a lot of people invest for profit. What does that mean to you or what? There's no quick way, like I just went through 20 years of how I became an expert overnight. There's no quick way to do it. I think let's talk to it's Twitter, mall, what's it, whatever it is that the apps that we're using, you can maybe increase you know, certain industries you can become a success overnight, truly. I mean that's, you know, unfair, but it happens. It's just not normal. But there's no such thing as an overnight success, but this, these products speed everything up. So that's the fun part. You know, if I was, if I was 30 and depressed, what a horrible waste of time that would be sadly, right? But, you know, because this is the greatest time, luckily in America to be alive in a matter of almost what your zip code is, but you know, you have to, you have to kind of find mentors, be a mentor, and really stick to your passion, right? And it's happening earlier and earlier for Kim, which is great. You know, I kind of wandered in the desert until I was 40. And so, you know, the, so for me, it's founder and their domain experience and trying to trick them and convince them that it's, you know, being a founder is not that fun. Like most of the time, I'm trying to talk to people out of their business. And that's, you know, because I know with Stocktwitz, you know, it's been in grind 12 years. With Wallstrip, it was a miracle. Stocktwitz is a better idea than Wallstrip. And you know, you make more money off Wallstrip than they do it. So there's no predicting this. So with founders, I'm trying to explain to them the good, the bad, the ugly, everybody's so excited and you got their idea and they're so passionate and they understand the whole in the market that they got a penetrate. But I'm generally probing and saying, are you sure you want to do this for 12 years? Look where I am. And so you're trying to like see if these people are really up for 10 to 12 years. Yeah, because if not, I think that's what it takes. That's what it takes. Even if your company is great, Robin Hood, seven years already. Sounds like an overnight success, but for the founders, it's probably a grind at this point. No, they're wealthy, but I'm saying, you know, Etoro's 10 years, you know, it's rarely that like three years you're going to be successful. And I don't think the amount of energy invested or the amount of energy required, excuse me, is really is really apparent to people that are first-time founders or CEOs. I think they they have it like you said to have an idea and they have no idea how many hours invested, how much energy it'll take. The stress that it will probably cause, regardless of whether or not is successful. So I think that as, you know, you do, you do a lot of these deals. I think that's probably the best way to approach it. It's because if not, you're going to, regardless of whether or not the company is successful, you know, you really want people to align with you who are happy that they've aligned with you. Like you want that value to come from both sides, right? So you want to go aligned. And so the difference of investing today is the scene versus past, this before, 10 years ago, I didn't necessarily need to meet the CEO, right? It was just such a, you know, such a kingbree in exposure moment of, you know, and this is what where people are going to make massive mistakes right now is, you know, forgetting Uber because that was 2009, 2010, but 2005, 2006, 2008, no matter what you touched, if they were connected to YouTube, LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, you're going to get rich because the arbitrage of getting a customer versus the value of a customer was just so in line with being a founder or an investor. Today, everybody's smarter and prices are more, you know, elevated and markets are more efficient for all this social and media and messaging that's much harder. But so I caught this kingbree in wherever you can write a 25K check, hearing a pitch over an internet, over an email and make money. I don't think people are going to be as lucky today. So, you know, luckily for us, we're a bigger fund. We don't write checks on the whim. We spend a lot of time, you know, they say if you have a great idea, you know, get drunk and see if that idea is as good tomorrow. I think the same thing with investing in startups, you got to spend a lot of time with the founders before you write the check. And we're just up front now. We're like, we're not writing 100K drunk and checked. Like here's how we've worked. Here's what we do. We move pretty fast relative to the other networks in our industry or for geniuses. And so we're very upfront about how we do things in our process. But, you know, we're all for quick nose and quick yeses, but they're within reason. I want to pivot a little bit because a lot of people that listen to this podcast are in a career. So the venture capital, the seed funding bit, I think definitely is interesting. I love speaking to people who have invested. But what I do want to talk about is one of the points on your website, everyone should be an investor. And I think that that's very applicable to people that are within organizations that are looking to set themselves up for their future and to be comfortable. Even if they don't want to start a business, they still they still need to dabble to some extent in financial markets. And obviously some of the portfolio companies that you've invested in that you work with sort of help them do that. But why should everyone be an investor? Because they can because every parent is now every parent's duty to do that. So it's not every kid should be an investor. It's shame on parents, you know, because the schools aren't going to do it. Shame on parents for not this. The on-ramp is is is everywhere. Whether it's Robin Hood or Stash or Wealthfront or everybody can have an account at least when they're 18. Every parent should open an account for a kid that's 12 to 15 and buy them one share, you know, you can buy a share for nothing for no commission. So everybody can buy put $50 now on Amazon or $20 on Nike or $5 on whatever your favorite companies are and see how the market will work. So that's what I mean about everybody should be an investor, you know. The fact that everybody's praising Warren Buffett who's who's 90 great, you know, he earned it. But we should be talking about the next 20-year old, we should be bringing those, we should be celebrating the new investors. And that means, you know, more distribution, more opportunities. And so with the stuff that we've been investing in for 10 years, our vision was there are going to be hundreds of millions of more people that have access to investing. It'd be very hard to lose money with that thesis, you know, in hindsight today, which luckily we think we're still at the beginning, you know, the world's changing, but we're still at the beginning. Now that these hundreds of millions of people have access to investing, what's next? And that'll probably just be more investing in education and media. But now that everybody can invest, that's why I said they should invest. Because, you know, everybody should should feel that ownership and be able to vote and say how they feel about companies. You know, you can vote every day by just not owning, you hate Marbro, you're just more, you don't have to own the stock, but if you rex on, but if you love Nike, you should be able to vote with your money and put $5 a month on that and see how the markets work and how compounding works. It's really quite easy. So that's why I agree with you. I understand a real with you. The reason why I bring this up is because the tools are there, but the education isn't. So how the education is, I mean, Twitter is free and there's tens of people on stock. Yeah, that's what I'm getting at. So, so where should people be looking? Because obviously, traditional education is not to the caliber, right? That you would have to look, right? Like they can open up Robinhood app and put 20 bucks in and buy a share for 20 dollars or their favorite stock. So they don't need a mentor to do that. That's just, you know, the power of compounding is what people need to know is, you know, putting, you know, interest rates and in the far other you are away from retirement, the more aggressive you should be. But if you compound, you know, 10 bucks at 8% a year over 50 years, you know, I don't have the math in my head. It's a massive amount of, once you do that basic math, you have to be nuts not to put dollars every month into the market. And that's why acorns was such a popular app, right? It just tricks you to save money in the market. You know, before the internet, it was like, oh, well, you know, pay yourself first. And, you know, no one pays themselves first. Everybody's living month to month and everybody can barely afford to live. But acorns is kind of like a hack, a trick to take five dollars. You know, my son's on acorns and he can't afford it. But every weekend, sneak in five dollars out of his account and it rounds up all his spending puts it into an ETF. So, you know, between acorns and Robinhood and Stocktwits and Twitter, you can find mentorship, you know, just follow me on Stocktwits and ask me a question. Yeah, you know, that's that's good. And I do like that a lot of the companies that you work with do enable this because I always think about employees in organizations where pensions are really not a thing compared to what they were like 50 years ago, right? Like now, it's sort of on this, the owners is on the employee to really set themselves up. And I don't think enough people are sort of learning about acorn, Robinhood, anything really. I think that more people should be sort of learning about how to set yourself up to be financially comfortable. And I think a lot of that comes from investing, obviously, compounding. But that's I think it's like, I think there's not enough push in that direction. For in my opinion, there's enough push in that direction because I think that the education's out there. But the, I guess the, I don't know, the gateway, the gateway drug into investing is rests on the parents, right? And they, they should be saving for their kids, you know, keep it simple. I'm not a tax person, but I'm like, make it simple, show your kids, you know, include them in the decisions. They know which products they love and explain to them those things. You don't have to make it mathematical. It's just objects and brands, right? Like, do you like what products do you use every day? Well, if you're using them every day, it makes sense that other people are and put a few bucks behind that. Like that, keep it as simple as possible. Yeah, I call it eight to 80 brands, right? Like if you're, if your eight-year-old uses the product and 80-year-olds use the product and you're not invested in that company, you're kind of insane. That's a good, I like, I like the rules. Yeah. You know, Uber, not that they, you should just buy the stocks today and that's going to, they're going to go up forever. You have to, you have to monitor them and sometimes it's better to buy them when they're in down 30% of course. But if it's an eight to 80 brand, you should be hoping they drop 50%. As long as eight-year-olds and eight-year-olds continue to use it and basically now, like with Google, it's infants to death, right? Very hard to bet against a company that has people locked in as their infants and also on their deathbeds. So, you know, going beyond that strategy, you don't really need to do that, right? If you find companies in products that that every age group is using, then just stick with that. I want to, when I'm closing this out, I want to pull out some life, some higher level life lessons out of you. But what I, before I go into that, I only, I only have a couple of minutes I apologize, but I got that. No, no, let's find them. We're going to close it up. Is there anything else that you wanted to bring up in terms of what you're doing now that we didn't cover? Yeah, I mean, what I'm doing now is just more of the same. Just, you know, I don't want to, like, write bigger checks. We want to continue to write, you know, leading checks into great founders and the financial services and enterprise space and consumer products. But, you know, it's easy to find me on, you know, HowardLindon.com. You know, pretty friendly. If you come on, stop Twitter and ask questions about investing, I'll do it, same, just add HowardLindon. And then on Twitter, I don't talk about stocks that much, but, you know, more about venture capital and goofing off. But, you know, I would give this, if to be mentored, you can't, you know, social, I would say social matters, right? Social graces. You know, you know, back in the day when I was cold calling, I hated it because people weren't expecting my calling. It was intrusive. So if you, you know, if you're inspired by somebody, don't ask them, hey, I've got the next Google, like, you have to kind of, this four play, that kids don't understand four play, because they have Tinder and they're just getting right to it on the first text. But it's not their fault. That's just life. But, you know, kids are going to have to learn this four play thing where you can't just ask and expect, you know, people that have put 20 years in the tell you their life secrets. You have to kind of just kind of ease drop and say, thank you, you kind of got to learn to wait for the right moment. Yeah, I mean, you can ask for whatever you want. Maybe you'll get it. But, you know, generally, you have to kind of pay your dues a little bit. Luckily, you can do it, you know, in an elegant way by just being nice. You actually, you have, you inadvertently nail my last question. I just wanted to ask, like, the advice you give your younger self. And it sounds like I was pretty good, right? Like, you know, back then I had to do a job just to survive. Today, a kid shouldn't have to do that. Maybe they do, but like, there's so many tools and so many things they can do in their spare times and gigs they can take. But, you know, people need to just be a little patient and put in the work, trying to do their 10,000 hours, you know, step one, and, and, you know, pay it forward. But a lot of it's just common sense, you know, social common sense, and how to behave. And even though it's digital groups, you have to learn how to behave in a digital group. Yeah, no, that's very good. So that's all I got. Is there anything else you want to close up with? No, I appreciate it. Just story I got to hop, but I appreciate the good questions. It's fun to talk about the past. Yeah, no, that's what I wanted to get out of it, because your background is really impressive. And I like to sort of map out that story from, you know, where you started to where you're at now. But thank you very much. I appreciate it. All right. See you, Scott. All right, cheers. Bye now. All right. Thank you for joining me on another episode of the sales versus marketing podcast. Thank you so much, Howard, for the chat. That was a really good session. I hope that everybody got a little bit out of that. Howard's a really impressive individual. Just what he's been able to accomplish throughout his career and what he's doing now as well with his portfolio companies and his investments. I would suggest you go go consume some of his content. He writes a lot about business life investing, startups, finance. He just he's a he's a very well-spoken individual. So go check out his his content. As always, if you haven't already, please please like subscribe and share this podcast with all your friends, family, peers, co-workers. If you if you haven't already, you can subscribe to this podcast wherever podcasts are found, including Spotify, iTunes, Acas, Google, overcast. That's literally on any podcast outlets. So go check it out. And as always, have a have a great week, have a productive week, and we will speak against it. Bye now.