20VC: How 50% Of VCs Hurt Entrepreneurs, How To Build A Relationship Of Trust With Your VC and How Entrepreneurs Can Detect VC BS with Jason Mendelson, Co-Founder @ Foundry Group

Jason Mendelson is Co-Founder @ Foundry Group, one of the leading VC funds of the past decade with investments in the likes of Fitbit, SendGrid and Makerbot just to name a few. Prior to Foundry Jason co-founded SRS Acquiom, the largest merger and acquisition closing platform that completed over $200Bn in merger transactions. Prior to co-founding SRS, Jason was a Managing Director and General Counsel for Mobius Venture Capital, where he also acted as its chief administrative partner overseeing all operations of the firm. If this was not enough Jason is also the Co-Author, alongside Brad Feld, of the best-selling book, Venture Deals: How To Be Smarter Than Your Lawyer, a must read for all. In Today’s Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Jason made his way into the wonderful world of VC having been a lawyer? 2.) Why does Jason believe there is too much BS in VC? What does Jason think causes this opaqueness? How does he look to build a relationship of trust and clarity with his entrepreneurs? 3.) How has the rise of social media affected the transparency and BS element in VC and startups? How can entrepreneurs know when a VC is lying to them? What are the tells? 4.) Jason has previously said that some VC behaviour is 'rather narcissistic'. What does he mean by this? How would he like to see this change in the future? 5.) How does Jason look to optimise board meetings? What are the expectations of both founders and VCs prior to board meetings when it comes to preparation? Items Mentioned In Today’s Show: Jason’s Fave Book: Atlas Shrugged Jason’s Most Recent Investment: Borrowed and Blue As always you can follow Harry, The Twenty Minute VC and Jason on Twitter here! Likewise, you can follow Harry on Snapchat here for mojito madness and all things 20VC. Intercom is the first to bring messaging products for marketing and customer support together on one integrated platform. With Intercom, businesses can chat directly with prospective customers on their website, engage current users with targeted messages based on their behavior, and provide personal support at scale with an integrated help desk and knowledge base. This is perfect for Businesses that want to help people visiting their website become customers. Marketing and growth teams that want to onboard and retain users by sending the right messages at the right time and Support teams that want to move beyond email to provide personalized, scalable support so simply head over to Intercom.com/20MVC Cooley are the global law firm built around startups and venture capital. Since forming the first venture fund in Silicon Valley, Cooley has formed more venture capital funds than any other law firm in the world, with 50+ years working with VCs. They help VCs form and manage funds, make investments and handle the myriad issues that arise through a fund’s lifetime. So to learn more about the #1 most active law firm representing VC-backed companies going public. Head over to cooley.com and also at cooleygo.com.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Harry Stebbings?

  Hello and welcome back to another week in the world of the 20 minute VC with your host Harry Stebbings and you can find me sharing inordinate amounts of mojito snaps on Snapchat at H Stebbings with two Bs. Now, before we dive into the show today, I do have a little announcement. I'm delighted to say that Fred Destak, general partner at Excel and former guest and I, will be running the London Marathon in April. Now, we're running for MS UK, a charity that's very close to my heart, having seen the effects of multiple sclerosis firsthand with my mother suffering from the disease for the last eight years. Now, the show has and always will be free, but this time we would so appreciate your support in raising money for such a worthy cause and it would mean so much to me and I've included the links in the show notes on where to donate. I so appreciate that. However, to the show today and I'm delighted to say, we'll be featuring the legendary Foundry Group this week.

• 0:45Harry Stebbings?

  Therefore, joining me today, I'm thrilled to welcome Jason Mendelson. Now, Jason is a co-founder at Foundry Group, one of the leading VC funds of the past decade with investments in the likes of Fitbit, SendGrid and Makeabot, just to name a few. Prior to Foundry, Jason co-founded SRS at Qium, the largest merger and acquisition closing platform that completes over 200 billion in merger transactions. Prior to co-founding SRS, Jason was a managing director and general counsel for Mobius Venture Capital, where he also acted as its chief administrative partner overseeing all operations of the firm. If this wasn't enough, Jason is also the co-author alongside Brad Feld of the bestselling book Venture Deals: How to Be Smarter Than Your Lawyer, which I have to say really is a must-read for all. It was my introduction into venture capital.

• 1:27Harry Stebbings?

  I'd also like to say a huge thanks to Brad Feld and Seth Levine for the intro to Jason's day, without which the episode would not have been possible. However, before we dive into the show today, you must check out Intercom. Intercom is the first to bring messaging products for marketing and customer support together on one integrated platform. With Intercom, businesses can chat directly with prospective customers on their website. They can engage current users with targeted messages based on their behaviour and provide personal support at scale with an integrated helpdesk and knowledge base. All products are powered by live customer data, helping businesses avoid the stiff spammy status quo and have real conversations to build real connections throughout the entire customer lifecycle. This is perfect for businesses that want to help people visiting their

• 2:10Harry Stebbings?

  Website become customers and marketing and growth teams that want to onboard and retain users by sending the right messages at the right time. So simply head over to intercom.com forward slash twenty M V C. And speaking of serving your clients better there with intercom, I've always been a big history man. And so I want to talk about Cooley, the global law firm built around startups and venture capital. Since forming the first venture fund in Silicon Valley, Cooley has formed more venture capital funds than any other law firm in the world with fifty plus years working with V C's. They help V C's form and manage funds, make investments and handle the myriad of issues that arise through a fund's life cycle. So to learn more about the number one most active law firm representing V C backed companies going public, simply head over to Cooley.com and also check them out on Cooleygo.com.

• 2:55Harry Stebbings?

  However, it is now time for me to hand over to Jason Mendelson, co-founder at Foundry Group.

• 3:06Speaker 01

  You have now arrived at your destination.

• 3:09Harry Stebbings?

  Jason, it's such a pleasure to have you on the show today. I've heard so much from from pretty much all your partners, so fantastic to have you on the show and thank you so much for joining me today.

• 3:18Speaker 02

  It's great to be here.

• 3:19Harry Stebbings?

  Now, I'd love to get started by hearing a little bit about you and how you made your way into what I call the wonderful world of venture and then later with Foundry.

• 3:27Speaker 02

  So I started off as a lawyer at Cooley Godward in Silicon Valley. I assumed that I would be a lawyer forever and I would run the firm one day. The joke was when I walked in there day one, I act like I own the place, not from an arrogant standpoint, but I really wanted to take care of the of the the practice and do as good as I could because one day I figured I'd inherit the firm. Um, along the way, my music background and my software background started getting me close to entrepreneurs and the V C's. And then I got an offer to become the general counsel over at Mobius Venture Capital, which was the firm where I met Brad, Seth and Ryan. And from there, I became the accidental V C. It was never a plan of mine to be a venture capitalist. It, you know, the dot com era blew up. I started taking boards to help us not get sued and a couple of these companies turned around and did well.

• 4:09Speaker 02

  And then, you know, after you have a couple of successes, people actually start coming to you saying, will you fund my company? And for a while I just took all that deal flow and handed it off to other people and over time, uh, I started. Keeping some of that deal flow and one day I woke up and said, oh my gosh, you know, the entrepreneurs want to work with me because of who I am. And I guess I have, you know, on accident become a venture capitalist.

• 4:29Harry Stebbings?

  And I've got a question from Brad directly related to that and your your transition from general counsel to VC. And he asked, what was the moment that you realized that you were no longer really a general counsel and that you were actually a VC? You said there about the deal flow. Was there a defining moment? You found one company in particular or one event or one specific turning point?

• 4:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, I don't remember the year. It was probably six years ago, seven years ago, maybe even longer. There was a point I was sitting in my office and I made the most boneheaded lawyer mistake in the world, one that would should get me fired. And I said, oh, my God, I'm a horrible attorney. And then as I as I had a moment of like, oh, this sucks. I've lost my skills. I thought about the 10 boards that I was on and all the entrepreneurs who I'd met and a couple of the companies were doing really well and just raised some new financing and one was getting sold. And I was thinking, oh, wait a minute, I, you know, yeah, you shouldn't, you know, you're not a general counsel anymore. You are a venture capitalist. You know, that doesn't mean do a crappy job on the legal issues, but like you've made a transition. You are concentrating on the business. You're not concentrating on the practice of law.

• 5:29Harry Stebbings?

  But I'd love to start then, Steve, with with a topic which I know we're both very passionate about, and that's the need for transparency between entrepreneurs and VCs. So I'd love to first start with that. And where are we at today, do you think, in terms of the transparent nature of VC and entrepreneur relationships?

• 5:45Speaker 02

  I think we're sort of in a local minima, if I use a math term. So if you go back in history through circa early 2000s, certainly through 2003 or four, there was almost no transparency between entrepreneurs and venture capitalists. It was a game. It was a what VCs can can extract from entrepreneurs. It was a very VC driven world. We had the checkbook. We had the power. There weren't a lot of a lot of us around. And it was really a travesty. You know, when Brad and I decided to write the term sheet series on the blog, we had two goals. One was to educate entrepreneurs and remove some of the opacity in the fundraising process. But two, we wanted to screw over all the jerk VCs that we had met who were who were screwing over entrepreneurs. And it was amazing that

• 6:30Speaker 02

  You know, the initial feedback was very polar. The entrepreneurs loved it and the VCs, you know, skewered us and said, how dare you give away all our secrets. Over time, given social media, given the media's attention to venture. I mean, you know, you think about television and radio and, you know, podcasting and blogs didn't exist, you know, a little more than a decade ago. The information's gotten out there, so things become more transparent. Unfortunately, I think a lot of these tools now are being used the wrong way. There are a lot of VCs who like to claim they're transparent or say, trust me. You know, I've always learned when somebody says, trust me, or somebody starts a word, a sentence with the word frankly, they're probably lying to me. And I, you know, otherwise you don't need to add the emphasis. Just tell me what's going on.

• 7:10Speaker 02

  And I think we have a lot of that going on right now where there's a lot of VCs who appear to be out there and transparent, but are actually reverting more back to a model of fifteen, twenty years ago, where they're not being honest with the entrepreneurs about what their incentives are and what their real feelings are about the company they're investing in.

• 7:25Harry Stebbings?

  How do you think then you can detect BS? Cause I, I interview so many VCs and they all say, obviously, I'm sure all the VCs I've interviewed are very lovely, but they all say, we're founder friendly, founder first, I'm here for you. How do you detect BS in VC speak, do you think?

• 7:40Speaker 02

  For, for one, I look at how much money the VC firm spends on PR and marketing. We don't have a PR firm, we don't have a marketing person. Our marketing is every once in a while we lose our brains and put up a music video or write a book. And that's not marketing, it's just, we do whatever we want. And we're one of the very few venture firms, if not the only venture firm, who behaves that way. I'm not saying all venture firms are bad, but in my opinion, at least fifty percent of them hurt entrepreneurs and twenty-five percent of them don't do any good. There's only really a quarter of the VC firms that I've worked with that really help the entrepreneurs. And frankly, it's amazing in a world to me where there's somewhat transparent information going on the internet that the opacity of, of reputation still exists.

• 8:21Speaker 02

  I, I would say just on the boards that I'm on, a good half of the VCs that I share these boards with, I don't respect. I don't think they're transparent. They've got the right buzzwords, they've been coached up to say the right things, but it's not how they act. And so I think, you know, in order to really know who the good folks are, it's really about talking to the entrepreneurs. And of course, they, they don't want to go out publicly and say, oh, this guy's bad. But if you have Have deep relationships with entrepreneurs, you can know pretty quickly which VCs act well and which ones don't behave the right way.

• 8:45Harry Stebbings?

  You said there about respect. I'm intrigued just from a personal perspective. What makes you really respect someone, have a profound respect for for someone and their mission?

• 8:54Speaker 02

  I mean, in general, I I respect people who tell me what they're gonna do and get it done. And do it in a way that is on the balance good and doesn't have to require somebody else losing to win. And I think being self-aware and resilient and thoughtful and empathetic. Uh, these are the types of qualities that make me respect that person. Respect is not, uh, to me, a mission statement. When I see a company that says one of our mission statements is respect for each other, I go, you know, respect is earned. It's not something that's forced upon people. And I, and to me, I I have a set of very stringent criteria. And when people meet those criteria, I respect them and I'm very loyal to them for a very long time.

• 9:29Harry Stebbings?

  And talking kind of the the transparency and the clarity of relationships. I I recently interviewed a founder who said that he doesn't tell his VC anything because he knows the dangers of of telling the VC too much. So I'm intrigued, when you make an investment, uh, how do you look to instill that relationship of clarity and trust from the very beginning? What does the core onboarding process look like in the relationship?

• 9:51Speaker 02

  Well, for me, I've decided that having no filter is both my biggest asset and my greatest curse. And it's an asset that not having a filter that when you meet me or when you work with me, you very quickly know what I'm all about. You know what my expectations are. You know what's in my brain. At the same time, it can be off-putting to some people. Sometimes bluntness is, you know, off-putting. There's people who think I might be mean or or or too aggressive. But I will say for the people who I work with, I think they appreciate that they never ever have to ask themselves, what is Jason thinking? And so if we get along, the relationship becomes where I can be a mentor to them. I can be a business partner to them. I mean, look, let's be honest, being a CEO is a really lonely job. You really don't have anyone to talk to about the company.

• 10:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, you're gonna have some co-founders and some other people, but you're gonna have some deep, dark secrets that you're not sure who to speak to. And I really hope that we have a level of trust between myself and the entrepreneurs, given my bluntness, that we can just have an open conversation, fix the problems and move on.

• 10:50Harry Stebbings?

  What do you think the entrepreneur needs to do then? That's from the VC perspective. What do you think the entrepreneur needs to do from the initial investment to to really get the relationship off onto the transparent and clear footing?

• 11:01Speaker 02

  I think one of the biggest mistakes they can make is over promise and under deliver. Now, that doesn't mean on everything. We all know that revenue numbers are made up, right? If we all know that getting products done on time, that's a very difficult thing. But on the expense side, you should have total control, telling me what you're going to do and do it. And if you think you're off the rails, telling me quickly, never surprising me at a board meeting. These sort of things make me feel like you're being open with me. When I come to a board meeting and there's forty pages of marketing materials and then all of the problems are shoved on the last slide that they're maybe hoping we run out of time at the board meeting, that's an erosion of trust and erosion of transparency. So I want to deal with the hard issues upfront and and the most important issues upfront. And in that case, if I feel like the entrepreneur is being open with me, the relationship usually works really, really well.

• 11:45Harry Stebbings?

  You said there about kind of board meeting interaction. A fellow Boulder kind of tech member and and founder of a tech stars company, Sphero, said that he likes to spend a lot of time sending the minutes of the board board meetings to the board members pre-board meeting, so they have a chance to really onboard pre-board meeting. Is that a good strategy, do you think, in terms of kind of aligning the board and the founder or the CEO for the board meeting itself?

• 12:12Speaker 02

  I think it should be the only strategy. I think it's critical. When you give me information ahead of time, you as the entrepreneur should hold me accountable that I've read everything, I've digested everything. If I have any questions, I ask before the board meeting, so that the board meeting becomes a strategy meeting, not a reporting exercise. Boy, three hours of somebody talking at me going, this is what we did next, and this is what we did next. Oh, my gosh, I want to shoot myself. I want to talk about the meaty stuff. So all of that should come well in advance of the board meeting, and that is another way of building trust.

• 12:41Harry Stebbings?

  I have to say, though, I'm intrigued because obviously board meetings take up a lot of time in terms of preparation and then actual attendance. And I know with you guys, you know, there's only four of you. How do you look to to manage the time around boards? And what does the board to investment ratio look like for you in terms of how many boards you sit on?

• 12:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, so I'm sort of at the Point, having done this for a lot of years now, where board meetings to me are spelled B O R E D. It's I could see a music video coming out someday about board meetings. I'd say about twenty five percent of the boards I'm on run really, really well and tight. Where it, you know, send out the information beforehand, there's discussion, whether it's over a Google Doc or over email beforehand, and you come in and you hit the important stuff. It's efficient, it's mutually beneficial. The board meetings aren't about me, or and they're not about the outside board members. They're about all of us together, helping the entrepreneurs have a better outcome. And so long as we're all getting some mutual benefit, learning, understanding, and feeling like we're having an impact on the business, that's good. But unfortunately, that's not the majority.

• 13:39Speaker 02

  And what you find is a lot of board cultures dumbing down to the lowest common denominator. Right, there's somebody on the board who doesn't read the materials. There's somebody on the board who's not mentally engaged. And the discussion quickly takes over in getting this person up to speed. And I have very little patience for that, but unfortunately, it's a regular happenstance in my life.

• 13:57Harry Stebbings?

  That would be frustrating, absolutely. But we mentioned Paul Barberian from Sphero there, and Boulder itself as an ecosystem. And I do want to touch on that and your location, because that's one large differentiator between me, between you and many of the VCs I speak to from San Francisco. So talk to me about that, and how you approach the idea then of great companies being built from anywhere, not just the tech hubs that we hear so often about.

• 14:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, look, we've been doing this for ten years. We've invested in over a hundred companies. If we look at which ones are successful, there are successful companies that are being built all over. We invest all over the United States, and we have successful companies all over the United States. There are pros and cons of having a company everywhere. There is no perfect place to start a company. And I think it's laughable that there are people on the coast, and primarily in Silicon Valley, who will openly say, you can't build a big business in the Silicon Valley. It is that myopic arrogance which makes me laugh, because that gives us great opportunities to build wonderful companies elsewhere that will have a different culture and a different mindset and different advantages, because they realize what the realities are as opposed to, you have to be in the Silicon Valley, you have to be in Silicon Valley.

• 15:04Speaker 02

  That being said, we have a lot of companies in the Silicon Valley, but it certainly is not the only place to build a successful company.

• 15:10Harry Stebbings?

  Do you think there are any fundamentals, some pillars that are really necessary for an ecosystem to thrive? Maybe it could be a huge acceleration like tech stars in Boulder. Or what are the pillars that are needed to really generate that ecosystem?

• 15:22Speaker 02

  Well, I mean, the first pillar is entrepreneurs, right? You need to have a creative class of people who want to live in a particular area. Second, you need to have the support systems that support these entrepreneurs. So that's everything from, you know, the obvious ones, which are lawyers and accountants and some venture capitalists or money that's willing to go there. But it's more importantly, the pillar of having a culture of failure is super important. I'm from Detroit and for many years, they had creative class, they had money, they had lawyers, they had people who could work there, they had great ideas, but they lacked the ability for people to respect the culture of failure. And, you know, if you failed in Detroit, you were a failure. If your company went out of business, you were a loser. In the Silicon Valley, if your company goes out of business, you're an entrepreneur. And you need to have that sort of culture infect your area in order to be able to nurture

• 16:07Speaker 02

  and take an entrepreneurial journey with these folks. It's also added bonus if you have a university around that's spinning off ideas and smart people. Um, and it's also a bonus if you live somewhere where you can import talent from other places. Boulder is notorious for importing great people from other parts of the country who just want to live here because it's gorgeous and beautiful and wonderful and they can have a great job.

• 16:26Harry Stebbings?

  You said there about investing across the US, uh, from SF to all over. I'm intrigued, when you actually make the investments, how does the deal competition differ according to the region? Is it very noticeable when you're investing in a company in SF compared to Detroit? Is that kind of intensity around the competitive nature much more?

• 16:44Speaker 02

  You know, for us, not really. I think our brand, which is ironic because we don't really try to create one, but there's four partners and there's no associates. So if you want to work with Founder Group, we're going to work with you. And, you know, if we want to work together, we'll work together. We're not going to chase deals on price, we're not going to chase deals because of some other term sheet. If an entrepreneur is sincere and wants to work with us and is one of our type of people, to us, there's really no difference no matter where we go. There's probably on the margin a little more valuation creep in the Silicon Valley and New York, but it's not material.

• 17:13Harry Stebbings?

  It's interesting you said about the, the price there. I had Howard Lindzen on the show the other day and he said his biggest lesson. From from speaking to Fred Wilson was that if price is the only thing stopping you from doing a deal, that's not a good enough reason. To what extent do you think you agree with that in terms of price being a stopping factor?

• 17:31Speaker 02

  You know, it depends. If price, if I'm the only VC talking to the entrepreneur and we're both in love, you're probably right that price shouldn't be a factor because at an early stage is early stage. You know, if we were late stage investors, totally different. It's a it's a financial exercise at that point. But you know, whether it's ten pre or fifteen pre, if the company is huge, we're all doing great. And if the company is a zero, it's the same result. Where I don't like to be in this situation is if there's multiple term sheets and the entrepreneur is focused on price. Look, at the end of the day, I turn that same argument around to the entrepreneur and say, look, a couple of points of ownership to anybody doesn't matter. You know, I'm not going to play this game of continually me walked up on price. Either you want to work with my firm or you don't. Totally cool if you don't. We got plenty of other companies we can invest in.

• 18:14Speaker 02

  So that's how I view price, you know, and I think Fred's right, but I would put the caveat, I'm not going to be a price chaser at any time.

• 18:20Harry Stebbings?

  And being kind of external to the ecosystem hubs we mentioned there, I'm intrigued to hear your thoughts then on some behaviour and appearance of of some of the fellow VCs, you've previously stated potentially rather narcissistic in in some cases. I'm intrigued to hear what you mean by this and how you'd like to see the behaviour change.

• 18:38Speaker 02

  I mean, I think the entire ecosystem has become narcissistic in many ways. I mean, the the living the fake lives on social media and television and hanging out with Hollywood stars and the big, you know, people, how many people have proclaimed themselves the next to Mark Zuckerberg in the past three years? And it's just, man, it's incredible. You know, I remember when I started in this industry more than 20 years ago. These were people who had to create these companies because they just had to. It was innate in them. It wasn't about the fame. It wasn't about the fortune. And, you know, as things go in any industry, as as things become noticeable and and and whatnot, there are people who are in this industry because they want to be famous or they want to be rich.

• 19:20Speaker 02

  And and I think it's it's changed the industry a lot. I mean, it's, I can't even watch the television show Silicon Valley because to me, a lot of that looks like a documentary to me and it just makes. Me sad.

• 19:30Harry Stebbings?

  It is eerily similar. I have to agree. Even the conference phones are exactly the same. Do you think then that often it's stated that downtimes are the time of real innovation? Do you agree with that in the case of the fact that often the people who aren't really the lovers and the believers in the core technology leave in the downtimes?

• 19:49Speaker 02

  You know, I don't think the entrepreneurs ever go away. I think the best entrepreneurs in the world don't care about anything except for pursuing their idea and pursuing their dreams. Who goes away are the venture capitalists, right? Venture capitalists in general are lemmings and when the times are bad, they get out of the market. You know, we had founded a group, we've been together 20 years as a team almost. And we consistently invest in the same number of deals every year because we want to be time diversified and we don't care if the times are great or horrible. And if you look at our track record, some of the best deals we've ever done were with entrepreneurs in a down period where no other VCs would invest in them. We were able to, you know, invest in these great companies because we were the only people out there writing checks and we had outsized returns from deals done in bad times.

• 20:29Harry Stebbings?

  I'd love to dive into a quick fire round with you now.

• 20:31Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 20:32Harry Stebbings?

  Now, now, the first one is funny because my favorite book is is your book. So. No, no, genuinely, it's kind of how I learned venture. This was my onboarding process for this very show. So let's start with your favorite book and why?

• 20:44Speaker 02

  Uh, probably Atlas Shrugged. I read it when I was extremely poor. I, for a number of reasons, I had no parents in my life. And it was sort of my first introduction to entrepreneurship and it was really impactful that one person could make a difference. But also with the cautionary tale that it's it's not, you know, there there are ways that we can destroy entrepreneurship. So we need to celebrate it and and love it, but also protect it and nurture it.

• 21:08Harry Stebbings?

  Biggest mentor to you and how it came about?

• 21:11Speaker 02

  I think my biggest mentor was, uh, two people, Eric Jensen over at Cooley, who was the partner I reported to when I was there. He taught me everything I knew as a lawyer. Uh, he was the one who literally kicked me out the door to take the job at Mobius, even though I wanted to stay at Cooley. He he foresaw something that I probably didn't at the time. The other one is my dad, who he's always been the guy who's told me I was gonna, you know, do some great things. Even when I had no confidence, I would.

• 21:34Harry Stebbings?

  And then your favorite blog or newsletter, what are your must reads?

• 21:37Speaker 02

  Ah, my favorite newsletter just went away. Left.

• 21:40Harry Stebbings?

  And it was it's sad, it's sad, isn't it? But he's starting a new one there. Let's be

• 21:44Speaker 02

  I know. So whatever Dan, whatever Dan's gonna write is the thing I read every day.

• 21:48Harry Stebbings?

  And then let's do one from Seth. Have you ever mistakenly bought an expensive Scotch and charged it to your partner's room? The answer will be yes, but I want to hear the story behind it.

• 21:58Speaker 02

  Seth and I were at a bar with his wife and my girlfriend at the time, respectively. The girlfriends, or his wife and my girlfriend wanted to order a $32 glass of Flowers Pinot Noir, which we thought was obscene. And we said, why don't you focus on the $12 ones? Meanwhile, we looked up and there was a Macallan 25. We had both just started drinking Scotch. We had no idea that prices went up with age. We had no idea. And we ordered two Macallan 25 Meats. We got the bill. It was $323. We about fell over. Our significant others were not happy that we had walked them down from their more expensive wine to drink $150 glasses of Scotch. So like any reasonable human being would do, we charged it to our partner, Ryan McIntyre's room, who was also staying at the hotel.

• 22:40Harry Stebbings?

  That is brilliant. Well, well done. I think you'd be sleeping on the sofa with that one. That's

• 22:45Speaker 02

  Correct.

• 22:45Harry Stebbings?

  And then let's finish today on your most recent investment, other than Scotch, and why you said yes.

• 22:51Speaker 02

  We just announced this week an investment in a company called Borrowed in Blue. It is looking to remake the antiquated online wedding industry. Right now, you've got the knot, you've got wedding wires. All they are is lead gen machines for vendors. We are going to turn this upside down and create a marketplace that's focused on the couple and how people are going about setting up and arranging their weddings. I got married two years ago and it was a pain in the neck. And this is not only scratching my itch, but I believe the itch of a lot of people who are getting married.

• 23:19Harry Stebbings?

  Jason, it really has been fantastic to have you on the show today. Thank you so much for joining me.

• 23:23Speaker 02

  No, it's truly my pleasure. It's a lot of fun.

• 23:27Harry Stebbings?

  What a fantastic and fun episode that was with Jason. Hilarious story on Scotch at the end there. And a huge hand to Jason for coming on the show and to Seth and Brad for the intro. I so appreciate that. And do not forget what I said earlier about the marathon. Fred Desta and I will be running the marathon in London for MS UK in April, and we would so appreciate your support. We've included links in the description and your support would mean everything to me. But before we leave you today, do not forget to check out Intercom. Intercom is the first to bring messaging products for marketing and customer support together on one integrated platform. With Intercom, businesses can chat directly with prospective customers on their website, engage with current users with targeted messages based on their behaviour, and provide personal support at scale with an integrated helpdesk and knowledge base.

• 24:08Harry Stebbings?

  All products are powered by live customer data, helping businesses avoid the stiff spammy status quo and have real conversations to build real connections throughout the entire customer lifecycle. This is perfect for businesses that want to help people visiting their website become customers and for marketing and growth teams that want to onboard and retain users by sending the right messages at the right times. So simply head over to intercom.com/20mvc, that's 20mvc. And speaking of serving your clients better there with Intercom, no one can beat Cooley for serving their clients for the longest. Cooley is a global law firm built around startups and venture capital firms. Since forming the first venture fund in Silicon Valley, Cooley's formed more venture capital funds than any other law firm in the world with 50-plus years working with VCs.

• 24:52Harry Stebbings?

  They help VCs form and manage funds, make investments, and handle the myriad of issues that arise through a fund's lifetime. So to learn more about the number one most active law firm representing VC-backed companies going public, head over to Cooley.com and also check them out at Cooleygo.com. As always, I so appreciate your support and I cannot wait to bring you Wednesday's episode with Jason's partner at Foundry, Ryan McIntyre.