EP 50: Alan Patricof (Founder, Apax/Greycroft/Primetime Partners ) - On Burning Man and a marathon at 87, early investments in Apple and AOL, plus, how he almost made it to Woodstock

On the 50th episode of the Logan Bartlett Show, Legendary investor Alan Patricof joins Logan to discuss venture through the years, his many investments including Apple and AOL, going to Buring Man at 87, his new book No Red Lights, and how a car breakdown led to him missing out on Woodstock. (0:00) Intro (1:30) Welcome Alan Patricof (7:00) No Red Lights (13:01) Generational perspectives and staying relevant (18:00) New York 1966-1969 (25:54) Graduating from Ohio State and getting into venture (29:40) Starting a venture fund in the 70s (34:02) Different periods in venture (40:25) Shift to private equity in venture (48:09) Investment style (51:41) Not taking board seats (55:50) What Alan looks for in founders (58:38) Investing in Apple (1:09:35) Optimism on future in venture Mixed and edited: Justin Hrabovsky Produced: Andrew Nadeau and Rashad Assir Executive Producer: Josh Machiz Music: Griff Lawson 🎙 Listen to the show Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/three-cartoon-avatars/id1606770839 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5WqBqDb4br3LlyVrdqOYYb?si=3076e6c1b5c94d63&nd=1 Google Podcasts: https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5zaW1wbGVjYXN0LmNvbS9zb0hJZkhWbg 🎥 Subscribe on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCugS0jD5IAdoqzjaNYzns7w?sub_confirmation=1 Follow on Socials 📸 Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/theloganbartlettshow 🐦 Twitter - https://twitter.com/loganbartshow 🎬 Clips on TikTok - https://www.tiktok.com/@theloganbartlettshow About the Show Logan Bartlett is a Software Investor at Redpoint Ventures - a Silicon Valley-based VC with $6B AUM and investments in Snowflake, DraftKings, Twilio, Netflix. In each episode, Logan goes behind the scenes with world-class entrepreneurs and investors. If you're interested in the real inside baseball of tech, entrepreneurship, and start-up investing, tune in every Friday for new episodes. Executive Producer: Rashad Assir Producer: Leah Clapper Mixing and editing: Justin Hrabovsky Check out Unsupervised Learning, Redpoint's AI Podcast: https://www.youtube.com/@UCUl-s_Vp-Kkk_XVyDylNwLA 🎥 Subscribe on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCugS0jD5IAdoqzjaNYzns7w?sub_confirmation=1 Follow on Socials 📸 Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/theloganbartlettshow 📱 X - https://twitter.com/loganbartshow 🎬 Clips on TikTok - https://www.tiktok.com/@theloganbartlettshow About the Show Logan Bartlett is a Software Investor at Redpoint Ventures - a Silicon Valley-based VC with $6B AUM and investments in Snowflake, DraftKings, Twilio, and Netflix. In each episode of The Logan Bartlett Show, we sit down with the people behind today’s most important startups and extract the tactics, lessons, and frameworks they’ve learned the hard way. Conversations span hiring to GTM, product, growth, fundraising and everything in between - collectively forming the ultimate playbook to make you a better CEO, investor or board member. Tap follow and enable notifications to stay ahead of the game.

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

• 0:05Logan Bartlett?

  Welcome to the 50th episode of my podcast, The Logan Bartlett Show. Thanks, everyone, for listening and bearing with us on the episode rebrand and all that stuff for the last 10 days or so. What you're going to hear on this episode is a conversation that I had with Alan Patricof. Alan is the founder of Apex Partners, a private equity firm with $60 to $70 billion in assets under management. Alan then, at the age of 73, founded Greycroft Partners, which is a venture and growth firm. And at the age of 85, he founded another venture capital firm, which he talks about in the "ageless generation," as they call it, but investing

• 0:48Logan Bartlett?

  in founders or businesses focused on over 60-year-old, the over 60-year-old population. Alan is a really interesting guy. He went to Burning Man this past year. He ran a marathon last year. He does three events a night. He still gets up every morning and works out. He thinks he's going to live to be 114 years old. And so, we had a really fun conversation. I think he was a little confused about why we scheduled as long as we did, and then ultimately, we ran out of time. So, really fun conversation with one of the original folks in the venture capital community, certainly one of the original people in New York venture capital community. And so, I trust everyone will enjoy that episode here now.

• 1:31Logan Bartlett?

  Alan, thanks for doing this. Sitting here today with the legendary Alan Patricof, the founder of Apex Partners, a now $70 billion asset under management, private equity firm, founder of Greycroft, a $2 billion AUM venture capital and growth firm. And then, now, most recently, the founder of Primetime Partners, which raised a $50 million fund, what, two years ago?

• 1:56Speaker 01

  Be three years in May.

• 1:59Logan Bartlett?

  You said that there's there's no like distinction. You've won awards and you get to be Sir if you're in London, right? But you just get the the the name legendary is sort of what's been bestowed upon you.

• 2:10Speaker 01

  I've been slightly out though. Two years ago, I was awarded the Légion d'Or by the French government.

• 2:15Logan Bartlett?

  For starting France in or the French venture capital ecosystem, right?

• 2:18Speaker 01

  In nineteen eighty two.

• 2:20Logan Bartlett?

  And so now, so is does any title come along with that or no?

• 2:23Speaker 01

  No, you just have a certificate and, you know, if you're Sir somebody if you're in England, you pretty easy to get a restaurant reservation.

• 2:32Logan Bartlett?

  With a Sir.

• 2:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, I don't know about Légion d'Or getting you a reservation in France, but here it's meaningless.

• 2:39Logan Bartlett?

  And you you did so you founded Apex at thirty seven, nineteen seventy?

• 2:45Speaker 01

  Ninety seven, it was formed as Alan Patrogov Associates. And I then in the US in New York and then Los Angeles, I'm sorry, in Palo Alto. And then nineteen seventy seven, I made an agreement and joined some guys in London and Paris. And we launched our first fund in Europe in nineteen eighty one and eighty two. And then we changed the name at almost, I think, nineteen eighty nine to Apex, which was Alan Patrogov Associates. The X was for cross border, which was first adopted in Europe.

• 3:26Speaker 01

  And then we changed the name here and it was to kind of have a generic name because we were in twelve countries by then.

• 3:34Logan Bartlett?

  Wow. And so and then Greycroft, you founded in two thousand and six at the age of seventy three. And then Primetime, you founded two years ago at the age of eight, five?

• 3:46Speaker 01

  Five, yeah, around that.

• 3:47Logan Bartlett?

  And you're also the author of a book, No Red Lights: Reflections on Life, 50 Years in Venture Capital and Never Driving Alone, which we'll talk a little bit about.

• 3:56Speaker 01

  I hope we'll talk a lot about it.

• 3:57Logan Bartlett?

  Yeah, a lot of the lessons, we're going to talk, we're going to talk through a bunch of different things related to what you teach in there. I'll make sure to leave some on the bone for people to go back and read all of that. But yeah, no, it's a fascinating book and sort of hearing the longitudinal perspective of the venture industry. And it's not just about investing or for founders. I think there's a lot of life lessons in there, right, as well. So we'll talk about that. But investor in a number of successful companies. So I'll ask you about that as well. And you've done, you've been active in politics, investor in Hamilton, right, active in investing in the theater. So a bunch of cool stuff. But then I guess most recently, attended Burning Man and ran a marathon, what, last year?

• 4:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, seems like yesterday, yeah, November.

• 4:42Logan Bartlett?

  It's crazy. So I think that in researching and prepping for all this, the single thing that I understood the least about your life and all of these things, I mean, it's obviously you've founded a number of venture firms, you've had financial success, you've been associated with a number of interesting projects along the way. You triple book yourself three nights a week, or sorry, you triple book yourself every night in terms of going out from an event standpoint?

• 5:09Speaker 01

  That may be a little bit overstated. I don't deliberately overbook.

• 5:12Logan Bartlett?

  But you're willing to pack in your calendar with social events in?

• 5:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. I figure out how to make most things work even during the day, not just in the evening. But it's, you know, you get, learn how, you learn the techniques of how to do it. But they're, you know, they're, whether they're a podcast, or whether it's a theater, or whether it's a cocktail party, or a dinner party, you know, there's a way of balancing.

• 5:39Logan Bartlett?

  But seven days in the week, you are doing something outside of your home at night. All seven?

• 5:44Speaker 01

  Well, that's, you know, I, I, not all seven, but pretty much.

• 5:47Logan Bartlett?

  At the age of eighty-eight, though, and then you're getting up five days a week and working out with a trainer or doing running and all of that. I, is this always been, like, were you, have you always been this active and on the go and all that? I'm thirty-five years old and it sounds exhausting to me, your schedule now.

• 6:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, I've always been, I've always been the, not now, but I've always have been the first person in the office and I used to be the last person leaving. I don't do that quite as intensely as I did years ago because I just don't have the reason to be in there at seven, eight o'clock in the morning and I have other things that I'm doing.

• 6:22Logan Bartlett?

  What's your, any trick or is it coffee, is some drug that you've discovered that the rest of us don't have, or is it just, is this sort of the way you are?

• 6:31Speaker 01

  It's just, I'm built, you know, I guess my internal rhythm works that way and I, I'm, you know, I manage to do it. It's, it's been part of my life. And of course, in addition to that, I've got three sons and seven grandchildren, which I also try to keep in contact with on a really frequent basis.

• 6:50Logan Bartlett?

  It's impressive. And I know, I know you have, you're going to live to a hundred and fourteen at least, right? So you have a number of years.

• 6:57Speaker 01

  That's my objective.

• 6:57Logan Bartlett?

  Yeah, it's, it's a, it's a good mission to have. But, so you recently wrote a book. What was, you set out, you started writing it at eighty-five, eighty-six, something like that?

• 7:08Speaker 01

  A little bit before I started primetime and it was during, you know, before COVID, maybe the summer before everything kind of hit the fan. And I just thought it was time that I put some reflections on paper and I, the way I write is the way I live. I did it like a stream of consciousness. I sat down on yellow lined paper in my terrible left-handed handwriting. I just started writing what I remembered and what I could think about. So it was not in a logical progression, you know, I was born at and I did, but it, it

• 7:48Speaker 01

  goes all over the place. And I was fortunate enough to get a editor researcher to help me at a later date. And I think the title was my title, No, No, No Red Lights, Never Driving Alone. And she took that Never Driving Alone idea very cleverly. Because I go from politics to theater investing, to classic cars, to working for the president of Nigeria, and of course, running three, having run three venture firms.

• 8:21Logan Bartlett?

  To being at Steven Talk House in Montauk.

• 8:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, so she constructed the chapters. And I took a left turn, I took a right turn, I took a U-turn. And it's all in driving metaphors, which I thought was fabulous because you don't think that about, you're talking about venture capital, and all of a sudden, you're in the theater.

• 8:42Logan Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 8:42Speaker 01

  And then back to politics, and then back to venture capital. So, from my standpoint, I'm very happy with that kind of sub-chapter headings.

• 8:52Logan Bartlett?

  And it was laid out pretty linearly of your life, right, from a time period standpoint. And each chapter sort of has some distinctive elements around it. Who, when you were writing it, did you have a end market of who would appreciate it and mind? Or were you just sort of coming in from, hey, here's my life, and whoever enjoys it will enjoy it?

• 9:14Speaker 01

  Well, I think you're asking a really good question because it's what motivated me to do this in the first place. I said to myself, I'm not an author. What right do I have even to write a book? And I wrote it for a bifurcated audience. And honestly, it has succeeded exactly the way I wanted. I wanted to write it, first of all, for your friends, maybe even younger than you. And I had observed a lot of young people that I came in contact with, mentees of mine over the years, and people in all professions. And I felt there was an awful lot of single-mindedness around of, you know, if you're a lawyer, writing briefs and writing until midnight.

• 9:56Speaker 01

  If you're an investment banker, doing spreadsheets through the weekend. And not really spending a lot of time in tasting the opportunities that either were presented to them or that they could go after. And what I pride myself, and I think all the things you said earlier are... My life is I have either grabbed opportunities that I saw going in front of me, or I've gone after them at no red lights. And that's the way I live my life, looking and trying to taste the opportunities we have. I've lived a very, very full life. So I wanted to inspire to some degree younger people.

• 10:39Speaker 01

  And I have had enough feedback to know that whether it's just younger people themselves or parents who had kids in their 20 or 30s who said, I sent this to my kids. I sent it to, you know, someone that seen me, they got it. The other audience was I was really struck by the fact that several of the people I know had been either retiring or forced to retire because of internal rules. For example, APAX requires you to retire at 60. It didn't affect me because I left in my 70s, but I was a little bit grandfathered in. But I didn't set that rule. My successors did.

• 11:23Speaker 01

  I think it's short sighted because I think someone at 60 has got the best rolodex, lots of energy, knows their field probably better than anybody. And I wanted to say, you know, if you're in the paint business, go back in the paint business again. You've got an edge over someone who's 25 who wants to just start a new paint company, whatever it may be. Yeah. Or, or become a poet, or become a writer, or do something. And so I wanted to inspire people to, when they were older, to say, don't just go down to Florida, play golf, go fishing. And of all the people who've given me feedbacks, and it's not in the reviews of the book necessarily

• 12:08Speaker 01

  on Amazon, but I ran into a fellow in my apartment building who's lived there as I have for many, many years. And I ran into him a few weeks ago and he said, Alan, I loved your book. I sent it to my kids, I sent it to my grandchildren, I've sent it to my friends. He said, it's just terrific. He said, the only thing I'm upset about. And by the way, he's 80 years old. He's a member of the New York Stock Exchange. He said, "The only thing I'm upset about is I wish I had read it 20 years ago." And to me, that was, that was the best review I could possibly have.

• 12:51Speaker 01

  So he was saying, "I've been sitting at my desk, watching ticker tapes, and I really could have done a lot more things in these last 20 years that I haven't done."

• 13:01Logan Bartlett?

  It's interesting, when you talk about that, the younger generation, my generation or whatever, the perspective of the breadth, right? And then the older generation, there's kind of this, this picking a period in the future and sort of thinking about your cumulative experiences and continuing to work towards some time that all these things benefit, right? You talk about the cumulative experience that builds up and stuff. I guess a question, as that relates to the venture capital industry to some extent, you've clearly done a fantastic job of continuing to iterate and think through new markets and all of that stuff.

• 13:41Logan Bartlett?

  One of the pushbacks, or a, something that has become a platitude in the industry is like, it's a young man's game, right, to some extent? Like, you know, it's hard to be out there meeting founders and having the nimbleness of thought to think through new markets and all of that stuff, right?

• 13:56Speaker 01

  Well, how many, how many people over, I'll say 60 or even over 50 are sitting in the waiting room of a venture capitalist? Not very many.

• 14:03Logan Bartlett?

  Not many, right? And so, and so I guess a question of that is how have you been able to keep that? Like, there's obviously the breadth of experience, but we're, we live in a very nimble industry, right? It's not industrial manufacturing that is mostly the same as it was 10 years ago. How have you been able to mentally sort of continue to benefit from both the cumulative advantages that come with experience, but also stay nimble to new ideas and all of that?

• 14:29Speaker 01

  No red lights?

• 14:30Logan Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 14:30Speaker 01

  I mean, going to conferences, attending meetings, talking to people on your left, to your right, wherever you go, experiencing life. I do not set myself forth as the leading technologist. I am not. In fact, just the opposite. I do have a pretty good insight in how young businesses...

• 14:54Speaker 01

  Get formed, get built, and how they grow. And that's really my contribution. But I pick up enough along the way that I can sit and intelligently hear a presentation and react to it. And I, you know, I keep myself current. I read everything, you know, whether it's newspapers or magazines or online material, going to not necessarily three every night, but, you know, doing things. And that's where you, you know, you keep yourself relevant. I say this all the time to friends.

• 15:33Speaker 01

  If I went to work and went in at 10 and left at 3, I would no longer be relevant in what I'm doing. You have to be, you know, really in it if you're going to be in it.

• 15:45Logan Bartlett?

  And I get the feeling from the latitudinal perspective of like the breadth of things that you were able to or have been able to continue to intertwine, hey, I'm doing theater over here, but I'm going to bring that in and sort of think about how that impacts the venture industry or the lessons learned from that. You became friends with David Stern, the NBA commissioner, and brought him into meetings, right, at Greycroft to sort of talk through things like that. And so I get the feeling that all these things for you kind of intertwined and there probably wasn't work and then life. These, the lines probably blended a little bit. But do you talk a little bit about like how the intertwining, not just from leading a

• 16:28Logan Bartlett?

  full life and not defining yourself solely by your career, but were there little benefits of concentric circles that kind of mapped together as you did this and then brought it over to learn or help in that?

• 16:40Speaker 01

  You know, I'll go back to a comment you made, which is in the book. Everything in life is cumulative.

• 16:46Logan Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 16:46Speaker 01

  I mean, and that's really what I would tell you. What, you know, people you met along the way, experience you have, reflections on those, and continuing to learn and do. I mean, for example, what you're not aware of, I just was appointed by President Biden to go on the Securities Investors Protection Corporation, CIPIC. It's the, it protects your brokerage account like the FDIC protects your, your bank deposits. And I got there because I, I like being involved on some basis in what's going on in Washington.

• 17:30Speaker 01

  I found that a very interesting part of my life. And I had no interest in being an ambassador or going and taking a job, but I did want to do something that was relevant to what I, my world, although I don't, I'm not in the public stock market, but I certainly know a hell of a lot about it. And so now I will be going out of Washington for board meetings six times a year. And I, you know, I think that's, that's the way I've lived all my life is, you know, take advantage of opportunities, do interesting things, and they all intersect in some way.

• 18:03Logan Bartlett?

  Well, there's a bunch of different threads in the book that I think are interesting to go down, and I'll leave it for people to read all of them on their own. But another thing I, I wanted to touch on from it is, I think it was 1966 to 1969 in your life. It sounded like a very unique, fun period where you were an investor in a nightclub. You-

• 18:26Speaker 01

  I started.

• 18:26Logan Bartlett?

  Started a nightclub.

• 18:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 18:28Logan Bartlett?

  You were a bachelor in New York, living where?

• 18:30Speaker 01

  Divorced in East Side of Manhattan.

• 18:33Logan Bartlett?

  East Side of Manhattan, owning a nightclub. You went to Woodstock and, or almost went to Woodstock, maybe got-

• 18:41Speaker 01

  Broke down on the, on the New York State-

• 18:43Logan Bartlett?

  Did you know at the time, by the way, was Woodstock known, obviously not to the extent it was today, but was it, was it really a big deal at the time and everyone was trying to go?

• 18:52Speaker 01

  In hindsight, it was bigger than what it was at that time.

• 18:56Logan Bartlett?

  Sure, yeah, yeah. I can't imagine you expected we'd still be talking about it 50 years later.

• 18:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, never.

• 19:00Logan Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 19:01Speaker 01

  And frankly, from what I know now about Woodstock, having broken down at, I don't know, exit 16 on the thruway, which was- Before the Woodstock exit, I probably would have been backed up for ten miles.

• 19:15Logan Bartlett?

  Sure.

• 19:16Speaker 01

  And I probably would have been sitting in my car all night in a blinding rainstorm. So I probably never would have gotten there anyhow.

• 19:24Logan Bartlett?

  And it probably was, I mean, I'm sure the people in their minds now remember it as like the best experience ever. It probably was a little unpleasant just how many people were there and the weather and all that, you know. It remembers with this.

• 19:34Speaker 01

  But it's great to have, I mean, I trade on the fact that I almost.

• 19:38Logan Bartlett?

  You almost, yeah, yeah, that's right.

• 19:39Speaker 01

  But I also, more importantly at that time, I was chairman of the board of New York Magazine.

• 19:43Logan Bartlett?

  Which was.

• 19:44Speaker 01

  I formed it in nineteen sixty-seven.

• 19:46Logan Bartlett?

  So maybe that's a good segue into, I want to talk about that period in your life just because it seems like a really cool, interesting time in New York. But, so your father immigrated from Ukraine as an orphan at four years old, moved to Ohio?

• 20:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 20:01Logan Bartlett?

  And then how did he end up, he ended up in New York?

• 20:03Speaker 01

  Everybody ends up in New York. His brother, his brother came here first and he followed him.

• 20:08Logan Bartlett?

  And then he was in the remnant business and then became a stockbroker.

• 20:13Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 20:13Logan Bartlett?

  And you were living on where?

• 20:14Speaker 01

  West side of New York.

• 20:15Logan Bartlett?

  Just for people that, I mean, I've lived here for the last, whatever, plus or minus ten years. What was New York, how would you describe it at the time, growing up on the Upper, Upper West Side?

• 20:26Speaker 01

  It was a very personal, more informal basis, as I have said, you know, you still had, I mean, I don't want to make myself like an antiquarian, but I mean, there was still an ice truck that came down the street.

• 20:40Logan Bartlett?

  Sure.

• 20:41Speaker 01

  There was still coal shoots, and there was a lot of, as a young kid, playing on the streets. And, you know, Central Park was our, our front yard or backyard, however you want. And I, there was a real interaction with the city. I went to school by subway. And, you know, I used to ride my bike all over the city. Today, forget about, the bike riding today is a different kind of bike experience. You're not doing it where you go visit your friend in a bike, you, you know, you're getting a city bike to go to work or something.

• 21:20Logan Bartlett?

  Sure.

• 21:21Speaker 01

  It was, it was a very.

• 21:25Speaker 01

  It was like living in the suburbs, or like living in a small town.

• 21:29Logan Bartlett?

  Yeah, it was closer to that. Interesting. And so then you ended up going to Horace Mann, a well-known prep school here in New York, and then found your way to Ohio State, which wasn't exactly a pipeline, right?

• 21:41Speaker 01

  I hadn't planned to go there.

• 21:42Logan Bartlett?

  You hadn't planned to go there. You almost went to Brandeis and maybe...

• 21:46Speaker 01

  Well, you really have read the book.

• 21:48Logan Bartlett?

  I told you, I prepped for this. You asked how we were gonna talk this long, and I said I was gonna do a bunch of prep. So you almost went to Brandeis, which was a new school at the time, right? And then ended up finding your way to Ohio State, which was not the plan, right?

• 22:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, I went through in three years and did pretty well. And I was able to move quickly because I had a lot of advanced courses because of Horace Mann courses that I had taken that made me qualified for credits quicker. I wanna go back for a second.

• 22:20Logan Bartlett?

  Yeah, hit me.

• 22:21Speaker 01

  Because you talked about 66 to 70. Days, I always talk about this, which is not great for my current activities, but those were my most exciting days. Because if you, you know, you have to understand, this was the time of the Beatles. It was the time, music was terrific, fashion was front and center.

• 22:44Speaker 01

  And I had, you know, here is running the leading magazine in the city, having this nightclub in Southampton for the summers. And I'd been, having just gotten divorced, I was in a very interesting position.

• 23:00Logan Bartlett?

  Very social.

• 23:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, and it was a fun time.

• 23:02Logan Bartlett?

  You were 33 to 37-ish in that period?

• 23:06Speaker 01

  I was 30, 30, yeah, 30, yeah.

• 23:08Logan Bartlett?

  What is a nightclub in 1960?

• 23:12Speaker 01

  This particular one was a unique one, which is actually in the history books, not because of me. I backed a guy named Bobby Goldstein, who's still alive. Spells his name B-O-B-B, Bob Goldstein, and a guy named Joshua White, which formed something called the Joshua Light Show, which is still actually operating and travels around the country. And Josh and Bob had this idea of a...

• 23:42Speaker 01

  Different concept of a multimedia discotheque. It was a discotheque, more than a nightclub.

• 23:49Logan Bartlett?

  What's the distinction you're drawing there?

• 23:50Speaker 01

  I don't know. A nightclub means something different to me.

• 23:53Logan Bartlett?

  Yeah, okay, okay.

• 23:54Speaker 01

  It was a discotheque and it had the crystal ball.

• 24:00Logan Bartlett?

  Yeah, that's what I pictured.

• 24:02Speaker 01

  It was. It was one of the first, if not the first, I don't know that for sure.

• 24:06Logan Bartlett?

  Where was it?

• 24:07Speaker 01

  In Southampton on North Sea Road. And it had projections of videos and stills coming from two corners, which was very crude to look back.

• 24:19Logan Bartlett?

  Onto the wall.

• 24:19Speaker 01

  I mean, using slide projectors and 16mm movie projectors.

• 24:25Logan Bartlett?

  Was someone actually going in and swapping out different?

• 24:28Speaker 01

  I was and someone was.

• 24:29Logan Bartlett?

  Yeah, that's a...

• 24:30Speaker 01

  Probably Bobby and Josh.

• 24:32Logan Bartlett?

  And being the chairman of the New York Magazine, I guess, what would you equate that to today for someone? Just, I mean, it was a big deal, right? New York Magazine was sort of the, was it a cultural center of...

• 24:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was How to Live in New York. You did, everybody subscribed to it who lived, certainly in the Manhattan world

• 24:50Logan Bartlett?

  Sure.

• 24:51Speaker 01

  of whatever was happening. I mean, it was, it was the, if you want, it was, the subtitle was How to Survive Better in New York.

• 24:58Logan Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 24:59Speaker 01

  I don't know if there is equivalent today, honestly. I don't know. You know, Rolling Stone came after that. I don't know what, what's the, you tell me, what's the equivalent today?

• 25:09Logan Bartlett?

  I was trying to think of like Lorne Michaels and SNL, but, you know, or something like that.

• 25:14Speaker 01

  SNL's been around about as long.

• 25:16Logan Bartlett?

  Yeah, I was just thinking, but in the early days of the 70s, whatever, that, if it was...

• 25:21Speaker 01

  It was a very exciting time in the whole country. I mean, it was, I don't think, New York in particular, but it was, as I say, a time of music and fashion.

• 25:33Logan Bartlett?

  Totally.

• 25:34Speaker 01

  And...

• 25:36Speaker 01

  You know, things were exciting.

• 25:37Logan Bartlett?

  Yeah, and you had some amazing writers as well, right, on staff with there. So that wasn't how you, so you came back from Ohio State.

• 25:47Speaker 01

  I did not create New York, it was created by a guy named Clay Felker. I was the chairman of the board that put together the financing.

• 25:53Logan Bartlett?

  So you came back from Ohio State and you were in econ major, finance major?

• 25:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, finance.

• 25:58Logan Bartlett?

  And you rode the elevator up and down, what building was it, just going in and asking people?

• 26:05Speaker 01

  I would, no, no, every building.

• 26:07Logan Bartlett?

  Every building, okay.

• 26:08Speaker 01

  But I got it, I started at 120 Wall Street and ended up getting a job at 63 Wall Street.

• 26:14Logan Bartlett?

  Just, just, and going into every floor and asking if there was a job available?

• 26:19Speaker 01

  There were no, no one was recruiting out in Ohio and, and there weren't, there wasn't the same kind of headhunting activities for young analysts that exist today. And you had no online?

• 26:33Logan Bartlett?

  Yeah, no online. I guess the equivalent would be sending tons of, I don't know, cold emails or something, cold calling today.

• 26:39Speaker 01

  I'm sure I did that, I'm sure I sent out plenty of resumes.

• 26:41Logan Bartlett?

  To letters and, how long did it take you to?

• 26:44Speaker 01

  Which had to be typed by hand.

• 26:45Logan Bartlett?

  Yeah. How long did it take you to find, find a job?

• 26:48Speaker 01

  Took me from June or July to September.

• 26:53Logan Bartlett?

  Okay, so, so.

• 26:54Speaker 01

  Three months, three months.

• 26:56Logan Bartlett?

  You graduated early, so you already had a schedule in that regard. And so you found your way into finance and that was a wealth management-ish type thing. And so you were picking, helping people pick stocks and manage the portfolio and all that stuff there.

• 27:11Speaker 01

  Traditional investment portfolio.

• 27:13Logan Bartlett?

  And so how'd you find your way into venture as, as we, you know, launching your first fund in 1970?

• 27:19Speaker 01

  I got recruited, I mean recruited, someone suggested me to another firm which was doing what they called development capital, which was doing projects, a finance company in Canada, a

• 27:34Speaker 01

  Telecontrol company in Michigan, trying to build a bridge across a river in Portugal. So there were projects and

• 27:44Logan Bartlett?

  And why would someone, I mean, why would they do that? Did they just think, hey, there could be good investment returns here?

• 27:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm sure they're, I'm sure there are exact firms existing today there.

• 27:54Logan Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 27:54Speaker 01

  That are working on projects and developments. And, you know, it's one step, it wasn't public stocks. It was one step closer to just doing private, we were not doing venture deals.

• 28:06Logan Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 28:06Speaker 01

  And, and then from there, you know, after a stint in the army, two stints in the army, I did, I was recruited by a friend of mine from Goldman Sachs, who suggested I meet these people at this family wealth management firm. And went there, which was running one family's money, not mine. And in the course of doing that, in addition to primarily a public portfolio, they were offered frequently opportunities to participate in private deals. And I was the only one in this organization that had an interest

• 28:50Speaker 01

  in this private, sometimes startup, sometimes later stage investments. And so that gravitated me more and more into the private deal, which I found much more fun and exciting and interesting.

• 29:04Logan Bartlett?

  Why was that? Just because you could help more?

• 29:06Speaker 01

  Because I felt in the public market, I was, I'd wake up one day and the market was down 20% or 2%, and the stocks would go down. And I had no, you know, I was like a victim.

• 29:20Logan Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 29:20Speaker 01

  Whereas in a private company, I kind of was involved. I knew what was happening. There were surprises, but they were kind of different surprises. And I felt more intimately involved. And that to me seemed like a more exciting future.

• 29:34Logan Bartlett?

  Yeah. And so, so 1970, you decide, are you, are you making a conscious decision, hey, I'm going to go launch my own venture fund? What was it called at the time?

• 29:44Speaker 01

  Alan Patricof Associates.

• 29:45Logan Bartlett?

  No, but what was the industry? I mean,

• 29:47Speaker 01

  I don't, you know, it's interesting. I don't think it was called venture capital. I think it was development capital.

• 29:52Logan Bartlett?

  Development capital.

• 29:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think so. I can't prove it. I mean, the National Venture Capital Association was formed in 73 or 74, so.

• 30:03Speaker 01

  You know, and there were firms around, I don't know the exact date, you'd have to look it up, but whether Kleiner Perkins was there then, I know Warburg Pincus was in operation because I knew Lionel who had started that, and there were.

• 30:19Logan Bartlett?

  Sequoia probably started a couple of years later, Venroc was.

• 30:23Speaker 01

  Venroc had started, the family groups, Venroc, J.H. Whitney, Bessemer, they were in operation, they were the precursor, you might say, of a venture industry.

• 30:33Logan Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 30:34Speaker 01

  They were the ones who were, if anyone, were doing deals and parts, different parts of investment banking firms, whether it was Lehman Brothers, or Loeb Rhodes, or Wortham, they had, not Morgan Stanley and not Goldman Sachs, they weren't in this era yet, but partners at these other more entrepreneurial partnership type firms were taking flyers, if you will, in early-stage deals.

• 31:02Logan Bartlett?

  And so you raised two and a half million dollars, who was that from, high net worth individuals?

• 31:06Speaker 01

  People I had met over the years in all these preceding activities, and I also had nine clients who paid me an annual retainer, so I didn't have just the two and a half.

• 31:19Logan Bartlett?

  For like wealth management services, or?

• 31:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, I said to a family managed office, look, you have your public portfolio, in case you get any private deals, send them to me and I'll vet it for you, or if I see any, I'll send them to you pre-vetted.

• 31:35Logan Bartlett?

  Got it.

• 31:36Speaker 01

  And so that's, I had nine clients.

• 31:38Logan Bartlett?

  Co-invest, the early days of co-invest.

• 31:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, plus this kitty of two and a half million dollars.

• 31:44Logan Bartlett?

  How long did it take you to raise that, do you remember?

• 31:45Speaker 01

  You know, I don't remember, I don't remember.

• 31:51Logan Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 31:52Speaker 01

  Probably not that long, because it wasn't that big, but you know, to get nine clients was not the simplest thing, to get them to pay twenty-five thousand dollars a year for a two-year contract for an idea.

• 32:02Logan Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 32:03Speaker 01

  So, but they knew me. I didn't, I don't remember getting any people I had not known.

• 32:10Logan Bartlett?

  The state of the industry, it sounds like industry might be very loosely defined at that point, but we touched on some of the names there. Were you aware of Kleiner Perkins on the West Coast and Warburg Pincus at this time? And like, were you collaborating at all? Or was it just, everything was so distinct?

• 32:29Speaker 01

  Modestly.

• 32:30Logan Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 32:31Speaker 01

  That increased as the years went on. But when I started, day one, I don't know. I actually, the only firm I think I was aware of was Allstate Insurance had an operation in Chicago run by a guy named Ned Heiser, who I always think of as a precursor of a lot of these firms. But the venture industry technically was started by a guy named General D'Urio.

• 32:57Logan Bartlett?

  Yeah, sure. George D'Urio.

• 32:59Speaker 01

  A Frenchman who taught at Harvard, who started his American Research and Development in 1946. But that was, you know, it was an isolated operation up in Boston.

• 33:13Logan Bartlett?

  Yeah, it took a little while to get going. And so the industry then, it sort of grew up over the course of the next couple of years, right? As you, as you think about the moments in time, as you sort of reflect on what's now become a pretty institutionalized industry, I was thinking about it in terms of decades, right? The 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s. But I imagine in your mind, there's probably more, different lines of demarcation, right? To some extent when the NBCA got launched, when, was it 1978 that institutions were allowed to start investing?

• 33:48Speaker 01

  Seventy, seventy-six, I think.

• 33:51Logan Bartlett?

  Seventy-six. And so those were probably big. And then there's the PC revolution, right? I'm sure for you, some of the media changes that happened along the way, obviously the internet bubble and all of that stuff. How do you sort of think about the periods of time of venture? And how do you draw demarcations in terms of the big changes that occurred?

• 34:13Speaker 01

  Well, I don't think of it like you're expressing, but if I had to, I'd say, you know, the PC revolution of the 80s, the cellular field, which was really important, mobile.

• 34:29Speaker 01

  Mobile communication was a big deal.

• 34:32Logan Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 34:33Speaker 01

  And then the internet of probably the, let's say, the 90s. I mean, and I guess we're now living in the AI world.

• 34:44Logan Bartlett?

  We were in the crypto world a year ago, so who knows?

• 34:47Speaker 01

  I've stayed away from crypto.

• 34:48Logan Bartlett?

  I know, I want to ask you about that in a second. But as you sort of think about the asset class growing up, one of the things that I reflected on was Apex, which you started, Warburg, TA, sort of, some of the East Coast firms grew up into essentially private equity firms, right? And then there was a handful of other ones on the East Coast, CRV, Greylock, that have effectively moved into West Coast firms. And what we think of today as at least that vintage of venture capital firms that still exist are mostly West Coast firms, the ones that persisted as venture firms. Was that, does that have something to do with like the geographical centricity of, hey, there weren't as many Apples or Microsofts or Amazons or whatever it was, Googles on the East Coast?

• 35:33Logan Bartlett?

  And so some of these businesses, I mean, private equity can be a much more scalable asset class than venture can. And so in some ways, you could argue it's a better business. But where do you think the East Coast firms kind of grew up into a lot of private equity firms?

• 35:44Speaker 01

  I always say my friends at Apex, they'll make more money in one investment than a venture firm will do in a whole firm.

• 35:50Logan Bartlett?

  Oh, yeah. It's, listen, managing or having a $70 billion AUM or whatever, the math pencils out pretty well.

• 35:57Speaker 01

  The private equity business is a money, is a financial engineering, discounted cash flows, present value calculations, and a very competitive business, much more so than venture.

• 36:12Logan Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 36:12Speaker 01

  I mean, people are competing for deals. Everything gets put out to, you know, to multiple people.

• 36:19Logan Bartlett?

  It's zero sum for the most part. You're not collaborating.

• 36:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 36:23Logan Bartlett?

  There's no co-invent, I mean, sometimes there is.

• 36:25Speaker 01

  Everybody's trying to compete with each other. The highest price usually wins. Venture is a much more independent, not as organized. You know, that's why there are so many venture firms.

• 36:40Logan Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 36:41Speaker 01

  There must be thousands. Every day, someone leaves a firm and starts another venture firm. So I think that the truth is that there is, the technology world really.

• 36:54Speaker 01

  Formed itself in and around Fairchild, Fairchild Engineering in Northern California. And company, venture firms were spawned, startups were spawned from that, that base. Really, there was a base. And, you know, people have done maps of how those companies. Yeah, the derivatives from. Exactly. And we don't have that in the East Coast. And it's, you know, people have bemoaned this fact for many, many years that there wasn't technology. Today, so many of these major companies all have some presence here, whether it's Google, or Amazon, or Facebook, or Microsoft. Everybody's got a big presence on the East

• 37:38Speaker 01

  Coast. So there's more likely to be technology startups here. You know, will it get bigger than the West Coast? I doubt it, but certainly it's happening. Also, the venture business was primarily Boston and somewhat New York and Northern California. When I started Greycroft with my two partners, Dana Sutlin, Ian Siglo, we opened up in Los Angeles, and of course, we're in New York. And I would say to you today, Los Angeles is a major factor in the venture industry. I'd say that New York, many of the West Coast

• 38:23Speaker 01

  firms have opened up here. NEA's opened up here, I believe Sequoia may have opened up here. So I haven't. Index just opened up here. You know, they, they obviously feel they've got to be in this area. I think Boston has declined because Boston got mostly medical firms. I mean, Greylock moved out of Boston. Charles River moved. I don't know, they, they probably may have some presence still in Boston. So, and then you have my friend Steve Case, who's going around the country with Revolution, rightly saying that there's startups every place, and there's technology

• 39:05Speaker 01

  every place, and there's creative entrepreneurial people in Kierkuk, Iowa. Yeah.

• 39:14Speaker 01

  People should be nurturing these companies, whether it's local money or national money. Greycroft has prided itself in investing all over the country. I was very active at Greycroft in a company in Minneapolis. We had another company in Nashville and Columbus, Ohio. I mean, so I think that the industry is much more diffused today, although at the end of the day, the heart of technology is still Silicon Valley.

• 39:50Logan Bartlett?

  The industry, or APACs as it grew up, right, and started to become more...

• 39:54Speaker 01

  It was Alan Patrick of Associates till it changed the name. So, really, the first, almost 20 years was Alan Patrick of Associates. And then, when we started promoting a new name, which worked perfectly.

• 40:09Logan Bartlett?

  And so, from 1970 to 1987, or whatever, Alan Patrick of Associates, then APACs after that. How, initially, it was development capital, and then it sort of, the venture was institutionalized. Along the way, at some point, it started to be a little bit more private equity, as you touched on. When did that shift start happening?

• 40:27Speaker 01

  About, well, it was probably in the 90s.

• 40:33Logan Bartlett?

  Yeah. Sunglass Hut and a few other investments.

• 40:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, Office Depot was earlier, but, yeah, we were, you know, let's face it, people would rather work on substantive numbers as opposed to theoretical market extrapolations, which is, you know, it's putting up your finger to the wind. I mean, no one knows how a lot of these young companies will develop. Primetime Partners, my new firm, focuses on early-stage, seed and early-stage, and, you know, most of the companies are, you know, year, two, three years old, and not a lot of financial... Substance or analysis you could deal with, you've got to deal with what you think

• 41:19Speaker 01

  the opportunities are in the market they're addressing.

• 41:22Logan Bartlett?

  Yeah, I want to talk about prime time in a second, but so APAC's scaled up and after the internet bubble, you decided that it sort of became a private equity.

• 41:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, I was just, and I didn't like, I didn't enjoy that as much as being involved with early-stage companies.

• 41:38Logan Bartlett?

  And so then you took off a couple of years from venture investing and did some political-related stuff.

• 41:46Speaker 01

  No, I did mostly international, I worked international development.

• 41:49Logan Bartlett?

  Got it.

• 41:50Speaker 01

  I went as a pro bono for the World Bank and the IFC. I went on a couple of nonprofit boards, which were involved in entrepreneurial development abroad. And then I got appointed by Democratic appointment in the Bush administration to go on something of the board of the Millennium Challenge Corporation, which was involved in international new concepts in our foreign aid. And, you know, I did that, and it was a very exciting time. And then I happened to meet the president of Nigeria and got involved with his presidential advisory council. So I, you know, no red lights.

• 42:31Logan Bartlett?

  Yeah, you were very active through that period, but what made you decide to start another firm after, I guess, five, six years?

• 42:39Speaker 01

  Because I saw that things had settled down in the venture business. I didn't think what I was doing was enough for me. I felt I had so much energy still in me that, why not do it again?

• 42:54Logan Bartlett?

  Yes.

• 42:54Speaker 01

  And so I started out what I hoped would be a pure venture firm. I think Greycroft has morphed into a venture and growth fund firm today. I wouldn't call it a private equity firm. And, you know, I wanted to do something again. I started up and found a couple of other people who agreed with me and opened offices. And today, as of last week, I think they have 65 people working at Greycroft.

• 43:26Logan Bartlett?

  Oh. And so then, so that was 2006 to 2018, 19. You started to do a transition out of Greycroft.

• 43:36Logan Bartlett?

  You officially left last year, but started to talk about it with the partners.

• 43:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, I guess it's about three years.

• 43:45Logan Bartlett?

  Three years. And was that similar, the capital was kind of scaling and it started to be a little bit of a different business?

• 43:51Speaker 01

  No, nothing to do with that. It's just that I, we were becoming a bigger firm, more administrative aspects. And I felt well I had two all-star partners and I felt, and I, so I worked at a four-year transition. So it wasn't like I dropped dead and I've done several deals in the last several.

• 44:17Logan Bartlett?

  You did Axios during that period of time.

• 44:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, I've done Wondery and I've done a whole bunch of podcast companies. And I, you know, as of, you know, without a specific date, I've kind of, I'm not doing any new deals for Greycroft anymore. But my own interest, the last, the last deal I did was about a year ago, the last new deal that I put in the portfolio. With the approval of the whole partnership, was a very interesting company in the government procurement area.

• 44:50Logan Bartlett?

  Oh, cool. And so then you, but you had another act in you and you, so you started Primetime Partners. So what was the impetus to do that?

• 45:00Speaker 01

  It was the same impetus, well, it was a combo. One is the book as I was writing it. Number two was I was reading a lot of stuff about what the population trends were. And I kept reading that, you know, the population for those people over 60 by 2030 would be bigger than those under 18. I saw all the venture money running into dog walking and fast delivery companies. And the more I read about what was happening, and at the same time, my wife was very ill with Alzheimer's. So I saw all the needs there were for older people.

• 45:38Speaker 01

  And as I say, I saw a lot of my friends retiring. And I started thinking about this is a whole market that is really not being adequately addressed. And I had been on the board of Thrive Global, which was Arianna Huffington's company dealing with wellness. And one day, my son said to me, you know, Abby Levy, who was the founding president with Arianna of Thrive Global, and who I would see at board meetings every three months.

• 46:13Speaker 01

  He said, he had gone to Harvard Business School with her. And he said, you know, Abby Levy is thinking of the same thing you've been thinking, except that she's going to do something about it, and you're just talking about it. You ought to get together. So we got together two days later, no red lights. And within a few weeks, we formed a firm. And I came up with the name Primetime Partners, which was, I'm living in my prime time now. I think everybody over 60 is in their prime time. You know, think about this, if I'm right about living to 114, we'll see if I am. At 60, you have, you just about lived half your life. So you got the whole, the second half to go. So make the most of it. So we, we had a similarity of interests.

• 46:59Speaker 01

  Abby was more interested in the product and services aspect. I was more interested in the older entrepreneur opportunities for backing people. But there was a definite confluence of interest. And so we just did it.

• 47:17Logan Bartlett?

  So those are the two.

• 47:18Speaker 01

  Just as COVID was starting.

• 47:20Logan Bartlett?

  And so those are the two areas, is services and products and content related, technology related to the generation. And then also founders of the generation. Oh, I didn't realize, I didn't realize.

• 47:31Speaker 01

  But founders, not necessarily servicing the old.

• 47:35Logan Bartlett?

  Yes, but founders of that generation.

• 47:37Speaker 01

  Anyway, you know, anyone who's got a good idea, our waiting room will give you a seat.

• 47:44Logan Bartlett?

  Oh, interesting. I didn't appreciate both, both sides of that. So from a, from an investment standpoint, now that's a $50 million fund that you, that you're currently investing out of, and it's, it's. A million, 500K kind of investments and then you'll scale over time.

• 48:00Speaker 01

  I think we had a couple of $2 million.

• 48:01Logan Bartlett?

  $2 million investment.

• 48:02Speaker 01

  But we've also had a couple of quarter million dollar investments.

• 48:05Logan Bartlett?

  You've been pretty vocal, I guess, investment style. I've heard you talk about that not every business should be venture funded and there's different types of capital and now, you know, power law and swinging for the fences and the fund sizes that are commensurate with entrepreneurs going big or going home, right?

• 48:25Speaker 01

  The Reid Hoffman concept.

• 48:26Logan Bartlett?

  The Reid Hoffman, blitzscaling, all of that stuff. I get the feeling that, I've heard you be much more measured, both in terms of your approach, right, that you can, hey, some of those podcast investments you've done have been fantastic IRRs and good cash on cash returns, but not huge absolute dollar.

• 48:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, it's interesting. I've built a lot of my reputation on a lot of successful media related investments, whether it was Audible or cellular communications or line broadcasting. I've done a lot of in the media area and I did it when I was at Alan Patricof Associates. We did it when we were called APAX. We did it at Greycroft. We're not doing that in prime time, not yet, but Greycroft has decided that they really don't want to do new media investments. That did not affect my change in status, but I'm more logically from there, from that

• 49:26Speaker 01

  standpoint, interested in putting in media investments into Greycroft. But they, they said just what you did, the, let's face it, I don't think there's any, been any media deal that's had a resolution of more than 500 million dollars.

• 49:45Logan Bartlett?

  Axios was probably the biggest one, right?

• 49:47Speaker 01

  The biggest. So, you're not, you can't shoot for the fences, you're not going to get a $10 billion exit and Buzzfeed is a perfect example.

• 49:54Logan Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 49:55Speaker 01

  You know, one time they thought that was a billion six, I don't know what the... valuation would be today. So I think media is just not getting the multiples or the interest and probably probably so.

• 50:10Logan Bartlett?

  What would you say to entrepreneurs that maybe in media or not that or the industry at large about the need to swing for the fences with these fund sizes and all that? And do you think that there just needs to be different financial products and fund sizes that generating $100 million acquisition is fantastic, right? Is it something that structurally the industry has just moved too far to this expectation that, hey, if it's not multi-billion dollar, then it's not worth it?

• 50:41Speaker 01

  I mean, look, that's the prevalence of thinking today. When I started Greycroft, specifically in our first presentation pitch deck, it said we're looking for small investments and we're looking at realistic outcomes that don't depend on a public market and that, you know, can make money at $100 million or $200 million that don't require a billion dollar exit. So many larger sized funds, there is a inclination, that a necessity to put larger amounts of money into a deal and to shoot for higher outcomes.

• 51:22Speaker 01

  I don't think necessarily that it's going to work that way, but based on some of the valuations that have occurred, if they don't have that kind of outcome, they're going to have a lot of long holding periods and very short outcomes.

• 51:38Logan Bartlett?

  Yeah. In terms of your investment approach to working with companies, you also, I think in the early days of Greycroft said, hey, we're not going to take board seats, we'll take observer seats. What was the philosophy behind that?

• 51:50Speaker 01

  Well, I learned from at that time, whatever number of years I'd been in the business, that in every instance, as a venture investor, you had a minority position. You had control through the contract you wrote. So the contract had provisions for borrowing and for salary changes and all those things. But it wasn't because you had a board seat. So, and I knew that every venture firm that I knew would insist on it.

• 52:21Speaker 01

  Having a board seat because they wanted to show their limited partners we're a value-added investor and we take a board seat on every company we're in implying that they had ability to influence the outcome. And I realized that a board seat didn't mean a damn thing. If you're a private equity investor, it does mean something if you're a leveraged buy at a because you have more than 41%, so you really kind of are the, you're the owner. But when you go into an early-stage deal and you're a minority position, it's probably going to be the second or third round, fourth round, if you have to have it, that the control aspects of the board are going to count.

• 53:01Speaker 01

  So I said, why not make yourself venture-friendly to other firms? And say to any other firm, you can have the board seat. We'll be an observer. And you know, sometimes there are two venture firms vying for seats. Both of you can be, and we don't have to be the lead, you can be the lead.

• 53:20Logan Bartlett?

  And you'll use your soft diplomacy anyway to be effective.

• 53:23Speaker 01

  Sitting at the board, you can speak and have your say and influence outside the meeting, but you don't have the vote and you don't serve on the audit committee or the compensation committee. And I had learned that that's not a bad position to be in. Entrepreneurs love the idea. When we first started saying, you don't want a board seat. You're the only person we've talked to who doesn't want a board seat. And in many cases, it made you more attractive because they didn't have to deal with people fighting for board seats.

• 53:57Logan Bartlett?

  It's a differentiator. Yeah, well, now it's sort of come back in the news with all the FDX stuff that's played out. But from a, from a market standpoint, I guess this, this ties into crypto at large. Like, how have you thought, you stayed out of crypto. Now we're in AI, you've seen the internet, you saw mobile and cellular, you saw the PC revolution. And I guess as, as you see these markets, how do you determine what's speculative, right? And maybe not going to persist versus what, you stayed out of crypto. Like, what was it in crypto specifically that you said, hey, this maybe isn't for me or not interesting?

• 54:34Speaker 01

  I came to that conclusion a little differently. I decided, this is one time where age had an impact. I said, crypto is a whole new language and I've got to Learn a whole new set of words and phrases.

• 54:53Logan Bartlett?

  You have to tweet GM is what they do.

• 54:55Speaker 01

  And I said, I really don't feel like learning it.

• 54:58Logan Bartlett?

  Got it.

• 54:59Speaker 01

  So when I get asked all the time, like in podcasts like this or in person, what's your opinion of podcasts? I say the same thing, you know, I don't want to pontificate because I am not experienced. But I've, I stayed out of it.

• 55:14Logan Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 55:15Speaker 01

  I can't tell you my three sons haven't done it, but that, they've done that independently.

• 55:20Logan Bartlett?

  Yeah, got it. Interesting.

• 55:21Speaker 01

  Like everybody else.

• 55:23Logan Bartlett?

  This sort of backs up to the, the point about investing in returns for venture scale companies versus not, but entrepreneurialism has been very much in vogue over the course of the last, I mean, particularly the last 10 years, I think, sort of post-social network. I feel like there was definitely a, and the money's been so plentiful. You speak at business schools and will often ask the audience, how many people plan to go into entrepreneurialism? What, in terms of evaluating founders, what, what do you actually look for? Like those people that are listening that are in business school or whatever, and they say, oh yeah, I want to go be a founder, I want to start a company. What, what should they be asking themselves if it's a good idea or not? And, and when should they go? Should they do it right out of business school?

• 56:07Logan Bartlett?

  Should they go learn under someone to get experience on someone else's dime? How do you think about it?

• 56:10Speaker 01

  You know, it's different for each person, but I, I believe that unfortunately, there are a lot of businesses that are being started by people particularly out of business school or whatever school or no school.

• 56:22Logan Bartlett?

  You went to business school, I didn't, so you can make fun of it.

• 56:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, no, no, but I think it, it feeds on itself because they see someone from a previous class or someone they know who started a business and who on paper is worth a lot of money or maybe really made money. And so they want to emulate them and so they want to start something. And I think that there's not enough attention. Given to, you know, is this a good business? The address market I'm going after? Do I know it? Do I know something about it? Have I really analyzed what the opportunities are of where I'm going? Do they understand the economics of that business? And what it takes to make a profit? Are they passionate about it?

• 57:08Speaker 01

  I mean, you know, another one who starts a dog walking company, I don't mean to beat on dog walking, but you know, is that something you're passionate about? But if I met somebody, I don't care whether they came out of business school or whatever, who talks about the market they're going into with real specificity and experience, hopefully, maybe only a little bit, but some experience, where they understand what it takes to make a profit? You know, what the, what a gross margin is and what the costs are to get to that market? Where they really care about it and have something to bring to the party? And where hopefully, if possible, they bring some differential in terms of some proprietary advantage?

• 57:52Speaker 01

  I think that that would be the most exciting kind of business. As opposed to someone who comes in with a business plan, who has no experience in it? And who has decided to go into that business?

• 58:06Logan Bartlett?

  Yeah, that's one of the things I found is you're asking yourself, well, one, why is this market going to happen? And for now versus some period in the past, right? But then also why you uniquely versus everyone else in the world can help solve this problem? What is the insight you have or the, the experience you have? Or the team you're building around or something like that? Yeah, it, it makes a lot of sense. In terms of, I want to play some of the, some of the investments. So outside of being legendary Alan Patricof, you also are associated with your, an investment in Apple, right? Which happened pre-IPO as they were going public? What was the state of the company then? And like what, I, I know you weren't a early-stage venture investor,

• 58:48Logan Bartlett?

  but it was only a $60 million valuation at whatever, one and a half times revenue. So I think it's. Close to 2 trillion now, so in the grand scheme of things, you were a very early investor in Apple.

• 58:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, I was, but I don't want to take a lot of credit out of it. It wasn't like, what it was is I had just read a lot of what was going on. I had happened to have bought a TI machine, Texas machine, for someone's friend of mine whose daughter just graduated from high school. I knew about Commodore business machine and I had been reading a lot about Apple in it. I was just fortuitous that a friend of mine who sadly passed away just last week, a guy named Tommy Utterberg, who ran a firm called Utterberg Tobin, which was probably one of the leading investment banking firms in the technology world. They brought Intel Public and they, part of the Apple Syndicate,

• 59:42Speaker 01

  had a piece of investment available and I, you know, got a very brief opportunity to talk to the company. I can't tell you there was extensive due diligence, but I thought this was an area we wanted to have a participation and I had the opportunity. So I don't want to take a lot of credit. I don't, I was not a founder. I didn't build a company. I was a lucky investor at the right time.

• 1:00:11Logan Bartlett?

  Is it, is it funny that that now has some association, this investment, like of all the ones that you've been super actively involved, like Apple, former, early Apple investor Alan Patricof?

• 1:00:22Speaker 01

  I can't go on CNBC without.

• 1:00:25Logan Bartlett?

  It's a good hook. I mean, maybe we'll do it on our YouTube videos. We'll say, "Early Apple investor Alan Patricof."

• 1:00:30Speaker 01

  Every time there's an Apple quarterly report, I get called and I, I don't promote it. I tell the truth, but it leads into other things.

• 1:00:40Logan Bartlett?

  Yeah, of course, of course.

• 1:00:40Speaker 01

  It's been very helpful.

• 1:00:41Logan Bartlett?

  Similarly FedEx was one that you passed on along the way because of what? The capital intensity of the business?

• 1:00:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, I, I think I intelligently analyzed it at that time. It was, Stromberg-Holson was involved in it at the time, as I recall. I met with Fred Smith. I had someone who was working with me go down to Nashville, I guess it was.

• 1:01:04Logan Bartlett?

  Yeah, or Memphis.

• 1:01:05Speaker 01

  Memphis, Memphis. And when I realized what the capital it was going to be required, and we had a small fund, remember? Two and a half million dollars and these nine clients, it was the 1970s. I said, "We'll get wiped out after the first round. We won't, we won't have any money to keep." Playing and it turned out that there were three or four rounds and anyone who didn't participate got wiped out and so when it went public and I can't remember the year it went public. I said, listen, I have all this knowledge and experience in it. At least we're gonna buy on the IPO. So we put that in the portfolio and I think we made five, 10 times on our money. Probably did better than those early stage people, I can tell you.

• 1:01:49Logan Bartlett?

  Totally. Better be right twice, right? Pick the right timing and yeah, be right about all that stuff. What about AOL? So you were early.

• 1:01:56Speaker 01

  AOL I was early.

• 1:01:57Logan Bartlett?

  Early and you bought, it was bought out of bankruptcy?

• 1:01:59Speaker 01

  It was bought out of bankruptcy. It was a game company and playing video games on, online. And it went through bankruptcy. Kleiner had been an investor in it and Frank Caulfield had a friend who lived in Washington, DC where the company was located at that time, who was running restaurants. Got him Jim Kimsey and he convinced Jim to go and step in and run this company, taking it out of bankruptcy and they went, were trying to raise money and I was one of two or three people, I think Citigroup, Inco, International Nickel Company Venture, myself

• 1:02:42Speaker 01

  and Kleiner, I think, put some more money in and I got actively involved.

• 1:02:48Logan Bartlett?

  How did it, what was the state, what was the business that was spinning out of the gaming company? Was it the portal?

• 1:02:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was the concept and I helped because I have my relationship with Apple. I did help to get them introduced. The first service they had was called Apple Link and then they, the company was called Quantum Computer. That was the first thing, coming out of bankruptcy and then they changed it to America Online. The service became America Online and the company became America.

• 1:03:18Logan Bartlett?

  What was the peak valuation for AOL at the?

• 1:03:21Speaker 01

  When they sold it to?

• 1:03:22Logan Bartlett?

  No, well, at the top of the internet bubble, like what was it, what was it worth?

• 1:03:26Speaker 01

  Well, that's when they sold it to America, to AT&T for a. I think a hundred billion dollars.

• 1:03:32Logan Bartlett?

  Oh, wow.

• 1:03:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was supposed to be, I guess in hindsight, one of the biggest disasters of of corporate history in terms of a shrinkage of value.

• 1:03:42Logan Bartlett?

  Yeah, value creation, yeah.

• 1:03:43Speaker 01

  I was not there at, I wish I had been there at the time because it was huge.

• 1:03:48Logan Bartlett?

  Yeah, financial.

• 1:03:48Speaker 01

  Value compared to when we went in.

• 1:03:49Logan Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:50Speaker 01

  Uh, but we did very well as the investment. I got to know Steve Case, who was then at that time, marketing vice president of AOL, and then he became president.

• 1:03:59Logan Bartlett?

  Oh, I didn't realize that. Who was running the business, Leontis?

• 1:04:01Speaker 01

  Jim Kimsey.

• 1:04:02Logan Bartlett?

  Oh, Jim Kimsey was, okay, interesting.

• 1:04:03Speaker 01

  But, but Steve clearly was, you know, bringing to the fore some, you know, real insights into the whole technology world. He, he, his brother was a guy named, uh, Steve Case, I'm sorry, Dan Case, who was working for Hambricht and Quist on the West Coast. And that's how he got involved in the company because of, Hambricht was involved with Kleiner and...

• 1:04:26Logan Bartlett?

  Sure, investment banking and all that. Well, I want to, I want to end with a few things related to, I guess, doubling back to the book, so...

• 1:04:34Speaker 01

  We didn't talk about primetime.

• 1:04:36Logan Bartlett?

  Oh, I thought...

• 1:04:36Speaker 01

  No, we didn't.

• 1:04:37Logan Bartlett?

  We touched on some. What, what do you want to hit on primetime?

• 1:04:40Speaker 01

  Well, I'm just saying, you know, I started primetime because of the opportunities in this field, and I think this is a burgeoning area.

• 1:04:46Logan Bartlett?

  So what, what do you think about the, I mean, obviously, you, you've lived this experience over the last, uh, whatever, twenty-nine, twenty-eight years? You've been in the primetime, uh, target market, right?

• 1:04:59Speaker 01

  I didn't think about it that way. Okay.

• 1:05:01Logan Bartlett?

  Yeah, which, which ironically, I mean, I guess, one fourteen, you sort of, the amount of time you've been here is, uh... Uh, so, so what, uh, what uniquely about having a product and a focus on this appealed to you? Obviously, the trends behind it are super impressive, right?

• 1:05:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, I did come to this, but we now have thirty investments. And, uh, it runs, you know, from caregiving to telemedicine, focused on older people, to consumer products.

• 1:05:30Logan Bartlett?

  What's the percentage rate about, of servicing the industry versus older founders?

• 1:05:34Speaker 01

  Oh, no, it's, it's mostly, we have, we have, we have several older founders in, but in this area.

• 1:05:43Logan Bartlett?

  Oh, they are, okay.

• 1:05:43Speaker 01

  We don't have any older founder who came to us to start a pain company.

• 1:05:48Logan Bartlett?

  Got it.

• 1:05:48Speaker 01

  Which we're, I'm still waiting for.

• 1:05:49Logan Bartlett?

  Still waiting for the pain company?

• 1:05:50Speaker 01

  But, but we're, you know, we're like any early-stage startup fund, uh... You know, it takes time for these companies to mature. Our half-life is probably a year, a year and a half because we've made investments, you know, a month ago or last week.

• 1:06:04Logan Bartlett?

  Yeah, totally.

• 1:06:05Speaker 01

  So, but I, and there are several firms that have started up since then, who really have identified this area as we have as a fast-growing area. And every large firm has now the word longevity or aging someplace in their deck.

• 1:06:25Logan Bartlett?

  Sure.

• 1:06:26Speaker 01

  So that, you know, they will do an isolated deal too. But when we started, Abby and I both said we want to become thought leaders in this area. And we really have accomplished it. There are not too many conferences or appearances and events that we don't get an opportunity to present the story. And I would say most companies, we had a meeting with a company this morning, and they want us as an investor because Primetime Partners is identified with this market. And if they're in your cap table, it kind of helps to identify who your market is. And we've really been really very religious.

• 1:07:08Speaker 01

  Our portfolio, really, every single company services the, let's say, 50 and over. I used to say 60 and over, but certainly the older generation. You don't see the dog-walking companies.

• 1:07:22Logan Bartlett?

  Yeah, no dog-walking companies in that. Are there, how much of an advantage has it been from an inbound flow standpoint?

• 1:07:28Speaker 01

  Oh, very big.

• 1:07:28Logan Bartlett?

  Is that the biggest advantage of?

• 1:07:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, we're the thought leader. If someone has something in this area, or even a major firm has something, I would hope they'd say, we ought to call Primetime, get them as a co-investor. They don't require a board seat.

• 1:07:43Logan Bartlett?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 1:07:44Speaker 01

  They don't need to be lead and get them as a participant. And they know something about this market. I mean, clearly, after almost three years, we know a lot of what's going on in this market and have a good sense of what. Would work and what won't work.

• 1:08:00Logan Bartlett?

  So, uh, Fund One you signed up for, you started in eighty-five, typically ten-plus year cycles, right? How many more?

• 1:08:08Speaker 01

  And no one asked me whether I would be here at ninety-five to see the end of the fund, which, by the way, you know, funds don't end in ten years.

• 1:08:15Logan Bartlett?

  They do not. They typically end up being twelve, fourteen, fifteen, all that. So, uh, it feels like kind of a rude question to ask if you're gonna be around at that.

• 1:08:22Speaker 01

  No one asked me.

• 1:08:23Logan Bartlett?

  No one asked you. How many more, uh, funds do you think you're gonna, you're gonna sell back from one fourteen?

• 1:08:28Speaker 01

  One more.

• 1:08:29Logan Bartlett?

  One more.

• 1:08:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think, hopefully, or possibly we'll do another fund for Primetime Two, maybe sometime later this year, and, uh, we'll see if anyone says to me, will you be here in, in, uh?

• 1:08:43Logan Bartlett?

  Now you've opened the aperture for.

• 1:08:44Speaker 01

  Ninety-eight, at ninety-eight.

• 1:08:45Logan Bartlett?

  Uh, listen, I, I don't know. I mean, if you're, if you're.

• 1:08:47Speaker 01

  If they know me and they heard this podcast and they've looked at my record and they know I'm living to a hundred and fourteen, they won't ask the question.

• 1:08:54Logan Bartlett?

  I don't, I don't know why they would. If you're still, if you're doing three events a night and, uh, and working out five days a week, I, I don't know, I don't know why they would ask that question. It feels like a pretty obvious answer that one fourteen's pretty attainable for you.

• 1:09:06Speaker 01

  Part of my workout, by the way, is I walk every place, to work, from work, to events. I did not work here today because I've gotta drive someplace after.

• 1:09:16Logan Bartlett?

  So I, I guess, um, in conclusion, as we wrap, uh, one of the things that stuck out the most in the book and, uh, in talking to you and, and, and all the prep that, that I did is you, um, you seem very optimistic. I think to be in venture, you, you probably should be optimistic about things. We're, we're living now in a somewhat nihilistic, um, you know, uh, time period where big tech is under a lot of scrutiny, right? Not to, not to go down a political rabbit hole about this stuff, but big tech and how workers are getting treated and, and all of this stuff is, is under more, uh, scrutiny than it has been.

• 1:09:56Logan Bartlett?

  And I think there's a level of, um, attention that's being put on Silicon Valley and tech, rightfully so, wrongfully so, whatever, not to debate that, but. It's a period and then economically it's not the best. Politically, I think we're in gridlock. There's obviously a war going on in Ukraine and Russia, right? Which I'm sure is personal to you. But how do you, among all this stuff, how do you stay optimistic? How do you, what, obviously it's an innate to you just in general. But how have you been able to maintain over the course of your life such a relentless level of optimism and positivity and just no red lights moving forward and all of this?

• 1:10:40Speaker 01

  I honestly have to lean on the title and keep saying, you know, it's the way I've lived my life. You can't live a life, it's no red lights and then have a lot of stoplights preventing you from doing things. Plus, if you're in this business, in the venture business, you have to have a positive attitude and wake up every day in the face of lots of problems like any, you know, we all have the same thing and try to overcome them and have a positive point of view. And I really have, you know, every day start that way. I mentioned in the book, the fact that I hope every day the elevator door is going to open and the next Steve Jobs is going to walk out.

• 1:11:23Speaker 01

  It's a, it's, you know, living your life in a positive fashion. I want to, in effect, say, in my activities in prime time, one of the things I liked about the area we're in is that it doesn't have cyclicality. We're going to get more older people and everyone's going to get older. They're going to need more things. It's relatively inflation resistant, doesn't, all these companies don't have interest, they're so young, they don't borrow monies, they don't have any interest rates. They're not affected by politics. So I like.

• 1:11:59Logan Bartlett?

  If it works, it's going to work.

• 1:12:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, I like this area that we're not as vulnerable as to a traditional firm that's got to worry about, you know, the next thing, wiping out their technology or what.

• 1:12:12Speaker 01

  Their, you know, cost of capital is and a whole bunch of things. So I just think that I look in the bright side. I've been through cycles. I've lived through down cycles so many times. And one of the things that in the last couple of years in particular, I've tried to convey to people I've worked with at Greycroft and Primetime, you know, it's not all going to go one direction and, you know, be tempered in the kind of pricing you have in deals and what your expectations are to be realistic that, you know, Rose Garden isn't there all the time.

• 1:12:51Speaker 01

  So be careful in what you're doing, be disciplined, and I try very hard to infuse that in what I do.

• 1:13:00Logan Bartlett?

  And that's on the investor side and the perspective you've given at both Primetime and Greycroft. What about on the entrepreneurial side and this macro environment? Like if you're an entrepreneur right now that has had to do layoffs or is facing business uncertainty, I guess any advice that you would give to those people?

• 1:13:15Speaker 01

  I'd say make sure your costs are in control. That's first and foremost. Make sure obviously you have enough capital. Don't get yourself over leveraged because, you know, sooner or later you got to pay the piper. And it will turn. I mean, you have to take the attitude if you've got a good, solid concept and you've got decent economics that will, this market will turn. The IPO market will come back. It just always does. Valuations will go up again. But I think I would urge an entrepreneur who's raising money, who needs capital, to

• 1:13:59Speaker 01

  be realistic and forget about what they thought were valuations in 22 or 21. And Not spend a lot of their time digging down a rabbit hole to, you know, raise money at unrealistic valuations. And that's a, that's more important than anything else is get the money, get it quicker and get back to what you're doing instead of trying to live in what the euphoria of the last couple of years. Cause I think we're going to be in a very, you know, I don't want to say monochromatic, but I think the world I see in 22, I don't, I don't

• 1:14:39Speaker 01

  see dramatic recovery. I don't, I don't see the, the underpinnings to create that, but that's, that's not all bad. I mean, you know, you always need a, a kind of digestion period and resetting. And that's what we're going through, I think in 23.

• 1:14:54Logan Bartlett?

  Well, the legendary Alan Patricof. Thanks for, uh, thanks for doing this. This was fun. Everyone, uh, your book is on sale everywhere. If you want to buy Amazon.

• 1:15:03Speaker 01

  Yeah. And I, and I read it myself on Audible.

• 1:15:06Logan Bartlett?

  Oh, you did? Uh, yes. I, I actually listened to, uh, part of it on Audible as well. So, uh, yes, you can get it wherever books are sold, but I, I thoroughly enjoyed it. Thank you for doing this. A, uh, a life well-lived and a lot of interesting insights. So, thank you.

• 1:15:20Speaker 01

  Thanks for inviting me.

• 1:15:26Logan Bartlett?

  So that'll do it for the 50th episode of the Logan Bartlett Show. Thank you everyone for listening in. Thank you Alan Patricof for joining and such an entertaining conversation. Hope everyone has a good weekend and look forward to seeing you here next week on the 51st episode of Logan Bartlett Show. Have a nice weekend, everyone.