310: Peter Pham On The Secret Art Of Fundraising

Peter Pham is the co-founder of startup studio Science, which is behind many of the world's best consumer internet companies, where they co-build these companies with founders in Santa Monica, CA. In this conversation, we discuss the secret art of fundraising, what Science looks for in great companies, why Peter spends so much time networking, how to build a great brand, and the stories behind Dollar Shave Club, Liquid Death, RealBlocks, and PlayVS. =============================== BlockFi allows you to keep your crypto, put it up as collateral, and receive a USD loan funded directly to your bank account. They do loans ranging from $2,000 to $10,000,000, and they're perfect for helping you reach your financial goals of all sizes. Visit BlockFi.com/Pomp to learn more about putting your crypto to work without having to sell it. https://www.blockfi.com/pomp =============================== Our second sponsor is choice, a new self-directed IRA product that I'm really excited about. If you are listening to this, you are likely part of the 7.1 million bitcoin owners who have retirement accounts with dollars in them, but not bitcoin. I was in that situation too. Now you can actually buy real Bitcoin in your retirement account. I'm talking about owning your private keys and using tax-advantaged dollars to do it too. Absolute game changer. https://www.retirewithchoice.com/pomp =============================== Pomp writes a daily letter to over 50,000 investors about business, technology, and finance. He breaks down complex topics into easy to understand language, while sharing opinions on various aspects of each industry. You can subscribe at https://www.pompletter.com

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

• 0:00Anthony Pompliano?

  This is Anthony Pompliano. Most of you know me as Pomp. You're listening to the Pomp Podcast, simply the best podcast out there. Let's kick this thing off.

• 0:11Anthony Pompliano?

  Peter Pham is the co-founder of startup studio Science, which is behind many of the world's best consumer internet companies, where they co-build these companies with founders in Santa Monica, California. In this conversation, we discuss the secret art of fundraising, what Science looks for in great companies, why Peter spends so much time networking, how to build a great brand, and the stories behind Dollar Shave Club, Liquid Death, Real Blocks, and Play Versus. I really enjoyed this conversation with Peter, and I hope you do as well. Before we get into the episode, though, I want to quickly talk about our sponsors. The first is BlockFi. You guys know I'm a huge fan, an investor, and a user. They've got three products. The first, you can deposit crypto

• 0:54Anthony Pompliano?

  and get a US dollar loan. The second, you can buy and sell crypto. Or the third, my favorite, is their interest-bearing account. You can go in and put cash or crypto and earn up to 8.6% APY in this interest-bearing account. Unheard of interest rates compared to the legacy world. So go check them out at blockfi.com/pomp. Again, blockfi.com/pomp, and really take a look at that interest-bearing account. To me, that's the most compelling part about BlockFi. And again, I'm a user and an investor in the company, so really, really believe in what they're doing. blockfi.com/pomp. Our second sponsor is new. They're called Choice. It's a new self-directed IRA product that I'm really excited about. If you're listening to

• 1:37Anthony Pompliano?

  this, you're likely part of the 7.1 million Bitcoin owners who have retirement accounts with dollars in them, but not Bitcoin. That's right, retirement accounts, dollars, but no Bitcoin. I was in that situation, too. But now you can actually buy real Bitcoin in your retirement account. I'm talking about owning your private keys and using tax-advantaged dollars to do it, too. I've got an account at Choice, and you should go get one as well. It's an absolute game changer. So head on over to retirewithchoice.com/pomp. Again, retirewithchoice.com/pomp.

• 2:10Anthony Pompliano?

  Myself an account, it's a no brainer, a self-directed IRA that allows you to own Bitcoin with tax advantaged dollars, including your own private keys. RetireWithChoice.com/pomp. Lastly, don't forget that I write a daily letter to over 50,000 investors about business, technology and finance. I break down complex topics into easy to understand language while sharing opinions on various aspects of each industry. You can subscribe at pompletter.com. Again, pompletter.com or go in the description and you can click on any of the links there. All right, let's get into this with Peter. I hope you guys enjoy it.

• 2:46Anthony Pompliano?

  Anthony Pompliano is a partner at Morgan Creek Digital. All opinions expressed by Pomp or his guests on this podcast are solely their opinions and do not reflect the opinions of Morgan Creek Digital or Morgan Creek Capital Management. You should not treat any opinion expressed by Pomp as a specific inducement to make a particular investment or follow a particular strategy, but only as an expression of his opinion. This podcast is for informational purposes only.

• 3:14Anthony Pompliano?

  All right, guys. Bang, bang. The legend's here. Peter, what's up, man?

• 3:18Speaker 01

  What's up?

• 3:20Anthony Pompliano?

  All right. For the like two people who are listening to this, who don't know who you are, uh, what's your background?

• 3:26Speaker 01

  Let's see, I'm down here in LA, uh, living in the dream by the beach. Uh, I am, uh, I run a small fund in LA called Science. It's a $75 million early-stage seed fund, uh, attached to a startup studio, uh, kind of one of the first to do startup studios. Basically means we help start the companies, uh, build them at day zero, usually for 12, 18 months alongside the founders, figure out kind of what we're doing, why we're doing it, find product market fit. We've been doing that for about eight years and about the last three years, we've had a fund now attached to all consumer internet products and companies.

• 4:09Speaker 01

  Everything from things you've maybe heard of, Dollar Shaped Club was one of the first big breakouts, Dog Vacay, which became Rover, Liquid Death.

• 4:20Speaker 01

  And many other companies, many failed, some succeeded and some are on its way.

• 4:26Anthony Pompliano?

  You're being incredibly humble because you guys have probably one of, if not the most successful startup studio, right? So a lot of accelerators and kind of all these other things that fund and help, but the idea of actually being there from day one and helping create these companies is a little bit different model. You need some different things that you look for. Maybe talk a little bit about as you guys have been successful over the years, like what does the ideal team idea, how it comes together, like what does that look like through the pattern recognition that you guys have developed?

• 5:00Speaker 01

  We're pretty thesis driven, so we have kind of like find these markets that we really want to focus over. So right now, brands, which we've always kind of done particularly well, looking at, you know, what's next on your mobile phone, like what else can you be entertained at other than looking at Instagram and Snapchat? And then the others, you know, what is the behavior post pandemic, right? What is the, how are we going to behave? What kind of products and services are we going to use? From there, it's just finding the idea that resonates. For me particularly, it's kind of like music, right? So one of the things is I love to dance. First of all, dance floor is like part of my bio. And just like music, I'm sure all music is great music, right? For two different people, but some

• 5:45Speaker 01

  things make you dance and some things make you hum, some things make you like look up the artist, play it over and over, add it to your playlist. Startups are like that for me. I'm sure there's lots of great companies and startups, but when I see the startup that resonates with me with the founder and that founder, you know, particularly for us, they want help. They want our opinion. They want to kind of learn. They want to grow with us. That's what I'm looking for. So it's a Look, I'm an all-in type of person. Like, you get to know me. When I'm not, when I'm in, I'm 110% all-in, which means I kind of want to feel like I'm a part of it. And so if I'm not authentically just loving it, I'm just gonna pass. Not to say it's an indictment on you,

• 6:29Speaker 01

  or the startup, or the idea. It's just, I just don't see myself waking up and thinking about it 24 hours a day. So, uh, it's a little convoluted, but for me, it's a little bit more gut and instinct. Uh, but of course, the founder is everything.

• 6:42Anthony Pompliano?

  So, from the outside looking in, and I've seen a number of deals that you guys have done over time. Uh, each of them has, uh, kind of some differences, but there is the commonality of, uh, there's almost this like cult-like following behind some of the brands. And so Liquid Death and Dollar Shave Club are probably two great examples of that. Uh, maybe talk a little bit about the Dollar Shave Club story, and kind of how do you take a business, which at the outset, uh, for most people, the first time they heard about it was this wild video that, uh, the CEO is featured in, uh, to all of a sudden, within a number of years, it's a billion-dollar exit. Like, how does that happen? And what's going on behind the scenes that, um, you guys are doing to help, kind of really help that team become that successful?

• 7:27Speaker 01

  Um, you know, that is always gonna be the vision and the genius of Michael Deven, right? He is, when I met him the first time, I just thought to myself, this is one of the most creative persons I've ever met. Um, he's, he's Branson 30 years ago, right? Just brand creative. Like, if you think about what Branson's been on, able to take the Virgin brand and create multiple things each and every time, and then just understand culture. That was a big part of it. The other was that, of course, that, look, razor blades, everyone loves to hate it. So, there are certain things in the world, people love to hate, right? So, the other example, Uber works, because everyone loved to hate taxis.

• 8:12Speaker 01

  Like, you could just walk up to somebody like, taxis, what a pain in the ass. Like, don't you hate it? Yes. Razor blades at the time, Gillette, it's like you had to shave, you had to buy their thirty dollar razor blades and you could walk up to anybody and say, "Can you believe they're ripping us off? Don't you kind of hate it?" Yes, so there's, that's part of it. Then it's how you approach it and market with that and use that virality. It was funny, it was the first kind of opening when YouTube started taking off and Facebook. So this is, gosh, it's almost eight years ago when we launched, right, eight and a half. At the time, we were one of the first people ever to use YouTube as a lead generation. Run a viral video to an advertisement. That didn't, that was the first.

• 8:55Speaker 01

  Using Facebook and commenting session and using the creative as an ad unit. And using the comment section and creating virality through that. So it was a combination of timing, right, based on marketing tactics that you can have reach with people and understanding that word of mouth, it's like this thing that we've been heard, you know, ever since college, like you, you would hear about word of mouth, but eight years ago, it was the first time when you knew that a hundred people could be heard by a thousand to ten thousand to a million people, all through Facebook, all through YouTube. So that was a big part of it.

• 9:32Anthony Pompliano?

  So you go from that, which is, uh, many people will say, "That's great, Peter, but, uh, that kind of window of time has passed, right? And those have become commoditized to now something like Liquid Death, which, uh, has a lot of the same, um, kind of features, if you will. The first time I saw it, you literally were taking pictures, posting it all over the internet and I was like, "What is he doing?" And it almost was like a joke at first. And then I think at South by Southwest, maybe, you were handing out cans, right? And then a couple of other conferences, like, "Oh, wait, this is like a real thing." And the second that you put the can in your hand and realize, like, there's magic here, right?

• 10:09Anthony Pompliano?

  I don't know what it is, whatever. Uh, we ended up putting a very small check in, um, alongside you guys, kind of taking this, uh, really what it sounds like was an idea, uh, and a brand, and now scaling it out to what it's become. So like, how do you recreate the magic of Dollar Shave Club? With a different product, different brand, i- i- is there a formula to it or is it just kind of, again, moment in time, different tactics?

• 10:33Speaker 01

  Um, same strategy, different kind of platform. So.

• 10:39Speaker 01

  Facebook's programmatic at this point. Now we're talking Instagram, Snapchat, but real Instagram. So think about visual. But for me, when I heard about it, it was the moment when we had just started banning plastic straws. Right, so there's always, to me, there's this meta thing culturally that's happening. And as investors, we're supposed to kind of not tell the future. But like, for me, this early, hey, what's, what's gonna be culturally relevant 12 to 18 months from now? Right, in 12 to 18 months, so it's been liquid, that's been about June, so about 14 months in, um, or so when we launched, but I saw it a year and a half ago. At that time, we'd just banned plastic straws. And I thought, huh, plastic straws?

• 11:23Speaker 01

  The social spread of how we're becoming a little bit more aware of the environment? How the whale is, you know, washing ashore with 90 pounds of plastic in its belly, right? And people are starting to talk about plastic, plastic, plastic. I thought, well, maybe plastic water bottles. Like, I've always thought it's kind of gross, like that's, you, and then you look at the, you look at the data, it's unbelievable how much plastic bottles are happening. Then there was this Atlantic article about two years ago that said China stopped buying our trash. So, well, wait a minute. So if China's not buying our trash to recycle anymore, um, we just banned plastic straws. There, I thought there would be this movement, honestly, about now. It happened a lot earlier than I expected,

• 12:07Speaker 01

  where plastic bottles are gonna be kind of the cigarette, cigarette butt of our generation. Like, you see somebody smoking a cigarette, you're like, really? It's, it's not as culturally okay these days. And then, I don't, I don't drink, I'm actually allergic to alcohol. And for a very long time, I would always like, holding, this feels just natural. And then lastly, it's content. If we've noticed during this pandemic, are you opening up Instagram as often? It's kind of boring, it turns out. Like, nobody's doing anything. Content, people want something to even talk about. Holding a can of Liquid Death in person, someone's gonna walk up to you and say, hey, what's that? I will guarantee it a hundred times, someone's gonna do it.

• 12:51Speaker 01

  And ultimately, people go to bars, people go to parties to talk to other people, but turns out, not everyone's like you or me, who's an extrovert. Most people are an introvert. And to give somebody something to talk about that is universal, kind of like, oh, that's cool. Yeah, don't you hate plastic water bottles? Yes, again, that goes back to the universally, we all love to hate plastic water bottles, right? And in a lot of cases, drinking alcohol is a peer pressure environment. And this kind of eases that environment and gives you something to talk about. So it's a lot of conversation. And so it's going back to what you're saying. You're using the same tactics. Give something for somebody to talk about. Dollar Shave Club, funny, viral video. Like, I can't believe that they charge thirty bucks.

• 13:36Speaker 01

  This is six bucks. What a deal. Disruption was mailing, I mean, honestly, mailing something to your house on a subscription eight and a half years ago. This didn't exist. We were the first company, I asked the Collison Brothers to create a recurring payment system on Stripe. That didn't exist, right? We, like, it was kind of, this is before Shopify. This is before everything that makes it so easy to click and subscribe to things. Now, for Liquid Death, it's just content, content, content. Now you're saying, well, we have almost a hundred thousand Instagram fans. What's the content? Twenty-five people got tattoos. Someone just got married with it. Like, we made a, a heavy metal album with it.

• 14:21Speaker 01

  It's content and people just want to talk about it. So it's all about marketing, ultimately.

• 14:26Anthony Pompliano?

  Part of what cracks me up too, specifically around Liquid Death, is the haters.

• 14:32Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 14:32Anthony Pompliano?

  Marketed as well, right? They're literally like, I remember when the articles came out about the fundraiser. Like, people were like, this is the dumbest thing ever, right? And you're like, I appreciate you sharing that article. Like, thank you. You just drove sales.

• 14:44Speaker 01

  Well, we talked about this. It emboldens everybody else. So, look, you see it in politics, right? And you see it in products, which is... People, there's gonna be a 10% of the population who hate everything they see. And just for whatever reason, this offended a lot of people. I don't know why, but it just offended people. And those people called everybody else who liked it or thought it was cool, an idiot. Dumb, whatever name-calling you can possibly hurl at it. That made everybody else say, you know what? I'm not dumb, I'm not a dumb consumer, like, screw you, I'm all in.

• 15:23Speaker 01

  And this goes to, if you look at politics today, when you, on one end, you just call blatantly anybody who disagrees with you, an idiot. It turns out, it emboldens and it takes all the people who are moderate to pick a side. And generally, when you're in the middle and you're like, really no opinion, do you go with the person who called you an idiot? Or do you go with the side that you're kind of already on? Typically, it's on this side. So, yeah, some of our best performing ads right now on Liquid Death are hate ads. So, um, the, the, the heavy metal album was called The Greatest Hates.

• 16:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 16:02Anthony Pompliano?

  That, that's what cracks me up though, right? Is like, actually, the brand has embraced the haters and shares, like, here, here's the best hateful comments, and which makes people just laugh, right? And, and you actually see, like, Jeff Bezos right now is embracing this as well. He's taking customer emails who are backlash against him supporting Black Lives Matter, and he's posting them on Instagram and being like, you're a customer I'm happy to lose. Right? And, and people almost kind of gravitate towards that.

• 16:30Speaker 01

  Oh, because you're, because fans of it, who can identify, just like, you, you've made lifelong fans, right? And that, look, there's the big, dude, I won't compare the two, right? One is doing the right thing and saying, look, I have an opinion, and if you don't share with me, you know, best of luck. Here's, this is, when I think about marketing, um...

• 16:51Speaker 01

  haters will always hate you can't convince them otherwise but to me when you start hurling insults that's use those because at the end of the day like I I'm sure you I don't know I I love you I'm sure many people but I'm sure you have haters and I have haters it is what it is like I I don't live my life to seek approvals from everybody else if you did that that's a sad life right like do good things celebrate your wins and ignore the haters that's what they say

• 17:23Anthony Pompliano?

  I uh I can back up the fact that you saying that you are the first on the dance floor is actually a fact I I have literally been with Peter when he has been like hey nobody's on the dance floor I will be the first and within 20 minutes there's a dance party every single time

• 17:38Speaker 01

  I you know what it's funny I I when I think about why I do that I like bringing joy like it's it's there's something about dancing where most people who stand around dance for like they want like they would dance but they're a little bit self-conscious and for me I'm like if you just let go and just let yourself have fun you'll notice everybody else will just join you and there's no more judgment when everybody's doing right well as soon as everybody's doing something no judgment but if one person does it all of a sudden it's like well should I should I and I think dancing is one of those liberating moments where you can kind of let go of what you're thinking about work disappears out of your mind there's a little bit of freedom

• 18:22Speaker 01

  there's this endorphin hit of just joy and happiness like you'll never see a dance for going off where there's sadness like it is just and so to me it's a challenge to walk into a wedding a party a business event and just get the dance for it's for me it's a challenge because it's marketing right so what am I doing I'm walking around really one by one trying to sell people to do something and to me that's just like it helps me Kind of tune the senses around like how do you convince people to do something that's slightly out of their comfort range, but I know they want to do it. And as soon as they do it, they're going to enjoy themselves. Uh, that's like, to me, it's a psychological experiment.

• 19:00Anthony Pompliano?

  My favorite thing that anyone's ever said to me about you is, uh, is either South by Southwest or Puerto Rico, somebody came up to me and they said, man, Peter's really drunk. And they didn't know who you were, right? They just, they were just like, oh, this guy's like hammered. I was like, no, no, no, Peter doesn't drink. Like that's him 24/7. Like, he's just a happy dude, right? And he's going to get the dance party started. And I almost looked at it as like, uh, it was such a compliment, right? They, they didn't realize that, but it was like a thing where, oh, somebody who would have, would have to get drunk to kind of let down their inhibitions in order to have that much enjoyment. And I was like, no, like he makes a conscious choice to do that. And he does it every single party. And so I just remember kind of laughing to myself like, yeah, he got another person. Like he

• 19:44Anthony Pompliano?

  just, he just converted somebody to the army.

• 19:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, look, if, if I could drink, like, you know, I have a relationship with basically a little bit and I throw, I can taste it. I don't swallow up, but it's about this much of anything. I'm basically hurling. Um, I don't, I, and I get it, right? Like to let down all your guards and just go all in on something. Um, it's like, it's great feeling. So, uh, I just naturally was just done it all my entire life.

• 20:16Anthony Pompliano?

  One of the, uh, the latest companies that you guys have done that I think a lot of people are paying attention to is, uh, PlayVS. Um, and, uh, maybe talk a little bit about kind of how that came together with Delain and, uh, how you guys have built it so quickly. I think, I, I think a lot of people are sitting there saying like, great idea. Delain is obviously speaks for himself in terms of how he's been as an entrepreneur, but like this thing has gotten so big so quickly and like how that's come together.

• 20:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, look, I mean, I have, if you see, I have like goosebumps when I talk about Delain. So, and I think now, this week, or the last couple of weeks, you know, I've talked, I've talked to him a lot. You know, he's one of those founders, I met him at South by, right? This goes back to, there's an article I did, USA Today this week, around like networking and what I'm missing. So this is cool, we get to cap, we caught up a little bit before the Zoom call, but it's not the same as just serendipitously running into people, meeting people. I'm one of those people, I go to every conference, I'm looking to meet people. And a couple of years back, at South by Southwest, during, there's a side event called Culture House that's put on by just amazing black entrepreneurs and investors.

• 21:27Speaker 01

  And it's really kind of this side event that says, look, South by is, you know, mostly white. A lot, and years ago, they said, let's put together this event, and Culture House. And so they were serving brisket, which is my favorite, from Franklin's, by the way. And my favorite barbecue in the world, you gotta go, if you have not been to Franklin's, like, just do it. Uh, and I met Delain on the dance floor. And it was a, it was a house, and they were serving barbecue, they were playing hip hop, which I love. There was no dance floor, per se, I was just, really just the only person dancing. And Suzy Ru, uh, from Cross Culture, uh, Cross Culture Fund in LA, with Troy Carter, introduced me to Delain.

• 22:08Speaker 01

  Delain was, uh, you know, he grew up in Atlanta, he was a black kid in Atlanta. Father was murdered before he was born, grew up just in the projects. And he was 24 at the time, but just had this like hustle, just like this passion and like sharpness to him that I'll never forget. And we just started talking about esports. And we, you know, it's one of the theses for science as a fund and investment is, is what's more entertaining than your phone and Instagram? What's up? It's actually video games, and I thought esports is gonna take off, we just didn't know what it was gonna be. And, you know, I met Delain on the dance floor, as the story goes, and convinced him over the next like two months to move out to LA and let's go figure what we should build.

• 22:53Speaker 01

  So he, on a Friday, dropped everything, Monday moved out to LA. And for a couple of months, we kind of figured out that, you know, what are we gonna build? And it ended up Play Versus, which is the platform for esports in all US high schools and soon be colleges. If you kind of think about fantasy football, right, which would be interesting if we had that this year. But fantasy football is spread across CBS, Yahoo, NFL.com, ESPN, pro fantasy sports, all. Imagine if there was one service that serviced all fantasy football. That's what Play Versus is. And so the scale of that, the reason I think people are surprised at the speed,

• 23:32Speaker 01

  is globally it's big, US not so much, but, you know, one of the things in my back of my head was thinking a little bit ahead. I thought, man, high school football, like, how's that gonna be a sport for another decade? I mean, all the data's coming out, the concussions, concussions, concussions, and the reality is, we're also a sue-happy nation. And at some point, the liability will probably outweigh the entertainment risk, and rightfully so. Esports is gonna be a sport in high schools. And very quickly, within the first year, we're rolled into, rolled on to 23 states, where you can play League of Legends, you can play video games essentially that are esports globally in high school,

• 24:17Speaker 01

  get a letter, win a state championship. And we raised almost a hundred million dollars in the first 18 months. And to me, look, at the time, this is, you know, Delain raised the most money any black founder has ever raised for a consumer internet company in that short amount of time. And this is, you know, special to me. Like, I was born in a refugee camp, right? Like, I grew up very poor. Uh, we grew up in a one-bedroom apartment, five kids, seven of us. And, you know, got to the point in life, like, both my parents were social workers. Uh, you know, my mom handed out welfare checks for 25 years. And so I understand different levels of poverty.

• 25:03Speaker 01

  Uh, he grew up in the projects. Way tougher neighborhood. I grew up in a very tough neighborhood. His is worse. And so, but I grew up with a father, he didn't. That to me is, you know, a lot of it is him. He is grown as an individual. He is the CEO of a company that is going to be most likely the biggest investment and biggest company that we've ever been a part of, for sure. And so, why did it grow so fast? He's an animal. He's just, just lights out. He will impress anybody. Two, market, timing. And then it turns out in this pandemic when schools are closed, esports, video games, look at the stocks of every video game company in the world right now. It has been up into the right.

• 25:48Speaker 01

  And kind of going into, hopefully when we reopen schools, contact sports and things that where you're near and close to people, probably not so much. Esports, whatever you think about it,

• 26:01Speaker 01

  as an Asian, right? I think about this. What if I told, if I told my parents, hey, mom, dad, I got a scholarship to play chess in college? They would be so proud. When you think about esports, five on five, it's, the strategy is unbelievable. You are thinking five, 10, 20 steps ahead. You have to react instantaneously while communicating with four other players on your team. It's actually next level, three dimensional offense, defense, planning strategically. What do we do in life, in real life as jobs, as career adults?

• 26:40Speaker 01

  Strategy, offense, defense, thinking as many steps ahead, whether you're a stock trader, whether you're an entrepreneur, whether you're a manager, you are trying to communicate with your peers. You're trying to grow your company. You're trying to create strategy. To me, it's a life skill. So, that's why it's so big.

• 27:02Anthony Pompliano?

  It's been amazing to watch and I've hung out in person with Delain. Everything you just said, you're underselling him. Right? I mean, he is the real deal. When I asked people for questions for you before we recorded, the number one question was, how the hell does Peter Fam raise so much money over and over and over again for the companies that he works with? I think you will be the first to say it really comes down to the founders and their vision and kind of what they're building. Outside of that, right? So, so don't spend a lot of time on that. Outside of that, what makes a good fundraise and a bad fundraise process now that you've gone through it so many times and been so successful over the years?

• 27:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, numbers put it is that I've probably done for the science portfolio companies that I'm deeply, deeply involved with, we've raised more like $700 million. The companies that have advised, been helped friends raise, been a part of whether founder CEO of myself, tap on another probably billion. So probably somewhere in the realm of about $2 billion. And that's, it's over a decade or so. And a lot of that is, it turns out to me, it's numbers. So in every round, no matter what, I'm talking to 70, I'm talking 70 to 100 people. So lots of no's. We're top, so I'm somewhere in the 7,000 no range.

• 28:27Speaker 01

  It no's are soft no's, quick no's, and I'm going for the no. I'm trying to find the person where time and space just align. Like I am looking for that investment. I am thinking about that space. I have the dollars to commit at this point. And it turns out there's, the system is pretty inefficient, right? You just have to find the investor in the right moment, in the right frame of time to get a yes in most cases. The, the most important part of this is the story. So countless times is

• 29:01Speaker 01

  And I think my superpower and the skills, I can take most ideas, most pitches, and just reframe it and tell the story in a different way that will be more compelling. You have to remember this investor, I think I can empathize, which is they want to be part of the journey. Like, what's the hook to make them feel like they're almost an employee of the company? Like, where they want to be excited to work for this company. That is the missing link. The other is what we call FOMO, right? Fear of missing out. What are the things where it's obvious things are happening and the momentum's starting to happen? And if I don't get you to come on now, you're gonna miss out. So it's framing the story and the information, the data.

• 29:46Speaker 01

  Um, and every stage is different, so I'll be more practical. Super early, I have an idea. At idea phase, it is really, kind of, I call three phases of every pitch. What was the world before? What, how did the world look before? Uh, before iPhones, before 4G, um, before Google Maps, right? What exists now that allows what you're doing? What's changed, essentially? So if you look at, um, Dollar Shave Club, well, what changed was like, subscription? I can mail things, right? Using media postal service mail for like $2. I could ship everything, go all over the United States for very inexpensively.

• 30:31Speaker 01

  I can now, uh, create and get things from Asia here much, much cheaper. It's just easier, right? I can now email market, I can reach people on Facebook, I can reach people on YouTube. That's what's different, right? Liquid Death, what's different? Instagram, people love sharing, right? People don't drink as much, plastic. So like, what in the world around us has changed to allow you to succeed? And then what are you doing differently than anybody? So basically, what do you know that I don't know and the rest of the world doesn't know that's special? So those are kind of the things, like, what did the world look like before? What does the world look like today? And what are you doing to take advantage of that? And what's the world gonna look like? That's kind of like the, the story hierarchy of any startup. And I think-

• 31:16Speaker 01

  If you just thought through that a little bit and get to the story quickly, right? I call it cocktail conversations. Whoever you're telling the story to, whether or not there's a decision-making or saying yes, they have to articulate that very quickly in a soundbite and remember and something memorable to somebody. It could be their spouse, it could be their colleague, it could be their partner, it could be their friend group. Because a lot of investors, most investors, want some validation that they're not absolutely insane for doing this, right? Um, so a lot of times, the complicated story is too complicated. So what is different? Why now? Why are you different?

• 32:00Speaker 01

  It's still down to a very simple story. And then the last would be, I have this kind of plan, once you start growing, no matter the phase, seed, A, B, C, D.

• 32:13Speaker 01

  I can't even talk, I, I rarely don't talk about this publicly, okay?

• 32:19Speaker 01

  For the thirty days, for the ninety days leading up to the fundraise, okay? Kind of go backwards. For the next thirty days, as a founder and CEO, you have twenty, forty, fifty things you're trying to get accomplished. Focus everything down to three things that you know you can move the needle and make it go up into the right. What are those three things? And it's not always this top-line cumulative revenue. People think revenue, it's not revenue. It's percentages. What's the percentage of people renewing? What's the percentage of people coming back? What is the conversion percentage? What is the average order in the cart going up by? So it's, um, it's showing that things are getting better, right?

• 33:02Speaker 01

  So as an investor, I want to know whoever gave you money last time? Did you learn and did you grow? Right? Were you efficient with that capital? Because when I come into invest, I kind of wanna in a way feel like, well, I'm taking advantage of the last investor. Like, uh, they put in all the hard money. Mine's the easy money, right? So you have to prove that the money that you took, here's what I did, here's what I learned. And this is, it's starting to happen. These things are really like, we, we learned a lot. We took the last investor's money, learned a ton, and now really starting to ramp. And I'm gonna take your money and increase that round. And so, no matter what the startup, you can have and see that data.

• 33:47Speaker 01

  So we have the company pray.com. So with all this lockdown stuff, churches are closed. So pray.com is subscription content similar to common headspace, but all based on religion. So what would investors care about? Well, not just new subscribers. Are they listening to more content on each time? Are they converting from download to paid? Right? Are, are, are more logging in? Are the more sharing it? Essentially, velocity, velocity, velocity. You wanna find things where you're seeing an uptick in a percentage uptake? Because top line revenue to me can be bought. In any startup, give me 10 million, I'll buy 10 million dollars revenue. That's very inefficient.

• 34:30Speaker 01

  What you wanna show is for every dollar that comes in, I'm making things faster, creating more efficiency in the product. The consumer love for it, since I do with consumer. Show me for fact that people love the damn thing. Well, well, 25 random people getting tattoos, people getting married with the people. I think we saw half a million posts so far on Instagram. Half a million about Lupita. Well, that tells you people truly authentically love it.

• 35:01Speaker 01

  Right. Oh, and by the way, it's been in Whole Foods now for two months. It's now out outperforming Vitamin Water. It's outs, you know, we're seeing acceleration every week, week over week, more and more cases being sold. So then if I extrapolate that out as an investor, say, whoa, okay, so if I give you money and there's more discretion, you're going to keep going. So it's all about storytelling, right? But when you look at the details of the data, pick three things that you're going to focus on as a founder and CEO. Enjoy those things and tell a story of why there's correlation and causation, that these things are important for the future of the company. And it always comes down cohorts.

• 35:43Speaker 01

  And if you don't know what the word cohort is, look it up, right? Like the customers that came in this week versus customers next week versus customers, like follow the journey of those customers and show that the customers that came in last month versus this month, everything's getting better, right? There's logging in more often, their average order is higher, like Amazon, take a big company, Amazon Prime, well, how many, not just how many people are Amazon Prime members, but how many renewed? How are they spending more month after month after month? Is it worth launching this other thing? Well, yes, if they spend more money, right? Velocity, velocity, velocity. I'm sure as like most people, the number of boxes showing

• 36:25Speaker 01

  up at your front desk door is increasing, not decreasing in time. So that means they're getting better. Take that same example and take it to your startup. There's always something that's getting better. If it's not, it's probably not working. Like if you can't find anything in the data that shows that there's some velocity happening, even a small number, maybe I don't care if you have a hundred or a thousand users, something has to be picking up steam. If it's not time to move on, time to change ideas, time to change strategies, because even in a small sample, you will find something that's interesting if it's working.

• 37:06Anthony Pompliano?

  And so that's like the founder perspective, right of like what they can actually drive. You mentioned the kind of 90 days pre actually going out for the fundraiser. That's about 30 days of focus. What do you do in the other 60 days?

• 37:18Speaker 01

  Well, the next 30 days is the 30 days of focus, 30 days of it actualizing. Right? It's, it's working. Things are going up and to the right. The last 30 days is during the fundraiser. During the fundraiser, it's continuing to go up. It's something if I talk to you today on Monday, when you check back in on Thursday, it got better. When you check in next week, it's better. You as an investor start feeling like, oh, like the trains, it keeps going. I might miss out if I don't jump on, right? I have the saying called linear is, linear is flat. Right? If your data just goes linear as an investor, why would I invest now?

• 38:02Speaker 01

  When I can wait, when I know where it's going to be next month, why would I invest now? Right? If I know where it's going to be three months, meaning the example, hey, we're growing one customer a month or one million a month. So it's June, so in December you'll be six more million, right? And then a year from now, I'll be 12 more million, two years from now. Well, I can just wait, pay more later, but de-risk. De-risk by 95, 90 plus percent of my dollar risk, right? Because risk as an investor means where are they going to be next month, six months? That's where all the risk is.

• 38:43Speaker 01

  I want to invest if I think that, I don't know, like it's, it's just going up and maybe in six months, it doesn't go up to $6 million, right? It goes to 24 or 30. So when you start finding the things to work on, it can't be this linear growth. It has to take this, you know, hockey stick. People think about the hockey stick. I know it sounds so easy. It's not, it is finding data that shows hockey sticks. So as an investor. Day, first thirty days focused, next thirty days, it's starting to happen, the next thirty days, it continues to happen so that in those investor conversations, you're honest about it. You're not, right? You look at data, but there's something to talk about continuously and it keeps going up.

• 39:24Speaker 01

  And hey, investor, if you give me money, I can make this even go faster. That's to me, kind of like the ninety day program. It is about focus, because like as a founder and CEO, there's so many false positives in your data. There's so many false negatives in your data. Taking the time to kind of distill it down to three things that move the needle, that fundamentally answer the question, is this a good idea? Is this working? This is going to be big. Takes this like exercise is just pulling things apart and ignoring the noise. Because what I've always found is startups who do too many things always fail.

• 40:08Speaker 01

  Like you, you, you can be great at one thing, like until you have scale against one thing, don't do the second and third idea. Like it's Uber took a long time before they did Uber Eats. Like a long time, right? So that's after like billions in the coffers. Most startups, before you raise a hundred million, you're doing one thing for a very long time. And so a lot of this exercise is just saying, as a CEO, you have twenty ideas and people working on, distill it down a little bit and you'll find more velocity, more truth to your startup. And then when you go talk to investors, it's much easier to digest as well.

• 40:49Anthony Pompliano?

  And I think that we are glossing over one of the most important facts, because you and I take it as a, an obvious thing. But it's really about the experimentation, right? A lot of people, I think, kind of early on, in especially the first or second company that they go to build, it's all about like, I know for a fact this is going to work. And investors, if they're good at anything, like they see right through that. And what you're really describing here is this idea of, hey, I'm running an experiment. That experiment is you give me dollars, here's what I think I can accomplish. I come back to you in, you know, six, 12 months and I say, hey, those dollars you gave me. I hit four of the five things I thought I was gonna hit. Give me more money. Here's the next six that I'm gonna go hit.

• 41:29Anthony Pompliano?

  Right? It's kind of this um, almost tranch, uh, bucket of accomplishments. And I think what you're really saying is like, you have to almost understand what those possibilities are and what you've actually been successful doing in order to tell the story, right?

• 41:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I think it's, it's, it's just, it's good exercise for the founder to like, really understand what's happening. I think, I'm always surprised when I talk to founders about their company and ideas, when I say, hey, what about this data? What is the consumer, walk me through the consumer journey and tell me what's getting better and why do you think that is? And we always say data, data, data. It's just, it's not about just showing graphs, right? It's about articulating why, like, why do you think that's happening? And can you, can you replicate that over and over and over? And your defensibility ultimately as a, as a company, everything can be replicated.

• 42:28Speaker 01

  There will be clones everywhere, but those that understand the why always win, right? The why, the secret sauce is the thing people invest in, because ultimately, whatever you are, you can be copied. We've seen this happen in every startup that's out there because of the speed of the internet and Twitter and Crunchbase and Quora and you name it, there's no like, secret, right? That's too hard to replicate. This is just water in a can.

• 43:04Speaker 01

  The secret, right, is what Mike Sosar, the founder, has in his head and has how he creates the culture and how he thinks about his fanbase and how he thinks the next thing he's gonna do that emboldens and really grows that passion, those users to use that voice. And so you have to understand the why and how to replicate that over and over again and spend the time on the data to see it and look at it in different perspectives. And so, yeah, there's every startup, you wanna be either number one or number two in the market. There's number, number three. Right, and so being number one, usually you can get by being first. Number two actually works too by fast follow. But you also just have to understand why.

• 43:48Speaker 01

  So Uber, Lyft examples, etc. Dollar Shave Club and Harry's was right, was the other example. Dog B K Rover, they actually end up merging. There will always be two in any market. But one typically pulls completely away from the other. And typically it's because they understand the customer. Look, Airbnb, HomeAway was first, then Airbnb. Airbnb actually understood the customer better, the younger demographic, the millennial, you know, whatever you want to call it, and the flexibility, and they pulled away. So to me, understanding the insights in the human psychology of why people talk about

• 44:31Speaker 01

  things, why people share on Instagram and Twitter and Facebook, and the tools that you give them to them. A lot of times, you look at big brands, they're fearful of somebody else taking that brand and altering it. Remember the days when like, every brand would be offended if they saw like their logo on somebody, a user who just like took it and changed it? That you want your consumers to take it and like make it their own version of it, right? That's why Supreme took off. If you can think about like, culture is, other people took something and like made

• 45:10Speaker 01

  it different, made it personal, make it, made it individualism to some degree. Today, you have to allow that. Like, you have to allow people to express themselves and feel like they own part of that idea. Otherwise, you'll fail. So, you know, I think about consumers. Enterprise is much different. I did enterprise for a very long time. That one's fascinating, but I enjoy consumer stuff.

• 45:33Anthony Pompliano?

  What are the areas in consumer that you're most excited about right now? Or that you guys are looking at saying, hey, somebody's gonna go build a company in X vertical, and if you're working on it, come talk to science?

• 45:46Speaker 01

  So we have a company, it's interesting, we announced the fundraising right before the pendant, and it's called Arrive Outdoors. And there's two, actually, Arrive Outdoors, we rent camping gear. So the thesis then was, well, you know, everyone's reconduing their lives, everyone's getting rid of stuff, but everybody wants experiences. And so we rent premium, like the highest end camping gear, but we ship it to you nationwide.

• 46:15Speaker 01

  Pandemic hits, everything shuts down. We're like, ah, but guess what? The last couple of weeks. What does everyone want to do? Camping, parks, natural, we have the exclusive with almost every state park, national parks. So you can go to Arrive Outdoors right now. We'll send you clean, cleansed, sterilized, like camping equipment for you to use. When you're done, shove it in a box, send it back to us. We'll clean it and sterilize it for the next customer. That, like, so what is that? That's the behavior part. So what does the world look like?

• 46:49Speaker 01

  Six to 12 months from now. When we started that one, we thought, well, you know, nobody has stores, nobody has garages, no one wants to do the experiences. They want to do with different people, they want to do different places. So if I camp where it's hot versus where it rains for four people versus eight people, it's like different gear. You're not going to collect all this stuff, but you also want the nice stuff, the stuff that's, you know, like the high-end things that aren't going to break down, the high-end things that are the nicest materials to keep you warm.

• 47:14Speaker 01

  And now it's just interesting. We got timings, everything, right? Like, we also are hitting this time where everyone wants to be outdoors. Uh, that's the types of behaviors. Um, lambs is another one. It's interesting, like, I think universally, most people would not want to hold their phone against their head all day. Right? Now, whether you believe it actually causes cancer or not, it's less about that. It's that maybe we don't know enough. It may just turn out that, just like tobacco was supposed to be okay with, for us, and sugar was okay for us. And, and, um, you know, Teflon was okay for us.

• 47:55Speaker 01

  Maybe like cell phones and Wi-Fi, I'm not a conspiracy theorist at all, but maybe. So why wouldn't you protect yourself? So lambs. Right, you can buy radiation-proof underwear, hats, beanies. We have this thing called the Snapback Glove. It's a silver-lined glove that you can slide in your hand to open up doors so you don't touch it. But the brand is really about protective clothing. That, you know, it's nice, it works, it's comfortable. Why wouldn't you wear this underwear if you're trying to get pregnant, or you actually think, you know, maybe it does cause cancer? So, um, so the new stuff, you know, we're launching a cereal. I don't know if I'm still saying that yet, but we're launching a cereal brand.

• 48:39Speaker 01

  Um, I think about launching brands that are unexpected. Uh, this one's amazing. And she's, uh, one of those people, you know, I think creativity, when we think about brands, a lot of it will be the founder, the creativity, and something that is worth talking about. When I think about experiences that are utilizing what's changed, so we're thinking about how to, not just regular homeschooling, so for everybody who's got kids on Zoom, what's the product that they might be liking? That means we're incubating something around that. Um, we're doing music. I mean, we have a record label.

• 49:20Speaker 01

  And we're hip-hop and trap music. So, you know, there's, to me, entertainment is still a big part of what we think about wanting to do. And Wishbone and Yarn are two top 200 apps in the App Store, right? That's us. And that's just people want to be entertained. Short-form stories, people want, it's quizzes, uh, you'll see this big announcement we're doing in a couple of days with one of the big platforms, you know? Ultimately, we get lots of inbound. The ideas we want to see are, if it's a brand, what's different? Like, tell me, why are people gonna talk about it?

• 49:59Speaker 01

  Right? If it's experiential services, like an arrived outdoors or dog vacay was, where Spunamons is a different way to do something through a service, why? And how does it scale? And then third, entertainment, if it's an app, or if it's, um, like eSports Play versus a Prey.com, like, that to me is a, something to do on your mobile device, that's not. Instagram, that's not Facebook, that's not Snapchat. So what is that thing? You know, right now, it's, uh, we have Wishbone Yarn, Pray.com, Playverses. So it's, it's a lot of these ideas for us are...

• 50:38Speaker 01

  I know it when I see it. My partners know it when they see it, and it's a lot of gut. You know, parent, like, do we believe, you know? Real Blocks is a company that, when I saw, I said, "Do we believe DocuSign is the last thing we'll ever see in digitalization of an asset?" Like, like, that's a crazy, right? So we all, I'm sure, own Bitcoin. We all understand the value of creating digital assets. And Real Blocks is looking at taking real-world, big-bank assets,

• 51:19Speaker 01

  REITs, securities, and then taking that whole automation of back the end of it. This, the, uh, the idea of putting that in digital form and making it globally accessible. It's gonna happen, whether it's today, tomorrow. There's no doubt, there isn't a rational person in the world that would say, like, "At some point, isn't it crazy that if you love the Tesla stock,

• 51:46Speaker 01

  if I'm in the, in some country, like, name it, like, I'm in Vietnam, like, how do I buy Tesla stock on the NASDAQ? Like, I can't do that unless I'm a, I have an account with Chase Citibank." Like, no, that's not the way the world's gonna work. And so globalization of assets, as you know, you know, Science was one of the few Reg D tokens that was ever created. And to us, that was a tremendous learning of how hard it is, right, to do. Um, and so, you know, we're, we're still working on a bunch of crazy ideas, right? We have Protego launching soon, uh, which is a...

• 52:32Speaker 01

  Custody and a trust company and we're one of the only things that exist in the world that you can take any assets and put it in custody. It could be your house, it could be Bitcoin, it could be any assets. I like thinking the world in that manner where what's it gonna be in a year to two years? I'm not a five-year person, ten, that's telling the future. To me, twelve to eighteen months is not about like I'm smart. It's observing the relevant information at hand today. Like arrive is like, well, people want to camp, people don't want to own things like that. To tell you that story that in a year, people were gonna rent a lot of camp here wasn't a stretch.

• 53:14Speaker 01

  You know, plastic bottles, people should not drink, we banned plastic straws to think that water in a can might take money. It isn't too big of a stretch. And so I'm much more the that, that's been my skill as an investor. Twelve to eighteen months, maybe two years. Ten years, we can have opinions on, I don't want to wait that long to know if I'm right.

• 53:35Speaker 01

  That's my skill and I don't want to have fun, I want to love the founder, I want to I want that founder to have a relationship with me that's just a lot different and much truer. But I'm all in, like

• 53:48Speaker 01

  this doesn't work for me, right? Like, I know you don't work, like, it's not work when you love what you do. And it's like, we wake up to do these things, that's what I did.

• 53:59Anthony Pompliano?

  My, uh, my one thing that I think I've learned from you is, uh, you were talking earlier about kind of telling the story. And I think one thing that people don't realize that you do probably better than anyone I've ever seen is you practice. I've heard you literally pitch Liquid Death probably five hundred times while I'm with you as you're handing the can, and it was all before that, the big last fundraiser, right? And so like all of that repetition, every time wasn't exactly the same, but it went from, hey, there's this water in this can that, you know, was kind of what I would assume most people would start at to by the time, the five-hundredth time I heard you say it, I was like, damn, that's pretty compelling. Like, there's not that many people who are gonna say no to that.

• 54:42Speaker 01

  Well, the funny thing is, you say practice, but I, it's like, I don't, my whole life, I've never, um...

• 54:50Speaker 01

  When I do talks, I don't write them down. It's always off the cuff. It drives people nuts, but I don't. Because I, it's mostly because I have a really bad memory. Like diagnosed with ADHD, bottom sixteen percent time memory. It's just the pitch. I, it's adjustments based on people's reaction. Right? And I just adjust, adjust up. So when I say seven thousand no's, those seven thousand no's got to a couple hundred yeses. Just because every time I'm just watching the reaction, I'm listening to the reaction. What do they have questions about? How can I essentially in advance answer the question in the pitch? So part of pitching is repetition.

• 55:29Speaker 01

  You can call it practice, but talking it out loud to people, normal people like gen pop, who aren't investors, do they understand what you're telling? Then through the lens of investor, every time you get the question like, I don't know. Why this? Why this? Why this? If you can weave in your narrative, the answer before you think you know the questions are going to come. What you want is a dialogue where you do a pitch for five minutes. And the rest is just like conversation, not questions. Because you've answered all of these things like, why now? Why this? You know, why now? Why would this work? I don't understand. If you tell your pitch in a way by kind of answering those questions along, you don't waste

• 56:14Speaker 01

  that thirty minutes you have with an investor. I always think, even though people say it's an hour, you really have, in my opinion, you have about fifteen minutes. Like, you know, maybe less. So you've got to capture them inside the first few minutes, fifteen minutes. A meeting that goes longer than one hour, you have them. The last thing I'll say is, there's a twenty-four hour rule I have.

• 56:39Speaker 01

  If an investor doesn't call you, text you, message you, hell, even like a tweet of yours, within twenty-four hours, it's a, it's a no. Move on. Fast no's is all I've ever asked for my investors. Like, I, it's not, I'm not offended if you pass. Like, if it's not your thing, it's not your thing. What's the worst is slow no's. Because you're just, it's like hope. To an entrepreneur, you're giving them hope. And that sucks, like just cut it so they can move on, like they need to move on, they need to move on. And so if you're an entrepreneur out there and you're pitching people, if they, if they haven't gotten back to you in a week, don't bother, like don't waste energy hoping, right?

• 57:23Speaker 01

  And you're not a teacher, you are not, as an entrepreneur, built to educate everybody. So just because an investor asked the question does not mean you have to answer. It is not truth serum, like it is amazing when a founder is like, I told him this, like, why would you tell them everything? Like they're, they're not on the board, they're not an investor, that's information only for us. And so remember the power dynamics is that I don't say, I never think, say things like, we're raising money. I don't like to say that, right?

• 58:02Speaker 01

  And when I talk to investor, I'm talking about, we're looking for people who can be a part of this, right? Would you like the privilege to invest? Like make it feel like it's a privilege, like they have to sell you a little bit. And it's a really mental thing, it's in the back of your head. If anybody out there who's raised money before, the moment you get somebody, you get a term sheet, all of a sudden you're so much more confident to the next investor. Nothing actually changed, right? Except your confidence into that next pitch and all of a sudden like the momentum of the close happens.

• 58:41Speaker 01

  If you've ever raised money, take that feeling and try to pitch like that all the time. Pitch with confidence, not arrogance is a big difference. Don't pitch with arrogance, I hate that. Pitch with confidence that you're looking for somebody to be a part of this, that it is a, it should be, rightfully so, if you're building a company that's gonna be worth more money, they are lucky to be investing, right? It's this, it's this relationship where you're saying, look, if you give us dollars, I'm in return giving, making you more money. Um, but don't, the desperation thing never works. It's a really interesting dynamic in a psychology thing when raising money, that your shares and equity of the company is very, very valuable. Treat it like so.

• 59:23Speaker 01

  Because if you treat it like it's not, why would investor want to give you money if you don't even think it's valuable? So it's a subtlety, it's a lot of subconsciousness around that.

• 59:33Anthony Pompliano?

  Every great entrepreneur knows that the investor needs them in order to make a return on the fund. Where can people find you on the internet and find out more about science if they want to get in touch with you guys?

• 59:45Speaker 01

  I'm a Twitter guy, @PeterFam. My Twitter is really...

• 59:52Speaker 01

  It is, if you follow me, it is, there's no agenda. It is, it's diarrhea. It just falls out. Like, it's just... You should strike that word. It basically is my emotion. I wear it on my sleeve. It's no BS. I, you know, I definitely, my PR firm tells me I shouldn't be tweeting so much about things, but Twitter, it's my true self. I really don't look for validation. I am who I am. I have confidence in what I'm doing. And so Twitter's the best. Hit me up. My DMs are open. I read everything. If I don't reply, you know, sometimes it does get buried. Email as well, but science-ink.com, info@... We read everything. All the partners open up every email.

• 1:00:38Speaker 01

  So, we do reply. And I would say, as we look through the trying times right now, I will say we are proud. We're very diverse in our investments. You know, we have a lot of women. We have a lot of black founders. And I think that's a subset of being in LA, more than anything else. Like, that's just what we grew up with. We don't have Stanford grads down here. No offense to Stanford, I suppose, before I say that.

• 1:01:10Speaker 01

  And it just has to resonate. We don't ever take offense to investors that don't, you know, that say, "No." It's just not, it's just timing. Serendipity is so much of this. How many investments have you done where it was serendipity meeting?

• 1:01:29Anthony Pompliano?

  Most of them. I don't know the exact percentage, but definitely most of them. In the sense of, and some of it too is, if you look back, some of it is, you know people who are doing the deal and they think of you because of something that you did or said in the past. And they just say, hey, I know you're interested in this. Some of it is founders who say like, I specifically want you to come do this and here's how you can be helpful. And then some of it is like going and looking for things, right? So there's no like one single bucket, but most of it, if you look back,

• 1:02:02Anthony Pompliano?

  you kind of laugh at like how it came together. But hey, it works.

• 1:02:07Speaker 01

  I know. At the end of the day, not every stock's going to work out. Like, we have to just be real. And I've had my failures. Everybody's had their failures. It is a numbers game. And I always start back from zero. Like, it's, who cares what you did in the past, like the now, right? And so I always have this mentality, like, I have to work hard. I gotta try. I gotta make the effort and put it in. And I think as an investor,

• 1:02:39Speaker 01

  things that burned you in the past, don't let it really, really hinder your investments in the future. Like, that was, that's a big, big lesson. It's kind of like if you, today in this, we're talking about the stock market. How many stocks right now? If you look at it, you owned way earlier, then you sold. And then it went up and you're like, oh, it's too expensive. And now it's twice as much now or three times as much. Like, I, I bought my Tesla two hundred and something, sold it at seven something, thinking I was a hero. It's gonna hit a thousand. Oh, I might, I'll probably still buy more because I am actually long Tesla or whatever the stock is, right? Amazon is the stock I'll buy forever.

• 1:03:21Speaker 01

  And so there's, if you look at investments, one of the biggest lessons right now, even as early, is if you love the company and the idea and the founder and it got too expensive last time.

• 1:03:37Speaker 01

  You know, if your thesis as a fund will allow it, you should still probably invest, or at least personally invest, because great companies stay great usually. And so, yeah.

• 1:03:47Anthony Pompliano?

  It is hard. Spoken like the ultimate fundraiser. I love it.

• 1:03:51Speaker 01

  That's right. So you can still call me and we're raising money for a lot of things.

• 1:03:57Speaker 01

  We're actually, you know, we're raising our next fund right now. And it's, it's like, to me, I, I love that we are allowed to do this. It's, it's a privilege. Are you kidding me? But like, how lucky are we? It's, I, I get, I'm never, ever, ever forgetful and how lucky

• 1:04:19Speaker 01

  I am to do this job. Like, so

• 1:04:23Speaker 01

  we gotta pay attention. You gotta do, you gotta put the work in, right? Like LPs give me money, expect some returns. I better be, I better be hustling for it. So, but it's, it's fun.

• 1:04:35Anthony Pompliano?

  You are an absolute legend. I appreciate you doing this. I couldn't speak more highly of you guys over at Science. So any founders who are listening to this, please, please, please go reach out to them because they got their receipts, man. They know how to build companies.

• 1:04:50Speaker 01

  Well, just wait. Oh, just wait. That's the thing. Oh, that's what kills me. You know, you ever sit there and think, God, and it's, you know, I, the fast forward, we're gonna, the fast forward part, I can't wait till next year. Like, the things that are happening that you know, and it, and that's the, I think on the inside for me, having the studio part and the fund is like, we have different perspective. I have a different lens on all my investments, right? As a fund investor, when I'm investing into Liquid Death, well, I know more than any investor. Like, we, they started in our offices, right? And so, it's, when you, and you, it's

• 1:05:33Speaker 01

  too hard to articulate because it's just too much information. That, to me, is everything. Like, we all, as human beings, just want to be right. Right? Like, at our core, we just want to be right. And that's, I'm in sight, I, I know and I can admit that. So people are saying my biases, like, you're only posting data that fit your narrative. Of course I am. Like, that's, like, that's what everybody, that's what, that's human nature. Right? So, uh, yeah, just, just, I'm so excited for some of these companies right now that hopefully it'll work, right?

• 1:06:14Speaker 01

  Glass is always powerful. It's never, like, to live in the other side? I don't understand. Like, it's just so sad. It's so sad.

• 1:06:28Anthony Pompliano?

  I couldn't agree more. We, uh, we are gonna have to do this again for sure when, uh, when this stuff comes to fruition, uh, because I think that, uh, the things you guys are working on are always awesome, but you guys have definitely done a fantastic job kind of navigating all the recent chaos. So, thank you again for, uh, for taking the time to do this.

• 1:06:47Speaker 01

  Thanks for having me, man. And, uh, you're, so when, you know, since Joe Rogan is a hundred million, what are you gonna go for? Come on.

• 1:06:55Anthony Pompliano?

  But, but please, Joe, uh, Joe has a fourteen-year head start on everybody else. That's what I, that's what people forget is he's been doing this since.

• 1:07:04Speaker 01

  Internet times, Pop. You'll be there, oh, fine, fine. You'll get there in like, four.

• 1:07:10Anthony Pompliano?

  No comment. No comment.

• 1:07:13Speaker 01

  I know. Come on. All right. Peace out, man.

• 1:07:18Anthony Pompliano?

  All right, guys. Thanks for listening to that episode. I hope you enjoyed it just as much as I did. My goal is to educate as many people with these conversations as possible, so please go subscribe on your favorite podcast channel, leave a five-star rating and a review. These things really help the podcast get higher up on popularity charts, which ultimately brings more people to learn. Also, don't forget you can go to YouTube to watch each conversation in video format as well. Just search my name, Anthony Pompliano, on YouTube and you'll find our channel with hundreds of awesome and informative videos. Thanks again for listening to this one, and I'll see you for the next one.