20VC: The Power Of A Concentrated Seed Portfolio, Why Operational Value Add Models At Seed Do Not Make Sense & Why We Will See A Shakeout Of Growth Stage Investors with Roger Ehrenberg, Founder & Managing Partner @ IA Ventures

Roger Ehrenberg is the Founder and Managing Partner @ IA Ventures, one of New York’s leading early stage funds with investments in the likes of TransferWise and The Trade Desk. Prior to IA, Roger was a prolific angel investor making investments in over 40 companies including BuddyMedia and previous guest, Howard Lindzon’s StockTwits. Before that, Roger served as President and CEO @ DB Advisors, Deutsche Bank’s internal hedge fund trading platform which managed $6Bn in capital across multiple geographies. In Today’s Episode with Roger You Will Learn: How Roger made his way into VC from the world of Wall St? How does Roger view the diversification model of 50+ in a portfolio in micro VC? What levels of ownership does that require? With regards to small and honed portfolios Roger has previously said that ‘small is beautiful’. How does Roger approach this with IA and what capital pools does this allow his partners? Roger has also said that ‘VC platforms are not a panacea’. What does he mean by this? What do founders really want from an investment partner today? What is the effect of Roger and IA being outside the traditional echo chambers of Silicon Valley? How does this affect Roger’s dealflow? Hiring ability? Partnership opportunities? Items Mentioned In Today’s Show: Roger’s Fave Blog and Newsletter: Maria Popova: BrainPickings Roger’s Fave Book: Out Of The Crisis Roger’s Most Recent Investment: Octane Lending As always you can follow Harry, The Twenty Minute VC and Roger on Twitter here! Likewise, you can follow Harry on Snapchat here for mojito madness and all things 20VC. X.ai is AI-powered personal assistant for scheduling meetings bringing you Amy or Andrew. The assistant you interact with like you would to any other person and it allows you to avoid the tedious hours of email ping pong in order to schedule one meeting. Even better, there is no sign in, no password, no download, all you do is cc [email protected] beautiful! And you can check it out now on x.ai it really is a must! Workable is the all-in-one recruiting software for ambitious companies. From posting a job to tracking and managing candidates, Workable provides everything you need to hire better. Transparent communication, organized candidate profiles, structured interviews and a full reporting suite gives hiring teams the information they need to make the best choice. Workable is available for desktop and mobile and you can find out more on workable.com where you can try it for free.

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

• 0:00Harry Stebbings?

  You are listening to the 20 minute VC with your host Harry Stebbings and I'd love to see you on Snapchat at H Stebbings with two Bs. All ads get a personal message from me. In all likelihood, I will have a mojito in hand for the snap too, so that's an extra bonus. However, talking of a bonus, we have that for you today with this fantastic episode. So joining me in the hot seat, I'm thrilled to welcome Roger Ehrenberg, founder and managing partner at IA Ventures. IA Ventures is one of New York's leading early-stage funds, with investments in the likes of TransferWise and The Trade Desk. Prior to IA, Roger was a prolific angel investor, making investments in over 40 companies, including Buddy Media and previous guest Howard Lindzon's company StockTwist. Before that, Roger served as president and CEO at DB Advisors,

• 0:42Harry Stebbings?

  Deutsche Bank's internal hedge fund trading platform, which managed 6 billion in capital across multiple geographies. I also want to say a huge thank you to Rory O'Driscoll at scale for the intro to Roger today, without which this interview would not have been possible. But before we dive into the show today, there are some products that you simply cannot remember what life was like before them. For me, that's X.ai. They bring you Amy and Andrew, their AI-powered personal assistants for scheduling meetings. And the beauty of Amy or Andrew is you interact with them like you would any other person. And it allows you to avoid the tedious hours of email ping pong in order to schedule one meeting. Even better though, there's no sign in, no password, no download. All you do is cc amy at X.ai. Absolutely fantastic. And you can check it out now at X.ai. It really is a must.

• 1:26Harry Stebbings?

  And on the topic of streamlining traditionally long and cumbersome workflows, you must check out Workable, the all-in-one recruiting software for ambitious companies. From posting a job to tracking and managing candidates, Workable provides everything you need to hire better. Transparent communication, organised candidate profiles, structured interviews and a full reporting suite gives hiring teams the information they need to make the best choice. Workable is available for desktop and mobile, and you can find out more on workable.com, where you can try it for free. However, enough from me, so I'm now delighted to hand over to Roger Ehrenberg, founder and managing partner at IA Ventures.

• 2:05Speaker 01

  You have now arrived at your destination.

• 2:09Harry Stebbings?

  Roger, it's such a pleasure to have you on the show today. I really appreciate you taking out the time to join me. Thank you so much for coming on the show.

• 2:16Speaker 02

  Oh, thanks so much, Harry. It's truly a pleasure.

• 2:18Harry Stebbings?

  Now, I'd love to get started today, Roger, with a bit about you and how you made your way into what I describe as the wonderful world of VC.

• 2:26Speaker 02

  It certainly was a non-traditional path. I spent the first 18 years of my career on Wall Street in derivatives and quantitative trading, not even really knowing what a VC was. It was really only after I decided to leave the street in late 04 and had started to make some seed-stage angel investments in technology companies in New York that I even became aware of and immersed in the venture capital industry. And it was after kind of five years of investing as a professional angel, investing several million dollars of my own money, seeding 40 companies, leading six rounds over that kind of late 04 to 09 timeframe, that I actually had developed a really clear vision of the

• 3:09Speaker 02

  kind of firm that I wanted to start and to build the next leg of my career. And that was really the genesis of I A Ventures.

• 3:16Harry Stebbings?

  And you said about the portfolio approach you took there as an angel, leading, I think you said, six rounds. But I want to start off today with some discussion on modeling behind VC. And in micro VC, there's the diversification model of 50 plus in a portfolio. I'm really intrigued. What's your take on this model? And how does that take then affect your strategy with I A?

• 3:37Speaker 02

  So as somebody, again, who ran trading businesses for almost 20 years, I have both a keen appreciation of the benefits of diversification, but also the power of concentration. And in my experience as a seed-stage investor, as an angel, during those five years preceding my starting the firm, I really came to see that the kind of the outsized benefits really accrued to my positions where I had made both, you know, significant early investments, but then followed on substantially in those businesses that appeared to be proving their hypothesis. Is true. And so what that really led me to believe when I looked at modeling portfolio construction around the time that I started IA was that a much more concentrated strategy than

• 4:22Speaker 02

  a more traditional forty, fifty, sixty portfolio constituent approach was what I felt had the best opportunity to generate the three to five X net returns that in the institutional construct I was seeking.

• 4:34Harry Stebbings?

  I'm intrigued. Would you say then the traditional fifty plus portfolio approach, would you say that is a spray and pray approach of sorts?

• 4:42Speaker 02

  So it depends on which kind of firm you're talking about, Harry, because certainly you've got firms like the Excels and the Greylocks and, you know, even someone like a Cosla or a Kleiner that historically have had, you know, forty, fifty investments in a portfolio, but there's been a radical concentration of capital in those companies that ultimately drive the lion share of their returns. So I think their belief is that by having that broader firm system, they're able to then use their brand and their capital to pile into those investments that actually have the greatest opportunity to move the needle for their scale of funds. Our adaptation of that is, you know, we're a very small firm taking an artisanal approach to venture investing,

• 5:27Speaker 02

  where, you know, Brad, Jesse and I, we have no junior people, we each do our own work, that by going deep in two to three companies a year each over a four-year period and having that kind of twenty-five portfolio constituents in a given fund and that two of those will drive the lion's share of the returns in a given fund, that approach is both, I think it's shown in our seven-year history to be working for us, but it's also something that given how early we start investing fits well with our kind of capital efficient approach to be seeing.

• 6:01Harry Stebbings?

  I'm really intrigued then with that kind of requirements of those kind of concentrated companies, what are the requirements in terms of ownership then to generate the alpha required for the for the fund to be returned in the three to five X as as we say to LPs?

• 6:15Speaker 02

  So our goal at the seed round is to own somewhere in the fifteen, eighteen percent range of a Company. And then from there, to the extent that the company is able to kind of prove out their hypotheses and execute their plan well, we will often do super pro-ratas and even buy up in the Series A round and then pro-rata in Series B and then kind of sunset by the C, such that after all of the capital that's been invested in the business between inception and exit, IA will end up owning somewhere between 12 and 15% at exit. That's our approach. Clearly, there are deviations where there are circumstances where we've owned 10 to 12%, and then there are other circumstances where we've owned over 20%,

• 6:58Speaker 02

  but kind of what I'm giving you, Harry, is kind of the fat part of the distribution of how we approach legging into a company.

• 7:03Harry Stebbings?

  I'm intrigued in terms of kind of two alternating theories then. One is, I'd love to hear your approach or your thoughts on Eric Paley at Founder Collective and his model of not following on in investments because he thinks it misaligns the founders to the VCs. What's your take on this? I know you're very much founder-aligned. I mean, you said in one of your articles, you've got the most founder-aligned documents with your seed-stage term sheet. So I'm intrigued what your thoughts are on the misalignment as you follow on. Is that true?

• 7:32Speaker 02

  So I think there is not misalignment. I mean, so Eric's a good friend and we've co-invested a ton. We just had a company go public that Eric and I were the original investors in. So we think Eric, David, Mike are three of the best investors out there. So let me just start with that. We have debated this issue for years and we clearly have taken different approaches. Now, I think, I don't know if they're quite as rigid as they depict on follow-on, but in general, let me take the statement you made at face value. We do not think there's misalignment as long as there is absolute clarity with the founder prior to investing as to what constitutes success for the Series A.

• 8:15Speaker 02

  So because we're investing in this kind of institutional seed phase, so somewhere between some friends and family money and pre-seed and then a full-on Series A, we're taking that 18 to 24-month period of pre-product-market fit.

• 8:31Speaker 02

  What I'll call max risk, but it's structured around these very concrete hypotheses. If the company executes well and the hypotheses that we aligned on prove to be true, then we follow on and that's great. It's a, it's an awesome signal for new investors and that's, and founders are happy and that's great. Now, to the extent that the company doesn't prove out their hypotheses and then they're trying to raise a series A from a weakened position. Again, what we've generally found is we tend to look at companies pretty much the way the same that other smart money looks at companies at the series A and beyond. So if we think a company is having trouble, the likelihood of a great investor at the series A, thinking that everything's rosy is really low. The market for capital has gotten increasingly efficient.

• 9:16Speaker 02

  So I guess our belief is that the notion of misalignment is somewhat of a red herring. Because smart investors will see what we're seeing and that if the company hasn't done well, then they're not going to be able to raise anyway. So then it comes down to, do they sell, do they stop, or do they have enough proof points? And a clear enough path to raising a great series A that they need a kind of a round extension. And then we work with them very closely to try and figure out which of those three paths is the best path. Long answer to a short question.

• 9:46Harry Stebbings?

  No, that's a brilliant answer, but I just, the trouble is I have so many questions to offshoot it. So the first, no, I really do. It's a, it's a terrible trait of being an interviewer. But the first, the first question is, you said about runway there and I always say to founders, go for the, you know, hailed and very common 18 months. You in the institutional seed, when they're searching for that product market fit stage where it can take longer. What do you advise founders in terms of runway to raise for at this stage? Is 24 months optimal?

• 10:13Speaker 02

  So I think it really depends on the, the maturity of the business and the, and the degree of product market fit to the extent it exists. At this, at the time that we're investing at the institutional seed stage. Because clearly when we invest, companies look quite different. There are some where it's literally a PowerPoint and some early code and a couple of great founders. And there are other times when, you know, there's a product in market while they, they may not have nailed product market fit. It's obviously much closer to being an evolved business than the. In terms of runway, I generally say eighteen to twenty four months. If a company already has product in market and they're really just seeking kind of product market fit and refinement, if they actually execute their hypotheses well, the likelihood of them getting a preemptive inside twelve months is actually quite high.

• 10:57Speaker 02

  And so having the extra six months of capital on the balance sheet is great. Conversely, if it's something that's much more development stage, I think absolutely having twenty four months is critical. If there's one thing I do know, Harry, and as you I'm sure know and certainly will in your new position as a VC, nothing ever goes the way you expect.

• 11:15Harry Stebbings?

  Never, never, never.

• 11:17Speaker 02

  Never does.

• 11:17Harry Stebbings?

  Like, nothing you ever say to a VC is really between the two of you. I'm sending you my deck. Don't send it. Don't send it to anyone, of course.

• 11:26Speaker 02

  I'm not commenting on that. In terms of having some extra cushion for companies that are really still very much in the developmental stage, I think twenty four months is table stage.

• 11:38Harry Stebbings?

  And then kind of getting to that twenty four months product market fit stage, you having seen many companies reach it and then also conversely not reach it, what are the signs that product market fit's been reached? Justin Khan at Y C told me it was when ten people unaffiliated from your network bought or used your product. How do you assess product market fit satisfaction?

• 11:59Speaker 02

  So I don't know that I actually have a hard metric, or I don't think Brad and Jesse do either, for what constitutes product market fit. I think it's when you've been able to sell in a way that isn't heavily consultative, because we often see, especially in businesses that are not consumer but more enterprising, is that, you know, the early sales done by the founder, CEO, are often a mix of technology and services because you want to make sure that the product works and you want to make sure that the customer is happy. So you tend to over-service those accounts, both from the standpoint of learning and from the perspective of having a happy customer. But clearly, that's not a sustainable model for a software company that wants to scale

• 12:44Speaker 02

  and scale rapidly. So to us, product market fit at that point is where sales cycle has come way in. Where there's not the need for heavy services in order to get somebody to buy, but where the product fit and finish is such that somebody is just willing to buy the product.

• 13:00Harry Stebbings?

  And say, say product market fit isn't quite achieved and, and they have to raise an extension or a bridge or a seed plus or whatever acronym we like to call it. What's your take on this extension round? Mike Maples once said to me on the show that more often than not, a bridge is actually appear to nowhere. Positivity is always, but what's your take on this? And for you, has it most commonly led to an unfaltering end? Would you actually see potential hope and future product market fit satisfaction in the round?

• 13:28Speaker 02

  We have used round extensions quite frequently when it's taken longer to have product market fit unfold, either because of technical challenges where getting the build done simply took longer or where the product complexity was such that there hadn't been enough time to kind of productize in a way to sell the, sell it in a scalable manner before raising the series A. Some of our best companies have actually raised kind of extension rounds. So the Trade Desk, you know, which is now, you know, trading at well over a billion dollars. They needed a few extensions before they, they were able to kind of raise their series A. It really comes down to discipline, Harry. It comes down to, are you clear on what the future state of the company needs to look like

• 14:12Speaker 02

  in order to raise a great series A? And understanding what the gap is between where the company is now, what that, that future state looks like and how much runway you need in order to be able to achieve that. As long as you go into this with a very, very crisp plan and there is a line of sight from where you are today to that future state, then I think raising an extension is well within the seed stage pervia.

• 14:34Harry Stebbings?

  And, and I want to discuss something now that is, that is a particular passion for me. And I think actually we'll disagree on it, so even more interesting. But it's a quote of yours that's very interesting. It's VC platforms are not a panacea. So I'm intrigued, what do you mean by this in particular?

• 14:51Speaker 02

  What I, what I mean is that, you know, there, there are certainly some high profile examples of firms building these extremely horizontal platforms of service.

• 15:01Speaker 02

  And having these large organizations within the firms to support portfolio companies. And look, I mean, one of my principal mentors, close friends and most respect, people I respect most in the industry, Josh Koppelman, has done this brilliantly at First Round. However, I think most firms do it to a lesser degree where they're not all in on that notion as Josh and Howard and Brett were. And as a result, they kind of offer a bunch of stuff that they feel they need to in order to be competitive. And I think we've pushed back very heavily against that notion. Now, we've done a ton of experimentation with different kinds of services to offer and community to offer our portfolio companies.

• 15:40Speaker 02

  And again, what we found, given how early we're investing and how founders actually care about relatively few things when all they're trying to do is prove product market fit, is to just focus on things like making sure that they raise the right amount of money, making sure that they are extremely crisp on what it is they have to prove to raise that great series and to get to the next level of the business, to actually provide them with a coach, somebody that they can speak to that works with them and is a safe person for them to share with when they're in their darkest days and they don't feel comfortable talking to their venture investor, no matter how good the relationship is because of the implicit power that exists between investor and portfolio company.

• 16:23Speaker 02

  And then finally, this helping companies just get their operations set up correctly, just basic books and records, KPI tracking. You know, we help companies with an outsourced CFO for their first year of life. We found those basic things to be what really matter, much less all of the broad scope of services that a lot of firms are trying to help with.

• 16:44Harry Stebbings?

  Do you think we'll see a diminished broader scope in the future? Do you think fewer and fewer funds will offer it in the future if it does follow your thesis of founders not really needing it or wanting it at that stage?

• 16:58Speaker 02

  I think it really is going to, that the industry is going to look like a barbell. And I've long thought you'll kind of have firms that are really focused on helping build companies at the seed stage and proving out their businesses. You'll have larger firms which may well have a lot of these platform resources to help companies with the scaling phase. And that there really won't be that much in between. Because I think dabbling in any in any markets business, whether it's venture, hedge funds, long only investing. If you're stuck in that middle, then I think it's very, very difficult to compete. That you need to be absolutely the best at whatever it is you're doing. And the bottom line is at the very early seed stage where you're just trying to prove out the experiments.

• 17:42Speaker 02

  None of this crap matters, right? Conversely, once you've proven the experiments and you've got a real company and you've got a company that is worthy. Then having a lot of these services and helping with recruiting and corporate introductions and stuff like that. That that can be much more valuable at that point. But that's not what IA does. IA does the first. So I think you'll see much more purity of purpose over time.

• 18:07Harry Stebbings?

  And talking about kind of the purity there, I do want to return quickly to your to your smaller, more honed portfolio before we dive into the quickfire. And ask how the honed portfolio itself affects your kind of capital allocation in terms of partners. You've got three partners. Is there kind of carved out capital allocation for the partners over the fund life cycle? Is that very much a strategic carving out?

• 18:30Speaker 02

  Absolutely not. What we are much more focused on is our approach to a portfolio company. Less what each partner has in a given fund. It's just the natural evolution is that we tend to invest more or less around the same. But really what we're most concerned with is refining the way that we engage with companies, the way that we engage with founders. And we've sought to streamline, simplify and engage in hyper transparent communication with our portfolio founders. And that's that's what we found there to be the greatest power, not that, oh, Brad gets 50, Jesse gets 50, Roger gets 60 or anything like that. We never even think of that, to be totally honest.

• 19:14Harry Stebbings?

  Absolutely. But I do want to ask one more question before we do the quickfire. And that is, what do you make of the rise of growth funds? It's a particularly. Interesting dilemma for me, but I'd love to hear what you make of the rise of growth funds and how you think that will play out with the rather worrisome fund economics.

• 19:30Speaker 02

  I think there's going to be a real shakeout because I think that there are relatively few growth funds that are going to be able to hit the return objectives to kind of justify LP investment. And there are certainly a handful of growth funds that have been extremely successful over an extended period of time because the partners are skilled stock pickers. They're very smart capital allocators and because of their brands and their personal reputations, they've been able to generate premium deal flow and to win is and what is now an insanely competitive growth stage market.

• 20:04Speaker 02

  So I think there will be a kind of a reaping, if you will, in the in the growth end of the market because there's just so many firms and so many dollars chasing relatively few truly great opportunities.

• 20:16Harry Stebbings?

  No, I absolutely agree, but I'd love to dive into my favorite part of the show now, actually, which is the quickfire answer. Sixty seconds per answer, I say a short statement. How does that sound?

• 20:25Speaker 02

  I'm with you. Let's go.

• 20:26Harry Stebbings?

  So let's do, let's start off with my favorite, your favorite book and why?

• 20:30Speaker 02

  W. Edwards Deming Out of the Crisis.

• 20:32Harry Stebbings?

  Why?

• 20:33Speaker 02

  I guarantee you not one of your guests has ever said that.

• 20:35Harry Stebbings?

  No, never.

• 20:36Speaker 02

  So, you know, Deming was one of the, probably the most famous name in quality management and what Deming and Deming was the one that helped transform the Japanese auto and steel industries into the powerhouses that they ultimately became. So Deming was all about focusing on process, not on outcomes, and that it's only by truly understanding process and measuring process diligently and accurately that you can then truly set yourself up for great outcomes. It was his insights that actually caused, you know, the US to drop in manufacturing relative to the companies in the Pacific Rim because those in the US wouldn't listen to him.

• 21:16Speaker 02

  And in the 1950s, he went over to Japan and Korea and they became amazingly successful because they built this process oriented approach, this data driven approach that was far superior to that that we were using in the US at the time.

• 21:31Harry Stebbings?

  To us, you said about the importance of process there. We just had Alexis Sohanian from initialized and Reddit on the show. And he said that a process is one of the most fundamental things VC can have in its operating. Do you agree with that in terms of the pivotal importance of process?

• 21:47Speaker 02

  One hundred percent, I think, especially, Harry, where we're investing in IA, which is so early, where there is such sparse data that if we don't have a process, if we don't have founders that embrace experimentation, if we don't have a rigorous approach to data collection, analysis, iteration, then I think it would be very difficult for us to be successful.

• 22:11Harry Stebbings?

  And then I'm intrigued, biggest mentor and how he came about, he or she came about?

• 22:15Speaker 02

  I would say probably Fred Wilson has been my greatest mentor. Funnily enough, I met Fred and Joanne because our kids went to school together. You know, Fred and I had known each other peripherally in the community, you know, while I was still on Wall Street, but then when I left the street, you know, Fred was extremely generous with his time and his advice on helping me make that transition. And something that Fred just blew me away with is, you know, here was somebody who was so successful at venture, you could not find a more humble, self-aware person who truly understood and embraced the fact that venture, being a great venture capitalist was a lifelong pursuit.

• 22:55Speaker 02

  And in fact, that it would never end, and that it is such a humbling, challenging endeavor, but one that brought great joy. So I am eternally thankful to Fred for all that he did for me.

• 23:05Harry Stebbings?

  And what a fantastic follow-on question to that. What's your favorite blog or newsletter?

• 23:09Speaker 02

  I would actually say that Maria Popov's Brain Pickings is my favorite.

• 23:13Harry Stebbings?

  Really? That's interesting.

• 23:14Speaker 02

  Because it's so... Because it makes me think about stuff that's not related to VC. It makes me think about life. It makes me think about art. It makes me think about those things that ultimately are important in helping me have an open aperture, to be open-minded about opportunities, circumstances, life, beyond the nuts and bolts of VC that we live every day. So I find her curation and her insights to be absolutely amazing. invaluable to me.

• 23:42Harry Stebbings?

  And then what would you most like to see change in VC?

• 23:45Speaker 02

  I would like to see continued transparency. I would like to see kind of industry enforced best practices around everything from term sheets to venture debt documents to just all the nuts and bolts of what we do. I spent 12 of my 18 years in the derivatives markets and I know that mystery and seeming obfuscation and complexity adds mystique. It's such bullshit. It's like the hardest part of VC is finding great people who are aligned on a challenging mission that's important. All the other stuff, weird terms in term sheets and complex documents, none of it means anything.

• 24:27Speaker 02

  And so I just, I wish there were, there was just more openness and more transparency around the deal so that you could, everyone could just focus their efforts on building a great company.

• 24:37Harry Stebbings?

  And then I want to finish today on, on the topic of building great companies with your most recent investment and why you said yes, public investment that is.

• 24:46Speaker 02

  I guess for me, my most recent public investment was, was Octane Lending. Kind of alternative finance is an area that I'm super passionate about, you know, simple, transfer wise. Octane to me was super interesting because of a couple of things. One, amazing founders out of Capital One and GE Capital. So knew the space, knew the domain extremely well. The other thing, one of the other things is that they, they actually had created a differentiated asset in the form of FICO scores for powersports. They don't exist. Like FICO scores exist for cars, but not really for motorcycles, snowmobiles, ATVs, UTVs and all the other stuff that people buy. And they, with both traditional data and alternative data, were able to create their

• 25:28Speaker 02

  own credit curves and stress tests them such that they could raise a hundred million dollars of financing from a large hedge fund and a bank as a senior lender based upon their proprietary data and insights, which to me was just amazing. And then finally, they're serving this, you know, with Dodd-Frank, this big underserved piece of the market where there's, there's money for super And there's money for deep subprime, but everything in between has largely been vacated by the banks and the finance companies. So they stepped in, they actually have a real finance company, not peer to peer. They have a real finance company, but then they have a user experience layer that's kind of like the next generation of dealer track to help the dealers offer the best financing for their customers.

• 26:13Speaker 02

  So really interesting company in a, in a domain I'm excited about both leveraging technology and leveraging differentiated proprietary data.

• 26:21Harry Stebbings?

  Roger, it's been such a pleasure to have you on the show today. Thank you so much for giving up the time today to join me.

• 26:26Speaker 02

  Thank you, Harry. Great questions. I really enjoyed it.

• 26:30Harry Stebbings?

  My word, I have to say, as a venture nerd, that really was just a dream interview with me digging into all things VC and investing there. And a huge thanks to Roger for giving up the time today to appear on the show and a big hand to Rory O'Driscoll at Scale Ventures Partners for the intro today, without which the show would not have been possible. And if you'd like to see more from us, then you can follow me on Snapchat at H Stebbings with two Bs, or you can follow Roger on Twitter at Info Arbitrage, or you can head over to our new blog, appropriately named Mojito VC dot com. I'd absolutely love to hear your thoughts and feedback on that. However, before we leave you today, do not forget that everyone needs Amy and Andrew in their life. Yes, this is X dot AI bringing you the AI powered personal assistance for scheduling meetings. And the beauty of Amy or Andrew is you interact with them like you would any other person.

• 27:13Harry Stebbings?

  And it allows you to avoid the tedious hours of email ping pong in order to schedule a single meeting. Even better though, there's no sign in, no password, no download. All you do is super simple, cc amy at X dot AI, absolutely perfect. And you can check it out now at X dot AI. It really is a must. And the other pain point for startups is always hiring, and that's where Workable come in. Workable is the all in one recruiting software for ambitious companies. From posting a job to tracking and managing candidates, Workable provides everything you need to hire better. Transparent communication, organized candidate profiles, structured interviews and a full reporting suite. Gives hiring teams the information they need to make the best choice. Workable is available for desktop and mobile, and you can find out more on workable.com where you can try it for free.

• 27:57Harry Stebbings?

  As always, I so appreciate all your support. You can always email me on harry at the twenty minute VC dot com. And I cannot wait to bring you Friday's episode with Dennis Mortensen, founder and CEO at X dot AI.