20VC: Thrive Capital's Kareem Zaki on The One Rule That Drives Investment Decision-Making and Focus at Thrive, Why Every Large Institution Will Enter Venture Capital Over the Next Decade and How To Create a Firm Culture That Attracts The Best Young Talent

Kareem Zaki is a General Partner @ Thrive Capital, with a portfolio including Stripe, Instacart, Instagram, Nubank, Github, Glossier and many more, they have cemented their position as one of the leading venture firms of the last decade. As for Kareem, he is a co-founder and board member to Cedar, Nava, Scope Security and Cadence and has invested in the likes of Affirm, Lemonade, Ramp and Trade Republic. Prior to entering venture, Kareem spent 3 years in private equity with Blackstone. In Today’s Episode with Kareem Zaki You Will Learn: 1.) How Kareem made his way from the world of private equity to backing some of the most innovative next-generation companies with Thrive Capital? 2.) Portfolio Construction: What is the one rule that drives all decision-making at Thrive? How does Kareem think about maintaining focus with such a broad mandate? How do Thrive think about asset allocation internally with such a broad mandate? How does incubating companies also help Kareem be a better investor? 3.) Investing Style: How has Kareem's investing style changed over the last 10 years? What does he focus on now that he did not before and visa versa? How does Kareem assess his own relationship to price? Through what lens does Kareem approach market sizing and timing? Where do many investors make mistakes here? 4.) The Landscape: How does Kareem respond to the activity and cadence of Tiger? In what way does Kareem believe the venture landscape will have changed most significantly in the next 10 years? How do the existing incumbent firms need to change in the wake of this? How do Thrive respond to the pace and cadence of check writing today? Item’s Mentioned In Today’s Episode with Kareem Zaki Kareem’s Favourite Book: How Will You Measure Your Life Kareem's Most Recent Investment: Cadence

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

• 0:00Harry Stebbings?

  Today we feature a guest in a firm who do not do interviews often. In our extensive research preparing for this episode, we discovered over fifteen different founder interviews. This guest has a top three NPS out of over three thousand VCs we've had on the show since inception. And I'm very touched that he was willing to do the show today and have the conversation. And so with that, I'm very, very excited to welcome Kareem Zaki, general partner at Thrive Capital, with a portfolio including Stripe, Instacart, Instagram, Nubank, GitHub, Glossier, and many more incredible companies. They've cemented their position as one of the leading venture firms of the last decade. As for Karim, he's a co-founder and board member to Cedar and has invested in the likes of a firm, Lemonade, Ramp, and Trade Republic, to name a few. Prior to entering venture, Kareem spent three years in private equity with Blackstone.

• 0:44Harry Stebbings?

  And I'd also want to say huge thank you to Josh at Thrive, Brandon at Narva, Jordan at RightWay, and Chris at Cadence. Some amazing questions today, a real team effort with the schedule. But before we dive into the show stage, you employ or pay workers in other countries. Yes, well, you need Remote. Remote makes it easy for companies of all sizes to employ global teams. They take care of international payroll, benefits, taxes, and local compliance. Remote helps you onboard full-time employees or contractors in countries all over the world in minutes on its simple, easy-to-use platform. They own full local legal entities in all their covered countries, guaranteeing you never have to deal with a third party ever. And to save you money, Remote never charges any fees or salary percentages. You get access to everything Remote offers for one low, flat rate.

• 1:29Harry Stebbings?

  No hidden fees, no surprises ever. And best of all, podcast listeners, get an even bigger discount. Get your first employee free for 12 months and two months free for any additional employees on-boarded during their first year. Just visit remote.com/20vc and use the promo code 20vc. And speaking of investing in your people there with Remote, why can you not invest in sports cards like you can stocks? With Alt, you can. Alt is increasing the transparency and liquidity of alternative assets, allowing you to invest from as little as $7 to a million dollars on their exchange. And with Alt, you also save on fees. There's only a 1.5% transaction fee. They also have an incredible real-time valuation engine. And so you can see what

• 2:10Harry Stebbings?

  Your portfolio is worth in real time really is incredible. I love this platform. So check them out at onlyalt.com. And last but by no means least, I just love using Angel List Fund Admin Platform to manage my investments. The team and platform at Angel List, they take care of everything that my back office needs so that I can focus on working with great founders. Leading fund managers have made over 10,000 investments into 6,000 startups for our Angel List, all online and all in one place. And with the recently announced Rolling Funds, you can easily find and invest in these top fund managers on angellist.com/rolling. But that's quite enough from me. So now I'm very, very excited to hand over to Karim Zaki, General Partner at Thrive Capital.

• 2:54Speaker 01

  You have now arrived at your destination.

• 2:57Harry Stebbings?

  Karim, this is such a joy to do. I've wanted to do this for a very long time and I'm also very cognizant that this is probably one of the first times that a Thrive team member has been on a podcast. So thank you so much for joining me, Stae Karim.

• 3:08Speaker 02

  Of course, super excited. Big fan of the show, Harry.

• 3:10Harry Stebbings?

  That is very kind of you. And as I said to you beforehand, I emailed many of your founders and every single one of them responded, which is the first time ever that has happened. And I would tweet that if you were on Twitter, but you're not. But I do want to start with a little bit on you. So tell me, how did you make the way into the world of venture and come to be at Thrive today?

• 3:28Speaker 02

  Actually, I grew up pretty far from it. When I was younger, I was very focused on being a doctor and I was on my way to med school. And I had this realization that I just knew very little about how the world worked. I got anxious about the idea of actually becoming even more narrow and focused over the next decade, going to medical school, residency, and all the things that followed from that deferred my decision to go to med school, ended up applying to a lot of places last minute. Was fortunate to get a job in private equity at Blackstone, spent a lot of time regulating industries like healthcare and financial services. After a few years, I started to get a bit disillusioned with, even though these were amazing businesses and doing really well by all, you know, objective measures, they were investing so little into the future and they're really relying on either the regulatory capture they had

• 4:11Speaker 02

  or the inertia of the market to continue to propel them forward. And don't get me wrong, they were amazing businesses, but I just left a little bit less inspired. And around this time, Josh, who's the founder of Thrive, was starting to think about Oscar Health. And we'd known each other from school. And I started spending time with him and the team unofficially around this. And I just got so inspired by the problems, the spaces, and the ambition of the team, which reached well beyond the 40 million fund they had at the time would suggest. And even with that small fund, they were taking big swings. You know, be a big investor in a growth round in Instagram right before Facebook bought it all with a small fund. And the craziest idea of all was Oscar, this health insurance company, at least to me, someone who spent a lot of time thinking about insurance and

• 4:55Speaker 02

  healthcare. And I remember coming home from one of those conversations, modeling it out and thinking about how it would work from all these conventional lenses. And I just realized the math didn't work unless you really believed that we were at the beginning of a new movement, really ushered actually by the Cannibal Care Act, where for the first time, you could create direct to consumer insurance company, that you could build real relationships with your members, you could drive engagement. If you did that, it actually flipped the whole economics of the insurance industry. And I was just so energized by these conversations. I just knew I had to be a part of it.

• 5:28Speaker 03

  Can I interrupt you and ask, you know, when you look at Chris Pike, when you look at Miles Grimshaw, when you look at you, and you look at the incredible ambassadors you've all turned into, what does Josh do in terms of tutelage, mentorship, to build such great ambassadors from more traditional finance backgrounds?

• 5:44Speaker 02

  Definitely. And you can actually throw Will Gabrick in that list as well.

• 5:47Speaker 03

  And Will Gabrick.

• 5:48Speaker 02

  Josh is fantastic. He's a great partner. He's a great friend. You know, the big thing, actually, and it's more of a firm philosophy. So we very much approach it as a partnership. We approach it as a team. As we think about Thrive and building an organization, the team, because obviously, that's the most important thing. And everyone says that. But one of the things that comes with that realization is that you actually need to own and invest and develop your talent. You make all these assumptions that the team's the most important, but you actually outsource it to other people to develop people, and you try to poach them later or get them later in their career. You've just created a dependency on the market that you don't control. And this is the most important thing. And so we've thought, Josh and the firm has really thought about how do we make and structure the entire organization around one philosophy? And how do you make Thrive the best and most exciting place for young and ambitious talent to work who want to

• 6:30Speaker 02

  Take a bet on themselves, thinking about a structure that actually enables them to take risks, to succeed and not to stifle. It's so natural that as a firm starts to grow, you try to over institutionalize it, try to get people to think a certain way, talk a certain way, follow a certain philosophy that helps you get to a certain level of success. And that's never been the philosophy of Thrive.

• 6:49Speaker 03

  My question to you on that is, okay, with that in mind and with ambitious young people in mind, how do you create an environment of safety where they feel that they can take these risks without the repercussions of, oh, wow, we fucked up? How do you create that environment of safety, but also not too safe?

• 7:06Speaker 02

  The way we think about creating Thrive to be the most exciting place for young and ambitious people to bet on themselves is first having a small team and being flexible in our structure. If you actually think about Thrive, yes, we're a venture firm and we've grown a lot from the forty million of fund at the time to managing more than ten billion of AUM. But we've really done it without any rules. We've been very opportunistic and we've only really had one rule. And that is to be a part of category defining companies with multi-decade tailwinds. The tailwinds being important because if you have tailwinds for long enough, any market will eventually be large enough. And the one B under that rule is we want to be their best partner. And that's exciting and liberating for young people who don't want to be told how to do things, but want to make their mark on the world and don't have to be slotted into a growth fund

• 7:50Speaker 02

  or an early fund or think in a certain way or we benchmark and we invest in those ways. We do pre-IPO rounds like Zoom or Zillow in the public markets or spinning Vimeo out of IEC or taking Collector's Universe private, took that company private and we actually build companies as well. There's one goal, which is to be a part of these category defining companies.

• 8:10Speaker 03

  So when you think about asset allocation and you think about the different buckets, you have that early growth, incubation, as you said, taking companies private, public, what many different kind of vehicles and mechanisms you do. How do you think about asset allocation across the different stages? And what does portfolio construction look like for you to say with the new two billion dollar fund?

• 8:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, we don't think too hard about portfolio construction. Again, there's one rule at Thrive and that's to be a part of category defining companies with multi-decade tailwinds. We've divided our funds early in growth and that's more of a mechanism. For us to kind of think and drive and focus our conversations as we talk about opportunities. And our lens is that the lines are really blurring across the board. You know, was investing at Stripe at three billion, a early stage deal or a late stage deal. And so we think about where are the most exciting opportunities. We remove a lot of the restrictions and the ideas of how do we price this deal or think about this deal. And more about are we backing category defining companies, multi decade tailwinds. And if we're right about that and we're in the number one, we're just so early in a lot of these innings

• 9:10Speaker 02

  that a lot of these things will continue to compound for a long period of time.

• 9:14Speaker 03

  Can I ask, do you worry about a loss of focus? Cause I I'm the same as you. My job is to be in the world's most transversal companies, period. People ask me what I invest in, I say unicorns. And they go, yeah. And like, but LPs go, oh, lack of focus. How do you respond to that?

• 9:28Speaker 02

  Two things. One is that actually, I think if you have that one lens, as you just talked about here, about only investing in category defining companies, it actually drives a ton of focus. You are less distracted about trying to talk to every financial services company, because that's what it says your fund does, or every series A company, because that's what it says your fund does. And you're really focused on where can you identify in the signal around finding the founders, the opportunities, the markets that are really at the edge of creating a new market, blowing a market open. And we think that just drives tons of clarity and focus around our conversations, because it's so easy as an investor to get caught up and, you know, you can make money on this deal or it's a good return, or it's the best that we've seen recently. And that just doesn't enter the conversation, because that's not the threshold, that's not the mission, that's not the focus of the firm. With that lens, actually, we think it drives a ton of focus.

• 10:12Speaker 02

  The second thing is, I think it's natural LPs to think that way, because I think historically, investing was much more financial than it was product and technology based. We're just seeing technology transform what it means to make a great investment. And it's less about what the P and L tells you. And it's much more about the combination of market and team and product and opportunity and really being able to intersect that, do everything, build it and drive it forward. And so I view it much more as a mentality of investing now, especially just how technology and software and the internet have changed the fundamentals of these businesses.

• 10:43Speaker 03

  I do have to ask that, because kind of aligned to the pricing element is the deployment speed element. And Tiger, you know, have done. Many things for this ecosystem, compressing, you know, deployment timelines is one of them. How do you feel about the compression of deployment timelines? And bluntly, the speed at which you're having to make a decision when meeting founders today?

• 11:02Speaker 02

  We notice a lot of complaints about Tiger investing. We think it's natural and totally inevitable. As technology investing goes from this niche asset class venture that was smaller people to actually being a good business, and so every asset manager is going to come compete in space. Because it's not about do they like tech or they think tech's interesting, it's just a good business now to be investing behind. And kudos to Tiger and the team, they're really smart and they're finding their own way to kind of compete in market. And that's on speed and friendly terms to founders. And I think a lot of investors are complaining because they haven't had to really compete as much before. There's just been a ton of passive success in the industry. So many funds enjoyed success because they happened to live in the epicenter of the greatest boom of entrepreneurial success the world has ever seen. And it was a totally different game back then, and I think the competition looked different.

• 11:44Speaker 02

  It was kind of the man with one eye, king of the blind or however that line goes. And if you were somewhat good, you cleaned up in the market back then. It's just a different game now because you're kind of seeing competition from lots of different lenses. And it's broken from this niche category into a much larger one. From our standpoint, it doesn't bother us too much because we've always been competing. One, you know, we've never had it easy breaking in as a firm. Two, we were a New York-based firm, and so we had to crawl our way into a lot of West Coast deals. We had to be a part of bootstrapping the New York ecosystem. We had to start our own companies to generate our own deal flow. And then a lot of older firms are evolving to compete. But if you don't compete, I think this era of passive success, because you're at the right place at the right time, is starting to shift away. I think another reason people are complaining is what Tiger's doing is maybe making them feel insignificant.

• 12:26Speaker 02

  Tiger clearly has massive ambitions and investors who are seemingly, you know, a big part of this tech ecosystem are looking a little smaller now. And I think it's forcing them to wonder kind of where do they fit in this whole thing? And if you haven't wrestled with that question before, it's a hard one. So it's natural that it makes you uncomfortable and pushback on the things that make you uncomfortable. So the fact that the game's changing, the way investing's changing is totally inevitable and just a factor of competition and the industry becoming attractive.

• 12:52Speaker 03

  What does venture look like in 10 years, do you think? Do we have 10 Tigers? Is every asset manager going to make, you know, $10 billion a year in?

• 12:58Speaker 02

  No, I think there's just going to be different styles. And it's going to evolve based on people are going to leverage the strategies that they've used to win in their own games to try to compete. You know, obviously there was SoftBank and there's Tiger and the people will come and they'll use the strategy. SoftBank came with lots of capital, make ambitious bets and focus on these capital intensive industries. Tiger came from the public world and, you know, betting in high quality assets, passive investing style, being really friendly with founders. I think we can kind of start to see it. Maybe the Blackstones start to come to the world and they just offer to buy these companies outright. And so I don't think it's going to be one dominant strategy as much as people are going to take what they're good at, what helped them succeed in their other category and try to fit it in this technology world. And the reality is technology is going to get so broad that everyone's going to find their own way and their own niche.

• 13:39Speaker 02

  I mean, I think from our standpoint and how we'll be competing 10 years from now is where the builder mindset, that's what drives it at its core. We're not financial investors. And as I talked about, some people are really good at that. They can do the risk adjusted models, they can price it to a three X and we know how to do that math, but that's just not our lens.

• 13:54Speaker 03

  Before we move to your personal style of investing, how do you respond to the people that say it's momentum investing? This is the wild west, slinging term sheets by email, you know, Kareem, you're a smart guy. Yes, 100 million bucks, go. Which some of my founders have had. How do you respond to the momentum suggesting the suggestion?

• 14:11Speaker 02

  I mean, obviously the velocity's picked up and the prices have escalated. My view is if you're in the right company, doesn't matter if you're in at the wrong time. So this could be above cycle relative to kind of how things have gone. We worry less about the timing that we hit in, the velocity that kind of comes in. Obviously we want to compete and we want to be there, but part of it too is back to the focus point. Because our lens is so narrow, we're rarely meeting a company for the first time when it's fundraising. We're spending time thinking about what are the real category shifts, what are the real market opportunities happening and being very proactive about it. So we take the time to get to know founders, markets, opportunities. So we're in a better position when maybe that term sheet comes across surprisingly. It's not the first time that we're hearing about the company. You know, we think as long as we're in the right names, we pay less mind to the time and the cycle and momentum of investing.

• 14:56Speaker 03

  How has your style of investing changed over time, Kareem? And what I mean by that is like, how has what you thought mattered changed over time? You know, I used to spend far too much time on products, on market sizing, on pricing. And then actually literally now I become much more of a psychologist and just spend all my time literally on like the childhood of the founder and their vulnerabilities and their fears and their ambitions and very much in depth there. How have you changed?

• 15:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think similar to you. I came in, back to the story, really excited about the thesis, this second industrial revolution we're living in, the early innings of tech transforming every industry. And very much my mentality and focus around engaging companies around the product, the market, strategy, recognizing and feeling more viscerally all the things that go into building a company, and building a team, and a culture, and how to align it organizationally, how to build the sequencing and the strategy. I find I spend way more time in that, hopefully because now maybe I'm a bit more qualified to have perspectives. But then you start to realize too, once you kind of product market fit, the real important thing to really focus on is, hey, how do you align and get a team and build to get them all to roll in one direction? Not just to build a good company or a great company, but an exceptional company that stands the test of time. And that's really hard. And so that's where I found that, you know, I've started to spend a lot more of my time in versus,

• 16:07Speaker 02

  to your point, a lot on the market and the thesis.

• 16:09Speaker 03

  How's working with founders changed for you?

• 16:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think it's continuation. As I've started to get much more engaged on the people in the company building side, it's just been much more intimate relationship. Because the conversations aren't, you know, once a year when you're thinking about some big strategic decision or some product decision that you need to launch, and now you're going to get the advice of an advanced investor. But really, when you have the day-to-day struggles, the week-to-week struggles, building a team, filling an executive hire, working on reorganizing your structure, helping elevate and grow talent within your organization, that's a daily occurrence. And that's just totally changed the frequency by which I engage and work with founders.

• 16:43Speaker 03

  I totally get you there. It's interesting how I'm both have changed. One final one, because this is important actually. It's like, you know, I've had many a great miss. But tell me about your biggest miss, and then tell me how it impacted your investing mindset today.

• 16:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, obviously, as you said, we've had lots of misses. And any category-defining company that's out there we're not a part of, we consider a miss. One of the ones that comes to mind is DoorDash. We had a chance to invest pretty early on in the business, even after it was kind of obvious that it was working. And we loved the founder. We obviously thought it was an amazing experience. One of the things that held us up, yes, it was an amazing experience, but it was more expensive. You're maybe paying $10 more on a $30 basket order. And so while it was working and it was growing, we just didn't know how deep it was going to go in the market, and at what point maybe they were going to hit price sensitivity. And obviously, the market was much bigger than we thought, classic mistake. But I think one of the realizations- I had as well is when you just see the bottoms up velocity of a business and every market growing and every cohort growing.

• 17:38Speaker 02

  The chances that right around the corner, you're going to hit some TAM wall is very unlikely. And you actually need to listen to the bottoms up data sometimes in these new markets for it to tell you kind of how far they run. And if your instincts that they're going to end early, you're probably wrong.

• 17:50Speaker 03

  Final one for the quick fire. I spoke to Brandon at Narber and he told me about you flying out to an exact offsite with your wife and child. And how you were so present there, but also so present with them. And I get my question to you is like, how do you manage the intensity of your role bluntly today? Incubating, investing and doing all you do on the firm building side with a wife and child and everything that comes with a family.

• 18:13Speaker 02

  Definitely. I'm more subscribed to the Bezos philosophy of work, life, harmony. When your work is so ingrained with how you want to spend your time, it just ends up aligning a lot. Doesn't end up necessarily being mutually exclusive. But also I'm very deliberate with the time when I'm working, I'm very focused on that. And I'm also very intentional when I spend time with my kids or my wife. And I think it's similar to anything you want to be great at. It's hard for it to happen accidentally. And so I make sure to schedule time and to focus around certain aspects. And you know, whether that's making sure I'm home for bedtime for my child every night, or if I'm away, I'm face timing them every night before I sleep. Or make sure to plan time with my wife separately. But again, I think to the point where you end up fortunate to work on something that actually so aligns with how you want to spend your time.

• 18:55Speaker 02

  You find that it tends to be much more aligned than completely at odds with your personal life.

• 19:00Speaker 03

  I do want to move into my favorite career. You know how this goes. I say a short statement and you give me your immediate thoughts. Are you ready to rock and roll?

• 19:06Speaker 02

  Let's do it.

• 19:07Speaker 03

  I'm sure you've read a frightening amount of books, so I'm slightly nervous about this one, but what's your favorite book and why?

• 19:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, to your point, it's hard to pick. One of the most actually formative books I read was How Will You Measure Your Life by Clayton Christensen. I read it actually when I was a senior in college and it was at the time I was doing this career exploring. And it just gave me a lot of language and frameworks for how to think about making that decision and the words for it. And then also actually reread it recently as we have two young children, as we were having children, because he really emphasizes on all the traps. High performing people might fall into as they have a family. And it was just a really thoughtful way to lay all those things out.

• 19:40Speaker 03

  What did you take away from it? What trap do people fall?

• 19:42Speaker 02

  All into you, I'll be like, ooh. One of the things it really talks about is short term reinforcement versus long term reinforcement. And so when you are investing in the life of your child, you might not see the fruits out labor for twelve or eighteen years. Versus when you're working on a deal, you know, get the pie of closing that deal or the next candidate or doing the next thing is reinforcing. And so high performance people are really attracted to feeling like they're driving success where maybe you doesn't feel like you're driving success. Cause you're, you don't, you're not seemingly making objective progress with your children, your family or relationships. So putting that all in perspective and really thinking about putting the right seeds in the ground for what you want long term as you kind of reflect back on your life. What's the hardest element of your role with Thrive today? Focus. You brought it up as a point. I think we're fortunate in that we have, you know, just one rule as a firm.

• 20:25Speaker 02

  But obviously with the pace of investing and technology and everything that's going around, it's really easy to get pulled in lots of different directions. What piece of advice do you often give but find hard to take yourself? Don't obsess over losing, hate losing, and I understand obviously it's all about being a part of the really transformative things, but I still have a hard time letting it go. What would you most like to change about the world of venture? I love if people stop thinking about it as deals and much more is about partnerships and company building. I feel for the companies if your partner thinks of it just as a deal and eventually goes south and you're not as successful. And they just think of it as a deal and they kind of move to the next one. We've been on the other side building companies and it's just heartbreaking. And so I wish that more and more people think about it as partnerships and not deals. I hear you're quite the dancer. What's the tune that gets you on the dance floor, Karim?

• 21:09Speaker 02

  I love dancing in a group, so whatever the group's dancing to, but my wife Raquel and I remixed our first dance song and with Drake and that was a lot of fun. We love Drake. What's your biggest strength and what's your biggest weakness? Oh, one of my strengths, I think, is actually being prioritization and help really identifying and honing in on the things that matter. And, you know, biggest weakness, I'd have to say I can interrupt people when they speak. I hate when I do it, but it usually happens because I'm so excited and I'm working really hard on it. Final one, my friend. What's the most recent publicly announced investment and why did you say yes and get so excited? I think the most recently publicly announced investment is a company called Cadence, which I'm actually a co-founder with Chris Alcheck, who was a repeat entrepreneur, formerly founded Mike. And we are building a remote patient monitoring platform.

• 21:52Speaker 02

  Helping people with chronic diseases, really focused on heart failure. And we're partnering with really large health systems and we just launched with LifePoint and we're on track to help 100,000 patients and we're already saving lives and it's been an exciting journey so far.

• 22:05Harry Stebbings?

  Karim, this has been so much fun to do. I can't thank you enough for giving up the time. As I said, I've wanted to have you on for a long time, so it means a lot, my friend.

• 22:12Speaker 02

  Really enjoyed it. Thank you, Harry.

• 22:16Harry Stebbings?

  A huge hand to Karim for giving up the time to be on the show there. If you'd like to see more from us, of course you can, on the 20minutevc.com. I always love to see you there. But before we leave you today, do you employ or pay workers in other countries? Yes. Well, you need Remote. Remote makes it easy for companies of all sizes to employ global teams. They take care of international payroll, benefits, taxes and local compliance. Remote helps you onboard full-time employees or contractors in countries all over the world in minutes on its simple, easy-to-use platform. They own full local legal entities in all their covered countries, guaranteeing you never have to deal with a third party ever. And to save you money, Remote never charges any fees or salary percentages. You get access to everything Remote offers for one low, flat rate. No hidden fees, no surprises

• 23:00Harry Stebbings?

  ever. And best of all, podcast listeners, get an even bigger discount. Get your first employee free for 12 months and two months free for any additional employees onboarded during their first year. Just visit remote.com/20vc and use the promo code 20vc. And speaking of investing in your people there with Remote, why can you not invest in sports cards like you can stocks? With Alt, you can. Alt is increasing the transparency and liquidity of alternative assets, allowing you to invest from as little as $7 to $1 million on their exchange. And with Alt, you also save on fees. There's only a 1.5% transaction fee. They also have an incredible real-time valuation engine, and so you can see what your portfolio is worth in real time. Really is incredible. I love this platform, so check them out

• 23:44Harry Stebbings?

  at onlyalt.com. And last but by no means least, I just love using Angel List's fund admin platform to manage my investments. The team and platform at Angel List, they take care of everything that my back office needs so that I can focus on working with great founders. Leading fund managers have made over 10,000 investments into 6,000 startups for our Angel List, all online and all in one place. And with the recently announced Rolling Funds, you can easily find and invest in these top fund managers on angellist.com/rolling. As always, I so appreciate all your support and I can't wait to bring you a phenomenal episode on Wednesday.