20VC: The Secret To Building Pattern Recognition, Why MBA Does Not Always Equal Great Founder & What Are The Right Reasons To Start A Company With Hardi Meybaum, General Partner @ Matrix Partners

Hardi Meybaum is a General Partner @ Matrix Partners and similar to Josh Hardi is a natural born entrepreneur. Prior to becoming a VC Hardi was a Founder of GrabCAD where he built the company into the world’s leading cloud-based collaboration platform for engineering teams to manage, share, and view CAD files. He sold GrabCAD to Stratasys in 2014 for a reported 100m dollars, and continued to lead GrabCAD for the next year. In Today’s Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Hardi made the transition from founding GrabCAD to becoming a General Partner @ Matrix? 2.) When times were really hard for Hardi in making the move to the US, what were the big elements that drive him to continue? What stopped him from giving up? 3.) What does Hardi's time allocation split look like? How does he look to optimise this? 4.) How much of a role has David Skok played in Hardi's progression? What are the key takeaways from the mentorship? 5.) What are the right reasons to start a company? How does Hardi assess founder product fit? Items Mentioned In Today’s Show: Hardi’s Fave Book: Deep Work: Rules For Focussed Success Hardi’s Fave Blog: David Skok: For Entrepreneurs Hardi’s Most Recent Investment: SketchDeck As always you can follow Harry, The Twenty Minute VC and Hardi on Twitter here! Likewise, you can follow Harry on Snapchat here for mojito madness and all things 20VC. Angelloop is the leading post funding management platform for private market investors and their portfolio companies. They help investors manage and track their portfolio companies on the cloud while providing them with access to their investments performance data. Angelloop helps founders of startups track their performance, manage their cap table and keep their investors in the loop. Investors get free access while their portfolio companies pay only $49/Month. Use or share the promo-code 20MinVC to get your portfolio companies online with a two month trial. This episode was supported by Wunder Capital, the leading online investment platform that allows individuals to invest in large scale solar projects across the U. S. Wunder’s solar investment funds allow you to earn up to 11% annually, while diversifying your portfolio, curbing pollution and combating global climate change. Do well by doing good and sign up for a free account here and join the thousands of people that are already achieving their investment targets.

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 part two of this very special feature week of Matrix Partners on the 20 Minute VC with your host Harry Stebbings at H Stebbings on Snapchat. And if you add me to stay on Snapchat, that's Wednesday, the 5th of October, I'll send you a snap with a secret code that gives you 20% off SASTA annual 2017 tickets. My word, how enticing. But back to the show and following our episode with Josh Hannah on Monday, I'm delighted to welcome one of Josh's partners to the show, Hardy Maybaum. Now Hardy is a general partner at Matrix Partners and similar to Josh, Hardy is a natural born entrepreneur. Prior to becoming a VC, Hardy was a founder of GrabCAD where he built the company into the world's leading cloud-based collaboration platform for engineering teams to manage, share and view CAD files.

• 0:41Harry Stebbings?

  He sold GrabCAD to Stratasys in 2014 for a reported $100 million and continued to lead GrabCAD for the next year. Now, I have to say Hardy's story today is one of immensely inspiring material where he founded a company, moved to the US and made it happen, all due to his immense ability and determination and it really is inspiring to us all. But before we deep dive on all things VC with Hardy, the 20 Minute VC is supported by Wunder Capital, an award-winning online investment platform that allows individuals to invest in solar energy projects across the US, giving them the ability to earn up to 8.5% annually while diversifying their portfolio, curbing pollution and combating global climate change. All you need to do is create an account for free at wundercapital.com/20minvc.

• 1:25Harry Stebbings?

  That's wonder with a U and 20 minute VC all in letters. Wunder Capital, do well by doing good. And talk about doing well, I always think investment relationships between founders and VCs is like marriage. Having never been married, I know so much about this, but communication, I think, is key and that's where Angel Loop come in. They are the experts in facilitating communication and data sharing between companies and investors. On the Angel Loop platform, founders can track their performance metrics, send out updates to their investors on the state of their business and then in return, investors can help their founders in real time with introductions, follow-on funding and much more. And Angel Loop is free for all investors and only costs $59 for companies per month. And right now, they're offering a free two-month trial with the promo code 20MINIVC.

• 2:10Harry Stebbings?

  That's 20, 2, 0 and then minute VC in letters. Check it out at angeloop.com or you can find the links in the show notes or on iTunes. However, I'm now delighted to hand over to Hardy Maybaum, general partner at Matrix Partners.

• 2:29Speaker 01

  You have now arrived at your destination.

• 2:32Harry Stebbings?

  Hardy, absolutely awesome to have you on the show. Thank you so much for joining me today.

• 2:36Speaker 01

  Thanks for inviting.

• 2:38Harry Stebbings?

  Now, I'd love to start today by hearing how you came to be in the wonderful world of VC and came to be the youngest GP at Matrix and what your route in was.

• 2:47Speaker 01

  That's a, that's a great question. If someone would have asked me two years ago if I would be a VC, the answer would be definitely no. And if someone would ask me 10 years ago if I would become a VC, my answer would be, what is a VC? So I, I think in order to answer that question, I think we need to go back around seven, eight years where I started a company called Grabcat. And I started this company in Estonia. And by that time, the startup culture in Estonia was not that deep. And I just wanted to build a product and solve my own problem. And we started to build it. We were actually profitable from day one, but we wanted to build a bigger solution.

• 3:28Speaker 01

  And then someone said, you should go and raise money. And I said, what do you mean raise money? Oh, you should raise money from VCs. And I was like, what is a VC? So fast forward a year after that conversation, we raised money from Matrix Partners in, in Boston. And I moved from Boston, from Estonia to Boston and then raised the seed round from Matrix. Matrix led A round and did a B part of B round. And I really grew close to David Skok and build a company. And then we sold the company end of 2014. And I made some money. I started to do some angel investment and really enjoyed spending time with entrepreneurs.

• 4:11Speaker 01

  But my plan was to go and start another company. And then the Matrix guys came to me and said, hey Hardy, you're already spending this time with all these entrepreneurs where you're doing the angel investment. You should come and join us full time. And I'm like, no, like I'm not VC. I'm a builder. I want to build companies. I want to start another company. And they're like, hey, but you're already doing that. You're already helping entrepreneurs. Imagine how great it will be. To it full time and I was like, wow, that is a an interesting idea. And that's how I I joined Matrix and because I I would say it was a big part because I knew the partners in Matrix already so well. Because I've been working with them since almost day one at Grabcat and I really treated them as my co-founders.

• 4:53Speaker 01

  So I I knew the team extremely well here and that was a definitely a big reason why I become a VC.

• 5:00Harry Stebbings?

  Now, Hardy, I'm always attributed with hustle, whether it's a good thing or not. However, I'd love to hear the hustle that you must have shown coming over from Estonia and then getting seed funding from David Scott. Because you said it quite casually there, but you know, David is probably one of the most prominent people in in the industry. And so so I'd love to hear how you came over and got funding for Grabcat.

• 5:21Speaker 01

  Well, yeah, okay, I made it sound easy, but definitely was not an easy road. So we can start by, I think, the journey from Estonia to US where where everyone said that you should go to Valley. And I was like, okay, but I'm going to Valley because everyone are saying that you should go to Valley. And then I booked a trip and when I was booking the trip, I was like, wait. In some reason, the old CAD companies that I was building Grabcat in the CAD space and CAD means computer aided design. So there's five big CAD companies and four have big teams or headquarters in Boston. And I'm like, wow, I should really maybe come by here.

• 6:00Speaker 01

  And so I made a quick stop in Boston for a month and a half and then I spent month and a half in Silicon Valley. And because of the visa situation, I really wouldn't stay this country longer. And the idea was that hopefully I could raise money. So I came to Boston first, I did met David, who clearly didn't immediately invest in me. And I met I met a lot of other VCs in Boston as well and in Silicon Valley. And every single VC turned me down and not only Boston, not only Silicon Valley, but also everyone in London. And that was quite a frustrating time. And also I had a six month old daughter with me. And Estonia has a pretty high quality of life. I had a very nice state job before I started Grabcat, so we had a pretty nice apartment and we gave.

• 6:45Speaker 01

  Over to Boston and and was quite expensive. So I said that I'm not taking salary while in Boston because it's really expensive for for a company. And I would only pay for the housing here and just a plane tickets for myself. And those are already really expensive. So we ended up staying in a motel that cost fifty dollars a night. And it was hour and a half from Boston. And it was so bad that like literally it was November when we were here. That the wind was blowing through the door. And I don't think the doors were like you could lock the doors and it wasn't very nice neighborhood. And it was really, really frustrating experience.

• 7:27Speaker 01

  And then, as a mechanical engineer coming from Estonia. I I met all these American CEOs who were just fantastic in pitching their ideas. They they seemed so smart about everything. And all of them were already raising money and had an impressive business. And I'm like, wow, this is a pretty crazy journey, like everyone are better than me. And we live in this shithole with with my six year old daughter, like this is not working. This is clearly not working. So I actually wanted to fly back and and get back to my comfortable life in Estonia. Great day job and a nice apartment. And then I thi- I think I tried to even change the ticket. But obviously it was the cheapest ticket, so you couldn't change the tickets.

• 8:12Speaker 01

  You could, but it was super expensive or something like that. So I was like, okay, I'm here, I'm going to give it everything I got and see what happens. So that was the first three months in in Boston Valley. And Valley was not that much better. I would say it was even worse in that that sense that I met a lot of people there. But I I thought that the quality of the people were not great. I later learned that it's just that Valley is so big and there is a lot of, just a lot of people. And in order to get to really good quality people, you need to prove a lot of things. And finally I got there, but the beginning was quite hard. And then the highlight of the trip was really meeting David. And of course, David said, wow, this this looks interesting, you look interesting, but you know.

• 8:55Speaker 01

  We need to obviously spend more time, time. So there was, he didn't give me no, but he didn't give me yes. While there are a lot of other VCs in Boston and Valley who just turned me down. And, and I think the worst moment of this was where a VC, that was before all the maker movement and hardware become hot and I O T. And one of the VCs told me that in Valley that why are you doing this? Because manufacturing is going to go away. We're not going to have things anymore. Like your business market is just terrible. So that was definitely one of the lowlights of the trip. So that was three months. That was pretty painful. And I came back and we got into Dexter's incubator. So we had some branding with us.

• 9:36Speaker 01

  And I would say then things started to change. We raised money from Matrix that definitely helped a lot and things improved. But yeah, the beginning's quite interesting.

• 9:46Harry Stebbings?

  So when things were really shit, as you said, staying in the shithole, what was it that drove you to, to move on and to progress with GrabCAD? And know that kind of there wasn't an end goal inside?

• 9:56Speaker 01

  I'm a very competitive person, one side, and I want to win and I don't want to give up. Like, I think those are the two things that just doesn't suit well with me. And also, I, like, I live my life with the principle that I want to give everything I have if I do something. And then if I fail, it's okay. If I've given everything I got and I fail, it's okay. I feel, I don't feel bad about that. But if I fail and I feel that I really didn't give anything I got, that makes me really unhappy. So I think just those things really pushed me, pushed me forward in this situation. And, and I loved the company I was building. I loved our users and customers and the team and the space.

• 10:37Speaker 01

  And I really wanted to make it work. And I, like, I, I wanted to be an entrepreneur and, and do this. And, and change the design and manufacturing industry. So like, I wanted, I wanted it really badly. So, so just giving it up would be just a bad idea.

• 10:52Harry Stebbings?

  And transitioning now to your, your time in venture, has it been everything you thought it would be in your mind? And what have you found as a challenge in adapting from operational life to the life of venture?

• 11:02Speaker 01

  I, I did quite a lot of thinking and two daily. When I decided to come over and to be very honest with you, it's it's been pretty much the challenges are the ones that I thought will be and you know that I would say the two big challenges if an operator becomes a venture capitalist is that first when I was a C of Grabcad, I I went home Friday night to have a dinner and wine with my with my wife and I felt I earned it. I felt that I worked really, really hard during the week, but every day we pushed things forward, like everything we were making small improvements in the business and I felt great. Like it was hard work, it was like a lot of hard problems,

• 11:44Speaker 01

  but I felt great. I felt that I have achieved something. Now I work the same hours, I go go home Friday night and I do not have that feeling of achievement in most of the weeks. And it's just, I feel entrepreneurs are doing their their hard work. I'm spending a lot of time trying to make investments and and meeting companies and trying to help companies, the new ones or the ones I've invested already, but that does definitely doesn't give me that satisfaction that I had when I was an operator. So that's been definitely some of the things I've been struggling. No surprise, I knew that that will happen. And the second one is that there's just no feedback loop in in VC. You don't know if you're good at

• 12:27Speaker 01

  your job because, okay, you can measure yourself if you're doing deals, but you just don't know if those deals become good till five, six, seven years. And you need to do a lot of work without any kind of feedback loop. Again, as a as an entrepreneur, you build a product, you launch a product, your customers love it, they give you money, that's a great, great feeling and you know you're on the right track, or they don't give you money, they hate that product and they tell you why they don't. And you improve and you have this great, very quick feedback loop while in this job you really don't have it. So I think those are two areas where I definitely have challenged the most. And luckily, I knew going in that this is how it's going to be.

• 13:11Harry Stebbings?

  On the first one there, you said about working just as hard and spending just as much time in the office. In terms of time, how much time do you find you're allocating between kind of sourcing new deals, existing portfolio companies, operations? What's your kind of current split, do you say?

• 13:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, I would say so because I just started this job ten months ago. I do not have a big portfolio of boards like similar to David Scott. So my time allocation is definitely towards to finding and sourcing new companies. And I would say it's right now, it's on eighty percent of doing new deals and meeting new companies and twenty percent spending time with existing investments, whether they've been made by me or helping some of the other portfolio companies that some other partner have done.

• 13:58Harry Stebbings?

  You said David Scott there and you mentioned your closeness to him earlier. I'm intrigued, how much of a role has the mentorship with him played to your progression? And what've been your kind of key takeaways from working so closely with him?

• 14:11Speaker 01

  I think there is a lot to learn from all the partners here. Obviously, I am more closer to David Scott because he was on my board and we're looking similar investments. But not only him, we have another partner, Antonio Rodriguez, who I work closely here in our Boston office. I would say the things that I have learned from these guys is trust my gut, like listen but trust my gut. And it's something that I've always thought that I'm a very gut-driven person and I will have a feeling about if something feels right or not. Because we see so many things, so many companies, and especially if you're

• 14:55Speaker 01

  that experience like David who have done it for so long, you have seen so many companies fail that tried to do something else, but maybe the time was wrong. And if I feel the time is right right now, I should go on and do it. So that's some of the things that these guys have encouraged me a lot. And then, you know, most of the staff are very, very, very specific. For example, if you're looking at- SaaS companies, what are the right metrics to look and and what really matter? Like a lot of B two B SaaS investors typically look, oh, is this company for Series A is doing one million annual revenue rate? And if they are, that's a checkpoint, right?

• 15:36Speaker 01

  What we write, what we like to do is really drill and go deeper and and understand what are the underlying metrics? Are they good as well? And and a lot of that is what is really a framework that David have given me.

• 15:50Harry Stebbings?

  You said about the kind of immense amount of companies that David's seen there. And that allows him obviously to build up the pattern recognition. How do you look to build up pattern recognition as you move forward, progressing with your career and venture?

• 16:02Speaker 01

  That's one of the things where I'm focusing because like I I need to look, look at myself and think, okay, what are the things that I'm strong at? And and one of the things I do not have is I do not have a massive experience looking of thousands and thousands of companies and and working with them closely to draw conclusions. So the way I I've been thinking about that is first is is creating that pattern recognition. And and the way to do it is I've started to select very specific fields where I'm going in. Instead of being very horizontal and and seeing everything that comes into the door, I'm I've I've become very thesis driven.

• 16:43Speaker 01

  So I go and look very specific vectors and I try to go and find every single company in this vector so I can start having comparison and pattern recognition around this vector. So just decreasing the data set. So that's one of the things that I've been doing. The second thing in order to start to have it is really go, like I've been very heavily focusing on founder and trying to figure out what makes a great founder. And ironically, I've spent a lot of time in the last 10 months not reading science fiction, but but reading books about great inventors, reading books about great entrepreneurs and really try to understand what what makes someone great.

• 17:25Speaker 01

  Meet with some of the CEOs who I know well who have have accomplished a lot, really try to. Understand their motivations, their their drive and draw lessons from there. And then become smart about when meeting founders, do they have the right characters to become a successful CEO and build a big company.

• 17:45Harry Stebbings?

  So from your studies, what have you found to be the commonalities of those inventors and founders? Who have those great characteristics?

• 17:53Speaker 01

  One of the first thing I I really look for, and I know it sounds very, very obvious, but I'm looking this drive. And it's really amazing that like when you're looking at these young founders or typically the older the founder gets, you can see that the drive is starting to reduce, but I think the best founders have this incredible drive to do things. And and you can recognize it very quickly, literally, it takes two minutes to sit with a founder and and you can you can see that drive or not. And that's that's really the one thing that that I'm looking. And then if you if you then go down and try to understand why they have this drive. And really try to start to understand why they're building this company.

• 18:37Speaker 01

  And that's something that I'm trying to really, really understand quickly. And I believe that this is definitely one of the most important, important thing in a founder.

• 18:46Harry Stebbings?

  What are the right reasons to start a company, kind of the founder product fit? I often see kind of associate VCs who then start their own startups because they've seen a niche in the market. And they have no passion in the space and they have no experience, but their due diligence and their market research has told them that there is a niche available in subscription, I don't know, smoothie companies, do you know what I mean?

• 19:09Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 19:10Harry Stebbings?

  So so what is the right reason to start one? Is kind of purely intellectual academic as a market opportunity or does there need to be more?

• 19:17Speaker 01

  This is a great question. So I'm very, very biased towards founders who are solving some of their own problems. Or solving a company, company problems that they've had, right? For example, I led an investment in a company called Sketch Tech. And those guys, basically what it is, it's a marketplace to get great design. So if you are a CEO of a company. Or a VP of Marketing and you want to have a new white paper designed to your company design guidelines. But all the designers are busy building your product. You can go to their marketplace to have vetted designers and they do the, do the work. And the founders started this company, they were at McKinsey before.

• 20:00Speaker 01

  And, and although they have this little bit of the M B A profile, McKinsey had their internal resource of that type of resources where it can go and, and have these things designed. And then when these guys left McKinsey and started their company, they had this problem. They wanted to have something designed and they were like, wow, in McKinsey we had this thing, but now we don't have it. Probably other small businesses have this problem as well. And then they started this company around. And similar to Grabcat, like we had this problem where we, we thought it's crazy to redesign everything from scratch. And we built this massive library that has now more than three million engineers using every day that are uploading and downloading designs and reusing each other's designs.

• 20:44Speaker 01

  But we started with our own problems. So, so I'm a, I'm a very big believer of, of backing founders that are, are solving a problem, they have their own. And I'm already coming to the meeting always when, when, when you have the M B A that's starting a smoothie company, that's always kind of a bad sign. I don't say, it's like sometimes it works, but I'm definitely more biased towards the guys who have a domain expertise and clear age and, and clear program. And I think the other reason why it's important, especially in the B two B space, and not only B two B, B two C as well, is that today's great companies are not just great products. They're great products, they're great marketing, they're great sales.

• 21:25Speaker 01

  And what, what makes them great is just a high empathy for the customer. So if you have been customer of that product or that industry, you know what tone to use when you're on your marketing machine, when you're talking with these guys, you know what tone the salespeople should be using and you can design and build absolutely the best product because you know the workflows and of the, of the, of the customer. So that's why I'm I'm also very, very biased towards domain knowledge. And and one of the things I've also seen is that when an MBA who has no domain expertise, they realize that, oh, everything looks simple when you when you see, oh, that's logical,

• 22:06Speaker 01

  that this company needs that solution because like this just makes sense. But they don't understand our underlying reasons why nobody have built it. So so even in GrabCAD, I saw a lot of competitors coming after us. And when I saw that these guys didn't have a domain expertise, CAD is a very, very difficult space. I would never take them very seriously because I know that they were just not going to get traction. I see many times where there were MBAs, junior associate, VCs and and coming to try to compete with us, but they always quickly failed after some great original buzz. So always super biased here, but those are those are the reasons why I've been biased.

• 22:45Harry Stebbings?

  I would love to dive into a quick fire round with you now. So I say a short statement and then you give me your immediate thoughts. About sixty seconds per one. How does that sound?

• 22:53Speaker 01

  Sounds good.

• 22:54Harry Stebbings?

  So your favorite book and why? You mentioned the Inverter book, so I'd love to hear if there's one I should be reading.

• 22:58Speaker 01

  There's a lot of books that I really, really enjoyed this year. I don't have a favorite book, but I would say a couple of books that I have been really influential for me. One is called Deep Work. I forgot who the author is, but it's it's a great book that reminds that, especially as a VC, it can be super transactional and can spend every minute of your day just reading and responding emails and looking through the pitches. And also like the way we are so connected to the world, it's just so easy to be always on and and be be very transactional. And that book is a great reminder that it actually is a great idea to take every day, couple of hours and do deep work,

• 23:41Speaker 01

  which means reading, learning about some of the thesis, coming up with an idea, writing. And I found that being a super influential for me, book that I've read this year.

• 23:52Harry Stebbings?

  And then let's let's do the highlight of your career so far. When did you go, was it the sale of GrabCAD, was it when you signed with Matrix? What was the highlight?

• 24:01Speaker 01

  I I think definitely it's been sell of GrabCAD because clearly have not had yet wins at Matrix. And GrabCAD was a great, great outcome for for everyone involved. And and that was just a very hard work. For me, if I work really hard and then achieve something, that that is definitely makes me feel good. So it was very, very hard work, very long six years. And and and to see such a great win for everyone involved definitely was a was a great moment in in life.

• 24:30Harry Stebbings?

  What's the vision for Hardy? Where would you like to be in ten years?

• 24:33Speaker 01

  Right now I have chosen a road to help entrepreneurs. And if in ten years I've been able to play a small role of helping a big company that does something good and really helps people to work better or or really influences how people live their lives, that for me would be an amazing win.

• 24:52Harry Stebbings?

  Your favourite blog or newsletter, you mentioned kind of Reads there, Deep Work, Developing PCs. What do you love to read?

• 24:58Speaker 01

  It's interesting, I'm reading less blogs nowadays, but I do still enjoy reading David Scott's blog called forentrepreneurs.com. It is a, and now other partners are are are starting to write stuff there as well. And I just found I found those blog posts interesting. And you know, sometimes I go and and and meet one of the companies where I made an investment. And our challenge is figuring out right onboarding. And and I always go and referring back to David's blog and and before the meeting and going and refreshing my memory. I used to know every blog post from the heart, but those are really long blog posts. So I I still go back to those and go read them.

• 25:38Harry Stebbings?

  And then let's finish today on your most recent public investment and why you said yes.

• 25:43Speaker 01

  That's a great question. So I have two investments that I've done recently that are not public yet. But I will still mention this, the Sketch Tech deal. It's a Y C company that I that I spoke to earlier. And I said yes because I would have used that product, I would love to have. That product when I was running Grabcat because I knew that I wanted our designers to focus on a product. And we didn't have extra resources, design resources to design the other things like webpages and and and marketing materials. So it resonated to that problem. And I really liked the CEO, Chris there, who I think is extremely thoughtful guy.

• 26:26Speaker 01

  And the moment I saw him and I'm very opinionated and I had a lot of lot of opinions how he can improve his business. And he, when we met first time, he had thought about all of those things and he was very polite to listen to me. But he he was on top of everything. So I would say those were the two reasons why I said yes.

• 26:44Harry Stebbings?

  Well, Hardy, it's been such a pleasure having you on the show. Thank you so much for joining me today.

• 26:48Speaker 01

  Thank you, Harry. It's been fun.

• 26:52Harry Stebbings?

  What a fantastic story and journey that is to GP at Matrix today from Hardy. And so fantastic to have him on the show and a huge hand to him for giving up his time. And if you love the episode today with Hardy and do not want to leave the world of the 20 minute VC, then you can add me on Snapchat at H Stebbings and I'll send you the secret code to give you 20% off SaaS to annual 2017 tickets. Or you can head over to the website, the20minutevc.com, where you can sign up for our newsletter. So you never have to miss an episode or an update from us. But before we leave you today, what if you could help combat global climate change and make money at the same time? That's where Wunder Capital can help. The award winning online investment platform that allows individuals to invest in solar energy projects across the US. And with Wonders online investment platform, you have the ability to earn up to 8.5% annually.

• 27:37Harry Stebbings?

  And your investment in Wonders fully managed solar investment funds goes directly to helping US small and medium sized businesses install solar panels. As those businesses repay their loans to Wonders, you receive monthly payments directly back into your bank account. And best of all, Wonders Capital don't take any fees for investing your money. Simply create an account for free at wundercapital.com/20minetc, all in letters, and that's Wonders with a U. And remember what I said about successful founder to investor relations, just like marriage, based on one thing, strong and consistent communication. And that's where Angel Loop. Come in. They are the experts in facilitating this communication and data sharing between companies and investors. On the Angel Loop platform, founders have the ability to track

• 28:20Harry Stebbings?

  their performance metrics and send out really clear updates to their investors on the state of their business, and then investors can help their founders with introductions, follow-on funding, and much more. And Angel Loop is free for all investors and only fifty-nine dollars per month for companies. And right now, they're offering a free two-month trial with the promo code TWENTYMINUTEVC. That's twenty in numbers and then MINUTEVC in letters. And you can check it out at angeloop.com, or in the show notes on iTunes, or in the show notes on the website. As always, we so appreciate all your support and cannot wait to bring you our Founder's Friday episode with Matrix Portfolio Company Connect.