So I originally went to Harvard University, and when I graduated, I didn't really know what I wanted to do. A lot of my friends were going into traditional finance rules and investment banking. A lot of my friends were going into consulting, and what I knew for certain is that I wanted to do something interesting. Eso I explored all the options that were available to May, Uh, the first position that I took after college was at a venture capital firm in Los Angeles called Halos Partners Small $40 million consumer, tech focused VC fund. And when I got there, when I very quickly realized is there wasn't a lot of infrastructure in place, I was working directly with one of the partners. And, um, you know, we didn't have ah, traditional training program. There were no other employees my age against whom I could compare myself for my work product. Um, and what I learned very quickly is I really liked being in an environment that was unstructured because it gave me the opportunity to grow into greater responsibility very quickly. So I spent about a year and 1/2 at Halos Partners before I met at a venture capital networking event. Brendon Wallace, who's one of the co founders of Fifth Wall, the company that I work out today and what I met him. Brendan was just in the beginning processes of starting fifth Wall, and he explained to me the concept for the business, which was a venture capital fund that was unlike other venture capital funds, in that he wanted to raise money from large corporations in the real estate industry and then invest in real estate technology companies that would be relevant to each of our investors, who are in turn, the largest potential end users off those businesses. And I was just fascinated by the idea. Um, and so week after meeting him, I quit my job at Payless Partners to taken interim shipment Fifth, lol uh, a couple of weeks later, that turned into a full time job. And then since joining fifth. While it's been almost four years now, I've actually warned several different hats that had a couple of different roles. The company I started as a Nasasira on the real estate technology investment team. Then we launched our own consumer facing investment fund, which we called our retail fund. Um, and I worked on the development of the fund's strategy and also some of the initial investments that we made out of that fund as well, and most recently, including up to present day for the last 15 or so, Monks have sat in the role of chief of staff, which varies pretty wildly from company to company. And there aren't that many chiefs of staff in the venture capital community. But what my role looks like day today is probably about 30% operational focused on internal operations in our company, making sure that all the different pieces of our organization are functioning as efficiently and effectively as possible. Another 30% or so focused on, uh, what I would call new business strategy, figuring out where we want to launch new products in the veteran capital space. We launch our products a little bit differently than other veces dio. And then the remaining is new business execution, helping my bosses figure out the fundraising strategy, fund raising outreach, what new LPs, we think would be most valuable to bring into our platform or our consortium. Um, and then I have a bunch of random assignments to from time to time. But that's, uh, in a couple of minutes. That's that's my story and that's why I ended up where I am today.

sure. Um So, uh, in terms of responsibilities and decisions, the thing I like about my job is that I'm making ah 100 decisions every single day. Um, and they can span from something as insignificant as where we're gonna order lunch for the office. Um, to whether or not it makes sense for our new sustainability strategy to be an investment vehicle or more of a consulting engagement. So it runs a pretty wide dammit. Um, but if I were to summarize the responsibilities that I generally face into a couple of different buckets. I would say bucket number one is internal operations. Number two is whether or not other teams internally to Fifth Wall are indulging with one another as effectively as they can. And that also relates to kind of the managerial set up of each of our individual business units. Number three would be my new operations kinds of things like vendor negotiations, where our office is going to be based, how much money we're going to allocate each year to our coms budget. Although that's not a decision. And make independently and, uh, there there's also a different bucket of activity that is unique to the chief of staff rule, which is that I worked very closely with one of our managing partners, Brendon Wallace, and every day when I talked to him, he might have a new project. It's like, Hey, I want you to look into how we can make Fifth Walls investment strategy more inclusive, and that is a big gold bars. So those are the responsibilities and decisions that I face on a day to day basis in terms of weekly work hours. I usually start working sometime between 7 45 and eight AM I would say close my computer for good sometime between seven PM and 9 30 depending on the day or night. I work sometimes on the weekends. Sometimes I don't, um and obviously when it comes to travel, traveling zero right now due to this pandemic, But traditionally I would travel for speaking engagements. I would travel sometimes for important fundraising meetings or travel to meet with prospect of companies. But travel is probably no comprises 5% of my traditional work month

Most of the challenges that I face on a day to day basis are related to the fact that no nobody's really telling me what to dio. I'm given very open and it prompts and they'll say, Michael, can you figure this out for us? Uh and then I'll have to go and put together a proposed solution that the company will then evaluate and execute on. So when you operate an environment like this where the majority of the tasks that you are given are somewhat nebulous, I think there are a couple of approaches that have really helped me. Number one is relying on people that are smarter than I am with more experience than I am. I built out a really healthy personal and professional network, and when I come up against the question with respect to hiring, I have friends that I know that work in the age, our space or that recruiting when it comes to investment strategy. I have friends at work and other venture capital funds or people that I've met throughout the course of career that have really, really interesting perspectives. I don't advice from, uh, my bosses who have gone through these issues before, and it's really important to be selective with the questions that you elevate to upper level management. You don't want to inundate them with questions, because if they're going to answer all of the questions, then they would just do it themselves. But it is important to have a framework as to when you do need to escalate things to the top. And one really great example is yeah, about a year and half, maybe two years ago, we were developing Fifth Walls. Consumer Investment Strategy. The general thesis is that there are all these new emerging brands that sell products online but want to open up stores in highly trafficked retail locations. And because Fifth Walls, a real estate oriented venture capital firm, we work with some of the big retail landlords that on shopping centers or Main Street retail etcetera. And so early on, when this was just an idea that my bosses had kind of started to think about, they asked me to help them put together an initial death as to what kinds of companies we could invest in, what the strategy would be, what are value out will be teach for investors in tow, a portfolio companies, and they asked me to put together a list of names that we could go out and try and hire for that fund. Those would be the people that are ultimately my direct managers. And, uh, it's not easy to accrue for the person that's going to be a bus, but I was able to draw on the experiences that the leadership at my firm had already gone through historically. And then I realized that a large portion of professional development is taking problems that you've never tackled before and working through them to the best of your ability. Uh, and then when you hit a roadblock leaning on those that you think can provide you with sound rational advice, and that's something that I've tried to dio basically since college.