All right, great toe. Be here today. Nice Thio. See you The I don't know. In some ways I've had a you know, a pretty, uh, maybe boring career. In some cases, it's been kind of interesting, but I'd say that that, you know, I had the benefit of growing up in the household of of an entrepreneur. My dad was an architect and started his own firm. And I got front row seats to seeing the challenges of of that as well as the upside of it as well. And obviously, the downsides. It just depends on three economy and a number of other variables. But I always was interested in data and analytics. Uh, I remember, um, one of the groups of books I used to like to check out of the library when I was in middle school was on accident investigations of airplanes. And, like the NTSB traffic accident reports, an FAA reports like, Why do things happen And what? And I just I've always been intrigued, intrigued with that and how things come together to lead to an outcome and in that case, a bad outcome. But I've been able to carry that same curiosity now into into business And, um, you know, out of college, I was actually interested in getting in the FBI at that time and applying that kind of, you know, analytic orientation of mine and, uh, you know, to crime solving. But when I was getting out of college, they were only looking for people who spoke Japanese and accounting majors. So eso I didn't fit either, though. So I went into analytics and got involved in helping launch companies like Capital One and MBA America credit both credit card companies and and both very intensively reliant on data and analytics to drive decision making around marketing. Who were they targeting? What were they offering, whose credit worthy and who's not those sorts of things? And that became a nice foundation for my career, where I was just trying to learn and absorb as much as I could as fast as I could. And and that led to, uh, you know, long story short moving, ultimately from the East Coast to Chicago and then had a job offered in California about one month before I was planning to move to California without a job to find a job here because I just I was I was called to the spirit of California, Uh, because it just it suited my personality and and I'm glad I did. It's It's been a It's been a very interesting experience here. The I launched one company called Direct Partners, and that was one of the first companies to really embrace digital marketing and data analytics. Uh, that was early on to like Sometimes I've learned in business that being very early has the same financial results is being wrong and thankfully didn't have the same case with direct partners. But we were very early, and we had to plow our field for an entirely new A new a new industry in a path. But it worked out on deck. Company was acquired in 99 then I went to work for that acquirer and worked there for about five years before launching market share. And I actually partnered with an academic from U C L. A. Anderson school. Uh, Dr Mike Hansen's uh, who I kept hearing from multiple academics around the world was like, you know, these guru in terms of of analytics for marketing and and e found that he was doing these sorts of analytics, and we wound up offering to build a business around around that approach to to thinking. In that case, the very specific mission was for market share was to help the C suite of companies help the CEO of CFO chief marketing officer allocate their marketing money in a forward looking way. Predictably so, the way it has been historically done in big companies is you get a budget based on last year sales. You get a budget for this year, and it's just it's just a stupid, arcane system that that's very unscientific. Eso we said, Hey, there's a lot of data out there. Let's start to build analytic models that were predictably allocate where the next dollar or euro or pound should go. Uh, and so if you had to do basically trade off analysis on you know what's actually driving your business. So not looking at soft metrics, not caring about soft metrics as much as caring about, you know, core business metrics like, what is my return on invested capital? What is my acquisition costs? What is my customer? Lifetime value? Uh, what is what is the actual revenue impact to the allocations of resource is that we're applying. A company could spend money in a lot of different ways, but only some of them in some combination of them work just like the airplane story Early on. Um, interesting. The, uh you know, we found that, Yeah, it isn't just one thing that impacts revenue. It's multiple things that come together to drive a business outcome. So you have to use data Analytics, Big cloud. Uh, you know, you know, Cloud based analytics and big data, uh, machine learning and so forth to actually start to isolate those effects and then looked at ways to optimize those things in a combinatorial way. So that was again a very early business. Uh, you know, to the industry that, you know, it was it was met with, uh, in some cases, incredulity. Can you really do that? Can, Is that possible? And then it Then, as we started to get the early adopters onboard and signing up for the software, then the word spread, and then it really caught on. And it's now the global standard for resource allocation and what's called attribution like what? What worked? What didn't and therefore how Doe. I optimize what I should do next across marketing sales, uh, product R and D. Things like that. So it's not simply digital marketing, not just marketing, but it's about all the drivers that impact revenue. Um, and we were planning Thio go public with that business, and then we had a number of suitors come around. Thio are interested in of the technology companies interested in buying market share and integrating into the platform. And what we did was we went up doing a deal with a company called New Star, where we we'd like to use our because it had very good identity data and, uh, which was relied we were relying on for our analytics. And, uh, it was also a company that was of a size enough that we could join and actually have a nim packed at the leadership level. And that company way did that for a year. And then that company was acquired. It's public company was required to take in private. Um, and I've since joined the board of that company of New Star. And what I've done now, after after leaving an operating job, is to focus on, um, helping entrepreneurs at at scale. That's the way I'm looking at it. I I've raised a lot of money. I built sold companies. I've done a lot of dumb things along the way. I've done a few smart things along the way. You know, if I can help you know, other people hack some of that, some of that growth of their companies and then it's then you know it's a it's a good opportunity. So I've been focused on on that for the past three years now of investing in companies, working with CEOs, acting as an independent director on public and private technology companies, and that's been very rewarding. It's been fun and I started getting a lot of calls from some of the growth equity firms that that I have been meeting along the way and had an opportunity to, uh, you know, consider going back to work full time or or continuing to work in a kind of a advisory way. And I had an opportunity with this company called March Capital, which has over a billion dollars of assets under management and just doing doing very well, making some very, very smart investments, uh, to get involved. There is a partner to help find opportunities to invest in these companies. My area of focus and interest is around AI Data Analytics, machine learning, computer vision, things like that. Things that enable better decision making. That's kind of the theme for my for my mantra. That's been my life, my life mission and, uh, something I've always been very interested in. So, uh, I think that that brings us up to today and, you know, um, now playing the VC role, but with heavy operations and entrepreneur experience and empathy that I'm excited toe share with entrepreneurs.

the march tends to invest in Nazi brown per se occasionally but usually a and then B and N c and then beyond, uh, so kind of a. A quality over quantity approach, focus on and and, uh, with conviction commit very deeply to, uh, you know, two companies. One of its most successful investments has been crowdstrike, where it went quite deep with Crowdstrike early on and continue to invest along the way. And it's just wound up being a great management team and perfect market opportunity and and, you know, an incredible AIPO. So it's, you know, one of the most valuable companies on the planet now. So it's done a very good job of taking advantage of their opportunities. And March is not just providing capital, but it's also providing access, you know, involvement from its partners, uh, introductions to partners and clients, things like that. So it zibin it's been very involved, which I like. I like that like that model because I like that as an entrepreneur. I wanted toe when I was raising capital. I didn't want to see what they you know. It's called the Dumb Money, You know. You. You You Yes, you want capital? But you also wanna have people that can add value and add value Can be anything from share pattern recognition. Uh, s Oh, I don't have to replicate errors to help me with my positioning and go to market the product market fit to helping me, Uh, you know, in the company access, you know, clients that we might not be other other otherwise able to access and create revenue growth. And eso I've got that burned in my soul. I really want to. You know, I learned that, uh and I had a few investors, frankly, that didn't do that. And I had that kind of value, and I had some that did, and I really saw the difference. And I wanna be that for companies that I'm working with. And I know March does a swell, so we have perfect alignment. And in in that approach, I think that that the the management team of the founding team of companies is something that, uh, you know, you have to spend a lot of time with I mean, cos a change and adapt. You know, I think it's something like average of three times that you know that that from what I've seen and I experienced it myself, the Theory journal Business Mission adapted to the market as we were growing. So I think one of things I really am interested in seeing in people is, uh, their ability to adapt their ability to listen and pick up signals. Listen to the market not be so arrogant to think that they have the only solution that that they can adapt. Um, you know, with airplanes, I got back using back, going back the airplane analogy. You know, if the airplanes wings were fixed and hard, the plane would wreck it out. If they fall, they be falling out of this guy everywhere around us. And that's because the wings need to be able to flex to adapt to the currents and the conditions that they're facing in flight. And that's why when you're looking at on the wing and you see it moving not to be freaked out, it's actually good. Be freaked out if they're not moving and the same thing with businesses. I mean, we have to be flexible and move with the currents that are touching us in that that that maybe the markets, saying, Hey, you've got a crappy idea. Maybe it's like I need that, but it's not really that valuable. Maybe it's yeah. Hey, this is this is great, but it costs too much. Or maybe it's you know what, Your It's too slow or whatever, like the ability to listen and adapt and apply and out of the box solution to something that I'm very focused on finding people that are good at that because that's a real skill. There's there's some humility in that and the ability to do that. And to do that well, um, I also like to find people that have had diversity in their life. I think that that, uh, you know, the right creating and growing a business is harder than any job that anyone's ever had before, and the level of grit and tenacity necessary to get through the highs and the lows. And there are a lot of lows. Uh, the a lot of people can't cut it, you know, 81 85% of companies go under in the first five years. There's a reason for that. They either didn't work hard enough or they weren't able to deal with rejection or they weren't able to deal with the adaptation that we're talking about. So people who had had adversity in their life at some point, uh, you know, have had to create some calluses on their bodies to deal with that. And I find that to be useful, not all the time. But that's something I find to be, uh, find to be helpful. I think obviously someone needs to be self starter. They need to be inquisitive. They need thio. I don't know. In some cases, be opinionated. You know, I think most entrepreneurs, I find tend not to be very good rule followers because, you know, they are looking at rules and going, Why is it that way? That's got to be a better way of doing this, and that's a dumb thing to do. Or why are we doing it this way? I think that is a you know, a great opportunity. I think you know, Zoom is a nice example. Uh, think about the pop that Zoom has gotten during the covert period. There was blue jeans go to meeting WebEx, Skype, Google. You know, there are a lot of other things people were using, and all of sudden people started using Zoom because they listen to the market. They figured out. How do I make it easier to log on? How do I make it easier to fix my picture? You know, how do I add a virtual background? Because that's kind of fun. How do I change my pricing plan? And all those things came together and it was like a perfect storm that led to an incredible launch of a business where now it's za verb on. Do you know that? That's a great example. I think of coming in and blowing up an industry, a big industry that was doing a crappy job listening to their customers. I just was on a Microsoft Teams call yesterday on. I hated every second of it. Uh, you know, when I get a Skype invite, I ask people, you know, I've sent out a zoom invite instead. It just and I'm a technical. I'm a tech meeting. I'd like technology. I'm good with it. I fix stuff, you know. But some of these things I just can't even stand to deal with And, um, you know, so I think that I look for all those sorts of characteristics and in, uh, in founders and in their teens and and recognize that the business goal in their vision is almost secondary because it's inevitably going to change. And so we have toe look for the core team. Have they worked together before? Have they had successes before things like that matter.

I think a lot of it gets back to what I was just mentioning about arrogance and, you know, and thinking you have all the answers and I think that that that's a that's something that I see a lot, that the people are just not listening to, uh, to the market or the other thing that I see is sometimes, you know, by my thinking is sometimes you could go broke saving money. Uh, you know, you, uh, maybe haven't raised enough money to to make your to make your product good enough and maybe, uh, maybe raise too much, and it allows the team to move too slowly because they're too comfortable, you know, it just it really depends on the business. But I think the, you know, I think really getting out and talking to the market listening, um, with all humility, listening to their needs and and listen to what they like about current solutions, what they wish solutions had think all that really matters. Um, you know, I think that that one thing I wish we had done a better job at my old company was I wish we had a like a like a true product leader, Uh, way, like someone had been through building at scale, very complex products. We got there eventually. Uh, but it took longer than it would have if we had, like, a seasoned, uh, chief product officer type of person, uh, in that role. But it got a great team nonetheless, that it worked. And but, you know, e think getting you know, getting that right team early on is very hard to dio. Uh, you know, it's it's hard to convince someone at a, you know, has a great job that leave their great job and come join a startup. So, um, you know my you know, my partner John and I, we had, you know, we started off day one in office with empty table and two computers and a pizza box in the middle of it that, uh, you know that, you know, it's scared away. Most people look walking in the door toe, see what we were building because there was just nothing. It was all in our heads, and But what we did was we way listened and we talked a lot of people and we you know, I think we're very good at pattern recognition to start to assimilate this feedback into it into signals that we could then discerned from the noise thio lead to, uh what that product roadmap should look like.