What Investors Look for in Startups | DC Palter, Climate Tech Investor & Mentor

Oh, today on the show, we have DC Palter. DC is an investor. And the reason I say that is because he's involved with not only VC at this point in his career, VC investing, but angel investing both in a group, a more structured professional setting, personal angel investment. And he also has a company called Unventures

investing in companies that don't fit the traditional VC model. So he has a breadth of experience deploying capital into climate tech, deep technology, specifically chemicals and new materials. And so the conversation was probably, if not the realist, one of the realist conversations that I've had with somebody about the mechanics of investing and how an investor thinks

about breaking down the economics of investing in the space. I walked away with extremely actionable pieces of advice if I were talking to a founder, if I were raising funds myself about how to approach angel investors, how to understand the different kinds of angel investments, how to approach VC investors, and then how to understand if your

business is fit for VC or angel or none of the above, or things like this. He also wrote a book that he shouts out at the end. I believe it's called How to Kill a Unicorn. But it was extremely enjoyable conversation. I learned a ton.

And he's very approachable. I was just reaching out with any questions, very knowledgeable. Shout out to our sponsors, Cleantech Growth Lab. If you're looking to grow in Cleantech, they're the people to do it with. And the producers of this podcast, Craze and Friends. And with that, I give you DC.

Hello, welcome to another episode of The Growth. Shout out to our sponsors mentioned just before this, without them it would not be possible to interview awesome people doing awesome things like DC from DC. [laughter] What's going on? Welcome.

How's it going? Cool. So, yeah, I want to I I want to get a little bit about your background cuz we didn't haven't got into it too much, but I think your content online is really great. I've been having a lot of conversations recently about how important VC is, but more importantly when not to

include VC in your discussions and there's a lot of other types of building a lifestyle that doesn't get as much press and I think you you articulate those things very well. So, excited to get into it. Before we do, if you give a brief introduction of yourself and what you're building.

>> Okay. Well, I'll keep it short. You I got a lot of gray hair. I tell people I've earned my gray hair. I've I've had a pretty long career doing all sorts of different things. I started off as an energy engineer. Nobody cared about energy then or energy sustainability, so I ended up in defense and realized

instead of saving the world, I was blowing it up and I didn't like that very much. So, I left and I moved to Japan and it worked in the steel industry for a while in reducing pollution from from steel manufacturing. That was great, but decided I want to move to the business side of things like a lot of engineers

eventually do. Got my MBA and ended up in startups and spent 25 years in startups, loved the startup world, loved, you know, after being in big company it was just like wow, decisions actually mean something and make a difference and it's a small team and, you know, and hopefully you you can really accomplish something. So,

I really enjoyed startups, had a lot of fun, had a had a few successes and that led me to being able to invest in other startups. I became a startup investor, angel investor, and what I ran across was I was I was the startup founder in the room on the investor side of the table

and I saw a lot of founders who were pitching and they really didn't understand what the investors were looking for and so their pitches didn't work. And on the other side, I saw a lot of my colleagues who were who were investors who were like, yeah, they were lawyers, they were real estate people.

They really didn't understand the startup world. So, that led me to becoming a startup mentor where I kind of work with a lot of the founders and say, you know, here's your audience, here's what they're looking for, here's why they're looking for it, here's what your pitch is, and it's not a template, it is a story, right? And

really trying to >> Right. >> put them into the mind of well, what is what what are people looking for? And then, so I've been doing that for a long time and been a mentor in a bunch of programs and and a few accelerators, especially in the climate tech side cuz the you know, energy sustainability has

has always been my passion and now I actually get to to to to work and these people care about it nowadays. But I see a lot of still see a lot of founders don't really understand what venture is looking for, what the venture model is, and so their pitches don't work there and even

if they get money from from venture investment it it's usually a dead end form. So, now one of the things I've talked about you mentioned is really trying to talk to founders and say, well, is this a fit for venture capital? If it's a fit for venture capital, here's here's the venture capital path.

It's well worn, but you know, there's a lot of things you need to know about how to you know, how to go down that path. On the other side, Yeah, if you don't fit, what are the alternatives because >> Right.

>> needs money. >> Yeah. So, something interesting that you said though, how long are you in Japan? >> I lived in Japan total of five years, but now I go back and forth. So, we actually have a house. My wife's Japanese.

We inherited the the family home. So, we have a house in Japan and a house in LA and we go back and forth. >> There's there's cuz cuz there's been especially a conversation I had yesterday with a founder who's doing business in the US, Taiwan, and Japan. And we and and they're they're in in an emerging space

called heat tech. And something that we talk about on this show is the use of language to communicate like you're speaking to uh stories and customers and value and things like this. Um what is your perspective on how Japanese culture approaches sustainability? I mean one thing you said is that it's definitely more people

in general that are um that are aware of things you know like like everywhere but you know do you know are there any noticeable differences I don't know investing or building in Japan or here? >> Um so I mean if you go to Europe and you go to Japan um I don't know Taiwan as well but people

care about the environment a lot more than they do in the US. They know climate change is not a hoax uh and they want to see solutions for it. Um and that's supported by the government and supported by big industry. It's supported by the startup community much more in the US. So um sometimes being a

startup uh investor climate tech investor in the US can be really frustrating because the political environment is is not that supportive of it and it really comes down to do you have a customer? Forget about um any sort of of uh government subsidies or or support you know do you have do you have a customer or not? And for a

lot of things the answer is no. You can't compete with oil and a lot of things that you know like like making plastics um that you really should be making all recycled plastics but that just is more expensive. So Japan in particular so the price of of oil in Japan is probably I'm just making

the number off the top of my head but it's probably somewhere around three or four times what it is uh in the US. Um and the price of electricity, the price of gas they're all much much higher. So that kind of drives uh consumer usage.

It drives how you know whether you know people take the train versus driving cars. Uh it takes what temperature they run their air conditioners at and how you know how well the the um and and how they run their air conditioners and office buildings. They turn off the the air conditioning at at

6:00 in in the evening even though people are still there and you just sweat. Um so in terms of understanding and the need for sustainability um and having a political consensus around it uh Japan is very strong that way. And in building the new house we we we just we're building a new house in Japan. Um, we

were basically told you know you have to put uh um uh solar panels on the roof because the government uh doesn't want any builders not to do that. So it's kind of like pushed for that. So um >> Wow.

>> very strong. But on the other hand what so what Japan does really well is large company innovation. So the big companies all have research labs. They have some of the best scientists there. They put a lot of money into uh R and D and driving that into into new products where American companies

mostly outsource their R and D to startups and just do M and A. The flip side is Japan doesn't do M and A. And so there are not many acquisitions of startups. There's no real exit and so it's very hard to invest in startups.

The um kind of climate for startups there is um it's a very conservative environment. Um, money is not the driver that it is in the US. You won't become a billionaire by building a startup. And the number of startups in Japan that have been successful uh is kind of minuscule compared to uh

the US. They're trying to change it but it's it's just really tough. So >> Yeah. >> on one hand you have like if you want to if you want to work on batteries if you've got this great new invention in batteries uh in the US you build a startup. Uh if you're a PhD researcher

in Japan and you want to devote your time to batteries in Japan you go work for Toyota. And Toyota research lab is one of the best places in the world when it comes to to battery research even though Toyota is not one of the big EV manufacturers it it it it's important.

They are battery manufacturers there as well. Um but it's done at corporate level uh as opposed to uh startups. >> Very cool. Well, I appreciate you indulging that. That was that was a very very interesting. >> love talking about startup community in Japan and and trying to do what I can to uh

uh to to help uh build it up. >> Well, honestly, I mean, I'm I'm sure we can have a whole episode about that so yes. >> And we'll do that one from Japan. >> There you go. That Hey, that'd be great.

That'd be awesome. Um and then we can show off your new solar panels. So um so then your something I'm curious about is a lot of people in the Grove community are early stage founders and like we're speaking to there's a lot as an early stage founder especially when you are very technical and you're building

something in deep tech that is unknown about how to get money or the investment world. So can you speak to first your perspective as an angel investor, your thesis, how you make decisions? Uh and then we can go into the the main thing about what you we advise uh with with early stage uh founders and storytelling

and understanding uh what's a good fit for venture and what's not. >> Right. So I'm uh vice president of a group called Chemical Angels uh which is a uh angel investment group, roughly 70 members, uh mostly PhDs and and scientists uh in the uh chemistry as as you can imagine chemistry material space, biology as well. Kind of

absolutely hard tech. Uh and about half of our investments are in sustainability. That's where the innovation is for the most part in uh in the physical science side and then about half in life sciences. So it's kind of the two big applications of uh chem of uh you know new chemistry materials.

Um we see a lot of we see a lot of pitches. Um and they first come to me. That's kind of my job is to is to screen the uh the applications. Everybody gets a 5-minute uh uh pitch to the group. So we see a lot of pitches. A a of them are straight

out of university. Some of them are still at university. Um, some of them have been spun out. Um, the challenge for those is it tends to be a lot of engineers and scientists as opposed to business people. And so they have a really good pitch on why they've got this great invention uh

or this great discovery or this great new technology and our answer is always yeah, sorry that you're you're still a research project. So go get a SBIR grant, go prove the technology, go hire a you know get a co-founder who has experienced building a business and then uh and then come back probably in a year

or two and tell us not why you have a great product, not why you have a great technology, but why this is a great business that's going to turn into a great investment. And that's what a lot of them miss.

And so when you talk about the storytelling, what we hear a lot of in these you know technical pitches for the most part are you know we we got this giant problem. We have climate change. Do you know how many times I've seen the same uh the the the same clip art for you know

climate change. We have a big problem with climate change. Oh, and here is our our solution for climate change and it's usually like sustainable aviation fuel or recycling plastics or new battery technologies. Like okay, the problem isn't climate change. The problem is why is your uh battery technology better than the other battery technologies out

there? But that's not the important part. And usually the pitch decks are at least 50% all about the problem solution technology right? Um, with a couple of slides at the end and market size and and you know and traction. Um, that's not what we're looking for.

That's what they're looking for in an SBIR grant. When you talk to investors, what we are looking for we are investors. We are financial investors. We are investing to make money. Yeah, we want to change the world at the same time, but uh this is not a donation. I donate separately.

[laughter] This is an investment. And so you need to tell me why this is a better investment than investing in SpaceX or Netflix or Apple shares or S&P 500 index. Why is this investment going to generate a big return?

And I think what a lot of people miss is what I call venture math. And so it's important for founders to understand that if we're doing well, one of our 10 investments will succeed. Nine will fail. Okay, that's and if I do S&P 500, they're almost all going, you know, some may go down, some may go up,

but they're not 90% of them are not just going to to die. So >> Yeah. >> 90% of our investments, maybe the company actually gets acquired, but the investors don't get anything. So from investors' point of view, that's a failure.

So 90% of our our our investments are going to fail. That means the one success out of my portfolio of 10 companies needs to get to a 10x return for me to break even after 10 years. That's not very good.

Okay, it's better better than not getting my money back at all, but as an investment, I would be better off putting my retirement savings into S&P 500 funds. So if you you need to beat the S&P 500 which which means roughly over 10 years it'll go up, let's say two and a half

times, so I need a 25x return. That's if there was no dilution, right? If you didn't have any other rounds, I'd need a 25x return, but you're probably going to have two or three other rounds at least. So I'm going to need minimum a 50x return for my one success.

So if your business now, if you're raising a million dollars on a 10 million valuation, you need to show me how you're going to get to a 500 million dollar exit. That's tough. Okay, you have a new battery technology?

Yep, absolutely. You you know, it's worth billions, right? You have a new battery tester? You have to show me how you're going to get to $500 million cuz it's not obvious. >> So, so at at such an early stage, first of all, thank you for walking through that cuz this is what I appreciate about

your content is that it gets into the weeds. And uh and to to continue in that cuz I think that's what's important about this conversation is what's the difference between uh saying that or or maybe a founder wanting to be fit for the venture model and actually being a fit for the venture model?

>> Oh, what a good question. [laughter] Because here's what often happens. I'm so I'm I'm I'm mentoring a startup in accelerator. They they show me the pitch deck. I look at the pitch deck and it shows 5 years from now they're going to be $20 million in revenue and you know, $5 million in profits and they're like,

look how wonderful this business is. And I look at it I'm like, that's a wonderful business, but that's not an investment because >> Yep. >> how do you get from the $20 million uh uh revenues to a $500 million exit? You don't.

So, I tell them kind of the general rule rule of thumb in uh for the venture world is what I call the 1 10 100 1,000 model. Raise a million dollars on 10 million dollar valuation, show how you're going to get to 100 million dollars in revenue and that's going to get to to a billion

dollar exit. Um the rule of thumb is is basically you have to get to $100 million in revenue because the only company that's going to spend the the only acquirers who are going to spend billions of dollars buying you are public companies.

And they're generating billions of dollars. They've got billions sitting in the bank. They can pay a billion dollars for for a startup, right? Uh if it solves a real problem for them. They they don't buy $10 million businesses. Doesn't matter how great your technology. They don't buy $10 million businesses. They wait for you to

get to $100 million and prove the market. That for them that's tiny. Um and so anything less than that, it's in the noise. It doesn't move the needle. It's going to take them millions of dollars in legal fees to do an acquisition. It's going to take tens of of dollars in uh kind of

executive time and restructuring and kind of building the business and they don't want a research project. They don't want a development project. That's not what they do. So M and A is designed to get them a finished product that they can put into their pipe and start selling the hell out of. And

um so you need to get to $100 million. So when I go to company I say as a great $20 million business you're not going to get venture investment. Almost inevitably next week they come back to me with a new pitch deck and shows oh we have $100 million business. I'm like you you you didn't

change anything. You have a $20 million business but now you're saying you have $100 million business. >> Yep. >> Um and they're they'll usually say well we're going to start in this beachhead this $20 million and then we're going to do all of these 10 other things that are going to get us to the $100 million.

And my reaction is you know really honestly each of those is a whole different business. Um you're going to need a whole different sales team. You're going to need a different product. It's going to be really hard to get from this one market where you're in now to 10 other markets. Um yeah go ahead.

>> I guess yeah just just to ground this in in an example and you can uh if if possible if we could use an actual example because we've been doing this for so long it should be great but if not you know we could you could do a hypothetical. Like uh what you know I I guess like you just said

you know a lot of people come back and they say now we're $100 million business and we're going to start in this market go to this market whatever. Like what what does it look like to actually say that in a way that's that's that's grounded in reality because we're talking about like you know eight years

into the future type of thing. So even the best founders >> yeah. >> Yeah you know and even the best founders like you know they they'll have some level of accuracy of understanding of where it's going but like at such an early stage how do you as a successful early stage investor you know

weed weed through the the situations where there's actually, you know, it makes sense to go from this market to this market and then reach uh an exit of some kind versus not. >> Yeah, so I mean there's the two sides of it. From the founder's point of view, you need to be looking at it and saying

there's a big market opportunity. This is not a $100 million market. This is a $2 billion market. This is a $10 billion market. There is a large enough opportunity and maybe we need to do, okay, so this is a $100 million market, but this is a, you know, $5 billion market.

Um an investor's going to look at that and say, well, why are you wasting your time right now on this $100 million market? [snorts] Forget about that. Go straight to the $5 billion market. And so that's how we're looking at it from the investor from the investor's point of view of if there's not a big enough

opportunity, it doesn't matter that that helps you get started. You you've got five to seven years to get to $100 million. You don't want to play around in in some market that that's just not uh not big enough to to get you there.

So sometimes the beachhead, so a true beachhead is a part of the same bigger market that's easy it's an niche within the niche that gets you in there quicker. And that's great. That's great. That's the kind of beachhead we want to see.

>> Plus de-risking technology. >> technology. Get get get into the places where there's a nice easy way in where they're really desperate and then expand it to, you know, to to people who it's just going to be about, you know, price price points.

Um but um when you go from this market to this market, this is not a beachhead. It's a different market. And then we're, you know, our reaction is you you got to pick one and you got to pick the one that's going to get you to uh to uh to $100 million in five to seven years.

>> Is is is there an example of a company or a founding team that's done this well? >> Uh oof. Um I'm sure there are plenty. I don't have any off of the top of my my head especially in the in climate tech space.

>> Yeah, no worries. So, so then, so then coming back to because this is a great discussion. When we're talking about a VC, does it land in the same it does does the the investing approach differ or is it similar to when you make angel investments? Like are you personally making angel or your your

group making angel investments in companies that aren't necessarily venture scale because you said that you're involved in both a VC firm and an angel group. >> Yeah. Man, you have very questions today. So, there's a lot of misunderstandings about angels and it can be a little bit confusing. Anyone who calls himself an angel and is doing

angel investing in a as you know even as a part-time activity but as a an an actual activity is looking for a return. It's it's angel investor but the investor side is the important part. So, the difference between angels and VCs is really we're investing our own money versus other people's money where they're

employees. So, this is money coming out of my retirement fund that my wife isn't always that happy about me putting in the startup. [laughter] But you know that's the only person I have to justify it for. We're VCs are sitting on a pile of $100 million that other people have given them and they're

full-time employees. >> yeah. >> Because they have $100 million pile and they're going to invest in 20 companies they're going to do average check size of $5 million. So, that means they're going to invest in startups that are already a little bit further along where it makes sense to put in a $5 million

check on you know like a $40 million valuation. So, angels are usually going to be earlier. So, typically we would invest in pre-seed where you're raising say a million dollars or $10 million valuation. It's too small for the VCs.

We can write 25k checks. We can write a group you know we we have million dollar fund where we'll we'll do 10 investments of 100k. So, we'll do 100k check as a group. Individuals will put in 25k but together add in a few other angel groups and you can do a million dollars. If you need 5

million, angels aren't going to do it. >> Mhm. >> So, essentially we are part of the same chain, the same investment process as the VCs. We're going to invest a little bit earlier, lower valuations, but it's you'll you'll do a pre-seed, then you'll do a seed, then you'll do a series A, then you'll do a series B, and that goes

from smaller investors to bigger investors. But it also means higher risk, which means that failure rate is also higher, which means we need bigger returns than the VCs do. So, when I said nine 90% of the investments failed, that's actually at the seed stage.

Pre-seed is probably more like 95% or higher. So, we really need one out of 20 to give a 20x return to get to break even. Um so, people will think, oh, VCs won't invest in us, so we'll go to angels.

Really aren't understanding what angels are looking for. It's exactly the same thing as the VCs, but uh you know, we're willing to invest earlier than the VCs are. >> So so this so the the economics are not similar, they're the same.

>> They're the same. >> That's right. >> That's great. That's that's super cool. Now, so then so then one last thing is that >> well, let me let me interrupt because there there are people who are also called angels who are not investing just for financial gain.

And so we we throw them we lump them all under angel investors, but very convenient. >> there are people who are just to confuse people that are true angels, that are investing to support you, that want to see the product made, um and they're not looking at it from a financial point of view. And just to

really confuse people, I do both. I invest in some companies where I say, you know, this is a bad investment, but um hey, if it succeeds, it's a home run. Um and mostly it's they're doing something in the environment or climate that I really want to support. So I'm going to invest in it. I'll do a smaller

investment because I think my chances of success are probably close to zero. So in some ways it's more donation than it is investment and I've kind of written it off the day I've done the investment. That So there's a bit of that.

Those are not You don't go on LinkedIn and find people who call themselves angel investors. You don't go to angel groups for that sort of investment. They are people who are already in that network. Um so I call it kind of extended friends and family. Um it's people who are investing like friends and family, not

for financial gain, but to support what you're doing. Um so it may be mentors, it may be it may be customers, it may be distributors, it may be Uh so I tell people if you are if you're doing law tech Um so AI for law, there's a bunch of startups doing that.

Where do you start with the investment? Do you go out to VCs? No. Do you go out to angel groups? No. You go to other lawyers. You go to the lawyers and you say, hey, I got something great. Would you like to try it? Would you like to invest in it? And some of them, you

know, maybe a 10K check, maybe a 25K check, maybe a $1,000 check, whatever, they're like, this is great. And so you've got you've got um investment that you need, but you've also got supporters and you've got your first customers and you've got validation for your later investors who aren't lawyers who would be like, this

is great. Same thing for um uh for life sciences. Who are the first investors? It's probably going to be doctors, right? Or other med tech people who are like, yeah, that solves a real problem. I want to see it made. I'm willing to put in a little bit of money.

I'm not thinking about is this a 5X return, is this a 20X return? It doesn't matter. If I get my money back, I'm great. Uh even if I lose my money, but this solves a real problem for for for the industry, I'm I'm not going to cry over it, right? Um I you know, better

than making a donation to local university or the church, right? Cuz this would actually solve a societal problem. So those are also angels and they they but very different investment philosophy. >> So, well, so many questions. But I think this is a good one is that you're something that you're saying without specifically saying it is that being

really intentional about the people on your cap table because they can be advisors and they can be entry points into um into industries and they can launch, you know, go go to market and things like this. Um which is again a lot of the stuff that um that a lot of uh um uh these

this type of content has been talking about which I think is important. Now, I'm curious uh not that we spoke about this so, you know, just let me know if you have an opinion about this but what's from a founder perspective taking on investments how do they think about structuring like, you know, giving out equity or not

or different types of checks that you can write or, you know, all of that? >> Uh you take money wherever you can get it and for a lot of people um that's usually >> Are you just giving away pieces of your your company always or are there other ways to do that?

>> Uh so for a traditional VC style investment um yeah, I mean obviously if you can get non-dilutive funding, if you can get government grants, if you can get customer grants, uh if you can get you know, prepays, uh you can get um pilot income, [snorts] things like that, that's great. That's better than money.

Um loans, if you take loans that will mess up your ability to get equity financing later so you probably don't want to go that route other than convertible notes which really legally they're loans but they're really just a way of shortcut to equity.

Um so the traditional uh venture path of you're going to raise a small amount now and then you're going to raise a little bit more later and then you're going to raise a bigger amount later and then you're going to raise a giant amount after that. Um yeah, you're giving up equity in every

uh at every stage. I always tell people raise the smallest amount you need now with a little bit of buffer to get to the next major milestone, typically in a in in a year to two years, that's going to make a step jump in your evaluation.

So, if you're pre-revenue, once you get to revenue, you've changed the equation. If you're early revenue and now you're at, you know, a million ARR, that's a step change in evaluation. Um and so don't raise a whole bunch now cuz you're going to give out more equity than you need to um at a lower evaluation. Better to take

what you need, get to the next you know, go from a one, you know, a 5 million evaluation, 10 million evaluation, 20 million evaluation to a 50 million evaluation so that you're you're not giving up uh too much early.

>> So so we talked about your angel investment, talked about VC. What is Unventures? >> Ah, okay. Something I really want to talk about. So um I've I've said, you know, the venture model is you're going to get to 100 million dollars in five to seven years and then get acquired for a billion dollars.

That's great if you know, you have a new battery technology. Wonderful. If you have a new battery tester, that probably doesn't work. Um and so you know, I I'd say something like well over half and probably closer to three quarters of the startups that I hard tech startups that I see um really

don't fit the venture model. Um they aren't going to be billion dollar acquisitions, but they have something that's really useful and really interesting and could be a really good business. And so this has been driving me crazy for years and I'm not alone and we've, you know, especially other hard tech investors have looked at a lot of these

companies, we've mentored the companies and like I said, we'll look at it and say, oh, it's a 20 million dollar business, it's going to generate 5 million dollars in in in profits. That's a great business, but you're not going to get venture capital.

So instead of telling them, you traditionally there's been two choices. Either you change your business model, you pivot, you go to the billion dollar, you know, market opportunity and and and and and get venture capital that way or you bootstrap.

Um, you you find a way to build a business without outside funding. And I've just been trying to say is is there a way to support the companies that are kind of in that middle, that are too big to bootstrap, need too much capital to bootstrap, but aren't big enough that they are

venture candidates. And so what we've come up with is we call it Unventure Capital. And the basic idea is that we're going to join as your co-founder. So you bring the product, we bring the money, and also our expertise on the business side. There's four of us as a partners.

And we don't just write a check. We join the company. And we help build the company. And the idea is to get the company to profitability as quickly as possible. So you have a $20 million business, you're going to generate $5 million in revenues. Let's get to $20 million and $5 million in in profits and then split

up the profits. And that $5 million in profits goes on forever. So that's that's really sweet, right? Instead of saying, okay, well, we're going to build a rocket ship that's going to get to $100 million and get acquired for a billion, which is really tough, we're going to build a good old, solid, old school

profitable business and share in the profits. And >> Which is great. >> Absolutely. >> has its place. >> That's right. >> Right. >> That's right. So we wanted to add this alternative. If you can bootstrap yourself, bootstrap yourself. Wonderful. That is a great way to go. If you've got if you're going to be the the next new type of

battery chemistry, but you're going to take it's going to take $100 million to build your your pilot plant and a billion dollars to build your your your first factory, your gigafactory, yeah, we can't help you with that. But there's plenty of VCs that that are happy to support you with that. So that's the

path for that. Um, but for the ones in the middle where it takes a little bit of money, but it also takes uh some staff and some expertise, um we uh we we present a alternative in the spaces where uh one of the four of us has some some value add as as part of the team

and not just money. >> So, we're unfortunately coming on time because I got so many more questions. [laughter] I guess we'll do uh >> I'll be doing the second one from Japan. >> Exactly. Yeah, yeah, we'll do we'll do all for all on the episode, but there's two questions I have. The first one's

about your book that unfortunately we haven't mentioned. So, a lot of these things you've spoken about are in book form. >> Uh, so what we've talked about is actually not in book form. It's on my website pitchingangels.com. What I've put in book form, thank you for mentioning it, To Kill a Unicorn is a fun murder mystery um about

a Silicon Valley startup that kind of roughly based on Theranos is doing some some some bad things and a hacker who has to figure out what's going on inside to to try to find his missing friend. So, it is a complete farce about Silicon Valley. Uh, lots of hitchhiker's guide to the to uh to to the Galaxy references

and uh engineering humor and a lot of fun to read. >> Very cool. That's hey, that's great timing with that that documentary coming out. >> yeah. Well, I wrote it while Theranos uh scandal was Actually, I started writing it before the scandal broke.

And I'm like, how is And it was a female founder. I'm like, how is she really going to get away with um kind of hiding all the evil things that she's doing? And she's really evil. I mean, a whole lot worse than Elizabeth Holmes as in murder. Um, and then I started reading,

you know, the Wall Street Journal the uh the the exposés by John Carreyrou, and I'm like, that's how she does it. And that And And And that And then, you know, I made it a bit more like Elizabeth Holmes, but uh yeah, that gave me the insight on how she was going to

get away with uh with with what she was doing. >> Hey, well some some some of >> the most effective ways to >> uh >> to learn you know lessons that we're speaking about it is is in story form. So I think that's helpful.

Last question with all the work you have done and the work to be done, what inspires you? >> Oh, I love working with startups, but climate tech is my passion. It's been my passion since I was you know since I decided in high school what I wanted to devote my life to.

And so being able to combine startups with with with climate tech is kind of what I want to be doing for the rest of my time left here. >> Nice. Well, I'm glad that you're doing it. You're certainly making a good impact DC. This has been awesome.

I'm serious about the second episode. I will do it. There's a lot more content here, but I appreciate this. And yeah, I'm looking for the I'm looking forward to the next one. >> That was great. All right. Thanks for having me on.