Transcript of The $25K Uber Bet That Became $135 Million New

1, 2.

Hi, welcome in. My name is Alyssa.

Eric, pleasure to meet you, Alyssa.

Eric, welcome to Coffees with Joe Shelby.

Happy to be here.

Amazing. What can I get you? Do you like coffee? Do you like tea? What are we feeling today?

Well, this late in the evening, I'm gonna stick with tea. Let's go with a soy matcha latte, please.

Soy matcha latte. I like your style. I love my matcha.

You and me both.

Yes, absolutely. Do you like chocolate by any chance?

Couldn't hurt.

Okay, beautiful. Yes, yes, I'm so happy to hear that. Okay, I have an assortment of chocolate here. We've got Dubai chocolate, we've got Lindor.

I lived in the Bay Area too long to not go Ghirardelli down here at the bottom.

Oh, right.

So I think it's gonna be sea salt caramel for your boy.

Ooh, okay. Open it up, give it a try. So I hear you are a lawyer, is that right?

Please don't hold it against me.

Okay, so are you who I call if I get in trouble with the police? That's exactly wrong. For laundering money?

No, I'm not doing that?

No, no, no.

Oh, okay.

Good, 'cause I don't do that anyway. So we're safe.

You would never. Nope. I'm on the corporate side. I help people most of the time acquire and sell businesses. So most of my clients are happy with me and they're not going through too tough of a time.

I love that. Okay, good. It's a good time in the world right now. How's that doing for you?

Delightful. It's gonna pair great with matcha.

Absolutely. Let's bring you over to Joe. Come on.

Thanks, Alyssa.

Absolutely. Come on over. Joe, we have Eric here.

Eric, Joe, thanks for coming, man. I know, I know it wasn't much of a drive. You're right here in Irvine, but I appreciate you coming.

I know, sometimes it takes things like this to meet your neighbors, so thanks for having me.

You first got to take our, our, uh, our chocolate today.

Oh yeah? Oh, everybody's passing?

Oh yeah, we have professional athletes here.

Oh, that'll do it.

Damn.

No, no, no.

What's up everybody? Welcome to another episode of Coffees. I am your host Joe Shalby, and today we are sitting down with Eric Cox, a brilliant attorney and the COO of NetCapital, a mega company that is taking companies public, business and acquisitions and mergers. Also the head counsel for StoryLaw. Please welcome the one, the only, Eric Cox.

Thank you so much for having me, Joe. Appreciate you, brother.

All right, let's go. All right. Hey, I know it wasn't much of a drive, but I appreciate you, brother, for coming here today.

Thanks for having me, my neighbor.

We're going to make some magic happen. Eric, I like to start the show off with the same thing I ask everybody. What's your morning routine?

Oh, so I am— I was never a morning person, but I had to become one. Like a lot of people that listen to the show, I imagine. I like to get to the gym early and I try to get a little bit of a green tea in. I have my matcha right next to me for Coffees with Joe. So yeah, usually just try to get to the gym first and then straight to business. I do also try to get a little bit of the word in there, kind of sit down and get, you know, kind of make sure that I'm centered. But But as best I can, it's a little bit of gym, a little bit of quick prayer, and then straight to business.

Right into it. Now, you work out at Life Time, or where do you train?

Oh, I'm a home— if I had to go a single mile, I wouldn't make it to the gym. So I'm a garage gym guy most of the time. It's honestly largely a similar routine. My brother put me on. He's a physician. So most of the time, I'm doing the same routine that he recommends for himself.

What's that routine?

So I do chest and triceps on Mondays. We call it Christmas. A little back and abs, biceps, calves, shoulders, abs, then legs to bring it home. on Friday. Leg day Friday, always ride into the weekend, right?

Oh, gotcha. Okay, so it's just a lift schedule.

Yeah, lift, Peloton. Peloton Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and then a quick run on Thursdays, and then a soft run on Tuesdays.

Oh, nice. All right, cool. Nice regimen. I appreciate that. Uh, now, um, you are in the world of law. Now tell the audience, what is it that NetCapital does, and how do you, how do you work with businesses like Apple and Snapchat, like mega companies. And what have you done for them?

Yeah, no, I appreciate that. So, you know, I'm what my law school used to refer to as a nontraditional law student. I used to take a little bit of an offense to it, but now I kind of embrace it. But essentially, I've always grown up doing emerging companies venture capital. I trained at Michigan Law School, and then I went straight to Silicon Valley to a large law firm called Cooley in Palo Alto. We had about 1,000 lawyers worldwide, but we represented 2/3 of all VCs in the United States while we were in the headquarters. headquarters in Palo Alto. So we got to do some of the coolest deals on the— I was on the Apple team that acquired Shazam. I was on the Snapchat IPO. I got to work on a really cool Corsair project for anybody, any gamers out there who know peripheral manufacturers. Yes, yes, thank you. So I got to do so many of the fun things. And then my best friend from law school actually brought me over to NetCapital. And that is where really supporting entrepreneurs in their fundraising journey beyond the law really began. And that's a funding portal and broker-dealer.

We help entrepreneurs raise capital entirely online. Hard to imagine after a couple years, we've helped a couple hundred companies raise about $100 million through the funding portal from a little over 100,000 investors. So you can imagine if you have a cool group of people that love your product and you want to let them into your deal, you have to be really thoughtful how to do that legally and compliantly. And we have all the regulatory frameworks down. We have all the team members that we need to be able to launch a capital raise online, support the fundraise, and then get you to your next part of your journey.

So what does like, uh, A small company, how many people do they need to reach out to you? Like, what do they need? What's their model need to be, you know, in order to even get your attention to look at the deal, to, you know, to even reach out to these investors?

Joe, that really is the hardest part, is because, you know, I like to be— I'm pretty honest with myself. I don't know. I've been wrong before when I thought companies would not have success. I've been wrong when I thought they would have success.

Yeah, how do you model that?

It's very uncertain, and a lot of it is— let's call it what it is— is guesswork. There are certain things that do to help us feel confident in a fundraise. A lot of things like social proof. If you have a strong management team, we always say we're betting on the jockey, not the horse. So strong management teams move the needle a lot.

Yeah, the CEO is like, okay, you're grilling the CEO.

All the time. You know, backgrounds that we could check into, past success helps a lot. If you have supporting, like really supportive advisors and investors, that moves the needles. Most of my family is in medicine, as I mentioned, so medical advisory boards, if you're in the pharmaceuticals, the biotech space, that moves the needle a ton. And then at the end of the day, if you're, If your clients or your customers love you, that's one of the most important indicators of success for us, because then we can reach out to potential users, customers. We call them investomers. Investors turn customers, customers turn investors. It's a pretty meaningful way to move the needle on net capital.

Investomers. That needs to be coined.

It's goofy, I know. Nobody liked it. I apologize, but—

I like it. I'm cool with it. Investomers.

Right?

You heard it first here, guys. That's a real word. He's going to coin that in Webster's Dictionary. Let's go.

That's why I'm here. I'm twisting Joe's arm to get a fundraise going for the listeners can own a small piece of Coffeee.

Yeah, that'd be cool.

That would be the move.

Yeah, we never, you know, we're now looking at, you know, big investments from different advertisers and hopefully Netflix. We're knocking.

I love it. They should be right here.

Yeah. Let's go. Now, you know, why did you get into law? to begin with?

Oh, I actually love that one. I have a pretty, you know, I have a lot of friends who—

Especially if your parents are in medicine, because if you got into law, because my parents are in medicine, if you got into law, you're like a failed doctor.

Yeah, that's one way to put it. No, I watched my dad do a colonoscopy. I didn't pass go, I didn't collect $200, I went straight to law school. It was, it was about as clear as that. It was, it was hands down, God bless you for your service, check please, I'm gonna do literature.

You don't want to do colonoscopies.

That was never the answer for me. My brother followed in his footsteps, God bless him, go Dr. Coxes. But no, not Not I said the fly. I think, I think what really did it though was in undergrad there's an incredible microfinance program at Pepperdine. Shout out Pepperdine here in Malibu. And we actually do— we actually, we would sell water at these sporting events and we would take the funds and go do microloans abroad. And so I studied abroad my sophomore year in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and there was a small leatherworking community called Adulam. And we took a couple thousand dollars over there and they were making all of their goods by hand. And we were actually able to get a leathermaking machine there. And they actually repaid the loan before we left at the end of the academic year. So like when I saw that and the increase of productivity for the ability for them to scale and support their families better, I was like, wow, that kind of ties into both why I went into law because it was incredibly heavily regulatory. It was— there were so many legal loopholes to go through to be able to deploy those funds.

And at the same time, it also reminded me that, you know, a cumulative of small investments can be really meaningful. And so those 2 things kind of support why law. and why a registered funding portal at the same time.

Makes sense. Makes sense. Now, I got a quick question for you.

Yes, sir.

You know, you left your big fancy law firm, Cooley, which is world famous, and you chose to be the number 9 employee at a startup fintech company. Like, was that a calculated move, or were you high at the time, or did you feel like you were going— because, you know, you've been obviously a contrarian thinker and not going into medicine. So like, what were you thinking to do that?

To leave Cooley? I love it. Yeah, I went to Cooley. And first of all, I loved my time at Cooley. I think the best training in the world, in my opinion, one of the greatest law firms ever, especially in emerging ECVC, emerging company venture capital. For me, my whole goal was, you know, 3 to 5 years to start my own fund. I was never going to try to grind for partner. It was never really a real perspective of, you know, legal practice was always kind of a means to an end for me. Timing. Timing at the end of the day is what does it for you. You know, the JOBS Act came out in 2016. I graduated law school in 2017. The funding portal was up and running late '17 into '18. My best friend from law school told me about this opportunity to help join early, be a founder, be an entrepreneur, but also support entrepreneurs. We work with investors, so it feels like we're kind of playing VC. We're members of FINRA, regulated by the SEC, tons of legal implications. So it checked a lot of my boxes. It had law. It had venture, it had kind of entrepreneurship.

So, you know, when those things kind of all align, it feels like you have to opportune.

Yeah.

And I knew that this would be one of those things that we'd look back on and I imagined it would be a staple of the community, right? There's no way that we can continue to have this world where only a certain group of people can participate in these deals. I just couldn't imagine that could be the case forever. And the idea that everyday people, people listening to this show, people that are online, people who are clicking the link, scanning the QR code, can own a piece of their restaurants that they love, the breweries that they love, the technology that they love, that they love, it just felt like that had to be a piece of the future. So yeah, I mean, it was definitely a leap of faith for sure, not to say the least, especially picking up— I was grateful Michigan was pretty supportive, but still had, you know, some meaningful student loans. So to be able to take that leap of faith, grateful for my family and my wife's support. And yeah, we went out there and took the risk together. And we were fortunate that early on, we were able to bring in some good deals from the University of Michigan early to prove the model.

There's actually one of our first deals, was Court Innovations, which I actually worked for as a law student, where you actually paid parking tickets online to avoid getting, you know, there's a debtor's prison where you would get a parking ticket, you get your license suspended, driving with a suspended license, bench warrant.

Right.

So real clear path from not being able to pay a ticket to going to jail. And we just kind of created some simple software for people to be able to pay that online and avoid those complications. So it was cool to be able to prove that model, do some of that stuff early. And, you know, and I had one of my, getting to work with your best friend, We'd already done emerging company stuff at the law school together. We'd already worked for student venture funds together. So we felt pretty confident that we'd be able to execute on the vision. So team, opportunity, timing. But I'll always be grateful for my time at Cooley.

That's great. I mean, it sounded like you were really looking for a wife for your job. You checked a lot of my boxes.

And similarly, you can't—

You didn't even mention that you got to move to Orange County.

That's true. Yeah, I grew up down here. I grew up down here, only really went to Michigan for law school, went to Silicon Valley just for the job, and got to come back home. Yeah, fully remote for the last 8 years before it was cool. So yeah, that was a big perk of it as well, getting to be down here. My wife teaches Irvine Unified. So being down here in a great school district, all those things really, really added to the formula as well.

You're right. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, like, you live in the best place, I would argue, on the planet.

I would not contest.

Yeah. So, I mean, I mean, people in like the hood in Van Nuys sometimes think—

Oh no, I picture, I picture all of the Southland. I love LA down to San Diego. I love the Bay too, but the whole Southland has to stick together.

Yeah, yeah, we do. Except, you know, Irvine, Newport Beach, it's, it's bona fide facts that it's the best place.

Look at him taking jabs in the corner.

Now, I got a question for you. What do you think is harder to convince, the first investor or the 100th investor?

You know, I have— maybe this is— I'm not sure it's going to be super contrarian. I think people will probably agree with this. The first. I think, actually— well, it depends on what you've done since with the other 99 investors' money, probably. But that first investor— in Silicon Valley, we used to joke around all the time. Every investor wants to be first. to be second. If that first investor— people would always say, you know, add me to your newsletter, keep me posted, I can't wait to see what you're building. And then as soon as there's enough market signals, and like lemmings, they start showing up out of the woodwork. There was probably a time in the '90s and early 2000s where there was true risk-seeking, but by the time I got to Silicon Valley, everybody had the same data. It was put more money in later, gets better returns for your limited partners. And that's pretty much been the state of things since then.

Now, I got a question for me as an investor. Like, what's the highest yields you've seen some of your investments at your firm pay out at net cap?

Wow.

So we've— yeah, we've held a couple— we've held a couple hundred companies. We have just under a dozen exits, pretty early on still.

Dozen exits?

Just about, yeah.

So that's pretty good.

Not bad, especially because we take really, really early risk when we go industry agnostic. So we've gone all the way from— we had a really cool company that raised for a Broadway show. just last year that might not ever return, but people who love the show wanna support it. They get a credit and they get to support and they get to go to the show and get a discount on things all the way to truly high-tech, high-growth lithium extraction companies or, you know, boron nitride nanotubes or some of the coolest things that we've ever seen. But I think we had just under 10x, we had an 8x return would be probably the best. that we brought to the non-accredited investor pool, which is super, super exciting. Otherwise, they'd be excluded from the deal. One of our investors in NetCapital also invested in Uber. And I mean, you guys know the return on that one is probably still gonna go down as one of the greatest returning investments of all time. But I'm just bummed that we couldn't get those technology deals on the platform for everyday riders. I remember my wife actually told me about Uber.

I'm embarrassed to admit it when she finds technology I didn't know about. But we were riding Uber when it was still, Limousines, uh, off-time.

I remember those days.

That was so fun.

That was like, I don't know, 13 years ago, 12 years ago. I remember my friend like, you gotta invest in this company, this is like a great investment, it's so cheap. Yeah, I'm like, what is this? You know, like, damn it, I wish I put like 10 grand in, I'd be a millionaire.

Yep.

Well, I mean, I'd be much more wealthy.

Yeah, yeah. No, I mean, I mean, I think they put $25,000 into the deal, turned to $125 million. That's, that's an unbelievable return. My wife also showed me one of her students was working on ChatGPT early, but at the time it actually wasn't even that good. I hate to say it. I, it was just, it was like, it was like a, a worse version of Wolfram Alpha. And I just couldn't, I couldn't see the vision, but it was, it was too early. I wish I would've kept track of it. But you know, we all look at things that, I think we remember the ones that we missed more than the ones that we were—

Yeah. I don't remember the ones that like I even did, but the ones you missed, you're like, why did I do that? Now, I got a trick question for you.

Ooh, lay it on me.

Do you think a great company can still be a terrible investment?

Yes.

Why?

All the time. Because we talked about team being the most important piece. So all it takes is one— for every good member of the team, you have to be more thoughtful about avoiding negative value. People lose track of that, and you hate to say it. I think there's a lot of kumbaya sometimes where it's like, oh, you know, me and my roommate are doing something. And we already agreed that we're going to be part of the team together. And that's fantastic and beautiful, and we love that. But oftentimes it's just not the team that you need to be able to execute at the next level, especially when you go from Series C, Series A into the Series B and C levels. Sometimes an entirely different skill set that you need to that next level, and especially if you want to get to a public company level, get on the NASDAQ or the New York Stock Exchange, almost an entirely different skill set altogether. And so There's a bad rap for venture capitalists bringing in more established, different expertise into companies, removing founders. I don't think that's the way to do it, but realistically, there's oftentimes an entirely different skill set for different stages of the company.

And if you ride the wave with the same people at different stages, oftentimes that can be a great company and a bad investment. Also, you know, every once in a while folks get a handful of the cash and they don't realize what the burn rate looks like and they don't know what the next stage is to get to the next round of financing. You know, down rounds can cripple a company where you raised— there's just like a frothy market and you were just so excited to take the highest valuation possible, but that wasn't realistic. And then now all of a sudden, a couple months later, people are saying, hey, I don't think it's worth that. And the market has agreed and now you're in a pretty tough spot. So, and then also, you know, about a third of all venture dollars go towards marketing. If you can't get the word out, it's kind of like if a tree falls in the woods, you know, and no one's there to hear it, did it happen? And unfortunately, in startups, often the answer is no. If you have a great company that falls in the woods and no one's there to hear it, it might not matter.

And that's heartbreaking.

And marketing strategy, you could spend a ton of money, but if the marketing doesn't resonate and there isn't an effective marketing strategy that actually grabs someone's attention, and that's hard because that's a science.

Oh, yeah.

And people don't like boring products. That's why this whole spin on this podcast has been a marketing strategy for me to market a boring mortgage company. Because nobody cares about my mortgage company.

Highly effective power too.

Amen.

No, this is—

So like, I have to entertain you to draw attention to my mortgage company.

If we're going to be honest, then self-serving. Not a lot of people are interested in corporate law either.

Yeah.

You know, like nobody cares about corporate law. It sounds like actually, like not only does corporate law sound boring, but it's like, it's like anticlimactic. Oh, like I tell people mortgage, it's like, telling you student loan debt. How would you like that?

Yeah.

You're like, oh my God.

Yeah.

So mortgage is like a step above student loan debt, but it's like, it's debt on your house. But people like the house. They don't want the debt. You know, they want the house. So we sell the vision and like the picket fence, you know, the dog, you know, like the—

The American dream.

Yeah. So, but, but like, what does it take to accomplish that? Like coffees, baby.

Coffees, baby. No, you're absolutely right. You know, VC companies fail all the time in the strong marketing strategies. One of my favorite things recently has been the influencer investor recently, where the actual— you know, you were just having athletes and entertainers on the call earlier today.

Yeah, that's strategy.

I love those investors. I love athlete investors because not only are you going to take the cash, but you're going to have the support of the founder. You know, one of my closest friends, Baron Davis, he was early in on Vitaminwater. He decided to take some equity instead of cash, promoted it. I think the idea that, you know, the Golden State Warriors, we used to joke around, in the Valley, their day job is basketball. But what it will actually provide the generational wealth for most of these guys is the Coinbase deals that Kevin Durant gets into.

Yeah.

That's what's going to—

And Durant's a multibillionaire from all his deals. But also Steph Curry, any business he touches, you're investing in. Like, what? Steph Curry's involved? I'm in. Because anything he shouts out is going to— it's going to succeed.

So you get their money, and they promote the opportunity, and you save the third of venture dollars that you would have poured into marketing instead. It's a natural—

just a quick question. Do you have any deals that Steph Curry's in right now?

I wish.

I mean, I'll invest in that. I love that.

I actually don't think that I do right now. And every single deal that I have to mention, I have to do massive disclosures. So let's just knock out some quick disclosures. I'm just gonna go— I'm gonna go deadpan. Anything I say is not legal, financial, or tax advice. It's not investment recommendations. Please consult your attorney. Consult your tax professional. Review every prospectus and consider wisely. Only invest what you're comfortable losing. All right, that should do it. Oh, no, no, I could never do that. I think you should. I think, you know, I've gotten a couple of these since I was reached out to, and I think what you're doing is incredible. Exposure is awesome. The opportunities seem super cool. But I do love— I do love— but on the same side, you have to also be— every deal you have to screen, you have to be really thoughtful about these deals. Sometimes there are certain influencers who are willing to take— you're kind of pretty indiscriminate on their deal recommendations. And there's just a difference between who people are really supporting, believe in it, can do the diligence on the deal, support the deal, market the deal, versus folks that are really kind of just there for a payday.

And that's a little bit of a fine line. So it's got to— you still have to do your research.

And you're seeing, like, that isn't 100%, like, a sure win, right? You see what's happening with Prime, for example, with the Paul brothers. It's tanking. It took off big. But they didn't create an ecosystem for retention. So yeah, you'll get a big launch, but what's the ecosystem to retain? Like, how are you going to keep the customers happy after the hype fades? They're going to all try the product, then they're going to be like— just like Prime, they're like, this is nasty. This tastes terrible. The kids tasted it, they're like, don't bring this back to football practice.

Right, right. And demographics are fickle too, man. Things that are super hot right now, everybody's waiting for the next thing. I think you have to be thoughtful about your timelines on CPG, on consumer packaged goods. That's really relatively quick turnover. And most of the times, PepsiCo, Coca-Cola, they're not inventing anything new. They're buying. They tend to buy versus build. And so the exit should be build something enough that they like it and get rid of it.

Yeah, Poppi's— were you on the Poppi deal?

Perfect example. You know, honestly, I always struggle with those ones because in the very beginning, they were talking about the probiotics, prebiotics, and all that stuff, and there's not real You know, there's not like a ton of science to support that there's any health benefit to that. So I struggled with some of that. Um, but look—

But it sounded good. A healthy soda, like, come on.

And they're delicious. I have some of them at home. I think some of them are delicious.

Yeah.

So if you just—

but is it healthy? Like, I don't know.

I mean, like, you know, does it have prebiotics to the point where it's actually impactful? I think they had to change their marketing. I think they— I think they had to change some of their marketing to because of some of the claims might not have been unsubstantiated. So I think it's difficult. I think those ones are always tricky, especially because I think I have a heightened burden by virtue of kind of having some of the medical community listening to me. So sometimes I straight up miss out on some great deals all the time by virtue of decision-making.

But the medical community and these startups have kind of converged due to this holistic biohacking society. Yes, that we're in now. And now everybody's claiming, you know, drink this, you'll live longer, drink that, you'll live longer, eat this, you'll reduce your biological age, drink that, you'll reduce your biological age. And everybody's just buying it all up. Like, everything I do, it like relates to biohacking to some extent, and somehow it works. I don't know, I think I look great for my age.

I think you do. And I love all that stuff too. I'm— I've always been a quantified self kind of guy. I'm a big wearables guy. I actually had Gen 1 Apple Watch. I was like Fitbit and Upband before that. I love the the folks over at Founders Fund who supported Fitbit and all those things. I think that's fantastic. You should always be thinking about, like, at the end of the day, time is your most scarce resource. And if you can increase time, like, what an incredible opportunity. But I think to your point, a lot of folks are converging. On that front, though, what I've been doing with my family is medical advisory. You'll actually love this. And maybe we can actually talk about this offline too, is having a whole slide dedicated to your medical advisory group. Medical advisors are incredible. Oftentimes, these physicians are pure practitioners and go home and paint or whatever they enjoy. But looping them in on deals, getting them small pieces of equity, and getting them to promote to the medical community is a whole other strategy we've been working on. And I think it's really helpful. And it also helps you think about things early.

I worked on a deal that is really cool. It's like a 5-Hour Energy shot-sized drink, 2 ounces, of like 10 to 20 grams of protein. And I think it's all of like 80 calories. It has like 9 ingredients in it.

Really simple. I heard about that. 20 grams of protein in a shot.

So, so, so cool.

And actually, that went through you guys?

Yeah, Protein Quick, big fan. Spoiler alert, we support them. We own a piece. I actually advise them outside of NetCapital as well. But we love the deal and it's super exciting because early on my brother was like, mark my words, Red 5's got to go soon. Like, no one cares about the color. No, if anybody's pouring out the 2-Hour Energy, if anybody's pouring that out into a cup and they see that it looks like bone marrow yellow that nobody wants, it's not appetizing, so be it. But fruit punch did not have to be red. No Red 5. And then California, I think 6 months or a year later, like Band-Aid. Yeah, so I think it's so impactful for you to be able to go through, speak with these people early, get their feedback before somebody else gives you the feedback and you have to make changes anyway. So big, big fan of medical advisory.

All right, what's more dangerous to a founder, a bad business decision or a legal decision that they don't even realize is bad 5 years later?

Oh, I'm so biased. But I think I'm trying to suspend my bias for a second, and I think I think the answer is still bad legal. We, we used to— we always say like, uh, you know, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. I, I'm so disheartened because a lot of our, a lot of our clients, you know, they think they're doing quite well and a lot of them are, but a lot of them are like, you know, a couple hundred thousand. You know, the runway is, you know, 18 months with, you know, a couple million dollars in there. But, you know, a couple hundred thousand in legal fees dramatically decreases your runway.

So.

Yeah. I always feel bad. They're like, oh, you must be happy that this went wrong and now we're paying legal fees. Like, no, absolutely, absolutely not. This is, this is a nightmare. And the work that we could have done to prevent this would have been so much less than it's going to take right now to go retroactively fix stuff. So, you know, most of the time an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Good legal counsel is basically, in my opinion, early on invaluable. After you raise your first little bit, right? First you got to kind of figure your sea legs, right? It's hard to do $600 an hour. with zero revenue. But, but you probably want to think about pretty decent legal pretty early.

Uh, $600 an hour is what attorneys cost now?

I think that's— that's good. That's, that's good value right there at this point. I have, I have partners at Kulu that are $2,000 an hour.

Wow.

I definitely have. I have, I have, I have close friends that are banging people over. And I, I always use $600 because it's just like, it's just like a perfect example of just $10 a minute. And it's— but there, there are so many thousands of an hour attorneys now, especially in venture. But they've done some of the coolest stuff, and their expertise has kind of been valuable. But I will say, if you can get a good kind of high-value kind of early supporter attorney, then I think that that's incredibly valuable. But I also will say that bad business decisions— I can't remember who had this framework. I always feel bad when I rip off so many smart people, and it makes me feel like I'm smarter, but it's not actually even my thought. But somebody broke up their decisions into, like, Haircuts and tattoos. I think there was actually one more element there. They said most decisions are haircuts. You know, you have a bad haircut for a while, not great, showing up on coffees looking like trash. Actually, my barber wasn't here today, so that's why I look like this. But it won't be the end of the world, right?

But tattoos, those permanent, semi-permanent decisions, those are the ones you should put quite a bit of energy behind and really think about those. But most decisions in life are haircuts, and you don't want to think too much about them. Get through them, move quickly, execute. And then those tattoo decisions though, you should, you should huddle up with friends and family and consider if that's the right decision.

That's true, that's true. And I like that analogy— tattoo or haircut.

And if it's a haircut, just pull the trigger. If it's a tattoo, lock in.

Yeah, I'm gonna use that for my business frameworks now, especially with my partner, you know, because we got a lot of haircut decisions that we just sit here and like we're huddling over like, dude, just come on. It's a haircut.

Picking it out.

I like that analogy. Thank you for— I always learn. See, I'm the biggest student of my own show.

Oh yeah.

And I always say, like, if anybody benefits from this show, it's me. Okay, then comes the decision that really changes your story. Instead of staying on the prestigious path, you left Cooly, you joined NetCapital, then there are only 8 people ahead of you.

Yep.

How did NetCapital first get on your radar? I know you mentioned your friend, and what made you willing, really, what made you willing internally to leave Cooly?

Yeah.

Because that was like, that's the baddest firm on the planet.

I love— yeah, that's so true, and it's such a tricky one. So for me personally, it really came down to— so it's funny. I like to say, when I look for founders, when we speak with them, you're considering investing, I love a sales CEO. That is the most important skill set you can have as a chief executive is sales. You're not only selling your company to users, but also you're selling it to investors, and you are selling it to your employees as well. The, the opportunity to own was the biggest piece. And I think we'll probably talk more about ownership and how critical that is. I was— there was really no path line, in my opinion, to owning a piece of Cooley, right? It would be 10 years, ideally, if you're lucky, make partner, pull down a couple million a year. And that's really just based off of the profit share. There's no Cooley gets bundled into another mega firm and I get a cut. There was no clear path to ownership there. And I do believe that ownership is the most— the single most important, especially business ownership. I love real estate too. I'm not cutting against eMortgage.

But I do think business ownership is kind of hands down the most important part of how you can get to your ultimate, you know, kind of dream lifestyle. So the idea to be able to come in, own a meaningful piece, direct— you know, kind of drive the direction. Also, you got to keep in mind—

It's also purpose. It's not even about money.

Purpose, yeah. Exactly.

For me, eMortgage, like, it drives more purpose. Like, you take away eMortgage, if I were to come in, like, I wouldn't sell the company. I was thinking about it the other day. I'm like, as we get hit up with different people trying to buy us, like, what the hell am I gonna do?

Right.

Like, I have a plan. Like, my son, I want him to be a, you know, take over. He's like, he already wants to be a CEO. Like, all right.

Perfect.

Like, I got vision for my kids.

Generational.

What am I gonna do here? Like, you know, like, I'm not gonna start another company that's gonna be a mega company.

Right.

You know, so there's, it's true purpose for me. It's outside of money. It's like, I have fun, but do you think that that's really what drove you?

That was the next part I was gonna say was that, you know, I was so grateful for my time at Cooley, but especially as a first year, And pretty much all the way through being a junior associate, you kind of— you're fortunate to be on the call, in the file, but I'm not, you know, really meeting and digging in with these entrepreneurs. I'm not really meeting and digging in with my clients. And so the idea to be able to actually roll up my sleeves, get involved, and support my clients, that was unbelievable. Yeah, I went from, you know, very much being like the very lowest common denominator. Like things would get crammed down to us to keep the file thin, to keep the cost down. And sometimes you get exposure with really cool people. I was on, you know, you know, I got to do some snaps with Evan Spiegel, which is still one of my coolest things on the Snapchat side. But realistically, you know, a lot of these clients, they were my partner's client and I happened to be on the file versus being able to be— this is like my contact. I call them, they call me, they need something, I'm their person.

So yeah, being able to actually be with them, meet with them, be part of their team and support them, that's kind of invaluable to your point.

So you now have the opportunity to find the next Snap. Is your firm equipped for something like that? That's exactly right.

And so that's actually part of the funding. So I love that you asked that question. Not only do we have the funding portal that's helped a couple hundred do the— a couple hundred companies do the $100 million, but we also have our registered broker-dealer. And this is something that most funding portals don't have. So pretty early on, we realized that, you know, Reg CF, Regulation Crowdfunding, you can only do about $5— you can do up to $5 million per year per company, which is awesome. That's way up from when I started. When I first started, it was actually $100,000 maximum, moved to $1 million, moved to $5 million. So we're proud that we've been able to get to be able to do more and larger deals. But realistically, a lot of bigger, better companies, they can't even use $5 million. So, so what we did early on was start building out our own broker-dealer. So we have our own proprietary broker-dealer. We own it. It's registered in all 53 states and territories. It could do every securities exemption, every investment instrument. You could do $75 million under Reg A. You could do an unlimited amount under Reg D.

So pure private placements. There's actually a design where you have a funding portal right here where your private deals could be behind a password and people have to be a member of Coffees in order to log in, see the deal flow, and invest in those deals. Full white label solutions. And so that, I think, is what allows us to be able to go get the next snap, is that not only can we help you with the first $1 to $5 million, but we can help with the $75, the couple hundred million, billion-dollar financings we could do through the funding portal and broker-dealer now.

So we are a privately held mortgage company. We got about 1,000 loan officers. We, we entertained you know, hedge funds. We've entered, but we never really like— we're able to fund ourselves.

Yeah, exactly.

We've never entertained like funding.

Yeah.

For a company like ours that has a lot of market share, biggest independent mortgage company in California, banker broker, but we're the first like broker of this kind of caliber in California. Is there any benefit like to seeking— because we're self-funded, like, but I want to dominate the nation.

Yeah.

You know, I want to just take over all the other— so my model is to attract other independent mortgage companies to come to our ecosystem because it makes a lot more sense. They plug into a billion-dollar infrastructure and they can leverage all of our technology, marketing, HR, onboarding, beautiful IT, legal compliance, all everything. Is there a benefit for a company like ours to go to, you know, private equity? You're like, you basically structure deals or like keep funding it yourself?

2 pieces.

Because can we grow faster? Can we gain more market share quicker?

It's probably that. That one in control. So I think you're absolutely right. At the end of the day, I always say, you know, I'm in the equity preservation version of capital raising. If you don't need the money, then keep the equity, generally. But that being said, if you have opportunities to have access to kind of like a meaningful amount of cash, all that applies.

My friend did a SPAC.

Yeah, exactly.

But he sold 7% at a $5 billion valuation.

Perfect.

So that was a SPAC, and he only had to let go of 7%.

Yeah.

And now the company's worth $10 billion. the stock's in the gutter, but because the industry as a whole—

The SPAC market, yeah.

Uh, no, the mortgage industry is kind of tough, right?

Right, right.

So, you know, but I, I just, I don't understand enough of that world to really see any benefit to how we can benefit.

Yeah, so if the terms are right, like you said, if you can get a meaningful amount of upfront cash and not have to part with too much equity, I think that's incredibly valuable. You can start going targeting those medium or small size brokerages, acquiring them, bring them into the fold. That could be a meaningful way to use the capital. I think on the other side too is that one of the things that we've always loved about these private capital markets is that you can keep control. I've seen too many times where you try to go to the— and I love the NASDAQ.

And we— I mean, right now we're going after distressed mortgage companies. We haven't ever approached like a company that's thriving and been like, hey, we'll just give you $5 million, roll under us.

Right, right.

You know, like that could be a play, but we don't have that kind of money.

But that also could be— yeah, but your approach could be really valuable. Everybody wins there, right? People are kind of on the verge and you can get a good get a good—

That's our approach now. We just acquire companies that don't— they're like, dude, it doesn't make sense for us to operate. We'll never be an eMortgage. We can't be. So like, we either face eMortgage in the ring, and they're going to take our talent.

Potentially get knocked out.

They're going to take our talent, or we just join them, and then we retain our talent, and we leverage all their ecosystem.

Yeah. No, I think that's right. Distressed assets are incredibly valuable, especially in this space. It sounds like that's a good move. There could be high-performing assets that you could do mergers with, mergers and recalls, and roll under our umbrella.

Yeah, the play for us, if there's any value there, would be like high-performing companies to just roll underneath us that see that we're just a much bigger player, and we can give them some sort of upfront severance, you know, to just walk away from their ego.

Yeah, there's that. There's also marketing dollars. We already talked about the value of marketing, you know, having some bucks ready to do national campaigns and attract the talent before it goes to competitor firms. That could be a good way to use the capital. But at the end of the day, what's nice about ours is we structure the deal. There's no bookmaker deciding what you're going worth. We'd work together on that. We guide and advise on value, but it's your company. You tell us what it's ultimately worth, and we'll go to the market and see if we can get our investors to support that. So I think there's a lot more control. There's no liquidation preferences, no pro rata terms, and no preferences. You know, the investors are generally hoping that you go and do something great with the money, and then they get a return. They don't get to really say if you want to go left. They don't get to say you're going right.

Yeah, yeah. That's the difference on our capital.

That could be a big difference on our capital.

Public and not, you know. And that's why we never want to go public. Like, we don't need— we have the regulators already up our ass.

Yeah.

We don't need, like, more people.

Yeah. No, no, no. We're members of FINRA, regulated by the SEC. I love my regulator partners.

I love you guys too. Every state, including Washington, Arizona, Florida, we love you all. I hope you're all watching. Yeah.

We even have the 3 territories: Puerto Rico, Guam, US Virgin Islands.

Now, if NetCapital had 2 years left after you joined, would you— would leaving Cooley have been the right decision?

No. No, we didn't, we didn't, we, we reverse merged into a NASDAQ company in 2021, and that really was kind of the one piece that made it kind of super justifiable at that point. But, well, you know, that's hard to say. You know, I mean, honestly, no. Well, I guess the theoretical thing— what helps a lot is that, you know, legal practice is a relatively small community. I went to a top 10 law school. I worked at one of the best law firms ever. I was very fortunate that I still do practice corporate and securities law. I always wanted to keep that expertise with me. So theoretically, there's always an opportunity to go back and I guess no harm, no foul kind of thing. So maybe, but no, realistically, I think as the equity vests, you want to get the full vesting term and ideally have an exit. And that's what makes it generally worth it. For on the technology side. And then of course the purpose side, you know, I cannot believe it, you know, I meet so many great companies doing great things that otherwise might have been unfunded. There was a company that only did about half a million through the funding portal, but then they got backed by Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and now they're off to the races.

But they wouldn't have qualified for that investment otherwise. So I guess, you know, come from a purpose side, sure, maybe, but from a kind of like the next step in my career, probably Less justifiable.

Now, most people hear the term crowdfunding all the time, and they think Kickstarter, they think GoFundMe.

Yeah.

And you're talking about something like, which is fundamentally different, right?

Yes.

People actually investing in privately held companies, which is— I don't know if that's— I mean, that's been around for a long time. Now, explain the regulation of crowdfunding to somebody who's never heard of it. And is this technically what you're doing now with NetCapital Crowdfunding?

Yes, both sides of it. So, yes, on the funding portal, Reg CF, Regulation Crowdfunding, that is the up to $5 million bread and butter, about $100 million over there. The broker-dealer is more traditional institutional raises. Those are Reg A's, Reg D's, larger funds. You need a broker-dealer on it, and that's kind of— it could be pure private placement or accredited only.

So, you're only hiring them for like $5, $6 million. See, $5 million for like a mortgage company, for instance, like we have that on the books. We have to keep that just to just appease our investor, our warehouse lines.

Yeah.

So you're looking for privately held small little companies.

Yeah, on the funding portal. And oftentimes they work together, right? You can have a Reg CF right next to a Reg D, private placement right next to a smaller raise.

Okay.

But what's cool about the funding portal is that you can do 2 really important things that you otherwise can't do. You can generally solicit your fundraise. You can yell from the mountaintop that you're raising capital. You can do national TV ads. You could actually have a QR code at your restaurant, and everybody who loves your restaurant can scan the QR code, and invest debit card, credit card, ACH, wire transfer directly through the website. Or you can go on national ads, you could do digital ads, it could be on Facebook and Instagram, et cetera. So you can generally solicit, which is big, and you can accept non-accredited investors. And that's about 90% of the United States, over 99% of the world. So allowing those smaller investors in the deal, and that's actually what I think is underrated, is that these retail investors, those are the folks that'll go out of their way. You know, we did a fundraise for a company, the ticket company I mentioned, Quart Innovations, came outta University of Michigan, They had a minimum investment of $100. They had a $100 investor who was a truck driver, and he invested because he would drive along his route, and if he got a ticket on the route, he'd actually drive back to Kentucky to go to deal with the courts and pay the fines or whatever.

So we got them into 3 different court systems along his route to avoid having to do all that. That's stuff that only the smaller retail investor does. $100 million investors don't do that. Million-dollar investors don't do that, go out of their way like that. So— So you can have accredited and non-accredited investors, domestic or international, and you can generally solicit. Incredibly powerful. But that being said, there's also the larger institutional stuff. We'd love to, you know, God willing, we'll be able to participate on any expansion leagues for the NBA. Shout out NBA. Let's see if we can get this going on. But—

You're working on the Vegas one or what?

Ideally. So I think—

Ideal, but not yet.

Yeah, I know. We're working towards hopefully inking something like that. I think that would be a perfect fit for fans in Vegas to own a sports team.

Well, it's coming. Vegas will have NBA teams.

Well, expansion.

But we want the fans to get in. been a version outside the Packers, but they don't have really true ownership upside, right? They would— these folks actually have upside when the company's acquired, right? Yeah.

And you know, it's gonna be— well, you know, Vegas is like completely changing their entire business model.

Yep.

Just because, you know, Gen Z, these guys don't drink, they don't party, they don't, they don't need nightclubs, and they don't need all-night after-hours. They don't do any of that.

Correct.

So the whole industry is just pivoting.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. You have to be fundamentally different in the way that you're approaching the next generation of investors. You have to provide value outside of like you said, alcohol and late nights. I think the other thing that's really cool about this type of version versus Kickstarter, and I love the folks over at Kickstarter and Indiegogo, but that is always, you know, kind of charity-based crowdfunding. You're supporting something 'cause you want it to become real, but this is equity crowdfunding. You're owning a piece of the company. There was a company, really cool small company at the time called Oculus Rift, right out of Oculus, right out of Long Beach, and they actually did a front— they did a Kickstarter.

You know Oculus that was purchased by Facebook?

Yeah, that's right, yeah, they did a Kickstarter. They raised like $2 million through a Kickstarter.

Wow.

And a $100 investor at the time would get a— I think it was a signed poster. And then I think a $1,000 or more investor, some sort of investor would actually get a Gen 1 Oculus Rift. And that's sick. Like, I would do it just for that. But I would much rather have owned $1,000 worth of shares in Oculus when they were acquired for a billion dollars. We actually did the math, actually, just off of like traditional kind of pro rata discounts over time. If they'd done their raise of $2 million through net capital instead of through Kickstarter, that $100 investor should have been between anywhere between $20,000 or $40,000 on the return, just based off of what the securities should have been worth at the time versus what they were acquired for by Meta, by Facebook at the time. So it's real. It's real. It's like everybody, instead of throwing dollars at a lottery ticket, you can actually have a chance and own a piece of a company that you believe in and hopefully see the upside. So big difference then. than charity-based fundraising, for sure.

Wow, that is pretty cool. What do you think? You ready to put your first $100 in one of his companies? But he hasn't had anything like— $100 is only gonna get you $800 at best right now based on these stats. Now, is, is traditional venture capital doing necessary, uh, filtering, or has it become, you know, a form of like gatekeeping?

First of all, I love traditional venture. I love all my friends in traditional venture. I think the risk-seeking that traditional venture is supposed to do is largely gone. I think there's a lot—

Why?

I think it's largely because of the data. The data came out, I think it might have been 2008, maybe, maybe 2012, And it kind of got reaffirmed over time. Generally, the limit— remember, these venture capitalists, it's not their money. You have to remember the whole structure of venture capital. They get their money from their limited partners, pension funds, other groups. So even the VCs that are deploying the capital, that's someone else's money. That's limited partners' money. They're general partners, but it's limited partners' money. So they have an obligation to return the funds to the LPs, right? And the data said that if you put more money in later, you get a better return for your LPs. And so that's why everybody's chasing the exact same handful of deals. They'd rather put $100 million into the exact same AI company as everybody else than to put $10 million into 10 potentially promising AI companies elsewhere. And then the data suggests that they get better returns. So I think there are great companies that are getting under, you know, kind of underexposure, not looked at, missing out on opportunities. And then they use that to reinforce their decision-making.

Like, oh, well, that company failed. Well, Yeah, because they never got any investments. They never got any looks. They never had a chance. So they're kind of kingmakers, but they're using— but the data suggests that they should continue to act one way, but the data is reinforced by their decision-making to begin with. So all that to be said, I think we have lost the plot a little bit. Early-stage venture is supposed to be that risk-seeking element, get the upside on the deals. I mean, people used to do— although there's one exception. Have you guys heard about this pre-idea funding that's happening at Stanford?

No.

Oh, this will knock your socks off. This will knock your socks off.

Pre-idea.

Pre-idea.

So a college kid comes in with a smoking idea, you're like, I'm in.

Specifically at Stanford, there are venture capitalists that are meeting up with these kids at these meetups, like coming out of like the kind of the entrepreneurship associations at Stanford. And they're basically saying, hey, I'll cut you these SAFE notes, the pre-idea SAFE notes, and I'll cut you $250,000, and it just goes towards whatever the valuation is, whatever you create next. It's like, it's on— it's, uh, we have no idea what it will be. Um, yeah, we, we get, we get our first year grades and then we— that, that determines our future.

Well, I mean, that's really betting on the CEO before they're a CEO.

Exactly.

So I do a form of that in my industry now where I just like scout a talent like, dude, you got great skills, you need to go get your mortgage license. Yeah, I think we could start a mortgage company around you. So I, I kind of do that now. Yeah, like I'll straight up find someone who's just talented because I, you know, I talked to them at, you know, they're my waiter But even that, you have an idea, and I like that.

But, you know, you could take transferable skills and bring them into something that you have, but you have an idea what you want them to do. This is like, we have no idea what you're gonna do. This is a—

You're just betting on the person.

Just entirely. No clue what the actual outcome will be. But the goal is that our quarter million will go into whatever, a discount on whatever rate is that the future—

But you know this kid's a genius.

That's it. That's all it takes.

Like, this guy's a genius, I'm gonna invest in this guy. I don't know what the hell he's gonna do.

Pre-idea finding. So it's difficult because it's two sides of the same coin. One is like, Like, you have to prove me that you have $1 million in ARR, or else you can kick rocks. Or you're at Stanford, you got these, like, incredible quant skills, and I don't care what you do, here's some money.

Yeah. That is fascinating. That is fascinating. But I mean, it's going to work, just because you're— you know, at the end of the day, despite how far you all are in the investment process, you're always betting on the person.

Always betting on the team. Right, right. But Steve Jobs— you can't do it without a WASP across the board. And I think that's why you're betting on the WASPs, because it doesn't really matter who the jobs is, they're gonna plug in a WASP. Yeah, right, right. But I think some of them are trying to look for the Jobs 2 of the world, which is even harder to do. Those super big thinker, you know, creative types, which is like, what an anomaly. Those are just like, God bless them. Those are incredible, incredible skill sets to have. But, but yeah, like there's, there's this whole new unique world, which is basically, I don't care what you're gonna do, I don't know what it is, but I want to be a part of it. And you can only do that because Stanford did the diligence, basically. Stanford already did the diligence you're piggybacking off of. And that's what largely goes back to the same themes, is that most of venture is follow-on. It's kind of lemming-esque. It's like a handful of tier 1 VCs that are doing all the heavy lifting in venture. They're the ones that are paying the lawyers like me to do the diligence on the deals.

And then somebody cuts a check, and as soon as— there's so many follow-on funds, which is actually a great business model. So many follow-on funds are just like, if this group comes in, then they get a piece of my fund.

Now, I got a question for me. Are there any really hot deals at your firm right now you're like, dude, this is a good one. You got to buy this one.

I've been trying to— I know you want this question. I've been trying to dodge it because I— because there's really no way. I cannot make investment recommendations. I'm actually getting my Series 7 and 63 license, then I can actually make investment recommendations.

But like, you know, what are a couple firms that really like caught your eye?

Oh my God.

Make sure we— if you guys subscribe right now.

But see, that's what you get to do, right? That's why you should— that's why why you should license our technology and you could be a promoter and you could recommend deals. No, so we actually just wrapped up— this is what I'll do. I'm gonna play it safe. You guys are gonna love this. I'm gonna play it safe because I'm gonna wrap up a deal that actually just closed, and that's what's gonna work, right? They just, they just sold, they just sold out their $5 million offering. They've done about $15 million with us through the funding portal. Really cool, promising company led by Brad, uh, over at Avidane. And, um, I'm not sure if you've seen anything in graphene, the, the composite the composite material science, graphene. I remember when he first described this to me, and here's the hard part. This is what I know, it's actually a pretty promising company, is when I'm like, either this is full of— can I say that?

Yeah, yeah.

Either this is full of shit and I'm gonna get off this thing, I'm gonna look like an idiot, or I'm gonna look like a freaking genius. And sometimes there's those dichotomy ones.

But when it is dichotomous, it's a good thing in my opinion.

And just by the grace of God, it seems like it's Graphene is the— So they have these incredibly high-value, incredibly well-designed graphene flakes that are an additive to anything. So imagine you're trying to make this, you know, military-grade aluminum. You can add a little bit of graphene into it, and then you won't need as much of these rare earth minerals that we always source from internationally. Like, basically, we have no rare earth minerals here. And so instead of having to go get, you know, pounds of rare earth minerals, you can add ounces of graphene and get, like, similar performance. You can do it to copper and alloys. And yeah, exactly. So we're talking about creating like, you know, aluminum that's stronger than steel and, you know, like incredible heat dispersion. So it could be the most impactful deal that we've probably ever done, maybe.

Yeah, grafting is expensive, right?

Yeah, but they have their aluminum mill, they have the technology, they're working with some great team members. And I think— so that'll be the one. Again, I can say it now because they wrapped up their fundraise. I would check out Avidane on NetCapital and see if they can— if they do another raise. I can't make investment recommendations, but I'd consider it. They've seemed to have done a pretty impressive thing. I'm not even a material science guy. I had to learn everything from scratch about what this looks like, but that might be the— I mean, you think about like, I mean, think about like, you know, AI, like, you know, chip manufacturers, heat dispersion, like these data farms that are struggling with heat issues and cooling problems.

Yeah.

Graphene, taking all our water.

Wow.

Could be transformational. Alloys, materials, like it could be military applications. It could be, you know, like, you know, yeah, it could be pretty interesting, like aerospace, industrial, like it could be pretty impactful.

This could, like, this is going to get Trump's ear.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, though they're already talking to DOD, like Department of Energy, Department of Defense, already conversations there. If it proves out, that could be the most impactful deal we've ever done, like by a light year. And it's crazy because I think people still think of that's a Reg CF deal. They just did $5 million at a time. Sold out their first million, sold out the next 5 million, sold out the next 5 million. Every time they sell out, they create a new waitlist. The next batch comes in, do another couple million. We had a— I did a live Q&A a couple weeks ago. $885,000 investor came into a reg CF. This is crowdfunding. $885,000 check. Just came in, cut the check, own a piece. I think people lose track of— because the minimum investment's $250, you know, every day people can get in and people are So, like, kind of letting that distract them from the fact that this could be the coolest thing I've ever worked on.

Could be.

Wow. I mean, it sounds promising, and it sounds really cool, and it sounds needed. If we believe ordinary Americans deserve access to private investment opportunities, don't we also have to accept the risks that come with that access?

You absolutely bet, Joe. Yes, yes. This is not paternalism. We're, you know, we've always kind of designed it to where we want, like, a diverse group of deals. Like we had a— we've done 2 pharmaceutical fundraisers, like a cancer immunotherapy, a non-addictive opioid. We've done a gravity simulation. There was a period of time during the pandemic we were launching rockets every day. We did a really cool gravity simulation tech that raised over $1 million with us. These are risky assets. These are high-risk assets. So you have to do your diligence. You have to invest only what you're comfortable potentially losing. And you have to be thoughtful about what you deploy your capital into. But I like the idea that it's there. Like that's what I love. If you imagine that only you and I can get into deals by virtue of being accredited investors, there are so many people listening to this right now that are otherwise excluded from the deal. And it all goes back to the '34 Act, '33-'34 Act. This is all back to like, we're worried that people were selling snake oil. And so instead of saying that the company selling the securities has to do more disclosures, we decided, okay, a certain group of people just can't invest at all.

You have to make $200,000 a year, or have $1 million in assets outside of your primary residence. That's basically 90% of the United States-ish that cannot invest in these startup deals. The largest wealth creation vehicle in the world is excluded to almost everybody in the world, which is tough. And so I've always felt like, yes, you have to be thoughtful, do your research, consider the opportunities, run it through AI if you have to, whatever. But I like the idea that you have the chance, and especially now, The argument against people having a chance at these deals is just— it's impossible to make the argument now with— no offense— it's the prediction markets. You know, you could bet on the weather tomorrow. You could bet on how many times the president says a word in a speech. You could bet on who wins and what the over and the under are and how many points are scored. They'll let you do that with zero research, zero implications. Like, they won't screen you at all. As long as you're 18 years old and you have the money, they'll take it. And that's perfectly fine. No concerns. But as soon as you want to invest in a startup, like, oh, hold on a second.

We need to make sure that you did your research, that you're qualified. We don't know if we want to let you get into this deal. So yeah, I think if you can show up and roll dice and they're going to let you do it, then at least you should be able to invest in a startup and have a chance to win, not betting against the house.

That makes sense. Now, our businesses are real different. In my world, And yours ultimately. The deals are the same and the fundamental problem— and the fundamental problem is somebody has an opportunity and needs capital to move on it. Now, how does an entrepreneur know whether they should be looking for debt, venture capital, private investors, or crowdfunding?

I love that. It's usually, you know, I like to think of this like a— I think about it as like a fundraising strategy, there's pieces to the puzzle. And a lot of the deals we see, there is a debt element and an equity element. Maybe it's you raise through crowdfunding and then you do venture debt. Oftentimes I like to remind people, oftentimes the time to take the debt is right after you've done an equity financing. You're less risky, you have cash on your books, you can get better terms. People lose track of that. They get the cash in the door, they're tired, and they just turn off fundraising. Oftentimes that's a good time to turn around and get some venture debt. It can just sit there. You're not even paying on it. It's— you're not using it, it's just available, but you have it at preferred terms. So oftentimes it's a fundraising strategy where a lot of these elements kind of are coming together. And so, you know, each one has their own downsides, right? You know, debtors are, you know, oftentimes creditors kind of have worse terms because they sit on top of the capital stack.

Common stock, if most of these companies fail on that capital, then the investors are just wiped out. There's no recourse. Debtors have incredible recourse. That's how this whole thing is designed. That's why a lot of debt instruments became more prevalent in venture capital, because they could sit on top of the capital stack. And if there was assets, they could sell off the assets and get paid back. But all to be said, generally speaking, there's pros and cons to every investment strategy. And generally, it's good to have elements of each.

A founder comes to you tomorrow with a good company, and he goes, And he's making $500,000 in revenue, 6 months of runway, and no idea of how to raise. Give me, like, a quick 90-day playbook.

Yeah. Oh, that's good. So this is going to be pretty industry-specific because a lot of these companies— well, let's say, so we have 6 months runway, $500K revenue. Generally, that's probably a pretty decent Reg CF deal. I mean, a lot of companies, a lot of ventures are going to see $1 million ARR. So a lot of, like, about maybe a third or— or 40% of ventures off the table right away. A lot of lenders will be uninterested in that limited of capital, or if they give you capital, it'll be a little bit predatory on the terms. It probably depends a little bit on if you have a decent community. If you have people that enjoy using your service or enjoy buying your product, that could be a really strong indicator to run a Reg CF opportunity through a funding portal. I think 6 months runway is always going to be pretty difficult. That's going to probably There's a really good group called KingsCrowd. They raised $100,000 with NetCapital and then did $1 million. But they are the kind of most recognized rating agency. They review every single deal on every single platform, and they grade them.

And one of the big ones I always look for is kind of risk associated with burn rate. And so, you know, only a couple of months left to execute on your vision. It could take a couple of months to get the dollars in the door, at which case you might be kind of right on the edge, knocking on the door, of the lack of success. But I think a modest raise and then using some of that capital for marketing to drive more revenue could be a reasonable opportunity.

Now, this is a question I ponder. It's like, can a company be incredibly successful and still the investors got a bad deal?

Yep.

They can? Like, where would the money go? Like, I guess the CEO would take the money, I guess. Yeah, like WeWork?

There's a lot more of that. There's obviously like things like that where it's just like bad people making bad decisions. I think even more than that, though, it's just that you can— it just really comes down to the terms. And that's what's so unfortunate. Like, I remember some people— there are some people— back in the day, there was a serious push towards liquidation preferences, where somebody could have an investment ahead of yours, and they get like a 2x liquidation preference. So no matter what, they get double their money back plus participation in whatever upside there is in the deal. And then you come in after that at 1x or, or kind of a normal liquidation preference. And now, you know, a lot of that value has already been associated with previous investors. You know, that's what's so weird about this world where a lot of the data says come in later with more cash, but at the same time, you know, the, the greatest returns of all time are the earlier risk-taking deals because you can get in there, you're not subordinated, you're not down the cap table, and you can actually get a meaningful return early on.

But it comes down to the deals, it comes down to the specifics, comes down to What your investment instrument is, what the what the what the terms are, you know who's who's in control. And then here's the thing too: you know if they taking they take investment from one specific investment group and and that board of director comes on and they have a very clear strong vision of where they want to go, which might not be in the best interest of the company, that can be a problem. You know shareholders determine the directors, directors determine the officers, but oftentimes the shareholders you know are are a conglomerate of venture capital funds. So a handful of venture funds could control, you know, 50-plus percent of the company. And so they really can say, hey, I like where you're trying to go, but it's gonna take me 5 or 10 years to get there. I'd rather sell this off for scraps right now and get my cash right now. Especially timing. People don't realize this. A lot of these venture funds have a 10-year horizon. They have to return their fund by the end of 10 years.

If you take money at year 8, year 9, they might come in, especially if you're a hardware company, they might be like, hey, Hey, that little thing that you have in the corner that's worth 100 grand, time to sell that thing so I can get my money back and put it towards something else. So yeah, there could be great deals, but you know, it's unfortunate there could be specifics that can, can make them not great deals.

That makes sense. That makes sense. So how does like, uh, an investor like prevent like a, like an issue like WeWork?

Oh man, which is so tough because I actually loved, I loved my time working in WeWorks. I think it's a cool idea. I think They made some interesting decisions, overextended, yada, yada. So I think if you're an investor— well, first of all, most investors didn't even get a chance to lose their money there. But let's say when you're really getting into the weeds there, I think having— OK, if you don't have an accounting background, have somebody on your team that does. A lot of people could look at the books and realize that some of these things don't make sense. For example, I don't want to speak poorly about the most recent SpaceX IPO. And there's some people who definitely made money there and there'll be some people that will continue to make money there. I just couldn't miss out on it 'cause I'd rather lose money than be wrong. So, you know, but, but I mean, losing, you know, losing $4 billion in Q1 without, you know, and, and then if you look at the data, basically their, their AI infrastructure was like a NeoCloud play where they didn't even have demand for xAI enough.

They're just selling that extra demand to other AI companies. I thought a super promising vision for your AI company is if you don't even have have the users to use your underlying infrastructure that you have to sell it to your competitors. So, and you can see it, you could kind of see all that from the financial statements too. So if you're not super confident in accounting, maybe, you know, kind of do a Coursera class and get a little, you know, kind of decent understanding or loop in your kind of friends and family and community members that can help give you some eyes there. But sometimes you can peek at these S-1s and once they're filed, you could feel pretty confident that something's are good or bad deals.

You could be as confident as you want, but like, if trust isn't in the picture, I feel like any deal will fall apart. How important is trust in a deal?

Gosh, trust is everything. People move at the speed of trust. I can't remember— again, I borrowed that from somebody way more— way smarter than I am, but people move at the speed of trust. You have to— you have to be able to believe in these folks. You know, good team members— look at the backgrounds of the founders, the directors, their officers. Yeah, trust is critical. And then you also have to trust that You know, when the, when the hiccups come, because inevitably there will be speed bumps in the startup space, it's just the nature of the business, you know, you really have to have trust that these are the people to execute on it. And that's why it keeps going back to team. It's the team that you trust that can execute, you know, whenever they have to pivot, they have to be ready to be able to do it. And so that's why you really got to look in and look at the team. So trust is everything.

Now, in the next version of the American dream, is it less about a great job and more about owning a piece of something?

I think almost certainly. I mean, we've seen, we've just seen, you know, kind of mass layoffs across the world. There was a period of time where, you know, having a 6-figure job at a, at a big tech company was like the most confident you could be in your future. And then we've seen, you know, tens of thousands of layoffs across the board on those. There's obviously massive push towards AI and everything. AI is designed to make companies more efficient, and efficiency means fewer humans. Like, let's just call it what it is.

That's what efficiency literally is.

That's exactly what it is. You know, they don't eat, they don't sleep, and they don't file for workers' compensation, right?

Yeah.

These are the types of things that generally mean fewer humans. So I think more and more people need to be able to creating their things. I think, I think there's a world where people are either creating their own thing or advising and supporting other people's big thing, and that could be a place where they can have success. But realistically, if, you know, if not, not owning your own thing is a kind of a precarious position these days, unfortunately. There's no, there's no 40 years and a gold watch anymore. I still hear that thing, it just blows my mind. People would just work at the same company for 40 years. And now the data shows if you're not switching jobs every year and a half or 2 years, you're actually leaving money on the table. Like, I didn't take this to heart. I obviously haven't been a good proponent of this, but the data suggests if you're not moving companies regularly, you're not actively leveraging up all the time, then you're not maximizing for compensation. So I think, you know, people are definitely not— there's no— it doesn't feel like there's loyalty to the game as there used to be.

And so I think you have to do what's best for you. People are switching, you know, people switching teams. And I think—

Companies aren't loyal to employees.

People aren't— companies are definitely not loyal to employees. They're surprised when employees aren't loyal to them, but they've never, you know, they're not loyal to their employees. And as soon as there's an opportunity in that board and that, you know, that board meeting shows up and they're trying to figure out where the money comes from, it could be coming from you at any time. So I think you gotta be thoughtful about having your own thing, unfortunately, in this world.

Yep.

Now, we're still relatively early in this experiment, but private investing once happened largely behind closed doors, specifically to accredited investors, right? Now, technology is steadily pulling those doors open.

Yep.

Right now, 10 years from now, how different do you think investing is going to look?

It took 40 years for mutual funds to become popular. It takes a long time for financial instruments to become popular. I can imagine a world where we just won't use something if you don't have a chance to own it. I really can. Like, why would I choose your product versus a competitor product? And that competitor product has a permanently open investment opportunity and I can add to my position regularly. And as I use it, they become more valuable. And as they become more valuable, I get, I get a larger dividend.

I mean, that makes a lot of sense to me.

Yeah, right? Why, why would you leave? The customer is the most valuable part of your business.

Well, that's the stock market. Science now. Like, invest in companies you use. Apple. You know, Facebook, whatever, Meta. Like, invest in those companies because you use them every day.

Exactly. But the issue is back in the day, they'd go public at a couple million dollar valuation. And now we just had a $1.5 trillion IPO. Like, where do you get returns? Like, you know, how do you get returns when a company needs to go from $1.5 trillion to $3 trillion for you to double your money? They, you know, in order for you to 3 times your money, they have to become the most valuable company in the world. Like, these are the types of things that people should be thinking about. Like, I think—

That's the SpaceX—

Yeah, exactly.

The hype was real, but it is, you know, you're just gonna— it's just safe. It's just like parking your money in the bank.

Right. And they changed, you know, they did a great job of getting folks to do things that had never been done before, getting included on NASDAQ 100 really early. Usually you have to wait a year. So outside of those types of things, like, you know, kind of— you're outside those, like, you know, some people could call it— some people could maybe call it, you know, corruption or like, you know, or at least market manipulation or influence or whatever. But, you know, outside of that, I mean, why would I use a coffee brand when I can own another one that I like? Like, you know, alcohol brands, we have a couple great investment opportunities up in alcohol brands. Like, how cool is that? I feel like George Clooney owning my own whiskey brand. Yeah, we did a tequila brand that was so cool. They wrapped up their offering They're called Ghost Tequila. It was a ghost pepper infused tequila company, and they just realized that everybody who sells a margarita sells a spicy margarita. And the worst part is muddling jalapeños. And it was like one of the largest return drinks of all time. It's either too spicy, not spicy enough, and it just comes back.

And it's just like, why just not just normalize that, institutionalize that, just make that the same all the day? We did a couple hundred thousand with them, and then they took tens of millions from Raptor Group, like a big private equity group. So it's like, why would I use your product if you're not even gonna— like, you care so little about me as a consumer that you're not gonna let me own a small— you won't let me give you money to own a small piece, but you expect me to use your stuff? I think 10, 15, 20 years from now, that'll just be ludicrous.

20 years from now, do you think people find it strange that access to private company investments was ever largely reserved for wealthy people?

I think so. Every time I speak about it, people are surprised. People are just like, well, why, why is it? And it's just such— because it's a, because it's a weird approach to take. It's so paternalistic. There's no other world where we're concerned that you would— you know, we're worried that grandma's gonna get swindled out of her pension. So what we said was no grandmas get to come in. That's really bizarre. And I think also it's kind of offensive too. The way they describe accredited investors is often— they usually conflate it with a sophisticated investor. They use those kind of interchangeably. I think people should be super offended You can make, you know, $100,000 a year and practice securities law, but you're not sophisticated enough to get into a deal because you don't make $200,000 a year. The idea of using wealth as a justification for your ability to access deals, I think, is pretty ludicrous. And I think more and more people will feel that way as well. Now, again, we do also have protections in place. You can only invest a percentage of your net worth and income, by the way, on the platform by law.

There's no world where somebody can make $100,000 and invest $100,000 through the platform. You can't do it. So there's already precautions in place. And like I said, it should be a slap in the face, especially compared to gambling and prediction markets. Like, you can't have it both ways. You can't say people can't put $100 in a cool startup, but you could put hundreds of thousands of dollars on whether, whether it's gonna be warmer than 90 degrees tomorrow.

10 years from now, what would have to be true for you to look back and say, Leaving the safe path was absolutely worth it.

So, I'm actually very fortunate that as of today, that's certainly true. As of today, it's certainly true that it was worth it. I mean, for me personally, I— one hand washes the other. Securities law and financings are inextricably linked, right? So, what I do at NetCapital supports me in my legal practice. What I do in my legal practice supports me in my funding portal broker-dealer. So, So no matter what, that's helped a ton. I've gotten to do really fun things like this that I otherwise probably wouldn't do. But 10 years for me to really say that it's worth it though, for me to really say that it's worth it, I would like to see more of a— we've partnered with an alternative transfer, a transfer agent that would allow us to have an alternative trading system, an ATS. It's a whole different registered group. And there's a world where all of these private securities are liquid. where you could trade your private holdings and private companies to other private investors. That is a very big nightmare right now. We've gone back and forth with FINRA and the SEC to try to do more and more of it.

They don't like that we control the primaries and the secondaries. They want to do all sorts of things. So I think for me to definitely say this is hands down worth it is if we could see an active liquidity market for private securities. There are so many people that are trading secondaries. Employees at big firms can't exercise their options, there are groups that are going in buying those options and flipping them, right? But again, that only happens through accredited investors. I think it would be so cool for me to like, you know, bank on something, support it. Maybe a couple years later, I'm ready to go on to my next opportunity and be able to have the liquidity to trade that. I think that would be like creating a private NASDAQ. It would be like, like my raison d'être. Like, why am I here on earth? It would be so cool.

I like to— we like to end the show with a little quick game show. Uh-oh.

Lay it on me.

Now, uh, Eric, this is gonna be a series of hypothetical companies.

Oh.

I'm gonna give you some basic facts.

Okay.

And you got 5 seconds to choose.

Okay.

So you have 2 choices: take the meeting or pass.

Okay.

So I just want you to answer with one of those and ideally explain why.

Okay.

Okay. AI Start—

Before you pitch one, can I say the caveat?

Yeah, what's the caveat?

I almost always take the meeting. I, I think, I think 15, 30 minutes, like 15, 30 minutes. I have a walking desk. Worst case scenario, I move like a mile just puttering around. I, I almost always— I'm always almost always—

I'm the same way, right? I'm the same way. But you know, for the sake of the game show, let's say, you know, let's say it's in person, I have to drive to LA. Yeah, exactly.

Whatever.

Okay, right. Yeah, let's add this caveat: in person, you gotta drive to LA.

Deal, deal. That, that helps a lot. Yeah, because if it's the Zoom, I'm going Going. Yeah, but this one, this one, let's— there'll be a lot of passes.

Let's go. All right, this is funny. An AI startup, zero revenue but 1 million active users, growing 30% month over month, and founder wants a $50 million valuation.

I would still take the meeting because I think I'm pretty good at reasoning people in their valuation, I would help them understand why a potential down round is not worth taking that money at that valuation. I would take the meeting, but it would have a— we'd have a lot of work to do.

Okay. Now, a boring B2B software has $2 million in annual recurring revenue. It's profitable, and it's only growing at 15% a year. Nobody has ever heard of the founder.

Okay. If they don't have an AI plan, I'd probably, like, drive to LA, Skip the meeting. I think AI will continue to eat B2B SaaS. In fact, that's probably part of why the whole, the whole market might collapse on itself is that the same people financing the AI companies are the ones that already backed B2B SaaS and they're eating each other. So we'll see what the whole venture market looks like pretty soon. But I would, I would probably pass on that B2B SaaS. If there's no, if there's no AI plan, thanks for the time.

Now, a viral consumer brand. It has $5 million in sales, a huge social following, an incredible founder, but the company loses money on every order.

I would take that meeting.

Yeah, that sounds like a cool company.

You could bring in— I fortunately know a lot of people with great distribution networks that can bring those costs down. Yeah, there are really thoughtful ways to bring those costs down that we can make that work. That one feels like a low-hanging fruit. Take the meeting.

Serial failure. Founder has already started 3 companies. All 3 failed. Same founder wants you to hear his 4th company.

That's all? Nothing about the company or anything? Just that he just hasn't gotten it done yet? I mean, something to be said about being resilient and banging your head against the— I mean, I'd take the meeting. Let's see what this one is.

I mean, shoot.

That's why I get jobs.

Yeah. Yeah.

Heck yeah. In fact, that ability to keep going nonetheless, I mean, it takes a little— it takes a— yeah, it takes a level of absurdity to be in this space already, Rhett. That's that kind of— that's that lunatic that gets the job done. Let's go. Let's meet up in LA.

All right. Now, a genius solo founder. All right. He's got an incredible technology. No sales experience, no co-founder, and he doesn't believe he needs one. Take the meeting?

I do take it. I would also think I'm pretty persuasive on that he does need one. He absolutely does. First of all, if you look at the data, solo founders are way underfunded compared to co-founders off the bat, especially depending on what, you know, demographic backgrounds they come from. I'm guessing technical founder is what he's saying. He said no sales experience.

Yeah, no sales. He's just incredible with technology.

Oh, I'll drop a sales CEO in there in a heartbeat and I'd be pumped about it. Yeah. We dropped a sales CEO in there. He won't buy it. He won't buy it. He will never do it.

You know somebody like that?

If it's a, if it's a no-go, I'm going to do this without sales, then it's an easy pass.

Now I know the answer for this next one, but you know, I'm going to say it. A celebrity startup, massive celebrity attached, millions of followers, almost no repeat customers.

Oh, that's not good. We don't like that. Why is that?

I mean, that's the downfall. That's what happened with Prime.

Yeah, they don't like them. They don't. So that, that is super concerning. Like, the churn rate is one of the first things I look to. If people aren't, if people aren't re-engaging with the product, that is a fundamental problem.

I mean, how is Prime even doing it now? They just pivoted to like protein shakes.

I think they had to. Wasn't there like a concern about like the caffeination? Their target demographic shouldn't even be having that much caffeine early.

Yeah.

And I think they lost out. They were trying to do collectibles basically. And that only lasts so long.

No, no, they're killing it in collectibles.

Right. Oh no, no, I mean like people were collecting the bottles. I remember the period of time where the kids were like hanging them up on their stuff. Um, you know, oftentimes you can kind of— if maybe there's something that we could tweak about the formula or something that people like, I'd take the meeting. I don't— I would really be concerned. I probably would not get the investment though. If people are not coming back to the well, that's a problem.

Yeah. All right, Pickle Energy. A founder offers you 20% of his company for $1,000.

Don't like that at all.

The company sells artisanal pickle-flavored energy drinks.

I love pickles.

Only problem, sales are somehow growing at 300% a year.

So I, I'm definitely taking this deal, and I'll tell you why. One, I love pickles. Two, this is just— is it going to be to remarket this to athletes? You saw, you saw the FIFA, the FIFA, um, referee that pulled over, had to do a pickle shot cuz he was cramping up during the World Cup.

Yeah.

Oh, this is going straight to athletes after this. Yeah, no, it's It's pick— sign me up. Pickle me up. Great, because that's what we brought you here for. You got the pickle, bitch? This has all been in the library of Aloy. Oh my God.

We got a pickle juice. Bring out the pickle juice. Bring out the—

I'm going to be so disappointed if I don't have— there's not a pickle back here now. Oh my gosh, yes.

Now the career pivot. I offer you $1 million to quit NetCapital tomorrow and become a mortgage broker at eMortgage capital.

So that's, that's not crazy. I feel like one of my shortcomings is actually in real estate. We're in OC, big real estate network here. Um, yeah, that's not a crazy— that's not a crazy pitch. Is that really the pitch? Is that what I'm here for?

Actually, we just hired an attorney, $350K a year.

I do— I think one hand could— I think they could really go side to side, because I— it's funny, I started to think about doing more estate planning specific, because I would do deals with people would be like, how do I estate plan? There's a real estate side to that. So yeah, pickle That's for 40 years, though. Yeah. That's kind of conservative.

We got you. Hey, that's what I do. I set up mortgage companies. That's my job.

I like it. I like it.

I'm in the business of making businesses, literally.

Yep, exactly.

I like to consider myself like the private hedge fund that funds small independent mortgage companies.

Yeah.

I basically take small mortgage companies, make them big mortgage companies.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's a great model.

Well, on the entity formation side, count me— count me a fan. Loop me in. Consider me— I'm happy to do fun stuff on the entity formation stuff. Is they planning to— look, I mean, look, if you— if you throw in the pickle deal, sign me up for eMortgage.

Let's go. Last question, bonus question. A great founder plus an average idea or an average founder but a great idea, who gets the meeting?

Founder always. Great founder always. Great founder always. I mean, so many things, these things started off as bad ideas. So, people don't realize that, I think. And sometimes they go from decent ideas to even better ideas. I mean, people remember, like, people lose track of Amazon never became profitable until AWS. They were a public company selling books online. Before Bezos had his glow up, he was just flipping books online, which I think is a decent business. And it wasn't until Amazon Web Services that it was ever profitable. Never profitable before that. And a fundamentally different business entirely. Great, great founder. Decent idea. Hands down. That's the easiest one.

Makes sense. You've been— yeah, pleasure to have on the show. If people want to connect with you, how can they find you?

Yes.

Okay.

Definitely LinkedIn's my favorite for sure. And then You could just look for you. I'm not super okay. I have to do my middle initial and suffix. It's not because I'm fancy feast. It's just that I have a generic name in Eric Cox, and so you'll never find me. So Eric A. Cox II with the Roman numerals—that's the way to find me. Or you can shoot me an email: eric@bluecoastvc.com. That's my personal one that goes with me everywhere. But also netcapital.com, you can find me. Story.law, you can find me. But if you want to go directly to me about anything fun, unique. even if it's inside law, inside financings, whatever. eric@bluecoastvc.com. That's my, that's my everything one.

Let's go.

You're the man, Joe. Thanks for having me, dude. Don't lose track of me on that pickle deal. I swear to goodness, if I see that pop up without me, if I see that pop up without me, I'm gonna be pissed.

Let's go.

Thanks.