It's Genevieve LeMarchal. I am so excited to have you guys here today to join me for this conversation with Tim Draper. The interesting thing about my conversation with Tim today is this actually a very personal conversation. We didn't talk that much about business. We didn't talk that much about bitcoin. We didn't talk that much about venture capital. Talked a little bit, but not a lot. We talked mostly about family, about growing up, about values and about legacy. I recently became a mother and was very excited to be able to share some of these stories and experiences and hear about Tim's growing up. So Tim has a lot of notoriety. I almost don't even need to introduce him. He is a very, very well known venture capitalist and a from a multigenerational family of VCs. He and I am excited to share our conversation with him today with you guys. So let's dive in. Let's talk about. So your upbringing. You know, I did a little bit of my homework. You pounded the pavement selling oysters and. 

Tim Draper: 01:13 The troubling oyster show. 

Genevieve LeMarchal: 01:15 I sold rubber bands as a child. So you know, a penny each or a bag for a dollar. So throwing yourself in. I think I also read some story about your mother dropping you off at the base of Mount Shasta or something along those lines. 

Tim Draper: 01:29 She dropped your way home at the base of Mount Rainier. 

Genevieve LeMarchal: 01:33 Mount Rainier. 

Tim Draper: 01:33 And you had to find at 14 with another friend. And we had 60 pound backpacks with just sleeping bags and freeze dried food for a week. And we had to, we had to find our way to this location. We had to hike 66 miles around to this other location. And my friend and I, we were just, I, we were so lucky we made it. But I've never been in better shape. I remember going and playing football after that and I couldn't believe how strong I was or how weak everybody else was because I had done that. So I highly recommend strapping 60 pounds to your back and, and your kids.

 Genevieve LeMarchal: 02:29 Backs and jumping them off on the mountain. Yeah, well, so I mean we have. Tim Draper: 02:34 Survival training at Draper University, the school I created for entrepreneurs. And, and we take them up to wherever and do do crazy things with Navy Seals and special forces and Army Rangers and Marines and whoever. And, and I, three of my kids, I said hey, you gotta join Draper University. You gotta go, go through it. One of them did. Our, our youngest did. But the other three said, dad, I've been through survival training. I'm your kid. 

Genevieve LeMarchal: 03:13 That's funny. I can kind of empathize my family. My grandfather was in the military also, and so I was raised by a Navy fighter pilot. And, you know, he didn't go easy on us. And, you know, he was the type of guy who would pitch a tent in the rain and we were going to sleep in it and we were going to have a nice time. Oh, yeah, it was always fun. Yeah. 

Tim Draper: 03:33 Well, we, we do sort of have, I mean, some strange things that we did, I did with the kids. We had something called death ball. We had a swimming pool and a basketball hoop, and there were no rules. The goal was just to get the ball into the hoop and. And it's amazing how inventive everybody gets when you don't have a lot of rules. When you don't set up any rules. Yeah, you had to wear goggles so nobody got poked in the eye. But it was. We eventually loved it so much we created death ball tournaments. We had, you know, my daughter brought all these kids from ucla water polo team, and death ball became this huge thing. But it was a thing for me. I was just thinking, you, you know, I want my kids to survive. I want them to be able to live through whatever it is. And a little bit of toughness is not a bad thing. I, you know, I know everybody's walks on eggshells now and the woke culture and all that stuff seems to make sense to some people, not to me.

 Genevieve LeMarchal: 04:57 I have a question for you then about that. So I was speaking with an athlete. Tim Draper: 05:01 I think people need a tough skin to survive. 

Genevieve LeMarchal: 05:04 I would agree. 

Tim Draper: 05:05 They gotta understand what's out there and they gotta feel it. They can't be. It can't be hidden from them and that. And I think it's important to be, to, you know, raise your children to realize it's not all going to be easy. Yeah, you're going to go through all sorts of fits and start. Look at what you're going through. Having a baby, trying to raise a fund, doing one. Yes, whatever. That can't be easy. 

Genevieve LeMarchal: 05:38 No. 

Tim Draper: 05:39 But clearly you're driven to do it and clearly you're tough enough to keep it going. If, if you want to raise a kid to get along and go along, fine. But we're trying to raise kids who, who become heroes, who become extraordinary, who, who drive new avenues, who, you know, pioneer a world that's better than the one we've got. And I think to do that, they've gotta. They've got to know that things can get tough. And when they get tough, it's not that bad. In fact, as my father used to say, well, it's going to make a great story. You know, when we were, didn't have any hotel reservation and in Mexico, he took us all to Rosarito beach and just said, you're gonna sleep on the beach? And then Eddie said, but it's gonna make a great story. 

Genevieve LeMarchal: 06:44 Yeah. 

Tim Draper: 06:44 And so I think that that attitude, like, go out, live your life, enjoy the freedom that you have in this country, enjoy the, the world that you have, take it all in and then see what you can do to improve it. I think those things are, are what can really help drive a family and also drive a community and a state and a country. 

Genevieve LeMarchal: 07:14 I like that value of contribution. That's very important to me, and that was something that was instilled in me growing up. But so one question I have for you is on this topic, a lot of people who I've met have come from upbringings that were difficult. I've spoken with several people who have become athletes or CEOs or business people, and they grew up in, you know, not great conditions and they overcame this adversity. So you're talking about things aren't always easy and children need to learn that. And, you know, some of the detriments of this woke culture we're living in today, which I, I have to agree with you on much of that, but, you know, I'm just gonna say it straight. You didn't have for yourself or your children some of the difficulties that some of these, you know, other people may have had growing up. So how, how would you, if someone brought that up to you and said you grew up in privilege, your family never actually had the, the risk of failure, true failure, you know, being on the street or whatever that might be, yet, you know, you still were able to create these values in your children and these values created in you from your parents, even though you didn't actually have that imminent risk of like, you know, ultimate failure hanging over you? 

Tim Draper: 08:35 Well, I don't know. Money comes and goes. 

Genevieve LeMarchal: 08:39 Yeah.

 Tim Draper: 08:40 When my dad ran for Congress, things weren't going very well. It wasn't always, you know, cherry blossoms. 

Genevieve LeMarchal: 08:49 Yeah. 

Tim Draper: 08:49 I think you, you underestimate the challenges that people have, no matter where they come from. And by, by thinking, oh, you know, they're, you know, oh, they're eating caviar and living the dream. It's. I, I think you, you know, I, I remember I, they called me flood pants or something because I, I wore the same pair of white jeans for three years. I, I, you know, that sort of thing. That's, that's what kids are supposed to sort of tease you so that you get that teasing so that you kind of take it in and you go, ah, this is important. This is not important. There are, you know, there are always going to be challenges. There are always going to be times when you are, you know, and when you, I mean, gosh, I, I've got a ton of money now. It creates all sorts of opportunities and problems because of all the people I'm involved with and all the battles and the excitement and the danger and the fun that I, I get to encounter. And I feel like it's really, you know, when you have a lot of money, then you have more responsibility. It's like Spider Man. With great power comes great responsibility. And then when it's gone, you have, you have survival instincts and you have to kind of get back down to it. It isn't a one state to another state thing. That isn't the way it works. There are days where you are impoverished and there are days when you're rich and then there are days when you are taking on the world and doing something very unpopular. And then there are days when all of a sudden you're swimming with a current and you're wondering what, what's going to go wrong. 

Genevieve LeMarchal: 10:59 Yeah, I felt that. So about resilience then. So this industry, venture capital, a lot of people don't know this about venture capital, but it's, it's extremely difficult. It is one of the hardest businesses I've ever been in. And I've been in some. 

Tim Draper: 11:14 You don't know if my dad said that he joined venture capital because he thought it would be easy. 

Genevieve LeMarchal: 11:19 Yeah, I think a lot of people, I used to think it was too. I'm like, oh, VCs, they just like have a checkbook in their purse and they skip around and write checks to cool ideas, you know? No, no. And you know, I don't. I always say the hardest thing you can do is be an entrepreneur and start something completely from scratch. And innovative technology, it's. On the scale of hard things, that's a 10. But being a VC, especially starting a VC firm, that's probably like a 7 or an 8 in terms of hard things to do. But you don't know. You don't get any feedback on whether or not you're good at your job. 

Tim Draper: 11:51 The great thing about venture capital is people are selling to you all day long, then you have to go do it yourself. Yeah, you have to go raise a fund. You have to do that. You have to see what that's like. So you're not just buying, you're also selling. And I think that's one of the things that, that a lot of people don't. It doesn't. It's not obvious to anyone because a venture capitalist wants to keep saying, hey, yeah, I'm in the business. Even if they're raising money, they don't have any to put to work. They still want to stay in the game. 

Genevieve LeMarchal: 12:31 Yeah.

Tim Draper: 12:31 So. Because if you drop out of the game, you, you lose the, all of the education you would have had during that period. And, and there'll be a hole in your knowledge, and so you really want to always be out.

 Genevieve LeMarchal: 12:47 Yeah. 

Tim Draper: 12:48 And that means that while you're raising money, you've also got to be putting money out. And that's a challenge. 

Genevieve LeMarchal: 12:57 Yeah. 

Tim Draper: 12:57 And I've. I've gotten to be both. You know, I've gotten to be an entrepreneur and I've gotten to be a venture capitalist. I've tried many different things, but the ones that worked were Draper University and Meet the Drapers. And Draper University has taken many years before it became the big success that it is. It used to be like we, we couldn't, you know, we were begging to get students in, and now we're harder to get into than Stanford or Harvard. And we also say, well, we've had 4,000 students, they've started about a thousand companies, and, and the students have come from 102 different countries. But our, our pitch is that Harvard and Stanford keep you for four years and say 85% of you will get jobs when you get out. And we say we keep you for five weeks and our average student creates seven jobs. It's a whole different way of looking at the world. And we toughen people up, and that's really what we do. We toughen people up and we build their confidence. It's kind of interesting, you know, you have to toughen them and you have to build their confidence. They're. And you put those two things together and great things will happen with people. Anyway, that started out as like, couldn't get anybody to go. And now we, we have to be. Beat people away. And now it's 1 in 21 in 30 that get in. Meet the Drapers was a show that I had started, and I thought, well, this would be fun. You know, bring the family together, allow the viewer to invest in the companies through crowdfunding. And I got the thing going, you know, and I couldn't get my mother to watch. And now we've got 70 million viewers. Now, as an entrepreneur, you've got to just sort of have, have your, have an understanding that you want that this is the right thing to do because there are going to be many times when there are going to be people that think you're crazy. What are you doing? How are you think? Why are you doing that thing? It's wasting everybody's time. How could that possibly be good for your venture, business, whatever. So as an entrepreneur, I and others have to go through that. That is a difficult thing to go through. You have to be willing to take heat from your family and your friends. You have to, yes, be willing to hold up and stay the course. Now, I was kind of lucky. My dad made a bet with me not to drink or smoke or take drugs until I was 21. And so, and part of that was, sure, better health, whatever keeps my mind sharp. But the other part of it was I, I could take a lot of peer pressure. I could do things that other people were not willing to do that I thought were was right. 

Genevieve LeMarchal: 16:21 What was the bet? 

Tim Draper: 16:23 Oh, the bet was I got $500 for a trip to Europe for not drinking, smoking or taking drugs till I was 21. So, okay, I made it and had a great trip to Europe and learned all sorts of things there, which was, you know, I guess part of the whole program. Yeah, and, but the, the peer pressure I got when I was 11 or 12 was extraordinary. High school peer pressure was nothing compared to junior high and college peer pressure was nothing, zero. I mean, I set the ground rules early in college, but it was, it was enough for me to realize how powerful peer pressure can be. And you know, if everybody says you have to take the vaccine, you, you know, there's that peer pressure to take the vaccine, even if maybe it's going to give a bunch of people shingles and cancer and whatever else. If, and I don't know, you know, maybe it was the right thing to do, maybe it wasn't, but there was serious peer pressure there. And, and there was, and there's. There was serious peer pressure around the, the woke community for a long time too. And at some point you have to think for yourself. At some point you have to. So I've taken on some very unpopular points of view. I created a school voucher campaign trying to take on the teachers union because the schools have no natural predator there. There's no market system there. There's nothing. And it's all controlled by those union bosses. And it's not working in California. It's just not working. And so I was trying to break that. I tried to break California into six and into three. Those were not popular things. And then it turns out when I was breaking it into three, the polling started at 8% in favor. 8%. 

Genevieve LeMarchal: 18:44 That's pretty high. No, that's actually pretty high, isn't it? Yeah, like, and then, I mean, that's kind of like an extreme idea. 

Tim Draper: 18:51 12% and then 17% and then 27% with 35% undecided. So we were going to win. And then the. The California Supreme Court, which is all union control, pulled it off the ballot before it could be before the day before they were printed. So they played dirty tricks, whatever. Those were unpopular things that became popular. And then I was outmaneuvered politically. I. I supported Elizabeth Holmes as a entrepreneur. The peer pressure against me was extraordinary. I bought a bunch of bitcoin. Peer pressure against. That was extraordinary. That's not money. How could you do that? What are you thinking? All of a sudden, people are kind of going, wait, what was that bitcoin thing you told me to buy? 

Genevieve LeMarchal: 19:48 Right. 

Tim Draper: 19:50 So when I have a strong gut feeling about something and. And I feel that it's the right approach long term. Now, there are people who have shorter time horizons, who make decisions for shorter time horizons, and they are right for that time period. But. But I'm looking out. I mean, big part of my job is to look five to 15 years out. 

Genevieve LeMarchal: 20:17 We don't have. There's no such thing as a short time horizon for a venture capitalist. 

Tim Draper: 20:21 No. And so I have to be looking five to 15 years out. So the expedient thing to do is not the right thing to do for me. 

Genevieve LeMarchal: 20:30 Right. 

Tim Draper: 20:31 And so I tend to support those entrepreneurs who also have that willingness to challenge the status quo to try new things. We're always looking for people who are trying things where, you know, maybe 8 out of 10 people would not think it was a good idea because it doesn't look normal to them. And so I'm very happy to take on these challenges and be the one to take some. Take a few arrows. You know, just. 

Genevieve LeMarchal: 21:11 Do you think that that was talking to you? You think you observe that in your father? Or do you think you learn that from your own experiences throughout your career in your life, being willing to take arrows, not run from arrows? 

Tim Draper: 21:24 You know, I think it might have been a combination of my father and my mother. My mother was. Really. Had a mind of her own. She. She always thought exactly for herself. Dad. Dad was, you know, has super high intelligence and. And a very good processor. And really good judgment. But I think mom might have had more, more of a creative spark and, and the independent thought. I think that just must run through our family. I mean, you. When you meet any of my kids, they are all themselves. They're all completely independent thinkers. They are willing to be a little goofy. They are willing to stand out for something that they feel is right. They are willing to create, you know, because it. You have to be very confident to create. 

Genevieve LeMarchal: 22:41 Yeah. 

Tim Draper: 22:41 I mean, even to enter an art show or to sing in front of an audience, when you don't have much of a voice or do a. Or even fund a company, you take a chance and you're kind of going, ooh, you know, this is. 

Genevieve LeMarchal: 22:58 Yeah, I've told a lot of people that. I think business is the ultimate act of creation because we put a little bit of ourselves into anything we create, whether it's something we write or something, some art or whatever. But we put a lot of ourselves into our business. And you know, it may not be this, you know, beautiful thing that can hang on the wall, but when it's, when it fails or when we are rejected, a piece of you is therefore being rejected. And a lot of people just run from that rejection. And so, you know, we want our children to be happy, we want them to be independent. We want them to, you know, live their own lives. But that oftentimes goes against this antithesis. As humans, we just have where we're like, I want to protect you from something that could harm you. You know, parents, that's their parents fear. I want to protect you. I want to give you every opportunity to be successful, but I also want to protect you. And that can sometimes have the opposite effect with children. I'm sure, you know, people who, their children were not set up to succeed despite being given opportunities for whatever reason, and maybe it was protection or whatever. What would you say to somebody who, you know, is trying to reconcile that for themselves as a parent in terms. 

Tim Draper: 24:10 Of saying, I know what it's like to be a new parent and you want to protect that child from everything and anything. At some point we were fortunate we had four children. So we could look at that and say, okay, you know, we can, we can try things, we can experiment. 

Genevieve LeMarchal: 24:31 If we screw up one, we've got three more, it's okay, we got a backup. But what's the portfolio model? 

Tim Draper: 24:40 Actually, it's the power did was it did put a little bit of a. More of a risk taking gene into my kids. I think they all have that willingness to take Risk. And that's. I don't think anyone. Well, first, I don't think anyone but optimists succeed, and I don't think anyone succeeds who doesn't take risk. And, and so I think you need, you need that in your life now. I'm talking about big success there. People will, you know, have careers, have play. If they're always playing it safe. They, you know, they might. It's a little bit soul crunching, but. But they will. You know, I mean, I just talked to somebody in government, and I was thinking, this guy has no joy in his life, and he's never taken a risk, and he's just doing the job and watching the clock. And I, you know, I was almost in tears for the guy because I thought that was so awful. Such a waste of a life. 

Genevieve LeMarchal: 26:02 Yeah. So you and that. 

Tim Draper: 26:05 So. So if you play, you go through your life playing it to. To safe, and if you try to encourage everybody else to be safe, that's what, you know, that's why we have so much government in our face. It's like there's so many people trying to say, oh, you know, government should do this, or we should have a right to this or something to this. I think you should. I mean, we really should bite our tongues when we start thinking that way, because it's, It's a. The freedom that we have here is what makes this the wealthiest, you know, large country in the world. It's what makes this a wonderful place for all of the entrepreneurs of the world to come. It's. It's all of those things. And when they start, when entrepreneurs. It's really interesting. We have these immigrant entrepreneurs are saying, finally, I'm free. 

Genevieve LeMarchal: 27:06 Yeah. 

Tim Draper: 27:06 And then they see what our SEC or our FDA is doing, and they go, wait a second. I. I'm not. I'm not as free as I thought I was. 

Genevieve LeMarchal: 27:18 I think it's something like, what's it, 30%?

Tim Draper: 27:21 What's that? 

Genevieve LeMarchal: 27:22 It's like 30% of unicorn. You know, unicorn CEOs are immigrants.

Tim Draper: 27:29 Oh, it's like, yeah, I don't know, 70% of my portfolio. 

Genevieve LeMarchal: 27:33 Yeah. Yeah. It's really, really interesting. First generation. Well, so there's another thing kind of about adversity. So you're talking about, you know, that's. 

Tim Draper: 27:41 Where I go back to the education thing. If we're not educating our students, we're. We're killing the, you know, that we got Rod in the system. And. And so there's got to be some sort of a market force to challenge the status Quo. When an education system or any system is not working. 

Genevieve LeMarchal: 28:01 Yeah, I would agree with. When you're talking about fostering a culture of failure, you know, in many ways, you know, you've hinted at it with not just, you know, your kids and, you know, like, dog eat dog, get in the pool. There's no rules, you know, fostering a culture. 

Tim Draper: 28:17 No. 

Genevieve LeMarchal: 28:18 A great success. 

Tim Draper: 28:20 Because they're willing to fail. 

Genevieve LeMarchal: 28:22 To fail. Yeah. Because there is no success without failure. 

Tim Draper: 28:24 In. In Draper University, one of our pled lines, we say, I will fail at all cost. 

Genevieve LeMarchal: 28:31 Isn't it all like, I'm going to. 

Tim Draper: 28:32 Fail and fail and fail and fail again until I succeed? And. And so I do think that our education system has failed us. And the way they've done it is all very safe. So if you get an A, that means you didn't make any mistakes. Right. And if you try something unusual and it succeeds, sure, you get an A. If it fails, you get an F. That's a risk. That's not a very good risk for a student that, you know, you're getting an F just because you tried something extraordinary. Yeah, I found that in school. I was a. I. I had very high. High A's and low. 

Genevieve LeMarchal: 29:21 Low F's. 

Tim Draper: 29:22 Yeah, not too much.

Genevieve LeMarchal: 29:23 Higher highs and lower lows. 

Tim Draper: 29:26 Because I would try things. 

Genevieve LeMarchal: 29:28 Yeah. 

Tim Draper: 29:28 I would do things and. And, you know, write my final in the form of a poem, you know, or do the, you know, and the. And some teachers appreciate it and some didn't. And. 

Genevieve LeMarchal: 29:41 Well, and students are average. 

Tim Draper: 29:43 Education system doesn't really want the outlier. Yeah, they want everybody to memorize it and learn it the way they did, and they teach it that way. And so at Draper University, we teach. You get. You know, if somebody does a really good job on something, we just sort of say, good job. But if they. But their team gets points if they've tried something really extraordinary, whether they failed or succeeded. 

Genevieve LeMarchal: 30:14 Interesting. And what do points mean? 

Tim Draper: 30:17 Well, you add up all the points at the end and. And the team with the most points is the big winner. And we take them out to dinner and, you know, it's a. It's a big honor. They get their name on the plaque. 

Genevieve LeMarchal: 30:33 So, like when your kids were little. 

Tim Draper: 30:36 I mean, many of the Draper University entrepreneurs have gotten funding and they've got. They've gone well beyond that. 

Genevieve LeMarchal: 30:42 Funding from you or funding from. 

Tim Draper: 30:45 We have a fund dedicated to university alums, and it's small, but gives them that little first. First plug or some of. And then. And then some have become unicorns. Some that I put some money into and some that I haven't. So we have about five unicorns. We're only 13 years old. It's pretty good. 

Genevieve LeMarchal: 31:16 I read something, actually. I wanted to talk a little bit about investing just for one second, but not about investing. I read something about how you made your first investments and you borrowed that money. Yeah, so I borrowed. That goes against what a lot of people may believe about you guys. So tell a little bit that might. That goes against what a lot of people might believe about the Drapers, you know, that you. You know, you. You just have this money as a family dynasty that has made all of these successful investments in companies like Hotmail and whatever. But your first batch of companies, you borrowed that money. 

Tim Draper: 31:49 Yeah, yeah, I borrowed a little bit about that. Sba. 

Genevieve LeMarchal: 31:53 And you borrow. 

Tim Draper: 31:56 Was great. The SBIC program back then was. Was quite extraordinary. And they only had four people, and they had about 500 SBICs. And I had one of them. And the way I got it, I went through with a. You know, the guy and. And he goes. He goes, you must have 10 more than 10 years experience investing. And I said, well, I've been investing since I was 10 years old. And he just goes, jack, you didn't even know. 

Genevieve LeMarchal: 32:33 You're like, I seeded my oyster company. I mean, that counts, right? 

Tim Draper: 32:40 But anyway, we. Yeah. And after about three years, you know, when I was going through the J Curve, they were about to call the loan, and I had to fly back to Washington, convince them not to call alone, and they hung in there with me. And then about six. Three more years went by, and I had. I had five IPOs. And IPOs were a little easier to come by then back then. 

Genevieve LeMarchal: 33:10 Yeah. 

Tim Draper: 33:12 And one was Parametric Technology, one of the biggest software companies in New England to this day. Ptc. And, yeah, I. He was a Russian immigrant, another great immigrant. And that was. That was a really good way to get going back then. Now. Now they're about the same number of SBIcs, but instead of four people, there are 800 people, and they're all running around doing whatever, but it's not as effective a program that it used to be. 

Genevieve LeMarchal: 33:56 So why didn't you raise it like a venture fund and go get investors? 

Tim Draper: 33:59 And I didn't really have much of a record. 

Genevieve LeMarchal: 34:02 Yeah. So that's interesting. So one of the things that a lot of people will say, you know, is I can't do this because I don't have that. I can't do this because I don't have that. And I hear this all the time. All the time. All the time. A friend of mine sent me a video this morning, and she says, does a crackhead wake up in the morning and say, I can't do crack today because I don't have money? She's like, no crackhead gets out there. They make it happen. Don't let a crackhead outperform you today. 

Tim Draper: 34:34 Oh, my God. 

Genevieve LeMarchal: 34:36 That kind of reminds me about that. Yeah. Yeah. You know, I think when I talk to entrepreneurs and. Or just people in general, I always want to know, why are you doing this? Because this is one of the hardest. 

Tim Draper: 34:49 That's the best question to ask, because you'll see either if it comes from their head, you don't fund them. If it comes from their heart. 

Genevieve LeMarchal: 34:57 Yeah, fund them well. And I think the reasons, too, is it's harder than ever today to get to Series A. Not even to get to IPO or any liquidity, just Series A, it's so hard. 

Tim Draper: 35:09 And the difference between having a concept and having a business, and there are more hurdles. Series A, that means you figured out you've got a real model. 

Genevieve LeMarchal: 35:21 You figured out a lot of things. And it's. 

Tim Draper: 35:24 If you've got. If you've gotten your seed money, it means you know how to sell. 

Genevieve LeMarchal: 35:28 Yeah, exactly. But there's multiple rounds of seed there. I mean, it's, It's. It's different than it used to be. And I'll. And I'll tell people the amount of resilience needed to get to Series A if. If you have a great reason. And it. The reason can't be. I met some guys, they had a cool idea. I seemed like it would make some money, and I decided to do it. It has to be something super personal because that's what's going to get you out of bed every day when it's hard. 

Tim Draper: 35:54 Because as I said earlier, the money comes and goes. 

Genevieve LeMarchal: 35:57 Yeah, You. 

Tim Draper: 35:59 You've gotta. You gotta be doing it for all the right reasons. And if anybody says, you know, I say, why are you doing this? And they say, for the money. That's not enough. Because that comes and goes. 

Genevieve LeMarchal: 36:12 Yeah. 

Tim Draper: 36:13 And. And when things are down, they're the first ones to leave the ship. 

Genevieve LeMarchal: 36:16 Yeah. 

Tim Draper: 36:17 We want somebody who's gonna go down with a ship, back up with a ship, down with a ship, back up with a ship. And the great entrepreneurs, you know, you think, oh, that Zuckerberg, no problem. Or, you know, coinbase came from nowhere. No. So easy. Whatever. It's just the opposite. Those people have been through unbelievable challenges. 

Genevieve LeMarchal: 36:40 Yeah. They don't share that stuff with Fast Company. It's like, what's the real story behind. That's why I started this podcast, because I had. I was really struggling. I was. As an entrepreneur, I was. I had a tough, tough road, and a lot of people did, but I wasn't. It didn't help me to hear about how people were successful. I need. Because I was like, I need to just not fail right now. And I'm, like, on the edge. This is. And I needed my son. 

Tim Draper: 37:07 My son is brilliant that way. My son Adam, he says, be the cockroach, never die. 

Genevieve LeMarchal: 37:14 Yeah. Just don't die, no matter how many times people step on you. 

Tim Draper: 37:18 Right. Because there are so many of these companies that didn't make it that. That were six months away, three months away from that big customer. They were on to something. They weren't sure. They doubted themselves, and then they ran out of money. So if you can just stay in that game. 

Genevieve LeMarchal: 37:39 Yeah. I. I'll tell entrepreneurs a lot. I don't actually know how to make you successful. In fact, I don't think there is any way to make you successful. I think you just get lucky. And the way to get lucky is don't fail long enough. Learn some stuff on the way, and then you're going to get lucky eventually. So I can't tell you how to be successful. Like, we're going to grow, we're going to try to do all the right things, but that doesn't mean that this is going to make it. But I can help you not fail because there's a pretty prescriptive way to fail. There's not a real prescriptive way to succeed, except for being a cockroach, I think. 

Tim Draper: 38:16 Keep your team lean until you have a perfect product market fit. 

Genevieve LeMarchal: 38:21 Yeah. Yep. 

Tim Draper: 38:22 Just keep it lean. 

Genevieve LeMarchal: 38:24 Don't fail.

Tim Draper: 38:25 Have. Have a few people who are completely dedicated to the cause. You know, maniacally dedicated. A cult. Three people in a cult. And keep them. Keep the thing alive as long as you possibly can until the customers start coming. 

Genevieve LeMarchal: 38:42 Yeah. And that's hard. 

Tim Draper: 38:43 And then get venture money and pour it on. 

Genevieve LeMarchal: 38:45 Well, so, like, I mean, you're doing crypto and things where, like, a lot of times the customers don't come. You know, these things don't really take off for me. I'm doing health, so it can take a long time. 

Tim Draper: 38:57 There are a hundred million crypto customers. No, there might be 500 million now. There are a lot of crypto customers. 

Genevieve LeMarchal: 39:05 Right. But they're blocking to, like, certain things. Right. So if Someone. Yeah, if it's new. I mean, I don't want to get into crypto. It's actually not my thing. I don't really know much about it, but, you know, I think better buy some. 

Tim Draper: 39:20 You're going to learn a whole lot about it when there's a run on the dollar. 

Genevieve LeMarchal: 39:24 Yeah. 

Tim Draper: 39:24 I mean, if you. If you lived in Argentina, you'd know crypto up, backwards, sideways. If you're in Nigeria, you'd say, oh, my God, I have to have crypto. 

Genevieve LeMarchal: 39:34 Actually, you know, that happened to one of my companies last year, the Nigerian. 

Tim Draper: 39:38 Deep, deep devaluation. 

Genevieve LeMarchal: 39:41 And they. 30% drop. And it was really. 

Tim Draper: 39:44 They all know exactly how bitcoin works. They have some. They. Yeah. When? Every time.

Genevieve LeMarchal: 39:51 Maybe I'll come to Draper University. 

Tim Draper: 39:52 Every time you hear. Every time you hear the government, oh, they're kicking it down the can. Kicking the can down the road, or, you know, oh, they've. They've come to the conclusion, so that they're not shutting the government down and all that stuff. That means they're spending more and more and more money that they don't have. It will inflate, and it'll be worth less to you. So the dollar you had in 2019 is. And you still have is now worth 75 cents. Because our government just spends. And then they wonder why there's inflation, and then they mask the inflation by running through our oil reserves. I mean, this is. It's pretty simple stuff. So the reason you buy bitcoin is that it is. It is outside of government. 

Genevieve LeMarchal: 40:47 Okay. 

Tim Draper: 40:48 It isn't tied to the Nigerian naira. 

Genevieve LeMarchal: 40:52 I have some. I just don't really know why I have it. I've just bought some because I'm like, well, you're supposed to have this to have a diversified portfolio. 

Tim Draper: 41:00 You have it because you want to be able to stay alive when the Armageddon comes. 

Genevieve LeMarchal: 41:06 Okay, I like that. 

Tim Draper: 41:10 So, I mean, there was a run on the. On the Confederate dollar. There was a run on the Greek drachma. There was a run on. Whenever a currency loses its. People lose interest in it. They run on it, and they don't want to use it anymore. So there will be a moment where people say, hey, I can buy my food, clothing, shelter, all in bitcoin. Why do I need these dollars? They're political. They lose money over time. They lose value over time. 

Genevieve LeMarchal: 41:43 When do you think that will be? Do you think that will be in our lifetime? 

Tim Draper: 41:48 Well, yeah. And. And I. My lifetime's a lot shorter than your lifetime. 

Genevieve LeMarchal: 41:55 Okay. All right. You guys heard it here first on Adventurous Podcast. Pick up some bitcoin. All right, well, Tim, do you have any, you know, final words of wisdom or anything like that you'd like to share with the audience here? My audience is primarily entrepreneurs. It's investors, angels, LPs, and just people who are out there building and creating and not afraid to fail. So what would you have? What wisdom would you like to share with them? 

Tim Draper: 42:30 If you. If you love what you're doing, keep doing what you're doing. And if you don't, really rethink your life, you know, some. There's some things you have to do for a period of time, just. But figure out how to get out of situations where you. You feel like this isn't working for you now, if the business isn't working, but you're pretty confident that eventually the world will come around, stick with it. The other thing is our biggest companies in the world that were all these ones that are now household names, they were all pivots. So when you pound, keep going, go, go, go. Listen to your customer. Listen to your customer, and then you're gonna see some other opportunity that's. That is somewhat related, but not quite the same as what you're doing. And make sure you're open to that. They were all pivot. It was real. It's really amazing. You go through every one of them pivoted their business in one way or another. 

Genevieve LeMarchal: 43:42 Yeah. I mean, we've all. 

Tim Draper: 43:45 Skype was shared. WI Fi, Hotmail was not even email. It was. They were going to do websites for people. The. All the search engines in the world were worthless until Goto came up with a shared search or the paid search thing. Facebook was hot. Or not. You know, it's. 

Genevieve LeMarchal: 44:19 Yeah. 

Tim Draper: 44:20 These things just beware. 

Genevieve LeMarchal: 44:22 What are they called it. They called it Face Smash or something like that. Face Mash. 

Tim Draper: 44:28 No, I don't remember. 

Genevieve LeMarchal: 44:29 I can't remember. Yeah. Yeah. All right, great. 

Tim Draper: 44:34 Well, thanks for having me on your show, Genevieve.

These are words and topics that don’t often go together. In fact…many would argue that these do not blend in this industry.

Naseem Sayani is a trailblazing consultant turned entrepreneur turned Venture Capitlist and General Partner at Emmeline Ventures. Naseem shares her health and fertility journey and struggles openly and transparently and in ways that many won’t. Starting with fertility challenges, through to IVF, and ultimately her adoption journey and how these experiences taught her about the environment that women live and navigate today when it comes to fertility and how this drove and inspired her to create Emmaline Ventures to fund companies that are solving these types of problems that millions of women experience.

Lack of consistent and reliable information for women about fertility leaves women disempowered and in positions where they have to make big choices with incorrect information, often from a disempowered place of social perceptions and cultural and society biases. Not exactly the recipe for modern women (and men) who want to have both careers and families.

Join Genevieve and Naseem to dig in to the topic with matter of factness and frankness. 

Follow Naseem on LinkedIn

https://www.emmelineventures.vc/

Follow Adventureous on social media!

YouTube -  https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL5lX5kd6h2T1e4J818ljNElOpW84hwjFL

Linkedin - https://www.linkedin.com/in/genevievelemarchal/

Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/genevievelemarchal/

Transcript:

(00:00) Hi adventurers I am thrilled to be here with you today and introduce you to Naseem Sayani she is a venture capitalist she runs Emeline Ventures and she has a really really amazing story to share with us and so much wisdom and I cannot wait to dive in with her but before we get there I want to share a

(00:24) little bit with you guys about family family helps you take control of your fertility Journey Couples are waiting longer nowadays to start families and they're bringing some new challenges to the table that really weren't a thing for us a long time ago so family really gone are the days of trying for months

(00:42) until you can visit your OB-GYN about your fertility challenges only to be sent straight to invasive expensive IVF treatments that often aren't even necessary so family offers fertility Telehealth at home Labs customized protocols and prescriptions as a fertility treatment before you go to IVF women will family helps women identify

(01:02) and treat these critical hormone imbalances and ovulation challenges they often aren't even aware is impacting their fertility and it helps them just take control so that they can have the family that they dream of Adventures podcast listeners can use code adventurous and be sure to check that spelling for a hundred dollars off your

(01:22) family fertility program find the link and learn more about family to get this special offer it'll be in the show notes or on our website at adventuristpodcast.com so next up here we have Naseem I'm so happy to have you here with us thank you so I'm excited to be here so let's start off I'd love to have you

(01:45) just share a little bit about yourself your adventure capitalists you're based in Los Angeles what else is there to know about and see me it's a great question so a couple of things on the career front I grew up in management consulting as I call myself a recovering consultant in a lot of ways

(02:04) lots of years in digital Innovation and digital strategy work which all kind of serendipitously led me to a place where I was then part of an agency then I was part of an incubator and we were like actually launching startups and it was through all of that experience the exposure to venture also happened

(02:20) and lots of we'll get into it but there are lots of instances of wanting to see change or do things differently or have different impact with different sets of people that became really apparent and it's it's what led me to then launch the fund and on the personal front I live in LA I have a four-year-old he's turning four in two

(02:40) weeks and so we're in like party planning mode and yeah and I have a dog I have a small dog named Lola oh okay so we I just talked about family I'd love to hear I know this is a topic that you and I discussed very briefly just a couple of days ago actually I think I don't know time's not a thing in my brain but

(03:03) about entrepreneurship women fertility and children like loaded subject if there ever was one you know so I'd love to hear a little bit about your story of a four-year-old son while also having it sounds like an extremely busy career becoming a venture capitalist share a little bit about that yeah it's a

(03:26) good question there's so many layers in that question and so I will start with you know having a small child and running a fund is super fun it makes the logistics really entertaining and so it but it's really good in that he gets to see what I'm doing every day and he gets to hear what we're

(03:48) talking about and we're a fund that focuses on issues that are important to women so he's going to learn a language that you know that like my father didn't learn until I started saying the words to him so yeah it's nice that his Baseline kind of starts in a fundamentally different place the

(04:03) other the other part of that is that you know my fertility experience was complicated as probably an understatement so I had like most of us like you know got my period when I was 12 or 13 years old kind of dealt with all of that the way we always do yeah I started taking birth control when I was went to college and so it was

(04:23) on birth control for the next like 15 like everyone and then my I got married in 2008 and I was 29 at the time I had just come out of business school and we waited a few years before we decided to start trying to have kids and so many people like many people we started trying when I was 34. and in

(04:44) my mind I was like 34. great this is fine right like mid-30s I'll come off the pill everything should work because I've never had any reasons I don't get sick often I have no reason that it wouldn't like period has been fine you know cycle has been very reliable but we were trying for probably 18 months

(05:03) and just couldn't get pregnant and I was tracking my ovulation and I was like I started to like have this spreadsheet and all the things yeah and something was wrong I was like this something's not right like we should be pregnant by now and so we went to go see a fertility doctor just to get

(05:19) some added insight and get more serious about the whole thing yeah and in my first session there we found out that I have a very mild form of endometriosis and I did not know until that meeting that I had it and there was like layers of reasons on why the first is coming from a very traditional South

(05:40) Asian family we don't we didn't talk about our periods growing up right because it was just you just don't you don't say the words out loud it's because you handle it in a hushed corner in the bathroom and your mom gives you a pad and you move on yeah but like excess pain heavy bleeding like all the

(05:55) things were just things that never surfaced so it just never got diagnosed early on and then once you get on birth control it pretty much subdues all the symptoms so then I didn't know for 15 years because birth control was otherwise some doing the system symptoms and so suddenly that was that was the

(06:13) issue was that was affecting my ability to get pregnant and so we went through then two rounds of IVF from there so had to do all the crazy shots and all the things and two extractions and then we ended up with about 11 eggs out after the two rounds of IVF it fertilized the nine of them

(06:34) fertilized appropriately six of them got to the right size and then all six had genetic problems so we couldn't transfer anything is kind of an optional step we could have not done it right and people were like no just do it we're here we may as well make sure we did all this work already let's make sure we're all good

(06:58) so we couldn't transfer anything and so now we're like eight months into this process right two rounds of IVF and the physical burden of IVF is one thing like it just it's exhausting physically you literally feel like you have marbles in your stomach and like it's and the shots are awful like you

(07:15) just it's hard the emotional burden of it is completely another right that you just the what I tell my husband all the time now and what I told him then was like 90 of the work of having a child is on the woman ninety percent of it he has a contribution to make but like all of the mechanics of the biology of my body

(07:34) that has to work in that moment if something is off we're not going to get there and I didn't and it was through this process that I realized because I was then you're deeply researching I was on Google old I'm reading everything I can get my hands on there's no consistent information about fertility for women there are completely

(07:52) Divergent sources of information I was by now I was like 38 38 turning 39 soon we had done two rounds all the data would indicate that if you get at least five embryos to the right size one of them will be viable and you can transfer I had zero of six it's like there's no data to tell me that scenario could

(08:11) have happened because all the data says you should be fine but there is data that says if I do one more round and I'm headed into my 40s my likelihood goes down by like 40 to 50 percent so now I'm 39 and I literally don't have any more options and there's not enough information on and what could adjust the next IVF cycle

(08:31) should we decide to do it because our fertility doctor was like let's try one more time and we'll add acupuncture we'll do this we'll do a different formula on the meds but I was like I is that going to help do we know that going to work and he's like wow we don't know for sure let's throw some

(08:47) stuff at the wall yeah but let's try and I was like I just I just can't I just I couldn't go through the third round without better information and it was it was that experience where I was like we don't know this we don't know anything about our bodies as humans as women the system doesn't know anything

(09:04) either and it's like it's not like they're not telling us they literally don't know and that was the first time I was like there's got to be a better way there has to be a better way there's got to be a different way to help women understand their bodies early enough that we can make better fertility

(09:20) decisions when we want to make them yeah and that it simply didn't exist right and I wasn't close enough to the spaces to have in impact on it and so we ended up not doing a third round of IVF we ended up deciding to adopt we got into an adoption process with an agency that a friend of ours had used and we

(09:39) adopted and now he's turning four in two weeks so it all ends in a really happy story but you know those couple of years going through all of that was like one of the hardest things we've ever been through my brother and my sister-in-law recently adopted a baby he's a month and a half old now amazing yeah I visited him last

(09:57) weekend for the first time and similar story you know multiple rounds of IVF yeah you know she had other things going on but similar but different you know and I know for me you know I was I was 35 and I took a modern fertility test was single I was I was in a relationship but I it wasn't I wasn't

(10:18) really sure if it was the right relationship and I was like I you know my window's closing I'm a little worried here and I'm not willing to compromise yeah you know and so I took modern fertility tests and it showed that I had low amh which is ovarian reserve and I had a complete meltdown like in bed crying four days like all

(10:38) this stuff because I was like and there was no information almost nothing and it was just moving me towards IVF and funny enough I ended up making friends with another VC named Ryan who actually has a fund called fast lane capital and he was going through something you know a fertility process with his

(11:02) wife and he was very knowledgeable yeah so he started kind of saying like hey like this and that and you know I looked that led me through things to discover like wait a minute amh isn't necessarily the only thing you know I read all these things and what I decided to do is say I can take this into my own hands and give myself the

(11:27) best possible chance so if I ever meet the right person I gave myself the best chance and if it doesn't work at least knew I did everything I went on a specific diet and did it for years I basically like ate the fertility diet for years took the supplements for years like eight yeah you know like

(11:44) really modified My Lifestyle because I was like this is the only chance that I'm gonna have you know but had I have not done that test in that moment yeah or even been the type of person to go like read science papers and try to understand it and like look and really understand you know because I'm a

(12:06) healthcare VC you know there are so many other people that really don't realize that there are options it's just like we don't know so this led you this this is like a catalyzing moment right yeah you know and so this led you to inspired you you know so yeah it's what you do today yeah yeah it was one of the

(12:33) drivers right so that my own Health Management fertility experience was a big big lever because it's one I didn't know enough about endometriosis two I didn't know anything about my body growing up and the rest of my health was fine so there were no indicators to say that like I should have asked a question differently and

(12:50) then the other part of it was just growing up in those corporate spaces in the Consulting World The Adventure World in the incubator world in the agency world you know there's not enough people that look like us in those spaces and so as we're building businesses and launching companies because that's what

(13:05) I did in the incubator I was at we weren't as and I was in parallel to my fertility experience and I was putting a lot of time and effort into building businesses that weren't solving problems that I had in the moment right yes and so that was like a disconnect for me was like we I can actually take the

(13:23) same skill set and focus it on things that would actually help me because I'm not the only one because as I told the story to other women every other woman I talked to was like oh I have Endo I have Endo I have this I was like how do we not talk to each other about this also there's so many of us some kind of

(13:40) solutions should be out there to start to help us one have better information and to make better decisions earlier and was that like diversity problem of the world I was working in combined with my own fertility experience and I was like I'm just going to do this differently I'm going to launch a fund I'm gonna put

(13:56) money against companies that can help solve these problems well like with with the sponsor on this episode family you know one of my experiences with that company you know it's  a growing company it's a startup yeah but like I was trying to explain to people other other investors everyone just said to me

(14:13) why wouldn't you just get IVF it's not that simple it was expensive oh my gosh you know like what if you don't want it or what if it's not necessary and the founder of Family actually told me one just anecdotal Story one of her patients had been in IVF and it hadn't worked in you know all these different things all she had was a

(14:33) vitamin D deficiency really it was that simple yeah it's that simple yeah so they corrected that yeah and like a couple months later she's pregnant naturally yeah I was like oh my gosh yeah it's incredible the thing is that we can like you did right the things you can eat differently

(14:53) you can sleep differently you can take better care of your you know your health and your wellness and you can actually have a dramatic impact on how your body will function but we don't know enough yeah and I think what would you say to people and I'm sure you do have to rebut this a lot because you're you know in the

(15:12) process of raising deploying Emeline Ventures when people kind of they maybe don't come out and say this is not a man's problem or this is only a women's problem but how what would you say to someone who's like this is kind of exclusively a man's problem and this doesn't really have anything to do with

(15:27) me so why would I put my money resources time effort or energy towards solving problems that are women's problems and not mentals it's like that makes me angry when I hear things like that even if they don't say that you know what they're thinking it yeah well the responses it's not it is it's a

(15:44) human problem it's not a woman's problem or a man's problem it's all of our problems because one you want the species to continue so we need to get ahead of these problems two like the stress and the frustration that my partner felt during all of this was no less than what I was feeling right like there was almost compounded because

(16:03) there's a little bit of helplessness involved because he couldn't actually do anything differently there was nothing he could change that would make my biology work better and you felt more helpless maybe than I did because I there are things I could do to maybe affect the outcomes so I think we can't we can't put things into that 

(16:22) issue is a female issue because it affects family and it affects growth and it affects economics and you know if we can't if women can't keep their health in a good place it affects their financial outcomes quite directly and that affects their family and it affects the Next Generation and so it's not

(16:42) gesto female problem it's an everyone problem because it ties into all of our economic next steps so directly something like IVF it's like easy to say just do IVF it's expensive procedure it's like 15 to 18 000 per cycle not everyone can afford to do that and even if you can't afford to you may not want to and so there you we have to have

(17:05) better ways to support families and when families want to have children that has to go well beyond IVF because that is completely inaccessible to an entire swath of people  unless you have health insurance that's going to pay for it which is not necessarily as prominent yeah I know too there are some employers that are starting to

(17:24) cover offer assistance and coverage with IVF yeah which means if we make that the standard for how couples get pregnant yes not all employers are going to be able to not only afford that but afford the downtime of their employee going through the rounds of IVF yeah on top of you know like they you know if

(17:46) you worry about productivity challenges or whatever the cost to IVF to just the bottom line is massive and so if we force people down that route we don't offer them other Solutions which is education in many ways yeah and yeah our creating a very expensive problem so and we the other the other thing I'll add on that is that we

(18:08) actually have a lot of work to just take stigma away right it like doesn't even it only gets to the point of IVF because we won't talk about fertility early enough and really talk about women's health in an appropriate way like we should be talking about menstrual cycles early we should be talking about

(18:24) endometriosis early and get all these words out into regular conversation because then it it doesn't end up in the shadows and if we could get the stigma out we would start to have way better conversations about fertility much earlier on the stigma is something I want to talk about because you know aside from even

(18:43) just the stigma of having the discussions yeah there's a stigma and a Prejudice still existing especially in our industry not just towards women but towards motherhood and working moms it's like you know people are like oh we love motherhood but like you better not actually try to like be successful you

(19:03) know like it's sort of yeah you know there's this there's this thing and so you know getting out there and not only having those conversations but what else do you how else do you envision the future of what it is that you're creating creating a better world for you know not just not just men but a

(19:24) better world for women maybe not even just in our industry but and working women and women yeah yeah I think things I mean the care economy is a big part of it we have to be able to support parents in better ways with care options because then we saw it during the pandemic predominantly the people

(19:44) that left the workforce were women because they had to stay home because their kids were out of school yeah and so we lost a lot of women from the workforce at all levels right and even executive-level women ended up having to de facto take a back seat because they're the primary Caregivers for their

(19:58) kids and so we have to there have to be better ways to support care and I think a lot of that will right now a lot of that is coming from family wallets and I think more of it needs to come from corporate wallets I think it needs we need to start thinking about how employers are subsidizing or supporting

(20:14) care so that their entire Workforce can stay productive and there are solutions emerging to help do that and provide subsidies or credits and things like that so that it's part of your benefit package to have options around care the other thing is you know we have to think about the kind of health insurance that's being

(20:35) provided to women because it's a little bit of a data in-data out problem whereas all the things that insurance has typically always paid for they continue to pay for but as new things are being discovered because suddenly we have more women actually solving problems around Women's Health we don't have a code to support an endometriosis

(20:51) based code yeah billing code right and so we need there needs to be more problem solving of thinking around the billing codes embedded in what insurance I actually think that's that root cause yeah our health care absolutely don't ask me why is the health system so broken I'm like you have to look at what

(21:09) we pay for what because we pay for what we value and we do not value preventative care because we don't pay for that and we don't value nutrition or any of that because you don't pay for it and you know we value pills yeah because those get paid for yeah and it's like procedures which usually the pill leads

(21:26) to a per person they're you know because that is what gets paid and it's just you know actually hospitals and the health system it's almost to their advantage to see patients Christ well they're in the business of keeping people alive and a little bit sick rather than alive and healed because there's more money to be made

(21:48) yeah it's morbid but like that's true and they'll argue but it's it's all comes down to the billing system and what yeah we you know you value where you put your money yes where you is what you value and that is this the billing system that we live in our country and it's very matter yeah yeah so yeah

(22:11) oh go ahead then the third thing I was going to add was the language and the awareness of women's health across the healthcare system and we've all read the articles on how women symptoms get misdiagnosed over and over again we're getting gaslit all over town like all these things but if we if

(22:31) the system gets better at listening to women around the symptoms that we walk in with we're going to be able to diagnose things better we're going to be able to support her life better and so that's happening but it's like it it's got to happen in bigger Bolder ways so that it's women feel more trust with the

(22:48) health care system because I think that trust has been broken in some pretty big ways massively I'm curious so let's say that you were going to Mentor female entrepreneur and she was you know in her 30s and you know she was like I want to have a family at some point and all these things like that and but you know

(23:11) maybe she wanted to get adventure maybe she wanted to you know go up in her career or whatever that might be you know what kind of advice would you want to give to women who are in their 20s or early 30s knowing what you know today and what kind of experience that you went through yeah it's a good question

(23:29) one would be don't take your fertility for granted just because you know you will want to have kids one day and the data says that you'll be fine until you're 40. don't it doesn't matter because every single woman's body is unique and different and all of those parameters didn't work in my case and

(23:46) and I was healthy and I am healthy and everything was otherwise fine but I just didn't know enough so that's one don't take it for granted two if you have the potential or the flexibility to freeze your eggs do it because that is your it's one of your option cards right and find that gives you room to kind of

(24:04) flex your fertility in a way that you know previous generations didn't have the third is really really think about lifestyle and the things you eat and how you live and what you wear and you know it everyone's gonna college is gonna be college for everyone and everyone's going to do all the things they want to

(24:26) do which is fine and you should right but I think really being thoughtful about how you maintain your health and it doesn't have to be dramatic it has to be things like making sure you drink enough water or making sure you're sleeping well or whatever it is because those little things can have a pretty

(24:42) high impact on your mental health on your productivity and you know your future decisions around fertility and even things like endocrine disruptors yes I learned like regular perfume oh yeah like it's everywhere you'll love it it messes up every hormones in pretty big ways a lot of chemicals that

(25:02) we use in the hall like I cleaned out my whole house of chemicals like only clean with like natural stuff because it because of the endocrine disruption yeah I would say too it's like probably for women it's one of the best gifts that they could give your future relationship you know yeah whether you're in one or

(25:20) not in one is just making these small lifestyle tweaks today to make sure that's yeah you know you did everything you could you know but I think that the lack of information is just completely that's a big one that's a big big problem yeah so when you look at what the future is what's the future that you would like

(25:40) to create with emiline  it's a great question so our our thesis is focused in three places so we invest in female Founders and we're looking for businesses that are helping women manage their health build their wealth and live in a cleaner safer world so everything we're talking about is embedded in that

(25:58) right it's women's health is one big pillar Financial Services things that are giving women real economic freedom is the second big pillar and then the third is a combination of content and climate because health and wealth for women as I mentioned are so deeply tied and you have to wrap climate and content

(26:14) around that because the things we read the things we wear the things we we breathe and sleep or whatever like all of that affects how we live and all of that affects our health and that our health affects our wealth and vice versa so the world told that we want to build with how we're investing in

(26:31) emiline is a play is a world that's safer and cleaner and more aware and cognizant of what Women's Health requires and what our unique situations might be such that we can make better decisions sooner I want more information in women's hands when they're in high school yeah and I want like sex ed to be

(26:48) a smarter more inclusive conversation and not one with a diagram that shows me where the uterus is right like oh I'm laughing I don't think we learned that yeah and like you that it's not about telling me all the risks it's about telling me things I can do and the questions I can ask and I also I just want we want to build a

(27:09) world where women have more information sooner and in more thoughtful ways so that they can make better decisions so they can choose when they want to have kids they can choose you know how they want to build generational wealth and when that starts and how they're going to do it and that's how we

(27:26) invest is we're trying to make sure that everyone after us has more options than we had I want to transition a little bit to your entrepreneurial Journey yeah so you know you went from you know Consulting and things like that to the corporate world into basically being an entrepreneur

(27:45) starting a VC fund is an entrepreneur entrepreneurial under activity I you know one of the things I often tell on to ask entrepreneurs when I'm interviewing them you know or hearing pitches is you know this is probably the hardest thing that you can do starting a starting a startup is like out of the

(28:04) scale of hard things it's a 10. starting a VC fund on the scale of hard things isn't is it eight yeah as hard because we don't have to like build a product you know but like it's and so why are you doing this because you would have such an easier life doing something else and like everyone has a very deep why

(28:22) like you do but also everyone will have a moment whether they've had it or not where they should quit or they should have quit yeah and either they didn't or they don't and you know kind of that Dark Night of the soul and Entrepreneurship that's sort of like that burn the boats moment not really

(28:42) the burn the boats I'm trying to think of the hero's journey but anyway you know what so you know when you got into this and you've started you know you made that transition from the cushy corporate life to entrepreneurship you know yeah when was the moment when you were like I made a big mistake and

(28:57) and I should quit you know tell me so it's it you know I haven't had that moment with the entrepreneurial Journey so far the quit moment there are moments that are really really hard like they're you know fundraising is not easy especially in the current market environment so there are moments where

(29:19) you're like I could just go get a job for a year and come back to this when the market is better right yeah oh yeah but the reason I don't do that and what I always come back to is impact it's a question of right now the energy is very very high around Women's Health there is an appetite for Solutions

(29:37) because there's demand for it there are we came out of the pandemic with much more Awareness on where the big pain points were around the healthcare system and in particular around Women's Health and so we have a inflection moment in front of us right now where we can actually do some good and make some real

(29:55) change and of course, make some money right like that we will make money and we will do good and make change at the same time and I think the energy and the ambition around that is what keeps me in it versus the notion that I would the alternative of like finding a job and having like a full salary and

(30:16) benefits again yeah it just I wouldn't be I wouldn't be flexing the impact muscle that for me has now become a really important part of how I find my own peace and quiet and fulfillment yeah and I can't do those things that I feel like I'm not doing enough and I think in my previous careers there were moments

(30:37) where I stayed in the Consulting role probably a little too long I probably stayed in some of those jobs a little too long and it was because it was scary on the other side and it's very very unknown on the other side yeah but it was comfortable and it was easy but the it was that impact lever for me

(30:53) that wasn't getting serviced and now that it is it's very hard to say that I could go do something else and still feel content with what I'm doing yeah yeah I often hear a lot of people who are in the corporate world kind of Yearning to get out of it but it's it's hard you're on the other side and the only thing you can do is just

(31:14) leap you have to just do it and a lot most people never do you know I think we call those entrepreneurs instead of entrepreneurs but I used to tell people as well and this Rings true day in and day out for me is this being founding a startup or running fund or being an entrepreneur is it the money is

(31:34) not enough like it's not enough to get you up every day like I do not get out of date out of bed every day to make a buck I don't yeah like it's almost one of the last reasons you know it's like when you wake up in the morning and you look at the ceiling and you just think to yourself really yeah really again

(31:52) really you know like there has to be something there that's gonna get you out of bed on that day when you've been getting rejected and like beat down and kicked in the teeth for weeks yeah what's gonna get you up yeah on those days when it would be so much easier to go get a job and yeah well and it's it's

(32:14) right absolutely and it's those moments where like I find I have to kind of get out of town for a day or two like I've gotta like drive somewhere that's not my house, not my home office and just take a beat and say you kind of take stock of what you're doing why you're doing it what are the goods what are the

(32:34) bads make the pros and cons list and I'll do this when my husband will laugh at me but I'll like do it at breakfast and be like here's all the things I could go do here's the pros and cons of what I'm doing right now and I have to remind myself why I'm doing it and yeah take two days to get out of

(32:48) town really think about it and hopefully come back Alicia's episode which was I think episode two of this podcast she talks about finding the last known point and for me I had a moment a couple of weeks ago where like it's it's just been like one thing after another and I was driving home and I was like

(33:10) oh my gosh I think yeah you know and I listen I remember it all of a sudden find your last known point and actually listened to a minute of that episode with her and like listen to her and I kind of thought back to that I realized my last known point was when I wrote this thing called The Phoenix

(33:31) Manifesto so I went back and I read that and I was like this is why you started this thing yeah this is it does this thing you know doing all these other things yeah but yeah it's it's you definitely have to Center and recenter yeah when you talk with entrepreneurs and they're in that tough

(33:53) place you know and you've invested in them or you know whatever that is and they and they come to you or maybe sometimes they don't come to you can just tell yeah what do you what would you typically share with an entrepreneur who was just in a really tough spot to help I I had a conversation like that this morning 

(34:15) and it what it comes back to what I what I usually suggest because it also works for me in those moments when I get out of town is go back to the feedback so if you've already provided the service or the business model or the thing you're doing and you've provided it to users and you have gotten feedback go back to

(34:31) that feedback read those messages over and over and over again because that's what you're doing you have to keep doing that right and like I have a stack on my desk over there of notes I've gotten from Founders emails and really beautiful emails notes and the handwritten notes in the mail and like

(34:51) it's I keep them there and they're going to fill up this wall behind me at some point I'm like that's what I'll go back that's my last known Point mm-hmm here's the impact here's what we're doing that's different that's bigger that's Bolder that's creating change go back to that and if you still feel the way you

(35:06) do after you go back to that and we'll have a different conversation but if you go back and you read those things and your energy doesn't come back it will because that's what you're doing so go back to that's great advice yeah wonderful well do you have any final pieces of wisdom you'd like to leave for our

(35:28) audience here at Adventurous oh it's a good question I think you know the hustle is it's real and it's hard and you will have really great days and you have really hard days but having good friends good partners good people around you who can keep supporting and reinforcing what you're doing and keeping you sane as very very

(35:51) important so you know build your village and keep the village close because it will bring everything you need to keep going yes and you will need it in those dark moments yeah as an entrepreneur for sure yeah well so how can people reach you if they want to connect with you further yeah about you know maybe it's an

(36:11) entrepreneur who wants to learn more about funds or anything else you're up to yeah so I'm on LinkedIn I'm fairly active on LinkedIn so you can find me there send me a message or ping me and that's an easy one and our website for Emmeline Adventures it's emelineventures.vc we have a pitch us link and there's an email at the bottom

(36:31) you can reach out to all of that comes straight to me so you can find me that way as well and then we're I'm on Twitter I'm not very active on Twitter but I am there so it's just at the same say honey I think I tweeted one thing like a year ago I check in every now and then I'm not too you'll you'll find me

(36:46) on LinkedIn before you find me on Twitter so yeah those are probably the easiest places okay wonderful I will put those links in the show notes so that people can follow you connect with you and I'm on this amazing journey that you are on and thank you this very very important mission that you're taking

(37:04) thank you so there I sound like a pirate it's Friday afternoon it's okay there you have it Naseem Sayani on this episode of Adventurous and we will see you back here for the next episode.

Armond is the founder and Managing Partner of The Paragon Group, a private equity and venture capital firm, which invests primarily in pre-seed and seed stage businesses with ethnically diverse or female founders. He graduated Magna Cum Laude from Florida A&M University with an MBA in Finance in 2002. In 2019, Davis received his second Master’s degree when he obtained an MS in Commercial Real Estate Investment from Georgia State University. Davis is heavily involved in community leadership in Metro Atlanta. He is an alum of the United Way’s Volunteer Involvement Program as well as the leadership programs of the Urban Land Institute and the Atlanta Regional Commission. He has served on the Board of Directors of the 100 Black Men of Atlanta, the largest and most influential Black mentoring organization in the city.

Follow Armond on LinkedIn

Armond's Website: https://www.armonddavis.com/

The Paragon Group: https://www.paragoninvestmentfund.com/

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Transcript:

(00:00) Hi adventurers we're back this episode I am thrilled to introduce you to Armond Davis of the Paragon group he has an incredible story to share he has amazing expertise to share with you and I cannot wait to dive into his amazing wisdom but before we get started I'd love to tell you a little bit about family family

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(01:21) to learn more about family and get this offer it will be in the show notes or on our website at adventurous cast.com so all right Armond you're here yay I'm so happy to be here I love the conversations that we have had offline looking forward to having another great one here today likewise yes we met

(01:42) through the Sutton Capital little Community which is very yes I've met some great people there so far so I'm excited to meet more so share a little about yourself our mom has a very interesting background because he like all these C's didn't come into VC but quote unquote typical way I don't even think there is a typical way but    so

(02:01) share a little bit about where you came from tell us about your journey and what inspired you to become not just a venture capital investor but the type of person who is a venture capital investor that you are that's a that I have never had the question phrased that way    well yeah it makes you know it makes

(02:22) you think about it from a different perspective but you know as you said nobody comes to venture to the traditional way there's just a handful of people who actually came out of business school worked at a big BC fire did deals on behalf of that firm and then just left and raised the fund and started doing their own firm a lot of us

(02:43) come from different places so I'm no different I was born and raised in St Louis and loved my family and left my childhood growing up I went down to Florida a University    for to get both my undergrad and my MBA in finance and then after that moved to Atlanta I worked for Goldman Sachs for a while I

(03:05) worked at SunTrust Bank for a while as well which is now truest but around 2005 or so I started to really think about what I wanted to do for myself and so it was that was really the in Patterson meeting in the beginning of a really long journey so my first instinct was what I wanted to do was start a hedge

(03:32) funds was 2005 2006 I was getting really into technical analysis and I saw this huge Head and Shoulders top forming and I said you know what I really should I should leave and I should start hedge fund and I should short the market and a moment of true and really a moment of doubt I really thought to myself at the time

(03:55) you know I was 27 years old nobody's going to give 27 year old black man that doesn't have an Ivy League education 20 million dollars so if you can short the market and    all coming off one of the biggest bull runs in history and you know the truth is that I I convinced myself that this was impossible

(04:19) and I never even tried I never even asked anybody for the money and it was a tremendous lesson    for me that you know when the universe puts something on your heart put something in your mind you already have the tools to execute on it and so you should just move and you'll be amazed at how the universe will open path rearrange itself

(04:43) that's right that's right the universe doesn't want any of us to fail yeah right and so when you're given an idea it's because you have the tools to actually turn that from something that's in your mind to something that actually exists and so that was a huge lesson for me    in that moment so instead of

(05:07) trying to raise a hedge fund what I did instead was did my first M A Deal went and bought a small construction business and   I would say that in 2000 that was in 2006 late 2006 I did that 2007 it was a fantastic year I thought I was the smartest guy in the world every story starts with this like I

(05:32) thought I had this no listen you have to be classic a little bit especially in VC right you have one obviously by nature is an optimistic practice right because you are you're investing in something that is in one state with the confidence and the optimism that is going to be better it's going to get bigger it's going to get

(05:55) better right and so    yes I absolutely in 2007 thought I was the smartest guy in the world    and then 2008 happened that I was no longer the smartest guy in the world you and many other people anywhere Yeah Yeah by   2010 2012    I was on the verge of bankruptcy I had I lost my home I lost my marriage

(06:21)    and really was just at a point in a place where I was just going to go and file for bankruptcy and go crawl over the hole somewhere and die and that's really kind of where I was with things and I drove to I pulled my last few dollars out of my bank account to give to the bankruptcy attorney to file for me and drove to the bankruptcy

(06:44) bankruptcy attorney's office and when I parked and got ready to open up the door to get out and go in I just couldn't move I just I was totally paralyzed and I literally sat there in the parking lot of the bankruptcy attorney's office with my hands at ten and two staring Straight Ahead    out the windshield one hour

(07:04) and just could not move and so after an hour I really just couldn't    continue to sit there and so I said you know what I must not be meant to be here so I need to go home and try to figure this out and so I did I went back home and    I at the time everybody's getting laid off and

(07:30) companies are laying people off but I went the opposite way and what I did was I empowered my employees I told them hey each of you guys have a business that's really just under my business so if you guys can create you know Revenue opportunities if you guys create savings cost savings opportunities I'll share

(07:46) all of that with you and I'm happy to say that we came out of the recession stronger than we went into it and not only that but I never laid anybody off never had to let anybody off that's a great story that was it was really rewarding but it was something that you know in those moments you feel

(08:04) like man why is this happening to me yes why is all this happening to me but it was all things in preparation things don't happen to you they happen for you right and so fast forward I don't own it operated a couple of other businesses ranging from import export to content creation marketing Consulting    but

(08:22) always wanted to get back to Investments and so in trying to merge my investment knowledge and experience with my operating knowledge and experience Venture was a natural segue for me and so I launched a paragon group    last year we invest exclusively in female and ethnically diverse Founders and so our

(08:46) thesis is very straightforward is that those two groups are the most    oppressed by current Society the most disadvantaged by current Society therefore they will lead in The Innovation that will move Society to more Equitable systems and so if you can invest in them at an early stage then you'd make above market returns I think

(09:09) it's very straightforward I think the data bears that out the data does bear that out and it's funny that we have to call them groups because we're actually the majority but it's underrepresented and female is actually the majority but it is true and you know I remember back when I first started    a Loan Fund a nonprofit back in the

(09:28) day called accelerate fund this that we were trying to tell people that women were not receiving access to    funding who Venture fundable women who were running opportu you know companies that were Venture fundable    were not getting access and people didn't believe us yeah yeah this was you know now it's you

(09:48) know over headlines and everyone knows it but back this was you know six or eight years ago or something we had to prove it so we actually had to start    yeah it was just I don't want to go into all of this but yeah we people didn't believe us and so so yeah so tell us a little bit about you know you're doing this really

(10:06) incredible work with Founders and and you you know you've got this origin story here of you know how you coached yourself out of a difficult time and was able to turn that around so you know when you're working with Founders and you know you're investing in seed as well you know these are some of the hardest times

(10:23) for an entrepreneur requires intense amounts of resilience and and most VCS that I know don't provide coaching and resilience and this type of mindset you know so share with me a little bit about how you work with the entrepreneurs and and    what kind of experiences you know that you have had doing that work with

(10:46) them yeah well I think that really the key is especially as you mentioned you're talking about pre-seeds and Seed stage businesses are heavily founder dependent right and so one of the things I say to the founders that I work with is you know your business can't outperform you so if you could only function at a level

(11:06) four or five as a person your business is going to function at a level two or three and so the key to really unlocking value and an early stage business is to have a Founder who's functioning optimally and so we can talk about ebitda and we can talk about AR and we can talk about P L's and I do all of

(11:31) that and we work on all of those things we can do that but the real key here is the founder and that's why I say I'm very founder driven and so that's the most important part of things and so I'm working with Founders on overcoming things such as imposter syndrome you know survivor's remorse unresolved childhood traumas that you

(11:56) know for those    Big League fans that of course you have upper limit problems and so we are really working on when those negative thoughts come into your mind develop a system develop a process or how to challenge those thoughts because it can't be something that I'm always you can't I can never scale

(12:17) enough right with the business if every time that happens you have to call me and so it's about arming the founder with the tools to be able to challenge their own negative thoughts why do you think this now why do you think that you don't belong in this room the evidence that if you really step back and look at

(12:36) it it's completely to the contrary you deserve to be here the greatness is in you and so that's a huge part of my Approach in terms of working with Founders and no idea I did I'd coach myself a little bit but no there were always people that were there that were pouring into me and were really helping me and believed

(12:57) in me in those really dark moments and so I really try to be that for especially for underrepresented Founders yeah I really try to be that for them and in return I do also require that if I invest in you then you will    you will Mentor another founder who is either in your geographic area or in

(13:19) your industry because we're all really just trying to be vessels here and pay things forward so it's interesting you talk on resolved childhood traumas and I find sometimes people always just kind of want to think like business is exempt from you know the other emotional aspects of life you know we can examine

(13:39) unresolved childhood traumas when we're having relationship problems we can examine those traumas when you know there's some people who have like relationship with food and those types of disorders but when it comes to business we should all be just like very of course you know it's nothing personal

(13:54) right it's just business it's nothing personal yeah and I just find it's that's so silly because this is actually one of the most emotional things that you can do especially as entrepreneurs because we are creators and we put ourselves into a business just as much as we put ourselves into our relationship and I see a lot of

(14:12) stuff about imposter syndrome of course and you know I feel that a lot myself and people will just sort of say just tell yourself you know you deserve to be here and you're like yeah so that doesn't so it takes doing the inner work of drilling in why do I believe this why and you get down

(14:31) to it and you're like oh my gosh when I was a kid my parents told me you know and like you know but if you don't yes I think there's even more of a block in business for people going there and I know I recently had to share a couple of things that were sort of going on with one of my investors and he was like oh why

(14:50) don't you tell me and I had to be like well to be honest my mother taught me when I was very young that you know like you you always take care of your investors and you never come to them without a solution so I didn't want to come and tell you that I had a challenge but I didn't know how to fix it because

(15:10) I was taught at a very young age that you have to like fix it you know and so it's like a childhood thing that was keeping me from communicating what I should yes and he he was like oh yeah now I see that yeah you can come to me when you don't know the answer and I'm like but still have all this fear about it yeah

(15:33) well and that's the look that's the reason why in my opinion especially as a founder and contrary to published you're a Founder too you're just your startup it's just a startup that invests in other startups if you're a family it's like you're a Founder too right right there's layers and levels to it I'm a

(15:54) startup that's another startups to start startups yes yeah listen listen but you go through a lot of the things that Founders go through right and so it's important to understand for me as an investor my whole purpose in being here is for you to come to me and say I'm really struggling with this and this is really

(16:19) challenging and I don't have the answer can you help me and find the answer right and so well because you learned more from your failures than you probably got from your successes successes are like cool we're gonna buy a nice bottle of champagne at dinner tonight it's going to be great the success the failures are what make you

(16:38) so wise and so resilient and I will often tell Founders I don't know how to make you successful I think it's luck so we're gonna work really hard and we're gonna do everything we need to do to make sure that we are in the best possible position to get lucky but I can tell you how to fail and I can make sure we don't do the things that

(17:03) will definitely cause failure    but I can't really tell you how to be successful it's like hey let's grow let's get customers let's but will that get you know will that get you to the acquisition or whatever that is we sure hope so but you know at the end of the day don't fail is the first you know

(17:19) well of seeds cookies don't fail well you know one there's no such thing as failure right there's only lessons and blessings we say yeah right only lessons and blessings so no such thing as failure two what you said is so important because it is the word that it goes to and points to its process

(17:44) and so when I'm working with Founders when I'm looking at Founders one of the things that's important to me is I want a Founder that is results oriented but not results driven what I mean by that is if you are just looking for the outcome the positive outcome sometimes you get a positive outcome even though your process your

(18:08) process is flawed and if all you care about is that you've got the outcome you wanted you don't actually pay attention to the flaws in your process and what happens is as you grow in as you scale if you continue to have flawed processes they will eventually rear their head and it's much harder to correct those things once you've gotten

(18:31) to a certain size right and so when I say being results oriented you want to be building a process that aims towards a result that doesn't necessarily mean that you always get the result that you want but you but your goal is to absolutely try to perfect the process whether it be client relationships whether it be

(18:58) investor relations whether it be how you analyze or assess your risk develop a process be process oriented and what you'll find is that that process over time will put you in the position that you described when you're in in the position to be able to take advantage of the opportunity and they say that luck is when preparation meets

(19:21) opportunity you know I think that was a hard lesson one of my hard lessons of 2023 so far    is that you know there was something that happened before we had the fund before I had processed before I had structured before I had some of the support that came to light and I was like wow that's a that was a massive

(19:42) flawed process like whoa was out of law I didn't know at the time but it was a flaw    and I had to one try to have Grace for myself and say I did the best thing I could at the time with what I knew the information I had and the support that I had now I know that was real bad and now the problem has to be fixed and

(20:06) it was not easy to fix    but it really showed me you got to pay attention to this stuff and that's right your processes your support your structures your team and just think about risks at each stage and so it's almost you know I we're optimistic we don't like to think that things are going to go wrong we only like to think that

(20:28) things are going to go right and most of the time they go well you know    but this was like a really hard lesson in realizing not everyone is your friend I guess everything is going and you need to protect yourself and I think you know I see a lot of early stage companies you know I do a lot of cap

(20:46) table work with startups where I just look at it and I'm like this one thing Could Happen which is relatively likely to happen and it will take down the whole company yes and you just want to be like let me help you you know and sometimes they won't you know and sometimes it's very painful to watch that go down

(21:06)    I have    it's really hard it's really hard I have that's a huge another Factor so I'm talking about the factors that we kind of are inadvertently going into my process right in terms of when I'm meeting with Founders and looking at Founders is are you coachable do you actually want to learn or do you just want me to give you

(21:26) a check and get out of the way are they saying the words they think you need to hear in order to get the check so that they can move on yes yes absolutely and you learn over time as an investor to discern right and you I recognize those phrases and those words where you're just trying to get me to give you check

(21:46) and get out of the way versus someone who's really Earnest about trying to learn and trying to work through these things because listen we all come to the table with trauma it's a part of being it's a part of The Human Experience right and so I'm not looking for someone who's trauma free because there's no

(22:04) such thing and someone who actually would present themselves as such it's not being very genuine right and so it's about how you think it through yeah right so I'm curious A Tale of Two Entrepreneurs right let's say you're hearing two pitches today first one comes to you and sits down similar to this format and they what is

(22:24) that interaction like where you immediately think to yourself pass because this person's not coachable they only want the money they're not they don't like all the check boxes that are a big no and then the next subsequent one is what would make you say we're going to the next step right so the first the what

(22:45) they want if you haven't done any research like you don't even really know who I am yeah you know what I mean like you just I'm just like I'm just a guy who could write a check basically so you don't know who I am you didn't listen to the podcast I did with Genevieve last week like you didn't you know you didn't you

(23:03) know it's the website and see that you invest in other words anything along those lines right number two a huge part is like I said think about the process have you thought about things I tell I'm the anti-vcvc so I tell Founders all the time like don't take PC money is extraordinarily expensive the first shot of heroin dude

(23:32) once you start to take it you can't stop taking it because you need it to scale in order to provide the returns to the people who were in early and so you need to build your business from the end back to the beginning yeah if you're building the business as you go from the beginning now it's a pass right because if you're at a point where

(24:01) one I'm gonna say capture all the low-hanging fruit that you can possibly capture the best way to raise capital is to grow Revenue so let me see that you have actually thought about all of the ways that you can capture Revenue without VC money and have you attempted those are you trying to do those things how are those things

(24:26) going for you okay then from there if you've done that and you're at a point where to take the big leap right you do need this million dollar check from the BC then you really have to think about how you're going to get that money back yeah right because on a multiple I was just like the truth

(24:47) is if I give you a million dollars today then I'm expecting you to write me a check somewhere in the neighborhood of five million dollars within the next five years that's the truth right if you only give me let's just say this is how challenging BC is if I give you a check for a million dollars and in five years

(25:07) you give me a check for two million dollars fail we don't have another fund where people don't realize I'm out of a job that's right I'm fine there's 2x that's right I'm backing up I'm starting a pop stand in Mexico because I have no future in this industry that if people don't know even if I produce 3x it's like I'm

(25:25) gonna have to do a real song and dance yeah and that's even I probably am still at the popsicle stand no-no and that's especially true right for    a female fund manager or for    a black male fund manager like me right we have to outperform you've got to outperform and so if I give you a million dollars

(25:46) right you need to write me a check for five million dollars within the next five years and you need by the time you ask me for that million dollars you need to have already thought about how you're gonna get that to me I understand that it's not going to go exactly lucky player right but I need to see that you've

(26:02) thought about it yeah yeah and it's not just I need your money today you know what you're talking about is the methodology and the practice that we taught at Expo Dojo which is revenue first if you've got the revenue the investment will come and doing the exercise like you're talking about future back what's the future of this

(26:20) company right and what are we doing now in the next and how does that break down weekly tasks monthly tasks in order to get to that because fundamentally to get to a billion dollars in evaluation you need to have you need to grow average 12 percent month over month right so you know really what we want to

(26:41) see is a more increasing ramp in the early stage you know because that will you know level off a little but when you say okay so to get to that much growth or you know let's say we decide we want you know 100 growth month over month or whatever it breaks down to fundamentals and if people can't think through that then why

(27:02) do you have a business you know right how many calls do you need to make how many emails do you need to send you know it really comes down to those simple things and when you bring that up and they're like well excuse yeah oh my God this isn't gonna work right so that's a huge red flag then we go into like I talk about the

(27:21) mental aspects of it because like I said like you said those are quantitative like you gotta make it make the calls you got to do the emails you got to think through the numbers you got to go through the revenue you want to hit a certain multiple you know but it's it really is how are you approaching

(27:41) your life as it pertains to your business so what kind of questions do you ask when you're Drilling in with people to find out so it varies yeah yeah it varies depending on the founder depending on the business    because one working with underrepresented Founders almost always

(28:04) have created the business not as well I see that there's a whole bunch of people doing this and I think I can make a billion dollars it's almost always some type of personal meaning or reason for it you know I say all the time that's the same in health too even if they're not under yes yeah yes absolutely and so one of the things

(28:26) that I do is I try to lead with empathy    myself as an investor I understand that there's really no such thing as a business decision when you're talking about a startup and you're talking about a precede even a seed stage business all these decisions are personal decisions because your life is

(28:47) on the line your livelihood is on the line you know there are times that you're making choices not to spend time with your spouse and your children in order to work on this business so there's no such thing really truly as a true business decision all of the decisions are personal so have you thought about that are you considering

(29:06) that are you suppressing your feelings or your emotions in order to try to make those decisions or are you allowing your feelings your emotions to completely take control of you and that's what I mean when you find people that are just lurching around lurching from result to result instead of focuses on focusing on developing the

(29:26) process so there are ways that you ask questions without asking questions is how you answer how you answer how you respond to me saying are you willing to be a mentor to another founder that lets me know whether you are Community oriented that lets me know whether or not you are a multitasker because you say no man I

(29:46) just got so much stuff to do trying to run my business I don't have time to talk to anybody else well okay every everybody when you understand the importance and the significance and the impact when you understand the reward that lies in helping someone else and being a being of service to people then that indicates that you kind of you

(30:09) get it right yeah and you should start your business with the purpose of being of service to people whether it's a product whether it's a service that you're offering you have to be the best the reason for its existence is to be of service to a consumer and so those are the kind of questions that I'm asking but those answers that I

(30:29) get answer three four other questions that I don't ask yeah it's almost like are you in Integrity do you know like if if you're are your actions and what you say aligning with who you are in the world and is what you are in the world aligning with what you're producing because if ithere's anything that's out of Integrity

(30:51) it almost always comes out somehow and if you then try to suppress it and try to pretend like it's okay or sweeping under the rug then it then it blows up my mother has to say had a saying that she said all the time that I've adopted she's used to say    you might get by but you won't get away oh that's interesting experience

(31:14) you might get by but you won't get away so you might not you might be saying all the right things right but eventually your true Integrity right will reveal itself    right you might you might you might tell this little white lie over here right to get to the next step and you might get to that next step but

(31:40) eventually the universe will move into a way that reveals your true character and you won't get away with it so you might get better that was your grandmother who's my mother you're my mother so my favorite quote tell your mom this one I I think about this one a lot actually it's Warren Buffett and he said

(31:57)    and I think I've even said it on this podcast but he said    when the tide goes out you can see who's been swimming naked oh and he kind of refers to like the markets and you know like what's not strong you know yeah it kind of also means that like when the tide goes out literally figuratively in markets in

(32:15) your life you know whatever's not really there yeah it's out in the open you know so let's talk about that let's talk about that from the perspective of all the corporations and all the entities that were out there they were saying over here for we're here for female Founders we're here for female oh gosh

(32:35) we're here for diverse managers let's get in let's get into it so okay now we have and really we started to see it last year actually yeah you know people yeah I see you're watching because it's great PR it looks great on LinkedIn you know yeah and so people are like well are we going to have a recession and I

(32:59) and I always take the point when people ask me that to point out there's privilege even in that question because if you're a female founder if you're an equity diverse founder you've been in a recession for at least a year always been a recession it's always on a recession like I told you this I have a founder and when you know

(33:19) the whole thing came out and YC send out their emails to everyone telling them to stop buying you know all the Herman Miller furniture and return the Bugattis and you know all those and cut the burn rate and everything like that she we're in a bar at a conference and she was in tears and she's like oh no you know

(33:35) reading all these things and I said this doesn't apply to you like business as usual for you because you're already running lean generating as much revenue as you can exploiting every coin and the couch cushions in the office that comes in like you're already this is for the people who were swimming naked yeah yeah that's

(33:58) true she's going to come out of this thing very strong and those companies are gone and yeah you know it's just it's it's like the only noticed thing that I've noticed different about the markets is things are a little slower right that's all yeah yeah it's just a little slower but like like we talked about the beginning

(34:23) the data is showing that we outperform the underrepresented founders out before and that's only going to be more true because we know how to do more with less well and you know the best businesses the best startups and you know the best fund managers are minted during recessions yes I believe

(34:40) that the funds that are vintage of this time are going to have the highest returns because not only did the manager who started them but also the entrepreneurs who are you know investments in those portfolios are gonna outperform and especially if they are underrepresented and    you know if they're not and then yeah

(35:01) they're returning Capital actually in many cases which is a little nerving but you know one of the things too about the underrepresented    investing VC conundr   is the people who are talking about how they support underrepresented entrepreneurs they are still systematically doing things the way that they've always done

(35:25) them and the issue of access to capital for underrepresented entrepreneurs and underrepresented fund managers is a systemic problem absolutely so if the people at the top are making nice PR and maybe even having some good intentions but they don't systematically change the way that they invest    I mean case in point minimum   check

(35:49) size yes then they're only proliferating the problem and you know it's only it's been a couple times when you know I've explained this and they go oh I didn't realize that you know a 10 million or 20 million dollar minimum   check was going to be too big for a first time underrepresented fund manager it just

(36:08) sounds like the silliest thing I've ever heard in my life right because I'm just like first time underrepresented fund managers including women do not raise 100 million dollar funds that's right we do not that's right or or right we could if you would write the 10 to 15 million dollar check and then first but then

(36:30) that's right yeah that's right or if you but then you want to say well but I I don't want to own more than 10 of the phone okay so then right well then yes I have to have 100 million dollar fund yeah we get your concentration problem you know it's diversification all those things but I just say I get that you don't want

(36:49) to come in and do the work on due diligence to write a five million dollar check I mean you could do that same work on due diligence and write a 100 million dollar check but the thing is that dude you are feeding into the problem because that hundred million dollar check is going to traditionally white male

(37:08) Founders who are this investing in traditionally white men traditional you know and at least in my industry you know Women's Health and health for babies and things like that is like it's appalling sometimes the Diagnostics that don't exist and the treatments that aren't there that I know are completely possible they wouldn't

(37:33) even be breakthroughs if they were invented but they're just not invented and I've sat on calls with Founders pitching like a women's health diagnostic and all the investors on the call scratching their head confused about why women need this when it's the number one reason that women visit their physician in the world and they go home

(37:51) they say I'm gonna go home and ask my wife and it's like I I I completely flabbergasted by the inexasperated by that one of my portfolio companies    mother of fact is owned by    another fact yes he's on my schedule for next week nice yeah so she was introduced to me through one of my LPS not even you

(38:15) that's fantastic listen that's awesome that's awesome so Emily is amazing you're gonna enjoy have a great conversation with her but her business is literally about getting Access to Health Care for Women particularly prenatal that struggle with it with such common conditions such as gestational diabetes

(38:39) which is wildly common right and is a huge contributor to morbidity mortality for    pregnant women particularly in underserved communities her business is a complete total market so much money to be made of course yes of course that's an impact but when you pitch that to a room full of white men they're not going to understand it right

(39:03) people invest in things they know which right is you can't fault people for that it's Human Nature because I'm old because there's a ton of stuff that I don't know but I'm always like oh I can learn something over here or oh I can learn something from over there I agree with you it's a blind spot and I believe with

(39:25) great power comes great responsibility yes and as an investor that it you know you have great power therefore you have some responsibility now how you choose to take it or exercise it you know we can discuss that all day long but you have some responsibility and I think that the old school way of thinking is

(39:47) my responsibility ends with making sure I'm compliant with regulations and laws and making sure I return to my investors but the new breed of venture capitalists so you and Alicia Hamp and you know all these people we know love Alicia yeah we know that yes we have to make returns of course we have to follow the

(40:07) loss you know we have to do all those things but our responsibility is to create a world where it's better to live in like up you know business I think I was talking with Blaine Bartlett earlier he said something like business is the possibility of the creation of a better world especially Venture yeah just by just

(40:27) what is our business that is your business right and so you think about the Fortune 100 at one point almost all those businesses were startups and there was someone who said I think this could be really big and impactful right and they it was that was the venture capitalist right seems to me that over the past decade or

(40:57) so that it's kind of gotten warped a little bit maybe not even a little bit it's gotten a lot worn and it has been almost like a real estate approach to flipping houses right well okay I can buy this house I could fix it up put some paint put a paint job on it put some crown molding

(41:16) in there and I can flip it you know Brian at expert Dojo calls it the microwave meal yeah like why would you prepare an amazing meal when I can pull off the plastic pop into the microwave got a meal fruit and I'm like it's true he's like two minutes I'm like and that's Venture Capital right and that's what

(41:37) has become that is not what we want to allow it to continue to be but that is what it has become well and the truth is right over time you keep eating those microwave meals you're going to have some bigger problems yeah right and then we have people throwing lime bikes and bird scooters into the bay

(41:57) right that's the microwave meal yeah yeah evaluations fast and growing and it's just like some of these things are just wild and there's a reason too it's like we have all these satirical shows now about Silicon Valley and it's like because this whole thing is such a Ponzi scheme in a way it's like satirical and

(42:15) it's turned into that yeah yeah so no but yet so that people like you you should mention people like Alicia we you know we are determined to bring this back to where it's it really is a calling it's a vocation right it's not a job yeah and if you have the ability to help Founders whether it be in healthcare

(42:43) whether it be like me I'm industry agnostic whether it be no matter where it is but you have something that you bring to the table that is in addition to your investment dollars to help people to unlock their potential then that's what your role is and we're going to see a shaking out of those who are just check writers

(43:05) you know you've got to bring something else to the table you got to be able to and that's why being an operator is so important now I'm not going to go because I'm gonna you're gonna get shouted down we're going to cause a issue on Twitter here if I go and say you must be a great operator in

(43:22) order to be a great BC so I'm not going to say that but I do think that having been in the in the role of a Founder you know I read something the other day that said there's two kind of people in the world those who had to make a payroll and those who have it and it completely changes you when you have to be looking at looking at your

(43:47) accounts and saying okay I need to pay so and so I need to pay such and such I need to get such and such paid and sometimes you don't get paid sometimes you don't eat so that they can the founder is always the last one that's right yeah that's right and so when I I'm like I said I was proud that I didn't lay anybody off you know many

(44:06) many weeks that I didn't get a check yeah I've been through that same experience and you know it's hard too because no one thanks you for not taking a check no no no no no thanks for taking one for the team they all say well why didn't why am I not being paid more you know when you're like yeah it's it's it

(44:25) is an extremely extremely tough job and you know I think I don't think I think my greatest failure is what made it makes me able to help entrepreneurs and you know everyone on my team has been an entrepreneur before and I don't actually really connect very well with people who have never done it because it's like

(44:45) it's almost like we're both talking about business and startups but we're on two separate planets when they haven't actually done it before there's a glint and a recognition in the eyes between entrepreneurs who have really really been through it that you don't get when you talk to someone who hasn't

(45:03) yes 100 my wife I was blessed as I lost the marriage and session in my that was my first marriage I'm highly blessed to have    gotten another chance    and now my second wife what we bonded over entrepreneurship and she's an entrepreneur as well and some people say man said you guys got a household imagine nobody's getting a

(45:30) consistent paycheck you're like well you know but there's things that we just we don't even have to speak about that we understand about each other and we understand the why that we're working in our passion and we're moving and walking in our purpose here and that's really important yeah yeah that's amazing we could have a

(45:55) whole another topic about relationships entrepreneurs we should do another podcast about that because I too got divorced    back a long time ago I was in my 20s you know and it was the startup and you know I remember he said to me I'll never forget he said I don't want to be married to an entrepreneur and I don't

(46:12) want to take backseat to a startup and I was like this is who I am this is who I am yeah and that's what I mean sometimes I wish I wasn't because it's listening easier yeah but that's what I mean when I say it's a vocation right and from a Founder perspective that's who you want to have investing in you

(46:32) right not somebody who's like well it's super whenever I walk in a room and I say I'm a VC like everybody sits up and you know pays attention to me because as soon as you're a VC it's like you can I can get into any event I can get it anywhere I want now and I'm like this is weird because yeah range but yeah yeah

(46:51) and there are people that are in it for that reason right and so yeah I think it's the one guy like he wrote a post or something he had made a business card that said Ventures and he went to South by and he got into all of like the events and the parties that he couldn't get into with his business cards

(47:10) wow yeah yeah yeah I think that it's important we talk about    resolved trauma as we talked about    developing a mindset and I really worked with Founders and really talking about developing on my set of abundance as opposed to a lack mindset because a lot of us don't come from money and so we we have a different relationship

(47:34) right with money and so you know I think about when you get to your birthday card when you're 10 years old and it's got ten dollars in it what did they tell you to do with it don't spend it all in one place right save it put it away they want you to put it somewhere where even you can't remember where it

(47:54) is right but this is right this is the antithesis of what successful people do with their body and so let it flow be a vessel for everybody money's a tool just like a hammer you know    Blaine Bartlett said the same thing this morning I think there's something in the air going on right now he was talking

(48:15) about letting he gave the same example of the dollar don't spend it all in one place and was like you know let it flow let it flow and you know he was best friends with Bob Proctor and some of the great thinkers in you know personal development and this is something that I just feel like there needs to be more

(48:33) conversations had especially with entrepreneurs    because we are conduits    VCS especially but entrepreneurs we wear conduits to abundance we're creating abundance in the world whether that is money or whether that is opportunities or whether that is you know your access to healthcare vaping

(48:50) and you're putting in more plants I don't know what are you doing but we're all of us are in the business of creation and expansion I have not met a single entrepreneur who's in the business of Destruction and contraction    if I have I probably don't like them but yeah exactly well I would love to

(49:08) Point people towards where they can connect with you Armond so yeah where can people find you where can people look at your stuff look at the Paragon group where it's    LinkedIn is easy it's all about a-r-m-o-n-d    Davis you can connect with me on LinkedIn my website is    paragoninvestment fund.com    you can

(49:35) get Twitter and Instagram I'm on don't send me you can follow me on Twitter I am accessible so it's not like oh I could only I could only get to you through Twitter like that's yeah but yes    Instagram is I am Arbonne Twitter is at Arm Davis but yes    and I'm always looking to me tell even if it's

(50:04) not a fit in terms of investment I recognize that really what we are in is in the talent the collection business right and so I just want to meet and interact and get to know as many talented people as possible awesome well thank you so much for coming on today and sharing your wisdom with our

(50:30) audience we call them the adventurers here okay I'm gonna go ahead and post all those links into the show notes    you can find this episode of course all major podcasting channels YouTube or adventuristpodcast.com and that is our final episode or final what's on the final episode that is that's a rapid of this episode okay

(50:56) you missed it at the end and we'll see you guys all on here for the next one [Music] thank you [Music]

Follow Blaine on LinkedIn

Blaine Bartlett's website

Learn about (or apply!) to VC Lab.

Learn about Versus in Forbes, Bloomberg, Yahoo News, Grit Daily

2:30 - John introduces himself and his journey to where he is today as the Founder and CEO of Versus Game. Starting from humble beginnings and almost failing out of university several times before embarking on his (even more humbling) journey of entrepreneurship, beginning with a couple failures before starting to have some successes and eventually versus game which launched in 2019.

4:25 - What Versus Game is and how it works. A prediction game that allows people to predict the outcomes of the culture and life we live in every day, and earn money. Rather than being passive to pop culture, with Versus Game you can become active participants in pop culture.

7:10 - John discusses a key moment when he almost quit entrepreneurship and what kept him from doing that. Including struggling to raise money for the initial funding rounds of Versus Game.

8:45 - Genevieve discloses that she had the opportunity to invest early in Versus Game, and how it felt to watch John and Versus Game become successful and not be part of it. What she saw in Versus Game early on (before it was even called Versus Game, it was called MrktStar) and she didn’t invest.

10:00 John and Genevieve discuss fundraising.

12:15 - John and Genevieve share wisdom and stories about building teams and recruiting the right people, choosing the right advisors.

15:50 - John and Genevieve discuss perceptions and dynamics of being an entrepreneur and managing perceptions of family, trying to date as an entrepreneur, etc.

20:55 - John explains his approach and lens to vetting and hiring great people from his own experience.

22:00 - John shares a story of one of his hardest times as an entrepreneur, restarting again fresh off a failure.

26:36 - John shares where purpose and entrepreneurship intersect for him and his perspective of finding your path and purpose as an entrepreneur.

28:11 - Genevieve shares how she is inspired in entrepreneurship and venture capital by the great broadcasters and journalists.

31:30 - John lends his final wisdom he’d share with entrepreneurs who are struggling in the trenches. You’ve already experienced the worst, and it can only get better from here. You still have an opportunity, what are you afraid of?

Read about Sober Sidekick on Fortune

Sober Sidekick with Brian MacMahon on the Expert Dojo Podcast, The Art of Startup War

5:00 - Chris’s story about starting Sober Sidekick, beginning with waking up on the sidewalk on Thanksgiving Day and asking himself, “What if today was Day 1 of my comeback story?” Asking ourselves the powerful question “What If?” instead of the disempowering question, “Why is?”

10:00 - Chris begins to tell himself a new story. From sober living, armed with a 30 day chip from Alcoholics Anonymous, to beginning to write the first line of code for Sober Sidekick. Chris realized his algorithm from his last startup for musicians could help others get and stay sober.

14.20 - Chris provides his advice on how to get through with someone who is in a really difficult or tough place. The similarities between the entrepreneurial journey and the recovery journey. How purpose can come from struggle and suffering

17.00 - Genevieve discusses the illusion of separateness and how it drives us in isolation, in entrepreneurship, addiction and otherwise. Dropping the belief in separateness and realizing we are the same, being willing to connect through our similarities instead of trapped in our differences. Chris talks about Sober Sidekick’s foundation of being a We platform that operates without ego. Guilt and shame can only come from the ego.

23.00 - The fork in the road, when Chris almost quit and relapsed. Realizing the enemy is not outside of him, it’s within him. There was no scenario that he cannot push through. The day you want to quit is the most important day of your life.

31.00 - What if our healthcare was community driven? What if we were more dependent on each other? Especially in behavioral health and mental health. How isolation drives adverse health outcomes.

34.30 - Genevieve ruminates on transactional thinking. What if we ask ourselves instead, “who can I be?” How this opens up possibilities. Overcome the immense pressure to transact, add value, take value, etc. Chris draws the connection between how he comes into sales and investment pitches with this mindset. Claiming the ultimate power through realness, authenticity and connection and using this to create a business, and a purpose that is bigger than you. This is the root of the multiplier effect that powers Sober Sidekick, Suncoast Ventures, Expert Dojo and so many other high performing purpose-driven startups.

42.00 - One day when you are on your deathbed, what will you care about most about today? That you were willing to show up, be on the court. You will only regret failure if you’re not on the court playing full out.

43.50 - The only thing you can’t undo is not taking action. All you have is looking back and wondering “what if?” Genevieve shares about how she used to have lots of reasons, justifications and reasons for why she didn’t have the life, the career and the results that she wanted, and how this shifted when she got on the court and started to take action.

Sebastian shares 4 powerful questions to ask yourself, your team, and your clients to break through blocks and clear up unworkable situations. Genevieve and Sabastian dig into the interplay between feminine and masculine energy in business, relationships and life and Genevieve shares her rituals to support feminine energy and flow as a busy entrepreneur and venture capitalist. Sabastian talks about knowing yourself, and knowing what you’re all about.

For more episodes and information, visit us at AdventureousPodcast.com

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Alicia’s journey from sports agent with the Baltimore Ravens to the tech startup world and eventually venture capital was a winding road shaped by grief, loss, resilience, and rediscovered purpose.

In this episode, Alicia shares powerful insights for entrepreneurs who are navigating or have navigated deep struggle — drawing from her experiences in the Army, the loss of her mother, the early years of building a tech startup, and now leading a venture capital fund.

For more episodes and information, visit AdVentureousPodcast.com.

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Opening with an excerpt from the AdVentureous book, host Genevieve LeMarchal dives into the inspiration and real story behind this podcast.

Gain valuable insights about purpose, impact, and the incredible journeys of transformation through the inspiring stories and conversations with trailblazing entrepreneurs.

Tune in every first and last week of the month for new episodes of The AdVentureous Podcast.

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