slightly engineered, like you knew who was going to be there and you

had a good person to know.

But it was like it was way before we were thinking about selling.

And and at the time, you know, like Adam had a reputation.

And I remember Miguel being like, you got to meet Adam.

I think he'd really like you.

And I initially was like, no. absolutely not.

Is it even new now? It's like five, six years old now.

But we kind of wanted to build the fund that we wish existed when we were

raising capital ourselves.

yeah and i think you know raising the actual fund it was a pretty specific set of experiences so i left we work at the end of 2019 early 2020 um you know new york city goes into lockdown because of covid and there was a few companies um opus bicky which were both in the gutter fund one faraday which is in fund two um where the founders were just taking it on the chin you know opus and bicky they were selling into smbs in new york city and they were navigating you know the toughest market anyone's ever had to navigate for the businesses they were in And I had some time on my hands.

It was the first time I was unemployed since I was 14.

And I had thought I was going to travel the world.

Covid hit, and I was just stuck in my apartment downtown.

And so I made the decision just to show up and spend some time helping these founders navigate through what they were experiencing.

So I don't know how you guys think about that when you look at some of these public companies that, you know, really have the resources and they're really profitable.

... not a two people startup

You know, I think like it doesn't matter the size of the organization, um, saying what you're gonna do and then either doing it or failing and learning something is really important.

And so I think obviously the earlier you go, the OKRs need to be held lightly, and you need to accept that like you're gonna be wrong.

But I think a lot of companies wander for a long time because they're just not explicit about what is the actual thing we're testing right now.

What do we wanna learn this, you know, this week, this month, this quarter? And just have an honest conversation about what's working and not.

And so, you know, hitting OKRs in a pre-seed stage company is not like the same as at a public company, but it's for, it's actually about enforcing a cycle of learning, and I think it's actually super valuable.

Um, so it starts with the goals, and then from the goals, you know, we start to work closely with the founders of, you know, w- what can we do to help them hit the goals? And so, you know, from the, from the first fund we raised, we knew that talent was gonna be a big factor.

Yeah.

So can you talk about that?

Yeah.

So, I mean, it's helpful to take a little bit of a step back.

So before I sold Managed by Q, I had started angel investing with my partner, James.

James is a computer scientist by training, became one of the world's most successful professional gamblers.

And actually, we met at Johns Hopkins many years ago.

He came to me with the idea that we would start investing in early stage software companies.

And so you just, so what was the catalyst? Like what was the.