Uh, no, no, for... as an investor.

As an investor? Um, more of the same.

Like, my job is to adapt to the market and see where the market's headed, I think.

And, uh, on one hand, it's easier 'cause I think our diligence process is somewhat easier.

You can, um, use automated outputs and skill files to help you.

What would've taken a full day of getting a data pack and a lot of its unstructured data and getting it to the output that we wanted can take, you know, minutes now.

And while that's working, it kind of gets you 90% of the way there, I'd say, and every business has nuances, and we're kind of cutting it a few different ways from there.

[laughs]

And can you explain to the audience what is growth equity, and what makes a company ready for growth equity?

Yeah.

Growth equity, I think, sits between kinda early-stage venture financing and later-stage buyouts.

So we tend to invest in businesses that have found product market fit, call it five million-plus run rate, uh, scaling well.

For Volition, uh, we tend to work with businesses that haven't raised a ton of outside capital.

Many of the companies are bootstrapped or raise less than kinda 10 to 15 million of institutional capital.

Um, I think what's different about VC is VC tends to make a lot of bets in a given fund.

Back to the show.

So how would you describe the current state of the venture capital and growth equity market, and what are, are the major trends, uh, that shape in, uh, investment strategies today?

Yeah.

Um, it is interesting times, as you can imagine, with AI and, um, it's, it's a, it's a very broad question, I'd say.

We're somewhat in a zone of the haves and the have-nots.

Uh, if you're a hypergrowth AI business that...

You know, we're, we're seeing growth like we've never seen before with a small team.

Um, so for example, uh, we looked at a business recently that went zero to a 17 million run rate in under nine months, and that's not atypical for some of these AI startups.

[laughs]

Like, how are you future-proofing your existing companies to make sure that they do have something defensible?

It's a great question.

Uh, kind of a two-part question.

So within the existing portfolio, I think that's where, as I mentioned, it's less of a push down from us to say, "Hey, you need to adopt AI." I think everyone is cognizant of that, that-Every company needs to become an AI company and reinvent themselves if they were not, if they were founded in a non-AI world, and we've had a lot of founders that are making that transition really well.

Um, I think some are just moving at a velocity and pace that are faster than others, but for the most part, everyone is aware of this.

Um, so it's-- Here, I, I, I'll give you a, a, a couple examples.

Like, there's one company in my portfolio that has been really strong at adopting AI, and they kinda looked at all their third-party...

So I'm curious, like, how-- what's your approach to underwriting there to make sure you're not overpaying or over-indexing on a particular asset?

Like, how are you future-proofing your existing companies to make sure that they do have something defensible?

It's a great question.

Uh, kind of a two-part question.

So within the existing portfolio, I think that's where, as I mentioned, it's less of a push down from us to say, "Hey, you need to adopt AI." I think everyone is cognizant of that, that-Every company needs to become an AI company and reinvent themselves if they were not, if they were founded in a non-AI world.

And we've had a lot of founders that are making that transition really well.

Um, I think some are just moving at a velocity and pace that are faster than others.

But for the most part, everyone is aware of this.

So I'm curious, like, how-- what's your approach to underwriting there to make sure you're not overpaying or over-indexing on a particular asset?