What are your thoughts?

We've got to play baseball.

We've got to cut down our strikeouts, cut down our swings, you know, short to the ball.

And, listen, defense and pitching is never my concern.

You'll never win a game strikeout 15 times.

Right, that's true.

It's got to be a little bit better at the plate.

And what was it like for those kids getting to meet a bunch of the major leaguers this weekend? That must have been pretty awesome for them.

Yeah.

That is finding, you know, factual sources of information about how film and television was made, who the, uh, you know, its progenitors were, you know, uh, who the, who, who, h- and how things came into being and what kind of impact they had at the time.

Um, but there's another aspect to that as well, which is, um, oral history and where, um, those creative talents, um, uh, from the past are, are, are very much still with us and, um, uh, talk with them and, and, um, recover, uh, you know, their memories.

Uh, uh, and so it's a, a, a dual kind of approach of, of consulting archives and, um, and talking to people really that underpins a very sort of evidence-based, um, kind of, uh, film and television history that we do, um, at De Montfort University.

So that essentially is the, the background of our, um, uh, environment there.

But-

Yeah

... uh, for, uh, uh, film and television archiving, um, which we employed.

And I love hearing about this whole investor advisor role that is helping your company a lot.

Yeah, absolutely.

I don't have an MBA.

I don't have any business background.

And I use ChatGPT and Claude to help me.

I didn't know what a cap table was six months ago or safe agreements or anything like that.

To be able to look at that, understand that my approach was this is built for physicians by physicians.

So how do you think about that? Building a SaaS platform?

No, no, please.

You take it.

No, I mean, it's a great question.

I think you're, you're spot on.

Prototyping this was a really big part of this campaign.

So, um, we could just shout out right off the bat our designer, Whitney Manny.

She's an incredible local Kansas City, uh, fashion designer who we collaborated with to create these bibs, and she's talked... or she's collaborated with folks like Cardi B, A$AP Racky, uh, A$AP Rocky, only the best.

This was sent to us, so but if we go to a Red Lobster, could we get one of these? How do, how do the folks watching this get their own, uh, a tandem bib?

And so I'm hopeful that, you know, there's been a bit of a kind of a, you know, an unlock in the capital that's out there and, um, the capital flows are gonna start to normalize.

Great.

Um, Justin Smith, uh, managing director, head of business development with Agilis Capital.

We're a little under two years old, uh, and we're founded by two best friends who started their careers at Audax in Boston.

Uh, worked together there for several years.

One peeled off to St. Louis to join Thompson Street Capital.

The other was a lifer at Audax.

Um, and it's something LPs seem to be focusing on quite a bit in the past, I would say five to seven years more so than maybe I saw ten years ago.

One of the consequences of, uh, success, particularly in, in this field, and talking about that success, is a lot of competitors, some of whom, uh, are more resourced than us, are gonna look and say, "Well, uh, why can't we do something like that?" I am curious, both, what do you think about the space getting more crowded, more media companies getting involved in the events, the convenings, space and business? A- and what is to keep a company like The Economist or the Financial Times or Bloomberg, places you've worked, places that we've said pretty explicitly are, are, are competitors, what's to keep them from swooping in and scooping up this business?

Listen, I don't think that these are state secrets.

Certainly, maybe it's, it's new information in terms of the, the growth of our business, the revenue, the, the profitability, the high margins, but ultimately, these are kind of well-known facts in the industry.

What it comes down to, when, when markets get crowded...

And by the way, the market, the entire news media market is extremely crowded.

Look at the Washington, DC, news market that we entered.

Everyone said, "Semafor is crazy.

I mean, you, you launched Bloomberg in the Gulf.

Uh, is that a real ambition? Is that a ten-year ambition, or am I misguided?

No, I mean, listen, we-- when we started Semafor, actually, in the original, uh, business plan deck, and, um, we, uh, s- saw an opportunity that, um, to build a leading CEO convening in the United States.

We, we, we looked at the, the US market, and we thought: It's interesting, this is the largest, uh, economy in the world, and, and this is twenty twenty-three, twenty twenty-two, and there is not a dominant leading CEO convening platform.

Um, and, uh, and in fact, you know, Davos was, was and still remains to this day, the sort of the preeminent gathering for global CEOs.

And we thought that was a, an interesting fact and, and one, one which, you know, presented an opportunity.

And so we, um, from the very beginning, uh, envisioned building, building this, um, from scratch, and we identified Washington, DC, as the best location to do this, which was also a little bit of a, um, an unusual choice.

DC's historically not been a place where CEOs travel.

... your core business.