So, with me today in Venice is Howard Morgan. Howard is one of the pioneers of venture capital and I trust that he's gonna have a lot of insights for me today. In case he needs a brief introduction, Howard is the chair and general partner at B Capital.

He also co-founded First Round with Josh Koppelman. He was the president and founder of Renaissance Technology. RenTech is one of the most successful and iconic hedge funds. He helped found Idealab with Bill Gross and he was an early LP in TenOneTen. Howard. I can't summarize all the highlights, so I will just pause and say it's a real honor to have had our lives and careers cross paths.

Thanks for being here. You're welcome. It great to be back in California. I've been investing in LA since the early eighties. So I had a presence here for a long time. Well, I'm from Pasadena, and so Idealab is, you know, one of the things that put LA on the map. It is. I had been a professor at Caltech back in the early seventies.

And so I lived in Pasadena or Altadena actually and enjoyed that and helped bring computer science to Caltech cause they didn't have any. It was one of their sad misses.
Wow. so they just, they didn't see the need for computer science. They didn't understand computer science as a science. They thought it was
just, just a tool, you know? And you know, you don't have a saw department , for laws. You don't have a refrigerator station department for refrigeration. Why would you need a computer science department for
computer
a tool. Interesting. anyways so what I most wanted to pick your brain on, I think was setting up an early stage fund, cuz it's very relevant to 10, 1 10 and Sure.
you've got a lot of expertise there.
This is a broad question, but like what do you think of the venture fund landscape today in terms of how small funds compete with big funds?
It certainly changed dramatically. When Josh and I started first round back in late oh four, beginning over five Josh had come to me and said, I have this idea. There's nobody doing seed stage funding,
So he said, you know, you could start a company for a half million bucks today, so let's start a small fund and fund emerging companies. And, uh, we were the first formal seed stage fund and uh, it worked out very well by 2010. There were several
hundred, uh, in fact, we showed our LPs one year a slide with sort of 14 new seed stage funds, beginning with the letter f
with Funny,
So, , that landscape changed We still were in a place in the mid 2000, 2005 to 12 where it was sort of two partners starting a fund and so on. It was only in the late teens that you started to see the single partner, the solo partner, solo gp.
10 to 20 million fund where people who had left Google or Facebook or whatever , and had some money decide and they liked to invest and their friends wanted to invest with them, they would start a solo GP fund and that changed the landscape dramatically.
So right now it's a very different landscape.
And so you have funds like First Round, which used to be, you know, kept in the 120 550 million range. Now raising a $500 million fund. and when we raised our B Capital early stage fund, the Ascent Fund, it was 250 million
So most of what the early stage funds with many partners are doing is really series A
investing, which is back to the kind of thing that people did, you know, in the eighties and nineties and so on. The sync Solo GP funds are the ones doing the really seed stage,thing.
but it has definitely changed the landscape.
changed. Do you still think there's a role or if you're not ready to be the 250 million, how do the dynamics shake out? Like , who ends up being competitive?
The people who are competitive are people who are very
focused, who, who stake out a claim in some particular area. , to really be able to with the big guys at the very early stage.
how do you think with like ownership structure, do you think different things work? First one, you took huge ownership. I don't quite know what it is at B
that you can, so, you know the, fact is the, the one lesson you learned early and I learned early in the career is what really matters if you're an early stage investor is ownership.
Because you may only have one or two of your companies really win, and if you own 10 or 20% of them, At the beginning and you get diluted down to maybe eight or 9% at exit, that's still a fund maker.
, if you own 1% of a lot of companies, it's not a fund maker. At first round. In First round, capital Two, we did very well, uh, spectacularly well in fact.
But at first round three, we had a, a lot of companies where we didn't have a lot of
ownership. So for example, we invested in Jamie and ring.com here in.
here
But we ended up only like one or 2%. And so it got sold for a billion dollars which if you had a small fund, might have been great, but for us it was a 20 million exit in a hundred and whatever, 50, 60, I don't remember exactly.
Million dollar fund. So it didn't move the needle.
So
you really do have to focus on ownership with big funds And so at B Capital, , in our ascent fund, we want to. At least 7% on a seed stage and 10% at the A stage. And we like to buy up.
We like
more. I mean obviously, but that's kind of our minimum.
And we pretty much won't do a deal for less than that cuz it takes your time, it takes your effort and it's not gonna return the fund.
And how much ownership do you think about having an exit if you are exiting the series A with 10%?
we like , to continue to our pro rata and have , eight to 10% at.
you know, if the companies get giant then it'll get down to 5%, but, you know, if five percent's not bad at first Round Capital we ended up in that range with, uh, Uber,
and Roblox. and Roblox. Roblox. actually
returned more than more than Uber. So, uh, it works very well.
Mm-hmm. . So other thoughts on doing the early stage really well? I have been chatting with Virginia and she talks about reserve allocation being something you've brought a lot to as.
Yep. So I think a lot of the money is made by doubling and tripling down on the
winners.
Mm-hmm. And that means having more reserves. At first round, it was typically two to one $2 a reserve for every dollar.
A lot of funds start out at 50
50. Mm-hmm. ,
it's not
enough.
You really need to be able to go further.
try. Hmm. Um, , are you as comfortable doing later stage investing? Cause I do find I get less comfortable evaluating a series B company.
capital. Well uh, you know, at B Capital, a lot of the team has been trained With Raj in the private equity world.
,So
they are very focused on the numbers
I'm very comfortable analyzing them from the product and management team point of view.
Like when you said you were comfortable evaluating the product and the team, how have you gotten good at evaluating team in particular?
Uh, well, I hope I'm good at it. You know, it, remember I was a professor for 15
years,
so
have a good track record of being good at
Yeah, I, and so you learn, you learn a lot about things. What do I look for? Uh, you know, I talk about the six P's I, in people, but I look for the.
Integrity in somebody. I look for the fact that they'll tell me the bad news first and not always try to tell me the good news. And I really look for them having passion and persistence,
And. One of the things I've found is sometimes the most passionate founders who succeed really well are people who are bipolar.
who are, Ooh,
And right.
And I, I was thinking about it last night. I had dinner with a, one of the early founders that I backed in the late seventies actually. and he's admittedly bipolar and, uh, He did three companies, you know, one of which was a huge success, and another of which went public and was a big success.
And when he's in the those up moods, he can sell anybody on
anything. And Elon
Musk is clearly that
way, you
know, and, whether it's bipolar or somewhere on the spectrum like Bill Gates or Mark Zuckerberg or some of other
people,
they're basically in that mode.
when they're up,
they can sell
you. And that passion translates itself.
You just have to watch for when they turn down
for Yeah. Yeah. so interesting. I put myself on that spectrum, but I like to hang out then with people like David Waxman
Yes.
Stable, more stable people. Yes. I understand.

I mean, I, I look for people who are Yeah. Larger than life, in a
Yes.
Larger than life. But the other thing they have and, and great entrepreneurs have is persistence. Because not everything goes right.
Right.
And you have to be able , to stick it out when things go.
wrong. Mm-hmm.
and you know, that you ask. Questions, of those entrepreneurs, like, you know, not such, what was your biggest failure?
But, you know, what did you power through that, that you thought all was lost, but you, you saved it in the end. And to try to get a sense of how persistent these people are.
that's a good question. Any other questions you really like?
Well, I, I do the, so where do you see yourself in five years?
Yeah.
With this company,
you know? Yeah. To try to see if their vision's big enough.
Yeah. You know, if it's too narrow a vision, , that's a problem. I, there are a lot of. Pitches that we get, all of us as venture capitalists and you say that's gonna be a great $20 million a year company.
It'll throw off a lot of profits and cash, but it's not a venture scale
company. Yeah.
When you're, um, looking at, cuz you've done a lot of LP funding, like seeding a lot of early stage managers. Are you looking for similar things or
So I've done, I, I'm in probably 80 or so venture funds. and the last 30 or so have been mostly diverse managers.
Uh, or with some particular hook
and they're seeing deals that we just never would've seen before.
And to me, that's one of the, the big areas. And what I look for then is that they have the network, but they also have some experience in what investment decision making looks like.
That makes sense. And how much do you think managers need to have like a wider lens into the macro environment of the times?
So from a seed point of. You wanna be investing in every vintage, and one of the things I've imposed on B Capital is to be very careful that we invest our dollars rateably, that we don't go, you know, too heavily in a particular year.
So clearly, uh, 20 20, 20 21, the valuations got way outta whack and we kept a lot of our stuff in reserves so we could still invest in 22 as the valuation started to come down and in now in 23 as they're continuing to come down. I think that's very important.
Mm,
How are you able to stay on top of all of the companies and as a fun, like, first round grows, like how do you get company updates regularly? So you're on top of it all?
Well, we do, so I mean, we have. Both at first round and now at B Capital, a weekly call where we, we have a sheet go over all our companies, anything new that's happening.
So all of the partners, associates, principals, and so on are kept current. We expect the principles who are in charge of particular companies to keep us updated, to be in touch with the company. Preferably weekly, but certainly biweekly. So you have to stay close enough to them and know what they.
and
at B Capital and at first round, we have these platform teams that help the
companies and
they keep us informed of how the company has been using our services
and, uh, in our case, Paul Carpus, who runs our Ascent platform, has been terrific about having the companies utilize the BCG resource, but also telling the team, you know, they made this introduction, they got this customer, they're moving forward in this direction. So we, we do try to stay on top of all that.
direction.
I do try as well,
Yes,
But I expect somebody to have a relationship with the CEO and preferably with at least one or two other people at, at the company,
,whether it's
the cfo, whether it's a people officer, a cto, whatever,
that they can call and just get a, a, a temperature, a pulse, how things going.
Yeah. And so with Bcap and with Ascent I understand broadly you're mostly in like digital transformation space. Tell me how you talk about your focus right now,
Well at Ascent, we do a lot of digital health Karen Page up, in San Francisco and, and so on. We do a lot of supply chain that Gabe Green Bounds an expert in.
We do deep tech that I. interested in for a long time. We have some brain computer interface technologies, the quantum computing technologies, things of that sort. We do a little bit of ad tech and marketing tech.
So you know, focus is when you have a a 250 million fund. I mean, we don't have one
focus. Mm-hmm.
America. Yeah. Let's talk about one of those. So I saw, I'm gonna forget the name of your company, but it was putting like transparent, like a little film on top of a brain in between, under the bone on top of the squishy part of the
brain.
Yes. It's called Precision
neuroscience. We just, uh, raised a 42 million series a, uh, with a bunch of great, great players. We are trying to help cure epilepsy initially.
So what we do is we drill a very.
Slit in the brain. And then we put the electrodes, as you say, between the dura and the scalp. Unlike Neurolink, which puts probes into the brain. And when you stick needles in, into the brain itself, you kill neurons.
So we don't kill any neurons. No neurons were killed in the . Uh, and then what we do, we. 4,000 electrodes on there to measure and also to send signals back into the brain. Right now the, largest other player in the industry is a couple of hundred. and we can then tell when an epileptic seizure is gonna start and then send signals in to stop
it. And then there are a lot of other things we can do once we go past that and we can recognize other things and there are other diseases we're gonna work on and, and so on.
It was amazing. I mean, it's just, I saw the demo. It was a
pigs
brain, It's a pigs brain And the pig's still alive. they walk around with this stuff on their scalp
stuff. So we're just gonna be able to understand what's going on in people's brains and then fire signals back at them.
Absolutely. you know, it, the question is we can certainly read the brain,
and
then the question is, can we write to the brain
and
what kind of signals can we put into the brain?
And that's all happening in the next.
next, and is that a big AI model as well? That's just understanding
the, absolutely. A huge machine learning problem to take this massive signal that's coming out and correlate it to the actions of the muscles and, and the thoughts and so on. But it's a solvable AI problem, and so it's being solved.
it's, yeah. What's your thought generally on just AI and maybe generative AI being the buzzy thing?
Well,
Jenn, today, you know, I, I, we were at, a meeting. At IBM in Jan, early January meeting with their top research people in Yorktown Heights on the Quantum and on the AI side. And I opened the meeting and I said there were about 10 people.
How many of you have not spent 10 hours on chat G p T in the last two weeks? . Yeah.
And everybody laughs cuz they all had, of course. Yeah.
it is a step function. Yes.
It has so many problems right now, as we've seen with, the training with, which we saw with.
Te Microsoft's early attempt at the chatbot that got taught to become a racist misogynist in a day in 24 hours.
It didn't take any longer than that. We're starting to see some of that with chat, G P T It is clear that the generative AI has some dramatically good uses even today in code writing. and it does a really good job at that.
Writing papers, it's okay at you know, it's, it's got so many wrong answers. That's why Google didn't release
it, because they knew
how many wrong answers it would give. Uh, my friend, bill Gross, is the founder of Ideal. Asked cha e p t for a bio on Bill Gross, and three paragraphs were about him, and two paragraphs were about the Bill Gross from
pimco. Right.
So, you know, it, it, just, it's not quite there
yet.
Mm-hmm. . Yeah, it is a step change.
Has it affected when you guys have discussions about do we invest, do we put resources behind investing here? And how you think about investing?
Well, we're, we look at companies like customer success type companies and we say, and companies that have chatbots and things
already. And the question is, how can the chat G P T technologies, how can the large language model technologies.
Impact those things. We're gonna have much more natural dialogues with users
and because of the deep fake technology, those dialogues can seem awfully real and we can make them as real as you'd like with a user.
They can be a video of you talking to your doctor who happens to be on the beach and the Caribbean. But the cha e p t deep fake is doing a great job of keeping the patient
paper. Yes. It's an amazing Yeah, I saw a great demo where you can roll into your zoom, call in your pajamas and not showered, but it takes your headshot and it deep fakes your face.
Right on there. It was like, this is great this is the future. Yep. What about Quantum? What do we need to know about Quantum and what's state of things in the future?
So what we need to know about quantum is there, there are a set of problems that.
Just not possible to solve with today's classical computing, And those problems, there are problems that can be solved with quantum computing.
They're in, pharmaceutical, in drug discovery obviously in code breaking which is the one that gets talked about the most in financial services where you're searching at gigantically large spaces. And what quantum computing can do is search those. it's not just in parallel, but it's literally in an instant
and because of the superposition way it works, and so, We need two things for quantum computing to succeed, we need enough qubits, quantum bits.
IBM has a machine with 439 today. We need several thousand at least, and we need to get to millions eventually. And we need people who understand how to build quantum algorithms. The, it's not writing software in the way that we're mostly used to writing
It's more like creating gates and electrical engineering problems,
uh, at least for, for some of these.
And so there's a lot interesting investing going on in quantum software companies and companies that have, are figuring out how to write the software and which piece of the software needs to run on the quantum computer and which piece can run on the classical computer,
because these are all gonna be hybrids. And so what you'll do is you'll run most of your a. On one computer and then you'll switch to the quantum ma agram for the piece that it needs, and that'll probably be a quantum computer on the cloud somewhere.
Who's furthest along on it?
I would say that IBM is furthest along. They've got a lot invested, not just in their hardware side, but in building an ecosystem of quantum software companies, uh, that they're backing and are bringing together to try to make sure people start creating things.
So you can go on the web and run an algorithm if you can devise one on ibm. Quantum
computers for free. And so IBM has really fostered the field, I think more than anyone else. Google is still doing quite a lot of work in the software side of it with the Sandbox AQ Group, uh,
What's interesting is to look at the pharma companies, the finance companies that also are keeping, uh, some of the quantum stuff alive and trying to figure out how to stay ahead of it so that when the machine's hardware is ready, they're ready to take advantage of it.
A lot of work is going on in quantum communications, which is a little different than quantum computing.
And that's for, for sort of tap free communication. China is ahead of us
there. China's
been using quantum communications to satellites with using quantum
entanglement to,
uh, send messages to satellites.
Is, does B Capital have a presence in China?
B Capital does have a presence in China. We've stayed away from politically sensitive stuff. We've stayed away from consumer stuff. We're collecting data. We have some great investments in the biotech area there because they have really good biotech.
How do you think, because B Capital talked a lot with, Raj and also with Mike Fernandez about the global lens, how do you think about where the US is positioned right now and how these nations are all gonna fit together, especially in, in an internet way?
Well, I mean, we have a big presence even at the Ascent Fund in India and Indonesia and Singapore.
The India is sort of where China was in 2005, which is its voice for gigantic
growth. the government systems have now moved away from the very relatively socialist forms that they took from the founding of India till the you know, 2010 ish, and now are very pro business. And, uh, we're starting.
The explosion in India. I know John Chambers, the former Cisco CEO, has been all in on India for the last five years or so. So has B capital. Eduardo obviously based in Singapore and has had a lot of presence, but we have a, couple of partners in, in India itself. China's a little trickier. Uh, You know, we, we have a great team in China, but we have investors who are wary because of the geopolitical situation.
we're being very careful about with
Yeah. I mean, I'm curious, the geopolitical and also the internet infrastructure to some degree seems to bifurcate a bit, which is, are you built on AWS or are you built on I think it's like Alibaba. Yeah.
I would say that we're seeing a lot of companies who are becoming cloud agnostic.
And you're seeing some software companies that will sort of optimize, uh, every hour and say, okay, we're gonna start instances right now. We're gonna get 'em on GCP cheaper than on
AWS or Azure or Ali or 10 cents Cloud. So I think that. We see everywhere.
The key with China is making sure the data stays in China, any PII stays in China, and that's not hard to do.
So we try to stay away from consumers, so we don't, we don't get any p i but for those companies that do, just make sure that that data is in the clouds that are in China.
in China. Mm-hmm. understand. Yeah. Raj did something really telling, so, okay, so my dad's a professor at Caltech and worked during the Cold War with Russia on a lot of the sending stuff into space. and Raj was saying, well, it's very different because we have, way more economically tied with China than the US and Russia were.
Which is kind of obvious, but it was stuck with me
Very much so. And you know, look, the world had an amazing time during the 2010s, right? The, the global Tom Friedman's, uh, world is
flat,
really came true.
It was super cheap. The consumers here in the US and the rest of the world benefited dramatically from all of that. The global supply chain and China benefited by taking hundreds of millions of people from the farms and poverty into manufacturing jobs and so on. And, uh, you know, with conditions that were pretty good.
I mean, there were, it wasn't like some of the third world with slave labor and child labor. They, they did a pretty good job of it. So that was a beneficial for the, for the whole world. It's just in the last , three or four years, really. I think that the Chinese leadership became a little fearful that there was too much push towards quote, American style democracy.
And, uh, that that was not something they wanted to see. They, they wanted to see the technology grow and all of that. They just were, you know, like any leaders, they wanted to stay in power. So,
uh, too much democracy isn't great and I think Jack, Poking them in the eye at a particularly bad time. Just set them off onto that course.
They seem to be pulling back now. They've said they're done, regulating technology. I forget the way they put it, but and they realize that it's important. But some of the damage has been done and so we're now seeing a move towards more isolationism or nationalism. And I look, I think it's a great thing for the US to have the chip sacked and to start manufacturing more here.
There's no question those jobs should and can be here. And I think it's. Very clear for the world that TSMC is, is a world resource. And you know, so there's, there's a lot of nervousness over whether China is gonna do something that would make that less of a world resource. But I think for right now, we're okay on that one.
And I think we're seeing. Signs of thaw, you know, the balloons notwithstanding that, you know, remember we sent U twos over Russia, ,
and, and they shot one down and that caused us a, a blip. I think, you know, they're sending balloons. And they have been, by the way, for quite a while,
Yeah, it made good tv. Yeah, no, I mean, I think it's one of the things that we're seeing as like a reinvestment in American manufacturing, and I'm not a rah nationalist, but it,
I think it's great. I think, look, we've, we've had the hollowing out of so many cities because of manufacturing jobs going away and they go away for this basic economic reasons, right?
It's cheaper to make it somewhere else. And if it's cheaper to make it there and have it imported back here you know, and FG had all the tariffs and anything else, then that's what's gonna happen. The, the laws, you can't repeal the laws of economic.
I love that. You can't repeal the laws of economics. So shifting back to investing. Do you have any other tips for seed? Seed funds
The key to venture success is sourcing. And we used to say at first round, it's not a sin to pass on a great deal. I mean, Josh and I looked at Airbnb and we both asked our wives, would you have somebody stay on our
couch
if we could make 30 bucks? You know, , they both said not, not on your life. it's a sin to have not seen the deal and be able to pass
on it.
Right? And we say the same thing at B Capital.
So you really have to say how. Get into the flow where I see all the great deals and if you're focused and you become a, quote expert in that area, in some area and well known, you'll see all the great
deals Cuz ,those entrepreneurs want to talk to you.
A hundred percent, Any areas where you lean in to help your portfolio of seed managers
Well, uh, communication, uh, LP
communications, right? I mean, I think it's, if you want to grow a fun family over, over a period of a decade or two, you really have to have good relationships with your limited partners, and that means a lot of overcommunicating.
,I
think Josh was brilliant and a master at Overcommunicating with first rounds LPs in that first decade. And, you know, just, quarterly reports, calls, reaching out to a lot of them. It made them comfortable that we were good stewards of their, of their money,
Yeah. Incubating Uber was a good one too. Uh,
Yeah.
That, that
was
good that that
helped. But that was partly because Garrett Camp had done his first company, which was, stumble upon
And then we sold that to eBay and we said to him, when you finish. Whatever with eBayyou know, come to us, we have a desk for you and, some money and we'll, well, whatever you're gonna do next. We'll
back, we
had, uh, at first we found something called the Blank Check Club.
if you made us a lot of money, your next deal you got, you had a, you had some money from
us.
that's a good club. Okay. More personal questions. What Howard have you had to power through?
have I had to power through? Well, you know, the transition from tenured faculty. Lifetime
appointment
to risk, taking, in the world was something that took me a little bit of time to get used to. I've led a very fortunate charmed life. What can I say? I mean, I,
what I like to say is my success has been picking great
partners. So
my wife of 55 years now, Jim Simon. Bill Gross, Josh Kapelman, Raj Ganglia, Eduardo Sare.

But picking great partners. I mean, that's, that's the whole thing,
I agree. It really is. And, think most people don't spend enough time trying to figure out who they should be working with, or who they wanna work with,
and
figuring out ways in to get to work with those people.
And I'm curious why you think they don't like. I don't, because I'm nervous to ask for time from great people.
from a, a lot of people are nervous to ask for time from great people, and, uh, more women are than men,
frankly.
and therefore they're, ashamed or they're, they just feel, gee, I'm just gonna get rejected and therefore I don't want the rejection.
It's always great to have had experience as a door-to-door salesman or one of those things where, where, you know that 99% of the time is rejection. . When my kids ask me what I do as a venture capitalist, I say, it's very simple. I say no to people all the
time.
So, okay. So you recognize that you've had an amazing career and yet a lot of people who recognize that I feel like become unapproachable and have big egos. And how have you avoided you come across as approachable still ?
Well, I like to think I am approachable, but, uh, how have I avoided it? You know, it's upbringing, right?
I mean, it's, you
I mean mm-hmm.
it's also. What I trained to do effectively was be a teacher,
and that's. What I do as a venture capitalist, I'm basically taking young people with great ideas, nurturing them, trying to bring out the best in them.
And I'm doing that as a venture capitalist and making a lot more money than I was as a professor. And I'm also looking out sort of five or six years now instead of 20 years, which I did as a professor. And I'm only going to constantly learn if I'm really open and listen to people who are in general, much younger than.
me and have different backgrounds than I have and so on. And it's that constant learning that keeps me going every day.
Yeah. I do think though, that sometimes there's listening, but then being approachable enough to actually have people tell you things
Um, How do you feel about being famous?
I don't think of myself as famous. I mean, obviously in the venture world, I'm well known. People say, uh, my wife always, we a joke about this. They'll come over and say, you know, your husband's a legend. And I'll say, no, I'm a myth
a myth Funny. What do you mean by
that?
Well, myths and legends, right?
I mean, you know,
so
Yeah. No, I just sometimes think that,
the more well known you get, sometimes you get a, target on your back and you've managed to avoid that,
I think I've avoided that by switching careers every
decade. right? I mean, you know, I did, I did sort of eight or nine years at Renaissance and then eight or nine years on my own and then first round and when we started I told Josh 10 years and now be capital for seven. I told Raj Raj 10 years as
well. So I just, you know, by the time people are ready to take aim at me, I'm somewhere else.
Quit while you're ahead. Go out on high note. That's interesting. what is it remarkable about Raj and Eduardo or the team when you joined?
Well, they presented a vision to me that was a global vision.
And now at first round we were basically just us. while I was there, we did close to 500 investments of which 10 were outside the
investments. Wow. I
didn't realize that.
And now being global, I mean, you then can stay. I mean,
right.
right. So being global, so when I was doing that Office of the Future stuff, I was doing it all over the world.
I was in, in Asia, in Brussels, and in fact, uh, I went to Japan in 1981 and I gave a talk that just went really great. And, you know, they, they were laughing at the humor and all that. And I said to the Transla, You know, you did an amazing job translating. They laughed at the jokes. He said, no, no, I translated as the American professor was told the joke.
Please
Laugh
, but it, but it
kept the energy going in the
audience. ..Yeah.
Great .
And so what Eduardo and Raj presented to me was the fact that the world, the global markets, and particularly Asia, We're gonna grow so fast that there were gonna be amazing investment opportunities there. There's a couple of hundred million people in Indonesia with cell phones and smartphones, and they, they're able to use
apps. And
in India there's 1.4 billion people, and Modi gave a billion people, you know, basically digital bank accounts on their phones.
You know, it just kind of amazing stuff.

And I bought into it and said, I'll, I'll help
you, I'll help you build that.
Fantastic. And how do you think about prioritizing your time or just the flood of requests and emails that must come into your inbox? Every. The Day
I use something called SaneBox, which is an amazing
tool. We
don't never invested in it, but it, filters out hundreds of emails. Not spam filtering, but, my inbox. , which get about a thousand emails a day. that are not spam filter, I mean Cuz I've been on the internet since 1972. Right. I've had emails since 1972. And so my email addresses are out there I try to get to inbox 20 or less every Sunday night,
less. Wow.
IBM used to have a rule back in the seventies and eighth that you had to return every phone call within 24 hours. at least to say that you got it and you were working on it. And I kind of feel the same.
I really try to return e every email. I don't follow 24 hours as much, but certainly by Sunday night you've got, I either gotten a response or, you're never gonna get one.
Good for you. I'm inspired. Last question. How do your friends describe you?
Uh, I'll tell you what my wife said. She, well, she met my mother on our second date and she said, my mother said to her, he's a little man in a hurry,
And
I
think my friends described me kind of that way, which is sort of constantly learning, constantly moving.
Mm-hmm. I like that. Well, I'm so glad at first. I'm glad you came on the podcast. Thank you so much. Um, But I'm glad you get a chance to really , feel grateful for this amazing career you've had.
And B Capital's a huge president in LA and so thank you for all that you're doing in this broad venture ecosystem.
Well, I've been, as I say, investing in LA since 1982. And I, I love the ecosystem here and, uh, and thank you for having me.
Great.