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The Twenty Minute VC: Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
20VC: The Chainsmokers on Raising Their First $35M Fund and Entering The World of Venture, Dealing with Vulnerability and Insecurity Today & How Music and Venture Compare; The Similarities and Differences
20VC: The Chainsmokers on Raising Their First $35M Fund and Entering The World of Venture, Dealing with Vulnerability and Insecurity Today & How Music and Venture Compare; The Similarities and Differences

20VC: The Chainsmokers on Raising Their First $35M Fund and Entering The World of Venture, Dealing with Vulnerability and Insecurity Today & How Music and Venture Compare; The Similarities and Differences

The Twenty Minute VC: Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The PitchGo to Podcast Page

Alex Pall, Drew Taggart, Harry Stebbings, THE CHAINSMOKERS
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35 Clips
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Sep 21, 2020
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Episode Summary
Episode Transcript
0:00
Welcome to the 20 min in VC with me Harry stabbings and to the show State and we have a first our first Grammy award-winning guest their music is filled many a Peloton ride for me and just last week. They announced their new Venture mantis now mantis is that first 35 million dollar Venture fund. And so if you haven't guessed it already and thrilled to welcome Alex pool and Drew Taggart founders of The Chainsmokers, and now mantis with the new vehicle. They have backing from some of the best in the business including Ron Conway, Mark Cuban kitra boy, and they're Off to the Races in terms of building the portfolio getting in.
0:30
To some really hotly contested Browns forfeit on and Loan snap the vehicles also managed by meal on cock and Jeffrey Evans and if being the most sought-after DJs in the world and having their own fund wasn't enough during Ali's also own a Production Studio A stakeholders in the spirit brand Yaya tequila and last year co-founded the ticketing platform yellow heart. I have to say this episode was just so much fun to do and I want to say a huge. Thank you to Christian guard at 137 vanishes for the introduction and some fantastic questions suggestions Christian. I really do sir preciate that but before we move into the shows,
1:00
I want to take a moment to mention hellosign and great example of a company that found success in building a product focused on user experience hellosign is an effortless e-signature solution used by millions to securely send a request legally valid digital signatures and agreements. They raised a total of 16 million dollars in funding and recently got acquired by Dropbox for an impressive 230 million dollars check out. Hello sign.com forward slash to zero VC to join the thousands of companies and Founders who value fast secure and simple
1:29
it shoots and I do have to mention another incredible product Centric business digits digits have spent the last two years building this incredibly powerful Financial engine for businesses. Now, they're ready to show you what they can do with it back in April. They announced a real-time dashboard to help you manage your company's expenses for free and recently A little birdie told me they have some incredible amounts coming up. They've raised almost 33 million dollars from Benchmark and GV and the team behind digits is just epic personally. I think it's one startup to watch this year and the next and last but by no means
2:00
Least because anyone tried to send a business payment recently. Oh my God, it was easier to get into college you have reviews you have this never-ending back and forth between colleagues which just slows the process down. It's a lot of work that continues to pile up as your business payments scale and that's where rudaba steps in was set up through to pull apart is not only as focus on digital business payments, but the time it saves on both the accounting and the operations sides did I mention the ruse ball automatically updates your accounting records making your Finance teams lives so much easier.
2:29
Ji'er request a 15 minute demo and start managing your B2B payments electronically a true sport.com /to zero VC for free. There's no transaction fees. No seat fees for one full month join root ball and building the best platform for businesses to manage their workflows and send and receive money digitally a truce Paul.com /to zero VC, but that's quite enough for me. So now I'm very excited to hand over to Drew tag it and Alex pool of The Chainsmokers and mantis.
3:02
You have now arrived at your destination
3:05
jobs. It is such a pleasure to have you on the show stamp had so many great things from Christian at 137. So thank you so much for joining me today. My pleasure Madam. That is so kind of you. And this is a more than exciting episode for me considering I know me in few middle-aged white man on Sand Hill Road, but I do want to start today with a little bit on you guys. So tell me how did you make your way into the world of startups and investing and then what was the Genesis of the idea with mantis? Yeah. I think Alex and I
3:29
when we first met in 2012, we obviously really bonded over dance music but we were also had a lot of entrepreneurial Ambitions that I think has really like played a key role in making a successful and addition to our passion for creating The Chainsmokers as a music project and we kind of always approached our career. I hate to say it this way but like in the beginning we kind of growth hacked our first promotional platform. It's really hard when you're an artist that no one knows or cares about and you're starting out in a genre that's dominated by primarily European Talon and for these two American kids and we found our first way into the music industry.
4:00
by re mixing Indie artists that we love that we found on this blog aggregator called hype machine and high machine is kind of like the first viral chart of the internet and the hype machine chart was populated by primarily Indy Indy electronic artists that didn't really have a huge presence in EDM of the dancing but that was amazed that we love them we grew up on so we reach out to all of them and we would beg all like everyone on the top hundred chart if we could do a remix of their song for free and one out of 50 would say, yes, and they send a stems and we work our asses off trying to create something that could eventually turn into the chain smoker sound and Alex would go
4:29
go and look at the back end of height machine and look at every blog that they pulled songs from and then you find every writer at every blog and every time we had a song a remix you would write a personalized email to every single kid at each one of these blog I'm talking like three to four hundred emails / remix, and these things were hysterical like totally took the piss out of what probably most labels were sending around their generic promo emails, and we ended up forming this really incredible bond with all these probably college kids writing for music blogs, which turned into this like extremely powerful promotion platform for us and probably the first six months of our
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career.
4:59
Question is that when we invest in Founders say often, I double-click it hard on like what drives you what fundamentally is. The reason that you're doing what you're doing and you Lydia sending 300 to 400 emails to individualize bloggers. What was the drive for you in the
5:12
beginning? I think we just wanted our music to be heard and I think it's been very beneficial for us as we understand. Both of us are very social and we understand the power of relationships and acknowledging people and the importance of any music project or any business in general the importance of Partnerships and that it takes a whole village to get you there. And I think that was probably the first thing that we did.
5:29
I've really just acknowledging the people that we mutually needed each other to help each other. They need to stuff the post and we need them to post us and just acknowledging The Human Side of it that we're all people that are just huge fans of music and treating the relationship like that instead of like here's a blank promo email and you should post this because this is how great I am which is unfortunately the approach of most labels at the time.
5:46
So they know how that feels in terms of these press releases, but tell me how did it end transition into the world of tech.
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Yeah. So we already kind of mentioned beginning of how we use Tech. We also like crowd-sourced a couple of our early tours using this platform tilt which was like a really cool idea to like, hey, like let's not go places that people don't want to
6:00
Let's go to the places where they really want us so through using this technology. We were like, wow, this is an interesting space how we're using it to our benefit. And then once we started to have some success musically or business manager who's been really instrumental person kind of shaping the way we think about business and conduct The Chainsmokers organization. He was like, you should start looking at passive ways to make money obviously investing in the stock market places like that. But even in to businesses that you are excited about an ember was one of the first companies we actually invested in if not the first and they're actually doing terrific which is a godsend because if they really did badly, maybe we wouldn't
6:29
Feel the same about it at all, but was joke one of our investments have gone to zero yet, but it's just cause we haven't been around long enough, but it was funny because now I can think of all the reasons why we invested into this business, but at the time I'd be lying if we said we were thinking that way we were just like this is a really cool product. We really love the founder. They have a road map to success. This isn't going to break the bank for us. Let's make an investment and over time. We realized that we were kind of getting more or less a lot of the same types of things products consumer Brands things like that. Naturally, you know, it's like, oh, let's get The Chainsmokers involved will say they believe in this product and then they endorse it and then they grow.
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So we were seeing that we were getting fur terms into deals that were hot that other people can get into and then we were possibly adding value through our name and it wasn't probably till about a couple years ago that we realized that what if we change the direction of this and we start seeking out those opportunities into other areas that are of interest to us and last about cpg stuff and things of that nature and that's when things got really interested
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in the totally in terms of that's when things get interesting I guess my question to you is like it's a little bit of a personal one, but when I made the move from like media and podcasting to venture now, I was shitting myself. How do you
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feel especially you said you wrote the first check their into Amber as your first tech check. How do you feel about making the transition? Are you nervous you excited but want to be a personal emotions feel
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like yeah, I think Alex and I we've started a number of businesses that are related to The Chainsmokers and have a TV and Film Production Company. Our first film just came out in theaters called words on bathroom wall, and we're really excited about we started a tequila company, which is I think the alignment with The Chainsmokers is pretty clear there. We wanted to create a youthful tequila brand that spoke to our fans and kind of like the internet tequila and I think the fun is also a business that's inherently
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Like who we are as people, I mean it kind of a couple of the stories that we told you in the beginning of this we have an insane thirst for knowledge and we have this incredible opportunity to learn about all these different Industries and meet all these incredibly smart people and I think that's another key thing that convinced us that we could do this, which was as Alex and I said like we did like a hundred eighty shows a year and every one of those shows somewhere Arenas 50 were Vegas. Then there were festivals all over the world. And every one of those shows is had a pre-party an after-party and we love hosting hospitalities probably 50% of what we do and through that we've met so many incredible people in
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the tech industry and we've connected a lot of them and they've been very helpful in guiding us into how we should think about the space and I made interest of the people that just helped us learn more and more and we've been very fortunate for that. And so yes, we are nervous. This is a new space and there's a lot riding on this and it's very liver died for us to make this work. But we are very fortunate to have a bunch of people way smarter than us that are advising us. Yeah. There's so many similarities between the two spaces which is kind of like an interesting thing to you to discover as we dive deeper into it. So that kind of does bring some sense of relief, but ultimately it's like we've spoken to
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Enough incredibly successful people over the last three months that like everyone begins to contradict themselves. Anyway, you know the beginning like, all right. All right. I'm thinking about just the right way and then like two months in your like wait. Wait. Okay, so no one knows anything and in for all just trying our best
9:16
I like if you listen to my show you'll hear once a price does not matter and then the
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other say price always matters, trust me.
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No one fucking nose. That's my last
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album 2500 shows. I think one thing that we do have confidence in is looking for businesses that
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That we think about the way that our fans would look at them and if they're helpful to them and the people that we understand the
9:34
most well that was going to be my question to you which is like, okay. So now we understand that if I'm an
9:38
investor listening or I mean a massive stay. What is this straight down the Fairway deal for you where you're like, absolutely this is exactly what mantis is going for both in terms of stage sector check size one strap. Probably not what you would think we actually are pretty bearish on investing in music tech companies, which I feel like we see probably most of them that are out there as of our profile, but we haven't made an
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In the music space yet. We invest in this company won't snap which is an AI mortgage lender that operates on blockchain to process loans in about half the time that a rocket loans, which is the next quickest issue ever loans can process and the relationship to The Chainsmokers is probably a lot less obvious there. But the way that we think about it is a lot of our fans when we started out we were in college and that was in 2012. So now there are 30 ish and they are dealing with paying back student debt and they are probably going out to buy their first house. And this is a company that makes that process way way easier and we figured out that would be something to be very useful to
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Our fans also brilliant founder. There was a great Mutual value add for both of us so that deal and less obvious, but very helpful to our fans. I
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would say kind of more generally like customer acquisition fundamentally is less cost
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effective than it's ever been in distribution is more important than it's ever been and I think you to a much greater extent than me but both provide
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distribution that others can't on can't tables and that's why you get special deals. And that's the cell. I guess. My question to you is to what extent are you able to other than Landing your name really engage in the companies they guess for you guys personally. Like how do you like to work?
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The
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canvas pricing of the partners the most important thing. I mean we're Founders ourselves. So we understand the excitement in the stress that a lot of these people are going through and being able to identify with people like that. I think is really helpful when we created man as the idea was to create a family of LPS amongst the chain smoker Equity that we can all add value into the business will be make they can also advise us to make calculated decisions. So we really curated rlp list in a very intentional way where we kind of have a guy for everything that's a respective leader in the industry. And that's also the help us advised us and make the smart decisions but also add
11:29
Value into the businesses that we invest in through their channels and networks. And that's something we were pretty clear about when anyone invested as an LP and are fun. So obviously there's the Press element and things like that but to us, it's a red flag when it companies like hey, can you just like post this on social media? You know, they made me feel like that's a really short-sighted way for us to add value through our tequila business through playing shows. We have relationships with every restaurant every Club every venue point of sale systems. We have a Global Network kind of at our fingertips to add value to these businesses really help them grow. Sometimes it's as simple as an introduction. We have one founder who's become a good friend of ours.
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And his helping basically unionized small restaurants to fight against like the big boober eat some companies like that. And if his dream was to meet Marcus Lemonis and we didn't know Marcus at the time but we knew we had was some finagling we can get in touch with him and he ended up being the greatest guy ever and we put him in touch with his founder. And not only is he going to do a piece on the business with it show, it looks like and that's going to bring exponential value to him. He cased. I'm his mom and is now a friend of his and like those are sometimes the little things that go such a long way for people and obviously that's a strange value add.
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bad situation for us but that's kind of like we're willing to go to any lengths for the companies that we invest in and so our LPS and those things will sometimes reveal themselves at a later stage, but for us it's not just about being a partner to the founders but also to the other VCS and investors in the business themselves, we like to think of ourselves as complementary people investing alongside the best firms out there benchmarks, the and reasons the Sequoia is those guys have been all been super helpful to us and we want them to see our money is different than there's only so much room in around so why not fill it up with people that
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Maybe thinking about this differently and try to bring a different value add tool to the equation
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killers on that element. How are you finding allocations? Because I'm finding personally just allocation
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is getting squeezed and squeezed and squeezed and I'm
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always happy to admit that I'm getting squeezed harder than ever and I'm fighting back and
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sometimes I win sometimes I don't
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how are you finding the allocation is squeeze and although it's
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so great to have The Chainsmokers
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involved. Are you finding actually we're still getting attention on the allocations you
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want. Yeah. I mean it is it's the most competitive time ever to be in VC as we've recently learned as a renewed the space. But yeah, it seems that there are
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And more firms that are investing early stage, which is where we're focused and we look for signaling to see that there are like other Great establish species that are getting involved but due to the size of our Fund in the check size that we write. We're not reading rounds. Typically, we're not taking up the Lion's Share of a lot of these rounds and so we're looking to find not only a good partnership with the founder. But also with usually the leading firm that sees our value-add and is interested in working with us and having US participate alongside them
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kill us. Please found is it always like super not concerned thoughtful around the process of getting to know their investors. How do you fight?
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And I found this I'm given the profile on your availability. I'm interested to hear how you think that we really love to be on every call. I mean, I think that's really important especially at the beginning. We want them to know that we are involved and care a lot about this. We learned a lot through conversations about how Ashton handled his fund and how great of a product guy he was and you know, I think Drew and I bring some really great skills in addition to Milan and Jeff who are the GPS in the funds were very complimentary to us and so us. That's the most exciting conversations. That's when we learn if we want to invest and it's almost like a storytelling session where it's like tell us how
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you got here. Why are you here? What led you to this point? And those stories are so inspiring to us because you're learning this person's life story of why they've LED them to this moment to create this business that hopefully is going to change the entire industry there and that's us as so fascinating and you can really get a sense of like someone because if you're investing early and seed and series a little bit last but you're investing in people and Drew and I really like to think that we're good identifiers of whether someone has that chip on their shoulder because Drew and I had very much both have that chip on our shoulder where it's like we've had conversations like you guys are rich like why are you doing this?
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It's like it never feels like that to us. We've consistently feel like we have so much more to prove and most importantly want to see what we can accomplish in that to us drives us constantly
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God. Is it the chip on your shoulder people like hey, you don't need to be doing this. Why are you doing this? What is that chip come
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from for me? I mean, I think that's part of the reason why I drew and I are in our partnership work. So well, it's like I think we push each other continually out of each other's Comfort zones. And then at that point, it's like, alright. Well, we're doing this we got to do this and I think we've always been like that. I mean for me my father passed away when I was 13 and one of the things I remember like my
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Visor mrs. Park was like you're going to really not amount to anything. If you keep acting like this and being like this and you have a choice you can go left you can go right and I was like, I refuse to be like a statistic for like a child whose father passed away when he was young and now he's like screwed up or something. You know, I'm definitely screwed up but I use that ambition really push me forward and drives us because it's like Drew and I were we always know we're not the smartest guys in the room. But like we know like the work that it takes to accomplish things and there's no even if you're really smart, there's no shortcut through the work and that to us. It's like, all right. We had a hit. Can we make a bigger head?
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Can we reach more fans? Can I show become the best show on the planet? Everything we do is inherent the things we already do but then it's like well if we're gonna do this we gotta like do it the right way in the best way.
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Can I say I just don't being the smallest in the room the thing that I learned from a very wise wise Mentor from the show. He's NPC's not about brains. It's about one simple thing. It's not what you say. It's not what you
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do. It's how you make people feel. That's an I can see that being the case. Absolutely that yeah, that's kind of the whole idea of being supportive of your Founders. You know, I mean, it's like it's not our job to push the buttons for them, but it's our job to be there and be supportive.
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Supportive of those Founders and that's us is something that we've always been like that. We relational guys. Obviously you're invested into degree and that's important. You know, you want to see those returns but to us, it's not about that that if someone passes on us or doesn't let us come it's not like screw you it's like rate will stay in touch, please like I love you. Let's maybe there's an opportunity later, like maybe this isn't even your successful company. Maybe it's something you're going to do in a year from now. So we're never short-sighted like that and that's kind of like the backbone of our music career to it's like as much as you want to like go off sometimes or not do the work. It's like all
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People play such a big role in your success from like little radio towns to the big ones every little thing counts and every time you push someone out the door, you're hurting yourself. Only yourself. Wow. I wish I was as Zetas you all that's correct. I'm not done. I'm like I have the worst camper the most impatient person. I'm more like fuck you. I want in on this round all the next round. Well, Alex is super powered to is he's the world's greatest Hagler and he'll just hassle people like if you say you're like I were interested in having you in this round. You're not going to not hear from Alex once or twice a day.
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A until you like officially pass on us and even that he's dug in a tech you text me once a week to like make sure we know what you're doing. Okay, that's what I was like laughing to our LPS. I was like, I'm so sorry for hassling you all so much. But at least now we're your Hassler is out there on your working on your behalf, but it's important and we learned a lot of that through the music business like artists are amazing people, but they're like in the clouds a lot of them and being created which is amazing and getting things done can be really challenging. So it's like sending a text every like three days being like What's the progress What's the progress where we that you know in and it's like you kind of feel like
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Idiot, but like it's not a no till it's a no in my eyes and I think that's really important when you're dealing people so, you know, you never know what's going through they could it be doing a million things. So like things slip through the cracks whatever but you always know where we stand
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please tell me Drew gave you a superpower being haggling. What's true
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superpower. He can like really clearly kind of see enough the future is the best word, but he has such a low that's a good one. But like what he's like, you know, like investing or even music in particular. It's like it's never about like the status quo right now. It's like, how do we
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Think of this thing in like a year or two from now and where that will be and how do we like position ourselves to be in that place then but also he's a really good house too. And then just like the same thing like a knowledge and people making them feel special like they're the center of your Universe, which I think is like something that everyone wants to feel like all the time. That was really nice. I should have gone with something better than world's best Hassler. He's is he selling
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you tell me on your shoulder come from
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partner to place since I was 12 years old like I wanted to start a business. I definitely have a chip on it.
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Sure that I can't drop back to like one specific event, but always just I think I started my first business when I was like 14 buying Timberland boots and and how would store and selling them on eBay like internationally. I just always been super interested in business and how much you can do and how much you can learn and how many people you can meet and this insatiable appetite and I think what Alex touch on two is like the two of us like have such a high expectations for each other, but I think we both push ourselves to just keep going forward and doing more and meeting new people and learning new things and connecting people. It's a high I totally agree with you in terms of the
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high. I do have one final question for the great.
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Fire they said when you look at the Tina Brown when you look at now the vengeful with
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mantis when you look at object Incredible Journey with The
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Chainsmokers, if I building these ancillary products and building this kind of megacorp at the top, I guess my question is how do you think about
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the Empire that you're building? And what does that look like to you in 20 years given the multiple different components to do benefit each other. Yeah. I think all of them will become more focused. I think the balance between all of those things and making everything work together more efficiently. I guess what it is is like when you started music we just did music as hard as possible. Like I said,
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Shows a year every show that we did a pre-party and after-party in like we'd spend the day time going every radio station doing interviews and all of that and I hope that we can transition to a healthier balance where maybe there's a little bit less of that little bit less touring. We're investing in companies that I like. I think our thesis will narrow of course, like I'm sure everyone does as we learn more and we invest in their companies and we have more experiences and then really excited about our TV and Film Production Company our first movies in theaters now and it's focusing on mental health and it's coming of age story about a kid with schizophrenia when it's a beautiful beautiful film and that's a theme.
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Not schizophrenia, but mental health is a central theme in a lot of our music to and so that was a really great beautiful ways of like how we found another medium to express things that are important to us and I hope that all of our businesses really find that Synergy with each other in the years to come. I'd like a golden retriever Farm also on top of all of that. Yeah, if you have to go to treatment from I'm expecting one of the first invites, I'm bringing you got
20:48
it. I do want to move on to a quick fire round advice. So I'm going to say she'll statement and then you're going to hit me with your immediate thoughts is
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very high pressure. Are you ready to rock and roll? Yeah favorite perfume White having start with you. I would say
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It's kind of funny how a towel poo. It was like a simple book. I read in high school, but there's something about reading the way that it's just simplify certain life lessons and values that I just find so like powerful and you just like calming I guess Jerry the in bearable lightness of being by Milan kundera a couple reasons one. I like the escapism component of it of thinking about being in Prague during the 1960's is fun. And then I also like all the philosophical nature behind that book and thinking about what really matters if we really matter, you know, what's the point? I think they have a been in just like how he tells all that philosophy through
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Characters that you can see yourself and every single one of them I find is a very peaceful read from it is not on the schedule, but I'm
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too intrigued. How do you deal with the nerves? Are you got supernovas for board meetings, which something very different to like playing it Vegas to sold-out stadiums. But like how do you handle the nerves in the pressure
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to kill as a good one? But obviously before a lot of meetings is not appropriate, but I think we both learned this from being on stage and how unpredictable a crowd can be doesn't matter. If you're going to play a sold-out show. You don't know like what the energy in the room is going to be like until you're out there on stage, but I think going out there and being open to
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Everyone's energy and then respecting your power of how you can affect that energy and how you can influence it. I think has been like a really great scale. So you transitions when you're going to speak to someone that's I tighten up an industry that you know a little about but you're very interested into just being humble and open and letting them speak and educate you I think can calm your nerves totally. What about you? I thought yeah, I mean he'll is great. I think you know, you're going to get through these things. I think at the end of the day like it's great to have a partner and people alongside you like. Okay, we're all doing this together and we'll get through this together, but it's never as bad as you imagined it and I think
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That's important in the remember. It's just like be optimistic and you have this like terrible vision of what could happen if this doesn't go perfectly but in the end, it's like you're just psyching yourself out totally
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but ultimate one. What would you most like to change about the world and text a you've got a fascinating purview coming
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from see from music now coming into that world and bunches
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specifically for would you most like to
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change I would probably end this is on behalf of all of our friends we've spoken to in sunflower Valley. I feel like we want to remove them from Silicon Valley and move them somewhere everyone just complains about San Francisco in the culture and everything.
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We never lived there so I don't want to get over it. But I definitely we've thrown a couple After parties there and I wouldn't say it thrives on the energy but I feel like we're almost to a new to make that judgment in some ways. But I think that what we love doing is creating an environment for people to meet one another and thrive in and feel comfortable and truly be themselves. So that's something we just hope to bring to the table which is like whether that's like conferences or events where like people from both sides of the table whether you're an investor or founder can come together and just kind of relate as people and we know some friends that do that really well.
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Maybe Neville who we become close with is an incredible human being who brings people together all the time. And I think that's just such a exciting fun way to do things.
23:37
Totally. Okay question for you. I'm super passionate about mental health icing will see you guys in the pre more vulnerability to what I think is a pretty chest
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pumping kind of
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BS sounding ecosystem the vulnerability that I have like super struggle with bulimia always been a big problem for me. I think people look at you guys in your life. I can kill it with Chainsmokers raised Venture fund kill it with that getting into the best deals. What vulnerability do you have? It could be
23:59
The karate I'm not asking for any spoilers, but like which is a vulnerability for you and relates a little bit to the mental health aspect
24:06
sure. I mean the thing about depression and anxiety is it doesn't matter what is on your resume. It's about how you feel about yourself. And I don't know it's back to the chip on your shoulder type of thing or like expectations for yourself or other people's expectations for you. I think that is something that like we have in me specifically has been like a huge issue for me that I've been trying to deal with my entire career and just like you said a lot of people are like you made money you're in a success.
24:29
A full band you're being able to pursue all these interest of yours, but just the day-to-day sanity component of it and looking out for yourself and taking care of yourself and making sure that you're happy and reminding yourself. What is the point of all this? That's something that I struggle with a lot that I'm continuously working on. It is not a lot different in that. I think it's just I tried to really do kind of block out the noise and it's interesting to think that like if you ask my like sixth grade version that I'd be dealing with like the things that we deal with from like bad, press to whatever like if you call me stupid in sixth grade would like ruined my entire week.
24:59
You don't even in and now we deal with that every like 25 minutes on Twitter. And I think it's just important to remember like who you really are, but it's very easy and tough to get sad about that disjointed nature of like how the world sees you versus like how you view yourself and the people around you that know you view and that disconnection. Can I really be frustrating and saddening because of that stuff cuts through so much louder than the good stuff. So for me, it's like that stuff for the stock. So I try to find the pleasure and like simple things that really make me happy. Now.
25:25
I'm going to give you a choice on the last question last question could be option.
25:29
Renee what are the nice 5 years old for you? And for mantis, what do you most want to achieve with mantis in the vehicle or be the most recent publicly announced investment and why you got so excited you can choose
25:39
a or b through your issues? Yeah. Sure, I guess a and I guess that's a scary want to choose now that I'm thinking about it because there's a lot if I said I knew where it would be I would be lying but you know, I think you kind of touched on it earlier just narrowing our thesis to the point where like the Investments we make the businesses that we have access to have great Synergy with all of the other things that we do and who we are as people on that's my Ultimate Dream.
25:59
Think like obviously our goal is to be getting into great deals to and sometimes you can't control that had takes prioritize because we have to make returns for our investors basis inherent to who we are as people but we have a lot to learn and there's a lot of opportunity to narrow that thesis and just really hone in on the businesses that we think are great and meaningful for not just us in our fun. But Society
26:16
totally with you guys. Listen, this has been so much fun to say thank you so much for joining me, and I'm so enjoyed it.
26:21
Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for having us
26:25
so much fun having Alexandra on the show there and I cannot wait to see the portfolio they build with man.
26:29
This if you liked the episode and want to see more behind the scenes you can on Instagram @ H stabbings 1996 with two bees. However, before we leave each day, I want to take a moment to mention hellosign a great example of a company that found success in building a product focused on user experience hellosign is an effortless e-signature solution used by millions to securely send and request legally valid digital signatures and agreements. They raised a total of 16 million dollars in funding and recently got acquired by Dropbox for an impressive 230 million dollars check out. Hello.
26:59
Fine.com /to zero VC to join the thousands of companies and Founders who value fast secure and simple e-signatures and I do have to mention another incredible product Centric business digits digits have spent the last two years building this incredibly powerful Financial engine for businesses. Now, they're ready to show you what they can do with it back in April. They announced a real-time dashboard to help you manage your company's expenses for free and recently A little birdie told me they have some incredible announcement coming up. They've raised almost 33 million dollars.
27:29
From Benchmark and GV and the team behind digitus is just epic personally. I think it's one startup to watch this year and the next and last but by no means least has anyone tried to send a business payment recently. Oh my God, it was easier to get into college you have reviews you have this never-ending back and forth between colleagues which just slows the process down. It's a lot of work that continues to pile up as your business payments scale and that's where rudaba steps in what's that screws fall apart is not only his focus on digital business payments, but the time it saves on both the accounting.
27:59
Operation sides did I mention the rooster will automatically updates your accounting records making your Finance teams lives so much easier request a 15 minute demo and start managing your B2B payments electronically a truthful.com /to zero VC for free. There's no transaction fees. No seat fees for one full month join root ball and building the best platform for businesses to manage their workflows and send and receive money digitally a truthful.com /to zero VC as always I sir preciate all yours.
28:29
Sport and I can't wait to bring you another fantastic episode this coming Friday.
ms