# The Services Model of Venture Capital is Broken The Best Founders Do Need Help, The Most Important Signals to Assess When Meeting Founders & Why Kids Bring Less Happiness and More Joy with Phin Barnes @ TheGP 20VC · Oct 2, 2023 · 62 min · 13,171 words Speakers: Phin Barnes, Harry Stebbings Source: https://www.996.fm/episodes/20vc--ep-250778be/ ## Cold open **Phin Barnes** [0:00]: The fee and carry model doesn't work because those services show up as a cost center on the cash flow statement of the VC firm itself. There's been this push to scale. It's eroded the product of venture. If someone says the best founders don't need help, what I hear them saying is the best founders don't need my help. **Harry Stebbings** [0:18]: This is 20 BC ## Intro **Harry Stebbings** [0:19]: with me, Harry Stebbings, and what a cracker we have in store for you today. I'm so thrilled to welcome back to the hot seat Phin Barnes, cofounder and managing partner of The General Partnership. Before founding TheGP, Phin spent over a decade at First Round Capital, where he was responsible for over 60 investments, including Blue Apron, Notion, Clover Health, Gauntlet, and Persona to name a few. And you can also see the full video of this discussion on YouTube by searching for 20 VC, and you can find all our old episodes there also. But before we dive into the show today, ## Sponsor read **Harry Stebbings** [0:47]: this episode is brought to you by Tigas, the go to research destination for bold investing. Tigas curates expert insights, analysis, and financial data to give you powerful perspective for your investment decisions with lightning fast access to over 60,000 transcripts across 20,000 companies, you'll discover a wealth of unique insights to fuel your fundamental research, gain perspectives, synthesize information, and even model outcomes all on Tigus. As a twenty minute VC listener, try it for free at tigus.com/growth. 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You have now arrived at your destination. ## Conversation **Harry Stebbings** [3:07]: Phin, it has been five years. So many great things have happened since our last show. But first, thank you so much for joining me today. Of **Phin Barnes** [3:14]: course. I'm really happy to be here. It's always wonderful to talk to you whether we're on the show or on WhatsApp. It's always great to to hear your voice or read your words. **Harry Stebbings** [3:21]: Man, I so appreciate our relationship. It's one of the great joys of doing the show for me, building friendship like we have, and so huge thanks for that. But I wanna start with some context. So why did you leave First Round? And before you said to me about a cofounding moment and the pursuit of it, can you talk to me about those two elements? **Phin Barnes** [3:37]: Yeah. Sure. Leaving First Round was a a really, really hard decision. I think you find your greatest opportunities when you leave the best job you ever had, and I think that's definitely the case here. I mean, it was a wonderful brand, very successful, wonderful people. But for me, there was always this question sort of eating at me around, was this it? Right? Was this all there was in my venture career? And was there more in in the opportunity to build something of my own and find a way to do that and continue to push myself and continue to engage with the edges of what I was capable of by trying my own thing. And so, you know, in 2020, was looking at the market and feeling the work I was doing and where I wanted to go. And I had some conversations with Josh and other partners, and we figured out a a path to navigate that was appropriate and acceptable to everyone. Not the happiest of moments because anytime you you know, these are deep friendships and people that you you care for and trust. But I think I underestimated the sense maybe that that somehow meant that what I was doing wasn't good enough, and that was not at all what I was saying. And those relationships are strong, you know, it's been some time and, you know, Josh is an investor in the fund and so forth. But I think navigating that was was a challenge. Sometimes doing the hard thing is the thing you have to do, and and I felt like I did that and did it with integrity. **Harry Stebbings** [4:54]: Where do you think the need to have your own thing comes from? Some people don't have it. My for instance, mine comes from running away from constraints. I hate people telling me what I can and can't do. And also a desire to be appreciated and recognized for myself, not for someone else, which probably insecure of me. But those are my two reasons why I I had to do my own. Have you ever analyzed why you had to do your own? **Phin Barnes** [5:17]: Yeah. For me, there's a question that eats at me about what am I capable of. Like, how far can you go? What can you accomplish? When you attempt to answer that question inside the context of an existing institution, the answers are not easy, but more obvious. You know, you could become a managing partner at the firm. Well, I did that. You could deliver an epic fund. As a team, we had done that. You could partner with unbelievable companies. And as an individual and as a team, we did that. You could change the industry in some way with The Review or Dorm Room Fund or Angel Track, and we did that. And so then I had done those things, and I think the question that was eating at me, was there more, and what could that be? And it felt like the only container to find out, the only place where that answer existed was in in trying to find my own my own thing and crafting my own approach. And then I was unbelievably lucky in in finding someone who had taken that step years before and who was very aligned with me. And so we came together to shape the general partnership in a really organic, but also powerful way. **Harry Stebbings** [6:23]: You said how much further can you go? I asked the same of myself. The truth is, to me, gosh, I'm gonna get in trouble for this. You can always go further alone without another half, without kids, when it is just you at your desk meeting founders focusing, you can do so much more. It is a young person's game of grind and ounce is what I've come to realize, but that scares me. **Phin Barnes** [6:48]: I think hard work is a huge piece of seeing how far you can go. But I think a piece is how far can you go with your life, your whole life, not just one aspect. And so everything has to integrate. Like, work life balance, I think, is not the right model. You want a life that you're proud of, work that you're proud of that weaves into your dinner conversations with your family that you have time to make and then serve and then eat. Maybe you ask your daughter to clean up because you need to go and get back online and do a Zoom or or email. Integrating your life and seeing how far you can go as a parent, as a spouse, as a friend, as a venture capitalist, all of those things, they weave together. It becomes when you have your own firm and, you know, it becomes a piece of that that life, I think, in a much more meaningful way for me. It is true, young person game. It is true. You gotta grind, and and there are, you know, hours and hours and hours. But I also think there's a thought that occurs when you're on your run, and there's work that gets done when you're off to come home or going to watch a child play a sport. And so I think you can you can integrate those things and create the life that you want. Dude, I run for long **Harry Stebbings** [7:53]: enough. I have enough thoughts. But I do have to ask. I think this is a really interesting one, which is if you could cool yourself up when you were leaving Penn and just about to join the first round, and you could give yourself a piece of advice on entering the venture world, what would you tell yourself knowing all that you know now? **Phin Barnes** [8:11]: I think there's something in being very intentional about what you're doing and appropriately putting in context the decisions that you're making. Don't set yourself a goal of, you know, being a partner in five years because you probably have very little control over that. But be very intentional about the day to day work that you're doing and making sure that that is both excellent in terms of quality and helping you build towards the experience that you hope to achieve. And I think too many people, you come into venture, and everybody kind of says, go find the next Uber. It doesn't really tell you how to do that. Every it's an art, not a science. Everyone practices it differently. But I think you can be intentional about the technical aspects of the job. So I think you can be a student of interviewing because venture investing starts with an interview with a founder. And you're sitting down with someone, and you're interviewing them to learn their ground truth, what they're going after, the way they see the market, and that's an art that can be practiced. It's also well documented. People do it as podcasters. They do it as journalists. They do it, you know, as members of law enforcement. They you know, there's many, many ways to interview. And then the other aspect coaching, which is also documented and can be practiced. And so I think you can be very intentional about the technical aspects of the job. You can focus on how to get better at those things day by day, and then you can hold on to the belief that that will be the path to your aspiration. **Harry Stebbings** [9:32]: Dude, I've I've gotta go double click on that. You said there about kind of the interviewing there and the art of it. One of the references I did on you said that you are Warren Buffett for founder detection, for really understanding the true qualities of a founder in front of you. How have the questions that you ask changed? Are there commonalities to those questions to determine the true quality of a founder sitting across the table from you? **Phin Barnes** [9:57]: I think I've come to believe that your priorities and the way you express those priorities and explain them is probably the the most important thing to understand when you think about partnering with a founder. I like to ask people, what's the best thing that happened at your company this week? And in the answer to that question, you have an understanding of what are they excited about, what do they think will drive the business forward, how do they approach the problem, and how do they respond when there's a solution. Do they give credit away, do they take credit? Do they set up the situation as something that happened to them and they were a victim and they overcame it, or did they set it up as a a challenge that they understood like a puzzle and they navigated? There are many, many, ways that your priorities and the way you frame the challenges that you have to overcome are telling in terms of how you will lead a company. If you can ask questions that get at somebody's priorities and their motivations and their operating style, then you learn a tremendous amount about them as a founder. And you can you can start to guess as to how they will handle the complexity that is certainly coming, the uncertainty that is certainly coming as they lead their business. The one that I love to ask is how **Harry Stebbings** [11:01]: did you first make money? I find very, very rarely to truly great entrepreneurs first make money with a business when they're 23 or 24 or with a job at McKinsey or Bain. They always did something when they were a kid. Could have been anything, cookies, building websites, you name it, but it was something. That's **Phin Barnes** [11:18]: right. That's right. But I think you have to also understand the way they set that up. So for me, when I was in junior high school, I mowed lawns. I had a a mower, and I would walk around the neighborhood, and I would offer to mow people's lawns. But then I realized that people wouldn't be home. I'm out, you know, knocking on the door. They're not there. And so I started offering people a certain number of lawn mowing's per month for a certain amount. I would ask them how, you know, when the grass gets to a certain length, do want to cut? Or do want to cut twice a month? How do you want to do that? And so within my neighborhood, I had this really nice subscription revenue business where pretty much every house told me they wanted their lawn mowed somewhere between one and three times a And and so then I was able to walk around the neighborhood when I had time and make sure I got to my route and mowed the lawns. I didn't have to knock on the door. They didn't have to be home. In fact, they probably rather they weren't home. And the reason I did that is I found that my friends wanted to play basketball on Saturdays and Sundays, just typically when I had time to mow, you know, but also when people were away. They were doing their own things on the weekend. So I need to find a way to be able to mow the lawns during the week. And the only way to do that was to come home from school and mow lawns without people's permission. **Harry Stebbings** [12:17]: See, that's what I wanna hear. The thing that worries me more is that more VCs have better entrepreneurial stories I find than founders. They'll look around. Pretty sure it's working well. You know, is is the old is the old Charlie Munger show me the offensive. They'll show you. Yeah. That's why everyone's in fucking venture. Yeah. We ought to repeat too soon in terms of **Phin Barnes** [12:35]: entrepreneur. Like, that's that's the best that you did. **Harry Stebbings** [12:38]: Right? Listen. I have to ask. You mentioned that, you know, about the ceiling that one hits. And you said, you know, invest in the next Uber, do great as a partnership, build a premier brand. That's what you and the partnership did at First Round, and you were there for eleven years. It shapes how you think hugely. If you would do one to two takeaways that really impacted your mindset from the eleven years at First Round, what would they be? **Phin Barnes** [13:04]: I think the first is one that actually I I learned before in in my work at AND1, the basketball company, that then I applied to my decision to join First Round, but it was also Josh's insight at First Round, which is there's tremendous power in being able to focus on a niche. And if you can know your customer better than your competition and you can craft your product to deliver against that customer's needs in a more salient way than your competition, then you will win. The challenge with niche is that at some point, people look around and they think, oh, now we're ready to expand. Now we're ready to go beyond the niche. And they forget that what made them so successful in the niche is the thing they have to walk away from to try to expand. So at AND1, we would talk about running shoes, trainers. We would talk about lifestyle shoes and clothing, kids licenses, and so forth. And the focus on those things eroded the quality of of the brand we had built in basketball and that the core understanding of bringing together hip hop and hoops and making that mainstream. When you look at what first Sean did in seed, it's very much the beginning of that journey. It's you own a niche, focus entirely on a founder at a certain stage, and you work in a certain way. And I think at The General Partnership, we're also trying to do that with founders who want to build their companies in a very specific way. And and I think that's a niche that we can try to own. **Harry Stebbings** [14:20]: I'm asking a really unfair question here. I totally agree with you in terms of owning that niche. But then combining that with your statement earlier of how much further can you go, if you own the seed niche like the first round did, there's a chance you could own the second round. You could own the Series A as well. Many tried and raised opportunity funds, Series A funds. How did that work out? How do you **Phin Barnes** [14:40]: I mean, you know, I think that there there are folks who have been able to do that without eroding their brand and without eroding the service, but I think it's a very, very hard thing to do if you define yourself as delivering a service in a unique way for a unique stage of company, and then you expand beyond that. I think the only way to do that is to say, at that later stage, either is a different product. So we do seed, and we do it this way. And then because of our brand and reputation as seed, we earn the right to be on cap tables at the later stage. That's just capital. And we're a commodity capital provider, and our value is that we won't be detrimental. You could take that approach, or you could say it's a separate team, which the the mega funds have tried to do and said, we have a separate team that focuses in this in this different way. It's it's really meaningful, the this scout investment, because it's in the scout fund versus the seed fund versus the growth fund versus the mega fund idea. For the original question, I think the lesson of focus is the core lesson. **Harry Stebbings** [15:33]: I've never actually spoken about this, but I think actually I lost my way with the content that we did about a year ago. I was overly focused on growth bluntly, and I started doing things with different guests that weren't venture. And you would have a pop star on the show, and it's like, that's not what we're about, and that's not why people listen. And it was a really important lesson for me in terms of going back to what makes us good and what makes us who we are, which is what I love, which is this, not enough. And it pops **Phin Barnes** [16:05]: But I would I would push on that a little bit because I think your push into 20 sales, 20 products, 20 growth, Those are expansions that actually bolster the brand. We have a certain style of interviewing that has to do with going very, very deep with experts in a space so they share their knowledge with folks. We're building community of those people. And we've started with VC, but now we're going to choose adjacencies, and we're going to take that same approach. And I think my view I'm not in your business, but my view of what you're doing is you've created a media property that has tremendous benefit for your venture fund, right? And so those two things are symbiotic from a product perspective, from a revenue perspective, from the value you can provide to your founders, and so forth. So I think the whole thing works together. And I think the same for anyone who's a customer. And I think founders are customers. And the way you craft and deliver product matters a lot. **Harry Stebbings** [17:00]: People come because they wanna hear about venture from venture insiders, and they wanna understand what's going on in the world of venture. But you said to me before something that's fascinating. I agree with this, starting on venture. Why do you think the business model for venture is broken in most cases, Phin? **Phin Barnes** [17:17]: So I think this observation I I started feeling this way in 2018. Venture as an industry has evolved tremendously. From the seventies when it started and you had folks like Don Valentine jumping into hot tubs with Nolan Bushnell and investing in Atari. I mean, these stories of a cottage industry with people who were maybe a little bit crazy, risk seeking, but also brought with them deep domain expertise, partnering with technologists, people who had crafted unbelievable products or deeply understood a new technology, chips like Silicon Valley is because it was it was hardware. And they would partner with folks who understood go to market and distribution. It was a one to one relationship. And together, companies would emerge in that collaboration. But the one to one relationship was the key, and that was a cottage industry. Like any financial arbitrage, it was eroded away as more and more people thought, oh, there's big returns in venture. I can come down. I can take that risk. And so at some point, the venture firms realized that they had to differentiate. And it wasn't enough to be a smart person with expertise, but you needed to do more. And so you had this industrial revolution in venture capital, and you saw platform teams. And when Andreessen launched, that was when Greylock hired my now co founder, Dan Portillo. He was the best recruiter in Silicon Valley, still is, and they needed more than capital. So they brought him in to lead recruiting and talent in 2011. And he did amazing work, 2011 to 2018. And things kept scaling and platforms kept getting bigger. But the challenge with the business model venture in a world where you need to differentiate with product, and if you choose to do it that way, then the fee and carry model doesn't work because those services show up as a cost center on the statement, the cash flow statement of the VC firm itself. And so as a good business person, when you see a cost center, you try to do two things. One, you try to minimize that cost. And then two, you try to amortize it across as many customers as you can. And so the result of that work to optimize for the GP business model is you end up with increasingly junior people paying increasingly fractionalized attention to a founder's most critical needs. You see efforts to productize and scale services, and services don't scale. You can scale a product, but the way you scale a product is you make it more and more static, you make it more and more brittle, and you make sure that it's more and more generic. And it can meet the marginal needs of many customers, but it doesn't meet the critical needs of any customer. That is the problem with the business model today if you're trying to differentiate by providing service. **Harry Stebbings** [19:51]: So I I think about a couple of things here. One, I think there's opacity between the cost centers that the LPs see and that the GPs have. And what I mean by that is a lot of GPs I find and I found over the last few years is that they leverage these extensive teams to justify the large fund size increases. And although the teams are a cost center, the fees that they get with the massive increase in funds means that actually it's just a game of increasing fees, and the cost center doesn't increase nearly as much as the fee game does for them. But it's a good justification with LPs, number one. **Phin Barnes** [20:26]: And when you say that, you mean you mean to help to to have LPs not push back on the the 2% fee on a billion when it used to be 2% on 200. **Harry Stebbings** [20:34]: Absolutely. You say, well, listen. We have a go to market team. We have a sales team. We have a talent team. We really have this unified force that it costs money to build these great companies, and there's 20 people there. LPs go, wow. That's that's a lot of people. I can see that. If you want the best people as well, they cost two. And so it justifies that fund size increase. **Phin Barnes** [20:55]: You know, I although I think the fund size increases were about investing bigger checks in more companies, moving faster, deploying more capital. And I think some of the fee justification came from we built out this service team. Although I think no matter how big your fund gets, I don't think you ever have the resource to meet the needs of your companies in a appropriate or impactful way. Even when you look at the largest firms and the services they provide, they are not any longer providing one to one. You know, it used to be, please come meet with our go to market expert. They will spend time with you once a week for six months. Then it was, you and a cohort of people are going to come and meet with our go to market expert. And then now you're seeing the rise of programs. Everybody has a program, and they're running people through programs in order to add value. And maybe it's an weekend intense with 100 of your promising startups. Right? And I just think that there's this constant erosion of value delivery anytime you move away from one to one, high context, from someone with deep domain expertise in that given area and someone who's been in the trenches very recently. Like, the half life of operating experience is very, very short now. Things are changing very quickly. And so you need people who are doing this day in and day out and who have tremendously deep experience, and they're able to deliver in a way that you can only do in a one to one fashion. **Harry Stebbings** [22:16]: Phin, this is the thesis with the 20 sales, 20 product, 20 growth, which obviously we can leverage for 20 VC portfolio companies. But it's like the the decay on operating experience. If you manage teams pre COVID, manage tech stacks pre AI or pre cloud often as many VCs did, it's a different world. Pre cloud, pre AI, and pre COVID. So I I totally agree with you there. I'm just gonna, like, push. I always say talent teams are largely BS unless you really invest in them because the diversity of roles that people will come to you for means that essentially you just become a job description writer. Because if you're hiring a CMO, it's totally different to a head of developer relations. A head of talent can't be expected to hire such diverse roles. Am I right, or do you think I'm being unfair? **Phin Barnes** [23:05]: No. I think you're completely right, which again speaks to the need for a one to one relationship versus a pooled resource. If you look at how the very best companies hire, someone's gonna go find a CMO or a VPE. The the very best searches, the companies are at a scale where they probably have a head of talent or a head of people. They probably have a recruiting team. They assign that role to a single person who figures out how to understand the needs of the company, how to then go out, identify some candidates for context building with the hiring manager. They then build a pipeline. They set up an interview loop. They bring those people through. They guide them all the way through from evaluation to offer to close. They get them in the seat, and then they help them be successful. That and one person will own that, whether that person is maybe an outsourced executive recruiter or someone internally on the team. And that is how the very best searches are done is that there is a single person who owns that search. They collaborate with the hiring manager, and they run it end to end. The best searches are not, oh, you need an engineer? We know a lot of engineers. Here's a Google Sheet with a bunch of LinkedIn links. Good luck. That's not recruiting. And so at TheGP, when we do recruiting, we do the first thing. We engage with a founder. We understand their needs. We have a person who maybe was the lead tech recruiter at Facebook for six years or was part of building Stripe's, you know, engineering teams two through n, come and sit with that founder and understand their roadmap and then understand how they're aligning that roadmap with their hiring needs. And then we go out and we build the context. We build the funnel. We bring those people through, and we manage that process end to end. And that accelerates that process. It increases the quality of it. And we can do that because our business model means that that work is a revenue center for the firm rather than a cost center, because we are an equity for doing that work rather than paying for that out of fee as sort of some differentiating, you know, factor in terms of how we offer the service. **Harry Stebbings** [24:56]: A couple of questions for you. Number one, how do you scale that? You know, it's early in the GPs life cycle. If we project it out three to five years and there's 60 to 80 companies, say, I'm just how does that quality scale over time? **Phin Barnes** [25:08]: I think the first answer is our goal is not to scale. Our goal is to maximize quality of service delivery and impact on a smaller number of super high quality company. And we've looked at how the business can deliver that even as the portfolio scales, because you're right that over time, that portfolio scales. And so every engagement, we work with a founder. We partner with them to understand their needs. We have a written statement of work that we collaborate with them on. That statement of work describes what we will do. It describes the time that it'll take for us to do that, and then the amount of equity they will earn when we deliver success against that statement of work. And those statements of work tend to be somewhere between six and fifteen months long. They work across recruiting, product, and engineering, and go to market. The founders can pick and choose where they need the help. Or if they don't need the help at all, we can just invest capital, and they can come back to us at some point when they when they want to engage. But when the statement of work is delivered, then that engagement is over. And if they want to continue with ongoing recruiting support, we need a new statement of work. And that's a new investment for us, and we evaluate that against every other investment that we could make with that same resource. **Harry Stebbings** [26:14]: Number one, I had Jason Lemkin and Sam Lesson on the roundtable show recently, and they both said, the best founders, they don't need you. If a Sam Lesson said, if a founder says I need you, I'm like, get out. Not for me. Do you think that's fair, or do you think that's actually not the way it is **Phin Barnes** [26:31]: in I mean, I think I think nothing against Sam, but they probably don't need him. Right? That that's what I'm saying. Right? I give you know? If if someone if someone says the best founders don't need help, what I hear them saying is the best founders don't need my help. And that's probably true in most cases when a VC says it. But I think that if you look at the best founders, they are constantly accessing the very best sources of advice, guidance, and hands on support and help to build their companies, to achieve their goals, and get to their north star as fast as they can and as high quality as they possibly can. Every single one. They all have a trusted group of people. They all have folks that they bring into their company who do unbelievable work. Every great founder has that support, and so every great founder needs help. They just don't need it from VCs. **Harry Stebbings** [27:18]: Now, again, it's why did 20 product, 20 sales, and 20 growth? It's a realization, though, that I'm unlikely to be able to help them, but I should be able to offer a catalog of amazing operators who can help them. But having that awareness, it is probably not me. **Phin Barnes** [27:30]: I think that's right. And I would imagine that success, let's say twenty twenty product, 20 growth, 20 sales are successful. Your founders are accessing those people. They have a conversation. They get some advice. They find it to be impactful. They go back to that same person. They build a relationship. And before you know it, that person who you had on 20 product is now an adviser for that founder compensated with equity. I mean, actually, we have 20 sales funds, and they then That's great. They earn the right they earn the right onto a locked cap table with their expertise and their advice. They can capture the most valuable asset in the startup ecosystem, which is equity in that company because of that, whether they do it through capital or advice, and I I would imagine some of them will do both. The challenge that **Harry Stebbings** [28:15]: I have now is, yes, better product from us, better service, better quality. But when Andresen puts and I'm not picking on Andresen, but when a big multi stage fund puts five on 25 or six on 40 on the table for a pre seed or a seed round. I get it, Phin. You're great, and I want to work with you. But three on 15 versus five or six on 30 or 40, my job is to capitalize my business, and that can enable me to do x and y. How do we play in a world like that? **Phin Barnes** [28:45]: No. I I think there's a lot of bellyaching about the market's broken. The the mega funds are coming down. Maybe I think differently about this because I was fortunate enough to have the experience of winning against those firms in the past with lower prices and smaller rounds. And so when I hear people say that, I think you have a product problem. And if you can't convince a founder, partnering with you is what's best for their business. In the face of your competition, you need to do something different. And I hear people say, oh, it means I'm not going to chase the best founders. I'm not going to chase the hottest opportunities. I don't have a chance to win those things. And I think you're hamstringing yourself when you think that way. If you really believe in your product and you really believe what you're doing, you have to test that in competition with the very best funds, the largest funds. And they have a structural advantage. I agree. Their cost of capital is lower than yours. They can write a $5,000,000 check and not think about it, and that's a larger percentage of my fund, of your fund. Makes it hard. But hard doesn't mean you can't win. You can find the founders that resonate with what you're doing, that recognize that the difference in dilution is something that they can make up for with progress. And the most experienced ones with the clearest vision will make that choice. And we've seen that so far with the GP. You know, we've made 19 early stage investments. 14 or 15 have been competitive and often competitive with large funds. And we are not the highest price. We're not winning on price. I think we're winning because we're offering something different. **Harry Stebbings** [30:08]: Do you notice the commonality in the founders that do choose you over the multistage funds? What I see as an example is I see more mature second time founders choose me or my friends over multistage funds with the awareness that the brand actually doesn't deliver the higher, the customer, the help needed, and there's more maturity. I find first time founders more bluntly just succumb to the brand names. **Phin Barnes** [30:35]: We we do the the general partnership product tends to appeal to more experienced founders, folks who are a little deeper into their careers. They've either started a company before or they've worked in industry for longer, so they've seen more. They understand how hard it is to hire an amazing person. The critical nature of that DNA early in a company's life and all of the opportunity that that can open up. They understand what it means to have a world class technology and product organization in the first year of operation. And what that means not just for their product, but also for their ability to recruit down the line, their ability to to sign up customers earlier in the life of the company, to learn from the market much sooner because you can touch that market with something that they can appreciate and understand. The very best founders are those that they have the maturity to have that north star. They have the maturity to understand their critical needs to get there, and they're willing to do whatever it takes to sort of have those cheat codes along the way. Do **Harry Stebbings** [31:28]: you have **Phin Barnes** [31:28]: to **Harry Stebbings** [31:28]: encourage founders to take your services? And what I mean by that is I speak to a lot of people with platforms, venture platforms, and they say, honestly, you'd be surprised by how few founders actually take us up on the services that we had. **Phin Barnes** [31:40]: Yeah. We don't. When Dan and I were designing the firm, one of the core things was that it would be an unbundled offering because we trust the founders to know their critical needs, and we want them to be able to choose where we have a unique product that gives them a specific advantage over the rest of the market and where we don't. Of the 19 investments we've made, 15 of them have done services, four of them haven't. But of the four that haven't, two of them have already come back six, nine months into the the partnership and asked to engage with the services team around specific challenges that they're facing. **Harry Stebbings** [32:11]: Are you more or less excited about seed today than you have been in prior years? **Phin Barnes** [32:17]: So I think the market obviously went through a peak and a valley. **Harry Stebbings** [32:20]: And then we we watched that occur. But I did did it go through a valley? I think that seed has been immune to any macro cycle. You've seen the migration of large multistage funds move earlier. The prices remain really just as high. It's the only place that's remained untouchable. Untouchable until they need to raise their next **Phin Barnes** [32:37]: round. Right? Totally. That's the valley I was that's the valley I was referring to. Agreed. But then, like, **Harry Stebbings** [32:42]: a is the place to be. **Phin Barnes** [32:43]: Maybe. Although I think that with seed, knowing that it's more competitive, knowing the the capital of the next round is harder to come by, I think that just raises the bar on how much of a standout you need to be as a founder and as a company. It elevates that urgency around execution and delivery. And I feel like the early stage with a lot of what's happening in the market is actually pretty interesting. If you start chasing people up the ladder, five on fifty, ten on 40, we see these rounds. And there's also something with raising too much capital at a certain to a certain point where it it doesn't make sense for the company, and I think there's adverse effects in terms of the culture at the business if you raise too much. But I find I'm excited about seed and finding the companies that will be building durable businesses, you know, over the next couple of years. Speaking of finding **Harry Stebbings** [33:26]: the companies, there's founders, there's markets, there's traction, and there's market timing. If you were to rank them one through four, one being most important, four being least important to you in your investment decision making process, how would you rank them? Founder, market itself, traction, and the market timing. **Phin Barnes** [33:45]: I think founders are first. And and the reason I say that is because the ability of a founder to surprise and to shock you with the way they view a market, the opportunity that they identify that no one else has seen, the ability to execute against that. Like, that is why I do this is to meet those people. And so if I can't align my business model, my returns with the thing that brings me joy in in the work, I struggle. And then second, if you're investing at a stage where traction can exist, I think that early it doesn't have to be at scale, but that passion or engagement of a user base is something that is often overlooked because, like, the n is too small. You know, you have hundreds of people that are that are spending hours or revisiting this thing on a daily basis versus tens of thousands. But I think those early signals should not be ignored. But I think when you're investing before there's a product, like, often what we call formation stage is sort of that true seed, you know, pre seed seed, not the $7,000,000 seed when you've already raised two and you have a product in market, etcetera. I think then it's about the market timing. And and what I mean by that market timing versus market is the ability to get that early traction. What what is it that says now is the time that you're gonna be able to find those first 1,000,010 users? You're gonna be able to sell in. There's a problem that exists that you can solve. What is it about the the market timing that suggests that you can get that early traction? I don't know if it's Peter Phin or somebody else kind of like, you earn the right to make $10,000,000 in ARR by making a million dollars in ARR. And once you make 10, then you earn the right to make a 100. And once you make a 100, you can make a billion. I mean, it's sort of this idea. And I think for early stage investors, it matters much less that there's a billion dollar opportunity in a market. There's a TAM that you can back your way into that suggests that there's, you know, tens of billions to be captured. It's much more important that the person can earn a dollar and only spend 25¢ to do so. Can I **Harry Stebbings** [35:38]: push your thinking here? We invested before, and it was in emerging economies or emerging markets. And what I learned and my takeaway from that was no matter how good the entrepreneur is, fuck it. Sorry. If the market is so challenged, which emerging markets are right now there are great businesses in emerging markets, which we'll never raise because all US cash is golf for anywhere in the majority of emerging markets. You're fucked. And so, actually, market for me is number one above founder. Founders can surprise you. It doesn't matter if your market's destroyed. **Phin Barnes** [36:15]: I agree. I think market structure. So what you're talking about with emerging market is market structure and all of the friction that comes from a less either regulated or mature developed market, that's accurate. When I think of market, I think, is Uber about owning the black car market, the taxicab market, or the auto market, or the delivery of all things and transportation market? I think when you get stuck thinking through that and working through the 100 reasons why owning the black car market isn't worth it, then you miss Travis would figure out Uber X. And I think in that, when I say market timing, is this is a team, Garrett and Travis, they are going to earn a dollar letting me press a button and take a black car somewhere in San Francisco. Ivan and Notion is going to figure out how to create a digital tool that is as elegant as a blank piece of paper and a pen so that you can create online. And in doing so, he's gonna create value. There's no there's no market there. It's not a note taking tool. If you convince yourself as a note taking tool, then you're not interested in that because Evernote wasn't great. And you you go down the list. Right? When you sort of say, there's a vision here, and then there's the ability. There's market timing means people want this tool to enable them to express their creativity in some way. They want to do these different things. Then you allow that founder back to sort of choosing founders to guide that company, you know, within that opportunity set. Do you **Harry Stebbings** [37:42]: think the founder I oscillate on this one. Do you think the founder needs to know what that next chapter is? Does Travis, when he starts Uber, need to know that it's gonna go beyond the chauffeurs in an explicit way? I often feel that, you know, you just have to be playing the game to turn over the next card. So many of the things that I've done, I had no strategy to do until I saw the opportunity. You know, you have to be playing the game to see the next play. **Phin Barnes** [38:10]: No. It's a great question. I've experienced both. I think that in the first case, whether it's Travis needing to know that there's Uber X or it's Ivan needing to know that there's gonna be integrations with Segment and other things and it's gonna become the the central data knowledge repository for a company, I don't think so. I think they need to be passionate about the core product they're building, but they need to know that they want and will find more than just that. They need to understand that this is the the foundation of something, that then there will be another act. I've also had the experience with multiple founders where in the first conversation, you sit down with them and they understand their business in three acts. And they lay it out, and then they go after that. And so I think you can have both. But the key thing is, in both cases, the founders know there's more. They know they want more than the core thing they're doing. And they also have a deep appreciation for getting the first act right. **Harry Stebbings** [39:00]: You know, when it comes to founder detection, everyone also makes mistakes. The question that I have is when you review the mistakes that you've made, what did you not see that later became true, or what did you see that actually wasn't there? You know, if I reflect on my own as an example, I fall for the brilliant salesperson, the one who is incredibly smooth and articulate and can present that three chapters, But their operational execution ability is not as good as actually their sales ability, and then they falter. What would you say your founder detection errors have been? **Phin Barnes** [39:32]: I I'm a believer that spikes is what matters. So someone's strongest talent is the thing that you should be focused on. But I think that there are things, like the example you just gave, the salesperson who can lay out the three acts, but operationally, they can't execute sort of to get on stage in the first place. Right? That's the challenge. And I think in that case, the quality of that founder, the value they will create, is a multiplication problem, not an addition problem. And so if you have a zero anywhere in a multiplication problem, the value is zero. And I think that my mistakes with founders have been missing the consequences of a weakness and being overwhelmed with the strength of a spike and not realizing how they won't even be able to apply that spike because they lack something else that will mitigate that strength. I think that's been the the weakness. I think I haven't been overwhelmed with someone where I misperceive their strengths as much as I think sort of misunderstanding the impact of a potential weakness. **Harry Stebbings** [40:25]: You mentioned some of the big wins there that the first round I've had. I think you learn a lot from the hits. What would you say your biggest hit is? And when you, like, reflect and do a postmortem, how did it change how you invest? **Phin Barnes** [40:37]: When I started investing, I was a product person. You know, I built sneakers and video games. And so my early investments, if I look at them, they were products that I thought should exist. From being a product person, you build up a sort a of schizophrenia where you can take on the personality of the customer and have empathy and understand their priorities and needs. And then you could imagine a product that would meet those needs and would resonate. And I think I did a lot of that. Bank Simple, Birchbox, even Blue Apron, I think, were were those things. The work I did with Notion, I think, was really foundational in understanding the product as a piece of what you're doing, but that understanding the the ways that that product drives distribution, the power of software platforms versus just an application, and the sense of a product that can grow with the user and deepen that attachment over time and sort of lock in, I guess you would call it. I learned many of those things from Ivan, Akshay, watching them build that business, helping them recruit people to to join that business, and seeing it seeing it scale. Leaning into things that become system of record for an important job to be done, that lesson kind of came through to me in in that first understanding of why why Notion was so special. **Harry Stebbings** [41:52]: Can you help me on something, Phin, which is I'm bad when it comes to what I kind of call continuous thoughts, which is essentially when you have a hit in a certain area, you think that area is just continuously a great area to be in. It might be, but it also might be a great founder, a special market timing, a special distribution strategy. Likewise, you lose money in an area, and you go, can't make money there. It's shit. Neither are right. There's always nuance, and you have to bring plasticity to every new deal. How do you bring plasticity with big losses and big wins? **Phin Barnes** [42:27]: It's very important to view every company to the extent you can as its own thing. There are certainly lessons that flow across. There's similarities. You know, God knows we heard so many pitches that were the Uber of x, people trying to play on that on that exact thing you're talking about. But I think that the challenge with rules, they can distort your vision. And you have to decide, is that corrective or is it blurring? You know, are you seeing more clearly or are you are you missing something? The thing to do is to ask yourself, why would this rule not apply? Why is this inappropriate in this case? So for example, at early for we're talking about early first round, so it's top of mind. So so ModCloth was a fashion company. They're ecommerce fashion. And there was a belief that the reason that company was working when it was working is that the founder was deep in the vintage clothing space and deeply understood it. She was a buyer. She got all those things. And so the first time we met Warby Parker, those guys didn't have design sense. And, like, there was no style person on that team. But the truth is that the glasses had to look good, but that wasn't the point. What they had figured out was something entirely different around supply chain and go to market and sort of this D to C motion, evaluating their team against the need for someone who had worked at Luxottica in design was the wrong thing to do. And so I think when you have a big win, it's very easy to say, I want to see something else that, like, that looks like this. So I want I want a founder like Ivan who comes out of design and, you know, is quirky in some ways and a genius in most ways and product obsessed and wants to build tools. And that's the way to build systems of record for for every facet of of business. But then you realize that that worked for him in a very particular way and that there's no other company that's built like that and that most other tools or systems of record are created by people with different mindsets and and other ways of thinking. Same with the losses. Right? There's the emerging market stuff and there's other things. But I think, like, I would look at that one and say, what were the positives? What part of that decision was actually accurate rather than, Okay, maybe the overriding lesson is all emerging markets are no good, and you just don't invest in emerging markets. And that's a fine lesson. The work you owe yourself is to try to find the positive or the thing you got right in the mistake. And it could be that there's not, that the lesson actually is don't invest in emerging markets. Don't invest in these logistically heavy, like, low margin businesses. That's a great lesson and one that you could stick to and and probably would be a benefit to the portfolio overall because I do think that there is a reason that most large venture outcomes are software only. There's something powerful in high margin, zero marginal cost growth businesses. **Harry Stebbings** [45:05]: I say to my mother on walks on Sunday, two things. I say margins matter, number one. And then I say the opportunity cost of capital is real, which is like, even if you can make money selling software to restaurants, it's so freaking hard that, actually, there are easier places with higher upside to put that money. **Phin Barnes** [45:25]: Yes. You you will have a limited number of companies in your portfolio. One of the I'm happiest about with the general partnership model is it's not a coverage model. Like, we are very intentional about building a more concentrated portfolio. We need to find 30 amazing early stage companies. We don't need to be in every amazing early stage company. **Harry Stebbings** [45:45]: 30 is quite a lot, though, if you actually think about it. Over a three year period, you're doing 10 a year. How many investing partners are then? **Phin Barnes** [45:51]: So we have, you Dan and I, and then we have Ben on our team. But the key with us is that the whole team is involved in the process of investing from sourcing to picking, winning, supporting. Everyone on our team plays a role, and they play a role by bringing their expertise to that. So if we look at our top of funnel, right, you look at the kind of the sources, 50% of the things we see are sourced by the team because they are very senior. They have incredible networks. People trust them. When their friends are starting companies, they come to them and they say, I'm thinking of starting a company. Who should I talk to? And they understand what we look for. They understand the types of companies that are interesting. And they surface those things, you know, to us as a team. Then they're involved along the way. So if we say one of the things that we think about with the founder is how will they build their team? As we think about crafting a statement of work and deciding that we could partner with someone, we engage the a member of the talent team to talk with that founder around their needs, how they think about sequencing, and how they think about success and recruiting. On the engineering side, we do the same thing. We deeply understand the way people are approaching their technology, what they're building, and in a way that I think it goes well beyond what I've done in the past. You know, we sit with an engineer in a meeting with a technical founder and have a conversation about the business, about the product they're building, and about how they're building it. And for me, the ability to be immersed in that conversation and to learn the language that the founder is speaking in that context is unbelievable. It's like, if you wanna learn Spanish, you would also learn to surf and do that in Costa Rica. You wouldn't take a Berlitz class or, you know, put something in a in your headphones and listen to it. I think I'd just get Jessica up. Yeah. There yeah. Exactly. Well, you know You you can keep Costa Rican. But I think but I think the traditional process of understanding what a founder is doing technically is as a VC that's not technical, you sit in that room. You do your best to understand. You reach out to someone who is technical. You provide some bastardized description of what that founder is doing. That person is probably polite to you and sort of pretends they understand, but then says, well, maybe just connect me with them, and I'll talk to them, and I'll get you my feedback. Then they do that. And then the feedback comes back, and it's, again, a game of telephone. And then you're making a decision because some engineer that you know said it's either good or bad. Right? Whereas what we get to do is sit in the room with the founder. The engineer is asking questions not to evaluate what they're doing, but to understand it to know whether we can help and to understand it to know where the holes might be and where the challenges are. And do the challenges that we identify align with the challenges the founder is seeing? And in doing that, it's just a much deeper process. And I think we involve the team in that. Totally random **Harry Stebbings** [48:28]: weird bum, but I was on this long run today, and and I was listening to this motivational speeches I do on long runs. And they said that, like, very few people truly understand what happiness is to them. And I know it's weird, dude, but I just really like you, and I'm just really intrigued to hear your thoughts on this, and I'm so loving this. What is happiness to you? I think **Phin Barnes** [48:45]: of it in a couple ways. So I I can imagine moments in life that would define happiness, holding your child for the first time, your wedding night, your twentieth anniversary of that wedding. For me, one, and this is this is strange, but you'll like this. For me, a moment that I know I will be happy and I'll know I have lived a good life is if on my deathbed, I'm looking up at my current wife and daughter, and they're smiling at me, and everything's okay. That's success. And that means that they have been supported by me in the right ways. It means I have lived with integrity. I've honored them, and and they're there for me at the very end. You know? And that's whatever it is sixty, seventy years from now, hopefully. But so I frame it that way. Day to day, I think happiness comes from the ability to have impact on individuals that you respect, and and I think sometimes it comes back to you. I got an email this morning that I was I was sort of sitting here thinking about what am I gonna say to Harry, and I get an email. A friend wrote me and said he was at a wedding with another friend, a mutual friend of ours. He he has a seven month old child. And he was telling this mutual friend, you know, I I feel so fulfilled and joyful. Like, I feel a joy that I've never felt before. And our mutual friend said to him, I talked to Phin when I had my first child. And he told me, you know, everyone talks to you about, oh, you can't your life isn't your own anymore, and, like, you can't go out, and you need to see your friends, and, you know, all these things. You can't work as much as you want and all this. And he said that what I told him when he told me that was that, yeah, you have a child, and it's way less happiness, way more joy. That's what it is. You have less happiness moment to moment. You have more joy in these moments that are just beyond. You're holding a child. There's there's something about that. Just so I understand, what is less happiness and more joy mean? Happiness being the freedom to do what you want. Happiness being, you know, you're you're out with friends, you you go for a run when you feel like it, these things versus changing, what do you call them, nappies, and, you know, being up in the middle of the night and so forth. But even when you're unhappy because you're up in the middle of the night and you have a big meeting the next day and you need to get sleep and the baby's crying, there's a moment when the baby stops crying. And the fact that you were there holding her when that happened is joy and is different. You're still unhappy that you're awake, but there's joy there. And and so anyway but for me, those moments when people say things like that to me, that makes me happy. Like, I I went to Dorm Room Fund, had a ten year anniversary, and there was hundreds of people there. It's an amazing community. But when I was there, I was talking to people, some of whom I met ten years ago, 09/08, seven, five, '4. Like, I met them across this time, and they I met them at a time in their life when they were in college. They were figuring out their future. They were graduating. And no fewer than 75 people said to me, hey. You probably don't remember you said this, but you said this thing. And it changed the way I thought about the job to take, the timing of leaving one and joining another, the way to navigate some negotiation or some hard time in my, you know, professional career. And it was so gratifying to me to know that those little moments that make me happy, giving my thoughts, helping someone work through a challenge, really listening, like, truly listening to them, helping them discover that answer that's always inside them. It's always there. Bring it out. And getting very, very good at doing that. Do it for founders around strategy. Do it for friends around personal situations. But just getting very good at listening and bringing out that person's best answer to whatever challenge they're facing and then supporting them in in going after that. That brings me happiness, and it leads to a moment of people saying thanks and reflecting on that, which is joyful. Listen, **Harry Stebbings** [52:05]: my friend. I could talk to you all day. Can we do a quick fire round? Absolutely. Tell me, cofounding moment with Dan. **Phin Barnes** [52:10]: Yeah. So as I was talking about the venture capital business model being broken, Dan was the person who had the courage to do something about it in 2018. And he stepped away from Greylock, and he started a business called Sweat Equity Ventures that offered service in exchange for equity. He believed that you could unbundle venture capital from venture services, and he convinced Reed Hoffman to invest in the company. He went out and did the work. He earned equity in amazing companies. That equity is now the portfolio that Reed was the sole LP in. And along the way, I had so much respect for that. We we overlapped on a couple boards. And in those board meetings, the founder would move from telling the board what they thought to saying some version of, well, Dan says, and then he would say the answer. And so I I had always wanted to find a way to work with him. And so when I left, First Round, I announced publicly I was ready to build again. And Dan was, like, the second person to reach out. He's the Michael Jordan of recruiting. And he started talking to me about how he could add capital to his model, not about how I could join him in the business. And through that conversation over fourteen months, it was amazing because we could just be totally transparent with each other about our goals, our vision for what venture capital should be, the way we wanted to practice. And it turned out that those were completely aligned, and we were able to build a firm, raise a fund that supported his service for equity model, but also added the capital that the the founders needed to build their businesses. What is the day to day routine? I heard I had to ask this one. I don't always stick to it. Right? You you have your aspiration, then you have your actual life. So that's I was caveat with that. But I try to get up early, try to do some reading, try to exercise, make breakfast, and sit with my daughter. I drive her to school, drop her off. We have great conversations on the way. Although she's in seventh grade now, so she wants to we're carpooling a little bit, and now she wants to take the bus. I'm afraid I'm a lose I'm gonna lose those morning conversations, but it's a nice morning conversation with her. Work till, you know, four or five, depends. Pick her up from school if I can, take her to sports if I can, spend time on family, dinner, and then go back to work, and then try to get six, seven hours of sleep and do it again. There's obviously times where you have to do you know, you're doing dinners. I think, a night out, two nights out a week for work is appropriate. I have a date night every week with my wife. We have date night. I think that's critical. You asked about parenting. I have so much. So much changes when you have a child, but the biggest thing that changes is the person that you love most in the world. Now there's a third person in the room, And each of you loves that person maybe more than you love each other. And you have to make space for your adult relationship to continue when you have the the child in the way. But but the daily routine kinda keeps me balanced on those values. **Harry Stebbings** [54:36]: You you mentioned your beautiful relationship with your daughter there. Taking the question we asked earlier about venture, if you could cool yourself up the night before your wife gave birth, what would you advise yourself knowing all that you do now? **Phin Barnes** [54:46]: There's a consistency in prioritizing your family that really matters. The reason it matters is because what children need, they need something to push on, and they need to know they're safe in doing that. And so consistency creates those boundaries, and you set them appropriately. You can make it a practice to truly listen to your child and then give them whatever it is you think they need, which is very different than what they ask for. But give them what you think they need. And if you do that consistently and to the best of your ability, I think you'd be a fantastic parent. **Harry Stebbings** [55:15]: A CPO I sat on the show the other day said, children are like users. You listen to their problems, and then you can provide them that solution. **Phin Barnes** [55:22]: This is something I don't know. **Harry Stebbings** [55:23]: Yeah. **Phin Barnes** [55:24]: I think, **Harry Stebbings** [55:24]: yeah, the distinction between what they ask for and what **Phin Barnes** [55:26]: they need is very important. Absolutely. What would you guys like to change about the world of venture? There's been this push to scale. It's eroded the product of venture broadly, the craft approach. Whether you're doing that the way Kris and Jordan are doing it at pace where they do it, or you're doing it the way we're doing it where in exchange for equity, we deliver a a very senior person who works in in a one to one relationship. But I would love to see a return to the one to one relationships that build the best companies. Tell me, which less well known firm do you most respect? So many. I mean, I just mentioned PACE. I think they're Kris and Jordan are wonderful. I think what Dave Fonight is doing with HF Zero is is pretty fascinating. It's these houses. He brings people in, residential program. He's got a real nose for talent, and he's doing some amazing things there. I think Meritech doesn't get talked about enough. Max and Alex, and they they're just unbelievable in their thinking and so much respect for their focus and and what they do. And then, you know, my friend Molly at Dorm Room Fund, think, is doing amazing work with that community. And I think if you look at the alumni from Dorm Room Fund and where they've gone on, you can sort of see the quality of the people that she's engaged with and how that community is continuing to form. You can have dinner with one person dead or alive. Who's that person and why? Bill Bowery and Phil Nick, founders of Nike, what they built, their partnership, the way they understood each other's strengths, weaknesses, how they work together, what they created is just stunning. My long term professional goal would be to be on the Nike board. How much do you run a week, **Harry Stebbings** [56:48]: and what's your pre and post workout need for **Phin Barnes** [56:50]: So running anywhere from 40 to 60 miles. I've gotten to the point now where I can go out and run anywhere from five to 10 without you know, it's sort of indifferent. Just depends on how long I have. I tend to drink a bunch of water before I go. I didn't work out in the morning, so I don't eat that much before. And then afterwards, I just have a normal breakfast. Like, I don't get into the shakes and proteins and all this. I think if you eat real food and you eat in a balanced way, I think you can be pretty healthy. **Harry Stebbings** [57:16]: I totally agree with you. 40 to 60 is a lot. I I do now the same. Five days a week, you do 10 miles a day. Shit. That's like I mean, I end up doing, like, a long one on the weekend, which covers a big chunk of it. **Phin Barnes** [57:28]: Although and I've also recently have mixed in I mixed in a bunch of cycling. It's sort of like, rather than miles, I think of it in hours. So for me, exercise is the meditation. Like, I like to exercise on my own. And so the hours, meaning if I can get 60 a hundred and twenty minutes a day, I feel much, much, much better than if I get thirty to forty five minutes. **Harry Stebbings** [57:50]: Final one. If ten years out, I said to you success with TheGP and with Phin, what would you say that would be? If everything goes right, what does that look like? **Phin Barnes** [57:59]: So I think if everything goes right for The General Partnership, we will become an institution that matters in venture capital. When we invest in a company, people will say, congratulations. They will nod and understand why it makes sense because we will have a taste that's understood in the market for a certain type of founder, a certain type of company, and a certain way of working, we will have achieved our North Star, which is to be the place that's known to create the best opportunities for the most talented people in Silicon Valley, whether that's a builder on our team, someone that we place into one of our companies, or a founder that that we partner with. I think creating the very best opportunities for the most talented people and doing that on a repeated basis is sort of the the north star for the firm and the fuel that will serve us as we travel over the next ten years. **Harry Stebbings** [58:41]: Then I said at the beginning that kind of friendships like this is is really the biggest joy of doing what I do. I I think I got a little bit lost again when I focused on the outputs of shows and actually realized that the joy is in the doing and the building of the relationships and not the titles or everything that comes with it. And it really is friendships like this that make me so appreciate what I do. So thank you for for all you do for for the ecosystem, but, you know, for your support for me, and I've loved doing this. **Phin Barnes** [59:08]: Yeah. No. It's been great. Great to talk to you always. And, yeah, there's a focusing on the process, that's the key, and find happiness and joy in that, and everything else will work out. **Harry Stebbings** [59:18]: I mean, I just love that discussion. I also really love the elements on parenting there. Some really unique elements in terms of less happiness and more joy. I haven't heard that one before. If you wanna see more from us, of course, you can on YouTube by searching for 20 VC. That's two zero VC. But before we leave you today, ## Sponsor read **Harry Stebbings** [59:34]: this episode is brought to you by Tigas, the go to research destination for bold investing. Tigas curates expert insights analysis and financial data to give you powerful perspective for your investment decisions. With lightning fast access to over 60,000 transcripts across 20,000 companies, you'll discover a wealth of unique insights to fuel your fundamental research, gain perspectives, synthesize information, and even model outcomes all on Tigus. As a twenty minute VC listener, try it for free at tigus.com/growth. And speaking of tools we can't live without like Tigus there, Mayfair helps companies protect and grow their cash automatically, access up to $50,000,000 of FDIC insurance, and earn up to 4.72% interest on your deposits from a single account. After the failure of SVB and First Republic, it's clear that the standard FDIC limit of $250,000 is simply not enough for VC backed startups. 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