Jet.com's Marc Lore on How To Assess Human Potential and "The Resume Test"

I was always an entrepreneur growing up. Wanted to be a farmer ever since I can remember as a little kid, four years old. My grandma always used to tell me, no. You don’t wanna be a farmer? And I said, yeah. Oh, yes. I do. I wanna grow stuff from nothing. And that was basically carried on for years, it turned into me being the classic kid entrepreneur doing everything you could imagine from washing cars, mowing lawns, baseball card business, recycling, newspapers, lemonade stand, you know, everything kinda in my DNA from birth, I think, because I literally had it in me very early.

My first memory of being an entrepreneur, I was really little, and it was Casper the Friendly Ghost, his little projector screen. You put the little circle things in, and it projects onto the wall. I don’t even think I could write or anything at that point, but I narrated because there was no words. And I narrated it and used to charge my family to come and listen to the narration. So it was always in there. And then, you know, I I didn’t grow up with any connections to venture, startup world.

It didn’t really exist in back in ’93 when I graduated college. So there wasn’t really a choice to, like, be an entrepreneur. Didn’t have money or anything like that. So I went into banking. I was good with math and, like, stocks and filed stocks as a kid as well. Went into banking, and each year, I was doing well. I just felt like something was missing. Like, I just felt like this is not my lifelong career. It didn’t feel right. It was a very mercenary culture. It was I didn’t like the culture of it.

I didn’t like it was all about money. I was always interested more in the mission of things, and I just wanted to become an entrepreneur and do a startup. So literally, I I didn’t know what else to do because I had no connections, no anything. So I said, okay. I guess I just need to quit and become an entrepreneur. And so I walked in my boss’s office, and I said and this is, you know, maybe six, seven years, six and a half years into my banking career.

I was doing really well. I was the chief risk officer for a bank. I was making a $500,000 a year. I just had a baby. It wasn’t, like, the best time to leave, but, I just told him, hey. I’m gonna be an entrepreneur. I’m gonna quit. And he laughed at me. And he goes, you’re gonna be an entrepreneur. Okay? What’s your idea? You must have a great idea then. I said, no. I don’t have an idea yet, but I’ll get one when I become an entrepreneur and I quit.

I can’t do it while I’m banking here because I’m working a hundred hours a week. And then he’s like, wait, you’re serious? I said, yeah. No. I’m I’m dead serious. I’m gonna quit. And he goes, and salary? No. I’m gonna take my entire life savings and put it in the business. I have 390,000 saved and putting it in. And he goes, alright. You’ve really lost your mind now. But you know what? You’re all in, and I think you’re gonna make this work. So can I put $50 in as your first investor?

And he did. And that’s how it got started.

I simply said, I’m gonna do this for a year or two. If it doesn’t work, I think I’ll be not far enough removed from banking that I couldn’t get back in if I had to. But in my mind, I was never going back. I was gonna make that thing work. A lot of people ask for advice and things about leaving and doing it and stuff. You know, most people that are asking me are very marketable. They can get really good jobs in corporations probably better than they have when they left if they’ve got entrepreneurial experience as well.

So, like, the risk is really just the money you burn in the period of time that you’re away from it. You know what I mean? And so that’s, like, very calculable, and it’s a much smaller risk than it maybe appears. I wouldn’t recommend putting your life savings in, but I would recommend putting enough money in so that you feel like it’s life or death because that’s the only way to get into what I call the sixth gear. I think in business, people working really hard in banking.

I was killing myself working eighty, maybe even a hundred hours some weeks, and I never really got out of fourth gear. I didn’t know what sixth gear was or even fifth. I was working really hard, and it’s a different mentality, sixth gear. Sixth gear is literally life or death. You’re able to do things that you didn’t think were possible.

I think there’s definitely some conflict there. There’s no question. I think other things have to suffer. You know, hobbies suffer. TV suffers. I can’t remember the last time I watched TV. I can’t remember the last time I, like, even read anything, news or otherwise. Some things I’ve just chose my priorities in a way that allows me to get the things that are most important done, but other things fall away. So there’s no way to do it all. There’s no way you’re going to be, you know, having hobbies and, you know, watching TV and reading the news and doing social media and all this other stuff.

Like, it’s just there’s not there’s not enough time to sleep. Right? I sleep eight hours a night. I think it’s really important. If you want in sixth gear, this idea of being in sixth gear and sleeping five hours a night, that doesn’t work. You can’t you don’t have enough energy to be in sixth gear for the remaining hours in the day.

You basically, at a young age, associate being loved with accomplishing big things. Every human seeks to be loved. And if you’re loved, then you’re good. Right? And if you don’t feel loved unless you do big things, you have to do big things to get loved. You have to do whatever it takes. And as a kid, developed this mentality where I get it. I know what I need to do. And it drives you, and it’s an internal motivation that you can’t replicate. You can’t tell somebody that doesn’t have this unhealthy childhood to find that motivation.

It’s something that’s unexplainable. But I think it’s really healthy when it starts, and I think with therapy and time, I think it kinda morph into something that’s healthy, and then it becomes an an asset instead of a liability. I think earlier on, it’s it’s more of a liability than an asset, but that’s how it started.

Yeah. A really good point. And I think you have to be really careful as a parent because it is a natural inclination to wanna, like, get really excited and proud when your son or daughter does something spectacular or great or wins or, oh, that’s amazing. Let’s go get ice cream. You won. And I mean, I would just caution a little bit about going overboard on that and figuring out, like, whatever things you think are important, like the values. I would start with values. Think are important.

Those are the things to celebrate. So kindness, empathy, loyalty, these are values that are really important to me and try to instill in our kids. Our daughters have two daughters that are 18 and 21. Be a good person. And so looking for opportunities to reward and celebrate that behavior. And, of course, you’re gonna celebrate when somebody wins something. I’m not saying that. I’m saying just be more balanced about it so that it doesn’t become a one track situation.

No. I’ve always, you know, I grew up again with my parents weren’t that involved. They had me when they were 20 years old, and, you know, I kind of fend for myself. And I learned a lot of lessons myself and failed at a lot of things. And I just sort of got comfortable with failure as being, like, not a big deal. Like, I I didn’t get good grades in school, and it wasn’t a big deal. It was like, okay. If I teach myself how to ride a bike and fail and crash and do it’s like get back up and just tie my shoe, figure it out, like, fail, not do it right, get made fun of.

And then you get just comfortable with, okay, it’s okay to fail, learn from it, take those valuable lessons, and be better the next time. Once you have that mentality, like, failure is okay, because that’s the starting point of fear. It’s like, failure is okay. There’s nothing wrong with failing. I think it opens up the possibility to take more risk. What about when you

I would separate, first of all, reputation and things. Now you start talking about values, I and don’t think you take risk on values. So I think you need to be really grounded. Know what your values are, what are your core values, and never deviate, and even live them when they’re hard. I think that sometimes is hard, but that means you’re living your values. So I would never take risk with values, but with money and other things, it’s the same thing. It’s okay to fail. Again, I wouldn’t put my life savings in again, probably if I had to do it over again.

Now I wouldn’t put $3.90, maybe I’d put 300. Maybe I’ll leave $90

Yeah. No. The values that I try and instill in the companies I start, trust, transparency, and fairness, I think apply in in personal relationships too. I think trust and transparency are the two biggest. I’ll assume fairness is probably a little bit more of a corporate, although fairness stretches to inclusivity. And so I think that matters in personal relations, like accepting people for who they are. But trust and transparency, the two big ones. If you want somebody to open up and connect, show them that you’re being transparent and you’re sharing information, maybe sharing things that are very personal or, you know, the stuff we’re talking about about my dad here and things like that.

Like, it’s okay to be open and be transparent in that way. And then trusting is probably even bigger than that. It’s sort of like, do you start from a place of trust when you talk to somebody, or is it trust but verify? Are you cautious? I found, and I’m very trusting, when you openly trust someone, really trust them, like, where they can burn you. Like, put yourself in a place where they could burn you. They rarely do. Occasionally, you might get burned, and that’s part of one of the consequences of of being open, but there’s so much more upside to trusting.

The worst place to be is kind of that no man’s land in the middle where you’re kinda like half trusting. You know what I mean? Because you’ll still get burned, and you won’t get any of the upside. So I’m when I mean trusting, I mean, like, almost to the point of, like, stupid. But people know when they’re being trusted when they don’t deserve the trust yet, and it puts them in a different space of being much more vulnerable themselves, much more open, trusting back, transparent back.

So I don’t know I don’t know if that answers your question, but that’s how I think about it. I

I know. I like I said, you have to deceive getting burned once in a while as a consequence. And I think maybe if you get burned early or if you’re gonna get burned one out of 50 times, but you get burned in your first five, you might think, oh, this is not sustainable. But I found that actually it is more like one fifty. Like, it’s rare that you that you’ll get burned, and you’ll get better at associating with people that are less likely to burn you.

But the upside is tremendous. Like I said, if you go halfway on trusting or three quarters, you don’t get the full bang. You know? I have so many examples even in my personal life of of, like, trusting somebody and them surprising you. Basically, either in the relationship, how hard they work,

transparent too, by the way, some people do interpret that as this radical transparency, like, tell somebody that they suck. That’s not what I’m talking about, and I think there are people that interpret it that way. I’m talking about transparent yourself sharing information. So I’m really talking about more sharing information, being transparent with your feelings, transparent with information, and not being secretive, not, you know, basically just being open. On the flip side, in terms of the being radically transparent in fights and things like that, I actually take a different approach.

I’m more about empathy in that situation, really just listening, trying to see the other person’s point of view. I’m a big fan of Myers Briggs personality test, the 16 personalities. I try and know the personality type of all my friends, family, and anyone, colleagues, because I think understanding the personality type is, like, kind of the first, you know, the beginning of understanding and being empathetic because you get to know a personality type and you understand why they may react a certain way or be a certain way or do a certain thing, and it’s more you can understand it better because there’s certain personality types that you’re just gonna clash with.

It’s just that’s the way it works. And knowing that it’s the personality type and not the person is really helpful.

Yeah. Because, you know, I subscribe to this theory of VCP, Vision Capital People. If you get that right, if you now VCP, everything else falls into place. The people part of it is the toughest and most challenging piece. It starts with setting the right culture, mission, values, what does a company stand for, create a culture where the best people in the world want to come work. But then you have to find those people, you have to recruit those people, you have to create an org structure that keeps them empowered, motivated, where you can get the very best they’ve got.

To do all that well, org structure, compensation, find them. Like, you need a chief people officer. Like, if you think that or the CEO or the founder of a company thinks that they can found the company, do the capital, do the vision, do all the parts of the business, and on the side with their pinky, do like the chief people stuff. That’s not gonna work. You’re not gonna create the best culture, hire the best people, have the right org structure to really get them motivated and empowered.

So that’s why I start with chief people now because that whole p part of the equation is so important, and you have somebody amazing on it. Everything else falls in place.

that understand the importance of culture in the organization. There’s lot of chief people officers that may be more mechanical in sort of, like, hiring business practices that we need to fire them, documents to sign, more operational. People that really understand it all starts with and employee experience that your employees are your most valuable asset. Treat them as such. You know? Like, create an amazing place for them to work. Focus on values. The smartest, best people in the world, they wanna feel like they’re part of something bigger than themselves.

I look for missionary as opposed to mercenary people that aren’t there for the money. They’re there for the mission. So what is the mission? What are the values? What do you stand for? And is this company prepared to live the values like no other company? That’s how you get the best people. And so some Chief People Officer that really gets that.

Yeah. I guess depends on the purpose of the reference. So early in my career, and I see people do this, you sort of have an interview, and you have something some tap. I call it a tap on the shoulder. Like, I’m not quite sure about this one thing. I’m gonna check and find out when I talk to their references. That’s kind of the mentality. Like, there’s some lingering thing you wanna flush through with the references. And very frequently, the references make you feel better. It’s like, oh, okay.

I guess that’s good. You know? And then you wanna hire the person, then the tap that you got once winds up playing out. It sounds like a false sense of confidence there. But my point now in reference is when I interview somebody, I need to know without a shadow of a doubt, without having to talk to any other person. I’m that confident that this is the right person for the job and that they exhibit the values. And if you didn’t get there, interview them again. Interview them the third time.

Wait until you get to a place where you’re like, I’m done. This is the person. You’re not going to get that from talking to a reference. It’s very, very, very rare. And I talked to you about this, that you’ll actually change your mind from a reference. Like, I wanna hire this person. Let me check the references. And then you’re like, no. Now I’m not gonna hire the person. Or I don’t think I’m gonna hire the person to talk to the reference, then you hire. It’s it’s a very, very rare thing.

And so you waste a lot of time. But more importantly, it’s what I said before, which is now you can check references. You sure you wanna hire this person? It’s like a really good gut check that if you check yourself and you feel the need to check references to make sure, then it’s probably not the right person. So it’s it’s the gut check that I like.

Yes. Well, there’s another component here. So I agree. It’s not there’s the whole before you actually make the decision to hire has to be aligned with this philosophy. Because if you do this philosophy, which most people do, which is like, here’s a resume. Oh, they’re in finance. They’re a CFO. I need a CFO. Great. Come in, chat for an hour. I really like this person, and you hire them. Then I would take back what I said about references maybe because you could get what I call honey potted, where you just like the person and they’re not great.

And so I don’t get honey potted anymore because I won’t interview somebody or I don’t even wanna meet them. I don’t wanna see them until they pass the resume test. And I have a very specific way in which I review resumes to see if somebody is a superstar. Are they top 10% or not? You know, by definition, only one in 10 are. So it takes time, you know, to find 10 people that have the right experience and and at the right level. What is the resume test?

I think this is honed over thousands of interviews over over many years, but I need to see a demonstrable level of success in whatever job that they do. So if they go into a company, you gotta think about what this company is, how fast they promote people, and that’s something you learn over time, and you could probably figure it out. Does it make sense that this person went into Procter and Gamble? They were there for five years and never got promoted? Or no, they came in.

They were 24 years old. Procter and Gamble, the best people get promoted every two years. Do I see two promotions in five years? Great. They left Procter and Gamble, and this is a really important part. When they leave the company that they’re at, superstores make demonstrable jumps in either title level type of company, and it’s very clear. And when they move, then they move through that organization really well. Any deviation from this, if I see somebody go lateral, if I see them stay five years and not get promoted, if they’re a director and stuck there for ten years, there’s all kinds of like these things that I see from experience that I say, they could be great.

I know my friends telling me they’re great. I’m not doing it. I’ve already made a mistake. Like, because like everybody’s got a friend that thinks they’re great. Right? So I’m not doing it. And there’s a lot of great people that are top 30%, top 50% even. Right? They’re like, I want top 10%. And there’s a certain the top 10 percenters, they all have the same resume. It doesn’t mean you can’t be in the top 10% with a different resume. So it’s true. I might miss some people.

And that’s, you know, sorry. I’m gonna miss people. But I’m not going to interview somebody who’s not top 10% because I won’t do it. And so I know when they come in that they’ve had a demonstrable level of success. They’re a star. I’m only interviewing for core values at that point, and it’s all about SPOTIQ. Do they have the traits that I look for? SPOTIQ is an acronym. Smart, passionate, optimistic, tenacious, adaptable, kind, and empathetic. And it’s the balance between a lot of people have passion and tenacity, and they’ll run through a brick wall, but they’ll run over people.

And so the balance of having somebody who’s kind and empathetic and also has passion and tenacity, and they’re optimistic, and they’re adaptable, and they So that’s what I look for, and the entire interview is focused on spotting. And if I find a top 10% resume with spotting traits, home run, and then I hire them on the spot. I don’t need to I don’t need to do any references at that point. They’ve already proven on their resume and and and to the values that they’re amazing. That’s it.

I guarantee you that person that had a bad reference, I guarantee they didn’t have a a superstar resume.

No. No. I don’t that that they don’t even get an interview at that point. The risky part is this is I’ve telling you, this is a trap. Somebody tells you somebody’s good. You look at their resume, and you don’t really spend much time on it because they said this person’s good, and you interview them. I do not do that. I don’t care if somebody tells me they’re good. There’s maybe a a few people in my orbit that if they’ve worked with somebody, they know a superstar, but it’s very rare.

Most people don’t really understand what a superstar is. So I, for the most part, I will never take a recommendation unless the resume fits the description. And so, yes, somebody who who bounces around, somebody who doesn’t get promoted in the job that they’re in, think I’m a superstore. I’m top 10%. Here’s what I’m doing. I’m I’m going to work for this company. I get into Google, and I see this all the time. You’re like, wow. They got a job at Google. That’s a pretty good job.

And then they leave in eighteen months out. Like, don’t even I don’t care what the excuse is. Somebody say, oh, well, there’s a really good excuse. It doesn’t matter. I only will focus on people that have a demonstrable level of success in any place that they work. It’s true, maybe that person has a really valid excuse and I miss that person, but I don’t know that person. I you know what I mean? I’m just going through resumes. I’m waiting until it fits. I also think it eliminates unconscious bias a little bit too because sometimes recommendations you get are from the same group of people.

You you like the person because there’s they’re the same, you know, type of person. So it kinda eliminates that a little bit.

Yeah. It would be it would be, you know, more like 15 investments. How do you put 10,000,000 seed in a company, and then the company winds up and let’s say you own 40% for 10 for 10,000,000, and then the company winds up doing a $50,000,000 round that you lead to keep your pro rata and put another 20 in. Now So you’ve got 30,000,000 in a company. The company’s got 60,000,000. It’s got an incredible team. It’s got a big vision and a big market with a big TAM.

You basically made that happen. You you you’ve been able to have the guarantee of great people because you’ve got 60,000,000, which you can go out and recruit, assuming you got the Chief People Officer and you got the right founders and things. And the $50,000,000 round kicked off with 20 makes it easy to get done. And so you put 30,000,000 in the company. You now own 40% of a company that probably has already a $100,150,000,000 at least if you raise 50, maybe $203,100,000,000 market cap, and you sort of made that happen from a seed from nothing.

You do 15 of those and have 30,000,000 in 15 companies and say $500,000,000 fund. Something like that on that order of magnitude.

Yeah. I think you have to find the right founders. And I think second time founder, there’s a lot more confidence there. So a lot of the founders are second time founders, but there are some first time founders where the confidence is there. The reason why the 10,000,000 is really to build out the right team and helping the founder build out an incredible executive team. Because at the end of the day, you know, you’re hoping to to create multibillion dollar business, public company, go all the way, right, and something massive.

But in many cases, there’s a strategic that’ll buy it a lot sooner. A lot of what the strategic will be interested in buying is in fact the team. The team and sort of, you know, technology bill. And if you’ve got $60,000,000 and you’ve hired the very best team in the world in that segment, and you’ve spent enough money on engineering to build a really good tech platform, it’s a good chance that the company’s worth a lot more than 60,000,000 to a strategic. But it’s the right industry at the right time.

It’s a big TAM. And so there’s that that safety net. There’s there’s a little bit of this, like, choose a no man’s land situation where you raise, like, a couple million, and then you you you don’t hire the best people, and you’re kinda going along and you’re burning, like, you know, 100,000 a month, and it starts to add up, And you don’t have enough money to really build anything of any significance. You don’t have the right team. And then you’ve now got 4,000,000 in and 5,000,000 in, and you’re like, I can’t do the big round of financing.

I don’t have the right team and things. And you have to wind up, like, selling it, but then you sell it as an acquihire, but you don’t have the people, and you sell it for less than you rate. It’s like a very it’s not a great situation. A lot of people get caught there. I find if you’ve got the very best people in the world in a certain segment of the market, it’s always gonna be really valuable and interesting to a strategic. So for example, like with Archer, the flying car company, the sort of the, EVTOL, the passenger drone company.

Two founders, great founders, second time founders, came in here. They’re sitting on this couch right here two years ago, and they had this big vision for next generation flying car. And there’s some companies that have already done it and been in in the space for a long time. They simply said to me, hey, listen, we need $5,000,000, and we’re gonna go out and hire the very best team in the world. Engineers, we know where they are. They had done a recruiting business before, so they kinda knew how to get to them, and they knew where they were.

And after we do that, we’re gonna raise 50,000,000 and build the best flying car that’s ever been built because we’ll have the best people and all the learnings. And then we’ll go out and do a real round. And I said, great. I get this. VCP. You got the vision. You guys seem amazing. Second time founders, incredibly hungry, tenacious. I love these guys. I can help on the capital side, so I gave them 5,000,000 and helped them raise the 50,000,000. The same kind of same kind of thing.

I kicked off the 50 millionaire around with 10, and that all came together. And they had $60,000,000. They had the best team in the world. They did build the best and latest and greatest sort of, like, flying car, and they were able to SPAC and raise a billion dollars. It kinda made it happen, like, because it was the right industry, the capital actually propelled the company forward to get the best people. And by the way, if they had to sell it, they didn’t raise the billion, and they just had raised 60,000,000.

I still would argue that there are a lot of companies out there, given how hot this sector is, would wanna buy the best team in the world and the technology they’ve built.

Everything I’m telling you here about getting the values right, creating the culture, hiring the very best people in the world that knew eCommerce. I think we had built and had some of the best people in the world. And when Walmart made the acquisition, that was a probably the the single biggest reason why they were interested in spending $3,000,000,000 for Jet. It’s it certainly wasn’t the the market penetration, the customers that they were buying. They were buying the team and the know how and the technology. And so there’s always an orb there, I find, when you invest in people and you invest in assets that are hard for strategic to replicate.

So technology, technology and people. If you’re spending money in other areas, it’s not gonna be valued as much. It gets more risky. So you better make sure, like, if you’re investing in in marketing early on, that you have such an incredible CAC, cost to acquire a customer, to LTV, lifetime value of a customer relationship, that you know, okay, this is working and more fuel, we can get it because it’s working and we’re gonna create a big company. But before you prove that CAC LTV, you wanna invest in people and and technology.

And I think a lot of startups, they do invest in technology, and that’s why many times is is okay. But few invest in the best talent in the world because they don’t have the capital. And that’s what the VCP fund is all about. It’s like, no. We’re gonna give you 10,000,000 so you could hire the very best people in the world and give you the best possible shot of making a big company. But if you don’t, it’s gonna be very valuable because big companies don’t have the best talent in the world in a specific sector.

Can I ask a weird one? What are you worried about with the new VCP fund? This may sound like a cop out, but I don’t really worry about much, like, at all. I don’t worry about stuff that’s gonna happen in the future, and I don’t dwell on the past. I spend every minute focused on trying to make things happen in the now. I don’t really spend any time worrying. If I’ve if I got the vision right, I spend a lot of time in the vision, I feel convicted on the vision, and raise capital and hire the very best people, I kinda just let things I don’t there’s nothing to worry about.

It it’ll be what it’ll be. All I can do is is control VC and P. So I don’t worry about that stuff.

The strategy can change. So how you get there, the vision shouldn’t change. If you do the right amount of work upfront, and I mean hundred plus hours crafting, thinking about the vision, talking to people, don’t be afraid to share your vision because it’s like a piece of clay. You gotta keep molding it and molding it. You’ll know, okay, the timing’s right, massive TAM, and you’ll just have a level of conviction after talking to enough people that there’s something massive here. Now the strategy, how you get there, lots of different ways.

You might have to pivot. You might have to but I can’t think of a situation where you’d spend all that time on the vision and then sort of get it wrong because it’s so big, and you’ve talked to enough people, and you know enough about the world to know, like, that’s where the world’s going. You know? It’s it’s it’s hard to imagine. I I guess it could happen, but maybe it happens if you haven’t done enough work on it. I don’t think people spend enough time on the vision.

They’ll say, like, if you ask somebody, what is your vision? Ten to fifteen years, where do you wanna be? It’s rare that somebody will be able to, like, recite a, like, really tight three to five sentences of exactly what they wanna be in ten years from now. Most people just get so caught up in kind of the day to day, and they have a vague thing about where they wanna go, but it’s not crystal clear. I think it’s really important that it’s crystal clear. Like, you write it down, Every single word matters, and you get your entire leadership team on board with every word.

Because everyone might say, yeah. We get the vision, you know, like your CFO and and it’s like, no. No. Every single word. Do you agree with this? I said very. You agree with very, or is it very, very? You know? Like, is it like, there’s different degrees. Every word matters, and it really does change the strategy depending on words in the vision. Because it is ten to fifteen years out, every word is nuanced in a way that can change how somebody would interpret how to get there or the strategy to get there.

Yeah. I still have the insecurity. Like I said before, even though I’m evolved and I’ve done therapy and this whole, you know, thing we talked about with my dad early, I do still have because we all say, know, you’re doing these new startups and things, but you’ve made all this money. Like, if it doesn’t work, you’re okay. I’m like, no. You don’t understand. I’m not okay. I still feel like it’s life or death. I still feel like love is tied to whether I succeed or not.

And so even though it’s definitely healthier than it was when I was younger, I still have that insecurity like, no. It has to work. There’s no plan b. There’s no fallback. There’s no it’s okay. I’ve got plenty of money. I’ll just whatever. So that’s an insecurity. Like, it cannot work.

Yeah. Sure. Go ahead.

thinking. I actually set aside time in the day to do nothing but think. It could be with a glass of wine. It could be, you know, sitting in the hot tub relaxing, but, like, try to get into a relaxed state a little bit and just literally think. But not think about what went wrong in the day, what worry about the future. Think about the past. Like, actually, just think about the world where it’s going, try and connect dots, and think about V. It’s really think about the vision for different ideas, for ideas, things I’m in, things I wanna get in.

I find it impossible to invent or come up with big ideas just kind of like on the like, in between your life. Like, you need to, like, dedicate real time to it. So other people read and I think. And when I try and read, I feel like I’m taking time away from thinking. So I that’s why I always put the book down. I do try. I do try.

When the kids were growing up, we used to go to Michael’s and buy all this arts and crafts stuff and build a leprechaun house, you know, with green paint and popsicle sticks. And we used to, like, make it really cool looking house. And the idea would be that the leprechaun would come on Saint Patrick’s Day, the eve, and stay there. And if he or she liked their stay, that they would bury a treasure in the yard. And so then the kids would have would leave a map, and then the kids would have the map, and then they would go and try and find the treasure in the yard with the map.

And that was a family tradition. They I loved it. They loved it. My kids making the house every year. And so that that was one. And at 18 and 21, they still do it today? They still no. They don’t do it anymore. But they don’t let they talk about it. It’s good to have things like that. It’s funny. You don’t in the in the in the moment, it’s not you don’t appreciate how meaningful it is until they get older and you look back and you laugh about it and talk about it and, you know, and you realize how meaningful it really was.

So

Yeah. It’s very frustrating as an entrepreneur where you have different funds specialized in different rounds of financing and, you know, they don’t come in seed and they come in seed, but they can only write a little check. Then you got to find another one to get a bigger check. And it’s just like, come on, man. Just, like, have a fund that and that’s kinda a little bit the VCP thing that can just come in and say, like, yeah. Here’s, like, 5,000,000 seed. Here’s 20,000,000 a.

Here’s you know, just like you can kinda get the company to lift off without having to worry about constantly every year having to, like, you know, go out and find the next tranche of VCs that are then, like, specific to that round. As an entrepreneur, it’s always frustrated me that I had to get, like, the seed investor that could put in, like, a million bucks, you know, and then I had a whole new group of investors that had to go, like, pitch.

That’s a good point, but I don’t think it’s a good enough point to negate what I said. VCs are great in that, you know, they could ask great questions, open doors, introduce you to people. All that’s the same through the rounds. I I think it’s a little overdone, this idea that, like, they help in a different way, the seed or the a. When I think about my best investors, because they came in all the rounds, I treat them all like they’re just great. They they’re sounding boards.

They open doors. They’re good supporters. I don’t really see like, oh, this person, they came in later and they have, like, a different perspective. The only different perspective is and this actually causes conflict, is that the early investors wants to exit, and the late investors, like, I just got in. I don’t wanna exit. And you have this conflict. All that goes away, by the way, if you have an investor that can basically just take you through the rounds. And by the way, I’m not saying that this is, a superior model.

It’s just frustrating that that model doesn’t exist, really. Tell me, final one. What’s the

I guess NOWwith is the most recent. Albert Podkin and Nicole Wineman just announced recently that me and and Alex Rodriguez invested. We did take a 40% stake in the company, and it’s in social commerce. I think the two big areas still left untapped in retail are social commerce and conversational commerce. So they’re the two areas I’m I’m really excited about. And social commerce is basically what they’ve created a platform that connects brands to influencers. And so that if you’re an influencer and you have a following, you can go on the platform, see all the brands and say, oh, Lululemon, I like that brand.

I’m gonna now create a video, put it on my Instagram, and people can then shop off the video. And every sale that I make, I’ll get dollars some percentage back to me. It’s the idea of of democratizing sort of access to any influencer to get access to brands in a seamless way. I think that’s that’s a big big opportunity.