39: היום שאחרי ההשקעה - בניית מערכות יחסים מוצלחות עם משקיעים. אורח: קן פוקס (English)

Hi, Eran. Hi, Leo. Hi, everyone. You reached Startup for Startup, the podcast on which we openly share knowledge, experience, and actionable insights among startups. Startup for Startup. Founder-investor relationships are usually discussed in the context of fundraising. What would be a good fund to raise from? How much money can a certain investor put? And whether there's an additional value to a certain partner over another? While these are all important questions, there's one crucial point that is hardly discussed. Founder-investor relationship on the day after the investment is made. What is tomorrow like after you've agreed to begin a relationship with your investors today? What should a founder expect from an investor in terms of health, engagement, and general communication? Our guest today is Ken Fox, founder and managing partner at Stripes Group. Stripes is a private equity and venture capital firm based in Manhattan, which led our last funding round of $50 million in May 2018. Welcome, Ken, and thanks for joining Eran and I today. Ron, thanks for having me. Leroy, thanks for having me. As I described before, the way this is done is that we, from the startup perspective, we look for an investor, and we have a list that we shorten, and we hope to get some alternatives if we're lucky, and then we choose the right one. But how do we know it's the right one? What does it mean for an investor to be the right one? So the day after investment comes, and here you are sitting on our board. The first thing I want to ask you about, Ken, is what do you expect in terms of communications? Hopefully prior to investing, you establish chemistry, and there's cultural fit, and there's mutual respect. And if you're in a company that's fortunate enough to be able to choose who your partners are, which a company like Monday clearly is, then that's at the top of the list, because the day after you close, you want to be in a position where you're looking forward to catching up with your investor. So that's really interesting. So you're saying here that chemistry is something founders should put attention on. Absolutely. Yeah, I mean, you're going to be working together for potentially a very long time. And just like the people that you work with every day, you want to feel good about those people. You want to respect them. You want to have people's opinions that you respect. You want to have people who hold themselves out in ways they respect. And it's a reflection of your brand, who you choose to partner with. And again, going back to the communications question, so what do you expect? Is it a daily interaction? No. No. Listen, we don't run companies. We're investors. And the mindset at Stripes and the way that I founded the firm on this principle, and everyone at Stripes moves along the same lines, is we're of service. And so our mindset here is we're minority investors in Monday. And our mindset is how do we be a resource and how do we be of service to Iran and Roy and the team so that execution gets easier? And we have a set of resources, and I've got experiences that are hopefully relevant. And the idea is that the entrepreneurs that we work with feel like they've invested their equity with us and they should get a return on that equity. And we're investing our money with them, and we want a return on our money. And our expectations for our returns are very high, and we think that the entrepreneurs we work with should have very high expectations on what their returns are in working with us. Listen, if you're raising money and it's a grind and you have a vision and other people don't share your vision yet, that's also very powerful, and you may not have the luxury of picking who you want. You may just—money is green, and I'm going to take that money, and I'm going to get going. But when you get that to a place where you have the traction or if you have a concept that's resonating in the marketplace and you have the ability to choose, then you should think about what criteria you're looking for in a board member and investor that goes well beyond the term sheet you get. In this investment, we did have an option to choose, and I remember Rory and I having this conversation of how should we prioritize? How should we choose? And I would say the number one parameter was the relationship, the chemistry with the investor, thinking about the day after the investment, not optimizing for valuation because we had a chance to get a high valuation, but I feel that choosing the right partner creates more value to the company and helps you create a better company. So I think this is the most important parameter. Many founders just don't know what to expect. They don't know what's the right and what's the wrong thing to do. Should they be texting their investors? Should they be emailing them? Should they speak only over the board meeting? How much to tell them? Are you telling everything? Is there such a thing as telling too much? Ken, you're smiling here. This is something people can't see. I don't think there's a uniform answer to these questions. Right.

I think that, you know, you need to be, I think as an entrepreneur, you need to be aware of a lot of different things. And I think you do, listen, you want to use your board, you want to use your investors in ways to help you make better decisions. And you want them, and you also want them to believe in you. How do you achieve that? And so I think that, A, you execute, right? I mean, listen, at the end of the day, this is a results business. And the results are what's going to drive the relationship over a long period of time. But I think, listen, so to your question, to your earlier questions, zeroing on the exact question, I think that everybody has a different style. And I think you should just work with your style. So if you're comfortable texting, text works great. You know, if you want to set up a regular rhythm of calls, you know, if you want to do a monthly check-in, that works well. You know, Monday we do quarterly board meetings, but we certainly talk to the guys, you know, more than once a month for sure. You know, when there are strategic issues that these guys want to bounce off us, we're available anytime as a sounding board to do that. How do you communicate with our board? Yeah, so, you know, it's our philosophy, but we as a company, we're very transparent to everybody inside a company. We got dashboards all around. We got BigBrain, which is basically all of our information is available to everybody in the company. So Rene and I made a conscious decision, I think a few years back, that we want to treat the board in kind of the same way. So one of the things that we've done, which I feel is kind of unusual, is we keep… Ken can tell us in a minute whether it's unusual or it's you. First of all, you know, for the company itself, we send like a daily SMS and a daily email of, you know, just financial updates from yesterday. And we made the decision that if it's something we're going to send everybody in the company, we're going to send it to every one of our board members. Now, this is not an easy decision to make. I mean, now it looks cool. But back in the days, remember that, you know, we would get phone calls, people asking, oh, I saw yesterday the number. It was low numbers, right? But every SMS triggered like a question. And as an entrepreneur, it might be easier for you to say, you know, I'm going to meet the board once a quarter. I'm going to crunch the numbers. Everything will look… Create a narrative for them and just keep on playing it. Yeah, I'll tell you what. First of all, I love getting these SMSs. I mean, partially because it's so much fun, right? And listen, when the chemistry is right and you invest in… It's a great investment and you're kind of cruising along and you're getting results. It's really fun in general. So Monday is just fun. But I love getting those daily reports. I think one of the things that's interesting is if you think about what makes it hard, it's hard to be that accountable. So to provide that level of transparency, to make yourself that accountable to not only your employees, but also your board, I think it forces you to execute better. Like, you know, when you say it, that's what I think about at least is that, wow, like you're naked, man. Like, you know, like it's all there. And that makes you perform. It raises the bar. And, you know, listen, it's already a tough bar to go out and be an entrepreneur and have a view and go try to execute against it. But to leave yourself that exposed where you're transferring daily data on your performance, that's an unbelievable measure to kind of hold yourself to. It's very cool. What does it allow for you, Ken, as an investor? Oh, you know, it obviously keeps me totally informed. And these guys are great, you know, so I'll text them. And, you know, if a day is light, I'll text them. If a day is big, I'll text them. And, you know, just to get a little color. And these guys can shoot back, you know, two, three sentences and boom, I'm informed. And that's great. Yeah, one of the things that we found, you know, looking into the company, you know, it also kind of ties back to why we transferred as a company to everybody in the company is that I found that, you know, once you share everything on a daily basis, on a constant basis, people see the bad, they see the good. They're not being surprised by, you know, if something doesn't work great and not being surprised if something's working, you know, extremely good. They're just part of the process, you know, like all of us. So for me, you know, even, you know, some days might be more volatile than others. We might have a weak month or, you know, a great month. But the fact that all of our board is part of that, it just made them see the numbers the same way that we do. And for me, what's the most exciting part, I feel more calm knowing that, you know, we're all in the same boat, we see the same numbers. They experience the company the same way that we do as opposed to… It saves you also the friction of having to deliver a message, you know, like if you have a bad day, you don't have to start thinking about how to tell that. I love the fact that it's not only you, by the way, it's other investors. They text me all the time. You know, it's what happened this day, this day was amazing.

I saw you guys reduce churn. I saw you guys increase new customers. But what happens on a bad day? And we do have bad days. Oh, we have a bunch of texts on bad days as well. I think even Ken, like a few weeks ago, asked us, you know, I saw this week was weaker than the others. You know, what I feel is that the kind of share what I feel on a daily basis, you know, instant feedback instead of like dragging something along, you know, waiting two months until the next board meeting, just take it off your shoulders. You know, let's talk quick SMSs or phone call. And that's it. You're done. You can move forward. That's it. So for me, it's less stressful. That takes a lot of courage. Like transparency in the company, but no way I'll take that back. Ken, I think also it might be helping you like help to increase your trust in the funders. Could that be right? Yeah, for sure. I mean, to have that level of transparency, it's fantastic. I think that if you're an earlier stage investor or any stage investor, you have to value the process in addition to the results because you need to be able to make good decisions along the way and you want to be able to continue to back people and continue to invest with people and believe in them. And I think that's the natural. I think that would be if you're an entrepreneur, that would be the catch 22 that you might describe to somebody as well. Yeah, it's easy for you guys because you guys are killing it. You know, of course, you're showing your data that you're your investors. They love it. But, you know, I'm struggling. So I, you know, I got to figure out how to manage that. And the truth of the matter is that there's the best way to manage it is to be transparent because then your investors are part of it with you and they'll respect you for it. And you're much less likely to go sideways with your investor base because they see that you're dealing with stuff and you're not hiding things and managing things. And look, nobody likes to be managed, you know, at the end of the day in terms of expectations or anything like that. You want transparency. And the end of the day, as investors, we're in it with you guys. It's not a public company stock. Like I can't wake up tomorrow and sell my shares a Monday. I'm in this and I want to be in it. Right. And I want to be in it to see it through to the ultimate upside and outcome and everything else with these guys. And so having a level of transparency is meaningful. I just want to complete the picture of how we communicate with the board. We got a daily SMS, daily email that we send to all of our investors. We have monthly updates. So basically every month we send a summary of all the key metrics and updates from the company. So any new features we launch, what's going on with marketing, ops, like all the general updates. And all of our investors have full access to BigBrain. So basically BigBrain is our BI, the same system that we use internally for all of our analytics. It's available to all of our investors. And I know some of them log in on a daily basis. We get the daily BigBrain email too. Yeah, the daily BigBrain email. And we have quarterly board meetings, which we do every quarter, which we're going to talk about more, I guess. That's all of work. Well, the daily SMS is automatic. BigBrain is there anyway. Monthly reports, I feel it's great. We also share this with the team. I mean, I think that the reality of it is reporting that's coming to the board should be the same reporting you're using to run the company. And you can't manage a business if you don't measure it. So you have to have these metrics. And so the reality of it is I don't think anything, like if there was no board, there's nothing that Iran is sending us that they wouldn't be doing anyway. So the one thing we do invest more time preparing, I think, like everything you said, I agree with. The one time we do have to stop and work harder, I guess, is when we prepare the board presentation. And when I say we, it's really a we thing in Monday. Ken can talk about it more. And maybe this is a good timing to connect back to the board we had yesterday. And generally, what's the board's purpose? I mean, one might, again, argue that this is a lot of work for good or bad reasons. So what are your thoughts on that? Well, I do think that preparing board books and board material, it takes a lot of work. It was 150 slides yesterday. Yeah. I think it was like 170 even. But I think it's a lot of work. I mean, it just is. But I think that we've all had experiences. As investors, we have that experience. Preparing investment memos, preparing material for an investment committee, preparing material for our investors. Those times that make you stop and reflect and think about where you are, why you're here, and your path forward, those are constructive times. And so I actually think while it is a lot of work, it can be very productive in terms of setting strategy and things like that. And at the board level, the things that you want to talk about and the things that you want to use your board for run the gamut. Like there's obviously a natural legal role of the board as it relates to government.

and making sure you have the right leadership. There is also, depending on the makeup of the board, I think entrepreneurs use their board for all sorts of other sorts of resources to prioritize and get views on product development as it relates to market and market positioning, as it relates to long-term strategy, as it relates to kind of path towards creating value. There's all sorts of, I think, roles that a board plays as a sounding board for management. You know, obviously every case is different. Every company is different. But I don't feel that the role of the board is to make product decisions or prioritize. No, I agree with that. Not at all. I agree with that. No, it's much more strategic than that. It's more around landscape, competitive dynamics, things like that. The board doesn't run the company, period. Although I think that a lot of entrepreneurs kind of place themselves in that position where they bring up priorities about product or about should they go this direction or that direction strategically. I think it's a mistake. Business models are many times discussed on a board level. Maybe not in the growth stage. Yeah, I think when I think about it, it's much more sounding board type stuff. So when I use the term sounding board, what I mean is, like, for example, I think Ron, Roy, the team, they've got a view. And it's very well thought out. And they've done a lot of work. And to the degree that the board could punch holes in it, that might be constructive. I think it rarely happens that way. I think when companies are really well run and doing well, they're sharing a lot of information. They're sharing a lot of data. They're sharing their work and the direction. And a lot of times you're getting a lot of support from the board and enthusiasm, frankly. But every once in a while you might say, does that really make sense? Or you have a view on a competitor and you get better data from your board, for example, things like that. I think this links back directly to what we talked about, fluid communication. Because, again, I'm trying to think about the fear. I'm trying to understand and relate with the founders. And sometimes a board can become something that you're trying to avoid and you're kind of feeling stressed about. This is probably when you're not hitting numbers and things are not going well. But, again, if you create this kind of dynamics where people know that before coming to your board, it's not going to be surprising them, this might take off some of the stress. I think if you get a board meeting and this is the first time that your investors know how much revenue you have, if you had a good month or not, you're in a very bad position to start with, no matter what the results are. I feel that you should go to the board meeting, that everybody on the board already knows the numbers and you can talk about the future as opposed to kind of talking about the past. I completely agree. I think in every situation I've been in where the company wasn't performing and the founder, CEO, the relationship with the board deteriorated, it was because they weren't transparent and because they were trying to solve problems and then deliver a solution as opposed to just sharing what's going on in the business. And listen, the board's not going to run the company. The board's not going to solve your problems. But, well, I think that's a unique situation where I think everybody ends up in a bad spot, right? Because you lose trust as a result of that, right? Because if you go to a board meeting and there's a whole slew of surprises and there's a lack of transparency and the team is really defensive, then everybody's really in a bad place at that point. I think that when things don't go as planned and there's transparency, you're in it together and everybody can have a certain level of ownership over it and the most important thing is there's trust and you can kind of work through issues and challenges together and hopefully get to the other side to a great place. And, you know, if you don't, at least you'll have done it in a way that everybody kind of maintains respect and trust with each other. Listen, not everything's going to go right all the time. No, it's a fact that it's not, right? Statistically proven that it's not. Exactly. Preparing a deck for the board, it's a lot of work. We had a board meeting yesterday, 170 slides, I think, a lot of work. Movies, videos, you know, screenshots, statistics. These guys do an awesome board deck, by the way. It's impressive. I want to take you back, like, you know, three years back, I remember walking on a board deck and thinking to myself, you know, why am I doing this? Like, why should I put, like, I get the board, you know, I want to create a deck, but I put a lot of effort into that, like, you know, designing the slides, making them beautiful, making the message clear, and I ask myself, you know, why am I doing that? Instead of just products. I have a theory as to why these board books are so amazing and why the meetings are so great. I think it's because these guys

Guys are working smart, they're working hard, and they're really proud about what they're doing. And they want to share it. And they want to share the enthusiasm. That's what I think. That's only 20% of it. 20%? Wow. Okay. At least I got 20% of it. That's true. But I remember feeling that feeling and, you know, essentially it's because I felt we're doing something for the board as opposed to something for the company. Something that we started doing three and a half years ago is that after every board meeting, every Thursday after a board meeting, and this is going to happen this Thursday as well, we go up, we get out of the whole company for an hour and a half, and go through the whole board deck from slide one to the last one, same deck. No changes. We don't remove any slides. And I love that. This is like the most meaningful part. I love that. So really, like 20% of it's for the board, but the 88% is for the team. Yeah. 80% of why we're doing this is for the team. I love that. And when we design the deck, we do it for the team. Like when I think about which slides I want to put, I'm thinking about the team, but I feel this is kind of the best reflection for the board in a sense. And everybody in the company pitch in. It's like, I don't create it myself. That's like a level of transparency that's off the hook. Yeah. You didn't know that, did you? I did know that. You just know that? You want to save me that. He's just giving you a good… Yeah, give me the credit. Every guy that worked in the feature that produced the video for that feature, the people that work on automations brought out the data for the automations. The guy that worked on the dashboard in the last board deck brought the data for that. They created the video. They created the screenshots. The guy from finance got all the graphs. The design team got all the design stuff. And essentially everybody in the company is working for that. And then we go back and it's like this hour and a half where you align everybody in the company. You show everything that you've done. You show all the financials. And what happens is the company is super focused after that. It's like every quarter we take the whole company, we super align them, where we want to go, what we've done. And it's funny because when we talk, we also talk about the future, our roadmap with features. So those videos kind of force us to imagine how this feature is going to look like. And that's amazing because I feel when you work on a new product, it's always hard because it's hard to imagine how it's going to look like. So the fact that we prepare that both for the board and the company kind of shows them the vision for the next quarter. And then it's just… You set everyone on the same line. Yeah, and it's just a matter of execution and implementation because everybody is super synced, from the designer to the product manager to the R&D, marketing, customer success. Everybody knows what's coming. I think that another thing you get out of the board is that it's a good time for you to stop and reflect on what's not working for you. Yeah, so I remember last board meeting, it was in Tel Aviv, I think. Yeah, October. That's the best place for board meetings. Yeah, we should do that next time. We all agree. Tel Aviv is the place to be. Last board meeting was in Tel Aviv, and I remember that we showed a bunch of slides about sales. You know, they've seen our graphs. We talked about contribution. We mentioned Mushon. Mushon is like our dummy salesperson that we try to create. And I remember, I don't remember if it was Ken, if it was you, Ken, or Jeff, but you guys asked, like, how do we scale that? Like, what's the next stage? How we scale the sales team? And we always, like, kept talking about, you know, we're trying to measure contribution. We're trying to make sure that, you know, it's the right impact. We just don't want to scale it without, like, making sure that we're scaling the right way. And even though it wasn't brought up in the board, I remember, you know, we finished the board meeting. Rory and I went back, and both of us said, listen, I don't feel comfortable with the sales team. Like, it's something that's not right. Something's not clicking. We talked about the board. You got defensive. Yeah, I felt like we kind of, you know, both Ken and Jeff kind of asked us how do we scale that, and we gave not the best answer we could have given, and we felt… To ourselves most of all, right? Yeah, to ourselves. I mean, they were trusting us, but I didn't feel comfortable with myself. And we also talked with them and said that we want to make the switch of focusing more on, like, bigger accounts and enterprise where we feel we give a lot of value with the sales team, and we changed that. Like, we communicated that, and we changed that. And now in this board meeting, like, we talked about it. We showed it was super successful, but I feel that the board is also self-reflection for you because the fact that you have to talk about it and see other people respond to it has a lot of self-reflection on the entrepreneurs of the company. Does that make sense? Yeah, it makes total sense.

So another thing that is commonly asked is what's the role of our investors with regards to the next investment? How can you affect that? Can you make any harm? Sometimes founders ask, should you be, I don't know, making intros? So what are your thoughts on that, Ken? Well, I think one of the benefits of getting investors involved is the network. So as you think through raising an additional round, you think about who your lead's going to be. Certainly introductions to those leads, character references on them, having a view on the people. So going back to this whole thing on culture and character, and if they're going to be investors, listen, we care a lot about Monday. And so we care a lot about who the shareholders here are, and we care about who the next investor is. And so we have a lot at stake also. And we have a view because we're in the marketplace and we do business with these people and we hear stories about how they do business in other places. And that can be very helpful. And certainly just introductions, you know, to talk about how positive our experience has been here. And I'm calling you because I think this could be a great fit and a great opportunity for you. And these guys are looking for a new outside lead investor. That's part of the role I think investors play. What if the company is doing fine, but you're not very happy with the founders? Talking again about transparency, you're not having the best relationship you could have imagined. What do you do then? Well, I think that's a complicated situation. Listen, I think the nice thing about investors and founders is that we're all shareholders in the same company. And so hopefully, you have an opportunity to make some good decisions and make that advances the progress of the company. I mean, that's the number one goal for everybody here is to see the company succeed. I do want to challenge the, you know, introducing new investors, because I feel that you can't disconnect from the fact that you're talking from a position, because basically you have equity in the company and you cannot introduce us to a new investor. But, you know, that investor understands that, you know, it's also for your benefit. Oh, yeah, no doubt. Yeah. Well, listen, it's all a poker game, right? Like, you know, every step of the way, like everybody's playing poker. And so when an investor calls me and says, hey, we have an incredible investment. Would you like to go take a look at it? Of course, I'm going to take a look at it and I'll evaluate that investment on its own merit. Critically, yeah. Yeah. You know, like with any other investment, you know, that that's just kind of background noise. Did we get an introduction to Stripes through Insight or was it a direct? No, no, we looked at this. We talked to these guys about the Series B round also. And Insight was super aggressive. And for us, it was probably at the time was probably a tilt early. I think we've learned frankly, we've learned from not investing in some of the earlier stage software businesses that we've looked at. What have you learned from that? We've learned from we've learned from our mistakes there, frankly, because we've passed on things because we thought they were too early. And what we've done based on analysis has come to the conclusion that those signals are actually really more confident. Those signals are worth following very closely. So but yeah, so anyway, so we had known these guys probably through a cold call. Yeah. Yeah, I don't remember who approached who, but I remember meeting the Stripes guys, you know, like even a year before we made the actual investment. But did it help or affect your decision at all that you knew one of the like, because you've known Jeff for a while? Listen, it can it can only help, right? Because, you know, listen, the more people that get behind the idea of working with us, the better. And so, you know, to the degree that Roy and Aron say, hey, these guys are going to be good guys to work with. We think this could be a great fit for us. And there's somebody on the board who's a significant shareholder and investor in the company says, you're right. These guys are good guys and they'll do what they say they're going to do. And it'd be great to have them on the team. That's a positive. So it is challenging your introduction theory. Yeah, I mean, introductions helps. I mean, I think it's all relative. You know, if you can come through an introduction rather than no. I think Aron's was from a different perspective, which is, listen. Everyone has a view was, hey, just because you make the introduction doesn't mean that investor is going to lean in and do it, which I totally agree with. I'm talking about the other side of the equation I'm talking about where we want to do it flat out. Definitively, we want to do it. And so does five other firms. And now we've got a situation where, you know, we got to demonstrate why we're the best partner and why, you know, you're going to be the we're your best choice. And to have people on the inside be advocates in addition to the founders is constructive. I'm smiling because another thing that helped in your case is you flying to San Francisco. And maybe you can tell the story about Ken popping up one day in San Francisco saying, I'm not going to wait for you guys to get to New York. Yeah, I mean, it was very impressive because I remember, you know, back then we just started the funding round. We had a plan to go to San Francisco and then.

York. And I remember that, you kind of…You had a meeting planned for the very, very last part of it, right? Obviously, there's this thing about who you meet first and who you meet last, but I remember that Ken kind of flew to San Francisco and met us, and we were really impressed talking to him, but I also remember Roy and I talking like, he's a winner. This is a perfect fit for us. We'll do whatever it takes to be number one, and I felt Ken is kind of the same chemistry of, you want to win and want to be number one. So he's been proactive about it, not just sitting there and waiting. Listen, I love to hear that, obviously, and I'm totally flattered by it, so thank you. But I also think, listen, at the end of the day, we play in a competitive world, and you've got to be decisive, and frankly, we really wanted to make this investment. I think Iran and Roy are really special. I think everything you're hearing on all these podcasts, and this one's a great example in terms of how they run the business and the way they hold themselves accountable, and they're ambitious. These guys, they want to win big. They're not looking to build a business and sell it for a couple billion dollars. They want to build a huge business and make a difference. And I think they want to make a difference. Listen, they want to do it for themselves. I think they want to set examples as to what can be done out of Israel. The combination of that ambition and these guys as people and character and also the financial results of the company, it's worth chasing. I would have flown anywhere to go to meet these guys to make sure that we got the deal done. I think, Ken, even going back to that meeting, you told us on that dinner a few more things you were doing proactively, and I remember how high-felt you were not just talking, but you were rather doing and evaluating the company from the inside. And I'll give you an example. You contacted one of our customer success reps and created sort of bonded and created a relationship with them to understand what it's really like. And when you told us this story, I felt like every other investor should have done that because just because we tell you we care about our customer success doesn't mean anything. And I really loved back then that you told us this story of how engaged you got. It was a great story. Oh, you have to meet Matthew. He's here in the office. Matthew, I have to tell you, I thought it was a total setup. I was like, this whole thing has got to be staged because to get that level of customer service was unbelievable. Tell them, because they don't know. Tell them that. You've got to refresh my memory. I remember… It was a dog story about your Instagram. Oh, that's right! Oh, yes. Okay, so that's right. So I don't remember what triggered the ticket, but I had some kind of a customer service issue or question that I was trying to do as I was working with the product as we were evaluating the investment and courting these guys. And so I went through the normal process, and I figured that Matthew, who was the customer success representative who dealt with me, that it was a total setup, that these guys, that I was somehow in the system as a VIP or something like that, that I was supposed to get all this special service. I mean, this guy was on it. He had looked up my bio online. On my bio on the website, and on the website, our Stripe's website, there's a picture of our dog. And so he referenced the name of the dog in an email back and forth, and I was like, this guy's amazing, but of course this is a total setup. And sure enough, what came out at dinner was, it was not at all a setup. We had no idea, remember? So Matthew deserves a big shout-out. Yeah. We'll have a closure after that. Ken, if there's any founder listening right now thinking about their future or current dynamics with their investors, is there any tip you want to give them, just a general one, on top of everything you said? I think that Ron kind of sets a great example in terms of best practices on how to deal with investors, and I think it starts with transparency and with the idea that it's all going to be based on trust. And if you want to manage your way through the good times and also have fun, manage your way through the tough times, and also have a lot of fun in the good times, every great relationship at any level starts with trust. And these are important relationships. Like, you know, you're going to have, you're going to go through challenging times, and you're going to have things that don't meet expectations, and you're also going to have, hopefully, a hell of a lot of fun. And so along the way, if you have a relationship that starts in trust, that's a great basis to start from. And I think these guys set a great example in terms of how they do business with the board that creates great relationships. Yeah, I agree with Ken. I mean, eventually, you know, it's a marathon, and you want to have fun, and you want to enjoy the path. Because I feel, you know, the result, it's not the key. Like, the key is to, you know, have fun doing so, and, like, picking the right investors and with the right chemistry. I think it's one of the most important parameters I would optimize.

If I had one tip to give to people that might listen to this, I would say that the thing that helped us the most, I think a lot of entrepreneurs kind of think they need to manage the company and manage the board, where I feel… Separately. Yeah, separately. It's like different dynamics, different people, different metrics, different way of telling the story. I feel we made our lives super easy, and I feel this is the right way to do it, to just treat both the same way. I feel that we communicate with the board and the company in the same way, same materials, same communication, same data, and I love it. You know, I don't need to kind of think about how, what do I communicate to the company, what do I communicate to the board, what do I communicate to myself? It's all the same thing. So it just makes my life easier, and I feel it makes everybody's life, you know, because we're in it together. So you as much communicate in the same way. Awesome. Thanks for having me on. 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