← How I Invest with David Weisburd
How I Invest with David Weisburd
E331: Ron Biscardi, CEO of iConnections on the Biggest Mistakes Managers Make
00:41:09
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- [00:01]
A
So is capital truly scarce or has the bar for conviction permanently risen?
- [00:06]
B
Capital is definitely not scarce. There is a ton of money in this event and we know from surveys that we did after last year's event, billions of dollars changed hands. I think this is just a long sales cycle business. It's never an easy process. People don't commit tens of millions of dollars, billions of dollars, without really knowing the people who are going to manage that money for them. Especially in most of the strategies here because they all have some illiquidity built in. So it's really more about building a relationship, taking the time for the LP to get to know you, building trust, and then capital absolutely flows. But we're seeing billions and billions of dollars move after these events. And when I say after, I'm talking the next 12 to 24 months. So it's, it's absolutely there. I, I would not say capital is scarce at all.
- [01:02]
A
When I talk to a lot of institutional investors, there seems to be this trend away from blind pool capital into more deal by deal Dynamics continuation vehicles, SPVs, et cetera, sometimes really large SUVs, sometimes 300, $502 billion continuation vehicles. What do you think is behind that? And is this a permanent shift or is this just lack of DPI today?
- [01:27]
B
The reality is it's always difficult to raise money into a pooled vehicle because from the LP standpoint, you have to think about who else is in the vehicle, what are the rules set that govern how this vehicle is going to function. You're definitely going to be subject to some level of a gate if it's investing in liquid securities like a hedge fund. But an SMA is much easier, right? It gets custody in your name. You can control the day you decide, hey, I just don't want to do this anymore. For whatever reason, it gives you that safety valve and most people don't use it, but it's nice to know it's there when you need it. So, yeah, I feel like there has been a big trend in the last few years towards SMAs. I also think a lot of the technology platforms have made it easier to manage SMEs. Like years ago, it was just seen as a negative from the GP standpoint because of the administrative complexity. So I think, you know, we've kind of the LPs and the GPs have sort of met in the middle on this, but I'm hearing a lot of interest on both sides in deploying through that kind of a vehicle and taking the money in that form as well.
- [02:43]
A
You alluded earlier that there's a long sales cycle between GPs and LPs. What should GPs expect in terms of how long it takes to get an LP into a blind pool fund?
- [02:54]
B
Today it's very AUM dependent and track record dependent. But so if you're a sub $300,200,000,000 AUM GP, you have to expect and you have to be in this for years. It is, it is a super long sales cycle. Business LPs are always nervous about the business risk in allocating to a smaller manager. So even if your numbers have been great, LPs are, their responsibility is to protect that capital and they're focused on protecting it before they're focused on growing it. You know, protection comes first, growth comes second. So you just have to accept that reality and get as many at bats as possible with the same LPs. I mean obviously multiple LPs, but what we've really seen in our business at iconnections is the GPs who come to multiple events and meet with a lot of the same LPs at these events. They're the ones that capital is flowing to over time. If you come in, you know, the, the smaller LP or GPS rather who pop into one event and then we don't see them again for a few years, much lower success rates because it just feels like they don't really have the commitment to the relationship building process. If you're committed to that as a small lp, it can work. Now once you're there, right, once you're running north of a billion, 2 billion, $3 billion, the sales cycle shrinks dramatically because as you grow, the business risk associated with allocating to you has dropped dramatically and at a larger size. Now the LPs are assessing your strategy much more than they are the business risk associated with.
- [04:46]
C
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- [06:11]
A
Talking about short sales cycle Andreessen Horowitz had one call to raise their $15 billion and you have emerging managers that are taking 24, 36 months to close their their own capital. And I think this is even reflected in the economics. All the top 10 funds in Venture are now 2 and a half and 30. And meanwhile emerging managers are trying to do whatever, beg, borrow and steal to get to get LPs in.
- [06:35]
B
Absolutely.
- [06:37]
A
Talk a little bit more about this business risk for that LPs face. I think a lot of GPs have a hard time understanding why LPs are not optimizing on returns.
- [06:47]
B
For most of the LPs that are in this event, it's not their money. These are professional investment teams that are running. They are, they're the fiduciaries over billions of dollars in sitting in endowments and foundations and pension funds and sovereign wealth funds. They have a duty to first protect that corpus. And yes, they will be judged to some degree on what their growth is, what the returns are they generate. But it is a much worse outcome for these teams if they lose money. And they lose money because they took unnecessary risk. You know, the, the boards and the trustees of these organizations would much rather see the investment team put up a 5, 6, 7% return and protect that downside than swing for the fences in the hopes of achieving, you know, 12, 13, 15, whatever it might be, but then have a much more negative outcome, not even necessarily tied to the market. Remember, because when we talk about business risk, we're talking about the fact that maybe that GP just wasn't a good enough entrepreneur. Maybe they didn't know how to run their back office. Maybe their team hadn't gelled yet and what looked like it was going to be an amazing fund and a great business completely collapsed because all the key people quit all of these. It's just like any other business, right? Until the business is really well established and you have a Nice long track record. There is this risk that it just might not make it for all the reasons small businesses don't make it.
- [08:21]
A
It's the old adage, you don't get fired for hiring IBM but apply to funds. And the interesting thing is you have two funds in one fund. You invest in an emerging manager, they may even invest in the same company, both lose money. This is bad emerging manager, this is bad company.
- [08:38]
B
Exactly. This whole bias is intertwined because in one case you might have lost money because the strategy didn't perform as it was expected, or maybe the manager made some bad calls and it didn't. But it's not because the business blew up because we made a bet that was too early or we didn't properly assess the business risk associated with that smaller guy. So emerging managers don't really like to deal with that one. But I would encourage them to always take that head on and be respectful of the fact that it is a legitimate concern for an lp. They do have to assess your team and how long your team has worked together and how well you guys get along. This is why they want to spend so much time getting to know gps before they, they make that.
- [09:27]
A
There's also a product market fit aspect there, to your point. And pension fund might not invest into a fund one because of the career risk, but a high net worth or family office, maybe the family office has incentivized their team to actually optimize on returns. A lot of the top GPS, they figure out a way to survive to fund three there's, there's an adage that the first fund, the first three funds is a GP problem and fund four and above is an LP problems. You literally have LPs coming to me and saying, well this GP is making me do this and it becomes their problem versus the GP problem. But, but you have to survive to that fund.
- [10:01]
C
3.
- [10:02]
B
That's exactly right. And that's all about being aggressive in your pricing, building that relationship, building trust, building out your infrastructure. Right. You want to present to the LP community that you understand it's not just the investment strategy. Like, let's face it, the bare minimum of being able to run a fund is to have portfolio management skills that can generate sufficient returns. You still need a back office, you still need a middle office, you still need investor relations, you need compliance, you need all of these functions that are also required. So the sooner you get all of those other things to institutional grade, the more presentable and the faster you will be considered a lower risk on that business side.
- [10:52]
A
David Rubenstein from Carlyle is quoted as saying, good LP management is average returns with great customer service. And that's maybe where we're converging, where you see these funds just raising tens of billions, hundreds of billions of dollars. How are they going to get alpha? I haven't heard a good answer on that.
- [11:10]
B
David is spot on. I have seen so many funds in my career that have what look like, I will just say mediocre returns. Not poor returns, but mediocre returns, but amazing institutional quality that no one is worried that the money is going to be misappropriated, stolen in any way, that the reports are not going to be accurate. They, they are institutional grade and they're amazing at relationships. And you know, look, at the end of the day this industry is not really that different than any other. We buy from people who we like and trust. If you build great relationships, it, it absolutely will pay dividends over time upstream of good relationships.
- [11:58]
A
And building good relationships with LPs is the quantum of meetings and FaceTime. So I get a first meeting with an Ivy League endowment. Let's say it goes well, or let's say it goes pretty, pretty good. What are ways to get a second, third meeting and what are ways to keep that relationship going without them having commit the capital? Let's say that I'm, I'm bought into this long term vision, but how do I keep on getting FaceTime with these top LPs that are by definition having thousands of people ping them every day?
- [12:27]
B
You have to be patient. You should have no expectation that the LP is going to give you anything, including substantial time. Especially if you're a small manager and you're lucky enough to get a meeting with the Yale or Princeton or any elite lp. They are inundated with the best funds in the world trying to get their time. If you're lucky enough to get that meeting, don't have an expectation that they're going to start meeting with you on any regular basis. The best marketing teams are always looking for ways to pay it forward with LPs. They're, they're very good at adding value in some way, providing education, providing market insights. And I'll tell you this, the LPs are flooded with emails, but they also read a ton. If you send them high quality content that's useful to them, that helps bring them up to speed as to what's happening in the market where you have expertise, they love that. You won't always get a response, but you will find out when you bump into them at the next event or you know, the next time you're lucky enough to see them somewhere, a lot of times you'll find that they do enjoy the fact that you're sending that to them and they're appreciative of it. If you're in this for the long haul and you're doing things like that to make the LP's job easier to pay it forward to, to communicate to them that you understand this is a long term game and you're trying to build that relationship over time and you're not making them feel pressured or making like, I've seen GPS make LPs feel guilty that they're not responding to their emails. It's like you have any idea what this guy's.
- [14:04]
A
You're not going to get someone into a $20 million check.
- [14:06]
B
No, you're not, you're not. This is strategy. These, these pe. I'll tell you this. So I go to an event every year, it's actually the Capital Allocator Summit and there are 80, 90 CIOs of the best LPs in the world who are convening at those events and we facilitate roundtable sessions. So I facilitate, I don't know, seven or eight of these over a two day period to a person. Whenever I ask the question of these LPs, what is the biggest headache for you? They all say their email inbox. They are so inundated with hundreds and hundreds of unsolicited emails. You just can't beat these guys up because they're not, you know, you're not top of mind for them, but it's great to get a meeting, get on their radar screen, supply them with as much useful information that makes their life easier, makes their job easier, and they will hopefully remember you when the opportunity strikes. You know, it's a long term game because look, any of these big LPs, they have established portfolios, they already know, you know, they have a manager in every category they want. You want to be top of mind. When they have a need in the area where you have expertise, that's when hopefully you get the call. And that's just all about being there, hanging around the hoop, making, building that friendship over time.
- [15:34]
A
If a GP internalizes the idea that the LP is managing their career, then upstream of that, you need to de risk that for the lp. How do you do that? You show a consistent, consistent performance. You show that you're, you do what you say you're going to do. You show that your strategy doesn't creep. You show that your fund size doesn't creep. All these things that LPs hate and that LPs will get scolded for by their ICs and by their CIOs. And you, you could basically start to show that you're not like that. I like to say that a person that pretends to be an honest person for 20 years becomes an honest person.
- [16:06]
B
And I'll, I'll add to that by saying one of the, one of the moments that gps can totally differentiate themselves from everyone else is when their performance is down. The vast majority of LPs run and hide when their numbers are down. It's the worst thing you can do when your numbers are down. That's the moment when you should be much more active and much more in front of your LPs. They so appreciate a GP who says, look, our numbers are down. Here's why. This is our assessment of the situation. Here's what we did right, here's what we did wrong. Here's where we were surprised. The transparency is so core to a long term relationship. And I have to say, especially among the smaller LPs, they generally don't do it. I mean, we will see it in the system a lot of times. We actually created a feature where we have the GPS reporting through their admins now to help lessen this. But when a GP just cuts off their returns, they, you know, they update every month and then they hit a bad patch and stop updating. It's the worst thing you can do now. The whole universe of LPs, we have a thousand LPs in our system every month, regardless of events now they come to look at your returns in a moment when your strategy maybe is under fire and they don't see an update, it looks terrible. So that's, I would say to GPS out there, that's the moment to be proactive over. Communicate, don't run and hop.
- [17:35]
A
I got to meet John Gray, president of Blackstone. He hasn't gone on the podcast yet, but I'm working on it.
- [17:40]
B
You'll get him.
- [17:40]
A
And I asked him this exact question, which is, what do you do when the market goes against you? Everybody has a patch. He's been at Blackstone for, I think 25 years or so and he said that exactly thing he said, I'm on a plane going out to every single LP and showing them why we still believe in our strategy, answering their questions and doing the exact, the exact opposite of hiding is actually coming to the, coming to the lps. Philosophically, I think a Lot of this comes down to GP attitude. What does that mean? That means is LP capital. Are you entitled to LP capital if I meet with you? You're an LP, am I entitled for you to give me $20 million? Or is it my privilege and my honor to even be in this conversation with somebody that could potentially invest this down the road? So I think a lot of this actually goes upstream to what is the GP's attitude? Are you entitled? Is everyone entitled to be a private equity manager? Is everyone entitled to be. To raise a billion dollars? So I think the more humble managers, I think in this case have a huge advantage in that they, they take every meeting that they have as a privilege and then ironically they end up the ones with a billion and ten billion dollar funds. They end up like John Gray, who's going in and flying out. And I think GPS should really think about why do you feel entitled and why don't you feel like being in the top.0001% is not good enough? Why do you need to be a billionaire in order, you know, to, to feel validated as a person?
- [19:07]
B
Maybe because it's a smaller community. You have some, you have some element of people who fall into that trap. That's literally the worst place you can be as a gp. I mean, it's like think about downward spiral. I mean, right? It's terrible. Think about any other product in, in our economy. If your product is great, consumers buy it, right? If you deliver a great product at a solid price, it sells. If it's not a great product, it doesn't sell. Are we going to blame the consumer because you couldn't create a product that was competitive or delivered at the right value. There's no difference in this line of work. It's crazy for GPS to ever. That's like the absolute worst thing you can do as a gp.
- [19:54]
A
I was talking to a GP and he was complaining to me how LPs didn't understand the cost structure. And I was thinking, why don't you create the product that the LPs want?
- [20:03]
B
Are you blaming the customer? Yes.
- [20:05]
A
That is like the worst possible, right?
- [20:07]
B
Like, think of any other business where they blame the customer and succeed. I mean, you know, you're competing against people like Elon Musk and Steve Jobs, like the equivalents that, you know, they don't have the same brand power, those guys do, but they exist in our industry. You know, they're incredibly smart, innovative people. If you're the guy who's blaming the customer, I mean, you don't stand a
- [20:29]
C
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- [23:34]
A
This is very ripe in venture world. So the average venture GP does not know how elite every venture GP is. We're talking about their top 5%, they go to Ivy League, their top 10% in their class, they go and start a company which they get venture funded, which is another top 1%. Then they actually get a successful exit, which another top 10%.
- [23:54]
B
Yeah.
- [23:55]
A
Just to sit in the seat, just to, you know, cosplay being a venture capitalist, just to even have the chance to sit down without lp. So they think they're very special and they are actually extremely special. But on a relative basis they may not be differentiated at all.
- [24:08]
B
Yeah, I agree with that. I, I feel like this is just broadly with people having to suffer. Actually Jensen Huang kind of talks about this. The folks who have had the most suffering in life and the biggest challenges are often the most humble and the most appreciative of the opportunities presented to them. They're the least likely to feel entitled, like the world owes them something. And I do agree with you. Sometimes folks who've had lots of success, especially through academia, you know, they hit effectively the real world and it's like it's a lot harder than they expected. And again, there's just nothing worse than coming across like everyone owes you something. A strong dose of humility always serves managers well in this business venture. Just focusing on that for a second venture is especially tough because venture has the widest dispersion of returns. Right. The, the spread between a top tier manager and a bottom quartile manager is enormous. You know, most other asset classes, the band is much, much tighter. But in venture there's a huge spread and it's also, it also has the additional challenge that the best deals tend to gravitate towards the best, the managers who have had the best track record. Right. So if you're a top 50 VC, unless as long as you're running your business pretty effectively, you're probably going to remain in that top 50 crowd because your ability to access the best Deals is really high. Venture is not the kind of business where the portfolio companies would prefer a better deal from a lesser known manager. They view that top 50 as the group that they have the best chance of succeeding with. And the difference for a startup between success and somewhere in the middle even is gigantic. So the deal flow power once you're in the top tier of VC is so enormous it really creates a huge advantage. Which is why Andreessen Horowitz sent out an email.
- [26:27]
A
Oh, one call.
- [26:28]
B
Right. And raises $15 billion.
- [26:31]
A
Professor Steve Kaplan, previous guest, did a study on this exact thing. Do venture capital returns persist? And the answer is yes, 52% of the time. Top quartile stays top quartile. Yeah, true, 48% they don't, but sometimes maybe their second quartile. I don't know the exact dispersion of the other three quartiles. But that's why there's this flight to quality. That's why emerging managers are not able to raise funds. And the top funds are charging two and a half and 30. Yeah. It's literally a tale of two cities.
- [27:00]
B
Yes. Yeah, it's absolutely right. I feel like the best move if you're trying to get into the venture capital business, the best move is really to just keep the fund small and do it deal by deal and give yourself the. Don't put the burden of I have to go raise $100 million or $200 million on my first fund. Having to do a $10 million $20 million fund. Focus on small checks, build your network. I mean, I'll tell you, the best guy in this building at thinking this way is Daniel Dart. Daniel Dart is running a $5 million fund. Daniel has the best network aside from the fund managers who are famous that are associated with this. I'm probably the next best known person because it's my event, I'm on stage bunch. Right. Like if you're coming to the event, you've probably heard my name. I think Daniel is number two behind me and the guy's running a five million dollar venture fund. I've never seen anyone build a network as fast and effectively as Daniel. Actually a month ago, Daniel held his first emerging VC conference. Had portfolio companies and mostly early stage VCs there. And he invited Bill Gurley to speak. Then he asked me to come and interview Bill, which was a total honor and I was super appreciative of that. This is a guy running a $5 million venture fund who got Bill Gurley, arguably the best VC in the world, to come to his event and speak. He was only able to do that because he's built so many great relationships in such a short period of time. So, like, when I'm thinking about how hard it is, it's super hard. If there's any guy who's probably going to make it, it's Daniel because he's doing all the right things. He's keeping his fun small. It's like, let's hit a bunch of singles and build our way over time to a real track record and put yourself in a position so that when the timing is right and, and maybe you get a few home runs now, you're really well positioned to go raise bigger funds.
- [28:59]
A
Speaking of these compounding games, you're in your sixth year.
- [29:02]
B
Yeah, this is. Yep. We'll be six in April 6th.
- [29:05]
A
Six in April. And you started from a charity event to now we're sitting here, there's 6,000 people, 6,000 capital allocators and GPs and charities. How have you been able to compound so quickly?
- [29:20]
B
We made a lot of good decisions. So I don't want to shortchange my team for all the hard work and a lot of great decisions along the way. But it's also often in life it's better to be lucky than good. And in a sense, the pandemic, while we saw an opportunity and capitalized on it, it created this opportunity to build a global business that we didn't even fully appreciate when we started. So in April of 20, when we had the idea to create a digital platform to make up for the fact that GPs and LPs couldn't meet in person and it was the primary mechanism behind all the marketing in this business, we knew the digital platform made sense. What we didn't fully appreciate when we did that first charity event was that it would go global almost overnight.
- [30:10]
A
You see it at every market, essentially.
- [30:12]
B
I mean, by the time. So we got the idea In April of 20, by July of 20, we were a globally known company in this industry because we threw that funds for Food event, you know, raised 2 million for food insecurity, but for the industry, more importantly, ran 3,000 meetings between 400 of the best LPs in the world. 300 GPS. Everyone all over the industry had heard of us basically out of the gates. That is super uncommon. Right. Like that. That is an incredibly hard thing to achieve for any business. And I think that's a spot where I'm really proud of how we executed. But we also were lucky that it kind of spread globally the way that it did so fast.
- [30:58]
A
A lot of people don't think about it, but you have a network effect business. You essentially have LPs and GPs and obviously other members as well. But you've done the very difficult thing, which is 0 to 1 now, 0 to 6,000. Do you see accelerated growth from year four to year five and year five to year six, or was it kind of this, this linear growth from the beginning?
- [31:17]
B
Our growth actually slowed a little bit in the last two years. I mean, it was like it was exponential. And in the last few years, it slowed as we tried to figure out this thing. Truthfully, the amount of logistics, IR support, sales support, client success teams had to be built. Getting this right, which was super important to our business, has taken us a couple of years. And getting the software right, I mean, for the clients who've been with us a long time, you know, they know the system three years ago was much tougher than the system is today. I think we're now finally positioned to see our growth accelerate again because the software has gotten so much better that we're now in a position to make connections for this community all year round. Right. Our roadshow modules already generated 2,000 road shows in the last year.
- [32:12]
A
Tell me about that.
- [32:13]
B
So we, In September of 24, we released a roadshow module. Everyone in this industry does road shows, like all the GPS do roadshows, meaning they pick a city, they set up investor meetings in that city, they travel to it, they spend two, three, four days, and they run around from LP Office to LP office doing pitch meetings. Well, if you think about it, that activity isn't really any different than what happens here. It's just this is two days instead of a week and it's one building with addresses, you know, on each of the booths instead of a city wide footprint. But everything that you do in setting up those meetings, it's the same thing that you do here. The LPs want to see your track record, they want to see your deck, they want to be able to message you back and forth. The system gives you a map view so you could actually map out, okay, I want to go from this LP to that one, to that one. Because of the geography, the roadshow module streamlined all of that and made it all possible for folks who are on a roadshow. And this year we're leaning into it by deploying our IR team on specific weeks in specific cities to just facilitate more activity. So we'll say to LPs, hey, we want to do a roadshow in your city the last week of April. Tell US what you're looking for and then we'll go to the managers that match that and invite them to be in that roadshow week. So it's not really that different than what's happening here. And that's just something you get as a member of the platform where we've already built out things like an investor portal and automated subdocs. Those are two things that have nothing to do with one on one meetings or cap intro. They're very logical next steps in our software platform that are elements of the investment process. So as these things start to catch on and we drive adoption of them, I think there's an enormous opportunity for growth here at Iconnections as we just start to do more beyond simply these physical events throughout the year.
- [34:21]
A
You've made a strategic decision to do an event in Paris.
- [34:25]
B
Yes.
- [34:25]
A
Talk to me about maybe the French market, but more broadly the European market. What, what are allocators looking for there and how are you providing product for them?
- [34:35]
B
We've been asked for, you know, at least the last 3 years very frequently by our GP clients if when are we going to start a European event? And because of some of the partnerships we formed at the start of the business, we were able to go to Singapore more easily than we could go to Europe. So we prioritized Singapore for that reason. New York was kind of easy, I'll say, because we just all of our clients, so not all, but so many of our clients are in New York. I generally don't love a city like New York or a city like London because doing an event where people live is usually not great. And it's actually for that reason will New York will never look like this.
- [35:19]
C
Yeah.
- [35:19]
B
What we get here is everyone's focus. Right. Everyone got on a plane, for the most part, came down here and they're completely focused on everything that they're doing, you know, on this, in this three day event in New York, you're not going to have that experience. And it's why even in Europe, we didn't go to London. You know, London gets brought up a lot, but we didn't want to do it where people live. We wanted them to get on a plane, get on a boat.
- [35:44]
A
There's almost this psychological schema when you're out of your home turf. You're more open to new ideas, you're more open to meeting and building relationships
- [35:52]
B
and you're not, you're just not distracted by everyday life. You know, you've, you've gone to this destination, you have a purpose. So we're super excited about Paris because it's a beautiful city. Generally, everyone loves it. The Louvre is obviously an iconic location for this thing and I think it'll be really, really attractive. And we hoped, really the goal is to make this event somewhere between a 2000 and 3000 person event. Right.
- [36:21]
A
A third or a half the size of Miami.
- [36:23]
B
Yes. Yeah, exactly. And I think we fully expect we'll attract players from the Middle east, from asia, from the U.S. but obviously we really want to bring in as many people from Europe as we can. We, we have a large European contingent here in Miami, but clearly it would just be easier if we're on their home turf and we can make it a two hour flight instead of an eight or nine hour flight. We're very, very excited about it. And I think just based on the inquiries we're already getting here, signs are really positive that people are pretty excited about it.
- [36:59]
A
Last time we chatted, I tried to get some life lessons from you. Instead you punted to Rahul McDonald's and our amazing friend. But I want to know from you if what have you learned through your careers? What has allowed you to compound your career so quickly where a lot of people are just kind of going by linear?
- [37:16]
B
I'm actually in a better position to answer at this time because I literally just lived it. Friday night I went to bed, check the weather because we were worried about the storm. It said it was calling for, you know, maybe an inch. It was like a dusting.
- [37:31]
A
Yeah.
- [37:31]
B
I woke up Saturday morning and it was now 12 inches in New York. I think it was 15 inches in Boston. And we immediately assembled a war room here in Miami. I had every department represented in that room. And we just immediately started triaging the problem, got all kinds of communications out to all the clients to say, hey, just make sure you know the storm is coming. It looks like it's going to be bad. If you can, we highly encourage everyone. Change your travel to today or first thing tomorrow. I think that might have saved hundreds and hundreds of people. A lot of people came back and said, I had no idea until I saw your note. If you think about how we started in that funds for food event where we had the idea we didn't even have a business. And two months later, we held a global cap intro event with hundreds and hundreds of industry players and ran 3,000 meetings. The mindset of the company that can achieve that is like, we are so good at being scrappy and problem solving. We totally thrive on it. I mean, for some people, it's incredibly stressful. But the truth is I'm not looking for it, but when it hits, I always feel like it is such an opportunity to, to set us apart from everyone else in the industry. It's like it's those moments that give you the chance to think outside of the box. I mean, the number of things we have innovated because of those moments, I can't even count them. Like, I'll give you one here. In the event. The mobile app has a phone calling feature which we only make available for like within a two hour window of the meeting so that people can easily reach each other if things need to be rescheduled. That came out of COVID because when we were dealing with events at the Fontainebleau, when Covid was just ending but still here, we wanted people to have an outdoor option. So we created a whole outdoor setup and we said to clients, if you're uncomfortable meeting indoor, just hit the call button. It'll call the other party that you're meeting with. Just let them know, hey, I don't want to be inside, I don't feel comfortable, let's meet outside. So they wouldn't be like in this huge complex unable to find each other. That wouldn't have happened if Covid wasn't a situation. And it obviously wouldn't have happened if we hadn't challenged ourselves to build that on the fly. Because at the time it was the Omicron breakout, I think. So, you know, we were, I don't know, three weeks away from the event when that outbreak hit. So like most software companies don't start adding features to their mobile app three weeks before a major event with thousands of people. But my partner Chris, who never shies away from a challenge, just workshop it, figured out how to do it and implemented it. So like, I think that ethos is so strong at I connections and it just differentiates us. It's why, it's why LPs and GPs can come here and have a really high level experience. Even though this is 5,000 people. Right. We don't associate high level experiences with events of this size, but we're able to run it really high end, super efficiently. You know, 20,000 meetings in two days. It is incredibly well orchestrated. And I think that really at the core it's driven by our determination and willingness to take on challenges in moments of crisis. They just make, they make us better. And I think they ultimately make the experience.
- [41:13]
A
When presented with a crisis, some people just completely are not able to deal with it. Some people are able to Overcome it. Some people are able to grow from it. That anti fragility, it reminds me of SpaceX. They have this culture of responsible engineer. Every engineer is responsible end to end on what they're working on. And this puts extreme pressure on people because for example, and if an engineer doesn't have a part, the, the culture says why aren't you on a plane going to the supplier, like banging on their door? Give me a part.
- [41:41]
B
Yes.
- [41:42]
A
And about a third of the engineers actually quit within the first year. They just can't deal with it. A third kind of could take three to four years. And then there's some lifers that are just able to adapt. But even the ones that quit, even the ones that can't take it, oftentimes they say that that was the most meaningful experience in their life. Yeah, that pressure that people stay away from is actually the thing that, that allows them to stay succeed the rest of their career.
- [42:03]
B
It's why competition is so important. I mean, what do we see generally in the economy when, whenever there's a monopoly market, innovation collapses because you, you have nothing driving you to improve things or make things better. It's, it's those crisis moments, the moments when you're terrified your competition has achieved something that's a leg up on you, that it, it drives you to create something even better. Iconnections we are, it is far and away our best quality. We are. I love those moments because those are the moments when I think we overperform and our clients ultimately fall in love with us because we do things differently than everyone else. Like going back to the snow storm this weekend, we did the communication. We helped hundreds of clients move hotel rooms and all kinds of things around. And then when we saw the storm was going to be really bad and airports might not reopen, we chartered a commercial airliner. We created a website, you know, in an hour and attached our stripe account to it and enabled clients to just swipe a credit card and buy a seat. We sold the seats at cost and we said, here's an option. If you just couldn't change your flight, this will fly on Tuesday, hopefully after the storm is done. And we could control whether or not it was going to take off because it was a chartered plane, but it was literally an MD80, you know, with 150 seats on it. We sold it out in five hours and we flew, you know, over a hundred people up here. I mean like there's not many companies that in a matter of hours, that's a cultural thing, would think like that yes.
- [43:44]
A
You can't create that overnight. You can't just say, okay, now act differently than you've been acting.
- [43:49]
B
Exactly. Exactly. At Iconnections, we never say, oh, well, there's nothing we can do. Like, there's always something more that we can do, and we try to do it.
- [43:59]
A
On that note, thanks so much for jumping on the podcast. Looking forward to doing this again soon.
- [44:03]
B
Great. Always good to see you, David.
- [44:04]
C
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