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- [00:03]
A
Welcome to the Investor, a podcast where I, Joel Palo Thinkle, your host, dives deep into the minds of the world's most influential institutional investors. In each episode, we sit down with an investor to hear about their journeys and how global markets are driving capital allocation. So join us on this journey as we explore these insights. Okay. We're live with one of my really good friends, Chi Way. He runs Oak Seed Ventures. I've gotten to know him over the last, you know, close to six, seven months now. Met him in San Francisco, and we've been just kind of community building, you know, building a friendship ever since. But just really interesting background. You know, he comes from a, you know, strong technology background and then kind of later on pivoted into investing. So, Chiwei, you know, excited to learn, you know, much deeper biography of you and kind of the legacy that you built in kind of technology and, you know, how you've really evolved as a professional, now becoming an institutional investor. So welcome to the show. Thanks for your time and appreciate you sharing your knowledge today.
- [01:30]
B
Yeah, pleased to meet you all and really thank you all for the opportunity. And we are very excited to be chatting with everyone today.
- [01:40]
A
Yeah. Well, excited. Let's kick this off. Chiwei, let's tell everybody who Chiye is. Tell us a little more. I know you're from Singapore, so tell me a little more about your early life, your career, your education, what you maybe thought you would pursue in your career and how you landed here.
- [02:00]
B
Sure. Yeah. So born Bread from Singapore, I was a very geeky kid growing up. Learned how to program the computer, see, programming, assembly. And, you know, in my teenage days, I started writing computer viruses. And then because of my geekiness, I got to my dream school, which was at mit.
- [02:31]
A
Can we. Can we stop there for a second? So you. You kind of glazed over writing computer viruses. So tell me. Tell me a little more about that. I mean, did you get in trouble? I mean, what. You know, how did you. What made you think to create a computer virus? And there's got to be a little more to that story.
- [02:51]
B
Well, sure. So the long version of the story was compressors were a big problem back then. It still is. Someone and I actually created a computer virus to prevent computer viruses from doing the bad stuff. So it's actually a good computer virus. I named it Interferon, actually. So that's a terminology from biology, which is that cells have interferon to indicate that it's been infected. And then that, you know, the white blood cell should come in, come and clean it up, and so when I was little, I was like, oh, what are these things called computer viruses that could just, you know, you know, infect a computer system and, you know, they spread by, you know, when you, when you take a floppy drive from, you know, one computer to another and, and you could buy virus scanners and all that, they have to be updated. And then I was curious if I could create a computer virus that could actually protect computer programs from infected again. So that's what I. Yeah.
- [04:22]
A
Okay. So it was actually a, almost like antivirus. And you're already kind of dipping your toes into cybersecurity kind of in a for good way.
- [04:35]
B
Right?
- [04:36]
A
Cool.
- [04:36]
B
Yes. Great. And that was my first foray into cybersecurity.
- [04:41]
A
Yeah, I mean, I feel like sometimes when you have to. Well, I feel like part of the prevention is creating the virus first to kind of understand how to prevent it, I believe. Right.
- [04:53]
B
That'S right. So as part of, as part of creating the virus, I had to study, understand how viruses were created, how they were spread, and how they actually modify executables in such a way that the virus code is run and then replicate. So that's what I did as a teenager, taking apart, you know, these things and, and you know, reading about it and, and then eventually creating one by myself.
- [05:30]
A
Yeah. That's great.
- [05:34]
B
Yeah. So fast forward. Yeah, as I mentioned, I, I got into my dream school, mit, started electric and computer science. And then I, I took a scholarship from the Singapore government. And so, so, you know, we all have to go home and serve the nation. And so right out of college, I actually dropped out of the PhD program, which I had gotten into with a master's degree. I went home and I was assigned to build classified encryptors for the Singapore government. So that was my real first professional foray into cybersecurity.
- [06:15]
A
So was that a government job with the. It was like a civil servant job for the government.
- [06:22]
B
No. So this was with a company called Singapore Technologies and this is one of the, we called it government linked company under the sovereign sovereign wealth fund tamasic. So Singapore Technologies Engineering, actually in particular companies together with, you know, Singapore Airlines, dbs, Bank Capital Land, and you know, and we were into also semiconductors like Charter Semiconductor and so forth, just to name a few names.
- [07:03]
A
Yeah. And what was going on in your head when you initially wanted to do the PhD? I guess what, and what made you kind of maybe switch gears? Was it just kind of the time it takes to, to do it or kind of like the, the focus area?
- [07:19]
B
No, I, I I was a good student at MIT and so applied for the Ph.D. program and, and you know, took the qualified exams, wrote a master's thesis. But, but the Singapore government. Time's up. You need to come home. And so I came home, sure.
- [07:42]
A
Yeah. You got to jump on the opportunity when you get it.
- [07:48]
B
Yeah, no, no, we, we, we actually do have an obligation to, to serve.
- [07:57]
A
Got it. Interesting. Yeah, I didn't know that. So it's kind of similar to the Israeli. Yeah, it's kind of similar to like the Israeli government. You have to kind of serve some time, you know, as an obligation. So how many years do you have to serve? A couple years.
- [08:14]
B
Six years.
- [08:16]
A
Six years. Okay.
- [08:17]
B
Six. Yeah, yeah. Long time. Yeah, yeah. And then, so when I was done, I, I then saw my career pivoting more towards the business side of things. So I was doing business development, I was working with, you know, cyber security startups, integrating our solutions together with some of the innovations that's happening in cyber security.
- [08:49]
A
Yeah.
- [08:49]
B
Also working with companies like rsa, We, which back then had a smart card company that submerged with into Gemalto, decided that it's time to learn some business. So I got my MBA from Harvard Business School and then, you know, switch entirely over to being first a McKinsey consultant, then subsequently being part of the corporate venture team at Cisco doing investments in tech. So this was the time that Cisco, our last CEO, John Chambers, wanted very much to transform Cisco from a hardware company to a software company, from a networking company, into what he called an IT or he said the number one IT company. And we were investing in essentially the whole stack of information technology outside of computer networking. This is a time where Internet scale Technologies, from NoSQL, new SQL databases. Big data, when it was a term.
- [10:22]
A
Yeah, people don't say big data data anymore. That was like a 2014 term.
- [10:27]
B
Right, exactly, exactly. Pre AI, but our pre modern AI, if you will. And those are areas that we're investing. And then fast forward, it was there I met my, my partner Brett Hartman, who was the CTO of the Cisco security business and. Yeah, and we started Oxy Ventures to basically focus on AI and cyber security.
- [11:00]
A
So can we unpack just cyber security? I know we've heard a lot in the news and you know, in all of the buzz about AI, you know, so we'll have to unpack AI too, but cyber. Can you just help us understand the categories? I mean, one thing I know that's really important is penetration testing. I feel like that's maybe just a product, but can you Just unpack the ecosystem of cyber and how you guys think about it.
- [11:32]
B
Yeah. So, you know, because, you know, everything in the digital world can be, can be hacked and needs protection. And it's also an industry that has evolved over the years. Right. So, you know, it goes all the way back to, you know, as I mentioned earlier, your computer viruses, you know, and the, you know, industry has grown in a huge, huge way since. Right, yeah. So at Cisco we started a business doing firewalls and network security was a big thing. What used to be called perimeter defense. If you have a corporate and you have your own data center or you have your own corporate infrastructure, protect it from outsiders by having strong perimeter defense. Right. Over the years that has, thanks to cloud mobile. Right. BYOD. And so, you know, the last 15 years you see the whole entire transition from perimeter based defense into what's called zero trust and firewood. That's why you see the huge number of new security cloud companies from Palo Alto networks to, you know, cloud strike and so forth. Meanwhile, you know, endpoints are, you know, a thing to always protect. One of, one of the biggest transitions that has happened and is still happening is that software is created at a very, very fast clip, updated, patched. Unfortunately more bugs get created and now you have highly motivated hackers that quite frankly, I mean, all the NSA equivalents around the world have a huge depository of what we call zero days, which are vulnerabilities in software. You know, everything across the operating system to, you know, networking equipment and what have you that they themselves know that exist. They've actually found them themselves. And that's think of them as essentially skeleton keys that can come to your home and just unlock the locks that you have. Right? Yeah, sure. And the truth is the entire digital world, the Internet, the backbone of Internet, the C programming language, is written in such a vulnerable way because when it was created, it was created for, for a purpose without thinking about all the security ramifications. And yeah, you know, and then, you know, unfortunately clever people do, you know, spend a lot of time exploiting the loopholes and the, you know, the situations where software has not anticipated a certain input and so forth. And that's how vulnerabilities happen. The problem now is that you have open source, nobody writes code from scratch anymore. And then code's written in sprints. And so everybody's under pressure to channel code updates to apps, updates here and then, and more code get created and more code get, get mobile get created. And so back to your question, you know, the whole landscape. Because of this whole evolution of the different trends and forces. You know, you've seen a whole evolution of different cybersecurity companies as I mentioned, you know, from perimeter, from antivirus to, you know, cloud based security vendors that protect. And today it's almost a given. It's not a question of if you would, if you would experience a question of when you would experience a breach. Right. And so security is no longer about just protecting, it's about detecting and also response. Right. And so there are companies across the entire spectrum defend, detect and response. Right. And then a lot of automation companies and also companies to, to manage configurations and so forth. Quite frankly, I don't know if I could give you a one minute answer to a rather complicated question.
- [17:19]
A
Sure.
- [17:20]
B
But yeah, hopefully that gives you a sense of the lay of the land and the complexity.
- [17:26]
A
Yeah, no, that's really helpful and I understand there's a lot more sophistication and complexity to get your head around it. Can you share a little more info on how you guys diligence these companies? Like what makes in your mind a company a great investment specifically focused on like cyber? Yeah, like what are some of the technical advantages that you look for, what's kind of the minimum market size that you're looking for and then what are the traits of the founder that you've seen that have been consistent when investing in them?
- [18:03]
B
Sure, sure. And this is continuously evolving, but so maybe rewind a little bit. At Oak Seek Ventures we focus on seed stage companies and our forte is really around picking stealth mode founders, building the next big thing. We are thematic and so we have a top down perspective on industry where the pain points, where the gaps, essentially what are CISOs struggling with? And we can go into some of this later with that in mind. We look out for teams that are solving these highly technical problems, what we really care about. Because at C stage it's really backing a team and, and the problem that they are trying to solve. Right. So we look for large, large pain points, unmet needs, and then we look out for a team that has both the technical and business elements to it. And this is really so that what they do is one of its kind, truly distinctive and there are huge barriers to entry. Right. And in cyber security, of course, one thing to be mindful of is it's easy to build small little companies. But you know, truly finding a blue ocean, a huge unmet need is critically important to establish yourself as a new vendor in a highly complicated space where CISOs are always under pressure of budget. They rather. Deal with resolved, a pain point is very important.
- [20:12]
A
Yeah, that's helpful. And then when it comes to the founder, what are some characteristics that you've seen of the founders being really successful?
- [20:23]
B
Yeah, so first of all, it's the general one, which is I always spend time asking founders, why are they doing this startup? What's the motivation? And it tells a lot, right? Because founders have to be highly motivated. Starting a company is one of the most difficult things in life, right. You eat, sleep, dream, everything about a company, right. Everything that can go wrong can go wrong. It will go wrong.
- [20:54]
A
You also have to, I would say you also have to forego instant gratification. Right. I mean, you're doing this hoping that there's some result, you know, in the long term where, you know, they could go out and they could go to Google or, you know, Microsoft and make, you know, 600 grand a year. So they're, they're, you know, foregoing all of those quick, you know, quick gratifications to hopefully do something bigger in the.
- [21:20]
B
Long term and more meaningful. So it doesn't, it's not just a big. Right. It is that they are, they are building on their life's passion. This is something that they realize, okay, well, all that experience in their lives, you know, can now be used in this way.
- [21:39]
A
Yeah.
- [21:40]
B
And it's a big problem and that's why they're gonna, you know, stick to it. Right. So that's one like, like, I think, I think for us it's a big criteria because there are too many, many, many, many startups. Right. And many founders start companies for the wrong reasons. And that's important thing because, you know, when times are not rosy, right. When funding is hard, when customers are not getting you the orders, you know, it's really having the right motivation is critical to pushing through pivoting companies is to necessary. So that's one.
- [22:21]
A
Yeah.
- [22:22]
B
Beyond that, there are two things that we really look out for if we were to point it down. One is the technology bench of a team. Right. And unfortunately, I did attend MIT where I, you know, you know, deeply thought that I, I learned computer programming when I was middle school and I said that learn programming the Apple 2e when they were four and a half. So, you know, some of these geeks, I would say, you know, the best geeks around that at mit, you know, in all the engineering classes, you always have a, you know, design problem and this and that. And then, you know, you would find these classmates that, that, you know, they've done programming since young, have been Playing around. They, they, you know, programming is like toys to them. Like, that's their enjoyment and they will always win these competitions. Right. And so in, in many of our teams, we are looking for that spark that, yes, this team is like so passionate about what they do, so serious that, that they've gotten insights into the areas that they are working on, that it's not someone you know, someone you know that, that, that has simply gone to MIT or like work at Google can have. Right. We're looking for that accumulation of, if you will just know how in a particular field that I would say maybe even the professors don't have. Right. So that's one element. And then the other element is the business sense of things right here. We realize that many of our founders are highly technical in nature, but you've got to have some sense. And maybe the CTO is highly technical, but he has a classmate who's the CEO or somewhat. And it's that savviness. It's the sense of, okay, these are big markets, this is what the customer pain point is, this is what they would buy. But there is also a huge part about learning as you go. And so the soft skills are important, the ability to listen. And this is what we watch out for when we have a conversation with founders. Right. So investing in startups is not simply, okay, you come along with a elevator, pitch and pitch me, and then I'm excited about the big hairy, audacious goal or this huge opportunity and this mission statement, and I'm impressed by the credentials of the team, but actually spending time with the team and checking out that they have some of these motivational, technical, but also soft skills. Soft skills to be able to have a conversation with you to win customers confident. And in cybersecurity in particular, trust is very important.
- [25:42]
A
Yeah.
- [25:45]
B
You'Re selling to a bunch of CISOs who are highly skeptical, highly worried, highly paranoid, and always sniffing out, you know, what could go wrong. And so if you oversell anything, you know, you, you could be gone the next day. They won't talk to ever, ever talk to you again because, you know, if they bought something from you, they, they depend on you for your livelihood. Right. And so, so those are, those are important soft skills to test for.
- [26:15]
A
So you pivoted from a, you know, engineer's engineer, right. A technical person to a business person, you know, becoming, you know, venture capitalist. You also did some corporate vc. So, you know, what advice would you give to people that are looking to kind of maybe pivot their career? They work in real Estate or tech or consulting or product. And now they want to try to, you know, switch into VC or private equity. What are some things that helped you, you know, be a good candidate to, to land some of these corporate, you know, venture capital jobs.
- [26:52]
B
Yeah. So I would say the two things. One is first being very self aware of what you really enjoy and not enjoy. And, and you know, oftentimes with enjoyment, you, you, it's probably what you enjoy most that you bring the most value to. Yeah, to work. Right, sure. And, and you know, it's, it's, it's, it's really tough to try to do something that you're not enjoying or not good at. Right. So I would say first thing is always self reflection and figure out, okay, what you do best. Then the second thought I have is really that in real life and the same for startups as well, you seldom get from A to B in one step. And so thinking about the intermediate steps important. I remember when I said Harvard Business School, they have the whole career center, you know, advising students, you know, how to do career changes and people go to MBA to do career changes. And one of the career advisors said, hey, you know, you want to keep something the same and then make something different. Right. And that's how you make changes. You can't say, okay, I'm going to just jump from A to B and then, and then without a transition. And so those are important things to think about. Right. So based on where you are right now, what step can you make that leverages the strengths and capabilities that you have, experiences that you have, and then make maybe even a baby step towards where you need to be. Sure. And then the third thing I would say is reflecting on my experience. I would say relationships are critically important. The thing that, Joel, you're doing like community and all that, that's incredibly important and incredibly important for transitions that you want to make as well. So think about that, just doing things and getting the experience and building that network that, that enables you to make those transitions.
- [29:23]
A
Yeah, yeah. And I mean you make a good point. You have to really enjoy what you're doing. I like you. I'm a very community type of person. I like friendships. I like to build like multi year decade long friendships. I just enjoy being with good people. Some people don't have any interest in that. Some people just want to be an investor and kind of deploy capital, but they're not the community person. They don't like to host events or do dinners with people. They just want to, you know, look at deals Analyze them and deploy. So I think, you know, figuring out what you enjoy doing and leaning into those superpowers, I think can get you into the industry. So if you think about like Michael Moritz, right. Michael Moritz was a. Right. You know, he was a really well known journalist. So you know, part of the job of investing is writing a really good investment memo, right? So he leaned into that where like if you have a PhD, or you're super technical, you know, maybe deep tech, going into the science, you know, going to university research, you know, that's where you could find your edge. So I totally agree. And then Chi Wei, I want to talk about the second chapter which is like, look, you know, you joined a fund, you worked in the industry, built some experience. What advice would you give to people that want to now kind of build something? They want to launch their own fund. You know, fund is essentially a startup, right? It's also a business, it's an entrepreneurial endeavor. So what advice would you give to maybe your little brother or little sister and maybe what are some of the learnings reflecting the last couple months?
- [31:01]
B
Yeah, so, so we, we asked you very much, humbly speaking, along this journey. Sometimes I think starting a fund is even more challenging than starting a company. In many ways I would say the.
- [31:20]
A
Investor base is much more opaque. Right. So you are looking for a much narrower type of investor where like you can easily go to a startup demo day, you know, and, and, and meet a bunch of VCs at the demo day where I think, you know, unless you have a, a fund manager demo day, which I'm going to have tomorrow, I think it's going to be difficult to figure out who those people are in just my.
- [31:47]
B
Exactly. Yeah, exactly. And whereas I think, you know, a startup, you know, even, even a, a, a C stage startup, sometimes you just need one investor, right? Only YouTube you can do that.
- [32:12]
A
I think I, I think I lost you for a second. You, I think you cut out. So I think what you said was you just can't do that with a fund, right? Just having one investor. Unless you got a massive right anchor lp.
- [32:21]
B
Yeah, yeah, exactly. Right. And then the other thing is that the work we do, I mean, sure, if you are really good and really lucky, maybe in half a year, a year you've got mark. But the true exits and the true TPI takes years and years and years, right? And the startup, hey look, you've got revenue hopefully within the year, it's not the second year, right? And then you have happy customers and then from there you can Go raise series A and B and C and so forth. Right. So those. The iterations are shorter. So any advice I have, I mean, one, I think having. Having a niche for us, I think it's incredibly important. I mean, gosh, it's. It's a crowded space for venture capital. Right. And we get. We get. We get all these questions all the time, like, oh, yeah, how do you get a new flow? And, you know, how do you stand out? And. And it really boils down to having a niche. Why you think that will make money for investors? And I think being value added to founders is critical. Right. Because green money is money, and they want somebody who they can trust, someone who's value added. Someone's not just, hey, looking for you and write the check. They want someone that they can trust and they can talk to now and then. And that's important. And so that's why we've done the same. We've tried to only focus on things that we know and that we can be helpful and that we can bring. My experience and Brad's experience as. As the CTO of our security business, his industry expertise, connections, his relationships with csos, and then my experience on the data infrastructure side, our relationships with our channels, our partners, those are things that I think by staying focused, we can build those critical relationships that we can then provide for founders.
- [34:45]
A
Yeah, no, absolutely. What advice would you give for people that are looking to try to differentiate? So, you know, that's one of the biggest things that we're saying here. So you got the niche. Let's say you have a niche. You know, what else are some ways that have maybe helped you guys differentiate or just maybe some other fund managers did you admire? What do you think they've done to kind of stand out? I mean, if you go to one of these fund manager conferences, sometimes there's like, you know, 200 fund managers there. Right. So, like, how can fund managers, you know, and we're learning from a lot of mentors as well. Right. You and I. But, like, what. What have you heard to, you know, maybe differentiate yourself.
- [35:30]
B
Yeah. So. And some of these, you know, we look at other fund managers and aspire to be more like them, quite frankly. And some of. Some of the funds that I've seen are, for instance, mission oriented. Okay. My mission is to do this, and I've seen them have success with certain family officers, for instance, that are passionate around certain missions, whether that's, let's say, you know, education or that's, instance. So I would say. I said that's that's one dimension that, that you could do. I've also seen funds that, that for instance, donate a portion of the carry interest to charity that potentially you could, you could find a connection the people who've made it, people who are wealthy. And it's not just about money, it's about giving back. So we are trying to that overall into how we work our investors. And bearing in mind just like startups had to find product market fit, we are product too.
- [37:06]
A
Yeah, I mean the financial product is a package that you're selling to LPs and they have to be solving their needs. You know, a lot of times as an allocator, you have to, you have to preserve wealth and then you also have to generate wealth. And you know, to your point, you know, the example you mentioned, there's a specific example. So there was a fund that I knew that takes a percentage of their carry and donates it to charity. And because they do that, there is a specific institutional LP that only invests in like some type of fund that does charity. So like that's an innovative model. And I think this manager actually doesn't need the money. This manager had access and Nevasso, they're not greedy, they're okay with giving up some of their, their carry, which essentially is your profit, right, Your, your compensation. But if you can kind of give up some of that, you know, it definitely gets you across the line. Another thing that I'd be curious to hear your opinion on is GP stakes. So there's some fund managers that have been willing to forego their management fee and also give up some of their carry to get a large anchor investor. The only thing is, you know, you're giving up some of your shares of your business, but in exchange you get hopefully maybe a big check to, you know, finish your fundraising faster and get to work. So was wondering what your opinion is on that on both sides and maybe what you're hearing, if anybody else has done it.
- [38:39]
B
Yeah. So funny how you asked me this question. I think it's a, it's a difficult, happy problem to have for any gp. If someone would write you, you know, half, half a fun and, and ask for GP interest and, and all that I have heard from other, some, some, some GP, some LPs, uh, that uh, I think the key is to structure this in such a way that doesn't get the other LPs nervous, sometimes get worried if there has a huge LP that has these GP interests or certain influence over the gp. But yeah, if a GP has an LP that would write this huge check in exchange for maybe economic rights but not, not certain influence and so forth. That would, yeah, that would scare away the RPs. I think that's a heavy problem to have.
- [39:49]
A
Yeah, I would say, I would say my, yeah, I would say like maybe at least revenue share, right? So I mean maybe not even influence, but it's like, look, you know what, it's. Because it's a great. I've talked to some large family offices that, that like it because it's a essentially passive income. Right. I mean you're investing in a company own shares. Especially if this is a. I know one large LP that does this with people that have left specific new managers that have left large shops. So someone who left like a Blackstone and you know, this person has a huge track record and now they're going out and spinning their own, you know, strategy. But they have the network, they have the track record. They have already proven this model out and they're just, it just makes sense for the manager to do it themselves versus just get maybe a salary and get like a small bonus every year. Why not just replicate the entire strategy? Especially if they're running the whole thing. So like as an lp, it kind of makes sense because it's like, look, you know what, I park my money into this fund, I get recurring revenue share off of the management fees plus hopefully the carry. Right. But you know, it's just the question is the manager is there, is that, is that too much of a chunk for the manager to be happy with? Right. Because it's eating into, it's eating into kind of the compensation that they could have or also potential, not even compensation, but potential capital to recycle and reinvest into the fund if they want to double down as well. So it's kind of like a trade off that they got to think about. So. But I was just curious if you heard anything from other managers on entertaining it or, or just kind of completely not doing it because they're giving up a part of their business.
- [41:32]
B
I think another day. It's a very personal choice, right? Yeah. And it's a personal choice between also the partners. Right. And you know, and depending on this anchor LP what, what the terms are, I, I would think for some, you know, it's, it's when you're starting out, trying to build, build a firm, right. And, and you're thinking long term and you want to be in business for you know, 10, 15 years, 20, maybe even 30, you know, being, being too short sighted about near term economics is probably not something that you want to, you want to do, right? Yeah. Because hey, a venture capitalist is a long term business, right? And so you are custodians of wealth for long periods of time. The exits, quite frankly, very, very far out. And you know, personally, I, I'm a true believer of, of, you know, making sure everybody gets a fair share and everybody gets wealthy together. Right, yeah. So, but those are, those are personal choices. Everybody's different in their own circumstance. Right. The different potentially personal constraints around, you know, needing to pay off mortgage and therefore needing.
- [43:12]
A
Those extra percentages of carry to be able to, to cover that.
- [43:16]
B
Exactly, yeah. And then of course in a partnership, it's always complicated. You have multiple partners and everybody could be at a different stage in life and different, different values and all that.
- [43:27]
A
Yeah. So I asked Mary. Yeah, no, I totally agree. I was just going to say I asked Mary Wheeler was on my podcast last week, so she runs BioRock Ventures. And at the end of the podcast I was like, look, what kind of advice do you have for people, you know, building an, you know, an investment firm? And you know, it's just like very, very basic but very profound. She's just like, look, raise and close, close and raise. You know, pretty much your. No, sorry. Raise and deploy and then deploy and deploy and raise because you're, you want to show activity and you know, it's just, she's like, don't make it too complicated, just close. Right. So you get, it's essentially like, you know, in my mind it's almost like B2B SaaS. Right. You're meeting prospects. Maybe the first call is having them understand who you are, what problem you're solving, what, what area in the market you're providing. And if that, if that allocator is, has a need to kind of get access to cyber or specifically if they're a, you know, they're like a corporate, like Cisco, you know, there's a, there's a vested aligned interest to be able to kind of get some type of access to those kind of deals. Some of those deals could potentially be a strategic investment for the corporate as well. But at the end, you know, you're having that first meeting, building rapport and then having them learn maybe in layers, more and more about you. And then obviously if they have more interest, then you have to use your abilities to get them to the finish line and have them take that leap, that seven year leap to work with you and go into business with you. But yeah, that was her feedback, which I totally agree. I think it really, in this ecosystem there are some of these emerging managers that, that wrote blogs saying that they talked to like a thousand LPs before they closed their fun. So I was wondering if there's any other pieces of wisdom that you want to share as we kind of wrap up in terms of maybe just your career, you know, being an investor or just life overall?
- [45:44]
B
I guess. Yeah. If I, if, you know, going back to earlier point that, that, that, that I made earlier would be really understanding why we are on this planet. Right. And each of us has, has a different why. And then I think you kind of like, kind of maybe teed this question up right in the beginning because sometimes it takes a long time to figure out what that why is. And, and we all got distracted by different things. We all get taught by our teachers, our mentors and maybe what we read. And, and it, it's not natural. It's, it's, it's a self discovery process. Right. And finding one is critically important, especially in starting something out new. It's, it's, it's really, really why, why, why, why are you doing this? And, and why, why? The world needs, needs a new firm, a new startup, a new company.
- [46:56]
A
Yeah.
- [46:57]
B
And why do you want to do this? Yeah.
- [47:01]
A
And to your point. And you know. Yeah. And I think based on people looking at both of your LinkedIn profiles and my LinkedIn profiles, you can probably conclude that, you know, it might take a few decades to figure out what your why is. I mean, I'm on my third, I'm on my third career right now. Right. And, and I think I'm heading in the right way. I think I really enjoy what I do. I mean this is a dream job for me, but who knows what'll happen? You know, I think, I think as you meet more people, as you get more life experiences, I think you find your calling and you know, maybe, maybe it just adds on to what you're doing. But sometimes it might be a completely, you know, complete career change, you know, so for me this is like the third time I've switched careers and you know, but I think all of those things that you developed or those experiences that you had kind of form who you are, you know, kind of makes your unique, you know, makeup of, of, you know, what you become to be. And I think there's still exciting journeys ahead to kind of continue discovering and evolving.
- [48:07]
B
Absolutely.
- [48:08]
A
Yeah.
- [48:09]
B
That's why what makes life interesting.
- [48:11]
A
No, I, I totally agree. Well, hey Chiwei, thank you so much for giving us your time. And look, I'm gonna see you tomorrow, so we'll hang out with some. With some friends. I think some of the people in the audience will be there, too. So excited to. To catch up, and thanks for all that you do, supporting the community and supporting founders.
- [48:29]
B
Yeah.
- [48:30]
A
All right.
- [48:31]
B
Yeah.
- [48:31]
A
Take care.
- [48:31]
B
Very excited.
- [48:32]
A
Yeah, absolutely.
- [48:33]
B
Yes.
- [48:34]
A
Take care, everybody. Have a good one. Bye.
- [48:37]
B
Yeah, Sam.