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- [00:00]
Dana Carvey / Rhett / Link
I'm Dana Carvey.
- [00:01]
James (Guest from Supersede)
I'm David Spade.
- [00:02]
Dana Carvey / Rhett / Link
Fly on the Walls. Back for another season. Now on audio and video every Monday and Thursday. So many incredible guests will be joining us. Follow and listen to Fly on the Wall everywhere.
- [00:10]
James (Guest from Supersede)
You get your podcasts too good Be true.
- [00:17]
Joel Palo Thinkle (Host of Investor podcast)
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. All right, we are live. Can you guys still hear me?
- [01:04]
James (Guest from Supersede)
Yep, we're good.
- [01:06]
Bonnie Halper
Great.
- [01:08]
Joel Palo Thinkle (Host of Investor podcast)
So we're here with James at Superseed. He's in the uk. Him and I have had some really good discussions in the past and excited to have him as a guest on our show. Also here with Bonnie Halper and a few other people in the. In the tech community. We are global now. So we've got people from all over the world dialing in, people who are in the tech scene, people who are aspiring VCs, emerging managers. So on that note, James, welcome to the show. Thanks for popping in.
- [01:40]
James (Guest from Supersede)
Yeah.
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Joel Palo Thinkle (Host of Investor podcast)
And would love to maybe hear a little bit about your background, your career, where you grew up and how you navigated to where you are now. Maybe we can kick off with that and then see where the conversation takes us.
- [01:53]
James (Guest from Supersede)
Yeah, perfect. So maybe I'll just talk a little bit how I sort of moved into VC and then that will link back to. One of the sort of contributing factors is my. Is my location, which is Cambridge in. In the uk. So I came into VC in a non, non linear fashion. I am a mechanical and electronics engineer by education. It was something that I was good at and, you know, I was. Yeah, it was one of the things that interested me. I was pretty torn between going into law and sort of investment and more of the technical side. Chose the technical side and really enjoyed at least the first sort of five or six years of it. I was doing product design, machine design, intellectual property workarounds, all sorts of different things like that for global brands. So we had a technology consultancy business. I worked out of Cambridge. Cambridge is a big hotbed, you know, Silicon fence. Then it came. It's a tech sort of ecosystem now where they've been at the forefront of all sorts of different technologies. Bluetooth, csr, you have all sorts of different things like arm. So ARM is the sort of backbone of almost every chip within mobile phones. It's insane. So I sort of started in that environment. So from a technical perspective it was a great proving ground. It's a great place to start. And with consulting you get chucked in at the deep end. So you get given a pack and flight details and then you jump on a plane and you read the pack and then you're meant to sort of land at 20. How old is I? 24. Walk into a room full of people that have been doing this, you know, working at this company for 10, 15 years and meant to be sort of competent. So you learn very quickly to sort of get what we call a T shaped consulting. So you're very broad, you have a sort of reasonable competency in a lot of different things and then you build out a specialism. So it's a really great proving ground for testing yourself mentally and adapting all the different things that you've learned in different areas and applying them for different projects. I enjoyed it a lot but eventually became a bit sort of frustrated with not really being able to control my own destiny. So I decided to leave and although I'd worked on some really interesting projects, I'd work on smoking cessation project for BAT where British American Tobacco where they were sort of trying to provide experiences without losing customers I think is the polite way of saying it. You know, see smoking has a, has a sort of inverse correlation to customer growth. So they, we worked on some interesting things there. I designed some of the first versions of E cigarettes so worked on some really cool stuff. But it was a bit frustrating not being able to sort of control what I was up to. So that was my first step into entrepreneurship. So20 April 2010 I founded my first business that I was working at previously. I'd sort of done some investments and some sweat equity into sort of local startup businesses that were just interesting. But this was my first big venture so I quit and yeah sort of just went out on my semi own. I'd recommend having a co founder and.
- [05:18]
Joel Palo Thinkle (Host of Investor podcast)
What'S the, let's hear the origin story of that. So what, what was the trigger that said hey you know what, I'm going to start this because I.
- [05:27]
James (Guest from Supersede)
So I. So I grew up in a small village just outside of Cambridge. Sure. And my father was technical director of a business called Lynx Computers. So at the time you had Amstrad, BBC Acorn and you sort of had these things going on in Cambridge and Lynx. He was not a sort of over entrepreneur but a lot of Cambridge folk aren't the sort of maybe the quintessential entrepreneur, the sort of bold brash you know, very, very sort of keen and going to change the world type of entrepreneur. But he, he worked in a lot of small businesses and so I grew up around that. That was normal for me. And he did quite well. They listed very early 80s and on paper was worth lots of money and unfortunately the company listed and then sort of collapsed. So he was then worth not very much money. So when I grew up, I was, you know, used to having a company that was being run out in the offices in the, in the back, out of the back of my house. That's like normal for me. Whereas all of my friends, it was normal for them to, you know, dad gets in a job and just plods his way through and, well, not plod, so it's offensive, but, you know, just sort of stays in that business and builds, builds their way up through that. That was their career.
- [06:51]
Joel Palo Thinkle (Host of Investor podcast)
So like the corporate ladder, pretty much.
- [06:53]
James (Guest from Supersede)
Right, but ladder, yeah. And it's just the sort of normal, the normal thing. But for me the normal thing was, you know, go and build something, go and do something if you want to do something, you know, learn it, learn your trade and then go and play it yourself. So I made friends with a guy called Tom Wood, who has since gone on to found quite an interesting business called Kazana. So he's an entrepreneur by default as well, sort of. And we got them really well and both of us just said, look, we don't like some of the elements of what we're doing. There's some of. It's super interesting and do we want to be billed at, you know, 1200 to 1500 bucks a day and see 100 or 150 bucks, it's like, you know, come on, there's a big margin in there. That's not fair. So we thought, right, let's just design our own consultancy. And we did that and left. And yeah, that's how the first sort of first, first venture started. Tough times. Pretty, pretty brutal. 2000, you know, back in 07, things were starting to happen. Real impact, you know, 08. And our model was to use research and research and development tax breaks as a Trojan horse. So we're still doing technical consultancy. We go into a business, we'd understand what they're up to as a business with the, with the sort of premise that we're going to increase their R and D tax claim. So by understanding exactly what they needed to do as a business and all the sort of steps of things, they're going to need to, they will have already done or will need to do in the future meant that their tax claims got larger. So we had a specialist in the tax area that we worked with, and it was kind of an easier way to get the doors opened up into a business. Hey, would you like free money?
- [08:45]
Joel Palo Thinkle (Host of Investor podcast)
And it sounds like a win win because you get paid for your services, but then you're also decreasing their overhead from the tax savings as well. So it's like everybody.
- [08:55]
James (Guest from Supersede)
That was the approach. Right. So I always try. So I've got quite an interest in incentive structures and I'm a sort of wannabe behavioral economist in the sense of that I'm not educated in it to the level that I would like to be, but I'm gonna study psy. And I'm very interested in the way that people behave. And one of the things that we have always tried to do and the things that I build is to try and make it as close to win win as possible. Because the closer that you are to trying to deliver, to trying to deliver something that they genuinely want, the less sales you need, the less marketing you need. And you know, one of my. I had a business mentor for about three or four years and he was a formidable chap, Very, very good at cutting through to what's needed very quickly. Very good at asking the pertinent questions. But, you know, one of the things he said was be interesting and interested and your marketing will work for itself. So, you know, we were trying to do something that was interesting and we were genuinely interested in the businesses that we worked with. And we tried the details behind the.
- [10:14]
Jake Brennan (Host of Disgraceland / Hollywoodland podcast)
Diddy indict, Taylor Swift's stalkers, Jerry Lee trying to kill Elvis. Disgraceland dives into the dark side of entertainment every Tuesday. Follow and listen to Disgraceland on the Free Odyssey app or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [10:28]
James (Guest from Supersede)
Try to deliver some real value. And if you're delivering real value on the, on as the outset, then you're likely to get paid because people don't always lead out with a cost. So, yeah, so we did, we did that. We, we used the sort of Trojan horse approach. It meant that they got something for effectively nothing. So we took a, an upset, we took a skim on the increase in R and D. But by this point, the concept was that they'd, you know, we'd released extra capital for them and they've, they've basically shown us what they're up to from a technical capacity. So there's hopefully some more money in the business. We know what their problems are. And the idea is we'd then sell Technology consulting on the back of it.
- [11:14]
Joel Palo Thinkle (Host of Investor podcast)
Yeah. So it's a little bit of an upsell on top of the.
- [11:16]
James (Guest from Supersede)
Yeah, so it's kind of sort of them allowing. So the normal consulting process is you have multiple meetings, trying to build trust, and eventually they start to tell you what their problems are. Like.
- [11:26]
Bonnie Halper
Sure.
- [11:26]
James (Guest from Supersede)
It's like psychologists 100. Right. You don't sort of meet someone, they just tell you all their deepest, darkest secrets and problems. So we sort of tried to go in that way and if we've increased the amount of capital within the business available to do stuff, then hopefully they would be more inclined to spend that money with us helping, you know, we know the business a bit more now they've got capital and we can hopefully help them use it to grow the business. Now the problem was by 2010, people had used up most of their reserves trying to sort of either tread water and not implode or grow within the sort of pressures that are going on. So what we didn't account for, and this is, you know, all of this stuff is just learning. And in this incentive structures element, the CFOs, the FDs, et cetera, were spending, allocating the capital before it even returned. So, you know, someone in, within the, within the finance department says, hey, you know, R and D tax claim is now 200k or something. And they're like, oh, great, you know, it's 150 grand more than it was. That's great, fine, I'm going to have 150k more. Boom, they've allocated it. And then, you know, two, three, four months later, we come back and go, hey, you know, the project you're working on needs some support. They're like, yeah, it does, it does, but we haven't got any cash. Sure, well, you know, you should have some more money. It's like, no, we need that to keep the lights on. So it was, it was tough building the business. We grew from two of us to 12 of us within about two years. And another lesson learned is that the number of bodies does not necessarily. If you haven't got good unit economics within, within the, within the structure, just having more people going in the business just increases your stress and, and you, you sit there on your margin and then your margin just stays the same, give or take a tiny bit. But your, your, your stress level, your problems that are beneath you increase. So we had 12 of us. We didn't really see much more money at the top because we're trying to grow the business. So we kind of had increasing pressures With. Without really much more financial stability. Long story short, in that sense, one of our clients was representing quite a large bit of our revenue and had a frank discussion with him. What does next year look like? He said, yeah, it looks good. We're going to be hopefully nearly doubling what we need to do. How are you guys going? And I'm like, not great. Like, you know, things are tough. We're gonna have to sort of start letting people go if we can't grow. And he actually decided to buy the business.
- [14:10]
Joel Palo Thinkle (Host of Investor podcast)
Okay.
- [14:11]
James (Guest from Supersede)
So, yeah, we made. Made the first exit pretty early on. Yeah, it was. That was difficult as well, because I.
- [14:22]
Joel Palo Thinkle (Host of Investor podcast)
Said, you're gonna tell me a different outcome. Like the way that you were leading up the story. I thought you told me that you folded the business, but you're like, oh, we exited.
- [14:30]
James (Guest from Supersede)
Well, we kind of. So we exited, but it was not great. Right. I set out to work and we made a bit of money, but nothing. Definitely not worth all the risk.
- [14:42]
Joel Palo Thinkle (Host of Investor podcast)
Absolutely.
- [14:42]
James (Guest from Supersede)
And heartache. I got a couple of quick.
- [14:45]
Joel Palo Thinkle (Host of Investor podcast)
I got a question. So this is something that I've experienced in the past when launching my own business. You know, it's always been a magical experience for me when I got my first customer.
- [14:57]
James (Guest from Supersede)
Right.
- [14:57]
Joel Palo Thinkle (Host of Investor podcast)
So it's that first paying customer. So how did you feel the first time that you, you know, you did your consulting business and you got that first payment? You know, you checked the bank a few times, refreshed the browser and made sure that the payment was really there. But how did that make you feel, you know, what was going on in your head?
- [15:17]
James (Guest from Supersede)
So I generally, I suppose I don't like to count my chickens. Yeah, count your eggs before the hatch, however you want to do it. But. So even when you sign the contract, my mindset then moves to making sure I can deliver.
- [15:40]
Bonnie Halper
Sure.
- [15:41]
James (Guest from Supersede)
And this is not a very uplifting way, but I kind of just. My mindset shifts, and then I'm like, okay, now I've got to deliver. So now I need to make sure that all the team that's to be on it, it's working. They've got the right stuff to do. They know what they've got to do. What do I need to do in terms of focus on other things? So now I need to sell more. I need to do other work. And it's very much a collegiate thing. Because we were relatively flat as a business, we tried to keep it quite flat. So a lot of sales were pretty mutual. I afforded myself just a little micro.
- [16:14]
Joel Palo Thinkle (Host of Investor podcast)
My bag. And I'm like. And I feel like the patch should really be given at least when you deliver the product and you know that the customer's happy, maybe then it's safe to pat your back because they may get pissed off and you might have to give them a refund if you don't make.
- [16:27]
James (Guest from Supersede)
Yeah, I mean, consulting is tough because you're expensive, right? You know, you cost money. And people internally go, I'm on, you know, the equivalent of X a day. And you're being billed at 5x or 6x or 7x the money. So you're expected to over deliver all the time. So it's never a relaxed thing. It's not like if you've got, you know, so what we do at the moment is, within the fund is invest in B2B SaaS. So, you know, if your software's all built and it's done correctly and you sign clients, it's money and you can't relax, but you can just sort of, you know, hopefully the client is happy and carries on with consulting. It's a constant interaction. So that was another lesson learned in, in what type of business do you want to get involved in? It's tough. Like it was. It's not, it's not easy. And they are in general pretty difficult. People like, it's. It's not, it's a difficult situation. So there's a book by Richard Thale. He talks about speaking to a chap who runs a very successful restaurant who sells his seats in a sort of bulk thing at the start of the season. And you reserve it. And I think it's like, I don't know, 100 bucks a seat or something for the restaurant. And he sells out like boom, straight away. And the economist was saying, you know, the economist approach is, well, do it as an auction, get the highest value that you can for each of the tickets and let, you know, let the market decide what they're willing to pay. And the restaurant chap was like, well, no, because if I let someone pay $1,000, $2,000 for a dinner, it doesn't matter how good I am, they're good. They're gonna be a bit like, meh, you know, at the end of it, they're like, oh, is it good? Yeah, it was good. But is it worth $2,000? Probably not. You know, would you do it again? Well, I don't know. And we kind of suffer from that same situation. If you're being billed at quite a large amount of money, you constantly have to massively over deliver just to, just to tread water.
- [18:54]
Bonnie Halper
Sure.
- [18:54]
James (Guest from Supersede)
So it's not, it's not a relaxed thing. You kind of don't really ever get any downtime. And during this period I bought a house and started a family, got married and all these other things about life choices where you've got lots of other like things you would probably prefer to be doing than working till like one in the morning. And then. So it's not, it's definitely. Consulting is definitely not a space that I, when I left, I didn't, I didn't miss it.
- [19:25]
Joel Palo Thinkle (Host of Investor podcast)
Yeah, I got a good question here. So somebody in the audience, Sarah, her question is, do you have any advice on how to treat clients where it might not have ended particularly well, but you want to leave the door open for future collaboration? So I guess if the client just wasn't happy, is there any way to hopefully re engage or possibly save that account?
- [19:52]
James (Guest from Supersede)
We had a few that were pissed off when we were working in my company. And you had unhappy clients or unhappy situations When I was working at my previous consultancy, obviously rule one is like, try not to let them get to that position, like monitor them and try and build that relationship where you can be honest if something screwed up. Like if you have a relationship with a client, you can go and you have to balance it because some people can't take, can't take the down news and can't wait until it's solved. Yeah, some people can take. Look. Okay, do you know what went down.
- [20:28]
Jake Brennan (Host of Disgraceland / Hollywoodland podcast)
The Viper Room the night River Phoenix died? Or how about the mysterious death of Brittany Murphy? Are you aware of how Steve McQueen escaped murder at the hands of the Manson family? The obsessive killing of Dorothy Stratton? The real life murder that inspired David Lynch's Twin Peaks. The three conspiracies surrounding Marilyn Monroe's death. These stories and more are told in the Hollywoodland podcast where true crime and Tinseltown collide. Hollywoodland is hosted by me, Jake Brennan, creator of the award winning music and true crime podcast Disgraceland. Follow and listen to Hollywoodland wherever you get your podcasts.
- [21:05]
James (Guest from Supersede)
Last week this thing happened. What I did is this. And now we're here and they're like, you should have told me. It's like, yeah, okay, but you know, look, I had to act on it first and now we're here, now I think we've got this way out. So you can sort of manage people that way. If you are doing your damnedest, like you're trying to do your best job and just something screws up, I kind of just, I think, I think the best is Just to be honest and open with them and say, look, you know, I dropped a ball. Look, this happened, that happened, this situation happened beyond it. Or look, I was doing this. This is the way I was trying to monitor this situation. I had weekly reviews with these clients that these people. And I did this. And here's my reports and everything. Look, I really tried to keep on top of this situation. And here's our weekly reviews that I did with all of your managers who, you know, maybe didn't report up to you properly or hadn't highlighted. Look, here's the. Here's my email saying to the managers, look, this thing's wrong. And look, you need to escalate this or whatever and say, look, I really tried my best, this is what I tried to build. But also say, look, it's my bad as well, because I should have probably gone above the managers and come straight to you and had that discussion or whatever. The other thing is to maybe talk through the problem. So when something's happened is to. And if it's really bad situation, I would suggest paying what they called them, not an arbitrator. Yeah, arbitrator. Like, basically, people sit in the middle of the conversation, but if you can do it direct, it's just have that conversation with them. Just try and understand what the problem is a lot of the time. Again, back to the incentives thing. Sometimes the thing they're pissed off at you about is not actually the real problem. It's a mechanism, It's a thing that they can hook on that something else is happening and sometimes is not even anything you've really done. So having a conversation about it is a good way to open it up. And you might find, look, this person just got, you know, completely bollocked by their boss for something. And actually they're annoyed at you because they should have done something themselves. And it's easier for them to just blame the consultant or whatever. And if you've genuinely done something wrong, just in my opinion, try and sort it. And. But. But open up that dialogue as quickly as possible. But you will just get people that just you. You can't. Please.
- [23:43]
Bonnie Halper
Sure.
- [23:44]
James (Guest from Supersede)
I've met people that are permanently unhappy. They're just always unhappy with everything. It doesn't matter what you do. Like, you show them 99 successes, though, the first thing they look at on the list, where are we at with that? And it's like, come on, in your head. You're like, come on, I've done all these things. It's like, we're way further than we should be. And they're like, what's that thing? And I think there are some people just unfortunately built a bit like that.
- [24:06]
Joel Palo Thinkle (Host of Investor podcast)
Yeah, no, look, I've experienced the same thing and some people just.
- [24:11]
James (Guest from Supersede)
The final thing on that is do you, do you want to work with them?
- [24:14]
Joel Palo Thinkle (Host of Investor podcast)
Yeah.
- [24:15]
James (Guest from Supersede)
Going forward if they're. People sometimes believe that it's a one way thing, that you always need the client and you should always be looking to secure the client. But it is kind of a relationship and I, I prefer to work with people I enjoy and maybe that's a luxury that I've maybe lost out in some things by. Maybe I've lost out some money or maybe I've lost out and you know, some other project or whatever because I kind of didn't get on with the people and I thought, you know what? I would prefer not to have six months of being shouted at even if I'm going to get paid a bit more extra money with them being permanently annoyed. So it doesn't always have to be one way. If you don't like the client and you don't need to have them, maybe don't take them.
- [25:05]
Joel Palo Thinkle (Host of Investor podcast)
Yeah, that's an interesting trade off. So another trade off I have that could be interesting is the hiring process. Right. So you could either do everything yourself and not sleep or you could pay something to someone else to take off those hours. So you know, how many times have you dealt with that? I'm sure that was a common thing in the beginning, especially when you're starting because you scaled up to 12 people. So walk me through kind of like your thought process when you were trying to take things off your plate and manage paying versus saving the money and doing it yourself. I'm only asking because I've dealt with that.
- [25:41]
James (Guest from Supersede)
Yeah.
- [25:42]
Joel Palo Thinkle (Host of Investor podcast)
Recently. Yeah.
- [25:44]
James (Guest from Supersede)
I mean you start, you start that in most jobs as you start to move up the ranks a bit. You kind of, you're not the end of the, you know, you're not the tail of the whip. There's not all this stuff happening somewhere else and you're just at the end just trying to like sort or firefighting. All the stuff that's just, all the crap that's just getting chucked at you.
- [26:02]
Joel Palo Thinkle (Host of Investor podcast)
Yeah.
- [26:04]
James (Guest from Supersede)
When you are founding a business, you, you, you are all things and everything. But you know, common advice is just try and know what you're good at and what your, you know, where your gaps are and hopefully fill, fill the gaps with people that are lightning at it, just love it, you know, that's what they get out of bed for, because then they're not forced to do it. If you don't like admin, you're not a details person, you're not good at organizing. Just get someone who's passionate about it, because that makes it so much easier. Because they're not forcing themselves to do it, you're not forcing yourself to do it. You have to be organized. Absolutely. But you can begin to surround yourself with people that are better at elements of what you do. I think the constant battle, it's exactly the same with entrepreneurs building their businesses as well as people going up through the ranks within a business. There's an old adage around you rise to your level of incompetence. I think if you are the CEO of something, co founder, whatever your title is, or manager, or whatever you expected, you perceive that you're expected to be brilliant at everything and that you should be able to do everything. And there are some people that can. You know, the managing partner of the fund that I'm at is one of those people. But they're super, super, super, super, super rare. Most people have a competency and an ability in some areas or big interest in some areas, which drives them to be competent, and then they have gaps. And so being honest enough with yourself about what you can change and develop and what you are inherently unlikely to get to the level that you need to, if it gets to that point, if you discover the things that, look, I can learn this stuff, but it's going to take up a massive amount of my time to get really good at something when actually I can bring someone in or I can find the right team members within the group to take those elements that will accelerate you faster, I think. And then the other thing, I suppose I witnessed it in the technical side as well. I mean, I was around technically better, better engineers than me. Like, they were technically much better. But my skill was, was unpicking what the client actually really wanted and what the real problem was that they were trying to solve.
- [28:44]
Bonnie Halper
Sure.
- [28:45]
James (Guest from Supersede)
So I was never going to be a better technical engineer than them, but as a package, I could be potentially better value within the business. And I suppose the final thing is that sometimes as a business grows, you feel exposed. And if you've built a team around you who are great, you can sometimes begin to feel, well, what's my value? Like, what, what am I fraud? Like, now I've built this amazing team around me and, you know, they're better at everything that I can do. And what am I? And you kind of get this like, Existential, like sort of what, what am I worth? Sort of thing.
- [29:30]
Bonnie Halper
Sure.
- [29:31]
James (Guest from Supersede)
But, you know, maybe step away from that business at that point. Maybe maybe leave it to run itself and bring a new CEO in and become a chairman and, or Ned or whatever and just, you know, that's an amazing achievement. You've built something so well that it can run. It's not run itself, but, you know, it runs without you. So, yeah, it's. It's difficult to do, but I think you have to be open and honest with your own failings and gaps and think what's worth my time. I think. I think valuing your own time is important as well.
- [30:05]
Joel Palo Thinkle (Host of Investor podcast)
Yeah, it's good advice. I think a couple things from that is, obviously, if you can pick people that can do things better than you can and they're passionate about it, that also probably helps with retention, I'm assuming, too, because they just love it. I mean, if you just suck at social media, but you find somebody that just loves getting on TikTok and posting stuff about your business, then, hey, that's great. And then another quote that comes to my mind, I think it's from Napoleon Hill. He said that good leaders can replicate themselves. So if you're, you know, obviously if you're the CEO and you can copy a couple versions of yourself, you know, that definitely helps as well. So that's just something that came to my mind when I listened to that audiobook a couple months ago. So let's talk about the next stage. So, you know, had a. Had a favorable exit and then did you take some time off?
- [30:56]
James (Guest from Supersede)
No. So we. This is how I then started getting to investment, because what they were buying, they were buying up intellectual property. You must remember this as a podcast about the secret and forgotten histories of 20th century Hollywood. Listen to. You must remember this on the free Odyssey app or wherever you get your podcasts from. Distressed businesses. Okay, so they found a way to highlight when IP was going to become expensive. They would then, because it's all public record and they're on certain timelines, you're on a conveyor belt when you go into ip, so you can locate all IP that meets a certain criteria, which is of a certain time frame. And then you review the IP for strength, and then you review the IP for commerciality, so the ability to commercialize the technology. And so we were performing the technical due diligence for this group, and then they had partnered with a wealth management business to raise capital, and we were buying up the ip, working out how we could. So we'd review the ip, work out the best stuff to buy and then we'd raise investment around it. And so that's how I started in. So I was doing the technical work. So I was investment analyst when I joined the group, then became investment manager. So I was then working on the portfolio of companies. I was working on the IM and doing the sort of end to end, became director of a few of the businesses and started to sort of work into in more depth in the investment side. And I enjoyed it. I liked the interaction with the investors when things are going well. Sometimes it's not always going well but it definitely started to push me into that space. So I'd had a taste of corporate, had a great exposure to sort of world leading brands, Unilever, P and G, coca cola, bat, etc. Johnson Johnson. I'd then done some entrepreneurship, you know, built, built building a business myself. Starting to scale teams and crying and drinking champagne and shouting and you know, all sorts of the ups and downs. And then I started to move into the investment side and I really just sort of, I just clicked with it. I just found it really interesting. It's a lovely combination from my perspective for my brain and it's a lovely combination of technical, It's a lovely combination of people, psychology, marketing analysis and then pure play finance. So I just enjoyed that sort of combination of things and felt I wanted to do more in this space.
- [33:50]
Joel Palo Thinkle (Host of Investor podcast)
Do you think it's also the variety? So for me what I get excited about investing is just the short attention span that I have. So I struggled with changing jobs every two to three years and then for me it just meant that just that variety was important. But I'm curious if that's kind of something that also was a differentiating factor that got you excited. The fact that you can work with different founders, different industries, different problems. Yeah, I was curious about that.
- [34:26]
James (Guest from Supersede)
I suppose it was the same with consulting to some extent you'd work on a project, it could be, probably the shortest, would have been a week I'd have thought and then other six, seven, eight months. I mean I got flown out to Puerto Rico and was dumped in Puerto Rico for nearly nine months. Flying back and forth every third weekend for a long weekend.
- [34:49]
Joel Palo Thinkle (Host of Investor podcast)
That's a good point.
- [34:50]
James (Guest from Supersede)
You kind of get chucked around on all these different projects and that was interesting to me. What I call the sweaty palm moment as well, you're kind of, you're panicking internally, you're thinking, you know how I've got to read all this stuff. I've Got to get up to speed in all these different areas. And you go through the sort of sweaty palm fear.
- [35:08]
Joel Palo Thinkle (Host of Investor podcast)
Yeah.
- [35:09]
James (Guest from Supersede)
Then you touch down, then you start to sort of, you know, find your way a bit. And then you start to become a bit competent. And then you start to really get your handle on it. And then you're like, okay, look, I can do this. And then it's like, boom. And then you're pushing and then you're growing and then you're starting to feel in your head, you start to get the stuff in your head where you just like, why are they doing it this way? Like, I've been in there now, like one week, one month or whatever it is, and to me it's like crystal clear that you should be doing this, this and this. And you start to then get comfortable. Not comfortable, but you start to get sort of comfortable in it again.
- [35:42]
Bonnie Halper
Sure.
- [35:42]
James (Guest from Supersede)
And then you do start to feel like a bit. A bit bored in the sense you're kind of going like, come on, guys, why doing this? Why is it like this in. You should have done it like this. And this needs to change. If that changes, we can move on. And so you do kind of go through that cycle sometimes very quickly, sometimes longer. But yeah, that change, that changing element is pretty addictive.
- [36:07]
Joel Palo Thinkle (Host of Investor podcast)
Yeah.
- [36:08]
James (Guest from Supersede)
Because you go through like a whole relationship of emotions sometimes within weeks.
- [36:15]
Bonnie Halper
Sure.
- [36:15]
James (Guest from Supersede)
With investing, it's a similar thing. You know, something sort of turns up and you. The really interesting stuff is when, for me is when, when you look at it and you're like, what are these guys doing? Like this, it's completely over your head. And then you start picking away at it and then you start realizing you're like, okay, well, this is. No, this is interesting because if you do it this way, everyone else has been doing it this way, and you know, this is, this is an interesting take on it, and then you stop. But you've gone from that sort of complete lack of understanding, accelerating yourself through research to be a, you know, I call dangerously competent. You're kind of, you feel, you feel, you feel like, you know, you're doing a bit, and. But you're probably a bit, you know, maybe slightly overconfident in terms of what you know, but you do go through that cycle. And that is, it's really interesting because every company, every startup that's built is generally one or two people, maybe three people that have come together, depending on how early you interact with that business. You're really in a pub talking to two or three people.
- [37:30]
Joel Palo Thinkle (Host of Investor podcast)
Yeah.
- [37:31]
James (Guest from Supersede)
So you've got a business that's built around them. So you're basically saying, are people's personalities different? Like, yeah. So when, when you're meeting all these different companies that they're all really different and they're all. I mean, some of them are the same and, you know, some sort of. I went to some event in, I think it was Web Summit, and there was a whole section of geotagged picture, you know, companies, probably like 50 of them in a row. I'm like, you know, they're all exactly the same. But when you, when you look at sort of technology businesses, you do find that they're all, they're all different because they're all so personal to those people. So it's super interesting, it's super varied and it's super challenging. You know, the really good businesses are that they're, they're, they're doing something that's just quite like, just nicely clever. You just like, that's. I like what you're doing, I like the way that it's done. And you get your own little taste of the aha moment because you, when you finally. You sort of. You click. You're like, okay, like. And it just, like, I get exactly what you're doing, I get what you're building. And this is cool, this is interesting. So, yeah, I enjoyed that element of it. The sort of versatility, versatile nature of it all.
- [38:42]
Joel Palo Thinkle (Host of Investor podcast)
And I guess the big difference too, you know, the variety is similar to consulting, but you're not operating right. You're kind of supporting the founders. So I think that's. That is a huge differentiating factor. I don't know if you know Arun from Green Shores Capital, he's in the uk, but he was a guest a couple weeks ago and he had a funny expression. It's. He was saying, VCs being like a grandparent because you're giving the money to your grandkids. You're not really ordering them around, but you're letting them kind of do the thing. So that, that does sound valid to me in some instances.
- [39:13]
James (Guest from Supersede)
Yeah. My. So we've got. I've got three kids and my mum says, I love being a grandparent because you come over and you play with the kids. Although all the COVID rules is you can only have one grandparent. But anyway, you come over and play with them, but you can hand them back. At the end of the day, you don't have to deal with the headache. So I'd probably stretch the analogy to say that. Yes. But unfortunately, like a grandchild you can't just sort of give it back when it's. And starts shouting and screaming.
- [39:45]
Joel Palo Thinkle (Host of Investor podcast)
We can add that caveat. What I've noticed too is grandparents, you know, they advertise that, hey, you know, have a bunch of kids. I mean, you got three kids, so I don't know if that, you know, they tricked you too. But you know, sometimes, you know, my parents, in the beginning, I got a three year old, but they're like, hey, you know, have kids because we're gonna babysit all the time. And what I've noticed is grandparents, they just want to live their life now, you know, they're not, they don't want to sit around and babysit. So you're pretty much on your own as far as finding childcare. That's just, look, that's my situation. I have a buddy of mine that has like three kids and his parents just put so much pressure on. They're like, look, you know, have another kid, we're going to babysit, we're going to come over there and he had three kids and he had, he had to get a nanny. So.
- [40:33]
James (Guest from Supersede)
No, they're probably the correct amount of interaction. Not too much, not too little.
- [40:43]
Joel Palo Thinkle (Host of Investor podcast)
Yeah, but I appreciate the caveat. Yeah, I think that's right. I think essentially when you're supporting the founder, you're not really handing them off. They're still somewhat attached to you, at least for like seven to ten years. So. Yeah, so at least, you know, if you did the analogy, you know, you're living with them until maybe grade school or something like that, or middle school.
- [41:00]
James (Guest from Supersede)
Yeah, you can't sort of. There is a inexorable relationship that you require. I think it's a horrible stat, but I think the relationship lasts longer than unfortunately the average marriage.
- [41:13]
Joel Palo Thinkle (Host of Investor podcast)
Marriage.
- [41:14]
James (Guest from Supersede)
Yeah. You choose that more carefully than you choose your own husband or wife.
- [41:21]
Joel Palo Thinkle (Host of Investor podcast)
Yeah, great. Yeah. So, and then. So was this supersede or was this another fund?
- [41:27]
James (Guest from Supersede)
No, so that was, that was 2012 to 2014 and then I'd had a second kid by now. I rang my wife up and said, I'm coming home early. And she was like, oh, that's great. Because that didn't happen that often. I think just quickly going back to what you need around you. You need some very, very supportive and understanding people. Persons. My wife is, yeah, pretty, pretty formidable. Like she's an amazing woman, but she's also then in her own right has to put up with all my crap. That happens because of the life choices I've made in terms of the career that I've taken. So, you know, to have someone that can put up with all that and to keep, you know, positive and things, that's a super important thing. So anyway, I rang her up and said, look, I'm, I'm coming home. She's like, that's great. I said, yeah, I've got some news. Okay, fine, you know, what are you doing? I said, I quit, I quit my job. And she was like, okay, well I'm sure you've done it for a valid reason. I'll see you in two hours when you get home. Okay? So I get home and I'd grown within the business and I designed an investment fund to exploit situations in Australia. So Australia had very large pension market but very small VC market. And we were going to do a sort of reverse rocket Internet I suppose to some extent. Find technologies that were, that were either being built there, that could be commercialized in Europe, use the capital there and use some. There was a benefit from a tax perspective as well. You could do research on both sides of the pond. Anyway, I'd built this fund and we'd agreed to go to partner and long story short, we, we decided to part ways. So I had a, you know, bit of money, not, not, not tons but you know, enough that I didn't have to sort of jump into a job straight away. Started searching. Then the decision, do I go back into corporate, get you know, nice fat salary that's paid every month and I might get a bonus and I get.
- [43:45]
Joel Palo Thinkle (Host of Investor podcast)
No more consulting business.
- [43:46]
James (Guest from Supersede)
Right. I get pension. Yeah. But then you know, you, you, you get paid well and you know, it's the level I was at by that point. And much to my wife's initial horror, I said, I found this, I found this startup. I think they're onto something. I think it's, I think it's interesting. And it was a company called Syndicate Room. They were an online investment company growing up in the sort of crowdfunding time.
- [44:13]
Bonnie Halper
Sure.
- [44:15]
James (Guest from Supersede)
And looking to basically co invest alongside angels and VCs and do it online, do it digitally, 1,000 pound minimum. So it's sort of accessible. There was some fund options that we sort of initially thought about and all sorts of different stuff. So I joined there and really enjoyed the journey. Like it was tough, lots of ups and downs, but it really started sort of refining my, my understanding of the investment landscape. Built out a really big network. We had 35,000 high net worth members. I was designing investment funds, I was doing all this different stuff and that sort of started to really crystallize my interest in angel investing.
- [44:59]
Joel Palo Thinkle (Host of Investor podcast)
What was your role to build relationships of more LPs.
- [45:04]
James (Guest from Supersede)
I joined as investment director and then Chief Investment Officer. So I was responsible for all deal flow coming in, all the different sort of models we built on and sort of partnerships and things like that. So build partnerships team. I designed and developed the first passive fund for early stage investing.
- [45:22]
Joel Palo Thinkle (Host of Investor podcast)
Oh, that's great. Almost like an ETF for private companies.
- [45:26]
James (Guest from Supersede)
Yeah. So looking at how we can sort of bring diversification into early stage investing, I got that off the ground and I think between us and the rest of the team, we raised about $15 million into that fund and started investing by the time I'd left it invested in 80, 80 odd companies within about two years. So it was doing what we wanted to. And then I also managed their growth fund, which was a direct investment, normal venture capital fund.
- [45:56]
Joel Palo Thinkle (Host of Investor podcast)
Oh sure.
- [45:58]
James (Guest from Supersede)
Really enjoyed it. It was super tough, lots to learn, you know, built the team up there again, highs and lows, highs and lows, you know, awards, all sorts of different things like that. I think we got up to around 28mil valuation. We raised institutional money into the business. We invested in over 230 companies. We won lots and lots of different awards for what we're doing. So really, really good sort of proving ground. When I decided to leave there in May last year or had a sort of decision to make, you know, where do I go next and what do I want to do? Do I want to kind of pursue this passive investing line or do I want to go more the active? And that's when I joined Supersede and Supersede is early stage business to business software and deep tech fund and we put a lot of focus on sales.
- [46:58]
Bonnie Halper
Sure.
- [47:00]
James (Guest from Supersede)
So poor distribution is the number one killer of startups. Yet in our opinion, VCs don't really, you know, don't really put enough effort into understanding is a real good product market fit. And the other thing that was interesting from my perspective was that in the US about 60% of VCs come from entrepreneurial background. In the UK it's only 8%.
- [47:23]
Joel Palo Thinkle (Host of Investor podcast)
Interesting.
- [47:24]
James (Guest from Supersede)
So.
- [47:24]
Joel Palo Thinkle (Host of Investor podcast)
So where do they come from in the uk?
- [47:26]
James (Guest from Supersede)
Investment banking or all sorts of different, you know, economics. So different routes in consulting and what.
- [47:35]
Joel Palo Thinkle (Host of Investor podcast)
Are the pros and cons of that? So, you know, is it. Do you think it's tough, do you think it's a negative that you're coming from banking and now going into vc?
- [47:46]
James (Guest from Supersede)
I think it depends on how innovative you want to be as a vc.
- [47:50]
Joel Palo Thinkle (Host of Investor podcast)
Yeah.
- [47:52]
James (Guest from Supersede)
Your deal flow is like deal flows, King, like you have to have access to the best deal flow. You can be very competent and just not be known.
- [48:01]
Bonnie Halper
Sure.
- [48:01]
James (Guest from Supersede)
You could be the greatest person in terms of analysis, but no one knows you, no one's speaking to you, no one's giving you the deals. You're pretty much worthless equally, you know. So you're far better to be well connected and incompetent than highly competent and completely unconnected.
- [48:19]
Bonnie Halper
Sure.
- [48:21]
James (Guest from Supersede)
So you having a network of people, if you're in banking law, etc. You get those networks so that you up a lot. You come from an analytical background, you're very competent with numbers, etc. So they're all good things. I just think that it's useful to know firsthand what they're going through and what they're gonna go through.
- [48:46]
Bonnie Halper
Sure.
- [48:47]
James (Guest from Supersede)
So that maybe you can have a bit more compassion.
- [48:52]
Joel Palo Thinkle (Host of Investor podcast)
Yeah.
- [48:52]
James (Guest from Supersede)
A bit more foresight, a bit more coming. Speaking from a position of genuinely knowing, not just, you know, a textbook says that you're going to do this or something. And I'm not saying that other VCs do that, but yeah, it's just in my opinion it was very interesting to find people that had done it and done it successfully. So they've got eight exits within the group of partners, four by investment, four by entrepreneurship. So end to end experience. Very, very focused on the biggest killer of startups. So very sort of focused investment thesis and just hyper competent people. Always surround yourself with people that are better than you if you can. And that's what I've tried to do. Just hopefully they won't find out that I'm not as good.
- [49:48]
Joel Palo Thinkle (Host of Investor podcast)
I'm sure you're great. We're always tougher on ourselves than we should be. That's great with Supersede too. What are some of the things that you guys look for in founders? What are some things that excite you when you first see a founder in your sector? And then what are some red flags?
- [50:10]
James (Guest from Supersede)
So we, we like people that are doing something with some sort of technical moat or some, some moat to some extent, whether it's technical based, you know, IP or competency or something. But we like them to have this moat. Normally that means that. Normally not always, but normally that means they're doing something technically quite clever. Maybe not complex, but clever.
- [50:34]
Joel Palo Thinkle (Host of Investor podcast)
Yeah.
- [50:36]
James (Guest from Supersede)
When you get highly technical people, as I've experienced in engineering, they're not always the best salespeople, I think is probably the politest way I can say it.
- [50:46]
Joel Palo Thinkle (Host of Investor podcast)
Yeah.
- [50:47]
James (Guest from Supersede)
It's always a pleasure when they don't look at their feet and stuff. So if you're, if you've got this highly, sort of, hopefully highly defensible technology, may be a bit of a gap in their ability to sell. That's interesting for us because what we then do is we spend quite a lot of time with the founders and the sales teams. If they've got them in place by the time we're speaking to them, calling existing clients, interviewing existing clients, shadowing sales calls, finding new sales leads for them to convert, and for us, then privately we'll do our own sales calls. So what we're doing is we're kind of unpicking is there good product market fit? Yeah. Is this genuinely a problem that needs to be solved? And then that sort of, you know, that trifecta of things sort of comes together when you've got a, you know, a very, very focused, very competent set of founders or founder solving something that's genuinely needed by the market. And that market need is big if we can, and we don't always do it, but you know, if we, because we do sales calls, if we're able to sell or highly involved in selling their software and, you know, we can see that firsthand that this is wanted by the market, you've then got something where it's a case of scaling that into, into the demand, rather than spending all your time and effort trying to either develop the product to fit a demand that might be there or marketing something where there is not the demand. So you're trying to convince people that this thing's interesting. And so by unpicking that early, that stops us then and other investors later down the line spending a lot of money trying to develop a new thing or market the hell out of it.
- [52:36]
Bonnie Halper
Sure.
- [52:38]
Joel Palo Thinkle (Host of Investor podcast)
That's an interesting model too, because it's, you know, you're, you know, a lot of funds advertise that they're founder friendly, they roll up their sleeves. You know, you see that on most of the websites, but some of them just allocate capital. But it's great that you also help them with sales. Bonnie, I don't know if you remember when we went to that ski trip. I think it was like Newark Venture Partners, they also have a sales arm and I thought that was really interesting. So I see that emerging a lot. Just really having to get much more hands on and really help them with customers. Especially with deep tech, you're dealing with scientific technology. Some of the founders are PhDs, so they're not necessarily someone that's cold calling. So. But I Think it's a great model. I you know, I remember yeah, I think Newark Venture Partners, they have, they hired like a salesperson to come in and like really help the startup accelerate and possibly even build a sales team. So I think that's important and that's.
- [53:35]
James (Guest from Supersede)
Part of what we do post investment as well. We try and sort of help on the sales strategy. We've actually, so we're involved in recruitment. We've just actually placed a CEO within, within one of the companies as well. So they talking about the sort of shining a light on yourself and you know, within that business they wanted a CEO that could do the things that they can't. And that's to have it that early on is. That's super. You know that's really nice starting point because shows you that they're honest and open and aware of the benefits and.
- [54:11]
Joel Palo Thinkle (Host of Investor podcast)
And so yeah, I've seen that similar characteristic too. I mean I've had a scientific CEO that ended up just hiring another CEO because the vision for the scientific person, he really just wanted to run a lab, wasn't really thinking about the commercial strategy but he was happy because he was important because he had all these subject matter expertise but he necessarily didn't even have the interest to run the company and build culture. So I think you know like inserting the right person and you often see that in private equity but you know seeing you know that happened happen in venture is great to see. And then I think with Deep tech because we look at deep tech as well. What's an exciting sci fi tech that you're looking at? We've looked at space, we've looked at lab grown foods. But I had a guy from the uk, I think it was Midvin, he was talking about fission technology. So that was completely new to me. But any new areas of deep tech that, that are getting you super excited.
- [55:12]
James (Guest from Supersede)
Yeah, I mean so one of our most recent investments is into a business called AI build and they have so 3D additive manufacturing is this sort of kind of like the holy grail of manufacturing. If it can be scaled because if it's perfect each time it's zero waste. You can design and build things that you just can't do any other way than 3D printing. You can be multi material throughout the whole product, you know, so you can change its structural capabilities, the thermal capabilities, all sorts of different stuff. So it's kind of like this holy grail. But in reality when you're making things especially at scale, if you're building stuff at a large scale, the Errors really start to, to magnify and fluctuations in temperature, flow rate, all these different things through the nozzle, the different nozzle heads, the materials. All this stuff then boils down to user capability. So the technician building the product for the, you know, maybe it's one or two or three prototypes or something. You know, they have to do multiple, multiple, multiple runs of the system before they can actually get something that's close to what they want.
- [56:31]
Bonnie Halper
Yeah, sure.
- [56:31]
James (Guest from Supersede)
And AI build is developed software that takes all those parameters and gets you zeroed in. The aim is to become first time, but I don't think they're 100% there yet. But the aim is that it can get you really zeroed in super early because it uses AI to analyze all of those different data sets, all the materials you're using, the flow rate, the temperatures, etc. To adjust and compensate for all the errors that are going to be stacked up so that you can get something very, very, very, very quickly. And I think they are opening up, you know, orders of magnitude in terms of what can get built first time correctly. And then you're able to do, you know, prototypes for all sorts of different businesses and then moving from prototype to full end manufacturing quality, you know, actual scale systems and products. And they've got some amazing projects they're working on. As of all these things, it's difficult to talk about all of them, but one of them is an F1 client and yeah, the stuff they're doing just, it's awesome. And because it's a software driven thing, they are kind of technology agnostic in that sense. So as the industry improves that the robots get better, the nozzles get better, all these different stuff, they're able to adapt. So they are the brain of what, what 3D additive manufacturing could be. So for me that's super exciting.
- [58:03]
Joel Palo Thinkle (Host of Investor podcast)
That is exciting. Wow, that's great. Well, hey, this was amazing. I know we're at time if we do have questions. Do you have like maybe a minute or two to take a couple of this one?
- [58:13]
James (Guest from Supersede)
Yeah, yeah, of course.
- [58:14]
Joel Palo Thinkle (Host of Investor podcast)
So I'll open it up if anybody has any questions. Looks like someone just joined the meeting now. So I guess anybody in the audience have any questions? Bonnie, feel free to chime in with your 2 cents or questions.
- [58:28]
Bonnie Halper
I was just wondering, and I posted in the chat, if you have a specific geolocation which you're focused.
- [58:37]
James (Guest from Supersede)
Say again? Sorry.
- [58:38]
Bonnie Halper
Oh, if you're focused on are you geolocation specific or you look at companies globally.
- [58:46]
James (Guest from Supersede)
So at the moment we. So in the uk. They have quite a beneficial tax structure for early stage investing, the Enterprise Investment Scheme. And that means that the businesses need to be UK based or have a sort of UK presence. So our fund at the moment is eis. We're in the process now of raising our more traditional LPGP fund which will be then pan European. The exposure to the US is very difficult from a regulatory perspective, so we're governed by the fca which is fine, but we generally don't want to get particularly involved in SEC because it becomes a bit of a headache. So we don't invest in the US businesses. There are some businesses that have come across from the us. Normally I don't wish to be always the same, but normally that's not a great sign if you're not, if you're not able to do it in the US and you're coming to the uk, unless it's sort of, you know, I suppose you can't even use a weather based focus. If it's rain and sort of gray clouds that you need for your business, then maybe that's an argument to come to the uk. But if it's a technology business and you're in San Fran and you failed to raise any money there and came over here, it's not a great sign. So yeah, so UK at the moment, pan European, hopefully in 12 months time.
- [60:21]
Bonnie Halper
Thank you, that's great.
- [60:24]
Joel Palo Thinkle (Host of Investor podcast)
Well, if there's no other questions, what I always ask every guest at the end is if they have any life advice. So anything that you learn from a mentor. I think we had a lot of nuggets in this talk, but anything else that you got for us as far as just looking back or thinking, thinking about something that maybe a mentor gave you as advice, we'll take that back with us.
- [60:44]
James (Guest from Supersede)
I think, I think valuing your time is very important and to do that very early. Is it worth your time? It's very tempting to think that thing, that task is going to cost me £500 to do. I haven't got 500 quid cash or don't want to spend £500 cash. I'll just do it, I'll sort it out. But then you start realizing that you're not going to do it as well as someone else. You might be able to do it as well as them, but actually your time would be better spent doing something else and you bring a lot more value long term coming in if you, if you just bend that task and give it to someone else. The other thing is just don't. Well, my personal Belief. My choice is that make a decision on what is successful for you. I have a very nice house. It's not a mansion, you know, it's nice ginormous house, but very nice house. I've got a car. That's fine. I've got a wonderful place that I live. And most importantly, I've got a lovely wife and my kids and I live with my friends and I enjoy my life. And so I would argue for me like no one else can argue any other way. I'm very, very, very, very, very successful. I've. Ach. I'm super happy in that sense. If you're obsessed by money and you know that's what's going to make you feel successful, then really question does it? Because I've met lots of people that are worth lots of zeros past what I'm worth, and they're not happy at all. So make sure you're doing something you really enjoy because that will make you feel successful and make sure you value your time and make sure you value the people around you.
- [62:30]
Joel Palo Thinkle (Host of Investor podcast)
Yeah, I couldn't agree more. I've been in that situation where I got paid what I thought I should be getting paid at like, the age I was, and I was miserable and I ended up leaving after, like, two years, so totally agree with that. So, hey, this was amazing. We covered a lot more than I thought we would, and it was great, you know, getting to know you a little more and really appreciate all your time and, you know, have a great week. Yeah. Thank you.
- [62:56]
James (Guest from Supersede)
Thanks, everyone for listening and, yeah, thanks very much for organizing. Yeah, absolutely.
- [63:16]
Dana Carvey / Rhett / Link
I'm Rhett. And I'm Link, and we're the hosts of the podcast Ear Biscuits. We're just two lifelong friends who've been talking about life for a long time. From being dads to businessmen, to all the random things we experience. Nothing is off limits. And now we're talking to you. We're answering your questions, giving advice that you may or may not want to take, and listening to your hilarious stories. So leave us a voicemail to be part of the show at 1-888-EARPOD1, on the Odysee app or wherever you get your podcasts.