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- [00:00]
Tatiana Mulri
The best thing I ever did and that improved my management was have babies. And, I mean, of course you develop skills as a multitasker when you have kids, Right? But that's not what I'm talking about. What you're saying is so true. I was a micromanager. I wanted everything to be done my way.
- [00:23]
Joel Palo Thinkle
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 like. Like everything else in life.
- [00:50]
Tatiana Mulri
That sounds good.
- [00:51]
Joel Palo Thinkle
Yeah. Well, welcome to the show. You know everybody who is tuning in, we've got Tatiana Mulri from Steamwork vc. She's a new friend and excited to have her come on and just talk about, you know, her journey into venture capital. So really excited to, you know, just get to know you over the last, you know, maybe month or so and. And just talk about, you know, just trends in. In the tech space. So maybe we can start. You know, I know you gave me your background last time when we chatted, but maybe we can go a little deeper and just talk about your career, where you grew up, and how you broke into venture.
- [01:27]
Tatiana Mulri
Sure. Wow. Okay. Well, thank you for having me on, by the way. This is really great. I'm happy to be a part of this community in some small way. It's something incredible that you're building here. So first, a lot of gratitude going down memory lane. I grew up in New York. I lived in Westchester county for my childhood, and then out to Pennsylvania, western Pennsylvania, to a completely different environment. So I've done the. And then came back to NYU for school. So I've done the suburb life, the rural life, and the suburban life. I studied economics undergrad, and that landed me in a very interesting opportunity to work with investment banks back in the heyday like this, the birth of the Internet. I remember sitting on the trading floor while Netscape was going public, and it was just like absolute mayhem. And everybody was super excited. We're all like, wait, what's the Internet? We barely had emails back then. So it was, like, super exciting to see the birth of something really, you.
- [02:43]
Joel Palo Thinkle
Know, tell me about, like, how AIM email was received, because, you know, obviously everyone has been talking about this for the last decade, right? I mean, with Bitcoin, why would you want to send electronic money, you know, with bitcoin? Because you can just. You can just Venmo somebody, Right? So it's the same thing with email. They're like, well, why would you. Why would I want to email somebody? I can just drop a post. I can just drop the. The letter off at the post office and you get a real letter in three days. So just walk us through kind of like what people were talking about and like, what were their reactions to it, because a lot of times you don't hear that.
- [03:19]
Tatiana Mulri
That's so funny. Now I do feel like such a, you know, like a dinosaur talking about this. But, you know, I teach college now, and so some of my students don't understand, you know, what life was like at all. So I think the best story to contrast is, you know, they obviously have everything at their disposal that you guys are all familiar with. But when I was in school, I didn't have an email. I used a typewriter to type my papers. It had four lines of memory, and I thought I was hot stuff. That means I had to think ahead and I could only correct four lines before I let it print. And I had to hand in a paper. Paper. We got our grades by calling into a phone. When I went to work in the investment banks and sort of like the beginning of the Internet and we started to get corporate emails. That was really my first email. And so why was that interesting or important? Well, my first investment bank, we worked with people in London and, you know, 90% of the team was there. So in order to communicate, like, it became really essential to work in a satellite office of a company based in London. And then we had offices all over the world. So it finally gave us this ability to communicate in near real time. We started to be able to have conference calls, which was super amazing. We could give our research recommendations, our buy, sell, hold recommendations in near real time. And we started to be able to. I was faxing articles and things like that. It was just like, it was an absolute explosion. One day I had to go. I figured out how to sort of hack the system so I wouldn't have to go into the office to fax London. I could figure out how to do it from home. And that was absolute insanity. Like, what we could actually potentially someday work from home. That was like a supercharged. Who could have ever thought that we would ever be in a situation where we'd all be home for two years and never have to go to an office? Like, it was a completely different world.
- [05:37]
Joel Palo Thinkle
So you kind of had mass adoption, which is email being part of your work environment. Right. So everyone would. And then did you have any other friends that maybe were not in banking or tech that were learning about email?
- [05:51]
Tatiana Mulri
I mean, things. Things came slowly. I mean, eventually all our cable companies gave us personal emails and we figured out. But we could email our friends and family and that was really cool. But yeah, I mean, when I would, you know, I either could call or write home to talk to my family who lived eight hours away. I used to send postcards to my friends on vacation. Like, that was how we communicated. There's no Snapchat, right? Yeah, I just. I feel like the oldest person on earth right now. But that was what. Life was so different. I don't know if you.
- [06:23]
Joel Palo Thinkle
Do you have Hulu?
- [06:26]
Tatiana Mulri
Did I have Hulu?
- [06:27]
Joel Palo Thinkle
Yeah.
- [06:29]
Tatiana Mulri
Do I have it now? Yes, but yeah.
- [06:31]
Joel Palo Thinkle
Yeah. So I just want to reference. I mean, this is a little risque, but. Yeah, there's a show on Hulu, Pam and Tommy, you know, like.
- [06:39]
Tatiana Mulri
Oh, okay. I know.
- [06:40]
Joel Palo Thinkle
It's actually pretty good because it covers. I guess when they have that tape that went out, there was a. I guess the true story was there's a guy that took the actual VHS tape. Wow, I feel like a dinosaur now. But he took the VHS tape and they made copies, right? And they sold it on the Internet and it was like, really crazy because they thought the Internet, you know, when he. If you watch this show, it's pretty. Pretty good, actually. Yeah, he's like, oh, you know. Well, you know, he got some money from the mob to fund, you know, this venture to actually buy enough tapes and be able to run it. And the mob is like, look, I can't get mixed up in this kind of stuff. And then I guess the guy that was behind the whole thing, he said, oh, well, what if the money was untraceable? It's on this thing called, you know. So like, that's so. It kind of makes me think about, like, Blockchain in the early days, you know, especially with bitcoin. People thought initially that it was like, untraceable. But, you know, everything has an address right on the blockchain. So it's not actually, you know, untraceable, especially if you're using like Coinbase. But it was just kind of interesting to, you know, have a flashback of like those days of dial up and like Netscape, you know, kind of. No Alta Vista. So, like, the movie actually has like. Yeah, it's like a nine episode series on Hulu.
- [07:57]
Tatiana Mulri
That's so cool. I have to watch that.
- [08:00]
Joel Palo Thinkle
Yeah. The characters actually look like. The characters actually look really, really close to Pamela and Tommy as well.
- [08:07]
Tatiana Mulri
That's really funny. Well, I'm going to give you so many more electronic money flashbacks you are not even prepared for then, I guess, because after there was so much going on in investment banking at the time, the Glass Steagall act had been repealed. There's like, bank, you know, investment banks were being bought by big banks. It was just like absolute chaos. And I decided I wanted a steady career. I wanted to work for a company that was going to be around a while. So I took a job at MasterCard and I was the manager of Rules, which was the coolest title, right? Like, I'm just in charge of all the rules. Well, what did that mean? That meant I got to write all the rules for chargebacks and E Commerce and how we were going to do transactions on the Internet. And it was just. It so happened, I dropped into this company at this amazing moment. I remember walking the halls going like, you guys heard of this PayPal thing? You think it's going anywhere? Is that important? So, yeah, I mean, basically the entire E commerce infrastructure just didn't exist back in the day, like when I started. And then all of a sudden it did. Right. And we had to catch up. We had to make sure that every merchant, every bank in the world knew how to handle these transactions and to keep the world safe. Right. Because obviously if Pam and Tommy were like, having their. Their private moments attacked and sold on the Internet with mob money, anything is possible. Right? And so what is, you know, how do we regulate that? How do we make sure that we're not accepting money from fraudsters? How do we make sure that we're, like, creating some kind of boundaries around it? And every good business in the world essentially has to put together their rules, their processes, their policies, and make sure that they get out to the stakeholders in their business. So it was super good training ground and I just loved it because I was in the center of analyzing this whole giant system. And I love. I think that's what's really exciting about analyzing businesses now in venture.
- [10:23]
Joel Palo Thinkle
Yeah. And going one, if you don't mind touching on it, just one more step earlier to go back to your role in banking, just for the students, because I know, you know, when it gets. When you get into banking, there's a couple different focused areas you can focus on, where you can focus on advisory, you can focus on fundraising, you can focus on, you know, M and A deal. So maybe you can unpack, you know, what your role was at the investment bank. And then. And then, like, and Then when you transition to the MasterCard role, that role kind of sounds almost like a compliance role. So like, yeah, maybe you can talk about like how you pivoted into that role or like, you know, maybe what team that was from the banking role.
- [11:03]
Tatiana Mulri
Totally. So in investment banking, I started at Baring securities and there's really interesting stories about that. I was doing Latin American investment strategies, so I would look at the bucket of stocks in each of the Latin American companies and decide which one, like how to put together a portfolio of stocks if you wanted to be exposed to Mexico, Brazil, Peru, Argentina. Then I also supported the PhD economist who is doing a lot of work in Latin America. And then I became a healthcare equity analyst. So I would write buy, sell, hold recommendations, deep research reports. When a company would go public, I'd do the first, if we were market makers, I would do the first in depth research report on that company to introduce them to institutional investors.
- [11:56]
Joel Palo Thinkle
So when you put together the portfolios, you would put together those buckets of investments and then that would be part of the sales process to the buy side researchers. Right. So there's bicep, so you know, for the audience there's the buy side and then the sell side. Right. So the, the, I think it's normally the sell side research analysts that are the ones that normally get kind of mentioned in the news, I believe. Right, because.
- [12:20]
Tatiana Mulri
Yeah, yeah.
- [12:21]
Joel Palo Thinkle
And then, and then I think you get a commission. This is me because I have a career in fintech. So a lot of my clients are both on the buy side and the sell side. But I guess on the sell side you get commissions from. And then also these tech stocks. So this is kind of the basket. And then, hey, buy all, you know, trade all the, I guess purchase all these shares and then you can, you can make, I guess the bank, you know, kind of like a JP Morgan or Goldman, they make money off of the, the fees for the trades.
- [13:04]
Tatiana Mulri
Right. So in an investment bank there's, you know, there's, there's many ways to make fees, but generally the research is kind of like the bait to get people to come in. The quality of the research is, you know, how you get investment banking clients who pay you a giant fee for taking the company public. But also the traders and the brokers, they really rely on your recommendations to keep the trading really active. And so the research analysts don't necessarily get any direct commission, but they do get decent bonuses, unless of course, the market is super wonky.
- [13:42]
Joel Palo Thinkle
Right, yeah. And then the other piece is like sometimes there's broker dealers that are bankers. Right. So if you're a startup or even if you're a fund, I guess some of the bankers can almost have like a placement agent role as well, where, like, they can take a commission for closing capital. Right?
- [13:57]
Tatiana Mulri
Yeah. And so I guess it does seem like a strange transition, but I was good at analysis. I could do a financial model, I could look at a business and really write about it. And my friend had moved to MasterCard. I got my job by FedExing the person who was her, like, recruiter. And that really worked like, that got people's attention. So I don't know, that's my career tip is like, if you know somebody at the company and like, stand out, have your resume stand out because you're going to get lost in the crazy resume systems. And I didn't know if this was going to be a good job fit for me. I just knew that I wanted to change. It was just too tumultuous and investment banking and I had had some interesting workplace trauma, which is probably a story for another day. And I just, you know, I wanted something different where I could sink my teeth in, where I believed in the company, where I could kind of make a name for myself. And. And it turned out to be a really good choice. I. I landed in a department called franchise management. And it's like the, I don't know, we are. We're the cops of the. The franchise. Right. So if you think of a franchise, you might think like McDonald's or every McDonald's you go into has certain rules. The burgers taste the same, the branding looks the same. Well, we cared about what does a brand look like if you know, on the card, what does it look like in the merchant? How do you know? How do the transactions work? And I had to interface quite a bit with our systems people. So when you think about fintech, maybe MasterCard doesn't come to mind, but essentially all of those transactions are moving back and forth through systems that are global. And we had to make sure that was a good experience. One of my big enterprise IT projects was around referrals. So what would happen is if you traveled abroad, they would have a hard time verifying who you were and they were afraid to take your card because what if you. Have you guys seen. What is it? The one about Anna, if you're ever talking shows, the one that's recently about the lady who is like scamming everybody. Have you seen that? Remembering Anna or something? And anyway, got to look for it. It was really Fascinating. And like, you know, scammers could take lots of money from your hotel or from your car or whatever. And so sometimes they would say, you have to call us before we'll verify this transaction. Sometimes they would say, you have to telex us. Which I can't even explain how old that technology is. And it could take up to 24 hours. I'm having trouble hearing. Can you say that again? Siri would like to know about that. No, Siri. Now everything's wired well. Anyway, it was a mess, so we had to build a better system for that. I became really involved in a lot of enterprise IT projects and built out a chargeback compliance system, a brand standard system that essentially the CRM for MasterCard, our licensing database, and interface with almost every department and convince them to use the data that we were scrubbing and making available to them. So I kind of built like internal APIs for data at MasterCard.
- [17:29]
Joel Palo Thinkle
Oh, cool.
- [17:30]
Tatiana Mulri
And then I ended up working more externally. We formed a consulting group and I was part of the information Products and services group. So we decided, hey, we've got this amazing treasure trove of data. Nobody called it big data at the time. We had no idea really what was about to happen with the data explosion. But we said, look, we have very valuable data. This is an asset to our company. Could be used in consulting to help improve performance of the banks that work with us. How could we package that up into products? We built operations and marketing focused products. We built predictive models to help with targeted marketing. One of my patents is in that area. And it was just, it was a really cool time. So I really love just being innovative, creating new things, building software, designing software. I got assigned this really terrible. Everybody thought this was like the worst job assignment ever. But it's kind of fun. I got assigned to rebuild our ATM locator. And so then I became obsessed with location. Like millions and millions of people were calling in every day to find out, like, where the nearest ATM was because there was a number on the back of their card and it didn't work.
- [18:59]
Joel Palo Thinkle
Yeah.
- [19:00]
Tatiana Mulri
So I had to fix it. We had to fix all the data in it. And one of my big career moves was saying, hey, Google, this company called Google is charging up, you know, I don't know, quarter or whatever every time a click happens. Right. Why can't we do that as well? If we're sharing ATMs and the banks are making money, when somebody takes money out of the atm, why can't we say that costs money?
- [19:29]
Joel Palo Thinkle
Yeah.
- [19:30]
Tatiana Mulri
And the people they like, senior management team was like, wait, we can do that? And I was like, I don't see why you can't. There's nothing in their rules that says you can't. So we turn that into, like, turn that switch on. And that became a, you know, $12 million business the first year.
- [19:46]
Joel Palo Thinkle
And it's a revenue switch that happens. It's just one more person that you pay when you take money out.
- [19:54]
Tatiana Mulri
No, it would just be a fee that we charge to the banks.
- [19:57]
Joel Palo Thinkle
Okay, got it.
- [19:58]
Tatiana Mulri
For marketing or ATMs, essentially, we were Google, you know, in that role.
- [20:03]
Joel Palo Thinkle
Oh, wow, okay.
- [20:04]
Tatiana Mulri
And we were driving people to their ATMs every day, but we weren't getting any benefit from it. So I said, let's turn that on. So because I knew the rules, because I knew the systems, I was able to generate new business opportunities for MasterCard. So they said, wow, this, this is a really interesting talent you have. How can we get more ideas like this? So we need you to be a part of the IPO team. And so I got drafted to do more of that. Worked side by side with the consulting group they had hired and looked at pricing, looked at, you know, should we have different business units? Should we sell some things off? Should we buy some things? Like what? What are our options? And so that was a really fun challenge as well. But I was super, super compelled by watching people start to get their phones. At the time, if you were a senior vice president or up, you got a BlackBerry. And I was like, that's kind of cool. I am not eligible for one of those yet. But when I am, there's something, you know, we're going to do something with that. So I asked for permission from my boss's boss's boss to run a global mobile strategy, meaning I wanted to go all around the world and ask consumers, banks, mobile operators, handset manufacturers, anybody who's. And all of our senior managers. I wanted to understand what we should do in this space and bring everybody together to come up with a strategy so that we could build the right systems, build the right products. And, you know, we were already ahead from an R and D perspective, but we hadn't really commercialized anything at the time.
- [21:52]
Joel Palo Thinkle
I think a lesson to take away from that is a lot of times you can kind of shape your own job. So, you know, you might have an initial role as a rules manager. And like, you know, then you start doing IPO stuff. Yeah, you're like, you know what, guys? I think I'm going to just launch a mobile strategy. What do you think? And then I think maybe the way that you can. It sounds so casual, but I think, but, but like I think also the way that you justify it is kind of having some numbers and really build like a business case around it. Hey guys, like this is, this is a business opportunity. This can really help the business. These are the pain points. And look, you know, everybody is heading towards a mobile, mobile world. Right. So this is kind of. We don't. And this, I think another thing you want to call out is like the risk of not doing right. So if you don't do this, your.
- [22:44]
Tatiana Mulri
Competitors are going to be a dinosaur.
- [22:47]
C
Sure.
- [22:48]
Tatiana Mulri
Yeah. So I mean just the idea of contactless payments I was testing back in 2000 just for reference. Right. But it took a pandemic for everybody to care about it because there was no real consumer need to tap and go and it's such a huge behavior change. Change. Right. But we've been terminalized since 2000, 2002 and major merchants and got to work on all of that. And yeah, so it was super fun. I ended up being that that strategy was very successful and we ended up building out the tokenization infrastructure to keep your card safe for contactless payments, which was then after I left licensed by Google and Apple and Samsung, I built out the first peer to peer payments network at MasterCard and the first developer program so that developers could apply to work with us more directly. So those were some of the fun things that we did to create more of a bridge to be innovative in the payment space.
- [23:58]
Joel Palo Thinkle
Great. And then okay, so you're at MasterCard, you're doing a lot of great stuff. And then what happened? Because last time I checked on your LinkedIn, you're not, you're still not.
- [24:07]
Tatiana Mulri
I'm not there anymore. I love that. That was a really fun time. Just for. Since you're asking about career advice, I want to mention that during those 10 years I had three babies. And for people who are looking for career life balance, probably I'm not the one to talk to, but somehow I ended up going from manager to SB level at the end of it. And it was, it was really cool, you know, it was really cool to be a part of that fast forward.
- [24:40]
Joel Palo Thinkle
I just to kind of go, you know, my wife is pregnant, you know, and yeah, thank you. And you know, like so when you kind of think about that, like, you know, I think there's a lot of really big champions. So there's, there's like Reshma Sajani who's like doing this whole Movement, which is like the Marshall Plan for moms, like, amazing.
- [25:04]
Tatiana Mulri
Super excited about what she's doing.
- [25:05]
Joel Palo Thinkle
So I guess, like, do you have any comments on just that topic as a whole? And then, you know, do you feel like it's getting better? You know, I know they have like, you know, maternity leave and they have a lot of great programs, but, you know, like, from when you were there, obviously Master is a huge company, right? So they're, they're gonna have all those perks. But any. Just general comments on that, you know, do you think it's a. Do you still think it's a problem? Right? Do people. I was actually seeing something in my feed the other day and somebody mentioned, like, you know, hey, you know, sometimes it's not, you know, you don't get the same kind of benefits obviously if, you know, like, depending on. Depending on your role. And sometimes, I don't know, like, did you feel. It seems like you did fine because you were a svp, you know, but do you feel like back then, some people, you know, especially women that had kids, I kind of took a hit on their career. Like, did they, like.
- [26:00]
Tatiana Mulri
I mean, the thing is that I think MasterCard treated people really well. We had very diverse team. Even back then, I never felt like we were held back because we were women. I have to give compliments. They. It wasn't like, easy. We didn't have like super long pain leave. We had to fight for what we had we weren't able to work for from home. We eventually got sort of flexible Fridays. We eventually be able. We're able to like, dress casually on Friday. It's like we were fighting for basic, you know, workers kind of stuff. Now I see people having babies at MasterCard and they are getting like, MasterCard bibs and donations to save the children in their name. And like, there looks like there's a celebration of parenthood. I mean, for me, I think it should be parental leave, right? Because it's not always the. It balances things in the workforce. If every parent can take time they need off, if also people can take off for other reasons, like taking care of a parent or some other relative. There are really legitimate things that people need to take care of in their lives. And I think that's changed a lot. It used to be we didn't. I didn't even mention that I was pregnant in any of these assignments. Like, I know I'm walking around with this giant belly, but, like, it just didn't come up. We didn't discuss our families. We didn't like, that was just not the culture of any of the job sites. And.
- [27:35]
Joel Palo Thinkle
And also, I mean, I think sometimes it depends on like, the team and, you know, your manager as well. Because I remember there was. There was one role that I had that was just kind of awkward. I mean, I had a couple direct reports, but these direct reports were super go getters. Right. So I felt like anytime if I was gone, like, there was a time where I took a vacation for like three weeks and I was still checking my email because I was worried that maybe they would just come in and who knows, like, they would probably do a better job than me or like, steal my job. So it was like. But then, but then it was, it was interesting with me too, like, maturing as a manager, because I think that was one of my first roles where I was a manager. So I was kind of a little, like, insecure with, like just having reports and, you know, oh, what if they come in and they try to, you know, undermine me or something like that. But then as you mature as a manager, you kind of let go and, you know, you kind of, you know, micromanage less. You just kind of say, hey, you know what? Like, if those people do well, it's less work that I have to do, you know, because they're doing really well, they're happy. And then you can kind of come in and think more strategically versus super tactically in the details. So I've kind of like shifted. You know, when I was a manager, my management style kind of like I feel like I just got more mature as a person over time. And I think that helped me.
- [28:58]
Tatiana Mulri
The best thing I ever did and that improved my management was have babies. And I mean, of course you develop skills as a multitasker when you have kids, right? But that's not what I'm talking about. What you're saying is so true. I was a micromanager. I wanted everything to be done my way.
- [29:17]
Joel Palo Thinkle
Yeah.
- [29:18]
Tatiana Mulri
You know, kind of like hold tasks and I had to prepare my team and myself and I would get.
- [29:24]
Joel Palo Thinkle
Did you get kind of like irritated, like, if your courts, your reports, like, talk to your boss? Because it's kind of like the change.
- [29:33]
Tatiana Mulri
I think everybody was like, that was sort of the culture and the expectation, so. But what happened was I had to figure out how to be okay with and make sure they were equipped to be out for 12 weeks. And when I came back and everything was going great, that's when I could actually say, okay, great, I could take on that other project. I actually have time to go do a global mobile strategy. I have time to work on the ipo. Right. Because that wasn't my core job. Neither of those things were my actual 9 to 5 job. They were like on top of it and they were things I could do to stretch my career and get promoted every time. Like every time I had a baby, got everything shipped shape with my department, got promoted.
- [30:21]
Joel Palo Thinkle
So do you think that's because you, it made you become more efficient with your time so that you can spend time with your families?
- [30:29]
Tatiana Mulri
I mean, I was still guilty of maybe working too much and taking on too much, but I, you know, I think it just, yeah, made me put, put everything in perspective. Having kids made me also need to work harder, which I think sometimes my colleagues didn't understand. Yeah, but I was the, you know, at the time I was the breadwinner of my family and like that, this was it, this was how I paid for my home. Like all the childcare, like babies are expensive. So it didn't make me want to back down. It made me more focused on providing for them.
- [31:08]
Joel Palo Thinkle
Yeah, yeah, no, totally. You become more ambitious because you want to. I mean, number one, you have to because there's more mouths to feed. But then you also kind of feel challenged to be like, look, you know, I want to have a good life. You know, you're not doing it for yourself anymore. You kind of, you know, everything you do is for your family. Yeah. Right. So that kind of, that's kind of a good framework to have. Okay. So I'm excited about what happens, all of that. Okay.
- [31:33]
Tatiana Mulri
Okay.
- [31:34]
Joel Palo Thinkle
So you. Okay, I get it, I get it that you did amazing@mastercard.
- [31:37]
Tatiana Mulri
Yeah.
- [31:37]
Joel Palo Thinkle
But then what happened?
- [31:39]
Tatiana Mulri
Okay, so I was speaking at a banking conference about mobile payments.
- [31:42]
Joel Palo Thinkle
Okay.
- [31:43]
Tatiana Mulri
And it was in Orlando, Florida. And I had a $2 beer in a bar with a friend of mine who was a consultant at MasterCard for me. And I was like, I'm not happy. I've been doing all these amazing, innovative things, but I'm still like the one employee in this giant engine and I'm ready to go do something interesting and different. He said, well, I'm the CMO of a VC funded startup in Santa Monica and would you be interested in coming out and being head of product? I was like, huh, that sounds fun. Wait, you mean I could rearrange my life, live in California, be like within three miles of my kids school, have a like not a brutal three hour commute. I had three hours a day of commuting. I could completely redesign my life and Live in California. I'm gonna, I'm gonna check that out. So I came out to LA. There was, there were like, I don't know, three VCs in LA at the time. There were like maybe five VC funded companies. And it lasted nine months. This was a big lesson. This was my first sort of VC trauma. It was interesting because the founder had been replaced by a CEO, which I didn't know could be a thing. So people who are looking at this whole founder, VC landscape, these were the lessons I learned. The founder can be replaced at any time. Anybody could be replaced at any time. The pressure, I mean, we built three versions of that product. We essentially have the entire same chassis as Twitter at the time when Twitter was first happening. And we kept saying, look at what's going on, we need to try this, we need to try this. And the VCs, the board just were like, we want to recover our money.
- [33:42]
Joel Palo Thinkle
So one of the lessons I'm trying to extract is that even though you have a product strategy, sometimes it's board can influence the product.
- [33:50]
Tatiana Mulri
Absolutely. If it's not going fast enough, if people don't get it, I mean, we sold to mobile operators, consumers and universities, different versions of this product in the nine months I was there. I mean, we iterated every day. We like had, you know, we were working as hard as we could and we kept saying, hey, like this is the next thing we should try. But they were done, right?
- [34:16]
Joel Palo Thinkle
Yeah.
- [34:17]
Tatiana Mulri
And so at a certain point they want to make sure they don't lose money. Right. So they want to take out what they can. And you know, everybody sort of votes on how that gets done. And your leases are on your board, so they have a say in that. We all went out for margaritas at 10am El Toritos on Ocean. If anybody's from LA, you'll be like, oh, okay, get it. Yeah, it was a sad day. And the next day I figured out, well, I've got to make money. I brought my whole family out here. I'm going to.
- [34:55]
Joel Palo Thinkle
So 10:00am 10:00am was when they.
- [34:57]
Tatiana Mulri
10:00Am let everybody go.
- [34:59]
C
We had, okay, and then you got.
- [35:01]
Joel Palo Thinkle
Margaritas a day after in the morning.
- [35:02]
Tatiana Mulri
Well, no, like literally we walked out of the office, oh, in the morning and had margaritas. And then we were like, okay, now what? So that's when I realized you could be a consultant. And I started down that path. But my second client decided to hire me. I worked for an agency for two years doing lead gen for big brands. So some of my clients were JCPenney State Farm, GameStop, ATT, LG, BlackBerry, all kinds of big companies who wanted to use mobile marketing and as an extension of their brand campaign, so started building apps for them, text messaging lists, being able to do a lot of in stadium, kind of like text to screen and pics to screen. We are the first to do those kinds of things.
- [35:54]
Joel Palo Thinkle
Oh cool.
- [35:55]
Tatiana Mulri
Yeah, so we just, I mean, I.
- [35:57]
Joel Palo Thinkle
Would say it's tough to find. Yeah. On the mobile side and just in general with growth marketing, it's a shit show. Like, I mean it's really hard to find good growth marketers. I mean, you know, so I don't know what, you know, you were one. So as a founder, what are some things that you should look for? I think one tip that I, and I always use this is always just try to get some references. But any tips that you have for just finding the right growth people, especially.
- [36:27]
Tatiana Mulri
For mobile, I think it's super hard because it is an art and a science. Right. And so you do have to find people with the right experience, the right temperament. Yeah. And as a founder I found many times this is a place where they are the least confident. Right. Because they don't know what they're to ask for and they don't know necessarily that they don't have their own skills in this area and so they have a really hard time verifying. So I think they resort to.
- [37:02]
Joel Palo Thinkle
You.
- [37:03]
Tatiana Mulri
Know, trying to poach people from other firms that are growing really fast and then assuming have all the skills. But you know, that's not necessarily a person that can come up with a strategy. They could probably execute the strategy. So it's a little bit difficult. You know, you have, especially in early stage startups you like people wear a lot of hats. You've got to be a little good at design, you've got to be a little good at asking for other people to support you with things. But you mainly have to do learn how to do those things yourself. Right?
- [37:33]
Joel Palo Thinkle
Yeah.
- [37:34]
Tatiana Mulri
And then over time you can hire specialists, but finding that right person who's got enough strategy, but then also the execution chops is really hard to find and it's not the same thing as you know, maybe a UI UX person where you could ask for a portfolio and it's not always easy.
- [37:55]
Joel Palo Thinkle
Yeah, And I think, you know, just from my experience too, there's usually like about a month time to set up the ads. I mean sometimes there's like a setup time.
- [38:05]
Tatiana Mulri
Right. Well, and even getting things installed, like if you have to install the SDK, if you have to. And all the pixels and everything. It takes time to even build the relationships with the developers, to actually put that in the queue in order to make it effective. And so it is an interesting. But having done it now many times with startups, it's, you know, really essential if you're going to do any kind of paid and measure what you're doing. Like, you can't measure anything until you get all of the infrastructure set up.
- [38:42]
Joel Palo Thinkle
So let's talk about that. So for measuring from a growth marketing standpoint, what are some of the KPIs, right. So there's obviously the, the, the CAC and the LTV. You know, what other, you know, just from your. I just want to go nerd out a little bit. Because you did growth marketing.
- [39:01]
Tatiana Mulri
Yeah.
- [39:01]
Joel Palo Thinkle
So, you know, tell us a little bit about like what success looks like.
- [39:05]
Tatiana Mulri
Well, yeah, I mean, and it depends on what the product is like for. I worked with a number of fintechs at this point and you really want to look at your stats across the entire lifecycle. Right? Because it doesn't matter if I had downloads if I didn't get somebody to load the account. Right?
- [39:26]
Joel Palo Thinkle
Yeah.
- [39:27]
Tatiana Mulri
And so you really have to. Every company is a little bit different. You just look at the funnel and you say, okay, well you know, how do I get people through this whole, this whole process? And what does success look like? What is the ultimate goal first time they go through the system? Right. I think there's so many choke points and really looking at every single step in the onboarding flow is really important because if you can put things in the correct order, you can unlock so much potential. And then once that's in good order, then it makes more sense to open the floodgates of paid, I would say. And having, having had really, really tiny teams, I would say it's also really important to build out your content strategy simultaneously because half of your volume could come from content over time. And then that's, that's what you pay once, right? You pay once to produce that piece of content and put it out there. But ultimately it can live on forever and keep bringing you users. And that's like super genius mode, if you can figure out the right content pillars and really get that going and bring people in that way.
- [40:47]
Joel Palo Thinkle
There's a really good post by Gary Tan, I don't know if you saw that one, but he really, really spent a lot of time producing some of his YouTube videos and he actually broke down like the ROI or putting together like a really, really high piece of high quality piece of content. And he was like, look, it took me four hours to put together this YouTube video. You know, I professionally edited it, put music and chopped it up. But then he kind of showed like how he, you know, how many subscribers he got just from that one high quality video. So he, you know, so that was really interesting. To your point, it's evergreen, right? See, once you get the YouTube video, you can push it out on, you.
- [41:29]
C
Can, you can chop it up, put.
- [41:30]
Joel Palo Thinkle
It on TikTok, you can push it out on Twitter. So it's multi, you know, it's a production and then it's also the distribution.
- [41:39]
Tatiana Mulri
Because it's a content cascade. Right. If you get that one top level piece of content, yeah, you can create it in many different medium. Like you're saying you can chop it up, you could have a transcript, edit that into an article. I mean there's just so many ways that you could, you could reuse that thing and, and have it on a cycle to repeat as well because it hopefully stays evergreen, like you're saying, still interesting to people. So, you know, in terms of KPIs, I would just really sit down and think like what is your North Star? What is the thing that you need them to do in order to be successful? And for us at some of the fintechs, it was really about getting the funds on the card because everything web flow from there, like it was a prepaid product, you know, product in most cases. So because you can't have transactions, which is how those companies get paid if you don't get to that first load. So those, that was sort of. And then you work back from there, like how do we keep undoing the choke points to get to that first load?
- [42:45]
Joel Palo Thinkle
Yeah, it's the, yeah, it's the asset gathering. And then what I've seen with like betterment is like new features to do like recurring payments and recurring deposits and in an easy way then you can kind of really build a money machine. Right. Because you can kind of predict, you know, where you really want to be is like, hey, I know that if I spend, you know, $15,000 a month, that'll get me of revenue. Okay, this is working. This is repeatable. Now let me but 30k and hopefully that 2x and then really you instead of just the proportional 2 to 3x, like hopefully there's a point where it's like, wow, you know, if I actually spend 30k, this actually gets me to like 300k a month.
- [43:35]
Tatiana Mulri
Yeah, I mean some of the early things that we learned at the Santa Monica startup that were just mind blowing is like the whole viral loop thing is so important. Right. To be able to put something into your product. And almost nobody. I've never come to a company that's already like post product and have seen them know to do this. And it's like the most basic thing. You need to find a reason for people to share this with someone else. Right. That network effect is so important and it's almost always the first thing I tell them to do. And it's almost never the first thing they say yes to because it's harder to, to squeeze it in after they've already launched the product.
- [44:18]
Joel Palo Thinkle
Sure. Yeah. And then the big thing now is product LED growth. Right. So you, you know that my favorite examples like Calendly, there's a great tool where you can do one calendar, but you know, a lot of times you want to send some people an hour Calendly, another person wasn't. So I upgraded within like a month, you know, because, wow, it just makes sense to have multiple calendaries because I think Calendly also by default, I think they make you do an hour by default. So people just don't want to do hour. Or I think you can choose whichever time box you want, but you can only do one. And for me, I find a lot of value in the different times. And then obviously Zoom, I think Zoom is free for like 45 minutes. Most people have meetings over 45 minutes. So it's like, wow, this is great. So you have to. Yeah. And I think same thing with DocSend. I think DocSend, there was a point where Docsend was free. Free probably for maybe three or four years ago it was free. But then what would happen is, you know, they would send you an email and say, hey, look at who's looked at your document. And then when you, when you try to look at it, it's like, oh, you have to upgrade to see who these people are. So they, you know, they have a lot of these really cool tools. I don't know if anybody else has like an example, but so, you know, I think now it's kind of the product led growth. Like make the product itself assist with some of the growth.
- [45:40]
Tatiana Mulri
Yeah. And make it like create that creative point where like, we're going to max out our generosity. But just short of satisfying the people who we think would really use this be heavy users. So it's a really interesting strategy to talk about. And it's funny, our partners are, we're taking so many meetings right Now I can't even tell you. So many meetings, right? And so we wanted to set up this feature on Calendly that they just launched called Round Robin so that people could meet with the first available partner versus all the rest of us one at a time. Right. And so I, I was like, that's amazing.
- [46:23]
Joel Palo Thinkle
So it's like a group. It's like a group calmly. They can.
- [46:27]
C
Can they pick.
- [46:28]
Joel Palo Thinkle
So they can't pick who they want to meet, but they could just pick a time box and it's one of you guys.
- [46:34]
Tatiana Mulri
We haven't decided to upgrade yet, so I haven't tried, but we're thinking about it. And the way I understand it is they would see a blended calendar and they'd be able to pick the first available. I don't know if it shows who you'd be meeting with until after it's confirmed.
- [46:50]
Joel Palo Thinkle
Sure. Yeah, no, that's. That's helpful. Yeah. I mean, I always use, you know, it's always great because Calendly also is a pretty decent CRM. Like a lot of times when I try to think of, like, who I met or if I, like, forgot their name, you can always just kind of like look in your inbox to see that there was a meeting invite and then you kind of think about the day. But Cal only also lets you download all of the. You know, you can download and export all of your leads as well.
- [47:19]
Tatiana Mulri
That's a good. That's a great hack.
- [47:22]
Joel Palo Thinkle
Yeah. Yeah, that's really good. I mean, some people use HubSpot. You know, Connelly is really good. I mean, you can. You can literally just download all the. All the emails. So. And then. Okay, so you. So you did some growth marketing for like a couple different agencies?
- [47:40]
Tatiana Mulri
Yeah, I mean, I did it for the agency, the big, like big brand agency. And then I went out on my own and I was a founder myself. In parallel with doing the agency thing, that was. That was how I bootstrapped my startup. And I think.
- [47:54]
Joel Palo Thinkle
Tell me about your startup.
- [47:56]
Tatiana Mulri
Sure. I decided to do an app called Ed Rover. And this is 2010. It was a check in for charity app. Here are the flaws in my genius plan. After running it for four years and shutting it down, I now know where I went wrong. Right. First of all, people did not have enough people did not have iPhones. Time. And it was an iPhone app. And there were. I worked with the wrong lawyer and accountant who advised me to file a nonprofit because nobody had ever heard of any kind of like, charity aspect to the company. Right. Of the tech Company. It was too early for that. Now there's B Corp and everybody's like excited about sports being socially conscious. Well, it was too early. My lawyer and accountant like helped me file for a nonprofit status and it was after three years of IRS proctology exams. I got a one page letter saying, no, that can't be a nonprofit. Pivoted my brains out and like, I should have just done it for profit from the beginning. But that was super hard. I think investors were, the reaction was disappointing. It came from this big corporate career and they were like, well, is this like a cute little thing that moms do on the side? And I was like, excuse me, what? They're like, yeah, it sounds like a lifestyle business. And I'm like, thank you. I don't know what that means. It sounds super offensive. I'm gonna go figure that out.
- [49:37]
Joel Palo Thinkle
Yeah.
- [49:37]
Tatiana Mulri
You know, I just didn't have exposure to the, the startup world enough to have heard those terms before and was super disappointing. So instead I did all kinds of corporate pitch competitions and wiped the floor with prize money. It was, it was like super easy for me to relate to those people and everybody loved it. So I became really deeply involved with AT&T and Microsoft Computer World. Stay classy, like getting great press. But I couldn't overcome the IRS thing and eventually shut it down. It was an awesome experience.
- [50:12]
Joel Palo Thinkle
What was the issue? They just didn't like that you were classified as a nonprofit.
- [50:16]
Tatiana Mulri
There's so many. So I had a for profit company that was like a consulting company. I built the software and I had a nonprofit and they didn't like how they were interacting with each other. Yeah, they honestly, there's so many companies that have this structure that had it back then. Didn't you know that continue to have it. I had a really bad examiner and he retired in the middle of it and it was just a mess. And they wouldn't need to stop calling I think after a while because it just wouldn't have been gone like this. I had all kinds of non profit consultants look at, look at it and give me advice. And they're like, it looks fine. I don't know why you wouldn't pass. So. So sometimes it's the luck of the draw, right?
- [51:00]
Joel Palo Thinkle
Yeah.
- [51:01]
Tatiana Mulri
Yeah.
- [51:02]
Joel Palo Thinkle
Okay.
- [51:03]
Tatiana Mulri
Yeah. So anyway, that was an interesting set of life lessons for sure. And so, you know, I really did have these like disappointing experiences with VCs and investors, angels, all kinds of people. And I was like, I just don't want anybody else to be going down this path and having this Experience, Experience. So I began really mentoring in my community. I run a program called Founders Boost LA where we help especially underrepresented founders navigate the VC and accelerator landscape which has totally exploded since I was a founder. And I just really got dedicated to that because I wanted to help prevent some of the disasters I had stepped in. And it's been incredible for just building community here in la, working with amazing mentors. But I was. And the alumni of this program have gone off to like top accelerators, have been raising millions of dollars. It's been awesome. Oh, there's a question I see in the chat. No, there's no fee and no equity. We're sponsor supported organization and yes, we are accepting applications now. So if, you know, promising startups, we're in multiple cities around the world, including unfortunately Ukraine. Ukraine, which was really scary last couple weeks. And so, you know, we really want to find very high potential startups and get them just absolutely ready for, you know, great deck, great business model, understanding access to new mentors, pitch on demo day and then you know, they, they get into amazing places and they're getting VC funding. And so I was like, why am.
- [52:49]
Joel Palo Thinkle
I leaving this demo day? And I guess. So the accelerator, do they offer any capital as well or is it more just kind of a support group and then they help you like you have a demo day where you invite VCs.
- [53:02]
Tatiana Mulri
Yeah. So up until now we haven't had a capital component, but Founders Boost itself is planning a fund. Yeah, be careful about how to talk about that. And before that fund was announced I had also worked with my partners and said, look, I'm leaving a lot of good opportunities on the table here by not being involved early. My two partners and I have been working for startup as consultants together and I would invite them to demo day and they would pick up some really interesting companies and become advisors and start investing. And I'm like, whoa, whoa, don't invest in my companies without me. Let's do this together. And so that's how steamwork Ventures came about. So now we've made our first three investments which is really exciting. We love picking companies that we think are going to impact the world in a positive way because of my software mobile experience and fintech experience. Of course fintech is on the table, but I've also got a lot of exposure and background in healthcare, so we care about. And some of my angel investments were in climate. So our thesis is around connected solutions that impact health well through the earth. We love working with Steam powered teams that are coming in with like a brilliant invention, but they don't necessarily know how to commercialize it because the three of us are kind of the cmo, cfo, COO types who can come in and just really help a technical founder build a business that can last. And so it's pretty exciting to be able to do that now.
- [54:59]
Joel Palo Thinkle
No, that's great. So tell us a little bit about steamwork. And I think you shared the thesis, but how did that just kind of integrate in with kind of your consulting work and some of your entrepreneurship and, and, you know, when. What, what was the triggering point that. That made you decide, I guess, was that. I guess that was probably the final chapter after you.
- [55:23]
Tatiana Mulri
Yeah, I mean, I, I would say like, Ed Rover went away, but I still was consulting with other startups.
- [55:33]
Joel Palo Thinkle
Yep.
- [55:34]
Tatiana Mulri
And I briefly considered doing my own fintech startup again, like last year. I was really having, you know, we were all in a pandemic or having this crisis of identity. What do we want to be when we grow up? Like, how do we want to come out of this thing? And, and I just decided I love working with multiple startups so much, it would be very hard to shut everything down in order to work on the one. And it's just something I know about myself. I know I can add value in lots of interesting ways. You know, we've been talking for an hour and hopefully you found it interesting. We'll see. I don't know.
- [56:16]
Joel Palo Thinkle
No, it's amazing. I mean, I think it's. I think it's really helpful for the people on the call too, to see how, you know, how much the career transitions happen when you try to get to where you are now. Right. I mean, I. Look, I worked in product too. I was an engineer, then was a product manager, and then, you know, finally like, you, you know, kind of started my own, you know, investment firm. But yeah, I think, you know, that's also a startup. You know, you have a brand, you have to have a website, you have to, you know, build community. So it's, it's, you know, if you're starting your own fund, it's essentially an entrepreneurial endeavor.
- [56:57]
Tatiana Mulri
Yeah.
- [56:58]
Joel Palo Thinkle
So I don't know.
- [56:59]
Tatiana Mulri
I don't know if every entrepreneur wants to hear that, but I have to say the process is, I would say, like 10 times harder being a founder of a startup.
- [57:12]
Joel Palo Thinkle
It is.
- [57:13]
Tatiana Mulri
I don't want to sound like I'm whining, but I mean, just the regulations, the paperwork, the types of support systems that are required to pull this off are insane. And then just the speed at which you have to be good at things that are required to run your firm. It's really amazing. But I can't imagine doing it with anybody else. I think my partners and I really complement each other well. And we had to do major trust exercises at the beginning because, like I said, I wasn't sure that this was necessarily the path I wanted to go down. VCs don't necessarily have the best reputation with founders and others sometimes. And yeah, I was like, I don't want to do this. I don't if I can't do it the way I think it should be done. And no, but like, we came to some really great consensus about how we wanted to be as a firm and how we wanted to show up for founders and where we wanted to draw the line over, like, because we could easily take over and be doing all of the roles as startup. And we're like, no, we're not a venture studio. We're not going to.
- [58:25]
Joel Palo Thinkle
Hey, you might just end up doing all their user acquisition for them.
- [58:28]
Tatiana Mulri
Right, Exactly. But I do feel like we can help them when they have questions, like your question about, well, how do we find a good growth marketer? Yeah, could we, you know, write up this book for them or could we review this back? Could we have an interview? Yes, we could do all those things. Today I reached out to my hundreds of students that I've taught at USC. I've been teaching an app design course since 2013. And so I was like, hey, anybody want to work for this really purpose driven startup? Like, those are the kinds of things that make it hopefully a delight to work with us. We really do want to be on the side of the founder in so many ways because we just see so much potential. And once we get to conviction, our due diligence process is thorough, I want to say. But once we are on board. We're on board and we're helping to fill the round. We're introducing you for. We introduced one of the companies into UCLA Medical for SBIR grants, projects and speaking opportunities. We want to completely change the trajectory of your future when we get on board.
- [59:48]
Joel Palo Thinkle
Yeah, no, that's really great. Do you have a second for maybe one or two questions?
- [59:52]
Tatiana Mulri
Yeah, sure. Absolutely. Hey, guys, you guys got any questions?
- [60:01]
C
Hi. Let's get some light on. Good evening. So I was, I was gently stalking you on the Internet for a quick minute.
- [60:10]
Tatiana Mulri
Oh, good. Gentle talking.
- [60:13]
C
I was reading one of your bios and I'm in the Air Force. So it was intriguing because one of the one of the bullets that you had worked in the air with the Air Force in some capacity. And I was just curious what, what was that relationship like and what you were able to do?
- [60:27]
Tatiana Mulri
That's so cool. So the Air Force, gosh, I have to like go way back. The Air Force wanted help with recruiting and they saw mobile as a really interesting way of getting in touch with people. And so we worked there. There are multiple agencies involved. Like we had sister agencies that would get involved in building out experiential recruiting events. Like big trailers would come out and we'd like design all these cool games. But ultimately what they really wanted was them to opt in for text messaging because they wanted to be able to keep in touch with the people who were curious about the Air Force.
- [61:06]
C
Okay, that makes sense.
- [61:07]
Tatiana Mulri
Yeah, they've definitely upped their game. Pilot now Air Force pilot.
- [61:10]
C
So, okay then one quick follow up on a slightly different note. You're working on an MBA right now and it looks like you took a little bit of a gap between your undergrad to doing your grad school. I was just curious about what was the motivating factor of doing it now after you've worked professional career for like a decade or two. And why now?
- [61:33]
Tatiana Mulri
I guess, you know, I mean, I shared about the COVID sort of identity crisis. My kids are older now. I have a chance for kind of this phase two career and really interested in being a big player in this space. Right. As an investor. And so I wanted to brush up on my quant skills. I wanted to develop a deeper network in Los Angeles because I went to school in New York. And while I've been involved in a lot of startups here, I. I'm going to need the help of bigger companies in order to help my startups and also to just open lots of doors from a career perspective. I would say it's harder to have a jump back into a big corporate role if you've been working as an entrepreneur. And so if that's my plan B or C, I also think the MBA would be helpful there as well.
- [62:36]
C
Got it. Okay. It's something I'm thinking about doing down the road at ECOT as well for my undergrad. And I'm like looking between is it better to do a full time program or an executive program? So it's good to get your thoughts on that. So thank you.
- [62:48]
Tatiana Mulri
Oh man. I mean that's an excellent question too because for me it's such a pleasure to be in the executive program and particularly like shout out to UCLA because it's not just 70% investment banking people. It's people from every walk of Life, including probably 10% of my class comes from Navy. They're transitioning out of the Navy from San Diego. And so fascinating to be able to look at what we're learning and immediately like, hey, General Mills does it this way and Amazon does it this way and Adobe does it this way. And we're like, oh, that's so cool. It's such really, it's so refreshing to hear real life examples just applied instantly in class. So I mean, for me that was a perfect fit. You know, I don't know where you are in that career cycle, but that's like definitely doing it any other way.
- [63:47]
C
From the very, very, very beginning.
- [63:49]
Tatiana Mulri
Okay, thank you. Thanks for years under your belt then and you know, because I think you'll have a lot to offer your class if you have more, more experience. Got it.
- [63:58]
C
Thank you.
- [63:59]
Tatiana Mulri
Thank you. You're so welcome.
- [64:00]
C
I believe one of my colleagues, Farouk, might have a question as well. It looks like.
- [64:04]
Tatiana Mulri
Oh, great. Cool.
- [64:07]
C
Hi, Tatiana, thank you for your time. Congratulations on sort of this journey of the first year of a VC fund.
- [64:17]
Tatiana Mulri
Thank you.
- [64:18]
Joel Palo Thinkle
So I was looking at the fund.
- [64:19]
C
Thesis and I noticed that it has a few sort of things that are not usually combined together. So medtech, fintech and climate tech. And then IoT sort of is a, sort of a hard combination as well. Yeah, not often seen in this, in this way. So what were your conversations like with LPs? Like what did they think of combining all of this health, wealth and earth in one string?
- [64:43]
Tatiana Mulri
I mean, we got some that think it's too broad. Like sometimes we get the instant it's too broad. Right. And sometimes we get that. Oh, that's kind of interesting. I mean, we can see that you have experience in these areas and can see the value you add. And it's very similar. So they're all software companies and they're all gathering data in some interesting way and generally that does require some kind of Iot. So there's, they have that common piece, but we're really dealing with a lot of early stage companies out of Los Angeles and we want to make sure we can pick some very good ones. Right. And we also want to provide with the first fund. LPs are generally, you know, high net worth individuals, smaller family offices, and they need, they may have different needs than an institutional investor that wants you to be super focused in one area. It may be their first, second, third fund. And so they actually do care more about diversification than you might think in their conversations. It's been pretty interesting. And because we're in Los Angeles, there's an opportunity for, I would say, to work with business managers of celebrities in a different way and they may be venture curious, but what it may not be ready to pick a sector. So I would say it hasn't necessarily slowed us down. Yeah. And I don't know, it's very hard to pick to pick a sector when you've worked in a lot of interesting companies.
- [66:20]
C
Awesome, thank you.
- [66:21]
Tatiana Mulri
Yeah, yeah, thanks. That's a good question. I should always be examining that. We have that conversation almost every day, I'm sure.
- [66:30]
Joel Palo Thinkle
Yeah.
- [66:31]
C
It's always constantly raising for the second and third, you know, it's always in the works.
- [66:39]
Tatiana Mulri
Always be raising. That's a good motto.
- [66:42]
Joel Palo Thinkle
Yeah, yeah, no, I mean, I think always be raising. And you're also kind of thinking about your long term franchise vision. Right. So if you're, you know, like, what's the bigger, you know, there was a fund that I, you know, so the book by the founder of Blackstone, I thought it was really good because it also kind of made me think of like the bigger vision of like what you're building. Right. So Blackstone, what I really think about their franchise, it's like, you know, they do private equity. They also have like, you know, a whole real estate practice. You know, there's like a bunch of different tentacles, but it's kind of like part of the larger conglomerate. So. Yeah, that kind of made me think, you know, hey, what, you know, what I'm building, are there multiple things that can feed into each other? Like you've got the accelerator, you've got kind of like the startup mentality. You also have probably relationships with corporates and universities.
- [67:36]
Tatiana Mulri
There's a lot of things going on. And the thing is that data and software and fintech, it's embedded in everything. And so you have to keep following where's the next innovation going to happen? And so it's just fascinating to see where this is going to lead. I mean, who knows what's going to happen by the time this fund matures in 10 years? What kind of new things will be on the horizon?
- [68:05]
Joel Palo Thinkle
Yeah, I mean, things that I normally get, you know, just average. Not, I wouldn't say average, but I have typical discussions with other VCs and LPs and there was one LP that hopped on a call with me and they were like, hey, have you really thought clearly when you're talking to these emerging managers about how crypto is going to impact this whole thing. Like they're, you know, SPVs may just be DAOs in the next four or five years. So I think just kind of, just different platforms are going to impact the traditional venture structure. So I think instead of kind of and syndicating capital, you can probably close capital in like 10 milliseconds through like a Dow or something.
- [68:52]
Tatiana Mulri
That sounds like a very interesting plan to go forward with. I think it's fascinating because so many new technologies do rely on the infrastructure laid by previous generations. And since I've been too early on certain things, I'm cautious about not getting too ahead of myself. But what is fascinating is I feel like I have an uncanny ability to open doors to the infrastructure players that are required to get these startups moving faster. And a lot of those companies, those corporates, are really interested in what's going on in those spaces. And so I think there's going to be a lot of change in the next few years.
- [69:37]
Joel Palo Thinkle
I totally agree. Well, yeah, I know that I've kept.
- [69:40]
Tatiana Mulri
You longer, so great to talk to you all.
- [69:43]
Joel Palo Thinkle
Appreciate it. Yeah, no, I appreciate it. And thanks for sticking around a little longer and I hope that we get to hang out at some point.
- [69:50]
Tatiana Mulri
I hope so too.
- [69:51]
Joel Palo Thinkle
Yeah, just give me a ring if you're in New York and happy to.
- [69:54]
Tatiana Mulri
Take you out and vice versa. Sounds good.