00:00 - 00:34 | Brett: It's a weird market and probably confusing for entrepreneurs. The market's been down, the interest rates are up. A couple of guys from Uber with a few slides of a deck were raising millions of dollars at the snap of their finger. People are being asked for, okay, show me a few million dollars in ARR before I give you your first round of the capital. Right. So anything that's got, you know, gen AI strapped to the name is raising millions of dollars with a couple of slides and the snap of a finger. So either the way I describe the market, it's like, you know, when you pull your like frozen dinner out of the freezer and you put it in the microwave and one bite is freezing cold and the next bite is scalding hot. I think that describes the venture market in 2024.
00:37 - 01:34 | Christopher: Welcome to the podcast for financially focused technology employees. Are you working for equity? Do you have questions on how your career and money work together? Then welcome. Every week we discuss strategies and tactics for how to grow your career, build wealth and reach your financial and lifestyle goals. Welcome to tech careers and money talk. I'm excited today to introduce everybody to Brett Martin. If you don't know Brett, he is a multimodal executive. Yes, I think we may have just coined that term. But he's the president and co founder of Kumo space. Kumo space is a virtual space for remote work companies, and also hybrid companies that have people in the office as well. At the same time, he's a general partner in Charge Ventures, a premium pre-seed and seed venture capital fund based out of Brooklyn, New York. I know he's also an avid sailor and he also does some part-time work at Columbia. Welcome to the show, Brett.

01:34 - 01:42 | Brett: Chris, thank you so much for having me. Pleasure to be here. Excited to commiserate about people who try to do too much.

01:44 - 02:25 | Christopher: Yeah, I know it is definitely much more, uh, people perceive it's glamorous, but it is, it's definitely a hard work. And I think it is, uh, yeah, sometimes we're, yeah, maybe a little too goal oriented, but we'll get to that in the second half of the show. In the first half of the show, I really want to focus on the work that you're doing at Kumo space. I think that remote work is something that we can leverage to, you know, unlock geographic freedom. It provides a lot of upside, a lot of flexibility in our lifestyle, but it's also hard. I'm curious what you're seeing right now as you are out in the marketplace selling KumoSpace to help enable remote work and hybrid work, etc. What are you seeing for the market right now in and around remote work?

02:25 - 03:39 | Brett: Yeah, I mean, obviously, it's been a crazy few years, right, going from kind of a backwater of, you know, only outsourced back office folks doing remote work to the entire working population during the pandemic to, you know, I'd say like, we're just coming out of a period of post-pandemic uncertainty. I think in 2022, 2023, it was a confluence of conflicting narratives, remote work plus return to the office, we're all going to go back. I think It's 2024, commercial real estate occupancy in New York is still 50%. And I think we realized, well, actually, the cat's not getting back into the bag. And this sort of remote hybrid thing is here to stay. And so, at least in our own business, I think we really saw coming out of 2023, people start realizing like, oh, we need to actually start planning for the long term here. It's not going back to the way it was. And what's the future going to look like? We believe it's going to be a long-term secular trend. Anything that can be done on the internet will be done on the internet, but people are trying to figure out, okay, what's the best way of doing it now? That's where Kumo Space comes in.

03:40 - 04:03 | Christopher: So let me ask you this sort of in the blend of companies that you're seeing, you know, looking at KumoSpace, because I think it's an interesting vantage point, because you get to see, you know, who's trying to do this successfully. What are you seeing sort of percentage wise between, you know, maybe newer companies that are founded remote versus, you know, more traditional companies that are trying to leverage a resource like this to enable hybrid?

04:03 - 05:51 | Brett: Yeah, I mean, I think the dominant design is generally good, is generally hybrid, right? But I do think that there are certain types of companies that are fully remote or in certain departments in larger companies that are fully remote. So I think, you know, for larger companies, you're definitely outsourcing whatever functions you can and you're outsourcing that to lower cost geographies. And the truth is the world is flat and there's brilliant people all over the world and You can get them at a half to a third of the price, depending on where you're working. And so having the right technologies to enable seamless collaboration with those folks is something big companies have been investing in for years, right? Actually, a lot of Kumulospace's customers are actually firms that were remote before the pandemic and continue to be remote afterward, right? So we've got digital marketing agencies, we've got a bunch of consulting companies, professional services firms. contacts and call centers. Then on the smaller side, right, you've got, you know, startups. And I think that, you know, startups, when they're very early, they're obviously like just getting off the ground. They don't have an office, so they're working remote by definition. Then they probably pull together into physical space, get the kind of initial core group of people together, shoulder to shoulder, but then kind of quickly Realizing, well, okay, well, how do we compete with these big tech companies? Well, now that the big tech companies are calling everyone back into the office again, guess what? The best people want, everyone loves flexibility, everyone wants freedom. And so if you're truly the creme de la creme, you can work on your own terms. And startups are courting those folks by saying, hey, you know, you want to live in Portugal and work at my startup? Like, let's go. We're happy to do it. So I think, you know, that's how you end up having kind of a distributed team pretty early on from a startup.

05:51 - 06:08 | Christopher: So the companies that are winning it from your vantage point, right, you get the opportunity to see them implementing a software that enables remote work. What are some of the characteristics? What are some of the traits that these companies, you know, inhibit that are doing remote work well right now?

06:09 - 07:48 | Brett: Talking about before the show and your experience at GitLab, I think what people had figured out before is it's really good when you're very structured processes, very clear, transparent processes. You can measure people based on their output and all those things apply. Good management applies, whether you're sitting in a a box together or you're working distributed, good management is good management. I think one of the things that gives companies that use Kumo Space and Edge is that it's actually, the hardest part of our job at Kumo Space is not selling software, it's selling a new way of working, which is, hey, we're going to be remote, but we're still going to show up and be accountable for each other, right? In the same way that It's like one of the main benefits of being in a physical office is actually not being surrounded by four walls. It's actually saying, hey, from nine to five, Monday through Friday, we are going to be available for each other unless otherwise stated. And I think, you know, when you choose to work in Kumo space, you actually are making the same commitment to your team. Hey, we're going to show up and be accountable for each other. Now, that doesn't mean that, you know, If you use KumuSpace, you can't step out and, you know, walk the dog or, you know, go to the gym or do yoga in the middle of the day. In fact, you know, we've got a whole status feature where, you know, we say that and at KumuSpace, you know, we're actually working in and out of the office throughout the day. But I think as a baseline to say, hey, we're working remotely, but we're still going to be accountable and transparent to each other. Like that is the biggest difference. You know, to me, that's the biggest difference between success and, you know, pretending to work a startup.

07:48 - 08:06 | Christopher: Right, because everybody what that does is it goes back to this, everybody's on an equal footing. And and it's focused on to your point, not not micromanaging, but just the transparency, the availability so that anybody who, you know, has questions or needs to get unblocked can understand how to do that.

08:06 - 08:57 | Brett: I mean, well said, you know, it's funny because sometimes people will look at KumuSpace and say, oh, like, you know, is this surveillance software or isn't this, you know, you're trying to micromanage me. And it's funny. It's like, actually, no, we're giving remote, you know, equity. We're making, we call it remote work equity. We're saying, hey, you can work remotely for this company and get the FaceTime with your boss and get the mentorship, you know, from leadership and get those promotions. and become and be a critical exec in the success of this company, right? You're not relegated to back office, right? So it's really a matter of perspective. You can see it as, oh, this is a tool to micromanage, or you can see it as, wow, this is my opportunity to get a leg up and really be promoted and succeed in a company that truly cares about its remote employees.

08:57 - 09:47 | Christopher: Well, and I really like that the positioning there of remote work equity, because that sort of denotes that you're getting some type of leverage. I think what you're contending with, and I think this is this is interesting based on my experience of GitLab as well, is to be able to engage with employees. If you're not physically present, it has to be known and understood, to your point, when you're available. And also, you also want to have some level of you know, organization and cadence around when you're engaging, whether that's with your team, whether that's with other executives, etc. Because being known, understanding how you're contributing, all of that stuff is going to be a part of your contribution to the company that's going to weigh in on to your performance review, that's going to weigh in on to your promotions, that's going to weigh in on to your ultimate impact.

09:48 - 11:02 | Brett: A hundred percent. And I think, you know, you talk about like structured, unstructured conversations. And if you think about, we have Zoom for our structured conversations and we can, you know, send someone a Teams message and say, Hey, you know, let's catch up. And then a couple hours later, they get back to you and they say, okay, great. When do you want to do it? And then you say, okay, maybe on tomorrow, you know, at 5pm, here's, I sent you a meeting, a calendar invite. And, you know, if you're a startup losing 24 hours between needing someone's feedback on something and then getting it. If you lose 24 hours five times a week and then 20 times a month and then thousands of times a year, that is really going to slow down your ability to ship. And so what we think about is KumuSpace is, hey, we're that tool for your unstructured catch-up quick video or audio conversations, and you need both, right? You can either be super, super structured, which I think works great for teams full of engineers, but for the rest of us, sometimes we actually need a little unstructured time with our colleagues to fill in the blanks, and KumuSpace is that tool for remote work.

11:02 - 11:32 | Christopher: Well said, because, you know, when you think about it, the ability to succeed in tech is the ability to change rapidly, right? And sometimes we need to compress a month's worth of work into a week. And so being able to, you're right, not, you know, remove sort of the slack out of the rope and be able to get those changes done quickly is important. So yeah, unstructured conversations, understanding when people are available and you're doing that remote, meaning that you don't have to physically be present, but you get the ability to, to do that remotely, I think is very powerful.

11:32 - 11:44 | Brett: Oh, you just, we're getting rid of the slack. You just said it perfectly. You've got the credit for that when I work it into my next marketing campaign.

11:44 - 12:57 | Christopher: Well, yeah. And I think part of it, you know, having worked remote and that was my, you know, when I left the office in 2019 to take a sabbatical and, you know, as I was building out my private equity company and making the decision to go back in and do another run at tech, I knew I didn't want to go back into an office. So I was really seeking these remote opportunities. And this is where, you know, when you know what you're looking for, and the GitLab opportunity came along, it was definitely, you know, match made. Plus, coupled with the fact that the opportunity came, you know, right at the height of 2020, that was really cool. But understanding this, I mean, I'd like to sort of shift this conversation from, you know, what's making companies successful to what's making people successful, right? What's making employees successful? Because some of the things when you go out, and I talk to a lot of technology employees weekly around career, around money, and some of the concerns, right? We know the benefit of remote work is the flexibility. The concern is that people won't see my work. I won't get recognized. I won't get the promotion that I want. What are some of the things, and again, I know there's a tool involved here, but just thinking conceptually, what are some of the important things that people need to be doing when they are remote work to make sure that they are getting the visibility they need?

12:57 - 15:48 | Brett: I think one of the downsides of remote work is that you will sync to the lowest common denominator. It's very easy to just do what's asked of you, right? Like if you think about how big companies have historically used remote work, it's basically any sort of back office function, right? You're saying, okay, This isn't actually that important. This is a commoditized skill and we're going to basically make it as modular as possible. And then we're going to ship it off to the lowest possible geography. And then we're going to quality control, you know, the hell out of it and sort of, you know, make sure that just nothing goes wrong. Right. That's the, that's the classic. And so that's kind of what's expected. I think of most remote work workers is to be this little like work API endpoint, you know, where you sit in your, your box and work comes in and you do the work and then you send it back and it could be basically done. know, through a screen and no one would know the difference of who you, you know, who you are, why you exist. And I think as a remote worker, it's very easy to just let that happen to you, right? Because if you think about, you know, in an in-person situation, the interesting work or the interesting opportunities or interesting conversations are often happening. before the meeting, on the walk to the event, or after the after the all hands, and people are in small groups talking about what was just said, and what it might mean, or, you know, at lunch, and, you know, you know, with your boss, where he talks about, oh, some, you know, idea he has, and then you get the idea to, oh, you know, maybe I'll like, start helping with that, or pitching him some, some ideas, right. And so I think that that in between those liminal moments, are actually where the opportunities to go above and beyond, you know, are found. And I think as a remote worker, like getting that exposure to those opportunities and those moments is absolutely critical. And, you know, that's obviously like a tool like Kumo Space makes that happen in a more organic way. You know, when we have, it's funny when you see a meeting happen in Kumo Space that, you know, on all hands, everyone kind of is moving across the office and assembling and having kind of little conversations in advance of the meeting. And, you know, so we get, we recreate that, but even if, you know, your company wasn't using a tool like Kumo Space, you know, I think you as a remote worker have to actually put in that extra effort to, to be there before and after the creation of work product and to, you know, petition your bosses to, you know, have those extra side opportunities and those extra, you know, side quests. So I think it's probably making yourself known and raising your hand and then also working at a company where they actually see the value in remote employees as not just cost centers and things to be quality controlled, but rather as like, you know, opportunities to, to basically, you know, see them as people who can do more than just their, you know, what they were tasked with.

15:48 - 16:31 | Christopher: Right. So it sounds like company selection is critical, meaning that you want to choose a company where the remote work is still doing leading things when it comes to product, when it comes to marketing, whatever discipline you're working in, you want to make sure the company understands and values what remote work is doing. And then, you know, we talked a little bit about this before in the context of structured versus unstructured conversations. It sounds like having those unstructured conversations before and after, making sure that you're engaged in some level of networking and side chats before and after meeting is really important to help you just understand more of the culture and feel like you're engaging even though you are remote.

16:31 - 17:05 | Brett: Yeah, at the end of the day, all the same rules apply. People want to work with who they want to work with. They want to work with people who they care about on some sort of personal level. And I think as a remote employee, you just got to do the extra work to get in there and also show meet these people in person. I mean, I sell remote work software, but that doesn't mean that I don't think spending quality, you know, physical time is important. And so if I were a remote worker and I had the opportunity, like what I, you know, show up in HQ once, you know, once a quarter and show my face like a hundred percent.

17:06 - 17:29 | Christopher: Right. And I think that's such an important takeaway is that remote work, right? Think about the, you know, 80, 20 or 90, 10, meaning that you want the ability to be able to be remote and have that flexibility for a majority of the time. But there still does need to be some level of human connection, human interaction, you know, to really get the most out of this experience.

17:29 - 18:09 | Brett: Well, that's the, you know, hilarious part is that sometimes people bridle against, you know, Oh, KumuSpace is, you know, I, it's like, I don't want to have this. I want to have this like accountability applied to me. But it's like, you know, when people turn their mind is when they're facing the alternative of, Oh, wait, I actually My alternative is to show up in the office for five days a week. People change their tune really fast and say, oh, wait, actually, this is such a blessing we have to be able to work from anywhere in the world whenever we want. I mean, as someone else who has more than one job, it's just amazing. If I want to work two jobs and work 80 and 90 hours a week, now I can't.

18:11 - 19:00 | Christopher: Right. Right. You can. And I also the one thing I always get really curious about, especially when I didn't have a lot of experience with this, you know, but it is concerning when people say they don't want to be accountable because ultimately, right, we are exchanging results for a paycheck. And so there does need to be some tangible output. This is not, you know, hey, we're paying you money to work on you know, your ideas, there does need to be some core level of accountability. Now, not meaning like if you want to go and take breaks, and if you want to be, you know, private about what you're doing on that time, whether that's, you know, yoga, taking a nap, whatever, I get that. But ultimately, I do think that there does need to be, you know, a shared responsibility that says, hey, we're going to be accountable to make sure that the team and this business that we're opting into is moving forward.

19:01 - 19:17 | Brett: Oh, yeah. I mean, I've posted on LinkedIn about the 20 minute 3 p.m. post-lunch power nap is one of the biggest benefits of working from home on the planet. You know, give me that 3 p.m. nap and I'll go till 10 p.m. No problem.

19:17 - 19:46 | Christopher: Well, yeah, that's hilarious because I literally, I mean, one of the reasons I wanted to get to work in remote is I had always fantasized about living the siesta lifestyle where, yeah, once you eat your food, taking a 20 or 30 minute little power nap is it's medicine. It is medicine for your mind, for your soul, for to like, and you're right. Like I get a power nap. I'm totally different. I remember being in experiences where I was in the office dragging so hard. It's like, man, if I could just lay down.

19:46 - 19:54 | Brett: I mean, you know, Google's got the nap pods, right? So now if you're working from home, I don't need to sleep in a pod. My bed's around the corner.

19:55 - 20:50 | Christopher: Go there. Yeah. My, my experience was that as I was, I was working for Accenture and I was based in Kawasaki city, Japan. We were doing this big, uh, global rollout for Dell of their instance of salesforce.com. This was back in 2008. And I remember I had this executive meeting at three and then at three 30, I would go down and they had this incredible pod room where they had all these little bet massage chairs. Like, so you're getting massaged and then you put on the earphones with classical music and you could just nap out. And that's where I really figure this whole thing out. And I'd schedule a meeting for a half hour every day. I'd go get, go get that little nap in. And that was magic. Japanese have some things figured, figured out. They definitely, in fact, the other thing they had is like, there was like, you could legitimately nap at your desk. If you brought like eye shields, I saw people that would literally just be napping at their desk. There was no qualms. Like you got a nap, just get her done. I was like, wow, I can groove with that.

20:50 - 20:55 | Brett: I like to think we have a slightly more humane version of that going on in Como Space.

20:55 - 21:49 | Christopher: Yeah. It is one of the advantages. Napping is good. Please take naps, people. I want to put a pause in this half of the conversation. We're going to take a quick break. And when we come back, I want to talk a bit about the state of VC right now with AI. And then we want to talk about what it's like being multimodal executives. So hang on to your hat. We're going to be right back. All right, welcome back. We're here for the second half of Tech Crews and Money Talk with Brett Martin. And we want to change the pace. We want to talk about VC investing right now in the age of AI and then also in today's environment. I'm really curious, you know, what is it like today to be raising capital, especially in this high interest rate environment? In fact, I think I saw you do a post the other day on LinkedIn around, hey, here's some things that you can do to raise capital right now.

21:49 - 22:52 | Brett: It's a weird market and probably confusing for entrepreneurs because on one hand, the market's been down, the interest rates are up, everyone's talking about austerity and cost cutting. Honestly, the bar for raising capital has significantly gone up. In the height of the boom, a couple of guys from Uber with a few slides of a deck were raising millions of dollars at the snap of their finger. The same people are being asked for, okay, show me a few million dollars in ARR before I give you your first round of capital, right? So the bar has moved and it feels quite challenging, but then at the same time, you've got anything that's got Gen AI strapped to the name is raising millions of dollars with a couple of slides and a snap of a finger. So the way I describe the market, it's like when you pull your frozen dinner out of the freezer and you put it in the microwave and one bite is freezing cold and the next bite is scalding hot. I think that describes the venture market in 2024.

22:54 - 23:17 | Christopher: So do you think with, you know, now that I think when the market becomes more conservative and people want to see, you know, seed and precede companies, you know, in a better position as an investor, you know, running, running a VC fund, are you getting looks at, and let's talk about non AI companies for a second. Are you getting a look at, you know, healthier product coming your way or, or not?

23:19 - 24:56 | Brett: I mean, I think there's no question that it is a great time to be an investor. I mean, I think like compared to that time when it, which was kind of irrational exuberance that, you know, now there's a big technology trend, right. In forms of the form of AI, right. You got computers that can see and read and write and speak and hear. And what's crazy new, you know, business applications is that on lock. Right. And maybe the, in the biggest difference, you know, between now and sort of the last, you know, the, the. crypto boom was that these are real companies. These are companies that are actually solving real problems and making real money. You know, they're going zero to a few million dollars in revenue in a few months. I mean, we have one of our portfolio companies, they went zero to a nine million dollar run rate in seven months. I mean, that's. That's an amazing business by any, you know, it doesn't matter what technology is doing it. Right. So I think that's, it's just an amazing time to be alive and to be investing. And, you know, how do you play, like, are these things, you know, a lot of these companies are growing fast, but they're churning, they haven't quite found their footing, but. I'm an optimist and I also don't fully buy into this narrative that, oh, only incumbents are going to capture value, like that's a recurring thread. And I think there are strong arguments for it, like, oh, they already have the data, they already have the distribution, they're just going to drop. you know, their chat bots into any text box. And I think that will happen. But I think that's underselling what entrepreneurs are capable of and, you know, underselling the creativity of entrepreneurs. Like, I think they're going to come up with completely new applications that weren't ever before possible. And there's going to be billion dollar businesses as a result.

24:56 - 25:20 | Christopher: And so like sort of balancing those two sides, Brett, so you have this side where, okay, it sounds like investors want you to be more selective in what you're vetting. You also have a, I'm assuming, a larger velocity of deal flow coming out, especially at the AI side. What are you doing now to vet and make decisions as an investor to really make sure that you're trying to select the right ones? Yeah.

25:20 - 27:02 | Brett: So I think you got a couple of things going on. What happened was basically, you know, when the market went down and, you know, 2022 and 23, a lot of everyone cut, everyone started cutting, cutting, you know, cutting burn. You know, they were told the smart people raised bridges immediately and then cut burn. And, you know, what happened is in late 2020, it was 3, 2004, people had been waiting to go out to market. So folks had said, you know, the bad companies were trying to fix their business. The good companies were saying, hey, you know, why would I go raise money now when the cost of capital is so high? I'm going to wait till the market comes back. Well, you know, they've been waiting for years now. They got to go out to market. You know, you have all these really good companies finally who have been growing for years, finally coming back out to market. So as an investor, it's just like, it's amazing. You've got net new companies with AI that are ripping, and then you've got companies that have been around for a while that have, you know, restructured and reduced their cost structure and improved their business and have been growing for years, also coming out to market. You know, that's why it's a great time to invest and why it's really busy. As an investor, how do you like assess those things? I mean, look, this is kind of a Jeff Bezos, you know, don't invest in the new thing, invest in the thing that isn't changing. So, you know, we invest, we look for. All the things that make it good about, you know, we look for big markets with serial founders of, you know, deep domain expertise who have, you know, lots of revenue growing really fast, super high margin. They've got network effects and data moats and scale advantages and, you know, unique regulatory capture and all the things that make a good business. So I don't think anything is fundamentally changed about investing. You just gotta be able to sift through all the noise.

27:03 - 27:10 | Christopher: It sounds like you just have to, I mean, like any other good solid investment, you gotta be patient, you gotta take your time, and you gotta be as choosy as possible.

27:10 - 27:13 | Brett: Yeah, you know, first rule of investing is don't lose money.

27:14 - 27:47 | Christopher: Right, exactly. Second rule, look at rule number one, right? Yeah, go back. I guess what I was trying to boil down to is like, is there some like thinking about that core list? And then now like when you think about some of this new technology, is there a new filter? Is there now a new line item that's on that list of due diligence or risk criteria that's going to filter things out that maybe wasn't there 10 months ago. 10 or 12 months ago, you would have said, okay, that looks good. Now, it's like, well, if it doesn't meet this criteria, I'm not even going to go deeper on it.

27:48 - 30:42 | Brett: Well, at the risk of getting too kind of esoteric inside baseball about, you know, early stage investing, you know, I think what happened was, is you had kind of valuation increases across the capital stack, right? So, you know, even pre-seed, seed A down to, you know, BCDE later stages, right? The later stages had the greatest run-ups in valuation. So if you just look at multiple expansion, right, these late stage, you know, companies, like that's why you had all these unicorns printed, you know, with billions of dollars, right? When the public markets corrected, Right. That creates a chain reaction where, you know, all of a sudden the closest cop to this late stage private company is a, you know, recently taken public company. And now all of a sudden it's multiples come down in half. Well, guess what? That starts cascading through the private markets. And so you have kind of this compression of multiples, you know, starting with the later stage private companies, but then kind of, you know, and working its way back to early stage. Now it's the most at these late stage private companies. And so. When that makes its way all the way down to pre-seed, we don't see as much multiple compression because we never had as much of a run-up, right? My entry point started at around $5 million, $3, $4, $5 million when I started 10 years ago. It got up to about $10 million post-money in the boom. And now it's actually come back down. We're doing sort of $5, $6, $7, $8 million post-money valuations. So whereas I sort of moved from $5 to $10 and then back, the late stage You know, let's say series B companies went from being two, $300 million valuations to $3 billion valuations. So kind of a 10 X change. And now they come down 90%. Again, in our market, what we see is the thing we worry about more now is because the bar is increased, right? Like we talked about earlier. I have to worry about financing risk a lot more. So whereas before I used to be able to say, okay, I'm going to give this company half a million dollars, million dollars. We're going to pull together a team. We're going to get some early traction, you know, let's say 10K MRR, a hundred, you know, a hundred, 200K ARR. Then we're going to be able to go raise a, you know, three to $5 million institutional seed round. Now we can't count on that, right? Because that seed round, the bar's a lot higher, right? We talked about how these companies are raising with now a million, $2 million ARR. So I have to worry about, okay, there's not as, I just can't expect follow on capital to come. This company has to make some serious progress before I can expect any other investors to, you know, grab the, take the bag from me. So we now are syndicating risk by, you know, pulling in more investors and sort of us co-leading with other pre-seed investors, making sure that, you know, our companies have a million and a half, $2 million to make it to that seed round. Right. So I don't know if that's interesting to your audience. I apologize. Yeah. No, it is specific, but that's not real market play right now.

30:42 - 31:35 | Christopher: No, no. I mean, we we have had on different VCs. I mean, going into detail on creating investment thesis and going into a lot of this. But you'll find that, you know, we have a lot of technology professionals that also are very money focused, who want to know and understand the nuts and bolts of investment. investing. So no, this is spot on and a really nice, rich vein of conversation. Because what I'm hearing from you is that now when you're selecting companies on that list of your due diligence or must meet criteria, there is now this criteria of we have to see some level of productivity, right, meaning that it's going to have to get to a higher level of MRR and production and be able to sustain itself for a longer period of time because you don't know what it's going to take to get to the follow-on round. So you're having to manage that risk and understand those levers a lot more clearly.

31:35 - 31:53 | Brett: Yeah, a lot more talk of, okay, if no more money comes, what do we, you know, how do we get to profitability fast? And that's been a positive change just in the way of thinking, right? People are just thinking about making, you know, making money as opposed to just raising it. And that's a net positive for the ecosystem altogether, I think.

31:54 - 32:39 | Christopher: I've seen this at least when you think about 2008 to 2010 and you see now. I graduated and started working right at the dot-com bust and I was able to observe some things there. But it just seems to me that when there's easy money, it's It's easy to get a lot of bloat in the system, meaning that people can maybe hire ahead and they're not really being thoughtful about the area that they're hiring ahead into versus when you're in a very constrained environment, people are making harder choices. And I think that's going to then just force the decision on companies to say, did I make the right decision? Is the market moving in my direction? Am I able to get traction? which allows us as investors to choose, I think, healthier product, right? Tough times create better companies.

32:39 - 32:46 | Brett: No doubt, no doubt. I couldn't be more happy to have capital deploy than in early 2024.

32:47 - 33:19 | Christopher: Well, and that's, I mean, I think that's important for people to understand because, you know, I think people get fearful when there is downward pressure in the market. And the perception that's given is that there's challenges. However, I think as investors, what that does for us is it clears the board. It takes the stupid money off the table. It takes the people that made bad decisions off the table. You're able to then start seeing companies that are operating a lot more efficiently, and I think it's time to deploy capital.

33:19 - 33:25 | Brett: Yeah, well, we're definitely seeing who's wearing shorts now that the tide's out.

33:25 - 33:32 | Christopher: 100%. For some reason, maybe, did you ever see that movie Inside Man with Denzel Washington and Jodie Foster?

33:32 - 33:34 | Brett: Oh, classic. Betraying my age now.

33:35 - 34:33 | Christopher: Well, but what it reminded me of the quote that she said, you know, when there's blood on the street by real estate, right? That was funny. When you think about AI, so then you mentioned like there's there is this dichotomy. So all of these, you know, there's a lot of companies that you need to make sure that you're clear on how they're making money. Is there some noise in and around what's in the AI space where you are seeing some companies that may have some overinflated valuations or you're really not sure about the product that maybe have more risk that you're having to actually wade through. And I'm asking that because I know people who listen to this show have a lot of questions around, number one, as I think some people got sort of scorched by what was going on in blockchain and all that sort of stuff. Now they're thinking about deploying capital in AI, and they're seeing it as a different mechanism, as you mentioned, that can make a lot more money, but they want to understand, you know, how can they make better decisions this time going into that particular space.

34:33 - 36:19 | Brett: I think that, you know, AI is the new blockchain, right? So people are just sprinkling it on anything and making, you know, that makes it exciting, right? If you looked at the most recent YC class, there were, you know, more than 50% of the companies were being presented as, you know, disruptive AI companies. And so a healthy dose of skepticism should be applied. Now, you know, as we, as we already said, right, like that. The difference is that unlike blockchain companies where you're like, okay, how is this going to be useful? Or does this have any sort of real world application? You know, these AI companies are really solving problems and, you know, have customers and are making revenue. Right. So that, that makes it different. I think, I think, you know, that. The question there is just like, okay, well, how defensible or long-term is this? Or, you know, if you can, so many of these YC companies were saying, oh, you know, we built this model in two months and look at, you know, look how good it is. And then I think the obvious question is, well, if you built that in two months, then how valuable is it really? And, you know, how many, who else could build it in two months? Right. So I think you have to get. timeless questions such as like, you know, who's this user? Why are they using it? How are you getting integrated deeply into their workflows? What are they ripping and replacing? What type of integrations do you have? What sort of data mode do you create? Are there some sort of, you know, network effects for your product? I mean, you know, nothing really new here other than just acknowledging that, you know, This technology is readily available and open source. And so, you know, how do you create really great, you know, the best product on the market? And how do you, you know, get some sort of lock in with your customers? You know, no, unfortunately I have no silver bullet other than just, you know, doing the work.

36:20 - 37:08 | Christopher: I think what you said, if I were to roll that up, I think what you said that's really important is, what we learn from blockchain, I think a lot of people, and I did not buy into the hype, I was very much, I'm gonna wait and see, I was spending most of my time more on commercial real estate at that point, very excited about what's going on in AI. What I heard from you is, it's about the basics, right? You cannot forget the fundamentals, you can't get caught up in the FOMO and the excitement, you have to double check, and especially being focused on you know, if somebody is rapidly iterating on this thing and creates a product very quickly, what is going to protect or differentiate that as you move into the marketplace? And again, surrounding that with just fundamental questions, but you can't, there's not going to be a fast track or secret sauce to figure out what's going on. You just got to go back to basics.

37:08 - 37:24 | Brett: Yeah, I mean, there's no generally get rich quick scheme is something to steer away from. I mean, you know, although I will say these meme coins on Solana right now are pumping. So if you're looking to gamble, that's probably not the worst place.

37:26 - 37:55 | Christopher: So I do want to take, I do want to take, we, we, we have some time left. And I think one of the things that I wanted to do is just get on and we can have this conversation in front of people, but it's about, you know, you are a multimodal executive. You have a role at Kumo Space. You have a role as a general partner of this VC firm. What's it like? Like give people sort of the view into what is it like being this, being a multimodal executive and what are, what are the things that you love about it?

37:56 - 40:13 | Brett: Yeah, I mean, I think it's rewarding. It's amazing the perspective and vantage point that I get. I think my favorite part is just that, I don't know, my philosophy is that you can do a lot of things. You can do anything you want. You can't do everything. And if you want to do multiple things, you got to make sure that they are constantly self-reinforcing each other. Because, you know, if you're being pulled in a bunch of different directions, you're not going to move anywhere. But if every step you take forward, you know, on one project actually pulls the other projects forward as well, then you can start to get, you know, to your point, you know, compound benefits and leverage. You know, I actually think being here today is, you know, a great example. Like, you know, I think you reached out in part because I, you know, wear a couple hats and in general, you know, I'm always trying to get leverage on any engagement, you know, for both Kumo Space and Charge. And, you know, I teach a machine learning course at Columbia and, you know, I have now hundreds of students that are, you know, data analysts, data scientists, machine learning experts. And I, you know, try to get leverage out of that, those relationships and network for my portfolio companies at charge. I try to hire those folks at Kumo Space. And so it's a constant balancing act, but in the best scenarios, they all reinforce each other and I'm getting kind of compound leverage out of each position. I think the downside of that is that to get all of that compound leverage, you actually have to do the work in each in each space and it is hard to find times to turn off or power down completely. There's only so many hours in the day and so what I end up doing is I end up doing meetings or podcasts or things like this all during the day. I actually counted my calendar last week. I had 57 scheduled meetings last week, not counting impromptu ones in Kumho space and phone calls and things like that. So I end up kind of, my days are really packed and then I end up working at night. And so, you know, I think that's a luxury I have. I don't have kids. I can, you know, my work, get to focus on my work babies, but I, you know, I don't know if everyone has that same amount of time that they can apply to their, to their work. So it certainly doesn't come without costs. I guess that's all I'll say.

40:13 - 41:01 | Christopher: No, it doesn't. But at the same time, you know, you mentioned, you know, work, work babies, I think, for, you know, when you start aligning your skills and your passions, and you're doing things that you really enjoy and are passionate about, and it's obvious to me that you're passionate about Kumo space, and what the problem that it solves, you know, the need that it's serving right of allowing remote employees to be participating much more inside of these hybrid companies. And then also, you know, charge when you are, you know, investing in you, it's exciting to be able to be a part of the growth of new ideas and new concepts and aligns with your skill set. Sometimes the work doesn't feel so much like work, right? I mean, the tiredness, the exhaustion feels the same, but I mean, I think sometimes the work can put, you know, energy and wind in your sails.

41:01 - 41:04 | Brett: Heck yeah. I mean, I wouldn't be doing it if I didn't love it. That's for sure.

41:04 - 41:55 | Christopher: And that's something that I think sometimes people, you know, I know they ask like, okay, you know, to me, okay, you left corporate, you have all this stuff going on, you know, the question is, is why? And I think, you know, to me, it's, it's really about legacy, right? It's like, yeah, I built the resume, I've shown the world what I could do out in corporate. But for this part, it's really about building something that creates you know, multi-generational impact, right? For me, it's leaning into technology employees, trying to help educate them on a lot of things that I and some of my peers had to stumble through so they don't have to stumble through it. I am curious, you know, you're getting ready to take a vacation. You mentioned that before. How do you think about resting and unplugging? Is it really, you sort of do rest and unplug sprints where you get away for a couple of weeks and just get out of it? How does that work for you?

41:56 - 42:43 | Brett: Yeah, so we're going to go on a ski touring trip and basically climbing up mountains and then skiing down them and then climbing back up them. And I think part of the reason, it's either that or surfing for me. And I think one of the reasons I love surfing or climbing or snowboarding is it really puts you into the moment. If you're trying to stand on a board that's on a wave or if you're hanging off the side of a mountain, it clarifies things and focuses you and really helps. You can't help but tune out everything else. And so for me, I like to kind of immerse myself in experience and that gives me a little bit of a break from the omnipresent demands of work.

42:44 - 43:04 | Christopher: It's, it's so true is that when you you do things that demand your time and attention like that, you know, physically, I know we talked about the fact that I recently got ice ice bath, like when all of a sudden you get in there and you're immersed, like you're just, you're definitely in that moment. But that's, that's fun stuff. Is there anything you do sort of in your week to week that helps, you know, sort of take your mind off things?

43:04 - 43:56 | Brett: Yeah, you know, I think, I guess, you know, we live in New York City and, uh, you know, the, one of the, I think it's funny, a lot of people churn out of New York City. I think they, you know, they have kids and then they stop going out and then they stop, uh, you know, doing all the things that make New York City great. And, uh, and then there's no reason for them to be here. And I fully agree. I think if you're going to stay in New York City, then you got to keep taking advantage of it. And so we go see shows and go to concerts, uh, you know, every, you know, every week, at least a couple of times, try to go out and see some art, get inspired. And so, you know, I think dancing is maybe a little bit of that same thing, you know, you're, you're in the vibe. And so, um, yeah, I guess I, as someone who builds software for remote teams, like I, whenever I can, I try to get in my body and, you know, out of the machine and really enjoy the physical world as much as possible.

43:57 - 44:08 | Christopher: I think that's a great takeaway. How did this journey start for you? How did you start doing both? Did the VC come first or did Kumo come first? How did that happen?

44:08 - 44:49 | Brett: Well, I've been, you know, Charged Ventures is 10 years old. So, you know, that's definitely been around for a while. Actually, you know, KumuSpace, we incubated with, you know, the CEO is a guy, Yang Mao, who, you know, has been my co-founder on prior ventures. And, you know, that's one of the reasons we could do it. It's just because, like, I've known him for a long time and know he's great. And so we sort of incubated that a bit out of Charge and launched it. So, you know, that's, Ideally, we could do a couple of those every fund and have a nice. ownership stake and have charge also be kind of a foundry for next great things.

44:49 - 45:09 | Christopher: Oh, that's super exciting. Would you say, is there one of those capacities that you feel like is your strength or was it the strength of operations that led you to lead into Kumo? How do you think about where your strengths are and where you're actually working to become better?

45:10 - 45:56 | Brett: Oh, well, honestly, I love investing. Investing for charge is the best possible job one can have. Honestly, the reason we incubated Kumo Space is just because we see a lot of great business ideas, things with lots of revenue, margin opportunities, big markets, and we usually would just invest in them. In the case of Kumo Space, I think we were looking for something like it, we couldn't find it. And it spoke to me personally. Like I said, it's like an extension of my person was to create this opportunity for people to live their best lives and be productive and have the flexibility. And so I guess it spoke from a personal perspective, which is the only reason to actually sign up for the hard work of building a company.

45:58 - 46:11 | Christopher: Well, that's good. Well, I want to thank you so much for your time. And before we get to the end, we always go through a little fire round here asking you five questions. What would you say is the worst investing advice you've ever received?

46:11 - 46:21 | Brett: Don't invest with friends. If you look around at every person that's a billionaire, they're all just doing business with their friends all the time. So that's something they tell middle class people to prevent them from making wealth.

46:22 - 46:26 | Christopher: Yeah, that's right. Now that's a good one. So in the midst of all this stuff, how do you keep learning?

46:26 - 46:41 | Brett: For me, it's people. It's talking to the smartest people in their field and, you know, being, letting them permitting me to ask stupid questions. And that that's how I learn is through conversation with smart folks like you.

46:41 - 46:46 | Christopher: Thanks, man. I think we already answered this, but what do you do to recharge?

46:46 - 46:55 | Brett: It's either surf, hang from the side of a mountain, or ski down it. Or if I'm in New York, it's getting a little dance in.

46:55 - 47:00 | Christopher: I love that. What's advice that you would give your younger self working in tech?

47:00 - 47:05 | Brett: Don't wait for the outside world to validate you. Just believe in yourself and let it come true.

47:05 - 47:21 | Christopher: That's great. What soft skill has helped your career the most? Motivating people. Influencing, motivating. Brent, I can't thank you enough for your valuable time. I know that you're super busy. How can people find out more about you and about Kumo Space?

47:21 - 47:41 | Brett: Yeah, well, just hit me up on LinkedIn, Brent Martin, or check out kumospace.com. And I would love to get you set up with a virtual office. And if you're building the next big thing, then feel free to shoot me a line on LinkedIn. And I would love to hear from you. Just mention Tech Careers and Money Talk.

47:42 - 47:46 | Christopher: Awesome. I'll make sure and put that in the show notes. Brad, thank you so much. Appreciate the time.

47:46 - 47:49 | Brett: Hey, Chris, thank you so much for having me. Have a great rest of your day.