Edu: Investor Comms – Happy Investors, Happy Life

Jessy: It just shows that you are the captain of your ship.

You're looking out into the horizon, you are understanding what's coming down the pipe, and you have things in control. And that means instead of me worrying about it, I'm like, you've thought about it way more than me. I trust you have it under control, but let me know how I can help.

Yaniv: Hey, I'm Yaniv

Jessy: And I'm Jessy

Yaniv: That's right. Chris is still struggling with his voice. And so we've brought back friend of the pod, Jesse Wu. From After Work Ventures for this week's episode. Welcome back, Jesse.

Jessy: Thanks. Yaniv. Great to be back on the show,

Yaniv: Yeah, we had a great reception till last time we had you on, so it's an absolute pleasure to have you on again.

In this episode we're going to talk about a topic that I know is, sometimes a bug bear for investors and a lot of founders don't even realize is such an important matter, which is investor comms, how founders communicate to their investors post capital raise.

Jessy: Investor comms is one of the many things that a founder is constantly juggling. And because it probably falls into that, important but not necessarily urgent bucket, maybe it gets moved down the priority stack. but I think that there are ways that founders can, without necessarily spending a whole lot of extra time, really excel at their investor coms and end up saving a lot of time when it comes to leveraging those investors.

And when it comes to the next fundraise.

Yaniv: I have a small angel portfolio and I notice just emotionally the difference that I feel between those companies that do a really great job with their investor comms and the ones that just kind of don't. I suppose,

Jessy: So I'll give a little bit of framing from VC's perspective. So Sometimes founders might forget that VCs are not actually investing our own money. A lot of the time we're intermediaries, we've gotten our money from LPs. we are deploying against a mandate to allocate to early stage tech or grove stage tech, whatever it is.

And that means that we have a responsibility to keep track of how all of those investments are doing, write up a little summary and send it to our investors. usually at a quarterly cadence. So it's actually a really important part of us being able to do our jobs that we have, our arms wrapped around how our companies are going.

And the easiest way to do that is monthly written coms, quarterly, potentially, depending on the stage of company. But I really like monthly because I think that in startup land, things do move so quickly, that it's worth sitting down every once a month to evaluate how you've gone.

Yaniv: Another way of framing it imagine your personal bank account, you can log into your internet banking anytime and see the balance on the stock market.

You can log into your brokerage and see the share price of every single item. Now, when you're investing in startups, you know that you're giving up a huge amount of liquidity, a huge amount of market transparency for that, right? You don't get to look at how your startup is valued at any moment of the day, and you can imagine, right?

If you couldn't look up your bank balance, that would make you a bit nervous. So there's sort of this element of like, okay, as an investor, sure, I'm giving up a lot of information, but I'd like some information about how my investments are doing. and an absence of information rarely feels like good news, right? It feels like, okay, I haven't heard anything for five months from this person, from this company. I bet you they're not killing it. Right.

And so like you said, Jesse VCs are often, usually investing LPs, money, LPs being the, actual investors, behind the VCs. And they also fiduciary responsibilities, but also there's, this emotional aspect. some of the LPs are, individuals or angel investors who just wanna know how their investments are doing. And so that's the first responsibility of investor comms is make people feel at ease with their investment.

So, I know you posted a little while ago, Jesse, on LinkedIn, six tips, for great investor coms.

So I thought the best way to do this would be, let's go through those one by one and, make each one a little bit of a discussion.

Jessy: Absolutely. The first tip is around, setting cadence, for when you're going to write these comms, communicating it and then following it. so for example, if you say you're going to send monthly on the first Monday of every month, or the first day of every month, as long as it's a workday, for example.

Then actually executing against that so that I know if it's the first Monday of March I'm going to open my inbox and there's gonna be all of these scheduled sends from the companies that I work with that hit the inbox at 9:00 AM that is just a VC's dream because I can carve out a chunk of time on that Monday to go through all of those updates, understand how those companies are doing, understand whether there's anything I can do on my end to help and, also know that they're tracking towards their milestones for the next fundraise, or they're tracking along their forecasts and there's no kind of red alert, where anyone in the team has to get more involved to try and troubleshoot or course correct.

Yaniv: And I'd say this tip is number one for a reason. The next five tips talk about what a good set of content looks like in an investor update, but I would say, I dunno if you agree, Jesse, that you're better off with a bit of a crappy update on time than a great update that comes in later than expectations. Because a missed update, like I said, is a cause for anxiety and concern.

Jessy: I would agree with that. you know, they say that turning up as 80% of the battle, I think being on time is, sometimes 80% of the battle.

Yaniv: Right. So if you're having a really difficult month, and by difficult meaning, you know, very busy, you don't have time to write a great investor update. If you say, Hey, this month's investor update is a bit light, we've got our nose to the grindstone, we're closing some deals, so we're missing a few of our metrics.

Our apologies don't do that too often. But I think an update like that is okay, but still get it out on time.

Jessy: And look, I have seen some companies they've scaled in the time since we first invested on them, they have a more sophisticated finance function now. So it's actually taking them a little bit longer at the end of every month to reconcile all of their metrics. But I think that's totally fine if you telegraph it, right?

If you say, instead of sending my update on the first Monday of every month, I'm actually gonna send it on the third Monday of every month, because that'll give the accounting team enough time to reconcile everything, up into the relevant North star metrics that I've been reporting on this whole time.

That just takes one line of communication managed expectations. And then we'll look forward to the update on the third Monday of.

Yaniv: Okay, so you have carved out time in your calendar to write your investor update at the same time every month. Fantastic. Now, what do you actually put in it?

Jessy: So tip number two I've put to consistently report on your North Star metrics and to be as quantitative as possible. So I think the standard metrics for most companies, let's say 90% of companies are probably revenue, number of active users. the average revenue per user, things like CAC, churn, lifetime value of a customer cash burn runway, and how much money you have in the bank.

Sometimes I find slightly weird North Star metrics in there where I'm like, is this really more important than revenue and number of customers? but I think they're basically the. markers that you have, product market fit and a repeatable, scalable, go-to-market function and really great core unit economics.

Maybe gross profitability or healthy gross margins or something like that. things that are common across lots of different kinds of businesses that can be compared against lots of different kinds of businesses that give, somebody coming in a really quick understanding of exactly how you're tracking.

Yaniv: And again, like you said, Jesse, the aim here isn't to be creative and imaginative. It's actually to be boring and cookie cutter, right? metrics are not directly comparable between startups. But again, think of your audience. These are VCs. a lot of professional angel investors, they have decent size portfolios and how many of these updates do you read every.

Dozens. Right?

Jessy: Yeah. Yeah. Well we have 66, companies across our entire portfolio from the Angel, investing days to our proof of concept Microfund days to our core fund days. So yeah.

Yaniv: And, honestly, not every investor is going to prioritize reading your whole update thoroughly. So you wanna make something that's also skimmable, right? You want the tldr, and then go into more of the details. So this is your tldr. Make it nice and quick, and easy to digest. Some people only have five minutes to pay attention to your update.

Make those five minutes count.

Jessy: And I'd be curious to get your view in of, sometimes I do spot a little bit of intellectual dishonesty in some updates. so I'm talking about things like reporting. platform, revenue as revenue or something that I'd pass as gmv or gross transaction volume as revenue. or sometimes not reporting the actual number, just reporting the growth rate and kind of flip flopping between what you report based on what's a better number in a given month.

for me that's a amber flag. it's almost trying to, spin a picture of events that's not entirely true and I think it's picked up on pretty quickly if, you are trying to say that you have $30 million of revenue at seed, I'd be like, Hmm, well why haven't you raised a big series B round then? So it's probably not 30 million of revenue, it's maybe platform revenue or transaction volume.

And I'd say just to avoid the temptation to be a little bit clever in how you report on your metric,

Yaniv: I think it's one of those situations , where the incentives are a little messy, right? Between the founder or the, company and the investors. a lot of it depends on trust that the founder has and the quality of their investors.

and also I think just a psychological shift where you go from fundraising, which is pitching. And of course you should always be intellectually honest, but you know, there's always a bit of gilding. Lil Lilly, you know, it's like you're dating and then of course you get married and you know, you do smelly farts and stuff and you gotta learn to live with each other, right?

And I think people can, so, Not make that transition where they're like, oh, I'm still selling, I'm still pitching to my investors, because I was pitching to them and I never, realized we are now cohabiting . I think there's that element. But there's also, especially if things are not going that well, the last thing you wanna deal with is a bunch of nervous investors hassling you.

Or giving well-meaning, but unhelpful advice because the numbers aren't doing what everyone wants them to be doing. So the temptation to just tell a, positive story and to shut everyone up, I think is, real, right? Where you're like, okay, if I tell investors the real story, will I get a net? Interaction. Will Will this just be a time suck? there is a, responsibility, I think for investors to show that they will respond in the right way to news that is less, positive than perhaps it could be.

Jessy: No, I definitely agree with that.

Yaniv: Okay? So tip number three is benchmarking. Jesse.

Jessy: So I think benchmarking is around providing a little bit of context against some of the things that you share and showing that you understand your metrics relative to relevant companies in your industry at your stage. so it's almost telegraphing to investors that yes, you are, are deep in your own business, but you are also taking the time to look over the fence and understand what your competitors or other relevant comparables are doing, and knowing whether, for example, your conversion metrics are tracking against what is, considered good by the industry, and really troubleshooting things that go out of line with what's.

Yaniv: It's an interesting one. when I think of benchmarks, I think maybe more broadly as being aware of the competitive landscape. you know, I think sometimes there can be a type of exceptionalism in startups where it's like, oh, we don't need to worry about our competitors.

We just focus on our customers. We just care about providing an awesome experience. And it's like, yeah, you don't want to take your eye off the ball and the ball is definitely your customers, but what your competitors are is a fantastic source of knowledge and insight around the market, around customers.

And if you don't show that you are like picking that low hanging fruit. , then you're not doing your job as well as you could. So to me, it's a sign of sophistication that, you're benchmarking. I'm struggling slightly with the word benchmarking because I don't disagree, but it's broader than that.

It's about actually looking up from what's right in front of you, which is your business and your customers, and looking around you to all those adjacencies and seeing what you can learn from them and then communicating that.

Jessy: Agreed. And I think that, if you think of certain kinds of business models, like let's say it's a, B2C application, like a mobile app or something like that, being pretty clear-eyed about what kind of retention metrics or daily usage metrics, session time metrics, other best in class apps in that space are achieving is just really helpful to narrow in on what you are targeting because there's no consumer app that's achieving, 70%.

14 day retention, right? So instead of putting more and more effort towards moving that retention number up and up and up, maybe if you've reached top quartile, you are like, actually probably as much, juice has been squeezed out of this lever as possible. and I'm gonna shift into top of funnel, acquisition or something like that.

So knowing that, you don't just have your metrics, which is telling you where you are, but you have a map, you have a compass, you know, where you're trying to steer the ship.

Yaniv: . So I alluded just before about what if things are not going so well. So the fourth tip is really about that.

Jessy: Yeah. So the fourth tip was around previewing challenges to manage expectations. So, as you said, yv, if there is a stumbling. especially one, in the future rather than one that's already happened, giving a lot of forewarning around that. for example, there might be a large enterprise contract at risk, there might be a product development cycle that's been delayed.

and saying, you know, this is what we are seeing two months out. This is what we are doing to try and mitigate against the impact it has on our business. and this is the possible things that will, do if it ends up happening. I think once again, it just shows that you are the captain of your ship.

You're looking out into the horizon, you are understanding what's coming down the pipe, and you have things in control. And that means instead of me worrying about it, I'm like, you've thought about it way more than me. I trust you have it under control, but let me know how I can help.

Yaniv: I think this speaks a little bit back to what I was talking about with trust from founders to investors. So a good investor, which is hopefully the, people who you have on your cap table, you see a lot of startups. And what percentage, Jesse, would you say never have any challenges on their way to a billion dollars?

Jessy: Probably doesn't exist. Right? what we are trying to do here is really hard. I think that every startup will face challenges.

Yaniv: pretty much none. Exactly. Like everybody has challenges, setbacks, and it's one of those things where they say, every overnight success is 15 years in the making, or, some variant on that. The point is you're gonna deal with a lot of shit on your way to success. And so a good investor knows that and they're not going to freak out or panic or be disappointed in you that not everything is going your way. they know that not everything is going your way. It's just statistically, overwhelmingly likely to be the case. . what they get nervous about is if you either don't realize that things are not going your way or that you are hiding that fact from them and not telling them, to your point, Jesse, what it is that you are doing about it.

So, being in control doesn't look like nothing's going wrong. Being in control looks like I'm on top of all the things that are going wrong. So you don't have to worry. And like, you said, Jesse, you can then turn your attention to can I help rather than do I need to rescue you or am I just gonna freak out and like, get upset that things aren't being run tightly.

Jessy: Absolutely. in your experience, Jen, what are some really. Great ways to communicate when something is off course. And how have you seen both founders and investors handle that situation well?

Yaniv: I'm a fairly big fan of straightforward communication. I don't think there's some, like, magic incantation. It's just, it's becoming increasingly common to say like a good, bad, ugly sort of breakdown.

I'll be honest, I've never quite understood the difference between bad and ugly. But I like, I like a format that says, okay, this is what's going well and this is what's not going well. So that normalizes it. Like every single update, there are things that are not going well, , and I think the thing to say is okay, like, Here's the good section, here's the bad section.

In the bad section. We've got this problem, this problem, this problem. and this is what I'm doing about it. And for me, the, chef's kiss is, and this is what we've learned from it. You know, I think that sort of, growth mindset is nearly like every challenge is also a learning opportunity.

And one of the biggest things a startup builds as it, develops as time passes is this mental model of how the world works in their particular sector in solving their particular problem. And so if every failure, if every challenge, if every setback becomes a lesson, and that lesson is well articulated, that really excites me.

Jessy: I really agree.

Yaniv: Okay, so number five, show that you know your vanity metrics from your needle moving ones.

Jessy: Yeah. And you know, if you, and Chris actually touched on some this in your podcast about seed stage fundraising, which if, listeners to this podcast haven't listened to, I'd really recommend checking it out. I think it was a great conversation. But one of the things you talked about is that in pitch decks you see a lot of, oh we got featured in, a major newspaper, or we won this industry award, or, you know, we got, and advisory board together.

And some of those things are not really getting you closer to product market fit and a scalable, repeatable go-to-market motion, which are probably the two most important things in the seed phase. and I think that in investor coms, , it's great to give some acknowledgement of these, what I might call vanity projects.

It's great to see, the co-founders and the team being recognized in publications. It's great to see, you being thought leaders, but I would right size how much attention you give to some of this and make sure that it doesn't come at the expense of the metrics and the discussion of things that are really going to be needle moving in your business.

I orient that back to the North Star metrics and often those North Star metrics are ways of passing how close you are to product market fit, how much customer velocity you have, and that indicates whether you have a scalable, repeatable go-to-market motion.

Yaniv: One thing I would point out is that the same. Thing could be a vanity metric for one company and a core metric for another company depending on that company's strategy. You know, I was at Airtasker for several years and, Airtasker, one of its key growth engines was actually building brand recognition through pr, through CEO appearances especially, but just generally, on tv, getting in newspapers.

And it was part of a coherent, effective strategy. So if your strategy is get on TV and you get on TV a lot, that's great. If your strategy is to file lots of patents and leverage them in some way, great , but if your strategy is something else and then you're like, oh, but we got on tv or like, we filed all these patents, then you know, I don't care.

I did work for a, company, a large, more than 100 year old technology company with a three letter acronym, let's say, and this company, has filed the most patents in the US every year for the last 25 years. And yet nobody would consider this to be a particularly innovative company these days.

This is an enterprise services company. And so I think that's, the example of a, sort of a vanity metric, where you're like, okay, you really need to think about, are these achievements or accomplishments that you are talking about, are they aligned to your strategy? And I think maybe that's the best way of thinking about it is if it's aligned to your strategy, it's not a vanity metric.

If it's misaligned, then it is a vanity metric and you shouldn't spend too much time patting yourself on the back or wasting energy pursuing those things.

Jessy: Yes, absolutely agree. And I hope I've captured that in the wording, which is not to say, you know, press releases are vanity metrics, therefore never tell me about them. But, being clear-eyed about what moves the needle in your business, and also being able to communicate how it converts.

So, you know, if you are able to say, oh, like we. A funnel set up that if we get a big press, appearance, it reliably converts through our landing page and top of funnel through the qualified leads. and every big spike, correlates to a big spike in user activation then That's awesome. And I'm, there being like, okay, how can I help you get more PR because this engine is something that's really valuable to you.

But if you are telling me these things in isolation of any outcomes it creates in your business, I'm like, oh, are you like chasing a tail? how are we thinking about the time app apportion to this activity when it doesn't seem to be moving the dial within the business?

Yaniv: Okay. We are rounding the bend to number six in Jesse W's list of tips for creating a great investor update. So what have we got here?

Jessy: The last tip is about how you engage and leverage your investors with specific asks. So sometimes I see in updates, Can somebody introduce us to someone in marketing? and I think that just leaves it too broad. I know a bunch of people in marketing, which ones are relevant to you, which seniority, in what sector, what do you wanna talk to them about?

I don't really want to waste their time. and you are kind of asking me to stake my reputation to this ask. so give me a little bit more context about what it's for, and what kind of person you want. So if you can say something like, you know, somebody who's worked in a performance marketing function at a, X revenue to X revenue company, that we want to talk to about scaling our advertising budget, five x over the next 12 months as we really embark on this period of high growth, then I.

Really, narrow down and ask within my network whether there's any personas like that. I can introduce you two and hopefully that is a much more fruitful conversation than if I completely misfire and introduce you to someone who's, been in marketing at a completely irrelevant business model or industry.

Yaniv: I think that's right. And all of these things, are really about making it easy for your investors. In this case, you're asking for help, make it easy for them to help. on top of that, I think there are two other bits that I feel are perhaps appealing to the natural and human vanity that everyone has, including your investors, right?

 If you make your ask really specific and I realize that I can help with that thing, I feel kind of special. Cuz not many people can help with that really specific ask. So I'm like, I will feel more compelled to action. It's nearly a variant on the bystander effect where I'm like, oh, okay.

You know, I'm the only one who knows the specific type of person. I'll feel very motivated to act. And then the other thing maybe just to add as a nice little touch that I've seen in a few investor updates is in the following update, shout out the people who helped you.

Jessy: Yeah.

Yaniv: And again, that's just appealing to people's vanity.

You see that and you're like, oh, maybe I'd like to be on that list next time having, my name shown as being a helpful investor in front of all the other investors. Right.

Jessy: Yeah,

Yaniv: A sort of social credibility.

Jessy: I have a slightly unpopular opinion here. I'm keen to get your view. Yiv. I would say that, I think it might be best to not include. What I would call low value asks in this category. so that might be something like, oh, we are hiring for a junior growth marketer. Does anyone know or something along those lines, because I'm kind of thinking, you know, we invested quite a bit of money in you. I don't think that hiring a junior marketer is that hard. maybe just go do that instead of Using up one of your asks in that slot to do that.

because there are almost these things where I'm like, I'd hope that you are better at hiring a junior marketer than I am , because that's not really what I do. , I invest in companies, and I don't build a network of junior marketers. I build a network of other investors and LPs and maybe more senior operators, who play a angel or advisory role to some of the companies that we're invested in.

what do you think about triaging those kinds of asks and, setting aside some of the lower value ones that should just be part of

Yaniv: Yep. I agree. And I'm taking your question and I'm raising you, which is actually about brevity in investor updates. And going back to all of those previous tips and thinking about this, which is one thing that I personally dislike, although maybe there's some data nerds who, like it is a really long investor update that is just like, okay, you want metrics, have all the metrics, here are these giant tables full of metrics for you to sift through. And I'm like, okay, I didn't ask for a data room, I asked for a monthly update. And, again, to my point attention is a limited resource. Investor retention is a limited resource, VCs look at a lot of these updates.

Angel investors normally are doing something on the side. Like for me, I've, got my own startup, I seem to have a podcast like, I, I don't have that much time for this, right? So, Make good use of the time that it'll allocate to it, and like a pitch deck or any other form of storytelling.

The more you tell, the less attention it'll be allocated to each of those things. So I'm like, tell a clear story. Pick the right north star metrics. Include those, pick the right wins, pick the right challenges. don't write laundry lists. Tell a story. And then when it comes to the asks, One ask will get more attention than five asks.

So pick one, good one and ask for that.

Jessy: I totally agree, Some of the best updates across our portfolio are the shortest. and they also are very similarly laid out month to month. And part of the reason why that's good is because it means that it's easy to be consistent. If you are putting the pressure on yourself to write war and peace every month, then you're probably going to fumble that.

But if all you do is fill in. six things that are the most important bits of your business with a little bit of commentary against any special things upcoming, then I think it's a lot easier to stick to. and also I think maybe a lot of green founders, like to put in a lot of rich description against leading metrics.

So sometimes I receive that's to have a lot of detail about every single pipeline conversation that they're having

Yaniv: Oh, I

Jessy: want to show, like,

Yaniv: Yes.

Jessy: look at all these meetings we're having, we are really working hard. And it's like, I feel like you're exposing yourself to downside here because if these, conversations don't convert, I'm just going to remember how you told me about all of this stuff that didn't end up happening.

And that's going to be a black mark against you. And also like, yeah, I'm just not here to read War

Yaniv: Yeah. I mean, when I say I don't care, I think it's important to understand that your investors care about you a lot, but consider the level of abstraction at which they care about you. They care about the long arc of your success and how they can help with that. They do not care about every little thing that you're doing and your wins and your losses and stuff like that.

So again, comms 1 0 1 is like consider your audience, consider what is interesting to them. Consider their context and their incentives, then speak to that. , so couldn't agree more. I might add a, tip number seven, which I feel maybe omitted because it's so obvious that it possibly shouldn't need to be said.

But in terms of, making it easy for yourself and writing these updates, like use a template, right? Create a template for your update, and every single time you're effectively filling it in rather than staring at a blank page thinking, how should I write this update? I think most people have that one figured out, but if you don't, make your life easier.

And also, again, a template, a consistent format makes it easier for people to read, the content. So do, do that.

Jessy: Yeah. To flip the question a little bit, you're a founder, yiv. What are some of the best investor responses to your updates that you've seen?

Yaniv: The best investor updates are ones that are supportive, right? You don't want to feel. Your investors are people you should be scared of, they, they have a fiduciary responsibility and, you know, when the shit hits, the fan incentives might slightly get misaligned, but overall, you want the same thing, which is your startup to succeed.

And so I guess I'm answering this in the negative, what you don't want is responses that, uh, I guess more common than angry ones or anxious ones where it's like, you know, you need to have 72 months runway and stuff like that. And it's like, yeah, that's not helpful. Like, are you gonna fund that.

So, I think you want supportive responses and I do think, like, it's kind of nice just to get replies that are like, you know, well done.

Thanks for the update. it's actually very proforma, right? But it, makes you feel like there's someone at the other end listening and, supporting you. but then, you know, sometimes it's just getting an alternative perspective can be really interesting when, when it nearly becomes a conversation or a dialogue, it's like, oh, okay, you know, you wrote this in your update.

Have you considered that? there's a caveat there. Like sometimes you get well-meaning responses saying, you know, have you considered, nearest competitor here, or like very obvious strategy there. And it's like, of course we've considered it. and now you're forcing us to, engage and it's, not a good use of time for anyone, but

I think if you've got truly unique insights, sharing those back with the founders and creating a dialogue around, what is the best approach, can be really exciting and energizing because you're then benefiting from other perspectives.

And, that's always valuable.

Jessy: Agreed. Awesome. Thanks for sharing that perspective.

Yaniv: So thanks for that, Jesse. I think that was really helpful. Concrete advice, And this is such good use of your time founders. If you do it well, you know that saying happy wife, happy life. This is the investor version of that, right? Just keep your investors happy, and you'll have a happy life as a founder.

Jessy: Yeah. And I will say that this could actually be really time saving for the next fundraise because

I imagine that as you get to. Deep due diligence with your series A or B investor. They will want that time series view of the company. and the easiest way to provide that to them is here's 24 months of investor updates and if they're good, that just speaks volumes right to your organizational discipline, to your consistency, to whether you can spot problems before they arise.

So it's worth making that investment in future you and writing those updates .

Yaniv: Fantastic. thanks for coming on.

Jessy: Thanks for having me. And if you are an early stage founder and you are actively fundraising or you're thinking about starting fundraising, we are actively investing through all of 2023. So, do feel free to hit us up. You can check out the after work website, after work.vc, or get in touch with me over.

Yaniv: Now you are listening to this and you think I'm a pretty honorable person, aren't I? Well, that's great because we have a pact. We've made a deal with you, but it requires your honor to keep it up. The deal, the pact that you have made with us is if you've listened to more than one or two episodes and you're getting value from the startup podcast, you are required to follow ,rate, review us on your favorite listening app. We would also appreciate a shout out on social media. This helps more people find us and is an important part of growing the Startup podcast and reaching more founders, so honorable people. Please follow the pact and thanks so much to all of you who have already done so.

That's it for part one of our two part series with Jesse Wu from After Work Ventures. Make sure to tune in next week when we'll be talking with Jesse about what founders should be watching out for on term sheets. Don't miss it.