How I Invest with David Weisburd
00:29:50 · Chaz Englander, David Weisburd
[00:29:50] S1: Obviously, we regularly connect, you know, pretty the most part of our customers are connecting our product into their, you know, CRM, for example. So, you know, clearly anything, you know, in the CRM, you know, we can tap into. But I think there's a lot of work to be done, you know, your exact point, it reminds me kind of when the business was started around one of our first use cases is, you know, we wanted to understand that relationship instantly. If there's a mutual connect with, you know, we're looking at opportunities and there's a mutual connect with the management team. We're looking at fund, you know, someone as the GP, etcetera. Whatever it might be, that's very much untapped. We're looking at bringing on a product team to specifically focus on that area and that's mainly just because our customers are slowly moving in the direction of, you know, keepies, LPs, etcetera. So I think in general, I think it's gonna be quite popular. [00:30:35] S0: One of my oldest friend, John Sung Kim, he started Five nine as a public company, and he all... He hammered this into me. He always hammered into me, you have to be close to cash. Companies die because they're not close to the cash. And when I think... That's why my mind went to, well, what's driving our revenue? Advertising and more deals. So what should we be solving? Guess and more deals. That... That's kind of why my head just immediately went to sourcing, I guess, on both sides.
00:30:35 · David Weisburd, Chaz Englander
[00:30:35] S0: One of my oldest friend, John Sung Kim, he started Five nine as a public company, and he all... He hammered this into me. He always hammered into me, you have to be close to cash. Companies die because they're not close to the cash. And when I think... That's why my mind went to, well, what's driving our revenue? Advertising and more deals. So what should we be solving? Guess and more deals. That... That's kind of why my head just immediately went to sourcing, I guess, on both sides. [00:31:01] S1: One of them Y Combinator mottos, which I think was, Michael Seibel that said it most was, you know, the idea of a a growing business is just don't die, which basically just means, like, don't run out of cash. So I'm very aligned with that. [00:31:14] S0: If you could go back to when you were just starting your first company, your first YC backed company, and you could give yourself only one piece of timeless advice, what would that advice be? [00:31:24] S1: Definitely perseverance. You know, I've mentioned this. We're on the Y Combinator podcast recently, and I said this on there. Not blind perseverance, but perseverance. I think if something makes sense to you and you are passionate about it and it makes sense in itself, you should probably continue doing that thing and persevere at all costs. I think across all the companies, there's ups and downs. These economic cycles are going... If if believe in something, I think the key is to just persevere.
00:31:54 · David Weisburd
[00:31:54] S0: It goes back. I've now interviewed nine billionaires. Hopefully, you'll be my tenth billionaire. You'll you'll let me know in a few years. And they all have one and a half things in common. The first thing is they're all compounding something. None of them are building linear businesses. You don't have enough life to become a billionaire linearly. It must be compounding. Sometimes it's literally network effects. Sometimes they're compounding brand. There's different ways to compounding, but they're all compounding. This is universal. And the second thing, almost all of them, I can actually think of a counterfactual, is they're all not only walking in the opposite direction of the market. Oftentimes, they're running in the opposite direction. I had the CEO of iCapital. He was a decade earlier to the retail trade. When he was doing it, people... You know, no institutional investor wanted to take retail capital. And he took a bet, and not only did he say, I'm gonna do this, you know, hopefully it works out. He was just running there, and now he's built a $7,000,000,000 company or so. Another example, Ryan Serhant. He was doing social media back in 2014. Every real estate agent was ridiculing him. You look like a clown. I think he literally jumped in pools, maybe even literally dressed like a clown, and he didn't care because he had that conviction. In 2014, he sold, I believe, like a $15,000,000 penthouse through YouTube. And that... That's when he knew kind of he had that proof. So having this conviction, and if you have this conviction, you're going in the opposite direction and no one else sees that, that's basically the sign. There's these signs that you get in startups. We had... When we started the podcast three years ago, every single institutional investor that had to go to, we had to create a compliance call. We knew that we were too early. Thankfully, was a VC and understood that if you... If it felt too early, you're probably on time. Having this contrarian insights where everybody thinks... Most of the time, you have a contrarian insight. Everybody thinks that you're wrong. You actually are wrong. But once in a while, you just keep on going back to first principles. What am I missing? What am I missing? And if you're not missing, you better run because people are gonna catch up.
00:33:42 · Chaz Englander, David Weisburd
[00:33:42] S1: That's it. Pass it in. [00:33:44] S0: Well, Charles, this has been an absolute masterclass. Thanks so much for taking your time, and thanks so much for jumping on podcast. David, thanks so much. That's it for today's episode of how I invest. If this conversation gave you new insights or ideas, do me a quick favor. Share with one person in your network who'd find it valuable or leave a short review wherever you listen. This helps more investors discover the show and keeps us bringing you these conversations week after week. Thank you for your continued support.