Transcript: Seattle's Ambition to Become the Next Silicon Valley | Aviel Ginsberg

Host: I think you want to find founders who are irreparably broken, so they're just going to keep charging forward and build. And my, you know, bond with them is that I'm the same way.

And so, I'm not here giving you money, trying to take advantage of what's broken about you. I'm saying, hey, I'm broken too, and living this path fulfills me. It can fulfill you too. Let's let's go on it together.

Host: It was a hard lesson to learn because I invested in a couple companies that I watched as their direct competitor became a monster. And I'm like, I knew that was going to be a thing. I knew it so early. But what I really fucked up is that the only thing that really matters is people.

Host: The general thesis behind it is that Seattle should be a much better place to be a founder than it is. And coming out of COVID with the rise of large language models, it was embarrassing to watch sort of the Phoenix of SF proper, with YC leading the charge. And when we're sitting here and be like, we're not going to replicate that. But the the difference is is insulting.

Host: What I was finding was this desire to work and build around others to engage in a community, but also this desire to leave Seattle, which was not a good thing for our ecosystem.

So, the idea for Foundations was, and can we kickstart a flywheel that'll make Seattle a better place to be a founder?

And so the ingredients that we took together was we need to anchor this around a fiscal space, because that's something that all three of those categories needs right now.

Host: Hello, everyone. Welcome to Startup Project. I am your host, Natraj. Today, my guest is Avi Owkinsburg. He is the founder of Simply Measured, which was acquired by Sprout Social. He was managing director at Amazon's Alexa Accelerator.

He's also a general partner at Founder's Coop, and he is now co-founder of Foundations, which is a shared workspace/accelerator or an anchor to Seattle's wee ecosystem, or trying to be.

Host: We'll we'll get to um Seattle Foundations and everything about it. But I think a good place to start uh this conversation entry. Um you know, one of the best episodes of Startup Project was Chris Dewor, your partner from Founder's Coop.

Um we had a really great conversation and I've been following Founder's Coop's work and Chris Dewor for a while. Um how did you get to start work with Chris Dewor?

Guest: For better or worse, my entire career has been wrapped around Founder's Coop and has involved Chris.

So, I graduated college in '07, sort of at the beginning of the Great Recession, knew I wanted to do something in tech, thought maybe I wanted to do something tech and finance. Um, I was from the East Coast. My plan was to go to New York.

And I mean, everything just went to to shit. Like, all of my peers who were graduating were having all of their jobs pulled.

Like, you know, everyone did the proper, you know, internship at Goldman and other stuff or I'm going to go work at this company and you know, rugs just pulled. Um, so I said, I I had been building, I wouldn't call them startups.

They were more like small website businesses throughout it to to pay my bills in college. So I just said, okay, fuck it. Let's just let's go all in. Let's let's do this. And so me and a buddy decided to found a company.

And before we closed on the friends and family money, I realized very quickly that we were just about to lose all of their money because we had no idea how to actually start the startup.

Like, we were reading Tech Crunch and being like, yeah, let's do that. Um, but neither of us had worked at one. We hadn't even really talked to someone who had been there and done. So I said, I I got to go west and I got to see what this is like.

I didn't know anyone in SF, um, but I had one good high school friend who was at Microsoft. And so I wound up in Seattle not knowing anyone. And you know, interestingly, about less than a week after I started, there was a startup weekend.

And startup weekends were very different back. I don't know if they even exist anymore. But what they were back in the day then was like, everybody gets in a room and builds together.

So there was just like 150 people from, you know, early Amazon, Microsoft, budding Seattle startup ecosystem. They're like, okay, let's pick an idea and then let's let's form divisions and we'll all build together.

You know how insane it is to get 150 people to work on the same thing at once? Like, it's hard as a company, but nobody knows each other. You're trying to ship something in two days. Like, complete shit show.

Um, but I raised my hand and I was like, oh, yeah, I'm a designer. I'll lead the design department. Was I a designer? I don't know. I could design shit. My dad's an artist, but I was more confident than everyone else who said they were a designer.

So, I you know, found myself rubbing shoulders with what eventually became sort of the who's who of of the Seattle tech community.

And out of that, I immediately landed a job at a company called Aperature, which was funded by Founder's Coop eventually. So within two weeks of arriving in Seattle, um, I was right in the middle of that community.

So, I got to know Chris as I was as I was working there. Um, and he got to know me and knew that my plan was always to start a company. And I was clear with the founders like, this is this is for me to to learn.

This is wonderful, but like there's nothing you can do to actually keep me. Um, and I was lucky enough to to walk set business work.

I think so many people start their career with startup that goes absolutely nowhere or to a big company where you're just sort of stuck in a a tiny little hole and you don't see the the broad spectrum.

I was able to on day one write code, design products, talk to customers, act as a product manager. I mean, that company went on to sell for over $100 million.

But I was just like, my first few years were like, holy shit, like this is what stuff working feels like.

Um, and when I felt like I had enough confidence to to go out and and do something, um, sort of paired with the fact that I think what what makes founders founders is that they just can't not start something.

Like I I was spending nights and weekends with my best friend working on um anything we could hack together with Twitter data, Facebook data, like all these new open APIs because one of the big challenges always like, you know, you could do interesting things with data but you couldn't get data.

I know that's so weird to think about today, but you know, 15 years ago or 17 years ago really was. Um, so I said it's time, time to go off and start a company. Um, but I don't know exactly what it's going to be.

And Chris and his then partner, Andy, were like, yeah, we like you. You should do it. We'll just write you a check. So we incorporated as Untitled startup. That was sort of the precursor to Simply Measured.

Um, Chris made me put together a pitch deck that he ripped to shreds and made me feel like he wasn't going to invest in me, but he did anyway.

Um, so I I transitioned from early employee at a Founder's Coop portfolio company to founding CEO, which then transitioned into head of product and engineering of a uh portfolio company.

But as things went on, I was finding that like, I was much more interested in the zero to one of things. Like going from idea to MVP, to customer traction.

Um, and so I was naturally spending more time with with Chris and Founder's Coop than I think a normal portfolio company does and offering up my time to do technical diligence, to help with perspective on, you know, the MarTech industry, which is where I I had been and where we were placed.

So, I I found myself immediately wrapped up inside of as like a pseudo venture partner, which turned formally into a venture partner in 2014. And then when we went on to sell Simply Measured, transitioned into a a GP role.

So it it has been in some way shape or form 17 years of working every possible seat inside of the Founder's Coop portfolio and now these days it's just Chris and I working together and investing in new companies.

Host: So, uh, talk to me a little bit about like what is Founder's Coop doing right now? Are you guys actively investing? At what stage are you investing? Uh, what size of checks are you writing?

Guest: Yeah, so we are um at the tail end of our fifth fund, which which is a $50 million fund, average check size about a million, million and a half, investing in pre-seed and seed in the Pacific Northwest mostly.

Um, you know, COVID sort of screws up what what geography really means, but we find that we gravitate towards founders who are culturally Seattle. So what that means is like you learned how to build at an Amazon or a Microsoft.

You gravitate more towards unsexy business workflow problems rather than, you know, flashy consumer products and things along those lines.

Um, and we'll be doing the first close of our next fund within the next month and are actively deploying and in business. I think the the thing about us is you know, neither of us are are finance people. We're both founders ourselves.

We never worked at a larger venture firm. We have no associates. There's no one else who's involved in the fund. We have a lot of small LPs. Like we we act very much like a startup itself. Or like it it is just hard.

We we are absolutely a venture fund. We have LPs, that's how we operate.

But our process, I think, feels more like interacting with um, you know, a former founder who's deploying his own capital into really early stage things that that they find interesting.

Host: One thing I was listening to a conversation on Shift AI, and one thing I mentioned was um you were sort of, do these things overlapping? You are an investor while you're a founder. You're sort of a monster partner at the same time.

I feel like we have that in common. Like, I do a bunch of things. I invest. I work at a big company, but I also do a podcast, um which I I could relate to, doing multiple things.

Um talk to me about how your thesis of investing and finding companies evolve. Like, you know, when I talk to someone who comes new into the venture community, they'll give me a list of a bunch of things on, you know, this is what I think.

But over time, with experience, then they'll realize that, okay, you don't have data to judge all these things uh and they completely realize that, okay, this is a more of a science than uh you know, uh more of an art than science.

Um, talk to me about like what your decision making of like, okay, I have to invest uh in a particular founder or a company.

Guest: with explain it initially. So like, it's a great point of like people come in with a perspective from either the the other hat that they're used to wearing. Maybe they're still wearing at the same time like I was.

So, so for me, when I was starting to make investment decisions as part of Founder's Coop, I was still actively operating. And I was anchoring too much on products as well as what I would do if I was running the company.

So I was thinking way too much about the product itself, the customers, and the opportunity rather than the the founder themselves.

Um, and I was a hard lesson to learn because I invested in a couple companies that I watched as their direct competitor became a monster. And I'm like, I knew that was going to be a thing. I knew it so early.

But what I really fucked up is that the only thing that really matters is people.

And I just did not yet have the pattern matching to know what are the behaviors and motivations that make a great founder because so much of success is about luck. is about upcoming challenges that you aren't expecting, things that are out of your control.

Um, and I was much more bringing my perspective of like, I know what good product looks like. I know how to to to take things to market. That's that's what's going to make me a good investor.

And I think frankly, I had to like that made me initially a bad investor.

Host: It's also like whenever that is a thing that you see, like even now in AI, you know certain type of companies will succeed, but now you have five competitors in the area, who are you going to invest in?

Um, and was these, are these investments as an angel? Because sometimes as an angel, you can do, you know, multiple similar companies. Well, funds have sort of a little bit of more. All as a as the fund.

Um, you know, and and I think that becomes a piece where I think you can run a strategy if you are a thematic fund, you have enough dollars, enough access and a structure. You can be like, I see everything in the space and I pick the winner.

I think it's hard to do that at the pre-seed and seed stage. That tends to be a thing that more like series A and beyond investors can pull off.

But I think, you know, at the pre-seed and seed, there's venture funds like Amplified who are able to do that across, you know, the entire infra world.

Um, but I I think ultimately as a seed stage investor, your job is to get really good at identifying a very specific type of founder. Be good at knowing how to help them along the way.

Like, what are the good parts and the bad parts of of their personality and motivations. Uh, and just focus on those folks and don't feel FOMO about missing out on other things. Don't don't feel FOMO around a specific thesis.

Like, I I think that's just like a a losing strategy. And in fact, like it's it's like embarrassing to look at what a lot of folks will do out there. We'll put out like a whole, we're all in on AR VR. We're going to AR VR fund.

Here's what we're doing. Yes, no, fuck, we're a crypto fund. We're AI, we're crypto again. Like, what the hell? Like Um, and I mean, at the same time too, then you'll ask folks who even stayed somewhat consistent.

And you're like, how did you know to invest in that company? Like, that's a great business. And then you learn pretty quickly that the company did a 180 degree pivot after they invested.

And so the whole reason why it was even in the fund is completely wrong thing. So, like, look, ultimately, early stage investing is like casino level risk in people. Like, that is what you are doing.

And the reason why it works is that you make enough investments that something does work and takes care of the rats and forgives all of the sins of the horrible investments that you made.

Um, and how you become good at it, how you derisk that casino level risk, is I think ultimately just through having enough experience with enough founders, seeing the movie play out enough times.

So alongside, you mentioned the the Amazon Techstars program. I was part of the selection committee for Techstars Seattle from 2010 through 2020 as well. So, I I have seen hundreds of companies.

Actually, if we're get doing selection, thousands of companies from, you know, pit to did they make it? Did they not? To some even IPOing. And so ultimately when I look at a founder, I look at how they're tackling an opportunity.

I look at sort of the shape of the market and the market opportunity as well. I can pretty quickly say, I can see all the different directions this can go.

I don't know which it will, but I can I can sort of take that very broad spectrum of future possibilities and break it down into something smaller and say, okay, how do I take that risk with my existing portfolio, with where else I want to take on some risk, and assemble something that ultimately can't just walk shout to a full zero.

But what you are looking at is really just the human and the market that they're going after. That is what you're underwriting. That's that's it.

Host: I mean, you mentioned pattern matching, right? Um are there any specific like one or two things um that are like team makers or breakers when you look at certain types of founders?

Guest: Yeah, I mean, I would say motivation matters a lot to me. Like, why are you doing this and where does your energy come from?

Um, and a lot of times I think the folks that have that infinite renewable energy resource are those who are building something because there's something broken in them and they're just filling a leaky bucket for the rest of their life with creating something new.

And they they find happiness and satisfaction in the work in building, not in a specific technology, a specific customer set, a specific product. Um, they just have to be putting something into the world. Um, or they're falling apart.

And and like I mean so that's you work with crazy people. Um, and and I and I love that.

I mean, it's it's it's funny too where it's like I think, you know, mental mental health is a a big factor I think in in sometimes the wipeouts that happen where like depression's real, mania's real. We're working with with crazy people.

Like, I I I lived this as a founder. My highs, low, low's real depression.

Um, but at the same time, your your job is to ride that wave as a founder where it's just like I I you know, you don't want to find someone where, you know, people joke on Twitter about founders getting like one shot by ayahuasca and finding peace and happiness and no longer being motivated in their company.

Like there's that version of it.

But like I've seen it happen the other way of like, oh, I discovered the love of skiing and now I'm just really into skiing and I have I have a family and I ski and I found balance in life and I no longer care if my company succeeds or not.

Like there's all those different elements and I think you want to find founders who are irreparably broken. Um, so they're just going to keep charging forward and build and my, you know, bond with them is that I'm the same way.

Host: I think that's a pretty good way to put it because I mean, yeah, there's there has to be a place where this motivation comes from.

Because in in because I grew up in India and when and I when I came to the US and you know, people criticize now, the US people criticize the Europeans, right?

But when you come from India, the Indians will criticize the US people because they they're feel soft. And then I I I was always of this perspective that why? Because entrepreneurship in the US is so derisked in a lot of ways.

Um, like you can take a good, the only risk you're taking is mostly on time.

Um, if you're like, let's say a developer working at a big tech, you should technically not be working at there especially when you're young and doing a startup because it is derisked.

You will find some seed money eventually if you have some decent idea. Um, and what I thought was um the Indians who come here are a bit more broken by their childhood. Right? They have more motivation.

While if you have a really stable childhood, which in most modern world it is, then that motivation doesn't exist. They're happy doing what they're doing.

The happiness quotient is different. so if they have higher happiness already in life, they're not motivated to do this. So I I get the sense of what you're hitting at in in a different way.

Um um talk to me a little bit about um you mentioned some funds investing in this narrow categories, like AR VR.

Uh it was clearly a sign of me not just having more capital on the startup side, but there was so much capital that there were funds with inexperienced fund managers being created left and right. Uh talk to me about that there.

I think maybe it was like 2020, 2022, that is probably both startup side and as well as fundraising side. We have created a lot more new funds which will never be successful as well.

Guest: Money became functionally free, right? And and I think so what you're suddenly looking at is like if money is free, where do I find alpha? Like what where do I go?

And when you run out of ideas, you say, well, the best place to put that money is in the unknowable, is in things that don't exist yet. And that obviously led to a outrageous amount of first-time funds.

And now an amazing thing about first-time funds and I I live this sort of as a first time, you know, it wasn't first fund, but me being a first time VC is, I'm bringing my network with me. Like and I haven't yet saturated it, right?

It's like, who are all these amazing smart people I know from my operating days? Now, let's all give them capital. And and I think with that that also makes it look better than it really is because somebody can easily let's say get 20 million.

They get $20 million and then they can immediately are able to deploy in all these awesome companies. Um, or at least awesome looking companies because they know the right people.

It's like, my buddy who just left stripe and is doing this and this and this. And then an outsider looks and is like, holy shit, this guy is a great investor. Um, but then at the end of the day, you're like, wait a second.

Like, this isn't really a a venture capitalist. This actually is just Someone with a great network who didn't have any capital and now has capital and just deployed it right into their network.

And you know, he or she was not being thoughtful about is there real business? Does this make sense? But all that was also masked by markups on top of markups and and people look like geniuses.

So um, that's why that happened and I think it makes total sense. But the second the music stops, a lot of those folks don't get money for their next fund, they lose interest. This is a lot of work.

Like the fun part is like the excitement you get around a new idea, a new person investing. Then you invest and then it just becomes it's all downhill from there, man. Like I always say that like nothing ruins a a a good story like data.

And the beginning is all, especially in pre-seed and C investments, like we're going to go to the moon, this person's awesome. And then you'll learn like afterwards, you're like, this like shit's not going. What have an asshole?

Like this business is terrible. Like, what the fuck was I thinking? Like this product doesn't even really work. Like, it's always like you're this high, high and then it goes to shit.

Like, dude, that first meeting you have, like the the first investment meeting, you're just like, what is this shit? Like it all and you come into it being like, I'm hearing some crazy noise. Do you hear that news? Well, I wonder what?

Um, you you come into that first meeting being like, how bad is it going to be?

Like, Chris and I will we'll do that and then afterwards we'll like immediately hop into Discord and and we'll be like, wow, that wasn't nearly as awful as I was expecting.

Um, because that's just how it works and then you build yourself out of the hole and into a great company.

And so, and that and that's where the real work is is like showing up every day, helping founders problem solve, knowing when to stay the hell out of their way, knowing when you need to be super active. Um, and that's the work.

And uh you know, I I I think a lot of folks will not raise future funds. A lot of folks have just realized this actually isn't that fun or enjoyable and have moved on.

Um, but the the the side effect of it is there's a lot of companies that raise money that shouldn't have raised money. Um, and we're still going you know, through that pain.

Host: I think the biggest distortion was the opportunity size. Like every idea was exaggerated to be a billion dollar opportunity. And I'll check that even further is that people were like, it's not that everything could be a billion.

Now there's 10 billion dollar opportunities.

Because there were like unicorns went to decacorns and that starts to make the model work, which is like, well then there should be a lot more early stage funds if they can be this big and like it's no big deal if the pre-seed's at 50 post because the company could be worth 10 billion.

Well if the company can only be worth 1 billion and you started at 50, your fund is fucked like at at inception. Um, so that that has been a problem.

Host: I think there's also just a winner bias and the set of winners that that became the winners in the story were all like Mag 7 and you know, all these trillion dollar companies. So now it's not just even in billions.

Now, okay, if this company works, it could be a trillion. Like everyone will say now trillion because now then you can justify a seed round of uh a billion dollars, which is with, you know, AI companies. Yeah.

I mean, and I think there are some areas where there could be winner take all market opportunities. So maybe you could justify something like that.

But I think there's also something I've come to see over time is there is this illusion that great companies have an arc that looks like this. It's just constantly up into the right.

The company will always be more valuable in the future in a long-term horizon than it is today if it's a good company.

You because like you can look at, you know, inside a year of of of reports of Microsoft or Google or that company, but you zoom out and you just see the up and to the right.

But things move so fast these days that I think there are amazing companies where their enterprise value is really this and then it goes to zero over time because the world moves.

And so part of your job there is you invest in the company and you have to know when to get out. And that doesn't mean that it's it's like value captured. It can still be value creation. But things need to die for new things to be to be created.

Um, so like I'll give you give you an example. We we invested in a seed round of this company called Ally, which ended up selling to Microsoft. So it's uh OKR software. Um, and we invested sort of right before OKRs took off and and before COVID.

So there was this like insane accelerant within the market. We were the the mid-market company.

There was a high-end company that Andreson uh and Sequoia were both in and then there was sort of a lower end coming up to mid-market that Insight invested in.

So we went from like this category doesn't exist to there's now two billion dollar companies and we're we're raising money from Tiger. We're raising money from Green Oaks. We're on that exact same trajectory. Like what what is what is happening here?

Um we we got approached by Microsoft for an acquisition. Um, and at the same time, we had a term sheet from uh a fund that everybody knows was like, how about we just give you $100 million at a billion dollar valuation?

Um, even though you have single digit ARR because it's in such a hot category, come on be a unicorn and do it. Um, you know, many conversations with the founder about what's the right way to go? What's your motivation here?

Do you want your software to impact millions of people? Do you want to be a CEO of a public company? What? Like a lot a lot of contention and you know, disagreements frankly on at the board level of what what to do.

We ended up deciding to sell the company to Microsoft. Um, now let's fast forward call it two and a half years, three years I guess after that acquisition. Microsoft acquired the the products, put it into um Microsoft Viva, made it Viva Goals.

They announced even though the product was doing well, they're just shutting it down because their strategy has shifted to co-pilots and the way that all this works they just don't care anymore.

So, the thing they bought for a lot of money, not not quite what that $100 million term sheet was offering a post money, but not that far off. That product shut down. Those two other competitors are functionally screwed.

They're they're trying to seed level pivots. I don't know how they ever clear the preference stack.

And so you look at that and you look at and if I'm going to go back in history to underwrite my investment. on on its head, like that was a bad investment. I underwrote a category that never came to exist.

Um, and there was not enough market opportunity there.

So when I look at that investment versus an investment in a company I made, you know, let's say one month later, that now after call it seven years is just struggling, has a you know, a million of ARRs, break even, doesn't know where they're going, probably end up shutting down.

Like on its head, both of those businesses and categories didn't. But one of them returned nearly a billion dollars and the other one is going to return zero. And like trying to reconcile that in this world is is a crazy thing to think about.

And so I think that is just important to go back to where where this point began of like underwriting something to be like it can worth be worth a trillion.

I think you have to think about that sometimes even in a great business, the local maximum may be the global maximum.

That this is as valuable as this business will business will ever be for strategic reasons because of acquirers, because of the market. Um, and that's okay, but you have to operate um as such.

If you're instead are saying like every business must be a trillion or nothing, you're going to be leaving a lot of enterprise value on the table because I just don't think that's true.

Host: Let me ask you this, was it was that acquisition sort of a fund returner for the fund? So it it was sort of an easier decision for you.

I mean if you're on the board and if you're looking at from the perspective of the fund, although you want to also look at the perspective of the. Yeah yeah yeah as a seed investor. I was very aligned with the founder.

I'm like, it's a it's a, you know, meaningful return rather than. because you must the company. I don't know if you remember Clubhouse, which you know, it's got an acquisition offer of 4 billion from the previous version of Twitter.

And they went done raised the similar amounts from A16Z at a similar valuation. And you know, when Covid dropped, the sort of hype for audio products, I guess, dropped and everyone sort of featurized Clubhouse.

Twitter has a version of it in I mean, and then you know, uh every product tried having it, but I think Twitter only has it now. Uh even LinkedIn at one point had it. Discord has it, I think.

Uh but they got featurized essentially and I guess they'll have to spend the $100 million they raised uh out to find a pivot that might actually help them, you know, find the next billion dollar idea.

But at that time the rational choice, even if you think, because you've only spent two years into the company, the rational choice is to sell the company now.

Guest: I I I think it I think it is.

Like I guess that's sort of the point I'm making is like just because Clubhouse got featurized and what we saw in the long term was that there was not any long term residual enterprise value, does not mean that it should be viewed as a failure or a fool's errand.

Like there were other ways where it's like you you realize that you created something of value that there were buyers for. Like Yeah.

But but recognize like something does not have to exist on its own in perpetuity to be successful, to be worth the journey. Um, and I think we sort of lost sight over the past decade in that those other alternatives are very real and very valuable.

Like it almost became a bad thing to sell your company. It's like, you sell out like what and instead it's like no the chip on your shoulder build a unicorn. Now we have hundreds of unicorns that are going to go to zero.

Host: one more point and then we'll shift to Foundations um is I think this is also the time I think and you were sort of a founder of a previous generation um where secondaries were huge uh because you're getting so much capital at inflated valuations.

I think the other winners were founders who were shrewd enough to make the rational choice of taking more secondaries. Um, I think that was also an interesting trend which will probably not happen as much uh now that we're in a high interest rate.

Guest: Yeah, the I think you need to be able to keep founders properly incented. So I expect some semblance of secondaries to continue and in you know recent years, I have seen it continue, but not to the same extent.

But there are things like, okay, look, like if you're going to take a big swing here, let's make sure you can you can buy a house that your life is comfortable. Like that that is important. And that was a trend that was existing all along, right?

It was not a new trend that happened in 2020. I think the new thing was that you can take like 100 million out of the company. That was a new trend.

Guest: Um it it it got nutty.

Host: Um, okay, so moving to, you know, Foundations. Uh, uh, fun little fact was uh I was Techstars mentor for last two batches before it got shut down. Techstars Seattle.

Uh so I saw this uh story a little bit closely and I can relate to, you know, how important Techstars that space and I remember I think Founder Coop was actually situated just behind Techstars Seattle.

Um, and so it was actually one of the, you know, sort of anchor pies for the Seattle startup community to come together, uh hang out, meet, you know, interesting people from different generations, successful founders, successful investors and newcomers can, you know, come and meet. uh and operators like me can come and you know, see what's happening in startup because I still want to like do angel investments, etc.

Um, and it got shut down. uh there were some legal suits behind the scenes uh which we're not going to touch upon.

Um, but I felt that obviously you know, I think Seattle is probably like second or third after SF, you know, in terms of talent and you know, the wonderful companies we can create but we are all somehow not living up to that potential in different forms and we can talk about that as well.

But talk to me about you know, why you started Foundations? What is it going to be and what is the goal for it?

Guest: The the general thesis behind it is that Seattle should be a much better place to be a founder than it is.

Just starting from that recognition and coming out of COVID with the rise of large language models, it was embarrassing to watch sort of the the the Phoenix of SF proper. Um, with YC leading the charge.

And when we're sitting here and be like, we're not going to replicate that. But the the difference is is insulting.

Um, so I went on a listening tour reaching out to to founders in the area and taking advantage of the fact that so many people moved to Seattle during COVID um, or transition from big code to starting a company during COVID and were extremely under networked and were feeling lost.

And what I was finding was this desire to work and build around others to engage in a community, but also this desire to leave Seattle, um, which was not a good thing for our ecosystem.

Um, so I went back in in in in reflection to why did TexStars come to Seattle in the first place? What was going