Earners. What's up?
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Today, you say you raised thirty million, what's the processes of raising money? Like, how do you who is in your circle of investors? And how do you network and promote your fund to actually get money into it.
Yeah, so it started out with that woman who it started out with that woman who didn't have a lot of network and so was she worked at a big company and then she had some money from that, so she put in like an angel investor. But then she introduced me to her friend who happened to just be in a network. That friend happened to be like a tech person from Facebook who knew a man named Lars Resmussen
who co founded with his brother Google Maps. So that third investor in twenty fifteen or the twenty sixteen that and he's a very early investor in Canva. So he's just very very successful and he sees things early. But that was kind of like the first like like that I could see, Oh, I'm going to be talking to people who have a lot of money and you know, connection here, so I just spent you know, every day, every waking hour, reaching out to people, working with people.
Then like maybe mid twenty sixteen, Stuart Butterfield reached out the founder of Slack. He just saw what I was doing and he wanted to be part of it. I reached out to Mark and Dreson because he he said that something I wrote was interesting, and I use that as an opportunity to ask him to invest and he ended up investing in three of my funds, like the smaller funds, which was has been really cool. He has also blocked me on Twitter, so that tells you my life. Like,
I have no idea to ask him. I don't know I should ask what Chris? I should ask Chris any? Yeah, you should ask Chris. I know y'all are friendly with him, but Marcus he blocks everybody. He blocks everybody. But I must have said something one day that upset him, because I will call like, I will call people out, like I call out Peter Till, I'll call out people who are like friendly. I'll call out and reason I've called them out before. I've had conversations with.
Chris about what did you call them all for?
And when George Floyd was murdered and Dreason Horowitz, which is a multi billion dollar fund, announced their cultural.
Fund Culture Leadership.
Yeah, and then they also, I mean they also announced this like one or two million dollar fund, and I just it hurts me to say that word because it's not to me a fund that invests in black people. I know what it's like to put together a million dollars, So I'm not saying it's nothing. But when you have multiple billions under management, and your response to a black man being murdered on TV is to say, here's this
penny less than a penny, I was offended. As someone who had invested at that point in maybe one hundred and forty companies led by underrepresented founders. I still am offended by it. And in fact, I mean I know the people who are all part of it. It's not like I'm over here just like mad at them and yelling at them. I've talked to all of them. I appreciate the work that Chris is doing. I appreciate the work that Nate did. You black men in these organizations.
I just think that the organizations are it's really interesting to me that they're run by white people, white men, and they especially Ben Horwitz wants to be so close to the culture. And if he's your friend, I'm not trying to offend you, but he wants to be so close to the culture. But tell me, besides, like two founders that I can think of right now, how many times do they put more than ten million dollars in to a black founder's company when they are those two
invest in. It's their business, it's their money. But just like it's their business to not do that, it's my business to talk about it and to say wow to.
The overall goal for backstage capital, you said you raised thirty million should be valued at one hundred million? Is there a number? Should it? Are you looking to be a billion dollar fund? Like? What is the goal? Right? Because obviously as you have more capital you can deploy. Yeah, it won't be a thousand new millionaires, It'll be yeah million.
Well, the thousand new millionaires comes from me teaching people how to fish. That's straight up. It's not about how many people can invest in. But I think I think for everyone involved, our founders, for the LPs who've already invested in, the ones who could invest based on the deal flow that we have, the people we get to see the access we have. I just told you I invested in open Ai. Nobody else got to invest in open Ai, you know, directly through them, right, unless you
had like one hundred million dollars fifty million dollars this year. Yeah, just yeah, I mean, you know, obviously wish it was sooner. But it's the thing though. It's like when Troy invested in Uber and Lyft. But anyway, I think for everybody involved, we should be at least the three hundred and fifty five hundred million dollar fund under management within the next five years. That's what we should be because we can deploy it, We have the access, we have the skills
to deploy that you don't all. You don't always have to have so much money, Like Robert Smith has billions under management, your friend, right, because he's a private equity investor, so he's making investments that are so much bigger than the kind we're making. So we don't have to be a billion dollar fund to be super successful. But I think that a three hundred four hundred million dollar assets under management is something that's exactly where we should be in the pocket.
So what's should track record for your fund?
The track record is that we're about well, it's called TVPI total value paid in. That means that for every dollar that you've put in, what is that dollar worth on paper? Essentially, So we're somewhere around one point four one point five x hovering across two hundred companies, which is pretty hard to track. But across that so we haven't had any major exits. We have like three exits that have been small or aqua hires. We invest at the earliest stages, but if you look at the enterprise
value of our portfolio, it's in the billions, which is incredible. Hundreds, if not thousands of jobs created directly from our investment and revenue is in you know, the hundreds of millions.
So what will be your pitch for investors to invest in your fund? Like, what's the main thing.
That you would I certainly cannot pitch to investors. I can tell you hypothetically because I'm not allowed by the SEC to.
What makes your fun attractive? In your opinion?
We were you know, the thesis that I had ten years ago or twelve years ago played out. I said, you can either be you know, we've done so much or so little. You can either be crashed by the way that's coming or you can write it. It's everything I've said has happened. It's a video of me in twenty seventeen talking about what happened in twenty twenty two and twenty twenty one. Like it's just it keeps happening.
So it's been proven out. On top of that, there are multiple funds that have been created after us and with our mandate in our blueprint that are have gone on to do well and who look to us for guidance. So we actually have all of the touch points. We have all of the deal flow and the network and the infrastructure that we've built manually essentially, so everything that they're looking for for those to find the companies, they don't have to do a thing, you know, come find
the companies through us. Then we nurture the companies. They don't have to do that either, and then we are able to the way we've already done, source the companyanies that then go on to have high enterprise value.
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