That's why it takes as long as it does, there are many ways to make it better, faster, cheaper that I look at with open arms. But ultimately, we're investing in cures for serious disease, and I'm not going to give somebody dying of cancer a fake pill. Right? We we need to be sure that it's really working and that it's safe. Welcome to The Investor, a podcast where I, Joel Palafinkel, your host, dives deep into the minds of the world's most influential institutional investors.
In each episode, we sit down with an investor to hear about their journeys and how global markets are driving capital allocation. So join us on this journey as we explore these insights. Alright. So really excited about the guest today on my podcast. I'm here with Mary Wheeler. She's the founder and managing director and general partner at BioRock Ventures.
You know, Mary spent quite a bit of time at Johnson and Johnson, you know, the innovation center focusing on new venture partnerships and transactions. She's a Kaufman fellow. And, you know, now she's building BioRock Ventures, you know, so BioRock Ventures is a VC fund investing in seed stage biopharma startups, you know, focusing on seed size investments into private life science companies develop novel FDA regulated therapeutic drugs.
So Mary, welcome to the show and excited to, you know, just learn more about you and go deeper on this, this sector. Thanks, Joel. I'm so excited to talk about this. Yeah. Me too. And I I enjoyed meeting you in person. You know, I think that's maybe something we can talk about as well. Just kind of like the difference from like, you know, zoom and virtual and phone calls to finally like, you know, the joyful moment of just kind of, you know, in person.
But before we do all of that, why don't you give your version of who you are? What did you kind of study early in your career and, you know, how did you get to where you are? And then from there, maybe we can pivot off of that and talk about other stuff. Yeah, absolutely. So, and I, yeah, I love to talk about the virtual world versus the real world. Let's make sure we come back to that topic. It actually ties into how we built BioRock Ventures as well.
Lots of ways to answer that prompt, so thank you for that open prompt. I started out thinking I wanted to be, and I feel like I sort of still am, a scientist. And so I did do a PhD. It was in a cool area called cognitive neuro science. Facts, expertise, those are some of the values that have driven me really learning about the truth in any context. And I think that carries me through to today as I do due diligence on investments that we're looking at BioRock.
I did not ultimately want to stay in academia. I have talked to a couple other people who have considered that jump, so anybody wants to reach out to me about that, I'm happy to talk. I've talked to probably over 100 people at this point about that. So I did go get an MBA, a little bit to erase the PhD, so that I could move directly into a startup. So I was part of the founding team of a startup. Then I went to a medium sized public company in New York City.
And then, yes, you mentioned Johnson and Johnson. Big huge corp, all biopharma, all doing M and A and licensing, externally facing partnering, search eval negotiation kind of function, which it turns out is the same skill set that you need for investing. That's what I was told along the way when I asked after I found out about this cool job called being in venture capital, how do I get this job? How can I do more of this? Was in biopharma.
You need to understand the regulatory pathway, how people make decisions in our industry, which is very financially modeled. You put in a lot of very specific details about product development. But across tiny startup, medium sized public company, and big co, the assessment is almost exactly the same, And it is also the same over on the VC side. So after I was at J and J, I did at J and J fund I started a program to fund some companies, and we can talk about that a bit.
But it was a bit of a gap that I saw across my career, and I followed one of those and then a handful of others out of it, and did a lot of advisory step in CBO before being an angel investor to build a track record and then founding BIROC Ventures in 2019. And now we're on Fund two. That's great. Well, why don't we start with just kind of the topic that we talked about in terms of community, you know? So tell me the origin story of starting BioRock.
Maybe share some advice on how to maybe meet your first LPs when you're building a firm. And then I'm assuming based on your vintage, there were some time where some of that happened during COVID. So I think that's where it's very important to kind of talk about virtual and then converting that to the difference with in person. So Yeah. Absolutely.
I mean, the basic origin story of BIROC Ventures is there is a gap, and it is getting bigger in the independent the funding of independent small ventures in sort of innovation around novel medicines. There are a lot of, very deep pocketed, very large four funds this quarter, announced $3,000,000,000 funds each, four times $3,000,000,000 just this quarter. In our specific space of biopharma, it is an absolutely massive space. I have nothing but the deepest respect for those funds that are large.
They take more scientific risks than we do, but they increasingly just cannot write what is actually a seed size check, and they increasingly do not write checks for founders who are independent. Instead, they, for many good reasons, basically need to start their own companies and own them. But I think you probably have a variety of investors and entrepreneurs on your podcast who are more on the tech side.
In biopharma, there just is not an ecosystem for funding these independent innovators, these garage innovators, if you will. I saw that when I was in New York City in a medium sized public company saying no to these founders and saying come back when you have made step A and B of your product development, And it just took them years and years of applying for grants because there was just no funding mechanism for them.
This was over a decade ago and it has continued into J and J, so I started it there as well. When I stepped away from J and J, I worked virtually with a large number of companies, and this was well before the pandemic. By the phone, all the newer, the older video tech, I worked with groups through the pandemic. We talked about who were based in countries, including China, where they had different shutdown rules.
So that was very interesting to see people inside of their meeting rooms altogether, I'm isolated talking to them over Zoom in that case, etcetera. So I have always been a proponent of and a fan of the virtual enabler, but there's nothing like in person to really get to know somebody for a variety of purposes, including investing. So give me I've got an example of what really could be noticed in person.
Do you have an example of something that you would definitely see in person that you can't see virtually? Well, people move through space. I actually am an athlete another layer of who I am. You can't really get a feel for someone. Right now, I'm sitting in a chair. You can only see the top of me and only the front of me. But when you're talking to someone and they're communicating, they're communicating with their whole body. See people use evidence. I mean, that's an obvious one.
I just think people are different. A lot of what we do is, and go back to what I said at the beginning, It's very data oriented. It's very fact based. We gotta go check stuff. Did the FDA really say what they say? We gotta go read it. Gotta read the meeting minutes before we're vetted. We gotta go read the data, the raw data, not the summary of it. That stuff you can do from anywhere. So there's a lot of what we can do that's virtual, and that's why I'm a fan of it.
To the extent that you need to know what kind of interaction and communication style someone has, we all know different people interact differently through different mediums, through the phone. I I have, you know, different generations in my own personal life, my family. You know, I have people who just like picking up the phone is just so difficult and stressful, Right? They're teens and tweens. And I have other people who are like, why is this person texting me?
They need to schedule a meeting and come meet me in person and shake my hand. Right? So we have that range in where I sit. You really need to understand that person and how they will receive and comprehend information and emotion. Everybody's different that way. One thing I do remember is you did tell me that I'm the same in person than I am in virtual. Happy to hear that.
One thing that I did notice in person that you can, you know, it's very difficult to see on Zoom is like, you just go to dinner with somebody, like just observing how they treat the waitress or waiter, you know, or just kind of seeing how they treat other people.
Sometimes you just can't, there's no way unless you're doing like a virtual lunch or something like that, but just how they interact with other people, you know, there's just different cues or just different situations where you just can't mirror that, you know? Yeah. Or their flexibility reaction to unexpected things that happen, which happens a lot if you're an entrepreneur. How do you handle that? No judgment, but there are a variety of ways to handle that.
It's useful information to know as somebody striving at an investor role to be a helper at that door and guiding if you don't understand how someone is handling something. Can you unpack biopharma and therapeutics just a bit deeper? So I guess when you classify kind of in your investment process as you're kind of sourcing and screening deals, what's some of the criteria that you're looking for to kind of be a good fit specifically classified as biopharma or therapeutics?
Yeah, I mean, I think there's kind of a couple of ways to unpack that question, and I would love to talk about any of those. So at the top level, would say, first of all, there's a handful of myths that I hear from a lot of folks who are looking at participating in the biopharma innovation ecosystem. So whether you're a potential LP or an entrepreneur or an investor, maybe a fund of funds, the myths at the top level.
One, venture capital is not investing in companies all the way to product being sold. Almost always, and I mean 95 plus percent of the time, the exit for a venture capital fund, big or small, I mentioned those huge corps but also tiny buyer rock, is an M and A into a knowledgeable player. Know, Pfizer, J and J, Lilly, etc. There isn't information asymmetry in the public markets.
There is a huge amount of necessarily confidential information that you need to be able to review to truly understand the progress of the product. So the public markets just are not able to understand that detail during the period before you get something into the market. So number one, the venture capitalists get out by an M and A. Whether the company went public first or not, that is our exit. It also, number two, does not take forever.
On average, it takes three to five years from first check to exit. Three to five years. So clearly we are not staying in it for the twenty plus years it takes from beginning to end to develop a product. We're coming in somewhat towards the beginning and getting out way before the end. Specifically, on average, about half of the companies are exiting it before they've even been in a person.
So before they've gotten into clinical trials, and roughly the other half, depending on the year, are getting out, still being acquired when they're in phase one or approaching phase two. So that's, I think, a key piece to keep in mind in terms of venture investing. Otherwise, unpacking it in a different direction, like, What do I mean by biopharma? These are companies that are developing novel medicines. So usually they're going to have a patent around their product filed.
Doesn't mean that it was yet granted, that takes a while. And then from there, the business model is really straightforward. So it's really about execution and knowing how to follow. The entire mechanism of developing a novel medicine is designed to prove that it really does what they want to say it does. Call it efficacy. And is it safe? And it's a really important mechanism to respect and participate in fully.
And so I certainly want to underline the importance of groups like the FDA to keeping us all safe and not buying junk that doesn't work. That's why it takes as long as it does, there are many ways to make it better, faster, cheaper that I look at with open arms, but ultimately we're investing in cures for serious disease, and I'm not gonna give somebody dying of cancer a fake pill. We need to be sure that it's really working and that it's safe. So, you know what I mean?
This is pretty provocative, but I mean, you know, years ago, obviously the Sackler family, you know, kind of the whole opioid crisis. You know, I feel like there was definitely a lot of corruption. A lot of people probably there was probably cross pollination with the regulators being possibly like advisors to like the corporates and stuff.
Do you feel like there's been a lot of change, to kind of prevent that to kind of just have better, like you said, efficacy and just kind of have better regulation so that, you know, although a drug gets passed, it doesn't create worse issues where people are now suffering from addiction. I guess have there been kind of a lot more checks and balances in place to kind of have better you know, qualifying criteria to make sure drugs are serving the better purpose?
I think what you might be alluding to is the misuse of of products, which is outside of so first of all, we don't invest. Right? I just mentioned that venture capital invests before it hits the market. Yeah. Right? But also, what you're alluding to was not So it's a little hard for me to comment on it in context to where I sit. So taking my hat off and commenting personally is the only thing I can do here. And that's an overreach on my part.
But if you're talking about people getting addicted to opioids, that is really a sort of post market, how is this being prescribed? I guess it could go back to the label piece, meaning what do you put on there that directs people, meaning doctors. Corruption in terms of I'm not really sure what you're alluding to nor can comment on it. I can just generally say that you do absolutely need experienced people in the FDA and you get the experience by working in a company.
It doesn't have to be a big company, right? And there's hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of biopharma companies. So I'm not really sure what to say to that question. Oh, sure. Addiction is terrible. I actually worked in startup right out of school. It was very hard to figure out how to whenever, in any case, you're trying to measure to prove that something is not going to happen, whatever that might be.
It's actually really hard if you think about how you would design the experiment to prove, which is what the criteria is if you're trying to get something to prove that you have prevented something. Yeah. Which is a whole other cool topic as well, like preventative medicine, you know, absolutely important. Practically, it's always gonna be easier, or it has at least been until somebody figures out some new math and there is some new math, to show that you have cured something.
So you've stopped your disease versus say you've prevented something that might happen in one in a hundred. So addiction is really a huge problem, very important to me personally. I just don't know that I can comment on it as a venture capital person, with that hat on or with respect to the FDA. Some of what you're seeing, as you said, is a little bit provocative because it's not specific enough that I could really comment on it. Yeah. No, that's fair. I and you make a good point.
You know, you're you're the the stage that you play in is much earlier, and I'm distant from the industry. Right? So I mean, what I'm speaking to is about like the documentaries that I've seen and I think you're right. I think some of the marketing from what I remember from, you know, kinda, you know, learning a little bit about what happened, was, there was definitely some marketing that, that advertised that it was, not as addictive than it really was.
And I think that's what caused some of the issues to my knowledge. But anyways, can go back to super early stage. What, you know, in the stage that you're playing in, what are some of the early signals that you've seen in founders that have been successful, especially in this stage? You know, are there certain milestones that they've hit?
I'm assuming in the stage that you play in, you know, it's, it's probably quite, you know, and I'm gonna let you fill the blanks here, but I'm assuming it's quite capital intensive and there's a lot of research that they're relying on, but maybe kind of going a little deeper. And this could be also helpful for LPs that are, that are also, you know, direct investors in terms of like how they can, you know, learn about this sector a little more and kind of the opportunities in this sector.
Yeah. I think you wanna have so BioRock has a bit more of a business case lens. Mhmm. There are also funds that are just very interested in your science. So I'm gonna tell you what I think from a BioRock lens, but I wanna, of course, say that there are also many great venture funds and pathways for those who have some new biology, where they've discovered something about the human body that may ultimately result in a completely new approach.
I would point to groups like Moderna, who came up with a different way, different substance entirely and flagship pioneering was part of funding that. We are talking more about products. So for the groups that we invest in, we want to know that they have experience, it can mean a variety of functions, but understanding how to develop a drug ideally at the stage that they want to get funding for.
So if they have something that hasn't been in the clinic yet, that the leadership has had experience working in a more established company can be small, can be big in that same step because there are very similar steps every single time you do it. And that's because if you don't do it in a way that actually is likely to be successful, it's very likely a waste of money. You need to have a clear product in mind and a clear patient group.
So who are you treating and why will your product be different? Then you need to have a clear plan for how you're going to show that your product is going to be different and better for those. So I think those are key elements for a lot of startups, and they seem really obvious. But I think that in our space, you will often hear people getting really excited about what I would think of as the science or the vision and the mission, and then it's just not going back down to those basics.
So I think that's what- So in software there's like an MVP, right? There's like some type of prototype or like just an early version of the app. So what is the actual product prototype? Is it like a pill? Is it like research on some type of, you know, clinical trial, like small pilot, or is it a formula or could it be all of the above? I guess what's kind of like the traction that you'd like to see on the product side? Yeah. And the traction is going to be data.
Instead of the data being users, if it's a B2C or selling to consumer, they're not doing that. And so that kind of thing, there is no direct analogy, and that's one thing that I think really trips up people who aren't uncomfortable stepping, but there's still data. Is the data coming from some of the who tells you that you cannot see this and you'll just have to wait, don't invest with them. Yeah, sure. There is data and you need to see the data. And is the data from the studies?
The data could be from any sort of range. They could be petri dish data, it just depends. It depends very much on the specific application. It could be from people, and then you say, Look, we have this data in people in a different disease, but look, it tells us something about this other disease and how we would use this agent. Those would be things that are being taken from one use to another, or it could be completely novel. And we already know.
Again, we like to see a BIROC that there is an example out there that's further ahead. So in combination, they have their own unique thing, but then this other thing that's further ahead is working and it works kind of the same way. They call it the mechanism of action. Right? So you target in the biological pathway, and you've got an example that's already working on that pathway, and then theirs is better in some way. Like, sticks better or it finds its target faster. Right?
There are so many different variations on that theme. Just like in software, it's like, you know, we were just talking about different ways to to project plan, and there's so many different project planners out there. You know, one of them is gonna win, and you gotta look at how is it actually better and really check that. Sure. And then do you see simulation ever helping with maybe predicting how the data could evolve?
So like you got some initial data from the Petri dish, but there's like a small sample, right? So do you think in the future or currently, some of these startups could use some type of, you know, algos or some simulations to kind of say, hey, you know what? Like, if we potentially had a bigger sample, this is kind of what it could look like. And you're talking to someone that, you know, did modeling and simulation. So I was just curious.
Yeah. I mean, my PhD, which is cognitive neuroscience, we use neural networks. I think it's really important for everybody to understand that biopharma as an industry has, for over fifty years, been the most quick adopter to any kind of simulation. The entire development process is a simulation.
It becomes increasingly more complicated and increasingly more specific the organism that is actually going to receive the benefit, all the way to the actual patients that are currently suffering from a specific disease. But it is all a simulation of various sorts. Now, point that out at the top level because I think people don't realize how quickly our industry is open to that, especially preclinical before you get into people. We will always use all the things to help predict and de risk.
Predict and de risk. That is all we are doing. At the end of the day, before you put something into a human being, we still do not have enough information about human biology, and probably will not in at least my lifetime, to completely skip putting it into people. And so, always. We're always using all kinds of different ways to model and simulate. Hopefully, there used to be a debate on rational drug design, is what they used to call what really is now being called AI.
There's so many different words for the same thing over the decades now that I've seen this, and there was always this debate, is it rational drug design or is it high throughput screening? So anybody using biotech will remember those terms. It's just wet biology versus computers. There's no versus. It's all of the above all of the time. We need it all, especially at the beginning stages for sure. So I was fortunate to have completed my PhD as well, and it was kind of a lonely road for me.
I didn't have like a support group. So I always get excited when I meet someone else that has a PhD because I'd love to kinda hear, like, your journey, and, you know, maybe something that you learned. For me, it was it was years ago.
And there's things that I learned and, you know, I can talk about, you know, some of the things that I picked up, but like maybe just talk to us about that experience, you know, doing the PhD, you know, I mean, I'm assuming there was like a qualifying exam defending the dissertation. Maybe it's been a while since you reflected on this, but talk to us about just the experience of getting a PhD. Maybe if someone was interested in doing it, what you would advise them on, all that good stuff.
Yeah, I mean, I think a lot of people will ask me if they're college students, should I get an advanced degree? I mean, number one, you should do it if you are interested in spending four to seven years diving deep into a topic, right? And I am so glad I had that time to do that. I did choose to complete my PhD in four years, but a lot of people it takes longer to get that done, and so you need to really love it, right? And It's a trite comment at the top level, but it is so important.
I would say I've also literally just last week sat next to somebody who is still in academia but wants to get out, who's been in it for several decades. I also talk to a lot of people who are at various stages of their whether it's a PhD or an MD or both, and they are very useful degrees in biopharma, pretty much essential for better or worse.
I think what it does teach you is that scientific lens and that patient impact lens that is really essential to making good decisions and what you invest your time and resources in our space. And so it's kind of, in one sense, a superficial stamp, but another, below that, you have critical thinking. You have learned critical thinking, especially if you've done a PhD. And The life of a PhD is a whole other podcast, and each department is different.
I have many, many comments about ways that we can make the life of a PhD better in The United States, which is my only real lens here, which is where I did mine. Think that the absolute power at the top can create some difficult incentives and very difficult scenarios for some individuals, and I think we need to scrutinize that. The life of an academic is a whole other I actually just connected. I saw one of my friends from my PhD was on the front page of the Wall Street Journal last week.
So, of course, I reached out to that person and reminisce a little bit about career pathways. The life of academic is something that you'll wanna talk to academics about. Ultimately, you are a teacher, and you are a grant writer. What was going on in your mind as you were thinking about the PhD in terms of your career path? Did you immediately know you wanted to be a venture capitalist? Did you think about being a professor?
Did you think about just working at a large institutional health care company as a medical director? I guess what were some of the ideas that you had maybe during your PhD or even earlier? I had thought I was going into academia. I just wanted to spend my life. So you wanted to be like a tenured professor? Oh, sure. Yeah, absolutely.
Yeah. And so I think if someone had said to me what you will be as a teacher and a grant writer, and you will be focused on one very, very specific area, I did quickly realize two years in that this was actually too narrow for my particular. Yeah. And that's no disrespect for those who have chosen to do that. It's just something you would just wanna know, and maybe you learn it as you go, which was my experience that actually, no. I I wanted to do something that was way more broad. Right?
Venture capital, you get to look deeply briefly, into a lot of things and then go back out and do something else deeply. And I love that, but you don't have that opportunity in academia. So for me, was really simply where is my best use case, and it wasn't it wasn't being a professor. Yeah. Well, if you think about it, right, when you do your dissertation, it has to be an original idea that hasn't been approached before.
And usually when you do your qualifying exam, there needs to be a lot of data, There's data collection. So that doesn't sound too dissimilar to what you're doing now, right? You're looking at potential health care companies and opportunities that, you know, biopharma opportunities that have that initial data. So I felt like, I feel like there's a parallel there with the novel discoveries and then kind of using that data to validate it, validate it enough to actually write a C check?
Yep. That's the skill set I was saying that you really need to have sort of tables in some fashion to be a decision maker in our space because you need to be able to quickly understand. As far as generating the data, that was very different. I'm sure, as a PhD, that you also spend a lot of time late at, like, two in the morning trying to, like, finagle duct tape together something on a low budget, literally. Mhmm. That piece of sort of being on the front lines is is less part of my life now.
It's much more about judgment and decision making and less about execution. And then, I mean, the skill set that I had to develop too in my doctor was like the statistical skills.
So there needs to be, obviously, some type of statistical significance for it to be deemed viable, at least when I was doing my So that was kind of difficult too because you have to prove with some type of measurement that it is important enough to pursue, which I thought was quite difficult, which is probably not the case as much now, you know, but I I'd like to kind of switch gears a little bit to the founder.
So we talked about the product, the novelty of the solution to maybe an opportunity or a problem, but, you know, tell me a little more about some of the characteristics of the founder that you've seen as a common pattern for success. Yeah. And these are gonna sound the same as what you probably have had other venture capital folks who invest seed ish. Sure. Yeah. Having grit, being able to break through walls. Right? Those are kind of the common questions. Yeah. But but what else?
What's what's what else is kind of unique to when you when you pick them? We we talked about in person interactions. Right? What are some of the other attributes outside of the the common, you know, outputs that I hear from everybody?
Yeah. Well, I think it is actually surprising to a lot of people that biopharma folks, they think of us as a bunch of scientists in a lab, that is absolutely not what's happening, that we are the same at that spot, which is we need founders who have grit, who really believe in what they're doing, and are coachable, flexible. Some things that are slightly different, and that depends on your fund, we are not looking for team builders. We do not have as a metric how many people have you hired.
You're like, what's your growth? Almost the opposite. We do not want to fund you hiring a ton of people too early. Instead, we really want you to focus on product development.
So at the end of the day, a lot of the people that we're investing in do go back to what you were pointing out, is they're going to be away from that vision and mission and sort of the rainbow kind of slides, and you're going to see a lot more sort of 25 slides with dense, dense data that they're able to share under a non confidential disclosure. So they've got like, here's the data, here's statistically significant, here's the error bars. So there's going to be a lot more of that.
But otherwise, what we're looking for in terms of in terms of founder, is really the same. At the seed stage, it's really hard. It's really hard. You gotta kind of keep it going in all different eating a lot of plates, etcetera. So I know we got a few minutes left. I wanna touch on just being an emerging manager and what advice you'd give to emerging managers that wanna build something. Because congrats to you, Mary, on all that you've built, all that you've accomplished.
What you know, you let's say you got a little big, you know, a little brother or a little sister kind of following you looking to kind of be your mentee or just kind of learn from you and say, look, I want to launch a fund one day. What what's maybe one or two pieces of, advice you'd give to them, to kinda just get get to their first close or at least just come up with some type of, strategy that differentiates? Yeah. I think there's a couple of just basic tactical.
This has been a very difficult recent fundraising environment for a lot of emerging managers just because we can talk about that if there's time. Some people talk about a first close, but everybody in the know, all of the other emerging managers that I've talked to who are not, you know, famous and already in the mainstream slash a spin out from an established fund, just close. To be in business, just close and invest. Invest close. Right? Do not overthink it.
Again, that goes back to we are all seed founders when we are emerging managers, especially when you're doing your proof of concept fund, your fund zero, your fund one, whatever you want to call it. You're going to be going to your high net worth folks and some of the family offices. You can be strategic about your later stage funds and follow the more typical guidelines, but you have to just be a scrappy entrepreneur when you're first starting. You're doing your fund for a reason.
You likely see a clear gap, So, make sure that people can understand why you exist or do your best. For those groups that are just not getting what you're doing, just keep going, Just move on, and you can come back to them later when you figure out a better way to connect. One other person pulled me aside early eight years ago and was like, Okay, just keep in mind that it is a numbers game. I'm like, oh, yeah. Numbers game. What are you talking about? So they're like, no. No. Listen.
You're gonna need to meet with a thousand people to get one check. Run your numbers. What are you gonna raise and how many people you need to meet with and find introductions to n of those people. Sure. And that is literally what I've seen. I've seen the same thing, with many of the super early managers. You know, it's a volume game, and I would say it's the same thing with any business, you know, I mean, if you're doing B2B SaaS, there's a close rate, right?
So you you're at a 25 to 30% close rate based on how many calls you take. So, there's a lot of parallels when it comes to to fundraising. But anyways, Mary, this was amazing. Thanks so much for unpacking, you know, all of the knowledge that you have. I know I learned a lot, selfishly, this is, beneficial to me, but also beneficial to the community. So thanks at all that you're doing. And look, you're you're backing companies that are changing the world.
So thanks for doing that too, appreciate it. Thank you. And I'd love to talk to anybody who wants to talk more. So hopefully we can connect. Absolutely. I'll share your contact info. Thank you.