I hope everybody's having a great day. So far, it's been a fantastic show. I'm lucky enough to have Leah Sullivan here with me. As Jordan mentioned, she's a general partner at fuel capital. Her investment portfolio includes early stage companies across a really wide range of categories, including consumer tech, hardware, education, marketplaces, and retail. And I think that she's probably the perfect person to go over this next next topic with us because she has some experience as a founder as an operator, and then also now as an investment advisor, with startups, so can't wait to hear from Leah about how to kick the bad habits. Welcome, Leah.
Thank you so much, Darrell. I'm thrilled to be here. Hey, everyone, I hope you're having a great day. And let's let's dive right in. I remember being a founder back in 2008, in Boston, when I was just starting TaskRabbit. And I remember going to a conference similar to this, and hearing from a late stage investor about the 10 mistakes startup founders make. And so I've been dying to do this presentation, sort of 10 years later with my own take on things. So let's get going. So, um, the first mistake I see founders make is holding their idea too close. So you know, people say all the time, well, if you share your idea with too many people, someone's going to steal it, someone else is going to do it. Let me tell you something, I am not the first person to have the idea for TaskRabbit. It is a very simple idea, right? It's like neighbors helping neighbors get things done this exchange of skills. I can't tell you how many times I would be giving a presentation. And someone after the presentation would come up to me and say, oh, my goodness, I had this same idea for TaskRabbit, like 10 years ago. And I'd be like, great. What did you do with that idea? And I think the point is, is that the idea itself, isn't the magic, the magic is in the execution of your idea and actually turning that idea into a business. If you share that idea freely, with as many people as you can, you just never know where your connections are going to leave. And I'm going to get to that point, actually, in a moment. So my next, my next tip, is to take conflicting advice. And this may seem rather strange, but I found as a startup founder, I would go to really smart people, all the time, I had built an mazing network of advisers around me, to help me work through challenges and think through problems. I would take a problem to the same to different CEOs to different advisors. And I'd say what would you do in my situation? What advice do you have for me, and these really, really smart, brilliant CEOs, these really brilliant people would all give me different advice. And I would think like, how is that even possible?
I think what I realized over time, was that no one knew my business like I did. And no one could ever make the calls that I needed to make. And so it was my job as the founder to take all of this conflicting advice. And then to make the call and make the decision and be confident about that decision myself. So I'm take conflicting advice. My next tip is to get your ethics in check. Well, what does that mean? Well, this has to do with company culture. You know, it's never too early to start thinking about your company's culture. What is your mission? What is your vision? What are your company values, um, even if it's just you, you can start this work, it's you and a co founder, think about this, be intentional about it. I know, when I was running TaskRabbit, I always felt like we had built this amazing culture that happened both organically and intentionally, we did this work upfront. But it was very familial people were very friendly with each other, we all have this shared mission around helping people make money in this change in the workforce. And at times, that felt really, really good. But at other times, I almost wanted the culture to feel a little bit more like a high performance team. And, and be a little bit more driven and a little bit more with a sense of urgency. And so I actually wish I was a little bit more intentional about creating a culture that drove the urgency but also kept the balance of feeling familial and feeling like we had this shared mission and shared goals together. So that's just one example. Okay, so I mentioned, tell your idea to everyone, you know, you never know where connections could lead. And so the interesting thing about this is, you never know where the connections can lead because you have to ask for the next connection. So my advice is, whenever you're networking, when you're building relationships, say you get a meeting with someone at the end of that meeting, always ask them, who else should I talk to? Is there someone else in your network, you think that could be helpful to me or that I could chat with? And I'll give you an example. So I was at dinner with friends back in 2008. Early It was early that year, January, February, I had the idea for TaskRabbit. And I was chatting with friends over dinner about the idea. I was still working full time as a software engineer at IBM. But one of the friends at dinner said, Oh, you know, I love this idea. I really think that you should reach out to my friend Scott. And she gave me his email address. I think he really loved this idea. He said, Okay, so I emailed Scott. And the next morning, he wrote back and I realized that it was Scott Griffith, the CEO of Zipcar. I had no idea he was the CEO, when she made the suggestion that I reached out to him. He very kindly wrote back and he said, Hey, why don't you come by my office? And you know, tell me more about your idea. And so Scott, and I really hit it off. I started meeting with him kind of every couple weeks and developing the idea for TaskRabbit. It turned out a lot of what he was thinking about and in Zipcar, and sharing resources in a neighborhood was very
similar to how I was thinking about building this marketplace around services. And so Scott, at one point, said, You know what, I think you should talk to john Zimmer, he's the founder of zimride. Now, zimride, later became Lyft, as some of you may know. And so I met john. He was visiting Boston, actually, and he was cutting a deal with Zipcar at the time. And john said, Hey, you know, there's this incubator program that Facebook is running in the summertime. So the summer of 2009, if you decide you want to apply, let me know and I'll put it in a good word for you. And so I did ended up applying to FB fun, this this Facebook incubator program that was run in the summer of 2009. JOHN put in a good word for me, participated in the incubator program that was great. At the in the middle of this program, Tim Ferriss came and he presented to the the class of Facebook companies. And Tim, at the time, was, had just written the four hour workweek, The New York Times bestseller, and you can imagine, you know, writing about how to make your life more efficient and time more efficient was very aligned with how I was thinking about TaskRabbit and outsourcing app. And so I got the chance to meet Tim, Tim, you know, over lunch, said, You know, I would love to share this idea with one of my investor friends and Mira co at Floodgate fund. And I was starting to think about raising money at the time. And so I got to meeting and ended up leading our first round of institutional funding a million dollars See,
whole process started in 1008. And ended with an investing the first money in the TaskRabbit in October of 2009. So if at any point in that relationship building, I hadn't taken the introduction, I hadn't met with that person, if I hadn't been out to dinner with friends, I have no idea if that path would have been different. And so it just goes to show you, you never know where these connections can lead. And you should definitely take every connection you can and then asked for the next one as well. So this one is hard. Don't mind the haters. And it's it's twofold. You know, on one side, you've poured your heart and soul into this company, this business, this idea. And sometimes people have bad experiences. And it just really got to you, you can really take it personally or maybe people don't like what you're doing or how you're doing it. Um, one way to look at it is that you've built something that is so important that people feel passionate enough about it to tell you they don't like it. And so that is one way of kind of looking at people that are that are having trouble with your service or site or don't like you know how you're building something. The other way of also looking at it is illustrated through I think best through a story so five years into tasks. Grab it. We had built in scale this marketplace business, we had 60,000 taskers in the US, we had millions of customers. And we wanted to actually try something new, we wanted to try a brand new mobile first product. And we thought, you know what, let's launch this product in a brand new market where no one has heard about us before. So we can get some real data on how it's gonna work because it is so different than the marketplace we had built to date. So we took this product, we launched it in London, and it was mobile first mobile only. And it's a completely new way of operating for our taskers and how they were making money and how they're picking up jobs. It works great in London, all of our key metrics doubled, if not tripled, we're driving huge revenues. And we were like, Oh, my gosh, we've got to roll this whole product back to the US market. It's just so compelling. We've we've got to do it. We know it works. So in 2014, we decided to take that new product, and we relaunched the TaskRabbit service in the US market. People were pissed, they hated it, particularly the taskers that had been on the platform for years and had gotten used to operate in a certain way and, and making money a certain way. And the truth is, is that we were really improving the way they made money, how fast they made money, how much money they can make. But a lot of people can see that they were just so used to doing things a certain way. And that's what they were focused on. And so that was really, really hard. We worked through some really tough conversations with our Tasker community on this change. And in the end, we had the confidence to know that it was going to work because we had seen it work in London, thank goodness, we had done that first and used it as a test market. And so we pushed through, it was really hard. And we ended up training the Tasker community, some of those early, early tabs didn't stay with us, new people came on board, and we're thrilled to be making money in a new efficient way, we're able to actually grow the marketplace faster and stronger and more sustainable over time. And so it really was the right choice for the company. But it was really, really hard. And I think the point here is when you change product, when you change things, even though it is the best decision for your business, it's the best decision in the long term. Sometimes there are short term pain, painful moments that you have to be able to work through. And by the way, there were some taskers that had started with me back in Boston in 2008, that are still on the platform today, and still making money today and stuck with us in our, you know, super happy with where they ended up. So there's always both sides to the coin.
The next one, and I won't spend too much time on because, you know, it's sort of it's, it's an obvious point. But it's so hard to ignore the competition, I'll tell you in 2012 2013, there were so many competitors emerging that were just like TaskRabbit, we started in 2008, we were one of the first in the market. And because we're doing well, you know, there are these other competitors that popped up. So one, you know, looking at it at it as a validation for the market, I think is good. Um, but also first mover advantage isn't always an advantage, right? second advantage is a thing. They can watch and see what you've done, what you've done, right what you've done wrong and adjust their strategy accordingly. My point here is focus on you focus on the company, focus on the business you're building, don't get too distracted with what's happening all around you. If you really know your business, and you know your customer. And you know how to scale that is the most important thing. And so don't get too wrapped up in what other competitors are doing because it can take you off course, it can be a massive distraction over time. covering your board. So if you're an early stage company, maybe you don't have a board yet, and maybe you have a small board in the early days of TaskRabbit. When I just had angels involved, I had a small board, I had an angel investor, I had an advisor, we met over lunch, it was very casual is very helpful. Now over time, of course, as we raised more money, the board became you know, more structured, I had up to nine board members at one point for TaskRabbit. That was way too many there are way too many voices in the room. There was a lot of debate happening in the boardroom about what we should be focused on about competition, as I just mentioned, you know, don't get too wrapped up in competition. You're bored, and investors can get way too wrapped up in competition. And so I think it's really important when you think about who you're surrounding yourself with, whether it's your board, whether it's a board of advisors, but any group that's going to be really influential to you. And there are many voices in the room, and that the plan is to partner with are really aligned with your mission, your vision and your values, I actually had to restructure that board and get it back down to five board members from nine and that was not an easy task. And so just remember, your board does typically grow and scale over time as the company scales. And so being really thoughtful from the very beginning, about who you bring around the table will make your life easier in the long run. Okay, tip number eight, not everything needs to scale in the very beginning.
And to this point, you know, in the early days, it's really important to understand your customer, your customer needs. And really, I believe the only way to do that sometimes is just to do it yourself. I was the very first Tasker in Boston, I was on my little scooter running around Boston doing jobs, because I needed to understand how the logistics of this marketplace was going to work. When we thought about bringing on a whole group of taskers. You know, you might think like, oh, we're gonna have to figure out how to automate this process. And we're gonna have to build code and processes around it. But in the very beginning, we needed to do everything manually. The first 30 taskers that joined the site, I interviewed myself over coffee in a coffee shop, I spent 30 minutes with each of them, because I needed to understand what they were looking for out of the site and service, who they were as people, what were their profiles? What, what were their priorities? was their priority to make money was that flexibility? Was it being able to, you know, be autonomous, be a business owner. And so doing things in the early days that don't scale is absolutely the way to go. Now, over time, you're going to have all of those learnings and you're going to be able to automate things. You know, over time our vetting process became a background check, it became an online application. And by the way, the application was Freeform. And we use natural language processing. To understand whether or not we thought that Tasker was going to be a good communicator, because we learned that communication was key in creating a great Tasker experience. And so you can automate things over time at scale. But in the very beginning, just remember doing it yourself is sometimes the way to go. Don't read the rollercoaster. I mean, startups are just so hard. They're so up and down. And, and, you know, I can remember having really exciting great days, and really, really terrible bad days. And sometimes it wasn't just days, it wasn't a matter of hours, you know, it would be so up and down. And in the beginning, I did emotionally ride that roller coaster, I would ride the highs, and I would hit the lows. And, you know, it was not sustainable. I mean, it was just a way to burn yourself out really, really quickly. And so my advice is to just try to stay level, just remember that, you know, things aren't always as great as they see. him or feel, and they're actually not always as they seem or feel. Um, you know, I can remember at one point, we have this surprise mentioned on Good Morning America. And we didn't know it was coming. And all of a sudden the phone lines were flooded and the website goes down. And we're both feeling, you know, incredibly excited that, you know, we got this, this brand recognition in this mention and all of these users. And at the same time, we're just in total panic mode on the back end, and nothing is working. Right. And so it's like both of those feelings at the same time. You know, the key there is just to stay level and particularly as the founder and CEO, your team is going to look to you and they're going to look to you for cues on how they should be feeling and what emotions they might be having. Are they validated. Are you panicking as a leader even at you might feel like oh, but the highs should be celebrated and they should you should absolutely celebrate the highs and the milestones and the great things that happen But at the same time, you also want to temper that with, there's always work to be done. There's always more to do. And so it's really important, I think, to have that perspective of stain level overall, you're, you're gonna feel much better emotionally, you're going to be, you know, acting in a way that's more sustainable for you and your team as well.
So my last tip here is to take time to refuel. Now, I know that as a startup founder, it feels like there is no time or space to think or do anything else than work on your company. I've been there. I've, I've felt that, um, and the truth is, I wish that I had been better at having the perspective that if I had taken time, space, energy for myself to refuel and recharge, I would have been a better leader, a better CEO, you know, the company would have would have done better as well. And the team would have felt better. And, you know, my example for this is our very last round of funding for TaskRabbit, he would think it would have been the easiest round a raise, we had raised, almost $50 million to date, we had tons of momentum, we were almost profitable, we were growing, it was a big business. And I went out to raise just a little bit of money. Now I realize now as an investor, why it was so hard to raise a little bit of money at the end. Because at that point, no one wants to write a small check, they either want to write a massive check, because they're a later stage fund. And they want to, you know, have a two to 3x return on that check. Or if you're a smaller fund that writes smaller checks the valuations too high, and you can't get the right ownership, and there's too much dilution. And so for all of the dynamics that I understand now, as an investor, that last round of funding for TaskRabbit was really, really hard. It was so hard, in fact that I literally put myself in the hospital trying to raise it was like three to $5 million. And I wanted to raise that small amount of money because I wanted to get us to profitability. But I didn't want to take the full dilution that a massive growth round was going to require. And so because it was this tough, awkward check size, it wasn't really an obvious, you know, venture investor model. I've talked to hundreds of investors. I mean, I had this spreadsheet and this list of just hundreds of investors and I just like, went down the list. And it was no after no after No. And I just ran myself ragged to the point where I was so stressed out, I was so burnt out that, um, I went for a walk with a friend one day and other startup founder, we were walking around Soma, where the TaskRabbit office is kind of Down by the bay in San Francisco. And later, he tells me that I looked a little bit green, like on the walk. And so I remember driving home, and I was feeling a little off. And I lay down on the couch at 8pm. And my stomach was just hurting. And it started hurting in a small way. And then more and more, it got worse and worse and worse until I finally decided, you know what, I think I need to go to the hospital. And at the time, I had an 18 month old baby at home so I couldn't pack her up and bring her with me she was in bed sleeping. So I took a lift by myself to the emergency room, got myself checked in.
Five hours later, you know when that is stress induced colitis, like my colon could have burst in the emergency room. And I ended up spending five days in the hospital pumped through pumped full of antibiotics and fluids. And I almost had to go through surgery to have the infection removed. I mean, it was very dramatic. Um, and I remember the surgeon coming in at one point and saying like, we don't know what causes this, you know, it can just happen sometimes. Have you been in Have you been under any stress lately? I'm like, you have no idea. And when I was in the hospital room, honestly, all I could think was this fundraiser is going to fail because my body gave out on me. I'm not because the company shouldn't fundraise. shinan you know, close the deal like it was about me and if I had just given myself a little bit more time and energy to refuel and kind of regroup along that fundraising process, I wouldn't have ended up in the hospital and it would have turned out much better in the long run. Now, I ended up closing that round from my hospital bed with an investor in London, who was actually a super fan of the the TaskRabbit service there in the London market. So all is well that ends well. But there was definitely a better way to get to that ending. So I encourage founders, particularly at the earliest stage, when you think you can't take a moment for yourself, take the three minutes to just sit and meditate, take a walk around the block, get outside, get some fresh air, exercise, do some physical activity, anything that can kind of break up, what can really lead to some serious burnout and serious repercussions. That is my last tip, and I am excited to take questions.
Thanks so much, Leah. That is a incredible story to end things off there, I think, especially pertinent and relevant that last bit of advice right now, right when people are under a lot of extra stress. So yeah, really good to see that an overall fantastic presentation. I really enjoyed it personally. And it looks like we got a ton of questions from the audience. So let's jump right into those. We have Elizabeth Cruz, who asks, while there's a setup here, so I did not apply to Y Combinator because they have a startup in their portfolio that's in the same market. And Elizabeth believes they can potentially copy them and beat them, given you know, the relative merits of the companies or whatever. So would you say that she was wrong to make that call? Or like Would it be okay, given your advice around, don't worry about sharing your ideas, to go ahead and jump into the yc class alongside a potential competitor?
Yeah, thanks for your question, Elizabeth. Um, you know, congratulations on building something really cool and interesting. And thinking about yc. You know, um, yc has a huge class, right of startups, every I think this time, it was like, 350 companies just in one class. And so I think yc has gotten to the point in scale, where there are going to be a lot of competitors, and crossover and competition. I think it's all good. It's all okay. I think if you have, you know, a unique angle, you're a different person, clearly in a different team. It's all about the execution. And I think that, you know, taking those opportunities and not boxing yourself out of opportunities, because someone else, you know, you think is already there is already done it. Um, I would say go for it. And if not, why See, don't feel bad, don't feel bad that you didn't apply. There are tons of other you know, ways to go, there's tech stars and other incubators. And there's also just just start building, just start building yourself and get something going get something out there and see where you can take it.
Great. And another one, actually, from Elizabeth, that is totally unrelated, but also very interesting, and one that the audience really wants to have answered. So my coworker is working full time for a different company, because he needs to provide for his family, the VCs that we've talked to don't like that and reject us. So what should we do in this case?
Yeah, um, well, Elizabeth, about the great questions here. That's a tough one. Um, you know, I, I'll share just an experience I had I don't have an exact answer for you. Um, I understand that investors want founders that are 100%. Committed? Yeah. Well, we realize that people do have lives, right, and families, and we actually embrace that. And so I could see us saying like, okay, after you raise this round of funding, we invest, like, that's when people will leave and be 100%. We've definitely made those investments. And I think that's okay. You know, I would also say that, I'm just thinking through other ways of compensation, you know, equity, ownership, that can sometimes help get co founders over the hump of making that leap. When I started TaskRabbit, I looked for co founders, actually, and I tried a few people that, you know, actually didn't work out. But my very first employee that I hired Brian, who stayed all the way through the IKEA acquisition, and you know, was the CTO of TaskRabbit. He actually just left last summer. He had a family at the time, and we worked together at IBM, and he couldn't leave IBM until I raised that very first round of funding and could actually pay him. And I told him who led that million dollar seed round and TaskRabbit I said, I know the first tire I want to make, he's a brilliant engineer, but I got to be able to pay him and she got on board with that too. So I think You know, it depends on the investors that you're talking to, I'd say look for partners that understand your circumstances and are going to support you and how you want to build out your team and your company.
Great. Well, that actually, coincidentally, partially answers Another question we had from from an anonymous Tasker. That was, how do you recommend building a team pre revenue? So it sounds like, you know, that can be some of the conversation that you have with investors as they come in?
Yes, and lots of equity, like, you know, think about incenting people with equity, those early early employees, you know, deserve a good chunk for taking that risk and making that leap.
Great. And then another question that's related, because you mentioned it the IBM experience. So you said you're still at IBM, while you're starting out, this is from an anonymous asker. But how did you make the decision to go 100% into the startup and kind of where was the startup when you made that decision to take the job?
Yeah, great question. And so I had the idea while I was at IBM, I became so obsessed with the idea. I had to start coding it because I'm an engineer. So I had to start building some nights and weekends, I've kind of start prototyping and building, you know, wasn't until I met Scott Griffith, the CEO of Zipcar, and I got enough confidence and validation from him. And everyone else that I had talked to it was, it was about four months of just talking to people, anyone who would listen to me, literally, the guy next to me on the bus, going into Boston, I would tell the idea to and like, get feedback. And so after four months, no one had said, You're insane. This idea is stupid. This isn't gonna work. Everyone's reaction was like, wow, this doesn't exist yet. And then Scott, you know, he at one point said to me, after we've met a few times, please, I think you're really on to something here, I think you should see how far you can take it. And that stuck with me, because I almost saw it as a challenge. I was like, yeah, I'm gonna show you how far I can take it. And I remember going into IBM that next week, and giving my notice insane. I'm just gonna go for it, I'm going to see how far I can take it. What's the worst that can happen? Right, like six months later, nothing happens. I'll just, I'll, I'll go back to IBM, I'll get another job somewhere else. And so I think just having enough confidence in yourself, to go for it. And then, um, you know, just understanding that you're not going to know how to do everything. But that you can surround yourself with advisors and people that can help you out to make that leap is what got me over the hurdle. Right?
Yeah, that's, it makes it sound like it's a very personal decision, right? It's not like you're looking at kind of like progress or whatever. And you're like, this is the jump off point here. You're actually saying like, no, for me, and my comfort level and my conviction around this idea like this is when I wanted to go,
absolutely. And at that point, when I left IBM, you know, I hadn't launched the company, we hadn't launched the product. So it was still, you know, pre revenue for users. I was still building. So it was it was very early.
Here's one from Robert Hall. So first, a compliment great story about networking and receiving your $1 million dollar seed. He also asked, so besides networking, how do you recommend reaching out directly to VCs to start early intros and discussions?
Thanks for your question, Robert. That's a great one, particularly being on the other side now, and I am the I get tons of emails every day. And some warm intros, some cold emails, we look at all of them. I have taken meetings from cold emails before I just took one last week. That was a great meeting. Um, and so I think it's always best if you can get a warm intro. And that's all about just building your network out again, asking for who else should I talk to who else should I talk to? At some point, eventually, if you're talking to enough people and the right people, like you're going to be able to get those warm intros to potential investors? Um, you know, I'd say if you're really early and you're looking for, you know, under a million dollars in funding, I think, you know, cold emails to early stage funds like fuel or like some other pre seed funds are is totally fine. Um, and I think you know, the volume of emails that
we
action, that's always best.
Yeah, I think I've heard anecdotally a lot of good experiences, even from cold emailing like angels too, right? Because a lot of times, especially if there's somebody that's an angel in your particular community, and it's outside of the valley or something like that, like they can help a lot with introductions, even if they don't end up writing a check or something like that? Absolutely,
yes.
Great. So here's another question from the audience. This is from john Warner. And this this one is john Warner is looking for personal duction. So let's, let's move on from that what you can email, right? You said you read emails
and john, email me it's just Lia at fuel capital calm.
There you go. So anybody in the audience feel free to send those cold emails. Steve pier here says one of my startups got featured on Good Morning America to congrats to you. How much momentum Do you think sustainability or green startups are getting with the current investment client? And I guess you could provide some some personal perspective from fuel?
Yeah, I mean, I would say I seed investing has never been busier, there is a lot of capital out there. Not only across funds like fuel, but where it's more institutionalized. You know, we have LPs that we've raised the fund from, but there's tons of angels out there right now that are investing in seed stage companies, they're investing in ideas, they're investing in pitch decks, they're coming on, they're helping their advising. So I'd say the early stage market right now is super busy, with lots of momentum. valuations, you know, I'd say have even grown in the last 12 months. I mean, in 2009, when I raised my first round of funding for TaskRabbit, I'll tell you, I did a million dollars on a $4 million valuation. I mean, it was like one on four, and that was market at the time, you would never see that today. I mean, we're at least like 10x higher than that. So um, you know, we've seen that really grow over time. The other exciting thing I'm actually seeing and seed is because there is so much money flowing. We are I think, seeing more underrepresented founders, both women and underrepresented ethnicities, black founders, Latino founders, getting early stage funding. My question and my problem. And my challenge is what happens to those founders, as they continue to build their businesses and scale, we've done a lot of investing in underrepresented groups. 40% of our fund, actually, for fuel are from diverse founding teams. But we want to make sure those teams have a path to scale. And we need to see more capital coming in at later stages to support those companies throughout their entire life cycles.
That's a great point that is reminiscent of kind of the the challenge you see in a lot of diversity reports from the big companies, big tech companies, where you know, they have a lot of admirable work going on at the hiring stage. But then, throughout the kind of career path of the individual employees, there's not as much support right, so I guess it's a mirror to that. But on the on the venture side?
It is Yeah, absolutely.
Great. And so here's another question. And this is from Louie Academy, forgive me if I'm pronouncing that incorrectly. So it's about what how you pitch kind of early on. We continue to learn new information every week, and it changes our forecast assumptions. do you suggest not pitching until we're confident about our forecast assumptions?
Well, thanks for your question, Louis, I think it really depends on what stage you're at. I remember the early days of TaskRabbit, when I had like 100 customers, it was really hard to create a forecast based on those 100 customers. There were some investors that would ask me for our three year forecasts, I'm like, you guys, like, I don't even know what it's gonna be three months from now. But like, if you want me to create, you know, a spreadsheet for you, I can do that. So I think it really just depends on where you're at. And if you're still trying to find that product market fit, if you're still trying to figure out who your customer is. Maybe even you're trying to figure out what your revenue model is, you're testing different revenue models. I think that's all okay, at the early stages at the seed stage, I think by series A, you really need to understand what the revenue model is how you're going to scale that who your customer is, and then start to have some Stable metrics around things like cost of acquisition, lifetime value of your customer, you know, maybe you haven't spent a lot of money on advertising yet or marketing, but you have some tests in mind you want to run at the series, they type stage, because you'll have a little bit more capital to work with. So that's how I think about it. I think it's really stage specific.
Okay, great. We're like basically at a time Can I ask you a really easy quick question from Deb Gosh, just from for you specifically. Is it a must to have a co founder? Specifically, if you have the skills that are needed in a single person?
No, absolutely not. I somehow made it work. Honestly, I wouldn't I wouldn't do it that way again. And if I could go back, I would absolutely, you know, try even harder. I mean, I've tried to have the right co founder, right person, but honestly, you know, the company progressed faster than I could find a co founder. And then so if you've raised money, and you still don't have the co founder, like, you know, sometimes doing it Solo is where you end up, but I think it's definitely nice to have people that can share the burden with you both emotionally and sort of from a skill standpoint.
Right.
Well, that's all we have time for. But this has been fantastic. And we got through a lot of questions. So thanks very much.