Why would you IPO in Australia before the NASDAQ?

Episode 94 - Itamar Novick Transcript Jason Kirby (03:04.718) Welcome to the show, everyone. Today we have Itamar Novick with us. Well, bought the co-founder out of Life 360 and took it public twice and is now the managing partner at Recursive Ventures. Itamar, let's just. Jump right in, let's pick up where you left off in that story of you buying out the co-founder of Live360,it was in 2012, 2013 when that happened? And you made that decision, why? Itamar Novick (03:39.862) Yeah, you nailed it. Itamar Novick (03:45.333) okay, that's a good one. So I was actually a VC on Sand Hill Road and I saw Live 360 early on around 2010. And like the company was not very well understood at the time. Let's just say that pretty much everybody I knew on Sand Hill Road where I was working was like, yeah, we don't know about this one. And I did all the diligence work. was a senior associate then working at a firm called Morin Tire Ventures, which was a pretty good firm back then. I did all the diligence and especially spent a lot of time looking at their customer acquisition and sort of activation life cycle. And what I saw was pretty, pretty crazy. This thing had, Life360 had crazy top of the funnel demand. Now they had a lot of issues with the rest of the life cycle. was activation, retaining users, and obviously it was very early in terms of monetization. There was none of it. But I saw the potential like in consumer services, online services, when you see there's a top of funnel demand, you know there's a dare there. So I started helping the company unofficially. It's like, you know, advising them, helping with some stuff. And then at some point around 2012, Chris Holes was the kind of original CEO founder of the company came to me and said, Edamar, we really need the VP of product. You understand everything that we're doing. So for your life cycle analysis and really need somebody like you who can help like, you know, institutionalize how we think of our product. and take it to the next level. And at that point in time, I kind of already made the decision that I should leave venture. And that's like a whole different conversation than why then I left venture, right? I kind of knew that there's no ladder up for me in venture at that point in time. And that I had to go for one big swing. Luckily, there was another co-founder early on in the Life 360 journey, and him and the CEO, Chris, did not get along. And he wanted out. Itamar Novick (05:38.777) his wife is a dentist and she wanted to open a dentistry and she was like, yeah, who cares about this startup that's going nowhere? this equity is worth nothing basically, or not a whole lot. So, you know, I was presented with the opportunity to buy out this ex co-founder who basically left and I didn't think twice. And it was like, okay, it's a really simple equation here. if this is gonna be, if it's gonna hit it out of the park, like I believe it could, because it has the potential. And if I step in, I can maybe help solve some of the challenges in the business. Then, you Obviously, would be an amazing opportunity. And if it doesn't, then yeah, I've lost all of my net worth, which I put all into the company and then borrowed more to be able to buy more. I'll bounce back on my feet. Like I'm in Silicon Valley and I'm a VC. I'll figure it out. I'll figure out another job. I kind of felt like, Jason Kirby (06:43.17) But how did you borrow double your net worth? How did you how did you do that? Itamar Novick (06:48.972) friends and family mostly. Jason Kirby (06:51.15) So you convince them that come along with this journey. Like, did you, was it a loan and they get like the upside in the shares? Like, how did you structure that for your friends and family? Itamar Novick (07:00.152) Yeah, was alone, just alone. Jason Kirby (07:03.508) I just like whatever interest and if, and you know, not, was it seven years later when you took a public, you like paid them off or something or paid them off. Itamar Novick (07:11.032) No, no, I actually paid them off pretty quickly. I don't like being in debt unless it's a very, very low interest debt. I have a mortgage because it's great to have mortgages at 3 % rate, which is what we had back in 2021, 2022. But otherwise, if I have capital, why would I take on debt? So I paid off most of it pretty quickly. Jason Kirby (07:24.302) Yeah, 3%, yeah. Itamar Novick (07:38.961) But anyway, yeah, so it was a big swing. It obviously paid off because Live 360 is now an $8 billion publicly traded NASDAQ company. And I kind of love. When it's the right time, and obviously you gotta be careful with this, I kind of love to recommend folks to sometimes swing for defenses. Like if you're in the right stage in your career, if you're in the right stage professionally, if you know that you're on solid grounds, and if something doesn't work, then fine, you'll find that the next thing, you'll figure out the next thing, but you wanna make a big swing that you know that maybe has a low probability of working out, but if it does, it will completely transform your professional life, and maybe even your personal life, then I don't think that's... a bad idea especially if you do it kind of earlier in your career. Jason Kirby (08:26.702) Is that what you look for in founders now? The ones that are making the big swing that like, guess, jump into what you do every cursive now. Like how do you make those decisions on the founders that you back today? Itamar Novick (08:37.814) Yeah, absolutely. I'd say two things on that. First of all, if you are trying to raise money from VCs and building a VC backable company, you are swinging for the fences, baby. Like it's, you're playing a game where the odds are against you. We know that at the pre-seed stage, 98, 99 % of companies fail and you're doing it for the 1 % of you building a multi-billion dollar business. And that is by definition swinging for the fences. But I think you're also kind of alluding to something a little bit different that I think is very important. You also have to have the right mindset of being able to... swing for the fences every day for the next 10, 15 years, right? Because as you go through the life cycle, through the growth of the company, there are so many different challenges and you gotta meet them head on. You gotta be really, you gotta evolve with the company to be able to go through all the way and that's definitely one thing that I'm looking forward to. Jason Kirby (09:39.118) Well, it's a, we'll unpack it a little bit more down in the show, but I think that's something that being someone in your position, cause you have a unique position. You, you saw the opportunity to live through 60. You, created and the value ultimately in growing the business. But as you had a VC mindset when making the bet to jump into that role and take that opportunity. So you can have that vision of, kind of recognizing what are the leading indicators that might actually turn it into an outcome. Let's go back to, life 360. Um, and those early days you bought in, um, you're relatively early, uh, or low valuation when you made that decision, you know, maybe not as much track. Like what were the stats back then? And then, you know, what were you first focused on when you took on that, that risk and that liability? Itamar Novick (10:26.614) Yeah, so I think it's probably fair to say that when I joined, I was sort of the adult supervision. mean, Chris and Alex, who are the two founders, they were in their 20s. Chris specifically, who's a brilliant, brilliant person and I work with still today, even in Recursive Ventures, this was his first job. I mean, he did an internship over the summer in Goldman, but it's not that he's worked anywhere else. Alex Harrell, who's the other co-founder, that was like his first job straight out of college. So again, both founders are kind of inexperienced as business leaders, but obviously very, very bright and technical and product oriented, which is great. There wasn't really an exec team when I joined. I mean, we tried to Aviva Marketing like kind of close to end of that was hired, but that didn't work out. it was kind of, you know. the three of us and there were maybe like five people, seven people. We were in this like almost like an apartment kind of building. It was very small. It was very early. It was generally pre-seed seed stage. So. Lots to build. And when I say build, it's not just building the product. It's also building the culture. It's building our identity, like who we are, what do we stand for, what are our values, like what's important in this company. And there was a lot that went into that. And a lot of that is still today in Life360, the kind of big public-e-trade company. Jason Kirby (11:58.828) And in that journey and kind of when you really started to hit like breakout velocity, kind of walk us through what, what was breakout velocity for you guys? When did it happen and what was kind of the precursor to it? Itamar Novick (12:13.854) say that there was never a moment where we were like, my gosh, this is breakout. Maybe when ADT invested, I'll talk about that in a bit, but it was a grind. It was a slog. mean, we should talk about... the fact that at some point we were two months away from running out of capital and basically every fund on Sand Hill Road said no. I still have a list of 70 of them, 70, funds. We're like, no, this is stupid. This is never gonna get big. are not gonna have smartphones. That was one of the reasons why they said no. you know, tracking has bad connotations. This will never go mainstream. Privacy is going to prevail. And it's going to be like, we've had all sorts of reasons that were proven to be wrong over the years. But again, you know, at some point, I remember in our, I think it was series A something, there was a point in time we were two months away from running out of cash. And we were like on the verge of begging people to just put in money so we can survive. Jason Kirby (13:20.536) This happens a lot, like founders in this situation. Like what was your demeanor? Like when you, you knew you had two months of runway and you're in this, you're in the begging state. Everyone says, you got to come from a position of strength so you can negotiate and get the right terms. And like, how are you managing your demeanor? How are you managing like the narrative around Live 360, you know, going into that series a with all the two months of cash. Itamar Novick (13:47.095) I think being in that situation with your back against the wall, that's the moment that helps define kind of the true founders who never give up, would, you like that challenge, that almost life threatening situation that you're in. The key question there is that does that, does that really empower you to go hard, right? And try to raise that money and try to make a dent in your business now. when even at the face of high probability of failure, versus basically break and say, okay, this is not working, what do I do? And that true grit of seeing death in the eye again, again, again. And I've seen that several times as a founder, not just at Life360. And in some situations I've also lost the company. And kind of... Being able to deal with it and actually work harder and stronger to try to get out of it is one of the things that helps characterize true entrepreneurs versus people who are maybe less equipped to deal with the opposite. Jason Kirby (14:55.342) It is, it is, I always like to say, you know, amongst like post-exit of founders, when a meeting, the post-exit of founder, you immediately know that they chewed on glass and ate shit for, for a long enough period of time. They'd like deliver an outcome. cause it's, it's just always pain all the time in most cases. so when it was, you know, what kind of was the breakout? Like what solved that problem? What solved the series a problem, two months of cash? What'd you, how'd you get out of it? Itamar Novick (15:25.688) We were able to, so it was an interesting situation that we were at. We had multiple corporate investors, like strategic investors who were like, yeah, if you figure something out on funding, we're probably gonna participate. We didn't know the what tune. We're just trying to raise, I think, eight million bucks at that time or seven. Jason Kirby (15:38.4) You Itamar Novick (15:43.625) And but obviously the corporate VCs, the strategic investors, they didn't know how the price is. They didn't want to lead the round. So they're like, just get us a credible VC that will sign off on this thing with evaluation and terms, because we don't know how to do that. So at some point, I remember it was a crazy conversation. We called up one of my friends was at a firm called DCM, which is sort of a leading Silicon Valley Asian related. VC, pretty sizable. And they had a small fund called the Android Fund. That was really the investors there were very interested in mobile, lot of them were carriers or folks who were involved in mobile from Asia. It was a relatively small fund. So basically we convinced them to put $2 million and what ended up being a $17 million round. So they led with $2 million and a $17 million round at the end. They were kind of the lead. They priced it because what happened is once we got that breakthrough and we got them to agree to do the $2 million, they were pretty reluctant. And I think that $2 million investment was, it ended up being very impactful for them. Obviously over the years, it's likely to become public. After they came in, like all the tides changed. was like, okay, now everybody wants it. And we ended up going out for eight and like raising 17 at the end. So it was interesting how quickly this flip from like, gosh, we're gonna potentially shut down in like seven to eight weeks. Like, wow, we have more capital than we thought we'd ever had. Jason Kirby (17:23.598) How much work was it convincing that Android fun? Like, how hard was that pitch? Itamar Novick (17:34.297) That wasn't the hardest. think, funny enough, DCM at that time, the Android fight was a smaller afterthought for them. They were much more focused on the main fun. So I think part of what we were actually telling them is like, no, we got this. You don't have to worry. This is not going to suck a of your time. This is a good bet. And we'll work with your mobile LP partners to take Cloud 360 to Asia. And I think it's going to be very interesting for your LPs. And they're like, OK, it's a small check. It's a small bet. Let's just do it. Jason Kirby (18:05.326) Well, you knew what triggered their needs. Like you knew what would matter to them and you kind of positioned it, not just we're awesome, please invest. You positioned it in a way that was aligned with their interest to kind of get. Itamar Novick (18:17.208) And to be fair, we had a champion in there. I won't start naming people. We had a champion in there who walked us through this. He was like, hey, here's the internal politics inside my fund. Here's what you should say, and here's what you shouldn't say. And I always tell founders, when you genuinely feel you have a champion within a venture firm, you're on the right track. And just do whatever they say. Because they know what's happening in those Monday morning meetings with all the partners. And you're not really sitting there. And sometimes you'll be shocked. to hear what they're talking about because it could be completely off from what you're thinking. Jason Kirby (18:50.858) yeah. Like, you know, having a partner or associate pitch your business in one of those meetings and just like completely miss them. know, could people interpret the complete opposite of what you want them to. but no, I think that's a super valuable experience to share. And I think it's, good for founders to realize that even when you're on the brink, you just have to keep pushing and work those connections and just not be relentless and not give up. so you raise the A. And then it might just flood in because at least people that promise to say they would follow actually followed, which is nice. Uh, and you over, um, you oversubscribed. Um, so what was the velocity of the business thereafter? Like, what were the key decisions after that? round. Cause that's a pretty pivotal moment for, you know, it's a lot of validation for a company to get a series a, um, what were some of the key decisions that you were focused on in the business that helped ensure kind of the subsequent. Itamar Novick (19:43.513) Yeah, so I have to say that even after we raised that round, was not overnight success. There were a lot of, and actually there was another round that came after that with ADT, the home security company leading a $50 million round. And these two rounds were pretty close to each other. They're like a year or two apart. So at that point we were probably fair to say overfunded, right? Like. to the point that we weren't exactly sure what to do with all this capital. And that could be a very dangerous situation to be in. And I think we made a lot of mistakes back then. We didn't make a lot of mistakes back then. It wasn't clear cut. One of the challenges with Life for 60 is that it's basically a platform that attracts a lot of consumers, right? Families and more recently, teenagers and seniors. Like, you know, any platform, have a lot of opportunities. You can, you can like build up a lot of monetizable businesses on top of all this audience that you have. And we really didn't know. what was the best thing to focus on, right? And some of it is like, yeah, you can do the work, you can research, you can understand what the market size is, you can understand what the competitive landscape is, but it doesn't necessarily fully apply to your audience. And kind of the only way to know is really to test it, right? Like check it out, figure out is there demand, will people pay? What would be the right product, what would be the right positioning? So I think at that time we just... We were great at growth hacking and figuring out how to get the numbers going and doing the very basic rudimentary, not rudimentary, but very basic, like, here's an awesome location sharing product. Itamar Novick (21:29.56) What we didn't know is how to take it to the next level to start spinning high quality products on top of that. We had to develop that muscle. And I don't think we had that back in 2014, 2015. So it was a combination of building the right team that really understands marketing, product, design. And other infrastructure piece like analytics, what's working, what's not. So that was one piece. The second mind piece was really shifting the mindset around quality. Because the biggest thing I feel with consumer services is you can't put something half-assed out there. The bar for consumers is just so high. Jason Kirby (22:16.343) on it. Itamar Novick (22:17.366) Right? So what happens is you have to spend a lot of time on perfecting your user experience, your technology, like it's gotta work well. And like consumers have zero patience for bugs, for issues, for shitty experiences. They just don't care, they just walk away, right? And they don't even tell you why. They just uninstall. So we had to make this cultural shift inside the organization to quality first. No, you're not releasing to out there. You're not putting anything out there that you're not proud of. You're not releasing anything that you're not going to want to run and go show to your grandma and say, this is amazing. Look at what I've built. So that was also a of a multi-year process. The last thing I would say is I think we did the classic mistake that a lot of Fungers do when they get, know, hoards of cash suddenly showing up at their door, which is we over-hired and we weren't focused enough on hiring A-plus players because you want to hire fast, you want to move fast, you're like, okay, this person is going to do just fine. We'll let them in. And if it doesn't work out, we'll let them go after six months, but let's give them a try. Let's see if this works or like... wow, we've got this team member that was amazing at the seed stage. They're a great individual contributor. They know how to hack through the thing that they're supposed to do. But now you try to integrate them into a bigger company and into a bigger system, and it doesn't really work out. So they're a great, you know, preceding seed stage employee, but they're not really great at the series A, series B when you're scaling up and you have hundred employees, right? And we would still give them a second and third and fourth chance without understanding that it's actually both bad for them and it's bad for us because they're not really operating the stage that they operate best in, right? So kind of going through those transitions in both culture and people is, well, yeah, it's painful, right? So I think we did a lot of mistakes there and that's also why we burn for a lot of that cash with some improvements, but not enough, not enough. Jason Kirby (24:22.988) And with that cash, some of the things that you guys did is you started making acquisitions, I think a little bit later. But to kind of transition to that topic, you're going through all these growing pains, which is very common when you have that much cash come in. But you still have to raise cash, raise hundreds of millions. When did... you know, growing through acquisition or making acquisitions start to come on the radar for you guys. Itamar Novick (24:53.494) Yeah, so I think it. My time and I don't think we've done acquisitions since I left. I think we've done 8. I want to say 8 acquisitions. And it's interesting because the first seven up until tile, which was 2020, 2021, were really talent acquisitions. And I don't see talent acquisitions as acquisitions, like typically how the market sees them, because we were not buying a product. We were not buying a revenue line. It wasn't a business, at least most of them. There was one exception called couple, and there was another exception called GeoBit. But. The idea was always like, oh wow, we think this team is unbelievable. The founders, the core team members are just going to be an amazing addition to our talent and they understand our users and what our company needs. So I mean, honestly, like talent acquisitions are way easier than a full on, you know, business acquisition and integration and like all the post acquisition activities. we were really focused, like the methodology that I developed over time with the management team was really about how do we incorporate this amazing team into our business and making sure that we've got everybody where they're supposed to be, where they're making the most impact. We are giving them sort of the right constellation to win as folks who are joining Live 360 and honestly are compensating them so they would be interested enough to keep bringing their A-plus game into Live 360. I think doing those talent acquisitions is easier than doing a full blown integration with an artist. Jason Kirby (26:34.542) But, but I guess, you know, what, kind of spotted, like, were you doing partnerships with them? Or are you just like monitoring them? know you, I think you invested in at least one of them tile and maybe independently of, uh, of Live 360. But when it came to, you know, that first one and, know, did you have a shortage in the team somewhere? You know, what kind of went through your mind when the idea of making that first acquisition came, came to be. Itamar Novick (27:02.604) Well, interestingly enough, we're always set on keeping in touch and kind of tracking everybody. Everybody in our space, you want to know what's going on, right? So I would just like call up people and say, hey, what's up? Hey, what's going on with your business? How can we help? We're always trying to help other folks in the family and safety and peace of mind spaces, right? That were kind of closer to us. You know, I was one of the first investors in time. This was in 2014. We ended up acquiring the business in 2021. So I'll show you the, kind of the, you know. the longevity, like how much time we spent building a relationship with the tile folks, understanding their product and understanding how a Live 360 tile integration could look like. Similarly, I was one of the first investors in Placer AI, which is a unicorn that is in deep partnership with Live 360 these days. And again, we've been building a great relationship since 2015, 2016. So that was really core to actually my job at Live 360 over the years is like really Jason Kirby (27:40.078) you Itamar Novick (28:05.65) building this kind of multiple relationships across corporate and business with all the companies that we could potentially either partner or acquire down the line. And we were systematic. in getting those relationships going. It's like, okay, quarterly touch points, hey, what's going on with your business? It could just turn into a cool conversation about what you your last trip to Australia. It doesn't have to be always a business thing, but just building the relationship, building a healthy relationship and building trust with those folks. And then some of those ended up being. partnerships or even launching products together. Some of these other ones turned out to be talent acquisitions, right? It was always a mix of where could we, where's the win-win? Where's the win-win for both sides, right? And when we saw that win-win and we shared the vision about the upside for both sides, we were bold. We would go to our board and say, look, we want to do this deal. Like, yeah, there's a million reasons why not to, but here's how we mitigate them. And here's like, this is the downside risk and we understand it. And we're walking into this with our eyes wide open, but we still think we should do this. And kind of semi-related is we always had like to a certain degree control of the board. There was early on in the Live for 60 journey, it wasn't necessarily intentional, but it just... between not having very strong lead investors to having a bunch of folks who were with us for many, many years and really believed in the vision and believed in Chris and the team, we, you know, early on could pull off almost anything that we wanted within the realm of reason, right? And that helped us. And it's funny, I'll just tell you a story. I acquired this company, Capua, I think it was 2015, 2016. And like the... Itamar Novick (30:08.096) the CEO founder of that company, just left Life360. He was there for 10 years. you can't, that's the best talent acquisition that you can ever imagine. Like this person who was acquired as CEO of a company ended up staying 10 years at Life360 leading product efforts. That's amazing, right? So that was very, that talent acquisition was very well worth it, right? For the Jason Kirby (30:31.982) So some advice for, for founders that are listening that, you know, might be a path for them, either to buy and or sell in an aqua hire. Like what are the, what's the profile you look for? Like, obviously you build a relationship, you build trust, but you know, what, kind of attributes did you kind of screen for when it came to doing these aqua hires? Itamar Novick (30:56.3) We're always very product focused. If we didn't believe that the people that we're talking with have significant product jobs, they understand what the right user experience is, they've built something that they're proud of, and rightfully so. They've built an awesome product, then we were always less excited about partnering with them, right? Because for us, we knew it was always product first. And... You know, as the company scale, we're also looking for people that could be leaders, right? That others would follow, whether it's in the technical side or on the product business side. You know, and we also felt that if we were building this ecosystem of founders that we work with and we actually hire and we partner with them over time, our employees would also look at that and say, wow, this is great. Like we're building the life for 60 mafia, right? I've like, and it actually became that. It became the Life for 60 mafia. And there's still all those people that we work with very closely and we fund and we back and we partner with. And I think that's a lot of our employees wanted to see that there's gonna be this Life for 60 family. I'm gonna be part of this. Jason Kirby (31:47.765) haha Jason Kirby (32:06.894) That's very cool. I get, when it comes to, I would say buy side M &A and you know, have these relationships, you're doing the diligence, but you bought a couple businesses, you know, not just the talent. Like, how are you structuring these deals? Like, what are you, you know, looking at? What's kind like the timeline from when you, not from when you meet them, but from when you like kind of realize that this might be the path is an acquisition. I don't know what's the timeline on something like that. Itamar Novick (32:35.104) Yeah, I think when we were set on doing the deals, we made them happen really quickly because the uncertainty, like for us, if we know that these specific people are going to go into these positions that we have in the company, obviously we wanted to fill those positions. And we know as founders ourselves, the kind of... know, complications that it brings to the other side, right? It's like, what do you tell your investors? What do you tell your employees? Like some of them might come over post acquisition, others might not, right? So how do you deal with that? think actually when you have conviction, moving fast, doing it fast and like giving like... having certainty around how this thing is gonna look quickly is key. If you let it linger, people are gonna lose motivation. So when we were set on doing it, we just went ahead and doing it and did it. There's a huge stark difference between what I call a talent acquisition, which is basically, know, sunsetting whatever part this other company has and really focusing on bringing the talent over and making that talent successful and buying a product that you actually want to integrate or, you know, manage as a standalone product in parallel to our main product. Huge difference, huge difference in post acquisition integration, huge difference in kind of what we want to see. So I would say, you know, in talent acquisition, it's really about the talent. It's about where the people, the founders, the founding team that we're acquiring is just a great fit culturally. We got roles for them, roles that could be impactful. Those roles are actually a good fit for their skill set and where they want to be in their career. And we want to see a lot of that overlap happening. When it comes to Itamar Novick (34:19.04) product acquisition is like a business, I mean we bought tile at a hundred million dollars of revenue, that's a significant business right, then it's a whole different ballgame. You really have to understand how you're gonna manage this thing. and at least, you know, historically what life for 60 has done with tile, which is the only sort of significant at scale business is like, yeah, we got to have a roadmap of how this integrates into our core product. Like if we don't understand that down to the numbers, down to the user experience, down to who's going to do what with a lot of clarity, we shouldn't be doing this at all. Like the beginning, right? Because we know that, you know, half of the and A deals go wrong. Right? They don't work out. So you need to do everything that you can to make sure it's in the right half. If it's a product that you want to kind of keep running standalone, like not integrate your product, you know, we haven't really done that. I think, and I often recommend founders not to do that because it's like, okay, you're splitting your company into two. Jason Kirby (35:09.26) Yeah. Itamar Novick (35:30.806) Where's the synergies? What do you know about this other business, this other product? So it could sometimes work like a completely different product line, but I do feel like there could be better opportunities for the capital if that's the case. Jason Kirby (35:47.992) Yeah, I know a couple of companies that, you know, got stuck in what they were doing and just try to buy their way out of the situation and, didn't have a real sound strategy and, ultimately causes either the &A deal to go bad and or the whole company to go bad. And so it definitely happens out there where it doesn't work out to be an $8 billion IPO company. Itamar Novick (36:12.266) Yeah, I'd say &A has to be bite sized for you. Like if you're a 20 people company and you're buying another 20 people company, beware. So that typically doesn't work. Jason Kirby (36:22.606) Yeah, no, think that's good advice. Bite size. I like that. Unless it's a full blown merger, who knows how that mergers scare the crap out of me when it comes to who's going to be in charge and all that kind of stuff and merging of teams and whatnot. when it comes to, all right, so you made these acquisitions like tile, $100 million acquisition. know, sorry, you're doing a hundred million revenue. Itamar Novick (36:47.266) Well, Jason Kirby (36:51.566) Yeah. And like when it came to structuring the deal, like, you know, how did you think about aligning incentives? we'll move the kind of talent acquisitions aside, because that sounds pretty straightforward, but for like the business buying ones, like, are you looking at majority equity, earnouts, performance, or just straight cash? Like, how did you guys think about those kind of more of the business app product acquisitions? Itamar Novick (37:14.988) Yeah, so our philosophy back then, and I think what is in many ways the right philosophy for for companies that are like scale up growth stage is it really starts with the product integration. Like what can we do with this new product, right? Where are the touch points? What are the integration points? What is, where does this thing move the needle? Does it move the needle on acquiring new customers? Does it move the needle on like retaining them? Are you gonna be able to increase your customer's willingness to pay? It really, I think for us in many ways, the acquisition stems from that product integration. And then, and this is where it gets interesting, we would marry the kind of upside that we're looking for from the product integration into the outcomes for the acquired company, both the investors and the employees moving off, right? So this thing is like, yeah, I mean, obviously we see the value here and we're gonna spend some money to make sure that this thing goes through nicely and everybody's happy to get going. But a lot of the upside has to be with like, how are we gonna perform against the one, two, three year integration plan? And the delivery of that is, it's mixed between somebody who owns it on the Life360 side and obviously the founders of the company getting acquired. Like they have to deliver. And if they don't deliver, they're both in a bad spot. The person... from the inside, life 360 is probably not gonna be in a super bad spot financially, or they're not gonna be able to, like, they're not, I don't know if they'll have their jobs, but at least they're not gonna lose a bunch of money. The folks getting acquired, if they don't deliver, then the majority of the value in the acquisition might not come through, right? So that was, that was. Jason Kirby (38:59.116) the Itamar Novick (39:15.488) even in talent acquisitions, not just in product business acquisitions, that was always a North Star for us of like, yeah, well, you're gonna have retention bonuses here and it will take a year two or four for you to fully realize the value of this thing and you have to deliver. Jason Kirby (39:33.9) No, I think it's important to have those performance structures and just align incentives when it's a company, buying a company and bringing those resources in. that carrot, we'll call it. It can be very difficult to motivate teams after the acquisition because they're I got my cash money. I'm on my way. So let's talk about the IPO process. So why did you IPO in Australia? Let's start there. Itamar Novick (40:00.6) of all places. So first of I love Australia. I love Aussies. But putting that aside for a second, we were at an interesting time in the company's journey back then. We were between $30 to $40 million of revenue, which is obviously significant, but not significant enough to IPO in the NASDAQ, which was the ultimate goal. And we were at a point in time where a couple of interesting things happened. First of all, we raised a lot of money from strategic investors. companies like ADT and Samsung and Verizon and Allstate and American Family and I can keep going. We had 11 strategic investors at that time. And some of them were in and around the board as observers. Some of them were, they had all sorts of, know, veto rights that belonged to, you know, preferred equity holders and so on and so forth. And it became a little bit hectic. We started getting acquisition interests from various different parties. Some of them were competitive or potentially competitive with existing investors. And we just felt like there's some degree of freedom that we don't have in this business. That's because of some of those strategic partners. we might have been blocked from doing some of the things that we wanted to do. So that was one thing. The second thing is we're really in a position where we had multiple offers on the table. We had an offer by the company, by a private equity firm. We had another offer by the company by a bigger, know, sort of antiquated player here in the Bay Area. And we're like, okay, so... We already have, at that point in time, think we have the $150 or $170 million of preference in our preference stack. And this is something that founders don't always think of early on in their journey, but it starts adding up. So we were kind of looking at our preference stack, like the founders, and saying, gosh, like, yeah, if this thing goes up into the right and all goes well and we sell it for a billion dollars or we IPO or whatnot. Itamar Novick (42:07.731) great, you we'll make money. But if something bad happens, and there was always a risk of like, you know, Apple trying to maybe shut us down back then, it was, or like other types of risks to the business, which some of them actually happened later on, by the way, but we're able to mitigate, then what happens if we do a fire sale for a hundred million bucks or 150 or 20 million bucks? We're gonna walk away after 10, 15 years with nothing because of the preference stack. So. IPO is very compelling in that sense because it transforms all preferred equity into common equity. Everybody's equal. Everybody, there's no preference stack. So that's the second thing. And the third thing is, and this is not intuitive and I don't recommend this to most companies, but we actually were up for the challenge. We were like, we think we're mature enough to operate like a public company. We don't know if we have the level of predictability that you need to have, but we'll set the stage. We'll explain to investors that this is high-risk, high-growth business, that we're not going to be in the green anytime soon. This will be in the red because we're investing in growth. And we're just going to be very honest with investors. And we went and we did the pre IPO. was a $40 million pre IPO to start getting, know, crossover investors to support us in case we want to do the IPO. And it was very well received. Like we found a few great partners. Some of them, many of them are still significant life for 60 shareholders. The IPO was, the pre-IPO was 2018. So we're seven years in and these guys are still holding. We're like, yeah, we get it. We understand the strategy. This is high risk. This is what we want to do with a certain portion of our fund. And, Itamar Novick (44:05.672) And we also had a good connection. of our early, actually the first angel investor in Life360 is a gentleman called James from Cartona Capital. He's from Sydney and he knew, he was an ex-banker, he knew the entire sort of industry on the ground. And he was able to really open up a lot of those doors for us. So we actually started spending time there and we, know, We end up saying, this could be an interesting choice. And then we start working on the IPO itself with Credit Suisse and a few other folks. And we saw that the valuation we're going to get in this IPO that also flattens all the preferred shares is actually better than the acquisitions offers that we have. So that's the time. That's the moment we decided to go all in on that option. And we made it work. Jason Kirby (44:57.908) What's kind of, you know, we'll skip ahead. obviously went public on NASDAQ and your stock is close to like three, four X since going public last year, which awesome. yeah, not a lot of IPOs can say that in recent times. but for, you know, again, choosing Australia, you made the case like there's, there's other public markets you could have gone to. why did you choose Australia? Itamar Novick (45:22.54) Yeah. So first of all, again, we had boots on the ground in the form of existing investors who knew the market extremely well. One, two is at that time and still to a certain degree today, the ASX, the Australian Stock Exchange, a little bit like the AIM, but differently. And then there's one exchange in Canada that I know does the same, was actually encouraging high growth companies to come over if they were too small for the NASDAQ, which we were. So they were really encouraging us. And we also realized that it's a small market. LaosX is a small market. But that... could actually work to our favor because we could cover it very effectively with analyst coverage and like really meeting all the main fundees. That's how they call themselves down there. Pretty effectively, pretty efficiently. It's also a very concentrated market. like during the NASDAQ, yeah, you're obviously dealing with Wall Street analysts and Wall Street investment firms, but there's a lot of global engagement there. In the ASX, it's really very local to Sydney and Melbourne, right? So you just hop between Sydney and Melbourne and you meet everybody that you want backing you in like a week. So kind of very efficient. And that's why we felt it's a good fit for us. Jason Kirby (46:43.948) insights. And then obviously it goes public. And then you then go public in the NASDAQ, like what was kind of the moment where I think you left or you're an advisor at that point, you know, what was kind of the decision factor that kind of said like, now we're ready for the NASDAQ and also given the turmoil that's happened over the last couple of years, kind of like timing and everything like that, you know, why did you try? Why did you choose 2024 as the right time to go on the NASDAQ? Itamar Novick (47:12.578) I mean, the company always wanted to complete a NASDAQ IPO after the ASX IPO. It was always in the cards, like always something that people thought about. But obviously, you've got to get to critical scale. So with $40 million of recurring revenue, that's not really NASDAQ material yet. And I think even though some bankers were suggesting that if you hit the $100 million mark, $150 million mark, you're good to go in the NASDAQ, we felt that we have to have more scale than that. And after the acquisition where we brought in another $100 million of revenue, tile revenue, we were already at, I think it was over 250 at that time because we kept growing organically very effectively. And we brought tile at least 200, if not 250 when that kind of chart to the NASDAQ IPO was, that path was being charted. So. But then, of course, like any IPO, it really depends on the market, right? And the... 2021 IPO window, we were just too small. We just did the tile acquisition. wasn't ready. 2022 was when the IPO market shut down. 2023 was a no-go for anybody, right? And it's well time, right? For 60 was scaling. So in 2024, when we had enough scale, I think it was close to $300 million of revenue at that point, which again is much more than what the kind of the bar was for the bankers. And also the being able to continue to show maturity as a public company. Jason Kirby (48:29.142) Yeah. Itamar Novick (48:48.314) I mean, in 2024, when Life is 60 IPO on Nasdaq, it was already public in the ASX for five years, already filing quarterly reports, already behaving and operating successfully as a public company, right? So kind of being able to show investors that you are operating at that level for an extended period of time. obviously was able to portray the company as a much more mature company in the time of NASDAQ IPO. And all these things came together with the timing, with the markets, and it was a green light. We were ready to go. Jason Kirby (49:22.092) Were you there to ring the bell? Itamar Novick (49:24.024) What? Yeah, yeah, front row. It was fun. I was, was. Jason Kirby (49:24.95) Were you there to ring the bell? How was that? Itamar Novick (49:33.843) shocked how well orchestrated and produced this thing is. Like they always pick one or two IPOs of the day that are like fully produced A to Z and, and Life360 was, was one of them. I think that was the one. And we did the whole like timescore activation thing as well. It was awesome. It was, it was a great experience. And when I did it, I was like, Hmm, this is, this is so great, but I'll never do this again. It's like the front row, you know, even if I back a company that goes public, they're going to have me somewhere in the back there. This is a once in a lifetime opportunity, at least for me. I don't know a lot of founders that IPO their companies twice, but I'm sure there's a few. Jason Kirby (50:13.964) It's it's going to be a pretty satisfied feeling. Well, so you, you've had this amazing success, this amazing run, which again, you had your fire moments where things, you know, aren't easy. Like it sounds all up into the right, but like, these are all very tactical. journey here, but now that you're running recursive ventures and you tend to be doing it for a while. It like you started it, it was like more angel investing that kind of turned into a fund. Was that kind of how it came to be? Itamar Novick (50:41.848) No, this is interesting. So first of all, I've been investing since 2010. And I was investing the whole time I was at Live 360. And some of it was actually with many of my Live 360 partners. So in 2014, while I was early at Live 360, I formed the first fund, Recursive Ventures One, which is super tiny. It was a million dollar fund. But most of the backers were actually folks that were Live 360 investors. And a bunch of the thesis was Live 360 is going to create an ecosystem with companies like Tile and companies like Zend Drive. and companies like Placer, which all ended up being either acquisition targets or business partners. And that was what got me going on the Karen strategy that we have in recursive ventures for over a decade. Then in 2018, I formed another fund while I was at Live 360, a bigger fund, which indicates it ended up being an $8.5 million vehicle. and kind of kept going but with more capital and dumbing down in winners. So I was investing the whole time and part of the sourcing and part of the opportunity was embedded into Life360 to a certain degree, not all of it. There was always that little bit of motivation. And the other motivation was really so that Life360 family, like extended family that we talked about, if we know we have a star employee who's leaving Life360 and starting a company, hell yeah, we want to back them. This is great. We know they're going to do, they have high potential and they have a chance to succeed. So we want to be able to do that. and have that legacy as a company of supporting our family. Itamar Novick (52:25.368) And, you know, over time, it just grew and grew and became more successful to the point that it no longer made sense for Recursive Ventures to be, you know, something that I do on the sidelines or something that I do part of the time to help Life 360, but most of the time to, you know, support founders. And I decided it was the right time to spin out and basically build this as an independent institutional great fund. Jason Kirby (52:51.532) And, think you're, you're on fun three now or fun four, fun three. And, um, you know, with the fun now and your full focus on it, you know, what kind of, are you still, you know, in most cases, VC is about, you know, relationships back in the people you know, but like, what, what's kind of been your, your focus and your edge, you know, as you've stepped aside from live 360 and focusing only on. Itamar Novick (52:54.978) Fun 3? Correct. Itamar Novick (53:14.924) Yeah, absolutely. what I've done and actually I should say that the Recurse Adventures is a is a founder GP led firm. So it's I'm the sole GP, but I have multiple folks helping me out in this fund, including Chris Holtz, who's the now executive chairman of Life360. And one other person called Constantine, who's one of the best angel investors in history that I've been working with for over 15 years. Just for the record, Constantine is one of the first investors in Tesla before Elon. among 20, and he has like 20 other investors. Jason Kirby (53:50.188) I'll it off. It'll be held. Itamar Novick (53:53.561) That and Canva, I also did Canva as a very early backer. So even though I'm the only GP, it's a team effort and it takes a village to do what we do today at Recursive Ventures. But what I would say is we've done extremely well over the years with data and AI, focus investments. A lot of my more recent track I heard from 2016, 2017 onwards is data and AI. B2B businesses, some B2C, but mostly B2B. And because we had significant, because I had significant hands-on experience being part of the data mafia, if you will, in the US, doing data deals, spinning up and investing and integrating data companies. And as a derivative of that, AI, where we built significant AI inside Life360 to do things like crash detection and response with a lot of data, obviously. Me and my team were just very, very well positioned when this whole chat GPT thing broke out in 2022. Obviously this is a new kind of AI. It kind of leapfrogs the AI that we had before the sort of NLP and machine learning and computer vision that was dominant in the 2010 to 2022 era. So generative AI accelerates all that and provides many new capabilities, but we had a very good understanding of AI and data and generative AI when it came out. And it was actually happened at the same time I was leaving Life360 and I just saw an opportunity of a lifetime. I was like, wow, there's gonna be trillions of dollars of value that are gonna be created with these generated tools. I gotta just like jump in, leave my cushy job at Life360 as a C level where you can imagine how much money I was making. Obviously it was a lot. And with a fast growing company that's doing well, I just have to leave that comfort zone. and go in on backing this next generation of AI companies. Because I truly believe that's the right thing to do and that's what we're doing today very successfully. Jason Kirby (56:01.854) It caught the, caught the mobile wave and now you're, you know, diving into the, AI, when you look at companies that you see, you're seeing tons of companies come across your desk. know, countless founders pitching you asking you to get involved. Like what kind of trends are you seeing? Like what's, what's the, the shiny object that everyone's kind of looking at right now and what, what's kind of fading away, you know, cause I'm, seeing things as like kind of turnover very quickly in terms of what's hot and then not. Itamar Novick (56:31.34) Yeah, the velocity is insane. And the group thinking and piling on on deals is even more insane, in AI specifically. So this is very interesting times to be in. So I'll just say a couple of things here that I'm seeing in the market, which some could be obvious to some of our listeners, some might not. I've been saying it for two years. So some things have really turned out that way. So the first thing is we've had a massive, massive wave of investment in infrastructure, LLMs, and sort of the stack required to build Jason Kirby (56:31.372) Here's the intro. Itamar Novick (57:01.274) and deploy LLM-based solutions. I would say we've over-invested in that space. And this is all the way from like NVIDIA market cap to Google spending, I don't know, $100 billion a year on chipsets and chips, right? And so on and so forth. And even at the LLM level, like for me, LLMs are getting commoditized. Like I don't think there is a big difference here now between like... an OpenAI GPT-405 whatever and a cloth. mean, obviously there's like details around this LLM does that better. But at the end of the day, it's... It's getting commoditized, right? And really where the value is, is at the application layer. It's the last mile. It's the workflow, it's the use cases, it's the value that you actually bring to end users and consumers, right? And I think up until a year ago, the venture community has completely missed that. They were just like piling on like opening eye rounds. And... surprisingly, the application layer, which every research that goes in depth would show that that's where the majority of value creation is going to happen. was kind of looked at more like SaaS companies, right? And I don't think that's the case. I think what's going to happen to the application there is that it's going to rewrite SaaS, which is a trillion dollar plus business in many ways. And it's going to create all those completely new use cases that we haven't even thought about. And it's all going to happen in the next five to 10 years. And it's going to build on top of the infrastructure that we overspent on. Itamar Novick (58:34.072) exactly like what happened in 1999 and 2000s, where we were overspending on infrastructure for networking and the web. And then it took another 5 10 years more for Webvan to actually show up in the form of Instacart. So I think we're going to do something very similar, but condensed in timelines. It's not going to take 15 years. It's going to take five. Jason Kirby (58:50.826) Yeah, about 10 years. Itamar Novick (59:01.194) So I've been focused on investing only at the application layer since I started this fund in 2022, and both consumer and B2B, but more with an eye to B2B. So that's the first thing. The second thing is we've gone through this evolution of like, wow, free wrappers are never gonna work to like, okay, here's all the ways that we can win. even though we're rapper, to like, gosh, fin rappers are actually great, as long as you can grow fast enough. And I think that's another big mistake that's happening now in the market, where VCs are just flocking to whoever has like crazy month over month or quarter over quarter growth in revenue, but they're not looking at the moat. They're not focused on defendability. They're not focused on understanding what happens when the 10 incumbents see this thing when it's like $50 million of revenue and they want a piece and the hundred other startups that are going to get funded when they're like, I want to get this business, right? I want to go after this business and I'll take market share. And I think VCs are kind of turning a blind eye. not thinking about the quantization and what lack of means. If you don't have mode or defendability, you're not going to create a multi-billion dollar business. That's what history teaches us. that's why at Recursive Ventures, we're very, very focused on our thesis of AI mode, which is really about what are the key differences in this business that... So the key question I ask CEOs is like, okay, you're ahead now. Explain to me exactly why you're going to be ahead five years from now. Jason Kirby (01:00:46.198) question. Itamar Novick (01:00:46.358) Right. So mode is key in a lot of VCs you can know that. Jason Kirby (01:00:51.988) Founders ignore it too. Founders don't pay attention enough to it. Itamar Novick (01:00:56.556) Well, you've got to find the right balance because as a founder on one end, yes, you have to grow because if you don't grow, you're clearly dead in the water. But at the same time, you also have to think about the long term. And that long term is you have to invest in actively creating a mode or you're going to get disrupted by the hundred other startups. They're just going to copy what you did overnight with vibe coding. And that's pretty dangerous. Jason Kirby (01:01:18.678) Let me ask you this question. Like if you are a founder and you have the choice to invest in, you know, trying to hit that month over month growth metric, or maybe not grow as fast, but have a more defendable moat that then, you know, hypothetically you put more money into it. It'll be better. Like, do you want to see the, companies making the month over month growth metric, like the sexiest thing, and then they'll get the money and then they'll figure out the moat. Or do you think it's better for them to maybe not be explosive, you know, a hundred percent mother growth, but have a defendable, moat at that earlier stage. And that kind of like, call it pre series a. Itamar Novick (01:01:57.721) The advice I typically give founders is to prioritize hitting their month over month growth metrics first. Because I think that's almost like a prerequisite. If you can't show that, you are... I mean, look, at the early stage jobs, there only two things in man. getting the product market fit and having enough capital to get the product market fit, surviving until you get the product market fit. If you can't do the latter, which is getting capital, you're just going to die, right? When you're not money in the bank, you're just going to, like the company is going to die. So I think you do have to hit your growth metrics or some, you know, or get at least close to that. But then the trick is how do you use that momentum, that velocity to invest in your mode? And what happens with a lot of teams that I'm seeing, especially younger founders these days is just they hit the growth metrics and they're just like cheering and they're excited and they lose sight of the mode and then the music stops because the thing with not having an indefinability or mode is I don't know when the music stops it could stop at the beginning it could stop after you go public but it will stop at some point because you don't have a mode so it's kind of short-term thinking versus long-term thinking you got to meet the short-term metrics and criteria that be a fundable business but you know then you have to really think about how you allocate time and resources to to invest in a long time. Jason Kirby (01:03:20.684) What do you want founders to know about recursive? Itamar Novick (01:03:24.268) that when you hit up Recursive, you're gonna get me. You're not gonna get some associate. I'm gonna be there for you supporting your business. Me and my two partners, they're more on the support side. And you're gonna get serial entrepreneurs who have taken companies from nothing to public, have been in your shoes, have raised every single round. That's the first thing. And the second thing is, We do one thing at Recurse Adventures and we do it extremely well. We've done it for over 50 companies. We help you get your series A done. Your seed in series A. That's our superpower. We get you funded. We know how to build the right narrative. We know how to figure out what the right KPIs are. We will make the most intros to the best VCs you will ever get from anybody on your cap table. That's our promise. We will get you funded. And at the same time, we're gonna get out of the way where we're not needed. It's up to you to figure out what the business is. It's up to you to figure out what the product market fit is. We're not gonna be able to do that for you because we're not in your shoes. It's your business. You run it. You know best. You know your industry best. But with us, we're gonna give you as much funding as you need to really realize your dream. Probably better than most other pre-seed funds you're gonna talk Jason Kirby (01:04:43.18) How do they get your attention? Itamar Novick (01:04:46.102) Yeah, that always comes up. Jason Kirby (01:04:49.26) You said it's like the dream dream VC I always want but how do I how do I get the right to make you actually want to look at my whatever I'm building Itamar Novick (01:04:57.015) Yes. Itamar Novick (01:05:00.504) So between me, Constantine Otmer, who's one of my venture partners, and Chris Holes, who's another venture partner, we have backed over 300, I dare to say over 400 companies over the last 20 years. 400 companies. The best way to get to us is to get an introduction from a founder that we backed before who knows you and knows us and can vouch for you. That's by far the best way. That's one that, I mean, we get three to five of these a day, but... Those are the deals that we jump on heads on and again, and try to find ways to be helpful. Second best is to get a warm introduction for somebody who knows you or knows us not as well, but are still like, hey, this is a great person. I met them. Maybe I like overlap with them a little bit. I think they're great. You should talk to them. That's also great. Cold calling doesn't work, guys. So just like, stay with me. Jason Kirby (01:05:58.7) And when it comes to, I'm always curious with like kind of pre-seeds. Do you do seed or only pre-seed? Itamar Novick (01:06:06.114) We mostly lead pre-seed rounds, but we also participate in seed rounds. Jason Kirby (01:06:10.956) When it comes to price, how important is price for you coming into the round? Itamar Novick (01:06:19.704) It's important, but we put it the right perspective. I'll give you an example. Two thirds of our deals in recursive ventures are with successful repeat serial entrepreneurs. And we believe that experienced repeat entrepreneurs de-risk the business by 2 to 3x. I have some data backing this, but honestly, it's more of a theory. It's anecdotal, right? That's also what we see in our portfolio. So if we come across a successful repeat entrepreneur and they demand a higher valuation or the market lends them that higher valuation, which happens, there's competition out there, yeah, we would pay up. Because again, our math adds up to like, okay, two X the valuation, three X the risk, that's a good deal, right? So we're less valuation sensitive than other firms, right? if it's really the appropriate setting, right? If that's not the case and we are making a bet on a less experienced team or there's a lot of hands-on work that we have to do, then we kind of want to make sure that that valuation really fits our model where we can see 100 plus X return if this one works out. So that's where you see lower valuations. And I get this often, like how frosty, like how crazy is the market and valuations these days? I'd say it's pretty crazy, but it's not that different from 2020, 2021. Like back then the valuations were also off the charts. Jason Kirby (01:07:52.108) and they were spread across a lot worse companies. think the valuations that we're seeing are at least higher quality and fewer. Please. Itamar Novick (01:08:00.344) Yeah, it's definitely the we're definitely the have and have not sort of AI and AI if you're a hot team coming up with open AI and you've got like a great story to tell you, know, the value issues are going to be insane. And if you just another team that's building a thin wrapper and legal or whatnot, you're you're lucky to even get funded at this point. So there's really the have and have nots, but there's a lot of great founders and companies in the middle, which again, we think the valuations are reasonable. Like I think in Q2, we looked at the average entry valuation for us. was, most of our deals are Bay Area deals. So Silicon Valley, it is more expensive. Great people. Probably in the 12 and a half, $30 million post money range at the entry point. It's not low, but it still fits our model. And we can still get our 100 plus x outcome with that kind of entry price. Jason Kirby (01:09:02.188) Well, it's Mark. This has been a phenomenal conversation from buying your kind of position into a company at, you know, kind of stage zero, stage one, and then taking it all the way to public. And then now. in AI. For founders, I just want to learn more about you, your portfolio, where should they go? Itamar Novick (01:09:26.538) LinkedIn, follow me on LinkedIn. write daily and I write about VC and I write about startup anti-patterns. Both are very helpful for founders who are starting VC backed companies. Just follow me on LinkedIn. Jason Kirby (01:09:29.706) Yeah, it's got a huge color. Jason Kirby (01:09:38.892) Beautiful. We'll make sure to that in the link below and thank you for coming on the show. Really appreciate the time that we had today. Itamar Novick (01:09:44.376) Thanks Jason, it was great and thanks for all our listeners. Jason Kirby (01:09:48.236) So we'll, keep it rolling, but we'll kind of wrap there. just think that that was one we went over a little bit longer, but I think you just had so much interesting stuff to share. that I want to kind of like peel apart more and more of it. Cause we, we talked from like IPOs to M &A to, you know, fundraising to, you know, almost losing the company. So there's, there's a lot to cover. Um, well, um, you're curious. That all said, um, I really appreciate this. I'm probably going push it up in the schedule because I think we have like 10 recorded right now and the schedule really starts going out on October 2nd. Telling-wise, does anything matter to you? Do you have any preference? Do have anything like coming up? Itamar Novick (01:10:32.12) Not at all, I'd love to promote it as well. So just send me things ahead of time. If you've got the 30 second shorts, I can promote that as well. I think what I'm feeling is it really is a lot of the success ties into how much we push this out. And I'm happy to push up multiple segments if you've got shorts or the like. Jason Kirby (01:10:40.246) Perfect, yeah, we said that. Jason Kirby (01:10:52.426) Yeah, we usually do three to five shorts per episode and then obviously the full length and that's on all the channels. Itamar Novick (01:10:56.216) I'll publish them. Even though I'll publish them, let's see how it comes out. I'm like out of my element a little bit. Like you caught me Monday morning and I broke my wrist. Jason Kirby (01:11:06.15) Yeah, I wouldn't ask about that, but we covered too much. don't want to throw you under the bus of why you have a broken arm. Itamar Novick (01:11:13.238) Now I dislocated a joint in my wrist. like, I'm not 100 % there. I also slowed down a of my stuff because I can't This is my palm has to be up. Jason Kirby (01:11:23.154) fine. So what company are you going to invest in that allows the true AI agent ability for the handicapped? Itamar Novick (01:11:32.248) electric scooter accident. It's a classic. These electric scooters are so freaking dangerous, man. It's like, yeah. Jason Kirby (01:11:36.32) wow. Jason Kirby (01:11:40.842) Yeah, I don't like the scooters. two, I have a skateboard, electric skateboard that I get around here in London. So much easier, like way more control than like the scooters that you can have. just, you know, the... Itamar Novick (01:11:52.665) Because you also have four wheels, right? That is already so much more stable. Jason Kirby (01:11:56.172) Yeah, four wheels. Yeah, you have like more. Jason Kirby (01:12:00.864) Yeah. I, and yeah, I've skating my whole life, so it's easy, it's no boarding, but, let's do this. you know, one, I'll get this out. I'll, I'll let you know kind of what the publishing schedule, comes out to be. And then obviously we'll tee you up with all the assets once they're ready. you know, didn't sound like you said anything that you want taken out, or anything like that. Itamar Novick (01:12:23.392) Yeah, I'll let you know. There's nothing that comes to mind. Jason Kirby (01:12:25.74) Yeah. It sounded like there was like disclosures of public, you know, public company info that you can't share or anything like that. We kind of kept it history only. Um, and then, um, yeah, how could I be helpful? Like anything that, uh, you know, it comes to mind in terms of, you know, uh, could be helpful to you. Itamar Novick (01:12:43.68) Now, nothing that comes to mind, I have one or two companies that are trying to sell themselves, but they are already working with bankers that they found. Sometimes I get asked on the sell side, but there's none that comes to mind now. So the sourcing deals, I'm very focused on everything that's happening here in Silicon Valley. So I don't look at European deals, that's the truth. I don't look. I focus on Jason Kirby (01:13:11.596) And we don't do that. We don't have much European. Most of our stuff is US based. I'm curious actually, a company I invested in is in the ag tech space. They're basically bringing AI to the livestock industry. And basically what they've done is they've tracking what we call birth the burger with AI from when a cow is born to basically when it's on the shelf, their AI is able to track the health of that. Itamar Novick (01:13:26.456) Mm-hmm. Itamar Novick (01:13:33.048) Mm-hmm. Itamar Novick (01:13:36.716) Yeah. Jason Kirby (01:13:41.014) know, cattle, it's like a $3 trillion industry in terms of the cabbage. Itamar Novick (01:13:43.289) Like farmer to marketplace to distributor to yes, like tracking being able to track the full life cycle. Yeah, that's important. We've seen that in vegetables and other types of produces, but meat is even harder because of the cooling and all the other. Yes. Jason Kirby (01:14:00.672) Well, it's more so in the, the cattle stage when they are. So that's their kind of beachhead. my buddy is the founder. call him the AI cowboy because he's actually out there on the ranches with the ranchers. and he, he sold the company previously, in the AI space and. You know, he's out in Austin. So he just knows kind of the cattle rancher life out there and just identify that it's, have you ever seen the show Yellowstone? well, it's literally like. old people on horses that are like tracking cattle on like black books. yeah, like she's about 1200 pounds, you know, kind of thing. And like that, that level of accuracy, as you can imagine, uh, from a cowboy riding horse is what the industry's relied on for like a couple hundred years. And no one, no one's broken through on tech. And I think they've done a really unique way with, um, a phone, a camera, cause like they have a lot of cameras on like for security purposes. Now they can convert those into like. tracking cameras and actually track weight, identity, breed, health, all those kind of attributes. So they built their own AI model around mapping those attributes around cattle. And then they had some beachhead agreements with some of the major associations on that front. I know, I think it's super interesting. Like obviously I didn't come from cattle, but the fact that they've, he's just about to. Like literally I was just texting this morning. Itamar Novick (01:14:58.007) Yeah. Itamar Novick (01:15:19.137) Is he raising? Itamar Novick (01:15:23.0) I'll take a look, I'll take a look. You want to hear something crazy? My grandfather has been building cow farms and raising cattle professionally in his kibbutz in Israel for 50 years. But he's at a level where they would take him as an advisor to build a new farm, with thousands of cow heads and all that. And when I was a kid, Jason Kirby (01:15:47.148) So you have some context, that's awesome. Itamar Novick (01:15:50.208) No, and he used to take me out on his jobs and you know, pet the cows and stuff. Jason Kirby (01:15:56.62) All right, let me connect you to Evan. He's a really good dude. Really knows his space, very passionate. And I think you guys might hit it off if you have some contact. Because it's hard to find people that actually understand. It's hard to find people in San Francisco that actually understand cattle. Well, have some exposure. You've seen some cow shit. Itamar Novick (01:16:09.656) I wouldn't say I understand cattle. just have some. Yeah, those farms stink like hell, but I can smell them from miles away. But yeah, mean, obviously, yeah, I'll take a look. It's like the biggest question is, know, how big can this get? Because even though it there's probably like. a top down like a high level analysis will say, yeah, there's like a trillion dollars a year spent on cattle. It's like, OK, but bottoms up, like how many of them would actually pay and how much would they actually pay is a tough question in that space because especially when you're approaching businesses that haven't traditionally been very tech-infused, it's a question. Jason Kirby (01:16:50.292) Yeah. Yeah. I think that's, that's one of the things that I've been impressed with looking at the competition and seeing how far he's gotten with just a solution that's, I won't sell it. I think you take a look at it. think it's pretty interesting. And, I think there, there's gotta be a winner in this category. The market needs it. And what they do in terms of the entire life cycle is what I think is like, this is their beach at tracking the cattle, but it opens up opportunities that have never been possible before in terms of data. in our food supply chain, which I thought, you know, it's years down the road, but like what this unlocks if this data exists at scale, which already have a couple of million cattle under, in their ecosystem. I think it's pretty, pretty cool. So I'll, send you an email to him and you guys can have a chat. Itamar Novick (01:17:36.408) I'm appreciative. The old source is always good. I trust you, I am this. we'd be happy to take a look. Jason Kirby (01:17:42.284) haha Jason Kirby (01:17:46.762) I'll share, I'll share with you a little bit later. then, yeah, if there's anything I can help with, you ever want to found her to chat with me about options when it comes to market and whatnot, always have to have a position. You asked, I just live here. My entire career has been the priority for the last 13 years of my marriage. And my wife got an opportunity to focus on her career and that meant moving here. Itamar Novick (01:17:56.185) Are you mostly Europe or are you most of your clients are in Europe? Why? Why then? Itamar Novick (01:18:14.424) you've told me. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Jason Kirby (01:18:16.396) Yeah. and, you know, it's been a great time out here with the kids and stuff like that. I just run things remotely and I work until 10 PM, you know, sometimes. So, uh, we're going back in the summer next year is what it looks like. So, you know, it'd like a good two, two and a half year experience. And then we'll be back state side where I won't be taxed to death. And yeah, yeah. Uh, I don't know if I can go back to West coast. Um, my, and also the family's more. Itamar Novick (01:18:25.112) You Itamar Novick (01:18:34.892) It's cause Itamar Novick (01:18:41.452) Yeah, I hear you. Jason Kirby (01:18:45.342) accessible from the east and stuff like that. Itamar Novick (01:18:48.088) Sure. Well, we'd be to have you back. And in the meanwhile, yes, if you're US focused, I just have one or two firms. It's mostly individuals, like small firms that I sometimes work with. So maybe we should try one or two with you as well. Let's see if that works. I'm happy to send folks over to you. I don't always get asked, but when I get asked, I'm happy to offer a few names to see if you can help the company. It's mostly. Like I know how this works. Like if they have 30 days of money in the bank and they're just shutting down, it's a waste of time. It's like important to start it when you're like six to 12 months ahead of running out of money and you think that it might not work and you want to start thinking about strategic options. That's the right thing. Jason Kirby (01:19:31.604) Well, and one thing we do really well that I'm most proud of is like we have several companies that are like tens of millions of revenue and some are close to a hundred. And then some of them are just a few million, but they come to us when they're at that pivot point of like, should we be on the path of raising? Should we be on the path of exit? Where's the next big swing for us? And, or is it time to cash in our chips? We're very good at coming in and answering that question and doing what we call a capital strategy assessment and figuring out. and presenting to the board and putting like a board ready deck of like, here's all the different paths that are open to you. And, here's probably the most plausible, you know, option A or B, and kind of why and what that means. And then you kind of have this, you know, chunky kind of meat, you know, meaty data backed, recommendation that kind of helps solidify some of the gut feelings people have, but it's kind of hard to go and say that to the board without being able to defend it. And so we kind of help, you know, bring all that. Itamar Novick (01:20:26.764) Yeah. Jason Kirby (01:20:28.94) credibility and data to the table in those decisions. So when people are kind of questioning, I go right, do I go left, or go down center? That's usually where it's best for us to start building the relationship. We always have to come in and shop a deal when it's ready to be shopped, but I think that's where we get to build a deeper relationship and value add with the companies. Itamar Novick (01:20:46.955) understood it makes perfect sense. I do have to run. It's great to see you again. Thanks for this and I look forward to promoting it together. That'll be fun. You too. a good night. Bye Jason Kirby (01:20:50.006) So yeah, great. Looking forward to it. Have a good one. Thank you. Bye.