Podcasting to Attract Investors and Grow Your Business

In this episode of Podcasting Secrets, host Nathan Gwilliam interviews venture capitalist Andrew Romans about strategies for entrepreneurial success. Andrew shares the inside scoop on raising funding, finding hot startup deals, and using content to build your personal brand. He reveals his tips for mitigating downside risk when launching a new venture, including planning for the worst-case scenario. You'll also learn the pros and cons of venture capital versus bootstrapping your business. Tune in to uncover key insights on how to amplify your business growth and turn your podcast into a profitable venture.

Transcript

Nathan Gwilliam: Hello, Incurable Creators. Today, I am joined by Andrew Romans. He's a general partner of seven BC venture capital. He's also the host of fireside with a VC. Andrew has founded two Silicon Valley and New York city venture capital funds. He's completed more than a hundred VC investments into high growth startups.

He's achieved top decile. That means he's in the top 10 percent of all us VC performance. He's raised more than 300 million as founder of his own startups. And he's a university professor on venture capital at one of California's oldest and largest universities Chapman in Southern California. And he's a three time author with major publishers in six different languages.

Thank you so much for joining us, Andrew.

Andrew Romans: Nathan, great to see you. Great to be back again with you.

Nathan Gwilliam: Andrew, can you share with us a little bit of your journey?

Andrew Romans: I'm excited to get into the topic more recently because I have a podcast. I have written books, I've had the experience of like foreign rights and all that, and I've done events and it fits into my venture capital business.

And so I'm an entrepreneur who is a VC, but I'm still an entrepreneur. And so it's exciting to learn from each other about how this space is evolving, for the community that you're building around podcasts and that kind of thing.

My quick journey, you read my bio already, I went, I got into technology early out of undergrad. I had a couple of venture backed startups. With some good, some bad outcomes, like an IPO on the NASDAQ M and a, and some failures. So I've even gone through firing 150 people and putting a thing into bankruptcy and down rounds and all that. So I've seen, good weather and bad weather on that side.

I've founded two VC funds from scratch and, raised the money and completed a lot of investments. And you were kind enough to mention that our scoreboard is good. I think most VCs probably return the money eventually. So it's like hard to lose your money investing in most VC funds because they're diversified and they know what they're doing hopefully. The question is, were you better off putting it into government treasury bills or, or the stock market or real estate in some part of the world that's really popping? And is it, are you getting enough of a premium to justify what is typically a weight?

We've actually innovated a way to return the fund faster. By selling a little bit along the way and letting people invest more along the way, outside of the fund, but that's my journey. And I think more relevant to what we're talking about today is the books, the podcast, I used to do a lot of blogging and I don't do too much of it, but I do a little bit throughout the year. And I think it's an interesting topic. As far as most VCs, I'm actually participating in a lot of this stuff, so I'm curious to talk to you about it.

Nathan Gwilliam: So you've talked about some highs and lows in your business journey. Tell us about your best high, the greatest grand slam home run you've ever hit. And what was the most important thing you learned from that? And then tell us about your. Worst failure. And what did you learn and take away the most important lesson from that?

Andrew Romans: It's funny I remember being at this offsite training thing for this company I worked for that was building fiber optic cable networks around the world at the very beginning of my career.

And the guy who's he was spoon feeding us that book, getting to yes. And like negotiations, training and stuff. And he asked the question, what do you seek the most in a characteristic of a customer? And I think I said open and honesty and being willing to share information so I know what they want. So I know how to potentially negotiate a deal and please them. And my boss who is running the whole globe around the world flying ticket guy, Rob Heller said, I like a customer who says yes.

And I remember at the time thinking that's a stupid thing to say. I'm coming up with a thoughtful answer that'll get us all, learn from each other and just getting to guess means nothing. And to answer your question, what's the high point it's when someone says, yes, it's when like you get somebody to say I'm in for 50 million into the fund. And it's a, yes, it's essentially closing a sales deal, really. And then the other high is even somebody coming in with a really small check of 50 to 100 K, but it's the head of co- pilot at Microsoft.

Some tech person we want to be able to tap into that brain and network. And then of course, I think any venture capitalist or entrepreneur will tell you the high point is when the exit comes and you sell or IPO one company that returns the entire fund three times, and then it happens again and lightning starts to strike multiple places. And I think there's a little element of luck in this, and you can try to neutralize luck or the need for luck with diversification and double down in your winners and sell a bit early and do a lot of favors for other people is the real truth on how to generate your own luck.

But those business events, a little bit like my old boss saying, I like to hear the word yes. Those are the high points. Low points are, it's a bit scary when you see a big investment go south or sideways or find out that there's criminal activity somewhere, or holy cow, the level of fraud here is sophisticated. Those are low points I think for some people, you got to get used to hearing no a lot. So have a high pain threshold for rejection, keep picking yourself up and getting excited and enthusiastic about. What you're talking about, because even when we're raising money for a fund. We get a lot of no's for a lot of different reasons. Ooh, China's going to annex Taiwan. That's our reason for no. And it hasn't even happened yet.

Nathan Gwilliam: All right, so that failure that you talked about, what's the most important takeaway you took from that? How do you see the world differently or do business differently because of that failure?

Andrew Romans: I guess it is planned for the worst at all times. If you think you're Columbus and you're going to sail across the ocean. And you have a sense of how many days of water and food and supplies you need more than double that, and even have other contingency plans. Maybe I have to throw people off the boat to make sure that this water gets us there. And, kind of plan for the worst.

Throwing people off the boat sounds really horrible in the world of Silicon Valley. If you've hired extremely talented people, they're extremely marketable, and you can even make some introductions and they might be loving to get out of a dot sinking ship and into an ascending ship that's taken off like a rocket. So I think what I learned there was don't be naive and listen to people saying, hey, we're going to wire the money on Monday, go off and have a great Christmas holiday break. And we're going to wire the money as soon as you get back in January. And then you get back in January and that guy all of a sudden backs out for ghosting you and not even talking to you, or it gives you some big reason that's beyond anyone's control.

And so I think the biggest lesson for the failures is almost plan for failure and make sure you don't.

Nathan Gwilliam: The way I look at it is I look at what keeps me up at night. I look at the things that are the biggest risks. They could go wrong. That could tank us and cause my failure. And then I get up and work and do everything I can to minimize the risks of those elements.

Andrew Romans: Take a risk, but a measured risk and say, I'm going to take a risk. And like I'm going to spend money to fly to Saudi Arabia. I'm going to pitch my deal to this family. It's, I don't know about this introducer guy. Maybe he's not real. Maybe he's not real, but this is the total costs of the plane ticket, the trip, the everything and the time and distraction, if this goes to zero, am I willing to take that risk? Even if it goes to zero.

And so you're basically saying my ship can get hit with this torpedo and it will not sink me. And so it's like a measured risk. And even mentally, you tell your spouse before you even do it and say, Hey, we're going to spend, a couple million dollars on this Saudi thing, and it's probably going to fail. But if it hits. It'll be generational wealth.

Nathan Gwilliam: You run a podcast and you get a lot of traffic, especially from LinkedIn as you publish repost this content that you're creating.

Can you tell me a little bit more about your journey to create the podcast and maybe even specifically, what are some of the benefits, the best benefits that you've seen as a VC running a podcast?

Andrew Romans: I think of the podcast a little bit analogous to me behaving in meetings and phone calls and talking to my portfolio companies that I've invested in. To my partners within the fund to young people that were growing up here and to other VCs and even buyers and lawyers and everybody involved in these companies developing to self actualize, keep getting funded, not run out of money.

And ultimately crystallize some sort of exit with M and a IPO PE, secondary that people were asking me or telling me you should write a book and this is going back decades. So people were telling me you should write a book because this is valuable stuff that, that is being discussed here that's coming out of you. Why don't you write a book?

It started off with me telling the story of what some other entrepreneur did in the same situation that you're in now. So I'm in a meeting with somebody and I said, this happened to somebody else I know this is how they got through it. And so the book was needed to get born like a baby and just be birthed and come out.

It wasn't so much. I'm like, oh yeah, these guys write a book. I should write a vanity book and beat my chest like Tarzan about how great I am. So that's what happened with book one. And then I went through a publishing experience with. McGraw Hill and McGraw Hill screwed up the Japanese, translate, or, we had like Nikkei wanted to publish it because I've LP investors in my fund from Japan.

So they were hooking me up in Tokyo and then McGraw Hill screwed that up. So that was a big learning. And then going through all those experiences, I then started to see benefits come from writing books. And at the time I was blogging a bit, blogging was bigger than it is now. And people still read blogs and I do blog a little bit, but I think we are training the younger generation to screw up their neurons and all they can do is watch Tik TOK and Google shorts. And so podcast is a different thing.

But at the same time, we were talking privately that people like you and me like to go deep into a topic. That's not a Tik TOK short. And so the podcast. Medium is a nice way to get really deep. Joe Rogan does the crazy three hour episode with Quentin Tarantino. Where else are you going to get to know Quentin Tarantino? Like you spent a weekend with him in the South of France, then the podcast.

So all these things evolved. It went from books, to the blogging to let's start essentially blogging and video and audio. And the benefits, so the short answer to your question is the main moving parts that impact my business are someone investing in our VC fund. And that's a wide group from small checks from little angel investors to bigger checks from super rich people to family offices that have so much money that they're paying people on a team. Two large corporations, endowments, pension funds, sovereign wealth funds, insurance companies, it goes on.

So the combination of books, blogging, LinkedIn, real world events in person, and the podcast is just another spoke and what's becoming a wheel to spin like a Disney wheel that brings, LP capital into our fund. And the other side of the business is finding startups to invest in. So maybe someone listens to this podcast. That we're recording now, and then they will contact me to fund them. And we will end up investing in a company that has a multi billion dollar exit outcome. And a lot of deal flow comes to us from these different mediums that we're creating content in, from the events to the podcast, to the books, to the blogging.

And you could say there's some reputational stuff. If you're trying to suck value out of the universe at all times, you're probably not even going to survive. If you take a view of, I spend some time, doing favors for other people, those favors may pay off down the line. So there's an element of that too. The time that's allocated here.

Nathan Gwilliam: Okay so I love this direction, this analogy you've given of this wheel and spoke model. Can you expand on that a little bit more? You referred to Disney, maybe start off by explaining how Disney does it and then how a business can do that with books and podcasts and these other things you've mentioned.

Andrew Romans: Yeah. And I also think that there's an opportunity clearly for individuals that are not even raising angel funding or venture funding to start off with some element of content creation and get sponsors, to, make more money doing this than they did working at the New York times or whatever. And they have the independence of a, like the Uber driver, but they could be in Thailand one day and skiing and some amazing place the next day in the Andes, right?

So I think it's worth thinking about that. So the Disney spoke and wheel model is like a, doc, if you get an MBA, you'll be forced to read a Harvard business school case on this kind of stuff. And there's others that have tried to replicate it, but Disney is the most famous. So Disney was, Walt Disney himself like made Mickey Mouse as content, right? And so you've got the cartoon and even the comic strip, the cartoon itself is like one form of contents. That's one spoke.

And you could say all the movies, even down to they've acquired Star Wars, probably killed it, it's not totally dead yet. So you have these movies that are like, Snow White or whatever. And the dwarfs, and then they make an amusement park where you physically go there. Like it's great adventure with a roller coaster and you can get out of the snow white ride or, what the jungle river ride or whatever that stuff is.

And so going, bringing your family to the ride reinforces the interest in them buying what was the DVD that the evil company of Disney would only make the DVD available between Thanksgiving and Christmas. And they promise you're not going to get it for the next four years. When your little princess daughter is too old to give a damn other than she hates you for not having bought her the princess, whatever thing.

So the amusement park absolutely reinforces the DVD sales or, pay to rent it on Amazon now is where we are now with that. And so content drives that. And then there's the merchandise that the merchandise gets you to buy this little Yoda hoodie. And now the little kid identifies that he's wearing Yoda every day. So he wants to go to the Universal Star Wars fun park in Orlando, and he's pumped to be watching the movies and paying money for it. And so these different spokes of like merchandise, the movies, the content, the little TV offshoot, and the amusement park ride creates a wheel that starts to roll with thunderous momentum is a monster that cannot be stopped.

And if one, any of the, they have cruises it, if you really, if you really know Disney, you're probably seeing, there's a whole lot of stuff that they've got on top of that than the ones I've mentioned. And so I think in this world, an individual can potentially start with a side hustle and quit their job and start writing books, getting online courses for the book, maybe, doing real world events, bringing a community together, and then podcasting with members of the community.

And be building something that people like that's valuable to a certain constituency. And they begin to get a Disney hub, spoke wheel thing going, and it maybe be gets, it becomes bigger than one individual person and it turns into a company that's, the livelihood for many people.

Nathan Gwilliam: Yeah. And I see how they build momentum upon each other, right?

You have the podcast and because you've invited guests on your podcast. They invite you on their podcasts. And because you become an expert on this, you create a book on it. And because you've got a book and a podcast and you're on shows, you get invited to speak at trade shows, right? It's this momentum that just builds.

Andrew Romans: Everyone's business is different, but like for me, I had a book on masters of corporate venture capital where Roel Sood is the co founder of Microsoft ventures. He's like the case study in that book, but then he left Microsoft, started a company and I funded it and then we sold it and made a lot of money together and I actually lost contact with anyone at Microsoft Ventures.

I think I met some younger people there, but then they rebranded as M12. And then some PR person cold emailed me asking if the new head of Microsoft Ventures, now M12 could be on the podcast. And he's like a super cool guy on LinkedIn. And I met him through the podcast and we have this shared experience that we recorded an episode together.

We got to know each other. We spoke privately, of course, and we're already sharing deals and he's looking at making investments. Into my existing portfolio companies. So we don't just throw the money blindly and pray that this Vegas investment we've placed a bet on is going to succeed by introducing them to M 12, Microsoft, if they invest and they put that onto the Microsoft platform, that's like much bigger than Disney is if you're a tech company.

So I see real value in that. In fact, we were talking to privately we made an investment into a company that could be relevant to a lot of your listeners and viewers, which is daily. ai. So it's I have a daily newsletter that comes out every day. Or even once a month or once a year dot AI.

And that's a tech company that is enabling any company or individual to create a newsletter that'll create content. So somebody could say, I want to have a podcast that's about podcasting. And you can use daily. ai and explain exactly what you want the newsletter to do. And it'll run out automatically.

It'll automatically just go out as a machine, grab all the new releases on who's been funded in the podcast world, what products are good on it, blogs about, tips and tricks or something about this. And it'll put it together with AI, and then you approve it or make some changes and it goes out.

And then the real kicker comes in with the feedback loop. It's measuring the hell out of every response to everything. And it starts understanding the individual out there and it can send a different newsletter to this person. And a different newsletter to that person. And so the open rates are like over 50 percent where they, the open rates of the industry is like far lower.

So to to be doing it without that kind of technology is a bit crazy, but who has time to write a newsletter about every single venture deal that's happening in Southern California or the Boston area or something. So it's interesting to embed some of these tech stack things. Into your hub and spoke thing and one feeds off another.

Now, if you're selling an online course to the book that you've written, then that newsletter could be driving sales to that book or getting people to download your app.

Nathan Gwilliam: I love it. The technology can definitely facilitate that hub and spoke. Or wheel and spoke, whatever we call it, model much better than we could historically do.

Do you think businesses that go this direction, that have some other product or service, they may be a software company, they may be selling pergolas and pavilions for backyards, right? But they adopt these things you're talking about, the books and the podcasts and speaking, and they build audiences and followings. Do you think that can increase value we're podcasting is not the core of the business, but it's the marketing strategy of a business that has a different focus.

Andrew Romans: Look at mr. Beast. I don't know the numbers all that well, but he makes these videos, he's spending real money with a team of hundreds of employees to make them now, and he was living off of his little pittance of revenue share that YouTube, Google pays him while they keep almost all the value for themselves.

Doing very little other than being the platform. And then he introduced like chocolate bars. And I heard that in the first year of introducing a Mr. Beast chocolate bar, that his sales are over like 250 million now. And he owns a hundred percent of that chocolate bar. We've invested in companies like daily harvest is now valued at over a billion dollars.

And super coffee is valued at over half a billion dollars. But those companies spent a lot of venture capital funding to build those brands and get there. So Mr. Beast, introducing a little merchandise or, an actual product to a community that that fits, with it, it's quite interesting and, I just think that it's very noisy out there.

There's a lot of so I almost think like the Viet Cong will win the Vietnam conflict and the American army will lose it. And in this scenario, it's the venture backed startup, that's the American army getting slaughtered by all these people, just like in the trees. And then, in civilian clothes that I think I see a big opportunity for these individual people to say, yeah, I was working at the New York times and then getting paid 150 K a year, which you could barely have a child and survive in New York city on that salary.

And then I switch over to moving to Jamaica or Bali, and I'm now writing all my stuff on a pay to subscription platform. And I'm actually making more money in subscriptions and I finally monetizing my worthless Twitter following or my enormous following I have on LinkedIn, and so I think for that individual, they may not need to raise outside funding and that's a huge uptick in life improvement.

And I'll bet you, they feel better than going to the office and getting a bullocking and saying, I want you to write an article every week. That sounds like sex in the city. And that's not what they want to write about.

Nathan Gwilliam: Okay so you're saying that maybe one of the advantages of podcasting is they don't need to go raise VC funding.

Maybe they can build it from scratch and build a following and build an audience that they own a hundred percent, create a lifestyle business that allows them to have the freedom. To, to experience life on their terms instead of creating the big, huge corporate Joe Rogan podcast.

Andrew Romans: Yeah I think, it's not a good idea to compare yourself to hey, invest in my startup because we're just like YouTube and YouTube just got acquired for 1. 6 billion or whatever it was. Now that there's YouTube, that's a Mac truck that your aunt sized company is going to get run over by. So we're not investing in your company. And it's a bad to compare yourself to that or saying, oh, I want super voting rights, like Mark Zuckerberg. I'm like if your company took off on Harvard campus, the way his did and spread to all the other schools and spread to all the parents, then yes, you can have your super voting rights, but it's not a good idea to compare yourself to that.

I think that Spotify was trying to really make a product extension from music only into the podcasting space and into the whole content world. And what was the future of television over the top broadcasting and everyone's a citizen journalist and every individual is a broadcaster in this world.

And so it made sense for them to pay a hundred million and they could algorithmically position it for they would get over a million in cash back in a relatively short period of time. So Joe he moved to Austin, Texas from California to not pay tax on that, deferred the transaction until his lawyers said, you're fully in the clear to not pay any tax in this a hundred million.

But that's pretty cool that he started a company and sold it for a hundred million and he owns his cake and can eat it too, because he keeps all the merchandise and sponsorships that go into it, and then he's got a clean hundee for life. So I would say that in entrepreneurship, and I've been on all sides of the table, if you can build a business and not have to raise capital and sell part of your little pizza pie.

So when you're a hundred million comes, you get all 100 million and you don't have to give 30 million to this VC and 40 million to that. And then after they've been paid back, you get your percentage or something. It's a wonderful thing to build a business that can be scaled on the retained earnings and profits that you're generating.

So that's the good news. The other kind of bad news in this is that most VCs want to invest in a company that has a lot of, first of all, so many of them are just B2B SaaS. Software as a service. So they want software that is being sold to another company. And then those there's a lot that are into consumer fine.

Andrew Romans: Is your business going to be big enough? And is it unique if it's not, is it unique? And so it starts looking like a brand. Most VCs are not going to invest in a startup. That's going to make blue jeans and have, and build a unique brand in the blue jeans fashion industry or a movie or television media company.

Where they're saying we want to make game of thrones, but on a low budget, most tech VCs are not going to invest in that media company. And if you're a newspaper or hub and spoke of the podcast and the events and this stuff, they're typically not going to invest in it. They'd rather invest in the guys making the picks and shovels being sold to the opportunistic gold miners that go running off to San Francisco for the gold rush.

But there could also be the platform play. If you're the company that all the journalists were making 150 K working for the New York Times, now they're making 750 K selling subscriptions through some Shopify business in a box. I think there's an opportunity for someone to offer we have the full tech stack of the daily AI newsletter.

We've got the tech stack for how to make sure with one click you're on Amazon and not just siloed on Spotify. We've figured it all out all you have to do is you be you and we will be successful together. I think there's probably some big opportunities for somebody to be venture backed and start pulling together a magic tech stack and it gets some kind of crowdfunding, momentum that say, cause most people record their podcast, post it to Spotify and YouTube or get it onto iTunes, whatever platform you're using and get very little view views and plays. So I think there's an opportunity.

Nathan Gwilliam: Technologies aren't integrated and they're expensive. And so that's actually what we've tried to do with PodUp. We've built a platform. We have 35 different technologies we brought together and to help you create, grow and monetize your podcast.

And we've raised more than 4 million so far. I'm sure there's lots of other players trying to do that as well, but that opportunity you describe is exactly what we're chasing.

Andrew Romans: That's fantastic. And I think that if someone's going for that kind of more, I am the Joe Rogan content and it'll die with me sort of thing, you might be able to attract angel investors that are, a rich person who made their money as a partner at Bain or something that likes you or met you, and you may be able to structure an investment that says, look if I can raise 500, 000, I can afford to pay for marketing and agencies and. Throw some money on YouTube and throw some money at Spotify or whatever. And that once we're generating these revenues from sponsorships or the events or whatever it is, I'll pay you your money back. And then in perpetuity, you own a slice of the profits. And here's the transparency I commit to with my integrity that you can log into my books and see. Each sponsorship showing up and blah, blah, blah.

So I think that it may not be venture backable for that lifestyle person. It's not doing a platform like PodUp, but they might be able to find some people in their network or network to some angels that provide some funding where they say, look, I don't mind throwing 50, 000 or a hundred thousand or two 50 K into this individual.

They already have amazing, set of content creation that they have. And I'll get my two 50 K back. And then I get a steady revenue stream. That over the next 10 years, it looks like a minimum of four or five X my investment into the company. And I'm happy to support this person. It might even be someone that's, you've known since they were a child and now they're getting their own little miniature, Mr. Beast traction.

So I think it's possible to raise money from individuals for your deal. Even if Sequoia and Kleiner Perkins are not beating a path down to your door.

Nathan Gwilliam: Yeah, that's what we've done to raise 4 million, but we haven't received any VC funding. It's all been, almost all of it is from successful CEOs that have made money and and they're investing individually.

That's the vast majority of what we've done.

Andrew Romans: That's great and that's impressive. 4 million from angel investors is, it sounds like a lot of meetings, a lot of calls. That's awesome. Good for you.

Nathan Gwilliam: It's consumed a lot of my life.

What is the greatest secret of success for your fireside with the VC podcast.

Andrew Romans: First of all it's very generous of you to call it a great success.

I think that we have there's a lot of interesting people and like important people that stay in touch with me. I think maybe one of the points of success is that, you get to know someone like Mark Cuban and there's only so much we email each other back and forth or get on the phone ever.

And by having the podcast out there. It it's like sending a Christmas card or something, they are staying in touch with you a little bit, or when you do meet them, they say, they're like laughing and they're demonstrating that I've been watching your stuff. And so maybe there's some value in that.

I don't know. I think that this is not a very unique thing to say, but if you consistently have really good guests for what your niche area is, that's probably you're marching in the right direction that, that may be more important than. Yeah all of the, all of the tech stack for me, I'm only doing podcasts with people that I want to have lunch with that I was going to have a call with anyway, occasionally there's someone like.

There's a new head of M 12 and I didn't know him. I knew the former person, but not the new one. And I said, oh, great. Let's go do this little shared experience. It's a bit like my books. When I put Pitch Johnson and Bill Draper, the first venture capital firm West of the Mississippi and wrote about what it was like for them in the early days of Silicon Valley.

I ended up in their dining rooms and their homes in Atherton with my wife and their wives, getting to know each other. This never would have happened had we not had this shared experience. Even if I might've met them, in a very formal professional environment, a few times, you had that shared experience of we'll always have Paris.

We'll always have the book. And oh, by the way, it's in six languages now. How cool is that? Your ego, your reputation living on canonized, thanks to me, so that was a bit of a shared experience to a smaller extent, it's like that on podcasts and you might be helping somebody by putting them on your podcast.

Like I say this on my LinkedIn, if you spend 30 percent of your time doing favors for other people, asking for nothing in return, that means that you went from spending a hundred percent of your time going to work every day, telling your family, I'm working hard. Daddy's working here down to only 70%.

So it's you're taking 30 percent vacation time from your work, even on a busy Monday after the holiday break. If you're doing 30 percent of your time doing favors for other people all the time, nonstop every day. So if somebody asks you for something, instead of saying, oh, I'm too busy. You're like, oh, thank you, God. This will be my help me with my quota of doing someone else a favor that remaining 70 percent of your time, if you're bad at this, we'll probably be two X more effective and you're trying to get someone on your podcast, but you did a favor to that guy. All of a sudden he's going to refer somebody really big to be on your podcast.

And boom, you were incapable of getting Bill Gates onto your podcast. And now you've got a Bill Gates episode. That'll be a game changer for you. So the idea that you're 70%. So you're achieving 1. 4 X results compared to one X results of not helping other people, that's maybe a way of thinking about some of this.

Nathan Gwilliam: Andrew, thank you for sharing your time and wisdom with us today. If our audience enjoyed it like I did, and they want to learn more about you and your products and services. What are the best ways for them to do that?

Andrew Romans: Yeah you can find me on LinkedIn. It says Andrew Romans or forward slash Romans, R O M A N S.

The other one is to email me directly, which is Andrew@7bc.vc. That's number seven B C dot V C as in venture capital. And if you're into podcasts and you want to hear a bunch of VCs blabbering on or entrepreneurs blabbering on with their VC, often my portfolio companies, but not always, you can find us at Fireside With a VC.

Nathan Gwilliam: Love it. And again, thanks for the value you shared with us today. I really enjoyed it.

Andrew Romans: Thank you. Great to see you.