The more that I put myself out there is who I am, like the less surprised someone is when they talk to me. And maybe the more they already felt like they knew me. And so they're Maura East, so they're more willing to talk about things in their business transparently. And so it again it all goes to. Of course, I'm in the business of making money, and it all goes to my ability and advantage there. But it just so happens that the way I get there is by doing stuff that

I loved doing. Hey, it's Adam Schoenfeld. Welcome back to the built in Seattle podcast, where Seattle's top entrepreneurs, investors and leaders share their stories and their lessons from behind the scenes. If you like this show, then you'll love my short weekly email, The Pike Street Journal. Subscribe at P s j dot email Each week I send some bonus nuggets from these interviews, stuff I get when the recorder's off and some or insider takes on Seattle people and companies. That's P s j dot email. My guest today is Kirby Winfield. He's the founding managing partner at Ascend VC, where he invests in precedes startups. He was an operator for 20 years before becoming a B C three times on the founding team and three exits. But he talked about the unhealthy physical and mental state that he landed in after his last exit,

how he was able to change his mind set and how those lessons and experiences have shaped the way he works with founders and his approach as a V. C. I hope you enjoy this candid and wide ranging conversation with Kirby. I'm here with the one the only Kirby Winfield. Welcome to the podcast,

Adam. It's awesome being here, man. I'm I'm really honored that you decided to include me.

I knew you way back before you were an investor when you were an operator.

Yeah, that's right. And probably a lot less healthy. Probably out of town, A lot more. Probably. I didn't know my family quite well. It's been a long time.

Can you talk about that a little bit? What's changes in your life? You're You're a lot more healthy. You're not traveling as much. We have cove it now. But was that a shift from being a founder to an investor? What was that

s. It was a huge shift, so I basically say, like I spent the 1st 20 years of my career chasing Esteem needs. So I tripped and fell into start ups right out of college, and the first one was called Go two Net. We ended up taking it public, and it was very successful. And so the bar was always to me, like, How do I How do I chase the next big deal? And how do I take more responsibility and optically appear to be successful in the startup world? And, like I got kind of caught in this trap where for my I felt like I needed for my own validation and even within my family, like I thought to be loved, I needed to be visibly successful in startups. That's a kind of messed up way.

Thio go about things because basically, that makes it a life or death struggle for your ego. And I bet I spent I was completely binary, like I put 100% of myself into the startup in nothing into my family and nothing and really anything else, including my health, physical and mental. So you wake up and do that for 20 years, and I was £60 overweight, pre diabetic with drinking way too much. Hadn't exercise since I played football in college and just a mess and had missed Ah, lot of my kid's childhood and have a daughter with Down Syndrome and had left a lot of that on my wife to help her and her early development. So it got out of the last startup we sold in 2016 and just looked in the mirror and say, Okay, this isn't working. I'm not happy. Nobody's happy.

And by the way, every startup I did the outcome got worse. Now they were all still exits. I guess it's good, but it was going the wrong direction. So even if I were just chasing the the external like validation that wasn't even happening and try to set, you gotta reset. And I wiped the like I said, I'm not doing anything. After we sold tow home away, Expedia, I said, Well, I'm not doing anything business wise for three months. I'm not taking a single collar meeting, and I'm gonna run every day,

and I'm gonna get my genetic health analyzed by the now defunct startup arrival and make some changes and came out of that into 2016 and said, All right, what what do I love doing? Which is the first time I've asked myself that maybe ever certainly since high school. And so I went out to explore the answer to that question, and that's what led me to launching a fun three years later.

What an amazing journey. I I didn't know that backstory. I'm glad we started on a lighter

note right there. Be Hey, it's got it is lighter now. I'm £50 lighter. That's

incredible. What do you think it was that allowed you or helped you make that mindset shift?

I think I realized that it wasn't sustainable for me to keep doing things the way I had been doing them to take ripping off these four year, five years sprints with that, we're all or nothing, I think part of realizing that So it wasn't possible if I wanted to keep a family and have some semblance of sanity and then also, I think in parallel to that, I finally stepped back and had a couple of people tell me, Hey, you tell the story of this narrative about yourself like you're this failure because that's how I saw it, the first to start ups like I was founding team. But it wasn't the CEO. And so they did really well. And I thought, Okay, I had something to do with that, but rode the coattails a little bit, and then the next to startups were decent outcomes, but not home runs.

And to me, that just felt because the first two were monsters. I just felt like I was I always tell people like the more I got in charge of something that the less good ended up, And I really internalized this narrative of the I suck and I had a couple of people just slap me and be like, You're very fortunate. You've had a lot to do with the positive things that have happened in your career and now comes that you've been a part of even the ones you didn't run And, like, just shut up and be happy with what externally looks pretty good, like four out of four start up liquidity events. And, like I felt like they gave me like I gave me freedom to feel like I've done enough in one in that world. Not that I've done anything great, but I don't think I did. But like enough that I felt check the box for my sort of ego and I could move on and really then asked that fundamental question of what I wanted to do versus I felt like I had done what I had to do in startups.

If that makes sense, yeah, I can imagine that was powerful moving from that mindset for so long of what you had to do to thinking about what do you want to do? What do you love doing? And I got to say, knowing you and looking at how you have put a send down in the world, you definitely look and feel different than a lot of other VCs. Has this experience kind of the roller coaster played into the type of ethos you wanted to have as an investor? Or how has that played?

Yeah, I think it has just in terms off the reasons that I'm doing it again. I had a pretty good run there and unfortunate enough that I could have chosen to do a bunch of different things and so literally. The reason I'm doing V. C is because I love founders. I love, I love the game and I I think there's an opportunity to be additive and fill a gap here, um, doing it the way I do it and and if it feels more like, make the analogy like I never had a hard time finding product market fit with the startups that Iran. But But with with investing, I feel like I have that finally have that product market fit. Where there's a poll from the market, I feel like what I'm doing is something that some segment of the market, at least from a founder and LP perspective, finds unique and interesting in 10 times better and wants it. And I'm sure I'm not for everybody,

but but being able to be my like, authentic, whole self and fundamentally be invested in the success of Founders, which is easy to say and hard to do is you start writing bigger checks and going up the capital stack. But at least right now I got to get in the boat and row a little bit, and that's fun.

Can you talk about what that means doing it the way that you do it and how that is different in the market and thinking about this in terms of product market fit, How is that sort of unique relative to others that are doing early stage investing

or investing in general? I think that in working with Look, I've raised money from, ah, lot of the institutional investors in Seattle or I'm currently working with them on companies in our portfolio and have very good friends that pretty much every firm you can name in Seattle not that's any great feat because there aren't that many. And I would say the vast majority of them are much better investors that I am when it comes to you know, Siri's A and beyond. And when it comes to really understanding what does see today and a to be looked like and how Doe I help a company focused on the right things to get to those next milestones, and I've got plenty of holes my game. But the one place that I feel like I'm advantaged is I spent the last decade raising venture and managing adventure boards and venture expectations and honestly, like not doing a great job of it, but then having to drag one of those one of those Cap table's through a Perry recapitalization when figuring out how to do a pivot, find an exit. Then again, getting raising money from investors for another deal and sort of getting halfway to where we want it to be and not being able toe necessarily feel great about our chances of the series A and we're gonna find find a good outcome, for I feel like I have fresh and relevant experience. It's almost like I look at. I look at some investors in town who have operated. They were also successful that maybe they didn't get the same sort of painful experiences that I had that maybe are more relevant to a bigger group of founders. I don't know.

Yeah, almost like you're founder. Empathy spans a wider range of possible situations across all the four companies that you did and the UPS and the downs, because we all know that it's not gonna be a straight line in most cases.

No, that's right. And again, I don't know. I think a lot of this I wonder how much how sustainable it is 10 years from now, am I gonna have the same sort of visceral connection to my own founder experience that aligns me with founders? I hope I could maintain it. I think investing at the earliest stage helps because I'm a lot of times I am a proxy sort of team member for however many hours a month, so I hope I can maintain that. But yeah, I think that's I think if you ask people, that's probably unique. Just just try. Uh, yeah. Anyway, I never trust anyone who says I'm empathetic and authentic E I would never say that.

But that's the feedback I get is that people feel like they look. The other thing is, I'm not gonna lead your seed round ever. I'm not gonna lead your around ever so there's no downside in telling me everything that's going on and asking me for help. And that's another place where I feel I feel that it's a little bit of a different relationship than it might be with a firm that has later stage ambitions,

because you you remove the need to posture for the next check in a way, and you could just get down to what really matters of How are we gonna grow this business? How are we going to validate our market? Like, how are we gonna have success here at this phase of the business?

That's right. I literally all I care about is you winning. And by the way, that sometimes ends up in me getting the opportunity to invest more money anyway, to win.

You said you love founders. Can you talk more about that? And why do you choose those words instead of I like investing in founders or like betting on founders? We hear PC save different flavors that you just said straight up. I love Founders. Can you tell me more about that? And where that comes from?

I said, I love founders because I think I just like people. I've always had a big tent approach to life. I'd rather have. I feel like I learned from every relationship I could build every like half hour I could spend with someone makes me better, and I have this insane like benefit of the doubt that I give people a person to person. If you talk to people I've known for a long time, they might tell you that over time, but that has a half life. But like I'm very optimistic and and I also I get like I get when you're at that stage off a company where your you've decided to do it. But it's not really anywhere yet, like how hard it is to communicate the reason that you're doing it and how frustrating it is to communicate with investors who don't seem to want to hear the truth. But they want to hear informations like arranged in a certain fashion for their consumption that will allow them to evaluate you. And I just remember being I remember really struggling with power imbalances. Okay, as a founder, really struggling,

I'm a very insecure person, and I need to be loved. And I've got all this like shit. And so I hated the power imbalance. Getting in a room with V C and the VCs that many VCs that that I pitched were very much traditional VCs were part of the game is that there is an intimidating thing. They're intimidating people, whether they mean to be or not in their offices were set up in an intimidating way, and the the meeting logistics are intimidating and and I always felt like I had to fight through that just to be able Thio let them know me and let them know why I was doing what I was doing. And I thought, What a stupid barrier. Blank. It's fine if I'm struggling with that. A za relatively privileged founder with a track record in the network. Imagine someone who doesn't have those advantages going into those situations, and it's just a shame, because basically what you're solving for in that case,

is as a B C is okay, who can overcome. I don't I guess I'm not gonna invest in anyone who really struggles with power imbalances and anxiety. But, boy, that you might miss on some winners there if you do that. And so I figured, How can I remove that? And when I meet with founders, how can I make it sure that I see the founders whole self and put them in a situation where they're able to communicate with confidence, why they're doing what they're doing and how they're going to get there? And to me, that was about like being of service to the founder, going to the found and went back when we could go places. I don't have an office. And a lot of the time I've tried to find a place where I could be the founder That wasn't wasn't in office and just trying to set things up so that to give myself as an investor look, it's selfish to write it. Zen enlightened self interest like to give myself as an investment the best chance to know someone but not let it get screwed up by the sort of noise of the power dynamic.

That's such an interesting observation because having felt that raising money and going to all these big, scary boardrooms, it's definitely there. And I love how you've stripped that away in your process. Does that then show up and how you work with the companies as well? Or how does that show up? Because it sounds like you made some pretty intentional choices about the early stages of getting to know founders. And before you make the decision to invest, does that carry through to then how you work with them once you're in the deal?

Um, I don't know if it carries over per se, like I would say, once we're often running look like once were often running. My job is to help you support you, but also hold you accountable because we're now on. We're now on the clock we're trying to We're trying to optimize learnings per dollar spent. We're tryingto figure out Where is the poll in the market for the thing that you think you're gonna dio and then we gotta find that. And then once we feel it, we gotta we gotta make sure we lean into it in a way that gets us to the next fund raising milestones. Because typically the company's I'm investing in aren't raising that much money. And so it doesn't really help anyone for me to spend the entire time canoodling with them on empathizing. Although I do my fair share. But I think if you asked folks like I typically get on post close by weekly call scheduled with founders and and without being a prescriptive board, okay, are type manager of the situation. I want to make sure that folks can bring me places where they might be blocked and see if I can help.

And at the same time, if I see someone going off the rails or making a mistake that I've seen, made or made myself before. I could help short circuit that, but yeah, I'd say the tenor of relationship shifts post deal. But I don't think it's a Jekyll and Hyde thing,

so changing gears a little bit here you seem to have leaned into content and brand more than many other Seattle VCs. How are you thinking about Go to market for yourself as an investor?

I think the first thing is that I was an English major. I was a creative writing minor. My I always get a hard time from a lot of for my college friends because many of them went on to write the best selling novels and and I write emails for a living. But I've always liked writing. And then I was actually a copywriter early on in my career, go to net and wrote PR and marketing materials. And then so I have a marketing background Onda writing background, and I spent and I spent an inordinate amount of time on Twitter talking about hip hop and record collecting and shoes and like second only to the amount of time I spend talking about startups and venture capital. So it I've been doing that for a decade. So I think just I have a I've always loved to write, have a marketing background, and I'm really curious about different communities in in the social media world and then from a boots on the ground perspective like I have. I was an angel for 20 years here, and it made more than 30 angel investments and got to know a lot of other angels. And that is a founder. You don't raise money from a lot of UCS and then as an operator, worked with thousands of different people in the tech ecosystem over two decades.

And so, from a sort of network perspective, I felt I have a lot of folks I could talk Thio and I think I have some interesting things to say, and I'm also okay looking stupid in public. That's been one of the best things about this whole like shift in awakening to not caring about what people think like as much, and what people think of my brand or my successes like or lack thereof is like, I'm just okay, I'm just okay shooting from the hip and learning on the fly. And I like I like the challenge of trying toe like make a joke on in 280 characters, and I like tweaking convention. I like the idea that I'm a VC, even though I'm really not. It's a $15 million fund. It's it's small potatoes. It's VC enough that I could tweak the convention a little bit and make little jokes on my website and just and nobody's gonna tell me no, because it's my shop.

So if I wanna put up a wacky startup toolkit, that's like half finished and I edit it once in a while, one in the morning when I can't sleep and there's a list of people on it and it might not be completed, I forgot, like two of my like people I respect the most, and they asked me what I have done, what or what they've done to deserve being left off. I don't care. It doesn't matter like the like. I think the big thing is I just feel so free thio to really just be myself. And that seems to map well to what some founders and that probably won't you know, we're gonna please everyone all the time. But what some founders find is interesting, compelling and positive. As the founders, you just want positive energy,

right? Like whether or not the investment gets made is do you feel valued in that interaction? And do you feel like And do you feel like you connect with this person? And the more that I put myself out there is who I am, like, the less surprised someone is when they talk to me. And maybe the more they already felt like they knew me. And so they're more at ease, so they're more willing to talk about things and in their business, transparently. And so it again, it all goes to. Of course, I'm I'm in the business of making money, and it all goes to my ability and advantage there. But it just so happens that the way I get there is by doing stuff that I loved doing.

And I think if you love by the way you talk to people, right? Who who don't understand twitter, they don't understand why you're there and what you do there. And I'm like, Look, if you don't love Twitter, if you don't understand that and enjoy it, then I can't explain to him. You're not gonna be good at it because you need to love it. And Twitter is not the only place I active. But like, that's a good analogy, right? If you're the kind of person who just loves this stuff and shooting from the hip and put put, put it all, making jokes and being a being a being a jackass, sometimes then it's gonna work for you. And if it's not that it doesn't. And so I guess they're just maybe not that many people who enjoy the things I dio.

Yeah, I love the way you describe that because it's not dogmatic. Everybody should put content out in the world or right, or share their opinions in the way I do, but that it's something you love and enjoy, and that comes through and I'm I love that you do it because it's great to see you out there. And I want to encourage people listening to read your about page on your website because I just love it when I say we. I mean me lines like that, and I just love how direct and open you are in describing yourself and the way that you operate. It's It's very refreshing.

Thanks, man. That's good. I'm glad that comes through. I feel I do feel like even though I'm 46 like, I'm really only in my first year of running a fund. And so I In some ways I'm like, I'm 23 again and I think it. I think that I and I watch a lot of younger entrepreneurs and how they operate. The conventions have changed, right? There's this rise of younger VCs and alternate vehicles, these rolling funds that people can raise on angel list or just solo GPS doing things, and you don't have toe be. You don't have to be Kleiner Perkins like you don't have toe. You don't have to speak and thought leadership language and publish research. And anyway, there are lots

of different ways you don't need to be in a peer reviewed journal. You can. You can put out a tweet and see what happens.

Yeah, that's right. And if you're wrong and if you look silly, then everyone forgets the day anyway, like it's it's okay, and I think having lived in like having grown up basically in public companies, it's just very liberating to not have to worry about any of that stuff.

Can you talk about how you pick companies? What matters most when you're making an investment decision?

Height? I

pick him by height. Damn it. I will never raise money from you. Kirby

depends The other companies I'm looking at, it's the typical I have. I have a heuristic that I use that I'm sure everyone else does in some fashion reform at the earliest stage. And that is like team team, technology attraction and by technology, I mean product and market. So it's just but technology starts with the teeth. So it was a team technology attraction, the more you have one of those less in need of the other two. So I always make the analogy. If you're Jack Dorsey, you probably don't need a product or attraction because you'll just get a check. I think that's how he raised for square like right. There's a deck, but most of us are Jack Dorsey, and so we need, like an M V P.

And if our EVP happens to be like some whizz bang world changing cure for cancer I p. Then we probably don't need a ton of traction or revenue, but it's probably not. So then we probably need some traction. Or if we have a million dollars in revenue, then we probably nobody really cares about our technology, whether it's differentiated like we have a market, but we probably don't have a million dollars in revenue. So if you need to have all three of those things, I think the team is by far the most important. So I like to see someone who not only you know, is impressive and is doing it has a great fit for the problem and is passionate enough to do it for 10 plus years would go through all the stuff that you and I know founders need to go through to get there. But that also is like self aware enough and compelling enough to fill in the gaps and their experience and expertise, and to be able to bring on co founders or early employees that they have no right to be able to bring on because by the way, that also signals their ability to have close customers. They have no right to close and get PR.

They have no right to get and eventually, onboard investors. They have no right to have. And so it's all about that sort of the team dynamic. And that's the price of admission. And then, assuming that you have that, yeah, it matters. The general. Do you have a credible? Do you have a credible path to discovering what? Where that where the market pull is for your general solution is the problem that you have is an urgent problem for the market that you're addressing? And is your solution 10 times better than what's out there? It goes typical stuff, but I'm more interested in the opportunities space than the market size.

So I'd say I want to see a bottoms up on If your solution works for a specific like sub market. I'm less concerned about the size of that market, but more concerned about how you ladder out from that down the road. You just need to know, needs to be a credible sort of. I can get this from, because basically I need to know that you could get from proceed to save milestones.

So and so are you looking for more of a prescribed path or vision on how they take the wedge and expand or ladder out. Or is it more just about knowing there's option value?

I think it's knowing there's option value. What matters to me is, can you express a vision that ends up being meaningful if you can reach it? But understanding that's probably 10 years out. Can you at least build the first two rungs of the ladder to get their trust that if you could do that, you'll probably find your way to the next eight?

Yeah, that's a great way of saying that I struggle with that because you always have to start small to start right. You need a sub segment or a niche or someplace to to go first. But yeah, if you're gonna be on the venture path, then it needs to have that big option value in that big potential.

Yeah, it's and I used to find it obnoxious as a founder because I was like, we have revenue, like even that seriously. We had $2 million in revenue, and I'll never forget. Actually, Michelle Goldberg, who was a technician at the time and who was on her board she said, Yeah, but that revenue is worthless. Her wrong kind of revenue. And I was like, What do you mean, Why was it the wrong kind of revenue? You know, it turns out it was like media revenue,

not sass revenue, the multiple different. And if I had listened to her earlier, we would probably it would have made a difference to our runway. And something else, she said, actually was. I got out of a pitch meeting and I was like, Why do VCs want me to lie to them? E. I was like, I'm just selling widgets here. You know what I mean? Like, I'm growing revenue like on sass, and it looks good and we'll keep doing it.

E don't want you to lie. They just want you to have vision. They want you to have a bigger plan than just making your next quarter and selling more widgets. And that's the hardest thing I think, to tell found, especially the ones in the portfolio. Now, as we get further along, who are going for Syria's A. Is it so different? As then see like See, It is okay. It's not traction. Its signal and did you build a product and do you have a good team? Preceded. Do I think you can get those three things?

Seed is you have those three things and then a is Oh, you're growing revenue like hand over fist. So what? Everyone who's pitching VCs for a has that profile. So, like the revenue is no longer the thing. It's the hardest thing for a founder who's going from 0 to 1 to understand, because you're like But I finally have revenue is growing like crazy. I can't service the demand and they're like, Yeah, that's a problem. How did you let that happen? Like how? How do we How do we resource to service that demand? Like, moreover,

like, How are you gonna get to your be? Because that's apparently the real hard thing todo and meanwhile, founder tearing their hair out because they're like they realized that what they thought, It's a false summit.

I love that one. It's yeah, it's your on the second rung of the ladder, and you need to stand there and look up instead of just taking one more step in the next quarter the next year. And that's having been there that's incredibly painful. What do you coach people to do then? When they're going to, they're a When they're in that beautiful position of having revenue and having reached the false summit, how do you coach people to move past that?

I had a conversation this morning. I think the thing is to just remind them like that fundraising has very little to do with, like, today's reality and all it has everything to do with, you know, envisioning the future. Because that's where, certainly later stage investors, that's they need to believe that you are the person who can hire the right people to scale up the company in the right way to manage and grow that demand to take that ember and turn it into the hot fire. But like one that's contained, you know, maybe, and not a timely analogy to make thes days put fire. But it's so the advice is, don't talk to investors about your like your If you're I was again. I was so insecure that the minute I had any sort of metrics, I just wanted point to him and put him in every slide.

Every slide was a metric slide look at our our our growth and I look at our MPs and I look out again. That's the price of admission. So really, coaching founders Teoh a. Spend a lot of time talking, thio and pitching friendly. It's like 2030 40 people on a narrative around why your company is going to change the world. Why is it different than all the other companies? Why, How? What's the story in the Wall Street Journal in your seven? Like when you're going public? What is that story? What's the headline and and then work backwards to okay, like things are great. Now here,

the three things we know we need to dio to get to 10 million they are and having a credible sort of because then now you need to be showing, like the ability to both be a strategic sort of leader of a growth stage company and like an operating manager of that same company, and so you need to be able to tell a really compelling story that starts you start to basically you start to have to sound like a Wall Street CEO on a road show. You're not there yet, but like you start to shift. Its funny is you have enough companies that moved through the chain up through serious C and D. It's what happens like the Sirius B deck. Even certainly the serious C deck that you're 12 slide my little like advice about 12 slides that goes out the window right around Syria's be. It's 30 slides and it starts to look a lot like Okay, now we're looking at conchs or diving deep into the operating metrics and that you have to be able to convince investors that you have the capacity to be that leader. And that's very different than saying, Hey, I got this thing to to its first sales.

Absolutely such a hard thing to dio. I love the way you frame. That should be your next, uh, Twitter storm Over there on Twitter. You gotta talk about those questions about the seven year later Wall Street Journal headline. I loved those in that way of framing it.

Maybe I'll get a I transcribe

this. I think there is one for that now. The GTP.

Yeah, that's right. Do you have access? So I've got 11 founder I know who has given me a little bit of access. It's something sweet. Stuff is crazy. We'll

just get a I generated Kirby.

Yeah. Yeah, I feel like what could go

wrong? All right. This is this has been great. I'm learning a ton. I wanna be respectful of your time. So we should wrap this up with the supersonic six.

All right,

Number one. How much coffee do you drink?

I drink two cans of high brew espresso in the morning. Maybe then double Americano iced after that sometime mid morning. It's definitely the lowest my coffee consumption has been in since high school.

That's a low I won't ask you about when it was high. But that is, uh, that's an impressive low water mark. Number two. What's one Seattle company that you're following are studying right now?

Man, that's a That's a tough question there because honestly, there all the countries on following area in my portfolio or about to be, uh, I don't pick my head up very often. So that said, I spend a ton of time with crowd count. Joe and Ethan are incredible founders and friends and have really built a super interesting logistical and a moat around sustainable craft protein. And that's Onley been gigantically positively impacted by by Covic. So that's been a real fun one to be involved with and spend time on

number three, whose one Seattle person that you're following or learning from right now

it's that way talked about this before. It's tough. It's tough to pick one person. I think I actually do think Leslie finds like from female founders. Alliance is probably someone who I really consistently just got benefit from her insights and her transparency around just whether it's again like I feel like she's a kindred spirit, a little bit like she shares a lot about her just day to day struggles with think she's tackling in life and how that impacts what she's tackling for business. And it makes me feel like I've got a that I'm not alone because sometimes I don't communicate all those things. I'm going to talk about my past but my present trying to keep pretty bright and shining, and she reminds me that you can be successful and build something unique and by the way she's like building something really unique and necessary and also be human. And so I appreciate that check

out Episode 18 Leslie finds it was on this podcast and and she was very open. Very direct. Exactly how

you described. I gotta go. I gotta go download it. That's perfect.

Number four. What's one thing that Seattle needs to improve as a startup hub?

It needs to be cool force for people to invest in start ups. There's not social capital tied to Angel investing in this city. There is in the Bay Area, it's way haven't awesome angel community, and I think we have a lot of certainly the angel groups in Seattle are probably if you put them together like the number four source of funds in Seattle, bigger than some funds, including mine, for my annual deployment perspective. So I think people need to recognize the importance of the angel groups and individual angels in Seattle. Um, but I did a survey earlier this year. Founders and they're still really concerns around Angels in Seattle, not evolving as quickly to accept simpler instruments like safe or to invest in diverse founders or to invest in in anything that's not gonna prize sass. And that's just that's not me saying that I'm an angel to I didn't like hearing it. But there is some. There is some eso people ask What do you think? The challenges And I just think in the Bay Area you have,

like, the first thing you do after you make it clear to 50 or 500 k either in an accident or your salary you're saving like you're finding a way to spend you to put 10-K 20 k in a startup just as a young sort of startup employees. I just don't know that I see that happening here yet starting to happen more. I gotta call, actually got a call from an employee of a startup that I'm invested in. And she said, I've saved up $50,000 and I want to invest in black founders. I was like, All right, this is a single, certainly great to hear someone wants to represent investing underrepresented folks. But the fact that it was an employee of a startup that has not exited that tells me something. And maybe it's not that it's social capital, but its socio political capital. And the more of that happens, I just think that's gonna change the dynamic of what it's like to raise your first money in Seattle. I think it's gonna change it for a good way.

Yeah, look forward, Toa Seeing that evolve, we could definitely use it. Number five. What's one piece of advice you'd give your 20 year old self

stay fit? I think that would have solved a lot of problems in my life if I forced myself to just just run six days a week. Because, as it turns out, if you force yourself to do that, you'll not do other things. You don't do those other things. You may have a lot more positive things happening in your life, Andi. You'll be a little bit more able to take advantage of. We got those years that said, like, easy to say Now that's a That's

a pretty good times. Yeah, absolutely. Number six. What can this community do to help you? Is there anything you want people to put their attention on? Anything you've put out recently that you want people to go check out?

I wish more people were on Twitter in Seattle, in the text tech ecosystem, and maybe you're all there and just were not connected. So follow me on Twitter I'm just at Kirby Winfield, and I would love to see, I would love to see a broader representation of folks from this ecosystem spending time and communicating and learning on Twitter because I just think it za super valuable, valuable tool for for investors and founders and everyone else.

If people listening start blowing you up, mentioning you on Twitter, asking you questions. Are you gonna respond?

I always respond. I'm pretty sure I've responded That every tweet that governments that I've ever been tagged descent and including the one where the guy accused me of Oh, God, it was so weird. I got randomly accused of being part of some sort of drug trafficking conspiracy. Yeah, which, even in my younger days, would have been a stretch. But I replied, and then I then I blocked eso Don't do that. But otherwise

Yeah, All right. All mentions and messages. Air welcome. Other than accusations of drug

trafficking s Uh huh.

All right. I'm glad we have some guardrails on that, Kirby, This has been amazing love talking with you. Thank you for everything you're doing for

the community. Yeah, thanks, Tom, for having me, Adam. And thanks for all you're doing. Podcast is amazing. You're an amazing founder. I love your journey and how you took learnings from simply measured and apply them in your next deal and applied how you've been. You've been ableto I think you learned a lot more a lot faster than I didn't. Hopefully, people can learn from you so that more of them could have your journey, which I know is still ongoing. And I'm excited to see where you go. Thanks,

man. And thanks for spending time with me today. What I don think it's on. Hey, it's Adam again. Quick note before you go. Thanks so much for listening. I hope you're enjoying the show as much as I am enjoying making it. If you do like it, please leave a rating or review. I would help other people find it in apple podcasts or wherever you listen. And if you have any feedback, send me an email. Adam Seattle podcast at gmail dot com. No underscores no periods. Just Adam Seattle podcast at gmail dot com. Yeah, yeah,