Jim [00:01:09] OK, so we are here with Eric Tarczynski, we are thrilled to have you and Eric is the founder, I believe, of Contrary Capital. 

 

Eric [00:01:17] Yeah.

 

Jim [00:01:18] And Eric, why don't you tell us a little bit about your background and how you came to form Contrary Capital. 

 

Eric [00:01:20] Yeah, for sure. And thanks for having me on. I appreciate it. So in terms of my background and kind of the Contrary story, I grew up in New Jersey, kind of the northwestern most part of New Jersey, which is actually kind of like the farm town in many ways. The Appalachians kind of run through northwest New Jersey. And so I grew up there, spent my whole life there, ultimately ended up going to school up in Boston and while I was there, hatched the original idea for what became Contrary, because at the time and still today, I think for that matter, you know the vast majority of the smartest people from across the entire world at some point in their lives were flowing through the top four year major research universities across the U.S. But what was kind of always so interesting to me was that all people had been investing and identifying kind of really sharp, talented people for 20, 30, 40 years that were coming out of, let's say, a Stanford or an MIT that was mostly just being done in a silo. Right. That was mostly just being done at Stanford or at MIT. And nobody had yet really built out this infrastructure layer to identify and support that talent and specifically the world's top engineers, designers and product folks systematically at scale. And so I kind of hatched the original idea because I was working on a company myself while I was in school and had friends and peers you know, all across Boston who were doing similar things. And so, just ultimately didn’t feel like anybody had done that. And so we decided to do just that and kind of spent the past four or five years now building Contrary, which is this tech driven venture firm backed by many of the world's best entrepreneurs, the founders from Facebook, Tesla, Airbnb, a bunch of others. And all we do is systematically identify and invest in the world's top talent. That's kind of the super quick background on who we are and what we do. 

 

Jim [00:03:13] Let's stay with that, because you just said your goal is to invest in the world's top talent. As a corporate lawyer and as a restructuring guy, and having done this for a long time, I have my own theory as to what is the secret to venture capital investing. And I always use the analogy of sports where the top draft picks seem to do well and you give the football to somebody who can carry the football. When Tom Brady left the Patriots, lo and behold, look what happened. So the challenge is, again, how do you, how do you identify the top talent? We all know that if somebody exits from Facebook or from Google or from Tesla and they built and run a division successfully, those people have a higher level of chance and success. But you're taking people, as I understand it, that are out of school. Right? What is your secret in terms of picking that top talent? 

 

Eric [00:04:05] Yeah, for sure. It's funny you mentioned given the football analogy, too. I sometimes jokingly call ourselves the Nick Sabin's of the startup world. Same analogy, right? You're kind of going into, in his case, high school. Right. But, you know, you're trying to find the best athletes or in our case, maybe the best would be founders, first. Right? And then kind of be in a position where you can maintain that relationship with them for life. That's very much how we think about it. It's multipronged is the short answer. It’s not just, kind of, one kind of secret sauce. I think for us, it all starts with this underlying belief that by the time somebody is in college, oftentimes, if they're the kind of person that we think is going to be a great member of our community, they very likely already done something exceptional in their lives. Right? And that doesn't have to be, you know, Okay, they start a company prior because they very likely haven’t, right, because they’re in college. But they've done something right and maybe they were a world class athlete or pianist or whatever it might be. Right. And so we're looking at that past body of work, which has shown exceptional grit and persistence or hustle or work ethic or whatever it might be. And then we're basically marrying that with what they have done while they're in school. And you're marrying that with maybe, where they’ve worked, where they've gone to school, projects they've done, whatever. Right? And then you're looking at, well, what do people say about them? What is their reputation? Are they well respected? Do people like them, etcetera? And then when we talk to them, we want to understand their ambition as well. Right? So what do you want to do? Do you want to just go and work at Facebook or Google for your whole career? Or do you want to be a builder, be a founder and be an early employer, start your own company over the next few years. And so I think those are kind of the different lenses that we think about it through and then ultimately make the decision as to whether or not somebody is going to be the kind of person that we want to have as a part of our community. And so that's what we do. Obviously, it's not perfect, but it gets us, I think, really close to where we want to be oftentimes. 

 

Jim [00:06:04] And that makes sense. I love the fact that you use the word grit, because I think that one of the secrets that I've seen with people that successfully build companies is: they're like a dog with a bone. They do not let go. They throw their backpack over the wall. They do not take no for an answer. They may pivot, but they have that natural grit. So let's stay with that for a second. It's a big country and you've got thousands of these potential superstars out there that you want to get to come to you, that you can mentor and invest in and so forth. How do you organize the country and find these people and how do they find you? 

 

Eric [00:06:40] Yes, in terms of, kind of, how they find us. So we've been doing this now for the better part of four or five years. And, you know, I think we've built arguably the most recognized brand that exists within our niche. Right? And obviously in the venture world, brand is extremely important. Right? And so, if you were to go talk with any bright young entrepreneurial person, let's say, they'll all know about Contrary at this point. Right? And so as a result of that, we get a lot of top of funnel, a lot of inbound, a lot of people reaching out to us, a lot of people that want to be a part of this, or I think they recognize that it's a high bar. Right? We only kind of are admitting about 100 people a year to be a part of this community. The people that ultimately do become a part of it are exceptional and exceptional people want to be with exceptional people oftentimes. Right? And so I think that's kind of the one piece. And then the other piece for us is the genesis of Contrary historically was a lot more deeply rooted in universities. And so we kind of in the early days, very much use the university as this one giant filter and then applied our own filter on top of that. Right? And so as time has gone on now, obviously that community has grown up. We've been doing this for two, three, four, five years. And so we're now at this point where we kind of start to think about ourselves as, hey, we should also be identifying and backing these people for their entire professional careers. What started maybe a couple of years ago as, hey, let's just try and find really bright young people first, has now just kind of organically become, well, why not do this at scale for people, for life? You end up building this incredibly powerful ecosystem over time, right, where you have people that are three, four, five, six, seven, eight, whatever years post grad. And they're now directors of product at great companies. They're now starting their own companies. They're now working at the top venture firms in the world, all the while having deep affinity for Contrary.  Right? And so I think ultimately that's something that's incredibly powerful and takes years to build, I think. But we're now at that point. 

 

Jim [00:08:36] What is Contrary? I think of certain things with Contrary. What does Contrary mean to you? And why the word Contrary? 

 

Eric [00:08:43] Yeah. So the name is actually a kind of funny story. So I was kind of a weird guy, I guess, when I was in college, I worked in a cloth fund for a couple of years with some of my friends but I was a lot more interested in public markets. When I was in college, and undergrad and then towards the back half of college, I started getting more into tech and tech entrepreneurship. But in the early years it was very into public markets. And I'm sure you know or I've heard of Howard Marks right, from Oaktree Capital or like a very famous investor. So, Howard, this is probably several decades ago at this point, popularized that matrix about how in order to generate Alpha over the long term, right, you need to be both contrarian and right. So you have that matrix with four different quadrants. And, you know, on the top left is market and wrong, you’re this idiot. Right? You know, kind of market and right, you do not perform. You're contrarian and wrong, you're this pariah. And if you're contrarian and right is when you win. When we thought about this in the context of Contrary it was not so much that the kinds of investments that we were making would be massively contrarian. I mean, we do make some to be sure. Right? We've invested in computational biology companies and software to ??? our companies and things like that. But we are also now and again going to invest in enterprise software company, much like the next person, but what is really kind of contrarian and kind of unique about the model was that we were doing something, and still to this day doing something, that no other venture firm in the world is doing. There are fifty thousand venture funds out there right now and many of them are venture fund X in Boston or New York or San Francisco that chases the same deals as everybody else does. But there was really no venture firm that was saying, hey, we are going to be laser focused on systematically identifying the brightest folks in the world and supporting them relentlessly for their entire professional careers. It's kind of a radical narrative. So I thought that ultimately, if we were successful with that, we would end up being in and of one venture firm, we'd end up being a venture firm that looked different than basically all other venture firms. And as a result of that would allow us  [00:10:43] to generate durable alpha for the long haul. So that was where the name came from. 

 

Jim [00:10:49] Help me understand this a little. Again, an entrepreneur comes to you whether or not they're right out of college or otherwise, but you're trying to get to them when they're young. Is your initial thing to mentor them and give them an initial investment to help launch whatever it is they're building? And then my question is, let's say that person shuts that company down, they call CMBG, which is my company, and I restructure them or I do an assignment for the benefit creditors. And now they've cleaned up their balance sheet, but they've taken a job at Procter and Gamble or they've gone to Facebook. It sounds like you would still stay with them. 

 

Eric [00:11:21] That's right. Yeah. So the model itself to kind of walk you through how we think about it. Right. So every year, as of today at least, we add about one hundred people a year to this community. And these are people that, again, we think that they're going to be either early employees at companies or start companies of their own over the next five years, let's say. Throughout that journey, we support them however we can. And so whether that's introducing them to companies that they might want to join, whether that's providing them with cool networking opportunities, whether that's our annual retreat that we run, where we can fly all of our community members out to the Bay Area for a long weekend and bring in cool luminaries and give talks. And we do workshops all the way through. Many of them are living in houses together across the country right now, specifically given the pandemic. Right? It is a deep, deep community in every sense of the word. And the idea is we just want to support them however we can in the interim, because we know that these are exceptional people that are going to do exceptional things. And so if we can find them first and if we can build that affinity with them early in their careers, it's the equivalent of you know, I'm sure you and I both have this, Jim, where whoever kind of gave you your shot in life professionally, whether it's your first job or whatever. Right? I'm sure you have this degree of affinity and gratitude for that person to that firm or whatever it is. And so, you know, that is really what we're doing with the fellowship, as we call it, at scale. So, yeah, the idea is absolutely, you know, you go start a company then and we invest in that company and let's say it doesn't work out, but you go start another one in two or three or four years, we're still going to be there with you. We're still going to be investing in that company because we're playing the long game. There are some companies, we're actually finalizing a deal right now. We met this founder five years ago. It took him five years for this kind of cycle to basically come full circle. But you ultimately end up with this closed loop ecosystem where, because you've built that relationship, you end up playing a different game than everybody else plays. That's how we think about it. 

 

Jim [00:13:22] Back in the day in LA there was a company called Idea Lab that Bill Gross started where you had this incubator for tech companies, whether or not you call it accelerators or otherwise. There's a lot of people that have toyed around with these different communities where they provide infrastructure, they provide legal, they provide consulting, and otherwise. There's TechStars, which does a lot of small investing, With you in your niche, for instance, do you have a team of people that help mentor and bring these 

people along, or is it equally the fact that you're creating this community where you're bringing these people together and they share some of their experiences? 

 

Eric [00:14:00] So the answer is both. The more nuanced answer is we have a team of about 10 people full time right now. And so that's split across, obviously, our investment team. Right? At the end of the day, we are a venture fund. Right? And then our platform team, as we call it. The platform team is, is really focused on helping us execute our job to the best of our ability, right, which is being in the talent identification business, as we 

call it, and then supporting those fellows through their entire professional careers. Right? And so we have an events lead and a community lead and a software engineer full time and a director of platform. Right? So, kind of all people focused on helping us run that operation as smoothly as possible. And so I think the answer is both ultimately.  And then we have a community, right, and we have people that, again, have that affinity and pride and loyalty for Contrary. And yet they themselves are be organizing talks or houses where people can live together with one another, whatever it might be.

 

Jim [00:14:57] in the world of COVID, in space and so forth. Are you finding, like the 10 of you, are you spread out all over the country or are you all in San Francisco? How are you operating now and how do you see yourself changed by COVID? 

 

Eric [00:15:10] Yeah, the interesting thing about Contrary is we were kind of remote before it was cool. So we've been remote all along, actually. And I think that speaks to maybe more of the original DNA of the firm. Right? Which was since day one, we've had this degree of scale. Since day one, we've been focused on kind of identifying the world's top talent across the country. As a result of that, it never really made much sense for us to plant our flag in the ground in a specific city or whatever it might be, and have the entire team be there, when in reality we need to be all across the country oftentimes. From a critical mass point of view today, the majority of us are based here in San Francisco. We have one or two down in L.A. as well. But then we also have folks on the East Coast and somebody in Nashville, as well. It's very much across the country. And I think to some extent, the pandemic put us in an advantageous position where we already played that playbook. Right? We'd already built that playbook and we already knew how to operate. We already knew how to make investments over Zoom and things like that. Right? Because we've been doing it for the better part of three, four years prior to that. 

 

Jim [00:16:16] So one of the things we've been doing at The Puck in terms of pivoting ourselves, just like companies pivot, is, you know, where is the world going in terms of from a technology perspective? The whole idea was using the hockey analogy of where is the puck going, and the best players anticipate where the puck is and they go there as opposed to 

waiting for the puck to come to them. One of the things we have focused on is we've looked at the world and we've looked at, for instance, income inequality and we've looked at the disparity between those people coming out of college, making two hundred thousand dollars working for Google and able to get money to finance a company versus those people making eight dollars an hour working at Walmart, for instance. When you're talking to these entrepreneurs and you're helping them get started, is there any

thought to what the country needs, not just focusing on how we can make more money, but actually from a societal perspective, how do we make the world a little better place? 

 

Eric [00:17:10] Hundred percent, the way we've always looked at it with Contrary is we view ourselves as being in the business of, as I mentioned a couple of times, is systematically identifying the brightest people in the world. But regardless of where they come from and regardless of what their background is prior. For us, in particular, we do this across a couple of different pieces. Number one is through our scouts. So we work with about one hundred different scouts across thirty five different university campuses today, much in the same way we have since inception. And we've been very, very deliberate since day one about building a diverse scout contingent, because we know that our scouts today are going to be the venture capitalists of the world 5 or 10 or 15 years from now. Right? And so if they're all white dudes like me and you, right, like, it's probably not the best thing for the industry and maybe for society at large then. Right? And so as a result of that, we said, OK, well, we view ourselves as being pretty close to the top of that funnel. And people don't come into college, let's say, their freshman year of undergrad saying oftentimes I want to be a venture [00:18:18] capitalist. Right? Many people don't even know that venture capital is a thing or that it even exists maybe until their middle, end of college at the earliest. Right. And so for us, we've then said, OK, well, as long as you just raise your hand right. And say, hey, I'm curious, I'm excited. I'm interested in learning about venture capital. We can handle the rest. Right? We can teach you. We built out our own content and curriculum at this point. And so it's our hope that the foundation that we're laying is going to set the stage for, you know, who are the voices of the world five or 10 years from now. And that's really started proving itself out. When I look at, you know, we're five years in. Right? And I look at our community members now that have gone out and gone into 

industry and we look at the ones that are in venture specifically, almost all of them. I think literally all of them, except one that I can think of, come from, you know, underrepresented and diverse backgrounds. That's amazing! And these are people that are working at Sequoia and Bessemer and Bencalla Ventures in some of the top venture firms in the world. And I think in some way that was due to us giving them a jump start. Think that's how we think about it from a scout point of view. And then very similar, I think, from our fellows point of view. Right. Those people that are the one hundred folks that are part of this community that we add every single year, we're extremely deliberate about making sure that this is a group of people that is diverse, comes from unique backgrounds, because I think ultimately that's how you build a vibrant ecosystem. Right? You don’t build a vibrant ecosystem by having people that all say and act and look like one another. I think that's our version. And that's always been our version of what is the best way for us to effect change in the world. It's been that we are the top of the funnel and we view it as our obligation, I think in many ways to make sure that the next generation of venture tech, etcetera, looks different from what it looks like in the past. 

 

Jim [00:20:08] When you're talking to these people and you're seeing the different types of companies and the things they're doing, are there any particular products or technologies that you're looking at right now that you think are going to be what I would call 21st, 22nd century technologies? I mean, we've looked at self-driving cars, we've looked at crypto currencies and we've looked at AI and big data. In terms of trying to stay ahead of where the puck is going. What kind of interesting things are you seeing that are going to change the way we think of the world? 

 

Eric [00:20:39] So we have a couple, I think, on a little bit more of like a short to medium term perspective. First, we've spent a lot of time in and around digital health over the past 12 to 18 months. And I think specifically, given the pandemic, I think you've seen a huge rollback of many regulations that for a while were inhibiting companies success in this space. And so we've backed a couple of companies that come to mind. One is called Tava Health, T A V A, which is a mental health and wellness space and obviously an incredibly important issue topic building a personalized approach to mental health. This is something that as a society, we're kind of increasingly becoming more and more cognizant of and it's becoming less taboo than it maybe once was. And so companies like Tava and then the other one that we come back and we're long term investors in a company called Amora Health, which is building a really kind of a smart operating system for health care. And so originally started as being kind of call or follow up management software for patients post op. So kind of the mode they leave the health care 

facility and then really being able to [00:21:43] track them once they leave and say, hey, if you just had this procedure right here, the different medications that you need to be taking at what time, all that kind of stuff. So digital health has been a big focus for us both pre, but also during and I think post pandemic and then on a surely more long term basis. I mean, we've done everything from companies in the computational biology space, so companies that are thinking about how can we basically invent novel compounds to significantly reduce the cost to manufacture these in the first place. Right? And then make along those same lines, make a lot of existing products, a lot more green and eco friendly and things like that, all the way to a company that we're looking at right now, which is in the wearable space. And they're quite literally trying to put a product together where you'll be able to think something, and it will appear as a as a text message, let's say, whatever, on your phone, and kept thinking about how can we take our thoughts basically and apply them in the right format, right into the kind of question the debate that we're having right now is we think that augmented reality, for example, fundamentally will not ever really be a thing until somebody can actually think something and it gets affected through their smartphone or whatever, it might be. Going back to Google Glass a decade ago whatever existing AR solutions have always been very clunky and they've always needed some other kind of supporting technology. Thinking about due to the past couple of years, if A.I. machine learning advances, feeling like we're ever closer to that point where you might be able to think something and outcomes an action on the other end of it. So, yeah, those are a couple of areas we're spending some time. 

 

Jim [00:23:31] So a couple of questions. One is you touched on following patients as they lead the health care. And I was the general counsel for a hospital for seven years. And so I'm aware of, for instance, the reimbursement rates that Medicare and Medi-Cal have. And, for instance, there's higher reimbursement rates if you are managing people well and you're keeping them out of the hospital. And so there are, as you said, a lot of people focusing on that. 

 

Eric [00:23:54] That's right. 

 

Jim [00:23:55] Let's go back to mental health first, because it's an area I'm interested in. My mom was a therapist and she taught at USC for years. I understand the model there where you have personal therapy and whether or not you go to a regular therapist, it's $300 an hour. You go to a clinic where somebody is just starting out. What is transformational about what your company is doing in the mental health space? 

 

Eric [00:24:15] So it's transformational about what the companies are doing. And we we've actually backed companies, one of the direct to consumer space and then Tava specifically, is more employer focused. But what's transformational ultimately is on the enterprise side, the affordability aspect of it and providing people with On-Call high quality mental health services for a price point that is very, very reasonable. In addition to their employers saying and acknowledging that this is OK, we fully support you, like we encourage you to take a call, a therapist or whoever it might be. Right? That alone is really empowering. And then on the consumer side of the equation, we backed a company called Prairie Health that is a direct to consumer mental health and wellness startup. And they're partnering with a couple of groups and getting access to pretty large data sets. And ultimately, what they do is they provide you with a prescription if needed or whatever that they think is the most accurate prescription that you might be able to get for any kind of a mental health issue or depression or whatever it might be. Historically, it's been so much more of this back and forth, right? You go to a therapist or whomever and they say, hey, you know, well, let's try this. Right, let's start you out with this. Right? And then you go back, you start gaining weight or whatever it might be. Right? And you're not happy. Right? And it can sometimes be a multiyear process before you figure out what is right for you, if ever. So what Prairie's trying to do is solve that the very first time once and for all. So that's kind of what's transformational to me. I think about both of those two companies is they're taking slightly different tacks, but each of them, I think, delivering a pretty powerful and valuable value prop. 

 

Jim [00:26:03] There's a trend out there, if you look at the Pew report where, for instance, people are going to church much less, but they are craving community, they're craving spirituality, they're craving mindfulness. There's an uptick on yoga. There's an uptick on mindfulness, meditation, therapy. At the end of the day, is having whether or not you're in AA and you've got a sponsor, having somebody to talk to you, do you see a sea change out there that as the millennials, the baby boomers top out, that your generation, the people coming up, are aware of the need for these kinds of mindfulness practices? More balance we talk about in America, this notion of work life balance. I have to tell you, having been at two large law firms in my life and then now running a firm where we do try to have work life balance, it's easy to say it. But then do entrepreneurs really have life work balance? And can you have work life balance and be an entrepreneur? Do you have the time to go talk to a therapist? How do you see all that playing out with these Hot Shots right now? 

 

Eric [00:27:04] I mean, I personally have never been a believer in the term work life balance. I think for anybody who is ambitious, entrepreneurial, whatever, it, in many ways, becomes all consuming. And I think you need to understand what your own lines are. There is no such thing as work life balance in many ways. Right? I think you figure out what your swim lanes are and then you swim in them. Right? And so work becomes this constant and then you have to carve out deliberate time saying, hey, you know, I'm going to block this off, spend time with my family or I'm going to do this. But it's not a palette. It's certainly not 50-50 for many folks. And I'd say younger founders, whatever, I think everybody falls into the same bucket, really. Ambitious, entrepreneurial folks. I don't think anybody is really a massive practicer of that. To answer your question, though, about more going back to mental health, wellness, spirituality, things like that, I actually think, this is really interesting. And I'm going to plug one of our portfolio companies here because it's right along the lines of what you mentioned. So the company is called Hallo, and you should take a look. I think the website is Hallo.com. But basically, they are building a, you can kind of think about it like a calm or headspace for Catholics and Christians in the entire idea behind it is that, as you said, meditation is exploding, right? A secular meditation, the calms, headspaces of the world and of which many young people are using daily and practicing meditation. But it's still small. It's something like 10 or 15 percent of the people in the US are meditating. But that bigger opportunity, Hallo thinks, is in spirituality. So people think that in many ways it is dying. But spirituality really is not. Institutional Religion might be, but spirituality is not. And so they're kind of taking the tack, which is, hey, let's focus on this generation of folks that maybe kind of grew up in the church or whatever, and maybe somewhere in their journey lost their faith, but are now swinging back around to it. And something like Hallo fills a real void for them. And so to answer your question, kind of, younger generations absolutely are excited about, interested in spending time in, we'll call, the meditation space, whether that's secular or companies like Hallo. And I think that all comes full circle with this mental health and wellness space that even when you are an ambitious, entrepreneurial person, you often have some degree of rigor in your schedule, in your lives. So carving out a little bit of time every day 

to meditate or whatever it might be, I think it's not a big ask for most folks. 

 

Jim [00:29:39] And again, going back to this notion of pivoting, when you look at the history of the human race and you look at the history of religion, when I was a young person, I remember thinking, you know, that religion was the opiate of the masses and that there was all this, don't do as I do, do as I say. There was all this hypocrisy. As I've gotten older, I've realized that there's this tendency for people to use black and white thinking and see things as all or nothing. And when you're dealing with spirituality and religion, it's very easy to fall into this category of, well, look at all these bad people out there doing bad things and saying that if you don't do it my way, it's the highway. And people are smart enough to know that hypocrisy and black and white thinking is not going to get them to the promised land. And yet I would like to think that we would learn not to throw the baby out with the bathwater, that realizing that spirituality in and of itself can become a very narcissistic, I oriented practice. And it's not about building community and loving your neighbor as yourself and everything else. I hope that the Hallos of the world in these companies is they're doing this recognize that, yes, we do need to have a spiritual practice and meditate and find meaning in our lives. But if we don't figure out a way to do that in the form of community and studying and passing it on to the next generation, it leads to a very lonely existence. And that's where I think as a society we're struggling. With, we look at these organized religions in the hypocrisy, and it's not a place that people want to go to, but we've got to recreate better companies and better religion. That's my pitch, at least to your entrepreneurs, and to Hallo and other people to say how do we reform this without throwing out the baby with the bathwater? 

 

Eric [00:31:17] Yeah, for Hallo in particular, in a community, yeah, has been a core piece of their focus almost since the outset. It's again, I mean, people would say that either church oftentimes is their community. Right?. And so this is a version of the virtual church, your virtual community. Right? And people who are holding you accountable are people who are staying close to you, seeing or doing whatever it might be. I think the community is deeply ingrained, I think in religion in general. Right? And I think it's super important. But I think the younger generation is very focused and mindful of those kinds of things. 

 

Jim [00:31:48] So, where do you see Contrary going if you're looking at your five year plan and what you want to accomplish, where do you want to be in five years? 

 

Eric [00:31:56] For us, we're building the next iconic venture franchise. That's been the vision since day one and very much continues to be. You know, when I look out five years, I think we're very much in need of one venture firm and a firm that is doing something that is fundamentally different now, much in the same way that Y Combinator 15 years ago popularized, slash invented, that accelerator model. I very much view Contrary to have a similar lens. So that's how I think about it. And we're excited to continue chasing ambition. 

 

Jim [00:32:28] Well, Eric, look, this has been wonderful. 

 

Eric: Yeah, I really enjoy this. 

 

Jim: And I love what you're doing. I love the kind of approach. 

 

Eric [00:32:34] we're trying to say doesn't really matter where you are, what you're doing, whatever. Like, if you are a super sharp, ambitious, entrepreneurial person, that's the qualification. We'll take care of the rest. 

 

Jim [00:32:44] Well listen, it’s been really fun. 

 

Eric:  For sure. 

 

Jim: And we'll stay in touch, Eric. 

 

Eric [00:32:47] Likewise, I really enjoyed it. Thanks for having me on.