John Frankel is the founding partner of ff Venture Capital, an early-stage investment fund focused on the AI, tech, and automation space. His firm focuses on the rejuvenation of US manufacturing by backing businesses that use technology to solve major problems.

Nate Wheeler is the host of the popular Manufacturing Insiders podcast. He also owns weCreate Web Design and Marketing, a nationally recognized marketing agency that helps manufacturers grow, save money, and become more efficient.

On this Episode of Manufacturing Insiders, John shares key advice for early-stage founders looking to scale and grow their companies. He explains how to attract venture capital, what makes a founder successful, and why US manufacturing is poised for a comeback.

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Nate Wheeler (00:01)
Welcome to Manufacturing Insiders. Today I have John Frankel. He is the expert in venture capital. Today is really going to be focused around those early stage founders who are looking to really scale and grow their companies. know, John predominantly works with companies in the AI tech automation space. And he’s had billions of dollars of success in helping companies grow and a very impressive track record, a lot of really impressive boards he’s been a part of, so I’m interested to kind of learn some more about that. If you’re interested in this type of content and you want to learn more, we cover a lot of topics of manufacturing insiders, please drop a like on this video, subscribe to our channel, and you’ll see more of us, so I appreciate that. Thanks for joining today, John.

John Frankel (00:51)
Well, thank you for having me on your podcast.

Nate Wheeler (00:53)
Absolutely. So let’s start with helping the average guy, somebody who doesn’t know too much about it. What is venture capital and what’s the difference between venture capital and private equity and maybe some of the other funding mechanisms out there?

John Frankel (01:13)
Okay, so I apologize for making this simple, but I will try and do it without insulting people if I can. You can invest in anything, right? And there’s public markets and private markets. In the public markets, you have debt, equity, derivatives, and the like. And in the private markets, you have debt, equity, and derivatives, and the like. Within the equity space, or private equity, private equity with capital P, capital E, when people refer to private equity, is the vast majority of the capital. And private equity firms run funds, like venture capitalists run funds, and they invest through those funds into relatively slow growth businesses, generally with cash flows, that have some heft. So they’re later cycle investors. Venture capital are earlier cycle investors and they want higher growth companies because if you’re starting on a smaller base, you want to get to heft.

Nate Wheeler (02:21)
Right.

John Frankel (02:22)
And so as a venture capitalist, we run venture capital funds. We’re a different size of venture capital funds. The larger the fund, generally the later the stage it is.

Nate Wheeler (02:34)
I see.

John Frankel (02:35)
We tend to be early stage.

Nate Wheeler (02:38)
Okay.

John Frankel (02:38)
So, we’ll invest when there’s three or four people, when someone’s just getting going, maybe pre-revenue, maybe post some revenue. And that’s the earliest stage. So we might invest at a five, $10 million valuation. Later stage firms could invest once the company’s got some heft, three, four, 500 people, and it could be a billion or five billion or even higher when they invest.

Nate Wheeler (03:00)
I see.

John Frankel (03:01)
And so that’s a different business. By the time you’ve got lots of people, you know the business model. You’ve got product market fit. You just need capital to grow and it’s a spreadsheet operation.

Nate Wheeler (03:13)
Right.

John Frankel (03:14)
For us, it’s not really that quantified. It’s much more qualified. Do we think the team can do it? Do we think they have domain expertise? Do we think they have the skills necessary? Do we think there’s a business there? And the business may not be there today, but do we think it’ll be there in five years? And do we think the addressable market is large enough that this business can get to being a hundred million revenue run rate? So that’s what we look for. And by the way, not every business that gets started needs to be or should be a venture capital back business. You know, a local card trading shop or dry cleaner or restaurant is really generally not a venture capital business.

Nate Wheeler (04:01)
Right.

John Frankel (04:02)
We tend to focus on businesses that have low capital intensity, that have high margins, and are not capital intensive. I

Nate Wheeler (04:13)
I see.

John Frankel (04:13)
think I said capital intensive twice.

Nate Wheeler (04:16)
No, that makes sense. That’s where the tech concept comes into. We’re not talking about necessarily a manufacturing operation where you have to buy $5 million worth of equipment to get off the ground. Let’s talk about a company in the automation space because we’ve hosted a number of different guests in that space that are creating various automations and robotics solutions that would range anywhere from mobile EV charging to creating enormous lattice structures that can be used in aerospace. So when you look at these types of companies, there’s a lot of them out there because this is the hot topic today. How do you, you’re going to see domain expertise with all these guys. You’re going to see a lot of possibility, a lot of application to their product in the market. How do you really look at them and know that this is a company you want to be involved with?

John Frankel (05:22)
Well, look, I think us like any other VC has a thematic backdrop that we look for. So our seven fund, we’ve been around since 2008 and we’re raising our seven fund. It’s focused on the rejuvenation of the US energy and manufacturing sectors. So that’s its focus. If you’re doing something outside of that, don’t come to us. Likewise, if you see a VC that invests in consumer brands, unless you’re launching a startup in consumer brands, don’t go to them. So firstly, play a little bit of matching. Secondly, look and see if there’s anything that’s directly competitive. We don’t want to back direct competitors. You probably don’t want to have an investor and give them information about your business if they also are investing in direct competitor. So those are two basic screens to run.

Nate Wheeler (06:14)
I see.

John Frankel (06:14)
For us within manufacturing, we see the secular shift of manufacturing back to the US as being incredibly strong. We think we’re at the time of the intersection of a number of technologies that really are maturing. And it’s not just the maturation of these technologies, but the intersection between them. Things like 3D printing, which has been very tough to invest in over the last 15 years, there have been some winners, but not standouts. But I think

Nate Wheeler (06:51)
Right.

John Frankel (06:52)
now with manufacturing coming back to US, it’s reaching a really interesting point.

Nate Wheeler (06:58)
Yep.

John Frankel (06:58)
The application of AI into businesses, what we’re seeing with the latest wave of AI can really improve operational efficiencies. And we think that’s important, both on the software side and on the hardware side. Believe it or not, the maturation of a smartphone has really enabled miniaturization of a lot of the pieces necessary for robotics. So we think robotics, drones, and the like are a natural outgrowth of the investment in smartphones that kicked off. 20 years ago. And then, yeah, certainly.

Nate Wheeler (07:45)
That’s really interesting. Can I pause you there? Because I want to learn more about that. And kind of where my mind went when you were saying that was I spoke with a really interesting guest a few weeks ago that they’re improving workplace safety with AI. Basically, you can take a video of an employee moving an object from location A to B and it’s showing you kind of a wire frame of their body in red, green, yellow to determine

John Frankel (08:15)
Right, right, right.

Nate Wheeler (08:16)
where. And so they can actually do this from a smartphone. you’re removing the barrier to entry for really anybody to analyze these workplace situations. Is that kind of the thing that you were?

John Frankel (08:30)
I was, mean, so definitely on the software side and you know, the AI embedded in video and digitalization video has enabled that enormously. But no, I was actually thinking, know, prior to smartphone gyroscopes were pretty big. Accelerometers were pretty big, right? Processing was pretty expensive. The acceleration of smartphones and the investment in all of the things are necessary for the cameras, for GPS and the like really has crushed the cost, the size and the weight of these sensors so that you can now put multiples of them within robotics or drones at very accessible costs, at weights that make sense, et cetera. The advances in battery technology have really enabled the shrinking of batteries, the density of power.

Nate Wheeler (09:34)
Yep. Yep.

John Frankel (09:35)
And all of those things feed in on themselves. And as those curves come down on the price, weight, function point, whatever the particular metrics are for that piece of technology, you open up new markets and the intersections of them are fascinating. And so the idea of having a robot in the workplace that has I don’t know how many chips in it, how many processors, how many sensors, its ability to process the environment in almost real time. It’s

Nate Wheeler (10:13)
Right.

John Frankel (10:14)
very enabling.

Nate Wheeler (10:15)
Right. Right. So you’re.

John Frankel (10:18)
You know, and what the forefronts of some of these sciences, you know, it’s there’s a debate going on right now in self driving cars as to whether having LIDAR radar is additive to the process or takes away from the process. Test is on one side and says only cameras. Yeah, and others. Have included LIDAR and radar and claim that the extra data. Help some. And there’s a debate around this and it’s a fascinating debate and it’s at the edge of science, but we’re continuing to see Tesla self drive capabilities outperform others that have all those other sensors and also you know, Tesla solutions about quarter price because it doesn’t have all the expensive equipment

Nate Wheeler (11:10)
Right.

John Frankel (11:11)
embedded in it and the lower the price, the larger addressable market. So watching. You know, cyber cab, which at the moment have safety drivers versus Waymo, which used to have safety drives and doesn’t anymore. How that can grow is fascinating because if Elon Musk is right and cameras can perform as well and his claim better than make sensor environments, the ability for cyber cabs to grow at a very fast pace much faster than Waymo can and much less capital intensity. It’s fascinating. I don’t know the answer, but

Nate Wheeler (11:56)
So, so.

John Frankel (11:57)
I think it’s these kinds of things that we’ll be enabling and we’ll spill over into other technologies. We’ll use the idea of the space race and technology that spilled over it into things that people didn’t think like Teflon plans and

Nate Wheeler (12:16)
Right, right.

John Frankel (12:16)
and pens that can write upside down, all that kind of stuff.

Nate Wheeler (12:19)
Yep.

John Frankel (12:21)
In the same way, every technology advancement spins this stuff off. But whereas back in the 50s, technology was, I don’t know, and I’m going to pick a number, 5 % of the economy. Today it’s 75%. So there’s much more opportunity

Nate Wheeler (12:36)
Right.

John Frankel (12:37)
and intersection.

Nate Wheeler (12:38)
Right. So the model with Tesla, from what I understood from what you said, they’re leveraging the cameras and then using AI to interpret what’s being recorded

John Frankel (12:52)
Yes.

Nate Wheeler (12:52)
versus having more of traditional LIDAR radar sensing these things in the environment.

John Frankel (12:59)
So to be clear, they’re all using AI. They’re all using fast chips. Tesla says you can do it only with cameras. Waymo has cameras and LIDAR and radar.

Nate Wheeler (13:13)
Yeah. Yep.

John Frankel (13:17)
Tesla’s going to produce cyber cabs, they believe, at the $40,000 price point. Zip code, they may be 30. I can’t remember the exact number they put out there. Waymo is closer to 160. So

Nate Wheeler (13:32)
yeah.

John Frankel (13:33)
these are zip codes. So think of the capital intensity. I think Waymo wants to add 5,000 cars next year. Once Tesla proves itself out, he can manufacture a couple hundred thousand cars if he wants, because he’s got the factories to do it.

Nate Wheeler (13:46)
Right. Right.

John Frankel (13:48)
I think this is a fascinating example of different approach to have taken. You know, it’s, know, when you look at space, NASA full of rocket scientists, literally. And this, you know, geeky, on the spectrum technologist comes along and says, I think I can do it for one 10th, 100th, 1000th, cost of getting to space. And everyone laughed and then he succeeded. And now, I mean, now capturing, capturing, capturing these things out of space.

Nate Wheeler (14:18)
Yep, he did it. Now he’s catching rockets and…Yep. It’s the out of the box, out of the box thinking. Yeah.

John Frankel (14:26)
Yeah, it’s just, you know, it’s, it’s, and that’s what we think will happen. So we think in both manufacturing and energy, there will be an unleashing of orthogonal thinkers. People say, if we’re bringing it back, let’s not just copy the processes in Asia and drop them in here. Let’s think of new ways and new products etc… take advantage of producing locally of mass customization. That’s why I think freebie printing is fascinating. I’ll give you an example if you want to that and and doing it a little differently and we

Nate Wheeler (15:10)
Right.

John Frankel (15:11)
think we think there will be. So the massive problem you’re solving is we export all of our expertise and supply chains overseas. And how do you bring them back? mean, it doesn’t happen overnight. It’s going to take 10, 20 years. But how do you bring the whole supply? And I actually believe there’ll be hundreds of thousands of entrepreneurs attacking different pieces and it will come together. And the new supply chains will be sleeker and more efficient and thought about from first principles in the same way that SpaceX thought about going to space differently as well.

Nate Wheeler (15:53)
Right. Yeah, I mean, as long as there is some continuity in the overall goal, you know, and that’s I mean, that’s the biggest flaw in the American political system is that every four years or every eight years, you have somebody else come in with a totally different philosophy on how things should be done.

John Frankel (16:13)
So on these principles, firstly, there are secular themes in independent administration. On the energy side, the demand for energy here, way outstripped supply, we have to fix that problem. We want a manufacturing podcast, let’s talk about that. On the manufacturing side, I think it’s just going to happen. There was a reason 20, 30 years ago when labor costs were, 60 % of a product.

Nate Wheeler (16:43)
Right.

John Frankel (16:44)
and you know cost of of labor was say one tenth of price you could almost save half the price of something it was a slam dunk today because of automation overseas and here and everywhere labor costs are maybe 20 percent but labor price differentials are probably half so now you’re only saving 10 percent not 15 percent but you have shipping and you have tariffs and you have national security

Nate Wheeler (17:14)
Right.

John Frankel (17:14)
You know, it’s crazy we don’t make all our drugs here. It’s crazy that, you know, we have an, you know, adversarial countries making things that are critical for American, you know, I don’t think that

Nate Wheeler (17:25)
Right.

John Frankel (17:27)
changes. honestly, and you know, I, this is not, I’m not trying to make this controversial, but this is my personal assessment. I think that Trump took these foreign policy objectives from Democrats. So I actually think his view on trade and manufacturing is a Democrat centrist policy. And as he did that, the Democrats really, other than saying we want to do something different than Trump, really couldn’t do anything different. you know, it’s like as much as Biden wants to reverse everything, he kept tariffs on China. He kept, you know,

Nate Wheeler (18:10)
Sure.

John Frankel (18:11)
right? He said we need energy here. let’s go and spend $5 trillion on energy. think there’s actually from these dynamics, both energy and manufacturing, these are bypassing policies. I don’t think there’s a lot of difference. And as a venture firm, we

Nate Wheeler (18:28)
Right. I think the difference is talking about it and being about it.

John Frankel (18:33)
invest over 10 plus year cycles. we have to assume there’s a couple of recessions, a couple of administrations, a

Nate Wheeler (18:41)
Yep.

John Frankel (18:41)
lot of things change.

Nate Wheeler (18:42)
Right.

John Frankel (18:43)
But I think the secular drivers here are so powerful and so important that I don’t think anyone would say, no, you know what, we’ll let India and China make all of our essential cancer drugs. I think people wake up, I think people woken up, and they’re just like, we have to change that. And

Nate Wheeler (19:04)
Right. Yeah.

John Frankel (19:05)
so I think that’s gonna happen. And with the automation that’s happening, which is disruptive, a lot of people are going to say, where are the real opportunities? And I think a lot of entrepreneurs will come out of the woodwork and start businesses to do different pieces of this. Then if you look back 10 years from now, go, my God, we’ve built an incredible supply chain.

Nate Wheeler (19:29)
I agree. How do you look at, you know, I remember reading about this scenario where a lot of times the company that brings the new idea and is the first to market with an idea is very rarely the successful company that takes it, you know, worldwide or really makes a thing out of it. So I would imagine that a lot of the companies that you look at to work with have pretty original ideas and are creating something that really hasn’t been created before. don’t know if that’s true or not.

John Frankel (20:04)
No, that’s

Nate Wheeler (20:05)
It is fair. Okay. So would your argument be that the capital injection and the method by which you grow that company is all that makes the difference whether they’re the big player in the end or not?

John Frankel (20:20)
I in some industries being first can be helpful. Capital can definitely be a differentiator, but most industries are not winner take all.

Nate Wheeler (20:34)
Right.

John Frankel (20:35)
Search is kind of winner take all. Most people don’t use Ask Jeeves anymore. Yahoo apparently is still around. Alta Vista, which I think was the first, we tend not to use.

Nate Wheeler (20:50)
Right.

John Frankel (20:50)
Right instant messaging there was a well instant message. Right and like where’s that so you know some of these are very dominant winner take all 23 winners for most industries are not like that

Nate Wheeler (21:06)
Right.

John Frankel (21:06)
and when you have a massive industry that can be real. I’m real opportunity for multiple players.

Nate Wheeler (21:15)
Right. Yeah, that makes sense.

John Frankel (21:18)
It’s about your own execution more than, you know, are you going to be outcompeted for most industries.

Nate Wheeler (21:26)
Right. Okay. So when you get involved with a company that you really believe in, where does that initial, because these are, you already said that they’re kind of not capital intensive or at least relatively not capital intensive business models. Where do you typically put the first investment dollars? What is the most important thing to get these companies to the next level?

John Frankel (21:55)
We are great believers that we invest in businesses that use technology, not technology that can become part of a business. So the companies we back happen to use technology, but only because that technology enables them to do something one tenth of price or 10 times better than the alternative as

Nate Wheeler (22:26)
Okay.

John Frankel (22:28)
opposed to AI is important. So we’re investing in a bunch of AI companies. That’s not how we look at it. So I’ll give you an example. We’re investing in a legal tech company called Alexei. But they’re based up in Toronto, growing double digits month over month. And they help lawyers do lawyer stuff using, happens to use AI.

Nate Wheeler (22:56)
Yep.

John Frankel (22:58)
And it is, you know, fits into that aspect of being 10 times better product and one 10th of price of having a bunch of lawyers do that research, pull that report together, do that analysis, etc.

Nate Wheeler (23:11)
Right. Right.

John Frankel (23:12)
Great company. Now, when we first invested, the company was very focused on the science. They had actually a number of years ago built their own GPT technology. They kind of decided about a year ago, the fact we built our tech, why don’t we just leverage the investment of, you know, folks like ChatGPT and then put our proprietary layer to the side of it and on top of it, but leverage that, you know, those assets because they’ve commoditized it rather than us. And the company’s just really taken off.

Nate Wheeler (23:57)
Right.

John Frankel (23:57)
Yeah, CEO is very sales driven and they’re crushing it. But where they started while and this was before check GPT came out, they started saying that this general purpose transformer approach is the right approach. And then as the dynamics around them change, they said, where’s the where’s the value that we bring? Is it building our own fundamental models or is it our interpretation sits on top of the models? And they side of the latter. So, you for us, early revenue, engagement with customers, finding out what they want, where they say, I need more of this, I’ll pay for that, I don’t care about that, I won’t pay for that, is important.

Nate Wheeler (24:50)
Mm-hmm. Yep.

John Frankel (24:54)
Not running a science experiment and then getting to revenues in four years.

Nate Wheeler (25:01)
Right. So customer engagement.

John Frankel (25:06)
Very important.

Nate Wheeler (25:06)
Very important. So what mechanism do you use to do that? Is that, OK, we’ve sold 10,000 units. Let’s talk to those people. Or do you have some way to survey people who aren’t customers and find out what features and benefits they would like out of the product? Like, how do you go about that?

John Frankel (25:27)
Well, invariably, you want the CEO to be the salesperson in chief. You want the CEO in every sales call, listening to customers, interpreting it, coming back and saying to his product team, you need to do this. Coming back and saying to his engineering team, you need to do that. Coming back to a sales team, marketing teams say, this is how we need to market. You need very close loop development of how the product needs to be adjusted to get to product market fit, which is a term in the industry.

Nate Wheeler (26:11)
Right. Have you seen any consistencies or patterns in marketing, let’s say, a robotics automation product in what works and what doesn’t?

John Frankel (26:33)
So what’s interesting in the hardware companies that have deep software layers, which nature of the kind of things we do, is are they making money by selling hardware that happens to have software embedded? Or are they making money by selling software that happens to have hardware embedded? So what’s the monetization model? What’s the business model? How do you get paid? How much is upfront? How much is recovered over time? What are the term of the contracts? How does all of that fit together? And in some industries, initially people just want to buy the hardware and run with it. In reality, that kind of doesn’t work. And we’re starting to see this even, you know, I’ll come back to Tesla again. You can go and buy a car. And then you can pay money to subscribe for things you want, like full self drive, pay $100 a month. You can pay a certain amount a month to be able to watch Netflix in your car, you know, to enable that kind of dynamic. you know, even in a hardware intensive business like selling a car, there’s a sense that there’s some kind of subscription you can embed in it.

Nate Wheeler (27:59)
Right.

John Frankel (27:59)
Even more so, when you’re selling capability into industry, robots who can do certain things, certain capabilities. If you’re going to buy a robot and you know the software is going to be continuously updated, shouldn’t you be paying so much per month to get access that continuous update? Or do you want to stay with the same, three years, have the same product with the same capabilities you bought three years ago? But your competitors are paying $100 a month or whatever it is. And

Nate Wheeler (28:34)
Right, right.

John Frankel (28:35)
theirs are twice as capable and more efficient. So,

Nate Wheeler (28:38)
Right.

John Frankel (28:39)
you know, it really depends on the business model. We generally prefer ones which are, know, software-based models

Nate Wheeler (28:47)
sort of modular.

John Frankel (28:50)
with, you know, enabled by hardware.

Nate Wheeler (28:52)
Right. OK. Yeah, and kind of what I was hearing, too, is sort of like a modular scenario where you can pay for extra value add.

John Frankel (29:02)
Right, and one that the extra value add might be additional capability, or it might be to access all the updates. Because if a company is a good company, they will find ways to make that hardware smarter over time.

Nate Wheeler (29:22)
Yep. Okay. So I think a lot of what we just said sort of answers part of this question, but you may have something additional. So if you are an early stage company, maybe you’re a sole founder right now, maybe you have a couple of team members that you’re working with on the engineering or development side, and you want to attract venture capital, what would be your biggest piece of advice for that person?

John Frankel (29:56)
When you’re just getting going, you need to be a storyteller. If you can’t explain what you’re doing in a simple story arc, if you can’t have a 15 page deck that walks through it and explains it, if you can’t explain as if you explained to a four year old, then you have a problem. think humans are storytelling, story consuming, pattern matching, know, evolved animals. I think that’s just what we do.

Nate Wheeler (30:32)
Right.

John Frankel (30:33)
And you know, so as a founder, you really need to be a charismatic storyteller, explaining what you’re trying to do, why it’s gonna work. I’ve used this term probably too often, but successful founders are delusionally optimistic. They believe they can get hundreds, thousands, millions of people to stop doing things one way and start doing them another. And that doesn’t mean everyone who’s delusionally optimistic is a good founder. Yeah, the world’s full of a lot of delusional people.

Nate Wheeler (31:21)
Right.

John Frankel (31:21)
But you really need that characteristic. You need to be able to say, look, we’ve done it like this forever, and now we’re going to do it like that. And we’re going do it like that now because of this emerging technology. And we think we can build not only a business here, but one with a defensible barrier to entry so that our profits are not competed away over time. And that’s what you need to do. And

Nate Wheeler (31:51)
Yeah.

John Frankel (31:52)
then you need to VCs, angels, investors who buy into that vision and understand it.

Nate Wheeler (32:02)
Yep.

John Frankel (32:03)
to make it happen.

Nate Wheeler (32:05)
So how do you go about, say you’ve got the characteristics, the storytelling down, you’ve got the defensible product, how do you find the right VC firm?

John Frankel (32:22)
Well, it’s much easier now than it used to be. You can probably go in and write a prompt for Grok or chat GPT or Gemini that says, me VCs who are active today, who invest in this space, who haven’t invested in competitors to the following product. And it’ll probably spit out a bunch of people.

Nate Wheeler (32:41)
Yeah.

John Frankel (32:42)
Yeah. Now my general belief is, and every VC will tell you this is warmer intros are better than cold intros. We actually are neutral. Somebody comes in the interest of us, we will look at it. But I will tell you, almost every company we’ve ended up investing, ex post seems to have come from a warm intro.

Nate Wheeler (33:05)
I see, I see. So find somebody that knows you.

John Frankel (33:07)
So that, you know, we don’t filter for that. Some VCs do. I remember talking to one VC and he said, I am only going to invest in founders on their second business when their first business exited over 10 million. I go, why? He goes, because statistically they tend to generate good second businesses and it keeps my life simple. Do you fit this screen? Yes or no, you don’t fit the screen, you know, sorry, but we’re not going to look.

Nate Wheeler (33:37)
Interesting. Yeah.

John Frankel (33:42)
you know, everyone has their own process. We don’t have that process, but like, you know, and it’s a nature of not just that the business being great and everything, you know, fundamentally working, but, but luck, you know, do you hit the VC at the time when they’re investing, when they have an

Nate Wheeler (34:03)
Right.

John Frankel (34:04)
investing competitor, where they, they didn’t have an argument 10 minutes before they came into the meeting or whatever it might be. Right.

Nate Wheeler (34:09)
Hahaha.

John Frankel (34:12)
Yeah. It takes a lot. And I almost have this belief that if the seed round or what they call today pre seed round is too easy, the business is likely to fail. And if it’s really hard, the business is likely to succeed. Now, I think it’s

Nate Wheeler (34:32)
kind of makes sense.

John Frankel (34:32)
more it’s a decent correlation. I think I think if someone comes to my exam raising, you know 2 million on 10 and like my god, I’m oversubscribed I’m gonna raise 5 million on 20 and blah blah blah. They’ll raise the 5 million They’ll spend it and now they can’t justify they haven’t got the business to the point to justify the next round

Nate Wheeler (34:53)
Right. Pretty typical. You didn’t earn it.

John Frankel (34:57)
Yeah, yeah, I mean, it’s funny. I think there a lot of lessons embedded in the HBO series Silicon Valley. So if you haven’t watched that, I would watch it. Particularly season

Nate Wheeler (35:11)
I haven’t, but yeah, I’ll it out.

John Frankel (35:13)
three and four.

Nate Wheeler (35:14)
Yeah, OK. Yeah, I’ll check that out. We definitely will do that. I mean, this is fascinating stuff, and it’s complex stuff. And I really appreciate your knowledge. I’d love to continue to pick your brain and hear about some of the boards you’ve served on and stuff like that. We might have to do a second episode at some point, but a lot of knowledge. Really appreciate the insights that you shared today.

John Frankel (35:40)
Well, thank you for having me on the show. This went very fast for me and I hope it’s gone fast for listeners as well.

Nate Wheeler (35:46)
Yep, absolutely. All right, John, stick around for a minute.