Meet Daybreak Labs Advisor and Capital Factory Senior Venture Associate, Luis Martinez, PhD

Host Yolanda Fintschenko, Executive Director of Daybreak Labs and i-GATE Innovation Hub, home of the Startup Tri-Valley (STV) Initiative, sits down with Luis Martinez, PhD, Senior Venture Associate with Capital Factory and Daybreak Labs advisor. In this inspiring conversation, Luis shares his remarkable 25-year journey from a synthetic organic chemist at Harvard to a management consultant, university professor, ecosystem builder, and now venture capitalist.

Luis offers invaluable insights for technical founders on what VCs really look for: capital efficiency, velocity, and the courage to be "bold crazy." He explains why not every company should pursue venture capital, the critical importance of continuous customer discovery, and how founders can build rocket ships worthy of VC investment. Luis also discusses Capital Factory's unique model as the "center of gravity for entrepreneurs outside of Silicon Valley" and the strategic advantages of the Tri-Valley ecosystem—from its proximity to Lawrence Livermore National Lab and the Bay Area to its untapped potential in energy, space, biotech, and ag tech.

Tune in or watch the link to YouTube to learn why entrepreneurship is a team sport, how to leverage regional ecosystems for national impact, and what it takes to build a real business that's 10x better than the competition.

Transcript

Startup Tri-Valley Podcast - Luis Martinez

This is the startup Tri-Valley Podcast featuring in-depth conversations with the leaders who are making the Tri-Valley the go-to ecosystem for science-based startups. I'm Yolanda Fintschenko from Startup Tri-Valley.

Today it is my great pleasure to welcome to the pod, Luis Martinez PhD, Senior Venture Associate with Capital Factory, a Daybreak Labs advisor, a personal friend, a fellow Trinity Tiger. Luis, thanks so much for being with us.

Oh, thank you so much for the opportunity to get a chance to chat. I've been looking forward to this for a very long time and super excited about not only the community that you've helped build, but also this incredible platform. So really looking forward to our time together in our conversation.

Well, thank you. So, let's start off with a story. I'm not even sure I've heard, which is okay. What inspired you to pursue a career in venture capital and how did you land at Capital Factory? You're a chemist. That's a really interesting story.

Let's frame this slightly, let's get to the chase. A career is measured over decades and someone's path can be non-linear. Let's just frame that to say that this is going be a long journey that has quite a non-linear path. So my apologies for those of you that are tuning in are, oh my God, I can't wait to start in venture capital. I'm doing venture capital in the next three years. It took me 25. So that's sort of the one of the take home lessons. 

We need to go back actually earlier than 25 years. When I was a graduate student at Harvard, I was really fortunate to be involved in a discovery that we ended up patenting. It was a phenomenal sort of achievement. It was really great to be part of that process as a graduate student. So I was part of the patenting process and the disclosure at Harvard, and then we had a licensee. And so it was about licensing that technology out, seeing it to scale, seeing, being built to scale. So that was sort of a completely eye-opening experience for me. I'm trained as a synthetic organic chemist. I'm a synthetic methodologist as my training. To see your method and what you developed as a catalyst being built on, being produced on a multi ton scale and then being used by pharmaceutical companies around the world, that's super cool. That's really, really cool. Nice. And so, that got me excited about other possibilities that didn't include traditional pharmaceutical chemicals research working for industry or academic opportunities. So at the time in sort of the late nineties, there was a number of consulting firms that were looking to hire PhDs because consulting firms at the time were opening in sort of that iris of the advisory that they were getting from their early hires and stepping out and hiring PhDs and additional traditional MBAs and JDs. So I turned down a postdoc at Berkeley. Later I found out that was probably not the best choice, but regardless, I turned down a postdoc at Berkeley. It's funny 'cause, quick aside, so they're, I, you know, hey, I turned down this postdoc at Berkeley, and they're, you know where that postdoc is, right? I'm, it's some named postdoc, blah, blah, blah. Not a big deal. They're, it means they were looking at you for a job. And I was, oh, it was, if not at Cal, it would've been at another UC school. It was, oh, maybe that was, you'd be incubating your company here, Luise. 

Anyway, I turned that down because I was interviewing at management consulting firms and I had this wonderful offer with a very small boutique management consulting firm that only specialized in biotech and medical devices. So it was a Boston based firm. At the time, it was one of only maybe two companies in the world. They were doing the work that they did, and their specialty was corporate communications and investor relations specifically for biotech and medical device companies. And what was interesting about that firm at the time is that they felt it was super important for them to hire PhD level scientists on their team because if they were going be working with early stage biotech or late stage medical device companies, they needed to understand the science at the same level that the scientists had at the companies. And so I was part of this cohort of our own egghead PhDs that were assigned to every consulting project. And so it was an incredible learning experience for me. I consider that my MBA was the number two guy in our West coast office. Help sort of support our clients west of the Mississippi. Built our own practice as we did that, built out to work on the west coast. Spent a lot of time on airplanes, spent a lot of time talking to, everything from two guys in the lab, rat to publicly traded medical device and pharma companies doing investor relations for both public and private companies, corporate communications and then the more traditional management consulting work that we got engaged to. It was exciting. That was super great for me. 

It was at that point I was, this VC thing sounds really interesting, is maybe the next step of what I'll do after the consulting firm. But detour, turns out my father took ill and I needed to go back to my hometown of El Paso, Texas. And what started is the conversation of, I wanna be in town. Do you need a lab to be taught or a section of organic chemistry to be taught, became a, well, I'm not saying we have a job, but if you were going be a faculty member and we had a role, would you take it? And so I committed career suicide again and sort of left management consulting and business and sort of VC to go become a university professor. So I became a professor of chemistry at the University of Texas of El Paso, which is my hometown. Got a chance to help be part of, not only teaching graduate students and teaching undergrads and not only writing grants and developing technologies. That's where my second patent comes out of, but also helping build a department, helping build a PhD program, helping build a region. So that was super exciting because I had this tech transfer experience prior to my academic role. I started advising our tech transfer office. 

They were just beginning to sort of have technologies and patents and stuff. So I helped them license their first three technologies out of that office. And then, because I wasn't busy enough, a couple of buddies that I, we had all found ourselves in the same area. Co-founded another consulting firm that I was a co-founder for. And we worked with small businesses and startups working that had up to a million dollars worth of revenue and in addition to that, we also worked with Los Alamos National Labs and Sandia National Labs to help do due diligence for credit investors. So, these are investors that may not know the technology super well or have to take someone else's word for it, that the TAM is really what it is or the opportunity is really what it is. And so we were engaged on a sort of case by case. To come on in and do due diligence for investors as they sort of evaluate those opportunities. Did that until about 2009 or so. 

So I've had the experience in only launching a company, but also winding a company down when no one can afford you anymore. And then, left my academic role to go become a senior scientist at the Scripps Research Institute in Jupiter, Florida. So it was an exciting time in Florida at the time. There was a number of sort of research institutions that were setting up their East Coast presence in Florida. The Burnham Institute was setting up a presence there. Scripps Research Institute was there. Torrey Pines was setting up an institute there. So it was very exciting in that economic downturn, the excitement happening around biotech, specifically in Florida. I was there and then went off to go teach at another small college. And then about 13 years ago, my wife got an opportunity to relocate and become a distinguished professor here in San Antonio, Texas. And she very wisely chose not to move to San Antonio without her husband. So I'm very grateful for her to do that. But they weren't looking for another organic chemist. They already had plenty of those on their team, but they had just opened up an entrepreneurship center and were looking for a new director. So I shifted and became now Professor of Innovation and Entrepreneurship. Also helped manage that tech transfer office as well, and built a university entrepreneurship center. And it was exciting. It was a great decade. I spent there, helped students primarily launch their first businesses. We launched over 60 student startups in the decade that I was there. Those companies then went off to raise over $60 million of the value of Capital, and we've had one successful exit from that generation that were there. Amazing. Helped watch a mentor program, an accelerator program, a venture competition, an internship program. Got deeply involved in the tech entrepreneurial ecosystem here in San Antonio, Texas that I helped build. So through that, got engaged with investors, got engaged with entrepreneur support organizations. Similar to Daybreak Labs. Started mentoring in a range of programs. At that time, Techstars had a Techstars Cloud here in San Antonio. So I started mentoring nationally with Techstars through the Techstars Cloud program. Been mentoring with them now for about eight years. Got connected through that with Mass Challenge in Boston. Started mentoring with them as well, and then started mentoring overall. 

So my origin sort of comes as sort of a management consultant and then my own consulting and then a mentor. About three years ago, left Trinity and was looking for something bigger impact and bigger scale to do for my next gig. And at the time, capital Factory was looking for a venture lead in San Antonio. And so they said, Hey, look, you've helped build this ecosystem in San Antonio. You know what it's to have companies get started. You've mentored, you've been mentoring with Capital Factory for a while, so we know that you don't give bad advice. Would you be interested in joining our team and be on the venture side? And I couldn't think of anything bigger impact in bigger scale than working across the country and working within the state of Texas and helping companies to go big and go fast. And so 25 years later, here I am again now working in VC. And so, my approach and how I think about VC is that while I have been an operator, and so I do have that operational experience of having co-founded a thing. My thing though, was a consulting firm and my background is in consulting, so it really is from a consulting perspective of how can you add value where it's not about you, it really is about the client, it really is about the founder. So it's a very founder focused orientation in the way in which I evaluate the engagements and investments that we make. So that's first. Second is that I've been mentoring for over 25 years and consulting for over 25 years. So that's another aspect of this, it's very mentory, consulting, and the ways in which we engage and lean into the companies that we work with. I think there's a misunderstanding by many founders and some VCs that the only value for investors is their capital, right? And that's important. You need that for oxygen. But really it's the investment of time and effort that actually in some cases is more impactful than the capital that someone can write into you. So I'm approaching this from perspective of investment means, capital investment, but also means investment in time and effort. And we as a firm, and one great thing about Capital Factory is to lean in through our advisory program into really providing our entire 75 person team all the work that we do as an ecosystem, really to provide that time and effort on behalf of our portfolio companies. So it really was a really great match in sort of the way that we work and sort of in the orientation that I have. The other interesting thread that I bring to the table is that, I'm a technical guy, so I'm a PhD. I can understand the chemistry, I can understand the biotech, I can understand the hard tech. I've been in lab, I've made stuff. So that investigator, PhD inventor, discoverer mindset is something else also that I bring to the table. The nuance is that I know the value of research and how important it is to write a paper and how important it is to have a publication and to have potentially patents and to move a research program forward 'cause I've done that. 

But I also know the difference between a research program and a viable business. And so that's the other aspect of the tenure, the tenor of sort of the way in which I engage is that I understand when something is some really fantastic science that could be a business or fantastic tech that probably isn't a business, but that is a nice tech. And then lastly, I'm the very first person to tell you that not everyone should do VC as an investment. It is the most expensive form of capital that you will ever have in running your business. 

The expectations for VCs is that, we're taking other people's money and we're promising them their return will be higher than any other form of investment that they could make, either in the public markets or through real estate or whatever else that they know. We're promising superior returns. And so those exits, the only time we get paid is when there's an exit. So those exits have to be huge. They, I mean, 'cause we in state we invest seed series A, so you're looking after markets that are at minimum measured in hundreds of millions, but you're looking at billion dollar, trillion dollar markets. How are you going be the player? How will you win? So, unless you're building, analogy that I use for founders is, unless you're building a rocket ship, which is a hundred million dollars plus company. If you're not building that, then VC is probably not the right investor pool for you. Right? And so if you're building a million dollar company, a tens of million dollar company, that's fantastic. 

There's lots of great ways of doing that. There's great other additional sources of capital, but the juice worth the squeeze for a VC, that's not the right level of return. And so that's sometimes hard for some founders, especially technical founders because they're, this is really great and okay, what's the total market? It's $20 million. It's, okay, that is not enough for a VC. Oh, but it's growing at this. It's, so you're assuming that you're going take all of the market, a majority of the market and you're going help fuel that CAGR and that someone else who's an incumbent or a large enterprise, or who's got more resources than you do and already has a brand and already has a place, isn't going outcompete you. So there's a lot of factors there. So I don't wanna say I'm negative on VC 'cause I'm definitely not. But part of the conversation I have with founders is, well, let's talk about your ambition and let's talk about the real expectations of what it will take to do that. Because it's not only big market founders underestimate or don't take into consideration velocity or how fast you're going. And so for VC, last number of fund is typically about 10 years. You're hoping for an exit within, ideally five to seven, three to five, you want those exits at that level of magnitude that I told you. So if you are not going build a hundred million dollar, billion dollar company in seven years, right? And you're not executing at that speed, well then you're probably not a match for VC either.

Right. So it's not just the total addressable market. It is absolutely the speed at which you can address it and the speed and where in the fund you are. Right? If your fund, if you're partway through the fund, that timeframe may be even more compressed than an investment that you make earlier on after you've raised your fund.

And as a VC, right? I mean, we've placed bets three years ago. We've placed bet two years ago, we placed bet 10 years ago. We'd double down on those and we know them because we helped invest in them and we've gotten to know them. So you're new, it doesn't mean you're not special, but when it comes to that allocation of capital, I have a choice of either doubling down on an early investment that I've made. I've got the opportunity to invest in a new company. And you wanna be keeping new companies in, but there is that dynamic where speed is really super important. And I do think that sort of graduate school where you're passing your quals and you're in year three and it's, oh, I'll get my PhD at some point. And we'll see. Sometimes early stage founders lull into that, well, we're still at early stages, we're still building, it'll, it's just going take us time. It's, well that's great, but the clock is ticking. So velocity is a really important factor.

And capital investment is really for something worth throwing more money at something will actually accelerate when you get there. And so it makes a lot of sense. So the timing has to be right, both for the company and for your fund. So you might pass on a great investment that another investor invest in just because the timing didn't work. You guys needed an exit before they'd be able to exit, even if there was a lot of potential for making money. It's, but not on our timeframe, and, and, well the other thing I think investors, the other thing I think founders need to understand is that for you, it's your company and you're shopping your opportunity to lots of investors, which is great. As investor, I'm getting hundreds of opportunities. A week, a month, right? So you're not competing against other diagnostic companies or the biotech companies, just broadly, you're competing against all the deals that I've seen that day. Or that I've seen that week, or that I've seen that month, or that I've seen that quarter. Right.

And that's just me. There might be other people on our teams that are also sourcing, and then we have to make a case within our investment committee about why amongst all the best deals that we're looking at that quarter, or all the best deals that we're looking at that month. However it is that it's divided, why you are the one who's going get that one check, or why the three of you are going get three checks and the other 15 or the other 10, or the other 20 or 30, whatever that number is, we're going take a pass on it. Right. And so your being evaluated across the surface area of which that firm is exploring so you can improve your chances 'cause you're only looking at firms that only look at your specific niche, which is good. The challenge is that you're looking and competing against everything else against that niche. And I think with where we are today in the current cycle in 2025, one of the big differences that I've seen in the last 25 years, well, there's lots of differences. One, one of the bigger differences now, especially coming out of COVID, is that there's an expectation that companies have been incredibly capital efficient and so. Friends and family dollars, personal investments you've made into the company. What have you done with the comp, with the, with someone else's money or your own money that's gotten you to this point? How capital efficient have you been? And if all you say is, well, we filed a patent and, we got a C Corp set up. That's very different from, we did a C corp, we did a patent, we're in seven pilots. We have got some recurring that's come on in, I've convinced right. Eight, seven to eight other people to join my company to be part of that effort. We're accelerating at all effort. 

That's what you're being competitive against. So I think it's really important to understand that in this moment, capital efficiency is king and we wanna see how you are efficient with what you've been given already or what you've put in on your own already. And some of that could be non-dilutive grants as well. That's super important. Right, right. So non-dilutive grants, SBIRs, STTR winning pitch competitions. Right? How have you been capital efficient with what you've been given to date? 'cause I'm giving you some money now, or having the risk of giving you some money. I wanted to be sure that you're efficient with that cash as well. Right. So to amplify what you just said, I'm less interested in building rockets unless you're actually really building rockets. I'm much more interested in paying for rocket fuel once your rockets begin to take off the tower. Right. Right. It's 'cause it accelerates. So capital efficiency is right. Second is that especially in the software side, but this is also happening as well on the hardware side as we have through the additive manufacturing being at a scale where it is today. The time to product, the time in your product development, in your developing that code, especially with AI, has just gotten shorter and shorter and shorter and shorter and shorter and shorter and shorter. So when you ask the question, it's what have you done in the last three months? How you answer that question today with what the output is, is very different than what have you done in the last three months, 20 years ago, or even 10 years ago. Right? The pace acceleration of product development, of writing code on the software side of product development, developing prototypes on the 3D out of manufacturing side for hardware printing, out circuit boards that process is just so much faster. And so the speed to actual real product has gotten shorter and shorter and shorter, and the expectations are high with the capital efficiency. The other difference, I think that's critically important for founders to understand is that, and it's not your fault, because of those two factors, the expectations for what investors have for earlier and earlier stage companies is a far higher bar than it was 10 years ago. Then it was five years ago, then it was 20 years ago. So some companies benchmark and they say, oh, compared to this company five years ago, here's the expectations. We've met those same expectations. It's, well, you don't know. Is it the goalpost have moved and you still haven't met that mark? And so the expectations for traction, product development, competitive advantage team, those goalposts have shifted where more is being expected for companies every stage, particularly those that are earlier stage as well.

And that's, I mean, I think one of the things that we've been working on at Daybreak Labs, and you just gave a great lunch and learn on this and how to get funding and customers through dual use military applications is the significance of having actual customers, right? Whether it's through letters of commitment, letters of intent, pilot studies, as you said, they're putting resources, maybe not money, but they're putting resources into deploying your technology. And so, so much of the progress, it's clear that even for early stage companies that is required is evidence that you have set up some very clear paths to revenue. Even if you work in a tightly regulated industry, the, I, you know, I have to wait for FDA approval in and of itself. That's not an answer, right? That's, that's while you're waiting. What are you doing? Where are your lines to revenue? And can you demonstrate that with actual commitment to what's the proof in your story? Which companies who have you talked to? What are you doing with them now? And I think that that was probably always true, but I think to your point, what we're seeing is it's even more true earlier. So it's even more true. So even for that first, even for that first check where people were supposed to be really accepting a lot of technical risk, it's, we'll take it maybe, but only because we see your path to revenue. Revenue, otherwise. You know, we'd rather invest in a company that's closer to revenue.

And I think for technical founders, especially first time technical founders, you think the only risk that's out there is technical. Right. And I can do that. Right. I'm an engineer, I can engineer this problem, or I'm a biologist, I'm biology you outta this. And that's great. I trust that you're super smart and can solve the technical risk. There's a whole bunch of other risk involved that I have to take into consideration. There's execution risk, there's business risk, there's obviously competitive, advantage and risk from the competitors. And I can't tell you how many founders I've met with who said, I've got no competition. It's, no, that's not true. I mean, you do, no, no, no, no. There's no one else in this space that's doing what we do. It's, fine, great. Who's adjacent to your space? Because if they see the same opportunity you do and they're adjacent that they're just going add cinnamon to their special sauce and that, they've discovered your recipe, right? Or there's the status quo. And that's a, now not only do you have the risk of being the adopted solution, but because it's the status, what the status quo is, there's an educational component that you've gotta do to convince people how to do things. People do things a new way or to incorporate into their process or their workflow in a very unique way. So I think for technical founders, really evaluating the additional risks that they have to sort of help have a path forward for is really important. And it becomes even more difficult when you're working in biotech or medical devices where you've got regulatory risk and you've got clinical risk on top of it. I was fortunate, I joke with our team, I cut my teeth and the hardest part, which is 'cause not, not only is there technical risk, not only is there business risk, but there's also regulatory risk and there's clinical risk and. I've seen my share of clinical assets that have failed at phase two and phase three and post-launch and there are graveyards littered with those failures. Some of that stuff's outta your control. And so as an investor, especially at the earliest stages, you've gotta account all of that risk. And so team's really important. And what have you done to achieve on your own, the de-risking of some of those various processes? Grants is a huge part of that. It helps de-risk some of that, programs the programs that you run help do that as well. But just, coming out and saying, I'm a graduate of this program and I've got a patent and I've got a C corp, in the current marketplace, it's gotta be really different. Or it's gotta be the trend that everyone's very excited about in order for you to really unlock that value.

Absolutely. So you've really jumped into a lot of the sort of key takeaways for any or any founders that are in our audience, particularly here in the Tri-Valley. And I do just wanna bring it back a little bit to Capital Factory. So it's something in common that Capital Factory has with what we're doing through startup Tri-Valley, Daybreak Labs and I-GATE. There's a regional focus. And there's also a national focus with Capital Factory. So there's a sort of, which we don't have. So we are very focused on creating economic vibrancy here in the Tri-Valley and with no aspirations to scaling that to the rest of the country. Capital Factory is also has a regional focus in bringing economic vibrancy to the state of Texas and sees a path to doing that by having a national focus. Or at least having a national presence. Maybe that's a better way to put it. And you guys already invest in a Livermore company, American Bifurcated Systems. They're just the next building over from us at Daybreak Labs. And we have your actual investment of time and looking at deal flow coming from Daybreak Labs and being an advisor. And so can you talk a little bit about how this plays, maybe it's not just a personal philosophy, but also into capital factories thesis and philosophy and how you see that bringing a unique advantage to our Tri-Valley startup community.

So a little history and then we'll get to the specific answer. We're a very unique investment firm. We're a very unique model. And it's a model that's grown outta the last sort of 16 years of the way in which we do the work that we do. We exist to address the critical holy trinity that's important for startups, which is startups need investors. Startups need customers, and startups need talent. So we are singularly focused at being the center of gravity that helps bring together entrepreneurs and connect them to their next investor, their next customer, and their next hire. We started 16 years ago as the center of gravity for entrepreneurs in Austin, Texas. Our founder, Josh Baer, had the vision, which was bold in 2009. So when I was out, moving off to go do something else, academia, he planted his flag in Austin, Texas and said, look, the future of startups and the future of venture capital is not going be in Boston, New York. It's not going be in Silicon Valley. It's going be this little town called Austin, Texas. And so it was really the focus of the center of gravity for entrepreneurship in Austin. And so we've been part of the growing tech ecosystem, VC growth in Austin since our inception. And in many cases. It started in our walls. They met at a conference. They met over coffee, we connected the people together. We've been part of that growth since our inception in 2017. We announced what we call our Texas manifesto, which is, hey, Silicon Valley is not a city, it's a region. And so will argue whether or not, Tri-State is within that region or not within that region. Right. Valley. 

It's Valley. Right, right. So can we get people to think about Texas as one big city? And so capital factory will serve as that connective tissue for startups, for venture capital in Dallas, in Austin, in Houston, and in San Antonio, the sort of Texas triangle. Where a majority of Texas's population is, majority of industry, majority of business. Can we unlock that? And there's already some very natural talent flows here in Texas. People have family members or their kids or in Austin or they're in Houston, they're in Dallas. There's just a lot of cross connect. A lot of the networks are there, but we've been intentionally building that across the state of Texas. That was our focus from about 2017 in part because of sort of the work that we had done. The US Army as they were looking to establish their next presence, chose Austin, Texas for their base for Army Futures Command. And that really for us, really accelerated what had traditionally had been just a focus on sort of B2B SaaS and sort of a little bit of sort of CPG to really embrace really fully hard tech. We've done a couple of sort of opportunistic investments in hard tech and biotech prior to that moment, but this really accelerated that growth. And so we have in our headquarters in Austin. Army Applications Lab and Army Futures Command, DIU, AF Works, Space Works, Marine X National Geospatial, US Department of Commerce, US Department of Home Security, the Defense Health Agency, a whole range of other federal partners that are in that space. And so we've got program managers and program officers that are there helping companies connect with federal opportunities, primarily through SBIRs, but also in a range of additional contracting opportunities. And so that for us, really accelerated an interest and a focus for us across deep tech and hard tech. We now have a space portfolio and an aerospace portfolio and a cybersecurity portfolio, and a whole range of really interesting tech and, and part of that. And so it was part of that center of gravity in Texas with this dual use component that had other companies reaching out to us and be, I really need you to connect into Texas. I'm from California. I hear Texas is interesting, but I don't know the players yet. I don't know the region yet, or. The people over my federal partners tell me I need to talk to you guys 'cause you've got this incredible network of investors. How do we connect and do what's happening? And so we've really served as a hyper connector. And then intentionally then, with the launch of our station, DC office in Washington DC have been looking to bridge that nationally. And so we changed our positioning from the center of gravity for entrepreneurs in Austin and the center of gravity for entrepreneurs in Texas to the center of gravity for entrepreneurs outside of Silicon Valley. And it's been exciting to see how we're not an economic development group, we're investing. Oh, you should be in the best place for you to build as a founder. So, please build in Livermore. Right. That's the best place for you to be. Right.

We can help unlock Texas for you so that you begin to engage and get stronger, faster, quicker. We can help unlock what really interesting opportunities there are available in Texas or alternative. We can also help unlock the opportunities around dual use or both. Or both. And we're now at a point where we have 750 companies in our portfolio, including eight of Texas's 20 unicorns. We've got $275 million under assets under management and above. I mean, we're not the largest investor in Texas, by all means. We don't have the most assets under management, but we write a lot of small checks and a lot of those companies are now, second time founders in our ecosystem building their second or third company with us, they've gone through an IPO, they've gone through M&A activity. So we've got that in our community. That muscle memory of being able to work with companies from very early stages to now sort of later stages. We started as an accelerator and then shifted 'cause lots of accelerators started popping up and did that work really successfully to now really focus on that seed series A as companies are beginning to engage their first round of institutional investors. And that really is something that's stuck and we bring to the table.

I know what distinguished you and Capital Factory to me is so, just for context for our listeners, you were basically just helping me out because you were 10 chapters ahead of me in the book, maybe onto the next series of the book series. And a lot of the advice you were giving me was related more to organizationally, how do I get these outcomes? But in talking to you, I think one of the things that I learned is that Capital Factory was one of very few sort of generalist funds. That was still investing in hard tech. At a time when we were seeing generalist funds, even regionally say, eh, capital efficiency and most, I would say most Bay Area generalist funds. So if, if you were, if your whole thesis was hard tech, climate tech, that didn't change. With the change in interest rates and the lack of. But, or life sciences, actual pharma, medical devices, et cetera. Okay. Nothing changed for those investors, but everyone else who was throwing a bone to, ah, it's a pretty inter, I mean, it's not, we don't really do this, but to your point, maybe they don't have the other resources but money. But they were interested, it does sound a good idea. We the idea of having something in cardiac technology, but none of us know anything about it. But, you seem a good investment. All of those opportunities just completely dried up in 2022, 2023. And everything became capital efficiency. Capital Factory is very unique in the fact that you've had the option to just stay tech. And you haven't, do you think that's because of your relationship with the military that that's allowed you to do more? Or is there something else driving that? And how is it paying off?

So, we're a very unique organization. We've got 70 plus professionals in our team that help power the platform. And within venture team, we're about 20 professionals within specifically the venture side of the work that we do. So some of that has just been, we're founder focus and it really is about the sort of unique insight that we believe that technology. Its core will be the solution for many of the world's problems. And so let's find really cool tech that's going help solve big problems. And so it's really, that's been our guiding guiding philosophy in the way in which we think about things. So that allows us to look very broadly at the work that we do. And so, because of the way in which we do, and it's lots of really small checks, we can take lots of really crazy bets, so someone walks into our space and says, I'm going go land on the moon. And we're, cool. Right. Let's go, let's go figure that out, and then they land on the moon. Literally, we've got two more portfolio companies, the two commercial companies that have landed on the moon or, Hey, look, I really think in the future, we're going have humanoid robotics and they're going take over the world and they're going do all the jobs that are dirty and dangerous and dull and that's going be awesome. Or cool. I can't imagine what the world looks with robots. Robots could be super cool and so growth. So a lot of it is about fundamentally backing really great founders that have got really interesting tech that's solving really hard problems. And so it started, and I have to give our partners credit for this. It really is about maintaining that as our focus, first starting with what everyone knew as our partners and sort of B2B, SaaS and SaaS and software to then take the risk of then expanding into hard tech and biotech and medical devices to now. We're really interested in really way out crazy things of what the future would look in 30 years or 20 years. Right. Just, we've seen that movie already in some of the investments that we've made and it has been exciting to see that grow. So that's part of it. The other part is, we're Texas and so it's, hey, we're just going be different in a lot of ways. To answer your question about why you guys and why Livermore, or the Tri-State. The Tri-Valley. Tri-Valley, it has to do with a bias that I have. My bias is I have seen and have colleagues out of the national labs and the great technology and talent that comes out of those national labs, I've collaborated and had partners at Los Alamos and at Sandia, I was fortunate to be part of a review committee and engagement with Pacific Northwest Labs, known folks that are gone for a long time, Brookhaven, Oak Ridge, Idaho. So as we started having the conversation about, well look, Lawrence Livermore is literally right there and Sandia is right there and there's some really great opportunities there and great talent. Let's see where this goes 'cause we know what that looks looking at universities. We've worked with UT, we work with Texas A&M, we've worked with Rice. We see the output of the university ecosystem around innovation. We're excited about the unlock that happens around the national labs. And a lot of it's around security and a lot of it's around, but energy, energy is a good example of a driving force. We don't have enough electrons full stop to do anything. And so we need to find all hands on deck to get more electrons. And so there's generation, but there's also transmission and there's also storage and there's also efficiencies around the current electrons that we currently have. And then there's ways in which we make those electrons or the hardware more efficient or the software more efficient. 

And so, my God, there's really smart people that have been thinking about energy for a super long time. And so, and it's not just oil and gas, it's fusion, it's fission, and it's wind and it's solar and it really is this all hands on deck to solve those energy problems. And then we're big, we're very bullish on space. We're going solve a lot of terrestrial problems. Problems will exist off world. And so how do we solve those problems in low earth orbit and higher orbits? And we think about lunar. If we think about planetary, there's a whole range of unlock there that opens up to think about ag tech to open up to think about. So we're very broad in the work that we do. And again, with our focus of sort of helping be the center of gravity outside of the Valley. We'd love to engage ecosystems across the United States and help work on linking them together. And we're very fortunate to have federal partners DARPA and, and AF Works and those folks that we've been partnering with for a number of years, specifically in the dual use space. We think there's opportunities in energy and we think there's opportunities in biotech and we think there's opportunities in healthcare. And so the ways in which that intellectual capital is driving innovation is something that for us is not only a guiding principle, but something that for us is exciting. And then the other component that I think is the unsaid theme of our today, relational. This is relational business. Venture startups is a relational business. That warm intro who, you know, who you can make that connection to, who can provide that insight. That hackneyed phrase, your net worth is, your network is, is real. So, we had a personal connection because we've known each other for a long time and you reached out and we continue that personal connection. This is a relational based business. And so if we can help be that connective tissue and engage ecosystems obviously in and within Texas, but also outside of Texas is our base. We see a great opportunity to really back incredible founders that are building bold things that are solving real world problems. That for us is really exciting.

And we really appreciate your support. I mean, I know personally, consulting you as we were as I was beginning as executive director and really trying to understand how to most effectively use the limited resources we had has been so valuable. And you gave me a lot of advice initially on our advisory network. Now you're one of our advisors, not just to me, but to our companies. And that also came about, I think in part 'cause you were starting to see deal flow. I'm bringing companies to you and there are companies that match your thesis. Maybe you won't invest in every single one, but it's clearly, at least a couple times there's reasons to have at least a second and third conversation. Right. And I think for our founders, there's a recognition that they're not going to. Speaking, coming back to your capital efficiency, they're not going be able to build a company fast enough that captures the opportunity they think is there if they're only looking at their source of relationships and network and company building model as being only regional.

 So they can, you can be a regional company, you can be Tri-Valley through and through, and you are maybe going collaborate with another hospital MD Anderson or if you're in Green Tech, taking advantage of what's being built in Houston around climate technology and what's existing in Chicago and what's going on in Boston and even in the North Carolina Tri-Cities. And somewhere in there you might do your manufacturing. Somewhere that doesn't even have any, it's not any of these places, right? Because Ohio gave you a really sweet deal, Oklahoma and I think the reality is if you're serious about building your business, you need to make a lot of strategic relationships across the US globally, globally, wherever it's going to actually fuel the growth of your company. Because if you are, if you are an investible company, then you need to grow quickly and you can't really afford to make a single location, the thing that's gatekeeping you. Right. And even though we do have, we have so many resources here in the Tri-Valley, in the Tri-Valley, but also in the Bay Area, but it's still not necessarily going be sufficient. Things may not line up, you've gotta think of your timing and who can match your timing as much as anything else. And I think for us, I think that's what working with Capital Factory unlocks is a much more, these warm introductions in all the places where you've built relationships. So I know we're super appreciative of that. I'm really curious, I know you've worked with a few of our companies. And you, we talk a lot. I'm curious what you see as sort of the, I'm going use a word that's used a lot in venture. Someone just really pointed out to me that it sounds mean, but it's not mean. What do you see as the unfair advantages we're giving each other by, Capital Factory investing essentially your time in the Tri-Valley and us working with Capital Factory you've seen the region. I'm curious to see what you see as some unfair advantages that maybe we should be capitalizing on and how potentially this relationship can help what you guys are building.

So let me frame that slightly. I was fortunate to go to graduate school in Boston and be engaged in that startup ecosystem in the nineties. Fortunate to, as part of the consulting firm I work with that I did be in California. So I've worked on both northern and Southern California in the late nineties, early two thousands. So I know what those ecosystems look when they're churning and burning. Right. But I've also been fortunate through the consulting work that I did to work with other emerging ecosystems, Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, and Miami, and Denver and Boulder, and Salt Lake City and Seattle, and Austin, and Houston, and Dallas and Chicago. This is Detroit and Cleveland, right? Vancouver, London, Dublin, Berlin. Madrid, Barcelona, Paris. And so I think there's a bias. To only look to New York and Boston and only look towards San Francisco and be, that's where it's, and that's where capital is concentrated. That's where startups are concentrated. That's where you've got that natural critical mass. But there's lots of advantages in lots of other places in the world. And again, I ended up spending the last decade here in San Antonio. I'm working in Austin. I'm working nationwide with the work that we do as a firm. So I know what's it to be in, forgive me for listeners in San Antonio and being in a second tier city. And so the now back to the advantages. So I think there are always advantages that are geographically tied. One of San Antonio's advantages is that it is Austin's southernmost suburb. So we're very close to, similar to the Tri-State, the Tri-Valley. Tri-Valley, we're the Eastern most we're the Eastern Rim of the Bay Area.

On a real synergy I see between sort of my experience in San Antonio working with Austin that you all have with what's happening in actually the Bay Area. So there's a lot of advantages that are there. What I've learned here in San Antonio as well is that we've got incredible talent, incredible talent. Some of it's fueled by the universities. A lot of it's fuel around hospitality. A lot of it's fuel around military. So we really do have this incredible talent pool and we've got legacies of SaaS companies, service-based companies, tech companies that have spun out and done great things that have been sort of the history of what's happening here in San Antonio. So why you all and why Tri-Valley? Number one, I think there's great, incredible talent that's there. A lot of it is fueled by the national labs, and that's fantastic. A lot of it's fueled by, again, your proximity to the Bay Area and affordability, work-life balance, access and ease into getting into wine country and the agricultural center of what's happening there. I'm excited about your partnerships that you're having with UC Merced as well, I think there's some really interesting talent advantages that you have that are very unique. Second is geography, as I mentioned before. You're in the valley, but not quite in the valley. You're the next valley over. Right. And it's easy to get out. There's a critical mass of density of startups and investors that are there in the place, but also in addition to the industry that's fueled through the national labs and the history that's there, there's a history of diagnostics and medical devices that have come out of that space and healthcare that makes it really different. Right. I mean, is it MD Anderson in Houston? No, but it's unique. It's unique.

We do, and it is true 'cause we do have, we have four hospital systems in the Tri-Valley. You have these hospital systems.

So thinking about healthcare broadly, healthcare system is important. Right? The opportunities and ag for you all are actually really interesting in Ag Tech as well. And it's not, it's, it's, I believe one of your premier agricultural outputs is a state is really nearby, right? Right. So I think, I mean this is not Champaign Urbana, Illinois, right. Or Kansas City, Missouri, or College Station, Texas. Right? Right. This is with these other advantages in ag with these additional critical mass opportunities around tech with ag and with where you are geographically, climate's important. Water usage is important, energy is important. So there's some really interesting advantages to place that are unique to the work that you do that are super exciting. So there's talent and there's place. Third, some cool tech, some of it's super, some of it's farther along, already had exit. There's already a sort of an advantage with some cool tech coming out and there is a tax to be spent about taking that tech and then moving into San Francisco or taking that tech and moving into Boston or taking that tech and moving to New York. I understand there's also that same tax going into Texas. People wanna sometimes live where they are or live where they have family, where they have kids. And so taking advantage of sort of that synergy of both tech and location or tech and opportunity, I think is an interesting combination. It's something that we've helped arbitrage with the work that we've done in Houston and the work we've done in Dallas. The work we've done in San Antonio, the work we're doing in Austin, the work we're doing with other ecosystems, for example, the great work our team is doing in DC right now. We've got a sense of what that playbook looks and so we're interested in engaging the ecosystems to do that more broadly for, we have a whole state of Texas. Do you guys get an opportunity to engage in. And so, oh my goodness, I get to engage in California, the Bay area. That's cool. That's amazing. But what does this look in Texas as well? And so that opportunity to think about, are there two places where I can have my customers or the two places I can have my pilots or there, and what's really interesting about Texas is that we're super bullish on space. And so there's places to launch rockets, there's places to build rockets, there's places to test rockets all over the state of Texas. And it's not just what Elon is doing down in Boca Chica, right. There's Port of Houston and it's actually in Midland and it's in El Paso. And it's all over the state. And we've got this little state group called the Texas Space Commission, which is investing in space. We've got a small group called CPRIT, which is a federal, which is a state initiative similar to how California has a state initiative around stem cells, or used to have one around stem cells. We have one specifically towards cancer, and it is the second largest funder of cancer research second to the National Cancer Institute. Wow.

And we're doing another one in neurodegenerative disease as well. So the opportunities for companies to sort of engage broadly with another state. The way that our companies have an opportunity to then engage then in adjacent to the valley is for us, I think, an exciting synergy. So we'll see how this plays out. I'd love for us to have a recap, a podcast how the last five years been. How the last three years been, and be able to have a recap about what we hope are the seeds that we plant in this season, take flourish. But we're very bullish about sort of these ecosystems and what we help bring to the table. And I think one of the critical issues that I think is missing is this concept of critical mass. And you have critical mass, you have critical in San Francisco, there's nothing it in the entire world. You'll be at a coffee shop and someone's, three co-founders are coding and building stuff. Eight investors are taking meetings. You're meeting big tech people. That critical mass of just running into people is part of the reason San Francisco is really special and why we will always be the leader in the United States for what we have around tech and investment at VC. Similar density issues in Boston. Very focused around biotech and life sciences as well. But we've got a similar density in Boston, similar density in New York. Everything else is up for grabs. And so we're building that density in Austin, but we think broadly within sort of our ecosystem and the communities in which we're engaging with, we can help build that all inclusive, one stop shop ecosystem where you're in the Tri-Valley, you're engaging with investors or stakeholders in Washington, DC. You've got pilots and investors and partners in Houston and in Dallas. In addition to what you're already doing in San Francisco, we've got a connection with someone in Seattle, or we're engaging with some folks from Korea or from Australia. So the ways in which I think COVID has changed the world to make it much more flat has been advantageous for venture in tech broadly. It's made these virtual distributed hybrid teams where, you're a team of eight, but only one person lives in one city and the rest of the eight are living in seven different cities as part of the solution. It doesn't mean people shouldn't be working together, people should be working together. There is something about the in office collision. There is important. No amount of zoom call, all hands is going solve that, or one-on-ones is going solve for that. But we are seeing a greater awareness of those ways. And so, we're bullish on America, we're bullish on tech, we're bullish on the ways in which technology will help solve some of the problems that it's both created as well as some of the problems that the technology can help you, the solution for.

That's great. I mean, I think your optimism and the path that you see for the future and the way, the way we can just capitalize on what's already happened. Right. As you said, COVID flattened things. There's a lot going on right now that makes it harder to source everything in one location and a lot of the barriers to sourcing things, whether it's capital talent, connections across the United States, through the 2009 initial inception and subsequent investments of companies Capital Factory. It's a lot of these connections have been made. And it sounds to me what you are seeing is, we have a moment of time where we can capitalize on it and this is good timing. Right. And there's political and macroeconomic forces that are helping shape this acceleration as well. Right. It used to be you could get away with, oh, we're doing manufacturing in China. You can't do that anymore for lots. Right, right. Everything's changed. Everything's changed. And there's, it's not just capital factory. There's been a lot of investment in the meantime to create these connections. And I know, I feel really fortunate to have a gateway to that outside the Bay Area connection to capital, to resources, to all the things that are really necessary to scale companies through you and Capital Factory. And I'm just curious, I want to be mindful of the time and everything you've, you've left us with so much, so many great nuggets. Is there something I didn't ask that you really wanted to leave our listeners with?

Oh my goodness. Well, we've, I hope, I'm glad we've got another hour on the pod.

Let me come through a couple of them and some of them come out of the mentoring sessions I've had with some of your teams. So they're grounded in those conversations. And some of it'll come out of some other mentoring and some other conversations I've had with folks. Not necessarily at Daybreak. The first is number one, you can't do this by yourself. You just can't. There's lots of advantages to being a solo founder. However, what happens when you get hit by a bus? That's a risk as an investor, right? So there's a general bias towards teams, founding teams as opposed to solo founders. And that's not only a risk mitigation factor, I tell companies all the time, if you can't convince somebody to join you on this pirate quest with you, either as a co-founder or as an advisor, where either they're going work for this for free or they're going work for this for free and put their own dollars into the opportunity, you will never land a customer or a partner. So, can I get it? Can I form a team together is an important proxy for those skill sets in a venture and as entrepreneurship is a team sport. I'm not saying it's go often and get a co-founder tomorrow. If you were a solo founder. I mean, that's in some ways is actually even more involved than getting married. So, you don't choose your life mate. I mean, some people do go to Vegas after 24 hours and when were married, but most people don't do that. So it is a process of trying to figuring out who your co-founders might be. But remember, you don't have to be co-founders. They can be employees, right? You can hire people. So how it is that you form that team is critically important. So team is an important factor. We talked about velocity, that's another important factor. Third, or second, story. Story's really important story. And this part of that story, you better really be in love with the problem. Many primarily technical founders, but I think that founders overall have this general blinder bias that because it's their baby, because it's their tech, because it's their product, they know it's the best solution for X, and so they're in love with product, or they're in love with their technology, or they're in love with their invention or their tech, and they're not as in love with the problem that it's supposed to solve. As part of that story, you have to convey your love for that problem that exists and that you are singularly focused on solving the problem that people are willing to pay you for as opposed to developing this really cool tech that you've discovered that people may or may not want. Right. So story is important. How you weave that story about why you care, how you weave that story about why you did what you did, how you weave that story about how you brought these people together to make this thing happen. How you weave the story about what your goals and objectives are, but it should be singularly focused on sort of solving that problem. Is it really important? Component number three, with the problem comes understanding the customer or the user. And so you should be really focused on your customer. You should be really focused on your user. And discovery, customer discovery is unending. You never stop customer discovery. Customer discovery is not, I went through NSF I-Corps and interviewed 30 people. It is not, I went through Steve Blank's program and I interviewed a hundred people and I've got my lean canvas and then my business. That's not, that is some discovery. But customer discovery is a constant process for every startup. Right? Steve Blank defined as a temporary organization designed to find a scalable and sustainable business model. So you're always trying to figure out what that business model is and how you're going scale. And then once you've done that as a business, you're still engaging with customers. This is why we've got customer success positions, right. This is why we have sales. And so this aspect of customer engagement and customer discovery is critically important 'cause the world changes. Their needs change and how they buy change and what the options are in the marketplace change. And you as a company change. So you've gotta constantly be driven by that customer discovery. Quick story. I was meeting with the founder last night in an event and he said, look, it really mean to me if you download my app. And I'm, fine, fine. And as I was downloading, I was, you're not going send me any spam, are you? And he's, I'll turn that off for you. I was, great. I appreciate it. So signing up, right? Pause and I'm, and then go on. Complete the sign up customer discovery. He's, I noticed that you pause. I'm, I wanna know why you wanna ask for my birthday. And he is, well, that's friction. You think it's a great idea. I just want your birthday. I said, look, if you want a date, ask a date, but you need to know my age. You actually don't need to know my birthday. Why are you asking the birthday? He's, well, we wanna offer incentives and bonuses on your birthday. I said, oh, well that's different. A, you should tell me that 'cause maybe then at that birthday, you don't need to know my age and know what the birthday is. I said, but what you wanna do is you want me to honor special events 'cause you wanna send me promotions around special dates that I celebrate. Why should a birthday, I mean, anniversaries, birth other people's birthdays. Right. Day Father's Day, the opening of baseball season, the World Series, the Super Bowl. Why limit this to birthdays? And he was his mind was blown. But had that conversation if he hadn't been engaging with customers and being focused on the discovery. So it is a constant process of that customer discovery. And you as the founder, this is maybe the fifth one, you as the founder, you have total control. 

You can decide whatever you want to do. You're the founder, I'm just some guy who be providing capital certainly is providing advice. You're free to reject everything I tell you, I'm just some rando that Yolanda connected me with, right? So, so you as a founder always have the deciding power work to decide the path that you go forward. So you can choose to take that customer discovery advice and say, Nope, I disagree. I don't think that's sort of what customers really want. Some of them, that's important for them, but they're not my customer. These are the people who are my customers. Others are, oh my goodness, I didn't know it was that friction. I was wondering why people weren't registering for my thing. Let me run an AB test. What happens if I take that question off? Do I speed the process of signing on? Right? Or maybe I'll let people know why I'm asking for that information and include it. So customer discovery is a constant process. You should always be engaging in. Some of the best Fortune 500 companies, some of the best Fortune 10 companies, they're constantly talking to their customers all the time. Every day. So build a real business around that. The next one, I forgot what number we're on. Five six. Build a real business. Build a real business. Build a real business. And some people, you got beautiful tech, a really great science project. It's cool. It's beautiful. It's not a business. Why? It doesn't solve problem. Oh, but it does solve a problem. Here's the next one. The bar is not that you solve the problem, the bar is that you are 10 times better than the current solutions. Not 20%, although in some cases, 20% gives you better. Right? There are these instances where a marginal improvement makes a huge cost gain or time gain or whatever. But are you 10x better than the other alternatives? Are you 20x better? A hundred x better than the current alternatives? And if you say there's no alternatives out there, that's not true. If you see an opportunity, other people will as well. And some of them will have more resources than you do, and all of them will have better talent than you do. So how do you stay competitive? How will you be better? So it's gotta be a real business, but it's also gotta be better, significantly better, an order of magnitude better for it to build a scalable sort of business 'cause, right? If I'm big, whatever, sure I can engineer out 20% efficiency or improvement, that's easy. That's called my next release. And I have an installed user base, I've got a sales team. They know who my name is. I'm in, I'm advertising nationally. Everyone knows who I am. They're going love the fact that I'm going charge 'em the same amount of money. They're going get 20% better, or I'm going give 'em 20% better. I'm going charge 'em 50% more. Right? There are these advantages, right, that incumbents have, this is why they're incumbents. That's why you've gotta be better. The advantages that you have, aside from the incumbents is that you can move faster. You can absolutely right faster, right? So don't forget startups. Your advantage is tech, but it's really speed. And being able to move more quickly than large tech companies, large enterprises. This is the reason why many of those companies are looking for startups 'cause they want to be able to go ahead and make investments in those startups, or do proof of concepts with their pilots to potentially either be a customer or eventually acquire you. So, right? Remember, your superpower is in part speed. And so executing quickly is critically important. And then lastly, be bold. Just be bold. Be bold.

I loved that founders just aren't old enough. It's, I only wanna build for the Tri-Valley. It's, what would this look globally? It's, nah, that's just too big of a problem for me. It's, people probably want this solution and insert other country, or insert other state or insert other world, right? Be bold. It's, oh, I don't know if I've got that ambition. It's, oh, that's fine. Back to what I said before, you as a founder have every right to say, I wanna build a nice little business. That's not what VCs are interested in.

I love that. And it reminds me of something, one of my former bosses and mentors used to say to me is, everyone does a plan A, which what they think will succeed a plan B in case it doesn't. But very rarely do people make plan C, which is, it exceeds beyond your wildest dreams. And I just heard from another advisor that they were, we went, we went IPO on our plan C. Investors bought our plan C.

I mean, as VCs I wanna see bold, crazy, big scale, bold, crazy. I love it. I think I, so there's so, there's so many things. Why are you the team that's going do this? Right? Right. I wanna see bold, crazy, but lots of people have bold, crazy. Right. Bold, crazy, grounded in reality. Right? How are you? Why, why? The story? The believable, the plausible, bold, crazy story. I mean, we've got cars driving by themselves on roads right now. Right. We're going have, we're going fly cars soon. The flying cars we've been promised for years. Exactly. Crazy. Be bold, crazy vision.

Okay. Be bold. Crazy. There are so many, so many useful and inspiring things you've said today, Luis, but I love the idea of ending with the bold, crazy. Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you so much for being a Daybreak Labs advisor, for advising me, for helping our region and for being on the pod today. Thank you so much. I've really enjoyed getting a chance to have this conversation with you and be part of your community. Easy to find on all the socials so people can feel free to reach out on all the channels that I'm easy to find. And I'll put everything in the show notes. Thanks. Excited to work with you guys and your teams and excited about the seeds that we plant together.

Thank you. Thank you so much.

Thank you.