--:-- Host: There is a distinct advantage of building companies in France from a dollar perspective. I think France is now on the map. We see a lot of folks who come from Europe or come from the U.S. and decide to move to Paris and contribute to the startups in the same way that this happened with Silicon Valley 15, 20 years ago. That was the main feedback that all the entrepreneurs in the ecosystem heard for many years. You're not being ambitious enough. You're not being ambitious enough. The French founders that I've met, oftentimes the ambition isn't that. Ambition isn't even the Eurozone. Ambition is, we're going to build the biggest company in the world. It was dirty in France to say that a few years ago. That's the one thing we need to crack.
--:-- Host: The Olympics returned to Paris this year, precisely 100 years since the city last hosted the event. Hopefully, you've caught some of the highlights, like how the world's fastest man was only a fraction of a second faster than the athlete who came fourth, just shy of the podium. Now, every Games is filled with these incredible moments, as host nations use the event to show their strength as a country, while over 180 participating nations do the same with their athletic talent. But as the Games do approach their close, it's worth reflecting on the fact that in the 98% of the time, when the Olympics aren't happening, countries show their strength with their talent in other fields, and increasingly in technology.
--:-- Host: So in this three-part series, we'll be exploring those dynamics across three regions: France, the UK, and Latin America. So what makes these regions distinct? And what ingredients yield thriving startup ecosystems? Is it funding, risk tolerance, regulation, or lack thereof? As people increasingly ask the question of whether Silicon Valley can be recreated elsewhere, the answers may just be across the pond. There are nuanced conversations around visa programs, successful startup mafias, and local culture.
--:-- Host: In this episode around France, you'll get to hear from Roxane Barza, longtime director of Station F, the world's largest startup campus. Also, Antoine Martin, co-founder and CEO of Zenly, which was acquired by Snap in 2017, who is now working on Amo. And Antoine was even referred to by Sifted as the, quote, godfather of France's emerging social media app scene. And finally, Brian Kim, A16Z consumer partner who also happened to lead the round on the recently acquired French startup, Be Real. Reflecting on the very startup scene that they helped build, let's kick things off with Roxanne, then Brian, then Antoine.
--:-- Host: As a reminder, the content here is for informational purposes only, should not be taken as legal, business, tax, or investment advice, or be used to evaluate any investment or security, and is not directed at any investors or potential investors in any A16Z fund. Please note that A16Z and its affiliates may also maintain investments in the companies discussed in this podcast. For more details, including a link to our investments, please see A16Z.com slash disclosures.
--:-- Roxane Varza: My prism is very early-stage founder, and I've seen this evolve quite a bit over the last few years. I feel like it's become a lot more international. We're seeing a lot more people from different geographies that now want to come build companies here, join companies here. And also, I think with the maturity of the ecosystem, we're starting to see people who have previously been in a startup or a scale-up or even founded companies before and now building new companies. So these are things that we weren't seeing as much of a few years ago. But I would say also with the AI boom, and I think it's no secret for anyone that the technical talent here, especially because the math and data programs that we have here are so exceptional that if you look in, I think, any of the leading tech companies worldwide, their tech and data teams will usually have a lot of French people in them.
--:-- Brian Kim: When I think about the French tech ecosystem, typically I have the three-pronged answer. I would start with the infra level, and I don't mean infra as in bandwidth speed. It's an infra for the startups, especially early stage. And Roxanne, of course, runs one of the largest startup studios in the world, then I view Station F as being a critical piece of infrastructure. And there's of course the amazing schools like Polytechnique that are technical and you even have schools like School 42 where the infra is really, really good for creating the next batch of startup founders.
--:-- Brian Kim: The second ingredient I would say that France has that I haven't really seen elsewhere is there's such a strong sense of community. Even the fact that there's a group of French consumer founders that all know each other, all talk to each other and are very keen on giving back to the community after having seen what they've gone through. Antoine is a perfect example of someone who grew up in the French tech ecosystem and then is very determined to give back, whether it's lessons, learning, angel investing, advising. And that loop, to me, is quite rare.
--:-- Brian Kim: And the last, I would also mention that there's actually a lot of, I don't want to say governmental support, but there is a lot of push for the startup ecosystem to do really well. There is a distinct advantage of building companies in France from a dollar perspective, whether it's BPI loans or whether it's actual GPUs. So when you combine all three, the infra, the community, and the support at a governmental scale, I think that makes for a very unique country to build companies in.
--:-- Host: Yeah, it is fascinating to see that the country last year published a national AI strategy dedicating 500 million euros to AI clusters. So we'll get into that. But Antoine, I'd love to hear your perspective, especially since it's been about seven years since your company Zenly was acquired. So you've been in this ecosystem for a while. I'd love to hear how you see it, but also how you've seen it change.
--:-- Antoine Martin: I mean, high level, I double down on what Roxane and Brian have said. There is this obvious underdog mentality, just because it's a smaller ecosystem, which does create the bounce and the desire for folks to help each other. And so we discussed the last decade, if I go even a little further than that, Roxane managed an incubator before Station F. We had the most poor office you could have at the time. And we couldn't host even 15 people in that consumer group you were talking about, Brian. We needed a space to see each other at night. Roxane would lend us rooms in the incubator she managed back then. So the whole like underdog slash givebacks mentality is one of the things that today is paying dividends.
--:-- Antoine Martin: We're also seeing second-time founders, third-time founders for the first time that come in with an ambition level and access to funding and talent that was in their initial teams that we couldn't see 10 years ago when it was a first generation. You add the openness that France is coming towards, where it feels like a more open country than it was 10, 15 years ago. Yes, we had a lot of tourists, but it wasn't depicted as the place where your quality of life was great and you'd be biking around the city. That is driving a lot of international talent.
--:-- Antoine Martin: And we see a lot of folks who come from Europe or come from the U.S. and decide to move to Paris and contribute to the startups in the same way that this happened with Silicon Valley 15, 20 years ago. The top of mind example I have is DJO, who was one of the founding designers, early designers at Flipboard, then at Mailbox, then led design at Uber. And now he's helping Kuntur, who's on an IPO road track. And he moved back to France a couple of years ago, and that generation of folks is helping us get to the next stage. It's amazing.
--:-- Roxane Varza: I know, Roxane, you also just published the international component of Station F? Yeah, for the last seven years, because we just celebrated seven years, we've always been around one third of our community international. But we found out this year that we have actually 65 nationalities on campus. I didn't believe that. I wouldn't have never guessed that. And then when you actually look also at some of the nationalities, there are countries that also aren't the most obvious ones. There's a lot of places that you would just imagine very pro-business and maybe they have ties to France, but also you have some very small countries that you cannot imagine that these people just picked up and came here to build a company. So, yeah, it's attracting people from everywhere now.
--:-- Host: And how many companies are now on campus? So we always have 1,000 that are based on campus. We're refreshing minimum 700 companies per year. And so we've actually worked with more than 700 new companies per year, which takes us to over 7,000 since the beginning. My partners Olivia and Justine, when they visited, the word for Station F in their eyes are, it's like a Disneyland for startups. I've heard that before. Or what it's worth. So true. It is Disneyland. Sometimes it's too cushy, maybe for our entrepreneurs. We got to give them a kick. But yes, it's definitely Disneyland for startups. What a title. And I mean I think when people think about the world largest startup campus they expect that to be in Silicon Valley. It's amazing that it's in France.
--:-- Host: Roxanne, same question posed to Antoine. Seven years, what have you noticed? I mean, it's been a 180 shift. When we started Station F, people didn't know there were 1,000 companies in France. This was very clearly the underdog ecosystem that Antoine mentioned. And it's funny because, Brian, you mentioned community. I actually forget that. I think we're so used to people here just helping each other and working together that we forget that it's not like that in all the ecosystems. But I think what we've seen really change in the last few years is maybe also the international investors that are paying attention to this ecosystem. So we talked about international talent, but seven years ago, we didn't have Andreessen coming out here. We didn't have Sequoia coming out here. And I think today it makes up over 50% of the investment that's going into this ecosystem and helping the startups scale on an international level. So, I mean, to just put that in short form, I think France is now on the map and very high up there.
--:-- Brian Kim: Ambition is, we're going to build the biggest company in the world. And of course, the U.S. is one of the largest markets. We're going to go after it with zeal and thoughtfulness and design that actually works for those markets. And I think that attitude, confidence, and approach is actually fairly rare. Any thoughts on what makes that unique when it comes to France?
--:-- Antoine Martin: High level, I think it's new, to be honest, because it wasn't the case 10 years ago. And I've heard her say this many times to consumer founders or other founders we know in common. Hey guys, France is great, but it's 65 million people. You're not going to make an extremely successful business if you focus on that. And clearly today it's not a topic anymore. It's actually the opposite. There was a founder yesterday at 42, which is one of the earliest coding schools, asking me if he should focus on the U.S. first or France first, because he was naturally going towards the U.S. And I was like, yeah, of course you need to succeed in the U.S., but maybe you need to mature your product and test it locally. And he was so grown on the idea that the U.S. is the only way to succeed that he was also forgetting that it also has to work locally. But that's a change. It wasn't like this 10 years ago, for sure.
--:-- Brian Kim: Totally agree with that. And I think it was very intentional. I mean, that was the main feedback that all the entrepreneurs in the ecosystem heard for many years. You're not being ambitious enough. If you're not being ambitious enough. So I don't know when the change happened. It was maybe like two or three years ago. It just really accelerated. And literally, I have not heard that in several years. The messaging worked. And I mean, two industries that are inherently international, at least these days, AI and consumer, right? You often don't think of like a country-based AI model or in some cases, consumer applications, but still the big ones obviously are international. So let's talk about those because France has become a leader in some ways in both.
--:-- Brian Kim: And so starting with AI, we're seeing companies like Mistral leading the charge. What do you think is yielding that kind of representation? This will be maybe a surface-level observation, but I go back into what is AI? Because ultimately it's numbers, it's math. And I think there's a little bit of difference between AI and consumer in that regard, where consumer can be about culture, taste, UX, and design, aesthetics. AI is a little bit more around the technical prowess. You actually understand the math underlying it. And if you think back historically, I think France has been extremely strong at producing elite mathematicians. And the schools like Polytechnique are focused also on deepening that technical prowess and the sort of arrival of LLM and ChatGPT, etc., just coincides really with a talent and interest, which I think is not really a surprise to me that one of the biggest fair offices was in Paris, and that the Mistral folks came out of that. And Jan LeCun, of course, as well. And then two, again, we're talking about the last seven years, but the infra, the idea, the direction towards globally expanding, it's all been set as foundational pieces. And then now you have this wave that's happening.
--:-- Antoine Martin: I think the underlying for AI is mass and numbers where we do have strong technical talent. The underlying for consumer today might be taste. And if you look at the city we live in, it's the epicenter of fashion, art, a lot of crazy brands. This is what we're inspired by on a daily basis. I come out of this office and there's fashionistas in the street doing exhibitions. There's an exhibition within 42's own campus where there's Banksy's on the wall. So we are emerged in that culture that I think leads to consumer, provokes great design talent. You add awesome engineering to that, then the equation becomes really strong. And in the last five years, we've added funding, which was the one thing that was back in the days missing. In my own case, one of the reasons why it made sense back then to join Snap, because if you wanted to do an IPO in our category, you would have to raise a billion, a billion and a half. Snap, Pinterest, and others had done prior to us. And that seemed impossible with very few gross funds locally and with the level of ambition to enable that. This has changed. Thanks for having us on this podcast. This is a perfect example of that.
--:-- Host: I so agree with the culture piece. I think I told a couple people, I'm like, what's different for French consumer founders? And my theory was, well, look, how many countries in the world export culture? And if you think of consumer products as like a cultural force, then honestly, think about it, how many companies can actually even export culture and is not a net importer of U.S. Hollywood or French fashion. I think we are left with very few countries. And again, I do think you need the funding. I think you need the technical talent. But from that standpoint, there just aren't that many countries in the world that can export culture. This is also a shift. Antoine, I'm sure when you guys were launching Zenly, nobody was talking about consumer in France. You guys were the only ones. So what's changed? Why are we good at consumer now?
--:-- Antoine Martin: I think we've had the luck of seeing a few successful companies paving the way. And yeah, Zenly is probably one of them. We've had MWM, Voodoo, who are both massive publishers. Mindy was the origin of TikTok. Their design was invented locally by art students. And so these companies have shown that it's possible and have succeeded. No one yet was an IPO, so no home run. But some of us have gone to a first base, second base. And so there is everyone wanting to compete and go further than this, which leads to today where it seems possible to by generation, the generation after. And so there's more and more new cool consumer products coming out. We're talking about 1010 a lot these days. And there's more coming in the same direction with former team members from all of these companies. Accel, who beats backend, is a former Zenly team member and that enables the scale that was harder for Zenly back in the day. And we're also seeing a little bit of mafianess, right? Zenly Mafia, Stupaflix Mafia or PhotoRoom. Definitely. So it's just very interesting to see the concept of mafia. There are places where that doesn't exist. In Korea, where I'm very familiar with, there's no concept of mafia. There will be, one day. One day. Neighbor. Like a prerequisite for a lot of the founders wanting to build the next thing. Korea has produced great ones too. This is true. KKO Talk, Neighbor, there's a few good examples. Absolutely.
--:-- Host: Are you guys seeing people from those mafias go on and create consumer applications once more? Or if we're seeing more integration, more of the crossover as founders go for round two? So we have a little over 50% of our founders that are repeat founders at Station F. It's grown considerably in the last few years. And what I've noticed is second-time founders, they either go for something related to their first domain because they have better insights and experience and the connections. But I'm also seeing a lot of people really going more for impact. There'll be a lot of people that will say, my first company, we built this, it was great, but now is my chance to really make a mark. And so there's a lot more of these kind of experienced profiles going for climate-related projects, health-related projects, education-related projects.
--:-- Host: You know, people are quick to label, right? People think of Boston for healthcare, they think of New York for finance, but obviously every city, every country has a medley of things, and perhaps there are things that are more underground that folks who live there know, oh actually we're not just good at consumer, we're not just good at AI, we're good at many other things. I'm curious if you're seeing other things where France actually has a lot of strength but other people may not know that quite yet. I don't think Station F represents the entire French ecosystem particularly well because we're obviously attracting people based on the infrastructure we have. So we don't have a ton of bio, but I think health is a space where France really shines and we're seeing a lot of, even with regards to AI, a lot of really interesting things in the health space. Obviously, AI, we're seeing just all sectors, all fields. B2B historically has been a very strong suit for France. So a ton of really interesting B2B applications. We also have decided that we want to double down on two sectors where we feel France is well positioned to lead. But I would say quantum computing. We have some excellent Nobel prizes in France. I think this is an ecosystem. If you want to talk about community like that is a really tight-knit community. You can count the quantum companies probably on both hands, but they all know each other. They all work together. So we have a quantum program on campus, probably the only one in Europe. Climate, because I feel like the regulation in Europe is very well positioned to accelerate these businesses. And we're seeing a lot of really interesting climate-related innovations, female health solutions, things that are in the femtech space, more stuff in that area here. Plus one on that one, I think I would add when you look at the panorama of scale-ups and companies that really have a go at world domination at some point with founders and teams that are ambitious enough to do that. In fintech, we have a squad of repeat founders that are so driven, have made significant exits the first time and start looking to do massive ones the second time or never actually exit. I think of Events First, I think of Memo Bank, I think of Koto in the adjacent insurance space. I am an eternal believer in Jean-Charles and Charles from Allen, who I think have a go at one of the biggest companies in the world. They're researching insurance through AI. And this whole group is repeat founders who have succeeded once, are going at existing industries and are executing super well.
--:-- Antoine Martin: Antoine, you mentioned John Charles and that actually reminded me of something. One thing that I always have a question on in regards to founders in France is the balance between commerciality, i.e., I want to make money. I want to go public. I want to build this giant thing versus, oh, I want to have a great impact on the world, which is obviously noble and amazing and is a mission for a lot of folks. I want to build something beautiful. I want to build something that gives me joy and satisfaction when people use it. Those two are not necessarily at odds, of course. But I tend to see a little more folks focusing on impact, beauty, the satisfaction, the internal sort of, oh wow, I built something beautiful versus let's go make money. And I do think there are few folks, and when you say John Charles, that's like, oh, he's in that camp. What would you say to that?
--:-- Antoine Martin: I mean, he's also in the health camp. And the funny story behind Alarm is also his first solving health in a country where a lot of its deficits and structural balance goes into solving health. If he thinks he can partially solve that. So it's both noble and yeah, definitely. He wants to build a massive business. He finishes his investor reports saying he wants to build the biggest company in the world. And he has the ambition and the courage to actually say that. And he's executing in that direction. So I think this is also something that changed where it was dirty in France to say that a few years ago. It still is in parts. I was very well perceived by everyone until then he exited and then suddenly I was a bad guy because we had made money. I think that's changing. And there's more respect for the way that can also be utilized for public good. And when you look at all of these stories, the tie in between every single story which is discussed, whether it's Station F, 42, AI in France, then the end of capacity to be funded at the early stage when no one else wanted to give money, is one entrepreneur, one founder pushing in all directions. He was an elephant in the room that I was going to at some point talk about. So I'm glad you brought that up. But I do think Antoine said something that's definitely not to be ignored. There's a cultural element to talking about money in France that's not the same as in the U.S. And I think within the ecosystem, it's much more accepted to talk about raising money, going after money, making money. I don't think within the entrepreneurial community, it's particularly taboo. But I think outside of this community, the general public, that is very much the case, which means that when people are talking about their businesses, openly they're not going to be saying that as much. And that permeates who people's role models are, what fields they go into, whether they're willing to start businesses. But another key driver, in addition to talent, is, of course, the government strategy and what messages they're sending as well. So maybe we can pivot to that. I mentioned a little bit earlier, the country last year published a national AI strategy, but you also have private businesses. You have Microsoft, for example, announcing an additional $4 billion for data centers and other AI investment in France. But then you also have, for example, the EU reaching a deal on AI regulation that some people are debating may actually stifle that innovation. So I'd love to hear this group's perspective on how regulation is playing a role here.
--:-- Brian Kim: As an outsider, I view recent policy towards the tech ecosystem as being very encouraging. They're seeing the impact that these businesses can have. They're seeing the impact that having these businesses on your shore and representing the country to some extent, what that can do to the national image of talent coming back to your country and building things and creating value within your borders, where we're seeing it from the top. It's almost as if somebody listened to like, oh, it's time to build and they'll say France edition. And so I get pretty excited about that. And I've seen the concrete benefit. I mentioned the BPI loan. I do know that changes the calculus for initial funding for a lot of startup founders because it's a non-dilutive funding and it enables them to think through the initial inflow of funds a little differently from other ecosystems. I think that's interesting. I also know that there's a real concrete economic benefit for AI companies to relocate or build in France. You know, all these things are so connected. But on the launch of Station F, we had sold Zenly and joined Snap a couple of months prior. And Roxane invites me to a private tour before the day of the launch with the president, which I met for the first time that day. We tell him the Zenly story. He learns the word divot, which he uses in a speech an hour later. Along the way, one of his cabinet members who led Digital Strategy for France for maybe five years afterwards, comes to me and says, hey, I work with the president. I'd love to understand where we can do better. We've been very lucky. We've had political momentum. We need to transform that into economic momentum and we need to deliver. These are his exact words that day. And he invited me over and a few other entrepreneurs to give feedback. And they did that continuously over the last seven, eight years. A lot of that led to reforms, led to encouragements, led to fixing a few things that made it harder to be an entrepreneur in France than elsewhere. Today, as a French founder, I don't see a reason to build a company and a team elsewhere unless 100% of your market is in another location. But even then, the access to talent you have locally, the local encouragements, the support, makes it a fairly easy equation to actually stay in France and build from here.
--:-- Roxane Varza: I can't help but agree with everything that's been said, but I do think we have to make a distinction because we talked about also AI policy on a European level. So I think when you look at the French government specifically, I can pretty much only say positive things about what's happened. And some of the groundwork was laid pre-Macron, but I think he really came in. I mean, this story from what Antoine said, I remember that speech that he gave him. We're like, oh, my God, pivot. He heard that 10 minutes ago. But yeah, I think the thing is he really understood, he really connected, he grasped it. But he also pushed the government to be close to the entrepreneurs. I mean, we have at Station F 30 government services, but I actually my team shares a floor with 20, 30 people from the government. So anything that we need, someone's visa is blocked. We're having issues with public funding. They're going to announce some kind of new thing for data protection. We can just go right next door and just ask these questions and get it solved. So I think that's just something we never would have imagined prior. And I also think that with regards to the negotiations around AI Act, I mean yes, I think it could have been better. And I'm hearing a lot of comments from AI founders today that are saying Europe is going to be behind because of what can be released here. But the fact of the matter is that when you look at what well France was playing in those negotiations a lot of people are saying France was coming across as way more pro than everyone else. So I think that also not something to be ignored. Maybe we could get into the specifics. I mean, I love that both of you mentioned that France seems to be a place that's more pro-founder than just for the uninitiated who aren't as familiar with what it's like to be a founder there. How would you characterize whether it's the regulation or the community? What is actually different about being a founder in France, let's say, compared to America?
--:-- Roxane Varza: I see people coming over from all different countries, but actually the country that's the best represented at Station F after France is the U.S. And it's been the U.S. from day one. We get a lot of Americans that come here. And I think in the past, maybe like 10 years ago, the conversations were around the clichés around hiring and firing. I don't hear that at all anymore. That's not a topic people are concerned about. Actually, people are pleasantly surprised by, Brian, you mentioned it, the public funding, the grants you can get. In some cases, people qualify for unemployment, very generous unemployment. I mean, there's money here and there's public money here that is probably way, way more generous than what you have in the U.S. So I think that's the first thing that a lot of people are talking about. And then obviously a lot of people who are coming from different countries are going through the visa scheme. The government did a massive overhaul of the visas, and I think it's probably hands down the best entrepreneur or tech talent visa that exists in Europe. Plus one. I mean, if you look at Amo, my current company, the majority of our hires come from abroad. It's often faster to get them a visa and make them move in than notice periods in certain countries. The first nationality represented in terms of international hires is the U.S. We have, I don't know, nine, 10 Americans in the team up to a point where I'm questioning the idea of making the seat too American if we want to stay international. This is the reality. This was enabled through the French tech visa. There's also a lot of things that were done around capital gain taxes. They were done very early on and barely changed since, which was also one of the asks from the entrepreneurs to stop changing these systems every year. They've been good at not doing that too often. They've improved the way we grant stock options. And this was one of the liabilities. It was harder here to do so to apply for market value and things like that. And it seems like it's been changed and it's now very competitive. So I have a few investments in Germany and in other countries where DocuSign is barely recognized. You need a notary to actually sign a fundraise. It's crazy how complex it seems versus what it is today in France. That's amazing.
--:-- Host: What I'm hearing is clarity as well. Obviously, it sounds like over the last decade, a lot has changed for the positive. But I'd love to hear your take on where we go from here. Right. What would you love to see, whether it's from the government or from the startup ecosystem, as we look to, let's say, the next decade? Imagine we're recording this in 2034. I would love to see a couple of 10 billion plus dollar IPOs. Plus one. I was going to say the same thing. And then probably some M&A on top, which, by the way, we had the very first local significant M&A in France ever within that company. You will not be real. Anderson Horvitz was through VK and an investor. It was awesome for me as the early helper of that team and investor to see them sell to another local company that has a go at that $10 billion IPO in the next two, three years. That's very new. That opens up another market for VCs. It qualifies the early stage space. It enables more business essentials. It enables teams who have made money through exit and are therefore telling us that stock options have value associated. That's one of the things I'd love to see. It will come with the IPOs. A hundred percent. I think the only thing that I could think of is exits. That's the one thing we need to crack. The government is very conscious of this. So what I think is really great is they're often on the ground asking people what needs to change, what needs to happen, where can we act? They've been doing that also since COVID. And when the funding kind of cycle started changing 2022, 2023, on the ground again, especially close to people in the finance world. And the one topic that is always talked about is exits. So hopefully we'll see some movement there. I wrote that when Steph asked the question. I literally exits and I circled it. And to your point of the government really asking for feedback, Macron is to this day the only head of states I ever met. And he asked the question, what can we do better? Why do you think this is an interesting market for you? And at the beginning of our podcast, talked about the infra, the community and the policy. I said exactly those three things and he took notes. I'm like, what? I'm like an investor and you're like, great. So that's when I also sort of, the third point, the policy, I'm like, oh, there's actually a system here that thinks of the tech ecosystem as being priority. Totally. And Brian, I'd love to hear your just quick take. I mean, I know there's probably limitations in what you can say, but just with the Be Real acquisition, what was that like to see that French company you obviously invested on our side? Was that surprising at all? Or how does it feel to see that M&A get off the ground?
--:-- Brian Kim: It's interesting. When you think about the exit ecosystem, we talked about the commerciality and what have you, like Voodoo is led by someone who I think is also very commercial. And he also was a fairly early investor in B-Real himself through the angel sort of system. And I think he posted almost every day as well. I was friends with him on B-Real, so I would see him post every day. I think it's very interesting when founders who understand the power of the product, the origin story, the design ethos, the people behind the product intimately well to have that confidence. Right? Like someone from far, far away may not be able to make the same decision because there's so much wealth of knowledge and intimate relationship and understanding about what the product is, what the potential is to combine the forces together. So I think there is really something to be said about, I think this also is a power of the community, where had it not been the group, the closeness, and the intimacy within the community, and the nose that all crisscross across all the people, I think that would have been a different outcome
