Alright. Good morning, everyone.

Good morning, Tiffany.

Woo. I love it. We're gonna have so much fun on this panel today. There are a lot of seats down here.

We smell great, so join us up here. There's the best swag I have seen at a conference. This takes me back. This, cassette tape and all the logos on there.

It is epic. Whoever did that, first class. Top notch. Alright. Great panel. We have combined AUM on this stage in the billions, which is phenomenal.

I am excited. I'm gonna give you a brief intro of everyone here, because I think you need to know the gravitas of these incredible venture, partners, and I'm gonna share a little bit. Firstly, Jim, Fulcrum Equity has raised over nine hundred and eighty five million dollars across four funds and has invested in over four hundred companies, SaaS tech enabled businesses, health care and health care IT. Your experience stands over thirty years in areas of operations, strategic development, and financial experience.

So many of the metrics today will fall into these areas.

Eric, next up.

Insight is one of the largest SaaS investors with over five hundred companies invested. Please correct me if I'm wrong there. And you focus specifically on SaaS, And, you recently, joined Insight, which On-site, which is, an investment department that helps the engine that that helps these companies scale faster and, more efficiently.

So you have over a hundred and forty advisers on the on-site, partnership team, and, you have certainly sat in your seat in sales and marketing world.

You've nailed it.

How about that? Alright. And, Brooks, a remarkable career to date.

You are now on the opposite side of the table. And over the past twenty years, you have led multiple high growth companies. I had to write this down because remembering every single one of them was gonna take a while. Alright. High growth companies, the cofounder, CEO, CMO, and CRO.

You've grown annual revenue from zero to a hundred and ten million in four years and achieved one point two billion in enterprise value post IPO. This is your audience.

I'm excited. Alright. So we're gonna get started. These are metrics that matter. It is important. From now, you are hearing from the venture side.

Let's get started. Jim, Falcon start focuses on high growth SaaS companies.

What are the top three metrics that you prioritize when evaluating a growth stage investment?

Yeah. So we start in that kinda is this on? We start in that kinda two to ten AR, growing fifty to a hundred percent. So growth is the first one, and and I we're Eric and I were talking earlier.

A metric is a is a license to get a head fake. It's really what's behind the metric. So behind that growth rate, we're really trying to look at bookings momentum of the business, the top of funnel momentum of that that created those bookings so that we can really understand that that growth rate is sustainable and diversified, not one or two customers. So growth rate first and foremost, at our stage, because we're trying to take a two to ten million dollars business towards thirty to fifty million, sell it up the food chain to some guy like this.

And then, beyond that, it's it's retention. It's, you know, with your growth rate, you know, you can get the dog to eat the dog food but can you get them to to to keep it. And, that that retention really has two pieces to it. One, gross retention, which is, is my product sticky?

I only see value in my product. And then the other one that really is as important more important, is net retention. Am I able to sell more to that existing customer? And beyond that, it's not yeah.

You can can have a good metric, but what's the road map and the vision beyond that that's gonna drive that net retention so this company can wake up every January and be up twenty percent because what we all know that having run these companies, man, new bookings are hard. You can't just keep growing a business with new bookings. You've got to get if you wanna maintain a high growth rate, all these ones have high growth rates, the only way they're there, high net retention. So we focus a ton on that.

And then finally, efficiency metrics.

And efficiency is, you know, one, obviously, is sales efficiency, CAC LTB, but also just overall efficiency. We want capital efficient entrepreneurs. So I always say, I'll let you burn a dollar to create a dollar because any fifty to a hundred growth business is gonna be trading at six, seven, eight, nine, ten. I need to make three to four times my money. Right? So if I give you a dollar, you create a dollar.

Pretty good. Kinda keeps it inside the goalpost. There's a lot more to it, but you want we want those kind of capital efficient businesses.

Yeah. I think think that's a great start, those those three to focus on. I'm gonna move it over to Insight, and talk about these high growth companies that you work with, Eric. Tell me a little bit about those specific growth metrics that are indicative of a successful company.

Hands. Who here knows what rule of forty is? If not, I'm happy to explain it. Okay. So about half.

I think about rule of forty, you just simply add your your year over year growth, which is, like, twenty percent, and your free cash flow margin, say, twenty percent together, and that gives you your rule of. And so it's it's kind of a nice way of understanding how fast are you growing juxtaposed with, how profitable, so to speak, are you. So so we look at that quite frequently.

The other piece we look at, Jim mentioned this before as well, is is CAC payback, which, you know, you can all you all you really need to think of it as is the sum summation of your sales and marketing expenses divided by your bookings or your revenue. It effectively tells you how efficient you are.

The one other piece we like to do or I like to do is to break it down by by geos, by teams. And I'd actually recommend all of you do that too if you're working for a company because that will tell you what geography am I most efficient in, what product am I most efficient in, what team am I most efficient in, what market am I most efficient in. And that can help you decision as you decide, hey, where do I where do I invest?

Yep. That's great. I think what I wanna shift now, I think we've gone across the board and now to those latest stage companies.

Brooks, how important, in evaluating companies is their future profitability, and their potential in your evaluations?

Yeah.

So as we we focus on more of the mid market, which would be companies that are twenty five million in revenue, kind of on the low end, up to maybe two or three hundred million on the high end. Really, our sweet spot probably is that fifty million to a hundred and fifty million. So but what's interesting though is the three metrics we do focus on, rule of forty.

So we I asked you to have my question.

My next question. Go for it.

I think we believe we invented it. Rule of forty.

I'm not sure if you I know which one I think we did too.

Right?

I think what's interesting though on rule of forty, it's a progression on rule of forty. It's not so much where you are now, but do we see a progression kind of your question around the current versus historic? Many of our companies that we invest in, it start they start off at rule of twenty. So they might have five percent profitability, the growing at fifteen percent, but we see a path that they can get the rule of forty over the course of two, three years, sometimes four or five years depending on the level of investment we wanna make.

So that that would be probably our number one lens that we look at. Net dollar retention shows the health of the business. We're very focused on that. Really understanding is there is there ample white space, the opportunity to go upsell, cross sell to your base as well as getting new logos, and then can you keep the customers you have?

And then magic number is something that we really focus on. So magic number, a lot of people do that math a little bit different. How we do it is just take because we try to keep it really simple because many times we look at your income statement is we take how much are you driving in new bookings, both new sales as well as cross sell, upsell. So how much are you selling in a quarter on an ARR basis?

And then divide that by how much you're spending on sales and marketing. And we wanna see that kind of progression. It's kinda what Jim was saying. Are you spending a dollar to get a dollar?

And how efficient are you get and are you getting more efficient? Because that allows us to understand where should we should be investing going forward. So I think in terms of, the past versus the future, I mean, we do spend a lot of time on the past because a lot of a lot of what we're looking at is is companies. Are they ready to kinda start to scale their business?

And are they are they ready to really get on that path to rule of forty?

Yeah. Brooks, I think that's an important question, and you talk a lot about those later stage companies lens through which you look at as an investment apply to an earlier stage company and some of those metrics? Is that something that they should be focused now? Well, I've had a lot of fun in early stage as well.

So, I think there, it's really about product market fit.

And so trying to find metrics. So I wouldn't get as focused on on rule of forty and those efficiency things that that early it's more about being effective early on than being efficient early on. So I'm looking for clues around, do you have product market fit? So what are your win rates?

What are your loss rates, I've got certain competitors in certain product categories. What kind of adoption are you seeing? Like, daily average user, time on-site, those kind of things. Okay.

Okay. I've got something here that the market needs. That those are more valuable to me in in earlier stage.

Yeah. And and if you if you, just add a little bit to that. If you have a high gross margin business, which we all want. Right?

And you have the efficiency from a sales perspective you talked about, you'll you'll get to rule a forty with any reasonable growth rate. So it's like you you should probably have a vision for how I'm going to get there in an early stage, and we kinda try to coach our under twenty million dollar companies to alright. Let's have a vision of how we're gonna get there because it more and more, it is important once you cross over that twenty, thirty million range, and you better have a story. You're better it better be obvious how you're getting there.

And so you don't have to wait to to think about that. You can kinda run you know, Excel is a beautiful thing. You can make you can see it evolve, but it's good to have it in your mind, much earlier.

You know, when we started CBion, this was back nineteen ninety nine, two thousand. I went to go talk to one of our early investors. We'd already raised the money, so we had the money in the bank. But, he was a Stanford professor who ran a fund called VantagePoint Venture RevPartners, still runs it.

And we were talking about our income statement, our projections, and all that. And he said, no. No. No.

Handed me a marker and he said, go to the whiteboard and explain your business in terms of unit economics. Like, show walk me from a customer pays you a thousand dollars a month. You know, what are your cost of sales? What are you paying your reps?

So you could really understand that per customer economics. Did we understand the core of our business? It's amazing to me.

We saw some of our companies that are doing a hundred million don't fully understand that. So the the sooner you can really understand your unit and customer economics, the more that you can understand the levers in your business.

I I would add one thing, which is the way we look at it is pretty similar. It's as you're starting out, it's product market fit. And a lot of product market fit is just experimenting, just seeing where things work, where they stick, where they don't.

Then after you have product market fit, it's really all about growth.

So we look at rule forty, but typically we're more focused on the growth part of the equation.

And there the mission is how do I how do I build repeatability in my business? So if I'm a bootstrap founder doing sales calls and all of a sudden I hire a three person sales team, the question is, well, how do I make that sales team do what I did? And so you're building a lot of processes, playbooks, you know, etcetera, etcetera, so they can repeat what what you're doing as a founder. And then, obviously, as your later stage call it that hundred million, get a two hundred bit larger.

Right? You're focused a little bit more on efficiency, EBITDA, CAC payback, etcetera, etcetera. And you're taking those pieces of efficiencies and you're trying to get even distributions of performance. You know, this is a go to market conference.

So you're trying to get even distributions of performance across your sales team. So that, for example, if you have ten salespeople, not one of them is selling all of your stuff. Because when we come in in diligence, for example, that is we look at the metrics.

But probably the second question I ask is is do you have an even distribution of performance across your team? Because that tells me whether you've been able to build repeatability within your, business.

I'm so glad you said that, Eric.

And I wanna talk a little bit about that scalability and your understanding of what that diligence is to show that scalability. You spoke a lot about the sales teams and quickly ramping up a sales team. I know we have many sales leaders in the audience where you might have that founder led sales. You might bring in your first VP of sales, but then you quickly expand that team. What are some of those specific metrics that you're looking at that tells you that this team can scale beyond that?

Yeah. So we look at I always look at distribution of performance. I think I mentioned that already.

But think about it this way. Like, you want a bell curve of performance across your sales team. So you want roughly fifty percent of those folks to be able to achieve plan if you've done a good job building that, repeatability.

And I look for that when we do diligence.

The other thing I look for is do you have repeated performance in some of those metrics like pipeline generation, for example? Are you lumpy? Are you showing an increase a steady increase over time, etcetera, etcetera. And and what I'll add and Jim said this before.

The metric is an important place for me to understand where to, like, drill in.

Right? But it's really what you've built underneath it that matters.

So when I see and I'll give you an example. I did a diligence about six six months ago, and the top rep there were ten reps. The top rep for that firm had done seventy percent of their total sales over the past three years. Right? So that tells me, oh, crap. You got, you know, eight, nine reps out there.

Someone got paid is what happened.

Yeah. Somebody got paid. Exactly.

Exactly. They they're not productive. But why are they not productive? And so then I asked, okay.

Do you have your sales stages written down? Do you have entry and exit criteria? Okay. Well, how do you inspect deals when you meet with the sales team?

Do you have a sales methodology, etcetera, etcetera. So it's it's really digging down into the processes, cadences, operating routines that you've built to understand, hey, how might those be impacting the metrics that, that I see or we see?

Tim, I might layer on one.

If I have one question I can ask in a due diligence session on go to market, and of course, we already have all the financials and a lot of the other metrics. I'll ask MQL to SQL ratio.

And you'll be a like, maybe not amazed, guys see you. I mean, maybe not in your head. How many companies whole stumbling block between, well, we're changing. Every company is changing their MQL definition, their SQL definition.

Those that understand it, understand what they're doing to improve it. Yeah. I don't really care what it is necessarily. Of course, if it's ninety percent, that feels like an allay going to the sales team. And if it's, like, five percent, I wonder is there misalignment on what a marketing qualified lead is versus a sales qualified lead. But just understanding what it is and having a team that connects together, sales and marketing, talk about why it is where it is and how where it's going, that's that really shows you how a a team is aligned.

I think that's a a great use of those early stage numbers that people can put to use immediately, whether you have an early stage marketing team or a sales team, and hopefully, they're working together early on from from day one.

Jim, I wanna talk to you a little bit about, the past few years that we've seen in the venture space, how valuations have shifted. We were standing outside chatting a little bit before this panel about how those valuations have shifted.

Have the any just because you, need to gain that, growth, but now we're really working toward that profitability.

Metrics shifted, over the past few years and if they have?

Yeah. It's it's a little bit of what we're talking about earlier that it matters the stage. So if you're a company cresting twenty million in revenue, you better start having a really good view of rule of forty.

Because it's and and we always talked about rule of forty. It's just become more of a it's every you know, you have I could say these these investors care about rule of forty five years ago. Now that would be everybody. Right?

It's there were there were investors that cared about just growing and kinda looked at rule of forty, didn't care. Everybody cares about rule of forty when you get over twenty million. So that's that's probably the bigger one of the bigger changes. I think when you're growing up until twenty million, you you like, it, we were talking about up here a second ago.

You've gotta understand the operating leverage in your business, and that comes down to what you were saying. Operating leverage starts with understanding unit economics of my business so that I I'll have a path to rule of forty if I just keep doing what I'm doing. Scale will produce rule of forty over time. So I think that's the at the early stages, that's the real key is understanding that.

And then, you know, once you understand that, then it's just a matter of how quickly can I grow my business? And you're getting in what's the available market, what comes around that I can grow into. And another thing I like you said was behind a metric and your metrics are they're just they're they're lessons they're a license to get a head fake. You have to know the why behind the metric, right?

Why did that company grow fifty percent? Why does it have a hundred and ten percent net retention? And if you don't look at net retention by cohorts, you can get burned. You just it's there's so many layers to it.

So I'd encourage you guys to understand the layers and and, obviously, deliver the metric.

I think this is a good segue. Do you wanna go ahead, Brooke?

No. Go ahead. Tell me.

Thinking about the segue from, getting behind those metrics. Let's talk about the management team.

What are you looking for? We in the venture world, you often think about the track jack jockey and horse analogy.

Who do you make that investment in? How do you evaluate a management team? And what are those metrics that can really tell you a little bit more about the management team?

It's open.

It's open. Oh, okay. I'll I'll jump in.

So in in the private equity world, you hear a lot about value creation plans. You heard value creation plan?

It's really the key method that private equity firms use to align with management teams on this value creation plan, which is really just what are the five or six things we're gonna try to accomplish over five years. And if by doing those things, we can actually accelerate our plan to get accomplish them in three years. That's that's where a lot of those of us that are in the operating team focused. So, I think that it starts with is is the team aligned and is the team aligned on that value creation plan?

We get into trouble is when the management team wants to go maybe think about growing at forty percent and having and be breakeven versus our value creation plan is focused more on maybe twenty five percent growth and and fifteen percent even on margin. What's and that's changed. It's got harder to create that alignment because what's changed over the past few years is that we talked about rule of forty, but a dollar of growth is typically worth more than a dollar of EBITDA margin when you think about the enterprise value of a company longer term.

If you go back three or four years ago, I saw stats that it was ten or eleven x. A point of growth was worth ten or eleven x a point of margin. Today, it's about one point six.

So the world's changed. Right?

I think what we're looking for is a management team that gets that and understands it. I was talking with Lance back there. We were talking about being very careful too about not just focusing on driving towards profitability because there's gonna be that time when you need the growth. And I've been caught in a situation where we were growing really well. The market a public market, we were public at that time, said, hey. We want more profitability.

And, we drove to that. And then they said, oh, we want growth again. And getting growth started again is difficult. So you're kinda like keeping as a go to market team, I would just suggest you keep one foot on the gas, one foot on the brake when those times situations kinda come along. But that's where we're aligning with management teams to make sure that we we're really making sure we're we're focused on the same thing.

The real answer there is just don't be a public company. Right.

Anything that's ever been That's right. It's all these gray hairs from the public company.

It's much better to grow businesses with slaps like us than public.

I don't know why you'd wanna be one now, for sure.

Everybody wants to do it one time. Yes.

It is it was fun.

Yeah. I'll I'll add a couple of things. This is probably the hardest question for me to really answer with simply just metrics. But we'll look at things like tenure of the team, turnover.

You know, one thing to understand, especially if you're a founder or or entrepreneur, is that the skills and competencies required in you will change as the company grows, and they change significantly.

And it's really important for you to look or sort of around the corner or forward to say, hey, what skills do I need to build in order to to still be effective in my role as my company, grows? So for, you know, for example, you know, as a founder, you're probably not thinking about, your classic sort of people leadership behaviors, staffing a big team, talent reviews, nine box grids, you know, etcetera. But those become quite important when you're a a bigger company. So, but we actually when we do a diligence, we actually do rate the the management team, and we'll tell them what what we rated them. And by and large, what it comes down to are things like, do you use this is gonna sound funny, but, like, do you use facts to make decisions with?

Now when you're when you're smaller, you do use your gut, and you should trust your gut in a lot of ways.

Right? But you should try and find the facts to prove yourself true or false.

We look for things like, do you use repeatable processes to get things done? I've you know, I mentioned I've I mentioned a sales process, sales methodology, etcetera, etcetera. So do you think in terms of scale?

And when we talk to you, do you talk about the team and the people and how you will grow them and how you will coach them over over time. So, you know, the metrics are Jim said it, like, you know, much time is already, but the metrics give us kind of a sense. But it's really these things like repeatability, using facts, etcetera, etcetera, that are most important to us when we think about a management team. And even above and beyond that, how are you thinking about yourself and your own competencies and skill sets, and how they need to change as you grow? At our at our level, I'll and skill sets, and how they need to change as you grow?

At our at our level, it's, you know, a two to ten million dollar company. First of all, the management team in two and ten is like night and day. You can't have too many twos. There's not enough hours in the day. You gotta have some tens.

And, but you wanna find leaders, obviously, know their product driven, all that stuff. That's the obvious stuff. But that that are a little bit humble and, very humble and and open and and we'll, you know, we'll talk to you and and and expose their vulnerabilities.

Because as an investor, we know a lot of people.

And if I know the blind spots of my CEO or CMO or then it's easy to help them plug in. I was just asking Jeff Perkins to talk to one of our I was at a board meeting yesterday about what a great company we have in the field service management space in Dallas, about the same size as, company Jeff said when I first invested.

And our CMO has got some blind spots. He's good, but a CMO is a big job. You can't be great at product, the can help them. I think that's what I look for.

When we're in diligence and you're talking to these teams, you can tell how people think. If it's my way or the highway and, honestly, there's just too many deals to do out there. We'll just back off and go. I I I don't I don't wanna be part of that.

I can't tell you how many times after a board meeting, we'll just say that team seems like having fun together.

Yeah.

They like each other. They wanna spend time together, especially in this more hybrid world. We find teams that aren't getting together, that aren't spending quality time together, aren't performing as well. Whether that means going to an office or it just means making sure they have plenty of off sites.

Like, that you may not be thinking that your board's paying attention to that, but we really notice that. And that's something that I think we look for in diligence. You know, these people that they want it's gonna be hard. Whatever we're gonna do is gonna be hard.

And so are they gonna fight through that together?

And we spend a lot of time thinking about the dynamics of that team.

Yeah. Diligence. You think you're doing all this you're kinda doing all this practical work. And at the same time, it's a big social experiment.

Right? You're trying to I'm being honest. It is. It really is.

You're trying to see you're learning how people think and That's where the MQL SQL question comes in because you just see all you can see the marketing and sales leader just say, oh, they turn their backs on each other or do they lean in together and Exactly.

We we I didn't mention this, but we do have an explicit rating for openness to, like, help.

Yeah.

But, yeah, know where you're good, know where you're not good, and be be upfront with it. By the way, know where your company is good and and know where your company shouldn't play, and that's just as important.

I'm glad you brought in some of those different side of those metrics that we often think of data metrics. We think of everything that is cut and dry, but what about these metrics that are? How does that team work together? How do they really collaborate and build and scale? I think that's something that we don't often think about. And what's unique about this, panel, and I really think it's important to share, each one of our firms has a specific commitment to the portfolio from a resource perspective, whether it is an on-site team that you have, an Insight, Eric, or how the Accel KKR team really dives in and immerses into every portfolio company, Jim, at Fulcrum, how you have this commitment to building and scaling these teams and giving them the resources they need to grow, and to scale. So not only as a fiduciary responsibility to our LPs and our investors, but also to the founders themselves.

I wanna close out with a few different things. I have quite a few more questions, but I know we're short on time. And I also wanna give some time to the audience to ask specific questions.

I I think one of the questions that we wanna go through, we've been through a lot of the operational efficiencies, the technology, customer metrics.

Let's talk a little bit about exit potential.

So, a lot of the focus is, from both the founder and investor perspective here. How do you evaluate a company's potential exit opportunities, and what metrics are most relevant in that consideration?

Yeah. So at at our scale, it's it's a lot making sure there's a whole bunch of guys like this hanging around in the areas you're in. Because we're we're growing these companies up towards you know, we'll start two to ten, take them thirty to fifty million and typically selling up the food chain to larger PE funds. And and the founders, you know, get to take some off the table and then roll some and get a whole another lap with group guys that are a lot smarter than we are.

So it's it's it's knowing I always say hanging out in spaces that that second level of PE firm is interested in. Field service management, donor management, nonprofit management. Just as big there's a bunch of them. Right?

But make sure we're in spaces that other people like. That's the biggest. And it's yeah. Strategic's in there, but if these guys are in there, the strategic must be in there because they're thinking about that.

Right? So we pay a lot of attention to to that. Yeah.

I would say I think when you think about exiting to a PE firm, I think our average is something like four or five years from the time that we meet the CEO and the founding team to the time we make an investment.

Right? So this is not like hire a banker and then six months later, you get a check from us. I mean, a lot of this is relationship building even when you're five, ten million. And and so I'm actually amazed, like, having been an operator, I would take a call from anyone.

I would meet as many people as possible. I'm amazed at how many CEOs and founding teams don't try to network to to firms. And I think it's just building up that. So I would encourage you to take the call from our analyst and get to know the firm.

That's my, top of funnel work right there, Andrew.

No. It's a it's really right. Be selfish. They'll learn whether it's a banker, they'll tell you about your competitors.

Yep.

They'll they'll tell you about your competitors.

You can learn so much. You're foolish not to take those calls.

We give a ton away. Like, we we will come in and tell you how we think we can grow with you. We will tell you, as you say, just about your competitors. So, yes, engage that community.

It's kinda like, you know, the last thing you wanna do is show up to a really important interview and have it be your first interview. So I would get that That's reps.

Going.

Get those reps going for sure. Alright.

I'm gonna a wrap it up with just one last question to each of you, and then I'm gonna open it up for questions. We have just a few minutes left.

Twenty twenty four and going into twenty twenty five. I know summer solstice, about to kick it off. We're halfway almost through the year.

What is one piece of advice or one area that you would Are you ready with the, top of funnel velocity and the AEs to process that funnel for next year.

And and you really if you're not thinking about that in in the middle of June, you're not gonna you won't get caught up in that. You'll you'll enter the year flat footed. So it's like, yeah, it's hard it's hard because you're halfway through the year having hit the number this year, but how are we ready for next year? And so middle of the year, you really gotta be thinking, what how what is achievable next year, not what we would love to push to, but what's reasonably achievable and making sure you set yourself up from a sales and marketing top of funnel and team sales team to achieve that.

I think really I mean, back to that one foot on the break, one foot on the gas. I am advising a lot of the go to market leaders. Have your baseline budget, but be ready for the three or four growth initiatives so that when you when your board or your CEO says pull the trigger, that you're not like, okay. Let me go think about what we could go do.

You have the three things. When someone someone says, where would you put the next dollar in marketing? Where you put next dollar in sales? You're ready to go.

And not just, like, little bets. Like, what are the three or four big bets you could make to really accelerate growth if if if and when that time comes?

I love it. I'm actually gonna add on to this because we do actually do a ton of work with companies that have growth plans, and they have no clue how they're gonna hit them. Right? They might have an idea of two or three initiatives they might drive to hit those targets. But I actually do a ton of work just simply helping a company build, quote, unquote, the business case for, hey, if I think I can grow by, I don't know, twenty percent next year to use simple numbers.

The math tells me if I hire four more salespeople, I'll grow by five percent. If I invest this much in, you know, demand gen given the efficiency, that'll get me another seven percent. So we see a lot of both late and early companies go into the new year thinking, well, I'll do these three things and I'm pretty sure they'll work. And you go, well, can you, like, literally take me through the waterfall and they can.

And it's not because they're stupid. It's because it takes time. It takes a lot of time to do this. So with with larger stage companies, we actually start this process in, August for a January rollout.

Now for smaller companies, it's not gonna start that soon, but you should start thinking now and attempt to quantify how those initiatives that you wanna run will will pay off.

That's some some of the best go to marketing teams are testing and learning, testing and learning and taking those little tests that you do give validation to these bigger bets that you want to make. And so if you can be doing that now, then you're not just going in and saying, hey, I think we should do this big new initiative.

You can say, we think we should do it because we've been learning this, doing kind of small campaigns that can be amplified.

Thank you. Let's take one or two questions if there are any in the audience before we wrap up.

Can you comment on your perception that you go to Northeast, you go to West Coast, the gray matter and the green matter stays in the ecosystem after a founder has an exit. Regrettably, the perception is Atlanta is just still dragging behind that mindset.

In terms of thinking big, what do you believe it's gonna I'll I'll tell you.

Twenty years ago, twenty five years ago, I moved here, it was a desert. Right?

It's a lot different today than it was. Paul Judge said an interesting comment to me when I made that same kind of statement maybe ten years ago. He said money travels.

The insights now here, you've got how many people here?

Four or five people here.

Four or five people here.

Excel KKR is here. We now have thirty or forty people here.

You You know, I think more and more funds see Atlanta, not just earlier stage, but all stages see Atlanta as an opportunity.

They're just it's so easy to get here. You're not gonna see a lot of firms set up shop here like maybe we have. But, Atlanta is is on the map like it hasn't been before.

Part of that is we've we've built bigger companies. You know, I haven't been around this ecosystem a long time.

We used to celebrate hundred million dollar exits. Right? That was the and and now we've got a number of billion dollar plus exits. Right? So we're we're building bigger companies. Founders are holding on to that equity longer and growing it longer and taking second and third laps with that with that business.

Part of that is all that capital that allows them to do that. You know, the maturity of the PE market has produced produced so much capital, you can hold on to a company and grow it a really long time. You know, why wouldn't I take two thirds off, roll a third, and do this again? I just keep doing that. I know this business better than anything. So it's a lot of a little bit, it's the ecosystem. A lot of it is university talent, and then the capital traveling here.

Why was this question important? What's the relevance of having investors local?

Well, I think going back to, like so when you're out in San Francisco and you go to the Grove, which is I don't know if you're in the Grove.

It's where everyone if you're sitting in the Grove, you can hear people raising money. Right? It's just there's an ecosystem. Right?

You're you're It literally floats around.

It literally floats around. Right? Or you're in Palo Alto. There's a couple of cafes. When you walk down Palo Alto, you see mostly, you see people raising their first fund.

So they're talking to, like, an LP or, so there's just there's that kind of energy that but I think we're creating that. Like, what David's done with Tech Village, what Blake and Bill are doing with TechScore Ventures and Engage, and there's the the energy here is a lot more. So I think the question is really around, is there a community? And, you know, Rachel and I were talking we used to spend tons of time now at the ATTC together.

Right? So I think, you know, if you're not doing that, you're not in the community. I mean, it's a lot different. When I was here twenty five years ago, it was like Bell South and that in MindSpring and CBON.

Right?

That was It it's it's really important because when you have the larger capital in, it takes companies further, which creates billion dollar companies.

Those billion dollar companies, those guys and gals that make money, feed it right back into the early stage. We got more early stage funds in Atlanta than we've ever had because we've had more exits at the top. So that we didn't have that years ago. We didn't have billion dollar exits.

Right? We had a hundred million dollar exits. There's not a lot of funds stored at a hundred million dollar exits. David David's the only one.

Yeah.

I think and to that point, it keeps the talent here.

Many you know, a decade ago, the talent was leaving. You had incredible engineers coming out of the best engineering school in the country out of Georgia Tech, and they were leaving. They were going to the Bay Area. They were going to the Northeast.

We're keeping that talent now. You're seeing mega Fortune five hundred companies setting up shop in Atlanta. You see, you know, Microsoft, Airbnb. You have all these in Google, in Midtown, and they are here to retain that talent.

And it brings other students to these schools, and that's the talent you want in your startups and to grow a lot of, what you're doing.

Yeah. Education, quality of life, and capital.

Right.

I mean, it's Yeah.

I mentioned the grow, but that Starbucks at fifth and spring is our version of that. Right?

It's true. I I know that they've got the red numbers now ticking for us, so we've gone over.

I think LinkedIn, the best way for people to get in touch with each of you? Yes. Great.

Yes.

Okay. Well, thank you all so much. Thank you, Eric, Brooks, Jim. Such a pleasure.