Startup Investor School Preview with Geoff Ralston

So why don't we just start with the basic facts? So what is Investor School?

Yeah, so Investor School is a four-day class that we're teaching for the very first time here in Mountain View, across the street and in the original Y Combinator of building 320. It's a school that's gonna teach the basis, the basics of startup investing. Um, so we hope people come in person. We think there's a lot of demand, so we think we're hearing a lot of folks who want to come. But also doing a live stream, and we're going to make it a MOOC, a massively open online course, just like we've done in the past with Startup School. So we're really excited about the potential to give back a whole bunch of the knowledge that we've gained at YC over the years and how to be a really effective angel investor, uh-huh, to the community at large. So we create more better happier.

And what gave you the impression that folks needed a school?

Well, what gives us the impression that folks need the school is we've seen lots of, shall we say, not so effective behavior and approaches to angel investing. We're not being conceited and thinking that we've seen it in ourselves. Sure, most of us have at one time or another in the partnership at YC been angel investors, and so we know all the missteps. We've done them ourselves. I personally have made so many mistakes angel investing that I feel if nothing else, qualified to tell you a whole bunch of things you shouldn't do. So we're trying to help people avoid a lot of the pitfalls. There's ways to be a better investor; there's ways to be a worse investor. We think we can help teach people those and, again, make them better at their job, even if it's not a job, better at the discipline of angel investing. That makes it better for the companies in whom they're investing.

And is there a particular type of person you're looking for to participate in Investor School? Like, do they need to have, you know, been an engineer and had an exit or they just like have some cash that they want to invest? Who are you looking for?

Well, the one qualification is that you're an accredited investor, okay? The SEC has a set of rules as to what comprises accreditation, you know, in terms of income and wealth. As long as you're accredited, we want everybody. In fact, we actually think this is an opportunity to add greater diversity to the ranks of investors. So, yeah, anyone who's accredited, which is a little bit the equivalent of what you said is you have some spare cash to invest that you can afford to lose. And, you know, you have to be honest about this; it's a very high-risk investing paradigm. So if you're going to invest in startup companies, you have to be prepared for extraordinary upside, but also perhaps more likely downside.

And are you giving anyone a certain criteria of what they should think about? It's like, this is an approximate amount of money that if you're gonna get started angel investing in the valley, you should be ready to start putting down, putting to work? Is there a number that you have in mind?

I think we'll give some guidelines as to how to think about creating your portfolio. Think about doing asset allocation across that particular portfolio. But how much you invest is a very personal thing. It's sort of how much you will care about losing, how much upside you want to have, what percentage of a company it's important for you to own if you think about it that way. So I think the amount that people invest is incredibly variable. There are some minimums; you know, most people aren't investing $5,000 when they do angel investing. That does happen, but it's unusual. Yeah, it sort of tends to be a minimum in the tens of thousands of dollars, up to a maximum of, you know, hundreds of thousands of dollars usually.

Okay, so maybe we ought to walk through the curriculum and like broad strokes. So we're day one, what are you guys gonna start with?

Well, day one we're gonna start with, as you might expect, okay, the basics. Yeah, sort of how and how you should start, why you should start angel investing, why do it, what's it about. I'm gonna talk a little bit about the history of investing and where angel investing came from. You know, there didn't used to be such a thing as an angel; there were people who pretty much financed companies on their own. That’s how Silicon Valley got started: HP was founded in a garage with $538 of capital that Dave Packard and Bill Hewlett scrounged together to build an audio oscillator. Much of Silicon Valley came from graduates of the Hewlett-Packard school of building products.

It was only later that venture capital started, and you had a whole bunch of people coming off Sand Hill Road and figuring out that they could make lots of money. I mean, there's an early venture firm that invested $70,000 in Digital Equipment Corporation. That was one of the earliest angel investments, and they made $35 million. VC investments really made $35 million? Yeah, big-time, which is pretty cool $70. Yeah, well, you know, that's the kind of return that people look at and say, "I want a piece of that action." So a lot of companies set up in on Sand Hill Road, and you had sort of classic early VC from, you know, great for starting Sutter Hill, Kleiner Perkins, and Sequoia all began back in those early days.

And so there was sort of an intermediate path to raising capital between putting together your own money, putting money on credit cards, maybe getting friends and family to put a little money in, and then IPO. Yeah, between adventure came and filled in some of that. But eventually what happened was it was harder to get started at the small level, and friends and family, who were kind of the original angels, expanded to be people who really just gave smaller checks, you know, which was really the amount needed, right, in the very beginning to get a company ready and able to accept venture investing.

So I'm going to tell a little bit about that, and then we're gonna talk. I'm gonna have a couple of partners from YC go over some of the mechanics of startup investing that are, frankly, a little mysterious. How is it that these weird convertible notes work? Used to be when back in the early days of venture investing you just bought a share of the company equity in the corporation. Now we have these different instruments that are much cheaper and faster and simpler to use, but also a little mysterious. So we want to demystify that, explain how it works. We've built up a bunch of standards as to how an angel investor or any sort of investor will interact with founders.

Yeah, there's something we call the handshake protocol, which is how you go about sort of cementing a deal verbally before you do it on document. So we want to cover things like that. So the beginning of the course is sort of getting the vocabulary, the vocabulary, getting the dotting the i's and cross the t's of how you actually act as an angel investor. How you should think about when you're investing, how much you're gonna own of the company, how dilution works, how cap tables work—all those basics that kind of, you know, you sort of run into it and no one tells you what's this document.

Yeah, I mean, but what about even before that? What about evaluating a company if you're a non-technical person who wants to invest in software?

Yeah, we're gonna get into that sort of in right in the very beginning. The question is, so you want to invest in a company, how do you learn about the company? Well, yeah, there's actually a simple answer to that: you meet with the founders and talk to them. So we're gonna quite extensively go into when you go into a meeting with founders, how should you conduct that meeting? How should you think about the founder? If I'm meeting with you and we're talking about your company, how do I make judgments about whether this is a company I want to invest in? How should I think about that?

Okay, so you want to kind of help people through that exact answer, that exact question?

So yeah, let's get specific on some of these. Like you're meeting with a founder for the first time—what's a red flag when you're like say there are two or three co-founders, you're talking to them about a product and it's just… I don't know, what's something that you might spot that you're like, "I don't know if I want to put money into this startup"?

Well, for me, the very first thing comes with sort of how I read the founders' belief in what they're doing. Okay, if you have this passion—people usually talk about passion. I remember listening to Mike Moritz talk about this once, and he talked about it being at a different level, like almost an obsession with what you're building and why you're building it. You have to care so deeply that everything that's going to happen to you as a start-up founder will be something that you will think nothing of overcoming because that's the sure thing, you know? That if you don't have the resilience you need, the toughness you need, the determination you need, the belief you need, none of the other things matter. Nothing else—how big the opportunity is, how much competition there is or isn't, how much money you raise, how smart you are—none of that matters because it won't happen.

So that's where I start, and if I can't get past that, so if I don't get that sense…

And are you kind of laying a little trap here and there to see if they'll, you know, bite on something? Like, oh, I don't know if they're quite confident enough, or is it just this vibe someone has? What do you actually think?

No, I don't think of it as traps. It's underhanded, and I don't—I personally, I don't throw the devil's eye.

Well, yeah, everyone gets different styles.

Yeah, I'm very direct, and so what I like to do is I like to push. Okay, so there's—and it's easy to do after a while because every single idea has a million things that could possibly go wrong with it, and half of those will. Yeah, so you talk about those, and you see how they react to it, okay? How they, you know, as you push on them and you say, "Well, you know, how could this possibly work? You know, you want to provide ride-sharing services to seniors; they don't really use their phones. How are you gonna do that, Craig? How are you gonna?" And, you know, you start to push on those ideas.

And so I think that a certain amount of this you can't teach. Yeah, it's experience. You know, as partners in YC, we've all talked to hundreds, not thousands, of companies.

Yeah, right?

Yeah, but we can, I think, illuminate the process and get people started on the right foot. And that's, I think, the way we should think about this. It's a short course. Yeah, it's four days, two classes per day, so it's sort of eight sessions total over that four-day period. It's not, you know, a six-month graduate school investing. I don't even know what you would cover in that. It's enough, I think, to put you on the right road to becoming a fantastic angel investor, and that's our goal.

Okay, create more fantastic angel investors. Fantastic, meaning do they make the right choices for themselves? They help companies need more. They have a better relationship with companies; they make their decisions in a more effective, timely fashion. Yeah, it's not just spray-and-pray, like show up to demo day, spend $200,000, and then hopefully— I mean, that can be okay. It's a terrible thing for companies, generally, to get that kind of cash.

Yeah, but I think it's much more useful for companies to get thoughtful investors, right, who invest for the right reason and who, you know, are not painful later, who understand the quid pro quo that's going on when you invest and when you get a piece of a company and how you should be interacting with that CEO and founding team henceforth.

So from a personal perspective, do you only invest in companies where you feel like you can add more value than your money, or are you okay just putting money into something you think is attractive but you don’t really know about the space?

A lot of people say that they'll only invest in companies. You know, there are all types. A lot of people say that, and then they put money all over the place. Well, there's what you say and what you do, but there's all different—there's probably as many different styles of angel investing as there are angels.

Yeah, me personally, I think I invest when I get excited about a company, okay? And it may be a little egotistical, but I kind of believe that I can always help a company because I've seen so many companies. I've been doing this for, yeah, coming up on seven years now, and I've been angel investing thirteen years now—this being YC, angel investing for longer than that. So as those insurance commercials go, I've seen a thing or two.

Yeah, yeah, right?

So I kind of believe that, but I think that's separate from if, like if you're talking to me and I say, "Oh my gosh, this guy's amazing," or "This girl's amazing; this is an idea," and you know I'm gonna invest. Yeah, and do I believe I'll be able to help you?

You have, you know, there's another perspective that's important to have as an angel investor. Angel investors can, in limited cases, have substantive impact on the companies in which they invest. You know, mostly their impact is marginal. Yep, minimum. You might meet with a company once a year, twice a year, maybe, and you might give them some really good advice while they're building the company. And sometimes I, you know, think angels—I've heard angels take way too much credit. Again, sometimes angels are very helpful, and I'd like to think that I've been quite helpful to the company that I've worked with, but they're building the company.

And so, you know, if there's a pile of credit for success, 99.9 percent goes to them and their team, and sometimes to bigger investors who spend a lot more time with them than angel investors who go on the board and meet with them every quarter or more frequently and help them recruit. Most angels don't spend that much time doing that.

Hmm, okay.

At times they do, and some do more than others, but for the most part, I, you know, I'm honest with myself and see, and I know that like words I can be pretty helpful. The main reason to invest, and it's good to be helpful, and it's good to be that kind of investor, but the main reason is because you believe. Yeah, and that's why I invest in.

So, going back to the vetting process, I heard an of all Brava con in a startup investing talk from Angel Conflict years ago on the Venture Hacks blog. I think he said something like it wouldn't be strange if you met with a hundred companies before you made your first angel investment. Do you have a rule of thumb around that?

No, no, so it could be the first one. Yep, okay!

I'll have a different rule of thumb. Analysis. It wouldn't be strange. Well, what I would argue from personal experience is that you oughta wait just because it's hard to calibrate, yeah, in the beginning. But at this point, I have no count. Like, I'll meet lots of companies, and I know when, and I do think like my calibration's done. I know when I'm interested in some combination of the founder, the idea, the opportunity, the execution they've had up to the end, yeah, all those things. But it is true in the very beginning—before you've made your first angel investment—calibrate, so do spend. I don't know if it's a hundred or ten or fifteen you should.

Hmm, this being said, it's been said there are—one of the reasons people angel invest is surely because they want to be Professor Horowitz at Stanford who invested in Google and became a billionaire doing that. It's nice to be a college billionaire college professor, and those companies don't come along very often. And so if, for whatever reason, you believe that the first company you talk to just might be the next Google or the next Airbnb, right? It will be painful to let that go.

Yeah.

So if you got that belief—no, I do think that, you know, the probability is low that you ever see one of those. If you saw one, the very first one would be—it'd be a strike of lightning. But, but it goes back to what you said already: like you have to be able to throw the money away, right? So if the first company you see—not throw it away, but you know what I mean, right? Do I have to be prepared, yeah, to zero out that investment? In fact, you know, my default position when I invest in a start-up is that that investment is worth zero. It's not like if I pick a number, $25,000, exactly in a company, and then I track that, yeah, its value is zero until I have more information that it's not.

Exactly.

Yeah, you have to have—so whether it's the first investment or the 20th investment, you're still gonna feel them know that pressure when you're about to write a check and you're like, "Oh, I don’t know if this is it," but eventually you're gonna have to pull the trigger.

So what other things—how else do you help someone mentally prepare to become an angel investor? What like mental models you offer? What do you recommend?

One of the things we're gonna do in this course, which I'm pretty excited about, is we're going to get four pretty well-known, yeah, pretty successful angel investors, okay, to come in and kind of tell their stories a little bit to give what I call angelic advice about how they dealt with that. I do think the bottom line is you gotta do it early, and you have to meet with a bunch of founders. You have to think about their companies. Usually, it's a good idea to invest in some space that you have some familiarity with, em, hmm, so you can actually hopefully make a more educated judgment, okay? And then go for it. Yeah, go for it or not, and you'll get better at it.

So what else? What else is on the curriculum? What else do we have to look forward to?

Well, okay, so I've talked about not much because, again, it's a pretty short curriculum. But we're gonna talk a little bit about how to be a good investor. We've talked—I brought that up earlier. Yeah, it's actually shockingly easy to be a terrible investor, and so we want to talk about what it means to be a good investor and how you should think about that and how you should interact with companies and what companies need and want from you as an angel investor.

And that goes from first meeting to, you know, whatever rhythm you have of meeting with the company once you're actually an investor, if at all. Some investors just want to invest and, like, you know, write me a check when it's all over, right? But most want to sort of get updates and definitely talk to the CEO. That's part of the fun of it, by the way—watching and watching progress.

I just got to go and talk to a YC company that's doing great. I mention them, but I also made an angel investment in, and you know, if I'm two people, now there are 50 people, and there I've got a big valuation, and they have all sorts of problems, and they're doing incredibly well. And it's exciting. It's just that's a really fun thing, but so I want to talk about that.

But maybe the last thing I'll say about the curriculum for the course that I'm excited about is we want to talk a little bit about investing in the 21st century because it hasn't changed. I was talking about HP back in 1957—in 1937, excuse me—that's when HP was founded, in '37. But venture capital really started in '57 and '60, and then sort of angels came in in the subsequent decades.

Yeah, things changed a lot. Once the 2000s, the 21st century came, probably the first big change was Y Combinator, with accelerators rethinking how people did early-stage investing. Well, it's changing again; you mentioned Avocado—he launched this thing called AngelList, and there's something called Kickstarter.

So AngelList brings people and companies together in a really unique online way to invest in, in sort of with a different paradigm than before, as Y Combinator was a different paradigm. But investing, it's investing in bulk, right? We invest in a whole bunch of startups all at once, but there's new stuff happening! You know about this, right? There's I.C.Os—there's initial coin offerings. Companies are changing the way they think about the availability of capital. The SEC is looking hard at this right now; it’s complex.

So why don't we talk a little bit about how the space is changing and evolving?

Another thing I didn't mention was that I sort of talked about this history in a not very chronological way. So I'll get you that. Other things that happened sort of after YC sort of began this accelerator craze was quite a bit more angels out there.

And the angels started to professionalize, and some of the angels who were most experienced angels became what we called at the time super angels or micro VCs. And they started creating funds, so then you had a little bit of fragmentation of VC where there was a bunch of early stage, and then Series A, and then growth after that. And then you had a whole bunch of evolution of that where VC started doing both early stage and growth, sometimes in the same fund, strangely, which I don't necessarily think is a great idea.

So there was this—I don't know if fragmentation is the right term; I used it before—but this is, you know, diversification of styles of professional investors. Professional investors, meaning someone who has limited partners who are investing other people's money besides their own. And so that's changed a lot in the very first century, but certainly these—the new ways to raise money, the crypto-oriented techniques, are pretty radical.

Mmm-hmm.

Radical in that, like, so early, there's an equal amount of money and ICOs being raised by startups as venture money! That's crazy!

So fast!

For sure, don't really believe it's sustainable, and there's a lot of crap, of course. Yeah, certainly a lot of fraud out there too, so, you know—buyer beware.

Mmm-hmm.

But, but the world is shifting and changing. I mean, absolutely, rapidly! So we want to talk a little bit about that so people are kind of up to speed with some of what's happening, and that's kind of the gamut of the course—where we're covering a lot of the fundamentals, some insider looks at how you become an angel investor and how you think about deal flow on portfolios and making your decisions. And then maybe a little bit of a look towards the future and where we're going.

Okay, awesome! So we would be remiss if we didn't talk about your personal angel investing experience to share some advice with people, just to give them a taste before they sign up for Investor School. So before you said the good and bad habits of being an angel investor—let's talk about those specifically. What does it mean to be a good angel investor?

So this qualitative thing is good—it like, good can mean a few things. That can mean that you're actually good to your companies. They can actually mean you get a good return, okay? So, yeah, they like trying to answer kind of both of them.

Yeah, I think to be a good angel investor, first, is you have to follow your passion. Invest in what you care about, but don't be emotional. You'll make a lot of bad decisions if you're emotional. So it is a cold, hard cash investing decision, and you should think about it that way.

Yeah, you should learn how to say no, and learn how to say no explicitly and kindly and with as many real reasons as you can. Mmm-hmm, I'll get back to that in a sec, but that's part of being a good investor to two companies. If you meet with me and I say, "I'm thinking about it, Craig; you seem to have a pretty good idea, I'll get back to you," and I never get back to you. Sometimes investors do that because it's just hard to say, "Dude, no."

Yeah.

And so you have to learn how to do that. Say no, sometimes—as I said—you should be as honest as you can, especially if it can be helpful. Sometimes you can't. Sometimes it's because, you know, I didn't believe in you. I don't think you were smart enough. I didn't think you were strong enough. I didn't think all these things that I'm not really gonna say in an email to you.

So you have to come up with some way to gracefully say, "I'm not interested, but remember what we talked about." And Eval said you have to meet with a hundred companies—at least ten or twenty or thirty. And certainly, you want deal flow, and that's another thing about being a good angel investor. You need deal flow. Find a way to get deal flow! We'll talk about that. If you don't have deal flow, you'll take the first thing you get. You'll talk to me, and I'll invest; please, take my money, right?

So you're, like, on a micro level, you wouldn't necessarily be wrong either. If your deal flow is only ten companies a year, you may still pick the best one, but it may still fail.

You might just need it, which is who knows what you're saying. Which is being wrong in the macro sense, but you're, like, locally, right?

But that doesn't do you any good!

Exactly! That's why you do need more to see. But, but again, I do think these sinks down alone. You have to look at whether you believe the opportunity is there and that you have a founder in front of you who has a probability of winning in the fight for that opportunity.

So, so be rigorous and organized and dedicated. And, you know, even if you're dabbling—and I think most angel investors dabble, they're not professional. Yeah, this course, by the way, is not meant to teach people to be professionals. I don't expect real venture capitalists will come and take the course. I expect angels who are investing their own money and who are doing this because they enjoy working with founders, because they have causes that they care about, because they want to see innovation in the world, because they want to see change.

Mmm-hmm.

Those are all really good reasons, and those are good reasons to invest, but you have to temper that because, you know, I wouldn't recommend just investing in change with no hope for return, right? You can if you're really willing to throw away whatever amount of money you're investing, and I would never gainsay that. If you're doing this because there's some possibility of making a difference, creating change, even if you're not that concerned about the return, that's fine. But most angels want some kind of return.

I would also say, you know, most angel investors should ignore the little stuff because when you're angel investing, if you're going for a 7.6 percent return to try to beat the stock market, you're in the wrong game, right?

Right.

It's a game of big wins. So don't sweat the little stuff, you know? Don't run your founders through the wringer as they're shutting down and try to extract some bit of blood from a stone where there isn't any. It doesn't matter!

Yeah.

It doesn't matter! In fact, if you think about it, if you act like a jerk to a founder, that might be— even if that gets you an extra 50 percent of your return, your investment back somehow, that might actually cost you way more in the long term because the way you get deal flow is because some founder says to another founder, "You should take Jeff Rosten's money because he's a good person to have on your cap table."

Right.

So my advice is be a good person to have on someone's cap table. Be that person. Say, "Ron Conway, you want his money! He will help you; he's not a jerk; he will be on your side."

Yeah, it's so relationship-based. Something I didn't fully realize until I moved out here was how important optionality is when people are investing. It's not uncommon for someone to say no at one point and then say yes later down, even if they have to pay a premium for that.

And I think that's a difficult thing because on the relationships, I've done that lots of times.

I mean, yeah, you know, one thing we tell founders here, and it's that the reverse is true for investors. Yeah, there's no no forever. It's not now!

Exactly, not now. I'm not ready; you're not ready, whatever.

But the thing that messes with your head is when someone says not now. In other areas of life, you're just like, oh, they're politely telling me to go away and never— but here, not now often means not now! Like, call me in 18 months when you're raising money again!

Yeah, and so, yeah, but there, you know, the fact is most angel investors don't get a bite at the later rounds. They might get a bite later on during this round and you think about it.

But don't—I mean, there's—there’s a look. One other thing I will say not to do as an investor, which is don't try to be the last money in because you don't have any confidence in yourself.

So some of the worst investor behavior is to say, "Hi, guy! I like you; I like your company. You're raising a million dollars; I'll put a hundred thousand dollars in as soon as you've raised nine hundred thousand." Because you're useless! The fact of the matter is once you, Craig, have raised nine hundred thousand dollars, you don't need me, and I have demonstrated right there that you don't need me! Yeah, right?

Yeah, you'll fill it in with someone else, and fill it in almost with someone who's more useful, who has more courage behind their conviction!

Totally!

Be the kind of investor who has enough courage to say, "You've raised zero; I'll be the first money in. I like you that much."

And on the strategic side, for you personally, what have been some of the best moves that you were unsure about in the beginning but then later on you're like, oh, maybe I kind of called it there, a thing that worked out pretty cool?

Well, the best example of that is one of my earliest angel investments, and I did it for the wrong and the right reasons. The wrong reason was the woman who was running this company, mm-hmm, was an old friend, someone I had worked with for years, years before.

And that's a terrible reason to invest in someone, except that she's awesome! And I've done both ways. Sometimes you like feel pretty good in your investment because they're a friend, and it's not a good choice. This one—in this case, it was the right reason. But, like, the space was really tough; it was in wireless networking, and geez, there was so much competition.

They were a small wireless networking company, and they had some kind of cool technology, but she wasn't even a founder; she'd become the CEO. She'd been a founder before, I know! She's like nails good! But you know, I didn't know the founders very well, and it was this hardware thing and, you know, some software.

And, oh my gosh, and so I only invested a little bit, and that was so far the only company that has IPO’d there. Yeah, and I made a really good return on my investment. So that one worked out, okay? Really nicely. And it took—and it was one of those things where I was like, "God, it's never gonna happen! It's never gonna!" And I kind of sort of lost track until I kind of woke up one day and they'd IPO’d!

I got to notice that I had public company stock, and I was sort of literally shocked!

Was there a learning on the positive side where you’re like, oh, this is a pattern that I might be able to match again or did you just get lucky and, you know, a good person had a match?

It was because I knew a good person! Yeah, I invested in that person, but aside from all the other warning signs. Like, this space? Are you kidding me? I found this I don't know that well, but like this great person is really smart and really capable and has done this before is running the company.

Yeah, invest in that all day long!

Okay, so I did want to ask you—you hope you've had success with startup investing, angel investing—where you didn't necessarily know if it was gonna pan out.

Obviously, you never know! What are mistakes you've made?

Oh, I actually think the appropriate question is, which mistakes haven't I made? Because I've made them all! I've invested in family; don't do that! Yeah, I invested without thinking it through very much—don't do that!

I invested in spaces where I really had no freaking clue at all about it, and I just did it because—and don't do that!

I invested in spaces because someone I thought was smart invested there, and sometimes that's a good thing to do, but I didn't put enough thought into it. I've been fooled by founders; I thought they were better than they were. I've invested in founders in a technical space that demanded great technical know-how, that didn't have great technical know-how.

I've invested in founders where I didn't believe in them and then decided not to invest and then was persuaded by short-term results that I was wrong, but I wasn't!

Mmm, do you often invest internationally?

Almost never! Almost never! I have invested in international YC companies sometimes, so I shouldn't say almost never. When I was investing pre-YC or outside of YC, I haven't.

Okay, it's too complicated.

Yeah!

Talk about investing in ecosystems you don't understand, and I mostly try to invest in places where I have an understanding or a belief system. I don't have to be deep into it. I will invest in CRISPR companies because I, you know—I'm not a biologist, but I think CRISPR is shatteringly important technology. I wrote a piece—I wrote it up absolutely about that just because it's so cool!

I wouldn't claim to be an expert, and synthetic biology, in general, I have believed for half a decade now, is going to be incredibly important—before I even know anything about CRISPR! But just the idea that you could start to think about programming the tree of life—in fact, a conviction that I had way back then that we're going to figure out how to do it!

It just kind of happened really quickly where, like, the ability to do gene editing at a very detailed level came about thanks to bacteria.

Yeah, very much bacteria! It's so cool. Amazing!

Yeah, and but I'm sure you're gonna have international angel investors come in, right?

Definitely, there are them all over the place, right? So I don't think it's different, though. I mean—

Right.

Let me caveat that. Sure, it's different, but I think the set of things we're going to talk about are generic and will be true for them as well.

Here's, it's a good point you make. Probably assuming this course goes well and we teach it again in the future, we'll think about whether we need to add more about how you should think about investing as a U.S. investor in international companies or as an international investor in international companies in countries in your own—

In your own country, or say investing in U.S. companies.

There's certainly a lot of international investors who come and invest in Western companies on demo day.

But that's the beauty of it. You know, this is our experiment to learning experience for us as well as for the students, and hopefully, assuming it goes well, we'll improve it and do it again next year.

That's great! Why should someone go if they want to apply?

They should go, well, the application is going to open on Thursday, and they—I hope I get this right—they should go to InvestorStartupSchool.org, okay?

And we'll also post it on the blog too.

All right! Thanks, Jeff!

Thanks a lot, Craig. Nice talking to you!

You too!