World of Venture Capital (Jayson Kim, Legendary Ventures) - Part 1

I don't want to hold anything back. I mean, America is the greatest startup in the world. What is like a common misconception? They'll get free money. That's not going to happen. I wish VCs would do more to educate founders. Dude, that's a great question. They need the Gordon Ramsay of VC. I think if you really care about someone, you just get up all in it. Yeah, they're going to get some Asian bro loving. And then the hookup culture really infiltrated the VC culture. It's very difficult for Asians to go and to say things that they feel that sometimes even on their chest. I mean, that's a really interesting question. It seems like nowadays everybody is trying to get rich by starting a company. But to create and expand upon a business, you need funding. And where do you get that funding? Well, one of the ways is from venture capitalists. Today, we sit down with Jason, who's a well-known VC, and he's going to break down everything from what they do on Shark Tank to the biggest mistake founders make early on and why people call him the Gordon Ramsay of the VC world. Hit that like button because this is Upside Mindset. All right, everybody, we're here for another episode of Upside Mindset. And we're here with Jason Kim from Legendary Ventures. Jason, thanks for being here today. Hey, man, it's really great to be with you guys. Shout out to the Asian community. I'm happy to be here. All right. Can you tell us real quickly about yourself? Like, who is Jason Kim? Yeah, you know, I'm the senior partner of a venture capital firm called Legendary Ventures. You know, we're an early stage venture firm based out of New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco. You know, we love supporting entrepreneurs. Personally, I was born and raised in New York, and I'm an Asian bro. All right, man. I mean, I guess real quick, what is venture capital? Because like a lot of people, I'm sure they've heard it. You see that thrown a lot around on like sort of financial headlines. But I don't know if everybody's actually like looked into it and watched like five videos on what is VC. Yeah, venture capital is pretty simple. I mean, it's just financing in an alternative format for, I guess, entrepreneurs who just don't have access to traditional kind of financing, you know, opportunities, whether it's banks or, you know, other credit facilities. So real quick, could we throw out some like examples of like maybe a small company that grew needing VC backed funding, right? VC backed is like a term that some people hear. So I guess like maybe what are two examples? Yeah, I think you can almost look at any company that went public. I mean, we can even use Airbnb or, you know, Pinterest, some companies that we've invested in. At some point, every company in America starts out as a startup, right? They're growing, you know, maybe they've put some money into themselves and they need growth capital to build a business. You know, the banks won't give them a loan. You know, they can't get more money to scale properly. So they'll come to kind of, you know, an alternative route of financing, which is venture capital. And I think our requirements are a little bit different than most other traditional financing kind of opportunities. And, you know, like, you know, we'll put money into pre-seed seed companies. They'll eventually grow as they get more mature. They'll go into different other types of financing models, right? To get them eventually to where they need to be. Right. And when you were mentioning seeds, we got to talk about like there's different like stages in a company, right? There's like early, middle, late, right? And you guys specialize at Legendary in early. Yeah, so that's interesting. You know, when we use these terms early, mids, late, I think, you know, one of my kind of confusions in the venture community, and I think this happens for a lot of founders is a lot of VCs have a tendency of defining what stage a company is in, you know, just by the letter of their financing round, whether like you said, David, like it's a pre-seed seed, A, B, C, D, like the alphabet letters for us. Like for us, an early stage company is anybody or any company or any founder that's building a company, they're pre-development, they don't have a product, not necessarily live with the product and generating revenue. Or if they're generating revenue, it could be somewhat unstable. So I got a question. And just because a lot of people are familiar with Shark Tank, right? I guess like, what is Shark Tank? Are they investing in a lot of early stage generally, I guess? Are they venture capitalists or what are they? I think based on their model, it's probably, you could classify it as venture capital. I think most of the, I haven't watched the show too many times, but I think most of their companies are probably, you know, pre-development or maybe at some revenue stage, but it's just unstable, right? Which I would classify as early. So I do think that Shark Tank kind of targets early stage founders and early stage companies. However, it's just confusing because you could be, I mean, there's a lot of companies today that don't have revenue, that are still raising a series at the A or the B, right? Because they're high growth companies, right? So, I mean, it really depends on the sector. You could have a tech company that's raising later stage and larger rounds of financing because they're just growth intensive. As opposed to maybe retail businesses or other sectors that are at revenue, but it's unstable, but they're not growing as fast. So they could still be seen as early stage companies, right? Jason, I want to ask you, like, before we get too much more in the weeds, why does it feel like that the term VC or startup and all these things, I'm a founder, it's such a hot term right now. Or I don't want to just say it's a hot term, it's what a lot of people are looking to do now. Like you even see memes and jokes about it on Instagram. That's when you know it's like entered the mainstream frame when there's comedians joking about what it is. If you've ever been to any sort of like, even networking party or party or social gathering, there's like founders there. There's people, especially in New York City, right? Finance capital. They're always like, oh, yeah, I'm in VC. I'm in VC. I'm a VC. I don't like, what does this all mean? And why do you work for me? What is going on? Why does it feel like this? Why is there memes about this right now in 2023? I don't think it's a, you know, I don't think that, I don't think it's just a trend. I think, you know, if you look at kind of our overall economy relative to where people are looking for jobs and looking for growth, you know, we live in one of the greatest startups in the world, right? I mean, America is the greatest startup in the world. And I think, you know, back 20 years ago, people were looking for jobs and that there was a lot of stability in that and innovation in that. I think the last 10 or 15 years, entrepreneurship has been really hot. And with that entrepreneurship, I think, you know, you've got a lot of people jumping into that ecosystem on both sides. You know, people who want to fund these companies. You also have a ton of founders and, you know, just innovators in the environment. Do you think it's hot partially because of like the old structures of like the pension fund at the job and all this stuff is kind of going away? Or is it also because like, honestly, a lot of people, young people who didn't have that much experience in entrepreneurship, they got a lot of money in the past like five years, maybe through crypto or their startup blew up or they sold this online or something. And I guess like once people saw that a lot of younger people like maybe even below the age of 30 were making money, then it's almost like that seems more appealing. Yeah, I think it's a complex answer. I think there's two parts of it. One, we do to some degree live in, you know, we live in a more modern context where the speed to technology and actualizing revenue and making money and growing is a lot faster than it was 20 years ago, right? So there's that angle of it, which is I could just go into startup and make a quick hit. I think the other problem, which is driving this kind of like, you know, interest in startups is the fact that there's just not enough mentorship and tutoring in America, right? There was a time and period probably 25 years ago when you joined a company, you had leadership and the leadership wanted to actually develop talent within their companies and bring them up, right? Through management and leadership. And that's why you had 20, 25 year careers doing innovation within kind of a closed community. I think because, you know, today more people are about hitting revenue and constantly being pressured by hitting numbers or succeeding in some fashion. You just, you don't see that in corporate America anymore. So I think that is another reason why a lot of younger people are just going back to the heritage of this country, right? Which is I want to be an entrepreneur. So you see it almost just as a return away from that steady corporate career back to the entrepreneurial days of even like moving westward or something like that and staking a piece of land or something. Yeah, it's totally, it's like our parents, right? They all came to this, you know, this country and, you know, my mom was a gas station owner. You, your parents did a lot of hustling. And at the end of the day, they learned how to develop their skills and manage their businesses on their own. And they got help along the way. But I think, you know, I think people are going back to that now. Are you real quick, I got to ask as somebody who was in VC before there was memes about it and everybody knew what it was. And there was all these people, you know having TV shows like Silicon Valley and stuff that often mentions VCs. Are you glad that the industry you're in is way more mainstream exposed now? Or you're like, ah, I don't care. It was whatever, I'm an enemy. Yeah. Or you're like, ah, man, there's a lot of young BS. There's a lot more competition, right? Yeah. No, I think competition is good. And I think more people who have access to venture capital is not only good for those companies and those founders but it's also good for the economy at large. I mean, we're an innovation driven companies or country, excuse me. So, you know, I think that's what makes us really unique. So for, you know, our GDP cannot be constantly driven by existing resources and industries. They have to, you know there has to be innovation, right? For jobs and growth. So I'm very happy that it's gone mainstream. The downside of it going mainstream as to what you guys said is people don't really know what it is. And so it can get confusing. And then you have people who don't understand what it is. You start working with some of these founders and it could lead to a lot of kind of discussions and education. So I wish I was, you know I wish VCs would do more to educate founders in terms of the process and what it means. Like we're talking about today but that doesn't really happen because at times people are really busy. And so you end up, I mean I would say that's kind of one of the pitfalls. You have a lot of founders who don't know what venture capital is or what kind of the pressures that we're under. And because of the lack of that conversation or knowledge, you end up in situations where people have disagreements or misunderstandings. And I think, you know what you guys are doing is really awesome. It's just trying to get people to understand what venture capital is. I guess, what is like a common misconception that a young founder has when they're interfacing with somebody like yourself? They'll get free money. That's not gonna happen. Right. I've actually, I think I've been with you and I've met people that like, yeah we're like, you know, when they meet you they're like, oh, this is a VC. They're like, oh and then they like try to pitch you and stuff like that. Is that not the right thing to do? No, it's fine to have enthusiasm for whatever you're doing. But I think there's this misnomer that, you know if you're talking to VCs because keep in mind on the finance ladder, guys there's always different levels of financing, right? You go from traditional financing in the public markets to, you know to alternatives and banks with private equity. Then you have growth capital. Then you've got venture capital. And I think, you know venture capital is kind of like the minority. It's kind of like the minor leagues, right? Of getting to the world series. So because of that misnomer I think a lot of founders think it's the easiest place to start and you'll just get free money. When they don't realize that, you know we still have to do some level of research. No, it's not as simple as oh, this guy has access to money or he's rich himself. Like, he's going to give me I have this cool idea. I think the passion is really it's what gets you in the door. And what it gets, you know I think it gets us excited, right? Because it's innovation and ideas. I think where some of the early stage founders don't you know, where they kind of misstep or they don't really get into the right groove is they also don't understand how it's kind of like marrying your left brain and your right brain. They've got to go from the passion and the emotion of it into the analytics of it. They've got to marry that really well so that even if you're not a revenue company and you have an idea that there's some confidence that you'll be able to execute that idea, right? So venture guys like to gamble, right? I'll be honest with you about that because we don't really know we only know what we know, right? We don't, you know Right, when you're picking a company too you put a substantial volume of investment in that's your own money, other people's money you just can do as much research as you can. Right, I mean at that early level quote unquote early level you just don't have enough metrics to if any VC said they had enough metrics to de-risk that business I would say that they're idiots. I think you just don't know, right? Well, because there's so many different ways to do venture capital, right? Like if it's a big firm like we've talked before sometimes they'll invest in a whole bunch of companies and then just hope that a couple of them become unicorns, right? And blow up and explode and become these great big like kind of like I don't want to say lucky winners but you know, winners of them all but maybe for your guys' firm you guys invest in less companies, right? Like there's different ways to do it. Yeah, our model is we're much more selective so we'll invest in early stage companies on that spectrum of pre-C to series F but you know, we'll also disproportionately put in numbers into later stage companies that have more metrics that are a little bit more stable so that we can return the fund. But is there a couple early stage companies that you're pretty proud of how they turned out like you guys personally? Yeah, I think, you know, it depends on what you describe as proud, right? But I mean, we were pretty early with companies like, you know, Airbnb and Pinterest. We've made late stage investments with companies like SpaceX. When it comes to, you know, pre-seed seed companies as you guys know, we've been involved in things like Snorbel and FlexFrost and, you know, a whole host of different companies across different sectors. But, you know, going back to your original kind of thought process on the spray and pray model, I think, yeah, I think that like at the end of the day because you don't have metrics that early, you're really believing in the idea and you really have to be passionate. So that passion comes through. We love the founders for that. And I think, you know, it's like a funnel of that group. There's only need to be a certain subset that can execute and return revenue and really become a viable business to scale. And that there's a lot of factors in that. So, you know. Is it based off their Shark Tank presentation or is that just for TV? Like, is it that they don't make you pitches like that or they do? Yeah, are the pitches from companies, are they presented like Shark Tank? Do they have like this great big PowerPoint? I'm sure they have a PowerPoint. Oftentimes they're wearing some sort of outfit and have a billboard behind them. Hey, so what we've been doing the past six months, you know, I think that most of the founders, you know, when they pitch to us, they have presentations and they kind of go through it. But I think what I love about Shark Tank is that they're under pressure to really summarize their ideas. So when you're not under television or the spotlight, you might have 30, 40 minutes to go over everything. And you can make mistakes. If you have to be. Yeah, and you could be, it's pretty casual. And, you know, you have the opportunity to express yourself in different ways. I think on Shark Tank, what makes it really interesting is that they're made to summarize their entire business in less than like 10 or 15 minutes, which is really difficult for a lot of people. Yeah, they turn all these founders that could be not even extroverted personalities at all into like the oxy clean guy. Dude, yeah. Or like QVC or something, right? Like they're just trying to pitch, pitch, pitch. Like imagine if we started a company and someone said you have, you know, two or three minutes to give me, you know, who, what, why, where, and give me the, you know, you know, go from 50,000 square foot down to like an inch on your business. I mean, that's a pretty difficult pitch. Real quick, I want to switch gears a little bit. I want to talk about the little guys because I know that Legendary, obviously you guys have invested in companies that everybody, household names, everybody knows now. But now there's obviously a lot of companies that are on the smaller side where I think maybe a lot of people are thinking, oh, venture capitalists, that sounds like they're only dealing with $500,000 or a million dollars or $5 million. Like what about the $10,000, the $25,000 investments? Do those exist in the VC world? And like, how common are they? And what do you guys as a firm, do you guys specialize in those or yes or no? I guess. Dude, that's a great question. I have so many founders who ask us what our average check size, right, for earlies are. Of the checks you're writing to give to a founder. You know, if you're an early stage company, what kind of check size do we write? I think that's the wrong way of answering it or the wrong question to ask because I think every deal is unique to the deal. So there might be early stage companies that deserve a quarter million dollars. There might be ones that deserve $25,000. It really depends on the psychographics and the relationship and how much, you know, you're enthusiastic about that founder, right, because you don't have metrics and what you think that business can do. So, you know, unlike later stage companies where we have like a list of things that we go through to evaluate the company. When you're that early, you just can't get through that. You know what I mean? So it comes down to, you know, people. It comes down to the idea. It comes out, things like addressable market. So for example, you know, if you're building the next generation AI tech that might have, you know, very broad consequences on the industry. I mean, that might deserve a bigger check simply because it might deliver a bigger return at some point. Is that something that... You can use it across a number of different... Yeah, you have more customers who could use it, right? But if you're building something that's like, you know, really small, that's very specific, you know, you might want to put in a smaller check to see how it goes. But that's not to say that a very specific, focused, you know, company on a specific industry, for example, will do poorly. There's a lot of companies out there that fit a niche that become multi-billion dollar companies just because no one else can do it. So it's not an exact science. So I think in the early stages, you know, to your points, it really comes down to the people. And real quick, like what about the types of business, like maybe a lot of people are interested in this space, but they're thinking, oh, they only want to invest in tech because tech is so hot and big. But then like, you guys actually do package consumer goods, which is like, for example, Flex Frost, which is an ice cream brand. It's a healthy ice cream brand. This is something that a lot of people can start because the guy who started it young, he wasn't like a rich guy himself when he started it. Yeah, I think this goes back to the notion of ventures, right? What does notion mean? Like, what does venture mean? I think for me, venture for us means investing in entrepreneurs who build things that actually have some sort of a creative value. And it could be anything. It could be anything, right? But I think there's this kind of common general idea that venture is associated with pure tech, and that's not the case. Is that because of popular pop culture, like Silicon Valley and like Big Bang Theory? I mean, I guess Shark Tank is more CPG, right? Consumer packaged goods, maybe, right? Because I've seen they invested in those. Well, Shark Tank has to be CPG because like what are you going to show on television? You can't show AI. How are you going to show a block? How the hell are you going to show a blockchain on television? Does that make sense? Like it's completely conceptual, you know what I mean? And the audience wouldn't understand it, and they wouldn't want to show that proprietary info out on the thing, right? So I guess, yeah, you're right. But you're right that in people's minds, when they're hearing venture capital, they might think like angel investment is more CPG in the average person's mind, right? Totally. And then VC has to be tech. Yeah, we like a diversified portfolio. So we'd like, you know, we pretty much invest in anything that we think can actually grow and generate returns. And we, you know, there's different reasons why we like, again, it's all unique, but we'd like CPG businesses because at the end of the day, they're very asset heavy. You mean like they have real things, like real things, like real products. Yeah, they have inventory. They literally have warehouses full of this thing. Right, or products like G Fuel, right? As you guys are aware of. Yeah, I mean, on the one hand, that inventory and those assets is a blessing. It's also, you know, a curse at times, right? Because it requires more money to build that business. But at least you have something, right? You know, as opposed to tech companies that are very asset light and that could pose, and there's benefits and liabilities for both. I mean, right now, if you look at, you know, FTX and some of these companies that are having issues, I mean, none of them are asset backed. So when they fall, they completely fall. I mean, there's nothing to go after, right? In terms of recovering some benefits for their investors and their community. I feel like a way to look at it is like, and I think the way it sounded was that, oh, if just because you write a small check to a company, that means you don't believe in them as much. But I think the point is like the fact that you guys did all your due diligence, looked into their background and still decided to be like, yo, this is still worth something. Let's give you some money. Yeah, that's a huge, that shows belief right there. Because how do you, how else can you show belief in a startup anything more than actually investing in them? Yeah, we're, I think our culture is really unique in the sense that, to your point, Drew, like we don't want to just give checks out for the sake of giving checks. What we want to do is we want to back a really great founder and we want to grow with them over a period of time. So to your point, if we give them a $25,000 check, that doesn't mean we're not going to give you a quarter million dollar check. We just kind of want you to grow and not, you know, get into a situation where you're so overwhelmed. Because, you know, growing is great, but growing too fast is also problematic, correct? You might not be able to scale to actualize some of those benefits and then you completely, you know, pancake in that. And real quick, before we get into a lot of the questions about like, oh, like, you know, diversity in VCs and Asians in VC, in the VC world. Last thing I want to ask is like, how about the VC to founder relationship? Can you shed some light on that? Because once you give me, let's say you give our startup $25,000, right? What is our relationship now? Are you like mentoring me? Are you helping me a lot? Are you, if you, are you helping me less or does it depend on your expertise as well? Yeah, I think, yeah, obviously mentoring and giving advice is part of it, but I guess there's two schools of thoughts on this, right? And I'll just be honest with you, bros. One school of thought is, okay, now that I'm an investor, my entire role is to basically play raw rock, right? You mean, cheer this company on, right? It doesn't really matter what they do. I'm a complete supporter, you know, at least in terms of decisions and whatnot. Like a sports fan. Right, exactly, like a sports fan. The other school of thought is, if you really want to mentor and support the company, it's not just about the good, but it's also about the bad. So you want to give them some constructive criticism. And I think that that's where, then you see another layer of founders kind of drop off. I think that there is a group of founders who can handle constructive criticism. And those are the ones that you want to really stick with. I think the ones that can't are probably not, you know, equipped at this stage in their life to really build a serious business. And that's just my personal opinion. All right, this gets me to one more point. There was a great segue of some people, maybe in your circle have called you the Gordon Ramsay of the venture capital world. I mean, your team, why is that? Because you seem so mild-mannered and nice and here, but like, I guess, and not that Gordon Ramsay's not nice, but he's super like, his temper's crazy. Yeah, I just try to keep it legit with the people that we work with. I don't want to hold anything back. I'm a big believer. It's kind of like the way my mom kind of raised me. If you really love somebody and you really care about what you're doing, because obviously like we're not going to give you money unless we actually believe in you. So do I really want to be a cheerleader? Would I rather just jump into a conversation and give them my direct, honest, kind of authentic opinion? That's great. Unfortunately, some people, again, can't handle constructive criticism. And that's not to say that I'm negative or I'm trying to downplay something. But what I'm trying to do is, this goes back to like culture, right? Like I think 20 years ago, I certainly grew up during a time when mentorship and tutoring and supporting was more synonymous with individuals kind of growing up and learning how to do things on the fly, right? I think this generation at times is really more about, okay, I don't get it. So let me go and help you do it. And then I've learned from it. So there's a lot of different factors here. But in my opinion, I'd rather just go and like legit tell them exactly what they're doing right or wrong. And if they don't like it, they could just off or they could just do it. But at the end of the day, it's their decision. You're about keeping it direct. Yeah, yeah. You're not trying to hurt people's feelings, but you're not trying to spare people's feelings. Yeah, I think it's the greatest form of love and care when you could be honest with somebody and tell them, hey, look, privately, these are the things that we feel or I feel or whatever it might be, or the things that are gonna help you become successful. And the difference is a lot of the times when friends are critiquing other friends, that friend that's critiquing isn't coming from a place of more experience or higher knowledge or a position of power and leverage. But you're coming from this place of being like, listen, we already did the research on you guys. We want you to succeed. We're hoping you to succeed. So when I tell you and criticize you, you know right off the bat, there is no way I'm trying to break you down. I care. I think this mentality and the style is also kind of determined on the VC background, right? So if you're a VC who only worked in the finance business, then obviously what else are you gonna say other than, hey, your numbers look like this. Maybe you should be doing these things and we love what you're doing. I think if you're a VC that comes from an operating background, so a lot of us at my company, at our firm, excuse me, there are entrepreneurs and previous startup guys who've exited businesses. When you have that operating experience and you translate that, I think it's a different experience if that makes any sense. So I don't view myself necessarily as an investor when I invest in a company per se. I think I'm kind of like a fellow founder working alongside them. And if I'm a fellow founder working with them, I'm not gonna hold anything back if that makes any sense. So if we were working together, I would want to be honest about the things that we really need to do to really make some progress versus just showing up and saying, oh, here's the great things that you're doing. Oh, you can kind of improve some of these things now. Talk to me in a couple months. Is there a pretty big variance in the way that VCs talk with their founders? Some people are really hands-off. Pretty much if they're gonna give a founder money, they wanna have their two cents heard, right? No, I actually think it's the opposite. I think most VCs are very hands-off. I mean, I don't know what percentage, I don't have the statistics. I don't know what percent, out of the 1,000 VCs globally, probably about 600 or 700 operating in the Americas. I don't know what percentage of them are actually operators or former founder operators or that have any type of operating experience. It'd be fair for me to guess that's fairly low, right? Most of these fund managers at VC firms are coming from financial institutions. They have MBAs. They went to Harvard, whatever, and they've never built a business. They've never exited a business. They've never gone through the crying at nights, you know what I mean, and all this kind of stuff. So I think that they're probably simply gonna say good things to these founders. For example, we were not investors in FTX, but that would have probably been a different type of conversation I would have had with Sam versus probably a lot of their other VC firms that probably just said a lot of great things to him. Right, they're probably like, you're killing it. Right, because at the end of the day, all they care about is making sure that their investment is being marked up. And that's another thing, right? So in the VC game, is the value of your investment based on something that's marked up, meaning you see how it goes up in the private markets in terms of value, or do you see your value in terms of how much you generate actually, right? In cash, you know, back to your investors. So if you look at FTX, I mean, I'm sure all the VCs were talking great to him like he was, you know, the next, you know, white Jesus. But at the end of the day, right, because they were getting the markups, but at the end of the day, it pancaked and they had to write off the entire investment. So I wonder how they, so I don't know if that's necessarily a good relationship. I'd rather, it's like dating. So you're basically saying that these founders, they need the Gordon Ramsey of VC. Yeah, dude. Like you're a advocate for your own style. Yeah, because I think it's the most genuine and honest. I think if you really care about someone, you just get up all in it. You know what I mean? You want to help them out. Right. Hey, so you know what? If they get your investment, you know, they're going to get some Jason Kim. They're going to get some Jason Kim loving you out. Yeah, some tough loving. Yeah, they're going to get some tough loving, like tough Asian bro loving. How does a founder like out there, let's just say there's a founder watching this right now. How do they like become somebody that's worthy of investment? Like is it, do you just see it in them? Or are you judging their body language? Can they like email you? I'm not saying that everybody should email you, but I guess like how do they even get to that point where they can feel confident to present it to you or that you guys will even take their presentation? You know what I mean? Yeah, I, you know, first of all, anybody can email us or contact our partners. I mean, we do get a lot of deal flow. So I mean, we look at as much as we possibly can, but I will tell you, it's interesting for me, one of the attributes that I look at when I hear pitches are people who understand why their businesses are problematic versus great. So like, I'll tell you bros, in the 10 years I've been doing this, I can't tell you how many times, you know, companies and founders have pitched us and all they do is talk about how great their opportunity, the company is, their business idea is, what the opportunity is. It's very rare for me to meet a founder that'll be honest and humble and say, look, I've got this really great concept. I'm working my ass off, I need a little bit of help and here are all the problems that I have. I don't know how to fix some of these problems, but if you can, then maybe we can make a good team. I admire people who say that because it's very, it's not part of the natural human condition for us to say the things that we're not good at. But I also believe that's with merit because if you know what you're not good at, you know you could fix that and become great. And I just think that that's not something in the community. It's not culturally, I don't know why, but I think there's a lot of kids today who are just afraid of saying it. It's like- Well, I think it might- Everybody kind of knows their weak spots, but whether they're willing to vocalize it and point it out, right? Versus you guys like actually doing the due diligence and being like, oh, now I found this. Yeah, I feel like it comes from the culture of sales, kind of. I'm not saying that there's nothing wrong with sales. We all work sales jobs at some point, but it seems like a lot of people, they just want to sell it hard. And they're just like, this is great. This is great. Here's why. Look, I'm cool. I'm smart. I came from this and this school. And then, yeah. But that mentality works if you're selling a product or a piece of software, right? If you're trying to get investors to help you partner, to build a business with you over a 10-year period, it's like dating. You've got to be honest with them, right? It's not a wham, bam, thank you, man, right? I'm not going to go take them out for drinks and then the next two days we're getting married. Well, you've got to get to know each other and be like, hey, look, this is my strengths and weaknesses. And are you in with me or not, right? Are we doing this or not? And it's just that doesn't occur, right? So you guys, right. A VC relationship with a founder is not a hookup. It is a marriage. Yeah, totally. There's no way it could be a hookup, right? But the problem right now is that in the community, I think for the last couple of years before the economy got really bad, everybody was just doing hookups, right? That was the VC ecosystem. Most were just doing hookups. But that was partially because it was a bull market and everything was going good. There was money flowing. So then people were like, oh, this is fun. This person sounds cool. And then the hookup culture really infiltrated the VC culture. That is totally, yeah, yeah. Oh my gosh. But I don't think you can, I mean, but to me that's, you know, it's just not a long-term type of relationship that could work, right? Because every VC knows that if you invest in a company, it's going to take six, seven years to get at, minimally to get out of that investment. So that's a marriage to me, guys. It's not a hookup. All right, moving on to the last section of this talk, because it's been, I feel like it's been so even insightful, even to us, even though we've had conversations with you about this before. It's even like hearing all the new analogies and things like that. But I guess maybe by now some people are wondering like, why are we sitting down talking with you? Like, how are the fungos involved in all of this? And what does this all mean as far as like our relationship? Yeah, I think, you know, one of the things that's really interesting about you guys is you're just not, you know, kind of in entertainment and media, right? You guys are entrepreneurs who have like very strong relationships with kind of this next generation of innovators in the community. And so, you know, our firm thought it was really interesting. First of all, I love you guys to death, right? We're all bros. Two, you know, our firm is one of the few, I think, minority-led firms as a senior partner at the firm. There's not a lot of Asians in venture capital at various levels. And three, you know, the combination of the two, I thought was a really good idea to work with guys like you, just so that we can help, you know, kind of upcoming Asian entrepreneurs in the industry. Thank you. Well, you know, it's been really dope to be a part of it. And it's like a whole new world opened up to us. And interestingly enough, there's not a lot of Asians in VC, but there actually are a lot of Asian founders, right? Totally. Yeah. So explain to us why maybe it seems like that there's a lot of Asians starting businesses, starting companies in tech, et cetera, et cetera. We know this, but not as many Asian venture capitalists and why that may be. Or maybe we don't have to only narrow it down to Asian. I mean, just maybe minority in general, you know, why there's not as many minority VCs out there on the capitalization side, right? They're building apps and whatever this and that. I mean, that's a really interesting question. I do think at a macro level, there are a lot of Asians in the community on both sides of the ecosystem, both on the capitalization side to your point, as well as founders. In terms of penetration, meaning why don't we see more high end Asian VCs that are very publicly known that we're kind of asking or, you know, early stage founders that are making it to unicorn status. I just think it's just an evolution of, you know, our race, right? And kind of going from being the typical stereotypical Asian who just works hard all the time. Right, STEM job, whether it's a doctor. Being a doctor or a lawyer or whatever it might be. Which there's nothing wrong with. But exactly. But that is kind of like art. You were a lawyer actually. Right, yeah. Wait. Right, but it's breaking out of that stereotypical rule of being good, quiet, smart Asians and going back into entrepreneurialism and then finding a voice in that entrepreneur. That makes any sense. It's very difficult for Asians to go and, you know, to say things that they feel that sometimes even on their chest, right? Because it's our culture to be very respectful and to, you know what I mean? To kind of internalize a lot of things. Yeah, exactly. Whereas other people they send to externalize it. Yeah, exactly. We're not FOMO, right? We're more about, to some degree, I'm not making a judgment on any other particular race, color, you know, religion, creed or whatnot. But I think Asians specifically are really known for being very practical, being very, very execution focused. You know, we don't like a lot of attention and we just like to work hard and get things done. And I don't know if that necessarily mixes with the VC culture, right? Where you have hundreds of startup kids running around the West Coast screaming me, me, me, me. Would you say that the VC culture is very American in a way? Like if we're trying to draw it to how a lot of us are raised by immigrant kids. So if your parents are immigrants, no doubt you have some of that culture in you, right? Totally. And you operate under that. A lot of us have taken trips back to Asia. So maybe some of us has worked in Asia. But I guess like, is it possible to say like the VC culture, because it's so strong in America that it is very American based. It's very confidence driven. It's very like being outspoken, which just drives almost, sometimes it feels like opposite to traditional Asian culture. Yeah, I think this goes back to, you know, if you look at the VC ecosystem in the world, clearly America is a very industrialized, mature economy for it, right? Going back to what we said earlier, America is the greatest startup in the world. So that lives in our culture. It lives in our heritage. It lives in our spirit. I think that's starting to rub off on other countries that are now coming in into an industrial age. Right, right, right. Maybe they're a couple of decades, a century behind. Right, but I mean, if you look at China, there's amazing group of entrepreneurs, but that system is going to be a little bit different than America, right? There, I think there's going to be more of an attention to, you know, especially in South Asia, to executing things, right? It's not going to be about, it's going to be what I'm essentially saying is that it's less about ideas and it's more about the business operations, right? And the execution. I do think, and this is a criticism, I think of America, is that in the current ecosystem, we have a lot more ideas than execution in this environment. Could we use this analogy, and you judge this analogy for me, that Asians in America, as far as like being VCs go, we're like in the early stage. Like what stage would we be at? Yeah, you know, I would- Is not pre-seed? No, no, no. I'd probably say we're like, you know, seed. Does that make sense? I don't know if we're pre-seed. I wouldn't say that we're, you know, pre-A or at the A. So Asians as a company. I guess one thing I wanted to bring up, because you know, your mom ran a gas station, right? Totally, yeah. And I guess a lot of Asians that I know that are even second gen, they're still sort of locked into that mindset of like, I'm going to get rich just owning 10 gas stations. Whereas you actually transitioned into this very like high-end field of VC. Like what made you do that rather than just owning like 30 gas stations? Because you know, you can make a lot of money doing that too, but it's very like nitty gritty. So if I'm going to be a little self-reflective, I think my mom is actually a lot, my parents were a lot more successful than I was because they had a lot less resources and they were able to build a business and generate revenue, right? And take care of a family that was totally new. It was incremental. They didn't get help in doing that. Whereas I think in my generation, I had some level of resources available to me, right? Going to a better school or getting a job or doing this or doing that. I think the current generation, you know, has more of those resources. So if anything, you know, I think, you know, I hope that the entrepreneurialism in this country can equate to execution because, you know, you're seeing a lot of other international companies where kids are just executing them, right? And here at this country, sometimes it's more about ideas and FOMO than it is about execution. So you're running into the risk where we might lose, America might lose some of our competitiveness, right? Because you have other countries that are just coming into age. I guess for anybody that wants to like pitch you an idea, what should they do? Oh, they can email us. I mean, go to our website. We've got questionnaires on our website. So just we can get to know you up front. Right. Typically when information comes into us, you know, our team, we have an early stage team that'll look at it and evaluate it. You know, I see them all the time. So I just kind of do, you know, not to spray and pray, but you know, if something strikes me as interesting, I'll jump into it. So this kind of misnomer that senior partners never look at early stage companies is false. I look at things randomly all the time, excuse me, all the time. And then if we like them, we'll schedule a call and we don't really care what their backgrounds are. We want to get to know who they are. I guess advice for any, not just young, but anybody out there who's like, yeah, I'm starting this business and man, I could really use some funding. I think I'm good for, just general advice for them. Yeah. My first advice is that if you're a first time entrepreneur, not a second time or three time, you know, founder, you know, with some sort of track record, it's probably best to build a business as long as you can without venture money. Okay. I know that sounds crazy guys, right? So don't seek investors as the first thing of your first business. Why? Is it because you're going to give up so much of your company? Is it? Well, you might not even get the investment anyways. Well, there's a couple of reasons. One is if it's your first time, you actually want to learn through the process, right? So it's not like you're taking a job at corporate America somewhere. But Jason, Jason, I don't want to learn. I just, I just want to make money. Yeah. I want to grow. Well, you can't make money unless you actually understand how to operate your business. Right? So first, some of it is just learning intensive, right? Because it's your first one. The second part of it is that it's not really even about other investors making money. You just want more, I think, freedom and less stress of operating your company, right? I, you know, if you get investors, it's not that they're going to be critical. I think when you have investors, you have another layer of stress, which is you're not just building your own business. You're also worried about what you could do for them, right? Or how they're perceiving you. So, you know, imagine, you know, imagine going to college and it's not just you having to have, you know, make your parents happy. But it's, you're also now making uncles and nieces and aunts and cousins. You know what I mean? There's just too many, there's too much expectation and too much pressure. Finally, I think that, you know, financially, if you could build your business to a stable revenue and profit, the longer that goes, the more you'll actually see in return and personal wealth, right? So in this country, you know, you can't really build a better socio kind of economic for, you know, life for yourself unless you actually have some returns, right? So there's this big argument, you know, is it, you know, is it government that in public policy that makes your life better? Is it kind of the social entitlement welfare environment that can effectuate your life? Or is it? So I'm a big believer that it's through economic development that you can really become prosperous, right? And have a say in this community. So I just think that first time founders should go as long as they can without venture capital. It doesn't really matter, loans, whatever it might be, because I think the longer they go, the less pressure they have, they can grow on their own terms. And when they do exit, they might end up with a little bit more money, you know what I mean? For themselves. And by exit, you mean, like maybe sell their company, sell the company, or even get investments later in the stage of the company, right? Because if you take investment early on, you're giving up larger chunks of your company. Correct, right? If you do it later, you'll probably give up less of it. But, you know, so it comes down to stamina, right? And again, how much do you believe in your company, right? If there's some serious founders out there who believe in it so much, you know, they'll go, they won't take a penny from anybody. I mean, you've seen those guys before, right? You guys are independent entrepreneurs. You guys are taking a lot of investments. You guys do the same thing. And then there are people who are less passionate, or, you know, less maybe, you know, they might believe in their businesses less, so they take more money up front. But again, I'm not making a judgment. In this particular case, again, it depends on the type of company that you're trying to build. If you're building a tech company that wants to address, you know, 300 million people, and that's your market, you're going to need some capital up front. If you're building, you know, a CPG business and expected $40 million in top line revenue, you might want to go as long as you possibly can without getting venture money. Can you give us any insight on the wackiest idea that you ever heard? Because a lot of people probably are like, yo, man, you get to see everything. You get to see good ideas, medium ideas, some horrible ideas. How about wackiest idea that you even looked at and like gave some thought? Yeah, the only thing that comes to mind, because there's so much to go through, but great question. I saw a company that actually built years ago, a woman's, this is, you know, obviously we invest in tech, but this was a hybrid and a CPG business. They built a woman's heel with transforming heels and things like that. So it's kind of a thing. You mean a high heel shoe and the heel changes color? Yeah, the shoe changes from a heel to a flat, right? Like a transformer. It's basically a transforming shoe. Oh. So I thought that was kind of interesting. I mean, it was functionally interesting, but I didn't think it would take off because it's just so hard to, I mean, this thing looked like by the time it transformed in, it looked like, you know, skateboard shoes or something. Are there any businesses that you know of that you guys totally passed on that ended up doing really well? Like smaller business that you're like, ah, I do regret that or I should have seen that or honestly, no, they got like, I couldn't have seen it coming. Yeah, I mean, there's, I don't know. I mean, I guess there are a few that I regret just because I thought they were really great companies and I didn't see it coming. I don't know if I regret any investments in terms of exits because a lot of the companies, keep in mind at a venture firm, we have a tenure horizon. And so something I regretted eight years ago still has not gone liquid, if that makes any sense, right? So I don't know, you know what I mean? But I do, you know, I think the only company in recent times that I regret was probably, you know, the Chinese EV company, I think it's called Polestar. Polestar, yeah. Yeah, yeah. So we had an opportunity to get involved with them a number of years ago and I didn't think that they would do so well, right? In the electric vehicle market and they've done pretty well, right? They've, you know, since then they've gone public, they've grown, they're maintaining their market capitalization. So they're doing pretty well, right? So that's one that I was like kind of surprised by because that was an international company, you know, but there's been plenty of companies that we've passed on that have marked up and done really well in the private realm, but it remains to be seen, right? I mean, if you look at a lot of the hot companies in the last five years, you know, they've all kind of done well going up and then all of a sudden at the end when people really need to cash out and make money, they've all pancaked. Like WeWork, you know what I mean? All of them, right? They're in that really interesting class of companies. They're really great at FOMOing, you know, financial investments, but, you know, when the rubber hits the road, they've got to hold their own, right? And when it's time for that, when it came time to give birth, it was, yeah, it was, it was a C-section and it was difficult. All right, man. I think that that's actually a good place to stop because I think, and for anybody who's made it this far in the video, I think there's so many more videos to make and I think there's more videos to make with other VCs, other founders, other people. So we're probably going to end it right here. I got one last question for Jason because I know Jason, this is probably the calmest I've ever seen you. Would you ever do a show where you are the Gordon Ramsey of venture and then like have that be more, you know what I mean? Like for the world to see versus just for small people. I've always thought it would be interesting to work with you bros on not, the thing about Shark Tank that I love is that, you know, it puts people under the gun, right? It's like, it's so pressure packed. They got like 15 minutes to, which is not enough time to explain what they're doing and then someone just says yes or no. I think it'd be interesting is to work with you bros or somebody for us to actually engage founders and go through the process of negotiating a deal so people can see what that's actually like. That would be kind of crazy, right? That should be our next episode. You mean you have, we'll put a founder in front of you that you kind of know about. And then we all talk to them and we figure out how to make a deal together, right? That to me is interesting. But part of that is you, what, ripping into them? You guys are making me really like, you got to show that side. It's an asshole. Because you didn't really get to show that side today. Yeah, because we're just hanging out as bros, right? Talking about this stuff. But I think that would be kind of interesting, right? Which is you're putting a founder, you know, under the lens. But at the same time, you're testing his abilities to show his strengths and weaknesses. And, you know, to me, you know, like I said, Shark Tank is interesting because it's a yes or no coming out, right, to some degree. I think life isn't so simple as yes or no. You got to get through the process. And I think a lot of founders are curious about what that's like, right? I can't, you know, I have so many founders who are always asking me, you know, if I pitch to you and I get to know you, what is your process like? And the truth is that there's actually no clear answer to that process. It's just a mixed bag of nuts. I'm a big believer that, you know, almost every founder in this country could get funded if they find the right people and they engage them the right way. Does that make sense? Okay. Wow, you're kind of saying you're giving a lot of hope. Yeah, you're saying everybody has a soulmate out there. It's just a matter of it really comes down to the details, right? If I engage, yeah, exactly. If I engage a founder and I really like them, it's never a no. That's what they don't realize. It's how do we make it a yes? And can we work together to make it a yes? And if we can't and you're not willing to play that game or you're not capable of doing it, right, or having that discourse, then, you know, it's always going to be a no, right? Right, right. Because at the end of the day, investing is something the founder is giving up some equity for the cash influx and the knowledge influx and the network influx, right? All right, everybody, we're going to wrap it up right there. That was our first episode of Upside Mindset with Jason Kim. This is a new series. I mean, we've had other episodes of Upside Mindset, but as you know, this is the series where we talk about business. We talk to successful individuals or people who are trying to become successful, people with some knowledge base. So hopefully you found that video very helpful and insightful because even, you know, knowing Jason, I still found this conversation insightful again, and I loved it. So you let us know in the comments down below what you guys learned. Check out Legendary Ventures in the link down below. And we just have so much more to talk about. But thank you so much for watching Upside Mindset. And until next time, everybody, we out.