E1: Joel Karacozoff on Founding Balto, Getting Acquired, Syndicate Investing | YC W19

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Matt Joseph: Welcome to the Superconnector Podcast. I am Matt Joseph, your host. My guest today is Joel Karacozoff, a former D1 college football player who founded a fantasy sports company and sold it to a publicly traded live sports streaming company. Joel, welcome to the pod.

Joel Karacozoff: I really appreciate you having me here.

Matt Joseph: I appreciate you taking the time out. Why don't we start with your journey from college football to starting your first company? How did that go for you?

Joel Karacozoff: So outta college I started working for a number of early stage startups. I took an attempt a couple years before we started Balto at doing a, think about it like Kickstarter for college savings.

It was called TuitionSafe with a Buddy I was working with at a company called Personal Capital. And that was the first real experience that I ever had. [00:01:00] We uh, gave it our best shot, and I think failed spectacularly in a couple different ways. But it gave me the taste and it gave me a little bit of the experience and confidence to really do it again.

And so after that experience, I went and worked for another YC company and then met my co-founders and, and the rest of it was history.

Matt Joseph: Tell me about the origin story of Balto then let's just continue down that line. How did you get started with it?

Joel Karacozoff: So we're playing flag football. Typically after a game we play Tuesday nights, we would go grab a beer following the game. And leading up to that game, I had been ideating on a couple different startup ideas. One that was in the sports betting space, and it was essentially a FinTech app to help with social betting.

So the context here was a bunch of my buddies and I would love to make one-off bets. You know, are they gonna score a touchdown here? Who's gonna win that game? But we had no real tracking mechanism for that. And so a lot of those would just kind of fall to the wayside, even though I was of course always correct and my friends were always wrong, I was like, what if I just created a little bit of an app that helped us to aggregate and figure out payouts at the end of every month?

So I started doing some research on [00:02:00] that and started just sharing that with some of the buddies on the flag football team, and two of the guys my then soon to be co-founders, Nick and Spencer said, " Hey man, that's really interesting. We're actually building a gaming platform and we would love to have a financial aspect to that." Right? This idea of social betting.

And so over beers that night, we kept going back and forth talking about how I thought about this app working, how it fits into the ecosystem that they were building. And about an hour later we said, "Hey, let's get together next week. Let's sit down, let's go back through this and see if it makes sense."

That's exactly what we did, and it was a really good fit. You know, I had a technical background as a self-taught developer. Spencer, our head of growth was coming from Google. And then Nick, our CEO had just taken an attempt on a previous startup and pivoted actually to this idea. And so we said, "Hey, we've got all the components here, right?" We had like the leader, the growth guy, and the tech guy. And so we came together and started building Balto from there.

Matt Joseph: Let's zoom out a little bit and talk about the fantasy sports industry as a whole. One of the things I found fascinating is just how big the industry actually is. I mean, I'm a [00:03:00] sports junkie but the industry reports I read said that in 2024, it's a $33 billion business, and that by 2029 it'll be a $63 billion business.

So this is a, a huge industry, probably a lot bigger than a lot of people might think it is. For you coming into it, what did you see as the opportunity at the beginning and where do you feel like the industry is now?

Joel Karacozoff: When we first started working on this idea, we were coming in at a time that the industry was completely changing. Not just in terms of how NIL rules work now in college sports, but also the adoption of sports betting. And so that's where we really saw our targets was, hey, if the United States as a whole, and it was state by state, is gonna adopt sports betting, there's gonna be all of these ancillary services that need to be built in order to support this. And so when you think about sports gaming as a whole, we kind of think about it in three separate buckets. The bucket that we worked in was called free to play gaming.

Then you have fantasy sports and then you have sports betting. So think free to play gaming are games you enter into typically these large like massive multiplayer games. So things like March [00:04:00]Madness Pools, Pick 'Ems, Survivor Pools. Those are the type of games that we began building, but was all with the intent to move them over to a sports book.

And so our business model was actually very focused on emerging states that were allowing sports betting. By having them play our free to play games and then we would give them offers to then go join a sports book. So it was a really, really interesting time to be in sports betting. And fantasy itself was also evolving as well.

It was kind of around the time where your more traditional players like DraftKings and FanDuel were, although that they own the market, were starting to see cracks in kind of their business model with new players like Prize Picks and Underdog Fantasy, which are companies that actually took fantasy sports and melted them down into this very simple concept, which is like fantasy sports doesn't have to be this super complex pick a bunch of different players and have these teams.

What they said was like, based on the rules, all you need to have are two players on two different teams. And at the time you couldn't use what are called actuals. So you couldn't use things, use things like total yards or touchdowns, [00:05:00] but you could combine things together to create, you know " fantasy points" and do what was very synonymous with sports betting, but that actually abided by the rules of the law. And so that's what we wanted to go after. And so as we started, we started very focused on this kind of free to play gaming ecosystem, these massive multiplayer games. But as we got more feedback, more users, we started to recognize that there's other areas this could expand into.

And kind of one really fun project that we did early on that was kind of like a catalyst for us actually getting into Y Combinator. It was right around the final season of Game of Thrones. And so we took this concept and we said, Hey, "what if we applied a game to Game of Thrones?" And we actually created what was called a dead or alive pool where we had players come every single week and they would decide what characters and Game of Thrones would end up dying or living at the end of that episode.

We actually put it on ProductHunt and Got a ton of users from that experience, which was really cool. But we started to see that like, you know, just this type of fantasy gaming has other applications. And although we never got there, we started looking at other reality events. You could think like reality tv, [00:06:00] similar to how sports are Right for the most part, somewhat unscripted.

Award shows were a really cool one that we wanted to get into, right? So think of like the Grammys, who's gonna win or lose certain awards. But we did stay in our lane. We stayed focused on sports for that time being. But it was just a cool experience to highlight that there were a lot of different opportunities.

Matt Joseph: I love that framing because basically you're kind of looking at gaming almost as, or fantasy sports almost as a subset of broader gaming. And you can tap into all other forms of entertainment and pop culture with this format. Well, you mentioned Y Combinator and that's something you and I share and I want to learn more about what your experience was with YC and then we could talk a little bit about the fundraising process.

Joel Karacozoff: So very fortunate be to be part of the Winter 19 batch. You know, we had one of those. I think everyone's journey there is a little bit different. When we first considered applying, we actually didn't because we didn't feel like we had what we needed in order to get accepted and by that,

we were pre-product, pre-users pre-traction And so we decided to take a step back, "Hey, let's go build a product. Let's [00:07:00] get some users and some feedback. And then let's go apply." So what was interesting about that is it didn't quite time up with the application process that they have. So we ended up applying extremely late, probably within a few weeks of when the batch kicked off, which was in January.

But what we did have finally was we had a product and we had users and we had traction. So we launched our first game the end of December. We had 1500 users sign up within 24 hours. And that gave us the belief and confidence that, hey, we actually really have something here. So we went to Y Combinator, let them know who we are, what we were doing.

And this little bit of traction that we had gotten and, you know, thank you Michael Seibel, the stars aligned that day and they seemed to like what we were working on. They brought us in for an interview and then we got accepted and started the program within a month of actually putting in an application.

And the experience overall was phenomenal. You know, I think once you get into a program like that, you just recognize the quality of talent that's coming through. It makes you a better person. It makes the company a better company. You know, there's this competitive nature having been an athlete that, you know, I [00:08:00] wanted to succeed.

And so working with other super high level performers definitely accelerated us in a way that I don't think you could do on your own. So we just dug our heels in for three months, continued developing products hit Demo Day, which was at the exact same time, March Madness released. So we had a March Madness game released in conjunction with Demo Day, which was kind of hilarious because we were literally like coding it at the Demo Day event just to make sure that all the scores were were correct for that, those games that day. And then we got on the fundraising trail, which was we'll talk about here in a second was an interesting process for us.

Matt Joseph: I cannot imagine doing a product launch while doing Demo Day. I mean, that is. That is epic, man. Kudos to you for figuring that out. Okay. So let's, let's talk about the round then . Obviously having an opportunity to pitch at Demo Day does open up a lot of doors, but it's never easy. Tell me a little bit about what your fundraising journey was like.

Joel Karacozoff: Before I even go in kudos and hats off to my CEO at the time, Nick, it was grueling. We were not one of the companies as much as we [00:09:00] had the aspirations of like, Hey, let's do this, like. Three weeks, super time boxed, we'll hit all the major players, we'll get all of these offers and then we'll decide, you know, who's gonna, no, didn't work anything like that.

From the start, you know, we pitched ourselves as a free to play gaming company, and I can just, you can only imagine the eyebrow raises you get from VCs when you start with something called free to play, right? They're trying to make money and I'm giving away free games here. So it was a grueling journey, you know, we had to find very specific partners that either understood the space we were working in or were just really big believers of our ability to pull something off like this. And I mean, we took no's to the chin left and right, and unfortunately for us, it wasn't this, you know, nice succinct scheduled raise. We were always raising and we never stopped until the day we actually got acquired because it, it required us to continue raising in order to keep the operation running.

And so our fundraising process was more collecting a check every couple months from someone who we had to put a lot of time and effort into to get them to really understand and get them on board. [00:10:00] Up until the day Balto got acquired. We were still fundraising in order to keep the doors open.

Matt Joseph: The resiliency required to pull that off is really incredible. How long of a timeframe was that where you were just going check to check?

Joel Karacozoff: So from when we got into YC, the beginning of winter 19 was our batch so starting in January, we operated for about 18 months until the acquisition. And we were fundraising the entire period, the entire 18 months. We didn't stop. And again, depending on who we talked to, you know, some conversations happened faster than others.

And for anyone who's gone through the fundraising process, it can be torturous at times. But you know, what we realized is that if we wanted to keep this thing going, we had to get more money in the door. So it wasn't a matter of giving up, right? It was, we just gotta make it happen and do it within the resources that we had.

We were the cockroaches. We were like, no, we just need to stick around long enough to figure this out. Find product market fit, or find a, find the right acquirer. So I mean, the scrappiness and the leanness of what we did, I think [00:11:00] was. You know, looking back, hindsight's 2020, but one of the things that I'm really proud of what we did, right?

Because had we not, if we just tried to make the big splash, throw the money out there, get all the marketing we probably just would've flopped and then had to call it quits and then had to go do something else. So we took the cockroach approach and I think that was actually a fundamental game changer for us because it allowed us the time to develop a number of games, get the proof of concept out there, meet a lot of people, you know, whether they're fundraisers or potential acquirers. And prove that like, "Hey, there's a market here, there's people interested. We can get traction. We can make money on this."

But it doesn't happen overnight.

Matt Joseph: I love that framework, and this is actually what I think was one of the most important lessons from YC where they preached ramen profitability. Basically getting your startup to the point where you and your co-founders can afford your rent and afford some ramen to eat and just be able to survive.

It runs against the narrative I think that permeates in Silicon Valley of startups just spending insane amounts of money and hoping to figure out a business model later on. When we [00:12:00] were going through it, it was the exact same thing. They were like, "get to the point where you can keep yourself alive, and then you can worry about the other components of your business." And don't - even if you have the money - don't let the money burn a hole in your pocket. You know, hold onto it. And, and it sounds like you guys typified that as well as anyone.

And carrying that process all the way up through the acquisition which I love that story. I hope that a lot of founders take that in. Well, let's talk about the acquisition then.

Joel Karacozoff: Yeah.

Matt Joseph: You guys got acquired by fuboTV - publicly traded streaming company - at what point did those conversations begin?

Joel Karacozoff: This was a really interesting part of our journey. So you have to think back, right? We got in to YC 2019, we're getting into 2020 and Covid hits. I mean, I couldn't have been more unprepared for a situation like that. We were running all of our games on live sports and in March of 2020, all live sports shut down.

And so, you know, we went through this process. We were like, what the heck are we going to do next? We [00:13:00] started to explore other avenues. We looked at eSports stuff but we knew this is. This was what the product was. It was meant for live sporting events. And so that's when we started talking to who we thought were the correct acquirers.

You know, we went to a lot of sports books. We talked to Caesars and MGM. We tried to talk to FanDuel and DraftKings, thinking to ourselves, Hey, like, these are the folks that should be the most interested in a product like ours. But the reality was they either had some version of our product or could probably build it pretty, pretty easily in-house.

And so what we decided to do, again with this very lean, scrappy mentality is we decided to go dormant. We didn't shut down the company. We helped all of our employees find jobs at other companies. I even myself, took a contracting gig at another company just to keep the doors open which was also a really cool experience, but a difficult thing to do, right?

To stop focusing on the startup that you knew had a lot of potential, but just in a time and place, you know, timing's everything, that we really couldn't make any moves. And so we went dormant for about three to six months. And during that period I was very fortunate to meet the founder of Sling TV. Had a really good [00:14:00] conversation with him about what we were doing at Balto.

And he was the person that said, "Hey, I think you guys should talk to Fubo and David Gandler." And at the time I was sitting there being like, "why would I talk to the CEO of Fubo? You know, we're a sports gaming company." And he let me know, he is like, " Hey, I think they're gonna get into sports gaming. Eventually they want to acquire a sports book, but what they really need is a service in between their streaming service and their new sports book in order to entice and move those streamers over." And he said, "I think you guys would be a really good fit for this." And then from there, everything happened pretty quickly.

He introduced us to David. We had two conversations, you know, sent him all of our materials, demos of the products we were building, a lot about the team that was, that had been building the product. And I think what really kind of locked in this idea that we would be a good fit is in that second conversation David said something to us that was phenomenal. He said, "guys, if anyone understands how difficult it is to run a company around live sports, we are the perfect examples. Fubo is a live streaming service for sports." And so it made us realize like, "Hey, we are in the same side. We're [00:15:00] in the same corner here."

They have similar aspirations to we do, but they're dealing with all of the same stuff that we are during this whole period of Covid. So it made us feel really comfortable because again, at the time we were like, oh my gosh, you know, like we don't even have live games to run on. But in the same way, Fubo didn't have live games to put on their streaming service.

And it was all with this idea that like, we knew sports were gonna come back someday without question. Like they're not going away anytime soon. It was just a matter of when. And so David pitched us, "Hey, come join us. We're gonna go build this foundation to get ready to do this huge launch as soon as sports comes back." He let us in on the information about them eventually gonna acquire the sports book that was called Victory.

And we said, "Hey, this seems like a perfect fit for us." It gave us the ability to continue the journey we wanted, which is, you know, build this really powerful gaming service, but do it at a place that appreciated and understood what we were trying to accomplish. So about two weeks after the first conversation with David, he said, guys, we're ready to move forward, made us an offer, and we didn't look back.

Matt Joseph: Wow, I love that. I mean, I want to set some context here. Just the way I read [00:16:00]this, you are now raising money to keep the lights on. A lot of you guys have taken jobs doing other stuff, and you take that foundation and turn that into an acquisition that is hats off to you, man. That's incredible. The deal signs, everybody celebrates then what?

Joel Karacozoff: It was interesting, right, from going from running your own company, setting your own schedule, your own KPIs and milestones to then being, you know, back at corporate life. I would say Fubo was a great atmosphere for us. It was a great fit. They did have a very much of a startup culture, but as any big company wants to have a startup culture, right, like. A startup is a startup and a big company is a big company. So there were some growing pains, I would say, you know, a lot of the things that even though we had aspirations to go after didn't quite fit with what Fubo needed us for.

So we went from running our, our own app to actually building this whole new ecosystem of gaming within live tv. And so some of the stuff that we built was first of its kind, you know, a live game on a [00:17:00] live sporting event directly played on the TV using your remote. And we were some of the first people to do something like that, so it was really cool.

However, we did have to detach and separate ourselves from what we had previously expected to be that big, long-term vision and had to meld it with what Fubo did, right? And again, kudos to the executive team at Fubo, particularly the guy I worked for, which his name was Sung Ho Choi, who's one of the coolest guys I've ever got the pleasure to work with who, who again understood what we were trying to do, but then helped us reposition it to make it what Fubo needed in that time and place. So there was a bit of a transition there, but I think, you know, as a team we did a really good job making that transition and making it work at Fubo.

Matt Joseph: Just so I have this right, I mean, strategically what Fubo was trying to do was drive signups usage for their primary streaming platform by having free to play games available directly in the service.

Joel Karacozoff: Almost. It was actually, they had acquired a new sports book and they were using us to entice their streaming users to try out the new

Matt Joseph: Ah, got it.

Joel Karacozoff: play games was the [00:18:00] perfect conduit to do that, right? So hey, check out this free to play game while you're watching the World Cup. Make a couple picks. And by the way, you now have a hundred free dollars to go play on the Fubo sports sports book. So we were a bit of the primer for the Fubo Sports book by getting that, you know, the users on that streaming service. One, it was just awareness, right? Making them aware that Fubo even had a sports book.

Getting them them excited, like trying to figure out who are the people that you know would enjoy gaming and this type of atmosphere. And then eventually moving them over right through mechanisms like coupons or free dollars toward, towards the sports book.

Matt Joseph: I'm curious what your feelings are about the streaming business and potential disruption to the streaming business. I mean, do you feel like the window is reopening?

Joel Karacozoff: I do think now that AI has moved into content generation, we are going to see an infusion of AI and content generation, but I do think that's gonna actually help the industry and propel the industry, right? Like more content means more ability for you to get like your unique aspect out there and get more viewers on your platform. Where I think the industry is hurting is [00:19:00] this fragmentation, right?

Because now you have all these people having to sign up for all these different services to try and get kind of this like one idea you to think around sports, right? Like unfortunately, Fubo doesn't have TNT and TNT has. NHL playoffs and NBA playoffs. And so now if you want the complete package of sports, you can't just have Fubo, you also have to have either Hulu or Peacock and you know, other additional providers to really fill that That's where we saw a lot of frustration. Maybe AI can help in some aspect to fill that, but until there's this ability to have any content that you want, regardless of the channel or of the streaming service, I feel like they're gonna keep kind of like cannibalizing themselves in a way because folks are just gonna keep switching back and forth trying to game the system in order to get the content that they want at the lowest cost.

Matt Joseph: That's a great way to put it. I read a research report that basically said the average american is willing to pay $46 a month for 3 different streaming services. And at last count, I mean, I don't know there's dozens of them, right? There's a [00:20:00] huge number of these things floating around. And so I, I've heard people talk about this as unbundling and rebundling, right? So it's like you had these cable packages, which bundled everything together, customers like that, but then the cost of it kept going up. And so people then want to have only, the services they want split out. And so then you see the unbundling process. And now we're, you know, the pendulum's gonna swing back in the other direction.

Joel Karacozoff: Exactly man. It's funny because we actually talked to people who, in just even my life, they're almost like, "I just wanna go back to regular cable now. Like they had everything in one place and I didn't have to think about switching." And yeah, the cost was high. But now when you have all these different services, right now, the costs are adding up.

So there's kind of like singularity happening there where it's like, you're correct, like they started the unbundling and now that they've unbundled it all, now people are like, well, we kind of want it bundled again. I totally agree. The pendulum's about swing back.

Matt Joseph: You can kind of see who the winners are or are going to be, and it kind of looks like Big Tech has basically come in and they're just replacing all these traditional companies with their own [00:21:00] offerings because for them streaming isn't a primary business model, right?

I mean, Google's making its money from Search. Amazon's making its money from AWS and Retail, Apple makes money from iPhones. Like this business really isn't a primary business for any of these companies. And so it doesn't surprise me that Big Tech wants it because it drives activity for their primary business models, but they're not under the same cash constraints as your traditional streaming companies, as the Disneys of the world, as the HBO Max and Paramount Plus. I mean, for all those guys, it's primary business and so they're in a very different position.

Before I get too far off on that tangent, because I, I know we could spend a lot of time on that, is there anything that you would do differently about this journey that you went on? How would you approach it now, knowing the things that you know?

Joel Karacozoff: I like to say that like I wouldn't do things differently, but the reality is I would, right. I think we would've made some different strategic moves earlier on. Things like looking for cash flow [00:22:00] sooner, right? Again, we were free to play. We had an affiliate model.

We didn't put as much emphasis on worrying about the business model as we did about growth. And again, this is 2019, so growth was where it was at. That's what they wanted to see. Everyone wanted to see growth at any cost. I think giving us a better foundation, having some cash flow would've extended our runway.

Would it have changed the actual outcome? I don't know if it actually would've changed the outcome. It probably would've de-stressed us a little bit given that we were founders not making much of a paYCheck. I think it also would've de-risked us a little bit too, in terms of the fundraising process.

But for the most part, like I wouldn't change much because it was such a great learning experience. And if you don't have the failures and you don't have the highs and the lows, you don't get that learning. So there's not, there's definitely not much I would've changed. And again, hindsight's 2020, so it's easier to look back and say like, oh, if we would've done X, Y, and Z things would've been totally different. But it all worked out at the end of the day.

Matt Joseph: Yeah, that's, that's a great call out actually. Let's now jump to the present day. So you have been investing. And I want to know more about what that's been like for you, going from being the person who is pitching [00:23:00] investors or part of the founding team pitching investors to being now on the other side of the table evaluating startups for investment.

Joel Karacozoff: It's a lot more comfortable on the other side table. It was a really cool journey, so. You know, it all started with YC, having gone through the program recognizing the immense amounts of talent that just pooled together in one place. And at the time, being a poor founder, you know, I had no ability to, to start doing any investing, but I knew that when I had the ability, I wanted to come back to this ecosystem and put money into it.

So, following the acquisition of Balto. I connected with one of my best friends from high school who was working at Credit Suisse who's an investment banker, much smarter financial human than I am. And I started to talk to him about this idea and I was like, "Hey, I've got this idea for running this kind of Demo Day angel fund where we get a bunch of operators together, we do this crowd source due diligence process."

I ran that idea by him. He ran with it. He started to put a model together. We did a bunch of analysis to figure out, "Hey, does this actually make sense?" We came to the conclusion that it does, and so it started with three [00:24:00] of us. We put money into one company. It was a cool experience, like kind of exhilarating, right, to start doing your own angel investing.

And then from there, the group started to really grow organically. Again, started with three, and you know, three, four years later, the group's grown to a hundred individual operators who all pull resources together, both for the due diligence and the funding aspect.

We've done almost 40 deals with another six or seven follow-ons, and actually last week was a very validating moment in this journey. We had our first company that we did a seed investment in, announced their series B. This will be our first series B as a group. And we invested very early on with this company.

I think we were one of the first two or three investors at eight and a half million dollars. And now they're raising their series B at $300 million.

And actually just using that example, it's funny because this company that's raising their series B was not one that I actually upvoted. You know, it was a cool vision.

I was just like, who's gonna pull this off? They were trying to be the ev, ev charging network of India, which is like super ambitious and difficult. But crowdsource the group. It was the number one upvoted company [00:25:00] for that batch. And again, following the process, we said, Hey, if this is what the data's telling us, this is the direction we should go.

And it was actually the first company that we had used the process with by doing the crowdsource due diligence. And it seems to be working.

Matt Joseph: Alright, well let, let's close out on this. What areas are you most excited about looking 5 10 years into the future? Like what areas are you looking at and saying, this is where I think something special is gonna happen?

Joel Karacozoff: Hard not to see AI right now. It's everywhere. I do think there's some cool things happening there. I'd say as a group, we haven't focused a ton on it. And just to kinda like. You know, pull the curtain back a little bit. After talking to a lot of our group members, there's this fear around AI that it's the next wave of crypto where a bunch of money's gonna get deployed.

There's only gonna be a couple winners and a lot of people are gonna be just sitting on the sidelines. I think less so technology wise, our group has been really interested geographically. And we've seen a shift towards a lot of investment in companies from India. So like this series B that we're doing is a company from India as well as Lat Am.

And I think [00:26:00] geographically our group has conviction that there are areas around the world where tech innovation is going to move faster than in other places. And India and Lat Am has been one of those, and again, very agnostic to what it is they're building. It's just the opportunity there seems very, very ripe.

Matt Joseph: It's interesting because I do think that AI has many characteristics of a bubble that it kind of filled this void post the start of the tech downturn where where investors wanted to deploy capital. Maybe some of them felt compelled to deploy capital, but the only area where it seemed like something was safe that they could justify was in AI. And I think a lot of that was being driven by OpenAI and just the incredible innovations that they had. I mean, ChatGPT obviously, but then now we're seeing Sora, DALL-E, all these other models that they're releasing, doing incredibly well. And I think that's really fueled excitement for disruption of lots of different industries.

But there's also just the [00:27:00] inside baseball of this, which is that as an early stage investor. It's hard to invest outside of your typical price ranges and still maintain the thesis that you have from the beginning of the fund. And so you just end up in this conundrum where. If an AI startup comes out and they're, they're really compelling, but they're raising at a $50 million valuation even if you really like it, you might have to say no. It's a reality of the business. And it might not be a function of, "well, I don't believe in this startup," but more just, "it's hard for me to see where I ultimately get my returns from and stay in business."

Joel Karacozoff: 100 man. Yeah. because when we did this even four years ago, right? Seed, seed stage rounds were, you know, on the low end, five on the high end, 15, but 8, 10, 12 was like very, very common. Even within that short timeframe that is shot up drastically. You know, we're looking 15, 20, we did deals at 30 million because we had the conviction. But it does change the math quite a bit.

Matt Joseph: Well listen, this has been an incredible conversation. I feel like we've covered a lot of ground. But thank you so much for taking the [00:28:00] time and we'll talk to you again soon.

Joel Karacozoff: Matt, thank you so much man. I really appreciate you and your time.

Matt Joseph: All right, my man.