DWAVC: Ben Freeberg | Ep. 34

Speaker A: Welcome to Drinks with a VC where we explore the humanity behind investments. Grab your favorite drink and join us as we laugh, learn and liquor up with some of our favorite venture capitalists.

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Speaker A: Hello and welcome to another episode of Drinks with the vc. Thanks for joining us via whichever platform you're using to watch or listen in. I'm Vic Laquara, co founder and General Partner of seed fund Greencow Venture Capital and as always I'm joined by my friend and co hostess with the mostest, Brie Hanson, who leads business development at Silicon Valley based firm Ravix, a, uh, wonderful sponsor that provides outsourced accounting, fractional CFO advisory and orderly wind down and HR consulting. If you are a startup in need of those services or a VC looking to make sure your startup is in good hands, please give Bri a shout. Today's episode is also brought to you by Fidelity Private Shares. Fidelity is committed to supporting startups at all stages. Using the Fidelity Private Shares platform, founders can automate their equity management, operations and financings in a single collaborative hub. To learn more about how Fidelity can help your company grow, please check out the episode description below. Great. How are you doing today?

Speaker B: I, uh, am doing great. We just had a wonderful long weekend and I have wonderful Long island right behind me.

Speaker A: Nice. Nice. Are you excited for our next guest?

Speaker B: I have been excited for a guest since January when I met him at a dinner and learned a little bit about him and his backstory and really wanted to have him on the show. How many of our past guests have opened for the likes of Jerry, uh, Seinfeld and Jim Gaffigan?

Speaker A: Yeah, I honestly can say that we've had a lot of funny people on the show, but none of them have been stand up comics and moonlit as that. So it's fun to kick things off and have a chat with him. No pressure by the way. Today's guest graduated from Duke University with a degree in Economics. After a short stint in investment banking, he would become the first employee at New York City based venture growth firm Alpha Partners, where his investments included Careem, which was sold to Uber, Gopuff included Health, Limero and Secure. He would then join Optum Ventures as Vice President at the Boston based venture fund, which is actually the product of Optum and United Healthcare, where he invested in Carebridge, Contessa, Somatus and Tilda. In 2021, he left Optum and gained operational experience as the director of growth for value based cancer technology startup Timecare which raised a 20, uh, $2 million Series A from top tier funds Andreessen, Horwitz and Bessemer. In 2022 he made his return to the other side of the table and debuted Oncology Ventures, an early stage venture fund investing in data driven startups. More affordable, efficient and accessible cancer care. Investments include Concur Gabby Health Universe, Ignite Data, Oncovery Care and Reimagine Care. He has spoken or emceed a number of TEDx events and he's uh, an advisor at Cancer X Accelerator. Please welcome the pride of the Wheatley School in Long Island, New York, Ben Freebrook. Welcome, Ben.

Speaker C: Thank you so much for having me. Good to. It's good to see you. And we nailed the intro.

Speaker A: Oh, thank you.

Speaker C: Cheers to you. Cheers guys.

Speaker B: What are you drinking today, Ben?

Speaker C: We are now on an Olipop kick. This is ginger ale. Um, I'm not sponsored by them yet, but we'll see how this episode goes.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker C: Hopefully between them and fidelity.

Speaker A: That's right. You actually mentioned that you are a fan of Diet Dr. Brown's Cream Soda. Are you saying that you like olipop more than Dr. Brown's Cream Soda now?

Speaker C: Uh, I think it is very location dependent. So I have diet Dr. Brown that's for a nice bagel or somewhere in a diner that just uh, it. There's just nothing better but an office in the middle of the afternoon. Olipop is probably the choice.

Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker B: There's a local Bay Area company in Oakland if they'd like to sponsor Wonderful Guts promoting probiotic.

Speaker A: Yeah. I'm gonna go ahead and trump both of you on this one and just say that I think I'm the only one with an Olipop sweatshirt. And for sure I have a real addiction to the Olipop root beer. So even one of the first things that I do going to a fresh time, which is like Whole Foods equivalent here in St. Louis, Missouri, we definitely stock up on Olipop root beer flavored or the Olipop cola flavored drink that's like my favorite. So. Yeah, Olipop. We're always looking for another sponsor. So if you're in, we got this. Listen, I also want to raise a glass to you in belated celebration of your sixth year of being cancer free. So yeah, absolutely. I think one thing that strikes me and we're just going to jump right into it, obviously. Have you ever known me to be any different, Bri? No. One thing that strikes Me in reading about you and doing all the back history that we do is that you are supremely driven by cancer and your thesis is driven by delivering efficient, affordable cancer care. I think which is informed by the fact that you've lived with cancer, that you've fought cancer. And. And so, uh, this is just an ex. This is exciting time for us to chat with you because I rarely do. You get this happens more on the startup side, but on the venture side you rarely get a chance to talk with a VC that is so, um, in the thick of what their investment thesis is. And uh. So this is great. I'm very excited for it. Appreciate you saying before we jump into. I want to go all the way Back to the 90s in Long island and talk about what it was like growing up for you and what are your fondest memories of that time?

Speaker C: I don't think I have ever been asked that on a podcast. I loved my childhood, I think the few pieces that I don't know if I fully appreciated in the moment, but we didn't have video games. We watched TV during a very specific time and so we were just go outside and throw a ball. So I love playing every single sport game you could think of. And imagine I used to play tennis growing up, played basketball, softball, baseball, the whole thing. And it was just. It's amazing what happens when you step outside your house and just uh, do go get friends to go do something or create a game. And so that is a lot of my childhood memories is different forms of competitive sports and fun, um, backyard games. I always took school seriously, but it was. I went to a small public high school in Long island and it was. There was one year in particular I remember when it got hard when they started taking the AP classes. But aside from that, it was, I think relatively you go, you show up, you pay attention and everything. I don't think I was ever very stressed during it, but overall loved it

Speaker B: and

Speaker C: wouldn't go back. I don't know if I'd go raise family right now on Long island, but much enjoyed growing up there.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: What's your birth order and tell us a little bit about your home life.

Speaker C: I have a younger sister, I'm three years older than her and we were incredibly close from um, her zero to probably 11. Then I couldn't for maybe four or five years. And then we became very close and have been. Have been tight ever since.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. Did you mention that you didn't have video games? Was that a concerted effort by your parents to limit Screen time or was it just. We're not gonna buy that for you. What was the thinking there?

Speaker B: Hm.

Speaker C: So I was also gonna ask what our rating was of um, this show in terms of language, but that feels

Speaker A: that just got blown out of the water.

Speaker C: So I, because I've asked them, I think that it was also partially driven by us. Uh, I don't know if we really wanted or needed and. And so I think it was a little bit of a mix. I just think we had more fun being outside. I don't know what came first, but yeah, there was definitely in any of the parts where there were like some times where like my sister and I would watch Grey's Anatomy growing up because we knew that the way to get the way to be able to stay up late and watch TV was if we joined our mom for or late night shows. One of our little workaround I also heard is still on the air, which is unbelievable.

Speaker A: So yeah, that is incredible.

Speaker B: Right?

Speaker A: I want to jump into that, but before I do, uh, did you consider yourself a jock or a nerd or just none of the above? What was your designation in high school?

Speaker C: I wouldn't consider it anything. I really enjoyed school and sports. I think there were a few people very similar to me, but I don't know if I'd throw myself into a bucket. Okay, that was pretty fun. Okay.

Speaker A: So I wonder, did you play tennis over at Duke as well?

Speaker C: I played on the club team, so I played on the high school team and then was debating going to do that for college and I wasn't good enough to play D1. I could have played D3, maybe D2 and ended up deciding to go to Duke where they were recruiting internationally. So I've been on the club team there.

Speaker B: Were you a class clown at O?

Speaker C: No.

Speaker B: You seem like a learned stand up. Like you studied it and you weren't that just obnoxious. Um,

Speaker A: I don't know what this means about me now because I was a total clown. Damn it, Bri.

Speaker B: Clown myself. Vic.

Speaker C: I think I was actually quite the opposite where I didn't love being in front of class. And also I was. I like look back at some of the things like I used to do the head down on the table where you like the teacher for sure knew I was pleasing. I thought I was being so casual and fly about in a 12 person class and no way, uh, so now

Speaker A: you were sneaking, staying awake in, in the morning, uh, in the wee hours of the evening till early in the morning watching maybe comedy specials, et cetera. Is that where the excitement or the curiosity around standup comedy arose from? How did. I'm really excited about this because I think I'm watching hacks right now. And we, we just finished the last episode in three. Um, that's out currently. I think there's episode nine coming. But I'm always interested in the origin story, but particularly of your standup comic career.

Speaker C: So first, do you guys use the Daylist feature now from Spotify?

Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker C: So they now have it where it's every part of the day. It, they do a really good job matching. Yet most of mine are different standup comedy compilations. So like here I took a screenshot the other day because it's hilarious because most people's are all, all music based.

Speaker A: Mine's mostly music. And then the Dax Shepard podcast will get credited. The thing we're in there. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker C: So I genuinely do love uh, listening to stand up to people talking about. There's this hour long YouTube episode where it's Jerry Seinfeld and Louis CK Ricky Durant talking about just stand up comedy. I love that. I love reading how people write and structure jokes. It's a very nice compliment to what at the time was. I was working in a general venture job and it just, it's all very interesting and fascinating and intellectually stimulating. But I was missing a little bit of that creative edge. But before, uh, I had never been on a stage in my life. And so there was one show in particular, it was. Do you know Mark Normand?

Speaker B: Mhm.

Speaker A: I'm not familiar.

Speaker C: No. He's getting bigger. It was probably like seven years ago when he was starting out in New York City. We went to this club and it was in this like hole in the wall. Nothing. It wasn't even a comedy club. It was just like one of those places where, hey, we're doing a comedy show, maybe we'll bring in some chairs and a mic. And so it was maybe 30 people and he was supposed to do a five minute set and after 15 minutes he checked in with the emcee and he's sorry, like I'm way over. And it was just for 15 minutes, people genuinely belly laughing in a way where it was just, it was unbelievable. And I just thought at the end of it, wow, that'd be so cool to be able to do that for a group of people at some point. And so I started writing then I took a class, like a writing class because I didn't know what I was. And when was this?

Speaker A: In college. This pre. In high school.

Speaker C: This Was after college. This was when I was 23. Uh, maybe 22. Turning 23.

Speaker A: Okay. Okay, interesting. And then what was your. So when was your first stand up experience and where was it?

Speaker C: Very shortly after I started taking the classes because I was like the more I delay this just. I just need to get on stage. I just want um, to figure out whether or not this is something I like. I don't get nervous. I was shaking. It was unbelievable going. There's nothing more nerve wracking than going and telling a joke to a group of people. And then uh, especially when you think it's funny. Like I remember on my way to the show, first show was at Gotham Comedy Club. And so it was in mid 2023 and I had the whole set word for word, memorized, 5 minute M bit. And I remember on the way there I city bike everywhere in New York. That's my preferred method of transportation. Not just this is a tandem we could go into later. But if it's raining, snowing, cold, hot, that is how I get around. And I remember thinking and running through descent in my head and then getting so excited about this joke that I pulled over, almost got into an accident. But I was like laughing so hard because it was a perfect joke. Got on stage, told it. Nothing.

Speaker A: Just nothing.

Speaker C: Yes. No one. People were like, oh, are you doing a setup for something? Coming up. And so it's this very humbling experience where you get really excited for things that maybe don't hit and then some um, things where you think are transition lines that people die at. And it's just, you just have to get out there and try it on stage. And there's only so much you could edit on your own or in a coffee shop before figuring out what hits.

Speaker A: Sure, absolutely.

Speaker B: What have you learned in joke writing about comedy and how do you try to structure your joke or what? Yeah, I would love to learn more about your.

Speaker C: You could always say something in fewer words. Unbelievable. And I tried to do that. I'm looking back even when we launched the fun. The emails I was sending relative to the emails I sent that it was just no one has time to read or like people's attention spans and also they want you do that for them.

Speaker B: Go.

Speaker C: Uh, if you're going to give. It's why I get so frustrated when people give speeches or whatever it is and they are reading on their note cards. To me, if you're reading up cue cards for whatever it is, it means you're either talking for too long or you weren't prepared Enough. And so much of it is, I think really condensing material so that you only give the audience what they actually need to understand the joke, the setup, where you're coming from. I think the other piece is anything could be funny. I genuinely do believe that if you make the right joke.

Speaker A: Mhm.

Speaker C: You could make m. Uh, me at least laugh about any topic. The issue is I think a lot of people. And what's happening with this doesn't answer your question, Bri, but what's happening with Stand up is a lot of people are getting canceled for stuff and I think some of it is genuinely because they're telling jokes about something and it's not funny enough.

Speaker A: Sure.

Speaker C: But also I think people are overreacting to a lot. So anyway, what I. The advice I got when I was getting started is whenever you see, hear, say something that exhibits a really strong emotion in you. Right. That could be something funny, but that could also be something confusing, scary, sad, calming, whatever it is. That means there's some real emotional connection there. And so I have this note on my phone, which is my favorite note list on my phone, where it's just all ideas for bits based on that, based on what friends share. And then my writing process from there is I go to my m. Feel like I'm in a movie moments in New York or when I go to a coffee shop to write comedy.

Speaker B: Ah.

Speaker C: I just go. And I don't press backspace. You just. I start with those few little bits and then I just write. And then every 30 to 45 seconds as I'm writing, I stop and try to write five jokes right after whatever line. And then you continue to rinse and repeat from there.

Speaker A: Help lend some clarity to me on this. I feel like when I was doing research on you, that it was a tale of sort of two stories. It was BC And AC before cancer. After cancer. And when did joke writing and comedy come into play? Was it before you had cancer or uh, was it as you were tackling it?

Speaker C: So it's so funny you say that because I genuinely don't think. I think there is a lot of pressure once you go through something like a cancer diagnosis to change, be a different version of yourself sees every day. That's right. I really don't feel like I am different as a core person. Like I was always someone who tried to fit as much into a day as possible. And uh, under ownership and I started doing comedy like a year before I was diagnosed.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker C: And I will say that there's definitely some pieces right One. Honestly, I think my funniest, best standup bits are my cancer stuff.

Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker C: And I think there's a lot of people that could would say you can't make jokes about cancer. One, I really do think if it's funny enough, you can. And also people need to hear it. Like, I've had both sides where I've had people come up to me after shows and say, thank you, I needed that. Uh, like I'm going through this. Whatever. I had one woman one time get incredibly frustrated and yell at me after a show saying, how dare you make up that you had cancer and that you're lying about this. I was like, why would I do that? And it was just so you can't please everyone. But for the before, after cancer, I really do think that it unlocked this new passion for me from it because I was like, oh, I could actually be pretty good at this. Where a lot of my stuff before it was fine. I've listened to him. It's okay. I don't think to be very clear to both of you and whoever's listening, I'm not that good at it and I don't do it that much. This is like a very fun part time side hustle that has for sure lost me money in my career. Uh, I really enjoy writing. I do this monthly newsletter for our fund where half of it is updates of the fund and half of it fandom comedy. I get to do it at conferences and events. And so it plays a really fun part of my life. But it's not like I'm not trying to become a stand up comic. I think we're at the perfect.

Speaker A: You have a perfect. The. You're at the height of your comic career, but you're finding ways to incorporate it into your venture capital career. For sure.

Speaker C: Totally.

Speaker A: Yeah, I think.

Speaker B: Sorry, I have a quick question. When you were telling me about your process that you were talking about trope construction, writing. Brevity is the soul of wit, basically. It really reminded me of advice that's often given to founders when doing their pitch deck and fundraising. How do you feel like some of what you've learned? Because I think you learn a lot about writing and joke construction and a lot of that does translate into the concise nature of learning.

Speaker C: 1. I also feel like meetings should be. I don't think. I think sometimes people view professional meetings and settings, which is why I was so excited to do your podcast too, given what you're setting up where it's just. It doesn't have to be that you don't have to be for sure. And there are some people who are also like, we're all sitting here in a very specific type of dress. You know, there's groups where you have to be clean shaven and wear a suit and yes, read, read the room. But bringing some at least slight humor into conversations at work and meeting, I think it's so necessary. It doesn't always hit but m, why not try? And then. To answer your question, Bri, I think it's two pieces. One, tell the story. Like really, uh, tell the story and understand who you're telling the story to. And so I think there are two, I would say two mistakes that founders make fairly often is one, they will get on the phone, they'll say, okay, I'm so ready to pitch you and then go into it.

Speaker A: That's right.

Speaker C: No, ask. Talk to me like you're having. It should be a conversation you should understand. Do we have dry powder left? What's our check size? How do we help and support? And I think the best pitches and the best founders really do spend the first few minutes talking to me and asking me questions and diligencing me because this is a long term partnership. The second piece is folks are so regimented of needing Y to go through X, Y and Z. I'd rather I never in all of my limited partner pitches. There was one time I presented slides and it was because they reached out to me before and said, we need you to do this. And I felt so like you should know all of the numbers. Like on the back of your head. You should know all the answers. Otherwise you're not ready to pitch and do some practice with friends. But it really should be a quick, concise story where you leave the call. Right. Think about the goal spree thing. The goal of your is to get on the phone. And so how do you, in the fewest words possible, want someone to say, oh, I should actually pick up the phone? And then your goal on that call is to get a second meeting. No. Yes. You could raise money in a, uh, phone call or a Zoom or a lunch, but it's rare and that's not how you should underwrite. And so I think going into it with the lens of less is more. Tell the story as I'm giving the crazy roundabout answer. But I feel like that's a big part of what Mystic Arms.

Speaker A: Yeah. Kind of building a narrative based on having a conversation and creating context with the person that you're meeting with, whether it's an LP or, uh, a venture Capitalist there. There's a lot of alignment there with the scaffolding that you have going into cassette. Right. Like a stand up set. I've actually also heard you say, and make another analogy, one in which I believe in, and I'm paraphrasing this, so correct me if I'm wrong. Uh, but you said either in a standup or in an interview, that one of the benefits of being a standup comic is never having to be correct and that you could be completely wrong about something and then of course, pass it off as well. I was just obviously joking, right? Obviously. But I find it funny and in alignment with a, uh, venture capital world, particularly like the Twitter venture scene in which there's no shortage of folks that are bloviating about their investments or about their opinion on things. In what other ways do you feel like being a comic and a standup is similar to being a venture capitalist? And in which ways do you feel like they. You can't do that. They're totally different. No way.

Speaker C: Oh, that's such a good question. I did a set where I compared raising a venture fund to doing stand up comedy to going through cancer.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker C: The big takeaway was the big thing PCs always say is, how can I be helpful?

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker C: And then you always share with them a very actionable, clear cut thing. Hey, we need to raise X dollars or, um, for my cancer. It's just I want to make sure my chemo works, et cetera. And then they respond by saying, that sounds great. Of course. Just let me know if at any point we could be helpful. You're like, yeah, no, I'm, Yeah, I just told you exactly how, uh, you could totally be helpful. That sounds great. Yeah. I'm just happy to help. And it's just, it's this. And show business a little bit too is I, um, can't tell you how many people I've met where they're like, oh my, yeah, I have an in with the MC or the owner at this point club or whatever. They'll get you in and then you follow up and then they don't respond and then you follow up a second time or a third time. And it's just unfortunately one of the, I think big similarities between comedy and venture capital is a lot of people talk a huge game and then don't follow it up. Anything actionable. And ah, it's really frustrating because people's time is valuable, like I'd read, but people are so uncomfortable saying no or not bragging like, it's not only it's not like you. It's not always a direct ask. And then they say no, people want to. In a room of eight people say oh don't worry, like we'll follow up after. I know the owner at this club. They don't. And if they did they don't have the end where they could help you. Uh, I think it's the same with VC where a lot of people will talk about all their connections to customers or other funders and then at the end of the day if you ask a lot of startups what the most frustrating part is, people, they spend all this time writing this detailed, curated forwardable note that they want to get in the hands of someone and it just never gets forwarded. And it, that takes, it takes time to write, it takes time to follow up, it takes mental space. You're then not going through another channel because you think that channel is closed and it's those pieces. So I think there's a lot of frustrating pieces. The positive uh, side when you're right it feels so good because it happens so rarely. If you have goes and um, you invested early and then they close a new customer or close a new round or exit or you have this joke that you've been writing for months and then you find on stand on stage and it just, it hits in a way where there are different forms of laughs that you get where you know what a real laugh and gut reaction is where it's just, that's what you do it for, right. And it's something you could always get better and it's a feedback loop and I like about stand up in real time and venture very long. But yeah, uh, that's why I like to balance this.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, no I hear you. But it's interesting as you're talking about kind of the role comedy played and how you, how being diagnosed with cancer almost gave you new material. I started thinking about it's comedy and particularly the way that it is in culture nowadays. I feel like we revert back to comedy to deal with tough things. And uh, so often in today's kind of culture I think the comedians whether the Trevor Noah's or the Jon Stewarts or gosh the all the late night hosts, they often become the best kind of conduits of bad news and horrible things. Right. It's just like shining or making some light of some really fucked up situation. Right. Indecision 2024 uh, yeah, indecision. I can't even. There's so many great comedians like John Oliver's et Cetera that I really look up to as people that are maybe the greatest truth tellers of our time. Right. Like unbiased is. It's, there's no bias because they're making jokes about everyone and but, but there's like the truthiness to them. Right. Um, I do feel like when Venture is done right, we become the comics of the startup ecosystem. Right. Where we're just delivering bad news or delivering good news or just explaining how it uh, how it's done. Do you feel like that's your role now in tackling tough challenges that, that cancer is presenting and saying, okay, how do we come together? How do I tell this story of how cancer is affecting us and, and then how do we bring together these amazing founders to help solve it?

Speaker C: To respond quickly to one of your first point you just made, it is, that is exactly right. There was something about writing material about cancer that changed the relationship a bit because I was like, oh, this could be real. Like this. I was writing stuff that was fun and funny and interesting, but it wasn't, it wasn't anything. Like, it just wasn't, it wasn't deep enough or meaningful enough or something that I enjoyed trying to make funny. It just felt very light.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker C: So that was awesome. And then when we were diligencing a uh, chronic kidney disease startup and we part of the dosage process, we watched John Harbour's bit without davita and it was m made like it was incredibly well researched and it was really unique and it actually helped inspire a lot of next steps in the process and learning about the space. And so a lot of times when they do it, they, they have these full teams of um, research analysts and they really do manage to explain complex subjects in a pretty, pretty special way. So 100. Agreed. And then to your question, I, I really do feel like I act as a translator sometimes because what we're investing into out of the fund is it's not FDA approval type of companies, it's not drugs, it's not therapeutics, it's everything that needs to be commercializable. Mhm setting today. And so I'm m explaining to a set of uh, CFOs, venture investors, family offices, fund of funds, what's going on in the oncology world and why it makes sense to focus on specific types, go to market strategies, et cetera. And then on the oncology side, it's meeting with all these, whether it's researchers, oncologists at executives saying actually let's talk about the numbers because if both of those are done in the right way. There's a lot we can do, but people are just speaking different. Different languages.

Speaker A: Different languages.

Speaker C: I.

Speaker A: And Bree knows this. I told her this before you jumped on the zoom. But I genuinely think that your monthly newsletter is one of the most informative written newsletters that VCs put out and on a monthly basis. And I think if I could encourage all of our listeners, all of our viewers to go to Oncology Ventures substack.com subscribe and just read. Yes, there's some really funny bits and Ben, you're a funny guy. Agreed there. But I think there's so much clarity to the way that you very simply lay out the problem at hand and the solution. Your investment thesis the decision process behind why you invested in X, Y and Z company and it's about some weighty shit. Uh, that is not. You wouldn't put on the top of the list of this is comprehensible by most people. Right. This is, it's tough stuff that you've distilled down to something that's very easy to. To consume. So for what it's worth, I think you've done just a great job on that, by the way. Cheers to that.

Speaker C: Cheers. I genuinely appreciate you saying that because it takes time and it is. There are some times where I'm sitting writing and I have a m. Million other things to do. Like why am I spending time distilling this down to people who probably are just giving through or not reading. But we've heard from enough different folks, uh, that people are reading it. Like we, we did one post on immunotherapy. Um, it's a really big topic and I don't think people understand what that really is. And then we did this most recent investment we did was in the EHR to UDC space.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker C: I think most people don't even know what EHR to UDC stands for, let alone why that matters. Let alone why it matters in Cancer.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker C: And so it takes a lot of time to explain all of those pieces in a way where hopefully people care. But it's so clarifying on my end because it puts me into a uh, different position where I think I'm now better at pitching portfolio companies to different folks at ah, different organizations because I've had to go through the lens of, okay, what would the mass audience understand? And go down from there.

Speaker A: Yeah. I've had the benefit of working with this one founder and I'll shout him out very quickly, but Jeff Dendy over at vumc, he's Working on an amazing product called Heartview AI Uh but diving into his specific realm of expertise and trying to uncover all of the complex natures of uh, the problem that he's trying to solve and all of the different players that are involved in a very complicated ecosystem of cardiac mri. Right. Found that the way that you approached electronic health records and electronic data capture around ignite data. Yeah. Was just. Was really cool and there was a lot of similarities to that and that definitely excites me digging into something like that and then uncovering it. And so true to what you were just saying about being the translator, you really dig in. I uh, feel like with the founders and help them translate it and make it easier for them to showcase the value that they are actually creating in the ecosystem.

Speaker C: Yes, I hope so. And it's, it's one of those things where. And maybe I'll learn lessons in different ways along this road. But I never understood why more VC funds didn't actually share their investment themes outside of the quick little works. So excited to back X. Humbled and thrilled and all fun stuff on LinkedIn.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker C: I want to know. I know. For example there was. Because there was a court case and they had to release it. I don't know if you read Sequoia's investment memo on YouTube.

Speaker A: Yes.

Speaker C: That's really cool. That is really cool. To see how one of the leading venture capital firms thought about the investment into a company that is now so prolific it's almost tough to think about what it was like pre YouTube.

Speaker A: Sure.

Speaker C: And hearing how even just as a time stone for yourself sharing that with the market I think is uh, I would encourage more folks to do it if nothing else to just clarify your thought process for yourself. Uh and folks are interested.

Speaker A: So it also showcases that you're not afraid of being wrong.

Speaker C: Yeah. People have said that. And this is the other thing that I'm probably going to learn because we're investing into 20 companies out of this portfolio. Not everyone. I, I genuinely hope this isn't the case. But odds uh, and statistics show that not everyone will make it and be a successful exit.

Speaker A: Sure.

Speaker C: You talk about and listen to all this like sports reporters doing this weird like 5 minute rants on why they're 100 right on this team. New player prospect.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker C: And they go on and they take their next big sense wrong on their last five. But you have Joe Lenardi's bracket. He's the bracketology guy for Mars. When you look at his picks like he's not even close to a perfect bracket ever. But every year people look to him as being the expert. And so I think, I don't know, just share your thoughts, put it on the market, let people debate on it and then we'll be wrong. But not that often.

Speaker A: How many companies fail not because they didn't have the right investment, right thesis or right value proposition, but they're. There's a whole host of things that could go wrong at any point in time. As an early stage investor though in health tech, uh, in oncology, in the broader oncology tech ecosystem. Right. There's long lead times to this venture is already a 10 year life cycle. A lot of the products and services that you invest in take a long time to come to fruition. How do you go about adding value and extracting value from the investments that you're making as you're making them and saying okay, all right, here we are day zero and now this is where we need to get to. How do you approach that in a very complex and very long cycled kind of investment conditions for health tech?

Speaker C: The current question I've been asking founders is one, explain to me today I'm uh, a health system cancer center, pharma company, whatever I am that is charged customer from day one. I just said yes, got it. Makes sense. We need this. Ah and they need to be able to explain incredibly clearly what they are going to charge me, why, how it's going to get implemented into my system, how it's going to get utilized, how it's going to get to the ends of the hands of the end patient provider, et cetera, then they also need to be able to answer okay, in five years you nailed it, everything goes well, engagement is there, what outcomes and ROI are you tracking? How is that being attributed to you and how does that change your business model? And if folk could understand and share and think about those two pieces, uh, that today just really bare bones pick and shovel approach to getting in the door with these systems where a dollar needs to come in for the value they're creating, if that goes well, how this is going to move towards some form of value or value based care or whatever term you want to use for not just being able to track the ROI but actually leverage that to price your product differently. That's really interesting to us and that's how we think about it. And if you could do both of those in the right way on average, I think the time to acquisition should be quicker than if you're. But it's different for different people. Right. So we made this Investment into a company called Health Universe which is building kind of this if you think like hugging face or GitHub, um, these AIML platforms specifically for healthcare. Yes. Start to turn on revenue. They have a few commercial contracts, a few of which we props enough and they need to build a community and this is going to work if they have all these AIML researchers for healthcare building, deploying, scaling on their app. And I understand that is going to be the case for some folks but also you should be thinking about both of those pieces and I think they in particular did a really nice mix of all three of those are explaining and understanding and building for let's make this work today and what the future vision looks and hopefully there are enough folks that care about this enough from a dollar perspective where they'll get scooped up.

Speaker A: Very cool. It's so funny. We've actually had a string of VCs on the show BRE that have had experience in the corporate venture capital realm. Both BSA Prasad, formerly SoftBank Vision Fund and let's see, Dan Connor had some background as well I believe. Yeah, Lechica as well. So we've had a number of VCs that have really found a way to channel their corporate venture capital experience in creating great outcomes for both the startups and their LPs or their, the corporations that they represent. And interestingly you having worked at and worked for a fund that was really representing Optum and UnitedHealthcare, it's interesting that you have that same uh, you have a very similar view around developing partnerships and how that equates to creating value and ROI for your LPs. Do you feel like uh, I think I already know the answer to this but how do you approach building your village as it were at Oncology Ventures of partners that you can then get in front of your startups to provide that value add?

Speaker C: I think it is one of the keys to our model is being able to have this group. We are now 9 formal strategic uh, partners and then we have executives from a few others that came in personally and we work with them and their teams. It's everything. So one, it helps as we're thinking about thesis areas because we understand and are talking to them saying hey, this is what are your top 1, 2, 3 priority areas that we know. Yes, we want to do a mixture of um, telling them what they should be focused on and also investing into things that are going to happen two, three, four years down the line. But it's really helpful to know where their dollars and mind is from. Day one and then part two is they all. If you look at the numbers for oncology right now it's employers, their top driver of healthcare costs is cancer spend. If you look at where pharma's pipeline is being developed, the percentage of it cancer versus others is just astronomical health plan in terms of the expensiveness of different these states patients. So it's all these groups that just need to be focused on this and if we come um, to the table to our portfolio companies and not only understand what they're building, so we understand it from the patient side, from the operator side, from the venture side, from inside. United is the largest health insurer in the world. Mhm thing. Okay. We know that at the end of the day you have a lot of priorities. You need revenue, you need to scale this. And if we could be the ones to actually help you get in with the oncology decision maker at these institutions, that opens a whole other door and depth to the relationship I think we have with our founders where we're joining their growth team in a sense. And that's been a lot of fun.

Speaker A: Yeah. Can you talk a little bit? How uh, because uh, you're a solo gp, but I think you'd probably say you aren't the only one running the show. Obviously you've on the website you've probably got 12 folks whether they're advisors, people on your investment team, venture partners, etc. Yeah. So I thought about um, yeah, they're not all window dressing. Right. They're not all stock photos. So how do you go about building your team and how do you look at creating balance on your team of perspective but then also just skill sets and how do you go about testing whether you really are going to enjoy working with this person or not?

Speaker C: Ooh, I didn't know where that question was ending. Okay, so piece, I've been really fortunate around who has come to the table. It's amazing like having some of these advisory board meetings where you're talking to everyone, you're like I. And it's made me giving an overview of a company we're thinking about investing in and this out of body experience, like why am I the one talking right now to this group? I should just be listening to them and it should be on a stage. And so it is this kind of humbling but exciting opportunity where I think we got the right folks, that we got a mixture of people from the health plan world, from the startup world, from the venture world, from the provider world come together where at the end of the Day if all of those agree or disagree on specific opportunities or different folks push back. It's just very clarifying. Um, because I'm not in that operational role on a day to day basis. Um, in terms of the actual liking and working with the people, I'm um, big on reference. Um, checks not just like the two that they provide you with, but go off book and figure out who knows who. Especially for folks who are so visible in their fields has been really important. And then I really do try to set it up in a way where it's different forms of like vesting and for folks and you have. If you give someone a percentage point of equity in your startup or fund, it doesn't necessarily all hit day one maybe invests 20% after the first year and then monthly. So setting up relationships where you both have the opportunity, if it's not working to get out. But also this is fun. This is a very fun, interesting, engaging job and opportunity where I think we can make a real impact in cancer patients, providers, families, caregivers, lives. And by investing into companies with the right business models, I actually think we're going to increase that even more because that is getting picked up by health systems which is what's going to get implemented. Financial returns should follow. So how else. It's why I'm having so much fun building the funds. Like what else do you want? If you could do good, do well, you're gonna matter with smart people who care. Yeah, it's pretty interesting and I think it's tough for people to show up with and I had it the other day like one of our advisors was like having a tough day and they asked if we could just push back a day because they don't know if they'll be their best self, whatever it is. Like we're very open and transparent. I think I hopefully breed and share that on my own. Where. Yeah, like this. I'd rather everyone, you know, be at a comfortable stage or point as we're having some of these discussions. And I think it's all been transparent and honest, which is the number one thing for me.

Speaker A: Yeah. Do you feel like, oh sorry Bri, go ahead.

Speaker B: Oh no, you can.

Speaker A: Do you feel like if you hadn't gotten cancer, oncology ventures would have been created?

Speaker C: No, I think I would be in healthcare still and I think I would have still by this point started something. But I don't think I would have known, understood or cared about the specificity. It really was. I was at Memorial Sloan Kettering. Good health insurance, good family Friends and everything. And I was 24 years old, young, active, healthy, and it was terrible. That's crazy. And it just mind blowing experience where if it was that bad for me at the best in the world with the best situation, it was all, everything was the best. Um, and cancer was really tough. I don't know how people do it. I don't know how people do it without insurance.

Speaker A: Sure.

Speaker C: How people do it without caregivers. I don't know how people do it at certain ages where they can't even afford a ride or get hospital or pick up their meds. And I don't know if I would have, I hope that I would have cared and spent time in some of the facilities, but it wouldn't have been as overpowering for me to understand the uh, how deep this goes where I still get it all the time where people say, oh, cancer stripes. Yeah, what is that? Like one or two that you could invest into? Then you dig in. We've already seen 600 and it's just blowing. The market is getting blown out of the water I think in uh, a exciting, hopefully helpful way.

Speaker A: Yeah. To date. So I think you just announced a follow on investment into one of your companies. Do you want to tell us a little bit about that?

Speaker C: So it's called oncoverycare. They were our first investment. It was an investment where I told people I was launching this fund and they said, you have to meet Hill. Uh, and so I was introduced to her. I think about six different people saying, you guys just need to get in a room. And they weren't raising. And it was good. They weren't raising cause I didn't have money. And so we talked and it was one of those. I remember exactly where I was having that intro zoom meeting because it was when I was like first launching this. I didn't have office space. It was, I was in like a diner on the way out in Long island and I remember talking to her and this is it. This is. It's a data driven cancer survivorship platform that helps folks understand when they are going through treatment and their surgeries and they're done with cancer. That should be an incredible celebrated moment. In reality, it's not. In reality, your primary care physician has no idea what to do. Only the stat is only 5%, roughly, which I think is overstating it. 5% of PCPs. Primary care physicians are well trained in survivorship guidelines. Your oncologist is treating the next patient. So what do you do? You just had however many months of surgery, chemo Radiation, you might have been neutropenic. You were just taking 40 different meds. I had two blood clots in my lungs. There are these things like you're not, you can't just go back to work. And so what they did is they're building this data driven personalized model to help each person during their transitional face of care back to life. They have their nurse practitioners, behavioral health support. It's pretty amazing. And now 18 going on 19 million cancer survivors, um, in the US to date. Hopefully everyone will be on the platform at some point. And so I ended up talking to her, I said I really think I'm going to raise this fund and if we do I would love to, to invest. And she said great. And so we ended up. It's just things like that are really important. It's building the trust and the relationship that we both knew we were going to do something and it ended up working out. And then they just raised a follow on round. So it's our first up round in the portfolio from 406 Ventures and Tennessee Oncology.

Speaker A: Congratulations.

Speaker C: Thank you. And it's really exciting because now they're in a point where they proved it out over the past six to 12 months that this is a need that they could build the team platform and structure the right revenue model from it. And now see how this scales.

Speaker B: I would love to hear more about your story and we're going to get into that in a little bit but we've got a gift that we would like you to open and then I know we've got one downstairs so we'll let you go downstairs and grab that after. So the first gift is the book which I know you've already opened on scuba diving. If you just want to show that, we'll edit it. We'll edit out me announcing it.

Speaker C: Got oh absolutely love it.

Speaker A: So we heard on your pre recording questionnaire that you're like what free time? I m don't have any free time but that maybe in the cards for 2024 was a excursion for scuba diving somewhere in the world. We're not sure where but you're going

Speaker C: to tell us maybe so scuba diving. So this was when I, it was about a month before I was diagnosed with cancer. I signed up for a scuba diving lessons and it was one of the things where I was so excited to do. Uh, unfortunately when you, when you start getting chemo and you uh, have blood clots in your lungs or getting surgeries, they don't love you underwater with that type of pressure And I had the surgeries went mainly well, but I still have some things and so it's been a while and I just haven't been able to physically do it with my body. And so now I think we still have to get 100% clearance. But I think I'm at a point where I'm finally able to do it. And so part of me has always wanted to do it then part of me, I was also like it's the thing I can't huh. Have. And I think we're now at a point where I can. And I'm just, I'm fascinated by it. I don't know where it's going to be. I don't want to plan anything until I get the official sign off from my oncologist. But it feels like we are in a spot where I'll be able to do it in the very near future. And I'm so excited to look at this because this is if you saw it's all the top destinations and photos from it. So I waited to open it up. So I haven't gone through yet. But I am um, I'm excited to see what might inspire the first trip.

Speaker A: Yeah, I love it. I don't know if our readers listeners have caught your TED Talk or uh, one of them, but one of, one of them was on Chaos isn't an excuse. And I think there are some really fantastic nuggets of advice but really it's around not waiting to do that next thing. It's to not continue to think of excuses for why you're not doing that next thing that you want to do. And from um, taking city bikes to scuba lessons, et cetera. I feel like you epitomize that mindset. Why do you think it's so hard for all of us to adapt to that and embrace that full fully?

Speaker C: You really, I love how much you guys do your research. So I think there's a few things. One it is I, I think people really don't think they have the time. And I think if you actually spend time to just look at your phone and your screen time for the last week or so and see where you're spending it, you could easily doesn't have to go to zero, just cut half of it from Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, whatever it is, use that 15 to 20 minutes. And that was the whole point of the talk I tried to give is it's. I think people put these new passions projects thing on these pedestals of um, I'm going to need to do this for a thousand hours before I get good and become an expert. But in reality, if you just do 15, 20 minutes a day for some of it, or few days for a few weeks, you'll really quickly learn whether or not it is something you're interested in or the learning curve of getting better or just learning how to even learn in that space. And it's just this. It's like when you open the book first, carrying the book around. It's just the other one. I. They were. The two songs I gave were similar, but the other piece was getting started. Just start doing the thing and if you like it amazing, you'll be even more excited and impassioned to go start and no one cares. I think there's this fear of failure, um, that I think also honestly, to your earlier point, like around why folks may not be throwing their stuff online. Yeah, I think people don't like being wrong or being bad at stuff. But like, why not? It's just, it's in dating, the fear of rejection or going up to someone or all these different, like no one. Everyone is worried about themselves and their own thing where if it doesn't work out, it doesn't, uh, work out. Go try a new thing. I think people underestimate others. Respect and acceptance for trying new things.

Speaker A: I'm not going to presume to know your status right now if you're single, if you're dating, if you're whatnot. But this next VC unboxing may or may not be the most flattering moment for you. Uh, can you please open up the next box?

Speaker C: Yes, I am single and dating. And honestly, we've talked about so many different pieces. If someone isn't interested in all these like little one off things I spend my time doing and thinking about, like, probably not the right.

Speaker A: Yeah, they can piss off. Yeah, I got you.

Speaker C: Okay, so this was unbelievable. So these are Chinese juggling devil sticks. Which.

Speaker A: Wow. Do they actually have a tassel at the end of them?

Speaker C: Yeah, so I used to actually. One. I'll uh, undo these. So it's one big stick.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker C: And I'll try to maybe figure out a way to stand up and I can show you, but it's. You hit the two things together and it's just like this nothing thing that I saw in Epcot when I was like six that I just thought was so interesting. And I ended up writing my college essay about it and it was just this thing where it was this mindless hand eye coordination thing that you did while like reading, learning, like I Did it while watching tv. I ended up doing them. Um, I do them on fire. I've done them for different. Wait a minute.

Speaker A: Stop. Hold on one second.

Speaker C: No, this is cool. There's like a specific type of, um, difficult people.

Speaker A: Give you another one if you want to light that one on fire just to see it. But Bree, seriously, I'm. I'm about to go crazy. We send these pre recording questionnaires to all of our VCs we've had and people just hold back from us a little bit. And this is a prime example. Ben's. Oh, yeah. One of my hobbies. Or this is one of my things that I do. He did not mention. Oh, I light them on fire. Perform in front. Uh, it's crazy. But we've had, you know, David Hornick, he did Tuvin throat singing. We've got our very first episode with Scott. Scotty B over at Norwest was him playing the piano. A mini piano.

Speaker C: That's.

Speaker A: I'm starting to feel like. I feel like our guests, ah, are just holding out from us. So, Ben, if you could. If. Do you have enough room where you are? Just stand up.

Speaker C: We'll cut it

Speaker A: either. We won't cut it. Um. Ran right into that.

Speaker C: Um, and what? It's like a different form of. I cannot believe I'm doing this on a podcast.

Speaker A: This is amazing.

Speaker C: Right now. It's not enough ceiling grow.

Speaker B: Really.

Speaker A: Don't toss it too high. Don't toss it too high. So what I just want to just explain to our. Our listeners only, um, we just had, uh, an incredibly gifted VC standing up, doing Chinese devil stick juggling, which I

Speaker C: didn't even unwrap it completely. He didn't even wrap like, he just

Speaker A: literally jumped right into it. Bri. It wasn't like, oh, I gotta get it going. He was just like, boom.

Speaker B: Now you know why I've been so excited to have been on the trip. I'm like, he's saving the world with his cancer fund. He can entertain. What else do you want?

Speaker C: I appreciate it. And these are nice. Oh, you guys did well.

Speaker A: Yeah, just toss your other one. Literally, just throw them away. Light them on fire. Yeah.

Speaker C: And so when I was growing up, this was like one of my first entrepreneurial endeavors was I didn't think enough people knew about it. And so we started making them. So my father and I made them in our garage. We would, like, make these wooden things. We would go to, um, Home Depot, get the wood, cut it out.

Speaker A: Whittling them.

Speaker C: Yeah. We would do the whole. We ran it was so nice. It was really fun.

Speaker A: We didn't even talk about that. So here we're gonna go way back into time. It sounds like you're. You're very close with your dad and what. What was your first experience? It sounds like that was your first experience in entrepreneurship. But we always talk to VCs about, like, how they got the curiosity, how they. How they maybe cultivated this spirit of being entrepreneurs or being curious about entrepreneurship. How did that come about?

Speaker C: Yeah, it might have been my first, like, little dub. But, like, to me, that was just, like, having fun with something I really enjoyed and thought was different. I've always wanted to start my own thing. Like, I had one of my other note lists on my phone is all business ideas I have, and some of them I have no business starting. Like, it's just a completely different field or strategy. I just think it's cool and should. Yes. In the world. There's one in particular that after we're done with fun 10 here, we'll do something with in a completely different space. So we could do a reunion episode in a while.

Speaker A: And you.

Speaker C: Okay, cross your thousand mark. I've just always been fascinated by and excited by people that leave their jobs to go build something.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker C: Uh, it was this point where I was like, if this is something that is so interesting and exciting and something I respect so much, what am I doing? Like, why am I like, yes, I'm in the world and I'm touching it, but why aren't I doing that on my own? And then you do, and it is scary. It is. It's a lot of people telling you no. It's just a lot of people that don't know, don't understand. It's what you're thinking in your head, but it doesn't matter because it's people saying, no, you can't do this.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker C: And I just felt like there were a few different pieces of what I wanted to build that I wanted to do under my own brand. Like, even the little things like the newsletter with doing comedy for half of it, very few funds would let me do that.

Speaker A: None of them.

Speaker C: All these different pieces were like, why shouldn't that, uh, be the case? And so it's some of the little things like that and then some of the other pieces where I think this is going to be really successful and why not own something that you think is going to be successful? I think it was a mixture of all of those.

Speaker A: Yeah. Uh, were your parents when you told them, hey, I'm going to go from working at a growth stage venture fund to then an operational person at Time Care. And then you're like, I'm gonna leave time and I'm gonna just start my own venture fund. When was the moment that you realized you were gonna start Oncology Ventures and then really go back to that moment. Were there people that were like, yeah. And um, people that you love and people that are close to you that were like, this is a bad idea?

Speaker C: M. I think there were a few different moments. So there was one moment when I was still at Optic Ventures where I was like, wow, this would be really interesting and I should do this. And I talked to a few people and family, whatever. And everyone was like, I think they were following my lead of, okay, this sounds like something you're thinking about. Great that you're thinking about it. And then I spent time at Timecare and then it was that September, October when I started changing my tune, being like, um, doing this and everyone. Not everyone, that's not true. I would say family, parents, sister, 100% on board, uh, were excited. Gave me the kind of comfort where they would be in my corner supporting investing. Like all those like little things that are really helpful. There were definitely a few people, especially ones in the industry that are like, this is so you are a solo GP raising a first time fund in arguably like the toughest fundraisers market with a really niche strategy. It's just, it's not going to work. No one's going to invest. Yeah, I'm glad I didn't listen to that.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker C: And there were a lot of people that were like this, maybe get a few more years. I heard from a lot of different folks, why don't you do X, Y and Z and then start it? But in five years to like to my point, getting started, I'd rather struggle doing it and do a smaller version one right now and in a year or two be in a place where, you know, I already. I've learned more in the past year and a half. Ish. Starting this. Met, uh, more people and had more. I don't feel Sunday scary is never. I don't. There's just so many pieces where this is such an interesting, fun thing where I'm glad I didn't listen to the people that said don't. But a lot of the close people in my life I think shared a different version of yeah, we know, I know you haven't told us you're starting anything, but like this was coming. And so I did feel supported and incurred. Yeah, no, I didn't feel encouraged. I felt supported.

Speaker A: Do you keep a list of your detractors? And you're like, these are people that I'll never look at.

Speaker C: Uh, I do not have a note list on my phone for that. But mentally, for sure.

Speaker A: For sure. Yeah.

Speaker C: Cool people that. It's just people are different when you're talking about their money. And, yeah, there are some people who doesn't. We could get into whatever version of this. Totally. But not in writing.

Speaker A: But not in writing. Nothing in writing. Okay. It'll just be audio and audio, video.

Speaker C: Tying my face to it.

Speaker A: That's right. Tying your face and plays to it. That makes sense. That makes sense. Go ahead, Brie.

Speaker B: You had told us with your experience, you had the best insurance, you had money, and it was still crap. I'd love for you to tell us about your experience when you found out, how you found out, and then what were the problems you experienced throughout your journey and that inspired you to start this fund.

Speaker C: So I found out when I was in Israel on, uh, my Berkeley trip, and I found out because I couldn't breathe. And so I went to the hospital and I was like, hey, I can't breathe. And I turns out I had a pulmonary embolism, which is like a blood clot in your lung. And people that are 24 and active and healthy, and I don't smoke cigarettes and any of that, you don't get blood clots unless something is causing a blood clot. And so we. I was there for a bit, and then they essentially told me, you have to make a decision. Do you want to stay here or do you want to go home? And I was like, what do you make a decision on what? Stay home. Stay here or go home for what? And they were like, something's clearly wrong. And so I flew home, got another blood clot in my other lung, which was, honestly, for people who haven't experienced either, more painful than cancer, for sure. It is like a really heavy person sitting on your chest all the time. It is. It's like, it's actually there. There was one point in particular where I was in the emergency room with him, just pumping drugs into. Because I couldn't physically do it. It was so terrible. And so I came back, went straight to my moral son category because I shared it with doctors, both in the family and out, that they're like, this is probably. It's probably some form of cancer related, did a bunch of tests, and then it turns out I was diagnosed at stage 3A, which is frustrating because a year earlier I was at a dinner and I wasn't drinking. It was a regular day. And I passed out at the dinner. And I went to the hospital because I shouldn't be passing out at dinner. And they were like, oh, you're fine, you're overreacting. I was like, overreacting to what? I just passed out. These are facts that just happened. This isn't a reaction. This is. Just tell me why my body just did this because it should not be doing this. I know it shouldn't be this because it shouldn't be doing this. And. And then I had back pain for a while. So there were a lot of different symptoms that doctors just kept telling me, like, oh, you're fine. Don't worry about it. I don't want to be in a hospital getting tests done. And so we finally listened to them. And so one of the big issues we're trying to fix it, software is early detection, because I should have been caught at stage one. I was in hospital complaining about a symptom that was related to my cancer diagnosis that no one found. And I went in one. And that is just because I would have avoided chemo. I would have avoided the blood clots. I would've avoided for sure one of the surgeries, maybe two, because people weren't doing their job well. And that is, that's frustrating. Um, or it was during the journey is we had a very well trained, strong oncologist, but the way he was answering the question is he was like, yeah, there are a few different chemo regimens, chemotherapy treatment options that you could do. And it wasn't a hundred percent for any. And so it's this unknown. And so I ended up going and getting second opinions from a few folks, but they weren't going to pay for a second opinion. So I had to go do that. Like, I had to go leverage my network, uh, and make phone calls and ask for introductions and talk to all these people saying, hey, can you put me in touch with this oncologist? And I'm doing this research while I'm sick, confused, scared, and working a job. How do you have time to do that? And so that's another big piece is how do we help with second opinions? Virtual tumor boards, or what they're called following evidence based medicine. Crazy. Mind blowing stat. We are still at a point of cancer care in the United States where less than 55,0% of cancer patients are getting treated in accordance with evidence based medicine. Unacceptable. Yeah, because it's changing quickly and it's because folks are overworked and it's because people don't have the access scale, et cetera. There's a lot of reasons why. So we're investing into that. Partnership journey was tough. I had a lot of complications with surgery, so that's a big part of what we're trying to solve for. And, and I went to the ED lot. There was just after 5pm you can't call your uncle. Like they're off.

Speaker A: Uh, yeah. What do you do?

Speaker C: And I was in or whatever and you call the people and they're like, yeah, uh, just come in. That should be. I don't want to go to the ED When I was neutropenic for most of my treatment, which means you don't have enough white blood cells essentially to fight infection. And why would I want to go be in a room with other sick people when I couldn't eat from a salad bar? I had to follow a pregnant woman diet. First comedy that I wrote about because oncologist is telling this 24 year old healthy guy with a straight face, you have to follow the same diet as prede. I was like, if that's not funny, then sure, it'd be tough. Also, helping with the ED and, and symptom management and supportive care outside the hospital is, um, something very important. Sure.

Speaker A: And it's interesting to note. Right. The doctors aren't bad doctors, but oftentimes people though, they're.

Speaker C: They. Yeah. Bad, horrible people. Um, now appreciate every physician involvement of uh, oncology ventures.

Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker C: I.

Speaker A: Look, I. So it's not that they're. It feels like they're, that they're hamstrung from a regulation standpoint, sometimes from a coverage standpoint, from what they can subscribe, what they can prescribe, what they can't. Again, dealing with this cardiac MRI company. The fact that cardiac, uh, MRIs are something that are regularly prescribed now in order to dig in and find out what might be wrong with you has made a huge difference in patient outcomes around cardiology. Similarly, you have these issues of a doctor put in this situation with X, Y and Z kind of symptoms is told, let's not proactively explore what those symptoms might lead to. Let's just treat the person and get them out the door and get the next person in. Right. And it's when you realize like the mountain of regulations that you're dealing with, it's just mind boggling to me and it's so sad. But that's why again, finding a way for true automation, true efficiency to be created in these processes with software and through the services that you're investing in is huge. Right? This is what's going to lead to

Speaker C: better patient outcomes 100% and I think it is. It's not anyone's fault. It's just this, this people are following incentive structure and they also don't have the time. Like the physician burnout is real. Everything from note taking and transcribing through to they want to spend time. People get onto medicine because they want to spend time with their patients and helping their patients. And unfortunately we built a system of admin backlog and perverse incentives that it just, it totally makes sense how we ended up here and it's why we're focused for this fund in the way that we are where, how do we ensure that everything we touch is going to improve some part of the process journey for some person or group today? Because there's so many. One of our advisors shows that like free isn't cheap enough anymore. Like you can't. It's not something where folks just don't have enough time to click into another thing. It needs to be so game changing, supportive and helpful yesterday. Otherwise it's going to be tough to build really quickly.

Speaker A: And I uh, want to touch on that. If you haven't had a chance, watch the interview that Gene Smart who plays Deborah Vance in Hacks, just did with Chris Wallace. And she talks about her late husband, how he passed away and, and that his death was really avoidable and he should have gotten better treatment at that time. But they said it was like some sort of pneumonia. They gave meds for it, et cetera. And it turned out that it was cancer and something deeper than that and he passed unfortunately. But really another story that kind of just brings this full circle talk about paradigm shifting software. I know in one of your, the comedic interludes in your newsletter you talked about a, uh, uh, in a particular situation it was Amazon in their checkout service and that AI really should stand for actually Indians. Uh, and jokes aside, where does AI and adoption of AI uh from the companies that you're investing in stand right now? And how does that. Is it making its way into real use cases and real points now, or is it going to be in a couple of years that we start seeing the real use cases emerge?

Speaker C: So I do think it depends. If you peel back the hood on some of these startups, it really is a team of offshore employees going through data. It's unbelievable. There are some that something real and I think we actually are at an inflection point right now high level, I would say folks are learning how to interact with it. I think we're doing it very case dependent. I think one really interesting use case that one of our companies is taking advantage of is point solution fatigue. All of these different groups are uh, just spent the last few years partnering with a ton of startups and have no idea what's going on, what's not tracking, outcome, roi, attribution. How can we actually leverage AI and build models to support that just end workload. Um, management I think is part of a step one I think there are certain parts and I'll speak specifically on the oncology side like radiology, pathology. Those are two different areas where we've seen a lot of early interest because it's very. Two things are true in those spaces. One, it actually is a fundamental shift of uh, productivity, additional revenue generation, clarity and I guess correctness that is able to be explored and it still at the end of the day needs some physician support. So we're viewing a world where it's all AI, uh, data enhanced, et cetera, hair delivery that is an extension of current workflows, not a replacement to. And I think the companies that are succeeding now and will over the next few years, it's going to be ones that fit really well into existing workflows and help to make those folks more efficient in a compliant manner. I think down the road, who knows. And there could be full end to end AI where you don't have to interact with anyone. But I think the ones that are successful are the ones that are taking that not baby step because it's a huge step but that first step to end, to end integration into current workflow um, in the current environment. Which is why we bet on that company Health Universe because I don't really know yet who's going to win in the space but I know that healthcare AI is going up into the right and I know people are going to be building and want to learn and scale and they're setting it up in a few ways. To use another analogy, I can't code or develop a website but I could use Wix.com and so they're also working on something like that for healthcare AI where oncologists, all these groups that have these ideas, they just don't know how to actually code and build AI, uh, which in some forms isn't that complex actually based on specific code bases. But I think the usability piece of it is really getting there now.

Speaker A: Yeah, I think there are those rare unicorn founders that have the technical Expertise like whether they're developing something in Matlab that then gets ported into Python. Uh, but then our cardiologists, oncologists, et cetera, and have real understanding of the pain points and sort of the value proposition, the value delivery chain, all of those things. And so I'm bullish with you. I'm right there with you on that front. You did mention compliance and I want to just jump into whether it's your belief that compliance right now in the FDA feels more like a headwind in a tailwind. And at what point in time does the FDA kind of streamline processes and regulations so that it can be more of a tailwind behind some of these kind of unicorn thinking founders that are utilizing deep learning, et cetera, for really big solutions.

Speaker C: It's why I think this Cancer X Cancer Moonshot thing is so interesting is I really do. It is a, an opportunity to build this public private partnership because folks don't know and you have to educate. I don't think it's lobbying. I think it's a different form of educating the decision makers that they actually, if you do X and Y, unlock a whole new wave of innovation that could be paid for and deployed in a safe, scalable manner. There's another company going through it right now that we've been getting close to that's actually just laser focus on it on um, helping the regulatory bodies and the systems and the startups be compliant. Because it is a really big, a really big issue that, that folks are facing. And I completely agree with you that I think it's right now, unfortunately a headwind. But I think it has an opportunity to be a tailwind if done, um, in the right manner. But I think people don't tell like the people who are most excited, interested, innovative are the ones they're very heavily skewed towards one side of the small startup creating side and not the folks that are making the policy on. Sure, uh, yeah, uh, to make an unfair broad generalization, I'm sure there's a lot of incredibly qualified people making a lot of these decisions, but I think there's a lot of education to be done because I don't want us to end up in a spot where we are sitting on all this amazing tech opportunity, etc. And it just, it can't get into the hands of folks.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. I do also recognize that Sam Altman and other leaders in AI can't be the only ones talking to the government about the pluses and minuses of AI, uh, and how it should Be regulated. AI is so vast and AI, uh in medicine in particular needs to have real medical people behind it that are also talking to them. Is that some of your thinking around partnering with Cardinal Health of the world, the Atlantic uh, Health Systems of the world where get people with real lobbying kind of bodies behind investing in startups and helping to back startups to then get them to move regulation uh and regulatory bodies in a different direction 1000%.

Speaker C: I think there is so much to be said for patient access. Throw another crazy stat out there. Almost all it's about 98% of clinical trials are administered in academic settings. Not relative to, for folks, relative to the community. Even though 50% of patients are treated in community oncology centers. They're just not getting access to it. And it's because why if you name your pharma sponsor, why would you contract with small Practice X with 5 docs for your new drug if you're maybe going to see one patient over the next three years, why go through the headache of being compliant and doing that full on 10 partnership? And if we could build this, uh, my goal for oncology ventures is to build something that sits at some form of the center of cancer innovation and that's going to be a really big part of it where we can prove out our scale and reach through some amazing strategic partners who between a lot. It's pretty incredible how many patients, providers, et cetera we're able to now reach through the groups around the table. I think folks should listen especially if you start proving it out and you need some people to go first, you need some people to adopt, you need people to get creative around business model, creating their own incentive structure, et cetera. But and when you do that,

Speaker B: yeah,

Speaker C: it's maybe too early for us to do some of it now, but people again follow incentives and numbers and I think we're going to do hopefully a really good job of tracking all of that. In a way error. We'll have our ear close to the ground on where we can take our place. Because you're right, it's not fair to just have the few folks in the public spotlight be doing it. It's on the other folks who maybe you know, a lot of folks even for how uh, big Optum is, a lot of people didn't know what Optum was and that's crazy because healthcare world is obviously such a big player. But a lot of what they do is behind the scenes for so many of it. Like they, they own physicians, they have this specialty pharmacy, there's a lot that they do that they actually do quite well and quite in. In an innovative manner. Uh, that I think, yeah, folks like that are going to be in a good position.

Speaker A: Yeah, you mentioned stage a little bit in there and it's interesting like when you graduated Duke, you went into private equity investment banking. And then from investment banking alpha is very much kind of growth or a little bit later stage. And I really um. It's great hearing a later stage investor again. We've had some more later stage investors on the show recently that have gone early and earlier and now finally you. I think you're really at that seed stage of development. What has the transition moving earlier been like for you? Given all the complications we talked about around investing in this with this thesis in mind and then what have you found the most joy in that transition? First,

Speaker C: I think it's better to start at the later growth stage and go early because weird. Like for all of our investor memos, we're writing 16, 18 page plus investment memos and we do a financial returns analysis, a sensitivity returns analysis, captivity map, all this stuff that I don't think most seed funds do but it's what I was trained to do and I think hopefully we'll make better decisions. It's also where the market is. I don't think we could. We've seen now uh, 600 plus opportunities we're going to invest into 20 out of the fund. We've made six so far. I don't know Slash think that given our focus on the market that would exist at the serious stage right now I think there's a decent chunk, but not in terms of that ability to choose and select and also help grow and shape these companies. So I think it's a little bit of a mix between where the market's at and where I think timing wise and maybe at some point we go later. But for fund one where we're at now, we're laser focused on the early stages of commercialization. I would say the most fun piece is it's just these founders are awesome and it's everyone. Yeah, there's a few that are like trying to do this to make some money, but most of them are doing this because they just saw something in some way that it is so crazy crystal clear that they should be working on this solution to help improve the journey. And you're talking to them at this stage when they're building that out. It's pretty refreshing and energizing.

Speaker A: Sure, yeah, absolutely. This is interested in so few times do I get to Actually talk to someone in health tech venture investing. Right. We've had a couple of folks on and it's just been eye opening to me every time I do. Do you feel like companies in this space that are being started are given a fair shake throughout? So unfortunately we live in the. You're either on the coast or you're not on the coast, you're in the middle, you're in St. Louis, you're in Takagi, wherever you might be. And I think there's a little bit of geographic bias that occurs but then noticing that we've got great doctors and we've got great scientists all across our country now with greater access to to software. Do you think there's a bias against great scientists in the healthcare space? That they don't know how to grow a business or scale a business as fast as technologists and SaaS or enterprise or whatever it might be

Speaker C: Such a good question. The portfolio we built so far is quite geographically diverse. I think there's definitely thought beds where you're seeing more and more of these different healthcare institutions work on different forms of accelerators or and spin outs. That actually I think is quite helpful and interesting and it's uh, not unfortunately around the whole country. But there's a lot of issues still where like you talk about like even things like tech transfer rights and the ownership that some of these groups are trying to take it really is hindering innovation and spin outs. And you're sometimes some of them are setting these scientists, researchers, clinical folks up for failure because they have it in their mind that oh giving X person for just doing a little bit of work 4 to 8% of our equity is fine and normal because they're getting trained to do that. Where in reality that is not the case that you would not see a repeat exited founder Give up uh 4% equity for nothing anywhere. And so I think there is a lot of, a lot of training and a lot of education that still needs to be done. And it's tough because we've looked at a few deals where it's almost too late like the cap table or incentive structure or royalty arrangement whatever it is so backwards that is we're playing catch up at the which is fair but it the reality is we're trying to return a fund all of us being equal we should probably take a bet on some someone else that's a bit more clean. And so I would urge folks to really think about how to set people up for the most success growing going forward because 1% of a big pie is worth a lot more than 4% of something that's struggling and doesn't get off the ground. And I don't think enough of those groups understand. I will say we're also at a point where we're seeing a lot of folks team up. So, like on Covery Care, commercial founder teamed up with a, uh, clinical co founder. And we're seeing that, that come to fruition a bit more where it's just a different, different form of a co founder dynamic where folks are realizing that they need support on both sides, especially in the healthcare world. Especially if you're going to touch the end patient, where, if you look at the exit, that's where a lot of them are. Right. Some of the most exciting exits in the space are ones that actually end up touching some part of either the patient or the provider, and not just this lightweight tech solution. In order to make that happen, I think you need a mix of a clinical and commercial team.

Speaker A: Uh, that's such great insight. I would also add, by the way, in addition to being geographically diverse, you've got a number of companies and dare I say, at least half of your companies have a female co founder. And so the fact that you're investing in companies that bring different perspectives and embrace different perspectives in solving problems is a big part of why I think you're going to be a very successful, uh, venture capitalist and hopefully get to fund 10 and beyond. So we're excited about that. Listen, as near the end of our journey, uh, here, and thank you for your time, we like to ask our guests to play, uh, a little game that we affectionately call fidelity 5. Question.

Speaker C: Affectionately because of the sponsorship or affectionately Affectionately?

Speaker A: Oh, just affectionately because of affectionately. And by the way, Fidelity is not only a sponsor, but Jason over at Fidelity is a good friend of both Bri and I. And so we say this from the depths of our being. Uh, Jason's a great guy and he's been so, uh, instrumental in being a value add, really. Not just being a friend, but being a really strong value add without asking for anything in return. The coolest thing is supporting VCs that we love and that we want to see be successful, but do it with, uh, the support of corporations that love us and want to see us be successful. So we're excited to have this, but would you humor us and play a little Fidelity 5 with us?

Speaker C: I can't wait.

Speaker A: Okay. Excellent. All right, so Bri or I are going to ask you a question, and it's lightning rounds. A quick answer to each of these Five questions will earn you a victory. Are we ready?

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker A: All right.

Speaker B: All right, I'll start us off. What is your go to karaoke song? Uh, oh,

Speaker C: the most recent one we did was paradise by the Dashboard Lights. Was very fun. Meatloaf.

Speaker A: Wow.

Speaker C: Yeah. Um, I can't hit the notes, but fun. And then a really fun. The. I can't believe this is more embarrassing than the devil sticks. The what dreams are made of from the Lizard McGuire Movie. That if you do in the right room with the. The right co. Karaoke singer. That. That's fun and professional.

Speaker A: That is truly unexpected. And I think next time we're out in New York, Bri, we know who we're going to be hanging out with.

Speaker B: Mhm.

Speaker A: This is a must happen.

Speaker B: That is a reminder. Vic, you were supposed to meet Ben in New York, but you didn't because

Speaker A: you missed the lunch, to be honest. And by the way, not sponsored by Southwest Airlines. So I can tell you this. Um, they suck. But yeah, our flight was canceled with less than 24 hour notice. Yeah, we were a little late to that dinner or lunch. We didn't quite get there, but that's okay. Um, that's why we have to go back to New York on a different day.

Speaker B: Exactly. We will. We will be redoing it again. And Ben, it will be in person. And you're going to be on stage telling jokes and singing songs.

Speaker A: And singing songs.

Speaker B: Flipping sticks.

Speaker C: I can't wait to see the invite for that event.

Speaker A: Oh, um, I can come up with one. All right. Okay, next question.

Speaker B: Called just Ben.

Speaker C: Oh my God.

Speaker A: All of those days I'm doing laundry and. Yeah, we get it. All right, here we go. Question number two. If you could invest in any fictional startup from a movie, TV show or book, what would it be?

Speaker B: Oh my God.

Speaker C: What's the name of the chocolate store from Harry Potter?

Speaker A: Oh, uh, I got it. Let me. It's

Speaker B: anything Harry Potter related.

Speaker A: Sweet shop.

Speaker C: Uh, yes. Yes. Yeah, that would be fun.

Speaker B: Get some water, beer.

Speaker C: Yeah. And just. I don't know how good of a business it is, but it feels like a neat market and I would love to get their new. I don't know, like anyone that's coming up with new creations, you get your little quarterly buck. Thanks for being an investor. And here's what we created. I think it'll be really fun.

Speaker A: Oh yeah. Oh yeah, absolutely. Okay. Number three.

Speaker B: All right. If you could do it all over again, would you rather be an investor or a builder?

Speaker C: Uh, investor. And unbelievable kudos and power to the people. Building startups. It is. It's just. It's so difficult and stressful and exciting. Building a venture fund feels like a really nice mix between ownership, entrepreneurial, ability to be creative, et cetera. But diversifying your portfolio. Mhm.

Speaker A: Oh, that's a really good point. Really good point. All right, what movie best fits the future of the human race? Wall E where we've all degenerated into an obese state due to anti gravity in the metaverse. Avatar, where we are dominated by this quest for resources, New worlds walking around an avatar body. Or the Matrix where we're all in a simulation.

Speaker C: I have seen half of Avatar and I have not seen the other two. So based on your pieces and what I know, Keeping up with pop culture, um, some form of the Matrix.

Speaker A: Okay.

Speaker C: I think slash maybe would hope. I think I'd probably rather visit Avatar.

Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker C: For a few years.

Speaker A: This is the one part of this episode that won't age well is where you said, I hope it's like Matrix. I'm gonna look back at that.

Speaker C: We're just gonna be like, really is. He was.

Speaker A: He didn't really. He doesn't. Not a pop culture expert on, uh.

Speaker C: I was kidding, obviously.

Speaker A: Yeah. The Matrix. In the Matrix, we've been taken over by robots and they're basically harnessing us for our energy source.

Speaker C: Oh no, I'd rather not do that.

Speaker A: Yeah. Or. And, and it's all simulation and then

Speaker C: we'll do a post edit for it.

Speaker A: So yeah, let's do Avatar also simultaneously. If I've ruined the Matrix for anyone out there, I'm sorry.

Speaker C: It's been out.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, it's been out for too long.

Speaker B: They're already doing like 25th anniversary by now. What?

Speaker A: The Matrix resurrection out on 2021. Wasn't that like episode or number four in the movie?

Speaker B: Yeah, they filmed in San Francisco. It was. It was awesome.

Speaker A: Okay, fine. We'll count that as a win.

Speaker C: Here we go.

Speaker A: The last and final question, Bri.

Speaker B: Okay. What is the one deal that you passed on that you wish you hadn't?

Speaker C: None in this fund yet. Good.

Speaker A: Although it's going to happen. I know. You know, it's um.

Speaker C: Oh, I like. I like. There's two. One at Alpha Jackpocket. They. They were actually just acquired, so this might be recency bias, but it was just ahead of its time for like DraftKings. They were acquired by DraftKings. I believe it was just making it efficient for. It was just digitizing mobile lottery gaming, things like that. And I think it was Really? I remember the founder being really sharp and really interesting, having a good sense of the regulatory changes in a complex, changing market, doing in a safe manner where you don't want to create addiction for folks. But obviously that's part of it. So I thought that one was interesting

Speaker A: that it wraps up Fidelity 5 questions. If anything, our listeners viewers can get a really good sense of how you really turned your greatest challenge into your greatest triumph over at Oncology Ventures. And we're extremely happy for you and excited for your prospects moving forward and what it means for all of us humans and battling cancer and cancer related issues. So thank you for joining us as always, because you've managed to circum. Circumvent some of these questions, but answer some of them in perfect ways, you get a prize. So with that, um, I think there's one more gift that you have to unbox.

Speaker C: All right.

Speaker A: All right, here we go. Ben has.

Speaker C: This is in my favorite color, a branded Patagonia drinks with a, uh, vc. Yeah, I didn't know we were at the stage of Oncology Ventures where we were at Patagonias yet.

Speaker A: You're there, man. You're multiple portfolio companies in. And Bri, once again, you're stunning in your pick of color and everything.

Speaker C: It smells like, gorgeous. This will get used.

Speaker A: Oh, uh, we love it.

Speaker B: So good.

Speaker A: We love it.

Speaker C: Wow. Thank you, guys.

Speaker A: It showcases Oncology, uh, ventures the way it should. And as always, we like to end our episode with our guest giving us a cheers. And this is your couple minutes to bring up anything, shed light on something. Thank mom and dad, whatever it is. Here you go, Ben Friberg, it's yours.

Speaker C: So, first of all, thank you guys so much for having me. I've done a few of these podcasts, but this was this. It felt genuine in so many different ways from the prep, the research, the question. So, first of all, congrats to what you guys are doing. I think this is really fun. Also, as a thank you to every. It. It really does take every single person in my life that I knew and didn't know. Related, non related. That has really helped. And just honestly, when I was going through cancer too, everyone just showed up. And I think if you bring positive energy, just go out and do the thing. I think really the worst thing anyone could say to you is no. So just go ask. Go try. And if you have someone or, uh, a loved one going through cancer, please do reach out and we can see how we, through our companies and connections can help. It sucks that we need cancer insiders, but we still unfortunately do, and early detection is the best thing you could do to improve your outcome. So make sure you're getting screened regularly for anything you might be at risk for, and have fun doing what you guys are all doing and hopefully getting at least one good laugh in a day.

Speaker A: Yeah, cheers to that.

Speaker B: Thanks for cozying up and listening to another episode of Drinks with a vc. We are so grateful for our listener support. Feel free to reach out and add any of your questions to the comment section. If you have an idea for a guest or have some feedback, reach out to us on LinkedIn.

Speaker A: If you liked that last episode, be sure to check out our others featuring VCs from Lightspeed, Bessemer, Hannah Gray, BTV and Norwest. As always, don't forget to like and subscribe.

Speaker C: Cheers.