Greg Head of Scaling Point on Changing Startup Funding and Drawbacks of Venture Capital Funding

Speaker A: All CEOs, me included. We don't actually know what we're doing.

Speaker B: They're all sharks. So all you gotta do though is know shark behavior. I don't think we've ever talked about this before. We can capture all of the wallet share. First place you start is with the product. That's just the first nut.

Speaker A: Uh, this is the Capital Stack.

Speaker C: Foreign.

Speaker A: Hey, everybody, this is David Paul, the host of the Capital Stack podcast, where I talk to founders, operators and investors about all things value creation in startups. Today I am talking to Greg Head, the founder of, uh, Scaling Point, which is an advisory firm and also the practical founders movement, which involves founders getting off the VC train, which is something I've been trying to preach. Greg does a better job. He's a better marketer than I. Um, Greg has got a very long history, uh, both as an operator, as in an angel investor. He's spent, uh, some time in being the chief marketing officer at a little company called Infusionsoft, INF, AZ, as well as some other, uh, big legacy platforms. Greg is kind of a dinosaur, honestly. Like, he's like, you know, it's like, it's. It's like the Tyrannosaurus rex. I like coming back from the, from the Jurassic times. But Greg knows marketing, and that is timeless. So, Greg, how are you?

Speaker B: I'm doing well. Uh, you just call me an old guy, uh, with a Tyrannosaurus rex. Okay, well, good. That means I'm bold and wise. I've been doing this for a long time. And, uh, the marketing thing at infusionsoft was the last thing I did last. Let's say it was 2011, 2015, so about 10 years ago that people remember me by. But I've done everything in the software business except code for just about 30 years. And, uh, now I work with founders all over the world who are not just, you know, uh, keeping, you know, not just, uh, staying off the drugs, but not heading there in the first place, uh, for the big VC funding. There's plenty going on.

Speaker A: You're like the just say no for VC funding.

Speaker B: Yeah, that's true. Uh, I played the game for a long time and I've won that game. I helped start a company in the 90s that grew up to be one of the CRM leaders in the early days. We went public and it was a big deal. We made the funds back in the day and, uh, sold that company, that was SalesLogix, we sold it to Sage eventually in Phoenix, and then infusionsoft, which also raised but didn't uh, sell and didn't pay back uh, for the investors and founders, uh, in there yet. So you can win, you could lose. But the game has changed so much David, in the last 10 years, five years, um, and that's what I've noticed. So I used to, I used to be in Phoenix with you, uh, helping folks, you know, work towards the VC funding model, the pitch decks and what to say to VCs and connections and all that stuff. And we've both seen how uh, the software game has changed. You just don't need that like you used to. So it's not, you know, there's all kinds of ways to create valuable software companies these days. And uh, VC funding should be you know, used in small doses only when it's really appropriate. Like opioids. Right. You shouldn't prescribe it for every time you have a headache. And it's pretty serious drugs, you know, as most founders who raise big funding uh, figure out.

Speaker A: And they just don't know it. They just don't know when they take it.

Speaker B: Well no, that's partly the game.

Speaker A: Yeah, well they know, they know that it makes them um, they know that they're supposed, or they're quote unquote supposed to because.

Speaker B: Right, interesting narrative said. Right, the narrative. And so I was part of that narrative. And you know in the 90s and the early 2000s that was kind of the game. You needed to hire 15 people at R&D and 10 engineers to build a client, uh, server Windows app and stack up the servers in the colocation center and so forth. You just don't need to do that these days. And there's no founder software uh, founder that has ever told me otherwise. It takes about 10 times less coding effort to build a commercial application and get into revenue which is another form of funding than it did 10 years ago. It's just amazing. And AI is making this easier. So that's just one of the things that's changed in the last 10 years. You uh, don't need another round of funding to go to market if you know what you're doing. And uh, that's another thing that's changed. Another one is you can get to 1, 2, 3, 5 million ARR annual recurring revenues in SaaS and get into very interesting or life changing wealth scenarios. And that didn't used to happen. And likewise VC funds have now gotten big and bigger and the fees getting bigger and bigger but now their checks have gotten so big that they can't write like a uh, $2 million check anymore. They have to write 5, 10, 20, $50 million check. So the risks are bigger. And that didn't used to happen. So this has all happened in the last 10 years. I've noticed it. I've seen founders, you know, fall into the VC funding trap. You're not cool, uh, if you don't raise funding and get stuck and uh, it's really kind of painful. And meanwhile the folks we used to pat on the head and say, sorry, you didn't raise VC funding, they walk away with the big prize and buy the house up the hill from everybody else in Arizona. You're not there and I'm no longer there as well. But we know the gangs.

Speaker A: But I think the VCs that were good at what they did, you know, were able to raise bigger funds and were able to write the five million dollar seed checks. But then there was the slew of the new capital people that kind of came into market and that were writing smaller checks, I. E. The micro funds. Um, yeah, and they were giving, they spoke about VC outcomes with companies that should never have been venture backable.

Speaker B: Well, that's always been the case. And you and I have been to venture events in Phoenix where there's 500 founders in the audience and four VCs on stage coming from all over the place. And you and I both know, and so do the VCs, that like 99% of people in the room won't get institutionally funded by, you know, series A B vcs. Um, you know, it's just not the majority of the cases. Um, I'll disagree with you or argue a bit here. All the big funds, um, uh, got bigger and their checks had to get bigger. They didn't really invest in more deals, they just wrote bigger checks. So they had to kind of pump it up. And so now if you raise 10, 20, 30 million, you really can't get out for less than half a billion, um, and have the VCs feel good about it. So it's kind of, which is literally quite crazy. So that's kind of what I'm saying is that's pretty silly. There's all kinds of great SaaS businesses these days that are not just lifestyle businesses and cute little businesses in the corner. That's the VC narrative. They're awesome businesses that you can sell for 25, 50, 100, $150 million and grow without funding and have fun along the way. It's all grind, but you're not, uh, doing it for somebody else. And founders split the prize with their Employees and it's pretty and you get to do it your way. Which is I think another powerful part of the practical founder story as I call it.

Speaker A: So from all the companies that you've advised, what are like, I mean do you, do you feel like most companies die from self destruction with capital or do you feel like it's just like kind of like a product market fit over scaling? How do you, how do you see kind of.

Speaker B: It depends. So we're talking about the messy middle in between the bootstrap religion on one side never take any outside funding and the VC funded Silicon Valley big VC on the other side. There's all kinds of ways to do it in between. What I, what I will say is and there's funding isn't bad, it's just usually misunderstood by founders and over prescribed by big uh, investors, funders. Um in the early days. Getting to product market fit is the universal problem. Whether you are funding it yourself or out of a service business or have a little angel funding or get to customer revenues or whatever, you've got to get something towards a million or 2arr. In the modern B2B SaaS world that you can see which customers really want it and they'll really pay and really keep using and the metrics and the business model in the business makes sense to everybody. Um, funding or not. The problem with getting funding, whether it's I don't know that safe note or you know, which is a gateway drug to more institutional funding. Of course you know, if you're, if you're living on the funding, you've got a limited time to try the experiments to get to the other side of sustainable product market fit revenue 2,3 million. And most companies don't get there on a couple tries. That's one of the benefits of staying off the drugs is you can have the pace and try to do it well and efficiently and tightly and have another try or two or three to get there and um, getting to you know it's by the way that getting to product market fit which customers really want exactly what we can build and what is the thing and the pricing and so forth that that puzzle funding doesn't really help there. No, it's kind of the myth.

Speaker A: Not at all. It's actually counteractive.

Speaker B: Yeah it's a. You get to do it with a gun against your head and you get to do it once. It's like, you know that doesn't really work. And we all know that anybody who says they got to product market fit you say how did you really get there. I talk about this on the Practical Founder podcast. How did you really get there? And they say, well, we thought it and then we went over here and it was this. And then we kept trying and we did this. And you know, if enough time and tries, you could do it. So funding doesn't help with that. And that's kind of a myth. It's supposed to be easier to get there with funding. And technically it doesn't. One of the reasons, David, you've seen this a million times is is that if you're saying, I got this idea, I got a little coding, I got some interested people and I'm going to go raise some funding so I can get to a million dollars in arrangement. The real conversation, the real game is with a customer who will pay you for something you have that you can give them value. And they say, that's amazing. I'll keep paying and telling my friends and so forth. That's the game. Uh, but then founders can spend at least half their year like shaping their story for what a VC wants to hear, investor wants to hear playing that game. And that's not the game, that's just potentially the fuel for the game. So they waste a lot of time and effort and they kind of sell themselves on what they sold the VCs on, which isn't usually the case.

Speaker A: I see that all the time. They forget.

Speaker B: Classic.

Speaker A: They forget that they're lying, you know. Yeah.

Speaker B: The lies investors and founders tell. And I've heard you on the podcast here talk about the lies that founders tell investors about. Oh yeah, it's conservative and all that, that fun stuff. So, yes, uh, it's always hard and it's a know, it's a puzzle. Uh, I just don't think it makes it easier to raise funding. And once you're over the hump, 2,3 million ARR. You know, uh, it's pretty good discipline to customer fund that and have constraints in your business as Jason Freed talks about at 37 signals and and so forth, this kind of goofy excess of spend first and so forth. And we, you know, lived through the recent boom time in 2021 that was, you know, kind of silly for everybody, but it kind of washes through these companies and then they end up with a shell of their former selves. So. And then they have to be quote, capital efficient. When they spent their VC money and they can't raise another round, they get to profitable. That's a lot like going on a diet if you've been eating, you know, McDonald's every day for 20 years. I'm going to go on a diet. Yeah, it's not really going to work.

Speaker A: Yeah, no one's betting that you're going to be successful. Yeah, no one's.

Speaker B: No one.

Speaker A: No one's taking that bet.

Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. So I didn't invent bootstrapping or all these kind of things, but a, uh, few years ago I've been hyperactively helping founders in Phoenix and then all over the world.

Speaker A: And you know, bootstrapping definition has changed. Right. Like now bootstrapping means raise less than 10 million.

Speaker B: Well, that's kind of capital efficient or raise. Greg Scoresby would say raise less than your ARR, that kind of thing. But uh, then I call them practical founders. So, you know, bootstrapping used to mean no outside funding. Heck no. And then VC funding was, you know, shoot the moon and race as much as you can. And um, there's not that many variations of big VC funding, but there's a lot of variations of practical founders who are building valuable software companies without, uh, big VC funding. It's actually the hidden majority of software companies around the world. We see the big ones of course, and we clap for the VC funding rounds ironically. And uh, you just don't see the hundreds and hundreds of companies, uh, uh, you know, like easily 50% of, in, so Gregslist.com, phoenix, my curated list of all the companies in Phoenix, uh, of software companies and other. In 12 other cities, 50% of software companies have absolutely no outside funding. And it's really just 20, 25% depending on if it's at Phoenix or is it Austin or something that have institutional VC funding, private equity funding. So that's another thing that's changed, private equity. So, so I just started uh, like leaning into the founders who were serious and making progress and not taking the bait on the VC funding. It's kind of a, um, you know, they, they weren't uh, they weren't doing it. And people say, well that's the hard way or whatever. It's all hard. It's just you take on more risk when you raise big VC funding. So you're in that middle zone of, you know, capital efficient game and that, you know, that can totally work.

Speaker A: I think, I don't, I don't necessarily think that the, the, the, like, the, the drug is being pushed as much like I do think the VCs push the drug. I don't necessarily believe it's all one way. I think people are naturally hedonistic and want to take the Easy way out as well.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. No, I mean, it's a human thing. That's why it's there. And nobody sees in plain sight all the success stories. We don't clap for the, you know, 12 year, you know, sold for $50 million. Uh, how about this one? Uh, Josh Strouble in Phoenix. Crazy kid. Built a software company, you know, blended it with services in the beginning and then uh, eventually sold it to GoDaddy, you know, for 10 times revenue and uh, or seven times revenue, I think he talks about in my podcast. And so, and then he comes to the, you know, the investor, uh, the investor events in Phoenix. And he was the kid that nobody would fund and he just ground, you know, did it and uh, built a great team and a great business for 10 years and sold it for a premium. He's actually the richest guy in that room, you know, and he did it without funding. So much richer. All kinds of ways to.

Speaker A: I guarantee you that.

Speaker B: Yeah, isn't that the irony here? And what I've just been doing and waving my hands during the run up there is saying it isn't what you think it is. And if you're on your way, uh, be very wise about. And savvy and about raising institutional capital. You can't go back if you bootstrap, you can raise money from you, but if you raise a, uh, $10 million Series A round, it's go big or die. Yeah.

Speaker A: Most VCs I know are broke. I would say probably the upper, like 90% of them are.

Speaker B: Yeah. Well, I say power law. Isn't that the interesting thing?

Speaker A: Well, it's just. It takes three. It takes three or four funds for you to get any kind of return. Right. So.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: And that's. And it takes what, 10 years for a company to mature? Right? Like for a venture scale.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: So you're in there hustling, you know, you're in there hustling for a very long time. Yeah.

Speaker B: And so this is. Let's just talk about that. You know, uh, when it's venture scale and you grow fast, you've done the series abc and I played that game like, literally. I've just, you know, I've been at Sand Hill Road months of my life. I've helped raise $150 million, created companies that went public, know, spent countless board meetings with VCs, and you know, in the nitty gritty of startup to super scale. And I've done that. But the reality is it's just rare when you get to a hundred million dollars in super scale and you keep going and the billion dollars and so forth, uh, of revenues and it's just rare. The default case for more than half of uh, VC funded, including all the startups the early guys are, is the founder who walks away with nothing was worth a try and didn't work out. So but we don't hear about that.

Speaker A: You know, I think it's too, it's non monetary. I think that the founders like, it's not just like hey, I want to raise money because I want a bigger outcome. I think it's, I want to raise money because I want a lot of people around me. Right.

Speaker B: And I want to, and I want to be the guy because yeah, I want to be the guy that does that. I want to do that.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: And so uh, so there's the founders. I talk to a lot of founders, I refer people, VCs follow me around. They actually I, I got 5 million views in my posts on LinkedIn last year. When I'm talking about practical stuff inside the business and the funding game and so forth for founders and people think I'm uh, poking the bear with VCs but they totally agree. Like I'm not selling anything out of school or bending the truth. Like VCs know that they're not for everybody and it usually doesn't work and Right. They're playing the power law game. So I refer people to VCs because after, you know, the filtering, you know, if they're really ready to play the game and it's for the founder a good bet to increase their funding and get some outside funding and go faster and so forth usually isn't a good bet for the founder. So I show up at the founder side of the table. So I advise founders, practical founders who have some funding or bootstrapped or whatever. Um, I had a peer group in Phoenix with a bunch of these bootstrapped founders and Gabe Cooper and other guys as well. And it really turns into two conversations. The funded guys kind of go their own direction and talk about funding and the big game and so forth and the bootstrappers talk about where they're going to take a month, you know, a vacation this year with their family and you know, or grinding through it in other ways. There's all kinds of variations there. So uh, I just felt the VC funded game that I came out of and I helped for so many years. That crowd was overserved, literally like the bar is overserved. And meanwhile the serious majority of serious founders, it's not like they're Less. It's not like they, you know, these are the C students, these are the just the A students that know enough to stay off the drugs and they want to build something. I mean, seriously, if you can get a B2B software company to 5 million ARR. These days, that is life changing wealth. Even at the lower multiples.

Speaker A: Even if it's even. Yeah, even if it's not. Even if it's not. I mean, and I'll even, you know, I mean, even if it's not a, um, grower, right? I mean you can get four or five times, right? That and I mean, dude, right? You're making 25, 30 million. You could live on income and interest alone over a million bucks a year, like you'd have.

Speaker B: So meanwhile, you'd have to, you'd have

Speaker A: to, you have to try to fuck it up.

Speaker B: Right?

Speaker A: Right. Yeah.

Speaker B: So I know a dozen people in Phoenix. There's probably 40, 50 founders in Phoenix that have played this game and won for more than $20 million to $200 million that I know. And they were the quiet ones in the corner in these niche markets and kind of growing steadily and some data for 20 fricking years, right? 10% a year. 10% a year. Taking money out along the way and then selling it for a premium at the end during the boom time. They're the ones who won during the boom time as they sold it at the super premiums. Uh, we know these guys, but I know these people that would kind of dip their toe in the VC ecosystem and say, this isn't right for me. They were kind of kicked out. You're not thinking big enough, kid. And your markets, your tam's too small and you're just not the right profile and, and all that kind of stuff. And they just chugged away. They walked away with 20, 30, 50 million.

Speaker A: Uh-huh.

Speaker B: Isn't that a lot of money?

Speaker A: Right?

Speaker B: And so I did the ipo. You know, we had the, one of the most valuable companies in Phoenix that you know, back in the 2000 days and nobody, uh, in that business walked away with those kind of prices, right?

Speaker A: And then if you have that money and you exit at, let's say conservatively 35, right?

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Or 45. And you wait 10 years, you, you just doubled your money. I know.

Speaker B: And so how about do that like Josh Drebel, he's not even 40 and he's taking money out along the way. He talks about that on the Practical Founders podcast. I'm not talking outta school. So here's one of the ways to do it, it's not the only way. So there's multiple ways to do. You know, if you're take like Hamid and others, you're doing well along the way and then you sell the company and you say, how do your life change? And they say, well I don't have to do that business anymore. But I already had the stuff and the time.

Speaker A: All of us, right, all of us

Speaker B: were strapped to the mask for all those years, working so hard and we get the one prize and then we're like day two. What do we do now? Right? Go back to work because we don't know anything else. We were just all in. That was my, my scenario on these super Fast growth companies, two companies to 100 million in Phoenix that I helped grow from the startup stages. So when I helped found. So yeah.

Speaker A: So what do you think the end game is for a lot of these companies that go. And they, you know, people have called me and I don't care. I think it's almost kind of funny and true. Like, kind of like a house flipper, right? I'll kind of come in, I'll take a house, you know and I'll, I'll get it to you know, 5, 10, 15, $20 million in revenue and sell it to the next PE guy. Do you think that there's a reckoning in that area that there's just too much money buying subscale? I mean scale is a subjective word but sub, you know, $50 million ARR companies because what do you do with them, right? Are you going to integrate them? Are you going to just have a portfolio of companies? Where do you think that that's going to? Where the, when the um, song ends, where everyone's going to land.

Speaker B: Well, uh, that sub 50 million which some M and A there no investors really get a touch. You can't get your 10x out of it. By the time they start at 5 million, you know, you can get your 10x if you're the one and done investor out of it. Um, but there's 20 to 50 times more of the sub $50 million exits for practical SaaS companies than all the billion dollar exits. There's a ton going on there. So uh, some of them are by strategics but that's actually shrinking year to year. Like all these private equity either rolling up or buying it directly or a private equity backed company to tuck in something in their portfolio is the most common thing. So. So even VC backed is different than private equity backed. VC backed acquired a lot during 2021, their currency was high. And maybe the public markets, uh, you know, they were public and they were high. They're acquiring a lot less. So private equity has shown up as the major exit buyer. At least half, uh, buying private equity, they have more reasonable expectations and you know, if you can get a SaaS business to a million you can get it to two. If you can get it from two, you can get it to five, a five to ten and so forth. So I don't know if there's like the lack mile who's going to get it in the long run. But it's just, I hate to say healthy and private equity in the same, uh, sentence. The old school private equity, it's just healthier than vc, which is, you know, fly it to the moon or you know, Amelia Earhart. You're going to get out in the middle of the ocean and you just, you know, you're down. So there's profits in there. That's another thing in this great software business that offers so much leverage, high margins and you know, if you do it right, uh, cacta ltv, great customer acquisition, uh, good multiples to very good multiple actually. Great multiples compared to normal business. Good multiples compared to the old days when uh, in the heyday, uh, it's just really awesome and there's tons of leverage in there. So I don't know that there's going to be a reckoning. Uh, there's still plenty of VC funding and private equity dry powder that's waiting for all these. So as you know there's more funding than there are companies worthy of the funding. And so I work with the founders who are on the other side of that.

Speaker A: I think that there is going to be a, um, I think there's going to be. At the end of the day you can always arbitrage cash flow, right? So you can always cut down the R and D. You can hold and even, even to the point of like revenue decay, you can get value out of these SaaS companies right at 5 million. So I feel like there's always going to be like a market bottom for there. There's going to be a clearing price for any SaaS company that's of a certain scale, um, just by the amount of capital that's out there. But I do think that this whole idea of like, hey, let's just buy all these subscale SaaS companies and roll them up and integrate.

Speaker B: Yeah, I think the roll up thing is a myth.

Speaker A: Yeah, that's hard.

Speaker B: That's like the old Synergy story. We're going to, you know, the synergies of, uh, in the acquisitions that never really work out. So yes, I think roll ups are stupid. I think that private equity, you know, the classic private equity game of buy it and you know, add, you know, lbo, add the debt and you know, take down tech support in the dental software industry, the legal software industry and a bunch of others here in the States, uh, dentists and lawyers and the rest understand what happens when private equity buys their favorite software. They know they're going to get less support, the prices are going to go up, uh, their R and D is going to slow down. It's going to be no fun. And so a lot of the companies I work with position against those. Remember the VC game? You knew it was, I don't know, 20, 30 years ago. If somebody got VC funding, their odds went up that this is going to be the one. You're going to get better product and service out of it.

Speaker A: Prices going down because we're taking it down.

Speaker B: Yeah, price is going down, but it doesn't work that way anymore in vc. So the world's changed. And you know, I try to, I mean, part of the fun of all of this is I keep track of what's changing in the world and what isn't. And I, uh, keep sorting that. Like tactically the world has changed, but there's, you know, some things around the first principles haven't really changed that much. But one of the things that has changed is that P word profits. Profits didn't used to be a thing in the growth. Yeah, right. And Todd Belfort used to ring my bell about that, you know. You know, I did, I, I joked I didn't know how to spell EBITDA until I sold my companies. And then we had to play that EBITDA game, right? All that stuff. So, um, yeah, uh, it's still an exciting game. So I get to help founders who are earnestly creating valuable products and teams that solve problems in the world. And there's a ton of problems out there and I get to help them scale the solving of that and uh, build something that's great for customers and their employees and themselves. And it's kind of unimpaired by goofiness. The government isn't involved. If you make somebody happy enough to pay you, you can do something amazing. And compared to other businesses, multiples of revenue is still exciting compared to multiples of profit in almost all other businesses for SaaS companies. So the, uh, SaaS business model is awesome. And getting better AI is helping practical founders be more practical and efficient. I'm not an extremist. Some people say, oh, the majority of software companies in the future are gonna be solopreneurs. You know, it's gonna be one person and 100 million. I don't. Yeah, so I don't believe that as well. So I'm in that messy middle, you know, that it depends between the simple bootstrap bumper sticker on one side and the vc. You know, you need funding or you're not cool, uh, silliness on the other side.

Speaker A: So if I'm a founder and I believe myself to be practical, how do I get in touch with Greg and how do I become a part of one of your cohorts?

Speaker B: Well, uh, a lot of people around the world. I'm talking to people, founders from all over the world every day. And I have 35, 38 founders in my Practical Founders peer group. So I advise them one on one. And we meet every month like a CEO peer group. We, uh, don't talk about funding. We talk about the nitty gritty of the growth game and how to survive and, you know, stay alive as a founder, uh, and healthy there. Uh, and I work one on one with founders so people can see me on LinkedIn, read my, you know, and they can find the Practical Founders podcast. Wherever podcasts are, are found@thepracticalfounders.com so most people just DM me on LinkedIn and, uh, we get in touch there. So I'm talking to founders every single day and I advise some of them as well. So, uh, there's a little therapy involved there. So it's not just the tactical quick fixes on the outside. There's something deeper going on. In order to fix the deeper things, you gotta have the right kind of thinking so people see what kind of thinking I have, and we align on that.

Speaker A: Awesome. Uh, Greg, thanks so much for coming down. We really appreciate it.

Speaker B: Thanks, David, everybody.

Speaker A: Thank you again for listening to another episode of the Capital Stack. We drop an episode every Tuesday. If you like what you heard, please subscribe. Tell a friend if you like what Greg said, then give him a follow. He's all over LinkedIn. And, uh, a great, great, uh, follow to have. Anyway, thank you. Have a great week and we'll see you on Tuesday. Bye Bye.

Speaker C: Thank you for tuning in to the Capital Stack podcast. Make sure to share this with someone you know that can benefit from this content. Remember to support this show by rating, reviewing and subscribing. David Paul is the founder and general partner at DWP Capital. All opinions expressed by David Podcast guests are solely their own opinions and do not reflect the opinion of DWP Capital. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon for decisions. David and guests may maintain positions in the securities discussed on this podcast.