"Part of the ability of being scrappy and finding your way to network into VCs is how you're also gonna network into customers and how you're also gonna network into talent that you wanna go recruit ultimately. And so it's a little bit of a test to show that you can find your way into the intros you want to get."

"I look for the team slide. I go right to the team slide. I wanna know who are these people? What have they accomplished in their career? How does what they've done tie to the problem they're solving and how big is the team."

"You are better off showing numbers that are not good and framing it in the most positive way you possibly can, even though you know it's maybe not your strong suit, versus hiding them because VCs will assume the worst."

"In my experience, 20% of VCs are really helpful and valuable. 20% are actually like a huge drag and big problem to your company. But 60% do no harm. They're nice, they're money, they'll try to help you every once in a while, but they're not gonna go above and beyond."

"We're looking to back people who are more intelligent and more capable and more scrappy and more every superlative than we are. That's hard. I tell founders too, I wouldn't back me. I would not invest in me. I am way too rational. I'm a person who's going to sell in two or three years. I'm not going to go take the moon shot myself. We're looking for outliers who go through hard stuff."