From Gardener To Trader To Venture Capitalist With Jon Bassett

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In this episode of Pathways To Wealth I’m interviewing Jon Bassett who’s the Managing Director for Nextgen Angels in Austin, Texas.

Jon has an extensive background as a trader, entrepreneur, venture capitalist, and now helps run one of the fastest growing angel investor networks in the nation.

This interview is great for anyone interesting in entrepreneurship, early-stage startup investing, or trading.

• How Jon went from trader to gardener to venture capitalist
• Learn the common success traits of startups, and why so many fail
• We answer the question – “Is the startup space in a bubble?”
• Why smart investors bet on the jockey, not the horse

Links & Resources From This Episode:

• Nextgen Angels
• Venture Deals: Be Smarter Than Your Lawyer and Venture Capitalist 
• Jon’s favorite quote – “Impossible is nothing.”
• Connect with Jon on LinkedIn 

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Transcription

Overview: Welcome back to Pathways to Wealth. In this episode, I am interviewing Jon

Bassett about a market and an industry that I am so super passionate about and that I

see a lot of potential for, for both entrepreneurs and investors and that is the tech start-

up space, angel investing, and venture capital.

We’re interviewing Jon Bassett who is actually a friend of mine and the managing

director for NextGen Angels here in Austin, Texas. NextGen is a nationwide angel

investment network that deals with some of the most prominent angel investors in the

world as well as some of the hottest startups and the deal flow coming through NextGen

is just mind blowing.

I'm really excited to introduce you guys to Jon because he started off as a trader and

then started a gardening company that is still operating today, really interesting story,

and he went into the venture capital world and worked with VCs for a while and now

does what he’s doing today.

In this interview, we talk a lot about the common success traits of startups because Jon

sees a lot of companies and why so many of them fail. This is just really a deep look

inside of the angel investing and venture capital space. Also, we’re going to talk about

the question that has been on everybody’s mind which is, “Is this market in a bubble?”

Without further ado, here’s Jon Bassett.

Chris Dunn: Hey guys, welcome back to another great interview here for Pathways to

Wealth. Today, I have a really, really special interview with Jon Bassett. Jon, how are

you doing man?

Jon Bassett: Doing great man. Thank you for having me out.

Chris: For those of you that don’t know Jon, Jon is the managing director of NextGen

Angels here in Austin, Texas. Jon, let’s explain what NextGen is?

Jon: NextGen is an early stage venture capital firm. We build through a group of

venture partners, a bunch of tech-focused folks mostly tech founders and executives

and prolific angel investors with emphasis really on young folks that are involved in tech.

We come together and look at early stage tech deals together, and then as a group, we

decide whether or not we want to invest in a company in and we typically pull $250,000

and make investments into early stage companies.

Chris: That’s awesome. I just actually met with Jon a few months ago or was that

earlier this year, I can't remember, but I was really impressed because I'm just getting

into the angel stuff and I've tried some other groups and looked at other networking

ways of just getting deal flow and nothing was really that impressive. But the kind of

idea that you have of creating young tech entrepreneurs and tech angel investors really

resonated with me, so the deal flow that I've seen has been great. How did NextGen get

started? It started in DC right?

Jon: Yes. It’s actually a pretty interesting story. It was started by two Harvard Business

School grads, Brett and Dan, who at that time, wanted to do more early stage tech

investing. They have full time jobs. They met with most of the angel groups on the

eastern seaboard and the angel groups that I met with tended to be a little older, folks

that were retired and a little bit out of the tech community, a lot of people with money, so

doctors, lawyers, dentists looking for different types of businesses not looking for the

early stage tech deals and they sort of said, hey, this isn’t our people, this isn’t our tribe,

this isn’t the type of deals we want to do, so let’s start doing it on our own. They got

together with some classmates and buddies and nights and weekends they built this

informal group of 25 guys and gals that looked deals together and made investments

together.

Over time, the model got some traction. Folks in the groups said, hey, I think this could

work in other cities, let’s go build this out and expand. We took some investment to our

operating company, scaled up the team, and now we’re in five cities DC, Boston, Austin,

Chicago, and New York City.

Chris: That’s awesome man. I love it. Let’s talk a little bit about your background. This

is what you're doing now. You come from finance and VC world and trading, let’s just

start at the beginning of this.

Jon: Yeah, so I guess I've done quite a few things in my short work career if you will. I

started working pretty young, grew up in Iowa, went to school in North Carolina,

Davidson College and played soccer there. Actually took my first job right at the school

at Dell Computers in a management training program to do 6-month rotations in a

bunch of different fields, marketing and sales. I did my first couple of months in

consumer sales inside sales. You're in a bull pen floor o 300 people taking calls of

people wanting to buy $200 laptops. That was really great training. I learned a lot about

selling in that form but after about 3 months, I decided it wasn’t for me and so peeled

off.

To make the story a little bit short, I had a good friend growing up who was a pretty

active day trader and earned his stripes long short US equities, trading stocks, and day

trading. He said, “Look, I think we’ve got something here.” He uttered this 4-year track

record and “so why don’t you come join me on the sales and marketing side and help

me raise some capital.” So left Austin, moved to Seattle and we started a fund called

and raised a little bit of cash and did that for about 2 years

out of Seattle.

Chris: What kind of trades were you guys looking for?

Jon: We did some earnings trading. We used  intraday

leverage to really kind of juice our returns which can cut both ways. We were kind of

50% long, 50% short, certainly not afraid to go shorter the naked shorts, tight stop

losses, but mostly US equity stuff, technical analysis, charting stuff. We did that for 2

years. It was a volatile time, 2008-2010 in the financial collapse. I'm sure a lot of your

listeners are aware of that but decided that we wanted to take a little bit of the proceeds

from the fund and do something totally different and start a company totally different.

And so, moved to Los Angeles, started a company called Farmscape Gardens. At its

most basic, we build and maintain vegetable gardens for homeowners, schools, and

businesses.

Chris: Interesting. So you would go out and physically build a garden for them?

Jon: Yeah. The emphasis is really on maintenance. Most folks that had a garden or had

experienced gardening growing up but it’s actually hard to maintain a garden because if

you neglect it, it dies.

Chris: Right.

Jon: We spent some time looking at the data and two of the largest leisure activities for

adults were actually genealogy and gardening. If you think about it, Ancestry.com has a

lock on the genealogy space, billion dollar plus market cap. In the gardening world,

there’s no one brand you think of. No consumer brand. No company that has national

appeal. So we really aimed to build that and improve urban food system. It really started

with a mission and a big market and evolved into this where we actually can

differentiate and that was the maintenance piece. We’ve got a staff of gardeners in LA

and San Francisco that go out on a weekly basis, maintain vegetable gardens, harvest

the produce, leave it on your doorstep. We actually maintain the baseball Giants AT&T

Park, so we maintain the vegetable gardens at AT&T Park. We’ve got some bigger

name, most established gardens but that company is still alive and well.

Chris: Jon: Do you have an active role in that company?

Jon: I'm on the board and that was a funny transition. Through that, I actually got to

meet a guy named David Cremin, DFJ Frontier, they are a venture capital firm. His wife

is very active in the gardening community in Los Angeles. I met her through my role at

Farmscape. She did some grant riding and some non-profit work in the gardening

space, built a relationship there because Farmscape actually installed and maintained a

lot of the gardens that she did grant writing for, started to meet her husband who is a

venture investor and pitched him on, “Hey, I've done this entrepreneurial thing. I have

some experience in sales and marketing, spent a little time in the hedge fund world, are

you guys looking to hire?” And he said sort of, hey, you're kind of a naïve kid. I've talked

to hundreds of people, they all want to work in venture and it’s really hard to get a job. I

sort of said, what do I got to do? Well, here’s kind of a day in the life and start

diligencing deals and he sent me some stuff to do and I did it and started showing up in

the office and served over 6 months. I worked unpaid part time, help and run

Farmscape and doing this stuff at DFJ Frontier and the relationship sort of blossomed

and snowballed and eventually I said, “Hey, can I come work for you guys? I like this

even better than running my own company,” so made the leap to DFJ Frontier and

spent almost 3 years there hoping to be an early stage venture investor.

Chris: Jon:From salesman to trader to gardener to venture capital guy.

Jon: Yup. It’s quite in a rather short span of time honestly. There’s a theme that runs

through it all. I've always enjoyed the entrepreneurial pursuit in running my own

business so to speak and all of those things really were that. Inside sales at Dell, you're

kind of a direct contributor, individual performer, to the sales and marketing function and

a hedge fund either raise money or you go out of business so you're controlling your

own destiny there, to the gardening world where again we saw a need and a problem

and wanted to fill the solution. We have a great team and that business is alive and well.

And then, opportunistically into the venture where your job is be a steward of limited

partners’ capital investing great deals and return more money than you took from them.

There’s a thread that runs throughout but I don’t know many people that can say that if

you done sales, trading, gardening, and venture capital in 8-year or 9-year span.

Chris: That’s amazing. What brought you to Austin? That firm was out in California?

Jon: Los Angeles, yup. DFJ Frontier is based in Los Angeles, a part of the Draper

Network of funds and actually got recruited to come join a venture funding here in

Austin called Silverton Partners. They are an early stage venture fund here in Austin

and so made the leap, I actually knew I wanted to get out of Los Angeles. Great city but

didn’t fit with my personal goals buying a house and having a big yard and doing all that.

I decided to make the leap to Austin and join Silverton Partners, spent some time there

and then this group NextGen sat down with me while at Silverton and said, “Hey, we

think we have a better model for venture,” convinced me that what they were doing is

really meaningful and I can have a meaningful stake and the outcome of the company,

and so, as of June 1 this year joined up with NextGen as the managing director of

Austin and helping grow the network and the vision is really to be in 10+ major cities in

the US, probably 3+ cities internationally, and to be a really scalable network-driven

model and getting guys and gals like yourself. The model is to really build up a hundred

person venture army in each city. You help us source deals and diligence deals and the

best stuff was at the top and then we as a group decide what deals to do and out of our

fund which deals to investing.

Chris: Awesome. So from trader, to gardener, to venture capitalist, now you're running

a really just incredible next level next generation angel network that I think is just really

cool.

Let’s break it down and explain for what angel investing is because a lot of people who

watch this show are either traders, entrepreneurs, or investors and I feel like angel

investing is becoming more popular with the new jobs act that’s opening that up a little

bit. What is angel investing and why do you think it’s important?

Jon: Sure. I don’t actually know where the term came from but I have to imagine some

religious connotations and angels are the saving grace for early stage entrepreneurs

who are trying to quit their jobs or make it with their company.

Angels typically are the earliest stage of capital for a business. If you or someone else

has an idea to start a company and aren’t fortunate enough to be able to sell finance it

or bootstrap it which means you don’t raise any capital sort of the revenues the

business to keep you profitable and help you grow. Typically, the first stages, you

approach friends and family first, right? You say, “Hey guys help me out. Throw me a

bone.”

Chris: Friends, family, and fools, right?

Jon: Friends, family, and fools, right? And so angels sometimes fall into that camp,

typically maybe a step right after let’s take a typical deal. You’ve got a hairbrained idea

to go change the world somewhere. You need $50,000 to quit your job and have 6

months of runaway to sort of hackaway, you get that from friends and family. You start

to get an inkling that you have a good idea, there are some market validation, some real

attraction, the next step is typically to raise $200,000 or $300,000 from angels.

Angels typically writes smaller checks, anywhere from $5,000 or $10,000 up to $25,000

to $50,000. If you get much bigger than that, you're in the super angel camp. Typically

in around of a couple hundred thousand dollars is the next stage of financing for a

company, and then from there, you’ll go out and raise half a million or a million bucks,

and typically start to enter the super angel or VC world, and from there, it off to the

races with venture capitalist and private equity and beyond.

Chris: There you go. It’s just kind of a progression and that’s what I think is cool about

angel investing is, you get in when it’s early enough – sometimes you have proof of

concepts, sometimes you don’t, but like you said, you're usually investing in either

entrepreneur or a hairbrained idea.

One of the last deals that I got in on was actually an A-round, so there was venture

money in there. Is that typical? That’s actually something that I don’t really know the

stats on is, do you angels typically invest more in Z-rounds or kind of a mix between that

and A-rounds after you have the seed capital and then you're raising real money like

multiple millions of dollars, where do you think angels typically fit in that space?

Jon: Angels are typically the first serious money in and that’s typically before an A, so

sort of the vernacular has changed over time with venture round, so angels are typically

involved before there’s true market validation. It’s still maybe a couple of guys and gals

and an idea and they need some more money to really hire up, build more product, do

sales and marketing, a few other things to prove they really have a business. Once the

business has proved out, angels will typically follow along on what is called prorata, they

have a right to maintain their ownership in the company per a term sheet typically but

they usually get involved before series A and once the company is raising $2 to $3

million dollars or more, angels start to die off and the big boys start to step in.

Chris: Nice. What advice would you give to somebody that’s like, “Man, that sounds

great. I want to become an angel investor?”

Jon: Yeah. I think the first piece of advice would be, don’t angel invest with money you

can't afford to lose both for financial reasons but also mentally afford to lose. I think

that’s a totally separate issue and people sometimes think they're ready to lose money

until they do and then realize how distraught they are.

The second thing is, most financial experts recommend you build a portfolio of early

stage investments if you're going to do it. I'm certainly not a financial adviser but I think

the wisdom is anywhere from 2% to 5% of your net worth should be in alternatives in

which private equity, venture capital, angel investing falls into—

Chris: Basically really high risk stuff.

Jon: Very high risk stuff, right. And so, if you're going to do it, I think you really should

plan to do a minimum of 7 to 10 investments so you actually build a small portfolio, and

basically, whatever amount of money you can carve out for angel investing and afford to

lose you should really carve it into almost 20 chunks and the thought being you invest in

10 companies initially, but inevitably, unless you hit just an incredible deal, the

company’s going to need more capital over time, so you don’t want to be left out in later

rounds or the ability to maintain your ownership stake because you invested all your

money in early stage deals and couldn’t follow on.

If you got a hundred grand, break it into 25k chunks, put $5,000 into 10 companies, so

you’ve done your first $50,000 and then as those either go out of business or grow, pile

on the ones that are growing and make sure you maintain your ownership because

inevitably, 1 or 2 will be the big winners and generate the bulk of your returns and you

want to plough more money into those and then obviously put less money or no more

money in the companies that aren’t performing well or likely to fail.

Chris: Don’t go, like say, you have a hundred grand and you're like, “I want to use this

as my angel investing capital.” Don’t go, “I love that company, here’s a hundred grand”

and just basically hope for the best.

Jon: That’s probably the worst thing you can do. I somewhat blame the media today

and insights like TechCrunch and otherwise. There is this hyperexcitement around the

deal but what people don’t hear about is the one that didn’t work out.

Chris: What percentage is that by the way if you have companies that don’t have an

exit, like get acquired or go public or some kind of liquidity?

Jon: I don’t know the data. I think the last thing I read is the average time from initial

check to exit is 7 years. It’s a long time, that’s the average.

Chris: Yeah, this isn’t day trading.

Jon: There are some that take 14 or 15 years. There are some that get acquired for

their talent or otherwise a year or two into the business, but plan to be in a deal for 7-10

years and you probably won’t be disappointed.

I forgot, kind of, what the question was again here. I kind of got off of the tangent.

Chris: No, that’s fine. Yes, success rates, like most of them are going to fail and I feel

like just for my very limited experience in the space, it’s the ones that from the beginning

look like the home runs in the early stage that always make it. Sometimes it’s the ones

that don’t look that promising or people kind of look and then go, “I don’t know” and then

all of a sudden, the market shifts or whatever and then it acts the unicorn or that’s the

one that crushes it. Are there any important criteria or deciding factors that you look at

whenever you look at investment or whenever you're trying to do due diligence that

says, “Yeah, this company has a real shot at making it big.”

Jon: I think my theory and I think a lot of people’s is unique to me but you want to be on

the jockey more than the horse, and by that, I mean the team is really all the matters. I

can honestly tell you in all the deals I've done in venture and the angel world throughout

my career. No company has successfully exited doing the exact same thing they were

doing when we gave them the first capital.

Inevitably, the term I think people like to use is pivot but companies tend to change what

they're doing when they get feedback from the market, from customers, and they're

never doing the exact same thing when they get bought as they were doing when they

initially raised capital and so you need the right team in place to navigate the ups and

downs, soliciting feedback from potential customers, making the right decisions, and my

real belief is a company succeeds or fails on a million little decisions, not one big

decision. People think they always want to sit down with successful CEOs and say,

“Man, what was the one or two things you did that really made this successful?” and I

don’t believe there is ever one or two key things. It’s the building block for a million

different yes’s or no’s or do this don’t do that, and when you add them up, it’s the

decision making that makes a company succeed or fail.

Chris: Absolutely, yes. I guess another way to put that is maybe ideas are a dime a

dozen but execution is everything right?

Jon: Absolutely. And to really answer your question about success rate, I think if you

look at a portfolio of 10 deals in the early stage angel stuff, I think you should probably

plan on 50% of your deals just going to zero, not getting any money back. In a portfolio

of 10, you really want, one, to be an outright success and return the capital you invested

in the other 9 so you really get all your principal back and then 2-3 of them you get your

initial capital back, maybe you make 2x your investment. But really, most people who do

this are playing for the outsized winner. It’s not singles and doubles. It’s grand slams

and strikeouts is what you're going for as an angel, so you got to have enough

investments to get the bat percentage that you need to hit a grand slam.

Chris: It’s a great way to put it man. It’s not like you go in one and hope for the best.

You diversify and hopefully one of them makes it big.

Jon: Yup. You're going for slugging percentage not batting average.

Chris: What was your biggest challenge in starting with the NextGen thing? Let me

actually ask it this way, what’s the biggest challenge that you run into when doing your

job looking at deal flow trying to raise money?

Jon: Yeah, I think a couple of challenges. One I think angel investors are a very

necessary part of the ecosystem. They're the ones who kick things of and get

companies in business. They're the very early believers when there’s nothing there to

really believe in but I think that one challenge is that over time, some angels, the term

angels, maybe have gotten a bad name or a black eye because of individual back

actors. One is a group, people typically have good intentions and do the right thing and

so I think sometimes we’re fighting an uphill battle with the term angel and actually as a

group we’re trying to drop angle from NextGen so we’re going from NextGen Angels to

NextGen Venture Partners or NextGen VP really emphasized the fact that we have a

fund in place. That’s not a general solicitation for fundraising—

Chris: Full disclosure.

Jon: Full disclosure and that we are really trying to be an early stage venture fund that

happens to aggregate a bunch of really smart technically focused people that can help

inflect the course and speed of your business versus being a true angel group which I

think can sometimes have perceptions of dragging things out, putting weird terms in a

term sheet, overpromising and under delivering and so I think that’s been the main

challenge.

I think the second thing is, we’re in a period where there’s record amounts of capital

flowing in the early stage deals and so when there’s an excess demand for deals versus

supply you see prices increase, and so a deal that you typically could’ve gotten on a

more fair valuation. Valuations are 1-1/2 to 2 times for the same stage companies that

might have been 2-3 years ago and so right there the bar to get a return has doubled.

You get to do twice as well now from where you would have to do before to even

generate a return on your money. That means you have to be more selective and you

have to be better at separating the weed from the chaff in terms of good deals versus

mediocre deals.

Chris: Do you think we’re in bullish exuberance and dare I say “bubble” or do you think

there’s a reason for the flow and the state of your space.

Jon: There’s smarter people than I that should really speculate on this stuff but I do

think when you see groups like Fidelity and huge public market money managers

entering the later stage venture, private equity almost, I think it’s because they're not

able to generate returns elsewhere, so they're able to take more of a flyer on private

market deals. These interest rates have been so low for so long they’ve got to find a

return somewhere else. I do think that there has been a bit of exuberance.

I think we’re not in a period that we were in ’98 or ’99 which I wasn’t in this field then,

I was much younger but from what I hear from those that live through it, companies were

going public on a domain name only. Pets.com had a crazy valuation on almost very

little revenue just because people thought the name is what mattered and you would

sort of build into your evaluation. If you look at the IPOs of the tech companies today,

the boxes of the world, you're not seeing your rational exuberance. Maybe the P

multiples were high but I don’t think they're undeservibly so based on the new SAAS

models and some of the revenue frameworks in place.

I think valuations have definitely creeped up. We are at a time where capital is, relatively

speaking, easy to get which means that valuations are going to creep up and you have

to work harder for your return as an investor but I don’t we’re at a crazy irrational place,

although those financings do exist and you see them in the headlines.

Chris: Yeah, I've heard stories of companies with no revenue, billion dollars valuations

and then you can make arguments for either way. Is it worth it? Is this just insanity?

Alright, so now it’s time for five to thrive, basically five quick questions just to pull some

more knowledge out of your brain. What’s one piece of advice that you’d give to

somebody, say, 21 years old interested in venture capital and they say, “Look, I

graduated with a finance degree” or maybe “I don’t have agree,” what’s the best way to

get into the field, maybe not as an investor but as an actual job or something to

generate income?

Jon: I can speak from personal experience. Unpaid internships are great if you have an

idea of what you want to do, but I think what I would say is, become an expert. You

have to add value to other people. No matter what field that’s in, if you can show up on

the door and say, “Hey, I know all the early stage tech deals in Los Angeles right now”

or “I'm an expert in over-the-top TV  we’re going to kill cable

and I know every company in the space.” You have to come with knowledge that’s in

addition to what the people you're going to talk to may have and I think it’s really

important to have an opinion. It doesn’t matter if you're right or wrong, nobody cares if

you're right or wrong, people just care that you have an opinion and if you're somebody

who is kind of a “yes” man and don’t have an opinion and never take a stance, it’s going

to be hard to get ahead in a competitive world like venture or private equity or other

sorts of investing.

Chris: There you go man, that’s great. Are you in the camp that says, focus all your

energy on one source of income and one thing or diversify and have multiple sources

income?

Jon: Look, I think unless you really want to know what you want to do in your life, you

should keep as many doors open as possible about

optionality. I think it’s never a bad idea to have eggs on multiple baskets, so maybe

have your own business on the side that’s a cash flow business, maybe work for the

man or another occupation and get good benefits and things that come with that. But I

think, you really should, if you're going to be in control of your own destiny, you really

need to have a couple different revenue streams.

Chris: Love it. Do you have a book that you would say is required reading for an

entrepreneur or somebody who wants to get in the VC space?

Jon: There are quite a few books that I think are really good. I often joke that I have an

economics degree and I often joke I should had a degree in psychology, so I think the

Malcolm Gladwell books were really helpful to think about what’s the right data set to

look at whether it be blank or some of the others. I think technically If you want to get

into adventure, there’s a book called, how to be smarter than your venture capitalist

lawyer and something else. It’s about structuring term sheets and all of the gotcha terms

that’s a much more technical book. But I think in general, books of self-improvement,

psychology, decision making, how to ask smart questions, those are going to make you

better at anything you do and are particularly applicable to early stage investing.

Chris: Great. Do you have a quote or a life mantra that you live by?

Jon: I would say, “Impossible is nothing.”

Chris: Nice, love it. And final question, what does true wealth mean to you?

Jon: I think true wealth is about being in control of your own destiny. For different

people, it might be a different dollar figure. For certain people it might be a way of life or

choosing their own way of life but I think true happiness is not a dollar figure. It’s a state

of mind and so whatever that means for you to get to a point where you feel like you're

in control of your own destiny, that could be financially, that could be lifestyle, that could

be travel but you really have to craft your life around what brings you happiness.

Chris: Nice. So what’s next? Where do you want to take NextGen?

Jon: I think the vision is really, we want to be the premier partner early stage venture.

We’re going to be in, hopefully, 5 more cities in the US soon and 3 internationally as I

mentioned but I think the model we need to prove is that you can truly scale early stage

venture capital the way it hasn’t been done before and if we can pull that off, then I think

we have a really really special group.

Chris: Nice. Where can people connect with you?

Jon: LinkedIn is probably the best way. Unfortunately, I'm not the best at social media,

Facebook, Twitter, or things like that. I have all those accounts but I'm more of a

consumer than a producer in those formats. LinkedIn is the best way to find me. You

can also probably get to me through the NextGen Angels website but happy to connect

with folks and answer questions they may pop up.

Chris: Nice. And what would you say is a good candidate for NextGen Angels or just

angel investing in general but specifically NextGen, what type of guys and gals are you

looking for?

Jon: I think a gating factor is being a credit investor that’s thing one. Beyond that, we’re

looking for people who are knowledgeable in tech and who want to be part of an

awesome network and other tech founders and executives and want to make

investments in the next crop of the next generation of successful early stage

companies. It’s probably somebody in their 20s, 30s, 40s have started a tech company

in the past, worked in a tech capacity in a large Fortune 500 or a prolific angel investor

or who want to be one of those things and have the capacity to invest 10-25 grand a

year to early stage companies.

Chris: Nice. I know one thing that really attracted me to the angel space is just being

involved in entrepreneurship. For anybody that loves entrepreneurship, I think the best

was to be engaged is through the angel space because you see all the cool stuff that’s

going down the pipeline. You get to understand the economics behind certain

companies and I feel like where my evolution as an investor is going is really trying to

hone in on the industries that I understand and just putting my money there because

I've seen some medical pitches and things that I'm like, “Dude, I have no clue how to

even evaluate or where to start here” but on the bitcoin space, I know you have the

startup that came in so I'm just trying to craft my own thesis and I appreciate all the work

your doing with NextGen and looking forward to seeing this thing grow over the next few

years.

Jon: Great. Well, thank you for having me out. I really appreciate the time.

Chris: Yeah, thanks man.