Donald Lee of LKP Global Law

Welcome to the Puck, Venture Capital and Beyond, a show that explores the evolving landscape of the venture capital world. We'll have candid conversations with today's VCs and entrepreneurs who are shaping those changes. I'm Jim Behr, managing partner at Behr, Negron, and Troff, and president of CMUG Advisors. This podcast brings change makers to the table to discover the inner workings behind the decision making strategies, and ultimately to how they got to where they are today. The way we think about our firm is that we don't have growth targets.

We don't have a goal of being a 100 lawyer firm in two years. I think our top goal is to have great lawyers who are really great people because we're competing with great firms. Welcome back, everyone. We took a short hiatus at the end of the year, but we're back in 2020. The interview you are about to listen to with Don Lee, partner at LKP Global Law, was recorded back in January.

Well, suffices to say, a lot has happened since then. And we did talk about rerecording our interview with Don, but I think it's interesting to hear a perspective of what we were talking about at the precipice of the pandemic. Before the COVID nineteen virus spanned out across our world, and, yes, changed our lives in ways that none of us anticipated. Don and I had an interesting discussion about displacement, the growing economic disparity, and how to create value that I believe will ring true for many of you. So without further ado, here's our Puck conversation with Don Lee.

So tell me a little bit about where you grew up, why did you go to law school, how why are we sitting here today? How did you become Don Lee tech lawyer expert? Well, first of all, thanks so much for the kind words. I really appreciate it. I grew up in the Midwest.

I grew up in Kansas. My parents are immigrants from Taiwan, but I was born and raised in The United States. So I have my Asian heritage, but then my sort of Midwestern upbringing. I got into the law because I was after college, I worked on Capitol Hill for three years, and I was really interested in politics, and I really enjoyed what I was doing. I was working for Bob Dole at the time.

But I kinda felt like I needed to do something different. I wanted to get either a law degree or an MBA and kind of go out into the world and do my own career. And so that's kind of what led me to law school. And then from there, I ended up moving to LA. I practiced law in Kansas for a few years.

Really? I was a litigator. Really? And then I took a year off. I moved back to Taiwan and kind of immersed myself in Taiwanese culture for almost a year.

Then I moved to LA and I took the bar and I started working at a firm here called Buckalter Niemer. And I started as a litigator, but, you know, this was kind of like ninety nine, two thousand and the Internet bubble was really getting to its apex. And one of our corporate lawyers in the firm, Rick Cohen, was doing a lot of late stage venture deals, but he couldn't keep any associates because everyone was going in house companies. Right. So I had an opportunity to switch from litigation to corporate.

And from my first couple of years as a corporate lawyer, all I did were late stage venture deals and learned how the deals work from the investor side. It was a lot of kind of literally, like, deal after deal closing just because of the volume at the time. And then it was kind of sudden, but, like, sometime in 2001, we did a deal and then that was the last venture deal for a while. And then the Internet bubble burst. The whole tech sector got beaten down.

And so I had to go do other stuff. I had to learn to do m and a. I had to learn to do debt. I had to start advising companies as outside corporate counsel. So as I rounded out my own practice experience, I started thinking about, well, I wanna build my own book of business.

Where would I like to focus? And I was always intrigued by the early stage technology world. And I started really immersing myself in sort of the local ecosystem, which if you remember in the early two thousand wasn't really robust. Right. So So I started going to lava meetings, and I started just meeting people.

And over the years, building up a network of relationships and, you know, a lot of hustling and a lot of free legal work and a lot of learning and educating myself. And over time, just tried to deliver highest quality work, tried to treat people well, be very transparent, high integrity, and, you know, it's worked out really well. So how many lawyers do you guys have now? So our firm is, 20 lawyers now, full service. We do everything from litigation to employment, intellectual property, and a lot of corporate work.

And is it one office? We have one office here in LA. We have some lawyers who work in other places, so it's kind of a remote situation, but it's very seamless. Gotcha. So in terms of the LA venture market and your focus and where you see it going, how do you fit into that?

Is there a particular part of the tech market you're involved in in Southern California? I don't think there's a particular focus. We represent all kinds of companies that are angel backed or venture backed. We also represent a lot of investors. A lot of the local VCs work with us.

We have some investor clients in the Bay Area. So we do a lot of investment transactions both for issuers and investors. And, you know, I don't think we have a particular focus on any sector. You know, it could be e commerce. It could be SaaS.

It could be robotics. It could be anything that a venture capital fund would be interested in investing in. What do you spend most of your time doing this? Do you mostly manage your firm right now? Are you mostly still doing client stuff?

What gets you out these days? Yeah. I mean, there's a lot of everything. Because we're a smaller firm, I have to be able to do more things. Right?

So there is firm management. I spent a lot of time on that. There's a lot of client development, relationship building, relationship maintenance, and there's still a lot of work to do. So when you're dealing with these entrepreneurial companies and these CEOs that are trying to kind of either get VC money or be successful, the fact that you run your own firm, do you think that that gives you an added leg in terms of the kind of advice and counsel you give your quote clients? Yeah.

I think it does. I don't particularly focus on that when I'm talking to clients. But I think the fact that we're running our own business is helpful for me to get insight into what our entrepreneur clients are thinking about. And we always try to focus and structure our advice around what is your business need, because they don't hire you to get your ruminations on all the potential legal ramifications of some issue. They wanna know how do we solve this problem, What is the practical impact on my business?

And if we're not focused on that, we're doing them a disservice. Because a lot of the emphasis of what I'm trying to do is is see where the world is going and where is the puck going, like three steps ahead. So out of interest, the listeners and and the people that call up and give us feedback, what they find interesting is, oh, that's where self driving cars is going or that's what's going on with cryptocurrency. From your perspective, because you work with different industries and you start to see these trends and you live through the o one situation, what do you think is going on today? What's unique about Southern California and technology and our economy right now?

Anything jump out at you? I think there are a couple of really interesting things going on right now. I mean, I think number one, the access to capital and the kind of low cost of building a company is much more capital efficient to build a company today than it was ten years ago. There's just a lot of entrepreneurship in Southern California, which is awesome. It's great for our market.

It's great for our community. And with that comes a lot more capital, whether it's domestically created firms or firms from outside of LA that really want to come in and find great companies here. Those of us who've been in the market for a long time, we remember the days when it was like, there might be two funds that have over a $100,000,000 of capital available. Now there's multiple funds. Right.

And I think one of the interesting things that's happening too in the marketplace is people talk about this conversions of private equity and technology. And so you're seeing a lot of private equity firms that are really interested in high growth tech companies. You see these, you know, really big late stage growth rounds with the big tender offer, secondary offerings to either clear out the cap table or just get some liquidity to the founders. But it goes the other way too. So for example, consumer products historically were just not touched by venture capital because those are very capital intensive businesses.

You have supply chain problems. You have working capital issues that VCs normally didn't think about. And that was always the world of private equity. And what we always used to hear from the private equity firms is like, look, interesting company, but until you get to $10,000,000 of revenue and, you know, $5,000,000 of EBITDA, we're really not interested. It's just too risky.

And what's happened over the last particularly five years is that particularly with all the DTC branded consumer products that are going directly into the market, they're cutting out so much of the cost structure. They have much more streamlined supply chain. Venture is hugely behind that now. And a lot of that capital is coming from early stage venture investors and, you know, the private equity guys, I think they're dipping their toe into that, but I think that a lot of that is being venture funded, those really early stage consumer product companies. And we have great investors here in LA for that.

Bam Ventures does a lot of consumer products. Power Plant Ventures is very focused on plant based consumables. There's all kinds of companies that are really interested in this space. One of my questions will be is, do you think we're gonna have a recession? Are we gonna hit a bump in the road?

And tied into that is that we've seen a lot of food deals recently where exactly what you were pointing to, which is that what started with Walmart where they were squeezing all their suppliers, Amazon's been doing. And now that Whole Foods, for instance, is bought by Amazon, they're squeezing everybody. And so, what I'm hearing out there is that whether it was, let's say, you grow the food, you mill the food, you package the food, and then you sell the food. That strategy of all these different vertically integrated companies are collapsing. And what's happening is if you farm and you sell retail, you can make money.

But if you're caught in the middle, you're getting squeezed. And I'm seeing that more and more. And so, it's really I mean, if you're not lean and mean and you don't have the right IP stuff, there's no the fat is being squeezed so out of the system. 100%. And that's driven by two things.

Right? Consumers wanna pay less, so you have to find ways to get rid of the cost. But you still have to have a margin, otherwise, you can't succeed as a business. And investors, they wanna see capital efficiency. They wanna see that you're also pushing out cost.

I mean, I think in LA, the venture investors in LA have always been very focused on revenue and profitability. What is the road to profitability? Can you forecast this out for me? And I think that that mindset has really helped discipline a lot of companies down here to really focus on how can I squeeze out cost while still retaining margin? And then you realize that as you get rid of all this fat in the middle, you can deliver lower prices and have even bigger margins than you did before because you don't have to pay all these middle people.

Yeah. And then it's fascinating because then you've got, you know, the Amazons in the world in terms of what they can afford in terms of wages to people because there is still a labor element. Right? Mhmm. And so, whether or not you're talking to people in the baking industry or the consumer industry, the challenge is as long as labor is still a component of this and you're trying to improve your margins, everybody's getting squeezed.

And so, you know, the CEOs are still making their quote money at the top because there's a scarcity, but in the employees at the bottom so I mean, from a society perspective, it's tough because people on the bottom, they wanna go to Walmart and buy their toothbrush at a fair price, but they're now competing against the Chinese and the Indians and everybody else. And so, you know, we have not yet figured out how to kind of make it feel like everybody's in a boat together. And there, you know, there's a lot of dislocation. And I think that it's only going to continue in that direction. I mean, everyone's trying to figure out ways to automate.

Whether it's cars, whether it's, you know, warehouse robotics, whether it's, you know, artificial intelligence that learns and replaces humans. And over time, I mean, I think a lot of really forward thinking people who are looking out twenty five years into the future, they're thinking about what value do we put on work and is income going to be based on something other than work. We have to start thinking about that because a lot of people are gonna get displaced. It's just the nature of technology. Yeah.

No. It's fascinating. And, I mean, you've got an aging population. So, home health care for instance. We do need people for things.

People forget that somebody wants to walk your dog. Somebody needs to come to bring you food when you're, you know, in a nursing home. It may not be the manufacturing jobs in coal mines anymore, but we are gonna get older and somebody's gonna have to take care of us. So, I mean, I I think this notion that people are gonna be replaced completely is crazy. I don't wanna be fed by a machine.

Right. But I think, there probably will be more opportunity for people to have dinners over a bottle of wine and have somebody, you know, give them a pill at night. I mean, I just think we're gonna have to reorient the way we think about work. I wish I could tell you where it's going and it's hard it's hard to know. I think, it creates anxiety too, obviously.

I have a teenager and a preteen, you know, and I think they look out and they see this world where there's growing disparity between people with money and people without. There's the automation and what's gonna happen to all these people, and they're worried about their futures too, you know. And they find their connection in social media. The way we think about human interactions really changed a lot, and it's going to keep changing. In terms of interesting new clients, like, as a lawyer, where you somebody comes in your office, you go, we're gonna do this.

Anything interesting experimenting with are, for example, looking at things like banking and payment. Okay. So there are a lot of fintech companies out there. They're trying to figure out different ways to, you know, create disruptive business models and replace some things. And we have some fintech clients that are using different payment methods just to make it super convenient.

You can pay bills with your phone, you know, and take pictures of your bills and they'll get taken care of. A lot of interesting stuff in consumables. Right? It could be collagen based teas, for example. It could be beauty serums that are using products that haven't traditionally been used.

So there's all kinds of stuff going on, I think, in terms of just making life more convenient, getting rid of some of the hassles. I think there's a lot of interest from VCs and companies try to figure out ways to make office logistics and work logistics simpler. Like, for example, we have a client that's doing stuff with outsource HR management. And it's going very well and companies see a high value in that kind of service and they're willing to pay for it on a subscription basis. Let's go back to the recession issue for a second.

You know, we have an election coming up. A lot of people are talking about how valuations have actually ticked up. One theory was because people see the window closing and so they're rushing and it's created more demand. And so the pricing has gone up and you would think, oh, that's a good thing. But actually, it's because people are actually starting to tighten.

So if you had to predict and I'm not saying it should become a self fulfilling prophecy, but this is the longest cycle. Right? We've had a long time. Do you think we're gonna hit a bump at some point? Inevitably, we will.

There's always a downturn. I have no idea when it's gonna happen. This year is an interesting year because it's an election year. I think president Trump will do whatever he can to ensure reelection, which includes whatever he can to keep a very strong economy, keep interest rates low. If he's successful in that, then I think that it'll probably extend for a while.

I think, depending on who wins the presidential election, that can have a huge impact on what the markets look like. Right. And look, regardless of whether or not you're a Democrat or Republican, the reality is J Powell and the fed have let, you know, quantitative easing has gone a long long way. Now that we're at full employment, they are afraid of blowing this up because we haven't had wage inflation at the bottom level. And believe it or not, you know, the good news, the bottom is finally starting to see increases.

What people don't understand is that means that businesses have to pass the cost on. Well, when they pass the cost on, at some point, people stop buying. Right? And that's the end of the cycle. Full employment's the end of the cycle.

Now, what's so complicated and I don't think people are talking about I don't have this figured out, that's why I'm asking you. Is when you figure in the fact that we've got 7,000,000,000 people and we've got labor all over the world. Is labor elastic or not? When you've got printed money all over the world and it's happening everywhere, so it's not relative. Everybody's printing it, so you've got almost unlimited access to capital.

And then at the end of the day, you've got a labor force that, yes, is aging out and is at full employment. But every day that there's demand for new labor, you've got an artificial intelligence or a technology taking over that's making it you need less people. What I don't think people have realized is that as the economy is growing more and more and more, we have other sources to go to to kind of create this. How that all sorts itself out? I don't know.

But have you given any thought to, like, I mean, how much longer can this go on without these companies having to pass these labor costs on? I haven't really thought about that particular question. I think that you're right. I mean, it it's all a cycle. Right?

The more it costs to hire your labor, the more cost you're gonna pass on the consumer, prices go up. I think an interesting part of that, and, you know, I'm not a macroeconomic genius at all, But you look at the developed world, Europe, US, Japan, you know, all these countries, they're slowing in growth in terms of birth rate. Right? Mhmm. So less and less young people.

And countries like Japan are talking about, well, we have to import people in order to get the work done. And I don't know if The US is anywhere near that, but we've always had a robust flow of immigrants who have been able to provide a labor force. And so I think that's really important for the country. I also think that looking into the kind of investment world, I think that even if there is a recession or even if there is a downturn, there is so much capital out there sitting on the sidelines, whether it's venture, whether it's private equity, whether it's other sources of capital. And I actually think what would happen in a recession is that a lot of capital is gonna get deployed.

It's gonna be a buying opportunity for people to get things cheap, to get things at better valuations. They'll definitely be hard for companies that are portfolio companies of existing investors to kind of figure out how do we navigate this downturn. And there will be a natural calling out, some companies aren't gonna do well and others are gonna really thrive. But I also think that investors are gonna see that as a great opportunity to have a killer vintage fund in, you know, 2021 or something like that. Yeah.

And I I think unless people overreact and politicians mess it up. I mean, the reality is when you look back at the Great Depression, you talk about, oh, we put on the brakes too soon. And that's the thing about protectionism and trade wars and all this other stuff is, you're right. There is all this ability to get through this. Just let the system fix itself.

But if people start pulling in and you've got this trend of nationalism, and everybody thinks we're not boat alone and it's all of us against the rest of the world, I mean, that's what created the Great Depression. If we all work together, I think you're a 100% right. We'll hit bottom and then boom, come right back up. And that's what I hope for. I don't know when it'll happen, but interesting.

Do you have an investment fund as well? Do you wanna share any of your five year strategy with us in terms of where you wanna go? The way we think about our firm is that we don't have growth targets. We don't have a goal of being a 100 lawyer firm in two years. We've always tried to be really opportunistic, and I think our top goal is to have great lawyers who are really great people because we're competing with great firms.

We're up against Cooley. We're up against Gunderson. We're up against Goodwin Procter. Like, those guys are awesome, and I have nothing but respect for them. And at the same time, you know, we obviously wanna do as well as we can.

So we've got to be at least as good as them on the quality of the work. And then one of the things that's really important to us is that because we're small, the culture has to be really great. Because if you have even one person who's really disruptive to that, it's painful for everybody. And so we're really focused on the type of people we hire. We wanna make sure they're all good people.

So even though we don't have a specific growth plan, I think that it's gone really well and we've built a firm that we're really excited about and we really, you know, love the people on the team. The quality of work, the type of work we're getting is great. And so we just wanna keep that going and we'll see where it goes. Well, you know, having worked with different law firms and having worked with different VCs and everything else, a lot of times people don't realize that firms do have cultures and there are differentiating factors. If you were listening to some of your clients' testimonials in terms of what unique about you and how you differentiate yourself.

How do you differentiate yourself among the the other firms? I think what we really focus on is we try to be very service oriented, very responsive. Everybody does. For me personally, I really like to build a really close trusted advisor relationship. And with those clients that we've been successful with, that is in fact the case.

And those clients feel really comfortable. They'll call me and we'll talk about whatever is they wanna talk about. And again, you know, what I said earlier is that we really wanna tailor our advice. You know, we know we're giving legal advice, but we wanna tailor it around the business imperatives of the client because that's really what it all is for. And we try to be really practical.

We try to be really solutions oriented. And I'm not saying that none of these other guys are doing that. They all are because they're good. But I think we're we're right there with them. And we are less expensive.

Our rates are more favorable. But, you know, at the end of the day, we're not selling ourselves as the cheap law firm. We're cost efficient. But, you know, I think what we really try to do is we want our clients to know that we're there for them. We've got their back.

We're their advocates. And hopefully, that's how they feel. I have partners that I trust and admire and they're building those kinds of relationship with our clients. I mean, if if it's a client that I've brought into the firm, it's largely gonna be a relationship with me. But over time that depending on where things go, they'll develop multiple relationships with different people in our firm.

So, you know, that happens a lot, and I think that's really important. I like it that way because I think it's really important for all the lawyers in our firm to have, number one, the skills of having those interpersonal relationships with the clients because that builds high trust and it builds real stickiness with the client. And for me, it's good too because I just need to figure out ways to create bandwidth all the time. So asking people to talk about their good things, what would you describe as your superpower? My superpower.

I don't really think I have any superpowers. I I really think that for me, the way I want to practice law and the way I wanna run our business is with honesty, authenticity, transparency, integrity. Everyone's gonna assume when they hire you that you have the competence to do the work. Otherwise, what's the point? We always wanna deliver great work, but I think we deliver great work.

All of our competitors deliver great work. And so what I try to do is I just try to be a really good human being in dealing with my clients. And when things go bad, I'm also gonna be there to take responsibility for that. And if it's something that bad happened to the client, I'm there to, like, listen and try to figure out ways to make the situation better. So I'm gonna tell you what your superpower is.

Okay. Being balanced. Common sense is not that common. And I think there are people that, you know, are three point shooters. And there are people that are weight lifters.

And there are people that are singers. But being a corporate lawyer takes EQ. The brilliant corporate lawyers, and I I don't need to name them. We know who they are in LA. You have to be able to see everything.

You just do to be really good at it because you're managing litigation, you're managing personalities, you're managing business stuff, you're running a firm. If you're really good at one thing, but you're crappy at a bunch of other things, it's gonna fall apart. You just look like a guy who's actually got it relatively together. And that's why I think your clench probably If only you knew. But see, that's knowing.

One of the most profound things you said was the fact that when we make mistakes, we own it. Most people, I don't make mistakes. Or and I certainly do. I don't wanna know about it. Right?

Yeah. So I think the fact that you have lived and survived the downturn, it's a war every day. Right? I'm just saying, I think you do have a superpower. It's humility, wisdom, and being balanced.

Alright. I really appreciate that. Thank you. So I think your clients are smart. They've realized they found a place where somebody can actually feel their pain, not panic, but help them get through a tough thing.

I mean, I learned years ago at Gibson, there's no problems, there's challenges, and here's the solution. Right? We're gonna work this out together. People don't they don't need to pay you a thousand dollars an hour to have you tell them, oh my god, the sky is falling. Right?

Right. You gotta stay calm. You gotta go like this with your chin and think about it. It strikes me that you're good at that. I appreciate that.

And one of the things I enjoy a lot about what I do is those relationships with clients can really build into friendships. And for me, that makes me even more invested in the outcome. Right? I just want nothing but the best for my clients and I'll do whatever it takes to get them there. Pure intent.

If you have pure intent, then you can get a pure result. But if there's rust, if there's, you know, not such pure intent, doesn't end as well. So it sounds like you actually care about your clients. I do. That's a good thing.

Thank you. So are there we can follow-up on that which is kinda what's are some of the pitfalls you see. But also, are there observations or things you'd like to share that we haven't covered? If there's things specifically that you think you see people they're starting to make mistakes and you counsel them to avoid it. And then if there's other things you feel like mentioned that we haven't talked about, let's take a few minutes.

You know? Sure. So on the counseling on pitfalls, I think when you are advising entrepreneurs and you're starting to get to know them, get to know the company, I I think the biggest issue is always centered around the cap table. Number one, have you documented everything properly? Right.

And there are serious consequences if it's not. And making sure that you've got your 83 b's filed. Huge huge economic consequences if you don't. People are very focused on QSBS status of their stock these days because the capital gains exclusion is very significant. And so making sure you're doing all that stuff right, you don't have too many redemptions, you're following all the rules, those things become very important in transactions.

But I think entrepreneurs just I get it because they're so focused on building the business. They're head down building the product. They're head down trying to figure out who's the right cofounder or how do I augment my team to get this stuff done. And they don't wanna focus on the right documentation for this because they just don't have time. And so where we can step in and help them is making sure that's all buttoned up because, as I always tell them, when you start raising capital, the investors are gonna look at this stuff.

And their council is gonna really dig deep and they're gonna look for holes because they wanna make sure everything's buttoned up and cleaned up. And so that's where we can really help you early on because we recognize the patterns. We've dealt with these hundreds of times, so we know how to fix them. We just need your attention for a little while, and then we'll tell you what to do, and we'll take care of it and just sign everything. I think the cap table is always the biggest challenge in making sure that the allocations are right, that people are investing schedules, that they've filed their 83 b's, all those things really, really important.

I think IP gets really interesting. I mean, we have an IP law in our firm who helps people with, like, their trademarks, with their patents. We don't really advise people to do patents very often. It's gotta be super interesting, super novel, and that's a very high bar these days. Mhmm.

But I think, you know, making sure you really have your brand protected is incredibly important. I think people realize the importance of that. You know, and then when people wanna go raise money, just kind of understanding the terms, understanding the landscape of the investors that are out there that might be interested. You know, we have a lot of relationships with investors, and we tell our entrepreneur clients we're happy to get you in front of them and be helpful in that way. And, you know, I think they really appreciate that because there are those entrepreneurs who really understand that game and and are really good at.

But there are a lot of others who they don't have the relationships. They don't know how to go about meeting people. And so if we can help them, we we love to do that. Those are kind of things I think about in terms of early startup pitfalls and concerns. Well, we're not gonna talk about politics, but I will say living in California, but having worked for Bob Dole, I have to imagine that you have the ability to have conversations with both Republicans and Democrats.

And I don't wanna know if you're a Republican or a Democrat. It's not relevant. But I suspect you're a person that can talk to both sides. And it's fascinating because in this world, most people can't anymore. It's hard.

People don't cross the aisle anymore. Yeah. I am always willing to listen. Doesn't matter where you are in the political spectrum. I might strongly disagree.

I might moderately disagree. But at the end of the day, I think that if you choose not to talk to each other because you just can't have that conversation, I think that's really counterproductive. Yeah. And I think that when I worked in the senate, this was, like, in the late eighties, early nineties, there was still a lot of collegiality. Dole was really well known for reaching across the aisle, figuring out ways to compromise and get things done.

And I look at today's congress and I'm just flabbergasted by the dysfunction. I can't remember who said it. When I was a young, young lawyer, I was very close to Dianne Feinstein. I was always kind of the conservative democrat, but I mean, I've I've voted for republicans. I've voted for democrats.

I've always been a kind of in the middle. I can't remember who said it. And actually, Joe Lieberman and Senator Rybakov. Rybakov is a cousin of my my stepfather's. There's no question that they said that when they would go to parties, you know, like in the eighties or whatever, you know, where you'd have Republicans, Democrats at the same parties.

At some point, that stopped. Yeah. And so, you can blame the Democrats. You can blame the Republicans. But somehow, both sides stopped mixing.

And that that's a disaster. People have gotta figure out a way to have common dialogue. I agree. And I feel like that phenomenon has trickled down throughout the country. And the people on the right and people on the left aren't really talking to each other very much.

And they're mostly casting a spurge on each other and I think that's really counterproductive. And I think it's really unhealthy for the country. I'm gonna push people to at least recognize that you gotta have the humility to at least have the conversation. I think it's important. I think it's important to be honest about things and transparent about things.

I think it's important to be empathetic and to try to put yourself in other people's shoes and think about how they're feeling about something. I certainly do that in my professional life because I try to think about what is my client worried about right now? Why is he or she so anxious about this? I get it. When I think about it that way, I get it and we gotta deal with this and it's really important.

And I think that that is important in any human relationship. Well, and it's fascinating you say that because I have a lot of clients or friends that are therapists or lawyers or whatever. And they say exactly what you just said, which is look, when I'm being paid to do it and somebody says they're scared about losing their health care, I'm gonna listen to them. Or when they say they're scared about somebody taking their gun, I'm gonna listen to them. Because I'm being paid.

But if I'm for gun control and somebody wants to tell me how they're scared to go to bed at night without a gun by their head, I get so afraid because I'm gonna get shot by a gun that I won't even listen to them. Or if I want health care and I'm thinking somebody's gonna take my health care away, I won't even listen to them tell me that they're worried about how we're gonna pay for it. And so it's funny. It's like if we could put ourselves in the mindset of, okay, look, if I'm being paid to listen to somebody, why can't I listen to my friend for God's sake instead of pushing the delete button from Facebook, defriending them. You're not the first person that said that.

It's easier to do it when you have an economic consequence. The economic consequence now is we're gonna destroy this flipping planet. Right. Right? So global warming.

But it's it's a little further away when it's happening in Australia. Right. But it's here. And you saw it working on the hill. I mean, you see what it was before Yep.

And you see where it is after. If we don't go back to that, this will not end well. Anyway, what else? Are there things that you find really fascinating or interesting right now or that you like? I don't know that I find any particular sector more interesting than the other.

What I do find most interesting and maybe is the best part of this job is that I really like entrepreneurs in the earlier stages of companies because it's just a mile a minute. Everything's going fast. Everything's changing quickly. And they're thinking a lot. And there's a lot of imagination.

And there's a lot of big thinking. There's a lot of energy and it's exciting. You get really excited when you see the entrepreneurs, like, have a huge win on something, you know, whether it's product development, whether it's a big sale, whether it's raising capital or whatever. Those things are all happening really fast in real time and I really enjoy that. And maybe that goes back to the whole human connection thing, but I really like seeing people go through a very rapid evolution.

They're gonna be failures, there's gonna be disappointments too, but when they have those successes that's I'm super happy for them. I think it's great. Don, thank you. This was great. You're welcome.

I really enjoyed it. Thanks again for joining us. We look forward to bringing you more conversations with investors and entrepreneurs while we navigate this uncharted path in today's new reality.