You've created 15 businesses in eight years.

Yes, I was at the Boston Consulting Group's Digital Ventures. That's where I got my start. I was there for almost eight years as a partner by the end, and we worked with corporations in BCGs pipeline, and we started new companies with them.

And so some recent ones that I launched were Spin by Oxxo, if you know Oxxo convenience stores down in Mexico. That's a FinTech that I had the pleasure of launching.

What does Spin do?

So Spin is like a Venmo for Oxo. So Oxo has, I believe it's 18,000 convenience stores, which is absolutely nuts.

Like bigger footprint than Starbucks?

Yes. Anyone who's been to Mexico knows this so bigger than Starbucks by footprint. And we launched a Venmo like service so that you can transfer cash, but do that digitally between locations, which is really needed in that market.

And so that was more like you were more like a founder than a consultant.

Correct.

You're just like creating businesses. 15 businesses in eight years.

Yes, I was at the Boston Consulting Group's Digital Ventures. That's where I got my start. I was there for almost eight years as a partner by the end, and we worked with corporations in BCGs pipeline, and we started new companies with them.

And so some recent ones that I launched were Spin by Oxo, if you know Oxo convenience stores down in Mexico. That's a FinTech that I had the pleasure of launching.

Wait, what is Spin do?

So Spin is like a Venmo for Oxo. So Oxo has, I believe it's 18,000 convenience stores, which is absolutely nuts.

Like bigger footprint than Starbucks?

Yes. Yes. Anyone who's been to Mexico knows this so bigger than Starbucks by footprint. And we launched a Venmo like service so that you can transfer cash, but do that digitally between locations, which is really needed in that market.

And so that was more like you were more like a founder than a consultant.

Correct.

That was the division I was in at BCG. So all of us acted like founders of these companies, but we worked synergistically with the consulting side

Hmm. That's so cool. I mean, so but you're a founder of a company that now is all over Mexico.

That's right, yes. I had a lot of fun working in emerging markets. I actually worked in Malaysia for several years and launched a company called Settle there, which allows folks to pay for fuel with their mobile phones.

And they've got 10% of the country transacting on that per month now, which is crazy for a FinTech. Yeah, that's so young. So that's gone really well too.

And are you the. Founder, who's the CEO? How does that work?

Yes, I would call us a founding team. So I worked with teams of product managers and engineers and designers. And you know, I've always said, you can tell what each group at BCG is doing by the titles of the people involved. And Digital Ventures was just that. It was all product managers and engineers, you know, designers. And so we would have a founding team that would come in and essentially come up with the idea, sometimes completely blue sky in partnership with a corporation. We would get that approved by the corporate leadership, and then we would build the thing and launch it and actually do all the user testing, and then ultimately hire the full-time team.

And is that the same or different than what you're doing at UP.Labs?

There are some commonalities. There are, and there are some pretty significant changes. So, you know, the biggest change to our model is that we really spent time aligning the incentive structure. I'm really proud that every single person who's an FTE at our company has equity. That was really, really important to me. And not only in what they build, but also in a portfolio. So we're kind of bringing founder economics and portfolio economics together for our team.

Okay. So you're working with these corporations and what is the value or what is the trade off between if they just did this themselves or if they, you know, did a CVC?

It's very hard for them to do it themselves, and we often work with CVCs. So to me there's a few different things that corporations can do in innovation. One, they can have R&D, right? That's important.
That's critical. It's really required. At the end of the day, but it's very long term and it's cash intensive and it's people intensive too. They can also have their own accelerator or incubator. Those have had really limited. Success. It's hard for them to attract talent with the right incentive structure. So that's what we're bringing to the table, which is different than what they can do. So with a public company, they're not gonna be able to offer someone equity in a new business. It doesn't work that way. And in many cases, they don't have the technology know-how to bring to the table to actually bring to bear a new company that's viable And then you have CVC activity like you

Wait, I wanna Ask about each. of these though. Let me start with, with R&D. So with R&D you said it's long term. Like, Why is this different than what the R&D you're doing. Is this shorter term?

It's shorter term. So we actually have, with the corporations, we work with a call option, so we're on a four year cycle. In the first year, we come up with the idea from many strategic challenges that the corporation faces, and that's also what's different between us and say digital ventures is we completely focus on strategic challenges inside the course.

So we're not looking for growth. We think that's a really difficult way for a company to make money. You know, Porsche is not a private equity company. The VW group makes a billion dollars every day and a half. And so us coming in and starting a unicorn is really not that exciting to them. It's gonna take a lot of time.
It will distract them from what they do well. We focus and set on the problems inside the corporation. Problems that don't have a startup that's tackling them where they can't contract with that startup, and also that are things that are too difficult or they don't have the talent to solve. Internally, Okay, but just say it again, slower for me. So, You aren't focused necessarily on their growth,
correct? Yes.
So we're not
a unicorn.
Yeah, I mean, it's not to say that we wouldn't build a unicorn. I would love to build a unicorn. However, our model is really focused on these reliable hits.
So we have sort of limited upside and downside in some ways, So we work with a corporation to build six businesses over three years. Two businesses per year and really a perfect portfolio to us looks like six $100 million businesses that get acquired by the corporation.

So do they have a call option on buying the company in four years that what you were saying?
So the way the cycle works is it's a four year cycle, and in that first year, my team goes in and kind of like consultants would do in the very beginning, we look for challenges inside the business
We go ideate. We come up with prototypes and proofs of concept. We test those using live data from the corporation. This is actually quite cool. We get access to crazy amounts of data. So for Porsche, we had access to live tycon data. within 12 months of working together, which is kind of insane.
And the reason why Porsche did that for us is just as you said, at year four or at the end of this four year cycle, Porsche can acquire that company from us. And so they're really comfortable sharing data and information with us that they wouldn't normally share with another startup company.
But you were looking at customers who aren't just porsche That's right. And so we wanna invest in things that are only viable in the broader market, and that's important to up partners who is our strategic partner and venture fund when they seed this business.
And so anything that is just focused on Porsche and can't go into the broader automotive industry is not interesting to us because if that's the case, They should pay Accenture or BCG fees to go do digital transformation work, cuz that's essentially what that would be.
And so did you just say, do you think digital transformation work is not good work for a startup to be doing.
In my opinion, that should be fee for service. Mm-hmm.
Because there's not a return that you're getting in the future. And that's where I think some of the consulting firms have come in and sort of blended these models. And I think it should be a little bit more black and white. So to me, if you're doing early stage growth, it's not suitable for fees. It's suitable for in lined incentives because you really need to push through those first few years.
They're hard years and you can't get people to do that with a fee for service model. Now in digital transformation, it's a lot more, you know, executive types. People who have worked in big corporations, they can come in, affect change very quickly, get fees for that, move on, do it again. That's the repeatable model there.
And it's really, both are very powerful tools. They're just for different uses
okay, I'm rewinding
a bit.
Why did you say. Incubation doesn't work within the companies? Because you said they couldn't attract
the talent. Is
that why? And cuz the equity is
wrong.
That's right. It's very hard for public companies and large corporations to attract the talent that they need. And actually, we were having a conversation with the Porsche executive board recently and they said, you know, we attract the very best automotive designers. In the world who wouldn't wanna work at Porsche in that space.
But when it comes to software specifically, it's harder for them to attract that talent because they have big tech and they have startups and they have other incentive models
I know I'm jumping a little bit, but like, how do you.
Attract
that talent? you've sourced, I think you said like four CEOs.
That's exactly right. Yes. We're really proud of that. So there's a few different types of talent that we're working with So one are the full-time employees of up labs. So that's my team.
So it's a lot of folks. That love zero to one. Mm-hmm. This is their passion. They love to do it over and over again. As a matter of fact, they might not wanna go scale the business.
And so that's one type of talent. And those are the folks where I said, every person who walks into our door, who's a full-time employee, has equity in every single startup that we build.
and there's a structured liquidity event within, you know, three to four years of their joining where they could see a return
the second type of talent. The folks at the portfolio companies.
And so these folks are incentivized a little bit differently. So they're coming in and the idea is there.
So there's some level of product customer fit on its way to product market fit. There's funding from up partners, there's a first customer contract from Porsche or the airline that we're working with, or the retailer that we're working with. And then there's a structured liquidity event for that person and they're getting cash compensation, but also pretty significant equity.

And tell me about that zero to one sort of stuff. Like what is the. I don't know if it's a playbook, but like what are some of the best practices you talk about when getting these things going?
This is a lot of fun and this is a lot of our secret sauce and we did
learn. Tell the secret sauce. Yes.
We learned quite a bit from our time at BCG Digital Ventures, we do a lot of mapping.
In the beginning it's friction mapping, it's value chains, it's org structures, it's functional mapping, and really understand what does this business do. Where's the profit? Where's the value pools? Because we won't pursue anything that isn't at the confluence of high value and high friction. And to me, high friction means that some human is experiencing a bad problem, and it could be somewhat infrequent, but if it's a very bad problem, I'm still interested.
So we've had this debate. We just started working with an airline we kicked off in San Carlos. This week. So I was there all week and we had this interesting debate about the baggage experience and we were saying, you know, actually it might not be as big a value pool as say maintenance or operations of aircraft, but people never forget when an airline loses their bag.
Exactly. They, and everybody has a story about this, so it's a very high pain space.
We'll have conversations at the executive level and they know where there are challenges, but they don't necessarily know why.
And it's the people who are doing the day job who might have been in baggage handling for 20 years that actually know what the problems are and just haven't had a chance to articulate those. To anyone outside of our team. and we can go in and sort of connect with these people and map out those workflows.
And it's a lot of paper prototyping. You know, I think a lot of the paradigm of what we do are B2B SaaS, data science and AI companies. And so a lot of this is running experiments.
And seeing where we can collect data and where we can start to develop stronger insights than what they have today.
Yeah. So tell me like keep going on what that looks like. So what is a paper prototype?
It is literally a Figma prototype or even sometimes a sketch on paper where we show someone here's what your new workflow could look like, or here's some screens
Okay, but
I sometimes feel like you get mixed messages when you say, this is what your workflow could be, and people are like, that sounds great, and then you build it and they're like, oh no, it's not. really.
You know, it's a good debate because I would say in digital transformation there's more workflow change that you want.
And actually in SaaS you don't necessarily want a ton of workflow change. You want to augment decisions that are already happening. And so I can give you an example with poll systems. The concept there was that Porsche has a very challenging time predicting when a battery is going to fail.
And so, you know, that's problematic because the automotive industry has made a beautiful transition into EVs. Honestly, it's staggering. It's really the biggest product pivot of all time, and it's been relatively smooth. So for many automotive companies, they took. Existing models and just added batteries to those.
Porsche launched the tycon incredibly successful vehicle. What's been harder for them is the software and support services around those to make the customer experience really rich and to support their own teams. Everything from supply chain to design. And so what
we've,
it's gone from a hardware maintenance.
To a software
that's ex That's exactly right. Overnight, pretty much. And a lot of the calories were spent on how do we even launch this brand new hardware that requires a new way of thinking. And Porsche's one of the best internal combustion engine companies in the world, so it's actually phenomenal that they did this.
But they wanna be 80% electric by 2030. Which in automotive means tomorrow, right? So we're supporting them in that transition with some of these software services. And so one of the things that they're lacking in is just understanding when batteries fail and when they sell someone a vehicle, the OEM is actually responsible for the battery to a certain capacity for eight years of time.
and so you know, what we wanted to do is go in and take insights from the vehicle. And we now work with 200 insights on the T to understand when a battery could fail and actually help Porsche direct a customer towards a repair solution instead of a failure.
Cuz that's much less expensive. So we're not disrupting the current workflow, but I almost think about it as like intelligence augmentation instead of
that's, but that is like, the buzzword right now is like augmentation, right?
I think that's right and I think we have the, pleasure of being able to do some of these things early, cuz we have a three year cycle so we can collect data in a very difficult space for two years and then build the business in year three.
So there's a little bit of a portfolio strategy here too. And for the airline we're working with, Like I found out a terabyte of data comes off of an aircraft
10. Oh, wow.
which is insane.
Okay. And is it useful? I mean, is it
interesting still, still learning about that? So our, our engineering team is gonna start that collection process. Fascinating.
Yeah. But, but tremendous amounts of data in that
of, Let's keep going. I find all of these really interesting, like, do you have. Early thoughts on like what's going on with airlines that might be interesting.
Problem areas
we do. One is the maintenance space, and actually this is true in automotive. And I'll pivot back over to automotive real quick cause I wanna tell you about one more thing we're doing there before we move into airlines. But one of the other spaces that just fascinates me is the repair and maintenance space more holistically.
Yeah, it's a $2 trillion market. And the need for repairs is like exponential. Cause cars are older, people are keeping them longer. There are software problems with cars now. And so you have this group of people who are most suited for oil changes and tire rotations that are now trying to reconnect sensors to a windshield.
And so it's just, it's very challenging to train people, bring them into the space, And so we're developing a platform that takes all the error codes and starts to map those two histories, but then also histories on that specific vehicle so that these individuals can make these changes and repairs much more quickly.
So that's one I'm really excited about. That's one we're launching this fall. And then, you know, back to airlines, I
thinking, wait, wait, but okay. So you are launching that company.
Yes.
And also 2 trillion.
Yes. I mean, it's kind of mind blowing and like customer satisfaction scores have honestly tanked in recent years because. The time to AIX has doubled. And some of that is because Bay Space is not available. But a lot of it is because you have a car sitting there that has a software problem, it's taking up space in a bay and you can't do the oil change, which is super high margin for you.
It's
fascinating that the turnaround time has doubled in recent
years.
Insane. And it was funny cuz I looked at like Reddit message boards and people are trying to do fixes on their own and you don't want that either. You want people to know that they can come in and there's reliability around that fix.
But I think that's, you know, certainly a space where we can help dealers provide a better experience, particularly around EV sales, which is one of the weakest parts of the experience today,

love, And
so you said, and that's just been fascinating, like, so the whole EV thing, it has swept all the manufacturers. Yes.
is it, regulation that has mostly driven
out? It is the regulation is so stringent at this point. You really need to produce EVs for carbon footprint purposes.
And it's also, to some extent, the consumer in certain markets are driving it. It's seen as luxury in California, so it's a few different things that are happening at once.
It's an interesting market. Obviously I'm, I'm fascinated also on automotive supply chain, and maybe that's true of airline too.
I'm not
sure
it is. So in automotive it's even more important because we're working with an OEM that's building the car, and Porsche's typically about 30,000 parts, which is nuts. And so what's happened in that space is actually really fascinating. It's sort of a, you know, business school case study where these automotive companies have.
So many suppliers now, and they've been working with them and optimizing them for three or four decades and saying, no, no, this is your profit margin supplier X. And unfortunately, the suppliers have not had the bargaining power and they've had to sort of listen to that. And so their businesses are very fragile and many of our macro events in recent years, Tested that fragility in a way that really hurt the automotive companies.
And so in my opinion, a lot of what needs to happen in that space is there's been a value shift up towards the automotive companies who took so much of the profit margin back into themselves, and they now need to shift that back towards the supplier space. then in addition, you have software and services that can run underneath the space that provide visibility.
So one of the most frustrating use cases for Porsche is. Automotive goes down to like tier seven, I mean, nutty. That's where your raw materials sit. And
so tier seven, explain the different
tiers. So each tier basically provides a good or a material up to the next tier until you get to the oem.
and so it's really precarious because if there's a delay at any point in this chain, the rest of the chain breaks. And what's been really frustrating for automotive OEMs, Is that they might be working with a tier one and there's a delay at the tier four, let's say.
And so that's known right now, but nobody passed the tier four knows that yet. And so by the time the OEM needs the part or the system from the tier one, it's really delayed. And they're like, why didn't we know that beforehand? And so we've looked at how do you align incentives and provide that visibility, and that is a really hard problem.
It might take us another year. To figure out how to get involved
requires,It's a fascinating conversation. Like I, I will come back to like the, the model,
but
like Yeah, yeah,
yeah. Do you Think about manufacturing as well and just like so much about Onshoring Nearshoring and where the US is on manufacturing.
And
yes, so there's been more vertical integration and that's been Tesla's play. I think it's really hard for other OEMs to do that at this stage, and I'd actually rather see them use software and better communication and kind of better legal and economic structures to do it because I'd love to see them focus more on like EVs and services around EVs and really cool automotive design.
That's their core competency now. And that's actually another, you know, interesting trend that we're seeing in the industry is cars are becoming software and so really, the commodities are at the supplier level. So I wouldn't recommend going back and trying to insource that. It's more about how do I become a software company?
Tesla's doing it all, but they had the, benefit of being an EV native company and building their tech stack in the past decades.
Interesting. So you're not focused from an OEM perspective. You're not focused on manufacturing. You're thinking about how do I use software to coordinate my ecosystem.
end? How does the OEM become a software company?
that's where the margin is gonna be and the differentiation. And I think many OEMs will, they're still gonna assemble, they're essentially assembling parts and systems that are coming from the suppliers in many ways.
So interesting. Okay. I mean, just The deep dive on automotive helps me understand the UP labs model.
But we touched on airlines. Are there other you know, themes outside of automotive that you're, you anticipate tackling or are tackling?
I mean, we think about ourselves more holistically as the physical world. So yes, moving world is a big piece of that. But one of the things that I find interesting is we would like to build about 60 companies.
And so at some point we start to cannibalize ourselves if we stay squarely in mobility. And so we will need to think about some of these adjacencies around retail, aerospace and defense is something that we're really interested in as well.
I think grocery is super fascinating from a supply chain standpoint, so I'd love to be in that space.
Yeah, so like double click on that. So likeit's a supply chain
Question
again.
Yes, exactly. Network optimization in the retail space. Going in, understanding freshness inside the store.
There are already some companies that are in this space, so there will be a whole new set of ideas by the time we get around to working with grocery. But those are some of the things that I think about in that space. And then in aerospace of defense, of course, you still have supply chain and manufacturing and factory floor and moving towards being more of a software minded company.
So a lot of the same trends that we're seeing. And what's been interesting for me even today, and this is part of why I say we're gonna cannibalize ourselves at some point, is. Even just in the few days with the airline, I'm seeing a lot of the same themes
I mean, how do you find the companies. Find the right person to talk to, build that relationship. You're no longer at bcg,
That's right, yes. And it's a lot scrappier. And so I'm going through that process now because we did come in with a lot of existing contacts and the UP ecosystem is phenomenal for this.
So this is where the UP partners team, Adam and Cyrus and Ben. Obviously my business partner John, really come in because they have phenomenal Rolodexes and you know, the UP team hosts the summit each year, which is an invite only event around mobility. And I was floored at the people who were at the event last year.
So we definitely have conversations with those folks, but we're also more proactively looking at like, what are the amazing companies that we would wanna work with on a company by company basis.
And so it's a lot of like hitting the pavement and going to conferences. I was just at Milken and we go to several conferences where there are CVCs and so
We're still very small and young, um, but we're excited. I think just being attached to the broader up ecosystem has helped us tremendously.
how did up build those relationships?
This is also a good question. So Cyrus had founded the largest private jet company in the world, and so he was working with a lot of, you know, high net worth individuals and family offices and corporations as well. And so built many of those relationships very, very early in his career.
AndAnd there's so much excitement, folks that love this space, that are like total junkies around flight and space.
And so , they built it up that way through interest and passion.
And so you said you run into a lot of the CBCs. what's your take on
ccb? Okay, I, you know, I'm an and person, not an OR person, of course. And I think that when it comes to a Fortune 500 company, for example, you're gonna do it all.
There's no way that I would walk into a Fortune 500 company and say, shut your CVC down and work with up labs.
But I think that in many ways they provide a valuable look around the corner at trends and understanding where industries are heading in and around that corporation where there's disruption.
And you know, I know at Porsche they've made a number of really good investments.
Some of those investments though, haven't been as close to the core. And so that's where I would go back to this difference between market value and strategic value. And where I still think the most value lies is in strategic value in solving a problem.
no, that makes sense because to some degree, if you're being a good venture investor at A cvc, you are making good investments. That aren't necessarily core. Correct.
Correct.
but what you're talking about when you come in and map all the problems to me it sounds, like a thing a good consultant could do at the beginning of an
engagement at the very beginning.
I think that that's right. But that's over within four weeks. So we're very fast at that. So our cycle, that first year, we have to get to those problems lightning fast. So
I'm not there to tell them, Hey, let me diagnose your business.
And now I'm gonna tell you where there are problems. It's less that and more. Let me tell you about solutions now to solve things that you're struggling with and here's the value those solutions can generate Hmm.
Right? Okay.
BCG seemed to get it earlier maybe then sort of a McKinsey. What was going on there? Cause you had the inside
front
of row
seat.
Yes. I was at Bain and Company before BCG and I was doing digital and social media strategy there.
And I agree. I think that they stayed more in the strategy realm.
My feeling was my client's lunch was getting eaten and I was giving them slides. So that wasn't very interesting to me. So I think that what attracted me to Digital Ventures, and I joined very early in 2014 when we were probably 50 people.
We grew to 1,100 people. But we were building, and that's where I go back to look at the titles of the people who are there. , they're building companies.
And so that was an important distinction and I think BCG did get that very early on.
And really in many ways we did for bcg, what we were doing for Fortune 500 companies, which is we digitize them. And so they're digital revenue, the fees that they were generating, cuz that's their core business. Was in the teens when we started, and I believe it's now probably 70, 80%. I mean, it's exorbitant.
So they're doing tons of work in the digital space

But does BCG Digital ventures, it doesn't still exist in the same form?
No. It's integrated back into B C G. That's as of a few months ago,And so they're still doing a lot of the same work, but it's inside of BCG at this point in time. I think that's also why, you know, we exist in many ways is a lot of the people on our team are X bcg and we wanted a different model and we did not wanna work fee for service.
We wanted an equity model, And you and John are sort of the founding John's, the ceo, you're the president and
you. That's exactly right. The digital ventures? Yes. So my business partner, John left Digital Ventures a couple years before me, and he met Ben and Cyrus at the summit.
And so they started noodling on what this model can be. And John is phenomenal when it comes to financial structuring, just genius level.
And then I joined the founding team last January with about six other people.
And who was that? Usually the champion. I know it's still kind of early, but like within
a
like.
Who's the, let's do this in partnership and do this new venture lab
model.
Yes. John had connected with Porsche's cvc, and so on the Porsche side, it's definitely the cvc and they see this as another vehicle for them because it's still making in investments, but this time they get to be relevant to the core business.
So it's a great value proposition for a cvc.
make.
Now on the airline side, we came in more through the strategy team and through the executive team and you know, had some ties through John to the airline. but so he's also phenomenal at really going in and helping corporations understand how they might wanna change.
Do outside investors, so,
UP Partners Invest.
And
Porsche's CVC is investing, do you ever have like a series A fund investing?
Not right now. So here's the way that I think about it is, you know, I told you the happy path is we want a company to become a 100 million company so it serves Porsche or the corporate partner first, and then a set of other corporations or customers in that space.
Get to a certain A r r and then ultimately be acquired by the corporate partner for around a hundred million dollars. That's what we say, you know, there's a range there. And so we actually can get there with the seed funding from up partners and the a r r, and that's what's unique about our model is we're very quick to value.
Hmm. It's very
unique.
Yes, yes.
so that's a great overview, but I'm trying to get a sense of like how you got here. I imagine you're thinking of yourself as a founder more than a consultant or something.
right? exactly right.
I'm more of an
operator. LinkedIn, You glanced at LinkedIn and you were at Bain. You're at bcg I think consultant.
Well, we what did your parents do in high school?
Where
were
you?
I grew up in Lexington, Kentucky, on a farm, actually. Okay. So I love horses, I love animals.
My dad is a real estate developer. My mom stayed at home with my brother and me, and I actually went to boarding school when I was 15, so I went to Massachusetts, Boston area, stayed there for undergrad as well. Went to Harvard. I was in a human cloning lab during undergrad molecular biology major. Yes. And then I did a visual arts minor, and so I've always been this very left-brained, right-brained person, and I think that that's helped me quite a bit in the space that I'm in now because like you said, I do consider myself.
A founder and an operator and a creator, really kind of an inventor. I think of my team. We're inventors. We're coming up with ideas. and we're working with people and I love working with big companies. I love complex organizations and their dynamics.
big.
my parents are still back in Kentucky, between Kentucky and Florida.
what do you think made you successful? Like what are some of your like. You're sharp, you're ambitious. Like what are the
things
that
you
stand out?
It's a good question. I think I'm very experimental. I'm very curious. I love to ask questions. I'm kind of that investigator personality type, and I'm a perfectionist, so Nothing is really ever good enough. And that's a double-edged sword, of course, but I think that drove me a lot as a teenager. Out of Kentucky into this new environment. And then I'm a junkie for arts and culture. I love beauty, so anything that's beautiful. I paint, I love being out in nature. And what is like the, for you, you're junkie for beauty, what does that mean
to
you?
The elegance and simplicity of something that really speaks to me. It could be fashion, it could be a painting, a masterpiece. I think about it as a great masterpiece
I have so many thoughts on that, but it's, I believe you have to have good eye, though.
I think you can only judge down is what
I say.
I think you're right. I, I would say one of my strong points is that I do have a lot of taste. I enjoy that. I enjoy cultivating that. I'm also very lucky to have gone to the educational institutions that I did.
So that's a lot of it is you cultivate taste because you're around other people who have it and they teach you about things and you like some of it and you don't like some of it.
And that's what helps you cultivate what you do and do not like. I also know very well on a given day, like what I wanna eat, where I wanna be, who I wanna be, what I wanna wear. So that's also a double-edged. sword.
Yeah. Interesting. Yeah,
And like you walked in and like kind of a, like, I need a picture, like a cowboy hat and like a fringy uh, jean sparkly sparkling cutoff
jean
jacket.
It's from the nineties actually.
that's awesome. You woke up and you're like, I am gonna be a sparkly cowboy.
That's exactly right. I thought about you and that I was gonna be here and my flight was delayed last night and I was unders slept and I was like, this is gonna make me really happy. I know exactly what I wanna wear
today. I love it.
That happens Most mornings.
so good.
It's been fascinating getting to know you and getting to know this model. It's really interesting.
Um,
and you're such a company
builder.
I
love
it.
it's been a blast and it really is a team effort. Well, thanks for coming on the pod
and telling
me
about
it.
My pleasure.