What do founders get wrong after making millions from an exit?

We just got 10 years of salary on one day. What's the biggest mistake that you've seen or maybe you made when it comes to that cash hitting your bank account? >> you're going to say what do you do next the next day. >> >> You still got to work. The lack of investment in yourself is another mistake, interestingly enough, that people make where you have a million dollars exit, but you won't spend a thousand dollars on a health or personal trainer. What would be your advice towards exited founders of what should they do as they just see this large amount come into their bank account? >> I'm fully guilty of this. One of the main lessons actually I would say is Everyone, welcome back to the show today. Today we have Sriram Gallapalli on the show, former founder of iLabs, a health tech B2B SaaS company, exited and now the founder of Long Long Angle, a high net worth community of investors. Sriram, welcome to the show. Thanks, Jason. Love to be here. We're excited to hear your story and I want to jump right in for our audience to kind of have you explain to them you know, give them the quick 10 seconds on what iLabs was, why you sold, and kind of how you structured that deal to kind of create a material outcome for you to where you were now a high net worth individual on the other side of the seat making investments. Yeah, totally. Well, thanks for having me, Jason. Yeah, we were very fortunate. We bootstrapped iLab over a 10-year period from '06 to '16. We kind of stumbled into a small space in the um streamlining operations for cancer research hospitals. Uh we kind of started with paper-based processes and webified it, SaaSified it, back when SaaS was more than just a four-letter just starting to be a four-letter acronym, so to speak. We ran that. It was virtual a company. We grew that to about 75 people and it was interesting. In year nine, we were we were always cash flow positive. Um a lot of ups and downs, but bootstrapped through the through that time. And um in year nine we were approached by um sort of a partnership opportunity with um clinical trials company and partnership to almost an acquisition offer and or trending towards there. Like that could have been the the story. And we said, "Oh, that's interesting. It's year nine, you know, things are going well. Still stressful about losing clients and so on." And we said, "Let's um let's run a process and let's kind of see what this could look like if we took this for real, if we took this seriously and decided to think about it." So, we we kind of went a little more professional here. We kind of brought a banker in um and ran sort of a full-on process, which I'm happy to kind of dive into. We ended up with uh 12 um IOIs, um which are indications of interest, six LOIs, or letters of interest, from four PEs and two strategics. And um it was a it was a wild ride for those call it six to 12 months, especially the last six to 12 days. And we were very fortunate to find a really great strategic partner, Agilent Technologies, um based in Santa Clara. They're a six, seven billion dollar life sciences manufacturing company. And we um really appreciated both the the fit um from a tech software perspective. We were sort of going to be one of the um spearheads in a platform of software, so to speak, um as well as culturally, you know, I think a lot of people miss that sometimes when you're looking at how these things go. And I'm very proud to say this is we sold 10 years ago. Um we had about 75 people when we joined. And the last I looked, I I wouldn't be surprised if almost 50 people are still with the uh still with Agilent um supporting the software or grown in their own personal careers at Agilent, which is the most rewarding. I mean, the software's still being used by, you know, hundreds of thousands of people around the world, but um just the culture fit was fantastic. And of course, the the the outcome was also really great for a number of people. It was structured as a 100% asset purchase agreement, so let's call it an asset sale. So, they purchased everything, um kit and caboodle. Um and then there was a bit of an earnout. Um typically structured more escrow-based as well as RSUs for a number of the leadership team that uh turned out to be pretty well in the the macro Agilent story for the following call it four to seven years. So, what's fascinating about this is you had a successful outcome with the retention package. So, for the audience to understand, you had these RSUs, restricted stock units, that essentially uh uh mature over a period of time and you uh get that cash if perform if you deliver on your performance, you stay with the company, you get this additional compensation, which is usually a uh lever for public companies to retain uh talent over a period of time. It's just as good as cash if you stay. But I guess how did you know culture fit was going to work? Cuz that's definitely a problem that a lot of the people they look at the dollars, they look at the valuation, they look at the terms, they don't really think about what's my life going to look like for the next three years, five years, whatever it is. >> Yeah, it is it I'll say, Jason, it's my life, my leadership team life, the founder life, but it's also the team's life, you know, and how that fits, too. You know, when we we we looked pretty closely at some of the PE offers, you know, I think there's the often second bite of the apple, you roll equity in, like it's a very um look it can be a very lucrative story for a number of reasons depending on the growth and the curve and the acceleration of where you see the product market fit happening. I think for us, we knew there was growth, but we also um I think part of us is funny, you know, an entrepreneur is typically very risky just by nature just by the fact of like, you know, I quit a full-time paying job at Deloitte jump in, you know, ramen eating so on and so to speak. But at the same time, there is a weird mental perception of risk. So, when it came to Agilent, what was pretty interesting about them is they're a stable In fact, they were like one of the they're they have culture from like the '60s. Like there were people they would frequently be 20, 30, 40-year anniversary parties of people. Um so, it was a it was a bit of a one part culture shock to see like that kind of longevity in a in a company of any sort of fashion, so it wasn't a startup by any means. Um but what we found just pretty fascinating was the um the willingness to explore, listen, um you know, in integrate, so to speak, and understand. They They had an integration machine, which was also pretty helpful to see. Like it wasn't like we were the first acquisition. We were one of the first software acquisitions, but we weren't one of the first integrations to happen, so some of that pain was actually um was mitigated. And then the people themselves, you get sort of a more warm and fuzzy, you know, it wasn't necessarily going to be grinding, but it was also like results mattered. So, um we really appreciated the discipline, the financial discipline, the operational discipline that they brought to the table. Um and they really saw an opportunity to foster career growth, you know, they have like this legacy Silicon Valley classic DNA that um you just don't always see from some of the more tech companies that are being uh purchasers these days. No, it's kind of fascinating. That kind of tenure just doesn't really click with me as a you know, tech entrepreneur. I'm like, how do I how can I do like if it's not mine, how do I do it for that long? Yeah. Well, and to be clear, I think very few very very few founders lasted five years, you know, we were on payroll for five. Um And the RSUs were structured very interesting, too. I think in our case the RSU Well, I know in most cases, but in our specific case, the RSUs were very structured as, you know, performance of the company per se, but it wasn't actually fully tied to the company performance and how it did for the following four years. Uh sorry, our our software, like the iLab software, performance necessarily, but it was also due to Agilent's corporate performance, as well. So, when you look back at that deal structure and you were considering all these deals or these LOIs from other buyers, what's something you look back and you're like, you wish you would have known after you before you took the deal, now kind of seeing the other side? Like what was kind of a main lesson learned in the transaction? Yeah, I think the main lesson is one of the main lessons actually I would say is don't necessarily underestimate the like cleanliness of an asset purchase agreement and not like trying to squeeze every, you know, dollar and cent out. You know, I think the the the piece that we struggled I wouldn't say struggled a lot with, but was around the the true second bite of the apple of sorry, a true second bite of the apple on the equity side with a typical PE deal. Um and that was I would say minor conflict cuz they're like, "Well, look, this could grow 10x or 25x or what have you." Um but it's it was fascinating to kind of have that mental discussion with oneself and say, "Hey, look, you know, you basically got The way we kind of structured is like mentally, so like, "Look, we just got 10 years of salary on one day." And, you know, that was sort of, you know, how do you think about being satisfied or like happy with a result that you can then free yourself to do the next thing. That's the other thing, too, I would say. I would say think about where you're going next or how you're thinking about going next. And we didn't necessarily think we were going to quit. We didn't necessarily think, you know, we were going to do this forever, but we also knew that we didn't we weren't super passionate about what we were building. So, I think the passion of what you're doing can also really influence how you structure the deal because if you see your baby kind of being thrown into a certain environment and you're very comfortable with it and you don't need to be there anymore and you can move on to the next thing if you kind of scratch that itch, I think that also will say something, too. I think it's fascinating you it's a good way to frame it. Like you just got a 10-year salary injection into your own personal bank account. And then you keep your salary for five more years. So, like you now have this nest egg that will grow, compound, and mature over time, which that's kind of what I want to get to now. So you you had this success. This is, you know, 10 years ago. You get this 10 years of salary deposited in your bank account. What do you do next when it comes to managing that money? I thought you were going to say what do you do next the next day. >> >> Go to work. You still got to work. >> to You still got to work. You get the check. You kind of share it with friends and family. They're They're not that that many people you can really share it with uh for for obvious reasons sometimes, just the way uh Humans. celebration. Yeah, humans in Western society and you know, just like yeah, humans really, as you said. You know, it's it's funny. We as an entrepreneur especially and um you know, you get risks, you take turns, and you you generally feel like you kind of know what you're doing. Um and you feel like you can apply that to almost every single facet of your life for better or for worse. Um So uh the I don't know if it's obvious or not, but obviously a lot of the banks come knocking on your door. Um whether it's private wealth, whether it's financial advisors, whether it's fee only, whether it's whatever. Um you'll start for however they get them get your names, they will have scanned the press release and say, "Hey, we're X Y and Z. We're the private wealth management of X Y and Z. Please, you know, we'd love to chat with you." Um my wife and I, we had several of these conversations and you know, we were very fortunate that we had, you know, obviously my co- founder going through a similar process. I had friends that had exited companies in the last, call it, 6 to 12 to 9 months at the time. So kind of kind of lend their bend their ear for uh feedback. And you know, I think the thing that's always struck me the most, Jason, was sort of the fee structures that were involved um when going down the professional route of money management. Um Learned a lot through that whole process. We We kind of tested a few more of the hybrid robo advisor kind of opportunities for part of the earnings. So where I think one of them took 80 points um for part of the wealth in addition to >> in bips? Uh 80 bips. So 0.79. Yeah. 80 bips. Sorry. 80 80 bips. 0.79. 79.79%. Um Uh And then what you learn or what I learned personally was a few things like the quarterly conversation with an advisor to kind of review your holdings and your portfolio turned out to be almost a Oh gosh, there's this meeting and you know, it seems like a waste of time. Or I feel like I'm being pushed some new product that they have that I can't fully understand. Or I have to go ask my friend like what is this really? Or Or they wouldn't be able to answer the real questions I have like how should I structure a potentially structure a trust and estate for the children or something like that. Um So we um so I'd say a lot of it was DIY. A lot of it was kind of getting up to speed myself uh from an education perspective. And then uh based on what I do now, but even back then uh starting to talk to more friends who I felt more confident in that I could, you know, it's the blind leading the blind, but at the same time it was my friends that I could talk to and even if we were all blind, we were kind of doing it together. So I had more trust there because I wasn't being sold something. How much do you blame that approach on you just generally being an entrepreneur? Cuz I I see this dichotomy of like the entrepreneur community and the the post-exit of the founders who kind of have this like I can do this myself. And then you have like employees that you know, are just like they'll just hand over the the keys to their their wealth and just like let it be managed and have a much more hands-off approach as compared to most founders who are like, "No, I can I can optimize this. I can tweak this. This is like essentially a new business in terms of money management." What was kind of your Do you think that was is that general sentiment in terms of your experience managing this community of high net individuals? Do you see that dichotomy between the two personalities or is there correlation? No, there's definitely correlation. I think there is, you know, I think the professional sort of approach is definitely risk mitigating. So I think a lot has to do with your risk tolerance. And look, I think there are very traditional portfolio portfolio structures that are pretty much set it and forget it if that's your cup of tea and if that's something what we're trying to maximize. I think everyone I think the biggest question that people are are always trying to grapple with or at least one of them, I suppose, is am I doing this right? And did I make a mistake? Or um you know, what am I missing? Sort of, right? It's all all the blending different versions of the same question of like I'm doing something wrong or I must have to go to someone else to do it to I must be paying All these people are paying these people because they're doing something right. And I think that FOMO is almost something that causes a little bit of like uh almost like a mental challenge because it's like, "Well, I'm I'm now spending more time worrying if my friends are all paying these advisors, why am I doing it?" Or or or things like that. And I think the entrepreneurial mindset to your perspective, I think forces you to kind of peek under the hood a little bit more. Um but at the same time, I'd say, Jason, people are generally risk uh sorry, fee averse, right? Like I think as you kind of start looking at things like would you pay, you know, another service provider an annual percentage of some growing amount of money for doing the same amount of work? So I think AUM-based advisors, I think are going to be challenged generally speaking for our generation and especially our kids' generations of uh wealth management. But that's not to say that there is some structure that offers peace of mind, offers a set it and forget it. And I think the last thing I'll say on the professional service providers is I think there's a a number of transactional things that are actually helpful depending on the complexity of the estate. So hey, do this wire for me or hey, can you send my kids this or hey, can you Like that is I I don't have one, but I'm doing those things and I'm now I'm now 10 years later trying to say, "Well, hold on. Maybe it is helpful to have just someone that's kind of doing more the transactional set of things." So I think that's cuz uh tax tax prep. Getting Not even Not doing the taxes, getting the stuff to the accountant is turned to can turn into a bit of a beast as well. Let's talk about this. Like exited founder. They have grinded. They have not maybe had a material liquidity event and then boom, they get 5, 10, 20 million dollars. What's kind of the biggest mistake that you've seen uh or maybe you made um when it comes to that cash hitting your bank account? Timing the market. First and foremost. I think the it back to this FOMO part, right? Like I think it's like, "Okay, well, I just need to time it right. I just need to park it differently. I just need to get the best asset allocation." It's sort of What is it? Uh analysis paralysis, right? I think that's probably the biggest mistake because it's one of those things where generally speaking generally generally it's been a little different weird environment, but generally speaking it always goes it being the market it's always going up and to the right. Right? Now, it ebbs and flows. It has ups and downs. But especially with the younger founders with typically uh your audience in the 30s and 40s we have a 50-year horizon, maybe more depending on how you approach investing in longevity. But um so you will you generally speaking, you can almost hit a dart and you will almost be fine, right? Um and you can make some different sort of decisions based on risk aversion. But you know, if you over time the market, it's What's the saying I recently told someone again that you know, it's on I see borrowed from Buffett and others. It's time in market is much much has much stronger positioning than market timing. Got it. So market Market timing is not the goal. Time in market is the It's hard like no one has a crystal ball. No one knows when the next tweet's coming out. No one knows when, you know, what's happening where. And conviction. You know, I think the other thing I say is And this is where I'm learning a little bit more on the community side, but you know, try to invest with things >> >> I guess the other, you know, piece of advice I would say is around diversification. And I think diversification is a personal preference, but um I would argue that diversi- like You could be a high believer in tech. You could be a highly believer in what have you, um you know, real estate or whatever might be, conviction in certain markets because you that's where you came from. Um but diversification, I think, is something that is um extremely important just for risk protection. The other mistake I would say is it's pretty fascinating, Jason, and I'm I'm not quite over this yet, but it's the the lack of investment in yourself I think is another mistake, interestingly enough, that people make where you have this exit, you're willing to put, call it, you know, a million dollars into Fang stocks or a 10,000 or 25,000 or 50,000 dollars into um you know, different friends' startups and their companies to try to explore things based on diligence either yourself or what have you. Uh um But you won't spend a thousand dollars on a new rowing machine or you won't spend five thousand dollars on a health personal trainer or and I'm fully guilty of this. I'll be the first to say that. But or you won't spend like five thousand dollars on like, let's say, a cloud subscription, Cloud Pro, because you feel like that's wasteful, but you know, it's empowering you to do something. It could be or education. It could be anything from all those things that I feel like it's like this weird mental block for myself again that or like even small things like I'll spend like I took me really hard time to spend like a thousand dollars on like a new chair for my office right or a new laptop or a new phone like these are such like inconsequential expenses the things that you use like every single day and you're like no no no no that's wasteful but you know you'll put like ten thousand dollars or twenty five thousand dollars into whatever it might be and it yeah into a startup and the last mistake I'll mention is um uh you just because you went through this whole exit and you did really well you are not a professional investor so I think everyone says I'm going to open up my own venture studio I'm going to open up an angel like I'm going to be a professional angel investor cuz I know all this stuff I think it's a whole different podcast but so many people go down that route and you know it's each to their own how to spend time but just because you were great at one part of the journey does not mean you're going to be amazing at this part of the journey Real quick if you're a founder doing over five million in revenue and want to know what the best hundred million dollar plus founders are doing to fuel their growth then make sure to subscribe to our hundred million dollar exits newsletter get the playbooks that are proven on how to fund grow and sell your business I'll even give you a curated list of investors that want to invest in your business it's totally free all you have to do is click that link down below subscribe do it now I promise it's worth it you won't regret it you got nothing to lose go ahead subscribe now back to the show Dude I resonated so much with everything you just mentioned from timing the market which at least in my case I was very lucky I sat on my cash for two years and just had no idea what to do with it did not make any investments just literally sat in cash I didn't have a high yield interest just like I was so busy grinding back at you know the next thing that I just kind of had the cash sitting there and then COVID happens and I was like well I got a lot of time on my hands now and I got to and like market collapse so I just you know rode the market and then I was like oh that was easy I'm I'm amazing then you know market started turning I was like in like 2022 and I was like I don't know I don't know what I'm doing Yeah I don't know how to I lost my you were like skyrocketed to like obscene it was almost like three four x the entire portfolio in a year and then you know then that portfolio fell like forty you know thirty forty percent I was like okay I'm just going to diversify not think I'm you know have the golden touch and um yeah I've kind of calmed down my expectations on investing and then definitely made the mistakes on angel investing I I put you know good chunk of six figures into companies that are not going anywhere and or have already collapsed there's a few that are still hanging there but yeah that was a waste of money and and the venture studio definitely everyone's I think everyone I talked to that uh as exited their company has explored either buying a boring business and or starting a venture studio and then cash flow I think that's the other thing too it's so weird I think there's this this like oh I don't have cash flow so what do I do to generate cash flow and I think it's on us like my wife asked me that too all the time she's like well hold on what's our cash flow plan right like if I stop working like if she stops working like what's the cash flow plan and it's a very like it's weird to take capital from sort of a sitting investment as your cash flow plan and you know especially when you're in your thirties and forties and I think that sort of becomes a sort of a a strange um a strange mental exercise because that's not something you're used to Yeah that definitely happens on a regular basis like investing in real estate was kind of how I supplemented you know cash flow to kind of come in and I run my money through that business and all that kind of stuff and it kind of gives some cash flow but then you know my wife saying questions like well what I was like let's you know buy some time for the new business kind of grow and all this kind of stuff and uh so yeah I definitely went through all the abs and flows of everything you just mentioned from mistakes made and questions asked and this in you know for our audience sake we haven't really addressed the elephant in the room like you know this is what you educate people on a regular basis by bringing people together so if you can give everyone a quick and I'm also you know a member of your community uh tell everyone a little bit about Long Angle and why you started it and kind of what its purposes Yeah I appreciate that so right we're actually this is five years after the exit now and we were still working at Agilent and Tad and I were wondering Tad was my co-founder I've known him since high school almost thirty years now we were trying to figure out well you know we are happy to stay here you know Agilent's a great company but maybe we want to scratch our itch and you know we have maybe another turn in us to maybe build something or maybe at least explore things so we said a number of ideas on the table Jason that's a whole other podcast it was super fun kind of pitched ideas to our wives from you know a vending machine for baby formula which doesn't exist by the way to kid kid SAS companies to to this one portfolio x-rays and other kinds of things and we said hey wouldn't it be great if we could chat with other people who are in their thirties and forties um have been fortunate to have some event or just you know through savings or what have you call it you know several million dollars to their name and just have a safe space to have conversations where you're not being sold something to so we pulled like fifty friends and said hey what do you think about kind of having a safe place to do this where we can chat you know more than a WhatsApp group but less than sort of an email chain and yeah I'd say thirty five people were like that's amazing I'd love to talk to other people to see what they're doing five people were like I'm going to be too busy or I don't know really about that and a few people were like that sounds really sketch so we were like okay well that's enough market signal so to speak so this is like late twenty early twenty one and we said look we're going to interview you to see you know are you bringing something to the table and you're not going to solicit and um do you have at least two million dollars to your name to kind of just set a bar for some capacity to you know set a metric you know I think a million dollars is super fascinating but for better for worse a lot of people can hit that these days and you know western you know place you can kind of do various things and then that's where we started so we started with like fifty friends call it late twenty early twenty one and we put ourselves put them all into an online community space and that was really the premise that's still the premise today community first trying to figure out how you can chat with people where you can drop your wealth filter and ask real questions like hey is it okay to buy business class tickets and send my kids on economy or how do you think about asset allocation or how much are you paying for your account for a tax prep am I paying too much like a lot of it comes down to this whole zip code tax problem right where just cuz you're in the zip code you're paying more so the typical example is around lawn care um where just cuz you live in a good neighborhood you're paying fifty sixty seventy five dollars per lawn cut but the same lawn mower team is charging twenty dollars like two towns over I think that happens so often when you're just unaware because you're willing to pay sometimes for a variety of things so we we created the space we interview everyone and today we have just about eight thousand people in the community um we are community first we do three hundred events per year across all of our cities um it's completely free to join there's zero obligation of any sort we've now crowdsourced access to private equity so once a month we do deep diligence on a specific kind of PE fund to help with your private allocation there's another one of those things where we're community driven full and first and foremost so we said hey one of the reasons that some people go with financial advisors is access to PE to get access to diversifying your portfolio we can talk more about this but basically if you're just buying the general US public markets you're missing a whole slice of private market opportunities that are just not being traded in the public markets so the idea of having a fully diverse portfolio is to show that you're getting a fully diverse portfolio and not just call it mag seven these days so we said well I want access to privates but how do you how do you diligence this world of everything and everything so we kind of created a whole mini machine around that so we provide investment opportunities that we feel pretty transparently diligenced and offer to people and then we do peer advisory similar to some of the more professional kind of groups we launched something called trusted circles now where you go even deeper you get even more close to call it six to nine individuals and you kind of share your portfolio for example you the first meeting you share your portfolio with your numbers and that becomes a very naked moment where you don't share that sometimes even with your spouse honestly like where all the accounts sit and that sort of sets the foundation for some pretty unique conversations that you can have with honestly the friendliest group of strangers you'll ever have because now they know what's in your bank account and that interestingly it sets up a foundation for conversations that you don't otherwise think to have but with that information in a backdrop you can ask certain questions that you would never ever imagine asking otherwise I I think the concept is is fascinating that's also you know why I wanted to kind of check it out be a member and I think the it's such a vulnerable you know thing it's like all right you you grinded you built this material wealth you know in some case I think some of the members are also like Fang members or you know, like they were employees at the right time with the right companies and have stayed there long enough to materialize the growth of their their stock. Uh there are issues of actively or in some cases months if you were at SpaceX like, you know, like you just joined and you leave. I mean, yeah. But yeah, that's It's insane. Like and that's that's a whole other conversation of the the talent hopping and like option accumulation strategy that exists out there for you know, kind of high-end you know, high-level employees at different um you know, kind of the Mag 7 companies. But I want to go back to this kind of experience of um diversification um as as as founders we tend to have this conviction mindset of like, no, I think I can create more material value doing what I think is best, which venture studio, angel investment. Uh or venture fund. But when it comes to proper diversification, you mentioned that exposure to um kind of the macro markets, S&P 500, which in reality is just a Mag 7 carrying the entire weight of the S&P 500, which is absolutely insane to see these days. Um but then you have um this venture into private or you know, it's a private credit, private equity, venture, uh directs. Um Yeah, there's financial advisors that basically tell you, "Don't do that. Don't invest in the private because uh you know, the S&P 500 has grown by 11% year over year like and these things could fail. You don't know what's going on." But like, what do you say to those financial advisors, wealth managers that are kind of pushing you more into the 60/40 um call the the stock and bond portfolio and how that's kind of maybe phasing out from your perspective or at least for the type of people in your membership, how that's not necessarily the diversification strategy anymore. What I'm finding these days, Jason, is that I think history has been sort of interesting and I think what people need to think about is the last 10 to 15 years have been pretty much the longest bull market ever. Like just period in the history of like basically stock market trading and COVID aside, you can't totally discount COVID, but generally speaking, like we're hitting new highs literally I think yesterday or depending when this podcast airs like, you know, I think in late April we hit again another high despite having pretty much massive global like strife of some sort of the other and everything's happening. And what people sometimes forget, myself included, is that it's so easy to say, well, I can just throw everything into the market. Like I need nothing else to provide diversification or return profiles because anything that I would do outside of a broad S&P allocation is just going to be net negative for me because um none of those in it's it's especially if you live in the US, like even like my my world sort of allocation, my ex-US allocation has also been doing abysmal and that's usually where you get some protection as well. Let alone within the private markets in the US, there um you know, there's so much of the economy that's not tradeable in the public market that's proving and creating accretive growth. So all that to say, um you know, I think for the person that's in their 30s and 40s and has call it a 5 10 year I'd say 10 plus typically, but 10 to 100 million plus portfolio, um they are you're you're doing yourself a mild disservice by not at least exploring the alt side to get exposure from a risk diversification perspective. And within the you asked about the community, we have a great allocation study, anyone can download it. I think as you move up the the net worth chain, it the minimum is about a quarter, you know, 10 to 25% in terms of private and that can mean many things to many people, but typically it's going to be access to either a fund that's providing the stuff. It could sometimes be um some sort of real estate trust or these different kind of entities, but um it's also been really fascinating to educate yourself on the way that really the economy works in a number of capacities, whether it's the oil and gas, music royalties, pieces of major league uh teams. These are all economically producing assets that sometimes one forgets are also part of you know, the way the you know, effectively the larger economy is working. So getting pieces of that into one's portfolio really can prove to have uncorrelated risk. Um on the bond side, um the traditional 60/40 and things like that, um look, I'm not an economist and I won't really claim to say I have a lot of experience on the bond market. Um my personal perspective is I've been burned by having too high a bond allocation when first um sort of being told the 60/40 and things like that and I was watching um the bond like portfolio actually shrink um when I was watching the private side or not the private, the public side grow. So um you know, I've become I've built up a small a small position in gold um of late some you know, um to provide a little bit of hedging, but I have little to no my personal this is true on this portfolio has little to no bond exposure other than maybe through retirement. Um and I think it's really important to just know. I think the other last thing I'll say on this is just know what you're investing in and just be comfortable with it. Right? Like I don't think you should take a full set it and forget it strategy unless you've really pieced it out and say, "Look, I'm comfortable to as you alluded to I think last I checked Mag 7 was what? 35 almost 40% of the S&P and if you're comfortable with that, you know, that's that's great on you, but just know it then don't just expect it's just magically going to be fine for you. Yeah, obviously and disclaimer, this is not financial advice, you know, to be very clear for for anyone. This is more experiencing sharing of kind of what you're seeing in this uh what was it? 8,000 high net worth in your communities? So you you you see a lot of data that I imagine, you know, with a very high caliber group of people. I think at least my AI was telling me it's average net worth is like 15 million in a group. Um which is you know, impressive to have those types of people at the table, some of which are obviously exited founders, which is you know, this audience particularly interested in. I guess what do you see behavior-wise in your community of say an exited founder versus a Mag 7 employee who made their they made their money materially different? Great question. I think there is definitely higher risk. Um um there's a higher appetite for risk with the founder. Um it well, it's interesting. There is a typically a higher risk appetite for the founder because they're willing to experiment and I think there's also this innate sense of like, well, I can do it again. Now, whether that's true or not, I think it's a different story, but you know, you'll you'll make some changes, you'll make some mistakes and you're comfortable with that because it's on you. I think the Mag 7 employee, typically speaking, it's a timing uh play. You know, they might have made a calculated risk of moving to a company when it was smaller or what have you. Uh well, in the Mag 7 case actually no. They they would have just joined, you know, joined a Meta or a Google and gotten a $5 million RSU package and it probably just paid out the 5 million that you were expecting. There was probably some modest growth that was built in based on ebbs and flows, but um that sort of experience is actually very different because you kind of effectively earned double effectively you earned a a high W-2 income for that that period. And that's not necessarily going to happen again and you probably ground yourself very differently to get there to get there. And that also has sometimes shown experienced itself in a way that has had it I'm start again. The the W-2 employee that has gone through that process, I think is definitely more risk-averse and sometimes unsure because it's not they don't have the mental mindset to say, well, I can just earn this again or things like that. Depending on I think the last point I'll say is many people have a bit of the retirement philosophy of like, how do I want to spend my time? I think it's a major conversation that happens in the community around um it's a whole philosophical discussion like, what's enough? And what do you invest in? I think um that becomes a very interesting discussion that very few people spend any time thinking about, like any time. Like you're you're sort of especially in the western culture perspective, your only measure of let's call it success is from a financial bank account perspective. Like the number goes up and I'm doing well myself personally or what have you. And I think people quickly forget that there are other aspects to a life, I suppose, and it's you can make trade-offs and you can start spending and um I think that's been opened up as well, too. Yeah, I'll go back >> that comment you were making earlier like, you know, not not buying the cloud max subscription or not buying the better laptop or the like. I struggled with that for so long. Um you know, when I first had my kind of material outcome in 2018 and uh it wasn't really until like I had kids that I started to be like, "I'm going to spend the money." You know, I was like, "I'm going to buy the nicer things. I'm going to buy the the higher quality stuff. Like I don't know why I haven't been doing this for so long. Uh I'm going to get the better house. I'm going to get these these things. This like I was just so conservative of like fear of loss or you know, just kind of also just like the scrappy mindset as a founder of like I don't really need these things. And it wasn't like you know, buying super lavish or any like ultra luxury or like first class or business class or anything of that sort, but it was more of like um the value of time and convenience. I think it's more where my time and allocation of spend has shifted in the last like 4 years since I've had my my first daughter cuz time is so limited with with them and we're you know, working and things of that sort. I think that's kind of shifted my perspective. Um you know, quite a bit. I mean been a little bit more conservative on the investment side as opposed to where I would or let's just say more conviction in my investments in the past where I had the time to do that. Now with kids, I don't get that. I'm going to hang up on this call. I'm going to go deal with the you know, two kids right after I guess with the point I want to bring up you know, with with Long Angle in this kind of peer-to-peer communication collaboration um what would be kind of your advice towards an not investment advice? Um advice towards exited founders of what should they do? They just got you know, 10 million like we talked about the mistakes that happened, but what would be your advice for them to kind of consider as they you know, just see this large amount come into their bank account. Yeah, that's a great question. I have a lot of thoughts on the time investment side of things. I did want to make one other comment. You know, I mentioned the $1,000 chair that I recently purchased for example. It's funny. I I couldn't bring myself to spend the $1,500 that I I'm I'm using a Steelcase right now. It's like a office chair. And I looked at it online it was like $1,500. So I kind of did the thing that I would normally do. I was like well, there must be another way to get it. Got to be a coupon or buy used. And I have to No, used exactly. So I found an office liquidator and I spent 550 and I bought you know, two chairs for a thousand and one for me, one for my wife and it's like the most I've ever spent on a chair even though it was used and it's great. Like you know, I I see why, but it's one of those things where sometimes that initial entrepreneurial mindset just never goes away depending on how how you go through things. Um you know, I'd say it's it's really around you know, you know, I'm biased here obviously, but finding people that you trust that you can bounce ideas off of. You're not doing this alone. I think that's that's something else that I find a lot of people are just worried about. And then so finding people you can trust whether it's a friend group, whether it's like communities like what we have or trusted people, trusted people that you're just not being sold something to. It's so easy to get preyed on. It's so easy to get scammed these days especially with what's available out there. Um putting the right security layer in place around yourself. I have a lot of thoughts there, too. Um but I think and then and then the last thing I'll say is just don't you're not going to do it wrong. Like just don't don't over optimize. Like life is short. Like and as you said like it's okay to spend. Like I think I was recently trying to come up with some number with my wife and I think we said something like oh like I think it was like 1/10% 1/10 of a percent of your net of our net worth you should feel comfortable spending. Like you know, and that turns out to be a lot of actual dollars in some cases. Like if you have a $10 million net worth um that's $1,000. Like and don't be frivolous about it as you said like don't spend $1,000 a day necessarily. But guess what? You probably could spend $1,000 a day forever and you're probably going to be okay. Wouldn't be too big of a deal. Yeah, wouldn't be that big of a deal. Like you know, 3% of your portfolio annually which you should hopefully be hitting that kind of return uh to where $1,000 a day doesn't really matter. Uh And and you're not going to do that just based on your mindset, but the point is it's like sometimes you second guess these things. Like the new MacBook Pro was like you know, I spent like $2,400 on it. I would have never spent that when I had my exit, but like 2 years ago I was like I use this thing every day. Like I'm going to just buy the extra RAM cuz it's going to be better for me. Like what am I saving the $100 for? I know. Wish everybody got the 64 gigs. I know. I got 48. So >> >> Yeah, exactly. These things you can't open up. Yeah, it's like Chrome's already lagging. Um just spend the money. What's wrong? It's been absolute blast talking about kind of the the post exit paradox of what do you do with the money and what happens you know, kind of like the common pitfalls that that occurs. For founders that are watching that either have had an exit or might be experiencing one in the near future, what's the best way for them to you know, learn more about you and the community Long Angle? Yeah, totally. You can follow me on LinkedIn. You can email me directly through longangle.com and then yeah, we're all the stuff on the website free to join, free to apply. We just do a quick phone call to make sure you're not trying to sell something and we'd love to have you. I will say it was quite vulnerable when I joined and I had to share my screen of my net worth. I was like I don't think I've ever done this before. Yeah, no we delete everything. We only need to see proof of just over 2 million and yeah, it's really just to make sure that you know, you're you're human you're human hopefully and and you're trying to >> Yeah, me too. Yeah. Now it's getting tougher, but no it's been great. The in-persons and just having that safe space has been just really revealing and vulnerable as you said. Awesome. Well, thanks for coming on the show. Make sure to include those in the show notes down below. And if you'd like an intro for the audience if you'd like an intro directly to Josh just let me know in the comments down below and I'll help you make that intro for you. Awesome. Thank you, Jason. Thanks for coming on. If you were inspired by today's episode, then go ahead watch this next episode. Promise it's worth it. And if you really enjoyed this last episode and you want to connect with the guest I had on today, make sure to leave a comment down below telling me why you would like an intro to this guest and I'll make it happen.