How do you turn a blank check into a $6M pre-revenue raise?

Today, we have Zack Bell, co-founder of myplace.co, a social network to share your place and assets with your friends. Zack shares his story of raising 6 million from Freestyle Capital and how he built a bond with his investors and how the company came about from a side hustle while trying to solve his own problem of renting his place, but only to trusted friends. This isn't our typical founder on the podcast and I'm excited to share Zack's story with you. Let's go ahead and get started. Welcome back, everyone. Thank you for joining us at Fundraising Demystified. Today, we have Zack Bell, founder of myplace.co. Zack, thank you for joining us on the show today. Thanks for having me, Jason. Awesome. Well, you know, Zack, looking at your background, you know, you're a serial entrepreneur. You're currently working on myplace.co, which you've raised in total of $6 million. Can you just give the audience a little bit of background on who you are and, you know, what led you to starting my place? Um so, my name's Zack Bell. I love long walks on the beach and sunsets. Um but for real, no, I am I have been building community my entire life and I have been traveling around the world uh fostering that community for most of my life and um I um kind of have my friends live all over the place and I, you know, I wrote a blog not too long ago kind of trying to tie this all together called I Could Never Afford My Lifestyle and I realized that hosting friends and staying with friends and sharing my house with my friends and having my friends share their houses back with me radically defined my life and what I had access to. So, I was building a company called Habitas, which uh I encourage you to look up. It's a really beautiful hotel brand all over the world that uh we call it luxury for the soul. So, it's all about redefining luxury around um you know, connection with yourself, connection with nature, and connection with other people. Luxury isn't like the built environment and extreme isolation. So, while we were building that, I was traveling around the world, running the marketing, and my places were empty always. So, I made a Squarespace page and I put my house on it uh and I I framed a Google Calendar into it and a form and I gave the password to a couple friends and I said, let me know if you want to come stay. This is what I pay for it. If you can cover my rent, great. If not, don't worry about it. I just love it to get used. That is how this thing took over my life. Be careful what you make on a Squarespace page in a weekend. Did it go viral? Did Did the password go out? It didn't go viral, but it was like, you know, one friend was like, "Hey, can I add my place? My It was like my cousin's looking for a place to stay. Can I give him the password?" I just kept track of everyone with the password who I gave the password to in Air table and it ended up with like 2,500 people. Um and a bunch of houses, mostly in New York, LA, and San Francisco, which is where we were all living at the time, kind of in out and uh and you know, skipping ahead a lot of things, but like the New York Times wrote an article where they included us in a list of about alternatives to Airbnb and I had written on the homepage like share with your friends and all these people reached out and were like, I also want to share my house, but not with your friends. I would like to share my house with my own friends. And turns out that product is really complex to build um but we're getting there um and we've had some some early successes with it. That's fascinating. So, you know, kind of serendipitously, you know, in terms of just you put something out to solve your own problem and everyone got excited about it and started to to leverage the platform as well and kind of get overwhelmed and I've seen a lot of co-home sharing types of businesses. Obviously, there's like launch houses that were more of like a accelerator type experience um you know, for a specific crowd and then I've seen like entrepreneur houses, but you know, this looks more of just a sense of community. It doesn't necessarily matter what your background is. Um I guess where where you guys at with the business now? Um we just kick quietly came out of beta. We haven't really loudly done anything ever. Um but we were a while for a while we were invite-only um and now we're just letting anyone download the app or sign up on the website. And the way the thing that really worked, my co-founder kind of came up with the idea. We were like, "Do people need to friend each other? How do you define who people's friends are?" So, for a while we were having people send friend requests back and forth, but we ended up just adopting kind of the like the WhatsApp strategy. So, when you download the app, we search your contact list and we just show you places to stay based on people that you know. Um so, it's your friends or friends of friends and because uh of the influence in certain communities around the world of our beta community, we ended up with um you know, uh you know, 20 million contacts in the database. So, chances are your friends are here um like in certain networks. And so, what we're slowly doing is working through getting new networks online so that when people come, their friends are already here. Um so, it's uh anyone can join the platform, but you can only share your house with your friends. And then we take your network out one degree if you want, but nothing more than that. So, it's friends or friends of friends and you can always restrict people and become more private um but you can't become like public. We're not a public rental site where we don't even consider ourselves a short-term rental platform. We consider ourselves more of a social network. Interesting. And that's an interesting way to look at it. And I guess from a, you know, business model perspective, how do you guys make money? You're planning to make money? We don't right now, which is a really exciting time to be in 2023. Say that with as much sarcasm as possible. Um but um you know, we think, you know, a lot of our investors I'll I'll I'll answer it a couple ways, but a lot of our investors believe that and I believe that kind of sharing things with friends is just something that's never been put on the internet well yet, but it's something that happens all over the internet. WhatsApp groups, Telegram groups, Facebook groups, like all these like endless amounts of groups. We're really just trying to share things with friends that you don't want to rent to strangers. You know, most people's homes are not available for short-term rental to internet strangers. Um most of them. Almost 99% of them. So, uh we're for the other people who don't want to like rent start a business. Like an Airbnb is pretty much a business for most people. So, we don't want people who start a business. We want people who just want to stay with friends, host friends for free, swap, trade, or at at least cover A lot of our users like travel for 2 months out of the year and just want to get their cost covered in New York. So, we don't want to make money on the transaction um because we're not a short-term rental site. So, likely uh very soon we'll uh in unclear which order, but we'll introduce a platform fee. So, uh to use the social graph or to sign share with friends of friends or in any direction either on the supply or the demand side, we'll be charging a net a small network fee. And then our most uh requested feature is insurance. So, we'll be offering uh insurance. But we won't be facilitating We won't be facilitating the transaction because it's hard to take a percentage of free when some and we want to continue to have people swap and trade and do free things. Um we don't want to be focused specifically on getting the transaction fees up. Well, you know, it's kind of like the early days of Facebook. Don't Don't monetize it until the network is, you know, at some kind of level of scale, but uh that's that And you guys consider yourselves more of a social network, which you know, I find interesting. A pretty interesting approach in sharing It's really sharing assets. It's like a social marketplace. Yeah. In many ways, right? You have to create In any normal marketplace, you have to create liquidity in the entire marketplace. We have to create liquidity inside of each individual user's social graph. Which is the hypothesis that we're de-risking, right? That's what we're solving for. Um in the coming months, we'll launch a feature called groups, which we beta tested extensively, where like your business school class can join or your entire alumni group or you know, we're going to launch it with Summit Series and Daybreaker and YPO for all people in trust networks can We can jump start people's networks. So, it's not all about just getting your individual friends on one by one. No, it's smart. Especially like those kind of higher valued groups like, you know, YPO group or things of that sort. I could see that being pretty interesting, actually. There's a lot of mutual in those groups organically, but not facilitated through any kind of, you know, more like WhatsApp and text messages and stuff. Exactly. And so, we're less like a Facebook social network, more of a marketplace, but we have a social dynamic to it. So, when we interact with like we don't want to mess with zoning and cities and things like that. Like we don't want to put tourists in business We don't want to turn housing into businesses. We just really want to get your friends in your place and get the right people using the right places and that's different for everyone. Some people's There's houses on the network that are like so nice, I could never afford them, but I also can't even see them cuz they're not in my network. You know, um so, it's kind of everyone's network ideally is, you know, suited for them. That's amazing. That's actually, yeah, pretty It's pretty clever. And you know, I think it's kind of fascinating and I know listeners here at this point are like, "Wait, he doesn't have revenue. It's social network. And wait, how much did he raise?" And so, I know this is going to be a fun fun story to go into. So, you raised a million-dollar pre-seed uh when you first launched in 2020, then a three a three and a half million-dollar formal equity seed round, and then you raised an additional one and a half million note. So, I guess just walk us through that journey. Like, you know, when did you decide to raise capital and why? And then kind of how'd you go about raising the subsequent rounds? Well, I know this this is probably going to come as a surprise to some people, but I was I was uh on the process of leaving my last company and a dear friend of mine was like, "Hey, that website that you made is really interesting. You should do something with it. And I here's a blank check for $100,000 at really like he I didn't even think of it. He was like, "Just make it for us." He's like, "I know you're on sabbatical and I know you don't want to work right now. But make this just for us and our friends. Don't worry about making a business out of it." And he's a smart guy. Um because we did an email like a million 100K at a million. Um and I didn't take it. Uh I just drew down on the account. So I never ended up taking the entire investment. Um but uh that's kind of how it got started. I called uh one of my best friends who's now my co-founder who ran an agency. I was like, "Do you want to get some developers on this?" He was like, "Oh my god, I've been thinking about this for a long time. I had been working on something similar." So we just started kind of doing it um a little bit with very small amount of money as little as we could spend. Uh I wasn't drawing a salary. And then we attracted some early investors from some early Facebook guys. Um um people who are kind of core network builders. I have one friend built Facebook groups, another friend who built Facebook ads. They were like, "Yeah, sharing with friends on the sharing things or assets with friends is just no one's figured it out yet. If you can figure it out, it's going to be a big winner." So that got us to about a million dollars in 100K, 25K, 50K checks kind of casually raised over about a year, year and a half. And in that process we moved off of the Squarespace page, obviously. Uh we shipped real product. Um and it it it started working a bit better. Um and what I was happening and I I can't stress how probably important this was and everyone, my girlfriend, thought I was crazy. But I it was a bait closed beta. I onboarded every single user. I made you have a 10-minute call with me before you got access. Um and one of those people uh was Dave Samuel from Freestyle Capital. And after I onboarded him, he was like, "I'm a venture capitalist and I'm going to send you a term sheet after we hang up." Just right out of the 10-minute call and he's just like Yeah, I talked to a lot of found I mean some of those calls ended up being I now I like I I knew who he was. Like I had looked up I look up people a little bit before they get in. I was like, "Oh, this could be interesting could be interesting." Didn't really think much about it. Um we had met a year and a half prior which I think this is important to note. Um We had met a year and a half prior during But this case was entirely different context. Um And so I think one of the things that one of my advisors, uh this guy Rob Goldman, is brilliant uh entrepreneur. He was like, "Your investors or your uh acquirers or any of the people, you will know them already, likely." Um and they'll be paying attention and they'll watch you do things. And yeah, I kind of came across Dave's plate really early in my career and then showed up again. And here's this interesting thing that he wants to use um with some early traction that came off of a Squarespace page. So if if the story kind of indicates like anything, it wasn't my first meeting with a venture capitalist. It was my like 50th. But I wasn't raising a seed round. I was about to raise a seed round. I was talking about like, "Oh, I'm thinking about raising a seed soon." Um and I a lot most people did not I talked to who are venture capitalists did not. Yeah, but I didn't like do a formal seed process. I just started talking like kind of while raising the pre-seed. I was like, "Well, you know, we have this little safe right now, but we're thinking about raising a seed soon." And that resulted in mostly no's. As everyone of them in your podcast probably has said. Which isn't me your business is a bad business or your idea is a bad idea. It just means that person I mean, there's so many people that have interest in so many things that they just might not be interested in the thing that you're building. And it might take you having to talk to 50 or 100 people until you find one person that's interested in the thing that you're building. How did you get all those 50 meetings? Like how did you go about getting those meetings? Um I I asked everyone I knew and just kind of laddered through my network. Nice. So but you so you're active. You were you were seeking capital. You were going out there and wanting raising a little bit of money. I was like, "Well, I think we could just keep getting these little I should just meet with venture capitalists and see what they say." Um and you know, I like when I when I had when I when the guy gave me the the the 100K blank check, I should He was like I was like, "Oh, cool. Like someone just gave me 50K. Um let's go to People are investing in this." And I just did like 20 or like 10 in-person meetings in San Francisco with like a really shitty Squarespace page, a deck with no designer, and everyone was like, "No." Definitely not. And it was like cute. They were like, "That was a cute meeting with that guy." Uh but I had like I had nothing. Um but it was something and I started the conversation. I guess at that point you're you're putting yourself out there. You're getting feedback. The no's are in a lot of cases some good feedback of all right, well, whatever I'm doing is either I'm talking to the wrong person or maybe my materials or mission or whatever you're doing isn't a fit. I guess when did it start to click? So one obviously you know, the freestyle you know, VC coming in and um coming in through a customer experience, but also having already known you is a massive qualifier in a lot of cases with these having some kind of prior relationship. But you know, beyond that did they did Freestyle do the full three and a half million or did you bring in two additional capital? Freestyle did most of the round and then we got it was 2021. So we got an overwhelming one two of a term sheet. It it's different now. But back then like once you had a term sheet, it's like blood in the water, right? And everyone wants to get involved especially when you have like a a well-known venture capitalist leading it. So Haystack Capital came in and took pretty much the rest. Uh Oceans Ventures who just raised their second fund. Um I met those guys. They're awesome. Um they came in and did a little bit. And then we actually made a little bit of space for a bunch of angels. Um predominantly because and which is also what we did the what why we did the safe. Um we wanted communities and influential people who would help us spread the network to have skin in the game. We actually haven't turned on our investor network for our growth strategy yet, but we plan on that being a massive lever. I'm going to say that and I'm glad you shared that just because as you advise for other founders, it's you know, bringing on influential angels. And of course they usually come in later, you know, when there's the round established, but not always. But kind of being strategic of leveraging them not just for the money, but for value add and you know, kind of being able to hit their networks and position your customer perspective it could be very valuable cuz there's a lot of I would say very successful kind of prominent entrepreneurs that I would say align with your thesis and kind of what you're doing and that kind of more communal um aspect. Uh community building. Yeah, they're in here. Oh, good. No, there's like a different there's like different outlooks on that. There's like as few names on the cap table as possible. And then there's the I want I call it the opening a bar strategy. Where when you open a bar, you want like you want like a lot of interesting people to be owners of the bar cuz you want them to be like, "Hey, let's go to my bar." Um and they all bring their friends and it just kind of creates the the scene. So we want um that's why we opted for that strategy. I always had this fantasy if like the first thousand Instagram influencers got equity in Instagram. You know, there'd be like a thousand more billionaire like a thousand billionaires instead of a few billionaires. Um so That's smart. And um I guess did you guys do them all direct on the cap table or did you guys do like an SPV to consolidate them? Different strategies. Um we never did an SPV, but when people came in and wanted to do uh um like syndicates on Angellist, we pushed everyone that wanted to put in small checks into that. And then some people above a certain above a certain amount we put on the cap table. Got you. So okay, so yeah, you did an SPV through Angellist. Was was it an RUV that you guys managed or is it We didn't do it. Someone came in and wanted to do a syndicate on Angellist. So we were like, "Oh, great. We have a bunch of people who want to put in small checks. Like we'll just push them all into the syndicate." And then anyone above a certain tier of uh amount we put on the cap table ourselves because they didn't want to to pay the carrier the fees. Yeah. Now, see I think that's uh a good lesson to share with with founders as you kind of start to consolidate. You know, maybe there's some amazing people you want on a cap table. They're amazing people, but coming in with a $5,000 check. That's not something you necessarily want to deal with on your cap table, but syndicates and SPVs are a great strategy to to do that. Um all right. So you guys raised the the three and a half million. You did this proper seed round. You know, obviously Pika market's a lot of you know, interest and you know, exciting you know, momentum going on. Yeah, I guess you guys then decided to raise a one and a half million dollar safe after the fact um you know, a year later. Kind of what was the the thought behind that? The thought behind that was that this might happen now. Um we kind of were counseled by different people that like the market might be challenging to raise money in later and we're in a good position now to raise and so if we can put a little bit more money in we should do it and we did. We did it um Freestyle led it, Oceans followed it. So all of our existing investors kind of recapitalized us. And you know this brings up an interesting point that I want to touch on. Um it was 2021 we did our seed round and all of my Web3 friends around me were raising like $70 million seed rounds. Uh and we raised $3.3 million. So the reason we didn't raise a down round um is because we didn't do the trendy thing. You know, anyone who did the trendy thing and raised these like obnoxious rounds they're getting their butts kicked right now. It's and anyone who put capital into those deals is getting their butts kicked right now probably worse. Um and I I just caution that with like I now have all of my friends who are acquaintances who are Web3 experts are now AI experts. Um and raising these crazy rounds for these kind of ideas it if you go with the trend of the moment listen I think Web3 stuff is going to be really successful and I think there's AI stuff that's going to be wildly successful obviously but the trends hype so intensely and so uh kudos to Freestyle who was like no you're not raising a crazy round right now you're raising a normal round because in two years when you go to raise your Series A that's going to also be normal. Um and we want not that it's the psycho stuff is almost unsustainable. Look at Clubhouse and these things like that they just kind of like shark fin um which is the biggest fear right? Yeah. Crazy growth curves just drop off instantly. So and we've done the same with our marketing like we haven't spent any money on marketing like we're just slow and steady growing and then when we kind of hit our inflection points we raise. Well that's smart and I think it's you know you got some amazing counsel you know to acknowledge that you know things are looking dark ahead grab as much capital as you can. You got it seems to be maybe on you know fair and reasonable terms and um you know so you guys have been basically well capitalized to to get to this point which you know I guess here which again fascinating you guys are you know launching going to market you know still no revenue but have raised you know 6 million. So it's definitely something that is very hard to see in this market. You know I don't I don't really see much of anything without revenue getting you know more than like a pre-seed you know angel round at this point. It it's harder now for sure. I mean if you put yourself back about a year it was very it wasn't totally different but it was very different. We are closing another round right now. Um there's another small round right now and it's way harder right now. Luckily we have great investors who are supporting us and then we're being led again by this is like whoever your lead investor is I mean that's your partner fully you know and we have luckily have an amazing lead investor and Freestyle Capital is awesome. Um as are some of our other investors but Freestyle Capital has been in our back and they're let us they're helping us do another round right now and a strong lead gets you the rest of it but it's it's tough right now. Um but now we're ready. I mean you have like things I would say something that I'll share a little bit more openly is like I didn't I would I expected to raise a Series A by now. Um but the metrics we set we hit. Like the metrics we set with our investors and our board and everybody we hit them. They're just not financing that right now. The market isn't financing that at that like we found product market fit and we know how it works and it's growing and it's working and now we need to expand it. But because it didn't hit exponential scale nor or it doesn't have a little bit of revenue they're not financing. You need massive scale exponential or and probably a little bit of revenue. So the only reason we're doing another small round right now is just to like do some inflection point marketing and start to put some just start to put the rev put the revenue drivers in the product a little bit earlier than we anticipated. But the part like insurance space our users are begging for it so it'll be great to get them what they want. Um and you need to demonstrate some at this market for us to hit our next financing milestone we need to demonstrate um I mean even some of the multi-stage funds that we're talking to were like just they're like just a thousand couple thousand dollars coming in. Like you don't need much just like get it just show us that it works and then we're good. So that's what we're focusing on right now for the next stage. But I also caution founders is like the metrics you set might not work. Like the things could change in the market as a whole. And I think that's a good note to share when you maybe set those metrics in a different time in a different market and you sit here and you do exactly as you were told to do and set to do and that should equal success. Um you know markets quickly shift and you know can kind of have to force you in a different direction but sounds like you've been wise in choosing a great partner as your lead investor and that's what I aspire all my clients and any founder I work with to to really see their their VCs as their partners and that's what VCs good VCs want as well. And they're buying into your vision. They want to support you as the founder and your vision and they're enabling you to do so. Um and a lot of you get here and now Great questions I was told to ask is like how much of your fund have you deployed? How much of your fund do you reserve for follow-on capital? Um if you are or like how often do you put follow-on capital into deals? You know um things happen and uh positively or negatively and the fact that your investor being able to come in and support you when you need it or support you when you're like or get more involved when things are going really well it's really important. Um You know some of our investors that some of our smaller investors we went to them at a different at a moment when when we were looking at different options for capital and they were like our fund is fully deployed like we can't do anything. Um so that gets a little tricky um if you don't ask that question. good thing to know about if you have it in your back pocket or not. Yeah it's super smart to to get to know the VCs and to especially in this first just first couple conversations qualify the VC on the other side as opposed to just you have money? Okay let's let's go. It's like no like well do you have money now and do you have money down the road for when you know might hit the fan. Um and or when things are scaling and you want to be able to do a round very quickly internally and not necessarily have to go do a whole new fundraising process because I imagine if Freestyle didn't have the reserves and you had to go out and find a lead in this market that wasn't already in bed with you in such capacity this fundraise would be probably exponentially more difficult if not prohibitive in a lot of ways. It would definitely look a lot different um you know having a strong lead who's got reputation in the every I mean it's like it's not news to anybody but like having a strong lead who has reputation in the market who follows on is also really good sign. Like when you're someone's already put capital in your business and they're going to put capital in your business again and they're the person closest to the business they have all the rights to look at everything that's going on. If they're continuing to invest that's what gets stuff done especially if they're hey you know what they're like we're taking a hard look at our portfolio as every fund is right now and we're going to make sure this one stays alive because it's really this one's one of the ones we're we're narrowing it and betting deeper on this one is a strong signal to everybody else and even to like it's hard to underestimate like even to me as an entrepreneur that's a to know that the person who's the people that are deepest with you like really have your back. What would you say like your communication is with your investors over the last you know two years or so? Like are you doing monthly updates quarterly updates? What's your relationship on an ongoing basis with them? invested in their company and I have I get their monthly updates and they're so good. If you can do that I would do that. Um I do a quarterly update. Okay. Quarterly updates are reasonable. Quarterly update usually. Um and my major investors I talk to you regularly. I have a standing every two weeks with Freestyle for the entirety. Um and that's just like state of the state intros advice what are you seeing in the market? Um and that's been a great meeting. I I don't know that you'll always get that um as a founder. I don't know that you'll always get that but if you it's awesome and he's and doesn't have a they don't take board seats. So it's kind of like to every two weeks it cancels sometimes but like broadly speaking we spoke you know every twice a month for two years. Um I have got I've because of that I've become friends and business partners and see each other socially. And we kind of kind of have like a third co-founder in a different capacity completely different capacity. Well, see it's like so not doing monthly updates but you're meeting with your lead investor every other week. Like that's you know, probably more powerful than just doing updates. I would say more powerful for me maybe not more powerful for them. One of the reason I I would love to um I would you can build hype and momentum with your investor group if you're doing your updates well on email regularly. Um I I could do better at that. But as a community builder, I just see it and I wish I was doing it more and I probably will start to do it um once we get this next round closed. Well, yeah, you get to start activating maybe your angels as you guys go to market and so those updates kind of help build that momentum and uh that was something that I've learned is that it's been pretty powerful to keep them up to date cuz the worst thing happens is when you kind of go dark for a while. Like I've made an investment in a company that basically they were all they were on the hype train everything was great. They were like too busy for updates and then they just kind of went dark when the hype kind of dissipated. I'm like what's what's going on? Can can I help you with anything? You know, like reaching out like not you know, just like all right, this you know, it puts a bad taste in the investor's mouth when you're quiet. and what happens is if I you know when I know I need to do an update is when one investor texts me. They're like hey, what's up? Like got to send an update. I don't know but uh you miss if you don't do the regular updates, you miss the opportunity to side note when things are challenging and ask for support because then all of a sudden you only ask for support and you weren't sharing all the good things that were happening. Well said. Um you know, before we wrap here I always like to ask like what's one mistake in your fundraising journey that you wish you can kind of go back. Now we talked about updates at this point. Literally that one. Um no, but another one. What would be like in your fundraising journey like what's a mistake that you wish you could go back and change? I would run have run a tighter I want to I I I understand now the value of running a really tight process. Um I kind of like moving quickly. Um fundraising can suck up all of your bandwidth. Um and at this I mean at certain stage of a business that is all you're doing. Um but at this stage unfortunately no one uh no CEO has the bandwidth for it. And I have to say the months that I did didn't get to fundraise are by far away my most productive months. Um and so put a spreadsheet together or an airtable or a database or what what you can collect as many intros as you can and hit them all up at the same time. Um and and and move through the process as quickly as you can. Um because you it's you just you you're going to be spending the money fund you're going to be spending the money getting the money, you know, if you do it otherwise. Um which is not how you want to be spending the money. You want to be spending the money building your company. So that's uh that's something I I I will likely take way more seriously when we go to raise our not this current round but when we go to raise our series A, I'll I'll focus much more on that. And also like momentum builds momentum. You're having the same conversation. Your story is getting refined. You're moving quicker. Um one yes leads to another yes, you know, and there's it's all happening. If you have like a 10 days between meetings, it's like they can feel that. Yeah. Like like when you're not the you know, the when you're not the like popular girl at the party, you're not popular. It's really obvious, you know, if you are it's really obvious. So being in market too long gets things a little stale. Yeah, I can can definitely attest to that. Um running a very back-to-back process where you're coming out of one investor meeting and going into the next. That energy is obvious and apparent and it puts VCs on their edge of their seat to you know, be a little bit more attentive and take the opportunity a little bit more seriously as opposed to you know, taking that meeting every so often and not really running that type process. So I can completely concur and that's something that we try to help our clients with on a regular basis. We try to get them as many consolidated meetings in a very short period of time. Uh and then even do road trips just because everyone's gotten so used to doing everything over Zoom and needs and everything like that, pushing those to be in person makes a huge impact especially on those second meetings. I was an in-person guy my whole life and I I don't even know how to pitch in person anymore. I'm I like literally dog. I'm like man, should I take out my laptop and like hook to the thing and we're No, never. Yeah, never never could never pitch in a meeting in my in my my personal opinion. Yeah, have a conversation. Yeah, if you're pulling up your deck you're already lost in most cases. You know, I will say one thing that I had I I talked I I a bunch of my founder friends will say and I have spoken about this. If they ask for the deck before the meeting, they are not going to invest. It's all I I have seen this and I talked to a buddy of mine who started four companies and I was like did you send people decks before the meeting? He's like never. They never invest if I do that ever. They often don't even take the meeting. Like you your deck is your dry slidey deck that someone sees a thousand of needs to be so good. It needs to convince somebody to take a meeting. Your blurb should do that and then you should get a meeting. And if they don't want to meet with you, they're like you're sending the deck, you're just giving people information they're likely not going to invest. It's my you have to have a deck, I know that but I like to send it after and I like to use slides from it to tell a story while I'm talking. But it's for me at least and for a couple of my friends, it's been like very high correlation to asking for the deck first and not actually invest. Zack, thank you so much for for being on the show and kind of sharing your insights. Where's the best place for founders to learn more about you and My Place? Um I mean finding My Place on myplace.co or finding me on zachmpbell.com z a c h m p e l l.com and there's links to everything I've done, everything I'm doing, everything that's going on there. And then if you have an iPhone, go download the app. Share with your friends. Well, that's a communal community management growing that you've been doing for years. Well, appreciate you being on the show. Look forward to getting this out to our audience and thanks again. Thanks for having me Jason. Appreciate it. Thanks for listening to today's podcast. 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