Generated Transcript

[00:00:14] David Hornik
Hello and welcome to Venture Cast. I am David Hornik from August Capital.

[00:00:20] Howard Hartenbaum
And this is Howard Hartenbaum, also from August Capital.

[00:00:24] David Hornik
And we have a special guest today. The return of the prodigal Venture cast. Son. That’s right. Craig Syverson from Yahoo.

[00:00:32] Craig Syverson
Incorporated.

[00:00:33] David Hornik
Yahoo.

[00:00:35] Craig Syverson
I think this is gonna be the I told you show, told you so show.

[00:00:38] David Hornik
Oh, yeah, yeah.

[00:00:39] Craig Syverson
Cause like, last time I did, when I did last Venture Cast, I was telling you I gotta move on to this thing. I said, you know, you should bring Howard on. Cause, like, you and Howard would be great together.

[00:00:49] David Hornik
And you’re like, howard, that guy. That’ll be awful. And then look what happened. I mean, since.

[00:00:55] Howard Hartenbaum
And it’s so awful we brought you back.

[00:00:57] David Hornik
Yeah, right. You’re just gonna, like, try and referee. Is actually all you’ll be doing on Venture Ca.

[00:01:03] Craig Syverson
You didn’t say it would be awful. And I think you guys have done a great job of the show. I think it’s really relevant and interesting.

[00:01:08] Howard Hartenbaum
And now that we’ve picked up all this extra traction. You want it back.

[00:01:11] Craig Syverson
I don’t want it back.

[00:01:12] David Hornik
That means you occasionally listen. That’s exciting. Only I know you listen because you post the video. I keep saying, like, craig, okay, teach me how to, like, edit the thing to get a. And, you know, all right, son. Will tell you.

[00:01:26] Craig Syverson
Will learn the other I told you so is that many moons ago, on a show, you’d mentioned Yahoo. And I said, yahoo, you know, blah, blah, blah. Did my whole kind of, you know, web 2.0.

[00:01:36] David Hornik
That’s that cool.

[00:01:37] Craig Syverson
And you were right. Yahoo is pretty cool. I mean, having been there now for a few months. And seeing kind of what it takes to do that, to run that company.

[00:01:47] Howard Hartenbaum
Are you running it?

[00:01:48] David Hornik
I’m not running it. I should be.

[00:01:51] Craig Syverson
I should.

[00:01:51] David Hornik
Yeah, we’ll fix that.

[00:01:52] Craig Syverson
But, I mean, it’s an amazing. It is an amazing. You said it was an amazing business. And I was just skeptical because it wasn’t hip and cool. And it’s really not hip and cool, but it’s amazing.

[00:02:01] David Hornik
But it’s still amazing.

[00:02:02] Craig Syverson
It’s still amazing. What the scope of it, you know, being. Being there and seeing how big it is and how. How big of a ship it is to turn that. It’s really fascinating. I think Carol’s doing a great job.

[00:02:13] David Hornik
So I’m sure you can’t really talk about it, but you’re sort of doing social media stuff. Right?

[00:02:20] Howard Hartenbaum
Right.

[00:02:20] David Hornik
Can we say that much?

[00:02:21] Craig Syverson
We can say that much.

[00:02:22] David Hornik
Right.

[00:02:23] Craig Syverson
And, you know, there have been a couple deals announced recently. Twitter was announced this week and. Yep, Facebook.

[00:02:28] Howard Hartenbaum
Yahoo bought Twitter.

[00:02:29] David Hornik
No. Yeah. Howard, where have you been? You didn’t see that? Do you know, I think they would, honestly, if Yahoo bought Twitter, they would stop traffic on 280 and 101. People would just stop. It’d be a little bit like an earthquake. Everybody would stop it. Everything would stop for like seven hours.

[00:02:47] Craig Syverson
In the Bay Area. People just be dazed.

[00:02:49] David Hornik
Yeah. Be like, oh, man, Yahoo. But Twitter. Have you heard? Have you heard? Have you heard? Have you heard? That’s what it’d be like wid. You heard it here first. Yes.

[00:03:03] Craig Syverson
And last.

[00:03:03] David Hornik
Happening any second now. I was chatting with Ev and he was telling me that Dick was a Yahoo. Or something like that. Something like that. And I interpret that to mean. Well, I mean, look at the. It’s kind of funny. They had on. On. I saw on tech Meme the other day, maybe it was yesterday. Something about some company doing diligence on another company. Like someone got wind of diligence being done, which I’m not sure what they meant, what they thought that meant. Like someone called up and asked a question about it and suddenly Facebook doing diligence on something. Yeah. Who were they doing diligence on?

[00:03:39] Howard Hartenbaum
Don’t remember.

[00:03:40] David Hornik
I don’t either. But. Right. They said, oh, Facebook is doing diligence.

[00:03:43] Howard Hartenbaum
So.

[00:03:44] David Hornik
Yeah. Who determined this? Someone said, hey, how do you. Have you worked with Ryan? How’s that guy? And then suddenly it’s like, oh, that’s me news. It’s almost like all the news again about Apple. All you have to do is put a bill of materials about anything related to Apple. It could be they’re buying like, schwag and it’s like, news.

[00:04:06] Howard Hartenbaum
Did you see there are the latest patent application about the ability to. When you’re on a call, to wave your thumb in front of the camera lens to like mute it or.

[00:04:17] David Hornik
Oh, that’s cool.

[00:04:18] Howard Hartenbaum
Listening to your voicemail. You can like fast forward. Fast forward.

[00:04:22] David Hornik
So gestural motions in front of the.

[00:04:24] Howard Hartenbaum
Camera and just on the back side of the thing. Patent application went in.

[00:04:27] David Hornik
I’m pulling out my iPhone to see how. Oh, totally. Look at this. You put your finger up.

[00:04:31] Howard Hartenbaum
They had a picture in the application and it’s the thumb. No, it’s. It’s.

[00:04:35] David Hornik
Oh, that’s not going to work. That’s terrible. No, try. That can’t be the thumb. That’s not.

[00:04:39] Howard Hartenbaum
I can’t hear you.

[00:04:40] David Hornik
That’s not even possible.

[00:04:41] Howard Hartenbaum
Forefinger is over the microphone.

[00:04:42] David Hornik
Yeah, exactly. I’m gripping the phone like I Grip my penis with one finger if I were. You’re hilarious. See, now I apologize for that reference. On the other hand, we had an earlier reference, earlier penis reference when we were off the air, and I thought it was hilarious. And so I just want to, like, you know, prompt this from. From Mr. Severson and Hartenbaum to see if they can repeat their. You’re not.

[00:05:09] Craig Syverson
Not even going there. You can’t taunt me. But speaking of diligence, thank. Congratulations on Aardvark.

[00:05:15] David Hornik
Oh, yeah, right. They did. They did some diligence. They said, yeah, they say, here’s the diligence. Hey, did you guys leave Google? We come back here. How much. How much will that cost? 50 million bucks. Okay.

[00:05:29] Howard Hartenbaum
About 50 million in a Tesla if.

[00:05:31] David Hornik
We’ll take you back. We’ll take you back credit. Yeah, you know, it’s. Anyway, thank you. I mean, I’ve been. We invested, what, Howard, like a year and a half ago, something like that? Yeah, about a year and a half ago. Really excited about the team, excited about this idea that subjective questions weren’t being answered well. And so it was one of those things, like they figured out interesting technology, interesting ways to go about it, built in a fantastic, fantastic team. And so I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised or upset about the fact that Google’s noticed and like a little bit like a spider in here, my darling.

[00:06:15] Howard Hartenbaum
A lot of entrepreneurs, they sell companies. They do afterwards. They. It’s a. It’s not the feeling that they expected afterwards because it’s a little bit anticlimactic. You know, they built their company and it’s so exciting, and then they’re suddenly back in a cubicle.

[00:06:27] David Hornik
Well, one of the things that these guys were excited about, and I give them total credit for that, is that, you know, Google said, gee, we’re going to push this thing out and you have a big audience, et cetera. And obviously, if you sell to a Google or a Microsoft or a Yahoo, now a Facebook, it’s a huge platform. Right. You have huge reach. You have a ton of opportunity to get at those people. So now we happen to all have seen many, many times when that doesn’t actually work and it doesn’t actually happen. But. But I will say that that was one of the things that was excited to the exciting to the Aardvark team. They were excited about it. And so I was sorry to see them go, as I told them during the process, like, I enjoy your playground and I like playing in it.

[00:07:07] Craig Syverson
So they’re miss your jokes at the Board meeting.

[00:07:10] David Hornik
Oh, they’ll be so sad. So, so deeply sad to lose me.

[00:07:14] Howard Hartenbaum
They told me they sold the company because they were sick of board meetings.

[00:07:17] David Hornik
Yeah. They’re sick of Hornick. If all of my companies start selling at virtually any price within a year about it, about a year and a half, then we’ll know when you reach.

[00:07:25] Howard Hartenbaum
Saturation or you have a bad breath problem.

[00:07:29] David Hornik
About a year and a quarter. Yeah, about a year and a quarter. You go, really? We’re kind of. We’re so over it. We’re so over it. Which is a shame, you know, because, I mean, I think I’ve got a good two and a half years worth of jokes in me. So you’re losing out. You’re losing out on a good nearly a year’s worth of jokes. I feel badly for these companies that I’ve been working, working with five, six years, because, I mean, you know, I’m literally on.

[00:07:52] Craig Syverson
You can see their faces.

[00:07:54] David Hornik
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. It’s like the fatigue is sort of daunting, isn’t it?

[00:07:59] Howard Hartenbaum
Did I tell you the one about when I was in high school?

[00:08:03] David Hornik
They’re like, you know what, David? It’s just not that entertaining when you say at board meetings anymore. Like, the first time it was vaguely novel, but by year six, the 8,000, the fuck is just not that entertaining. Now I’ve destroyed it. I’ve said penis and fucking. We’re never. And. And my mother listens to this show, and we’re never gonna get on mainstream media.

[00:08:25] Howard Hartenbaum
We can go back and bleep out all those bad words.

[00:08:27] Craig Syverson
I could do it for you.

[00:08:29] David Hornik
Fuck that. Anything else? Get acquired. Anything else acquisitional that we’d like to talk about?

[00:08:44] Craig Syverson
There was an ipo, though, right?

[00:08:45] David Hornik
That is true. Well, they’re sort of. They’re on file. Right. I got that Tesla on file thing. And then we have. And then we have. Oh, man. What’s the name of it?

[00:09:00] Howard Hartenbaum
I’m just waiting for you to say it. I know what it is.

[00:09:02] David Hornik
Oh, you’re a jerk.

[00:09:03] Howard Hartenbaum
I don’t even know what you’re talking about.

[00:09:05] David Hornik
You know, the lead. The lead gen company that went Quinn Street. See, you forced me to, like, suffer through that.

[00:09:13] Howard Hartenbaum
That was good. Your memory recall is good.

[00:09:15] David Hornik
I was once driving on this train from, like, Munich to Berlin or something. And I started chatting with this. This. This girl on the train, and so.

[00:09:24] Howard Hartenbaum
I was working pretty good until. You realized it wasn’t a girl.

[00:09:28] David Hornik
No, that’s not where the story is going. And I was working so hard, like I had done I’d studied German and school. I was working so hard to come up with the German words. And literally we would been. I’d been suffering through German for hours. And we’re approaching Berlin and I was like, God, what’s the word for such and such? And I said it out loud. And she said, blah, blah, blah in German, you know, And I went, you speak English? And she said, well, of course I speak English. Of course I speak English. But you were doing such a good job and you were working so hard, I felt like it was only fair to let you try and speak German.

[00:10:06] Howard Hartenbaum
Quinn street was on the tip of my tongue.

[00:10:08] David Hornik
But I thought, hours, hours. I suffered. That was good. Quinn Street, Yeah. So Quinn street got out and you know, and. And that’s it. That. So, you know, be nice to have an IPO market back out and then what do you think? I mean, is there going to be an IPO market?

[00:10:25] Howard Hartenbaum
I think it’s going to be a while. I think the financial markets are getting a little bit more turmoil, more in the short term. Just in the short term. I mean, all the stuff going on in Europe with Greece and uncertainty and housing starts going down, I think things will slow down for a few months before they. But I think it’s coming. Happy days again.

[00:10:44] David Hornik
Europe. So, you know, speaking of Europe, I mean, Europe’s certainly not doing any favors to the Internet, right? I mean.

[00:10:52] Howard Hartenbaum
It’S illegal to put videos onto the Internet.

[00:10:55] David Hornik
It is illegal to allow people to put a bad video on the Internet among thousands that go up amongst 20.

[00:11:04] Howard Hartenbaum
Hours per minute of upload. If you don’t catch the one, you could be liable.

[00:11:08] David Hornik
Yeah. So I mean, those of you listening who don’t know to what we are referring. An Italian court just found Google libel for placing a video on. For not. Not placing. For allowing a video of a group of kids picking on a kid with down syndrome to be placed on the. On YouTube service. So just to be clear, YouTube didn’t know about it. They didn’t say that YouTube knew about it. They took it down when they knew about it. But someone placed this video, which sounded like a horrible video. I’m not defending the video by any stretch of the imagination.

[00:11:49] Howard Hartenbaum
Probably the video was probably made by Berlusconi’s agency and then put up their.

[00:11:53] Craig Syverson
If you want.

[00:11:53] David Hornik
Okay, now, now, like, I’m not. That’s just. I’m not going there. I’m not saying did it, you punk. I mean, I’m just saying that this is the hope. So this is the DMCA Right. This is exactly what the DMCA was written. The Digital Millennium Copyright act says if you are a hosting service provider and you provide a system whereby videos can be taken down when you are informed of their illegal content, etc. Then you’re protected from liability. And that. That’s the law in the United States, the safe harbor. Yeah, it’s this DMCA safe harbor thing. Right.

[00:12:30] Craig Syverson
No, that didn’t apply in Italy, obviously.

[00:12:32] David Hornik
Nope.

[00:12:32] Craig Syverson
But it doesn’t apply just American companies. It just applies to regional jurisdictions.

[00:12:36] David Hornik
Applies in the U.S. right. So, you know, so it would apply to international companies doing business sued in the United States, then I. They would. I believe extraterritoriality would apply, as they say in the legal. The mumbo jumbo. But the problem is that the European courts are, you know, they got their own rules and they’re going about their own. So, you know, so now Suddenly, what is YouTube supposed to preview all video that goes on?

[00:13:04] Howard Hartenbaum
Well, that’s what they want. That’s what the Italian government wants. Because they know that it’s not technically possible.

[00:13:09] David Hornik
It’s absurd. Right. It’s not going to happen. So the alternative is what?

[00:13:13] Howard Hartenbaum
Shut it down.

[00:13:14] David Hornik
Right.

[00:13:14] Howard Hartenbaum
Which is what they want.

[00:13:16] David Hornik
Because why?

[00:13:17] Howard Hartenbaum
Well, some people might hypothesize.

[00:13:19] David Hornik
Yes. Right.

[00:13:20] Howard Hartenbaum
It’s because some key members of the Italian government are involved in the entertainment and television industry, which Google is crushing.

[00:13:29] David Hornik
Yeah. They sort of own it. They run it.

[00:13:32] Howard Hartenbaum
So what way to deal with your competitors then? To have the power to put them out of business, legally or illegally?

[00:13:38] David Hornik
Yeah, no, it’s all this sort of weird protectionism. So the one that also gets me is there’ve been a number of suits in the United States and in Europe alike where ebay gets sued because knockoff products are sold on ebay. Right. So if you go and you search for Rolex or whatever, some percentage of those things that are being offered with that brand are knockoffs. Right, Right. Which again, ebay doesn’t approve of. They don’t want to happen on their site, and they police the best they can. And if you locate them and point it out to ebay, they take them down. In the United States, the courts have said that’s sufficient for ebay to not be liable for, you know, the infringing behavior of those counterfeiters. But in Europe, in France, the French brands have sued and they have on a couple of occasions, 1 and 4, you know, against ebay. And so again, what is ebay supposed to do? Are they supposed to police every item that comes in? You Know, they could do maybe for that particular brand. Right. Okay. We’re going to look at the French luxury brands and make sure that is. But it’s huge volume and it’s. And it’s going to be a major impediment to E commerce. Right. So, so what, what are American companies supposed to do? Are they supposed to shut down the Internet? You know, not Right.

[00:15:01] Craig Syverson
In the other countries.

[00:15:01] David Hornik
Yeah, well there’ll be no French Internet.

[00:15:05] Howard Hartenbaum
Well, if the French want no Internet, they can shut it down.

[00:15:07] David Hornik
Le I bay no more.

[00:15:10] Howard Hartenbaum
Yeah. Von Prive no more.

[00:15:12] David Hornik
Yeah, well and you know, there’ll be a riot. Well go. You know they control their inventory. Right. So maybe it’s protecting a V Prive. It’s protecting a. Because Von Prive isn’t, isn’t counterfeit goods. Right. It’s not, it’s, it’s these seconds, you.

[00:15:28] Howard Hartenbaum
Know, it’s not counterfeit goods. Bon Prive has more people I bet since use their service every day than people who vote.

[00:15:37] David Hornik
I think we’ve talked about Vin Preve, but guilt.

[00:15:39] Howard Hartenbaum
Gilt is a copy of Van Prive, if you’re familiar with Gilt. Gilt is a service where every day they send out millions I bet now 2 million emails to their regular customers who are predominantly women at exactly the same time every morning, 9 o’.

[00:15:55] David Hornik
Clock.

[00:15:55] Howard Hartenbaum
And they have certain very great deals on brand. High quality brand purses for example. And then it’s a feeding frenzy on who can buy them as fast as.

[00:16:04] David Hornik
Possible before it sells out.

[00:16:05] Howard Hartenbaum
And it’s a great business. And they’re doing what, 150 million.

[00:16:09] David Hornik
I’ve heard more. I’ve heard more. They may be. Yeah. And then you look at something like woot, we’re doing like a quarter of a billion in the same kind of model of we have a bunch of these, these you know, leftover products that need to be pajamas, for example. Is that what you bought? That’s what I want on Whoop.

[00:16:28] Craig Syverson
That’s what I want.

[00:16:31] David Hornik
Is that because you think you’re Superman or because you just need pajamas?

[00:16:34] Howard Hartenbaum
I just want to walk around the house wearing Superman pajamas with a cape. Everybody has their own fantasy, you know. Mine now it’s not that bad if.

[00:16:44] David Hornik
You in fact get Superman pajamas. I will make you a cape.

[00:16:47] Howard Hartenbaum
I’ll wear them to the left people.

[00:16:51] David Hornik
No you don’t. The only one wearing a costume at the lobby is me. Just to be clear.

[00:16:59] Craig Syverson
I got to on the first year too.

[00:17:00] David Hornik
Yeah, that’s true actually. That’s right. Correct. You were, you were Ricardo Montalban to my Herve Vela Jazz. That was good stuff.

[00:17:10] Craig Syverson
Oh, that was classic material. Oh, boy.

[00:17:12] David Hornik
And if you look on the web, you can find a shot of me and Craig in our white suits. We living large, Craig’s slightly larger.

[00:17:20] Craig Syverson
And I got to drive the cart.

[00:17:21] David Hornik
Yeah, of course. Because that’s. That’s how it goes.

[00:17:24] Craig Syverson
That’s how it goes.

[00:17:24] David Hornik
That’s how you roll. So, yeah, so we got Vin Preve, over a billion dollars in sales. We’ve got Gilt Group doing a bunch of stuff. And so now these things are popping up like weeds, right?

[00:17:37] Howard Hartenbaum
I mean, Rue La La was a similar model. It was just bought by GSI Commerce, I think.

[00:17:43] David Hornik
Oh, really?

[00:17:44] Howard Hartenbaum
Yeah.

[00:17:44] David Hornik
And then what was the other one we saw? Ideally. Ideally.

[00:17:48] Howard Hartenbaum
And there’s others that are kind of similar to it, like one King’s Lane.

[00:17:52] David Hornik
So One Kings Lane. Yeah. So started by Ally Pincus who has. Who basically said, look, you know, why not home goods like, you know, sheets and pillows, etc. So like, in fact, I have sitting on the other side of my desk some adorable baby blankets.

[00:18:08] Howard Hartenbaum
Are you having another child?

[00:18:09] David Hornik
I am not. I’m not. But if a friend of mine does, I’ve bought these adorable baby blankets that’ll make a lovely baby present. And they.

[00:18:18] Howard Hartenbaum
And they were great deal preparation for your friends having children.

[00:18:21] David Hornik
Do you have any idea how many children are had every year? No.

[00:18:26] Craig Syverson
Look at this family.

[00:18:27] Howard Hartenbaum
6,000 a day.

[00:18:28] David Hornik
It turns out they’re a lot even, you know. Plus we back all these young entrepreneurs, eventually they’re going to procreate and you’ll.

[00:18:35] Howard Hartenbaum
Be ready with your baby blanket.

[00:18:36] David Hornik
I am ready. Because you know what? Here’s.

[00:18:38] Howard Hartenbaum
That’s why DFJ has DFJ logo baby blankets.

[00:18:41] David Hornik
Do they really?

[00:18:43] Howard Hartenbaum
Well, they have dfg, lots of cool stuff. Baby blankets. I don’t think they have.

[00:18:47] David Hornik
Oh, all right. Because I was thinking that was genius. Yeah. You want Tim to make those?

[00:18:51] Howard Hartenbaum
Yeah, I want a baby blanket. Tim.

[00:18:54] David Hornik
No. If you could get him the cape, DFJ branded cape for his pajamas, that would be excellent.

[00:19:00] Howard Hartenbaum
He has some cool costumes.

[00:19:02] David Hornik
He wears costumes. I agree. He sings and he wears costumes. He’s giving me a run for my money. The only other guys who sort of are competing are the first round capital guys with their holiday, you know, their holiday card thing. They sing and dance and I gotta see you. I respect that. You know, maybe we can get our partners to sing and dance for the 2010 holiday card. What do you think, Howard?

[00:19:24] Howard Hartenbaum
I’ll hold the video camera.

[00:19:27] David Hornik
I’ll hold My stomach while. While our partner John dances. That would be good. I’ll work on that.

[00:19:34] Craig Syverson
So you mentioned a shoe thing, too.

[00:19:35] Howard Hartenbaum
Is another shopping shoedazzle, I think is the name of this one in Los Angeles, which kind of came out of nowhere and in a year is doing a couple tens of millions in revenue. And it’s just a slightly different model. In this case, you pay 40 bucks a month, and they do a bunch of knockoffs of very popular women’s shoes, and they help you pick the right one for you, and they send you a pair of shoes every month. And they’re knockoffs. They’re being manufactured in China, and they’re very cheap, so the margins are very, very high for them. But it’s this whole sense of inclusion and getting access to the great things. And we’re seeing lots and lots of different companies. One that we saw recently, which I thought was pretty cool, was this company called Mertado M E R T A D O, which is a Facebook app. And met the guys, really, really nice guys running this company. And the first day I looked at it, they had this, like, Keurig coffee maker. And I was like, well, it’s normally 80 bucks. It’s only 40 bucks. So as soon as I buy it, I see, well, wait a minute, they’ve got a Sony Blu Ray DVD. Only 92 bucks. I bought that, too. And then they come in the mail, and I’m like, what the hell do I need this coffee maker for? So I have an ebay account, and I put it on ebay, and, like, I put it up, and three hours later, I’ve made money. I mean, I’ve sold it for more than I bought it for. So for all you ebayers out there, if you want to just go on all these different sites and buy all the overstocks.

[00:20:56] David Hornik
Yeah. Get the best. Get the best deal you can come up with.

[00:20:58] Howard Hartenbaum
Chop them up into one pieces, and you’ll make money on it.

[00:21:01] David Hornik
Yeah, it’s interesting. I mean, it is. So the reality is that there’s all this left. These leftover goods. And the old days, what? They only moved them by putting them in TJ Maxx and Marshalls. Right. Like, what else did you have? Yeah.

[00:21:14] Craig Syverson
Then outlet stores.

[00:21:16] David Hornik
Yeah, that’s right. That’s right. They had kind of. Right. They had the L.L. bean outlet, and they still do, but. And those were all awesome.

[00:21:22] Howard Hartenbaum
That’s not actually overstock anymore. They’re actually making special products for the outlet store these days. These days? Yeah. It’s not even the same Products. And they’re not even the same quality.

[00:21:30] David Hornik
See, that’s just wrong.

[00:21:31] Howard Hartenbaum
And they’re marked. So my wife went down in Gilroy and bought some Nine west shoes, and then they fell apart three weeks later. So she’s lazy. So she goes to the Nine west store in the Stanford Shopping center, and they look at them and go, see this little mark on it. These are not real 9. These were made at our factory in such and such a country. And these are low quality.

[00:21:50] David Hornik
And of course, they fell apart.

[00:21:52] Craig Syverson
Nine West.

[00:21:53] Howard Hartenbaum
That was. That.

[00:21:54] David Hornik
That was Seven West. Those were Seven West.

[00:21:57] Howard Hartenbaum
So if you’re tricked into that, you’re tricked.

[00:22:00] David Hornik
Yeah, but anyway. But there’s a ton of this stuff. And, you know, you finish, you gotta get to the end of the season, and you want to move it, but you don’t want to destroy the margins on your new products and all the stuff. And so what do you do? And the old days, there were only a few channels, and now it’s like, gee, there are a ton of channels and lots of these different models. And people are trying to figure it out. And what’s stunning to me is how cheaply you can get these goods. Like, oh, get a thousand of this thing, or 2,000 of that.

[00:22:22] Howard Hartenbaum
Just because we didn’t know that TJ Maxx was buying items for 5% of their original list.

[00:22:29] David Hornik
Yeah, well, now we know.

[00:22:30] Howard Hartenbaum
We thought it was 60%. It was 5%. People were dumping, you know, 400 Prada bags for $8 each or whatever the amount was.

[00:22:40] David Hornik
It’s pretty awesome. I mean, this is why I like the Web. Like, the Web is awesome, Right? Because eventually you can take advantage of these things and you can. Once again, it’s another fine example of the real beneficiary of the Internet. American Express. Yeah. Maybe the consumer. Maybe the consumer. But Amex. I mean, not an Amex. What am I saying? FedEx. FedEx. What am I saying? American Express. Pay attention. Amex is.

[00:23:02] Howard Hartenbaum
Thank you, Mr. Hornick. We would like to be a sponsor.

[00:23:04] David Hornik
Yeah, exactly. Federal Express is what I meant to say. Although I do use my Amex. If you want to follow my Amex, you can go to blippi.com davidhornick1word and you can see how I abuse my American Express.

[00:23:20] Craig Syverson
Are you serious?

[00:23:21] David Hornik
Yeah, I actually am serious. It’s flippy. You gotta check it out.

[00:23:26] Howard Hartenbaum
So if you’re voyeuristic and you like to know what your friends are buying. Yeah. You can basically watch it on Blippi. It’s kind of fun. So that’s Permission it, though.

[00:23:33] David Hornik
Yeah, yeah.

[00:23:34] Howard Hartenbaum
So, for example, Hornick went to Long’s Drugs the other day. He bought a box of diapers and a box of condoms.

[00:23:41] David Hornik
Yeah.

[00:23:41] Howard Hartenbaum
And it was just a classic purchase there. Looking at that, going, all right, David, but you got him out of order.

[00:23:46] David Hornik
Okay, just to be clear. Not true. Not true. I believe I bought cough drops. Yeah, it was pretty close. I did. I bought. I bought, like, Gatorade because my son was sick, and some Tylenol, but it’s up there. You can go see. It was. It was at Duane Reade, as a matter of fact, in New York City. It says David Hornik spent $12 at Duane Reade. And this is.

[00:24:11] Craig Syverson
It’s out syndicated on a feed.

[00:24:12] David Hornik
And I can. It’s a feed. You can go, yeah, go check it out.

[00:24:14] Howard Hartenbaum
Right after Duane read, there was $300 at Cha Cha Massage. I’m just joking. I’m just joking.

[00:24:20] David Hornik
Joking. He’s here till Tuesday, that Howard Hartenbaum here till 2:40. Right. He’s got. He’s giving us till 2:40, which means we get 40. Like 20 more minutes of his stick. You should be on the borscht belt. Howard and Hart and Bomb and Hornic in the bar. So. By the way, Howard. So Howard has a new car. And for a while. No, he should have.

[00:24:44] Craig Syverson
I know. Last time I was.

[00:24:46] Howard Hartenbaum
No, I bought a Toyota. And it. When I get pulled over, I’m gonna say, unintended acceleration.

[00:24:52] David Hornik
Yeah, exactly. Howard’s on fire. He’s on fire today. So you bought a new. You bought a new car, and you finally got a new license plate. And I. And I drive up and I see that you have a lot. That you have a vanity plate. And I look at it, and it’s. And I look and it says Love and Baum. And I’m like, love end Baum or Love en Baum, or He’s lovin Baum. And I’m thinking, well, gee, Michael Baum, who we back to, founder of Splunk, is, like, really pleased that Howard.

[00:25:24] Howard Hartenbaum
Yeah, for Michael. There you go.

[00:25:26] David Hornik
So I came up and I said to. I said to Howard’s assistant, did you see Howard’s car has a new license plate? She’s like, yeah. Did he tell you what it means? And she looked at me like, what are you talking about? She said, I figured it out myself, dude. And I’m like, what does it mean? She’s like, Hart and Baum. It just never struck me to think, like, heart, you know, because you always use the love. I just thought the heart Was love.

[00:25:54] Howard Hartenbaum
Everybody that sees it. Half of the people think it’s really stupid. And the other half of people think it’s. They just don’t get it. And once they get it, they think it’s really stupid.

[00:26:04] David Hornik
So it’s working for you.

[00:26:05] Howard Hartenbaum
So I like it as a vanity. You know, Howard H. Was available.

[00:26:09] David Hornik
Yeah. But you didn’t go with that. I’m surprised. So I was. I had a number of conversations after I got my Mini. My kids said that I should get the vanity license plate Mini vc. They thought this was, like, the perfect license plate for me, which I sort of like that. When I was talking to James Currier and I said, what do you think of this Currier? Like, my kids think I should go with Mini vc. And he said, no, no, you can’t.

[00:26:33] Howard Hartenbaum
I saw in Sandhill Road a couple weeks ago a Mercedes with the license plate XL vc. Well, I didn’t recognize you.

[00:26:40] David Hornik
Don’t know which one it was, but.

[00:26:42] Howard Hartenbaum
I bet I know where he works.

[00:26:43] David Hornik
Yeah. Well, was that with a C or an X? C. Okay. Yeah. Anyway, Courier said, like, you know what, David? You already work that short joke so much. I think he’s just bitter because he’s so freaking tall.

[00:26:57] Howard Hartenbaum
Do you want to sell your Mini?

[00:26:58] David Hornik
No. Why would I always have my Mini? Would someone want to buy it?

[00:27:02] Howard Hartenbaum
I got your buyer a few years ago.

[00:27:04] Craig Syverson
I was at. It was at Whole Foods, and there was this guy walking through, eating fruit, just walking through, you know, doing what he wants to do. I turned around, saw his face, said, that looks a lot like Steve Jobs. I left the store out in front, parked in the red zone, right on the street. On the red zone, this long black Mercedes. And the license plate said, next.

[00:27:23] David Hornik
Wow. So that’s. A ways back.

[00:27:24] Howard Hartenbaum
He was just, like, picking up fruit and tasting it, dropping it as he went. Yeah, it’s cool to be Steve.

[00:27:31] David Hornik
Yeah, right. Hey, excuse me, Mr. Jobs. Unit. Mr. Jobs. I didn’t know, you know, there is this. I was hanging out with an entrepreneur earlier today, and he was in New York. He lived in New York for a bunch of time, and he recently moved to Silicon Valley. And he was talking about how cool it is to be an entrepreneur in Silicon Valley. Valley that New York. You know, we were talking about this idea that New York celebrities are the people who are rich. And oftentimes they’re not. Or they’re. Or more pathetically, like their families were once rich. It’s not even like that they are rich. It’s that, you know, like, oh, well, I’m A, you know, whatever. A Hilton or whatever. Right. And whereas in Silicon Valley, nobody. That’s. Who cares. Like, right. He was saying that he was hanging out with them, was at something with Tom Conrad, who’s the CTO of Pandora, and the fact that people would, like, whisper, oh, that’s Tom Conrad. You know, like, oh, good. And. Which is hilarious. Like, no offense, Tom, I love you, and you’re a fun guy, you know, but you’re not Paris Hilton. Right. But in Silicon Valley, Tom Conrad is like, you know, hey, that’s the CTO of Pandora.

[00:28:38] Howard Hartenbaum
Right?

[00:28:39] David Hornik
Yeah, exactly. In Silicon Valley, Tom Conrad is Paris Open.

[00:28:43] Howard Hartenbaum
Michael Arrington is Paris Hilton.

[00:28:45] David Hornik
Okay, so who’s Heather Hardy?

[00:28:49] Howard Hartenbaum
Tom Conrad.

[00:28:54] David Hornik
I do like that. I do like the fact that, you know, that you have the right cult of personality, the meritocracy aspect of something. But they’re still, I will say, you know, people, you stop. You see Steve Jobs, and you. You do stop. Like, whoa, Steve Jobs. Oh, yeah, that’s Larry, Sergey, whoever. You know, like, that’s just. You can’t help yourself. Right?

[00:29:17] Howard Hartenbaum
Yeah.

[00:29:18] Craig Syverson
I saw Sergey, like, on the street eating a burrito the other day with his family. You know, I didn’t stare because I realized I don’t want to stare at that.

[00:29:24] David Hornik
Don’t be rude. Right. It’s nice of you, but I did.

[00:29:26] Craig Syverson
Take a double take.

[00:29:27] Howard Hartenbaum
So you just asked him for his autograph?

[00:29:29] David Hornik
Well, so I was just. I just came back from the TED conference. Technology, Entertainment and Design. And it’s. And it’s always interesting in this respect because, you know, Larry and Sergey are there. Jeff Bezos is always there. There are all sorts of very interesting people. You know, Paul Simon of Simon and Garfunkel fame is there with his son this year. Will Smith was apparently there. I didn’t see Will Smith.

[00:29:53] Howard Hartenbaum
That sounds pretty elitist to me.

[00:29:57] David Hornik
That’s called leading the witness. He’s all, Howard’s saying that because I wrote this post on Venture Blog where I basically defended. Because truthfully, after every TED conference, there’s always big discussion. Last year, it was Sarah Lacy who basically said, you know, screw you, ted. I’m not going to Ted. Not that I can. Or I was invited, but I’m not going. Now, I shouldn’t be mean about Sarah, because she’s like, I’m still going to the lobby. I like the lobby. But this year, Robert Scoble wrote a big article, you know, big blog post entitled something like, the Elephant in the Room or the Elephant’s in the Room. So, okay, look, I get it. It costs $6,000 and Will Smith is there and all that stuff. And, and there are a lot of people want to go and they can’t go. And so that’s. I understand that that’s kind of elite and all that stuff, but. But they post all of these videos now. Millions, hundreds of millions of people now watch these Ted.com videos. They have programs out there where you can you create your own TED experience, like the TEDx I’m gonna have. So we could have TED, you know, August Capital or TED, you know, Silicon Valley.

[00:31:03] Howard Hartenbaum
TEDx.

[00:31:04] David Hornik
Yes. Did you get to the Silicon Valley one or San Francisco one, or it was Miami. Yeah, there’s a Miami one, there’s a Sao Paulo, there’s a.

[00:31:12] Craig Syverson
Whatever.

[00:31:13] David Hornik
I mean, they’re really cool, right? Because, you know, there are plenty of smart people are thinking and doing interesting stuff. So that’s kind of democratized. So I called this post the. The Democratization of TED or something. And I really think that Chris Anderson and the team who built it have done great things to try and spread ted.

[00:31:32] Craig Syverson
They probably have students come in too, I would imagine.

[00:31:36] David Hornik
Yeah, they do. They have their own. They have a program and you can apply.

[00:31:39] Craig Syverson
I mean, face it, think can only be so big, right? It can’t be.

[00:31:44] Howard Hartenbaum
That’s what they said about Facebook two years ago.

[00:31:48] David Hornik
That’s a different dynamic, Howard. Big is good in that instance, right? No, I mean, it is this kind of interesting challenge. And one of the problems. So the great news about the Internet is, right, suddenly and the proliferation of video, and suddenly everybody has flash players, and so video is available to everyone and it’s easy to download, etc. Is that suddenly these TED talks that you could only see if you spent originally $3,000, now $6,000, or they sent out DVDs. So if you went to the conference, you got a dvd and then you’d show your kids or your friends, oh, check that out, or whatever that. So its reach was kind of few thousand people. And suddenly with the Internet, they literally. June Cohen, who runs the digital piece, said they’d served up 500 million videos. Right. Pretty awesome, right?

[00:32:35] Craig Syverson
Pretty awesome. And they’re excellently done videos.

[00:32:38] David Hornik
Really? Yeah, really, smart guy. They’re just well done and they reach a big audience. So I think that’s. I think that’s pretty exciting. But I will say I don’t mind being one of the guys who gets to go to the conference. That’s pretty fun. Really smart people talking about all sorts of interesting stuff. Actually, you know what? Who was there moot do you guys know who Moot is?

[00:32:58] Craig Syverson
No.

[00:32:58] David Hornik
He’s the kid who started 4chan and he went, have you ever been on 4 Chinese? 4chan is basically imagine a message board that essentially disappears almost as quickly as it starts. So you start a post and then people comment like crazy and then it goes away. There’s no history, there’s no archive. And so this is the guy who started and he basically. And it’s all anonymous. You can say whatever you want. And the volume is massive and a huge number of the interesting memes and out there have started on 4chan. So things like rickrolling was started on 4chan and lolcat started on 4chan, all these things. But also, you know, as Moot said when he, when he was talking, there are certain rules of 4chan. It’s because it’s anonymous and you can post whatever. Not the place your mom should be going. So Betsy Hornick, do not go to 4chan. This is one you should steal.

[00:33:56] Howard Hartenbaum
That’s like the other night I tried out chat.

[00:33:59] David Hornik
Oh yeah, How’d that go? What’d you think?

[00:34:01] Howard Hartenbaum
I said it to David and David’s like, I hear it’s, it’s not such great content. And the first person pops up was a attractive 30 year old woman and we chatted for a little bit.

[00:34:12] David Hornik
Really? That was like, that was like winning the lottery, actually getting a woman.

[00:34:16] Howard Hartenbaum
And that was the first one? Yeah, I’m like, this works great. Perfectly matched to me, you know, she’s attractive, I’m good. The next one I hit, it was like some kid and he was just kind of looking around the room. And then I hit another one and it was a guy masturbating and I was just like, whoa. And that.

[00:34:34] David Hornik
And that’s normal by the way. That’s not an anomalous experience.

[00:34:38] Howard Hartenbaum
And so I was like, I’m.

[00:34:39] David Hornik
This is what you were done. So did you move on to the next guy or did you finish? You’re like, oh, I’m out.

[00:34:45] Howard Hartenbaum
Because I was thinking it could be worse.

[00:34:47] David Hornik
Trust me. No, it’s apparently this. There’s some wacky, troubling stuff that goes on in chat. Roulette. This thing got started by a kid in Russia, I think, and it’s been growing like crazy and people are using it but they’re getting. That’s the experience, right? Is this kind of. It’s a roulette, you know, a little bit like Russian roulette, Like spin, click.

[00:35:07] Howard Hartenbaum
I was thinking of doing it while I hold a gun to my head until someone sees It.

[00:35:12] David Hornik
See, but like, people might do that, but, you know, you could spin that. It’d be horrifying.

[00:35:16] Howard Hartenbaum
Yeah, I don’t want to see that.

[00:35:16] Craig Syverson
Do you remember Logan’s Run where he had the roulette thing?

[00:35:19] David Hornik
Yeah, right. This is. Right. This is the automated Internet version of Logan’s Run. It’s pretty crazy, but it’s growing. But like the web, I feel like the web continues to accelerate. Like these things become big and interesting so quickly that the question is, will any of them be sustainable or do they kind of peak quickly, drop quickly, like chat roulette doesn’t strike me as something that’s gonna be a long term interesting thing, but you never know. One of my favorite things.

[00:35:46] Howard Hartenbaum
I sent the founder a note.

[00:35:48] David Hornik
You did? What’d you tell him?

[00:35:49] Howard Hartenbaum
Just said, hey, what’s your plans for the future?

[00:35:52] David Hornik
He’s been getting lots of those notes because Fred Wilson blogged about trying to like, I’ll fly you to New York, come talk to me.

[00:35:59] Howard Hartenbaum
So he responded to me right away and he told me he wasn’t gonna respond to Fred.

[00:36:02] David Hornik
Yeah, right. What? Oh, August Capital. I’ll fly out to California, talk to August Capital. But that Fred Wilson, forget about it. Good for you, Howard. You’re the man got the power of persuasion.

[00:36:15] Howard Hartenbaum
Thank you. I’m. I know you’re insulting me in some way. I’m just not sure I get it.

[00:36:19] David Hornik
I’m not. It’s a loving bomb lovin Bob. That’s it. From now on, I would love it. Bob voice McLovin.

[00:36:30] Howard Hartenbaum
I’m surprised you don’t see more license place which are like I heart and then somebody’s name.

[00:36:36] David Hornik
Every one of them is sold out. Go look. I bet you couldn’t buy a single.

[00:36:39] Howard Hartenbaum
I Heart Howard is available.

[00:36:42] David Hornik
You checked on that?

[00:36:43] Howard Hartenbaum
Because there’s Nobody loves Howard.

[00:36:44] David Hornik
That’s right. That is sad.

[00:36:46] Howard Hartenbaum
No, I asked my wife, do you want that? She’s like, what, are you crazy? I don’t even want people to know I’m married to you.

[00:36:51] David Hornik
Yeah, exactly. I’ve met her. She’s a very nice woman. Of course she doesn’t.

[00:36:55] Howard Hartenbaum
So I wanted to ask you, David, you mentioned about an hour ago that there was an article yesterday in Businessweek about all the seed funds.

[00:37:02] David Hornik
Oh, yeah? Yeah.

[00:37:03] Howard Hartenbaum
I didn’t see the article yet and I was curious what you thought about it.

[00:37:06] David Hornik
Well, no, basically it was this article talking about the rise of the seed investor. This particular article was about Google and the influence of Google and the future, that there are companies that have this kind of follow on set of companies that are and investors, whatever. And so in this instance, there have been lots of people who’ve made a lot of money from Google and they’re investing in companies and profiled in particular Aidan Senkat, who we know well. And Aidan’s invested in all sorts of interesting companies and he’s taking the idea of being an investor, an angel investor, very seriously. Right. I mean there are ways to do it as I’ve invested my friends or whatever. But what I see is all these invest a lot of these more serious angel fund like angels. And so I think it was business Week then listed like the top 20 or 25 angels. And it was one of their, you know, slideshow things so you could click through. And so it had Jeff Clavier and it had Mark Andreessen and it had, you know, the PayPal mafia, etc. And it had Mike Maples and you.

[00:38:11] Howard Hartenbaum
Know, what about Michael Dearing?

[00:38:13] David Hornik
I’m sure it had Deering. Although if it didn’t, it should. This is like. That was a mini suck up. Should we suck up to.

[00:38:20] Howard Hartenbaum
I’m having Brad next week.

[00:38:21] David Hornik
All right, so we, I mean we could suck up to Deering every show. Let’s do that. Just a quick mini suck up to Michael Dearing.

[00:38:28] Howard Hartenbaum
Okay.

[00:38:28] David Hornik
We love you, Michael Deering. Okay. So it had all these guys and it was sort of tight and each one had a little snippet about how.

[00:38:36] Howard Hartenbaum
They were dressing about it or any.

[00:38:38] David Hornik
That was just sort of like, look, this is the jet. You know, it did the typical. It takes less money to start a company. And so these kind of super angels are the future of the venture business kind of thing, which like more power to them. I think the more money we get to smart entrepreneurs, the better. And that’s great. On the other hand, as I’ve said before, if a company is succeeding and wants to leverage that success, they tend to then want and need more money. Right. It’s very rare that a company can make. Make enough money that it can plug back into the business to accelerate it at a speed that makes sense.

[00:39:13] Howard Hartenbaum
I had a call.

[00:39:14] David Hornik
What? Mary, this is my assistant, Mary. Mary, I can’t hear you. What? What are you saying? Oh no. 3:30. Oh, so this just in for Mary. My 2:30 is here, but my 3:30 has canceled. All righty, thank you. Mary.

[00:39:36] Howard Hartenbaum
I had a call from one of our large investors yesterday who is an investor in one of these seed type funds and he wanted to just discuss what they were thinking about it. And they were thinking they were looking at some more of these seed funds. And we talked for maybe 20 minutes and at the end of the discussion I said, well, where are you coming out on this? And his reaction was, well, if it’s one of these seed funds is a only betting on companies that they believe are going to be thunder lizards, as Mike Maples calls them, which means big, freestanding, disruptive companies. And they have no intent of selling their companies for modest amounts of money along the way. And the investments they’re making are not capital intensive businesses, then it could work. That was their opinion and I tend to agree with it.

[00:40:24] David Hornik
Although it’s sort of an interesting thing, right? Because Mike Maples, we know Mike well, he was here at August’s office for a period of time and he’s invested in lots of interesting companies. One of his most interesting companies is Chegg, right? And Chegg’s immensely capital intensive. They’ve had to raise a ton of money because it’s a book rental and you need to buy these books ahead of time and rent them out. So there’s an obvious inventory cost. And yet Chegg is doing great. In fact, Dan Rosenzweig just joined the company as a CEO, which is sort of stunning, right? I mean, Dan was this very senior guy at Yahoo, really great, smart guy, was in PE for a while, but it was clear that he was just sort of doing that, waiting to find the next interesting thing. And then he ran what rock band, right? Which big business. Interesting. But I guess someone convinced him, hey, there’s a real opportunity here in Chegg. And Chegg’s a thunder lizard, no question. Like, if it’s successful, it could really make and break that fund. But it’s not exactly fits that model.

[00:41:25] Howard Hartenbaum
But the multiples on return may not be what they’re looking for because there’s so much dilution with all the follow on financing that. This was a discussion with the investors.

[00:41:35] David Hornik
Yeah, it’s an interesting conversation that.

[00:41:37] Howard Hartenbaum
Then there’s the argument, they were saying the argument that some of the seed funds have is that, well, they’ll have extra funds and then they’ll double down and triple down on their good ones. But their concern about that is you get one of those wrong and you’ve doubled and tripled down on one and that one doesn’t make it and it wipes out the returns of your fund. So from what I was hearing from the big LP is they’re still kind of not sure about it. Like, they’re optimistic if it’s somebody like Mike Maples who’s going for A big one. But if people are espousing that their business model is going to be to get in at a very low price and sell the company for 30, 30 or 50 or $80 million. They weren’t interested in that.

[00:42:12] David Hornik
Well, because it can’t work, right? If you look at that.

[00:42:17] Howard Hartenbaum
It can work. If you’re the investor, the GP.

[00:42:20] David Hornik
It can’t. Well, why?

[00:42:22] Howard Hartenbaum
You take 20 million and you turn it into 80 million and it’s just one investor and you’re getting 20%, but.

[00:42:28] David Hornik
You’Re not going to make it. You’re not going to turn it into 80 million. Right. Because what is the likelihood that you sell a company? Right. The theory behind that is, oh, well, I can sell a disproportionate number of my companies to a Google or a yahoo, whatever for $50 million.

[00:42:42] Howard Hartenbaum
Aiden seems to be doing that.

[00:42:43] David Hornik
But you just can’t like the likelihood that you sell. Even a third of your companies are sufficiently successful to be sold at those numbers, even, I think approaches zero. So yeah, Aidan’s done a great job. But is it sustainable? I mean, Aiden’s. How many investments has Aiden made?

[00:43:02] Howard Hartenbaum
He’s made like 25, 25 to 30 returns. He’s more than returned his fund already in exits.

[00:43:09] David Hornik
Nope. So, you know, maybe we’ll get him.

[00:43:11] Howard Hartenbaum
On here and we’ll. Yeah, get it from the left and I’ll get him from the right.

[00:43:14] David Hornik
We should do that because, you know, we try and only bring on people with accents. We had Jeff Clavier. Actually, I’ve been meaning to say, Craig, could you put on an accent? What are you talking about? See? Exactly.

[00:43:25] Howard Hartenbaum
Stupid.

[00:43:26] David Hornik
You’re giving me flashbacks to my. My incredibly onerous train trip to Frulein, who actually spoke English.

[00:43:37] Howard Hartenbaum
Funny thing is she didn’t speak German, which means you just didn’t know that.

[00:43:43] David Hornik
She was not a free. She was just smiling, trying so hard.

[00:43:47] Howard Hartenbaum
She was like, is that Italian?

[00:43:50] David Hornik
That is funny. Anyway, I think that we have come to the portion of our program. No, no, no, wait. We have to suck up.

[00:43:57] Howard Hartenbaum
John Lilly.

[00:44:00] David Hornik
That’s who you’re. That’s who we’re going for.

[00:44:02] Howard Hartenbaum
I like that guy.

[00:44:03] David Hornik
John Lilly is the CEO of Mozilla. Do you know John? Met John. John, super smart guy. Was, you know, John’s done consumer, he’s done enterprise. And now he’s been running and driving. He’s been kind of driving the bus over there at Mozilla and Firefox and done a great job of that. That.

[00:44:22] Craig Syverson
And why are you sucking up to John?

[00:44:24] David Hornik
We were hanging out with him the other night, and he’s just a super smart guy and. And we like him. Is there any. Is there anything more?

[00:44:30] Craig Syverson
You know, usually there’s an alter.

[00:44:31] David Hornik
Do we need it. Do we need a reason to suck up to someone?

[00:44:34] Craig Syverson
Usually have one.

[00:44:35] Howard Hartenbaum
We have one, but we’re not going to state it.

[00:44:36] David Hornik
Oh, yeah.

[00:44:37] Craig Syverson
That’s why it’s ulterior.

[00:44:39] David Hornik
That’s right. We’re going to be the first company sold to Mozilla.

[00:44:43] Howard Hartenbaum
August. To Mozilla.

[00:44:44] David Hornik
August Capital.

[00:44:45] Howard Hartenbaum
Mozilla is going to be selling it for $3.2 billion.

[00:44:49] David Hornik
There you go. No, that’s not enough return. Just fund five.

[00:44:54] Howard Hartenbaum
Yeah.

[00:44:54] David Hornik
Oh, fun. Five.

[00:44:55] Howard Hartenbaum
Fine.

[00:44:55] David Hornik
I thought you were talking about all of August.

[00:44:56] Howard Hartenbaum
It was, but the other one’s already gone.

[00:44:58] David Hornik
That’s not happening. No, we had. We had 2. 2 billion under management. How is 3.5 billion sufficient? Come on, Howard, think big. I thought you were gonna say trillion.

[00:45:06] Howard Hartenbaum
What about like, 3 billion?

[00:45:08] David Hornik
Yeah, exactly. Great. This is how Howard invests. You’re fired. You were my partner in. Until two seconds ago.

[00:45:15] Howard Hartenbaum
See you later.

[00:45:16] David Hornik
But it’s been nice knowing you.

[00:45:18] Howard Hartenbaum
Anyway, that ends Venture Cast for the day.

[00:45:20] David Hornik
There you go. Thank you, John Lilly, for doing such a fine job. I enjoy my Firefox. And Craig Syverson, do you have any. Any parting thoughts for us?

[00:45:28] Craig Syverson
Great to be here. Keep up the good work. I’ll keep editing your shows.

[00:45:32] David Hornik
Come visit.

[00:45:32] Craig Syverson
I don’t edit, actually. I’m just.

[00:45:34] David Hornik
I’m just processing. You process and append.

[00:45:36] Craig Syverson
I’m not editing because I used to edit.

[00:45:38] David Hornik
You used to? Yeah. Right. For those of you who are listening, finish listening to this show, which will be fine. It’ll sound good and whatever else, but you’ll finish listening and then go back, what, two years to the archive. Go to the archive and listen to a show that Craig and I did a couple years ago where Craig literally came in with different microphones. He had one for himself that did a good job with his voice and one for me. I mean, you know, it’s just a different story altogether. We. You. You would edit out the ums and ahs and, you know. I mean. Yeah, exactly.

[00:46:09] Craig Syverson
And coughs.

[00:46:10] David Hornik
And you’d edit out Howard altogether. You’ll notice there’s no Howard in those shows.

[00:46:16] Howard Hartenbaum
Why? It’s called the David Hornik Show.

[00:46:17] David Hornik
That’s why it’s the David Hornik. We all learned that. You are the master. I mean, I mean, I think it’s awesome that Yahoo has you working on social media stuff, but thank you, but, man, oh, man. Like that digital media. Goodness. You got to do some more of this. That.

[00:46:32] Craig Syverson
I’ll get back to it. Like, you know, I did too much of it. It’s kind of nice.

[00:46:35] David Hornik
Is that right?

[00:46:35] Craig Syverson
You’re really designing and have files that are less than three gigs each. It’s kind of nice.

[00:46:40] David Hornik
Yeah, exactly. I do miss it, though. Like, you know, man, when we made the program. Craig and I made the program for. For the lobby two years ago, and it was this newspaper. And so it was like being in a college newspaper again. We had to lay it out and we pulled an all nighter.

[00:46:55] Craig Syverson
All nighter.

[00:46:56] David Hornik
I mean, we should have probably started earlier, but we really. And we had to get it off to the printer. It was totally, like, up against the deadline. And we. We literally worked through the night until I had to go take my kids to school or something. And we printed out the final pieces.

[00:47:08] Craig Syverson
And we’re still friends.

[00:47:10] David Hornik
Yeah, that was awesome. All right, that. Here ends the reminiscing portion of Venture Cast. I’m David Hornik from August Capital.

[00:47:18] Howard Hartenbaum
And I’m Howard Hardenbaum, also from August Capital. At least for now.

[00:47:31] David Hornik
Oh, that’s beautiful.