In our case, obviously, we built up VEV over a decade. We started by delivering it out of the back of our car. By the time we had sold it, it was in every Nobu and Walmart and TJF Fridays and Ruby Tuesday and Disney and cruise ships and Virgin America. And so, you know, like so many startup journeys, we just had to figure things out as we went. And I think that's what then turned us into great investors is we've been in their shoes.
After we sold that business, we wanted to then build a model that allowed us to invest in great companies, but take a different approach with kind of this hands-on model. You know, people go and talk to our founders and they go, man, these guys are really helpful. And part of it is we just built N13 from the onset to have this kind of focus on operational expertise. So our propulsion team, beyond our investing team, has spent about 6,338 hours with our portfolio companies, right?
One of the things I look for in founders is storytelling. Have to lay out that vision and the why. Like in our case at N13, we always talk about unfair advantages. Why should this person succeed at this, right? As a VC, what keeps me up at night around AI is when you think about consumer software, that was kind of what developed out of the iPhone. It was innovators competing, right? You had Lyft and Uber and others and ride sharing.
You had Pinterest and Snap and Meta and social networks. The thing about AI is the big tech companies have a huge advantage because they have huge amounts of data. And so this is going to be a fight of innovators versus the largest tech companies on the planet. We've had these cycles, right? There was early 2000s and then the iPhone and cloud computing and blockchain. So VCs, sometimes they make me laugh. They pretend like we haven't been here before.
But you can look at history, like take the 1920s. The technology was the automobile. It was awesome technology. People were riding around horses. But the second and the third ripples are the people that invented gas stations. Or a city like Los Angeles wouldn't be possible without the car. You can go and try to invest in other car companies. But there's a lot of different ways to get the second and the third ripple right.
And those are harder to get right. But if you get them right, I think they're much better risk and probability adjusted returns. I just fell in love with this amazing girl named Paris. And so I'm forever extremely lucky. You know, I was relatively deadly at my craft before she ever kissed me five years ago. I'd already seated or been in the Series A of 13 unicorns. But clearly, when you look back at her career, the innovations, her instincts are world class, right?
When you think about people say she's famous for being famous, I say, well, screw that noise. What she realized is I can build a brand first and then I can decide how to apply that brand, right? That was really her innovation, right? I think about my wife. I think she's probably been underestimated for too long. Underestimated as the businesswoman she has. Underestimated for her marketing ingenuity. And I think really, if you think about her career, she just, it's a story of perseverance.
It's a story about innovation. It's a story of just always being one step ahead of where the world's going. I remember when we first started dating, she's like, it's so sexy. You're always working. And I was like, I'm going to need that in writing. But true to form, it's been over five years. And it is part of our love story, right? Part of our love story is nobody works harder than she does. She has her media company, 1111.
You know, we've scaled M13 quite a bit. But it's part of our love story. Thank you so much for watching this episode. If you could do me a huge favor and subscribe, that will really help us to make more content like this in the future. Today, we are honored to welcome Carter Ream, co-founder and partner at M13, a leading VC firm. Carter has been instrumental in nurturing innovative startups and redefining industries
that are shaping the future. M13 manages $1.3 billion in assets with offices in LA, New York, NSF. Their inaugural fund invested at the seed or Series A in 14 companies that later achieve unicorn status, including ClassPass, FabFitFun, Lightning Labs, Matterport, Ring, and Lyft. In 2023, M13 was ranked 14th globally in the HEC Dow Jones Venture Capital Performance Ranking. Recognizing its strong investment performance, M13 invests in visionary founders building disruptive
software businesses in the early stage and Series A within infrastructure tech such as AI and Web3 that power the future of work, health, commerce, and money. Recent M13 investments include Pietra, an e-commerce enablement platform that helps brands with sourcing, logistics, and distribution. And prepared an AI-powered assistive 911 technology company that powers and partners with first responders to live stream emergencies in real time.
The firm places a significant emphasis on diversity, with 40% of its portfolio companies having at least one female co-founder and 39% featuring at least one non-white co-founder. Carter's strategic vision and commitment to innovation have solidified his reputation as a leading figure within the investment community. Carter is also a fellow Goldman Sachs alum whose entrepreneurial journey began with the co-founding of Veve's spirits alongside his brother Courtney.
And under their leadership, Veve became one of the fastest growing independent spirit brands in the U.S., earning recognition from Inc. Magazine. His success was further chronicled in one of my favorite books and bestsellers, Shortcut Your Startup, which I call the Founder's Bible. They offer invaluable insights into accelerating your entrepreneurial journey. Pick up a coffee. Beyond Carter's legendary investment record, Carter is dedicated to philanthropy and thought leadership,
serving on the board of Los Angeles County Museum of Art, also known as LACMA. And Carter is also one half of one of my favorite power couples with his extraordinary wife, Paris Hilton, combining their iconic influence to change the world. I'm so excited for you guys to tune into this episode. Hi, everyone. Welcome to this very special episode of the Icons Podcast. We have one of my favorite icons and influences, Carter, with us on the podcast.
He has been a legendary investor of over 13 unicorns, the author of this Founder's Bible Shortcut, Your Startup, one half of my favorite power couples with his beautiful wife, Paris Hilton, advocate, inspiration, and change maker. Thank you so much for being here today. Thanks for having me. And I know the only interview you've done this year is Wall Street Journal. And the Small Emerging Icons Podcast. But thank you so much for continuing to be so generous.
Thanks again. This will be fun. This incredible legacy you've had not only as an investor, which people will know you for M13, but prior to that you had this very successful business, Veve Spirits. Can you tell us about that venture and how you started it with your brother? What initially inspired this journey to leave Goldman Sachs and then go into being an entrepreneur in your soul? Yeah. My brother and I were both investor bankers at Goldman Sachs.
I was on the deal team that took KKR, the famous private equity firm, Public, who was one of the first at the time to go public. I was very much on a path of leaving Goldman. And I originally took a job here in LA at Oak Tree Capital, the big private equity firm. My brother conversely worked in consumer products at Goldman and was on the deal team for a 30-year-old person that was about to IPO a billion-dollar company.
Today, it seems like every 30-year-old is about to IPO a billion-dollar company. That was not the case 15, 16 years ago. That 30-year-old was a gentleman named Kevin Plank, and his company was obviously Under Armour. And so my brother really got inspired by him and said, hey, I want to leave Goldman and I want to go start a business. We had no previous experience in liquor. My brother had worked on the largest transaction in the space.
And so, you know, can you imagine my dad's shock when my brother called him and said, we're both leaving Goldman. In fact, Carter's not going to show up at Oak Tree and we're going to go launch a company. Today, that's an obvious path. But 15, 16 years ago, people thought we were crazy or they just felt really bad for us. Like we threw away everything to go start a company. You know, in our case, obviously, we built up Veve over a decade and successfully sold it.
It was less about the experience in the alcohol industry, but really for us, it was our business school, right? We started by delivering it out of the back of our car. By the time we had sold it, it was in every Nobu and Walmart and TJF Fridays and Ruby Tuesday and Disney and cruise ships and Virgin America. And so, you know, like so many startup journeys, we just had to figure things out as we went, right? And I think that's what then turned us into great investors is we've been in their shoes, right?
We went from the back of the car to, you know, running a big business. And so, you know, it was obvious to us after we sold that business that we wanted to then build a model that allowed us to invest in great companies, but take a different approach with kind of this hands-on model. So it was a great experience. And I think it was kind of so much of one's career is I always talk about how it's dominoes, right? It's one domino falls and trying to play out the game of dominoes.
For us, it was the perfect setup to be the type of investors we are today. It drew this journey. And reading your book, you can tell that there is so much resiliency that was developed. And obviously, I imagine you have very strong will even going to starting a business for yourself. Can you talk to us about some of the formative moments that built that resiliency, tenacity, and that strong willpower? I'm probably a little bit different than a lot of people in the sense that I don't believe when you see these big outcomes, it's some magical thing, right?
To me, so much of our success and when I look at other people's, it's I talk about it being brick by brick, right? You just have to keep moving forward and do, you know, if you do enough of the right things over a long enough period of time, you get what people call lucky, right? And so my experience is you have to make a lot of better day-to-day decisions where no single decision moves the needle, but a lot of them compounded over a lot of time kind of moves you.
And then when that happens, you find these moments where you kind of get lucky, right? You have that step change growth. And for us, it goes back to our kind of experience as athletes. It's thinking about those summers where you say, you know, I want to shoot free throws better next year. So you get up every day and you just try to get better, right? And so I always just talk about so much of life is execution. And the way you do that is you just go brick by brick by brick by brick.
And for us, we say, you know, most people look at a startup up and to the right and they go, wow, what a huge success. What they don't realize is the way you usually get from here to up in the right, it looks more like an EKG, up and down, up and down, up and down. You just hope that you kind of get up and to the right. But that is the story of most startups. And so, you know, I always say you just have to win on more days than you lose.
And if you do that, you'll keep making progress and keep getting to where you want to be. It sounds like that was the mindset that you had going in day in, day out, that we have to have wins and continuously move fast and look past the maybe challenges or failures that are right in front of us. Can you tell us in moments that it was very difficult, challenging, things didn't go your way? What was going on in your head, the sort of narrative that you had to keep you pushing forward when maybe conventional wisdom said, you know, maybe you should quit?
I've only interviewed for one job. It was my one interview I did and got the job at Goldman Sachs. But I remember still preparing for that interview. And one of the questions I prepared for was, tell us a time when you failed. And I can still remember my rehearsed answer, which is, honestly, I can tell you, I don't remember a time when I failed. And I can say that with a straight face. Imagine me saying this as a confident 22-year-old.
Because I look at every failure as an opportunity to get better, right? And I had this whole fancy answer about it. But I really think there are a lot of tough days, right? But you just have to keep looking forward, right? And you go, yep, that didn't work out. But let's keep going and see, you know, that. And, you know, it's like if you go to Las Vegas and you're playing blackjack. And sometimes you do exactly, if you've ever gone to the gift shop, you can buy a little laminated card.
And it tells you what to do with every kind of setup. And sometimes you do exactly what's on the card and you lose a hand. You'll have people at the table go, shoot, I knew I should have done something different there. But you shouldn't have. You should have done exactly what that little card said. That outcome was just an outlier. But if you follow that card for long enough, you will always have the best odds possible, right?
Reversion to the mean. And so there are a lot of difficult days and times where you just have to. I think one of the reasons Paris and I get along so well is we just have that kind of boundless optimism, right? We just kind of have that positivity. In her case, she has a lot of sparkle and a lot of fun. But it's this idea that, OK, that didn't work out today. But how do we do better? And what I talk about at M13 all the time is how do we get 1% better every day?
And if you do that, by the end of the year, you're 37 times better, right? And that is just indicative of just step by step, brick by brick. And, you know, I think as an entrepreneur, you eventually develop a muscle where the highs aren't that high and the lows aren't that low. So I've developed that muscle because, shoot, it wasn't that easy delivering blues out of the back of my car and going, OK, well, this isn't that fun.
How are we going to move forward? Right. But I've had that experience. I find now because I'm so modulated in a positive way, I have to actually celebrate the winds more, right? I landed at 2.30, tucked my Phoenix into bed. And here I am this morning on this couch, right? So I have to find some time this weekend to spend time with my wife and go, hey, hold on a second. That was pretty cool. You just passed federal legislation, right?
So that's what I find now that I do have that muscle of being modulated. I actually have to purposefully celebrate those winds a little more because as an entrepreneur, you just kind of go, oh, that was cool. That worked out well today because that's almost a defense mechanism for the days where you go, shoot, that did not quite work out how I imagined and on the whiteboard, you know? When did you decide to transition from building company to then investing in them?
I mean, if you think about M13, it was very much built in this mode that I wanted to continue to invest while continue to operate, but do it in a different form factor. My experience when I was investing, angel investing while operating our business was I was a better investor because I was an operator and vice versa, right? Because I was seeing so much data, I was seeing what others were doing and I was able to apply that.
And so if you think about M13, right, we have three times as many people on our full-time, what we call our propulsion team, which is our best in class operators for every person on the investing team. And so we have, you know, 10 people on our investing team. They are company pickers, right? They have to have the pattern recognition for which founders, which industries do we want to go after. And then we have 30 plus people on our propulsion team.
They wake up every day and say, how can I help our portfolio execute and operate better? And so that model was designed because I wanted to continue with my brother to be a hands-on investor, right? We don't like investing and being hands-off. We like investing and helping entrepreneurs. Because, you know, we had this thesis that there was, there had never been more competition in the world. It's very different than, you know, eight or 10 years ago when we seeded Ring Doorbell.
They were the only ones making a wireless doorbell. So we found Jamie who was doing it in his garage in the Palisades. Now there's hundreds, if not thousands of competitors. And the way we think about it is you could say that in every space, right? We never look at a business anymore. We go, oh my gosh, no one else is doing that, right? There's 10 or 15 companies, well pedigreed, well funded. And so every VC talks about finding special founders with special ideas.
And we believe that's one skill of a venture capitalist, but we don't believe it's the only skill. And so if you think about our model at N13, it's yes, we're going to pick those special founders with great ideas and expanding markets. But what if we then add a world-class operating team and give those companies a little better odds of success by helping them fill in the gaps when they're kind of getting up the J curve?
And so really it all goes back to the fact that we wanted to continue to operate. We wanted to continue to invest. I didn't think we wanted to start another company. It's hard. It's really hard. You know, it puts a lot of wear and tear on the body. So this was our way to be able to do both, but do it in kind of a new form factor, which is our model at N13. What differentiates N13 from other also hands-on investors? You know, there's a lot of VCs who claim their hands-on.
There are fewer that actually are hands-on, but there are some that have very great models. I think the proof for us is in the pudding. You know, people go and talk to our founders and they go, man, these guys are really helpful. And part of it is we just built N13 from the onset to have this kind of focus on operational expertise, right? And so our propulsion team beyond our investing team has spent about 6,338 hours with our portfolio companies, right?
And so we just had the benefit that from day one, we were able to build a different model, right? The thesis was that, you know, we invest typically at Series A. At Series C, a company is going to have a head of product and a head of talent and a head of data and all these things as they start to scale. But at Series A, they're not going to, nor should they, right? Take one of our propulsion partners, Carl Alibar. He was the founding COO of DigitalOcean, took that pre-revenue to pre-IPO, right?
He's not going to go back and work at a Series A company anymore. He's done that, right? But you don't actually need him full-time. You just need him to, you need to leverage his brain to fill in the gaps and kind of help you get up the J-curve. Or Christine Choi, who ran Brandly Comms Globally for Richard Branson for 15 years, right? Our portfolio companies can get her advice or get her team's help when they have a moment that is needed.
And so, yeah, I think you're going to see more and more firms realize that they need to take a more operational approach. But big firms, it's always harder to kind of retrofit their model, right? We have 12 partners at the firm. Six of those partners are investing partners. They wake up every day and ask themselves, where are we going to deploy capital? But six of those 12 partners are propulsion partners. They actually don't invest for a living in our model.
They very specifically wake up every day and go, how can I help this portfolio? And how can I support our founders execute better? And so we were just able, I think, to build a model that was very different. And the proof is in the pudding. The founders, right, we tend to spend on our propulsion team between 100 and 150 hours helping those companies troubleshoot. It might be a project that takes three days or three weeks or three months.
I think we're one of the few. There are others that are as helpful as they say. That's so wonderful to hear. And I love the word proponent as opposed to just operating because the vision of I'm going to take you to the next level sounds like if you are one of the portfolio companies of M13, it is this very serious partnership that is a mentorship as well. You know, like a good example to make it very concrete is like the other day I was talking to a portfolio company and they said at the board meeting, we're trying to figure out how to optimize our engineering team.
And Carter, do you have thoughts? And normally you would have had somebody like me opine, but I've run an engineering org. And I said, instead of opining on that, I'm actually going to call Carl. He ran DigitalOceans. They had hundreds of engineers and were a world-class engineering org. And the idea that I can grab Carl and our head of talent, Matt Hoffman, and say, talk to this founder. And, you know, yesterday when I was in the capital, I joined that call and the portfolio company was just blowing away.
But that's because they have two guys that, you know, led a company to a $5 billion IPO and ran an engineering org. They can opine and give advice to that founder much better than I can. Shit, I ran an alcohol company, not an engineering org, right? So that's where I think our model makes a lot of sense. It just supports the founders because it is hard, right? You think about it. We all celebrate this company or that company when they become unicorns.
But no one talks about, you know, how hard, how low the odds are, right? And so you just have to try to give these companies slightly better odds of success. And if you can do that, you know, it's a powerful thing. The advising and strategic mentorship and pulling together all these resources from the M13 network is so uplifting to hear as an entrepreneur that's interested. I'm sure there are many people who are listening.
Do you have any advice or tips in terms of how to get that first meeting with M13 and pitching? It's easy. We have a lot of great investors. I think everyone's very kind. So just email us and somebody will get back. But I think, you know, for us, when we meet an entrepreneur early stage, it's just trying to understand their vision, right? We spend a lot of time understanding where they're going and what could be possible.
Like other VCs, we love expanding markets, right? Uber being the famous example, right? People said, well, how big can it be? You know, you can do the math of how big taxi cabs are. But what they failed to realize was that Uber would change behavior, right? And that it was an expanding market. So, yeah, whether it's M13 or any great early stage VC, I think founders have to lay out that vision and the why. Like in our case at M13, we always talk about unfair advantages.
Why should this person succeed at this, right? And so we use the sports kind of expression of wins above replacement. It's a famous sports statistic. But LeBron James has the largest wins compared to his replacement. And so we love to find founders where they have some unique background or skill set or experience to tackle kind of some new innovation or some new business model. Now, on the investing side, if someone wanted to join M13 as an investor, any suggestions for the investor profile?
Yeah, I think for us, when it comes to the investor profile, it's just about somebody, you know, all the obvious stuff. They have to be a good human being. They have to work hard. They have to be very proactive. Everyone at M13 is a founder by background. It's kind of our table stakes. They all have very different backgrounds. If you think about my background, you wouldn't necessarily think starting and successfully selling a liquor company would be a background.
I would suggest I would be a darn good venture capitalist. But I think that's indicative of a lot of different backgrounds, right? But it's like it's about any background that can give somebody an unfair advantage to then be able to pick up the pattern recognition of how do you find great companies and great ideas. And then I think it's the psychographic of really the role of a VC is try to understand where the world's going, right?
Every adoption curve is just getting steeper and steeper because it's building on the past one, right? So we had the iPhone. We had cloud computing. You know, we had blockchain. Now we have AI. The world is constantly evolving. And so, like, one of the things when I look back, I think Goldman set me up for where I am today. Because when you're at a place like Goldman and investment banking, they say, oh, you're working on this deal team in aerospace and defense.
You have to very quickly get up to speed on the industry and the companies. And you've learned that skill set. That's effectively what you do as a venture capitalist. You know, somebody you meet with, you say, oh, I don't know this space overly well. But very quickly, you can kind of hear their vision, go do some work and say, is this a market? And do I believe in their thesis? So, yeah, I think obviously everyone knows M13 has no small aspiration.
So right now we have an amazing team. But, you know, we'll continue to scale and continue to add people. And so, yeah, we're excited. We've talked a lot about pattern recognition and that being a core skill in both an investor and an entrepreneur. Can you tell us some key patterns that you've seen from the successful 13 unicorns that is a common thread between us? So excited to welcome this extremely distinguished guest, ecosystem builder, and head of community in San Francisco, Christopher Floyd.
He runs one of my favorite organizations in San Francisco, Founders Bay, along with Marianne Becker. And here to talk to us a little bit about all the amazing things and how you guys can be involved in person through different conferences, events, and get connected. Christopher, so can you tell us a little bit more? First of all, thank you so much for having me. It's a pleasure to be here and I love what you're doing.
Founders Bay, it's awesome. So we're based in San Francisco. We're a community of getting close to 80,000 members. That's huge, guys. You have to be a part of it. Yes, you have to be a part of it. So we're based in San Francisco, but our members are spread across the country, across the globe. But we have a very high concentration of folks that are based here in the city. We do events constantly. We do large events, you know, 2,000 plus people.
We also do smaller events. Basically, what we're trying to do is connect founders, investors, operators, and even just tech enthusiasts to each other and give them an avenue to share ideas, collaborate, and kind of expand their networks. At founderspay.com. Thank you. I'm a perfectionist and I often don't feel like these videos meet my standards. And for me, that's where Be Creatives comes in. I sent them my raw, imperfect footage and they worked their magic.
They helped me clean up the audio, video quality, fix the lighting, and helped me make everything look more professional and polished. Now, no matter where I'm recording, I know my content is going to be in good hands. It's been a game changer and one of the best decisions I made for this podcast. Be Creatives and I have partnered for a special discount of $150 off per month for the icons community. Please click the link here to sign up.
Can you tell us some key patterns that you've seen from the successful 13 unicorns that is a common thread? Yeah, I mean, it's hard. It's a good question. It's always hard. I think, like, that's why I say the subconscious, right? Because sometimes it's hard to put your finger on it. You know, there's like a famous example in Malcolm Gladwell Blink where two people that can tell if a painting is fraud or not, two show up.
And the one guy shows up and says, this is definitely a fake painting and here's why. And then the other guy shows up and says, no way, you know, blah, blah, blah. And he goes, they said, well, how do you know? And he just says, like, I know. And he was right, right? And he said, it's just my gut. But gut or intuition is actually pattern recognition in the subconscious, right? And so I don't think there's one size fits all for the patterns.
It's seeing so many, so many, you know, it's everything from why would this market expand? Like we have a company in our portfolio called Form Health. It's one of the largest platforms for obesity. And, you know, in that case, it was the pattern recognition, the founder, Evan, he had been part of the founding team at a unicorn healthcare company. And this was before GLP-1s and everyone talking about a Zinpik. And he said, you know, the penetration or the treatment rate of obesity, which is classified as a disease, is significantly lower than other diseases in America.
And I believe if you do the math, about a $500 billion industry can develop from an expanding market. You know, it's in that moment, the pattern recognition to go, oh, similar to taxi cabs and Uber and Lyft. Is this an expanding market and why? And so I think there's different pattern recognition everywhere. But it's pulling on that subconscious, pulling on that gut and that instinct and just not totally knowing how you've seen it before, but knowing if that makes sense.
I first got to know you through this incredible book, Shortcut Your Startup. And it's become sort of a founder's Bible for myself and many other founders who are focused on how we can shortcut our success. A big motivation for why I started this icons community was to provide mentorship at scale, essentially distilling the wisdom of incredible people like you and sharing it with the community of founders and investors who are building up and aspiring to be visionaries like you.
So a lot of the focus behind, I thought, reading the book was so much of you wanting to share and impart and uplift, mentor and guide through this very condensed version of your lessons. And that's essentially what we're trying to do for our community as well. I love that expression, mentorship at scale, because one of the reasons I did the book was I found myself going to coffee, saying the same things over and over.
And I said, hey, if I just put it down on paper, then, you know, I can touch a lot more people with whatever I've learned along the way. So I love the six factors that you talk about in your book that are essential for a founder's success from optimism, energy, risk taking, being emotionally resilient, visionary and persuasive. Do you think that these are skills that are innate in an individual or that they can be trained and in a sense, through a lot of discipline can be achieved?
Yeah, I think some of them are clearly innate, but all of us can be purposeful about the traits we want to exhibit and kind of work on them. Right. You know, like one of the things I look for in founders is storytelling. Right. And what I mean by that is I mean, in a very positive way, it's the ability to inspire. Right. It's that ability to be able to raise around when maybe the metrics aren't as good as they need to be.
Or it's that ability to get a hire to believe in your vision or things like that. And so to me, like that's something where someone can kind of learn that and can adapt. So I think some of them are innate, but I think people can like I try like during COVID. I had to, as a leader, operate differently in a digital setting than I would in the office. Right in the office, I would see somebody at the water cooler and I'd be able to have that conversation.
So I remember when COVID first happened, I basically made a Google Doc and said, how do I have to lead differently in a digital world? So one of the things on my sheet was I was going to Slack huddle one person every day just to say, hey, what's going on? How are you doing? What are you working on? I would never have done that in an office setting because I'd see that person going, you know, walking down the hallway or going to the water cooler.
And so me, I'm of the opinion, we all have some innate stuff, but as leaders, we have to figure out what we want to dial up or dial down. And I just try to be purposeful about those things. And I think everybody can. Do you think it holds true also for VCs? How much of being a successful VC is the innate talent versus the training to get there? How much of it can be taught? Yeah, I don't know about being taught. I think it's more about pattern recognition.
Like I read a lot of Malcolm Gladwell and know him, but like if you think about outliers, right, they tell stories like Bill Gates is not an outlier, right? Like he happened to grow up near Stanford and had logged, you know, the famous kind of 10,000 hours on that computer. So, you know, when anyone's asking me about, you know, how do they become good at VC? I think it's you just have to get that pattern recognition.
And that means looking at deck after deck after deck after deck. And so, you know, even incredibly talented operators who then try to become VCs, it takes them a little bit because they have some innate skills, but they need to pick up the pattern recognition. And I've probably looked at 20,000 decks over the last eight years, right? A lot. And so often I pop one open. I look at it, even if it's not a fit. I just look at it for one minute or two minutes or three minutes.
I'm actually just trying to get that data into my subconscious brain to process it, right? And so because then when I see something later, I go, oh, gosh, that reminds me of that. But your brain is so powerful and the subconscious kind of learning is so powerful. So to me, it comes down most to pattern recognition. There's a lot of smart people in this world. Then they need to get the pattern recognition because especially investing at Series A and Seed, it is a very different skill set than doing later stage or something like that.
One of your extraordinary talents is having your finger on the pulse of things before they become mainstream to be able to see what the emerging trend is going to be. And at the same time, finding the emerging technology that supports that trend. Can you tell us a little bit about how you cultivated that skill? Yeah. Oh, man, I don't know. But yeah, I think you hit the nail on the head, right? It's all about just having good instincts about what's coming and why, right?
So if you look at M13 and Fund 1, we were one of the best D2C investors, I think, in the country, right? We had our hands receded things like Thrive Market and Ring and Daily Harvest and Rothies and Tecovis and FabFitFun and all these great companies. And since that moment, we have not, we stopped at about 2019 investing in any D2C. So that's either crazy or that's incredible discipline. I think it's incredible discipline because there was a moment in time where we thought there was because of things like meta advertising that D2C companies could be built.
And there was a kind of an arbitrage, but that quickly closed up. And so you haven't seen too many great D2C companies since that moment in time. So it's constantly changing. It's constantly evolving. You know, that's why I say both for founders and VCs, you have to have a microscope in one eye and a telescope in the other. The microscope is to get whatever you need done in the here and now. The telescope is to keep looking out, right?
And even you think about AI, everyone's talking about it. But right now we're talking about the technology. But it gets even more exciting when we talk about the implications of the technology, right? And to use historical examples, the technology was the iPhone. The implications of the technology were the invention of Meta, Lyft and Airbnb and Pinterest. They all came from the fact that we had a supercomputer in our pocket, right?
The same thing with AI. Yes, the technology is incredible. But we haven't even begun to realize the implications of the technology. So I get excited about what's the second or what's the third ripple. I think, again, like the use cases for these emerging technologies and how companies are leveraging to power their vision has been really exciting to see. Is there a trend that you're excited about within AI or a way that you've seen companies adopt it into their business model that has been really exciting for you?
Yeah, I think like AI is very unique across a few dimensions. One is because it can lead to innovative new business models, but it can also lead to just supercharging current models. So take a company like we have called Pietra, it's an Ecom enablement tool. I'm on the board with Founders Fund and Entries. And it's not an AI company, but they're using AI to do, you know, kind of disruptive stuff around design studios and social scraping and things like that.
What I say to every company is you have to be using AI to get ahead. And if you're not, you're basically falling behind, right? Because every company should be using AI either to unlock new features or get productivity gains. What I think is, as a VC, what keeps me up at night around AI is when you think about consumer software, that was kind of what developed out of the iPhone. It was innovators competing, right? You had Lyft and Uber and others and ride sharing.
You had Pinterest and Snap and Meta and social networks. The thing about AI is the big tech companies have a huge advantage because they have huge amounts of data. And so this is going to be a fight of innovators versus the largest tech companies on the planet. And so me personally, I think you're going to see a lot of innovative companies rise very quickly, but also fall very quickly because they are battling some very well-funded large tech companies.
And so it'll be interesting to see. I think, you know, we think about AI as a horizontal layer. We invest across the future, money, work, health, and commerce. And we think, obviously, it will disrupt everything. But I think we're in the very early innings of the world of AI. And so we try to instill patience and just keep looking out ahead. I think you're going to see, you know, around content creation, marketing. I think fundamentally you will have some very large shifts, but more in the early innings.
I think it's also really interesting what you said about the big companies and then the smaller disruptors. They could be like a David and Goliath sort of situation, which might be interesting to witness. Yeah. And maybe, you know, like acquisitions along the way. I think you'll see a lot of like, you will see a lot of very modest acquisitions when you look forward two or three years from now. Because, you know, the other thing about AI is depending on where you're playing and using AI, it's also very capital intensive.
Right. And so, yeah, it'll be interesting. But we've had these cycles. Right. There was early 2000s and then the iPhone and cloud computing and blockchain. So, you know, VCs sometimes they make me laugh. They pretend like we haven't been here before. But you can look at history like take the 1920s. The technology was the automobile. It was awesome technology. People were riding around horses. But the second and the third ripples are the people that invented gas stations or a city like Los Angeles wouldn't be possible without the car.
Yeah. Right. And so, yes, you can go and try to invest in other car companies. But there's a lot of different ways to get the second and the third ripple right. And those are harder to get right. But if you get them right, I think they're much better risk and probability adjusted returns. I wanted to pivot a little bit. One of the things I really loved and admired about you just personally was how important family is to you.
That you wrote this book with your brother. Yeah. You started M13 with your brother. And this book is dedicated to your father. Can you tell us a little bit about your family and how they inspired your vision? Yeah. I think, you know, like if you read my group chat with or my text with my wife, I'm always talking about being good teammates. Right. And I think that comes from playing sports growing up and this mentality of being teammates.
Like even my brother and I, we've been business partners since we both left Goldman Sachs where we are investor bankers. And people go, man, really? You work with your brother? And I say, yeah, but we just have this different relationship because we've always played on the same sports team. So one of us would try to pass to the other and the other would score. You know, I think it all starts from my parents. My mom was one of 20 women that graduated from Columbia Business School.
But for us, she was just our mom. She gave up her career to be a mom. So she was the CEO of the house. And my dad, before he suddenly passed away, ran a Fortune 50 company as the CEO. But he'd always say, you know, your mom is my confidante. And growing up, I was kind of like, really? Like she just like makes our lunch and then she drives us to soccer practice and then we do it all over again. And I think that just gave me watching my parents who are married for over 40 years just instilled that sense of teammates.
Then playing so many sports growing up. And, you know, there's a whole lot of reasons why I love my wife so much. But we always talk about being great teammates, right? Just trying to be supportive as we can to each other. How do we make each other the best version of ourselves? So, yeah, it's been great that I get to do so much with my wife, so much with my brother. But it really all stems from my parents. I think it's so lovely that you had them as role models growing up and seeing them be a true partnership.
I think that that is something wonderful that your kids also get to see mom and dad partner together in your shared vision. And it's seeing a relationship is such an inspiration for so many women and so many people in the business community. The combined, you know, two are more powerful than one. I wanted to talk to you about your vision and your legacy for what you and your wife have planned for the future. With my wife, I never know.
She does so much, you know. But I think, you know, like we talk about all the time, we just want to leave the world a better and in her case, a little more sparkly place than she found it. You know, I think what's great about our relationship, I remember when we first started dating, she's like, it's so sexy. You're always working. And I was like, I'm going to need that in writing. But true to form, it's been over five years and it is part of our love story, right?
Part of our love story is nobody works harder than she does. She has her media company, 1111. You know, we've scaled M13 quite a bit. But it's part of our love story. You know, we'll take a bath at night. She'll say, how was your day? What deals did you do? We'll do what's going on in my world. Then we'll kiss. We'll cuddle. So it just kind of works for us. So, you know, we don't really have life-work balance. I think we have life-work harmony, you know.
And so for us, it works out so well. And I'm just excited. You know, all I say is in our house, everyone has to be a good human being. In our house, everyone needs to work hard. And then it just depends on, you know, where she or I want to apply those talents. But it's been a fun five years together as teammates. So, and I always say to her, I think the best has just begun. So. That's amazing. I'm so excited to see the continued legacy that you guys will uphold and your family grow
and all these amazing things. I know that you just came off a very early flight this morning. You were in D.C. with Paris advocating for the Stop Institutional Child Abuse Act, a really important bill that passed unanimously in the Senate and then passed also in the House. Can you tell us a little bit about this years-long crusade? Paris really sharing and turning her most painful experiences and galvanizing change systemically,
uprooting the system and really using her voice for the voiceless, what that has been like. Yeah. I mean, I think her healing process and her advocacy will also forever be part of our love story. You know, with her documentary, This Is Paris on YouTube. Four plus years ago, for the first time, she came out and talked about the abuse she suffered at these schools. People refer to them as troubled teen schools, therapeutic boarding schools.
And she didn't really mean to do that, to be honest. Like, she was doing a documentary on just her life and her business ventures. And one night she said to the directors, I'm sorry, I'm really tired. I just couldn't sleep. I have really bad insomnia from some PTSD. She said, well, what do you mean, Paris? And then she said, I don't want to talk about it. And kind of shut down like she had for 20 years because I never talked about her experience.
And that director, Alex Dean, you know, kudos to her, did a little research and realized that Paris had gone to these schools. And so she got Paris to open up for the first time at, you know, the physical, the sexual, kind of all the abuse that happened at these schools. And, you know, I'll never forget it was during COVID. There was a live YouTube screening of her documentary. And she was just shaking and crying, not knowing how the world was going to react to her sharing
her truth. And by the end of it, she was just overwhelmed by all the support, all the people that said, I had that same experience. And she started getting thousands and thousands of letters and emails and DMs from people who had gone through these schools. About 250,000 a year go through this $23 billion industry. So it's been going on for 25, 30 years. So millions and millions of people. And then, you know, it was fun.
It just, she said, I just can't not talk about this. I can't let this happen to anyone today. And she always says, you know, I need to at least try to be the hero that I needed when I was in these schools. And it's been, you know, yesterday was such a proud moment because it wasn't handed to her, right? During COVID, she went through a 12-week legislative incubator called Rise, where, for 12 weeks, you learn how to pass a law.
And she showed up every day on Zoom and did that. And then, you know, we just started brick by brick. And, you know, I always use the analogy, most people, whether it's seeing a bill passed or whether it's a startup that ends up being successful, they say, oh my God, that's so cool. Right? And it's like a bonfire. It's raging. It's doing well. But my experience has always been that the way you get there is not putting lighter fluid
on something and lighting a match. It's starting these little fires. And these little fires within the bonfire. And all of a sudden, you get to this eventual conclusion. And so, you know, she's fought for three years. She's shown up at DC probably four to five times a year, met with hundreds of legislators and hundreds of media interviews. And so it has definitely been the most healing journey of her life. If I think about my wife, I think she's probably been underestimated for too long, underestimated
as the businesswoman she has, underestimated for her marketing ingenuity. And I think, you know, if I look back, being intellectually honest, the first time she went to DC, they said, oh, that's cute. Paris Hilton showed up. But then she showed up again and again and again. And they realized she wasn't going to stop. Right? And that's what I love about my wife. Whatever her dreams are, whether it's advocacy, a new album, 18 years after the first, she has
her dreams. She's unapologetic about those dreams. But she works hard to achieve those dreams. So everyone sees, oh my God, you did it. But what they don't see, like, you know, you hear a lot of basketball players or athletes say, no one talks about the 5 a.m.s at the gym when I was shooting free throws time and time again. And so just so, so proud of her. I think more importantly, this specific bill gives oversight to the entire industry.
And she slept, she'll sleep better going forward, knowing hopefully children don't have to go through what she went through because it's been happening for decades. Thank you so much for sharing all of that. I think that what Paris has been doing with not only the brands that she's built, how she's inspired so many entrepreneurs and her whole legacy around marketing and brand building, being a pioneer in so many different ways.
But now using her voice to save all these lives, it's incredible to see what her tenacity, resiliency and strength has all amounted to. And again, it's a very bureaucratic process. Her drive, I think almost like her entire life had prepared her for this moment. It was such a visceral reaction that I had when I saw the news yestermine in just how this will change the world. Yeah. And this is just the beginning. Just the beginning.
Just the beginning. So she's changed now 10 state laws, passed federal legislation, but she's going to go tackle every single state in the country and just keep doing it. But I think it's been really fun to see when you put in the work, when you can raise awareness for these issues like she can. And in this case, it was a very, very rare bipartisan support of this bill, which is no small feat. Yeah, exactly. But I think it was just, you know, her sparkle and her kindness.
You would think that everyone would agree on children, but they tend not to like to agree in the government. So it was quite a feat to get so much support for this issue. And it's also so nice to see the whole country uniting in this way and creating and pushing change unanimously during this, you know, very contentious time. And how has she inspired you? Whether it's, you know, through being a father, it's through your investment philosophy, your
view on seeing the world through compassion. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think I learned so much from my wife every day. And I hope if you asked her, she would say the same. I think, you know, I was relatively deadly at my craft before she ever kissed me five years ago. I'd already seated or been in the series AF13 unicorns. But clearly, when you look back at her career, the innovations, her instincts are world class,
right? When you think about people say she's famous for being famous, I say, oh, screw that noise. What she realized is I can build a brand first and then I can decide how to apply that brand, right? That was really her innovation, right? She was the first one to understand the power of social media because she said, wow, this gives me a vessel to be able to, you know, connect with my fans, right? She was tweeting about crypto in 2018 after having dinner with the founder of Ethereum.
So really, if you think about her career, she just, it's a story of perseverance. It's a story about innovation. It's a story of just always being one step ahead of where the world's going. When the world started talking and AI tools started reaching out, she like immediately trained AI model on her products so she could do new product innovation for Walmart using those tools. So it's fun. So her media company, 1111 to billion dollar media company, like now I get to see the world
through her eyes and their eyes while seeing the world through my eyes. And so there's no doubt about it. She makes me better in my craft. I hope I make her better at her craft, but it's really, again, goes back to being teammates. I share with her what I'm seeing in the world. She shares with me what she does. And then I think there's something about just on the personal side of it, the way she's lived her life. I love that she's lived her life unapologetically, right?
After we had Phoenix, our son, you know, she would post something about work and people would say, oh, you must be a bad mom. You're doing something work for them. And I said, whoa, nobody would say that to me if I was working, you know, a few weeks after having a child. And so at the time she clapped back and said, I have a great mom, but I'm going to be a great businesswoman and it's okay. And the comments and the people that responded here saying, wow, that's, that really is empowering,
right? Because I'm that kind of thing. And so I love that just the way she carries herself. There's, I think, a lot to learn. The way she's unapologetic, the way that she, you know, I saw her two posts yesterday about her bill. One was a very serious post. The other was on TikTok and it was her riding her motorized suitcase, celebrating the bill through the Capitol. And that's okay, right? That's like, that's how she lives her life.
Most people would say, don't take such a serious thing and have fun with it by, but she's unapologetic. And I think she showed that warriors can achieve anything. This warrior happens to love pink and happens to wear stilettos, but she's a warrior. And I love that she really put power back into women's hands to show them that how multidimensional they are and how they should never be underestimated. And she is a powerhouse and a genius and effort.
And I love how much she's also influenced you vice versa, as well as seeing that in her work, in her investing in business ventures. That's best. So thank you so much for sharing a little bit of insight into the real partnership that you guys have. I think it's such a beautiful, inspiring love story. This story. Where it will forever be a lockdown love story. Because she kissed me on Thanksgiving dinner three months before COVID.
And as I tell people, I just fell in love with this girl named Paris. Because for nine months, like everybody else, we were trapped inside wearing PJs, watching Netflix, working. And so what a unique time to fall in love with Paris that I didn't have to share with the world, right? Going to a fancy party or a tech conference. That unfortunately is not real life. Real life is what you do in your house and when you're playing with your babies.
And so I just fell in love with this amazing girl named Paris. And so I'm forever extremely lucky. It's so wonderful to hear that love story between the two of you and how much you have both, how far you've both come in the last even five years. It's so heartwarming to hear. And thank you for again, inviting us into the hair flow home that you guys share. You can feel the warmth and love in this house. It has been so amazing to see all these different hats that you've worn.
Investor, entrepreneur, philanthropist. I know that you sit on the board of LACMA as well. You have had exceptional success in all these endeavors and also beautiful family. What do you want your legacy to be? I hope my legacy is as an amazing husband and amazing father to Phoenix and London. You know, when my dad passed away seven years ago, although he was very successful, like I mentioned, ran big public companies.
Nobody talked about his success or, you know, that they just talked about what a good human being he was. And that really struck me. And, you know, I think I've achieved a lot. I hope I'll achieve a lot more. At the end of the day, the real moments are family. And so I hope that's my legacy. I think it's so clear and evident how kind you are throughout the industry. Everyone I've spoken to has had a resounding career so generous and kind.
And I know the only interview you've done this year is Wall Street Journal and the Small Emerging Icons podcast. But thank you so much for continuing to be so generous with your portfolio companies and meeting Brent and Whitney at M13. It's very clear that they're also perpetuating this very kind and professional excellence that I'm sure comes from the top. So thank you for the legacy that you've had at M13. The personal inspiration you've given me and for giving us all your time.
I hope the Icons community gets to have a sense of how incredibly inspiring and generous your spirit is and learns all the lessons from your legacy. Thank you so much for being on this very special episode of the Icons podcast with Carter. Thanks again for having me. I appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you. If you're an investor, a builder, an entrepreneur, and someone who likes to attend events in person, you guys have to check this out.
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