How to Find AI Unicorns Early: Venture Capital Strategies | Marina Davidova, DVC

That's why it's a number game. That's why especially on early stage. That's why we we've invested in 120 companies to identify four unicorns. I believe it would be more than four. It's just it's still early. It takes time to

to grow them.

Yeah.

Yeah. It would be more. But we have a very particular DVC portfolio founder in mind when we are investing. I would say they are I'm Felicia Shakiba and this is Leaderbook AI where we solve a business challenge in every episode. How should venture firms automate their processes with AI and what do they do with those processes to find and select an AI unicorn? Today we have Marina Davididovva, managing partner at Silicon Valley's DVC venture capital firm. Marina, let's start at the beginning. Take me back 10 years when you first started investing in AI and it still felt like a moonshot. You know what made you believe early? Let's start even earlier than 10 years ago because I was born in Russia. It was the Soviet Union then. And I think growing up in a country that underwent massive systematic changes taught us to recognize patterns and inflection points way before it the mainstream does.

So back then we already work we already in venture capital and 2012 AlexNet came out. that was a neural network created by Alex Kvski and Ilaskever that worked with images and it was the first first use use use cases in different fields and for us it was like okay it's something interesting we don't know would it be immediate business use cases but it was very interesting then couple of years Later we've noticed some implications of computer vision in advertisement in different fields but still it was very narrow niche. So 10 years ago it was I believe one one and a half billion venture capital invested in AI very very small niche compared to the overall venture capital but we just was we were very curious we loved the industry ourselves what made us believe early it wasn't just like I know technology itself it wasn't it wasn't hyped.

So I think we didn't we didn't bet on just technology itself. our first job when we were still college students were and Cisco for the industry where in the beginning of internet era was this essential infrastructure. So AI for us was also this inevitable infrastructure for the new to same as electricity in the beginning of 20th century. So we saw how quickly foundational shifts through bright economies and we just we were super curious to ourselves. We were super curious to see how use cases are emerging and we just love to work in this field. And just curious about how like what was it that made you kind of lean in? What was like the first moment or if there was, you know, if there's a story behind it all that you thought of it as something that was unique and different from the rest of the technology?

To be honest, the story was very simple and not that interesting. We just moved to the Silicon Valley and as I mentioned we moved from from from Russia where the venture capital market is very very different. I think that the market there is mostly about like investors giving terms to founders. Moving here we realize that every other neighbor is also investor and we have to compete

and we have it's not enough to have money and invest in certain companies you have to bring value beyond that

and I remember there was a daughter at that time she was 5 years old and there was some event at school and all parents were introducing themselves and like it was like I'm an investor, I'm an investor, I'm an investor. So you have to distinguish yourself somehow. And so we sat with my husband Nick and try to understand what what is it that we are interested interested about what we want to focus the next 10 years because usually investors thinking of these 10 years periods timelines. what we want to focus on, what we want to deepen our expertise. and since there was like early AI implementations and we are very fascinated about that, we decided to focus on that. Not just because like we were super super into the field, it's just because like we we realize that we have to bring fairly beyond money and we have to distinguish ourselves among others.

Yeah, absolutely. And I think that was what founders are looking for, right? I mean, anybody could throw money on the table, but at the end of the day, I think founders really want to be supported. It's a lonely journey. I know you know that. And I I even as a founder of leader book AI, it is very tough and having some sense of direction somewhere somewhere that we can go to get feedback and to kind of even just be supportive for those good decisions that we do make those go a long way. And so I think that's really critical that you realize that and that makes you some, you know, sets you apart. Which leads me to my next question because my next question is really about how you make your selections around identifying unicorns. so you have backed four unicorns is it

from the latest fund from the DVC fund. in four years we already have four unicorns. That's that's correct. Yeah.

Wow. That's incredible. So I have a lot of questions but maybe we can start with like what are those unicorns? What are those companies that became unicorns? Let's first call them out here and then maybe we can start with what did you see early on in those founders and maybe walk us through that process. So among unicorns we have proxy Higgsfield aeti and the fourth one we cannot announced until the next week. so it's still on a stealth mode but it will be announced on March 10th. So probably when the podcast will be released we can also share.

Yes. Yes it will be released. How exciting. Yeah.

Yeah. and to be backed unicorn founders before with our previous ventures but I think this is a new wave of unicorn founders which is very exciting for us to notice and to witness firsthand and it's not a very easy question to answer to be honest because if it would be so easy we would be investing only in unicorns right I remember There's a popular medieval tapestry where people I think it was Scottish tapestry where people are trying to find unicorn unicorn and they were like trying to hunt hunt the unicorn and it was they're still looking looking at them and the unicorns there and it's not easy. That's why it's a number game. That's why especially in early stage that's why we we've invested in 120 companies to identify four unicorns. I believe it would be more than four. It's just it's still early. It takes time to

to grow them.

So yeah it would be more

but we have a very particular DVC portfolio founder in mind when we are investing. I would say they are they are they already been to startup war before. So we invest only in repeat founders. The reason why is because they have to be very quick and they have to navigate this constantly changing environment very quickly. Repeat founders most of them they have this experience. They trying a lot of hypothesis. They are moving fast. They are not afraid of failures and they like went through exits, shutdowns, I don't know, coounder breakups and they live through all of that and they decided to go back to the front line and instead of becoming cynical, they became sharper. They don't romanticize startup world or they don't romanticize their wins or failures. they just accept them and they look into the reality and they continue building resilience.

Yeah. And another thing which is very important for us it's that especially in AI founders should have a very engineered soul. It's not about being very it's not about only being like t tax heavy. It's about the pattern. It's about the willingness to take things apart and build it better together again. So it's just like having this engineering mindset always curious how how it is built, how we can make it better how to use new technology to to build better processes. And I think the third thing which is also important is that they're looking long term. So when we are ask them about like what's next, what are next milestone, they almost never talking about like next round valuation, they're talking about like how how their new product, new technology will change the industry. they understand this is a long-term game and they're committed to it in spite of all the battle scars they had before.

That's really I think relatable to a lot of founders, but also I think it's unique when speaking to someone that has never founded a company before. And I've seen both. I've seen founders who have done it over and over again and they almost know how to, you know, do it faster, right, the next time, much more further that they go, they're like, I've done this before. I know how to do this now. I spent, you know, 5 months doing it wrong or however many months doing it wrong. And you know, I think that that is really special about a founder of understanding what that looks like of being able to, you know, even break your code and start from scratch, right? And then I've seen founders who, you know, they have the passion, they have the ambition, the commitment, the talent, even the idea even, but have no idea how fast to move and what that means or looks like.

And I think there there's like a mindset shift and and you can feel free to disagree with me, but more of a design thinking approach to solving the problem, how we add value to clients and or customers and and really looking at how to best solve a very specific problem. And maybe that is at a certain stage like seed stage. But I guess my question to you is have you seen that type of mindset evolve or is it consistent as the company scales? What is what is your has been your experience?

I think just one correction from from what we observe is that like people repeat founders they they don't know they accept that they don't know how to build actually. So they tried it didn't work. And it doesn't matter because it it doesn't mean that they know how to build right now. They just accept that they have to try lots of times and the faster they fail the better because it will save a lot of time and resources. So they have to just like try try. To be honest, I I think that entrepreneurial mindset, you can be born with that, but it also something that you can teach yourself because most of the time it's just about the like certain risks, acceptance, the curiosity and the like internal motivation to to fix the pro specific problem, the gap that is on the market. And the motivation could be actually very different.

We've seen among 150 founders that we have in the community that there is no like specific trait or like specific even mindset. The founders can be extroverts, introverts, they could be tax, they could be more like business oriented. They could have absolutely different cultural backgrounds. They could have traumas like that could motivate them to show every everyone how big they can actually build the company. So the motivation could be very different but it should be the specific energy that keeps moving them. For someone it could be just like okay they be reoriented on like earn money but to be honest for them venture capital is not the best field. Are there ways to earn money than that? Easier I would say. Yeah I hear you on that one. So I also want to understand the funnel right? So the funnel meaning approximately how many founders you know pitch and then how many do you talk to and then how many do you select or how many do you fund like what's that funnel look like?

Yeah to answer that question I have to tell more about how our fund is organized.

Yeah

DVC fund is built on on a community. So when and me and my husband Nick we we are founders of that fund but we are actually we've been on both sides of the table. We've been founders ourselves. We built a computer vision company. We've been investors for different venture capital firms. So we know we know the industry from both sides. And when we were building our company, we realized that the most help we got was not from the very big venture capital firms. The biggest help that we got was from angel investors. They were the people who could come to our office at night and build like even write codes and worked on our brand and worked on our pictures and everything else. So when we started building DVC, we really wanted to build a company where always angel investors have an opportunity to invest and help.

So DVC consists of more than 200 investors. most of them either tech founders or engineers from biggest tech tech corporations working with AI research or AI implementation. So they're very deep into the industries themselves and they have this understanding of of the technology of business implications and we are also trying to get them engaged in the process as much as possible. So they are bringing not only investing money in the fund they also bringing companies they're bringing deals they are looking they bring bringing tools they are using and they like most of our funnel are coming from the community from our network imagine we have 200 LPS I would say 60% of them are very engaged bringing at least three five deals per And these are very high quality deals. I'm not counting cold outreach. so we are looking at thousands and thousands of decks every year.

So thousands and thousands every year of pitches or

Yeah. of pictures of the companies that like that already met the criteria that we have. So they already went through our LPS or through our network and came to us.

Okay. And then what is the next so you have thousands of thousands that have met the criteria and then what is the next step in that process look like? So the next step is actually where our AI agents are started to work. So we we built internal agents to to walk through the duck to identify the main the main important things for for it and also enrich with signals outside. So we can see anything about the company, web traffic, hiring data, all all signals that are important at that stage. Since we're investing early, the company itself can have like limited data, but there are still a lot of a lot of signals and data outside just the company that we can look at. So after this like initial screening the company ended up in our pipeline then we usually have a community discussion everyone can can join and give a feedback or use the technology if it's if it's possible give a comment on that.

So after the community discussion, after the partners discussion, usually we're trying to make decision very fast. So save hours and founders time and just then then go to the usual due diligence process and investing process.

Okay. So tell me more about this community discussion like who is it with, how long is it, how long how much time do you spend just discussing you know a a company at this stage that sort of thing. It depends on the company. We we always have asymmetric discussions as well. We will we also build a platform where all information available in real time to all our LPS so they can look at it and leave their feedback and comment. We also organizing calls every week for all LPS so they can can just join. Got it. And so so I mean I'm I'm assuming not all 200 LPs join this call but you get a handful of LPs who are interested in participating in providing feedback on these companies. So yeah, usually 20% of our LPS are joining consistently.

Okay. Probably another So we also have like specific experts in the in the in the community with whom we can directly address our concerns or questions. So they're providing like direct feedback asymmetrically not on the calls but still available on the platform. What are the questions that you hear them asking about like often? You know what are they mostly curious about? Is it like founder relationship? You know what is the industry? Is it numbers around? or is it is it everything? What what are you getting repeat questions about?

It's it's a mix of question. It depends on the company. It depends on the field because we are I would say we are industry agnostic in terms of like it should be AI startup but it it could be a health tech it could be I don't know like the developer tools it could be very different implementations of u AI. So that's why we have very our our our LPS are very diversified themselves as well. So I believe that both our world is very diverse and we have to have diversity on every level and in order to have diversity on every level we have to have very diversified investment decision makers. So that's why we are bringing like lots of people to decision making process and so that's why the the the range of question could be very wide from distribution so distribution I think they all into technology they understand technology very good they could ask very deep focused questions about like technology how it's built what's next steps for the technology distribution is always the question because like well it's hard to compete with the tech monsters of course it's less questions about the founders because it's it's hard to get so they're they're asking about that but it's hard to get without the the call or meeting in person meeting.

So that's that's mostly on partners who are involved in communication. yeah, that makes sense. So, I think one of the things that I'm I actually I I'm sure this happens a lot, but I I haven't heard that before where the LPS come together and give feedback and the the kind of like double downing on diverse perspectives, which I think is a very smart thing to do. You know, in big corporate America, this is called stakeholder management. and and you get a lot of different color of different you know conversations and where where people's thoughts go and managing those opinions and some pe most people are not going to agree but I guess my question to you is like you have a lot of people giving you feedback or giving feedback on the company and asking questions you know what happens when there is like a strong pull to a no and a strong pull to a yes are you looking for consent ensis are you looking for like how do we get this you know can we are we capable of helping this company get from A to B what what exactly are you looking for as an outcome from that discussion

so we have sort of like set of red and green flags

it's true people are different and they have a different risk profile venture capital especially or early stage is still very risky so sometimes you are It's mostly about having enough green flags to invest and not have a very like bright red flag. so anyway we are just wait we have a like a weighted system in the mind when like sort of feedback okay probably there is a question there is no question about technology I know the team is is is brilliant they built amazing technology no questions there could be a question about distribution but at the same time we have someone in the community who is could could help with with distribution. So we're trying to got the feedback try to understand whether we can actually help with particular weaknesses or is it that there is a the the red flag is so bright for example they the founders are not hearing for example or like they are moving very slow.

they are not adapting to the current conditions of the market fast enough. So for us for example it would be very red flag. So of course we are like community mentioning community is another like thing thing to do. It's not an easy job but it's very exciting

and we accept that like that's why we are building it. That's why we we are ourselves are not the smartest kids in the room, but we like to think about that like we are but we are bringing lots of people to the fire to to discuss startups and investment opportunities together and to find something very interesting.

Yeah. So tell me more about examples if you could. red flags and green flags that you seen before. Yeah. For the I have I can tell you a story of one of the company that we invested in. because on the paper it looked for us as a no-brainer. So it checked all the all all all all marks in terms of like the the team the founder the market the technology. There was a flag which was not a red flag but it was very concerning flag for me. It was about the founder motivation. He the previous company was grew very fast but sort of like bucks once on the market ruined it. So that the founder took whole expertise and technology and the team to build another venture which was very logical like fit all all all of the trends but I just felt that he was almost burned out and he was trying to put like logical use of what he learned from the previous experience but he's not really into it.

we decided to steal because like venture capital is about like making risk decisions and bad like in a lot of startups we're still invest in the company and you know what in six months he was burned out and he switched to another thing.

Oh wow.

Which is like it's okay. It's very common. but it's also about like listening to like looking carefully into the flags that that that that is during the conversations because like consciously everything was fine. all of our green flags were working but there was one red flag that we decided not to not to notice. Well, then when there's so many green flags, you know, you don't want to notice the the little tiny red ones that are might be popping through, right? So, wait, what happened to that company? Just out of curiosity.

Yeah, it was

resolved or

Yeah, it was went down.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean that's venture capital, right? I mean, you you get a few, right? what are the what are the green flags that you notice that you often notice? So for us it was like to fit in our DVC portrait that I mentioned before like this like mix of I don't know previous startup warrior with engineering soul and curiosity to build from the first first principles so understanding and like how like the decision on go to market strategy and distribution if it's already on like more product market heat stage if not on like understanding on the market and technology funny thing is understanding that like everything you're building now could be changed

right

in in a couple months because like sometimes we've seen that like we've seen a founder who is very sure about what he's building but he's so sure that he's he cannot even accept the fact that it could be different in in a couple of months.

Right. Exactly. And which I think is really interesting because we do so much like due diligence

and understanding do they know the market? Are these the right founders? Is this the right team? Do they have a go to market strategy? And then everything changes. So I almost think like is it a testament to how they work more than what it is that they're working on?

Yeah.

But I I have to say one more thing like it is important to stick to big vision idea. It doesn't mean that like it's also a big problem when we see a founder who switches to one vision to another vision like every six months.

Mhm. For example, I don't know, we have right now we are looking at the company we want to invest. They have a big vision to improve people's sleep scores because they believe that if people sleep better, they will make better decisions and it will be better for the world. That's a big vision and they see the trend that people are taking more care about the longevity about their health metrics about the sleeps and other stuff. So they making they're betting on the field and then they're building different products inside the field like from the mattresses to other things. So the big vision idea is still there but the realization of this big vision could be different depends on what is going on the market how quickly hardware changes or AI software implements health data into the other things. So I believe that like the founders should be consistent with a big vision but accept that the realization could change quickly.

Yeah. Yeah. And I think that again, and I know I say this over and over again on my show, but adaptability seems to be like a really key theme. And that's really at every level, you know, not just like a founder level,

you know, smallmedium businesses, enterprises. I mean, especially in the world that we're living in today with so much change and a ridiculous amount of change, but being able to adapt is really important. And but I liked what you said which was, you know, not changing your idea every 6 months. You really have to have that that big idea or that big mission or vision that you're still trying to accomplish. It's just that you have to be adaptable along the way maybe the way that you get there. Is that what you're saying?

Yeah, exactly. Thank you. Putting putting this into this short sentence.

I I mean I try my best. I really do. Well, in in light of that, how long does that selection process actually take from and I'm sure it's probably different for every company, but you know what what is that se is it? Are you talking about a month? Are you talking about six months? How long does that take to actually select a new company?

Oh, for us it's u like maximum one week.

My goodness. So, from pitch to fund, one week.

Yeah. Yeah. So it could be even couple of days because like we are most of the time we are competing on very so we're trying to invest in very comp competitive rounds

and usually it's the decision have has to be made in in in days not not even in weeks.

Wow. I'm glad I asked that question because I didn't know. So we are investing from 10 to 15 companies every quarter.

Wow. Okay. And what and what is the size of the investment at?

So we right now we have two funds under management under our umbrella. The first one is early stage rolling fund and we invest 100k 200k checks initial checks for example

and from another fund which invests on series A I would say series B maximum

we invest 1 million 3 millions checks

yeah okay got okay got it so so we never leading we are never leading so that's why we are like most of them we following or we are preempting the rounds. So we are not the one who set the terms. That's why we are like competing competing among other angels to be on the round most of the time.

I see. So so when you are actually doing your selection, it's really coming from companies that are already have a leading investor. Sometimes they're not but they are and for us it's actually one of the green flags. So if they have a lid investor that's a big green flag because what we are looking at so the the founder can actually fund raise hire the best and sell to the to the sell to the market. So these three things should click.

I see. I see. Okay. I also think that you you have to also align on, you know, your values as a as a venture capitalist, right? And and what you what you're looking for, which is, you know, can be hard to do, making sure that all of those things fit, which we were talking about. But the other question I had, which is what do you see most founders do with that with their first round or second round? like when they when they they have their investment, what is their game plan? Like the general game plan, not the specific one, right? Like where where are they going first? Are they spending it on ads? Are they spending it on building their team? Are they going to conferences? Like what where is that money going? yeah companies are very different but there's specific market understanding what companies on different stages supposed to do like on the preede they mostly raising to build like first MVP to test it to test that the idea actually is does make sense and they can build it and they actually attracts potential customers.

For the next phase they are trying to do the product market fit. So they already built something and now they are trying to they find the target audience actually can pay money on the next stage. It's u mostly about the growth. So they found market product market fits. It's only about scale and that's the time when they can spend more time more money on advertising and other stuff. So it doesn't make any sense to spend a lot of money on advertising in the like preset stage or not or that you actually can build it and you're not sure who are your target audience,

right? Yeah. No, I I I think I love it. So, for for those who of listeners who are just listening and not watching the video, there's a bunch of balloons in Marina's background that just went up. So, it's beautiful.

one of the things that I'm so curious to learn is what do you spend money on for product market fit? And by that I mean like usually like when I think about product market fit I'm thinking about okay I'm going and I'm talking to specific people with a specific background and I'm asking them for feedback or I'm asking them to even buy my product and see what that feedback looks like and then every conversation will tweak me in a different direction to help me understand who my ICP is which is my you know ideal customer. So what do you define as how you would spend money for product market fit?

It really depends on the product and we are like both investing a lot in both in consumer and

B2B B2B as well. so it could be very different strategies and you know what like right now with AI it's getting like interesting and interesting. we've seen a lot of companies who are getting like first million in IR just team of two without spending like extra money on on the team or extra money on like I know sales and other stuff. So you can automate a lot of processes even like building company from zero to one.

Mhm. And actually and but there are other things that we have to take into account. We've seen a lot of lots of company who got this first million in the bank but they're not recurring revenue. It's mostly like from pilot revenues because like more and more enterprises are experimenting with AI as well. So they're like curious to try the pilot. It doesn't mean that it's consistent recurring revenue as well,

right?

Not all of the founders understand that. I couldn't answer easily on that question. It really depends on like lots of things. I I could see more and more companies that are spending less money on that by just automating lots of processes.

Mhm. Yeah.

I want to take a step back because I've been I've been drilling you. I know. But how when you think about the unicorns that you found, the teams or the pitches or the energy or whatever it is, what is it to you that you have kind of seen as you've seen as a pattern or a common theme or a spark or a signal that they all maybe all have in common?

Well, for us it's like two things. As I said, since they're repeat founders, we are very curious to walk with them through their past experience to see how they made decisions before. As an example, I know we have team Western who built Pandora and who came through all all ups and downs during the journey when like they almost died like don't don't have enough money they didn't pay salary but still we're like sure about what they're building and actually build a great company going with him through through the journey was very interesting we have Conrad who who built Teachable and it was not a unicorn but I think they sold it for 250 millions which was a success and he started a new company right now kick so we are again we we are going with him for his previous journey trying to understand like okay what's next for him why he decided to build again why he's excited about this particular industry right Now how he actually assessing the previous journey what lessons did did he learn there that's a lot of information just from talking to him

to them about about that and when I was talking about energy I was talking a lot about like does this particular founder has enough energy to move on to to be to raise funds to to to attract customers to attract investors. Yeah. Because we've sometimes you've seen especially like coming from Eastern Europe with a lot of great technical technical people. We see that they are amazing in building products but they're so bad in selling and sometimes it's a lot about this energy I'm talking about. It's not enough to be just to build. It's like things together.

Yeah. And do you ever see founders who that are not builders that find right and like find engineers or or is it mostly you know engineers led I mean kind of to what your thesis was which is like builders but like do they do you find founders that are that are good pairs or

so that's just our focus because this is this what we understand mostly so we we understand

like more like this engineer souls. It's not about like as I as I mentioned, it's not only about like building technology. It's about how they accessing the world. So they are looking at things and they're curious how it's built and how they can take it apart and build it better. So because our expertise and our network and our understanding lie a lot into the AI research network I would say. So this is what we understand and we are working mostly like most of our founders either technical founders or like technical engineers.

Okay. Yeah. I and that I think that it's important to stay focused on what you know I mean you even as as a founder yourself that you have been you know and turn investor I think that you're staying with how you are successful as a founder by doing that right. So that's really important. How do you get founders who have this engineering mindset to sell the product to go into marketing and selling and maybe even be on a podcast, you know, one day? What what what does that look like? What does that transformation look like? Well, you know, most of them have this motto. They they so don't they so don't like to sell products. So they building products that sell themselves just anything they they can automate and this product they do and they're building products that good that they they not do not require selling.

we have a founder who whose selling process was so bad they they were the product was sold in despite of all his efforts to actually ruin the process. And when we ask him how how are you doing this? He said like I don't know they just all this like inbounds I don't do anything. They're just calling me to like asking me for the phone. Oh my goodness. So people are just calling him for the product and he's like not answering or

he's not like he said like he's not building anything specific to people. just like he's yeah working with in all in bounds which is actually for us was also a bad fact because it's it's okay for the like first like product market fit stage but for scaling if you want to build really big company you still have to build the sale process you have to work with your clients you have to understand their needs and you have to talk to them

yeah absolutely yeah exactly you have to I mean I I don't know any other way I mean that's the way that I approach. But I mean, I know my husband's an engineer and he's like this, you know, he can build something and like the product would sell itself. Okay. So, so last question and I I think I mean we've we've we've really dug deep into this episode on this topic. So, I appreciate everything that you've shared so far. I think the last question I have is around like the future of AI leadership. You are essentially selecting the leaders of our future.

AI is going to be everywhere. If it if it's not everywhere already, it will be very soon. How do you think about you know that responsibility? How you think about what the future might hold? Like what what are your thoughts on ba basically being a participant in selecting our future leaders?

You're absolutely right. But it's not about like AI itself being a problem. It's about how people with AI are working. So what are they bringing to the table? What are they feeding into the foundational models? What they are prompting? What they asking? I think that the venture capital is playing a great role in it. Nowadays we already can automate a lot of things with AI in our decision making process and AI is much better in I don't know sourcing the data to in analyzing in like creating investment memorandums and making I don't want to say decisions make but making like summaries and conclusions and other stuff but decisions are still on people and people are making decisions using these scores but they also making decisions on investing not in the companies but most of the time investing in people as well in venture capital an early stage is very important because it's at that stage there's almost almost nothing but people that's why I we in DVC we believe that the world should be very diverse it's already very it's it's diverse but in terms of venture capital the venture capital was not diverse at all.

So that's why we believe that venture capital should be more diverse than it's now. More and more people have to make decisions on venture capital because it's boost entrepreneurship, it's boost new products, it's boost technology in the sort of in certain trends. So we want people more people to join the conversation about investments and in AI and making and investments not only as I mentioned in startups but also in in people. We are actually very proud that in spite of our like small niche that most of our LPS are engineers and tech founders. They are very diverse. They are from different countries. We have lots of women. I I think we have 30% of our portfolio had at least one female founder in the company for for repeat founders in AI. It's it's a lot.

Yeah.

We are paying a lot of attention to that. We are paying a lot of attention to motivation, the big visions of the founders. We always asking like what is the big picture and what they want to sell solve eventually. We have our set of values like for example we are not invest in anything like I don't know alcohol or gambling or even defense.

Mhm.

So we believe that venture capital can bring a lot of value especially in early stage if people are involved in decision making into humans. Yeah, I I agree with you. I think that having those different perspectives really make decisions much better and stronger. I think in my time I have witnessed unfortunately a lot of group think and you know cultures that are just move to make decisions out of fear

and it's it's really heartbreaking to see honestly but I think that the way that you have set up set this up set up the fund and the way that you guys make decisions being able to hear and identify all the different things that you would have never really understood by yourself. I think that that is just a genius way to approach it and I'm very excited to hear about your next unicorn. So

yeah. Yeah.

I think maybe one more thing I would add in is that I believe that we as society evolve not isolated. We evolve in tribes group group group in communities. we survive because we have each other. We survive because we can sit around the fire, share food, share stories. Loneliness is a problem. Most of the founders feel lonely because because of specific of their journey because they have to always wear mask to I don't know to protect confidence and success to all the stakeholders. That's why it's so important to have people around founders whom they can trust and with whom they can be without their mask with honest because when we have each other when they can feel in this like constantly changing world with whom they can feel safe. they can actually make better decisions and look into the future without fear but without like this more confidence because like we have each other that's why we are building community and I hope like it's it doesn't necessarily supposed to be like we see community but people need people I wish everyone have a tribe around them to be to be grounded and to to feel this human touch and to make better decisions.

We'll leave it to a female VC to to tell the truth. Right.

Well, thank you so much for being on the show today. It's it's been a pleasure. Likewise. Thank you so much for hosting you.

Visit us at leaderbook.ai. Your support as a subscriber means the world to us. So, thank you for tuning in. I'm Felicia Shakuba. Let's connect on LinkedIn.