Why Founders Win or Lose: Inside VC Sourcing, Competition & Fund Tactics - E572

"So the reason why sourcing is difficult is that because thousands of startups are launched every year with no public data. So if say anybody here right wanted to basically build a company, so let's say Jose says I want to build a fashion tech startup and now's my time to make it go. Too bad Zilingo didn't know how to make it work but now I know how to do it. How would I know? I wouldn't know because he's a startup, he's talking to his founder friends in US Enterprise Club or whatever it is, Entrepreneurship Club. There's no information that tells me you're doing what you're building, what you're thinking, how good you are. So there's no public data, there's no announcement that you have launched. Secondly, the founders who are really good tend to accelerate very quickly. I gave you an example already that a founder can, within a single day, have multiple bids to happen. So the stronger you are, the faster you go. So again, we're looking for power law founders. That 1% tend to accelerate very quickly." - Jeremy Au, Host of BRAVE Southeast Asia Tech Podcast

"I think there is actually a real insight to this, right. The thesis here is that since the majority of the fund will be generated by a few companies only, you should just invest very widely in your first spread and then double down aggressively on the companies that generate home run returns within the next two years. So with a company starting to rocket ship up, what happens is that a lot of people feel like, Hey I can't tell so I just want to go very wide. Because the worst-case scenario is that you went too narrow and said no to 20 other companies, and then the home run company that starts to accelerate takes off in the company you said no to. So you should have a wide top of the funnel and then narrow aggressively onto that." - Jeremy Au, Host of BRAVE Southeast Asia Tech Podcast

"But of course the reason why VCs and private equity make money is because we deal with proprietary information. We know things that other people don't know and don't understand; it's not publicly available. So we are trying to understand, and the people in crypto made money because they understood before others did that crypto was going to be a big thing eventually, so they knew that. Same thing for AI, not everybody understands how big AI is going to be, but they also don't know where it's going to show up. So proprietary information and secrets are really important to make you a stronger VC or not." - Jeremy Au, Host of BRAVE Southeast Asia Tech Podcast

Jeremy Au breaks down how Limited Partners shape the Southeast Asia venture capital landscape and why founders should care. He explores the hidden motivations of sovereign wealth funds, endowments, corporations, and family offices, and how they quietly influence funding decisions. Jeremy reveals how startups move through brutal funding stages, why VCs compete fiercely at the same stage yet collaborate across them, and how different VC fund strategies from index portfolios to venture builders change founder outcomes. Finally, he dives into the race for proprietary information, sharing how top VCs win deals before competitors even know they exist. This conversation is essential for founders navigating opaque markets and VCs fighting to stay sharp in a crowded field.

00:00 LP Motives Shape VC Bets: Jeremy reveals how sovereign funds, endowments, and corporates invest with different goals that impact founders' funding journeys.
01:54 Hidden Pressures Behind LP Capital: LP expectations for returns, diversification, and learning create invisible forces that shape VC-founding dynamics.
04:11 Brutal Startup Journey & Death Valleys: From FFF to IPO, Jeremy explains why early-stage founders face tough gaps and why VCs step in selectively.
08:41 Four VC Fund Playbooks Explained: Jeremy breaks down index portfolios, concentrated bets, multistage giants, and venture builders and what each means for startups.
14:23 Winning in the Sourcing Race: Why speed, proprietary information, and reference checks separate top VCs from the rest in Southeast Asia's fast-moving markets.

(00:54) And so you have to understand who these limited partners are. Limited partners obviously have several (01:00) attributes. They vary by mandate and approach. So there are obviously sovereign wealth funds, right? we have Temasek, we have GIC, we have all these other folks, but what's interesting about sovereign wealth funds is they represent countries and they effectively have an unlimited time horizon because they just wanna make sure that they can invest over the next century, endowments and foundations.

(01:19) I met the Harvard University Endowment a few weeks ago. Their perspective is that they want to invest the donations that they receive and they wanna invest it so that they're able to grow the pot of money to provide scholarships and so forth.

(01:30) Then there are corporations that are obviously investing as limited partners. We'll talk about it, but some of it will have a strategic reason primarily. Yeah, they just want to invest. So Samsung has a corporate VC fund. They also invest in other VC funds, but obviously they're trying to keep an ear out who are the cool.

(01:46) Hardware technology startups that are relevant for them in B2B or B2C. Obviously they're family offices. So I was just talking to somebody today and then she was saying that, Hey, we wanna raise money from family offices. 'cause these family offices are patient capital. They're (02:00) intergenerational.

(02:00) They're not necessarily as professionalized as the sovereign wealth funds or foundations. They have an asset and focus on wealth preservation. But they have strategic goals as well. And obviously we have fund of funds, so these are. If you don't know which fund to invest in, you can invest in a fund of funds.

(02:18) 'cause this team promises to invest on your behalf. So for example in Singapore there are some fund of funds that represent us. So basically if you are a Singaporean or Southeast Asian and you don't know American Fund to invest in. You can invest in a fund of funds that will take your money in Singapore, and then they'll deploy them in US VC funds for a small percentage of this deployment.

(02:40) And obviously the last thing is there's high net worth individuals. So if you're rich and well off, then you can afford to be an LP in various people's funds as well. What we see as result is that LPs have different motivations about why they wanna do this. Some of them are focused on. High return on investment.

(02:57) So I'm trying to get 25% (03:00) return year on year. Financial considerations, what I'm trying to go for, obviously we understand there's high risk, so obviously I will have money in bonds, I'll money in public stock markets. I'll do some active trading. I will do some. Private equity funds and maybe 1% of my portfolio is diversified into VC funds to generate a return profile.

(03:18) That's one. Two is people may want to have diversification of VC without having to invest directly. They're interested in startups as part of diversification approach. Next is sometimes you want insights to the geography and industry. A lot of your corporate VC funds are trying to do that.

(03:33) So for example, a lot of the banks have incubators and accelerators for FinTech fund startups, right? Because what they're saying is, I wanna know who are all the FinTech companies out there because all these FinTech startups want to eventually disrupt me one day, right? So if I put a little bit money and spread the pot around, then they're all part of my network in that sense, right?

(03:51) Then obviously the last is a sensor network. some of you may be like, okay, I'm investing in early stage funds so that you can write the seed check or the series a (04:00) check. But when I am a larger company as a sovereign wealth fund or a large corporate. I can invest in a series B, series C, series D, series Z.

(04:08) So maybe one we think about it is you look at Microsoft, right? So Microsoft obviously invests a lot into early stage investments the biggest late stage investment they ever did was open ai, right? they just announced this week that they're opening up an office in Singapore.

(04:22) So maybe some of you will get to work there in time to come, right? And last year, of course, sometimes people will invest in a VC fund because they wanna learn from the GP about how to run a VC fund. So they're rich, they put some money there, then they learn, they get connected, and then just using it to pick their brain.

(04:37) But I think overall the key mandate is that no matter what all this goes back to it, is that there's a belief that if your VC is part of your portfolio, it'll beat public market returns by about 5%. Over a 20 year time period. So that would be a yardstick. Obviously, if you are saving up to buy a house, a HGB 20 years, a liquid investment makes no.

(04:59) But (05:00) if you are family office, et cetera, then it makes more sense. VCs do collaborate, but also compete with one another. What we should look at is that. If you look at startups, they generally go from left to right? In terms of time. And from here to up is the revenue chart, right?

(05:14) About how much revenue you have. So what we see is that historically when startups found they don't need a bit of money 'cause they figuring out the idea, and then after that they start losing a lot of money because they go through a of death. So they're going through r and d, they're figuring out a stock, they don't have much revenue.

(05:29) and then they start making a little bit of money and then they make more and more money. And then eventually the IPO on the right hand side. so generally from the left to right is, the co-founders meet up then they accelerators, they get some angels, they get some money from FFF, which means.

(05:43) Friends, family fools. 'cause family invested you because they love you. Mark Zuckerberg's dad invested in his son and loved him and turns out it was a good investment. Obviously friends because they know you from work or whatever, so they trust you. They put money in you, obviously fools because, you just think it's a good idea.

(05:59) So he put money in it, (06:00) but it's very high risk, right? 'cause we talked about it. This is a very high debt rate. Now after that, you have your early stage capital, your funds, then you have your professional VCs. You have your strategic alliances with corporate VC funds. Then you have your growth equity funds like Tiger Global.

(06:13) And then obviously it goes to your first, second, third round mezzanine and eventually your IPO, the public market. So we go to public market means that this is available to all retail investors. Any stranger can invest in your company at the IPO stage, obviously this has changed over time. Obviously that the value of death has gotten larger and larger. So you look at open ai, Elon Musk gave them, like a hundred million dollars a lot of other folks in the early stages and a bunch of all that money with no revenue for almost 10 years in a row until, and then suddenly now there are multi-billion dollar company in terms of revenues as well.

(06:44) That would be an example of a company of a very large value of death, but a very steep growth rate that you see here. So VCs do collaborate across stages. So for example an angel will probably refer you to an early stage VC fund. Early stage VC fund will refer your deal (07:00) to a late stage fund because, we understand that we have a certain role to play because I specialize in high risk founder bets.

(07:07) VCs have called me afterwards and they're saying like, Hey Jeremy, you invested in this company. What do you think about this guy? And I'll tell them, Hey, I think that this guy is good because of these reasons. Over the past two years he's grown really well and I look forward to him, blah, blah, blah.

(07:20) We are all each other's a bit of a, I wouldn't call it assembly line for founders, but we are cooperating and syndicating that deal across time 'cause we specialize in different parts of it. That being said. If you are in the same stage as me, we are competitive, right? So we mentioned earlier, last time around in last week, it took us about less than a day, half a day to make a decision.

(07:40) VCs compete with each other in a vertical stage, but tend to collaborate with other across stages. So that's something for you to be thoughtful about. 

(07:47) So first of all, I'm going to give this in a context of Southeast Asia numbers so that you roughly understand the staging. Obviously these are rookie numbers compared to Silicon Valley. So if you look at this pre-seed is 0.1 to about million dollars.

(07:59) This comes (08:00) from friends and family and yourself and accelerators. And normally you're looking to build that minimum viable product. The prototype, maybe a little bit of revenue from your early customers. Then your seed is considered your seed VCs, the angels. So normally you have at least a hundred thousand million dollars of revenue with early adopters.

(08:17) Then series A in Southeast Asia, roughly be around $5 million. At a 20 million valuation around there. And then, you've demonstrated product market fit. You are ready to keep growing at least two to three times year on year. You have about almost a million dollars of annual recurring revenue.

(08:29) Then your series B will be around $10 million at $15 million. So you're to expand more geographies, more product expansion and you're gonna grow a lot faster. And then a CVC plus you're going to put in a $20 million check, a $50 million check. And then, yeah, it's quite clear that you're a market leader in your home country or home industry and you everyday extent and build more and more so what VCs are doing as a result.

(08:52) And many of you will meet these VC associates or cities recruiters and so forth is they're doing several things. They'll be looking to source, then they'll be (09:00) looking to select, then they're looking to support and they're looking to exit. So sourcing is basically saying, do I even know you exist?

(09:07) Do you know I exist? Can I even have that connection in the first place? The second part is can I make a good judgment? even if I meet a million startups, do I pick the right 20 startups to invest in your sense of judgment? Then you support even after 20, they're gonna be make or break moments. Can you support them?

(09:23) Can you coach them? Can you bring them up to the next stage so they're able to outcome? And lastly, of course is can you exit? Do you know what you need to do to exit and get that cash reward to pass it back to your other folks? As a result VCs will try to design the fun strategy across four major VC teams that you see.

(09:41) So when you meet a vc, they normally belong to these four categories. So the index portfolio is your accelerators. So these tend to be your, obviously DBS accelerator.

(09:52) Y Combinator as well. 500 startups, iterative. These are considered index portfolios. So what I mean by (10:00) that is that the less polite version that people will call it is, they call it spray and pray. 'cause it's spraying investments everywhere is pray that they work out.

(10:06) I think there is actually a real insight to this, right? So the thesis here is that since the majority of fund will be generated by a few companies only, you should just invest very widely in your first spread, and then you should double down aggressively on the companies that generate that home run returns within the next two years.

(10:25) So with a company starting to rocket ship up, what happens is that a lot of people feel like, Hey, I can't tell. So I just wanna go very wide because the worst case scenario is that you went too narrow and then you said no to 20 other companies. And then the home run company that starts to accelerate.

(10:41) Takes off in a company said no to. So you should have a wide part of the funnel and then narrow aggressively onto that. these companies, because they're supporting so many companies like Antler for example, within the systemize, the support, they'll use batch manufacturing, right?

(10:55) So Everybody starts in April. Everybody graduates in June. So there's this (11:00) kind of tempo where they try to have a batch. The second part is what we call the concentrated bets. So these are your standard approach that we'll see.

(11:07) normally this will be about 20 companies that they invest in. So what they're saying is actually, we're pretty good at selecting, that's what they say. We don't need to have as wide top of the funnel and to double down. We're actually pretty good at selecting even on the first time around. So because of that, we will take on more work.

(11:24) We are willing to write larger checks per company, but we're also willing to lead the round. We're willing to find the co-investors. We're willing to sit on the board. 'cause we don't have to do 40 companies, right? We only have 20 companies to deal with. So there's that amount of, personalized support that happens. So next few ventures, haystack, monks Ventures will be good examples companies where they write about 20 investments per fund. Then we have multistage funds. So multistage would be our famous ones like Sequoia to some extent light speed. Tiger Global obviously was a big one.

(11:56) But basically what they say is remember that chart they say, Hey. I don't need to specialize (12:00) only in the early stage, at the early stage of the index. I don't need to be the only one to do concentrated bets. I can do both. I can do multiple slots. I can do the early stage, I can do the middle stage, I can do the late stage.

(12:11) Because what they're saying is, if I can make the right investment here, then I should double down here. I shouldn't give that space to somebody else. I should continue to invest here. So they keep investing. They see this as limited real estate. And that's quite fair because if you think about it in every VC round that you have there isn't that much space for allocation, right?

(12:29) So the point of view is if I'm a very good index portfolio, why should I let someone else make money from the hard work I did at this point of time, right? So I should own every stage of this value chain. The last category that you see here is venture builders. So they tend to say Hey, 

(12:43) We have ideas. We think that founders that are good by the organic ecosystem is scarce. So we are willing to seed hire and collaborate to help them build a startup. And so as a result, we're gonna own 50% of the equity. We're gonna take a large chunk of the equity upfront. And then examples will be b, c, G, (13:00) digital Internet, obviously a rocket internet that owns solar.

(13:03) They use their own Lazada, for example. Yeah. And then Manela is a Temasek Venture Studio as well. So they'll hire people to work for them to build out the companies that they have imagined. So these are the four major categories that you see for VC funds. And the fact is, if you look at this some VC funds are really better at sourcing, selecting and nurturing units.

(13:25) The other companies, so for example if you look at this list, so what you see here is Union Square Ventures, Sequoia Capital. And all the way down to the bottom is just Anderson Horowitz and Y Combinator. So there's a list of all VC funds they have. Then the bar chart shows what is the number of startups that they have, right?

(13:43) That they invested in as part of the portfolio. And then on the other they say, what is the percentage of unicorns? So what is the percentage of their portfolio turn out to be actual unicorns? Okay, so let's start the most famous one, which is Y company, the most of you have seen it. So this is a classic index portfolio.

(13:58) They've invested in (14:00) 632 startups, right? By far the most of everybody else, right? And 1% of their companies is unicorns, only 1%. 

(14:09) But you must remember that they set a lot of people right? And then only 1% of the unicorn, 1% is one out of 100. Does that make sense? So the filtration rate is, I'm happy to set a hundred startups and have only 1% of them become unicorns. But then when that company is a unicorn, I will double down and put up more money into that.

(14:26) On the other end of the scale, you have Union Square Ventures and Sakara Capital. So Union Square Ventures had only 62 investments. They have made very concentrated bets. And 8% of their portfolio is unicorns. So 8% is basically about one out of every 12 startups. So that means, in a standard portfolio of 20, basically about two companies are unicorns.

(14:47) Sequoia Capital is much more of the multi-stage capital, right?

(14:51) So they do multiple investments. And so they have a different playbook from Union Square which is a concentrated bet. Benchmark Capital is a concentrated bet as well, so they (15:00) don't do multi-stage. And obviously we have a whole bunch of different folks that you have here as well.

(15:04) So it's not your face, it's not who you are. It is basically the actual LinkedIn profiles of the people.

(15:12) But you need to be able to see that story and make it look. Attractive. So carrying on here is that what VCs are doing all the time is that they have source deals, right? So you can't support them, you can't exit the deal if you didn't see any deals at all. So the ability to source deals is very important to actually be able to see the deal, right?

(15:32) And as a result, one way to think about it, and this is quite equivalent for a normal VC fund in Southeast Asia, so a VC fund in Southeast Asia is seeing about 5,000 startups. Then they'll qualify about 1,500 in a year, so that means about 3,500 of them are literally disqualified because they're not really real.

(15:52) They're really horrible. They're just bad. Then out of the 500 startups that have a shot of it. Maybe about 300 about 20%, (16:00) or one fifth of them will be prioritized. So you can call it grade A, B, C maybe 'cause they have a strong founder, good product, market fit, good idea, good timing, whatever it is.

(16:09) Maybe a strong prior investor, but something gives them some sort of signal in that. Then in general the VC team will normally investigate about one third of them. About a hundred of them will have a deep dive. So they'll do a beyond the first coffee call, et cetera. You're diving into the numbers, you're looking and trying to understand the business idea.

(16:26) You're doing full-out meetings, and then presenting it is, you've done a research memo, you've done analysis, you've done modeling, you try to get buy-in. So you present 50 of those startups about once a week to the investment committee, and then the investment committee will decide to invest in 10. So about 20% of this final group.

(16:44) So one we think about it is that if you are a VC associate, you join. You have a lead, there's some sort of newspaper article or a accelerator came up with iterative, like all those. You log all of them into the CRM and do about 5,000, then you'll qualify. (17:00) So basically you're saying like, okay, I'm looking for, I'm a Southeast Asia fund, so I'm gonna disqualify all the Indian ones, I'm gonna disqualify all the China ones, I'm going to disqualify all the American ones.

(17:08) So it just disqualifies with this screening, desktop research prioritization. So out of the thousand five startups that there, you probably meet all of them. For a 30 minute coffee chat, the one hour coffee chat. So me imagine meeting 1,500 people in a year, right? So basically meeting all of them for coffee.

(17:24) Then you prioritize 300. That means that you have a second coffee of them. You have a third coffee of them. Then a deep dive Out of the 300 that you are prioritizing and you have this multiple coffee chat, a deep dive in a hundred, you probably be like, you start looking at the data room, you start looking at different things.

(17:39) You start doing reference calls, you're trying to get an understanding. you've done, like I said, is associate. You've done the modeling, you've done the data room, you've done a buy-in, and then eventually make a decision to invest in 10. So basically, the top VC funds would normally invest in far less than 1%.

(17:53) Of the startups that they see right from 5,000 all the way down to 10. And this would be quite normal for Southeast Asia Fund (18:00) in the US as you imagine they're doing global investments. So I met my friends in New York. We're catching up. They do quantitative engineering, so they're bots are scraping the internet.

(18:08) The moment you say on your LinkedIn, you change your profile to stealth startup, then the bot will just scrap you and they'll just immediately send you an email after that to. Log you into the CRM, right? 'cause this person has a global mandate, then after they just disqualify.

(18:23) So the reason why sourcing is difficult is that because thousands of startups are launched every year with no public data, okay? So if say anybody here, right? Wanted to basically build a company. So let's say Jose says, I wanna build a fashion tech startup, and now it's my time to make it go.

(18:42) Too bad. Slingo didn't know how to make it work, but now I know how to do it. How would I know? I wouldn't know because he up a startup, he's talking to his founder friends in US Enterprise Club, or whatever it is, entrepreneurship club. There's no information that tells me you're doing what you're building, what you're thinking, how good you are.

(18:58) So there's no public (19:00) data, there's no announcement that you have launched, right? Secondly, the founders who are really good tend to accelerate very quickly, right? So I give you an example already that a founder can, within a single day have multiple bits, right? That happen. So the stronger you are, the faster you go.

(19:13) So again, we're looking for power law founders, right? So that 1% tend to accelerate very quickly. And for example the standard rule is that normally people raise VC funding this year, and then in two years time they'll raise a new round of VC funding. But that will be for the average startup. A strong founder would normally raise every year, right?

(19:30) So they raise down for two years, but one year down the road, it's so attention, so hot. They grew so fast, they hire, they have another VC funding straight away. And of course the thing is that these founders get to pick the best VCs in terms of competitiveness. But also, let's be real, every other smart VC team is competing against you, right?

(19:47) So if you're a VC associate and you're working at, Sequoia, guess what? Peak 15 is competing against you. There are so many of these associates and teammates who are all competing with you equally smart, equally hardworking, equally incentivized.(20:00) 

(20:00) And their job is to find this. Diamond in the rough before you do and build a relationship. So it's actually a competitive space. if you are, there's a lot of founders like, Hey Jeremy, I'm worried that I go out there and people are not gonna love me, blah, blah, blah. And I don't know how to get their attention.

(20:14) I always tell people, look, if you're good, every VC will fight to be getting your time. If you're bad, then you'll have to struggle and fight and try to get people's attention. So that's a tricky part for it. How good a founder are you?

(20:25) So as a result, funds will seek to build information engines that are able to help them drive this proprietary information. 'cause the proprietary information they're trying to understand is. Are you legit? Are you good? Are you gonna outperform? Are you gonna be a home run in time to come become a unicorn in 10 years?

(20:39) What are clues right now that, tell me that. So obviously we think about it in two major dimensions. inbound versus outbound. So inbound is saying, how do I attract you to apply to me? A lot of you are not even startup founders, but you have heard of Y Combinator. Why?

(20:53) 'cause Y Combinator's out there, put a press release. People say I'm a Y Combinator. People go on LinkedIn and say, I belong to Mental Health (21:00) Open Bracket, YC S 22, but they show off that they are from Y Combinator because they use it as a signal. The same way somebody would say, I went to Harvard as a signal, I went to Stanford as a signal.

(21:10) Like I'm showing they off. So in that sense, inbound marketing newsletters, is a lot of podcasts on crypto and biotech and health. Lightspeed recently released a report. So there's a lot of thought leadership that is there and goes out there so that founders read it and they remember the brand of your.

(21:26) VC fund and then come to you over time. So it's inbound. Now, obviously there's outbound. I mentioned earlier that there are bots out there. So you say founder, then they'll pull your email, they'll write email. There'll be some VC associates who'll be told to do call emails.

(21:39) Obviously there's LinkedIn, there's demo days. Then people ping you off the demo day. There's also two types of information. There's public information versus proprietary information. So for example, you're building something in AI Companion.

(21:49) We have public market reports, we have market information. We understand some things about your peers and competitors, but. Ai companionship is a very new field versus if you told me, Jeremy, I'm building a company, oil and gas, there's (22:00) a lot of information, there's a lot of public information about oil and gas shell, bp, et cetera.

(22:05) There's a lot of information is there, so public information is key. But of course the reason why VCs and private equity make money is 'cause we deal with proprietary information. We things other people don't know. And don't understand, it's not publicly available. So we are trying to understand, and the people in crypto made money because they understood before other people did that crypto was gonna be a big thing eventually.

(22:26) So they knew that. So same thing for ai. Not everybody understands how big AI is gonna be, but also don't know where it's gonna show up. So proprietary information secrets are really important to make you a stronger VC or not. So for example, if I met somebody like. Gin yang.

(22:42) So Gin y. If I meet gin young and somebody else has not met Jin Zhang, that's proprietary information, right? Because I know who Jin Zhang is, but the person does not know, right? So we have reference checks. So for example, I've done reference checks. I had to go, we were looking at investment.

(22:56) I wanted to do a deal. So Singapore, a small place. I look at mutual (23:00) connections. I called. And asked a mutual friend and, Hey, can I tell me about this person? Is this person good or bad, whatever. And of course, the person said, Hey, this person was a good colleague, did all these things. So I was, it was a positive reference check.

(23:11) Then at the end of the reference call, I was like, anything else you wanna add? And the person was like but I'm not sure if this is relevant or not. But, back in junior college, he dumped his girlfriend really hard and really badly. And I was like, wow, what a piece of information to know right now.

(23:25) Obviously from my perspective it's irrelevant to whether it's good founder or not, but that's deep information I can get, in a sense. So I'm like, okay, now I know that information. But you can imagine there's all kinds of other pieces of information. I know. So if you're a bad performer at work, it's very easy for me to call your colleague and be like, Hey, was this person.

(23:40) A good performer. You go out there and say, Hey, I did this and that, and then it's very easy for us to double check. It's very important for us. And we've seen this in Southeast Asia, there have been a lot of fraud cases. People are saying they have a certain degree and people didn't care, didn't check.

(23:55) So they invested in them and then turns out they did not have that degree from a university, (24:00) which you think about. It's quite crazy 'cause such an easy thing to check. But then nobody checked and they raised millions of dollars of capital and it turns out to be false. So it just goes to show that the people who checked and said, I do not want to invest anymore after checking.

(24:13) They save themselves some money as well, right? So you need to think about that piece of information.