DN #37: Venture Comedy, Decks Made in Claude & Why Investors Aren't Your Friends (w/ Shaun Gold)

Shaun Gold:but even on some of the stuff the screens where they share their deck, they're sharing it from within Claude. And I see the prompts. I see the prompts make it look like it's a unicorn, make it look like it's a billion dollars, make it look like Airbnb. Like they don't even take it out. Like I can see the prompts. So of course I'm not gonna be polite and ignore it, I'm gonna call it out, right?

Niklas:Hi, huge welcome to you, my lovely listeners. So glad you're here. Today, you're joining me for a chat with Sean. Sean is the creator of Venture Comedy. Sean, so lovely to have you.

Shaun Gold:Th that is the nicest kind of intro I think I've ever heard. My lovely listeners. That's so nice. It feels all warm. I feel like I just wanna listen for that.

Niklas:I hope you guys stay to be honest because this guy actually made a transition from nightlife ninja to venture capital and venture comedy. Maybe you can walk us a bit through it. sounds really interesting.

Shaun Gold:It wasn't that complicated. Both industries are a joke. I mean, it really are. yeah, I mean listen, Nightlife was a big part of what I did, right? Marketing, relationship management, all that kind of stuff. It's the same thing as as in venture capital, except venture capital has has less fun, more money, worse people. Did I mention it has less fun? but yeah, it's you know, it's it's the same principles. It's the same principles as, you know, for me at least. One managing archetypes and personas, two, calling out the bees. Yes. I mean it's it's the same thing, except in nightlife we don't really have Twitter. you know, but it's the same thing. People bragging about what they do, what they know, who they know, all of that. So it's it's really similar. you know, I I got out of nightlife because eventually you all have to get out. You might not be done with it, but it'll be done with you. got suckered in the startups, suckered into them, and then I got suckered in the venture capital. And I just every time I kept hearing someone talk. I kept making a quip and a joke and I started writing them down and it became a whole little niche thing for me that now brings me into conferences, classrooms, and even shows like this. So it works! So so yeah, dare dare to dream as I say.

Niklas:What is it like to roast the startup world? I mean, is it really different from being a VC in some sense, or is it the same at the end of the day and they do it anyway?

Shaun Gold:They do it anyway, they just don't have the the tacks. Or the wit to do it like I do. I mean, listen, everyone, you know, you have what the VCs put out publicly. We we we come in at the first check, we're looking for scrappy founders, you want to invest where no one else is investing, blah, blah, blah, blah. But at the end of the day, when they see a decker take a meeting, they're all saying the same thing to each other anyway. What is this person thinking? This was horrible. Why did I sit through this? This is a hundred pages of slop, all of that. So they're not roasting it publicly. I'm roasting it publicly, but they are doing it privately. it's just that that's how the game is. Everyone it's a small world, everybody talks to one another, everybody kind of shares deal flow if it's worth sharing, and everyone also shares who to avoid. So yes, if you think someone is crazy and not in a good way, people will share that. Like this person is crazy. I wouldn't take a meeting with them, let alone invest.

Niklas:When you look at it from a venture comedy perspective, what do you think is the biggest skill from the comedy world that founders and VCs undervalue?

Shaun Gold:Biggest skill? I think right now, the ability to think on your feet. Especially now because the just everybody is so used to being told what to do by their AI tools. Right? They're used to prompting and they're used to taking a response. They are outsourcing what little intelligence they had to super intelligence that is giving them wrong information and defaulting to the average of what it's trained on. So of course nothing good is gonna come from it. I mean, I see things where it just it's to the point where founders don't prepare anymore. And what I mean by that is that instead of having judgment on a pitch deck, you know that little thing that you're asking a complete stranger for millions of dollars for the one mandatory thing that anyone that's gonna invest is gonna require. they literally put as little amount of time into it as possible. They go to Claude, here's my information, make me a deck. They don't realize that every other founder is doing it, so all the decks look the same. It's even worse when they're presenting, because I I serve as a judge of A lot of startup competitions and accelerators and just did a speech with TechCrunch, not to brag, gonna brag. but even on some of the stuff the screens where they share their deck, they're sharing it from within Claude. And I see the prompts. I see the prompts make it look like it's a unicorn, make it look like it's a billion dollars, make it look like Airbnb. Like they don't even take it out. Like I can see the prompts. So of course I'm not gonna be polite and ignore it, I'm gonna call it out, right? so I think that just one thing that I I could call out, but there's just so many. I mean there there's so many that we see on a daily basis and you know we laugh it off, but a lot of people are thinking that they're going to be a billionaire from their I don't know their their AI for sushi app or something, and then they just put an hour of thought into it, use AI and try who can I meet for investors who invest at the intersection of food, fish and an AI, who wants to get rich, all of this. And it's always terrible. It's always slop. It's always something horrible. so yeah, that's just one thing. But th there's plenty of others, both on the venture side as far as all the kind of content they put out, as well as on the founder side, and as well as on the the picks and shovel side. You know, the people that I will raise a million for you. I will teach you how to get to eight hundred thousand dollars a month MRR. All that stuff. All you gotta do is comment below! Like there's so much of that garbage on X, LinkedIn, YouTube, whatever the case may be. And there's always someone there willing to believe it. And it's it's it's it's all terrible. So yeah, I could I could go for days talking about it, but I know we have a limited time. So yes, that is a long-winded answer to a to a short question.

Niklas:I always found these like trading courses really interesting. my friend, if you really have a profitable algorithm, the last thing you want to do is like share it because the market is efficient. It will not be profitable anymore. And you definitely don't need to sell courses if you can build like really profitable trading algorithms. So what is this course thing about something wrong on this?

Shaun Gold:Yeah, it it's all kind of following the same playbook. Okay? It is always like i first, in the age of AI What do you have to buy that my $20 OpenAI plan cannot tell me? Like what? What what what do I have to buy that that it can't tell me? What why is it that everyone that sells these courses they all have the same car? At least get a different car. At least stand out. At least do something different. It's always the same balcony, the same car with the same food, the same bright stuff. I want something different, okay? Take it from the guy that used to rent exotic cars when I was in nightlife. They're horrible to have, okay? You think It's fun driving, but then you got to go to the grocery store and you gotta park far away, and you gotta make sure no one parks next to you and they can't fit your groceries. It's terrible. So I don't know why we're all following that playbook, anyways. it doesn't work. And the second thing is that you have to sell a lot of courses to be able to have that kind of income, and you have to have the information to be able to tell your customers and convince them that they will have the same kind of cars and lifestyle that you will have. And it's very easy to fake that lifestyle, it's very easy. So, I mean, it's simple to rent the The cars and do a photo shoot and do video. Same with the private jets, same with all that stuff. And it just doesn't make any sense. I mean, if it was really a profitable business, don't you think that Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk, with all their reach, could create their own course and make a billion dollars in a day if they wanted to? They don't because they know that everyone would complain. They know that their playbook would just be the same slop that everyone else is selling and they would demand refunds, or it would ruin their image, although I don't know how you could ruin their. image even more but it just wouldn't work. so yeah I don't advise it. I mean I think in the age of AI you don't need it and you're gonna learn more about diving into whatever your whatever your startup wants to do and whatever your passion is to figure out to profit from than anyone else can tell you. And it's really just diving in. And no one wants to dive in because when you dive in you don't know anything. You make mistakes you you think you suck at it you you waste your time and you know you just You don't want to deal with it. That's the reality of entrepreneurship. That's the reality of the startup. It's the you know, one at a time. How do you get to a million dollars? Well, one customer at a time is pretty much how it works. It's not sexy. It's not sexy trying to get enterprise clients or deal with Dennis who bought your product and is complaining that it doesn't work and you gotta deal with Dennis for $19.99 a month. That's just the game. And I feel like people want to bypass the game and get to the end, to the victory, and it doesn't work that way.

Niklas:think venture comedy, at least to me, very refreshing because you're an industry that tends to take itself quite seriously most of the time. What do you think about that?

Shaun Gold:I think they take themselves too seriously. Okay. I think that there is an extreme amount of ego, narcissism. And straight out insanity when it comes to a lot of investors and a lot of like tier one founders. And I get it, you have to be outlandish to to do it. I get it. You you you you have to think big. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about the people I'll just use an example. Let's talk about AI because why not? It's trending. you know, you have the people in the industry that are like, This is gonna be the greatest thing ever. This is the age of abundance. AI is going to do your job, allow you to travel, have a healthier life, have have no diseases, have more free time, have more money, all of that stuff. And meanwhile I'm in reality and it's like, okay, great. I just asked AI to create this presentation for me and it looks like it was created by Stevie Wonder. May maybe I'm doing something wrong with the with the age of AI. I don't know. see everyone takes themselves way too seriously. They spend way too much time on social media. I mean don't you have a bunch of businesses to run? Don't you have a bunch of money to enjoy? Why are you tweeting 10 times a day? About stupid stuff. they have this tendency to constantly, constantly try and stay relevant, even though they've already won. You know, I don't want to mention any names, but let's just say if you're a venture capital firm and you're already won and you have exits, you don't need to be on 20 podcasts or tweeting 50 times a day or launching more funds. Go and enjoy life. Do what most supervillains do. Buy a dormant volcano, an extinct volcano, and instar install a sp Spacecraft in there with your own private army and ninjas. Have a harem of Victoria's secret models that are secretly spies. You know, what other supervillains, or as I call them, founders and and successful founders in Tier 1 VCs, what they should be doing. Instead, nope, they're providing value on Twitter. That nobody asked for, but that's what they do. So there's a lot of delusion in it, but it's great for me because it gives me plenty of material to work with.

Niklas:Finally, we see often say happy to help and then pass. What do you think founders actually get wrong in that direction?

Shaun Gold:they don't get anything wrong. VCs get it wrong by encouraging this notion of again, we're here to help. Happy to provide value, look happy to take on a call, quick coffee, collaborate, do lunch, all this stuff, but then they don't, because it's a it's much easier from a marketing standpoint to say that you're for the people, but you're not gonna walk with the people. Okay? There's there's a difference between you know being for the people and walking amongst them. Okay. and VCs have to do that. Unless unless of course you know you could happy have something where it's like we don't talk to anybody unless you're doing ten million dollars a year. Even bother. We're not offering value. We're not here to help you. I mean, nobody wants to work with that person, even though that's how most of them are. so it sets this example that yeah, you know, we want to invest at the earliest stages, and then when you when you come in at the earliest stages, you're too early. Or they ask for, you know, we want a founder building a company that's going to change the world and doing something that's never been done before. Great. I am building something that's never been done before. So the first question the investor will ask is: This is great. What's your track record? Have you done this before? No, you just said you want something that hasn't been done before. If I did it before, I wouldn't have reached out. So it again, it there's cognitive dissonance. It doesn't make sense. It's it's it's a weird, strange industry, and it's ripe not for disruption. It's ripe for roasting. And it's ripe for fun. And that's what I do: putting the fun in fund.

Niklas:I think that there's a bit of a at times. And I think that it's really interesting for founders to know how to differentiate like signal from noise. So when they talk to a VC, what's actually noise and what is signal?

Shaun Gold:okay, well that's that that's a real question. So hold on, let's get into that. Okay. The moment before you even talk to a VC, you are sending signals. And what do I mean by that? Your communication is a signal. Let's start at the earliest. Let's start with the cold DM. Okay, the cold outreach. The first words matter. Hi, first name. Hi, or dear sir, madam, to whom it may concern. Okay, if you don't take the time to research who you're reaching out to and spell their name correctly, you're already done. I see this because my name's on the screen. It's public knowledge. It's spelled very simple simply. It's not hard. And people still get it wrong. They they they spell it wrong, they add an extra three U's. I don't get it. So I'm already gone, right? Then we go into the main body of the message. It doesn't have anything to do with that venture capitalist investment. It goes against their thesis. They don't do the research of why they're why them. They don't lead with anything that would be investable or fundable at the stage. They don't attach the pitch deck. It's all wrong. It's it's it's it's all wrong. And those send signals that this founder is an amateur, this founder is not ready for me to waste my time. This founder is not someone I want to even be associated with. If you want to take it to the next level with the pitch deck, it's all about signals. signals such as: okay, what's your track record? Why are Are you the team that is going to be the killer in this industry? Why are you the team that are going to turn this idea into a billion dollar plus company? Why are you the team that can do this that your competitors cannot? and a lot of pitch decks, they just they don't they don't answer that. So it sends signals that there are no signals, and what do I mean by no signals is that just people don't do the research. They just I have an idea, you have money, give me the money, I'll give you the idea. There's weak signals where yeah, they prepare, but they don't do it right. Instead of, you know, I see this all the time because I've done a lot of deck work. Instead of saying I'm a 2X, two-time exited founder whose last companies were acquired at this amount and this amount, they just say, you know, AI enthusiast with years of you know exceptional experience. It doesn't tell anyone anything. They and and then you have strong signals which lead with, okay, it's 10 to 12 slides, it has everything there, the current Revenue, the pipeline, the team that's complete, not question marks. It doesn't have 20 advisors on a slide. It has a problem, it has a solution, it has the market, it has the competition. All the stuff is there to send a strong signal. Just a lot of founders just overlook it or don't do it, and it it hurts them. And it's not something that's esoteric. We don't have to buy a course for it. You can go to a website like OpenVC and read all the material that's free, it's not paywalled on how to build a top one process. Pitch deck, or you can come to these webinars that I often do of the same name, how to build a top 1% pitch deck, where I will teach you how to do it slide by slide what works and what doesn't. so yeah, it just the founders need to prepare and they need to research, and you don't send out the deck until you're absolutely ready. That means you're you're you're 100% ready to raise funding, you have a data room, you're in the right corporate structure, you have a complete team, you have revenue, you have an MVP, you are just ready to. rock it's not just I have an idea let's take a meeting or I want to learn from you or I want to be your friends. Investors are not your friends. Okay they're they're not they might say they are but they are not your friends. They are if they invest they become your silent business partners for years to come but they are certainly not your friends.

Niklas:Like if you look at founder VC interactions, like what is worse to write jokes about? What is good, what's bad, what is fun? What should you look out for if you're looking for a VC actually?

Shaun Gold:Whoo, how do I answer this? Okay. So if you're a founder raising funds, let's let's start at the early stages. One you have to be fundable. Okay, that's it. You have to have something that is fundable. So that's number one. Two, you have to know your stage. A lot of founders are still operating on an old playbook. Pre seed means it's an idea, you give me the money and I build you an MVP. No, it doesn't. We're in the age of AI now. You have to be coming with a full clip of the right ammunition. I'm talking you already have an MVP. I'm talking you already have data. I'm talking you already have revenue. I'm talking you already have people that are clamoring for it. again, a lot of founders have I have the market research. This is what's gonna get me eight hundred. Or I need the money so I can quit my job. Like a lot of things that just aren't gonna fly. You know, venture capital is a game of extreme risk. A lot of founders think that the investors are used to it, so the risk is mitigated. No, it's not mitigated. Even when they invest in a company, there is the assumption that unless this company can do a 30 to 100x return, it's probably gonna die. Most venture-backed companies die. But we hold out hope, we hold out our power. Law, we pray at the tabernacle of term sheets. We hold out hope that that one company has that $30 billion exit. You're the next Facebook Figma Uber, you're the next open AI if it ever goes public, you're the next anthropic, if it can have a good IPO, you're the next SpaceX. We hold out hope. but to be one of those companies, it's very hard. majority of the time, like just investors pass, that's just the way it is. and unless you Operate your outreach and your fundraising campaign as an actual campaign, meaning you've done your research, you have a list of prospects, you're spending 10 to 15 minutes per email to shoot those out so they're thoughtful, you're fundable, you have all your materials ready, and you're actively doing this and building in public and networking and put yourself out there. You know, most founders are going to fail. They don't want to hear that. They want to hear Shark Tank or Dragon's Den, where they pitch for 15 minutes and then get a check. Doesn't work that way. I've trained people for Shark Tank. I work with people that have won. Shark Tank. It's not 15 minutes, it's a three-hour film that's a filming shoot, but they turn it into the 15 minutes for TV. You have to prepare, you have to know what you're doing, and you have to be fundable. and and a lot of times most people are not. so just being prepared. It's it's and and again, you know, there is no shame, and there's also no comedy, so it's bad for me, but I'll take the hit for you. There's no shame about bootstrapping, you know, there's no shame of being Mailchimp and having a $12 billion exit and a 50-50 split between partners. You know, I know it sucks. It's not sexy to bootstrap. It's not sexy to put your day job money into your startup. You wish someone could give you a check and let it do it for you. But sometimes it might be better off for you. And we're entering an era where there's gonna be a lot of companies that aren't venture backable, but they're still good companies. Maybe they only have five million a year in revenue, maybe ten million, maybe two million. Still pretty good for a small team to make a living on and have to deal with anything. So, you know, we're we're entering a new age. Age, and I think there's gonna be a lot more options, and I think just founders and aspiring founders need to open their mind to those options and realize that hey, listen, Chad, you might not make be a billionaire. It's okay, it's fine being a millionaire, okay? It's totally fine. So, yeah, that's again a long-winded answer, but I try to provide I try to provide value because we know many investors won't. Not this guy.

Niklas:think especially growth later on, it's a content game. That is what I would say. I'm quite embedded in what I would call the solo founder community because I found it really interesting. These people who bootstrap, who are not venture-backed, who build their companies by themselves. There's one guy, he's called Peter Levitz. He's very active on Twitter. I've watched him for a while. Two, three years back, he wrote, When AI came along, I realized I had to get famous because it's kind of like this thing that now differentiates things. And me building software myself, also my free time, like the speed at which I can build software, that's not the determining factor anymore. It's can I get reliably get users at a lower customer acquisition cost? So when you look at like content or the content game in general, What would you recommend to like an early stage founder who's just getting started, who has been a bit technical, who now thinks, okay, I have to have a public profile, at least for my company. I would think personal profile probably better because nobody knows your brand. So you have to put something out there that has trust. But what do you think about that?

Shaun Gold:So, for you kids at home, one of my main, main focuses is content. I've generated over a hundred million impressions. cross LinkedIn and X for my clients. I've built out multiple content programs for venture studios, venture capital funds, founders, companies across the spectrum, across over a dozen industries now, maybe two dozen industries. very few people understand content as as well as I do and I don't want to be a braggart about it, but I mean I'm I have the data to prove it. Just gonna throw it out there. Have data it's very hard to get to a hundred million plus impressions. And I have the pipeline of generated revenue that That also comes with that and deals closed and all that. So, after me talking about me, let's talk about you. You have to have a personal brand. And I'm not saying this as a sales pitch, but if you want to put a link down below to hit me up on LinkedIn or X, feel free, I can help you with it. But the age of the moat is coming to an end. You've got to get out the moat, rock the moat, as we say. That means you have to be recognizable. People have to come to you for what you offer. And the only way to do that is to by by creating content. You have to put content out there because people are going to gravitate toward individuals and personal brands that they like, that provide value, that they can trust, that isn't trying to sell them a course, that isn't trying to give them some stupid playbook. Okay? That they are building a product that is solving a painful need in their niche. Okay. I'll use a perfect example, right? As far as a product. I don't follow their content, but I love the product, right? As a content guy. I use a tool called Buffer. I pay $84 a year. I'm the Buffer ideal customer persona. It's great. Why? Because I want to schedule my content. I write tons of content. I want to schedule it. That's a painful problem, right? So they made a product that solves my pain point. A lot of founders are making a product for people that don't have a pain point, and then they create content around that product, and there's a disconnect. You have to have a product first that solves someone's pain and it Could be niche, it's totally fine. Second, you have to talk up that product and ask for feedback. What would you like to see? I'm building this. This is what it's gonna do for you. So that people can say, damn, I someone, why didn't someone else build this? This is great. How much is he charging? $7 a month. Okay, I'll pay for the year. Doesn't matter, right? That is how you get your customers. I mean, you could get them again through cold, cold email campaigns and outbound, but the cost is much higher and you're just gonna annoy people. It is much better. To identify your niche, build your personal brand around what your company does, around the value provide, pound LinkedIn and pound Twitter with it. Now it depends on the company for your other social channels. If you have a DTC product, TikTok's gonna be more for you. But a lot of like tech people, they're on TikTok, but they're looking it for entertainment. They're not really gonna be, you know, becoming educated. Same could be for YouTube. Depends, same could be for Instagram. Twitter is where a lot of tech people live and they interact. Same with LinkedIn, a lot of B2B, a lot of corporate people on LinkedIn. You have to identify it. Now, granted, if you're building for something, say, in the in the HVAC community or something like that, in the services, and your ideal customer persona is on Facebook, then that's where you gotta go. The problem is people go omni-channel. And you can't go omni-channel at the start. You have to identify where your where your people live. You can repurpose the content for a few channels at a time and see what's resonating. everything is gonna be different. But if you are going to be in startups and you're going to be in tech, then Twitter 100%, LinkedIn 100%, and then depending what your offer is, Instagram and YouTube as well. it just depends, but you you need to have content. I mean, it's just something where there's an old quote I used to use back in the nightlife game, and it applies from Petey Barnum. It said something terrible happens without promotion. Nothing! And people just expect, you know, I'm gonna get an email. Email, I'm gonna wake up and I have a bunch of DMs and it doesn't work that way. you have to put your effort into it and over time it compounds, and that's when you get a bunch of DMs. And I tell you from some gu someone that speaks on podcasts at universities, at conferences, comedy clubs, all of that comes from me putting out content daily. LinkedIn, it's Monday to Friday for me. Twitter, it's seven days a week for me. I'll put out blogs. We have Venture Comedy Show coming out, it's coming out soon, so that's gonna be coming on YouTube. So there there's there's There's ton of stuff coming out. But it it's it's a huge play. And you you have to do it now because again just seeing a banner, a logo, an ad a it just it's not gonna work. People are gonna want to identify with somebody that is building a product who solved their pain point and is giving them a lot of value than you know, just someone random saying, you know, thick AI is cooked. It doesn't doesn't do anything.

Niklas:I think this is also really important. So a lot of, for example, my podcasts that I have here, I've built on X and the people I interact there. I've always found this really useful because it's actually worldwide in a sense. It's not only my local people that I could talk to anyway, but it's the community you can talk to. If you kind of find the right people, then it's actually quite a fast communication with people I could never reach. outside. So this is extremely valuable and it can also if you manage to do it well, it will take time. I'm a terrible cost seller. would not say that it goes fast. In my

Shaun Gold:Mm-hmm.

Niklas:opinion, I think it's something that just takes time. It's the classic snowball with like a classic growth curve. Therefore, don't expect to wake up and have 500 new followers unless either must retweets you or something like that happens, but on a normal basis, that's just not what's going to happen. If you go beyond content, and I think a huge topic the last three years has been AI employees, what you will say

Shaun Gold:Mm-hmm.

Niklas:actually works is building an AI operating system around yourself. What's that actually?

Shaun Gold:You know, people say that and I've yet to find it actually work. Okay. Because we have the people that are again promoting it. This is gonna be great. Now you can go back to doing nothing at home and nothing at work. Your agent's gonna do everything. the problem is the agents make mistakes. They're prone to it. even using, you know, large language models, they still make mistakes. I will have something and say, Is this ready? And it'll say yes and then I'll say, Are you sure? Double check, I found three mistakes. Like it's Not instantaneous. What AI can do is AI can help you, right? It could help you remove the drudgery, which that's what I use it for. Remove the drudgery, right? It helps me take care of things that I don't want to do. So, yes, you can do that and become more powerful. As far as having, you know, the one employee company with 30 agents. I don't know if we're there yet. Some people might claim it, but you know, they just had a report come out that less than two percent of US house. Households use AI, you know, it's just it's the earliest thing yet. And there is a bubble, I feel, as far as like the what you read on X, where people are just doing agents for everything, and then the rest of the population, where it's like, agent? No, I'm I I I don't have a realtor. I don't I'm not looking to move. Like they don't it they don't get what you're talking about. So it's still a very small, like tech ish percentage of the population that knows about them. mainstream does not Normal people do not. a lot of people don't like AI. They're very distrusting of it, and they hate it, and they don't get it. And I think that if you're gonna utilize it, you have to make sure that it works. Okay. So for me, again, Grok, ChatGPT, Claude, yeah, it definitely helps me. It but at the same time, I have a superpower where I know what I can use with AI and knows what I have to use for myself. So for example, most people just use AI to do something. something for them but they have no context with it. So let's say they use AI to prepare for a job interview. But they don't read what the AI tells them. Or if they read what the AI says but they don't double check it and it's filled with mistakes or it has errors, the person that they're interviewing for is going to be like, where'd you get that information? How did you do that? So you can't outsource your entire brain to it. AI is a tool, you're still a machine. I've yet to find something for me personally that I can just say have an agent do everything for me. One because I like to be involved and two I like to read what I'm knowing about and I like to be hands-on. but for drudgery things, like here, I need this information put into a Google Sheet. Yeah, it's great. Puts it into a Google sheet so I don't have to deal with it. You know, things I don't like to do. Here, fix this banner, because I'm not a graphic designer. Great. You know, little things like that, which are not game changing or world breaking. It still messes it up on the first or second time. Still can't get the specifications right. Tens of billions, hundreds Of billions of dollars into the A these AI companies and it still uses M-dashes. It still can't get the width and the height right for my LinkedIn banner. Right? Where's the money going? So yeah, I I don't know if we're there yet. Again, there's some people that are saying, Yeah, we are, you can do it. I I haven't seen it yet where you know the there's companies that are just gonna have AI systems that are gonna have no employees and all of that. You're still neither gonna have humans in the loop.

Niklas:Yeah, I think that is one of the bigger questions. If you just look at it from fundamentals of principles, like our monetary system we designed, it's that we don't have to exchange apples for bread, right? So that's why we invented money. And it's also easier if you can say, give you two euros tomorrow instead of the bread in two weeks or whatever it was. But all these things are kind of tools that help us as... If I now imagine that we kind of remove everybody from jobs like what is kind of the dystopian picture that I think Dario sometimes paints, it doesn't really match like the fundamental idea that we kind of set up the society in a way that it benefits us. So I'm really interested about this. And I also think obviously there will be agent to agent interactions, but for a long... For lot of topics, it will still be intelligence augmentation of sorts. There will be a human that presses a button, then

Shaun Gold:Mm-hmm.

Niklas:there will be some kind of software that runs in the background and does something, and then it comes back with a result of sorts. think that fully autonomous systems that act like humans are still a little bit away to me.

Shaun Gold:Yeah, but you're still need to gonna be a human who can in in in the loop that knows how to think, that knows how to break things, that knows how to fix things, that knows how to see something's wrong. I mean, you know, I hate to use the Starship Troopers analogy, but I'm gonna use the Starship Troopers analogy, and if you're watching this, drop it on my LinkedIn or X if you if you would like to know more, because I'm gonna give it. So there's a scene in Starship Troopers, one of my favorite movies, when they're in the future, of course, and they're practicing throwing knives at basic training, throwing knives at a target. So the cadet says, I don't get it. What's the point of throwing a knife in a nuke fight when someone can press a button? And he says, put your hand on the wall. Takes a knife and he throws the knife and he impales his hand on the wall. And he says, if you disable the hand, it cannot press a button. Okay? And that's the my favorite analogy for this. You still need a person to execute. You still need to think. You still need to outthink people. Especially if you want a competitive experience. Advantage. the human mind and all of its shared experiences and all of its evolution is still much better than any agent, chat GPT rapper, any of that. Yeah, they can give you output, they give it faster, they can do it, but there's still no soul with it. I mean Dario wants to put a soul in it. You start with himself, but you know, it still doesn't have like something that is human, and I think I'm just contrarian, I think that people are gonna. want to gravitate toward person to person as AI becomes more entrenched. I think people are going to want more human relationships. I think that they're going to it's going to have a higher value. People are not going to want their AI girlfriends or boyfriends. Some will, but I think regular people are still going to want human companionship. I think they're still going to want to hang out with someone. I think they're still going to want to work with someone. I think they're going to want to see a face on a zoom a face in person over coffee an actual human voice. on a call. I think that as attention spans get shorter and shorter, people that can actually think and read an entire book and write long essays or even write things that don't require AI are gonna have enough an authentic human competitive advantage over their peers. And it's that's what's gonna really, you know, distinguish in the next few years who's gonna be successful, whether it's in venture, whether it's in startups, just anything, people that can that can actually process and Be very productive and if the power goes out, that's fine. They don't need AI. They'll be annoyed because that they could take a little longer, but they can still accomplish what they need to accomplish.

Niklas:You have talked a lot about secondaries and helping founders accept. What does good founder liquidity or accept planning actually look like?

Shaun Gold:that's a whole separate podcast. So yeah, as part of my my fund Improve Ventures and also another thing we started, Amplify. Yeah, we we work with late stage companies that are looking that have either employees or early stage investors that want liquidity. so we actually connect buyers to sellers. And we've done that through a fruit big AI companies and whatnot. but essentially, I mean, listen, people want liquidity. They can't wait around. I mean, SpaceX just IPO'd a few months back took him what like a quarter of a century. If only when I was in high school, I should have bought stock in it. I should have invested when I had no money, no contacts, and I just waited a quarter of a century. I would have been a mis multi-millionaire. but people normal people can't afford that. People have responsibilities. They want to go on vacation, they want to buy a house, they want to send their kids to college, they they want to do something with money, they can't afford to stay in a company for years. And years and years. and depending on what startup you're in, it could take five to twelve years, depending on the macro conditions, if you're lucky, if you get to an exit. So if the shares are valuable and then there are people that want them, yeah. I mean, that's kind of what we do. I mean, it's just it's something that, you know, most people they don't want to exit the full position, but they want something because they they have to do it. And I've worked with other people that have been in companies that just they they've been employee number three and number four, but they're in companies that aren't. hot. They were hot five, six years ago and they don't really have good numbers and they're not really doing anything. And nobody wants to buy you know access to them. Nobody wants to buy their share. So they're stuck with them. So yeah, it's if the opportunity is right, there's always an opportunity there. But it has to it's it's a lot of moving parts because there's a lot of people that say, I want you know I want to get out of this and it's like well we don't have buyers for that. Or I want to sell my personal stake and it's too small. You know it's kind of the thing that no one talks about on on social media. Which is I invested in all these companies and I haven't made a dollar back. Please help. Send help. Is there something where I can get my money back? And it's like, no, there isn't. This is why they give you, you know, the little small font says, you know, startups are inherently risky. You could lose some or all of your investment. Please consult with an advisor before making an investment. This is why also you should be accredited, even when you are accredited, you still achieve MoFo. You know, for those that don't know, accredited means You have $250,000 a year in income or a million dollar plus in net assets or net worth, so that your twenty thousand dollar angel investment is not going to break you. They're still gonna act like it's gonna break them, because who doesn't want to lose the twenty thousand? But that's just the game. I mean you're either you're a sophisticated investor that you get it, they're all not gonna work, or you're the guy that's like, this kid's got something. I think AI for potatoes are the future. Take my money, and then nothing happens. so yeah, it it really depends again on the circumstance. The founding team, what company it is, and all that. but it's we only hear about the exits. We only hear about the windfalls. We never hear about the companies that implode and you lose all your money, or the companies that just don't do anything and you lose all your money. And we what your dreams die with it. The two percent that you own is worthless until that acquisition or that exit IPO, it's it's always worthless. It's not real until you get the money.

Niklas:One last question now for like a first time founder. One thing that they should do and one thing that they should definitely stop doing.

Shaun Gold:Okay, just one, it's gonna be tough. Okay. one thing that you should do to your first-time founder is make sure that you're building a product that actually has a pain that actually solves a pain point for your audience. Okay. A lot of people will do a Google survey. Say, everyone says they love it, they're gonna buy it, all this stuff, and then they won't. You have to have something that you either encountered yourself that just really annoys you, that you wish there was something out there and you tried the other tools and they were clunky and they didn't work and you say I can do this better, and then you have to find out there's other people that are willing to do it. You know, it it you don't need a giant, you know, fifty billion dollar market. As I said earlier, not everything is venture backable. If it's enough where you can make a few million dollars a year for yourself and you're a small team and it's all you need, it's cool. Solves a really niche niche problem. It could be it could be A a begrudging product. It could be something that people are forced to have by maybe government mandate or by you know code or requirements and they just have to buy it and nobody likes it, but they're they're mandated to do it. So you want to make sure that whatever you're building is not because you want to be cool, it's not because you think it's gonna make you a billionaire, it's because there is an actual problem, there is a market, and that you are building the solution that can solve it. Most people just have ideas. Just I have an idea, everyone says they love it. They all say they're gonna buy it, they say I'm the next Google. But you have nothing else to support that. So you gotta stop doing that. One thing that you you so that that that that's one thing. one thing that you totally should do. Was that the should do or shouldn't? I think that was both. Have a product, make sure people, make sure it solves the pain, make sure it has a solution, make sure the people are actually going to pay for it. And then something I think that you also that you really should do like no matter what is research into the game. Understand how venture capital works because you might not be venture backable. Understand You know, if this is something you actually want to do, because it's not just building, it's selling. Selling's the most important part. That's part of the content play, but it's it's actually who's gonna do the sales if you're a two-peep two-person team. You're not gonna hire a salesperson, you're actually gonna do it. Who's gonna raise the funding if you want to raise capital? Founders all the time want me to raise the capital for them. Doesn't work that way. The the investors want a relationship with the founder, not with Steve from Upwork, because Steve's gonna be gone in six months. Founders, you're gonna have that relationship for years. They don't want to work with a broker dealer. They want to work with the actual founder. So you have to be able to understand that, like, okay, what's my role? It's not just being a founder. If I'm not the technical co-founder, then that's my co-founder. He's building. What am I doing? Well, I'm doing marketing. I'm doing content. I'm doing sales. I'm doing research. I'm dealing with the customer service. I'm doing the fundraise. You have to understand, you know, what the roles are, and it's a really long, drawn-out, complicated, tedious journey, and it's not for everyone. So make sure it's for you. As I always joke, you know, if you love working long hours and nights and weekends for no pay and no possibility of pay, then being a startup founder is right for you. Because it's not instantaneous that, okay, yeah, everyone's gonna buy it on day one. You have to build everything out, and even then, once it's pulled out, you never know if it's gonna work or not. It's a constant grind, it's a constant hustle, and you have to be able to chew glass, as they say, and like it.

Niklas:That are very nice, final words, Sean. Thank you so much for being on the podcast and you, my lovely listeners. you next time.

Shaun Gold:Thanks for having me.