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[Music] so the typical steps in a diligence process for us um you know we're typically dealing with quite early stage companies uh series a series b but the typical steps would be let's find out who you are as the entrepreneur let's find out the team that you've built about around you and let's find out about the product what are its specifications who's the competition uh how do you stack up and how do you differentiate we essentially will ask you probably hundreds of questions if i'm honest about your business model about the competitive landscape about your pricing about r d about customer insights feedback loops distribution we ask a lot of questions so that we fully understand your business model the opportunities the risks and the weaknesses of that model on the financial side we will ask for audited financial statements that's a validation point that we do have other validation points that we have is that we want to go out and talk to your customers we want to go out and see your factory we want to go out and if possible buy your product so there's these external validation points that we that we also have be prepared to have really odd awkward questions and lots of them so yeah set your expectations pretty low in terms of what you mean they asked me for that again yeah we'll ask you for that again and we'll keep asking and there'll be more and you'll not have thought of some things that we'll be asking for and that many other investors will ask for but it's all to build up the sense of intimacy when we make an investment we're getting married and what happens to you happens to us as investors and so we need to fully understand kind of what's happening inside of the business essentially what happens is that i become the champion for your business inside of my firm and so if i'm going to be your champion then i have to know the ins and outs and i have to know everything about your business and so i ask we ask all these questions not because we're trying to like make your life more difficult but we ask these questions so that we have the information that we need to go to bat for you inside of our organization because ultimately when we're thinking about making an investment we're thinking about valuation we're thinking about all sorts of different factors what we're doing is we're saying look can we trust these individuals do they do they come to the table with some honesty and authenticity because it's going to be a hard journey ahead and i think the other part of the diligence process that entrepreneurs may not necessarily be aware of is that we're also sussing out your character your business is going to struggle and we're okay with that but we need to understand and know that we are betting so to speak on the person and the team that has the character to take them through the highs and the lows of running a business we're getting to know your character how you handle tough questions how do you say i don't know how have you dealt with previous setbacks that's all a part of the diligence process that has nothing to do with the commercial side but more from the standpoint of who are you as a person as an entrepreneur and do we want to walk this journey together with you