The Data Driven Case for Investing in Diverse Founding Teams | LSI USA '24

Elizabeth Clayborne  0:00  
I welcome everyone. Hopefully we'll have some more folks joining us from lunch. This is a panel that is going to be focused on the data driven case for investing in diverse founding teams. What I'd like to do is we'll just do a quick introduction of everyone here on the panel, and then dive into some interesting questions, and hopefully our goal is to really help kind of change the hearts and minds of many of you when thinking about why we have a dearth of funding going towards these particular type of founders and what can be done about it. So my name is Dr Liz Clayborne. I'm the CEO and co founder of NASA clip. I'm an emergency medicine physician by training, faculty member with the University of Maryland, and I have a device that helps anyone, anywhere, stop nosebleeds. Quickly. We see about 500,000 ER visits a year for nosebleeds, which is just crazy. And so my device is kind of like the band aid of nosebleeds. It has sponges that can be medicated, goes in the nose and then applies comfortable compression and the right anatomic location. And so I'll be presenting on that company later this week, track one on Thursday, 1025, if you want to catch more about it. But I'm really excited to be here with other esteemed colleagues. I'll pass it on to you. Verby. Next,

Virpi Muhonen  1:19  
hi everybody. It's great to be here. So I'm Virpi Muhonen. I'm the CEO and founder of Askel Healthcare. So it's a female founded, female led, and actually full female team. We didn't do that on purpose, but we hired the best ones, and that happened. So our company is focusing on cartilage repair. So it's an orthopedic sector, and it's biodegradable implantable device. And we are actually also presenting here tomorrow, early in the morning, at 731 in the Avalon room. So if you're a early bird, so come and check that out, and I give it to you, Jenny, thanks.

Jenny Barba  1:56  
Liz and Virpi. Hi everybody. I'm Jenny Barba, co founder of features capital. Features capital is an early stage medtech venture firm. We are based in Vermont, and we invest at the seed series A and Series B stage companies.

Jeff Chu  2:15  
Jeff Chu co founder, managing partner at features capital as well, really focused on helping unlock venture for medtech, in particular, for founders and LPs.

Elizabeth Clayborne  2:27  
Awesome. So what I'm going to do first is just a little introduction. This is actually part of a keynote speech that I do that is really focused on why I think, in particular, women and people of color can be some of our best leaders. And I'm going to use this as an introduction to kind of get you thinking about some of the topics that we're going to discuss as a panel. So where does the best marijuana come from? Did I grab your attention? I'm serious. Is it a certain location, weather conditions, soil, or maybe it's how the marijuana is grown. Are these questions making you uncomfortable? Are you wondering why on earth this emergency medicine physician and CEO is asking you about marijuana? Maybe I can propose a different question. Where does the best wine come from? Ah, is that better? Interestingly, the cultivation of exceptional weed and wine finds its roots in the most tumultuous conditions. In the realm of marijuana strains that endure harsh climates develop robustness and resilience, producing potent buds with complex flavors and aromas. Similarly, vineyards perched on rugged terrains, battling unpredictable weather patterns and rocky soil nurture grapes that make exquisite wines. But why is the question about wine more comfortable than the question about marijuana? Is wine more safe or legal the marijuana I'm not sure. I do know that far more time of my medical school curriculum was dedicated to the use, abuse, disease and negative consequences of alcohol compared to the relatively nonexistent time that was spent learning about THC. So why does one of these questions possibly make you clear your throat while the other is easy to swallow? I'll give you a much more likely answer, bias, yes, conscious and unconscious bias. What I find interesting is it seems there's multiple similarities between the conditions that produce the best wine as well as the best weed. It's as if Mother Nature is telling us that her sweetest, most pungent fruit is born out of a will to survive in the least optimal environment. This juxtaposition may be considered. Answer a different question, where do our best leaders come from? Today, I want to challenge you to move past some of your explicit and perhaps implicit biases, to consider that women and people of color are primed to be our best leaders. And this is not just a dei topic, we must understand that the fate of human prosperity is dependent on the strength of the leadership we cultivate today. And what we look forward to convincing you is that if we change the paradigm of power to look for atypical stories of resilience and innovation, atypical leaders, namely, women and people of color can catapult society and organizations, yes, even your organization, to new levels of success. Hopefully, you guys enjoyed that. So given that you're kind of thinking maybe a little bit differently about what that means and where bias comes from. And, you know, why is it that I feel different when she asked me about marijuana versus, you know, alcohol? Like, where does that come from? Like, there's this general acceptance that there is a difference there, but you're not really able to put your finger on what it is I wanted to start out with talking to some questions about why we think there's such a small percentage of funding that go to women and minority founded companies.

Jenny Barba  6:32  
Jenny, sure. Well, first of all, this was just amazing to start off with. So thanks. Liz, I will never forget this moment. So thank you. Really thinking about the rocky soil and the harsh climate just really feels like what we go through. So with that, you know, there is a significant gap in funding of diverse led venture firms. And then when you back that out, a little bit even more so into life sciences and med tech, diagnostics, even digital health, the experts, who are the allocators, so the LP investors, so the pensions, the endowments, foundations, etc, are extremely risk averse and extremely conservative. So traditionally, the venture firms are predominantly led by people who have been in the industry a long time. They've they've paved the way they were maybe founders 1020, years ago, and with that, there has been a large gap in the diversity of the funds that have been led to come through the ranks. So we feel as features that really to change the face of funds. And then whoever who gets funding has to increase in diversity. And so that's really important to our strategy. It's important to what we believe is the future of venture. The data shows, and I think we're going to have some data showing up back behind us in a bit, that when you have diverse allocators, it increases the representation at the table of the founders, the management teams, the leadership, all the way down to the patients,

Elizabeth Clayborne  8:33  
absolutely. And I think it's important for people to recognize like, how disproportionate this funding is, right? We're still talking about only two to 3% of venture capital going to women, you know. And there's a lot of different reasons why. Maybe there's also not enough women that are able to found fund companies, but there's no question that there's not that many dollars that are going there. And so part of why, you know, I think, for burpee and I, as founders who are coming from female kind of founded and led teams. What is it that you think is maybe coming into play with conscious and unconscious bias that I talked about verpe That's like potentially participating in why we're seeing such a huge disproportionate number of investment dollars going to women like us? Thank you,

Virpi Muhonen  9:19  
and thank you, and thank you for the presentation in the beginning. It was excellent. So of course, I can speak from my own background, and coming from a purely from an academic background, having zero business knowledge or anything when we started, and the whole founding team was from an academic background, so we were really kind of underdogs, in that sense, struggling to get the first financing. And what I really learned in those times where that the diversity we need, it's in these kind of companies who have similar backgrounds that we have in kind of this strong academic background, is that it's not just gender or it's just not race. It's really this diversity in thinking. And the sooner you get. Into those young teams, really diverse backgrounds, of people, commercial knowledge, all these things you need to have to succeed, not just from the technical perspective. The better you are off on the beginning. And then the earlier you have that, the more kind of interesting you are, also for the VCs or the other investors, when you have those kind of parts of the game that makes you a potential winner. So I really learned that from the hard way of doing these things by our own kind of scientific team, and then learning a little bit later on that okay, we need to have that kind of diversity in thinking and being really doing our part of being ready to be investor ready. Because, of course, it's kind of a dual way. You you need to do your part and make sure that you bring in that diversity and then being good candidates for investments. So I think it's a it works both ways. Yeah,

Elizabeth Clayborne  10:53  
and Ginny mentioned that, like, you know, LPs often are very risk adverse, and so part of the, I think, unconscious bias is that they're assuming that a female founder or a minority founder is more risky. And part of what we're going to talk about is that that's actually not true. We're actually we're actually better as an investment. We're a safer investment. But why is it that that seems to not translate before we get into it? You know, Jeff brought up a question that I think is really important on this topic, which is, what is the terminology you use to describe different backgrounds, and have you experienced problems using some labels versus others?

Jeff Chu  11:30  
Yeah, I love this question because it really helps us start to really think about what it means to have diverse thought, right and diverse diversity and thinking. And so one of the things I want to touch upon is, you know, in terms of diversity of thought and the labels that we tend to use, I think that automatically puts people into categories and labels, right? And so, how many, how many startups do we have in this room? It's probably a bunch here, right? Yeah. And so, and you're going out and raising capital, what is the most often thing you hear. It's about, you know, are you a similar entrepreneur? Did you come from an established ecosystem? Did you come from a lead institution? And so this conventional wisdom is a vicious cycle, right? Because we're just talking about, how do we increase diversity? How do we expose ourselves into and create more diverse thoughts, different paths that people have traveled to get to where they are, because at the end of the day, we humans are extraordinarily nuanced, right? And, you know, and we don't fit into one category or another. And what we're really talking about is intersectionality and how we got here, whether it's different, how we grew up, where we came from, that we have immigrant parents. Where do we go to school? What experiences we have in school. All of that has been tremendously impactful. And what I love about this diversity of thinking approach is that's where true innovation, how we overcome these challenges, bringing together those experiences, the knowledge I think about when you hire someone, we usually think about knowledge, skills and abilities, right in terms of building a team and hiring a person, we put a lot of emphasis on skills and abilities and very little emphasis on the knowledge side of things. And I think that's where diversity really comes in. Oftentimes we talk about what we do at features, people have described it as we're helping to innovate the innovations. And I love that, right? Because what we're trying to do is break down some of these barriers, overcome the complex challenges that these founders are encountering, and break through those barriers.

Jenny Barba  13:25  
Can I double click on what Jeff just mentioned? It's also access, and I think that's something that we as an industry can really enhance access. So there's access to physicians, access to patients, access to engineers, clinical trials, you name it, but access to capital and the networks of capital is, I think, the hardest part of a founder's journey in especially when those networks are pretty close, pretty tight to tap into. So

Virpi Muhonen  14:01  
go ahead. One comment in between is that about the unconscious bias, is that I think it's hugely important as human beings for us to really kind of acknowledge and kind of accept the fact that all of us are biased. So it's inward in our brains, in a way, to look something that is familiar, and we believe what we want to believe. And we have this kind of inherent tendency to being biased. And I think it's hugely important that we kind of first address is like, Hi, I'm virbi. I'm biased person. That's where we start from, and then acknowledging that and understanding and stopping yourself that, hey, that is a biased thinking. Let's go back. I have the power to kind of stop my thinking, but I think it all starts from understanding and accepting that we are all biased persons.

Jeff Chu  14:44  
And I think that's a part of inclusivity that we have to better acknowledge, right and accept, is that, you know, at the end of the day, what we're trying to do is make an environment that's safe to have, you know, thought, free discussion, to share your opinions, right? So you may come with these biases, but if you don't have the. Inclusive components to it, then we're never going to explore those things and leverage those experiences.

Elizabeth Clayborne  15:04  
So you know now we want to really delve into some of the data, because a lot of times when I'm pitching for my company, one of the things I point out about being a black female founder is that I'm not asking for charity, right? I don't want you to invest in with me because you feel guilty or you think it's a good thing to do, I am going to make a return on your money. I am a solid investment. Okay, this is not just social impact funding, but to illustrate how much of an uphill battle it is for me to raise statistically, a white male founder will speak to an average of seven contacts to see to get a yes or a kind of return on investment, a black female founder needs to speak to 10 times that amount 70 people to get one yes, and that's why we see those. So that's a lot of no's right? You got to think about the resilience that you have to have to hear no that many times and still get to your fundraising goals. But that comes back to like, why I think we're actually so well, I guess, molded for these particular positions because we had to go through all that to get where we're going, and that's why we can be really successful. So moving along with some of our slides, I wanted to kind of have both Jeff and Jenny speak to ways that you've experienced strength or value of having a diverse founded team, and why you think that diverse founded teams can outperform other teams that are more homogeneous? So prior to features,

Jeff Chu  16:26  
I had a product development commercialization strategy business that I built over a 20 year period. And so commercialization strategy side, we did regulatory, reimbursement, go to market strategy, and then I had a full product development team that did everything from ideation to transfer manufacturing. And so companies came to us. I've worked with hundreds of companies, from startups to multinationals, to help them solve their most complex problems or build their most complex products. And the reason why they came to our type of group is because of our ability to innovate, and that innovation really comes true at the end of the day, because of the diverse teams that we're able to bring together and help them solve these complex challenges. Here's a great example, like a striker comes to us because they can't innovate any longer, right? Because, really, it's ingrained and instilled in their mindset to be lean manufacturing, right? And Lean principles, which is great for their business, but it also has a downside of being able to not be able to be creative, to think outside the box and have more complex thoughts, right? And so. So everything that underlined our teams to be successful has always been creating high functioning teams. Those the best high functioning teams that we ever had were people who came from very different experiences, because they're going to come with different ways, different perspectives to look at problems and overcome these technical challenges. Again, these are huge companies that couldn't solve their own complex problems. And so what we've learned over a period of time is that every time we have an engagement, we have to put together a new team. So I've built hundreds of teams, and I think every single one of these teams has always been successful because of that, you know, the building of these perspectives. And so a couple of the statistics that we look at from big picture, 20,000 foot view is that. And this is the cognitive dissonance that exists, right? If I told you, as an investor, there's a way to find companies to be more productive generate higher revenues and higher probabilities, would you want to do it? Right? The answer is yes, of course. And on top of that, you're gonna have better exits. Whoa, that's a secret formula for success, right? And what you look at is it's pretty simple. The data shows this, and this is the craziness about all this, right? We need to embrace it, because this is what works, and it's been shown time and time and time again, and then the other side of it is, like, you look at just the broader conversations about high functioning teams, there's numerous HBr articles about this, and at the end of the day, those high functioning teams happen. You can't put type A personalities and a players all together. Have that to be successful. What you find is you can put a bunch of B players and C players together and they'll outperform those a player teams, right? Again, case study after case study after case study. So the data is incredibly rich. The exits that we see on some of these companies, we're seeing eight to 10x better outcomes for some of these companies. That's phenomenal. I mean, look at some of these stats again. These are published research data. Yeah,

Jenny Barba  19:19  
yeah. I feel really fortunate that as a team, we're able to have these conversations. And so I've been in the room with teams where it's been the polar opposite, and you can see in the founders faces and body language, walking into the room immediately knowing it's why are we here? And so I feel like the future of venture and the future of founders is these high performing groups that we get to see because it's on our radar. We're actively seeking teams with a broad skill set, broad backgrounds, diversity. Be really front and center, and we see the efficiencies, the ability to execute, the ability to leapfrog that we are not seeing in traditional teams. And we think this is kind of a secret sauce, so feel free to join the train here. Because, you know, the founders that are coming through the diverse networks, medtech color, medtech women, medtech vets and programs that are accelerating the time to market, the time to patients, to within the healthcare systems. It's really a positive trend that we're really proud to be a part of. And just acknowledging the fact that when, when people do have to work, 347, times more, it's there's a high return that's going to come from that.

Elizabeth Clayborne  20:56  
And one of the data points I always like pointing out is that while women right now are sending between two and 3% of venture capital dollars, we represent 17% of unicorn exits. I think that again, if people just they assume that there's all this additional risk that's associated with investing in somebody that looks like me, because you're not as familiar, you're not as comfortable, potentially. And I understand that, but I also am trying to communicate that if you can get past that, there is a whole bunch of opportunity that can lift someone like me up and take you along for the ride. So I just want to get into a lot of the data, because I think that's really what illustrates my point. But can you guys both also speak to why you think it's important to have diverse actual funding teams, and why that trickles down to actually helping people like verpe and myself.

Jenny Barba  21:48  
Definitely, this is really important to us. So with diverse funding teams, we are obviously looking for, you know, large markets, half a billion dollar markets, the goal to be number one or number two in that market. You know, a lot of the winning mentality of okay, mic drop, however, with that, it's okay. Building the clinical trial for inclusion purposes, health equity, access to care patients. The if you look at the patient populations that are growing and that have the highest comorbidities, they're extremely diverse, so having the mindset of diverse sabs, diverse board members, inclusion as the front and center of the company. These are companies that are being designed to meet the patient population's needs, the physicians access the costs of the hospital efficiencies. And I feel like people who are in the throws, the scientists, the physicians, the surgeons, who are with the patients, the caregivers, you know, they're seeing things that people who are not in those in the trenches are seeing. So

Virpi Muhonen  23:07  
maybe one comment from me in this point is that, because, as a we have seen now that there's those diverse teams perform what's better than the non diverse team. And as a as a scientist or as a biologist myself, I always started to wonder that, why is that? What's the biological reason, maybe, why these diverse teams do better? And kind of my thinking is, this is my theory. So there's no science really packing this up. Is that we know that people who kind of push themselves outside of the comfort zone, so you are challenging yourself, you are struggling, you are making mistakes, and when you are in a diverse team with people who don't think like you think you do exactly those things, you need to struggle. You need to put more work to understand where are coming from, and you need to you most likely do more mistakes. But that is really the remedy for learning and getting better. That's how your brains actually grow. So it's kind of like you you elevate yourself as a person when you put yourself through that diversity. So I think that's kind of the biological mechanism behind that, that when you push yourself into those situations, you actually became much better learner, and you succeed better when you have that kind of capability. So I think that's the biology there,

Jeff Chu  24:24  
yeah. And I think a key point to that is, you know, we talk about building high functioning teams here, and an underlying tenant for high functioning teams is psychological safety, right? And so I think having a diverse team. People come from these different experiences. They have empathy for one another, and that empathy allows you to create this, the safe space. And these creative solutions come about because people offer their opinions, right? And if you're not, if you don't have a psychologically safe environment, you're not going to offer your opinion, and all you're going to do is probably follow someone, one with the loudest voice, and use their solution, right? And that's not innovation. You know, innovative. Innovation is hard. You're going to encounter. Blocks every every step along the way. And this is what we talk about innovating innovations is because you need these teams to come up with creative solutions to overcome each of these barriers that they hit. And so from from a funding perspective, you ask the question, I love it. And as fund managers, we have the same issue that you guys are seeing, right this entire cycle exists, less than 5% of all venture funds today are minority owned, right? That's crazy, even though, again, it's cognitive dissonance. We outperform, right? And so if we only get a small fraction of the capital that's being deployed our that limits the amount of capital we can deploy to these amazing founders who are going to create the next innovations. So it is incredibly impactful.

Elizabeth Clayborne  25:44  
I can tell you personally like that, I certainly experience the access of capital when I tap into funds that are focused on particular women and people of color. Like currently, I'm in the middle of a seed raise, and over 80% of my cap table is black, over 50% of my cap table is female, and it's because they're the ones willing to take the risk on me, right? Maybe because they're more comfortable with me, or they don't have the same kind of bias inhibition that's allowing them to see the opportunity for me and the company and how we can grow. But I think that that is really important when we look at the solutions which we're going to talk to next to get people like me more capital is that the people giving the money also have to be diverse. It diversifies the thought of what, you know, an investment dollar can do when the people are giving money from, you know, a team that has not just one way of thinking or one background or one particular ideology when it comes to what can be successful, especially in our kind of life science and med tech industry. And

Jeff Chu  26:44  
I think that that, you know, homogenous cap table that you have hurts you in the future, and that's a problem, right? And so we have this affirmation to bias that when you look at it, and people look at it and say, Oh, it's the same label of type of person that's investing you, so therefore it must be a social impact investment, not because you're building a great company, right? And that's scary and

Elizabeth Clayborne  27:04  
it's hard, because that's really the only dollars you really can get really early on. So the battle for me now is just use that momentum so that I can and so for this raise now we have a mix of angel money and VC money, and, you know, they kind of slowly get more comfortable with it, but those early investors are really always going to be typically, someone else that has a passion or a fervor when it comes to wanting to lift up a particular, you know, ethnic background or a female founder. So moving on to, I think, what I really want to make sure we emphasize, what can we do about this, right? So, what can be really this realistically done to improve funding and support diverse founded teams, and how do we break down barriers to starting a business for underrepresented founders?

Virpi Muhonen  27:53  
Maybe I go first, because there was actually this is, I will give you this kind of Northern European startup perspective here, because there was this survey done in Finland among all the Finnish startups that just regarding this area, that what do we need to do? And it was really highlighted there that still the case is that the most the people who feel most belonging and they feel included in that community are, of course, also those people who get the most funding, and those are plus 40 year old Finnish males who have been in the industry for a long time. And you can guess that those people who feel less included are females, or these non EU citizens who don't have a lot of experience in the field. So there's a clear division. And when they were asking that what can be done in that community of Finnish startups, the number one thing that they're looking for is education. So people are really understanding that diversity is a thing that we really need to have, but they don't know how to do that. So they really are wishing to have more kind of industry wide training, especially for the leaders, more like uniform code of conduct for the whole industry, examples like role models presented. But what is positive is that there's a really big drive and interest of being more diverse and seeing the benefits, but there's really a lack of practical tools and education. So that really stand out from the from the survey.

Jenny Barba  29:24  
I love the international perspective too, because it's not just a US thing, so it's helpful. Thank you. Okay, so I'm just going to make a very blatant call to action from those of us who came to this session and to this room. So I just want to first of all give a shout out to all of you for being in this room, because it's it's a it's a ripple effect, it's a momentum. And we are all a part of this together, whether you're a founder, an investor, you know, advisor, and so with that. That the call to action, to change the dynamic is to invest. Number one, ask your friends to invest. Tell them all about it. Like med tech is leaps and bounds behind tech in this mindset. It's a, it's a shift in mindset, right? So we're very risk averse, we're very, you know, we're, we're always capital efficient. And with that, I think it's a disservice to our industry in the diversity bucket. And with that, we need to, I maybe emulate the tech bros, right? And it's like, Oh, you got a Tesla. I got a Tesla. Oh, you got the new Lightning f1 50. Oh, I'm getting old. You got this cool new mountain bike. Okay, going back to how you started the day the session, oh, you invested in that cool med tech company. Yeah, my friends did too. And then, oh, we're at the soccer game, and oh, you need to come into my friend's med tech startup. It's so cool, right? It's just changing access, access to venture. Oh, you're in that fund. Oh, yeah, my friend just put 5 million in, oh, you gotta put 5 million in, okay, we don't all have those friends, right, but it's a buzz, and it's momentum that we can build in the industry. Also in corporate. I'm gonna just highlight on corporate here. Corporate is extremely risk averse as well. There's budgets, there's politics, you name it. And we, I think, as momentum as the wave here in the room can create that buzz. Oh, wow. Let's highlight this teammate. Let's highlight this physician. Let's bring them in to speak. Let's put them on a podium. Let's have a Kol as a clinical site. Boom. That is a ripple effect. And we, we are. We are a part of this together. So just want to highlight that it's across the board, investing, founders, corporate physicians, hospitals, who's in

Jeff Chu  32:00  
awesome. Yeah, we've got to get this the wheel moving right. And so the wheel moves by us investing in people like vrpe and Liz. They're going to create the next generation of companies. They're going to become investors themselves. They're going to invest in funds that are diverse. And what you know is you start to have this multiplier effect that begins to occur. And so for us, it comes in multiple ways. I think Jenny spoke to the investment side of things. I'll speak to a call to action for all the founders here, and people who've come from, you know, have more experience and are mentors and advisors, reach out help support some of these, these diverse founders. At the end of the day, we need more diverse founders that we can invest into, right? And that's what's going to happen. And so it comes both ways of having, you know, revenue creation, of being able to deploy capital into these companies, as well as building up the next generation of founders so they're ready to build the next innovations.

Elizabeth Clayborne  32:51  
And since we're focusing on call to actions, because I really like that, I would like to echo that obviously, as a female founder, as a black founder, capital and access to capital is like the first thing that will kill your company. Your company. So all these things are really important, but there are a whole plethora of other supportive strategies that I think lifts up founders like myself, and a lot of them have to do with the social network that both of you were talking about. And so I think that if you you know, certainly you know, if you want to invest in a company that has a black or female founder, that's great, but at least spread the word about them. Do you have a resource for them? Can you get them PR Can you spread their story? For example, earlier this month, I had an awesome feature on CNBC where they were talking at the kickoff of Women's History Month about how much support I had received from my female founders, and what I told them during that interview is that it's not just that I was proud that like women were investing in women. It's that they brought much more to the table than just capital. They brought the social network that was necessary to propel me forward, because it is those social circles and someone knowing someone else when I need to hire, when I might need to do, you know, my next research stuff when I'm doing grant writing, all these things that go into making me successful behind the scenes is just as valuable and sometimes more, and that is what is important to bring to the table. So even if you don't have dollars to give to me, do you have an introduction? Can you share my name? Can you, you know, potentially help someone else in my network? So my call to action for all of you today is, I want you to find one female or minority founded company, and I want you to specifically reach out to them and offer them something an introduction you might just say, like you're doing a good job, because I already told you, like how hard it is for us and how much of an uphill battle we have, do something to lift up a founder that you know is struggling, and you will see ripple effects from that action you want to follow. Finish this up, burpee, what's your call? That's good. Well, I'm glad we had a lot more people trickle in. In the end, I want to say kudos to Henry, who I kind of pitched to him that we should have a session like this. So another thing you could do. Do is certainly give feedback to the LSI staff if you thought that this was helpful, if you thought it was an important topic, I think it's something that I'd like to talk about on an annual basis at this conference. I think there's just so much brilliance and innovation that comes out of these underrepresented founders that could be lifted up in this platform where there's so many of us doing amazing things. So certainly let the staff know if you want to see more of this, and I'll keep pushing for it as well. Applause.