Episode 51 - How to Say No with Jake Thomsen
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Today’s episode features one of the great thinkers in the FDI community talking about a topic that, well, frankly none of us like talking about. And that is “how to say no.”
No investor can say yes to every deal that crosses their desk (nor should they!), but learning how to say no is a uniquely acquirable skill. Today, Jake Thomsen of Sovereign’s Capital is back after talking to us about Fundraising 101.
He’s here to walk through some of the practices he incorporates in situations where he has to say no, and how these tips might serve you.
Episode Transcript
Some listeners have found it helpful to have a transcription of the podcast. Transcription is done by an AI software. While technology is an incredible tool to automate this process, there will be misspellings and typos that might accompany it. Please keep that in mind as you work through it. The FDI movement is a volunteer-led movement, and if you’d like to contribute by editing future transcripts, please email us.
Jake Thomsen: I think whether you just got a cold email in or you spent a few weeks with an entrepreneur then comes down to encouragement, No. One, humility. Number two, in transparency, you know, encouragement, there's always something to encourage somebody and there's always something to affirm. This is kind of classic Dale Carnegie, how to win friends and influence people, that it's not flattery, but you can do the work to find something that you can encourage them in. And so we always try to do that. Right. Hey, the problem that you're solving, we've seen a few go at it in a certain way. But this is actually the most elegant or we think the most insightful because of X, Y, Z, and your story is a perfect fit for it. There's always something to be able encouraged.
Henry Kaestner: Welcome back to the faith driven Investor podcast. This is a podcast where we hear from investors and talk generally about investing and we talk about how to steward God's capital that is entrusted to us. And we've got two special guests once, my co-host, Luke Roush. But nonetheless, he's still a special guest and he's with us this morning. Partner. Good morning.
Luke Roush: Good morning. It's good to be with you.
Henry Kaestner: Also have Jake Thompson, partner in Cerberus Capital, great friend, long term partner, long term friend, guy runs the venture capital operations and investments out of sovereign's capital. Good morning. Good morning, Alisyn. Be here with you guys. OK, so we're going to talk about a topic that a lot of people would think, gosh, I just pass this over, right? They're going to talk about how to say no to entrepreneurs. I mean, how hard can it be? Right. And yet it's something it's incredibly important as we were just thinking and planning this and just brainstorming on it together, a good investor will end up saying No. Ninety eight or ninety nine times out of one hundred. And for something that takes that much activity, it's something we should probably be spending some time on. One of the things that we've always looked at at sovereigns is that they're five or six different things that you need to do. Well, when you think about investing, you need to be able to fundraise. You need to be able to negotiate deals. You need to find deals. You need to be able to manage your deals. You need to do fund operations. And my partners here tell me what I'm missing. But by far and away, the most important thing that you do as a professional investor is the deal flow. If you have great deal flow, everything else kind of solves itself. You come alongside the right entrepreneurs. They're able to prosper in order to have great deal flow. You end up even hundreds and hundreds of deals that you look at in the course of a month. That means you become very, very selective. You find it very, very, very best. That gives your investors a great return. The problem with that is that to the extent you have great deal flow, that means that many more times that you need to say no. Now, Jake has always impressed this Luke in the way that he's able to say no, Jake Riffe a little bit about why it's important to say no. Well, and why you see that as an opportunity to love other people. And can you love other people in the world of investments?
Jake Thomsen: Yeah, we have to hit all three of those. You know, I think's important for a few reasons. You can think about it almost pragmatically as an investor, right? If you say no. Well well, it's a way to turn something that's inherently transactional, a little bit more relational. Right. And that's good for deal flow networks. It's good for an entrepreneur kind of second time around when the reason maybe they will be more private then I think much more than that. Saying, Noel, is a way that we do indeed love somebody else, that we can recognize and honor the image of God in somebody else and making the time to do that and really put in the effort to do that. Well, and it's something, as you mentioned, we have much more Praxis than we ever would want.
It's the worst part of our jobs. And yet out of the three thousand or so companies that we've seen over the last eight years, we've only invested in fifty one or so. So almost three thousand times or eight years, we are doing the worst part of our job, which makes you wonder why we would do it that many times.
And yet to be able to do it well is something that is very important to us as a three thousand men and women and since Sovereign's Capital just invested faith driven entrepreneurs, these are men and women that have come into you really believing that God's laid something out in advance for them to do is call them to do that. The thing that's standing in front of their ability to succeed is getting capital. That's kind of a really vulnerable spot to be in, right? You feel called to do something. You've probably left your job and you've kind of talked about your business. And yet it's kind of hard to separate the business idea from the person. So the person you're talking to has got to take acceptance or failure personally, right?
Yeah, absolutely. And even beyond the professional risk there, probably if they're married and they've got a family, you know, they're negotiating at home and trying to figure it out, they're taking a big risk in front of their community. I mean, they're a whole bunch of reasons why this has a potential to be just a very stressful, difficult process. And most these entrepreneurs, you know, while we say no to that many and only invest in one or two out of out of 100, they're seeing the same kind of stats. Right. If they can even raise the money, they're getting told no. Sometimes hundreds of times in the way that that will weigh on their vision, their own personal mental health, just their encouragement, their drive to pursue that vision that God's put before them. They certainly can weigh them down. And I think we can come alongside them and be able to do that a little bit better.
Luke Roush: I do think venture capital, one of the things that I think has given venture capitalists a challenging name is not just say no, but also the timing of when those come through. Oftentimes there's a black hole that you're putting diligence and information in and then nothing really ever comes back out in the way of either feedback on why I came back or sometimes even just to know itself. Right. It just kind of goes into the ether and you wonder where you are. And so I think that part of being a faith driven investor is actually being different from the way the world works. And rather than treating our own time as kind of the most precious asset, being able to put the shoe on the other foot, this is what I seen you do so well, being able to put the shoe on the other foot and actually say, hey, this entrepreneur's time is very, very precious. And sometimes being able to get to a quick no and also being able to articulate kind of why we're no and if it's a no, not never or sort of just a no, not now, being able to articulate why it's important and maybe instrumental in terms of helping them make some adjustments that help them to raise capital from us in the future, that sovereign will raise capital from another investor. So maybe just talk a little bit about some of the things that you've been exposed to that have really kind of made an impression in terms of the timing and also the feedback that you give.
Jake Thomsen: Yeah, well, and some of the entrepreneurs that we invest in, they're getting all kinds of investors right. So we see through the lens of those entrepreneurs, many of us in our experience in the past, we see that fortunately for future investors, it's a very low bar that we're competing with. Right. It's usually investors that, as you mentioned, what kind of ghost them in the process or maybe over the top optimistic, enthusiastic, and have a very whiplash of a no, because for whatever reason, they're just trying to retain the option to invest and just can't quite get there. And so that's what we're dealing with. And in terms of how we think about it and how might even structure it, I think can probably break it down to offer a bit of a framework into encouragement, humility and transparency. I think whether it's a cold inbound or if somebody whose hand that you've held for a while, I think those three topics are those three focuses can make that process go very well and very redemptive and maybe unpack some of those. But too, from where you're coming from, I can remember horror stories that we everything just mentioned our learnings. We didn't know that out of the gate. I can think I don't think about these often when I do, I sure cringe, you know, those deals that maybe we got to know the investor or the entrepreneur, rather, for four, six, eight weeks, you know, having a slew of requests and talking with customers. And I just never quite getting. In a couple of times, in the end, we ended up saying no for a reason, that if we were really being honest with ourselves and doing the hard work and not having some worry about missing out, we probably could have come to those conclusions very early on, probably within the first week or so as probably safe to say, at least the sovereigns. Our experience is it's rare that we are not excited about a deal. And through diligence, we do get excited. Right. Sometimes we kind of think, well, let's just keep researching and doing diligence and maybe something will excite us. I can't think of any time that we made an investment and we're very happy with it that that was the case. Right. It's usually the opposite. We start off very excited and now let's go and try to prove ourselves wrong because we just tend to be some optimistic guys. And and so that's more of the process. And so all that to say we take a long time to get to know when we were excited to be with thought we could be. But getting that quick. No, whether it's on the spot, it's in a couple of days or a week or two, if you really dig it in, that's something that we really hold really is the value of what we do.
Henry Kaestner: And so that would seem to be contrary a little bit to one of the dynamics that you think is big about investing, which is optionality, right? Yes. We've heard about the fast yes, the fast know the slow know the slow mo being the worst for the entrepreneur and clearly not a way to love on them. But that's a little bit countercultural in terms of investing. Right. Because let's just acknowledge there's this natural tendency for an investor to want to draw things out to give them more optionality. Maybe the entrepreneur you're talking to lands a big deal or maybe a whole bunch of different things might happen. That gives you more of an opportunity to really be able to assess the deal. Maybe it gives you a chance to change some of the terms. You see that the entrepreneur kind of gets strung out a little bit. They need to cash that much more. And at the end, they're willing to cave a little bit more on some negotiating points because they need the money that much more than they did three months ago. But when you talk to them, so how are you able to fight the urge and not to suggest that you have these nefarious tendencies and you're like, you know, let's go ahead and string this person. I know you well enough to know that's not a thought for you. And yet optionality to see how the next quarter's numbers come in or to be able to assess and look at different things. Optionality is your friend as an investor. And yet that's not always the best way to love an entrepreneur to talk more about that dynamic.
Jake Thomsen: Yeah, so two things. One, very practical. I don't know that we've ever been in a situation where waiting and we've, of course, never intentionally strung anything out. But if we're part of a process or maybe a lead investor wasn't honoring the entrepreneur, how we would like them to, we never really seen that work out where a deal came to fruition. That went really well with other relationships intact and the rest we just haven't missed out on that. There's probably more fear based than not. And I would also point to the idea that we look to be in the relationship for five, seven, ten years. Right. These are long term relationships and we don't want to be getting in a relationship by kind of tricking somebody into certain terms right into us. So suffice to say that that doesn't tend to be that big of a temptation for us in wanting to have that optionality in a way that hurts the entrepreneur. Now, where we do get optionality, I would say, is doing the work to honor the entrepreneur, to build their relationships. I think even the way that you say, no, you can build a rapport, you can show the entrepreneur what type of investor you are and how you will honor them in a way that's sometimes especially over multiple rounds. We've seen, earn us additional looks, earn us optionality, because we're think about the long game and we're thinking about the relationship first. And so I think that can actually go over several reps that can work in our favor, because just like, again, I bring up the analogy of marriage so often, right. When you see somebody true character, you end up wanting to have them around. You end up wanting to not kind of miss out on who that person is. And I just getting tricked into something, I would say. So we see an option. I work out the relationship.
Luke Roush: So take one of the things that I think would be really good to talk through is just in full transparency. What are some of the things that we've done wrong over the years? It's over information, things that we've learned. But there's also a bunch of challenges that we've had kind of doing things incorrectly. And maybe just to give you a chance to think one thing that I know that has happened at least once, but probably two or three times is when we don't have conviction on a deal or an entrepreneur, we will sometimes kind of hang around the hoop and we'll put the CEO, the founder, through some do loops while we're trying to figure out whether other informed investors are going to put capital in. So at least a couple of occasions I have stalled trying to figure out whether other people have conviction rather than us personally having conviction. And that can really drive people nuts because they feel like, gosh, do you really want to date me or do you want to see if other people want to date me and then you want to date me, like, what's the deal? And I think a big learning that we've had is trying to get to our own determination of whether we have conviction to be a partner. If we do, then we should step forward with some amount of courage and declare our interest. If we don't, then we should free the entrepreneur to find somebody who really is a better fit and has more subject matter expertize. And so that's something that I think we've done wrong. And here in Silicon Valley, we see a lot of others who also maybe don't have that much conviction, a little more. A herd mentality, sheep following each other around, and that's something that can really, I think, give our industry a challenging name. But Jake, what other things have we got over the years that would just be good to share with listeners so that they don't make the same mistakes that we've made?
Jake Thomsen: Yeah, I can think of too many of those, unfortunately, too, that come to mind. First one, it was entrepeneur that we got no for a while. In the end, I think we probably said no in a way that wasn't helpful because we knew that we weren't going to get there. We didn't want to tell them over the phone. We thought, hey, we've got this guy over three months or so like this really deserves to be in person. And we just we were moving quickly on other things and didn't really think about it. So invited him to come join us in that case was in San Jose, came down quick conversation telling them, hey, we really appreciate this, let's buy some coffee, let's hang out. But we're not going be able to get to an investment this time and come to find out, he was in Oakland earlier that day, ended up driving an hour each way just to come here. No, right. Because we're thinking like, OK, this is let's check this box in our to do list. And it turned a little bit more transactional then I think we would have liked. So that was just kind of weird because we weren't being very empathetic. We weren't paying ourselves in his shoes and maybe thinking a better way to do that. I think one that we probably hit more often is just being positive with the entrepreneur. You know, we always want to be encouraging. We're at our core encouragers as Hobbins, I would say, for the most part.
And so sometimes in the past, it's really easy to focus on the positive things that we're excited about along the way and give an indication if we were on the other side, we'd probably think the same thing, but give an indication that we're very interested. And the default place we might end up is that there would be an investment. And it's not until later on down the line that we realize, OK, well, our investment committee and where we've landed and based on some other experiences and research on the rest for a couple of risk that were there earlier on, we're just not going to be able to get to an investment. And I think that's been a little bit whiplash in the past, whereas I think what we do a better job now and hopefully is foreshadowing that a little bit, setting expectations both on timing but also saying here's we're really excited about. Here are things that either we're worried about or we'd have to diligence or if we get tripped up, it might be because of X, Y and Z. And so that's what we're going to focus diligence on. And it helps to give a little bit of transparency into our diligence process. And it foreshadows here are some things that may lead to us getting to know. So let's have a very open, transparent conversation about that along the way. And if one of those risks materialize, our own diligence and we say we can't quite get to an investment, there's at least less of a whiplash as more of an understanding that there was a reason there where the expectations I think of the past, we have just tried to retain that option by being really positive and wanting to be those investors that are for.
Henry Kaestner: Well, you know, one of the things is we talk about this sense of the herd mentality that's actually really interesting. There's a study that came out of correlation ventures which talked about where the winners are coming from in venture capital. And it's not any big surprise that what delivers the best returns for the big venture capital funds are the unicorns. I think we all know that, that the venture capital is an industry tends to be focused on these binary bets. And increasingly, there are some firms that are out there that are looking for some of the ground rule double instead of just the home runs. And yet the industry is focused on the home runs and yet correlation ventures found and looking at where these returns are coming from, that many of the deals that the big VCs thought were going to do well were a whole bunch of herd came in and it was oversubscribed, didn't have any type of bearing on whether the company was successful or not. And so they found out in the research that many the majority of the big winners in venture capital were led by smaller firms, many fewer from financings that were undersubscribed or inefficiently syndicated. And so if your investment premises, let's hold off and see if some other people really like this company, that actually doesn't help you to understand whether that deal is going to be successful or not. There's not any correlation there. And I think that that's fascinating because otherwise you're listening to this and saying, well, yes, of course, I want to love my neighbor. Of course I want to love the entrepreneur, but I want to be a good steward of the capital that's been entrusted to me. And so if that's part of the negotiating game and that's what gets me the top quintile returns, I need to do that. But actually, the data doesn't bear that out either.
Jake Thomsen: Yeah, well, in a lot, I think comes down to supply and demand, right, if you don't have a contrarian perspective or at least you don't see the world a little bit differently than everyone else in Japan, a whole lot of capital in their bids up prices, you know, end up getting those returns. And so it's human nature and the data I think this is one of those cases where they're often in conflict.
Luke Roush: Now, there's also some really interesting work that's been done previously just to understand, like what are all the deals that firms have passed on that ended up being really remarkable in terms of the opportunity? And we keep a list of kind of our entire portfolio, Jake. We're like, here's all the things that we said no to.
Henry Kaestner: And boy, we wish we could give back to the original Bessemer Trust and you can Google. The best summer antique portfolio is some of the funniest reading you'll ever do. If you're an investor. You care about angel investing, you care about venture investing, about why they pass on eBay or Amazon or just it's just very, very, very funny reading. And out of that, we've endeavored to do the same. Tell us about Orianthi portfolio.
Jake Thomsen: Yeah, you know, we've got a bunch I'd say we've got a solid half dozen that are just very, very painful when it comes to returns. I would like to think know one thing that we always look at, I should say, and this is probably true at the time, that if we were to make that decision again, based on the information we had at the time, that is our gauge of success of that we made the right decision or not. Right. Hindsight, 20/20, a lot of unexpected things happen, but sometimes I'd say the half that we definitely would like to do differently because there's something about the industry or the size of the opportunity or the technology that we didn't quite love. And yet the entrepreneur was just stellar. And we invest in people first. But every once while we think this is an incredible entrepreneur, but in the space that we just don't have a lot of connection. And it's also almost especially in the early days, getting a little spooked by a space that we didn't know and yet not back in a world class entrepreneur. Those are probably more than anything on our entire portfolio.
Henry Kaestner: Do you ever get emails from entrepreneurs as they go public that say, how do you like me now?
Jake Thomsen: I get a lot of people's raspberries. I say, you better watch out because we are going public. But I've never gotten on the other side, I tell you. Yeah.
Luke Roush: Yet I'm gone there yet to take out what is just kind of good tactical and specific. How do you think about closing the loop with entrepreneurs when you have to say no? How do you decide how much time to spend? Because what I hear from other investors and what I felt personally and what I actually you know, you and I have had this debate right. Like, you can get sunk actually saying no and doing a great job with that. And meanwhile, the portfolio that we've invested in that we partnered with people is hungry for our time, but we're too busy saying no and try to be good stewards. Like how have you been able to find a balance between allocation of time to really shepherd those relationships?
Well, to make sure that people aren't scarred coming away, recognizing that we've tallied up a whole bunch of times in the last nine years, how do you think about managing that and maybe just give listeners some real tactical guidance about how you go about it?
Jake Thomsen: Yeah. So maybe I'll break that down by giving a little bit of our template. And I call it template. Just because we've kind of normed on it's nothing real formal. But I think whether you just got a cold email in or you spent a few weeks with an entrepreneur, then comes down to encouragement, No. One, humility, No. Two, and transparency, you know, encouragement. There's always something to encourage somebody on, right? There's always something to affirm. This is kind of classic Dale Carnegie, how to win friends and influence people, that it's not flattery, but you can do the work to find something that you can encourage them in. And so we always try to do that, right. Hey, the problem that you're solving, we've seen a few go at it in a certain way. But this is actually the most elegant or we think the most insightful because of X, Y, Z, and your story is perfect, fit for it. There's always something to be able encouraged to, number one. Number two, I think having a spirit of humility is really important, whether an email or in person or the rest. This is kind of considering others better than yourself understanding, especially at an early stage. There's going to be so many unknowns, no one's going get it quite right. So we don't want to have the pride of saying we have the right answers. So we always want to have that humble tone. Henry, there's a line that still strikes me that I heard you say a few times early on where you approach us so well when your feedback for an entrepreneur, we'll hear a pitch and they'll describe how they're going in a certain direction. And you'll say something along the lines of, well, I understand and completely get where you go and A, B and C, and you had the experience and you know where you're going. And I know about five percent of what I need to know to make the statement. But it sure seems like DNF could be pretty interesting, too. What do you think about that? Right. Where Henry probably has an opinion about what they could be doing and yet just positions it in a way that is winsome, that recognizes the number one way to get people to stop hearing you is to tell them that they're wrong. Right. So how do you kind of go around that and still serve them with humility and being able to deliver truth in kind for saying that a lot of that was just informed by my experience as an entrepreneur.
Henry Kaestner: And I semi famously, almost famously, we went over forty inventor phrases. That means 40 different firms and probably one hundred and thirty five meetings or something like that or two and a half years saying no. And I'll tell you, I remember a guy and be fun. If you listen to a podcast, I want to suggest you would. But there's a guy named Erskine Bowles at Carousel Capital who I will remember to this day, said no so well, and it didn't take a ton of time and doing it, but. He had a way of validating who I was the night before. It was something along the lines of this and say, listen, I got to tell you, I want to bury the lead. I'm very sorry that we're not going to be able to invest in you. But before I go on a little bit further, I want to give you kind of some thoughts and some feedback on why. I want to let you know that what you're doing is really cool. And I really admire the partnership that you've got with David. And from what I can gather about the team that you've built. You got something really special there. I couldn't get my partners to a couple of different key things that help us to get unity around, make an investment. But ultimately, you guys get a lot of courage. And I think that you're going to be successful and I'm going to be hoping and praying that you are. And I just want you to keep on going. And this is probably another one of those data points where it's going to be kind of maybe frustrating. I would have loved to have seen us be able to make an investment and we're not going to be able to do that. But you guys have something special going on there. And the way that you're thinking about solving this problem is really interesting. And I think you have an opportunity to refine it over the next couple of years. And I'm going to be really eager to see how you guys work versus some of the other times where we had two different venture capitalists fell asleep during meetings with us. It's reasonably hard to do. I mean, unbelievable.
Luke Roush: Or when David was talking or you were talking. He was talking.
Henry Kaestner: Well, you know, I mean, because it was me was me talking. And there's some funny stories about how some of those things ended that you may know that probably not great for prime time, but you had some of that. But also you'd have some of the just the canned things like we can't invest right now. But as you progress, you know, give us a look. You know, keep us in the loop. Let us know how you're doing and the thought of from the entrepreneurs to times like. Yeah, sure, pal. I mean, you just said no, you wasted all this time. And as soon as we have the big win, I hi5 my partner about the big win. And we're thinking about calling you right away. It's never going to happen. And so I think that part of to whatever degree that I say we do it well is because we've been on the receiving end and have seen it done so poorly. But I'll tell you, Erskine Bowles was such class and it just didn't take him that long to do. And I'll never forget it. And this is 20 years ago that he did that. Yeah.
Jake Thomsen: Yeah. And even that point you mentioned jumped out of me. Or I think you have the opportunity to refine some things. Right. There's transparency where he wasn't given the timings wrong or let's just pick it up later. There's there's actually a reason that he may have given not necessarily a whole lot of detail, not necessarily try and make it a conversation, but just giving you some indication of where they're coming from and why. So I think with that encouragement, humility, transparency, that doesn't take that much time when you do it, a number of reps, when you kind of have a bit of an instinct for doing that did build over time in some ways. I think Amy Minnick has been so wonderful, insightful and talk about gleaning and investments. I think whether it's spending time saying no to entrepreneurs or there are some other activities like that, that in some ways is some sort of gleaning to say it does take some time and that's the way to honor others, somebody else and to lift them up. And yet we find that as you do it more and more, it doesn't take all that much time to be able to do it. Well, as long as you're encouraging being humble and having some transparency to.
Luke Roush: Well, I think also one of the things that's really important for faith driven investors is that it's not dissimilar to the role that pastoral staff or congregation has in the church know when you have someone come in and sort of try out and interact. We all know folks who have been burned by bad experiences. They had a youth group or a church or whatever. And so to the extent that the gospel is going to be front and center to the work that we do as investors, it just raises the bar considerably that those who we come in contact with, particularly those that we don't end up progressing into some form of partnership with, have a good taste in their mouth. And, you know, one of the things that I've seen done well by others is the entrepreneur. Even when they get to know, they do genuinely feel like the person is in their corner. And we've tried to adopt this at times. The times have done it OK. At times we've really blown it. But the entrepreneur really feeling is that we are for them. We want to see them be successful. If there's folks that we know in our network and our advisory network or in our investor network or other secular or faith driven firms, to the extent that we can connect them to folks who can break down obstacles or help them, even if we have no horse in the race whatsoever and have nothing to gain to the extent that particularly for entrepreneurs who are, you know, great folks and a great idea, it's not the right fit for us to the extent that they see us being willing to sort of leverage our network for them, even though we have nothing to gain. I think that's a way of them really believing that we are practicing what we preach in terms of really demonstrating a care and a belief that God has equipped them to do something special, even though it's not for us to be a partner with them in that that we're trying to do other things that we can't help them.
Henry Kaestner: And I think it's really important. You know, there's a market dynamic, particularly with entrepreneurs that are in the 20 or 30 year age group. There's a lot of research by Bahrain and others talking about some of the dissatisfaction and some of the challenges that they've had with the church. And so in light of that, you don't want to be yet another example about, see, that's why I don't go to the Christian community. You know, the church doesn't get me. And we've become another negative reference, and it just takes them that much further away from faith because there's real harm that can be done here, especially for investors that have identified themselves as Christ followers that will pray with entrepreneurs ahead of time. When we say no, it could be significantly more damaging than if battery, Sequoyah, US venture partners, Redpoint, all of those people say no, that's not a no from those people, isn't going to take them potentially further away from their faith. But I know from somebody who shares their faith, who says no may discourage them and just say, you know, the Christian community doesn't get me. And yet God creates to be in community. So if you listen to this podcast feature investor, a good chance that you're driven by your faith. And so I think that that's that much more important that we as an investing community do this well and we at Saffron's capital do it better than we've done in the past.
Jake Thomsen: Yeah, I'll tell you, it's been very encouraging for us having even just the FDI marketplace, right. Where even if there's a no, we might be able to four of them on, I think, the exact mission that that you guys are going for. It's not just an encouraging word or I'll pray for you, but, hey, I'm going to tell you now and I'm going forward, John, not just to the podcast, but to a marketplace where you can find capital for us to be able to bring them into the community, a feature of investors to have a whole lot of different types of people that are looking in the marketplace. That's been a big blessing for us because we can say no and write in a unique way.
Luke Roush: Well, that's a great point. And I'm glad you brought it up, because particularly in today's market, there's not a shortage of capital and there's not a shortage of ideas. They're trying to find the right capital for the right ideas. And trying to make that match is very, very challenging. And so it's a great point for other investors that are out there knowing that the marketplace exists as a way of short circuiting. Maybe what would otherwise be kind of a random process is great opportunity and great kind of offramp to do another whole universe of different investors that have complementary and different skills and what our firm or your firm may have. So I want to close just with how we typically close of what God is teaching you right now, Jake. But before we do that, just summarize three things that investors should be thinking about in terms of how they know the right way and then close by. What got to you right now?
Jake Thomsen: Yeah, I would say getting back to that theme, we've hit on getting to a quick no if it's going to be thinking about their time, right. Being empathetic, they're no to try to see the image of God in them. That sounds overly theoretical and theological, but really, just how do you see them as a person? And if you were to put yourself in their shoes, how would you want to be treated? How do you honor them? I think even just stopping and praying before interactions, before you write an email, before you sit with an entrepreneur to say no and just have the spirit work on our hearts to try to put that interaction the right light, see it through his eyes. I think those are three things that I would recommend to.
Henry Kaestner: And just tell us what you're hearing from God through his word. Maybe this morning. It doesn't need to be this morning, maybe this week, this month. But how do you feel that God is speaking to you in your life right now?
Jake Thomsen: One idea that I'm thinking about these days is just this concept of anxiety. We're with some entrepreneurs and they're doing fundraisers and they're sleepless nights and just more times. And I was reading Philippians about two weeks ago now and it really struck me. Of course, I got to Philippians four, which is like the go-to for anxiety of "Hey, be anxious about nothing but in everything through prayer and supplication lift it up to the Lord. And the peace that surpasses understanding will come to you." And in one sense I think that's such an encouragement and the other sense it can be kind of discouraging or even anxiety-inducing, because like us, especially now, we were going through a fundraise. Are you feeling that lack of anxiety? And if not, it's kind of like you think you got something going wrong. But what really jumped out at me, this is the point I'm getting to is reading Philippians all in one sitting. I got Chapter two where Paul essentially has this riff, where he has his missionary friend and Aphroditus, who got really sick. The Philippians didn't know he was sick. They thought he might die. And so part of the letter, Paul wants to let them know, hey, he is OK, I'm going to send him to you. And it kind of talks about we're all very anxious about this. Aphroditus is anxious. I'm anxious about it. And the only way I'm going to solve it is by sending him to you so that my anxiety can be reduced somewhat. And it seems as though it would be saying we do experience anxiety because of the brokenness of the world. And sometimes Paul at least was looking at the circumstance. And even when he was trying to address the circumstance, I didn't quite get him told to that peace that surpasses understanding. And yet he gets to Chapter four and says, this is what we strive for. And so I don't have a clear takeaway from all that. But that's what I'm wrestling with, kind of looking at from different angles with God. And I think I'm landing just on the side of the "Already - Not yet" right. God has already accomplished the victory and it is not yet fully here. And so how do we live into that kingdom that is still coming? It's still on its way, and yet we know what that faithful living is like. And maybe some layer of anxiety sometimes doesn't necessarily mean that we're doing something wrong, which is that we're in this kind of following world in a tough spot and I don't know where to go from there. But that's what I'm thinking about.
Henry Kaestner: That's a good one. That's a good word already. Not yet. And then that leaves you in this place of faith believing in it.
Luke Roush: Hey, man, I'll say thanks, Jake, for being with us often to hear your thoughts. I think this is such an important topic because it occurs so frequently in the lives of investors and being able to say know the right way is just fundamental to being able to be a witness and testimony in our faith, how we interact with others. So thanks for your thoughts.