956 - How To Become The World's Most Active Angel Investor w/ Edward Lando (Pareto Holdings)

Mat Sherman (00:01.249)
All right, we are here with Edward Lando, who is the most active angel investor on planet Earth here on Forward Thinking Investors. Edward, welcome to the show. How's it going?

Edward Lando (00:12.994)
Thanks for having me. It's going well.

Mat Sherman (00:15.511)
Yeah, I appreciate you coming on. I feel like a lot of people did not know. You weren't on my radar up until this guy named Lenny published a Lenny Ryszynski, I think is how you pronounce his last name, published this list of the most active investors, period. I think it was for last year in 2024, maybe it was a different key, but you were like number one by a lawn shot.

So I'm like, my gosh, who is this guy? So I had to get you on and learn more about who you are, what you like investing in and just kind of like cover your story a little bit. So I think let's start there. Like you're the most active angel in the world. How'd you get into angel investing? Let's start there.

Edward Lando (01:00.052)
Yeah, thanks for having me. again, think there's a debate as to I think quality matters more than quantity. I've certainly been active and hopefully we're also making some good investments. the way it got started is very sort of organically, I guess. And I wasn't planning any of this. But back in college, I learned how to code. I learned how to start working on my own ideas with a couple of my best friends. It was actually kind of one of the more memorable things that came

from college. I made a couple of really good friends and I studied business as an undergrad, which was kind of useless, but I met some great people and I had some fun and some great classes and so on. But sort of working on my own projects in my spare time.

was I think the most meaningful thing that came of it. And I started a couple things, projects I would say mostly more than companies while I was an undergrad. And then when I graduated, I had a couple different things going on, but I got into YC for one of the companies that a friend of mine, Emil Pitkin and I started together. And it was a lot of fun. This was in 2014. And I moved out to the West Coast, you know, in the couple years before that, I had spent some time in San Francisco.

I had met some of Teal Fellows. I had applied to the Teal Fellowship. You know, I think when I was a freshman or a sophomore and I was correctly rejected because I didn't have much of an idea, but I was already interested in longevity and helping people live longer and healthier and perhaps, you know, of like alleviating a lot of the problems that people have. But I was sort of hanging out with the fringe people in SF, I would say. And I realized that there were some folks around me that I...

Thought very highly of and that I thought would succeed and and as you you know, know when you're building one startup you you get to recruit some awesome people if you're lucky, but you don't get to recruit everyone and and you might know other people who you think are sharp and interesting who are doing cool things and and to me this was a way to start participating in what they were doing and so You know initially

Edward Lando (03:03.534)
raised a tiny little vehicle back in the day, but then sort of quickly, you know, a couple years later, started investing my own capital, even though was smaller amounts. And it was just the sort of smart people around me, sort of impressive, tenacious people around me, and their friends. I find that sort of impressive people tend to hang out with other impressive people. And it started that way, and you know, a couple of them, you know, obviously I think some folks had a good experience, and so recommended other people, and it grew from there.

Mat Sherman (03:33.223)
You mentioned there...

that you were kind of hanging out with folks like on the fringe in SF and there's like, there's plenty of different groups of tech people in SF, hundreds really of subcultures. And I think the group that you get involved with from the get often like sometimes can determine your life in some ways, because then they introduce you to their people, introduce you to their people. And it's just kind of like, you're around that quality of person. like that Walkman, it's obviously the group of people you initially were hanging out with,

served you well like how would you know who to hang out with in SF or does it just kind of like happen to you you had a friend that they introduced you to their friend and you kind of like locked into it or is there a little bit of luck a little bit of skill how does that work

Edward Lando (04:14.882)
Yeah.

Yeah, I'll answer that. And actually, you know, as you were saying that I realized that even some of my first investments were not even from that group. So that's I sort of set that. But then I realized like some of them later maybe. But like the very first angel investment I made was, you know, so I grew up in France, despite my accent, and I read about this cool company that was building like a way to make music videos on your phone before any of this stuff existed before TikTok existed and others. And they seem really cool. I reached out to them. At the time, I was writing articles for Huffington Post for fun because I like to write.

and I used that to meet them and I found a way to invest in their company which was awesome and that initial company didn't work out but still very good friends with them and I think they're gonna do something cool. And then a couple of the other examples of investments I made early, a friend of mine started a very successful serial company called Catalina Crunch. I'd met him through a mutual friend from college and that mutual friend had said, this is one of the most impressive people I know, incredible math student and

and sort of had worked in quantitative finance and he was tinkering at something else for a while and then he got into this, but he just came sort of recommended like crazy by someone. So to answer your, I guess the first point is, wasn't only initially the fringe people in SF, I would say that I did invest in some of the interesting SF folks that I met and those, it happened organically again, where I spent a couple summers in San Francisco interning at various places. I hung out with the Teal Fellows. I went to sort of interesting meetups.

This was, you know, not too long ago, but kind of long ago now, you know, which was like, you know, I met, I was in college from like 2010 to 2014. So during those summers and so on, it feels like the tech kind of community in SF was still a little smaller than it grew to be. And these people just, you know, hung out together and it's a pretty small world. And I would say it still is a small world.

Edward Lando (06:10.446)
And so I still think that the best way to kind of get started is to just bet on people who you organically like and get to know and so on, and then sort of let it happen. think that when you force it, and there are other methods. I've seen investors do a good job sort of with a lot of cold outreach and meeting people that they haven't known for a while, but this is what has worked for me.

Mat Sherman (06:32.858)
After being in tech for me for about eight years for the first four years in Arizona and kind of the Arizona scene not getting exposed to SF and then for my last company Seed Scout getting very very exposed to SF I've come to completely agree It's like it's like it really like do you want to do business with people that you think you're cool that you buy with it's like about the vibes right like you're like I thought like when I first was hearing that just like that's like kind of lame, but it truly is You know truly is reality. You know you want to work with people that you like and trust and respect

Edward Lando (07:00.611)
Yeah.

I definitely think it also applies to, you know, hiring an early team. Like I think, you know, a lot of people think, you know, I'm working on a startup. I need to go hire fancy people in order to, to, make my startup more real. I think the best like five or 10 initial hires that you can make are like your friends, your roommates, your, your, your ex colleagues or, or whatnot, people you've known for a while who might be slightly underrated in a sense, but, but who, for whom you feel a strong loyalty and, vice versa, and who you want to be, you you want to be in the trenches with them. And then, you know, once you become more successful.

I think you end up hiring the more, you know, the fancier people. But I think initially the first 10, 15 people ideally are people you've known for a while. So I think it applies to investing and building.

Mat Sherman (07:43.748)
Totally. So let's talk about your investing practice, you could say.

As I mentioned, I heard about you from Lenny. He looked at all the top investors on Crunchbase, the most active, and yours, like, of investments, I think, in 2024. Can you kind of walk us through two things? One, like, how much, like, how many checks are you writing a year on average? And, just walk us through, like, what you like investing in, like, when you like investing, and guess your general thesis or practice as you invest in startups.

Edward Lando (08:12.11)
Yep.

Yeah. Yeah. So I don't think we don't have a fixed amount, you know, of, investments that we make for them. say we, because I initially made about 400 or 450 investments on my own as an angel. And then I couldn't really sort of stay on top of everything and, and, be helpful to these people and so on. And so, ended up creating a couple of years ago, an entity called Pareto, which is still self-funded, but we have a couple of people, not that many, but, a couple of people helping us sort of like, you know, find more companies and more importantly, help them and so

on and the joke is that when I brought up one of the main people who's been amazing, Ben who's based in Europe, I think he asked me where do we keep track of all the investments and where they're at right now and what they're worth and all that stuff and I sort joked and I was like we don't keep track of it anywhere. So I had no tracking, nothing, I was of very much yoloing it which was for better or for worse that has been my approach, sort of organized.

Mat Sherman (09:05.507)
you

Edward Lando (09:12.974)
controlled chaos. So we don't have a set number per year. I would say that like, we, know, this whole quantity thing, it's sort of a, it is, I agree, like it's a false like thing to be proud of because you could just invest in, you know, everything and become the most active investor in the world. We definitely pass on a bunch of incredible people who sort of show us things and so on. I think the,

We end up investing in things whenever we're kind of impressed, whenever we're impressed with like, you know, a team and we think that like the price is sort of like makes sense and where we think that like the, general category makes sense as well. And so I started off, you know, when I started investing, I guess almost 10 years ago, I was very much like, you know, I only want to like bet on great people. Like great people are, are, are the people who changed the world. and then, you know, sort of like,

along the years I started thinking more about market, business model, other things like that. And then know if you've seen a lot of these Twitter memes where you have sort of like the bell curve and you have this sort of idiot and then the Jedi at the end and the middle one. But so I think that the idiot and the Jedi have the same point of view, which is you end up just betting on great people. I think everyone makes a bunch of different sort of excuses and rules for business models that you should back, business models that you shouldn't back. I've done very well from serial and now toothbrushes.

and stuff like that, but also from like, you know, software and AI and, you know, sort of things that sound fancier. And I know there's several people who I think are some of the smartest people and investors that I know in general, who have passed on some incredible companies because they were too smart, especially sort of like early on, and they didn't like the initial business model. And then very quickly that team changed business models a month or two later. And so...

the investor is sort of missed out. So would say at least at my stage, very much sort of a person-driven and no set number per year.

Mat Sherman (11:21.113)
You mentioned in there that if you are impressed with a team, impressed with a founder or co-founder team, and the price kind of makes sense, you may lean in.

How do you kind of determine if something is like priced well or not? It's like, there's no right answer. Cause if like Mark Zuckerberg starts a new company next year, you're going to invest, either it's a post money of a billion or whatever. But like, I feel like it's, it's, it's really hard to know if something's overpriced or underpriced or just priced perfectly. Do you have a kind of like a framework on how you think about, you know, valuations when you're getting deals?

Edward Lando (11:59.03)
Yeah, a little bit. Yeah. And I would say, you know, I could, I could sort of, there's a couple, think very good early investors who would say, you know, if it's a great company, who cares about the price, right? Whether you enter at five or 10 or 15 or 20 or 30, if it's an amazing sort of, you know, future Nvidia or whatever it is, what does it matter? I think a couple things just generally, one is if you write fairly small checks, right? Let's say you write like 25, 50 K.

you know, putting in 50K at like a $200 million valuation is like fine, but it's kind of like a drop in the ocean. And you can, and you maybe you can add the logo to your website or your angel list or whatever, but like it is kind of a drop in the ocean. So I think it has to do as well with like the quantum of capital that you're investing. And then the other thing is, you know,

At the end of the day, if we meet someone exceptional, even if we only put in $50,000, it's a great way to just start working with someone amazing and have a relationship with them. But I definitely think that there is, at least for our model for Preseed, there's a sort of asymmetry to...

you know, putting in more capital at a less expensive price, at a lesser price. You buy more of the company and you know, it's still a relatively small amount of capital, right, from a sort of like absolute point of view. And if you're right, you're really right. And if you're wrong, you you lose the principle, but you have sort of like others. And so would say it's sort of a...

mix of an art and a science. But again, like putting in, you know, putting in 25,000 into the most hype, you know, pre-launch AI deal at like 200 million valuation or whatever it is, is like, it's not really going to move the needle that much in any way. And I don't think, you know, it's not our favorite way of investing, but again, sort of backing someone great at a sort of a fair price or even a great price is awesome.

Mat Sherman (13:56.25)
There's also something that isn't necessarily economical, where if you're in someone's first check, they remember you forever. You bet on them, and you're always their first investor through a failure or through a success. And I think that has a lot of other payoffs outside of just the price you get and the ownership you get in the company.

Edward Lando (14:07.116)
Yes.

Edward Lando (14:21.28)
Yes, yes, that's exactly right. Like I think apart from like the cold like numbers approach to all this stuff and all that, I always say like, hopefully again, hopefully we make money doing this stuff. We don't really have external investors. you know, like we can also just do it for other reasons. But yes, hopefully it's a good investment. We make money and all that. I do think that the sort of like human relationships that you form with the people that you

you know, who you're the first to back are incredible. the sort of like loyalty, of essentially almost love and friendship you have at some point is great. And I had seen, I don't know, just people remember it forever. They really remember like you were the first to back me. there's, for example, like recently, you talked about X and sort of like Lenny's post on X. There's another founder that we work with who I posted about his progress, this guy, Keon from Nucleus. When we backed him,

He was a student undergrad at Penn where I went as well. think he was a sophomore or something and a friend of mine and I sort of like co-led the pre-seed or a friend introduced us. So very grateful for that. And I remember like Kian was sort of like moved to like tears, like, you know, when, he was able to sort of drop out and pursue his dream and he's, he's already sort of like raised a lot more money, you know, sort of hired an incredible team. But I think to his credit, he'll, he'll, I think he'll never forget, forget that. we become sort of like very.

very good friends and I think hopefully again that'll be big success if he does something else we'll work together again but there's you we have other relationships like that where it's much more unique than hey you know fancy fund is already leading her around do you want to throw in you know an angel check you know that's that's kind of nice for your ego again maybe you make some money on it but but it sort of feels less special so I definitely think that there's it just kind of it's awesome it's beautiful when you get to be the first backer of someone great

Mat Sherman (16:10.521)
Absolutely not.

Edward Lando (16:11.744)
And I think, again, I like that these are all sort of impromptu questions, but I remember I think you mentioned that one of your, you enjoy asking is what is the sort of misconception people have about venture capital and stuff like that.

just to answer this question, which you haven't really asked, but people are often like, the first thing they say when you say you invest in early stage companies, they say, well, a lot of them must go to zero, right? Sort of like almost all of them fail, right? Like 99 % of them fail and so on. I don't know where they learned that. Maybe it's Shark Tank or whatever it is, but that's not been my experience at all. I think I have like 950 investments or so at this point and you know.

I don't know, like I think somewhere like maybe 150 of them have failed, maybe around there, maybe 130, 140, something like that. And fail is sort of like a, it's a strange word here because in some cases, you we ended up working with the same people again. And what people don't price in as well as again, the human thing of like, if people really love working with you, they often find like just a way to sort of like, I don't know, even if the company doesn't work out, a way to work with you again. And I've also been very impressed with founders who, you

five years in, six years in, or like, hey, didn't work out, we're so sorry, here's like 50 % of your capital back. And you're like, how is that even possible? But it's kind of unbelievable to what extent most people are actually kind of like good and do the right thing and are very, grateful for you to back them early.

Mat Sherman (17:45.028)
Totally as a founder, at least up to this point, I feel that way about my early backers. I'm my first investor ever. Jason Calacanis from my last company, we kind of put him through hell with that company. had like a co-founder fight. It is what it is, like he just like, you know, was just such a champ and you know, just like such a professional through all of them. Just like, damn, like that guy, the firm gave me.

give me a chance before anyone else, before any accelerator. I always, you he's always, I don't know if he'll ever back me again, but like he will always be the first guy that backed me. And like, like, have like a, you know, at least I feel kind of like a loyalty towards him because of that.

Edward Lando (18:21.326)
Totally, and I think people underestimate, know, life is short, but life is also quite long, and people underestimate the power of repeat games. know, like you like game theory and stuff, like everyone is a cliche that startups in Silicon Valley are all about like aggressive power grabs and weird moves, like in, I don't know, suits or succession or whatever it is. It doesn't, like the people who kind of win don't end up kind of being like that necessarily because that sort of reputation in news sort of

goes quickly and so usually there's again the people who sort of optimize for the repeat game are those who win.

Mat Sherman (18:59.332)
Totally. shifting gears slightly...

So I live in Phoenix, I'm not like in the inner beat every day, like in SF and like kind of like hearing all the news and all the new folks that are coming to town or just kind of investing. But I also feel like I'm pretty plugged in. Like I have this podcast, I've interviewed like 950 founders, plenty of investors. I like, you know, I feel like I'm informed. But you are someone who, like I mentioned, like I hadn't heard of you before, before that list. But obviously you must be hyper, hyper, hyper networked to have invested in all these companies.

just sit and invest, know, one of your first, not one of your first, but an investor referred a founder to you that you co-invested and you led their pre-seed. So my question to you is, how do you stay relevant to like investors without maintaining a super, super, super high profile? And how do you make sure people know who you are? Or like, is that just like through the relationships that you have through the investments that you make, you people know just by your actions? Versus like, I think some people just tweet a lot or they write newsletters or they podcast a lot.

I'm one of those people. There's nothing wrong with that. But how do you stay top of mind or do you not try to stay top of mind at all?

Edward Lando (20:05.955)
Yeah.

Edward Lando (20:10.444)
I don't know if I'm top of mind or if we're top of mind, you know, and, and, you know, we've gone back and forth and I've gone back and forth on like the merits and, and drawbacks of being loud. I think there are merits and drawbacks in general, cause I think it being loud sort of is a lot of noise often unclear how much of it is useful and, and in general unclear, you know, how much of the people kind of like reading you or listening to you are the ones who are going to send you interesting things. but again, serendipitous things have happened from, you know, things that I posted on LinkedIn and X and so on.

and I like writing and so for example I do some of that but we've definitely and I've definitely sort of avoided

doing news or stuff like that around investing. And I think again, our approach is we back some great people. Hopefully they like working with us. They introduce us to other great people. I would love for the best investors out there to have me and us top of mind and say, definitely need to have Edward in your round and Pareto in your round. That doesn't happen that often. We have some really good allies and people that we like, early stage funds and folks like that.

but we don't actually, we are not necessarily close to a lot of the larger, more famous investors out there. nothing against them, but I think it's become kind of like a very kind of competitive world that they're probably among each other. Sort of like a lot of these funds managing a lot of money.

and wanting to take the whole round. And so we often back companies before these people. And we backed a lot of companies that a lot of these top funds have marked up and invested in afterwards. So yeah, I would love for the top fund who leads a seed or a series A to say you should definitely make room for Pareto. Maybe that will happen one day, but currently not the case. Currently it's often us who've come in before. So to answer your question, we're probably not top of mind. But hopefully one day we will be.

Mat Sherman (22:03.053)
Yeah, I two thoughts on that. I find that like most of the time when people want to refer guests to my podcast, generally founders, the interview always goes slightly less well than if I scout them myself and find them myself just through my own sources. And I just think just because like everyone always has like an incentive or a game to like, you know, introduce someone to you or help you.

versus when you just are out in the wild scouting or hunting. You're playing your own game. So I feel like after making almost 1,000 investments, you've invented your own game in some way. I have a follow-up question on you investing earlier than the large funds. And this is kind an educational question for those listening that want to be investors or are investors.

How do you make sure that when you invest in a company, a larger investor who invests later doesn't like wipe you out? You know, there's pro rata, there's other things, but like in practice, does this happen? Like, can you protect your investment or are you kind of, you know, helpless as an early stage pre-seed investor to these funds? How does that work?

Edward Lando (23:04.236)
Yeah, it's a good question. And I think it's in living some of these moments that I sort of understood why venture capital and private equity are sort of in the same general category, at least maybe in like the LinkedIn categories or whatever. It's because at the end of the day, you're buying stakes in companies.

In some of the cases, often in venture capital, you don't buy a controlling stake, right? You buy sort of like a smaller stake, fits an angel investment, like a very small thing. If it's a pre-seed, maybe 7%, maybe 10%, whatever. If you're leading a seed round, maybe 20%, who knows? And in private equity, right, which is kind of like New York land and whatever, you're often buying like a majority or sort of the entirety of a company. And so in private equity, you're often like a control investor and you can sort of control what happens. In venture capital, you know, I guess that the question of like this whole control thing had

had not really come to mind before we lived some of these moments. And again, I think the answer is you can't really control it as a sort of like, you you can have some sort of protections as a sort of a major investor, I guess, you know, if you put in a little bit more money, if you buy more of the company. the, you know, again, it goes back to what I said, which is like, got to kind of, and I guess this is not investment advice or whatever, but like, you got to trust that

a lot of the people that you partner with are gonna do the right thing, right? And so I think it comes down to a lot of the founders. I think at some point probably, especially if the company is struggling or doing okay, have an opportunity to do right by you or not, especially when negotiating with future investors. There've been a couple cases when we've been totally wiped out or almost totally wiped out with sort of recaps and things like that. And I would say that happened a lot more in like the not fun years of like 2022.

2023, part of 2024. And you know, there are a lot of years where you just get a bunch of markups and everything's great and you think that you're right on everything. But I would say the answer, at least in my experience, it hasn't happened too often. It hasn't happened too often and it often happens when like the company is not doing that well. And again, I think if the person you work with, the founder you work with,

Edward Lando (25:15.08)
is likes you and wants to keep working with you for the long term, they usually find a way to treat you well. But certainly there are larger investors who don't care about the early investors and who find aggressive ways to cram down those people, but usually only when the company is not doing well.

Mat Sherman (25:32.078)
Yeah, that's another question, just almost for my personal knowledge. I don't know how this works. If a company is doing well, if a company, you still there? yeah, I froze for second. If a company is doing well, there's no world where that's really a problem unless the investors are tier three or tier four and they just don't know what they're doing right? Or is there a world where a company can be doing well and you still get screwed?

Edward Lando (25:46.092)
Yep.

Edward Lando (25:58.126)
There's a world, there's a world, and there's definitely a lot of really bad investors out there. I don't have a lot of respect for a lot of them. But I think it goes back to, in my opinion, the way to do this early stage, at least early stage investing, not sort of series A or certainly not growth. But the to this early stage is you have to have a lot of like kind of...

trust of like just sort of backing people and then letting go and then doing it in like a non-high control way. I think in most cases, you know, and there's, I'm going to quote a friend of mine, Fabrice at FJ Labs, who's also been a very active investor. I remember this, for some reason, what he said to me stuck with me, I think a couple of years ago, which is,

Most people end up kind of doing the right thing and like they've also been super active and it's pretty rare that people kind of like actively try to screw you over and it happens. It definitely happens, know, of numbers and so on and you learn and you just don't work with those people again and I certainly feel that way about a couple people. But in general, people kind of do the right thing.

Mat Sherman (27:03.033)
A couple more questions for you and then we'll call it a day. I appreciate you coming on. Super, super valuable.

Edward Lando (27:07.875)
Yeah.

Mat Sherman (27:09.913)
Kind of your brain, you know someone that's invested in 900 plus companies. It's like you've seen so much So some of the things you're saying, you know, or even like pretty pretty simple, right? It's just like trust the founder the founder make sure the founder trust you like have a good relationship with them But I feel like there's so much content and so many people that make it so much more complicated than that, know and it's like, know, I found that the investors I like the most especially with my last company seats gap We had about 15 investors or like, you know, there's a chunk of them that I'm just like

I'll do anything with them. If they need help with something, I'm on it. If I'm doing a company again, I'm hitting them up. But there's some that aren't like that. But that's just like, that's kind of the name of game. So I just wanted to touch briefly on portfolio construction. You don't have outside capital to deploy. So do you even think about portfolio construction or?

Just like, what's your- just give me some thoughts on portfolio construction for Pareto and like how you- I don't know.

Edward Lando (28:10.766)
Yeah, sure, yeah, and again, I don't know if this is I need to make this a disclaimer, but this is not investment advice, you know, and again, this is just my personal experience and whatever, like, what's nice when you don't have to deal with external LPs and all that stuff is you can kind of do a little bit more just what you wanna do, and so.

our motivation is we want to work with the exceptional people that we meet. And obviously, if we can buy more of the company early on and we want to and we can, great. But in general, we just want to work with great people, even if we're small investors. And from a portfolio construction point of view, like,

We don't think about it that much. Maybe it's a mistake. But essentially, the word I'm sort of obsessed with is asymmetry. And I guess the sort of Pareto principle is linked to that. But when you make a very, very good early stage investment at a good price, that investment ends up sometimes covering hundreds, if not more, other investments. And so I think looking for more

You know, if you're going to do a good amount of investments, making sure that a lot of these are asymmetric and can at least more than, you know, 50 or 100 X, they work out, I think is an interesting way to approach it. Because if you're backing a lot of sort of uncorrelated things, assets with small amounts of capital.

where you can only make a 2x or whatever it is, the math is not going to quite work out in the same way. And so if you're thinking about it in a purely cold and investor return way, it's doing this asymmetric approach at scale, given the fact that we make a lot of investments. And the idea is you only have to be right once. And guess to some extent, you train 1,000 times for the one investment that's going to return everything 10,000 times over.

Edward Lando (30:04.92)
or whatever it is. that's my approach. But generally, we have some really good numbers. Now that we started tracking, I sort of know, and we've returned a good amount of capital and all that stuff. But yeah, I think asymmetry is sort of like the rule of venture capital or sort of like the religion of venture capital. And I think my criticism of early stage investors is that a lot of them are just capitalists, and they're capitalists who

don't, yeah, I guess, love people that much and who sort of don't love, I guess, the romantic idea of taking a shot on goal on someone. And they're not venture capitalists. And I think the venture part is sort of like the adventurous part where you gotta like trust someone and go on an adventure with them.

Mat Sherman (30:44.217)
Hmm.

Mat Sherman (30:51.022)
I love that and I resonate with you saying that all these reps get you to a point where when you're in a position to make the best investment of your life, you know to make it, right? And two examples that pop up are...

Peter Thiel with Mark Zuckerberg, like there's like stories about how every moment of his life that led up to that was like a trillion X less important than just him deciding to cut the check into Facebook. And then another more recent example is COSLA investing in OpenAI, this like large position for COSLA. And that's like a large fund too, right? And that ended up, mean, it'll probably pay off, maybe it's already paid off. don't know how that works, but like obviously OpenAI is doing quite well. So I completely agree.

one... Yeah.

Edward Lando (31:33.646)
Totally we would love we would love a Peter Thiel we love a Peter Thiel Facebook moment and and you know It's some people obviously have that moment earlier on some people, you know after investment 500 or whatever it is But but I think in order to get lucky taking a lot of good shots on goal is the way to do it and same thing with interactions with people right you have to to kiss a lot of frogs

Mat Sherman (31:53.156)
Do you think Peter knew that the Facebook moment was a Facebook moment? how would you know if you, like, do you feel like you would know if you had a Facebook moment in real time?

Edward Lando (32:02.67)
It's a good question. I don't know, I can't answer for Peter, but I have certainly, I have met some people where I'm like, I'm a little sort of a...

I don't know, struck by lightning in a sense. And there's some people, I sort of have some meetings where I come out of them and I'm like, oh, I remember how good people are allowed to be, if that makes sense. You meet a lot of people and you're like, okay, okay, this is good, this is interesting, it makes sense, it's a good market, good presentation. And then once in while you meet someone and you're like, oh my God, they're allowed to be that good. Some people are allowed to be that good. And so I assume when you meet an incredible entrepreneur like Zuckerberg, it probably stands out.

Mat Sherman (32:26.905)
Mm.

Edward Lando (32:46.112)
And to me, it's more about the person than about what they're working on. Although I'm sure if you see something that's growing incredibly fast, that's also sort of anomaly. But yeah, they're very rare, but it's sort of like making a new friend as well. Like, I don't know, you probably meet a bunch of people throughout the year, and once in while you make an incredible new friend and you feel like you've known them forever. Or maybe going on a bunch of dates and finally meeting someone you like, I really like. It's that feeling of like, I can't believe that it's allowed to be that good. And I think that's part of the joy of doing this job.

not really a job but doing this sort of calling if you will.

Mat Sherman (33:19.737)
Totally. mean, it reminds me what the bar can be. And then it helps you be a better investor, because then you compare everyone else to like, how high are they at that level? Or could they be in the future? I think about that with my podcast. Yeah.

Edward Lando (33:32.942)
Yeah, and would say, just jumping off of that, it's like.

You know, this is not like an easy category. A lot of people like to say that it's a terrible asset class. It's the type of people who talk about asset classes in general. feel like shouldn't really do this job anyways. You know, they should stick to like being like investors in funds of funds of funds or whatever it is. But like I think people should do this that in my opinion that the people who do this best do it because they love it and because it's a calling. It's a way to meet incredible people and, hopefully make a lot of money if they're right and like do something amazing if they're right. But like, yeah, people who like to talk about asset classes and all that stuff, such as go work in private equity.

or something like that. But yeah, I think this is more fun.

Mat Sherman (34:10.553)
I there's a large percentage of people in this industry that would be better off working in private equity, but I don't think they know that yet. Maybe they'll find out in the future.

Edward Lando (34:16.706)
Yes. I agree with you.

Mat Sherman (34:20.505)
So I think for my last question, it might lead to maybe a couple, but generally the last handful of questions is someone's gonna listen to this. They're gonna be based in Phoenix or Miami or Emblem, Wyoming, population 10, know, like pretty much an outsider to the industry. And they're gonna say, like, this guy's awesome. Like, I wanna get this guy's investment. I wanna pitch him.

What you said in the beginning of the show, everyone is like this, invest is like generally, people like investing in trust networks, because that's just how they find the best people. So like.

And that's, are my words, not yours. Like, you you might have a different answer as I ask this question, but like, what advice do you have for someone that's just like day one, they wanna build something big, they have a vision or they have a big problem they wanna solve, and they wanna raise capital. Like, how do they get to someone like you? How do they get to investors? Or what advice do you have for them that may be counterintuitive to help lead them down the path of building a really large company?

Edward Lando (35:19.36)
Yeah, well, if they want to get someone like me, they can add me on Twitter, they can add me on LinkedIn, know, Edward Lando, add me and message me and so on. And I'm fairly responsive on those. As far as like more generally how to find an investor or investors. Number one, again, kind of to your point about the answer is being simple. If you work on something interesting, I find that it's kind of easy to get in touch with the right people, if that makes sense. Like the world is large, but the world is kind of smaller than ever. And, you know, great investors.

were rare, but great investors will find you if you're doing something cool, I find. And so just from a first principles point of view, if you just work on something interesting with people that you really like working with and who you have a good working relationship with, as long as you don't live under a rock somewhere and you have access to like the internet, I think it's not that hard to get someone's attention. You know, I've seen amazing stories, like we've been the first investors in college dropouts even, I think, maybe even people who...

pre-college, like high school dropouts or whatever it is, who just got attention because they had a cool video on X, like just making robots or whatever it is. The world's amazing these days. If you do something cool, people will find you. So would just say, don't worry about the networking thing. Don't go to any conferences or local meetups and stuff like that. I think those are not really useful. But just sort of do something interesting with people you like working with.

Mat Sherman (36:41.913)
Thank you so much for coming on the pod. Wealth of knowledge for sure. If someone wants to connect with you, you just mentioned they can hit you up on Twitter or X or LinkedIn. Is there anything else you want to push or any other links or websites?

Edward Lando (36:50.764)
Yep, AdWords

Edward Lando (36:56.078)
No, no, just I think Twitter X, know, just Edward Lando hit me up there and, you know, hope to meet some interesting folks. Thanks a lot for having me.

Mat Sherman (37:05.114)
Yeah, thanks for coming on. a good rest of your day.

Edward Lando (37:07.032)
Thanks, Matt.