David Eckstein

And I had all these opportunities to possibly invest in my friends.

I believe in my friends, so I want to invest behind them.

And so I decided to raise a fund on the side to invest in these great operators I had gotten to know in Silicon Valley.

And so I set out during COVID because I had all this free time because I wasn't commuting down to Palo Alto every day.

And I raised an $8 million Series B, C, and D fund.

And so that expanded my spectrum to invest in C, series A, and now I can invest in B, C, and D. And so I had that full spectrum to invest in.

And during COVID, I finished investing in that B, C, and D fund.

I'd warn myself the risk of staying put.

So there is a Japanese word that my father-in-law once taught me.

It's nurumayu.

Nurumayu means stay in the bathtub too long.

And it's a beautiful word.

If you stay in the bathtub too long, you get very pruney.

And I think in life, I've tried to push myself out of my comfort zone.

Being at Barclays, quitting like a very established job, leaving New York, which has been my home since birth, traveling across the country, I pushed myself out of my comfort zone.

I got my master's at the London School of Economics.

I pushed myself out of my comfort zone.

But there are tons of times that I stayed too long, whether it was in a job or in a partnership with a tech vendor.

And I need to constantly think about how is the market changing?

What is my role in the market?