Friedberg

I was the chairman of the board of the company.

I hired an outside CEO, fired him in a year, promoted the CTO to be CEO.

For years, I worked with him as the chairman of the board.

I invested close to $10 million of my own money in this company, spent years on it.

It had raised a Series B, a Series C, Series D, was doing great.

I'm like, man, this is awesome.

I can be a chairman, not a CEO, run these companies.

This goes great.

Scaled to, like, whatever it was, $100 million of revenue.

I started Itza, which, as you guys recall, was this quinoa fast food restaurant.

Robotic as well.

You were way ahead of your time, yeah.

I put 3 million of my own capital in the business.

And then I had a CEO run it.

And then we raised outside money, which I was not planning to do in that business.

And I'm like, man, I am so good at starting companies and being a chairman.

This is what I should do.

And that's what led me to start the Venture Studio.

Both those companies ended up being net negative returners for me.

And over time, many of the other projects that I was a founder of, but chairman of, didn't succeed financially.