Gwen Whiting

And, you know, quarter million dollars later.

That's how I funded the laundress.

And that all came down in 2008 with the financial crisis.

Oh, my gosh.

I mean, it was unhinged for the whole time.

You know, I

What I put myself through and that carrying that debt and living hand to mouth all those years is incredibly unhealthy.

And, you know, everything's trending and on Instagram and people see and think this is like such a sexy, luxurious lifestyle to be a founder and get money thrown at you.

And you got, I go to these events and it's like, I'm series C and series B and series, series, series.

And it's like, Hey, I don't know what you're talking about.

Be like, that's not impressive to me.

Like that's such a badge of honor.

And I'm like the outlier who walked away with selling my company with a majority ownership.

So it's a very different landscape of at the end of the day, what presents as sexy versus the reality of keeping your company and keeping your equity and having that versus giving it away.

all those years.

Exactly.

It's like the minute you raise money, you just gave that away.

You're not your boss anymore and you have stakeholders and you just gave your...

autonomy and authority and away.

Independence, the whole thing.