Jeff Cotton

Of course, as you can imagine, the latter investors got the five X they were over the moon, uh, excited.

I would tell you on a down round, um, couple things.

First of all, this was painful.

No one wanted to do it.

But you got to do it if you're in this type of a situation.

And a couple things that I would think about.

I was lucky to have supportive investors, but I was also demanding of those investors that number one, you have been here along the way.

You've helped this business get to the spot it's in.

And number two, we've got to do the right thing by the employees.

If we do not get a team that is re-incented, re-signed up because they've just taken a whole lot of dilution as well on this down round and they don't necessarily have the opportunity unless we re-up them as a part of this down round.

They don't have the ability

to participate in now future upside.

So I asked our board, maybe more like demanded our board, and they supported a complete recap of the company.

So that would be something that if you're facing that type of a situation, I would absolutely make sure that you're thinking about how can you recap all of your employees, which are really important

so that everyone can win.

And look, we also were successful at getting 50% of the company back in the hands of the employees.

You can imagine raising three rounds of capital now.

With the types of valuations that we had, we had taken a lot of dilution on, and we were probably down around 15% was what employees were holding prior to that down round.

One last thing, and probably the way to think about this more for you all is bringing on new leaders into your organizations.

One of the things that I did that I think ultimately made this successful is I was not a founder and I knew it was critical to really prop the founders of the company up and keep them highly visible.