John Block

We all know the 26-year-old version of me who has done consulting and private equity and thinks they're pretty hot.

So I went down this journey of thinking that and thought I'd go buy a business.

You probably run into people like me 15 years ago that have done that exact thing, and you're probably pretty happy to say, there's a lot you need to learn.

I'm glad I didn't buy a business and instead went back to HPVC where, as you said, I was a partner, was there for a long time and learned a lot.

Got to partner with some awesome business leaders, learned a lot about scaling culture and leadership.

the impact you can have on people's lives when you share success as broadly.

And I took all that learning and kept building on it, kept building on it, kept building on it, and then one day woke up and said, okay, time to pursue the entrepreneur muscle, time to exercise that passion, that dream that you've always had.

And at that, I decided to branch out from my prior firm and launch Unity three years ago, a little over three years ago.

Moved to Dallas with my partner Shannon and our, at the time, newborn and

build our family and build a business here over the last couple of years.

The first thing I'd say is I can feel like I've never been able to be more empathetic now having gone through the journey of starting.

Because the answer is yes to all of those things.

You're looking to raise money.

You're looking to build a team.

You're looking to find 8 to 12 businesses to partner with.

And you're trying to do that all at once.

And so it's a little bit of the same thing I'm sure you went through, where you're looking for a supplier, you're looking for a customer, you're looking for a teammate.

And by the way, you're trying to do it without burning too much money and sticking yourself too far into a hole while you win that first customer and deliver that first product.

And so for us, it was exactly the same.

So we went out.