Justin Ishbia

And so I can't raise the capital.

I have no track record.

I was an associate at a private equity firm.

I was a lawyer first in an associate private equity firm.

No endowments can invest with us.

I would call them.

They were like, yeah, come back to the track record.

I was like, how do you get a track record?

We went out and raised money when our first was a pre-fund.

It was a $10 million community capital vehicle, but a couple of important points on that.

instead of raising just $4 or $5 million for the first deal, we raised $10 million of committed capital.

And why?

Someone gave me some really good advice that you go for your first add-on, some of us get divorced, some of us have changed their mind.

And by having a committed pool of capital, you don't spend much time raising capital for the second add-on.

So having a $10 million committed pool is mostly wealth managers, founders of other private equity firms, head of law firms, traders in Chicago.

We went to our little network.

We didn't have great wealth.

We didn't have much of all our small offices with 1,200 square feet.

But those very early days,

It was about being thematic.