Nicole

Are there groups that might put a warehouse facility together for me?

Are there groups that I have a good line of sight that they'll be my anchor?

If you don't have those three things in advance of leaving a really awesome job to go kick off a fund, I'd probably, you know, think twice about it because it is tough.

It's tough to raise capital.

It is tough to be different, to be differentiated.

Um, it's tough.

It's just tough.

And so that recipe, if you will, those, um, key success factors were things that, you know, I was really thinking about from a practical perspective and then underlying all of that or over time.

overlaying all of that, I should say, was just the idea of, are these great humans that I am going to be proud to build a business with that have a similar value base to me that we know we're going to have tough times?

Are we going to be respectful and want to still keep coming at it day after day after day?

And that human piece of it, that cultural piece of it, I think is a really important part that can't be

overlooked when you are doing something as risky and as stressful as launching a new fund.

And so those are just some of the things that I thought about in advance.

Yeah, like what you're doing.

and who you're doing it with.

I don't think you can underestimate the second part of that sentence.

I think it's, you know, look, it's easy to, I'm not gonna say it's easy.

There's a path for people to go and make a bunch of money and do a bunch of cool deals.

But if you don't enjoy doing that with the people that are around you, I,

you burn out.