Ry Walker

So that's, you know, again, I'm not, I do have, uh,

You know, a horse in the game there.

But, you know.

Yeah, I mean, I tell a lot of people this, especially in the entrepreneurial ecosystem, I was offered a chance to sell my shares in secondary at our Series B, Series C rounds.

This was the Zerp era, and I said yes.

Basically, the way I saw it was, I'm a founder sitting at a poker table with a big giant pile of chips, and I have no money in my bank account.

And someone says, would you like to leave the table?

It's like, yeah, let's make this happen.

equity real.

Uh, so I had a rare chance of making that happen without, without the company being acquired.

Um, you know, we just had a lot of interest in our, in our rounds and, you know, I'd been doing that, that company since 2015.

So, you know, seven years in, um,

I also had hired a CEO.

You know, we hired a CTO.

We hired a bunch of leadership.

And so, you know, I just wasn't I'm an early stage person.

I'm a from zero to blank person.

You know, not not what they're doing now.

Uh, what, how much, how much the company raised?

Astronomer raised like $300 million, uh, in a few, few years.