Tom Digan

And it was clear that he wanted to build something very meaningful and consumer.

So I spent my time tricking him into joining us, if you will, and eventually I got him under the hood and excited about what we were building.

Why I was so interested in startups myself is that I had this sense that you could will something to happen in the startup world.

It just felt like if you were willing to not stop and you just keep going, it seemed like sheer force determination you could build something.

That was appealing because in the hedge fund space, I can promise you in the finance world, that's not possible.

You can't just will hedge fund returns.

I think Bernie Madoff tried to do that and it doesn't work.

It was obvious to me that he shared that same belief.

We'd be in the middle of doing something messy, like the debt collector, whatever it is, something hard.

And in that same next conversation, he's talking as if our success is inevitable and we're going to build this enduring business.

I was attracted to that.

I've always felt that way.

And so I could just tell that Greg seemed like the type of guy you wanted to be in a foxhole with.

the end of 2019.

And I'm realizing that we have this opportunity to reset and to really think about what can ladder 2.0 be.

But in order to do that, we need to refocus, restructure, was thinking about what a leadership transition could look like.

I found myself in a position where I was our largest financial shareholder.

In addition to being in the company as a co-founder, early days, it was all...

people like yourself that had put money in because they trusted me personally.

So I felt naturally this obligation and my role and mindset shifted from one of co-founder to trying to be a steward of the business.