Vlad Tenev

I was actually like, I want to go out there.

This is my time to lead, you know.

This is my time to.

to show what I, what I've made of as a leader.

Cause I'd been kind of a reclusive, not reclusive, but I hadn't really been out there very much kind of just building behind a keyboard and, and not doing a lot of talking.

So I wanted to go out there and actually after the interviews finished, I ended up thinking like, I thought that went pretty well, you know,

Felt like I got my points across.

I read them.

Throughout the year since then, I keep thinking, was there some magic collection of words that I could have said or interview I could have given that would have taken the temperature down and would have solved that issue?

Yeah.

help the brand out.

Because it's been a gradual rebuild in the years since then of the brand and the public perception around that.

Largely, it's just time has healed the wounds.

People kind of move on.

But yeah, I still play that back.

If those interviews had gone better and I had given like a super charismatic...

response and said, hey, this was a really bad situation.

We weren't ready for it.

We didn't have $3 billion at the time.

We didn't really know.