Building with Heart: Life Lessons from Venture Capitalist Bruce Taragin Blumberg Capital

Hey everyone, welcome back to another episode of Found the Stories. Today we have the absolute honor to host our dear friend Bruce. Bruce is a phenomenal phenomenal person, but someone who I'm very excited to call a friend and learn from him constantly on all the interactions that I have with it. But Bruce is the managing director of a phenomenal fund called Bloomberg Capital. They're operating and now out of their fifth fund, have invested in some credible companies which we're going to talk about. But what I am very excited about is to personally learn about Bruce, his values, who he is on a personal level, how he becomes better on a daily basis. So we can apply this lesson into our own life. So Bruce, thank you so much for joining us. Great to be here. Thank you. Thank you for having me. You're welcome. I'm very excited. This is, you know, took a bit of time and then they get back to the question time and we're finally here and that's very excited to welcome you on your first podcast. Thank you very much. So the start of this conversation to frame it. I mean, there's many topics we've had a credible interaction right before just podcasts we got until he spoke about everything almost like a podcast and stuff. But that podcast within a podcast. The podcast is exactly. But first of all, I want to, you know, our initial podcast was supposed to record a little month back. And we heard the unfortunate news that your father passed. And we had to be scheduled. So first of all, I want to express my condolences. Thank you. Your father was a very special man. Our first story is from you. I wonder what are some of the things that you personally learn from your father and that has shaped you now as an adult, things that you picked up from in your childhood from him that take you throughout the course of life and your business life. Well, thank you for having me and thank you for your condolences. Sorry that we had a reschedule. Life will always bring things that are unexpected, obviously. And I think my dad is very blessed. He was with my mom for almost 75 years and lived almost 92. I'm the youngest of four sons of four boys and he has a legacy of 16 grandchildren and approaching 30 great grandchildren and more on the way. So, you know, you had a wonderful life and I feel lucky to have been in son and to go through it. You know, for me and it's fresh, obviously, with my dad having passed, you know, just a little bit over a month ago. I think one of my brothers said it best at the funeral where my dad always said if you're going to do something, do it right. And I think he instilled that sort of before value into each of us that anything worth doing is worth doing right. And so, number one, we've always had that philosophy and that approach with pretty much everything we've done in life. And number two, really seeing from my dad and my mom and my brothers are also amazing role models and incredibly accomplished. It's just nothing comes easy. Everything, you know, you've got to work hard, it takes time and life is about showing up and hopefully good things will happen if you do that. So, those are probably two of them main core things I would say that my dad transmitted to us and we grew up in a very structured, pretty rigid, you know, religious environment and we all aspired and my parents were role models in that regard. Not only was my dad a professional, he was a dentist, but my mom was not for me as well and we lived that and saw that and I think it really impacted and has driven deeply into the DNA of myself and my siblings. The question is coming up from my mind now is how are you doing with grief and everything? Yeah, it's a lot. It's the natural progression of life and we're blessed that my dad lived to almost 92. So, and there's been so much tragedy, we just went to a 10/7 Memorial the other night and it's been a year. So, when my wife Michelle and I were in Israel last year on 10/7 and there's been so much tragedy that my dad passing it almost 92 is not tragedy, but it's interesting you're asking it because it's still stunned a lot. I know from me and my brothers, as weird as it was that for the last two years he had some dementia, he wasn't doing great. It still surprised us nonetheless and it's still painful and it's, you know, it stinks to lose a mom or dad. I feel really blessed that, you know, my mom's almost 90 and she's doing thank God, you know, great and that my dad was around for this long, you know, my wife's dad and my father went past away almost 30 years ago and so to me that's a bit tragic to, you know, have lived and worked so hard for decades and not to really maybe see some of your children married, to see grandchildren, great grandchildren, that's, you know, more on the scale of tragedy and there's obviously a lot of tragedy going on in the world. So, it's hard and, you know, I find myself thinking and being reminded of things about my dad and trying to focus on the positive and the good and thankfully there was a lot of good, there was a lot of positive and thankfully my brothers and I and our extended family are like supporting my mom and, you know, therefore I was sort of physically and emotionally to help out. And it's hard and it just, it's, you know, you kind of live life forwards and you understand it backwards and so until you've experienced it and I remember saying to my wife that day, it's the first time I felt old, you know, I never really felt old before and, you know, it definitely ages you and it puts a lot of things in perspective, you know, again, getting to and then you want to touch on, you know, values and the meaning of life, extent there's any wisdom here on that and insight, but, you know, you kind of realize like, Carpe Diem, you know, you get to seize the moment and it's really important to spend time with your family and with your loved ones, you know, we had 9/11 in America, we had 10/7, you know, in Israel and and so now more than ever, I think that's really important to take time to appreciate and cherish the people that we love. I was, by the way, I was really, I found it as a tremendous blessing. My dad passed a little bit over a month ago, but he was pretty sick and one of my brothers actually called me like a few weeks before that. So I actually, like, maybe two weeks before my dad passed, my wife and I flew to Israel where my parents were living and I got to spend like four or five days with him really uninterrupted and again, he had dementia so it wasn't 100% but having those few days together where we're kind of really helpful for me and kind of a true blessing to spend some time like we prayed together kind of every day and and spend quality time and I really knew that as a gift. And then last moment. Yeah, because I kind of felt like there was a really good chance that, you know, I might not get to see him again alive and so I felt like that was almost a second chance to sort of get some closure and be together and with both my mom and my dad and and was very meaningful. You know, a lot of times when we go to his life experience because it seems like that. Like in the moment, you know, the recognition on 11, 10, 7, you know, a case like this, we it really gives us a new perspective of life. It changes us. Yeah. But sometimes that perspectives go only will last a tiny bit. For the last for a month, two months we get it. So like, you know, same thing, we get inspired, like, you know, comes a new year's resolution. This year, this type of resolution, I'm getting inspired. How do you think this is going to change in life perspective? How is your future of our change? It's a great question and it's hard to answer because I'm still living fresh in it and it's definitely changed and, you know, we've pretty strictly observed the laws of like Shiva and I find the laws so brilliant in their nature and that there's this first period before you have the burial. Then there's, you know, the whole Shaba period. Then there's the Shlotion, you know, the 30 day period and getting through that to a year. And you know, and they say it, like, the cottage is, and I've been reading a few books about cottage that have been really interesting and kind of fascinating. Just so much of it is about you. It's not really for the person that, you know, passed. And I find that to be true. And I don't know, I've tapped into this whole subculture of people that are saying cottage for a parent or for a loved one. And, you know, it's like trying to catch a flight three times a day. It's really not easy. But it's pretty meaningful. I've bound and it's exhausting on one level. But you also, I feel, get a lot out of it. So I'd like to think that it's impacted me for the better and you think about change and really informs me as a father. I mean, I've got three kids and, you know, you cherish that and you have to think about how special that is and how our time on this planet is short-lived and getting into like, well, what's the meaning of it all? What's the purpose? And I'm blessed to have three beautiful, amazing kids. And that really, again, informs a lot of my life decisions. And I just try really hard to spend quality time with each of them when and where I can. And with my wife, you know, when married almost 30 years, and that's just really maybe someone unusual and special. And I feel very blessed. And one of the things that a person could do right is marry right. So you've definitely done that. But I want to speak about your parents for a second. 75 years is, in this day and age, 75 years is on her time. Yeah, it's a long time. What do you think they've done right? What did you see from your perspective? They did the right. I mean, it was about being a life partner. So my mom was 16 years old when they started dating and they got married when she was 22. And, you know, it's approaching 75 years that they've been together. It's like not even losing like a person that's like almost like losing some of your limbs after being together for so long. And I think it's about trying to, it's aspiring to be life partners, you know, with this individual. It's, I think them and then my three siblings are pretty amazing and their spouses. And they've all been role models to me in terms of how do I want to live my life and what I want my legacy to be. I mean, we're maybe getting ahead of ourselves, but thinking about, again, the purpose of it all and it's not obviously just about, you know, work and And it's, you know, and this actually comes from, I have to give credit to my business partner, David Blumberg, we've been together also for almost 30 years. And he says a little the time, and I think it's really true. It's, you know, in Hebrew, T. Kunalum, but it's in English like, how do we make the world a better place? And really leaving the world better than we found it. And so I know that that's the top of mind for him, and it's something for me that I'm constantly thinking about as well. And it really bleeds into all aspects of my life. It's whether it's working with an entrepreneur, it's whether it's being a husband or a father, or a son, or a brother, and really just hopefully trying to, like I said, you know, make the world a better place. That's the goal at the end of the day. - How does that come out, with your work in entrepreneurship, in your work in Blumberg? - Yeah. - Yeah. So I remember, I think when my youngest son was in like second grade, and I was invited, you know, they invited like moms and dads to come and explain to your kids, like, you know, what your dad or mom does for a living. And I don't think they're gonna really understand venture capital too much. So when I thought about it, I put up a slide on Rambham on my monides, and who is prolific for sharing, I guess, his perspective on seven levels of charity, and the top level of charity is really ultimately teaching someone a fish. And so I felt at the end of the day, that kind of describes what I'd like to think about, what I do as a VC, as an early stage investor, it's all about job creation. It's the engine that drives the economy. You know, Alan Greenspan used to talk about productivity and what drives the economy. Its technology is really that innovation engine. And I like to think that we're enabling that. And one of the things I'm most proud of is, the company's out of Israel, for example, that we've invested in over the past few decades, it probably created over 30,000 jobs globally. And so that's what I'm most proud of. I mean, it's great that we've had reasonable success, and it's been an amazing journey, and it's been a privilege to learn from and work with so many amazing entrepreneurs and founders over the decades, and literally travel the world with so many of our companies. But I think to me, it's ultimately, that's kind of what we're doing is really just creating jobs and helping the economy, hopefully. And even if you fast forward today, I think about it. Like we have companies in the digital healthcare space that are using data, using AI, they're saving lives. Like that's really profound and special. So it's not just about making money. I mean, obviously we have investors to report to where if I do share, that's part of our responsibility. But it's incredible to have an opportunity, like I said, to hopefully make the world a better place in some small way, shape and form. - Yeah. A job, I fully agree to you, because a job is much more than a paycheck. A job is giving someone fulfillment. They do something to wake up into the morning. A job is also if they're, if someone feels productive in their own personal life to where a job, they come up, their marriage could be better. They come up with that, you know, they're more than a better move. - 100% contribute to society and give charity and everything. - But I want to talk about your entry into venture capital. So from my understanding, you still are a recovered lawyer. - Before I'm a former lawyer, too. - And you weren't happy as a lawyer. - This is true. This is true. So I went to law school and business school and for grad school. And never envisioned myself being a lawyer. I guess getting back to like my mom and dad, they were kind of like pushing me, you know, towards education and that always have that. And I'm grateful for that. And it was always kind of looking for a time. So it was shortly after I got married. And Michelle and I decided to quit our jobs. I was working at a very big law firm, one of the top 10 law firms in the world. Michelle was working advertising, her dad had passed away at that time. And we basically just moved to Israel. We went back back and through Southeast Asia for a couple of months and then showed up. And then again, timing I guess is really everything. This was the mid 90s and it was, you know, the, if I think it was Michael Lewis wrote the new new thing with like Post-The-Netscape IPO, technology was booming. And so it was really right place, right time and getting into this technology, you know, boom in Tel Aviv and it was a great time. And a great transition and it was something that was a lot more passionate about it. But how did you get into it? So again, having both a law degree and a business degree and being an American, GreenGo going to Israel was, you know, unusual and unique and a good value prop for Israeli entrepreneurs in that ecosystem. And I worked for, there in Israel, I worked for Hamburg in Quest. HQ there, one of the leading investment, you know, tech banking firms out of Silicon Valley. And they had, you know, presence in Tel Aviv as well. So I landed there. We actually then came back to America. I worked at a number of startups, two startups and one later stage IT services company. Before, again, being an issue which has been I followed my wife out to the Bay Area. She went to Med School there. And that was when I connected up with David through actually a cousin of my wife's that was a big tech eye in Israel. He suggested I, you know, sync up with David who is doing a lot of US Israel stuff. We connected up in the late '90s, almost 30 years ago at this point. And I guess the rest of history, as they say. So it was just really right place, right time. It was before we launched our first fund. So at the time of Bloomberg Capital, we had more of a pledge fund where we invested on behalf of ourselves and some high network families. We had about $3 million that we invested into nine companies. Fortunately, you know, out of the nine companies, four when public four were acquired and one died. And so we had, like, it was about a nine X cash on cash return. And that was really the catalyst for the first venture fund which we launched in 2000. - Wow. I mean, now if you look at this 30-year journey, it's over $1 billion in assets right now, starting from $3 million to $1 billion. That's incredible. So I want to talk about like, you know, what has that journey been like from $3 million to $1 million? - So we were a startup at Bloomberg Capital, just like we would invest in startups. So I remember starting out and we had champagne taste, but we had a beer budget. So I would take a 5 AM flight to save a couple hundred bucks over the 10 AM flight. We were flying coach. We were staying at, you know, two-star hotels and we were taking buses and it was a lot. And, you know, especially leaving it, you know, four in the morning every other week from, you know, a wife and three kids if we were living in the Bay Area at the time for like 20 years. I remember it was just a really kind of sums it all up, but I remember being in Israel for a board meeting in Tel Aviv with one of the most prominent VCs at a Israel at the time that had many billions of dollars under management at the time, a very prolific, you know, venture firm. And I remember leaving Tel Aviv and it was literally 24 hours door to door from like Tel Aviv back to my home in the Bay Area in Oakland, California where we were living. And I'll never forget it because like we both boarded the plane. He went to the left sitting in first class and I was like in the back row sitting in coach in the back of the plane. Then we get off the plane and, well, I still had a, so I stopped off in New York there for meetings in New York. And I remember he comes out of the airport and this is like four o'clock in the morning and it's freezing out. It was like wintertime and he's got, you know, a driver holding up a big sign and he jumps into his white stretch limousine and I took the bus to Penn station and took the train, you know, back to my apartment. And so, you know, we really, and I think it's an important message, I think, for entrepreneurs, investors today, people, you know, like to just say, like, oh, look at you today. It's been decades. It's been 30 years to get to this point. So we were a startup ourselves. I kind of feel like we still are a bit of a startup and have a startup ethos. But it was a really long journey and this was really, you know, 10, 15, 20 years of getting on a plane every other week, fundraising for our funds, working with our entrepreneurs, flying coach staying in, you know, pretty unattractive hotels, etc. and motels. And it's okay. It builds character and it makes hopefully some moderate success that we've had today, even sweeter, because, you know, we work hard for it. And that really builds, you know, kind of resilience and a sense of appreciation. I think, you know, in Israel, they say, like, you know, it's a sense of entitlement. And I think it's, that's a really challenging thing for folks that are coming out these days, don't have a sense and an appreciation for how long, how hard it takes to build, you know, a firm like Blumber Capital, it's taken us many decades. It's been a lot of blood sweat and tears. And people weren't around to remember that and have short-term memory. And maybe we don't like to promote that and advertise it because we like to talk about how successful we are today. But it took a lot to get here. And it was a very, very challenging journey. And I feel lucky that, you know, I was with David Blumbergan that we were a good team. And then we had a lot of support over the years. And, but it was not easy and it was not, you know, you know, boom, like tomorrow, you know, where we became a billion dollars. So it took a long time and people don't always appreciate that. - Did you have one to give up? - Multiple times, multiple times. And people have approached me and said, oh, I'm looking to launch a fund and this and that. I think, again, David and I were a terrific team together. We complemented each other. We had others that were super helpful. It was a really long journey, but I don't always encourage people, to do that, I think it's really important people appreciate how long the journey took. And again, I had a friend of a friend who approached me where he was like, oh, we're quitting my job. I'm launching a fund and he had three other guys. And I said, listen, I don't know in good faith that I'd recommend you do that. And I shared with him some of the long journey and how hard it was and we had tremendous muzzle and luck and success and I'll take that any day of the week. And I remember running into him like 10 years later, he maxed out his credit cards, he you know, took another mortgage out on his house. He almost declared bankruptcy and like they were, you know, really unsuccessful. They had to break up their partnership and he was, you know, after a long time finally went back to like a regular kind of day job where he had a paycheck and he was like, he was so right. He didn't fully appreciate, you know, the journey and how long and hard and he not everyone has what it takes, he not everyone is willing to put in and sacrifice. Again, you know, David and I were getting on a plane, you know, almost every other week and flying around the country, raising funds for our funds and it just, it's really tough and takes a long time. You know, I remember again, David and I met with a very prolific, you know, VC that everyone recognizes name and I remember sitting down with him and he said to us, to David and I, we were on our journey then early days launching like our first or second fund and he was commenting how he left his old fund and basically in 30 days he raised $100 million fund, you know, through a bunch of friends and I said to him, wow, how great it is to be you, you know, you did that in 30 days. David and I have been on the road for two years and we've raised a third of that and how challenging was he's like Bruce and he was very humble and he said, Bruce, you must understand me. I've been doing this for almost 50 years and 30 days to raise $100 million fund and I thought that that was just so kind and wise and humble but true, you know, now that I've been doing this for 30 years, it's a journey and if and when you're lucky, you know, maybe good things will happen but it's about finding the right partners that are also aligned with you that have the same value. It's about building a culture, establishing a three day core in your organization and then I don't care what other people say, you can be smart, you can work hard, you really do need muscle at the end of the day. You need luck, you need timing in the marketplace and so many variables that are out of your control that are macroeconomic issues or microeconomic issues. I mean, who could have ever anticipated 9/11? I mean, we had sadly, we had one of our companies that basically lost their wholesale as a marketing team. They were in the windows on the world having a breakfast meeting with team at Merrill Lynch that were their first customer. They were all killed. Literally, they were killed on 9/11. Across the street was an investment group that were going to investment committee to put 10, 15 million into the company. That all went away and the company ultimately, I think, was acquired for a couple million dollars by a big enterprise. We're just because they wanted to find a home for it. I mean, you can do everything right, which they did. And then 9/11, 10/7, all these different events can happen. I can just change life in the world as we know it, which sadly has happened. So, it's really difficult and you just want to be with great people that you really respect and want to spend time with. And it gets to the entrepreneurs as well. It's not just about making money. They're entrepreneurs. We recently sold a company that we were early investors in and we were investors in the founding team three times. They're just amazing entrepreneurs. And I would take that phone call 10 o'clock at night on a Sunday when I'm doing homework with my kids. But I would be interrupted to work with them because they're amazing people. They're inspiring and it's a privilege to work with them. And so, we kind of have like a no-assal rule. Like you really want to work with people that you respect, that you admire. That's true about the culture at my firm. I love the people that we built together in our organization of Blumber Capital. They're really amazing people and incredibly talented. And it's true about almost every company I've worked with an entrepreneur that I've invested in because it's a long journey. It's a 5, 10, 15 year journey. It's kind of like marriage. There is no divorce. And so, it's also by directional meaning entrepreneurs should think about that when they take money from an investor because it's a really long journey and a long relationship. You want to work with entrepreneurs and investors that you like. And so, again, I feel really blessed and privileged that so many of the people that my team and entrepreneurs that I've invested in and worked with are incredible people that have the similar sort of values. And I view it as a privilege to work with them. What do you think were some of the pivotal moments of Blumber? Because you keep on going back to the luck opponent, which I fully agree that you have to yes, work very, very hard. But you need a certain aspect of luck in order to hit certain lucky breaks that can go. So, when you look at the past 30 years of Blumber, 25 years, what have been some of the pivotal moments that you propel you guys to the next level? Well, I mean, success. I mean, ultimately, at the end of the day, we are fiduciaries for our limited partners. I think something like 80% of all funds don't raise their next fund because typically you need to be in the top quartile or desk, all in terms of fund performance for investors to keep supporting you. And so, again, we've been really lucky. We have about 10 unicorns. These are companies that we've invested in pre-product, typically pre-revenue that have grown in value to over a billion dollars. And so, across multiple continents, we have Canada, US, and Israel. And that's, I'd like to say, we're smart. We work hard. Many others do the same thing. We've been really fortunate, I think, to invest in some amazing entrepreneurs. So, for example, out of Israel, double verify, you know, Orrinette Sir was the founder of the company. We, you know, really invested in the company pre-product, pre-revenue. And today, it's a five or ten billion dollar public standalone company approaching half a billion in revenue. And this is an entrepreneur that we backed pre-product, pre-revenue, similarly, Nutanix. I just connected with D-Raj, who's the founder of CEO, one of founders in CEOs at Nutanix. The company's growing today. The Republic company worked 20 billion dollars. We seated them when it was three guys. It was D-Raj, Moheet, and a G with three co-founders of the company. They were pre-product. They were pre-revenue. I remember they didn't have a business plan or a deck. This is going back, probably, like, 2008, 2009. And they were drawing up on our whiteboard, kind of their vision of how cloud storage was going to change, and they created a category, you know, referred to as this hyper-converged cloud storage space, where they put an intelligent software layer into, you know, combining compute and storage. And, you know, fast forward today, they're doing two billion dollars in revenue. And so I think it really starts with that at the end of the day. It's investing in amazing visionary entrepreneurs that are at, you know, a dozen of these companies that we back. We have a few more that are gearing up to become, you know, unicorns and beyond. And having the privilege to work with these entrepreneurs is unbelievable. I would say our first superpower, in my opinion, has been the US-Israel and North America Israel connectivity that we've been doing pretty successfully for a few decades. The second piece is this innovation council. And that maybe gets to a question of all, how do you, you know, figure out to invest in a company like a double verify, a Nutanix, a braze, you know, an adapar, a Hootsuite, a bio-catch, a fund box, a yacht-po, and some of these other amazing companies. So typically almost all of our investments are enterprise infrastructure, kind of B to B. It's, frankly, it's pretty boring. It's not very sexy, but they make money and they're selling into the enterprise. And so we've built out, you know, David and myself over the last 25-plus years, this innovation council. So it's a network of people that run technology for companies like Fidelity and JP Morgan, checkpoint, Uber, you know, Johnson and Johnson, common spirit, dignity, health. And so we have the largest organizations in the world. So for example, in the case of Nutanix, before we invested in the company, we put, you know, D. Rajman, we eat in a Jeep, the three founders in front of a few dozen of these council members. And we basically said, you know, they gave the pitch and we were kind of a fly on the wall. And they would say, here's the problem, here's the solution. And we kind of hit the pause button. And we would talk offline to those council members and be like, what do you think? Like is this? So they, it's grown out to like 200 folks, you know, plus and growing. We just had a dinner actually here in New York. We do dinners once a year in each, you know, in Israel, Florida, New York and San Francisco. So we do dinners once a year. We do typically quarterly sessions. But before we invested any of our companies, we're typically sending off an email to, you know, the 200 council members. And within an hour, we'll get, you know, 10, 20, 30 responses of, this is really interesting. This is a big problem. Or they might say, well, I think data dog or Shopify solves for this. You know, this isn't so compelling. And so it really is an extension of our team that has just grown. And it's a great ecosystem and network that I remember in the case of Nutanix, where dozens of our council members were like, this is a big problem. But these guys can actually build it and solve for this. That's exciting. And we spend tens or dozens of millions of dollars a year on this. And we can shave off a lot of that expense that we're spending on EMC, VM, et cetera. So I mean, I was personally, for example, on the first call. D. Rajan, I were upstairs in our office. in our office in San Francisco. And we were chatting with Ian Miller, who was the CIO of Longachal, one of the biggest law firms in the world. And Ian's part of our council, and Duresh and I were sweating, it was like summer, it was like hot. And we literally, we didn't have any customers. And we gave sort of Ian the pitch and he said no. And Duresh and I were looking at each other and we were like, oh my God. So I'm like, Duresh and you're part of the council. This is great technology. You're gonna thank us. Like, you gotta give it a shot. And it was just like silence. And Duresh and I were sweating. And then after a few seconds, Ian was like, okay, we'll do it. I'll do a POC. I'll do a purchase, initial purchase order. We'll figure out the details. It was like a $75,000 POC with Ian. And then probably, I don't know, a year or two later, Ian Miller stood up at one of our council meetings and he said, I just wanna thank Bruce and the Bloomberg team. We've basically ripped and replaced all of our EMC and VM and we've replaced it and NetApp and we've replaced it with Nutanix. It's amazing. And by the way, Bruce, if you guys have any other really interesting hot technology, love to take a look at it. So like, well, funny. You should mention that, Ian. So then we brought him Savera, which was a zero-day attack cyber security company. And again, he was the first POC with Savera, which ended up very quickly getting acquired by Palo Alto for a cup of 100 million dollars like within less than two years. And then I mentioned I met with Duresh. It was one of the founders in the CEO of Nutanix. Duresh told me that that's $75,000 purchase order. I think today it may be an excess of like $10 million that, while it actual spending. And many of the other introductions that we made through that council are also customers at Nutanix. And the same story of course, raised in double verify and many of our portfolio companies. I remember again, sitting with Orinetser, one of our CIOs who ran innovation for WPP, one of the largest brand agencies in the world. And I sat in the room with Orinetser and his name was Joe Hollander, who was the CIO at WPP. And double verify is basically solving this problem of online ad verification. So for example, if you're a marketing team at Verizon or Disney, you put together dozens of characteristics that go into your marketing plan. And for example, you don't want ad showing up on porn sites. You don't want them showing up on gambling sites. You don't want them showing up on a competitor site. Things of that nature. You want it to be above the fold in certain locations. So WPP manages ad spend for many of the largest brands in the world. And so Orin gave the pitch, the short pitch to Joe. And then Orin left the room and I said to Joe, like, hey, well, what do you think? He's like, well, I have to tell you, he's like some of the largest brands in the world that we work with right now spend hundreds of millions of dollars a year on their online spend. And they're going to pull 100% of their online spend, because this is back in 2010 and it was the wild, wild west on the internet. So ads were showing up everywhere. So completely out of your control. And Disney, for example, was like, we have zero tolerance. Our ads can show up on porn sites or gambling sites or things of that nature. And that's what double verify basically solves for. And it was a rocket ship. And again, it went from pre-product, pre-revenue to a market leader and a multi-billion dollar IPO and an incredible success story. And the same thing with braze and bio-catch and adapar and many, many other companies. So we've been really fortunate and privileged and blessed to invest in incredible entrepreneurs. Our job is, I would say relatively easy for the most part. We just have to make one decision. Do we want to invest in this company? Obviously, Mike Moritz from Sequoia is pretty famous for saying that. That he only-- it's a little bit glib. He's like, well, we have to make one decision a year, like which company to invest in. I mean, there's some truth in that. We're typically the largest shareholder on the board. We're very actively engaged. We're oftentimes working to help companies, for example, bio-catch. Today is an interesting story. And they've had an investor come in and basically want to buy everybody out at north of a billion dollar price point. We actually didn't sell. We love the company. They're doing amazing. They're basically profitable. And they're one of the fastest growing companies. And we've done all the work to get to that point. So why sell now in some optimized? But tragically, when I was on the board of the company, one of the founders who was the CEO died. They were really under-capitalized. And we helped them by finding a CEO, bringing a chairman of the board, bringing an AMACs, bringing Bane Capitalized as an investor. I think they put in 100 million plus into the company, helping them with some of their first customers and partners. So we weren't passive as an investor. We're active. And I remember introducing a friend of mine who joined them as a CMO, another friend joined the Miss General Council. So really helping the company over the life. And today, thank God, they've been an incredibly successful company. So I think our promise is early stage investors is we promise-- and this is not trivial. We promise not to screw up your company, which many investors do. There's I think a lot of humorous, a lot of arrogance on Sandal Road across the VC ecosystem, maybe for reasons they've had a lot of success. So number one, we promise that. And number two, hopefully we can help the company leveraging our innovation council, leveraging our network, and the relationships we have to bring value to the company. So it's been a journey. I have some gray hair and scar tissue, as you can see. But again, it's really been a privilege. I mean, in my prior life, worked as a lawyer, worked as a banker, been an entrepreneur, and doing startups myself, bringing those, hopefully, some of those different skill sets together to work with companies and really just to be an active coach. I mean, it's really lonely being a founder, and being an entrepreneur of your company. It's a really, really tough job. And so we have tremendous empathy and perspective and appreciation for how difficult that is. We love to get in on the ground floor as an early investor, help win and wear in how we can. I mean, my team loves-- we love going to trade shows. I mean, I've been going to the Javits Center here in New York to like NRF, the retail show. It's called The Big Show for 15, 20 years, walking the trade show, finding prospective customers and partners for our portfolio companies, learning and understanding about the business and what they're doing, and just trying to be helpful. And so I think having a sense of humility and a sense of perspective, who and what we are, and great, we've had some success. We've obviously had missteps to-- we've learned a lot. They asked Gene Kleiner, who's, again, a prolific VC from Kleiner Perkins, one of the probably one of the greatest venture capitals. They asked him, well, how do you become a VC? And he said it cost $20 million. And there's such truth in that comment of you learn, you make mistakes. It's a bit of your brain is like a pattern recognition machine learning engine. And hopefully, over time, you make fewer mistakes. And again, it's less about the mistakes. There's type one and type two errors. So it's OK if you write a check into a company and you lose a couple million dollars. That's our job at the end of the day. We're venture capitalists. We shouldn't take the venture at a venture capital. What's frustrating is, for example, on the seed round we passed on Palantir. Today, it's a $90 billion public company. So those are the ones that are hard to swallow. And that's going to happen. It's not perfect information. I remember we sat down and I launched with Alex Carp in Jolansdale. The founders of Palantir back in the day. And we were trying desperately to convince Alex, who was the CEO, to-- he was convinced their Palantir was only going to sell into government. And we're like, you're never going to build a standalone company if you just sell into government. You have to sell to financial services, insurance on the verticals. Years later, he came back and agreed. And we were right, unfortunately. Didn't help us we missed the investment. But the good news is, Joe Lansdale came back to us and started out a part. And we invested in out a part. And again, like Palantir, the valuation was a little bit high. We struggled, but kind of fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me. And so we invested in out a part in fast forward today. It's a $10 billion company. It's going to be a great investment for us. We're still early investors and shareholders. And so again, I think it's just learning from some of your mistakes and hopefully not making those same mistakes twice. And it's weird. Two of my brothers are physicians. And my wife's a doctor and you chat with them. And I say, imagine you're a doctor. And you see 10 patients and 9 out of 10 patients die. Like you're done. You're going to prison. You're done as a physician. In our industry, that's OK. If as long as the 1 out of 10 that we invested in becomes a Palantir and it's worth $90 billion, it's more than OK. And again, we've thankfully had a much better track record than that. More for than not, our companies don't typically die. I mean, they typically-- they get acquired, will make our money back, will make a 1, 2, 3, X. That's not really what our job is. That's not what I'm in business to do. We're in business to try to hopefully invest in companies like Nutanix, Praise, and double verify in Adapar, where they make 10X, 50X, 100X. That's really what our job is at the end of the day. So more than than not, even when we quote unquote fail, we're investing in innovative technology in the companies, the founders are geniuses, and they're going to get acquired by a Palo Alto, by a checkpoint, by a Cisco, by a Facebook, meta, whomever, and we'll do OK. And the founders will find a home for their technology, more often than not. But again, our job is really to can we invest in this company and put in 10 or 15 million of the life of the company and take out 100 million, $500 million, a billion. So that's our mindset. And that's what we think about as early stage investors, which is really hard, because again, we're typically investing in this company pre-product, pre-product. revenue and so there's just an incredible amount of risk. But it's exciting. Do you still have excitement out to the state? You still get an excited about it. I pinch myself every day. I love what I do. Maybe that's coming across. I don't know. I don't know if it comes across in a podcast. But you know, again, having been a lawyer, having been a banker, having done some startups, I feel it's a privilege to do what I do. It's really a privilege and an honor to meet people like yourself, to talk to other entrepreneurs that have a vision of becoming the next meta, the next Cisco, the next checkpoint. That's what keeps the juices flowing. So I love what I do. I love waking up every day and learning and being challenged and being taught by entrepreneurs, you know, an area of hyperconverged cloud storage that I didn't think about, you know, digital media applications for the SMB business. How can we optimize, you know, financial services and transform an industry or in healthcare like saving lives? Like that gives me goosebumps that when you hear from an entrepreneur and, you know, we've invested in companies that have started that literally people would have died. You know, the number one cause of death in the healthcare system is medical error. And so leveraging data, leveraging machine learning to optimize outcomes for the patient is unbelievable. You know, if you think about like in the airline industry, imagine if the TSA and the transportation industry would only track 5% of the airplanes that are flying at any given time, that's not feasible. You have to have you have to have transparency on 100% of the airplanes that are flying around all the way as they're going to start crashing into each other. That's basically healthcare up until today. It's slowly being transformed, but they really only have like a proxy of some of the data. So they're looking at two, three, four, five percent of the data that's out there in healthcare. But now with data, with, you know, GPU based technology, with artificial intelligence, we can look at 100% of the data and really just optimize outcomes across the healthcare system. So things like that are transformative. And to again, to be part of that transformation is really a privilege and honor. It's incredibly exciting and I'm learning and growing every day and I'd love to keep doing this for the next 30 years. One of the things that's coming out is that you've been able to attract some phenomenal category defining founders to Bloomberg. You're looking at tonics, you're looking at the bio-catch, the out-of-poll, the many braze. I know some of these founders personally, they're very, very special people. Amazing, you know. Special people. A, my question is how do they come to Bloomberg? By the B is like, what are you looking for in a personality perspective? Because not necessarily, you're going to see it in there. And eventually, once you start a company, you'll see it in their actual, how they operate. But that way, the time these people don't have operation experiences is more in their personality. So what are you looking for? What did you see? And even for future founders? It's, listen, it's a great question and it's difficult and it's definitely not a science. It's an art. And, you know, historical success is obviously no guarantee of future success. I remember we invested in Orenetzer's first company, Double Verify, which was, you know, Grand Slamon Run and a multibillion dollar IPO. He started another company and Oren made a lot of money for us. And so we looked at it, I think we passed on it two or three times. And I remember his credit. He was at one of our limited partner meetings and he mentioned how the Bloomberg Capital team were right for passing and he shut that company down. And he started now another company and that company we did invest in and we've looked at. And again, he's an amazing entrepreneur. He's really a difficult journey and there's no necessarily, you know, secret success of like, oh, well, I've done this in the past. I'm going to guarantee success in the future. I mentioned this other company where we funded the team three times. There's another group of entrepreneurs. I funded them two or three times as well. So we love entrepreneurs that we know and we love many times. Entrepreneurs come to us where they are lieutenants at a prior company that we backed. So they maybe had an opportunity to interface with us. We've spent time with them because we're not just working with the sea level executive necessarily. We're working with BPs and other folks across your organization. And so getting the chance to work with them, as I mentioned before, it's sort of by directional diligence. We're not entrepreneurs. They say, hey, I like Bruce and the Bloomberg team. These guys are good guys, which we aspire and strive to be. You know, you're not getting a lot of ego and attitude from us. We're here to help it your company. So that's very much our philosophy with an entrepreneur. Other funds have a very different perspective. They're going to come in. Some of the big funds on Sandal Road are famous for coming in, funding you, taking control, changing management. And so that's just not our MO. So we're not going to fund those type of entrepreneurs. And they're obviously not looking for money from us necessarily. So our objective is how can we help you be successful? How can we coach you? How can we support you? And work with you to make you incredibly successful over this journey. Our objective is not to take you out of your position as the founder or CEO or CTO or whatever it is in the company. And so it's trust and verify. And the other side of your question is leveraging that innovation council. At the raw level, what is the problem? What is your value proposition? And what are the barriers to entry? So trying to answer those questions, leveraging our council, leveraging our network, bringing them to dozens of prospective customers, even if they haven't built a product, to get that validation to see if there's pull from the marketplace that there's demand. So we spend a lot of our time talking to people that run innovation for some of the largest organizations in the world. And so the metaphor we use is like we really want to skate to the puck and understand where are things moving in cybersecurity? Where are they moving in enterprise SaaS? Where are they moving in terms of supply chain logistics and healthcare? And then trying to then find amazing entrepreneurs that are doing that. I remember a Fintech company that we funded. We basically gave his pitch. He walked into the room. And effectively what they're doing is they've created a marketplace for SMBs to find solutions across the stack and financial services. We were looking for that company. We had proactively written some white papers ourselves. And his round was oversubscribed, but he really liked the fact that we understood the pain point and were able to add value along the journey that he was going to have for his life of his company. So again, we can't pull the ocean. We don't do everything. You know, we've typically shied away. And when we've dabbled in consumer related things, we've typically fallen short. It's just not our core area of expertise. So it's not getting too caught up in reading your press and your historical successes. Staying ruthlessly focused. And many entrepreneurs that come to us, for example, we were seed investors in a unicorn company called Funbox. That's also doing SMB lending. That's like a pre-IPO type of company out of Israel. One of the founders, you've all our yav. He and I have co-lectured and been co-professors of Columbia in the grad school. We've done that together. I also teach at my undergrad. He's a common as a guest speaker there. He brought us fun guard. They're pre-unicorn company in Fun4. That's also in financial services. They all work together in the 82 hundred in the same units. Leor Yoghav, who's the founder CEO at Fungard, which is an amazing company that's just raised $100 million around earlier this year. Again, we see to the company pre-proud out, pre-revenue. We were the first investors. We've been on the board for the last five, six, seven years of this journey for this company over the life of the company. He was referred to us by Yuval from Funbox. Leor is the founder at Fungard. He referred us to Joe Shue, an insurtec company that's in Fun5. That also they work together in the same intelligence unit. Leor's a Goldman Sachs Columbia Business School. A lot of the founders know each other. They talk. There's a profile. Again, we appreciate the opportunity to work with these amazing entrepreneurs that are brilliant and trying to really disrupt. However, we could try to be helpful over the course of that journey. I think it's somewhat unique to our other investors that might have an agenda of selling very quickly, not being supportive over the long term. I think the fact that we've stayed small and early, intentionally and deliberately, that's kind of our core focus. That's what we love. We talked about, we were approached 10, 15 years ago about raising like billions of dollars. And for us, it's never been about AUM. It's about doing something we're passionate about. It's not about the management fee. It's really about the carry, the equity in these companies that will create wealth creation for us and entrepreneurs hopefully. And we just, David and myself and my extension, our team are very passionate about that. It's what we love. I think we're pretty good in that we've been doing it for a really long time. I've probably looked at approaching 40,000 companies or of course in my career. And having that learning, that experience. And then when an entrepreneur comes to us and says, "Oh, someone wants to buy me for 250 million, how do you respond to that?" And again, this is not new for us. We've seen companies grow from pre-product, pre-revenue to over a billion in revenue. And so just having scar tissue and learnings from that journey, I think we're very lucky, very fortunate. And hopefully we can be a friend. and an ally to the entrepreneur over that journey. Our companies have probably raised an excess of $10 billion in subsequent financing. So being thoughtful about capitalization risk when an entrepreneur comes to us, especially from Tel Aviv, and says, I'm raising the seed round. And I'm thinking through who's going to lead the A to be the C to D, who are investors that we've co-invested with these firms many, many times over the course of that journey. So for example, I was actually just on a call earlier today with Yoav, he's the founder of Pantera, which is an amazing Fintech company out of Israel as well, that we seeded with Erie Levin. It was one of the founders of Ways. And chatting with last year, they raised a $100 million round from iconic. Iconic were investors with me that came in late stage of praise that went through an IPO. And we were seed investors in praise as well. So that kind of guy is chatting with them last year, trying to help navigate and get to the sort of finish line of them to put in with light speed and others around for Yoav and Pantera and what they're doing. And they're crushing it. They're just an amazing company. And again, it's been a journey. They've been around. They've pivoted. They've iterated. But they've really hit their stride. They have trillions of dollars under management across their platform with what they're doing. They're a market leader. And to me, that gives us goosebumps because I remember day zero with Yoav when we were just starting out and trying to think about, you know, and the company was called FIACS or FIACS. And you know, again, they changed the name, the other Pantera. And that whole journey and the evolution in that company. So it's incredible. It's, you know, thinking about Fannie Nohrman. You know, we recently exited that company. Benny was the founder and CEO of FNRO. They used to be called Cretarax. It's a transaction processing platform that was acquired for a little bit under a billion dollars. And what's amazing when we love Benny and Benny is really knowledgeable in FNAC. And he's advising us on other FNAC investment opportunities that we're looking at together. We funded him again in another company called Chazby. Cretarax FNRO was a company in FUN2. Chazby is a company in FUN4. We're looking at companies together with Benny that we might invest in at a FUN5. These are folks that come back and invest in our funds as limited partners. And so it's a really virtuous ecosystem. And as I tell my students and as I tell my kids, at the end of the day, all we have is Shane Tove. A good name. It's really important. We sort of under-promise, we over-deliver, we try to communicate and over-communicate, we be transparent. And I think that's what you try to do over the course of your career, which sounds somewhat easy and trivial. But most of the people just don't, as you and I know. Again, you're dealing sometimes with billions and billions of dollars. And that can maybe change people and cause people to act differently. So I think just doing what you say you're going to do, being a straight shooter, I'm proud to be partnered with David Blumber for almost 30 years, that he holds himself that way. That we try to hold ourselves to that standard. As you know, I went to your Scheeb University for my undergrad, for high school, for undergrad. And their whole mantra was Toru Mada. It's Toru Mada. It's really ethics and science. And I learned all those things in school, and they were academic. But then going on to grad schools, and then going on to the workforce, and really implementing that ethos, that culture, of making sure, like, you know, doing the right thing, or trying, we don't always do the right thing for sure. We've made lots of mistakes. No one's perfect, obviously. But really trying to be like proud of ourselves and what we've done, how we've held ourselves. Proud of ourselves that, you know, I think, for the most part, we've really tried hard to care about our reputation, care about our brand, and do the right thing by an entrepreneur. And again, we might disagree with an entrepreneur. And I've seen in life, it's not so much what you say. It's how you say it. And of course, we can disagree with an entrepreneur, but we can disagree respectfully and calmly. And truth seek together to be like, OK, well, what should we do here? And at the end of the day, we're fiduciaries. We have a responsibility to our investors and to the company. So I'm not necessarily focused on the entrepreneur, what's maybe in the entrepreneur's best interest. Because the entrepreneur may not be focused on the company, either, sometimes. Everyone has a different, and they can be diverging agendas. Hopefully they line up more often than not they do. We always try to be sensitive and thoughtful about the entrepreneur as well. But really, at the end of the day, our job is, as a fiduciary to the company, what's in the best interest of the company. And so we're always thinking about that from day one. And again, we're very transparent with the entrepreneurs that that is our agenda and more often than not, that all lines up together. A recurring theme that I'm hearing is that a lot of your founders keep coming back to you guys, either for the second company, the third company, but those come back and participate as an LP. At the same time, they're going to recommend their friends. And they send us their friends, which is amazing. So I think this goes back to another point you mentioned, which is a shantil, having a good name. So how do you keep that good name and check? But also, how do you make sure that success didn't get through heads? And you should have such humility and able to face that. Because at the end of the day, you could-- like you said, you could have raised the bill in the elephant, that we'll get to also why don't you raise the bill in the elephant. But you could walk around with the ego. To a certain degree, you've earned it. Yeah, listen, it's-- I'm married for almost 30 years. So I have an amazing wife. We definitely keep me in check. And she's amazing. And she herself is a doctor and a neuroscientist. And a lovely human being. And so it's not really that difficult to stay humble. She reminds me every day of where I came from. And again, my roots. And then we touched on earlier my dad passing. You have ego, but I spent the last two years with my dad. It was suffering from dementia and had 24/7 care. At the end of the day, this is all meaningless. It's-- so again, I think spending my life under the UCU University rubric of learning about Jewish ethics, the meaning and purpose of life, and to keep an alarm of trying to make the world a better place. I think that, and again, just living life, it's not that difficult to stay pretty humble. My kids are amazing. And I learn from them every day and cherish the time with them. And my wife, Michelle, told me to find time to laugh at myself and life in general. And again, we've-- thank God we've had some reasonable success. But life is complicated. And this is all at the end of the day, relatively superficial. And I think it's just having an appreciation for a higher being in that this is your place. And as Golda Mayor, you should say, don't be so humble. You're not so great. [LAUGHTER] It keeps things very under control. So these companies and work is great. But life again, spending time with your dad who had dementia and needed someone to help him brush his teeth. And that's where we're probably-- if we're lucky, we're all going to end up there. So lots of stories around that. But I think it's just appreciating how blessed we are, how privileged we are. I mean, I feel like I won the Ovarian Lottery, being born in this amazing country. It's still the greatest country in the world. It's the greatest democracy, obviously, Israel. Kind of a number two, a smaller country and an incredible democracy in the Middle East. And a beacon of hope and light. And having that and having family being surrounded by being blessed to have beautiful, healthy children, a wife, a business partner, as a team that are so much more talented and smart than I am working together with them. It's great. I'm just happy that I'm doing something that I love that I'm passionate about. And that their opportunities for me to give back, whether it's in my capacity as an adjunct professor, teaching at Yashim University at my undergrad, when I was teaching at Columbia University in the grad school there for a number of years and maybe providing some feedback, mentorship to others. I feel really, really lucky, really blessed and very thankful. No. How do you think about charity and philanthropy? So again, there's, I guess, various forms. To me, there's giving back financially, of course. And I've been pretty strict growing up, Jewish, Orthodox. Like it's in the Torah, in the Old Testament, giving Typing, giving my ser, so at the end of the year, I just give between 10 and 20% absolutely, unconditionally put it in my donor advised fund. And it's a privilege to give that away the following year. And I feel really blessed to have that. That was an amazing thing setting up a donor advised fund. By the way, it's really easy. You don't need to be rich to do it. You could put a couple thousand dollars into it. And then just have that discipline. And so I joined a federation when I was out in Oakland in the Bay Area. I joined the federation. And as a condition of joining their investment committee, you had to set up a donor advised fund. And it was the best thing in the world. And I probably did that. 20 something years ago and and then just it's hard to keep track of your donation and your charity and so just being able to put it into you know now I have it at Schwab a donor advised fund but you can have it pretty much any financial institution so I love that that's amazing so this way you give it away and you don't think about it and you're done and then you just give it away the following year so that's number one um number two there's still no replacement for actually doing things so I mean for my daughter's birthday I mean we went to like a food kitchen or something and for Holocaust survivors before one of the holidays and we're packing up food and meals for people and that just is an incredibly gratifying thing to be a part of that and I've done that for many many years with my kids when they were little out in the bay we would you know before the Jewish holidays we would pack up meals and bring them with my kids and some of their friends to you know people in the eat and just again when you see how lucky and privileged we are and how much we have in our lives to give you know it's in again it's in the Torah in the Old Testament it says when it comes to charity it says the word Vinah Thunu he wrote which means to give it's actually the word is a palindrome which means when you spell it either way it spells the same way backwards and forwards and the point is the commentary say and I truly believe this like the person that gives really gets more than the person that I'm giving to and it's really just a privilege to be able to help and again I get goosebumps when I think about you know feeding other people I mean this is trivial but I try every day to give a homeless person food and it's sort of meaningless on the scheme of things at a macro level like if you talk to big philanthropist they're like well that's silly you're wasting your time I feel that if I've done nothing else for the day I feel like I've accomplished something and I feel good about myself and it's obviously it's small in the scheme of things but you know it's to me something that you know keeps keeps it honest and and real like I used to always every time there was a fast I would always after a fast before I'd break my fast I would try to feed you know a number of homeless people to give them food and stuff so it just I think it's about empathy it's about perspective it's about trying to give back and again I'm really fortunate that I had my parents my brothers my wife as role models as examples our families you sheath university and that whole influence of you know the concept of giving back and Tecron Alam and having that value system in place and again I just feel privileged every day to wake up that I am in a position to do something good I feel really blessed and really lucky and that's really what drives me forward is just being able to hopefully make a small impact and contribute in various ways whether it's dollars whether it's different organizations and there's I mean again unfortunately post October 7th there's so much need in Israel specifically that we try to contribute to you know tens of thousands of people are our our homeless in the south and the north with what's going on obviously in this country as well there's you know tremendous demand so again being able to in some small way you know give back is you know gives me such a sense of self and a sense of fulfillment I feel great about it how do you translate those to your children because you're 30 year over nice success you've worked very very hard you built Bloomberg together with David into what is today so you had you know the hard work that goes into it but in the day your children are being brought up on the opposite end so how do you translate all these values of Tecron Alam charity of shame toll of all these things to your children and they're not going to have to work as hard as you know well I mean they do they do have to work they got their their talent and their bright they're capable and you know they should all work and achieve on their own there's first off I don't want to cheat them out of that success I mean I remember as a kid growing up when I was a teenager my brother and I worked as waiters and like I felt so amazing getting that paycheck you know we worked hard I mean it was hard work we'd walk because we often worked on a Shabbat afternoon and we'd walk like two miles in the freezing cold we'd go to like Kashgama the you know the early service and then we go work as a waiter and then we you know we made like 50 bucks you know whatever it was but like we were thrilled it's so it's it's an amazing feeling of achievement and it doesn't have to be you know selling the company for a billion dollars it's working at a soup kitchen and seeing someone smile and giving someone food it's working as a waiter and getting a paycheck it's just taking pride in what you've done and your sense of self so I would never want to achieve my kids out of that and they're gonna hopefully achieve great things on their own and and can and it's just being a model you know hopefully trying a model that you know I remember my younger son once we were uh forget we were late delivering meals something he was like like oh let's buy a nice sports car like I saw you sold a company and I'm like that's not what we're about like that's not who we are we don't need a nice sports car like we can you know give back you know on so many levels to so many people so I think just trying to again maintain that ethos that sense of humility and there's so much to be humbled by and listen so much of the successes others it's not me it's the entrepreneurs it's you know my team and and a million other things and and again obviously not to get spiritual maybe but you know God's intervention and you know I truly believe that and when you have that perspective it's not so hard to stay relatively humble and hopefully transmit that to our kids so we we try to be role models and you know we love to go to temple together my wife and I for 30 years you know we go Friday night we go Saturday you know we keep the Shabbat they say a family that's praise together stays together um and and honestly like I love Judaism and religion and what it's brought to us it's truly a gift I think Shabbat is the greatest invention of all time like my kids I play this game with them over the years well hey what's the greatest invention like was it iPhone or you know what have you and to me it's Shabbat like turning off for 25 hours is such a privilege and such a gift to just be present and be with you know your family with your loved ones and celebrate life so having that having the holidays are just real treasures and gifts and hopefully that my esmosis will will be transmitted over because those are the values that you know my siblings have my wife siblings have and we truly feel you know really privileged I do feel like those values translate into your dealings with entrepreneurs and the business well you know I think it's what we touched on before it's always you know trying to under promise and over deliver it's being forthright if I say something I mean that I don't care if we've signed a document or not if like we shake hands and this is what we agree to then that's how I'm going to behave and so you know what you're gonna get with us and I've seen again there's just a lot of people that are not like that in the business world and unfortunately as you can imagine when you're dealing with you know millions and billions of dollars people don't do that they overpromise they under deliver they misrepresent and maybe intentionally maybe some not intentionally and so I think it's important and then again I'm really proud of our track record and our team and you know what David and I have done together and as a firm as an organization and we have an amazing party you would find in television managers are our office there and and Steve you know manages our team in San Francisco and other folks on our team and so I think we're unique in that regard I mean I'm not saying there aren't others obviously there are it's kind of unique and special though when people kind of do what they say they're gonna do and stick to their you know promises and their word and to me that's like everything like with an entrepreneur like you know I'm and again I don't think there's really a company you could speak to that I've been involved with where I've been on the board where I've been with that entrepreneur we're an entrepreneur would say you know Bruce lied to me he misrepresented and I just wouldn't do that it's just life is too short they may not always like what I have to say I mean I'd always agree that's okay like we're entitled to disagree of course but I think you know I really value trust transparency loyalty and I think people appreciate that over the long-term and I believe it frankly I'm doing it but I think it's self-serving anyway it's in my best interest because I think it really does differentiate me from many others that I wouldn't want to work with someone who's dishonest and disloyal and and you know putting themselves first and ego maniacal and all these other things so to a certain degree I think it just makes sense but it's it's how we were raised and again getting back to my dad like my dad was a dentist I mean I heard stories after his passing of so many people that he took care of and treated and helped and never charged and people would you know bring him a hollow you know because they like he like many many growing up in Muncie with very religious community many Ushima students just had no money and they'd always come and he would you know take care of them in fact I heard it from friend of ours who was like in our community who was very religious and they had a terrible emergency and they came on the Sabbath where my dad worked on them on the Sabbath and then after the Sabbath the gentleman was like oh I want to pay him my desk I'm not taking money for the Sabbath and he's like can I always have emergencies on the Sabbath and he was a very religious guy and he was sort of joking but it was kind of funny and that was I think how my dad kind of rolled and and I respect that I mean that's really something to respect and admire that he wasn't like the wealthiest guy but you know he was a man she was stand up and that's a big deal and that makes him big as different I think so yeah so I'm going to to to mention and that people that shame tove and humility I think it also represents you know some of the your LPs that you've attracted. Like if you look at your first fund, you had the pillars of the Jewish community that were part of your first fund. You had a Sir Jacob Rothschild, who was the anchor investor of your first fund. You had the Tish family, you had multiple other families that had been massive pillars in round the world in general, it's philanthropy and everything. - Sure, sure. - But you had a Rothschild. Like what did you learn from Sir Jacob Rothschild? - Well, it was interesting when he approached us and heard about us. This was Lord Jacob Rothschild out of London. And at the time, David and I, we're working on a company called Wineshopper that was in the Winespace. And Amazon was interested in investing and kind of Perkins wanted to put in like $50 million into the company. They were trying to really transform and put this as like a button on Amazon. That the next category was gonna be Wine. And so Lord Jacob, approached us and heard about Blumber Capital through that. At the time we didn't have a fund, we were more of a pledge fund. And he said, listen, you guys are really smart, talented, you help companies tremendously, but you don't have a fund. You're missing like the third, fourth leg of the stool. He's like, I wanna back you guys. He's like, my family, we made two mistakes. We bet on the wrong continent. You know, they bet on Europe, obviously. And they really missed the whole technology wave. And he's like, I wanna back you guys so that I think you can be the next to Koei, the next Kleiner that can transform the industry. So that was like his initial thesis in investing us. He was a very kind, gracious, humble, understated human being. I mean, he came to many events that we hosted where he would speak. David and I had multiple trips out to meet him in London and his team as well. You know, it was tragic when he passed away. I was actually in Tel Aviv and I was flying through London for some other meetings and went to sort of pay condolences to the family and the team in London. And we're very thankful. I mean, he was really like a patriarch of the family and he was an anchor investor. And part of the other dimension of why you wanted to invest with us as well with the Tish family and the water families, these were three families that basically built the state of Israel financially. I mean, you can't walk around Israel and not see their names all across the country. And they love the fact that, you know, we're, if I do share his, but we're also Zionist, David and I or, you know, I've lived and worked in Israel and speak the language. David's been there hundreds of times. He was the fourth operative executive at Checkpoint Software and investing early into Israeli technology, which I can get to in a second. But those families really loved the fact that we were going to invest in Israeli technology. We were not just in Israeli fund and they liked that as well. That we were in US, we were North America. But Israel was an important component and it has stayed a very important component. You know, it's typically, there's no specific mandate, but it's typically about a third, you know, 25 to 35% of our total portfolio, depending on how you define Israeli companies, have been Israeli companies that we've invested into and we've done it, you know, reasonably successfully. And they really liked that, you know, element of the fund where they felt they were getting Israel exposure, the opportunity really helped Israel, but we're, we're Zionist, but we're fiduciaries. And that was some of David Blummer's legacy as well. He worked for the Brown from Family in Montreal and just going back to the early 80s before we even, you know, launched Blummer Capital and launched our first fund. But the Brown from Family said to David, like, oh, let's invest in Israel, which we invested in. David almost jokingly said, "We should buy the whole televestogue exchange because the P multiple was like four or five or six." And so they started slowly and he led the investment. They bought a company a big for about $20 million, which they immediately flipped into Teva pharmaceuticals for about 20% of Teva pharmaceuticals, which became a $30 billion holding and probably one of the best investments they ever made. And so that was, you know, again, back in the early 80s before David, you know, left and went to San Francisco to start Blummer Capital in the early 90s. I joined up with him in the later 90s with the, when we had the pledge fund. And again, we're invested in checkpoint. DSP, who would be a FI Creo. These were four big IPOs out of the Israel ecosystem. And that led for a lot of deal flow out of Israel, cybersecurity in our early days, you know, in 2000, when we launched the first, you know, pledge fund, our first formal fund, one, you know, fast forward today. We're investing out of fund five. It's a $225 million dollar early stage fund role, you know, in the early days of, you know, basically getting ready to launch fund six, which will probably be another two to 50 early stage, you know, venture fund. I hopefully keep doing what we're doing. And we also, we did launch a venture growth fund last year. And that really was driven again by our limited partners, where we had done up until then, we had done a bunch of special workers vehicles and SPVs, sort of doubling down on some of our winners like this FNRO company. I think we put in close to $20 million through SPVs in subsequent financing rounds. Our early fund was smaller, it was a $90 million fund. And so our LPs were like, you've done really well with some of those follow-ons. So this venture growth fund was meant and is meant to a double down on the best of the best across funds, two, three, four, five. And then B, go outside of the fund as well. So it will not just be all Bloomberg capital, portfolio companies, but go outside the fund as well to find amazing things maybe that we missed or passed on. And then we can jump in on a series B. So the early stage funds will do a precede seed in A. And the venture growth fund could jump in kind of on a series B and beyond. And so that's working out well. And we've already made a handful of investments into the best of the best, like I mentioned, fund guard before that raised $100 million. The venture growth fund, I think, put in approximately $10 million from the venture growth fund into fund guard, which our early stage fund was sort of tapped out having put $10, $15 million already into the company. And so that's kind of the purpose of that vehicle. And it's a bit of a barbell approach where the early stage funds doing earlier and the venture growth in a little later. But as we continue to think about how do we extend our platform, how do we grow? But we love small and early. And that's what we've done pretty well. And we'd like to keep doing that for the next 20, 30 years, hopefully. Wow. I think one of the most amazing things is, and of everything so far, I think, it goes almost a four circle. When you talk about luck and today, Lord Jacob Rothschild gave you that opportunity. You think, guys? 100%. Amazing. I'm going to take a chance to need to. Fantastic. Yeah. And from there, everything like spun out. But at the same time, you have the luck component. And then you have the two values they mentioned beginning to the early stage of your father, which is if you're going to do work, do the best job possible. And the other second thing was, is work hard, but also shame itself? I think it's all those things. It's really this convergence of show up, work hard. And 90% of life is really just showing up and working hard. And surprisingly, many people aren't ready, willing, and able to do that. It takes sacrifice. It's not easy. Again, David and I were getting on flights at 4 or 5 o'clock in the morning and staying at Motel 6s. And it was a lot. We were a startup. We've definitely evolved somewhat. And Shane Tove and Tiquin Olam have been really our name, our reputation, our brand is really important. And then, listen, at the end of the day, nothing helps breed success more than success. So we've been really fortunate to meet and invest in some of the best entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley and Israel over the past 25 plus years. And success can, hopefully, and usually does breed success. We've grown out our team, really smart, talented people that are amazing. And we have entrepreneurs that come back to us that are sure entrepreneurs, they're like artists. They want to keep on painting. It's rare that an artist is going to paint one painting and then go home and retire. And so many entrepreneurs come back. They send us their friends. So on a certain level, our job has gotten easier because it's sort of a rinse wash repeat. I feel like we've been there, done that. It's still really hard to perform as an early stage fund and take $100 million fund and turn it into $3, $400, $500 million or more. That's really hard to do. Our early fund, too, has returned to 11X and been fantastic. Performance, our Pledge Fund, was at 9X. So again, all our funds have to date, been in the top quartile or desal. Some are still earlier and we need to get there. They're not there yet. But I'm very optimistic that we'll continue to land in that top quartile or desal. I'm very proud of the fact that none of our funds have ever lost money, even funds that have been through very difficult economic cycles where other funds have lost their money. We've been, again, very fortunate. And none of our funds have ever lost money. We've always returned every dollar to our investors plus. And to me, that's something I'm very proud of. And it's-- listen, I feel really-- like I said, very lucky that I have some-- like my day job is very intellectually stimulating and challenging. David and I have literally traveled the world together over the past 25 years, working with different companies, visiting different opportunities, meeting with different LPs. Our investors have really just incredible. I mean, we mentioned a few of the names and they are business builders. They are themselves entrepreneurs and families that have made the world a better place and done amazing things. On so many levels. And I mean, I remember we'd have breakfast with Bob Tish. I mean, he's just so modest. And here we were having breakfast in the Regency Hotel on 61st and Park. It's his hotel. He owns the hotel. We're eating breakfast. And they own the New York Giants. He's wearing his New York Giants watch. It's like a $35 watch. And all he wants to do is talk about how Phil Sims played in the game the other day. And this is going back. Unfortunately, he's passed. as well, but you know, he was just so lovely and humble and modest and you like, when you meet and interact with people like that and you see that with so many of the families that we've interacted with, it really informs your life. And like, I mean, whatever I've done is like a tiny little fraction of a fraction of a fraction of what some of these families have done on so many levels. So it's very easy to be humble when you interact with so many truly amazing people that have done so much to make the world a better place and it just, to me, it's just inspiring. And an honor to get to spend time with some of these folks and learn what they've done and hear from them and learn from them and try to even do a fraction of what they've done over my lifetime is just amazing. And again, I just, you know, wake up every day and you know, cherish the fact that, you know, I'm still desperately in love with the person I married 30 years ago and considering myself so incredibly. You know, so I'll never forget this when I was in high school, you know, I talked to my rabbi and he was like, I was a very close student of his and he was an amazing guy. His name was Rabbi Shainberg and he was in my senior year of high school and he was very religious and I thought for sure, like he was going to say, he's like, well, when you're marrying someone, I figured he's going to say, marry someone super religious. And he turns to me and he says, two words, "Lave tove." I said, just marry someone who has a good heart and that stuck with me. Full stop. And so, you know, I know that I married just a lovely kind human being and you know, she makes my life better every day and thank God. So I'm still like the luckiest guy in the planet to be married for almost 30 years. I've got, you know, three great kids and healthy and beautiful and kind. What else do you need? The rest is gravy. What message do you want to give over to other people? You know, you have this negative phone, it's here with the rich, you know, the billion people. I mean, I want to give over to some message. What does it value when the message you want to be? Well, I don't know if anyone's going to listen to me, but, you know, I would say not to be a broken record, but like when I teach as a professor, it's just like try to tell the students, the world is your oyster, you know, in the young days of your career. Now you're just launching your career. You could do anything you want. So shoot for the moon and the stars. Don't settle for anything. Find mentors, you know, learn and grow. And just remember that all that follows you around for the rest of your life is your name. And you know, Shane Tove. So just really think about who you are and who you want to be and what you're aspiring to do. And remember that and everything else will fall into place. You know, I mean, work hard, you know, show up and there's no replay. There are no shortcuts. Like people think like, oh, you know, get rich fast. It's just listen, I thought the same thing too. But, you know, doing this now for many decades and, you know, getting older and maybe a little bit wiser, but like it just, it takes a long time. And you know what, it's that much sweeter when you've worked hard and achieved it. If you, you know, had something overnight, it's funny. A friend of mine tells me the story of they worked hard. Like they wanted their parents to buy them, I don't know, some outfit or something like that. And the parents said, no. And so they got a job and like, worked really, really hard and paid for that outfit and bought it themselves. And that was only cared about all the other stuff that they got. You know, it was sort of meaningless. So it's like, it just makes it so much more meaningful. Like, you know, and you know, there's an element of pride you can have that you work hard and you show up and you, you know, do good things. And it just, it's sort of like this cycle of good things will happen. Right. So I love it. Well, Bruce, thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. It's been absolutely amazing. I've learned to mend this amount that I think. I appreciate you showing your story about it being vulnerable. And it's so much more to learn. You know, there's so much, I've been more questions, but you know, what you're showing me here in the book is I really, really appreciate this opportunity. Thank you for taking the time. I appreciate it as well. It's great to chat and have an in-depth session with you. Thank you.