Disrupting the Status Bro with Kt McBratney

Welcome to Built and Backed, a podcast where we dive into the real stories behind startups directly from the people building them to those backing them. Whether you're a founder, investor, operator, or advisor, built and backed is your inside look at startups today. And your tech startup network founder and podcast host Ashley D. Biasi, in each week of bringing you candid conversations and insights you won't hear anywhere else, let's get started. Welcome back to another episode of Built and Backed. Joining me today is Katie McBratney, a community, innovator, and investor obsessed with disrupting the status quo. As general partner and head of community at Renew Venture Capital, they're redefining how founders, capital, and networks work together, building community as an operating system not a marketing channel or afterthought. Katie, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me. I'm glad to be here, Ashley. I'm glad to have you here. I'm very excited to have you on specifically because you have such like a multi-directional career journey. I mean, you were a founder. Now you're in VC, like there's so many cool things about you that I feel like we could chat about. And so that's where I'd love to start is to have you share with our listeners and overview of who you are and what you do. Yeah, I mean, I tell people that I disrupt the status quo because it kind of encapsulates my life's work. But what that means, and when I answer my family or my kid about what my job is, is I talk to people. I ask questions, I help solve problems, and then I talk to people some more. And it's really been a path that's been a through line through my career, even though it's been non-linear, but really at the crux of it what I do today is use community as an operating system to build the next generation of venture capital firms. And what I mean by that is I strategize and implement, implement community across all touch points of what we do. And that means that I'm active in our investment decisions. I'm active with our portfolio companies, but I also touch marketing, programming events, content, really thinking of community as the through line and the heartbeat of everything we do ultimately to drive both profit and purpose, right, and to challenge this idea that to have a high growth, highly successful company, you have to leave your mission at the door. And to pursue mission, you have to forego profits. We're trying to create structures and using community as a lever to put out into the world as many companies that challenge that myth as possible and prove that they can succeed. Yes, and I love the community that you've been building at Renew. I'd love to hear more about that specifically, especially for any founders who are listening to this episode, who are looking for a community like that, how they can get involved. Yeah, it's really interesting because I didn't actually have a formal community people could join until about 18 months into my role. A lot of it was community infrastructure. And that's behind the scenes, it's how we show up in spaces. It's the spaces we show up in virtual or in person. And it was earlier this year that I just couldn't ignore a gap that I saw as a former founder myself. I was an operator working alongside founders for years part of that where there was a gap in founder support, both for meaningful peer connection, right, spaces where you could have ongoing reciprocal non-transactional relationships that didn't end at the end of an accelerator or a program. But also, the blend of practical and what I call like founder well-being, right? You can kind of find one or the other a lot of places where it's here's how to interpret and digest and understand a term sheet, very practical things, or it was very like coaching. Oh, no, let's help you recover from burnout. Oh, here's how you become a better leader. We really wanted to fuse both of those things together into one place while giving founders a safe trusted place to access each other and build connections from folks who get it. And we lodged earlier this year and have been focusing really on growing with quality and meaning over trying to collect as many founders as possible. These are real people building real businesses and it's a really hard job and I really wanted to honor that and foster real value for them instead of saying, "Oh, I walked this in my version of my founder experience, so I know what you need." I'm really focusing on building with community and not or for them. Yes. Oh, my gosh. Especially to one of the things that have really admired about renews community is that it totally goes against the idea of gatekeeping, right? Like, I don't love how some parts of tech does feel like it's gatekeeping or that information is classified or confidential or people can't have access to it, but I think for everyone to be successful, like all this information and resources and connections and community does need to be available to everyone. And so I love that that's such a big part about what you've built and what you're really focusing on. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. I'm all about, I don't even want there to be gates. It's not just about issuing more keys. I'm like, great. Who's with me? Let's break them down. Let's just tear down the gates and make access, not just to knowledge or mentorship and capital, but access to relationships. More available and inviting, not just there if people know like the secret back way to get in or know somebody who knows somebody. We need just to be loud. We need to have like a loud neon flashing sign saying like, you are welcome here. And you know, a lot of times in thinking about community, it's thought of as like a marketing channel or lead gen or whatever and people try to control it. They want to keep people in their community and out of others. That's that's the opposite. We want founders who feel like they belong in our community to be here. And if they feel like they also belong in an accelerator and they also belong in VC backed moms, and they also belong right, we don't we don't want to control anybody's relationships. We want them to have everything that they need to succeed. Oh, absolutely. And that makes me wonder to what what your community does differently than other communities out there. And even as you mentioned, like accelerators or other types of programs like that. You know, that's a great question because we're learning as we go. I'm learning as I go and the entrepreneur in me is still very much alive. So we are a small team growing and I'm wearing lots of hats. And so with the community, one thing is having a focus on accessibility in terms of ease to enter the community, right? It isn't a highly competitive time staking time, you know, time suck of a process. Really we have an application just to make sure that this is a good fit, right? So somebody who's building a small brick and mortar boutique is a different kind of entrepreneur with a different set of needs than somebody who's building, let's say a high growth AI tech company. And it's also just to make sure that we're able to deliver on people what people are looking for in community. If you're looking for a community just to share leads and sell. This isn't the one for you. But I will say that we are doing differently. We're doing a lot of things that the service might look the same. We have events. We have content. We have programming. We have curated experiences. But the intention in the through line is different. We don't come into the space with the typical power dynamic that I think a lot of investors have. We try to flatten that because ultimately as a founder, if you're fundraising, if you're selling, if you're hiring, you're person talking to a person. And we want to focus on those human relationships first. Another thing we're really doing differently is we dedicated this summer all of our virtual programming to founder wellbeing. So we had a whole series called Founder Fuel where we brought in different guest experts to talk about warning signs of burnout, different breathwork, nervous system regulation, how to lead under stress to tend to kind of the whole of the challenges of this. Whereas I think a lot of times in this industry, we tack that on after it becomes a problem. We say, let's let this break. And then we'll fix it. We're trying to get ahead of those and help founders build healthy for them, for their teams, for their companies. So they're always building a healthy business. Instead of burning themselves out, being horrible managers, maybe taking the wrong kinds of funds for their business and giving that strong foundation to build off of. Oh, I love that you focus on that pillar, especially as over the past like month or so. The idea of 996 has been such a big topic for founders and people basically saying, well, if you're not following this, you're not going to be successful or you're not working hard enough, which couldn't be further from the truth. Absolutely. It's this thing that, you know, we'll talk to founders and especially when we're exploring whether or not they'll join our venture studio that we have and would be like, oh, but I'm also working some contract roles just until, you know, this is up and running and I can pay myself a living wage, et cetera, or they'll say like, yeah, I'm going to be transitioning out of my day job in a month. Is that a deal breaker? And I think that the 996 and also the idea that a founder has to be working full time with no source of income coming in to be quote, unquote, serious about their company is a really harmful myth. Now, does a should a founder should commitment to what they're building? Absolutely. But to expect that really is exclusionary, it is built on the premise that the founder isn't a caregiver in any way, shape or form can survive, has privilege or the flexibility to survive and pay their own bills on little to no salary, little to no self care, all of that. And that's just not true for some of the best and brightest and most promising founders out there. And it's just an artificial signal that unfortunately gets a lot of noise and there's still a ton of hustle culture. And that's a rampant that we're trying to say find your right pace venture capital is for high growth companies, not every company needs to be that and that's okay. And even if you are hyper growth, there's other ways to do it then. Drink all of your savings and live on Roman, which yeah, I don't know many people who could do anyway. Oh, seriously. And I think that's one of the many valuable benefits of being a part of your community is that I feel like from the outside, you're helping people to combat like going down the burnout path. I personally feel like when people are isolated or working solo is when they kind of drive themselves to that burnout or overworking themselves, compared to if they have a community to just how does a sounding board and someone to be there for them, hopefully will prevent them following that path or going down a rabbit hole that's much harder to get out of. For sure, and it can be a very lonely job being a founder, even if you have a team, if you're a solo founder, you're kind of at the top, right? The decision and the responsibility lies with you and that can be very lonely. And if you don't have trusted people who get it, that you can lean on when times are good and times are bad and everything in between, it can just be profoundly isolating. And that's not good for innovation, that's not good for well-being and I don't believe it's good for business. Oh, seriously. Yeah, absolutely. And with the founders that have been a part of your community, I'd love if you could share any examples of just some really gratifying moments that have been like, this is why we're building or building. Like, if anything positive or really cool has come out of it, I'd love to hear it. One example was we did early on we were experimenting with these founder and founder hours, just a dedicated space for founders to bring with them whatever they needed. I was the only non-founder in the group just to facilitate and hold this space. It was the first one we had, two founders from across the country. One was in Maine, the other one was in Los Angeles, they never met. They were building in completely different worlds. One is B2C, one is B2B, could not on paper see more different. However, one of them was like, I know Reddit, everybody keeps saying Reddit is a channel that I should, I should explore, but I don't have time. I don't have time to add on another thing to try to figure out. This other founder, unprompted, completely unprompted to this, responded to this kind of aside, as I got you, within 15 minutes, I can get you, I can help you get all the info, I'll share everything that you need to get started so that this isn't overwhelmed and you can, you can dive in. Just reach out to me, like here, let's connect. In that moment, like, that was the magic of community. Someone saw a need that they could fill and instead of saying, and then what can you do for me? It came from a place of true generosity and support and wanting to see someone else succeed, wanting to share experience and knowledge that someone didn't have to stumble and stress over figuring out for themselves. That was really beautiful just to see that unfold in real time, like in front of my eyes. Another one is a founder that I had met outside of Renew, who was like, I don't know what I want to do. The idea might be a tech company, it might not be, it might be a consultancy, and I actually heard from her this week. She has been participating in our community and coming to some of our events and diving into our resources, especially around storytelling and pitches, which can be a whole thing to navigate and like super stressful because everybody's got an opinion and a preference and the short answer is it depends, but she emailed me this week just to say that by taking in the different perspectives and insights and hearing from not just our team and our experts, but from other founders, she was able to really hone her pitch and got into a new program that she didn't even have on her radar, hadn't even considered herself for, prior to having community to show her she was capable of doing it and give her practical and leadership support to do it and she applied and instantly got it. That's really cool. Yeah, and it goes to show that all of the time and effort and energy that you and your team have put into building this community, it shows that it's so needed and so valuable or so valued from the people who are part of it. And I imagine that getting all of those wins or just one of the things that probably keeps you going, right? When things get like difficult or overwhelming, it's like just remembering the outcomes that founders have had from that is truly incredible. You know, I have this folder on my computer that I started many years ago, maybe when I was a founder or anyway, many years ago, I got into this habit because there are hard days. There's absolutely hard days on this side of it, you know, like there's this perception that things are easier on the BC side. They're still super hard just in a different way, but I call it my hype drawer and whenever I get something like that that I'm like, we're doing it, it's making a difference. Like, it's happening. I take a screenshot or I save it into that, that hype drawer. So when I am having those days where I'm like, feeling like I'm pushing the boulder up the hill, when every year, hard or whoever releases the data about venture dollars distributed across different identities, I can be like, okay, but we're doing something like we're making progress. It's not going to happen overnight, but we're doing something right. Yes. Oh, 100%. And that makes me wonder too. I wonder if sometimes founders don't always prioritize candy right away because of time and they might try to tell themselves, I don't have the time to dedicate to this right now. And I think a lot of founders can realize later down the line, I don't want to say the harm, but like the negative impact that can come from not surrounding yourself in a community or being a part of community. And so I'm curious to hear more about that from your perspective on why you think it's so important to have community at the forefront from the very beginning as a founder. I think the word community itself can be the blocker. Right. It implies a certain level of involvement or a certain format or consistency that really it depends. And to me, that is where this deprioritizing of community of connection of support starts to happen because of course, founders have, we all have limited time. All of us, especially founders. And I like to encourage people that community can take lots of forms. What it means to you is that you're connected. You're a part of something there is mutual value being created. There's trust. There's belonging. That could be being a part of a formal competitive accelerator community like YC. It could be part of being an alumni association. It can be part of something like old girls club. It can be part of a founder specific community. It can be your local coffee shop where you can go and work from home and seeing other people reminds you that not everything exists in your computer and in your startup. And this almost limited view of what community is and requires to me as the first barrier that keeps founders from saying like, oh no, I need more than just my dashboards and my team and my metrics. And again, similar to mental health and emotional well-being, just something community like culturally we've trained and conditioned ourselves to say like, I'll do it when I need it. But I like to think of it as like going to the dentist like you don't want to wait until your tooth is like rotting out of your face and you're horribly in pain to go to the dentist. You go to the dentist so that your teeth don't really hurt and rot out of your head. Yeah. About community like that as well. Not just for founders or in tech, but for all of us and I think it's important to emphasize to founders, especially those who feel like they don't have the time, they don't have the resources to give, they don't know where to start, is to just start where you feel yourself. Start where you feel being there, fills your cup, brings you joy, serves your purpose, and it doesn't always have to be a founder community. Because you need to tend to that other parts of yourself to round out that founder side of you and care for it. And that's another, I'd say, common experience I see is founders going only all in in their founder life and not balancing that with any other parts of who they are as a person. Yeah, that's a really good point is that the idea of community would look different for everyone, so it's not always going to mean the same thing or have the same definition, but also what you share too about not just only using community as a startup founder, but also using community like in your personal life and the things that fill your cup in in that capacity. Because as we all see, when we take the time to dedicate our energy to the things that light us up, that only gives us more energy and creativity and motivation and inspiration for our businesses. And so it's really important to have both. And I love that you shared that amazing. And so I would love to hear too about your journey as a founder, because I think that one of the really cool things about you is that you bring that perspective and that experience the table as well through your career in VC. And so I'd love to hear more about the startup that you founded and what that journey was like. Well, it all comes down to to non-linear and like I like how you said it multidirectional. I'm going to borrow that, that's a good description. That's what led me to being a founder. My background actually graduated from college with a degree in journalism. Literally never had tech founder on my radar or venture capital. I didn't even know what those were graduating college a million years ago, just kidding. It was only 20. But it was that curiosity in this like deep entrepreneurial spark that like I like to sell problems. I like to create things I like to say, okay, but what's next? Oh, how could we do that differently? And really just following that led me to lots of interesting places and led me to me. The person who became my co-founder. And we built a company called Own Trail. It was founded on this philosophy that there's one not one right path through life, right? And I'm sure people have talked to you and been like, oh, can I pick your brain about I might want to start an agency. I might start one and start a podcast. And the reality is no matter how much you share about your journey, the path you took to do those things, there's other right paths. That was just the right path for you. And so the Own Trail was a platform that allowed people to share their life journeys both personally and professionally in one integrated trail. It was a visual and choose the milestones in your life that were meaningful to you. First, present, and then also what you were aspiring to. And then connect with people who could support and share you on and help you on your journey and vice versa. And it was wild time. We officially launched in February, 2020. Oh my gosh. I'm trying to do it. But really at a point where a lot of people were having that reckoning of like, do I want to be on the path I'm on? What might be out there? And we were really able to meet that need and grew organically with a community-based tech product and platform. In summer 2023, the company was acquired and then I was like, what am I going to do? I thought I was going to be building that for a few more years and went on what I called a listening to where I was not at all thinking of going to the investor side. So much of my journey as a founder was shown that people who were in venture capital were not people who had paths like mine. And that was part of the challenge of fundraising. And being seen in the market and having our product and our company taken seriously was a didn't pattern match to an industry that tends to reward that. And it was only when I connected with the team at Renew and our managing partner Mark and we're talking about how community is a needed, needed instrument of change in this industry and it needs to also come from the investor side, not just the founder side, that I started to entertain it. And he, you know, he asked, have you ever thought about being a GP, a general partner in venture capital firm, and I literally know, no, like in my albeit limited experience, I felt like doors were built to be closed for me in some of those systems. I didn't go to Ivy League school to study finance and work on Wall Street or to investment banking. That's who I was shown are the right people to make these decisions. And he was like, okay, but you've raised money, you've built a company, you know what it's like on this side, you know what it takes to be a good founder, you know common mistakes, you know the challenges, you know what investors look for. These are important considerations to make investment decisions because if it's just people who have moved money around for ultra high net worth individuals, how do they actually know how to choose the right founders at the early stage to invest in? And that's what led me here and I'm, it's been over two years and never thought I'd be here, but sometimes following the squiggly line is the right direction. Yeah, and it and it sounds like there's a crossover too from what you had with own trails and what you do now at Renew is that they both have community. I mean, just hearing about what you did with own trail is like providing community for people who had similar paths or wanted to support people on their own paths. And so now that's translated into the work that you do here at Renew. Yeah, I think community has always been a through line of my work before I had a word for it. And at the core of it, it's having people, of course, connect with other people, a piece that I think gets left out a lot in any kind of community is first people have to feel safe, incentivized, aligned enough to feel seen, to show themselves, right, to allow themselves to be comfortable in their own skin. So that they can connect with people and so that balance of, yes, you will connect with other people around maybe an area of practice or a stage of life or a goal, but that requires the community and the space to allow you to show up as yourself. And I think that that piece gets, gets brushed over a lot. Oh, absolutely. And you mentioned a good point too that founders like should only be looking for communities for founders, but like VC should also be having their communities as well. And that makes me think that there's kind of a responsibility that VC should have with their portfolio companies and not only just providing them money, but also providing support in other ways. And community, of course, is one of those ways to, to provide that. And so again, it just really hits home about why what you're doing is so important because we need to kind of look beyond the money. There are other areas that founders need help with and need support with and community is really one of the ways to do that. Yeah. I fully agree. I really, what my entire thesis is and, you know, I'm fortunate that my team believes in me and trusts me and agrees with this thesis is that we know capital is always going to be needed. We know that it is not flowing equally and fairly all the time. That's just, you know, a fact. However, it's not the only thing. And so how might we use community as a way to reorient the startup and the innovation and the tech ecosystem around relationships and not the transactions that come with it. And I believe that by doing so, we actually can unlock the flow of that capital to move better to where it's needed to not accumulate on evenly in places that don't serve better outcomes. Right? Like, you know, you'll hear, oh, so and so these investors are sitting on dry powder. Money they need to invest like they don't want to be doing that either. So thinking about like, how can we just like reorient, how can we tilt the prism of how we're building things and using community as a metric to do that or the measure to do that is, is kind of this big grand experiment that will, we're starting to see payoff and we'll see how far we can take it. Yeah. I love it. And say there's a founder who's listening to this episode who's like, okay, Katie has sold me. I am not involved in ending community. I need to become a part of a community. How do they even get started with that of just finding a community, getting involved, like knowing what they need, would love to hear more about what you would recommend with that. That's a great question. That's a really great question, right? Instead of saying just search for this. My first step I recommend to people, especially to founders looking for community, but this could also apply to anyone is do some reflection, spend some time with yourself. Not just the goals you're trying to achieve. If you're saying, yes, I want to launch my company and get venture funding. Okay, but why? Like, what are you actually, what are you trying to achieve? What is the outcome in the world you're trying to do? But then also what do you need as a person? And that means places where your strengths and your opportunities can be an equal measure. That can feel uncomfortable, especially for founders who oftentimes feel like we have to prove ourselves, right? We have to be perfect in front of investors. We have to do everything right to lead our teams. We have to almost like be perfect all the time. But to say like, okay, just sit with yourself, like, where do you want to grow? What strengths do you want to flex and give back and connect and nerd out with people on? What rabbit holes do you want to go down? What areas are you like? Oh, I should probably figure that out, but I don't know how. And just get an idea of what pieces maybe are missing for you. And from there, you know, of course you can look down LinkedIn, TikTok, like wherever kind of your social media or internet of access of choice is, instead of looking for a community look for people. Look for people who are either in positions you aspire to, who build in a way that you admire or similar to yours, and they don't have to be like pie in the sky, big moonshawns. It doesn't have to be like, I aspired to be an entrepreneur like Beyonce, but I don't have access to Beyonce. Like there are incredible people that maybe are just a bit ahead of you in this, or you think they're ahead of you, but they might actually be similar to where you are. And then see where they're spending money, yeah. Because if you see yourself in those people in some way, and you shouldn't be identical, like that's boring and not helpful. I would not want to be in a community of just me's, that would be, that would be wild. And probably nobody wants that, but like where they're shared experiences, similarities, and where they're meaningful differences that speak to you. Yes. Like people lead you to where they're at, and you'll probably find more of your people. It's funny that you say that because I feel like every good community I've come across is because I've learned about it from someone else. And I think that's such a good point to like find someone that you admire or aspire to be. And just shout with them and see where they're spending their time and how they're making connections because that can give you access and opportunities as well. Right. And it might even be in their LinkedIn. You know, some people put that they're a member of different groups in their LinkedIn. They might just be shouting it out and talking about it. There's ways to kind of pick up on that, especially if you know you're feeling shy and you don't want to send that DM, which I'm a big fan of shoot your shot. But that's the thing is like the best communities don't have to sell themselves. Their members ring in. They're almost like a magnetic pole, right? And the beauty of like magnets is they pull, but also they can push. Yeah. They repel, right? You put a magnet that two sides together and they repel each other, which is an okay thing in community because it allows people to go like, oh, no, wait, that's not for me. And that's okay. That's absolutely wonderful because then it means you get to find the one that's right for you. I'm glad that you brought that up because I think that that's something that people don't always talk about is like what happens when a community actually doesn't serve you. And I guess I'm curious from your perspective, having led community for so long, how a founder might know if they're in a space that isn't quite right for them and also how they could perhaps not be involved in that community anymore without feeling like awkward or guilty or whatever they might feel about that. I mean, yeah, that depends really on the kind of community, really, how you make your exit, but just do it in a way that makes you feel like you acted with integrity. Some community is like, if it's a, if it's a slack and you haven't been active and you're just kind of like piece out, it's fine. Yeah. So maybe, maybe if you pay to be a part of a community and it's a bigger investment, you want to make sure and you want to make sure you try out all the different offerings and not just aside from the first experience, however, listen to your gut. It's going to tell you something. It's one form of data. It's not all form of data and you need to analyze it. But if you don't feel comfortable, if something gives you legit it, if you don't understand where to start, okay, pull on that thread. Maybe you are missing like an onboarding piece and you can ask for that. But just know that you are absolutely in the right to participate and not participate as you see fit and think about how you want to participate in community. Do you want to be always on? Do you like a small group? Do you like structure? Do you like freeform chaos of a thousand slack channels lighting up every day? Does that stress you out? Great. A lot of the best founders that I've known and worked with, not just across how they decide on communities and investors, but really how they guide and lead through their lives requires an ongoing kind of self-awareness, knowing who you are, but also knowing that circumstances around you are constantly changing. So just having that conviction to check in with yourself and don't just go through the motion and your time and your energy or finite, like, if it's not working for you, that's cool. And also share your feedback, I think that that's a thing for folks who manage communities, community managers talk to me about this a lot, but also people who are more in the community strategy side is like, it's really helpful to know what's working and what's not. And the best way to know is hearing from communities. So if somebody's like, I really like these events, but like, can you just stop it with so many emails? It's helpful. Feedback is a good way. For founders, be sure to pay it back in communities you're a part of, let them know what works for you and what you need less of. Great advice. And I also feel like too, it's when a founder is in a community that just isn't working for them. I think it's important to have that perspective of, well, stepping away from this community just means it's making space for me to join the right community. Now I have more time and more space and more energy to join something that might be more aligned. So I think having that mindset shift too, I think is really great. There's this book 4,000 weeks by Oliver Berkman and it talks about different ways. It's not a productivity book, but it kind of fits in that mold, but it's like, we all essentially have 4,000 weeks on average in our lives. And we get scared by saying no to things because then we're shutting those doors, but by shutting those doors by saying no, by saying yes to one thing, we're implicitly or explicitly saying no to a lot of them, right? We're saying, I'm going to pursue this. I'm going to start a podcast. That means you have to say no to other things to allow it to happen. That is not a bad thing. And so if we're afraid of it, then we kind of get stuck in this limbo. And that's just like, one, a big waste of like time and energy and also no fun. Like should I or shouldn't I, it's not like, and feeling stuck is, nobody likes it. I don't think. I agree. Yeah. Now, I have a question that might be tough for you since you've been leading and building a community for so long, and you know so many people, but if there was one person that's doing something cool and tech right now that you could give a shout out to someone who really admire, I'd love to hear who that is. Oh my gosh, that's so hard. I love that you asked a hard question. Let's see. One person in tech, you what's sad is that like I can think of people that are doing things I don't admire and I would maybe do differently, but I don't like to focus on that. One person I consistently admire is someone I've had the fortune to work directly with and that's Emily Best of Seed and Spark, and I'm going to shout out what she's doing outside of tech actually because it's very connected to it. She's got several different initiatives outside of her companies, which are thriving and doing beautiful, intentional, purposeful work while being, you know, real businesses, getting revenue, all of that and growing, but also being an active voice standing up for the kind of world she wants to see not just in tech and in her quote unquote lane, but as a citizen of the world. And so not being afraid to use her platform to advocate for justice, for rights, for women, for immigrants, all of that, and also invite other people in tech to think critically about the tools we're using, our motivations, potential outcomes, instead of just chasing trend or saying, well, so and so is doing it, everybody's doing AI, so I guess I should do it, but instead inviting people to and inviting by example of saying, I could do this, I thought about it. And here's where I decided on what's right for me, the type of business and the type of legacy I want to live. So I think that that kind of critical thinking authenticity and a little bit of an activist mentality is something we don't see a lot in the feed of founder dumb. We see a lot of people kind of performing. Yeah. And only talking about the big wins or the successes or only what's like in the hype cycle right now, instead of having the confidence to share where they're at, what they're struggling with, and opinions and takes that might not be the consensus. Mm-hmm. I love that. And that's a really good shout out. And like anyone who uses their platform to do something for good, even if it involves addressing difficult conversations or going against a thought process that someone else might have, I think it's really important. So I think that's a good one. I'm going to have to check out Emily's platform. Yes, yes, please do. And I think what that shows is like being a leader is hard, yeah. Being a founder's hard, running a company is hard and you have to think critically, you're responsible for people's, like when you have payroll, you're responsible for your employees being able to pay their bills. And while not every decision is life or death, and certainly not every tech company is like, you know, dealing with super grave matters, that's a real responsibility. And sometimes the fun and the media version of what being a CEO is or being a founder is can take away some of that human responsibility of how we're using tech ethically, how we're using resources responsibly, you know, and investors are investing their money. VCs, like this isn't, we raise money from other people and invest it. Like when a founder takes a venture, a check from a venture capital firm, they're taking on the responsibility to return that money. And I think that, you know, there's a degree of a responsibility that comes with taking this role while also having like a really fun, wild, ridiculous time. Yeah. You both. Yes. And for anyone who's looking for a fun, wild, ridiculous time, you were the person to chat with them. And so now I'd love for you to share where our listeners can find you online because you'd like to reach out and connect with you directly or learn more about renews community. The best place to find me online right now is LinkedIn. You can just search for my name Katie McBratney. I think I'm still the only one. Katie with no vowels, that's a whole nother long story. And then you can also check us out at renewvc.com, that's where you can learn about our community. There's an entire tab on the website to dive into that and catch up with me on the podcast I host founded on purpose where I get to talk to founders. So it's almost like the flip side of what you get to do. I get to get in deep with with founders to really showcase their stories and there are some incredible folks that that are on there. So that'll all be at renewvc.com. Amazing. And I'll include all those places in our show notes that our listeners can easily find you and connect to you from there. Thank you so much again for coming on this week's episode Katie. Thank you. This was so fun. Thanks for listening to Built and Backed. If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to subscribe, leave a review and share the show with someone who could benefit from listening to it. Until next time, keep building, keep backing and keep moving forward.