Changing Tides: From Founder & CEO to Client

[00:02:37] I remember when Utah and Colorado ended up in the big, in the PAC 12 together. We touched base on that and and it was really neat to keep that and, we had a few more. Conversations along the way about business. And then ultimately Green springing came on as a, or Monu new Hall at the time came out as a client.

[00:02:51] Yeah. And then yeah. I’ll never forget , when you called to let me know that you were interested in coming out to Colorado, I d if there was anyone that I would, that I’d be willing to put you in touch with. And I said you know what about coming to work for us?

[00:03:01] . and I was, and I was half kidding when I said that. Knowing what you were doing, I thought that there would be probably lots of opportunities and turns out it stuck yeah. Yeah.

[00:03:08] Jeff Williams: Hard of, yeah. I remember it fondly as well. And I think I’ve even told that story a couple times recently.

[00:03:14] And so that’s the exact manner in which I recall it as well. So there it is. I’m telling it as it was. yeah, been a wild ride though. This happened? What’s just so being back here is one thing, but just, what, overall what do you think about it all? I love that you’ve had a couple years now to step out get a different perspective and stuff.

[00:03:31] And again you talked about what it’s like to come back here, but now I guess first off, What are you up to now? Let’s make sure we set that as a foundation. Yeah.

[00:03:38] Kevin Kelly: So one of the thoughts that popped into my head, and I think it might be relevant in this context, is, one of the things that I thought was really interesting about my initial experience and also your experience, so my initial experience coming from helping RCP as a, as a contractor.

[00:03:53] Or an advisor and them being a fund to funds. And then I think also the experience that you brought here coming from Monague and now green springing or I guess now StepStone as a fund to fund. So that for some reason that kind of popped into my head is like I always think about it was awesome that this first client that I had, or the first opportunity I had to work in this space was the fund of funds because it, gives you that perspective of like really being in the center of the universe and the view of the world as a GP and an lp. And I think that was something that you brought as well.

[00:04:20] And I think that was probably something that we shared. that e we’d be in some conversations with, with other super smart people and we would have this perspective of I know that it looks like that, but it also looks like that. And there’s all this nuance. I don’t know that just popped into my head in terms of what’s going on and something that we shared, but.

[00:04:35] To the specific question. So I am now the Chief Information Officer of P 10. P 10 is a publicly traded holding company that’s based in Dallas and P 10 really came into being. Back in 2018 when they formed a partnership with RCP Advisors. And as, as and maybe other people listening to the podcast know RCP advisors in Chicago was and is client zero for alvia.

[00:04:56] So I started working with RCP as far back as maybe even 2004, kind of 2004, 2005, building an access database for them. And I’ve got a funny story to tell you. I love

[00:05:07] Jeff Williams: when you talk about the access databases. Yeah. But I love watching. Work with access databases even more

[00:05:12] Kevin Kelly: still. But you know, so I had gotten the start with RCP in, in 2004, 2005 maybe.

[00:05:17] And I had built this database for them and then the database kind of grew and we can get into sort of the how ALVIA kind of grew out of that. But you know, our RCP is really where I got my start in this space and they’ve continued to be a great. And a great, firm that has pushed all via, I think, to do cool things.

[00:05:31] And RCP back in 2018 kind of formed a partnership with P 10 where they created this entity that was a sort of a holding company. And the idea being that they would be able to go out and acquire other managers. with the idea being that RCP had done some really cool things with data that, that both you and I had a lot to do with over the years in terms of building out that infrastructure.

[00:05:51] Now, lots of that, most of the heavy lifting was done by Lindsey Shire and Ross Conig at rcp in terms of building that out. But one of the many things that, that I think P 10 saw as very appealing about this partnership with RCP was the practices and the discipline that they had around data.

[00:06:05] From 2018, P 10 went on to acquire, now six other asset managers. And when I decided that I was going to leave, Alvia in the spring of, or late spring of 2021, when that, when it came clear, I wasn’t necessarily planning on going back to, to work right away. And, was able to negotiate and navigate the transition here.

[00:06:23] And in July of 2021 kind of exhaled and said, wow, I guess I don’t know what I’m gonna do next, but we’ll wait and see and literally it. Two weeks later, after I had officially wrapped up here, the guys from RCP reached out to me and said, Hey, we’ve got a little bit of change here.

[00:06:37] Is this something that maybe you’d be interested in coming back to help us with? And at that time I looked at it and, I think originally RCP was like, we need someone at rcp. And I looked at it and said, if we’re gonna do this, we really need to do this at the P 10 level.

[00:06:49] If we’re gonna, if we’re gonna realize. The benefits of data. If we’re gonna be able to take this great infrastructure that RCP has always had in place and apply it to other managers, we need to be doing it at the at the P 10 level. So that’s how I ended up, I started my job with P 10, in November of 2021.

[00:07:05] So it’s been about 16, 17 months, I guess, at this point. And it’s been it’s been really cool. I mentioned Lindsey Cher. She moved over to P 10 with me from rcp. And we’re trying to carve out and build a function, at P 10 that is assisting all of, seven different private equity firms.

[00:07:19] and implementing systems and processes and practices for allowing data to move smoothly between all of those and up to P 10 where it’s appropriate. And it’s been really cool so far. The

[00:07:28] Jeff Williams: Duke and Ross shout out to Ross. A lot of nostalgia and memories. Yeah. With those names and. Keep

[00:07:34] Kevin Kelly: at Ross.

[00:07:35] Ross. Ross would be a great person to get on here. Lindsay would probably be great too. Lindsay would probably have lots of lots of

[00:07:40] Jeff Williams: oh gosh. Funny stories. That’s a great idea. Yeah. There, yeah. You heard it here? We’re getting ’em on. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So then let’s go back to that question, like just what is it that you know, you and I very close friends always will be , I watched you go through that period, leading up to when you stepped away and, I’ve thought a lot about that and felt a lot about that.

[00:07:59] What was it like for you? I mean, what was the thing that caused you to feel that way? I mean, I can recall being like, it’s okay, you can, yeah. Trying to because I acknowledge and still imagine, in hindsight that it was some very difficult thing.

[00:08:10] Kevin Kelly: Yeah, it’s really funny. Jobs said you even brought that up, you know that, that. Con several conversations that you and I had, prob probably sitting exactly where I am sitting right now and over in my old office and all places in between. And while I didn’t have a therapist at that time, I probably could have used one and you might have been the closest thing that that I had to it.

[00:08:28] And I think that, it was such a, it was such an incredible journey from, I, I always think of the official start date of Apex. It was the precursor to Alvia, is on July 1st of 2016, and. It was a grind. It, it was a grind. And I used to always say, and you’ve heard me say this I just wanna build a great company and if we build a great company e everything’s gonna take care of itself.

[00:08:49] And but obviously there’s this this sort of milestone or this milestone or top of the mountain that you hit when you can do a transaction and work with a great firm like Bow River. And having done that, I just exhaled a little bit and was like, wow, you know what?

[00:09:02] What’s the next thing to do? And I don’t think, I think I’ve gotten better perspective on this now, I don’t think I necessarily realized it at the time, but I really enjoyed building something and I think that it became very clear that we were now running something. And running something with, with the mandate or the, the objective of further growth and stuff.

[00:09:19] But, I think that it was an opportunity to just exhale and look around and I think Beau River, brought in a bunch of great leaders and shifted some things around here and I felt I’m not sure that there’s a. More left for me to do here. And so that was something that took, I think, several months for me to get clarity on and when I got clarity on it, and then having conversations like several of the ones that you had.

[00:09:39] And I’m incredibly grateful for you just saying it’s okay. The way that I’m wired, the way I guess maybe the way that I was brought up or things like that, I tend to, certainly be hard on myself and to have permission to be able to step away, was incredibly liberating.

[00:09:51] So that one’s cool. So thank you for that. Oh, of course.

[00:09:53] Jeff Williams: Yeah. How do you feel now? You now you’ve done it and I happen to know, I think the answer cuz. sat and had, many things to eat and drink and discuss it to an extent. But yeah, I mean, I suspect there’s gonna be, a lot of folks here as listeners that that know you and worked with us and with you and all those things.

[00:10:09] And, like officially on the record, like how does it feel now? Yeah,

[00:10:13] Kevin Kelly: It’s been it’s been a really interesting, gosh, , eight 18 months or so. I guess with that little bit of down period between me leaving here and getting started with P 10, call it 18 months.

[00:10:23] There’s been lots of ups and downs. There’s been candidly, lots of times where, I’ve wondered did I jump back into something too quickly? And the reality is that I don’t think that’s the case. Interesting opportunities appear when they appear, when they’re supposed to.

[00:10:35] Whether it fits my timeline or not. And I think, from my perspective, there’s probably not another job that I would want to be doing right now. And I think that I’m probably uniquely qualified to do the job on behalf of RCP and P 10 and the other affiliates. Just in terms of my understanding of, the moving parts and some of the history, I mean, , there’s lots of cool technology that exists today, but being able to understand how and why things evolved the way that they did I think, is a perspective that I have that’s pretty helpful over there.

[00:11:00] But yeah, there’s definitely, along the way in the last 18 months, there’s definitely been lots of times of gosh, I could just be playing hockey three or four times a week, and go skiing. And the good news is that I’ve only got one, one child left at home of my three kids that you know well.

[00:11:12] And, she’s a 16 year old daughter and she doesn’t really wanna spend that much time with her parents right now anyway. That that, that has freed me up to do some other stuff. So the whole idea of oh my God, I could be home hanging out with my daughter all the time, that might work for me.

[00:11:23] I’m not sure it would work for her.

[00:11:24] Jeff Williams: Yeah. , man. The hockey thing. There’s a lot there. I think, this we still in one of our slide decks at the end, I think it’s like an internal deck. Have that image view Yeah. That, yeah. That Amber, the goal. Yeah. Yeah. And yeah, I guess that’s maybe a sort of poster child for this little thought, which is, it.

[00:11:39] It, everything’s, and everything about you and everything about the history of this company is still very much alive. And so it’s cool in certain cases to see so that’s at the end of like our, what we call nine 40 on Monday’s. Whole company spends 20 minutes, same page.

[00:11:52] And then that’s at the end, and there’s a lot of new faces around here these days, but, that’s like the last thing they see, after this thing in Monday morning. And it’s cool. I mean, I don’t know if how many people know about it or how many people wonder about it, but it’s, it’s right there.

[00:12:05] And nobody’s like, why is that there And that’s awkward or anything. You it’s very natural and it’s just kinda one of those things. It’s like a, another thread in the Yeah. Quilt that just is there. And part of you still with. every day for that, right?

[00:12:16] Kevin Kelly: Yeah. Whether people realize or not. Yeah.

[00:12:18] Yeah.

[00:12:18] Jeff Williams: You got into the P 10 RCP stuff, and the thing you said was, I feel like I’m uniquely qualified to, to do some cool stuff there. You must definitely are. I think so too, but I want to just talk like what. stuff is going on. Not specifically with what you’re doing, but like now that perspective you have and what’s going on in the market is an outstanding one.

[00:12:39] What’s your take on what’s going on these days? And here’s an interesting question for you to answer it within that is, let’s say you were going back in time and you were going to start another company and I think I. that, you’re not crazy enough to go back and do that again. But if you were given the viewpoint, you now have what’s going on in the market?

[00:12:55] Like what sort of stuff is interesting? Yeah. Where are we headed?

[00:12:58] Kevin Kelly: Yeah. It’s funny I had lunch with a guy that’s kind, in, in our space a little bit, on the periphery of it. And he’s got some neat ideas about a product. is, tangentially related to private capital markets.

[00:13:09] And he was picking my brain a little bit and I think one of the things that they were, contemplating is, should we build something like this on top of Salesforce? And he asked me, straight out if you were to start a company today, would you build on top of Salesforce?

[00:13:20] And I. Unfortunately the answer is probably maybe, but probably not. But I said, without a doubt, through 20 14, 20 15, 20 16, like with, without a doubt I would do that again, building on top of the salesforce.com platform. And the reason is that, It is, it’s a it’s at the center of what lots of people are doing, like CRM and just, that, that sort of stuff is really there.

[00:13:41] And in our case, like in, 2006 when I decided it, it was time to start a company. I didn’t have any capital. I mean, we raised, a total of $85,000 to launch alvia. And back in 2006, it just wasn’t viable. To start a company and rack servers and build infrastructure and things like that without, probably at least 800 k, maybe closer to one and a half million bucks.

[00:14:02] Just out of the gates just on servers and infrastructure and engineers. And so I think being on top of the force.com platform allowed us to actually. Get up and running and start to innovate and start learning about customers. Now, there’s amazing pros and cons.

[00:14:15] We could probably have a podcast just about, the pros and cons of building tech on another platform, whether it be Salesforce or anyone else. But I think. As I think about the, it’s amazing when I look at what’s going on across P 10 and all of the affiliates, the, a core CRM is still a huge part of what we need to be doing.

[00:14:34] And I think that there are, I’ve had exposure to. Lots of solutions out there. And I used to always say the same thing when we were talking to prospects and things like that. Like the selection of the platform that you choose is probably gonna be less important than what you do with it and the commitment that you have to using this and building your business around it.

[00:14:49] And the idea of a boring old CRM is still really central to what needs to happen. And I’ve got this like mandate or this vision at P 10 where we’re gonna have incredible information. That we are able to centralize and just because we’ve gotta centralize doesn’t mean that everyone across P ten’s gonna be able to see it.

[00:15:05] But if we’ve got it centralized, we can aggregate it and we can work on it, in, in the best way. And our ability to have great information at the center is really dependent on having well, thought out, used applications on the edges and, a CRM is really what’s at the edges.

[00:15:21] That’s what most people on, that are, whether they’re raising capital or deploying capital on behalf of, whether it’s a fund of funds or a fund manager or even an institutional investor or other lp. That’s the interface. That’s where people are doing their jobs. There’s a lot that we can do to make those applications be better, but, I think fundamentally, , I’m rambling here a little bit, but I think fundamentally like the idea that we need to have great technology on the edges in order to present the information that we have collected but also to collect the information that’s relevant out there.

[00:15:50] Whether it’s phone calls or the status of a deal or the status of a fundraising opportunity or, being able to see shared, shared data, whether it’s inside of our firm or from other affiliates and things like that. It’s really dependent on, used, thought out of applications in the edges.

[00:16:05] That requires technology, that requires leadership and it requires, process and discipline around it as well. .

[00:16:10] Jeff Williams: Yeah. The other reason to have based the technology upon salesforce.com at that time is like every, yeah. Firm in this market was number one using it, and many of the early adopters were already clearly struggling with it, which is how you and I came to meet.

[00:16:25] Yeah. So we were an early adopter of Salesforce as well, and. had hired a consultant, and I gotta tell you, like in the two years you haven’t been around, on these sales calls. There are still just a ton of folks Yeah. That, that are hitting that point still. It’s, it’s just amazing.

[00:16:40] Kevin Kelly: Yeah. And I mean, I can tell you whether, whether it’s inside of P 10 or other, CIOs that I talk to at other firms, it’s not just people that have bought Salesforce and hired a. That they’re like, wait I thought I was gonna be better than this. I mean, this happens with every platform imaginable that there’s a lot of thought I think of oh, you just turn this stuff on and all of a sudden we start doing it and, or, start, starts working and we’re gonna have amazing data.

[00:17:02] And it’s no, it requires if you are gonna bring in a consultant that requires a consultant, that I think probably underst. The industry more so than understanding the technology. I mean, the technology you can figure out what you can’t, easily figure out is like how do we take this technology and make it really work for our business?

[00:17:17] Jeff Williams: Yeah, so much. It’s interesting. We were I was on a sales call with a fund of funds just maybe last week and had gotten to. understand, some of the problems they had with, the vendor they’re with now, and by all accounts, this, excuse me, this vendor shall remain unnamed.

[00:17:33] But I think you and I both and probably many would agree that there’s, some good. Industry, context and relevance, like domain expertise inside that company and how that product, came to be. And it is a product. It’s not necessarily like a a sales force where you take it and build it.

[00:17:49] And. Interesting, cuz you and I have seen this a million times, have talked about it openly. It’s one of the things that still I, and I’m go, I’m telling this story because I still am like this is still relevant, yeah. And in short they were unable to articulate it in many conversations we had, but when they saw in a demo, we were giving them that, like one of the analytical challenges they have right now.

[00:18:09] When they invest in the same fund twice, like the data doesn’t come out right? Because they have to they can only invest in one fund for one amount according to the application, and so it’s like that, that remains for me, one of these things to the point you were making, right? Which is just even with, in some cases, even with the sort of industry context of the domain expertise, the stuff gets overlooked and.

[00:18:28] Yeah. It’s just, I’m not really sure what to think about it anymore. It’s been, happening for so long and the fact that it still happens and people with domain expertise and you’re just like, sheesh. But it, it, it further emphasizes your point that like sometimes even the really good domain expertise, Still isn’t enough, at least from the purview.

[00:18:45] Yeah. You know that I see it. Yeah.

[00:18:47] Kevin Kelly: I can’t remember when I was introduced to this term, but I absolutely love it and it’s this idea of the ability to look around corners. And I think that we had. Especially in the early days, if I think about maybe like 2010, 11 to 2014 when, we had guys like you, we had, Ben Hendershot and Jill Monte that had spent, 15, 18 years at Accenture doing management consulting.

[00:19:07] That’s who was implementing our product. , and we had, I think, pretty tight feedback loops in terms of. here’s it may not be obvious that we’ve gotta do this thing right now but we’re going to we can look around corners and we know that this is gonna be a problem down the line.

[00:19:18] We know that as a fund of funds, whether you pick up a secondary or whether you decide to make another commitment to a fund or, as a, as an lp. Like we anticipated some of those things. And I think the tricky thing was that sometimes, you’d be demo with software and it’s oh, I really want it to be one click.

[00:19:31] Why does it need to be two clicks? So it’s I get that. You don’t get it right now. , but like in 12 months you’re gonna get it and you’re gonna, trust me, you’re gonna be happy that we saw around that corner for you. . And it’s a fine balance because you don’t want things to become overcomplicated.

[00:19:44] You don’t want to have, you don’t want to build a process around like the one time out of a thousand that you’re gonna have to do it. And I do think, if I think about some of the challenges of Salesforce, and building off of that platform, a lot of times how we wanted the data to be was dependent on how you could report on the data.

[00:20:00] So you have to do some funny things to get the data in there. And that’s one of the things that I think is really exciting now, is that, continue to have Salesforce be like a repository is great, but having some flexibility to be able to, report on stuff and not have your reporting to be limited to how it’s stored in Salesforce, I think is a cool.

[00:20:16] Trend. And I think that’s an area, like we talked about Ross and Lindsay, that’s something that they were, way ahead of folks in terms of okay, having the data here is one thing. Now we wanna have a lot more flexibility in terms of how we report on it, how we interact with it.

[00:20:28] Jeff Williams: Yeah. How about this? Is there a company you’ve seen even, so we’re whole. But now, you’ve started a company, it’s been successful. You’ve stepped away from it. You’re now, right back in the thick of the same market, same technology, seeing a, bunch of different vendors, I’m sure that are coming to you with all sorts of things.

[00:20:46] We, you and I swap notes occasionally on, on that. Is there a company that is in that market? , whatever, or outside it entirely, that you look back and you go, yeah, I wish I would’ve started that company.

[00:20:57] Kevin Kelly: Yeah, I wish I would’ve started it. Or, I guess one, one thing that pops into my head is everyone in business has always had this the challenge of like expenses and expense reporting has been something that has existed.

[00:21:08] Probably as long as there’s been receipts and expense reports and things like that, and at our company we use Expensify. , every time I use it, I’m like, oh my God, I love this. It’s like they’ve just nailed it and they’ve got like a little bit of complexity and I, what I love about it is you never feel like you’re in a dead end.

[00:21:22] You can, like you, you use it and you can, it’ll take you as far as they can take you. And then if you have to like. , round off the corners on something, then you’ve got a way to go about doing that, and it’s so that’s an example. I think as a user of technology, I mean, it just makes me smile every time I use expense art cuz it’s just like magic and I love it.

[00:21:38] And they’ve got great integrations in the background and things like that. I think as it relates to private capital markets, I would say. RCP is in, I mean, I used to always think this, and RCPs top, decile top, 5% in terms of what they’re doing. I think the challenge that we’ve got right now is that, a tech stack that was built to support one firm and really, way, the way it was built and the way that it evolved.

[00:22:00] Like we’ve got an opportunity to modernize some things and we’ve got an opportunity to say unscramble some eggs and do things a. Differently and do things in a little bit more scalable manner. But I don’t think that I’ve seen, I certainly haven’t acro come across many firms that have it as dialed in as RCP does.

[00:22:16] And it’s been really interesting, look, just like Alvia has grown involved and there’s different faces and things like that. I mean, the people that we were working with at RCP and the Rosses or the Adamski that were, the ones that were. The worker bees, seven, eight years ago, like their discipline and their process.

[00:22:32] Has flowed through like analysts at rcp. Like they, they maybe don’t know all the why of why you do cer certain things, but it’s like their discipline around getting data in a structured way is incredible. And because they’ve got that discipline at the edges, we’ve got incredible data to work with in, in the center.

[00:22:47] And it, you feel a little funny saying that I’ve always had you. RCPs always had a special place in my heart. Just, give, given the history and things like that. And you’re like I’m probably biased, maybe they’re not really as good as I thought.

[00:22:56] But one of the things that’s been really cool for me in the last 18 months is to interact with other CIOs, and in some cases it’s CIOs that I interacted with. When I was with alvia and in other cases it’s folks that I’ve met since then. And it’s, I mean, everyone’s trying to figure this out, no I wouldn’t say that there’s anyone that just has the magic button. And, like I said while I think RCP is as good as anyone, I, I know for a fact that there’s lots that we need to do to improve how the sausage gets made.

[00:23:21] Jeff Williams: Yeah. We’ve always acknowledged that dynamic and even played to it, the sort.

[00:23:24] It’s just such a competitive market which is what I love about it, right? Like even if you’re in the, at the top of food chain, you’re constantly looking back, you know where somebody’s gonna catch you and that drives you to, people are competitive and, it drives everybody. Yeah.

[00:23:38] Love it. What else? So everybody’s struggling with this sort of data thing and you’ve seen the slides. Still kick ‘ em around today, but you know, they’re, you look at some of these like surveys done of private market CFOs and stuff and usually like it, this question of what’s the biggest operational challenge?

[00:23:52] And usually it’s data, and then . Then from there it’s like reporting, and we always joke, it’s it turns out those are, one and the same. I’m kind, related. What do you like, if you step outside of, kind of data and stuff? What else are some of these folks that you interact with and stuff talking about it?

[00:24:06] I mean, like the reporting’s clearly related, but like, why is it, why does anybody do any of this? I mean, what’s the sort of thing like if you’re not a technologist, that people are talking about. And you’re talking to technologists for the most part. Yeah. But what’s the sort of end game with the data and reporting things like what are people thinking and talking about?

[00:24:22] Kevin Kelly: Yeah, I mean, I there’s lots of themes. I think I, I think that there’s certainly a little bit of keeping up with the Joneses and there’s this idea that you see a cool pitch stack from another manager, and especially I think as a, as a fund of funds or an lp.

[00:24:35] You get to see this, this whole world, and it’s oh my God, we saw this deck from, manager XYZ partners, and they’re doing this incredible stuff. We should be doing that. So I think that there, there is a. The, it’s a little bit of like just keeping up with the Joneses and maybe some fomo oh my God, we’re, these guys seem to have it all figured out and, I can guarantee you probably most firms that, to the extent that they have it figured out, it probably looks like they’ve got it figured out more than they actually have it figured out.

[00:24:59] , so there’s still, , there’s still a little bit of duct tape and bailing wire that, that goes into into these things. And I think that there’s, that’s okay. That there’s that, because that’s how we evolve. And, sometimes, if you didn’t have the ability to use duct tape and bailing wire to make something creative work, then you’d never get there.

[00:25:14] And so I think that there’s around reporting and data, it’s still a challenge. I don’t think anyone’s got it completely nailed. , but I think that more so than what I, what existed like 10 years ago I think that there’s this perception that you should be doing it. I think that there’s certainly, if you look at other industries and obviously folks that are in private equity look at other industries a lot and they’re able to look at that.

[00:25:35] I think that there is, there is probably far more capabilities that exist today from a technology perspective. Regardless of the industry than we had 10 years ago. So I think that folks not only feel this need, but they’re like, wow, we’re looking at a pharmaceutical company or we’re looking at someone that does daycare and they’ve got all this great data.

[00:25:52] We should have all that great data. So I think that there’s maybe more of more of a sense that like the tools are out there, and I think that there’s better tools and whether it’s. Private capital market, specific technology. There’s much better tools, but also just, the capabilities that we get by moving things to the cloud and the capabilities that we’ve got with databases and with analytics and things like that.

[00:26:11] There, there is better tools, but I think that there still exists as problem of okay, how do we actually harness this and how do we make it work in our business? And it still comes back to. . If you want to have, if you want to know how frequently you’re touching a, a prospective investor or a company or you know who your best inter intermediary deal sources are, you have to have that log somewhere, , and hopefully we can do some things to make it easier. We can make it easier for that analyst to say, I got another deal from, from investment bank, but you. You can’t do this amazing analysis if we’re not collecting the data and that problem still exists.

[00:26:43] Jeff Williams: Yeah. Yeah. I was talking earlier today internally with some folks and was asked my thoughts and on the application of ai, which, at this point as we sit here right now today is people really mean like Chad, G p T, yeah. And it’s, it’s like in a nutshell, it’s , it’s probably a little bit of a bubble mania on just that term.

[00:27:02] There’s, we’re hearing a lot of people that are like just simply coming out to, to take advantage of that this big spike in the usage publicly and formally by companies of AI and. , I think about like Buzzfeed sort of laying off all of their writers. Yeah. And going to chat g p t instead, the stock, it’s like up 150% or something.

[00:27:21] And it’s like in the long run, does that really, do much for buzzy? I’m not really here to say yes or no, but. Feels like the stock price benefited quite a bit from yeah. At least mentioning it and obviously from cutting some costs too. But it’s that, that term gets thrown around a lot and especially right now, a as if it is implied that there’s just this obvious way to get the information that you need and which is proprietary to you, and which requires translation somehow.

[00:27:49] And it’s just why do I have to enter this? Yeah. And when you have these sort of manias with chat e p t, it’s like this thing can write article. Or there’s a little bit of that, but it’s come on. Yeah.

[00:27:59] Is it really that hard? Yeah. And you just have to do it.

[00:28:02] Kevin Kelly: Yeah. Or I gave it this schedule of investments and it pulled out, the net asset value of the 10, portfolio companies in there. What, it’s like we’ve got 250 different schedules of investments that we get.

[00:28:13] Yeah. All different fonts every quarter. And it’s great. If I can feed it into this machine and it pops up on the screen, but we don’t need it on the screen, we need it like, in a structured database. Yeah. I mean, I think that I’ve, I’ll share a funny story about chat G p t cuz I think it.

[00:28:26] It really speaks to it. So I like everyone, I think in the world, sometime between December 1st and February 1st, we all probably went down a little chat, G p t, rabbit Hole and mine was on a Sunday morning and I was just like, I was, I had just made a coffee and a really nice Breville coffee maker and and I was, reading about Cha g p t and I was like, cha g p t write a poem about my Breville Barista Express and it spit it out.

[00:28:49] And it, I mean, it was like a beautiful poem. I mean, there was a few things like, and so I sent it to my kids. because my kids are like big coffee drinkers too. And I said, Hey, I was just feeling really creative this morning. And I wrote this poem about our coffee baker and I didn’t hear anything from any of ’em.

[00:29:03] And then about an hour later I was like, oh, I’m just gonna mess with them. And I’m like, okay, chat g p t. Write a haiku about the, Breville Barista Express. So great. It writes this great, and I send that to my kids in our family chat and you still don’t hear anything.

[00:29:15] And then I wait 10 minutes. I’m like, okay, write a limerick about . So I send that and I’m like, they’ve gotta be figuring out, you knows something Yeah. Yeah. They’ve gotta I, maybe I’m creative and I’m sensitive and stuff, but I can’t I don’t have.

[00:29:26] That capacity to like whip out, limericks, haiku and punk. Yeah. And and so finally my daughter Sophie calls me, she’s oh my God, I sent your poem to my friends. I’m like, this is incredible. I was like, so I got bad news for you, . And she just felt she’s believe me bleed.

[00:29:39] I can’t believe you did that. But, the, I think the funny thing is that, I think chat, G P t, I think ai. It’s gonna be incredible. And I’m far from an AI expert so I could quickly get out of my element here, but I think the thing is everyone’s oh my God, a machine can write a poem.

[00:29:52] It’s like the machine is only able to write a poem because lots of people wrote poems that the machine is able to look at and say, oh, this is a poem. Yeah. So I think that, I mean, eventually I think the machines will probably take over, yeah. Yeah. When that’s gonna be, but I think what it.

[00:30:05] The really the thing to me that I spoke to is as an analyst, if all I’m doing is going and looking up stuff and then putting that stuff into a slide deck, yeah. Chat g PT can probably do that, but what chat g p t can’t do is okay, what is the implication of this stuff?

[00:30:17] So I see it more as a tool and more is something that we need to embrace and we need to, figure out. But it is, I, it doesn’t exist on it. Yeah. It can exist on its own. It doesn’t have value in, in, in and of itself, yeah. And,

[00:30:30] Jeff Williams: and the thoughtful application to this stuff, I think is what’s key, right?

[00:30:32] Yeah. It could be that continuing to apply it thoughtfully in the right places to solve the right problems. We’ll then train it to ultimately take over. Yeah. I also think it’s a, it’s hilarious that the one of the founders carries around like a backpack. Have you seen this? , he’s got like a backpack with a remote detonate, if I understand correctly.

[00:30:49] I understand. In case it turns, yeah. It’s yeah, we know it’s smart enough to potentially go off the rails and, yeah. Yeah. But, I, I maybe thoughtfully applying it. To the right problems, many times over and over. Then it actually does become smart enough to totally take over.

[00:31:04] But I totally agree with you that for the time being the thoughtful application is what wins. Like I saw that, Microsoft was introducing like the ability to auto reply.

[00:31:12] To emails like in inside of Dynamics, something like that. Yeah. Was part of what the 10 billion they invested were going to immediately lead to. And they may have even launched that by now. Great. Application of making a human more effective, was the news that they, that the rep didn’t have to update his for.

[00:31:28] that they just got rid of the rep entirely for Chad g pt. No, I mean, but it was a very thoughtful, and I thought like tasteful application of where the power of the technology is to

[00:31:37] Kevin Kelly: Yeah. And the ability for email to auto reply was something that’s actually accurate and helpful to the person that had sent that email is highly dependent on that.

[00:31:46] It’s got a body of work to look at and say, here’s how we respond to stuff. Yeah. You’re like, how did it not

[00:31:50] Jeff Williams: reply with. The information that, I have in my head, but which I didn’t enter into the crm. Come on.

[00:31:55] Kevin Kelly: Yeah. That’s exactly right. Yeah.

[00:31:57] Jeff Williams: Interesting stuff. You mentioned your children and I just gotta tell you as we wrap it up here your children are amazing.

[00:32:03] Your family’s amazing. I got to watch them. You got to see me without kids. And we’re behind you and my wife and I often refer to your children and say let’s hope that one day we have children like the Kelly’s. Not everybody that would be listening would know your family like I do.

[00:32:17] But I, I feel since you mentioned them first off, shout out to them. Yeah. And to your lovely wife Kristen. That means a lot. Thank you. But yeah you’ve done. On a lot of things kids, family building a great company, all the things. Tremendously grateful to you for joining me. But way beyond that, for our friendship and for what we’ve shared and what we’ve accomplished together, it’s.

[00:32:36] Huge part of my life too, so thank you. Yeah,

[00:32:38] Kevin Kelly: yeah. Memories definitely come come racing back, sitting in this spot. I think that you’ve, I coined this office, the the travel agency cuz it’s like right in the middle of the office. Yeah. With the big window that everyone can see in.

[00:32:47] But definitely have a lot of memories, sitting here that, obviously had a huge impact on the business. But more importantly, on me as a person, I think you think back to many time’s on the road with you and and I’m incredibly grateful for for our friendship.

[00:32:58] And that you called me back in 2010 or 11 or whatever and asked for help in my network and you decided to come to work for us. Yeah. Instead.

[00:33:07] Jeff Williams: Yeah, man. Amazing. amazing stuff. It’s fun to, to recall it back. And of course people wouldn’t, who are listening wouldn’t be able to see this. But if this doesn’t personify , this office right now with, you, you suggested and somebody else did too, that it looked like a fort in here.

[00:33:20] And that’s not a permanent thing. It’s like this because we’re trying to dampen. The sound here as we sit across from each other and not get too mixed on mic, on mixed up on microphones, but at the same time, when I walked back in here, I was this is just symbolic, I suppose, of the mad scientists, the sort of all over the place, history that you and I Yeah.

[00:33:36] Share together, which again, I’m very fond of. So thanks for coming on, man. Thanks for sharing the thoughts and just thanks for being

[00:33:42] Kevin Kelly: you. Yeah. Hey, thanks Dubs. I appreciate it.