SOCIAL LEVERAGE: THE EVOLVING LANDSCAPE OF FINTECH AND AI WITH MATT OBER

E101 SOCIAL LEVERAGE_ THE EVOLVING LANDSCAPE OF FINTECH AND AI WITH MATT OBER

Transcript

Dalton Anderson (00:00.884) Welcome to VentureStep podcast where we discuss entrepreneurship, industry trends, and the occasional book review. Today we're joined by Matt Ober, a general partner at Social Leverage and has built a career between the intersections of math and the markets, previously led data strategies at large firms like Third Point and WorldQuant. And he brings 10 years plus of angel investing experience and has deep data science knowledge and also has

quite a bit of experience in the venture capital world. Welcome to the show, Matt.

Matt Ober (00:34.57) Thank you for having me.

Dalton Anderson (00:37.486) So today's agenda that we're gonna be discussing is really like, what's the difference of social leverage and other firms that you could potentially get investment from? And then talking about POCs, the speed to POC and how that's changed with this world of maybe AI or AI enabled development in some stances where it's just enhancing some of those templates and formats that may have taken a lot longer. And then,

talking about how customer expectations have changed in the marketplace, especially in the FinTech space, and then talking about the opportunity that's upon us and how that potentially plays out, whether great consolidation or what route that you think from your view that it will take.

Matt Ober (01:24.414) Cool, sounds like a plan.

Dalton Anderson (01:24.984) Sound good? So first, let's just talk through social leverage and the difference. like, do you mean by social leverage? And like, how can you explain that to the audience?

Matt Ober (01:38.538) Yeah, I think when my partners Howard and Tom started the firm, financial leverage was a big deal coming out of different financial crisis. so social leverage was always about leverage your social networks. Like how can we really compete? I think we have a really strong network of not only ultra high network individuals and family offices and so forth that are investors, but having backed over a hundred different companies now and dozens and dozens of others that aren't part of our funds, I think we have this very broad network.

grew up in the times of the different accelerators and tech stars and different things that were happening and just learning about how do you really leverage a social network? it's pretty powerful and you can help a founder by making a few phone calls and really open up a lot of doors for them. social leverage, we've always had great events as part of being LPs and founders in our funds, but also a pretty broad network.

Dalton Anderson (02:37.248) Yeah. Networking is definitely one of the most important things. Like you'd be super smart, intelligent, well-spoken, but if you don't know anybody, it's really hard to get, to get the intro. It's a lot easier if you know somebody that knows somebody versus trying to cold call or find somebody's email online and then start sending them emails. Tell you that that is not, is not optimal compared to knowing somebody for sure. Do you have any suggestions? Like if

More of an individualist takeaway from the social leverage lens is how do you leverage your network in the most part? I guess the first part is to be likable, but after that, how do you add value and extract value?

Matt Ober (03:23.262) I think it takes years to build a good network. think you also have to recognize that you don't have to be a social climber with people in your network. People might be starting in one place and it'd be surprising to see 10 years, 15 years later where they end up. can think about it. So many people I met early in my career when I started at Bloomberg or WorldQuant that were an account manager at a small company and now they're president of a big firm. You look back and be like, it's crazy. You didn't...

take that for granted when they were in a specific space. think also building the network, we do this a lot even at social leverage, like do the right thing and the karma comes back to you. When we're investing in a company or thinking about it, we might make five, six intros to people in our network or potential clients for them. They end up closing those deals and maybe we don't end up investing for one reason or the other. Our thought process is like, we'd rather do that and not get the opportunity to invest in.

they tell another founder who tells somebody else and maybe we find a different investment, maybe we meet a new LP, then like, you know, not building that network. So I think it's a, it's a trust thing and trust the process and embrace the process. know, something you do today might not be helpful for 10, 15 years down the line, but, you know, the world's crazy like that in terms of, know, separate, you know, degrees of separation with people you end up meeting.

Dalton Anderson (04:43.679) Yeah, I'm sure you've gotten quite a few emails or calls about like something that you did five years ago that wasn't a huge deal to you, but was turned out to be massive for them. And then they were reflecting and saw the influence that that outcome had on their life. And they were like, Hey, I've got something or I just appreciate what you did and like, et cetera, et cetera, to where from there on out, like if they had somebody has a question, all right, like I've got a guy named Matt, like he's great. He helped me out X, Y, Z.

And yeah, this is why you should come to him.

Matt Ober (05:16.714) Yeah, definitely.

Dalton Anderson (05:17.613) I think you hit the nail on the head is really just about being genuine and trying to put your best foot forward on providing a positive outcome for whoever that is.

Matt Ober (05:33.694) Yeah, think, mean, listen, it's, you gotta be, you try and be as helpful as you can. Obviously, you know, life gets busy, the world gets busy, you can't get, you can't connect with everybody. And I also think like, some people appreciate honesty and being firm and fair and others sugar coated. I think my approach is like, tell it how it is and the right people will appreciate it.

Dalton Anderson (05:59.756) Exactly, I agree.

Speaking of fair and maybe firm perspective is this new age of AI, I know that it could be hit or miss on some of the stuff you probably see coming across your desk and in demos you see, but I do know that the barrier entry has reduced. It's not completely gone, especially in the Fintech space, like there's still regulations, still things that you've got to do, licenses, et cetera, et cetera.

But as far as getting a working concept, think the speed of doing that is much faster. Are you seeing the same thing?

Matt Ober (06:37.716) I agree. mean, we're seeing companies obviously get to revenue much quicker. We're also seeing products being built. I think a pre-seed investment now, there's not a lot of reasons that a founder can't get a proof of concept off the ground pretty quickly. I also think that rewind a couple years ago, you want a good technical founder with a business person. It's really hard years ago to invest in somebody if they have no technical capabilities and no technical...

founding team member, right? And they're just like outsourcing everything. think arguably now like go to market and distribution and sales is more important than the technical team member. Now, obviously this is all depends on the industry you're investing in. If you're a deep tech investor, you're building the next, you know, Anthropic, then like, yeah, you need obviously the best talent in the world. But for everybody else, you know, you can do a lot now with these tools that are out there from

on code to cursor to all these different tools that are out there, that you don't have to have the top talent for a lot of these businesses, at least not at the beginning to get off the ground and try and get some real feedback from companies.

Dalton Anderson (07:51.086) What do you think about the notion of the solo founder? I know that's been brought up quite a bit. It's like now that there is these technical capabilities that are gonna increase, like maybe there's less need and will become the new norm is not having co-founder and just being a solo.

Matt Ober (08:13.558) I think it depends. think if you're not raising money and you're just building a business and you're not looking for a venture back to build a venture back business, you can definitely be a solo founder. No doubt in my mind. I think to build a venture scalable business, it is possible to be a solo founder. I think what you realize though is like, it's a lonely journey. And you know, as a seed investor who sits on the board of a lot of these companies, the solo founders, you know, like

they need almost a therapist and somebody to just vent to more often than like, if you've got a co-founder, you kind of lean on each other a lot, right? Or like, you if you're a solo founder, there's a lot of parts of the business that are just not fun to deal with. Legal compliance, operations, HR, taxes, audit, all the stuff that's not building the real business. And so like, if that's all on top of you, plus like you've got to like fundraise, sell, build an actual product, like...

You have a lot of other things on your plate that you can't really dump on anybody, especially in the early days. So I'm not saying it's not possible. And we definitely have companies we back that have that and they're doing great, but I definitely think it's another hurdle of stress. I think the flip side is, is too many co-founders and you're guaranteed to have a possible mess on your hands at some point.

Dalton Anderson (09:30.446) Yeah, like too many chiefs, not enough Indians. And then the other aspect is like too much weight for sure. Like that's one of the main feedbacks I've heard from my experience interacting with founders at different conferences or just networking and such. It's like the co-founder is as much as like a workhorse in their own regard, but also like

supporting each other emotionally because of how stressful the whole ordeal is like the ups, the downs, the highs, the lows. You're all over the place all the time. Like there is no baseline. Like your baseline is just got massive volatility. So

Matt Ober (10:10.294) I didn't call it a coincidence, but I moved into a new office recently that was previously owned by a therapist. It had a little sign outside that says, click this button to let the therapist know you've arrived. And it puts a blue light on in my office. And when I moved in, I was like, you know, I might as well just keep that because kind of feels like a part of my day job.

Dalton Anderson (10:31.871) No, that's a good nice touch, nice touch for sure. So you are seeing a, I would say increase in stuff across your desk that is like, I don't know, AI enabled or AI partly developed and are you seeing a reduction or?

a lack of quality or are you seeing like it seems to be like similar quality but as before maybe three years ago but it's just things are moving faster.

Matt Ober (11:07.798) of you have a lack of quality. think things are definitely moving faster. I think you have a lot of the same things. think I meet, see a lot of companies that, they think they're the only one building something and we've seen 50 of the same things already pitched to us that we maybe didn't even respond to. I think AI from my perspective is like, you know, it's like cloud technology. Like everybody's embedding it into their workflow and into their tech stack. know, how were you able to build this so quickly? 10 years ago was like, you know, I built it on the cloud with AWS.

Now it's like with AI, think people are using AI in different ways, right? There's front end AI, there's backend stuff. You know, we invest in some data companies that are building amazing things with AI from a data collection, cleaning and quality control perspective that like may allow them to build a company that typically took 10,000 people and now we're going to do it with 50. Right? So it's not sexy AI from the end user perspective, but underneath the hood definitely gets exciting. So,

I think it's all over the map.

Dalton Anderson (12:08.909) That's exactly what drives change, is the stuff way under the hood versus the stuff that you see on the surface. And speaking of change, we talk about the change in customer dynamics and their perspective of what they're demanding consistently from companies. know that has shifted quite a bit and that provides opportunity.

Matt Ober (12:32.383) Yeah, I mean, I think the customer, you know, I think this is true with AI, right? Like you're seeing really quick revenue, but you're also seeing a ton of churn. And I think it's hard as an early investor to know, you know, what's real and what's not. know, a lot of people are trying a lot of things like go to market sales tools. How many people are paying for open AI and they're paying for enthropic and they're paying for, and then they're going to just get rid of a few. You know, we've seen founders try four or five, six different AI sales tools for

cold calling and email campaigns, not going to keep all these things. So I think you're definitely seeing the churn and changes quickly. And I think, you know, it's also hard to figure out who's building something unique with a real moat versus who's just jumping on the hype wagon really quickly.

Dalton Anderson (13:18.061) Do you have a, I guess, step-by-step parameter on how you would describe whether or not something has enough of a moat to where if you give it a little bit of capital, they could at least defend themselves for a while, either get acquired or scale?

Matt Ober (13:37.92) I mean, I think for us, it's about the people and the domain experience, right? Like lot of these companies over time are going to pivot or find their product market fit over time, or may have to think through adversity. So first it's the people and is the idea big enough? And then it's like, what's their domain expertise? Like what experiences do they have? For me, like I love seeing if there's some sort of data moat or something where like they've got access to things or something they're building that others aren't. You we also like

going after industries or things that haven't been disrupted in a long time and maybe are not the sexiest industry right away within FinTech or within the verticals that we pay attention to. So there's a little bit less competition right off the bat.

Dalton Anderson (14:26.701) Yeah, I think for myself, not necessarily for VC, but I know everyone can start an insurance company. And like the big thing when you're starting like an insurance company is like, I've got this data. I've got this partnership with so-and-so and I have already know what my perspective portfolio is gonna be. Whereas if you're just like, I'll just start an insurance company. It's like, well, like not everybody could do that, but.

I think a lot of people could do an MGA or an insurance company. If there's no special angle, there's nothing special about it.

Matt Ober (15:00.97) All right.

Dalton Anderson (15:02.093) I think it's a key takeaway.

Matt Ober (15:05.238) I agree with that.

Dalton Anderson (15:07.517) With people trying all these new things and it being difficult to discover whether the turn or traction, how do you navigate the mess in your regard? Do you just focus, really focus on the founders and their experience and their direction if they're well equipped for a pivot or do you look elsewhere?

Matt Ober (15:35.446) I don't even think of it as a pivot, but I definitely think, listen, it comes down to the founders, right? We're investing at the earliest stage. We definitely like to invest in things that are non-consensus that maybe aren't the most interesting. We've been investing in like wealth tech and wealth management technology for five years or more. I don't think that was really an exciting industry up until maybe the last year year and a half for other venture firms.

And even now that it's exciting for many, there's a lot of parts of just wealth management that are still boring or under thought through. so founders that have experienced a problem that they've encountered in their life that they want to go solve, but that also is a multi-billion dollar opportunity, that's exciting to us. I think that we're more vertically focused and more industry focused. We're not investing in the next Zoom info or a generic

sales enablement tool. It's just not something that we can really, I think, wake up every day and be as helpful with. I think that's also, most of us have been out of that industry seat for many years now, so we're not as in touch with the day-to-day of the generic salesperson.

Dalton Anderson (16:49.614) For sure, for sure. Do you mind double clicking a little bit on the wealth management and what, over the last five years, what excites social leverage in yourself?

Matt Ober (16:58.55) Yeah, I mean, think there's like two things. Like if you think about wealth management, like obviously you have Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs and all these, but you have thousands and thousands of independent registered investment advisors that manage as little as 50 million that, you know, manage upwards of 25, 30, $40 billion. And every piece of the wealth management technology industry is like slowly being rebuilt. Financial planning, direct indexing, access to alternatives.

tax, estate, audit, all these different things. That's just on their end and how do you obviously make it more efficient for them to do things quicker, more efficiently, have a digital strategy for their end consumer. then from an end consumer perspective, wealth management hasn't really changed in a long time. Obviously Robinhood is getting into it now and trying to make it. We've had the robo-advising trend of many years ago.

There's so much of wealth management that is still broken and has such a better opportunity just from not only the end consumer, but also to make the advisor's life easier. And then there's a lot of boring parts of wealth management. There's securities class action claims, right? Every year there's 10 billion plus in securities class action claims, which is like maybe Google was sued and they settled for 400 million. If you own the shares, you get paid. We probably all have gotten this in the mail. You're thinking you're going to get like three, four bucks.

A lot of the times that three, four bucks is actually a few hundred bucks because if you show up, you get paid. If you don't show up, the money just goes to everybody that showed up. But processing that paperwork and doing that across typical wealth manager, if they have a client, they may have six, seven, eight accounts. They have an operating account, they have savings. Doing all that at scale, they're going to say, I'm not doing that paperwork. It's crazy. 70 % of wealth managers don't actually do the paperwork.

Dalton Anderson (18:32.622) Hmm.

Matt Ober (18:51.914) for securities cost action claims. That's a lot of money. It's a great opportunity for somebody to come in with AI and automation and build something that collects that $10 billion and takes a small fee for doing that. that type of stuff, when we see something like that, that excites us.

Dalton Anderson (19:09.646) No, I think that, sorry, I had a cough. I that that is reflective of when I was interning at Merrill Lynch. was just, I mean, great company in the essence of there's a lot of opportunity and things to learn, but the technology could use some help where like, you know, people would call in to transfer their money. And then like, I think the best thing that they had like technology wise is like they had voice authentication back then.

which was supposedly cool. But that's pretty much it to write home about. And it's pretty much pretty simple. Like you take a call, you'd move the money, you take notes, you submit your notes and you've got the date that the money was moved and why the money was moved. And that was it. And pretty much everything else was like manual, like manual templates, manual processes. There's not a lot of, I would say robust automation.

And I remember I'd worked on like some simple stuff with like macros and just like doc stuff that they create templates. And it did so well at the wealth management firm I was interning at and other firms within like other offices within Merrill Lynch in the area found out about it. And they wanted me to do it for their firm as well. They're like, you need to do that. And then it was like this whole tug of war thing between the firm I was working for. Like, we don't want you to be spending time with these other firms like

we're competing against each other a little bit and you don't work for them. And I was like, okay, that's fine. I was just an intern. But I was just surprised the level of interest on something so simple. Yeah, I was just taken back by that.

Matt Ober (20:54.006) Yeah, I mean, think AI can reduce so many inefficiencies and I don't think it's technically getting rid of people's jobs. I think we could have more free time to spend with clients, to prospect with new clients, you know, just not be doing these, you know, tasks that take hours. You know, we invested in a company called Lea out of New York and like, it's like document intelligence, which like, could be like, oh, you could probably do that with open AI, but like the accuracy level of like,

If you're going to become a client at a new wealth manager, you probably give them 500 pieces of paper, right? Like all of your statements, your accounts, your mortgage, your life history. Somebody's usually taking all that information and putting it into a system to figure out a financial plan for you. That could take three, four weeks. Reality is that should take like a couple hours, but you need the accuracy to be like 99%. So like now there's a whole opportunity just to make that easier and think about how many hours you have, especially

Dalton Anderson (21:43.481) Mm-hmm.

Matt Ober (21:49.63) in a day and how many things you have to be doing to be able to like onboard somebody new. There's a lot of good wealth managers that are like, just not looking for new clients.

Dalton Anderson (21:58.222) Yeah, because we're out of capacity and don't want to do with the hassle with hiring somebody else and then teaching them process. It's like, do I optimize the process or do I hire more people? And a lot of times the headache of hiring more people is not worth it. know that I like to phrase, there's plenty of other steak dinners to be had versus the headache of potentially, the potential headache. think that.

Matt Ober (22:00.342) We're too busy. Yeah.

Matt Ober (22:14.518) Alright, so let's just go golf and call it a day.

Dalton Anderson (22:25.273) The anticipation of a potential headache is the turnoff, the main turnoff. It's like, I'll hire somebody. They don't do well. I lose a client. It's like, just not worth it. But if you've got a process that's locked in with a system, then you're all good. I think I was going to say something about...

I was going to say something about the phrasing that I use when I am automating things at the company I work for. And I worked on a big project where I'd automated like quite a bit of somebody's work, like a group of people's workflow. And it wasn't necessarily like your job is disappearing and it's gone. It's doomsday. It's more like, Hey, like you've got more time to work on higher value tasks and elevate yourself as, an employee in a group. don't, I don't think it's like, Hey, we don't need these good employees anymore.

I'm not giving away good employees. That doesn't make sense. it's just like, okay, like instead of doing these things, you'll get to work on other things that would elevate you.

Matt Ober (23:23.382) I think that's right. I think also it's going to give a lot of value to people that are good at building relationships and creative thinking and more in-person opportunities because I think in my life when I was working at a hedge fund, if you think of the job of an analyst that's working for a portfolio manager, you can get rid of 90 % of that grunt work, right? Doing the research to get up to speed on a company, building a pitch deck, putting all these charts together.

listening to expert network calls. If you could take all that now and take what used to take two weeks down to four hours, that analyst should be meeting managers in person, go to an event, go to ideas dinner. Thinking about creativity, where the world's going in the future. There's going be a lot more of the, hey, we don't need somebody in the office till two in the morning building an Excel model.

Dalton Anderson (24:20.505) That would be nice.

Matt Ober (24:20.584) makes me rethink like what's the valuable skill sets.

Dalton Anderson (24:24.599) No, I agree with that statement. And it's one of the main, the main, I would say driving points of the podcast. It's like, okay, like I want to be really good at speaking and explaining ideas and talking through complex topics, given that I think it's going to be an important skill. mean, public speaking has always been an important skill, Matt, but I think in the future it's like, okay, like you can code, you know, so can all these other tools and it gets you a

close to there. I'd say that there's less leeway for you being technical and being bad at social skills unless you're just like the next Mark Zuckerberg or something like that and you've got this startup. But I think that there's a lot less give in that regard where before maybe 15 years ago, 10 years ago, it's like, okay, this person is very technical, so they don't have good social skills. But now it's like, okay, well, you need to be well-rounded and great at speaking.

Matt Ober (25:25.238) I think that's right. think, you know, we have a younger guy on our team that graduated within the last year or so. And to see his skill set of using these AI tools and what he's able to accomplish, things that used to take us writing investment memos, we have a fund to fund, like crunching all this data, doing all these different things. Like his skills just using these tools. It's like eye-opening, you know, like what the, you know.

what the capabilities are if you really embrace all these things that are out there.

Dalton Anderson (25:57.646) No, for sure, for sure. And it's just gonna increase over time. One thing you talked about, you talked about Robinhood. And if I remember correctly, social leverage invested in Robinhood, like was an early investor. And they rolled out the, I guess it's active investing for Robinhood. And I'm actually using it. And cause I didn't have, I just was just like not.

Matt Ober (26:11.894) Correct.

Dalton Anderson (26:23.177) not fully invested into actively monitoring the market all the time. So I do use Robin Hood's, I'm looking at my phone real quick Robin Hood's.

managed investment offering and it's done pretty well. think it did 20 % like when I think in six months or something like that, which is decent for not having to worry about it. I think it's like, I think it's free if like you're under a hundred K investment. And then if you have Robin a goal, which I think is like 50 bucks a year. And I think it then it's like,

Matt Ober (26:48.374) That's great.

See ya.

Dalton Anderson (27:02.863) some kind of fee and then maxes out at like 400 bucks, which I feel like is pretty cheap.

Matt Ober (27:08.182) Pretty cheap. think they got into the wealth management space. They acquired a smaller custodian in that space and so they're doing the automated part. I think they'll have the advisors there. I mean, think about it, they've got equities crypto options, wealth management is now coming. They've got banking that some people have been getting into. They've got the credit card and then obviously there's prediction markets, which is an entire topic on itself.

I'm a personal investor in Robinhood, not financial advice, obviously, but we were seed investors. My partner Howard and Tom were the early investors and we've been a fan ever since.

Dalton Anderson (27:52.816) I love Robinhood given that their UI experience is just in the marketplace that they're competing in is just on another level. There's Robinhood and then there's everybody else. And I think for myself, that's one of my main attractions to the app. And the system is just how clean everything is and how easy it is to use. Like if I try to use.

Fidelity for my and once again yet not financial advice, but if I use fidelity on the mobile app It's just like so complicated versus just Robin Hood's like two clicks boom done I log out and I don't have to worry about it. It's like I don't need to sit down for 20 minutes

Matt Ober (28:29.942) I don't know how anybody can compete with Robinhood at this point from a consumer experience.

Dalton Anderson (28:37.801) Because expectations have now changed, especially like I need something clean, beautiful, and it needs to work, and it needs to be easy, which all the other apps aren't that way. The structure is not that way. And they seem like they're really specialized in making investing easy on a mobile app. And then now that they have expanded to all these different areas, and now that they're becoming like a full suite, a full financial services suite.

Matt Ober (28:38.13) least not in the US.

Dalton Anderson (29:06.147) And so they specialized in great UI UX on mobile app, making the tagline would be making investment, mobile investing easy. That's it. That's all he did. I mean, there's some other stuff that they did with like the quantitative trading and all the other stuff, but like the general sense for the customer.

Matt Ober (29:23.734) Well, they were the first to make it free, right? I think like they made it dead simple and clean. also, this was a time when we all used to pay, you know, like $10 a trade, you know, payment for order flow. It's a separate topic on how they went about that. But yeah, I think, I mean, it goes back to an early for an early stage company, like really be focused and really execute on one thing and then go broader, right? Like

Dalton Anderson (29:32.239) trade.

Matt Ober (29:50.282) I think if they try to do everything from the very beginning, they never would have made it. And I think, you know, I see that a lot with companies that doing this, they're doing that. It's like, you know, I was talking to one of our founders recently that was like working on his product roadmap. And I'm like, we have so much demand for the current product. Like, why are we even thinking about the next thing for even, we should wait another 12 months. You know, there's millions of dollars in demand. If we just focused on executing.

Dalton Anderson (30:16.857) That's a point. How do you know when you're ready to move away from like the specialization and more towards a broader approach and expand?

Matt Ober (30:30.342) I think you got to listen to your customers. I think you got to look at your pipeline also. I think the right founders have a feel for that. I think that you always have customers that want more, but if you have people banging on your door every single day for something that you're selling, I don't know if it makes sense to go focus your attention elsewhere. Obviously, that growth will slow down and maybe it's time to bring other things to the table. But I think in the very early days...

have a maniac focus on one thing is important.

Dalton Anderson (31:04.719) I think that makes sense. follow the vibes. Maybe if the vibes are less clear, like if there is a pending or rumors of a large acquisition of your competitor to a massive company that just going to just pump a lot of capital into that company, said company and flood the market. in that route, have like kind of a couple quit.

A couple decisions that you could have is like, okay, you can get acquired or you can pivot. Like, how do you know whether or not it's better to get acquired versus pivot in that scenario?

Matt Ober (31:43.238) Or you can fight. mean, right. Sometimes more money is not always a good thing. It might be flooding the market, but also, you know, pissing their users off with the things that they're doing, changes their pricing. think getting acquired comes down to like founders and you know, is it, do they still have the drive, right? And the fight in them, do they want to keep going? Right? Like I it comes down to that is a big part of it. I think, you know, how long have they been doing this? I think from a pivot perspective, like

Dalton Anderson (31:55.748) Hmm.

Matt Ober (32:12.726) I find that a lot of the times a pivot is they haven't found product market fit or they have and it was a part of the product that they didn't think was going to be the big deal and that's where the customers are driving them versus we're going to pivot because others are competing and it's gotten hard. I think in that case, if it's gotten hard, it's either time to go to fight or maybe it is time to find a home within a bigger organization.

Dalton Anderson (32:39.961) How many times you think it's acceptable to pivot your idea or iterate on your idea of your company that you're working on? I think that's one thing people stress. No, no, before, before you even have these meetings. think we talked about earlier in the episode is like, think the expectation now is that you've got some kind of MVP working build, more or less versus before. So I think it's before you have these meetings.

Matt Ober (32:48.246) before or after you take in money.

Matt Ober (33:05.43) I think you pivot as many times as you have to. mean, it depends on how determined and sold on the idea you had was at the beginning. Right? Like if you're just trying things out, then like trying things out. If you're like, you know, if I'm going to personally start a company, which I have no plans to like, I'd have a really good idea of what I wanted to start. And I would have had like enough feedback from potential customers and people in the industry that are like, yeah, you should go do that.

So the pivot wouldn't be, maybe you pivot a little bit here and there and go to market, but it wouldn't be like building a wealth management technology and then I pivot and say I'm building the next LinkedIn.

Dalton Anderson (33:46.064) And then ice cream delivery. All right, yeah, that makes sense. I think that that's valuable to a of people. think that there is a struggle on getting feedback and then pivoting and then, or iterating. It's like, okay, how long are you doing that for before you actually get started? But I always believe in the essence of getting feedback before you start making some serious builds, given that.

Matt Ober (33:49.526) Exactly.

Dalton Anderson (34:15.001) Well, it's a waste of time to build something that no one needs. And if you're too far ahead of time and you think that you are some kind of, I would say some time traveler and you know what the future demands are gonna be for product, think that those are, I would not bet on that. I mean, they can happen, but a lot of time, timing's important as well.

Matt Ober (34:36.886) I agree. Everything's got to line up for those big companies that come to fruition.

Dalton Anderson (34:42.255) So this monster opportunity that I think is being created by this new infrastructure, development infrastructure of AI, the increased expectations of customers and their demands, creates this gap between speed to market and the ability for large companies to adjust fast enough to meet these new expectations.

Matt Ober (34:47.094) Thanks.

Matt Ober (35:13.878) I that's right. mean, think that companies are being built much quicker, revenues happening a lot quicker for a lot of businesses. And I think the customer expectations, know, you know, we're living in a degenerate economy where it's like, I want things now and I want it perfect. like, if I'm not getting it, I'll go find it somewhere else.

Dalton Anderson (35:37.237) Which is tough, but also good. You know, I think people should have higher expectations. I think there should be less. My personal opinion, there's a lot of companies that don't deserve to compete. I would like companies to compete at the highest level. And if we have got a whole bunch of mediocre companies, they just don't. They just don't deserve to be competing. I mean, that's that's a tough take for myself, but it's just my opinion.

Speaking of competing and getting involved, how would people contact you, and or wanting to get involved in social life?

Matt Ober (36:19.616) Yeah, I mean, I'm pretty active on LinkedIn, so it's easy to find me there. Socialleverage.com, we have contact forms there. Those are probably easiest. I write a newsletter, matober.co. I think between those areas, it's always easy to find one of us. We're pretty open about our thoughts and ideas and pretty active writers across our company newsletters and partners. have our own personal and speaking on LinkedIn about different topics. So always happy to engage.

Dalton Anderson (36:49.583) Yeah, I have viewed and peered into your newsletter. It's quite interesting, some of the stuff that you're talking about and just updates that you have. I know that you'd recently closed a fund, I think 80 million plus, I mean, I think 83. And it just, and you discussed like which companies that were in part of that fund investing. It was interesting. It's cool insights and some stuff about the market and tokenizing is coming, tokenize exchange, so.

Matt Ober (37:02.39) 85 85

Dalton Anderson (37:16.986) I checked it out and it's quite interesting. I suggest others, if you're curious about these topics to check it out for sure. But of course, wherever you are in this world, good evening, good afternoon, good morning. Thank you for listening and listen in next week. Thank you so much.

Matt Ober (37:23.702) Appreciate it.

Thanks