Happiness Found Him Through a Crappy Movie at 2AM

Sean Weisbrot: What's the hardest thing about what you do?

Ben Narasin: You know, I think it's the patience to not

Ben Narasin: start to do things I know I shouldn't. In other words, I see thousands of pitches a year.

Ben Narasin: Last year I saw 2,500 pitches, I only funded one.

Ben Narasin: But I believe that the death of venture is when you lower the bar.

Ben Narasin: Having said that, at the end of the day, my job is to find phenomenal founders to fund them and to help them.

Ben Narasin: And so when you see thousands of pitches

Ben Narasin: and you can't find one that you think hits the bar,

Ben Narasin: it makes you a little sad, but I've learned the hard way that you can't let that get to you.

Ben Narasin: You have to just stay strong and maintain the bar where you see it and if you're wrong, you're wrong, but you start making compromises, it's a downward spiral, it doesn't look good.

Sean Weisbrot: What are some of the companies that you found that were outstanding

Sean Weisbrot: that you invested in that maybe we've heard of today?

Ben Narasin: Well, the first institutional investment ever made was a company called LendingClub,

Ben Narasin: which when it went public was the largest tech IPO of the decade.

Ben Narasin: So, it's still a public company.

Ben Narasin: That was an interesting one because it was sort of my first week on the job.

Ben Narasin: I was driving to the office, I was listening to the local public radio station and and they're interviewing this French guy named Reno LaPlange

Ben Narasin: about this new idea he had to basically dismediate the banks and allow consumers to borrow from consumers.

Ben Narasin: His pitch was super crystalline.

Ben Narasin: You pay 18% on credit card debt, other people put their money into banks and earn four.

Ben Narasin: Why don't we let the people that are earning four loan to you at 12? They make more.

Ben Narasin: You pay less.

Ben Narasin: It's all great.

Ben Narasin: And I thought, oh my god.

Ben Narasin: This is gonna be huge.

Ben Narasin: And so I spent, you know, a couple weeks trying to get to them.

Ben Narasin: I finally got to some mid level person.

Ben Narasin: They're like, I'll be happy to meet you.

Ben Narasin: I'm like, no. No. No. I need to meet the founder.

Ben Narasin: And then it took me forever to make the decision.

Ben Narasin: I did make an investment.

Ben Narasin: There's a lot of larger investments I made.

Ben Narasin: And that was a great company, a great run.

Ben Narasin: Interestingly, they fired that founder as they did with Zenefits.

Ben Narasin: And both founders I've funded a second time, and both founders have gone on to build companies that are even more valuable.

Ben Narasin: Zenefits was worth about 5 and a half billion at peak when he got fired and his next company, Rippling, which I invested in is currently worth $17,800,000,000

Ben Narasin: So a lot of people have heard of Rippling.

Ben Narasin: I have five different companies that are publics

Ben Narasin: at different levels.

Ben Narasin: The most recent one's a company called Omada Health, that one took about fifteen years.

Ben Narasin: There was a three d metal printing company, there's a company called Surf Air. That one's was it's funny.

Ben Narasin: That's a not as fun story.

Ben Narasin: I was in their first investment round and I'm still underwater on the public company.

Ben Narasin: It's ridiculous

Sean Weisbrot: Hello?

Ben Narasin: because of a bad round done by bad people in my view,

Ben Narasin: that crammed me down even though it was an up round.

Ben Narasin: You gotta

Ben Narasin: company success doesn't always equate to investor success, and that's something you all learn to mitigate.

Sean Weisbrot: Can you speak to a little bit more in a way that founders can understand how to mitigate?

Ben Narasin: Well, there's a

Ben Narasin: one of the key realities, there's a large incubator out there that spends, I believe, too much time, and I've funded a bunch of their companies, too much time on game theory and how to maximize your valuation.

Ben Narasin: These are ten plus year relationships when it works out.

Ben Narasin: Imagine that you were dating

Ben Narasin: and you decided in order to get the most

Ben Narasin: attractive in the sense of the entire package of smart and beautiful and wonderful and hardworking and all that stuff, mate.

Ben Narasin: And so you decide to use game theory to trick them.

Ben Narasin: Now you're married, your life sucks, same thing.

Ben Narasin: So, I think that founders should spend more time at the beginning curating and diligencing their investors.

Ben Narasin: Now, I get that not all founders have choice

Ben Narasin: and I was one of those.

Ben Narasin: I mean, basically, if you have no choice and there's one offer, you pretty much know what you're gonna do if you wanna run your company.

Ben Narasin: But given the opportunity,

Ben Narasin: you want someone that you can believe will stand by you.

Ben Narasin: That can be all the difference in the world.

Ben Narasin: And to be fair, you should also treat your investors like partners as long as they are partners to you.

Ben Narasin: You know, I, I had a company oh, it's not I can't say the name of it, but company that went public and

Ben Narasin: I was looking at my share account and I was like, this seems off.

Ben Narasin: And I called the foundries like, that's what we have on record.

Ben Narasin: Now interestingly, sometimes my founders and I will negotiate on terms,

Ben Narasin: and that's just life.

Ben Narasin: Lawyers have to get paid.

Ben Narasin: And I remember one of my entrepreneurs was getting all upset about a clause.

Ben Narasin: And I said, Bob,

Ben Narasin: let me ask you a question.

Ben Narasin: I've done over 180 deals in eighteen years.

Ben Narasin: How many times have I looked at the original documents?

Ben Narasin: Zero.

Ben Narasin: The only time

Ben Narasin: was that time when I didn't even look at the original documents, I searched

Ben Narasin: for weeks through my office, which is just piles, to find a document he had lost.

Ben Narasin: And then he said, oh, no problem.

Ben Narasin: We'll take care of it. And he added the shares even though it was after the filing.

Ben Narasin: Same person, you know, I had ten year warrants, they expired.

Ben Narasin: He's like, no problem.

Ben Narasin: We'll just renew them.

Ben Narasin: Them.

Ben Narasin: You know, he wanted us to win.

Ben Narasin: He treated us fairly.

Ben Narasin: He treated us the way he would treat,

Ben Narasin: you know, one of his relatives, like just do the right thing, do the right thing, things will work out.

Ben Narasin: When you try to gain people, when you try to gain the system,

Ben Narasin: it will come a day when it'll come back to haunt you.

Ben Narasin: We we call these the self inflicted wounds that you're taught, which you suffer for later.

Ben Narasin: So,

Ben Narasin: you know, it's about truly finding a partner.

Ben Narasin: Now I'm not gonna tell you all VCs show up and do the work.

Ben Narasin: They don't.

Ben Narasin: But it doesn't mean they're not entitled to participate as long as, you know,

Ben Narasin: they empowered you with the capital to do the things you're gonna do. To erase them out of the history is entirely unfair.

Sean Weisbrot: Don't you think there's way too many VCs who just they claim we care about founders, but then they really just are a check?

Ben Narasin: Yeah.

Ben Narasin: Oh, totally.

Ben Narasin: No. It it it they've all been taught.

Ben Narasin: Look, it's funny.

Ben Narasin: I was, I was at a big, Silicon Valley Summit yesterday and this guy came in and was like, Ben. And I was like, yes?

Ben Narasin: Said, oh, you don't know me, but I follow you on LinkedIn. I was like, I didn't even know that was a thing.

Ben Narasin: He said, yeah.

Ben Narasin: No. I love them.

Ben Narasin: Like, you're just so you're such the advocate for founders.

Ben Narasin: And I'm like, well, yeah.

Ben Narasin: Yeah, I was a founder for twenty five years.

Ben Narasin: I know what that life is like.

Ben Narasin: That is what I wanna do.

Ben Narasin: That's why it's so important you do the diligence.

Ben Narasin: Everybody says,

Ben Narasin: I'm phenomenal.

Ben Narasin: I help my founders.

Ben Narasin: Great.

Ben Narasin: Why don't you call their founders and find out?

Ben Narasin: And not the ones they tell you to call.

Ben Narasin: Here's the trick I tell my founders.

Ben Narasin: You you have a VC you like.

Ben Narasin: Okay.

Ben Narasin: Great.

Ben Narasin: Give me some references.

Ben Narasin: Great.

Ben Narasin: Here you go. Boom.

Ben Narasin: Okay.

Ben Narasin: Now give me the list of the founders you funded or you look on their site and you look at the founders they funded.

Ben Narasin: Now do a separate Google search for these days, ChatGPT,

Ben Narasin: and find out the founders they didn't mention.

Ben Narasin: So if they've got a list of 30 companies on their website and you find 33, call the three they didn't list.

Ben Narasin: Find out what happened when things went poorly.

Ben Narasin: Things are going well.

Ben Narasin: I mean, you know, open and eyes about to go public and you're fat and happy.

Ben Narasin: Of course, you're Sam's best friend.

Ben Narasin: What about

Ben Narasin: Sam was very unhappy with the company he had before called Loop'd? I think he unfairly

Ben Narasin: I think he got too mad.

Ben Narasin: I don't think it was the VC's fault, but I wasn't there.

Ben Narasin: I wasn't in the room.

Ben Narasin: But Nat Nat talked to him about how it went then.

Ben Narasin: So talk about the failures, talk about the difficulties, talk about the hard times, look for those messages.

Ben Narasin: I had all my founders come to a party

Ben Narasin: and I asked them each to record, like, a

Ben Narasin: two minute video, and I put it up on my LinkedIn page.

Ben Narasin: And you wanna see any founder whether they've succeeded or failed, they're up there.

Ben Narasin: I I actually had an LP meeting

Ben Narasin: where I all the founders of Tenacity.

Ben Narasin: I mean, I have a bunch, probably 30 founders from before Tenacity that have done testimonials for me, including companies that went to zero.

Ben Narasin: And, you know, I think that's a useful way to understand me and I think others should try and do that.

Ben Narasin: But net net, I we had our LP meeting, brought our LPs, and we brought a 100% of our founders in from around the world.

Ben Narasin: They came from London, they came from Mexico, they came from everywhere.

Ben Narasin: And at the end of the session, I said, okay, here's what I'm gonna do. I've told you everything about us. I've told you everything about these founders.

Ben Narasin: We've interviewed these founders.

Ben Narasin: I'm gonna leave, and and you can ask my founders anything you want

Ben Narasin: because I have absolute confidence there's no skeletons in my closet.

Ben Narasin: And so when I heard later was, well, your founders love you.

Ben Narasin: They have one complaint.

Ben Narasin: You don't have a website.

Ben Narasin: I'm like, why do I need a website?

Ben Narasin: I don't care.

Ben Narasin: They go to LinkedIn page.

Ben Narasin: They said, well, they like to have something to point to because there's another fund out of India called tenacity.

Ben Narasin: So they don't want people to think that's who funded them.

Ben Narasin: They wanna be able to point to you.

Ben Narasin: But I still don't have a website.

Ben Narasin: That was several years ago.

Ben Narasin: So haven't been convinced it's worth doing.

Sean Weisbrot: I have seen

Sean Weisbrot: I have seen websites that say coming soon under construction, and my first thought is, why should I trust you?

Ben Narasin: Well, I have a LinkedIn page for Tenacity,

Ben Narasin: which has, you know, those videos from the founders and my various TV appearance, whatever.

Ben Narasin: So there's plenty of content to be accessed about me. But,

Ben Narasin: you know, most people are like, oh, you need a website for deal flow.

Ben Narasin: It's like, dude, the last thing I need is more unsolicited deal flow.

Ben Narasin: I mean, it's already ridiculously difficult to get to the number of times I've had to burn up a weekend just getting back to inbox zero, it's like weeds.

Ben Narasin: You know, you prune the damn garden, and then a week later, you're like, oh, I gotta spend a weekend on this again.

Ben Narasin: So,

Ben Narasin: you know, there are a lot of venues for people.

Ben Narasin: They can go to the LinkedIn page for me. They can go to LinkedIn page for tenacity.

Ben Narasin: They can see hundreds

Ben Narasin: of interviews with me. I mean, you I don't I don't Google my own name, but I'm suspicious if you Google Narison, you're gonna find plenty.

Ben Narasin: So

Ben Narasin: you shouldn't trust me because I paid $50

Ben Narasin: for some random out of a box piece of crap website that looks nice because it was designed by AI or Wix.

Ben Narasin: Does that make me more trustworthy?

Ben Narasin: By the way, it's sort of like think about this.

Ben Narasin: When you go into a bank, you ever seen a a bank built out of wood?

Ben Narasin: Oh, he's marble, big and beautiful.

Ben Narasin: What does that have to do with anything?

Ben Narasin: All it does is create this false sense of trust.

Ben Narasin: I get it. Marketing and brand are important.

Ben Narasin: But at the end of the day,

Ben Narasin: if you're a scammer bank, your bank's gonna be the most beautiful bank in town.

Ben Narasin: And if you're a scammer VC, wow, are you gonna have a nice website.

Ben Narasin: Look, Benchmark didn't even have a website for a long time, and then I think they put up a page.

Ben Narasin: Their reputation preceded them.

Ben Narasin: I've been doing this for eighteen years.

Ben Narasin: It's not that everybody knows me, but a lot of people do. And I think, you know, look, when entrepreneurs diligence me,

Ben Narasin: I've never had an issue.

Ben Narasin: I did have one guy say, yeah, I called a lot of people.

Ben Narasin: I mean,

Ben Narasin: you generally got a great reputation.

Ben Narasin: I mean, what do you mean generally?

Ben Narasin: Well, a couple of people's shirts.

Ben Narasin: You know, you you could be a pain in the ass.

Ben Narasin: I'm like, okay.

Ben Narasin: You know, that's life or whatever.

Ben Narasin: I'm neurodivergent, so fine.

Ben Narasin: That's the current word for weirdo.

Ben Narasin: It comes through every once in a while.

Ben Narasin: But

Ben Narasin: the the I remember once Renault from LendingClub was doing a someone was calling in for diligence, and he said, Ben is tough but fair.

Ben Narasin: And I was like, dude, that's all I can ask for.

Ben Narasin: I don't wanna coddle an entrepreneur.

Ben Narasin: You think anybody's doing you a favor telling you how great you are when you're doing something horrifically stupid?

Ben Narasin: I'm not gonna say that's horrifically stupid, but I'm gonna tell you stories how I did something horrifically stupid and how it ended up, and I will be hoping that you will listen enough to understand that we all make mistakes, maybe learn from other people's mistakes.

Ben Narasin: I do not think

Ben Narasin: being supportive of an entrepreneur is just blindly saying yes to every idea they come up with.

Ben Narasin: I'm not there to veto you.

Ben Narasin: I'm not there to get in your way, but I am there to provide you counsel if you're gonna ask me for it.

Ben Narasin: And, you know, it's in some ways like being a parent.

Ben Narasin: You know, you you spare the rod, spoil the child.

Ben Narasin: I mean, I didn't beat my kids or anything, but net net, you gotta be tough enough on them so they can actually get stuff done.

Ben Narasin: You don't just let them chew glass and be like, ah, he'll be fine,

Ben Narasin: which by the way, of course, is a great metaphor for entrepreneurs.

Ben Narasin: They have to chew glass.

Ben Narasin: But if you actually say, you know what I'm gonna do? I'm gonna stand on stage at TechCrunch and chew chew glass to prove that I'm tougher than anybody out there.

Ben Narasin: I'm gonna tell you, you know, you might wanna consult a surgeon that had to repair the mouths of people that chew glass first because it feels like you could do some permanent sparring.

Sean Weisbrot: Right.

Sean Weisbrot: So I feel like that mentality was how, like,

Sean Weisbrot: my great grandparents would parent or my parents would parent where

Sean Weisbrot: or not mine, but like the generation.

Sean Weisbrot: I think like two generations of parents or three generations of parents ago, it was kind of like, well, let's, you know, let it, you know, see what happens.

Sean Weisbrot: Like, you know, you break your leg.

Sean Weisbrot: That's fine.

Sean Weisbrot: Just walk it off.

Sean Weisbrot: You'll be fine.

Sean Weisbrot: Just walk to the hospital and you'll get a cast.

Sean Weisbrot: You'll be okay.

Ben Narasin: Yeah.

Ben Narasin: Kids are amazingly resilient, and I do think we've gone from two

Ben Narasin: you could use the word tough, but maybe it was too unengaged to too engaged.

Ben Narasin: It was a great learning for me. We were at, my kids are all out of the house now, we're empty and ass.

Ben Narasin: But I was at, we, when we moved here, we moved from New York and we went to this school and I was like, tell me about the teachers, tell me about this, tell me about that, all the typical questions.

Ben Narasin: So I have the math program.

Ben Narasin: We're talking pre k, by the way.

Ben Narasin: But in New York, you have to take an SAT style test to get into pre k, like fanatical parents.

Ben Narasin: Anyway, so here, they're like, you know what?

Ben Narasin: What really matters to us is we want the kids to learn to love and love to learn.

Ben Narasin: And I'm like,

Ben Narasin: yeah.

Ben Narasin: Thanks for the hippie bullshit.

Ben Narasin: Now let's talk about the teachers.

Ben Narasin: But what I came to appreciate over time is they meant that and it worked.

Ben Narasin: The kids graduated with what they needed

Ben Narasin: and along the way, they became well rounded children.

Ben Narasin: And the thing that I remember the most, because I was not working, I resigned for quite a while, so I spent a lot of time with that school and being on different pair of committees and stuff, and a kid's on the playground, falls down, scrapes up his knee,

Ben Narasin: teacher's standing on the sideline, teacher watches the kid, and I'm like, why is the teacher not going to the kid?

Ben Narasin: Kid gets up, looks around, nobody's coming to help him, runs off.

Ben Narasin: There's a book here that's very popular called The Blessing of the Skin Mean,

Ben Narasin: but it was a crystalline moment of just like, Wow, that kid's fine.

Ben Narasin: He doesn't need some parent to go hover over him, and, Oh my God, is your knee okay?

Ben Narasin: Let's get the Bass of Tracen.

Ben Narasin: He just went about his day.

Ben Narasin: And it was a great reminder of the resilience

Ben Narasin: of youth.

Ben Narasin: Like, they're they're built to survive almost anything.

Ben Narasin: Not anything, but a lot.

Ben Narasin: In New York, you get pregnant, you hire somebody to come in and baby proof your house.

Ben Narasin: Every plug must be protected.

Ben Narasin: Every corner must be padded.

Ben Narasin: Every window must be barred.

Ben Narasin: It's crazy.

Ben Narasin: And, yes, tragedies do happen.

Ben Narasin: They're quite rare.

Ben Narasin: But, like, the level of go from zero to a 100%, like, oh, it's it's crazy time.

Sean Weisbrot: Well, they do that because according to my friends who have really young kids, they're constantly trying to kill themselves.

Ben Narasin: Yeah.

Ben Narasin: It's a bit of an exaggeration, but, yes, there's I okay.

Ben Narasin: Here's an example.

Ben Narasin: Yes. We put the little dollar plastic things in the in the sockets.

Ben Narasin: How many people do you know?

Ben Narasin: Now, I would say in life we come across probably in excess of a million people, not that we necessarily get to know, but that we come across in different forms.

Ben Narasin: How many of them do you know that were electrocuted as a baby by sticking their finger in a socket?

Ben Narasin: I know one person who, as a child,

Ben Narasin: chewed through an electrical cord, which you couldn't protect against, and now and her mouth never grew.

Ben Narasin: But,

Sean Weisbrot: Her mouth never grew?

Ben Narasin: dude,

Ben Narasin: yeah.

Ben Narasin: So she's an adult person with a very small mouth.

Ben Narasin: It's I mean, not disproportionate.

Ben Narasin: It doesn't look freakish.

Ben Narasin: It's just but the story

Sean Weisbrot: I don't think an electrocution is gonna prevent grow.

Sean Weisbrot: That seems strange.

Ben Narasin: I don't know.

Ben Narasin: It was a weird that's the story I heard from her or one of her friends.

Ben Narasin: Maybe it's a myth.

Ben Narasin: But my point is, when was the last time you heard a story of, oh my god, my baby died from sticking her finger in the socket?

Ben Narasin: Oh my god, this happened.

Ben Narasin: I'm not saying it never happens.

Ben Narasin: The problem is that today,

Sean Weisbrot: Well, Yeah.

Ben Narasin: when some outlier event happens, like, the baby that got abducted in Jamaica,

Ben Narasin: everybody knows about it immediately.

Ben Narasin: And so we perceive

Sean Weisbrot: I didn't hear about it.

Ben Narasin: this was many, many years, like ten, twelve, fifteen years ago.

Ben Narasin: We perceive that these sort of incidents are going up. Statistically, they're going way down.

Ben Narasin: This is another event from a school that was an interesting learning for me.

Ben Narasin: They do all these educations for parents things, so this person comes in and presents and he's like, well,

Ben Narasin: by show of hands, how many of you already know that child abductions have gone way up in the last thirty years?

Ben Narasin: You know, like, 70% of people's hands go up. And he says, that's not true.

Ben Narasin: Child abductions are down 80%.

Ben Narasin: It's just that we see them all immediately online and in the news because now we live in a flat world of information.

Ben Narasin: So the world is much better.

Ben Narasin: Our lives are more abundant,

Ben Narasin: but everybody writing a story likes the tragedy.

Ben Narasin: You know what they the old saying in the news is if it bleeds, it leads.

Ben Narasin: So the same is true, by the way, for the economy.

Ben Narasin: There has never been a time in all of history where every strata of society is better off in all sorts of ways.

Ben Narasin: But, you know, that doesn't get the whack jobs elected, so they gotta whine about this, that, and the other thing and try to take money from one pot to put it into another.

Ben Narasin: Never has worked throughout history, but, of course, there's a group of people that try to do it. I don't even know if they actually believe in trying to do it. What they care about is getting their votes.

Ben Narasin: Career politicians that will basically do nothing but be politicians for the rest of their life and become enormously enriched.

Ben Narasin: Well, you know, damn, you know, let's let's screw the rich while they're themselves getting rich trying to

Ben Narasin: milk off the system.

Ben Narasin: Sorry.

Ben Narasin: Drifting down on a tangent, we probably don't need to spend time on.

Sean Weisbrot: It's okay.

Sean Weisbrot: There was something that you said earlier, which I've been thinking about.

Sean Weisbrot: I've thought about it many times over the years.

Sean Weisbrot: You said,

Sean Weisbrot: I've seen 2,500 deals, and I only invested in one.

Sean Weisbrot: Why is it

Sean Weisbrot: that investors are so excited to tell people how many deals they've looked at every year?

Ben Narasin: I think it's well, I say it for multiple reasons.

Ben Narasin: In the beginning, we used to count, I'm estimating now.

Ben Narasin: There was a two year period, 2023 and 2024, where we saw 10,000 pitches and funded six.

Ben Narasin: I think it conveys a couple of first of all, I like data.

Ben Narasin: I think general statements are weak.

Ben Narasin: I always tell my founders, specifics are your friend, generalities are your enemy.

Ben Narasin: So some investors will say, we've invest only in the top 1%. I immediately think those are weak investors I

Ben Narasin: mean, because clearly, I invest in, like, the top one fifth.

Ben Narasin: It is hard in the current economy to find if you invested in one of every 100 pitches, you saw, man, you better be seeing some phenomenal deal flow.

Ben Narasin: Part of it is I want entrepreneurs that pitch me to understand what they're up against for two reasons.

Ben Narasin: One, the vast majority of the time, it's gonna be a no, and I tell them in the meeting if it is.

Ben Narasin: The other thing is if I do fund you, I really want you to understand how special that is. I applaud my entrepreneurs all the time.

Ben Narasin: To me, they are the superstars of the planet.

Ben Narasin: They are the triple gold medalists of the Olympics of of economics,

Ben Narasin: and I want them to know that and be proud of it. It.

Ben Narasin: So I will trumpet from the rooftop how rarely it is I fund somebody

Ben Narasin: if only to make sure the one that gets through the gauntlet is applauded for it by me if no one else.

Ben Narasin: And so that you know, I've done, essentially, my entrepreneurs will often have me come to their annual offsites, you know, their company wide things.

Ben Narasin: And I often tell the following story.

Ben Narasin: I tell them that.

Ben Narasin: Say, I want you to understand something about where you are right now.

Ben Narasin: In two years, I saw 10,000 pitches, I funded six.

Ben Narasin: In five years, I funded a total of 24.

Ben Narasin: This company is one of the top three.

Ben Narasin: Think about what that means.

Ben Narasin: You have landed

Ben Narasin: at what is likely, if you look at my track record as proof, which it is a reasonably good proof of this, at one of the best startups on the planet.

Ben Narasin: Now you're here, so it just feels normal, but don't underestimate how special this is. You are at an incredibly exciting place and you need to appreciate that.

Ben Narasin: And that message tends to resonate, the founders like it to be told and it's a little harder for them to tell it and the people like to hear that they're there.

Ben Narasin: It's like there's a concept that wherever you end up is where you should be, maybe, but if you end up in a super elite place, it's even nicer to think about how you deserve that being there because these companies are always very rigid in their hiring, etcetera.

Ben Narasin: So, you know, I want people to look, there's very it's a grind.

Ben Narasin: It is an absolute grind to be a founder.

Ben Narasin: It is mainly pain.

Ben Narasin: But anytime you can add a little slice of joy, awesome.

Ben Narasin: You do a big deal, buy a bottle of champagne and celebrate.

Ben Narasin: Is it gonna take a whole day?

Ben Narasin: No. Is it gonna be a toast at the end of the day at 05:00, 06:00, 07:00?

Ben Narasin: Yay. Ring the bell.

Ben Narasin: Clap your hands.

Ben Narasin: Have champagne.

Ben Narasin: Back to work.

Ben Narasin: But give yourself that little sliver of joy.

Ben Narasin: And I hope

Ben Narasin: I can give a little bit of it in that way.

Ben Narasin: But I also think people have just gotten used to it as a metric.

Ben Narasin: I think part of it is, so how do you communicate this?

Ben Narasin: I go back to I like data, I like specifics.

Ben Narasin: I can say to you, I work incredibly hard and it would be true.

Ben Narasin: You know, like, okay, doesn't everybody say that?

Ben Narasin: But if I tell you how many pitches I saw in a year, it gives you a little bit of a it's funny, my son gave me pushback very much like yours.

Ben Narasin: I was writing my annual report

Ben Narasin: for my LPs and I said something like, we saw this many things.

Ben Narasin: It's too even that's not specific enough.

Ben Narasin: You say you traveled a lot.

Ben Narasin: Go back and give them specifics.

Ben Narasin: So I looked it up, I went through my whole calendar and I think,

Ben Narasin: I don't know, it was something like, I can't remember the exact number, I'd have to read it, like, 52 conferences or

Ben Narasin: visits to 22 different cities or something crazy because, you know, New York gets repeated, Mexico City gets repeated.

Ben Narasin: And so I was like, here's that data.

Ben Narasin: Now maybe they don't care at all, but,

Ben Narasin: I mean, part of it is the harder you work, I don't need to stand on a hill and scream about it. But I'd like my LPs to understand Ness.

Ben Narasin: He is actually doing the work.

Ben Narasin: He is trying really hard to get us what we need from him, which is these phenomenal investments.

Sean Weisbrot: I don't envy

Sean Weisbrot: that.

Sean Weisbrot: It when you were saying that, it made me think of, like, I have several companies in different countries, and so I have to manage the tax filings every year.

Sean Weisbrot: And so I have to go through and look at the invoices and the contracts and prepare all that stuff.

Sean Weisbrot: And it and

Sean Weisbrot: what you just said made like, I have PTSD from this.

Sean Weisbrot: Just like every year having to go through the specifics because every one of these countries requires every transaction.

Ben Narasin: Yeah.

Sean Weisbrot: And, like, Estonia, for example, they they don't wanna just see a payment slip.

Sean Weisbrot: They wanna see an invoice or a contract.

Sean Weisbrot: They wanna see proof that there was a reason why you had to send this money or why you received this money.

Sean Weisbrot: And it's very frustrating to have to do.

Ben Narasin: Fortunately for me, look, I cover The Americas.

Ben Narasin: I used to cover The UK with some of Europe.

Ben Narasin: But right now, it's US, Canada, LATAM.

Ben Narasin: And so, you know, I'm I went to Salt Lake City half a dozen times last year,

Ben Narasin: but there's no special requirement.

Ben Narasin: I mean, yes, my I fortunately get to use an accountant to do that stuff.

Ben Narasin: And, yes, we I'm always surprised at some random place we have to do a filing, but it's usually a random place in The United States.

Ben Narasin: Also, as an investor,

Ben Narasin: oh, you you are I can I I sympathize with the pain you have to suffer because, like, we have when we make an investment in, say, Mexico or Colombia, inevitably,

Ben Narasin: some big old pile of documents from the government,

Ben Narasin: oh, you gotta tell us everything that's ever happened in your life and who you are and, you know, get a proctology exam?

Ben Narasin: I'm like, yeah.

Ben Narasin: I'm not going to. And then they're like, then your company won't exist.

Ben Narasin: And so it's like, really?

Ben Narasin: So you have no choice.

Ben Narasin: But,

Ben Narasin: I always get I get PTSD over and over and over again when I, you know, I I tell the joke quite frequently because because I live in California, people are required to respect the identity I choose.

Ben Narasin: And I identify as a 23 year old male.

Ben Narasin: But the problem with that is while my friends in California might have to nod their head and smirk and say, Sure, Ben. Okay, fine.

Ben Narasin: You're a 23 year old male.

Ben Narasin: We'll take that.

Ben Narasin: Mother nature doesn't care and she just kicks me in the teeth relentlessly because, you know, I'll still do the stupid things like take the 6AM flight because it's cheaper

Ben Narasin: or, you know, try to get the go to oh, I mean,

Ben Narasin: literally, like, I'm in Switzerland, but I wanna commit to this other conference.

Ben Narasin: The only way to make it is take a red eye plus two connections to get there and then go straight to the conference.

Ben Narasin: And it's like and then, of course, I say yes.

Ben Narasin: And then at the end of it, you're just so beaten down

Ben Narasin: because I can no longer travel like a 23 year old as much as I'd like to believe I am.

Ben Narasin: And so that has become hard.

Ben Narasin: And then I'll go for three I just came back from three weeks to travel.

Ben Narasin: At the end of the three weeks, I'll be like, okay.

Ben Narasin: I gotta take a break.

Ben Narasin: I can't travel anymore.

Ben Narasin: And then literally a week later, someone will say, hey.

Ben Narasin: Do you wanna come on the show in New York?

Ben Narasin: I'm like, absolutely.

Ben Narasin: And I jump on a plane and and then that's literally what happened.

Ben Narasin: So I think I'll be home for a month and then I'm home for two weeks.

Ben Narasin: It it's just but having said that, look, I learned something a long time ago.

Ben Narasin: I do believe I have an exceptionally fierce work ethic.

Ben Narasin: I learned it from my father.

Ben Narasin: I respected him and his.

Ben Narasin: Working hard is required to get material things accomplished,

Ben Narasin: but you work hard when there's a reason to, not just to appear to be working hard.

Ben Narasin: So I'll work weekends, no problem, if there's something that requires me to work the weekend.

Ben Narasin: But if there's not, I'm gonna sit on the couch and play Arc Raiders,

Ben Narasin: or a founder will come over and we'll have whiskey and scar in the pit, or my wife and I will play pickleball with friends, whatever.

Ben Narasin: But, you know, when the need is there, I'll fulfill the need.

Ben Narasin: I just don't need to do it just so that I can say I worked every weekend.

Ben Narasin: I I have a lot of respect for Elon Musk and it's always funny when people compare themselves to him and I wanna say and I usually will say, well, so just out of curiosity, I really care a lot about sleep.

Ben Narasin: I like to get a good sleep.

Ben Narasin: I think it's healthy for your brain.

Ben Narasin: Do you sleep well?

Ben Narasin: Oh, yeah, I do. So that's interesting because it's Elon Musk's next equivalent.

Ben Narasin: He works seventeen hours days, seven days a week, fifty two weeks a year and makes people work through Christmas.

Ben Narasin: I'm confused as to how you are the next Elon Musk when you are not sleeping under your desk for four to seven hours and you are not working weekends and you are not working holidays.

Ben Narasin: So just out of curiosity,

Ben Narasin: when you say Elon Musk, is it Elon Musk that exists or a fantasy of Elon Musk in your mind where he just did all this nine to five?

Ben Narasin: Because I don't think you understand how hard that man works.

Ben Narasin: He actually had a board member that used to get on him about not having enough sleep, Arianna Huffington, because that's her was one of her big things.

Ben Narasin: And he's like, yeah, I just don't have time.

Ben Narasin: It's like when I was a young entrepreneur in New York, we used to say, and I'm pretty sure it's what he says, We'll sleep when we're dead.

Ben Narasin: You just don't have time right now.

Ben Narasin: But now I have time.

Ben Narasin: Now I can sleep.

Ben Narasin: That's one thing.

Ben Narasin: That is my that is my conceit.

Ben Narasin: I will get my sleep.

Sean Weisbrot: I've always slept, like,

Sean Weisbrot: at this like, my my body just goes to sleep when it wants to go to sleep, and it wakes up when it wants to wake up. Alarm matter alarm clocks don't matter.

Ben Narasin: Yeah.

Ben Narasin: That's my goal.

Sean Weisbrot: And I think that's actually how we're supposed to live.

Sean Weisbrot: It's supposed to be like, you know, go go to sleep when the sun goes down, wake up when the sun goes up.

Sean Weisbrot: And I could go to sleep at two in the morning or 08:00 at night.

Sean Weisbrot: I'm still gonna be up at, like, 04:30 to 05:30 because that's when my body wants to wake up. I have no control.

Ben Narasin: Yeah.

Ben Narasin: I'm,

Ben Narasin: I I sleep I'd almost never set an alarm unless it's, like, when I was on CNBC at 4AM. Yeah.

Ben Narasin: I had no choice.

Ben Narasin: But, normally, I go to bed at eleven.

Ben Narasin: I wake up at sometime between six and seven, and that looks fine.

Ben Narasin: And it's

Ben Narasin: the the travel screws it up, which is probably one of the reasons that upsets me. But

Ben Narasin: you adjust as best you can and you keep moving.

Ben Narasin: But, yes, I do think in fact, there was just a story today

Ben Narasin: about a new study that came out where because we don't really understand sleep and what it truly does, but now they think one of the most important things it does is literally flush everything out, like clean your brain.

Sean Weisbrot: It does.

Sean Weisbrot: Yeah.

Ben Narasin: And I like that.

Ben Narasin: Yeah.

Ben Narasin: So it seems good to me. I like a clean brain.

Sean Weisbrot: Something I I learned about that specific function probably like ten years ago.

Sean Weisbrot: And that's been always really important because

Sean Weisbrot: I used to smoke weed when I was younger and I quit about six or seven years ago.

Sean Weisbrot: And one of the reasons I quit was because the theory was

Sean Weisbrot: smoking marijuana could potentially prevent your brain from

Sean Weisbrot: not entering REM sleep, but it could severely compromise its ability to to do REM sleep,

Sean Weisbrot: where REM sleep is the point at which it does that cleaning.

Sean Weisbrot: And so I thought if smoking weed is gonna potentially

Sean Weisbrot: be the thing that gives me, like, Alzheimer's because, essentially, what happens is this cleaning process allows you to take the

Sean Weisbrot: there's, like, a plaque buildup.

Sean Weisbrot: And so during REM sleep, it cleans out the plaque.

Ben Narasin: Right.

Sean Weisbrot: And so if you consistently don't get enough sleep and or you don't get enough REM sleep, it can't clean

Sean Weisbrot: the way it needs to, and it builds up, and it causes Alzheimer's and dementia.

Ben Narasin: K. And one would like to avoid that with any ability he can.

Ben Narasin: By the way, apparently, now I'm seeing a lot more data on I always assumed everything was about REM sleep, but now I'm seeing more and more data on the importance of deep sleep,

Sean Weisbrot: And I said, right.

Ben Narasin: which is not always my best

Ben Narasin: number on the Oura ring when I do wear it, although I don't know, it's been years.

Ben Narasin: So,

Ben Narasin: it feels look, at the end of the day, I believe

Ben Narasin: there's one undefeated entity on the planet and that's mother nature.

Ben Narasin: And she's an incredibly effective vehicle

Ben Narasin: for which is, you know, basically, it's all of evolution of all time, it ends up in you.

Ben Narasin: And so I have to believe that if we let our bodies do what they are naturally intended to do, particularly, like, you know, sleep being an example of that, then we will deal with and process the things in the way they are needed.

Ben Narasin: So whether it's REM sleep or deep sleep you know, I got one of the very first Oura rings, and I used to be a little fanatical, and then I got the next version.

Ben Narasin: I was less fanatical, and now it's like, Sometimes it's useful, but for the most part,

Ben Narasin: like I met the first investor in Aura and he went and used to be like a big humpback and I almost invested in the first round.

Ben Narasin: Interestingly,

Ben Narasin: it was the round that ended up being led by Prince Andrew and the Fresh Prince of Bel Air, Will Smith.

Ben Narasin: And I was like, I'm not paying Prince prices.

Ben Narasin: These people are amateurs.

Ben Narasin: They don't know what they're doing.

Ben Narasin: And I think it was like $100,000,000, no revenue,

Ben Narasin: but clearly it worked out.

Ben Narasin: So, maybe I should have been a little less snooty about who was leading the round.

Ben Narasin: But

Ben Narasin: I asked him if he had learned anything

Ben Narasin: and he said, well, he'd learned two or three things.

Ben Narasin: One,

Ben Narasin: basically your body compresses caffeine in one of two ways.

Ben Narasin: It's a genetic thing.

Ben Narasin: You can either drink coffee at any point, including right before bed and fall asleep

Ben Narasin: or you can't. I can't.

Ben Narasin: If I drink coffee after about 01:00, I will be up at night when I go to bed.

Ben Narasin: And I'll be lying there at midnight going, why can't I fall asleep?

Ben Narasin: And And I'll be like, oh, damn it. I had that cappuccino after lunch.

Ben Narasin: But what he learned is he's one of the guys that can drink right up to the point of going to sleep, but it materially impacted his deep sleep.

Ben Narasin: Same thing with a big meal and red wine.

Ben Narasin: All three of those things, even though he could go to sleep with no problem,

Ben Narasin: impacted the quality of his sleep.

Ben Narasin: So, you know, that might have changed my own thinking about it because I would have thought a nice big meal and then you're tired and you go to bed more easily, but the digestive process is quite straining.

Ben Narasin: So

Sean Weisbrot: No. It's really bad for you to lay down and not and have food sitting in your stomach, not digesting.

Ben Narasin: yeah.

Ben Narasin: Apparently.

Sean Weisbrot: What's the most important thing you've learned in your life so far?

Ben Narasin: Happiness

Ben Narasin: is not about having what you want, it's about wanting what you have.

Ben Narasin: And, you know, I think we all it's funny, I had an entrepreneur over one weekend.

Ben Narasin: He said, hey, I need some advice.

Ben Narasin: Can I come over?

Ben Narasin: I'm like, absolutely.

Ben Narasin: Back in the day when my kids were home, I said, you can have me during the weekend, but you have to have me at my house because I need to be with my family.

Ben Narasin: So he came over and we're talking about a half an hour in. And I said,

Ben Narasin: you know, you're not asking me for business advice.

Ben Narasin: You're looking for the meaning of life.

Ben Narasin: And he's like, oh, maybe.

Ben Narasin: And I said, look, at the end of the day, it may or may not be different for each of us, but we have to find it. And by the way, no matter how hard you look,

Ben Narasin: you won't find it. It will find you.

Ben Narasin: And so for me, it was it finding me that happiness is not about

Ben Narasin: having what you want, it's wanting what you have.

Ben Narasin: Now, admittedly, that is a much easier to say concept when you have an abundance.

Ben Narasin: But I have run into people that have very little that are very happy because they're very happy with what they have.

Ben Narasin: And I think, and I know more than plenty of people that have a lot, a lot more than me and are very unhappy because they don't have enough, because it's never enough, because there's always more that needs to be had to keep up with fill in the blank.

Ben Narasin: And that balance,

Ben Narasin: once I sort of realized that or it came to me, it actually came to me in a very odd way, through a movie,

Ben Narasin: a crappy movie, a really terrible movie.

Ben Narasin: But

Ben Narasin: I was I started to look around at my own life and say, I am so happy for what I have.

Ben Narasin: You know, wonderful family, great kids, wonderful wife, you know, a reasonable amount of abundance that, you know, gives me freedom,

Ben Narasin: a great house, live in a wonderful community, all that stuff.

Ben Narasin: Like, I don't need the trappings beyond that.

Ben Narasin: You know, it's not there are people that I I know somebody who's who said to me, well,

Ben Narasin: what I need is to have a a jet that's big enough that I can drive my car onto it and go on a moment's notice anywhere in the world that I want to. Okay.

Ben Narasin: Well, I don't know what spawns that need, but, you know, that's

Ben Narasin: a that's a quest that I don't have.

Ben Narasin: I don't need a plane.

Ben Narasin: I don't need more than one house.

Ben Narasin: One's good enough.

Ben Narasin: I love the house I have.

Ben Narasin: So that's probably been the single most important thing.

Ben Narasin: I think over time, tide is life's hard, get over it. It's hard for everybody.

Ben Narasin: And everybody thinks other people have it better.

Ben Narasin: They might have it better, they didn't have it easier.

Ben Narasin: And if you doubt this,

Ben Narasin: everybody thinks their life is hard.

Ben Narasin: You know that there was that prince

Ben Narasin: in England who gave up his princelyhood and married some television star and moved to The US and got a TV contract and he wrote a book called Spare.

Ben Narasin: Do you know where the term spare comes from in that book?

Sean Weisbrot: No.

Ben Narasin: So there's an old school WASPy term about having children, which is you want an heir and a spare.

Ben Narasin: Two boys, one to inherit and one in case the first guy dies.

Ben Narasin: He was the spare.

Ben Narasin: And, oh my god, was that horrible.

Ben Narasin: And you're like, you're a prince.

Ben Narasin: You're literally a prince, and you're whining about, oh, woah, woah is me. Really?

Ben Narasin: Really?

Ben Narasin: I mean, I'm pretty sure

Ben Narasin: 99 plus percent of the population of young males would be perfectly happy given the opportunity to be a prince.

Ben Narasin: And I'm pretty sure a vast number of women would be very happy to marry a prince.

Ben Narasin: Isn't that what young girls look at as the ultimate?

Ben Narasin: So it was just like, wow.

Ben Narasin: Really?

Ben Narasin: Your life is so hard.

Ben Narasin: Oh, world's smallest violin playing just for you.

Ben Narasin: So life is hard for everybody.

Ben Narasin: You gotta you gotta rely on yourself.

Ben Narasin: Nobody's coming.

Ben Narasin: It's up to you.

Ben Narasin: It's a Navy Seal saying, like, just just get it done.

Ben Narasin: I mean, be quiet.

Ben Narasin: Do the work.

Ben Narasin: Get it done.