November 8, 2022 • 16 mins
Episode 23 -We speak with Derek Distenfield Managing Director at Fundamental Global and FG Ventures
Derek talks about what Fundamental Global looks for when investing in companies, more importantly the leaders of the company. He shares FG Ventures unique approach in supporting CEO’s, founders, and Leaders in their journey to (IPO) Initial Public offering which is the strength of the FG Ventures team.
About Fundamental Global:
Fundamental Global is a closely held private partnership focused on long-term strategic holdings. It was co-founded in 2012 by Kyle Cerminara (former T. Rowe Price, Point72 and Tiger Cub portfolio manager), and Joe Moglia (former Chairman and CEO of TD Ameritrade).
Fundamental Global uses our resources, network and capital to deliver results.
FG Venture: Venture Capital
FG Ventures is the venture capital arm of Fundamental Global, a private partnership co-founded by former T. Rowe Price, Point72 and Tiger Cub portfolio manager Kyle Cerminara and former Chairman and CEO of TD Ameritrade, Joe Moglia.
FG Ventures’ team consists of seasoned founders, current corporate leaders, and serial venture investors, forming a collective that has launched, seeded, and invested in hundreds of startups to date. FG Ventures takes an approach that is stage and industry agnostic, backing bold entrepreneurs looking to deliver innovative, technological-based solutions to pressing challenges.
By bringing to bear a network of experts and resources that can help portfolio companies grow through direct support and mentorship from experienced leaders, coupled with a conduit to additional sources of capital, FG Ventures offers founders a unique value proposition in growing their businesses to new heights.
Learn More:
https://fundamentalglobal.com/
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Play the King (00:00):
This podcast was sponsored by OMI, the company
that makes CRM work.
And today's guest is DerekDistenfield from Fundamental
Global.
Derek, welcome to this episode.
Excited to talk to you.
You told me before that you guysfocus on companies.
You purchase companies that youcan take all the way through to
IPO, but that you don't reallyhave a position on like what
stage you want that company tobe.
I wonder if you could just sortof introduce what you guys do by
(00:23):
telling me how you evaluate thatthen?
Like, what is it that you guyslook for?
What is the main broad categoryyou could identify for us?
Derek Distenfield (00:30):
Yeah.
Well, thanks for having me on,George.
I'm really excited to bechatting with you.
Fundamental Global in best incompanies, agnostic to stage,
agnostic to industry, and reallyagnostic to asset class.
What we are ultimately lookingfor is outstanding leaders.
We really do believe that greatcompanies start with great
(00:53):
founders and great CEOs, andthat could be in the lumber
space, it could be in the movieindustry, or it could be in tech
companies like Firefly.
And we've ultimately found, ifyou find the right leader, good
things can happen.
And so it's a cliche that we'veall read a lot about, but we've
(01:15):
seen it absolutely become true.
And the co-founder of our firm,Joe Moglia, ran TD Ameritrade
for many years, but then at theheight of his success, he
stepped down as CEO and went andcoached football.
And he has really instilledleadership at Coastal Carolina
University where he coached, buthe's really pushed those
(01:37):
principles into us and helped uslook for those traits in the
leaders that we're investing in.
Play the King (01:43):
That's really interesting.
And so I want to ask about yourbackground first.
What kind of experience do youhave that helps you to identify
people who, you know, I assumeyou're not an expert in every
single industry, every singlesector that you guys invest in.
How do you identify the peoplewho might be or who can take
those companies to the next step?
Derek Distenfield (02:00):
It's a good question.
I've sat on multiple sides ofthe table.
I've worked in technologycompanies from$0 failures to 2
billion dollar exits and prettymuch everything in between.
I helped start Bunker Labs whereI seated 250 companies that went
on to raise another a hundredmillion in venture capital.
(02:21):
I ran and co-founded an AIventure studio.
So I really looked at companiesfrom all angles in terms of
tech, but then also I was anofficer in the US Army and a lot
of my leadership experiencestarted with that.
I think there's not always achecklist that you're looking
(02:43):
for in terms of great leaders,but kind of like the Supreme
Court said about pornography,you kind of know it when you see
it.
Play the King (02:53):
.
That's right.
Classic line from the Jury Team.
I wonder, you know, it's alwaysinstructive to me.
You don't have to name nameshere, but like, can you just to
illustrate this point, maybecould you give me an example of
a time maybe that you foundsomeone and you were like, this
is a long shot, never gonnawork, but you had a gut feeling,
you went with it, or maybe andor someone you're like, Oh, this
slam dunk and it didn't work outfor whatever reason.
(03:14):
What are those stories?
Derek Distenfield (03:15):
The long shot that's never gonna work.
It usually has to do with thesituation where the cash flow
statements, the balance sheets,the PNLs are just not adding up.
And you see a business that'slosing money.
You see a business that mightnot economically make sense, but
(03:37):
what you're betting on is theCEO and his leadership team to
find a way to make it work.
I often really think abouttechnology companies, especially
at the early stages as scienceexperiments, and you're betting
on the professor or you'rebetting on the leader of the
(03:58):
experiment, not the experimentitself.
And so oftentimes 1, 2, 3, 4years into the business, the
experiments aren't going well,the economics aren't adding up.
Maybe the traction isn't, or thegrowth isn't where you want it
to be, but you see that leaderand you're going to continue to
engage and invest in thatexperiment.
(04:20):
And so on the other side of thecoin, there are times where you
see great ideas, you see greatdesign, you see great investors,
but perhaps that leadership teamwasn't the best in the world to
bring it to market.
And you know, I you do misjudgethat sometimes.
(04:41):
I certainly have, we try not to,but that's where things kind of
go wrong and, and go, Right.
Play the King (04:48):
Okay.
I'm going to respect yourdiscretion there, uh, and
not press too much to name thebiggest failure that
you've ever invested in.
Although I know, investors, ifyou are not investing in
failures, you're not doing itright.
Right.
Derek Distenfield (05:02):
Yeah.
And I would say the biggestfailure, I'm trying to think.
We invested in, not FundamentalGlobal, but I invested in a
legal tech company that wethought was ultimately going to
change the legal profession.
And we put a lot of money, a lotof time and, you know, we really
(05:26):
thought it was going to disruptthings.
But what we didn't take intoaccount is how angry lawyers
were going to be.
And we didn't pay close enoughattention to what the reality of
the climate of the situation wasand how much lawyers wanted to
do it.
I mean, Justin Kan famously didthe same thing with his
business.
He's like 80 million dollars andsoon ran into similar headwinds
(05:50):
that we ran into two or threeyears before him.
And I remember I met him andtold him that was gonna happen.
And of course when you're JustinKan and you found Twitch and you
work at YC, you're gonna be ableto raise the round and you're
going to bet on the guy runningthe experiment.
But sometimes they don't run theway you think they are, even
when you have an experiencecredible founder like him.
Play the King (06:13):
It's funny, I think I was reading something
recently about collegeprofessors and they're
reluctance to use schedulingsoftware.
It's like almost a mark of theirown autonomy and ability to like
do things their own way toresist doing that and like force
people into a little morediscomfort when they need to
schedule with them.
It's like, you know, lawyers Ican see being very similar, you
know, like, no, it's myprerogative to do it the way I
want.
I'm gonna, your software bedamned, you know?
(06:35):
That's funny.
So talk to me about scaling acompany.
You have to see it for what itis and you have to see what you
think it could be.
And I wonder what are some ofthe things that you look for?
I know that's a really vague,broad question because every
company's different, everyindustry's different.
And maybe it relates back to thequestion of of it's not
necessarily what you know, it'swho you know, but think about
those different dimensions ofthis question, the people
(06:57):
running it or versus the what itis and the various factors you
look at when you think, hmm,could this become what I think
it could become?
Derek Distenfield (07:05):
Yeah, I think the importance saying in terms
of scaling a company is it isvery, very difficult to be the
guy that comes up with the ideaand sees it all the way through.
I think the challenge with thatstatement is, people will point
to guys like Zuckerberg andGates who, you know, the
(07:27):
exceptions came up with theseincredible company.
They are the exceptions andthat's why you know them.
It's not something that happensevery day.
And there's very few personalitytypes.
Even Elon Musk is one where youcan have an idea at the early
stages and push it all the waythrough, but regardless if it's
(07:48):
the original founder, originalCEO or not, in terms of scaling,
there has to be a process in aculture, a machine that works.
You know, I've seen some prettygood leaders drag a company to
50 million in revenue, maybe alittle bit higher.
(08:09):
But to go much beyond that, youreally need to have both the
culture and the processes and ittakes a lot of rigor and
discipline to develop thosethings.
And, you know, that's muchdifferent than what is needed
for a guy to have a completelydisruptive idea.
(08:30):
So if it is gonna be the sameperson, there's gonna have to be
that shift that is oftentimesunpopular with your dorm room
buddies or your original teamthat you hired.
And you're going to have to pushpeople through that.
I think the other thing thatdoesn't get talked about enough
(08:56):
is the economics.
And there has to be a reallystrong business case and maybe
that's an obvious statement tomake, but I see a lot of
companies who raise theirmarketing spend and their
revenue goes up, but it's justgoing up in parallel.
(09:16):
And at some point in time thathits a brick wall.
And so Slack is incredible forall the reasons that get
discussed, but they also had aninteresting revenue model and
you know, I think people forgetthat usually disruptive
businesses that scale likeSlack, like Airbnb, we wind up
(09:41):
taking their revenue models forgranted.
But at the time that they weredeveloped, they were new and
they were different and theywere scalable.
So it's not just the product,it's those economics that can
move alongside with it that canreach a lot of people and make a
lot of money.
Play the King (10:00):
That's really interesting.
Tell me about some of theearlier stage companies you've
invested in, especially the rolethat forming a community around
them can play.
You know, so I'm thinking aboutaccelerators, incubators, the
places people think of as, youknow, sort of the birthplaces of
startups.
How important do you think thatis?
Do you look for a company thatsort of comes out of those areas
when you guys are looking toinvest?
Derek Distenfield (10:20):
Yeah, so I'm a little biased because one of
the things I also did is I ran acommunity building marketing
firm.
It was called Cult Following.
And we would recruit, indoctrateand spread and help brands think
about community.
So I really sometimes overindexaround community and you know, I
(10:41):
think there is nothing magic inthe water in San Francisco.
I think intellectual capacity isevenly spread around the world,
but opportunity is is not alwaysthere.
And I think that if you providepeople the network, the
resources and the capital thatis needed to build businesses,
(11:03):
you can build them fromanywhere.
And I don't mean just any city,I mean any town, any place.
And certainly I've seenaccelerators do an outstanding
job of providing that bridge tothe capital resources and
connections that are needed tobuild your business.
(11:26):
I think Y Combinator has reallyset the standard, Techstars has
done that, but there's lots ofcompanies that need those
community and resources tosucceed.
And especially if you are afirst time founder that's
looking to raise your firstround of venture capital
(11:51):
accelerators and communities forthat matter.
It doesn't necessarily have tobe an accelerator, but finding
that place for you can be agreat step in the right
direction.
Play the King (12:03):
How does an investor like yourself help
companies scale?
And I guess behind that questionis maybe another question about
when is the right time to, to behands off and just let, let
companies, you know, cook andwhen, when is it, you know, when
can you be helpful and when canyou actually get involved on a
more granular level.
Derek Distenfield (12:20):
Step in?
The way that I think about it isat Fundamental Global, we don't
have like a program that CEOshave to go through or this is
what we will do for you.
We really support the CEO in theway that they want to be
supported.
Sometimes that means gettingreally hands on.
(12:43):
Sometimes it just means being agood board member and providing
advice and governance that we'rerequired to do at that level.
So I don't really believe in thekind of cookie cutter approaches
to helping founders scale, but Ido believe that we have seen a
(13:07):
ton of early stage companies, aton of late stage companies, and
that there's not always a uniquesituation.
It might be the first time thefounder has gone through it and
there might be unique ways toaddress it that are important
for your organization, butusually we've seen something
similar or know someone thathas, And oftentimes as a founder
(13:31):
you feel alone and whendifficulties arise you feel that
you're the only one sufferingfrom this challenge.
But it's usually something thatwe've seen before and we've seen
founders get out of.
And if we haven't, we can findsomeone that has and we can be
there and support the founder.
(13:52):
We also have the ability to lookat the economics and help with
modeling and business decisions.
But ultimately at FundamentalGlobal, what we're trying to do
is use our network connectionsand resources to help companies
(14:12):
fulfill their KPIs or OKRs to besuccessful.
And that's really what we try tofocus on, but it's always gonna
be pull from the founder, not apush from us because ultimately
we are the investors, the CEOand the team are the ones in the
(14:33):
foxhole and they need to drivewhen they get that support and
when they need it.
Play the King (14:39):
I wonder if I could just ask you to tell me
about an investment you maderecently that gets you the most
excited.
What is the deal you've donerecently that you're just like,
man this was fun, this ispotential, whatever it is that
makes you excited about it.
Tell me what
Derek Distenfield (14:51):
It is.
We are very long on Firefly.
They have a unique approach toadvertising.
They actually started out byputting screens on top of Ubers
and sharing the revenue withUber drivers, but they've really
expanded much beyond that and wethink they are a unicorn two
(15:15):
times over heading into thatdecacorn space.
They have an outstanding CEO andleader that we are a hundred
percent behind and will gothrough by the tooth and nail to
help them continue to succeed.
That's
Play the King (15:30):
Great.
And where can people go to learnmore about Fundamental Global
and what you're doing?
Where do you want send them?
I know you have a sub stack,maybe that's the place,
Derek Distenfield (15:37):
.
Yeah, I meanFundamentalGlobal.com, our
website.
I'm on LinkedIn and Twitter.
I will help any founder at anystage.
All I can regardless if weinvest or not.
I really do believe in#givefirstand excited to learn and engage
from people every single day.
This podcast was sponsored by OMI, the company
that makes CRM work.
And today's guest is DerekDistenfield from Fundamental
Global.
Derek, welcome to this episode.
Excited to talk to you.
You told me before that you guysfocus on companies.
You purchase companies that youcan take all the way through to
IPO, but that you don't reallyhave a position on like what
stage you want that company tobe.
I wonder if you could just sortof introduce what you guys do by
(00:23):
telling me how you evaluate thatthen?
Like, what is it that you guyslook for?
What is the main broad categoryyou could identify for us?
Derek Distenfield (00:30):
Yeah.
Well, thanks for having me on,George.
I'm really excited to bechatting with you.
Fundamental Global in best incompanies, agnostic to stage,
agnostic to industry, and reallyagnostic to asset class.
What we are ultimately lookingfor is outstanding leaders.
We really do believe that greatcompanies start with great
(00:53):
founders and great CEOs, andthat could be in the lumber
space, it could be in the movieindustry, or it could be in tech
companies like Firefly.
And we've ultimately found, ifyou find the right leader, good
things can happen.
And so it's a cliche that we'veall read a lot about, but we've
(01:15):
seen it absolutely become true.
And the co-founder of our firm,Joe Moglia, ran TD Ameritrade
for many years, but then at theheight of his success, he
stepped down as CEO and went andcoached football.
And he has really instilledleadership at Coastal Carolina
University where he coached, buthe's really pushed those
(01:37):
principles into us and helped uslook for those traits in the
leaders that we're investing in.
Play the King (01:43):
That's really interesting.
And so I want to ask about yourbackground first.
What kind of experience do youhave that helps you to identify
people who, you know, I assumeyou're not an expert in every
single industry, every singlesector that you guys invest in.
How do you identify the peoplewho might be or who can take
those companies to the next step?
Derek Distenfield (02:00):
It's a good question.
I've sat on multiple sides ofthe table.
I've worked in technologycompanies from$0 failures to 2
billion dollar exits and prettymuch everything in between.
I helped start Bunker Labs whereI seated 250 companies that went
on to raise another a hundredmillion in venture capital.
(02:21):
I ran and co-founded an AIventure studio.
So I really looked at companiesfrom all angles in terms of
tech, but then also I was anofficer in the US Army and a lot
of my leadership experiencestarted with that.
I think there's not always achecklist that you're looking
(02:43):
for in terms of great leaders,but kind of like the Supreme
Court said about pornography,you kind of know it when you see
it.
Play the King (02:53):
That's right.
Classic line from the Jury Team
I wonder, you know, it's alwaysinstructive to me.
You don't have to name nameshere, but like, can you just to
illustrate this point, maybecould you give me an example of
a time maybe that you foundsomeone and you were like, this
is a long shot, never gonnawork, but you had a gut feeling,
you went with it, or maybe andor someone you're like, Oh, this
slam dunk and it didn't work outfor whatever reason.
(03:14):
What are those stories?
Derek Distenfield (03:15):
The long shot that's never gonna work.
It usually has to do with thesituation where the cash flow
statements, the balance sheets,the PNLs are just not adding up.
And you see a business that'slosing money.
You see a business that mightnot economically make sense, but
(03:37):
what you're betting on is theCEO and his leadership team to
find a way to make it work.
I often really think abouttechnology companies, especially
at the early stages as scienceexperiments, and you're betting
on the professor or you'rebetting on the leader of the
(03:58):
experiment, not the experimentitself.
And so oftentimes 1, 2, 3, 4years into the business, the
experiments aren't going well,the economics aren't adding up.
Maybe the traction isn't, or thegrowth isn't where you want it
to be, but you see that leaderand you're going to continue to
engage and invest in thatexperiment.
(04:20):
And so on the other side of thecoin, there are times where you
see great ideas, you see greatdesign, you see great investors,
but perhaps that leadership teamwasn't the best in the world to
bring it to market.
And you know, I you do misjudgethat sometimes.
(04:41):
I certainly have, we try not to,but that's where things kind of
go wrong and, and go, Right.
Play the King (04:48):
Okay.
I'm going to respect yourdiscretion there, uh,
not press too much to name thebiggest failure
you've ever invested in.
Although I know, investors, ifyou are not investing in
failures, you're not doing itright.
Right.
Derek Distenfield (05:02):
Yeah.
And I would say the biggestfailure, I'm trying to think.
We invested in, not FundamentalGlobal, but I invested in a
legal tech company that wethought was ultimately going to
change the legal profession.
And we put a lot of money, a lotof time and, you know, we really
(05:26):
thought it was going to disruptthings.
But what we didn't take intoaccount is how angry lawyers
were going to be.
And we didn't pay close enoughattention to what the reality of
the climate of the situation wasand how much lawyers wanted to
do it.
I mean, Justin Kan famously didthe same thing with his
business.
He's like 80 million dollars andsoon ran into similar headwinds
(05:50):
that we ran into two or threeyears before him.
And I remember I met him andtold him that was gonna happen.
And of course when you're JustinKan and you found Twitch and you
work at YC, you're gonna be ableto raise the round and you're
going to bet on the guy runningthe experiment.
But sometimes they don't run theway you think they are, even
when you have an experiencecredible founder like him.
Play the King (06:13):
It's funny, I think I was reading something
recently about collegeprofessors and they're
reluctance to use schedulingsoftware.
It's like almost a mark of theirown autonomy and ability to like
do things their own way toresist doing that and like force
people into a little morediscomfort when they need to
schedule with them.
It's like, you know, lawyers Ican see being very similar, you
know, like, no, it's myprerogative to do it the way I
want.
I'm gonna, your software bedamned, you know?
(06:35):
That's funny.
So talk to me about scaling acompany.
You have to see it for what itis and you have to see what you
think it could be.
And I wonder what are some ofthe things that you look for?
I know that's a really vague,broad question because every
company's different, everyindustry's different.
And maybe it relates back to thequestion of of it's not
necessarily what you know, it'swho you know, but think about
those different dimensions ofthis question, the people
(06:57):
running it or versus the what itis and the various factors you
look at when you think, hmm,could this become what I think
it could become?
Derek Distenfield (07:05):
Yeah, I think the importance saying in terms
of scaling a company is it isvery, very difficult to be the
guy that comes up with the ideaand sees it all the way through.
I think the challenge with thatstatement is, people will point
to guys like Zuckerberg andGates who, you know, the
(07:27):
exceptions came up with theseincredible company.
They are the exceptions andthat's why you know them.
It's not something that happensevery day.
And there's very few personalitytypes.
Even Elon Musk is one where youcan have an idea at the early
stages and push it all the waythrough, but regardless if it's
(07:48):
the original founder, originalCEO or not, in terms of scaling,
there has to be a process in aculture, a machine that works.
You know, I've seen some prettygood leaders drag a company to
50 million in revenue, maybe alittle bit higher.
(08:09):
But to go much beyond that, youreally need to have both the
culture and the processes and ittakes a lot of rigor and
discipline to develop thosethings.
And, you know, that's muchdifferent than what is needed
for a guy to have a completelydisruptive idea.
(08:30):
So if it is gonna be the sameperson, there's gonna have to be
that shift that is oftentimesunpopular with your dorm room
buddies or your original teamthat you hired.
And you're going to have to pushpeople through that.
I think the other thing thatdoesn't get talked about enough
(08:56):
is the economics.
And there has to be a reallystrong business case and maybe
that's an obvious statement tomake, but I see a lot of
companies who raise theirmarketing spend and their
revenue goes up, but it's justgoing up in parallel.
(09:16):
And at some point in time thathits a brick wall.
And so Slack is incredible forall the reasons that get
discussed, but they also had aninteresting revenue model and
you know, I think people forgetthat usually disruptive
businesses that scale likeSlack, like Airbnb, we wind up
(09:41):
taking their revenue models forgranted.
But at the time that they weredeveloped, they were new and
they were different and theywere scalable.
So it's not just the product,it's those economics that can
move alongside with it that canreach a lot of people and make a
lot of money.
Play the King (10:00):
That's really interesting.
Tell me about some of theearlier stage companies you've
invested in, especially the rolethat forming a community around
them can play.
You know, so I'm thinking aboutaccelerators, incubators, the
places people think of as, youknow, sort of the birthplaces of
startups.
How important do you think thatis?
Do you look for a company thatsort of comes out of those areas
when you guys are looking toinvest?
Derek Distenfield (10:20):
Yeah, so I'm a little biased because one of
the things I also did is I ran acommunity building marketing
firm.
It was called Cult Following.
And we would recruit, indoctrateand spread and help brands think
about community.
So I really sometimes overindexaround community and you know, I
(10:41):
think there is nothing magic inthe water in San Francisco.
I think intellectual capacity isevenly spread around the world,
but opportunity is is not alwaysthere.
And I think that if you providepeople the network, the
resources and the capital thatis needed to build businesses,
(11:03):
you can build them fromanywhere.
And I don't mean just any city,I mean any town, any place.
And certainly I've seenaccelerators do an outstanding
job of providing that bridge tothe capital resources and
connections that are needed tobuild your business.
(11:26):
I think Y Combinator has reallyset the standard, Techstars has
done that, but there's lots ofcompanies that need those
community and resources tosucceed.
And especially if you are afirst time founder that's
looking to raise your firstround of venture capital
(11:51):
accelerators and communities forthat matter.
It doesn't necessarily have tobe an accelerator, but finding
that place for you can be agreat step in the right
direction.
Play the King (12:03):
How does an investor like yourself help
companies scale?
And I guess behind that questionis maybe another question about
when is the right time to, to behands off and just let, let
companies, you know, cook andwhen, when is it, you know, when
can you be helpful and when canyou actually get involved on a
more granular level.
Derek Distenfield (12:20):
Step in?
The way that I think about it isat Fundamental Global, we don't
have like a program that CEOshave to go through or this is
what we will do for you.
We really support the CEO in theway that they want to be
supported.
Sometimes that means gettingreally hands on.
(12:43):
Sometimes it just means being agood board member and providing
advice and governance that we'rerequired to do at that level.
So I don't really believe in thekind of cookie cutter approaches
to helping founders scale, but Ido believe that we have seen a
(13:07):
ton of early stage companies, aton of late stage companies, and
that there's not always a uniquesituation.
It might be the first time thefounder has gone through it and
there might be unique ways toaddress it that are important
for your organization, butusually we've seen something
similar or know someone thathas, And oftentimes as a founder
(13:31):
you feel alone and whendifficulties arise you feel that
you're the only one sufferingfrom this challenge.
But it's usually something thatwe've seen before and we've seen
founders get out of.
And if we haven't, we can findsomeone that has and we can be
there and support the founder.
(13:52):
We also have the ability to lookat the economics and help with
modeling and business decisions.
But ultimately at FundamentalGlobal, what we're trying to do
is use our network connectionsand resources to help companies
(14:12):
fulfill their KPIs or OKRs to besuccessful.
And that's really what we try tofocus on, but it's always gonna
be pull from the founder, not apush from us because ultimately
we are the investors, the CEOand the team are the ones in the
(14:33):
foxhole and they need to drivewhen they get that support and
when they need it.
Play the King (14:39):
I wonder if I could just ask you to tell me
about an investment you maderecently that gets you the most
excited.
What is the deal you've donerecently that you're just like,
man this was fun, this ispotential, whatever it is that
makes you excited about it.
Tell me what
Derek Distenfield (14:51):
It is.
We are very long on Firefly.
They have a unique approach toadvertising.
They actually started out byputting screens on top of Ubers
and sharing the revenue withUber drivers, but they've really
expanded much beyond that and wethink they are a unicorn two
(15:15):
times over heading into thatdecacorn space.
They have an outstanding CEO andleader that we are a hundred
percent behind and will gothrough by the tooth and nail to
help them continue to succeed.
That's
Play the King (15:30):
Great.
And where can people go to learnmore about Fundamental Global
and what you're doing?
Where do you want send them?
I know you have a sub stack,maybe that's the place,
Derek Distenfield (15:37):
Yeah, I meanFundamentalGlobal.com, our
website.
I'm on LinkedIn and Twitter.
I will help any founder at anystage.
All I can regardless if weinvest or not.
I really do believe in#givefirstand excited to learn and engage
from people every single day.
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