Made It with Connor Tomkies

Eric Bahn [Audio]
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[00:00:00] Eric Bahn: If I were to compare myself to 20 years ago, when I was just 22 years old, maybe starting my career, I was that insecure asshole. I was the one that was trying to put on that affect saying I'm smarter than I really am, or I know more than I actually do puffing up my chest, maybe more than actually needed to.

And it was really to cover up the fact that I was a scared little child there that didn't know anything.

[00:00:22] Narrator: Hey, co founders welcome to made it with Connor Tompkins, a podcast where we meet with bad ass entrepreneurs who've. Successfully [00:00:30] exited their companies, discussing everything from the wins and losses of entrepreneurship to the next steps after the exit to not miss out on these exciting stories.

Be sure to subscribe wherever you get podcast. Let's dive in.

[00:00:45] Connor Tomkies: Hey, Eric, we're live in the garage.

[00:00:47] Eric Bahn: Yes, we are indeed. It's good to see you. I'm so pumped that we'll be hanging out soon in person too, next week.

[00:00:53] Connor Tomkies: I'm actually really excited that we're recording this virtually, but we could have done this in person.

We could have been out in the wilderness. Doing a deep dive [00:01:00] podcast, uh, together. Maybe we could have been going on a spirit journey or something like that. Talking about investing startups, all the wonderful stuff.

[00:01:06] Eric Bahn: It doesn't have to be an either or it could be a yes. And so let's see how it goes today.

I

[00:01:10] Connor Tomkies: like how you say yes.

And it's like a startup improv, right? Like that's what we do as entrepreneurs. I do want to highlight some of your background really quick. If I was to share a little bit about Eric, he is a minivan enthusiast. He is the co founder of the hustle fund. He also did read your story. I got acquired by a jib jab.

In 2022, [00:01:30] super interesting guy. And Eric, I really appreciate how you also are building a community around some of the stuff that you do.

[00:01:35] Eric Bahn: I'm excited for this conversation because I've been starting to get much more involved in the community that you're building with these post second set founders, seeing how they're communicating with each other.

So I think we're gonna have a lot to say about communities. If the conversation goes that way today.

[00:01:47] Connor Tomkies: Yeah, it does seem to be the future. It does seem like people are going that way, but then a part of me is wondering, like, when does it get saturated or how do you, what's that tipping point when you're providing value versus just Doing community for community [00:02:00] sake, right?

And that's really, that's really hard. How do you create that genuine connection? Do you think you've found that yet with hustle fund?

[00:02:06] Eric Bahn: I think community really comes from the top, from the leadership, from the vision that you set. And there's a Buddhist saying that I try to live my life by every day, which is when you bow to the mirror, the reflected image bows back.

And the way that I've always interpreted that is if I treat my environment with love, kindness, vulnerability, it'll naturally be reciprocated back in kind. Or if I'm an insecure assholes, [00:02:30] everyone insecure assholery will be bounced back right at me as well. Those that I think I really admire in the community space have really figured out that they need to set the tone.

Usually the ones that I like the most, that I am personally most attracted to those kinds of communities are ones where the leaders are open to vulnerability, where it doesn't feel like this transactional thing. Like, Oh, I have this deal. You should do it too. Or I'm raising money. Can you give it to me?

That's okay. That could be a part of a community. But. It should really be around the spirit of, of I think just [00:03:00] enjoying the fellowship of each other, realizing that we're all in it to grow somehow or dive into an interest that we're all passionate about.

[00:03:07] Connor Tomkies: I think that makes a lot of sense. That vulnerability is something that you can only be in certain environments.

It takes a while for people to feel that comfortable.

[00:03:13] Eric Bahn: If I were to compare myself to 20 years ago, when I was just 22 years old, maybe starting my career, I was that insecure asshole. I was the one that was trying to put on that affect saying I'm smarter than I really am, or I know more than I actually do, puffing up my chest, maybe more than I actually needed to.[00:03:30]

And it was really to cover up the fact that I was a scared little child there that didn't know anything. And wisdom through the years marrying a great woman going through therapy. These are things I think that have allowed me to shed some of these affects over time, which allows me to get vulnerable with people relatively quickly.

I get the sense actually, Connor, you've had a I

[00:03:49] Connor Tomkies: understand what you are talking about around This phase, because I was, especially with my first company, I felt like I had to have all the answers. I felt like I had to be the optimist because why would people do this? Why would [00:04:00] people do this company if I didn't believe in where I was going?

But then I think it made me come across like I was disconnected. And so that vulnerable leadership. Is something that I think is pretty rare and pretty important to

[00:04:12] Eric Bahn: my first company felt really lonely that I thought I had to come up with a solutions is on my shoulders today. Like in my current company, I remind myself every day that I can lean into the people whenever I'm going through troubles or something.

I can't figure out by myself like we share the burden together [00:04:30] and it was really scary. To feel like I could do that at a certain point in my life.

[00:04:34] Connor Tomkies: If you don't mind, I would love to hear a little bit about how some of what you shared with me previously around, um, your family story about how you got here and then how that helped lead you into this path from entrepreneurship.

[00:04:44] Eric Bahn: I take the view that there really are no self made individuals in life. There's always, there's likely a parent. And if you're lucky enough to have someone, an influence like that, maybe as a teacher who really believes in you, some, a set of people had to actually pull you up [00:05:00] and your course of your journey in order to get you to the place that you are.

And in my case, I actually did have some pretty wonderful parents. Unlikely story. My dad is actually from North Korea. He had a harrowing journey to get out of there. I met my mom in South Korea through a sequence of really odd events. He found himself. In a position where he was during the Vietnam War, a medical officer working with the American government through his service that granted him actually citizenship to allow him to come to the United States with my mom in a very accelerated pace, going through this a little bit quickly.

[00:05:30] And then they decided to settle in Detroit, Michigan. to start their lives and families. The thing that's crazy growing up is my reality was being born into a really nice quiet suburb on the west side of Detroit, next to a forest, riding my bike all the time, getting in trouble with my friends. You know, my parents, their version of allyship to me, I think, and to my sister was they didn't want to burden us with the trauma of their past.

It was only in the last, I'll give you an example of this Connor, like it [00:06:00] was only in the past year that my dad told me he had an older sister who was 19 years older than him, who was killed by a missile, like when he was a child. During the Korean, a missile bomb dropped on their house, it killed his oldest sister.

And then he was very, it was, he was really a matter of fact of like, did you know that like you would have had an aunt? Yeah. And I was like 42 or when he told me this stuff, right? So in their view, they thought that just providing the stable environment for their kids. Would allow them to have more chances of [00:06:30] success here in America.

In addition to that, too, there's some other parts of the journey I didn't tell you about, which is my last name is spelled B A H N. If you were to just see my name on paper, most people assume that I'm German. Right. Like Audubon or something like that. And I actually have Googled Eric bonds and seen like other tall hands like guys, like

[00:06:51] Connor Tomkies: similar and you're like, stand up in a lineup, essentially.

Yeah,

[00:06:54] Eric Bahn: exactly. And the, there's actually some history behind that too. My dad thought that by Anglicizing or I guess, [00:07:00] Saxonizing, whatever the German is Germanizing the sound of, or the spelling of your last name, it might give some additional benefits to the kids so that they wouldn't have. To face bias, at least on paper.

And I do think that. That was also a sad kind of version of their allyship as well, which is, let's put more distance between our current heritage as well. Anyway, I got to say that these kinds of sacrifices that my parents made, it worked. I came out of my childhood in Michigan enormously positive, felt like I could conquer anything in the world.

[00:07:30] Lots of, Lots of confidence. I really credit them for setting that foundation for allowing me to pursue and take risks and feel really safe. And there's a whole journey beyond that, like of just starting companies, education, media, businesses, all that stuff. And then what we do at hustle fund today, but I'll leave it with this one last comment, which is something I was saying that I heard in church once.

I think I might've shared this with you before in previous conversations, which is small hinges swing wide doors. I love to think about life like this, right? Which is like these moments that felt [00:08:00] kind of trivial or non important at the time that ended up swinging a massive door open for your future.

Meeting my wife on the first day of college clearly is one of the best small hinges of my entire life. Meeting Elizabeth, my co founder on the second day of college.

[00:08:15] Connor Tomkies: That's fantastic. As far as like, uh, meet wife on day one, meet co founder on day two.

[00:08:20] Eric Bahn: Yeah, I can just hang it up at that point.

[00:08:21] Connor Tomkies: For those who are listening that are not sure whether they should go to college or not, maybe just at least attend the first two days and see what happens.

[00:08:27] Eric Bahn: That would have been much more cost effective from a [00:08:30] debt load perspective.

[00:08:31] Connor Tomkies: From a tuition standpoint, 100 percent for me, at least I met my wife in high school and from like a business standpoint, I felt she gave me stability like in my life before I was always changing like who I wanted to be and having that person in my life throughout that long period of time gave me like kind of like that reflection back of like how she viewed me and that gave me like a steady base to like grow and to develop and instead of like hitting up bars and colleges and doing uh, [00:09:00] Probably some normal stuff.

I was focused on growing a business and and experimenting with different things. And she provided that kind of like that base for me to focus on.

[00:09:09] Eric Bahn: I've heard that male adult brains don't fully develop until we're 26 years old

[00:09:14] Connor Tomkies: or 36. Yeah,

[00:09:16] Eric Bahn: exactly. Maybe 42. In my case, you're basically a little child.

probably way less mature than your wife was when you first met her. And did you ever ask her what she saw in terms of like the potential, like [00:09:30] why she wanted to take a bet on you? And because you were going to go through 10 years of massive changes probably to after you met her.

[00:09:36] Connor Tomkies: We've known each other for so long and we've made so many small decisions that interact with each other.

It's almost like minds intertwined, but you mentioned your other co founder relationship and I want to get into like hustle fund and your co founder relationship as well. But like who you work with is also kind of similar. As far as like you're developing, you're making a lot of small decisions together, and that establishes this relationship and this understanding of how you guys work together and [00:10:00] and whether you guys you're making that decision every single day as to like, yes, I want to work with this person.

Yes, I want to move forward with this person, right as to why she made a chance or took a chance with me. I have no idea. And, um, I, I appreciate.

[00:10:13] Eric Bahn: If you were to meet my wife, Connor, and I'm sure there's gonna be an opportunity for you to do so in the future. You'll find that we're quite similar now. We've been together for 21 years.

And just like our sense of humor, the way we talk, just our values, everything's getting more and more similar. Maybe we started as two different trees. [00:10:30] But over time the roots interconnect and the branches can be like almost indiscernible between one or the other.

[00:10:35] Connor Tomkies: Yeah, for sure. Eric, how did you get into minivans?

And then how did you start your first company? I would love to get an origin story.

[00:10:43] Eric Bahn: Minivans. Okay. So I went, I had my first kid nine years ago. And then when we were pregnant with our second kid, I was like, okay, you know what? My back is killing me. We have a Honda Accord, like going down this motion, put the kid in like the car seat was like destroying my back.

I needed something like. More [00:11:00] like this, right? I was looking at a variety of things, SUVs and all stuff. I like the size of the minivan. I like the drivability, the convenience, the cargo capacity and everything. And then one day someone made a comment to me as another dude who was just like, what are you like a soccer mom?

Like, why are you looking at minivans? And that for whatever reason really triggered me to get. Really deep in behind this brand, you can try to emasculate me or whatever, like you want by having a minivan, but the fact that I own one is because I have helped make children. So a I've had sex. All [00:11:30] right, I don't know because you're

[00:11:32] Connor Tomkies: already ahead of like most of the population that week, probably

[00:11:36] Eric Bahn: exactly.

So part one is just that is an ironic statement, right? That you're trying to it. emasculate me when I've definitely created children, because that's why the minivan and then part two is just was this, which is, I love questioning weird norms. One is just that minivans are really dorky or just, they're not as good as an SUV and all this stuff.

I've driven a lot of cars in my life and it's one of those things, which is if this is like an [00:12:00] emperor has no clothes kind of moment to me, I was just like, These are actually like legit fantastic cars to own. Even if you didn't have kids, I think you can make a strong case for why it'd be cool to own that versus a Ford F 150 or a Tacoma TRD Pro, whatever.

[00:12:14] Connor Tomkies: I went to Tahoe with a group of friends and I sent them a video of my rental being a minivan and me pushing all the buttons and all the doors like opening up and I thought it was the coolest thing in the world. I'm sold

[00:12:25] Eric Bahn: anyway. I'm a little bit obsessed, but then I made it my brand because a it represents, I think the [00:12:30] wholesome character that I truly do think I am, which is like a, eventually just a dad first and foremost, but B I just find it hilarious to describe myself as a minivan enthusiast.

Cause it's one of those things that people like to do business or just be around people. That they enjoy and like, right. And like the hilarious thing about like the venture capital industry is that it is largely unlikable. You have these wooden kind of characters of dudes in Patagonia vest looking really bored, like saying yes or no, or come back later.

And we forget that there's [00:13:00] humans on both sides of the table. So I think that's a big part of this brand is just like expressing that we are also silly, flawed, hilarious, People just like you. And if we're going to take this 10 year journey to build a company from scratch together as your investor, we might as well enjoy each other too.

Tell me about the first startup at a college. I started this company called beat the GMAT. It's a, it was a community for people applying to business schools, almost a large discussion forum. Started off as a blog, eventually turned into a data analytics company that where we had 95 [00:13:30] percent of MBA applicants globally providing the application data to us six months in advance of applying.

And then we would. Anonymize and sell that data for 100, 000 a year to business schools, the global MBA applicant population, those are actually applying to an accredited MBA program around the world is quite small. It's about 250, 000 people a year who are seriously applying. There might be like a couple million who are considering it, but those who are actually writing their applications is really small.

So grew up in Detroit. Great. Worked really hard to get into a great [00:14:00] college. Got to go to Stanford. Wonderful. Got to Stanford. I was like, I'm going to have a great time. Now smoked tons of weed, played lots of video games, had the worst GPA, never worked in the summer because I was a privileged spoiled brat.

And then finally. Senior year comes around and then I'm looking at what I accomplished during college Which was not as much as I would have hoped and I call my mom and I'm like mom What am I gonna do? I have like the worst GPA. I have a good college like brand, but I didn't do [00:14:30] anything and then Keep in mind.

She's a Korean immigrant and her English is good Good, not great. And in her broken Korean English, she said, Eric, you are too dumb to be a doctor or lawyer. Maybe you should consider business.

[00:14:47] Connor Tomkies: I'm humbling right there.

[00:14:48] Eric Bahn: Yeah, I loved it. It was like, at the time I was frightened as hell. But like, when I think about how she said it to me, it is like objectively hilarious.

I spent the summer going to the library. I got a bunch of [00:15:00] GMAT prep books, which is usually the first, SAT's entrance exam for MBA programs for those in the audience who may not know. And that's normally the first step that most MBA applicants take is like, they take the test and then they have to apply and all that stuff.

I started a blog on how I prepare for the test every day for 60 days. It was like, open your Kaplan book, page 62, do these five lessons. And here's what I learned. And you can just follow my script. And I ended up doing pretty well on the GMAT test itself. I never went to business school. We'll talk [00:15:30] about that later.

Uh, and this blog, it started to turn into this really actively followed thing among MBA applicants. Eventually we turned that into a discussion forum and then the evolution over the next nine years into this data analytics platform. But at its core, it was a community. And this is actually where the lessons come in.

I discovered that there are three pillars to an excellent community through this experience of running Beat the GMAT. The first was be responsive and quick. So, in [00:16:00] the first 18 months when I launched the discussion forum part of Beat the GMAT, I set an alarm, I programmed it in my, these are flip phones back then, to produce a chime every time there is a new video.

Post in my discussion forum 24 hours a day. So my goal was within 15 minutes. I would try to respond to every single post for the first year and a half. And the idea behind this was like, if you can condition quick responses, then it should probably [00:16:30] inspire like members like Connor to actually ask more questions and keep seeding the community with more content.

So part one was be responsive. Part two was be thorough. So I didn't just write one liners. I'd actually write pretty detailed, responsive cars. Look, I'm having problems with this math question. Like train leaves Boston at 30 miles an hour and an LA from 70 miles an hour. Like where are they going to meet or whatever?

Like I would provide a detailed explanation. Of like how I would solve that problem. It takes me like about 10 minutes, usually to 15 minutes to write an [00:17:00] explanation. So now you have quick response that's conditioning you. This quick dopamine hit of I'm getting quick responses. It's a good response.

That's answering your question. So it's probably inspiring you to come back more. And then here's the third pillar, Connor. And it's the most important pillar. I called it be a hippie. When I started Beat the GMAT and realized like, it's not going to be enough to just provide great content in this transaction.

We want people to feel good vibes here. I started to adopt a persona that was what I described as saccharine, like a little bit overly [00:17:30] sweet. This is when I started to add. Extra exclamation points emojis. I was like 25 percent nicer than I actually am in real life. Right? The idea behind this was like, now you're getting a fast response, thorough response, and I'm trying to make you feel good and welcome in the community.

And this was the key pillar of an excellent community for a number of reasons. One is yes, it makes you feel nice and everything like that. As a community expanded to 95%, you can imagine we had a lot of Problems with like spam or really [00:18:00] negative people. The community then started to police itself because when I led with the vulnerability, the niceness, it made everyone nice.

So like, let's say that Connor comes in, he's a troll. He starts being a jerk to Eric. The community was formed him being like, Hey, Connor, welcome. By the way, like here are the rules of this community. Like you gotta be a little bit nicer. They would police themselves and it protected the community to scale to near a hundred percent penetration.

[00:18:24] Connor Tomkies: Did you do anything else to bring other people along? Because that's the hard part, right? How do you find those early [00:18:30] advocates? How do you find the people that align with you early on?

[00:18:32] Eric Bahn: So we started to put together leaderboards of who is the most responsive person, like who like response to a new thread first, who gets the most thank you button likes.

And there were something like 20 people who naturally became moderators of the community who are spending on average 40 hours a week on beat the GMAT for years. They just loved it. They just found their people. and purpose. It really came down [00:19:00] to being able to instrument and identify those people who are behaving in ways that we thought were really positive for the community.

And like the last secret here is just, um, what I would do at the end of the year during the holidays is I'd call every single one of them. It was usually, it ended up being about 50 to 100 people by the end. And just saying like, Hey, this is Eric, the founder. I just want to say like, it was really lovely working with you this year, Connor.

And I saw all of your contributions. And I'm just grateful that, you know, you're making beat the GMAT happen quick call. It would spike even more, [00:19:30] uh, contribution in the following year as a result.

[00:19:32] Connor Tomkies: So with beat the GMAT, you built this company for seven, seven to eight years. How did you go through the process of selling to the Daily Mail?

Because that's who you eventually sold to, right?

[00:19:42] Eric Bahn: The Daily Mail, if you're not familiar with it in the audience, uh, they're kind of like a tabloid. What a lot of people don't realize about the Daily Mail is actually, it's a really diversified company. They have an oil and gas company. insurance company, and then education was actually a really big part of this business as well.

[00:19:57] Connor Tomkies: Did they reach out to you or did you hear [00:20:00] about them? How did you guys get connected initially?

[00:20:02] Eric Bahn: So what happened was about around year seven, I was, it was really starting to get to me being a bootstrap founder. I didn't know anything about management and scale. I felt like too much weight was on my shoulders and I was just ready to get out.

So a company approached us in the space as well. With an acquisition offer that looked pretty solid. And then we thought, you know what, maybe we should pull the rip cord here. And that's when I hired a banker to actually run a process. And then eventually that's how we got in [00:20:30] touch with Hobsons, which is the education arm of the daily mail.

And they didn't offer the best numbers in terms of just like the monetary outcome. But. We went with them because they seem like the best human beings. And I got to say that made all of the difference, the big temptation for founders to really understand is sometimes there's a big number presented to you, but then you look at the terms.

It's like for your earn out with these milestones, hit blah, blah, blah. Like those are traps. These are mechanisms for your acquirer, not to pay you the amount that they're promising. [00:21:00] But we had great terms, all cash, all upfront, very simple vests, like 18 months, stick around or something like that. And they really, Worked hard to help me get that earn out that team

[00:21:08] Connor Tomkies: to your point.

That doesn't always happen. Right. And then once you sell the company, you don't have any control. So it's a little up in the air. It definitely resonates with like sometimes the best offer by the numbers is not the best offer that makes a lot of sense to me. And we didn't go with the highest offer for us, but we went with the people that were asking the right questions that we're excited about.

[00:21:28] Eric Bahn: Good human beings, hopefully, that have a [00:21:30] sense of humor, like that are just nice to hang out with, that you enjoy serving. And if they're a bunch of assholes that are on the other side of the table, it just makes it harder to do your work every day.

[00:21:38] Connor Tomkies: For sure. And you're responsible for a lot more people than you, right?

So whatever environment or whatever vision that they have for the company, if you can get behind it, then you feel better about how you're ending that chapter of your life. So you. Sold the company. And then after that you traveled the world with your wife. Was that like what you needed to recharge after uh, after selling the company,

[00:21:58] Eric Bahn: we were together for a while.

She was actually [00:22:00] working at the company with me, beat the G man. So that was also a very special experience. Essentially. She was a late co-founder, super talented at sales and customer success. And we knew that we wanted to start a family. You know, at that point we were 31, I wanna say, uh, when the acquisition happened, and, but we also knew that maybe this is the last convenient time.

To do something a little bit crazy, take a break. And it was one of the best decisions. That trip took place in 2014, about 10 years ago. Now we saw 17 countries, [00:22:30] mostly Asia, Eastern Europe. It was such a blast, but I still hold those memories in my heart a lot, because this is actually where I think I became a true optimist.

There's so little differences between. People, we all want the same things, a good future for our families, good friends, like meaningful work and some of the richest people I got to see what we're on this trip. And I'm not talking about like they had yachts or anything like that. The one thought I there's a really distinct picture of my mind even right now.

So I [00:23:00] was walking around in Hanoi in the north part of Vietnam. At night, just wandering around by myself. Actually, my wife was back in our Airbnb apartment or whatever we were doing. And I walked by this motorcycle shop and it was like a family of about 10 people, grandparents, parents, little kids over there as a bike shop.

But it was really clear to me that these people lived at the bike shop, probably in the floor above they're having like a delicious, like soup and meal right in front of them in the middle of the shop. Bright fluorescent lights, [00:23:30] motorcycles around them. Everyone's was spoon in like this giant, like beautiful looking bowl of whatever they're eating right in front of them.

Lots of smiles, lots of laughter. They, it looked like they're having the best time of my life. And I just stared at them for a couple of seconds. I was just like, I think this is like the richest family I've ever seen in my life. The love was just like emanating out of this motorcycle shop. And it occurred to me, or just like, you know, what is rich?

What is wealth? What is rich? Like being rich actually mean, and it really did redefine so much of just [00:24:00] like what I wanted to get out of my life in terms of how I run my family today. What we spend money on, more experiences over things. It was a great reset as an adult of just like, this is how I'm going to live from now on.

It was just a celebration that there's these differences out there, that there's different kinds of ways you can live your life. And that's something that I still hold in my heart a lot.

[00:24:18] Connor Tomkies: You traveled the world, you worked like Instagram and a big company, and you were also an entrepreneur residence at 500 startups.

You started a company with your sister, and I think it's funny, the caption that you have on here is you [00:24:30] started a children's book company with your sister, and she and I still get along, which I think is like an awesome like caveat, like you worked with your wife, and it worked out great. You worked with your sister.

It worked out great. Tell me about this, uh, this, uh, children's book company that you made

[00:24:43] Eric Bahn: that idea behind this company called read your story. This is around the time I had my first kid. And one of the things I was starting to notice was Kids, in this parent's fault, naturally like to reach for a device, right?

An iPad, or like a phone. And if you're [00:25:00] a busy parent, it's really easy to just drop the device on them. And I'm guilty of this, too. My kids watch way too much iPad. But, the other observation I made as even a little baby was, they like to see pictures of themselves. So the idea behind Read Your Story was, What if you can upload a picture of your kid's face and then we can crop their face as the protagonist of these characters, these children's book stories, along with their name in the story.

So you can hear things like Owen went to the park today and Owen played with the duck or something like that. And [00:25:30] then like, maybe we can condition these little kids to reach for a book. And that was the mission behind Read Your Story, is we'll start by basically Trojan horsing these kids into enjoying seeing themselves in these printed books that are really beautiful.

But over time, can we inspire them to want to read? And it was a really meaningful project. And I did it with my sister, who's a great marketer. She, she's like a Googler and all stuff earlier in her career. And it was really fun doing it with her. And I say that we still get along because I think it's a lot of risk always to work with a [00:26:00] family or a spouse or something like that.

Like if things go badly, then maybe the relationships gets damaged. But in the case of my wife, in the case of my sister, it was fine. We really enjoyed that experience.

[00:26:10] Connor Tomkies: I think it's really cool. And you're right. There's a pretty clear mission and vision around it and who you sold to oddly fits. Like jib jab, the videos where like you replace the head and they do

[00:26:22] Eric Bahn: like a dance.

They found ways to diversify their properties into kind of the same idea of copping faces into like different kinds of products, like greeting cards or [00:26:30] socks or dancing gifs. It just naturally fit within the catalog of what they're creating. And that team also was just like, Exceptionally nice human beings.

[00:26:38] Connor Tomkies: So after you, you did, you built this business with your sister, you started hustle fund, was that the original vision whenever you set out to make this company or did it start out differently?

[00:26:47] Eric Bahn: I think it started off slightly differently. So we started as a much more pure venture capital fund, but pretty quickly, I'd say it wasn't like years later, it was pretty evident to us that we had a skill set around media.

From our backgrounds, [00:27:00] my two co founders, I have two Elizabeth and she, and I actually met both of them. My freshman year of college, 24 years ago, we had the skillset around building community, building media, and we knew that we needed to leverage that. So I'll get back to that in a second. The real Genesis of HustleFun began out of a simple observation, which was, why is it that the same.

Looking dudes are getting all of the seed capital for a wider Asian man like us to went to a good school, maybe you worked at like a Facebook or Google or something like that. That's considered [00:27:30] like a very prime kind of founder for VCs to back. But in my experiences and being the founder myself and scaling up teams.

I never thought that just because you went to MIT or Stanford and worked at a Google, it necessarily meant that you actually knew how to hustle hard or work or drive really creative kind of outcomes. But it was hustle that always differentiated the best people that I ever hired. Didn't matter where they went to school.

If they were endlessly creative, got shit done and interested in [00:28:00] experimentation and measurement, then they tended to have and had a great growth mindset. They tended to just like, Create exponential outcomes in their careers and in the work to

[00:28:07] Connor Tomkies: more reps and because they're working harder, more likely than not, those reps might work out

[00:28:11] Eric Bahn: totally.

In fact, like there's interesting evidence around this. So if you look at like some of the famous like leadership programs, like johnson and johnson, G. E. They don't really recruit from Harvard. They look at like University of Wisconsin. Um, others like state schools. Those aren't, I'm not nagging those schools, by the way, they're excellent, but They purposely want people who have a little bit [00:28:30] more chip on their shoulder to outperform those like Harvard MBAs.

Again, not nagging those guys either. That was the basis of Hustle Fun, which is let's focus on identifying hustle, make sure that we have a really wide funnel of people that we can attract. When we have our own model for how we try to work with the teams to understand whether they can actually hustle or not in a good market, creating that wide funnel actually is the media business.

So today we have a VC fund, which is our core business, but we have a huge angel investor community of 2000 members called the angel squad. We have a [00:29:00] scaled newsletters business, lots of sponsorship, 24 events per year. If we can provide great education to these new founders, then they'll be inspired to come to hustle fund when they want to.

Put together the first raises. And today we see over a thousand deals a month because of, I think these media activities that we scale up for investment team members on our team, over 30, uh, and I think 32 or 33 other teammates who are marketers, journalists, event producers, those that are actually building the media side of this business.

[00:29:25] Connor Tomkies: You're building almost like this, like a cohort, right? Like of flexible people that can [00:29:30] jump in and help out as needed. Is that the right way to view it?

[00:29:33] Eric Bahn: We do have a lot of contractors for sure on our team that are very specialized in certain kinds of things, but also the community is quite amorphous on my side of the table, like this angel squad can mean dimension of 2000 angel investors.

These are people who are just starting their angel investing career. Want to learn how Hustle Fund identifies its companies want to participate in our deals as well. But they're actually the secret to hustle fund, because let's say that Connor is building a healthcare company. All right. And Connor says, Eric, I really need to figure out [00:30:00] Medicare so that my patients don't have to pay out of pocket.

My answer to you'd be like, dude, I don't know how to do that. But just talk to Erica, who's the chief health officer and angel squad. And then she'll, we'll connect you in over 15 minutes. She'll probably just navigate you through how this process works. But my job is just basically a fancy concierge, like almost at a hotel, right?

It's just like you, you have a question or need, like, maybe I can. Connect you to the person in our community somewhere that can have the answer for you.

[00:30:23] Connor Tomkies: I was going to ask you about how do you identify household? Because that's a hard thing that pretty much everyone listening to this podcast wants to find out.

[00:30:29] Eric Bahn: [00:30:30] Every month we see about a thousand companies. And of the thousand companies, we will on average write checks into seven. Businesses with an initial 150, 000 check. So that's 0. 7 percent of the companies that we see. So if we think that we're impressed by how they're presenting the team, the problem, the solution, the market, the traction, but we want to understand how well they hustle, we're going to go ahead and write that check relatively quickly on pre seed valuation.

So fairly low. We define hustle as great execution meets high velocity. It's more about the [00:31:00] throughput of what you can ship per hour worked. And some of the best people that I know who are true hustlers are not working on. More than 40 or 50 hours a week on average because their output is like 10 X everyone else.

Now, the way that we identify after right, that first check is then we'll put them in that cohort. As you described, like we, we will run a growth project together for eight weeks in a school that we set up called Redwood school. It's a school on customer acquisition and sales. It takes only 45 minutes a week, but we'll pair up that founder with two growth experts, usually from angel squad in their [00:31:30] industry, along with a general partner like myself, the founder.

We'll choose what growth metric matters for them. It could be customer acquisition, user acquisition, that could be sales, whatever they want. Usually it's a sales or user acquisition related project, and it's from this period of time of working together, trying to sprint towards the metric that the founder cares about, where we can get a much better sense of witnessing the team's work, the operation, operational skill.

Their hustle, learn more about the market and in about 20 percent of cases, after you write that first check and run the [00:32:00] growth project in that subset, we've identified that founder Connor is a true hustler. He's in a market that's amazing and large. Let's go ahead and write a second 200, 000 check into that team.

Open ups an additional allocation for angel squad to also come in through an SPV so they can participate in the same terms and then we can serve this founder together.

[00:32:16] Connor Tomkies: I like some of the things I'm hearing is that there's an education component. There's a cohort component, so they're in a group with some other people that are going through it.

Right. There's a mentorship piece and then a financial piece. So you're combining a lot of different pieces of value [00:32:30] add to these founders.

[00:32:30] Eric Bahn: There's a mantra within our fund that you're required to believe in order to work on our team, which is that great hustlers look like anyone and come from anywhere.

And this notion of like diversity, inclusion, whatever has become super politicized in the last two years. And it's like a woke leftist kind of notion and so forth. I actually viewed this as really simple, which is just, I don't necessarily believe that only Stanford kids or MIT kids or whatever should have the right to get all the seed money.[00:33:00]

But if you give. A chance to people who are just pure hustlers, you'll create natural inclusivity at the end of it. So while we're in the business of trying to make the most money as possible for ourselves, our investors, our founders, all that stuff, what you discover is that when you follow this model and then have a mechanism identifying who's a true hustler and serve those people the most, giving them the most money, you'll create natural inclusion.

It's about 50 percent women who get the court check, 27 percent underrepresented who get that court check. 60 percent of our deals are now out of [00:33:30] outside Silicon Valley. It just naturally looks like the population of the United States. Because great hustlers look like anyone and come from anywhere.

[00:33:37] Connor Tomkies: You're baking it into the structure. And that's what, like, it's really about if you were to bring people along with you is, yeah, Support Ninja, we're hiring people internationally that come from even a wider pool of economic and, uh, cultural differences and socioeconomic. It's such a wide pool, but you're giving them opportunities to interact with some major companies that maybe they wouldn't normally interact with.

[00:33:59] Eric Bahn: It makes sense, [00:34:00] I think, Possibly for you, because there's a very specific type of person who gets this mission immediately. It's actually founders. Once you've actually had to grow a team and actually work with a ton of people, hire people from a variety of pedigrees and so forth, most people, after they've actually built a team, realize like it really does come down to, is this person a true hustler or not?

I don't know where most of the people on my own team went to college. I definitely don't know their SAT scores or GPAs or anything like that. All I know is I can measure them [00:34:30] on their output. And they're outstanding. Right? And the people that don't get this, I'm going to be a little bit mean here. If you're like a person that like has only had a finance career, never actually had to really manage anyone.

And then you're now like running an institution or something like that. It's really difficult to get that kind of founder empathy. Around this concept. So in the beginning, when we launched house fund 2017, it was a really difficult pitch. People did not understand this until we started to understand if you're like a family office, a former founder, or at least an [00:35:00] institution that has actually like has some experiences personally in running companies, they immediately understood it.

[00:35:06] Connor Tomkies: Post exit founders is like the group I'm Pretty honed in on at the moment that you have these people that have time, they have resources, they've been there, they can commiserate, right? And they also have this industry expertise. And I think that those are the type of investors I want to work with. I think you're something pretty magical.

If you combine like the post exit founder with the pre exit founder and you help them curate the idea, which you guys are doing and you're [00:35:30] helping them set those goalposts and connect with other people that might provide value.

[00:35:33] Eric Bahn: I just recently joined our community. You invited me a couple of weeks ago.

And so I've been watching, following along, slowly starting to message some of the people here too. And I, a couple of things actually hit me. One was the vetting of like humanity, just like the EQ levels is quite good. So you did a good job, I think of just like the vetting of making sure that good people are largely in this community.

But part two is I realized it's hitting a different kind of need for the participants. And this is actually going to [00:36:00] come off a little bit. Maybe arrogant or privileged, but when you go through your first acquisition, it's tacky, right? To just declare, Hey, I'm worth like 50 million now or something like that.

And I'm feeling alone because I want to retire, but I have no friends who are 35 years old or whatever that can ride their Porsches with me. It's no more raceway, but that's a very like arrogant way of describing, but like the hardest there, which is stress, whether you're dealing with something traumatic in your life or stress.

Whether it's actually feeling super [00:36:30] lonely because you're now part of this world that you can't really commiserate with anyone about, it's still the same cortisol that's pumping through your body, and it still has the same harmful effects on your body. And I tend to find there is a really lonely class of people who have been quite successful early in life.

That feel like they're on their own island and don't know how to find those kinds of meaningful connections. And that's where this post exit community, I think, is quite special. Because I see a lot of people who are finding fellowship for [00:37:00] the first time, probably since their exit. And I do think that is a really purposeful project, and I'm really grateful to be part of it, too.

[00:37:07] Connor Tomkies: I think that there's a little bit of a, you were talking about, like, heavy doors, small hinges. Like, there's moments, and like, those moments are the small hinges. And whenever you sell a company, that's the small hinge, I think, for me. That's the moment when you're like, you're not sure what's coming next.

You are lonely. Maybe you are going through that identity crisis. And people have a hard time whenever they were [00:37:30] saying, I'm the CEO support ninja, and now I'm not sure what I am doing next. What are the other acts, aspects of my identity that I need to put in front? Because you were talking about like some of these people that come from more traditional backgrounds.

So you want to understand how do they classify you? And you want to understand how do they, how do you classify yourself? It's like a shortcut, right? It's not, The right thing, but I think a lot of these post exit founders are going to this phase of, do I want to start a family office? Do I want to start another business?

Do I want to help other people? [00:38:00] Start their business and I think that you're seeing a pretty unique subset of that and hustle fund with the limited partners that probably were previous entrepreneurs, some of the VCs that have experience with seeing a bunch of companies grow and exit and then these founders that are probably going through their own experience is a very interesting mix of people.

[00:38:18] Eric Bahn: I'll share with you the pep talk. I normally give someone like a friend who maybe goes through a substantial exit that kind of creates a meaningful windfall in their life. I always ask this question. Um, Which is if you look back at the last [00:38:30] several years of your career, is there a single activity that you can identify that consistently brought you high emotional energy?

You can define that as like flow, joy, whatever it is, what is that? And then sometimes it takes them sometimes a long time. These people asking this question to you to answer what that might be. But then the punchline follows is. And whatever you do next, what if you actually could just solve for joy, right?

And focus on a project that is always putting you on the flow [00:39:00] state as much as you can. You're now in the post giving a fuck era of your career, which is not to say you don't give a fuck. I'm just saying that you're not going to, you're not here to fight to climb the ladder to become like a VP at Google or whatever.

Like you're just not in that game anymore. So what does solving for joy look like? Right. Unapologetically solving for joy. And those answers sometimes are really tremendous. I've heard things like, I have to start a nonprofit. I have to like, I have to go like travel the world and just meet this one guru or something.

Or it's even as simple [00:39:30] as like, all I want to do is coach my son's soccer team. Right? And it's cool. Like when you can see, hopefully you play a tiny small hinge moment as well of just like shaping maybe a direction. And I see tons of people hungry for that, that are actually searching for this in your community, which is like, what is my solving for joy now?

[00:39:49] Connor Tomkies: I want to talk to you a little bit around what you've built because you have Camp Hustle. It's happening next week. What am I expecting to [00:40:00] see here? What is happening at camp hustle?

[00:40:02] Eric Bahn: Camp hustle is a event that we started three years ago. This series is held. It's our flagship event for investors. And it's one third institutional investors.

One third angel investors, one third GPs, angels, and so forth. No founders really could do this. And the design behind this is. As a venture capitalist, I've been to a bunch of events and it can feel quite stuffy. Like sometimes you got to suit up or at least put on the blazer. It feels really transactional.

It's Connor. What do you do? Oh, you're like an [00:40:30] investor. Like why don't we like set up time? So transactional, so hollow. We wanted to actually create an investor and vet that actually, Discards a lot of those affects where we can actually understand each other as people first. And here's how we try to solve for that.

One is we hold it in the forest. You can't wear a suit in the forest, Connor. It's going to get really scuffed up and nasty. So you got to come and dress casually. You're in the forest, you're surrounded by this natural, beautiful Northern California forest, and. You can set sense that the tone is really shifted at that point.[00:41:00]

This is a place where we're not going to be here to make transactions happen, right? Like we are all in our own islands today. What if we break down these affects in the next few days and then get to know each other's people, business will follow at some point. And so we got these inspiring speakers, these talks, but a lot of time and to connect with each other through certain kinds of games and activities too.

With very wholesome vibes. This is not a place to be drinking really heavily until like 4 a. m. We don't do that kind of stuff at Hustle Fund. People walk out of it feeling like they've actually made some meaningful connections and it touches on what we were talking about before. [00:41:30] Sometimes when you're like an allocator, or something like that, it can also feel really lonely.

You can go into these events and then as soon as people know you're investing in funds or companies, like they'll start to swarm you for money. And we want to just create a little bit of safety from that kind of environment so that. You just feel less alone. You feel like you have a connected fellowship of people that you're excited to just like collaborate with for the longterm.

And I think that's a better way of starting relationships with people than like showing up the four seasons. Ballroom suited up business cards. [00:42:00] LinkedIn's doesn't have to be about that.

[00:42:01] Connor Tomkies: Honestly, I think we should probably have more meetings around Redwoods and we would be better people.

[00:42:05] Eric Bahn: I do this with my son.

My son is also quite introverted and it takes a little bit of time to open up to me. Sometimes he was crying the other day and what I've learned is actually we're really fortunate to live next to a really beautiful canyon. And I've started to take him in walks down the canyon whenever I see him being upset.

And there's something about this, honestly, like a man thing, like men, like when you're kind of like facing the same direction, like kind of going through nature, talking like [00:42:30] this, not at each other in his case, but like, you know, like this, it kind of breaks down the barrier a little bit more. Right. And, and that's, that's like something that I think is such a special tool for me in my relationship with, with him, but also other dudes that I'm really close to.

[00:42:43] Connor Tomkies: This is like a psychology thing, but they had to study where they had little kids and they would put them in a room to like interact with each other. And, and the two boys would like, um, grab their chairs and then they would put them like, uh, kind of facing the wall or face facing like [00:43:00] the window. And, uh, they would be like, I play baseball.

And he's like, I play baseball too. And I, I hit a ball over the fence. And then there's like a little bit of like a one up and then flip. They got two little girls and they did the same thing. And they pointed the chairs at each other. And she's like, my dad, Is an engineer. And she's like, Oh, my dad likes to build stuff too.

And they're finding like these commonalities, but it was like the orientation of like the chairs and how they like to interact. It makes me wonder, like, maybe there's a reason why the chairs or the bar stools are facing the bar for some reason, you know, like maybe there's [00:43:30] a little bit of a dynamic there.

[00:43:31] Eric Bahn: You know, I grew up in Detroit and. Compared to a lot of my peers in Detroit, I'm like a woke leftist, right? Like Northern California dude is kind of left leaning and all that stuff. They, they seem a lot of things like, especially my buddies who are, you know, definitely much more conservative than me back in Michigan.

But when we go to like a lion's game or tiger's game and watching sports together, we always instantly reconnect. I can talk to anyone. Any spectator about, like, did you just see what happened? It's powerful because like, you know, it's the same thing as like, [00:44:00] like walking in the forest or like staring out the window or just enjoying something like, like a team that you really love together.

Right? And, and I love and seek those kinds of moments of fellowship. We're never confided.

[00:44:11] Connor Tomkies: Eric, what are some of the best things that have come from Camp Hustle and the Hustle Fund and Angel Squad?

[00:44:17] Eric Bahn: Again, like when you go to like our events or be part of our community, we try to always emphasize if you're going to get to know someone for the first time, try to understand each other as humans and like understand their values.

First, there's been a number of companies that have formed actually out of [00:44:30] Angel Squad. There's been new funds that have been created across people who just met each other at their events. But I think like the thing that is most special. Is that we do a really good job. I think of the post event experience to like everyone gets, gets added to like these WhatsApp groups through their own volunteering, don't have to join and so forth, but a lot of them do.

And I found actually that even a year later, these groups are super active. And the nature of the conversations is totally different from a lot of other WhatsApp groups. It's not like I'm sharing a deal or I like I need to like [00:45:00] raise capital. Here's my pitch deck or something like that. Yeah. But it gets so much more vulnerable and we're not judgmental.

It's just a different, it's just one more resource of good human beings you can count on to support you. And that's what I love seeing at the end of this, these weeks, there's a certain type of person that doesn't succeed in our community. It's someone that maybe takes a zero sum view of life. Generally, we are pretty good about identifying those folks and finding them a way outside of our community.

Those that we are attracted to are exactly the mindset you're talking about, Conor, which is just like, we can all win together. The side [00:45:30] point here is just like the most miserable people I know.

[00:45:33] Connor Tomkies: Eric, I'm looking forward to next week. I think it's going to be fun. I'm looking forward to the Redwoods. I'm looking forward to, uh, to meeting everyone who are, who is the right person to listen to this podcast and learn about hustle fund and where should they find you?

[00:45:46] Eric Bahn: Yeah, thank you. I don't think I've ever had a podcast host asked me the question in that way. So. The right person in terms of a founder, investor, whatever, that we like to collaborate with is someone that actually is also buying into the social contracts that I'm suggesting, which is I'd [00:46:00] love to do business and succeed, of course, with the right partners.

But beyond that, I think we also need to answer the question. Actually, this is the question that I used to propose to my wife. I didn't say to my wife, Hey, will you marry me? I said, do you want to grow old with me? And I actually take that question on almost every relationship now in the stage of my life, which is if we're going to work together as like a founder, as an LP, whatever.

You're signing up for like at least a 10 year relationship. That's what a fun life is. It's not enough for me to feel like this is going to be a great transaction. It's also gotta be one where [00:46:30] like, we both feel like we're going to get a lot out of this, not just from the business too, but we'll be excited to hang out, serve founders together, get to know each other's families, get to pet each Pets and like toys and everything like that.

If someone is excited about that kind of social contract as a founder, collaborator, LP, whatever it is, then I'm really excited to speak with you. So best way to reach out to me, you can find me at Eric at hustlefundvc. com. That's my email. You can follow me on Twitter. Eric Bond, E R I C B A H N, have a good following over there too.

And [00:47:00] yeah, we're always excited to hear about what people are building and more than that, just hearing great stories. That's awesome, man. All right, guys, that's the pod. Thank you so much,

[00:47:06] Speaker 2: Connor. It was a lot of fun doing this with you. That wraps up today's episode for more inspiring stories and valuable lessons from successful entrepreneurs, be sure to listen and subscribe wherever you get podcasts.

Thanks for listening until next time, keep pushing boundaries and writing your next chapter.