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What you’ll hear in this episode:

• How Tusk Holdings helped startups navigate the politics of regulated industries 
• How to determine if a VC fund relationship is right for you and your company 
• Tusk’s philanthropic foundation and how his perspective of prioritizing gaining skills, experience, and interests over money has enabled him to be successful and fulfilled

Considering the comparisons between investors and “sharks” and the general public’s assumption that VC firms are the ultimate gatekeepers of success, you might expect a venture capitalist to be cold, aloof, or withholding. But Bradley Tusk, who is the co-founder and CEO of Tusk Ventures as well as a writer, philanthropist, and political strategist, axes all of those prejudgments, showing up as the exact opposite. Engaged as well as engaging, Tusk is open about his journey from Capitol Hill to venture capitalist, and shares his current and future projects with an energy that demonstrates his central message: it’s important to let passion guide your steps.

Tusk has a passion for politics, and thus his path began in government, where he gained experience as Michael Bloomberg’s campaign manager, the deputy governor of Illinois, and various positions on Capitol Hill. In 2010 he didn’t so much leave the universe of politics as move to an adjacent planet, starting a “bootstrap consulting company” in 2010 advising large companies that were facing political hurdles in expansion or development. One day, he received a call about a “little transportation start-up” that was experiencing regulatory problems, and needed his expertise. Tusk became Uber’s first political advisor that day, and since they couldn’t afford his fee, he was paid in equity, which Tusk laughs “worked out pretty well” for him. 

Tusk played a large role in legalizing ride-sharing by giving customers the ability to advocate politically through social media, and thanks to his work (and the millions of people who participated in his campaign), we now live in a world revolutionized by ride-sharing. Tusk recognized that there were a lot of startups just like Uber, who were creating products in regulated industries with intelligent teams of people who didn’t understand the political side of their industry at all. He began to pitch his expertise to other companies, and at first, many startups dismissed his services as unnecessary. But as more startups (such as AirBnB, FanDuel, and Uber) faced public political battles, companies began to recognize that they wouldn’t be able to progress without his help. He began to work for these startups in exchange for equity. 

These experiences sparked Tusk’s idea to found a venture capital firm that invested exclusively in startups with a lot of potential that could only be realized once they had hurdled some political or legal issue. If Tusk came across one of these companies and believed his expertise could solve their issue, he would leverage his expertise in exchange for the opportunity to invest in the company. Once the political issue was resolved, the company’s valuation would increase, and the investment risk was mitigated. With this differentiated VC idea, Tusk set out to raise funds, and while it took him 2 years to raise the initial fund of $37 million, his “thesis proved right.” Startups began to see how Tusk’s input was helping companies like Uber overcome their legal issues and he went from selling his idea to fielding an unmanageable volume of emails in his inbox. 

Having a political advisor involved in startups “went from being the exception to the norm,” and Tusk Venture Partners are now the only VC firm that works at the intersection of tech and politics. He explains that his role is not to decide what should and shouldn’t exist – rather, if a product has a demonstrated demand, he has to “take the consumer’s want seriously,” and instead of policing the idea itself, determine how to execute it in a way that is “socially responsible.”

Contrary to many entrepreneurs’ beliefs, Tusk does not advocate that every startup pursue venture capital. He explains that it’s often not the best deal economically, since founders are parting with a large chunk of their company in exchange for the investment. He encourages new companies to consider the classic “bootstrapping” route of growing and developing their company, explaining that many million-dollar companies achieved their success by reinvesting, struggling, and growing the “old fashioned way”. Venture capital is a good resource for ideas that will scale to a billion-dollar valuation, or are in “deep tech” spheres and thus require millions of dollars to achieve research and development. In Tusk’s opinion, the amount of time and work it would take to simply get an interview with a VC firm is better spent building, branding, and developing for most companies.  If venture capital is right for a company, Tusk encourages these founders to find a firm that fits their needs – whether it’s specialization in political advising, marketing, branding, or hiring, Tusk suggests that a firm needs to be able to give you “something else” in the way of advice or service in addition to money.  

Outside of his VC firm, Tusk’s passion for politics manifests in his family foundation, Tusk Philanthropies. Getting down to the purest facet of politics, Tusk Philanthropies has launched the initiative Mobile Voting, which strives to revolutionize voting and increase voter turnout by empowering constituents to vote safely and securely via blockchain technology on their phones. They also improve and support school meal programs across the US.

Tusk also shares his passion for politics and revolutionizing the world around us through his writing (The Fixer, columns for “Fast Company“) and podcasting (Firewall). He encourages entrepreneurs to locate and stoke the fire of their own passion, explaining that the more that you enjoy what you’re doing, the better you will do it, and the more success you’ll find. Tusk explains that when he was young he prioritized building skills, relationships, and experience over earning money, and considers his love of learning and resilience to be the main contributors to his success. Simply put, Tusk shares that from his experience, “if you want to be an entrepreneur, the path to success is resilience, individualism, passion, and ideas.”

If you’ve ever taken an Uber or bet on FanDuel, listen to this episode to get to know the guy that made it possible. If you get something out of the podcast, be sure to share it with an entrepreneurial friend and don’t forget to like, subscribe, and check out other “Masters and Founders” episodes!

Masters and Founders is a founding_media podcast created in collaboration with foundingAUSTIN.

Host: Dan Dillard

Guest: Bradley Tusk

Transcript:

This is a Founding media podcast.

This podcast episode is brought to you by our friends over at traverse legal. They’ve been super helpful for us to work with as we started founding Austin and our other ventures, traverse legal has been changing. The way law is practiced since its own founding in 2004, with a focus on utilizing technology.

To better deliver IP and business law services to founders, startups and emerging growth companies. Traverse legal’s latest offering provides a monthly fixed fee fractional general counsel offering to companies. Learn more by visiting traverse legal

welcome to another episode of masters and founders. This week, we are sitting down with a true systems, disruptor Bradley tusk Bradley is the founder and CEO of tusk holdings, which includes tusk ventures, the world’s first venture capital fund to work with and invest. So. In high-growth startups facing political and regulatory challenges.

His background includes serving as campaign manager for Mike Bloomberg, as communications director for Senator Charles Schumer. And as Uber’s first political strategist, I’ll let him tell you more about what interests him now in VC funding and how he sees politics changing in the future.

So, um, um, we were chatting a little bit about your path and I want to really share this with the audience. A lot of times, I feel like, and why I wanted to, one of the drivers of having someone that is, has a VC company on the show is because there is this. Misconception at times I have, it’s a great idea.

I need to go get some VC funding. Sure. I need a million bucks and it’s just, I hear this over and over and over. And I’m like, whoa, wait, there’s multiple ways to skin this. Yeah. You probably don’t need a million bucks. Yeah. And so I thought, well, wouldn’t it be great to have someone like yourself on the show?

Highlight the other side of that story. Yeah, totally. Why don’t we start with this? Um, what gave you the idea to start over? So I came at this in a really, really weird unconventional way, which either will be inspiring for listeners who want to be VCs, because also you don’t have to take the traditional route, or they’ll say that’s such a weird way that doesn’t apply to anyone, but that one dude.

Um, but my background was actually in government and politics before I got into tech and forgotten to venture. Um, and I’ve done stuff like I was Mike Bloomberg’s campaign manager. I worked for him at city hall in New York. I was the deputy governor of Illinois for four years. I worked on Capitol host, Chuck Schumer’s communications director.

And I started my first company and, you know, just a regular bootstrap company, uh, based on whatever little savings I had in 2010 consulting firm that run speak campaigns for big companies. So your Walmart, and you’re trying to break into 10 different cities and you’ve got community opposition and union opposition or whatever it is.

How do you make it happen? Right. And those customers are the usual suspects, the Googles and Amazons and whole foods and Pepsi’s and Comcast the world. Um, and then I’m sitting in a meeting of 2011 and a friend of mine called. I said, Hey, there’s a guy with a small transportation startup. He’s having some regulatory problems.

Would you mind giving some advice? Um, I become Uber’s first political advisor that day. I get really lucky and Travis calls me back and yeah. Well, listen, I can’t afford your for you to take equity. I said, yes. I didn’t know what I was saying yes to. I didn’t understand what equity even meant, but luckily it was run.

Luckily it was during the series day and spent profanity out here. I spent the better part of the next five years, just kicking the shit out of the taxi industry all over the U S to make rideshare and legal. And the thing we basically figured out was that if we gave our customers the ability to advocate politically and say, I want the ability to have ride sharing, whether it’s through email or Twitter or Instagram or wherever it was.

Um, they would do it and they did a couple million people over a period of years. Did. And that’s why ride sharing is illegal everywhere in the United States. Um, and where I’m the guy, I’m the guy for better or for worse. If people love you, he will hate me, but I’m the guy. And what I started seeing was this kind of vacuum where you have all these startups that are entering regulated industries and they didn’t understand government or politics or regulation at all.

Right. They just assumed because they had really high IQ and they were really good engineers, somehow, everything else, which I’ve, oh, you went to Stanford, just sure. We’ll make the hotel rules, whatever you want, you know? Um, and obviously it doesn’t work like that. Right. And so early on, before I even raised my first fund, I just started talking to other founders and saying, listen, you know, you’re in this sector, uh, you know, here’s who you’re disrupting.

Here’s the relative political power I’ll help you. And I’ll do it for equity, not even knowing what that meant when I started was for equity. Right. Uh, I just think I was working pretty good with Uber. Um, and. For a lot of time, they just didn’t take it seriously. Right. It didn’t think that they had to devote resources or time to it.

But then, you know, over time, Uber and Airbnb and fandom, and all of these startups started having kind of constant public political battles and the notion of taking it seriously started to shift. Um, and so, oh, we had this idea is what if we could actually invest in startups where we know. Hey, this company has the ability to be an incredibly valuable company, but there’s some sort of gating political problem on the front end.

And either that gets solved and they become an incredibly successful company or it doesn’t get solved and they don’t succeed at all. If we think the company has incredible potential and we think that our skillset can solve the problem itself, why don’t we invest? Then go solve the problem. And then the valuation increases, uh, make sense.

So I started trying to raise a fund, um, and every LP says, oh, I want something totally differentiated. I want something totally new. So I’m walking in there and say, well, here’s how I’m going to use politics to get into all of these deals that are otherwise really, really hard to get into because. I’m going to tell these companies that I won’t solve their problem politically, unless I’m given the opportunity to invest.

Um, and I, and enough of them will give me that opportunity to invest. And that’s why this will be a successful fund. And then they would look at me, sit in here. When I say differentiated, I meant like a different font than not, not you. Right. And it took her two years to raise the fund. I mean, I just was like going around and around and around.

And I finally got really lucky that. We were working on a comic called FanDuel, which is a fantasy sports startup. And one of the people I pitched the guy just love sports betting, to be honest, I don’t think I had much more than that, but I was sitting on all these investment rights and FanDuel, and that was really exciting to him.

And he was willing to give us a chance. And then, so we had to raise about 37 million for fun wine, which is a pretty small venture capital fund. Um, but the thesis space. Prove right. Which is lots and lots of startups who realized, okay, I have this problem came to us and said, can you fix it for me? I said, absolutely can, but I need to be ability to invest first.

And at first like, oh, who’s this guy, why do we want to give them investment rights? But over time, two things happen. One is they saw solving the problem. One was for other startups. And two, we started getting on the cap table of companies like. Lemonade and fan duel and circle and Coinbase and Nexstar and bird.

So he’ll sort of say, oh, I think it looks pretty good if these guys are involved. Cause it looks like we’re taking this stuff seriously. So spend a lot of time, really just trying to sell people on the notion that we would be a good investor and a good partner to have a lot of time with startups. A lot of time with other VCs saying, listen, You want to invest in X, whatever it is it’s coming with this amount of regulatory risk.

We’re not a silver bullet, but a form of all the odds of the risk be mitigated are a lot higher than if you’re just trying to handle it on your own. Right. So cut us into the deal. And then over time, it went from being an exception to the norm. Now, people I think are generally. The idea of us being involved because it shows that they’re taking this stuff seriously.

Um, and so we invested in 18 companies out of fund one, we’re in a bunch of really, really good stuff. Uh, Warner what’s called the sec calls, a quiet period right now, which means you can’t talk about our new fund. Um, but there, the reports that have been written out on the paper I will say are not inaccurate.

Um, and, um, yeah, we’re really excited about it. And I think, you know, we’re still the only VC that works at this intersection of tech and politics. Um, I think we’re proving it out. And I think we’ve been in some really good stuff. And, you know, I just think about companies that are just functioning here in Austin.

Uh, you know, I remember when I was trying to get Uber and tossed and it wasn’t easy. Right. And we got in and then advocate this out. Then I had to go to Abbott and get them overturned. Whereas with Berg. It was a very different perspective. And I don’t think we totally know how to regulate Raj scooters yet.

And I think that there are times even this weekend that I was just, you know, Congress and guide, we’re going to hit these people. This is terrifying. Um, on the flip side, uh, the notion of the need to sort of take the technologies that consumers want seriously. And you just because you’re a regulator. I don’t like it.

No, that doesn’t work. You have to say if there’s clearly all this market demand among my voters for this, there’s some reason why, so how do I give people what they want, but do it in a way that is socially responsible. Um, and that’s what we really try to do is figure out that right intersection of the two to help all of our different portfolio companies we’re allowed around the U S and then all over the world.

That’s incredible. I really love that you took, what was your passion and your knowledge w in, in politics and your roadmap, and then applied it to something completely new and built something from, you know, and it reminds me, and yeah, as you were talking about, you know, founders in how smart they are, and yes, I’ve got lots of respect for a lot of founders, but a lot of times they have this notion is if I build it, they will.

Right. Doesn’t that? I mean, they won’t spend money marketing. They won’t spend money in all the areas. They need to spend it because they think the product’s so good. It’s just, everybody’s going to know about it then. Just like in this industries, you can build it, but then you’ve got not only marketing, but you also have politics again.

Well, yeah, you can do all kinds of things and you have to prepare to do that. Yeah. Just being a great engineer or a great coder. Look, if you’re a great engineer, lots people will hire you and pay you lots of money to do your thing. But if you are entrepreneurial and you’re trying to create a product, you have to convince people if they need this product or service in the first place, you have to build a market for it.

You have to build proof around it. You have to be able to sort of deal with whatever regulations come in, that particular industry. And there’s lots and lots of different pieces to it beyond just having a great piece of software. And, you know, I think the really successful entrepreneurs understand it.

For sure. That’s amazing. Well, back to our, our, uh, listeners and what I feel like a lot of them get out of this is, is, you know, you don’t just. Get an idea, put it on paper and say, I’ve got to go get some VC funding. Right. I mean, there’s multiple, multiple, multiple ways to, to build this, to build businesses.

So, um, what kind of stories have you heard? Yeah, so let, let me start off with sort of two different things that I was kind of hoping to get across here, knowing that that was sort of what the listeners are interested in. The first is not every company needs to be a venture backed startup. Right. Um, because keep in mind when someone like me invest in your company, We’re giving you money, but I’m taking a chunk of the company in return.

And then every time you’d raise more money, you’re giving away more and more and more of your actors equity. So you could have a point. I like the guys that founded it, Lyft, uh, Logan Green and John Zimmer. They still, they own 7% of the company, which on one hand at a 20 something billion dollar evaluations, a lot of money.

On the other hand, you would think when you told them they were starting that okay. Now with the times, all of a sudden. They say they each on 3%, like, they’d be like, well, how did I lose all my control of my company? And the answer is because when VCs give you money, they take equity. I take control on return.

That’s how the model works. So, um, one is people sort of assume that because it’s sort of cool that like, oh, I should get VC money, but one it’s not necessary. The best deal for you economically. Right too. You have to think about, is there a reason why my company, if it’s scary, It’s a billion dollar company, because most companies are not by definition.

You know, there’s, they’re called unicorn for a reason. They’re pretty rare. And you can have an amazing business that makes you really wealthy personally. And you’ve got millions of dollars a year just by bootstrapping and building it the way that most people build companies, which is, you know, yeah. Put your savings into it.

You sacrifice you struggling or a card you grow and you keep reinvesting in the company over and over and over again. And you getting bigger. That’s how most, really successful businesses are built. The stuff on venture tends to be really the ones that work are this idea that is incredibly scalable or this idea, whether it’s a deep tech thing.

So it could be, you know, blockchain or AI or machine learning or autonomous vehicles where, you know, you have to raise money because you need tens of millions or ultimately hundreds of million dollars for research and develop. That makes sense. Um, but I think the first thing to do when you’re thinking about, you know, I’m starting a company, how do I fund it?

Is do I need VC money? Do I want VC money? And am I a good fit for VC? And if the answer isn’t yes, to all of those things, then don’t waste your time on it. Right. Even getting in the door to pitch a VC can be really hard. Right? I mean, we get, I always prided myself into the kind of person that if you emailed me, I wrote you back, um, even just to be polite, right.

And in every job I’ve ever had, even when I was, you know, pick Auburn. If I run in the state of Illinois, I was really good about that. And that all changed when I became a venture capitalist, because the amount of unsolicited inbound from people pitching their companies. To me, it’s overwhelming. I can’t read it back when I do write back that may write back with questions or this that did you end up at some point you end up having not responded in any way, so you feel bad.

So, um, but the point is it’s hard to get on the radar screen of a venture capitalist and you know, we’re good enough at what we do that. Even if we make the wrong choices, we at least understand. Here’s what we’re looking for. Right. And if you don’t meet those initial criteria, instead of spending that time, building your company, building the brand, building the service, building the team, you know, you’re just trying to pitch to VCs.

That’s really a pretty inefficient use of your time. Yeah, absolutely. So I think people should be aware of. And then B it’s a, here are the kinds of things that I look for when we invest or would maybe give people a sense of leads, what VCs are looking for. So we invest, um, pretty early stage. So seed and series a is our typical entry point.

Before you jump into that, let’s explain seed series a series B, because I think the, I think the audience gets a better understanding of that. Then we can jump into the absolutely. For companies that are VC backed, you know, there’s lots of different stages. The very beginning would be what’s called pre-seed and that’s usually friends and your family taking in money.

You’re maxing out your credit cards, you’re doing whatever you can, you just kind of established proof of concept. And in that case, you still own the vast majority of the company. Right. Then you hit the seed round, which is like, okay, There’s something here. I either need cash to build out the technology, or my tech is already here, but any cash down market, this product and get people aware of that.

And P you know, typical seed round today, and we’re in, we’re in a world of pretty inflated valuation. So I don’t know that it’s going to stay at this level, but typically, now people are raising, you know, Two to four, two to $5 million for a seed round. A company is valued at, let’s say somewhere between 10 and $15 million typically.

Um, at that point, and I just started to give up ownership in the company control board seats to people like us. Um, then the next one will be series a, B, C. Okay. I’ve got a real product. I’ve got a real service. I’ve demonstrated market fit. Now I want to start scaling. I want to start launching in other markets.

Let’s say you start at Nostra and he said, I’m now I’m ready to launch this thing in Chicago, LA in New York or whatever it is, I need more capital. Um, and then a series a effectively, it’ll be, you know, these days, maybe you’re raising. Five to $10 million and evaluation. So between say 20 and $40 million, and then it goes on.

So a company like Uber right now is at a serious queue or whatever number letter, or I think it’s like probably like H or I, or something, you know, because you know, a company like Uber has raised billions and billions and billions of dollars. This has been going on for a long time. But typically speaking, any company that goes all the way from pre-seed through to say an IPO, you know, Eight rounds, 10 rounds before that happens and even different types of investors coming in at different points in the process.

Um, a lot more startups that have a successful exit. Aren’t going public. They’re selling to a bigger company and saying, okay, I’ve developed this really cool product. Um, you know, Proctor and gamble wants to buy it for a hundred million dollars or whatever it is. And you’re selling somewhere along the continuum.

So for us, we focus on seed and series day for a few reasons. One is for me, it’s really fun. Build companies. So to me, the earlier I’m involved, the more that we’re really helping create, you know, what’s the culture of this place. What’s site guys, what’s the product roadmap, you know, how do we talk about this?

How do we brand it? How to in my world specifically, how do we deal with the regulatory components of it? Um, you know, whereas if you’re investing in. Let’s say an Uber or an Airbnb, or we work right now and they’re worth tens of billions of dollars. It’s the same thing as back stock and the stock. Right?

You have no impact on the company, even as you’re putting in a billion dollars at that point, you still don’t really have that much impact. So to me, the interesting fun thing is building companies, right? If it’s purely just like invent. Investing. If it’s taking them investing, there are people who love that.

I’m not one of them, right. I’m interested in finding companies where I think there’s an amazing idea and an amazing team. And with our help and some of our money, it can become a tremendous company and Uber, a bird, a Coinbase, a FanDuel, whatever it is, um, But all of that, for me happens on the early side where both a it’s more fun.

And B earlier you get in the more relaxed, the more reward, you know, we’re trying to make a 10 acts on every single deal. So if we’re investing $2 million in a company, our hope is that we’ll get back $20 million. I’m most of the time we don’t, the way VC math works is, you know, around a third of your companies go to zero around a third.

You kind of get back what you put in, and then you make your real money on the other third, the music labels. Totally same concept. I think publishers have all kinds of, probably like that. Imagine movie studios are like that, you know, all kinds of things like that. So, you know, it’s funny as a bit of a tangent now, but think when a really bad movie comes out, Was it an obvious, like how did they not know such a bad movie?

Why did they release it? But then I invest in startups that don’t succeed and it clearly made sense to me at the time know we have a whole process for our investment committee. It’s not like we just randomly throw darts at the dartboard. Right. So obviously someone at. Universal studios, whatever it is, thought it was a good enough idea that got far down the road enough.

So they made this movie and then it was a died. Right. Um, so same thing is true in ventures. So out of our first fund, we typically invested about a million dollars per company at series a, uh, our new funds will be bigger. So the, the numbers way bigger, but we’re staying in the same range of seed and series a, um, and yeah, and then, you know, investors get something called pro-rata, which means I have the right.

To keep investing with each success of round. And then what tends to happen is if you become a really, really successful company, you hit a point where it doesn’t make sense for me to keep investing, because the cost is so high that it’s not part of my strategy anymore. Right? So like 20% of my fund is in bird.

Um, because we got into bird really, really early when it was a $50 million evaluation of the series. A and then we turned around eight months later and it was a $2 billion valuation at the series C, um, which was amazing, but it’s bird keeps raising money. The reality is I can’t afford to keep putting it in because in my fund ones only $37 million I’ve already got.

20% of a fifth of that fund in bird. Right. Um, I can’t keep dedicating more money. Um, and so that’s what other types of investors, private equity and things like that tend to come in the mix and they say, okay, um, we can write much bigger checks and we don’t need to try to make 10 X on a deal. We’re happy to.

Two acts on a deal. Um, and so that’s when they come into the equation. So different people come in at different times, but I think when you’re looking for a VC and you’re thinking about this process, I think the people who are listening to this are probably wondering how does this whole thing work and is it right for me or not?

So it’s, it’s a few things. One is your company, really a scalable tech companies are just a good business idea, right? Because 99.9% of good business ideas don’t necessarily mean scaling something where you’re going to have scooters in 87 cities and in the span of a year or whatever, we did a burn. Right, right.

That’s one, two. Yeah. Economically do I need to do it this way? Because there’s a good chance that you will ultimately make less money that way than if you bootstrap it yourself. I’m assuming that’s all true. Is there a reason why venture capitalists. Would be attracted to me. Why would, what would they want about me?

Who do I know that as a VC, they can give me a warm introduction because you know, the way I look at a startup when a VC or a founder that I respect it’s, Hey, take a look at this thing. It’s very different than if someone sends me an email, right. If I get an unsolicited email, I basically just deleted because it’s like 500 a day.

I can’t write, this is not fast. I can deal with it. Right. Um, if the answers are yes to all of those things, you know, then you can really start thinking about, okay, uh, What kind of VCs do I want to work with? Right. So for us specifically, people come to us because they know they’re going to have political and regulatory problems, and they know that they want our expertise.

There are other VCs that are really great with marketing or branding that it could work great at helping you find engineers and recruit talent, um, you know, different VCs offer different things. And I would say all things being equal. If all someone has to offer you there’s money, um, you know, I’d be, if you really need the money, that’s one thing.

But, you know, ideally you want someone who can give you money plus something else. And that’s when that becomes a really attractive VC. Uh, for example, there’s a VC here in arts club, mark VC, uh, Adams Zeplin runs it. And one of the things I think is, is we love working with them is that Adam was able to really just get engaged in the gut, to the company and help with operations, help with product market fit.

All of these things are different than what, what we do. We’re we’re coming at it more from the media and regulatory side of it. But he’s engaged. Right. And that’s what you’d want. I think you don’t want pass, right? For sure. One of the things that I. Was reading about you is, is because your focus is the political environment.

Your money is more patient. So what I, what I read and I would think it’d have to, because obviously you don’t know what you’re getting into and it was some of these companies. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. I mean, we, we invest in a company, especially when we’re investing, say it’s seed. We assume that they’re, we’re not going see anything back for seven to 10 years.

Okay. Right. And that’s just our working assumption. If on occasion, something happens sooner and it’s good. Great. And on occasion, they gonna go bankrupt by 4, 7, 10 years also, by the way, you know, it’s going even have both kinds of outcomes. Um, but yeah, I mean, one of the things about VC is especially if you are thinking of becoming a venture capital investor or investing in a venture capital fund, It swelled tech moves really fast.

The companies move fast, but from when you first start deploying capital to when you see something back, it’s a really long period of time and you have to have the ability to weigh. And one of the reasons that it’s hard to raise venture capital, especially it was for me in the beginning is people who are investing in our funds know that they’re not going to see anything.

Seven years or whatever it is, which means they’ve got to be reasonably confident in me that they want to deploy this capital on the front end and wait a really long time to say anything bad. Now, what they’re hoping for is that when they do get their money back, they’ll get three or four or five times what they put in.

And that’s sort of the math on venture capital. Um, but there’s a lot of risks. Very cool. Very cool. You have some new things you’re working on. I was reading. Let’s talk about some of the new would love to you. So I I’m here in Austin, uh, is like, I guess everyone, the last few weeks I came for south by, um, and I was lucky that they invited me to come speak about a product I’m working on.

Yeah. Out of my foundation. So I mentioned earlier that when I started with Uber, I took my fee and equity, um, that really worked out. So now I have a family foundation because I have more money than I ever, I didn’t grow up rich and, you know, worked in government politics. I didn’t have a lot of money, so, you know, more than I need at this point.

It’s just like, well, okay, how could I use it productively? And the thing to me, that where I thought I had the greatest ability to impact the world at this intersection of tech and politics, where the thing that I learned in government, uh, and it’s kind of a sad fact, but 99.9% of politics. Desperately self-loathing and secure people that can’t live without the validation of holding office.

It’s like asking them to not have the attention and credibility that comes with being a politician it’s like asking you or me or the listeners to just go without oxygen. Thank you. They can’t do it. Which means when you think about the decisions they’re going to make while in off. Almost a hundred percent of those decisions are driven solely by lateral and puts it nothing else.

So there are exceptions. I worked for Mike Bloomberg. He was definitely different. Um, but by and large, if you want to know why someone’s going to do something, when it on a policy issue on a legislative vote, whatever it is, you’ve got to go back and say of the few people who actually vote in these people’s primary that people would.

Impact their next election, whatever they want, but that’s really all it comes down to. So if you want to change the policy outputs, you’ve got to change the political inputs. And because we live in a world where a turnout is so integral, credibly, low, and B uh, you know, we have a voting system that was built for an agrarian society 250 years ago, we bought on Tuesdays because that’s what was good for the farmers in the 17 hundreds.

Right. Um, and because of gerrymandering, the vast majority. Primaries really served as effectively the general action, because the district is drawn in a way that it’s not going to be competitive, uh, either, uh, you know, for Republicans or Democrats, depending on where you are for all of that, most us elections are determined in the primaries and average primary turnout is about 12%.

So if you take gun control is just an issue. And I know private since at least within Texas or people in Austin who probably agree with me on this and people in the rest of Texas would probably hate this, but let’s assume that you think assault weapon ban is a good idea. I think it’s a good idea. You Republican Congressman from Florida.

Um, you probably know in your head, the people walk around your district with an AK 47, not good, but turn out in your primaries, 12% the stick gerrymandered. So the primary is the general election and RA members make up half of that 12%. You’re never going to vote for it because being an office is so important to you.

You’re not going to risk your future just because of that issue. But now imagine a world will turn out is 70%, right. Then all of a sudden the view of the majority of the mainstream is what you’re following. Right. And that could be on guns or climate or healthcare or immigration or the economy on anything.

Right. And you know, right now, the way it works is groups on the left and the right tend to exploit low turnout primaries to exert a lot of powers to teachers unions on the left business groups on the right. Tend to be able to disproportionally impact what happens because they know, okay. If turnout’s going to be 32,000 votes in this election with my money and with my membership, I can move a good chunk of those votes and ask that politicians do what I want to do.

What I learned with Uber. And we were talking earlier about how do you mobilize. Customers is the same people who never vote in a primary when we gave them something they cared about, which was there’s this thing called ride sharing. It can exist or not exist. Uh, asked me determined by the politicians you can weigh in and we made it easy.

So from the app press spot, and you can tweet at your city council member, or you can email your state Senator, or you can. Post something on your state reps, Instagram Patriot. Well, however you’re looking at it, people did it, right? So it wasn’t a people won’t participate. They won’t participate if it’s wildly inconvenient, which is how the system currently works.

So those two things that, to me, if we want different policy outputs with different political inputs, if we give people the tool to engage in elections differently, they’ll actually do it. Right. So it’s how do you do it safely? And that’s where blockchain came in and because blockchain effectively.

Plumbing that transmits data from point a to point B in a safer manner, we now have a way to transmit votes, uh, over the internet, over the blockchain. That’s safer in the way we conduct elections now to all three of those things came together for me and an initiative where we’re now trying to create a world where everyone can vote in elections on their own.

Over the blockchain. So it was started last year in West Virginia, uh, working with deployed military. So the secretary of state of West Virginia, who’s, you know, conservative, Republican, not really my politics at all, but he had been in the military and his kids were in the military and he found it very frustrating that you’re risking your life to protect our right to vote.

And you mail your ballot from Kandahar. And by the time it shows up the election office elections that long over and I throw in the trash, um, he was looking for a solution to that problem. We wrote, put together the tech piece, the political piece. We pay for the costs for West Virginia to administer the election out of our foundation.

Uh, and we were the, they became the first jurisdiction ever to offer mobile voting over the blockchain, uh, to their constituents. Uh, so last week we announced that the city of Denver’s doing it in their municipal elections. This may same thing for deployed military. And my hope was over the next couple of years, I can keep working with more and more jurisdictions.

To try it out with different populations. So you could see how it’s really useful for the blind or the deaf. If you live in a rural area and you have to drive 50 miles to vote, if you’re on a native American reservation, or maybe you’re a college student abroad or whatever it is, start with those groups and then eventually work our way into the middle.

Where we have a world where everyone can vote. And, you know, obviously I, don’t not naive enough or stupid enough to think that I can take on the NRA and the teacher’s unions and everyone else. But my daughter’s 12. And I looked at him and said, when she’s 18, uh, if I’ve created a world where we’ve proven over and over and over again, that this thing is safe and this thing.

She’s going to demand the ability to use it. Right. And we’ve seen what happened when young people especially demand something and force it eventually happens. I mean, the thing that I’ve learned more in tech than anything else is once you’ve let the genie out of the bottle, you can’t put it back in.

Right? Right. You can suppress a particular startup, a market, Austin mantras kick Uber out for nine months, however long we were gone for. But at the end of the day, if it’s a really good idea that people want to do, it’s going to survive. And so what I’m really trying to do right now is just let the genie out of the bottle.

Very cool. That’s amazing. I’ve often wondered why that doesn’t exist. It’s like, this is so antiquated as with many things. Why isn’t this? Why isn’t this fixed story? And that’s part of it is that the techno blockchain really makes technology much easier. And that’s why I was here for the interactive part of south by, at, on to, on a blockchain panel talking about mobile phones specifically.

But part of it also is that the people who are in power are not interested in making it easier for themselves to lose power. Right. And in fairness, I’m, I’m an independent, I’ve spent enough time in politics now that I don’t believe in either party at all. Um, but you know, this is really true on both sides of the aisle, which is people who have worked hard to gain power, want to stay in power, which means.

Even if they think it’s overall good for society for more people to vote, if it’s not good for their next election, they’re not going to support it. Yeah. And so, um, you know, I’m just trying to ultimately get enough, enough belief, enough proof of concept out there that one day we can overwhelm them.

Incredible. I really love what you’re working on. All the other things you’re doing. I mean, just helping companies just kind of navigate this. Yeah. Yeah. I mean to us and it’s, you know, they’re all fixed together. You’d mentioned earlier sort of the. We had taken our experience in politics and apply it to venture.

That’s really almost, you know, I want a bunch of different kinds of companies, not just in technology. Everything that we do effectively is the application of what I learned in politics in the first 20 years of my career. Yeah. To something else. So for example, uh, I wrote a book, uh, last fall about startups and politics, and we just sold it to, we haven’t announced a deal yet between.

Famous TV network. Uh, we’re turning to a fictional half hour TV show that I’m now helping to write. Um, but again, it’s Hollywood, but it’s, you know, yeah. Using that experience I had in politics or I own a digital archive company where we built these really bespoke high in archives for foundations and companies and individuals.

But it was all based on initially we did it from my Bloomberg where, when he was leaving the mayor’s office in New York city, he had accumulated 12 years worth of staff and we spent a whole year collecting, but 3 million videos, speeches, memos, transcripts letters, photos, you name it, curate it down, put 170,000 assets that we thought he would really want to hang on to digitize everything.

Meta-tags everything built a platform, uh, worked with StoryCorps to do an oral history of the administration. I became a Google for Mike. Uh, and so now we, we build these really high-end archives for people, but again came out of politics. So everything we do, and, but the other thing we do out of my foundation test philanthropies it’s hunger.

So we fund and run campaigns around the U S on an issue called breakfast after the bell. So not shockingly the same kids that don’t get breakfast at home tend to not to get to school early for the free breakfast either. So every study shows that if you handed out during homeroom a, the uptake is much greater.

Be the stigma goes away because it’s available to anyone, right? It doesn’t matter what your income is. If you want foods, you can have it. If you don’t want it, you don’t have to have it. Um, so we’ve now run bills in eight different states to Crip, perhaps after the beltway Passman all aids by 3 million, more kids have access now.

School breakfast. We’ve got campaigns going right now in Oregon, Maine, Minnesota, and Massachusetts. Uh, and my hope is that every year, you know, we can just fund and run four or five more campaigns. But again, it’s, it’s not that the food advocates didn’t know all of this before. It’s that their expertise.

Food policy. And they tend to be really nice people and politics is a rough business, right? And the reality is sometimes, you know, the way we win these campaigns a week ago on the air and we pick some asshole who’s being, you know, against it. And we find dirt on them at some other topic entirely. I say, you can be for the hunger bell, or I can put this out in the press you decide.

Right. And it’s sort of using political tactics, uh, to get a good thing done. And so really almost everything we do. And I think this may be not a bad lesson for the listeners, which is you probably have a core passion or skillset, right? The moral of as engaged in anything you’re doing, the more you’re gonna enjoy it, the better you’re going to be at it.

The more successful you’re going to be. We were just talking about that. So if you, if you build a business right, If that steam’s going to run out. Yeah, definitely. For sure. You’ve got to over 150 interviews I’ve done over the last three, four years. Um, the successful, successful founders I’ve spoken to, which is majority of them.

Yeah. Um, you know, to say, look, I need to, actually, I was just talking to Louis Black, who was one of the founders of south by Southwest. He was more or less, uh, interviews. Um, and he said, anytime I did anything for money, I failed. Yeah. I did ever passionate. Didn’t know what I was doing. Didn’t have money expectation at all.

Wildly successful. Totally, totally agree with that. I would take two things. One is, um, especially if you’re starting a company, right. It is. I mean, you know, that’s because you’ve created that. It’s so hard and it’s so much work that if you’re not passionate about it, it’s just, it’s not going to succeed.

You’re not gonna be able to recruit talent. You’re going to have to retain them that going out to raise money in whatever form of benefit, just convincing a bank to give you a loan, right. Sell products. So you’ve gotta be passionate about it because you’re talking about like, you know, for the first year or two, it’s like a hundred hours a week.

Right. It’s all consuming. Um, the other thing is, is, you know, for, for some of the younger people listening to this, I’m 45 now, but I spent my twenties and a good chunk of my thirties, just basically saying. As long as I have a job where I can pay the rent, I don’t need to make another money. What I need to do is build as many skills and experiences and relationships as I can.

And then there will come a day where I’d like to make money and I will figure out how to monetize all of that in some kind of unique way. But I didn’t really worry about it till I was 35, 36 til I had kids. Um, and just up until then was just really focused on just trying to learn as much as I possibly could.

And then that’s pretty worked out, which is one of the time came I was able to, okay. I’ve had these experiences of. Running a state run, a marrow campaign. I understood finance. I understood I was a lawyer. I understood politics and just depress. And I put it together in a way that made sense for me. But, you know, oftentimes, you know, people will come in their twenties or thirties and ask me for advice.

And it’s like that, that passion piece of that, that lose 500 even more important because just do stuff you like learn. Build things. See how they work. Don’t worry about it. Right. It was so unsavable for you to have that mental process of way back in the day. I just can’t even imagine being 23. And I’m just gonna like take it easy on 35.

I’m not sure. I fully, even in retrospect I could articulate it. Yeah. And look, when I started my first company, it was completely designed for, for my skill set and interests. Um, and you know, also government pays. Okay. Right. So it wasn’t like we were living fine. It’s it’s funny how you make more money. You get very good at spending it.

Right. But when I didn’t have it, they didn’t feel the pride. I felt okay. You know, I was still able to put food on the table. Um, so yeah, to me, you know, I think it was probably a lot of people to this podcast who are young and say, you know, if I can have a big successful tech startup and I could be really rich and then I’ll be happy in life, you know, the cliche happens to be true, right?

Like, is it easier in life to have more money for us? Absolutely. Anyone tells you that that’s factory’s line. But is it the determining factor of anything? Now, if you hate what you do, you’re still going to be unhappy. And if you love what you do, you’re going to enjoy it. A lot more part of this, I think is FOMO, right?

It’s like same thing as like, I want to have a unicorn and it’s like, oh, this person. So this company in two years in may $200 million and he’s like 28. Uh, but so many more companies are built a lot later in life. First of all. So for every 28 year old at there that there’s literally pay a hundred thousand.

That tried and failed, which is okay, but you just have to understand the odds. Yeah. Second, you know, people look at the ultimate, say sale price with company or the IPO amount. That’s not what the person who created the company made. Right? So if the 28 year old started the company, when he was 22 and raise money for six years, um, by the time it’s sold $200 million.

It’s a ton of money, but maybe he made 25, 30, $40 million more money than anyone ever could need. It’s not $200 million. Right? Right. So even a sense of even the people who really, really, really make it are not making nearly as much money as you think. Yeah. Well, but I liked the message. You said it was just, just like, just follow your passion, build your skills, figuring out what your passions are at 20.

Do you really even know what your passions are? You still get so much of life ahead of you. Yeah. Go figure that out and then know and trust the journey that at some point it’ll all come back. For sure. And all of a sudden you get the other piece is just resilience. Right? So, one thing that I know that I worry about a little bit now is you, you have these, oftentimes these are really, really smart kids that go to these incredible schools.

And they know how to study for a task. They know how to sort of impress someone on a resume, but, you know, life is a lot about getting knocked down and getting back up again and failing and figuring out another approach and succeeding. And I think most importantly, that you can really build his resilience.

I actually have in my office. Now I know Ivy league Milena, the hiring policy. If you’re a millennial and you went to an Ivy league school, we will not hire you because my view. I’m not curing cancer, right? So like the extra five IQ points when we are there, it doesn’t really make that much of a difference to what I’m doing.

But I like people who are really hungry and I’ve had to work for it, have been knocked down and want to get back up. And if they need to be patted on the head all day, that’s a really bad use of my time and my team’s time. And so I think also trying to build that resume. It’s okay to fail. It’s okay to try things.

Don’t work out. If you only wanting to do things that have no risk, you might not fail, but you don’t accomplish anything in the first place. Um, and so, you know, again, to the extent that there’s people listening who are a little younger, you know, really just being out and doing what, trying to do what you love when you’re passionate about, but B also not being terrified of failure.

You know, those are the personality traits that ultimately lead to those. 28 year old selling coming for $200 million. Right. It’s not because they checked every box and they had a degree from the Wharton school of business. Right. And everything else, there are people I, you know, if you want to do that, go turn with Goldman Sachs.

Right. Uh, but if you want to be in tech and be on entrepreneur, the path for success is resilience, individualism, passion, and ideas. Right. And if you have those things, then your odds are pretty good. Let’s tell our listeners. I know that obviously. You can get flooded with emails, but where do you, where would you like them to look?

I know there’s some things in your philanthropy that, yeah. Yeah, for sure. I mean, so a couple of things, one is, um, if you go just to the tusk holdings.com website, it’s a link to everything else that we’re doing. So, uh, you know, first of all, I would love people to check out mobile voting.org. We just launched that last week.

It’s our website around mobile voting. Uh, there’s a site called firewall.media that has all the content. So I also have a podcast, not nearly as good as yours, but I have one and I interviewed tech founders and VCs and people like that. Um, I write a lot of columns for publications like Cortes and CNN and CNBC, and those are on there.

Um, so, you know, we’d love people to check out the content we’re creating. And then yeah, if you go to tusk ventures.com, you’ll see everything we’re investing in and working on test strategy to see what kind of campaigns we’re running. So, um, yeah. Please check us out, uh, because we’re doing lots of good things and every one of those sites has a way to contact us on there.

Um, and you know, especially if what you’re looking for, it’s not so much that you think you have X billion dollar idea, and you’re trying to get me, get me to give you money for it. But it’s, you know, when people reach out for just career advice and I say, here’s who I am, here’s where I’m trying to do. You know, I try to help whenever I can.

Thank you so much for being on the show. It’s been, it’s been incredible learning your path, and I hope that our audience, I know their audience will really enjoy the show as well. Cool. Thanks for having me. Thank you.

Wow. I could have kept talking to him for hours. Thank you, Bradley for sharing your story and giving us a quick glimpse of what our futures may look like. The masters and founders team includes me. Dan Dillard, producer, Mariah Gossett, and audio engineer, Jake Wallace. Thank you, everyone at found immediate for your support to see this video interview and other founding media podcast, make sure that you subscribe to our YouTube channel.

The link is in the show notes. Thank you for listening.