Thank you Very honored to be the first speaker and kick this off. This is a topic that's near and dear to my heart And we could talk all day. I could talk all day having been building businesses for the better part of 25 years For today, there's just six topics that I've chosen I think these are the most essential topics for us as we're thinking about Starting our first business. This is really directed at people who have never started a business before If you have started one in the room, congratulations, you know how hard it is And the primary audience is folks who've never been through it before A little bit about me So this is my my fifth business First one started on the backs of my mortgage Sold it to a public company called Gartner The next several have been venture backed The Second one is now worth one and a half billion dollars went through a bunch of ups and downs I exited at a down and I didn't protect my stock and so I didn't participate in that one and a half billion dollars, sadly The third business where I met the CEO of Fermion who I'm helping Was a company we built at 35 people and sold to a public company called Google Fourth company a robotics company and now today. I'm the chief operating officer at Fermion as as was said We're bringing the third wave of cloud computing leveraging web assembly We've got a serverless offering with stunning performance and that's the extent of my advertisement So as we get into these six topics This first topic is product market fit and If you take one thing and one only one thing away from this conversation It is that product market fit is pretty much the only thing you need to care about for the first phase of your startup You're gonna want to spend 66 to 80 percent of your time Just focused on product market fit and the phrase that I love that captures sort of the essence of what product market fit is Is that your offering flies off the shelf? What do you need for an offering to fly off the shelf? You need three things one you have to have a problem in your customer's mind that is a Significant enough problem for you for them to want to solve to your solution has to be the best fit solution and Three the price has to be accessible for the problem that you're solving if those three things are true Then you've got product market fit and your product will fly off the shelf So That's sort of the dominant thing you want to think about Product market fit and what's interesting with an open-source business is that you have to do this twice as If building a startup isn't hard enough When you do it normally and you know your first product people are paying you money for there's an exchange of value Okay, great But with an open-source offering you have to do this twice Your your open-source has to fly off the shelf and then you have to figure out how to get money in your second iteration for it to fly off the shelf Second topic is capital I Believe that the best startups are Driven by customer capital and this is how you want to think you you want your mindset to be almost Exclusively on how do I get customer capital? If you think about this This is how business is supposed to work. It's it's worked this way for centuries People who have an offering go to a customer and they say my offering has value You're gonna pay me money and I'm gonna make a little bit of money on this and I'm and each time I'm gonna put that money into the next thing I make and into the next customer And if you think about Steve Jobs and and that story You know, they were in a garage. There's a reason they were in a garage. He didn't have any money and There's a reason why the first product they built was only a hundred units the apple one was a hundred units It sold out really quickly So they made some money and they took that money and they put it into several more hundred units And then they built the apple to and sold those so there was no there was no outside capital so that's you know, that's sort of lesson number two and And you want to keep in mind in that phase You are not gonna be spending a lot of money. You're not gonna be making a lot of money And if it takes a while for you to build your product, okay, it's gonna take a while So you're not taking a salary.  You're living on on a shoestring and most people don't want to do that And that's why most people aren't entrepreneurs Okay, so let's say you do want to take other people's money The thing to realize about taking out other people's money is it is brutally difficult It is really if you're not willing to part with your own money If you're not willing to part with your savings if you're not willing to part with your mortgage It's really hard to get somebody else to convince convinced to part ways with with their money and really You know as the slide says I Think venture capital is a necessary evil. It's not a great influence When you think about building a business it's hard enough and there's a cadence to it But venture capital changes that cadence but venture capital basically says you have to perform faster because I need to get my money out And and it's really a more modern Construct it's 50 years old ish I don't necessarily think venture capital is is a great influence on startups because it Sort of changes the discipline you need to stay focused on Delivering a solution that is so valuable to your customers that the product's gonna fly off the shelf If you do think that you want to or need to Convince somebody else to give you some money Just recognize that credibility is a really difficult thing to have to have and to get And you will be competing with hundreds of thousands of no-name people that have no credibility So you're always selling you're always always always selling You are selling when you're convincing employees to join you vendors to support you customers to buy your product and Venture capital even when you're not quote-unquote raising money if you're talking to a venture capitalist you're selling and All of the other activity you're doing with customers vendors, etc They're gonna be checking the venture capitalists are gonna be checking And the best and easiest way for you to get credibility Is to have customers so we sort of get back to customer capital Because venture money is gonna look for that that credibility coming from customers in the last next thing to understand about venture is They are driven almost exclusively by emotion and those two emotions are fear and greed. Yeah, there's logic There's always logic. They have to tick a bunch of boxes about your startup And they do that but ultimately it's gonna come down to fear and greed and they are paid to be fearful They are paid to screen out every single problem with every single business They screen hundreds and hundreds of businesses each year and they choose one And they only choose one because they got greedy right because there was something in that conversation Something in your credibility. There's something about the market That says, oh my goodness This could be a home run for me So just remember fear and greed Uh a note on dilution. I have this conversation with lots and lots of people Dilution is the silliest thing to pay any attention to It only matters in the mediocre outcome state In the failure state, nobody makes any money. Dilution is irrelevant In the success case Your business is worth gazillions of dollars and you're gonna walk away with so many millions of dollars that you've never had before And do you really care whether you put 25 million or 22 million dollars in the bank? No, you don't So don't worry about dilution. Don't try to optimize for how much of your business you're giving away Just remember that cash is the most important thing for your business and get the cash And then lastly your job as founders if you're going to get venture money Is to create this greed and it's to create competition amongst capital partners when banks compete you win You win because you get to set the terms you get to negotiate And most importantly you get to decide who's the wise advisor that sits at the board table with me and counsels me on the business That's what you want to look for when you're choosing a venture partner if you're fortunate enough to be able to choose Is choose somebody who's going to be a really wise counsel counselor for you The next topic is co-founding Most people can't start a business by themselves because it's brutally hard It's the same reason that a lot of people can't get their workout routine going. They need a gym buddy A gym friend It's a lot easier to go to the gym and experience all that pain when you've got a friend Who's experiencing that pain with you and helps you get out of bed and go experience that pain It's the same thing with with startups Much much easier to experience a bunch of pain with Somebody that you're working with And when you choose a partner It is a partnership you're going to be spending most of your life with this individual for years And what you want to remember is this is a important partnership And the singular thing you want to look for in that partnership is shared values I I have so many stories of partnerships and companies that just absolutely blew up because the founders did not share values One founder wanted to spend money because you had to go big or go home and the other was like No, no, no, we need to be cautious and conservative with the way we spend money Destroyed they just ate each other apart over time Those sorts of core values have to be agreed on And and my recommendation I've written a blog post about this is that you actually sit down And you go through your core values in rank order and their core values in rank order And you see that you'll have overlap and if your top three or four values They aren't anywhere in their top five Get out of there. It's not going to be a marriage that lasts So just remember right divorces destroy Our fifth topic build a great team Your only potential competitive advantage Is the speed at which you can operate with a pittance of resources You need to you need to take those resources which are minuscule and you need to outperform Everybody else who has way more resource than you do and the only way you can do that Is with a core group of people who are rowing in synchronicity in the same direction with effort and energy That's a high performing team. You have to you have to do this And so my singular ask on this slide is go read the five dysfunctions of a team Patrick Lencioni magnificent book it outlines exactly all the characteristics you need Google did empirical research on their high performing teams called project Aristotle go read that That is great material And guarantee you that if you've got 10 or 20 people who are rowing in synchronicity With speed with alacrity you're going to run circles around teams of 100 or 200 And so your 2 million in capital is going to compete with 20 million That product manager at a large company going in and asking for 20 million most of the time doesn't happen So that's your competitive advantage And then finally people ask me what are the two most essential traits If I want to start a business And my answer is you have to have two One is you have to have a maniacal belief that you have value to deliver to the world And your belief is so maniacal at borders on on insane It's it's that crazy. It's that level of belief And two you have to have intimate comfort with the concept of fear and failure You are going to fail over and over and over again And those are going to be course corrections that make you stronger and you're going to adapt and you're going to succeed And you're going to face risk and fear all the time Whether it's putting your mortgage and your savings on the line Whether it's putting Employees on the line whatever you're going to experience that And so if you're not again familiar and comfortable with that It's not going to work And again, that's why you know 99 and a half percent of the great ideas out there never happen Is because the people don't have the the internal makeup They don't have that that level of passion and they don't have that level of comfort with fear So I want to leave you in that context with just a quote from From steve jobs. I had the good fortune to work at apple for almost 10 years at the beginning of my career So I revere steve a lot And he was asked what's the characteristic that a good entrepreneur needs and he said People say you have to have a lot of passion for what you're doing and it's totally true The reason is because it's so hard that if you don't any rational person Any rational person would give up And there it is here. He's talking about that belief that borders on on insane irrational So those are my six topics. I purposefully did that In a relatively short amount of time so that we have plenty of time for questions Which I'll take at this time So, uh, yep on the aisle up here Yes, you look. Oh, yeah, okay I have a question You were talking about the core values lining up with your partner. Yeah, however, I've seen situations where It's good to have diversity on them Where having one compliments the other instead of both being crazy and coming down the pipe together being an issue Yeah, that's fantastic point values are different from diversity Values are different than beliefs. And so yes, you want to have a variety of beliefs You want to have a variety of lived experiences? Absolutely. You want that diversity? But your core values are core Beliefs get changed with evidence and they get changed with situations and And it lived experience is is just what you have with you And and just I mean you're just gonna have to trust me from having seen so many partnerships destroyed by By a lack of shared values values are more fundamental And and when they conflict they conflict inside you in such an emotional way that it's really hard to get to get Over that because it's about your identity and your partner's identity So but great question Yeah, um, I have another question. Um, is it better to Like have a team of three co-founders than two co-founders. So, uh, like taking decisions Like, uh, he's led to uh, he's led by a vote we can say Uh I think it's I don't think there's a a good or bad. I don't think there's a a significant differential I think when you've got three co-founders who are so committed and have that sort of Irrational level of belief about what you're doing. That's just a more effort and more more energy towards the mission Uh, and again when you share the mission and when you share values Usually decisions You know happen in a relatively straightforward way I mean, I personally do believe that that groups of people don't make decisions unless it's you know Some sort of governance like uh in the u.s. Supreme court In a business individuals make decisions and so even if you have three co-founders Which decisions are you making which ones are the second one making which one's the third one making? and it's it's You know, there's only a few decisions that are so foundational that the three of you need to Uh get together and and sort of debate it and come to To consensus. Okay. So, uh, so a sense of tolerance Should be like is necessary between partners Because absolutely. Okay. Okay. Thank you. Absolutely. And and it's not to say that solo founders don't succeed. They do right?  It's just those are those are the few and far between Versus versus teams of people who share values and and an admission Yeah, go ahead. Uh, what do you think of startup accelerators like a white combinator then? Yeah, I think these are are pretty essential in the ecosystem For founders that don't have credibility because that's what that's essentially what those accelerators are doing Is they're giving you the first The first hint of credibility right by getting accepted You're getting through a screen a credibility screen and capital is going to look at that and say, oh great You know of the of all the options I have here's the 10 percent Here's the 15 percent that got through that screen and therefore they've got more credibility firstly and secondly The programs themselves, you know, I've been a mentor in tech stars since the very beginning and a mentor You know Dozen a dozen companies The programs themselves Do a great job of teaching right? I mean, that's a 25 minute session right? Those are those are 90 day immersive Programs immersive sessions, which by the way the first third of it is all about product market fit So I think they're quite good And and usually it's worth again back to the dilution comment at the beginning Usually it's worth the six percent that they take from from you And and it's worth the you know, however much capital It used to be with 100,000 with tech stars. Maybe it's still that way that you get And and you get a cohort of co-founders right so of peers right and That's another thing right having peers Having people who are going through the same experience as you are at the same time You know, you don't need them as a gym buddy But in the gym, you know, seeing a lot of people who are experiencing a lot of pain That's just you know, that's just helps get you out of bed and gives you a little bit more motivation It gives you a little bit more of a support structure I'll ask the next question here When should people avoid venture capital right? When is it, you know, you have a great idea And you go to pitch it and they tell you like hey, this isn't something that scales or is always different for venture Oh, so my first answer is always it's always good to avoid venture capital You want to start from first principles, which is I need to get customer capital And even if that's even if that's going to customers who are going to find so much value and saying hey I'm going to choose you as one of my first three customers You're going to give me enough money to build this product because you're going to help direct it There are other other moments and I think you referred to this where Where it is so hard to to get money, it's a hardware company. It's a deep science company And I think the success pattern I've seen there is by getting government money You know essentially grants that get you that get you started or again some significant customer that gets you started Oftentimes that is the government right the government may see something that's deep science deep tech enough And and and that's your contribution is the sort of the depth of that science that you that you understand Where you're going to where you're going to be able to get that kind of capital Hello, very interesting talk and thank you for sharing You were talking about non-delutive financing and saying that it's not that important to think about the percentage of delusion that you left during the negotiation I have a question about that. How do you manage the lose of control that can occurs with this delusion because I saw many situations where co-founders Were just fired out because of that. Yeah, that's right Venture isn't necessary evil. Don't take it if you don't have to Because that's the deal you're making a deal with the devil You're making a deal that I have to turn your money into more money quickly and you're and they are now your owners They're not necessarily your majority owners in terms of the amount of the company They own but they're definitely your owners in terms of what they can control Right, they can control whether you are the ceo or not And and by the way they should right I mean these are folks who if you get the right partner They've got vast amounts of experience with what the success patterns are And if your behavior as the ceo is dysfunctional Right, if your behavior as a ceo is is you know pushing things in a direction that the mission isn't going to be achieved And their money isn't going to turn into more than you should go Right, that's just called accountability So but yes, right, this is this is why you want to think really really carefully Before you take other people's money because you're you're Because that's the deal is that you're putting them into positions of holding you accountable and having those Those positions on your cap table my comment about dilution is don't worry about 20 percent dilution versus 18 versus 17 versus 23 It's just silly right because when you do the math over two or three rounds It ends up being like Again like a net total of 10 percent of the at the end and and then Again, when you do the math in the success case, you're walking away with many millions of dollars and boohoo You didn't have a half a million dollars or whatever regarding found raising you you say that we have We have to seek for customer capital or Avenger capital what are your thoughts on Love money, which is taking money from your family and relatives dangerous Most I mean most people start there right because because those who love you find you credible It's true and uh And so You know here you are you have an irrational belief that your thing is is so valuable to society that society needs it You know, it's it's hard for a loved one to sort of not get drawn into that passion Uh And it and it comes with dangers, right? Um, I think my counsel there is is to be really really clear with your loved ones You could lose this money. No, no really for real. You could lose this money And if you can't afford to lose this money, do not give it to me right just If if you would go to las vegas and put this money down on black knowing that there's a 50 chance It's 50 chance. You'd lose it Great, I'll take your money If you would never do that Don't give it to me because there's less than a 50 50 chance that I'm going to turn your money into money So just right just to have a really clear good conversation with them Hello Uh, it's here. Oh, thanks for the talk. Uh, you were talking about passion While doing the while growing the business Do you think that there is a thing? Such as too much passion and if there is How how would you detect it in your opinion, of course? That's a great question. Uh, I I suppose in theory, there's such a thing as too much passion Uh I think it's hard to figure out When that might be Yeah, I mean There's a there's a concept of attachment, right If if you if you embed too much of who you are as an individual in your passion, that's dangerous Right, because then the failures are going to eat at you 10 times as much and you're going to say oh my gosh I'm such a terrible person because it's my identity. Um, so yeah, I think you want to Uh, I think you want to be really clear that your passion is directed at this Passion that this concept in this moment of time. It's not It's not me. It's not my identity Uh, that's at stake here Tim we're going to take probably two more questions. Maybe three. I see three hands right as a topic We could talk about all day So I'm going to ask a question given that we're in open source conference one mistake. I kind of see a lot where A founder is really excited about the technology and not so excited about the business part getting customers Pricing things going through that whole motion. What is your advice when A team of founders has a you know of love for the technology not so much the business start a nonprofit Seriously just just put the put the technology into a nonprofit and be really clear with whoever is going to you know Give you donations to Feed your process It's a nonprofit if if you if you don't have passion for building a for-profit thing Don't do it What a good example be like let's encrypt I think they had a really great product open source project and they went the nonprofit route Lots of people use let's encrypt if you I don't know but they are a nonprofit. They are not a venture backed Uh company selling it for for for profit business. Would that be a good example of going that route? Perfect. Yeah, perfect Yep, uh, thank you for the talk. Uh, I have a question. Is there any sense in exploring venture to benefit from those Success patterns they may be familiar with Yeah, there's some benefit to it And if you Again, if you believe that you've got the credibility and and again, usually Usually you're building credibility because you've you've built the beginnings of a thing and customers are coming towards you and and And sort of validating the beginnings of product market fit. And so yeah, venture capital can certainly accelerate that And and I think that's a great place to look at and think about taking venture capital is Is if you're sort of bursting at the seams with oh my gosh, I have product market fit There are customers and I can't serve customers fast enough That's a beautiful moment And and yeah, they do bring a lot of wisdom and a lot of pattern matching Um And and I think there's a lot of ways to get that wisdom and pattern matching without them necessarily being a Part of your cap table and owning a piece of your business Again, unless right, there's the situation where you've got Sort of pretty clear pathways and runway to growth I think maybe one more So my question here will be When you start this business with your partners and you know, you know You're expecting to be successful And and that's the expectation for everyone But then when you're just users are starting to be successful And you didn't agree from from the first stand like how we're gonna divide this What's what's like the right moment to agree on what if we you know, if we hit the pocket like Hit the jackpot like how we're gonna divide this stuff at the beginning Yeah, I'm those all of those sorts of questions are at the beginning conversation In this scenario in that scenario And and walk yourself back and say are we all comfortable with the way we're gonna behave in in this scenario Yeah, please. Okay. And but commonly in maybe in the beginning, you know, certainly on Like who's gonna invest Most of their time or be more valuable to the company and then you might make mistake on those decisions Yeah, this is this is true, you know, so how you split your cap table at the beginning It is it's a negotiation amongst the partners. So The thing I usually counsel is make sure that you have a five-year stock vesting period and a two-year vest so No businesses most businesses aren't going to have any hint of getting off the ground for at least two years And so it gives you two years as a partnership to figure out Who's adding value are they adding enough value or they adding the kind of value that they that they have on the cap table and right and And after two years great two years of your stock has vested And then you still got three more to go, right? And and that that gives your partnership time and it also, you know, even three years into this if one of you isn't Pulling the weight then the other two partners are like well, at least we got back two years of their of their capital Right, they didn't they didn't just walk off because it was granted at the very beginning. So thanks That's that's a piece that I usually counsel pretty strongly um Is it risky if um, like, um, two co-founders doesn't share the same, uh, I don't know risk awareness or level or Like a rationality level or is it good to have some kind of balance? Why taking like Yeah, it's good. It's good to have some risk balance. It's good to have a dreamer and a skeptic and meet in the middle Okay, uh, you know, again, those usually aren't Sort of core values. Um, it's just sort of how do I operate in the world? Yeah, but like the the difference in this kind of like kind of core value. Is it good? Okay, I think so All right, I'm gonna give you your last question here There are a lot more startup employees than there are founders And so there are a lot of people here that are probably maybe not being necessarily interested in becoming a founder But they might want to go work for a startup. You know one question that I've learned there's many Um, how much runway do you have and looking for that honest answer? And why what would be your advice for someone that's looking to join a startup? How should they evaluate that startup? How should they think about compensation including equity? What would your advice be to them given that 25 years of experience? That's a it's a complicated question. Um, take all the time you need run runway um You know runway for me Six to 12 months You're not you don't really have any better answer from any big company. You're gonna join You know might there be layoffs six months after you join of course and might you be impacted of course, right? There's no there's no, you know, there's a there's an impression that they're more solid And they're they are, you know, marginally But you know, but I would look for six to 12 months Especially in in today's world where most people can go get, you know, another job relatively quickly in in the tech industry You know and then in terms of evaluation You know, it's actually no different evaluation than an investor is doing Is is the market sizable enough and growing fast enough is your product uniquely differentiated and likely to compete, right? Or likely to get product market fit. Is the team highly passionate about it? Are you passionate about this mission? And and do they have the sort of wherewithal to execute, right? Do they have the experience in this particular problem solution set space? So, I mean, those are the basics of what Of what venture capital looks for when they invest because you're you're doing the same thing You're investing You're investing your sort of marginal earning power today in return for tomorrow and then in terms of equity The the industry is is for the most part pretty bounded by how much equity they can give out Uh, you know An executive is is probably going to get no more than one percent of the equity Uh, a senior engineer is probably going to get no more than sort of half a percent and most people are going to get 0.1 to 2.2 percent As a as a basis a quick follow up there On the other side of this equation Hiring how fast How are you looking for talent most founders? I know are hiring directly from their network I used to work with this person at company a I want to bring them on with this thing But then eventually you start hiring people you don't necessarily know What's your advice on the other side of that equation? Once you get to that point, um, I go back to values. I mean at the last three businesses We've got our values agreement. It's it's three or four pages Of the core values for the for the business And once we've determined that the person we've never met they're not part of our network has the competencies We're looking for we're determining whether they have the values that we're looking for And we actually have them sign an agreement. I understand these values. I'm going to model these I'm going to uphold them. I'm going to hold other people accountable to them And and I'm going to sign those value statements So thank you Great session, uh, appreciate all the awesome questions I'm glad that we spent a lot of time with questions because That's really the fun part of of a talk like this. All right. Thank you, Tim


Certain U.S. airports have started to deny entry to Chinese graduate students trying to come back to the U.S. from China, even the ones from Yale University. So, we gotta talk about it. What's going on? You know, for me, I just went back for the year of the dragon. And now I've been dragged in to some sort of geopolitical beef. What's going on? The geopolitical wars of the world. Let's read the headline. China says students, including those at Yale, are subjected to interrogations and deportations at U.S. entry points. Andrew, the main U.S. entry point is Dulles Airport in Washington, D.C. They've been deporting the most. Yeah, Dulles Airport. I mean, I think Washington, D.C., it being the nation's capital, I guess I could see them being the strictest. But anyways, David, basically what's happening is that these are Chinese graduate students who go to Yale University, but might have gone to undergrad in China. And that's part of the issue here. I'm going to get into the details of something that I read off the Yale News website. But basically, they're getting to the airport after visiting China and then all the TSA and everybody's like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, where are you from? Let us interrogate you. And then even after a 12 or 8-hour interrogation, they're sending them back to China. We gotta talk about it, man. Make sure you like, subscribe, turn on your notifications. By the way, guys, check out smileysauce, smileysauce.com. I'll say this. Obviously, this is unfortunate. And our geopolitical tensions are at a high right now. I do think it is variable per airport. You know what I mean? Like if you flew into a different airport, they might not have that protocol or even that knowledge base in place. You mean certain airports are probably going to be more on top of things and more strict enforcing? Because this is something that was especially enforced during the Trump administration. But I will say this. During the Biden administration, I heard it didn't get flipped and turned over. So people are still operating off of the Trump protocol. Yeah. I mean, let's be honest. These grad students, if they had a macro bird's eye view of like the tone or the temperature, they probably shouldn't have flown back. You think so? Yeah. Like I know some Chinese grad students in New York right now that are like, yeah, I'm not going to go back. I can all take the risk. Right. Because you just don't know what's going to happen. Even if you have a valid visa, that doesn't mean that you will be for sure let in. Because if they find any reason, any reason at all, which the reason is for some of these people, for example, one student from Yale, a graduate student, a PhD student at Yale named Zhang, he basically it's because his undergraduate college in China was considered to be involved in part of a government military civil fusion strategy. I don't know what that means, but it was deemed as a potentially military adjacent college. Right. Like a quasi West Point or something like that or something like that. I'm maybe not even a West Point level, but something that having to do with the Chinese military programming. And since he graduated from there as the undergrad and then he goes to Yale when he tried to come back, I guess they denied him. And it's unfortunate. I'm not saying there aren't legitimate reasons to deny somebody entry, but right now, so much stuff is in a gray zone, you know, and as an undergrad, he may have just been like, yeah, it was just a good project to participate in. You know what I mean? Like he's just trying to build his resume. He's like, yeah, they're funding the research. I'm doing it. He's not even thinking about any of this stuff. Yeah. But yeah, I mean, obviously, I'm obviously America has the right to make the reads that they see fit to like on the flip side. Yes. But who's making the reads and with what threshold or like, you know what I mean? Or, or, or are any of these people being racist? We don't know. But anyways, we're going to get in the comment section because I think there's a range of opinions. I went on some of the subreddits, Andrew, that are more like definitely not Asians, right? They were more like, listen, there was good reason. If you get sent away, they have done the investigation. They have done their due diligence. You deserve to be considered untrustworthy. That is an opinion on the internet. Yeah. Yeah. Listen, I have a friend who is a Asian guy from Britain, born and raised in Britain, and he got denied at the Seattle airport because not because he wasn't supposed to be here, done no crime, but he was kind of like working when he wasn't supposed to. And if you're visiting the US from the international space from any country, even from Canada, you're not supposed to make money and work in America without a work visa. So technically he was working on the low getting paid beneath under the table. And they found that out. How did they find that out? I don't know. They interrogated him, obviously. And this guy, he's not even a Chinese citizen at all. So he's a British citizen. Yeah. He's a British citizen, pure British. So it wasn't because he was Asian then, but it was because he was doing something he wasn't supposed to. So I guess the argument is that these people did the due diligence and found some reason to deny the student entry, even though they had been a Yale graduate student. Right. Somebody said that it was how come it's just all from one airport? Doesn't it go to show you that different airports have different leadership and different standards? You're right. You're right. You're right. Duelist airport in Washington. I think maybe that one's the strictest, though, because it's kind of Washington, D.C. That's like flying into Beijing versus like you can find a chundu chundu. Everybody's a rapper or a tattoo artist. You go to Beijing. Everybody works. Who knows? Maybe if these people had flown into the New Orleans airport or Atlanta or Kansas City or they're like, here's some whiskey. Here's some bourbon. Get in there saying party or even SFO. I don't know. I don't know why it's particularly the Washington, D.C. airport. I don't know. Well, there's some logic to their guess. There's logic. Somebody just said, no, it's actually systematic signophobia in America.  Yeah. David, this is true. I noticed that even when we got back from certain countries, even when we're going through the end of customs, not that I've been interrogated, but they did like ask some extra questions like that quick interview at the end when you do pass them their password. For sure. For sure. If you come back from China, they're going to ask you a few more questions than if you come back from France. Maybe if you come back from France, they're just like, hey, good bread over there, right? I remember one time, one customs agent was like, hey, man, welcome back to home. They don't have all that. The guns and the hunting and the fishing and the shooting ranges like we got over here, right? Because he like kind of saw me, I guess, as a, I don't know, like an outdoorsy guy or something like that. And I was just like, oh, no, they don't have shooting ranges over there. Well, we were coming back from Asia. Yeah. I was coming back from China. Oh, yeah. So there was some sense of like, hey, man, you're on our team, right? Like you're on team like outdoorsmen.  I was like, David, I was like, are you inviting me? Am I going to like, is there a kickback somewhere? Where's the barbecue? Are we going on ATVs? I'm invited to the mud swamp or whatever.   Both things have some truth to them that like I get the rival aspect. There's some legitimate rivalries going on right now with the, you know, PhDs and science or whatever. But it's also been super politicized and trumped up in the media and exaggerated by people who do not know the hardcore semantics and the logistics. Listen, nobody really knows what's going on. I know some grad students here who don't know if they'll be allowed to come back into the US if they leave back to China. So the truth is, is there a way to make it clear to people? Like, should you just tell all grad students, hey, be very, very careful? You might not want to leave to go back to China right now just because they, we don't know because this is the times. This is the geopolitical vibe right now. Unfortunately, there is tension. There is possibly a war going on essentially going on right now. We don't know if it's been going on or if it's not about to start or whatever. So be more careful. Like, is that the message that should be sent to Chinese international grad students? Because like, should it be clear because it's like, I think it's terrible to be working so hard for a PhD program.  And then you can't come back to America. You know, there's the reality of it and how it plays out in politics. I think that the reality, if you really look at the trade relations and the amount of economics that's going back and forth, it's way closer to frenemies than enemies. But the way it's sold in the media and people are trying to score points for their political crowd to win elections, to do things to look tough on this, look tough on that. There's a lot of posturing and almost like PR campaigns. And a few grad students not being able to finish their PhD, Andrew, that's nothing a politician wanting to make a statement. No, for sure. For sure. But you know what I'm saying? It's like, there's the reality of it. And then there's how it's playing out. And that almost becomes people's reality who don't study the actual thing. Yeah. And it's unfortunate. And there's a lot of collateral damage in that and people's PhD programs. That's nothing. Right. Somebody to chalk it up to be like, yo, this was just a pawn in posturing or whatever or jujitsuing this thing. Like this guy brought up that there has been longstanding sinophobia in America because do less Andrew, the guy that the airport is named after in Washington D.C. One time was posturing in the Pentagon that they should nuke China back in 1958. So the irony is that at the douless airport, the douless man who's named after wanted to nuke China, or at least thought of that. They had discussions and it was over something that totally was like that was like complete overkill. And I'll ask this. Why is America always talking about nuke in Asians, man? Yeah. Yeah, America. You want to nuke anybody else but Asians. It'd be interesting if there was ever a nuke again. And it was also on Asian looking people. That would be really telling. Yeah, if it's two for two or three for three guys, come on. That's a pattern. So anyways, guys, yeah, this is a complicated issue. We obviously do not know the details of why these students got denied. Do they unfortunately have some family ties that are closer to the Chinese government and military? If the dad or the uncle is the general, it's logical. The logic would make sense. It is true. It is true that they're we're in a complicated time and it is not cut and dry and and yeah, I just don't know. People's academic careers are essentially collateral damage to the times. Well, I mean, a lot of them can still finish online, but they can't come back to America. And I don't know, guys, being Chinese yet again is confusing in America. But anyways, you guys let us know in the comments down below. Let's have a discussion, share your perspective, share opinions. Do you know anybody who ever got denied at the airport? Why or why was that? I know people personally. I've also been interrogated at the Canadian border. Oh, my goodness, man. We got man. I'll tell you this from being that being Chinese going into Canada, Canada coming into the US flying back from China, but you get is different. Yeah. If you you guys don't know what that's like being Asian, trying to cross into the Canadian border and getting stopped interrogated.  But then if we come back from China, then people are like, we've been with our family before and being viewed as essentially like Chinese nationals too. Yeah, it's crazy guys being Chinese.  It varies per border guard.  They tend to be more on like archetypical. They fit in more of a stereotype. Let us know what you think in the comments down below. If you found this interesting, hit that like button. And until next time, we out. Peace.


Hi everyone, Joe for Jaspy's casebreaks.com coming at you with 2019 2020 Panini Chronicles basketball Random team break number 33. It's blaster edition and we're giving away 15 teams and the brand-new contenders optic pick your team number one So we're gonna do the break itself first At the end we'll re-randomize everybody's names the name on top gets the wizards the 15th name down gets the Kings Just in that order right there We'll do that a little bit later Let's do the break itself first big thanks to these folks for getting into it appreciate it And that brand-new contenders optic is gonna be coming up in a separate video right after this So for the names and teams six times one and a five one two three four five and Sixth and final time after six. We got Sean Matic down to Matt Hedges Sean down to Matthew One and a five six times for the teams one two three four five and Sixth and final time. We've got the Orlando magic down to the Milwaukee Bucks All right, so there's the first half of the list right here and the second half of the list right here zoom in with the Bulls Mavs Grizzlies for Sean They're the palette Chris Erickson with the Pelicans Could be interesting it's a blaster box as opposed to like a Retail pack a hanger pack so that could make things a little more interesting in this blaster box All right, let's print. Let's rip no trade windows and stuff like this Got a little hoops going on right now Celtics and heat Pink parallels are what we're looking for here. That's a close one right now after that free throw Miami 37 35 with five minutes left in the first half Full security retail thing right here Yes, Logan. That's why they're not on Tyler hero. What are you doing?  The Andre Hunter rookie card is a pink parallel exclusive to this set the honest And then a ja marant pink nice that is for Sean Matic and the Grizzlies. That's pretty nice So it's exclusive to this blaster set and part of that essential set which I think people really like At least on the secondary market Another ja marant That's another pink parallel to that's a prestige This is the prestige design pink parallel Not too shabby at all not too shabby at all And ja marant Marquis at the end That's a nice Tyler hero right there Playing some good basketball in the bubble and in the playoffs Giannis rookies and stars And I think these prism cards are actually more like prism like updates So that's a nice anthony davis right here. He's got a little more rebound anthony davis next game Denver played great though.  Let's see who's going to get teams In fact, it's going to be half of that list Is going to get teams So good luck Pretty good odds here So let's roll it. Let's randomize it Three and a one four times a three and one one two three and Fourth and final time after four There you go. I mean from 16 down to 30 Appreciate you giving it a shot. We'll get him next time To the top 15 right here. There you go A lot of names right here. Let's copy your names Put them into this list Sean with the wizards mark with the nicks Matthew hedges with the bucks ea with the calves T wolves for asa david with the spurs erin pettit with the clippers jake with the sixers chris with the blazer Sean maddock with the raptors brandon with the pistons zoom in with the magic Derek with the rockets zoom in with the pacers and olver you got your kings. There you go. We'll put a little uh I guess we'll put I guess we did a couple of these. So let's put uh chronic blast 33 That'll be the designation we'll put next to your name. So you know you won that in this particular blaster break Congrats to all apologies to to the other half. We'll get him next time. Thanks for trying. I'm joe. I'll see you next time jasky's case breaks.com


Whoo, that's a hot mug guys. Hey guys, this is my review for Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire Now this is actually The tipping point for me in terms of my fandom for Harry Potter because after this film came out Things changed for me drastically with which I'll talk about near the end of the review This film has Mike Newell as the new director as well as Roger Plant Coming back a Roger Platt returning as DOP you guys remember his work He was the one who decided to do all the Dutch angles in Chamber of Secrets and He's back with a reckoning because when the Quidditch World Cup camp goes all the topsy-turvy with the Death Eaters coming He's doing Dutch angles more than frickin battlefield earth was this Dutch angle Dutch angle Dutch angle Dutch angle This film is also kind of a strange amalgamation of what Chris Columbus had done with the first two films as well as the Updated sort of view and visual representation that Alfonso Perron had done in the third film This film also marks the first time that John Williams is not doing the score Michael Gambon really Takes a step with Dumbledore in this film He's there in the third one and Admittedly I was one of those kids again writing on nostalgia who didn't exactly like Gambon at first But by God does he cut down on the script by like half an hour if Richard Harris had somehow survived for another 10 years I honestly have no idea how they would have done the latter scenes especially leading towards the half-blood prince I have no idea how Harris would have been able to get through those without even falling asleep clearly having like a Thing in front of him telling him what his lines are or just not giving a shit I think that this film is a commendable effort It's not one of the standout ones in terms of the films But it does set the tone for what is to come That was what it felt like with the book Admittedly prisoner of Azkaban kind of set us up for this So it's not as much of a gut punch as it was when reading the series This is definitely the most action-packed Harry Potter film of all of them because of the Triwizard Tournament The challenges that he Harry has to go through as well as it also Introduces my favorite character at least one of my favorite characters in the Harry Potter series Alistair Moody however, the one issue the big issue I've always had with Alistair Moody is What we technically got was the Barty Crouch Jr. version of Alistair Moody is the actual Alistair Moody Like the version that we got her is he a little bit different and that's something that kind of was never fully Developed or he might have been in the order of the phoenix, but honestly I can't tell you because I hated that book It took so long for me to read emo Harry just going the children one It just that's a bad representation of it But that's what I felt like reading that book back onto this film. I feel that While Rogers Cinematography is not the most welcome. I was very much enjoying the previous guy's work It's not the worst it works in the dream Sequences it works when Voldemort is revealed He does try a few different things other than a Dutch angle here and there But admittedly he does rely on it a bit too much Speaking of too much the hair Who thought that this was a good idea give all of the boys mops Was it the actors choices? Was it the productions choices to be honest in the entire series of all the Harry Potter movies All of the decisions all of the changes all of the casting choices every single choice that was made in this entire series The worst one in my opinion was going with this hairstyle Ron looks like a twit Harry looks like a twit their hair is terrible And I don't understand why they went with this because everyone else looks nice in this movie except for these two bumbling idiots Neville even gets a little bit of Introduction and that's something else that the series also started to delve into was hey There's other people in this series besides the three main leads. They don't get as much screen time as One would hope for especially with Neville and the arc that he's gonna go through later on However, I still feel that it's welcome to see other characters besides the main three and this is also The beginning of me not liking Ron. I can't stand Ron as I pointed out in my philosopher stone Review I feel that his purpose his overall usefulness to the series pretty much was tapped out after the first movie because after this He just becomes a jerk. He just becomes a whiner He doesn't do anything Hermione and Harry are the ones who are solving everything whereas Ron's in the back going It's very interesting to think about it because when I finished the Harry Potter novel series I do remember having a distinct thought that I actually never liked any of the main characters by the end of it I was more attached to the story I was more attached to the world than I was to the characters plights It's funny to think about it that rolling couldn't write three characters to be interesting for me by the end because as we're gonna see Ron and Hermione just keep doing the same loop that keep doing the same thing I remember that distinctly in the novels I just remember these two just going through spats over and over again and even though it was pretty obvious by the second book They were gonna end up together I don't understand how because they would definitely be divorced if they were a real-life couple, but gobbled a fire It's fun. It's not a step backwards, but it's also not a step forwards. I would say it's Hmm. It's kind of just in the middle of the road. It doesn't further anything in terms of how the film Establishes the world establishes them how Harry Potter and his friends kind of go on their adventures. It's just Slightly like two but with a breath of three So again, not that much of an advancement especially considering the Magnitude of this however seeing Ralph Fiennes as Voldemort is quite entertaining as a kid I thought he was a bit scary, but seeing him here. I'm laughing every time He's like But also speaking of which This is at the point in time if I'm correct. I might be wrong But I believe before the fifth film came out the seventh book came out. I lost all love for the series Because in my interpretation Voldemort got beaten by a case of Butterfingers, but that's something that we're gonna talk about obviously as we go on But maybe when I start the fifth review I'll kind of go a little bit more into that in the end though I'm gonna give the goblet of fire a four out of seven. It's okay Yeah, that's it. Anyways guys I hope you enjoyed this review if you did leave a like and if you're interested in more subscribe Otherwise, I'll see you guys next time Thanks for watching the video My name is Nitz and you might remember me from the animated cult classic TV show undergrads It's been a while, but I'm happy to say the click is finally getting back together in an all-new movie Thanks to a successful Kickstarter campaign But we are still asking for your support to see any and all updates about the upcoming undergrads movie Be sure to check out and like the bring back undergrads Facebook page and with any luck. We'll see you guys soon


Today, I have the pleasure of speaking with Justin Reed from Trollus Gold. How are you today? I'm great. Thanks. Good morning, Tracy.  He wrote, when a company that at this time has a market cap of roughly 100 million announces, it's raising 45 million or roughly 25% of its existing value. One has to take notice. And of course, he raises 45 million. So let's start there with an update on your raise. Yeah, we we've completed two raises in the last month. 45 million, which was an upsize from 35, a bought deal with a syndicate of six institutional brokers and banks, massively oversubscribed had about $100 million in the book, which is great. Taking in to account the flow through premiums, we raise the money at about an average cost of $1.45 a share, which was a pretty significant premium to where we were trading. And then alternatively, last week, we closed an additional 11.1 with the government of Quebec at the exact same price. And of course, we have to follow. We're following the money. It's attracted to Trollus Gold. Can you tell us what you're doing right and the competitive advantages of why we should all have Trollus Gold on our watch list today? Well, we we now have 58 institutions on our register. And majority have been with us since the beginning. Trollus is a large asset in a great jurisdiction that's already had an incredible amount of de-risking complete. 8.1 million ounces moving to the pre-feasibility level with an existing mining lease in place and a history of over 2 million ounces of production. We're going to be able to show in the very near term a 20 year plus open pit mine producing over 250,000 ounces of gold a year with copper and silver credits in a great jurisdiction of Quebec, which in this world of volatility takes a lot away. Okay, so we have room though for retail investors. Is that correct? Yeah, we we've made a real push in the last year in expanding our retail presence. And then the last deal that we announced, we we we carved out 20% of the deal for our retail following. And that's something we're going to continue to do in the future. And obviously talking to you Tracy, we're spending a lot more time talking to the drivers of the market, which is really the retail investors. Well, I'll tell you investors like myself, we do follow what the institutions are investing in because of course they have huge investments in their infrastructure. So let's also jump to the Quebec government, which also is giving you a vote of confidence. Let's talk about your most recent news and their involvement. Yeah, the investment Quebec, the Quebec government through investment Quebec invested 11.1 million dollars in tutorials, which which is great. Our balance sheet incredibly strong now we have almost 60 million dollars in the bank and three years of runway. More importantly, it was a culmination of almost a year of due diligence, not only technical, but environmental and social jobs, taxation, impact to the Quebec north. And all of that led to this initial investment, which is great, and a huge vote of confidence for us. But more importantly, we established the framework with IQ, with FDQ and with the case, our largest, three of our five largest shareholders, all Quebec based institutions to establish a working group to move towards full project financing, which I think when you're at the pre feasibility level is a major de-risking event for any company, knowing that the financing or the ultimate construction capital required is already being considered and being considered from great partners. Speaking of great partners, let's just jump right into your most recent drilling results. This is a former producing mine that you're reopening, correct? Yes. Okay, and the drilling results, we have had some feedback, wanting to know if your drilling results are competitive enough with some of the many companies out there that are currently, you know, putting out their drilling results. I mean, there's some spectacular results out right now if you look at Great Barren Others, and I'm a shareholder. Troilus operated for 14 years at the exact grade we're drilling now. We've discovered a new zone in the southwest, which in one month of drilling last year, we defined 600,000 ounces at surface. We have since drilled another 30,000 meters in the southwest. That's going to be included in our new resource in the in the coming weeks. As well, the J zone, which is one of the past producing pets, we found a new extension. It's expanded over 850 meters along strike, and all shallower than 200 meters. We're drilling between 30 and 60 meters of a gram plus material in an area which we had modeled as waste. So an economic deposit is being increased or is getting better because we're replacing waste with ore, and that's full margin to the bottom line. So speaking of that, what should we as shareholders anticipate? I mean, we've had a lot of news here in the last couple of months. Can you talk to what we should anticipate, say in the next quarter? We're still drilling 10,000 meters a month with between four and five rigs, depending if it's moving or not. That's infill expansion and regional exploration. So a lot of new news talking about trellis growing, about trellis not only being a deposit but being part of a district, hence our 1,400 square kilometers that we've acquired over the last three years looking at for the first time. They're going to have a new resource from us this quarter, which is going to show continue growth. We've added six and a half million ounces in the last two years. That growth is going to continue and more importantly, we're going to be able to show our inaugural reserve which is a major de-risking event for us and that's all going to culminate into our pre-feasibility towards the end of the year. So lots of news supplemented with exploration results. Well, Justin, as always, it's a pleasure to get an update on trellis gold and have you here on Investor Intel. Thank you. Thank you very much, Tracy.


Hi, I'm Realtor Sara Mara with Cell State Peak Realty. I am so excited to chat current market activity with today's guest, Anthony Meisner, who does sales for land title. He's been in the industry for nine years and his focus is residential data and helping us Realtors use and distribute that data to serve our clients well and to create happy homeowners. Anthony is also a real estate investor who holds a degree in economics and he's the co-chair of the affiliate committee for Bolo Realtors. He loves geeking out on stats but presents data in a fun, approachable way on his own YouTube channel that is loaded with relevant and useful market content. He's committed to developing himself and others. He loves Longmont and he loves his wife who he's been married to now for eight years. He has two adorable young sons. He's always down for some kickball and some paddle boarding. And today we get to bend his ear on what's going on out there as the summer winds down. Good morning, Anthony. Good morning. Thanks for having me. Thank you for being here. So let's dive right in. I guess the most burning question that people have and that I have for the expert is why buy right now? Like late August, early September used to be a great time to buy and it seems like this year is a little bit of an exception. Is it still a good idea for me to buy a house right now? Yeah. So I think one of the bigger things that you want to think about and this is what I tell everybody that's either buying or selling so much has changed this year because of economic uncertainty and because of rising interest rates. So all the timing of the market is really off. One of the bigger things you have to remember is usually we peak in our market with peak sales around June or May. This year it was really April. So the biggest thing about that is with buyers kind of pulling back early, it's created a rise in inventory which it's not extreme by any stretch of the imagination.  This year at least you have a few options and you're really going to be able to kind of take advantage of some of that inventory rise. Now is it still competitive? Absolutely. It's very competitive, but you don't want to wait till later this year where you might be priced out of the home you want or interest rates might have risen even more to where that makes stuff less affordable. So there's a lot to that question, we'll unwrap more of it obviously, but I think it's very important to understand that timing of the market is not always the same. It's not always the same. And I guess the same question, you sort of answered it, but sellers seem to be even more fearful right now than buyers. But you're saying there's enough activity right now that whether you're buying or selling, get out there. Yeah. So from a seller's standpoint, I think the big part to remember is inventory has been at the absolute lowest rate it has ever been at starting in like January, February timeframe, right? So by the time that we get to here we are in July, August, you know, there has been a lot more inventory come on the market. It's like this every year. It's very seasonal. The bulk of the listings come on between March and October, but that doesn't necessarily mean that this is a bad time to sell because a balanced market occurs around four to six months of inventory. We're at, you know, not even two. So we're way into a seller's market in any normal seller's market that we've seen in years past, call it 2016, 2017. We have less inventory today than we did then. So that's what's driving these bidding wars. That's what's driving a lot of this behavior. So as a seller, you're going to see inventory rise all the way through October because that's when we see all the listings come to market and we have reduced buyer activity right now, but this is a great time to sell because we're still in an extreme seller's market. Is it as extreme as February? No. Are we seeing bidding wars like we did earlier this year? Not nearly as much, but that doesn't mean that, you know, they aren't happening. Right? They're still happening. Could you clarify? You mentioned four to six months of inventory and balanced market. And I don't think that's a very household sort of a term for some of my viewers. Fair enough. So a balanced market really just means that the buyer and the seller are on even footing. So it means that like the seller is asking for some things. The buyer can come back and say, you know, I like this, but, you know, we need you to replace the roof because the roof isn't in adequate shape or, you know, there's other inspection objections that might actually get dealt with. When the buyer and seller on even footing, they need each other equally, right? So the big difference in a seller's market like we are today, there's not enough inventory out there. There's all these home buyers out looking and shopping and, you know, there's ten people coming to your house on the first weekend. Well, you wouldn't see that type of behavior in a balanced market. I see. So if four to six months' worth of inventory, what is that, like before we run out, like what do you mean? Yeah, that's exactly what it means. It means if no other listings came on the market, when would we run out of homes for sale? To reach the demand of the buyer. To reach the demand of the buyer. So four to six months' worth of houses sitting on the market at any given time is balanced. Cool. Thank you for that. Yeah. Okay. Let's talk a little bit about like you are so good at really getting down to the granular details of various parts of Boulder County. I love the way you send me the Boulder County stats and then also really hone in on Longmont. Let's, because, you know, I like to specialize in Longmont, let's talk about, you know, I have some friends who rent in Longmont and they're nervous that they've been priced out of Longmont. So they want to buy in Longmont. They love it here, but they're kind of starting to face the music. They might have to move to move east, move north. Talk about Longmont, what you're seeing as opposed to Boulder County and some of the neighboring town. Yeah. So Boulder County and Weld County, obviously, they're kind of coming together here in Longmont in many ways. The big thing about Longmont is its proximity to city centers, to jobs, and to a growing economy are really matched by not very many other cities, right? Broomfield's kind of in that position, but your proximity to Boulder's really good. It's drivable into Denver. You're drivable into Northern Colorado. You know, Weld County is booming in this area and the Southwest Weld County market. So all that being coupled has pushed a lot of infrastructure and a lot of building and a lot of jobs into the Longmont market. And the Longmont market's actually bigger than the city of Boulder at this point and it represents a large amount of this part of the area. I mean, Longmont is actually being considered part of the Denver Metro area in many ways, like from large-scale economic perspectives because people will literally drive from Longmont to work in the downtown Denver and that proximity really drives a lot of appreciation in the marketplace. That's why you're seeing 10%, 11% more expensive than this time last year in many ways. And that really is a major factor in Longmont, right? Longmont is this city center. It's an economic driver in the area where if you were going to move outside of Longmont, you're not going to see as much appreciation in your homes. If you ever wanted to move back into Longmont, you might be stuck out somewhere else, right? You see this a lot in metropolitan areas like on the front range here where the farther west you are, the more expensive things get. The farther east you are, the cheaper it gets. But you don't get the same appreciation over time. So the farther east you go, the less likely you are to gain that equity growth that you're really looking for. I mean, yes, we all make decisions in our housing based off of what we need.  We got married. That might be. And that kind of drives our decision making. But in the back of your mind, you still need to think about, okay, well, if I'm going to trade up in the future, you know, what decisions do I need to make and where should I really buy, right? Because location, location, location is what we always say in real estate. Longmont is one of those locations where you can really expect some long-term growth. And specifically right now, like, what about Longmont? I don't know. How many houses are going on market? How many are you selling? Can you give us some of the stats specific to Longmont just very recent in the last month or two? Yeah, sure. So last month, we had 221 homes come on the market. Those are new active listings to come to market. Now if we have 151 homes that went under contract, so being that we're in this transitioning market, right, economic uncertainty, rising interest rates, buyers have really pulled back, but we were at such a low inventory level for so long that that's not necessarily a bad thing. We're finally getting some homes that come to market and you can actually go shop for something, but there's still 151 active buyers last month that went under contract, right? That's not all of what came on the market, but it's the large majority of it. Homes that are not ready for sale or homes that, you know, need remodeled or those kind of things shouldn't necessarily sell right away, right? And we've been in this market for so long where people are willing to do anything just to get a house. It's good for buyers to have some selection. We don't want 20% appreciation in the marketplace over the next year, right? It's still not affordable here, right? Correct. Those Gen Z and Millennial First-Time Homebuyers aren't having a hard time finding stuff to live in because now cost of money is expensive or at least more expensive. Right. In retrospect, it's close to where it's averaged out over the last 40 or 50 years, but, you know, we really need to see that affordability come back to reality, right? The last two years have been so wild that we really need to see that come in. So the fact that we're talking 10%, 11% appreciation in the Longmont Market probably over the next year is a really different scenario than a year ago at 20%, right? But I think if you're a buyer, you really need to understand one thing. Am I going to make more money next year than I am this year to offset the price of housing if I go to rent, right? So you may not be buying your ideal spot in Longmont, but what you want to do is you want to buy so you can get on the appreciation escalator, which is going to allow you to trade in something you really want later. Sure. Appreciation is the thing that's moving the fastest.  Right. Get your foot in the door. Build that equity, particularly in Longmont, if you can, and then play the long game. That's what I tell my clients all the time. So you touched on this, but can you say a little bit more about, I know COVID messed with a lot of this, but what are we seeing right now, August 22, as opposed to, you know, August of 21 and 20, and how are we comparing year over year right now with those stats? Okay. So, number one, those bidding wars that people were experiencing a year ago have really come down quite a bit. Now, earlier in the spring this year, we had a really vibrant sellers market because of the inventory shortage. That's really come down quite quickly, right? Our seasonality changed and shifted a couple months ahead of time, so it feels like we're in a fall market right now. Right. We're in August, we're not in a fall market, we're in the summer market, but it feels like we're maybe in October. That's just kind of how it feels. We have the rising inventory that's coming up. That inventory I think is a really positive thing for most people.  But what you are getting is you're getting consistent traffic, you're going to, if you price it right and it's buttoned up, it'll sell right away. Is it going to sell in one week? Maybe not. Maybe it's selling in, I think, long months at 13 days on average, right? So that active to under contract time has extended a little bit, but, I mean, let's be realistic, 13 days is amazing. There's times where even two or three years ago, 2019, we were talking 30 days, 40 days, right? So when we're talking those kind of differences, it's important just to understand perspective. Totally. Because historically, 13 days is the fastest market anyone's ever seen outside of last year. Right. Yeah, that's the other thing I've been telling people is like, because of the proximity of the insanity and because it was so recent that we saw some of this banana's behavior, people, they want it. They want it now, but it was right here, it was just there. I could have touched it. Anyways, thank you for those particulars. So I guess just another thing, what would you tell a seller? You mentioned like, price it right, button it up. Can you go into details about, okay, let's say I really want to sell my house. Maybe I'm regretting staying on the fence because I knew I needed to sell it back in February and I could have made a killing. What can I do now still to get top dollar and how can I reset those expectations a little bit? I mean, a lot of this is your expertise, but I'll give you the highlights that make the most sense. So number one being the fact that if the home is priced correctly, we're talking about markets here. So if it's priced right, it will sell. That doesn't necessarily matter about condition. If the condition is terrible and you price it correctly, it will still sell. If it's the most beautiful house in the block and it's priced correctly, it's going to sell too. So I think if you want to get top dollar, first of all, you have to price it right because you want it to move in the first weekend or at least in the first month. Because before it feels stale or stigmatized. The other thing is, all those things like fresh paint, curb appeal, like just button up the landscaping, they're just those little things that make a home feel like, oh wow, I really want this. This is the nicest one. It doesn't have to be amazing. And even something like staging, staging goes a long ways because it feels livable and then you take all your personal stuff out of it so you don't have pictures of your family and your kids in the wall because you want people to feel like they can live there. But I mean, that's your set of expertise. Those are just the highlights that absolutely have to be done if you want top dollar. Sure. Awesome. Well, I pretty much exhausted my questions. I guess I also am curious, you mentioned this multiple offer scenario. We aren't seeing 16 offers first weekend. Can you tell us, I know we were at 103% over asking. Can you explain what that means and how much things are going for in terms of what the asking is, the purchase price, if it's going over or if it's going under. That tends to be a lot of buzz. Yeah, so in a traditional market, the peak of the market usually tops out somewhere around 100%. 100% being, if you're asking $500,000 for a house, the buyer is going to offer $500,000 or maybe even a little bit more and then kind of negotiate back down to that $500,000 level. Back in April was the peak of the most crazy sellers market we've ever seen. We had 108% less sale price around here. Certain markets were even above that. And that was like bidding wars on every house. That was that, oh, it felt like I was getting 17 offers on a home or I had 100 people come to my house over the weekend. That's completely unsustainable. But when inventory is at rock bottom, that's what we see. So we go from one huge swing of the pendulum to the super seller side of the market to where now in June, we were at 103%. In July, we just got the data. We're at 100.7% or something like that. It's finally coming down, but that is really indicative of the supply line. So as supply rises, that's going to start to fall. In a traditional market, peak around 100% in the May timeframe. That's the hottest part of the market. And then people negotiate. If you want to sell a house for $500,000, they might offer you $495,000 or they might say, hey, you've got to throw in a new roof on this house and I'll give you $500,000. So that really brings your purchase price down just a little bit, but not a lot. And that gets you that 98, 99%, which in a fall market, we are traditionally around those levels. So nothing to be concerned about. This is just finally getting back to reality instead of what I've been dealing with through the COVID years. So a couple of personal questions. You recently bought a home. Yes. And that was, I mean, did you buy it in the summer? Did you buy it in the spring? You seem to be. You got your finger so on the market stats in the pulse that I wanted to know. Yes. So the funniest part about this is I actually traditionally prefer to buy houses in the fall. But then you make those emotional decisions. And as much as I keep my eyes on the data, we still are impulsive and make emotional decisions. So we purchased at the height of the market last year. It felt insane. We bought over asking price, but we sold over asking price. So I don't know. It's just kind of is what it is. I mean, in all reality, people buy and sell real estate when they need to, right? Totally. Yeah. And I like the way you're giving us perspective. As much as we attach ourselves to these buyer's market phrases and these percentages, we're not talking about that much money, really. Are we? I mean, yeah, the monthly payment each month when these percentages tick up does make a difference. But you found the house you loved. You could afford it. And in the grand scheme of things, it was probably the best financial move you could have made. Absolutely. It was a brilliant decision and retrospect, right? Little did we know what that would really mean for us. But you buy it when you can and when you need to make a change. And yeah. Right on. And how do we reach you?  Yep. Tell us about what you do. So I work for LandTitle. I am our Boulder County residential salesperson. So if you need information on the markets or the data, you can always reach out to me. Easiest way to get me a cell phone,<PHONE_NUMBER>. Or you can reach me on my email at amysner at ltgc.com. LTGC. So LandTitle, guaranteed company. That's it. I love Land. You guys do such a great job. Thank you. You close all of our deals on time, at least you have for me. And that, my friends, is the proper tea.