Hunter Harris: Hey everybody and welcome to Build and Break Through. I'm your host, Hunter Harris of Hunter Software Consulting. And with me today is Stephen Pivinick. He is an advisor, an author, a speaker, a runner. he's a multi-time founder and he's also the host of the Built to Finish podcast. Steven, do you want to introduce yourself a little bit?

Steven Pivnik: Hey, thanks, Hunter. basically I like to say that I'm a retiring entrepreneur. I built my last company to over 200 employees across twelve countries before realizing a successful exit. as you mentioned, ⁓ I'll elaborate a little bit further. Not only running, I'm an endurance sports nut job. I'm addicted to Ironman, disenterathlons and big mountains. ⁓ And back from Everest last year and right now just really, really enjoy applying the endurance mindset to entrepreneurship and paying it forward.

Hunter Harris: Love it.

Steven Pivnik: in the entrepreneurial community via advisory work.

Hunter Harris: I love it. I'm an advisor too. And it's just so rewarding to be able to save people from some of the pain that we've probably both been through. so I I guess you you mentioned the exit. I wanted to start with exiting. I guess kind of a potentially purposefully naive question to start off with. When should I be planning for an exit for my company? Should I say, know, I mean on year five, say I feel burnt out, let's go exit now within the next couple or

Steven Pivnik: Absolutely.

Hunter Harris: Should should I begin a little bit earlier?

Steven Pivnik: I mean, there there's no such thing as starting to starting the planning process early enough, right? I mean, the the earlier you plan, the more benefit ⁓ you'll actually see from the event w if and when it happens. there's just so many things that need to be taken care of that if they're not, they will service in the eleventh hour. And sometimes that eleventh hour isn't planned, right? Because an opportunity presents itself and all of a sudden you're you're you're bustling, you know, to get it done, and so many are made.

Hunter Harris: Exactly. Mm-hmm. Absolutely. A a big part of that is optionality, right? you're well prepared, ⁓ when opportunity comes knocking on your door, you take advantage of that versus being caught flat footed. So if I you know, an entrepreneur, I've started Hunter Software Consulting, for example, just for me how should I be thinking about exits in the future?

Steven Pivnik: Yeah, I mean there's think I think you you yourself and you know anybody listening that's an entrepreneur that you need to continuously look at ⁓ enterprise drivers and valuation killers, right? They're the s they're the same thing. ⁓ things that drive the valuation higher are also the same things that will kill a valuation if you if they don't if they don't get paid attention to. You know, first and foremost is obviously your finances, right? You need to be firing on full cylinders and you know, everything needs to be in the green. You know, that's that's table stakes.

Hunter Harris: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Of course.

Steven Pivnik: then you you need to be able to paint a picture of future growth for the acquirer. Right. So if you're in a market, if you have 100% market share and you can't grow any further, and I'm I'm not saying you can't sell your company. You can there is if there's sufficient cash flow, it's still highly, highly saleable, but the lack of growth is going to hurt valuation. Another one is something I call the Switzerland structure, right? It's a you know high dependency or concentration on a single customer, single vendor, single set employee or set of employees.

Hunter Harris: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Okay.

Steven Pivnik: Any sort of concentration going to hurt. And you know, that needs to be continuously looked ⁓ one of the biggest ones, and I mean I can just rattle this, I can going for hours, but the biggest one that which affected me personally, even my company grew for 26 years straight to north of 40 million dollars in sales, but we only had 10 recurring revenue, right? So come January 1st, every single year, we needed to go, you know, hunt and kill.

Hunter Harris: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm.

Steven Pivnik: tens of millions of dollars in business, you know, from scratch, which we did successfully. And it but my God, did it get harder and harder and harder. That represented risk to the buyer, right?

Hunter Harris: Mm-hmm. So so ⁓ about that was that predominantly like a churn issue or o other of customer retention?

Steven Pivnik: No, it that it absolutely had nothing to do with churn or customer retention because we had super, super high on customer satisfaction scores. We had project based software. Even though we were in the software business, our project w the software was utilized for the project. When the project was over, there was no more need for the project for the software.

Hunter Harris: Mm-hmm. ⁓ that makes sense. That totally makes sense. So I guess fundamentally that came back down to like a like business plan issues, essentially, right? Where the the the product and the customer inherently was structured so that you had to continually doing these large sales motions to continue developing this pipeline of customers. That's very interesting.

Steven Pivnik: Yeah, I mean we we bec we became the Right. I fortunately, fortunately there was a massive amount of demand for what we did. because we basically rode the the entire email wave and modernization wave and competitive wave between the big players, IBM, Google, and Microsoft. So the with new versions and new competitive aspects coming out of the marketplace and then the cloud, there was ⁓ massive for our software. But again, with every single project, once the project was over, there was no more there there was no need for it.

Hunter Harris: How four. Mm-hmm. Right.

Steven Pivnik: Un until next time, maybe three or four years down the line.

Hunter Harris: Mm-hmm. Very, very interesting method. Because I I haven't run into a lot of project-based software in my experience. I did want to go back a little bit to one of the things that you said earlier about concentration specifically. One thing that stuck out for me in terms of an e essentially like an overarching theme for all of this was risk, right? And risk mitigation. Concentration being kind of like one of those quintessential risk scenarios where you have one pivotal client, you lose the client, you lose the whole kid in caboodle. One pivotal employee, that person, know, the bus factor, gets hit by a bus, gets COVID, decides that they want to be a be a carpenter and suddenly goodbye your entire business. I will say for a lot of founders I talk to, I would say that that one pivotal employee tends to be the founder. So how do you recommend that founders think about themselves ⁓ being such a pivotal part of the organization. Cause it's obviously required to get to a certain point, but also overly patched into the organization past that point ends up being an increasing risk factor too, right?

Steven Pivnik: No, because founder dependency is a huge valuation driver, right? And killer. ⁓ I'm at my own personal story, because you know, I addressed it really well and easier said than done, I knew that I I didn't want to face a founder dependency. So three years prior to my actual exit, I started to search for a CEO to replace me. And it gonna be a really hard band aid to pull off because you know, how do you even trust somebody to run your baby? And I've been burnt in the past.

Hunter Harris: Mm-hmm. Of course. Mm-hmm. ⁓ interesting. Right.

Steven Pivnik: And I won't bore your audience of tears, but I've had like you know two massive betrayals with other executives that I brought on. so this time around, I said, you know what, I'll bring on a COO and him or her and and I will have an agreement that if everything works out, they'll get promoted to CEO. And I was gonna give it a year for that to to play out. Well, it took me ninety days and I I got really, really lucky, I got the right person.

Hunter Harris: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. ⁓ really?

Steven Pivnik: I I liked him, I respected him, I trusted him, and so did the team. Just the the the way he gelled with the entire team and the rest of the company was brilliant. So that's what gave me the comfort level to promote myself to executive chairman. He took over the reins of day-to-day operations as CEO. And when we got into due diligence, I remember this conversation like it was yesterday with the acquirer. I said, Hi, I'm Steven Pivnik. I'm the owner of the company. will not be participating in anything due diligence related because I don't work here anymore.

Hunter Harris: Mm-hmm.

Steven Pivnik: Ha ha.

Hunter Harris: No, that is definitely helpful in terms of making that particular process go a little bit more easily. so I I guess though it sounds like you got lucky in terms of getting this particular person though. Was there any sort of groundwork that you laid to make that ⁓ a handoff a little bit easier? You you mentioned, for example, the betrayals. Well I wanna go into that in a little bit more depth in a a little bit here, but for the moment, staying on this particular topic like What were some core lessons learned, some scars won that potentially let you go into this particular arrangement a little bit more cleanly than the previous one?

Steven Pivnik: Yeah, great question. I mean, one one of the biggest differences was I had a great team in place already. So b even before the COO joined, you know, I had a really good head of sales. I I had a great h I'm head of finance. I had a wonderful, you know, I'm director of consulting services and product development. So I had a really good team in place already that that was also, you know, seasoned enough and mature enough.

Hunter Harris: Mm.

Steven Pivnik: to, you know, not go crazy with, ⁓ my God, Steven's leaving. What does that mean? He doesn't he doesn't want to work here anymore. He doesn't think there's a future for the company, you know, and all the other possible drama that can occur when you have a, you know, less less than experienced and seasoned team. So I think that that was one of the one of the biggest things which made the ⁓ transition go a lot easier.

Hunter Harris: Mm-hmm. Of course. That's i very interesting. So I guess trying to think of the question that I want to ask about that. Because it does seem like that a very seasoned team, I mean, quintessentially having the right people on your team is such an of success. But also, people have to hire who they have access So was part of the story was it that you had a really good network, you had spent time developing the network and therefore you had access. To these talented people that were like the right team for the job? was there a certain process of nurturing some of these people to grow into these roles? in your particular case, what did this look like?

Steven Pivnik: Yeah, it was a combination of both. You know, some people were definitely, you know, nurtured and mentored to grow into ⁓ senior executive leadership roles. other cases, it was the network. I've to hand it to the advisory firm, and I don't mean for this to be self-serving, but the advisory firm that I utilized, which I now join and work with to, you know, pay it forward and advise, they had fantastic network. They on they single handedly got me a new head of sales, a new head of finance, and they're the ones that sourced the COO who became the CEO.

Hunter Harris: Mm-hmm.

Steven Pivnik: So ha having a network is incredibly important. if you don't, and then s you know, sometimes I can s people consider these ⁓ necessary evil, but there's headhunters that are out there that specialize in type of in this type of stuff. It'll cost you, but it's gonna be worth it. Almost almost guaranteed.

Hunter Harris: Definitely agree. back to the point of founder dependency Some of the dysfunction that I see is a lot of founders really struggle to delegate. and as part of that, struggle to trust their teammates. And it of becomes a chicken and egg scenario, right? Where they can't delegate, therefore the good players can't stick around. There and as result, they can only keep the B2C players who, in turn, they unsuccessfully delegate to, which damages their trust. Which then further damages the delegation. Have you e experienced any sort of cycle like that?

Steven Pivnik: Absolutely. I mean it it's a it's a really, really vicious cycle. And the biggest reason why folks can delegate is because they don't trust the person that they're delegating to to get it done as well as they can. Right. So so it's it's really important to find folks that can operate at the level you need them to. And what what I like to pick at, I like to pick at the CFO and C and head of sales position all the time. If you're running, let's just pick a round number, if you're running a twenty million dollar company. And you have a head of finance that's been with you for like let's say 10 years from the time you are a five million dollar company. And the same thing for your head of sales may have been with you from the beginning or maybe joined later on. If he or she doesn't have experience running a company at that level, they're not ideal for the position. And it's not, it's it's no knock on them. They just they just never done this before. Now, some can pick it up, and there's definitely an opportunity for folks to to rise to the occasion and do great.

Hunter Harris: Absolutely.

Steven Pivnik: But ⁓ more often than not, they're they're just going to struggle a little bit because it's just a different playbook at a at a different level. So and that and that that's what causes the owner to get into this vicious cycle that you just mentioned.

Hunter Harris: Absolutely. I see the exact same thing in technology where usually your like early engineering hires are fantastic like zero to one builders. And then once you hit that scaling step, the attitudes and practices and of going about doing things that make you successful zero to one frequently ⁓ are very when you try and go from one to a million, right? ⁓

Steven Pivnik: Exactly.

Hunter Harris: So for the founders that are listening to this, what advice do you have to give to them in terms of like building that practice of delegation? Because I really do feel like delegation itself is a skill that can be cultivated and learned.

Steven Pivnik: Yeah, I mean I I I think not wait to be a one hundred percent comfortable to delegate something. If some if you're seventy percent comfortable, give it a shot, right? And and then there there's multiple levels, right? So you can you can you can have somebody you can you can ha you can actually say here, go take care of this and completely walk away. Or there's a form of delegation where you can say, We've got this issue. ⁓ I you to work on it. I need you to come come back with the three things, the three possible paths that you're going to take with this.

Hunter Harris: Of course.

Steven Pivnik: And the w the one that you recommend the most. So then at least you you have some input into the final direction that's going to be taken. then and then there's multiple levels of that as well, right? You then or or you can say, you know what, go think about this for a couple of days, go take a specific path. And then before if when you're twenty five percent in, you know, check back with me. Just I just just for for a touch base, I want to make sure that you know you're you're on track. So it's some of those approaches, you know, work.

Hunter Harris: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Steven Pivnik: work really well. But do not wait until you're a hundred percent comfortable because you you'll never be.

Hunter Harris: 100% agree. And I actually want to call out one thing about what you just said that I love. What you just described, the first scenario I think is delegation. Whereas I think all of the follow-up scenarios that you just described are more mentorship than delegation, exactly. Where as part of building delegation for yourself, part of that is also cultivating the talent in other people by not necessarily I mean, there are times and places where you want to just let someone run wild and just see what they can do.

Steven Pivnik: Good point.

Hunter Harris: But especially when you're early in the relationship, it is good to, to your point about 70% for example, maybe you still do 70% of the task, but you find that extra 30% that you can hand off to them, that they can actually or or sorry, in this case, 70% comfortable with delegation, hand off 70% of the task and you still keep the remaining complicated 30% the risky as thirty percent so that you reach a balance where you're developing the ⁓ muscle of delegation but also allowing them to grow into the role, dis display ownership, get their feet wet with a business, get their feet wet with a customer, et cetera, et cetera. ⁓

Steven Pivnik: Yeah, and there's gotta be continuous open open and honest communications as well. You know, which you know some some founders are are just hard at because we're we're just such s naturally nice people and nice guys, right? I think the conversation needs to be had saying, I hey, Mr. Chief Executive, ⁓ Mr. Executive's leader here, I need to get better at delegating. I have a hard time delegating. So for for this specific task, I'm I trust you 70%. And because that.

Hunter Harris: Absolutely. Mm-hmm.

Steven Pivnik: We this is the process that we're gonna go through. But I want you and I to get to a point where I'm one hundred percent comfortable dedicating it to you. And until such point, I'm gonna be giving you open and honest feedback as to why that little gap of trust still exists.

Hunter Harris: I love that. Open and honest feedback is such a key. that effect, one of the practices that I really recommend to essentially all leaders that I talk with is making sure you're maintaining one-on-ones, but also making sure you're doing skip levels. That way you can ⁓ Get that procedural insight into what's actually going on inside of your organization. It's so easy to not do those sorts of things or do them just for your individual employees' desires and needs, and good about that and feel like you're mentoring them, but at the same time not get the information that you need. It's really a two-way street for these sorts of meetings where it's not just like, hey, I'm gonna tell you employee what to do. It's about ⁓ I'm going to learn more about you, learn about what you're good at, what you're bad at, but also I'm going to use this as an opportunity to figure out what's actually going on in the business because I've seen so many situations where I'm back to your point about things like betrayals where there's, for example, the founder and he becomes increasingly isolated because he's hired a few people that are acting very heavily politically and in their own favor. And so the founder or whichever executive it is. thinks that everything's going great and things are not going nearly as great as they seem to be until, you know, reality tends to rapidly reassert itself.

Steven Pivnik: Now yeah, I I see that all the time and skip level meetings are really important. I I'm a huge fan, as long as the founder doesn't give the skipped level the opportunity to go over the the level that was skipped head. Right. So hey, the I I have this great idea, I wanna do this, but my boss won't let me. And then that that'll inevitably create a l a a lot of friction and then

Hunter Harris: Yes, very true.

Steven Pivnik: If you undermine them and let the individual go forward with whatever he or she is is bringing up, then that that's a recipe for additional drama and friction j just l lack of productivity.

Hunter Harris: Absolutely, yeah. That is a great call out. It it is very important. I I feel like insubordination is a little bit strong for that, although it is probably descriptive, but like there is an organizational hierarchy and there's something to be said for democracy, but companies are not really democracies. And I feel like a lot of people really the the worst failure cases that I see is when people try and treat businesses like democracies. They're not at the end of the day there is a hierarchy. It is written into the corporate structure, generally speaking. I mean, unless you're working a co-op, which I haven't talked to anybody working in a co-op and I've never working in a co-op. So that, you know, that is an exception. But ⁓ yeah, man, leaders that are like, I'm just gonna solicit feedback and let the majority decide leads to a lot of decision by consensus and it moves so, so slowly. And it it really incentivizes the sort of politics that you just described where people will potentially try and like go around the leader to get stuff done and it ends up in a whirlpool of organizational dysfunction. Well ⁓

Steven Pivnik: Exactly. No, exactly. And it it it definitely happens with first time founders, right? They they want to be nice, they want to make sure everybody's heard, they wanna give everybody an opportunity. But and unfortunately they they learned the hard way on how progress is stalled as a result of, you know, that that type of culture.

Hunter Harris: Yeah. Mm-hmm. What I always say is like there's niceness and there's kindness. Like a lot of people over-index on being nice. You should to a certain extent be nice in the workplace, but like it is much kinder to be direct. And also if you build a dysfunctional organization that fails, you will have to do the unkind step of firing all of your employees when it goes under. is not an ideal situation. If you like the choice there is pretty stark, right? I I would always unequivocally Choose to be less nice if it means the business keeps on running and can continue to financially support me and the people that work for me. That is like the economic angle is just start to me. But ⁓ I wanted to hop into since we're talking about organizational dysfunction a little bit. Can you tell me a little bit about those betrayals that you

Steven Pivnik: ⁓ wow. my my first one happened when we ⁓ I was fortunate enough to have three mini exits of the same company before I had my my final exit. And second mini exit came in the form of an asset sale where we were approached to sell a division of our company to somebody else. And I part of that deal because it was because so much staff was moving over, they wanted to make sure that the leader, you know, was coming also. ⁓ So

Hunter Harris: Mm-hmm. Of course.

Steven Pivnik: I did a great job there and I had a wonderful experience. I called that that that ⁓ chapter of my life my MBA in a box because I got to work with a seasoned leadership team that just raised seventy-five million dollars, which was a ton of money in nineteen ninety nine. And so as great as all of that was, I did a horrible job of playing the owner card and keeping my my the leadership team that I put in place accountable. Right. So and they proceeded to run the company in

Hunter Harris: Wow. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. the leadership at the ⁓ the company you left.

Steven Pivnik: at at at my at my c at my company at the at the company that that I left. The re the remaining company after I took a division out and left with it. I did a horrible job, you know, playing ⁓ owner and board member because I I was just so busy and having such a great time. It's very hard to say I was having a great time working eighty eighty hours a week at this other company, but I was Yeah. I mean it it was it was fantastic.

Hunter Harris: Cash. Mm-hmm. I know the feeling. I mean w when it's right, it's right and the hours it's it's not whether it's forty hours or eighty hours or a hundred and twenty hours. just do the work in front of you, right?

Steven Pivnik: Yeah. And this was this was the height of the dot com boom, right? So there was just so much fun stuff and exciting projects going on that we were just running that wave the company I left behind was going in the other direction. And I didn't find out about it until it w it was it was too late. Basically when the I I'm kind of combining two stories into one because it just it's it's easier for it to flow for the audience.

Hunter Harris: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Makes sense.

Steven Pivnik: I finally I get a call from the bank saying, hey, the I was still co-signed for the credit line for the company, even though I I I had left. It was still my was I still owner of the company. I got a call from the bank saying we haven't received an interest payment in three months. I'm like, what do you mean? They're like, Yeah, we haven't received an interest payment and we're gonna foreclose on the collateral on this line, which is your house. Like, okay, that's not that's not cool.

Hunter Harris: Mm-hmm. Whoa. That's yeah, ⁓ wow.

Steven Pivnik: So I quickly uncovered during the next two weeks that I was being given, you know, falsified financial statements they were basically the ⁓ I'm I'm sorry?

Hunter Harris: Like full on falsified. Like full on falsified.

Steven Pivnik: Full full on full on falsified revenue and cash flow forecasts and PNL for and PL statements to hide the mounting losses that were occurring because they just refused to to let go of staff. They refused to make all the necessary hard decisions to deal with a downturn in business. And they were just they really thought they were they're j just about to turn a corner, just about to turn the corner, one more month, two more months, three more months, and by the third month the bank said, Hey, no mass want our credit line payment.

Hunter Harris: Wow. Right.

Steven Pivnik: They they which by the way they'd maxed out at that point. So basically got out of my employment agreement with the company that acquired my division, came back, had and basically had to nurse my baby back to health. I I by point I'd been gone for two years. I had I had everybody for their job. ⁓ I ⁓ let probably over two dozen folks and left eight just to literally just to keep the lights on.

Hunter Harris: Mm-hmm. Right.

Steven Pivnik: And clawed our way back from like nothing to I said, like I mentioned in the beginning, to over forty million dollars in sales ten years later. ⁓

Hunter Harris: Mm-hmm. What I found absolutely fascinating that I just said ⁓ ⁓ line about nice versus kind, and this story is exactly that in a nutshell, right? Like this this group of people was trying so, so hard to be nice, just keep everybody around, do illegal stuff in terms of falsified finances, pretty sure. That legal action could and may have been taken. instead of doing the kind thing, which is making the necessary changes, which you did once you came in, you said, Hey, we're in this now. Well, like the either figure out to like get on with this thing, or none of us continue doing this anymore. And and ⁓ and similarly, nice in terms of like keeping everybody around was incredibly

Steven Pivnik: Yeah, I exactly. I mean it was it was a it was tough.

Hunter Harris: unkind to you in terms of, hey, surprise, your house is on the line now, right? It also feels like there's a certain go ahead.

Steven Pivnik: Yeah, I mean again I no, no, I I judge I I give people the benefit of the doubt. I don't think he was trying to hurt Stephen Pivnik. He was was really he I think ⁓ was foolishly optimistic about how we can turn things around. and that that was his biggest crime. Instead of being realistic, just con just foolishly optimistic time time month after month after month.

Hunter Harris: ⁓ of course. Yeah. I I will say of the kind of foundational traits that I look for in founders is you do have to be to kind of spit in the face of reality a little bit, you know, like strive against the status quo. But also you do have to touch grass from time to time and be in touch with like what the market's actually doing, what your financials actually say. So it sounds like he probably erred a little bit too much in one of those directions, sad to I guess we we are transitioning a little bit here. I mean, you've mentioned that you're endurance athlete. One of the things that came up in ⁓ our was, you know, founding being an endurance sport. in your opinion, what traits was it or what practices allowed you to continue striving and continue staying the game as a founder year after year after year? When so many founders are like, Six months in, I'm out. One year in, I'm out. I mean, the the reality is you have to be in this game eight to ten years to get to a successful exit. I believe the average is over eight years. it might be ten years, that might be twelve years, but it's it is north of eight years, I'm fairly confident.

Steven Pivnik: Yeah, right. No, it it I I don't I'm not sure what the exact number is, but that that sounds ⁓ very, very accurate. it's the endurance ⁓ I the perseverance and the stamina that I learned by by picking up endurance sports that transferred really well into business. Right. There's just there's just so many ⁓ similarities between the two that kind of feed on each other, you know, planning, preparation, execution, pivots, setbacks. The list goes on and on and on. When you experience enough of those in one.

Hunter Harris: Mm-hmm.

Steven Pivnik: then you that you can you can them in the other. So when I'm like I'm I'm on race, I don't know, I'll just pick a mile. I'm on mile like 50 of an ultra marathon and I'm really, really hurting and I don't think I can make it to the next eight station. Then I think back of that time where it was Thursday and I needed to make a $400,000 payroll on Monday and I only had $80 $80,000 in the bank. Somehow, some way I made it to Monday and the ⁓ made the money appear. Right. the endu the endurance hard times

Hunter Harris: Mm-hmm.

Steven Pivnik: help me in the business hard times and and and vice versa. So I I just love the similarities between the two.

Hunter Harris: So all the founders out there, get out there and run a triathlon or do a triathlon, it's not just running, and and you'll be a better founder for it. well Steven, we're getting towards time. I wanna be respectful of your time. This has been fantastic. Do you wanna plug some pluggables?

Steven Pivnik: Okay. ⁓ sure. So bas ⁓ one of the things that I'm really enjoying doing right now, thank you for the opportunity, is doing a founder exit readiness assessment. And this is applicable for founders that aren't necessarily all in the process of exiting, but that want to really learn what their enterprise value is how those drivers that I mentioned that drive enterprise value or hurt enterprise value, how they actually score on them. So I it's it's a series of, you know, three questionnaires that a founder fills out and then they they get an assessment from three lenses.

Hunter Harris: Mm-hmm.

Steven Pivnik: A personal psychological readiness, a financial readiness on what type of lifestyle they want, and will an exit fund the lifestyle that they want. And then a value score on their actual business across these eight drivers. So it's it only takes about 20 to 30 minutes to complete all three. You get you know three customized reports that have you know actionable insights on how to move the needles on of these drivers that are identified. It's a it's a really cool process and very eye-opening.

Hunter Harris: Mm-hmm.

Steven Pivnik: For everybody that's gone through it.

Hunter Harris: sure I have a number of people in mind that I want to recommend that to just right off the top of my head because I there are a number of founders that they're working exciting ideas but to your point about consolidation and risk things a bit riskier than they I think they realize things are a bit more consolidated and I think they realize and as a result getting a

Steven Pivnik: cool.

Hunter Harris: sane holistic third-party view of what things are like what the trajectory actually is and what things are actually worth, I think is an important valuable data point you can use to reorient yourself towards further success, right? Everything's all about feedback. Well, Steven, thank you so much for joining me. This has been fantastic. Really appreciate you taking the time. I think this has been absolute gold for

Steven Pivnik: Exactly. Exactly. Exactly.

Hunter Harris: The founders that may be listening to this. And for everybody listening, I hope that you've enjoyed this as much as I have. This is an I feel like I've learned a lot from this. it ⁓ nice to hear of some of my experiences and some of the stories and to learn a little bit myself as well. So I thank you all for joining us, ⁓ and hope to see you all next time. Have a lovely day. Peace.

Steven Pivnik: Thanks all. Thank you, Hunter.