9 Add-Ons in 24 Months | Dan Lifshits of Dwelly Interview

0:00 Today's episode is with Dan Livshits, co-founder and chief product officer of Twilio. Twilio is building what you might call an AI-enabled roll-up in UK lettings, buying independent agencies, keeping the local brand and teams, and layering in software to automate the heavy operational workflows that frustrate tenants, landlords, and agents. So far, they've done eight acquisitions, and Dan is joining us at an exciting moment. Twilio just announced 93 million in fresh funding to accelerate its acquisition-driven expansion across UK. Dan, thanks so much for being here today, and congratulations on the raise. So, let's get into it.

0:46 >> Thank you so much. A pleasure to be here. I found an interesting tweet, a post from you, where you said under a announcement of of your I think it was capital provider who said you were saying there three strange kids show up summer 2023 and say they'll start buying agencies and digitizing them, and first acquisition will be 40 to 50 million pounds, 250 people. We already mapped it out long before AI roll-ups were a thing. thank you so much for your trust. there were 100 investors that passed, and you guys could have been 101st. So, it takes just one to believe, and you were saying thank you to them.

1:30 So, I want to cover here too many people in life, overall, in business as well. They give up too early. So, let's talk about your fundraising journey, and please don't tell me it was hard. Tell me about more about what kept you going, what were your thoughts, how was the day-to-day, and tell me the real stories. It was hard. But jokes aside, I think that it comes back to a bit of a think of our backgrounds and the what we've built in kind of life before and everything. So, as you might know, we kind of Twilio was founded kind of by the three founders of ours. our journey has been kind of significant part of our career. Forming part has happened in ride-hailing kind of businesses. I personally was general manager at Gett.

2:19 Kind of my co-founder has been GMs at Uber. And I think that's where we learned how to build kind of highly scalable, kind of also very operational, tech-enabled operational business. And then after that, kind of Ilya and Dmitry, kind of the other co-founders, when kind of leaving Uber in around kind of 2018-19, were exploring what are the other markets resembling kind of lots of very similar things to that being in ride-hailing. So, like effectively a hugely operational business, number one, lacking technology to kind of significant extent, and that kind of clearly can be improved with technologies. And highly fragmented two-sided marketplace, both on demand side and supply side.

2:59 No surprise, so this is where kind of the journey took turn to the residential lettings, so long-term residential rentals, because effectively kind of nature it ticks all of the above-mentioned boxes. And then the guys already once effectively kind of built very, very similar business ideologically in Eastern Europe, what effectively kind of serves and continues serving to significant extent a foundation to what we're building here at Twilio. Now, it was pretty meaningful business that kind of for the guys sold in end of '21, kind of summer end of '21. And I think that that gave effectively it was like pretty big-scale, tech-enabled kind of letting agents focused on long-term residential rentals.

3:39 and I think through that journey, it became kind of pretty clear there were two major learnings on on the journey. I think that learning number one, as it always goes, one kind of positive, one kind of not so. The good learning was that it's pretty probably obvious, I think, for anyone that ever interfaced with the kind of letting agents or property manager, that this is like very, very people-centric business, but with more and more regulations coming through, with more kind of other restrictions happening, it ends up that people spend most of their time just on orchestrating basic kind of mundane admin processes, rather than really spending time with the clients. And I think that technology exactly can help with that, where it can free up kind of a lot of time of people to really be much more customer service-focused in the first place, and then for the technology to take most of the remaining kind of mundane admin effectively. So, kind of you can build a much more product-led business, tech-first, much better user experience, higher efficiency, etc., etc. But there was a negative learning.

4:38 And the negative learning was that but organic growth in this industry is very, very limited, because by organic growth I mean the key customer that you're kind of acquiring in this industry, the pays you money, is a landlord, like owner of the property. And it's just structured that finding the landlords organically one by one is very, very slow and very limited, because there are not that many landlords that looking to switch an agent at every moment of time. That's exactly why when we've been in the kind of new evolution of this business, kind of considering effectively starting Twilio, it was very clear for us that organic growth doesn't really kind of work fast, that you kind of cannot grow the landlord base so at that quick pace. And that's exactly why we started exploring is there a way to overcome the limitation of organic growth. So, effectively kind of can we actually try to merge the best of the two worlds, where we'll be building a tech-first, AI-kind of native platform that reengineers the whole end-to-end letting agency experience from finding a tenant, brokerage, to property management, to collecting rent, the full kind of cycle effectively. But the way to grow would be rather than going and selling this technology into existing agencies, because agencies not looking for yet another B2B SaaS to change the operations. And equally kind of not to kind of grow the landlord base organically, is there a way to overcome limitation of organic growth? And that's where I think that most of your I think followers on the X and YouTube and everything know it as bread and butter, because I think a lot of them coming from private equity world on roll-ups, that obviously kind of growing by acquisition is one of the ways exactly to overcome that. And this is the industry that is known to significant extent that roll-up is kind of works very well here, because very good fundamentals of the business. You're buying effectively almost annuity-style, highly retentive customer base with a retention rate of like 95% plus, and almost monthly subscription-style monetization. So, like super, super lucrative asset, super stable, and a good one for kind of roll-up. And that's exactly why kind of we thought why not to try to merge the playbooks of the kind of all of the two worlds. Goals are the same, improve the level of service and increase efficiency of the underlying operation and free up agents' time to kind of to service the clients more. But to achieve these goals, try to merge the best of the two worlds. So, let's build an kind of AI-first, tech-native kind of stack, tech stack, but kind of go to market, let it be tactically going and acquiring kind of existing agencies in the way of buying agencies, effectively buying the kind of the managed contracts of the customer base of this agency. And then marked on the journey, I think it was closer to kind of end of '23, when we kind of kicked it off. And no need to tell you that I think that end of '23, very, very limited pool of investors I think were kind of open to kind of in a way something creative on the business model level, because effectively it's almost sits at the conduit of the two worlds. Because on one hand, you're building a VC-style kind of tech transformation of the traditional business. On the other hand, your growth is a kind of roll-up, where I think that VC kind of investors have a tendency to put I think businesses in different buckets. And I think roll-up kind of directly associates with the kind of PE-style investment, because like where would you see a venture-style upside in the kind of private equity kind of style of roll-up? And obviously kind of I think that talking about the 100 investors that gave up, you can't talk to VCs. VCs saying everything is great, industry is huge, industry is crying for disruption. You guys' kind of pedigrees probably kind of one of the best kind of founder-market fit that you can think of. But roll-up, go talk to PEs.

7:55 You can't talk to PEs. PEs are saying, "Sure, roll-up, bread and butter, no problem. We can even originate from scratch." The only moment you're saying that I'll be quite significantly technologically disrupting or reengineering the business, they all of us are saying, "Guys, I mean, we probably can understand it intellectually, but that's not the type of investments that we kind of have a history to underwrite. So, we just not don't know how to play this playbook. Would we really be the best way you to invest for you? Maybe you can refer back to kind of to the VC guys, because they know this playbook a bit better." And that's exactly where you kind of fall between the kind of the chairs a little bit, because I think that this business model, different investors have different views. Some say that kind of there is clear venture alpha, some say that it's maybe kind of PE-style roll-up. I'm obviously much more of the first view, because like I can understand how Twilio can become kind of 10, 100 kind of billion business, pretty clear. But I think the kind of the the the challenge was that this is a bit of a novel playbook with different profile of returns, both of the kind of upside returns and downside returns, that I think whenever you're trying to put yourself in one of the kind of brackets that exists, you will struggle, because it's not very typical kind of putting a square in the kind of circle hole type exercise effectively. That's why I think that was a bit of a novel playbook, and a lot of guys that have kind of been a bit less maybe creative in the way of how like how to think about the kind of capital strategy in general were struggling to kind of put us in any bucket effectively. How many rounds of financing you've done so far?

9:15 We kind of not sharing exactly the amount of kind of number of fundings, but yes, that altogether to date raised close to around 70 million pounds, like close to 100 million dollars, across multiple rounds of funding. Okay. Let's take a step back. I want to understand you mentioned having this great group of experienced founders, second-time founders. So, how do you how did you guys think of industries, opportunities?

9:47 Why I'm asking is I'm just trying to understand how guys like yourself thought of what what would be the next best opportunity to work on next, because guys listening, maybe there is someone on in a similar position so they can learn a thing or two from from you. Sure. I think that our story and the way that kind of some of the other people may think about it might be a little bit different. So I think coming back to what kind of I've shared, I think whenever we're coming from the standpoint of oh roll-ups make sense, let's go and do roll-up or like I don't know AI roll-ups make sense, which industry to do an AI roll-up for.

10:21 We're not the finance people, we're kind of product people operators. So I think we we always and as kind of shared in the history, I think it was much more about we've built already once kind of high velocity kind of hyper operational business kind of in rate heating kind of on the different sides. Then we've built already kind of that led us to kind of to think about what are the other highly operational marketplaces kind of might be a good fit. And I think letting kind of space is a great space for that. And then when we're starting at Valley, our thinking was we kind of love the space. Space is like full of pain points. Space is huge.

10:54 Space is crying for disruption. How do we kind of go around overcome the limitation of organic growth for letting agencies specifically? And the roll-up was the answer for letting agencies specifically. So it was not the storyline of AI roll-ups make sense, in which category to do an AI roll-up. Even more, AI roll-ups did not make sense back in 2023 as shared in the kind of our approaches to funding. Also the investors weren't understanding that. So with all due respect, I think that our journey might not be highly kind of helpful or applicable to lots of the other founders that can researching their journey right now. Because it was never a question of like where to build an AI roll-up in. So eight acquisitions so far. What is your take on obviously building roll-ups? So what is your take on buying customers versus winning winning them? Actually announced ninth acquisition today. So you can congratulate us already ninth today in the morning. It comes back to kind of effectively organic growth versus roll-up. Letting agency is an industry that is structurally described by the fact that average tenancy term when one tenant leaves in the property on average around 2 and 1/2 3 years. An average idle time between the tenancies, so when the property is idle and the kind of landlord is potentially idle to consider switching agencies is usually on average around 2 weeks. Sometimes even less than that because usually kind of it's known that there is like a fight for the good properties. There is always more tenants than kind of good properties out there.

12:16 And whenever you as a landlord have the current property tenanted, you're not looking to switch really because all agencies are kind of the same. So kind of the service that agencies have provided is not highly differentiated between different agencies. So effectively to try to grow the landlord base organically, it implies that you need to try to catch a landlord this 2 weeks window in between 2 kind of 3 years old kind of rental periods of the tenancies. And that's exactly what makes the kind of the switching of the kind of landlords very difficult. At the same time, new kind of landlords, new effectively investor property investors that are buying the properties to to let them, it does exist and it does happen. But if you will check the statistics of what is the percentage of new builds being built across all of the Europe, I think that it's barely around 1% on the country level. So in general, there is no more than 1% of new customer base, new kind of landlords buying the properties for rentals coming to the market every single year. So hence effectively kind of that makes organic growth pretty slow in terms of acquiring landlords one by one because finding new ones, there are not that many coming to the market every year. And switching from existing agencies that happens very rare as well.

13:22 That's exactly why it works other way around. If you will be sitting here and kind of I'll be telling you that there is a ton of organic growth, but we just started with a roll-up. If I'll be you, I'll be asking myself, man, okay, sounds great, but why did you buy in the first place? If you're telling me that kind of there is effectively organic growth that can be happening in your industry, why then to buy? Because as we know, buying is not easy. I mean all the kind of anxiety management of the kind of preserving the existing kind of team and the people and culture and processes and everything. Buying is not easy. Buying the business and operating it and transforming it is not easy. So kind of that's why I think that the framework here is pretty simple. If the retention in the industry of the customer base is let's say 95% plus, then probably roll-up potentially makes more sense because it's highly sticky customer base. If in the industry there is natural leakage of 10-20% every year, these customers got to get going somewhere. And then why not then to consider building kind of an AI native services business that just effectively be the place where all these customers going just by winning in terms of level of service, price and other things. I think that's the framework.

14:28 But in our case, yes, retention is very high meaning organic growth is more limited. Okay. So the real asset you're buying is really the sticky customer. Sticky, highly recurring customer base. And then the brand of the agency and the management team to which this landlords are connected and tied with to some extent. Where usually it's going to be kind of a few key people in the business that own most of the relationships with with all the landlords. And some of the kind of ways that these landlords are being served. I don't really understand why was it so hard to raise capital? It's pretty simple to understand what you guys are doing. I think that it's the question probably at which capital structure are you trying to raise the capital. If you're trying to raise the capital at let's say kind of venture style philosophy, then I think that the kind of the question is kind of but this is a roll-up, where is my venture alpha? And then kind of it takes time to build conviction to understand what we're actually building, what is the vision and where the venture alpha is. If you're trying to raise it under the kind of typical private equity structure, then I think that the challenge there would be is we understand how to kind of underwrite this investment should you guys be doing a typical roll-up, but you'll be kind of building your own technology, you'll be hiring your kind of AI engineers, so you'll be hiring your forward deployed engineer kind of volunteer style kind of people. And that's a pretty kind of chunky cost. At the same time, you're investing all this cost on the right that there is going to be kind of technological transformation of the business, hence better kind of EBITDA margins, returns, etc. down the line.

16:02 And again, this is not the very typical private equity style investments that the guys are making, right? Because I think that the kind of tech transformation business case is not very bread and butter business case in the PE world. So that's why kind of falling between the cracks a bit. I think that it ended up with a bunch of like flexible style minded investors like Begin Capital, venture capital kind of guys, and some of the family offices that I think that understand kind of the quandary of the two worlds in the best way. So where do roll-ups fail in this category? I think that kind of AI roll-ups by itself, to be honest, is a new category that's being defined as we speak. And I think that it's a little bit early yet to say where the kind of AI roll-ups fail. I think that still yet to kind of to see where the kind of the potential challenges going to be. I think that I can say where the general roll-ups fail specifically in our industry if you put the kind of technology aside. But I wouldn't be sharing anything new or insightful for you. I think that this is like the challenges of the integration of the business, challenges of the cultural integration, of the transformation, of changing the processes, of unifying the ways of work, over leveraging the businesses and then kind of should one kind of integration go wrong and then effectively it has a domino principle on the whole business. So kind of this is the typical things. I think that the AI kind of transformation of the business on top adds just another layer of complexity that obviously kind of makes the business I would say even a bit harder to kind of to run and transform because it's not just kind of you're building a roll-up, but at the same time you're also building like a tech enabled kind of transformation of the traditional service industry and effectively an AI kind of deployment and kind of transformation of the business.

17:43 And I think it comes along with its own challenges, but kind of where would the pitfalls be? I think we're still yet to learn. Obvious things is that obviously your kind of HQ costs and your costs on technology and the product team is just much materially bigger than any traditional kind of PE roll-up because you invest more into the kind of tech part of the business on the right kind of effectively bigger technological transformation of the business, so hence better user experience, faster growth, better EBITDA margin, etc. etc. But I think that the challenge wouldn't be kind of the typical that you're investing even more up front costs into technology, you are kind of group level kind of money losing business. You effectively need more kind of capital to come in to become profitable. So I think it's just like same sort of challenges as with typical roll-ups, but just heavier and chunkier HQ costs effectively. And then you also require different skill sets to be able to kind of put it all together.

18:36 Okay. Before talking about what type of companies you're looking to acquire, let's first take another step back about the integration. So far you mentioned nine acquisitions. So maybe you can explain more about the the the post acquisition work, what you exactly you do, what changes for those who become part of your organization. And then let's go and about like what type of companies. I think it kind of ideologically comes back to kind of who we are and what we build because I think that you can say and we we've been asked this question by some of the private equity investors when we had some conversations. They're like, hey guys, but you already built some technology.

19:12 Why do you need any more people? I mean fire everyone, put the current technology in the maintenance mode and kind of that's kind of works, right? Why do you need to continue investing? I think it comes back to kind of who we are ideologically and kind of what we build because this is not a PE roll-up with like a glimpse of technology on top. I think that this is rather kind of imagine that you're trying to think how the kind of letting agency in the 21st century should look like with AI with all the modern technologies, with all the kind of changes that you can make.

19:41 And rather this is what we built. And then for us going and buying the businesses is effectively as much as buying the customer base along with some of the kind of people coming along with this acquisition. To put on our kind of effectively technology on our product, on our target operating model and the way that we believe things needs to be run. So, you know, this is rather what we built. And then existing CRMs, ERPs, whatever the business is using to be run at, we obviously kind of just put on hold and eliminate completely because like we don't need it anymore to run the business. It's fully run off of the back of the value where a dwell is effectively software that powers the business. and I think that that impacts quite significantly the mindset of how you think about things because effectively what you buy then eventually, whenever you buy the business, you're buying not just the customers. You're also buying the processes, the people, the brand, the kind of some other things. In our case, yes, we do buy some glimpse of that as well. It's not just the customers, but it's obviously some of the great people that coming along with the business.

20:38 It's obviously kind of some of the brand and established kind of reputation in the kind of space that comes along with that. But primarily is the customers. And then effectively we keep working and this is what our operations is. Keep working on our effectively understanding of what is the target operating model and standard procedures of the business should look like that effectively then after we buy the business, we kind of move the customers to be run by the way that kind of we believe this businesses should be run in a unified single way across all of the kind of family of agencies that we're acquiring and not kind of effectively preserving the different ways of work and different processes of how agencies were run historically because obviously this is the nature of the service businesses.

21:20 The more kind of businesses there are, the more different processes of how these businesses could be run. We unifying all that and effectively building one single operational process and one single product supporting this one operational process. So, hence kind of talking about the people and change management, we are kind of taking the people on the journey that exist on the business into kind of effectively somewhere changing roles and responsibilities, somewhere kind of upskilling, somewhere reskilling kind of the team to kind of for them to align as close as possible to kind of how we believe the business should be run in terms of the target operating procedures of the business. I want to take a very quick pause from the podcast and talk about our today's sponsor. Now, one of the biggest ideas in this conversation with Dan is that great acquisition entrepreneurs are not simply buying businesses. They are building systems that can absorb businesses, improve them, and compound value over time. In Dwelli's case, that means combining local brands and local trust with software automation and a much more scalable operating model. And that is exactly why Capital Bad fits this conversation. Capital Bad gives investors access to private operator-led acquisitions of real small and mid-size businesses. And that is what makes this so relevant to this episode is when you listen to Dan describe the challenge of buying agencies, preserving what already works, and then layering in technology to unlock better margins and better customer experience, you're hearing the logic of modern business building. So, it is not about financial engineering, it is about backing the right operators in the right markets with the right structure and the right long-term mindset. So, if you're an LP, family office, or a serious accredited investor looking to deploy capital into aligned, thoughtfully structured private market opportunities, Capital Bad is worth a look. You can learn more at capitalbad.com.

23:21 I will also put the link in the show notes. Again, that is capitalbad.com. And now, back to the conversation with Dan. Can you give some specific examples? Let's say the acquisition number nine you you just completed. What this seller can expect to to change, to improve within the next maybe 30, 60, 90 days now when they're part of your group organization? Usually the kind of big reason to sell an agency by the kind of agency owner proprietor is quite often in our space at least is the retirement of an agency owner. So, it's not unusual that the kind of the person that was a significant shareholder of the business might kind of potentially retire and effectively will be then looking for succession in the business, for someone to step up and run the business after. So, it may be not fully applicable to the kind of to the former owner itself. But what's going to change? You can look at it as Dwelli being effectively this very weird AI first CRM that rather than just being sold to an agencies, instead goes and kind of buys them up to be able to kind of transform them from the inside out and rather than from the outside in. I think this is what is Dwelli. So, kind of Dwelli is kind of call it like technology or CRM or whatever with a kind of toolkit of the standard processes that effectively kind of powers by this technology that is brought into the business. And that is effectively what changes. So, kind of in in the broad strokes, if you're a landlord, if you're a tenant, for you things going to be majorly unchanged.

24:51 The only thing that you will notice is maybe the business would become kind of you as a tenant as landlord would kind of receive the tenant or landlord portal and will start receiving more automated communications and more visibility about kind of the system. So, experience would get better because effectively kind of there's just going to be more visibility, more visibility, more touch points, more communication. you'll be able to kind of to talk to the kind of any agent 24/7 whenever you want and not just kind of whatever the agency is open. So, kind of this sort of things.

25:17 But kind of internally for the business, effectively it's going to be the change of some processes, going to be the change of roles and responsibilities of some people, going to be the change of kind of the technology and the processes of how the business is is run underneath. You mentioned these retiring owners. so, maybe you can explain like who is your ideal like customer profile in terms of agencies which you target? What is the size and why? We started with targeting certain scale size of an agency in terms of the kind of just the size of the business to have because this is eventually kind of effectively an on-the-ground density marketplace type business and economics works better from the threshold of certain density whenever you have like 4 500 kind of managed properties in any given kind of certain location. As we kind of start going on and on, I think that as we already have presence in more locations across the UK, I think we can start considering kind of effectively taking in some smaller acquisitions into the existing businesses as well because there's already existing infrastructure.

26:20 So, in terms of the size, I think that we'll start being a bit more kind of flexible and accommodative where if it's entering the new location, it's still going to be certain threshold usually that we would kind of want to have. But other criteria should be is like all the other things that I think known for the industry. So, kind of business kind of ideally would be as much kind of lettings revenue focused and not kind of sales revenue focused because lettings is this annuity style kind of recurring income where sales is one of transactional kind of business. So, effectively kind of for it's known that lettings businesses are well utilized a bit more in general and we're kind of happy to pay up but buy a more meaningful asset. It's important for us there is strong succession in the business because we kind of tend to be buying leading agencies kind of across the UK and for us it's super important that we're not coming in there to just then fold it into already existing kind of structure or anything. Rather, we rely significantly on the kind of management teams, on the strength, on the brand, on the reputation of the existing business to then work together to try to elevate it up to the next level together. So, it's like super important for us that there is like a very strong established kind of team and the brand in the kind of in the business that we buy. And then some other secondary criteria. What I would say kind of this this this are the key ones that we look at. Okay. And now, I forgot to ask in the in the beginning, let's say I'm a I'm a I'm a landlord, what changes for me? What improves for me under a new ownership? It used to be I was part of an agency for I don't know five years. I was I was happy, everything was all right. Now I'm part of you. What what changes for me? You have more visibility, you have more tech first access to the portals, products so so that you can see everything at your fingertips should you wish it to be.

28:02 But in reality, a lot of landlords, I think there are two things. Number one, most of the landlords are kind of a little bit later in their life by the age naturally because kind of you buy the property, then you buy the second, then you start renting out the first. Usually happens closer whenever you are kind of 40, 50, 60 years old. Number one. So, hence these people might potentially be a bit less kind of tech savvy and just need technologies a bit less in general. Number one. And number two, the whole premise of a landlord coming to the service of letting agency is to effectively kind of hand in the keys of the property and kind of forget about the existence of the property and then receive a white glove service where the agency would be doing everything for you. Finding you a tenant, property manager, collect rent, everything end to end. So, what you as a landlord want to kind of to know is number one that your property safe and secure so that nothing happens to kind of to this as an asset because this is one of the most precious asset that you own in life. Almost like your retirement money. Number one.

28:56 Number two, and as a proxy of that, you're interested about the quality of the tenant. Number two, what you kind of is important for you is effectively that if there is any problems that you know about these problems up front and convenient vents and not get to know about them first hand yourself to then kind of inform your letting agency. And then already all the other monetary things such as like utilization, void periods, etc. etc. So, for you as a landlord, kind of by digitizing the kind of the tenant find funnel and everything, we'll be able to provide you may much more kind of leads per property or on each kind of vacation. So, effectively you'll have a much bigger variety and selection of the prospective tenants to kind of to choose from. And on average, we kind of provide the landlords not kind of one to application per property but closer to kind of eight to 10 applications per property. Number one. And do it much faster. So, whenever kind of on average usually the properties rented in two, three weeks, we usually rent the properties in like a couple of days by digitizing significant part of the kind of finding the tenant type process. So, effectively kind of it helps you to kind of have a better quality selected tenant and also kind of to rent the property kind of much faster. So, helps you with utilization and with your kind of income a little bit. And then when it has to do with visibility, with upfront communication, with all that stuff, it's just a lot of things where in the current CRM and the current processes, either you as an agent need to remember to go and kind of proactively inform the landlord about some things, etc. And you all that says a property manager has like hundreds of properties that you're working on and like thousands of property management jobs that they can currently running. You just would be forgetting to do some things, not because you are kind of not diligent or because you're bad person, just because it's so many admin things that you kind of need to be on top of. This is exactly where kind of the automated communication of the system can be providing some things like hey, we just received this property management report, we have this problem. We're already exploring that. We do already, for example, kind of our contractor has come in the property and assessed it.

30:42 This is the description of the problem. So, all of this like proactive communication efforts that in general quite often in the kind of today's world would be lost, the system would be doing automatically for the landlords in our kind of view. Okay. Now, there is I I looked up and there is a larger player on your industry, Texters, which has like 20 to 30,000 properties which they manage. So, the question for you now as you raised the capital, you're in a in a better position to grow and expand. What has to be true operationally before you could serve a a large player like this?

31:14 I think that kind of is is the question of scale, right? I think that to be able to show that you know how to run What is the best way to make sure that you can run a 30,000 managed properties portfolio? probably the answer is run a 30,000 managed properties portfolio. So, probably kind of as close as you be getting to well, building out the operational machine, operational product integrations machine that effectively kind of knows to process this sort of volumes, the more conviction and the more confidence you get that actually kind of should it be, for example, suggesting us to kind of to just offer our platform and technology to these guys or, for example, would it be kind of consider, for example, some buying them up or something, we'll have more confident conviction that we know how to process this volumes. I I know you need to go, so I Usually at the end of every podcast I ask what is the best investment advice they've ever received, but for from you, I would like to ask as you just went through this long journey of raising capital, can you give some specific advice for people who were on a similar journey of of raising capital and maybe struggling at this stage? I wouldn't say anything new, I guess. I think that fundraising is a mix of science and art. I think that the science part is do your homework, map out who are the investors, if they kind of relevant funds at the relevant stages, at the relevant check sizes, at the relevant geographies so that kind of feel excitement and conviction about the thesis that you're building. And then find the kind of specific partners that share the same view of the world that you do because to some extent fundraising is like a numbers game to some extent. So, I think that kind of there needs to be some sort of top of the funnel because effectively you're finding kind of the people that share the same view of the world as you do.

32:54 And then I think that there is a bit of tactics that I think has to do a bit already about art. This has to do with like what are you building really? What is the vision? What are the data points supporting this vision that kind of effectively builds the conviction that kind of you really can achieve what you're kind of saying you will achieve. So, I think it's a mix of two things and to some extent I think it's about for me in the end game, finding the kind of people that I think you feel the same view of the world with. And then I think that building relationship with them because I think in the end of the day, it's people investing into people. And I think that they just need to feel confidence that you are kind of trustworthy, reliable kind of person that just shows up every day and continues kind of becoming 1% better of yourself every single day. And then over time this compounds. That's probably my view on fundraising. Okay. Awesome. So, what you do is very interesting.

33:46 Again, congrats on on raising the recent round and let's do it again in the near future because a lot is going on for you. So, then thanks a lot for doing this today. Thank you for having me. I hope you enjoyed this episode of Buyers and Builders. Please remember to subscribe wherever you're listening and leave a review. It really helps the show reach more buyers and operators. And if you already haven't, go back and listen to some of the other episodes of Buyers and Builders. This podcast is built for people who buy, build, and hold great businesses long term. Every guest you hear on this show has real, hard-won experience acquiring and operating companies. And the goal is again very simple, to give you ideas you can actually use in your own journey.