EP 330 – A Journey into Angel Investing: How to Build Confidence, Diversify, and Succeed – Elena Kersey – Community and Partnerships Lead at Epic Angels

Read the best-effort transcript below (This technology is still not as good as they say it is…):

Michael Waitze 0:02
And then we’ll start. Are You Ready? Ready? Hi. This is Michael waitze, and welcome back to the Asia Tech Podcast. Elena Kersey, the Community and Partnerships Lead at Epic Angels is with us today. Thank you so much for coming on the show. I’ve been waiting for this for a while, as you know, so I really want to, I really want to thank you for your time. I really appreciate it. How are you doing today?

Elena Kersey 0:20
Good. I’m doing really good. Thank you so much. And I’m a big fan of this podcast, so yeah, looking forward to this conversation as well. Thank you

Michael Waitze 0:27
very much. Before we jump into the main part of the conversation, I do want to spend a lot of time talking about epic angels. Let’s give the listeners a little bit of your background for some context too.

Elena Kersey 0:36
Yeah, so I’m the community and partnerships lead at Epic angels. I’m also an investor with epic angels. I joined epic angels at the beginning of 2023 and certainly went zero to one in terms of investing with epic angels. It was the first time I ever made a startup investment was through epic angels. I’m, yeah, my background is, it’s not venture, it’s not tech, it’s not even finance, it’s media, traditional television, broadcast media. I love it specifically. Yeah, so I didn’t come from any space that was sort of related to startup investing, but I really wanted to learn more about it. I just wanted to, I guess, just become more confident about making financial decisions generally. And I think learning how to evaluate a startup investment is a very steep learning curve towards that ambition, and it helps you in other areas too. You know whether you own your own business, or whether you’re running a business, or, I think also in deciding what you’re going to invest in in public markets, I think it’s, it’s just great financial education for for all of those spaces. And I say it many times, I think epic angels was one of the most valuable investments that I made in my own sort of personal and professional development. I

Michael Waitze 2:04
like it. Can you Can we back up a little bit, if you don’t mind, sure what got you involved in the first place? I mean, I know in Singapore and Malaysia and Southeast Asia, there’s a lot of talk, maybe a lot of hype around, like investing in startups, but it does feel a little bit clubby in a way, if you know what I mean? So I’m curious. Like, you’re sitting around talking to your family, whatever, talking to your friends, and you’re just like, you know, I think I want to be an angel investor. Or, like, how did that

Elena Kersey 2:29
come about? I mean, when I think about, like, when I was having this conversation with my family, my husband is a entrepreneur. He’s built a couple of businesses, so he understood it. I felt like I’d kind of had this passenger side seat to that journey, and I wanted to be more involved. However, I think the more I speak to founders, the more founders that I’ve heard pitches from, you know, over the last year or so, the more I realize, you know, I’m looking for something specific in a founder, and those are not necessarily traits that I see in myself. So how can I be part of supporting that innovation, or supporting, you know, founders solving really important problems without, you know, building a business from scratch myself to do that,

Michael Waitze 3:20
right? Can I ask you this, though, what types of traits are you looking for in a founder? And I want to give you an example. Actually, I’ve done, you know, we talked about this before I started recording, but I’ve done, I don’t know, 20 503,000 recordings in the past, like six or so years. And I feel like my ability, just by having a conversation with someone to evaluate, like, are they going to be a great founder, even if the business they’re building is not the right one, but like, if they jumped sectors and did something else, I feel like I can tell, do you feel like that’s changed, and what are you looking for?

Elena Kersey 3:52
So again, I’m much earlier on this journey than you. So very interested to hear more of your insights as well, but I personally am more interested in supporting female founders, but often female founders in a mixed team, like I do like to see diversity on founding teams. I also look for founders who have some kind of, you know, Spike, or some kind of reason why they really, really want to build this business? Is it that they’ve encountered this problem in their personal life, and so they’re really, really committed to the problem they’re obsessed with. The problem is it because they have built a business before? I must say that founders that have built businesses before, I also kind of index more to Yeah, and, and I think founders who I know are really committed to solving this problem for the next 10 years, even if it’s not in through the particular solution or particular product that they’re raising funds for at that time. Yeah. Yeah.

Michael Waitze 5:00
I mean, one of the things that I found is that great founders are great problem solvers, yeah, yeah. And, I mean, I can share a story with you. I remember when I was at Deutsche Bank, and I asked one of the greatest technologists that that was there. He was visiting from New York, and I was in Tokyo at the time, and he was so good, just so good at, like, software building, and just like product building, I said to him, why don’t you go start your own company? And he said something really interesting to me. He said, big banks have big problems, and great technologists want to solve big problems, and there’s no better place to do this than at a big bank. He goes, and I love solving those problems, and it kind of stuck in the back of my mind. I want to find people that solve problems. Does that make sense? Yeah,

Elena Kersey 5:42
yeah, I like that, and I also like the story behind it, right? Why do you want to solve that problem? That’s the thing that makes me more interested, right? So

Michael Waitze 5:53
this is another question I always ask people, or like a conversation I like to have. I have this thesis that, like well educated people, can be good at anything they try. But to be great at something, you have to care about it. And I want to find people that are trying to build something because they really care about it, not because they think they can make money in two years. And this gets back to what you said, committed to building it for like, the next 10 years. Because if you want to build something that’s going to last, in my mind, it should take time. I think, yeah,

Elena Kersey 6:19
yeah. And I think, you know, we can see that, right? It always takes twice as long and usually twice as much money to achieve whatever goal it is that you set out to achieve. I think that’s just realistic, and I think that’s also why I like founders who have built something before, because they know that they’ve seen it happen, and I think they’re a little bit more resilient to the bumps. Yeah,

Michael Waitze 6:43
for sure, for sure. And that resilience is actually really important. Do you feel like there’s some specific things that you’ve learned about investing in general, since you joined epic angels, right? Since you started taking some of your own capital and putting it into, I’ll say the market, yeah,

Elena Kersey 7:06
I think, you know, it’s so where do I begin with this? I’ve learned so many things,

Michael Waitze 7:16
but it’s true, the learning curve is so steep, right? So I’m just curious, like, what are some of those things.

Elena Kersey 7:21
So I think for me, what I’m doing and what I’ve learned is that it’s it’s difficult to pick a winner, so maybe just go for diversity instead. And I invest the same amount in every startup I invest in, and I’m not going to re invest in any of those businesses at subsequent rounds. I’m not going to mark my own homework, and I’m not going to suggest that. Okay, this one, this one, I’m going to back to it to a greater degree in terms of capital than another one, at least in the stage I meant I’m at now, which is, you know, stage one, when it gets to stage two, then I would be looking to make larger investments, maybe in a more focused sector, but I’m not there yet.

Michael Waitze 8:06
Do you feel like, as you see, new people join epic angels? Do you feel like they have they come in with a misconception? Because I definitely did this, and I learned a hard way that, like, you shouldn’t invest a ton of capital in any individual startup, but like, if you’re putting do you get the sense that some people come in this misconception of, like, if I don’t put in at least 25 or 50 grand, then it’s not worth doing, in the sense that, like, you could put in $5,000 into a company that becomes a billion dollar company and make a ton of money. Do you know what I mean? Do you feel like there’s a misconception on

Elena Kersey 8:36
the way in from people? I do see the misconception, but not necessarily in terms of how much they should put in to begin with. I think the misconception is how many investments they need to make in order to to see a return across their portfolio. If you’re going to make, you know, three or four investments, then that’s not really necessarily going to return interesting create an interesting return, but if you’re investing maybe smaller amounts across 25 startups, then then you could, over time, see, see some interesting gains on that portfolio. And don’t you feel this starts

Michael Waitze 9:11
to look more like an index fund? Do you know what I mean? Like just investing in the s, p5, 100, because I don’t know which company is going to win, and I don’t think, and I think actually, people that tell you that they’re maybe this is too much, but I don’t think that people tell you that they’re building alpha into their portfolio by choosing the right companies, or over investing in this, and not under investing in that. I think they’re just like every now and then they’re lucky, but if over time, if you just invest in the index, which is what you’re suggesting in startups, I think you’re still gonna win. Yeah.

Elena Kersey 9:38
I mean, you see, the same learning curve often happen when people start investing in the public market. At first, they try to pick certain stocks and they trade regularly. But what is the saying? Time in market beats time to market Exactly? Time? Yeah,

Michael Waitze 9:54
exactly, exactly. You don’t want to market time. No one’s that smart and nobody has that much excess information. So I don’t think it’s I don’t think you win that way. I want to ask you this too. Do you feel like now that you’ve been at this for, what a year, you said that your conversations with your friends have changed about investing, where, like, maybe before you were just kind of sitting back and not saying anything, or feeling like, Oh, if I say it, it’s going to be wrong. But now that you’ve done it a bunch, do you feel like, hey, I can join this conversation. I can have different conversations about investing with my friends.

Elena Kersey 10:22
Yeah. I mean, definitely my conversations with my friends have changed, but I think most importantly, my conversations with the other angels have changed. Tell me, the beginning, I was really worried about asking a stupid question or sounding not very smart. But I think actually the value of investing, together with a large group of women who where, I think about 60% of epic angels are new to investing, and 40% are more seasoned investors. But those women who are new to investing, they’re not, you know, newbies in business in general, they’re executive women who have built and scaled businesses. They just haven’t invested in startups before. Right? Their portfolios are in, you know, other things, like real estates, public public markets. And you learn a lot from women who have a lot of subject matter expertise in a particular area. And I think that’s how the conversation changes, because I also noticed the conversations I have with other members. We don’t use a lot of jargon. It’s not about starting it’s not about sounding smart. I think you said this on an earlier podcast. You can I think it was with Sherry Zhang. You can be smart without being, you know, mean or rude or condescending about it. And I think that’s what I see. If, to me, a real smart person is someone who can break down something, you know, that’s, for example, the payments industry, not something that I know about. But if you can break down what the real problems and hurdles are in that industry in a way that I can understand, then that’s smart, and that is where I feel I get the real value and where my conversations have changed. I’m not worried about using certain jargon or asking stupid questions.

Michael Waitze 12:13
Yeah, I like to say, don’t confuse my ignorance with your vision of my stupidity. Yeah, right. Right. Anyway, yeah, and, but do you also, here’s, here’s another question. When I first started trading like, I think my personality changed, or at least a new part of my personality came out, is maybe what I should say. Part of my personality that I wasn’t using came out, and it’s never gone away, because the necessity to do like, a certain type of analysis, particularly on a trading desk in real time, changed the way that I looked at other parts of my life as well, not just the investment part of my life. Do you know what I mean? So even if I went to the supermarket, like, just considering like, which line I should get in, considering like, which type of products I should buy, seemed to be driven by the way my mind was working in the way I had to now analyze things. And I’m curious if you see that happening too in little bits and pieces in your life, where you like, if I look at this and analyze it the same way I would a potential startup investment, do I think about it differently kind of thing?

Elena Kersey 13:12
So you’re reminding me of something. So in my previous life, I was in television, so much of my time was spent pitching television shows, right? And, you know, original content ideas to broadcasters or production companies. And so much of the focus is on the idea. And you know, if there’s one thing I’ve learned is ideas are cheap, execution is everything. So show me the execution. And looking back, if I was to go back into those rooms and, you know, pitch a slate to a broadcaster. Now I would be like, Why is this gonna work? How is this going to deliver you the audience you want? How do I know? What have I done to test that?

Michael Waitze 13:53
Yeah, it’s so this is my point. Is that the analysis and the thought process that you have to go through to invest in anything we’re talking about startups, and early stage startups in particular, changes the way your brain works, the way you present things. So let me back up and ask you this now, do you think that it would have benefited you and would benefit anybody, if, like, they learned how to do this in high school or in college? Do you know what I mean, and not have to wait until much later in life, like I didn’t start sitting on a trading desk until I was 35 years old.

Elena Kersey 14:23
Yeah, 100% even earlier than high school or college. I think about the conversations that we have around the dinner table with my kids. We have two seven year old boys, and if we’re just talking more about how much things cost. So this is an example. My, my we are. We have a helper, a full time nanny, and she comes from the Philippines, and her husband raises pigs. So the boys have bought each they’ve each bought a pig. And this has been raised from a piglet, and soon it will be. Be eaten at a wedding banquet. But the cost, the cost that they can sell it for to be eaten is based on how much, how heavy it is. And so we’ve been talking about, okay, so this is how much you bought the pig for. This is how much we hope to get from it if nothing goes wrong, if it doesn’t get sick, if it reaches those weight goals. This is how much it’s cost for you to to pay for the food, the medicine, taking care of it, and this is the return that we could expect. And what are you going to do with that? Are you going to take it, or are you going to reinvest in and buy another pig, right? Or buy two pigs, two more? Yeah, whatever it is, yeah. What are you going to do? And I just think having those conversations with kids at an early stage, those weren’t conversations that I ever had around the dinner table. And you can see it also when you talk to business people or founders. You can see the ones who maybe came were brought up with an entrepreneurial background. Maybe their parents were Business Owners. You can see that the way they look at opportunities is different. Yeah,

Michael Waitze 16:03
and that’s the whole point I’m trying to make. Is that you are now going through this process, and have already noticed this feeling of like it’s changing the way I’m thinking about it. I’m gonna go right down to the seven year olds and make sure they get this today so they don’t have to wait until they have seven year olds to figure out that they need to know this. And at some level, as a seven year old or as a 10 year old, it doesn’t matter. You can’t really separate, like the things you’re learning from the things that are fun. You just just become as part of your life. And I think that part of it is actually really important. Yeah,

Elena Kersey 16:33
yeah, for sure.

Michael Waitze 16:34
Can I ask you this? So are you at the stage now where you feel like you can go and encourage other people to join epic where you have because, you know, one week in, you haven’t really gone up that curve as much, but now that you’ve been in for a year, right? You’re head of the community in partnerships. So now, do you feel like when you meet other women, you feel really powerful about you should do this too kind of thing, and I’m curious what kind of responses you get from

Elena Kersey 16:59
people. I do it all the time. I pitch epic angels to everybody. Well, every, every woman I meet. I mean, it depends there. They’re always at different stages. A lot of women, particularly ones who have never invested in startups before. They They second guess their own financial understanding, their financial knowledge. They’re like, Oh, wow, that’s that seems really something that only VCs do. I need a certain level of experience in order to do that. In general, I find lots of people feel they need experience, some kind of certification or qualification to get started. Interesting. But I think what I’ve learned is, if I can do it this way than anyone can. And the qualification is, by doing it, it it is always daunting, I think, and it’s it was more of an internal struggle for me to make that first investment, to write that first check. But once you’ve gone over that hurdle, then you’ve exercised that muscle. You know, even if you’re the first investment you made is not necessarily, you might evaluate a startup differently in future, you’ve learned something, you’ve you’ve got in there, you’ve you’ve done the work, and then I think it’s just about continuing to learn, continuing to have conversations with other investors, continuing to do due diligence, even if it’s in a startup that you don’t think you’d be interested in investing in, yeah, I just think it’s, it’s important to just keep exercising that muscle. So I want

Michael Waitze 18:30
to go back to this phrase, and I actually wrote it down. The qualification is, by doing it, I think this is actually really important for a lot of potential epic angels, but for a lot of potential angel investors to learn this idea of you have to know what it feels like to have a position in the market, because it feels differently. Right? You can sit on the sideline, and if your brother was an early investor in, I don’t know, Uber, let’s say you can feel happy for your brother, but if that stock starts going down, you don’t have the same feeling your brother has. And when it goes up, you can be happy for him, but again, you don’t know what that feels like. But even if it’s a small investment, 2000 $1,000 in a company, and you can see it doubling, tripling in value, you know what that feels like, and you have to get comfortable with the risk. This is the other thing I like to ask people that are new to investing. One is, how do you feel about taking risk? And two is, are there other places in your life where you haven’t taken risk in the past, but now that you know what it feels like and you’re comfortable with it, you can then go back and take risk there as well. Does that make sense?

Elena Kersey 19:27
Yes, that’s really interesting. I had never thought about that because I am probably naturally quite a risk averse person enough, actually, when I you know, my first I was originally a lawyer, that’s my first job. I didn’t stay in law very long because I figured out pretty early it wasn’t for me. I think lawyers in general can be quite risk risk aware people. So I’m naturally a risk averse person. But yes, I think now I’m just more accepting of the fact that I’m not going to be great at something the. First time, and that’s okay, but the only way I’m going to become great is by doing it more times and and, yeah, and getting better. That’s how children are really comfortable with that. I find children have no problem with not being great at something. They accept that that’s how you get better. But something happens when we reach adulthood and we feel like we have to be great to begin with that, you know, natural talent. And there are people with natural talents for things, but most of the people who are really excellent, like you were making a distinction between those who are good at something and those are who are really, really great at it, yeah. And those who are really great are those who put in the 10,000 hours and just keep doing it and doing it and doing it. Yeah,

Michael Waitze 20:41
I mean metaphorically, like you say, the qualification is by doing it, and it’s true for every single part of your life. Like, nobody wakes up being a great chef or being a great tennis player or being a great football player, you have to commit to it, and you have to do it. And again, you have to know that, like, the first 50 games you may lose, but it’s the only way you’re going to get good. Sorry. Go ahead

Elena Kersey 21:00
and that’s okay, you know, I think also, if, if you can lose those first 50 games, but still have had fun on the pitch, then, then that’s okay. You’ve got something out of it, exactly. And I think when you’re investing in a risky asset class, at least for me, I want to know that there’s something else I’m getting out of this. I mean, I hope to make, I hope to make returns. I do genuinely hope to become good at this and build a strong portfolio that generates returns for me sometime in the future. But that’s not probably going to be for seven to 10 years, so it’s not a super liquid space. So what else am I getting for it in the meantime, learning and, and I also think, you know, supporting founders who are solving problems that I care about, even, as you mentioned, this particular startup, doesn’t work out if those teams then go on to build something that does make a real impact. I’ve been part of that tailwind and, and that’s exciting for me.

Michael Waitze 22:01
Yeah, I mean, I wish I’d had an epic angel group when I first started angel investing, because I did it all wrong. But I will say that I just I spent way too much money investing in too few companies, and I learned really early on. I was like, oh, that didn’t work, but that was really painful. It didn’t have to be that painful. And I think there’s a I think there’s a male mentality that says, if you don’t do something in size, then it says something about your own success already. If you know what I mean, like, you can’t put 100 grand into this while you don’t have enough money kind of thing. So I kind of got tricked into that, but I now look back on it as a massive learning opportunity, and I consider it tuition like, that’s the way I just look at it. I paid tuition to learn the hard way, but you shouldn’t have to do that, and the people that work with you should definitely not have to do that, for sure, yeah, and

Elena Kersey 22:51
I think, you know, starting small also helps, because if I look at, you know, so I’ve only made three investments so far with epic angels, so I’ve got a while to go to build this, you know, portfolio. I think I need 2025, in order to see real returns. But you know, that’s my that’s the cost of my learning at this stage. Yeah, look, I think at

Michael Waitze 23:15
some point you’re going to become more of an expert than you believe. I always ask this to people like, five or six years into any journey, like, did you expect to have this level of expertise in the thing you’re doing? They’re like, no idea who’s gonna know all this stuff. And I think you’d be surprised as the new angels come in and you start being the person that explains stuff. Then you like, when did I figure that part out? Kind of thing? Do you know what I mean?

Elena Kersey 23:36
Yeah. I mean, I think if you were to tell me five years ago that I would be investing in startups and that I would be, you know, as part of my role with epic angels, I’m running regular webinars to teach people about how to start angel investing, even if it’s not with us. You know, sometimes on an ECF platform, if you told me that that’s what I would be doing, running webinars to teach people how to get started in Angel investing. I would think that you are mad,

Michael Waitze 24:04
but your TV experience has to come in super handy for this, right? I mean, I don’t know exactly what role you had in TV, but if you were just around the production, the ideation, you said you did the pitching, like there’s not that big a difference. It’s like the surface is different and the outcome may be different, but the process is not that different, actually, right? You have an idea, you execute that idea, you pitch that idea to somebody. You understand the idea, you iterate the idea. Like all of this sounds familiar in the context of Angel the TV experience must be super handy now, particularly if you doing all these webinars and stuff.

Elena Kersey 24:36
Yeah, I wish I had done it the other way around. I have to say, I think that there’s a lot that I could have learned from, you know, selling television projects, from being an angel investor, fair enough. In particular, I think it’s about, you know, understanding, how do you test something in the TV space at a smaller cost? Right? Because it’s one of the reasons why broadcasters and studios are so risk averse, is because it’s such a huge financial outlay before you know whether or not something’s gonna work. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Michael Waitze 25:14
I mean, look, that’s what pilots were supposed to be for. But back in the day, creating a pilot just cost so much money, which is why I love what I do, maybe we should drag you back into the media business. Yeah.

Elena Kersey 25:24
I mean, that’s the other reason why I love podcasts in particular. I think it’s a really interesting way to test content, grow audiences. Yes, you know, and then, and you see it already right in the podcast space. Podcasters who have become really successful with their own independent shows and are now part of networks and now have TV deals. So I’m I just think it’s a great medium for that.

Michael Waitze 25:49
I’m dragging you back in. We can talk about it. We can talk about it after the show. I have another question for you now that you’ve been at this for a while, right? You’ve made three investments. Do you feel like you have a specific what’s the right word, vertical in which you like to invest, someplace where you feel like more comfortably, like, I think I understand this a lot now, and I get what’s going on over here, but this just makes me feel better. Kind of thing, like, what types of businesses do you like, both from a vertical perspective, but also from a how the business is constructed perspective, if you know what I mean.

Elena Kersey 26:18
So I think the first investment I made was really important to me. I felt like I need to, I need my first check to be written for a business that I I understand. And it was, it was actually a publishing and media business makes sense. And that was a nice, a great first investment for me. But actually, at this stage, I’m looking for diversity, and I’m looking to not actually have too many investments in the same vertical. I think eventually, over time, I will start to see one particular vertical that really, really appeals, yeah, and start to invest more heavily in there, and maybe write bigger checks I

Michael Waitze 26:56
got it. And your time frame here, you just think, like, seven to 10 years, yeah? Because even though you’re not, you’re not running a fund, per se, right?

Elena Kersey 27:04
No, no, we’re not a fund. So each Angel makes her own decision as to whether or not she wants to invest in that particular syndicate. But I’ve basically, my strategy is to put aside a certain amount of money that I want to invest in startups. I’m going to keep investing until that’s all gone. And I think it’s going to take me about five years.

Michael Waitze 27:23
Awesome, awesome. So one last thing, has I asked you this before, but just to ask you again for one more time, how has changing the way you invest and manage your own money like this, putting it aside and taking a five to seven year view, has it filled it into other parts of your life as well, where maybe you felt like I was in a little bit of a hurry to get something done, but now I can take a longer term view, or just like the steps through investing has changed the way you do other things in your life.

Elena Kersey 27:51
Yeah, I think I’m less concerned about how long something might take. Like, I like this saying you always overestimate what you can do in a year, but you underestimate what you can do in a decade. Yeah, exactly. So I think this, so much of it is about consistency, right? Just you have a strategy, and the strategy will change. Obviously, the more I learn, the strategy will change. But if I have already kind of made an allocation like this is how much of my portfolio is going to be invested in, in startups or or private companies. This is how much I’m going to invest in public markets. This is real estate. And if I really believe that those percentages of the portfolio are sound, then I just continue to allocate capital to those buckets, and I do that over time. And let’s hope that that that works out. It sounds it

Michael Waitze 28:48
really sounds like you know what you’re doing. I love this, actually. Okay, one last thing, community, because that’s, that’s what you do at Epic angels. Talk to me about, like, what the community means to you, what you’re trying to accomplish with it, and like, what kind of things the community does into outreach and maybe how people can get in touch with you if they’re interested in joining just by listening to

Elena Kersey 29:06
this. Yeah. So the community does a couple of things. First of all, for those, those angels going zero to one, like myself, we help you gain the confidence to invest. Gain the confidence to make, first of all, your first investment, but then the confidence to build a portfolio, and then for those investors who are more experienced the community, is about trying to identify what kinds of deals women are interested in, the women in our community interested, and making sure that we’re delivering the deal flow that you’re really interested in. This split between more experienced investors and less experienced investors from a community perspective and a learning perspective, I think works really well, because the more experienced angels Angel Investors also rely on those women who even if they’re not experienced investors. They have a lot of experience in whatever field they work in. For example, I think I mentioned payments earlier. We have a few women in our network who are really experienced in the payments industry. To be able to lean on expertise of 340 women all around the world in almost any industry you can think of to do your due diligence with that is extremely interesting and powerful, I think, for any investor, and then for the woman who are looking to make the first step. Knowing that you’re doing this in a community with women who have done it many, many times before gives you a level of confidence as well, and also doing it in a community where all questions are valid, and nobody’s trying to ask the smartest question in the room, and nobody’s making, you know, people feel stupid for for asking those questions.

Michael Waitze 30:56
I like it. I’m gonna let you go. Elena Kersey, the Community and Partnerships Lead at Epic Angels. We’re going to do a lot more of these. I hope with your help and assistance, we’ve already had a few introductions. I’m really looking forward to those as well. I want to thank you very much for doing this today. This was awesome, and I think you will find, and I mean this very seriously, that you actually know a lot more than you probably thought you would at this point in time. And it was great talking to you. I really appreciate it. Thank you. Oh, well, it’s

Elena Kersey 31:21
great to hear that from you, Michael, and thank you so much as well for inviting me to come onto the Asia tech Podcast. I’m a massive fan, as I’ve said, and this has been a lot of fun. Thank you.