EP 170: Georgetown's entrepreneurial ecosystem with Benjamin Zimmerman

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Hi, I'm your host, james Mackey.
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Welcome to the Breakthrough Hiring Show.
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Today I have the Managing Director of Georgetown Entrepreneurship, ben Zimmerman, on the show.
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Ben, thanks for joining us.
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That's awesome to be here, really great to know James and to have brought him into our ecosystem.
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We're really blessed.
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Yeah, well, really excited to do this episode.
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I know we've been planning on it for a few months now, so I'm glad we're finally able to hit record and make it happen.
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Before we jump into what you're doing at Georgetown Entrepreneurship, we'd love to learn a little bit more about your background.
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Sure, yeah, my background is varied in some sense, but I think that the main thread that my background has had through gosh 20 plus years is through education.
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I started off as a teacher.
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I was trained as a middle school humanities teacher, worked my way through to becoming more of an administrator.
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That was.
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My goal in life was to be a school principal and didn't end up quite going in that direction but ended up more in the higher ed space because I got a little burnt out as a teacher in a classroom setting with younger students.
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So I was like I want to stay in education, found my way to Georgetown and was going to use that opportunity to take some courses, figure out the next path and basically had a side hustle myself as a tutor, built a little tutoring company it was just me grew that to a point where it was hey, it's time to either hire some more people to help grow it or essentially quit something else in my life.
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So my wife was pregnant at the time.
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I had the day job at Georgetown working in a learning and assessment role and I was about to start an MBA program.
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On top of this side hustle business I had tutoring families around the greater District of Columbia area, so you could probably take a guess on which ones of those I should not say get rid of.
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I elected to let my little tutoring business fizzle.
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Basically, clients I had.
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I said my goal in that job was to tutor my way out of a job.
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It was to say, I'm going to help students that have executive functioning deficiencies keep themselves organized and, once I set up those structures, send them on their way, set the systems up for the families.
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And so, once those students were all set, I focused in on the MBA and then actually, I simultaneously found the Georgetown Entrepreneurship Initiative and my esteemed colleague, boss Jeffrey, took me under his wings hey, I need help.
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Basically organized his finances and started with that, and then we came into some funding right about that same time this is like circa 2018.
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And the funding was to go towards one of our main pillars now, which is around venture development engagement, to start our venture lab.
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So I built that and over the course of about a year from the ground up, we had, at one point, 40 plus ventures in there doing all sorts of things, but all Georgetown alumni so happy to talk more about that.
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But that's how I came to be and been able to grow a lot of the various things we do at Georgetown Entrepreneurship and work with just fantastic, inspiring people like James Mackey.
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Yeah, I appreciate you say that.
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So the entrepreneurship program was founded, you said in 2018?
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.
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No, jeff Reed started it around 2010.
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Okay, 2010.
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Yeah, but I started with the program in about 2018.
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Yeah, Nice, okay, gotcha, and I know the program's grown considerably over that time.
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I think what I'd love to be able to share with our audience is about what you're currently offering to primarily just students, I think.
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Start there and then, if we have time, to get into also what you're offering to alumni, that'd be pretty cool too.
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But do you want to give us a high level over there?
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And then I'm sure I'll have follow-up questions to ask you.
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Surely.
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We do a lot.
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Our motto in the office, so to speak, is we do a lot with a little.
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It's a lean startup approach.
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We practice what we preach and we're really proud of that, to the point where we won an award through the Global Consortium of Entrepreneurship Centers last fall for being the best entrepreneurship center one of on the globe for 2020, I guess that's 2024.
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So part of that was to broadcast what we do.
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We have three pillars student formation, venture development and engagement and thought leadership.
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That's how we bucket all the stuff we do and I'm not trying to gloat, it's just one of those things that we try to see what the problem is, so to speak, at the university and how we can help solve it from an entrepreneurial mindset.
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And ultimately, those three pillars.
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The goal is to inculcate the people in our ecosystem with an entrepreneurial mindset, not necessarily just start businesses, not to make billion-dollar acquisitions, ipo, spacs, nothing like that.
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It's all about in each person to do that, and that's a really grounded way to think through it from a Jesuit perspective, which is the main function tenet of Georgetown University over other institutions.
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So we're really happy with that.
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So I can dive into each of those pillars.
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I can pause there if you had any follow-up questions before I dive into the Pillars.
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Yeah, no, that was very helpful and clear.
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So yeah, let's dive into it, sure.
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So start with student formation by all means is our largest population that we serve.
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Last year alone we served over 3,000 unique students.
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From our calculations, in the various things that we do there's a minor.
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You can minor in entrepreneurship if you're a business school student.
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We aspire to broaden that to the entire university in the near future.
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There are disparate courses that have entrepreneurship threads in them that we consider part of our academics and those are open across campus to all students in many senses.
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But the majority of the students that we are serving do come from the School of Business.
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But our tagline is Georgetown Entrepreneurship serving all of Georgetown University from the McDonough School of Business.
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The other key components of the academic side of student formation center around the way students interact in a club sense right.
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So there are student clubs.
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The main ones that we work closely with are the Georgetown Entrepreneurship Club, Georgetown Ventures, which largely circles around being an accelerator, a peer-to-peer accelerator, at the institution.
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So they're recruiting student companies and it's that kind of different side of interacting.
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We help advise them using our entrepreneurs and residents.
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We can talk about more of that later.
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And then there are other groups that we work a little bit more loosely with, but those are the main student clubs.
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We have a big academic side around the Georgetown Startup Interns Program.
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One of our adjunct entrepreneur residents teaches a three-credit course, so students can.
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It's a triad you can take the course for three credits, you get help being placed in a startup internship and you can be assigned a leadership coach.
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So that's a growing program that a lot of students take advantage of, because everyone wants to be an intern somewhere while you're a student.
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It's a great opportunity.
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That's actually my software company, june actually in the fall semester as a graduate student on the computer science program that's interning for us and we're actually onboarding.
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We actually had such a good experience with him that it looks like he's going to try to continue the internship and do it again, so he might be continuing and then we are onboarding, hopefully.
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Actually we're going to be making an offer later today for another intern to start on for the spring semester.
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Amazing, I got to get back to Mike later, but yeah, it's a great program and we've just the students that are part of the program.
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They're just so incredibly bright right.
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Yeah, it's been great.
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Yeah, it's been great.
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Yeah, there's something special about Georgetown students that I just can't.
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It's infectious, and I say that as having been one myself, but by no means I.
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The ones I work with are just like so impressive all the time and they get stuff done and they do it well and they do it with pride.
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And I think, above all, georgetown entrepreneurship are really about entrepreneurship for the common good and I think that kind of echoes through all the programming we do.
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So I was at so where was I?
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Georgetown startup interns we do have a global component of that too, which, in essence, it's that triad I spoke of trying to help firms abroad attract Georgetown students, usually during the summer months.
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We're focused on the summer months and we've toyed with a few different ideas, but Mexico City is really where we focused the past few years.
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Next year we aim to focus a little bit broader and the goal there is really just we help create a marketplace.
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You have a startup you're in Tel Aviv great, we'll market that to our students and we help that partnership happen.
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Just like James had mentioned, secure Vision was utilizing it.
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Another big program that's been around for 10 plus years is the Summer Launch Incubator.
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That is what you think of in the startup world, like Y Combinator, but a very junior version of that.
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But the startup excuse me, the summer launch incubator.
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We have a thought leader.
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We have an entrepreneur in residence.
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Amy Millman currently runs that.
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She's been running that for the past two years.
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Previous to that, she ran a incubator called Springboard Enterprises I think they called it, but Springboard.
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It was a women-only, healthcare-focused tech incubator.
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So she is just an unbelievable resource to be running this and essentially what we do.
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We're going to spice it up a little bit this summer, make things a little more exclusive.
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Spice it up a little bit this summer, make things a little more exclusive.
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Goal is to pick five ventures current students or recent grads come May and surround them with mentors, surround them with resources and really curate a process for those five ventures to help them launch to the marketplace or grow if they're already in there.
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We've traditionally done more companies, but the goal is to kind of zero in on a few, just a few companies.
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So are you so?
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Are you investing in these companies as well, or is it primarily advisement?
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We are not investing in them any more than, obviously, time, intellect insights.
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But they do earn.
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Traditionally they've earned $2,000 stipend.
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We're going to up that ante to about 5,000 this summer, but really we want students to commit right and 2,000 is just, it's not a lot of money.
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But but no, we do not invest.
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There are no programs currently that we do invest in.
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Right now it's all non-dilutive Use, as you wish.
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The only exception would be we do have in our I can talk more about this later.
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On the venture development side of things is the Georgetown Entrepreneurship Alliance, which we work close partnership with.
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Our advancement office has the georgetown angel investment network which, as it sounds, is a network of georgetown brethren that are investing as angels in georgetown companies.
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So that's nice right now.
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The main place, that and the only place where we are investing in companies is that?
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is that a program that, like any angel investor, can join?
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It's not Okay.
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Yeah, you do have to be an accredited investor, but you have to be an alum of Georgetown.
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So it's that loyalty component of investing that sometimes can be elusive in other venture instruments.
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So that's the deal there.
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We don't benefit monetarily.
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Georgetown Entrepreneurship does not.
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That's strictly on the angels.
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But it is a construct that has grown under our kind of umbrella.
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That's true.
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Uh, so you have this incubator, right.
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But then you also have the Venture Lab, which is, you said, this was like the program we just mentioned.
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It's over the summer, lot of great stuff, as I outlined, majority of what we do.
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There are a few other student formation things I can talk about later.
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But the alumni side was like we do a few things for alumni and majority of Georgetown brethren are alumni, right, and it was like what can we do for them?
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We said let's start by creating a space.
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One of our advisory group members had mentioned that another one of his alma maters had a lab type structure where alumni of the institution could say, hey, this is lonely, hey, I need more resources, all the things that entrepreneurs go through and they created a co-working space.
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Essentially this is in New York City, which brought together X amount of ventures a year.
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They all sat together on a regular cadence and worked together Water cooler stuff, I think.
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Water cooler interactions.
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They would have lunch and learns, they would have talent brought in to them, and it was to create an ecosystem in a very small sense in one city, and ours is in Washington DC.
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We've had that since 2018.
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It's in a WeWork, so we do have the turnkey readiness of a WeWork, versus doing it on campus, which is always fun, but you're beholden to hey, we need to use your space type stuff.
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Where this is our own thing, it does mean we do have to fund it and that is funded in combination with another program we have, which James is involved in, called Bark Tank.
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The Leonsis family funds the Venture Lab, and we've had that blessing and I was just running some statistics there.
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Hundreds of millions of dollars have been raised by these companies.
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Right, there's some big hitters in there, but it's been a big success and I think the reality is that the attrition and failure rate of startups writ large is 90% or so.
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Right, we've seen a far better outcome.
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There are companies that don't make it for sure from the Venture Lab, but that community has helped considerably bring those numbers closer to like 30, 40%.
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So, anyhow, still room for improvement, but a really great resource for any Georgetown alumni of any program at any point in time that is in the District of Columbia looking for low-cost office space but, more importantly, a community to help them grow.
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Definitely.
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So, yeah, I'll talk a little bit more about venture development now that we talked about the Venture Lab, the Summer Launch Incubator.
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The Summer Launch Incubator in particular is a bridge between student formation and venture development because we're focusing on students for summer launch incubator, but it's strictly hey, we're helping you build a business, build a venture, just like the venture lab is.
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And the venture lab, again, is only for alumni, and there are times where we bring the summer launch incubator, for example, to the lab, the physical space, in the summer to have those collisions between current entrepreneurs and aspiring entrepreneurs.
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So that's one kind of beautiful way to see those two things match each other.
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We have received another very generous gift from the Leonsis family for $5 million last year that basically will fund that lab for the next few years, as well as the Bark Tank, pitch competition and one way to keep all this together and basically prophesize all the things we do, we've created something called the Startup Ambassadors and a major component that bridges student formation and venture development is mentorship at Georgetown.
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So the Startup Ambassadors are very new.
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Right now.
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We've hired part-time a few MBA students, so they're students that are currently studying.
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They've worked somewhere in their life before getting their master's degree, and that's not always common, right?
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There are a lot of master's programs that will accept students right out of college.
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So these are students that have either been in a startup setup, created a company of their own, or very interested in it, but they've also worked, so they have that street credibility, so to speak, to help mentor, to a certain extent, other students and alumni.
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The main function of this, the startup ambassador, is to really know all of what we do and help guide students to the next thing, not say, hey, this is what you got to do with your, your P and L and here's how you attract customers.
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Some of that happens, but it's really guess what?
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I know the perfect person for you, jimbo, that I'm talking to, you should go talk to Entrepreneur-in-Residence X, and that's a good segue to talk about again.
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This bridge between student formation and venture development is we have an Entrepreneur-in and we have an experts on call program, the entrepreneurs in residence.
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Right now we're, I think, at 35, they're from various walks of life.
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We try to keep a very diverse core of these mentors.
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You can find them all on our website and any Georgetown student or alum can reach out to one of these EIRs at any time and say, hey, I'd like to have a coffee or I'd like to chat on the computer or chat on the phone, so on and so forth.
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The entrepreneurs and residents, for the most part, are close to campus.
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In DC, that's the residence part.
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Things have changed a little bit with respect to being close because of the pandemic right, we've all got more virtual.
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So there's something a little bit similar to that, because the experts on call program, by nature, was they're not close to campus, they're global, but they have an expertise that we haven't been able to match elsewhere.
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And those experts on call we have actually zeroed in on it being alum focused.
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So if you want to be an expert on call, we basically are requiring at this point that you are an alum but that you have an expertise.
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And again, students, alumni, can reach out anytime to these individuals for insights, career, business life, you name it.
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I'll pause there, james.
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So the entrepreneurship and entrepreneurs in residence and experts on call.
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The main difference is location, essentially just experts on call, just like national or international, versus folks that are in DC.
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Yeah, there is a larger.
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There is a form, formality to this.
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Again, we're all about building community and all the things we do.
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It's not just like one-off program there.
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It's all about we have a core group.
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How can we keep them cogent and know all the things we do, get them to events?
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The entrepreneurs and residents have a larger commitment.
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They're on papers committing to five to eight hours of their month Experts on call.
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It's less of a commitment.
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It's more.
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I think it's about four hour or four interactions.
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We say Some get way more business than others, depends on the trends in the business world, but it's just a far less commitment is the reality, gotcha, yeah, and I wanted to also make sure we have time to talk about Bark Tank.
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This is a program.
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You know that the goal is to bring some exclusivity to pitch competitions.
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We do several pitch competitions throughout a given academic year at various levels, and this one is designed to get the best and the brightest and aspiring student built companies in front of a highly trained set of judges.
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And, moreover, the process for the Bark Tank starts months before the pitch competition, where there's a nomination process.
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You have to be nominated by someone that we will actually vet, you have to have references and then you have the chance to apply.
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We will actually vet, you have to have references and then you have the chance to apply.
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From those applications, you go in front of a panel of faculty staff and entrepreneurs and residents to determine who the top eight teams are and, from that point forward, the top eight teams are paired with, basically, pitch coaches, because the timeframe is not necessarily to accelerate or totally hone in on the business model.
00:21:54.455 --> 00:22:09.684
It's more about let's put your best foot forward, given where you're at right now, and that is typically a four to six week process of coaching, and James has been doing that, and I don't know if you want to share it all about your experience, but that might be fun.
00:22:10.814 --> 00:22:11.496
Yeah, it's been.
00:22:11.496 --> 00:22:12.923
It's been a lot of fun.
00:22:12.923 --> 00:22:17.549
So each of the eight entrepreneurs or eight startups, we could have more than one founder.
00:22:17.549 --> 00:22:23.070
They essentially have a couple of months to prepare their pitch and they're both teamed with.
00:22:23.070 --> 00:22:43.498
Every group founder group is teamed with two coaches and essentially we've, with my team, we've just essentially gone through optimizing the pitch, getting it down to a tight three minutes, dialing in on one clear value proposition, simplifying the pitch, making it impactful, trying to show a clear how the money's going to impact the business and I think it's.
00:22:43.498 --> 00:22:55.208
It is incredibly valuable for the entrepreneurs to be able to leverage the mentor's experience and then, of course, in my case, I'm pulling in my network as well to give our entrepreneur even more of an advantage.
00:22:55.208 --> 00:23:03.709
So what's really cool about what I've seen over the past couple of months is I feel like this has already been incredibly valuable for the student that we're coaching.
00:23:04.314 --> 00:23:14.916
Absolutely yeah, and I was just pulling some data together and we'll share this out at Actual Bark Tank, this out at actual bark tank.
00:23:14.916 --> 00:23:15.799
Not that these are the only.
00:23:15.799 --> 00:23:16.782
Let me just pull this together here.
00:23:16.782 --> 00:23:18.628
Not that these are the only items for reporting.
00:23:18.648 --> 00:23:29.600
Just give me a second here, sorry yeah, go for it, yeah the typical things, these vanity metrics out in in the world of the startup world, of jobs created, funds raised, so on and so forth.
00:23:29.600 --> 00:23:36.219
So last last I checked and did diligence on it the funds that were distributed through the Bark Tank Pitch Competition.
00:23:36.219 --> 00:23:38.123
It's $100K or so a year.
00:23:38.123 --> 00:23:46.988
They've given away they being the Leonsis family $975,000 in prizes over the course of eight years.
00:23:46.988 --> 00:24:02.449
66 ventures have received funding for that and to date we've calculated about 1,100 jobs created and $412 million raised.
00:24:02.449 --> 00:24:07.543
Pretty cool stats that we're really proud of.
00:24:07.543 --> 00:24:17.661
But again, I think it's more about the lives impacted, the entrepreneurs being impacted as students of the business world, and it's all about community.
00:24:17.661 --> 00:24:26.389
It's about building rapport with the mentors, with staff, with faculty, with students and with the broader ecosystem.
00:24:26.389 --> 00:24:28.461
So it's all the things we do are all about that.
00:24:29.123 --> 00:24:29.524
Definitely.
00:24:29.524 --> 00:24:35.139
I was a judge on a pitch competition a couple of years ago, I think, for Mercore, is that right?
00:24:35.139 --> 00:24:41.080
Yeah, mercore, mercore, and they recently raised, I think, like a 30 million series B right.
00:24:42.383 --> 00:24:42.744
They did.
00:24:42.744 --> 00:24:43.746
They're doing quite well.
00:24:43.746 --> 00:24:51.219
They're in a similar space as, I think, securevision as far as using AI and helping people find jobs in the tech world.
00:24:51.219 --> 00:24:53.005
Yes, but they're doing quite well.
00:24:53.005 --> 00:24:54.981
He actually dropped out.
00:24:54.981 --> 00:25:03.204
Brandon Foody dropped out of Georgetown to fully pursue his business and we would never say, hey, drop out, it's time.
00:25:03.204 --> 00:25:19.346
But that's one instance where things were moving so fast and he had figured out the formula, so to speak, and it would have been a hindrance to time wise to stay in school and hopefully he comes back one day, finishes his degree and all that jazz.
00:25:19.386 --> 00:25:30.735
But yeah, he's been doing quite well yeah, so there's some really big success stories in there absolutely, yeah, absolutely very cool so you had mentioned, there's several pitch competitions throughout the year.
00:25:30.735 --> 00:25:34.005
There's the rocket pitch one and then you have Bark Tank.
00:25:37.118 --> 00:25:37.899
Are there any others?
00:25:37.899 --> 00:25:38.741
Yeah yeah, pitch competition.
00:25:38.741 --> 00:25:41.466
So we are in the venture development world.
00:25:41.466 --> 00:25:55.277
That's a very major component of that is venture development would be behind what we do with pitch competitions, and right now we are actually developing a new series called just a pitch series, where we're actually going to go straight to the source.
00:25:55.277 --> 00:26:00.848
So we typically we broadcast hey, apply here to pitch on this date.
00:26:00.848 --> 00:26:10.545
We've got some applications in advance, and so on and so forth, and then we find judges and then people come, there's a keynote and that's a formula for our pitch competition.
00:26:11.355 --> 00:26:16.434
We are going to try something new, largely going from the ground up, with the student clubs I mentioned earlier.
00:26:16.434 --> 00:26:20.366
They are saying, hey, why don't we go to like midnight mug?
00:26:20.366 --> 00:26:23.697
Why don't we go to the maker space on campus?
00:26:23.697 --> 00:26:32.468
Why don't we go where there are a lot, there's a ton of energy of just students gathering, and we'll basically do like a pop-up pitch competition.
00:26:32.468 --> 00:26:46.686
They'll be a little yeah, there'll be more advertising than just that, but it's let's just bring our presence there and the goal is it's more than anything is marketing yeah, for sure, getting our yeah, getting ourselves out there.
00:26:46.747 --> 00:26:54.758
So the goal is to do more of that like we initially called it, micro pitch series, but it'll inevitably be titled something even fancier.
00:26:54.758 --> 00:26:59.038
But this semester we're going to do three to four of those and it's lean.
00:26:59.038 --> 00:27:08.918
We'll probably have some food there, we'll probably market swag and stuff like that, but the goal is to bring that ground up energy to our, our ecosystem.
00:27:08.918 --> 00:27:24.870
That I wouldn't say it's waning, but it's definitely something that it's always a struggle to get a message across campus because there's so much going on in every nook and cranny and new programs, new master's degrees, new institutes.
00:27:24.870 --> 00:27:28.560
The good old guerrilla marketing tends to work best.
00:27:28.560 --> 00:27:39.379
Put flyers out and actually physically being in a dorm, physically being in a coffee shop that's really where the trend's going as far as pitch competitions shops that's really where the trend's going as far as pitch competitions.
00:27:39.379 --> 00:27:44.455
But as far as venture development scope, its early stage is RocketPitch or these pitch series that we speak of.
00:27:45.096 --> 00:27:50.597
You're then in our sphere, summer Launch, incubator, a lot of those companies from those early stages.
00:27:50.597 --> 00:27:53.730
Hey, you're really a masterful company, masterful pitching there.
00:27:53.730 --> 00:27:57.304
Let's hone that business idea, even better, incububate that idea.
00:27:57.304 --> 00:28:03.682
Oftentimes those companies out of the incubator are the bark tank finalists as well.
00:28:03.682 --> 00:28:13.087
So you can see that pattern and I think the trend with the venture development side of Georgetown is to curate more of a process.
00:28:13.087 --> 00:28:29.221
Behind you enter our sphere here, ben Zimmerman, the student pitching this idea we're going to actually follow you and track you and help you, not just do one-off programming, because that's really the way we are now.
00:28:29.221 --> 00:28:35.779
We strive to bring more continuity to following a venture through a process.
00:28:35.779 --> 00:28:46.657
Not everyone will get to Bark Tank, but we want to make sure that everyone that wants to have the time of day of our mentors, of our ecosystem, that we're able to better attract them.
00:28:47.360 --> 00:28:49.809
Yeah, yeah and that makes I love it.
00:28:49.809 --> 00:28:51.174
I think it's really impactful.
00:28:51.174 --> 00:28:54.119
And just being part of Bark Tank to me it's the.
00:28:54.119 --> 00:28:58.929
This is the event I've had the most fun actually taking part of here at Georgetown.
00:28:58.929 --> 00:29:05.247
Again, I actually doing the mentoring with Kevin over at Serenity Lawn Care.
00:29:05.247 --> 00:29:09.944
He's really doing quite a good job making the adjustments week over week.
00:29:09.944 --> 00:29:11.187
But on the pitch.
00:29:11.187 --> 00:29:19.918
But what's interesting is, as we're going through the pitch, there's also hey, this isn't necessarily directly related to your pitch, but also really we should be dialing into here.
00:29:19.918 --> 00:29:20.880
You should consider this.
00:29:20.880 --> 00:29:28.723
Or hey, this is something that you need to think about for your business, or shifting the business model a little bit, or whatever it might be, or just so much comes up.
00:29:28.723 --> 00:29:37.125
Right, while we're refining the pitch, where it's like there's also all of these takeaways of what you can do to improve your business.
00:29:38.127 --> 00:29:38.588
Absolutely.
00:29:38.855 --> 00:29:40.381
So I think that's really been.
00:29:40.381 --> 00:29:45.549
The interesting part is when I started working with Kevin a couple months back.
00:29:45.549 --> 00:29:52.394
That's okay, we're just we're going to focus on refining a pitch, but in doing so, we've been doing a lot of work on the business.
00:29:52.394 --> 00:29:59.702
There's been a lot of things that we're going to be able to implement right To to help him accelerate growth and really make it a huge success.
00:29:59.702 --> 00:30:01.045
Right, that's awesome.
00:30:01.245 --> 00:30:02.508
Yeah, and I'm sure you'll.
00:30:02.508 --> 00:30:10.064
You've formed a partnership, and not a formal partnership, but a friendship that you'll hopefully continue beyond Bark Tank too.
00:30:10.064 --> 00:30:10.826
That's great.
00:30:11.294 --> 00:30:21.464
Yeah, yeah, whatever he needs, it's always exciting to and fun to work with entrepreneurs, folks that are willing to put in the blood, sweat and tears to make it happen, to make the commitment, and it's just.
00:30:21.464 --> 00:30:24.100
There's an energy in those early days of starting a company.
00:30:24.100 --> 00:30:25.585
Oh yeah, it's contagious.
00:30:25.585 --> 00:30:26.699
It's a lot of fun to be around.
00:30:26.994 --> 00:30:31.001
I'm glad you're able to rekindle that in your own, your nature good naturedness.
00:30:32.216 --> 00:30:33.541
Yeah, it's always good to stay around it.
00:30:41.375 --> 00:30:42.056
But is there anything else?
00:30:42.056 --> 00:30:42.738
We got a few minutes here.
00:30:42.738 --> 00:30:44.243
Is there anything else that you wanted to share with the audience?
00:30:44.243 --> 00:30:44.684
Yeah, I've said a lot.
00:30:44.684 --> 00:30:45.065
I think again it's.
00:30:45.085 --> 00:30:48.496
We can water down what we do to those three pillars of student formation, venture development and thought leadership.
00:30:48.496 --> 00:30:51.850
You know I didn't really chime in on the thought leadership side as much.
00:30:51.850 --> 00:31:03.366
It doesn't mean it's not important, but I think the reality of thought leadership is putting our word out there to the world, and that is done through various channels.
00:31:03.366 --> 00:31:15.750
I think the main way we do the thought leadership side of things is through these new opportunities to engage existing constructs and to be the person that convenes the people.
00:31:15.750 --> 00:31:20.265
Some examples of that are largely this is done through Jeff Reed.
00:31:20.265 --> 00:31:30.405
We have a Jesuit Entrepreneurship Alliance he's helped form, in concert with some of his other contemporaries that are entrepreneurship center directors.
00:31:30.405 --> 00:31:34.585
So, as you can imagine, schools that identify as Jesuit.
00:31:34.585 --> 00:31:42.207
We're like hey, there's a commonality in the Jesuit tradition of entrepreneurship is a thread actually in that Religion.
00:31:42.207 --> 00:31:50.076
Aside, it's like all these Jesuits through thousands of years have always been entrepreneurial and the institutions are glomming onto that.
00:31:50.076 --> 00:31:54.006
As we know, things are very competitive, but Jeff convened those people.
00:31:54.006 --> 00:31:57.779
We are a thought leader in the Jesuit institution side of that.
00:31:57.779 --> 00:31:58.881
So I think that's pretty cool.
00:31:58.881 --> 00:32:01.184
More to come on that.
00:32:02.246 --> 00:32:10.688
Other main components of the things that are in the works thought leadership, wise, the venture and the capital love the terminology, the focus there.
00:32:10.688 --> 00:32:12.460
This grew out of students.
00:32:12.460 --> 00:32:15.611
So connection between student formation and thought leadership.
00:32:15.611 --> 00:32:20.777
Students said, oh my God, we're so interested in venture development, writ large.
00:32:20.777 --> 00:32:23.764
There's a venture fellows program that we have.
00:32:23.764 --> 00:32:26.318
They said we got to do more than that.
00:32:26.318 --> 00:32:34.400
We need to bring together all the people that have this policy slant, defense, slant, what have you?
00:32:34.400 --> 00:32:46.375
The big names are coming to DC now H2Q, andreessen, horowitz, they're all bringing offices to DC because they know stuff's going to happen there and is happening.
00:32:46.375 --> 00:32:48.623
Two more things and then I'll be quiet.
00:32:49.286 --> 00:32:54.622
Jeff Reed has done a great job of convening innovation leaders from the District of Columbia.
00:32:54.622 --> 00:33:04.810
So you think your Nestle's, your Booz Allen's, the various entities that are corporations, marriott, that have an innovation, a CIO, so to speak.
00:33:04.810 --> 00:33:10.966
He's convened some of these CIOs to say, hey, cool, you guys are doing your own thing at that nook.
00:33:10.966 --> 00:33:12.818
Why don't we share resources?
00:33:12.818 --> 00:33:13.860
Why don't we share ideas?
00:33:13.860 --> 00:33:27.247
Because we're all trying to work together and Jeff's theme is that it's common good, entrepreneurship, like everybody needs to make a living, but like we're all working towards helping the world, and it just seems like a perfect marriage of that.
00:33:27.247 --> 00:33:32.750
So he's brought those folks together, I think on three different instances, and we look to continue that series.
00:33:32.850 --> 00:33:36.200
And then the last but not least, I would say, around thought leadership.
00:33:36.200 --> 00:33:37.382
A major breakthrough one is.
00:33:37.382 --> 00:33:56.188
And then the last but not least, I would say, around thought leadership, a major breakthrough one is more the incubators, as it were, around town, the district, sorry, union kitchens, right, the Jose Andres thought leaders, the people in the Think Food group, all those people doing work with the startups, whereas those innovation hubs like the Marriott's, they're doing it on a corporate level.
00:33:56.188 --> 00:33:58.296
These are the more organic.
00:33:58.296 --> 00:34:02.542
Hey go finding startups, having them convene in different ups and crannies around town.
00:34:02.542 --> 00:34:08.471
This one I'm not justifying for the sake of a podcast, but I think that's one like Jeff.
00:34:08.471 --> 00:34:13.978
This thought leadership one would be a great, I think, podcast.
00:34:13.978 --> 00:34:15.621
For Jeff probably to do is talk more about all those things.
00:34:15.621 --> 00:34:17.226
But that's it in a nutshell.
00:34:17.226 --> 00:34:19.976
I've definitely left out a few programs, but it's a mouthful.
00:34:20.699 --> 00:34:25.882
Yeah, it's definitely a good high level and we could always jump back on for another episode if there's more to always more to cover.
00:34:25.882 --> 00:34:28.577
But, ben, thank you so much for joining us today.
00:34:28.577 --> 00:34:35.481
It's a lot of fun getting to know you and the entrepreneurship program and what you guys are building, and I'm very excited to be part of it.
00:34:35.481 --> 00:34:36.965
So thanks for letting me do that.
00:34:38.755 --> 00:34:45.585
But yeah, make sure to come back on sometime soon and update us Absolutely, always here to help, absolutely In the future.
00:34:45.585 --> 00:34:46.186
Take it easy.
00:34:46.967 --> 00:34:48.429
Take care and for everybody tuning in.
00:34:48.429 --> 00:34:50.538
Thank you so much for joining us and we'll talk to you soon.