Embracing Life's Twists: Matthew Kee on Venture Capital and the Thrill of Innovation

From the secure halls of JPMorgan Chase to the dynamic world of tech startups, Matthew Kee's journey is nothing short of remarkable. As the visionary manager of Tundra Angels, he joins us to share how swapping bank spreadsheets for the entrepreneurial rollercoaster became a life-altering decision. We're taken through a riveting saga, starting with his roots at Olivet Nazarene University, to the serendipitous chance given by his father that led to his first business foray. Matthew's tale is a vibrant illustration of how embracing the twists of life with open arms can lead to unanticipated but gratifying career paths.

Venture investing is more art than science, and in this episode, we peel back the layers on what makes a startup stand out in the eyes of those willing to bet on the future. With anecdotes from our own experiences and nuggets of wisdom from the Tundra Angels Angle newsletter, we dissect the importance of visionary foresight—a skill exemplified by our investment in Octane Coffee. This robotic coffee drive-thru journeyed from a mere concept in a warehouse to a viral sensation, offering a taste of the thrill that comes with pioneering innovation.

As we navigate the finale of our season, we examine the essence of venture capital investing and the daring it takes to stand firm by one's beliefs, particularly when those beliefs go against the grain. The episode doesn't shy away from discussing the emotional challenges of early-stage investing and the impact of herd mentality, all the while underlining the significance of understanding the 'why' behind each decision. Balancing the professional insights, we celebrate the grounding force of family and the joys of parenthood. And for fun, we ponder the what-ifs of having invested in Apple at its inception and the chance to be a part of Steve Jobs's pioneering journey. Stay tuned for what promises to be a thought-provoking and uplifting second season after our summer break.

To connect with Olivet’s Entrepreneurship Program, contact Program Director, Chris Perez at caperez2@olivet.edu.

To learn more about other entrepreneurship opportunities and the McGraw School of Business’s very own Createur Conference and Pitch Competition, go to Createur.Olivet.edu.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

This week, Matthew Key will be joining us to share what he looks for when investing in tech startups.

Speaker 2: 0:06

Where faith and business meet. This is Creator. What does it mean to be a Christian entrepreneur? How can I turn my ideas into an actual business? How do I navigate my path to entrepreneurship?

Speaker 1: 0:19

Welcome to Creator, the podcast brought to you by Olivet Nazarene University's McGraw School of Business to unlock the secrets to Christian entrepreneurship and fuel your path to success.

Speaker 2: 0:30

I'm your host, Carly Bird, graduate assistant of Olivet's Entrepreneurship Program.

Speaker 1: 0:36

I'm your co-host, Spencer James, an Olivet undergraduate marketing management and business administration major.

Speaker 2: 0:42

Join us, fellow students, as we embark on a journey to discover the call of the entrepreneur.

Speaker 1: 0:49

Hello everyone. This week, carly and I have the pleasure of being joined by someone that isn't afraid to try something new, especially for the sake of helping the fellow entrepreneur, matthew Key.

Speaker 2: 0:59

Matthew is the manager of Tundra Angels, which is an angel investor network that invests in high growth tech startups. The group is comprised of 50 investors who have collectively invested in 17 companies to date, with almost $4 million in capital deployed. That built out a software product and went through two startup accelerators, eventually raising venture capital from a Fortune 500 financial technology company. Matthew's current passion is being the investor that he wishes he had on his own startup journey. Matthew, thank you so much for being here with us today. It's so great to have you on the show.

Speaker 3: 1:39

Yeah, thanks Carly. Thanks Spencer. It's a pleasure to be here.

Speaker 2: 1:42

Yeah. So, Matthew, I'm so excited to hear your thoughts today on investment strategies. But before I get too ahead of myself, I think it would be great for our listeners to just learn a little bit more about your backstory and how you ended up forming Tundra Angels. Now, I didn't mention this in your bio, but from my understanding, you actually started your career at JPMorgan Chase. Is that correct?

Speaker 3: 2:05

Yeah, I did.

Speaker 2: 2:06

Yeah, so do you think you could just share a little bit more about how you went from working for a large financial corporation to starting some of your own companies and startups? Really?

Speaker 3: 2:16

Yeah, for sure. I'll just back up just a little bit more and just say that my Olivet experience was incredible. So it's just an honor to be here talking with you both A little bit of a full circle moment for me. But yeah, I graduated Olivet in 2011 with a double major in international business and Spanish, a minor in music, and great college experience, loved it. I was involved in a lot of campus ministries and campus activities, intramurals and things like that. So I graduated. I met my wife at Olivet, elizabeth Bernhardt formerly Bernhardt, now Bernhardt Key and in 2011, I went into JPMorgan Chase. So I was a banker there for three years. I had got the job actually, because One of the reasons I got the job was because I spoke Spanish. I traveled and studied abroad in Nicaragua, cuba and Costa Rica at Olivet, which is just a phenomenal experience and so I had some Spanish skills. So I worked as a bilingual banker at JV Morgan Chase for about 3 years, right out of school.

Speaker 2: 3:14

Wow, what a great experience.

Speaker 3: 3:16

Yeah, I loved it. It was honestly a dream job. When I was graduating, I said to myself my goal was to get a job in finance, speaking Spanish, with no idea what that actually looked like and meant, and yet it was able to work out, so very thankful for that.

Speaker 2: 3:35

That is a blessing. So okay, I'm curious then, that was your path in the beginning, going into that financial corporation standpoint, but when did you decide to take that jump into entrepreneurship?

Speaker 3: 3:49

I never thought I'd be an entrepreneur. I think that some people grow up and think like I want to start a business someday, or they're doing all these side hustles in high school and in college, and I knew people like that and I respected the heck out of them at school, but I never had that. In fact, I thought that if you were to say what is an entrepreneur, I would probably have Googled the top what is an entrepreneur? And all these traits come up, like risk-taking and all these things that I probably would say that's not me. That's not me. I'm going to be in corporate America for the next 35 years or something. So what ended up happening and how I fell into it was I was transitioning.

Speaker 3: 4:28

I was at JP Morgan for about 3 years and then it was a transition to business school, and sometimes transition moments in life cause you to think about different options or different avenues that you hadn't considered previously, and so that was the case for me, and so, when transitioning to business school, my father approached me with an opportunity. That was really a side project, and he had worked in the bond market space to build out this sort of algorithmic decision-making product for asset managers. You want to just kind of help build out some documentation and stuff like that, and so I ended up what became what was started as a side project ended up becoming a 5-year journey which we can get into. But one of the things I wanted to call out was when I jumped, when I stumbled into entrepreneurship it wasn't too long into working on the side project and seeing this like, wow, this is actually a thing, this could actually be something that I realized oh my gosh, I actually love this.

Speaker 3: 5:41

And when I was at JPMorgan Chase it's a bank highly financially regulated and what I realized was when I stepped in entrepreneurship, I almost rediscovered who I was for the first time, in the sense that, all of a sudden, those four walls of the bank that I was in, was working within, had almost been kicked down. And it's like now you're in the startup company and there is no, there is no rules, there is no limitations on what could be done. There is, technically, there's more moral and ethical things to do, but from a creativity standpoint, the doors have been kicked down and it's like, wow, I love this and I rediscovered Almost not rediscovered discovered who I was, in some ways professionally, for the first time in that moment, and so that was kind of the inflection point where I realized to myself wow, I don't know where this journey is going to end, but I know that I love the world of entrepreneurship and I want to do it for the rest of my life.

Speaker 2: 6:42

That's incredible. I love your testimony. Yeah, that's. I'm sure that was big moment in your life to experience going from one end of the spectrum to a complete opposite like that.

Speaker 3: 6:55

Yeah, it was a lot of fun. I would say I'm really grateful because I think that I found out a couple years out of school what I really love. I found out like a couple of years out of school what I really love. I think a lot of people in life, in society, almost, like you know you might hear them make a side comment like I spent 20 years. I'm still trying to figure out what I want to do. You know, well, I'm thankful that, like it's three years out of school and I'm like, well, I don't know exactly what entrepreneurship is going to look like practically sometimes, but it's like I know this is what I want to do, which is a really cool aha moment. You know so early in life, so I'm very thankful for that.

Speaker 1: 7:27

That's awesome. So you know you kind of transitioned over into this entrepreneurship space. I mean, what, what kind of led you to getting getting into the tech startup space and the investment in that?

Speaker 3: 7:38

Started the fintech startup in 2014,. Over a five-year journey, took an idea, built out a software product for institutional asset managers, built a tech product around it, built a team around it, ended up raising venture capital from a Fortune 500 company. So I was like, as a CEO, you're the janitor and, as well as the lawyer, as well as the go-to-market strategist, and you're doing everything right. You're doing everything in the company, because that's what there's limited resources. So that was the experience that I had, and it was one of these things where this was completely new space to me. Like I said, I didn't premeditate getting into the space. I jumped into the space. I almost stumbled into it accidentally and realized, oh my gosh, how much I don't know. So I was just putting myself, soaking up podcasts, soaking up books, all these things. It's just almost like level up my entrepreneurial acumen over these 5 years.

Speaker 3: 8:34

At the net of it all, after 5 years, in 2019, the company didn't pan out for a number of reasons. I like to say that I had this experience where I made 1000 mistakes and a couple good decisions, and I took that into my next endeavor, which was coming out of the fledgling company at that point in 2019. I joined up with the Greater Green Bay Chamber here and they were looking to build out a pre-seed capital source. And so they had an economic development strategic plan that they were executing against, and in part of that plan they were looking to build a pre-seed capital source. And so, to make a long story short, tundra Angels became that capital source. That's what got me on the investor path, as it were, to start my career on one side of the table as a founder, now to kind of come on the other side of the table. So that was kind of the. That was the sort of the impetus to the beginnings of Tundra Angels in 2020.

Speaker 1: 9:30

That's so cool. We have the creator conference and pitch competition, where a lot of students are actually able to go in and pitch their idea to to a set of investors, and I think that's such a cool opportunity to be able to do, because for a lot of young aspiring entrepreneurs, I mean that was that could be the most intimidating part for them to be able to feel like they they can show their worth a little bit Right and kind of being able to help convince others that their product or their service is worth, worth the cash. And so do you have any advice or anything for maybe some younger entrepreneurs who are maybe looking to seek out some investors and to raise some capital?

Speaker 3: 10:09

Yeah, I mean, I think it's a big.

Speaker 3: 10:11

There's a lot that I could say, but I think one of the biggest things that I found is, at the end of the day, if the CEO, the founder of the company, if they're not trumpeting their own company and what they're doing, nobody else is going to.

Speaker 3: 10:25

I mean, they're the number one evangelist of the company. And so there's a lot of companies, I think, where the CEO and the founder is just a little bit more low-key, a little bit more, just not really out there talking big about the company. But I think I've realized, if you, as a founder, you as of realized like if, if there, if you're not, if you as a founder, you as a CEO, you're not doing it, then nobody else is. And so, basically, the takeaway there is like be bold, don't be afraid to, to be, to be proud, or even, I wouldn't say brag, but be excited about what you're doing, because ultimately you're the evangelist for the excitement of your passion. And so you're the kinetic energy of that founders, the kinetic energy of the idea of the movement that they're trying to create, which we can maybe get into a little bit more. But that's what I would say is like if you're not tooting your own horn, nobody else will be.

Speaker 2: 11:26

Very true. Yes, I mean, if you're not passionate about it, then nobody else will. That's a great point. I'm personally curious as well based on the industry that you're currently operating within and taking part in, based on the current environment that you see that we're living in today, do you have any go-to factors or criteria that you look for, or would suggest some of our listeners to look for, when considering an investment in a tech startup?

Speaker 3: 11:52

This is where I love this. I spent a lot of time thinking about how to invest in startups and the insights around that. Let me just take a step back and just lay out a little bit like what Tundra Angels is like how we function right now. The way we run is, at a high level, there's what's called a VC fund, a venture capital fund, and then there's an angel investor network or angel investor group, and so a VC fund has a captive fund that they're maybe raising $25 million to deploy from. That is not our model.

Speaker 3: 12:23

Although we invest in similar deals sometimes the same deals our model is different. We don't have a captive fund. We have a membership-based model where accredited investors pay an annual fee to be part of the group and my role as manager is basically curating opportunities for them to invest in. So we hold a pitch meeting every quarter and at that pitch meeting I have 3 or 4 companies that I've curated over the last. It could be a bit of time 3 months, or even I could have been talking to companies for 2 years until they reached that moment.

Speaker 3: 13:00

They pitch for our group in a very it feels a little bit like Shark Tank, except there's no cameras and no Mr Wonderful and so, but it's a ton of fun. And so at that meeting, basically, our investors have an 8-minute pitch, 8-minute Q&A and then 5 minutes of investor discussion at tables, and after that the outcome of that is they indicate interest in which companies they're interested in pursuing into due diligence, and then we Me, and then a number of the members strategic members that are selected within our group vet out that company via due diligence and then figure out if we want to make a commitment on that company or not. So that's the. I think it's helpful to share that that's the process at this point in time. To date, we've invested in 17 companies. Depending on when this is released, it could be 18. But almost $4 million deployed at this point in time.

Speaker 2: 13:55

What an accomplishment. That's amazing, yeah. So going through that process and personally I find that that's just sounds so exciting to be able to see all these different individuals sharing their ideas, bringing something new to the table like that and being a part of that, that's so exciting. These individuals what are you looking for? Personally, I'm sure you're looking for plenty of different things and that's a lot to unpack, but if you could give maybe even a top 3 that you know that those are the must-haves almost.

Speaker 3: 14:34

Yeah, let me just share a little bit of context. I asked, got asked, a question similar to that at a conference last year. I was at a pitch competition. I was sitting with somebody, um, and this person I was sitting with I'd never met before. I just the person, sat down on my table and, uh, they worked for one of the big five. They work for one of the big five tech tech companies. Um, so like, very intellectually, you know smart, um, and they were, but yet they were very unfamiliar with the venture capital, venture investing space. And after several startup pitches that I was just observing I wasn't doing anything in the competition, I'm just watching the company's pitch and just taking notes and stuff this person asked me something similar to what you asked, which was what is the one thing that you look for in these companies when you're looking to invest? Which was like what is the one thing that you look for in these companies when you're looking to invest? And I thought that was a great question.

Speaker 3: 15:24

And yet what's interesting is, as I have developed in this journey been a founder and now an investor for almost 3 years it's actually not so much one thing, it's actually, I would say, the metaphor I use. It's like a Rubik's cube of variables that they need to be twisted into the right alignment so that there is a clear like yes, this, and so some of the things within those variables I lay out. I've got a series that I write that's not live yet but will be live tomorrow, called the Tundra Angels Angle, which is a weekly newsletter that I send out to startup founders dropping insights from an investor perspective on how to win in the market. I lay this out on each one of these in a post. I think there's like 10 posts in that series, but I'll just pick a couple of these that I think that get me really amped up and excited to have a second conversation.

Speaker 3: 16:24

So the one thing, one big thing, is there needs to be what I call a non-obvious insight, and what that means is there needs to be an insight into the future, of what the future could represent. So it's not my words necessarily, but there's a guy named Mike Maples Jr who's a venture capitalist in Floodgate in Silicon Valley and he calls it a breakthrough insight. He actually says that a startup is a series of insights. A startup is not even a company, but yet a series of insights about the future and rather successful startup founders are actually time travelers. They actually live in the future and they come back to the present and their job is to pull the present toward that future. And so let me just give you a really practical example. So that was theoretical, but let me give a really practical example with one of our portfolio companies.

Speaker 3: 17:17

So the first company that we ever invested in is a company called Octane Coffee, and Octane Coffee is very cool. It's a robotic, automated coffee drive-thru. So picture a shipping container and inside there's a robotic configuration that is dialed in to make coffee and to hand the coffee to the customer. So the experiences that you get on your app and this is currently live in the West Service of Milwaukee the experiences that you get on your app, the Octane Coffee app you place the order on your phone, the coffee order on your phone, the GPS tracks your location on the way to the store and the robot times when you're going to arrive and then makes your drink according to when you're going to arrive, so that when you're literally 100 yards away, your drink is ready. You pull up, you scan the QR code, the cabinet rotates and then there's your drink and you literally grab your drink in 5 seconds. There's no people, there's no bathroom. It's a completely nearly automated experience. It's radical Now that sounds now that sounds amazing.

Speaker 3: 18:23

But let's go, let's flash. Let's, let's flash back three years, right, when, when Adrian Deasy was just like in a like, literally in a warehouse and had a robotic configuration, you know, in a warehouse, like it wasn't live, right, so that's when we invested. But we invested then, right, okay. So the question is like, how does that happen? How did how in the world does that happen? And one of the ways why that happened is because when we were talking with adrian, you know, you have to think about, like what the problems, the current alternatives are out there, right, we all have been through the starbucks drive-thru line. When it's like either five minutes or 20 minutes, right, you, you all kind of you pull up, you're like, oh my gosh, I'm not going to stop there, it's so long. We've all been there, we've all been on the drive-thru line. There's a super huge amount of variability to it. And yet, in addition to that, there's also this labor shortage, right when baristas are going to be Exactly so, there, there's these confluence of sort of like, these macro factors in society, and all of a sudden, we talk with Octane Coffee and, you know, after a number of conversations, we become convinced of something, and what we're convinced of is, wow, that's the future. And it's almost like this future is streaming to us. It's almost like the future is live streaming to us from several years out and we have to go like, wow, do we believe in that future? Because if we do, then that informs the way that this, how this story is now in process, is, like you know, when we invested, it's almost like we invested in this kind of thing that nobody knew much about because, frankly, nobody did.

Speaker 3: 20:05

But it was really interesting because once Octane Coffee launched to the public late summer, last summer, 2023, about three months in, they had this viral moment where there's a, there's a, a article, newest article that went out about them and it went.

Speaker 3: 20:20

It had like millions of impressions across all these different social media platforms and all of a sudden, like this one, like small, localized, you know, robotic, automated coffee shop in milwaukee was known to people in like the united arab emirates and like australia, like all over the world, because of and that that was a moment to us as investors, who was like, yes, we believed, we took that bet 3 years ago, believing that that was the future, and now here's the moment, 3 years later, where the entire world is saying the exact same thing. Yes, that is the future, and so that was a moment for us where it's like, oh my gosh, it's almost like those are the moments that we need to seize as investors, and so I think that's one big thing. I know it's a little bit elongated in the explanation, but I'm just trying to give you a sense for how some of these breakthrough insights come full circle. Yeah.

Speaker 2: 21:17

No, that makes complete sense. I'm really glad you said that. You know, with that forward thinking mindset that you're talking about, you're right, you have to have that mindset and be that visionary individual, because otherwise everyone would have jumped on that already. I think that goes along with you know. I know you mentioned earlier that you don't really see yourself as or you didn't before see yourself as much of a risk taker, which I know that we all say entrepreneurs have that risk taking quality, or you know that's a common conception and I think that right there there's that risk taking quality too is you have to have a little bit of that to be able to, you know, invest or believe in someone that is looking so far ahead into the future.

Speaker 3: 22:01

No, you're exactly right. I mean Carly, in 2014, when I had that sort of aha moment and I realized, oh my gosh, I want to do this. It was like I didn't know who I was professionally. I discovered, and now I look back I'm like, oh my gosh, I have a pretty healthy appetite towards risk, except I didn't know that at the time, I didn't know that 10 years ago, at this point. So, yeah, no, you're exactly right. It's neat. How entrepreneurship is this medium that almost reflects who you are, if that makes sense, and so, anyway, it's like a mirror in that way, for good and bad. The key is just being aware of your strengths and being aware of your strengths and being aware of your weaknesses.

Speaker 1: 22:40

Well, matthew, one of the things that we sometimes talk about at Creator is for every one success. Sometimes there's a lot of fails that happen behind the scenes and with every risk taken, there's not always success in that. So how would you say, just in your time being in this space, that you have kind of been able to mitigate some of those risks Because there has to have been some failures along the way surely with kind of the investing in some new and upcoming businesses?

Speaker 3: 23:09

Yeah, it's a good question. The reality of the venture investing space is that basically it's a power law distribution. So that means that if you invest in 10 companies 10 just being an example like one or two, one, maybe two are going to be the pop that pays and does really, really well and does above and beyond, makes up for everything else that you've lost. But the reality of the venture investing space is like five or 6 of them are going to be either 0 or 1x you know what I mean and so there has to be a systematic level of capital deployment in a number of different companies over a period of time, so that you give yourself the statistical likelihood of hitting one that actually does go very well. So, as I think about venture investing, I already have this lens of like. I know most of them know that this is not going to pan out, which is a very odd mindset to have.

Speaker 3: 24:14

But, the idea of putting together a portfolio is really, really important. So it's one of those things where I know that I can do the. I'm trying to do the best I can as a manager, and our group is really excellent. Our members are so excellent at really sussing out some great opportunities from the ones that we really shouldn't be paying attention to. So it's not just rests on my shoulders, but there have been some companies that didn't pan out. They're just the way it goes and in retrospect you can't necessarily kick yourself, beat yourself up about it, because there's sometimes macro things that are out of one's control that, wow, we didn't see coming. No-transcript.

Speaker 1: 25:26

That's great insight. I mean, you missed a hundred percent of the shots you don't take, right. It's kind of the famous quote and uh.

Speaker 3: 25:32

But with that sometimes there can also be some some, some areas where we we might need to make that. I think you know what remains to be seen. I was, I was. Maybe this is a different way of answering your question. It's interesting because it's really easy to to sort of like feel good about something when other people think it's a really good thing too.

Speaker 3: 25:50

Um, like other investors think it's really good, right, it's like so you know, a lot of times, investing, investing in general, maybe even broader than venture capital investing but it relies on this herd mentality Everybody thinks it's a good thing, so it must be a good thing. Where it gets a little bit hard sometimes is if I or our group has a conviction on something that nobody else has conviction on. That's really hard because, again, we are investing way before the pop moment, the hockey stick moment, happens for this company, and so we really have to. If you're really crystal clear on why are we doing this and why does it make sense and believe that, no matter other investors that maybe don't want to be a part of what we're doing, right? So there's a number of companies in our portfolio or otherwise that, um, you know, I'm kind of like trying to.

Speaker 3: 26:47

You know, just almost like hey, this company is raising funds and so on and so forth, and sometimes, when investors don't bite, it kind of gets me a little bit like huh, well, maybe this isn't as good as what I thought, but at the same time, kind of gets me a little bit like huh, well, maybe this isn't as good as what I thought, but at the same time I'm kind of going like, well, wait a second, I'm convinced this is the future, just like the Octane Coffee example.

Speaker 3: 27:08

So what gives? And so sometimes the plane hasn't landed on some of those yet. Sometimes there is a moment where it becomes like maybe for all those investors it was too early and we just happened to see something earlier than others did, or vice versa, we could completely miss the boat on something and others were, like you know, early and we're like, oh, we bowed out and, like you know, we didn't get involved. Like that's just going to happen. And there's just like having conviction in the kind of the moment of stillness I think when you're alone in your conviction, I think is one of the hardest things. But knowing the why behind that is pretty Is mission critical in those moments.

Speaker 2: 27:43

You hit the nail on the head again. You have to. That's kind of the whole fun of the space that you're in is being able to do something and spot the uniqueness that others might not even notice is there yet. So, matthew, this, this has been such a great conversation. I could just keep going all day. I just I love where we're going with this. But of course, as you know, um the show is. You know, we're only a 25 to 30 minute show.

Speaker 3: 28:15

So you know, I'm like, yeah, I'm happy to, I'm happy to um connect, yeah, and I'm happy to uh, like I said at the beginning, like I love, uh I love my experience at olivet um, and have really just obviously met my wife there, so I'm really grateful for that. And, uh, the three kids we now have, which is wonderful, um, three boys. It's only just a, yeah, not a little bit going in our house like three, three boys under five um, but but and then some great friends, and so I'm happy to support what you guys are doing and connect with any students or otherwise offline as well.

Speaker 2: 28:48

Well, we're so grateful to have you, Matthew, today, and it's great to bring back an Olivet alum as well, as you mentioned. So you know, like we said, this is a great conversation, but of course, I don't know if you've seen our show before, Matthew. But there is one final question that we do still have to ask you Spencer, do you want to kick it off? Our quirky question of the week is what we like to call it.

Speaker 1: 29:10

So this one's a little bit different it's very relevant to what we've been talking about today. And here's your quirky question You're ready, Matthew? Yeah, let's do it All right. Well, hey, if you had one time machine and could go back in time to invest in any tech startup from the past, which would it be and why? Okay?

Speaker 3: 29:30

That is a great question. I've never been asked this question before. So, perhaps one of those things where it's like you think about something later and you're like I could have answered differently.

Speaker 3: 29:40

But I think Apple is probably a good one, and the reason is is because think about what Apple is now and the legacy of Steve Jobs. I would have loved to be a part of those early fundraising conversations that Steve Jobs was having at Apple, at Apple, and think about and it kind of understand, kind of like, what the vision was that he was portraying and and almost like, would I have believed that vision or would I have not have believed that vision?

Speaker 3: 30:10

You know what I'm saying so like cause, he, like he represents like this, like the epitome of a time, a time traveler, right Like he was living in the future, pulling the present towards the future. And so I would have loved to just maybe if not invest, just like be part of, like. How did those dynamics go down and what was the conversation with the investors who could have invested? What were they saying? Why were they saying no, or why were they saying yes? You know what I mean. Like that, like from a thought perspective and mindset perspective. I think that'd be so fascinating.

Speaker 2: 30:42

Oh man, you're so right. That would have been such an interesting conversation. Or just to be a fly on the wall in some situation like that.

Speaker 1: 30:49

Well, matthew, thank you again for being on the show today and sharing some just amazing insight. I know I took away took away a lot for it and and how to be an evangelist for my passion is what I took away from it you got to be. I just want to thank you so much for sharing today.

Speaker 3: 31:04

Yes, yeah, absolutely. And then happy to connect. Like I said, connect with me on LinkedIn, connect with Tundra Angels on our website, tundraangelscom. I'm happy to support what you guys are doing and yeah thanks for the time today.

Speaker 2: 31:18

I'm happy to support what you guys are doing and, yeah, thanks for the time today. Matthew, you're one step ahead of me. We always do. Yeah, yeah, there you go, listeners.

Speaker 3: 31:24

I'll always be closing. No, I'm just kidding, I'm not closing. Always be selling, right? Yeah, always be promoting.

Speaker 2: 31:29

Yes, so, listeners, you heard Matthew. If you want to connect with him or Tundra Angels, you can visit his website, as he mentioned, wwwtundraangelscom, or you can find him on LinkedIn, so make sure to check that out.

Speaker 1: 31:42

And if you want to connect with Olivet's Entrepreneurship Program Director, Chris Perez, or discover other entrepreneurial opportunities that the program has to offer, such as the McGraw School of Business' very own Creator Conference and Pitch Competition, you can just go to creatorolivetedu.

Speaker 2: 31:58

Where faith and business meet. This is the Creator Podcast.

Speaker 1: 32:02

We'll see you later. Hey, Creator community, thank you so much for taking a listen to the Creator Podcast. First off, we want to extend a big thank you to you for joining us on this incredible journey and for being so faithful in the content that we delivered week after week. Over the past season, we've had the privilege of interviewing and recording with over 18 special guests, each bringing unique insights and inspiring stories that have really enriched our understanding of what it means to live a life as a faith-driven entrepreneur. If you haven't had the chance to catch all of the episodes, now is the perfect time to go back and listen to a few over. Some of the insights from our guests are really awesome and they are worth much more than just one listen.

Speaker 1: 32:47

So, as we wrap up season one, I want to give you some vision into what's coming next. We're excited to announce that we'll be taking a break for the summer, but don't worry, we'll be back in the fall with an action-packed season two that you're not going to want to miss. We really have an incredible lineup planned, with even more engaging conversations, valuable lessons and inspiring stories that will continue to challenge. In the meantime, make sure to stay subscribed to the podcast and follow us on social media at All of it business. That's where you'll get all of the latest updates and sneak peeks into what is coming next. We cannot wait to reconnect with you in the fall where faith and business meet. This is the creator podcast.