Venture Everywhere Podcast: Steve Seigel with Anna Barber
Anna Barber, Partner at M13 and LP in Everywhere Ventures, chats with Steve Seigel, co-founder and CEO of Flossy on Episode 3: Don't Forget to Flossy
Listen on Apple & Spotify!
Steve Seigel is the co-founder and CEO of Flossy, a company reinventing dental insurance by connecting high quality and affordable dentists to patients with transparent pricing. Prior to Flossy, Steve led Silversheet which was acquired by AMN Healthcare in 2019 for $55 million. He is also an active angel investor.
This episode is hosted by Anna Barber, Partner at M13 and LP in Everywhere Ventures (previously The Fund), also a former founder. In this interview, Anna and Steve discuss how the dental tech market has evolved through innovation, fundraising in the era of COVID, and adjusting to new realities. Hear firsthand accounts on surveying potential customers and finding the right market to launch, getting to positive unit economics, and partnering with CVCs. Listen till the end for benefits and joys of being in a founder community, plus Steve’s latest book obsession.
If you liked this episode, be sure to subscribe to Venture Everywhere and give us a rating wherever you found us. To learn more about our work, visit Everywhere.vc and subscribe to our Founders Everywhere Substack. You can also follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter for regular updates and news.
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Jenny Fielding
Hi, and welcome to the Everywhere podcast. We're a global community of founders and operators who've come together to support the next generation of builders. So the premise of the podcast is just that: founders interviewing other founders about the trials and tribulations of building a company. Hope you enjoy the episode!
Anna Barber
Hi, welcome. I'm Anna Barber, I'm a partner at M13, member of The Fund community, and a former founder and entrepreneur myself. M13 is a consumer focused Series A venture fund based in Los Angeles. And I'm very excited to be here today in conversation with Steve Siegel.
Steve Seigel
Awesome I'm Steve Seigel. I'm the co-founder of Flossy, we are reimagining the way people find a dentist and pay for dental care. Super excited to be here to talk to you, Anna, love The Fund. I was so excited to have you guys in my first round of financing and just excited to talk more.
Anna Barber
Fantastic. So let's start with just an overview of Flossy. Tell us about what you're building now.
Steve Seigel
Absolutely. So I think at it's core, what Flossy really does is help people find a great dentist and save a bunch of money. And I think, like everyone, no one likes going to the dentist. And I think some of the pain points are: it's expensive, it can hurt, I don't want them to rip me off. So what we looked at - my partner and I - is: there's 75 million other people in this country that have no dental coverage. We spend over $160 billion a year on dental care. But there's been no real innovation in the way we find a dentist and the way we pay for care. So what Flossy has created is really the first digital marketplace that curates all of these top-end dentists. We do all the upfront negotiations for pricing. And then we make it transparent for you on your side when you choose a dentist. And I think in healthcare, it's one of the one industries where you kind of never know what you're going to pay, you know, you end up going to the doctor, you get your bill afterwards and one of three things happen. You don't owe anything because of insurance, you owe a little bit, or you owe more. And so we want to do is take that kind of opaqueness out of healthcare, bring it forward to the consumer and help them have a great experience at the dentist.
Anna Barber
So how did you land on dental? I mean, you've been a founder in health care for a long time. You've had prior success with Silversheet, you know, really embedded in the healthcare innovation field, why Dental? How did you come up with this concept?
Steve Seigel
Yeah, so my partner and I, when we sold our last business about four and a half years ago, to AMN Healthcare, a big public healthcare staffing firm, we were there for a year during the earnout. And I think afterwards, we were really thinking about big areas of healthcare that had a lot of spend, that didn't have a lot of technology innovation. And we kept coming back to dental. And I think the thing about dental that's really interesting is: for such a big spend category, if you look at like travel, or restaurants, all these things have been brought online. You wouldn't imagine booking all of your flights now over the phone and asking them for availability. You couldn't imagine calling every single restaurant to try to find a reservation as well. But 85% of dental appointments are still made over the phone. And so we looked at with dental is: it's massive spend, and then how are people paying for it? And so traditional health insurance doesn't cover it, traditional Medicare doesn't cover it and so what we saw was just big pockets of people paying 100% for their dental care. So really, as we looked at innovating in dental, we kind of broke dental into three categories. One was: do we kind of reimagine like the actual dental office itself? There's a few startups out there, like 10, which are kind of creating these One Medical, almost like Instagrammable type offices. And what we saw, it's a great experience, but it never really bent the cost curve and the way people pay for care. The second is we looked at ancillary products. So if you see Quip on the toothbrush or Smile Direct on the aligners, I always felt like it was addressing one part of oral health but not your overall oral health. And so then the third thing we looked at is, really, dental insurance, and how do people actually pay for their dental care? And what we saw is dental insurance - first of all, it's not regulated, like real insurance. So the Department of Insurance isn't regulated, there's no national regulation. And it really acts much more like a prepaid benefit, where you pay in, your policies are capped, you're getting some discounts on your preventative care. But anything expensive, takes 6 to 12 months for you to get that covered. But the one thing they do really well is because they have such patient saturation in an area. There's so many people with dental insurance, they're able to negotiate lower fees that they pay the dentists and so our big aha moment was "well what if we become that front-end customer acquisition for the dentists" and dentists are usually in so many networks! Because if you've ever done traditional finding a doctor or dentist, you type in your zip code, they give you a roster, it looks like a menu. You maybe don't get past the first page, you Google or Yelp a few people, and then you call for an appointment. And so that dentist gets a free customer. So what we said is: in exchange for being that acquisition and providing them with a free customer, give us those same in-network discounts that you would traditionally pass on to the carriers, and let us use our technology to connect you with patients, sit in the payment flow and make a kind of a free offering. So at its core, we looked at areas with big spend, not a lot of innovation, and not a lot of traditional coverage models. And that's really the way we kind of looked at Flossy.
Anna Barber
That's so interesting. So it sounds like you came up with, really, a new business model that didn't exist and that no one else is pursuing in your field. And you really did that by spending enough time in the industry and kind of learning about how customers are acquired. I'm curious, you know, people hate going to the dentist, people avoid going to the dentists - like how has that resistance to going to the dentist affected the way that you're taking this to market?
Steve Seigel
Yeah, and to add another layer, give it COVID as well, which made it even more terrible.
Anna Barber
Oh yeah, you guys started this right during COVID.
Steve Seigel
So we closed our seed round, March 13, 2020. If you guys remember that day, that was the day that Trump declared a national emergency. And by the way, five days later, Newsom shut down dental offices. So now we have this new dental startup, but there's no dental offices. And now we have this new virus, which I had no idea what the extent would be of this, but I knew people were terrified to go to the dentist, now even more. So actually, the first thing we did at Flossy - and then I'll touch about how we kind of helped the consumer - the first $50,000 we ever spent was actually on Survey Monkey and we just talked to 1000's and 1000's of dentists and 1000's of consumers because the world has just changed overnight. What were the things that were important to dentists? What were the things that are important to consumers? And so the most important thing we saw for consumers, and we thought it would be asynchronous booking - booking from your mobile phone, all these things - it was price transparency! And the reason people are frustrated going to the dentist outside of the fear of the actual procedures is: there's all these surprise billing because the coverage models aren't great. And so if you read a lot of the negative reviews around going to the dentist, outside of maybe the office being dirty or had to wait, or the front office wasn't nice, it's really like - I didn't realize this procedure was going to cost me this much. When I got done, and I sent him my insurance, I still owe $2,000 or $3,000, that was that negative experience with a dentist. So what we said is alright, let's eliminate that. Let's put the transparency up front. So dental, very differently than other healthcare, is all what's called fee for service, which means everything is almost billed like a menu. There's none of this where you're gonna go there and say, "Hey, I wonder what that additional costs are, what they're going to cover." It's all transparent. So we said "Great, why don't you just put it on the front end? Why don't we just show people these ranges in the front end?" And then also we do the legwork where we show you what it is relative to retail pricing in your area. So I think the big way we got consumers comfortable to even go is to say: listen, we're going to help you find a great dentist that's not going to rip you off, we'll do that legwork. And you have to be four stars on Google Health Grades or Yelp, we'll do all the price negotiations. And we'll show it to you up front relative to everyone else. So that's been the big way for us to kind of get people over the hump and say, alright, if I'm gonna have to go to the dentist, and most people go to the dentist is reactionary when there's an issue. So that's usually when it's the most expensive when I had to pay and I need a root canal, why not get you those discounts, show you how much it's going to cost up front and then to be able to deliver you to like a five star dentist within a day or two.
Anna Barber
So you guys started interestingly, you're in California, you are in LA, part of The Find LA but you decided to launch in Arizona? Can you talk about that a little bit, and sort of why you made that choice and kind of what other founders might be able to learn in terms of finding the right market to launch a product in?
Steve Seigel
Absolutely. So we did tons and tons and tons of A/B testing, you know, just driving people even to landing pages with different propositions before we went live. Free whitening, a free exam, different areas, income demographics, age demographics. So Arizona is pretty unique and I always talk about Phoenix and this is usually nobody realizes this. So Phoenix is the fifth largest city in the US, right? And so after New York, LA, Chicago, Houston, it's Phoenix. So you have tons of density.
Anna Barber
OK I had no idea. That is shocking to me.
Steve Seigel
Nobody - every time I say this, everyone thinks it's like a top 20, but it's really the top 5 city in the US. Also, there's a high senior population, so Medicare doesn't cover dental, so we wanted to go after them. And then if you remember COVID, there was really high migration and so Phoenix became one of these like tier cities that people went to. So there's a high amount of self employed freelance and also people who didn't have continuity with a dentist moving to a new area. So all of these things like kind of played out and obviously being LA it was only an hour away timezone wise, we can get there really easily, you know, to see the dentist, and then we're regulated, it's what's called a dental discount plan and every state has different regulations. Arizona is one of the easier ones to get going. So as you think about it as a founder as you're testing initial product market fit, getting something out into the market, with as little friction as possible, and it hit kind of all the other check marks that we want. And so that's the way we kind of look at that market. Also we're consumer, we looked at CPCs in all the areas, there's a lot of other metrics we overlaid as we started to test. That's really the way between the seniors, the income demographics, the freelance, the high migration, the regulation, and the proximity to California.
Anna Barber
So what's so interesting about this conversation is, all of your decisions are so data driven, right? So from the business model, to where you decided to launch? And, you know, we've been talking about dental care for 15 minutes, and you're so incredibly excited about it. I mean, where does that come from? What is sort of driving you in this? And that says it about impact? Is it your curiosity, where does your motivation as a founder come from?
Steve Seigel
Yeah, it's mission driven. You know, I think, you know, Miles, my co-founder is a physician by training, even though we both been in the tech industry. I think with Silversheet, even though we were a software that we sold to hospitals, like Cedars here in LA, and it was an investor. It was really about better patient care started with doctors spending less time on paperwork. So we were innovating in that and seeing the impact. Here, it's like this is completely mission driven. We are focused on making an impact, really on the low to median income, or like the self-employed freelance gig worker. We have so many gig workers, small businesses, construction, beauticians, and then the other spectrum, our patient demographic is bi-modal, we have that demographic, and then the seniors, right. And there's so many things out there, especially in tech that are not geared towards seniors. Here's an innovation that's actually geared towards helping seniors. So we were super excited to build upon that. So when we saw a big whitespace, and I always remember you and I having a conversation, when you guys first invested, you talked about the different archetypes of these founders, right. And one of them was like that, the MBA of the whitespace. We kind of had the domain expert, but we saw this giant whitespace in dental, right, and it was like, alright, there's so many groups of people that we can go help and it very much aligned with the missions of Miles and I. Listen, at this point in our career, we've been fortunate to have success and build, we wanted to get up and working on something we were passionate about. And like, we just kept coming back to this thing with dental and say like, this is so much room for us to improve here.
Anna Barber
It's funny you mentioned that conversation that we had, because I've always been kind of dismissive a little bit of those, like MBA founders, it's like, oh, let me just look for a market whitespace and I don't really care what it is, I just want to find an opening in the market and be really clinical about it. And I've always thought, that's not filled with a lot of customer focus. And so I do think you have that data driven approach, but you also have the other archetype, which is the empath, which is really caring about the customer, right. And this construct actually is something that Jenny and I came up with together, whether these four archetypes, but that's like a conversation for another day. It's interesting that you kind of put yourself in that category, because you do have that quality. So you've had this crazy journey with Flossy because you launched like a product in possibly the worst category right at the beginning of COVID. And then you had to raise a Series A like, right as the funding market kind of bottomed out, so talk a little bit about how you navigated through that.
Steve Seigel
Yeah, I always tell other founders that we missed the greatest run up in venture capital history. So like, if you look at the second half of 2020, through Q1 of 2022, like, it was probably the most, I don't know, frenzy I've ever seen in all of venture capital. And I think the pro and the con was, listen, there were a lot of people raising there, and they raised a lot of money and now they're in very difficult situations. I think for us, we're in a really favorable situation, as difficult as it was. We didn't raise that evaluation, we didn't raise at a time where the expectations were top line growth, will deficit finance that growth, and these are the metrics we care about. And those things shifted rather quickly in 2022. So yeah, so we closed our seed in March of 2020 and then we went out to market kind of May of 2022. And, you know, the one thing I'll say is, you could feel the later stage already starting to get hit. And then it was kind of trickling down to the early stages. So as we're fundraising, you can kind of see the cracks in the market on the earlier stage. But I also think given what we were solving for, there's still plenty of money for businesses like we're in digital marketplace. We're a super high gross margin, massive TAM, experienced team, and I think if you are going to place bets in these types of environments, these are kind of the areas that you want to do it. And so we were very fortunate, you know, like our early investors, Slow, 8VC, Clocktower all came in pro rata, we've had relationships like once we were able to get things together it was actually pretty smooth. But I'd say a lot of that came from like you talk about all the time, developing the relationships with these different investors when you're not raising. I think it became even more important during this time, but it was really interesting you know, I think for us as soon as we had things coming along like seed to close, really have a clear vision on what we're going to do with it, be able to reset our expectations and how we're going to grow the business and going for extremely positive unit economics, high gross margins, and actually having models that show getting to profitability were extremely important, different than even the model we had built out six months ago, where it's like, alright, here's the ARR number we need to get to, we just need to continue to grow. And if we're even within striking distance of positive unit economics, we'll get credit. And I don't think you get credit anymore in this market, especially going forward. So I would say we pick probably the most challenging, but now, you know, we sit in a situation where we don't have to come to market where it feels like the people who raised in '21, the second half of this year, and beginning of next year, there's a bunch of people are gonna have to come to market and we can just continue to be heads down and kind of grow our business.
Anna Barber
What I'm hearing a lot of is that you have what I call, strong opinions, loosely held. You're willing to put a stake in the ground, but then you're also willing to kind of move off of that if you get new information. So this example of being focused on just growing ARR and then shifting that quickly, which is really what was required of founders during like the last six to nine months, is being able to just understand that the goalpost had moved, and then being able to kind of reset your plan and kind of reformulate how you're presenting the business and how you're thinking about it.
Steve Seigel
Totally. Miles and I, so Miles was a venture backed founder in '08. So he went through it. I was an investment banker at Bear in New York and LA when it collapsed. And so we both saw, how quickly things can turn on their head. You know, Bear collapsed over a weekend and Miles is like, listen, we were signing contracts and doing deals, and then you know, 2008 happened, you know, and things were put on hold. And we had to kind of change it and figure out how we're going to preserve the business and build out from here. I think we started to see this very early and we started to have conversations with our investors too, who are very close with the later stage guys so that people would be doing our rounds. And so we just looked at each other and we said, listen, we need to be proactive about this, we need to be realistic, and we need to say, alright, here's what it's really going to take for us to get to this next inflection point and unlock the future financings. But knowing that they could be years away, or they could not happen again. And I think once we kind of were aligned with that, and we shared that message internally, that's what people wanted to see. We made those decisions in May of 2022 where you still feel like people who were waiting it out are still kind of in trouble now. So yeah, I think having gone through that before, and being able to convey that gave people a lot of conviction to invest during that time with us.
Anna Barber
I think that's so important. You know, I was an operator in '99. So I went through that, right. And then I opened a retail store in June 2008. That was my second startup, right. And so then I saw the economy totally change, and I was locked into a lease. I think those of us who went through those cycles and saw both, that the economy does recover, and it's possible to get through them, but also that you have to radically shift your mindset in order to do that. I think that is an experience that is incredibly valuable to what we're going through now that allows you to kind of navigate more successfully and, frankly, allows investors to be that much more confident that you're going to be able to take the company forward.
Steve Seigel
100%. And the one thing I always say to founders, especially not just here in LA, all over, it's like, there's usually a disconnect when there's a correction between founders holding on to valuations or expectations. And I was like, you need to shift now, it's already happened. It's not like it's happening, the correction, the shift has happened. And as soon as you can come to terms with that, and realize what I need to go and do going forward, expectations from a fundraise / financing, how much I need, that's what I've always told people is - they're hanging on to some of these fantasies - it's changed, and it may cycle back, but you'd rather be conservative and to say, okay, if it does cycle back, and things are on the upswing, we're just in a better position. So that's been the biggest thing I've heard from people is, hanging on to valuations or expectations, when really, things move - This, even in 2022 moved faster than anything I've ever seen, the interest rate movement, we've never seen anything like this in our lifetime. And with that, obviously, it hits high growth, you know, high cash burn companies. And so the more people really understand those dynamics, I think the easier it is for them to come to terms and be able to kind of find a path forward.
Anna Barber
I think that's very well put. I think it's a tough message for investors to deliver. So I have trouble saying that in my current role as an investor because founders just hear it as like, oh, you're trying to use this as a way to getting a lower valuation. But what you said is the market's already changed, the quicker you can adjust your mindset and accept that, the better off you're going to be. And I think that's absolutely right. And I think it's not just sort of a normal correction. What we're seeing is, we were in an abnormal bubble. And now we're having a correction. If you look at the data, it's sort of: valuations now are reset to sort of what they were in 2019. It's not like they've gone below that, right. All we're doing is we've corrected the bubble. People need to understand and I agree with you, there's this divergence between the founders that have gotten that right and adjusted to the new reality and are moving forward and the ones that are still holding on to, you know, wanting to wanting to see how it was. You know, with your last company, Silversheet, corporate venture capital was really important and corporate partnerships were just a huge part of the business. How do you see that with Flossy playing out, you know, as you continue to grow?
Steve Seigel
The exact same way. When we were doing Silversheet like, we were a SaaS business, and this is when Slack and these other ones were growing, and, as a SaaS company, we were measured against some of these, like, outliers that were in there. Especially in healthcare, where it's like they wanted hyperlocal growth and traditionally like stagnant industry, and especially being.. usually in SaaS, you're selling ahead of the product, you're a tiny startup. How do you kind of have that? And so corporate venture capital, taking Cedar's money, so Cedar's venture arm was called Summation Health at the time. It was a JV between Memorial Care in Long Beach and then Cedars here, gave us validation, both as saying we're an investor, but then also to fast track getting a pilot or deal with them, and having them call their counterparts. So having Darren Dworkin, the CIO of Cedars, call his counterparts at Northwell, or NYU, or these big institutions, that was the way we got in front of these people, right? When you're a small startup, it's to say, alright, they're not only an investor and they're a client, that's the validation if you can get it, as a startup. And also, the return profile is different, right? They made their little bit value, they're not as valuation sensitive, a lot of times it's off balance sheet. And it's really, do you solve a pain point internally for our company, or for our patients or our members? And if you do, and we can get a return, and maybe even, attract better people to the Cedars TechStars accelerator and be able to get better portfolio companies, because they can see the value that we bring along the cycle, that's super helpful. So obviously, Silversheet was extremely helpful. Same thing here, we haven't taken any corporate money. But what I could see going forward is the way I think our business scales too, it's not just direct to consumer, but also big groups of people who kind of touched the individuals that we service. So you know, the senior population. So there's a lot of people who work with seniors in the Medicare space. They are going to be great kind of b2b2c partners. And even the carrier's themselves, you know, as we think about distribution, and their broker force, we could be a really unique offering as a differentiator to them as well. And so for us as we continue to scale the business, thinking about taking money from them, and having them as partners, I think will be extremely helpful. I always like starting with kind of the commercial pilot aspect of it. And it usually leads into a great investment or an acquisition. But I think for us, especially in healthcare, where things are very relationship driven, things can be very slow. It was the only way we have been able to kind of really hack our way to significant growth.
Anna Barber
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. You also invest in other companies, Steve. So you know, this isn't a huge part of your, activity stack, but you do it, how do you decide what other founders to back? What do you look for in a founder?
Steve Seigel
Yeah, I mean, great founders. So we focused a lot on healthcare, right. But in this, you know, we're really a digital marketplace, and we're consumer, and we're healthcare. So as we thought about founders who are investors in Flossy, you know, we have people who have built big companies in health care, so Erin Bali from Carbon Health, Zach Weinberg, from Flatiron Health, people have built great marketplaces, so Tracy DiNunzio from Tradesy, Eddy Lu from GOAT, and then people have done direct to consumer. So like the FabFitFun guys, we've done Modern Animal on the clinic side. So having a great network of founders who have built businesses, both in consumer and healthcare and marketplaces, really touch upon all the different things that Flossy does. And we can have these very candid conversations like we're having now that are a little bit different than having them with VCs or your current investors, where it's like, what are you guys seeing? What are you guys hearing? And I think you can be a little bit more vulnerable with your founder friends, and just be like, "This isn't working, this is working," you know, what do you think about that? So having founders as investors in us has been, I mean, extremely important. And on the flip side, places where we have great founder relationships where they're building new companies. I mentioned, Erin, so we've been longtime investors in Carbon Health and in Modern Animal and Steve - places where we know the founders. I almost don't care what they're doing, but when we get excited about what they're building, you know, Miles and I had big kind of thesis' is in healthcare and when we're thinking about businesses. We looked at either - should we build the business there or who there is building something great, and we had ideas around tech enabled urgent care and primary care here and we saw what Carbon was doing. We wanted to do something in the senior space. Obviously Flossy touches on that. But we're investors in Honor, Seth is a friend. We looked at obviously in the pet space, we thought was big. We did Modern Animal. So it's really we have thesis' of different parts of healthcare we get excited about, and then it's really just a lot of the founder relationships, but we've been super fortunate to be able to just have a great network of them. And then obviously, I don't think there's anything better than founders investing in founders, you know, so the ones who invested in us, and we've invested them, it's just been fantastic.
Anna Barber
Well, I mean, that's kind of a great recap, because that's exactly what The Fund community is about: founders investing in founders. And, you know, it's been such a joy to be part of this community, and see it grow and see people truly supporting each other, you know, and this feeling of like, we can all be successful together, rather than the alternate idea, which is that there's some sort of competitive element and that founders are competing for limited resources.
Steve Seigel
I agree with you. And I always say, you know, it's one of the few professions where, it's not a career choice, like being a founder is a life choice. You know, and especially I have two young boys under nine, so it's even more challenging, you know, and so, I give my wife all the credit in the world, she's the only reason I can do this. She's amazing. But really, I look at this, and I was like, if you're in this life choice, you know, and you have other like minded people, just help them. And that's why I'm always active on The Fund Slack. You know, even last week, someone brought something up around potentially having adding a board member what they should do, they weren't part of the preferred. I'm commenting on that, people are commenting back and forth. And you see 1000 members on there, I think it's fantastic. You know, these are the things where, you know, if they haven't gone through it, like who do you ask, you can't ask your investors, you probably don't know, haven't gone through it yet. And so it's like, if you have a trusted community that you can reach out to, that's fantastic. And the same way I was able to pay it forward this time, like 10 years ago, I was asking those same questions. Right, the difference is, we didn't have this community back then. You know, and so it's been really great to see it evolve. And it's also been really great to see it evolve here in LA. You know, I think the last 10 years LA has just blossomed, which has been fantastic to see.
Anna Barber
It's pretty incredible what's happened in LA, I agree. And I'm just I'm thrilled we've kind of managed to keep the community element and keep the tone of the community just so supportive as as the ecosystem has grown. And you've been such a massive contributor. So thank you both on The Fund side and the LA tech community, you really kind of walk the walk. So thanks from all you bring to the community. All right, let's wrap up with a speed round!
Steve Seigel
Okay, let's do it!
Anna Barber
All right. I need a new book recommendation, tell me or what book you're reading or podcast you're enjoying.
Steve Seigel
I just finished - it's not because it's the marketplace - but I read Cold Start Problem that Andrew Chen book, fantastic. I mean, it's amazing. All the different marketplaces, he talks about Instagram, where you come to the product, and you stay for the network. It kept resonating with me, where originally you came for that photo filter, and now the majority don't even use anymore and it's really about the network. It was truly fascinating to read that one. If you haven't done it, highly recommend Cold Start Problem.
Anna Barber
Love that, great recommendation. If you could live anywhere in the world for one year, where would you go?
Steve Seigel
Oh, wherever my wife picks, that's easy. Hahahaha It's 100% the right answer. I mean, I would probably pick Italy, but wherever she wants.
Anna Barber
Love it. All right, what's your favorite productivity hack?
Steve Seigel
I would say early morning. So I get up between four and five every day, and especially with kids. So that 5 to 7 or 4:30 to 7 hour, couple hours, when no one is up, that is my hack. So you'll see like a ton of emails and stuff come out during that time because it's like my time with no one else and I just kind of feel like I get a head start on everybody.
Anna Barber
Love it. Love it. I'm an early riser too
Steve Seigel
I grew up playing hockey, so I was getting up at 4:30 in the morning.
Anna Barber
That's an amazing discipline. Okay, I'm sure people want to get in touch with you. Where can our listeners find you on socials?
Steve Seigel
Yeah. I have some investors and some friends who are extremely active on Twitter. I'm not super active on Twitter. I am on Twitter. I am on LinkedIn. The one thing I will say is I'm super responsive. So whether it's through The Fund slack to begin with, you know you can see me. If you slack me directly, I always respond. On Twitter, on LinkedIn, send me a message, I'm super responsive. I may not be the most opinionated one on Twitter, but I'm always there. So just just drop me a line anytime.
Anna Barber
Awesome. Thanks a lot, Steve. Thanks for a great conversation.
Steve Seigel
Awesome. Thanks so much. Yeah, thanks The Fund. Thanks, everybody.
Scott Hartley
Thanks for joining us and hope you enjoyed today's episode. For those of you listening, you might also be interested to learn about everywhere, we’re a first check pre-seed fund that does exactly that. We invest everywhere. We're a community of 500 founders and operators and we've invested in over 250 companies around the globe. Find us at our website, everywhere.vc on LinkedIn and through our regular founder spotlights on Substack. Be sure to subscribe and we'll catch you on the next episode.