https://www.linkedin.com/in/elliewheeler/

This is an excellent interview with Ellie Wheeler. Ellie is a partner at Greycroft Partners, which is a prominent venture capital firm. She’s in their NY office. Ellie is an investor and sits on the board of a number of startups including Flashpoint, HealthReveal, and BaubleBar.

Before Greycroft, Ellie was with Lowercase Capital. And before that she was with Cisco working in corporate development where she did a number of acquisitions and investments.

She graduated from Georgetown and received her MBA from Harvard.

If you listen, you’ll learn from Ellie’s experience as a venture capitalist and in corporate development. I learned how corporate development teams at large companies think.

Here are some other things we talk about:

-What does a corporate development team do?
-How often would Ellie and her corporate development team reach out to potential targets?
-What should startups do from day 1 to increase their chances of getting acquired?
-What does Ellie do when not working?

 
 

Transcript

Dave Kruse: Hey everyone. Welcome to another episode of Flyover Labs and today we get to talk to Ellie Wheeler. And Ellie is a Partner at Greycroft Partners, which is a prominent venture capital firm and she is their New York Office. So Ellie is of course an investor and sits on the Board of a number of startups, including Flashpoint, HealthReveal and BaubleBar. Before Greycroft, Ellie was with Lowercase Capital and Cisco working their corporate development, where she did a number of acquisitions and investments. So she also graduated from Georgetown and received her MBA from Harvard. So I’m petty pumped to learn more about Ellie’s background and what she’s learnt and what she is excited about now. So Ellie, thanks for coming on the show.

Ellie Wheeler: Thanks for having me.

Dave Kruse: Definitely. So before we talk about what you are doing now, could you give us a little bit of an overview of your background?

Ellie Wheeler: Yeah sure. People ask me this a lot, right.

Dave Kruse: Of course,

Ellie Wheeler: A lot of people are interested in getting into venture and it’s not the most straightforward thing to do. I would say that there is no past right. It’s not like if you do X and then you do Y, you can get a director role, really that’s just not it works. And my past is just as odd as any. I actually went to med school after college; I dropped out. I ended up at a private equity firm at Boston called Summit Partners, as soon as I dropped out of med school. I was there for a number of years or that’s overstating. I was there for a little over two years and I learned a little bit about a lot of things there. So a little bit about a bunch of different industries and different business models, certainly later stage a little bit up the food chain from of course what I’m doing now and you know I learned a tremendous amount, but I also learnt what I didn’t want to be doing. And which I always say the stake is more important. I realized that figuring out what habitual leverage does to IOR in five years is just not interesting to me. So the financial engineering and that aspect of kind of later stage investing wasn’t exciting. But I’ve liked a lot of the other things that I was doing. So I moved over to Cisco. I was in Boston, a private equity firm. I moved out to the West Cost, moved to San Francisco working at Cisco which was in the Valley. I had basically never been there before and so I went out to interview, and started working at Corp Desk for Cisco. So you may know that being at Cisco is very inquisitive. It’s part of you know kind of their core operating principals; you know they kind of look through the world through a bi-filled or partner lens. So it’s a machine and everything is very well integrated and you really see a lot of the organization by sitting in Corp Desk. I was also – that was my fully immersion into tech. The – again, I touched on a lot of different things, but this was my full on, you know now we are going to focus on the enterprise software side of what Cisco was doing. So I learnt a lot there and it also happened to be during the finical crises. So given you know Cisco had a huge cash balance of $33 billion at the time, I don’t know what it is no, we saw a ton come through. So you know for me I got an incredible exposure, because liquidity had otherwise completely tried out. So we were seeing everything sitting there as a potential acquirer, potential funders. So for me it was really a great experience, I learned a lot. From there I went back to business school. It wasn’t the most thought out thing quite honestly. To me I had – you know I had been in – I have done a free med curriculum undergrad and so hadn’t really explored the basics and the fundamentals and the frameworks that you might have acquired, even taken an economies class ever, let alone gone to undergrad business school. But I’ve learned a tremendous amount on the job, but of course there were a lot of things that I didn’t know and I didn’t know really the underpinning, a lot of things that I didn’t learn and was doing in fact. Also every one of those names either in my job had gone to business school. So it seemed like something I had to go do. But again, this is coming out of the financial crises. I went back to business and I guess started in 2009, graduated from HBS in 2011. For my second year there I worked with Chris Sacca remotely, and that was obviously you know really early stage stuff, guys doing things interesting things, so I had a bit of experience there and then ended up landing in Greycroft immediately after business. So I have been here in New York for the last six years.

Dave Kruse: Got you, okay. So I’m curious. Well of course Lowercase, but also Cisco, because the corporate there it seems like it’s a – like you said, who knows how you are eventually going to get to the VC, but it seems like there is definitely some venture capitalists that come out of the corporate there, which makes a lot of sense, because you kind of see the other side of things. You know how did it – what were your roles and what did you first start doing at Cisco’s and what else did you work on when you are there?

Ellie Wheeler: Sure. So at this stage you want to do a bit of everything in that Corp job department because it’s pretty self efficient. So we did a handful of investments joining C-round, typically via C-round usually not leading somebody was leading, so we work alongside of VC and we evaluate the company and you know kind of how it fits the system point of view on the world and that particular systems point of view. We also did a number of acquisition funds there, ranging from some smaller more tech and talent acquisitions ranging up to much larger, for example Tim Burk [ph], we did a ton of work on the gym clothes label [ph] after before it closed, but we did a lot of work on it, towards the end of my time there. I also joined about a week after WhatNext closed, Cisco about WebX and it was an acquisition that it was a little bit out of the ordinary for Cisco. Usually it’s you know kind of a machine and you go through step one and step two and step three and so on. WebX was a little bit more friendly, which was to my benefit and to my experience, so I got to work pretty closely with a team there to build out kind of the strategic operating plan over the next few years and ultimately some of the acquisitions that we executed were to support that grant. So I got a wide range of experience and yeah, a bunch of different business units that we worked really closely with and you know your interacting with the senior leaders of these business units, but in a company like Cisco a lot of these people are running business units autonomously which are larger than a lot of public companies. So it’s a great experience as a you know pretty junior person.

Dave Kruse: So and how does your team at Cisco identify targets and then how do they – how do you figure out which ones to really kind of go after. Are they committees or what’s kind of the process to make that happen?

Ellie Wheeler: Yeah, so from the investment or from the acquisitions?

Dave Kruse: I was thinking more acquisition.

Ellie Wheeler: Yeah, yeah sure. So you know there are strategic leisure events, so often time you know or not often times, you basically always need a business unit to sponsor. So somebody your working with, somebody you know running up a sick unit or you know driving a road map within a business unit and you know there is a core need that you know that needs a fill, that’s when we’ll grow and kind of evaluate all the different options including building, including kind of partnering with someone to run that functionality or actually buying a company that happens at all different manners. Sometimes it’s somebody, this huge ad we get for buying a particular company and that’s really how the whole thing starts.

Dave Kruse: Okay.

Ellie Wheeler: Sometimes it’s more of a – we have a strategic need, what are our options to fill it. But in all cases you’ll go evaluate the market, evaluate the different companies and the different options and come back with a recommendation, both with the business units though you are aligned in what it is that we think the best path forward is and then also you know eventually kind of up the chain within corporate development and within the general state.

Dave Kruse: And then how do the deals or potential deals kind of come across your desk. Like do you guys meet people at conference or do you actively seek out and say hey, we’re going to go after this particular industry and here are the top 10 people for garner or whatever it might be in. Do you actively go after companies or yeah, how does that work?

Ellie Wheeler: It’s a little bit of everything. So you know it was structure and when I was there it still is and I’m sure there’s you know some particulars that have changed. But you are focused on your kind of particular area in a smaller team within the corp you have though. You know reworking for your communication and video conferencing, voice. So yeah, we were pretty aware of – later our business to be aware of a lot of the companies that were in that space that were both a larger one as well as the more emerging companies. We did a lot of reaching out to folks, especially like with the particular sector that we were interested in and so we would get to know other companies. I remember doing a big enterprise collaboration and a market map and talking to a ton of different companies since we were touching that space as we look to figure out you know kind of what the best path forward was for us in that particular sector, which is kind of fun to watch them do the flat emerge now. This is not new. It’s just executed well and executed differently and the time is different. So it takes all four and sometimes you know the company that is already invested in, so you understand the company you know differently and the results of that and sometimes it is a partner, you know somebody who is at the company or a particular business unit is already working with this company, then like…

Dave Kruse: Okay. And so my last question here. So if you’re a start up and Cisco approaches you, I mean how much target can you guys do like. Should that start up like ‘holy cow,’ and get acquired from Cisco or its more like ‘you’re like one of 10 companies we’re talking to this week, so don’t get too excited.’

Ellie Wheeler: That’s yes, the latter is the right. You know they are not talking to anyone in a vacuum and it would be irresponsible to do so. So you know they are taking a look at an entire space. I don’t think it’s a bad thing for a start up to be on the radar you know and it shouldn’t be spending a disproportionate amount of time with any of these corporate partners when you know you’re trying to execute your business first and foremost, but building those relationships over time is kind of how these things end up getting done.

Dave Kruse: Okay, and that was my next question. It was you know with your Cisco corporate development head on, you kind of just gave the advice, but do you give any other advice to your start ups saying, if you want to get acquired – I mean probably the best way is have a high growth rate and good revenue growth. But is there any other advice you give to them to make them attractive targets I guess?

Ellie Wheeler: Yeah, I mean I think first probably good business, right. Solve the real problems, build a good business, do whatever is valued to your customers and the rest of it is secondary. If you don’t do that first, unless you have something tremendous technically right, like your solving a very specific technical problem that a company needs to fill in, if you haven’t actually done the hard work of building a business and showing that customers value, what it is that you are delivering, then you know you can wrap it up as nicely as you want to, but no one is going to buy it.

Dave Kruse: And how big a part of being acquired as a startup is timing do you think. Sometimes it seems like the large companies like Cisco, you know they have certain milestones or certain agenda and if you are not on their agenda, there is no way you are going to get acquired just because of the timing. Is that true? Just how much part of it does timing play?

Ellie Wheeler: Yeah, I mean I think timing plays a big role in just about everything. So you know whether its business or life or whatever, so of course timing matters, but it’s not the end albeit all. I mean there’s exceptions to all of it, something really exceptional that people are willing to think of as a consign to flip there typically working with it.

Dave Kruse: All right, so moving on, so how did you get connected to Lowercase? You were at Harvard at that time; it sounds like that.

Ellie Wheeler: Yeah, I was. I was finishing up an internship I had done a big one in London and Chris actually too made out a post looking for help, actually but he was just doing it in his own manner, which is like Capricorns or something of that kind of thing. I think that’s actually what it was and somebody had to edit it and I thought it was good and it was this you know [inaudible] and you know kind of really interesting post and I spent the last two or three days of my internship responding to it and it’s a whole bunch of things lined up and it ended up working out and I actually worked with a professor in my first semester to structure something academic around it that I also did in order to get course credit and it sounds quaint now, but at the time it was kind of seed venture funds or micro or super angels that were nascent. You know there were only a hand full of funds that were actually doing that. So I ended up doing a study of kind of what was out there and how different people were operating. What the potential workable effects throughout the rest of the venture ecosystem would be and you know what it would evolve to in the cycle for time and all these different things with a bunch of interviews kind of across the ecosystem, which was kind of a project that I did alongside the work that I was doing.

Dave Kruse: That is interesting, okay. And for Lowercase, what did you just review potential companies or what was kind of your main roles there?

Ellie Wheeler: Yeah, exactly. I was just trying to you know provide a support you know for time, you know helping out and doing the first sets through doing a tremendous number of emails that was coming in as well, you know helping out on things that were more alive in the pipeline and helping the portfolio where I could.

Dave Kruse: Got you, okay. And do you think the cold emails, does Lowercase or even Greycroft ever invest in those much?

Ellie Wheeler: You know it happens, it really does, but your odds are not tremendously high.

Dave Kruse: Okay.

Ellie Wheeler: Because the odds of getting funded generally are well like, this is that which already companies don’t get funding and probably shouldn’t. The vast majority of companies really shouldn’t take venture money; it’s not the right thing for them, but you know even though you should try to make that because many are not successful. So cold email is headed pretty far down the list of – you know in terms of if your goal is to maximize your odds, that’s not the way to do it.

Dave Kruse: Makes sense, makes sense. Okay, all right so let’s talk about what you’re doing now at Greycroft and can you just give us a brief overview on Greycroft if that’s possible?

Ellie Wheeler: Yeah, sure. So we’re based in New York and Los Angeles, those are where our two offices are and have been for the last 11 years. We were founded in 2006, and the idea behind Greycroft is really to get back to the inventions. So they used to be a cottage industry and in many ways it still is. But you know got geographically bigger and bigger and what we were seeing is that increasingly companies were getting capitalized based on fund size rather than what was actually optimal to the company at that point. So we wanted to kind of go back to basics and take (A) a more flexible approach. So we are now, and I’ll get into that, but we’re on our first fund now, $200 million on a staged vehicle that takes us through C to go to B. I would say 90% of our tried incentive series A and we also have a $200 million growth vehicle that takes us to where the early stage fund lays off. So out of the early stage fund, I checked, it’s from $500,000 to $5 million, the core investment. Anything under $500,000 is seed. We always syndicate and there is always another fund around with us. We also don’t have a minimum investment announced or a minimum ownership percentage. So often times you’ll hear you know we need a probably 25% or even 30% and therefore you need to take Y number of dollars. We could be more flexible. Corporate doesn’t make sense to have a portfolio, you know with a $200 million fund to have a portfolio you’re your owning 1% of a tremendous amount of companies, but let’s just say that we’ve had success spying at one ownership over time and even if we had gotten in, you know kind of for less than what we’ve originally wanted and that’s what was being helpful and is doing our job well in a CEO role that will help us find a way to do that. We want to be in the best company, so we wanted to be flexible there. We also don’t necessarily need a board seat, so you know we’re happy to be in a server and we think that kind of all the things together allow the entrepreneur put together the white background for their business and I’ll go get the people at the table out there which your really excited about. If they get essentially just as a hindrance to be over capitalized at the early stage as it is to be undercapitalized and I think that we’ve seen evidence to support that, what is there in lab, 24 months. So you now we take a personal approach and then sector wise really anything internal verbal enables and you know we have a pretty wide range and given that as portfolio of the best 60% B2B, 40% interphase.

Dave Kruse: Okay, well that was good. Okay, nice thank you. And so one quick question on that, and this is kind of a tough question to answer because it’s kind of generic, but so you know so that the key is to have the right amount of capital. Like how do you figure that out, because yeah, do you have a certain amount of runway or how do you determine that?

Ellie Wheeler: Yeah, its tied to a certain amount of runway, but it’s a certain amount of runway to what? Right. It’s not just go and get 18 months or 24 months. You know what are the milestones that you will – you know the business milestones that you will be able to achieve with this amount of capital and do you have enough time to actually reach those milestones and achieve those milestones. You know you need to prove to the heads in the business from one round to the next as the volume of the business grows. You ultimately need enough time to be able to tune out a lot of those things. Sometimes that urge will be a revenue number; often times its going to be something else. It’s going to be a combination, it’s going to be the product evolution in addition to getting our sales engine ramping in effect, that’s why you start getting that repeatable engine. When a consumer doesn’t know which part of it we’re going to be finding in that, you know one or two in this whole acquisition channel or it can be almost four different things. Usually it’s more of IQ and its going to be reasonable and you’re going to be able to hit milestones that are going to really make sense and that probably is it.

Dave Kruse: No, that makes sense. Right, and if you’re going to raise tripe the amount, could you actually triple the milestones and you know where is the planned diminishing returned in the – yeah, that makes sense, okay. Yeah, so how did you get connected to Greycroft? Did they tweet out too that they were they looking for…

Ellie Wheeler: Yeah, no this one wasn’t via Twitter. But I actually, it’s funny it all ties back with that project I mentioned having tied them to school. I did a bunch of interviews to do that and one of the first people I talked to was St. Barnes, [inaudible] in New York. Now he’s moved to San Francisco, but I stayed in touch with him over that year and he made sure it’s for me and then ultimately he introduced me to Greycroft and he knew. He had heard that they were hiring and made the introduction.

Dave Kruse: So at the beginning I mentioned three of the companies that your invested in, I was curious if you could tell us about one of those or a different one that you are especially excited about. I know you are excited about all of them, but – or maybe you can tell us about more than one too, but it would be fun to hear about one of them your especially excited about.

Ellie Wheeler: Yeah, yeah sure. So as you know there are no case of children. Yeah, the whole – virtually that was wonderful. No, but you know there is a lot exciting stuff going on. So I will talk about HealthReveal I guess because you did mentioned it and it is also – I closed two investments in Q1 in this year and that’s one of those too. But this one you know, the CEO and Founder is Ronny Rayson and he was originally, not originally, was previously the Founder of ActiveHealth. ActiveHealth was sold to Aetna for about $400 million. After that acquisition he served as the Chief Medical Officer at Aetna for a number of years. So HealthReveal is essentially ActiveHealth 2.0 using the technology and data methods that they all go off today that were not available when ActiveHealth was actually launched. So frankly it’s the pattern that you love seeing, particularly with an enterprise technology. It’s kind of a repeat Founder, got a successful exit, very well connected in the industry, bringing back team members from their first effort and kind of going to attack that industry again. So that’s one of those that if every single company I saw was just like that I’d be very, very happy. So I had the opportunity to spend a lot of time with Ronny and the team last year as the round was coming together and I’m really excited about what they are doing and they are essentially taking a bunch of different signals and creating quite this information, but also the latest clinical guidelines. Doctors are overwhelmed by the work, both to see a tremendous and growing number of patients and smaller and smaller churn blocks and in addition to all of that, we’re also suppose to keep up with the latest and greatest that’s being published you know every day in these 60 page guidelines from their very clinical organization for women orient research journal. So this is also now one of the things that they are doing is just sitting down and making usable and digestible of the latest guidelines in applications or sectors that might be relevant to a patient. So simplify it they are pulling together a bunch of different data, some of its in data signals, both from the patient, from claims data, from as I said clinical research and kind of being a doctors helper at the point of care to kind of their coined reveal, which just shows you know that this is the kind of recommended course of action or you know this medication makes us resistor even to make our job easier to make sure that patients are ultimately getting a better standard of care and ultimately to treat the 50% of patients out there – 60% of the 100. Well 60% of the cost in healthcare system is from you know kind of the product, the product reveal and so they are going after that bucket first and often the most complicated and we see that most of the doctors have multiple issues so there is a linear combination of you know making sure that information is available to the making care division, that they are also tracking down the profit, by of course you know something that they are providing better care and its getting ahead of instances that might happen down this road that are being more preventative and proactive.

Dave Kruse: And how – that sounds like a pretty good investment, especially like you said for the team and their track record. So how did you get into that deal, because I imagine they probably had other potential suitors and…

Ellie Wheeler: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So we actually did it alongside GE Venture with flair, but you know we had gotten to know that really early on and spent a lot of time and we were actually introduced originally by another investor besides that linear tech ventures introduced us. They also didn’t come into the wrap, but they made the first introduction and it was great, because we’d have to share this all the time so we could get to know them pretty early on.

Dave Kruse: All right, got you. And so do you often spend that much time with the team. I mean this one they already had a successful exit and a good track record. But what if somebody didn’t have that, like how do you know they have the potential for that big exit?

Ellie Wheeler: Yeah, that’s the name of the game, that’s the name of the game, so you know you hope that you get better with that over time. So you know there is no one answer right, but I do this trying and thinking about why the team is you know particularly well suited for the particular problem that they are going after. You know if they have customers, you are spending time talking to them, understanding how it’s going to work with the team in addition to why they chose our particular product or you know your certainly doing what you can to spend time with them and understand you know what the working relationship will be like and if you believe they are going to be able to recruit ultimately and who are they tracking themselves with – so you’re looking for signals in a variety of different things and you know every interaction your getting something out of and that goes both ways. I mean they should be doing the same with new – you know it’s harder to get rid of an investor than it is ultimately you know to get rid of it and the executives were [inaudible] is never really cool. But you know just practically speaking it’s pretty hard to get rid of an investor in your company. They should be just as you know kind of …

Dave Kruse: Yeah, diligent or…

Ellie Wheeler: Focused – yes, exactly diligent and in getting to know you and your firm and you know how you’re going to be.

Dave Kruse: Interesting, okay. And what type of areas do you invest in? It seems like you invested in – well, that’s one of the questions and then another question is what’s the investment decision process at Greycroft. Like how – who else has to sign off in the health reveal investment before you make it?

Ellie Wheeler: Oh yeah! Sure. So you know we invest at Greycroft, you know as I said we’re fairly wide ranging. So it can either tend to be fairly opportunistic and founder driven more so than purely schematic. So in the case of the company there for example I am looking at that team to show me kind of you know where things are heading, you know like this is really important because this growth is going over there and you know we’re going to help the world move over there and you know really you know kind of paint that picture. And when you take as many meetings as you know anyone in my shoes does, your taking little pieces of information from a lot of those different meetings to develop (A) a view of you know where things are headed and where are the pockets of opportunity, you know a fairly wide range when we do a ton of different settings and frankly you have to be pretty adaptable because you know whatever was you know the trend of the moment nine months ago is often times you know you’ve probably moved on and if your operating on information from then, you’ll be making pretty bad decisions today. So you have to be pretty approachable. And then in terms of our investment process, so you know once I meet a company I just spend time to dig in, get some additional information, go to the place that’s it at, meet more of the team, start doing some references and calling around industry people and then have them come in for – to present at a partner meeting where they’ll meet our whole team, present to the whole team, talk about it as a group, a pretty collaborative process. We’ll all kind of vote and come out of that meeting with a sense of – sometimes its – you know we really were excited, but we want to dig into XYZ things and if we can get comfortable with that, then you know we’ll consider moving to a term sheet. Sometimes we’ll come out of there talking about price and trying to figure out if we can work out a deal and sometimes we decide that it’s not something we want to spend additional time on. But that’s kind of generally the process and then you know after that we can kind of move to a term sheet and start putting together a syndicate whether there is another investor around the table who is really excited about it or some trying to move and block someone to the table who kind of has been looking at this you know with us the entire time, but they will you know kind of move to a select process and be on average like three full weeks, but it can be longer and it can be shorter.

Dave Kruse: Okay, and at Greycroft do you have like an investment community that has the majority vote or does everyone have to approve it or how does that work?

Ellie Wheeler: Yeah, yeah. So we – you know it’s pretty consensus driven, but you know we vote and then you know we talk about it after. Does somebody really you know jump up and down and absolutely hates it, you know people listen, but it’s not always the killer.

Dave Kruse: Got you. Have you ever jumped up and down yelling, ‘No’? No I’m just kidding. You don’t have to answer that.

Ellie Wheeler: Yeah, I can. I think that it’s a valid question there, our transit. Yeah I also strongly know, I mean those trends and others things I strongly know and you know you make your case and if people really, really feel that strongly then you know – if its – you know let’s say I’m bringing something and one of my partners hates it, you know that’s really meaningful and I am going to spend a lot of time with them trying to figure out why and see if we can see eye-to-eye or you know kind of get past it.

Dave Kruse: Got you, okay. All right so unfortunately we’re almost done with the interview here, but I got a couple of questions more on the personal side coming. It sounds like you’re a really sweet – you love your job. I mean obviously you probably don’t always feel like that, but you do have quite an interesting job, that’s for sure. But you know I’m curious, I’m always curious how people kind of get away from work a little bit you know. I mean I know you probably work quite a bit, but when you can, what do you like to do to relax or get away from it all?

Ellie Wheeler: Yeah. It’s hard, because it’s you know always on proposition. You know you could work all of the time. Like there is no way – you could be reading an article, you could be doing something. But I don’t know – I live in the state of New York, I live in Manhattan, so I get – you know it’s a bit crazy.

Dave Kruse: Do you like to go out?

Ellie Wheeler: Yeah, that’s the sport in Manhattan right and you know as all of the typical things, I read a lot, I do. I probably read more than the average person, but I also you know work out, read and hang out in the city with friends and all of that good stuff. Right now I actually have a cat on my left arm and so I’m staring at it thinking about how much I would like to work out and I can’t, so that’s what’s top of the mind at the moment.

Dave Kruse: What do you like to do when you work out?

Ellie Wheeler: A little bit of everything, running, to you know kind of classes and I also have a road bike in the city I haven’t been able to take out yet.

Dave Kruse: So does it ever – because sometimes I get this a little bit. Like you said you could always work and so like does it – how do you deal with it to not always work. It sounds like it’s almost more stressful not working, which just sounds silly, but you know do you ever have that problem where it’s you know it’s almost hard to rip yourself away from doing one more thing.

Ellie Wheeler: Yeah, absolutely, especially because its soo email driven that its really crazy all the time. You know there’s a lot of roles I set for myself. Like there are – we have no – and you know I’ll say no devices at dinner at all which is a good one, no devices ever at the table, yeah whether out or at home and different days also which I put my phone down. It’s a battle I think we all fight.

Dave Kruse: Got you, all right. Yes, okay, especially in today’s world. Well, I think that’s a great place to end the podcast. So Ellie I really appreciate you taking the time to share about your professional background, a little bit of your personal at the end and its great. I learned a lot, especially around the corporate development; that’s really an interesting area and the VC, but I didn’t talk much about corporate development on this podcast. So I really appreciate you sharing your insights and thoughts.

Ellie Wheeler: Of course, thanks for having me. It was fun.

Dave Kruse: Definitely and thanks everyone for listening to another episode of Flyover Labs. As always I greatly appreciate it and we’ll see you next time. Thanks everyone. Thanks Ellie.

Ellie Wheeler: Thanks.