Navigating the World of Start-Ups: Investor Interview with Evan Shubin
We're thrilled to bring you another Investor Interview, featuring Evan Shubin, a seasoned investor in equities, real estate and start-ups.
In a candid conversation with our very own Chris Carsley, Evan shares his journey from graduating from Brown University to making a mark in the trade show industry. Evan also provides an in-depth look into the world of start-ups, discussing the challenges he faced, the lessons he learned, and the successes he achieved.
Video Highlights:
Insights into the Start-up World
Learning from his Failures
Exciting projects he is working on now
Importance of Timing and Networking
His Volunteer Work
“I experienced four big company failures, and not all of them were ones that I had founded. You learn more lessons from failures, obviously, because most startups do not always succeed.”
“I think that diversification is always an issue. I have three buckets - equities, real estate, and startups. It’s easy to diversify in the stock market with ETFs nowadays. Across different asset classes the math says you need at least have 30 different holdings to be properly diversified. I have 8 or 9 properties and 6 in start-ups so I am not as diversified as I want to be in those two buckets.”
Watch the full video below.
Transcript
Chris: I'm here with Evan Shubin, and we are very fortunate to have some time of his today to kind of, uh, dive in and learn a little bit more about him, what he's working on from an investment standpoint, and we'll just talk about, uh, you know, the investment regimes of what's going on, what was experienced in his life in 2023, and a little bit of what's going into 2024.
So, You know, Evan, take it away. Tell us a little bit about, you know, your background, where are you from, where you went to school, and what you work on.
Evan: Thanks, Chris. I'm happy to do it. And hey everybody, uh, my name is Evan Shubin. Um, got my undergraduate degree from, uh, Brown University. And, uh, after that started working the trade show industry.
Did about 10 years in the trade show industry, and then, uh, became a hired gun. And, uh, I've, uh. I had a consulting firm for the past 25 years. Um, and then my wife and I started launching companies. We've launched four companies together over the past 25 years. I've been a founder or co-founder six times, and I've been directly involved in 22 different startups as an investor, a founder, or a senior executive, and usually some combination of all three.
Um, so I have a small family office that my mother and sister and I Uh, our, our part of, and we invest in startups, and then my wife and I also provide hours in exchange for additional, uh, equity, so the idea behind Candlelight Partners, the, the family office was to look for companies that first needed our help, and then when we were fully allocated in terms of the hours we could give, then we'd start to look for companies that, uh, we thought were good investments that didn't need our help.
So, um, we've got six companies right now, three of which I serve as COO, One of which my wife serves as VP of operations and then three of which were strictly cash investors. We're happy to help, we're happy to advise, but we try to really stay out of the founder and their team's way in terms of those three companies.
Chris: That's great. That's a lot of startups. That's a lot of work. I've done a fair number of startups myself. Um, so I, I know the good and bad. Um, you definitely have some badges on your arm, I'm sure from, uh, battlefronts that, uh, not of them go, not all of them go. Well, uh, for a variety of different reasons.
I'm kind of curious, the first four that you got into, what sectors were they in? What were the first four startups? And I mean, you know, give me the, give me the, the, the, the good and the bad of what you learned from those first four.
Evan: Yeah, I actually did a webinar recently that was the entire first half was the failures.
There were four big failures and not all of them were ones that I had founded. Um, one, one of them especially was, but several others, three others that I got involved in. And, uh, um, you learn more lessons from the failures, obviously. And yeah, startups do not go well. And the, there's a lot of different data out there, but realistically, you know, one out of 20, you're going to get a little bit of money back.
Um, if you're lucky, one out of 20. And so I feel like we've been a little bit luckier than that. We've got three exits, all of them, I would call minor league exits. But in terms of those first four that my wife and I launched together, one was a consulting firm, ResultsNow, and you know, the idea there was strictly to sell our time and that company has been alive and, you know, it's had its ups and downs, but it's, it's generated a lot of revenue for us over the years.
Um, the next two were both in the trade show business and the one was, um, our biggest home run, it was called Exhibitor Invite. It was at the very beginning of the email revolution and we developed a new tool that allowed exhibitors to invite their customers to a given trade show and the trade show paid us to offer that tool to exhibitors and really everybody won.
The trade show got exposure to the exhibitors customers, many of whom had never attended or registered for this particular event, even though the exhibitor was paying to exhibit and the customers were obviously good prospects. So that was really the big reason that, uh, that we got paid by the trade show owners to run it.
But then exhibitors also with email just getting started, this was 2008. Exhibitors, also, we could prove that they got better booth traffic if they used our product. It sort of makes sense, right? If you do a pre-show marketing campaign, three emails telling your customers, Hey, we're going to be at this show.
Here's our booth number. Here's what we're going to be showing. And if you want to register, Click here. Here's a link to register either free or a discount. And, you know, again, everybody won. Exhibitors at the time were just not doing very much pre show marketing and certainly not a ton of email, even though they were starting to collect email addresses.
So that was the first one and it was very successful, very quickly, and we ran it for about 10 years and then merged it with a competitor. So definitely a successful exit. A lot of owner cash along the way, really allowed, really set us up for what we're doing now. The next one that we founded was an utter and it was a, it was a painful failure because we got one paying customer.
It was also in the trade show space. A different software as service and a little bit high, really higher costs for the trade show owner was one of the big problems. And, um, we got one paying customer. They were very happy. I tried and tried for, for almost five years to, to get a second paying customer and just never get over the hump.
And so. Um, all the investors was three of us that went in with cash and hours. We all got our money back, but we didn't get back those hours that we had spent. So almost five years trying to get customer number two and just couldn't quite get there. And it was really a lot of it was about average sales price and about competitive, uh, advantage. Exhibitor invites average sales price about 15 grand and we could prove that it worked. It drove additional attendees to the show and exhibitors got more booth traffic. All good. The second one, Atlas was about 35 grand, the average sales price for the trade show. And there were, there were cheaper alternatives that were nowhere near as good, but they were a lot cheaper.
And so the difference from 15 to 35, you know, I thought it would be a no brainer for our exhibitor invites customers to also buy Atlas, but. Didn't work out.
Chris: Well, here's, you can, uh, there's always a question that I get in so many different, uh, venues is, okay. Uh, from learning from that mistake, what advice would you give to people who are coming into a startup and saying, okay, well, these were all the assumptions I made.
What would be the advice out of that that you would give to, you know, people who are listening to this that are like, hey, I'm going to go, you know, start a new company.
Evan: So timing was, timing was an issue. I had a very good friend who was working for Freeman at the time, one of the biggest companies in the trade show industry.
They're what we call a decorator or a general contractor. He would have been in a position to specify the Atlas product to a whole slew, hundreds of Freeman customers, and they weren't all going to say yes, but it was a huge hit. We just missed the window. We couldn't come to market fast enough. He left the job.
And in addition to that. These cheaper alternatives, a mobile app that could do, um, not as well, but most of the things that we were doing with Atlas, which was really about wayfinding. You'd go up to a kiosk and you'd say, I'm looking for these booths, or I'm looking for these products, and it would show you where the booths were and how you could get there.
When you can do the same thing on your phone, it was hard to navigate a big trade show floor on a map on your phone on a tiny little map. But it was, it was five grand per show versus 35 a show and all the trade show managers took, the, uh, the quick, the, the, the cheap way out. So, you know, the first problem, the, the first issue was timing.
The second issue was customer discovery. I thought it would be easy, we had 60 exhibitor invites customers that I thought many of them would transfer over, and the third was that price point. And just, yeah, not realizing, you know, that, that we couldn't, it, it wasn't as clear, uh, a USP. Exhibitor invites pay me 15 grand, I'm going to get you a thousand to 2000 more attendees and happier exhibitors with more booth traffic. Yeah. Atlas, pay me 35 grand and this is a better way for your attendees to navigate the show floor. Exhibitors are going to be happy and over time they're going to get some sponsorship revenue. It just wasn't as immediate or concrete enough, a USP and that, you know, that's really was the hard lesson and the one that, uh, that I should have dug into a little bit deeper, but like I said, a lot of it was about timing, some bad luck, but also some bad assumptions.
Chris: Yeah, well, I'll, I'll be honest with you. Some of the conferences I've been to, they seem to be getting bigger and bigger.
So there might be an opportunity for you to rethink about that, at least in the finance and investment conferences I go to, because some of the big ones, I just get lost. I mean, it's like, I have no idea who's there. Um, and you know, you just hope you can find somebody, you know, or who you're looking for.
Um, it's, it's, it's, it's good to see post COVID having people, you know, these, these conferences go from zero to all of a sudden people are back in the thousands. Um, coming back. But when you get that kind of size, uh, on multiple days, um, I totally get it. You can get lost, uh, in multiple, you just, you can't find what you're looking for or meet the people you're looking for.
Well, let's shift gears now. I know you're working on a current project that's not one of those four. Why don't you give us a rundown of like, well, how did you come up with that investment opportunity where you are with that startup that you're building? And I don't know, maybe even if there's, you know, something you're looking for on that side.
Evan: Yeah, so, um, I think you're alluding to Game Gym.
Chris: Yep, I am.
Evan: Um, an eSports company. We, we started as happy customers. Uh, both of my sons are avid gamers and I was the anti-gaming parent. I thought video games were a gigantic waste of time. And for any parents out there listening, my son Samuel, Wrote his college essay on his journey with a game called League of Legends, which is five versus five, and how his friends got together and how they were clueless and how they learned to play the game.
And um, Ohio State came with a $15,000 a year academic scholarship, and that's when the light bulb went off for old gray haired dad here to say, okay, maybe there is something to this video game thing. And, uh, maybe it really did. There is some real value there. More than 500 colleges and universities currently offer partial or even full scholarships for e sports either to play on the team or as an academic scholarship because of what the student has achieved, um, which is still boggling to me.
And it's just getting started. It's really just getting started. And so as happy customers, uh, the founder of Game Gym, Josh Hafkin, went out about almost exactly four years ago and said, Hey, I'm looking for investment to grow, and I'm looking for people to help join the team. And the timing was good. My wife and I We're looking, you know, we had some hours to give, and so we wrote a check, and we came on board.
I'm the COO of Game Gym. Josh is the CEO, and then my wife is VP of Operations, and the whole idea behind Game Gym is a healthy and holistic approach to esports training. Josh was a scholarship swimmer at University of North Carolina. He went Deep into the Olympic trials in 2008 and 2012, almost made the Olympic team.
He was the ACC championship, the ACC champions the year that he was a senior at North Carolina. Um, and you know, from the time he set foot in the water, he had all sorts of support as a talented young swimmer. All sorts of support and structure to maximize his path, whether he was ever going to get a college scholarship, you know, starting back in sixth grade or fourth grade, whatever, you know, you don't know what's going to happen.
But if you're interested, whatever your skill level, whatever your talent level, as a swimmer, as a soccer player, as a debate player, as a trumpet player, you've got all that support and parents are throwing money. Well, now you look at eSports and like me, most parents are skeptical that it's a good use of time.
They're skeptical that it's a valid extracurricular activity. And like I just said, 500 colleges and Ohio State, uh, among them can't be wrong. And so that's what we're, what we're trying to change is to provide that same structure and support. So if you're an enthusiastic video game player as a sixth grader, if you're a talented video game player as a sixth grader through 12th, you know, through 12th grade, we're gonna provide that structure and support. So we run, we own and operate a collegiate league in 19 schools across four states in the, the District of Columbia. We operate a high school, uh, league for Montgomery County. We offer after school and enrichment and teacher training at the middle school and lower school levels for Montgomery County, Maryland.
Um, and so this is really where we've gotten our start. It's our home, uh, county here outside of Washington, D. C., and we're involved in all three levels, and then we've developed a training app that is available, um, on, uh, the Apple and Google stores, and, and what it does is it provides workouts. So if your game is League of Legends or Rocket League, we've got seven different video game titles that we support.
You want to get better at that game. There are really only two ways to do it. Use the game gym app with curated workouts from certified coaches, or you go on YouTube and you watch a pro gamer provide commentary while they're playing. That's valuable. No question about it. And, and you can spend some time doing that.
A better and smarter way to get better with video games is to use our app. And so that's what that's what's behind the whole thing. And so, um, we, uh, about a year and a half ago, we raised 700 grand in the first round, and we've just opened our second round. Um, the app is live. on the, uh, you know, on the Apple and Google store, we've got paying customers growing, you know, slowly but surely.
And now we need marketing dollars and operational dollars to continue to improve the app and improve the community part of the app, and then also to drive downloads and subscriptions. Uh, across that, those seven titles, we have more than 450 workouts total that are posted on the app right now. We're posting 10 new workouts a week.
So we're always adding content. We're always providing new workouts for gamers of all ages to get better, but especially that K to 12, um, range.
Chris: Just like anything as you know, I’ve taught a lot of different things. Soccer, martial arts, scuba diving. It just You've got to practice and you've got to, if you want to get good at something and you got to put it in the iterations and, but I will attest, I was, uh, we didn't have the games they have, uh, now, but, uh, back when I was playing, but, uh, I was considering myself someone who played probably way too many games according to my parents.
Um, but I sat down with, uh, a friend's niece, I mean, and she was like 11 and, you know, we were playing some, PvP, player versus player. I mean, she just handed me and I was like, okay, I'm too old for this anymore. I obviously way out of practice. So it's, it's, it's not as easy as it, as you think I I'm with you.
But, um, so with that, I mean, yeah, there's a clear market. It's a growing market. Let's switch a little bit more to, you know, the, your investment side. What are you focusing on? Obviously you've got a number of things in the venture and startup, and that is a very particular profile. of investment. Through 2023 and 2024, what else are you sort of looking at?
What are your, hey, I think this is opportunity, I think these are concerns, and sort of what you're building. You said earlier, you know, you have a small family office, obviously that's tied to some of the investments you're doing, but you know, you're, I know you're diversified and you're looking at a lot of different things.
So, Walk us through some of those thoughts about, you know, what are, what are you looking at and what are you thinking about from an investment standpoint, um, you know, given, you know, what, what you do as a, as a profession as well.
Evan: Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, so the, the bad news is that Candlelight Partners is broke.
Um, we, you know, we started my, my, uh, mother and sister and I, we started, we, we put, they gave me a stake and, um, uh, we've invested in six companies. And then you know, the, about a year ago, the market took a little bit of a dive. My mother, especially, is very skittish, you know, with good reason. And, um, so until we get some more family funding, we've got our six investments and we're waiting for an exit.
So in that sense, all I can do is window shop, which is terrible. It's very, very painful to be broke. You know, the spin on that is we're fully, we're fully allocated.
Chris: You're not broke, you're illiquid.
Evan: We are illiquid. That is, that is the truth. And so we are waiting for, um, and in, you know, and, uh, an exit to, to, and there may be, maybe one coming, but it's, it's not, uh, it's not tomorrow, that's for sure.
Um, the other thing that I have to spend is, is my time, right? My hours. And so, you know, I'm always looking to help, um, young founders and see whether there's an opportunity to, to carve out a little bit of time. I, I, you know, I'm 56. I don't want to work 80 hours a week. I've done it. I'm not interested in doing it again, ever.
I'm also not working more than probably 40 right now. And so if something really comes around, yeah, I could probably, you know, shoehorn in another five or 10 hours a week without too much hardship. And so that's the other place where I'm looking to spend, if you will. I'm going to spend my time. Um, I think that this is a cop out, but I think that AI is just absolutely critical. Um, I think there's going to be a lot of bust in AI that, you know, like crypto or anything else.
I think that that people are coming up with some crazy ideas and also some great ideas. And we won't know for a while, which are real, but I know for sure that, AI can save human time and advantage companies in that way, and that's just the tip of the iceberg. And so, you know, I'm certainly looking for a situation where there's, you know, a founder who, um, is involved in AI, you know, ideally a coder or an engineer who's got those skills, but needs some business acumen.
And that's certainly where I tried it to come in, you know, in any of these, these three companies where I'm COO I view that job as, you know, helping the founder to run the company. And two, you know, one of those Game gym is with Josh Haken. The other two are with Ed Zumstein, and they both need different things and we complement each other in different ways.
But that's always what I'm looking in. I I'm looking to come in as the number two. Uh, I'm, I've had a few great ideas, one minor league home run, but the reality is that in many cases, when I'm the founder, it's someone else's idea. I'm a co-founder. You know, as a founder, like I said, I've had one idea, one home run, and a few other, you know, small singles and doubles here and there, but, um, I don't expect, and maybe, maybe I'll surprise myself, I don't expect another great idea, but I know that if I can find a great founder, I can help them, uh, run that company, because first time founders have enormous challenges.
They're just facing all sorts of challenges, and you know, barriers to success, quite frankly, and, um, I'd like, you know, one, one company at a time, one startup at a time. I'd like to try to change that.
Chris: Yeah, no, you mentioned, I mean, I mean, there's challenges of time. I mean, everyone struggles with that. I really think that somehow post COVID and the ability to do what we're doing right now, seamlessly, you know, not even be across the entire country and having a meeting, um, Has created, somehow, everyone's busier.
Um, continuously. Um, there's, there's no excuse to not be doing something, uh, kind of this in the back of people's heads. I mean, we're in a pretty dynamic, uh, time period right now. There's a lot of moving pieces on a global macro basis. Um, And not all of them, you know, good. Is there anything else in particular that you're seeing as a, as, as a challenge for you or something that worries you?
Um, you know, going forward,
Evan: I mean, I think that diversification, diversification is always an issue, right? I, I, and I've got really three buckets. I've got, got the stock market, I've got real estate, and I've got startups and that, that, those are my three buckets. And on in the stock market, you know. ETFs makes it very, very easy nowadays, and there are all sorts of different vehicles, and you can, it doesn't take much to be diversified.
You may or may not be perfect, you may be overweighted on purpose or not on purpose, but you know, in reality, that's a relatively easy thing to do. Real estate, um, you know, I'm very, very happy to be part of Kirkland Group, I'm happy to be I've got a primary residence. We've got an investment property in Florida, and we're part of a very small group that has a couple of investment properties up in New York, Pennsylvania, that serves college students a couple of apartments.
And so I feel like we're relatively diversified there. But you know, across any given asset class, the math says that you should have at least 30 different holdings. That's a lot. And it's easy to do, like I said, in the stock market. But if you look at real estate, I've sort of got maybe eight or nine, depending on, you know, how you count Kirkland, maybe more than that.
But and then on the startup side, I've got six. So in those two buckets out of three. I'm not as diversified as I'd like to be. I'd like to get up to, you know, maybe 15 different holdings in, in both real estate and in, um, startups and especially on the startup side. And that just takes more cash or more hours, right?
That's what it comes down to. And so.
Chris: It is one of the issues that, uh, that a lot of people face in the alternative investment world is just being able to write the check. You know, in startups, you know, the standard angel check is 25, 000. You know, that's sort of the, the go to number. Um, it's, it's not a written rule.
You can certainly invest less, but it just seems to be, that's the go to number. And, you know, not everyone can come up with 20 different companies and write a 25, 000 check into every single one of them, um, or more if they have conviction. And then, like you said, in real estate there again, um, you know, you know, I think it's smart, what you're doing is, Hey, we're, we have a group that came together to buy, you know, the student housing and everything else. And I, I tell a lot of people, I said, listen, investing is not always this, uh, lone warrior, uh, you know, journey, you know, find people to travel with and, you know, build your network. Uh, and you know, a lot of people are, and that's hard.
I'm actually, I'm actually writing up a paper. Cause it's so easy for me to say like, Hey, Evan, just build your network. Uh, well, okay. How? Um, and so I'm actually taking that idea and I'm mapping out a whole ‘nother webinar just to kind of deal with some of the aspects of how to think about building network around, you know, and one of the things I get is a lot of people are dealing with due diligence, you know, how do I do due diligence in alternatives?
So, um, it's, it's, it's funny you mentioned that because I think that's great. People should follow that of like, Hey, I don't have all the time. And I know I want this, and to create diversification, find groups of trusted people that are like minded from an investment standpoint and go in with them. And so it may allow you to write smaller checks and get greater diversification.
So, um, that's great. Um,
is there something, I mean, AI is on everyone's mind, so maybe that's the answer. It seems to be the answer of what a lot of people are saying is, is there something If you had time or something that you find important in your investment world, in your views, what you would want to learn, like, if I, you know, what do you want to learn next, Evan, if I gave you an infinite amount of time to just go do learn that.
Evan: Yeah, that is, that is a tough question. If I had an infinite amount of time, I think the biggest thing that it would, in my, in the past five years, what I have learned is that the, the, the startup fundraising model is broken. It's, it's a big, big problem. And if I wanted to go out and learn anything, I would want to learn, you know, all of the aspects of that.
I still don't know. I've been involved in a couple of different rounds in a couple of different companies now. Um, not something in the past we bootstrapped a lot and, and, you know, done some mergers, but just in the past five years is really when I've got involved in truly fundraising for startups and, you know, chasing investors, chasing angels and VCs, and it's broken.
I can tell you that on the, from the founder perspective, it's broken because it's a full time job in and of itself. And the skill set required to successfully raise investment dollars is not necessarily the skill set involved to successfully run a small business or launch a startup and, you know, get to that point where it becomes a small business.
And so you've got a lot of founders with a lot of great skills and potentially great ideas. And then you've got challenges because they can't get the money that they need. And, you know, there are resources, there are money, you know, people on the VC side are always fond of saying, you know, they're the good startups get founded.
There is money that you could get funded. There is money. And I think that's, that's true, but it's, it's just hard to find. And it's not, I think there is some, Luck involved in a lot of hard work, but that takes away from actually launching and running the company. So this to me is a, you know, a problem I've witnessed firsthand and, uh, you know, and a, and a challenge.
And then when you do get money, then the founders and the investors are often at odds. And this, to me is part of the broken model. In other words, a VC, they're gonna place 20 debts. And they want one Grand Slam homerun because they know they're probably going to go one for 20 and a single is not going to do it if they only go one for 20.
And so they take all of those 20 founders and they push them as hard as possible to hit a Grand Slam homerun as quickly as possible. Some of those 20 could be healthy little companies with 5 or 10 million in revenue and 40 percent profit margin. I'm just making that up, but you know, just as a success as a bit, you know, as a gauge for success, some of those companies could hit that number and the VCs don't care.
That's a failure to them because it's not, it's not going to give them their, the ROI. And I understand why the model is right. They know they're going to go one for 20. They're writing those checks. They want. that one to be a Grand Slam home run. And so they push all 20 to be a Grand Slam home and that's broken.
That's not in the founders don't know enough in most cases to push back on that. Sometimes they can't, you know, push back cause they need the money. And there, uh, all, you know, they're, they're, their eyes are glazed over with the Facebook story. You know, you know, I can, I can be a billionaire in three years and it just doesn't always happen that way. And some of these startups are just built to be nice little healthy small businesses, but that's not going to happen if you take investment dollars and you're, you know, you're forced to go for the grand slam home run. So to me, I don't think I can necessarily solve that problem.
Um, because I think what it really takes is small batch investing more, you know, where you really get involved and you actually help that founder. And come up like, like I do sometimes when I can is come on a COO. The reality is that's only, you know, three companies at a time. Um, it gets crazy. I've, you know, I've done that for a long time.
I've been a hired gun since 2001 taking sometimes cash, sometimes equity, sometimes both, and you can't really do more than three or four. It's just not, you know, it gets to the point of diminishing returns. So I don't know if there's even a solution for it. But at the end of the day, I think that the current model for startups and the way that startups get funded does a great disservice to the founders.
And that's, so that, that's something it's, I'm going to step down off, off of my soapbox now.
Chris: Well, no, listen, there's a lot of education, a lot of people working on that. I mean, it was something. That I struggled with for years. Um, and still, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm still raising money. Um, and it's not just in the startup world.
Um, there's, it's often, how do you find that investor that has the right mindset that's going to mesh with the founder and the company in your case, or even in my case, it's like, well, I want the investors in our fund, I'm a fit for their portfolio. I'm not some trade. Um, we're, we're not, we're not something that you jump in and out of.
It's, Hey, I want to be a material piece as an alternative fixed income play. Um, but it's difficult and you got to spend the time. Uh, I have just realized. You got to spend the time. I mean, it just takes a long time. I don't think there's this fix. There's a lot of people who are out there saying they've got the fix or they've got the plan and I go through a lot of these just to see what they're saying.
See if there's some kind of nugget I can pull out. Um. And I come back with one thing. It's just, uh, Hey, it just takes time. And it's, it's like getting that right intro. Um, you know, I, you and I have had this conversation before where I keep my ear open. Cause I have a lot of people who come talk to me. And if someone's like, Oh, you know, I'm looking for this and this, and I'm like, ah, you know what?
I know somebody you need to talk to. I mean, I try to be that person. Um, at least that's the way I've learned over the last 20 some odd years of raising money of the best way I can try to fix it. If you come up with a different way, you better let me know. Um, if you find that magic bullet, um, wait, let's shift gears.
I mean, we don't have too much time, uh, that we want to take up, uh, here, but, um, shifting out of investments and a little bit more into life. A couple of questions. If what is it you're looking to do, you know, life wise with travel or something of that nature that you, you know, we, we talked about time, okay, well, let's free up some time and what are we doing outside of all of these companies you're trying to help build and you're going to raise money for.
Evan: Yeah, so you know we we've been lucky that over the years we've been able to do quite a bit of travel and I love travel and I plan definitely plan to do some more throughout this year. We're going to try to get down to Tampa and Saint Petersburg and then definitely get out to Denver, which is where my business partner Ed Zumstein is.
My wife and I always spend a week at Rehoboth on the um, On the Atlantic Ocean, Robert Beach, Delaware. Um, so we do that, uh, over the summertime. Um, our youngest son is in Portland. And so we were there for a week in, uh, August, moving him in, try to get out there again this summer, depending on what, uh, what his plans are.
So travel is always, um, on the schedule, um, for us or, or in the plans. Um, that's important to me. Um. If fitness is very, very important, I, you know, look at my, my father and grandfather who have passed and I've got to fight the future every single day. So I exercise every day. I play racquetball twice a week.
Um, that's always gotta be a part of my life and I'm worried a little bit as I get older and I've got to hang up the racquetball racket, you know, what's that? I've got to look for more lower impact. I hate swimming. Um, and so it's not going to be
Chris: what you haven't, you haven't picked up the, uh, pickleball craze.
Evan: I'm not, I've watched it. I've watched it live and on TV and I, I, racquetball, it's too fast. It's, it's, it's just a, it's a better sport. I'm sorry. I don't know. One day I'll probably be stuck with it and have to eat my words, but for now I'm not doing both. It's hard to do two racquet sports at the same time.
So I'm not giving up racquetball until they carry me on.
Chris: I guarantee you if you hit a pickleball as hard as you hit a racquetball, you are not going to be putting it in the, uh, in the line. It's a much softer touch.
Evan: But, you know, Chris, in, in, in a, um, larger standpoint, I really do feel like I've arrived and I feel very lucky in that regard, you know, in the almost exactly five years since I started Candlelight Partners and really started doing this full time.
Full-time, startup executive and, and family office. I hope to be able to do this for quite a while and whether I scale back at some point, you know, to 30 hours or 20 hours, whatever that means, I feel that I'm as happy as I have been in in doing this. And that doesn't mean they're not up and down days because there are and you take everything personally.
I still take everything personally. You know, it's worse when you founded the company. Exhibitor Invites, we had a great run, but we had some ups and downs and I took every single, you know, down day personally when it's your baby, when you create your brainchild, but even now in companies that I've, you know, come on board as an investor and as COO, you take the body blows and you, you know, you take them personally.
But I really do feel like. Yeah. I'm as happy as I've been. The other thing I do from a volunteer standpoint, and I hope to step this up at some point, is I'm part of the University of Maryland's Dingman Center for Entrepreneurship. I'm a mentor in their network. I have office hours. It's a great, great machine.
It's not the only one. A ton of universities nationwide have great entrepreneurship programs, but Maryland's is a really great machine. And also a call out to Connectpreneur, which runs a pitch meeting called Rocket Pitch each month, and I'm part of their prep team. So each month I take one of the founders, it's generally 10 to 12 founders, and most months I'll take one of them and I'll help them to refine that pitch deck, refine their presentation as they pitch for investment dollars, because no matter how many times I'll get up on the soapbox and say it's broken.
It's the only model out there right now. And so if I can help founders, you know, get funded and, um, you know, needless to say, I've seen a wide range of founders, both with through the Maryland office hours and through, uh, RocketPitch and Connectpreneur, some great presenters, some great pitch decks, a very few that have both, that have both a great presentation and a great pitch deck. I try to make them each a little bit better if I can in the time that I, that I have with them. And I look to see them, you know, later after they've done that pitch as they've continued on and hear about what's going on, um, uh, with them. So I hope to step that up as well.
At some point, if I, you know, if I, if I scale back on the actual working as a startup executive. Do more of that volunteer work, but it's, it's an important piece of the, uh, of the puzzle right now. And, and I hope it'll continue to be an important piece.
Chris: Well, that's excellent. I mean, Evan, I really want to thank you for your time today.
Um, I wanna thank you also obviously for being, you know, part of our investor family at Kirkland Capital Group. Um, so, you know, we're always here to help you and, uh, if there's anything, you know, you can reach out, but thank you again for your time and thank you for your insights and it's great to learn more about what you're working on and hopefully the people who watch this, uh, maybe there's an overlap of business and maybe we can make a connection there and, you know, solve that, solve that problem.
We're all going to fix money raising, right? We were going to find that magic bullet, but, uh, all righty, sir, well, thank you again.
Evan: Thank you, Chris. I'm a big fan, and I'm happy to talk to, you know, to anybody. I'm always happy to do a meet and greet, but I'm especially happy to talk to you. Big fan of yours, big fan of Kirkland Group, so I appreciate the time today as well.
Have a good one.
Chris: You're welcome. Thank you, sir.
