Diane Stokes, founder and angel investor, is back to update us on her startups. This inspiring triathlete has great ideas for startups who want to scale. Read full episode transcript.
Highlights:
This Interview Picks Up Where the Prior Interview Left Off – Back to Wyebot
How Wyebot Weathered COVID
Diane Stokes and Colleagues Formed a Firm to Help Startups Grow
Squadle – Promising Startup in Which Diane Stokes and Sal Daher Invested
Dermal Photonics – Diane Stokes Is Trying Their Product
Dermal Photonics Is Championed by Super Angel Jeff Arnold Who Has Been on the Podcast
Sal Daher’s Standing Question: How to Get More Angels to Do Biotech
“He discovered that VCs are not doing the small-scale biotech anymore. By small scale is a company that could sell for $200 million.”
“They all want to have the next Moderna.”
“One of the things is, is it manufacturable? How do you get to scale on your manufacturing, if it's not even at that stage yet?”
Diane Stokes Believes Angels Have to Be Shown the Possibilities of the Biotechnology Beyond the First use Case
“The resource we have an abundance of, are brilliant academics with no business experience, but with tremendous motivation.”
“If you get a physician that is open to having somebody work with them and know what they don't know in that, it can be very successful and I think this is similar.”
“Being able to understand the state of where your organization is, what help you need, where to spend that newly acquired funding that you received.”
Diane Stokes Plans to Do a 2000-mile Bike Ride to Fight ALS
ANGEL INVEST BOSTON IS SPONSORED BY:
Transcript of “Iron Woman 2”
Guest: Diane Stokes
Sal Daher: This podcast is brought to you by Purdue University entrepreneurship, and by Peter Fasse, patent attorney at Fish & Richardson.
Sal Daher Welcomes Back Iron Woman Diane Stokes, Founder & Angel
Hey, this is Sal Daher. Welcome to Angel Invest Boston, conversations with Boston's most interesting angels and founders. Today, our conversation is with Diane Stokes, founder, angel, triathlete, incredibly energetic person that I really enjoy talking to. She was interviewed before. Some of you may have listened to her previous podcast, which is called Iron Woman, and this is an update from Iron Woman. Welcome, Diane.
Diane Stokes: Hi, Sal. Great to see you again.
Sal Daher: Great to be back on. Diane and I are colleagues at Walnut Ventures. That's how I got to know her. If you listen to the original episode, you're going to find out amazing things about her. She's somebody who takes multitasking to the third power. ROTC, taking care of her sick mom when she was in college, cheerleading squad, and all this stuff.
This Interview Picks Up Where the Prior Interview Left Off – Back to Wyebot
This energy has translated into her professional life, into her life as a founder. Actually, when our first interview [First Interview with Diane Stokes] where we left off is that Diane was going back in. "They keep pulling me back in. I tried to get out,” into Wyebot heading up marketing." Diane, tell us what happened. You went into Wyebot, tell us what Wyebot does and what happened when you went back into heading marketing?
Diane Stokes: Sure. Wyebot provides analysis and an awesome tool for wireless networks. When I went in, it was originally for the marketing, trying to get a cohesive strategy. I ended up taking over sales as well and put together a cohesive, go-to-market strategy, including sales, business development, and marketing. Built a team there, focused on the education market which was in the biggest need because all of the Chromebooks and wireless needs, all the teaching was starting to happen. Wireless was a big factor there.
We did that and for about 18 months, right before COVID, we achieved about a 10 times growth and really were hitting our milestones, and were able to get into not only education but also expand into other industries as well. It was a tremendous success and then COVID hit [laughs]. We were all like, "Wait, what just happened?" Actually, I talked to the CEO last week and continue... I'm an investor as well, but I am looking to help them again in another area, TBD. [laughs] They've been able to really weather the COVID storm which has been great.
Sal Daher: How did they do it?
Diane Stokes: Healthcare.
Sal Daher: They pivoted to healthcare?
How Wyebot Weathered COVID
Diane Stokes: Yes, and still education because there were some things within the buildings that remote users had to get access to, and making sure that everything was up and running in the appropriate manner. As efficiently as possible was great analytics for the schools to have. We were also able to get them into other industries which was really germane to the growth that they're seeing over this year.
Also, through the E-Rate program that the government has for schools, we made tremendous inroads there as well. That was great. When COVID hit we decided that we could take a lot of resources and just hold for a moment and let natural things occur, but have a few people continue with what they're doing. I decided that I could step back and do some other things while we saw how COVID continued. They're doing great, hiring and everything.
Sal Daher: If someone wants to look for them and also for the transcriber, it's Wyebot, W-Y-E-B-O-T.
Diane Stokes: Correct, .com. Yes.
Sal Daher: Yes. .com. wyebot.com, Wyebot [https://wyebot.com/].
Diane Stokes: Yes, so they're doing great.
Sal Daher: They're hiring?
Diane Stokes and Colleagues Formed a Firm to Help Startups Grow
Diane Stokes: Yes, they're hiring, and it's really been a great company. The team is awesome over there, so hope to be able to help them again this year as well. [crosstalk] In the meantime I started doing some consulting with other early-stage companies, and actually formed a consulting organization called Rocket Growth Partners [https://www.rocketgrowthpartners.com/] with a couple of other people that focus on helping early-stage companies. That's been fun, and we're getting into helping companies. You know that hockey stick growth that everybody wants to have. Turning that corner and getting into that hockey stick is what we specialize in.
Sal Daher: Excellent. Your consulting business brings something that's sorely needed with startups, because startups are very young companies, and they're not fully formed. I've seen in my experience, and you've seen this too. A founder who's a brilliant product person develops a product that has tremendous product market fit. Takes off like crazy, but they can't manage the growth.
Diane Stokes: Well, they're figuring out where they just got investment of millions of dollars, and they're trying to figure out where do I spend it first. They don't have the management team to help them.
Sal Daher: How do I hire people?
Diane Stokes: Exactly.
Sal Daher: Who do I hire? This is so helpful. The hard part is figuring out the product market fit. Coming up with something that you can take one to n. The hard part is getting from zero to one. The one to n, there are people who have experience doing that and you should look for help. In my experience I've seen so many times where founders who have tremendous idea, tremendous product that really addresses a need in the market, but they get caught up scaling it, because of mundane things that other people can help them with. They've captured lightning in a bottle, but they can't replicate that, because of inexperience. I've had one founder who really forgot that there were liabilities in the company, ran out of money despite the fact that the company was promising, was doing lots of interesting things.
Diane Stokes: It's really sad when I see that. That drives me crazy, because I think people undervalue execution which is, you can have the best product in the world. If you can't get it out to people that need it, and you can't scale appropriately, and hire the right people, it's not going to work. It may work for a little bit, but you're not going get that growth that everybody's looking for.
Sal Daher: When you are addressing early adopters, who have the patience to help you fashion the product, and are excited about your product you can have someone who is inexperienced, but inexperience is your friend, because you're open to new things, and therefore you can develop that product. Then there's a transition from the early adopters to the next step, and that's the famous chasm, crossing the chasm.
Diane Stokes: Yes, exactly.
Sal Daher: Early adopters don't connect with people who are going to be massive users of the service. There are not enough of them. The use cases are too particular, and this is where having someone with experience can be very helpful.
Diane Stokes: You haven't proven scalability which is the next step. You have to prove that more than just a handful of people whether it's 100 people or 1,000 people depending on what the product is, you need to prove scalability.
Sal Daher: That's very true. Let's talk concretely about some of the startups that you're involved with. I also want to make a little time to talk about my hobby horse, which are in angel-scale biotech startups, and get your input on those things, because you have a lot of experience on this. What are the startups that you're involved with? You're still involved with Wyebot. What are some of the other startups you're involved with?
Squadle – Promising Startup in Which Diane Stokes and Sal Daher Invested
Diane Stokes: Another one Squadle, which is-
Sal Daher: Yes, I'm also an investor in Squadle. Please explain what Squadle does.
Diane Stokes: Squadle originally had a temperature probing device, but they've expanded to really back-end for restaurants. Being able to not only do the temperature probing and uploading but automating the manual processes of back-end restaurant administration, I guess you can call it.
Sal Daher: Right. They have gotten to the point where they have been adopted by major brands.
Diane Stokes: Correct. Major restaurant brands, and continue on that growth. They've hit a little hiccup lately with the management team, and they are working on fixing that, but that happens. Startups go through-
Sal Daher: Growing pains.
Diane Stokes: -growing pains [laughs]. Yes. They're ready to hit that acceleration button. They just need to fix a couple of things and they'll be up and running
Sal Daher: Yes. This is a classic situation. This is part of, "software eating the world." This is Marc Andreessen formulation. The founder Le Zhang had tremendous insight into this industry and understood it and has created a remarkable product. Any other startups that you want to talk about?
Diane Stokes: There's a few that I'm starting to work with. I'll wait to the next update maybe, but--
Sal Daher: Anybody else you're invested in?
Diane Stokes: Well, there's one that I am looking at, haven't invested in them yet, except I did buy their product.
Dermal Photonics – Diane Stokes Is Trying Their Product
Sal Daher: Ah, see, this is angel investing. You're seeing here the real-life angel investing. This is how it goes on. Tell us about this startup.
Diane Stokes: Dermal Photonics. It's a laser for around the eyes. Those fine lines that we, over 50, I'd say maybe over 40, people are trying to, everyone's trying to look better and younger. It's a little home laser that is supposed to get rid of those fine lines. I said, well, I will try it before I invest. I did buy one and it's only been a like two weeks and it's supposed to be four to six or something before you see results. We'll see.
Sal Daher: Too soon to tell.
Diane Stokes: Too soon to tell.
Sal Daher: It's a direct-to-consumer product, right?
Diane Stokes: It is. Yes. Right now, you can buy it off their website and it's called NIRA Skin, I think the device itself. The process of getting the product was easy. I just ordered it online, put my credit card in, it came fairly readily. They do have an app that they are developing with it. It's not quite ready yet. That's supposed to be ready in a couple of months.
Dermal Photonics Is Championed by Super Angel Jeff Arnold Who Has Been on the Podcast
Sal Daher: Interesting. The reason that I paid attention to it is that was shown to me by Jeff Arnold who's had quite a history of being involved in successful startups.
Diane Stokes: Correct. He's great. He's awesome.
Sal Daher: He's tremendous. He's been interviewed in this podcast and how to make money in biotech [Jeff Arnold, Super Angel & Founder in "How to Make Money in Biotech"] I recommend people to listen to that because he is very successful in his biotech investing, which leads me to what are your thoughts, because you're a specialist in go to market and sales and so forth. I have discovered an opportunity which is the thing that I am focusing on right now.
Sal Daher’s Standing Question: How to Get More Angels to Do Biotech
That opportunity is that there is an explosion. It's like a Cambrian explosion of interesting life science companies for a variety of reasons. All of a sudden academics are deciding to become founders. The technologies are available that could be developed with a few million dollars in funding. There are shared lab spaces and so forth.
It's a little bit like the explosion that happened in the early 2010s in the software field with APIs coming in, with Amazon Web Services and things like that, or things as mundane as lawyers deferring their fees, things of that nature. This kind of stuff is happening in the life sciences. I'm involved in a few of these companies.
What I'm working on is, I'm trying to figure out a way to attract more angel investors to support these academic founders because... People say, "Well, why don't the VCs help?" Well, the thing is there are not enough of them. The big VCs are not interested in these angel-scale deals. I'll give you an example of an angel-scale deal, how I discovered this.
Jeff Behrens [ Jeff Behrens in "Why You're Wrong About Biotech Funding"] was a very experienced person in the life sciences he was executive in the life sciences took over a startup called Siamab and they were developing an oncology therapy. He thought he was going to get some money from VCs because he knew a bunch of VCs and he discovered he couldn't. He ended up raising $14 million from angel investors.
He got some non-dilutive funding along the way as well. Then eventually ended up with a 200 million plus exit. Plus, because they've had progress payments afterwards. Things have worked out even better than expected at the time of the acquisition. This is an angel deal and Jeff who has a lot of contacts with VCs was unable to raise any money from the VCs.
“He discovered that VCs are not doing the small-scale biotech anymore. By small scale is a company that could sell for $200 million.”
Then he went off and he did some research on this, a PhD thesis, as a matter of fact. He discovered that VCs are not doing the small-scale biotech anymore. By small scale is a company that could sell for $200 million. This kind of opened my eyes to the possibilities of this. My question is, how do I reach out to angels and recruit them to help me in this effort? What thoughts do you have on this?
Diane Stokes: Yes, it's interesting because VCs are looking for the unicorn, they want to go public, and they're looking for that. And this is not, this is a long term-
“They all want to have the next Moderna.”
Sal Daher: Moderna. The success of Moderna [laughter]. They all want to have the next Moderna.
Diane Stokes: Exactly. This type of deal is more about a strategic coming and purchasing the technology versus go to market. I think from an angel perspective, I'm guilty of this as well. You have to look at it from a different perspective which is, it's a long, long-term play. It's not something that's going to happen in the next couple of years, probably because a lot of time these companies are A: academics. They have an awesome product. It's not actually even a product but for the most time, it's a technology or it's a-
Sal Daher: Sometimes when they get acquired, it may not even be a product then.
Diane Stokes: Correct. It's not productized, it's a technology or it's a process, or it's something that people have a hard time wrapping their arms around. I think the best thing that you could do would be to educate on those differences and how an angel could help because I think a lot of angel investors don't want to just give money. They want to give money and their time and experience and all of that.
Sal Daher: There's tremendous room for helping [unintelligible 00:17:05]
Diane Stokes: But they probably don't know how because like I'm a go-to-market specialist. They don't need go to market. They need-- Do they need productization? They may not even need that. So, like your product people are saying, wait, they don't need productization either, how am I going to help? Maybe if we could figure out, what are the things that they need from their investors to make their exit to a strategic-- Maybe it's all around the introductions to strategics that might want to keep tabs on them, to give them advice on what their holes are, for example, something like that.
Sal Daher: I'm thinking here of advice that I hear, conversations that I had with Jeff Behrens. Going back to Jeff, in relation to dealing with strategics. The thing was strategics, the strategics have a very long view. The startups need to develop the technology. The strategics will only come in if the technology has been de-risked. The only way the startup can de-risk the technology is by using it a lot. Actually, when the academic starts, it's not a technology, it's a discovery. They have a discovery which entails a device, but it's not even a tech yet because they can’t even manufacture the device... Some of these things are handmade in the lab.
“One of the things is, is it manufacturable? How do you get to scale on your manufacturing, if it's not even at that stage yet?”
Diane Stokes: Maybe that's part of it is-- One of the things is, is it manufacturable? How do you get to scale on your manufacturing, if it's not even at that stage yet?
Sal Daher: Exactly. They have to go through that stage. I'm sort of nibbling on a very particular corner of it, the microfluidic space. Actually, I'm an investor in a company. They're helping microfluidics companies produce their device. The interesting thing is the stuff where you can really build value is where you have a microfluidic device that has intellectual property that means a patented process.
I've developed the screen to sort of figure out what are the angel-scale deals. They can get to a point where they can have a collaboration with a strategic, with no more than $6 million raised, total. Let's say, let's break that up into four raises, four one, a million and a half raises maximum, ideally less than that. It has to be something that's really strong in terms of intellectual property.
Diane Stokes: Right, that's key.
Sal Daher: And platform, a platform, multiple uses. I keep thinking about Savran Technologies, which I'm on the board of, and very heavily invested in. I think there are other companies that fit that screen and one of the things that they talk about go-to-market strategy, Diane. They have a technology that's been used in one very successful cancer study. They improve the ability to predict the recurrence of a terrible breast cancer, significantly. Go to market means finding other academic centers to do, use that the process over and over and over. What does that do for them? Well, it generates revenue, but it also creates more cycles.
Diane Stokes: More data. You need more data.
Sal Daher: More data about how to do the product. They improve their efficiency of carrying out these processes. The question is there's a lot of help that can be provided. One example is like go-to-market, is how to approach researchers that might be interested in using the technology. Other things might be, for example, I'm involved in another of the startup that I don’t know if you've run across them. Hilltop Bioscience, they are creating shelf stable biologics that help horses recover from injuries.
These injuries are very frequent. Horses are very specialized animals, highly overbred and they're always having problems. Right now, they have a product that's ready to go to market and they have a serious go-to-market. How to reach out to veterinarians that can put this stuff, that can use the stuff and increase their revenue stream?
Some of these startups are actually selling and these are life science companies. These are biotech companies. I'm involved in another biotech company, which is called QSM Diagnostics, fast diagnosis of the presence of bacteria in a sample. Eventually it's going to be used in humans, but right now you can get a two-minute diagnostic for dog ear infections, and they also need to get out to veterinarians.
Diane Stokes Believes Angels Have to Be Shown the Possibilities of the Biotechnology Beyond the First use Case
Diane Stokes: That might be the issue though, is helping angels understand the-- Typically a company like this needs to pick one small, minute place where the product would work, but they don't understand that angel investors may not understand how that projects to other areas.
Sal Daher: Right. How it can become a really interesting investment.
Diane Stokes: Broader efficacy.
Sal Daher: How it is an idea-driven enterprise instead of just a small medium enterprise because it has that IP. In the case of QSM, their ambition is to have an instant diagnostic for humans eventually. I'm pretty sure that's how they started and eventually it's going to there, but right now they have the ability to detect pseudomonas in samples from dog ears and cat ears. I guess the problem for them right now is go to market. How do they build that operation?
So what you're saying is it's basically framing, one aspect might be framing for the angels, to have the angels understand that yes, some of these companies, the ones that are going to have more immediate revenues, they have this ultimate goal that something that can really scale and become really rewarding.
Then on the other hand, companies that have these very lofty goals like Savran. Basically, they're improving the ability to predict the recurrence of breast cancer after therapy. That's huge, right? But that's still in the research stage. They can build a business in the research stage if they can have more and more procedures done of that type.
Diane Stokes: Do you think there are enough angels that understand this space?
Sal Daher: There are not. You see that the thing is we have to retool. There are not enough people. There's not enough of anything in that space. See Diane, that's the thing. The opportunity is-- These are technologies that are hugely promising. There are not enough experienced executives. You'd say, "Oh, biotech executives can come in and help." The biotech executives are unbelievably busy, making very high salaries in companies like Moderna.
Diane Stokes: I was going to say, and they're from huge companies and it's very different to bring a startup from 0 to 100.
“The resource we have an abundance of, are brilliant academics with no business experience, but with tremendous motivation.”
Sal Daher: The resource we have an abundance of, are brilliant academics with no business experience, but with tremendous motivation. Okay. And a brilliant idea. I have found in the case of Çağrı Savran, the founder of Savran Technologies, that some of these people can be unbelievably quick studies. [laughs]
It's, they're the smart kid in the class, that's why they're professors. If they have an open mind, if they have a willingness to learn, this is the key thing. A guy like Çağrı, he listens. He's never had any business experience, but he has managed to develop logistics of producing the product. He managed to drive a very successful raise which he just wrapped up.
Diane Stokes: I find this in healthcare as well with physicians. They have a lot of ideas because of things they've run across, that they have run into and they have. Maybe they've even gone so far as to create it as something, maybe a technology or a process or something. But they don't know how to get it to that next step. That's how Onco Rehab came about with myself and the physician. I really didn't have any health-
Sal Daher: Onco Rehab is Diane's company that she founded. It was a remarkable success, unexpectedly successful.
“If you get a physician that is open to having somebody work with them and know what they don't know in that, it can be very successful and I think this is similar.”
Diane Stokes: I didn't have healthcare experience at the time. But partnering with somebody who did, but I had all the go-to-market, the building a company, the business experience, it really works. If you get a physician that is open to having somebody work with them and know what they don't know in that, it can be very successful and I think this is similar.
I think you could have somebody that doesn't particularly understand the life sciences industry, but is a fast study in it. There are certain things that it's irrelevant what industry you're in. There are things that you need to look at from a go-to-market perspective to have that growth.
Sal Daher: Yes. I guess what I think you're pointing to, is the angel has to be willing to learn and the founder has to be coachable.
Diane Stokes: Yes, exactly.
Sal Daher: Because they're both in this exchange of information, the founder has a lot of technical information, a lot of scientific information. The angel may have a lot of business information which is not necessarily, directly applicable to an early-stage biotech company, which could be helpful here and there. Or the angel can find the people to bring in to help with different aspects of it. Like bringing a consultant who is knowledgeable about FDA approvals or bringing in-
Diane Stokes: Exactly.
Sal Daher: -or knowing when a consultant is useful or when it's not. This is what I'm excited about, what I'm working on.
Diane Stokes: Sounds exciting.
Sal Daher: Yes. It's a lot of fun.
[music]
I'm really proud to say that the Angel Invest Boston podcast is sponsored by Purdue University Entrepreneurship and Peter Fasse, Pat Attorney at Fish & Richardson. Purdue is exceptional in its support of its faculty. Faculty of its top five engineering school, in helping them get their technology from the lab out to the market, out in the industry, out to the clinic.
Peter Fasse, is also a great support to entrepreneurs. He is a patent attorney, specializing in microfluidics and has been tremendously helpful. Some of the startups which I'm involved, including a startup came out of Purdue, Savran Technologies. I'm proud to have these two sponsors for my podcast.
Sal Daher: Well, I thank you very much for your thoughts on this, Diane, because you've done a lot of business and you've built a lot of teams and you've built a lot of enterprise growth. I really appreciate your insight. As we think about wrapping up this interview, take a moment and think about what thoughts you like to leave us with as an angel, and as a person who is helping companies, helping CEOs scale their recently funded companies.
Diane Stokes: I think the biggest thing you hit the nail on the head which is the coachability, and having the CEO and management team understand where their holes are and finding people to help them fill those holes at all levels of the organization. That's what we do at Rocket Growth Partners [Link to Rocket Growth Partners] really is help. We do work, we're not just there to [laughs] tell you what you're not doing and give you reports, but help you where you're at.
“Being able to understand the state of where your organization is, what help you need, where to spend that newly acquired funding that you received.”
Being able to understand the state of where your organization is, what help you need, where to spend that newly acquired funding that you received. When, how, who; those are key questions in order to get that right. And be coachable. That's the key part because you got to where you are because you are successful and your technology is probably awesome, but to really hit it out of the park which is what you want to do is you need to be able to execute and you can't do it alone.
Sal Daher: Exactly. Part of execution is building an organization that's helping scale. If you can't attract more people to your enterprise, it's not going to scale. That's really great. Oh, I understand you're going to be doing some biking in the near future.
Diane Stokes: Yes, a lot of biking.
Sal Daher: Talk about some of your athletic pursuits.
Diane Stokes: Yes, so, this year over COVID it was tough. A lot of races were canceled. I did end up doing one half Iron Triathlon this year, just for fun. Didn't really train a ton for it, but it was fun, went with a bunch of friends.
Sal Daher: Excuse me, I just want to mention something important here. Listeners should know that at this interview and also the previous interview, Diane is standing. She's such an energetic person. She's standing up while she's doing the interview. I'm sitting down but she's standing up. Please, continue.
Diane Stokes Plans to Do a 2000-mile Bike Ride to Fight ALS
Diane Stokes: Next year, I'm really excited about this. We're embarking-- Myself and a friend of mine are embarking on an over 2,000-mile bike trip to raise money for a company called CCALS, and they're out of Falmouth, Mass. My friend he lost his son who was 26 years old to ALS.
Sal Daher: Lou Gehrig's Disease.
Diane Stokes: Yes. This organization CCALS has helped not only his family but thousands of families across the US and they continue to do so. We wanted to do something big. We are going to be going from Falmouth, Florida all the way up to Falmouth, Maine hitting other Falmouths on the way and culminating at their retreat center in Falmouth, Mass next summer.
Sal Daher: Awesome.
Diane Stokes: We want people to join us virtually, ride with us, raise money for this awesome ALS organization. It's going to be a lot of fun. We're doing some events on the way and it'll be great. More detail to come but the website is ccals.org [https://ccals.org/]. We'll have a blog.
Sal Daher: When is it going to be?
Diane Stokes: We're trying to determine that because Florida's really hot...
Sal Daher: 2023?
Diane Stokes: 2023, yes. We're doing the planning and we... Jim and I have to train.
Sal Daher: Maybe like May.
Diane Stokes: I was thinking May and into June but we may culminate it at the Falmouth Road Race, which the CCALS has a big showing at that race. We may culminate it in that.
That's still TBD. We're in the very early stages of planning. I'm super excited about this endeavor and hopefully, we'll be able to do it. We're really old now.
Sal Daher: [laughs] Ha, Geez. You know bike ride, it could-- That's 2,000 miles. That's a lot of biking.
Diane Stokes: We're hoping to do it in a month but that's averaging about 80 miles a day.
Sal Daher: My wife and my two daughters, we did walk part of the Camino de Santiago in the north of Spain. 13 days, we walked about 165 miles.
Diane Stokes: That's amazing.
Sal Daher: It was really quite an experience. It averaged out to about 12, 13 miles a day, every day.
Diane Stokes: That's awesome.
Sal Daher: With a 35-pound backpack. The secret is a lot of Vaseline in your feet so you don't get blisters.
Diane Stokes: I have lots of blisters. Yes. I need Vaseline in other areas, if I [unintelligible 00:33:32] [chuckles]
Sal Daher: Geez, yes. Don't shock the young people. These basic considerations of life don't seem to affect the youngsters, they get easily shocked by stuff. As you get older, you have to deal with the other side of life. Great. Diane, this is tremendous. I'm looking forward to seeing you face-to-face at Walnut, when we resume in-person meetings if we ever do. Anyway, it's great to conduct this online interview. Keep us posted.
Diane Stokes: I will. Thanks. It's great talking to you as always. Thank you. Keep up the good work. You're doing awesome.
Sal Daher: Thanks.
Diane Stokes: I love listening to your podcasts. I listen to them when I'm running in here, whatever.
Sal Daher: Oh, gosh. I talked to a listener today who's a physician and every time I talk to a listener, I'm like, "Wow, this person listens to me." My next thought is, gosh. [crosstalk] Just this week I had Ben Littauer sent me an email, "Sal, on the interview with Robert Nagle, you talked too much. Talk less." I'm like, "I got to tighten up my game here because people like that are listening and people like Ben and Diane Stokes, and [unintelligible 00:34:51]
Diane Stokes: You have a lot of listeners, I'm sure.
Sal Daher: I love it. It's really humbling, but there's also pressure. Anyway, thanks a lot.
This is Angel Invest Boston. This is Sal Daher.
I'm glad you were able to join us. Our engineer is Raul Rosa. Our theme was composed by John McKusick. Our graphic design is by Katharine Woodman-Maynard. Our host is coached by Grace Daher.