Yeah. So, I mean, for me, like a couple things, one about how we got to mantis and then who Alex and drew our, which I think are super important into what our story. For me, I've done, a whole series of startups to three brick and mortars to, tech companies, , and, you know, record label and management company.

And what happened in that process . Of actually, you know, when I got into the, the music business was I realized how much I was truly inspired by brilliant young tech founders who were smarter than me and trying. Build technology to change the world and do fantastic stuff. the idea came to me of saying, , maybe I should be a venture capital at this point. But I had this theory that, , if I partnered with the right, influencer, that had real social capital, that it could create an edge But for me at that point, it. I was working with , our, fourth partner, Milan K, who's got more of , traditional venture kind of background and experience, but as we were talking through it, , what I said was we needed to find, , the other partner who was gonna more than likely be a venture. If we didn't bring the idea to. That kind of motivated about 99.9% of the world, , potential partners

And as we were doing research, read a Forbes article about Alex and drew the Chainsmokers and were talked about, , more than 25 investments they'd made into tech companies and startups. At that point, I thought they might be a reasonable fit for what we wanted to do and have a real interest in it.

I happened to be connected to Josh Klein, who is the founder of the Klein group, which is one of the, larger and, and definitely one of the better business manager practices, uh, within, this world. Of entertainers. And so I went to Josh and he, works with the Chainsmokers. I went to Josh to sort of share this concept and idea, and Josh was very excited about it and said, I wanna introduce you to them because they're in the process of to set up a fund to institutionalize their access. And so I was like, great.

Sounds fantastic.

but you know, I, from initially standpoint, connected. They wanna utilize their platform to build something important. They were talking about a generation of funds and wanting to actually, , build to the point where it wasn't considered a celebrity fund.

And it wasn't considered, you know, oh, it's a Chainsmokers fund. They wanna sit on the investment committee. They wanna be involved in every company and then who they are as people. One, they are, , two of the most hospitable and nicest people I've ever met, , two, they are the hardest working individuals. I know. , I will say, you know, on top of that, , , um, and we all say it, Alex might be the most responsive human I've ever seen on email and text. , I think it's inhuman

And then, , three is, , they hustle. , so no one's gonna outwork us and no one's gonna outwork them. And then the last piece is they're very curious and have a real keen interest in, understanding the world and what's happening in the world and particularly how technology is gonna affect it and what areas are most ripe.

 for disruption

Right. So, so Alex and drew are very involved. They sit on the IC and they're active with the portfolio.

Yeah. ,they sent in the IC, because they've been involved in every investment that we're gonna make. it's important to me that people, understand it because don't want them to be ever discounted in any way from what their true value is. They're really great venture capital investors period. if we were running this fund and they were not the Chainsmokers, they would be fantastic partners to.

As venture capital partners, So that's the first piece, that second piece about what they do for the company is they take it very seriously.

I mean, we all do. , we feel like our platform support is, one of the most important things we can do, in bringing it, but, , they will do whatever needs to be done, but it's never, what's expected. So early on one of the companies that we were, , investing. they were trying to hire , a CTO and they needed him to leave one of the big tech companies.

I We were talking to them. They were saying, well, this is our biggest challenge. We gotta get this guy this week. They weren't asking us to do anything. It was sort of telling us what's happening. And, at that point, um, Alex and drew were on the call and Alex said, Hey, Send us his phone number and, a couple pieces of personal information about him.

 And, uh, they did. And then Alex and drew picked up the phone and FaceTimed this guy, who was completely shocked when he to FaceTime and was talking to the chain smokes and, , uh, thought that was great. And then they went into why they invested in the company, why they liked the company, why they thinks , he should join the company and closed him on the call.

He took the job, which was great. I mean since then, , they have closed, I think 160 out of 170 candidates for our companies by doing that same thing and taking the time to personalize it and spend time and let people

Wait, holy crap. On the 160 candidates closed.

I mean, is it a silly question to, to say, should I go get myself a celebrity? Um, or do you have thoughts on building quote unquote celebrity funds? I got really lucky, , with them, I think, because listen, without calling other funds up, we've been asked to sit on calls with people who are starting or founding other funds with, influencers. And we've on the call and, and they've said we've heard from so many people that mantis is kind of setting the bar for how this is done.

And we're on these call and they said, what, what's the secret sauce? And I remember one of them in particular, Alex said, where's your guy.

Mmm.

What do you mean? He's like, look, I'm here and I'm present. I'm present for our companies. I'm present on calls. I'm present in the investing decisions. That's the secret. And that's secret is hustle. That's secret is hard work. And if you have someone who's not gonna be a part of that. Then there's no secret.

They're not really a part of it. And believe the founders can see through it. so I think that, 70% 70 of life's just showing up, Alex drew show up everywhere

Right. And you said something like you don't want this to just be a celebrity fund.

 do you think being a celebrity fund has a negative connotation?

Yeah. I think that there is a, piece of it's a celebrity fund , that comes off as a negative. And so I think that there's, you know, there's a world of, here are the top venture capital firms, here are the tier one firms and there's, you know, another people say, oh, this is a celebrity fund.

So they're just utilize the celebrity, get stuff done. We want. People to want Manti on the cap table, a hundred percent for our merits as who we are as investors and what we do for the company , that needs to be irrelevant of whether it's a celebrity or not.

Now, what we do is we use their, their, social capital and their influence, to open doors and create opportunities for our companies that, their cache allows them. To do but we don't want, uh, I guess we don't want to be perceived as it's a vanity fund. It's not a vanity fund.

do you think of Alex and drew as founders in a way where Chainsmokers was there startup.

Oh, a hundred percent they're founders, right? I mean, it actually makes a lot of sense when you sort of lay it out that way, so Alex and drew, they're fantastic artists and fantastic, , musicians, but they really growth hacked their way into building this business as a founder would in any business. I mean, it's a long, detailed story, , but they figured out what was happening, in the world of, uh, , how to work the hype machine system to really get noticed in the industry, how to get their songs to chart, what needs to happen, who do they have to communicate with, who are the, the important, people on the, music blogging side that actually moved the needle and built relationships with them and added value to what they were.

And that allowed them to sort of get notice and build that sort of phase one, , when they lucked at doing, , you know, early on before, this was kind of obvious when they luck at touring, as opposed to. To, the, you know, the agent, Hey, just route us on a tour. That makes sense.

They spent time really crowdsourcing to understanding where their fans were based. So they only did shows in places where it was gonna sell out cuz they knew they had a strong fan base there. and you know, utilize the technology to go ahead and build that and do it. You know, when it came time to release music, as they were in the edge of sort of CD sales, ending music downloads for purchase ending and streaming really exploding when they first broke onto the scene.

And, , they were the first ones to come with the concept of the rolling album to say we needed to drip and release singles to our fans on a regular basis. And then when those singles are near the. Then you release the album once you've sort of released all the singles. So let's do the rolling album, not the release, the single that album, cuz people don't consume music that way anymore.

And that's an obvious statement today to say, because that's kind of how most everybody does it, but they were the first, they sort of created that concept. And so I think that there are always, thinking ahead in whatever they're building and doing. I really look at them as, entrepreneurs and founders who happen to build the business of the Chainsmokers and do a great and successful, highly profitable business.

And now they're, you know, utilizing that to build other businesses around it, where they can focus their common effort.

Fascinating. I need to have one of them on the show next. Um, and this is now fun too, for mantis. We're investing outta fund too. Yeah. And fund three is right around the.

So, what's the ideal size check, and you know, are you leading those rounds? Are you participating? How does that dynamic play out?

So what we've, as we've looked at mantis and, and tried to determine what our place in the industry is right now, from an investing standpoint, there's been a couple of things that have been important to us. One is , we're not the lead check , we're trying to be the second biggest check into those rounds and partner with.

The best of the best funds and find the best of the best deals.

We like to go seed in series a, , we don't typically go pre-product.

Hmm. Great. Uh, fair to move on a little bit and get some of your background then. What brought you here?

Sure.

where do you want me to start?

 one question, I don't know what a record label does.

Yeah, I neither do. I

well, you were doing this before mantis, right? Like, or you, maybe you still are. , what was the goal when you started? I wouldn't have even thought to start a record label.

so for me, I guess a little background on how I got

there. I, I was a business school at duke university qua school of business. And I didn't wanna work for any big corporations, So I decided to try to find a job at a small company coming outta business school, where I could actually get real high level experience in dealing with operations.

So I took a job at a company called ons assignment, , which is a staffing company that was based out of at that point, uh, Canoga park, and I was a director of operations right out of business school, which was great. I didn't know a thing about this business, but here I was trying to, you know, uh, figure out how to model this business and how to help it expand.

so I spent about five years doing that. I learned a lot and made a lot of mistakes, And after doing that for about five years, , I realized that I felt like I could build.

The staffing business on my own that I understood it well enough to do it. So I took, any money that I had been able to save from sort of, , the few options that I got for working at the company and bought a, controlling interest of a local staffing firm that had was a single office staffing firm at that point in time.

And it was doing title industry staffing. , expanded the services to, full real estate settlement services and banking and finance staff related services, and then started to expand it, city by city office by office. And that's what I had done at on assignment. So I followed a similar model, and was able to expand it.

Now, we built this company that was doing real estate settlement services at a time where , interest rates went to close to.

And companies like Countrywide were exploding in their size. And so those kind of companies were calling us and saying, , send us anybody you can, who has any experience at all in this industry, we are so backlogged with paperwork that we will take them.

And so we were growing at a tremendous pace. we grew that thing to a 2 million a week business, a hundred million. You know, run rate business, uh, over a three year period from about a $3 million business and sold it. But you know, there are a lot of things I did right in that.

But if we didn't happen to be in that space, that happened to explode at an exponential level, then it would've been a much different pace of growth and expansion. I still think we would've been successful, but it would've been different, after that,

And this is gonna explain why I ended up in the record business, where I had no business being at, at all. In 2008, when everything crashed, I got knocked pretty hard. Like I figured I'd climbed a mountain pretty well. And I got knocked down to much lower level at that point in time. So I was lying in bed one night and I turned to my amazing wife, Lori and said, I wanna be in the music business.

And she was half asleep and was like, okay, what does that mean? And I said, I have no idea what that means. Uh, but when I was in college playing in a kind of band and moving around and didn't have two nickels rub together, I was just always happy. Playing music and being around music.

She was like, great. Put it out there, do what you wanna do. I think that's awesome. Support whatever you wanna do. And so I did put it out there and also a believer in from the standpoint of karma, that if you are willing to say things and put it out there in the universe, that has a reasonable chance of coming back to you.

If you're not willing to talk about it, it won't ever come back to

you. So I kind of put it out there in the universe. I wanna be in the music business lo and behold, my son. who at that point in time was seven. My youngest son comes home and has two new best friends. and one of them came to this play date and was driven to the play date by , uh, his bodyguard, which was a little bit, you know, I don't know what's going on.

So, Lori had called me and said, okay, , you know, one of Eric's friends came with the and I feel so bad if they, I seen him in the car and I bought him in the house. Super nice guy, you know, all good. Great. So I came home that night and said to Eric, , cause he had been to this kid's house multiple times.

I said, well, have you met? Kylie's parents. He's like, yeah, And I'm like, do you know what they do? And by the way, I'm asking my seven year old. Right. And he doesn't have eye people. Like he doesn't care. And he's like, no. And I was like, well, are they there?

When you go over to the house? He's like, yeah, he's always there. And he goes, I don't know what his mommy does. And his daddy plays a piano when he can't see.

And so I'm like, holy crap. And so I, show a pictures, Stevie wonder, I says is Kyle's dad. And he's like, yeah. And, uh, I'm like, oh my God, Kylie's dad is Stevie wonder.

And Eric's like, I don't think that's his name. And I'm like, well, I'm sure Kyle doesn't call him Stevie wonder I just calls him daddy. Uh, I said, but that's amazing. And so from that, Stevie myself and his other best friend, uh, whose father happened to be a legendary producer in the music industry, all became friends.

And one night at dinner, the idea was floated to me, from Adrian that the three of us started record label together. And, , it didn't come together in that light that, seat never actually joined the record label, um, which was a total bummer. But. Could done it at any point in time, he could do it now, if he wants to

Um, one of the most amazing humans I've ever met by the way, Stevie, but from that I said, okay, we'll start a record label. And for me, that was me writing checks. Adrian was gonna produce music and we're gonna, you know, figure out together how to find some artists assign. And at that point, Stevie and his wife at the time pie said, we heard this incredible artist singing at the Malibu country Mart.

You should reach out to her because, because she's incredible. So we did and signed her, , and we immediately took her in the studio every day and, Adrian and her worked on making a record. , that first artist was Andrew Day, who, , most people probably know her from the song rise up. She also is a world class.

 one of those talented artists on the planet, but it all came together from that. But I was really just writing the checks and I figured out a marketing plan, how we wanted to launch her, cuz , we wanted to try to do things independently as possible initially.

And in that process of launching her, She asked me to manage her. Now I'm gonna tell you, what's interesting about it, , as an industry and why I decided that it ultimately, wasn't where I wanted to spend all of my time. I, you know, start with someone as talented and as amazing as Andrea then to have to build from there is very difficult, I was looking for that same kind of inspiration and passion.

Additional artist. And we developed three more artists after her, all three major labels wanted to partner with the Z. Once we got 'em in developing all three, got nice marketing funds and a lot of attention from a major label and all three failed. , and it really hit me that it was in space where, , you could work really hard and do a lot of the right things , and you really didn't have a lot of control of whether it.

There wasn't real opportunity to, learn and shift and adjust and build. Uh, and I didn't have a lot of control over the, success in the end. That's when I sort of went back to and said, well, what are the places that I, you know, most want to be in? And that's where moving back into the world of tech came from for me.

Hmm, man. I have so many questions. I feel like it just takes us off topic. Let me ask one, like, why don't you have the ability? I mean, it seems like that's what the Chainsmokers did in some ways, as you were saying, they, they learned, they iterated, they growth hacked their way into success.

Yeah, they're fantastic. By the way, they're better at the music industry than I am. There's no question.

I think it's different if it's you and trying to get someone else to build it and do it. so what I'd found was we spent, you know, time, money, effort to really create and help develop talented artists.

That then turned into things that, the best minds in the industry thought were great and had a chance of success. And then they all ended up failing because it, the end of the day, it's just a, public vote. It's a very quick public. I felt like you could create a really what you felt was a great product.

 But there wasn't the real opportunity to iterate it and change it and learn from the market. Uh, unless you had an artist who wanted to iterate and change and learn from the market and most. Not to their detriment. I'm not saying that they should be different, but you know, an artist is not just a product.

So at the end of the day, they have to want to learn and iterate and change versus want to share their art with the world. And I think art is different from, you know, just a pure product. I mean, artists are artists for a reason and they wanna share their art and to my job was to find a way for them to share their art.

And it just became, frustrating. and I felt like I didn't have the kind of control I would, have in, in different businesses.

So, okay. Let's keep going. So tiger text then. Was it your idea that communication should disappear?

Yeah. So , and I think that that all of us had found that it would probably have a little different story. I, to specifics of the conversation where it took place. But, , it was myself and, uh, Andrew Brooks and Brad Brooks. , and we were, , at a retreat. And just for having this conversation about, , the differences between text and email, because there were, at that point in time, lots of people getting in trouble for text messages.

And, I will say that I said it, but who knows exactly who said it? I think all of us would typically said it, but it was, it was a convers. that email was like a professional communication and texting was more like a conversation. And if you can imagine every conversation that you've had being recorded in archive to come back at you, be horrific, , in life.

, although we're probably not getting far from that at this point, but, but that's how we felt about it. So when the conversations is over, it's over. So we said, why can't we create the technology that allows people to communicate on their mobile device? In a way that was I permanent that the, author of the message controlled the life of the message.

That was the concept that we originally had. And that concept didn't exist at that point in time. And we created the first, , IM permanent mobile communication company. And by the way, this was the time, you know, this was 2000 2011, I think we started this and, , iPhones were just starting to take root, but they were very part of the, ecosystem.

, most people were sending messages on BBM back when Blackberry dominated the. market dominance at Blackberry had, and the pace at which it fell is staggering to me, , I mean, I think when we started this Blackberry had like 80% of the market,

And it had high NPS, like I think, you know, that's, what's staggering to me too.

Yeah. I mean, iPhone literally just knocked like the concept of a touchscreen phone just completely destroyed them. and.

For the next three years, their market share plummeted. And of course, Android stepped in at that point as well, you know, with the Google phone and came through, , and there was so much competition happening for the phones that from Microsoft also spent those about hundred billion trying to do the Microsoft phone, which was a colossal failure as well.

And was it easy for you to raise your first couple rounds of capital? because you'd had success. scaling a business before, Yeah. I mean, Fundraising is never easy. I think at the end of the day, , I say it's always, you have a great idea. You get excited about it. And then I always tell myself it's gonna be 10 times harder to raise the money than I anticipate

just the right mindset to go into, because it takes a lot of rejection.

 I will say of every business that I've run where I've sort of started it.

I have had a week where on Monday, we were not gonna meet payroll on Friday,

every single one. And so. the analogy I always use for that is I, I go back to , Matt Damon and the Martian at the end of the movie, he talks about things are gonna go wrong. And when they go wrong, you just gotta work the problem and ignore everything else until you solve the problem.

And once you solve that problem, you can then solve the next problem. But survival is the key. And that's what, in each of those cases, that's what we did on Monday. We didn't have the money and we needed the money by Friday. So we just worked the problem. And each time we ended up solving it, I've been asked like, what happens if you didn't solve it?

I'm like, well, that company would've gone under, like, that's what happens.

But I, like, I find that lesson to be very helpful for when I talk to, founders in our portfolio, those kinds of lessons that I've learned from challenges that, we've had in trying to build through those times and that when you have a real challenge, just work the problem

and work it to solve it.

And if you don't solve it, you won't survive. So nothing else matters. And then move from there.

Yeah, I mean, my equivalent is I say chop wood carry water, which is kind of like me saying work. The problem.

Yeah.

What are some other lessons learned from? I mean, you had this idea, this is pre Snapchat. What other things do you take away from that experience? And you're one of the more prominent LA companies.

Yeah. I mean, that was my first technology experience. Tiger text building a technology company. that, I mean, you're, you're the product of your experiences and your knowledge and what you have. My experience told me that I had to build a business, a real business that was gonna make money. And that had to be the goal in the end. And because of that tiger text, which had a ton of fanfare in the marketplace initially, and a ton of consumer downloads moved to becoming a healthcare HIPAA compliant, mobile communication.

Which , was the right business to be in from a standpoint of how you could make that work financially had we just said, we're gonna embrace the consumer, not worry about making money from them.

And we'll figure that out once we can get 10 million, 50 million, a hundred million, 200 million, 500 million consumers. don't know if he would've been successful with that or not, but that would've been a different angle that I didn't understand could actually be a play at that point in time. I understand that much better now

So we went after the healthcare market and built that company. Uh, came along with Snapchat and dominated the consumer market and then built, you know, company the one point times with a hundred billion. Now I also find this world of tech to be somewhat fascinating there it's like There's so much that's based on what the future potential is that we're where companies are valued.

 That at times gets to be difficult to handle, you know, the instance of Snapchat, an amazing business that culturally has changed the world

since still doesn't make any money.

We lost 400 million last quarter. So. my background in upbringing told me that, that you needed to build a business, gonna make money.

And that kind of eliminated a lot of the options for the company we were building at the time. Yeah. And losing 400 million last quarter is still pretty staggering to me. Uh, do you tend now to lean one way or the other when it comes to profitability in your portfolio? C.

Yeah, we do so. we spend a lot of time with founders talking about negative contribution margin. And there is a rationale to take business that has a negative contribution margin, but it needs to be intentional. It needs to not be, I'll take any business for the sake of any business, any revenues, revenue. We don't believe that. So are you willing to take business with negative contribution margin? Cause that's building towards something that's gonna be positive. That's important. Because the market's Froy and people aren't going keep putting money into your business. They're gonna be more, picky about where they invest their next dollars. Business is gonna be forced to say, what is our business that we can build that becomes a real business, a real company. So I think that this difficult time period actually a lot of winners come out of it from being forced to look at the business in a different light and to be. More scrappy founders and the ones that can't do that, I think at the end of day, wouldn't have made it anyway.

It just would've taken them longer not to make it

Yeah. What is it that you think makes a successful founder?

well I give this analogy that. Hopefully your audience is old enough to remember. I have an analogy of the road runner in Wiley coyote.

And if you remember the road runner in every episode, towards the end of the episode, the road runner jumps up in the air and his feet starts spinning at a blur. It's just a blur in the cartoon, but he is not going anywhere. He's just hovering in the air. And the coyote is typically standing there with a fork and a.

Ready to close in on the road runner. And as the coyote starts to close that fork in the knife, the road runner hits the ground. And before you can blink your eye is over the horizon

And I say that the, to be an entrepreneur, you gotta be like the road runner. And what I mean by that is you start your business and you jump in the air and you start sprinting as fast as you can, but you're not going anywhere. But you're running as fast as you can. Meanwhile, everybody around you, at some point in, time's gonna tell you to stop and tell you it's not working and tell you you're crazy and tell your idea, doesn't make sense, and we're not gonna fund this.

Whatever's gonna happen. And if at any point in time, you stop, you will be eaten and dead But if you keep running long enough and keep, working through it at some point in time, you don't know when it's gonna be, you're gonna hit the ground. When you hit the ground, you're over the horizon before you.

And I say that not everybody is that person and that's completely okay. And people aren't that kind of person. Why?

I think it's any reason at the end of the day. , are you willing to look. So being successful entrepreneur, you have to listen to a lot of people tell you it's not gonna work. And you're crazy. Can you block all that out Are you willing to, put in whatever the hours are that it takes, whatever the time is that it takes and just believe that you're gonna be successful are you willing to do it and do you want to do.

And why are you this way or more specifically? What was youth like? What were your parents doing when you were growing up? Yeah, my parents, what an interesting sort of uh, you know, when you're growing up, you just live in your world. Like, it doesn't seem like it's necessarily different. It's just your world. And then later in life, you kind of figure things out. So my father was a uh, CBS news correspondent, foreign correspondent.

He's a Moscow bureau, chief, the Southeast bureau chief. And then he moved into becoming a national expert on energy and oil is power and middle Eastern affairs. My mother. Was a consultant who was then hired as one of the first 50 employees of this local startup in Atlanta called CNN. Which I remember at the time in the early eighties, she was like, oh, I'll do this for a couple years.

So it goes under uh, ended up becoming actually the senior executive vice president of the entire network. And I think at that point in time, the highest ranking woman in the news business and then became an author on, Being a woman in business So growing up our dinner table at night, you know, we would the evening news together. And this was a time where there was 30 minutes of national news at night. And that's where you got your news there.

There wasn't yet. Well, I guess. Until Ted Turner invented it there, wasn't this concept of 24 hour news. There wasn't an internet. You were getting your news from the newspaper in the morning. And from, you know, Dan rather Walter Cronkite at night and so we'd watched the news and we'd have dinner and we'd ended up talking about things that were in the news or things that my parents were dealing with at that point in time, lot.

Oil, energy and middle student affairs.But the upbringing was one particularly that my mother who is still a great influence in my life.

Taught me a lot about the importance of empathy and inclusion. And it's been a tentative of, of how I run everything that I'm involved in And I remember reading in one of her books early, where she talked about, you know, People fill board rooms with people that are like them and are gonna agree with them because they want their board to be supportive of what they're doing

And so she taught me at a very young age, the importance of diversity of thought,

Mm, zooming out from just, you know, your parents and your current role at mantis, more philosophical, like what motivates you in life?

I love building things , there was one time actually at one of the early holiday parties for on staff, the staffing company that we had.

And there. 80 to a hundred people at this party. And we were all standing there and I remember going to the corner and, and almost breaking down and crying. And my wife's like, what's wrong, nothing's wrong? I said, , it just struck me that two years ago there was nothing. And now all these people are here celebrating this company's growth are all, you know, employed and, building their careers and doing stuff when it happened. We built something from nothing.

It's the most incredible feeling. And I think a lot of people like taking the time to step back and look at that. Is, you know, it's hard because you're just caught in the daily hospital all the time. But when I realized that, that first time, that's what I wanna do. I want to be a part of, building things that last and matter and change things for the better.

Well, that is an amazing note to end on people with a vision, really can build amazing things. and it's just amazing to watch that happen. Jeffrey, it sounds like you've got a great role. Um,Thanks so much. This was amazing. It was amazing to get to know you. Thanks so much for coming on the podcast.

Oh, my God so glad that we met, we should tell everybody we met during LA tech week. As we're

building out this LA technology investing ecosystem, and it's been a joy.

Um, I believe we met at Paris Hilton's house, actually.

We did, although she wasn't there.

That's true. I know strange twist of the story. Okay. Thank you so much, Jeffrey. This was great.

thank you. Speak soon.





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