Investor Stories 420: Why I Passed (Abel, Ruscio, Niehenke)

This episode of TFR is brought to you by Ramp, the spend management platform we use here at TFR. They're offering listeners a $150 just to take a demo. We've never had an offer quite like this. Claim your $150 before this offer is gone at our partner link, ramp.com/partner/tfr. And this episode of TFR is brought to you by the American Arbitration Association, where smart startups and investors turn to for fast, efficient, and cost effective dispute resolution. Visit adr.org/tfr to learn more. Welcome to the podcast about venture capital where investors and founders alike can learn how VCs make decisions and reach conviction. Your host is Nick Moran, and this is the full ratchet. Welcome Welcome back to TFR. On today's special segment, we ask guests to discuss their anti portfolio, a start up investment that they passed on. Here's the segment called why I passed. On today's special segment, we have Godard Abel of g two. Godard, can you tell us a story about a critical opportunity or decision you chose not to pursue? Was it the right call, and why did you pass on the opportunity? And usually, I pursue too many opportunities, but then I have to give up. But one story like that recently, we we acquired a startup at g two called Siftry in 2019, and we were also gonna launch a SaaS spend management product to sell to CIOs and addition to CMOs. And honestly, I realized it was too much, so we spun it off to better cloud. And so usually as an entrepreneur, I tend to say yes to no many things, and I have to learn to say no later. So true. That's so true. For so many of us. On today's special segment, we have Joe Russo of Heavybit. Joe, can you tell us a story about a startup that you passed on? Yep. Yeah. I mean, passing a lot, but one that kinda sticks out for me and and I'm super excited to because often when you you pass on a company and they they end up pivoting to something else, like, I don't ever, like, kinda feel bad about that. Obviously, the the past was a good reason. But there's one. It's a Replit. I don't know if you're familiar with Replit. I'm not. It's it's a it's like a a hosted development environment that's super cheap, easy to use. So any developer can kinda like create a replica account, log in, and start like writing and testing software. And they've they've been at the very forefront now for the last two years on on integrating AI generated work codes and even agentic work even agentic approaches. And so they're just doing really, really well. I first met, the founder. I believe it was in 2018. So it's very early. It was my first kinda year investing. And I I don't the reason we passed, I think, was twofold. Importantly, I think go to market, it …