This is Scott Cooper, and I'm here with Danny Shader, CEO and founder of Paynearmy, and also

Danielle Morrell, the CEO and founder of Mattermark.

And thank you both for joining us today.

What we thought we'd talk a little bit about is valuation trends, what's happening,

and then in particular, kind of the idea of what are the pitfalls or what are the things

you should be trying to

solve for when you're raising money? And in some cases, is it worth stretching for valuation?

Is it not worth stretching for valuation? So we'll cover a bunch of topics, but I think we'll

kind of start with that. So Danielle, maybe we'll be great is given kind of your business, obviously,

where you guys are awash and kind of data and certainly are kind of the voice of what's actually happening in the, particularly

the early stage venture capital world, you know, what are you seeing either valuation

trend-wise or in terms of your conversations with entrepreneurs about how they're approaching

valuation in this market?

Yeah, well, I think there's a couple factors.

One is that you can do more with money now than you used to be able to.

So if you raise $5 or $10 million, that money can go a lot further.

I remember the first startup I worked on, we raised a pretty large venture round just to get servers.

So even Amazon Web Services alone is just a huge impact.

So you've got that side of the equation.

And then I think you're also seeing these really massive rounds

because what I've seen is really competitive deals where investors feel like there's not

that many super unicorn potential startups.

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