Hello and welcome back to Equity, a podcast all about the business of startups where we

unpack the numbers and the new ones behind the headlines.

My name is Alex and this is our

Wednesday show where we niche down to a single topic or a guest and dive deep. Today we have two guests, both from the world of Microsoft for startups.

I had them on the show because, well, I wanted to learn more about

what Redmond is doing with Upstart Tech companies, how open AI and generative

AI in general fit into that, and also what are they hearing from startup founders on the

ground about what they need in today's more conservative venture capital climate.

So next up we have Hans Yang, GM, and Tom Davis, senior drugger of Microsoft for startups.

Hans, Tom, hello, welcome to the show.

Thank you.

It's our pleasure to be here.

So the funny thing for me here is this is kind of a full circle moment because way back in the day, jobs and jobs ago, I was a Microsoft

beat reporter and I always used to harass the fine folks in Redmond.

I'm like, look, why don't you have a venture

capital fund you know why don't you do this there's like Google ventures and I was always

told the same thing which is that for a company of Microsoft's size venture

capital would not be accretive to the balance sheet, which, you know, is a reasonable point.

And now, you know, 10, 15 years later, there is a venture capital fund

and there's Microsoft for startups.

And you guys have some recent news about launching Pegasus, which provides credits to kind of growthier startups.

And so I'm kind of curious, have you guys reached your final form as an org?

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