Software Spotlight

Michael Bernzweig (00:02.12)
Are you ready to unlock the secrets of B2B SaaS success? Tired of sifting through endless noise to find actionable insights that actually move the needle?

Welcome to Software Spotlight, your weekly deep dive into the transformative world of Software-as-a-Service. Your host is Michael Bernzweig, who in 1998 launched Software Oasis as one of the first platforms enabling businesses to download, license, and deploy software instantly across their networks with a single click. Today, Software Oasis has evolved into one of the leading communities where businesses find top tech consultants across the USA and Canada.

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I'd like to welcome everyone to today's edition of the Software Spotlight. I'm your host, Michael Burns-Weig over at Software Oasis. And today we are actually being joined by Scott Sorocheck. He's the, with the Spark Loops group and he's actually a venture partner. So with that, I'd like to welcome you to the Software Spotlight.

Scott Sorocha (00:31.274)
Thank you, Michael. Thank you for having me. Really appreciate it.

Michael Bernzweig (00:33.886)
Yeah, no, great, great to have you aboard. And I was hoping, you know, obviously we have a lot of questions that came in from the audience, but I was hoping you could maybe start our audience off with a little bit of your background, your journey, and a little bit about everything going on over there at Sparklabs.

Scott Sorocha (00:56.844)
Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for having me today, Michael, and really love your podcast. So glad to be part of it. So my journey, and I'll give a very quick background because I hate talking about myself, is I grew up in Massachusetts, went to university and was in computer science and MIS, Management Information Systems. But I was fascinated, absolutely fascinated with computers at a very early age and it was

Michael Bernzweig (01:08.576)
Sure.

Scott Sorocha (01:25.102)
I'm old, not quite vain enough to say that I am old enough where it was right around the time that Steve Jobs had just come out with the Macintosh in 88. And I had just started university and was really fascinated, could not wait to graduate college and get out to California. So packed up my 69 Plymouth Valiant and drove the 3000 miles to California to kind of cut my teeth in Silicon Valley and started off as a software engineer for first couple of years.

Michael Bernzweig (01:41.792)
Sure.

Scott Sorocha (01:53.718)
and was coding way back in a SQL 2.0, Sybase, to date myself and really, really enjoyed the technology side of it. But, back in the late eighties, early nineties, as Tim Berners-Lee was coming up with and founded the worldwide web off of, you know, vent surfs are our father of the internet back in the early eighties. you know, it was just a great time to be part of Silicon Valley. And so.

made a transition from software engineering to sales and just worked at some really phenomenal startups back in the 90s. Netcom, which was one of the first dial-up ISPs, competed against AOL. then, yeah, doo-doo-doo, you've got mail. And then we also made the transition to At Home Network, which was the biggest transition in the 90s, very transformational, where it was from dial-up.

Michael Bernzweig (02:33.878)
Sure, absolutely.

I can still hear those modems.

Scott Sorocha (02:51.086)
to broadband, which we all take for granted today. And that was pretty much a monopoly in the United States back in the mid to late 90s, because we had seven to eight year exclusive agreements with the cable operators to deliver broadband over the network. So again, we take that for granted today. But back in the day, it was just fantastic. And we took that company public in 97 and just a phenomenal ride there.

Michael Bernzweig (03:08.768)
Right.

Scott Sorocha (03:19.246)
And so the first 15 years I'd say of my career were transitional from software engineering, sales engineer to sales, working with a lot of venture backed companies. some, some successes like at home and net com. but quite frankly, I like to talk more about the failures, which I think really has enabled me to help create playbooks over the last 30 years that, you know, have not only helped me, become a better individual and leader, but also,

impart those lessons on other entrepreneurs that maybe haven't been through those rough season in the past so that they can learn from some of those mistakes. And then I'd say in the last 15 years, it's been mostly working as a chief revenue officer or a senior leader of operations in private equity-backed With Venture, they look to turn a liquidity event, usually within a seven to 10-year timeframe.

Private equity is a much shorter time frame. It's usually three to five years. And so I like the cadence. I like coming in and helping to fix companies that perhaps don't necessarily have, you know, either products or teams that are not really producing, but there's just different elements of the business that need some fine tuning. And coming back full circle, I apply some of those lessons learned over the last 30 years with the playbooks that I've developed to really just help

both operationally from a process and from a functional perspective, tightened the ship a little bit as it were and clean up areas that I've seen and identified as processes that can be improved. so that's helped me really help these companies either get to liquidity or continue on a profitable EBITDA path so that they are very self-sustaining. So that's kind of a quick backgrounder on myself.

Michael Bernzweig (05:13.394)
Sure, no, and that's quite the journey. obviously, doing what you're doing, having been there and done that is an important aspect to be able to act in an advisory role to be able to help a lot of these organizations get to that next level. So I guess the first question that comes to mind, obviously process, procedure, product, all of these things are important in terms of having the right structure in place to get to the

liquidity, I guess is the biggest thing when I started Software Oasis back in 98. In the crazy 90s and early 2000s, it was all about getting to scale and size and we'll figure out how to make money later. And that led to some pretty crazy things. But from the very beginning, we've always been focused on profit, which just seemed like the right way to go.

Scott Sorocha (05:58.989)
Yeah.

Michael Bernzweig (06:09.172)
I guess my first question is when you're working with founders, overall, do you see that a lot of these organizations have already found their product market fit or are they still kind of evolving to figure that end of it out at the point where they hit your front door?

Scott Sorocha (06:28.846)
Yeah, that's a great question. think in my in from my vantage point, entrepreneurs are still very much working under the auspices of build quickly to address a particular pain point or market need that they felt like the reason they started the company is to solve a very, big problem. Get to market quickly.

It doesn't need to be a product that is completely robust, quite frankly, completely general available GA. Get it to market quickly, gather a lot of feedback from the users, and then you can act and iterate, you know, in a very, very quick timeframe. And I think I'm still seeing that as a way that a lot of these entrepreneurs are operating. And that bodes really well for the way in which

venture capital also invests in these startups because they've got over the last call it 60, 60 years, you know, really well-defined metrics at a seed or an A or a B round as to when VCs are going to put in money and at what conditions and at what tranches. And so, in the early, sort of incarnations of businesses, what you're really trying to do is to validate the assumptions of the

a business that you are trying to start and address the problems in the marketplace, whether that's small, medium or enterprise businesses, you know, what are the fundamental assumptions that you can validate for venture or for any other type of equity or debt that you're trying to take on to validate your business assumptions? And if you can do that very quickly, you know, then raising money while still very challenging.

It enables you to grow in a very rapid timeframe. So I don't think that I've seen much change in that regard other than, you know, the amount of money being raised in today's environment is exponentially larger in the earlier rounds than it was back in the day when I was raising capital back in the 90s and 2000s. Valuations are definitely rich right now. The amount of

Scott Sorocha (08:47.47)
money that you can raise in a seed in an A round are probably at an all time high. So while those things have changed, I don't think fundamentally that the way in which entrepreneurs are starting their companies and getting to sort of the early beta, early test markets has changed very much. It's what is your thesis and business issue that you're trying to address in what market? How can you build and get to

testing either a product or a service very very very quickly in order to prove your thesis and then get additional incremental capital growth capital that will help you then really grow that business in a very big and meaningful way.

Michael Bernzweig (09:30.859)
Yeah, and it is, and it always has been at a very iterative type process. You need to always be evolving the product. But so if you were sitting across the desk from some, a young entrepreneur and they were to say to you, you know, overall, you know, do I take on debt? Do I take on equity? mean, this, this absolutely, as you just mentioned, tons of money out there. The reality of it is should, should organization in the early years be

taking on additional money, should they be bootstrapping it, how do they know the right time and the right type of money to take aboard.

Scott Sorocha (10:10.402)
Yeah, yeah, I've got two different answers for that. I'll give you the most. I think the most first one that comes to mind is if you can, if you can bootstrap your company to profitability and grow it on your own, that is by far the best option for you, both from a ownership perspective. And then ultimately from an exit perspective, because you literally are running the show. You don't have outside influence. You don't have.

Michael Bernzweig (10:23.168)
Okay.

Scott Sorocha (10:39.458)
you boards that are trying to pull you in different directions from a product or a strategic perspective. So I think anyone would agree, including venture capitalists, that, you know, if you're an entrepreneur and you are building your business, if you can do it profitably and you can scale it to the size of a Google or a Meta or pick your favorite, you know, near trillion dollar company, you should do it on your own. Now there comes inherent risks with that. Number one, it's very, very difficult unless you are

very cash rich personally to be able to fund that development, right? To fund the resources, to fund the OpEx and the CapEx to do that. But if you can, it's obviously the first choice for entrepreneurs. The most logical and the most path that most entrepreneurs take is to raise some level of funding, either through family and friends to kind of...

ease into venture. you raise it family and friends. You you don't have a lot of, you know, board issues, like I said before, when you've got venture capital raised. And if you can get that seed money, or the angel money, and it gets profitability, then you've kind of enabled yourself to not use your own capital, use friends and family and high net worth individuals, but not be as diluted and also not have the restrictions that you are imposed on by many of the boards.

That's the second option. Then the third is venture capital. So you go out and you you pitch a hundred VCs, you know, you have, you know, maybe 10, 15 meetings and close, you know, close one. And, know, your dilution is, is really one of the biggest issues that you, that you face, you know, typically 20 to 25 % dilution in your first round. then, you know, there's depending on what articles you believe you get diluted, usually down before you go public to, you know, between five and 10%.

and you know, you get capital that you can use to grow your business, both domestically, internationally, globally. and that is not money that comes cheaply. but at the end of the day, you don't have to fund it yourself. so that's kind of the order in which I see a lot of entrepreneurs focusing today is can I do it myself? Can I fund it myself or through family and friends get to profitability?

Scott Sorocha (13:03.534)
where then I can grow and scale at my own pace. But I would say still, there's a very, very large amount of capital that is what we call dry powder on the sidelines, ready to be invested with the right business plan and the right idea and the right bodies and the right entrepreneur.

Michael Bernzweig (13:25.046)
So if you put the money aside, if an entrepreneur or founder has decided they are going the VC route, what are the considerations they should keep in mind in terms of what are the different value adds that picking the right partner can add to the equation in terms of helping them other than the money that'll help them get to where they need to get to quickly?

Scott Sorocha (13:49.879)
Yeah.

Yeah, I'll be honest, you know, and this is just after 30 years of experience, both in the operational side and on the venture side, you know, a lot of VCs will say, you know, Hey, you want to go if it's a really hot company, hey, you want to go with us, you know, we're going to be very operationally focused with you. We're not going to run your company, but we're going to introduce you to all these business development partners and sales and executives and whatnot. honestly, in my experience, that just doesn't happen. You know, I mean, venture partners are very focused on,

their core swim lane, which is investing in startups that are going to be the next unicorns. And so very few are really operationally intensive and focused on helping those companies to be built. So the areas of value add, quite frankly, are getting that capital with as few restrictions as possible related to the

the actual money being deployed, meaning, you know, don't have ridiculous triple triggers, liquidation preferences, all of these different things that from a legal perspective, you know, hinder a founder's ability to grow the business because they're so worried about dilution and they're worried about, you know, what the impact is going to be to them when they exit. The focus from the venture side is really on what are the areas of the business that we can help you grow?

from a international perspective, introducing other VCs that can maybe co-fund the next round. When you're an entrepreneur and you're looking for those venture capitalists, this is a really big part of their due diligence that a lot of entrepreneurs don't focus on, which is who are the best venture partners that have either invested in this space before and, and or have missed an opportunity.

Scott Sorocha (15:45.144)
to invest in the space, I feel like my company is gonna give them that next best opportunity. there needs to be on the entrepreneur side, a very careful analysis of which venture capitalists they're going to be targeting and what is the value that they think they can get from them. In some cases, if I'm a gaming startup company, I'm gonna wanna target venture capitalists that perhaps have come in the past from a...

either a gaming background that has sold their company now that they've become a venture partner. So now they're the ones that are tasked with investing in gaming companies or that again, as I said before, they want to invest in gaming companies, but they've missed out on EA. They've missed out on, you know, Sony, they've missed out on some of these other companies. So doing the due diligence and really identifying a list of the top call it 75 to 100 venture.

Michael Bernzweig (16:19.808)
Right?

Michael Bernzweig (16:31.456)
Sure.

Scott Sorocha (16:40.814)
you know, capitalists that have invested in and around your space, super important. The other part that's really, really critical is not ever doing cold inbounds. So you never go to a, say for instance, you know, Kleiner Perkins website or, you know, a Sequoia website, drop in a contact to a partner and say, hi, this is Scott. This is my idea. Here's my business plan. You know, let's talk, you know, the likelihood of you getting a response is, is, is almost nothing.

Michael Bernzweig (17:06.005)
All

Michael Bernzweig (17:09.812)
Almost next week.

Scott Sorocha (17:10.03)
What you want to do, you know, and this is something when I look back on my career that I'm particularly proud of is just the networking part. You know, you've got to be able to network behind the scenes and say, okay, um, you know, pick Jim Gatz over at Sequoia. Um, I'm a friend of, you know, Michael's, you know, he runs this podcast. He was from software Oasis. I know that you guys, you know, connected together, investing in a company. Um,

you know, I'm forwarding this along, you know, because we did a podcast together and would love you to take a look at my, you know, my business plan or better yet. Yeah, it's warm. It's warm. It's warm referrals. And that's, that's what, that's what entrepreneurs, think in some cases, you know, if you're very young and you're just not a university or even in university, you don't really have a big networking connection. So, you know, you've got to be able to network though, at some level.

Michael Bernzweig (17:47.796)
Yeah, and it's all a matter of referrals, network partnerships, introductions, all of that.

Michael Bernzweig (18:03.776)
Right.

Scott Sorocha (18:08.588)
with people that have either got some connection to that venture partner or that have some relationship or tie so that you can get a warm intro. And it's just, very, very important. know people talk about it a lot, but it's a lot of hard work. And by the way, you're doing all of this background due diligence and research and investigative work on the venture partners while you're still trying to run your business. And that's the other thing that it's kind of a dirty little secret when you're out raising money. It is not a

a part-time process. know, it is a full-time job to go and raise money and put all these, you know, spreadsheets together and figuring out which venture partners you're going to be pitching. And, by the way, you're still running a business and you're still getting product out and you're still trying to get customers and support them and whatnot. So it is two full-time jobs, which is the other reason why, you know, a lot of entrepreneurs either try to find ways that they can raise their own money on their own very quickly to focus on their business.

And then once they get to profitability or positive EBITDA, then they can go out and raise capital by spending a little bit more time on that.

Michael Bernzweig (19:16.862)
Yeah, and at the end of the day, know, dating myself and, you know, I'm going to say, you know, in the early days, you know, our, our childhood, you know, you would watch cartoons, you'd watch the Jetsons and they had this, this monitor come up and people were having a video conversation. That was the future. It's here now. And I think this current generation did not grow up with the same type of, you know,

Scott Sorocha (19:20.654)
Thank

Michael Bernzweig (19:44.863)
challenges to communications and all of that. for our generation, know, picking up the phone, having a face-to-face conversation, getting on a video call, all of that is very natural. I think for with this current generation, everything is email, text, chat, there's so many other channels of communication that it's almost a whole other world. But now if you were advising someone that maybe

Scott Sorocha (20:04.642)
Right.

Scott Sorocha (20:08.792)
Right.

Michael Bernzweig (20:13.962)
You know, we're in their early stages, just a founder that's really taking on funding for the first time. Obviously, any VC firm, day in and day out, that's what they do. You know, they're filtering through hundreds or thousands of potential...

pitches and you know zeroing in on the ones they want to focus on and then you know obviously have a whole team in place to handle all the negotiations and the structure and there's a lot to it. If you were advising somebody in the other end who should they have in their corner? What are the important advisors that they should have going through the details of all of these agreements, the structure, the contracts if they've never been down that route before?

Scott Sorocha (20:54.36)
Yeah.

Scott Sorocha (21:01.646)
Yeah, yeah, it's a great question. And it's one that I think needs a little bit more attention. So I'm glad that you asked that or somebody from your audience did. Advisors are a very, very, very integral part of a company in the early stages. And the reason is exactly what you state and then more. And that is any entrepreneur, unless you are a very, very seasoned entrepreneur that has had three or four exits, you've built three or four companies, you've had a couple failures, you've had some successes that you have really mastered.

sort of the playbook of starting a company and then going through that process, I would say that's rare or I think that's less than five or 10 % of the total volume of entrepreneurs that are out there. So for the other 90%, it's really about aligning yourself, understanding and being self aware of where your expertise is. So for instance, if I'm a, you know, I'm just going to throw this out there. If I'm a Stanford engineer,

And I've come up with, you know, X, Y, and Z company that I want to start. you know, I'm going to want to bring in advisors that are perhaps seasoned executives that have been through a, space that I'm in, first and foremost B are complimentary to my engineering skillsets and expertise, meaning sales, meaning business development, meaning marketing, meaning, any kind of operational experience in growing companies from

you know, seed or inception all the way through the growth phases, and really bringing on people that can compliment compliment you. you know, Steve jobs, you know, again, one of my, idols back in the day, you know, said it very aptly and as, as great of a product guy that Steve jobs was and, and great leader. said, we don't bring on, you know, people, that and tell them what to do. We bring on people so that they can tell us what to do. And the whole logic around that is.

You want to surround yourself with people that are in fact smarter than you in the areas of their domain because it helps you act and iterate in your business much faster. If you're the type of CEO or entrepreneur that you've got to be the one in charge of everything. And I mean, as in you've got to be knowing all aspects of the business, very few companies would succeed because you just don't have the time to iterate on your product or your service.

Scott Sorocha (23:20.706)
to get product to market to grow your business. You've got to rely on people that have been there before you. So in the same way that you hire people in that regard, you have to bring on advisors that can give you guidance on what pitfalls to steer away from, best hiring practices, the best operational practices in their areas of discipline. So that's just an absolutely critical component that honestly, I don't see enough entrepreneurs adding.

to their stable of equity, which is the advisors.

Michael Bernzweig (23:52.479)
Yeah, and it's so important. And really that's the foundation upon which Software Oasis is built. It's literally the ENG's list of consulting. have the top 500 consulting companies globally on the platform really helping, you know, at every stage of an organization to be able to find, you know, the top consultants in each area to help them get to where they need to get to.

I guess the other conversation I want to do, you know, open up that I think we started speaking about a little bit before we hit the record button, but I think it's interesting and I saw a lot of questions come in. you know, paradigm shifts in terms of tech and where things are heading and all of that in the industry, because you sit in a very unique space and you obviously see a lot of unique opportunities. You mentioned the early years, you know,

broadband and you know going from from dial-up to ISDN to DSL to cable to you know everything that we're at now and the launch of the internet that was really the biggest shift of all. Next you know I think a big shift obviously we see AI is turning the world around right now. What do you see coming next?

Scott Sorocha (25:15.958)
Yeah, that's a question. So again, I'm old enough where we're back in the mid nineties to late nineties. It really was about, you know, the browser having and taking Tim Berners-Lee creation at the end of the eighties of the worldwide web and the predecessor, Vince Cerf, father of the internet. You know, it was really about creating the ability to get mass consumer adoption of access to the internet. And that was the browser.

Michael Bernzweig (25:34.602)
Right.

Scott Sorocha (25:44.502)
Right. was Netscape. That was Internet Explorer and others. And that was in sort of the early nineties when I was at companies like Netcom and then the transition from dial-up, which was very slow, which most of your audience probably will not remember. But that transition to broadband, which we all take for granted now, which is having the equivalent of very high speed access to the Internet.

Michael Bernzweig (26:01.45)
Just as well.

Scott Sorocha (26:12.834)
with no delays in screen or audio or video. That was not prevalent back in the mid 90s. is now. And that transformational shift was only enabled by utilizing very, very high speed highways. And that was broadband. That was cable. That was fiber. That was satellite. And the companies in the early days that really benefited from that were the infrastructure companies. So the Cisco's of the world that had

90 % market share with the cable modems and the routers that were passing all the internet packets. So, you know, I liken that to where we are today with AI, you know, we're still in the first inning, you know, of a nine inning game in terms of the infrastructure build out the chips, the Nvidia is the, you know, Taiwan semiconductors, the AMD is the Intel's all the way through the, core infrastructure, which are the,

companies that are building out and housing all of these supercomputers that are stocked with these chips that can process large language models or even regional language models based on the different verticals. And I think that that's going to happen over the next call it three to five years where the infrastructure will be built out. You only need to look to the Mag-7, the Metas, the Googles, et cetera, that are spending and continuing to spend.

hundreds of billions of dollars on infrastructure. And that return, liken it back to the internet early days, is not gonna be really materially received for the next couple of years. But once it starts to happen, and once people can start to see that AI is changing the way that, for instance, we go and check into hospitals, or the way in which

doctors have access to our medical records or the way in which in finance, which I think is going to be one of the first verticals that is materially impacted by AI, where you can shorten dramatically down not only the way in which you're doing your taxes or filing your taxes, but also getting the returns back all the way to mortgages where instead of going through a process where you've got to do 30 day mortgages down to a couple of minutes. So

Scott Sorocha (28:35.86)
The applications in the verticals are going to take the next three to five years to roll out, but the return on investment is going to be very, very prevalent and big and meaningful. And that is when I think that you start to see an even sort of next wave of AI hitting, is how can we be doing things faster with fewer resources? And that's going to trickle all the way down to startups because you're not going to need as many employees.

to be getting your product out, to be getting it to market, to selling it, to hitting all the metrics that you need to, to get more funding. So I short version is we're still in the first inning of a nine inning game on AI in terms of the build out and infrastructure and expense investing inside of it. The next three to five years will be the return. And I think people again, in today, if you watch CNBC or other MSNBC or whatever your favorite financial channel is, you know,

I think the analysts and the anchors in many ways have it wrong. know, well, they're spending a couple hundred billion dollars, all these companies on AI and they're not seeing the return. Well, they don't remember back in the mid nineties, you had to invest to allow the, you know, applications and the development to catch up to in the specific vertical market segments to see that return. And my guess is, you know, we're still years away from that, but once it happens, it will be yet another.

major tectonic change, like and then similar to the way that Cisco from an infrastructure change, it changed the the internet. And that's just on the infrastructure side. That's just one example.

Michael Bernzweig (30:15.968)
Got it, so as we're wrapping up here, I'm gonna ask you one question that was by and far the number one question that came in from the audience and they will absolutely have my head if I don't ask you this. as a mentor and investor to Sparklabs, what do you and the team look for in a startup when you're deciding to either invest or support them down the road?

Scott Sorocha (30:27.608)
Sure.

Scott Sorocha (30:42.946)
Yeah, yeah, three things. The first and foremost is passion about the business that you're in. You know, it's so nerve wracking and I realize this for many entrepreneurs to be able to pitch to a VC. You know, it is a very nerve wracking experience. And I think that at the same time, you just need to be yourself and just be really excited and show that excitement about your business and the idea that you have.

And and that's more of an ethereal thing But but it carries a lot of weight because if you're not excited about the business and you're kind of doing it part-time You know three up three co-founders that are all doing it halftime And I guess you know you got to start somewhere But you got to be passionate you got to be all in and you really got to you know Convince people that this is this is the best thing the second thing is You know it has to be solving a big enough problem, you know in venture

it, the rule of thumb in general is that it's gotta be a billion dollar, you know, marketplace or, or bigger, or, or it's just not that, that interesting. So are you solving a problem? That's truly a problem that is either does it currently exists or is pervasive, or are you trying to be massively disruptive? And that's super, super important. So big idea, big problem you're solving. And the last is the team. you know, venture, obviously you take a lot of risks.

because you're investing in a very, very early unproven idea and team. But if you're investing in a team that's already been through maybe two or three startups, several exits, that gives a lot of credence to venture money and being put in to these startups because there's a proven history of success there. Not to say that you have to have had an exit, but it just really obviously helps your ability to get that round close.

Michael Bernzweig (32:35.626)
Great, and we're gonna leave a link in the show notes for anybody that would like to reach out to you, but I'm gonna wrap up with one final question. So as you're looking back over your career to date, is there a particular pivotal moment, a particular individual that opened some doors for you, a particular exit, something that really stands out in your mind as a transformational moment in your career that helped you get to where you are?

Scott Sorocha (33:03.392)
Yeah, yeah, I would say too, and it was very early on in my career. I was making a transition from straight coder in the early 90s. And I really wanted to get into a business that I felt like was transformational. And this woman actually lost touch with her over the years, but her name is Glee Katie.

And she used to, she worked for a company, the company I mentioned earlier, Netcom, was one of the first dial up internet service providers and said, I just met her through friends. And she said, you know, look, you really got to look at this company because dial up is where people are to be accessing the internet. And I think you'd be really great at sales engineering there. And, that really helped me solidify, in my career early on what it meant to be at a startup and really work for a very high growth company. so I think about.

her often just in terms of giving me my first kind of start. And then the other person, Don Hutchison, who's pretty well renowned in Silicon Valley, he worked at Netcom. He was the senior VP of sales and marketing there, and then also went to At Home Network afterwards. He's been a mentor for me and to others in the internet business in the 90s, and then also in some of the SaaS based businesses.

that I've followed up on over the years. And I think those two individuals, when I look back on my career, probably had the biggest impact in my 20s. And the overall message there is, thank you to them for helping me at a very early age, get into some of the companies that I think were very transformational in the 90s and set my career on the path that it's been on. But the message to the audience is always be networking.

You know, whether you're at, if you're in college and have an idea, always be networking with your parents' friends or your uncles and aunts' friends at parties over the holidays, asking them what they do, asking them what part of business they're in, what exactly is the size of the company they're at. And then if you're in your 20s and 30s, there's so many more tools out there available today, even beyond just LinkedIn, that enable you to be part of networking groups.

Michael Bernzweig (35:18.6)
Right.

Scott Sorocha (35:21.058)
whether you're an engineer or in sales or in marketing or operations. But networking is, when I look back on my career, probably the number one thing that has enabled me to be at my level and where I'm at, which I'm very proud of. Because, you know, I've got people and it's not bragging, it's just funny to me that, you know, people that I knew in my twenties that were, you know, either software engineers or coders or fellow salespeople are now

you know, either have been or sold their companies for billions of dollars that, you know, are just a phone call away. And that's 30 years later. So the people that you work with today, you will be able to not only ask favors of in the future, but also do favors for over the course of those years. So networking is probably the biggest thing. My advice to your audience is continue to network every day, every week, because that will pay off in spades.

Michael Bernzweig (35:57.558)
Right.

Michael Bernzweig (36:16.372)
Yeah, and as you're taking your journey, it's an important stepping stone to get to where you're going. And it's absolutely important to invest in your network, build your network, and reach out to your network if you need help or if you can provide help. that's always, it's a two-way street. anyways, Scott Surczak over at Sparklabs Group, venture partner.

Scott Sorocha (36:32.982)
Absolutely.

Scott Sorocha (36:36.907)
Absolutely.

Michael Bernzweig (36:43.092)
I'd like to thank you for joining us on the Software Spotlight this week. And we'll leave a link in the show notes. And I very much appreciate your time with our audience.

Scott Sorocha (36:53.118)
Awesome. Thank you for having me, Michael. Thank you for everybody. Thanks a lot.