In episode 56 of the Get Hired Up Podcast, I speak with venture capitalist investor, Chris Haynes, an impact investor. Chris discusses his transition from investment banking to venture capital investing in the med tech and digital health sector. He discloses the deeply personal reason for his transition and talks about what might surprise you most about venture capital.

He says, "as a young person, I want to push hard for what our vision of the world should be, and you don't need to compromise the economics to do so."

I know you will enjoy the show!

Chris, welcome to the get hired up podcast.

Chris Haynes

Thanks for having me. I'm really excited to be here.

Maureen Farmer

I am excited too. So, I'm going to read your bio, and then we'll launch into some of our questions. Chris Haynes is a venture capitalist and investor who has backed companies in the medical device, digital health and education sectors based in the United States, India, and Africa. He is currently an investor for TEAMFund, an impact investing organization focused on improving the accessibility, affordability, and quality of care for the world's underserved populations. Before TEAMFund, Chris was on the investment team at Ascension Ventures, a venture capital fund that has invested more than $1 billion on behalf of several of the largest not-for-profit health systems in the United States.

He also worked as a funds investor for New Holland Capital, covering public and private debt, private equity, and other investment strategies. Chris joins us today from San Francisco, California. Welcome again.

Chris Haynes

Thank you so much!

Maureen Farmer

So Chris, we met I think, through LinkedIn a few months ago, and our team became very fascinated by the work that you do. And as an investor, you seem like a young person to be investing. And so I would love to learn a little bit about your journey to where you are today.

Chris Haynes

Yeah, happy to step you through that. Let me start off from the beginning, which is I went to the University of Florida for undergraduate economics. And like most people at the time, I was entirely convinced I was going to do something very different than what I wound up doing. So it's very convinced that I was going to go into the law, and so partially out of that conviction, and also, due to some personal extenuating circumstances, I had to make a tough decision and push to get that degree completed in 22 months. So, part of the answer to your question is, I did get a running start. And, you know, after doing a little bit of pivoting, to come into investing, got a master's degree of Washington University in St. Louis, a master's in finance, after that got my start in investment banking, which is where many people go into to kind of learn the nuts and bolts and good practices as it relates to both financials and evaluating businesses

Maureen Farmer

So you started off as an analyst then correct?

Chris Haynes

Yes. And so I did that for about a little less than two years, and got very excited about moving into, you know, being more on the investor side, as opposed to the banker side of things that took me to New York City where I joined New Home capital, new home was a fascinating place to work, they managed about $20 billion on behalf of the Dutch civil servants, pension asset managers. So that's a group called APG that's based in the Netherlands, and they manage effectively their significant segment of their alternative assets, primarily hedge funds, but also some private equity capital.

Maureen Farmer

So Chris, you say it was a fascinating place to work. What was fascinating about it?

Chris Haynes

I would say a few things first, and this is a consistent theme in my career, part of whether you're investing in fund managers, or investing in managers of startup companies, there's a very significant component of that that's related to what I think of as manager selection. So these are people that are within their domain of expertise, at least always going to have a deeper understanding of the details than you do. Right. There's a lot of interesting ways to approach that problem. But it's a fascinating problem. And I knew one, I think, also took a very cerebral approach to unpacking that problem. So I think, you know, I'm the son of academics. So I think, you know, just the care and almost academic rigor with which they approach that problem was very interesting to me, especially as a young person who felt like almost everyone in the world was smarter than me. You know, the idea of how do you how do you differentiate between two people, both of whom have high conviction, both of whom have very good experience and are very persuasive? You know, how do you how do you pick between the two? How do you tell which one is right and which one is wrong? So that was a very interesting question to me. And so that, I think was, I really enjoyed that piece of the work as well as just you know, it was I was still early in my career. And so I think it was a good way to ease into the idea of managing capital while still being something of a generalist. Because I hadn't yet made the decision as far as what sector of the world I wanted to focus by investing efforts.

Maureen Farmer

You mentioned that your parents are academics. What disciplines do they study?

Chris Haynes

So, my mother has a PhD in exercise physiology. My father has a background in chemistry and then ultimately got his graduate degree in nutrition. So, and then my stepfather is the Dean at Florida State University. So that, you know, I sort of grew up just surrounded by professors, their students, you know, all those folks out there, I think still getting over the fact that I did not choose to go into academia. But it's, I think it's very much shaped my worldview.

Maureen Farmer

Excellent. Thank you for sharing that with me.

Chris Haynes

So after spending a fair amount of time at New Haven, I came, you know, I started to realize two things. First, primarily, because, in my, in my work as an investment banking analyst, I'd spent a fair amount of time, in fact, I was in the department that focused exclusively on private equity clients. And so that made me a natural fit for working on the port, that smaller portion of the portfolio that was in kind of private equity style investments. So as a result of that, I'd gotten some early board observer experience that really enjoyed kind of that hands on approach to investing. So I knew I wanted to do more of that, not less of it. And then, at the same time, you know, my mother was diagnosed with breast cancer, she's fine now very well managed disease here in the States. But I was fortunate enough that New Holland, as I said, great place to work, you know, really went above and beyond to make sure that I had time off to go spend a month or two, with my mother just sort of ferrying her around and spending time with her point of view. So I was here, I was getting this exposure to the healthcare system for the first time, which is not, you know, many 25 year old men have effectively never in a serious way and against the course yeah. And so as somebody who spent a lot of time thinking about identifying more and less efficient businesses, I was just floored by the state of it, I couldn't could not believe that this was the system that we had in place. So that got me passionate about moving into healthcare helped me find clarity on that question of which sector to focus on. And my experience, as a board observer had gotten me conviction that I both enjoyed and at least, could get good at being more involved on the direct investing side.

So that kicked off a search went to go find a job that had those attributes, that quest took me to ascension ventures, which, which you alluded to in your bio, that, again, was a great, great set of experiences for me. And so far as that team is getting outstanding platform has, you know, been, when I joined the core team, there had been all they're doing the work together for 20 years, right. So you really had the benefit of joining an institution that had really strong knowledge and culture, right. And it was great, because it was also they invest company in capital on behalf of health systems. And they're also located within ascension, the health systems headquarters. So I really got the insider, outsider view of the health system, which like everything else has pros and cons. But I think it was quite critical for me where I was at that time. And so far as I had a very naive understanding of how the whole system works. And so being able to, I think it's something that it saved me a lot of the pain that many folks go through when they just come in with the full outsider view. And, you know, just want to which, which is an important perspective as well. But it helped ground me in at least the understanding of why why folks felt things had gotten to where they were, did that I, as I said, for a few years. And then and then I think where I got hyper passionate about a couple of things that directed me to Team fun was seeing the success, the camaraderie and the development that the senior folks at Ascension had gone through. By virtue of building a platform together, I wanted to do something like that. And unfortunately, ascension was already a very well proven out platform. So that that was something in which I wanted to scratch.

And then I was also increasingly excited about the opportunity outside of the US and in healthcare, specifically, because there is much less of the legacy infrastructure and incumbents in those regions, right. And so your degrees of freedom to really approach things with a first principles mindset was much more significant, you know, in addition to rather than having to a try to imagine what the ideal solution would look like from a first principles point of view, and then be estrous Southwell, how do we build that, given that there's all these very large companies that have interests that may or may not be aligned with that vision? Right? Instead of trying to attack both those questions, which is a very thorny problem, you really could mostly focus on the first question, not to say that investing in emerging markets is easy, is certainly not. So there. There are other different types of challenges you have to overcome. But that vision was very exciting to me. So that brought me to TEAMFund. And I know I've given a long answer to a short question.

So TEAMFund is an Impact Fund, as you mentioned, it's a very lean team. So there are two co-founders, Tim Ring and Kathryn Gleason, who are very seasoned healthcare operators and legal minds respectively. Tim is on the board of several large companies. And Kathryn was a founding partner for Morgan Lewis's healthcare practice in the United States. On the investment side, we have a managing partner whose name is Yousef, who's done many things worked at Kaiser ventures, Abbott ventures, was on the executive team for a startup that was backed by Kleiner Perkins. So I felt very convinced that these folks had the right ingredients to help me in this joint effort to make the platform a success. In addition, they all had significant components to their experience that were differentiating to mine, I've never been a true operator. I've never led a public company, which Tim has done, certainly not a lawyer. And again, as you can probably tell from the way I've described some of these places, I have two meta attributes I look for everywhere I go in life, which is, hopefully I will be the dumbest person in the room, and expose yourself to people that have very different points of view and experiences than you do.

Maureen Farmer

So what I would say there is that is what you're describing, as somebody who is incredibly self aware and incredibly, incredibly humble. I've seen all the awards that you've received, that you've earned. So I hardly believe that you're the dumbest person in any room. But I appreciate I appreciate your your humility, and it's a great leadership attribute.

Chris Haynes

Well, thank you for saying that. And like I said, I don't want to make myself sound too humble. I'm not a dumb person, I just have been very lucky to work with very, very smart people. So that brought me to TEAMFund. You know, we focus on digital health, medical devices, with a particular point of view to expand access for the underserved in the world, you know that in our first portfolio, we have seven companies sprinkled across India, Africa, primary, those two geographies primarily, and then a few in the US. And I joined midway through deploying fund one, that's almost complete, now may very well be complete. That's a game-time decision that's being made as we speak. And we're in process of fundraising for our second fund, which will be a much larger fund that seems to be going well knock on wood, given the environments. So I think it's gone really well, very excited about it. But I have had been uniquely fortunate in the breadth of the experiences that I've had.

Maureen Farmer

So how did you find Ascension? And then subsequently, how did you find TEAMFund? It sounds like you're a very focused person, you know what you want? And how did you go about finding those companies?

Chris Haynes

It's a very good question. So as I'm sure you know, given the expertise and the clients that you've worked with, I think with Ascension, it was a combination of two factors. First of all, I was very clear on what I wanted. And as you know, from the work you've done over the years, that's very helpful.

Maureen Farmer

I would say that's probably 80% 80% of success, right there is knowing what you want and your meta attributes. I really liked that as well. It's like identifying an ideal company profile or an ideal client profile, a persona, if you will.

Chris Haynes

Mm hmm. Exactly. And then so that, I think, certainly was helpful, both to me and the recruiters because it also meant that I wasn't, you know, I could invest my time. Strategically, right. And then the other thing, this is the other big piece that I think is always important, is a little bit of serendipity. And so, you know, I had gone to school in St. Louis, what is one of the best schools in the Midwest? ascensions headquarters is in St. Louis. So I think I probably had a level of brand recognition for that that wasn't quite helpful. And so I think that was, that was a big part of kind of why the match made sense at the time because otherwise, you can, there's, there's not that many examples of people making the leap from doing fund to funds investing to venture capital, mainly just because they're different skill sets, not because it can't be done. So I think that was a big piece of it. The transition over to TEAMFund, I think, has some similarities. I think the piece of it, that's interesting. So team fun had gone through a traditional recruiter to source people for that job. I'm not sure that I was exactly what they were looking for at first blush. But you know, we got along very well personally, as I went through the recruiting process. And then I had a prior colleague from my time at Ascension, who had left ascension and is now a global head of ventures for one of the one of the largest health care companies in Japan, publicly traded. So, you know, senior to me, and as he was going through that transition, you know, I had made a very, we'd gotten along and work together and all that. But, you know, I saw what I thought was an opportunity, because there was a period of time between, you know, his leaving ascension, and his finding that job as you know, finding those kinds of jobs takes time. During that time, I saw what the way I saw it was, here's this senior person, and they have maybe more time right now than they typically would have, you know, and I'm sure, you know, everybody in venture is constantly trying to stay current on the market and develop, you know, more and more refined theses. So I thought, why don't why don't I talk to this friend of mine ruble? And we can, you know, we can just brainstorm and talk and talk about what is it he would think is the most attractive area in healthcare to invest in right now? Right? What do I think about that? You can just compare notes. So we did that. I don't know, maybe twice a month for a couple of months. I think I probably got more out of it than he did. But the benefit was, you know, we probably had a more deep personal collect connection than we would have had had we have we just worked together at Ascension, even though that was great, too. And so then fast forward about a year and a half. He knows my now colleague and friend Youssef, who's the managing partner at TEAMFund very well, and in fact, had been doing some consulting work for them at one point. And so as my name came up through the process, given that we overlapped at Ascension, an early off-reference call was to ruble, right. And so that I think made this pretty much a slam dunk for TEAMFunf. Right. And so I think, again, call it luck. Call it, you know, focus.

Maureen Farmer

Well, I don't know. I mean, it was a very deliberate process that you did with him. And I think you set the stage certainly.

Chris Haynes

Yeah, but this is, this is where, again, this is, I think, the point that I would draw out of this, or I did draw out of this, which is, at the time that that was happening, all I saw was an opportunity to engage with somebody I could learn from, right without having to feel guilty about, you know, the opportunity costs on their time, not because he wasn't still having things to do. But you know, I would always feel a little guilty if I was approaching, you know, a senior person at a time when I know, they've always got a million things going on, and to say, let's just brainstorm and just talk about things. Right. So I think it's not that I would never do that. Otherwise, it's that I wouldn't have had that kind of concentrated period of time doing that, right. It might be once every six months, not twice, so twice a month for three months, if that makes sense.

Maureen Farmer

It does. That's great. Thank you for sharing that. It's a smart strategy. And I think mentorship and seeking out the help and assistance of others, it can deliver tremendous opportunities that we're not always expecting.

Chris Haynes

Yeah, no, I couldn't I couldn't agree more with that.

Maureen Farmer

So Chris, in terms of what you're doing now, I'm very curious about what a day at TEAMFund looks like for you. An average day?

Chris Haynes

Yeah, no, I think it's a good question. I lead point on, you know, sourcing and evaluating of investments, right. We make decisions collectively. But I would say, I certainly am 100% in charge of the top of funnel piece of that. And I would do I do a lot of, you know, the, the kind of due diligence piece of things right? Keep in mind, two people on the investment team, so we run pretty lean. So I would say probably for me call it 6am. Because that's roughly how early, you know, you need to be able to if you're going to catch folks in India, so roughly from six to one or two, I very much focus on meetings with potential prospects or prospects that are in evaluation for due diligence, right? So lots of rapid fire meetings, meeting new people for the first time, and or, you know, very agenda driven, technically focused kinds of conversations.

Maureen Farmer

So you're, you're basically evaluating whether you want to invest in these particular companies. Correct?

Chris Haynes

Correct. So it'll be typically first the first meeting is myself and the CEO, one on one. And then I typically like to have you know, those more due diligence style calls, I like to have those preferably one on one with whoever the functional leaders in that area. But sometimes it's, you know, them plus the CEO...

Maureen Farmer

For sure. And what types of questions are you typically asking them in the early stages? is it's kind of tick the boxes type of thing? Or do you actually get into the operations of their thesis and get into some of the more granular nature of what they're doing?

Chris Haynes

Yeah, no, it's a good question. And of course, I'm generalizing here, right?

So there's maybe two things I would say just just in case, it's of interest. One would be, I tried to never lose sight of the fact that it's as much me selling to the company and then selling to us. So I do spend probably 10 minutes on the front of the call, trying to do two things, which is set expectations, and establish why team fund should be a preferred partner of choice, you know, for from for many companies, right? We're not right for everyone. But you know, what, what makes us different and special? I then do try very hard. I don't always succeed, because I have a lot of questions. I'm a very curious person. But I try to give them at least kind of 20 to 30 minutes to just walk me through high level, the following things. What does your business do? And why did you decide to work on this? What do most people misunderstand about your business?

Maureen Farmer

Oh, that's a really good question. 

Chris Haynes

Yeah, and then the final piece is, you know, as you think about the next 612 and 18 months, what are you doing now that has to change? And what are the key constraints from being able to make those changes? Right? So that's, that's the high-level mental model that I think about when I'm because and the reason I asked those questions, especially those last couple, as much as I want to understand the technical points of the business, which sometimes takes more than 20 minutes for them to walk me through it. It's as important for me to understand how they think about the difference between, you know, as things scale, understanding, there's non-linearity, and how a company operates, and how they evaluate the trade-offs that are always incumbent upon that. So I try to make my questions as open-ended as possible, and then ask a lot of follow-ups.

Maureen Farmer

And how long does a typical deal take to close? I'm sure it's different for each, but generally speaking, what's that look like?

Chris Haynes

So,  two answers to your question. I think, from start to money, wiring, I think a good average at Team fun is six to eight weeks. So roughly two months, it can be less, I would love to get it down to less. And I really, and really, a lot of that is when we spent a lot of time thinking about this, which you can maybe tell from my answer. But you know, usually in the first meeting, I have a good intuition about is this interesting enough to invest more time in? I tried to get to that part of the decision-making process as quickly as possible, mostly out of respect for the founders time. And most VCs say no, a lot more than they say yes. And so getting to that know quickly, while being humble about, you know, why should I say? So that's the mindset I try to maintain is, what should I be excited about? Because I don't I don't want to default to no. So I usually by the end of that call, maybe with another side chat with a couple of people on my team have a pretty good idea of is this attractive to us, right? If it is, we have a very standard kind of set of materials that we want to look at, that we send over to them. It's just a checklist. I ask them if they can, you know, before I take up more of your time, can you send me these things? That's enough for me to get smart on the business. Have an introductory presentation to our full partnership. present my recommendation about yes or no? And then at that point, we move into have a deep due diligence, which is myself talking with those functional area leads to get detailed answers to the questions that I have. It's also when we start to loop in external advisors or people that are in our network, who knows the clinical space that the room really well, who may have an understanding of what clients are looking for, what would buyers preferences are that sort of thing. So that's, that's really the two parallel paths that we proceed down, which is getting the detailed company specific answers, and then evaluating what a third party expert might think about. Right. So at that point, you know that that part of the process probably takes the longest, so that's three or four weeks. At that point, if we're still ago, it we take it to IC and then after that point...

Maureen Farmer

IC is investment committee, correct?

Chris Haynes

Yes. And then typically, after that, you know, it's just deal executions with lawyers, and back and forth on kind of the sticking points of any deal that needs to be papered.

Maureen Farmer

And, of course, I'd like to ask the question, how long do you hang on to your portfolio companies? Before there's some type of exit? Or?

Chris Haynes

Yeah, that's a good question. So our funds life is a 10 year life, right. So it's a five year investment period. And then five years on the back end, with potential for two one-year extensions, pretty standard in the in the private equity or venture world, as I know, you do know. And so we have, I think the luxury of being able to be stage agnostic with in the world of venture, meaning I don't think we'd ever go super late stage, right, where, you know, companies and kind of that private equity segment of the market. But but we've done things as early as Series A, as late as series D for an intro and an initial entry. So I think we are willing to take as long as a seven or eight kind of base case, estimate of time to exit. But we do start peeling that back as we get closer to the end of the investment period. Meaning if we were to do a new deal today, I need to have, you can't have certainty, but I would need to have conviction that there will be a path to an exit, and more like, four or five years, because we're nearing the end of our investment period

Maureen Farmer

Oh, yeah, complete sense. Yeah, it makes sense to me. And let's define an impact investor just for the benefit of those who may not know what that means.

Chris Haynes

Yeah. So the impact investing industry was really got its start from what's called a double bottom line mandate, meaning, you still have all the same kind of financial incentives that exist in a typical private equity or venture fund. At the same time, you have both a mandate reporting and targets on some measure of broader global impact, and societal benefit, right. So for us, as a healthcare focus fund, that takes the form of maybe more things than you might imagine. But things like supporting provider training, improving the number of patients who have access to XYZ type of care, making that kind of care more affordable, making higher quality or more advanced types of technology, available in regions where they maybe have not been accessible before. And so I think the difference between that and a typical fund is, I think, at least in my experience, especially in the venture world, most people have a belief that their capital is going to do some good, especially within healthcare, right. But I do think one of the big differences is we spend a lot of time measuring that and evaluating it from day one, meaning I don't, you know, we have a strong point of view on what can be most impactful of all the things on the menu, and it's, it's a primary consideration where we invest capital. So I think that probably sounds harder than just making money which is quite hard in and of itself. I think the reason why it's an exciting time to do it is because it is a younger industry. And there is a lot of room and opportunity to think creatively and even as a young person like myself, you know, push quite hard for what your vision of the world should Do what you would like it to be. So, again, I I'm a strong believer in that you don't have to give up economics to have this impact. But it's very in a world where, you know, traditional venture maybe is often quite levered to pattern recognition. I think being in the impact industry gives us the opportunity to say, what if things were completely different? Also, how would I know if we were doing it the right way? And that's the second piece that I think sometimes just maybe it's the act, those academic roots we talked about, just tickles my fancy. So, you know, we would say, because I always think of you put forward a hypothesis, and, you know, you have to have some kind of a priori system of evaluating. Right, so whether that's the number of patients that are on the platform, the, you know, the number of interactions they're able to have with providers, etc, you know, some kind of thesis about have in being detailed about if this is we're having the impact we expect, what will that look like? And how will we keep ourselves honest about that?

Maureen Farmer

That's great. What would you say Chris, would surprise most people about impact investing? And about venture capital? In general? What would you say would surprise them most based on your experience so far?

Chris Haynes

So I think what would surprise people most about venture capital? In general, it's very easy to be quite good at this at this in this industry, just by maintaining a curious mindset. So asking honest, good questions, listening fully to the answers. And then this is the critical piece that is harder to do than it is to say, just creating vulnerability, so that you can help people, because all founders are dealing with a set of problems where they're very effective people, they never have as much time as they need to get all their things done. They always need help with something, it does not need to be expert help, it can often be as simple as helping pull them out of the weeds to think about it in a different way, introducing them to a person who does have that expertise. But to get there, you need to you have to invest time, right? It's not as simple as showing up and saying, being so focused on all the things you can do, as opposed to being focused on in my my experience anyway, communicating, you can be trusted to know that they need help with things. Because that's a hard thing to do, especially in the early stages of running a business with an investor, especially if they haven't already given you their capital.

Maureen Farmer

Right, I really liked your approach. It's very, it's contrast to what most people imagine investor or venture capital investors to be. I mean, you think of like the Shark Tank and stuff like that, that you see on TV. But even aside from that, you know, there was a bit of perception from the mainstream anyway. And I would say I represent more of the mainstream than not, although I do know the industry. But it's it there is a difficult standard for founders to meet in order to, to get investors to come on board. It sounds like you have a very collaborative approach to doing that.

Chris Haynes

Yeah. And again, I'm you know, I'm young enough in my career, to know that the verdict will come in on how good of an investor I am years from now. So it could be very wrong. But I think, to me, it comes down to a couple of things. First, there's just an effectiveness part of it, which is, as I said, these folks are always going to know more about their business than you do. And if you don't think that's true, you should go start a business. Right. So I think that's a no, that doesn't mean that you can't have, you know, areas of expertise that, you know, because, for example, you're out in the market, you know, how you see have a maybe a broader view of the industry or something like that. But I think it's important not to lose sight of that piece of it. And so, you know, the only way that you get to see problems early in their formation is if there is that trust, right, yeah. Because otherwise you get the problem, probably before it can be fixed in an optimal way. Right. So I think that's, you know, something that I think about quite a bit. And I think the other piece of it is, it's also about building trust in the other direction. And so far as if I'm good about listening more than I speak, being thoughtful about my founders time, and carefully weighing out my words over time, too. Most good founders will understand if there's insert issue that Chris is, you know, jumping up and down about, maybe I should listen. Right, even if he is, you know, the younger kid, you know, not on Shark Tank, right. So so I think there's, there's a significant interpersonal piece of that. I think the other thing that I would say is most surprising about the impact industry. I think people would be surprised about the value, that impact lens has four founders. And I'm going to, again, speak in generalities. But I think there's often a point of view within the broader investing industry, sometimes even from founders that oh, here are these impact investors. And because they do have a dual mandate, they're less focused on making money. And so maybe in some sense, they're, they're cheap capital to take onboard. Right?

Maureen Farmer

So what we're saying here: It's a real business platform. It's a real business.

Chris Haynes

Yeah, no, it's real. Yeah, yeah. And also, this is the thing, I think founders maybe don't leverage enough, which is, there's always going to be moments where there's something that you as the founder, have deep passion and conviction about doing, believe that you can and should do that. Some investors somewhere will push back on because it's not going to make money right now, not every time because, again, we're focused on making money. And I least I'll speak for myself, I would never ask any of my founders to do something that was contrary to their economic best interests, right. I'm a strong believer in the win win. But I do think that there, we are willing to take a longer view on things. And we do care about things outside of just maximizing, you know, that bottom, that bottom line, so that I think, can be something that founders leverage in the boardroom. Meaning that they may be there's having another a different set of view that maybe is somewhere in between, there's and just the typical financial investor, I think is of value. And then for the folks that might be listening, who are evaluating the impact industry, it's, you know, don't don't lose sight of the fact that that can be part of what makes you value as an investor, just just having that difference in perspective, you know, is differentiating So, but to create value out of differentiation, you have to be aware of it.

Maureen Farmer

No, that's excellent. Chris, you know, this has been an amazing conversation, I do want to acknowledge you're sharing a very personal story about your mom, and just for full disclosure here, too. I've also suffered from breast cancer. And, yeah, thank you, and I'm doing very well. And I was the beneficiary of a wonderful now, every healthcare system has its issues, like there's no nothing, no such thing is a perfect world. But I have to say that I was very, very lucky. And I'm very, very grateful to have the health care services available to me that I had during that period of time. And I really applaud you for taking your career in a direction that is deeply meaningful for you, and maybe less linear than most others. So I applaud you for that.

Chris Haynes

No, thank you so much. And I really, really appreciate your time today. I know I'm, I've benefited greatly from you know, podcasts like this one, as I, you know, navigated my own career. So thank you for giving me the opportunity to share my story. It's an honor, and I hope it's of use to the audience. 

Maureen Farmer

Oh, absolutely. And before we wrap up the call, we do something fun here on the podcast, we are building a restaurant list. We release it every year, during the New Year between Christmas and the New Year. And I would love to get a sample or two of restaurants that you'd like to frequent in your area.

Chris Haynes

Yeah, yeah. I'll give you one from my current area. And then one from my old haunts in New York City. Oh, yes, please do. Yeah. Yeah. So here in SF and, and I may be biased because it is within, you know, like a mile walk from my apartment. So I get the benefit of a nice outdoor day along the way to this restaurant called Angler. A seafood restaurant. I believe the chef has won a Michelin star at a prior restaurant. So it's very good food, but it's not a complicated menu. And it's very down to earth in terms of the atmosphere that they cultivate. And of course, it's on the Embarcadero. So you have a lovely view of the bay. So I again, I go more often than I probably should. And then in New York, you know, in this is, this is very much in the in the bucket of comfort food. Oh, for sure, let us have it. But there's a restaurant called Jacob's Pickle. That's on the Upper West Side. It is fantastic. And portions are generous. And the food is so so good. And the drinks are also fantastic. So I would I would heavily recommend they have a downside downstairs portion that does become a little bit more of a bar for if that's something that is of interest. So I think that maybe you can tell that I've gone from being you know, my 20s and my 30s. But yeah, I think I could not recommend either of those more.

Maureen Farmer

Well, I won't be heading to San Francisco anytime soon. But I am heading to New York in about eight weeks. So Jacobs pickle. Okay, awesome. I'll definitely check it out while I'm there. And I'll add it will add it to the list that will be released at the end of the year. And it's been such a pleasure, Chris, thank you so much. And I look forward to following your career.

Chris Haynes

I and I can't wait to see everything you guys are building. You shared earlier that this is you know, you guys have been on a year or two journey and have made such traction. So happy to have been here in the early innings of it.

Maureen Farmer

Thank you so much. Oh, wait. Now before we sign off, how can people get in touch with you?

Chris Haynes

Oh, yeah. Great question. Um, you can reach me at C.Haynes@outlook.com. I'm pretty responsive. That's my personal email. So just give me a shout. I I'm, I love doing this sort of thing. So if you have questions that I can answer, I'd love to do so.

Maureen Farmer

Awesome. That's terrific. Thanks again, Chris.