Venture Capitalist Miriam Rivera Is Betting On Longshots — And Finding Unicorns
When Miriam Rivera was born in 1964 to a pair of Puerto Rican migrant farmers in Dunkirk, New York, women in the United States could not get a credit card or mortgage without a male co-signer. Although the Civil Rights Act was signed that year—which prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex or national origin—Wall Street was still three years away from seeing its first female member of the New York Stock Exchange.
Sixty years later, Rivera is thriving as the cofounder and CEO of Ulu Ventures, a Palo Alto-based venture capital firm with $400 million in assets under management and a portfolio that includes ten current or recently-exited unicorns. Rivera says that her personal journey, from a free-lunch kid learning English from watching Sesame Street to Silicon Valley power broker, is reflected in her investing philosophy. “I’m really looking for those long shots,” Rivera says, “because in a power-law distributed world, it's really the few that will generate a lot of profitability.”
Rivera is one of the 200 all-new members of our fourth annual 50 Over 50 list—a collection of women who, like Rivera, have careers that are hitting powerful peaks during life’s second half.
Read the full story on Forbes: https://www.forbes.com/sites/maggiemcgrath/2024/08/01/forbes-50-over-50-meet-the-women-winning-lifes-second-half/
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Sixty years later, Rivera is thriving as the cofounder and CEO of Ulu Ventures, a Palo Alto-based venture capital firm with $400 million in assets under management and a portfolio that includes ten current or recently-exited unicorns. Rivera says that her personal journey, from a free-lunch kid learning English from watching Sesame Street to Silicon Valley power broker, is reflected in her investing philosophy. “I’m really looking for those long shots,” Rivera says, “because in a power-law distributed world, it's really the few that will generate a lot of profitability.”
Rivera is one of the 200 all-new members of our fourth annual 50 Over 50 list—a collection of women who, like Rivera, have careers that are hitting powerful peaks during life’s second half.
Read the full story on Forbes: https://www.forbes.com/sites/maggiemcgrath/2024/08/01/forbes-50-over-50-meet-the-women-winning-lifes-second-half/
Subscribe to FORBES: https://www.youtube.com/user/Forbes?sub_confirmation=1
Fuel your success with Forbes. Gain unlimited access to premium journalism, including breaking news, groundbreaking in-depth reported stories, daily digests and more. Plus, members get a front-row seat at members-only events with leading thinkers and doers, access to premium video that can help you get ahead, an ad-light experience, early access to select products including NFT drops and more:
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Transcript
00:00Miriam Rivera, you are the co-founder and managing director of Ulu Ventures, an early-stage
00:15investment firm.
00:17You are one of the faces of this year's 50 over 50 investment list.
00:22Thank you so much for joining us.
00:23Thank you for having me.
00:25I was asking you before we started rolling what your greatest over 50 accomplishment
00:30is.
00:31And you say it's the company that you're running now.
00:33Tell us about it.
00:34Ulu Ventures is a seed-stage venture capital firm located in Palo Alto, California.
00:40We started fundraising from outside investors after I turned 50.
00:46So why is it your greatest over 50 accomplishment?
00:50Because it's really allowed me to give other people opportunities that have just been extraordinary
00:56for myself and that I wanted to give back to younger people, diverse people.
01:02It's been a fabulous way to do that.
01:06Now you frame it as giving back, but you are looking for profits.
01:09You are looking for returns.
01:10And in fact, in your portfolio, there are 10 unicorns, which is not the greatest number
01:17compared to Sequoia, but that's a pretty large number for a firm of your size.
01:22How did you do that?
01:23We did that by identifying talented people who were really trying to pursue really big
01:29markets and also many of them want to do something that supports a positive social end.
01:36And we think that there's just great opportunities for them.
01:39We also looked particularly for teams that had diverse members because there's a lot
01:44of data that showed in public companies, diverse board members could actually generate
01:49greater profitability.
01:51And that's what has turned out over the last 15 years to also be true of startup companies.
01:56They perform better when teams look more like America.
01:59That's right.
02:00So aside from looking for diverse teams, strong teams, good management structures, what is
02:06your investment thesis?
02:07What are the sector-based trends that you're looking for these days?
02:11So in enterprise software, we look for technologies that help make business more efficient and
02:17profitable.
02:18We look for other kinds of businesses, such as in the healthcare well-being space, sustainability,
02:25financial services, innovation, basically new ways of doing business.
02:31New ways of doing business.
02:32And those new ways of doing business have created 10 unicorns, and of those unicorns,
02:37five are run by women, I understand?
02:39Five had a woman founder at the start, and actually all of them still have a woman founder.
02:44Two of them have women CEOs.
02:47We're speaking in a moment where DE&I has been under attack in America.
02:52The litigiously-minded folks in this country, some of them say, focusing on women and people
02:59of color is actually reverse discrimination, and you're leaving out white men.
03:04How do you respond to that, and how do you operate in this environment when you have
03:08other funds with similar focuses that have been sued?
03:11Well, a lot of times people think diversity means minority only.
03:16That's not what we mean by diversity.
03:18Our teams have all permutations of people, all colors, all genders.
03:24There are plenty of white men in our portfolio.
03:26The other thing I would say is that really DE&I is about having the customer in mind.
03:34When you think about growing a business, the main thing that you should be looking for
03:38is a large market.
03:39Seventy percent of Americans are diverse people, meaning they are not white men.
03:44They are women.
03:45They are people of color.
03:46They are immigrant Americans, and they have different business needs, perhaps, than others.
03:51They're also going to be the majority of the working population in the United States by
03:572030, so we really need to emphasize how technology needs to adapt for Americans today.
04:05Now, I know you have said that Silicon Valley looks like 1950s America.
04:10What do you mean by that?
04:12Well, it would mean things like women-led companies only have about two percent of venture
04:17capital dollars, but obviously women represent over 50 percent of the population.
04:23They also represent over 60 percent of the educated population in the United States.
04:28That's an example of how extreme the change is needed in terms of trying to increase representation
04:37in business, and it's not going to happen with people who are opposed to investing in
04:43the most educated and the best.
04:46And when you describe the business opportunity that you're seeing among the consumer market
04:50that's growing, would you say that the majority of Silicon Valley is missing out on a substantial
04:54amount of dollars?
04:56Yes.
04:57I would say that in part because one of our clients, who is a very large pension, has
05:02a number of firms in Silicon Valley in their portfolio, and when they looked at who they
05:08had access to at seed stage, they had zero of our entrepreneurs.
05:14All of these diverse entrepreneurs that represent, you know, I said 50 percent of them have a
05:18woman on the team, 20 percent of them have a Latinx on the team, which is much more correlated
05:23with Latinx population in the United States.
05:27About 45 percent of them have an immigrant founder.
05:30So we really have a diversity of team members, but 90 percent of those companies also have
05:35white people and white men on the team.
05:38I've heard other venture capitalists say that investing is an art and a science, and I've
05:44heard you kind of talk about using your intuition as you're assessing companies, but also putting
05:50data to that intuition.
05:53Can you tell us how you do that?
05:54Because you have a really interesting model.
05:55Yeah.
05:56We use a process called decision analysis that was developed at Stanford University
06:00by Professor Ron Howard.
06:02He helped us to develop a methodology where we actually use both intuition and data.
06:08So for example, we want to look at team risk, financing risk, market adoption risk, and
06:14product development risk.
06:16Every venture capitalist looks at those.
06:18What we do that's a little bit different is that we actually develop criteria around
06:24each one at every stage in the life cycle of a company, and we put a number to the level
06:31of risk.
06:32What that allows us to do is learn, because in a couple of years when our companies are
06:37looking to raise capital, we'll see whether or not they had one of those risks actually
06:42materialize.
06:43We'll also see, let's say we had 10 companies, and we said six of them were going to be successful,
06:49and only two are.
06:50We would learn that we're not calibrated appropriate to the level of risk, and we'd be able to
06:54get a sign of where the risk was higher than we anticipated.
06:58And so do you track, so let's say you're looking at a company named ABC, and you say the management
07:04risk is 60%, and then let's say no negative event happens, and it's a successful company,
07:12they have an exit, they have an IPO, they have something great happen five, 10 years
07:16down the line.
07:18How do you then adjust your model, and how you assign the numbers and the scores in your
07:23model?
07:24What we would do to learn from that, and we've actually done this recently, we look back
07:30at what the distribution of returns is that we expected for the portfolio.
07:36We've developed our models for each company in exactly the same way, so that we can generate
07:42a distribution.
07:43One of the things that we know about early stage returns is that they are power law distributed.
07:48They are not normally distributed.
07:50So for example, we expect most of the companies not to generate very interesting returns,
07:56but we expect a few of those companies to generate a great deal of return.
08:01And what'll tend to happen is that really it's only the companies that get to the top
08:06of the market in terms of adoption that will actually generate most of the return.
08:11What we see is that's probably somewhere between about 10% of the companies.
08:17And what we've learned over time is that both our first and second portfolios are actually
08:23positively correlated with that notion that the top 10% are generating most of the return,
08:29and that we have a large portfolio enough to generate that return consistently.
08:34That's really interesting.
08:36You have a data-driven approach, but you also have an approach that I think, if I'm correct
08:40in understanding your life journey, has been kind of informed by that journey.
08:45You are the daughter of migrant workers and really watched your parents build a life from scratch.
08:52Can you talk about your childhood and what you bring from that childhood to your work today?
08:56Yes.
08:57My parents started off as migrant farm workers.
09:00They moved from Puerto Rico to Florida.
09:03Then they would work the crops between Florida and New York State.
09:05I was born in upstate New York in Dunkirk, New York.
09:09They stopped doing that when my older sister got ready for school because they wanted her
09:15to be able to stay in one school district.
09:18We moved to Chicago, and they were able to find factory work through ... Each of them
09:23had a sibling that had moved to Chicago from Puerto Rico.
09:27That's where I grew up.
09:30My parents both obviously worked very hard.
09:33A lot of the times ... Lawyers have the worst hours of anyone, I would say.
09:38In fact, they say that they're even worse than doctors these days.
09:42My sense of that is nobody really works as hard as a migrant farm worker, so I knew that
09:48I was really blessed to be able to do the kind of work that I have done both as an attorney
09:54and as a venture capitalist.
09:56You got to the attorney part before I did.
09:58You have four degrees from Stanford.
10:01Is that correct?
10:02I do.
10:03I love the place.
10:04You were on their board for a minute there too, right?
10:08We kind of say I bleed cardinal because that's the name of our team.
10:13Speaking of the law, let's talk about your early days.
10:15You get your law degree.
10:16You're working as a lawyer.
10:18You were hired as Google's second ever lawyer in 2001.
10:23That was early days for Google.
10:25What was that job like?
10:26It was a really fun job.
10:28I have to say it's one of the more fun jobs I've ever had.
10:31Part of it is growing a company from what was $85 million the first year that I was
10:38there to over $10 billion in five years is an incredible opportunity.
10:44It's really like climbing Mount Everest with some of the smartest people you could ever
10:49meet.
10:50Also fun because it was a real startup.
10:53When I joined, they would actually make the rack servers for the data rooms in the hallways.
10:59I'd be walking over guys with rack servers and people that in the data rooms would actually
11:05be wearing roller skates to actually change out parts on those servers.
11:10It was a really fun time to work there.
11:13It's gotten a little bit bigger in the years since.
11:15A lot bigger.
11:16I think with $10 billion when I left, I think they closed $100 billion quarter last time.
11:25Before you founded your venture firm, you were also an entrepreneur.
11:28Tell us about those days.
11:29Yeah.
11:30I was an entrepreneur in the late 90s along with half of Silicon Valley, which was the
11:36first boom.
11:38This was a real time when the internet was still new.
11:41I had worked on an IPO as a young attorney that had only 39 million users on the internet
11:49in 1996.
11:51We were early days developing software that would be used by enterprises.
11:57There were many times when we had to go without pay, where we really would do every kind of
12:03work that was needed to get it done.
12:06I would work as the attorney, a consultant, and also hire people, negotiate leases, whatever
12:14needed to be done.
12:16Then the evolution to venture founder, it really seems quite natural.
12:20I think to go from law to venture feels like quite a jump, but does the JD inform what
12:26you do as a VC?
12:27Yes.
12:28Both the law and business school degrees really inform a lot of what I do.
12:32One, as a venture capitalist, you're basically selling securities.
12:36I was a securities attorney, mostly working with venture capitalists and startup companies
12:41in the mid 90s before becoming a startup founder.
12:46As a startup founder, you have to do everything that walks in the door.
12:51Part of what you're trying to do is build a business, but also keep your IP from bigger companies.
12:58We were a small startup company, but we were dealing with Fortune 2000 company customers.
13:04They have huge legal teams, so it was really helpful to have that background.
13:09You have witnessed the evolution of the internet, basically from its birth to today.
13:14You invest in internet and tech-enabled businesses, so I'm really curious.
13:18You hear a lot of consumer concern about internet security, AI, social media.
13:25I could go on, but as you think about what everyday people are talking about and worrying
13:30about when it comes to the internet, what is a fear that you think is overblown?
13:35I think a fear that's overblown is that AI will put people out of work tomorrow.
13:40Instead, I actually think that AI will help create more efficient ways for people to work
13:45and get rid of a lot of the drudgery of what they do.
13:48I also think that it will help them to be able to do more interesting parts of the job.
13:55For myself, for example, if I were doing a bunch of document review for filing, let's say,
14:03I would have to go read everything, summarize it for myself, try to keep track of where it all is.
14:10I think AI can do that more effectively and at least guide me to places where you need
14:16a human and human judgment to be able to find the things that matter.
14:21I think it's actually a great tool, and I think people are afraid when a lot of jobs
14:28really won't be replaced by AI, but I think they'll be augmented.
14:33It's true.
14:34I think about transcription services.
14:35I remember when I was starting as a reporter, very meticulously sitting at a desk with my
14:41recorder here and my laptop here and transcribing every word.
14:47I think my rate of typing was slow, so it would take eight hours to transcribe one interview.
14:53I've gotten all that time back thanks to the AI services that just do it for me.
14:59Are you looking for AI opportunities in your portfolio and in the startups you speak with?
15:04We are.
15:05Although, we're tending to look at applications of AI as opposed to infrastructural AI.
15:11A lot of the big companies like Google and Microsoft and Apple are all developing AIs,
15:18obviously OpenAI as well, that are incredibly powerful, and they're spending tens of billions
15:24of dollars to do so.
15:27Competing head-on with those is maybe something that Elon can do, but it's probably not in
15:31my wheelhouse.
15:33Instead, we're looking for applications where our companies can help make businesses work
15:41cheaper, better, faster, and also serve new customers.
15:46For example, a company that is in our portfolio has applied AI to transcribing phone interviews
15:56that not-for-profits do with senior citizens that receive services from those not-for-profits.
16:03A lot of the times, there's a government agency that's charged with making sure that seniors
16:08who don't have families are actually cared for.
16:12The hardest thing they have to do is actually track down what's happening with a particular
16:17senior.
16:19All of these records, like you, it takes a lot of time to transcribe all of the phone
16:24messages that you've gone through with respect to a client.
16:28Now, an AI can help do that for the not-for-profit worker and get that into the system so people
16:35know Beth's food was late or not delivered, and she can get the services that she needs.
16:41That's really interesting.
16:42Now, I talked about people's fears.
16:45Flip side of that question, because you're looking at internet trends, technology trends,
16:49what is something that you're seeing percolating that is exciting that the consumer public
16:54is not talking about or realizing?
16:57I think related to AI is the fact that we can develop software that's much more cost-effective
17:04for areas that really don't have the same kind of budgets as the private sector.
17:10We're seeing industries that are referred to as laggard industries, like education or
17:16government, not-for-profits, be able to afford software that really meets needs that they
17:21have but might not have been able to afford before.
17:25For example, one of our portfolio companies is developing a technology to help not-for-profits
17:31be able to fundraise, and that's something that can be done with an AI more effectively
17:37perhaps than with other methods.
17:39Miriam, we are speaking today in New York City and not Silicon Valley because you are
17:43in town for a board meeting, and I love this board.
17:47Can you tell us?
17:49I'm here for the Sesame Street board meeting.
17:51It's actually called Sesame Workshop, but everybody knows it as Sesame Street.
17:55How did you get on the board of Sesame Street?
17:57I will call it Sesame Street because I grew up watching Sesame Street.
18:00It is a funny story in that they asked a number of diverse women if they would like to be
18:06on the board, expecting maybe one person to say yes, but instead they ended up with about
18:12five of us on the board, and all of us because we had our own unique Sesame Story.
18:19What's your Sesame Story?
18:21As I mentioned, I was a Head Start kid.
18:23I spoke Spanish first.
18:25I didn't learn English until I was in Head Start, and Sesame Street was really one of
18:30the ways that my parents helped me learn English and get ready for school.
18:36You have a really interesting statement that you've made, which is, you know, I doubted
18:41there were many Googlers whose early childhood education consisted of Sesame Street and Title
18:46One Head Start, who had earned four Stanford degrees, co-founded a venture-backed startup,
18:52and would develop technology services agreements that would generate billions of dollars for
18:58Google.
18:59The long shot can be very profitable.
19:03You say that about yourself.
19:05Is that what you look for in entrepreneurs, the long shots?
19:08I'm really looking for those long shots because in a power law distributed world, you're looking
19:14for long shots.
19:16And it's really the few that will generate a lot of profitability.
19:21How are you finding them?
19:23It's looking for talent in places that others don't look.
19:27So for example, we really look at diverse teams that include women, that include people
19:32of color, that include people of all genders, immigrants, for example.
19:38And there are huge markets and problems that people don't identify in venture capital as
19:44being huge.
19:45For example, one of our companies also uses AI and computer vision to create hair lace
19:52that is used to custom make wigs.
19:55This is a market that is addressing the needs of a large number of women, predominantly
20:01black women, but also women with hair loss from disease.
20:05And they had the experience that even though they were this super dynamic team of two sisters,
20:12Nigerian immigrant, black women, one of them had a BS in computer science, a master's in
20:19electrical engineering, both from Stanford, a PhD in computer vision from MIT.
20:25Her sister had a Wharton undergrad and MBA, and they could not get a meeting in the East
20:32Coast to address this market because people think it's not a big market.
20:37When we analyzed the data, it turns out that this is about a $12 billion market.
20:43We think that it can be kind of the Warby Parker of wigs.
20:48That sounds like a huge business, but you have your eyes open at least, so someone's
20:52funding them.
20:53We're funding them, but we were the first venture firm that took a meeting with this
20:56team.
20:58How many times in your career have you been the first or the only?
21:01Have you lost count?
21:03I think I've lost count.
21:06I don't want to, and my firm is trying to do something about that as well.
21:11I have a partner named Maria Salamanca, who's obviously also Latinx, and we also have a
21:17young senior associate, Andrea Bogarin, who is Peruvian also.
21:23We talked a little earlier about your comment about Silicon Valley looking like 1950s America.
21:28Do you think it is changing?
21:30It is changing.
21:31Over the last 15 years, the number of firms that have been started by people of color
21:36has really exploded.
21:38In 2020, we did an analysis of the market and determined that about 50 firms that were
21:45led by Black and Latinx founders had actually made about two-thirds of all the investments
21:53in African American and Latinx founders in the United States, and that would number fewer
21:57than 100 investments.
22:00Since that time, there's probably about six times as many firms.
22:04Wow.
22:05So it's growing.
22:07It's growing, and we have dynamics where right now venture capital is out of favor, and year-over-year
22:14investment in firms has gone down by 70%.
22:18Venture capital is out of favor, or is it just that we had the frothiness of 2021 and
22:24the exuberance of so much investment that everyone's being a little more conservative
22:29with dry powder these days?
22:31I think it's both.
22:32So one, we did have a lot of exuberance, but two, we also have a lot of safe yield coming
22:40in from government debt and Treasury bills, for example.
22:43If you can get a guaranteed 5% rate of return that's backed by the U.S. government, I think
22:48that's a pretty good investment for a lot of people.
22:50I think that makes sense.
22:52As you look at your career, let me ask everyone on a 50 over 50 this.
22:56When you were in your 20s and 30s, did you ever imagine your career over 50?
23:01I had to admit that I hadn't thought about being 50 ever.
23:05I think that was beyond the point when I could think.
23:08When I was a kid, I really thought of setting goals for myself, and most of them I've met.
23:15And the last one that I did meet at 50 was actually running my first marathon.
23:20And I haven't written my book yet.
23:21That's another thing that I want to do at some point is write a book.
23:24So as a teen, you made a list of goals, and on it was run a marathon, which you've done,
23:30write a book.
23:31Write a book.
23:32I wanted, I thought I would get married.
23:33I wanted to go to graduate school.
23:36I wanted to raise children.
23:39So those were on my, like, I knew I wanted those things, but I didn't really know what
23:44would come after that point.
23:46Is being over 50 an advantage or disadvantage in your line of work?
23:51Well, some would say that it's a disadvantage.
23:54When I first started to raise capital for Ulu Ventures, I asked an experienced venture
24:00capitalist for a referral to a limited partner, which is an investor who invests professionally
24:06in venture firms.
24:07And he told me that venture was a young man's game.
24:12And so I was really left astounded because I'd served on a board with this person.
24:17I think he knew me fairly well, but he dismissed me out of hand.
24:21And that's not the first time you've been dismissed.
24:23Earlier in your career, when you were a co-founder of a venture-backed company, you were a new
24:29mom and one of your investors was a little opinionated about how you should be spending
24:34your time.
24:35Are you willing to share this story with us?
24:37Yes.
24:38I think it's a mark of its day, but I had my daughter on Friday.
24:42I went back to work on Monday, and a few months later, I was told that by a director, if it
24:49were his grandchild, he'd prefer the mother to stay home.
24:54And I was asked to leave my firm.
24:57You were asked to leave.
24:58And that's partly because a new set of venture capitalists were coming in, and they did not
25:03want a husband and wife team.
25:04My husband and I were co-founders at the time of the startup.
25:07I certainly felt that it was a bias against working women and certainly marital status
25:13bias.
25:15So what I'm hearing is, as hard as that moment was for you when that investor said that awfully
25:21biased thing, you heard in that you were not wanted and you would be better off finding
25:27somewhere that you would be valued and you would be accepted.
25:31That turned out to be the case for me.
25:33I ended up at Google, which turned out to be a pretty good place to work and at a pretty
25:37good time.
25:39I think it's really important for people to identify a place where they will be given
25:43a fair shot and to find the right investors and the right supporters.
25:49If you don't do that, I don't think you can build a great career.
25:52As I look at your career, it feels very intentional at every step.
25:56You have the degree.
25:58You become a lawyer.
25:59You work for Google.
26:00You take that knowledge and you eventually become a venture capitalist and combining
26:05all of the above.
26:06Over the years, there were some moments of uncertainty.
26:10Is there a moment of uncertainty that stands out, either a decade or a job or one incident
26:15that you think back to and you, at the time, had no idea how it would work out?
26:20I have to say that Google was partly like that.
26:24We were growing at the fastest rate of any company in American history and I was literally
26:31the second person in this department and we were overwhelmed by the volume of work on
26:38our team.
26:39The first few weeks, I opened 130 different legal matters and I really didn't think I
26:45could prepare folders anymore because it was just too much volume.
26:50Part of my challenge and a fun problem to solve was how do we handle that much volume?
26:56A lot of the work that I did was actually reengineering processes compared to just doing
27:02legal work.
27:03I ended up shortening our contract from eight pages down to one page, for example, because
27:08the fewer words there are on a page, the fewer things there are to negotiate.
27:13Then I tried other approaches from even fast food operations to try to figure out how do
27:19we get the volume through so that we don't slow down the revenue growth of this company.
27:25A lot of my challenges were operational as opposed to legal in nature.
27:30I was going in that direction about uncertainty because I think so many people feel uncertain
27:36at different moments in their career.
27:38Taking that example, what did you learn about navigating through career uncertainty while
27:43you were at Google, navigating that deluge of business?
27:47One is I learned that I'm a pretty good surfer and that I think you have to have that mentality.
27:52I'm not a surfer, really.
27:54I do have a child who does it.
27:56But it's really understanding that you are riding a wave, that you are in hyper growth
28:03and that a lot of things will kind of fall to the wayside.
28:07One person said, should I give away my cat and my plants?
28:10Because it was not a time when you could have balance in life.
28:14I think part of it is just realizing that there are moments in your life when all you'll
28:19do is just try to keep up.
28:22If you can do more than that, it's gravy.
28:26If we speak again in a year, two years, five years from now, what do you want to be able
28:30to tell me that you've accomplished or that Ulu has accomplished?
28:34The best thing that we could do in the next three, five years would be to actually return
28:42capital and more to our investors.
28:46They are foundations, pensions, higher education endowments.
28:51They're all doing amazing things in their communities, providing scholarships, research
28:56that makes us all better off.
28:59They're providing for pensioners in their old age.
29:02We really want these companies to win so that those investors can win.