Philippe Von Borries: Building A $500M Business By Seeing Women As More Than A ‘Niche’ Market

Philippe Von Borries is the co-founder and CEO of Refinery29 which is a leading digital media and entertainment company dedicated to inspiring young women to live an informed & well-rounded life. The company has raised so far $130 million from investors such as First Round, Lerer, Floodgate, Stripes Group, and even Hearst Communications.

In this episode you will learn:

Finding profitable revenue streams
Building credibility towards your brand
Committing to full transparency in your organization
Achieving massive scale
Not allowing disagreements simmer and fester
Investing in lifting your cofounders up, you’ll need the same one day
Getting a full spectrum of perspectives so you can make the best decisions
Being kind to yourself

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About Philippe Von Borries:

Philippe cofounded Refinery29 with the goal of building a destination to celebrate independent style and help people discover the world’s greatest independent designers and makers.

Today, Refinery29 is re-inventing the global media landscape.

Reaching over 65M people monthly across the web, mobile, social and video, R29 is now the largest digital lifestyle media company in the United States with 24/7 content in a multitude of categories—from fashion to politics.

Every day, Refinery29’s mission is to fearlessly inspire confidence and celebrate individuality in people everywhere.

Philippe focuses on corporate strategy and direction for the company’s product, marketing and content.

Refinery29’s many accolades include three Webby Awards, four consecutive Inc. 500 awards for fastest growing companies in the US, a top fashion honor from Forbes, and an ASME nomination for Best Website.

In 2015, Philippe was named winner of the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award in the Media Category.

Connect with Philippe Von Borries:

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FULL TRANSCRIPTION OF THE INTERVIEW:

Alejandro: Alrighty. Hello everyone and welcome to the DealMakers show. Today we’re going to be learning a ton about digital media and entertainment. So, without further ado, I want to welcome our guest today, Philippe von Borries from Refinery29. Welcome to the show today.

Philippe von Borries: Thank you very much.

Alejandro: Originally from Cologne. I think we’re going to get the battle of accents here on the episode today. So, how was life growing up there?

Philippe von Borries: Life growing up in Germany was okay. It was pretty short. I came to the States when I was 16 years old. I landed at a high school as an exchange student as a teenager. I think I knew that somehow I was actually meant to have been born in the States and somehow finagled my way to go to a boarding school in Massachusetts called Concord Academy when I was 16. I never really looked back. I’ve lived in the States ever since.

Alejandro: Did you always want to come here, or was it just like something that your parents suggested?

Philippe von Borries: My parents didn’t suggest it at all. I think they had wished that I was in Germany. My parents live in Germany. I was drawn to the States through movies and pulp culture and everything else. I think my family took me on a couple of trips to New York when I was really young. I knew that I needed to be in the States. I don’t think I had any sense of entrepreneurship when I was at that age, but the creativity and somewhat sort of stereotypical opportunity, but it’s true was there, and I felt it. I knew early on that I needed to be in the States to become the person that I am.

Alejandro: Really cool. Then you went to Columbia here in New York. What did you study there?

Philippe von Borries: Yeah. I lived in New York during college. I went to Columbia. I studied history. I was really into politics and international affairs. I really saw that as my path. I worked for an amazing professor who actually has a weekly column in the Financial Times called [3:38] through my off hours. I moved down to D.C. after I graduated at Columbia to work at an International Affairs startup called the Globalist back in 2003 to 2005. Very different era in terms of building brands and monetization. So, I got my start in the space, but had really come of age and built my circle of friends and acquaintances with a lot of people that had gone into different creative spaces launching businesses from music to fashion. D.C. is all about one thing. It’s politics, and while that was really interesting to me, I was missing the creative edge. I knew deep down too that I was on a path to create something, and I moved back to New York. Soon thereafter, the story of Refinery29 began.

Alejandro: Got it. All you’ve known is startups. Why after Columbia where you saw all these people going into consulting—

Philippe von Borries: Finance.

Alejandro: — and different backings. Look, we’re talking about the early 2000s. So, it’s like the startup ecosystem wasn’t even as mature as it is today. You knew that in Silicon Valley, but not like the Silicon Alley here, for example, in New York. How did you come up with the idea of “I’m going to go do a startup?”

Philippe von Borries: I didn’t even go to a startup. I created the startup.

Alejandro: But I mean this political startup in D.C.

Philippe von Borries: Oh, yeah. That was really the result more than anything of being drawn into the world of media, journalism, early online startup culture, and something about it just felt right. I just knew that I wanted to play a role there. Yeah, the days were definitely very different. This was when most people, like you said, were heading into consulting and finance. It wasn’t like everybody was pursuing tech jobs, particularly after what had happened a couple of years prior. But I saw an opportunity in the content space and the media space. I think that’s what drew me in.

Alejandro: Let’s talk about the opportunity. So, you created Refinery29. How did the idea come about? How did you come up with meeting Justin, Piera, and Christene as well? How did the idea all come together?

Philippe von Borries: Like you said, there’s four people who founded the Refinery. The four people are still together. It’s a pretty remarkable story. Last year I went onstage at an event introducing the four of us, and I said, “The band is still together.” I think a lot of the success is in the partnership that we’ve had. And full disclosure, Piera is my wife.

Alejandro: Nice.

Philippe von Borries: We were together and dating at the time we founded the Refinery, and soon thereafter, we got married. The story of Refinery began in 2005. We were all living in New York, starting off in our mid-20s. The initial idea was really about curating and building a platform to discover really cool, independent brands and boutiques in different cities around the world and creating a lot of sidebar content around that. I should really qualify that. The initial idea was probably only appealing to a subgenre of people. This was about highlighting people who are not in the mainstream. That was really powerful. It also meant that the business grew really slowly, but it had a really authentic core to it. We were promoting and writing about people and telling stories about people who were just starting out in creating their own businesses and their own brands. I’m not sure how much these names will resonate for this audience, but even in the fashion world, brands like rag & bone had just started out. I remember going to their midtown office overlooking a park, and it just being the two of them in their office. There were all of these different brands that were popping up at that time starting something new. We were putting them in the spotlight and creating something really valuable. It was a really interesting mix between content and service and tools of discovery. That set us in motion, and that gave us liftoff, and thereby started the story of Refinery29.

Alejandro: Really nice. So, how did you guys divide the responsibilities because four co-founders, obviously, that’s probably what I would say is the limit? If you go over that, it gets a little bit crazy in terms of managing egos. How did you guys divide and conquer in terms of responsibilities?

Philippe von Borries: It was pretty straightforward. Piera and Kristine actually work together in a previous world, in the magazine world. So, Kristine took over all content editorial. Piera took over all visual design, which is the signature of the business even today. My business partner, Justin, looked at the ad sales and monetization world and I focused on fundraising and marketing, and the overall product mix. That was the initial division of labor, but it was pretty organic. I remember our first office was in a Cavallaro Studio on Leonard Street in Tribeca two basements down where there would be a ray of sunlight between 12:00 and 12:15 every afternoon. We built a small team. This is before the distribution mechanisms of growing audience or monetization was in place. The digital app sales ecosystem was barely existent. All the money was flowing to Yahoo and banner media. We built it very, very organically. We’d host events locally in New York in different stores and boutiques. We’d sign people up and get their email addresses literally on a clipboard. I mean, this was a manual as you can imagine. It really had a root and being very authentic. The right people were identifying themselves with the tone and the mission of Refinery early on in that we built a lot of word-of-mouth and street cred very, very quickly. It’s interesting, Refinery today as a media and entertainment company really focused on women, and we didn’t engineer that. We didn’t. As you can probably imagine from me telling the story, we didn’t set out to just go about and create a next-generation media and entertainment brand for women. The story was different, and women became the audience because they chose themselves. I think we’re writing about things and covering things in a way in which we weren’t mirroring these traditional media worlds of particularly women’s’ media that was telling you how you should live your life, what you should put on your face, and dating tips, or beauty tips, or whatever it might be. It was very democratic and much more open. That gave us sort of a license, and it had a very different appeal than anything else that was out there.

Alejandro: Then how did you guys start to make some money out of this? What was the business model?

Philippe von Borries: It’s actually a very interesting story. We were focused on all of these very Indy brands. The first business model was actually a marketplace. So, the e-commerce world was more promising at that point than the advertising world for us. We built out a marketplace similar to what Farfetch is today. We had a marketplace. Actually, the name Refinery came about because we created a digital mall called The Refinery where each floor housed 29 different boutiques and brands in different categories. That digital mall became the initial business model by basically networking all of these independent stores together. Then you could shop them with one unified checkout. That was pretty advanced for the time. We started to make some good money, but for anyone who’s in the marketplace world, you really need to have massive scale because otherwise, it’s a third-party model and the margins aren’t particularly great. Like I said earlier, the thing developed a lot of street cred. People were writing about it, and talking about it, and saying, “This is a really interesting model bringing cool, independent local brands to an online destination and making them universally discoverable. One day a big brand that shall go unnamed called us and said, “We want to be on your map in your mall.” We said, “No. There’s no way your big brand; your too masked. We’re all about Indy. They said, “How about we give you $100,000. We said, “That’s amazing.” That was the most amount of money someone had ever offered us. We turned it into a pop-up shop. We said, “This is still all about independent brands, and it’s all about this Indy cred. We’re going to build you a brand and pop-up shop.” That was our first foray into what very organically would become over time branded content, branded entertainment. Thereby we birthed our advertising business.

Alejandro: Very nice. Then what were some of those early days and the challenges that you guys were encountering as you were pushing forward?

Philippe von Borries: There were so many.

Alejandro: Name a few because I know every day is full of fires, but if you had to name like the most meaningful ones, which ones would those be?

Philippe von Borries: I think the early challenges are definitely in fundraising. That whole ecosystem wasn’t really built out in New York. I think the only major significant venture fund out there was Union Square Ventures. There was really nothing else out there. To even build our own network.

Alejandro: This was 2010 when you started fundraising, or when was this when you started getting out there for money?

Philippe von Borries: Yeah, probably like 2006 or so.

Alejandro: 2006, so it was earlier.

Philippe von Borries: Yeah, it was early. We basically had to build our own network of people with money to invest.

Alejandro: How did you do that?

Philippe von Borries: We met one entrepreneur in New York who actually set in motion a network of people who pretty quickly all came about and wanted to invest in the business. But that was probably after meeting like 25 or 35 people. That one person was like a critical connection at that point for us to open up an entire universe of new connections. So, that was really, really key. I’d say the fundraising was probably one and teaching ourselves the ropes. Again, different time; different era. We hadn’t been serial entrepreneurs. This was our first go-round, specifically making our – like creating and addressing our first media plan ever for our first ad campaign. The universe, the marketplace in our category was just a lot less mature. So, we had to put one step in front of the other, learning the ropes.

Alejandro: From a fundraising perspective, how much capital have you guys raised to date?

Philippe von Borries: To date, we’ve raised about 110 million dollars.

Alejandro: 110. So, how would you say the financing milestones and the progress from milestone to milestone has been for you guys?

Philippe von Borries: If you look at a chart over a time starting since 2005, we started really, really slow. It probably took us four or five years to get to a million dollars or two million dollars in revenue. I think were it not for the fact that we’re in our mid-20s that I think we could have easily said, “Let’s throw in the towel. This is not going to work out.” But we were young, and the risk was pretty low, and we were doing something that we really loved. The great thing about media is that it’s one of the most interesting, fast-moving, and intellectually-compelling categories to be in. It started to eventually accelerate, and then with our first Series A and the expansion into branded content, entertainment, and the full powers of Refinery as a marketing platform, our revenues started to really accelerate. Then Series B and C, things really came about pretty quickly thereafter and very organically. We didn’t really have to seek it out all the way through to our last financing. Like everything in life, it had a relatively slow start and then started to accelerate over time.

Alejandro: Of course, and great investors by the way. For the people that are listening, you have First Round, Lerer, Floodgate, Stripes Group, and even Hearst Communications. So, what was the process like meeting these guys and closing them?

Philippe von Borries: It was all really, really organic. I think our Series A was probably the hardest and took the most amount of time. It’s also interesting – I tell this story often. We’re a women-focused company, and we’ve written plenty about female-funded businesses and the still-tiny percentage of VC-funded women-owned businesses relatively speaking. I think even for us pitching a business that was women-focused, even as men was more challenging. It took people a while to fully appreciate the opportunity in what we were doing. Then after we locked in our Series A with Floodgate, which was one of our big partners at the time, things started to set in motion. Then with our Series C, we had Stripes Group come onboard. That was when we had such a good lesson because we had met them two years earlier. The business was too small for them to invest. By that time, we had really proven out our model, and the projection said if we had taken them through a couple of years earlier, we would have squarely beaten. They came back to us, and it became a very organic process from there on out. It was so with future investors as well. With WPP later and with Scripts, and with Turner, people that we met along the way and built very organic relationships with. As we bring people up to speed and the progress in our business, new opportunities would present themselves.

Alejandro: Very nice. The other thing that I was being present to as you were speaking is that educating these investors probably was a really major one because unfortunately, where things are coming from, from a history perspective, VC has been labeled as a boy’s club. So, obviously, since you were targeting and you had this segment of customers, you were trying to speak to those investors, but they had no clue because it was not the target audience for something like this. I’m sure that was difficult.

Philippe von Borries: 100%. Even we would get the line very often. An investor would say, “Let me ask my wife about this.”

Alejandro: Wow.

Philippe von Borries: We heard that many times early on. But I should also say that the people who backed Refinery along the way, we found some of the most powerful and amazing women, obviously, in this space. I think the whole financial universe has obviously seen a lot more powerful women who’ve set up funds and who’ve become investors over the last five, six years. But again, in the mid-2000s, there was a lot less of them. But even then, we found some really amazing funds that had female partners like Ann Miura-Ko at Floodgate who early on saw the opportunity in the business. And another amazing woman, Shana Fisher. That’s always been part of our story. Ultimately, the people who understood what we’re doing in the lives of women as investors, female investors quickly identified with the business in what Christene, Piera, Justin, and myself were after. That was always a critical part of the story.

Alejandro: That’s amazing. Look. I think that times are changing now, and I’m actually thrilled that that’s the case. I have three daughters myself. So, we’re at the right time in history for women, and I love it. I’m glad that my girls are going to be living in a different world. We’re seeing great, great female investors now, great female founders, and it’s just incredible.

Philippe von Borries: Amen to that!

Alejandro: Yeah. Shifting gears a little bit here, you were talking before about more of the Series A level, for example. There were times that you really felt like throwing in the towel. Make us insiders because we all know that entrepreneurship has no such thing as a straight line, and there are really tough moments in the journey. What was one, for example, of those moments that were dark, and what was the breakthrough out of it?

Philippe von Borries: It’s a great question. I remember specifically a moment where we were raising our Seed Round. We had somebody who we were spending a lot of time with, a serial entrepreneur who has had many successful exits, who committed himself to basically be the lead, and who had brought in a bunch of other investors to ride on his coattails and invest in the business. Literally, a day before we were supposed to sign, he went dark. He just disappeared, and it wasn’t until we literally saw him as a restaurant like four years later, and we never saw his face again.

Alejandro: Did you throw a cake at him or her?

Philippe von Borries: You know, that’s never been my vibe. I don’t know what happened to him. You can only make assumptions. By the way, all the people that are in this universe ended up investing in the business, but it was one of those moments where you’re like, “Wait. This is crazy. We spent the last three months wooing this person who had come through every model.” We were ready to go, and by the way, he was the lead, and he disappeared. There are moments like that where you’re just, “This is crazy. Why am I doing this?”

Alejandro: What did you do? I’ve had many people, for example, who were in a situation like that, and in many instances, it’s very challenging because the entrepreneur makes the mistake of increasing burn rate because they’re counting on that money to come in potentially. How did that impact you guys, and how did you recover from it?

Philippe von Borries: First of all, it was one of those things where you were like, “Well, I thought I had this thing ready to go.” Then you reset, and you go back to square one. You know, you recover from it by realizing that you got this far in the first place, and what you’re doing is clearly resonating with the audience. That was the most important thing. That’s the thing that’s always kept us going. Even at this point, we’re in a place right now in media and entertainment where it’s a more challenging time. We have one of the most significant and influential brands in the space. We’ve filled up the largest audience across the board with more engagement. We’re working together with incredible people from creators to actors to filmmakers to brands, and it’s that that keeps you committed to what you’re doing. For us, it really has been about the larger mission that we do in the lives of our audiences that really is the thing that ultimately makes you push through. I think even at that time, it did. At that time, the business was still so small that it was not even much to adjust in terms of burn rate. It was probably like lowering our salaries from like $45,000 to $40,000. There was so little to lose at that time. The stakes, obviously, get higher as you go along. But I think it’s the commitment to what we’re doing.

Alejandro: Got it. So, basically, going from Ramen to a starvation for a couple days.

Philippe von Borries: Yeah. You survive.

Alejandro: That’s it. As long as you have the drive and the customer is there, you’ve just got to keep pushing. Philippe, for you guys, how big is the company today?

Philippe von Borries: Today, the company in terms of headcount, we’re a little over 400 people. Offices in New York, which is our headquarters. Also, offices in LA and in London and Berlin. Companies north of 100 million revenue. The way we speak about ourselves today is as a media entertainment brand focused on women with several businesses that really stretch across our core media and advertising business including our Life Events business, our Studio, and Originals business which is creating long-form programming, and our international business as well which is a critical part of our growth story now.

Alejandro: I also saw that you guys had the co-founder and co-CEO structure, so I wanted to ask you how did that structure work out for you guys, and then also how has the roles of the co-founders evolved as the company was getting up to north of 100 million and over 400 employees?

Philippe von Borries: First, an enormous shout out to Christene and Piera who have much more the face of the audience. Both of them have built up big public profiles and personalities. It’s an incredibly important testament for us to have connection to the audience that is also mirrored by the people who we founded the business with. As for Justin and myself, yes, we’re co-CEOs in the business. Justin has always taken a little bit more of a focus and leadership on the outsell side of the business and the finance side of the business. We me, always a little bit more on the product marketing content side. But we have an incredible collaborative relationship. We’ve known each other for 20 years. We spend an incredible amount of time together, and we’re very, very aligned in the way we look at the business and the decisions that we make, with a good bit of debate, but I don’t think we’ve ever had an argument at night and awakened the next morning not talking to each other in 20 years. I think that’s a testament to how it’s worked. It’s worked for us. It probably doesn’t work for everybody, but I think the company is better for it.

Alejandro: I think that perhaps the communication has been a critical factor in making that happen. How do the two of you embrace communication?

Philippe von Borries: It’s such an important point. At the simplest level, you can’t let anything simmer and/or fester. I think it’s the biggest – it’s one of the biggest learnings to me. I read an article today on recode that Slake for a while deemed to be a great tool of productivity. It’s also getting away from people actually having conversations and solving problems in real time. Justin and I talk through anything and everything that comes up in that moment, and we’ll try to get through resolution. That means speaking on the phone, picking up the phone. That also extends to anyone of our direct reports. I think the direct seeking out of people in the real world, on the phone, or in person is just such a critical driver, and it’s somehow remarkable how easy and how forgotten that sometimes is.

Alejandro: Absolutely. I guess talking about Justin here and your relationship, what has been a major breakthrough that has happened between the two of you guys that has taken that relationship to a full other level if you’re willing to share?

Philippe von Borries: That’s such a big question.

Alejandro: An event or a moment that really got you guys closer and really made that relationship be magical on a whole other level.

Philippe von Borries: Wow! What a good question. It’s hard for me to pin down one moment. I think there’s just a ton of respect across the board. If you’re an entrepreneur, it can be tricky at times. You sometimes feel the weight of the world on your shoulders. I think it’s important to have a partnership where you can be there for one another, and if someone is a little bit more in a funk than the other person to lift you out of that too. I think it’s a critical responsibility. I think it’s probably one of the strongest parts of our partnership. Even across the four of us, but I think for Justin and myself, I think it’s one of the most critical things you can do.

Alejandro: Absolutely. What about the communication with your wife? You guys working together? I’ve heard that you even go to the office an hour earlier than her so that you guys don’t do the commute. Is that right?

Philippe von Borries: No, that was maybe a few years ago. Now, we have a kid. Everything has changed.

Alejandro: Okay.

Philippe von Borries: My relationship with Piera is actually one of the most significant aspects of my own journey as an entrepreneur, as a leader, as a creative person. Piera is a force of nature and an outspoken champion for women, and obviously a great creative leader. I think we have a unique relationship. It’s not easy to have four founders and work together. It’s not easy to have a co-CEO, and by the way, we work in the same room. But particularly working with your life partner is a whole other dimension. For us, it’s worked out incredibly. We both support and help each other out in different ways. For example, if I am putting together a communication to the company, I want her input in ways that she can make the story come to life and get her thoughts. If there’s something where she needs my input to help apply a layer of organization on top of a lot of creative ideas, she seeks out my ideas. It’s amazing. But now, we have a little bit less time in the mornings now that we have a baby, running ideas by one another. When you have a kid, you’re lucky if you have like a third of an email draft finished by the time you leave the house.

Alejandro: I hear you. It’s funny because the last business I also built it with my wife.

Philippe von Borries: You did?

Alejandro: Yeah. So, I know the drill. I know exactly how it is and the journey. The cool thing, we have kids now, but I tell the joke to my wife that now that we have kids, they’re also like startups, but there’s no exit, and you only break even when they let you sleep at night. Let me ask you this, Philippe, where do you see the media space heading?

Philippe von Borries: It’s one of the most interesting times that’s ever existed in the space all around. If you look at just what’s happening right now at the upper echelon of all the large traditional media companies that are launching direct to consumer offerings from Disney to Warner to NBC. It’s probably one of the most interesting moments every over the next 12 months as a lot of the buildup over the last 10 years with people seeing the end of the bundle coming. It’s actually happening. I was out in LA last week, and we were meeting with a lot of the different content companies. There’s an arms-race right now in the space, and it’s probably one of the greatest times to ever be in it. At the same time, it’s a challenging time also because you’re dealing with a business model that has traditionally been at least one of the legs of the stool’s advertising that is a more challenged space with the platform still taking the majority of the growth. That means that the focus is on for businesses in the space to build diversified revenue streams with probably a 50/50 distribution between advertising and direct-to-consumer revenue streams. We’re now at about 70/30, which is a huge progression from where we were. Even just a few years ago when the business was north of 90% an advertising business, and that’s the result of things like our Life Events business where we sold over 100,000 tickets last year, and our Originals business where we’re selling content to a lot of the streaming services or networks. So, that’s the big challenge here. You can only be successful with it if you have a great brand, if you know exactly what you stand for, if you have an audience that cares, that tunes in, that shows up in the real world. For us, right now, this is a moment about continuing to show up for our audience, build a great, efficient, and profitable business, and make sure that our journey of diversification which is off to an amazingly successful start over the last few years is really going to come all the way full-circle.

Alejandro: Really cool. Showing up. There’s nothing like showing up. I think that community is king, so I’m right there with you. I think that if you guys continue to show up and really deliver value like you guys have been doing, I’m sure that you’ll find the way. In a world, Philippe, where the vision of Refinery29 is fully realized, what does that world look like?

Philippe von Borries: We say that world looks like where people can reach their infinite potential. That’s our own vision. The mission of Refinery is to be a catalyst for women to fully see and claim their power. I think certainly this notion of equality is a significant one. Those are the underlying principles. Even if you look at some of the latest stats, we’re still a while off from that. So, for us, it means making impact and continuing to make impact in a big way. If that’s changing the narrative in Hollywood, where we created a film fund called Shadowbox to advance the percentage of female filmmakers all the way to changing the representation of women in media and advertising. Those are the core set of beliefs that we have on the brand side. On the business side, it’s what I spoke about earlier. It means having a great diversified portfolio of revenue streams. That’s when the full success would be realized.

Alejandro: Really cool. One of the questions that I typically ask the guests that come to the show is if you had the opportunity, Philippe, to speak with your younger self and give yourself one piece of business advice, what would that be and why before launching a business?

Philippe von Borries: My advice has been very consistent. It’s been to be extremely open with what you don’t know, and very honest about that with other people. I think, generally, people like to give advice and to help. It’s always served us well. I also think that no crisis is as big as you think it is. It’s life, and it all needs to be seen in perspective. Sometimes, we tend to think that things are all-consuming when they’re not. The way you show up, and the perspective that you have and the kindness that you give yourself also comes back in spades when it comes to your own success.

Alejandro: Very interesting. To follow up on that, Philippe, if there’s a major crisis that is happening and a really big important decision needs to be made, what’s that decision process or what happens immediately to take the steps you actually take in order to make that decision?

Philippe von Borries: To me, we have an extremely important relationship with our executive team and our direct reports where transparency is absolutely key. Obviously, trust is absolutely key. I usually like to hear from people and get a sense of people’s opinions quickly, and then make a decision. But to me, it’s always really important to get the full spectrum of perspectives and opinions, and the them make our decision on that. That’s usually how it works.

Alejandro: I love it. For the folks that are listening, Phillippe, what is the best way for them to reach out and say hi?

Philippe von Borries: Reach out on Instagram. That’s my preferred place. @philberticus is the handle.

Alejandro: Amazing. Alrighty. Well, thank you so much for being on the DealMakers show today, Philippe.

Philippe von Borries: Thank you. This was great.

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