Episode 71: Amanda Kim of Avante Capital Partners on How Your Mission Can Be a Valuable Differentiator

Episode Transcript  

Shiv: All right, Amanda, welcome to the show. How's it going?

Amanda: Having a great day. about you?

Shiv: Great, excited to have you on. So why don't we start with your background and what Avante does and let's go from there.

Amanda: Absolutely. Avante Capital Partners is a private credit fund, lower middle market, founded in 2009 by Jeri Harman, as well as Ivelisse Simon and Paul Hayama. Based in Los Angeles, we also now have an office in New York, and was really founded with the mission to have private credit and be the premier provider in the lower middle market for both debt and equity. Over the years started with SBAC fund one, 218 million in 2010 and have now grown to almost a billion of AUM and we're raising potentially over a billion this year with two new strategies, both opportunistic credit strategy as well as more of a pure direct lending fund. The majority of our deals is sponsored back to where we're partnering with private equity firms in the middle market. But we have now also expanded to independent sponsors and company direct strategies.

Shiv: And so you're providing financing for the investors that are actually doing M&A and acting as one of the people in the ecosystem that's supporting the transactions.

Amanda: That's right. That's right. So companies of approximately three to 30 million of EBITDA, or let's say 10 to 100 million of revenue, really the companies that are driving economic growth in the US, we are typically partnering with private equity firms as another institutional capital provider. So if someone's buying a company for 50 million, maybe the private equity firm takes control and puts in 25 million, we provide, you know, let's say 22 million of debt as part of that transaction, and then put in some equity ourselves, maybe 3 million. Although we have, as I mentioned more recently, started to do some more direct deals as well where maybe we're the only one that's providing 25 million of minority capital, for example. The only deals that we won't do is we are not the majority buyer of companies.

Shiv: And how do you determine which kind of approach to take there? I guess historically you've done more debt deals, but now you're doing more equity, equity investments as well. So how do you determine which approach to take for which investments? Is there like a criteria that you're kind of sifting through?

Amanda: Yeah, great question. We are always credit first with our investors, with our investments. That's our legacy. That's what we will continue to focus on. So while there may be some deals where we decide to go 50-50 debt equity, if we think that it's a really attractive equity story, we will always be credit first in terms of our underwriting and where our fund will lean. In terms of, are we doing a deal where we're participating in the buyout with a private equity firm versus if we're lending directly? The sponsor-backed strategy is viewed as less risky in the sense that there are more people around the table. If you have - typically it's a founder-owned company versus institutional capital, having a private equity firm that has a committed fund, right? Let's say, you know, $500 million to put to work. If there are any liquidity issues or bumps in the road, they have that money to support the company. We obviously have money as well with our committed funds. So that is viewed as a less risky strategy versus if we're the only one that has institutional capital in the strategy, then we just don't have as much money around the table, one. And two, we don't have as many bright minds around the table. And Avante is a majority women minority-owned fund that doesn't necessarily have anything to do with our investment criteria. But one of the things that I think is amazing about a woman-led strategy is that we're very collaborative. We would much rather have lots of smart minds around the table versus thinking that we have huge egos and we're the only ones that can drive value for a company.

Shiv: Yeah, talk, talk a little bit about that. I want to hear about the other side of the business side as well. But I think the, uh, female angle is super important. Actually. One of the things that we talk about a lot, because there's a lot of women on our team, uh, I think 70% women on our, in our organization too. And, uh, our clients are all private equity firms and we find that we mostly are interacting with firms that look and feel like the same are made up of very similar demographics. And even, you know, there's just less diversity overall in the private equity industry. So talk about why you've taken that approach or how you've gone about bringing in a different approach to the private equity world and how you've leveraged that as an advantage.

Amanda: Absolutely. When Avante was founded, it was just a woman founding the firm. Actually, we didn't think about diversity in terms of our core mission and what we were doing. Jeri Harman has been an investor over 40 years, invested billions of dollars, worked at big brand name firms, Prudential, American Capital. It really was the financial crisis that spurred her and others to encourage her, hey, you have an amazing track record. Why don't you go out and start your own fund? So Jeri's first hire was Ivelisse, who's now our managing partner, Paul Hayama, who's now effectively our CIO, had worked with her prior. So really it was smart, like-minded investors coming together to invest in the lower middle market. As they started to work on the strategy, realized that having the women and minority angle was not only something that was just important to us in terms of having different voices around the table, but realized it was a real go-to-market strategy. That diversity is a critical business asset for us. And as we approach the market, particularly in private credit as resourcing deals, it's all about the network, right? Where are you sourcing the deals from? How do you win those deals? How do you best support your companies and add value post close and really drive those returns? And realize that our approach to the market and our diversity as a team has allowed us to access unique channels that other private equity and private credit firms haven't been able to.

Shiv: What would be some examples of that? What are some channels or areas or things that you have been able to leverage with that as a strength that are maybe not as accessible to other firms or debt providers?

Amanda: Yep. Yeah, so actually two thirds of our closed platforms are sourced by a woman at a private equity firm, either source or they're an advocate for us at the private equity firms. And I'm sure you've seen some of the data, but the number of women in mid and senior ranks is still very low. I think one of the last stats I saw was 10% of senior investment professionals. And the problem about that is that people often invest in people like them. So if you look at the demographics of the US economy, 50% of businesses are founded by women. However, it's like 2% that receive institutional capital. And a lot of it has to do with the demographics of the people investing, right? You'd much rather invest with my next door neighbor who has the same hobbies as me and it kind of has the same networks versus maybe that's in a different community, right? Or has different background. So having different perspectives in different networks and senior investment rules allows more capital to be funded to different communities in the US. So similarly, having a team run by women, we've realized one we think has added different viewpoints to our investment process. We've, knock on wood, never lost money on a loan across 60 plus portfolio companies. So we have top tier investment returns first and foremost. But in terms of the sourcing and the approach to the market, we have this women's network now, over a thousand women in private equity, where we host over 120 events a year supporting these women and really have created a community for support and value add, both for the private equity firms themselves as well as their portfolio companies. And just one example, I think it started probably 12 years ago, Ivelisse, our managing partner had someone come to her and say, I'm tired of whiskey and golf events. Can someone please invite me to the spa? And Ivelisse said, I can invite you to the spa. And fast forward 10 years, we've now closed deals with all six of those women on that original spa trip. Because in the lower middle market, in the types of companies we're investing in, there's a lot of trust. You want to have partners that you're investing with that understand your business and your objectives that are willing to be flexible and can help you drive your goals. So you'd much rather work with someone who has spent that time to develop both that trusted business and personal relationship versus someone that may not have spent that time.

Shiv: Those are some phenomenal points. Actually, I hadn't thought about this angle that, you know, we work with some really large private equity firms and there's like one woman for every 10 men in the firm. So I didn't think about this angle that the women in those firms are, you know, they want to evangelize supporting female entrepreneurs or female-owned businesses. And that can turn into like a driver of alpha for the fund and then potentially bring you in. I was talking to a private equity firm yesterday and they were like, hey, maybe you guys can help us with our own firm branding so that we can land more deals. And I was just giving that person, that managing partner some advice. And I was like, you know, one thing that I think that's an issue inside most private equity firms is that they look and feel like the same and they have the same talk track and they all kind of stand for the same thing. So it's really hard for a founder that's deciding, should I pick private equity firm A versus private equity firm B? Why would I choose this one over the other one? There aren't enough differentiators. So my advice to him was to really like put a flag in the sand or whatever, just to say, this is what we are for. This is our core expertise. These are the people that we help. And then that will lead to losing other deals, but then you kind of win these other ones. And I think your point about this, the female angle kind of lends to that because you, are basically building a very distinct brand for yourself in the marketplace and actually making a difference in helping the women inside these firms by having the women's network. And it creates like a whole new type or stream of events that you can hold only that other folks can't hold or don't have the credibility to hold. And so you can have a much more powerful brand as a capital provider.

Amanda: Yeah. That's right. And you know, we're in a fundraising year and we've had some investors, typically men, ask us, well, how easy is it to recreate this network? And we typically respond and say, how many other private credit firms do you know out there, first of all, that are led by women and second of all, that have spent 16 years building this network and building these relationships. We would be so happy if all of a sudden this was not a competitive differentiation and that there was really support for women in the workplace. But unfortunately, every year there are pretty high churn rates of women at the mid and senior levels and so there continues to be that need really to help support women to stay in the industry.

Shiv: Yeah, I think there's probably, yeah, there should be more of these types of things emerging, but that doesn't mean that you can't have a distinct position in the marketplace and be a very valuable player.

Amanda: Well, and the thing I, one of the reasons why I was really excited about your podcast in the first place is that we think about the women who we support as part of a broader value add of how we relate to our partners in general. We don't do deals only with women. Now we certainly do more than the average, than the average of the industry. But it's really that value added mindset, right? Of how can I be the best partner to the companies, to the private equity firms? And exactly what you just said is your advice to that other private equity firm is what is unique about me in the market? I hate to say it but private equity, private credit, is arguably commoditized, although if you look at the stats there's still so much more private equity dry powder that has been raised versus credit so we see the argument for credit in terms of there's still that imbalance you know most deals are funded 50-50 debt equity so if there's way more equity there's still more money to be raised in credit. But even within that well there 10 other private credit firms down the street that could be lending to these companies so why do you want to partner with me in particular, and not only today but what value am I going to help you drive to get to that next exit, right, that next bite at the apple because a lot of times we're finding companies where it's a transition from the founder and the management team isn't getting a huge payout in the transaction, it's really that next transaction where the management team is going to get their payout and some economics so they're very focused on “hey you, Amanda I don't want you just giving me money, I want you giving me strategic advice, I want that approach to the market of how do you build towards that next exit and create that generational wealth for me and my broader company.”

Shiv: Yeah, I want to ask you something that I think is more of a sensitive topic, but I think you would probably have a really good take on this is, you know, I think five years ago, or, or five, six years ago in the political environment, I think of things like as a pendulum. So it really swung the direction of DEI and ESG and trying to do things to make progress on certain social areas. And then I think over the last couple of years, there's been kind of like this correction or I don't want to say correction, but like the pendulum has kind of swung the other way where people are less focused on that and they're more focused on actual numbers and they might skip past some of the things that they were previously investing into. And a lot of companies have cut DEI organizations and things like that. So how do you see that? Because something you said earlier is like, 50% of founders are female founders, but I definitely agree. A small fraction of them get funding compared to male-founded organizations. But then at the same time, there's like the merit-based side of like, are those companies being founded by females the same quality as an investment asset versus the male-founded ones? Like there's a bunch of other data that I think we could kind of look at. So, that's why I it's a sensitive question. Like how do you balance that to make sure you're still investing in the best assets and not just driven by the social piece of your thesis or your mission as a firm?

Amanda: That’s a great question. You know, I can't speak for other firms out there in the market, but Avante is a returns-first focus firm. So we are looking to have the strongest risk adjusted returns that we can. We often say that people like us don't get a second chance. So if anything, we need to be better than the other firms out there. We were just named last year Avante as the number three globally ranked private credit family of funds by PitchBook. So I think we were right ahead of Apollo on that list. So we absolutely are return-focused and do not make any exclusionary criteria or investment judgments based on any diversity criteria. Jeri and Ivelisse and Paul have found over the years though, going back to my original point, is that we've seen that diversity is actually a driver of our return. So we in private credit, you want to have the widest funnel possible. You want to source as many deals as you can such that you can be highly selective so that you can be highly selective, have the largest funnel and then not only source those deals, but be able to win the best deals, right? Anyone can source a deal, but can you get access to the best deals at terms that are not the highest leverage and the lowest price. We are able to leverage the communities that we've built, the relationships that we've built, such that we're often not the best price or the best leverage, but we bring in our value-added approach and the perspective that we're bringing to the table to persuade the firms and the companies that we're the right partner, ultimately.

Shiv: Right. Yeah. I think that is the main distinction point. And so when you think about generating returns, first and foremost, like how do you balance that with the mission? Because, and especially when I think about, you're kind of like selling through channel partners for using traditional go to market terms and your channel partners are private equity firms that are mostly male, right? So, but you kind of probably meet still a lot of companies that are male led and kind of goes counter to the mission. So,

Amanda: Mm-hmm. Yep.

Shiv: Do you try to balance that or is it just like, hey, spread as wide of a net, encourage the female investors in this market, build a network of those folks, eventually you're gonna get a different mix of companies that come your way versus let's say a traditional lender and then make decisions against that based on the quality of the asset.

Amanda: That's right. There was actually a - Cambridge Associates did a study last year that showed really the latter what you said that diverse firms tend to source a different pool of deals. Like they actually looked at with BCG underlying portfolio company data and found that there was some overlap, but that diverse-owned firms had access to a different set of deals and portfolio opportunities so that by investing in diverse firms, you were adding diversification to your portfolio as an LP or institutional investor. 

One of the best examples, I think, to your point is we're more of a carrot than a stick, right? We're not out there - again, we are returns first manager. We're not out there looking to shame people in any way about the underlying diversity of their teams or companies. We take a great company and a great team and we help to take it to the next level whatever they look like. So one example is our Women's Operating Network. So distinct from our Women in Private Equity Network, we have over 300 C-suite level women who we've got to know over the past couple years. Jeri, our founder, is chair of a public company, NN, Inc. So she's been really involved in executive women on boards and other women in board organizations. And a lot of these women are interested in serving on private equity backed boards but don't have an entree into the sector because it's hard, right? It's usually, what do you do? Email a VP at a random private equity firm and say, here's my resume. You know, I'm really interested in participating in your board. You usually need to have connections to get to know those firms. So we've now created a database of these 300-level women. We have the relationships with the private equity firms. So every time we invest in a company, but also even if we don't invest in the company, we provide this database as a resource to our private equity partners to say, hey, if you're looking for a woman with health- or it doesn't even have to be a woman, you're looking for an executive, right? A lot of private equity firms now, their differentiation that they bring is executive expertise, where they bring an operator and say, hey, we're looking at a consumer packaged goods company, I'm working with the ex-CEO of, know, Kraft Heinz or something. And that is how they persuade a company that they will take them to the next level. So we are providing those executives to help drive that value to our private equity sponsors. And then also when we invest in the company can make recommendations for board roles. But that is also because it is the women's operating network is another way still to your point where we have the intersection of our mission of creating opportunities for underrepresented communities with the returns first focus of what we're trying to do.

Shiv: And how are you so… Yeah. How are you sourcing or bringing these groups, the Women's Operating Network and the other women PE kind of network together? What is the effort behind that? What is the recurring work going into that from your firm?

Amanda: Yep. Yeah, it's a great question. I mean, a lot of it now is organic where we've built a brand, you know, people we've gotten the word out. And so we're always getting inbound referrals of women that are either looking for community or women C-suite executives that want to get board roles because we have made a number of matches now between private equity firms and the board roles. We do have an internal person that is also focused. She's our community manager on helping to support these networks as well. You know, we also use tools like PitchBook and different databases, right, to keep tabs on who is entering the industry, but it is typically referrals to the network.

Shiv: Okay, got it. And then how often are you bringing these groups together or what kind of ways in which are you helping the folks inside Connect? And I ask because I think this is something a lot of PE firms should be doing is they're getting their core audience together. And some people do portfolio summits and things like that. But I think this is a little bit different. This is like building a community of a specific subset of the market. So what is the kind of work that's going into that.

Amanda: Yes. Yep. Absolutely. And we call it our impact team, which is really the bridge between our deal making and our mission or community elements. And it's always changing, right? COVID was such an interesting time where all of a sudden we all went virtual. So one of the things we did during COVID was we started having virtual happy hours where every month it's a very informal Zoom, you know, 30 minutes with women in different cities. I have one in Chicago, Boston, New York and Philly open for anyone who would like to join if you're listening to the podcast. And there's no agenda. It's not a, you know, DealMax like you're sourcing deals from each other. It is really purely a girlfriend's meetup peer building to have someone and there's a lot of data that shows us actually that women are more likely to stay in the industry if they have a support network, whether it's a senior woman ahead of them that they can see has succeeded or other people to share tips with and again these are generalizations but I have found that men often see the bigger picture of what it takes to succeed in the private markets that they're not only doing the deals but they are grabbing drinks after work with you know friends across the industry, they're going to the networking events. Versus, I find a lot of women are really trying to prove themselves and as a result are more heads down, working, don't go to the after work drinks, or on the flip side, maybe are newer working moms and are rushing home to relieve the nannies at 5pm such that they're missing that after work networking piece that's so critical in building both deal flow and your personal brand. And so the virtual happy hours was meant to address that of building a peer group in a setting that was easy for people to meet up, right? It didn't have to be that after work drinks. It could just be a quick Zoom call that you can pretend is a deal call or a bank or call or normal calls that you're taking during the day. But really, it's just a catch up where we all exchange notes on what are we focused on and really an ask for that group. It could be I'm looking for a QV provider. It could be I'm looking for comps on carry. It could be what multiples are you seeing in the tech sector right now, but recreating that networking. Now fast forward. People don't like Zoom as much, but we have kept the monthly happy hours, but we've now supplemented it more with in-person, right? So we usually do quarterly meetups. We do events around a lot of the large women's conferences, but I just actually started a WhatsApp group for working moms. That was a request from one of the women about finding what are kind of day-to-day ways to engage people. And it's not about me. It's not about, Avante, I love you, and gonna send a deal. It's about facilitating that community such that people can connect. And of course, the hope is eventually, over the years, that we'll create enough goodwill such that it will build deal flow for us, which it has.

Shiv: Yeah, I think that is, there's some great advice in there because I think when we think about community, especially in the private equity world, it's often around like live events and big conferences. And a lot of these conferences are also expensive. Not everybody goes to them. Like I've gone to these like PEI events and Deal Max and all these kinds of things. And there's like maybe a women's breakfast on the side at the event. maybe, right. And then it's kind of, and it's over. You see each other, you talk about some stuff, but in an hour or like hour and a half, you're not going to cover that much. I think the essence of community is ongoing communication. We need a platform like that. And I think, that's a strategy that I don't see people deploy, maybe a Slack community or a WhatsApp group or a circle, private community or whatever it is where people can go and ask questions beyond just like a session where everybody's coming together, you can ask something and asynchronously people can support each other, think there's a lot of value in that.

Amanda: That's right. Yeah, yeah, the WhatsApp group has been working great. We have tried LinkedIn and Slack. Those have been harder platforms candidly and you know it changes, right? And one of the things I love about Ivelisse, our founder is that she's always looking around corners. She is a visionary. She is the one that really saw the potential of what she and Jeri just did naturally, right? Mentoring younger women in the industry, becoming a business strategy. And she every year will sit down and say, what is the new thing that we're doing this year? Every year we try to do one new thing. So for example, last year,

Shiv: Yes.

Amanda: We did our first symposium for the women's operating network where we brought 50 of the women to Chicago, 25 private equity firms. The first day it was  the first part of the day was sponsored by KPMG where it was more like lunch and learn for the operators about the board role, about what they can do to prepare and then the second half of the day was speed dating with the private equity firms to more tangibly look for board roles. And that was new for us, you know, it's a lot of work, but it was a lot of fun and again figuring out what are the new settings that help facilitate connection. You know we're not doing this symposium this year but we're you know thinking about what is that next thing. For example we do separate from the women's aspect we do an investment bank or speed dating event in our offices in LA because LA is so hard to set up meetings like you could you know spend all day driving around traffic just getting to meetings. We bring in outside private equity firms, we bring the investment bankers to our offices. So we've done that for 10 years but we're thinking about launching now a New York investment banker speeding event because we now have an office there. So just every year we think what is - we did our first client survey this year and one of the questions was what are your pain points for this year? I always love to ask people. What are your goals, personal and professional, and then we craft our strategy around how can we address the needs of our private equity partners in our companies and the number one need was deal flow, which is unsurprising given the M&A, you know, still depressed levels and then the number two ask was talent - operators, internal talent - although I know hiring has slowed in PE - but figuring out who are the people that we can use to differentiate our strategy and drive results in our portfolio companies.

Shiv: Yeah, talent is a huge problem even now. There's a lot of roles inside companies, inside the private equity firms that people hire and then they fire and they can't seem to find the right person. So I totally see that. I want to just say a side thing on the WhatsApp stuff is I think given your audience and how you're differentiating yourself is I think women in general, it's harder to sync in person because of the roles that are played in households and families and things like that. I think, I think even more so it matters, especially if they're mothers and have kids and stuff like that. So I can totally see the validity of that.

Amanda: That's right. It's interesting when we are doing in-person events, know, Ivelisse always has a philosophy of being really generous with what we do and being special. She said, you know, if you are, when we first hosted this spa wine trip, she said, it better be something darn good to pull women away from their families on the weekend, away from their jobs. There has to be a real justification, right? For people to show up. So either it's something amazing, like the best spa trip ever that you wanted to go, or it's something that you add, right?

Shiv: Yeah.

Amanda: We invite LPs, right, when fundraising is difficult, or sometimes we invite bankers if you're looking for deal flow. So it's really trying to get to the heart of the matter of what is, you know, even now a lot of private equity firms specialize, so I've seen more and more people looking for industry-focused stuff. They said, look, I'm not even going to go to the general women's conferences. I'm only going to go to a luncheon for you know, tech education bankers in the lower middle market, right? Something that is going to directly address the need of what I need to be driving in my day-to-day job because every minute in my life. I mean, I feel this, even though we're technically generalists, every minute is a minute that I'm either paying for childcare and I better be hyper-focused at work and driving results, or the opposite, right? Spending time with my family, but thinking about all the big goals that we have at Avante. So I better be utilizing my time wisely and I think that balance makes me more focused and impactful with the work that I do.

Shiv: Totally. Yeah. All of that makes sense. You mentioned LPs there. And that was the one question I wanted to ask is as you're fundraising for your own firm and you're raising capital for your next fund and things like that, how do you get LPs on board with some of this work? Because it costs money. It is on top of what a traditional capital provider might be doing. And so how do you sell that idea? And then also on the LP side, is there also like a partnership to find LPs that really believe in this mission as part of their mission as well to kind of support organizations like yours?

Amanda: Yeah, it's a great question. You know, on the LP side, because we are a traditional private credit returns-focused fund, you know, our LPs really vary. Some care about our mission, some do not, and we're okay with that. You know, obviously the LPs that are excited about our mission are the ones that we're more aligned with. So we actually, with our next fund, are planning to start an impact LPAC. Again, we're not an impact investor, but we do have some investors that are interested in supporting and providing insight into some of the efforts that we do supporting women in the industry for example. So we're really excited about that. On the fundraising in general, we are doing our opportunistic credit fund. We're doing a direct lending fund as well. So it's really more about the risk profile that investors are looking for. Are you looking for more of that low teens, net senior risk? Or are you looking for that mid to high net teens return of something that's more of the junior capital positions? In terms of the cost, you know, we actually - so we have an internship program called the small business investing scholars. We actually receive fees from our participant firms for that. So we actually - and in terms of our events we try to get as much sponsorship as possible. So KPMG for example sponsored that women's summit. So from a cost perspective, we try to make it as much of a net neutral as possible to the firm and I think it's pretty typical now, if you look, a lot of bigger private credit equity firms - you said a lot of people host now, you know, symposiums for their C-suite and their operating executives. So I think what we host is pretty typical to other funds. And we are cognizant of that, right? Anything that we're doing needs to be driving business value. First and foremost, we're not a nonprofit and we can't be investing in initiatives that purely are mission aligned and not supporting our business.

Shiv: Yeah, that's right. And then I guess the secondary question on LPs is do you find that your approach allows you to raise money more easily or at least gives you an advantage when you're going to LPs? Because I think that's something that firms are always trying to do. They're trying to raise the next fund and some firms have a harder time than others. So I'm curious if the strategy actually helps you.

Amanda: 100% LPs are looking for differentiation. First and foremost, they're looking for returns. So we lead with our returns, no cash loan losses, four times average gross cash on cash in our equity, realized equity co-investments, mid to high teens net returns on our funds. So first, performance. Second, the attractiveness of the lower middle market. And then third is that differentiation, right? How do you approach the market? Why are you different than others? And most people have a sister or mom and understand the concept of while most people might be picking in the big apple orchard over here, there's a smaller pear orchard over here and we're, you know, we're the only one focused on the pear orchard. That doesn't mean we don't also pick from the apple orchard, but understand that concept of an underserved market and how we're able to approach that. And then really the last pillar is our amazing team, right? Their backgrounds, the diversity of backgrounds, allows us to have strong perspectives around the table.

We have a unanimous IC, there's very much consensus on our investment team and a lot of challenging each other, which I think is what drives our strong returns.

Shiv: Yeah, that's awesome. I can totally see that resonating. We're coming up on time here, but before we close off, Amanda, where can people go to learn more about you, about Avante, and then also some of these networks and places to actually go ahead and meet some of these other amazing women that are part of the groups that you brought together?

Amanda: Absolutely. So our website, avantecap.com has more information on our network. Certainly feel free to reach out to me directly, Amanda, at avantecap.com. We can connect to Gabriela, our community manager. We are advocates for anyone in this industry that wants to do well, that wants to, you know, create a more collaborative environment, and always open to good partners. Ultimately, we have a philosophy that life is too short to work with jerks, so like to pick, pick and find the good partners, the good people in this industry to do deals with, whether companies or private equity firms.

Shiv: That's awesome. We'll be sure to include that in the show notes. And with that said, Amanda, thank you for coming on and sharing your wisdom. I think a lot of private equity firms that are listening will take away from the lessons on diversity and also the unique positioning that you've created for yourself in the marketplace. So appreciate you coming on and sharing all that.

Amanda: Thanks. Awesome. Thank you for having us, Shiv. It's been great.