Latest / AI for Founders with Ryan Estes / Turn Illiquid Equity Into Real Wealth

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Turn Illiquid Equity Into Real Wealth · AI for Founders with Ryan Estes

0:00
Welcome back to AI for Founders. I'm Ryan Estes.
0:02
What happens when 4 trillion in private company wealth gets
0:06
locked up and founders, early employees and investors can't
0:09
touch a dime of it? That's the problem today's
0:12
guest, Greg Bragger, decided to solve.
0:15
Greg is the founder of Collective Liquidity, a platform
0:17
that finally lets its employees and founders of late stage
0:20
startups turn their equity into actual wealth without giving
0:24
half of it away to taxes. Before Collective, Greg built
0:28
shares Post, which merged into Forge, the first major secondary
0:32
market for Unicorn shares, and he's back to disrupt private
0:35
markets all over again. In this conversation, we dig
0:38
into the math behind diversification, how only 38% of
0:42
Series C companies will ever deliver value, and why founders
0:46
need a parachute before their IPO dreams crash.
0:50
If you're a founder, operator, or startup employee sitting on
0:52
equity and wondering how to turn it into real freedom, this
0:55
episode is for you. Now, if you love conversations
0:58
like this, join the newsletter at AI for founders.co.
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3:00
Code story.co. Greg, welcome to the show.
3:17
Thank you so much for joining me.
3:19
Thanks, Ryan. Great to be here.
3:20
Absolutely. Now we spoke before, which is
3:22
rare for me, so I'm excited about that.
3:24
I know it's going to be a really important conversation.
3:27
I can't I, I love learning more about your your company every
3:30
time we do. But I wanted to start with some
3:32
personal anecdotes because I was doing a deep dive research on
3:36
Greg Brogger. You know, I want to be prepared
3:38
what I'm doing, but I couldn't find it.
3:41
It says GPT and Perplexity and Gemini could not find reliable
3:47
public sources describing Greg's hobbies, off work, activities or
3:51
personal interest. So just start us off Greg.
3:54
What do you like to do when you're not working?
3:57
That's a good question. So I I live in a really
4:00
beautiful place up in Northern California in Marin County,
4:04
where I think mountain biking was actually invented, or at
4:06
least that's what all the bike shops around here claim.
4:08
And so they're just miles and miles of trails.
4:11
And so I, I'm either hiking or biking or at the beach.
4:15
I just, you know, have half the reason to live here is to do one
4:18
of those things. So that that's kind of, you
4:21
know, that's how I clear my head and, you know, get a little
4:24
exercise and hopefully live a good life here in Marin.
4:28
Incredible. Now that's kind of a
4:29
controversial statement because I'm in Colorado and I believe
4:33
Cresta Bute also lays claim to being the 1st mountain bike
4:37
company. Either way, I I imagine there's
4:41
maybe more than one place they thought to put a bike on a
4:43
mountaintop and and write it down.
4:45
But yeah, it's a couple of distinguished locations for
4:50
mountain biking in the country. Yeah, anywhere you've got like a
4:53
group of guys with extra time on their hands and a few too many
4:56
bikes. They're starting to tinker, you
4:58
know, in the 70s. And a trail or two.
5:00
Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
5:03
Cool. That's awesome.
5:04
You know, mountain biking, are you, are you kind of like a
5:08
cross country guy or you done any of the downhill stuff?
5:11
I'm, I'm, I'm just a, a recreational, I'm just, you
5:14
know, happy to stay up on my bike.
5:16
And so if I can be on the trail and going up and and down
5:20
without any major injuries, that's, that's about as far.
5:23
It's like my ski level ability, like I used to be a little bit
5:26
more aggressive. And my son, we lived in Park
5:28
City for a number of years. They probably also claimed to
5:31
have the 1st mountain bike. I'm I'm sure, but and so he's
5:35
now doing double black diamonds and skiing off trail and wants
5:38
me to go with him because he wants, you know, a wing man And
5:41
I'm just that's I have enough risk in my business and start up
5:44
life stress that I just want to be when I'm on a mountain bike
5:47
or skiing, I just want to be relaxed and and, you know, kind
5:52
of enjoying the scenery really. Yeah, well, you, you have a you
5:55
got a buddy in Colorado because that's my speed.
5:57
My son, you know, he always wants to go extreme.
5:59
And I'm like, son, I want to go medium, you know, medium to
6:02
medium light, you know what I mean?
6:04
Like. Well, they, they fall and they
6:07
bounce back up. I fall and my bones shatter.
6:09
And you know, the same to sewer on a bike.
6:11
So I, you know, the the risk reward is a different
6:14
calculation for us, I think at, at our at least at my age, I
6:17
guess. Totally agree.
6:19
Totally agree. Amazing.
6:20
OK, let's start in. Give us a brief overview of your
6:24
company collective liquidity. Yeah.
6:27
So Collective is a platform for primarily employees of venture
6:34
backed companies, late stage venture backed companies to
6:37
obtain sort of de risk their over concentrated position in
6:41
their company. If they've got stock options or
6:42
if they're a founder and the bulk of their net worth is all
6:45
tied up and one company shares, everyone knows that's not a good
6:48
idea. No financial advisor will
6:50
recommend that, but it's really hard to take these illiquid
6:54
shares, even of really successful companies and, and
6:56
turn it into a diversified portfolio that can be the basis
7:00
of a long term financial plan. And so we have a fund that
7:04
allows people to do it, not just to to exchange shares for a
7:08
diversified position, but to do it in a tax freeway, which is
7:12
really what's amazing. Because the difference, you
7:15
know, for for most founders and employees of these companies
7:17
between a tax free and a taxable transaction, say a stock sale
7:21
is, you know, in California, it's 46% same federal tax rate
7:25
if you don't have long term capital gains, which, which most
7:27
of our clients don't. So, you know, that's, that's the
7:31
first thing we do. And the second thing we do is if
7:33
you need liquidity, if you need cash to buy a house or start a
7:36
new business or whatever, we partner with a number of
7:39
financial institutions and have our own program to provide
7:42
liquidity using not the shares of the company that they come to
7:46
us with, but the LP interest that they get from the exchange.
7:50
And because it's a diversified portfolio and it preds quarterly
7:52
liquidity, the borrowing costs are much lower than any of the
7:55
single stock loan providers out there.
7:58
OK. So diversification and
7:59
liquidity, I should have just started with those two words.
8:01
That's what we do. Great.
8:03
And, and the liquidity, so like if, if you did want to, you
8:06
know, you want a down payment for your house, you know, if, if
8:09
you're in California, you're still subject to that 46%, is
8:12
that correct? That's exactly right.
8:14
Yeah. If you don't have long term
8:15
capital gains and you know, there's everyone's tax situation
8:17
is a little bit different. What's their AMT situation?
8:19
Do they have Isos or Nsos? But you know, even, you know,
8:24
pretty much in all cases the tax savings is a very relevant
8:28
number. Plus we don't charge brokerage
8:29
fees. So it saves you another 4 to 6%.
8:32
And those differences in our fund compound over time.
8:36
So the difference between, you know, assign the same value to
8:39
shares, They have $100 worth of shares, put them in an exchange
8:42
fund and compare what that looks like 7 years down the road to if
8:47
you took the same $100 worth of shares, sold them pay tax and
8:51
then bought diversifying assets. And it's 2 to 1.
8:54
And that's just because it's just the power of compounding
8:56
those to those tax savings with, you know, at 46% year one, year
9:00
2, year three, it just is building and building and
9:02
building. So you can get literally twice
9:04
the after tax return or after, after tax wealth if you work
9:09
through an exchange fund rather than a a stock sale.
9:12
And look, public company executives have known this for a
9:14
long time. So any really sophisticated
9:17
financial advisor at Morgan Stanley or Goldman Sachs or you
9:20
know, any of these sorts of places, if they have a public
9:23
company executive will use an exchange fund as a way to
9:25
diversify them because the tax savings is so powerful.
9:29
But this collective is the first exchange fund in the private
9:32
market, the first exchange fund that will accept private company
9:34
shares into its portfolio. Interesting.
9:37
And why do you think you're the first?
9:39
Why is nobody kind of bit off this problem before?
9:43
Well, it's, it's a complicated problem.
9:45
There's a lot of attacks and legal structuring that we had to
9:47
figure out. And it's, it's kind of part of
9:49
this kind of larger theme, I would argue around the private
9:52
market generally or the venture ecosystem, if I can still use
9:55
that word. Because, you know, look, if you
9:58
go back 10 years, maybe a little bit more now, you know, before
10:03
private companies started staying private as long as they
10:05
did. And we had this kind of massive
10:06
increase in the number and value of unicorns.
10:09
Venture was not exactly a sleepy backwater, but kind of of
10:13
private equity. And so if companies are going
10:15
public, by the time they're, you know, four or five years old and
10:17
$300 million in market value, then you know, you don't really
10:22
need wealth management products because by the time they have
10:24
any wealth, they're already a public company and they can use
10:27
public company exchange funds and all the other wealth
10:29
management tools have been around for a long time.
10:30
But if you then Fast forward and now you have $4 trillion, so do
10:35
the latest numbers that I see from CB Insights, you know, in
10:38
aggregate market cap tied up in venture backed companies, then
10:42
you know, you're in a different world.
10:43
If they're taking 1012 years, you've got, you know, both
10:46
demand from employees of these companies, kind of market size
10:50
that you know, makes it viable to create a platform like what
10:54
we've created a collective. You know, and you had a really
10:59
interesting blog post that kind of illustrates this by taking a
11:02
look at what was it, 2010 to 2015 Series C companies.
11:06
Maybe maybe pull those statistics out, because I think
11:10
that really paints the picture well.
11:12
Yeah, it it's, it's interesting and it's, it's the kind of
11:16
conclusion just to kind of skip to the end of the word
11:18
backwards, the kind of conclusion that we all
11:19
understand that that, you know, holding on to a single stock is
11:22
much riskier than a diversified portfolio.
11:24
We all get that. But just the extent of it, the
11:26
math, until you actually do the math and do the research, it's,
11:29
it's kind of all this was surprising to me.
11:32
So yeah, we looked at a cohort of every U.S. company that did a
11:37
seriously financing between 2010 and 2015.
11:41
So a decade later, 2025, we looked at how many of those
11:46
Series C companies had actually exited to reduce value for the
11:49
employee shareholder for their shares.
11:51
And it was only 38%. Yet if you had invested in every
11:57
one of those Series C companies, you'd have over a 5X return on
12:00
your investment. So you know, it's difficult, I
12:04
think for for a lot of employees of these companies that love
12:07
their companies or their obviously if they're a founder,
12:09
it's their baby and they, you know, things are going really
12:11
well. They've just closed a financing
12:12
and you know, they, they feel like, you know, the, the, the
12:17
Sky's the limit. And in, in a sense it is.
12:19
But just realistically, that's what every series C, you know,
12:24
CEO of a series C company thought to themselves when they
12:27
close that round. And the reality is a decade
12:30
later, you know, 62% of them had yet to produce value.
12:34
So, but if you had access or exposure to all of those
12:39
companies, you would have created real wealth.
12:41
So we don't typically suggest that a founder or an employee
12:45
trade all of their shares, right?
12:47
In fact, I'd say on average, we only want to accept something
12:51
like 15 to 20% of a customer's shares into the fund.
12:54
But it creates a floor under your net worth, and it also
12:57
allows you to create liquidity. And there's all kinds of other
12:59
wealth management solutions that can be keyed off of our fund,
13:03
things like don't advise funds and charitable remainder trusts.
13:05
Again, all of the kind of wealth management strategies that are
13:08
commonplace for public company executives, but just not been
13:12
available to private company executives.
13:14
You've been kind of tied to the mass all or nothing binary
13:17
outcome. And again, that's that's fine if
13:20
it's a 3 or 4 year run, but if you're going to spend 1215 years
13:23
of your life building a company, you really can't afford a miss.
13:27
Yeah, you need a parachute. You know, a backup plan?
13:31
Yeah. Yeah, you bet.
13:32
So is the customer then the company itself for you or is it
13:36
actually the individual contributors of the company, the
13:39
the staff? Well, yeah.
13:41
Well, it's, it's not to be not to be difficult, but the answer
13:44
is it's kind of both, right. So, you know, certainly the,
13:46
the, the transaction is with the company or sorry, the
13:49
transaction is with the employee shareholder.
13:51
So they take $100 worth of shares in their company and they
13:54
trade it for $100 LP interest in our fund and everyone else does
13:57
that that's in the fund. So that's how you get the
13:59
diversified pool of venture assets.
14:01
We could talk about how we pick the companies that are eligible
14:04
for exchange, but every, almost almost every venture backed
14:09
company at this point has the ability to accept or deny A
14:14
secondary transaction or or to accept or deny a new shareholder
14:17
under the cap table. And even where they don't, we
14:20
don't really want to do an exchange or, or work with a
14:22
company where we're not seen as a value add player to the cap
14:25
table. We're not sort of working with
14:27
the company to enhance the value of their equity compensation
14:29
plans. So, you know, we, we need to
14:32
basically win both audiences and the way it most often works.
14:36
Like we, we work in our network and we have an amazing
14:38
investment committee and board and others making introductions
14:41
and we're working with now nearly 30 odd companies with,
14:44
with our program. But very frequently what happens
14:48
is a, a mid level executive will find us on the website or find
14:53
us one way or the other, a referral or something, and we'll
14:57
enter into a transaction and all of the transactions before
15:00
they're obviously consummated, before they're closed, get
15:03
submitted to the company. And frequently what happens is
15:05
the company will say, look, this is different.
15:07
What's an exchange phone? We haven't seen something like
15:09
this in the private market. How does it work?
15:11
And so that conversation happens with the CFO and the CFO
15:14
frequently will bring the CEO and thinks, you know, most of
15:17
the time, at least the great majority of the time, I think
15:19
this is a great idea, but we could really use this.
15:20
This helps our, you know, helps our employees in a, in a very
15:24
real and unique way. And so that that then kicks off
15:30
a company discussion about a program.
15:31
And so that's where we'll start talking about having the company
15:35
direct us to allocate whatever exchange eligibility we have for
15:39
that company amongst employees at their discretion.
15:43
How does kind of vesting periods fit into this?
15:45
So if I was, if I was granted, you know $100 and equity in the
15:49
company and but I have 36 months for it to fully fast, do you
15:52
have to wait that period before it's eligible?
15:54
Yeah. So, so you know, there, there
15:57
are some players out there that get super creative with, you
16:00
know, sort of ways to work with unvested shares or to work
16:05
around the bylaws of the company or or, you know, find ways to
16:07
basically by contract lock up shares rather than have the
16:11
shares actually transfer in their name to their font.
16:14
But we, we don't, we don't do that one it, it's not generally
16:18
viewed favorably by the companies that we want to make
16:20
our partners. And it just creates uncertainty
16:24
because you don't actually know that the shares are going to
16:27
vest. Or if you're doing like a
16:28
forward contract or something, you know, super creative, you
16:31
know, you've just got all these, you've got, you've got a
16:33
contract. But if the shares don't get
16:34
delivered, you know you're going to chase people down.
16:37
So we we haven't resorted to that I guess.
16:41
Yeah. So we, we own, we, we own all of
16:44
the shares that are in our portfolio outright.
16:47
Love it. So this this seems like such a
16:50
it, you know, the no brainer term gets thrown around all the
16:53
time, but like this is a win win, win for everybody kind of
16:56
product. What were people doing before?
16:58
If you guys were the first one, What what were somebody doing?
17:01
If they came up, you know, super cash short and they're you know,
17:04
they they're a multi millionaire on paper, but like they can't,
17:07
you know, they can't get rid of the stock.
17:09
Like what were they doing? Well, you had sort of two
17:12
primary alternatives and both of them are, are still around in
17:15
the market today, right. And so actually, you know, we,
17:17
we started much of the, the team that's a collective with me has
17:20
been with me and with, you know, one or two companies in the
17:23
private market space previously. And so, you know, we, we started
17:26
the platform shares post back in 2009, which was the first
17:30
basically marketplace, first place where buyers and sellers
17:32
could get together and trade private market or, you know,
17:35
venture backed companies pre IPO shares.
17:38
And that, you know, that made sense right at the beginning of
17:41
a market, you pick the simplest kind of form of liquidity or
17:45
financial product because it's nascent and anything more
17:49
complicated isn't necessary. And so we just connected buyers
17:53
and sellers in charge to Commission and that's still
17:55
around. And that and that's, you know,
17:56
by far the by volume where most people get liquidity.
18:01
And so you know that that that's perfectly viable and, and for
18:05
some, some use cases, that's still the best way to do it,
18:08
right. So depending on your tax
18:09
situation, if you don't get the full tax benefit of what we do
18:13
and you want to maximize immediate cash, then sometimes a
18:19
stock sales is the right way to go.
18:21
And we frequently, you know, our, our customer service reps
18:24
are really take a consultants type approach.
18:27
And so we refer people all the time to Forge or Zimbato or any
18:31
of the, you know, private market platforms.
18:33
But the other approach, just the downside to that approach is 1,
18:37
there's a brokerage Commission, which is pretty sizable.
18:39
And two, it's fully taxable, which, as I said, you know, over
18:44
the long term can make a big difference.
18:46
The other solution are are called the, the single stock
18:48
lenders and those, you know, basically they will lend against
18:53
your shares. I mean that the challenge for,
18:56
for those, you know, our customers of those platforms are
18:59
that they're, they're quite expensive and they're expensive
19:02
because the effectively the lender who's lending against
19:05
these shares using your single company shares as collateral is
19:09
taking a great deal of risk and has to do a great deal of work,
19:12
right. So they've got single stock
19:14
concentration risk, they have to value the company.
19:18
So we, we can talk about how we value companies in our
19:20
portfolio, but it's mostly done algorithmically.
19:23
So we always have an immediate price for a potential customer,
19:27
whereas a single stock lender has to do a kind of a
19:29
traditional underwriting of the company has to get financial
19:31
information from the company in order to feel comfortable.
19:34
And so it it's time consuming and expensive and that's and,
19:39
and typically because there's also significant risk that loan
19:43
to value ratios, the amount of cash you can get in a loan is
19:46
relatively speaking quite low. Yeah, fascinating.
19:51
So, OK, so shares post is now forged, did you fully exit that
19:56
company or is that are they connected?
19:59
So no, I well, I was on the board after the merger until it
20:02
went public and I'm still a bit of a shareholder.
20:08
So I've been watching its fortunes rise and fall and
20:12
slightly rise again. So hopefully it finds a good
20:15
home. But yeah, you know, I think
20:17
that. Of all the trading platforms
20:19
that we look at and you know what what are the benefits of I
20:22
mentioned how we value shares. So we get pricing data from most
20:26
of if not all of the kind of major market trading platforms.
20:30
So by API and data feeding, including from from Forge.
20:33
And so we can kind of see relatively speaking, where the
20:38
what each of the platform does in terms of volume, like what
20:41
companies they're trading the most in how much they're
20:43
trading. And so we can say, you know,
20:45
with some assurance that that forge is, you know, typically or
20:48
usually in most quarters, you know, the number one trading
20:53
marketplace at least by volume of transactions, if not by
20:55
dollar volume. So, you know, I, I think that's,
20:59
and that was the logic behind putting forge, which at the time
21:03
was called equidate and shares most together, which was to
21:05
create the kind of the single largest marketplace hopes that,
21:09
you know, it would generate network effects and and, you
21:13
know, become the dominant player.
21:15
Hey everybody, you know what's crazy?
21:17
I've been sitting on a gold mine this entire time and I didn't
21:20
even know it. My Gmail inbox?
21:22
Literally thousands of warm contacts who already know and
21:25
trust me. But here's the problem every
21:27
founder faces. How do you turn those
21:29
relationships into revenue without feeling like a sleazy
21:32
salesperson? That's exactly why I've been
21:34
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Trust me, your existing network is worth way more than you
22:24
think. Yeah.
22:26
What's your feeling on venture capital in general?
22:29
Like you said, there's, there's new trends where, you know,
22:31
companies are taking longer to IPO, which is probably annoying
22:36
for retail investors. Now you have non profit
22:39
organizations that are going in for profit.
22:42
Now suddenly, you know, there's a there's a lot of restructuring
22:46
going on. And I've also heard that like
22:49
people feel like there's too much money in venture capital
22:52
and so there's not enough basically opportunity for people
22:56
to to get returns. Like, what's your kind of take
22:58
of Silicon Valley right now? Well, it's, I mean, Silicon
23:02
Valley is, is was for, for many years kind of concentrated, you
23:08
know, on Sand Hill Rd. And so that's, you know, I, I
23:11
think if you looked at the sort of market share of venture
23:12
backed companies that were funded out of literally Sand
23:15
Hill Rd. VCs 10 years ago, I don't know
23:18
what the number was, but it was quite high, 7080%.
23:21
But with the, you know, the, the growth from, you know, over the
23:25
last 10 years and the number of private venture backed companies
23:28
and their size and the amount, the demand for capital, you
23:31
know, the ecosystem has exploded, you know, both
23:33
geographically. So it's a, it's a really a
23:36
global phenomenon. So I was in Brazil recently and
23:39
there's a whole slew of, you know, investment institutional
23:43
investors looking for access and have found various way to deploy
23:46
capital and the amount of capital.
23:49
So the size of the funds that are deploying.
23:51
And if you're going to, you know, just think about SpaceX
23:54
alone, the amount of capital it consumes, you know, it's, it's
23:57
it's own, its own market, it's its own industry, basically.
24:01
And so capital has flooded into those opportunities.
24:04
And I, you know, I also got to go back to the, the, the, the
24:07
fundamental shift that started this whole market.
24:11
So if you go back to 2009, what was the first company that kind
24:14
of pursue this strategy of staying private logger was
24:17
Google, followed by Facebook, followed by LinkedIn and, and
24:20
Twitter, whereas, you know, the first 2-3 years.
24:22
And that's what I kind of, you know, came up with.
24:26
The idea to start shares post was just like something had
24:28
changed because it used to be the case that founders would try
24:32
to get public as fast as they possibly could, almost like that
24:34
was the destination to ring the bell.
24:36
The New York Stock Exchange. That was the victory lap.
24:39
And what came after was kind of an afterthought.
24:41
And to see the Google founders dragged into the private markets
24:45
by the SEC was a sign. And then when others followed
24:50
and I, you know, when you look at it, it, it's, it's a whole
24:54
bunch. It's like a perfect storm of
24:56
things that are driving this, this, it's regulation.
24:58
So with Sarbanes-Oxley and Dodd Frank made it much more
25:01
difficult to be a public company.
25:03
It was programmatic trading so that if you missed your
25:06
earnings, you know, in a matter of, you know, an hour of the
25:08
earnings announcement, you could lose a third of the value of
25:10
your shares if you missed your earnings enough.
25:13
It was the consolidation of the investment bank.
25:15
So there's all these structural causes and none of them have
25:17
changed, right? So it's not easier to be a
25:19
public company. It's not, you know, the, the,
25:23
it's not less of a problem if you can't predict your earnings,
25:28
if you're in a high growth mode. And at the same time, it's, it's
25:32
just as difficult to be a public company.
25:33
But it's become much easier to be a giant multi billion dollar
25:35
private company because there's so much more capital that's now
25:38
in funds that are focused and dedicated to late stage private
25:41
companies. And there's so much more
25:43
liquidity and there's so much more data that I, you know, I,
25:49
I, I, I hesitate to ever say it's never going to change.
25:52
Maybe the, the pendulum swings back towards public companies,
25:56
but I don't see anything but sort of an accelerating trend.
25:59
And I, you know, one of the most, you know, interesting
26:01
things and I think would be kind of the next phase of this
26:03
market's growth is 4 O 1K plans could now accept private equity
26:09
in or we'll, we'll can now invest in private equity.
26:12
And so as a conduit for retail investors like all the major
26:15
funds, both kind of traditional private equity and and venture
26:20
are all thinking about new distribution strategies to
26:23
capture more assets and deploy them into this, you know, pre
26:27
IPO space. Are you, you saying then that
26:32
like it's a, it's healthy or it because of the complications of
26:36
like trending for like longer and longer privatized companies
26:40
and, and, and also less diversification?
26:43
I mean, with AI basically there's just like a $100 billion
26:47
moats around a lot of these companies where there's not
26:49
really opportunity for challengers or or competition.
26:53
Well, yeah, it was. So just to take the, the first
26:56
question first, like is, is it healthy?
26:58
Like I, I, you know, it, it seems like what generally
27:02
markets do is they grow in a particular direction until they
27:05
get out over their skis and then there's some cataclysmic
27:08
problem, a market crash or, you know, I'm just thinking what,
27:11
what led to the current regime, right?
27:14
We're talking about, you know, Sarbanes-Oxley and Dodd Frank
27:18
were a reaction to Enron, right? Right.
27:20
Was it was massive fraud. So there was massive legislation
27:22
passed to curtail public companies and, and, and increase
27:27
the amount of disclosure and the liability for management and
27:31
directors. And so I, I think it would take
27:33
something like that to reverse the course.
27:35
So I, I, you know, it's, it's, it also depends healthy for who,
27:40
right? So it's very healthy for the
27:41
VCs, It's very healthy for the people that can participate in
27:44
the market, maybe in a lot of complaints.
27:47
And the reason why this change with the four O 1K accounts have
27:50
happened is, you know, if you look at companies that are
27:54
growing, right? So tech companies worth more
27:57
than a billion dollars, I think it's something like 70% of them
28:00
are now private growth. Sorry, private companies, not
28:02
public companies. So even if you're a retail
28:05
investor, you know, call it a blue collar investor, if that's
28:10
the right term, I'm coining and you're trying to save for your
28:14
retirement and you want growth. If you invest in the public
28:16
companies, you're basically investing in like 5 or 6 tech
28:19
companies. If you look at the NASDAQ,
28:20
that's like some crazy percentage of concentration of
28:23
the total value where and they're not growing at anything
28:26
nearly like the, the, the rate that the private growth
28:29
companies and venture backed companies are.
28:30
So you're giving them access to assets and investments that they
28:34
really need. But it is, you know, the public
28:37
markets and the, the transparency and the rules that
28:40
those companies are subjected to do protect investors, right?
28:43
That's the, that's half the job of the SEC is to protect
28:46
investors from fraud. And it's a lot harder to do in
28:48
the private market space than it is in the public.
28:51
So it's, you know, people are going to get, people are going
28:54
to get burned. There's there's no, no way
28:56
around it. But maybe that is still net
28:58
healthy for the overall capital market because it provides
29:01
access to companies people need access to.
29:04
You know, it, it's frustrating to me.
29:06
I, I think, I mean, you know, obviously, you know, the, the
29:12
accredited investor, the bar is actually pretty low, but why not
29:17
just disappear the bar and give people the same opportunities
29:21
where you can do these like little microtransactions.
29:23
You know, you can pay, spend 10 bucks on that up and coming
29:27
startup that you want. I think it would be healthy for
29:29
the startups, it'd be healthy for, for democracy, honestly.
29:33
I mean, it's kind of like hypocritical that like the SEC
29:37
wants to protect the the investors while they're shoving
29:40
sports betting apps down everyone's throat.
29:42
Like day after day. It's like, well, how much
29:44
protection are we we getting here?
29:46
You know, well, and this is I, I actually, I started my career as
29:50
a securities lawyer. It was very brief briefly that
29:53
at one of the Valley law firms, Wilson Sonsini.
29:55
And so I, I spent a lot of time as a securities lawyer.
29:58
And so we spent a lot of time, you know, studying in law
30:01
school, etcetera. And look at the SEC, it's often
30:05
misunderstood. Everyone thinks of them as
30:06
solely as investor protection, but they really have two, two
30:09
goals that are supposed to be sort of equal in, in priority.
30:12
One is protecting investors, but the other is efficient capital
30:16
markets. And so it's obviously these two
30:19
goals are in, you know, there's a tension between them.
30:22
And I think, you know, the, the, the staff and, and legislation
30:26
is, has attempted to do some part of what you've said, which
30:29
is, you know, for example, there's a crowdfunding rules
30:31
where you don't need to be an accredited investor.
30:34
And, and so for a certain investment sizes and certain
30:36
sorts of companies and certain, you know, offerings of shares,
30:40
the rules are greatly abbreviated.
30:44
But you know, the, the fundamental point is, you know,
30:47
and this came out of literally the Great Depression, the stock
30:50
market crash, right, when people lost homes and obviously
30:54
catastrophic financial harm done to many, many families.
30:59
The thought was, you know, companies can take advantage of
31:03
individual unsophisticated investors, right?
31:05
People who don't have it, it has their day job to study these
31:09
stocks. And so how do you protect them?
31:12
How do you find what, what's a simple test that you can
31:15
actually make scalable across, you know, hundreds of thousands
31:17
or millions of investors? And the thought was, well, net
31:20
worth. That's something we can track
31:22
easily. And if you've got 1,000,000
31:23
bucks, then probably, you know, a little something about
31:25
finance, a little something about what you're doing when you
31:28
invest in a company. But if you don't and you're just
31:30
investing out of your paycheck and you have no net worth,
31:33
probably that means you don't have a lot of financial
31:36
expertise and maybe we can protect you from yourself.
31:40
And so obviously that's very controversial.
31:42
It's probably, you know, there's a lot of good that's come out of
31:44
that and a lot of bad. And no one's come up with a
31:47
better rule that I know of. Maybe AI will do it.
31:50
Maybe you'll have to pass, you know, a financial investment
31:54
exam administered by an AI and before they'll let you deploy
31:58
your dollars. But yeah.
31:59
Well, you know, I mean, it makes sense, but maybe I'm just bitter
32:03
about all these sports betting apps.
32:05
It's like, yeah, well, they're like, yeah, you seem like you
32:07
like to take some risks. Well, why don't you go bet on
32:10
the Portland Trail Blazers? I believe Chauncey Billups has
32:13
some good card games for you. Yeah, well, yeah, is investing
32:17
entertainment is like betting is I mean, yeah.
32:19
And look, these rules in the legislation the governor, the
32:22
financial markets are not passed evenly or or necessarily even
32:27
Terry say responsibly, right. They it's in the patch works
32:30
and, you know, major legislation that rewrites these kinds of
32:33
roles happens, you know with, you know, rarely and
32:38
unpredictably. Like I, I remember, you know,
32:42
some of the, the, you know, major loosenings of back in kind
32:48
of the 2009 to 2010 time frame, which made it much easier where
32:53
basically if you were raising money for a private company, you
32:55
still had to, you still could only sell shares to accredited
33:00
investors, but for the first time you could advertise to them
33:04
and that had to be done. I mean, that was a major shift
33:06
because I really significantly expanded the, you know, the
33:09
ability of founders, particularly ones that didn't
33:11
have Sand Hill Rd. backing to go out online and say, I'm a good
33:15
company. This is, you know, I'm raising
33:17
money for this idea. And it was part of the
33:20
crowdfunding, same group of legislation, but it was nobody
33:24
expected it to pass. And it was just this in the last
33:27
like 72 hours before it went to a vote.
33:29
Just some, you know, I think actually the Angelus platform
33:33
was a significant, you know, backer or sponsor of that bill
33:38
and made some kind of miracle happen that nobody expected.
33:40
And the rules changed. And it's had dramatic effect 10
33:44
years later. But you know, you can't predict
33:46
the next time that's going to happen.
33:47
Totally fascinating. So there's probably not an
33:53
insignificant number of listeners to this podcast and or
33:56
subscribers to the newsletter that might be in a good position
33:59
for collective. So when, when is the right time
34:02
for a company to to start consider collective for their
34:06
for their shareholders and their staff?
34:08
Yeah. Yeah.
34:09
So, well, I'll just there's there's a couple, I'll just talk
34:13
about it from from, from from our perspective a little bit and
34:16
then we can talk about it from the company's perspective.
34:18
So with any exchange fund, kind of the most critical problem to
34:22
solve is negative selection bias.
34:25
So if we just accept shares of any company, private company
34:28
that comes to us, then you can imagine the company, you know,
34:32
the, the shareholders that are most worried about the future of
34:34
the company are the ones that are going to come exchange.
34:35
So we kind of do it in reverse. We define the companies that are
34:39
eligible, excuse me, for exchange.
34:44
And if you're not on that list of eligible companies, then you
34:48
know, we'll, we'll obviously talk to you and we'll put your
34:50
company in front of our investment committee.
34:52
But typically, you know, we, we just don't accept the, the
34:56
shares from those companies into the fund.
34:58
And that gives anyone who's thinking about exchanging a
35:00
certain level of comfort that there's a quality bar.
35:02
And you know, the things that we, you know, that make a
35:05
company eligible for SO1, they have to have a market cap in the
35:10
most recent round of over 400 million, but our average market
35:13
cap is actually 1.6 billion. They need to have, you know,
35:16
typically look for revenue over 100 million, I think average
35:19
revenue for our companies. So we're at 2:50 to 300 million.
35:22
So these are really later stage companies that we think will
35:25
have a likely exit in three to five years or we're not a Series
35:28
A kind of platform, a Series B. We're not a startup platform.
35:33
And that's just because we, you know, the, the predictability of
35:36
the value of a company becomes much greater as it becomes as
35:38
it's got real revenue and performance metrics.
35:41
And it's a little further along. And also, you know, the again,
35:46
nailed on head we we need vested options.
35:48
We right to so company that's only two or three years old,
35:52
none of the employees have any vested options, so they can't
35:55
really work with us yet. So, you know, I think probably
35:58
the sweet spot is here 5 or 6 or 7 depending upon the kind of the
36:01
growth trajectory. And there's about 100 and now
36:05
thirty 140 odd companies that we've approved and we're for
36:09
exchange and we're trying to reach out to those companies and
36:11
introduce ourselves have been successful with about 30 of them
36:16
and being on boarded as a shareholder and providing our
36:20
diversification and liquidity solutions to their employees.
36:24
Yeah. Does this is this sounds like
36:26
the the actual members of the exchange fund, the different
36:29
businesses are kind of like interchangeable as customers
36:32
too. Is that kind of the ideas that,
36:34
like the customers in the fund, become kind of synonymous?
36:39
Well, yeah, I mean, so in a sense, I mean there's a really
36:42
interesting community that we weren't really focused on when
36:45
we started it. But what we realized is the LP's
36:49
in our fund are the executives from the companies, the venture
36:53
backed companies that are IC, some really smart law, you know,
36:57
experienced venture investors pick as their sort of dream
37:00
portfolio. So we look at Sequoia,
37:02
Andreessen, Benchmark, Excel, we pick the we think of as the best
37:07
companies across all of the vintages, across all of their
37:10
funds. So it's really kind of a
37:11
portfolio of winners and you know, the the most cutting edge,
37:17
most successful, most, you know, most innovative companies in the
37:21
space. So the club that we're kind of
37:24
forming of founders and CEOs and CFOs and, you know, other
37:29
executives is really somewhat unique.
37:33
I mean, there's a handful of like Sequoia and Andreessen
37:35
obviously have, you know, enough size and enough companies that
37:37
they have, you know, our superior network.
37:40
But what we're building is, I think, really interesting
37:43
because when our IC, for example, goes to think about,
37:47
you know, investment in a defense area where, you know,
37:50
we're now talking to a group of LP's that are already in the
37:54
fund. Yeah, that have deep experience
37:57
and know which companies are thriving and which companies are
37:59
not. So there's a feedback loop of
38:02
sorts that comes into the investment decisions or really
38:06
the eligibility decisions for the fund.
38:08
And we're going to see what we can do kind of more in the
38:10
future to kind of connect the LP's within the fund so that
38:13
they can be, you know, kind of bounce ideas off each other.
38:16
Great again, it seems like it's this tight little club that How
38:20
do I weasel my way into it? No problem.
38:24
Well, Ryan, you are always welcome.
38:27
Amazing. Greg, you've had a bunch of
38:30
success over the years. What keeps you motivated?
38:33
Why? Why?
38:35
It sounds like you kicked off this company in 2021.
38:37
Is that correct? Well, I think we did our first
38:41
external transactions in 2023. So we were building in 2022,
38:44
kind of call it stealth mode, sort of, although it's kind of
38:47
the nuclear winter of venture capital in the secondary market.
38:50
So everyone was sort of in stealth mode because there
38:52
wasn't anything other than stealth mode.
38:55
But yeah, it's, you know, I, I think for, for a collective, you
39:03
know, we, we merged shares post and, and for or to with equidate
39:09
to crate forage. You know, I, I, I'd kind of gone
39:13
as far as I wanted to or thought I really had any kind of value
39:16
to add to that business model to that.
39:18
Again, as I said, it's the most simple, you know, any kind of
39:20
marketplace, it's just connect buyer and seller and take
39:22
Commission for doing, for, for doing that.
39:26
And that was the model we started with.
39:28
That made sense. But then as the size of the
39:31
market and all, you know, the data and the number of
39:33
participants, you know, mushroomed, it seemed like there
39:36
might be better or at least better solutions for at least
39:38
some kinds of problems than were in the market.
39:41
And so the exchange fund is a good example.
39:43
And So what motivates me is a desire still to solve a problem
39:47
that doesn't really feel solved. So if you're even in the most
39:50
successful private growth companies, it's not easy to
39:54
create a financial plan or diversify or give to charity or,
39:59
you know, any, any of the things that you would want to do with
40:01
you. You're a paper millionaire.
40:03
But you know, so often people can't buy a house or whatever.
40:06
I mean, it's kind of cliche use cases.
40:09
And so you know there's a problem that still needs
40:11
solving. And I just, I like making like
40:15
any founder, like any startup guy, I like making things work
40:19
that have never worked before or be able to bring something new
40:21
that works, that solves the problem in a different way.
40:23
It's a zero to 1. And I just kind of gravitate
40:26
towards that. And once you start on an idea,
40:29
then you know, you know it, it takes a lot for you to walk away
40:32
and say, yeah, it just doesn't, this just doesn't work.
40:35
You know, you iterate, you, you pivot you, you know, Bob, you
40:38
believe you, you know, you figure out how to, to get there.
40:40
So hopefully that's what we're doing at Collective now.
40:43
I mean, you're, you're surrounded by so many zeros.
40:46
I mean, the, the folks that you, you work with, your customers,
40:50
your clients, your neighbors might be some of the most
40:53
successful wealthy people that have ever existed on planet
40:56
Earth. How, how does that kind of
40:58
affect your idea of success and wealth?
41:01
And and is there some kind of like a comparison?
41:06
Well, I, I, yeah, I mean, that's, that's the answer.
41:10
An interesting question is I, you know, get a little bit
41:15
older, the more senior in my career.
41:17
It's, you know, when I kind of think about like how much is
41:19
enough? And so I, I have had some good
41:22
fortune and early, early on in my career.
41:25
So I, I've, you know, wealth or your wealth is always relative
41:30
to your expenses. How much wealth do you need is
41:33
sort of depends on your lifestyle.
41:34
My lifestyle is relatively modest compared to some of my
41:36
friends who have more exotic existences.
41:41
It's fun to go to their parties. But yeah, it's, it's a
41:43
different, I have a different set of needs.
41:46
So I, I, you know, I just think it's, it's kind of a losing game
41:49
to compare yourself to others when wealth, wealth wise,
41:53
because there's always somebody who has more, There's always
41:55
somebody who has less. There's only, you know, one
41:57
person who can say that there's nobody who has more.
42:00
So unless you don't want to compete with Elon, you know,
42:03
there's no point in comparing yourself to others wealth.
42:06
And so I think it's do you have enough?
42:09
Do you have enough to to, you know, support the, your, your
42:13
lifestyle and, you know, let you sleep at night?
42:16
And then it's what problems are you working on and who are you
42:19
solving those problems with? You know, who's in the trenches
42:21
with you? So that's, I mean, the other
42:22
thing is I want to make collective successful for myself
42:25
and for our customers, but also for our employees.
42:27
You know, there's a, there's a leap of faith that people take
42:29
when they join a start up. And nothing would make me
42:33
happier than producing a, a good result for them, not just
42:38
financially, but there's there's nothing more fun than creating
42:41
something that's never existed and making it succeed.
42:44
That's really satisfying. I agree.
42:48
Yeah, they're winters are rare, you know, That's what makes it
42:52
so sweet, I suppose. Yeah, 38%.
42:58
Yeah, 38 percent, 15 years later.
43:01
If you get to a series C. Yeah, exactly.
43:04
Cool. Are you ready for the Lightning
43:06
round, Greg? Fire away.
43:08
I didn't know there was a lightning round, but I'm
43:09
equipped. Let me get some water before you
43:11
do brace. Yourself.
43:12
Brace yourself so the I'm locked.
43:15
In. The the listeners this podcast
43:18
love business ideas. You got any business ideas
43:20
rattling around in there that won't go away?
43:24
Well, if I did, I wouldn't share them.
43:26
I mean, although the idea I'd love the most is what I'm going
43:28
to do next. But well, you know, I guess here
43:32
this is self-serving, I'm sure. But look, I think just focusing
43:36
again on collective, like once you have an exchange fund, the
43:39
ability to do something with that exchange fund because
43:41
you're taking basically the alchemy or magic, what we do is
43:43
you take single stock position, which you can't do much with.
43:47
If it's private and liquid, there's no information about it
43:50
and you're turning it into a portfolio that is transparent,
43:52
provides liquidity and so you can do a whole bunch of
43:55
different things about it. So again, I think for example,
43:57
you know, charitable remainder trusts and donor, let's talk
44:00
about donor revised funds, the ability to take $100 worth of
44:04
shares contributed or exchange it for $100 LP interests and
44:07
then contribute that $100 LP interest to an exchange fund and
44:11
take $100 write off that you get to take over the next five
44:14
years. So I think it's, there's a bunch
44:16
of financial products and innovation that I think is going
44:18
to happen for or in the private market, whether it's keyed off
44:22
our exchange fund or, or, or others.
44:24
And it's just, there's so much capital trapped and so much
44:29
demands the people that, that, that hold these shares in these
44:33
companies to be able to have a financial plan.
44:37
And what we do is part of it. But I think that it's, there's
44:40
a, you know, any number of solutions that in the next 5
44:43
years, we're going to see and particularly as the, you know,
44:46
the Morgan Stanley's and Goldman Sachs's of the world, you know,
44:50
start to embrace these kind of platforms and, and bring it to
44:54
their distribution channel. I think it's going to grow very
44:57
quickly because there's so much demand and and such a large
45:00
volume of assets that will follow.
45:03
Why are the kind of, you know, traditional players?
45:06
Why are they slow? What?
45:08
What are they concerned about? So I think they're slow and in
45:12
part just because the the market is just coming out of a full on
45:15
reset. So 2021 we had this meteoric
45:18
rise, 2022Q1, we had a meteoric crash and 4050% reduction and
45:23
kind of everybody in the venture ecosystem just was sidelined as
45:27
I said by this kind of nuclear winter of venture capital.
45:29
So it's only 2024-2025 that there seems to be, you know, a
45:36
healthy marketplace is starting to develop again.
45:38
And I think one of the major signs that this, you know,
45:42
things are going to get busy again as Morgan Stanley just
45:45
announced an acquisition of Equity Zen, which is one of the
45:48
major competitors to forge. And so, you know, when 1 big
45:51
player buys one part of the waterfront, all the other big
45:54
players don't want to be left out and, and kind of, you know,
45:58
feel like they're, they're too far behind.
45:59
So I think that they will get busy again.
46:01
But the other thing is, you know, big players are always,
46:06
you know, concerned about risk and liability.
46:08
They have more to lose than they have potentially to gain by
46:11
trying out a risky new product. So at least my belief is that
46:16
they're, you know, we're we're talking with, you know, all the
46:19
usual suspects. As you would expect, Everyone
46:22
loves the idea of what we're doing at collective just because
46:24
they've seen just for example, in the public markets, you're
46:27
probably the largest player in the exchange fund space is Eaton
46:30
Vance. They have announced they have
46:33
over $500 billion in assets under management.
46:36
And so you know, it's, it's not we're a new product in the
46:39
private market, but we're a proven product as a, as a
46:43
financial solution. And so, but as I said, there's
46:47
all kinds of legal and and tax structuring that we had to do to
46:49
create the fund in the private market space.
46:51
So I think they'd like to see it scale little.
46:54
They'd like to see it have a little bit of operating history,
46:57
you know, make sure that companies embrace it.
46:59
And, you know, we'll get to a place where, frankly, they'll
47:02
either partner with us or copy us.
47:04
And that's just the nature of a competitive marketplace.
47:07
But we're running as kind of far and as fast as we can until that
47:10
happens. Yeah, well, it's great.
47:13
You know, when money's moving around and people are jumping
47:16
in. I mean, I remember looking at
47:18
Pitch Book and it was like, you know, 2021, there's probably
47:21
like 4 or 5000 deals getting closed per month.
47:23
And then like a few months later I looked and it was like 118.
47:27
And if I was like, Oh my gosh, it really was a new.
47:32
But if you, if you think about it like just how much further
47:34
the market has to go in terms of, you know, expansion and,
47:38
and, and deepening, right. If, let's say there's, I think
47:42
the, the biggest estimate I saw for 2024 total secondary volume
47:46
was 150 billion, sort of in that range.
47:50
If you're looking at a $4 trillion asset class, 150
47:53
billion as the numerator, 4 trillion as the denominator.
47:56
We're, we're just scratching the surface and you're, the question
47:59
would be, well, what percentage of the aggregate market cap
48:01
would trade if it could trade like woodchuck if it could?
48:06
And so nobody knows, right? If it was a perfectly efficient
48:09
capital market and you could, you know, it was like the NASDAQ
48:12
Public Market where you could just trade your shares.
48:13
But you can look at the NASDAQ Public Market small cap index or
48:17
an index of small cap companies. On average, they turn over 100%
48:20
of their market cap in a year. So if we're at 3 or 4% today,
48:26
maybe it doesn't go to 100. But it, you know, the demand for
48:29
liquidity is obviously many times the amount of liquidity
48:32
that's actually getting satisfied.
48:34
And as more capital comes to the market, 4O1K plans and more
48:37
retail investors come into the market.
48:40
As I said, I don't I don't see a reversal of the trend.
48:43
Yeah, well, and just like the products now are so much more
48:46
exciting, suddenly out of nowhere, everything's AI,
48:50
robots, quantum computing, nuclear reactors.
48:53
It's just like what's going on? It's great.
48:56
Yeah, no, I, I, it's, it's great.
48:58
It's a, it's a little scary because it's so much less
49:00
predictable than it used to be, you know, particularly, as you
49:03
say, just, you know, mapping AI and quantum computing, which is,
49:06
you know, nowhere near anything I have expertise in.
49:08
But you know, the, the effects of either of them is
49:12
revolutionary and the combined effects of them, you would
49:15
think, no, nobody knows what comes next.
49:17
So last pitch for the importance of diversification.
49:21
Like if you think you, you can see, you know, five years out
49:25
into the future for your company, any company, you're,
49:28
you're smarter or braver than I. And maybe you should consider,
49:33
you know, hedging your bets a little bit and, and just accept
49:36
the unpredictability of a, a technology landscape that's
49:40
changing like it's never been changing before.
49:42
It's at least in my lifetime. I love it.
49:46
Well, in conclusion, I what I what I'm going to do is pitch
49:48
you a product. You see a lot of products, you
49:50
see a lot of investment capital getting moved around.
49:53
Now I got a winner here, but I'd love to hear your take along
49:56
these lines. AI robots.
49:59
But you know, what people really like is personal workout
50:02
equipment. You know, So what I'm thinking
50:04
is that give me a couple of sets of arms, you know, kind of like
50:08
Doc Ock, but just two arms that can carry on what I'm doing that
50:11
way all day long. I could just be doing curls, you
50:14
know, really work on the bis and tries.
50:17
So like I have robot arms that are like giving me like typing
50:20
my my emails. It's bringing me, you know, my
50:23
snacks and my drinks, But meanwhile I can get my human
50:26
arms like, super jacked. Yeah.
50:28
And I take it is the AI then also your, your, your coach, I
50:31
take it it's talking about how many sets you need to do.
50:33
I was actually just reading about this in the New York Times
50:35
a couple days ago about, you know, people starting to use AI
50:38
to train for marathons. Yeah.
50:41
Right. Because it's the voice in your
50:42
ear. Yeah.
50:43
Voice in your ear is, you know, you know, 100% of the time is,
50:47
is attentive to exactly what you're doing, always available
50:50
and, you know, frankly, super smart, smarter than most
50:52
personal trainers or more reliable.
50:54
Yeah, So, yeah, I think the combination of that, yeah.
50:57
But I guess the, the other thing I'm reading in terms of, you
51:00
know, or at least some, you know, I, I, I think you can it
51:03
just with the dictation and voice recognition, you can do
51:06
most of most of your typing without typing anymore.
51:10
But the, you know, get me a creatine shake from the
51:14
refrigerator. Is is it's the hands problem,
51:17
right? Isn't that what they're saying?
51:19
It's this, it's the challenge of gripping.
51:21
And so there's, I was also reading a little bit about that,
51:24
like it takes like three or four tries.
51:25
It's kind of funny to watch a robot try to pick up a glass.
51:28
It's just you never appreciate your hands as much and how
51:32
easily they do remarkably complex things.
51:35
But it's only a matter of time. Yeah.
51:37
I mean, how irritating it is. I mean, ultimately I'm really
51:39
interested in kind of human computer interface because then
51:43
you can like add arms and add things.
51:46
And I want that to happen before the robots.
51:48
I know 1X just released that Neo and I don't like looking at that
51:53
thing. The idea that there's like folks
51:55
in the third world with VR goggles that are controlling it
51:58
inside your house and that's actually how it moves totally
52:01
creeps me out. So it's like give me the Doc Ock
52:04
arms first before we get like C3PO in the closet freaking me
52:08
out and not even being in the kitchen.
52:10
I just got to I I'll know he's there.
52:12
You know, I don't even want. That Yeah.
52:14
Yeah. Well, I, you know, I, we'll,
52:17
we'll see, but I mean, I, I would guess it sounds like
52:20
you're following it more closely than I am, but I, you know, I
52:22
think in the next, it's probably not five years, it's probably
52:25
more like 10 years. Like, you know, I think that's
52:27
the conventional wisdom is that people overestimate how quickly
52:32
new technology will be implemented in their lives, but
52:34
underestimate the impact of it when it is.
52:37
And so, you know, you just look around your house and think
52:41
about how the world changes when you have, you know, robots that
52:45
can train you type your emails, get a glass of water for the
52:49
creatine shake out of the fridge.
52:51
What will, what will we be all doing?
52:52
Because you think about then everything else at Rambles St.
52:55
you look at the, the, you know, the robot implementation at
52:58
Amazon, the 30,000 people that have been laid off.
53:02
You know this, as I said, not to be, you know, Pollyannish, but
53:08
it's the world is changing very quickly in unpredictable ways.
53:12
So true Greg, this has been awesome.
53:15
Ladies and gentlemen, you can check out
53:16
collectiveliquidity.com is the website.
53:19
For the first time you can reduce the risk of pre IPO
53:22
shares by exchanging tax free into a portfolio backed by
53:27
legendary VCs. This has been awesome.
53:29
I want to give a shout out to breakthrought1d.org which is a
53:35
great organization that that makes supports.
53:39
It looks like if you go to to breakthrought1d.org on November
53:45
is a dedicated month for the community and you can give a a
53:49
generous one time gift amount and any amount that you so
53:53
choose. So my, my, my son has type 1
53:56
diabetes. That's that's why we give to
53:58
that organization. So I'm sure he'll appreciate
54:00
it's a good organization. Tremendous.
54:03
Greg, where can people connect with you online?
54:06
At greg@collectiveliquidity.com. So that's, that's my e-mail.
54:09
Happy to, you know, certainly anybody in in your audience,
54:11
Ryan happy to engage with answer questions.
54:13
As I said, even with we can't help because it's not a eligible
54:18
company for exchange. We're happy to provide
54:20
introductions to, you know, other people that can help solve
54:23
problems. Thanks so much, Greg.
54:25
It's been great. And thanks for having me,
54:28
greatly appreciate it. This episode is brought to you
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