Latest / Money And Wealth With John Hope Bryant / The New Rules of Investing: AI, Capitalism & Wealth Creation
Transcript
- 0:00Speaker 1: Welcome The Money and Wealth with John Hobryant, a production
- 0:03Speaker 1: of the Black Effect Podcast Network and iHeartRadio. Hey, Hey,
- 0:14Speaker 1: this is John Hope Bryant, and this is the Money
- 0:17Speaker 1: in Wealth podcast series on the Black Effect Network on iHeartRadio.
- 0:25Speaker 1: And as you well know, and thank you by the
- 0:28Speaker 1: way for continuing to make this one of the top
- 0:33Speaker 1: one percent of all podcasts in the world, and one
- 0:39Speaker 1: of the top sixty podcasts for entrepreneurship and one of
- 0:44Speaker 1: the top two hundred and fifty on every condent in
- 0:47Speaker 1: the world, as we break down the mysteries of fans
- 0:52Speaker 1: and capitalism and free enterprise and the word I love
- 0:57Speaker 1: the most, entrepreneurship. And as you know, I have had
- 1:05Speaker 1: a habit of just talking directly to you myself because
- 1:10Speaker 1: I often don't want a translator between me and you.
- 1:15Speaker 1: And if I bring somebody on my program, you better
- 1:20Speaker 1: believe that they are best in class. As I say,
- 1:25Speaker 1: a relationship too plus to she'd equals six, eight or ten.
- 1:28Speaker 1: If you're not better together than what are you doing?
- 1:31Speaker 1: And such as the case today. There are two entrepreneurs
- 1:36Speaker 1: here with remarkably consistent stories which might come as some
- 1:46Speaker 1: surprise to my new friend and my guests. Let me
- 1:49Speaker 1: introduce you to somebody who he doesn't realize is going
- 1:54Speaker 1: to become a new friend. I like his vibe, I
- 1:57Speaker 1: like his intgy jenniic Melling, and I say that problems.
- 2:03Speaker 1: I want to make sure I get that is right.
- 2:06Speaker 1: It's very important I say his name right. He's Danish
- 2:09Speaker 1: and that's a Danish name, and there's are all kinds
- 2:13Speaker 1: of ways you can say it and screw it up,
- 2:15Speaker 1: but it's very important to me that I nail it
- 2:18Speaker 1: because it is a really cool name. Actually, he's the
- 2:22Speaker 1: co founder and the co CEO of Public dot com.
- 2:27Speaker 1: I actually have even had to ask him, so is
- 2:29Speaker 1: it public.
- 2:29Speaker 2: Or a public public?
- 2:31Speaker 3: You know, it's not French.
- 2:39Speaker 1: And Public is one of the fastest growing multi asset
- 2:44Speaker 1: investment platforms in the United States. As I said, he's
- 2:48Speaker 1: a Danish born entrepreneur who started and I love that
- 2:52Speaker 1: part of the world to spend a good amount of
- 2:54Speaker 1: time in an order. Countries in Europe and the Danish
- 2:58Speaker 1: are just really cool people. And he started building websites
- 3:05Speaker 1: at age twelve. Sound familiar somebody else's story in suburban Copenhagen.
- 3:12Speaker 3: Now I was before, by the way, way before you
- 3:16Speaker 3: could vibe code.
- 3:17Speaker 1: And he was doing at twelve in the suburbs. I
- 3:19Speaker 1: was doing it at ten in the inner city of Compton, California.
- 3:22Speaker 2: His Copenhagen was Mark Compton.
- 3:25Speaker 1: He joined Saxe Bank Saxo at age seventeen.
- 3:31Speaker 2: So he made look like a rock star.
- 3:33Speaker 1: For those who get a chance of watching this on
- 3:36Speaker 1: one of the platforms.
- 3:38Speaker 2: But if you're.
- 3:38Speaker 1: Listening to this on your radio or on your phone,
- 3:41Speaker 1: or in your car or jogging, let me give you
- 3:44Speaker 1: a visual. Let's say James Bond meets the Beach Boys
- 3:53Speaker 1: meets Double O seven on a beach, chilled out, that
- 3:58Speaker 1: happens to go into a board room, and if he's
- 4:02Speaker 1: working at a bank at seventeen, you absolutely know that
- 4:07Speaker 1: looks didn't count. His brain is what they were interested in.
- 4:11Speaker 1: And he went on to co found several fintech companies,
- 4:16Speaker 1: including Tradable, which he sold for one hundred and twenty
- 4:19Speaker 1: million dollars. Again another coincidence. I sold a company for
- 4:25Speaker 1: one hundred and twenty one million dollars about the same
- 4:30Speaker 1: age when he did it, well the same timeframe in
- 4:33Speaker 1: their career trajectory. And he did that before launching public
- 4:38Speaker 1: in twenty nineteen. We co founded with Leif Abraham or Abram,
- 4:45Speaker 1: no Abraham.
- 4:46Speaker 2: They get the right Abram and.
- 4:51Speaker 1: Public is an investment platform on a mission to make
- 4:54Speaker 1: public markets work for all people. So he had me hello,
- 4:57Speaker 1: That's why I wrote the book Capitalism for All All
- 5:00Speaker 1: is to and that's where I actually we met. I
- 5:03Speaker 1: was on the set of CNBC talking about the well
- 5:07Speaker 1: launching my now best selling book is the best Sellers
- 5:10Speaker 1: as I saw you, Jenny as capitalis We're all inclusive
- 5:14Speaker 1: economics in the future proofing of America. And he was
- 5:16Speaker 1: there on CNBC. But those is the best business show
- 5:19Speaker 1: in the world, I think on squad box talking about
- 5:22Speaker 1: his great company and we were rooting each other on.
- 5:28Speaker 1: So the Public offers commission free access to stocks, ETFs, options,
- 5:36Speaker 1: crypto bonds, treasuries and alternative assets with fractional shares included,
- 5:44Speaker 1: so people can start investing with almost nothing.
- 5:46Speaker 2: I absolutely love it. And the platforms community is made
- 5:51Speaker 2: up of.
- 5:51Speaker 1: Hold on now for women and forty people of color.
- 5:58Speaker 1: I may have to make you an honorary black man
- 6:00Speaker 1: where this is over, which is a remarkable statistic for
- 6:05Speaker 1: the industry that's historically dominated by wealthy white men. The
- 6:09Speaker 1: companies raised over four hundred million dollars in venture funding
- 6:13Speaker 1: from investors including Tiger Global and Will Smith's Dreamers VC
- 6:20Speaker 1: Sale and others, and was valued at over two billion
- 6:24Speaker 1: dollars as of twenty twenty one. Now this is an
- 6:27Speaker 1: interesting antidote before we bring him in, speak for himself.
- 6:33Speaker 1: So in twenty twenty one, when the company was worth
- 6:35Speaker 1: about two billion.
- 6:37Speaker 2: During the whole game, stop means stock chaos.
- 6:42Speaker 1: While other companies restricted was restricting trades, Public took the
- 6:48Speaker 1: opposite approach. They stopped participating in payments.
- 6:51Speaker 2: For order flow. We'll explain what that means in the
- 6:54Speaker 2: course of this conversation.
- 6:55Speaker 1: Pfof the controversial practice where brokers is paid to route
- 7:01Speaker 1: orders to market makers, creating a potential conflict of interest
- 7:04Speaker 1: between the brokers and the customer. They Public introduced an
- 7:09Speaker 1: optional model instead of doing that, and began routing orders
- 7:14Speaker 1: directly to exchanges like Nasdaq and n y s SE.
- 7:19Speaker 1: That's the values driven business decision that cost him revenue
- 7:22Speaker 1: in the short term, but built enormous trust. So let
- 7:27Speaker 1: me but with no other So no further ado is
- 7:30Speaker 1: they say, let me introduce my new friend and my
- 7:35Speaker 1: brother and other mother soon, Danik Melling, that was.
- 7:40Speaker 3: A hell of an intro buddy. That was great.
- 7:44Speaker 2: Welcome to the program.
- 7:45Speaker 1: So I'm interested in your backstory and your your background also,
- 7:50Speaker 1: But let me start with a hard hitting question, because people,
- 7:54Speaker 1: you know, they don't understand investing. I mean, I've had
- 7:58Speaker 1: young adults ask me questions like what's a stock? What's equity?
- 8:02Speaker 1: And I was proud that they trusted me enough to
- 8:06Speaker 1: admit that they didn't know what these things were. But
- 8:08Speaker 1: I think we just assume people know all these terms
- 8:11Speaker 1: and all this stuff that's in the Wall Street Journal
- 8:13Speaker 1: and on CNBC in squad box, and really it's another language.
- 8:17Speaker 1: You've got to become almost bilingued on it. But so
- 8:20Speaker 1: why public exists? You said Americans either couldn't afford a
- 8:24Speaker 1: diversified portfolio or felt like the stock market wasn't for them.
- 8:30Speaker 1: So which of those two problems is harder to solve?
- 8:33Speaker 1: The access of psychology is my first question, and then
- 8:36Speaker 1: I want to get into your backstory.
- 8:37Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure, definitely I think it was the psychology.
- 8:41Speaker 3: You're actually the right. We always looked at it as
- 8:43Speaker 3: like this this like rational structural barrier, which was that
- 8:48Speaker 3: in order to invest I think when we launched public,
- 8:51Speaker 3: Google was like a two thousand share, Amazon a three
- 8:54Speaker 3: thousand a share. Since then, they've done some stock splits,
- 8:57Speaker 3: which is a way that the price pre kind of
- 8:59Speaker 3: comes down. But basically, in order to buy the top
- 9:02Speaker 3: ten fifteen stocks in the country, you needed to have
- 9:06Speaker 3: like ten thousand dollars saved them. And so I just
- 9:08Speaker 3: talked to a lot of people who are like, yeah,
- 9:11Speaker 3: you know, something always got in the way of them
- 9:15Speaker 3: saving up that amount of money travel you know, this,
- 9:17Speaker 3: that and the other end. So it was very difficult
- 9:20Speaker 3: to get started because that structural barrier sort of existed.
- 9:23Speaker 3: And then the second part was this like psychological barrier
- 9:27Speaker 3: of is the stock market for me? Right? If I
- 9:30Speaker 3: am not a finance bro type person, you know, I
- 9:35Speaker 3: have not historically seen a lot of people like me
- 9:39Speaker 3: participating in these kinds of markets. Not a lot of
- 9:41Speaker 3: success stories around I mean, all the success stories around finance. Frankly,
- 9:47Speaker 3: all the stories around Wall Street have always been it's
- 9:50Speaker 3: like to Touster and Palm, like Gordon Gecko or Wolf
- 9:54Speaker 3: of Wall Street. They're all fantastic movies, almost two good movies.
- 9:58Speaker 3: Because I think they've sort of alienated of a lot
- 10:01Speaker 3: of people from what the stock market really I think
- 10:04Speaker 3: should be, which is how Buffets always Warren't Buffets always
- 10:07Speaker 3: thought about it, which is just is the greatest wealth
- 10:11Speaker 3: creation engine in the history of mankind. But you know,
- 10:15Speaker 3: two things can be true at the same time. The
- 10:18Speaker 3: US stock market specifically, by the way, not the European one,
- 10:20Speaker 3: not the Asian one. The US stock market, it's the
- 10:22Speaker 3: greatest wealth creation engine in the history of mankind. And
- 10:27Speaker 3: at the same time, there are niches of fringes around
- 10:31Speaker 3: that market that have these like shady taitaster and prompt
- 10:35Speaker 3: well for Wall Street type practice. Both of those things
- 10:37Speaker 3: can be true at the same time, and I think
- 10:40Speaker 3: culturally the latter just overshadow the format, Like there's not
- 10:44Speaker 3: really a good story that you can make around how
- 10:48Speaker 3: you stash money away you dog saverage into the stock
- 10:51Speaker 3: market every month for ten years and then you make
- 10:53Speaker 3: generational wealth. Like that's not an interesting Hollywood script. It
- 10:57Speaker 3: wasn't interesting Hollywood script. Was Gecko Boiler Room, you know,
- 11:02Speaker 3: Margin Call, like all these great movies. And I think,
- 11:05Speaker 3: as we know, you know, movies are able to, for
- 11:09Speaker 3: better our words, really shape kind of culture and how
- 11:13Speaker 3: people perceive things, and so I think that that's actually
- 11:15Speaker 3: quite a big, a big part of it. And so
- 11:18Speaker 3: I think therefore that psychological barrier which much tougher the
- 11:22Speaker 3: structure bearers. You know, we were able to find a smart,
- 11:26Speaker 3: innovative solution, write some code so that you could buy
- 11:29Speaker 3: these fractional shares. Were actually the first to offer that,
- 11:31Speaker 3: which we're quite proud of, so that you could start
- 11:35Speaker 3: buying as low as a dollar of that Amazon stock,
- 11:38Speaker 3: even if it's trading at three thousand dollars a share.
- 11:41Speaker 3: So basically, and the way we thought about that was like, okay,
- 11:44Speaker 3: think think about bigcoin. Think about if you had to
- 11:46Speaker 3: buy one whole bitcoin to participate in that as an investment, right, Like,
- 11:51Speaker 3: it would never have taken on the life that it's
- 11:53Speaker 3: taken on, because very quickly you'd have to come up
- 11:57Speaker 3: with a lot of money in order to participate in it.
- 12:00Speaker 3: And so we were a little bit like, well, it's
- 12:02Speaker 3: kind of silly that these companies have these things called
- 12:06Speaker 3: share prices that are set in a little bit of
- 12:08Speaker 3: an arbitrary way, and that access the flaw or the
- 12:13Speaker 3: minimum amount that you can invest, and nobody could really
- 12:17Speaker 3: you know, there's no good answer all other that that's
- 12:20Speaker 3: just how it is. And I think whenever you get
- 12:22Speaker 3: that answer as an entrepreneur, you know that you're likely
- 12:24Speaker 3: onto something and there's a problem to be solved.
- 12:27Speaker 2: That's why you went to fractional shares as well, that's.
- 12:30Speaker 3: Why we win exactly. And so so it enabled obviously
- 12:35Speaker 3: people to invest that couldn't be false. Instead of saving
- 12:39Speaker 3: up ten thousand dollars, we had people who would just
- 12:42Speaker 3: invest ten dollars a day because the shares are so
- 12:47Speaker 3: fractional shares are basically just you know, I guess the
- 12:51Speaker 3: simplest ways to explain it is when you buy into
- 12:54Speaker 3: a company, you can buy one share for like, let's
- 12:58Speaker 3: say five hundred dollars, all you can buy with fractional
- 13:02Speaker 3: heres zero point one shares for fifty dollars, and so
- 13:06Speaker 3: being able to trade less than one share was historically
- 13:09Speaker 3: not possible, and that was the initial feature that we
- 13:13Speaker 3: launched with hence the name public. It's sort of about
- 13:16Speaker 3: making the public markets truly available to the public. That
- 13:19Speaker 3: was where we kind of started from, and we've actually
- 13:23Speaker 3: then gone on to do that with the bond market,
- 13:26Speaker 3: with the US Treasury market, corporate bonds, and so now
- 13:31Speaker 3: we have this fully fractional trading platform which lowers the
- 13:35Speaker 3: minimums that you need to invest. But I also think
- 13:37Speaker 3: it just lends people to build more balanced, diversified portfolios.
- 13:43Speaker 3: Because if you imagine the thought experiment of say you
- 13:46Speaker 3: had ten thousand dollars back in twenty nineteen, if you
- 13:49Speaker 3: wanted to buy Amazon and you had to buy full
- 13:52Speaker 3: shares and it's three thousand dollars a share you have
- 13:55Speaker 3: to buy Amazon would be thirty sixty ninety percent of
- 13:59Speaker 3: your portfolio. Can't be twenty, can't be fifty, can't be ten, right,
- 14:03Speaker 3: And so I always come back to some of these
- 14:08Speaker 3: pubfet quotes and Warren Buffett all said always said like,
- 14:11Speaker 3: if there's two things you should do, optimized Texas and
- 14:14Speaker 3: the versa by your portfolio. It was actually quite hot
- 14:18Speaker 3: for the average person to do beople fracsional ships right,
- 14:22Speaker 3: both of those things. And so we've spent a lot
- 14:25Speaker 3: of time innovating in this space to make sure that
- 14:28Speaker 3: that is that is sort of a premise that everyone
- 14:31Speaker 3: can actually go and execute on for themselves.
- 14:37Speaker 1: Why do you care so much, my man? I mean,
- 14:40Speaker 1: you could have just continued on your career after the bank,
- 14:46Speaker 1: and you sold, made a company and sold some sold it.
- 14:50Speaker 1: You could have went and got a yacht or done
- 14:51Speaker 1: what rich obnoxious people do and check out and live
- 14:55Speaker 1: in a bubble. But you, h You're just one thing
- 14:58Speaker 1: I noticed about you when I met you, and I'm
- 15:01Speaker 1: attracted to people who are just authentic like this. You
- 15:04Speaker 1: are just normal, and normal is pretty abnormal these days.
- 15:10Speaker 1: But as we were saying offline, I believe that a
- 15:15Speaker 1: good person who becomes very successful just becomes a very
- 15:22Speaker 1: successful good person, and a bad person or jerk who
- 15:28Speaker 1: becomes uber successful becomes just a really big jerk who
- 15:35Speaker 1: happens to be really like, very successful. But it's so
- 15:38Speaker 1: obvious that they just amplified who you are. And when
- 15:42Speaker 1: we met in the green room effectively at CNBC, you
- 15:46Speaker 1: didn't know me, I didn't know you. And we both
- 15:48Speaker 1: had handlers who would prefer to risk manage around us
- 15:52Speaker 1: by not letting us talk to anybody, And of course
- 15:54Speaker 1: both of us were nosy and curious, and so we
- 16:00Speaker 1: out of each other's business in a very positive way.
- 16:02Speaker 1: But I just found it. You're just so easy to approach.
- 16:05Speaker 1: You're very normal. Uh, you're very authentic. That has to
- 16:11Speaker 1: do my guess, is your with your backstory in Copenhagen.
- 16:14Speaker 2: Can you take us.
- 16:15Speaker 1: Into that world and and what was that experience that
- 16:19Speaker 1: gave you self esteem, confidence, confidence and comfort dealing with
- 16:22Speaker 1: diverse groups of people.
- 16:26Speaker 3: Well, thank you. I I mean, look, I had a
- 16:29Speaker 3: pretty also normal upbringing, like a little bit out inside
- 16:33Speaker 3: the city. I guess you could call suburbs today. My
- 16:36Speaker 3: dad was a plumber and my mom was a customer
- 16:38Speaker 3: service but I would say very hot working people. My
- 16:43Speaker 3: dad also he had his own plumbing company, so he
- 16:47Speaker 3: was an entrepreneur. It was not very big, it was
- 16:49Speaker 3: just him and a couple of other guys, but he
- 16:52Speaker 3: cared deeply about his craft. And I remember reading the
- 16:55Speaker 3: Steve jobs book. I think Steve Jobson's dad was a
- 16:58Speaker 3: carpenter and he had deeply about his craft, and he
- 17:02Speaker 3: was always this kind of guy to like make sure
- 17:05Speaker 3: that stuff looked as good as on the on the
- 17:07Speaker 3: inside as it did on the outside, even if nobody's
- 17:10Speaker 3: ever going to see it, Like that's that's totally my dad.
- 17:13Speaker 3: Like he actually I think he actually got a medal
- 17:16Speaker 3: from the Queen for being outstanding in his in his
- 17:19Speaker 3: in his field as part of education stuff like that.
- 17:22Speaker 3: So I always grew up with this notion of, on
- 17:27Speaker 3: the one hand, if you're going to do something, do
- 17:29Speaker 3: it really well, because life's just too short to be
- 17:33Speaker 3: doing something that you're not great at or you don't
- 17:36Speaker 3: love doing. And so I think that finding that Venn
- 17:39Speaker 3: diagram is really important. And then you know, my dad
- 17:43Speaker 3: also has a saying, which is like, we are who
- 17:45Speaker 3: we are, and and so why try to be anyone else?
- 17:50Speaker 2: Right?
- 17:50Speaker 3: And I think that's maybe a little bit more straight
- 17:54Speaker 3: to your question on authenticity. I do believe that in
- 17:57Speaker 3: the Nordic countries especially, this whole concept of having an
- 18:02Speaker 3: image as a person doesn't really exist to the way
- 18:05Speaker 3: that it does in America, which obviously is the home
- 18:08Speaker 3: of marketing and branding and everything else, and so that
- 18:14Speaker 3: that probably has something to do with it as well. Oh,
- 18:22Speaker 3: c J. Did we lose him again?
- 18:26Speaker 2: I think we did. But that was a great answer.
- 18:28Speaker 4: Though the world does not. The devil does not want
- 18:38Speaker 4: us to get together. It's amazing this never happened before.
- 18:43Speaker 3: No, h hang on, John, now I can't hear you.
- 18:47Speaker 3: You're kind of froze for a second.
- 18:48Speaker 2: And now.
- 18:52Speaker 1: The devil does not want you and me to get together.
- 18:57Speaker 3: I know, but now it's back to being my my damn.
- 19:02Speaker 5: Uh okay, now this this will probably hold.
- 19:17Speaker 4: The devil does not want you to connect, so so John,
- 19:21Speaker 4: the second one appeared, I'm gonna remove that one just
- 19:24Speaker 4: so you want hear to.
- 19:25Speaker 2: Echo, Yes, sir, this is crazy.
- 19:29Speaker 3: Yeah, this is uh. I'm also like it's a little
- 19:34Speaker 3: bit like it's my airpod's it's your connection.
- 19:38Speaker 1: You know, I've been this is my third season of
- 19:40Speaker 1: doing this, season three. This is I've done live TV
- 19:43Speaker 1: from here and broadcasts. This has never happened. It hasn't
- 19:46Speaker 1: happened once yet alone three times. So uh, you already
- 19:49Speaker 1: got a phone call. I gotta get my people and
- 19:51Speaker 1: my tech folks come up here and solve my internet.
- 19:53Speaker 2: And I got three I've got redundancies.
- 19:55Speaker 1: I've got I've got two Internet commercial Internet connections plus
- 19:59Speaker 1: starlink and uh uh so yeah, anyway, I don't and
- 20:04Speaker 1: I don't give up. So we will pick up right
- 20:07Speaker 1: right we left off. Hopefully this is this will we're
- 20:10Speaker 1: halfway through.
- 20:12Speaker 3: Adversity.
- 20:14Speaker 2: He did a good job answering the question. He completed
- 20:17Speaker 2: the question just so he completed the question. Did he
- 20:21Speaker 2: did well?
- 20:22Speaker 1: We were talking about your background you're you're completed about
- 20:25Speaker 1: your your dad.
- 20:27Speaker 3: I think I got to the end of it and
- 20:28Speaker 3: I think you're just FROs Yeah.
- 20:31Speaker 1: So, so your dad's story and Steve Jobs you mentioned
- 20:40Speaker 1: is an interesting that you mentioned that. Then my book
- 20:42Speaker 1: Capitalism for All I talk about Steve Jobs and the
- 20:46Speaker 1: fact that people don't know that he is the product
- 20:49Speaker 1: of a father who was Middle Eastern. He was Syrian,
- 20:55Speaker 1: I think Syrian Jordanian and the uh father of the
- 21:03Speaker 1: lady he had fallen in love with his father of
- 21:06Speaker 1: the of the mother of Steve John's mother, his birth
- 21:09Speaker 1: mother uh. The so the his grandfather did not want
- 21:14Speaker 1: the daughter Steve John's mother to be with the Jordanian
- 21:18Speaker 1: and put him up for aduction. And the first family
- 21:22Speaker 1: bounced out for whatever reason.
- 21:25Speaker 2: And it was his and it was his criteria that.
- 21:27Speaker 1: Had to be highly educated, wealthy white and that family
- 21:31Speaker 1: bounced out, the Booby Prize family. The backup plan was
- 21:35Speaker 1: his middle class family in the Silicon Valley Valley called
- 21:39Speaker 1: the Jobs family. And so he ended up there by accident,
- 21:45Speaker 1: if you will, and then met Wosney Act.
- 21:47Speaker 2: In the neighborhood and the rest was magic.
- 21:49Speaker 1: Of course, he was obsessed with design, and texture and
- 21:52Speaker 1: look and feel. The first tech leader who wanted it
- 21:55Speaker 1: to look good inside and out as your dad. So
- 22:00Speaker 1: but why do I say that because eighteen almost eighteen
- 22:03Speaker 1: twenty six percent, almost twenty percent of all GDP in
- 22:06Speaker 1: America is tied to immigrants, and you're an immigrant story.
- 22:11Speaker 2: Yeah, totally, no one, And so when did you come
- 22:18Speaker 2: to America?
- 22:19Speaker 3: I came in twenty seventeen, I believe I was actually
- 22:23Speaker 3: in London before and then speaking of immigration disasters, bricksit happened.
- 22:29Speaker 3: And when I was living in London and Brexit came in,
- 22:33Speaker 3: it was like wow, like nobody really believed that that
- 22:35Speaker 3: would be a thing in central London, which also, in hindsight,
- 22:39Speaker 3: was I guess a view into how how little sort
- 22:46Speaker 3: of understanding there was between urban and sort of more
- 22:51Speaker 3: rural kind of places in the UK at large, which
- 22:55Speaker 3: I think became a little bit of a canarrea in
- 22:58Speaker 3: the coal mine for the twenty twenty for the first time.
- 23:02Speaker 3: So Trump won the election over here, and then that's
- 23:04Speaker 3: repeated itself, I think in many other places around the world.
- 23:08Speaker 3: So looking back at it from that lens, it was
- 23:10Speaker 3: kind of interesting, But yeah, breaks it happened, and I
- 23:12Speaker 3: was like, hey, I don't actually know if I can
- 23:14Speaker 3: even be here as a European citizen, as a Danish person,
- 23:19Speaker 3: and so there was that push, but I think stronger
- 23:22Speaker 3: than that was probably the pole of America. The US.
- 23:26Speaker 3: I've always called it the champions League of finance, like
- 23:31Speaker 3: it is the biggest market. It is like it has
- 23:36Speaker 3: the stock market, has this like I mean, it has
- 23:39Speaker 3: the best track record far and away, and it is
- 23:42Speaker 3: truly this like massive wealth creation engine. And I remember
- 23:49Speaker 3: coming to New York and talking to people who was
- 23:51Speaker 3: not taking advantage of it, and I just found that
- 23:54Speaker 3: to be strange. And that's sort of how I started
- 23:56Speaker 3: asking more questions, just trying to stay curry is about
- 24:00Speaker 3: why people do something or why people don't do certain things.
- 24:05Speaker 3: And ultimately I just sat down scheduled fifty meetings over
- 24:09Speaker 3: zoom or Skype. I think maybe it wasn't even better there,
- 24:12Speaker 3: And then I just did fifty meetings with people my age,
- 24:16Speaker 3: from all walks of life and ask them are they investing?
- 24:20Speaker 3: Why aren't they investing?
- 24:21Speaker 1: You know?
- 24:22Speaker 3: And you learn a lot that way, and it honestly
- 24:26Speaker 3: like it took a week, and so I think a
- 24:29Speaker 3: lot of entrepreneurship gets left on the table because people
- 24:36Speaker 3: don't know where to start. And it's said how to
- 24:38Speaker 3: validate an idea? And I would say, it's actually simpler
- 24:42Speaker 3: then your thin It is just like, sit down. I
- 24:44Speaker 3: hired this one freelance that just like, help me find
- 24:47Speaker 3: a bunch of people. You go on socials and LinkedIn,
- 24:50Speaker 3: et cetera. You're off of people, I mean following. Most
- 24:53Speaker 3: people do the stuff for free just because you know,
- 24:57Speaker 3: they like to be heard, and everyone does and so.
- 25:01Speaker 3: And it was people who were like product managers and
- 25:03Speaker 3: tech companies, it was people who were working in services industry.
- 25:07Speaker 3: It was sort of from all walks of life. And yeah,
- 25:10Speaker 3: there was a very clear message that like, the stock
- 25:13Speaker 3: market seems complicated also and I don't understand it. Then
- 25:18Speaker 3: the people that didn't understand that, they were like, well,
- 25:20Speaker 3: I need to save up ten twenty thousand dollars to
- 25:22Speaker 3: build a portfolio I really want to build. That's why
- 25:24Speaker 3: this fractional idea kind of became very powerful. And I
- 25:29Speaker 3: think if you fast forward to today, the problems around
- 25:32Speaker 3: the stock market or adoption, I would say of the
- 25:34Speaker 3: stock market has always been access information and tools and time.
- 25:42Speaker 3: Maybe as the fourth one, but tools and time kind
- 25:45Speaker 3: of go hand in hand. And when we met on CC,
- 25:50Speaker 3: I was there to announce that we was sort of
- 25:54Speaker 3: the first and vision platform to bring AI agents into investing,
- 25:57Speaker 3: which I think is in many ways the sort of
- 26:03Speaker 3: the second chapter of this company, because the first chapter
- 26:07Speaker 3: was about ensuring everyone had access and that they could
- 26:13Speaker 3: buy any any stuck in any company that they wanted
- 26:16Speaker 3: without commission, free of charge, build any portfolio they wanted.
- 26:21Speaker 3: And so once you solve access, what comes after it's
- 26:25Speaker 3: essentially resources, which you could call tools, time, information, some
- 26:30Speaker 3: mixture of those three things. And it was always and
- 26:34Speaker 3: I knew that from the beginning of the company. I
- 26:36Speaker 3: just like it was always difficult to like, how do
- 26:38Speaker 3: you solve that right in the pre AI world, how
- 26:41Speaker 3: do you make it so that somebody who spends an
- 26:43Speaker 3: hour a week on their portfolio can can get anywhere
- 26:50Speaker 3: near to being as sophisticated as somebody who has a
- 26:53Speaker 3: family office and a bunch of professionals, you know, employed.
- 26:59Speaker 3: And throughout the journey the company, by the way, you
- 27:01Speaker 3: mentioned a couple of people that invested, there was also
- 27:07Speaker 3: a guy like Tig Passions, who I think we talked
- 27:10Speaker 3: a little bit about and so I was I was
- 27:15Speaker 3: lucky enough to get exposed to some of these super
- 27:17Speaker 3: successful people and just learn about how do they invest.
- 27:21Speaker 3: And then I was trying to be like, Okay, how
- 27:23Speaker 3: can we make ninety percent of that available, you know,
- 27:27Speaker 3: for ten percent of the cost, so to say to
- 27:30Speaker 3: everyone else. And so access was really the first just
- 27:33Speaker 3: like fractionalizing the entire stock market so everybody can buy
- 27:36Speaker 3: into it. And then AI, I think, is the next
- 27:38Speaker 3: chapter in ensuring that everybody has a support system around them,
- 27:42Speaker 3: that they have resources, tools, information readily available, that everybody
- 27:46Speaker 3: has a thought partner, because I think, contrary to public belief,
- 27:51Speaker 3: investing is I think, not something that should always just
- 27:53Speaker 3: be done in silos.
- 27:56Speaker 2: You know.
- 27:56Speaker 3: I think it's great to talk about this stuff and
- 28:00Speaker 3: to get ideas out of the opened and and and
- 28:02Speaker 3: really think about them from all different kinds of legs
- 28:07Speaker 3: and perspectives.
- 28:10Speaker 1: Something else I found interesting when we met, you volunteered
- 28:13Speaker 1: that one of your big backers initially was Dick Parsons.
- 28:15Speaker 1: You just volunteered that, and you owed a lot to
- 28:18Speaker 1: Dick Parsons. And a lot of people want to suggest
- 28:21Speaker 1: that they got there all by themselves or some version
- 28:24Speaker 1: of that, and uh and even rarer where they acknowledge
- 28:28Speaker 1: that the person who gave them a shot was a
- 28:32Speaker 1: major player on Wall Street and in business who just
- 28:35Speaker 1: happened to be black. But can you tell the audience
- 28:38Speaker 1: very quickly, God rest his soul the legacy of Dick Parsons.
- 28:42Speaker 1: And then I want to pivot to to because I
- 28:45Speaker 1: think that what I'm hearing you say is you want
- 28:47Speaker 1: to be a good capitalist, which is again what I'm
- 28:49Speaker 1: talking about in Capitalism for All, And you want to
- 28:51Speaker 1: prove that you can do well and do good at
- 28:53Speaker 1: the same time, you know, to be a jerk to
- 28:54Speaker 1: be successful, which is what I'm trying to also do
- 28:58Speaker 1: in my businesses. And how did that affect you in
- 29:01Speaker 1: twenty twenty one when the whole meaning.
- 29:07Speaker 3: So that actually goes back to make a little bit
- 29:09Speaker 3: so so so I didn't actually meet with him very
- 29:12Speaker 3: many times, but it was it was one of these
- 29:14Speaker 3: things where whenever you spend time with him, you just
- 29:19Speaker 3: you came away with a lot of enlightenment. And obviously
- 29:25Speaker 3: he just had a ton a ton of experience. And
- 29:29Speaker 3: I believe in this quote that history doesn't repeat, but
- 29:31Speaker 3: it rhymes and when COVID hit because of his health condition,
- 29:41Speaker 3: he had to I think get outside of the city.
- 29:46Speaker 3: And our business was going gain custers why we're doubling
- 29:49Speaker 3: the user base every month, and so we all had
- 29:51Speaker 3: to go remote. But we were also trying to kind
- 29:54Speaker 3: of co work together in different apartments and whatnot around
- 29:57Speaker 3: New York City, just because, like things will moving so
- 30:00Speaker 3: fast that a small bunch of us kind of needed
- 30:03Speaker 3: to to be together. And and I think we had
- 30:10Speaker 3: some instrumental calls with him where we kind of went
- 30:12Speaker 3: through He's like, hey, how can I be helpful in
- 30:16Speaker 3: any way, shape or arm. He had some space in
- 30:20Speaker 3: the city that we were able to also use at
- 30:22Speaker 3: various points in time. I don't even think we had
- 30:24Speaker 3: an office at that time actually, And and so he
- 30:31Speaker 3: was always just someone who genuinely wanted I mean, he
- 30:35Speaker 3: obviously invested in the company, but you got the sense
- 30:37Speaker 3: that he generally really wanted to be helpful and and
- 30:40Speaker 3: his investment in our company is not going to make
- 30:43Speaker 3: a financial difference to him really at that point in
- 30:46Speaker 3: his life, I think, but he really liked I think
- 30:51Speaker 3: the mission that we were on, and he wanted to
- 30:57Speaker 3: see guys like us who I think he believed what
- 31:02Speaker 3: what we both believe, which is that capitalism and moral
- 31:08Speaker 3: sort of and values and having good principles if you will,
- 31:15Speaker 3: don't have to be at arts with each other. And
- 31:18Speaker 3: it's funny for me because, like I'm coming, I grew
- 31:21Speaker 3: up in Denmark, and Denmark is sort of a place
- 31:24Speaker 3: that's not exactly known for capitalism, although we do have
- 31:27Speaker 3: a lot of I mean, we have one of the
- 31:29Speaker 3: largest comes in Europe, and nautistic Skype was like partially
- 31:33Speaker 3: founded by Danish guy Lego obviously is one of the
- 31:35Speaker 3: most successful companies of all. So it's like here I
- 31:40Speaker 3: here Swedish, so it's close. Okay, No, that was Finnish Finish,
- 31:45Speaker 3: so we can take create for that one. But there
- 31:46Speaker 3: was a lot of invention, I think, like c sharp
- 31:50Speaker 3: the programming language, you know, like a lot of early
- 31:53Speaker 3: contributions to the tcp IP protocol. So a lot of
- 31:56Speaker 3: good engineering, a lot of a lot of innovation. But
- 31:59Speaker 3: we can yeah, I think less about as a people
- 32:02Speaker 3: like capitalizing on the inventions, and it was more about
- 32:06Speaker 3: like proving that we could do it, and that's what's
- 32:08Speaker 3: kind of interesting. And then obviously very very kind of
- 32:11Speaker 3: values driven society. I was actually a little bit the
- 32:14Speaker 3: odd one out. I was a little bit the guy
- 32:16Speaker 3: who was like, I like capitalism. I have seen, especially
- 32:20Speaker 3: in America, what capitalism can do for the world, and
- 32:23Speaker 3: so I guess to some extent, I was always looking
- 32:26Speaker 3: for people who understood that you could marry those two
- 32:29Speaker 3: concepts and to your initial point, your opening point, that
- 32:34Speaker 3: you know, the summer sort of greater than the parts
- 32:38Speaker 3: if you do that right. And I think the Positis
- 32:40Speaker 3: was one of those people as well, and I think
- 32:42Speaker 3: that's maybe just how we also got attracted to each other.
- 32:46Speaker 3: But so he was very helpful back in twenty twenty,
- 32:49Speaker 3: twenty twenty one at those very early stages on a
- 32:54Speaker 3: number offications. And then in twenty twenty one, this whole
- 32:57Speaker 3: game Stop thing unraveled and there was this moment, okay,
- 33:02Speaker 3: I called it like a mass educational moment of how
- 33:05Speaker 3: the stock market works. So a lot of people was
- 33:08Speaker 3: buying this game Stop stock because there was a short
- 33:12Speaker 3: squeeze on it, which we can get into all the
- 33:15Speaker 3: technical details of, but basically, all of retail was buying
- 33:18Speaker 3: the stock, all of Wall Street was selling the stock.
- 33:22Speaker 3: They were short the stock, and so it was like
- 33:24Speaker 3: if enough people could buy it, you could squeeze out
- 33:26Speaker 3: the shorts. They had to cover their shorts, which means
- 33:29Speaker 3: that to buy back the stock, which means the stock
- 33:31Speaker 3: would go up even more. And this is sort of
- 33:33Speaker 3: a way that institutions have been battling against each other
- 33:36Speaker 3: on Wall Street for decades, and now retail was a
- 33:40Speaker 3: player at that table.
- 33:43Speaker 1: This is actually worth slowing down from it and rolling
- 33:46Speaker 1: back is a lesson. They's spend two minutes explaining and
- 33:49Speaker 1: unpacking shorts and what happened in this particular environment where
- 33:54Speaker 1: Main Street decided it was going to send one message
- 33:57Speaker 1: to Wall Street and took a top.
- 33:59Speaker 2: It really wasn't all that valuable to the moon totally.
- 34:02Speaker 3: And like they so basically as short as if you
- 34:06Speaker 3: believe a stock is going down and you don't own
- 34:09Speaker 3: the stock, how are you going to speculate and and
- 34:14Speaker 3: and put yourself in a position to gain from it
- 34:16Speaker 3: going down? Well you do that by instead of buying stock,
- 34:20Speaker 3: because then you'd belong the stock, as they call it,
- 34:22Speaker 3: you benefit from the stock going up, So instead you
- 34:25Speaker 3: borrow the stock and then you sell it. That is
- 34:29Speaker 3: what it means to go short. And in that situation.
- 34:33Speaker 3: You know, you're borrowing the stock and you have to
- 34:35Speaker 3: ultimately give the stock back to the person you borrowed
- 34:37Speaker 3: it from. But you're boring it and selling it in
- 34:41Speaker 3: the market, and so to close out your position, you
- 34:44Speaker 3: have to buy it back, like the inverse of being long.
- 34:48Speaker 3: And that's something that you know, hedge funds have been
- 34:51Speaker 3: doing forever and and again whenever. Whenever hedge funds do that,
- 34:58Speaker 3: there's this thing called short interest, which is as a
- 35:00Speaker 3: percentage of the market capitalization, let's say how many people
- 35:04Speaker 3: are short. In the case of Game Stop, it went
- 35:09Speaker 3: all the way up to and for technical reasons that
- 35:12Speaker 3: are probably too far fitch to explain on this, I
- 35:14Speaker 3: think it went actually over one hundred percent because I
- 35:16Speaker 3: had to do with the float and everything else, so
- 35:18Speaker 3: and the settlement times and stuff like that. So basically
- 35:22Speaker 3: like just to think about like a lot of like
- 35:24Speaker 3: the mall, the stock went up and got disconnected from
- 35:27Speaker 3: its fundamentals, meaning it's price earnings ratio for example. The
- 35:31Speaker 3: more people also wanted to be shot. But when you're short,
- 35:35Speaker 3: you can actually lose more than your initial investments. So
- 35:38Speaker 3: it's also very very riskin very very dangerous that's why
- 35:41Speaker 3: historically mostly it's something that institutional vestors have been participating in.
- 35:46Speaker 3: And so you had all these heads fronts being short
- 35:49Speaker 3: retail buying out the stock based on this speceis on Reddit,
- 35:51Speaker 3: which now has become very famous. Also a great movie
- 35:55Speaker 3: about that, and yeah, and so the more people were buying,
- 36:00Speaker 3: the more it squeezed the shorts because they would have
- 36:03Speaker 3: to buy the stock as well at some point to
- 36:05Speaker 3: cover the short because they have to get the stock
- 36:07Speaker 3: back to the person that they poured it from. And
- 36:10Speaker 3: so very exactly, honestly, that thing no point intended for
- 36:15Speaker 3: game stop, but like that thing became a game and
- 36:17Speaker 3: it's obviously completely discarnated for investing. And so I remember
- 36:21Speaker 3: the exactly no totally and I remember being like, man,
- 36:26Speaker 3: this is I also went on CBC or something, MSNBC
- 36:29Speaker 3: something that morning, and you know, I didn't honestly probaly
- 36:33Speaker 3: sleep for two weeks or everything was a little bit
- 36:34Speaker 3: of a blur, if I'm being honest, But it was
- 36:37Speaker 3: something where I was like, Wow, this is either gonna
- 36:39Speaker 3: be the biggest on ramp of new investors to the
- 36:43Speaker 3: stock market that I've ever seen, or by the way,
- 36:48Speaker 3: that was definitely the case. So the question is what
- 36:51Speaker 3: happens after? That was always a question in my mind, right, like, yeah,
- 36:53Speaker 3: this thing is gonna like like like any high risk
- 36:57Speaker 3: kind of poker game, it can turn out really bad,
- 37:00Speaker 3: few winners, there'll be a lot of losers. But what
- 37:03Speaker 3: happens after Because if everybody came in and they spend
- 37:07Speaker 3: ten bucks on this game stuffing and they lose that
- 37:09Speaker 3: ten box, do they have the wherewithal two be like, Okay,
- 37:16Speaker 3: that didn't work out, and now let me try the
- 37:17Speaker 3: more balancedobards of our portfolio strategy, which goes back to
- 37:22Speaker 3: again this duality of the stock market, which is, at
- 37:26Speaker 3: the same time this can be this crazy speculative, really
- 37:30Speaker 3: crazy thing, but it can also be a very fairly
- 37:34Speaker 3: stable sort of compounder of your wealth. Right, And we
- 37:40Speaker 3: had a big role to play, I thought, in that
- 37:42Speaker 3: moment to make sure that we notch people towards not
- 37:46Speaker 3: just having the journey of investing start and stop with
- 37:50Speaker 3: game stop. So how do you evolve them to stay
- 37:55Speaker 3: on the platform, to think differently about investing, and how
- 37:58Speaker 3: do you make sure that this became like an on
- 38:00Speaker 3: ramp for them to invest and then they and then
- 38:04Speaker 3: they stuck around and built something with large, much larger
- 38:07Speaker 3: amounts of capital that they could really actually compound follow
- 38:13Speaker 3: long haul. And as part of that, there was this
- 38:16Speaker 3: whole debate about payment for autoflow, because what happened in
- 38:20Speaker 3: the industry is like certain brokerages had to turn off
- 38:24Speaker 3: the buy button, which means that retail couldn't buy the
- 38:26Speaker 3: stock anymore, which means the shots kept work. It stopped working,
- 38:32Speaker 3: and it had been working pretty well objectively up up
- 38:36Speaker 3: until that point. And then people were wondering, well, why
- 38:40Speaker 3: did they take away the buy button and such? And
- 38:43Speaker 3: then this whole thing about payment for orderflow came into play,
- 38:46Speaker 3: which is basically how brokedes can get remunerated from marketmakers
- 38:50Speaker 3: in the stock market, and we saw an opportunity there
- 38:54Speaker 3: to and that was just like a default in the
- 38:56Speaker 3: industry that everybody, everybody was using payment for autoflow. Nobody,
- 39:00Speaker 3: I mean, very few people were sending orders to the
- 39:03Speaker 3: stock exchange. They were sending into the sophisticated market magus.
- 39:08Speaker 3: And there's a lot of debate about whether that was
- 39:10Speaker 3: better for the executions or worse. I think ultimately the
- 39:15Speaker 3: evidence shows that in some cases is better. In some
- 39:17Speaker 3: cases is worse at that moment, it was probably worse.
- 39:22Speaker 1: But the executions, by the way, is how your intention
- 39:25Speaker 1: to buy a stock ultimately ends up in the market
- 39:28Speaker 1: in the process.
- 39:30Speaker 2: How that happened is the execution.
- 39:31Speaker 3: So that's exactly yes, yes, yes, thanks for pointing out
- 39:34Speaker 3: out that's a good point. And so we took a
- 39:38Speaker 3: stance for like a better wording to say, we're going
- 39:41Speaker 3: to stop participating in payment for at that point, and
- 39:44Speaker 3: we're going to do some first principles research of what
- 39:49Speaker 3: is the right execution model and and and what we
- 39:52Speaker 3: stopped doing instead is like we routed all the orders
- 39:54Speaker 3: to exchange. Because most people, if you stop them on
- 39:57Speaker 3: the street, hey you buy a stock, which like where
- 40:00Speaker 3: there's your order, If you want to buy a stock,
- 40:01Speaker 3: where does your order go to get filled the stock exchange.
- 40:04Speaker 3: Of course, that was actually not the case in nine percent,
- 40:07Speaker 3: and so we were like, well, let's make that the
- 40:09Speaker 3: case again. And then since then we've we've evolved our
- 40:13Speaker 3: platform for people to have optionality of where they even want.
- 40:15Speaker 2: A route to.
- 40:16Speaker 3: So if people can keep routing to the exchanges and
- 40:20Speaker 3: then there's no payment for autofload, they can keep They
- 40:23Speaker 3: can also decide to rout the market makers if they
- 40:25Speaker 3: believe that that's better for their particular instance, And it
- 40:28Speaker 3: all depends a little bit ultimately, like what you're trading,
- 40:31Speaker 3: how often, et cetera. But I think it was a
- 40:34Speaker 3: good example of like there was no choice in the
- 40:37Speaker 3: industry again actually like there was a default model. This
- 40:40Speaker 3: is how it is, just just because and again that
- 40:44Speaker 3: that is always a good opportunity I think to take
- 40:46Speaker 3: a step back and be like, how should it be?
- 40:50Speaker 3: And you're right, we probably did sacrifice some short term
- 40:52Speaker 3: revenue with that decision, but I still see it as
- 40:55Speaker 3: a capitalist decision fundamentally, because I think I'll look back
- 40:58Speaker 3: at the data now and I can and you know,
- 41:00Speaker 3: there's not perfect attribution on it, but I can, I can,
- 41:03Speaker 3: I can sort of roughly gather that a lot of
- 41:05Speaker 3: people said, hey, you should go and try public because
- 41:10Speaker 3: they just have different ideas about how all this stuff
- 41:12Speaker 3: should work. And so we got a lot of credit
- 41:15Speaker 3: for it in other ways, and ultimately, ultimately we were
- 41:22Speaker 3: also able to, like I said, do a lot of
- 41:24Speaker 3: that research and lead the industry in that, I think,
- 41:27Speaker 3: and sort of uncover a little bit like, Okay, what
- 41:30Speaker 3: does execution quality look? Like across different times of day,
- 41:33Speaker 3: different tickers, et cetera, and what is actually the right
- 41:36Speaker 3: model And and that just came back in terms of
- 41:40Speaker 3: I guess lower customer acquisition costs as well. Ultimately it's
- 41:44Speaker 3: how you'd measure that, right And so even from a
- 41:47Speaker 3: pure rational data capitalist point of view, I think it
- 41:50Speaker 3: was the right decision. And our thesis was in the
- 41:54Speaker 3: moment to be clear that this was a good example
- 41:56Speaker 3: to do this thing that we're talking about, like like,
- 42:01Speaker 3: it's still a capitalist move, but it's a more long
- 42:04Speaker 3: term one versus a short term one. And I think
- 42:07Speaker 3: by the way, that's something that often goes gets misunderstood
- 42:12Speaker 3: is sometimes you look at things and you can think like, oh,
- 42:17Speaker 3: is this like a capitalist endeavor or is this like
- 42:20Speaker 3: a good hearted endeavor? And as we keep coming back to,
- 42:23Speaker 3: often it can be both. But the other dimension to
- 42:27Speaker 3: look at is what is the time horizon. There time
- 42:30Speaker 3: horizon is really, especially in the world of investing, it's everything,
- 42:33Speaker 3: And so something can appear like a non capitalist move
- 42:39Speaker 3: in the short term, but turn out to be a
- 42:41Speaker 3: very good capitalist move in the long term, and I
- 42:45Speaker 3: think that was the case for us in that moment
- 42:47Speaker 3: with paint and waterflow, and I think those are the Yeah,
- 42:52Speaker 3: that's that's that's that's a good framework that we often use.
- 42:55Speaker 3: Like there's so often a balance between short and long term.
- 42:59Speaker 3: And obviously you want to make your business thrive in
- 43:01Speaker 3: the short term. You know, you got to pay the
- 43:03Speaker 3: bills and you got to keep growing. But at the
- 43:05Speaker 3: same time, you don't want to squander the long term
- 43:08Speaker 3: opportunity because at least as entrepreneurs, that's what most people
- 43:11Speaker 3: that like, that's why we were not here to like, like,
- 43:15Speaker 3: you sign up for a very long journey, and you
- 43:17Speaker 3: sign up to hopefully make your dent in an industry
- 43:21Speaker 3: or even change the world over a decade, not over
- 43:24Speaker 3: the course of a year or a month like that
- 43:26Speaker 3: would be you know, that's not that's not having a dream,
- 43:30Speaker 3: that's just having an illusion, right and so and so
- 43:33Speaker 3: I really think that aspect of like time horizon perspective
- 43:39Speaker 3: is important with every with every decision made, by the
- 43:43Speaker 3: way I use it every day when I buy stocks, right,
- 43:46Speaker 3: you know, a stock that I believe is going to
- 43:48Speaker 3: be worth a lot of money in five ten years
- 43:51Speaker 3: goes down five percent because somebody somewhere decided to some
- 43:55Speaker 3: bank I decided to issue rating that in the short
- 43:57Speaker 3: term they don't believe as much in it. I all
- 44:00Speaker 3: personally not avestment advice, but I've always just seen that
- 44:02Speaker 3: as great buying opportunities. I think a lot of our
- 44:04Speaker 3: members on public do as well. And that's where this
- 44:08Speaker 3: dollar cost averaging idea comes in, where you can just
- 44:11Speaker 3: keep buying the dips on these companies that you believe
- 44:14Speaker 3: in a long term.
- 44:17Speaker 1: So a dip is when the company of the stock
- 44:20Speaker 1: value the stock price drops and everybody's or the market
- 44:25Speaker 1: drops and everybody's sort of if you're not confident, you're
- 44:29Speaker 1: jumping overboard if you will. And as Warren Buffett would say,
- 44:33Speaker 1: when people are afraid, be greedy.
- 44:34Speaker 2: When people are greedy, be great.
- 44:37Speaker 1: But if a company is good at three hundred bucks
- 44:41Speaker 1: a share and you believed in it, and nothing about
- 44:44Speaker 1: the company's fundamentals have changed, But because the markets and
- 44:48Speaker 1: sentiments or whatever and outside factors, now the stock prictice
- 44:52Speaker 1: prices one hundred and seventy five bucks or two hundred
- 44:55Speaker 1: bucks a share, would you want more of the same company.
- 44:58Speaker 3: That's a little bit what I call the Friday that
- 45:00Speaker 3: that's the closest thing we get to a black Friday
- 45:02Speaker 3: in the stock market, and and and to be clear,
- 45:05Speaker 3: not every dip is the same. I think yesterday you
- 45:07Speaker 3: saw Drawbox, Drew Houston was announcing that he's stepping down.
- 45:10Speaker 3: He's the founder of Drawbox, and he's gonna also step down.
- 45:15Speaker 3: Stock goes down a few percentage points, like okay, there's
- 45:17Speaker 3: a clear reason for why it goes down, But you
- 45:22Speaker 3: have these moments where there's like a reallocation in an
- 45:26Speaker 3: index bond happening, and therefore for no apparent reason, just
- 45:32Speaker 3: like the stock sells off. The product is the same
- 45:35Speaker 3: as yesterday, The team is the same as yesterday, the
- 45:37Speaker 3: market opportunity is the same as yesterday. Now it's just
- 45:41Speaker 3: five ten percent cheaper. And I think, and I think
- 45:46Speaker 3: I personally like the buffet quote of the greedy when
- 45:51Speaker 3: I was fearful too. But I will say that when
- 45:56Speaker 3: I talked to investors around it about it, many people
- 46:02Speaker 3: don't like it because they still feel that you need
- 46:04Speaker 3: a lot of like courage to execute on that quote,
- 46:09Speaker 3: Like it still feels like okay, but how can I
- 46:12Speaker 3: be the person who's greedy or not the field? Do
- 46:15Speaker 3: I have that in me? And so it doesn't really
- 46:17Speaker 3: help them get started as much as the simple test
- 46:21Speaker 3: of like listen on public we have an AI scanning
- 46:24Speaker 3: every stock in real time explaining you why stock is
- 46:26Speaker 3: up or down. If there's a stock that's down, like
- 46:30Speaker 3: I said, because the COO left, okay, maybe maybe don't
- 46:32Speaker 3: buy the stock. Maybe see how goes unless you really
- 46:34Speaker 3: like the new CEO better than the old CEO. But
- 46:37Speaker 3: if sometimes the stock will just go down as part
- 46:39Speaker 3: of called a broad index draw down, which is like
- 46:44Speaker 3: you know, bankers issuing short term analyst ratings, or it's
- 46:50Speaker 3: an index, is a think about it as like a
- 46:53Speaker 3: collection of a bunch of different stocks. So the S
- 46:58Speaker 3: and P five hundred exactly, it's a beast right on Spotify.
- 47:01Speaker 3: You call it a playlist, you know. Basically it's basically
- 47:04Speaker 3: just like so the five hundred are the considered like
- 47:08Speaker 3: the top five hundred companies on the on the US
- 47:14Speaker 3: stock market. The Nastak one hundred, which I would say
- 47:16Speaker 3: the second most famous, are the top one hundred companies
- 47:18Speaker 3: from the Nastacs Vargut change, which is mostly tech companies
- 47:22Speaker 3: but not always. And we've done actually some interesting innovations
- 47:27Speaker 3: here also with Aire where we've made it so that
- 47:33Speaker 3: you can basically just prompt inside public you can be like, hey,
- 47:37Speaker 3: I want to invest in the entire Nastaq one hundred index,
- 47:41Speaker 3: but only companies that don't get affected by tariffsple wow.
- 47:45Speaker 3: Really Then and then it builds a custom index for
- 47:48Speaker 3: you in ten seconds, shows you every pick, It explains
- 47:53Speaker 3: why it made every pick, It has a relevance to
- 47:55Speaker 3: score from sero to one hundred on every stock pick,
- 47:59Speaker 3: and it shows you a back test over the last
- 48:01Speaker 3: ten years how that collection would have performed, how the
- 48:04Speaker 3: basket were performed relative to the S and P five hundred,
- 48:07Speaker 3: which is considered the sort of benchmark in the market
- 48:10Speaker 3: right and that has been a super successful product. And
- 48:14Speaker 3: it's a little bit like the new way to build
- 48:16Speaker 3: an index fund in this era of AI, because it
- 48:20Speaker 3: just again gives control and choice back and transparency back
- 48:25Speaker 3: to the user, which is I think free principles that
- 48:28Speaker 3: have always been quite key to how we think about
- 48:31Speaker 3: building product at public. And there are so many cool examples.
- 48:34Speaker 3: By the way, you can browse examples other people made too,
- 48:36Speaker 3: which is like a really good time to spend your day,
- 48:39Speaker 3: very educational as well, to see. I mean, there's like
- 48:42Speaker 3: I think there's like twenty thirty fifty thousand of these.
- 48:46Speaker 3: We launched this like before Thanksgiving class years as like
- 48:48Speaker 3: half a year old, and there's all kinds of things.
- 48:52Speaker 3: There's there's by the way, there's one with immigrant CEOs
- 48:56Speaker 3: that's performing. So let me let me back all the
- 48:57Speaker 3: companies of immigrant CEOs that I just happened to, uh know,
- 49:02Speaker 3: performance extremely well. This one for software to service companies
- 49:06Speaker 3: that are over sold, you know, and a lot of
- 49:09Speaker 3: these kind of things and so and again this is
- 49:12Speaker 3: like a little bit how we think about a public
- 49:15Speaker 3: giving resources tools to people so that they can, in
- 49:18Speaker 3: a simple way, build a pretty sophisticated portfolio, because everybody
- 49:23Speaker 3: wants to end up with something pretty sophisticated, I think,
- 49:26Speaker 3: but historically has taken a lot of hard work to
- 49:30Speaker 3: get there, and I think software and especially AI just
- 49:36Speaker 3: makes that process much smoother and much simpler.
- 49:39Speaker 1: By the way, just tell how much I believe in you,
- 49:43Speaker 1: and I think I've ever done this. I just opened
- 49:45Speaker 1: an account on public awes. Okay, and so you inspired
- 49:52Speaker 1: me to to uh to open an account, and that's.
- 49:55Speaker 2: Hard to do.
- 49:57Speaker 3: It's called generated assets, by the way, I should have mentioned.
- 49:59Speaker 3: So look, look for generated assets when you hit the
- 50:02Speaker 3: trade button in public and you can just prompt whatever
- 50:04Speaker 3: you want. It's also honestly, you'll love it. It's quite
- 50:06Speaker 3: fun and it's quite impressive. How I mean, I could
- 50:09Speaker 3: talk for hours about this, but we basically in a
- 50:12Speaker 3: way that you have a stock analyst at a bank,
- 50:14Speaker 3: we have an an AI agent version of that. So
- 50:17Speaker 3: there's thousands of agents in like a swarm that go
- 50:20Speaker 3: out and analyze the whole market in ten twenty seconds
- 50:23Speaker 3: based on your prompt. And you know, and you can
- 50:26Speaker 3: keep re prompting as many times as you like. You
- 50:28Speaker 3: get a different baptist result every time. And then if
- 50:31Speaker 3: you want to invest, just hit the invest button and
- 50:34Speaker 3: it sits in your portfolio as like one position, just
- 50:38Speaker 3: like a just like an ETF WID. And that's the
- 50:42Speaker 3: that's the cool part.
- 50:43Speaker 1: This AI think that you announced when when we were
- 50:46Speaker 1: both together. Other folks are now following your lead. They're
- 50:49Speaker 1: now announcing it like it's a new thing. But you
- 50:50Speaker 1: were the first mover when I saw you, So kudos
- 50:53Speaker 1: to you on that. And you still have the human
- 50:56Speaker 1: condition there and still you have you still people still
- 50:58Speaker 1: make the decision, but you use it technology and power,
- 51:01Speaker 1: better decision making, and democratize for you know again, level
- 51:05Speaker 1: of the playing field here is what I'm seeing. Everything
- 51:08Speaker 1: I'm hearing you say as the level of the playing field.
- 51:10Speaker 2: Let's go. Two things jump out so far, and it's.
- 51:13Speaker 1: Been a great interview, very educational for people and very
- 51:17Speaker 1: inspirational for me. You mentioned you basically had a two
- 51:20Speaker 1: billion dollar company with no offices, working out of different
- 51:26Speaker 1: bedrooms and apartments in New York, going from from place
- 51:30Speaker 1: to place with your team members and me with investors
- 51:36Speaker 1: like Dick Parson, for whom they could have blew you
- 51:38Speaker 1: off but embraced you instead.
- 51:41Speaker 2: In the middle of a.
- 51:42Speaker 1: Market where people are going all loading into a meme
- 51:45Speaker 1: stock and being completely irrational and basically gambling on Wall Street,
- 51:49Speaker 1: and you're going in the opposite direction.
- 51:52Speaker 2: Somebody might have said.
- 51:54Speaker 1: You're crazy back then, but you were to me crazy
- 51:58Speaker 1: just like a good entrepreneur.
- 52:00Speaker 2: And it was that the most edgy position of.
- 52:04Speaker 1: Your company a two billion dollar market cap, four hundred
- 52:07Speaker 1: million dollars invested institutional investors, but you don't have an
- 52:10Speaker 1: institutional office, and you're going into the opposite direction of
- 52:13Speaker 1: payment from order flow, which is basically your own your
- 52:18Speaker 1: own road less traveled, or was there another moment that
- 52:21Speaker 1: is more distinctive. And when you're thinking about that, I
- 52:23Speaker 1: know you're smart. You can do two things at one time. Also,
- 52:26Speaker 1: tell me you said earlier that the US marketplace is
- 52:31Speaker 1: the US stock market is the jewel of the world,
- 52:34Speaker 1: and no other place in the world is like Northern
- 52:38Speaker 1: market is like the US market. And of course as
- 52:40Speaker 1: a market, there are other markets in the in the Europe.
- 52:44Speaker 1: So why and as we round out to the conclude this,
- 52:51Speaker 1: I want you to think about some real gems of
- 52:55Speaker 1: what you tell your younger self, advice that we could
- 52:58Speaker 1: share with the audience.
- 52:59Speaker 2: And then I've got a person one for you. But
- 53:00Speaker 2: let's go into the edgy moment.
- 53:03Speaker 3: Yeah. So, I mean at that time it was not
- 53:05Speaker 3: quite too bad, maybe half that, but still we were
- 53:08Speaker 3: like a like a million worth and and it was
- 53:12Speaker 3: it was an actually crazy time, both through COVID as
- 53:15Speaker 3: well as for this whole game stop SOAKA Now, that
- 53:21Speaker 3: definitely was one of the biggest moments where we were
- 53:24Speaker 3: also the most contrarian. I would say the second biggest
- 53:28Speaker 3: moment where we were very contrarian was right after CHATGT
- 53:32Speaker 3: came out early twenty twenty three, where you were like,
- 53:36Speaker 3: wait a minute, this could actually because the asymmetry in
- 53:41Speaker 3: the markets, it was never just feast, it was tools, resources, time.
- 53:48Speaker 3: A lot of people.
- 53:49Speaker 2: Explain what you mean by asymmetry to the audience.
- 53:52Speaker 3: Asymmetry meaning some people are having an advantage and some
- 53:55Speaker 3: people being at a disadvantage structurally. And that's ultimately what
- 53:58Speaker 3: we were trying to solve. And so the first way
- 54:00Speaker 3: you solve that is everyone can buy any stock at
- 54:03Speaker 3: the same cost at the same terms as a hedge
- 54:06Speaker 3: front or an institutional player. But do they have the
- 54:10Speaker 3: same tools, do they have the same resources? And I
- 54:12Speaker 3: think most importantly are they willing to put in the
- 54:15Speaker 3: same amount of time for every person? That answers usually no.
- 54:20Speaker 3: So many people have asked me over the years, what
- 54:22Speaker 3: does it take to be a great investor? And for years,
- 54:25Speaker 3: for decades in fact, my answer has always been the same,
- 54:29Speaker 3: same as as Kobe would say, if you want to
- 54:31Speaker 3: be the best, be the first person in the gym
- 54:34Speaker 3: and the last person out. Same as that's true if
- 54:37Speaker 3: you want to join the NBA, it's true if you
- 54:39Speaker 3: want to be greater investor in the stock market. With
- 54:42Speaker 3: AI in early twenty twenty three, I started to see like, okay,
- 54:47Speaker 3: this might not be true anymore. Now actually you have
- 54:52Speaker 3: all these It's a little bit like you have fifteen
- 54:56Speaker 3: analysts available, you're disposal, you're the boss. Put them to work,
- 55:01Speaker 3: have the research stuff. That's where we started with AI
- 55:04Speaker 3: research directly in the public app And so suddenly it
- 55:08Speaker 3: became less about just like the pure grind and more
- 55:10Speaker 3: about like thinking maybe more deeply also just like exactly right,
- 55:16Speaker 3: and like figuring out not not chasing the answer, but
- 55:21Speaker 3: trying to figure out what's the right question to even ask.
- 55:24Speaker 3: And so it changed the paradigm completely. And then fast
- 55:27Speaker 3: forward to today. You know AI can just to research.
- 55:32Speaker 3: It can help you execute your strategy. So if you're
- 55:34Speaker 3: not glued in front of the screen twenty four seven,
- 55:37Speaker 3: if you're not able to, next time in video goes
- 55:40Speaker 3: down five percent for no apparent reason and you're like, damn,
- 55:42Speaker 3: that would be good time to buy the stock. Well,
- 55:44Speaker 3: guess what you can tie into an agent. Hey, next
- 55:46Speaker 3: time a video is down five percent, just five hundred
- 55:49Speaker 3: dollars worth, right, and I don't need to be there.
- 55:52Speaker 3: You can also ask it to say, send me a
- 55:54Speaker 3: push notification and I'll approve it, or you can have
- 55:56Speaker 3: it do it fully like you have like you can
- 55:59Speaker 3: do it the way you want to do it. The
- 56:01Speaker 3: point is that not having resources, not having twenty analysts,
- 56:08Speaker 3: like like, all the excuses are now a little bit gone.
- 56:11Speaker 3: And so you don't need to spend eighty hours a
- 56:13Speaker 3: week analyzing stuff anymore. You can spend one hour and
- 56:18Speaker 3: if you do the right analysis, you're leveling the playing
- 56:21Speaker 3: field right exactly. And so I think that that notion
- 56:24Speaker 3: of time, how much time do you need to invest
- 56:28Speaker 3: in your education to be a good investor, I mean
- 56:31Speaker 3: that number has changed by a thousand x. And I
- 56:36Speaker 3: think that is the single most exciting thing about this
- 56:39Speaker 3: AI movement for me. And that's very much why I
- 56:43Speaker 3: say that a thing public place and point roll is
- 56:45Speaker 3: like and it's it's the second chapter for us. The
- 56:48Speaker 3: first was about enabling access. The second is about enabling
- 56:53Speaker 3: you know, analysis information and giving people the resources and
- 56:59Speaker 3: they need to those great portfolios and so yeah, so
- 57:03Speaker 3: I think that that was the second most contriveing because
- 57:07Speaker 3: in early twenty twenty three, a lot of people look
- 57:09Speaker 3: at the AI stuff and be like, it's never going
- 57:11Speaker 3: to work for finance. It hallucinates too much, YadA YadA, YadA.
- 57:13Speaker 3: By the way, it didn't work for finance and twenty
- 57:15Speaker 3: thirty three, let's be clear, but we believed that it
- 57:18Speaker 3: could play a really important role, and I think we
- 57:21Speaker 3: were able to see that portuitre for US before other people.
- 57:26Speaker 2: Do you think that a US market will continue to
- 57:28Speaker 2: be the jewel of the world.
- 57:32Speaker 3: Ultimately? Ultimately, yes, but I think where historically it's been
- 57:39Speaker 3: so clearly the jewel of the world. And you asked
- 57:42Speaker 3: why that is? For me, that comes back to capitalism
- 57:45Speaker 3: driving innovation. I mean, really, it's as simple as that.
- 57:50Speaker 3: Whereas I think in Europe there's been more a tendency
- 57:54Speaker 3: to regulate versus to innovate M and that doesn't that
- 57:59Speaker 3: just the lead to the same amount of growth. Quite frankly,
- 58:02Speaker 3: I think Europe now got the message in these last
- 58:05Speaker 3: couple of years, and they're investing heavily in defense, which
- 58:11Speaker 3: will have a lot of I think positive second order
- 58:16Speaker 3: effects fintech no in defense, so like defense, defense defense,
- 58:24Speaker 3: but basically like today, if you invest in defense as
- 58:29Speaker 3: a sovereign nation, you're essentially investing in technology, right Like
- 58:32Speaker 3: defense and technology at this point pretty much the same thing,
- 58:36Speaker 3: and so just generally, when you invest a lot of defense,
- 58:39Speaker 3: you build good technology, and the second order effects are
- 58:43Speaker 3: that also quite great for society, for entrepreneurs, et cetera.
- 58:46Speaker 3: And so I think so I think Europe will be
- 58:49Speaker 3: more competitive going forward. You've seen very recently the Korean
- 58:52Speaker 3: stock market absolutely exploding, and so I think US, over
- 58:58Speaker 3: a long period of time, will will still be I'm
- 59:01Speaker 3: still one hundred percent of believer that it will be
- 59:05Speaker 3: acround you and like the best economy and the best
- 59:08Speaker 3: stock market. But you're definitely seeing success stories elsewhere, I
- 59:12Speaker 3: mean career right now, I think Europe not so much
- 59:15Speaker 3: about it, but I think has actually it's National Magazin
- 59:19Speaker 3: that outperformed you as a little bit in the last
- 59:20Speaker 3: twelve eighteen months, I think by and Latch and so so. So. Yeah,
- 59:27Speaker 3: but but I still believe that the US also made
- 59:30Speaker 3: it just like the sense of that you can build
- 59:35Speaker 3: something from nothing here and get going. But it's very
- 59:38Speaker 3: important that we don't lose that. That's why I think
- 59:39Speaker 3: your book is so important. But it's very important. Like
- 59:41Speaker 3: if you if you ask me what the threats are
- 59:43Speaker 3: to this not being true, it's all the it's all
- 59:46Speaker 3: the same points that that you touch upon in in
- 59:49Speaker 3: your book, right. It's basically if we stop believing in
- 59:53Speaker 3: this idea that you are your own like like like
- 1:00:00Speaker 3: you are the you control your own destiny, you can
- 1:00:03Speaker 3: just do things in life, by the way, and all
- 1:00:05Speaker 3: this stuff is so much more true now what they
- 1:00:08Speaker 3: are than it ever was. I mean, it was so
- 1:00:10Speaker 3: much harder for me to build the first company in
- 1:00:15Speaker 3: London mhm, but also pre AI, pre even mobile really
- 1:00:20Speaker 3: you know, and then it was and then the first
- 1:00:24Speaker 3: version of public if you would, we built in the
- 1:00:26Speaker 3: mobile era that was easier, and now an AI era
- 1:00:29Speaker 3: is actually even easier, right, and it's faster and so
- 1:00:32Speaker 3: so zoom out, Like the last thirty years thirty forty
- 1:00:38Speaker 3: years have been incredible from from the Internet to mobile
- 1:00:40Speaker 3: to AI have been incredible for entrepreneurs. In fact, everyone
- 1:00:44Speaker 3: now can become an entrepreneur, and so a little bit
- 1:00:47Speaker 3: like how everyone can become an investor. And so I
- 1:00:50Speaker 3: just see barriers disappearing everywhere, yep. And I think and
- 1:00:55Speaker 3: I think that is the leading indicator that is sort
- 1:00:58Speaker 3: of the canari and the coal mine for or an
- 1:01:02Speaker 3: economy that is set up to just do really well,
- 1:01:06Speaker 3: but it requires that psychological factor that we talked about
- 1:01:10Speaker 3: at the outset to get that right as well. And
- 1:01:13Speaker 3: so you know, culture, psychology, how people think about themselves.
- 1:01:18Speaker 3: It's important not to take ownership of these things, and
- 1:01:23Speaker 3: they need to try new things, and they need to
- 1:01:26Speaker 3: be able to take a little bit of risk in
- 1:01:28Speaker 3: a calculated way, because it's not that the world of
- 1:01:32Speaker 3: AI I think will a share in this era where
- 1:01:34Speaker 3: we're all just going to be lazy and rich, I think,
- 1:01:37Speaker 3: but I think the opportunity is quite unbounded, and at
- 1:01:42Speaker 3: least that path with the opportunity that we've seen through
- 1:01:45Speaker 3: the shift to the internet and mobile et cetera.
- 1:01:47Speaker 1: M Jennic has mentioned this book it was just capitalism
- 1:01:53Speaker 1: for all. Did I sign this copy when for you
- 1:01:56Speaker 1: when I was with you, or was.
- 1:01:57Speaker 3: It no I need to sign copy.
- 1:01:58Speaker 2: I'm going to sign it.
- 1:02:00Speaker 1: I'm signing and singing to you today. So you as
- 1:02:04Speaker 1: we wrap this up, this has been, frankly, it's been
- 1:02:06Speaker 1: one of my best interviews ever because you you really
- 1:02:08Speaker 1: have educated the audience on investing, on an entrepreneurship mindset,
- 1:02:16Speaker 1: on working through problems, on never giving up on the
- 1:02:21Speaker 1: common touch, on the value of principles, uh, the value
- 1:02:25Speaker 1: of real values.
- 1:02:27Speaker 3: UH.
- 1:02:27Speaker 1: The you know, I think there's been so many uh
- 1:02:32Speaker 1: artificial intelligence the future not to be afraid of it.
- 1:02:35Speaker 2: So thank you for all of this.
- 1:02:37Speaker 1: UH. As we wrap this up on to ask just
- 1:02:39Speaker 1: a final question of you, as I'm listening to you,
- 1:02:44Speaker 1: and we could have a whole other session just on
- 1:02:46Speaker 1: artificial intelligence. I really believe that story is just beginning
- 1:02:50Speaker 1: and it's and and I think that people's jobs are
- 1:02:54Speaker 1: not going to be replaced by AI. It will temporarily,
- 1:02:56Speaker 1: by the way two years, but ultimately your job's being
- 1:02:59Speaker 1: replaced by somebody who can use AI. And I think
- 1:03:02Speaker 1: it's gonna be there's gonna be a bunch of jobs
- 1:03:04Speaker 1: in the back end.
- 1:03:04Speaker 2: It don't even exist right now. And entrepreneur opportunities.
- 1:03:07Speaker 1: As this old tech, uh, the old way of doing
- 1:03:11Speaker 1: things fades away, a new tech, new way is gonna
- 1:03:13Speaker 1: come up emerge.
- 1:03:14Speaker 2: Now.
- 1:03:15Speaker 1: You accidentally tripped on possibly a third huge big boom
- 1:03:20Speaker 1: for you and maybe you see it already. You've got
- 1:03:23Speaker 1: forty women I believe in forty five percent minorities on
- 1:03:27Speaker 1: your on your platform. If if my memory is serves
- 1:03:31Speaker 1: me correctly, that's out of sync with Wall Street but
- 1:03:33Speaker 1: in sync with the future. And my book talks about
- 1:03:37Speaker 1: the fact that third of the economy basically are women,
- 1:03:39Speaker 1: and forty percent of this country is black and brown,
- 1:03:42Speaker 1: and that number is increasing. And you got one hundred
- 1:03:44Speaker 1: trillion dollars of eighty eight three into one hundred three
- 1:03:46Speaker 1: and of generational wealth is going to transfer in the
- 1:03:49Speaker 1: next decade or so. And this is just all these shifts.
- 1:03:53Speaker 1: And ten thousand baby boomers are leaving the economy every
- 1:03:56Speaker 1: day every day, and so how do you replace them?
- 1:04:01Speaker 1: And how do we introduce them to free enterprise and capitalism.
- 1:04:04Speaker 1: We've got this Investor's Mindset partnership we have with NASDAC
- 1:04:08Speaker 1: Foundation Operation Hope, my philanthropy where we're going to teach
- 1:04:12Speaker 1: an entire generation about investing. And one of the things
- 1:04:14Speaker 1: I want to talk to you about offline is whether
- 1:04:16Speaker 1: we could do some of that with you. Is to
- 1:04:19Speaker 1: is to to prepare people to become investors and send
- 1:04:25Speaker 1: them the way of good capitalists like you and others
- 1:04:28Speaker 1: to do fractional investment in others. That's very exciting to
- 1:04:33Speaker 1: But we can come to that offline. How do you
- 1:04:36Speaker 1: see taking the never let a crisis go to waste,
- 1:04:41Speaker 1: So the world and is upside down, and it's all
- 1:04:47Speaker 1: this friction and all this tension, and you're you've constantly
- 1:04:49Speaker 1: stepped into that gap. When there's been a problem, you
- 1:04:52Speaker 1: leaned into it. Do you see the current challenges and
- 1:04:56Speaker 1: we don't need to listen and we know what they
- 1:04:58Speaker 1: all are, diversity as a problem, or do you see
- 1:05:03Speaker 1: the great unwhining in in in rebuilding as a market
- 1:05:10Speaker 1: opportunity for public?
- 1:05:12Speaker 3: Well, I was actually gonna say, I not to get
- 1:05:18Speaker 3: to philosophical, but like I've always problem equals opportunity for me,
- 1:05:24Speaker 3: I'm an entrepreneur by heart, and so I don't see
- 1:05:26Speaker 3: them as different things. And so therefore I see I
- 1:05:29Speaker 3: don't see more problems as a negative thing. I've never
- 1:05:32Speaker 3: I've never held that belief. In fact, I mean, ten
- 1:05:35Speaker 3: thousand years ago, our entire species had three problems, how
- 1:05:40Speaker 3: do I find shelter, make food, and avoid getting killed?
- 1:05:43Speaker 3: Right today we have literally that was the like the
- 1:05:49Speaker 3: total set of problems that existed for our entire species today,
- 1:05:53Speaker 3: obviously you couldn't count them. There are billions of problems everywhere.
- 1:05:57Speaker 3: As we built the society with like banking and and
- 1:06:00Speaker 3: and growth. Reaes and like everything shipping, and so for
- 1:06:05Speaker 3: me that's exciting, Like this this notion of like every
- 1:06:11Speaker 3: solution creates new problems. That's a cycle, and that cycle
- 1:06:15Speaker 3: can drive growth and innovation. And for me, that's what's
- 1:06:20Speaker 3: so critical because I think, ultimately, like what are we
- 1:06:23Speaker 3: all here to do? We could all just chill and
- 1:06:25Speaker 3: have fun and counter days and then and then one
- 1:06:28Speaker 3: day we'll we'll pass out and we will wake up.
- 1:06:31Speaker 3: But by the way, that's another steep jobs code, right,
- 1:06:34Speaker 3: Remembering that you're going to die soon is the most
- 1:06:37Speaker 3: It's the best thing that ever happened to him, he mentioned,
- 1:06:40Speaker 3: because it's like live your life with intent, you know,
- 1:06:45Speaker 3: think about what you want the intent of your life
- 1:06:47Speaker 3: to be. Like, I have a family, I've got kids,
- 1:06:50Speaker 3: so like they're a huge part of that, but another
- 1:06:52Speaker 3: part of it is building something that I believe is
- 1:06:56Speaker 3: missing in the world that can make a difference. And
- 1:07:00Speaker 3: obviously if I'm successful in that, it will also increase
- 1:07:03Speaker 3: the quality of my life because I am a catalyst
- 1:07:05Speaker 3: through through of course, then it will creeve the quality
- 1:07:08Speaker 3: of life of my kids. That will make me very
- 1:07:10Speaker 3: proud of myself, you know, just like think through all
- 1:07:14Speaker 3: those things for yourself. I think that's really really key.
- 1:07:18Speaker 3: The second thing I would say a lot of this
- 1:07:21Speaker 3: is about in America is about freedom, and America has
- 1:07:25Speaker 3: always been about freedom. As a European, you'll look at America,
- 1:07:29Speaker 3: you look at how in a dictionary and it reads freedom.
- 1:07:32Speaker 3: I think maybe people feel over the last decade that
- 1:07:38Speaker 3: or two that that that sense of freedom has disappeared,
- 1:07:42Speaker 3: and I think our little slice of that is helping
- 1:07:45Speaker 3: more people get to financial freedom. But critically, I think
- 1:07:50Speaker 3: freedom isn't a number. It's an identity shift. Yes, you know,
- 1:07:56Speaker 3: it's not really ever about hitting another it's like moving
- 1:07:59Speaker 3: people from someone who owly earns and spends to someone
- 1:08:02Speaker 3: who owns. Yeah, and you were talking a little bit
- 1:08:05Speaker 3: about initially like to have having talked to somebody and
- 1:08:08Speaker 3: having to even explain what a stock is.
- 1:08:11Speaker 2: Yeah.
- 1:08:11Speaker 3: I actually had to explain to my oldest son who's seven,
- 1:08:14Speaker 3: the other day what a stock is because it finally
- 1:08:16Speaker 3: time to understand what Daddy actually does for living, right,
- 1:08:20Speaker 3: And yeah, that was that was tough. I was like,
- 1:08:23Speaker 3: how do I explain this? You know, it's an equity
- 1:08:26Speaker 3: that you're like, no, you can't go down there. So
- 1:08:28Speaker 3: I was like, look around the room, what do you like?
- 1:08:30Speaker 3: And then he's like, oh, you know, I like to
- 1:08:33Speaker 3: s food over here. Okay, that came from hole, folks.
- 1:08:36Speaker 3: That's owned by this company called Amazon. You know, he
- 1:08:39Speaker 3: loves going to Target. Guess what Target has the stock?
- 1:08:42Speaker 3: You know, you playing roadblocks roadblots has the stock. And
- 1:08:45Speaker 3: so suddenly he's like, wait a minute. So people make
- 1:08:49Speaker 3: these things and then they increase in value. But if
- 1:08:54Speaker 3: I buy this weird thing you call a stock, I
- 1:08:57Speaker 3: can I can be part of making that thing. Yeah,
- 1:09:01Speaker 3: and yeah you can because you led your capital to
- 1:09:03Speaker 3: that company. So even if your ideas are not being executed,
- 1:09:06Speaker 3: which by the way, they can. I mean most companies
- 1:09:09Speaker 3: have shared the meetings obviously, and there's always ways to
- 1:09:12Speaker 3: get hurt. And so that that's ultimately how I ended
- 1:09:14Speaker 3: up explaining to him. And then one for one look
- 1:09:16Speaker 3: around the room, and I looked up every stock on
- 1:09:18Speaker 3: public and now he's got a little portfolio that he's tracking, right,
- 1:09:21Speaker 3: And so I think, you know, in that moment, like
- 1:09:26Speaker 3: his identity became more of somebody who's starting to think
- 1:09:32Speaker 3: like an owner, like like that was probably playing. I mean,
- 1:09:35Speaker 3: let's not get carried away he's still just seventh, but
- 1:09:39Speaker 3: maybe that's maybe that's planning the seat as much as
- 1:09:41Speaker 3: and sort of thing that is really really key, because
- 1:09:46Speaker 3: the more people you have owning, the more people you'll
- 1:09:48Speaker 3: have understanding. Owning something is the best forashing front of him,
- 1:09:50Speaker 3: for trying to understand it. The more people who have
- 1:09:52Speaker 3: understanding companies, the more people who understand business. They're for
- 1:09:57Speaker 3: politics and markets and then not being it will lead
- 1:10:00Speaker 3: to a place where we can all get a little
- 1:10:02Speaker 3: bit more on the same page.
- 1:10:04Speaker 1: That's right, And don't underestimate your seven year old son.
- 1:10:08Speaker 1: We've got a hope child savings account for every kid
- 1:10:11Speaker 1: in kindergarten at Atlanta Public schools, twelve thousand accounts, and
- 1:10:15Speaker 1: the studies have shown with fifty bucks in an account,
- 1:10:19Speaker 1: the kids connecting education with aspiration, and they're seventy five
- 1:10:22Speaker 1: or more likely to graduate from college. So that your
- 1:10:25Speaker 1: son's real lucky to have you as a dad asking
- 1:10:28Speaker 1: you that question at seven versus the person who asked me.
- 1:10:31Speaker 1: They were twenty seven thereabouts when they asked me that
- 1:10:35Speaker 1: question of what's the stock, and they can get ahead too,
- 1:10:37Speaker 1: but they're starting in a much much further behind. So
- 1:10:41Speaker 1: the sooner we get them, the better. I want to
- 1:10:44Speaker 1: thank you. This has been extraordinary.
- 1:10:47Speaker 3: And let me just say one thing that on the
- 1:10:49Speaker 3: last round, yeah, absolutely, the sooner the better, and the
- 1:10:52Speaker 3: compounding returns of the markets have showed that. But it's
- 1:10:55Speaker 3: never too late. That's another thing the market have showed.
- 1:10:58Speaker 3: I was me and a lot of and often this
- 1:11:02Speaker 3: belief that like, okay, remember when the market crashed in
- 1:11:04Speaker 3: a way, that's that's when you should have bought in.
- 1:11:06Speaker 3: Now it's too late. Furious laid up boom, same thing happens.
- 1:11:09Speaker 3: They got COVID boom, same thing happens, and you got tariffs.
- 1:11:12Speaker 3: You know it just last year. Boom happens. So don't
- 1:11:17Speaker 3: let that discourage your if you're listening and you're thinking
- 1:11:20Speaker 3: it's too late, Like there's always another opportunity because we
- 1:11:23Speaker 3: live in this world, but there's always more problems created,
- 1:11:25Speaker 3: always more things to bid to get solved. And also
- 1:11:30Speaker 3: so just like you know, just do it, Like the
- 1:11:33Speaker 3: Nigis logan is still undefeated.
- 1:11:35Speaker 1: One hundred percent and as frothy, as as heated as
- 1:11:39Speaker 1: as market is right now, there might be a market
- 1:11:42Speaker 1: correction coming down around the corner, and people should be
- 1:11:44Speaker 1: prepared to buy the dip if it does, and people say, well, well, John,
- 1:11:48Speaker 1: what if things go wrong and everything is destroyed as well?
- 1:11:51Speaker 1: If America get is destroyed, you don't worry about it.
- 1:11:54Speaker 1: The rest of the world's going with it. So if
- 1:11:58Speaker 1: we're all done anyway, So look, thank you very much.
- 1:12:03Speaker 1: I don't normally I don't know. I'm pretty objective when
- 1:12:06Speaker 1: I do these interviews, but I think the audience can
- 1:12:08Speaker 1: tell I really like you. I mean, heck, I'm opening
- 1:12:11Speaker 1: an account while I'm sitting here. I think you'll be
- 1:12:13Speaker 1: a ten B andellar company here soon. I think that
- 1:12:15Speaker 1: you're going to become a great, great celebrated entrepreneur with
- 1:12:19Speaker 1: real values. I think it will be immensely successful. And
- 1:12:22Speaker 1: I don't even need to say the butt. Normally i'd
- 1:12:25Speaker 1: say as long as you but you know, just don't
- 1:12:28Speaker 1: get in your own way. As long as you don't
- 1:12:29Speaker 1: get in your own way, I don't have to say
- 1:12:30Speaker 1: that to you. You've already learned that lesson, and you
- 1:12:32Speaker 1: got that from your mom and your dad in Copenhagen.
- 1:12:37Speaker 1: I'm gonna go ahead and make you an honorary black man,
- 1:12:40Speaker 1: is it.
- 1:12:40Speaker 2: I'm just giving you a pass.
- 1:12:43Speaker 1: Cool look he turn it. Pa. Thank you very much, Janic,
- 1:12:51Speaker 1: this has been fantastic and only promise me you'll come back.
- 1:12:55Speaker 3: I will sure.
- 1:12:57Speaker 1: This This is John O'Bryant. This is Money and Ealth
- 1:13:00Speaker 1: on the Black Effect Network on iHeartRadio.
- 1:13:03Speaker 2: And this has been a interview with the co founder
- 1:13:07Speaker 2: of Public.
- 1:13:12Speaker 1: Money and Wealth with John O'Brien is a production of
- 1:13:15Speaker 1: the Black Effect Podcast Network. For more podcasts from the
- 1:13:18Speaker 1: Black Effect Podcast Network, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
- 1:13:23Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.