Latest / The Bob Lefsetz Podcast / Slava Rubin

Transcript

Slava Rubin · The Bob Lefsetz Podcast

• 0:08
  Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Left Sets podcast.
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: My guest today the Slav of Vemon, one of the
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: co founders of indiego Go and chairman of the new
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: platform Vincent. Slava, good to have you here. Thank you
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: for having me. Very excited to be here. Okay, explain
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: what Vincent is. Vincent is an aggregator for alternative investments.
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: Alternative investments are growing very rapidly. Alternative investments are anything
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: that are not public equities or bonds, so you could
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: think about it like collectibles, real estate, venture, crypto assets, art.
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: All these things are growing rapidly and there's not really
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: a central place where the individual investor can try to
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: look across all of their options. So that is Vincent
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: one place to start thinking about how to invest into alternatives. Okay,
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: needless just say, we had a Robin hood and his
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: result of that we had volatility in a MC, we
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: had volatility in game stop. Is this an arena where
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: the average persian should be playing? Absolutely so um. For
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: the longest time, people felt that only the rich, the
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: accredited investors, the family offices, the institutions were able to
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: have access to these alternative investments and they've known that
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: being able to have a small portion of your portfolio
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: across some of these riskier assets gave them higher returns overall.
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: So today you see about five percent of portfolios across
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: investors in these alternatives, and too many people don't have
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: anything in alternatives. And I really do believe that the
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: average person should have somewhere between five to fiftent in alternatives.
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: You shouldn't at the farm on it. You should him
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: put all of your savings in it, but a small
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: portion of higher risk, prior return assets could give you
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: a much better return overall. Okay, most people are financially unsophisticated.
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: Those with some assets might have a financial advisor who
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: would balance their portfolio, as you're saying, But well, you
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: find certainly on robin Hood that it's a lot of
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: people who are relatively young with some extra cash and
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: this might be their only investment. They might have an
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: eye row. What do you say to those people? So
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: it's really just a function of a percentage of how
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: much you have. So if you have ten million, you
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: should put you know, let's call it a million dollars
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: ten percent into alternatives. If you have a thousand dollars
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: you should think about putting a hundred dollars into alternatives.
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: It's really about putting that five to ten percent into alternatives. Now,
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: the question that asks, how do I only put you know,
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: fifty dollars five five thousand dollars into alternatives. That's the
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: beauty of what's happening in the last decade. Since about
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: you've seen the dawn of all these alternative investment platforms
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: across these individual asset classes. You have real estate platforms,
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: you have venture platforms, you have art platforms, you have
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: collectible platform and when I say collectibles, i'm talking about whine,
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: I'm talking about cars, I'm talking about trading cards. You
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: have crypto platforms, and they're all offering these fractional ownership
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: where you can get a piece of the asset. You
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: don't have to spend the entire seven million dollars on
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: a mon a. Maybe you can spend two thousand five
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: dollars to get a piece. You don't need to spend
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: the entire four thousand dollars for some Will Chamberling card.
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: You can buy a ten dollar piece. And that's the
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: beauty of what's happening across all of these alternative investments,
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: and it's becoming much more approachable for the everyday investor.
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: Whether you have ten thousand dollars of extra uh income
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: to uh sorry, ten thousand dollars of worth that you
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: can deploy, or if you have uh, you know, five million. Really,
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: you just can prioritize it accordingly as to how you
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: would diversify. Okay, let's assume I am interested. How do
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: I decide what to invest in? Am I purely you know,
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: flying blind doing my own research? Are there any primmers,
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: anything that could help me out? Yeah? So? Um right now.
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: The two places where you can really start as the
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: investor to think about your alternative investment options is either
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: you ask your buddy, you know, Sally or Sam that
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: you talk to at work or on zoom or at
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: the golf course, and you know that person is gonna
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: be limited by what they know and what they have
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: access to. Or you go onto Google and you try
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: to do your research, which the research is complicated because
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: most of the research and most of the information is
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: coming often from the people trying to sell you the
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: actual product. So it's hard to find objective information to
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: try to research and diligence across all of your options,
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: and that's exactly what Vincent the platform which we launched
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: five months ago with Vincent dot Com is to be
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: able to start your journey on alternatives with Vincent, which
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: is this is where you discover your options. This is
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: where you do your diligence. This is where you can
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: compare and contrast, and then you click through to the
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: deals that you like and move forward. Okay, if one
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: examines the site, there's certainly hundreds of alternatives available. How
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: much information is there is? How does someone uh digested
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: information to help them make a choice. Yeah, so, uh,
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: there are dozens of different types of alternatives. We've grouped
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: it into a simple taxonomy of six different options. High level, So,
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: do you want a debt alternative? Do you want a
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: real estate alternative? Do you want to venture which is
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: like you know, equity or venture fund, et cetera. Do
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: you want art, do you want crypto or do you
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: want collectibles? Everything will fall into the one of those
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: six categories. Inside of that, you can then refine your
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: filter in terms of how much you're trying to spend,
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: what kind of returns you're looking for, and then we
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: help you to try to navigate compare and contrast. Now,
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: a real estate investment will have some similarities to a
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: trading card investment, but there will also be differences, which
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: is part of the challenges of navigating across assets. But
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: it's also the beauty of the product that we've tried
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: to create that simplicity for the comparison. Just to give
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: you a really interesting stat like I mentioned, we've been
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: around now for five months. Um, we have over sixty
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: platforms already signed up on the supply sidelight light. Wait wait, wait,
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: just define what those platforms are pleased. So a platform
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: is one of those originators. An originator is an organization
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: that is SEC approved and they are approved to be
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: able to source deals. Uh in that vertical on behalf
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: of the potential investors that would invest into that. So
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: let's be specific. Uh, there's a platform called Collectible which
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: focuses on trading cards. Their SEC approved to be able
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: to get let's call it a Will Chamberlain card or
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: yesterday I invested in the Sandy Kofax card. They were
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: able to get that card. They originated, they sourced that deal,
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: They originated that offering, and Sandy Ko Fox what I
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: think was selling. It's a p s A nine. P
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: S A is a grading in the in the card industry,
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: it's p S A nine. I think there's like thirty
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: six of them in the world that are known. I
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: think there's three p s A tens. So this was
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: a p s A nine selling for about four fifty
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: thousand dollars. So if somebody is rich enough on the car,
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: you know, listening, they could just try to go buy
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: the whole thing. But um, what this platform is doing
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: is making it more accessible by selling the shares at
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: ten dollars apiece. And that is an originator. So Collectible
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: is just one example of an originator. So the originator
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: establishes the price of four hundred and fifty thousand, Theoretically,
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: could I invest my ten dollars And since there's so
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: much to mend, the originator might say, well, now the
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: value was six. No, it's just like an I P O.
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: So when the I p O happens, that's it. It's happened,
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: and then it goes into a secondary market. So when
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: the IPO happens, that's the primary issuance. So the primary
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: issuance is the first price that it goes to market with,
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: and it's kind of like the I p O of
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: this offering. Um so, Uh, Sandy ko Fax went for
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: about four thousand dollars. I bought my shares. You know,
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: I put in a thousand dollars. And you know, next
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: week or next month, somebody might want to buy my
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: shares for twelve dollars or they might only be worth
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: eight dollars. And so I'll probably hold because I believe
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: Sandy Kofax can be worth a lot in the future.
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: Um So I'll get to decide if I want to
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: sell for twelve dollars for and get a profit on
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: my ten dollar shares or fall hold. And that's just
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: in the collectible space. You you you mentioned a couple
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: of things and we have Let's say I'm investing. Does
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: Vincent charge me to invest? So? Vincent does not charge
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: the investor anything. We are on the side of the investor.
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: We're helping them to discover in diligence. Uh, and we're
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: just leading you to all of your options. We do
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: not charge the investor anything, totally free. Okay, So then
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: how does Vincent get paid? So Vincent is working with
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: the originators to help them to be able to get
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: more investors. So We're really like Google, which is a
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: search engine trying to you know, get more qualified leads,
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: uh to our originators. Okay, so let's say sorry, you
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: could just think of us as just a very vertical
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: specific search engine like Google, but specifically for alternative investments. Okay,
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: now Google, Uh, they with ad Sense, depending on what
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: you're at, isn't bidding, you might pay more or less.
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: So with Vincent, is every originated product a different deal
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: or is there a straight deal or it's different every
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: uh company has a certain percentage that you charge them. Yeah,
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: so all the um right now on Vincent, we don't
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: actually have a paid promotion product like ad Sense. So
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: when you search on Google for you know, hotels in Camcoon,
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: there's a few people that are paying for those positions,
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: and there's a few people, a few companies that are
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: getting those positions organically because they deserve those top positions.
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: Right now, we only have organic results. No one is
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: able to pay to get better results. In front of
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: the investor on Vincent, we're only five months old. Would
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: you anticipate you might charge for that visibility? Uh? That
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: very well might happen. Um, you know already our originators
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: are asking us to get more visibility and more exposure
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: and trying to pay us for that opportunity. But we're
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: also trying to make sure we're serving the investor as
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: well as possible in terms of having a trusted experience
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: while trying to have, you know, a business that can
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: be anniable into the future. Okay, so the Sandy kofax card,
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: the originator. How much do you are you charging the
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: originator when someone buys on your platform? Well, they don't
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: buy on my platform, right, We hand off the investor
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: to their platform, so we don't charge anybody anything, meeting
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: any investor anything. What the platforms charge is their different
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: fee schedules. And one of the beautiful things that Vincent
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: is able to do is transparently compare and contrast those
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: fee schedules. Because sometimes it's a little opaque because not
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: all companies charge the exact same way, so it's a
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: little hard to compare. We try to surface that to
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: the front so the investor can understand what they're getting
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: into a little bit better. Okay, what might be the
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: options of charging the ultimate investor? Um? I mean it
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: gets a little complicated. I mean the originators decide their
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: own way. Sometimes they'll just mark up the asset. So
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: the asset might be worth let's call it a hundred
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: thousand dollars, but they'll sell it for a hundred and
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: ten thousand dollars, So they automatically made a ten percent
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: big without you really knowing it, even though you know
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: it's built into the price. Sometimes they'll tell you, hey,
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: we're only charging a hundred thousand dollars, but we're going
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: to charge you five percent to do the transaction. Uh.
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: Sometimes it's all just baked in. UM. They might offer
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: for free, meaning at price at market for the hundred
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: thousand dollars, because then they want to make money on
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: the secondary trades where you're trading from ten dollars to
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: eight dollars or from ten dollars to twelve dollars in
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: that secondary market. Maybe they want to be able to
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: charge you uh some money on each of those secondary trades.
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: So there's a lot of different ways. Uh. Maybe they
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: want to get you into subscription product. Maybe they want
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: to get you into an a u M product a
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: U M A little bit tower. What is a subscription
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: and what is an a UM Well subscription would mean
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: Maybe they want to get you into a more premier
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: UM access of the way you work with their platform.
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: So they charge you, you know, ten dollars a month
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: or a hundred dollars a month or a thousand dollars
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: a month to be able to get special privileges or
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: deal flow or access or data UM, while others might
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: be trying to get you into an a u M
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: product means assets under management, so they're trying to offer
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: you a professional fund UM where instead of you picking
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: specific stocks and I say that as a metaphor meaning
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: individual assets, you might just say I want to deploy
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: money into this UH platform and just let them put
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: all of their various UH individual assets into that fund,
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: and I just want to invest into the fund. So
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: all these origination platforms which I mentioned we have well
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: over fifty already. They all have their own business models,
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: they have their own monetization models, They focus on their
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: own verticals in terms of the assets they focus on.
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: This is all very confusing. UM. Often, if you're just
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: trying to navigate from the perspective of I have an
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: extra ten thousand dollars, what should I do with it?
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: It's daunting if you're just thinking I have ten thousand dollars?
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: What should I do with it? It's hard to know
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: where to start because if you start in any one
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: of those platforms, you right away go down the tunnel
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: with that specific asset, with that specific platform. While with Vincent,
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: we're trying to give you a very top down view
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: across the entire industry of all the assets, UH, and
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: try to give you a compare and contrast across all
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: the platforms within an asset, or compare across assets. Um So, yeah,
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: the idea is to start your alternative journey with Vincent. Okay,
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: so you provide the lead so to speak. How does
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: Vincent get paid presently? Um? So, we haven't been focusing
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: very much on monetization since we're so young, but presently
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: what's happening is platforms are partnering with us UH and
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: then UH paying us on a per lead per lead. Okay,
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: So let's just assume I buy my piece of the
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: sandy Ko fax card. Let's just say the value is
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: a hundred thousand dollars to make and numbers easier to comprehend.
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: What happens if they only sell fifty thousand dollars to investors? So? Um,
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: the originator each originator has their own approach to that.
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: But usually what they're doing is they're underwriting the card,
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: so they've already kind of bought the entire card, so
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: they already owned the entire card. So anybody who's buying
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: a piece doesn't have to worry about whether or not
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: the entire card is sold, because as long as they
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: have their piece, that's fine. Often they are trying to
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: sell a specific amount for simplicity sake, let's say fifty.
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: So let's say they're trying to sell fifty of sandy kofax. Uh.
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: If they're only selling so far, that doesn't mean that
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: they have to wait for the other ten percent to
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: be sold, because the card is already in their ownership.
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: They already custody the card, right, So it's not as
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: if you have to try to get that full number
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: to try to own the card, because the originator is
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: often already owning it, so they're underrated that. But often
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: you are getting to the full amount met, sometimes within minutes,
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: sometimes within hours, sometimes within days or weeks. Okay, let's
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: use the continuing example of Sandy ko fax. You have
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: x amount of sandy co fax. To what degree is
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: that liquid and who's to be supervises the sales, what
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: would be the exchange so um, right now, the way
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: it works is there's a number of different originators. UM.
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: The examples that we're talking about with Sandy co Fax
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: would be a collectibles originator. In the collectible space, There's
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: a company called Otis. There's a company called Rally, There's
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: a company called Collectible. UM. There's others which you can
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: get into n f t s which are like digital collectibles. UM.
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: And what will happen is often where you are originating
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: the deal, where you're purchasing originally, is where you will
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: be doing your secondary trading. So uh, they will allow
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: for the matching process between supply and demand. Let's talk
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: about Sandy Kofax again. So often there's a lock up
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: period where let's say the deal closed today. UH, and
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: let's say you want to sell tomorrow your shares. Usually
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: that's not allowed. Usually they will lock up for thirty days,
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: sixty days, ninety days, maybe a year, uh to allow
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: for things to settle in and then the secondary trading
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: will be allowed. So let's say, for example, let's say
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: ninety days, so after nine d days I will be
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: able to uh, you know, enter the markets of secondary trading,
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: and I can set my price and say, you know,
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: I'm willing to sell my ten dollar shares that I
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: bought UH for twenty and I can list that on
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: a secondary market, the one often that I bought it on. Now,
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: it's not as fluid as robin Hood because robin Hood
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: is massively liquid. There's so many people that are buying
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: and so many people that are selling on both sides,
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: and the public markets have huge infrastructure that's been built
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: out by things called market makers and others that really
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: make the the trades happen so fast because they're able
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: to match what people want versus what people are trying
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: to sell for. The bid in the ASP are the terms.
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: But in these new spaces, in these alternative markets, it's
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: not quite as liquid yet. So sometimes you don't match
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: immediately or within even an hour or even a day.
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: Sometimes it might take days or weeks to find that match,
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: or it can be instantaneous, depending on how the market
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: works out. So if I'm looking for twenty dollars, but
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: the other folks are coming in saying, you know what,
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: you just bought this for ten dollars three months ago,
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: but I will buy for twelve right now, or I
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: will buy for fourteen, but you know I'm sticking out
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: for for twenty. Uh, you're just gonna I'm just gonna
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: have to wait because my match didn't come through. Now
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: somebody else, uh living in you know, for the fun
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: of it. Let's say in Alabama they are ready to
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: sell quicker, their Sandy kofax, and they're just looking for
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: thirteen dollars. So if they were saying I want to
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: sell for thirteen and somebody came in saying I want
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: to buy up the fourteen, that match will happen. But
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: because I was waiting for a twenty, my match didn't happen.
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: Does that make sense? Yes? Of course. Is it a
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: transparent Let's just assume your example blooded at ten want
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: to sell it at twenty. Is there an exchange so
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: that while I'm asleep, the transaction will happen if someone
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: bids twenty. Yes. Um, I wouldn't use the word exchange.
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: That's a little bit of a technical word. Usually exchange
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: does mean a more sophisticated, um quick transaction. Really what
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: these are called our billboards billboard secondary because it's almost
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: like you're posting something on like in the old old
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: style newspapers classified, where you know, some people will say
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: I'm looking to sell my Sandy ko fax for twenty,
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: and somebody else is saying I'm looking to buy Sandy
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: kofax is for four. Team. It's almost like somebody will
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: manually be reading the classified and say, oh, I think
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: these two people should talk to each other. And that's
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: actually just happening a little bit more fluidly on these
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: on these platforms right now. Uh It's not as sophisticated
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: as robin Hood or as exchanges like the New York
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: Stock Exchange or or the NAZDAC, but it's way more
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: efficient and way more fluid than the newspaper classified example
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: I gave. Okay, so let's say, using your example BOARDED
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: ten want to sell it twenty. I'm on the bulletin board.
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: Can someone say I want to buy a twenty and
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: the trans hack transaction happen without your interactions since they
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: met the price. Well, yes, to be clear, the only
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: way that uh me being willing to sell its point
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: he could be on the Bolton board is if I
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: already confirmed and approved that. So I can't have that
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: beyond the Bolton board unless I already proved it once
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: I approved of it. If that other side of the
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: transaction comes through, it will happen automatically. So you don't
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: have to ask me again, do you really want to
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: sell at twenty because I already said I want to
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: sell at twenty. So no, there's not like a double confirm. Uh,
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: you have to confirm the first time before you can
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: even put that. Okay, let's just assume you bought it
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: at ten, you're watching the market closely, and you're emotional.
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: You don't know what you want to sell it at.
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: How does that work? I mean, these are not um
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: to be clear, these markets are not changing on these
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: bulletin boards by the minute. Often these bulletin boards for
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: the sake of getting liquidity, and what I mean by
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: liquidity getting as many people on both sides of the market,
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: uh to be at the same place at the same time.
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: They often don't do it NonStop. They'll create like almost
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: like trading hours or a trading day where where they
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: will say, okay, get your thoughts in what do you
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: want to buy out or what do you want to
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: sell at? Here are all the things you can buy
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: or sell. Get your thoughts in because you know on
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: April a month from now or a week from now
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: or tomorrow is when all the trades are gonna happen.
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: And then those trades happen and then uh, you know,
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: sometimes they'll wait another week or another month before they
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: do trading again. Now, the reason it's taking so much time,
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: as opposed to on robin Hood things that happened within
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: a millisecond or you know, so many it's because the
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: lack of liquid These are smaller markets that are historically
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: very private and they're not as large, so it's gonna
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: take time for it to become as transactional as liquid
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: as you know robin Hood in New York Stock Exchange,
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: et cetera. But my personal opinion why we built Vincent
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: is I do believe by the end of this decade,
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: you are going to get that transparency, you are going
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: to get that liquidity, and the alternative markets are gonna
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: be very exciting. Uh they're exciting today, but it's gonna
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: be that much closer to the infrastructure as how the
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: public markets work. Okay, so theoretically I could invest ten
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: thousand dollars and a month later I need the money
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: for rent. I may not be able to raise that
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: money immediately. You might not be able to access that
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: liquidity immediately. That's correct. So alternative investments um. One of
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: the challenges with them historically is what makes them alternative
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: usually is the lack of immediate liquidity. So, for example,
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: you know, if you buy real estate, uh, you know,
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: you try to get a nice home in a in
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: Austin because Austin is really popping and you feel like
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: being in the suburbs of Austin could be a nice investment.
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: You know, it's hard for you to just snap your
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: fingers and get that money out. Now again, you know
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: how much demand is there for Austin real estate, which,
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: by the way, real estate is an asset class on
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: Vincent right, it's not just trading cards. You can get
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: real estate. You know. The more liquidity again liquidity is people.
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: The more people that are circling around Austin looking to
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: buy and sell, the more likelihood that you'll be able
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: to get in and out faster. Now, if you're trying
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: to buy a second home in the suburbs of Anchorage,
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: I'm guessing that you're gonna have a hard time selling
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: in the mentor of the middle of winter in Anchorage. Nevertheless,
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: any time, because I'm not sure how much liquidity. Look,
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: you know, the suburbs of Anchourage have So that's another
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: example of where is liquidity? Where are the people lining up?
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: In terms of buying and selling um and alternative investments.
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: Historically you've had to be able to, you know, be
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: willing to tie up your money for a little bit
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: of time, whether it's a week, a month, a year,
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: or longer, uh to be able to get some of
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: that higher return. Often with the liquidity comes a lower return.
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: There's a premium for having your money locked up. The
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: beauty of where alternam investments are headed is that there's
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: all this infrastructure being built out, like exactly we just
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: talked about with Sandy Kofas is over time, these things
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: that were historically either you buy it for a hundred
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: for half a million dollars and hopefully you find the
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: buyer to buy it for six hundred dollars six dollars
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: a year later. You know that's really hard. But now
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: you're chopping it up into those pieces ten dollars apiece.
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: You add a lot more people that are able to
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: trade in and out. You're starting to create more liquidity.
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: You go from bolton board to exchange and now all
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: of a sudden, you're taking things are historically super difficult
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: and super locked up the things that can become highly
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: liquid and quick to access your money. So that's one
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: of the beauties of where these alternative investments are getting
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: are going. Okay, let's just as sue myself. How am
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: I charged? And how much am I charged? Again? Every
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: one of these platforms has a different model. Obviously with
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: robin Hood, you know, with um with day trading, you
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: had child shwab or e trade used to charge you
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: nine dollars of trade and then robin Hood told you
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: it was free and then we learned their free head
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: another business model, right, So they all have their own
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: business models. So I don't want to come across as
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: all knowing because they all have different business models. But
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: typically they're either going to charge you for the trade
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: let's call it ten bucks. They're going to charge you
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: a percentage of the transaction let's call it, you know,
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: three five percent, or they'll charge you in some other fashion,
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: whether again it's a subscription, or they'll add a little
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: bit of a spread without you even knowing, which is
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: you know, maybe the person is willing uh to uh.
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: You're willing to sell your shares for uh for thirteen,
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: the person is willing to buy them for fourteen. Um,
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: all you need to know is you were willing to
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: sell them for thirteen, but the fact that they charge
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: the other person fourteen, it took the dollar. You don't
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: know the better, you know what I mean? So all
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: all these all these platforms have their own business models
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: and it's not um, you know, a single, single approach,
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: which is also the opportunity for a platform like Vincent
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: to again try to surface those differences, try to create
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: that compare and contrast, because you know, data and transparency
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: is what's going to create more uh investors that trust alternatives,
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: which is just going to create more liquidity. It's gonna
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: be better for everybody. Okay, let's assume I invest or,
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: I go through Vincent. There's enough information there for me
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: to know how I will be charged when I sell. Yeah,
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: so we do surface as much information as we can.
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: We're constantly improving and I never want to say that
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: our five month old product is perfect. So if any
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: users on this podcast, you know, feel like there's anything
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: that could be improved, we always want to hear it, okay,
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: but also getting it straight that you could have the
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: originator and you and they could supervise trade or theoretically
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: it could also be the originator and other platforms simultaneously
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: that you might be able to trade your product on correct. Okay,
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: we were talking about the verticals. You talked about collectibles,
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: tell us about some of the others. Sure, so there's
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: real estate, like we mentioned, so, um, you know, real
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: estate is one of the oldest, if not the oldest,
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: alternative investment. Uh. The idea of you know, you have
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: your primary residence, that's not an alternative investment, that's your
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: primary residence. But outside of your primary residence, there's a
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: lot of people that say, you know what, you know,
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: if you have some money, you should put it in
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: real estate because real estate is a limited asset that
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: goes up in price over time. And instead of holding
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: out to cash, because cash over time with inflation, will
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: devalue itself. Uh, if you put it into real estate,
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: real estate often will stay in touch in line with inflation.
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: So a minimum, you'll be able to get the appreciation
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: of that in your asset, and depending on the market,
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: you might get further appreciation because of demand for your home,
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: for that home or for that market. Okay, just to
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: stay with real estate practically, if I want to invest
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: in real estate today, then I literally investing in one
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: building or do is it tend to be a group
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: of buildings both? So on Vincent you can look at
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: specific buildings. It could be Uh, there's residential buildings, there's
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: commercial build things, there's commercial offices. Uh, there's all kinds
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: of office, there's all types of building types. Um. And
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: that that's where I would call stop picking. I mean,
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: it's not a stock, but it's just a metaphor. It's
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: just you know, you're doing the picking. Uh. There's also
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: fun products where again, instead of you having to do
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: all the diligence and research yourself as to whether this
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: one specific deal is the right deal, you just know
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: that you want to get some exposure to some real estate.
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: You want to be able to take ten grands or
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: a thousand dollars or you know, two hundred fifty dollars,
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: and you want to be able to get that real
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: estate exposure. There are fund products, and different platforms offer
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: different fund products. Some platforms offer only one fund product,
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: some will offer several fund products and some don't offer
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: any and you can choose. You can choose that as
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: a filter on vincent okay, in this nascent market, because
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: there have been any stories of an originator either going
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: dark without telling anybody or walking away with the asset
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: um the short answers, I don't think so. I think
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: the slightly longer answer to your question, because the question
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: you specifically asked would mean that the originator was being
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: completely completely negligible and negative, uh, you know, trying to
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: defraud the investor. Now, has there been some defaults where
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: the originator genuinely tried to, you know, find an asset
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: that would be paying let's call it rent, or that
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: would be able to you know, have a nice yield
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: of eight or ten percent or fifteen pent and for
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: some reason the underlying uh assumptions didn't work out because
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: the tenants weren't able to pay, or because of some
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: default of something of that sort. That definitely has happened
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: in the industry. I think it happened a little bit
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: more during the COVID crisis, right when it all popped
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: in you know, March, April, May June. But in general,
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: the percentages of any of those types of defaults are
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: very limited compared to the overall market. Okay, some other verticals,
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: so art art is a vertical, so literally you know, uh,
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: like I mentioned buying a Picasso, buying a Warhol. Um.
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: You know, there's a cool platform called Masterworks, uh that
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: you could check out there. Another one is digital, so
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: crypto and digital assets. Okay, let's say that, because that's
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: a deeper thing. Before that, what about uh fun fun
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: funds that are essentially startups. You're investing in a startup?
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: Tell us about that? Sure, so we call that venture.
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: So inside adventure, there's you can invest into companies, individual
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: companies and get equity from these small companies. Um. You
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: could also invest into funds that invest into companies. Um.
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: And there's other types of funds that are available. So um.
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: You know. Equity crowdfunding is really kind of the origin
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: of a lot of this, the jobs that got passed.
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: I was a part of that with the Obama administration
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: and in seen it all went live. You know, you
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: actually just saw the increase for equity crowdfunding. There was
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: one million. Many people are not familiar with this. Explain
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: on a ground level, you know how what this actually
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: means yeah, so, I mean basically, as part of the
• 32:29
  Speaker 1: Securities Act nineteen thirty three, you create the sec and
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: as part of that, there's this concept of an accredited
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: investor that was created, which means that uh an investor
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: had to meet some threshold of of intelligence or sophistication,
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: which was determined by your salary or your net worth.
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: Uh So, uh if if you didn't have so, if
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: you didn't have simply about a quarter million dollar salary
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: or a million dollars in net worth, you're considered unaccredited.
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: And if you're unaccredited, and the only way that you
• 33:01
  Speaker 1: were allowed to participate in these investments if they were
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: publicly solicited. The only investments that you could publicly solicit
• 33:07
  Speaker 1: are things that are listed on the stock market, so
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: on the you know, on the Nazadac or on the
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: New York's Doctric chains, et cetera. Things that were private
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: listings were left for just the accredited folks. Um that
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: all changed as part of the Jobs Act, saying that
• 33:23
  Speaker 1: you know what, these folks that don't make that much
• 33:26
  Speaker 1: money or don't don't have that much network really should
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: be allowed to participate, but let's limit their exposure. So
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: what they decided was on the company side they can
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: only raise up to one million dollars and on the
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: investors side they can only invest up to ten thousand dollars.
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: Those limits got raised a few weeks ago actually, from
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: one million to five million, so that when when live
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: in sten got increased five years later UH to a
• 33:52
  Speaker 1: five million dollar cap, which is a huge game changer actually,
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: So now companies can raise up to five million dollars
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: from what I would call the crowd the masses, from
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: anybody accredited or unaccredited UM, which is super exciting. And
• 34:06
  Speaker 1: we have many platforms including Republic or we funder or
• 34:13
  Speaker 1: others that are originators again on these types of deals
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: and the deals that they focus on, are these venture
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: UH funded companies. UM. Yeah, okay, So if I'm not accredited,
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: how much can I invest? UM? I believe it's up
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: to H I believe it's ten grand or up to
• 34:34
  Speaker 1: ten percent of your income, whichever is greater. And who's
• 34:38
  Speaker 1: checking this it's right now. It's a great question. Right now.
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: It's self accreditation. UM. So it's kind of like when
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: you go on the websites and say that you're UM
• 34:49
  Speaker 1: old enough to look at cigarette ads or you know,
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: cigarette companies or alcohol companies, so you have to be
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: honest and you know it's self accreditation and self reporting. Okay,
• 35:03
  Speaker 1: now going to the topic you mentioned, Let's start on
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: the back end, and if I mean, start on the
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: front end the n f T s and then get
• 35:09
  Speaker 1: into cryptocurrency. Please explain what an n f T is. So,
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: n f T is a non fungible token. UM. I
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: guess for those that just saw Saturay Night Live, they
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: just try to take their hack at explaining it. So
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: all that it means it's a unique asset and it's
• 35:31
  Speaker 1: specifically been tokenized, which just means that it's been digitally
• 35:35
  Speaker 1: stamped that you can prove that this is what it is,
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: uh and without doubt. And that's all on the blockchain.
• 35:43
  Speaker 1: Let's ignore what that means on the blockchain. It's kind
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: of like saying it's a website on the Internet. Let's
• 35:47
  Speaker 1: just understand the blockchain is tech whatever, UM and n
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: f T is just way of saying that this is
• 35:54
  Speaker 1: unique and it is what it says it is and
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: there is no doubt about that. You know, we have
• 35:59
  Speaker 1: similar concepts without using fancy words like n f T
• 36:02
  Speaker 1: S even when we talk about like our house or
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: our fingerprints. You know, your fingerprint is different than my fingerprint, um,
• 36:10
  Speaker 1: and we could just call uh, you know, it is
• 36:12
  Speaker 1: unique and it is truly yours and the technology that
• 36:16
  Speaker 1: yours is on is on skin, so it is what
• 36:18
  Speaker 1: it is, that's your fingerprint. If anybody wants to prove
• 36:21
  Speaker 1: that was you, they would have to prove that that
• 36:23
  Speaker 1: match the exact fingerprint of what you have. And uh.
• 36:28
  Speaker 1: Similar for me, I have a unique fingerprint that's uniquely me.
• 36:31
  Speaker 1: Uh and you know ours are difference and you know
• 36:34
  Speaker 1: they might look similar at some level, but there is
• 36:36
  Speaker 1: at the fundamental level there's something that's different about it
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: and it could be proven um and yeah, so n
• 36:42
  Speaker 1: f t s are then created. So that's a non
• 36:44
  Speaker 1: fundible token and it's just you know, applied against all
• 36:48
  Speaker 1: these various things right now and people are using it
• 36:51
  Speaker 1: towards artum. But you can really just think about of
• 36:54
  Speaker 1: anything that you can prove that it is uniquely what
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: it says it is, and uh, usually it is scarce.
• 37:01
  Speaker 1: That's what makes the the non fungible tokens. It can't
• 37:05
  Speaker 1: be like replaced if you take one piece of gold
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: and another piece of gold and you trade them where
• 37:10
  Speaker 1: you put them in two different hands, and you you know,
• 37:11
  Speaker 1: you mix them around, you say which one was which.
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: It doesn't really matter, right because gold is gold is gold.
• 37:17
  Speaker 1: As long as it's the same caliber of gold, they
• 37:19
  Speaker 1: would be fungible, exactly exactly. But if you take you know,
• 37:25
  Speaker 1: my fingerprinting, your fingerprint or me or you, I mean,
• 37:27
  Speaker 1: I know we looked similar, but somebody says, who's who?
• 37:30
  Speaker 1: I mean, there's only one of me and only one
• 37:31
  Speaker 1: of you. Um, And that's what makes it a non
• 37:34
  Speaker 1: fungible token. Okay, Now all the excitement, sorry, sorry, So
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: it's non fungible, and the token portion just means it's
• 37:41
  Speaker 1: it's a technical jargon that it's on the blockchain and
• 37:44
  Speaker 1: it's tokenized, which and recently there has been a lot
• 37:50
  Speaker 1: of the ink, a lot of excitement and also a
• 37:52
  Speaker 1: lot of sales about tokenization of certain items which would
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: be rapidly and endlessly reproduced in the marketplace. There are
• 38:06
  Speaker 1: sports clips, there is digital art. So let's start from
• 38:11
  Speaker 1: the beginning. And n f T could represent something physical
• 38:15
  Speaker 1: and something not physical, correct, I mean, officially, the fact
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: that it's token ized UM means that it's on a
• 38:23
  Speaker 1: digital blockchain. But it could represent something that's physical, yes,
• 38:26
  Speaker 1: but it would be the digital token. Um really is digital, right,
• 38:31
  Speaker 1: So let's just say in the case of you know, selling,
• 38:34
  Speaker 1: let's start with a sports clip. People are buying sports clips.
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: Tell me the thinking you're thinking about that. I mean,
• 38:44
  Speaker 1: I'm a fan of NBA Top Shot, that's one of
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: the things you're referring to. I'm a buyer. Um, you know,
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: I love sports, I love trading cards. I've been buying
• 38:52
  Speaker 1: trading cards. We even talked about Sandy Kofax, you know before,
• 38:55
  Speaker 1: since I was a kid. So I really do see
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: the the n f T version of sports cards with
• 39:03
  Speaker 1: these videos and these moments as kind of a V
• 39:06
  Speaker 1: two of sports cards. I see it as kind of
• 39:08
  Speaker 1: the next evolution. Uh, kind of like where you see
• 39:12
  Speaker 1: Vinyl moving to c D C D S moving t
• 39:15
  Speaker 1: MP three is whatever, It's just the next evolution. At
• 39:17
  Speaker 1: the same At the end of the day, good music
• 39:19
  Speaker 1: is good music. It doesn't matter what the tech is, right,
• 39:22
  Speaker 1: So that's just my perspective. That said, NBA Top Shot
• 39:26
  Speaker 1: I think is awesome because, um, it's just a new
• 39:30
  Speaker 1: version of of sports cards. The the thing that you
• 39:35
  Speaker 1: said that I'm not sure if you said it on purpose.
• 39:37
  Speaker 1: I have to disagree with you said that it can
• 39:39
  Speaker 1: easily be replicated. Uh, for these videos, they can't be replicated.
• 39:43
  Speaker 1: The same video could be seen on YouTube, but having
• 39:48
  Speaker 1: that specific n f T where it's uniquely identified as
• 39:51
  Speaker 1: that is the one, just like my fingerprint, cannot be replicated.
• 39:55
  Speaker 1: So the fact that maybe there's you know, a Lebron
• 39:58
  Speaker 1: James dunk that's really famous, and there's a moment that
• 40:02
  Speaker 1: NBA top shot created and there's only ten of those
• 40:05
  Speaker 1: dunks and you happen to get the first one of
• 40:07
  Speaker 1: the ten or it doesn't matter. There's one out of
• 40:09
  Speaker 1: one and you have it. A lot of people are
• 40:11
  Speaker 1: gonna want it because that's interesting. Now, can somebody get
• 40:15
  Speaker 1: the Samisa video of that dunk on their phone, on
• 40:18
  Speaker 1: their computer, on YouTube, on snapchat, on whatever? They absolutely can? Okay,
• 40:22
  Speaker 1: I can I take a photo of Mona Lisa and
• 40:25
  Speaker 1: show it to you. Absolutely can. All these things are possible,
• 40:28
  Speaker 1: But the thing that is unique is the one that
• 40:31
  Speaker 1: is uniquely stamped to say that is one of one
• 40:34
  Speaker 1: and we all want it. Where a lot of people
• 40:36
  Speaker 1: want it, Okay, but we know with collectibles, whether it
• 40:40
  Speaker 1: be baseball cards or automobiles, etcetera. There's a limited market
• 40:45
  Speaker 1: and the price can fluctuate wildly. That's on physical assets. Basically,
• 40:51
  Speaker 1: if you if you buy a sports clip, if there's
• 40:57
  Speaker 1: not a market for it of people who want to
• 41:00
  Speaker 1: buy that clip, essentially it is worth nothing other than
• 41:04
  Speaker 1: to make you feel good that you own it. It's
• 41:05
  Speaker 1: that you would say that was correct, correct, absolutely correct,
• 41:09
  Speaker 1: But that was true with anything. You know, if you
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: buy a Masdamiata because you think it's a cute car
• 41:14
  Speaker 1: and you hope to make a million bucks and then
• 41:16
  Speaker 1: you find out there's no market, you know, it makes
• 41:18
  Speaker 1: you feel good that you bought it. If you buy
• 41:19
  Speaker 1: this moment on NBA top shot of of you know,
• 41:22
  Speaker 1: Lebron James and one wants to buy it, then you
• 41:25
  Speaker 1: know the market is the market. And if everybody wants
• 41:28
  Speaker 1: to pay you a lot of money for you're silly
• 41:31
  Speaker 1: you know, uhum garbage patch kid, and then they all
• 41:36
  Speaker 1: want to pay for that, you know, and if not
• 41:38
  Speaker 1: they don't. I mean that's supply and demand. That's okay.
• 41:42
  Speaker 1: We have the beanie baby situation. Let's just go one
• 41:45
  Speaker 1: step deeper, because what is you know, creating all this
• 41:48
  Speaker 1: ink is people selling digital assets for enormous prices. Yeah,
• 41:54
  Speaker 1: most people would say that the people paying enormous prices
• 41:58
  Speaker 1: or people in the crypt the world glory made a
• 42:02
  Speaker 1: lot of money in the crypto world. Do you think
• 42:06
  Speaker 1: that is accurate or in accurate? I mean, I don't
• 42:08
  Speaker 1: have uh facts, but my opinion is yes, there is
• 42:13
  Speaker 1: a lot of money that is moving around U trying
• 42:16
  Speaker 1: to diversify their ownership, um beyond you know, a certain
• 42:21
  Speaker 1: amount of assets. You saw this in seventeen eighteen as well.
• 42:26
  Speaker 1: Uh in the rise of bitcoin, you saw these you know,
• 42:30
  Speaker 1: second tier coins really start to pop because people didn't
• 42:35
  Speaker 1: want to rely solely on Bitcoin as to where all
• 42:38
  Speaker 1: their crypto gains were going. So you are seeing a diversification.
• 42:42
  Speaker 1: You know that uh let's call it that wave popped
• 42:46
  Speaker 1: and uh came down significantly. That's where the term ship
• 42:50
  Speaker 1: coins came from because a lot of these you know
• 42:51
  Speaker 1: turned to ship but uh, you know, come back to today,
• 42:56
  Speaker 1: a lot of these coins that people thought were garbage
• 42:58
  Speaker 1: have come back really strong. And Bitcoin, which you know
• 43:01
  Speaker 1: capped out just under twenty thou fell all the way
• 43:05
  Speaker 1: down to three or four whatever and now is covering
• 43:07
  Speaker 1: around sixty. So yes, it took a few years. Yes,
• 43:10
  Speaker 1: you have to be patient. Um. So, I mean I
• 43:13
  Speaker 1: think these things evolved. I think n f t s
• 43:16
  Speaker 1: will see a similar ride. So the short answers your
• 43:20
  Speaker 1: question is, do I think that some amount of money
• 43:22
  Speaker 1: that's coming into this market is because it's crypto money,
• 43:25
  Speaker 1: that's you know, diversifying and just moving around their money.
• 43:28
  Speaker 1: I think the short answer is yes, Do I think
• 43:30
  Speaker 1: that's the only market? No? Do I think there's new
• 43:33
  Speaker 1: entrants into digital because of these moments, because of these
• 43:37
  Speaker 1: n f t s. Because people are attracted to sports,
• 43:39
  Speaker 1: people are attracted to collectibles, they're attracted to art, and
• 43:42
  Speaker 1: it's an interesting way to enter into digital. Absolutely, I
• 43:45
  Speaker 1: think this is just a good um marketing. You know what? Um,
• 43:52
  Speaker 1: You know, Chilean sea bass was not always called Chilean
• 43:55
  Speaker 1: sea bass. You know what it used to be called.
• 43:59
  Speaker 1: I know this story, but I can't remember what it
• 44:00
  Speaker 1: used to be called. Padigoing in toothfish, you know. And
• 44:03
  Speaker 1: then like the group that was in charge of selling
• 44:05
  Speaker 1: Patty going intooth fish is like, Hey, we're not selling
• 44:07
  Speaker 1: a Patty going intooth fish. Let's rename it. Who wants
• 44:10
  Speaker 1: to buy a paddogoing intoothfish. Let's call itch land sea
• 44:12
  Speaker 1: bass off the shelf, fly and fly and flying. So,
• 44:14
  Speaker 1: you know, people called the bitcoin, people called the you know, shipcoins.
• 44:18
  Speaker 1: People called it protocols, people called it blockchain, all this
• 44:21
  Speaker 1: other stuff. People were like, way nerdy for me, I
• 44:23
  Speaker 1: don't get it, whatever, whatever, whatever. All of a sudden,
• 44:26
  Speaker 1: you put it under wrapper of a sports clips, some art,
• 44:29
  Speaker 1: some culturally relevant things. It's still on the same blockchain,
• 44:32
  Speaker 1: you know. I mean, it's still like the same const Okay,
• 44:35
  Speaker 1: but let's use bitcoin, which is the big cahuna here.
• 44:39
  Speaker 1: Bitcoin you can actually Bitcoin is fungible, yep. You can
• 44:43
  Speaker 1: buy bitcoin and sell it. Okay, it is inherent you
• 44:48
  Speaker 1: can invest in it. But theoretically it's a currency. Let's
• 44:51
  Speaker 1: start there. What are your thoughts about digital currency? Irrelevant
• 44:56
  Speaker 1: of whether someone invested in the volatility, is digital currency
• 45:00
  Speaker 1: the future or what? Um? I mean? I think that
• 45:08
  Speaker 1: our own currency, the US dollar, is already massively digital.
• 45:14
  Speaker 1: To be clear, I don't remember the last time I
• 45:16
  Speaker 1: touched a paper dollar. I haven't written actual checks with
• 45:21
  Speaker 1: paper in literally twenty years. So to me, I use
• 45:25
  Speaker 1: my credit card, I scan my phone against those different
• 45:28
  Speaker 1: sensors at whole foods. So to me, I'm already using
• 45:32
  Speaker 1: a digital currency. It just happens to have, you know,
• 45:36
  Speaker 1: less appreciation these days, especially in the world of the
• 45:39
  Speaker 1: central bank being able to print money, which is being
• 45:42
  Speaker 1: done so I don't have control over the you know,
• 45:46
  Speaker 1: devaluing or valuing of the currency. So I appreciate something
• 45:49
  Speaker 1: like bitcoin that has a limited set that cannot be printed.
• 45:52
  Speaker 1: More of it can be divided further. But I like
• 45:55
  Speaker 1: it from that perspective, like I would think of gold,
• 45:57
  Speaker 1: you know, as like a store of value. In terms
• 46:00
  Speaker 1: of digital currency, I think that, um, you know all,
• 46:04
  Speaker 1: like I said, I already think the U s D
• 46:06
  Speaker 1: is highly digital, So I think that concept is a
• 46:08
  Speaker 1: little abstract for me. Well, let me use Mark and
• 46:11
  Speaker 1: Reesen's thought. Okay, he talks about trade. Then you get
• 46:15
  Speaker 1: the bank in between the buyer and the seller in
• 46:18
  Speaker 1: a foreign countries. He specifically used the example of Africa
• 46:22
  Speaker 1: and he said there's a lot of fraud in the
• 46:24
  Speaker 1: system that digital currency would get rid of by taking
• 46:28
  Speaker 1: out all those middle people. Yeah, no, I agree with that.
• 46:31
  Speaker 1: Um to me, again, that's having a transparent ledger where
• 46:37
  Speaker 1: it's very clear what is authentic and what is true
• 46:40
  Speaker 1: and what has actually happened. And from that perspective, I
• 46:43
  Speaker 1: love the blockchain. And that's where I think people are
• 46:46
  Speaker 1: appreciating n f T s on the blockchain because was
• 46:50
  Speaker 1: this really what somebody said it was? Well, you don't
• 46:52
  Speaker 1: have to worry about that. You know a lot of
• 46:53
  Speaker 1: people are selling their sneakers on eBay or on go
• 46:57
  Speaker 1: or stock x. One of the biggest concerns is are
• 46:59
  Speaker 1: these really the sneakers people say they are? So should
• 47:02
  Speaker 1: I be paying a hundred hours for these sneakers or
• 47:05
  Speaker 1: because if they're really what you say they are, they
• 47:07
  Speaker 1: should be so. A lot of these marketplaces usually one
• 47:10
  Speaker 1: of the most valuable things they nail is trust. Airbnb
• 47:14
  Speaker 1: people trust it, you know, uh? YouTube now people trust uh?
• 47:18
  Speaker 1: And I think blockchain helps to create trust. Okay, what
• 47:21
  Speaker 1: about all the blowback about the energy costs of blockchain.
• 47:27
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna admit I am not sophisticated enough, uh to
• 47:30
  Speaker 1: understand all the details there um on on the energy level,
• 47:35
  Speaker 1: But I mean, yeah, I think it's not a topic.
• 47:39
  Speaker 1: I'm great. Okay, Okay, Now that, as you referenced earlier,
• 47:43
  Speaker 1: there are different digital currencies and you talked about Vincent
• 47:47
  Speaker 1: playing in the crypto field or making that stuff available.
• 47:50
  Speaker 1: The big cahuna once again is bitcoin, but all the
• 47:53
  Speaker 1: n f t s tend to be Ethereum. So if
• 47:56
  Speaker 1: I am on your platform, how do I decide or
• 48:00
  Speaker 1: what can you tell me about investing in cryptocurrent? Yeah,
• 48:03
  Speaker 1: so we're gonna have that as one of the six
• 48:05
  Speaker 1: major verticals that you can click on. And again we're
• 48:07
  Speaker 1: not going to the pro level detail. You know, if
• 48:10
  Speaker 1: you are five years into crypto, chances are Vincent is
• 48:14
  Speaker 1: not where you're gonna learn more about crypto. Chances are
• 48:16
  Speaker 1: you're gonna learn a lot more about the other five
• 48:18
  Speaker 1: verticals because you're so knee deep in crypto. Um. But
• 48:22
  Speaker 1: if you're a knee deep in real estate, you're probably
• 48:24
  Speaker 1: not gonna learn a ton more about real estate, but
• 48:27
  Speaker 1: you'll get more variety, but you'll probably learn about those
• 48:30
  Speaker 1: other places. Again, I think it's a great entry point
• 48:32
  Speaker 1: for a lot of folks, and as it relates to
• 48:34
  Speaker 1: crypto or n f T s, we're gonna tell you
• 48:36
  Speaker 1: what are the platforms you can enter with. You know,
• 48:38
  Speaker 1: we'll let you know about coin based, will let you
• 48:40
  Speaker 1: know about what the uh the preliminary coins are, We'll
• 48:42
  Speaker 1: tell you about what n f T s are. We'll
• 48:44
  Speaker 1: tell you about where your options are to be able
• 48:46
  Speaker 1: to navigate that UM and we'll present you with individual
• 48:50
  Speaker 1: options like actual individual offerings, or will tell you the
• 48:54
  Speaker 1: platforms where you can go. UM And as a matter
• 48:57
  Speaker 1: of fact, UH, digital uh assets and the n f
• 49:01
  Speaker 1: T s have been one of the fastest growing assets
• 49:04
  Speaker 1: because we actually have proprietary data that's unique literally to
• 49:08
  Speaker 1: the world, where we're able to aggregate the interest across
• 49:12
  Speaker 1: the verticals. So what percentage of people are interested in
• 49:15
  Speaker 1: real estate versus what percentage of people are interested in
• 49:18
  Speaker 1: UM digital assets, what percentage interesting collectibles? No one else
• 49:22
  Speaker 1: has that, and we're able to show those pie charts.
• 49:24
  Speaker 1: We put that out once a month. UM. And you know,
• 49:27
  Speaker 1: digital assets and crypto is the fastest growing market for
• 49:31
  Speaker 1: the last few months. UM. You know, we're very young,
• 49:34
  Speaker 1: so we don't have that much data yet, but it's
• 49:35
  Speaker 1: no surprise considering since New Year's you've really seen this
• 49:39
  Speaker 1: n f T craze and UH, you know bitcoin stays
• 49:44
  Speaker 1: very high. One thing one thing you did say just
• 49:46
  Speaker 1: to counter UM is yes, a lot of these n
• 49:50
  Speaker 1: f T s are on Ethereum, but they're not all
• 49:52
  Speaker 1: on Ethereum, including NBA top Shot, which is on flow
• 49:56
  Speaker 1: Um their own protocol, and they specifically created the own
• 50:00
  Speaker 1: protocol flow because of the challenges that they had with
• 50:04
  Speaker 1: Ethereum when they previously came out with crypto Kiddies back
• 50:07
  Speaker 1: a couple of years ago, and the congestion and all
• 50:10
  Speaker 1: the challenges, so they developed their own protocol. And now
• 50:12
  Speaker 1: there's more n f T s and other companies building
• 50:14
  Speaker 1: on that protocol. I do think you're gonna see more
• 50:17
  Speaker 1: competition at the protocol level, uh for you know, uh
• 50:22
  Speaker 1: protocols trying to win the love of these n f
• 50:26
  Speaker 1: T markets. Okay, now you said there are six verticals
• 50:30
  Speaker 1: on Vincent, could you list those? Yes? So there is
• 50:33
  Speaker 1: real estate, debt, venture, art, collectibles, and crypto. Okay, now
• 50:45
  Speaker 1: you're talking about the ability of the average person to
• 50:48
  Speaker 1: get into this marketplace. You know, in the last year
• 50:52
  Speaker 1: or so, if not longer, the hedge funds who have
• 50:54
  Speaker 1: traditionally been in this space have not been doing well,
• 51:00
  Speaker 1: which would anger that maybe the average person should be
• 51:03
  Speaker 1: suspicious or reluctant since the pros are not doing that well. Um,
• 51:12
  Speaker 1: is there a specific question yes, The question would be
• 51:17
  Speaker 1: if you look at the landscape, the people who traditionally
• 51:19
  Speaker 1: beat the market where hedge funds. Right now, the hedge
• 51:22
  Speaker 1: funds are not beating the market. They are professionals. This
• 51:26
  Speaker 1: is what they do twenty four seven. As an amateur
• 51:30
  Speaker 1: with much less information at my fingertips, is this really
• 51:34
  Speaker 1: a place where I should be or should I say
• 51:37
  Speaker 1: I should be aligned with someone much more sophisticated. So
• 51:41
  Speaker 1: there's a few questions there. Um. You know, it's hard
• 51:45
  Speaker 1: to paint massively broad strokes on hedge funds. Um. Some
• 51:49
  Speaker 1: hedge funds are probably doing very well. There are doing poorly.
• 51:53
  Speaker 1: I think COVID was the sort of black swan events
• 51:57
  Speaker 1: that a lot of the models weren't able to plan for.
• 52:00
  Speaker 1: You couldn't kind of, you know, check your analysis of
• 52:05
  Speaker 1: what would this look like? So I'm gonna build a
• 52:07
  Speaker 1: fund strategy like this. So you know, a lot of
• 52:10
  Speaker 1: this is algorithmic trading. Uh that again, the algorithms weren't
• 52:14
  Speaker 1: ready for the dynamics of COVID. UM. So I think
• 52:19
  Speaker 1: it's it's hard to paint broad strokes. I think that
• 52:23
  Speaker 1: in the more recent market, for the last year plus,
• 52:26
  Speaker 1: it's really been a stock pickers market, meaning a little
• 52:29
  Speaker 1: bit more active management, not passive management. Uh. Some hedge
• 52:33
  Speaker 1: funds are set up that way. Some are more just like,
• 52:36
  Speaker 1: you know, just set in and forget it. Um. And
• 52:40
  Speaker 1: in terms of ship, am I sophisticated enough for should
• 52:44
  Speaker 1: I leave it to the hedge funds? To be clear,
• 52:46
  Speaker 1: most of these hedge funds are participating in the public markets,
• 52:49
  Speaker 1: and the alternatives are not the public markets. I do
• 52:54
  Speaker 1: think you're gonna see more and more institutional money move
• 52:57
  Speaker 1: into the alternative markets. But because of UM, the lack
• 53:05
  Speaker 1: of control by the hedge funds and all these other
• 53:07
  Speaker 1: institutional players of alternative markets is where there is opportunities, uh,
• 53:11
  Speaker 1: to be able to just be smart and try to
• 53:14
  Speaker 1: you know, put some money where you believe it should go.
• 53:17
  Speaker 1: And it's not one of these things, where as the
• 53:19
  Speaker 1: game stop investors would say that the system has already
• 53:21
  Speaker 1: rigged against you where you have no chance to win
• 53:23
  Speaker 1: because the institutions control it. I think the alternative markets
• 53:27
  Speaker 1: are much younger because of that, there's much more opportunity,
• 53:31
  Speaker 1: and to be fair, because of that, there's more risk,
• 53:34
  Speaker 1: which is why it's a higher risk prior reward market. UM.
• 53:39
  Speaker 1: You know, I don't consider a gambling uh you know,
• 53:41
  Speaker 1: on one side of the spectrum, but it's going to
• 53:44
  Speaker 1: be more risky than you know, investing in the Dow
• 53:46
  Speaker 1: thirty where you get some I don't know, some Caterpillar
• 53:50
  Speaker 1: and some Coca Cola. Okay, going to the other side
• 53:54
  Speaker 1: of the equation, since you've also functioned on this end,
• 53:57
  Speaker 1: let's assume I'm a startup. Certainly twenty fifteen years ago,
• 54:02
  Speaker 1: my goal was to get VC money. I'd start with
• 54:04
  Speaker 1: maybe agel investing in VC money. Do you believe if
• 54:08
  Speaker 1: you're a startup that this is going to grow people
• 54:12
  Speaker 1: using uh these platforms to raise money as opposed to vcs,
• 54:17
  Speaker 1: and what are the advantages and disadvantages? Absolutely? So already
• 54:21
  Speaker 1: with the five million dollar cap, So twenty was a
• 54:24
  Speaker 1: huge year for equity crowdfunding. I believe like double the
• 54:29
  Speaker 1: previous year, and this year is supposed to be something
• 54:32
  Speaker 1: like three four x of last year, specifically because the
• 54:35
  Speaker 1: one to five million dollar increase plus the increased demand
• 54:39
  Speaker 1: on the on the entrepreneur side and the investors side. So,
• 54:43
  Speaker 1: just a few weeks ago when the markets changed from
• 54:46
  Speaker 1: one million dollar cap to a five million dollar cap
• 54:48
  Speaker 1: for the entrepreneurs in terms of how much limit they
• 54:50
  Speaker 1: could raise. You actually had an entrepreneur, the founder of
• 54:54
  Speaker 1: gum road Um was able to on day one, right
• 54:58
  Speaker 1: away raised five million dollars from about eight thousand investors
• 55:03
  Speaker 1: in twelve hours. I mean incredible. Now, to be clear,
• 55:06
  Speaker 1: this company was not started overnight. It was already several
• 55:10
  Speaker 1: years old, had already has a significant following, already makes
• 55:14
  Speaker 1: millions of dollars of revenue. But it's part of the
• 55:17
  Speaker 1: creator economy, and they wanted to get their creators involved
• 55:20
  Speaker 1: as investors. So they opened it up to their creators
• 55:23
  Speaker 1: and to the public, and they got funded really fast.
• 55:26
  Speaker 1: To me, equity is the ultimate loyalty, and I think
• 55:29
  Speaker 1: you'll see more and more of that from startups um
• 55:33
  Speaker 1: as they try to navigate the early days of dilution.
• 55:37
  Speaker 1: Some will go to vcs. There's benefits of that. You know,
• 55:41
  Speaker 1: a single investor. Sometimes the VC is massively connected. Maybe
• 55:45
  Speaker 1: they're an operator, they have a ton of experience, they
• 55:47
  Speaker 1: can help you with wisdom, but sometimes they're not. Sometimes
• 55:50
  Speaker 1: they're just money. And if they're just money, what's better
• 55:54
  Speaker 1: the three million from the just money VC or the
• 55:56
  Speaker 1: three million from the crowd which comes with ambassadors, it marketing,
• 56:01
  Speaker 1: some tweets, promotion, some love. Now what's the counter to that.
• 56:05
  Speaker 1: I mean, if you're going into try to solicit one million,
• 56:09
  Speaker 1: three million, five million dollars through equity Craftland, you have
• 56:12
  Speaker 1: to be public about it. That's the whole premise public, right,
• 56:14
  Speaker 1: So you have to go out hat in hand and say,
• 56:17
  Speaker 1: you know, public here, here's here's my company, here's what's
• 56:20
  Speaker 1: going on. You've got to open the kimono a little bit,
• 56:22
  Speaker 1: talk about what your revenues are, talking about what's going well,
• 56:25
  Speaker 1: what's not going well, and they might not turn out
• 56:28
  Speaker 1: to be a great result. And if you get publicly
• 56:30
  Speaker 1: turned down, that's tough. You know, that's a risk that
• 56:34
  Speaker 1: could be a risk to your actual business because that's
• 56:36
  Speaker 1: marketing that didn't go well. Also, it could be challenging
• 56:39
  Speaker 1: to have to interact with that many investors. Um And,
• 56:43
  Speaker 1: you know, do you want to deal with the overhead
• 56:45
  Speaker 1: related to the you know, the follow ups, etcetera, etcetera.
• 56:48
  Speaker 1: I mean, I believe overall the pros that weighed the
• 56:51
  Speaker 1: cons But I do think these are decisions that people
• 56:53
  Speaker 1: will make more regularly. Um And I think this will
• 56:56
  Speaker 1: be an exciting evolution of our capital markets, especially for
• 57:01
  Speaker 1: these early stage opportunities. Let's switch gears completely telling me
• 57:10
  Speaker 1: about the generation or the start of indie go Go.
• 57:16
  Speaker 1: So basically you're saying I'm old, so we're gonna talk
• 57:18
  Speaker 1: about another company now. Uh So yeah, we started Indigo
• 57:21
  Speaker 1: Go in two thousand and six. We came up. Uh,
• 57:24
  Speaker 1: we launched in two thousand eight, We launched at Sundance.
• 57:26
  Speaker 1: We started with film only. Uh. The idea back then,
• 57:30
  Speaker 1: before the word crowd funding existed, uh, and before any
• 57:33
  Speaker 1: of the platforms existed, was really you know, Uh, it
• 57:36
  Speaker 1: was about the gatekeeper, right, who was the VC, who
• 57:39
  Speaker 1: was the banker, who was the grant maker at the institution,
• 57:43
  Speaker 1: Who was that person that you need to kiss their
• 57:45
  Speaker 1: ring and hopefully get their stamp of approval? And there
• 57:47
  Speaker 1: was that man or woman that they got to decide everything,
• 57:50
  Speaker 1: or those five people that get to decide any everything.
• 57:53
  Speaker 1: But in a world of YouTube was starting to become interesting,
• 57:56
  Speaker 1: why was it that you couldn't ask the crowd, you know,
• 57:58
  Speaker 1: to fund you or not. We wanted to do what
• 58:01
  Speaker 1: is now known as equity crowdfunding right away in two
• 58:03
  Speaker 1: thousand and eight. The rules did not allow it because
• 58:06
  Speaker 1: of the various regulations, and so we came out with
• 58:09
  Speaker 1: this workaround, which is, you know, a perks or a
• 58:12
  Speaker 1: donation based model where you get maybe a robot in return,
• 58:17
  Speaker 1: a music album in return, a poster in return, a
• 58:21
  Speaker 1: T shirt in return, or a donation attacks deduction. Um.
• 58:25
  Speaker 1: And we did that, uh and off to the races.
• 58:28
  Speaker 1: So it's been a wild ride. Uh in you know,
• 58:32
  Speaker 1: we then were able to navigate the Jobs Act as
• 58:34
  Speaker 1: I mentioned before, and things have evolved quickly. But I'm
• 58:37
  Speaker 1: happy to add more color wherever you think is appropriate. Okay,
• 58:41
  Speaker 1: So it's cold indiego go like indie films. It uh
• 58:47
  Speaker 1: is called indie go go like independent is where the
• 58:51
  Speaker 1: term comes from. It wasn't specifically because of indie films. Um.
• 58:55
  Speaker 1: It was more of the independent spirit that was the concept. Um.
• 58:59
  Speaker 1: But we always knew like Amazon was going to be
• 59:01
  Speaker 1: for everything. But started with books. We try to take
• 59:04
  Speaker 1: a play out of Bezos playbook, which is starting one
• 59:08
  Speaker 1: vertical to get product market fit. So we started with film. Uh.
• 59:12
  Speaker 1: So we tried to get better product market fit first
• 59:14
  Speaker 1: there and then we evolved into everything. Okay, from a
• 59:18
  Speaker 1: layman's viewpoint, there were two entrants in the marketplace and
• 59:22
  Speaker 1: still two big ones today Indiego Go and Kickstarter. From
• 59:27
  Speaker 1: your viewpoint, who came first? Who innovated first? Uh? Because
• 59:32
  Speaker 1: there are similarities and differences. Well, it's not exactly from
• 59:36
  Speaker 1: my viewpoint, we could just ask way back machine the
• 59:38
  Speaker 1: facts we were first. That's not exactly an opinion. Uh.
• 59:42
  Speaker 1: Kickstarter came about a year a little over a year later,
• 59:45
  Speaker 1: about a year and a half. H Kickstarter did lots
• 59:47
  Speaker 1: of great things. They brought a lot of amazing design,
• 59:50
  Speaker 1: did a lot of good curation in terms of good
• 59:52
  Speaker 1: product projects. Um. I thought it was great historically to
• 59:57
  Speaker 1: be able to both compete and both in prove for
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 1: the backers the funders uh product that everybody likes, um
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 1: and to be fair. Over time, there were more entrance
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 1: that came in, right, you have go fund me, uh
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 1: comes in and does a really great job in the
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 1: cause and nonprofit space. And then Patreon comes into and
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 1: Patreon h comes in late focused much more on the creator.
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 1: You know. I think they just raised was it today?
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 1: I think that at four billion dollar valuations? God bless them.
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 1: So um yeah, I mean the concept of crowdfunding has
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 1: really been abstracted quite a bit. Um. But yeah, I
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 1: guess you know, when I'm old, I get to at
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 1: least appreciate that pretty much. You know, we helped start
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 1: the entire movement in January. Okay, so when you have Kickstarter.
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 1: Just talking about those two companies, Kickstarter and indiego go,
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 1: are they relatively the same size? Is one larger than
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 1: another today today? Yeah? So there pretty similar? I think. Um,
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 1: you know, indie goog focuses very much on the entrepreneur,
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 1: and I would say that Kickstarter focuses more on the creator. Uh.
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 1: There are certain verticals that indie googo doesn't focus on
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 1: that Kickstarter does very well in UM for example, like gaming,
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 1: uh and some other verticals. But in the side the
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 1: verticals that indigogo focuses on, UM, we're definitely very large
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 1: and doing very well. Okay, And to what degree are
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 1: you still involved? I mean I'm definitely involved. I'm on
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 1: the board, a large shareholder to say the least, and
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 1: still very much care how my first child does. I
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 1: actually have uh, two human children now, one is five
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 1: and a half and one is almost three. But I
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 1: know what it's like to raise them, and I know
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 1: what it was like to raise indie go go s
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 1: indi Gogo is definitely still the first child, so definitely involved.
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 1: You know, we put in a great CEO, a senior
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 1: executive from Reddit. Uh. Indie Googo is doing really well.
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 1: We've been growing significantly. Covid was actually a major tailwind
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 1: kind of like Etsy uh and Amazon. You saw a
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 1: lot of that um demand for digital as well as
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 1: kind of unique things, and we saw that demand come
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 1: to Indiegogo and we're actually profitable and we've been profitable
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 1: for a while. Okay, but Kickstarter is basically going to
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 1: limit I don't want to use the wrong technology, but
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 1: they're not talking about ultimately selling it, etcetera. What is
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 1: the indie go go viewpoint? I mean, I can't comment
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 1: on what Kickstarter does. I'm not on the board there.
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 1: But Indiegogo, you know, uh, like I mentioned, we're profitable,
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 1: we sustainable, get to you know, run our own future,
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 1: and you know, we still want to figure out what
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 1: we're gonna be when we grow up. As long as
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 1: we have customers that like using us and we're improving
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 1: the product, we'll keep on looking to serve the market.
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 1: Where we're geriatric in the Internet time, we're like thirty,
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 1: but you know, it's a game of musical chairs and
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 1: there are fewer chairs and they're ever reducing. So theoretically
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 1: Indiego Go could go public and you could have a
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 1: big pay day. Theoretically, anything is possible. Okay, well I've
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 1: been Kickstarter. I'm pretty sure they said no for them.
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 1: So let's talk about you. So where did you grow up?
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 1: I was born in Belarus in Minsk, which is uh
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 1: former Soviet Union. Um. And then I was born in
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 1: seventy eight. Came over when I was six months old
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 1: with my parents and my brother to Brooklyn. We lived there.
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 1: So I'm a Jew, so that's the wait. Wait, wait,
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 1: just because I'm interested, how did your family get out
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 1: of Belarus? Because it wasn't so easy then? Right, So
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 1: we're Jewish and um, you know Belarus and the Soviet
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 1: Union wasn't too excited about keeping their Jews, so they
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 1: were open to letting the Jews go. Um. So we
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 1: were part of that wave, and my dad put our
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 1: name into the lottery, uh and we won the lottery. Um.
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 1: You know, winning as a relative concept. To be able
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 1: to leave without anything, and to be an immigrant with
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 1: nothing except for the clothes are on your backs and
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 1: come into Brooklyn, Brooklyn and seventy nine and then the eighties,
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 1: the Giuliani eighties, which referring to get to the Giuliani eighties,
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 1: What did your father do for work in Belarus and
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 1: then what did he do in Brooklyn? Yes, so I
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 1: have really great parents, smart parents, which actually just shows
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 1: how much Russia didn't care about Jews because they let
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 1: go of a mechanical engineer. Uh. And my mom is
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 1: a doctor. So two of the two main professions that
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 1: the Soviet Union wanted, which was engineers and doctors, they
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 1: let go of two of those folks. Um and Yes,
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 1: so my dad became an engineer again. Um in Brooklyn. Uh.
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 1: He actually didn't know English. He learned English by watching movies.
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 1: He learned German in Russia, so he didn't study English
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 1: in Russia. My my mo, they're actually studies some English
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 1: back in Russia. She had to retake her certification, so
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 1: she was a certified doctor in Belarus, and then she
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 1: had to be re certified in English, which I can't
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 1: even fathom that concept. That's kind of like graduating college
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 1: and then having to do it again in another language
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 1: as bananas while she had two kids. Um, so we
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 1: were in Brooklyn until I was seven. Then my mom
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 1: got her residency. Go ahead, No, so she did pass
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 1: those boards, she sure did. Okay, so you're saying you
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 1: were in Brooklyn til your seven. She had a residency.
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 1: So she got her residency in northeast Pennsylvania in a
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 1: scrant Wilkesburg area. So we all moved to Scranton as
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 1: part of that. Um. And Uh, my dad then um
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 1: got cancer and when I was in high school, and
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 1: he died when I was in high school, and I
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 1: then went to penn I went to Wharton Underground a
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 1: little bit slower. So you went to public school? Yeah,
• 1:05:58
  Speaker 1: so I went to private school. I went to Hebrew
• 1:06:02
  Speaker 1: Private School in Brooklyn, and then I went to Hebrew
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 1: Private Day School, uh in Pennsylvania through eighth grade. Um,
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 1: I was going to go to a private secular school
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 1: for high school like my brother did. Um, But because
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 1: my dad died of cancer, we were, uh, you know,
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 1: struggling more with cash and trying to make sure that
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 1: things were able to work out. So we decided I
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 1: would go to public school for for high school. Right.
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 1: So what was it like? Because I certainly went to
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 1: high school being the new kid in high school with
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 1: the first name Slava. Uh. It was challenging. It was challenging.
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 1: I mean when I was a new kid to the
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 1: high school for my district was like, I don't know,
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 1: Italian and literally a Catholic. Um. So um, yeah, it
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 1: was challenging. I mean Slava was one thing. It was
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 1: actually more challenging to be Jewish, to be perfectly frank,
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 1: uh no one. I mean, at least in my school,
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 1: being a Jew was uh, I don't know. I might
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 1: as well have been a dinosaur, uh, like something that
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 1: they saw in the movies, like on Jurassic Park. And
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 1: it was an interesting experience. Um. You know, I just navigated.
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 1: I had to deal with uh, some anti Semitism, but overall,
• 1:07:32
  Speaker 1: I mean I think it was fine. Um. And you know,
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 1: I graduated Valuatorians, so that I had some pros and cons.
• 1:07:41
  Speaker 1: Pros being like, you know, it's nice to finish top
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 1: of your class. Cons that you know, people kind of
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 1: knew that I was smart, and it's not always the
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 1: best thing to do to be like smart as part
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 1: of your coolness factor in high school. You know, I
• 1:07:57
  Speaker 1: did buffer that a little bit with being an athlete.
• 1:07:59
  Speaker 1: I and call myself a jock, but I did play football, basketball,
• 1:08:02
  Speaker 1: and tennis. Um so, uh, you know, I just rolled
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 1: with the punches and sometimes that included punches, but uh,
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 1: it's all good, Okay. So if you were the valedictorian.
• 1:08:13
  Speaker 1: I grew up in the Jewish family, but a couple
• 1:08:16
  Speaker 1: of generations were moved from Russia. Uh, and there was
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 1: a lot of parental pressure to do well in school.
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 1: Did you have that same pressure, believe it or not. No. Um,
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 1: I find it fascinating how the results came about. But
• 1:08:36
  Speaker 1: you know, my parents were too busy surviving and being
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 1: entrepreneurs themselves. And when I say the word entrepreneur, I
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 1: don't mean in vocation. I mean in just navigating life.
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 1: So they had so many risks and had so many
• 1:08:50
  Speaker 1: problems to navigate on their own to make it seem
• 1:08:52
  Speaker 1: like life was okay for their kids that I don't
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 1: think they had like enough capacity to like over focus
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 1: on you need to get an A plus. That doesn't
• 1:09:02
  Speaker 1: mean they were okay with like a D minus coming
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 1: in on the report card, but it was kind of like, hey, hey,
• 1:09:07
  Speaker 1: you know you're studying, you doing your work. You're doing
• 1:09:09
  Speaker 1: your work, you know. Um, so yeah, I don't really
• 1:09:14
  Speaker 1: remember getting like, you know, uh really like helicoptered over me.
• 1:09:21
  Speaker 1: I think my brother, who was four and a half
• 1:09:23
  Speaker 1: years older, probably did have more than that. Um. And
• 1:09:27
  Speaker 1: I'm the younger child. So you know, the more children
• 1:09:30
  Speaker 1: you have, the later the child, the less you know,
• 1:09:31
  Speaker 1: the parents care. Uh as I smile, but um yeah.
• 1:09:37
  Speaker 1: And then by the time i'm um, you know, already
• 1:09:41
  Speaker 1: in high school, sorry, in late grade school and then
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 1: high school, you know, my dad's already getting cancer. And
• 1:09:47
  Speaker 1: you know, that's three really rough years. There's no focusing
• 1:09:49
  Speaker 1: on my grades when that's happening. So, uh, you know,
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 1: I was kind of like, I just thought it was
• 1:09:57
  Speaker 1: important for me to be educated, try to have a
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 1: good future. Okay, what is your brother do today? Uh?
• 1:10:05
  Speaker 1: So my brother works for City Bank. Okay, so you
• 1:10:09
  Speaker 1: have two kids, they're young. Let's say your kids said
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 1: they didn't want to go to college. That be okay
• 1:10:15
  Speaker 1: with you. I mean generically, that's totally fine with me. Um.
• 1:10:20
  Speaker 1: I think college, as you know, a structure is evolving.
• 1:10:24
  Speaker 1: So yeah, I I don't really have an issue with that.
• 1:10:27
  Speaker 1: I do have an issue with them not getting educated
• 1:10:30
  Speaker 1: and being like responsible adults and of high integrity and
• 1:10:33
  Speaker 1: being able to be good decision makers. I think that UM,
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 1: with information coming to our fingertips in every direction and
• 1:10:42
  Speaker 1: having the simple facts or the calculus being figured out
• 1:10:46
  Speaker 1: for us by computers, being able to navigate morality and
• 1:10:50
  Speaker 1: ethics and decision making is me really important. Whether that
• 1:10:53
  Speaker 1: requires college or not, I'm not sure, but I would
• 1:10:56
  Speaker 1: want them to be, you know, well educated and ready
• 1:10:59
  Speaker 1: for life as become grown ups. Okay, so you go
• 1:11:02
  Speaker 1: to Penn, and you go to Wharton, So you go
• 1:11:04
  Speaker 1: in knowing that you want to study business. Yeah, I
• 1:11:09
  Speaker 1: mean I started UM buying and selling trading cards. Going
• 1:11:12
  Speaker 1: back to the early parts of our discussion, when I
• 1:11:14
  Speaker 1: was a kid. I'm talking like, you know, nine, ten, eleven, twelve,
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 1: Like I was already buying basketball cards and trying to
• 1:11:23
  Speaker 1: buy them for four dollars and try to sell them
• 1:11:25
  Speaker 1: for ten dollars at the malls or at the hotels
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 1: or at these like shows. And I was like a
• 1:11:30
  Speaker 1: little kid, and I loved getting these magazines. Um, you know,
• 1:11:35
  Speaker 1: Beckett and Tough Stuff. Beckett still exists, you know, thirty
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 1: years later, but Beckett and Tough Stuff, and you know,
• 1:11:40
  Speaker 1: you can only get these magazines once a month, and
• 1:11:42
  Speaker 1: they would tell you the price went up or went
• 1:11:44
  Speaker 1: down once a month, and the arrow was up or
• 1:11:48
  Speaker 1: down or flat once a month. Can you imagine that
• 1:11:51
  Speaker 1: we're asking if we could get liquidity within a millisecond,
• 1:11:53
  Speaker 1: like Robin, I'm talking about once a month. So I mean, like, um, yeah,
• 1:11:57
  Speaker 1: I loved it. Back then, I went into this high
• 1:11:59
  Speaker 1: school program where they asked you to create this kind
• 1:12:02
  Speaker 1: of poster about yourself as part of the summer program
• 1:12:05
  Speaker 1: and what you want your future to be, and as
• 1:12:07
  Speaker 1: part of my future I I put in the poster.
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 1: I was like, I want Wharton to be part of
• 1:12:11
  Speaker 1: my future. This was already while I was in high school,
• 1:12:13
  Speaker 1: and you know, I was lucky enough to get into Warden,
• 1:12:14
  Speaker 1: which was great. But even back then, I thought I
• 1:12:17
  Speaker 1: wanted to be involved with business. You know, I thought
• 1:12:19
  Speaker 1: I was gonna be more of a um Wall Street
• 1:12:23
  Speaker 1: the movie, like a banker Gore and Get Go type,
• 1:12:27
  Speaker 1: you know, try to take some of the negative out
• 1:12:28
  Speaker 1: of that. But I thought that's what I wanted to do.
• 1:12:31
  Speaker 1: But then what I slowly learned is that's that's not
• 1:12:33
  Speaker 1: actually who I want to be. I want to use
• 1:12:35
  Speaker 1: the capabilities of business the capabilities of decision making a
• 1:12:38
  Speaker 1: math and you know how you create value, uh, to navigate, Uh,
• 1:12:43
  Speaker 1: you know, trying to create you know, positive things in
• 1:12:46
  Speaker 1: the world, which you know turned out to be me
• 1:12:49
  Speaker 1: being a strategy consultant for eight years. Um, so yeah,
• 1:12:52
  Speaker 1: I never really became one of those like investment bankers
• 1:12:55
  Speaker 1: or that type of role. I mean, I have investment
• 1:12:58
  Speaker 1: bankers that are nice people and friends of my but
• 1:13:00
  Speaker 1: I decided, as part of you know, getting what I wanted,
• 1:13:03
  Speaker 1: I decided that wasn't what I wanted, if that makes sense. Okay,
• 1:13:06
  Speaker 1: so you're in Warden in retrospect. Uh did you learn
• 1:13:10
  Speaker 1: something or was it more you got a diploma? Oh,
• 1:13:14
  Speaker 1: Wharton was great. I mean it was super super difficult.
• 1:13:19
  Speaker 1: I mean, I'm like fairly intelligent. There was way more
• 1:13:21
  Speaker 1: intelligent people have Warden. I mean I brought the S
• 1:13:23
  Speaker 1: A T. I would scored down for sure, but the
• 1:13:26
  Speaker 1: good and the bad about word. It's no fooling around.
• 1:13:29
  Speaker 1: It's not like some liberal arts school where hopefully you
• 1:13:32
  Speaker 1: get an A or not, like most of the classes
• 1:13:33
  Speaker 1: are on a curve massively competitive. You know, Uh, if
• 1:13:38
  Speaker 1: the highest scores of sixty and you've got a fifty nine,
• 1:13:40
  Speaker 1: and then you've got a great grade if if everybody's
• 1:13:42
  Speaker 1: got a ninety eight and you got a ninety seven,
• 1:13:44
  Speaker 1: and then you're left so like everything was competitive and
• 1:13:47
  Speaker 1: you weren't competing. You know, you weren't six ft eight
• 1:13:50
  Speaker 1: playing against five ft nine's. You're everybody's pretty solid. So um,
• 1:13:59
  Speaker 1: I I loved it. Mean you have to always be sharp.
• 1:14:01
  Speaker 1: You're surrounded by really smart people, really creative people. I
• 1:14:04
  Speaker 1: mean the you know my class, and I'm sure pretty
• 1:14:06
  Speaker 1: much all the classes can say this, but you know
• 1:14:08
  Speaker 1: my graduating class as incredible results, I mean founders of PayPal, etcetera, etcetera.
• 1:14:12
  Speaker 1: I mean great stuff LinkedIn whatever, lots of cool stuff. Okay,
• 1:14:17
  Speaker 1: So what's the difference between going to graduate school and
• 1:14:20
  Speaker 1: Wharton and being an undergraduate? That's a great question. It's
• 1:14:24
  Speaker 1: a great question only because I'll have fun with this.
• 1:14:27
  Speaker 1: See a lot of people say they went to Wharton
• 1:14:29
  Speaker 1: and they actually went to the business school, which is
• 1:14:31
  Speaker 1: the graduate school, which you know, I say this with
• 1:14:33
  Speaker 1: a smile because we're on audio, which is way easier
• 1:14:36
  Speaker 1: to get into than it is for the undergraduate degree.
• 1:14:39
  Speaker 1: See an undergraduate degree. Wharton is the only IVY with
• 1:14:43
  Speaker 1: an undergraduate degree in business. So you can't get an
• 1:14:47
  Speaker 1: undergraduate degree in business from Princeton or from Harvard or
• 1:14:51
  Speaker 1: from whatever. So uh so, if you want a quote
• 1:14:54
  Speaker 1: unquote Ivy League degree, but you want a business degree,
• 1:14:59
  Speaker 1: Waren is the only game in town. So it's massively
• 1:15:02
  Speaker 1: competitive to get into. I'm pretty confident there's no way
• 1:15:05
  Speaker 1: I would get into it today if I applied today,
• 1:15:08
  Speaker 1: because the caliber is just ridiculous. Um. But yeah, I
• 1:15:12
  Speaker 1: really enjoyed it. Um. I thought it was a great experience.
• 1:15:15
  Speaker 1: I personally love competition. I grew up with sports. My
• 1:15:17
  Speaker 1: dad taught. You know, my dad was great at sports.
• 1:15:20
  Speaker 1: He taught the US sports. I love the idea of
• 1:15:23
  Speaker 1: winning and losing. I think losing and failure is pinnacle
• 1:15:28
  Speaker 1: to being educated. Um So yeah, I really enjoyed all
• 1:15:33
  Speaker 1: the team projects at Wharton, as well as all the
• 1:15:37
  Speaker 1: competitive energy and everything surrounding. So what did you actually
• 1:15:42
  Speaker 1: learn there other than the competition? I mean a majority
• 1:15:47
  Speaker 1: of your degree is actually pretty similar to your neighbor,
• 1:15:49
  Speaker 1: which is you're getting the accounting one on one and
• 1:15:51
  Speaker 1: one or two, the finance one on one, the you know,
• 1:15:54
  Speaker 1: the writing that this to that, and then you specialize
• 1:15:58
  Speaker 1: with you know, your focus areas. So I did to
• 1:16:01
  Speaker 1: focus areas. I did a finance focus area. I was
• 1:16:03
  Speaker 1: a double major, so finance and entrepreneurial management, which basically
• 1:16:07
  Speaker 1: means I already knew I liked entrepreneurship. But most people,
• 1:16:11
  Speaker 1: you know, what's happening, Warren, is you're getting like the
• 1:16:15
  Speaker 1: exact same degree and then personalized, which I like to
• 1:16:19
  Speaker 1: joke around. Some people go their vocation. They want to
• 1:16:22
  Speaker 1: be a plumber, so they go to learn how to
• 1:16:23
  Speaker 1: be a plumber. We go to learn how to be
• 1:16:25
  Speaker 1: a business person. I mean they're just like spitting out
• 1:16:27
  Speaker 1: business people. And I say that in the nicest way possible.
• 1:16:31
  Speaker 1: And then so you graduate from Penn and then you
• 1:16:34
  Speaker 1: were talking about the UH. You had a different job
• 1:16:37
  Speaker 1: before Indiego go. Yeah, I graduated two thousand. I was
• 1:16:40
  Speaker 1: a strategy consultant for UM uh seven just under eight
• 1:16:45
  Speaker 1: years for who And what was that experience? Like, yeah,
• 1:16:50
  Speaker 1: it was great. Um it was for Diamonds. So now
• 1:16:54
  Speaker 1: I diamond was bought by p WC, so it's a
• 1:16:56
  Speaker 1: consulting firm. But I got to work at the UH,
• 1:17:00
  Speaker 1: you know, at the most senior levels at huge companies
• 1:17:03
  Speaker 1: as a consultant helping companies navigate their biggest decisions about
• 1:17:07
  Speaker 1: how to plan for the future. UM. More specifically, I
• 1:17:11
  Speaker 1: worked with companies like FedEx, I worked with Goldman sachs Uh.
• 1:17:16
  Speaker 1: I worked with others that are not able to name,
• 1:17:19
  Speaker 1: like large telecom companies. But like a really fun exercise
• 1:17:23
  Speaker 1: UM that I was a part of in the early
• 1:17:26
  Speaker 1: two thousand's is we work for a telecom company, a
• 1:17:30
  Speaker 1: very large telecom company. And at the time, in the
• 1:17:33
  Speaker 1: early two thousands, if the folks can remember, everybody was
• 1:17:36
  Speaker 1: talking about the last mile Internet, and they were saying,
• 1:17:38
  Speaker 1: D a seller cable is a D A seller cable,
• 1:17:41
  Speaker 1: which one's gonna win? And everybody's trying to sign a
• 1:17:43
  Speaker 1: D sell or cable. It's kind of like you know, Beta,
• 1:17:46
  Speaker 1: VH at whatever. And UM. They asked us, They're like, well,
• 1:17:50
  Speaker 1: we know we need to deploy a ton of money
• 1:17:52
  Speaker 1: against one of these, so can you tell us is it,
• 1:17:55
  Speaker 1: you know, D sell or cable? And we did the
• 1:17:57
  Speaker 1: analysis and I'll just fast forward word. But this is
• 1:18:01
  Speaker 1: early two thousands, okay, so we don't even have the
• 1:18:03
  Speaker 1: iPhone yet, okay, And we told them we actually think
• 1:18:07
  Speaker 1: wireless internet is going to be an interesting way to
• 1:18:11
  Speaker 1: deliver last mile internet. They said, no, no, the question
• 1:18:17
  Speaker 1: was dsllor cable. It's not that hard. We're paying you
• 1:18:20
  Speaker 1: millions of dollars. All you have to say is AIRB
• 1:18:23
  Speaker 1: and we're good. And we said wireless internet is probably
• 1:18:26
  Speaker 1: where things are headed. And they said again, just DSL
• 1:18:31
  Speaker 1: or cable or we're not paying you your fees. And
• 1:18:34
  Speaker 1: we're like, well, we think it's be wireless internet. And
• 1:18:37
  Speaker 1: they said, how can it be wireless inet? And we said, well,
• 1:18:40
  Speaker 1: you know, some smart people were able to figure out
• 1:18:43
  Speaker 1: how to take you know, the spectrum of the signal
• 1:18:47
  Speaker 1: for um, your video and now they give you Internet
• 1:18:51
  Speaker 1: through that cable. Well, those same smart people are going
• 1:18:54
  Speaker 1: to figure out how to take the signal from your
• 1:18:57
  Speaker 1: cell phones and they're gonna put Internet on it. And
• 1:19:01
  Speaker 1: that's that's gonna be really too difficult. And the amazing
• 1:19:05
  Speaker 1: thing is, like about seven years later, I remember like
• 1:19:07
  Speaker 1: that first commercial. I think it was like two eight
• 1:19:09
  Speaker 1: maybe two thousand nine. There's like that commercial where there's
• 1:19:13
  Speaker 1: this guy who's walking through the swamp and he's holding
• 1:19:16
  Speaker 1: his laptop above the water of the swamp and he
• 1:19:18
  Speaker 1: has like a little dongle that's connected into the complete
• 1:19:22
  Speaker 1: the laptop and he's like using the Internet with the
• 1:19:25
  Speaker 1: dongle and I was like, oh my gosh, somebody's actually
• 1:19:28
  Speaker 1: doing this wireless internet. Here you go. I mean obviously
• 1:19:31
  Speaker 1: now you know, kids don't even understand what it means
• 1:19:34
  Speaker 1: to not have Internet on your phone wirelessly. That's just
• 1:19:38
  Speaker 1: like water, right, It's it's more important than water. So yeah,
• 1:19:42
  Speaker 1: I used to do that, so trying to predict five
• 1:19:44
  Speaker 1: to seven years out where companies should be trying to
• 1:19:46
  Speaker 1: aim their huge tankers because it's not always easy to
• 1:19:50
  Speaker 1: be nimble. Um. So yeah, that's what I did for
• 1:19:54
  Speaker 1: for a while and it was great learning because I
• 1:19:57
  Speaker 1: got to learn corporate structure. I got to manage folks.
• 1:20:00
  Speaker 1: I got to see how to make big decisions and
• 1:20:02
  Speaker 1: that was really helpful to building indiego Go and then
• 1:20:04
  Speaker 1: now Vincent. So how did you decide to leave? What
• 1:20:06
  Speaker 1: was the first thing you did as after you left? Well,
• 1:20:09
  Speaker 1: I always wanted to be entrepreneurial. I just never had
• 1:20:12
  Speaker 1: the gut instinct on what to do. And then finally
• 1:20:15
  Speaker 1: my two co founders, Eric din In I came up
• 1:20:18
  Speaker 1: with the idea for indiego Go and then parallel processed
• 1:20:21
  Speaker 1: building indiego Go while working at Diamond for all of
• 1:20:24
  Speaker 1: two thousand seven and then January one, I officially went
• 1:20:27
  Speaker 1: full time on on on indie goo go. Um. I
• 1:20:33
  Speaker 1: was excited, you know, um, as much as being in
• 1:20:36
  Speaker 1: the services industry is great. And when I mean by that,
• 1:20:39
  Speaker 1: you know, being a lawyer, a banker, a consultant, et cetera,
• 1:20:42
  Speaker 1: being able to be an operator and actually making something
• 1:20:45
  Speaker 1: and bringing you know, a turning air into reality and
• 1:20:48
  Speaker 1: bringing something to the world is really like so fun,
• 1:20:52
  Speaker 1: just so awesome. It's also like massively difficult, but it's
• 1:20:56
  Speaker 1: so great. And when you started indigogo, would you do
• 1:21:00
  Speaker 1: for money? Um? So we purposely planned, the two co
• 1:21:06
  Speaker 1: founders and I to use our own savings up front,
• 1:21:08
  Speaker 1: so I purposely saved. Um. We actually got rejected by
• 1:21:12
  Speaker 1: nine three vcs in a row because the market crashed
• 1:21:15
  Speaker 1: at the end of two thou and the fall. We
• 1:21:18
  Speaker 1: definitely didn't predict that, so we definitely ran out of money.
• 1:21:24
  Speaker 1: You know, I was paying to work for three years
• 1:21:26
  Speaker 1: pretty much, so that was not a good paying job
• 1:21:29
  Speaker 1: about r o I. But in the long run, it
• 1:21:31
  Speaker 1: all worked out because it got me to the results
• 1:21:33
  Speaker 1: on that today and it's all good. I like to
• 1:21:36
  Speaker 1: think long term. Often their short term pain or short
• 1:21:39
  Speaker 1: term obstacles, and usually the things that are the most
• 1:21:42
  Speaker 1: valuable or will give you the most return will require
• 1:21:45
  Speaker 1: a little bit more of that long term view, and
• 1:21:47
  Speaker 1: some challenges you need to overcome. And in those three years,
• 1:21:51
  Speaker 1: how many times did you save yourself? We should pack
• 1:21:54
  Speaker 1: this in. I should go back to the other world
• 1:21:57
  Speaker 1: just one time, just one time, very seriou. It was
• 1:22:01
  Speaker 1: middle of two thousand nine. It was already very dark.
• 1:22:05
  Speaker 1: Crash of two thousand eight was rough. It was pretty
• 1:22:09
  Speaker 1: clear we weren't going to get institutional funding. It was
• 1:22:12
  Speaker 1: pretty clear that we now have run out of our
• 1:22:15
  Speaker 1: savings of the three founders, and it was pretty clear
• 1:22:19
  Speaker 1: that the only ones we have to rely on are
• 1:22:21
  Speaker 1: the three of us. There's no hiring anybody, there's no
• 1:22:25
  Speaker 1: asking anybody for some money. There's only just brute force.
• 1:22:29
  Speaker 1: Do we want to not get paid and keep on
• 1:22:32
  Speaker 1: working on this until it works? And I remember we
• 1:22:34
  Speaker 1: had this conversation where we all set to ourselves. Listen,
• 1:22:37
  Speaker 1: you know, it's pretty rough. I like to joke around
• 1:22:39
  Speaker 1: that I was thinner back then because I couldn't afford
• 1:22:41
  Speaker 1: much food and um, we just said maybe we should
• 1:22:47
  Speaker 1: get part time jobs so we could sustain ourselves a
• 1:22:49
  Speaker 1: little bit better while we work on our actual gig
• 1:22:54
  Speaker 1: and for better or worse. I was very adamant. I
• 1:22:57
  Speaker 1: was like, listen, the second we step out part time,
• 1:23:01
  Speaker 1: we're done. So if we want to do part time,
• 1:23:03
  Speaker 1: we might as well just close. And the argument was like,
• 1:23:06
  Speaker 1: no, no no, no, we want to do part time so
• 1:23:07
  Speaker 1: we could sustain doing what we want to do. And
• 1:23:10
  Speaker 1: I was at him and it was like, listen, either
• 1:23:12
  Speaker 1: we're in or we're out. And we're out, it's cool,
• 1:23:14
  Speaker 1: we're done, but if we're in, it's only full. There
• 1:23:17
  Speaker 1: is no part And how long how long after that
• 1:23:21
  Speaker 1: conversation did it start to turn around? Um? Look, we
• 1:23:27
  Speaker 1: made some kind of last stand sort of moves. We
• 1:23:32
  Speaker 1: made some major product moves, we opened up the entire site.
• 1:23:36
  Speaker 1: There's really three things we did. Um, but yes, a
• 1:23:41
  Speaker 1: few months after that things started turning around, and before
• 1:23:44
  Speaker 1: you know it, we saw real growth. And we didn't
• 1:23:48
  Speaker 1: have the opportunity to just fool around with monetization, like, oh,
• 1:23:51
  Speaker 1: it's not necessary right now, we're just trying to grow.
• 1:23:53
  Speaker 1: We were monetizing right away because we wanted money and
• 1:23:56
  Speaker 1: I was really helpful, and um are It's funny. Our
• 1:24:01
  Speaker 1: corporate council at indigogo is actually the same corporate council
• 1:24:05
  Speaker 1: that I originally hired back in two thousand seven. And
• 1:24:09
  Speaker 1: he always jokes around. He's, you know, very senior lawyer
• 1:24:12
  Speaker 1: now at a firm, and and he jokes around, he's like,
• 1:24:17
  Speaker 1: you know, all my other clients that were of your
• 1:24:20
  Speaker 1: size in the market crash of two eight, none survived
• 1:24:24
  Speaker 1: past a few years. You were the only ones, the
• 1:24:28
  Speaker 1: only ones. And he always ask me, I still don't
• 1:24:30
  Speaker 1: understand how you guys survived, And I was like, it's easy.
• 1:24:33
  Speaker 1: They all ran out of money. We had no money,
• 1:24:36
  Speaker 1: so we could not run out of it. Okay, so
• 1:24:41
  Speaker 1: it becomes successful. How did you decide to walk away
• 1:24:44
  Speaker 1: on a day by day basis? So you know, we're
• 1:24:48
  Speaker 1: continued to build and grow. Um, we are continued to innovate.
• 1:24:53
  Speaker 1: And then a few years ago, you know, I started
• 1:24:55
  Speaker 1: about eight years ago Angel Investing, and I have really
• 1:25:00
  Speaker 1: loved it. I really love entrepreneurs. I like working with entrepreneurs,
• 1:25:04
  Speaker 1: even if I don't make a dollar, just because I
• 1:25:05
  Speaker 1: feel like any one entrepreneur has an opportunity to change
• 1:25:08
  Speaker 1: the world. So why not stack the odds in our
• 1:25:10
  Speaker 1: favor for for Earth and just like get as many
• 1:25:12
  Speaker 1: entrepreneurs as successful as possible. And I've really enjoyed the experience.
• 1:25:16
  Speaker 1: I've had some really good results. And my friend and
• 1:25:19
  Speaker 1: I from Penn said to you know, he's been doing
• 1:25:21
  Speaker 1: a great job angel investing as well, and we just said,
• 1:25:24
  Speaker 1: wouldn't it be cool if we took all of our
• 1:25:26
  Speaker 1: learnings and of our operator knowledge and our network and
• 1:25:29
  Speaker 1: try to pay it forward onto like, you know, the
• 1:25:32
  Speaker 1: next wave of entrepreneurs. So we decided to build a
• 1:25:36
  Speaker 1: venture fund, and so we launched that in eighteen and
• 1:25:40
  Speaker 1: that was part of stepping away. Also, indie goog was
• 1:25:44
  Speaker 1: really hitting more of a steady state, add more zeros
• 1:25:47
  Speaker 1: type of business. And while adding more zeros is great
• 1:25:51
  Speaker 1: and amazing and the world needs more zeros, and you know,
• 1:25:54
  Speaker 1: people making more money needs more zeros. Um I like
• 1:25:57
  Speaker 1: zero to one and innovation and taking air and turning
• 1:26:01
  Speaker 1: into reality. So I was just looking for a little
• 1:26:03
  Speaker 1: bit of the next challenge and putting in the right
• 1:26:06
  Speaker 1: leaders so that I can you know, start this fund
• 1:26:08
  Speaker 1: with my friend Cyrus. Okay, so you started the vc
• 1:26:11
  Speaker 1: fund with how much money. Our first fund is thirty
• 1:26:16
  Speaker 1: million dollars three zero and we it's a vintage. So
• 1:26:20
  Speaker 1: we're now seventeen portfolio companies in and it's going quite well. Okay,
• 1:26:25
  Speaker 1: So if you have seventeen companies, so the big example
• 1:26:28
  Speaker 1: here is soft Bank, their hit the ship ratio is bad.
• 1:26:31
  Speaker 1: They have these master failures, but they have these massive
• 1:26:34
  Speaker 1: success successes for those who are unsophisticated. If you have
• 1:26:38
  Speaker 1: seventeen companies, realistically, how many do you have your hopes
• 1:26:43
  Speaker 1: on that are going to make the whole investment worth it? Well,
• 1:26:47
  Speaker 1: I mean different vcs have different approaches how they navigate that.
• 1:26:52
  Speaker 1: There's more the spray and prey much smaller dollar amounts
• 1:26:56
  Speaker 1: and have as a diverse portfolio as possible to really
• 1:27:00
  Speaker 1: play that lottery and play those actual real sciences around
• 1:27:03
  Speaker 1: the statistics. Others, you know, have more concentrated positions where
• 1:27:08
  Speaker 1: they really are trying to have more hits, as you say,
• 1:27:12
  Speaker 1: but maybe each of the hits doesn't have to be
• 1:27:14
  Speaker 1: as big, but you want to have a higher hit ratio.
• 1:27:17
  Speaker 1: For us, uh, we're more consolidated. I mean only seventeen,
• 1:27:21
  Speaker 1: which is not that many for an early stage and
• 1:27:24
  Speaker 1: because our funded so small thirty million. I mean small
• 1:27:27
  Speaker 1: as a relative concept. If one of these companies, if
• 1:27:31
  Speaker 1: we have a decent amount of ownership decent again is
• 1:27:33
  Speaker 1: all relative. If one of these companies is worth a
• 1:27:35
  Speaker 1: few billion, I mean we could have massive returns. Okay.
• 1:27:40
  Speaker 1: So from the outside, living through this whole uh Internet explosion,
• 1:27:46
  Speaker 1: you know, the middle of the nineties, everybody gets a
• 1:27:49
  Speaker 1: O well and they start playing online. Then there's high
• 1:27:53
  Speaker 1: speed and ultimately uh the internet wirelessly as you say,
• 1:27:59
  Speaker 1: but there was a new company, Like every month, there
• 1:28:02
  Speaker 1: was a new thing, okay, and then ultimately we hit
• 1:28:06
  Speaker 1: a big level of consolidation that we have a handful
• 1:28:09
  Speaker 1: of large companies obviously, Facebook, Google, Apple, Amazon, and Microsoft.
• 1:28:16
  Speaker 1: Has you seen a concombinant? Can commonant decrease in the
• 1:28:23
  Speaker 1: number of entrepreneurs or the number of successes? I think, um,
• 1:28:32
  Speaker 1: I think the actual fact is yes, I think the
• 1:28:35
  Speaker 1: number of entrepreneurs is going down, um, But I think
• 1:28:38
  Speaker 1: that includes a lot of these small businesses entrepreneurs. I
• 1:28:41
  Speaker 1: think the number of tech entrepreneurs UH in total is growing.
• 1:28:47
  Speaker 1: But and I think the number of UM positive results
• 1:28:53
  Speaker 1: is growing. So it all depends on what lends you're
• 1:28:56
  Speaker 1: looking at. I do think that. You know, when we
• 1:29:01
  Speaker 1: have that new wave of Internet innovation in the late nineties,
• 1:29:05
  Speaker 1: it was just such a huge movement of so much
• 1:29:08
  Speaker 1: technology and so much opportunity. I do think blockchain is
• 1:29:15
  Speaker 1: offering directionally something like that. I don't think it's quite
• 1:29:21
  Speaker 1: as big of a shift, but I do think you'll
• 1:29:24
  Speaker 1: get there. I think, like, uh, the late nineties, there
• 1:29:30
  Speaker 1: was a lot of garbage that we don't remember today.
• 1:29:33
  Speaker 1: There's a lot of companies that we probably can't even
• 1:29:35
  Speaker 1: remember where they fit on the rolodex of index cards
• 1:29:38
  Speaker 1: of whatever alphabet soup. But we also got Amazon and
• 1:29:44
  Speaker 1: other amazing companies. So are there going to be game
• 1:29:48
  Speaker 1: changing companies that we live with ten years from now
• 1:29:52
  Speaker 1: that are fairly young right now? Absolutely are all the
• 1:29:57
  Speaker 1: companies that are talking about n f T are crypto
• 1:30:00
  Speaker 1: or blockchain or whatever fancy technology. I mean, we haven't
• 1:30:04
  Speaker 1: even talked about DNA sequencing. We haven't even talked about
• 1:30:06
  Speaker 1: I mean, there's so many things right um, Innovation will continue,
• 1:30:12
  Speaker 1: Companies will continue to improve the world, and they'll create
• 1:30:15
  Speaker 1: you know, enterprise value and wealth as part of it.
• 1:30:20
  Speaker 1: That is without a doubt. What often happens is people
• 1:30:24
  Speaker 1: expect the things to have quicker than they do in
• 1:30:29
  Speaker 1: the short term, and they're surprised how quickly they happen
• 1:30:33
  Speaker 1: in the long term. I understand that. Okay, in terms
• 1:30:39
  Speaker 1: of consolidation, I mean, brad Stone wrote a whole book
• 1:30:41
  Speaker 1: about Amazon with diapers dot Com. You know, they forced
• 1:30:45
  Speaker 1: them to sell and then they ultimately go out of
• 1:30:47
  Speaker 1: the diaper business. You have them, You have Facebook buying
• 1:30:50
  Speaker 1: what'sapp before people in Washington, d C. Even know what
• 1:30:53
  Speaker 1: it is, and they certainly buy Instagram as a VC
• 1:30:58
  Speaker 1: and as new companies that us be imposing that must say, hey,
• 1:31:02
  Speaker 1: we got to find our direction otherwise one of these
• 1:31:04
  Speaker 1: big companies will either put us out of business or
• 1:31:07
  Speaker 1: force us to sell them to them. Yeah, it's imposing,
• 1:31:12
  Speaker 1: for sure, But you know, you need to live out
• 1:31:17
  Speaker 1: of respect, not fear. So if you don't respect your competition,
• 1:31:20
  Speaker 1: if you don't understand the landscape, don't understand the situation,
• 1:31:24
  Speaker 1: then you're destined to just fail. If you live out
• 1:31:27
  Speaker 1: of fear from even starting because of course Amazon will
• 1:31:30
  Speaker 1: just crush me, or of course Google will just crush me,
• 1:31:33
  Speaker 1: then what's the point. You might as well just not start. Um.
• 1:31:37
  Speaker 1: You know a lot of the key to succeeding is
• 1:31:42
  Speaker 1: just putting one ft in front of the next and
• 1:31:43
  Speaker 1: continue to make progress. And the truth of the matter is,
• 1:31:46
  Speaker 1: while these huge companies are amazing and great, and I'm
• 1:31:49
  Speaker 1: a shareholder of a lot of them because they're public,
• 1:31:51
  Speaker 1: and I've been invested in them for a while because
• 1:31:53
  Speaker 1: I think a lot of them are great companies. Um
• 1:31:56
  Speaker 1: you know, they're also big, huge companies now that are
• 1:31:59
  Speaker 1: slow and not nimble. So that's why there's all these
• 1:32:02
  Speaker 1: opportunities for these nimble startups that continue to crush it.
• 1:32:07
  Speaker 1: You know, we're about to see coin base go public.
• 1:32:10
  Speaker 1: I mean, what is gonna be that valuation? Honestly, it's
• 1:32:12
  Speaker 1: gonna be absolutely obnoxious. I mean I'm quite confident it's
• 1:32:16
  Speaker 1: gonna be over a hundred billion dollars. So where was
• 1:32:21
  Speaker 1: Where was Google? Where was Amazon? Where was Facebook? They
• 1:32:25
  Speaker 1: could have all built it right and it happened right
• 1:32:28
  Speaker 1: underneath their noses. Okay, So what are the seventeen companies
• 1:32:32
  Speaker 1: or what are they? What areas are they working in
• 1:32:34
  Speaker 1: that you've invested in? Um So, we love health tech
• 1:32:40
  Speaker 1: because of my partners Cyrus who helped build SoC doc.
• 1:32:45
  Speaker 1: We love marketplaces because again my experience with Indie Gergo,
• 1:32:49
  Speaker 1: and we love Frontier Tech, which is kind of cutting
• 1:32:52
  Speaker 1: edge technology companies run by technologists. Now we're generalists, so
• 1:32:57
  Speaker 1: we have all kinds of different companies, but I'm happy
• 1:32:59
  Speaker 1: to give you a few examples. So one is Galileo.
• 1:33:04
  Speaker 1: So Galileo is from Tom Lee, who built One Medical
• 1:33:07
  Speaker 1: Group One Medical when public about a year ago. Um.
• 1:33:12
  Speaker 1: And you know, Tom is a serial entrepreneur, massively successful,
• 1:33:16
  Speaker 1: and he's really taking the best of telehealth and bringing
• 1:33:19
  Speaker 1: AI to medicine and putting almost like a doctor in
• 1:33:22
  Speaker 1: your pocket that you can have a subscription to telehealth
• 1:33:26
  Speaker 1: for you know, a minimal cost and then helping to
• 1:33:30
  Speaker 1: uh minimize costs as part of how he's sending folks
• 1:33:35
  Speaker 1: to your home so to minimize referrals or emergency room
• 1:33:40
  Speaker 1: needs anyway. So we were lucky enough to get in
• 1:33:42
  Speaker 1: super early with Tom's most recent company, Galileo, and they're
• 1:33:45
  Speaker 1: doing incredible off to the races. So that's one example.
• 1:33:49
  Speaker 1: Another one in that space would be like Peak get
• 1:33:54
  Speaker 1: Peak today dot com. So they're doing direct to consumer
• 1:33:58
  Speaker 1: for testosterone on health. So a lot of men have
• 1:34:02
  Speaker 1: low testosterone, which is an issue on many levels. So
• 1:34:06
  Speaker 1: it's a chronic condition. They're able to get the blood
• 1:34:09
  Speaker 1: tests writing your home, have the doctor consoles, and then
• 1:34:13
  Speaker 1: provide the relevant medications, et cetera, all through your home,
• 1:34:17
  Speaker 1: which is super interesting. Now in terms of a marketplace,
• 1:34:20
  Speaker 1: obviously we talked about Vincent. Vincent, Uh, you know, is
• 1:34:25
  Speaker 1: the alternative investments marketplace, an aggregator. Another interesting company is Shadow,
• 1:34:32
  Speaker 1: which is helping to end lost starting with lost Dogs. Uh.
• 1:34:36
  Speaker 1: They started in New York City and now they're in
• 1:34:38
  Speaker 1: many different zip codes all around the country. And they're
• 1:34:42
  Speaker 1: really just taking another slice out of Craigslist, where Craigslist
• 1:34:47
  Speaker 1: has been sliced and diced into incredible unicorn companies, whether
• 1:34:50
  Speaker 1: it's you know, truly for real estate, whether it's um
• 1:34:56
  Speaker 1: match dot com for dating, whether it's Airbnb. But one
• 1:34:59
  Speaker 1: of those things that people still use Craigslist for is
• 1:35:01
  Speaker 1: lost and found. So Shadow is helping to end that.
• 1:35:05
  Speaker 1: We have an interesting director consumer company in the furniture
• 1:35:08
  Speaker 1: space called Burrow so Uh Burrow bu r r o W.
• 1:35:13
  Speaker 1: You know they came out of pen as well. Uh.
• 1:35:16
  Speaker 1: We got to invest in them when they were doing
• 1:35:18
  Speaker 1: under three million dollars of revenue for the year and
• 1:35:22
  Speaker 1: you know this past year they did way more than that,
• 1:35:25
  Speaker 1: meaning like over fifty million dollars, which is absolutely incredible. UM.
• 1:35:31
  Speaker 1: And then on the frontier tech side, you know, we
• 1:35:33
  Speaker 1: have some super geeky companies which I love. Uh. One
• 1:35:37
  Speaker 1: is made bot, which is a commercial vacuum cleaner, but
• 1:35:43
  Speaker 1: where robotics meets AI. I like to call it. If
• 1:35:45
  Speaker 1: Tesla built a vacuum cleaner, this will be it for
• 1:35:48
  Speaker 1: commercial cleaning, so for hotels, for malls, for airports, et cetera.
• 1:35:54
  Speaker 1: They definitely had a dark day when covid started because
• 1:35:56
  Speaker 1: all their customers were literally hit by COVID. But now
• 1:36:00
  Speaker 1: that we're slowly getting on the other side, the demand
• 1:36:02
  Speaker 1: for their product is higher than ever. And then another
• 1:36:06
  Speaker 1: is chef Robotics, so they're bringing AI and robotics to
• 1:36:11
  Speaker 1: augment how food gets deployed, whether it's at a food
• 1:36:15
  Speaker 1: manufacturing facility or potentially at a quick service restaurant like
• 1:36:19
  Speaker 1: a Sweet Green or a Chipotle. So really trying to
• 1:36:23
  Speaker 1: augment the human interaction there to make sure you're getting
• 1:36:26
  Speaker 1: exactly what you wanted. Um, no extra germs uh and
• 1:36:30
  Speaker 1: no extra you know, food that you didn't want in there.
• 1:36:33
  Speaker 1: So everything is super cleanly clean, and um, you know
• 1:36:37
  Speaker 1: done a significant scale. So that's a few examples. If
• 1:36:41
  Speaker 1: those are great, So let me ask you, do you
• 1:36:43
  Speaker 1: ever want to get in on a deal and someone
• 1:36:45
  Speaker 1: else they go with a different company? So do I
• 1:36:48
  Speaker 1: ever lose out on an investment because somebody else gets
• 1:36:52
  Speaker 1: it instead of me? Yes, that does happen. I would say,
• 1:36:57
  Speaker 1: if that didn't happen, it means I'm not trying hard enough. Um, Luckily,
• 1:37:01
  Speaker 1: it doesn't happen that often. Actually, quite the opposite is happening,
• 1:37:05
  Speaker 1: which is the deals are already closed or they're about
• 1:37:08
  Speaker 1: to close, and then we're getting allocation at the very end.
• 1:37:12
  Speaker 1: Because we're bringing something very unique between Cyrus, myself and
• 1:37:15
  Speaker 1: our network of advisors. We're really bringing experience from inception
• 1:37:21
  Speaker 1: of starting a company all the way to having significant
• 1:37:23
  Speaker 1: enterprise value and unicorns. There's not that many people that
• 1:37:28
  Speaker 1: actually have that experience from all the way from inception
• 1:37:31
  Speaker 1: to significant enterprise value. There's a lot of people that
• 1:37:34
  Speaker 1: have started inception to seeing some value, and there's a
• 1:37:37
  Speaker 1: lot of people that have joint companies at some value
• 1:37:40
  Speaker 1: and seeing them become rocket ships to be worth tons
• 1:37:42
  Speaker 1: of money. But to go from the very beginning all
• 1:37:45
  Speaker 1: the way through is not that normal. A lot of
• 1:37:49
  Speaker 1: that is isolated in Silicon Valley. It's starting to spread
• 1:37:53
  Speaker 1: out more. But we built out our fund in New
• 1:37:55
  Speaker 1: York and a lot of people value are you know,
• 1:37:59
  Speaker 1: operator experience. So we're very straight shooters with our New
• 1:38:02
  Speaker 1: York approach. Um, so, yes, does it happen? It definitely
• 1:38:06
  Speaker 1: has happened. Am I sad? Definitely sad? Do I ever
• 1:38:09
  Speaker 1: like losing? I prefer not. I mean the sports you
• 1:38:12
  Speaker 1: know player in me, uh doesn't like losing. But it
• 1:38:16
  Speaker 1: just means that we got to keep on refining our
• 1:38:18
  Speaker 1: craft and keep getting better. Okay, so if you invested
• 1:38:21
  Speaker 1: in seventeen, how many did you pass on? A lot? Okay,
• 1:38:26
  Speaker 1: we'll leave it h that. So talking about Vincent to
• 1:38:30
  Speaker 1: what did we are you personally hands on? Yeah? I'm
• 1:38:33
  Speaker 1: very involved. I'm one of the four founders. Um I
• 1:38:38
  Speaker 1: think you said I'm chairman, so I'm executive chairman. So
• 1:38:40
  Speaker 1: I'm definitely involved every day. I actually know what it's
• 1:38:43
  Speaker 1: like to run a company, you know, like I mentioned,
• 1:38:45
  Speaker 1: from from inception to large growth at CEO and I
• 1:38:48
  Speaker 1: knew that, um, you know, having somebody there with me
• 1:38:52
  Speaker 1: as the day to day CEO, having a great CEO.
• 1:38:55
  Speaker 1: Having a great CTO is really important to me. Um,
• 1:38:58
  Speaker 1: so I'm really excited about the team. It's a killer
• 1:39:01
  Speaker 1: team with you know. For example, our CTO was the
• 1:39:04
  Speaker 1: lead engineer at Mirror that just sold a Lulu lemon
• 1:39:07
  Speaker 1: for half a billion, so he was hand soldering the
• 1:39:09
  Speaker 1: product together and pulling the software together with team. Um
• 1:39:13
  Speaker 1: my CEO was the guy who wiped build my investing
• 1:39:16
  Speaker 1: business at Indigogo, so has the perfect background to be
• 1:39:20
  Speaker 1: building this business. And then my CEO is a serial
• 1:39:22
  Speaker 1: entrepreneurial multiple exits, so really first class team. Uh. The
• 1:39:27
  Speaker 1: whole team is four founders, two engineers to additional engineers,
• 1:39:31
  Speaker 1: and a designer. So only seven people right now, but um,
• 1:39:35
  Speaker 1: you know there's lots of experience and lots of scale
• 1:39:37
  Speaker 1: out of that team. Okay, are you doing any marketing?
• 1:39:40
  Speaker 1: How are people finding out about Vincent or do you
• 1:39:43
  Speaker 1: want to keep it on the down low while you
• 1:39:45
  Speaker 1: work out the kinks. No, we're definitely marketing. We mostly
• 1:39:49
  Speaker 1: just go on the bob left that's to show and
• 1:39:51
  Speaker 1: just try to do the podcast as often as possible. No,
• 1:39:54
  Speaker 1: we're definitely doing marketing. I mean, for us, we're doing
• 1:39:55
  Speaker 1: a lot of content Uh, and we're trying to educate folks.
• 1:39:58
  Speaker 1: So we're putting out a newsletter that everybody should sign
• 1:40:00
  Speaker 1: up at called the Pulse Newsletter. Once a week, you
• 1:40:04
  Speaker 1: get the best information across the entire spectrum of alternam investing.
• 1:40:07
  Speaker 1: It's usually about ten to twenty pieces of content all
• 1:40:10
  Speaker 1: in one place, which people love. Uh. We're creating our
• 1:40:13
  Speaker 1: own blogs, at least one every two days. We're doing
• 1:40:16
  Speaker 1: our own clubhouses. We're creating our own proprietary reports, which
• 1:40:19
  Speaker 1: we're putting out once a month. We're putting out a
• 1:40:22
  Speaker 1: new one tomorrow. Obviously I don't know when this is
• 1:40:25
  Speaker 1: gonna go live, but on April eight we will have
• 1:40:29
  Speaker 1: who knows the archive, we'll be having a new report
• 1:40:32
  Speaker 1: drop as to how March by the numbers for all
• 1:40:36
  Speaker 1: the entire alternative investments market was. So yeah, we're definitely
• 1:40:40
  Speaker 1: marketing and we're trying to use education and content as
• 1:40:43
  Speaker 1: the number one approach for sure. Now, if you look
• 1:40:47
  Speaker 1: at similar aggregators or the business model might not be
• 1:40:50
  Speaker 1: the same. But we look at travel, we had you know, Kayak,
• 1:40:54
  Speaker 1: we have Orbits. Never mind consolidation thereafter, do you have
• 1:40:58
  Speaker 1: a competitor in this field? You believe that there will
• 1:41:02
  Speaker 1: be competitors. Is there a first mover advantage? Um? So,
• 1:41:08
  Speaker 1: I mean there's not really, uh any competitors that have
• 1:41:13
  Speaker 1: any scale. Um. You know, like I mentioned, only five
• 1:41:16
  Speaker 1: months old, so I would say we're not even that
• 1:41:19
  Speaker 1: relevant yet. But we're trying to become relevant quickly. We're
• 1:41:22
  Speaker 1: growing quickly. The numbers are adding up fast, which is awesome,
• 1:41:25
  Speaker 1: and users are enjoying their experience. But like I tell
• 1:41:28
  Speaker 1: any of my entrepreneurs when they say I have no
• 1:41:30
  Speaker 1: competition or I expect no competition, if you have no
• 1:41:33
  Speaker 1: competition and you expect no competition, it's because you're going
• 1:41:36
  Speaker 1: after our market. That's irrelevant. So so for sure we
• 1:41:39
  Speaker 1: will have competition. Just like with Indiegoga, we navigated competition,
• 1:41:44
  Speaker 1: and when you have competition, it means there's something to
• 1:41:46
  Speaker 1: compete for. So I look forward to that, and it
• 1:41:48
  Speaker 1: means that we're going after something that's awesome. Okay, Slava,
• 1:41:51
  Speaker 1: this has been great. I could talk all day to
• 1:41:54
  Speaker 1: you and go into all the nooks and creaties have
• 1:41:56
  Speaker 1: a lot more questions, but I think we'll leave it
• 1:41:58
  Speaker 1: in that for now. Thanks so much for doing this,
• 1:42:01
  Speaker 1: Thanks for having me so fun. You bet until next time.
• 1:42:05
  Speaker 1: This is Bob left sits h