Speaker 1: This is Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Messer and Jason
Speaker 1: Kelly on Bloomberg Radio. Delighted to catch up it's been
Speaker 1: too long with our friend Vivek run A DVA. He
Speaker 1: is the CEO, founder, managing director of bo Capital Management,
Speaker 1: also the owner of a little basketball team called the
Speaker 1: Sacramento Kings, and this is very exciting. He's joining us
Speaker 1: from the bubble. Carol, this is the first time I've
Speaker 1: talked to somebody in the bubble. Obviously, we're referring to
Speaker 1: Walt Disney World, where the NBA and number of NBA
Speaker 1: teams are playing that. How are you. What's it like
Speaker 1: down there? Well, it's great. You know, we get tested
Speaker 1: like once or twice a day. But kudos to Adam
Speaker 1: Silver and the NBA for creating the bubble. Everyone is
Speaker 1: buyers free, the games are going on. I wish my
Speaker 1: team was doing better, but it's been. It's fantastic here. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I wasn't going to bring that up. It's been a
Speaker 1: tough run. But but listen, an amazing experience and hopefully
Speaker 1: we can talk a little basketball in a second. I
Speaker 1: do want to ask you, though, because you are in
Speaker 1: the midst of another boom of sorts, which is in
Speaker 1: these blank check companies, the spacks special purpose acquisition companies.
Speaker 1: Tell us about why you chose this way of going public.
Speaker 1: Tell us about bo X. Yeah, so I started boy
Speaker 1: X a few years ago. It stands for Better Our World.
Speaker 1: And there's just two investors in the venture capital part
Speaker 1: of Bowl, which is the ten campus. You see, system
Speaker 1: is the largest research platform in the country, and myself
Speaker 1: and where the board, the entrepreneurs, the arrow, and it's
Speaker 1: really the mission is to fund companies that use technology
Speaker 1: to advance society. So I built this platform out and
Speaker 1: I was seeing companies stay private longer, and many of
Speaker 1: the entrepreneurs were coming to me. They called me the
Speaker 1: o G. I they say stands for original Gangster, Ready
Speaker 1: to get me in, the old guy. And they were
Speaker 1: coming to me and asking me for help and saying, hey,
Speaker 1: can you invest? Can you help uh? And we're entering
Speaker 1: a really exciting era right now. I call it kind
Speaker 1: of civilization three old, where they're transitioning from the industrial
Speaker 1: age to the digital age, and it's going to create
Speaker 1: the largest wealth creation opportunity in human history. So there's
Speaker 1: a trillion dollars plus that's gone into these private tech
Speaker 1: companies and they still remain private and they need to
Speaker 1: come out on the other end. So we have these
Speaker 1: rocket ships that are waiting to burst out, just get
Speaker 1: out of its it and reach of the stars. And
Speaker 1: what they need is rocket field. They need, they need money,
Speaker 1: they need it quickly. They need coaching, they need mentorship,
Speaker 1: they need connections, uh, they need certainty, and they need
Speaker 1: to be able to execute on all of that. Now,
Speaker 1: one of the things about great entrepreneurs, and I was
Speaker 1: lucky to be friends with guys like Steve Jobs, is
Speaker 1: that they were also great storytellers. And the new generation
Speaker 1: of entrepreneurs is no different. They want all the same things.
Speaker 1: They want certainty, they want speed, they want execution, and
Speaker 1: they too are great storytellers. Now, the beauty of this
Speaker 1: back is that you go out under a S four,
Speaker 1: which is a murger agreement as opposed to S one
Speaker 1: with an I P O. So with that you can
Speaker 1: actually tell the story, you can provide future projections, and
Speaker 1: so it's the absolute perfect fuel for these new rockets
Speaker 1: that we're seeing. It sounds like you already have some
Speaker 1: entrepreneurs in mind, Is that fair to say? And if so,
Speaker 1: I'm just curious about the types of technologies, you know,
Speaker 1: the visions or the visionaries that are capturing your attention
Speaker 1: right now. Is that Yeah, So we have about companies
Speaker 1: that we've been tracking. You know, think of us as
Speaker 1: a reverse soft bank. SoftBank comes in at the end
Speaker 1: and gives you big checks and you know, with the
Speaker 1: one hour meeting. So on the other hand, we're working
Speaker 1: with these companies that many of them are in our portfolio.
Speaker 1: We see the first deck, we see the second deck.
Speaker 1: We get to know them. We have data, we have history,
Speaker 1: we have a relationship, and so these are game changing companies.
Speaker 1: You know, these are companies that are using data to
Speaker 1: completely disrupt entire sectors. So we have a company called
Speaker 1: Farmers Business Network in our portfolio, uh, and you know,
Speaker 1: they are using data to disrupt our agriculture. They started
Speaker 1: as a uh Bloomberg for farmers and have now become
Speaker 1: kind of a Amazon for farmers. Gigantic market, brilliant visionary entrepreneurs,
Speaker 1: already doing hundreds of millions in revenues doubling every year.
Speaker 1: So we have you're like a hundred and fifty companies
Speaker 1: that we think are stackable, and about fifty of them
Speaker 1: that are speccable in the not too distant future. I
Speaker 1: love the terms specable. That has become so interesting. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's also interesting to see who's getting into this spat
Speaker 1: game as it were. I mean, we're not too far
Speaker 1: removed from having someone also well known in the sports world,
Speaker 1: Billy Bean, get involved in the sports side of this.
Speaker 1: The a special purpose acquisition company. How do you sort
Speaker 1: of differentiate at this point, VIVEC, when it does seem
Speaker 1: like the money is sort of pouring into and a
Speaker 1: lot of smart folks like you are seeing this as
Speaker 1: an opportunity, how do you tell the story a little differently. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so I'm going for a different type of company. I'm
Speaker 1: not going for kind of what the New York private
Speaker 1: equity guys are going forward. I'm going for the growth company.
Speaker 1: I'm going for the rocket ships. Uh. And you know,
Speaker 1: the last thing that those guys want is to uh
Speaker 1: to have an activist uh work with them. Just like basketball,
Speaker 1: basketball become a players league, so the business of building
Speaker 1: companies has also become a players league, and entrepreneurs want
Speaker 1: to work with other entrepreneurs. They want people who have
Speaker 1: been there, done that, who know what it's like to
Speaker 1: invest in growth, to build a salesforce, to invest in
Speaker 1: R and D, to build new products, to conquer new markets.
Speaker 1: Entrepreneurs want fellow entrepreneurs. Uh, And so we're very different.
Speaker 1: You know, we're looking at high growth days that could
Speaker 1: be and we're looking for venture type of returns on
Speaker 1: these companies. So we're not looking for you know, if
Speaker 1: there was a twenty percent uptick and value, I would
Speaker 1: personally be disappointed. You know. I believe that this is
Speaker 1: an opportunity where the risk is lower because these are
Speaker 1: going businesses. They have a critical mass, they have customers,
Speaker 1: they have technology and uh. But at the same time,
Speaker 1: you could get a five ten x type venture like
Speaker 1: return on these companies. So that's what's really exciting out
Speaker 1: where you sit right now. So all right, I gotta
Speaker 1: I'm gonna go to basketball before we uh we lose
Speaker 1: you or we run out of time. We can talk
Speaker 1: to you all afternoon. You know, you said something really
Speaker 1: interesting that that that we only have a minute to
Speaker 1: talk about. Player of empowerment, the Players League. This has
Speaker 1: been quite a moment for the NBA. What do you
Speaker 1: do in a minute or less as an owner to
Speaker 1: ensure that players have the voice that they need. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So I've always been all about the players, and so uh,
Speaker 1: you know, we uh you know, in my mind, I
Speaker 1: was the first person to support Black Lives Matter, which
Speaker 1: was important to our players. You know, it's the first
Speaker 1: person to speak out against what happened at the Clippers.
Speaker 1: So we talked to our players. You know, we hold
Speaker 1: uh sessions where we get together players, kids from the
Speaker 1: inner city, you know, the police. So the players have
Speaker 1: a huge voice in the NBA. Uh. You know. One
Speaker 1: of the things I love about basketball in the NBA
Speaker 1: is that, you know, we don't really care what all
Speaker 1: of your skin is, what your ethnicity, your religion, your
Speaker 1: sexual orientation. You know, we just got one question. You've
Speaker 1: got game. If you've got game, then come join us.
Speaker 1: And that's what I love about sports. Absolutely Well, best
Speaker 1: of luck. I know it has not gone exactly the
Speaker 1: way you wanted there in Orlando, but what an amazing
Speaker 1: experience to be there in the bubble and see it
Speaker 1: all happen that that grandad diva. He is the CEO, founder,
Speaker 1: managing director Sacramento Kings and a Vogue Capital Management