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Speaker 5: All right, so now we're gonna talk about something very
Speaker 5: interesting and something actually when you when you contacted us,
Speaker 5: you brought up a good point He's like, I don't
Speaker 5: think you talked about this, and like, you know what,
Speaker 5: we haven't talk about it, right, so, yes, equity crowdfunding. Right,
Speaker 5: so people might not be familiar with equity. Well, crowdfunding
Speaker 5: in general is a way to raise money from large
Speaker 5: amounts of people, right. So, like the most popular form
Speaker 5: is kickstarter. People things like that, Right, It's kickstarter where
Speaker 5: you kind of like a donation kind of charity thing.
Speaker 5: Sometimes you can give people like T shirts, but it's
Speaker 5: pretty much they're not getting nothing in return for that
Speaker 5: except for just good will they want to support you.
Speaker 5: Right now, Equity crowd funding is something that is new
Speaker 5: that came about from President Obama's Jobs Bill.
Speaker 3: Up, I'm not yeah, the Jobs Act.
Speaker 2: And yeah, so can you talk about that because it's
Speaker 2: pretty interesting.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 6: No. So, you know, one of the any business, right
Speaker 6: particularly within in tech companies, right, you have to raise
Speaker 6: funding and for for you know, decades now, right. The
Speaker 6: way you do that is go to an investor, right.
Speaker 6: You pitch your vision to that one individual usually or
Speaker 6: a fund, and you know they make a decision on
Speaker 6: if they're going to give you the startup capital that
Speaker 6: you need to go build this thing, and in exchange,
Speaker 6: they get equity, right, they get ownership part ownership in
Speaker 6: the company. And that's how it's been done for ages.
Speaker 6: Now one of the things that it has created is
Speaker 6: a very big gap in terms of wealth and the
Speaker 6: access to generate wealth, right when you talk about angel investors, right,
Speaker 6: and again, trust me, like I've learned all of this
Speaker 6: stuff in the last five years. I didn't, Like I said,
Speaker 6: I don't even know what Silicon Valley was or the word,
Speaker 6: and so this was all things that I had to
Speaker 6: learn on the go. But when it comes to angel investors,
Speaker 6: these are basically wealthy individuals that are investing their own capital,
Speaker 6: like out their bank account. They they're investing in the
Speaker 6: companies getting equity.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 6: And then when those companies go on to do very
Speaker 6: well and get sold or i po then those angel investors,
Speaker 6: those wealthier, those wealthy votes get even more wealthy, right
Speaker 6: because they get a return on their capital.
Speaker 3: And so it was creating this gap.
Speaker 6: And and you know, shout out to Obama because he
Speaker 6: you know, saw that there was a disparity there and
Speaker 6: thought that anybody should be able to have access if
Speaker 6: they can access that deal, right, because there's there's there's
Speaker 6: part access, but then having the capacity to even get involved, right,
Speaker 6: and so he created the Jobs Acts, Right, it's jumpstart
Speaker 6: our business startups, and it is you know, it's it's
Speaker 6: actually a whole lot of different things. But one of
Speaker 6: the things in there is equity crowdfunding. And what it
Speaker 6: does is it gives founders of companies the ability to
Speaker 6: open up the fundraising to what they call non accredited investors.
Speaker 6: So that angel investor that I mentioned is going to
Speaker 6: be an accredited investor. And to be an accredited investor,
Speaker 6: you have to make two hundred and fifty thousand dollars
Speaker 6: a year or more at least for the last three
Speaker 6: years as your tax you know, paperwork will show or
Speaker 6: have a million in liquid ascents.
Speaker 8: Yeah, we can see how that could be a problem.
Speaker 8: Like especially in the communities we live in.
Speaker 4: It's like, how many people do we know that make
Speaker 4: two hundred and fifty thousand as a combined family somebody
Speaker 4: one person make.
Speaker 3: It and as a group, actually you can.
Speaker 6: You and your spouse collectively have to make three hundred thousand, right,
Speaker 6: and so they even make that bargain a little higher,
Speaker 6: and so or have a million in liquid assets.
Speaker 2: That's it. That's the only requirements to fifty million in assets.
Speaker 3: Or a million in liquid liquid, So it can't, but
Speaker 3: it basically can't.
Speaker 5: They got to be something like a retirement account on
Speaker 5: bank or stock stuff like that, things that you can.
Speaker 3: Look at the liquid at yeah quickly.
Speaker 6: And so that's you know that and honestly or like
Speaker 6: what I looked at in the research I've done, it's
Speaker 6: that's about eight or nine percent of Americans, right, And
Speaker 6: so the ninety one percent essentially right, can't can't even
Speaker 6: access that deal. Even if they know the founder of
Speaker 6: X y Z company. They can't you know, invest even
Speaker 6: if they havn't to have some load of cash that
Speaker 6: they came across or whatever. But so what Obama said is,
Speaker 6: you know, through the Jobs Act, now anybody should be
Speaker 6: able to access that. So in twenty sixteen is actually
Speaker 6: when they went through, and now you started to see
Speaker 6: the rise of these equity crowdfunding platforms. So the thing
Speaker 6: that you have to know is like if I run
Speaker 6: a tech company or startup, just because you know the
Speaker 6: Jobs Act exist doesn't mean you could just walk up
Speaker 6: and give me some money and say I want to
Speaker 6: be an investor.
Speaker 3: The companies have to go through. So this is all
Speaker 3: sanctioned by the SEC.
Speaker 6: You know, there's a lot of kind of formal terms
Speaker 6: I won't bore you guys with, but you have to
Speaker 6: go through a very extreme vetting process. So first, there's
Speaker 6: the platform. So you brought up a good point Kickstarter, Indie,
Speaker 6: go go, right, these are forms of crowdfunding. Go fund
Speaker 6: me is a crowd as a crowdfunding platform, right, and
Speaker 6: again to your point, you're raising money for something from
Speaker 6: a large crowd of people.
Speaker 3: Hence the name.
Speaker 8: The original of the crowdfunding itself was based on a
Speaker 8: rock band like yeah, they couldn't get money to go
Speaker 8: on tour.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, so their fans came together to say, like
Speaker 4: let's fund them to at least have a tour to perform.
Speaker 8: Hen it's crowdfunded.
Speaker 5: Troy always comes with it was like a white elephant
Speaker 5: always comes with like these little does That's all right,
Speaker 5: so we back to the crowd.
Speaker 6: Yeah, so you know, crowdfunding as in and of itself exists, right,
Speaker 6: It has existed for some time, all the way back
Speaker 6: to the rock band. Right, and to your point, crowdfunding
Speaker 6: came in right when you and let's just draw a comparison.
Speaker 3: Let's take Kickstarter for example.
Speaker 6: This is a Kickstart is a company that enables you
Speaker 6: to run a crowdfunding campaign, right, and so you can
Speaker 6: put up your project, whether it's a film, whether it's
Speaker 6: a whatever it is, right and you can basically promote
Speaker 6: it and people will buy in and maybe you have perks.
Speaker 6: Like you said, now, the difference, right, you talk about
Speaker 6: equity crowdfunding. There are also platforms, right, so republic is
Speaker 6: one that is probably one of the more popular ones.
Speaker 6: There's others called we funder, you know a few others
Speaker 6: that you know allow you to have an equity crowdfunding campaign. Now,
Speaker 6: they have to go through a rigorous process to even
Speaker 6: be set up. But the big difference between those two
Speaker 6: platforms is that on Kickstarter, if I'm not mistaken, basically
Speaker 6: anybody can set that up. You can go in there,
Speaker 6: fill out the thing and then boom, launch your campaign
Speaker 6: and it's up to you.
Speaker 3: And you have to raise a certain amount to even access.
Speaker 6: To the capital for equity crowdfunding because these are technically
Speaker 6: public offerings right of shares in a company and a
Speaker 6: private company, it has to be sanctioned by the SEC.
Speaker 6: So it's a very rigorous process, right, I mean they
Speaker 6: dove deep into the financials and all the history of
Speaker 6: the company. H And then that's how you're able to
Speaker 6: even be accepted on one of the platforms, right like
Speaker 6: Republic for us. And then and really it's a it's
Speaker 6: a because basically I don't even know if we said it.
Speaker 6: What it means is equity crowdfunding enables anybody not a
Speaker 6: credited investors to invest into private companies for as little
Speaker 6: as you know, I think legally the minimum is like
Speaker 6: ten dollars.
Speaker 5: Yeah, now that's something that all right, So I don't
Speaker 5: want people to not understand this, so because I get
Speaker 5: I get this question on my DM so often, like
Speaker 5: when I post stuff about like Beyond Meat and like
Speaker 5: Lift and all of these stuff, and I post stories
Speaker 5: about like nas and like how he invested early, and
Speaker 5: people like, well, how can I invest in these companies early?
Speaker 5: For the most part, you really can't, right, like you said,
Speaker 5: I mean on that level is like angel investors and vcs,
Speaker 5: but even on the small levels and credited investors, so
Speaker 5: you have to be like a special kind of person
Speaker 5: for lack of a better word, to actually invest. But
Speaker 5: now it allows the general public crowdfunding allows the general
Speaker 5: public to invest in companies on the ground level, because,
Speaker 5: like you said off camera, one of the main disadvantages
Speaker 5: is that you're getting people that can invest in these
Speaker 5: companies and then when they go public, their percentage goes
Speaker 5: up like a thousand percent. But by the time the
Speaker 5: general public is in the stock market, they've already made
Speaker 5: them money that they're out.
Speaker 2: They're out the gay right.
Speaker 5: So and it's it's interesting because probably the most famous
Speaker 5: in our community person that has done that is Jay Morrison.
Speaker 5: He did a real estate crowdfunding with the Tulsa Real
Speaker 5: Estate Fund and he same thing.
Speaker 2: He raised money from.
Speaker 5: The crowd and I think like over ten million dollars
Speaker 5: in a very short period of time. So it's a
Speaker 5: very successful real estate crowdfunding fund campaign. But it's something
Speaker 5: for people to understand from two aspects of it. From
Speaker 5: a business owner, it's a way to raise money, right
Speaker 5: because financing is extremely important and it's hard to get
Speaker 5: bank loans, it's hard to get outside financing. So this
Speaker 5: is a way for business owners to raise large amounts
Speaker 5: of money. Now you're giving up equity in it, and
Speaker 5: we'll talk about that, but you know, you don't get
Speaker 5: nothing for something. You always have to do something. So
Speaker 5: and it's also a way for investors to invest in
Speaker 5: companies that they believe in and they think that can
Speaker 5: blow up because now you might put in ten thousand
Speaker 5: dollars on a company, but in five years that company,
Speaker 5: that percentage might be worth one hundred thousand because you
Speaker 5: got it on the ground level. And you as said
Speaker 5: something about Ben Harwitz, right, Ben Howardz If anybody's not familiar,
Speaker 5: he's a tech giant, VC giant, and he's good friends
Speaker 5: with NAS. He's one of the reasons why NAS is
Speaker 5: really blowing up. He's kind of like mentored him. I
Speaker 5: read some stuff about that If anybody's not Familion, Niles
Speaker 5: is doing this thing with Queensbridge Bridge. Yeah, and they
Speaker 5: invest in like lifting Ring pill Pack, all a lot
Speaker 5: of these companies. And so Ben is really into hip hop.
Speaker 5: He's like a hip hop head. And it was maatic
Speaker 5: from what I understand, is like one of his favorite albums. Ever,
Speaker 5: so he just he developed and Horror was not Black
Speaker 5: by the way, if you didn't know about the name.
Speaker 2: If.
Speaker 3: So, he's just the barbecue.
Speaker 5: So you were saying that it was crazy because roughly
Speaker 5: he invested like two point fifty into Instagram and then
Speaker 5: like two years later it was worth like eighty million
Speaker 5: or something like that.
Speaker 6: Right, Yeah, I mean, so I don't have any facts
Speaker 6: on this. Actually shout out the Chamellionaire if you know,
Speaker 6: Chamellionaire is really really been winning and this Houston's own
Speaker 6: ride dirty and you know he's been winning in the
Speaker 6: tech game and just real quick, you know he I mean,
Speaker 6: we were talking about a situation that happened I think
Speaker 6: twenty seventeen finals, right, and this is where it actually
Speaker 6: came out that you know, chamillionaires. Yeah because he because
Speaker 6: he yeah, he was you know he was court side, yeah,
Speaker 6: and like in the background of a picture. And it's
Speaker 6: how many ring tones did he sail at the finals
Speaker 6: game game five, you know, court side And people came
Speaker 6: and said, no, he's been early investor in Lyft, early
Speaker 6: investor in ring you know, early investor in the number
Speaker 6: of companies that have done well. And so you know,
Speaker 6: actually Chameleon I was the one that kind of you know,
Speaker 6: put this, put this kind of this data out and
Speaker 6: now I don't know, you know, the details and specifics
Speaker 6: on it. So let me make that clear, but there
Speaker 6: was a very sizeable return you know in the in
Speaker 6: the eighties of millions of dollars you know, based on
Speaker 6: that initial investments from what I hear. But it shows
Speaker 6: the power of equity ownership right and and now was
Speaker 6: I think with the with the real point that he
Speaker 6: was making is that you know, you have to be
Speaker 6: able to get in on the ground level, and for
Speaker 6: so long the price was so much higher than earners.
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Speaker 6: You know, most of our folks in the community could
Speaker 6: ever even think about investing. And so with the equity crowdfunding,
Speaker 6: that's where because it's coming from a crowd of people,
Speaker 6: you can make that price much lower, you know what
Speaker 6: I mean. And so for like for win win for
Speaker 6: two hundred and fifty dollars you can own equity, right,
Speaker 6: I'll be it a smaller portion compared to somebody that's
Speaker 6: putting in twenty five grand or two hundred and fifty thousand,
Speaker 6: but you know, it's all about having a slice of
Speaker 6: that pie, particularly if you believe in the company, if
Speaker 6: you believe in the mission, if you're going to be
Speaker 6: a consumer of it, right, and that to your point,
Speaker 6: the ninety one percent that aren't that are non accredited investors.
Speaker 6: They have to wait until it's already publicly traded to
Speaker 6: even you know, have some ownership, right, imagine being able
Speaker 6: to do that on the front end. But now you
Speaker 6: actually can. And that's where the equity crowdfunding, to your point,
Speaker 6: comes in, where we can raise money, particularly as black founders,
Speaker 6: we have now an alternative avenue to raise money from
Speaker 6: the crowd versus having to go to a very particular
Speaker 6: specific demographic of vcs and people.
Speaker 5: I'm glad you brought that com millionaire story up because
Speaker 5: it highlights a problem in the community. So it all
Speaker 5: started with the It was like the Golden State Final.
Speaker 5: Anybody knows finals tickets they cost a lot of money,
Speaker 5: like hundreds of thousands, Like it's crazy now hundred of thousands,
Speaker 5: but a lot of money, a lot of them. So
Speaker 5: he's front row at the finals, and it's like a joke.
Speaker 5: It's like, damn, how many how much ringstos did he sell?
Speaker 2: Like he has somebody here doesn't belong where feen years.
Speaker 5: But little do they know the guy's been making millions
Speaker 5: of dollars and investing in companies long after his musical
Speaker 5: career was over. So when they find that out, it's like,
Speaker 5: now it's not funny anymore. Right, So it's like a
Speaker 5: lot of times we highlight celebrities and entertainers, but like
Speaker 5: even if you look at that Jay Z and Beyonce
Speaker 5: at the front row, everybody knows them, but they're probably
Speaker 5: middle class for everybody else in the front row. Like
Speaker 5: the guy that got into the fight, nobody knew who
Speaker 5: he was. He worth eight billion dollars, just a random
Speaker 5: billionaireuntil he put It's like, how many people that you
Speaker 5: don't know are just billionaires? The one person that you
Speaker 5: do know just became a billionaire. Not not you know,
Speaker 5: no disrespect to James b. We love them, but that
Speaker 5: just goes to show you how much money it's out there.
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, in the Trail.
Speaker 6: Hotel, right, And you know, and that's why I'm glad
Speaker 6: you brought that up, because when I was in the Bay, right,
Speaker 6: one of the things that I really actually appreciated, you know,
Speaker 6: relative to l A right, is that you didn't know
Speaker 6: who you was talking to or what you were doing.
Speaker 3: Like the money was just shown way differently, you know
Speaker 3: what I mean.
Speaker 6: And you just have people that were just grinding and
Speaker 6: hustling and building companies, and you know, you meet a
Speaker 6: guy just randomly looked like you know, random guys like yeah, man,
Speaker 6: you know, just sold my second company, Amazons.
Speaker 3: Words, you know what I mean, and drinks on you.
Speaker 6: Then you know what I'm saying, it's it's just a
Speaker 6: different it's a different mind said and to your point,
Speaker 6: like you know, like you said, it wasn't funny no more,
Speaker 6: you know what I mean. And you know, I think
Speaker 6: that I love these examples where you look at you know,
Speaker 6: a cha millionaire who and that's a great friend.
Speaker 3: Shout out to Cam and and by the.
Speaker 6: Way, he's he's an entrepreneur as well as an investor.
Speaker 6: He started his own tech app tech company called Convos,
Speaker 6: which I you know, suggests everybody go check out and download,
Speaker 6: and he's been building and feeding into the community, giving back,
Speaker 6: you know, and and and you gotta you gotta love that.
Speaker 6: But you look at, you know, the Beyonce situation right
Speaker 6: where if for those who don't know, you know, she
Speaker 6: essentially passed up a cash offer to perform at a
Speaker 6: big Uber event, passed on six million dollars, as the
Speaker 6: story goes, and wanted equity in exchange, and they gave
Speaker 6: it to her, and then they just recently I pod
Speaker 6: and supposedly it's worth somewhere in the three hundred million
Speaker 6: dollar range. Right, And again that's the power of equity,
Speaker 6: because you know, they I PO, you own shares of
Speaker 6: the company, and now you're able to cash that in.
Speaker 6: Now granted that's on paper, right that that worth, but
Speaker 6: she can cash that in and make it.
Speaker 5: You know, who else has a good equity story? I
Speaker 5: told this story before, but I never told her on
Speaker 5: the podcast. Some might as well tell fifty cur shout
Speaker 5: out to fifty.
Speaker 2: We don't we don't owe him any money? Oh yeah, yeah, Now, so.
Speaker 5: Everybody knows fifty cents vitamin water he made, like they say,
Speaker 5: ninety eighty million dollars, right, because what happened is that
Speaker 5: the he had equity, I think like ten percent equity
Speaker 5: stake in the company. Then Coca Cola brought it for
Speaker 5: a billion dollars and then his ten percent was worked
Speaker 5: like one hundred million. What they don't know is that
Speaker 5: so vitamin Water they got from Vitamin Water there from Queen,
Speaker 5: Queensland Queen.
Speaker 2: So yeah, so fifty Queens gets the money. So fifty is.
Speaker 5: From Queens from southside and you know who else is
Speaker 5: from Queens Metal World Peace, why not normally he's from Yeah,
Speaker 5: he's from queens Bridge, home with Us and Mob Deep
Speaker 5: and a bunch of other people. So when the guys
Speaker 5: that started Vitamin Water, they was looking for somebody from
Speaker 5: Queens hometown and they wanted a celebrity, so they approached
Speaker 5: Roan Our tests about being like the face of vitamin Water.
Speaker 2: Right, he's an athlete, sizeable names, it's you know at
Speaker 2: that time.
Speaker 5: So they offered him the same deal, ten percent equity stake,
Speaker 5: and he wanted two hundred thousand dollars. They didn't have
Speaker 5: two hundred thousand dollars to actually pay him, so they
Speaker 5: told them, well, we can't give you two hundred thousand,
Speaker 5: but we can't give you ten percent, He turned down
Speaker 5: fifty cent, took the deal.
Speaker 2: Just so happened.
Speaker 5: One year later, Goca Cola bort them for a billion
Speaker 5: dollars and at ten percent, turned into one hundred million dollars.
Speaker 5: So round our test gave up one hundred million for
Speaker 5: two hundred thousand. Education. He didn't fully understand the power
Speaker 5: of equity. He's like, no, pay me. You try to
Speaker 5: pull a fast one over right right, right, right, but
Speaker 5: it all comes down to education. So now you hear
Speaker 5: Beyonce say, pay me in equity. So we're starting to
Speaker 5: fully understand this, and especially in the VC world and
Speaker 5: Silicon Valley, that correct, siliconlic Silicon Valley, they're gonna know now.
Speaker 2: Well you was gonna know anyway.
Speaker 5: So that's something that's been going on for years, right
Speaker 5: where it takes time and the back end is always
Speaker 5: more profitable than the front end. So now we fully
Speaker 5: understanding this, and we need to be fully aware of this.
Speaker 5: So in that vein being that you have run a
Speaker 5: successful equity crowd funding campaign, you're actually still running in it.
Speaker 5: You're still running it right now. All right, somebody has
Speaker 5: a business and they want to take the same route
Speaker 5: that you did, right, what are the steps to actually,
Speaker 5: because I know you said it's a whole process with
Speaker 5: the sec they gotta get approved and all that stuff,
Speaker 5: Like what's the steps?
Speaker 6: Yeah, so the steps is, you know, you you have
Speaker 6: to you essentially can apply I believe to the company.
Speaker 3: Now we were a little rare.
Speaker 6: We actually you know, companies reached out to us, like
Speaker 6: Republic and how that got set up. So, but there
Speaker 6: is kind of a submission process, I believe where you
Speaker 6: can be considered. They actually have people on their team
Speaker 6: that are looking for companies and they're trying to say, hey,
Speaker 6: we think you should do an equity crowdfunding campaign because
Speaker 6: you know their model is they make a percentage of
Speaker 6: what you ultimately raise, right, So they're looking for great
Speaker 6: companies that they think.
Speaker 3: Will be successful.
Speaker 6: So if you end up finding yourself in a position
Speaker 6: where you know, you reach out and there's alignment, they
Speaker 6: do a vetting process themselves, then you're you're kind of
Speaker 6: in the game. You gotta go through the process of
Speaker 6: you know, pulling all your financials, right, you got to
Speaker 6: go through It's just like I said, it's a very
Speaker 6: rigorous process. And you I think the thing you have
Speaker 6: to make sure that you understand is what you're what
Speaker 6: you're kind of getting yourself into, right, because not and
Speaker 6: this goes back to even and this is probably a
Speaker 6: whole nother podcast just around the types of funding and
Speaker 6: who gets that type of funding right, because if you
Speaker 6: you know, depending on your business, right, there are only
Speaker 6: a certain type of business, certain types of businesses that
Speaker 6: should be raising money from venture capitalists, right because these
Speaker 6: vcs want to see ten x return like hockey stick growth, right,
Speaker 6: and that's why they're giving you that money. If you ain't,
Speaker 6: if you ain't getting that way, which is fine, right.
Speaker 6: You have other companies that just grow steadily profitable, you're
Speaker 6: making money. That's a great business, but you shouldn't be
Speaker 6: taking money from kind of the the investors that we're
Speaker 6: talking about right in terms of their credit, because there's
Speaker 6: a there's an expectation there. But when you when you
Speaker 6: go back to you know, looking at your business and
Speaker 6: where you are, right, I think one of the things
Speaker 6: that is key to look at, and we looked at
Speaker 6: this even in our own decision, is how attractive and
Speaker 6: understandable will it be to the crowd, right, Because you've
Speaker 6: gotta you gotta resonate with people, and we're building something
Speaker 6: that we believe touches everybody. Right, you talk about uh,
Speaker 6: sports and philanthropy and entertainment.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 6: My good friend Don dix And said the other night
Speaker 6: that you know, she invested in our company as well,
Speaker 6: and she said that, you know, when when operates into
Speaker 6: recession proof businesses, entertainment and sports, people could be doing
Speaker 6: down bad and all across life, but you're gonna watch
Speaker 6: that game. You're gonna find a way to you know,
Speaker 6: get in in that into that experience, and so you know,
Speaker 6: you got to think about is this going to be
Speaker 6: attractive to the average consumer. That was one thing that
Speaker 6: I had to really kind of even adjust how we
Speaker 6: talk about the company because I'm so used to talking
Speaker 6: to sophisticated you know, investors.
Speaker 3: That this is what they do.
Speaker 6: So there are terms in terminology that we can use
Speaker 6: that they understand very quickly, whereas you're talking to the
Speaker 6: crowd right through communication or whatever.
Speaker 3: You got to kind of break that down. And I've
Speaker 3: been learning to your point.
Speaker 6: Like the the big gap and knowledge of what equity
Speaker 6: it actually is, even even to the point where on
Speaker 6: the hiring side, one of the things for startups is
Speaker 6: you have little capital usually, so you can offer early
Speaker 6: employees equity, right, and that's where you get big time
Speaker 6: companies like uh, you know, big time engineers at Google
Speaker 6: for example, who will leave Google right a very cush
Speaker 6: job and go work at a startup because they're getting
Speaker 6: some percentage in the equity. So they're saying, I'll pass
Speaker 6: on that you know very well to do job, to
Speaker 6: take equity because I'm.
Speaker 3: Going to help build this thing to become whatever that is.
Speaker 6: Even as we've now come to Houston, there's been conversations
Speaker 6: with potential employees that who don't necessarily even understand. They're like, no, like,
Speaker 6: you know, we need this much money, and it's like, well,
Speaker 6: you know, we'll be a little under market, but we
Speaker 6: want we can comp that with equity, which now I
Speaker 6: find myself having to explain, actually, how valuable that that's
Speaker 6: that that you're the fact that you even have an
Speaker 6: opportunity to have equity.
Speaker 3: Is a big deal.
Speaker 6: And that's what that's why I love these pop culture examples.
Speaker 6: Beyonce a chameleon there, you know fifty that everybody knows,
Speaker 6: and they're showing that, you know, how powerful that is.
Speaker 6: And now the fact that anybody can get in on
Speaker 6: that equity. I think it is a game changer for
Speaker 6: not only our communities. You talk about generating general tional
Speaker 6: wealth and you know create what you guys talk a
Speaker 6: lot about financial literacy. When you know better, you do better, right,
Speaker 6: And I think this is changing the game and opening
Speaker 6: up those opportunities.
Speaker 8: One of the things you said, and that's extremely important.
Speaker 8: It is like even if it's a small right, like
Speaker 8: one percent in equity. Right, let's say it's two hundred
Speaker 8: and fifty dollars, Like that's the initial investment to own
Speaker 8: a percentage, Right, that could turn into fifteen thousand, right
Speaker 8: if you if you had more, obviously it turns into
Speaker 8: more of a profit, but that fifteen thousand can be
Speaker 8: the startup for you to invest in something else, like
Speaker 8: your first piece of real estate or your first restaurant.
Speaker 8: How it may feel fit for yourself.
Speaker 3: It's a beginning, right.
Speaker 8: A lot of people think, like it's so small, I
Speaker 8: can't do it in Houston.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 4: You said something earlier about it becoming a tech hub,
Speaker 4: like it's going to be the Silicon of the South.
Speaker 4: How's the vision for that, right? And who's ei the
Speaker 4: forefront of it are the people out here that are
Speaker 4: going along in that struggle with you.
Speaker 6: You can sense the kind of the fervor in the
Speaker 6: air of like, you know, this is exciting, right because
Speaker 6: Tip even with the investment, we got some new investors.
Speaker 6: Shout out to them, you know here in Houston that
Speaker 6: have typically invested only in you know, oil and gas
Speaker 6: and energy. So now to have some you know, innovative,
Speaker 6: fast growing tech company opportunities has been great for those
Speaker 6: you know, kind of traditional investors. But what I'm more
Speaker 6: proud of is that we can bring this opportunity to
Speaker 6: everybody from Third War to the Swat, you know, to
Speaker 6: downtown and the Gallery, anybody across the city, in the
Speaker 6: in the country, and really the world. That's the great
Speaker 6: thing about equity crowdfunding. Also, you can invest from anywhere
Speaker 6: in the world. I mean, we got investors in Canada, Australia,
Speaker 6: Africa that.
Speaker 3: Have come through in our campaign.
Speaker 6: And it gives everybody that opportunity to gain that equity
Speaker 6: we've been talking about.
Speaker 2: It's powerful.
Speaker 4: Man.
Speaker 2: They weren't thank you for coming in. We appreciate you.
Speaker 7: My graduates from my school being forced back drop. Mike Dropp, you.
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