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