Alt Goes Mainstream: The Latest on Alternative Investments, WealthTech, & Private Markets

Today we have a founder who is creating a modern insurance provider for the collectibles industry that was made for collectors, by collectors.Calvin Bradley is the Founder of WAX, a digital insurance company for collectors to protect the value of their collections by making collecting safer, easier, and more community-oriented.Calvin and I had a fascinating conversation about how the modern world of collectibles requires a modern, digital insurance solution, how NFTs factors into the world of collectibles, and what the future looks like for WAX.Insurance is a major challenge in the collectibles space. It is often hard to properly appraise valuable items on a real-time basis as there has yet to be real-time data in many collectibles markets. WAX is building a modern insurance provider, for collectors, by collectors. Founded by a team that has deep experience owning collectibles, they have created a mobile app to enable users to take pictures of their collectibles and have them protected. And, as more collectibles purchases move online, WAX is working with retailers point of sale systems to offer insurance at time of purchase.Calvin has quite a fascinating background to launch WAX. Calvin was a former Olympic level Modern Pentathlete from South Africa before teaming up with David Nichols, the former Global President of K-Swiss to launch WAX. Calvin also co-founded Blockchain for Change in 2016.They have since launched a product that is built for the digital age of insurance and for the collectibles world.Thanks Calvin for coming on the AGM podcast. We hope you enjoy the episode.

Today on the Alt Goes Mainstream podcast we have a guest who may be young in age, but has already done more and lived through more than many people twice his age.Anthony Zhang recently turned 26 but has already successfully built and sold two companies, secured funding from Mark Cuban, and received a Thiel Fellowship grant before starting Vinovest, his third company, which is making it easier to access fine wine as an investment product.He also has an admirable and awe-inspiring personal story, working hard to come back from a devastating accident that left him paralyzed from the neck down. He was in the middle of running his second company, EnvoyNow, when this accident happened and, despite the tremendous adversity he faced, was able to continue to build the business and achieve a successful sale.Anthony recently founded Vinovest, a platform that has been described as the Robinhood of wine investing. He’s built an investment platform that is unlocking wine investing to the masses. We had a fascinating conversation. We talked about: Anthony’s background as an entrepreneur.Some of the lessons learned from starting 3 companies by the ripe old age of 26.How fine wine can be a compelling investment during periods of volatility.How to identify an investment-grade wineSome of his favorite wines (that he drinks and invests into!).Wine as an investment has been largely inaccessible to the individual investor due to high account minimums, a lack of wine expertise, concerns about fraud, and the excessive costs associated with storing and insuring wine. Vinovest is abstracting away many of these issues with their automated investment platform that helps investors invest into fine wine as an asset class.Thanks Anthony for coming on the AGM podcast. We hope you enjoy this episode.

Today on the Alt Goes Mainstream podcast we have one of the OGs of the crowdfunding space on to talk about how he’s built platforms that have evolved in tandem with the alts ecosystem.Slava Rubin is the founder of both Indiegogo, one of the first crowdfunding platforms, and Vincent, a platform that is making discovery and alternative investments easier for investors. He is also the founder of humbition, an early-stage investment firm.We had a fascinating conversation about the evolution of the alts space – from the early days of equity crowdfunding to now wading through all the different options of investment platforms in the alts space today. We talk about:The evolution of the alts space.The alts portfolio of the future.The need for an aggregator – and how once other industries, like travel, had an aggregator, the space took off.Slava founded Indiegogo in 2006. He grew Indiegogo from an idea to over 500,000 campaigns and more than $1 billion distributed around the world. While at Indiegogo, Slava represented the crowdfunding industry at the White House during the signing of the JOBS Act and helped navigate bringing equity crowdfunding to the American public.Slava also pioneered security tokens in the US. He created a way to sell fractionalized ownership of the St. Regis hotel in Aspen, Colorado using blockchain technology.Slava’s latest work in the alts space is to bring transparency, discovery, and diligence to investors. He’s founded Vincent, which he’s likened to Kayak for alternatives, to enable investors to easily search, discover, and invest into all sorts of alternative assets.Thanks Slava for coming on the Alt Goes Mainstream podcast. We hope you enjoy.

Today we have a special episode of Alt Goes Mainstream – the co-founders of Rally on to discuss how people can now invest into defining cultural moments and assets that are aligned with their passions.Chris Bruno and Rob Petrozzo grew up together – and they have combined their respective talents to form what has become one of the symbols for the financialization of all sorts of assets.Rally, which started as a platform to enable investors to invest into shares of classic cars that would be unattainable to many investors, has become a multi-asset investment platform that allows individual investors to invest into all sorts of exotic, rare assets at low minimums.Chris, Rob, and I had a fascinating conversation about how Rally built and evolved their concept from classic cars to all sorts of rare, grail assets. We discuss:How they got into collectibles themselves.How they’ve waded through complex regulatory structures to figure out how to offer these assets to the masses.How they grew up together and have now built a company that aligns with their passions.And how on earth they were able to IPO a triceratops skull and IPO a rookie card of the United States (hint: the Declaration of Independence).Chris, Rob, and team have created a leading fractional investing platform for the alternatives space. They recently raised a $30 million round led by Accel, who invested in GOAT, to help propel their marketplace further.Rally has already achieved an active, engaged, and passionate userbase of over 200,000 investors who have invested in everything from Pele rookie cards to classic cars to dinosaur heads to, soon, the Declaration of Independence, or a rookie card of the United States of America as Rally investor and Upfront Ventures Partner Greg Bettinelli has called it.Chris, the Co-Founder and President, comes from the VC and startup worlds. He was an Associate at Village Ventures before co-founding two companies, Health Guru Media and Spotter. He’s a classic car enthusiast, which ignited his interest in unlocking the asset class to individual investors.Rob, the Co-Founder and Chief Product Officer, has been the creative inspiration behind Rally.He has brought his background as the in-house lead designer and creative consultant for Sony BMG, where he worked on the likes of Kanye West’s GOOD music imprint, and as the creative director for a few startups to bring Rally’s brand to life in person and in the digital world. Rally has also done some really interesting things with their brand, opening up a showroom to their investors, creating and offering stock certificates to their investors, and creating exclusive merch drops (including the limited edition Michael Jordan rookie card sweatshirt that I wore for today’s podcast). Thanks Chris and Rob for coming on the AGM podcast. We hope you enjoy today’s episode.

Today, we have an expert in lending and capital markets on the Alt Goes Mainstream podcast to discuss how his company, Pipe, is building a new asset class.Michal Cieplinski is the Chief Business Officer for Pipe, a fast growing fintech company. Pipe has seen a rapid rise over the past year. They are one of the fastest fintech companies to reach a $2 billion valuation – and it’s in large part because investors see the potential to build a platform that unlocks recurring revenue as an investable asset class for the world’s largest institutional investors.Michal deeply understands the inner workings of credit and lending on both the borrower and lender side from his experiences helping to build Fundbox, LendingClub, and now Pipe.Pipe was born from the idea that entrepreneurs and companies should be able to grow their businesses on their terms – without taking debt or dilution. This was a fascinating discussion with someone who has seen the evolution of a number of lending platforms. Michal and I discussed:Lessons learned from building marketplace fintech businesses.How Pipe is empowering founders to adopt a trader mentality by unlocking recurring revenue as an asset class. How Pipe is creating an efficient way for companies to turn their predictable revenue streams into a way to access capital without sacrificing dilution.How Pipe is building out both the buy side and sell side of their marketplace.How Pipe handles churn on SaaS contracts of their sell side borrowers.How he thinks about the evolution of Pipe as a platform in terms of the types of assets you would "pipe" and how any sort of recurring revenue stream - like ISPs, streaming services, even PE / VC fund management fees could be "piped."Thanks Michal for coming on the AGM podcast. We hope you enjoy.

Today, we have our first LatAm guest on the AGM podcast. And it was a special one.Bitso, LatAm’s leading crypto exchange, is fresh off of raising a $250M round led by Tiger Global months after raising a $62M round led by QED and Kaszek - and has been minted as one of LatAm’s newest unicorns.We had Bitso’s co-founder and CEO Daniel Vogel on to talk about what it has been like to build a leading FinTech company in the region and provide access to investments and financial services.This was such a fun conversation. We could have gone on for hours. Daniel is such a compelling and fascinating storyteller. We discussed a number of things including:How Daniel has dedicated his life to unlocking monetary freedom for people through crypto.How a talk with his friend, a janitor at his company in Silicon Valley, opened his eyes to the need for real applications of crypto to help people send money cross-border.The origins of Bitso and how Bitso was a pioneer of an online brokerage account in Mexico.How Bitso has become the on-ramp for financial services for many consumers across LatAm.The meaning behind Bitso’s slogan #makecryptouseful.The power of stablecoins and how it’s enabling people in countries with inflation and currency fluctuations to save money.How Bitso balances being a centralized company in a decentralized world.How religion and community play a unique role in crypto.Daniel is an early crypto pioneer and a thought leader in the space. He became intrigued by the idea of bitcoin well before many other people had heard of it and really thought of crypto as a way to unlock monetary freedom and access to financial services for the underserved.After founding the Bitcoin Club at Harvard in 2013 while he was doing his MBA, Daniel founded Bitso with co-founders Pablo Gonzalez and Ben Peters soon after he left Harvard Square. In Bitso, Daniel and his co-founders Pablo and Ben have created the on-ramp for financial services to many consumers in Mexico and across LatAm.As Daniel said in a recent TechCrunch interview, the growth of the crypto ecosystem in LatAm has been nothing short of remarkable. It took Bitso six years to get their first 1 million clients. And over the course of 2020, Bitso has surpassed the 2 million client mark. They have also doubled their assets on the platform. And their transaction volume during the first quarter of 2021 exceeded transaction volume for all of 2020.It is clear that Daniel has a passion for building out the cryptoeconomy and for making a difference in people’s lives, so much so that Bitso has made their tagline #makecryptouseful.Thanks Daniel for coming on the AGM podcast. We hope you enjoy this episode.

Today on the Alt Goes Mainstream podcast we have a domain expert in the world of VC – and someone who has been a visionary when it has come to one of the biggest movements in VC over the past 8 years: emerging managers.Samir Kaji, the Founder & CEO of Allocate, is a well-respected industry leader in the VC world. He has spent over 20 years partnering with VCs at First Republic Bank and Silicon Valley Bank, where he led the Venture Capital and Private Equity banking efforts. At First Republic, he built out the infrastructure and client base that served the VC and PE community. He’s evaluated over 800 VC fund managers and worked with thousands of LPs at First Republic.Samir and I had a fascinating conversation about the evolution of venture capital and what's to come for the industry. He’s seen a lot in his career in Silicon Valley that has spanned multiple market cycles. He shared his perspective on:The challenges that GPs and LPs face during fundraising.Why the structural inefficiencies of allocating to funds - and perceived risks with emerging managers - led so many LPs to miss out on the Fund I’s of now legendary emerging managers Lowercase Capital, K9, and Initialized Capital.The case for emerging managers in a venture portfolio and why emerging managers are the future of venture capital.The trend of non-institutional capital coming into the venture world.How LPs will be able to better discover and allocate to fund managers in the future.In his time in Silicon Valley, he’s become an unquestioned thought leader in the world of VC, particularly in the emerging manager space. He has consistently written seminal thought pieces and instructional guides on the topic – and now talks about the space with his podcast, Venture Unlocked.His experiences working with many of the top VC funds and LPs globally has culminated in a journey that he’s now starting by founding Allocate.He has observed a number of inefficiencies with emerging managers when it comes to firm building and capital raising. He’s seen many emerging managers struggle with fundraising due to the difficulties finding the right LPs. He’s seen the challenges that LPs have with being able to locate and allocate to new emerging managers, many of whom have gone on to outperform benchmarks and become the next generation of brand name firms.He believes that the ecosystem is ready for a decentralized, democratized, and diverse ecosystem of fund managers. And Allocate is the connective tissue that will solve these challenges for both GPs and LPs alike. Thanks Samir for coming on the Alt Goes Mainstream podcast to share your wisdom about the world of venture.

Today we have a guest who is bringing farmland investing to the masses. After working for one of Canada’s largest pension plans, Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan, and running Operations and as the CFO at a platform for buying and selling produce, Artem Milinchuk founded FarmTogether to bring an asset that has largely been the domain of institutional investors to individuals. Artem and I had a fascinating conversation. We discussed: How farmland deserves a place in all investors’ portfolios – in large part due to its features as a hedge against inflation and a passive income generating investment.How to underwrite a farmland asset.How he one day envisions the ability to invest into farmland embedded directly into one’s brokerage account.He also made a great case for how we can eat our way into supporting farmland investments, like hazelnut farms, which happen to be some of the types of farms that Artem likes to invest into.FarmTogether is a technology-enabled farmland investment platform that provides investors with direct access to US farmland as an asset class. They have developed an end-to-end investment platform that allows investors to review carefully vetted farmland investments and invest in properties.Artem has over 10 years of finance experience in food, agriculture, and farmland. Prior to founding FarmTogether, Artem was the first employee and CFO / VP of Operations at Full Harvest Technologies, a post-Series A b2b platform for buying and selling produce.In addition to working at Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan, he also worked at Sprott Resource Holdings, E&Y, and PwC. Thanks Artem for coming on the Alt Goes Mainstream podcast. I hope you enjoy the conversation with Artem.

Today we have one of the pioneers of the European tech ecosystem on to discuss how the European early-stage VC landscape has changed since its early days – and how their fund, Passion Capital, has unlocked access to investors with their latest fundraise.Eileen Burbidge, a Founding Partner of Passion Capital, and I had a fascinating conversation about all things VC, opening up access to the asset class to individual investors, what it means for the future of venture capital, and Eileen’s love of Arsenal and why she’s not a fan of the European Super League.Eileen has built a reputation as the go-to VC for seed stage companies in the UK and Europe – and for good reason.Her aptly named fund, Passion Capital, has built a name for itself as one of the top early-stage funds in the UK because of her passion for rolling up her sleeves, much like she did in her days as an operator at Skype, Apple, Yahoo!, and Sun Microsystems.I won’t forget when we met last year at her office – she had just stepped out of non-stop meetings with one of her growth-stage companies, where she was helping them figure out team and talent questions.Not every seed stage VC has the ability to stay involved as their companies grow nor does this type of work, but that’s what separates Passion from the pack.Eileen is just as much at home in her office, which doubles as a co-working space for Passion portfolio companies, as she is in 10 Downing Street, where she has been named the UK Treasury’s Special Envoy for FinTech, has been appointed by the Chancellor as the Chair of Tech Nation, and was awarded an MBE in the 2015 Queen’s Birthday Honors for her services to businesses.So maybe it’s no surprise why she’s been described as “The Queen of British VCs” by Fortune Magazine.She’s certainly backed many of the British startup royalty at early-stage, being a Seed investor in Monzo Bank, where she still serves on the board, Tide Bank, GoCardless, Digital Shadows, Marshmallow, Butternut Box, and a number of others.Eileen has also had an illustrious career as an operator, working for Apple, Yahoo, and Sun Microsystems in the early days of the internet before moving to London in 2004 to become one of Skype’s earliest employees and Head of Product. She then founded Passion in 2011 as one of the first Seed funds in London, serving a critical market need for the entrepreneurial ecosystem in London. She’s now trailblazing once again by being one of the first funds to open up their LP base to the crowd, where they have partnered with Seedrs to allow individuals to invest into Passion’s latest fund.She’s also an independent non-executive board director at Dixons Carphone, a 10B pound revenue electrical and telecoms retailer and on the Transformation & Innovation Advisory Board at UniCredit.Thanks Eileen for being a pioneer in the European VC ecosystem and bringing innovative structures in venture capital to LPs.I hope you enjoy.

Today we have a special guest who is one of the foremost leaders in the alternatives industry.Bill Kelly is the CEO of the Chartered Alternative Investment Analyst Association (CAIA), the leading global educational and professional credentialing body dedicated to delivering greater knowledge and alignment for investors in the alternative investments space.Bill and I had a fascinating conversation. His thoughtful and eloquent views on the evolution of the alternatives space led us to talk about:How the Retirement Promise has impacted consumers and investors and what it means for alternative investments.The importance of being a fiduciary.How CAIA consistently evolves their educational program to cover emerging trends like crypto and DeFi.How partnerships with leading investment platforms in the alts space like iCapital help to move the industry forward.Bill brings an operator’s perspective to CAIA. Prior to joining CAIA in 2014, Bill was the CEO of Boston Partners and one of seven founding partners of the predecessor firm, Boston Partners Asset Management, which was sold to $215 billion global asset manager Robeco in 2002. He then led Robeco’s US operations as CEO.Bill’s illustrious career in institutional asset management spans over 30 years, where he’s been in CEO, COO, and CFO roles across a number of firms. He is also currently the Chairman and Lead Independent Director for the Boston Partners Trust Company, which has over $2 billion in AUM. Bill has been an independent board member at Salient Partners, a $16 billion investment advisory firm, and an Independent Trustee at Bank of America’s $50 billion mutual fund complex business. He’s also an Advisory Board Member of the Certified Investment Fund Director Institute, which strives to bring the highest levels of professionalism and governance to independent fund directors around the world.Bill is a lifelong learner and a tireless advocate for shareholder protection and investor education, which led him to his current role at CAIA, which he has helped grow the membership to over 11,000 members and 31 chapters across 95 countries.CAIA serves a critical role in the alternative investments industry – they educate industry stakeholders and fiduciaries on the most current knowledge and best practices across the evolving landscape of alts. They have a sophisticated credentialing and thought leadership program that equips everyone from fund managers to distributors of alternative investment products to individuals who want to learn about alts with the tools they need to understand the industry as CAIA looks to consistently raise the standards across the industry.Thanks Bill for sharing such important and interesting thoughts on the alts space and for providing critical education to the space through CAIA.I hope you enjoy.

Today, we have a special guest who is changing the mechanics of private company stock ownership and investing for the better for employees, companies, and investors alike.Kelly Rodriques is the CEO of Forge, the leading private company stock exchange and investment platform.On today’s podcast, Kelly and I discuss:How private markets are the new public markets.How companies like Forge are unlocking a huge wealth management opportunity hidden in plain sight.How Forge is creating new accredited investors directly on their platform thanks to secondary market liquidity - and what that means for the alts space.How the private markets can innovate with structured products like index funds that provide diversified exposure to blue-chip private company stocks. How and why strategics like Deutsche Borse and BNP Paribas see Forge as critical to the private markets ecosystem.Kelly has helped build out the private market investment ecosystem at scale for Forge, bringing together a trading business, a private markets exchange with data, and managed liquidity solutions for late-stage private companies. Kelly and Forge also acquired and operate IRA Services, a self-directed IRA custodian with over $13 billion in assets across 1.5 million accounts.Forge has transacted on over $10 billion in deal volume and counts many of the top private companies as customers. They’ve also received meaningful investment from strategic investors like Deutsche Borse, BNP Paribas, TD Ameritrade, and Munich Re.Kelly has a great background to be building Forge. He combines a background as a successful serial entrepreneur with multiple exits, the deep marketing acumen, and the expertise from leading one of the largest self-directed IRA businesses, Pensco, to a successful sale. Prior to joining Forge as CEO, Kelly was the CEO of Pensco, one of the nation’s leading alternative asset custodians, which had over $16 billion of assets under custody and was sold to Opus Bank for $104 million in 2017. Kelly was also a founding investor of mFoundry, the leading provider of mobile banking services, which was acquired by FIS in 2013. He also built Totality, which he sold to Verizon in 2006, and has run an early-stage FinTech VC fund, Operative Capital, that has made 26 early-stage FinTech investments.Thank you Kelly for providing such an insightful and fascinating look into the transformation happening in the private company stock market space. Your passion for innovating in private markets is palpable and such a welcome addition to the industry.I hope you enjoy.

We had a special live episode of Alt Goes Mainstream this past Wednesday on $COIN Day to celebrate a landmark moment in the crypto industry that has, in many respects, signified the mainstreaming of crypto - the Coinbase IPO.Adam Draper, the Co-Founder & MD at Boost VC, was one of the first investors in Coinbase’s Seed round in 2012. He joined the Alt Goes Mainstream podcast to discuss what he saw in Brian Armstrong, Coinbase’s Co-Founder, when he decided to invest in their Seed round, what excites him about the future of crypto, and why he looks for founders who are rational people doing very irrational things.Adam is also learning how to play the guitar, so we were lucky enough to hear the exclusive release of a special new song that he created just for this podcast. Adam’s attempt to play the guitar and sing was quite admirable, but I think I can safely say that he should stick to investing as his career choice.Adam is one of the most thoughtful, energetic, and vibrant people you’ll meet. This episode was signature Adam - unfiltered and unedited - which is much of what makes him so unique, interesting, and able to “see the ball” (as Adam calls it) with generational founders and ideas. It was a lot of fun to talk about Coinbase, crypto, and life with Adam on such a special day for him and the crypto industry.If you want to see the live video (you won’t want to miss seeing Adam play guitar!) of the podcast, you can view it here on this Twitter link or here on this YouTube link.I hope you enjoy.

Today on the Alt Goes Mainstream podcast we have Matt Hougan, the Chief Investment Officer of Bitwise Asset Management and one of the leaders in the crypto industry. On today's podcast, we talk about:* Matt's views on crypto.* How Bitwise is bringing crypto to the wealth advisory community.* How crypto's evolution is similar to that of the ETF market.* How community has played such a big role in making crypto go mainstream.Matt has had an illustrious career at the forefront of major industry shifts in financial services. He's been a pioneer in the creation of not just one, but two major asset classes and financial products. First ETFs, and more recently, crypto. Matt is the CIO of Bitwise Asset Management, one of the leading crypto-asset investment platforms with over $1 billion of AUM. Under Matt's leadership, Bitwise has pioneered the first crypto index fund and is the leading provider of rules-based exposure to the crypto space.Matt and his team have brought institutional quality frameworks and learnings from the development of other industries within financial services, like ETFs, to bear as they help institutionalize crypto and work with many RIAs, family offices, and institutional investors. Matt led the development of the index that underlies the Bitwise 10 Crypto Index Fund.He's also been an educator and evangelist for the crypto space to more traditional investors and he couldn't have a better background to do this. He's able to share stories about how the ETF space evolved into an institutional investment product with over $4 trillion flowing into the asset class. He was the CEO of ETF.com, initially starting as a freelance writer, and working his way up to CEO. As CEO, he helped build ETF.com into the information provider for the industry and helped guide the sale of ETF.com in three separate, highly successful transactions. He also helped create the world's first ETF ratings and analytics service which now powers FactSet's ETF ratings.He also co-authored the CFA Institute's monograph on ETFs and appeared three times as a member of the Barron's ETF Round Table. In 2016, ETF.com was acquired by Informa, where Matt joined their team to extend Insight ETF's position as the largest ETF conference in the world. He's been a pioneer in both the ETF and crypto worlds and sees the exciting opportunity in all different alt asset classes.It's always fun to talk with Matt. He's such a thoughtful and intellectual guy who can live in both worlds of traditional finance and crypto.I hope you enjoy.

Today, we have a special guest from an industry leader in the wealth management space. Ed Swenson is one of the most successful entrepreneurs in the wealth management space. Ed is the Co-Founder and COO of Dynasty Financial Partners, a leading RIA technology services platform.Ed and I had a really interesting discussion about the future of the wealth management industry – and how alts will play a role in the evolution of the space. We discussed:How and why the wealth management industry is changing.How Dynasty is a champion of entrepreneurs in the wealth management space.The democratization of access and advice in wealth management.How and why wealth managers should have alternative investments in their portfolio.How VCs will soon realize that the RIA space will be a great source of LP capital for them.How advisors allocating to “alt alts” (like crypto, sports cards, collectibles, art) should be “on the table.”Ed co-founded and is the COO Dynasty Financial Partners, a leading RIA technology services platform that enables wealth advisors to become entrepreneurs and run their own businesses using Dynasty’s platform and infrastructure across technology, operations, diligence, access to investments, and M&A capabilities.Ed and his Co-Founder Shirl have grown Dynasty to over $50 billion in aggregate AUM across almost 50 advisor teams. Dynasty is a leader in the fast-growing RIA space. They uniquely understand the needs of advisor teams who break away from wirehouses like UBS and Merrill Lynch and they’ve built out a tech stack and platform that is state of the art. Ed spearheads their technology approach by partnering with best-in-class fintech companies in various aspects of wealth management to build a tech platform that advisors love.Ed also recently co-founded the Envestnet Advisor Services Exchange by Dynasty, a platform that enables Envestnet clients to access the value-added services that Dynasty offers. Ed comes from a wealth management background, so he’s in a unique position to understand the needs of independent advisors. Prior to Dynasty, he led the distribution network communications for Smith Barney’s Multiple Discipline Accounts division and was a Portfolio Manager for the Legg Mason Partners Large Cap Growth Fund. I hope you enjoy.

Today, we have a guest who's democratizing access to private investing. Ken Nguyen is the co-founder and CEO of Republic, a multi-asset investment platform for private markets. Ken is a pioneer in the private markets investing world and a serial operator who knows how to build businesses. He's helped grow Republic to hundreds of millions of dollars in gross transaction volume over the past three years after Republic spun out of AngelList. After Ken was an instrumental part of building the investment and regulatory infrastructure at AngelList, as their General Counsel, Ken founded Republic to create a leading equity crowdfunding platform for both nonaccredited and accredited investors. While their incredible progress on the retail crowdfunding side is remarkable, Republic's platform and vision is so much more than simply a retail crowdfunding platform. They also have an accredited investor platform and they enable investors to invest into everything from real estate to e-sports and gaming financing to small businesses. Republic has done the hard things first. They built the investment infrastructure for private markets. And they combine that with a Robinhood-like investing experience for private markets, for both retail and high net worth investors alike. They've also been innovative in how they engage consumers by creating a Republic Note, a security token that has created network effects on their platform for users.It's been really fun to watch this team execute at a blistering pace from the time that they started out with the idea of enabling investors to invest in startups at twenty dollar minimums, to building out a comprehensive private markets investment platform. Ken has been instrumental in that success with his infectious energy tireless work ethic and drive to create democratized access to investing for people around the world.This was such a fascinating conversation. We talked about Ken’s drive for starting an investment platform that could enable everyone to participate in wealth creation in private markets, how investing and owning equity is part of the American Dream, how Republic has unlocked access to private markets for all investors, “Lean back vs lean forward” framework applied to investing (h/t Rishi Garg of Mayfield Fund for the “lean back vs lean forward” framework), and how community is such a big driver of Republic’s growth and success as a business.I hope you enjoy.TranscriptNote: This Transcript was created by an AI software package. It is not an exact translation of every word in the podcast.Michael: [00:02:30] Ken, welcome to the Alt Goes Mainstream podcast. Ken: Michael, thank you so much for having me. It's such a pleasure to be here. Michael: Oh, it's great to see you. I love that background of New York. Ken: I am in New York. So, art mimics real life or the other way around. THE FOUNDERS STORYMichael: [00:02:46] Well, you've had a busy year, so congrats on everything. But before getting into Republic and all the things that you're doing, I'd love to hear your story. I mean, you've had such an incredible story of how you've gotten to Republic. So what is that story? Ken: [00:03:01] Yeah. Thank you, Michael. I definitely have a bit of an unusual founder story.My family immigrated from Vietnam to the Bay Area in California. And so growing up in the late nineties, early 2000’s, you hear these stories of companies going IPO and tech and Google and Facebook. But just because you were smack in the middle of Silicon Valley, it doesn't mean that I or my family had anything to do with it.We definitely weren't accredited, but that fascination early on, I think, ended up, staying with me. I ended up going to law school. Started out as a litigation attorney in New York and went into finance. And along the way, I think the story, the headline news that caught my attention the most was always tech companies. You know, you hear more and more of Facebook and then Airbnb. I had the opportunity to go back to the Bay Area and academia. I spent two years as a Teaching Fellow at Stanford and studying corporate governance. But Stanford happens to be also a tech hub. And so more and more, the different stages in my life just inserted me more and closer into the tech ecosystem and then I had an opportunity to join AngelList when they first launched their first syndication product. So I joined. I think the first non-engineer hired as the General Counsel back in 2013, 2014. Part of that work led to a change in the law, which is regulation crowdfunding in 2016. And I'm sure we're going to go into it. But in short, between the Great Depression in the 1930s, all the way to 2016, you had to be a millionaire to invest privately. In 2016, all of that changed. It's like opening up the flood gates. And that's when the team and I set out to found and launch Republic. DEMOCRATIZING ACCESS TO INVESTINGMichael: [00:05:04] That's fascinating. And it seems like you really have a variety of experiences. Everything fr

Today we have a guest who is building the infrastructure for a new asset class – sports cards.Leore Avidar is a visionary founder who is building a ground-breaking company, Alt, which is backed by Alexis Ohanian and Seven Seven Six, as well as First Round Capital, Addition, SV Angel, Box Group, and Kevin Durant’s Thirty Five Ventures.Alt is on its way to changing how we think about investing. This was such a fun conversation. We talked about:How Leore’s experience and excitement for building infrastructure has dovetailed with his passion and love for sports and collecting cards.How he’s building the future of the sports card market with Alt by creating the tools and infrastructure enable people to value, trade, and store their investmentsHow cards can be a tool to connect different generations through financial literacy.How culture can become a financial asset. Alt is the culmination of his experiences working on Wall Street as a trader to working on the API economy at Amazon Web Services to making direct mail programmable at Lob. He's building the infrastructure - much like Coinbase has done in crypto - for the world of alternative investments and specifically trading cards. As we've seen the development of market structure in other asset classes like public equities, fixed income, crypto, etc, it will only be a matter of time before we have a similar evolution in the alternatives and collectibles spaces and Leore is right at the forefront of this curve. Card collecting and investing is on a tear - 2020 and early into 2021 saw sales of sports cards at public auction reach all-time highs. Leore has built out an incredible team and vision to build the platform at the epicenter of this market - and he's also built out a fund, Alt Fund, to invest into top cards.He's leveraging his deep background in the space, having invested in sports cards for 5 years and generated returns that best many hedge fund and VC managers over the same time period. And most of all, he's a company builder who combines the best of a visionary founder who sees markets before they develop with the ability to execute and ship product. He's also the founder and CEO of Lob, a highly successful Y Combinator-backed company.Today’s podcast felt like we were peering into the future of what financial markets will look like. Thanks Leore for giving a glimpse of what’s to come.I hope you enjoy.

I’m thrilled to kick off the Alt Goes Mainstream podcast with a special guest - one of the leaders in the alts industry, Lawrence Calcano of iCapital Network.Lawrence has built iCapital into one of the category defining companies in the alts space. They have democratized access to high quality alternative investment products for the wealth management industry.Lawrence and the iCapital team have built the de facto operating system for the wealth management community to invest in and access leading institutional quality alternative investment fund managers. They’ve grown to almost $70 billion of AUM across 740 funds and 125,000 underlying accounts in less than 7 years.In the past year alone, iCapital grew their platform assets by over $20 billion and raised $162 million from top growth and strategic investors including Ping An, BlackRock, Blackstone, Goldman Sachs, Hamilton Lane, and WestCap.Lawrence has had an an illustrious career as a banker and operator. Prior to iCapital, he was a Partner and Co-Head of the Global Tech Banking Group at Goldman Sachs, where he spent over 17 years advising tech companies on many landmark M&A deals and IPOs. He was named to the Forbes Midas List of influential people in venture capital for 5 out of 6 years from 2001-2006.And now his second act as an entrepreneur at iCapital may top his first act as a Partner at Goldman.I hope you enjoy.

Welcome to Alt Goes Mainstream!