Alt Goes Mainstream

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.You can find this episode on Spotify here, on Apple Podcasts here, and Transistor here.You can subscribe below to get more written and audio content from Alt Goes Mainstream. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit altgoesmainstream.substack.com

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 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.You can find this episode on Spotify here, on Apple Podcasts here, and Transistor here.You can subscribe below to get more written and audio content from Alt Goes Mainstream. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit altgoesmainstream.substack.com

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.You can find this episode on Spotify here, on Apple Podcasts here, and Transistor here.You can subscribe below to get more written and audio content from Alt Goes Mainstream. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit altgoesmainstream.substack.com

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 is 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 to financial services for 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 the entirety 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.You can find this episode on Spotify here, on Apple Podcasts here, and Transistor here.You can subscribe below to get more written and audio content from Alt Goes Mainstream. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit altgoesmainstream.substack.com

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.* How fund managers are business builders.* The case for emerging managers in a venture portfolio and why emerging managers are the future of venture capital.* The secular trend of non-institutional LP 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. You can find this episode on Spotify here, Apple here, and Transistor here.I hope you enjoy the conversation with Samir.You can subscribe below to get more written and audio content from Alt Goes Mainstream. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit altgoesmainstream.substack.com

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.You can find this episode on Spotify here and Transistor here.I hope you enjoy.You can subscribe below to get more written and audio content from Alt Goes Mainstream. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit altgoesmainstream.substack.com

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 individual investors with an innovative decision for their most recent fundraise.Eileen Burbidge is a Founding Partner of Passion Capital, one of the UK’s top seed stage VCs. Eileen and I had a fascinating conversation about all things VC. We discussed:* How Eileen’s early days in Internet 1.0 working at Sun Microsystems, Apple, Skype (one of the first employees in Europe & Head of Product), and Yahoo! helped shape her views on venture.* How Passion Capital helped build the fabric of the UK startup ecosystem with White Bear Yard.* How Passion is opening up access to the asset class to individual investors with their crowd raise on Seedrs.* What crowdfunding means for the future of venture capital. * 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 GBP 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.You can find this episode on Spotify here, Apple Podcasts here, and Transistor here.I hope you enjoy.You can subscribe below to get more written and audio content from Alt Goes Mainstream. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit altgoesmainstream.substack.com

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. 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.You can find this episode on Spotify here, Apple Podcasts here, and Transistor here.I hope you enjoy.You can subscribe below to get more written and audio content from Alt Goes Mainstream. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit altgoesmainstream.substack.com

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 $11 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.You can also listen to this episode on Spotify here, Apple Podcasts here, or Transistor here.I hope you enjoy.You can subscribe below to get more written and audio content from Alt Goes Mainstream. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit altgoesmainstream.substack.com

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) on 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.You can listen to the episode on Spotify here and Transistor here. 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.You can subscribe below to get more written and podcast content from Alt Goes Mainstream. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit altgoesmainstream.substack.com

Crypto week continues with another industry luminary discussing the past, present, and future of the crypto space.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.You can listen to the episode on Spotify here, Apple Podcasts here, and Transistor here.I hope you enjoy.You can subscribe below to get more written and audio content from Alt Goes Mainstream. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit altgoesmainstream.substack.com

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 Ed & his co-founder Shirl Penney started Dynasty out of a garage.* 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.* Why 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 $60 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. You can find the episode on Spotify here and Apple Podcasts here.I hope you enjoy.You can subscribe below to get access to more written and audio content from Alt Goes Mainstream. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit altgoesmainstream.substack.com

Today, we have a guest who is powering the retail revolution by democratizing access to private investing. Ken Nguyen is the Co-Founder and CEO of Republic, a multi-asset investment platform for private markets. Republic recently raised a $36 million Series A led by Galaxy Digital, with participation from Nomura, Motley Fool Ventures, Tribe Capital, Prosus Ventures (fka Naspers), and Broadhaven Ventures.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).* How community is such a big driver of Republic’s growth and success as a business.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 in gross transaction volume over the past 3 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 non-accredited and accredited investors. While their incredible progress on the retail crowdfunding side is remarkable (over 1M users and over $280M in GTV since inception), 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 esports and gaming financing to small businesses.Republic has done the hard things first - they have built the investment infrastructure for private investments. And they combine that with a Robinhood-like investing experience for the private markets for both retail and HNW 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 fun to watch this team execute at a blistering pace from the time they started out with the idea of enabling investors to invest in startups at $10 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.You can find this podcast on Spotify here, Apple Podcasts here, and on Transistor here.I hope you enjoy.You can subscribe below to get access to more written and audio content from Alt Goes Mainstream.This was such a rich and thoughtful conversation that I also wanted to do something different for this episode - share the podcast transcript for those who want to read the text. Here’s the transcript of the podcast below (Note that this transcript was created by AI software. It is not an exact translation of every word in the podcast).TranscriptMichael: [00:40:00] 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 non-accredited and accredited investors. While their incredible progress on the retail crowdfunding side is remarkable, Republic's platform and vision are 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

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 investments.* How cards can be a tool to connect different generations through financial literacy.* How culture can become a financial asset. Alt is the culmination of Leore’s 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.You can find this podcast on Spotify here, Apple Podcasts here, and on Transistor here.I hope you enjoy.You can subscribe below to get access to more written and audio content from Alt Goes Mainstream. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit altgoesmainstream.substack.com

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 and I had a great discussion about how to build an alts platform for the wealth management community, why iCapital serves such a big need for wealth managers and banks, how iCapital thinks about democratization of access and focuses on diligence, education, and quality control on their platform.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.You can find the episode on the Alt Goes Mainstream Spotify here.I hope you enjoy.You can subscribe below to get access to more written and audio content from Alt Goes Mainstream. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit altgoesmainstream.substack.com

Welcome to the Alt Goes Mainstream podcast. I’m excited to share the Alt Goes Mainstream trailer here in advance of our first episode that drops later this week.We’ve been building up to this point for a while … and 2020 has witnessed a shift in how people think about investing.There have been a confluence of events that have changed people’s minds on how they invest. Everything from a low interest rate environment to technology innovation that has democratized access to alternative investments to the rise of influencer investors.No longer do we live in an era of the 60/40 portfolio. People – particularly Millennials and Gen Z – want to invest in everything from startups to sports cards to digital collectibles. And we’ve hit the point where we have seen the collision of culture and capital. All sorts of assets are being financialized – and it’s going to have a big impact on how we invest and what we invest into.Alt Goes Mainstream will cover how a previously small – and alternative – corner of the investing world has made its way into mainstream conversations. On social media platforms, on Clubhouse, and in people’s portfolios.We have everything from blog posts to podcasts with industry leaders that include many of the top founders, investors, and wealth managers who are helping to make Alts Go Mainstream.We’ll cover why and how we think the world is changing. I’ll draw on my experiences as an early employee at two of the early alt investment platforms – iCapital and Mosaic - and as an early investor in a number of alt investment platforms that are pioneering this groundbreaking trend.Alt Goes Mainstream will keep you up to date on the future of finance. I’m excited for you to join me in learning about a space that is becoming an important part of finance.You’ll be able to find our podcasts here on this Substack and you can subscribe on Spotify here, Apple Podcasts here, and Google Podcasts here. A full list of podcast subscriptions are here.I hope you enjoy hearing from the industry’s leaders.~MichaelThanks to our awesome team of creators, Chris Enns of Lemon Productions (producer), Yung Spielburg (music), and Emily Kolodny (artwork), for their great work!You can subscribe below to get access to more written and audio content from Alt Goes Mainstream. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit altgoesmainstream.substack.com

How can a piece of music be the expression of financial products? How can a piece of music exemplify how much finance is changing and capture how people are investing in everything from startups to sports cards to art to dinosaur heads? How can a piece of music express how Alts are Going Mainstream?Lenny Skolnik (aka Yung Spielburg) worked his magic and figured out how to do it.Lenny is a prolific music producer. He has produced music that has touched and inspired millions of listeners around the world. He’s worked on Grammy winning and Recording Industry Association of America certified platinum records. He’s worked with prolific musicians and creators in the US and abroad. He works closely with Japanese music icon, actor, and philanthropist Miyavi, where they’ve teamed up to produce and co-write five full-length albums together. And, more recently, you may know Lenny for creating the music theme song for the All-In Podcast, the podcast with Jason Calacanis, Chamath Palihapitiya, David Sacks, and Dave Friedburg, that has captured the ears of many.Mike Gelb from The Consumer VC recommended that we talk with Lenny about creating the podcast music for our podcast (thanks Mike!). And boy, are we glad we did!We had a blast working with Lenny. His attention to detail and desire to understand the meaning behind why we have created Alt Goes Mainstream came to life in his work. He read our blog posts. He listened intently. And, like a wizard, he concocted a brilliant podcast intro for us.So, without further ado, here’s the new music for the Alt Goes Mainstream podcast. We love it – and we dare you to listen and not start singing along because “we’re going mainstream!” Thank you Lenny for bringing Alt Goes Mainstream to life! You can check out more of Lenny’s great work on Spotify here.You can subscribe below to get access to more written and audio content from Alt Goes Mainstream. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit altgoesmainstream.substack.com