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VENTURE CAPITAL & PRIVATE INVESTING
Recorded: Sept. 4, 2025 Duration: 1:00:12Space Recording
Full Transcription
Thank you. What is up, everyone?
Welcome in.
A couple minutes late start.
Working on getting everyone in here to the space on this Thursday afternoon.
It's just after 5 p.m. Eastern, and we run a venture capital and private investing show
here on Wolf Financial each and
every week with great, great conversation. I know we have a really interesting new guest coming on
today, maybe some other familiar faces, of course. We'll get everyone rolled in here in just a moment
or two as I get some invites sent out, but wanted to go ahead and get this open. We had a great
discussion over on Stocks on Spaces going on, and then it turned into an NFL football debate there at the end, because as everyone knows, and I think we may actually discuss a certain investor and some private investing that is playing in a game tonight.
So stay tuned for that.
Going to be a great show.
We've got a good lineup here coming in, and I see my co-host Kyle up here on stage.
Kyle, how are you doing, my friend?
What up, what up, what up?
It's good to be back.
A slightly late start today.
Let's see if we can't get our guests and our hosts in here and start to blow up these numbers a little bit.
But it's always good to start early and start intimate with our close friends and everybody.
And you got me fired up here today because we are talking about venture capital and private equity.
This is a topic that I think in the traditional markets gets overlooked more than I realized.
I've been doing a lot of work recently with public markets companies and investor relations firms in the space.
I certainly know that the Wolf team, we have a lot of different conversations going on about trading and about the markets and
all these things. I think that those people generally actually very under discuss the highest
on the risk curve asset management division, which is obviously venture capital. It's covered all the
time in crypto. But crypto really brought a lot of that to the mainstream with respect to these
things, especially with a relatively weak IPO market over the last five to 10 years,
which as we've covered here on the show a thousand times,
my hope is that that is starting to change with some really successful IPOs.
So today we are going to be discussing everything to do with the private equity space,
specifically the venture capital world.
Sometimes we talk about it from a fund manager's perspective,
how a VC would look at these things. I know we have a lot of emerging market VCs and aspiring VCs in the listener base. Sometimes we'll wear the founder hat and talk a little bit about
our experience with fundraising because I know there's always new startups looking to raise
capital, looking to better understand how the venture capital game works. And other times we
talk about it more as an LP, as an allocator, as somebody that's looking to better understand how the venture capital game works. And other times we talk
about it more as an LP, as an allocator, as somebody that's looking to deploy into fund
managers so that as aspiring managers can better understand what's going on in the LP space. And
so really quickly, as you guys may know, my name is Kyle Sondland. I am a second generation family
office based in Miami, which means that I do a little bit of everything. I kind of describe myself as a capitalist. I'm a founder and I've raised millions on multiple
funding rounds for different companies of mine, including most recently a layer one global
settlement. But more than that, I'm a general partner of two different funds. One that is a
venture capital fund, more on the private equity side, and then one that is kind of more of an
actively managed fund as well. And I've been an LP into funds and businesses all along the way.
So I've really sat in all these different seats and loved the conversation.
But before we dive into anything else, I do want to introduce my co-host on the show, Jared.
Jared, how are you doing, brother?
Happy NFL Thursday.
My Eagles are feeling pretty good today.
Hey, Kyle.
It is a great day for dudes in America. I will say that.
Definitely excited to hop into the show today. And if you're new here, not familiar with who I
am, my name is Jared. And my connection to the VC space is a little bit more on the marketing side.
I help founders, whether that's their personal brand or their company brand,
I help them grow their audience on X.
So with a larger audience, you can market to more people and make more money,
and that's what we do.
We've done over 3.5 million followers for clients,
over a billion and a half impressions.
And then through that, I've got to meet a lot of cool founders
and talk to a lot of cool people.
And that's kind of my connection to the space here.
All right, all right. All right.
And with that, we also have some fun guests. We may as well start it off by introducing our guests. And I'm happy to have Amy Street here. She's a good friend of mine in Miami and a baller in the
crypto space and has seen everything from projects to investors to companies and really knows that
space super well alongside a whole host of other things. Amy, do you want to introduce yourself?
Yeah, thank you, Kyle. I know Kyle is the mayor of Brickell. He's literally Mr. Miami down here.
He is him. So I appreciate him. He's a great friend of mine and one of my favorite people
I've met in the city since I've moved here.
So thanks for inviting me.
My name is Amy Street.
I've been in the crypto space for about five and a half years now.
And I run my own accelerator and I do hiring and raising.
I do a lot of different things for companies in the space.
Just kind of like the Mary Poppins of Web3, as it will be.
So I'm the girl who knows a guy.
I can hire.
I can raise.
And I just am the growth girl in the crypto space for a lot of different companies.
Worked with a bunch of different companies from Brave Browser to Magic Eden to Kraken to SoulFlare, lots of big brand names.
And then some emerging companies recently just helped with the go-to-market for a company called Dare Market.
You might have seen the red profile pictures all over Twitter.
That's my newest go-to-market that I've been working on.
But many different projects under the hood over here.
So just doing some consulting and helping crypto companies go from zero to one.
Amy, with the way you describe Kyle there, it makes me sound like I need to get down to Miami.
Honestly, you're lucky if you know this guy well because he knows everyone and everything.
It's been a cheat code for me in Miami to know Kyle.
So that's for sure.
That's very sweet.
That's very sweet.
But it is not all about me, as it were.
It is all about venture capital, private equity.
Jared, do we have anybody else that we want to introduce or bring up?
Or do you want to lead it off into the news and what's going on in the industry?
Yeah, we have another guest, hopefully, that is joining us here soon.
But as we wait for him to hop on, we can kind of jump into conversation here. To touch on last week that just came out, like, you know, during our show last week is Donald Trump Jr.'s, his fund is now a large partner with Polymarket.
So we've seen a lot of that with Kalshi and Polymarket.
Obviously, those have been huge companies that have just kind of came out of what seems like nowhere here in the last year.
There's a lot of ties in the crypto space with that as well. So just kind of wanted to get your
guys' thoughts on, you know, what do you see with that partnership with Trump Jr. and his fund,
but also where do you see that those betting markets going? Obviously, there's still a lot
of regulations around certain sports betting stuff.
I know in Nebraska, you can do player props, but you can't actually bet on teams and stuff like that.
And so there's just still a lot of regulation on the gambling and on the betting side.
And as we've seen with very many things in crypto, when it's in crypto, it's kind of a free for all.
The rules aren't really there because you can get around with things because it's more decentralized.
So I just kind of want to open it with that and let you guys take it from there.
Yeah, it's a really interesting business model.
Because of what you just mentioned, there's a lot of regulation around gambling and sports betting directly.
But it seems that a lot of the regulation, this certainly isn't directly my area of expertise,
but from what I understand, these rules don't necessarily apply to what you're describing
as a prediction market, which is what a lot of these companies like Kalshi or like Polymarket,
you're not actually betting on a particular event.
And I think that a lot of that has to do with the fact that in a gambling situation, there is kind of a house and then there is the customer, right?
And so the house is the gambling company who sets the stakes.
And so as people may know, it's illegal to run an unlicensed gambling operation across the country.
But that doesn't mean that you're not allowed to host gambling events.
You just can't do what's called taking a vig, which is the vigorous is the percent that the house takes on every bet in order to compensate themselves, right? And so that's kind of that lever that you can increase or decrease to encourage more participation because that's going to affect
the ROI of the bettors and the gamblers. And so if you want to take a percentage of the pot
without actually participating in the gambling itself as this kind of the house component,
that is actually the piece of this that gets regulated really heavily. And I believe that
there is probably a similar thing with respect to sports gambling, where
these sports books, DraftKings or ESPN, Bet or whoever, they are the ones that determine
the rates that you get for picking one team over another and what the money line looks
like on those types of outcomes.
The difference in a prediction market is that it's always just a zero to one probability.
There's no set of money on the spread.
Instead, you're betting out of a 100% certainty what is happening.
So what are the odds that Kyle has his birthday in the next 24 or 12 months rather, that one's probably 100% unless
I guess you thought I wasn't going to make it to my next birthday.
And so that's going to be somewhere in the 100% to zero.
And that's where they kind of run the market is from an odds perspective from 0% to 100%
as opposed to saying, all right, you're going to get $5 back on a $1
bet for X, Y, or Z thing happening.
So because they have this prediction market component, which financially is very different
from a mechanics perspective than gambling in how these companies set these things up.
And because it's a free market that kind of decides what that percentage of that floating
rate is, they've been able to get around a lot of the gambling regulations.
That being said, it's hard to really be totally jazzed about the fact that there is a sitting
president and the son of the sitting president investment firm is directly deploying into
things that have not only significant potential impact on elections, but there's also very
little regulation on the insider trading rules around these things, right?
So if they know that a bill is going to get passed tomorrow and the market says that it's probably only a 75% chance that it's going to happen,
they're able to take that they know isn't public.
And so I think that that's definitely going to be something that we want to watch.
That would probably be the main risk factor that I would look at as an investor in these things is that you'd have to
think that you know this is not something that's going to last forever there will be a kind of a
regulatory movement in trying to better understand how to limit some of these things and I'm not sure
if you totally can but I'm not sure if the answer is just no guardrails at all so that's probably
where I would probably I would be looking as an investor to understand how these firms are trying to account and adjust for that
How their business model may be impacted and then and then trying to figure out okay
I'm sure a lot of these companies are now multi-billion dollar businesses
So what's the path for them to then take this from where they are today to a 10x valuation from here?
How would government and regulations kind of impact some of those things?
That being said before I want to pass it over to Amy and hear her thoughts on just kind of the gambling markets as a whole.
And obviously crypto pioneered this so much.
We've seen, you know, Jeremy Gardner did this with Augur 10 plus years ago.
And it's now fully thriving.
You know, gambling really is one of the more profitable industries in the world.
And it's really taken over the whole world with these kind of pocket gambling apps.
And so it does feel like it's here to stay regardless of what regulations come out.
So, Amy, what's your take on this whole market of the prediction space?
So I really didn't realize, I guess, I mean, I was living under a rock.
rock. You can only have a pulse on so many things in this industry. There's just so much going on.
You can only have a pulse on so many things in this industry.
There's just so much going on.
I didn't realize until about a month and a half ago how interested globally everyone has eyes on
this prediction market sector of our world, the crypto world, because I got hit up by Vanity Fair
and did an interview with them about a month and a half ago. And the questions that she was asking in the interview was super interesting to me and
kind of made me start to look for more information about this.
So when this news came out about Trump Jr. getting involved with Polymarket, it was interesting
to me because it's like, okay, well, is this a regulatory green light for the United States, which is like, um, to me kind of nods that he's
going to have some deeper involvement more than just on the capital side. Um, I, I, I do think
that there's going to be like a bit of conflict of interest because he's involved as a, as an
advisor in both Calci and Polymarket now, which makes things, like, it kind of shows
that he's looking to deeply get involved in that world.
And, like, that kind of makes me question why
in similar ways that you're kind of discussing, Kyle.
And I don't know.
That might lead to actually more regulatory headaches
if he's involved in multiple of these, like, um, like larger projects. So, um, it's an
unusual power play. Um, but I, I think that we're going to see a lot more of this prediction style,
um, or like hyper gambling stuff where it's like, it's more on based on odds and not on, I don't know,
like memes and other things that have kind of taken highlight in this cycle.
I think we are going to lean a little bit more in towards prediction markets.
And it's both because of stuff like this.
And I also just see a lot of influencers that are, it sounds like, taking deals with some of these bigger institutions.
And they're really leaning into this in both Web 2 and Web 3.
So I think we're going to hear a lot more noise about it.
And it does kind of make me question why.
There's always a motive and there's always movement in a certain direction for a reason.
And it's not just because like, oh, the people chose it. Sometimes money's flowing that direction
and that's the reason why the people are choosing it. So I'm just kind of paying attention. I'm not
super interested from a consumer standpoint and partaking in many of these these platforms but from a capital perspective or like
like an angel investor perspective it does kind of make me like interested in looking at some more
decks yeah that's that's interesting I one of my favorite things to do on this show is to just like
spit out really random hot takes and we used to have a specific segment for that um but one of my hot takes on this particular industry is actually
this is a ripple effect like we're all familiar with like that term butterfly effect but i feel
like the problem with butter the the term butterfly effects is that we only use it to describe like
the first domino out of like you know a thousand potential future dominoes going down the line.
And everybody says, oh, well, this could be the butterfly effect that causes X, Y, or Z.
I actually am looking at these prediction markets and the rise of them
as a very interesting end state butterfly effect of actually the Gary Gensler SEC hostile regime.
And so, you know, I'm actually very much in favor of a lot of what Gensler did, to be honest with you. I was never really a big meme coin or crypto
guy. I spent most of my career building capital markets infrastructure for finance and for
equities and real estate and these types of things, which we used to call security tokens.
Now they've been rebranded as RWAs. And so I think that a lot of what the SEC of the previous regime did was directionally
correct and consistent with the perspective and the stance of the SEC for the last hundred years.
The problem with what they did, and I had a problem with maybe 20% of what happened,
and I think that the 20% that I had a problem with actually has led to some of the things that we've seen today. And that is
that the problem with a very kind of regulatory by enforcement hostile approach is that you need
to release the pressure somewhere. You need to allow all this built up, and in this case, all
this built up liquidity, right? People are using this stuff, making money on this stuff, and are
deploying into these spaces. And I think the problem with the SEC was that they tried to
shut down a lot of, I would say, earnest and honest attempts to build real world value because
they didn't comply with securities laws. And instead of embracing tokenized securities,
instead of reducing the regulatory burden for a private issuer to create real value in a tokenized securities, instead of reducing the regulatory burden for a private issuer to,
you know, create real value in a tokenized form, it actually forced the industry to go even more
degen to really directly avoid any of the consequences or any of the indications that
they were in a regulated entity or business model.
And so that's why I think we saw the extreme blow up of the meme cycle of 2021 to 2023,
2024.
That's where you're seeing pump fun coming out of nowhere is because people basically
said, okay, if the US government is going to be really hostile, we're going to make
it so incredibly obvious that this is not what
they think it is. And it's so obvious that it's actually a useless token that we won't get
punished for it because it's very, very explicitly clear that this thing is useless. And so that's
where you had all these crazy meme coins clearly representing nothing. And now you're seeing kind of the next phase of that,
of people saying, okay, well, we do need to build something of value. And so prediction markets come
out where, you know, instead of actually creating value in these token economies from a really,
you know, strong business perspective, you're starting to see, again, tools that are trying
to skirt regulation, which again, perhaps they always will try to skirt regulation.
But I think a lot of these markets are, you know, we're finally starting to course correct a little bit in the sense that I think at least these Calci and these types of real-time, real-world event prediction markets are a very interesting measure of where the truth lies on some of these issues.
are a very interesting measure of where the truth lies on some of these issues.
But the question is, well, when will they start to become manipulated by large institutional
actors?
But again, you're starting to see companies like HyperLedger or excuse me, HyperLiquid
that are doing this type of revenue, buying back the token, burning the token, doing all
these types of things, as opposed to had we had a more open system
they may have just been able to pay those dividends straight through the
token holders or have something that was a little bit more straightforward and so
now we have this super incredibly convoluted market which is really even
way harder for regulators to get their hold on and get a grasp of solely because
there was a little bit of redundancy in the initial effort so it's similar to
the NCAA with their with the sports angle of, you know,
they didn't want to pay players forever.
They kicked the can down the road, kicked the can down the road,
kicked the can down the road.
They lose that big lawsuit.
Now they have zero control.
They have zero opportunity.
And, you know, now these players are just transferring from one college
to another all the time.
And so it's a little bit of a non sequitur there.
But I actually think that this is kind of a late-stage domino
of some of the malaise from the previous regulatory regime.
Bring up a lot of good points there, Kyle.
And one of the things that really stood out that you said
as far as, you know, it's not really regulated, so...
It's not really regulated.
The truest form of somebody always knows.
The example that comes to mind is Taylor Swift's engagement.
Guy creates a new account.
You can see that on Polymarket.
That's a huge amount.
Two days before the announcement, it makes a ton of money.
Somebody always knows, and you're going to get more of that insider trading with that. So
that is a good point, good point to bring up. But also, if you're somebody who tracks that often,
you know, you could probably make a good bag just following other people. I do want to welcome,
we have a new speaker up here today, Alexander. Alexander, if you want to come
off the mic and just say hello and kind of your connection to the VC space, then we can hop into
our next topic here. Oh, yeah, yeah, totally. Hey, everyone, I'm Alex, calling right from the heart
of a CIF market street. I'm from NoCap with've built world's first ai um investor in startups um we
made her into a character and yes you know she's a she so like you know she has a
pretty interesting background and everything and actually just today we launched um her new thing
um it's called nciac and um it's a program for solo founders or solopreneurs.
Because like our bet, our thesis is that this is where like everything is heading. More and
more people are going to just start building businesses on the side, kind of slowly going
full time. And that's going to change the investing paradigm like super radically. So we're betting primarily on that.
I'm going to drop a link in the chat if you guys want to check it out.
But basically, if you go to nocap.so, you're going to be able to see that.
Awesome. Glad to have you here, Alex. Thanks for hopping on.
I have a question I want to ask you, Alex, but also Kyle and Amy as well. I know
you guys would have some background on this. But Alex, being backed by Y Combinator, we always see
these funds, these funding rounds, they're backed by A16Z or whoever it is. That's kind of like the
headline, backed by so-and-so.
You know, the amount of money is one thing, but who is it backed by is another.
And so what I've, you know, found and what people realize is not all money is created equal,
You know, if anybody in the audience, you know, you guys are probably familiar with Shark Tank, you know, those sharks ask for a premium because they say you're not going to find Mr. Wonderful anywhere else.
especially in the venture capital private equity place. You know, if anybody in the audience, you know, you guys are probably familiar with Shark Tank,
You're not going to find Mark Cuban anywhere else.
And they demand a premium.
So not only is the money not created equal, but sometimes it comes at a premium.
But there's also different expertise you get with that, different angles, different connections,
different things in that realm.
And so I just wanted to ask you, Alex,
being somebody who's backed by Y Combinator,
what have you seen from that angle as far as who you're backed by matters
and just being strategic with who you let on your cap table?
And then I want to pass that, Alex, after you wrap up,
we can pass it to Kyle and Amy
and kind of let them talk on this point as well.
Totally, totally.
Actually, it resonates with me a lot
because one thing we're seeing increasingly more and more
is founders or, you know, like entrepreneurs
who might not necessarily be looking for venture,
picking only the investors that could clearly provide them
with some kind of value, right?
And where every investor tries to think
or communicate that their value add,
most of them actually are not, right?
They provide more kind of just trying to disrupt your operations than actual value.
But one piece of value that would never be taken away and would always be useful is some
kind of publicity or being able to promote whatever you do.
And that's never going away.
And that's what pretty much everyone wants the most
is like access to people, being able to make intros and yeah, just being able to amplify
whatever you do. And so what we are seeing is actually exactly that. So like all of the
investors in our case, in our world, like let's talk VC firms, right? All of the ones that have not fully
embraced that and like kind of approached basically brand building, media, building
connections, making intros, they're slowly getting, you know, basically going away. They still have
money because whenever someone gives them money, limited partners, like actual people with money or
institutions, it's not so easy to take them away. But we think that within the span of five to seven
years, all of the new funds that will be taking on money from these institutional investors
are going to all try and focus on providing some kind of brand support, network support.
And so that resonates a lot.
We, in particular, if anyone will be happy to chat about,
we, in particular, are trying to focus on the earliest possible stage
because we think that's where the biggest unlock would happen
with the increase of the amount of people that are going to just
try building things on the side. And for that, you need to have some kind of an AI that can process
like tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of conversations at the same time and be able to
amplify the best of them, the best that actually like, you know, want to take the money.
And if that matches with you wanting to give them the money, then that's a good thing.
So essentially kind of taking that pre-YC, right? But for, let's say if you're a super hungry,
early stage founder, and you want to get this publicity push um and you go
you want to go 100 venture then weiss actually does that really well i think they they definitely
nailed um this um this approach awesome well i I appreciate that insight there. And sorry, it took me a second. I was on mute.
But Kyle, do you want to add in on this?
Yeah, I think it's an interesting conversation. Y Combinator has done a tremendous job in building
a sick portfolio. And Alex kind of got me thinking,
and we've talked about this on the show before,
but with the rise of solo founders
that don't have co-founders,
and maybe just as a slight aside,
I think part of the reason for that
is that with a lot of this automation,
a lot of the tools,
it's just you don't need quite as much help and support, right?
Whether that's on an existing company, you don't need as much operations back office
stuff because it can be automated.
And at the founding of a company, you may not need that same technical expertise on
your development team, provided that you can figure out how to do it yourself.
And vice versa, if you're a technical expert, you may not need quite as much business savvy because of the fact that those are things that you can now kind of query larger models for.
And so I think with the rise of a lot of these things, there does call into question of are the days of massive funding rounds to bring on a big office and a big overhead and doing all that stuff.
Are those days past us, at least for this cycle? I think things are generally cyclical occur. So,
you know, we probably will go back there at some point, but we certainly have not seen that at the
scale that we had in years past. That being said, obviously, some of these large language models
have raised insane amounts with Anthropic and Open being being two of the best examples and obviously um elon and all of his companies but
but i think there's also an interesting model around you know i'm a big proponent and super
bullish on venture debt um it's something that silicon valley bank was super useful for and was a big proponent of until they went under,
not for, I don't think for those particular loans, but more of how they managed their treasury
with long dated debt instruments that, you know, as inflation has gone crazy, we've adjusted
interest rates to a point where a lot of the debt that they were in no longer made financial sense.
And then obviously Teal and companies pull out all the cash and a bit of a consorted effort in
order to screw them just for then Teal to then launch his own bank. But that's maybe a separate
conspiracy. But I think the venture debt space is really interesting for a lot of these early
stage startups because of the fact that they may only need some small operating capital to get
off the ground. They may have a business model that generates revenue. And so, especially when
we're talking, and as Alex mentioned, if we're talking really, really early stage, if you're
talking pre Y Combinator, which is already about as early as you're going to find in the market,
you know, as an investor, as somebody that deploys into these types of companies,
I don't love the idea of having to hold my equity for 10 plus years
before potentially getting an exit.
And that's kind of the five to seven year timeline
was always the rule of thumb in VC, especially in the last market.
And so if there's ways that I can generate cash flow,
or return some of that capital onto my balance sheet, or to my potential LPs earlier, such that
I can maybe take a smaller size of the equity stack over the long term in exchange for earlier
DPI through cash flow or through something like in a debt style structure,
a convertible debt structure where it's like, look,
at least let me get my principal plus 25% or something back, you know,
as a floating IRR. And then the rest of it, once you hit that, you know,
the rest of it then will convert into equity or something.
I think there's room for innovation in how we structure some of these
investment vehicles outside of what every VC has
done if they don't want to hold equity, which is force random companies to launch a token so they
can dump the token on retail. I think that there's probably a middle ground in there somewhere
that for a lot of these, especially AI companies that have an immediate go-to-market potential,
have an immediate revenue stream, and if they have a really low headcount and a really low kind of operational cost, they could be profitable pretty quickly, which then makes a model like this
from an investment perspective much more palatable. So that's kind of how I see a lot of this.
I love this so much. That resonates actually like, you won't believe how much it resonates
with what we've been just observing, essentially, because with this shift
that I described and you described, what comes is basically like most of these startups,
so we call them startups, we can call them projects, we can call them businesses, right?
Most of them would actually not be even like a good fit for BC because they like they would find a really hard time to actually scale to
even like 300 million valuation for that matter and so all the incentives will be completely
different they might still raise some money but that money would be more like you know you raise
from friends and family or angels or you know some small investors that would not necessarily make it their living to depend on
having at least a couple of billion dollar shots or something like this.
Which already functions as essentially venture debt because those types of friends and family,
you would just end up paying back and then some just ad hoc, if you will. So we may as well just
formalize that structure a little bit more
and then go from there. Absolutely. And just to add to that a little bit more, that's actually
what we are already starting to explore. We haven't been public about it because we're still
basically in the process of trying to nail the exact details. But we see that like even from
the funnel that we are getting right now in in no cap um act uh from all the
all these different solo founders solopreneur startups um only a handful of them like a couple
of percent actually are like a good fit for venture and and they should go venture they
should raise the rest we're trying to figure out um a way to connect them with the right um
out a way to connect them with the right
essential venture debt or revenue share
mix of where you first
it has a clause that's into the revenue
share where it would make sense
where it would make more sense for them because I do
believe that now is probably the time to reinvent the Japanese merchant banks for this new kind of generation of all these
businessmen armed with AI native tools, like you said. So yeah, you wouldn't believe how much of
this is already happening behind the scenes, even at just what we're working with.
Interesting. Interesting. I had a topic that I wanted to loop Amy in on as well, since Amy, you're so connected
in kind of the, you know, pop culture angle of a lot of these markets and cycles.
And I'm sure you've been firsthand seeing all the celebrity coins of the kind of the
pump and dump efforts, obviously
headlined by the Kanye West one that launched a couple of weeks ago that I was able to ride the
hyperliquid shorts on, which did not go very well as pretty much every single one does.
There was a headline today that Jared found, and I'm sorry to steal your thunder here, Jared,
that Jared found, and I'm sorry to steal your thunder here, Jared, that Meek Mill has been
commenting a lot about how he wants to raise money for his new AI company. And so I guess the
question I have for you is, do you think we actually may see a trend of celebrity entrepreneurs?
I saw a deck recently with Edward Norton as the CEO of a new tech company.
We obviously know the Ryan Reynolds and everything that he's been involved in.
Are we likely to see almost a shift towards celebrity CEOs or co-founders as kind of a new meta that will be coming in the near future what are your thoughts on on uh not only meek mill trying to raise 25 mil for
for uh for his app but also just kind of this general trend and where where the market's going
on that front so i mean last cycle crypto and nfts were the hot new girl in school we thought
meme coins was maybe going to be the hot girl in school this cycle. I actually think that AI is going to be the grift for most of these influencer celebrities.
And now that vibe coding is super available and easily readily available to the public,
I think that we're going to see a huge amount of people with influence celebrities releasing applications
that have some sort of AI component to it. And they're going to be selling it to their audience
because it seems like less of a scam than the meme coin or NFT route that they had gone in past cycles.
But the scary part about that is they're not employing developers.
They're not employing people to audit their code.
And there's a lot of security issues with some of these vibe coded apps.
And so we're going to see people try to onboard their audience to applications,
in my opinion, that are going to be a huge security risk. And I think it's going to be a
huge lawsuit issue, even more so than we saw when they were trying to dabble in crypto without any
real knowledge and what they were getting into in that. So I'm already seeing it on the mid-tier
to upper-tier influencer side in crypto. And usually when that's happening, it means that
somebody is going to tilt that scale and try to take it to a celebrity and pump the gas on
whatever they can with their connections. So I think someone's
going to sell that dream to some of their celebrity friends or celebrities are going to see how easy
it would be. And they want to bring their ideas to life. They think that vibe coding is going to be
able to take things from zero to one. And then they're going to end up in a huge legal mess because the security issues are abundant.
And we've already seen examples of this from some big Instagram accounts that are businesses that have launched the companies.
I mean, we've seen it with a couple celebrities already, but I think that it is going to be a massive trend,
and I think it's going to be a dumpster fire.
So that's the hot take.
Well, it's actually very much...
Oh, go for it.
I just wanted to ask,
would you name a specific example of what was leaked?
I'm actually very curious to dive into that.
I can pull it up.
The T-app was the big one from a month ago.
Yeah, the T-app is a massive one.
Then the – what was the other day? There was some recent leak that was showing that – whose was it?
Oh, it was the Hermoses.
Layla Hermosey and Alex had launched an application
that essentially if you just went to the dev level of it,
you can see that the whole thing was a sham
and that they're essentially selling whole thing was a sham and that they're essentially selling
stuff that was already readily available and it was it's like it was just really easy to access
their their course and so it leaked it for free from like a really basic level security breach
a really basic level security breach and caused them millions of dollars in revenue lost because
people were able to access this hack.
So luckily that wasn't to their audience that someone was having an issue for security and
it was their revenue.
I mean, that sucks for them, but it just is kind of showing the lack of knowledge of even some of the smartest business people that I look up to are kind of falling into the trap of.
And so the T-apps is an interesting one.
The Hermosi situation is not super big in the media, but I read it somewhere and we talked about it in one of my spaces pretty recently.
I read it somewhere and we talked about it in one of my spaces pretty recently.
And then I've just heard whisperings from the crypto space about a handful of large influencers that have like 300,000, like 150,000, 300,000 plus followers on here that are going to be doing the same.
And when I've asked them questions about it, it's like all vibe coded stuff.
And vibe coding is like great if you're launching something for yourself.
But unless you really know what you're doing, you know what you're doing with prompts and you have a really good handle over your AI, you're probably going to be dealing with a decent amount of security breaches that's not built for commerce.
So that's my draw from that take, I guess.
One in a roundabout way, it's, it actually bolsters my perspective as an investor of,
you know, this type of venture debt salad instrument, right?
Where you're kind of like, look, if you can get your first hundred customers, then I'm
going to at least get myself paid back on this loan.
And then, you know, it might convert into some equity upside on the back end,
but it reduces some degree of compliance risk of getting to a million customers.
Because as to your point, Amy, I think potentially some of these people either,
you know, and I don't mean it in a superiority way or anything,
but a lot of people don't know how to run companies and don't know what to think about and how to manage this.
And they're not bringing in an amazing team around them
because they can do a lot of this stuff themselves
or at least on the surface they can.
And so you do kind of subject yourself
to some of these risk factors.
And so that doesn't mean that you're not gonna be able
to get that immediate source of opportunity
and those immediate customers.
But as the earliest stage VC, you know, you don't also want to
take all of this outsized risk forever in hoping that is going
to get paid off and then hope that they're going to get acquired
or go public one day, which may not be a great fit for a lot
of these applications.
And so, you know, right now there's just not a lot of way to
A, invest in those types of businesses that may not have that future.
And B, there's not a lot of opportunities for those companies that have a real
opportunity to make a million dollars in revenue to get the, you know,
100K that they need to get that million in revenue.
And there's got to be an opportunity there.
So I've been watching this space a lot.
I think it's only going to become more relevant and either I'm going to do it or somebody else will, but it's definitely coming.
Yeah. And just to add to that real quick, I think that's an absolutely very real risk. I think
Emmy's like absolutely to the point. That's what we've seen as well, although not to the point of like essentially scandals, but essentially people
not fully, like non-technical people not fully realizing the potential issues that they might
face with essentially like all these like deployment infra issues, because it's, you
know, it's all good and fine when you five code something, but then the issue comes with these
models not having a big enough context to contextualize a lot of the code and more complex
projects. And so that's where things sometimes start to be clunky. And that's where also the
issues might arise. But generally generally I'm optimistic mostly just because
there are a lot of people working on this
from actually a couple of angles,
both the angle of just essentially new models coming out
that are just more capable, larger context.
And so they're able to work through the issues better
and not just like run in circles. And then on the other
end, the tools themselves are trying to face this concern and integrate more tools inside. A good
example would be Replit. So for example, compared to Lovable, I do think and see from specific like
internal documentation that Replit is taking the security concern a little bit more seriously,
and they have more tools implemented in place to prevent potential abuse and things like that.
So it's also about, I guess, education in a way of how to use the tools, what to use, etc.
Love it. Love it. So we've got eight minutes left left jared do you have any other topics that you wanted
to squeeze in or any thoughts on your end yeah i'd love to to throw in a question here one one
thing to touch on the last topic i do think we'll continue to see more of that and i think you always
will whether you want to call it a grift or not but people who gain influence have gained influence
and they want to monetize off that.
And I think people will continue to give them money and continue to support that from the investor side because they already have a marketable audience.
I think the money is in the marketing.
I'm biased because that's what I do.
I help people grow their brands.
But when you have that brand, there's a ton of different ways to make money. And so somebody like Meek Mill who says, hey, I have an AI idea. I need an investor. When the A16Z guy responds, he's
thinking, well, he's already got a marketable audience, which usually costs a lot of money to
get. And so once they already have that, you're just ahead of the curve with that, regardless of,
obviously, Meek Mill's probably not the guy, the AI founder that you would probably ahead of the curve, you know, with that, regardless of, you know, obviously Meek Mills, probably not, you know, the guy, uh, the AI founder that you would probably think of, but
he has the audience and they can put somebody in that role, uh, to really run the company.
So that's my little tidbit on that. Um, but one question I wanted to get to, um, and, and I'll
pose this to Amy here. Um, and then, And then Alex, you can jump in too.
But I talked to a lot of founders.
Everybody is always looking for user acquisition, user acquisition.
Amy, I know you have some background with some apps and some different other companies you've worked with.
What do you think is the best way as far as acquiring users and what separates companies that are able to acquire
users versus ones that don't. Obviously, you have to have a good product. If your product isn't any
good, it doesn't matter. But there's also a lot of companies who have good products,
and some of those still aren't able to get new users. So Amy, the question is,
between those companies that are good products, what do you see that is the differentiator between those who are able to acquire users and those who aren't?
I mean, this is a hefty question with five minutes to spare, but I will say that I definitely think that, I mean, I ranted about this on the timeline pretty recently in a tweet, but I think that in this space, particularly in like between AI and crypto, Web3 products, I see a lot of CTOs that we have a lot of issues with um a lack of knowledge when it comes
to the marketing side of things and what it actually takes to gain users and it really takes
more than just having a really stellar product if no one gives a damn about your product
and no one hears about it you might as well hears about it, you might as well have not
raised capital. You might as well have not wasted your energy building the product. The
users are the whole point of building something, right? And that's really what the main questions
when you're in a VC call or anything like that is, how are you going to get users? How are you going to generate revenue? Those are the heavy questions that people are looking for answers for.
And I think unless you intimately know who you're marketing towards,
you are going to have a really hard time getting it out there. I think that sometimes founders are trying to cast too wide of a net
or they're not isolating their marketing events to get their target audience. I work with a bunch
of influencers in KOLs in Web2, Web3, AI, Web3 blockchain space. And I lead a bunch of KOL marketing campaigns for companies and I think
that this is like the biggest waste of money and the biggest misstep that companies do when doing
it on their own because influencers are expensive because the supply and demand is there. We're in a tension economy where UGC content
goes a really long way if done correctly. And I think that a lot of teams know that. They've read
that a million times. They've read articles about it. They have heard lectures about it at conferences,
but they really don't know how to activate that. And they go for the wrong, they spend their money in the wrong
ways. And so if that's spending marketing dollars on bad hires for a marketing lead, or if it's
spending dollars on UGC content to be able to get their product in front of people, I think that that's one of the biggest misspins that I see from a marketing budget across the board. has way less followers and way less engagement, but actually is funneling towards the specific
audience that you're looking for and bringing them on as an ambassador, which is going to be
less marketing spend for you because they're going to be easier to get on board with you.
They're going to be involved in the process of marketing with you and they're going to be
actually invested and finding ways to incentivize them, not just with cash or equity, but also with some sort of scaling model of how they can make more based on more
users or more revenue that they're bringing to your product. And not only do I recommend that
teams do that, but they also find many of those, like three to five of those, and
pin them against each other and come up with some competitive way to have a handful of
these mini marketers working for you to help get to your audience.
I think that there's plenty to be said about SEO.
I think there's plenty to be said about SEO. I think there's plenty to be saying about advertising.
I think there's plenty to be said about other things.
But like that realm of the world is my expertise.
And it is one of the things I see people misspending to be able to get to their audience is just like, let's pay a giant influencer that has this huge amount of followers to blast once or twice from their account with no real connection to our brand.
I think you have to really intimately know who you're trying to reach and then finding people that really align with that audience and kind of building an army to get to your target audience.
So that's my most succinct way of getting it in before 6 o'clock hits here in Miami.
I think that's great.
And I think one of the things that I've seen a lot too that you mentioned
is there needs to be some kind of relationship where it seems more organic than paid.
When some big influencer posts it once or posts it twice over the span of a month, how much traction does that really gain?
So I definitely think you're on to something there.
I'll be quiet for the rest of the show.
Alex, Kyle, I'll pass it to you guys if you have anything that you wanted to wrap up with.
Alex, any closing thoughts?
I have one, but I want to make sure you have the floor before we wrap this one up.
POV, which is first kind of security concerns from folks with distribution.
That's that's precisely who we are targeting with NCEAC.
Folks who are idea people that have audiences and we want to try and help them kind of, you know, just build their companies better with the help of our AI.
And it looks like we need to place more emphasis on like how do you you deal with potential security issues and like, how can we help with that?
So that was like a big one for me personally.
And then second one, it looks like more and more folks are super excited about alternative ways of financing.
So, yeah, I'll try to just share more on that as well.
So thank you, Kyle, for bringing it up.
Hey, look, you know, I think that both of you
did a fantastic job today.
Really, really appreciate having you on.
My final closing thoughts on that topic is,
I think what you said makes a ton of sense.
And the reality is that marketing,
especially with how quantifiable it is today,
there's so much analytics involved
in marketing these days.
Whereas I think previous decades, especially with how quantifiable it is today, right? There's so much analytics involved in marketing these days,
whereas I think, you know, previous decades,
marketing was way more vibes and way less measurable.
Whereas today, right, with social media,
you get all of the info on conversions.
You can track exactly where this stuff's coming from.
I think what a lot of people don't want to admit,
and I don't totally know why,
because I don't think it's necessarily something to be embarrassed about, but marketing is way more about sales
today than it ever has been, right?
And so I love the point that Amy made about sales being a core focus of the marketing
engines, especially if they're externally faced people.
And so I think that's just such a core thing
that not a lot of people grasp when they try to deploy
in that particular vertical.
But this has been a fantastic conversation.
I'm so thankful to be here.
Shout out to the Wolf Team for allowing us to do this show
and everybody that's listening.
We've had a lighter space today, 60 or 70 people in here at any given time,
which usually results in at least a few hundred over the hour.
We do this show every week at 5 p.m. on Thursdays Eastern Time.
So I really appreciate you being here for the Venture Capital Private Equity Spaces.
I also know that the Wolf Channel does everything from trading to sports to Bitcoin to anything that you're looking for.
I guarantee you there's a space going on about it at any given time.
So definitely check out the account and their whole host of subaccounts that do all this good stuff.
And check out our wonderful panelists.
Jared is such a beast and is the heartbeat of the show.
And of course our panelists today as guest contributors,
you both are welcome to join at any time in the future.
I think that this is an awesome show and you're both welcome to join in again.
So with that,
I'm going to kick it over to the main Wolf account to close out the show for
the week. And I'll talk to you all from Asia next week.
Appreciate that, Kyle.
Alex, Amy, great having you guys on today.
I love just being a fly on the wall listening.
And then, of course, my two great co-hosts of this show each and every week.
One of my favorites of the whole week.
And if you are interested, we do run a whole myriad of spaces here on Wolf Financial
and across all of our networks. Our pinned schedule, our pinned post is right there on our
main account. You can see the full schedule each and every week. I do put that out on Sunday
evenings. And then check out our Wolf Bitcoin account, our Wolf Crypto account, our Wolf
Trading account. We've got all kinds of things from news, sports, to all different investing items around the markets as well.
So all kinds of stuff going on here with the Wolf team.
And this is one of the great shows that we put on each and every week.
We do record these.
So if you missed a part of this show, which it was a great conversation, big shout out to the whole crew.
You can listen back to it as soon as I close this out.
And that does it for this Thursday.
Hope everyone has a great rest
of their afternoon, evening, night,
wherever you are. Take care.
And I don't want to say
go Cowboys, but I'm going to say go Cowboys
just because the NFL is kicking off tonight. I'm fired up.
I'm fired up about it. I know.
Hey, we'll see what
your Dolphins do this year, Kyle. I'm actually
curious. I'm an Eagles fan.
Gross. Gross. Let's not get it twisted. Plus eight. I'm actually curious. I'm an Eagles fan. Gross.
Let's not get it.
Plus eight.
I'm on it.
Plus eight.
We're going to cover.
I respect it.
I love it.
It's all good fun.
Hey,
beer on it for Eagles Cowboys.
I'll give you the plus eight.
Okay.
I'll take that.
And yeah, safe travels to you as well,
Kyle.
I know you've got a lot of big things coming up.
So safe travels.
Best wishes to you.
We'll see you from the other side of the world next week.
Same time, same place.
Thursday, 5 p.m. Eastern right here on Wolf Financial.
You will see this venture capital and private investing show.
And with that, I'm going to close it out.
Enjoy your night, everyone.
Take care. Thank you.
