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VENTURE CAPITAL & PRIVATE INVESTING
Recorded: June 12, 2025 Duration: 1:04:48Space Recording
Short Summary
In a dynamic discussion on venture capital and crypto, panelists explored the resurgence of IPOs in tech, the launch of a $500 million AI crypto treasury, and the cultural shift towards self-education and innovative funding strategies. Key insights included the importance of strategic partnerships and the evolving landscape of investment in founders and their companies.
Full Transcription
Thank you. What is up, everyone? Good afternoon. Happy Thursday. It is 5 p.m. Eastern here on Wolf
Financial on Thursdays. That means one thing and one thing only, the Venture Capital and Private Investing Series
show that we've been running each and every Thursday this year.
Been a fantastic show.
I've got two great co-hosts up here as well.
Just sent both of you those co-host invites so we can get everyone in here, get kicked
off for the day.
Kyle, see you already throwing up some
excitement there. I'm going to let you lead us off today. How are you, brother?
What up, what up, what up? It is Thursday, 5 p.m. Sorry for any background noise. I am
just wrapping up a trip to the post office. I published a book about a year ago. And so
every once in a while, I'll send out some signed copies
to some clients and partners and friends.
And as you may know, unfortunately,
you didn't ask me for my address.
Send it to me.
I'll send you one.
Yeah.
But yeah, I'll cover the shipping.
It's international.
The lines there can be pretty brutal.
So it took a little longer than I expected,
but I'll be home in a minute. i am enjoying the sunny miami weather and uh welcome to the venture
capital shows where we talk about everything private equity markets we've had a super active
ipo market which is really cool to see because i think that in the previous iteration of tech
startups they really failed on the IPO markets.
They were not successful.
And that doesn't seem to be the case with the newest crop of AI and crypto companies going public,
which is a really good sign, in my opinion, for venture capital,
because it does prove that model more effectively.
And I think it also helps allow LPs and investors in these companies to actually get money for the investments that they made to return that capital.
So a lot of exciting things to talk about. As I said, my name is Kyle Sondland. I am a venture capital investor.
I'm also a founder and I've raised venture capital and I've put together syndications of investments.
So I've kind of covered the gambit with respect to doing everything in this market and especially
I've spent a lot of time in crypto.
This is going to be a crypto heavy space based off of some of the guests that I think we've
got coming on the panel.
So really excited to be here, really excited to lead the discussion today.
But I want to kick it over to my co-host, Jared, to introduce himself as well as our
panelists before we really dive into the meat of this session.
Jared?
Awesome. Well, Kyle, that's pretty cool. I didn't know you had a book,
so congrats. I know there's a lot of work that goes into getting published and just sitting down to actually get thoughts out and put them on pages. Yeah, it's actually kind of a pain in the
ass, but once it gets out, it feels really good to have a real paper, a real book, not just-book, like to be able to look at the book and with the cover on it and be like, all right, you know, that's the work I put in.
It's nice.
Yeah, it is pretty neat for sure.
To see it on the shelf has got to be pretty rewarding.
But my name is Jared.
I go by Self-Taught Success on the Internet.
And the meaning of that name is all the information you're looking for is out there.
It's just up to you to find it and learn from it
and then go apply it on the path to your goals.
And my connection to the VCPE world is more on the marketing side.
I work with founders and startups anywhere from pre-seed
all the way up to publicly traded stocks and companies,
helping them grow their brands on X so they can market to more people.
And that's kind of my background to the space. We do have a pretty sweet panel today. I'm
definitely excited to get into it. Today's show will be a little more crypto-based focus. Last
week, we talked a lot about energy, had a great discussion there. So definitely excited to continue the good trends here this
week. So I'm going to pass it around here to the panel and let you guys give a quick
30 second intro as to who you are, what you do, and kind of your connection to the
venture capital and private equity space. And if you want to relate that, how that relates to
the crypto side as well, you're welcome to do that. So I'm going to pass it here to Ravi, one of our reoccurring guests first,
and then we'll just kind of go around the panel.
And anytime today that any of you guests want to speak, feel free to just raise your hand.
You can just do that with one of the little emojis like that.
like that, raise your hand, and then we'll be happy to pass the mic to you after that.
Raise your hand and then we'll be happy to pass the mic to you after that.
So Ravi, we'll start with you, and then George from Agoracom, you can go next.
Thanks.
Yeah, good evening, guys.
I missed the last week when I feel foolish because it was energy, but I did listen to
the recording.
So anyways, lovely to be back, Kyle and Jared, and my brother BJ is here.
Great to see you here.
And I think talk about writing books, I think BJ and I are also authors joining you.
Kyle, again, congratulations.
So I really look at emerging markets, really looking at India-US space.
I have a fantastic news I have to tell you that we're organizing.
For sure, I had a meeting with the Consul General of India yesterday in New York. So we will be organizing a high-level roundtable for investors
at the Indian consulate here in New York,
bringing together about 40.
We're trying to get Dale Ackman with another minister
to actually chair that event.
So I'll send you some more information
and maybe discuss more about it as it comes.
The other area I really look at is sunrise areas
such as green hydrogen. And that's why for me, energy, I don't know how I missed it. discuss more about it as it comes through. The other area I really look at is sunrise areas such
as green hydrogen. And that's why for me, energy, I don't know how I missed it. This week has been
very interesting for some very odd reason. I'm not a Meditech investor, but the whole MedTech
community from India who's looking to expand into US. So I've been dealing with five founders and
the amazing innovation. So that's interesting for me. was a learning week honestly great to be here awesome glad to have you back ravi
george from agoracom go ahead we'd love to hear your quick intro hey guys thanks for having me
love the energy this is my first ever uh venture cap and private investing spaces so i'm gonna
be a contributor but i I'm going to sit
back at the beginning like a horse in the Kentucky Derby and just kind of see what the pace is like.
10 seconds about me. I'm the pioneer of online investor relations for public companies in North
America. I've had about 500 clients primarily in the Canadian small cap space, have helped them
raise money to try and move their business along.
Where I'm going, though, is a massive arbitrage opportunity that exists because naked short sellers have really beat up small cap companies.
So we're creating a tokenized real world asset financing channel to help these companies finance themselves by tokenizing their assets
and getting away from
overly dilutive and naked short sellers on the equity side. So I'm really curious to hear what
a lot of you have to say there, but it's a multi-billion dollar opportunity, one of the
biggest arbitrages I've ever seen in my lifetime. Awesome. We appreciate that, George. George,
you're definitely a legend in this space. I know you're huge in the AI and actively using AI, so it'd be good to get your take on that here as well.
So just going to pass it around the panel here. BJ, if you want to give a quick intro, and then Christopher and Steven, quick 15, 30-second intro, who you are and kind of your connection to the VC space.
That'd be awesome. And then we can kick into the show.
Yeah, sure. And by the way, thank you for the invite.
And thank you, Ravi, for connecting us.
I've been listening to your weekly spaces since you introduced me to this group.
introduced me to this group. The short version of a very long story is I now, you know, have a
project in the startup space with one of my partners who is here, Stephen Hicks, if you can
pull him up and I'll talk about him in a second. You know, I started this journey in 2012 at a
small business on a university campus in downtown Toronto. And in 2012 to 13, it's like somebody
turned on a switch and the entire student body and the entire student, the entire faculty seemed
to lose their mind that year and go into this full postmodern victimization philosophical worldview
that we're in. And that actually inspired me to get involved in politics,
which I would suggest to anybody is always a mistake. But, you know, I thought I could make
a difference and, you know, might as well see how far we can go. At the same time, I started
producing podcasts. One was for the real life Jack Ryan, a seeking operator who became an intelligence analyst, one of the many people I met while in politics.
So I learned a lot about how the world really works on the political side and on the intel side and in the military side.
And, you know, I did a number of, let's call them things or events in politics that people don't know I was behind.
I used my creative entrepreneurial skill sets to try to move the needle into a little bit of a less crazy dynamic that we're in right now.
And that ultimately led to me being the spokesperson and the head of messaging at the Canadian Trucker Convoy,
if you remember a couple of years ago during the COVID insanity. I've since written a book
about it as well. And, you know, I'm kind of the techie entrepreneurial type that was always also
in Bitcoin. And I just landed in Florida two hours
ago because I'm going to be speaking at a Bitcoin conference in Tampa on Saturday this weekend.
As well, some of you might have not known any of this, seen some of my articles. I do
a little bit of journalism as a hobby and I write for a number of publications. I think I've had now seven articles in Zero Hedge. The last one being about Scott Adams, Grock Adams, a legacy
worth programming. I suggest you read it. You'll enjoy it. It's one of those upbeat pieces.
And so Stephen and myself and Michael Kimmelman, who is going to try to pop in for a little bit,
Stephen and myself and Michael Kimmelman, who is going to try to pop in for a little bit.
You financial guys will know him from the book about his experience called Confessions of a Wall Street Insider.
The three of us have put our minds together and tried to take this alternative media platform that I've been working on for the past several years and take it to the next step.
that I've been working on for the past several years and take it to the next step and build it
into a machine that could generate significant revenue, have some upside, and maybe if we're
lucky, have some positive effects to kind of wane down a little bit of the cultural extremism,
I like to call it, that we're seeing on all sides of the spectrum and get more and more of us who have not
been talking to us for years to finally engage and focus on our commonalities and our similarities
as opposed to our differences. So that is the short version of who I am.
Man, that would definitely seem like maybe a mid-sized version, but it's awesome that you're doing so much.
And that's why we're glad to have you on the show, because we love having people on the show who are in the thick of it and really doing what they talk about every single day.
So appreciate you.
Love having you here.
Christopher, I'm going to pass it to you and then Stephen for a quick 15- second intro, who you are, kind of your connection to the VC space.
Thanks for having me, Chris Deutsch.
I've been an angel investor since 1998 when I was very young.
And now I've done probably a little bit over 100 investments in early stage startups. And today I'm very focused on Chicago First Check
founding, First Check founders. And really, my whole thesis is find the best founders I can,
invest in them holistically forever, this company, company after, company after that.
Awesome. Glad to have you back. Stephen, go ahead.
Hi, my name is Stephen Hicks. I'm a philosophy professor, Chicago land area.
My connection here is with Benjamin, who's the lead entrepreneur in the new gray listed media company.
Mike and I are starting my connection to VC entrepreneurship and the crypto space is that I've been working for many years on the philosophy of money, the philosophy of entrepreneurship, lots of technical issues around money and entrepreneurship that people dialed into.
But there's a whole intellectual infrastructure underlying that, all of the moral debates, the political debates over them.
I attend to the arguments there. And as Benjamin is pointing out, things are rather extreme in that intellectual space.
And we're trying to bring a reasonable voice to those issues.
Awesome.
Glad to have you here.
We're always excited to have new speakers on the show.
For everybody in the audience, if you have any questions or any speakers you would like to have us have on the show at some time,
you can feel free to send us a DM or go ahead and comment that on this space as well. And before we kick it off, if you would
go ahead and click that purple pill button at the bottom that says 13, click that. Go ahead and give
this space a retweet and a like and a comment so this can reach more people. I'm sure there's going
to be some gems shared here today. So with that, I'm going to pass it to my co-host Kyle and kind of let him kick off our show and our first topic.
Yeah, Jared. Well, you know, I see this purple pill button is back. Did we get a reversion back
to the old UX? Yeah, I don't know. I just noticed that here as well. Emp, you might have more insight
on that.
I'm not fighting like three devices tonight. I'm fully focused here tonight. And I think that's what helped us out. That's probably what it was. All right. Well, I'm excited to dive into it today.
I think we have a really interesting group of panelists here. Really appreciate everyone being
here. As we've discussed, we do this every Thursday at 5pm Eastern and have some
fun discussions about private and now public markets as well. And I think that the cool thing
about where we are in the ecosystem and the market cycles right now is that we're starting to see
some of these private market assets transitioning into the public market. And I think actually
crypto does deserve a lot of credit for this because of the fact that you had so many of these early stage companies that actually began trading
way earlier than when you traditionally see a venture-based equity, right? In traditional
public market fundraising, or excuse me, private market fundraising, the pitch was kind of always,
yeah, we're going to have a five to seven year horizon where you're going to have to lock up your capital because we're going to be a private company.
And then maybe we'll get acquired or maybe we'll go public.
Whereas in the crypto space, we saw that they pretty much immediately started trading.
Maybe there were some lockups for an investor six months or something like that, but something that's pretty nominal.
And it really started to force this opportunity of longer or shorter liquidity cycles.
Because what we saw in the previous iteration of private markets transactions was the company
staying private longer and longer and longer.
You look at Stripe.
You look at some of these companies that have been super, super successful and just have
no desire to go public.
And perhaps we're starting to see that pendulum revert back the other way with some of these more successful companies coming to market.
I want to kick it off first. Obviously, I want the whole panel to feel free to jump in,
but I'll maybe try to throw some questions to different people. First off with George,
can you talk a little bit about your perspective on small and midsize companies that have gone
public? And if you're seeing trends
in the current market that maybe feel or look a little bit different than what you've been used
to across your career? Yeah. Hey, thanks for the question. I appreciate that. Well, one trend
that's definitely happening is small. I'm especially in the small cap space uh but i think this applies to mid caps also
they're they're getting their market caps pummeled for two reasons one the positive reason is you
know you got the big caps you got nvidia and and tesla and all these guys trading like small caps
there's so much volatility there and and massive gains being made. Look at what NVIDIA has done the last two, three years
that I think money's just getting concentrated
at the top end of market caps.
And that means these guys are struggling
to attract money, which makes a lot of sense.
And it doesn't help that you got 10-year treasuries
sitting at 4.5% right now
and have been like that for the last couple of years. on the flip side i kind of said in the intro i'm part of the save canadian
mining advocacy group that has monsters on that in that group like eric sprott keith newmeyer rob
mckeown because they've identified that naked short sellers are just pummeling the small caps,
especially in Canada.
And so what's happening is first they got pummeled and they're victims.
They're standing around like deer in the headlights because they don't know what to do.
But now they're starting to realize, okay, this is going to be around for a while.
This is going to be a structural problem and they can complain about it
and they can cry about it.
But what we've done is over the last few years,
I've gone to buy, struck a couple of really big partnerships
and I've made them aware over the UAE
that, hey, there's this massive arbitrage here.
ABC Widgets has a company that can be fairly valued
at 50 or $60 dollars or 100 million dollars
but it's marked cap is 20 million dollars and it can't raise any money without diluting the
hell out of itself and at first they didn't believe me about these massive arbitraisers
that there's no efficient markets that actually have those kind of inefficiencies you must be
getting something wrong or there must be a problem and when i when they finally saw it and believed it and now see the
opportunity well like anything in the universe that's too far off balance it has to revert to
the mean so you see all these small cap companies here's the big here's the big payoff all these
small cap companies saying you know what we've been sitting here uh stuck and playing within
the guard rails of the traditional equity markets exchanges, they're not doing us any favors.
We are now willing to go global and do token deals, tokenize our assets in order to advance our companies.
And I think you're going to see, I know we are going to make some massive moves.
We've announced some already and there are going to make some massive moves. We've announced some already. And there are going to be some other players.
But I think what's going to happen is these small caps and mid caps are going to go global to their benefit, even though they never intended on it.
But at the end of the day, it's going to be a big benefit because suddenly investors from around the world can be able to buy tokens in Georgecom.
As long as it's a real asset that's what it's
got to be it's got to be real assets we're not talking about you know uh speculative funding to
help george grow his widget business with no revenues but i think we're going to see a massive
move and that's going to be interesting for the crypto world because i think ravi was talking
about it um the crypto world when it comes to real world asset financing is limited right now to treasuries through BlackRock or really big real estate deals, which neither one of those are really growth oriented.
But small cap companies that have real assets are just waiting to be supercharged with some funding.
They represent companies that are regulated with guardrails and opportunity. So that's something really big,
a major shift that's going to happen in the next 12 months. And we've never seen that before. It's
exciting. That's a great point. That's a really, really great point. And it's a really exciting
place to be in the markets. I think on top of that, you're now starting to see
how a lot of small or midsize companies are now looking to add Bitcoin to their treasuries in
order to start generating more of that public interest and public excitement as maybe a tool
for investor relations on top of the investment strategy, right? I guess you could think about it
somewhat like, hey, we're going to invest money in investor relations to get people to
buy our stock. If we buy Bitcoin and it ends up ripping, then it's actually we could maybe return
money on that investment we just made from a marketing strategy and have our stock appreciate
and have the Bitcoin appreciate as well. So it's a very interesting strategy going on right now on that yeah well our one of our clients quantum biopharma qntm just announced
that uh their treasure is now up to five million dollars you have five million dollars of bitcoin
uh so you bring up a great point that uh they're they're starting to diversify diversify into the
crypto world and and find growth outside of the traditional, you know,
parking their money in the bank and collecting while they're waiting to spend it.
I see, Chris, you've got your hand up. I'd love to hear what your thoughts are there.
Yes, this is such a great point. If the audience members haven't watched Michael Saylor's video from, I'm going to make a guess,
December or so of last year that he made, it was about a three-minute video for the board of
Microsoft that had like 50 slides or something. It took me probably two hours to digest that three
minute because I just paused and read through everything. It was basically giving
a playbook for how Microsoft is effectively shirking their fiduciary responsibility by not
evaluating this opportunity and spending insane amounts of money on stock buybacks and
stock buybacks and dividends. And he said, just take a fraction of what you put into that,
put it into Bitcoin.
Like he gave all that, he gave the entire playbook. So it's just sort of interesting how you're starting to see more of these very small companies that are smaller companies that
are doing this. If you haven't seen that, I'll try to find it and throw it in the purple pill.
But it is absolutely worth taking a look. He's been really a good advocate and cheerleader for
companies putting into their treasuries.
That's an interesting perspective.
When you're thinking about it from an investment perspective, Chris, does this only extend
to public companies or would you see this as a green flag for an earlier stage startup?
No way.
Startups shouldn't have treasuries. I mean, that's, that's kind of antithetical to what they do. However,
if you're like a private, like mom and pop generational, like cash flowing business,
absolutely. Sure. Like there's just no reason not to do that. But, but if you're like, I mean,
I don't know, like the term startup can be malleable, but the way that I think startups is like first check.
And, and that's where I'm investing. Even if you're into like the growth rounds, I can't
imagine investors would be too excited about seeing their capital going into a treasury like
this. But this gets a little bit out of my pay grade when you
start talking about how gross stage companies manage their finances. My gut would say no,
but there certainly is an application for non-public companies as well, I would think.
Interesting. Yeah, no, I think you're right. I think that certainly in the earliest of stages,
you're definitely looking to have the company deploying the capital that you're investing
directly into growing their business.
But perhaps there could be an angle.
I personally don't know how I feel.
I probably would not be super interested in this.
But theoretically, I guess there could be an angle of like,
hey, we have 24 months of runway plus three months of runway in the form of Bitcoin or
something like that would probably be how that ends.
The challenge is just the volatility.
Like you have to hold it over a long enough period or else the volatility, like you really
could be at risk.
I have talked about this with some startups.
Over a long enough period, I think you're fine.
But startups are, as you said, like 24 months, I think it's a luxury.
You know, most investors aren't going to pay up for an 18-month runway.
They're a 24-month runway.
Like 15 to 18 is probably more to the ballpark.
But anyway, yes, like this is, we're getting a little bit out of my pay rate
in terms of talking about like treasury management.
George, I see your hands up.
Hey, I wanted to give you, I don't know if you guys saw this,
but this was huge news i saw
last night and if you've seen it tell me but i don't know if you guys heard that there's this
company i'd never heard of him before interactive strength they trade on the nasdaq under trnr
they're not a client of mine i don't know who they were until you know 12 hours ago
they got a market cap around eight million dollars but they announced the launch of a 500 million dollar
they're calling ai crypto treasury now you may think that might be some small cap guys trying
to do some great promotion but here's the thing they're doing it with fetch ai and they've already
got 55 million dollars committed to it from atw partners and dwf labs um So that is, that's a massive, when I saw that, I go, holy smokes, these guys are effectively
pivoting away from the fitness equipment market, or maybe they're going to, I think they're
going to incorporate AI agents as part of all this into the fitness equipment to create
customized exercises and all that training and all that.
But I just found that as a massive
headline and i don't know if any of you uh any of you on this call heard about this uh but that's
that i think that's a massive that's a massive shift and and there's and they're calling it
a bold shift in venture capital and corporate finance interesting yeah no it's a great point
i want to ping in steven i haven't heard from you do you have any thoughts on anything we've talked about so far or any ideas of things that you want to take in a different direction?
No, I'm happy to listen to this more technical discussion.
I, like many others who are coming at this from philosophy, intellectual infrastructure angle,
spend a lot of time just keeping up to speed on the technical development.
So that's it.
So maybe the follow up that I'll ask you there is like philosophically, how do you
feel, you know, just from a from an investment perspective around a company that maybe doesn't
have anything to do with crypto, buying a crypto to hold on their balance sheet?
Is that is that something that like, you know, makes sense to you with crypto buying a crypto to hold on their balance sheet is that
is that something that like you know makes sense to you because it's a hedge to maybe the the the
business model that they're doing does that make you uncomfortable um doing philosophically it's
a smart idea because the more people that play into it it kind of makes it more real um where
does your where's your perspective lay on that? Yeah, I don't think philosophy can speak to that.
That's a strategic or sometimes tactical judgment.
Each company is going to be making depending on its on its circumstances.
Where I'm interested is a is a step back.
So there are lots of people politically and morally opposed to Bitcoin and cryptocurrency in general.
And someone needs to take up those arguments in the cultural space and say that crypto is not merely a set of technical tools,
but that there are moral values involved about how we're going to interact with each other as trading partners,
raising capital, all of the issues of trust and honesty that underlie the ability of people to
do transactions at long distances planned for the future and so on. That's my turf.
Interesting perspective. BJ, I saw you threw up a couple of hundreds. Did you have any
things you agreed with there or any thoughts of your own on this topic or something else?
Well, I have lots of opinions on Bitcoin and I guess crypto in general.
You know, I first got into Bitcoin in 2015 and I just thought it was cool technology. I'm a techie, something new, blockchain.
And, you know, once you understand how money works and our debasement system, which is something
that I learned extensively about when I was a teenager after binge watching Bill Still and James Burke talk about the history of
money and central banking. I was primed for and, you know, so later in life, this thing,
Bitcoin gets on my radar and you think, oh, this is pretty cool. Maybe this will solve the problem.
I never imagined that I would be at the center of a global protest and be subjected to the government,
freezing all my bank accounts, all my assets, my credit cards, my lines of credit,
everything I had to transact. It's the equivalent, you know, me and Jordan Peterson were talking
about this privately. It was the equivalent of being banished from the town square in the Middle Ages and being left to rot and die
in the forest. That's the modern equivalent of it. So now I've switched from, it's just a cool
technology that is absolutely a vital insurance plan. I think that we all need because during
that period when all the funds we raise were confiscated by the government, and all our personal funds were frozen, it was the one unit of account that still functioned that the government couldn't suppress.
It was approximately $850,000 at the time.
I guess now close to $2 million.
It's the only money that we were able to distribute directly to the truckers that were there protesting.
So I've evolved from it's just a cool technical tool to we need this, especially in our age of everybody being a little bit crazy and needs to calm down. It's exactly what we need. And
obviously, there's the investment, you know, opportunity from it. You know, I've been begging
people in my private life, friends and family, since Bitcoin was just under $2,000, begging them,
please buy Bitcoin, buy a little bit of Bitcoin. No, it's a high flyer.
No, I don't understand. You know, all the way through 5,000, 10,000, 15,000, 50,000, 70, the
same excuses. And so that's what I found. What seems to really resonate with people is my
experience and the importance of having money off the system just as an insurance policy.
and the importance of having money off the system just as an insurance policy.
Actually, just a quick point to that. You talk about how Bitcoin can play a role in treasury
or finance. Again, it's kind of ironic. I'm a startup investor, but I'm not really a finance
guy. I'm really trying to become, I'm really more on the qual side than the quant side, if you will.
trying to become. I'm really more on the qual side than the quant side, if you will.
When you invest early, you're more like evaluating the people. But I could see,
and I would imagine some people are familiar with this new model they're talking about a lot now,
BitBonds. I could see a scenario where if you're really able to borrow at like 1%,
like they're talking about this more now for government entities, like US government,
municipalities, etc.
But I could see a scenario where people go, oh, my God, I can borrow at 1%.
Like, OK, you know, let's figure out how to do bit bonds more for smaller businesses.
That could be an alternative methodology for financing early stage startups.
Maybe. I don't know. That's way, way, way far out.
But it certainly
is something that I think could be really interesting. We'll see what all the BitBond,
if it's just hype or if something really comes out of it.
Interesting perspective. Interesting perspective. And so for anybody here on this panel,
let's talk a little bit about how innovation know, how innovation flows. Like, like,
do you guys have the same level of passion and excitement for some of the emerging markets,
whether that's the, you know, AI space in a variety of ways, whether that is, you know,
we just saw Neuralink just raised a huge monster around 650 million on top of, you know, obviously
XAI just raised.
So Elon just continues to pull in the big bucks.
Are you guys seeing these same innovations on a similar level to the crypto Bitcoin cycle?
Or do you think that these are really inevitably just going to be pennies on the dollar with
respect to the impact that Bitcoin has on public and private
markets. Anybody have any thoughts there? I've got a couple thoughts. Go for it.
I'm telling you what I'm loving and I'm really doing a deep dive into. So going back to what you're saying about that massive raise,
I think a lot of us are starting to get locked out.
And Chamath had said this and a couple of other guys had said that
it's like the top, the top Kortov VC firms are giving access to the top deals
and everyone else kind of getting the scraps.
And that's why Chamath said earlier this week,
it's becoming nearly impossible
to make money as a vc i'm not sure if any of you guys saw that uh post he put up on x but it was
pretty detailed and when when someone like him says that that's interesting so i've been doing i've
been doing deep dives into things like um ai agents on these platforms like the virtual protocol
agents on these platforms like the virtual protocol where you can go on the virtual protocol
and someone has uh has put up um uh an AI agent that has real some have no utility and they're
just you know they are what they are but a lot of these have real utility and you can buy them at
very early stages and there are some big gains there and these aren't meme coins you know this
is not pump fun and meme coin style investing, but these are some real AI agents out there. And I think that's fascinating because
when I was trying to explain to somebody, I said, imagine you could invest in Google,
but instead of waiting for the IPO, when IPO to 80 or $90, or instead of being able to invest in the VC round, if you knew somebody, uh,
in San Fran and could get into a couple of VC rounds, this is like potentially investing
in Google at the garage level when Sergey and Larry were running it out of their garage.
And, uh, I'm, I'm seeing some incredible, I think, I think the rise of AI agents and real ones that have utility
that are doing real work, that are generating revenue and a return, is we're at the very
beginning of that.
And I think we're going to look back, almost timestamp it, but I think we'll look back
three and four years from now by the end of this decade and say, holy moly, I could have
been buying some high quality AI agents at pennies on the dollar back in 2025 and 2026 and uh so that's
where i'm i'm putting a lot of my attention and i love the fact that you can get returns
quickly i'm not looking for fast returns but it's liquid right away as opposed to lock up your money
for seven years with you know some vc fund I'm not sure if any of you guys are
looking at these or not. If you are, I'd love to hear your feedback. Yeah. If anybody else has any
thoughts there, definitely put your hand up. But I also kind of wanted to take that same question
and then maybe dive a little bit earlier into the timeline. Chris, another question I have for you
is kind of just one that I keep thinking about because of how easy it is to build products these days with some of these tools and things like that.
Like is pre-product, pre-revenue investing dead?
Or like how has that changed now that it's just so much easier for individuals to spin up and build products and prototypes and build your audience through social media to get distribution?
Like, shouldn't we kind of, are you finding that you're holding founders to a different
level of expectation because of that and potentially viewing it as a red flag if they are unable
to get those things off the ground before they're raising capital?
Or are you seeing it not to be a problem?
Would love to hear your perspective there.
It's a really good question.
There's a couple of caveats here.
The first is I do not look for companies outside of Chicago, although I invest in some.
And those usually come in from like an introduction from somebody I trust or what have you.
And that's an important distinction, one.
And then two, I'm also in a season now,
which will probably last about another year or two until I start getting some of my very large,
hopefully, still, you know, still waiting, but some of my very large investments to actually
exit return capital. I'm in materially a pause. I am making investments, but I'm not making a lot
of them. And I'm certainly not advertising that. I say I'm not looking. So, and that's been really materially since this huge push around say that. But also Chicago startups, like even at first
check, a lot of them already have traction. They already have products. Like these guys are so
gritty and so scrappy. And that's what really got me hooked on looking at startups in Chicago,
dating back to 2014, right after I first moved back here. And so that has quickly become my
thesis because we have founders that are
building companies that have revenue and customers before they're even taking in capital. So I'm not
a great person to ask that question because I've been doing that forever anyway. But I would say,
yeah. I mean, if we just go to the basic concept of lean methodology, you should be getting out
and testing your hypothesis for
the problem you're trying to solve as easily and quickly and leanly as possible. And now,
if you're not doing that with all the tools that exist out there, that's a pretty big question.
It's just like a flag. Why haven't you gone out there and actually tested some of these?
Unless it's really complicated. I've got a new, I'm building a quantum chip or something. That's
a different kind of animal, like deep tech kind of stuff.
But short of that, like, you know, you really should be able to at least get some kind of inkling from the market.
Is this something that people want?
So I know that was kind of like a non-answer.
Yeah.
Basically, stay at your day job, buy a subscription to Cursor, start hacking out your product while you figure
out your traction, and then come back to me when you need growth capital.
100%. It's not even growth capital. You absolutely should be doing this nights and
weekends. This should not be like quit your day job and go try to raise your first check to pay
your salary. That's crazy. This should all be stuff that you're doing on the side,
nights and weekends. I mean, it's, it's definitely like, in fact,
there's a fund. What was the guy's name from who founded a product on who
started like, like Ryan Hoover, you know, like it's exactly that idea.
You should not be doing these things like, like zero to one in like,
I just quit my day job. Do that on the side. There's no reason not to because most startups fail and a huge way to hedge that
risk is to actually start getting some traction and getting some early signs of product market
fit. Awesome. Awesome. I like that perspective. I think it makes a lot of sense to me.
And to keep the conversation going, I want to involve Stephen back into the conversation.
I did a little bit of research into some of your background in entrepreneurship around the Center for Entrepreneurial Education and some of the other things.
I would love to hear a little bit about your perspective on the industry as a whole and any thoughts you have around entrepreneurship and the future of work.
Yeah, that's a great question.
My view is that as a longtime college professor
and someone who's given talks at universities around the world,
the big gulf that we are facing right now
is going to be between those who get Bitcoin
and those who don't,
those who get the future of robotics and those who don't, those who get the future of robotics and those who don't,
those who get AI and those who don't. There's going to be a huge cultural shift of younger
people who are coming up. And for whatever reason, bad schooling, bad parenting, just personal
laziness or whatever, they don't take advantage of mastering these
skills and the cognitive mindset that goes with it when they are young. And so they get shunted
into various economic dead ends. And then as a result of that, they feel left out. They start
to feel resentful. They start to feel they are falling behind. And that then becomes a powder keg culturally and a powder keg politically.
And then on the other side, there are those who are excited by all of these new technologies.
They see them as potential growth tools for their personal development, for their own economic development.
And they get the right education, the right parenting,
the right encouraging that takes them in that direction and that accelerates them down the path.
So we have a lot of talk about the economic gap between rich and poor, the skills gap between those who can do and those who cannot do and also the motivational gap between those who see new opportunities
and they've got some risk tolerance and they see that as exciting as an adventure versus those who
see them as threats as something that is going to just keep them in even if it's not a true
description of their personal situation they nonetheless feel themselves to be there along with the
technical infrastructure and the financial infrastructure that people in
this space are already quite comfortable with. How do we bridge those cultural
gaps so the whole thing doesn't explode and bad politics doesn't undercut or
even blow up the accomplishments that you guys are
working on. Yeah, it's a great point. It's a really, really good point and a fascinating insight.
I see we also have Mike here on stage. Mike, thanks for being here. Really, really appreciate
your hopping up. If you want to do a quick intro
on yourself, and I don't know if you caught any of what Stephen shared, but if you have
any other thoughts there too, feel free to rattle it off. We've got about 15 minutes.
I want to make sure you have some time to chat as well.
Yeah, let me just build off with Stephen first.
I can't hear him, by the way.
Could you come a little closer to the microphone? I can hear you very, very quietly.
How's that?
Any better?
Perfect.
Yeah, perfect.
All righty.
Yeah, I just had to activate the Mac.
That works.
Steven had some very prescient points.
And I think what you're also seeing is that cultural inversion and that elimination of
credentialism, which has existed forever, where you used to have
that career path, that ladder path, and you had to go to college. And the people that went to the
good colleges can turn their nose up at the people that didn't. And the employers everybody wanted to
be at only recruited from them. We've seen a complete fragmentation on that point, almost to
the point where it's now being inverted. And you see, there was an article,
I think, in Business Insider, and forgive me for admitting that I read Business Insider,
but somebody mentioned the Palantir Fellowship, similar to the Teal Fellowship. These are
the highest and greatest aspirational roles these days versus going to Harvard or going to Stanford
of aspirational roles these days versus going to Harvard or going to Stanford because it's
true builders trying to build things that don't exist and it's not a meaningless paper credential
that most people are starting to realize even if college had sort of had reasonable expenses,
it still wouldn't be the be all end all anymore. It's still not the path to go if you want
to build, if you want to make money, if you want to accelerate everything you're trying to do,
you have to try to look at these alternative paths. And then you add in, of course, the economic
and financial disaster that college is, you know, and I'm going through it myself. You know, I forgot
what Stephen called it, but it's not laziness. It's not
stubbornness. In this case, it's a stubborn ex-wife who's deciding, but I'm sending a kid
to college, two of them actually at 92K a year. And I have this constant conversation with them
where it doesn't matter what you're doing at college if you're not building your entire
skill stack while you're there. And of course, college, networking is important.
We get jobs often based on who we know rather than what we know.
So that networking aspect should be amped up.
But at the same time, if you're not doing the AI stuff,
if you're not doing the self-study,
if you're not developing the emotional intelligence,
the life skills, the public speaking,
the entire skill stack that people like Scott Adams talk about, there's no job for you when
you come out if you're not highly technical. And even if you're highly technical, there's no
guarantee anymore either. People used to say, well, I'm computer science. At least I could code.
We've all seen what's happened to that over the last year. So you really do have to be a self-starter,
build your own skill stack, realize the complete acceleration and
democratization of new career paths, new career ladders that are existing outside of that
traditional system. And if you're not taking advantage of that, you're going to be left
behind and left behind more and more every year as these tools get built out. So that's just
responding to Stephen. Real quick, I was an M&A lawyer
for one of the big firms on Wall Street
and lateraled over to finance
and worked on Wall Street in different roles
from analyst, portfolio manager,
eventually ran my own fund,
got that up to about $250 million,
semi-retired, and that's a much longer story
than we have time for here, but wrote a book about it called Confessions of a Wall Street
Insider and then got dragged down the crypto rabbit hole by Charlie Shrem in 2015. He was
president of the Bitcoin Foundation. I was a sort of hedge fund, tradified douchebag,
and was obviously very skeptical. But after about a
year of learning and talking and attending conferences and reading, bought in full hook,
line, sinker to Bitcoin and have been doing advisory and investment in that space since
about 2016. And as you know, with crypto, a lot of boom bust. So during some of the
busts, I also went back to doing advising, private to
public stuff, venture capital stuff for things that I covered while I was on Wall Street, like
healthcare and deep tech. So I'm glad to be here. Very sorry I was late, but happy to be here now.
No problem at all. I see that your perspective has really gotten the team excited here. So, BJ, I want to give you an opportunity to hop in and share any thoughts.
talent stack, which I was always a believer of, even when I was a kid. That's why I can rebuild
an engine. I can build a computer. I can upgrade a diamond. I know how to do accounting and how to
run a business because you just love to go through life learning stuff. Whereas my brother, who I
grew up with, runs one of the biggest pension funds in Canada. He's a CFA. So he's always kind of aware tangentially of the
finance industry and how things work. And he's very much more of a credentialist. I'm the opposite
of that. And so my entire life, there's been these two worlds that I've been seeing, not colliding,
but working side by side. And right now for me, for example, is a very special moment because this is the first
time ever in history, and hopefully this will be a moment of history, where I'm on stage with
two of my partners, one of whom is one of the most prolific and influential philosophers of our day around the world.
And Mike, who's written one of the greatest books I've read in the past 10 years.
If you like the movie Wall Street and you like the TV show Law and Order,
you will not be able to put his book down.
So for me, this is a very special moment to have the three
of us together publicly for the first time ever. They don't teach you that in Harvard. Those are
the moments that make you to aspire to do great things. If you become fortunate enough to be a
participant in moments of history, that is such a driving force in this entrepreneurial experience that
I don't hear anybody ever talk about, which is odd. But I think it's something that could
use a lot more credit. Sorry to get a little, if that sounds a little woo-woo,
but I think that's important given our circumstances right now.
Hey, well, look, I mean, that's kind of the juice of the private market investing space.
I feel like you need to be in touch with the spiritual world to really understand what's going to make a startup successful seven years from now or something like that.
So I actually think that a lot of what you're saying is important to understand some of those components.
Christopher, what's going on?
Hey, yeah, so I
really agree. Pretty much
everything that I heard, I really agree with. I would say
there's a caveat
that I would throw into that.
I don't know if it's close to
but it's pretty near
worthless because most of what you
can learn, you can learn online now,
self-teach, you can save a lot of money. There are other ways to acquire that knowledge. And
frankly, a lot of the stuff that they're teaching in school isn't really that valuable. So the
reason I say the caveat, I was just back at my alma mater this last weekend for a reunion with
a bunch of friends. And the people that you meet at a
relatively top tier school, you're going to keep those relationships forever. That's one.
Two, I'm going to make a strong argument for a liberal arts education. We are not teaching
ourselves just proactively how to be good communicators, how to think critically,
be problem solvers, to the same
degree that I think you can in a top tier liberal arts school. And so if you're not going to go to
school, make sure you don't shirk on those pieces. Make sure that you learn how to be a good,
effective communicator. You learn problem solving. You learn these other soft skills. I can't remember,
maybe it was Mike who's talking about it. That stuff's really important, but there's really no way to replace the relationship building.
It's not networking. I want to be clear. Networking is very transactional. This is
relationship building. The relationships that you will develop in an elite four-year school,
you will have forever. And those don't go away. And those open doors and accelerate
the process of you getting to where you want to go a million times
faster if you approach that with authenticity. So if you apply to a lot of schools and one is
sort of a mid to low tier state school, you get in there, but you don't get into whatever,
Ivy, little Ivies, I probably would pass and just like invest that capital and your time
more effectively. I think that that's like probably what most people are doing that today.
I would say most young kids are at least thinking about that, but I think that's definitely be the
trend for the future. Yeah, no. And Robbie, great to see you back. Do you have any thoughts around
thoughts around self-learning, self-education, and kind of empowerment?
self-learning, self-education and kind of empowerment?
Maybe not, but it also is a good opportunity to flick it over Jared. I don't know if you're
available, but you have a name of self-taught success. It feels like it's right up your alley.
What are your thoughts around everything that we've been talking about?
Yeah, you know, the name I mentioned at the beginning kind of stems from the aspect of all the information you're looking for.
It's readily available and it's just up to you to go find it.
So I definitely think the world of traditional education as we know it has definitely changed.
And I definitely think there's other routes to go.
And I think technology is a massive player behind that.
Just, I mean, even if we just want to talk
from a simple perspective of Google and YouTube,
you know, I always say that I got my college education
from Google and YouTube.
And so I think that's changing a lot.
I think that will continue to change.
I think about, you know, what would it have been like in junior high and high school if I had
Grok to help me out on my homework? So I think we're going to continue to see changes in that
industry. And what we see now, I think it's just going to be further along down the road 10,
20 years from now as these different AI agents that I know George is
well-versed in continue to be more prominent.
Interesting perspective. And Ravi, we've got four minutes. I want to hear your thoughts.
No, sorry, guys. It's been such terrible driving from New Jersey to Westchester. But just to say
that, you know, on this point, first of all all i want to thank both of you and the wolf team because my learning curve after joining these weekly uh you know uh spaces has
been fantastic and i was telling somebody this morning in india i said you know you're missing
out uh you know youtube is great everything is great but you're missing out if you do if you
really want to know what's happening and hear it from the horse's mouth join the x-paces in fact i send this to a lot of folks in the indian community because of course
because of timing uh folks are sleeping in asia but maybe we may want to look at at least a month
once a month do it in the morning time that will really bring a lot of folks there and second
really you know we have enough evidence right with androgygy, which is our learning. The more we discuss, the more we reflect, the more we learn.
And I think what I really like about, you know, this is that we have discussion, and discussion means more registering.
YouTube has been fantastic in terms of, you know, but it's one-way traffic, right?
We are listening, you know, but here we get to discuss, debate.
You know, that's been one of the best things to say that.
Awesome perspective.
And Vijay, take it away.
Yeah, just to add to what Ravi was saying, and then I got a question,
is when he talks about the engagement,
that part of what's causing the chaos in the world
is we switched from unidirectional media to bidirectional media, the ability for anybody to respond and to respond publicly.
on wanting to control the message.
Unfortunately, the cat's out of the bag,
and that's no longer entirely possible,
which is why you see so many attempts for influencers,
platforms, et cetera, to be captured by investment
from certain entities tied to politics.
So I think that's a big part of what's causing
some of the rifts in in the culture and actually
i'll go back to something that steven said and i think it was was one of the the earlier podcasts
that glenn beck launched a couple of years ago just after we started open college together
and he was asked by glenn beck you know how do you feel or what are your concerns about the instability of the world and how people respond to media?
I'm paraphrasing. I don't remember the exact verbiage, but that's generally what he was asking and how social media is disruptive to the modern world.
And I remember this. I've mentioned this in a couple of speeches.
Sorry, Stephen, I didn't tell you, but I reference you quite a bit.
What he suggested was, well, it's new technology.
And new technology, not only does it evolve, but society has to evolve over time to understand how it's going to fit in.
And, you know, building skepticism takes time and experience. And we're
just in an era where we have this new means of communication that bi-directional media talked
about. And people don't know what is real and what is not. And you know what? Over time,
we'll get used to it and we'll figure it out. And I think that's why we're going to see some of the chaos over time subside.
That's what I was trying to do with messaging around the trucker convoy to try to bring people together.
I spoke with as many people on the political left as I did with people on the political right and libertarians.
And we made it open for everybody.
And there was such a desire
and thirst for that and I think that's where we're going which is why we're trying to do
this this media project together now my quick question for all of you because Mike has brought
this up a couple of times as we've been kind of strategizing and working on our deck and our
financials and stuff one of the things he suggested is, you know, perhaps token,
trying to tokenize partial ownership or certain shares of the company or
whatever. And we haven't come to any conclusion yet.
We haven't come to decision what we're going to do.
I guess it just basically boils down to whichever team gets involved in
pre-seed, seed and series A.
But I'm just curious your thoughts.
If you're as this space is evolving and you see startups coming down the pipeline, how important is having a tokenized vehicle for, you know, for verification of ownership?
How important is that now?
And do you think that's going to be more important in the future?
Because we're trying to make that decision right now ourselves.
Great, great points.
Fascinating discussion.
And I wish we could keep going.
Unfortunately, I do have plans now that I need to run to.
So we are going to close our space.
We do this from 5 to 6 p.m. Eastern every single Thursday talking
venture capital. And sometimes we talk about quantitative stuff, about the markets and
pricing and valuations. Sometimes we talk about methodologies, what's going on. And sometimes
like today, we talk more metaphysical about what's going on and the mindset that one needs
to have to approach this space and to approach this
market.
So it was a fantastic discussion, one that I really, really enjoyed.
Just last week, we had a deep dive into the nuclear industry and uranium and then a very
different conversation.
But that's the beauty of startups.
It's the beauty of early stage stuff is that you're really going to cover the map in terms
of opportunities, in terms of topics.
I really want to thank all of our panelists here today.
It was a tremendous discussion.
You're all welcome back in future discussions.
And everybody, please tune in next week for the same discussion and conversations.
And if you want to follow Wolf Financial, they do all kinds of Twitter spaces for 12-plus hours a day about trading markets, about everything, about the stock market.
They have a sports channel.
They've got a Web3 channel.
There's so many conversations going at any time,
crushing it, talking about everything to do
with financial markets.
So with that, I want to give Jared the opportunity
to thank the crowd and sign off.
And then we'll kick it over to Em to close out the channel.
Awesome.
Appreciate everybody for joining us.
Like Kyle said, we're back here every Thursday, 5 p.m. Eastern.
Different VC and private equity conversations.
I want to thank our panel for joining us today.
So feel free, everybody in the crowd, to give our speakers a follow.
Stay up to date.
They put out a lot of great content about what they're doing in the markets.
And so that's a great way to continue learning from them. And so I know we'll have George from Agoracon back on next week and have another great
conversation as well. So, Amp, I'll pass it to you. I want to thank everybody again.
Our usual great show. Great job, Kyle, Jared. Appreciate you co-hosting the show every Thursday.
Big shout out to the panel up here as well.
I would encourage everyone to go in and give them all a follow.
Check out their other content, both on and off of this app.
And definitely check out, like Kyle was saying, check out our full schedule.
It's the pinned tweet right here on Wolf Financial.
I've personally been live since 9 a.m. Eastern.
So nine straight hours today of content.
And we're going to do it all over again tomorrow.
9 a.m. Eastern will be open over on the Wolf Trading Channel to get you ready for that opening bell of the stock market.
A lot of conversations across a variety of topics all throughout the week and all throughout the family of networks here at Wolf.
Appreciate everyone. Hope you had a great Thursday wherever you're at in the world.
Thanks for tuning in.
