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VENTURE CAPITAL & PRIVATE INVESTING
Recorded: May 29, 2025 Duration: 1:01:09Space Recording
Short Summary
The latest discussion in the crypto space highlights significant growth indicators, including all-time highs in market activity and substantial fundraising efforts in the Indian startup ecosystem. As partnerships between the U.S. and India strengthen, crypto enthusiasts are encouraged to explore emerging trends and investment opportunities that could reshape the industry.
Full Transcription
Thank you. Hello, hello everybody and welcome to the venture capital and private investing spaces.
We're just getting this thing spun up here really quickly.
Bear with us as we bring Jared on stage and get our speakers on here.
I'm going to make a quick post, letting everybody know that we are officially live.
And let me get to that now.
Before you jump into it, how's Vegas? How's the conference?
Give me a quick little update as we get everyone in here.
It's good, man.
It's 2 p.m. here, so I wasn't used to the time zone difference.
I actually missed a call that I had scheduled earlier today because I thought I was two hours time zone different.
And as it turns out, I'm actually three.
But the conference has been really, really cool.
I mean, it's just it's pretty crazy.
You know, I've been in the crypto industry for quite some time now as an operator and as an investor.
And so it's just it is surreal in a a lot of ways that we have, you know,
presidential vice presidents, we've got all kinds of senators and regulators and, you know,
billionaire business people that are pulling up to these events. I think that I just remember back
to the days 2013, 14, 15, where it was a very different crowd at events like this. And so it's pretty
surreal, but it's pretty exciting to be in this crowd. So I've had a lot of fun here this trip.
It's all-time highs right now, so obviously it's a fun time to be at a conference like this.
I can't help but feel a little bit like a little nervous trepidation just on the idea that like, you know, we are at all time highs.
Everybody's all excited.
You know, these are generally start to be those times where you start to think about what happens if the steam runs out of the ship.
But there's still so much bullish sentiment.
So I think I'm kind of sitting in that, you know, one foot in, one foot out kind of feel right now, Jared, to be honest with you.
All good vibes.
But, you know, when everything's good,
that's when the chair gets pulled out from under you in the crypto space.
It seems like it's much different.
The last one in Nashville, when was that?
Did we run up into that one as well,
or we were a little bit lower pricing back then?
You know, that was, what, one year ago.
I think they do this every year.
So it was, I mean.
It was like in the middle of that big consolidation that we had.
It wasn't like a bad time, but it definitely wasn't the euphoric time that we're at now.
But it's always fun to hang out with the Wolf Financial and the Wolf Web 3 teams.
You know, we've got everybody here, Cade and Sam
and Gov and everybody.
Ace Kid's been here.
It's been a lot of fun to hang out
with all the boys that we talk so much
in virtual lands
to spend some time in person. Always
a great time to see
everybody. The reception has been
wild. There's just so many people.
That being said, it's Vegas Vegas I personally prefer a different location just because the traffic's pretty tough
and and they're they're all the places aren't quite as connected or conveniently connected as
like a place that has a bunch of bars for happy hours or things like that so I think has made it
a slightly less efficient conference. But Vegas is Vegas.
And if you're into that, it's-
Vegas is Vegas.
That's a draw for some people.
For others, it's a mixed review, of course.
But yeah, thanks for the update out there, Kyle.
Hope you're having a great time.
I know you are with a lot of our Wolf crew out there as well.
But I do want to jump into it a little bit here.
We are here for the Venture Capital and Private Investing Show here
on Wolf Financial, 5 p.m. Eastern every Thursday. And a great, great series that we're running here.
I've got Kyle and Jared, Self-Taunt Success, my two co-hosts up here. I want to give them a chance
to introduce themselves slightly for maybe some new listeners out there. And then we do have
Ravi and Jonathan up here on stage as well. So Kyle, I'll let you kick us off a little bit and we'll get over to Jared for some introductions.
All right. All right. All right. Welcome, everybody.
This is our venture capital and private investing Twitter spaces or X spaces.
I still can't get over that.
But, you know, I think that we do this every week, 5 p.m. Eastern Time on Thursdays,
talking about the private markets.
Because so many people hop in on the Mean Coin Casino, or in my case here in Vegas, the real casino.
But I think the real opportunity to hit those crazy outstanding gains is in investing in early stage companies.
And this is a tale as old as time here in the spaces realm.
This is a tale as old as time here in the spaces realm.
But getting involved in these early stage companies not only can provide a fascinating
return profile, but it is the most, I think, inspiring and impactful investment strategy
because you are directly contributing to the success and development of new things in the
industry.
So my name is Kyle Sondland.
I am a venture capitalist.
I am a founder and a syndicator. I've done everything in between. I've raised money for my own businesses.
At this point, 10 plus million in my own companies. I've deployed significantly more than that into
deals as a general partner and as a venture fund manager myself. And I've done some syndications
around collecting money with other people
to deploy into deals, whether that's buyouts or syndications or SPVs,
things like that.
So I really care deeply about capital markets and how all these things work.
And so I love hosting this show,
talking about all the amazing things going on in venture capital.
But of course, I don't do it alone.
I have my co-host here, Jared.
Self-taught Success.
Would love for you to introduce yourself as well.
Awesome.
Appreciate that, Kyle.
Vegas definitely looks like a good time on the timeline right now.
And I'm glad everybody's having a good time there.
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 up to you to seek it out, find it, learn from it, and go apply it on the path to your goals.
And that's kind of the goal of my content and what I do.
As far as business-wise and kind of my connection to the VC space,
I help startups, whether that's companies or the founders of those companies,
especially in the finance niche, private equity niche,
anywhere from pre-seed, pre-revenue,
all the way up to publicly traded companies, small and mid-cap stock.
So that's kind of my connection.
I help them run ads and help them grow their brands on X so they can market to more people and make more money.
And that's kind of my background here.
Oh, yeah. We also have a fantastic set of panelists here for a good discussion. So,
Jared, do you want to lead the introductions off of some of the panelists and we can get
into a good conversation after that? Absolutely. So today we have Jonathan,
Ravi, and Zhu. If we just want to go in that order, give a quick intro on yourself, quick 30 seconds, who you are, what you do, kind of your connection to the VC space.
Zhu, I know we've been trying to connect for quite some time, so I'm glad to have you on here as well.
on here as well.
So then I'll let you kick it off, and then we'll go to Ravi and Zhu.
and then we'll go to Ravi and Zhu.
Awesome, sounds good.
Well, great to be here.
And I think this is my second time participating.
So great to be back.
Yeah, I'm the general partner and founder
of a venture capital firm called Space VC.
We do pre-seed frontier tech investing.
So we're investing anywhere
from the first $500,000 to 2 million
into deep tech startups, very early stage, oftentimes ideation stage that we've invested across space, defense, energy, quantum, manufacturing, industrials.
And yeah, today I'm calling in from Los Angeles where I'm visiting a bunch of companies.
So great to be on the call with you guys.
Awesome. That's pretty awesome. the call with you guys. Awesome.
That's pretty awesome.
Glad to have you on.
Good conversation last time.
We were also excited to keep that rolling this time.
Ravi, go ahead.
Hey, guys.
It seems to be a regular show here, which is great.
Brilliant show everybody who's listening.
Kyle and Jared do the fantastic thing with, of course, Wolf being the host uh so i really look at the india u.s opportunity i'm kind of uh very much a very narrow focus for the next six months because i think it's interesting with the fta
coming through there are lots of back and forth we had the foreign secretary of india back yesterday
in dc so hopefully things will work out. Do not get too confused with the
noise coming out of DC. I think it's going to look very good. So really, I look at the
VC space in food tech, agri-tech investments, but also look at AI smart manufacturing.
And, you know, my background has been on clean tech, water tech. So that's another area that I look at.
You know, this week was very interesting.
There were at least five to six, you know,
five, I would say startup and five companies from India
who are really seriously looking at now setting up shop
and different locations here.
So it's a very interesting time for me.
I've not seen that happen for 20 years.
So definitely something's working out very clearly.
I'm also putting together a New York summit for those of you interested to really learn
about India-US opportunity.
So I'll probably DM Jared and Kyle and others about it.
So that's something that we are putting together here.
I've already spoken about it the last two times about a possibility of doing something
in D.C.
Hopefully, once all this crazy thing falls, you know there's no calm down so that'll
be interesting so very happy to be here thank you everybody awesome always great to have you
you're a great dad to the show zoo let's hear your hear your intro jared uh yeah pleasure to be here
everyone thanks wolf guy jared again for the best vPE space on this platform. So thank you for that.
Just a quick background on myself.
I go by Zoo.
I did management consulting in Saudi, Emirati, English markets.
Did a lot with nonprofits, creative industries, and more.
I'm fluent in English, French, Spanish, and Arabic.
And I'm founder at Bluebird Invest.
We do cross-border deals.
We had to already raise
multiple millions in debt equity financing and honestly we're sector agnostic. We do deals
starting maybe six million to three hundred million dollars and we continue facilitating
investments in Latin America, USA, Europe, Middle East, Africa and Asia. Thank you for the time and
looking forward to have the session today.
Awesome.
Appreciate everybody for joining on.
And if you're new to the space and new to the audience, we're glad to have you. We host this show every Thursday, 5 p.m. Eastern, Talk VC.
Bring up different guests from different sectors.
Next week, we'll be having a show specifically on the energy market.
So that'll be a nice topic that we haven't really dove into yet. And if you have any questions,
feel welcome to click that purple pill button on the bottom of your screen,
leave a comment on the space. And we'd be happy to answer that to any questions you have,
whether you're brand new to the space or you're more advanced in the space.
We'd love to get to those questions.
So to kind of start off or show an aspect that we'd like to do is just kind of catch
up on recent events from the VC and private equity world over the last week.
And one aspect we have not talked about, which I'm not necessarily sure that any of us are
super experts from the consumer side,
but maybe on the business side we have some insight to share, is on cosmetics.
So Emp, if you're able to pin that Haley Bieber tweet that I sent, that would be great.
If you guys are not familiar, Haley Bieber, which is Justin Bieber's wife, Alec Baldwin's daughter. She just sold, I believe
yesterday, equity stake in her company, Rode, her skincare line for $1 billion. That's not a
straight cash deal. I want to say it was like six or 800 million cash with 200 millions of incentives.
And she is staying on as creative lead of the company.
But what I thought was really interesting about this, and maybe I'm just, you know, a guy who knows nothing about makeup.
But it seems like a lot of big brand influencer celebrity types have huge makeup lines.
I know it's a massive industry. I know it's a massive industry.
I know it's a massive business.
But these valuations are nuts.
So I'm just going to read a couple to you, a couple of these different companies.
Haley Bieber, her company, Rode, $1 billion valuation, $212 million in yearly revenue.
Rihanna with Fenty Beauty, $2.8 billion valuation, $582 million
revenue. Kylie Cosmetics, Kylie Jenner, $1.2 billion valuation. Kim Kardashian, KKW Beauty,
$1 billion valuation. Selena Gomez, Rare Beauty, $2 billion valuation. Lady Gaga is doing $200
million a year in revenue. Jessica Alba's company, the Honest company, actually went public at a $1.4 billion valuation.
So really interesting to see just the aspect of a large brand being able to push such massive numbers in this industry.
I just kind of wanted to open it up to general discussion.
I just kind of wanted to open it up to general discussion.
What do you guys think about the Haley Beaver acquisition and how are these celebrities able to so quickly get such a massive market share in this business?
Haley Baldwin, who you see the pinned tweet here, $1 billion acquisition in three years.
So I'll start with Kyle and then we'll pass it around to the panel if you guys want to hop in.
Feel free to raise your hand at any time you guys want to chat.
Yeah, this is just such a fascinating industry.
And I have a little bit of insight here just because the first venture round that I ever raised for my first startup where I was CEO of was the main LP, the family office we were working with in Miami.
Actually, his company where he made a lot of his money was in this industry.
It was in cosmetics.
And I remember this was back in, this had to have been probably 2017 or something like that.
And they had done over a billion dollars of acquisitions of companies
doing this exact process where they would take a beauty cosmetics company, they would then pair
it with an influencer and then they would bring in economies of scale to ramp up the sales on the
process and bring down the cogs of production and then would sell the brand off to
L'Oreal or Sephora or Estee Lauder or one of these really large conglomerate beauty companies
and they would kind of just churn and burn these businesses and would go over and over and over and
then you know if there were you know non-competes or things like that, you'd wait out that earn-out period and spin it up again and do another one.
And it seems like that is just such a repeatable model
that has just now continued.
We're now, I'm sure, 10-plus years
into that type of business.
And you're spot on, Jared.
It is enormous.
The thing is that there is distribution
that these celebrities, influencers have,
and these
products are incredibly high margin, especially with the fact that a lot of them aren't actually
very healthy for you.
I don't want to necessarily put that bad juju out there and I have no idea about road
beauty or this, but a lot of these products have stuff that's not necessarily organic
or not necessarily skin safe in a lot of ways.
So you can kind of cut corners sometimes on some of the products.
The margins are incredible.
If you've ever gone to Sephora, you've ever gone to one of these stores, I mean, you have a girlfriend or you have a wife and you buy them some stuff. You can realize how quickly that bill is a three digit number. And so,
so I think there was all these products that come in small bottles.
They're highly repeatable, highly repurchased and great margin businesses.
And perhaps there's, you're acquiring some IP from the celebrity as well.
But this is just a pretty pure PE roll-up style of play in the
cosmetics industry. And they certainly see the financial models here and suggest that it's worth
that acquisition price. But it really does blow me away as well, Jared, just how long this play
has lasted. I feel like it makes a lot of sense, but it was, I think, surprising for me as well to
see that this model just continues to prove itself over and over and over again.
But it sounds like there's no signs of stopping.
So we'll probably tune back in six months from now with another huge beauty acquisition
from another A-list celebrity.
But it's a fascinating, fascinating industry.
And if you have expertise in consumer packaged goods, that's the real competitive part of this is that it's really an insider's game with respect to if you can get shelf space or distribution, now maybe some of this is online sales, but presumably the firms that Haley Bieber or whoever worked with help you get into Sephora or help you get into one of these cosmetics stores.
And that's the hard part.
If you just start a skincare brand – tomorrow I worked with a founder for a while who did a – it was like a female athletic skincare line.
while who did a it was like an a female athletic uh skincare line she had a bunch of gold medal
athletes olympians um d1 athletes and professional female athletes that were a part of the brand
getting the shelf space is really really hard consumer packaged goods are incredibly difficult
and so i think that's really the key um the key moat for for some of these businesses and i think
that i'm not totally sure that the influencer behind the brand
has that expertise.
It's probably more likely that there is a firm like the one with the family
office I've worked with that works for a stake in the business to pair
these things together and then blow it up.
Yeah, Kyle, I don't think there's any doubt that some of these celebrities
have a, you know, it's like they're like the big business minds behind these brands that are going huge.
I know Alex Ramosi says he really got upset.
And he was like, Kylie Jenner is a billionaire and I'm not.
And I know she's not better at business than me, you know.
But he said, but what it is, she is a bigger brand than I do.
And so that's kind of how he got going all in on the, you know, the social media, anywhere you
look, if you scroll five times, you're going to see Hormozy, follow any kind of business people.
So there's definitely a lot of validity in that aspect of, you know, they have to partner with
people. But I think that's true, you business, with any model. You get big enough,
you get to a point, and you have to hire experts because you can't do everything yourself. And if
you want to grow at scale and you want to be efficient, you can hire experts.
Yeah, I'll just add two quick points to this conversation. I don't have any insight into the
makeup or cosmetics industry, but I think to your original
question, brand and distribution are always two powerful vectors that I'm continually
surprised by how quickly they enable some of these companies to scale.
And I think from a venture capital standpoint, consumer products and consumer investing is
consumer products and consumer investing is a little out of vogue right now. But I've recently
a little out of vogue right now.
seen new funds being created and some commentary from some of the top VCs in the space suggesting
that maybe now that it's not in vogue is the perfect time to actually be looking at new
consumer bets. So I wouldn't be surprised if you see some great consumer plays here in the next
few years. I think the other thing too, and maybe this is just a kind
of like a technology ideation comment is, you know, the, the cosmetics playbook, as you mentioned,
has been kind of rewritten over and over again with different influencers and celebrities, but
I'm curious what the next iteration of this looks like in the world of AI. Like you could imagine a
world where these celebrities beyond makeup lines also have their own AI agents, right?
Haley Bieber's skin routine AI agent, LeBron James' fitness coach with his training philosophy AI agent. I think the mechanism in which brand and distribution scale will continue to change, and they'll monetize that image and likeness in a lot of different ways.
But it's definitely very cool to see how quickly these companies can be built in this day and age and how it'll change over time.
Zoo Ravi, I saw you guys had your hand up. Go ahead, just hop in.
Oh yeah, Ravi was first. I'll wait.
Yeah, I think it's pretty interesting because when we work on AI for food,
Because, you know, when we work on AI for food, you know, one of the second thing that reached out to us, and that's why we kind of went, you know, AI agnostic in terms of R&D.
But we were contacted by many pharmaceutical and as well as cosmetic companies because similar to food science, we have the whole cosmetic scientists who actually are sitting and formulating new cosmetics every day. So in fact, you know, one of the deals I looked at last month
was a Thai company, which has been looking at using lipsticks
to create vitamin C, so you don't need to really take in vitamin C.
So on your point on AI, there's a lot of work happening
in AI integration into a cosmetic world.
And really, I think the other thing we always forget is, you know,
similar to the food world, we all know that the consumer insights
and consumer intelligence, if you look at AI palette, we did a very recent study and a dear
friend of mine who was a co-founder, you know, Soam, you know, they did an AI consumer insights
on cosmetics and where are the tweens, teens, young women, adults, women, and elderly women.
It's a huge segment, right? And I think it's like a never-ending enigma.
And I think the estimation of women, you know,
as consumers is about $20 trillion annually.
And then you add another $8 trillion coming in the next, you know, five years.
So something which is definitely intriguing to me,
and I always look at this as a very big opportunity,
we specifically look at food and women as consumers, but I think it doesn't surprise
me at all.
I mean, honestly, I think 1 billion for this particular segment may be low, you know, but
I see that huge amount of young women have come up with cosmetics, especially in Southeast
Asia as entrepreneurs and India, one of the two top are new indigenous brands that are doing better
than many other European brands.
So the market segment is huge.
And I think we forget the power of tweens, teens,
and women, and I have a daughter, right?
She wants to go to Sephora every time we go to a mall.
And if you just, we'll keep saying don't buy,
land up negotiating and buy one small thing every time.
So it's insane.
The opportunity is fantastic.
I totally agree with that, if you don't mind.
So yeah, I think if we can look at it from kind of two sides,
I mean, it does make a lot of sense
that they're not just like the primary consumer
in cosmetics,
but there's like a huge wave of entrepreneurship
in the space.
You guys kind of mentioned AI being paired with this.
So I think on the AI side,
this is where things could get interesting. Like we
might be moving maybe past just like celebrity products into something more like a digital
experience or a digital extension of the brand. So instead of like buying, I don't know,
Hayley Bieber skincare, you're interacting with her assistant. Like there's an AI skincare
assistant and it's customized to your routine, to your kind of skin problems.
And I think it can become like a subscription product.
I've read this like quickly right now as you guys are speaking because I really have zero idea about the industry.
But I do know being in Saudi Arabia, Latin America, when Rihanna started this, i saw a lot of things related to darker skin colors and
how the older market did not cater to them and rihanna kind of like had this entry point to the
market so i think it's interesting but i did want to say something earlier and it's based on two
kind of forces i think one is distribution the other one is the brand or brand premium
so okay so i think what's going on with these like billion dollar beauty brand valuations i think it I think one is distribution, the other one is the brand or brand premium.
So, okay, so I think what's going on with these like billion dollar beauty brand valuations, I think it might come down to these two main forces.
So first one, let's call it audience distribution.
So these celebrities already have like millions of followers.
They can already move product fast and they don't need ads.
They don't need budgets for that or huge budgets and the second thing is the brand premium so people are willing to pay more just because it's tied to
someone they trust or admire that's what that's why i mentioned rihanna there oh she cares about
my darker skin color so you know it's not really about the product being you know revolutionary
or safe as kyle was saying but in terms of ingredients or formula it doesn't matter
i think it's more about the emotional connection and the perceived value in my opinion
oh and one more thing just to give a quick data point to throw in here i commented it
estee lauder bought in a skincare brand they called the ordinary a while back
and the parent company is called deciam but yeah the deal is valued at 2.2
billion dollars and that's not a name where we i don't think anyone here you know knows these
specifically they're not so famous so yeah big players are clearly willing to pay a lot
to lock in that kind of influence and have direct consumer access yeah just to wrap this up before
jared you go on to the next topic, I ended up texting
that billionaire family office guy that I mentioned just to see if he wanted to share
any thoughts.
And he said, I asked, how has the model changed since you had your first few successful acquisitions?
I'd imagine it's a much more competitive industry now.
And his response was, it always was competitive, but Facebook moved to Instagram and now TikTok
is taking market share.
I guess he's referring to distribution there. He said, no one cares about department stores anymore,
but Sephora is still a beast and there are always nuances and trend shifts, but the game is the
same. Build big sales and exit and people are super expensive, something that AI will help
businesses get more efficient with. So that was his perspective on the space. So it sounds like
there's no sign of slowing down here. It's just some changing nuances in how you bring that
business to scale. That's a good point, sir, Kyle. And I don't know, department stores,
I know those are a thing of the past, but maybe it's just my girlfriend. But it seems like
about every time we go out, we end up at some department store or something looking at makeup or something.
So those businesses are definitely doing okay because they're always packed and there's always a lot of people in there.
And you mentioned margins, and I always think those things are super expensive anyways.
Like $50 for that little half- ounce bottle. I don't know. But
another thing I wanted to bring up, I think Jonathan kind of referred to LeBron. My connection
was kind of spotty there, but man, that dog is, neighbor dog is just going nuts right now.
So all these females have these huge brands. They're all able to have their personal brand and sell makeup right away.
I was trying to think, you know, is there, you know, a guy equivalent like that?
I don't really know if there is.
I mean, obviously, you know, different.
There's a bunch of athletes that are sponsored by these companies, Nike, whatever.
But as far as starting their own brand and really accelerating it,
I don't know if we've really seen anything quite like that.
Maybe you could say Mr. Beast with Feastables
and Logan Paul with Prime.
So maybe it's like a food aspect,
but do you guys know of any kind of industry
where guys are able to kind of start their own business,
put their face on it
and grow it to these billion-dollar valuations?
In fact, the only thing that comes to my mind,
I don't know where it is, the art of shaving.
I have no idea what happened to it.
I used to see a store in Grand Central.
I don't know if it's still there.
But that's a very, very interesting question
because it's got to do with a lot with men's grooming
and their own personal care.
I know some friends in Canada started something.
It didn't go very well.
It was a lot to do with virility.
I don't know if I've seen anything really come out of it.
That's a very good question.
I can't really think of any.
I don't know if others know something.
I mean, I think tech, like men just dominate tech.
And not that they have to necessarily,
and not that it's exclusive of women,
but I think the majority of tech founders, crypto,
these types of things are probably the male equivalent
of the cosmetic founders, in my opinion.
I got one, the Indian cragator,
the Virat Kohli, I don't know if you guys follow Crooked.
He started a men's wear, which became a rage.
And it did so well that his, you know, he's not a designer, but he lent his name to it.
And I know that done extremely well for the drone company that I was talking about like a few weeks ago.
Another Indian cricket team captain, Dhoni, he came and gave a co-invested.
And that's the company that I told you about, which is going IPO.
So it's really in that tech space.
But the only fashion one I know is, you know, this Indian company, but it's more Indian and a South Asian thing.
But it's done extremely well.
And I would go back to your point, Kyle.
I would maybe push back on the tech aspect because the founder aspect, it's not like these guys are guys with huge brands and they start a company and are able to build it basically through their personal brand.
A lot of that tech stuff is new innovations versus, you know, the skincare industry is one that's already established.
You know, and as I say that and listen to Ravi talk, one thing that kind of comes
to mind is, you know, maybe it is the athletic wear, you know, Tom Brady has his TV 12, Dwayne
Johnson has, you know, his company. So maybe, maybe it's a athletic wear, maybe that's the
industry that guys can come in and, and really accelerate. But I don't know if there's anything
quite like skincare. And I know skincare is such a huge brand overall. In our private
chat there was a comment about
alcohol being a really
interesting one. You know
there's Clooney with the tequila.
Ryan Reynolds has been very involved in
those things as well. Dwayne The Rock Johnson
doing Terra Mana.
You know Jay-Z doing Ace of Spades.
Snoop Dogg
50 Cent.
They all have them too.
There was the Ciroc from Diddy before he was not quite as –
different time, I guess.
But yeah, I think there's – McGregor did the whiskey.
So I think that that's a really interesting comparable.
So good point from our team. I think that's a – I think you that's a really interesting comparable. It's a good point from our team.
I think you're right on that.
So next topic I want to go to real quick.
We're about halfway through the show.
So if you're in the audience, go ahead, give our speakers a follow.
They post a lot of good content all the time about what they're doing,
what they're learning.
And that's just a good way to continue to learn, keep up with what they're doing, what they're learning. And that's just a good way to continue
to learn, keep up with what they're doing. Next week, we'll be back same time, 5 p.m. Eastern for
a show on energy. And I see Samuel Gibson in the audience. He'll be up speaking next week,
talking about nuclear energy and the different things he's doing with his company.
things he's doing with his company. And to kind of move on to our next talking point,
an aspect that's just quick shout out to our friend, Darren Marble, friend of the show. He's
been on a couple of times. I know Kyle knows him pretty well. Might be hanging out with each other
in Vegas right now, but he has his own TV show on X Originals called Going Public, where basically it's a mix of
The Apprentice, Undercover Boss, and Shark Tank. And they go through different companies. You can
watch the show. It's called Going Public. But the shout out is because they're crushing it.
Their latest episode, the third episode that just came out, has done over 30 million views.
And if you were to put them on Netflix, it would be almost by double the amount of views, the number one show in the world.
So we're really excited for Darren.
We'd love to see that.
And I will also be on Darren's podcast next Thursday, so you can check that out as well.
Darren's podcast next Thursday. So you can check that out as well. Next topic I want to move to
here is, okay, forgive me if I'm saying this wrong, but Humane just announced a $10 billion
fund for transformation tech. Kyle, I'm sure you have some kind of insight on this. So I'm going
to pass it to you.
Is this the same humane that had to be like the AI wearable?
Correct.
Yeah, it's such an interesting space right now.
I actually, so funny thing from Vegas here, I was meeting with a client that I've been helping out on some financing, on some trade finance, which is basically debt, to
do some commodities harvesting and product distribution.
And having the conversation, met the guy, had a second conversation with him the next
day.
We were at lunch with the rest of his team, having a good conversation.
And at the end of the lunch, he looks at me and he's like,
Hey, man, you know, I'll send you the meeting notes. I was like, what? And he shows me his pendant. And he had a AI wearable pendant that was recording our entire conversation.
And he sent me the note taker. And like, it's a weird spot, you know, like, where you like,
you just don't quite know how to feel about it.
Part of me was like, oh, that's convenient.
That's really useful.
I definitely could see value in that.
Part of me also felt like a little like, bro, you got to tell me when you're recording me like that.
But you don't have to, I guess.
And that's kind of the world we're heading into is that everything just is going to be recorded and tracked and monitored.
But he used it and I'm sure it's useful for him. And theoretically, if you're recording all these things in your life, you feed it through an AI model,
you could very quickly start to map out your life and manage all of your relationships and
your contacts and your sales. And so I think that, I mean, I really do think that AI wearables are
probably the future. We already carry our phones in our pockets all day. We charge them all day,
every day.
You know, so I think that provided that it's not a hindrance, you know, people wear their AirPods everywhere all the time now.
Like, I think provided that it's not obtusive and uncomfortable for the wearer, I think
that this stuff is probably the future.
the future. That being said, hardware is a really, really tough industry. And doing that
That being said, hardware is a really, really tough industry.
delicate balance between hardware and software and that interoperability, that's certainly where
Apple has just had such a dominant lead over all the other providers in the mobile sector,
is because of how easily they interoperate between their different devices. And so it feels like a seamless experience.
I think that that is incredibly difficult to do at scale.
And something that even Google or Microsoft
or whoever hasn't quite figured out themselves.
And we've seen a lot of wearable tech,
we've seen a lot of VR, a lot of AR,
a lot of these things that have yet
to kind of pierce that veil.
So it'll be
fascinating to see what the next generation of hardware technology looks like. But it seems like
now OpenAI is going to be launching a hardware wearable. I wouldn't be surprised if in the next
12 months, you're going to see multiple other companies capitalizing on what is inevitably
going to be a bit of a gold rush to be the next generation
of hardware. And so I think it makes sense. The problem with the Humane is I think their first
product really didn't do very well. So it'll be fascinating to see if they succeed on their second
effort. Because if they do, then you're going to see other companies that say, look, I want a second
bite at this Apple. It worked successfully for Humane. If it doesn't go well, though,
it'll be also interesting to see
on the other side of that coin
how investors and how the market responds
to companies doing hardware products.
But it seems like it makes sense.
The problem really is also just the materials.
So I spent so much of my time
in the commodity space doing silicon,
doing cobalt,
obviously gold as a lot of people are familiar with. These types of things are incredibly difficult to acquire from a resource perspective. And many of the companies like Apple or like
Qualcomm and others control these supply chains really strictly because they recognize that's a
strong moat to defend against other competitors
in the industry. And so it can be really difficult to produce these things at scale,
not only because it's incredibly expensive from a raw cost perspective, and it's expensive to get
it wrong if you make a mistake and to do prototypes and things like that. But it's also
difficult to get the resources required from a permissioned perspective.
If Apple controls all of the mines of whatever rare earth metal that you need, they're not just going to give it to you unless they know exactly what you're making it for.
And the minute they realize you're making a competitive product, there goes your supply.
And so now we have more geopolitical tension, more trade war stuff around rare earth metals.
geopolitical tension, more trade war stuff around rare earth metals. I think those supply lines
will only be more and more restricted for, you know, licensed and approved transaction parties
and companies. And so I think this space has a lot of promise, but I think there are a lot of
roadblocks and a lot of hurdles that you're going to have to clear. And there's going to be a lot
of money that's lit on fire trying to build out products that really never get to see the light of day
yeah the light money on fire aspect seems to be a pretty common thing right now in the vc world
some of those valuations is just absolutely insane ravi zoo do you guys want to chime in
I generally agree with Kyle that hardware is in a category where it's not only expensive,
anything you want to add here
it's also politically constrained.
And yeah, China controls the majority of the global supply chain.
So to be super honest, so access cannot be guaranteed, especially if startups are seen
as a potential competitor to kind of big tech.
That means if a startup raises capital and they build a prototype, they can still be blocked.
So if you're building an AI hardware without approving your supply chain access, you're basically gambling against geopolitics and procurement.
like geopolitics and procurement so you're gonna fail but yeah that's it for me you know it's
So you're going to fail.
But yeah, that's it for me.
interesting you ask that because you know one of the things that we did last year was we you know
got into an mou with the foundry education foundation of us in chicago and it was very
interesting because you know the conversation we really had on the big hardware and big machines
was really you know the sad reality.
As you said, you know, a lot of work that was done here in the 70s and 80s actually was just handed over to China.
So China definitely is dominating that space.
Even to get into this with some of these interesting companies, especially in the South,
you know, they're struggling to look at.
And some of these schools have looked at, you know, the big machines and the big innovation there.
And we are trying to kind of revive that.
It's not easy.
It won't be easy at all.
But I think as long as the geopolitics angle,
which you touched upon, Zou, is so critical because, you know,
we've not had the really, a very strong will here for many decades.
And at least in the last three decades, 30 years,
that there has been very strong push to bring manufacturing.
In fact, just before this call, I was speaking with somebody.
I said, look, if you're looking at manufacturing, the three priority areas for U.S. for the
time being are going to be very much the defense, it's going to be the pharmaceuticals, and
it's going to be the chip.
But the rest of them are slowly coming in.
But the know-how, just on the industry side, if you look at Zen Zen Y who want to look at getting
into heavy machinery engineering equipment there's literally hardly any school and talent
available and that's something that really needs to worry people it'll take take us there but I
think there is an awakening but decoupling from China is not going to be easy and you know I know
I work on the smart manufacturing piece also in India.
It's happening there.
And I see some kind of a ray of hope.
But definitely it's concerning, but also it's an opportunity.
There will be money, a lot of money will be pumped into this
from a subsidy perspective and some other grants will come into this area. Awesome. Excuse me, guys. I got some technical difficulties going on here,
but I definitely appreciate those takes. One other thing I want to hop on here real quick, Ravi, I've been wanting to ask you this question for a while.
Maybe if possible, give me a shorter answer of this because I know you could talk on this topic for several hours alone.
But a couple of news things that came up recently. A91 Partners Crisis raised a third round for $665 million,
targeting mid-stage Indian startups. Also, Excel did a $65 million raise and Bessemer $350 million
raise. Another fact about the VC world in India is in 2024, they had 10 companies IPO versus in 2023, they only had four.
So Ravi, from your perspective, somebody who does a lot of investing around the world in
India, why is there so much attention going to India?
What is the big thrill there?
And why are we seeing those developments happen?
I think just like bullet point answers, right? One, the biggest consumer base, which is emerging
to be the next wave of both people consuming what is going to be produced. And that's why,
you know, India, China have this very strange bipolar relationship. On one hand, we have this
issue, but then China also knows it needs to have India to really look at.
In fact, one of the things, I don't know if you guys realize,
China has been trying to put a lot of money into the India VC space,
and the government has been resisting,
and they find different back channels through Singapore and through Vietnam.
So you'll see a lot of Singapore-Vietnam money coming into India,
which is actually really, if you start getting into probing it,
you'll see that 65% of money in Singapore, for example,
is really sitting with China.
So on the second part, I think, is the governance,
the stability of making India.
And you've seen with Pakistan-India,
one of the success was this innate India-developed
and defense missiles called Akashtir and Brahmos,
80% developed in India.
The country is obsessed with engineering, with innovation, with science, with looking
at the opportunity.
And third really is the youth dividend.
I think China's way of youth dividend is on a decline.
In fact, one of the statistics from the World Population Report is by the year 2070,
China's population, which is about 1.4 billion, now is going to fall from 1.4 to 700 million.
Whereas India's population in 2070 will be about 1.7 billion,
probably one of the biggest youth opportunity.
And this means that you're looking at both from a blue-collar workers' perspective,
you're looking at manufacturing, you're looking at consumers from a blue-collar worker's perspective, you're looking at manufacturing,
you're looking at consumers.
So it opens up in a very big way.
Another interesting thing is, you know,
this morning I was on a call with a VC fund from London.
And, you know, traditionally everybody looked at,
and there was another one in Canada, Alberta,
sitting with a lot of money there, right?
And these guys who would always look at US
as an important opportunity,
and they were really asking the same question that you did,
you know, why do I need to invest in India?
I think this is where I think the ease of business
is doing well, and then the way India's managed
to kind of create some zones, like in the north,
they're, you know, setting up industrial corridors
on arm production, they're looking at chip industry.
So there is a lot of positive signs.
I think the infrastructure,
whenever you are like a booming economy,
you have the advantage of new updated infrastructure.
Just from Solotech,
yesterday was an interesting entrepreneur,
solopreneur,
and he was just telling me about the work
they're doing in India.
And they're like,
we're going to be making our own stuff.
And I was in a state of shock because I've been away for about 24 years.
So many, there are definitely very big opportunities.
You know, in fact, you know, if some of you are interested, you know, there will be this event that I'm putting together in New York.
Hopefully, you know, partnering with, you know, Jared and Kyle and others and Wolf and others.
So that, you know, really open up that space.
So I would really say that a very big push
coming from Middle East GCC investors,
Saudi investors, so it's just not the American money, right?
It's also Europe and EU going the FDA,
where you saw the UK did an FDA.
EU's pushing in it.
For 19 years, India demand was after EU
to sign up an FDA. About like six in it. For 19 years, India demand was after EU to sign up an FTA.
About like six weeks ago, EU was saying, you know, can we have the FTA immediately? And of
course, with Trump, I know that there have been back and forth, but I know, and yesterday was
a meeting with the foreign secretary and the deputy, you know, secretary here of state.
The whole aspect here will be that I've been arguing, making this case for the longest time.
I said I don't really care about what's happening with CCP.
India and US will be very critical partners for the fourth AI-powered industrial revolution.
I think that's going to be so critical for all aspects of human life
because ultimately a human being is a consumer.
And if we look at his or her life, we look at all dimensions.
And if AI intelligence can come in
into solving some of those problems
and making some money out of it,
it's going to be pretty big.
I think governance is definitely
one of the most important anchor there.
It's been very, very stable, very supportive.
You know, just to give you that,
10 years ago, when our startup
wanted to set up a shop,
it was so difficult.
It took them four to six months to just set up a company.
And now you can go to one-stop shop in some states,
and you can come out in 24 hours with your own company.
And you can get subsidies and grants, and then you have a prime minister championing you.
In fact, I've been saying very clearly, in fact, if you remember a month ago, I was in D.C.,
and I've been saying that Trump really needs to call for a White House startup summit, which really
kind of accelerates and pumps up the whole sentiment with young folks on manufacturing,
very targeted manufacturing. It cannot be everything under the sun. I think we need
something like that. If they do a crypto summit, which is great, you need to also do like an
almost a revival, especially for the young folks here to look at that opportunity.
As you said, I can go on on this.
In fact, I'm writing an article
which will be out tomorrow.
I'll send that your way.
Awesome.
Well, I appreciate that, Ravi.
I've been wanting to ask you that question
for the last three, four weeks.
We've just had a full sledge of slate of content.
So I'm glad I could finally get your answer on that there.
I want to pass it here to Zoo and Kyle.
If you guys look at the pinned tweet here,
a friend of the show, Rick Zulo, put this out,
I believe this morning.
And I won't read the whole thing.
You guys can read it if you like.
But basically, Rick's point is the single greatest law of a VC is basically saying the aspect that board members and people of influence for a company are afraid of calling out the founder when he's wrong.
And they know he's wrong because they don't want it to push back on them or they don't want to get a bad referral.
And they just keep everybody
happy. They know something's not going to work out. They know it's not going to work out for the
company, but they don't want to get pushed. They don't want to push the founder to lunch and
basically kind of get booted out. So I wanted to get your guys' thoughts on that as far as
basically what I just said, that long- form tweet from Rick, and then also just how
ego and constructive criticism plays a factor in the VC world.
So pass it to Zoo and then to Kyle.
And then that'll probably take us to around the end of our show.
So I just want to thank everybody for listening.
And Kyle, once Zoo gives his answer, you give your answer.
Feel free to wrap it up
can you hear me i tried to unmute yeah my bad so uh thanks a lot jared i think that's a real issue in venture dynamics i'm referring to rick's uh article i didn't read it i just listened to you
uh because i didn't have the time but yeah pointing
out that failure of governance right under the pressure of reputation or reputational risk
and by the way i think board members will hesitate or often would hesitate to confront or you know
have a clash with founders even when the execution is off track i think because there's like power asymmetry and so
on so and and it has flipped uh a lot uh especially in early stage deals probably um founders kind of
control the narrative you know um influence now i'm not going to talk about influence but so i
think vcs stay silent to kind of preserve access and the deal flow and political capital.
And this will create or is creating a feedback loop.
There's no accountability, there's inflated valuations.
We spoke about that a couple of weeks ago here.
And just prolonged misallocation of capital.
And by the time things are corrected, it's too late.
So just a quick stat by Harvard Business Review, 60% of startup board members do admit avoiding confrontation with founders because even if they believe the strategy is failing.
So like this silence is systematic.
It's not an incidence.
it's a really interesting conversation and I have an interesting perspective maybe just due to the
It's a really interesting conversation.
fact that I've spent a lot of time kind of on both sides of this equation I can tell you that
if I put my founders hat on I don't want my board members running my business I don't really care
like obviously you want your board members to be aligned.
And in a lot of cases, they can add a lot of value.
But you invested in me, right?
You, if you think you can do my business better than me, then go start your own business, right?
Like, the way that the businesses that I've built, not only do I think that there are really strong business models and a really great opportunity, but you're also especially in early stage and mostly middle market venture.
I'm the right guy for this business. That's what I'm trying to convince investors, especially early stage, early stage.
And you have no product and no revenue. The only thing you're standing on is that you are the right person to do it. And so you should be welcoming
competition because you think that you can do it better than any of them. And competition really
just validates that the market's there. Right. And so I've had board members that can be a real
pain in the ass. And it's really annoying. Like they want to sign off on any new hires. And it's
like, no, like, I don't,, no, like I don't like that idea.
Like obviously, again, as a founder, you're going to want no restrictions.
And as a board member and as an investor, if I put the other side of the hat on, you
want to make sure that your founders aren't doing crazy things.
And maybe you want additional teeth or control because you know that that's good leverage
for you.
You can be bought out or they can buy those rights back from you or you have control or protection from other investors that may try to dilute you or may try to
push you out. But as a board member, as an investor, I'm more afraid about other predatory investors
coming in and squeezing me as opposed to having some concerns around my founders. Because it's
kind of like being a parent to
kids, and I don't have kids yet. But I imagine it's similar in
the sense that when you have kids, you can't control your
children, right? You have to prepare them for the best things
in their life. And then you let them do their thing. Right. And
in the same way, like, I think overbearing board members are
that's not the answer. And there is a reality that if the
founder disagrees with the board member, I believe
the board member should stand down and allow the founder to run the business.
Otherwise replace the founder with a different founder.
But I think that there's a little bit of a lot of complaining in venture capital circles.
I think that general partners generally, most of VC is certainly they just kind of follow along and
they certainly care much more about reputation than success. But I think that boils down more
to the companies that they're picking to invest in to begin with. Like if you don't have belief
in the founders in your company, then you should write the company off as zero and move on to a
different business. Like you made a terrible investment if you don't trust and believe in the founder, especially in a venture capital business.
In a private equity style of situation, you don't trust the founder, you might still buy the business and then replace the founder with somebody else.
But if you're buying an early stage company or you're investing in an early stage business or a venture capital business, sub-billion market cap, the founder is everything.
That's everything.
And like, like, I think that this is a bit revisionist history of, of VCs that think
that they're way better at running businesses than they actually are and saying, oh yeah,
well I would run it so much better and be so much more effective if I was, you know,
blah, blah, blah.
But, but you know, I'm not sure that that's, I'm not sure that I actually totally agree
with this, which is maybe a bit of a hot take because I end up defending VCs here.
But the founder makes the ultimate call, in my opinion.
And if they don't, then you're not going to build a successful startup because you need
the founder to feel like they're in control and feel motivated to grind through those
18-hour days for 5, 10, 15 years to get you your liquidity.
You're not going to do that by putting an entrepreneur on a leash.
It's just not going to happen.
So that's my take.
I don't know if anybody has any quick thoughts on that
before I dive in.
I see Ravi's hand up.
If you want to give 60 seconds
before I close out the show,
I'd be happy to hear your thoughts there.
No, I really think it's always a team effort.
And I've dealt with a situation
where the founder, because of ego,
actually killed one of the best things
that he was doing.
And then somebody else picked it up and turned that around.
So I think you're right, the VC should not be controlling,
but I think there needs to be some kind of a relationship.
And I always talk about communication and effective exchange.
And I've seen that VCs would just let go
and then say, okay, let the founder just do it.
I think it's really, it's a very interesting,
it's almost like a chemical reaction.
But definitely you cannot have an overwhelming VC controlling the show.
But I think it needs to come out,
the ego needs to be matched and handled both sides.
Yeah, I think that there's definitely nuance there.
And I was being a bit strong just for the entertainment of the whole thing.
And there's certainly edge cases on either side of the equation.
But to your point, I mean, how many VCs have I worked with?
And maybe some people in the crowd or anyone on the panel,
like how many VCs have you worked with
that were actually value add hands-on investors?
From my perspective, it has been very few.
Some family offices, some high net worths and angels,
they tend to be a bit more interested in being hands-on.
I actually haven't had a ton of amazing experiences with venture capital firms generally. So I just think it's funny for them to be like, not at any value in my life.
Again, obviously wasn't pointed at me at all.
I'm not trying to make this about me.
But from my personal experience, it's like I see a lot of VCs where they do just go to
Aspen.
They deploy a couple of checks a year and then they keep continuing
on the circuit raising capital for their next fund.
Then to be able to say, whenever they don't agree with the decision, come in and say,
oh, I think we should do it a different way.
It's like, bro, I thought you could just sit back and do what you wanted to do, which
was passively invest money in startups and follow all your friends in on new rounds and
then write up the rounds and then take the company public. Like that's the interesting dichotomy.
But more on that in another episode of the Venture Capital and Private Investing Show.
Really appreciate everybody being here.
It's obviously a pretty crazy week.
There's multiple different conferences going on all over the world.
So we really appreciate our panelists for coming up, taking the time to talk
about what's going on. Really appreciate having all of these people in the audience that have
tuned in, listening to an amazing discussion on venture capital and private equity. As we talk
about, we do this every week, Thursday, 5 p.m. Eastern time, 2 p.m. Pacific time if you're like me in Vegas or on the west coast right now and
Also, if you are interested in other
Financial topics wolf financial and their subsidiaries wolf web 3 wolf trading wolf sports and a variety of others are
Always doing live Twitter spaces or X space is talking about the markets, the trading markets, the stock markets, as well as gaming, gambling, and crypto, everything in between.
So definitely make sure to follow Wolf Financial, follow everybody on stage here,
and tune in next week for another awesome episode with some returning guests and some new guests,
as we always try to do.
So with that, I'm going to bump it over to Emp to close out the show.
Emp?
Thank you, sir.
Hope you're having a great time out there at Bitcoin Vegas.
And great show today.
Big shout out to Zoo, Ravi, Jonathan up here earlier.
Make sure you follow all those great speakers.
I know Ravi is all over the place.
I see him participating in some other great conversations as well,
all across this app.
And, of course, big shout out to my two co-hosts running this show each and every Thursday evening,
Self-Taught Success. That's Jared over there. And of course, Kyle Sonnen. And thanks to everyone
of you that tuned in today. All day long, long day of spaces, bringing you everything that we can
around the markets and elsewhere. And we'll be back live tomorrow, first thing in the morning.
I believe I'll be opening up over on Wolf Trading right around 9 Eastern.
We'll get you ready for the stock market.
We'll take you all the way through that closing bell with everything that happens in between.
And with that, I'm going to sign off.
Hope you have a great rest of your Thursday evening, wherever you're at in the world.
Good evening, good night, good morning, and take care. We'll see you on the next space. Thank you.
