Offshoot: The Fident Capital Podcast

My guest today is Jim Griffin, the Managing Director and Co-Founder of Derivative Logic, a firm he started with his partner, Rex Evans, over 11 years ago. Before this recording, I didn't have any personal connection to Jim, but I've consistently seen opportunities for operators to reduce risk through understanding and utilizing hedges and derivatives. I strongly suspected that having an expert like Jim on the show would be valuable for both you, the listener, and for me.

My guest today is Jim Griffin, the Managing Director and Co-Founder of Derivative Logic, a firm he started with his partner, Rex Evans, over 11 years ago. Before this recording, I didn't have any personal connection to Jim, but I've consistently seen opportunities for operators to reduce risk through understanding and utilizing hedges and derivatives. I strongly suspected that having an expert like Jim on the show would be valuable for both you, the listener, and for me.

In our conversation, Leo shares his journey with LLJ Ventures, grounded in the lessons learned from his earlier private company, HNMA, which provided residential mortgages to underserved Hispanic borrowers. With a unique mix of “zoom in, zoom out” as described by Jim Collins, Leo remains community-oriented and purpose-driven while focusing on the finer details of execution. His intellectual rigor and ability to connect strategic vision with day-to-day tactics is a cornerstone of LLJ's success.

Today, I'm thrilled to have Eric Naslund, the Co-founder and Principal of Studio E, joining me on the podcast. With over 37 years of experience, Studio E stands as a beacon of architectural excellence in San Diego, boasting a talented team of 30 individuals. Explore their impressive portfolio on studioearchitecture.com to witness the transformative projects Eric and his team have brought to life, spanning housing, mixed-use developments, civic structures, institutional buildings, and urban planning initiatives.

Welcome, everyone, to another episode of Offshoot. Today, I have the pleasure of hosting Ben Miller, the Co-founder and CEO of Fundrise, on the podcast. Fundrise is a real estate, credit, and tech crowdfunding platform. It was founded in 2010 and launched in 2012, making it one of the pioneers in the crowdfunding space. Currently, Fundrise owns $7 billion worth of real estate and manages $3.3 billion in equity from over 400,000 investors and 2 million active users. Fundrise's mission is to simplify and make the investment into alternative asset classes accessible and cost-effective for traditional, non-institutional investors.

Welcome to Episode 17 of Offshoot with Sarah Kruer Jager. Sarah came into her family business, not by design, but via circumstance.  Since joining the firm, she's become an absolute powerhouse in the commercial real estate industry and an epic role model for those aspiring to get into the juiciest part of the apartment business.

Kristian is a seasoned commercial real estate entrepreneur with over 20 years of experience in the institutional investment space. As a managing partner at Catalyst allocating joint venture equity into real estate development deals, and raising capital for the fund, he has a refined sense of what it means to be an impact investor.

Welcome to the latest episode of Offshoot with Jeff Brown. In today's episode, we're chatting with Jeff about his entrepreneurial journey and the lessons he's learned along the way. Jeff's story began in 2011 when he joined forces with his friend John Southard to pursue a single deal. Little did they know that their initial success would lead to multiple deals and the birth of their company, T2 Capital Management.

Welcome to Episode 14 of Offshoot with Howard Katkov, CEO and co-owner of Red Mountain Resort in Rossland, British Columbia. Howard has started and successfully operated seven different companies and has pulled a steady paycheck from them 45 consecutive years. He loves the game of businesses and building successful ventures from vision to execution with the support of strong teams.

Welcome to Episode 13 of Offshoot with Ms. Jennifer Hernandez, a land use attorney from Holland and Knight. Jennifer is truly remarkable. She expertly and fluidly draws connections between the flaws of California's Environmental Quality Act and the rights of its citizenry to have attainable shelter. Jennifer reveals that CEQA is no longer utilized to protect the environment from pollutants, nor to protect open space.

Dr. Thornberg is an uncommon economist. Chris is as much at home with philosophy as the nuts-and-bolts of economics and forecasting. As the Founder of Beacon Economics, Chris is not only one of the few, like Hank Paulson, who called the collapse of the housing market, but also one of the few economists who can call it like it is, and share beliefs rooted in facts rather than opinion.

We welcome Jon Lotter, founder and Managing Director of Appian Capital, a boutique investment manager that has invested in over 140 transactions deploying over $400MM of equity in $2.2B of real estate value.

Welcome to Episode 10 of Offshoot with Carrie Nikols from The Nikols Company. Carrie is the co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of The Nikols Company, a private lender who has originated over 500 loans without a single foreclosure or loan loss.

Bruce is a NYC-based lawyer running a boutique firm of 40 lawyers.  From a difficult start in 1997 to now, Bruce has found his power niche (consummating joint venture equity deals) and become an effective leader to his “pure-play real estate only” team of lawyers.

Episode 8 of Offshoot brings forward one of the “young guns” in the founding partner of Trion Properties, Max Sharkansky. Trion is a value-add investor that finds mismanaged properties in top growth markets which they can turn around. Their historic focus has been the West Coast, though that has recently changed to include the southeast.

Peter is Vice President of ESI Ventures, a diversified and opportunistic commercial real estate investment firm that focuses on the acquisition, development, and repositioning of value-add and adaptive reuse projects through a variety of positions in the capital stack. 

Episode 6 of Offshoot brings long-time friend and acquaintance, Andrew Jobst onto the show.  Andrew is a principal of HG Capital. Since 1995, HG Capital has specialized in providing joint venture equity for value-add and opportunistic real estate investments throughout the Western US. Uniquely, they typically invest $8MM and less per transaction.

Lorne Polger, co-founder and Senior Managing Director of Pathfinder Partners joins me on this episode.  After more than 20 years practicing real estate and environmental law at Procopio, in San Diego, and just before The Great Recession began, Lorne and his partner Mitch Siegler had the vision and guts to leap into the operator role.

Ian Formigle, the Chief Investment Officer of Crowdstreet joins us on this episode. Speaking about their 2013 startup through today, where CrowdStreet has become one of the preeminent crowdfunding platforms in the Nation, Ian shares a ton.

We welcome Eric Boyd, Managing Director of Cross Harbor Capital Partners, to this episode of Offshoot.  Cross Harbor is a Boston-based asset management firm with $3B of assets under management that invests up and down the capital stack, providing stretch-senior debt, mezzanine, preferred equity, and joint venture equity to institutional and middle-market real estate investors.

We welcome Josh Sasouness, Co-CEO of Dwight Capital, to this episode of Offshoot. Dwight is NYC-based mortgage banking platform that is the number one multi family FHA/HUD lender in that Nation. Josh and his brother, Adam, came to that position after only six and a half years advancing the business they started in 2014.

In this episode we welcome Brian Shirken. Brian is a Cofounding Partner at Mountain Pacific Opportunity Partners, and the founder of its precursor, Mountain Capital Partners. He also co-founded Columbus Pacific in 1995. Brian has been principally involved in millions of square feet of retail, over 10,000 student housing beds, development of over 3,000 multifamily units, and 5 assisted living projects.