Podcasts about lps

On todays' episode, you will learn from GI expert and RD Katie Lovitt how gut health and weight are connected. We will chat about her tested approach for improving both digestive symptoms and metabolism! In this episode: - How imbalances in bacteria impact your calorie and starch digestion and calorie absorption - How your gut impacts the production of anti-inflammatory short-chain fatty acids, and how that impacts your metabolism - Why 'unhealthy' gut bacteria promote metabolic problems via production of lipopolysaccharides (LPS) and metabolic endotoxemia - How we address dysbiosis in clinical practice: testing, diet, lifestyle, and supplements Check out the full episode at empowerednutrition.health/impactsofguthealth You can also see our livesteamed chat on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qPh7Zjn61W0&t=15s Learn more about Katie and her practice, and get her free resources at: www.NoursihThriveWellness.com Enjoying the podcast? Please review the Empowered Nutrition Podcast on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen! Then, send me a screenshot of your positive review to podcast@empowerednutrition.health or a DM on Instagram (empowerednutrition.health). Include a brief description of what you're working on with your health and/or nutrition and I'll send you a free custom meal plan! Interested in working on your personal health goals? Book a free chemistry call to discuss your story and see if we're a good fit here. Love free products? Get a free one year supply of Vitamin D and five free travel packs with your first purchase of Athletic Greens' AG1 nutritional supplement when you visit athleticgreens.com/empowered Do you have questions you would like answered on the Empowered Nutrition podcast? You can propose your questions/ideas here or reach out to me at podcast@empowerednutrition.health I can't wait to hear from you. Enjoy listening!

Welcome to More Equity. Today, we're bringing you a new episode from our Harlem Capital Limited Partner Series — connecting with Harlem Capital LPs to share insights on navigating the VC fundraising journey. In today's episode, we speak with Amelia Gandara, Principal at Nationwide Ventures. Amelia shares how corporations like Nationwide approach investing in the venture landscape, as well as a few tips for emerging managers looking to build relationships with corporate LPs. Tune in as Managing Partner Henri Pierre-Jacques and Amelia discuss everything from how to support diverse managers for the long term to how Amelia's prior life as a professional ballerina makes her a better investor.

Oren Zeev is the Founding Partner @ Zeev Ventures and one of the OGs of solo capitalism. Oren has an incredible portfolio including investments in Audible, Houzz, Chegg, Riverside, Tipalti, TripActions, and Firebolt to name a few. Oren is also very unlike any other VC firm, he does not employ any associates, principals, or staff. He doesn't have partners or partner meetings. No LP meetings. No processes. No investment committees or memos. Nada. Oren is doing it differently. Prior to starting Zeev Ventures, Oren spent 12 years as a GP @ Apax Partners where he c-headed their technology practice in their Silicon Valley office. In Today's Episode with Oren Zeev You Will Learn: 1.) Origins into Venture: How did Oren make his way into venture over 20 years ago? How does the crash of today compare to the dot com and 2008? What is the same? What is different? Why did Oren decide to leave Apax and start Zeev Ventures on his own? 2.) Deployment Pace: Why does Oren believe that the benefits of temporal diversification are overstated? Oren raised 3 funds and over $1BN in a year, how does this current environment impact how Oren thinks about deployment pace? Will he change anything? How does Oren explain deployment pace to LPs who question him? 3.) Ownership: How central a role does ownership play for Oren in terms of his investor psychology? Does Oren believe it is possible to increase your ownership in subsequent rounds, in your best companies? What are the biggest mistakes that big funds make with regards to ownership requirements? Why is there a misalignment between GP and LP when it comes to increasing ownership vs markups? 4.) Price Sensitivity: How does Oren evaluate his own relationship to price today? What have been some of Oren's biggest lessons on price from his biggest wins and losesses? What mistake do the majority of investors make when it comes to price? 5.) Diversification: Why does Oren believe that both GPs and LPs are wildly over-diversified in their portfolios? What is the right amount of companies for GPs to have in their portfolio? How does Oren advise LPs on the right amount of funds for them to be invested with? 6.) Oren Zeev: AMA: What does Oren know now that he wishes he had known when he started his career in venture? What elements of the world of LPs would Oren most like to change? Why does Oren feel that the concept of pro-rata is a lazy one? Item's Mentioned In Today's Episode with Oren Zeev Oren's Most Recent Investment: Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup

0:00 Bill Gurley & Brad Gerstner break down the state and historical significance of 2022's market downturn 12:27 How VCs will handle capital commitments from LPs, underwriting startups in the new reality 24:14 Bull run mistakes, why VCs don't underwrite lower valuations, handling distributions 33:52 Gurley's take on WeCrashed & Super Pumped TV series, how sophisticated investors got "gaslit" by the market, influx of capital creating consumer-surplus businesses 47:54 Brad predicts the market for next year, Bill gives post-Benchmark plans Follow the besties: https://twitter.com/chamath https://linktr.ee/calacanis https://twitter.com/DavidSacks https://twitter.com/friedberg Follow the pod: https://twitter.com/theallinpod https://linktr.ee/allinpodcast Intro Music Credit: https://rb.gy/tppkzl https://twitter.com/yung_spielburg Intro Video Credit: https://twitter.com/TheZachEffect

I neglected to mention the significance of 4-20 so please forgive me. I DO share a Doobie with you. Isn't that worth something? This time I also share the electric violin of Jean Luc Ponty, Doobies and Little River Band from my LPs and more. How about the 23rd love letter from a 17 year old, in song? Spooky Tooth is here too. Spring is in full bloom now. Suddenly, the leaves have popped out on our maples and it's all so green! Be sure to vote May 3rd! Coming up Wednesday the 27th at 5 central time on RadioFreeNashville.org and at 103.7 and 107.1 in Nashville, Tales Vinyl Tells plays Badfinger, Peace and Quiet (they're NOT), Mose Allison, Jimmie Spheeris and a few more. Refresh your memory and your senses when you join me! And please consider donating to community radio with money or even your old auto. Check RadioFreeNashville. Thanks!

Monique Idlett is the Founder of Reign Ventures, a seed-stage investment firm, and previously the Co-Founder and CEO of Mosley Brands and Mosley Music Group, home to a multiplatinum roster of artists. Chad talks with Monique about how the music industry is like the startup venture capital industry, understanding that representation matters, having a data-forward approach, and appearing on the TV show Undercover Billionaire, where entrepreneurs are given 90-days and nothing but 100 dollars to go undercover and build a thriving million-dollar business for a small town in the US. Reign Ventures (https://www.reignvc.com/) Follow Reign Ventures on Twitter (https://twitter.com/ReignVc), Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/reign_ventures/), or LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/company/reign-ventures/). Follow Monique on Twitter (https://twitter.com/Monique_Mosley_) or LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/monique-idlett-mosley-41353b15/). Follow thoughtbot on Twitter (https://twitter.com/thoughtbot) or LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/company/150727/). Become a Sponsor (https://thoughtbot.com/sponsorship) of Giant Robots! Transcript: CHAD: This is the Giant Robots Smashing Into Other Giant Robots Podcast, where we explore the design, development, and business of great products. I'm your host, Chad Pytel. And with me today is Monique Idlett, the Founder of Reign Ventures, a seed-stage investment firm, and previously the Co-Founder and CEO of Mosley Brands and Mosley Music Group, home to a multiplatinum roster of artists. Monique, thank you so much for joining me. Now, you left Mosley Music Group about three years ago to focus exclusively on Reign Ventures. How is the music industry like the startup venture capital industry? MONIQUE: There is no difference in the way I see a pipeline of amazing talented founders. We're truly looking for those exceptional founders that we can help develop, put up that bumper system. The end product in the music industry was the music we were consuming, the experiences through the live art form. And in the startup world, that end product is the success and the ability to scale a real solution that this company has solved with amazing, talented people. So to me, it was a nice, easy transition, and it made sense. CHAD: Are there ways in which it's different? MONIQUE: Oh my goodness, yes, lots of ways that it's different. The difference is that music is an art form. For me, music is the universal language. I believe that I've traveled the world. And I've been to places where there were language barriers, but when a song, a popular song, came on, the language barrier was gone. In the startup world, there may be several people trying to create and penetrate a problem area in a vertical or a category. And we may not have the ability in the startup world to have several of the same sounding things from a business model. They may not all work. And so you're dealing with the emotional capacity on the music side. And on the tech side of things you're truly dealing with, can you really solve this problem? We're solving problems, not just emotional connections from the music industry perspective. And also, it's a lot slower moving. We have a project in the music industry, and it may have a cycle. And now it's an even shorter cycle with technology. You may be able to create an entire project in just a couple of weeks. In the startup world, in the business side of things, you may not see the development for two to three years. So the patience is definitely...I've had to apply a lot more patience and understanding of being able to scale a business versus just a project-driven entity. So it's a little different, but the end result is all the same. Creating real great solutions for real problems, whether it's through an art form or whether it's through a business model, is all similar to me. CHAD: So, do you have a particular investment strategy or focus at Reign? MONIQUE: We do. Erica and I currently we are the largest two female Black-owned VC fund. So one of the things that we felt ten and a half years ago when we started investing together is investing has just been done...venture has been done wrong. There's a reason why less than 3% of funding collectively was...still to this day; it's about 3.2. But over ten years ago, when we started, only less than 3% of funding from VC was going to women, all women, and Black and Brown founders. And so literally, we were like, the problem is that we're not having enough investment or a lens on women and people of color. And we want to do it the way it should have always been done: investing inclusively. We are proud to say that we invest in all founders, all exceptional founders. And yes, we have a lens on women and people of color because they've been under-capitalized and under-resourced and under-everything. And so the reality is that we want to set the tone of how it should always look and the world is inclusive. Diversity is not an issue; the equity and inclusion side is an issue. And we want to keep being that example. CHAD: That's great. Do you feel like, or in your experience, have you found that these founders were already out there and they just were being passed over? Or were the problems so systemic that they weren't even getting the opportunity to even be out there? MONIQUE: I think there are always exceptional people out there; that's number one. And I think it's a two-prong problem: yes, the pipeline, the access. So there's the lack of access for these types of founders that has absolutely been an issue, the lack of resources, the lack of access. But the other side of it is that they have just been overlooked and not allowed into the rooms. There are exceptional people in this world that don't only look like one type of person. And the reality is that we have access to them. And so yes, both of those are an issue, okay. But the reality is that we have exceptional founders of all types of people. There are amazing people in this world. When you sit behind a computer, and you run an algorithm, and you only go to only your network of what looks like you and comfortable, then you are what we call missing out on a ton of opportunity. So Erica and I are founder-friendly. We go where the founders are. CHAD: I've come to learn and understand representation really matters. Being able to see yourself is really important. And it's something that because I look like what I look like, I had the privilege to not realize how important that is because there are so many people in power that look like me. I can imagine it's super refreshing to a lot of the founders that you work with to be talking with you and sitting across the table from you and seeing that and talking to someone that understands them. MONIQUE: Yes. I think that having someone to relate to on all levels, personal, professional is a very important concept. And I remember starting my career at USA Today; not only was I different in age because most of my colleagues were 40-plus, and I was in my young 20s, they were mostly male and definitely particularly only Caucasian. I was the first African American executive on the marketing and sales side. And I remember feeling very isolated and very lost and not knowing who I could turn to that would understand some of the things I was actually going through. And so yes, founders, it eases the founder's mind when they can talk to me and know that hey, I didn't always look like this from this perspective. I grew up in income-based housing in New Jersey. I understand where you come from. Yes, I understand what it's like to be a Black woman; I am one. But also the other side of it is that when we have founders who are Caucasian male. We like to have conversations of inclusion from the ground up with them. "Did you think about this consumer base? Do you know that you might have to message different?" These are things and conversations that people are not having if you're only talking to one type of person. And so, I think that what Reign Ventures is doing is allowing for comfortable conversation and then execution. CHAD: That's great. You started with a $25 million fund in Reign, and you're well beyond that now, right? MONIQUE: Yes, yes. So our current fund is a $50 million fund, and then our next fund will be...we're going for the stars and trying to raise $100 million. CHAD: Wow. I've talked to a few people who are either interested in starting VC or who have done it before. And what do you use to judge how much or how large of a fund you'll be building? MONIQUE: So we like to think of what we want the outcome to be. And so, the long-term goal of Reign Ventures is to have a billion-dollar under asset management. That has not been done by two Black females before. And so we understand if we do that, if we look at the long-term goal, if we do that and count backwards, here's what it will take to get to that billion dollars under asset management. So yes, the size of the fund will have to increase. But we also know that that means we're creating amazing companies and supporting amazing founders with Reign Ventures. And so we look at the size as our ability to have a larger stake and the ability to have follow-on capital for all of the companies that are doing amazing. I would tell anyone who is looking to start a venture fund that Erica and I (Erica is my business partner.) she and I started and wrote our thesis over ten years ago. And we actually deployed our personal capital for the first nine years so that we could create a data room and so that we could understand what it meant and felt like to have skin in the game so that we can learn truly where we sat well with a thesis. And it ended up being we do really well with consumer tech and SaaS, you know, B2B SaaS software. And so, I would say that it's not an easy journey to start a venture fund. Truly understand what you want your thesis to be. Truly understand that you're going to hear the word No way more than you will hear the word Yes. This is someone else's investment. This is accountability. And try it and understand it before you just start raising money. CHAD: You sort of alluded to this earlier; you said increasing the size of the fund is going to allow you to make bigger investments and follow-on investments. So do you also see you investing in more companies? MONIQUE: So we like to have a 20 to 25 cap strategy per fund. And what we do is we take 25% of the capital for the earliest investment, and then we save 75% of it for the follow-on round so that we maintain our equity stake. Because we're founder-friendly, so we always want to be in that board room. We always want to roll up our sleeves with the founders and so maintaining whichever early equity we have, which is usually the way the fund is structured, between around 10%. It allows us to not just do more companies; it actually allows us to really double down on the portfolio itself and make sure that we're staying and growing with the founders. CHAD: How involved are you? Are you personally involved? Do you split the portfolio up, and each person takes a few? Or how do you typically do it? MONIQUE: We truly, truly do take my 25-plus years in the music industry. We take that very bumper system approach of we're here to help develop the raw talent and, on the tech side of things, the actual founding team and the evolution of the company. And so I usually take the board seats. Erica, she comes from finance, and she's been doing finance banking for over 25 years. She's been doing early-stage investing for 16 of those years. And so, she helps with the finance cap strategies. How do we get you from your seed stage to your A in 12 months? How do we get you from your A to your B? So she's very, very involved with the financial models and running several of those and working with the founders on who's on your cap table? Okay, so intentionally and strategically, who's missing from your cap table? Let's work on that. And then I'm always the one working on taking the board seat. I'm the one working with the vision, the strategy. I'm an operator, so I have a most extensive network. And so I'm the one aligning them with our resources, our network. And you know, yeah, we're very, very involved. And I think that when you're dealing with seed-stage because that's the stage we're in, it's the riskiest. We try to de-risk the company, the founder, the founding team as much as possible. So we are as involved as the founder wants us to be. We do not make founders feel guilty for not having the largest team. We're like, "Okay, what do you need? Let's get you that." And that's where we like to play. We don't see ourselves going into anything past the seed stage. CHAD: Is there a limit to how many companies that you're able to personally work with? And how do you scale, Monique? MONIQUE: So the cool thing about our fund is that all of the companies are intentional. Half of our companies are consumer tech. So they mostly need pretty much the same type of things, even if they're in different verticals. The other half is SaaS. And so the reality is that they're in different stages. They're growing at different stages. And we, first and foremost, create a founder community that supports each other. That's number one. Then we have an LP community that supports not just Erica and I but our founder community. So we look at investing as from a holistic community. We drive community, and that is the way that we're able to actually still have a sustainable business model with Erica and I. And we have a team. We don't do anything by ourselves. We have an entire team dedicated to the growth of our portfolio companies. CHAD: Speaking of that team, what does that team look like now in terms of the different roles on it? And how big is it? MONIQUE: So currently, right now, we have about four full-time. And then, we have a couple of interns who work on the data science side. And then we also have in-house from just Monique from my particular business model side; we have an HR. We have financial operators, and then we have contractors and partners. And so, at the end of the day, there isn't anything that our founders need that we can't source for them internally or externally. CHAD: Who was the first person you brought onto the Reign team, and why? MONIQUE: Her name is Naya, and she actually has worked for me on my foundation side for a few years. She's was an engineering student at University of Miami. And once she graduated, she was now getting her Master's in Data Science. And we felt like being able to report properly on our founders, the companies that were applying that we actually could not invest in but were investable, we'd like to keep track of that. And so, we felt like having someone who could really handle the data side of Reign Ventures was one of the more important hires. And then, we also hired a full-time social media person who handles the content. We have a monthly podcast called The Series A. They oversee that so all communications on our portfolio companies and Reign Ventures as a whole. So those were the first two hires. And we're currently prepping to hire for the summer a full-time associate that will be out of the New York office. We have offices here in Miami, across from the University of Miami, and then we have offices in New York. CHAD: That's cool. The data aspect of that is super interesting to me because I think that I talk to a lot of people, and a modern VC firm is certainly doing that. But there are still ones out there that don't have that data-forward approach that it sounds like you do. MONIQUE: Well, we need to make sense of all of this. So we need to make sense of the idea of how many founders are applying? What is the demographic makeup of them? Who is this founder? Where are they coming from? What markets are they coming from? Because we do invest just only in the United States. And we pretty much invest in all markets here. We'd like to keep that data. And most importantly, we are over-communicators with our LPs. So we're sending them monthly updates. Carta is updated every, you know, they have access to that. So we'd like for them to understand what our day is looking like. How are we spending our time? What type of founders are coming to us? Hey, you all don't necessarily have access to these founders, here's why we do. And so all of this information is important. You have to make sense of who your audience is. And for us, our audience are the founders. Mid-Roll Ad: I wanted to tell you all about something I've been working on quietly for the past year or so, and that's AgencyU. AgencyU is a membership-based program where I work one-on-one with a small group of agency founders and leaders toward their business goals. We do one-on-one coaching sessions and also monthly group meetings. We start with goal setting, advice, and problem-solving based on my experiences over the last 18 years of running thoughtbot. As we progress as a group, we all get to know each other more. And many of the AgencyU members are now working on client projects together and even referring work to each other. Whether you're struggling to grow an agency, taking it to the next level and having growing pains, or a solo founder who just needs someone to talk to, in my 18 years of leading and growing thoughtbot, I've seen and learned from a lot of different situations, and I'd be happy to work with you. Learn more and sign up today at thoughtbot.com/agencyu. That's A-G-E-N-C-Y, the letter U. CHAD: You mentioned that you invest in people in some ways as much or more than you do the idea that they have and really work with them. How far along will people typically be with their product when you start working with them and investing in them? MONIQUE: The way that the investment cycle is, you know, your family and friends, then your angels, and then sometimes even your super angels will come in after that. Then you have your pre-seed, which is usually where you're testing product-market fit, et cetera. And then we step in at the seed stage, which is founder market fit, you know, product-market fit, a billion-dollar addressable market. You understand your operational strategy, where you're going to raise less than 50 million, and if you're not, you have that strategy of why? And definitely more than just an idea at that point. Now you just need to raise this round, to hire on more team, and then scale. So for us, that's how our due diligence works. And if you make it through that due diligence, then it becomes about who is this founding team? Will they be able to deal with adversity? Because you're going to have it. Are they coachable? What is their leadership style? Is it an inclusive environment? You can't be creating an equity company, and then all the team looks the same. So these are the things that we're looking at. What is your personality type? We like to spend time with our founders. How will you deal with the stress because the stress will come. Is your mindset the glass is half full or is it half empty? All of these things are important at the seed stage because it's not the growth stage where it's automatic it's happening. The seed stage boils down to can you deal with adversity? CHAD: I imagine you reject a lot of people. MONIQUE: Ooh, I would say that we use a different term. We are not dream killers. CHAD: Okay. [chuckles] MONIQUE: Here's what we say: we have an open-door policy with founders. We allow founders, even the ones that are not ready for investment or that we've actually had to pass on investment. And the thing is that we can only do 20 companies. That is where we'd like to sit, 20 companies per fund. And if for some reason, it's not a company that we invest in, we still give them access to our resources. We still give them access to our network. We still will spend…I mean, every Friday is our Founder Friday, and it fills up very quickly. Erica and I get on with founders who are not in our portfolio because just because they weren't a good fit for Reign Ventures or it was something that we could not do, maybe it did not fit the fund's structure; we also try to align them with investors that might fit them more properly. And so I don't feel like we reject; we just redirect. CHAD: So given that then, I imagine that you are often pretty open with the companies that you're not able to invest in the reasons why and hopefully, it helps them. MONIQUE: Oh, absolutely. We get founders all the time that say, "Listen, this was the best thing. Prior to coming to you all, we weren't able to raise $1. You didn't invest in us, but you taught us how to be investable, and now we've raised money." That's what we want to hear. None of us win if there's really a great company with a great solution that can really have some traction if they never get up and running. CHAD: That's great. And maybe you get the opportunity to invest in them later, right? MONIQUE: Yep. Absolutely. Absolutely. There are a couple of companies that that has happened. And one of them is now back in our due diligence and probably will make it through. CHAD: Yeah. Are there any companies in your portfolio that you particularly want to give a shout-out to? MONIQUE: Oh, we love all of our portfolio companies. CHAD: [laughs] MONIQUE: You know, Sharebite, Dormify, SoLo Funds. SoLo Funds is one of my favorite companies from the perspective of dealing and disrupting predatory lending. As a person who grew up in a neighborhood that liquor stores and cash checking were like every other block, if not on the same block, we truly do know the long-term effect it has on those communities, right? The underserved communities get so taken advantage of. If you don't have $200 and then you go to a predatory lender, and you're paying them $2,000, how do you ever advance? And so SoLo Funds really, really the only Black-owned B Corp in the United States. CHAD: That's awesome. MONIQUE: This narrative is so important, Chad. CHAD: Yeah. And, you know, not only is it important from a social perspective, but that is a huge business. It's a huge market opportunity for the right company with the right values to come in and be able to have a significant business, too, right? MONIQUE: Listen, they're making the whole ecosystem better. For the lenders, listen; they feel good. They're having a positive social impact. And oh, by the way, I'm getting a return. For the borrowers, they are getting financial literacy. They are getting higher social credit scores, which is then impacting their personal credit score. I mean, listen, by the way, when this company was created, over 76% of Americans, if they were hit with a $200 bill, they were not going to be able to pay it. So this is not just about one type of community. This is about the American concept. CHAD: So when you work with a company like that, were they a B Corp when you started working with them? MONIQUE: No. True story, I was literally personally the second investor in and then the third before there was ever even...So Rodney Williams is the Co-Founder of SoLo Funds. And I'm on his board for LISNR. We were one of the first investors in LISNR, which is the data over audio company. And he shared this idea with me, and I loved it because we all come from a neighborhood where we know and we were the ones who quote, unquote, "were doing better" in our families. So we were always getting the daily calls like, "Oh, my car broke down. Oh, this." And when he said this to me, I'm like, "Oh my goodness, this makes so much sense. I'm in." And see, this is where investing in people comes to play. Rodney had proved his ability as a founder with LISNR. So the trust was there, the relationship was there. Travis comes from banking, super, super intellectual, really quality guy, and not only is he the co-founder, but he's the CEO. And he's doing an amazing job. So no, it was not a B Corp; it is now one. And they will be the largest neobank for this community. And so growing and seeing the cycle of it is what, for me, personally, is what makes me happy. All of our companies in our fund have a social impact perspective. CHAD: Had you been involved in a B Corp before? It's something that I'm really interested in, but I have not been directly involved in one before. And I'm actually really interested in it for thoughtbot too. MONIQUE: No, I had not. No. CHAD: Is it difficult? [laughs] MONIQUE: So was it difficult for them? Absolutely. But they made it through. They made it through. And I think that we now have two men who are great human beings who happen to be Black men, but they are just great human beings who went through the process and can now help educate and share that experience with other people that look like them and are trying to do the same thing as them, create great companies with a great social impact to just have a better world. CHAD: From an investor perspective, when your portfolio companies want to embark on something like becoming a B Corp, which, you know, some investors might look at and say, "That might be a distraction from what you need to do now," how do you look at those things? MONIQUE: I mean, listen, if you want to become a B Corp, you actually are trying to have more of an impact, and I wish more companies were. When we actually are only focusing on the dollar side, the stakeholders of the dollar side, how are we truly making sure that we're impacting the world in a positive way? There's a lot of conflict usually. So we encourage that type of behavior; we encourage founders to think beyond their dollar sign and their stakeholders' dollar sign. The good thing is that they had an amazing team supporting them. They had an amazing A series lead investor, ACME, that really drove it with them. And so they did this. We didn't do this. They did it. This was their mission, and they did it. CHAD: That's great. And it's definitely something that's on my list to dig into more, like I said, for thoughtbot as well. So was it 2021 that you were on Undercover Billionaire? Was it last year? MONIQUE: Oh my goodness. CHAD: Or was it the end of 2020? MONIQUE: So it was the end of 2020, yes. [laughs] Tacoma, Washington. CHAD: Yeah. So for folks who don't know, Undercover Billionaire is a TV show where you give up all of your resources, and you're planted in a city, and you start a business from scratch. And you have what? Ninety days to bring it to a million-dollar business? MONIQUE: Yes. So technically, the premise of the show is you literally get a new identity. And you do not know where you're being dropped literally until you're dropped there. And so, I had no idea I would be dropped into Tacoma, Washington. And one, they give you $100, literally, a phone with no contacts in it, and a used vehicle, and you have 90 days to turn that into a million-dollar valuation. CHAD: It must have been a wild experience. MONIQUE: I have to tell you, the emotional connection that has to happen and then also by the way you're lying to everyone, it was a very intense thing. And most of the time, 99% of time, you're running on adrenaline. And to be completely honest, when I first got there, you're focused on the goal. The goal is can you make this valuation? The goal is I can't be the example that didn't make it right. Then when you get there, it becomes less and less about the goal. You actually get to a point where you don't even care if you make the goal. You care about the community that you've been dropped into. And you just want to see them win, and you want to see them become better. And Tacoma, Washington, everything from the mayor, down to now to one T'wina Nobles, who is now the Senator, the youngest senator in the state of Washington, these amazing people were a part of my journey. So it became all about, wow, at the end of that experience, that last show, and I look at the room of all those people, it was the most inclusive experience naturally. That's what the win was for me personally. And I also got to learn about myself. But I will tell you that it was one of the hardest things I've ever done in life outside of having children and raising them to be healthy adults. [laughter] CHAD: Not only to build the business, you mean, but that experience of -- MONIQUE: Just the entire experience. CHAD: I watched the episode where you told everybody who you really were. MONIQUE: Yes. CHAD: And I could see that it had really affected you. MONIQUE: I was lying to people every single day. And these people were so amazing. They donated their time, their resources, their ability to me because that company could not happen without them and without the community. And so, what we all walked away with was a shared experience of how powerful community actually is. And that even when you don't know how to figure something out, if you use your voice, someone will actually help you and you end up all helping each other. For me, that's what was so beautiful about the experience. CHAD: I imagine it's pretty intense. How quickly did you force yourself to settle on the business you were actually going to build? MONIQUE: It's so interesting because I have been asked like, "Did you create the concept before you went?" And I said, "Actually, no," literally, I went into it with a blank mind of wherever I end up, I want to see what they need, and we'll create a business model around that. So I think it was like day four of being in Tacoma. And I was in an area that was a food desert for the most part. And I'm like, listen, I'm talking to people, and they're like, "Oh yeah, we have to order juice shots. They have to get shipped. Or we get the ones that are, you know, sitting in the grocery store, and that's not a lot of options." And I'm like, wow, this is a problem. And I'm like, let's reimagine the ice cream truck. Everyone would like to think that the wealth gap...that if you make money, you care about your health, if you don't make money, you don't care about your health, actually, no. [laughs] I grew up in a natural home, and we lived in income-based housing growing up. And so the reality is that everyone wants to be healthy. People need more access to healthier options at an affordable rate, and people will buy it. So the question was, oh, Monique, you can't sell juice shots for $5. Yes, we can. You think a community just because they're underserved won't pay for their health? They absolutely will if you give them the option to. We always sold out in the communities that they said would never sell. CHAD: So up against a ticking clock, what did you do to sort of validate the idea and really run with it, or did you just know? MONIQUE: No, you don't just know, right? CHAD: Yeah. [chuckles] MONIQUE: You're literally working on adrenaline. Listen, there was nothing normal. We all know this as business owners; there's nothing normal about this concept. You can't create a successful business in 90 days. So you're literally in overdrive: no sleep, multitasking, doing all types of things. Here was the thing; first of all, I talked to the community. I asked them what did they need? What were they missing? If they had access to something, would they utilize it? That was number one. Number two was testing it. So I started making samples. And I went out to the community again and started testing it. Three was of the test that did good; let's run with that and package that up. And you have to understand, Chad, it was the height of the pandemic. Everything was shut down. You know, I live in Florida, so we weren't like that. But going to Tacoma, Washington, nothing was open. So I had to think, how do I get to people because they're not coming and cannot come to a brick and mortar? So the only thing that was pretty much open was the farmers' market. So that's what I did. I'm like, let's get to the farmers market. And also, let's see how we become mobile, oh, the ice cream truck treats. Let's teach people that healthy treats are actually what they crave. CHAD: I think even though it was accelerated, intense, the things you're talking about doing in terms of validating the idea, actually talking to customers, testing things out, those are things I think people want to do in any situation. MONIQUE: It is absolutely true. We talk to founders all the time, and it's the I, I, I. And we tell them, "Well, have you talked to your customer?" Sometimes we're so close to our ideas because we hold them, and we're trying to solve a problem maybe that we experience. That's step one. But step two is, is it something that other people want and need? So you definitely have to go out there and do market research. CHAD: Are there other things that you counsel founders on doing? Particularly with the seed stage, you know, on the verge of significant growth and scaling, what are some things that are maybe common plays or common pitfalls of companies at that stage? MONIQUE: So some of the things that we see, especially with solo founders, is them having this idea that only they can do everything and not understanding that you actually have to have a founding team. And that does require you to give some equity. We see founders wanting to hold on to everything. And then it becomes do you want 100% of something that's very restricted, or do you want to share it and make it something really special and a part of a billion-dollar concept? So that's one. Two would be founders in need happen to take money without understanding that it is a debt that even if it's fundraising and you're raising institutional capital, these are your investors. These are your partners. And is it a good partnership? We have seen a lot of founders in contractual and legal documents because they went and took money from the wrong type of investor. We see that -- CHAD: And they did that because they were desperate at the time? MONIQUE: They were desperate. They were desperate. They were desperate and for just really crazy, contractual things. They don't have attorneys look at the paperwork. We see a lot of these mistakes. And so we tell founders you have to have a step back from your business. You have to look at all types of options. Have you applied for grants and particular grants in areas of the problem that you're solving? Have you tried for Small Business Association grants? Have you tried to get a credit line versus an investor who's now going to have equity? These are all the things. And if you do need investors, don't take all the same types of investors. If every investor in your cap table is a bean counter and the numbers aren't playing out well for them, what type of board meeting is that going to be? So make sure you have an operator who's on your board. Make sure you have a financial person, investor on your board. You have to be very strategic and intentional. And if you're in a desperate moment, I can guarantee that is not when you want to take the money that you actually need to do a deeper dive and step back from the company to really see what the company needs. CHAD: Monique, I feel like that's great advice. The level of experience and passion that you have for the work is obvious in listening to you. It makes me want to work with you. [laughs] MONIQUE: Oh, thank you, Chad. Yes, I'm very impressed with what you have built. And I'm very impressed with you understanding the ability to give access to information to your audience. Here's the thing, we are products of an environment of capitalism. And there's nothing wrong with capitalism, but it just needs to be a lot more conscious. And it needs to have a much better impact for all. The problem with from our childhood age of education is we've been taught that there's only one, there can only be one winner. There's only one first place. We have to take that mindset back and really step into the power and the power that we truly have, which is abundance. There's enough for us all. We just have to give that power back to it. And the reality is that we all need each other, and we all need to build together. And people just need access to information. Most founders tell us, "I was embarrassed to ask that. I was made to feel like I was supposed to know this, so I just went ahead and pretended like I knew it." It's okay that we don't know everything. In fact, I like to sit in that space of student and say, "You know what? I like to be in the room that I actually don't know anything because then that means I'm learning, and it's okay. We better keep learning." One of my favorite quotes is, "We delight in the beauty of the butterfly but rarely admit the changes it has gone through to achieve that beauty." And Maya Angelou wrote that, and she understood the human spirit needs to understand that no matter what career path we're on, Founder, CEO, employee, employer, no matter what that is, it is a constant evolution of self. And sometimes we'll feel like a butterfly, and sometimes we will have to be in that learning and growth and uncomfortable stage. But the beauty of uncomfort means you're growing, and we have to make more people feel comfortable with that. CHAD: That's beautiful. Monique, thank you so much for coming on the show and sharing with all of us. MONIQUE: No, thank you, Chad, for having me. CHAD: If folks want to get in touch with you or find out more about Reign, where are all the different places that they can do that? MONIQUE: So if they want to contact me, they can email me at monique@reignvc.com, which is R-E-I-G-N-V-C.com. We're on LinkedIn; we're on Twitter; we're on Instagram. And if they want to learn more about Reign VC, they could just go to reignvc.com. And if they have any questions, they can submit it, and we'll get back to them. CHAD: Wonderful. And you can subscribe to the show and find notes and a full transcript for this episode at giantrobots.fm. If you have questions or comments, email us at hosts@giantrobots.fm, and you can find me on Twitter at @cpytel. This podcast is brought to you by thoughtbot and produced and edited by Mandy Moore. Thanks for listening, and see you next time. ANNOUNCER: This podcast was brought to you by thoughtbot. thoughtbot is your expert design and development partner. Let's make your product and team a success. Special Guest: Monique Idlett.

Sam Primm is a Real Estate Investor, Educator with over 40 million dollar Real Estate using people's money  He started a successful Rental Real Estate company, Wholesale company and he does Flips as well.  In this episode we talked about: * Sam's  Bio & Background * The First Investment in Real Estate * Using Other People's Money to Buy Real Estate * Network Building * Private & Institutional Lenders  * Capital Structure * Interest Rate Risks * Journey on Social Media * The Process of Property Acquisition  * Mentorship, Resources and Lessons Learned Useful links: Book “Pitch Anything” by Oren Klaff Book “Eat that frog” by Brian Tracy https://www.instagram.com/samfasterfreedom/?hl=en https://fasterfreedom.com Transciption: Jesse (0s): Welcome to the working capital real estate podcast. My name is Jesper galley. And on this show, we discuss all things real estate with investors and experts in a variety of industries that impact real estate. Whether you're looking at your first investment or raising your first fund, join me and let's build that portfolio one square foot at a time. Ladies and gentlemen, my name is Jennifer gala and you're listening to working capital the real estate podcast. My guest today is Sam prim. Sam is a real estate investor educator with over $40 million worth of real estate using other people's money.   He started a successful rental real estate company, a wholesale company, and he does flips as well. We just kind of went over a little bit about his portfolio right now, Sam, how's it going?   Sam (45s): It's going well, man, it's going well, appreciate you having me on.   Jesse (47s): Yeah, thanks so much for coming on. I think one thing we miss here in the intro is just the fact that your social media presence with real estate is pretty pronounced. It's part of the reason that we connected, I saw what you were doing online. And I said, you know, I think that listeners would get a lot of value about you coming on, telling your story, and also talking a little bit about that presence online. So thanks for coming on. Really appreciate it. Why don't we take a couple of steps back as we normally do here and talk a little bit about your background and how you got into real estate, you know, from, you know, where you started and where you're at today.   Sam (1m 23s): Yeah, for sure. So I don't have the most exciting story, like, you know, some guests and some people I know that, you know, came over here or grew up super, super poor and didn't have, you know, much of an upbringing. I had a normal upbringing, you know, my parents were middle-class. My dad was an engineer. My mom was a teacher. My dad worked for the same company for 40 years and retired. That was kinda what I was grown up in. That was kind of how I was raised, you know, save money, save money, save money, invest, and went to college and was kind of planning that path.   But kinda during college, I started a, a house, you know, painting company with my buddy. We started to kind of paint in the summers, painted exteriors of houses and fences and decks, kinda got some entrepreneurial itches and then went to school and finished school and then, you know, graduated and got a job out of school. And he got an engineering degree and we were just doing our own thing. And then we started to connect and talk real estate and we decided to go in and buy one house a year for 10 years was our goal. And just kind of start to just see what real estate can do for us on the side.   And that kind of ballooned into what I'm doing today. I kind of really kind of ventured away from that traditional mindset of work for somebody else, your whole life. I was able to quit my full-time job and go full-time in real estate a few years later and really enjoying now showing other people that you do have an option. You can do the traditional path, but if that's not for you or you can't do that, or whatever, whatever the reason may be, you do not have to work for someone else, your whole life. You can do what you want when you want and real estate's the best, you know, kind of bridge to help you get to that life.   Jesse (2m 53s): So, Sam, what was the first investment in real estate that you, that you ever did? What did that look like?   Sam (2m 60s): It was a single family rental. I actually bought it in 2014 into 2014, bought it with the thought that you got to, I was going to fix it up and sell it and take that profit and put 20% down on a rental. So back then, even when I started, you know, investing in real estate, I thought 20% down on rental property. So, all right, I don't have 20% to put down, so I'm going to flip a house, take that profit and then put 20% down. So I thought for every, you know, one rental I wanted to buy, I had to flip one, so two houses to get one rental.   But during that process, I learned a, about the cash out refinance and kind of leveraging money and leveraging bank funds and all that, all that stuff that I'm sure a lot of your viewers know about, but I didn't know about it. And I ended up actually turning that one into a rental that worked out pretty well. So just, you know, jumped in and was figuring it out and then found out about refinancing and, and all that cash out stuff. And you haven't looked back since, and haven't had to put 20% down of my own money on anything since. So   Jesse (3m 55s): That's great. So in terms of the actual debt side of the equation, when you are looking for properties and over your career, when you've been looking for properties using other people's money, I mean, people hear that and they, you know, intuitively understand what that means. You know, you understand what the words mean, but in terms of actually executing that and doing it in a way that doesn't put you in a unreasonable amount of risk, how do you approach that? And what does that look like for you when you're saying you're using other people's money to buy real estate?   Sam (4m 26s): Yeah, for sure. Cause if you're, if you're not using your own money, you're putting 20% down, you know, you could be overleveraging yourself, like you said, and putting yourself at unnecessary risk, you know, shift in the market could sink you. And, and that did a lot in oh eight, it's sunk a lot of people. So the key to using other people's money in your own money honestly, is making sure there's equity in the property. Everybody thinks that banks care about that 20% down when you're buying rentals, they don't, they care about that 80%. They want to just make sure that they are not over leveraged themselves and that there's 80% equity in the deal.   So if you can creatively use somebody else's money to find distressed properties, you know, fix them up, manage them well, whether we're talking, you know, single families, commercial multi-families, whatever it is, if you can just find the deals out there and use other people's money and, you know, find a good enough deal and increase the value enough that there is at least 20% equity at the end, then you're not over leveraged. If, if you bought a million dollar apartment complex and put $200,000 down, there's 80% equity. If I've, you know, did the same thing and use somebody else's money and have $800,000 of somebody else's money in the deal, and it's still worth a million, why it's the same position?   There's, you know, there's, there's not any risk there. As long as that equity is built in, obviously there's some more intricacies that go into it and there's a ton different ways to do it. But I think the key concept that you brought up and kind of wanted me to drive home is as long as you're buying at a discount and managing it properly, you shouldn't over leverage yourself. If you do it the right way, it's not buying things at market value, you know, a hundred percent of costs, a hundred percent of value, a hundred percent of loan. It's, you know, we're, we're deep, we're much less than that. There's a lot of equity built in at the end of these deals that just grows over time.   Jesse (6m 5s): So during that time 2014, and I guess the, the few years after that, that got you to where you're at today, the actual network that you had, the people that you went to to actually raise money from, how did that evolve? You know, did you have somebody in the beginning that you were doing this with, that kind of showed you who the ideal people would be that would invest with you? What did that look like?   Sam (6m 25s): Yeah, kind of. So I knew that you could use other people's money to buy and fix up a property. I think, I don't remember. I think that flip or flop the torque and Christina moose or whatever, the ones that was on HTV. I remember seeing them go to like their lawyer's somebody's house and they would get the money and then they would fix up the house and they would split the profit with them. So I knew you could do that. So I knew that you could borrow money to buy and fix up a house. I just didn't know about the 20% down. And that's what I did on my first property. I borrowed the money to buy it and fix it up. It was from like a kind of a friend of a friend kind of thing. It was one of my dad's friends that owned a business.   I'd known him growing up a little bit and he'd always talked about, you know, if we ever get into business, you know, he'd like to help me out kind of like a, a mentor type thing, but he wasn't a real estate investor more just on the business and mindset side of things. And we talked and, you know, met a few times and, and showed them the plans and show them what we wanted to do. And he said that he would be willing to give us, you know, you know, a hundred thousand dollars to buy and fix up a house. If we found something that worked and showed him the deal and ran through the numbers and we did that. And then we did it again. And I continued to use that same private lender for, for a long time.   My first, first three or four years in investing in real estate, I had a full-time job. So it probably maybe a 20, 20 rentals or so. So it was good, but it wasn't anything crazy. But then after that, you just make connections and know the right people and that lender talks to other people. And then eventually we, you know, got more money than we know what to do with now, just as far as, you know, sourcing deals for private lenders, it's, it's just, it can be tough to find private lenders. So I was pretty lucky, but I always tell people whether it takes you two months or two years to find a private lender, always be looking one private lender can change your life.   There's other, there's other options. In the meantime, you can wholesale, you can use hard money, you can use lines of credit, you can do a ton of different things. Self-directed IRAs, all those are great. But, you know, using a, having a private lender that has flexible terms that will lend you a hundred percent of purchase and rehab on, you know, whatever the property may be is life-changing so be looking for one, you may stumble across when, right away, you may not, but don't give up because one can change your life. For sure.   Jesse (8m 27s): And what was the, I mean, flexibility, you mentioned that there w what are the other appeals that you have with private lenders, as opposed to institutional institutional lenders for what you're trying to do?   Sam (8m 38s): Yeah. So private lenders are, you know, their flexibilities by far the biggest one. So, you know, if I'm buying an apartment complex, I'll go to private lenders and they'll put 20% down. And then the other 80% is institutional. Whether it be, you know, government money, Fannie, or Freddie, or whether it be, you know, bank money, but they're, they're going to be in second position. Then the private lender is okay with that. It's, you know, most hard money lenders or other institutions won't want to be in second position. They're going to want to be in first position to be most secured. So they're flexible because you have a relationship with them.   There are people that, you know, or people that, you know, know that understand real estate that don't usually, they don't have millions. It's usually it's, you know, I just had a student the other day that was like, I can't find a private lender. And then all, you know, all of a sudden he was talking with a real estate agent that he was trying to buy houses from. And that agent said they always want to do invest, but they don't have the time or knowledge. And they had an extra 150 green, you know, they didn't have millions, but they took some out of the stock market and they had that and they're willing to invest with them because they knew them. So it just comes from different sources. It usually doesn't come from a rich uncle or even a rich friend of your dad like minded, but, you know, there's a ton of different places.   You can find them. And they're just flexible. They're understanding. I think a couple of the second deal I did, we couldn't pay back. The private lender has full amount plus interest. So he let us roll that into the next deal. And just things like that. There's flexibility being second position on terms, and I'm on lengths of things. And, you know, when you're dealing with somebody that they have relationship with built with, you can talk about that when you're dealing with these bigger institutions, they're just a number on a spreadsheet to them. They don't give a, they don't give a crap if you had an issue or not.   Jesse (10m 10s): Yeah. I feel like when you're dealing with private lenders, if the deal goes sideways, God forbid there, you know, you want to work with the person, the person typically wants to work with you where it's the bank. Like you said, if you're just a number on a spreadsheet there, you know, they can be a little bit more aggressive and saying, yeah, sorry, like this, we're going to take this action X. That might be pretty detrimental to your investment in terms of the, the, what you described there. So the 20% down from a private lender and then the balance from say an institutional lenders. So that to me is a very similar or very common for a short-term kind of, you're basically trying to stabilize an asset or you could potentially be flipping it.   How do you look at the capital structure when you're dealing with more of a longer term, hold on your real estate.   Sam (10m 54s): So everything, and we've done this a few times now, so I own six, six apartment complexes, and I've done this on three of them and three of them in the process of doing this. So like, what I've done in the past is for one of my second apartment complex, I bought it. No, nothing big. I haven't done any huge deals yet. This was a 32 unit. So what we ended up doing was we bought it for 1.1 million. So we've got 20% down from our private lender. So he lend us 20% down, which I guess is 220 grand. We got an $880,000 mortgage from the bank.   So it was worth a little bit more than that when he bought it. So there's equity built in, but we improve the building over the next couple of years. You know, we increased cashflow by raising rent. We use some of that to fix up the property and we, you know, got efficient with the expenses and managing and just took care of everything and just kind of turn the building. Wasn't a nightmare, but we turned it around relatively quickly and just two years. And we were paying the private lender a little bit out of cashflow. And then two years later, it appraised for 1.5 million. So we took some equity out.   We refinanced at 80% and paid him back as two 20 plus interest. And now we own it and we own it. Long-term and, you know, we have a one point had a one point, you know, one, something million dollar note on it. It was worth 1.5. And then two years later, which was last year, just the price for 2 million. So it just kind of shows you that you, you get one of these assets and you can force the value in force appreciation by being efficient and raising rents. You can create so much equity so fast that you can do these short term. I call them short term burst deals in two or three years.   You can, you can reposition an asset and create enough equity and value by you controlling the asset properly to get enough to pay him back plus interest and move on to the next one. It's just kind of a rinse and repeat thing. I haven't, you know, done the syndication route where you're raising 20% from, you know, lenders that you're going to pay back over the next, however many years or, or anything like that. But mine's a little bit more of that, you know, smaller scale. But if you do it enough, you know, like I said, I got 40 million that I own a hundred percent of you can, you can scale pretty quickly.   Jesse (12m 57s): Yeah, for sure. I mean, there's good money to be made. And both strategies might find the, like you said, almost a, like a, a variation of the burst strategy where you are buying, holding, or refinancing, renting all the RS. But if you do the syndication route, it's basically the same thing. I, the only difference would be an equity portion coming from LPs. So we, we did something very similar recently, and it is just a larger version of buying that single family house and, and doing a, doing a burst strategy with, so in terms of the, where you kind of see the market right now, obviously we're in a time right now, it's Q2 20, 22 interest rates have continued to go up.   How do you look at the risk of your deals in terms of interest rate, what you typically keep in reserve? Like how, w from a risk standpoint, how do you, how do you view your, your real estate acquisitions?   Sam (13m 51s): Yeah. Interest rates have gone up way more than I thought they would way quicker, but even, even with that, I'm not, not overly concerned. A majority of my portfolio, we have tied up at, at 10 year arms, you know, tenure. So the rate's not going to just, I guess for eight more years now, we locked them in a couple of years ago. So majority of it is eight is eight more years of our current rates. Modem is non-recourse with some government and funding, but as far as going forward with the current purchase, I'm just keeping that into account interest rates are going to be a little bit higher.   If we do a deal now, or we have a three-year arm or something that probably going to be a little bit higher, but I don't think they're going to be substantially higher. And now that my portfolio has got to a point where I'm just trying to add good assets to it, I'm not worried about, you know, they're all good deals. They all cashflow on their own, but I'm just looking at it as more of a portfolio that I'm going to have for 20 years. So a little bit of interest rates, a little bit higher on the portion of the portfolio right now, isn't extremely concerning to me. I don't love it, but also going with higher interest rates, rents more rents going up every, I think I heard the other day or read something rent's going up every year in the past, like 90 years, except 2008 or 2009, like one is the only year rent's ever not gone up.   So with increase interest rates, you also have increased expenses. We're getting more efficient in management with property, with software, with things like that. So you can offset some of that extra interest on that. You'll be paying with a higher, with a little bit higher interest rate, but you can offset that with just being smart and efficient and just scaling and not worrying about, you know, having to spend a little bit more. I feel like if your deal hinges on 50 basis points, you'd probably buy in too deep. Anyway, I understand this gone up more than that recently, but in the, in the commercial game with a small local banks who I deal with, it's it hasn't gone up.   It hasn't gone up near what the residential has. That's right. Not to get too into a, you probably know this better than I do, but the, the residential, the mortgage that people hear about this going up like crazy is based on the ten-year treasury, what, what we borrow at the small local banks that I deal with. And part of the reason it's based on the fed funds rate, and that's barely gone up. So they're kind of based on two different things. And, you know, you can take advantage of one while the other one's, you know, doing something. And so there, there's always some way to be flexible and get around it. I, I'm not thinking that you're not going to be able to invest in real estate because interest rates are too high, but that's kind of how I look at it.   W what do you think about that?   Jesse (16m 10s): Yeah, I have very similar view. I think the 50 basis points comment, I think it actually is accurate because even though rates have gone up higher, if you're doing an analysis and underwriting a deal and say, you're playing Monday morning quarterback, and you're in the deal now, and rates have gone up. If you didn't, if you didn't have some sort of sensitivity analysis that gave you a bit of a range, you don't underwrite a deal and go, okay, I can't go higher than this. You give yourself a little bit of padding. So you, yeah. Even with the padding, you might be, you might be within 75 bips or 50 BEPS.   And it, like you said, if that's going to kill your deal, then you've got bigger problems to worry about. I think the, the different approach that we're taking is just looking at things banks, when we're doing refinances or bef before LTV loan to value was a lot bigger piece of the pie. Now, debt service coverage ratio is which makes sense, right there. They're being cognizant about how much you have in cashflow. And it kind of, I think every once in a while, every five, 10 years, we need a little bit of a jolt in the real estate industry because we start getting away from the fundamentals and then we kind of need to be brought back that cashflow is, is a key aspect of what we do.   So I think, you know, provided that we don't go into a global pandemic again, which is kind of, I only laugh. It's, you know, it's not funny, but only ironic in the sense that we always say, like, you know, caveat this, as long as this doesn't happen, it will be okay. Now that we have seen something very intense, like the last two years, I think investors will be a little bit more prudent, but provided that we don't have anything crazy geopolitically going forward. I think that it's not unhealthy to have interest rates go up a little bit and values of cool off, especially in some of the major markets, you know what I didn't even ask.   What a, which market are you currently investing in right now? We're   Sam (17m 58s): St. Louis, Missouri, everything. Everything's here within an hour, hour and a half of a, of St. Louis on the Missouri side. So yeah, everything's here local in the Midwest, not the most exciting city, but it's a great city to own rental properties in and invest in is, is pretty stable. You don't get the swings. So it's, it's a good place to be.   Jesse (18m 16s): Yeah, for sure. What, switch gears a little bit here and talk about this presence on social media. It's pretty fascinating to me, especially in our space because, well, I guess any space you get all these quotation gurus online and posting random stuff, and just kind of filtering through a lot of that. I saw the content you were posting really interesting, engaging educational. You kind of go through some of the deals. We'll put a link up for listeners to check you out on Instagram. And I assume you, you know, you have a link for YouTube, but talk a little bit about that, that journey on social media as it relates to real estate.   Sam (18m 52s): Yeah. So I just started posting a little bit on Facebook about what I was doing, you know, and drummed up a pretty good amount of, you know, interest from just friends and family and people that didn't know that I was investing in real estate. They just thought I had that full, you know, my full-time job. And so that kind of started to get some traction and, you know, it didn't really think a ton of it. Then I went full-time in real estate in 2018 and was focused on growing my rental portfolio and growing, you know, the flipping company and doing all that for a good year and a half, two years and occasionally posting on social media.   And then we got those businesses to a pretty stable place being my business partner, Lucas, and kind of had the idea of you run those, keep those going. I'm going to try to, you know, get into this education space and try to educate people what you're doing, because the minimal exposure I had was just inundated with people. How did you do it? Can you teach me how to do it? How do you do it? You know, so I thought, well, let's, let's try to, you know, make a social media about it and try to maybe create some type of course or mentorship. So I just started by just giving away as much as I could for free on YouTube and then Instagram and slowly getting some traction.   And then Pope did Tik TOK and got made fun of for a while. But I posted on Tik TOK once a day for 30 days and said, I'm just going to give it a shot. And this was back in 2020 middle to end of 2020, and then that blew up and then everything else kind of just followed from there. You know, ticktack saying is it all starts on Tik TOK? And for me, it kind of did that kind of gave me the credibility to grow the other platforms. And like, what you said is what I do. I just try to post informational stuff. I don't overreact. I could have a bigger following if I was a, fearmonger not going to name any names, but the people that have had that YouTube thumbnails for five years in a row saying the world's ending and the market's going to crash, eventually they're going to be right.   But you know, those people that do that negativity and that just kind of drove me crazy. And also I knew somebody that had done three bird deals and wrote a bird book. So I was just like, come on. So anyway, so I decided to, to teach and go in a little bit more and go full-time into it. And the last I've been doing social media for about years. And as you alluded to, you've got a decent following on tic-tac YouTube and Instagram, and just trying to provide as much education as I can. It's fun. Obviously I can make money from it if people want, want me to educate them further, but regardless, it's just a good place to, you know, be creative and have fun and teach people and show them that there is another path out there that real estate can be fun.   And it's a, it's a good thing to invest in and so great way to get free eyeballs.   Jesse (21m 13s): So I don't think I connected with you on Tik TOK, but what was that 30 days like, was that just I'm going to post some deals, some, some tip, but what did that 30 days look like?   Sam (21m 22s): I just, I just was posting and at the time my Instagram was probably like 500. My YouTube was probably like a thousand, I don't know. And I just wasn't getting as much traction on them. So I thought let's hop on Tik TOK. I had somebody told me that people were talking about real estate. I thought it was just a place for people to dance and you know, what it's turned into now, craziness. But so I got on not early, but kind of early. And then I just posted once a day for 30 days. And I think my fourth video got a hundred thousand views and I was like, holy cow, it was like a 15, 22nd video. You know, it makes sense now that people can scroll and see, you know, five different people in one minute, the only platform that really allows for that.   But yeah, and then just kind of got some traction there and then other social media started to grow and then it's kind of the staple. I, I don't even, it's insane. I have 1.5 million followers on Tik TOK, and it's just like, that is like a city. And then when it does bleed over to the other platforms and now, yeah, and now that tic-tacs allowing for longer videos and things like that, I'm trying to leverage it to, to, to push people towards the other social media platforms. Cause tic Tacs fine and all, but you know, in five minutes, someone probably sees 50 different people on Tik TOK in five minutes.   They've see probably 10 people on Instagram in five minutes. You just, usually one people on YouTube and same with podcasts. So the goal is to push people to the longer form content, to warm them up and teach them more. But just taking advantage of what's out there. And it's a lot easier to make a 32nd video than an engaging 30 minute podcast. So that's, that's what I was doing for a while and still do.   Jesse (22m 53s): Yeah. And it's, you know, like we're talking right now, if we probably end up putting this on YouTube, you know, it's one thing to have this story. Some people, you know, you, I find a lot of people just like people are visual learners. I find we, we remember stories better. You have this long form aspect of, of Sam prim they'll remember certain aspects, but you know, like at some point in this conversation, we said, DSCR, you know, that's a 32nd video for tech doc or for Instagram. Right. But you can't get the, well, you can only get so much information out there in the short form. So that makes sense that you kind of capture them there, bring them over to longer form content.   So in terms of the educational stuff, what type of, what type of stuff are you putting out there? You mentioned the course that you had.   Sam (23m 34s): Yeah. So Joe, I have a, I have a mentorship currently, you know, it's a lot of different things that go and it, but basically it's everything or, you know, everything I can put into that content about creating a rental portfolio using other people's money. There's 250 videos I put in there because no one likes to sit down. No one has an hour free time, or usually they don't. So I spent about eight months making five to 10 minute clips of every single step of the way. So someone, if they got a free 10 minutes can just watch to my videos and learn a little bit or poke around and see.   So there's that, there's a closed Facebook group. There's weekly mentorship calls, group mentorship calls, and then all the resources you'll need. So it's pretty in depth and it's pretty comprehensive. You know, we just launched it about six months ago, had a little over 500 people sign up. So it's, it's not, it's it's for people that are willing to take action. We'd one of the questions is making sure that they're willing to take action. We just don't want to take people's money just to take their money. If they're willing to take action and it's a good fit for you, but it's been fun. And it's just kind of one of the trickle down effects of getting a lot of eyeballs, a certain amount of those people will want we'll happily give you money to teach them further.   You know, we're not holding a gun for anybody's dad to sign up. So it's, it's been, it's been a fun thing that I don't really push a ton. A lot of people don't even know I have it that follow me on social media. So I kind of like it that way.   Jesse (24m 50s): Yeah. I mean, it's also too, it's a reflection of, of yourself. So this idea of just, you know, signing up a million people in the short term is, you know, a lot of people do it, but if it's something that you you're trying to build and you want it to be quality, it makes sense that you want people to actually be in there engaged because unfortunately, a lot of people, you know, we've all been guilty of it, but there are a lot of people that consume a lot of great content, but never take any action with it. Whether it's a finance real estate need, it could be anything. So it's, it's definitely one of those things you want to have that action piece connected to the actual consumption of, of information.   Want to just hop back to the real estate side of things. So, one thing that we talk about with a lot of guesses, their process for acquisition now more than ever off-market deals are, seem to be the route that a lot of people are going in terms of finding properties. We'll see if that changes with the changing environment out there. What's your process when you're looking to acquire properties. And maybe you could talk about if, if it has evolved when, since you started out.   Sam (25m 54s): Yeah, it has. For sure. So at first, when I was, you know, just doing this on the side, I was, you know, buying things, certain things were on market, you know, back in 2015, 16, it was a little more common to find some of these on market deals. So that's what I did at first. And then through some local wholesalers, you know, people that were out there doing the work themselves and, and drumming up the deals and bringing them to me. And then we, you know, went full-time and have our house flipping company now. So we have five full-time buyers. That's all they do every day. They buy between 30 and 60 houses a year and they go and find the deals and drum up and talk to other wholesalers and connectors and real estate agents and lawyers and senior care facilities and all those kinds of things we buy.   We bought 252 houses last year. And I think like 165 of them were through no marketing spend all just through networking and our, and you know, going to find people. And then we also do the, do the advertising. You know, we got Facebook and AdWords and SEO and all those. So we do a mixture of, you know, you know, actual ads and then a mixture of networking for the sort of the houses. But for the apartments, that's a little bit different, you know, we've done some mailers specifically to owners, but we're, we got most of our deals. I've just been dealing with local brokers and, you know, local people that are wholesale on those deals.   And, you know, people that come across these cause you know, the commercial space is a little bit different. An agent can get something and you kind of have a pocket listing and put shell it out. They don't have to blast it to everybody like they do on the residential side. So yeah, just getting to know people and networking our last three apartments we bought from the same broker that he brought to us first because we were able to perform on one. So relationship-based, I guess is the key to what we've done. It takes time, but it takes time upfront. You'd be friendly and get to know them, offer value. Then you get a gravy train of deals coming. And yet it takes a little bit of time, but our last three deals I've been through one guy.   I mean, we'll probably buy 20 apartments from him in the next 10 years. So that's well worth it. I'm spending some time, you know, you can flood the market with advertising. That's an option, but not everybody has the money or knowledge to do that. So anybody can go network and market with people and, and, you know, come across deals that way.   Jesse (27m 56s): Yeah. And it's beneficial for him as well. Right. You have a qualified buyer and he knows that when he has that pocket listing, that you're going to be one he shows. I think it's, it's just, it's interesting to see the different approaches people take. Like for, you know, a lot of people come in with mailers. I found with our market it's, hasn't been, as we haven't had seen that much advantage or that much output from mailers, but I still call direct. I'm a broker by trade. So it's a little different in the sense that, you know, I get the free quote freebies of CoStar Altice, a bunch of different software pieces that when I need to find a corporate search for a numbered company, it's something fairly easy for me to do.   Whereas I know, you know, for a private investor to do that, they have to scale their business fairly, fairly big, but a lot of this stuff, depending on which state or province, if you're in Canada, in terms of, you know, where you're finding information, it's a lot of this is publicly available for on the apartment side as well. So you can usually enough elbow grease and you can find a name for a person, but you're absolutely right. It's a different animal on the commercial side, but in terms of making those relationships, I think, you know, just going back to your educational aspect, I think stuff like that is, what's so valuable in education.   And one thing is, okay, you can say connect with a good broker, but there are aspects of, you know, making sure that you sound like, you know, what you're talking about and you know, do's, and don'ts when you're trying to connect with the brokerage community. And not that they're, you know, we're this, you know, just geniuses, it's just the fact that you want to be speaking our language. And there's a couple of red flags that just jump out right away. When brokers hear somebody talk that, you know, you can, you lose credibility fairly quickly, but if you do the opposite, you know, it's a, it's a list an off-market listing then I'll definitely want to get out and, you know, give to somebody that if they sound like they know what they're talking about.   Sam (29m 40s): Yeah. I agree. Hundred percent like that. The education is, is just huge. And it's obviously something I believe in it's something I practice and I pay a lot of money every single year to be in a couple of masterminds and some subscription services. But it's, you know, they say you can't buy time, but you can like time, you can buy time by being more efficient and effective. If, if you know, you took 10 years to learn how to do what you do. And you know, we're putting a lot of that in this pocket. Someone keynote can spend listened to, you know, 10 hours of your podcast and get two years worth of knowledge and information.   So they can be more efficient and effective. So whether it's free or paid. And I take part in this, in all my businesses and every aspect, I'm writing a book right now, and I got a ghost writer helping me write it, like taking other people's information. So you can be, and their knowledge and experience. So you can be more efficient and effective and kind of take that group path and have less headaches and, you know, do more in less time you are buying time. So yeah, that's huge. That goes along with the lingo that you're talking about and just general, you know, just having somebody keep you in the lanes and keep you out of the gutters is huge, hugely important.   So yeah, I fully believe in it and sell it obviously, but also take part in it. And pretty much every business I have.   Jesse (30m 51s): Yeah. Well, it's a great community be in. I find that there's a lot of like-minded people. And generally speaking for the most part, everybody is pretty encouraging when you get into this business. And I, you know, I assume it's similar for other industries, but one thing I've always loved with the real estate industry is that if you are hustling and, and you are outwardly showing that you're interested, older individuals in our industry do want to do nothing but help you. I've found that through my career is because they see a little bit of themselves in you. I want, you know, when they're 50, 60 plus, and they see a younger version of themselves kind of doing their thing.   So reaching out to those people is, is something that, you know, if you can add value, it's something that I always encourage for people to do.   Sam (31m 31s): Yeah. Don't, don't underestimate vanity. I see it all the time. They're, they're willing to help. They really are those older people, they a hundred percent want to help. They see themselves in you, but they're also like, Hey, this is what I did. Look at how cool I am and look, here's the secrets that I did. And I figured out, and look at me, I did this, you know, look up to me and it's, it's everybody has it as natural. I'm not trying to dog on anybody. I have it, you have it everybody. But if, you know, people will, some people have a little bit more banning than others, but having, you know, people, you know, be able to say, look what I did and have you be like, wow, that that's something and that's real.   And that, that goes along with people wanting to help you're right. Real estate investors are surprisingly helpful in my opinion, compared a lot of other industries.   Jesse (32m 10s): Yeah, for sure. And you're absolutely right on the vanity side, I've found that even on the podcast and it's, and again, it's not to say that in a negative way, but I get a lot more honey from people I reach out to, especially on the commercial real estate side and, and the academic side, when I said, Hey, I just read your last paper, you know, that you wrote on, you know, commercial real estate prices and their effect on X. And all of a sudden you're like, oh, read my work. Okay. Like, you know, I would test it. So yeah, definitely. That's a good aspect.   I think any, any time in life, you can kind of a tickle or a, you know, a warmup through the vanities angle or a little bit of the stroke in the ego. I think it, you know, it helps Sam. We're coming up to the end here. We've got a few questions at the end. We ask every guest. So if you're cool with that, I'll, I'll send them your way. All right. All right, Sam, what you know, talking about mentorship, what is something that you would recommend or encourage for a young person getting into our industry, whether that's, you know, investing or commercial real estate as a, as a profession, you know, even on the institutional side,   Sam (33m 19s): Just take advantage of all the free resources out there, your podcasts. Those is a ton of social media stuff. I'm on YouTube and Instagram and even Tik TOK. Now, like we kind of alluded to, but just take advantage of all the free stuff out there. You can learn so much for free if you're willing to spend a little bit of time and energy on it. So take advantage of the free stuff out there, and then that'll guide you to pay stuff if you want. But also get out and network, go to these meetups, go to meet people, go grab lunch with someone it's so much different commenting on somebody's Instagram or joining a Facebook group and chatting then getting in your car, driving, going to a meetup, meeting, other people that got in their car and drove and went to that meetup.   Those people are so much more valuable to connect with than somebody you just met online. So do the online research, but go meet people, talk to people because those people are the people that you want to know. And you, one connection probably will eventually change your life. You just gotta meet that connection. So go connect with people in person. And if you're young, like you said, man, people like to take you under their wing, especially if you're super young and just wanting to get into it in green, you don't even have to act like, you know what you're talking about. As long as they know that you're green and you don't act like, you know what you're talking about, you'd be shocked at how many people will help you.   Jesse (34m 31s): Yeah. It's almost an advantage if you act like you don't really know what you're talking about, they want to, they want to help you out. So speaking of resources, what's something, a podcast or book that you're reading right now that you could share with listeners.   Sam (34m 44s): Yeah. I just talk on that. I love listening to podcasts and listened into books and kind of getting, I usually get my active information and active knowledge and, you know, from, you know, masterminds or podcasts or YouTube like this, but my overall like mindset stuff comes from more books and things like that. A book that I just read again for the second time that I, I really, really like is a pitch. Anything, if anybody's ever read a pitch, anything's a good one. And then eat that frog,   Jesse (35m 13s): Oren Klaff right. Pitch anything,   Sam (35m 15s): And then eat it just about, you know, conversations and how you can kind of not control the other person, but you can kind of lead the conversation to where you want and lead the relationship to, to, you know, something that's beneficial for everybody. And then also eat that. Frog's a really good, simple one that I kind of liked. It's just about, if you get the, you get the hardest thing over at the beginning of the day and everything else, it's not just like, you're done with the hard thing. It's like, you got momentum, you got the energy from it. And then everything else seems easy. You get, if you wait until the end of the day, do the hard thing, you won't do it. Or you do at the end of the day.   If you do the hard thing at the beginning of the day, you get literally twice as much done. So just suck it up and do it. So that's that's I really liked that book.   Jesse (35m 52s): Yeah. We'll put links to both of those. I've, you know, I can't even, it was probably three, four years ago. I read, eat that frog and I was so confused. Cause a buddy sent it to me and I was like, what is this? I don't get the, you read the book. And you're like, yeah, it makes a lot of sense. No, I mean the, the, the title, when I first saw it, I was like, what am I getting into? But yeah, it's basically getting, getting that, you know, that toughest thing out of your day and then setting yourself up for, you know, for the rest of the day, week a year. That's awesome. We'll put a couple links to those last question. We'd like to ask all of our guests just cause I'm a bit of a petrol head.   First car make and model   Sam (36m 26s): First car make a T at 1993. Stick-shift Toyota Corolla.   Jesse (36m 31s): I like how you say stick, stick, shift. I listened to this econ talk one of my favorite podcasts and they call it a, a millennial security device.   Sam (36m 39s): Yeah. I've heard that too. That that's true. That's true. That a lot of, not a lot of people can, can find those these days.   Jesse (36m 46s): Awesome. We'll say for those that want to reach out, we alluded to it throughout the whole podcast, but working the working, they get to you. What's your handle for Instagram? Tik TOK or YouTube.   Sam (36m 57s): Yeah, they're all. It's all the same. It's same faster freedom. So my name and then faster freedom is my brand. So same fastest freedom on Tik TOK, YouTube, Instagram, check out the stuff. If you like it, shoot me a follower and shoot me a message on Instagram. I, I try to get to as many as I can and I'll usually get to them within a day or two if I don't get them right away. So shoot me a message. If you have any questions, I'd love to help you out.   Jesse (37m 17s): My guest today has been Sam prim Sam, thanks for being part of working capital.   Sam (37m 21s): Thank you. I appreciate being on.   Jesse (37m 30s): Thank you so much for listening to working capital the real estate podcast. I'm your host, Jesse for galley. If you liked the episode, head on to iTunes and leave us a five star review and share on social media, it really helps us out. If you have any questions, feel free to reach out to me on Instagram, Jesse for galley, F R a G a L E, have a good one. Take care.  

"LONER LEGENDS III" is the final episode of Season Five & features:: *an overview of Eden Ahbez & the writing of Nature Boy* *a difficult dive into the dastardly world of John Phillips* *an overview of Alan Hull's work with Lindisfarne and his solo LPs* *a section on Basil Kirchin and his pioneering of 'ambient music'* Thanks so much for listening

Le podcast d'impro bruxellois est ravi de vous retrouver pour sa troisième saison !On n'a rien préparé vous propose 30 minutes d'improvisation théâtrale radiophonique chaque semaine. Cette semaine, nous accueillons Raphaël Francq ! Improvisateur depuis plusieurs années à la Ferme de Martinrou et aux Campros de la FBIA, il fait désormais partie des Flammes en Rose de Saint-Louis ! Sa plus grande ambition est de tomber à chaque entrée sur scène et de dénoncer les côtés sombres d'Iseult Brasselle... et il s'en sort pas mal pour le moment ! Dans cet épisode, 05:30 – On s'étale des choses sur le visage en bruitant, 10:20 – on admire un diamant cramoisi en tentant de placer des mots, 19:05 – on chante pour tous ceux qui ont pensé à nous dans cette vie, 26:10 – on écoute le coup de cœur de Bruno ! L'intrumentale qui a servi de base à la chanson est « Lonely » par Flavour Beat (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z7Q2cIJBUSE). Le coup de cœur de Raphaël est pour l'Eurovision, et plus particulièrement le groupe slovène de cette année, LPS, et sa chanson Disko (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g8Ezl7xucCU) ! N'hésitez pas à partager cet épisode et à vous abonner au podcast. Si vous en avez les moyens et l'envie, passez mettre quelque chose sur notre chapeau virtuel par ici : https://www.utip.io/onnarienprep/ ! Prenez bien soin de vous et à la semaine prochaine !

In VC Sunday School we discuss Pitchbook's data on women-led VC funds (03:16), how much money they've raised and how the industry is evolving. Then, Jason explains why new fund managers often have more success with individual LPs than institutional LPs (27:12). In This Week in Climate Startups Molly speaks with Anukampa Freedom Gupta-Fonner of Springeats.com, a zero-waste grocery service (38:31).

We begin by quizzing Jeremy about the rising popularity of investor portals. He speaks about the advantages these bring, what they might say about a particular operator, and if they are even a necessary part of the investment process. Operators who are looking for advice about how to distribute opportunities amongst their different tiers of investors might also find some of Jeremy's later points valuable. We hear about how investors can make sure they get a piece of the pie if they find that higher shareholders are hearing about opportunities before them. Finally, we talk more about the dangers of sharing sensitive information between investors and operators, and how to mediate these. Lance helps us understand the friction between LPs and GPs and how to minimize that. Lance also discusses institutional money – its pros and cons. Tune in for this rich discussion and enjoy the show!

Reefer Reporters - May 12 2022 with Glenn & AlStories include.....Active medical registrations with LPs continue to decline, while personal and designated increase, Police confirm investigation into Ontario Cannabis Store data breach, Greenway Greenhouse to sell through North 40's medical cannabis platform, Paying the price in the cannabis supply chain, What Are The Most Expensive Cannabis Strains On The Market?, How Not To Get Arrested For Weed In A Legal State, Let the cannabis packaging sector lead the way out of an environmental tragedy, Medical Cannabis For Autism: What The Latest Studies Are Telling Us, Cannabix study correlates THC levels in breath and blood samples, Researchers Make Surprising Discovery Involving Cannabis StemsTY Legacy420.com Bma Hydroponics Dr. Buck CTS Campbellford Lifestyle Shop

You've decided to jump in to private investing. You've already asked yourself if you should invest at all and discovered how to participate. Now that you're ready to invest - how does it actually work? Who is giving money to whom and what are they trying to achieve?First, you start with a venture capital founder - an entrepreneur that starts a company with an industry-disrupting idea. Think Zoom, Peloton, and Coinbase as recent examples. The company must grow, scale operations, and eventually become profitable to become successful.Second, the Venture Capital Firm (VC) - a group of people who specialize in finding the next trillion-dollar company before they even have profits - funds the founder with the capital necessary to realize their potential. In exchange, they become equity owners of the business and work in partnership with the founders to increase the chances of success. Some of the most well-known VCs include Accel, Bessemer Venture Partners, Lightspeed, Sequoia, IVP, Benchmark, and a16z. Third, the investors, like AWM and other family offices, then put money to work with venture capital firms to target the outsized returns. The ideal end result is an exit (sale) that generates for the investors, VCs, and founders an outsized return. Without the idea and execution, the VCs and investors would not be able to capture this return. Without the capital invested, the company would fail.In this week's episode, Brandon and Justin dive deeper into this process on how the venture capital investing works, the different seed and funding rounds, and what to expect throughout as an investor.Have questions for an upcoming episode? Want to get free resources, book giveaways, and AWM gear? Want to hear about when we release new episodes? Text “insights” or the lightbulb emoji (

Kakšna bo 15-a slovenska vlada? Odgovor bomo dobili popoldne, ko bo najverjetnejši mandatar Robert Golob predstavil tako imena ministrskih kandidatov kot tudi končno število ministrstev. Teh bo po pričakovanjih več, kot jih je v zdajšnji vladi. Druge teme: - Danes občutno cenejša bencin in dizel, vlada po drastični podražitvi cene pogonskih goriv omejuje za tri mesece - Ukrajina napoveduje ustavitev dobave plina prek plinovoda v luganski regiji, po njem v Evropo dnevno tretjino ruskega plina - Znani prvi finalisti letošnje Evrovizije, med njimi ni slovenskih predstavnikov, skupine LPS s pesmijo Disko

Study finds Mediterranean diet improves depression symptoms in young men and women University of Technology, Sydney, May 9, 2022 Young adults with a poor diet saw a significant improvement in their symptoms of depression when they switched to a healthy Mediterranean diet, a new study shows. The 12-week randomized control trial, conducted by researchers from the University of Technology Sydney, was recently published in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. The study contributes to the emerging field of nutritional psychiatry, which aims to explore the effect that specific nutrients, foods and dietary patterns can have on mental health. The diet used in the study was rich in colorful vegetables, legumes and wholegrains, oily fish, olive oil and raw, unsalted nuts. The primary focus was on increasing diet quality with fresh wholefoods while reducing the intake of 'fast' foods, sugar and processed red mea. "There are lots of reasons why scientifically we think food affects mood. For example, around 90 percent of serotonin, a chemical that helps us feel happy, is made in our gut by our gut microbes. There is emerging evidence that these microbes can communicate to the brain via the vagus nerve, in what is called the gut-brain axis. To have beneficial microbes, we need to feed them fiber, which is found in legumes, fruits and vegetables," they said.   Amaranth extract goes head to head with beet as nitrate source Arjuna Natural (India), May 6, 2022   A number of studies have established that nitrate, a nitric oxide metabolite, is beneficial for endurance during exercise. However, this bioavailability study, published in the journal Nutrition, was the first clinical trial to show that extract of amaranthus - one of the sources of nitrite in nature - can help athletes work out longer and harder. The researchers found that a single (2g) dose of amaranth extract was able to increase nitrate (NO3) and nitrite (NO2) levels in the body for at least eight hours.   Until now, sports nutrition manufacturers have typically incorporated beetroot powder and juice into formulations in order to support nitrate levels. These findings give this market a new, more potent form of nitrate to work with, according to botanical extracts manufacturer Arjuna, whose interest in amaranthus stems from its traditional use in Indian medicine and cooking.    By comparison, he said that amaranthus was a far more “potent” form of nitrate for sports nutrition applications.   “It's standardised to 9-10% nitrate content, whereas most beet-based ingredients contain less than 2% nitrate,” he told NutraIngredients.   Arjuna attributes this to its patent production process, which extracts 9,000mg per 100g of nitrate from the leaves of the amaranthus species. Another advantage over its beet-based counterparts is that it doesn't contain any reducing sugars and oxalates.     Study identifies exact amounts of extra vitamin C for optimal immune health University of Otago (New Zealand), May 6, 2022 If you are carrying a few extra kilos in weight, an extra apple or two per day might make a difference in boosting your immune system and helping ward off COVID-19 and winter illnesses. New University of Otago  research has identified, for the first time, exactly how much extra vitamin C humans need to ingest, relative to their body weight, to maximize their immune health. The study has found that for every 10 kilograms of excess weight a person carries, their body needs an extra 10 milligrams of Vitamin C daily, which will help to optimize their immune health. "Previous studies have already linked higher body weight with lower vitamin C levels," says lead author Associate Professor Carr. "We know obesity is a risk factor for getting COVID-19 and that obese patients are more likely to struggle to fight it off once infected. We also know that vitamin C is essential for good immune function and works by helping white blood cells fight infection. The results from this study therefore suggest that increasing your vitamin C intake if overweight might be a sensible response. Pneumonia is a major complication of COVID-19 and patients with pneumonia are known to be low in vitamin C. The study determined how much vitamin C is required for people of higher body weight compared to a starting base weight of a 60 kilogram person consuming the average New Zealand dietary vitamin C intake of 110 milligrams per day, which most people achieve from a balanced diet.    Vitamin A deficiency is detrimental to blood stem cells German Cancer Research Center, May 5, 2022 Many specialized cells, such as in the skin, gut or blood, have a lifespan of only a few days. Therefore, steady replenishment of these cells is indispensable. They arise from so-called "adult" stem cells that divide continuously. In addition, there is a group of very special stem cells in the bone marrow that were first discovered in 2008 by a research team led by Andreas Trumpp, who is a division head at the DKFZ and director of HI-STEM. These cells remain in a kind of dormancy most of the time and only become active in an emergency such as bacterial or viral infections, heavy blood loss, or in the wake of chemotherapy. Once their work is done, the body sends its most potent stem cells back to sleep. The scientists assume that this protects them from dangerous mutations that may lead to leukemia. The scientists have now identified retinoic acid, a vitamin A metabolite, as a crucial factor in this process. If this substance is absent, active stem cells are unable to return to a dormant state and mature into specialized blood cells instead. This means that they are lost as a reservoir. This was shown in studies with specially bred mice. "If we feed these mice on a vitamin A deficient diet for some time, this leads to a loss of the stem cells," said Nina Cabezas-Wallscheid, who is the first author of the publication. "Thus, we can prove for the first time that vitamin A has a direct impact on blood stem cells."     Exposure to wildfires increases risk of cancer McGill University (Quebec), May 9, 2022 A new study from McGill University finds higher incidence of lung cancer and brain tumors in people exposed to wildfires. The study, which tracks over 2 million Canadians over a period of 20 years, is the first to examine how proximity to forest fires may influence cancer risk. "Wildfires tend to happen in the same locations each year, but we know very little about the long-term health effects of these events. Our study shows that living in close proximity to wildfires may increase the risk of certain cancers," says Scott Weichenthal, at McGill University. The study shows that people living within 50 kilometers of wildfires over the past 10 years had a 10% higher incidence of brain tumors and 4.9% higher incidence of lung cancer than people living further away.   Curcumin improves intestinal barrier function: modulation of intercellular signaling  Virginia Commonwealth University, May 5, 2022 Studies from Virginia Commonwealth University Describe New Findings in Curcumin improves intestinal barrier function According to news, research stated, "Association between circulating lipopolysaccharide (LPS) and metabolic diseases (such as type 2 diabetes and atherosclerosis) has shifted the focus from high-fat high-cholesterol containing Western- type diet (WD)-induced changes in gut microbiota per se to release of gut bacteria-derived products (e.g., LPS) into circulation due to intestinal barrier dysfunction as the possible mechanism for the chronic inflammatory state underlying the development of these diseases. We demonstrated earlier that oral supplementation with curcumin attenuates WD-induced development of type 2 diabetes and atherosclerosis."T The research concluded: "The major site of action of curcumin is, therefore, likely the intestinal epithelial cells and the intestinal barrier, and by reducing intestinal barrier dysfunction, curcumin modulates chronic inflammatory diseases despite poor bioavailability." Videos:  1. Brazil's Lula proposes creating Latin American currency to ‘be freed of US dollar' dependency (part 2) (10:00)   2. Elon Musk Blasts Soros 'Dark Money Groups' Threatening Twitter Advertisers (14:13)

In this episode, elementary DLC Julie Spang interviews second-grade teacher Rachel Garcia and her students at Estabrook about using VR Expeditions to 'visit' the Taj Mahal for their social studies unit. LPS has a virtual reality kit through a generous grant from the LEF Foundation. Lisah gives reminders about cleaning out your Drive as the end of the year approaches.

Sestaviti želimo močno vlado, k sodelovanju vabimo tudi LMŠ in SAB, je sinoči dejal najverjetnejši mandatar Robert Golob. Kot poudarja, je eden od ciljev Gibanja Svoboda združitev levosredinskega političnega prostora. V posebni oddaji Studio deveti maj v Slovenskem mladinskem gledališču je napovedal tudi vnovično regulacijo cen energentov. Druge teme: - Predlog sprememb statuta RTV Slovenija uvaja dva ločena informativna programa in funkcijo odgovornega urednika MMC, svetniki o usodi Studia City čez 14 dni - Francoski predsednik Macron po srečanju z nemškim kanclerjem Sholzem: pridruževanje Ukrajine Evropski uniji bi lahko trajalo desetletja - LPS se bodo na odru torinske dvorane PalaOlimpico drevi prvič predstavili evrovizijskemu občinstvu

Take a look behind the curtain to hear what Arlan revealed to nearly 7,000 stakeholders (including past and current teammates, a portfolio of 200+ companies, ~6,500 Reg CF investors, Backstage fund LPs, Studio investors, and more) at this year's annual stakeholder event! --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/yfm/message

Fabrice Grinda is the Founding Partner @ FJ Labs, with over 700 investments, Fabrice has had over 250 exits and built a portfolio including Alibaba, Coupang, Airbnb, Instacart, Flexport, and Delivery Hero, and many more. Prior to FJ Labs, Fabrice served as CEO for three multinational companies; including OLX, one of the largest websites in the world with over 300 million unique visitors per month. As a result of his incredible investing success, Fabrice was named the #1 Angel Investor in the world by Forbes. In Today's Episode with Fabrice Grinda: 1.) Everything Great Starts Small: How did Fabrice make his way into the world of investing from founding 3 companies? How does Fabrice feel about founders raising funds with external LPs? Why does Fabrice feel that investing as an angel made him a better CEO? 2.) WTF is Going On: The Market Today How does Fabrice assess what is happening in the market today? What is causing the massive public market drops we are seeing? How do inflation rates and interest rates have such an impact on where we are? How much of this is a result of COVID, the shift to goods from services and supply chains? 3.) The Optimistic Case: How does Fabrice think things could get better from here? What needs to happen? What could the Fed do to enable this optimistic outcome to take place? What would need to happen in geo-politics and Russia for this to happen? What is the probability today of this optimistic case happening? 4.) The Great Stagnation: How does Fabrice think the economy could go sideways from here? What are the core drivers of this? Why is this the most likely outcome of all? What is the probability of this happening? 5.) The Catastrophe: How could this market get so much worse? What level of interest rate change would cause this outcome to occur? Why does Fabrice think that Switzerland is a "House of Cards"? What would this mean if Switzerland fell? What other European countries does Fabrice think are vulnerable? 6.) What this Means for Venture: How will LPs respond to these differing situations? How does this impact how Fabrice thinks about his rate of deployment? What segment of the market is Fabrice most excited for; early or growth? Mentioned in Today's Episode with Fabrice Grinda: Fabrice's Favourite Book: Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

Looking for an effective and efficient way to raise capital?   Marcin Drozdz joins us today to talk about the system that secured him 9 figures of private investment capital for several business ventures. An active investor with a several hundred unit real estate portfolio, Marcin developed the E.A.S.Y. system, and he breaks it down for us in this episode. He also shares the inspiring story of his family as immigrants in the United States and the mindset and values that led him to his current success.   [00:01 - 04:54] Getting in the Game Early Jumping into real estate in his mid-20s Transitioning from employee to entrepreneur A lesson he learned early on Find out if you're a finder, a minder, or a grinder   [04:55 - 11:12] E.A.S.Y. System to Raise Capital Building and maintaining rapport with your contacts Make them understand what's exciting and unique about the opportunity Talk to a lot of people Generate scarcity through demand Know the amount they're considering   [11:13 - 19:36] There is No Plan B Bring people along for the journey Have a “This is going to work” mindset Remove self-doubt and believe in your own worth and capabilities Look for the right inspiration and the right next step for you   [19:37 - 21:07] Closing Segment Reach out to Marcin! Check out the free E.A.S.Y. System Mini Course! Final Words Tweetable Quotes “Find your inspiration, the guy that's out there killing it at a level that you're just like, that's godly. That's God-like. Sure. But then bring that back to Earth and find that next peg on the ladder. That's somebody that can help you, you know, actually more directly.” - Marcin Drozdz “Never lie. Always use real numbers. Don't say things that aren't consistent, because it's a small sandbox… If you start making up stories, it's not going to work.” - Marcin Drozdz “If you don't put yourself in a position where you can speak with some authority on what you're doing, if you don't buy into and you don't believe what you're doing, you know, it's a really difficult thing to sell.” - Marcin Drozdz -----------------------------------------------------------------------------   Connect with Marcin! Learn more about him and the E.A.S.Y. System by going to his website and downloading the free E.A.S.Y. System Mini Course!   Connect with me:   I love helping others place money outside of traditional investments that both diversify a strategy and provide solid predictable returns.   Facebook LinkedIn   Like, subscribe, and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, or whatever platform you listen on.  Thank you for tuning in! Email me → sam@brickeninvestmentgroup.com   Want to read the full show notes of the episode? Check it out below:   Marcin Drozdz  00:00 Find your inspiration, the guy that's out there killing it at a level that you're just like, that's godly. That's God-like. Sure. But then bring that back to Earth and find that next peg on the ladder. That's somebody that can help you, you know actually more directly.   Intro  00:14 Welcome to the How to Scale Commercial Real Estate Show. Whether you are an active or passive investor, we'll teach you how to scale your real estate investing business into something big.   Sam Wilson  00:26 Marcin Drozdz is the managing partner of M1 Real Capital where he and his team focused on acquiring value add multifamily properties throughout the southeast. Marcin, welcome to the show.   Marcin Drozdz  00:36 Thank you, sir. That's quite an introduction. I appreciate I'm all excited now. Love it.   Sam Wilson  00:41 Great, man. I'm looking forward to it. There's three questions I ask every guest who comes on the show: in 90 seconds or less, can you tell me where did you start? Where are you now? And how did you get there?   Marcin Drozdz  00:49 Sure. I started out reading Rich Dad, Poor Dad, probably like millions of other people, thought it was a good idea that I could figure it out, started buying houses while I was in college, got recruited into private equity on the real estate side. Probably brought me in a little young, but I'm glad they did got to immediately go from you know, looking at single-family homes, to multifamily land assemblies, commercial, recreation, just all kinds of stuff. So seeing that for a couple of years was tremendous. A couple of years after that broke out on my own, sort of putting together my own LPs trusts structures. And fast forward today, we focus on value ad today, primarily in the south and southeast.   Sam Wilson  01:32 But what a great way to get your early education in real estate   Marcin Drozdz  01:37 Drinking from a firehose, literally.   Sam Wilson  01:39 I'm sure it was but it didn't take you long. I mean, a couple of years is not a long time really to spend under somebody else's tutelage and then just go out and do it on your own. What were some of the things that finally pushed you over the edge and said, hey, I can repeat this.   Marcin Drozdz  01:52 Well, you know, what it was, the firm that I worked for was family-owned, good people, well-intentioned, but I knew that I would never be anything more than just a well-paid piece of the puzzle here, a cog in the machine. And you know, being young enough, maybe naive enough in my mid-20s at that point, I was like, You know what, I can do this. So, you know, went out on my own very quickly realized the things that I didn't know, as I left that space, because everything was kind of, in and around what you do, there's a ton of things that happened for you that I didn't really understand at that point. And then, you know, a couple of million dollars later, with my own money, a bunch of mistakes later, I finally realized, maybe I'm not, as you know, well-versed, you know, as I initially thought, but again, you know, you take your bumps along the way, you know, 37 now, so, you know, a lot of experience, a few gray hairs and all things considered, I'm glad I did it when I did,   Sam Wilson  02:43 What were some of the things just, you know, top of your mind that you say, Man, those were some of the early mistakes I made that somebody else could be spared from?   Marcin Drozdz  02:51 You know, the biggest thing is you got to recognize, if you're better, there's three types of people, there's finders, there's minders, and there's grinders. So that's probably the best way I'm able to articulate it. And you know, finders typically the front of the business, whether it's the deal side, the money side, it's the person that goes out and makes things happen. The minders are the operations, the ongoing maintenance, the making sure the buses run on time, so to speak, and everything happens the way it's supposed to. And then the grinders are the people that are typically just happy with the nine to five, or nine, and nine, or whatever it is, and they have a very specific role within an organization. And they're happy just to grind it out. They don't want to have to go outside of their parameters. So for me, I thought everybody thought like me when I left the PE space. And I very quickly realized that was not the case.   Sam Wilson  03:44 Which of those three do you put yourself in?   Marcin Drozdz  03:48 Well, when you start a business, you're all three, my friend, as you very well know. I'm definitely a finder, I love to find opportunity, find talent, find the right people around me and execute on a vision. But you definitely need to be aware of the fact that you need the minders, and you need the grinders to actually execute things. And that was probably for me, that was my biggest lesson in my 20s.    Sam Wilson  04:11 Yeah, that's a tough one. You're absolutely right. And I'm just a slow learner altogether. And so this is something that I've been actually researching quite a bit, because you're right, I've made the same assumption many over the years, like everybody thinks like me, like no, and goes back to the whole like visionary, integrator. And then there's just like you're saying, so like I would put the visionary is the finder or the integrator is the minder, and then kind of the employee person that just wants to be an employee as the grinder. And yeah, the idea of being just an employee, not just, being an employee and just kind of being happy with, you know, the way that things go, like, I don't understand that. And so because I can't relate to that myself. Like, I assume everyone's me that just wants to go, you know, go nuts and go find stuff and take deals. Yeah, that's just not the case. One of the things you're known for is the system you call the E.A.S.Y. System to Raise Capital for real estate deals. Can you break that down for us?   Marcin Drozdz  05:03 Sure, easy stands for Exclusive, Abundant, Scarce and Your allocation. So essentially, the system is part of a much larger process of how to find, nurture, maintain contacts and eventually get the commitment in a way where you don't, you know, you don't come across pushy, don't come across sales-y. It's very consultative, very process-driven. And ultimately, as you very well know, just because somebody isn't a fit for a deal today, doesn't mean that they won't be a fit in three months, or three years for that matter. So how you approach that situation, how you maintain that rapport with that person is, I mean, it's everything it really is, you know, everything I'm at 16 years now, and you end up getting a compounding benefit for all the work you do early on. And if you do it in, you know, if you always approach things from I'm here for a long time, not just a good time perspective, then you'll have that flow. So the E, the exclusive is your deal. So in other words, so many people, when they tie up the deal, they totally undersell it when they're explaining it to somebody else, or they focus on the wrong things that most people don't understand. So I can't tell you how many of our students or some of my partners are like, yeah, like going in cap rate is X, and we're going to come out at Y, and the replacement costs is Zed, and here's why that matters. And I'm just like, dude, honestly, I understand. But the business owner that's trying to give you 250 grand, is just gonna stare at you and go, Oh, okay. And a confused mind doesn't buy, right. So exclusive is, you know, break it down to a level of what would have got you excited about the opportunity. If you didn't understand real estate, for example, is it on Main & Main? Is it one of the last remaining buildings before the codes change? Is it of a certain size, a certain stature? Is there certain finish within the units? Are there certain opportunities for you to do things to add value that is unique in your market, in your city, in your state, whatever it is. Like, focus on the things that the everyday person can understand. Like, if you tell me, hey, the rents in this area are $800. And if we just put new counters down the guy down the streets renting for 1200, I can understand that, you can tell me that the cap rate is going to go from X to Y, but I'm just going to stare at you and go okay. So that's exclusive. Abundant is make sure you have a ton of people to talk to. So in other words, just because you don't have a deal, doesn't mean you shouldn't be talking to investors about past deals, things you're looking at. Because when you do have that deal, and you can call somebody and say, Listen, you know, I have this deal. It's exclusive, because of these reasons, I have X amount of people that I need to talk to. But I know you told me you want to hear about this. So here we are. And then S for scarcity is, so we're only looking for $2 million. Our average investment is you know, let's just say 150,000. So we're probably looking for another eight or so investors in the opportunity. And then the Y. So scarcity got to create, you know, if you're doing a great deal, and it's exclusive, and you've got tons of people to talk to there's natural scarcity, both within the amount of allocation somebody can take, and the amount of room you have for people because of the size of the deal. So then, you know, you'll obviously have a conversation back and forth to that person. And when you think it's appropriate, you can say, Look, I know you still got to do your due diligence, I got to send you the package, you gotta review everything. But if everything does check out, what amount would you potentially consider investing, like, ask for some kind of a soft... So again, I'm oversimplifying all this, Sam. But all of this breaks down to a process that has helped me secure well into nine figures in capital. And whether you're raising 50,000, 500,000, or commitment for $5 million, it really is the same process.   Sam Wilson  08:44 I love that. It's not playing mind games. I don't want to use that word, but it is a process. And it's getting used to even some of your phrasing there, I think is really unique. Just you know, where it's like, hey, you know what, we're only asking for two and a half million dollars. That's all the raise is average investment, would you say? 150 grand is your example.   Marcin Drozdz  09:02 Yeah, I mean, whatever it is for you, right? It's 25. It's 25. It's 50. It's 50. It's 250 or whatever, it makes it real for you. By the way, never lie. Never BS. Always use real numbers. Don't say things that aren't consistent, because it's a small sandbox, as you and I both know, Sam, and, you know, if you start making up stories, it's not going to work.   Sam Wilson  09:22 What was the Y in the E.A.S.Y.?   Marcin Drozdz  09:25 The Y? I'll tell you why I created two, but the Y is your allocation. So in other words, it's asking for some kind of a call to action. So in other words, when you're talking to somebody can say, Look, I know you got to look through the package or lawyer or accountant, whatever it is, but if everything does check out what amount would you potentially be considering? And that's, you know, soft commit, I mean, in PE it's a soft commit. So in other words, you know, because you got to give them the opportunity to do their due diligence, obviously, to make sure they're qualified and make sure they can, you know, comply with the rules with your lawyers and everything else and make sure everything's done clean. But if at all didn't checkout, what amount would they be considering? Because if someone isn't considering it, they would tell you there, you know, but if they're already telling me I love it, if it all checks out, I'd probably do 100-200, then that's a good indicator of at least somebody who's semi-serious.   Sam Wilson  10:14 Right. I really liked that. I mean, that breaks it down into a very easy-to-understand step-by-step process for people who are out there raising capital. It sounds like maybe this was developed for you just because you needed something that was repeatable.    Marcin Drozdz  10:29 So when I left PE, again, I started thinking that I could do things my own way. And there were various forms that encouraged us to incorporate what I've now coined as the E.A.S.Y. system. But I had a property, I personally had three properties that I was closing in a month. And these were smaller properties. I remember my investor in the last week or so decided to pull out. And it was like, you ever see the movie, Jerry Maguire or buddy gets fired in the restaurant, and he just doesn't know what to do next. That was my Jerry Maguire moment. So, you know, I sweated it out, I figured it out. But after that, I swore and we closed on the properties. But after that, I swore to myself, I would never put myself in a position like that again, and at a sheer necessity created this thing.   Sam Wilson  11:11 Yeah, absolutely. I love that. Tell me some other lessons, you know that you would say that you've incorporated? I mean, raising nine figures is no small amount of money. Is there anything else that comes to top of mind? You said, Hey, here's some other things I've learned along the way.   Marcin Drozdz  11:24 Yeah, I think the best way to sum it up is dig your well before you get thirsty. And I forget where I heard that I didn't coin that, I read that in a book somewhere in the author's... The origin of that escaped me. So for that, I apologize. But that saying to me, it was always resonated true on the fundraising side. So many people wait till they have a deal in hand before they start talking to people. My whole thing is bring people along for your journey, because you don't know if it's going to take someone three days, three months, or even three years to finally decide to engage with you. So if you can share your journey, and I mean, you do it well, other people, you know, some people attempt to do it well. You add value, do video walkthroughs. I mean, just the last property we were buying. As we were doing some of the rentals, I literally just FaceTimed with some of the investors, some of the buddies of mine, as guys were working on-site, I was just walking through the site with a hard hat on and just like, hey, so here are the new units. Here's this, here's this, buddy's not available, that's fine, crank out a two, three-minute video. And understand it's not very professional, because they get the professional newsletters and the quarterly updates and things like this as well. But on top of that, they feel like they're part of the journey when you share that type of authentic, you know, here's what's going on with your money in this project. So bring people along for the journey. And again, if you did that, well before you're thirsty, when you do have an opportunity, those people that have responded favorably to past things, it's a much easier transition, because they're already engaged in your world to some extent.   Sam Wilson  12:52 Absolutely. And that's something, taking your advice to heart even, I started a year and a half ago, like I never had a regular newsletter, right? But it's been for a year now we've sent out every single, almost a year, every single Friday 10 am my newsletter goes out. And you know, Marcin, I haven't closed the deal since September of 2021. But we're constantly talking. But now we've got three deals under contract, right? And it's just like, hang on, like it's coming. Here's the things we're working on. And at times, it feels like Gosh, what do I talk about? I mean, really aren't doing a deal, right? Other than the deals we have, you know, in operation, like we're not doing something actively. But yeah, keeping that lead warm, because it's like, Hey, here's all the stuff we're actually still doing out here, even though we're not presenting deals, because there's nothing that made sense for us. But then all of a sudden, you know, out of the blue, and now we got three deals all at once. And so you know, having that prep ahead of time, I think is just really absolutely key. Talk to us a little bit about maybe your mindset. You seem to indicate or at least I hear that there's a mindset. Is that a true statement?    Marcin Drozdz  13:52 It is. You know, it's interesting, because to me, when I started in this business, I knew that it was going to work. I wasn't sure how I, just in my mind, I was already wired that this is happening, this is going to work. And that's probably due to the fact that I mean quick story about me. I was born in communist Poland and my parents, my dad got arrested for selling corn on the black market corn with a C, those of you...   Sam Wilson  14:17 P as in Papa I'm like, okay. Charlie, corn.   Marcin Drozdz  14:21 C as in Charlie. In Polish, it's called kukurydza. So, the point is my dad was selling this stuff. And during communist times, you couldn't run a business. So he got arrested, they were going to send him to jail. He didn't like that too much. So he and my mom and I was a couple of months old at the time, they ran off to East Germany, and eventually migrated to North America. Well, when I finally got out of Poland, it was because my grandpa snuck me out four years later, so I didn't see my parents for four years. They stuck me out, literally drove me across the border, you know, quote, unquote, legally in the trunk. And we came to North America settled down, but my point is when we got here, there was no plan B. There was no safety net. There was no relatives. There was no family, there was no friends. So the language was foreign. I mean, I spoke Polish and German and now learn English, right? So I always grew up with no plan B. And that forced me to whatever I'm doing, this is going to work. And so mindset is so important for people. Because if you don't put yourself in a position where you can speak with some authority on what you're doing, if you don't buy into and you don't believe what you're doing, you know, it's a really difficult thing to sell, especially for fundraising. If you think about it, you're not giving so, like, when somebody invests with you, they're not getting a house, they're not getting a car, they're not getting anything tangible there that says that they own a piece of this apartment building, or warehouse or trailer park, or whatever it is. And that's it. So it's so important to make sure that you have the mindset that you feel like you're worthy, you're capable, you're competent. And that element of self-doubt has to, over a period of time, leave the mind, because I can tell you right now, when I raised that first $5,000, I was more terrified when I was downtown New York, getting a term sheet for 25 or $50. million, like, but the process is the same. So what change? Obviously, my knowledge, my competence created confidence, which is something I say all the time, but it's the mindset to know that you're worthy of that. And consistency is what's going to give you that. If you think that, you know, if you have feelings, like why are people going to invest with me? I can't find any deals. Do I really know what I'm doing? What if I screw up? Like, if you go into conversations with those thoughts, then you're already shooting yourself in the foot. And that mindset piece is a starting point, it is everything. It really is.   Sam Wilson  16:44 That's an incredible story. First of all, and I love the comment there. You said there's no Plan B, it's the burning of the ships. And it's like, Well, guys, no option. This is what you have to do. What do you say to someone that, you know, is struggling with those things, or, you know, maybe, you know, hasn't done enough deals to really be able to say, hey, you know what, this is how I can confidently, you know, lead on this? What do you do for those people? Or how do they develop that?   Marcin Drozdz  17:13 So, Sam, look, we're all struggling with things. We're all in different scenarios where sometimes we feel like we're not equipped or prepared. I mean, I'll give you an example. I was on the phone with a fund manager at in New York right before, actually right when COVID hit. And he's talking to me, I'm walking through where we're at where we're going, and I'm you know, I'm looking for equity, right, large checks. He says to me, he goes, Well, what's your asset size? And I tell him and he goes, Okay, so look, you're a little small. For me, I go really? Like how much? He goes, well, our smallest client is 1 billion. And I just laughed, I go, okay. So I actually said to him, I go, so what you're telling me is I'm trying to get from the kids' table to the grown-up table, and you won't let me yet. He just starts laughing, right. But the point is, look, whether you're at 100,000, a million, 10 million, 100 million, there's always someone that's going to make you feel like you're at the kids' table. And my advice is to get that person or those people just a little bit ahead of you, or maybe a little bit more ahead of you, when you get to know these people, you'll see that they're just like you and me, we're the same. And when you can see that it's attainable. You get past those self-doubting components. Because yeah, if you see guys on Instagram, or YouTube and buddy's buying Lamborghinis, private jets, whatever it is, and he's billion dollars, whatever it is. And you're like, dude, I'm just trying to buy, you know, a 10 Plex, so that I can put my daughter through college, there's a disconnect there. It's such a huge disconnect, that that's not your man. I mean, those are great people for like inspiration. But that's not the next step for you. The next step for you is the guy or girl that's already at 40-50 units, and trying to get to 100, or something along those lines. So find people that are just ahead of you, or maybe slightly ahead of you to actually have some real connection to be able to engage in growth, because otherwise, you know, there's nothing more, you know, okay, I want to play in the NFL. Great. I'm gonna go play with Brady. Yeah, right. Come on, right, like the guys doing, you know, so I have people call me sometimes and they want to play and I go, Look, you know, it sounds like you want to do algebra, but I need you to learn how to count first, like, you got to work your way up. Right? So the best action item is to find people like yeah, find your inspiration, the guy that's out there killing it at a level that you're just like, that's godly. That's God-like, sure. But then bring that back to Earth and find that next peg on the ladder that somebody that can help you, you know, actually more directly, I think.   Sam Wilson  19:37 I love it, Marcin, thanks for taking the time to come on today. I certainly learned a lot. I've loved hearing your story. All the things that you've been involved in, you know, ideas on how to develop a system for raising capital, just, you know, coming from the institutional side than just going out and doing it the idea that we don't need a plan B. We just need a really good plan A and to go execute. So I've certainly enjoyed having you come on today. If our listeners want to get in touch with you or learn more about you, what is the best way to do that?   Marcin Drozdz  20:04 Best way to do that is my website marcindrozdz.com. And then for those of your listeners who want to pick up the E.A.S.Y. System, or at least get introduced to it, because there's a lot more to it than we talked about, I've got a free download there. There's a mini-course there on the website. It's free to anybody so they can go on my website marcindrozdz.com. Hopefully you can spell that in the show notes for them. And they can download the E.A.S.Y. System. It's a 15-20 minutes set of video tutorials that will walk them through the specifics of that.   Sam Wilson  20:31 Yep, absolutely. Yeah, look for marcindrozdz.com. We will put the spelling exactly of that in the show notes. Marcin, thank you again for your time. Certainly enjoyed it.   Marcin Drozdz  20:39 Really appreciate it. Thanks, Sam.   Sam Wilson  20:41 Hey, thanks for listening to the How to Scale Commercial Real Estate Podcast. If you can do me a favor and subscribe and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, whatever platform it is you use to listen, if you can do that for us, that would be a fantastic help to the show. It helps us both attract new listeners as well as rank higher on those directories so appreciate you listening. Thanks so much and hope to catch you on the next episode.  

Connor was fortunate to grab the Slovenian band LPS for an early morning interview following their second rehearsal, and together the band shared their favorite entries for 2022, their excitement around being in Turin, and what they have planned post ESC. This interview was done in Joint with ESCUnited.com.

Eric's Best of 2021 Episode Part 2. This episode Eric discusses his top LPs of 2021. We also listen to some tracks from some of those releases. There is a lot of hardcore and a variety of other bands on this list. Better late than not at all.

They might be young, but LPS is a talented lot. Filip, Gašper, Mark, Zala and Žiga are fresh from high school and representing Slovenia at Eurovision. The group caught up... LEARN MORE The post

The Third Men Podcast is proud to welcome to the program this week Detroit music legend and founding member of the band THE GO, Mr. John Krautner! When John met up with Bobby Harlow in 1996, the chemistry between these two rockers set all involved on a break-neck ride into the rock'n'roll life. From The Go's humble origins in the sweaty clubs of the Cass Corridor, to opening for the White Stripes in front of thousands in Europe, to blazing a singular sound on such quintessential LPs as Howl on the Haunted Beat You Ride, John and crew set the standard for Detroit guitar groups to follow -- all the while crucially maintaining their integrity amongst a ruthless music industry that dealt them more than one tough blow. We'll chat with John about recording with Jack, cutting his first solo LP, where to find the best breakfast in Detroit and much much more in this exclusive extended interview. Thanks to Mr. Krautner for joining us and hope you all dig what we're serving up! See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Support the show and get hours of extra content at: https://www.patreon.com/backtomono   Hello Friends! Today on the show we're hitting the 50th album on the show, and I've decided to take it right back to the beginning, with The Beatles' debut LP Please Please Me. An album with a notoriously wide twin-track stereo mix, just how different could the mono and stereo mixes be? The answer is not too different, but there's a few key differences here that you may have overlooked, and a big hole to dive down regarding the title track. So, with 2 LPs and a 45 in hand, let's bring these mixes together and find that taste of honey!   Happy Listening,   Frederick   Email the show at: backtomonoradio@gmail.com   Listen to companion podcast Back to Mono: https://www.mixcloud.com/backtomonoradio/playlists/back-to-mono-complete/   Find me on Instagram @hypnoticfred   Join the Facebook Community here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/backtomono

Looking to retire on passive income?   Just a few years ago, this was not in the cards for Emma Powell. But when her husband suddenly got laid off from his tech job, Emma made the jump to real estate and started her own business. Now, she's working on building her passive income portfolio and is well on her way to financial freedom.   She's here to share her story of being a stay-at-home-mom-photographer turned real estate investor and her unique perspective on raising capital and finding deals.     [00:01 - 06:52] Bouncing Back and Getting into Real Estate  After her husband was laid off, they moved to Salt Lake City, Utah She went to real estate just to have a new source of income and to have a hedge for unemployment Emma soon realized the bigger possibilities with real estate   [06:53 - 13:41] Transitioning from Active to Passive Investor Here's where Emma is getting ideas and inspiration from Shortening their timeline She breaks down the 4% and 8% rule Diversification is key   [13:42 - 18:24] Creating An Investment Club Emma was struggling to find limited partners Learn how she overcame this challenge She explains the investment club model More than raising capital, it's become a place of resource and mentorship   [18:25 - 19:55] Closing Segment Reach out to Emma!  Links Below Final Words Tweetable Quotes   “You can retire on passive income, just from being a passive investor. You don't ever actually have to own your own real estate.” - Emma Powell “Just being well-diversified, sticking to your lane, and letting other people do what they do best but trusting them with some of your money so that your money can be working for you as well as you're working for yourself.” - Emma Powell -----------------------------------------------------------------------------   Connect with Emma for passive commercial real estate investment opportunities! Visit the Highrise Group website now.   Connect with me:   I love helping others place money outside of traditional investments that both diversify a strategy and provide solid predictable returns.     Facebook   LinkedIn   Like, subscribe, and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, or whatever platform you listen on.  Thank you for tuning in!   Email me → sam@brickeninvestmentgroup.com   Want to read the full show notes of the episode? Check it out below:   Emma Powell  00:00 It doesn't matter what you're doing. You could be doing anything to make money. It doesn't have to be real estate-related. For me, I chose real estate because it was a high-earning type of job that I could do without having to go get a professional degree like a medical degree. And also because I just like real estate. I mean, I was a real estate photographer. I like houses. I like buildings. I like architecture. I like business. For me. I actually like it. Some people in this business don't really like real estate. And I feel like do what you like they can make money and then anything that you make, you invest. You can retire on passive income, just from being a passive investor. You don't ever actually have to own your own real estate.    Intro  00:33 Welcome to the How to Scale Commercial Real Estate Show. Whether you are an active or passive investor, we'll teach you how to scale your real estate investing business into something big.    Sam Wilson  00:45 Emma Powell is a stay-at-home mom of four, photographer, and a multifamily syndicator and capital raiser working on financial independence. Emma, welcome to the show.   Emma Powell  00:54 Hey, thanks for having me on.   Sam Wilson  00:56 Pleasure is mine. Same three questions I ask every guest who comes on the show: in 90 seconds or less, can you tell me where did you start? Where are you now? And how did you get there?   Emma Powell  01:04 Well, the stay-at-home mom-photographer describes it pretty well. You know, always running like a little cottage business, got a degree online when I was 40, Bachelor's Degree in Entrepreneurial Management. And my husband is in the tech industry he got laid off. So we sold everything in Texas, moved to Salt Lake City and super short notice. And when I got up here, I didn't want to restart my photography business, it was a lot of hustle and grind. And I'm just getting to the point where I wanted to spend less time working, more time with my family. But I still needed something that could make a really good income. And so real estate and business, you know, you want to build wealth, you want a business or you invest in real estate and running a real estate business puts those two things together. And so I decided that I wanted to get enough passive income to retire my husband is my new endeavor after we moved. And so I started a real estate business in order to be able to do that. And so I'm mostly retired now, I am still wanting to do deals, obviously, as a passive investor, as a limited partner, but not completely step away from the business, just to be able to boost my earnings a little bit from what I would be doing as a limited partner. So we started a club recently where we just pool our money and do deals together. So allows me to be still involved in the GP, in an advisory or capacity, watching over things without completely stepping away. And it also gives me a chance to do a little bit less work per deal, as well as bring other people enter the deal so they can finally get their first deal done. Or if they're like me, and they want to just take a step down for being an active sponsor. It's a good middle ground for a lot of different people.   Sam Wilson  02:34 When did you move to Salt Lake City?   Emma Powell  02:36 It was in like the last week of January and 2018. And we got from this beautiful Austin, Texas weather. I think it was 25 degrees that day, we drove out. And when we got into Salt Lake, it was like 25 degrees. And I was an angry, angry person for about three weeks. And then we got our first blizzard. And I thought I love it here. So it's been actually a really good move for us.   Sam Wilson  02:57 So if I'm understanding this right, stay-at-home mom-photographer, you said, Hey, I'm going to step away from this entirely. So from 2018 to now you've done enough deals to basically retire yourself.   Emma Powell  03:08 Mm hmm. Yeah, definitely, I make a lot more money now than I did as a photographer, like I make more money than my husband. But he is not comfortable quitting his job for two reasons. One, he works 100% remote, and he can work remote anywhere in the United States. The other thing is, he has a lot of time freedom, even during his job, they have something called flexible time off. And so it's not like PTO where you have to save up days and all that they just come in and come out. As long as their work is done. He can work early in the morning late at night, he can take lunches off he can go places with us so it's not a part time job, he does work full time, but he can schedule it like a part-time person would be able to. So the other thing that he wants is a lot more security and our income stream. And so selling a deal or doing a deal that's active, that's my job. And he doesn't want to just have to replace, if he quits replace his job with my job. He wants it to be completely passive have a foundation of passive income that comes in at somewhat regular intervals. That W2 type of security, so monthly or quarterly distributions is what would be making him feel more comfortable. So between those two things, and you know, also just really liking his company and feeling like they're working on something really important, unusual, and they have a great company culture. So he's like, you know, let's just wait until we can really feel like we have that kind of a constant income security that you're not having to work for, it is truly passive. And then if we want to work after that happens, that's our choice is being financially free, not necessarily retired.   Sam Wilson  04:35 Right. That's really awesome. Did you expect in four years time to be able to step away yourself?   Emma Powell  04:42 I don't think I realized that the first six to 12 months. I really thought that it was a way for me to bring in another stream of income that would protect us from another layoff because in the tech industry, it's not if it's when and he was lucky with his first layoff because at the time he was contracting or working for California company and they had to give him 60 days notice like a plenty of time to go find a new job. But when that new job was a Texas when they laid him off, it was like he came home in the middle of the day 10:30. And he's like, Hey, can we talk and I mean, every wife knows, with a husband in tech knows what that means. It's just such a common trope almost. So for me, I just felt like I wanted to protect us from that my photography was definitely not going to be able to do that. And that was one of the reasons I didn't want to restart the business when we got to Salt Lake. But it didn't take very long for me to realize that this income earning potential wasn't just a hedge for unemployment, or layoffs, it could not only replace my need to work full time, or even part-time, and completely replace his income many times over. And I think that what we've done is the same thing with syndication kind of blows the lid off of what you can earn, with a W2 job, as we're looking more into fund creation, fund management and capital raising, that again, blows the lid off your income potential that you would have as a syndicator as an operator. So that's kind of what we're looking at next. It is a lot of work. So I'm a little work adverse right now. I'm definitely anxious and ready for retirement. So it's hard for me to plan a lot farther, I know that I'm gonna have to take a gap year and take some time off and reevaluate. But thinking about maximizing your income for the time that you're spending is something that you have to do if you claim you want passive income and to spend more time with your family, which everybody does. But then when they say that the next thing you do is go out and start a syndication business.   Sam Wilson  06:27 Right. He's guilty, guilty as charged. Yeah, you don't want to, you know, have more time, freedom. Yeah. Okay. Out of the gate, that's not exactly how it goes.   Emma Powell  06:38 No. So I transitioned pretty quickly, from active operations to more passive and consulting, because I just realized that I wasn't being true to my own goals by saying, I want passive income to spend more time with a family, and then just build this huge business that takes me away from my family.   Sam Wilson  06:53 Yeah. How did you because, there's a tipping point there but there's also that like, where you have to chase one and not the other at some point? How did you navigate that? And then talk to us a little bit about that, that question even make sense.   Emma Powell  07:06 Hanging out with people who are doing what you want to be doing and seeing them doing it successfully, you have to determine who those people are. And so I came across a couple of people who were basically full-time passive investors, you know, Jeremy Roll, Travis watts, people in that category, and just watching what they did. I mean, they don't really know who I am, but I know who they are. And they're my imaginary mentors, if you will. And so just watching those types of people, there are few other I talked to who are running syndication businesses, or capital raising funds, but they had previously retired on their passive income. So even though they are working now, they don't have to. And so knowing that about them, I can ask them questions and see how they did it. So just kind of following them around and replicating what they were doing helped me figure out really quickly that to retire on passive income, you don't have to be running a real estate business, you can do it from a job. And I remember my son when he got his first job when he was 16 at Sonic, and I was driving him to work one day, and I said, you know, if you just work hard, save up your money and start purchasing investments really young, like 16-18 years old, you could if you wanted to work at Sonic the rest of your life and be very, very wealthy, because you hold a lot of cash flowing assets. And he looked at me and he said, I don't have to work at Sonic the rest of my life, do I? No, but it doesn't matter what you're doing. You could be doing anything to make money. It doesn't have to be real estate-related. For me, I chose real estate because it was a high-earning type of job that I could do without having to go get a professional degree like a medical degree. And also because I just like real estate. I just really, I mean, I was a real estate photographer. I like houses. I like buildings. I like architecture. I like business. For me, I actually like it. Some people in this business don't really like real estate. And I feel like do what you like they can make money. And then anything that you make, you invest. You can retire on passive income, just from being a passive investor, you don't ever actually have to own your own real estate.   Sam Wilson  08:58 Right? That's a valid point. You know, was there a number that you had to have as a nest egg and you said, Hey, this is my investable assets.   Emma Powell  09:07 Yes, if we go off of the 4% rule, which means that you're drawing down your portfolio at 4% per year of the total value, we needed something a little over 2 million, almost $3 million. Before going on to 8% roll which I also see is becoming more commonly accepted because your portfolio is going to continue to grow. You're going to be taking out less as time goes by. So if you go with the 8%, we were somewhere in the million and a half to 2 million range. What if we were going off of the average annual return of 10% to make 120k a year which is $10,000 a month, we needed about a million dollars invested in cash flowing assets. And so I set the base one as that million dollars in play. When we sold our little ranch in Texas we had just under half of that between our retirement fund, our emergency fund, the equity that we got out of that house, it was both cash we put in an equity that we forced from renovations and also just live in it for a couple of years. So we took and piled all of that together and went out and started our business. And like I said, I had about half of that million that I needed from those savings and activities. And I knew that I could double that by the year, by the rule of 72. At 10%, a year would take 7.2 years to double that. And to me, 7.2 years was too long, my husband was starting this brand new job, we didn't know if he was going to like it, we didn't know if he was going to like the company and 7.2 years seemed like an eternity me, plus, I had no job. And so I thought I would be a good candidate to be an active investor, because I want to shorten this timeline down to three, four or five years, not 7.2 to double that. And I need some to do. I mean, when we first moved to Utah, I was literally watching cat videos on YouTube, I was so bored. And so I spent a couple of months just figuring out, what I wanted to do. My house was spotless, it was just ridiculous. I thought my kids just don't need me at the level that they needed me when they were younger. And so I went out and basically started in a real estate business. For all of those reasons. I like doing one thing that checks a lot of boxes. And for me that checked a ton of boxes.   Sam Wilson  11:07 I love that. And that makes a lot of sense. Thanks for breaking down the four and 8% rule that you know, because even if you're at 8%, and you're you're checking off at 10%. Theoretically, it's growing still every year, you're never touching principle because a lot of deals, especially right now finding something that throws off 10% cash on cash is kind of challenging. A lot of this stuff is baked in IRR with a 6% cash-on-cash return. Are you just being hyper selective? Or how are you finding the opportunities that meet your criteria?   Emma Powell  11:37 It's been really difficult, because to find something that throws up the yield that you need to have a high cash on cash return like that, it's really challenging with cap rates compressing, and you're seeing total returns go down and you're definitely seeing cash on cash return go down. It used to be 10% was the minimum that people needed to do a deal at all. And now if you can find 10%, you're doing well. And I'm not talking about 10% from like things that you're doing yourself, like you can get that off of AirBnBs, you can get that off of a lot of things. But if you're going in as a passive investor, where you're just investing for cash flow, it's a difficult thing to find in commercial real estate right now. So I think the advantage of putting money into a deal and not as much time like I still like putting my time into multifamily, because that's my niche. And that's what I know. And that's why I like to do what I understand. But being able to diversify your cash into other things that you maybe don't understand as well, because you don't have to run it. I'm never saying that you should invest in something that you don't understand. But you don't have to understand it to the deep level that you would if you were actively managing that actual deal or that portfolio. So looking into assets outside of real estate and talking to other real estate investors because they're not 100%, real estate maxis, we have to be in other things, it would be... Just like we tell all the crypto people don't go 100% into crypto, you shouldn't be 100% in real estate either. And so being able to diversify into things that really specialize in high cash flow like ATM funds, oil and gas. Those are the notorious ones for high cash flow. There's no upside, but you do enjoy some depreciation. I do like the upside to get off of commercial real estate. So I think a 70 to 80% of your portfolio and asset class you really understand well, and then you've got some percentage in some diversified things for hedge also, but just because it does something different, in this case, high cash flow. And then you have a little bit leftover for some more speculative investments, like tech startups, crypto, things like that. So just being well-diversified, sticking to your lane, and letting other people do what they do best but trusting them with some of your money so that your money can be working for you as well as you're working for yourself.   Sam Wilson  13:37 Absolutely. That's brilliant. I couldn't have said that better if I had tried. So plug your mindset behind that. With the last few minutes we have here. I want to talk about your investing club and your group mentorship. How did you build a following around that in order to get that launched?   Emma Powell  13:51 It was actually the plan B. Plan A was to build a network of limited partners who would want to passively invest in deals and I thought, oh, I want to be a limited partner. I know how to speak to limited partners. But really the only people I was speaking to and reaching who were reaching out to me were other entrepreneurs like how can I do a deal with you? How can I Co-GP? I've got $100,000, I've got $200,000. How do I do a Co-GP and at 200,000, it's really just difficult to get a large multifamily or large commercial operator to even talk to you about Co-GP. You need to start from three, four, or 500,000 before you can even have that conversation, especially if you don't have any experience. I'm a little bit different position because I have some experience and I can help out on a GP in various ways. But it just was not going anywhere. And I felt like, where are all my LPs? I went to go do a raise for a large deal. And I raised almost nothing. It was just almost a complete and utter failure. And I just realized I do better raising money for joint ventures. But as the deals got bigger, the joint venture partners have to have more and more cash and I just, I didn't know anybody or not enough people in the 500 to a million-dollar space to put in one single deal. I know people with 200 who needed to diversify that $50,000 at a time because that was the only 200,000 we had. And so as I was, as that deal kind of went down the tubes, we weren't able to get the money raised for it, I had a partner on another deal joint venture, you know, who was a securities attorney, and have a lot of experience in the private equity fund space for real estate syndications. And he suggested the investment club model, which is basically you pool capital with up to 99 other investors, including yourself makes 100. And as long as you stay under that and follow certain rules, it's not an SEC, you're not basically dealing with the SEC, because you're not dealing in securities, we buy securities, but we're not offering them, we're not giving any financial advice, I don't charge any fees to join the club. If I did, then that puts me in a registered investment advisor territory. And so I don't charge any fees weekly, for free, we look at deals we decide do we want to pool our capital into this deal. And we do negotiate our way into the GP to protect that investment, namely, but also because a lot of us in the club do have experience and can offer valid and legitimate skills into a general partnership.   Sam Wilson  16:04 That is really, really interesting. So you're gonna rely on the operator, then go find the deal, and they bring it to you, they bring it to your club, as you as a club? Are you guys going in as a fund to funds plus getting a cut of the GP? Or are you going in just strictly as a GP member and bringing all the capital?    Emma Powell  16:21 We go in as individual limited partners, we cannot create an investing company for the purpose of investing in securities, that's illegal. It's also a way that people would try to do that's like the clever idea they get, well, if I was in your company, even though I'm not accredited, I could still invest in 506C deals, absolutely not, you still need to be accredited. If it's an accredited entity, every person in the entity must be accredited, or the entity has to have $5 million worth of value. And we're never going to do that because we create a new entity for every deal that we go into. So you have you're basically dealing with all of us individually as limited partners, we all sign a PPM we all make our own decisions. That's one of the rules. And then we create an entity that then negotiated into the GP, again, to protect that investment, keep an eye on it. And also to be able to contribute our skills as necessary. I would say it's a non-managing member, typically more of a board position.   Sam Wilson  17:13 Got it. That's awesome. I love that. How, what has been, you know, you said you built it really from out of necessity, because you were trying money from limited partners and found that all your limited partners wanted to be general partners, not limited partners. You built that out of necessity. What has been, in my small mind, I don't understand this model that well, it would, you know, most of these people wouldn't need a group mentorship, weekly meeting, talking about, you know, the mechanics of deals, but it sounds like that's still an information gap you're able to fill.   Emma Powell  17:43 Yeah, definitely, I think because it's free, there's a lot of value there. And we have fund managers, we have experienced operators, we have people who've been in the space for several years learning and taking courses that maybe they've never done a deal. So they're looking for their first deal, they definitely want to build a syndication business, or some sort of capital raising fund. But then we have people in there as well who just want to get into this, but they don't want to build a big business. It's just not something, it's like me, it's just not something that's in our long-term plan. And so people can get into the club, and really turn it into exactly what they need. If it's just education, if it's just networking, if it's deals, it doesn't really matter. Again, it's one of those things that I had a lot of different little problems that I was trying to solve. And this one thing check all those boxes.   Sam Wilson  18:25 Absolutely love it. Emma, thank you making the time to come on today and really break down your business, your kind of story, how you've achieved retirement really, you know, in just a few short years. So I think that's absolutely awesome and love the investing club model.   Emma Powell  18:38 Thank you.    Sam Wilson  18:39 If our listeners want to get in touch with you, or learn more about you what is the best way to do that   Emma Powell  18:42 My website, actually here, www.highrise.group. And if you go to /contact, I have links to all my socials there. I have my phone number, my email, you can also book a time in my calendar to talk whether you want to be a limited partner or a Co-GP Club member, we can kind of put you in whichever bucket more appeals to you. I definitely still am raising money from limited partner capital, I always will be doing that. And then if you go to highrise.group/podcast, it has all my interviews that I linked there if you want to go through and has tons of, you'll hear the backstory like 100 times. But anyway, that's the best way to get in touch with me. And then you can choose the platform that works best for you, texting, social platforms, whatever, because it's all listed there on that contact page.   Sam Wilson  19:24  Fabulous. Emma, thank you so much for your time. I do appreciate it.   Emma Powell  19:27 Hey, appreciate it. Thank you for having me on. This is great.   Sam Wilson  19:30 Hey, thanks for listening to the How to Scale Commercial Real Estate Podcast. If you can do me a favor and subscribe and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, whatever platform it is you use to listen, if you can do that for us, that would be a fantastic help to the show. It helps us both attract new listeners as well as rank higher on those directories so appreciate you listening. Thanks so much and hope to catch you on the next episode.

Kanav Kariya (President, Jump Crypto) joins the Solana Podcast to discuss his optimism for the future and the many areas in which Jump Crypto is innovating in the crypto and blockchain space. Austin Federa (Head of Communications, Solana Labs) guest hosts. 00:49 - What is Jump?03:07 - The path to operationalizing crypto06:00 - Optimism for Crypto10:49 - Discovering and Building in Crypto with Jump14:24 - Personal Journey at Jump16:43 - What's being built at Jump?17:55 - Reasons to want to build19:39 - What does Pyth offer?22:22 - Criticism about conflict of interest26:30 -  How Web 3.0 facilitates resource coordination28:46 - Data contributors benefiting from onchain data31:01 - Token Plans for Pyth31:46 - Message bridging34:48 - Wormhole, stable coins and asset tokens37:36 - Time synchronization for cross-chain dApps39:14 - State storage on wormhole for dApps40:21 - Is Wormhole layer 0?41:14 - Wrapped NFTs44:13 - Jump's position towards NFTs48:36 - Exciting things in the ecosystem49:43 - Custom silicon / FPGAs53:22 - A parallel execution model? DISCLAIMERThe content herein is provided for educational, informational, and entertainment purposes only, without any express or implied warranty of any kind, including warranties of accuracy, completeness, or fitness for any particular purpose. Those who appear in the content may have a financial interest in any projects referenced, and any content herein is not intended to be and does not constitute financial advice, investment advice, trading advice, or any other advice.  This content is intended to be general in nature and is not specific to you, the user or anyone else. You should not make any decision, financial, investment, trading or otherwise, based on any of the information presented without undertaking independent due diligence and consultation with a professional advisor. Austin (00:10):Welcome to another episode of The Solana Podcast. I am Austin Federa, sitting in for Anatoly again this week. Today we've got a pretty special episode I think. I'm really looking forward to this conversation. I think it's been a long time coming with a few false starts. Today we have Kanav Kariya president of Jump Crypto, or do we just say Jump at this point?Kanav (00:32):Yeah, Jump Crypto is good.Austin (00:34):President of Jump Crypto, which maybe this time last year very few people knew existed, very few people knew what you guys were doing, what you were building, what your role in the ecosystem has been. So yeah, I guess let's just go ahead and Jump right into it. What is Jump Crypto and how did it come about?Kanav (00:51):Yeah, thanks for having me on Austin. So for context for the audience that aren't very familiar with us, Jump is historically a prop trading firm founded over 20 years ago in the pits at the CME. Today one of the largest quantitative trading firms in the world. And we started a crypto division over seven years ago. It started as an intern project at the University of Illinois, where we were running a miner in a closet and building some trading infrastructure.And today we've got over 150 people on the crypto team doing a lot of different things. So the way I like to describe our business is spitting it into three primary pillars. One is prop trading, which is exactly what we do on the other side of the house, we build trading intelligence and we scale it. The second piece is building and that's the piece that I hope we'll get to talk a lot more about on this call and it's closest to my heart and closest to the heart of the team.And that's in building pieces of infrastructure, really streets and sanitation for the space and a couple of the marquee projects that we've really focused a lot of our efforts on have been Wormhole and Pyth. And of course, along the journey, we've aligned ourselves with a lot of the major ecosystems in the place, including Solana, Terra and a whole number of others in building a lot of different things across those platforms.The third bucket is venture, I like to call ourselves accidental VCs in that we found opportunities to add value, or we had requests come in to work with partners over the last six years in various different capacities. And we found that we could be meaningful in those contexts and work with people that were solving problems for us. And that has now grown into the venture division that's deploying across the space.Austin (02:31):I want to get into a lot of the work that Jump is doing as core code contributors and supporters of projects in the ecosystem. But I kind of want to start a little bit with that journey. I would say that the transition from prop trading equities and commodities to prop trading crypto, that feels pretty organic. And there's a number of firms in the space that have also made that transition. Albeit you guys seem to have made it sooner than a lot of other firms in the industry. What was that process like of going from deciding that you wanted to add crypto to actually operationalizing that? And then we'll get into some of the journey to actually becoming builders.Kanav (03:07):The project started as an intern project at this thing called Jump Labs. There was a research lab at the University of Illinois and was meant to work on cool stuff with the university on working on fun problems. So alongside the crypto stuff we were doing when I was an intern, there was a VR project working with professors at the university to abstract away trading screens. And there was work on some interesting machine learning and networking problems.And the group has grown out of that. And of course matured out of these things, but we've definitely strongly retained that ethos. Now I want to caveat this by saying we definitely didn't have oppressions in being infrastructure builders. When we started the project in the lab that many years ago. It's been a very organic and natural process for us. And it's hard to make the instant leap from prop trading to what we're doing today, but it's easy to reason through the steps along the way.As one of the earliest large trading firms in the space, we had a lot of requests from institutional liquidity exchanges, OTC platforms, and importantly projects that were looking to solve trading and liquidity related problems. And those conversations gave way to us exploring a lot of DeFi projects and a lot of L1 platform projects that shared a lot of the problems they were thinking through on complex financial system design or programming in resource consumer environments, which are very natural and germane to a quantitative trading firm. And those conversations led to jamming about foreign ideas to implementing governance proposals, to maybe starting to write a little bit of code in them. And then all the way into committing over 50, 70 engineers that we have today in building through the space. And that process involves a few different steps. One, it involves the willingness for the institution at large to be mentally long the space. It requires a recognition and frankly a little bit of a taste of the upside.It requires flexibility, which of course, prop trading firms just generally naturally just have to have. And then everything else you can just learn along the way, right? We've done a lot of things wrong. We've stumbled over ourselves a hundred times, but you've got to keep digging shots on asymmetric upside and with all the resources that we've had at the firm I think we've been able to make some good ones.Austin (05:20):Going back to you last year, Jump Crypto had sort of a moment where it decided it wanted to make itself public. You wrote a blog post that was laying out. I wouldn't quite call it a thesis, but laying out an idea of how you view the space and the role that something like Jump could play within it. One of the things I was struck by going back and rereading this is your level of optimism in this post, right? Which is something that you don't see from many financial trading firms. You see them seeing opportunities to make lots of money. You see them making lots of money. They're very profitable endeavors, but you usually don't see optimism contained within it. Where'd that come from?Kanav (06:01):That's a pretty good question. So quant firms today are basically research and development firms, right? So the people that build trading systems, that build the intelligence behind trading systems are generally of quantitative background. They generally have PhDs in either statistics, machine learning, physics, those kinds of endeavors. And the people building the platforms are low latency high performance systems engineers that there are different optimizations across every level of the stack to build robust, scalable, fast infrastructure.The environment down to the lab five years ago was about exploring this space. It was like, what does this space mean? Right. And it wasn't about, okay, how are we going to make X billion dollars kind of getting into this endeavor? It was about exploring it. And I think it attracted that kind of people and it occurred that kind of environment.And the leadership that stays since then has kind of embodied that. And just personally I'm a raging optimist, I believe in technology, I believe in the future, I believe in building towards something bigger. And thankfully I think the firm has shared those ideas and I hope I've been able to shape a lot of the culture and behaving that passion.Austin (07:10):Where do you think that optimism in yourself comes from? There's a lot of things you could have gone into coming out of school. What about both, something, an organization like Jump, which is undoubtedly a great place to go work. But you stay there for a while now, you've worked your way up, you're now in charge of the crypto division. Where does that sense of optimism in you come from and what makes Jump the right place for that?Kanav (07:33):I feel something for Jump because they had a cool internship program and they had a lab on site and they were working on really fun problems in a well resourced environment, that just made it fun and attractive. And after I had the opportunity to intern there for eight to 10 months, I kind of got a sense for the possibilities that existed. And this is the flexibility that the whole space had. And it was like, you come in, you get to make a lot of bets, you get a lot of resources. And if you make good bets, you get more resources and then you get more resources. This is the only place I've ever worked. I think it would be rather unique to have that kind setup. And again, no, I wouldn't say it was a passion moment to come in to Jump and know that I would be able to build suites and sanitation for crypto. But I knew I would get to do a lot of really cool stuff, work on fun problems with smart people. And where does optimism come from?Austin (08:25):Yeah. I mean, you look at a space like this. It's been through boom and bust. There's tons of amazing projects being built in the space that end up going nowhere. And especially from the vantage point of a trading firm, right? One of the secret sauce of a trading firm is it can make money in an up marketing, it can make money in a down market, right. And that is the advantage of a professional trading operation versus a more passive trading operation. But again, like those are not usually characteristics that breed optimism. Those are usually characteristics that bleed margins, where you're optimizing 1%, 2%, 3% here. So you can compound that over a year and it will make a marginal difference. But again, that's not usually an optimistic space, that's a very functional space to work in.Kanav (09:10):Yeah, it is. And traditionally I don't think it lends itself to naturally just exactly this. Jump culture has kind of always been a little bit unique. So Jump also has a number of other kind of divisions that work on non-high frequency trading stuff. Historically, since about 2011 or 2012, had a VBC arm called Jump Capital that invests in growing technologies in this space. They've had some cool endeavors in the biospace working on automation there in healthcare.And so the founders have generally been optimist. They definitely believe in the future. They've been able to take shots at things that are going on. And even if it's not naturally germane to the trading business in and of itself, the culture itself lends itself to being able to do something like this, which is a really awesome combination of knowing how to monetize, but then also knowing how to build. Yeah, it's been an absolute pleasure to be able to soak in from that environment.Austin (10:04):Let's look at the building for a bit. I think it's pretty open secret at this point that Jump are core contributors to Wormhole and Pyth, you've been very heavily involved in that process. Take me back to some of the early days there where you are internal to Jump, and you're saying like, "Hey, we need to do more than just trade and invest in this space. I think we can actually build." And especially you're talking about this from the perspective of sanitation and roads and the very base level infrastructure. Crypto's been around for a long time. I think most people coming into the space in that time horizon wouldn't have necessarily looked at and said like, "Oh, there's very base level features that are missing from this ecosystem." What was that both discovery process like, and then the process of convincing everyone internally that this was worth dedicating resources to?Kanav (10:50):Yeah, the discovery process was very organic. We had a lot of inbound from people looking to solve trading and liquidity problems because a lot of people in the space, even though we were quite kind of new of our trading presence, and as one of the early trading firms that really was trying to make bigger pushes in the space. When you get to talk to awesome founders every day about all the problems that they have and get to build relationships with them, you start to uncover a lot more of the problem space that exists, start to internalize a lot of it.And once you've got the opportunity to sit in that for a little bit, and I'm sure you see this today. We are much later on than we were when we made a lot of those big switches, but there's still a lot of opportunity, right? When we were kind of ideating on the origins of Pyth, the conversation we had was, look, our whole thesis at Jump Crypto is to be as long aligned with the space as possible, right? We're trying to get the maximum exposure we can on the space that we think is going to be explosive. And we're trying to ideate this ways which we put that quote unquote trade on, right? The best way to put a long trade on in a growing space, and the best mode to value capture is value creation. There's definitely a lot of inefficiencies created by hyper growth, right? And there's room to capture those inefficiencies. But those are small in magnitude relative to the absolute value creation at play.And then there's a value creation capture correlation that you think about there. So if you think about it in that lens and you know that you want to be big contributors to the space and just aim to create a lot of value to both, then you start thinking about what the opportunities are within your realm to be able to engage in that capacity.Austin (12:27):But at some point there's a meeting, or you have a boss who you report to, and you have to go down and sit down in front of him or her and say, "Hey, I want to spend a lot of money to hire a lot of engineers to do something that's going to be totally public and totally open source at a firm that historically likes to stay out of the news."Kanav (12:46):It was a few meetings.Austin (12:46):Yeah, I'm sure.Kanav (12:46):And it's kind of baby steps along the way, or big steps along the way that compound into a complete shift and a big switch of that nature. We had this summit, we called the August summit a few years ago. And we went down to an offsite location and we talked about what being in this space means for us and how we differentiate. And I remember we showed up with these sheets that we went around and distributed to people. We were like, this is the toolkit that we have. This is the opportunity set in the space.And everyone kind of had their own, things went on, but that was one of the approaches that I've taken. And if we believe this is where the space is going, this is the opportunity set that we can tackle. And these are the levels that we have to pull, right? And then you socialize that and you try to convince them people that there is opportunity to be had here and you get buy-in to take a first little step. And once you get the buy-in to take a first little step, and you kind of really show the big medics of differentiation in a native space, you get the buying for the next step.And then suddenly it's the entire [inaudible 00:13:47]. You get the whole kitchen sink thrown behind you, and then you are kind of propelling to this part that you want to be at. And that's the whole thesis of Jump everywhere. You take bets with asymmetric upside and we throw the kitchen sink at things that are working. And a lot of the stuff that we were doing started working.Austin (14:02):How is that journey for you personally, going from an intern involved in a few projects now to the Jump Crypto teams over a hundred at this point?Kanav (14:11):Yeah. We've got over 150 now, hard to keep track.Austin (14:14):Wow. Yeah. From a leadership role, and from your own perspective, how has that transition been? What parts of it were easier for you? What parts were harder than you were anticipating? Scaling yourself is often much harder than scaling a company.Kanav (14:28):Without a doubt, yeah. I started in the team as an intern like you pointed out, working on software problems. I came back to the team a year later in a formal full-time capacity, working on quant problems, which was to do with predicting crypto markets, building alpha and kind of scaling that piece. And the early conversations with projects where we were trying to solve liquidity problems was an area that I got really, really interested in. And I just kind of went about trying to build that a little bit further.Over time that led to a transition from engineering and quantitative work to more conversational business development work, just having spent years across all those functions and natively knowing how to live them has been the biggest tool that I've been able to build in the toolbox. Now that doesn't teach you how to manage a hundred people, that doesn't teach you how to propagate culture. It doesn't teach you how to scale hiring strategy. Doesn't teach you how to value the troops when things are low.I definitely want to make a claim that there are many who are close to a finished product, rather than trying to be good at everything, good at every one thing, we always try to be excellent at a few things. And then by force just propel everything forward. I'd say some of the biggest lessons I've learned, the biggest mistakes we've made, definitely been in the shape of trying to shove square bags in a round hole. Where in a trading environment it's like the only people you have on your team are engineers and quants. They're just smart people that can solve any shape of technical problem you throw them at. When you move that towards sales and marketing and product and everything else, that all kind of falls apart.Kanav (16:05):And you need people that are able to natively live within specific sub domains across those functions. And that's something that we've been trying to scale in. I spend basically all my time hiring and trying to focus on making sure our zero to one projects have a lot of momentum. But yeah, it's been an awesome journey. And of course I have support from a company that's grown to a 1500 people as the largest quant trading firm in the world and so lots of guidance and help along the way.Austin (16:33):Let's talk a little bit about that work you guys are doing and actually building. So if I understand correctly, the two projects that you are mostly core contributors to is Pyth and Wormhole. Is there anything else that you'd put into that category of engagement?Kanav (16:46):That's the highest level of engagement for sure. We do a lot of things across the big ecosystems of course. We can talk all of what we're doing with Solana. We're always trying to get deeper. We built an NFD project on the Metaplex landscape after their investment as an intern project. That was a real fun one. We've been core contributors to some of the projects that are coming out on the data landscape today. We've worked on a lot of the mechanism design that goes on, on the other one. And there's a few other projects, but the highest levels of engagement have definitely been with Wormhole and Pyth.Austin (17:18):Looking at over that landscape, Pyth high frequency Oracle. But again, Oracles, they've existed for a long time. There's a number of name brand ones that got their start on the ecosystem in the 2017 range. Lots of people have had ideas about Oracles over the years, some of them have worked, some of them haven't. Similar to Wormhole, bridges have existed for a long time. Bridges are actually the basis of how any L2 works, right? Both of these are hardly new ideas I would say. What about looking at the landscape gave you guys the confidence to say, not only there's a need for something different, but we can help build something different and better.Kanav (17:57):Again, just like 100% organic. In that August summit, we were looking at some of the biggest things we could do. And a big problem that everyone kind of kept voicing to us is that they don't have access to equities data. They don't have access to fast data so that they don't have to have things like clawback mechanisms and all these different things that LPs don't get direct on every turn, right?The fundamental thing with financial oracles is that they're used to settle risk transfer. They're used to set a price at which two parties exchange value. And if that price is latent or slow or not accurate, one side gets left folding the bag. Now, DeFi, the way protocols are constructed, the side that gets left holding the bag is either the LP that's contributing to the protocol or the protocol stakers or a key stakeholder in building the ecosystem.And the takers are able to take all that value. If you are going to build something that's going to house all of OTC, if we're building something like synthetics for example, and your protocol stakers are taking the other side of every trade that happens on S-Oil or SSNP, you need to make sure that's the right price. Otherwise you're just going to get up the way down to zero. When we were ideating on what the biggest ways we could contribute is let's contribute our data. And the first idea was in let's start, let's go and figure out how we bring together a network of people to build an Oracle.It was how do we contribute our data, right? And we browsed through the category of solutions. We had all the conversations. We spoke to dozens of investors and builders in the space. And there wasn't an easy way to slot in high fidelity financial data, into existing Oracle solutions. And so we spoke with some of the founding partners of the Pyth program and came to consensus that there was an opportunity here. And that led to the first step and we just kept building sets.Austin (19:39):In your mind, what is it that Pyth offers that other Oracle solutions don't offer?Kanav (19:46):Pyth is a very hyper specialized tool for high fidelity financial data, specifically financial data for settlement of risk transfer, right? If you think about the way the market data landscape looks today, it's different across asset classes, but there is a class of people that have access to high fidelity, streaming price data that they can legally distribute and make available to a protocol, create like an Oracle program.One you need access to very fast financial data, which is hard to get and even harder to have a legal right to distribute. You want to make sure that the people who are publishing the prices are the real owners of the data so that you can set incentives for the data to be accurate, right? If you are staking the value of a third party aggregator, their third party aggregator has no skin in the game. That's one of the other kind of fundamental things that you have to think about.And third, you need to acknowledge the fact that a price is not absolute. A price for Bitcoin has about 20 liquid trading venues that are distributed across the globe that can often be fractured, that can often have all kinds of different idiosyncrasies. And that being able to accurately determine the price on most relevant venues and build a dispersion is really important. If you think about kind of all those things together, you want very fast access. You want a broad range of access of independent sources, not reporting from the same source.You want very high liveness and uptime of course, and you want kind of good legal clarity that that price can continue to be distributed because you don't want the application to suddenly get turned off when the regulator says, "What's going on?" And those are the kind of key things that Pyth has really focused on very heavily to build that piece of infrastructure and Solana was the perfect opportunity. Before Solana there wasn't a way to create a high fidelity fast Oracle. There just wasn't a need for it and there wasn't a platform for it, right. And so all those things just came together.Austin (21:49):One of the criticisms that you'll hear about Pyth is that because of its structured model here, where the people providing data are permissioned at this point and are also like firms that are professionalized trading operations themselves, that there is an inherent kind of conflict of interest in that system. With any system in blockchain, you have to assume everyone is trying to cheat, everyone is trying to extract the most value possible. How have you gone about setting up incentives to make sure that the users of Pyth and the contributors to Pyth are not at odds with one another?Kanav (22:27):Yeah. I think you made a totally fine point there in that we are building for byzantine systems, right? And so that's the kind of incentive design you've got to keep in place. I'll frankly say I think that claim is a little bit ludicrous for a few different reasons. Once you peel back the onion just a little bit, and I'll talk through some of the reasons why.Austin (22:43):Let's peel back the onion.Kanav (22:44):One, you've got to first understand that the amount of value that can be created in actually pulling something like Pyth off successfully is dramatic. And the forms that are building this are now incentive aligned to make that happen. But two, this is an open sourced protocol, it is decentralized, and you can look at exactly what the inputs are, how they're being aggregated and what their resort in price output is.Three most importantly, there are about 50 financial firms that are submitting independent price data to this article to construct final outputs. And these financial trading firms aren't friendly with each other. This is the very first time that a group of highly adversarial trading firms, banks, exchanges, and ODC players across the entire space have come together and said, "Let's go build a piece of infrastructure." And one, I think that needs to be celebrated a lot, it's a huge win.But two, the trading firm, there are 50 global financial trading firms contributing their proprietary prices directly to Solana on the Pyth program today. We have realized that these 50 comprise of between 60% to 80% of global asset class volumes at this point, given the network of participants that have aggregated around this protocol. When you are that big of market share that you're covering that kind of breadth, the participants in the protocol themselves are on the other side of each other's trades almost by definition. And so who's manipulating the price against who? Let's kind of just start there.The system of incentives that set up in this taking protocol, you can read through this on the Pyth white paper has some really intelligent aggregation algorithms that put all this data together, that identify the quality of each of these independent data publishers that then sets out a mechanism to aggressively punish providers that don't have good prices. And good prices can mean I published a malicious bad price. It can mean I have slow prices. It can mean I published, I had a bug, it can mean anything.The incentive design mechanism is meant to reward data providers that are not honest, but that have great data. And that's a fundamental difference in how system designs, we're not kind of rewarding agreement, we're rewarding prediction. And so you are rewarded for correctly predicting the price that would come up rather than for rewarding agreement between parties, and which can both have different kind of models and can both work in different ways.But there is almost no possibility for one collusion across these landscapes, given the composition of the people in the network. And the incentive structure again is obviously explicitly set up to discourage that. Third, all these forms are heavily, heavily regulated. I spoke about 20 years of its reputation and a giant, giant business behind kind of making a lot of this happen. And we're definitely incentive aligned to make this thing as successful as it can possibly be.Austin (25:39):The Web 2.0 world and the rise of FinTech apps has largely taught people that organizations that claim to be on their side often aren't. There's very legitimate reasons from a market making perspective that during the game stock run up and squeeze, users of Robinhood and other FinTech applications, their trading was turned off. Now, there's a bunch of really good backroom reasons for why that might have happened. But the effect is what matters to the retail trader, which is that they were using a platform that they thought gave them equal access to a market, that platform did not provide them equal and neutral access to a market.I think when people look at something like Pyth, it wouldn't be crazy to say that, well, the same incentives that made us think that Robinhood was on our side, could also be applied to Pyth. What is different about the Web 3.0 space and the construction of something like Pyth in your view that makes that not something someone should worry about.Kanav (26:37):Web 3.0 is fundamentally any means of resource coordination, and it facilitates that by, one, facilitating the export of trust. And the export of trust is actually one of the big reasons why the whole Robinhood debacle went on, right. They basically ran out of margin requirements in order to continue to clear trades on one side, since it was so directional.And there is this massive web of intermediaries that set up all throughout traditional finance for the express purpose of establishing trust as the FCM, the DCM, the clearinghouse, all the other three letter acronyms. And all of them exist to make sure that when a match occurs on any platform that actually settles into a financial trade.In crypto the match is the execution. And that's facilitated by the fact that you can export all the trust of executing a piece of code onto Solana, onto Ethereum, onto the blockchain itself. And that's unlocked this completely new means of resource coordination, which makes things like Pyth possible. It means that you can explicitly lay out a system of incentives in a closed loop fashion. And regardless of who's uploading the code, or who's proposing designs or architecting any of this, everybody is independently participating according to the incentives laid out very plainly by the program itself.And that means DRW and Jane Street don't have to trust Jump when they decide to publish prices to pay. That means they look at the program that's running on Solana that they can read. They look at Solana's trust model and decided they can or don't trust Solana as a platform. And then contribute to the platform that then self executes and lives on its own terms. And the fact that we can allow different kinds of state to compose in a trustless fashion is the entire revolution Web 3.0, that's basically what the whole space has been building for the last 10 years. And that's what makes Pyth possible, it simply was not possible before.Austin (28:32):What does something like Jump or Jane Street or anyone who's a data contributor to Pyth, what do they get out of it? What is their incentive apart from any rewards that might be generated from contributing data. How are they then going back and using this on chain data in their own operations?Kanav (28:51):There's a few elements. And so one, it is fundamentally a two sided marketplace, right? It has data publishers and it has data consumers. And the other interesting thing like Uber did for taxi cabs, where it created a marketplace where cars could now come online, created this marketplace where data that was once latent came online.Jump is publishing its own trades to the Pyth network. That is IP that it has the legal rights over, has only just been a cost center so far, and now has the opportunity to get monetized. And that's the same for all of the trading firms that sit in the network. It's a lot of people to turn cost centers into potential elements in the marketplace and that bootstraps the supply. The consumers of the data obviously are paying for this extremely created highly robust set of data inputs that then get aggregated. And that creates kind of flows in one direction. And then like your regular two sided marketplace, it accrues value, right?All the data publishers today in Pyth have some sort of stake of asset interest in the thing succeeding. And there is a set of incentives that then rewards them for the correct participation going on with fees, rewards, all those kinds of things. And all that is in gross detail laid out in the white paper and we can go over some of that. But the off chain applications and some of this stuff is also quite interesting, right?So if you look at kind of back office systems around the world at forms like Jump, you don't need microsecond level access to financial data, but you need that for your trading engines because otherwise you're playing at a disadvantage related to the field. But in order to make sure that your clearing prices have happened correctly in order to make charts in order to do something like a trading view, in order to get on the Bloomberg terminal or to be on a ticker somewhere, all these applications are now easily facilitated by subscribing to something like Pyth, that's living on an open kind of blockchain area. And so a lot of the off-chain use cases are getting more and more interesting I think over time. The fundamental value is in creating the pricing source for on chain data. And this is kind of like an awesome thing that just falls out of it.Austin (30:56):That's a really interesting way of thinking about both the incentive alignments and the rule that the data providers versus the data consumers play in the market. Are there any token plans for Pyth?Kanav (31:07):Yes, there is a token plan for Pyth. You can read all about it on the white paper, no comments on timing or anything of that at this point. And that's going to be a networking governance decision, but I'm sure in the near future.Austin (31:16):Transitioning over to Wormhole, which is the other project that Jump is heavily involved in as a core contributor of the code. When people look at wormhole, I think it's very easy to look at it and say, asset bridge, multi chain, cool, fundamentally utility. The first thing I noticed when we were talking about this and looking through it is this whole component of allowing different smart contracts on different blockchains to communicate with each other. I think most people understand how asset bridging works. Can you talk a little bit about this whole concept of message bridging?Kanav (31:51):Yeah. And this also kind of goes back to your question on, how do you decide that there's an opportunity here when bridging is something that people have talked about for a while? When we were kind of ideating with everybody else on kind the Pyth's team and the network on how Pyth goes across chain. Hendrick and team were building Wormhole as Solana Eths token bridge on the hackathon project at [inaudible 00:32:17].And I called Hendrick and I asked him, "Look, is there a way to generalize this thing so that we can get Pyth messages across?" We're building this Oracle thing on the best, fast, scalable censorship resistant message bus we can, but we want to get it to all the other ones that operate on a slightly different resolution. And through the course of that conversation, we came to a conclusion that enabling generic message bosses to allow this cross chain composability in a much more high dimensional fashion than just the token bridge word was a massive opportunity set that had to be filled.And so when we launched last August as a completely generic message bus. And what that means is that any piece of state that is created or lives on a blockchain can be included as a message that then gets communicated to any other blockchain environment. And so if you think about Oracles, you think about a governance board, right? Uniswap passes a governance board on Ethereum, produces workloads on a lot of different chains. The outcome of that governance board has to, in a secure, reliable fashion, be communicated to all the other geographies that Uniswap lives on. That needs to be encoded as a message.And so Wormhole has outpost contracts on every chain that is deployed, it is deployed over eight chains today. The outpost contract just listens for a message that is sent to that contract and the Wormhole network of guardians attests to that arbitrary binary block. That block can then be picked up, relayed to any other blockchain environment, verified that is coming attested from the homeowner network and then decode to do anything arbitrary and interesting. And so generic message process have really exploded over the last year. We've seen so many awesome applications being built on it. And I think we're just kind of scratching the surface, right? There's a lot to do here.Austin (34:04):When I think about messaging, I think about how a lot of the models right now for cross chain communication of assets are a little tedious and maybe have more risk inherent to them than are necessarily required. A very centralized example, USDC, right? You can go to FTX and you can withdraw USDC as an ERC-20, as an SPL token or across several different networks. And what's happening there largely is because the mint authority to that is centrally controlled. They're able to issue new, quote unquote new USDC natively on each layer that USDC is supported on. Do you see the capability of developers using something like Wormhole to make that possible for fully decentralized, both stable coins and just asset tokens?Not only possible, but already widely adopted in the Wormhole X asset framework, right? There's over four and a half billion of assets in the token bridge today. And the word token bridge kind of has meant a lot of different things to people at different points in time, right? The old token bridges were bidirectional, state sponsored bridges that sovereign ecosystems would run to communicate to Ethereum, to get liquidity in as soon as possible.And then if you send that across a different bridge, then you would have like a double wrapped and triple wrapped implementation and just an absolute UX nightmare. When you use something like Wormhole's X asset framework, you retain complete path independence as you move assets across the ecosystem. Once you're registered as an X asset, let's take USD as an example, there's a couple billion dollars of USD on the bridge today. It flows throughout the ecosystem using Wormhole on the back end, Terra bridge money, uses one more on the back end to expose one of many front ends to users.When USD flows from Terra over to Ethereum or to Solana to Polygon and then to Avalanche, it retains the same representation on Avalanche that USD flowing from Terra to Avalanche directly or through any other part in the ecosystem would retain. It's a truly cross chain native asset. It doesn't fracture liquidity, it fungus seamlessly, and it allows a lot of cool composition.If you look at something, now like the result in second order effects of this, it's this theme that we've been calling X Dapps, right? So cross chained apps. And we've seen kind of the first marquee deployment of one of these apps in the form of X anchor, which is deployed on the Avalanche chain now, right?And X anchor is just a light set of endpoints that's deployed on Avalanche. And all that does is it lets you kind of hit some functions that then really assets and/or messages bundled or separately or back to the Terra blockchain and then trigger state transitions on the Terra site. Anchor contracts don't need to be deployed to every chain. You don't need to replicate state everywhere, you don't need to stay synchronized continuously. But you allow for outposts and communications and different chains to then communicate back to the home chain using messages and assets. And now the USD that's in the X asset standard can be deployed to X anchors everywhere. And it's a much faster, much more robust getting strategy that has far less communication over.Austin (37:07):Let's dig into just a little bit on like a technical level too. When you're talking about X Dapps or cross chain Dapps that are communicating via Wormhole, you're inherently talking about fractured state across multiple L1s or L2, it's unavoidable when you're ... anything cross chain is inherently working under a fractured state model. How fast does that time synchronization need to be for developers to actually deploy something like an AMM or a club across chain and actually maintain price parody and appropriate liquidity between them.Kanav (37:42):Yeah, I'm glad you brought this up. There's a few different programming models for how cross chain Dapps works, right? One is you try to state synchronize as aggressively as possible. You keep sending messages back and forth. You have allowances, risk limits, tolerances that allow your apps to communicate. And the other is this X Dapps framework where state only lives on one chain and you allow people from other chains to then interact with it.Now, of course that also comes with its own downsides, right? If you look at something like a club and you're trying to trigger a cross chain swap using the club from another chain, you are inherently incurring the latency of the two blockchain transactions and the finality assumptions that you want to kind of work with that. The more stateful your application becomes, obviously the more latency and risk constraints everything through. With something like a lending protocol or like a cross chain anchor, things like that. They are less stateful than something like an order book, but order book is probably the most stateful you can get right in the spectrum of applications.And so any cross chain swap design inherently has to have some additional liquidity back then, that's like fundamental, right? You can ask people to take risk on your behalf. You can have the protocol take risk on your behalf, but that risk exists. There's a lot of ways to program around it and create better user experiences, but fundamentally that's a real problem and somebody has to be compensated with that risk.Austin (38:56):For the X Dapp framework, are you looking to actually be able to offload compute to the wormhole level there? Or is it really just ... The natural extension of this seems to be that eventually there's some sort of state storage on Wormhole that Dapps are able to actually access and leverage with some functionally side chain compute resourcing. Are you guys thinking about that as well?Kanav (39:19):Yeah. The fundamental cross chain thesis is that there are going to be independent, specialized compute environments that attack their own communities, their own audiences and their own apps. And Wormhole is away for folks to leverage state that results from these autogenous environments and compute the solutions on these environments to compose.And you can cut that in a million different ways. You can leverage Solana as a state execution machine. You can leverage Terra as your stable coin asset layer and you can represent this third thing as a NFT thing, or you can bundle them all in. But the Wormhole vision itself right now with all the genetic message capabilities that are out there, in the near term roadmap doesn't need to build an execution layer of its own. It can naturally extend to it. I think you're definitely kind of pointing to something that's relevant.But I don't know if that's the lowest hanging fruit given the capacities that exist in current blockchain compute environment. The vision of course is to make people, Web 3.0 users rather than blockchain users or L1 users. You basically want to deploy resources to the most relevant execution environment with the right community, that's creating the right apps and then expose that to at a higher order to consumers.Austin (40:24):Would you describe Wormhole as layer zero?Kanav (40:28):I'm rather old school, I think of layer zeros as networking protocols and internet backbones and things like that. I think it is maybe a useful analogy for kind of blockchain audiences given how we've very economically can't use the word L1, so I don't have an allergic reaction to it, but it's not my first word of choice.Austin (40:46):What would your first word of choice be?Kanav (40:49):Interoperability protocol. I'm not that creative.Austin (40:51):Yeah. Wormhole is also supporting wrapped NFTs, which is kind of an interesting concept. I think most people don't think of NFTs as something that's been bridged and quite frankly, the numbers on Wormhole on bridge NFTs are quite low compared to the success as an asset bridge or a messaging bridge. What was the original idea of using wrapped NFTs? And why do you think it hasn't caught on as much yet?Kanav (41:20):I think cross chain NFTs as a story are just beginning to play out. So there's about 16, 1700 on the NFT bridge itself. And again, NFTs are also cross chain fungible and composable across environments. They are also part of the X asset framework. And so X assets can mean anything. It can be in rebasing assets like STE, it can be in NFTs. It can be in fungible assets. It can mean anything else, right?The NFT story started to play out as a result of new other ones trying to access marketplaces that supported one or the other chain, right? And so you get to access as new audiences, you get to create experiences with different communities. You get to access different user bases, but we're seeing the experiences get a lot richer. So you see something like [inaudible 00:42:00] come out recently, they got featured on Bloomberg for new cross chain staking program where they have in game elements that kind of change based on cross chain NFT staking that are different experiences with different communities. And much like the asset bridge has that kind of globalization and cross pollination of commercial kind of elements. Cross chain NFTs are globalization kind of culture. And incorporating a lot of those elements across games that live on Solana, that live on Terra, that live on other environments and just creating those kind of richer experiences.And so we're seeing people make NFTs on one chain, come to Solana, fractionalize them, trade them, put them back in, move them over to OpenSea on Ethereum. There's all kind of interesting use case patterns. And so it's definitely been less aggressively adopted than the explosive token bridge or the other generic message applications. But there are still 16, 7,000 NFTs, there are a lot of teams using it for cool and innovative stuff that we just kind of keep up out of the wood works every some time.Austin (43:02):Do you think that's social? Do you think that's technological? Do you think that's just like the ecosystem hasn't matured enough? I think I'm surprised how much ... well, I guess surprises maybe the wrong term. People have a lot of emotional attachment to an NFT, in the same way they don't have an emotional attachment to a Bitcoin. They may have emotional attachment to the concept of a Bitcoin, but I would be upset if I lost my particular Degen ape, even if I got a different one for the exact same value. Do you think that factors in at all to how people view the concept of wrapping an NFT, that it somehow weakens the authenticity?Kanav (43:39):I think for a lot of purists, it does. I think it was just so worthy, right. For the most part, people aren't even going to realize, the large end of this consumers like buying these things, an NBA top shot or air, or any of these other platforms, it's something on the app for them. And eventually it's going to be extracted away as we draw to Eth, we draw to Solana, we draw to wallet, connect wallet, and it's going to be kind of as simple as that. And so we're always going to have purist stakes, but I think that's going to remain within our little chamber here.Austin (44:05):For Jump Crypto in general, how do you view NFTs? There are obviously firms now that are dabbling and market making and NFTs. Is that something that you've looked at and if not, what was the decision not to enter that space yet?Kanav (44:19):It just doesn't take a lot. We are looking at trading opportunities. You are looking about margins, you're looking about what predictive offer you can have, like what the edge you can have on a traders and then how many times you can apply that edge, right? It's just as simple as that. And even if you can get a 30% margin on something that trades a hundred million like week one, I mean, [inaudible 00:44:40] now.But if you have a low volume asset class, even if it has slightly higher edge, and it is harder to predict and more dimensional, this is on a good researching decision. So as that volume changes, we will continue to stay on top of it. And I don't know if these are trading tens of billions of dollars every day, and have really interesting datasets, I'm sure we'll be trading them.Austin (45:00):If the market hundred X in size, you wouldn't be opposed to it, it's just the sizing opportunity issue right now.Kanav (45:08):[inaudible 00:45:08] you can't be the richest man. It's about identifying if there's opportunity and executing all native there is.Austin (45:14):Looking at wormhole, one of the things I do want to touch on is the wormhole hack and exploit that happened a little while ago. It was one of the larger bridge hacks at the time. It was eclipsed a few weeks later by an even larger hack of another bridge, also targeting stolen Eth in this process. I'm sure that activities and projects that Jump has been involved in have had larger losses of money or similar volumes of money just based on the area you operate in. But this is one that inherently to the nature of Web 3.0 is very public. How is that like internally knowing that your core contributors to a project that suffered this kind of exploit, and also that failure is now a public failure, as opposed to maybe where it would've been a private failure beforeKanav (45:56):Building is hard, building in the open is even harder. And building in a decentralized open space where there's a large network of participants, consumers, affected people, the stakes we're playing in, right? That's the stakes that every DeFi application, that every L1 at every bridge and that everything in Web 3.0 that aims to do something meaningful inherently adopts and has to learn to deal with.The hack was big punch in the gut, obviously a big financial loss as well. The fundamental nature of smart contracts is that the code and code can have bugs. And this exploit was kind of deep, deep, deep down in the stack, in kind of like Solana instruction verification account check that was missing. The auditors listed our team that has independently been one of the biggest bug bounty finders in the space missed, and code based at the opportunity to be out in the wide for seven months, kind of had unchecked.The day of the hack, of course really, really rough. Jump is not used to being a public institution. So this was like you said, a very public kind of fallout in nature. I can't possibly have been prouder of the way the team reacted to this incident. We kind identified it within short course of it happening. We pulled the meeting room together, identified the bug, fixed up a batch, managed to coordinate the guardian network to bring it up, bring it down, announce our intent to refill the gaping 320 million hole within an hour of the incident being reported on, and brought the bridge back up within 18 hours to end to end.Building bridges and building cross chain is very, very hard. And that's where the reward for it, building it right, is even harder. You don't even make 320 million decisions very lightly, and this should hopefully signify you how much conviction and faith we have in the code base in bringing it back up in 18 hours. It should tell you about where we think this whole space is going and where Wormhole is going and where interoperability is going and what a core piece of infrastructure in that realm would mean.Security continues to be extremely, extremely top of mind. We have a 10 million bug bounty. We have an internal red team that's basically thinking about breaking Wormhole and our key projects every day. We have multiple audit from [inaudible 00:48:12] with lots of audits going on, pretty intense security review practices, all of which can be found publicly online. And I'm incredibly confident that Wormhole has come out more stronger from this incident. The team has come out kicking and that we're building one of the best and most trusted inter op solutions out there.Austin (48:32):Looking across the ecosystem, let's say over the next 12 to 18 months, what are you personally most excited for and what keeps you up at night? What do you still have worry around?Kanav (48:44):I'm looking forward to a whole bunch of things. So definitely very excited about all the advancements that we are seeing in the succinct proof and zero knowledge space. That stuff is just awesome, it's magic. And I'm just so excited to see all the things that's going to unlock for us. There's a lot of interesting problems in the hardware acceleration space that need to be made to make that possible. There's a lot of problems algorithmically that are kind of being uncovered there. And I think hopefully this conversation has lent on that we have a big infrastructure mindset. When I say streets and sanitation, that's kind of what we think about every day. That's what we're looking forward to. And on what we can build to and contribute to that.Austin (49:19):You said something I got to get a little more info. You said specific hardware to accelerate certain kinds of applications. The only place we've really seen this so far across the entire crypto landscape is ASICs for Bitcoin mining. You see GPU mining optimization, but again, nowadays I wouldn't necessarily even call GPU specialized hardware. It's really commodity hardware at this point that's just deployed for a specific application. When you're looking at the space, where are you seeing actually custom silicon or FPGAs becoming something that it makes sense to deploy?Kanav (49:50):Yeah, I mean, definitely for zero knowledge provers, right? So like two verification times have compressed a lot to the point where it's pretty feasible on most blockchain environments today. But proving itself is still super, super resource intensive. That's where there's a lot of simple math operations that can be encoded into Silicon and into FPGAs or ASICs to speed up the process significantly. And that's where we are seeing a lot of adopt. There's already a lot of people working on this on hardware acceleration using FPGAs, maybe even ASICs on zero knowledge provers.It's a little bit of like it's tough to say when the right time is because there's new changes like algorithmically coming out all the time with the new advances in new papers. And so when you spend a whole bunch of time just optimizing Fast Fourier transforms. And then the next paper makes Fast Fourier transforms not relevant. It's tough to make a decision on when the right time is, but I know there's a lot of work already going on into it. And it's a space that we are very familiar with and that we are also excited about. And mostly, mostly positive stuff on the regulatory side.Kanav (50:56):As of recently I think there's a lot of good faith engagement from regulators around the world on setting frameworks and policies for how kind of all this stuff gets put into place. Outside of maybe China we haven't seen anything very aggressively or handed on cutting off innovation. We even saw India now finally starting to open up. And so I feel more optimistic about the regulatory landscape than I did 12 months ago. We need a new influx of builders to keep coming and building cool experience and leveraging this technology where we're seeing that happen. We need capital being continued to commit to this space where we're seeing that happen.Austin (51:35):The inverse of that question, what are you most concerned about on a macro level for the space still?Kanav (51:39):Asset pricing is of course highly dependent on macro environment and that is unrelated to crypto, right? And there's just like, it's its own thing. And so we'll see price movements on a different time scale. And if you see a very sustained global macro depressed environment, then we're going to see less capital, less builders and less momentum in the space. And I think that's probably the biggest overhang we have today.Austin (52:03):In the long run we're all dead.Kanav (52:05):In the wrong run we're all dead. That's right, so let's keep building.Austin (52:09):Yes. One kind of last question here, I think if you rerun the clock maybe three or four years, the prevailing wisdom in this space was not that traditional financial institutions were going to expand their vision and embrace blockchain and we'd call it Web 3.0 at the end of the day. And you'd have Twitter profile pictures of NFTs, you'd have Jump Trading building software that's open source for a decentralized environment. And we really have seen that that is what was originally pitched as a forked parallel path of economic development.Austin (52:42):It's a little bit more twisty curvy than we thought it was going to be. And there's a lot more integration with traditional companies. As crypto has a thesis about it, that it's moving more consumer, right? Across the spectrum you see more normies getting into crypto in one way or another. Does the existing market of specifically the United States and Europe where you see very few competitors within an ecosystem.Austin (53:07):There's basically only two phone companies. There's basically only three cell phone companies. There's basically only four internet provider companies. Across the spectrum you see very non-competitive markets. When you look at the consumer landscape in the United States, do you imagine that we're going to see similar patterns rolling out there as we saw in the financial industry, or we really are going to go back to that idea of a parallel execution model?Kanav (53:30):Yeah. I'll strongly state that I don't hold a heretical view of this kind of being a completely forked off parallel path that has no relevance to anything that we do today. I think it's an amazing technological invasion that gives us tools to coordinate resources in an untrusted environment. And that's unlocking a lot of magic.Kanav (53:49):But that again bleeds in with the rest of the real world, which is also big and has its own dramatic pieces of innovation and with a whole bunch of other stuff going on. I think one of the most exciting things has been kind of the global equalizer that crypto can serve to be. Yesterday we saw Polygon come out with an integration with Stripe. And these are three kids from India that had no early supporting or backing that kind of boosted the network on their own and are now competing on a very, very competitive landscape with people from every single part of the world that are very well resourced, competent teams.Kanav (54:23):We see [Inaudible] coming from Korea. We see teams from Australia and New Zealand over the [inaudible 00:54:28] guys. We see people from Berlin and the US and everybody competing on the same, not only the similar consumer markets, but also on the same capital markets. And there are network effects that accrue, but not cannibalistic network effects that accrue. That makes me very excited about where the space is going overall. When we talk about integration points itself, it's going to largely depend on [inaudible 00:54:52], right? And that's like an unsatisfactory answer.Kanav (54:55):But if you're talking about financial markets, crypto is already integrated heavily into the financial markets with 15 excellent international venues that are competing, so we already have a fractured environment. That is before the [inaudible 00:55:08], the NASDAQ, the CME groups have made their moves in the space. And they're clearly not going to be monopolies in crypto, obviously, right?Kanav (55:16):If you look at something like a telco and interactions with like cell networks still remains to be seen, whether like decentralized constructions of those kinds of things can be competitive. I mean, building telcos and stuff has such strong network effects and so many economies of scale. And it's unclear whether a Web 3.0 means of accruing that value to a decentralized organization has the ability to accrue the similar kind of network effects and so remains to be seen. But I'm excited to see it play out.Austin (55:43):I always enjoy getting to pick your brain about where these technologies are going and the intersection of a very traditional financial world with this new global system that we've all been building. But thank you so much for joining us for spending some time digging into this stuff.Kanav (56:00):Thanks a lot for having me on Austin. This was super fun and as always, love chatting, so yeah, we'll see you again soon.Austin (56:04):Thanks.

A Quarta Temporada do Discoteca Básica está chegando, e com ela a campanha de financiamento coletivo para o lançamento do livro “Os 500 maiores álbuns brasileiros de todos os tempos”.    Para preparar nossos ouvintes para esse mergulho nos grandes LPs e CDs de todos da história, nossa equipe preparou este áudio-documentário contando tudo que está por trás do projeto: da ideia inicial à apuração passando pelo corpo de 162 jurados.   O programa ainda rende tributo às três grandes eleições de discos já realizadas no Brasil: a da Bizz, de 1997, a da Revista MTV, de 2003, e a da Rolling Stone Brasil, de 2007, com depoimentos dos editores das três revistas: Pedro Só, Mônica Figueiredo e Pablo Miyazawa, respectivamente. O Discoteca Básica é uma co-produção da Parasol Storytelling e Tudo Certo Produções.   Apresentação especial: Mari Soter    Roteiro e Pesquisa: Ricardo Alexandre e Sérgio Jomori   Direção: Ricardo Alexandre   Edição: Roberto Oksman de Aragão   Produção Executiva: Guga Mafra   Produção Executiva: Ricardo Alexandre       Saiba mais em: https://podcastdiscotecabasica.com    Support the show: https://podcastdiscotecabasica.com/assine/    See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.    Support the show: https://clubediscotecabasica.com/assine

Harley Miller is the Founder and Managing Partner @ Left Lane Capital, one of the fastest-growing growth equity firms of the last five years. Just yesterday, Left Lane announced the closing of their new fund taking their AUM to over $2BN with an early portfolio including M1 Finance, Masterworks, Choco, GoStudent, to name a few. Prior to founding Left Lane, Harley spent over 9 years at Insight Partners investing in the likes of DeliveryHero, HelloFresh, N26, Calm, Udemy and many more breakout companies. In Today's Episode with Harley Miller You Will Learn: 1.) Origins into Venture: How Harley made his way into the world of venture with his first role at Insight? What were Harley's biggest lessons and takeaways from 10 years at Insight? 2.) Left Lane: Fundraising What are harley's biggest takeaways on fundraising from speaking to 2,500 LPs for Left Lane I? With that experience in mind, what advice does Harley give to other first time fund managers on what it takes to raise successfully? How did the Left Lane pitch to LPs change over time? What worked? What did not work? With the benefit of hindsight, what fundraising elements would Harley have done differently? 3.) Left Lane: Firm Building What are the hardest elements of building a firm today? How did Harley navigate the transition from investor to fund manager? What was challenging? What is Harley's biggest advice to young people in venture looking to scale their career fast? What are 1-2 core inputs aspiring VCs should focus on as they build their career? 4.) Left Lane: Investing and Consumer How does Harley approach portfolio construction with the new fund? How does Harley think through outcome scenario planning and ownership requirements with the new fund? How does Harley think traditional growth equity models can be applied to consumer investing? What will Left Lane be in 20 years? What firm does Harley want to build? Item's Mentioned In Today's Episode with Harley Miller Harley's Most Recent Investment: Masterworks

The United Kingdom's 2021 act James Newman joins host Steve Holden to discuss his 'nil points' at the Contest in Rotterdam.From the class of 2022, we're also hearing from Malik Harris from Germany, MARO from Portugal and this year's youngest competitors, LPS from Slovenia. Plus, Christoph and Daniela from German podcast ESC Schnack talk about their country's hits and misses, and Samantha Ross from 12 Points From America has loads of Eurovision facts. Find Steve on Instagram (@steve_holden_ldn) and Twitter (@stevehreports). See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Pete Witte, EY Global Private Equity Lead Analyst, explores the key themes and market dynamics from 1Q 2022 that are top of mind for PE investors. PE Pulse is a quarterly report and corresponding podcast miniseries that provides analysis and insights on private equity market activity and trends. Visit https://www.ey.com/pepulse to view this quarter's summary and infographic.   Five takeaways from 1Q 2022: The macroeconomic environment is top of mind for investors as uncertainty impacts growth, inflation and interest rates PE deal activity decreases 27% from 1Q 2021: despite a softening in activity from the breakneck pace of last year, this level of activity is still quite robust Geopolitical uncertainty: PE firms are using the same playbook they used during the COVID-19 pandemic to manage the impact from the war in Ukraine PE exit activity decreases 60% by value from 1Q21: PE will continue to do what they have always done, which is execute on strategy and look to exit when conditions are more amenable Secondaries market reaches new heights: GP-led deals are key drivers of this trend, as they providing optionality for LPs    

On this week's episode, Canadian Musician Editor-in-Chief Mike Raine shares the full conversation he had with Darren "Young D" Metz and Quinton "Yung Trybez" Nyce of the acclaimed Haisla rap duo Snotty Nose Rez Kids for his cover story in the latest issue of the magazine. This career-spanning conversation follows their evolution as artists and people from the release of the first two LPs in 2017 to their latest masterwork, Life After, which was released in late 2021. In that time, they've twice been shortlisted for the Polaris Music Prize and received wide-spread fan and critical adoration around the world. In part, that is due to their unbeatable ability to create songs that make you want to both dance and think. With Mike, the guys chatted about their Indigenous roots, making political music and who they're speaking to with their music, addressing difficult personal issues, mastering their vocal dexterity, learning from fan criticism in their community, and more.

On this week's episode of Inside Outside Innovation, we sit down with Rachel Kuhr Conn, Founder and CEO of Productable. Rachel and I talk about the pitfalls and challenges facing corporate innovation and some of the processes and practices that companies can use to level up their innovation efforts. Let's get started.Inside Outside Innovation is the podcast to help the new innovators navigate what's next. Each week, we'll give you a front row seat into what it takes to learn, grow, and thrive in today's world of accelerating change and uncertainty. Join us as we explore, engage and experiment with the best and the brightest innovators, entrepreneurs, and pioneering businesses. It's time to get started.Interview Transcript with Rachel Kuhr Conn, Founder and CEO of ProductableBrian Ardinger: Welcome to another episode of Inside Outside Innovation. I'm your host, Brian Ardinger. And as always, we have another amazing guest. Today, we have Rachel Kuhr Conn. She's the Founder and CEO of Productable, where she is turning the innovation process into software. Welcome to the show, Rachel. Rachel Kuhr Conn: Thanks so much Brian. It's a pleasure to be here. Brian Ardinger: I'm excited to have you on the show. I'm surprised we haven't had you on earlier. We have a number of mutual friends that have crossed paths. And we just only got introduced to recently. So, I'm glad to have you on the show. You've recently started a company called Productable, focused on the space of innovation and how do you create more repeatable processes and things along those lines. You've just landed a deal with the US Air Force to expediate the innovations process at the national defense area. How did you get involved in this innovation space to begin with? And then we'll talk about how did you develop Productable. Rachel Kuhr Conn: Really excited to finally connect after all of the different people we have in common. So, a little bit of my backstory is I was a bright eyed, bushy tailed engineer, thinking that I was going to change the world with amazing products. And dreaming of all the impact I was going to make. And my research area in school was actually around predictive analytics for innovation success. And so, there's actually a lot of data around personality type, team dynamics, methodologies that you can look at and actually predict what should be used and what the team dynamics should be to drive the best outcome.So, in school, I was like, oh my gosh, industry must be amazing at solving problems. Like I just can't wait. And instead, I went into large corporation after a large corporation and just couldn't believe how politics and silos and just corporate bull crap for lack of better term, ruined every single opportunity I thought I had to ever make something awesome.And so just personally, I got really, really tired of the amazing capacity that all these large organizations have. And I just could never quite create the thing that made it to the finish line. And so got involved in the venture capital world. Saw how things work differently. Got really inspired by it. And essentially started building our platform and what we call the Productable Way, which leverages VC mindset and built it more into a corporate friendly approach, if you will. Brian Ardinger: And you worked with Mark Cuban companies, and some other folks, to build out this philosophy or build out this methodology. Can you talk a little bit more about that? Rachel Kuhr Conn: So, I got so frustrated in the corporate world. I actually cold emailed Mark Cuban while watching a bunch of Shark Tank. Cause I was like, they say yes to a lot of things that I think my boss would have said no to. And so, I just had to figure out, figure out what the difference was. And in the venture world, it's okay to take a lot of bets. You're supposed to build a whole portfolio of bets. And you understand that the outcome of a few is going to be big enough to pay for the losses of the others, and then some. It creates this incredible culture of risk-taking and experimentation. And having the room to do that in corporates really is what's required to help large organizations overcome the disruption curves that are ahead. You know, you always have something that's eating these large organizations. And so, you really have to have a way of managing, how do you actually take a lot of bets on new ways of solving these problems and in overcoming these things to actually be able to succeed. Brian Ardinger: Well, I'm curious to talk a little bit more about how you came about creating Productable. So, you know, there are a lot of idea management, idea capture, innovation software platforms out there. So, a lot of people kind of taking a swing at this over the last 20 years. What made you want to try to tackle this marketplace? Rachel Kuhr Conn: For one, it was from the pain point. If one of those had solved the problem, I feel like I would've just run with it. I didn't really necessarily feel the need to be a founder. It was actually the pain that I couldn't go into corporate innovation yet again and face the same problems. And so, something about those tools just wasn't doing it for me. It wasn't solving that problem that you end up with ideas on a shelf.And so, there's a lot of great idea management platforms that start to build that early stage of top of the funnel kind of solutions. But how do you actually move solutions through mid-stage and late stage of the funnel? And that's really where Productable comes of help. Brian Ardinger: Well and that's one of the interesting insights is I think a lot of people think that a tool will solve the problem, but really a tool is just a tool. And what really makes this thing work as far as innovation within big companies, it's a culture of innovation. And its processes and that that are around the intake of an idea. So maybe talk about how does process play a role in the actual software itself? Rachel Kuhr Conn: Yeah, absolutely. And so, it's a hundred percent culture where just a means to help support all of those things. And one of the big things is the company has to be willing to really invest in innovation. And if you're not putting your money where your mouth is, you're not going to get the outcomes. And so Productable is really a three-pronged approach. It's portfolio, progress, and people. And so what those three elements are, Portfolio Management is really about establishing and evangelizing a solid strategy that people understand. Making it so that you invest wisely in innovation, so that you're not throwing good money after bad. And you're making it really easy to expedite decision-making across the whole process. Then I'm going to actually switch to People Management. So that's more of like the top-down strategy if you will. People Empowerment is about honing the innovator skill so that you can actually empower projects to go through the right methodologies and tools and ensure you're involving the right subject matter experts. So, it's a little more of the ideal, if I was building a product, and building a company, these are some of the tools and processes I might. And then you would have to actually sync those together and that's our Progress Management. So, progress management, is like the way that a venture capitalist might get an update from a startup. And actually, here's our barriers. Here's our wins. Here's our asks. Here's how everything's actually going. Rubber meets the road. It's that kind of reporting so that when you're dealing with all the corporate stuff, that's preventing you from doing anything. It's how you actually manage all of those barriers and work through those pieces. So essentially that top down, bottom up and that syncing are those three pieces that we use to leverage in our software to help people innovate. Brian Ardinger: Well, I think it's interesting. A lot of companies struggle first out of the gate, just defining what innovation is. And trying to come up with that innovation thesis. You know, do they focus on core optimization types of innovations. Or do they go for the transformational stuff? And what does that even look like? Some people only think of innovation as one side of that bucket. Which it's not. So, talk about like how your clients and that use Productable or the approaches that you use to understand how to create that innovation thesis. And how to place bets across the different horizons of innovation.Rachel Kuhr Conn: Well, that's a great question. And I would say we're very agnostic. So, we don't care if you're doing a core innovation or a disruptive innovation. But what we're going to do is be able to show you the math. So, if you're doing disruptive innovation and you're wanting to put all of your eggs in one basket or two and you're essentially say, yeah, we're going to do these two really disruptive ideas. You're going to see that whether you invest in two ideas or you decide to invest in 20, the math is still going to be true. That if you're going after a disrupting idea is probably like a 10% chance it's going to work out. And so, as long as you're okay with that, and you're doing two bets, great. That's your expectation. But maybe you should be going after 20 bets if you want disruptive. And in a core, it might be 90% success rate. And so, there's a lot of great data around success rates that corporates really miss. And so, it's being mindful of taking that risk tolerance at the leadership level and setting that standard of this is what a bet looks like. This is the check size. This is essentially what we expect our decision criteria to be. Our traction metrics. The same way a VC would. And then making it really visible essentially, so that when it's time to make a decision, they can decide if something fits in their portfolio or not. And then they can actually get the metrics to see how it's going. Brian Ardinger: So, let's talk about how people are using it now. So, give me some examples. Or some people or places that are taking advantage of your software. Rachel Kuhr Conn: Sure. So, we're working with the Air Force right now. We work with the Vice Chief's Office, the number two of the air force. And a lot of the DAF, Department of Air Force leadership. And the Air Force is a 700,000-person organization. There are, I mean, just hundreds of people involved in innovation. And it's really interesting at a large corporation, you tend to have a head of innovation and a group that works under them. And the Air Force is much, much more complex than that. I don't have a very straightforward answer of how it's all going. But the short answer is we're starting to look at how can we leverage portfolio management within the Air Force. And how can we build an ecosystem of portfolios to ensure that we actually have the right funds and system to ensure that ideas can go from idea to mid late stage and not fall into the valley of death along the way. Brian Ardinger: What kind of differences are you seeing between like maybe public facing companies or like private companies. Versus like the government sector. Do they treat innovation differently or what are you seeing from the differences? Rachel Kuhr Conn: I never thought corporate seems so simple. A 700,000-person organization turns out, I don't know if you've ever heard the rule of threes and tens. Things tend to get more complicated with three people, 10 people, 300 people, a thousand people, three, you know, so forth. And so, when you think about 700,000 people organizations, it's just what is a single approval at a large corporation is actually takes you to a different business unit that then manages the process that does that approval. That takes you to another business unit that manages. So actually, putting your arms around any sort of portfolio decision is so complicated. And it's so needed to be able to solve that in such a large organization compared to a small corporate, if you will.Brian Ardinger: And I imagine the stakes are different, depending on the specific ideas and that. Like, obviously if you're doing innovation in and around things that could kill people, or, have a significant different effect versus you know, the new color of a new product that you come out with. I'd imagine the stakes are slightly different as well. Rachel Kuhr Conn: Well, the interesting thing about the Air Force is that it's actually, I think it's 94 bases and every single base works like a city. And I didn't realize this until I worked with the Air Force either. So, the Air Force, like the pilots, if you will, are part of the scene, but to support those pilots, you have to have a base where there's hospitals, hotels, restaurants, education, gas, like literally gyms. Everything you can imagine has to be on base.And so, the Air Force is actually in charge of having every single one of those kinds of businesses within the Air Force organization. So actually, the kinds of things that we're helping are everything from childcare, gym apps. Yes, there are some more serious ones too. But I would say there's a surprising amount of comparables to industry of solving those kinds of problems.Brian Ardinger: That's quite interesting. So, talk a little bit about some of the trends that you're seeing in the space of innovation. Or what are you excited about? Rachel Kuhr Conn: I think that people are really starting to see the need for portfolio innovation. Pre COVID there was a lot of, I'm talking about the corporate space. It was a little more okay to spend a lot of money and just see what would happen with it.And so, I had a lot of connections that were in corporate innovation, they would get to try a lot of stuff. And then it was okay not to know what was going to happen next. Then all of a sudden COVID cut those budgets. And people got stuck. And they had to figure out what to do next. And I think we're, you know, everything was really held back.But now I think we're in a really interesting space where people really want to innovate. They want to do something different. And they're saying, how can we make sure that we're going to drive real outcomes? And so I'm actually really excited for this new market that we're in. That I feel like there's a little more responsible. And also, proactive and engaged and really curious to see what they can do.Brian Ardinger: Are you seeing the similar obstacles and problems being faced. Or is it different. Like has the mindset changed? Like when we talk about innovation, you know I think, and disruption specifically pre COVID, a lot of folks kind of understood it intellectually. But didn't really get it until everybody's lives had to change overnight. Are you seeing differences of how people approach innovation based on the world changes and that? Or what's different from that perspective?Rachel Kuhr Conn: I think it's COVID, but I also think it's maturity of innovation in general. We've seen a lot of large corporations that have invested in, ahead of innovation. Where then the outcomes didn't quite reach the executive leadership expectation. And it's funny, I don't know how much people talk about this stuff, but I hear about it all the time. People get the job of head of innovation and then they try to get a certain amount of money to move their idea forward. For a specific idea, let's say. And then leadership says, great show your progress, and then we'll give you more money. And it's a trap. Because you need a lot of bets to succeed at innovation. And so, then there's like this problem that innovation leaders are put in this place where they're getting asked to prove success on something that is really a bet. And it gets really confusing. And all of a sudden, their neck is on the line for success. It generally doesn't end well unless they got lucky. And so, there's been like this two to three year rotation that happens over and over again. People are getting tired of it. Having enough after working at a few large companies, seeing the same thing over and over. Company is seeing that same person go through and not getting what they need, that they know something has to be different.Brian Ardinger: Is there a way to prep management on that particular process from the standpoint, like you understand when you're betting from an LPs perspective, like in a venture fund, that you're not necessarily getting those returns, and you know, for 10 plus years. So that that's a much longer timeframe when you put that money in. Is there a way to prepare management for that more of a venture-based model? Rachel Kuhr Conn: We actually wrote an Ebook on that. So, I can share a link. I'm happy to share the Ebook on that, but yes. That's the biggest problem that we've actually seen. And we wrote all about it because yes, you need to get leadership in the mindset of they're really comfortable with index funds and mutual funds. Look at their retirement portfolios. They play this game all the time. They would never put all of their money in one stock. Why would they do that with their corporate money. So, it's really a mindset shift that we have to help drive. Brian Ardinger: Are you seeing companies get better? Or what are some of the things that seem to be working that people are adopting?Rachel Kuhr Conn: We're seeing companies get better at it. One we're seeing them care more. And being mindful of it. And starting to put all the pieces together. And having more fruitful conversations. What happens after the theater? What happens after the demo day? How do we actually make this into something? Why does it always fail? Because you can't really get away with that stuff much longer. And so, the conversations are getting more real. I don't think people see the solutions yet, but I'm excited to see how Productable can help and really shift the industry of making that much easier for everybody. Brian Ardinger: Curious to get your take on this concept of inside outside innovation. So, a lot of corporates are interested in trying to come up with innovations within their four walls and that. But there's another set of corporates that are looking outside to startups and investing in startups and things along those lines. What's your take when it comes to betting on innovation, either inside or outside of the walls.Rachel Kuhr Conn: Both are so important. You know, it's really interesting. I've worked in internal innovation and external innovation. The funny thing is they both kind of require each other and they don't really talk about it. And so, when you're doing external innovation, it's really easy to get excited about a startup and then go force it on a business unit and tell them that they should go pilot this product. And the business units kind of like, Hey, we didn't even need this. What's going on?And then it's really easy for somebody in a business unit to come up with a cool idea, but then they don't get any of the resources to do it. There's a little bit of this magic of empowering people within the company to act like intrepreneurs if you will. And allowing them to leverage external startups and external technology, and actually allow them to partner together to really be able to build something that's a little bit of a mix of internal and external. And depending on the solution, maybe it's a little more one or the other, but it's kind of a funny thing to me that they often get so separated. Brian Ardinger: One of the things that we've seen that's been helpful is to get our employees actually involved in the startup scene. Just from being part of it, you know, going to demo days, going and mentoring at accelerators and that. If nothing else, it provides them that access to see how other startup folks with brand new ideas with no business models, how they move and interact. Versus how they would do it if they were inside their own walls. And I think exposure to the startup ecosystem, so to speak, can do a lot, not just like in finding actual innovations and that, but in the tool sets, mindset, skillset arena. Rachel Kuhr Conn: Absolutely. Yeah. I mean getting from zero to one, if you will, is, is really important. How do we actually go from what we're used to as everyday business and actually start thinking of more exploratory ways? How do we start thinking about growth and getting that mindset in? And it's a really hard dance to figure out of how long do you let that soak in and then start to create some of those other methods and ways of actually turning that into deeper transactions. And your company has to be ready for those. And so, I feel like it's a little bit of learning to crawl and then walk and run, if you will. Brian Ardinger: Are there particular resources that people should be following in the world of innovation? How do you stay up to date with all the stuff that's going on? Rachel Kuhr Conn: I don't have a great answer for that one. I have a lot of people that I talked to. A lot of consultants and great thinkers that I try to involve in my day to day. But we do have a blog and we do have eBooks and things that we're creating on our end to try and spread that knowledge as much as possible. I like to think that it's helpful and help drives all of that. But it is really hard to figure all of this out. I've been in this space for a long time, really trying to figure out what is expert look like. And it was really, really hard to get to the bottom of finding a lot of these pieces. For More InformationBrian Ardinger: If people want to find out more about yourself or about productive, but what's the best way to do that? Rachel Kuhr Conn: Sure, they can go to beprodable.com. That's B E product able.com and I'm on Twitter. I guess that's probably the easiest way to do it. Design K U H R is my Twitter name and really excited to chat with anybody and see whatever they like to talk about. Brian Ardinger: Excellent. Well, Rachel, thanks for coming on Inside Outside Innovation. Very excited to finally meet you and have a chance to talk more. Love to stay in touch and keep you in mind for further conversations about the world of innovation.Rachel Kuhr Conn: Perfect. This was awesome. Thank you so much for having me. And I can't wait to listen and hear more about what people have to say.Brian Ardinger: That's it for another episode of Inside Outside Innovation. If you want to learn more about our team, our content, our services, check out InsideOutside.io or follow us on Twitter @theIOpodcast or @Ardinger. Until next time, go out and innovate.FREE INNOVATION NEWSLETTER & TOOLSGet the latest episodes of the Inside Outside Innovation podcast, in addition to thought leadership in the form of blogs, innovation resources, videos, and invitations to exclusive events. SUBSCRIBE HEREYou can also search every Inside Outside Innovation Podcast by Topic and Company.  For more innovations resources, check out IO's Innovation Article Database, Innovation Tools Database, Innovation Book Database, and Innovation Video Database.  

visit acedoutpodcast.com to see photos and more“As long as you're consistent, things can happen.” So says solo artist JAY DOUBLE YOU!—who began his funk career as a pro drummer in the late 70s at Don Davis' legendary United Sound Studios in Detroit. His golden opportunity came in the form of a session with none other than OG Parliament vocalist Fuzzy Haskins, who had landed his own solo deal at Westbound. “Fuzzy, he gave me my first major session,” says Jay Dub, then known as Jim Wright. “He lived not too far from my mom's house.” Indeed, for young Jim, Parliament-Funkadelic had been a family affair ever since grade school, when he first got to know Bernie Worrell, George Clinton and the rest of the P-Funk camp through his big sister, vocalist Debbie Wright. Jay Dub remembers that first official session well. “Fuzzy was gonna play drums,” Dub explains, “cause normally he played drums on his stuff… I happened to be in the studio… I was like ‘Hey Fuzz. Wassup man? Can I give it a go?' Me knowin' him, he said ‘Okay Jim.'” Even so, young Wright knew full well that a chance wasn't a guarantee, as friendship and nepotism didn't get you very far when it came to laying down the funk. “You had to be quick, ‘cause money is being spent,” he explains. “You didn't get too many chances.” So Jay Dub went over to the drums and sat down, with Glenn Goins, Garry Shider, & Cordell “Boogie” Mosson holding their instruments and staring at him like: Why is Debbie's little brother in here when we're about to record? But little did they know, the Kid was ready. “They counted off, and I hit it in one take, man,” reports Jay. “Pocket. Timing. Solid. And from there I end up doing two more songs that night with ‘em. I would do a song, they would say ‘Take a break. Let us mix. We'll call you for the next one.'” Seven hours later and $400 richer, young Mr. Wright had been fully matriculated into P University. Word spread to George C about what went down. “Fuzzy gave me that shot, and from there I guess George heard it,” recalls Jay Dub. “And next thing I knew, I was called down to the studio.” Significantly, Dr. Funkenstein wound up pulling Jay Dub into a marathon session with the nimble-fingered bassist Rodney “Skeet” Curtis, recording songs that were turned into funky headwreckers which wound up on such classic records as Parlet's Pleasure Principle and Bernie Worrell's All the Woo in the World. All of this established Jay Dub's reputation as a pocket drummer, and some serious heads within the camp were starting to take notice. Yet, by the time the 1980s came along, the wind was starting to blow in a different direction. The drum machine, once a novelty, was becoming more significant in the music industry by the day, predicting a cruel fate for live drummers. A still quite young Mr. Wright saw the writing on the studio wall and decided it was time to expand his skills. Enter Don Davis, owner of United Sound and mentor to local talent. “He was great to me,” Dub remembers of Don. “Anyone that had enough confidence, he would give you a shot… He would at least throw you in the studio to do some demos.” And when Jay Dub found out producers got paid double scale, he really got inspired. So he improved his keyboard skills, grabbed the mic, and began to record his own ideas instead of someone else's. “It's a growth thing until the end, basically,” he says of his evolution toward becoming a singer/songwriter. “You're always learning. You're always trying to adjust if you choose to move forward.” As it turned out, part of moving forward was getting out of his deal with Davis in order to go independent. From there, Jim, now Jay Double, put out his own singles and LPs. He even started his own clothing line.We first met and talked to Jay Double You! for Episode 5 of Aced Out back in the fall of 2019, when we were still a struggling little podcast trying find our footing. He gave us a fascinating and fun interview that focused heavily on his P-Funk days but also featured some of his super dope solo work. But the “fun with a K” didn't stop there, not by a long shot. As it turned out, Dub not only enjoyed his moment in the spotlight, but also connected spiritually with Aced Out's mission and raison d'etre: to give props where props are due. “It's hard for musicians to give each other credit,” laments Jay Dub. “I say, ‘Genius, recognize genius.'” And we here at Aced Out know firsthand that the man practices what he preaches. Indeed, Dub recognized the opportunity to share the wealth and, with our blessing and gratitude, got on the phone to recruit some old friends for the cause. Consequently, the man has been an integral part of Aced Out's ever-expanding body of work, garnering us classic interviews with Joe “Pep” Harris of Undisputed Truth and the late Robin Russell of New Birth, as well as his fellow P-Funk alumni Rick Gardner of the Horny Horns, Steve Boyd, Andre Foxxe, and Grady Thomas. For this second appearance on Aced Out, Jay Dub traveled all the way from Suwanee, GA to join us in the Bay Area. In this intimate, in-person interview, Dub describes his transition from player to producer, explains how his subconscious guides his songwriting process, and reveals the secret to Tiki Fulwood's high-hat technique. Jay Dub also raps about why Junie Morrison loved singing over his drum tracks, learning rudiments from Tyrone Lampkin, and that time he made George Clinton bacon and eggs for breakfast. If all that weren't enough, Jay Stone & Ace Alan and a buncha Bay Area heavy hitters (listed below) help Jay Dub perform the title track to his funktastic solo joint, I'll See You Soon (2001)!Produced & Hosted by Ace AlanCohosted by Jay StoneExecutive Producer: Scott Sheppardw/ Content Produced by Jay Double You!Website, Art & Graphics by 3chardsw/ major props to Nat CollinsLive Version of “I'll See You Soon” Featuring:Jay Double You! — clavinet, vocalsFemi Andrades — vocalsVanessa Love — vocalsAlan Williams — tromboneAl Lazard — saxOcea Savage — synthKyle “Coyote” Collins — synth percussionChris McGrew — drumsJay Stone — guitarAce Alan — bassEngineered by Chris McGrew for Wally's Hyde Out @ Hyde Street Studios, San FranciscoVideo by RoAn Gibson for X Racer ProductionsWith thanks to Maryzelle UngoSound Editing, Video Editing & Graphics by Nick “WAES” Carden for Off Hand Records in OaklandTheme song “I Can Never Be” by the FUNKANAUTS from the album Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth an Issac Bradbury Production © 2022visit acedoutpodcast.com to see photos and more