Podcasts about spac

SPAC President Christopher Shiley and Chief Executive Officer Elizabeth Sobol join us this morning for a preview of their Summer Season including highlights from the New York City Ballet and the Philadelphia Orchestra.When last we met, Chris was SPAC's Senior Vice President of Artistic Planning and now has been promoted to President. He is now overseeing SPAC's programming and day-to-day operations in alignment with the organization's goals for the future. And he works collaboratively with Elizabeth and, the Board of Directors.

Financial innovations are demonized all the time, and perhaps David should be grateful because a low regard for capital markets is what motivated the creation of this podcast. But today he looks at SPACs and the criticisms of them as an example of how fallacious defense of central planning works. He makes the case that protection against fraud is one thing, but protection against loss is another. And ultimately, he makes the case that a system of robust financial markets has gains and losses, and that is a good thing.

PODCAST 503 The return of Oscar the Romantic Hispanic. https://www.youtube.com/@ClevelandMoto/streamsShow notes: Are we done with electric motorcycles? Livewire Way back in 2019:. "The range of new bikes are expected to haul in more than $1 billion of annual sales in 2022 compared to 2017".Then back in 2021...The $1.7 billion Harley-Davidson electric motorcycle SPAC deal, Jochen Zeitz, Harley's chief executive, will be the chairman of LiveWire for up to two years following the completion of the deal. In an investor presentation, LiveWire projected units sales volume of 100,961 electric bikes by 2026https://www.cnbc.com/.../harleys-electric-motorcycle...Dec 14, 2021 Can Harley-Davidson's LiveWire spin-off go from selling fewer than 400 electric motorcycles this year to selling nearly 101,000 around the world in 2026?Ouch in just 4 years, that did not age well. "LiveWire sold over 117 electric motorcycles through March 2024, an 86% increase compared to last year"July 2024 "The company expects to sell between 1,000 and 1,500 e-motorcycles by the end of this year" Nope, not even close, you sold just over 600. Great, let's give them more money! Harley-Davidson's electric motorcycle business, LiveWire, is  getting a Tax-Payer funded $89 million boost to support a five-year project to increase production of zero-emissions motorcycles.Since its inception in 2019, LiveWire has only sold somewhere around 2,350 motorcyclesLiveWire claimed to have sold 1648 bikes in 2019Later recall data had shown only 390 actual sales. LiveWire sold 177 bikes in 2020LiveWire sold 461 bikes in 2021Livewire sold 597 in 2022LiveWire sold 660 bikes in 2023LiveWire sold 612 bikes in 2024LiveWire has sold only 33 bikes in 2025 so far. ClevelandMoto has doubled Livewires sales numbers, can we get a govt. check? Based on the $1.7BN initial funding and a $100M Loan from HD to Livewire and the $89M Govt. Grant that makes each bike worth $808,510  -   And you're only paying $22k for it, such a deal!But wait, their latest shareholder report says they sold 1970 bikes in the first quarter of 2025!?!?  What a revival, that 89 mil bump is paying off... Look super, duper closely, read the fine print....that's a COMBINED number for both  stacyc kids $600 balance bikes and $23,000 motorcycles?!?!?Sorry bud, time to get in the motorcycle graveyard, scooch over Energica. VERMONT BANS LOUD PIPES - The news aint the story, so much as the comments are fire! httpsSupport the showRemember folks...Ride Fast and Take Chances! check out our Youtube channel at https://www.youtube.com/c/ClevelandMoto

Today's show: Cursor's explosive growth, hitting $200M in ARR and a massive $9B valuation. They also explore the buzz around Magical Toys' new AI-powered dinosaur, where LLMs meet playtime. The conversation turns to “vibe coding” and how AI dev tools are changing the way product teams build. Plus, Jason shares stories from his Formula 1 poker table, Uber's latest autonomous vehicle partnerships get analyzed, and we bring you highlights from our Founder Fridays pitch showdown, featuring Kippy from Sydney and MomSub from Chicago. Stick around to hear how Cloud Neuro is tackling SaaS sprawl.*Timestamps:(0:00) Jason kicks off the show!(3:52) Rise in popularity of F1 and Netflix's impact(10:23) Uber stock, partnerships, and self-driving technology(10:47) Northwest Registered Agent. Form your entire business identity in just 10 clicks and 10 minutes. Get more privacy, more options, and more done—visit https://www.northwestregisteredagent.com/twisttoday!(13:50) Aurora Innovation's SPAC and Cursor's valuation discussion(19:07) Revenue quality concerns for startups(20:17) Lemon.io - Get 15% off your first 4 weeks of developer time at https://Lemon.io/twist(21:37) User engagement versus churn in startups(23:06) AnySphere's ARR and impact of faster development on tech(30:29) Fidelity Private Shares℠ - Visit ⁠https://www.fidelityprivateshares.com! Mention our podcast and receive 20% off your first-year paid subscription.(32:11) Anker's portable solar solutions and off-grid living innovations(37:41) Jason's investment insights on Warner Brothers and Disney(38:27) Skype's decline and the rise of Zoom and Microsoft Teams(42:04) Founder Friday bracket final matchup and pitches(51:08) Interview with Fateen Anam Raffid from Magical Toys(59:24) Dino AI toy demonstration and future plans(1:04:20) Interview on CloudNuro's SaaS spend management(1:10:01) SaaS compliance, vendor-customer relationships, and AI spend management(1:16:09) CloudNuro's data-driven foundation and AI governance(1:18:46) Company growth, competitive landscape, and Chicago's entrepreneurial ecosystem*Subscribe to the TWiST500 newsletter: https://ticker.thisweekinstartups.comCheck out the TWIST500: https://www.twist500.comSubscribe to This Week in Startups on Apple: https://rb.gy/v19fcp*Links from episode:Magical Toys: https://www.magicaltoys.comCloudNuro: https://www.cloudnuro.ai/*Follow Fateen:X: https://x.com/Fateen_Anam*Follow Shyam:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shyam-kumar-7b18524/:*Follow Lon:X: https://x.com/lons*Follow Alex:X: https://x.com/alexLinkedIn: ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexwilhelm*Follow Jason:X: https://twitter.com/JasonLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasoncalacanis*Thank you to our partners:(10:47) Northwest Registered Agent. Form your entire business identity in just 10 clicks and 10 minutes. Get more privacy, more options, and more done—visit https://www.northwestregisteredagent.com/twisttoday!(20:17) Lemon.io - Get 15% off your first 4 weeks of developer time at https://Lemon.io/twist(30:29) Fidelity Private Shares℠ - Visit ⁠https://www.fidelityprivateshares.com/ Mention our podcast and receive 20% off your first-year paid subscription.*Great TWIST interviews: Will Guidara, Eoghan McCabe, Steve Huffman, Brian Chesky, Bob Moesta, Aaron Levie, Sophia Amoruso, Reid Hoffman, Frank Slootman, Billy McFarland*Check out Jason's suite of newsletters: https://substack.com/@calacanis*Follow TWiST:Twitter: https://twitter.com/TWiStartupsYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/thisweekinInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/thisweekinstartupsTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@thisweekinstartupsSubstack: https://twistartups.substack.com*Subscribe to the Founder University Podcast: https://www.youtube.com/@founderuniversity1916

Did you enjoy this episode? Text us your thoughts and be sure to include the episode name.A video of this podcast is available on YouTube, Spotify, or PwC's website at viewpoint.pwc.comThis episode kicks off a new video miniseries focused on SEC reporting that will keep you up to speed on the SEC landscape and take a “back to basics” look at key reporting areas. In today's episode, we cover capital raising, one of the pillars of the SEC's tripartite mission and a focus of the new SEC Chairman. Whether you're preparing for an IPO or navigating ongoing public company reporting, this discussion breaks down the key requirements and considerations. From SEC filing requirements to readiness, our guests share insights for companies at every stage of growth. In this episode, we discuss: 1:11 – Overview of the capital markets, including IPO activity 4:48 – Key disclosure obligations for new public companies 17:47 – Overview of the IPO process (e.g., SEC reviews, confidential filings, roadshow and pricing process) 24:05 – Financial disclosures, interim reporting, and pro forma adjustments 32:36 – Public company readiness (e.g., governance, systems, investor communications) 36:12 – Other capital raising considerations (e.g., follow-on offerings, shelf registrations, seasoned issuer reviews) Be sure to follow this podcast on your favorite podcast app and subscribe to our weekly newsletter for the latest thought leadership.  About our guests Ryan Spencer is a partner at PwC's National Office specializing in SEC financial reporting. He has over 25 years of experience serving clients and is a frequent contributor to PwC's publications and communications. Mike Bellin is a PwC Deals partner who leads PwC's US Capital Markets practice. Mike advises clients on accessing the debt and equity capital markets by providing clients with technical/project management advice on complex accounting and financial reporting issues associated with the SEC registration process, IPOs, direct listings, SPAC mergers, 144A debt and equity offerings, divestitures, spin-offs and carve-outs, and GAAP conversions. About our guest host Kyle Moffatt is PwC's Professional Practice leader, leading a team responsible for working with standard setters and regulators as well as delivering brand-defining thought leadership and educational materials. He also consults with engagement teams and audit clients on SEC reporting matters. Before PwC, Kyle spent almost 20 years with the SEC, most recently as Chief Accountant and Disclosure Program Director in the Division of Corporation Finance. Transcripts available upon request for individuals who may need a disability-related accommodation. Please send requests to us_podcast@pwc.com.

Send us a textHi everybody and welcome to the first episode of this new series of Attendance Bias: over the next few weeks, we are going to take a look at venue Phish is going to play on their upcoming 2025 summer tour; from old favorites like SPAC and The Mann, to first-time visits for Phish, like Folsom Field and Forest Hills Stadium.Today, I am joined by returning guest Chris Casey and his partner Jenn, both New Hampshire natives, to give us a local view of the SNHU Arena, or the “SNU,” at which Phish will open their summer tour with a 3-night run on June 20, 21, and 22.Phish doesn't have a big history at the venue, but Chris and Jenn have a long history in Manchester, and New Hampshire as a whole. So, what follows is a mix of a venue preview and a travelogue. I hope you enjoy it and look forward to our previews of other venues on the summer tour.

This week, we sit down with Rick Hendrix and Adam Fishman from the Live Oak SPAC team. Rick Hendrix is the Founder of Live Oak Merchant Partners, and Chairman and CEO of Live Oak Acquisition Corp. V (NASDAQ:LOKV). In addition, he is an operating executive at Crestview Partners, a New York-based middle market focused private equity firm. Adam Fishman is a Managing Partner at Live Oak Merchant and President and CFO of Live Oak V. Adam joined Live Oak right before Live Oak II was launched and has been an executive on each of the SPACs since. Together they discuss how the SPAC climate has changed and how they choose to position their team relative to the broader market. Where are the big opportunities now, and what are some of the transaction terms and structures they would and would not consider? Give it a listen  

The market shows a resurgence in SPAC activity, signaling a shift in dynamics. Many startups previously merged with SPACs during the last bull market, with mixed results across sectors such as scooters and genetic testing. Recent weeks have seen new SPACs forming partnerships with firms in cryptocurrency, autonomous vehicles, and nuclear energy. Notable deals include Kodiak Robotics, valued at $2.5 billion, Veraxa Biotech at $1.3 billion, and Twenty One Capital at $3.6 billion. Additionally, Terra Innovatum and Terrestrial Energy announced deals valued at $475 million and $925 million, respectively. Investor sentiment remains cautious due to prior losses, with experts predicting a more disciplined approach to SPAC transactions. The current market features experienced sponsors, while the tech IPO landscape remains inactive, limiting opportunities for public investors. The deal environment is volatile, impacted by tariff uncertainties, and high-valuation companies are delaying public listings. The SPAC route offers quicker access to the market, reducing the risks of evolving conditions. However, companies face a challenging investment atmosphere influenced by share price volatility. Learn more on this news visit us at: https://greyjournal.net/news/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Nik from Rooted Leaf Nutrients (use code GROWCAST) returns for another deep dive- this time moving away from soil fertilizer elements and delving into watering dynamics. Nik introduces us a concept called SPAC, or soil, plant, air, continuum (AKA the soil, plant, atmosphere continuum). This concept encompasses a more holistic view when it comes to optimal climate conditions in our cannabis grows- whereas singular metrics like VPD can sometimes be only part of the picture. Nik discusses how we should be thinking about what happens to all that water that we dump into the soil system after we put it in there... Plants, after all, are just water lifting mechanisms designed to move that water from the soil into the atmosphere. Understanding and mastering this cycle leads to a healthier, and more vigorous garden. Intro 0:00 Cult Cup Experience 2:32 Watering and Soil Moisture 5:52 VPD and Light Intensity 7:56 Soil Water Potential 20:52 Air & Water Pressure Differences 29:41 Biological Changes in Water Consumption 33:15 The SPAC Cycle in Nature 42:26 Final Thoughts 53:39   Join GrowCast Membership TODAY! Connect with the most active, vibrant cannabis community in the entire world. Personal 24/7 garden support, Members Only content and discounts, and so much more! www.growcast.com/membership    GrowCast Seed Co KLM DROP IS LIVE! Members get $20 off per pack- this Key Lime Madness Drop is going fast so don't miss it! Code growcast15 now works with grow KITS from AC Infinity! www.acinfinity.com use promo code growcast15 for 15% off the BEST grow fans in the game, plus tents, pots, scissors, LED lights, and now REFILLABLE FILTERS!

Crypto News: CME will list XRP Futures which is critical for the XRP Spot ETF approval. New SPAC Bitcoin Investment Company backed by Tether, Softbank, and Cantor Lutnik. Federal Reserve gives bank greenlight to participate in crypto.Show Sponsor -✅ VeChain is a versatile enterprise-grade L1 smart contract platform https://www.vechain.org/ 

The gang comes together to chat about Wayve's deal with Nissan, Kodiak's decision to SPAC, China's ban on "self-driving" terminology — and of course Tesla. Plus, Alex and Kirsten commiserate on their increasingly expensive classic cars.

Good morning from Pharma and Biotech daily: the podcast that gives you only what's important to hear in Pharma e Biotech world.Lilly is currently involved in a legal battle with compounders over knockoff versions of tirzepatide, marketed as Zepbound for weight loss. The FDA has prohibited compounders from producing these knockoffs after confirming the end of the tirzepatide shortage in December 2024. On the other hand, BMS is facing disappointment with Cobenfy's late-stage failure in treating schizophrenia, marking their second high-profile setback in recent weeks. RFK is contemplating removing COVID-19 from the CDC's vaccine guidelines for children to align with other countries and the WHO. Biotech investors are navigating a turbulent period due to new tariffs and economic uncertainty, causing additional upheaval in an already fragile market. Trump is looking to reinstate international drug pricing policies, while Swiss ADC Biotech is opting for the SPAC route to Nasdaq.Summit's bispecific has outperformed another cancer medication, putting pressure on Keytruda's dominance. In the midst of this biotech downturn, Wacker Biotech is offering advanced therapy process development and production services. Moving on to the next news, executives in the pharmaceutical industry often receive substantial golden parachutes upon leaving a company. Pfizer is defending its cardiac blockbuster drug against competition from Alnylam and BridgeBio. The biotech sector was showing signs of a rebound until new tariffs and economic uncertainty introduced further instability.Lilly is pursuing legal action against compounders for producing counterfeit drugs, while Roche and Regeneron are committing billions to US manufacturing amidst tariff challenges. The industry is undergoing significant changes under the current administration, with opportunities to learn from global markets. Challenges such as investor pullback and market volatility are impacting the biotech sector.Janssen's departure from Galapagos and the promising future of all-American biotech companies are also discussed. Stay tuned for more updates on upcoming events and job opportunities in the field.

Jack Mallers, Strike CEO, leads Twenty One Capital, a Tether and SoftBank-backed Bitcoin acquisition firm. Launching with 42,000 BTC via a SPAC merger, it aims to maximize Bitcoin per share, offering investors exposure through a public stock.Where I buy Bitcoin (Non-KYC options)https://bitcoinwell.com/referral/bitcoinnotcryptoNeed help on how to buy btc on Bitcoin well?https://youtu.be/-52aEY3LIFsBook a 1|1 Bitcoin Consulting call with mehttps://www.differentmedia.ca/bitcoin15% Stampseed Titanium Seed plates (BEST WAY TO STORE BTC PRIVATE KEYS)https://www.stampseed.com/USE CODE : BTCNOTCRYPTO15Become a Member of the Channel, Get exclusive content, and livestream playbackhttps://www.youtube.com/channel/UC2aM2gVVEHTu0pfE1ZyA0BQ/joinFollow Rajat, Jor, and I's new show togetherhttps://www.youtube.com/@MapleBitcoinJoin my BTC Discordhttps://discord.gg/PY5tKvAamBListen to this as a podcasthttps://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/bitcoinnotcryptoFund my Documentary Series "Bitcoin Fixes This"https://geyser.fund/project/bitcoinfixesthisFollow me on Nostrnpub1zqm9zant0rxf49wfgw8pt5h0j50cetfes6hwa73u7sxstlzcsz8qh6x9fsFollow on Twitter/Xhttps://x.com/forrestHODLDonate to the show hereBitcoinnotcryptoshow@coinos.iobc1qnzxvnchtyqzk623rvnvnvvsjjsqt07y4xat6zslxzf8lcv8ku7uqf0qrraMovies I've madehttps://amzn.to/3FtVKmrhttps://amzn.to/3FtVKmrhttps://amzn.to/3FtkmM6https://amzn.to/3s43FE8Alternative Dwelling Documentarieshttps://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL8TC5LCUPfit4qO8aiIh_iHtC2xFWtIzA

Jason Wilk is the Founder and CEO of Dave, the greatest turnaround in the public markets of the last 12 months. Dave went public with a market cap of $4BN, just months later the company had a market cap of $50M. Today, they are back with a market cap of $1.1BN. In 2024, CNBC named Dave the best-performing financial stock in the country, achieving 900% growth. In Today's Episode We Discuss:  04:09 Do Rich Founders Make Better Founders 07:45 The Best Performing Fund Would Only Invest in YC Founders on Their Second Time 11:25 “We Went Public Too Late, It Was a Big Mistake” 17:53 Why Did Jason Choose to SPAC?  24:21 Why Does Jason Believe SPACs are Unfairly Demonised and Will Comeback? 29:47 How Does AI Change the Margin Structure of the Next Generation of Companies 33:14 Is Trump Better for Business than a Biden Administration? 38:35 Are We Heading into a Recession? Predictions for Next 12 Months? 46:26 Why Have No Neobanks Reached the Heights of Revolut in the US? 48:08 Why is the Opportunity in Low Income Banking Not High Income in the US? 50:07 Why Short Sellers Should Be Stopped and How Immoral They Are  

On this week's Money Matters, Scott and Pat take a deep dive into special purpose acquisition companies (SPACs) - exploring their meteoric rise, sharp decline, and the potential risks and rewards for investors. Plus, they field questions from listeners about pension decisions, lump sum options, and how to adapt investment strategies to today's market conditions. Finally, they emphasize the value of personalized financial planning, covering key topics like tax strategies and Roth conversions to help secure your long-term retirement goals. Join Money Matters:  Get your most pressing financial questions answered by Allworth's co-founders Scott Hanson and Pat McClain live on-air! Call 833-99-WORTH. Or ask a question by clicking here.  You can also be on the air by emailing Scott and Pat at questions@moneymatters.com. Download and rate our podcast here.

This week on Autonomy Markets, Grayson Brulte and Walter Piecyk discuss Kodiak starting the process to become a publicly traded company, the anxiety leading up to Aurora's driver-out commercial launch and Lyft's expansion into Europe through the acquisition of FREENOW.Kodiak has officially filed to go public in a $2.5 billion SPAC deal, backed by a $100 million PIPE and a 100-truck order from Atlas Energy that signals strong market confidence. Aurora's long-anticipated driver-out commercial launch is drawing closer, with industry watchers counting the days and parsing every signal for an indication of launch. On the platform side of autonomy, Lyft is expanding to the UK and Europe through a $197 million acquisition of FREENOW. Now that Lyft has European operations, there is a path for the company to scale robotaxis on two continents.It appears that Lyft is gearing up to compete with Uber more aggressively, while in the U.S., Waymo continues to grow their Waymo One service which overtime will capture marketshare from both Uber and Lyft. Meanwhile, Walt headed out to LA to get an on the ground understanding of how Waymo is scaling in the City of Angles and how Angelenos are currently thinking about autonomous vehicles. Episode Chapters0:00 Walt's LA Adventure2:08 Waymos in LA9:40 Kodiak Files to Go Public17:10 HD Maps20:41 Aurora's Driver-Out Moment24:22 Lyft Acquires FREENOW, Expands to Europe30:00 Nuro Expands to Japan31:10 Sidewalk Delivery Bots35:10 Tesla FSD38:27 Waymo's Upcoming Atlanta Launch on Uber41:04 Next WeekRecorded on Thursday, April 17, 2025--------About The Road to AutonomyThe Road to Autonomy® is a leading source of data, insight and commentary on autonomous vehicles/trucks and the emerging autonomy economy™.Autonomy is transforming industries and creating an entirely new economy that we call the autonomy economy™. The Road to Autonomy provides advisory and market intelligence services that helps you better understand the market and stay ahead of what's coming next. To learn more, say hello (at) roadtoautonomy.com.Sign up for This Week in The Autonomy Economy newsletter: https://www.roadtoautonomy.com/autonomy-economy/See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Today, on TechCrunch's Equity podcast, hosts Kirsten Korosec, Max Zeff and Anthony Ha are unpacking the week's news, including the possible return of the SPAC in an uncertain IPO market. It's a curious moment for a public debut, as Kirsten points out, especially after so much chatter that 2025 would be the big comeback year for blockbuster IPOs, but some major players like Klarna and StubHub have already hit pause. And as investor Mark Goldberg put it on this week's show, folks holding their breath for a fintech IPO wave this year “are going to be blue in the face.” Listen to the full episode to hear about: How Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos's AI voices could be taking over a crosswalk near you Figma's IPO plans, and questions on the Equity crew's mind ahead of the S-1. How Hugging Face's latest acquisition confirms its push into humanoid robotics The latest wave of OpenAI models, updates to its o3 and o4-mini reasoning models, and why all eyes are on the bigger launch still to come: GPT-5. Equity will be back next week, so stay tuned! Equity is TechCrunch's flagship podcast, produced by Theresa Loconsolo, and posts every Wednesday and Friday.  Subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod. For the full episode transcript, for those who prefer reading over listening, check out our full archive of episodes here. Credits: Equity is produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. We'd also like to thank TechCrunch's audience development team. Thank you so much for listening, and we'll talk to you next time. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode of Revenue Insights, host Guy Rubin talks with Matt Hemingway, VP of Sales & Operations at Axcient and Olympic silver medalist, about applying disciplined coaching and culture-first leadership to build high-performing sales teams. Learn how the SPAC framework, strategic hiring, and internal promotion drive sustainable revenue growth.

On Episode 827 of WHAT THE TRUCK?!?, Dooner is talking about the shockwaves that have been reverberating throughout the trade community due to the trade war. The Maritime Professor Lauren Beagan drops in to talk about the massive collapse in container bookings that has happened over the past month. How soon will we feel the pain in volumes on the trucking side? Beagan also breaks down recent maritime policy regarding new port fees as well as the Panama and Suez canals. Port of Huntsville CEO Butch Roberts believes we're in for an inland port renaissance. We'll find out how the port works, whom it serves and why big investments in air and intermodal will be a boon for shippers. Plus, gambling bookkeeper busted; Kodiak goes SPAC; Indiana Jones and the Great Circle drops on PS5; and more. Indiana Jones and the Great Circle 00:55 Headlines: $4M gambling theft; Kodiak goes SPAC 03:31 The power of inland ports | Port of Huntsville 08:15 It's not a Bug, it's a feature 22:12 Navigating a trade war | Lauren Beagan 22:44 Port fees and maritime policy | Lauren Beagan 42:12 Catch new shows live at noon EDT Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays on FreightWaves LinkedIn, Facebook, X or YouTube, or on demand by looking up WHAT THE TRUCK?!? on your favorite podcast player and at 5 p.m. Eastern on SiriusXM's Road Dog Trucking Channel 146. Watch on YouTube Check out the WTT merch store Visit our sponsor Subscribe to the WTT newsletter Apple Podcasts Spotify More FreightWaves Podcasts Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On Episode 827 of WHAT THE TRUCK?!?, Dooner is talking about the shockwaves that have been reverberating throughout the trade community due to the trade war. The Maritime Professor Lauren Beagan drops in to talk about the massive collapse in container bookings that has happened over the past month. How soon will we feel the pain in volumes on the trucking side? Beagan also breaks down recent maritime policy regarding new port fees as well as the Panama and Suez canals. Port of Huntsville CEO Butch Roberts believes we're in for an inland port renaissance. We'll find out how the port works, whom it serves and why big investments in air and intermodal will be a boon for shippers. Plus, gambling bookkeeper busted; Kodiak goes SPAC; Indiana Jones and the Great Circle drops on PS5; and more. Indiana Jones and the Great Circle 00:55 Headlines: $4M gambling theft; Kodiak goes SPAC 03:31 The power of inland ports | Port of Huntsville 08:15 It's not a Bug, it's a feature 22:12 Navigating a trade war | Lauren Beagan 22:44 Port fees and maritime policy | Lauren Beagan 42:12 Catch new shows live at noon EDT Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays on FreightWaves LinkedIn, Facebook, X or YouTube, or on demand by looking up WHAT THE TRUCK?!? on your favorite podcast player and at 5 p.m. Eastern on SiriusXM's Road Dog Trucking Channel 146. Watch on YouTube Check out the WTT merch store Visit our sponsor Subscribe to the WTT newsletter Apple Podcasts Spotify More FreightWaves Podcasts Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today's show: In this episode, Jason, Alex, and Lon dive into Blue Origin's all-female celeb spaceflight (yes, Katy Perry sang on reentry), Hugging Face's unexpected move into robotics, and Jack Dorsey's wild take that we should “delete all IP law.” Plus, they break down Figure AI's eye-popping $39B valuation, the risks of SPVs, and what founders and investors can learn from the SPAC boom. As Jason puts it: “You just have to assume an 80% failure rate.”*Timestamps:(0:00) Jason kicks off the show!(1:34) Blue Origin all-female crew launch and space tourism(7:17) Emerging technologies and tech adoption trends(10:07) Northwest Registered Agent. Form your entire business identity in just 10 clicks and 10 minutes. Get more privacy, more options, and more done—visit https://www.northwestregisteredagent.com/twist today!(12:38) Hugging Face acquires Pollen Robotics; Open AI and robotics debate(19:42) Squarespace - Use offer code TWIST to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain at https://www.Squarespace.com/TWIST(20:42) Significance of Hugging Face in generative AI; Jack Dorsey's IP law stance(25:01) U.S. high-tech job market; revisiting IP law discussions(30:03) Lemon.io - Get 15% off your first 4 weeks of developer time at https://Lemon.io/twist(31:03) IP law and American innovation(32:22) Challenges in startup exits and secondary trading platforms(37:09) Figure AI's valuation controversy(46:37) Startup insights and investing perspectives(50:39) Jeff Bezos on risk assessment(57:03) Jason's personal journey and reflections(1:02:06) Developing a samurai mindset; societal systems abstraction*Subscribe to the TWiST500 newsletter: https://ticker.thisweekinstartups.comCheck out the TWIST500: https://www.twist500.comSubscribe to This Week in Startups on Apple: https://rb.gy/v19fcp*Follow Lon:X: https://x.com/lons*Follow Alex:X: https://x.com/alexLinkedIn: ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexwilhelmFollow Jason:X: https://twitter.com/JasonLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasoncalacanisThank you to our partners:(10:07) Northwest Registered Agent. Form your entire business identity in just 10 clicks and 10 minutes. Get more privacy, more options, and more done—visit https://www.northwestregisteredagent.com/twist today!(19:42) Squarespace - Use offer code TWIST to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain at https://www.Squarespace.com/TWIST(30:03) Lemon.io - Get 15% off your first 4 weeks of developer time at https://Lemon.io/twistGreat TWIST interviews: Will Guidara, Eoghan McCabe, Steve Huffman, Brian Chesky, Bob Moesta, Aaron Levie, Sophia Amoruso, Reid Hoffman, Frank Slootman, Billy McFarlandCheck out Jason's suite of newsletters: https://substack.com/@calacanisFollow TWiST:Twitter: https://twitter.com/TWiStartupsYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/thisweekinInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/thisweekinstartupsTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@thisweekinstartupsSubstack: https://twistartups.substack.com*Subscribe to the Founder University Podcast: https://www.youtube.com/@founderuniversity1916

New Era Helium CEO Will Gray joined Steve Darling from Proactive to provide a detailed operational update and outline the company's forward-looking development strategy. Gray highlighted ongoing progress across multiple business fronts, including the Pecos Slope Plant project, helium offtake planning, and the company's parallel expansion into AI-driven infrastructure through its joint venture, Texas Critical Data Centers, LLC (TCDC). At the Pecos Slope Field, New Era Helium is actively engaged with its midstream gatherer and processor following a recent transition in both the ownership and management of that third-party entity. Discussions remain constructive, with NEH focused on securing an outcome that is both operationally efficient and financially beneficial. However, Gray acknowledged that as a result of these negotiations, along with delays in securing project financing during the company's recent de-SPAC process, the construction timeline for the Pecos Slope Plant has been extended. To mitigate potential delays and maintain momentum toward monetization, NEH has initiated contingency planning for helium offtake agreements. These efforts are running in parallel with construction timelines and are designed to ensure flexibility in commercial arrangements. The company remains in active dialogue with current counterparties while exploring new agreements to unlock long-term value and ensure a robust path to revenue generation from its helium assets. NEH stands out as one of only two companies trading on a major U.S. exchange with both proved and probable helium reserves, positioning it as a rare and de-risked opportunity in the helium investment landscape. Despite current production from its properties, the company is not receiving payment under its existing marketing agreement, which has surpassed its primary term and now operates on a month-to-month basis. The company is evaluating its options to optimize the commercial structure moving forward. Beyond its helium and natural gas operations, New Era Helium is also making strategic progress on its data center initiative through its joint venture with Sharon AI, Inc. The JV entity, Texas Critical Data Centers (TCDC), has signed a Letter of Intent (LOI) to acquire 200 acres in Ector County, Texas, for the development of a 250MW net-zero AI and high-performance computing (HPC) data center. This facility will be powered in part by NEH's own natural gas reserves, aligning with its vision for an integrated energy and digital infrastructure platform. This expansion into AI-driven infrastructure reflects NEH's broader mission to diversify its revenue streams beyond traditional commodities and position itself at the intersection of clean energy and next-generation computing. By leveraging its natural resource base to support high-demand sectors such as AI, semiconductor manufacturing, and HPC, the company aims to create long-term value across multiple verticals. #proactiveinvestors #neweraheliuminc #nasdaq #nehc #oil #gas #perimianbasin #HeliumProduction #NaturalGas #DataCenters #AIInfrastructure #PecosSlope #VerticalIntegration #EnergyMarkets #PermianBasin #Semiconductors #PowerGeneration #ProactiveInvestors

What happens when a trader-turned-tech-CEO builds a decade-long startup that lands on the Nasdaq? In this episode, Bill Alessi, CEO of Alpha Modus pulls back the curtain on AI patents, capital market strategy, and the SPAC journey.

In this SPACInsider Podcast Replay, we go back to 2021, when we spoke with Chris Urmson, CEO and Chairman of autonomous truck technology firm Aurora (NASDAQ:AUR). At the time, Aurora was working to close its $10 billion business combination with Reinvent Technology Y. Chris laid out how the company planned to approach the commercialization of its self-driving heavy truck business model and what challenges still laid ahead for it and other developers of autonomous technology. Now, Aurora is preparing to debut its driverless trucks along the Dallas-to-Houston freight route later this month, with plans to extend on to El Paso and Phoenix, Arizona before year's end. Now that this debut is finally at hand, take a listen to what the road ahead for Aurora looked like four years ago and why it was kicking off that journey with a SPAC.  

Today's show: Circle gears up for its IPO and the stablecoin wars heat up, Palantir's meme stock status gets a reality check, and they riff on a possible Uber + DoorDash merger and whether AI should train on Substack content. They react to Sequoia partner Andrew Reed's inside take on fund dynamics, laugh at a brutal VC meme, and wrap with “Office Hours” featuring Caylee Harrington, founder of Hookhub — the Airbnb for RV parking — to talk vanlife, growth, and building in an unsexy market.*Timestamps:(0:00) Alex and Jason kicks off the show!(1:29) Palantir's stock and market dynamics(5:43) Meme stocks and reversion to the mean(6:57) X and XAI merger(10:01) Squarespace - TWiST listeners: use code TWIST to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain: https://www.Squarespace.com/TWIST(12:05) M&A trends in tech and AI content acquisitions(17:22) Valuation strategies for acquisitions(22:05) Oracle - TWiST listeners can try OCI and save up to 50% on your cloud bill at ⁠⁠⁠https://www.oracle.com/twist⁠(23:31) Circle's IPO and stablecoin regulations(30:46) Fidelity Private Shares - Visit ⁠https://www.fidelityprivateshares.com⁠! Mention our podcast and receive 20% off your first-year paid subscription.(32:26) Crypto community and anti-money laundering in stablecoins(37:43) IPO and SPAC updates in tech(41:20) Deep tech investment risks and lessons from SPACs(44:03) Hookhub's journey and RV market insights(49:27) Growth and challenges in RV market(52:01) Hookhub's social media and content strategy(58:48) Hookhub's investor pitch and growth strategy(1:04:11) Van life business model potential(1:06:16) Sequoia's internal culture and investment strategy(1:13:03) Sequoia vs. Andreessen Horowitz and VC indexing(1:15:32) Venture capital humor and closing remarks*Subscribe to the TWiST500 newsletter: https://ticker.thisweekinstartups.comCheck out the TWIST500: https://www.twist500.comSubscribe to This Week in Startups on Apple: https://rb.gy/v19fcp*Links from the show:Hookhub: https://www.hookhub.co/*Follow Caylee:X: https://x.com/Mariano_APOLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mariano-apodaca-45b07a16a/vFollow Alex:X: https://x.com/alexLinkedIn: ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexwilhelm*Follow Jason:X: https://twitter.com/JasonLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasoncalacanis*Thank you to our partners:(10:01) Squarespace - TWiST listeners: use code TWIST to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain: https://www.Squarespace.com/TWIST(22:05) Oracle - TWiST listeners can try OCI and save up to 50% on your cloud bill at ⁠https://www.oracle.com/twist⁠(30:46) Fidelity Private Shares - Visit ⁠⁠https://www.fidelityprivateshares.com⁠⁠! Mention our podcast and receive 20% off your first-year paid subscription.*Great TWIST interviews: Will Guidara, Eoghan McCabe, Steve Huffman, Brian Chesky, Bob Moesta, Aaron Levie, Sophia Amoruso, Reid Hoffman, Frank Slootman, Billy McFarland*Check out Jason's suite of newsletters: https://substack.com/@calacanis*Follow TWiST:Twitter: https://twitter.com/TWiStartupsYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/thisweekinInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/thisweekinstartupsTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@thisweekinstartupsSubstack: https://twistartups.substack.com*Subscribe to the Founder University Podcast: https://www.youtube.com/@founderuniversity1916

Managing director Guy Barudin of Chardan Capital Markets discusses how the investment bank has navigated the SPAC sector. Guest hosted by Bill Meagher, senior reporter.

Guest: Zac Bookman, CEO and Co-Founder of OpenGovThirteen years after co-founding the government transparency startup OpenGov, Zac Bookman is still finding ways to surprise people. In 2023, Cox Enterprises bought the company for $1.8 billion — but as far as Zac is concerned, “we're just getting started.”“ I left the vast majority of my net worth in the company,” he says. “So I'm a believer. I'm all in.”The mission of powering “more effective and accountable government” has been stable since OpenGov's earliest days, and that mission has informed everything from hiring to M&A to the decision to sell. “These people buy and don't sell,” Zac said of Cox. “They're all in on the mission. And they're all in on taking care of employees. So I see a triple win: A win for employees, win for the investors, win for the customers, maybe a quadruple win for me and the management.”Chapters:(01:46) - OpenGov's mission (04:34) - Shrinking the product-market fit (07:34) - Super misson driven (08:59) - Why OpenGov almost shut down (13:08) - Zac's early career (16:16) - Picking (and losing) a CTO (22:50) - Growing upside-down (25:29) - The SPAC backstabber (31:26) - Why Zac didn't get fired (33:24) - Selling in 2024 (37:04) - Growth by acquisition (42:31) - John Chambers and PMF (49:32) - Zac's cross-country bike ride (56:25) - Expectations vs. reality (58:57) - The coup attempt (01:01:59) - Tiring work (01:05:47) - Going to the White House (01:09:40) - DOGE & disrespect (01:12:54) - “We're just getting started” (01:14:18) - Who OpenGov is hiring (and where) (01:15:13) - What “grit” means to Zac Mentioned in this episode: Joe Lonsdale, Cox Enterprises, OpenAI, the Department of Government Efficiency, Workday, H.R. McMaster, Stanford University, Formation 8, 8VC, the National Academy of Sciences, the Stanford Review, Kamala Harris, Marc Andreessen, Balaji Srinivasan, Coinbase, Earn, Ben Horowitz, Facebook, Steve Laughlin, Cisco, Laurene Powell Jobs, Glynn Capital, Acme, Allen & Company, Harry You, Joe Tucci, EMC, Bill Green, Accenture, Tyler Technologies, HP, Josh Kushner, GTY Technology Holdings, John Keker, Palantir, CKAN, Oracle, Kevin McCarthy, The American Technology Council Summit, Jeff Bezos, Tim Cook, Satya Nadella, Pat Gelsinger, Donald Trump, Jared Kushner, Elon Musk, Bill Clinton, and Al Gore.Links:Connect with ZacLinkedInConnect with JoubinTwitterLinkedInEmail: grit@kleinerperkins.com Learn more about Kleiner PerkinsThis episode was edited by Eric Johnson from LightningPod.fm

Bitcoin is up half a percent at $85,502 Eth is up half a percent at $1,993 XRP, is up half a percent at $2.48 Execs from Trump Media launch SPAC to acquire us based crypto company Kraken acquiring NinjaTrader ByBit hackers laundering funds to BTC Gotbit's founder signs plea deal with US DOJ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Dora Zhang interviews Shiven Shah, CFO at Libra Solutions, on the "Weinberg in the World" podcast. Shiven discusses his extensive career in finance, including roles at Merrill Lynch, Citi, Peak6, ABN AMRO Clearing Group, and OppFi, where he helped take the company public. He emphasizes the importance of flexibility and teamwork, and highlights the supportive community and lasting relationships he formed at Northwestern University. Transcript:  Dora: Welcome to the Weinberg in the World podcast, where we bring stories of interdisciplinary's thinking in today's complex world. My name is Dora Zhang and I'm your student host of the special episode of the podcast. I'm currently a junior studying economics, psychology with an IMC certificate. And today, I'm very excited to be speaking with Mr. Shiven Shah, who is a CFO at Libra Solutions, a PE-backed specialty finance company. Mr. Shiven, thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me today. So to start off, do you mind introducing yourself? Shiven: Yeah, it's a pleasure to be here. Thank you Dora, for having me on the podcast. My name, as you mentioned, is Shiven Shah. I graduated in Northwestern, the class of '99. So I've just had my 25th year reunion recently, which was great to see a lot of old faces and friends and colleagues from many years ago. So I have had a really tight connection with the Northwestern community. I'm a member of the NULC, helped with admissions committee, and also with some mentoring projects as well. Background wise, I grew up in the Chicago area, right outside of Oak Park, Illinois, which is a western suburb, very similar to Evanston in a lot of ways, a diverse community. And my first choice was Northwestern and I ended up being fortunate enough to be accepted in, and studied economics and minored in statistics. And then I ended up going into a career in finance, starting right after undergrad in New York City at Merrill Lynch in investment banking. I did that for a few years, and then went to business school. I ended up in a financial management program during the financial crisis, and it was really interesting times 2007, 2008, where we had to bail Citi out with the too big to fail and the credit derivatives and the swaps. So it was a very interesting time to be there. So I ended up staying at Citi in a variety of finance roles for about eight years. And then ended up coming back to Chicago, and then worked at a trading company called Peak6, which was a diversified company. They had several investments in small private equity type investments, private placements, and also had bought a couple other companies and sold a couple of companies while I was there. So really, really great experience. And then I ended up going into another CFO role at ABN AMRO Clearing Group running the Americas business for trading clients. And then I really, really found my footing in 2017 when I joined a company called OppFi, which is a mission-driven company to help the hundreds of millions of Americans that live paycheck to paycheck and with 70% of America having savings of less than a thousand dollars. We tried to provide an alternative to payday loans and other high interest rate products, with a fully amortizing product that really gave people an opportunity to withstand an emergency situation. We ended up building the company up over a five year period from startup and then we ended up taking the company public via the SPAC process in 2021. I stayed with the company one year post public and then I joined another company, similar space, similar mission to help those in an emergency situation. In this case, Libra Solution is responsible for consumer litigation funding, so mostly personal injury. So when people get into a car accident, a motor vehicle accident, we help them out by providing an advance against the case settlement. So while they wait on a case which can last anywhere from an average of a year and a half to sometimes more than five years, we provide... And also have relationships with providers and attorneys to help them get the right care. So that's my background. Really excited to be here, as I said. I'm looking forward to the questions. Dora: Yeah, thank you so much for sharing your background. Because you've previously talked about your recent reunion with the Northwestern community, do you want to talk a little bit about the Northwestern alumni network? How would you describe the network? And are you in touch with any of the alumni? Shiven: Yeah, I think some of my best friends are from Northwestern, who I still keep in touch with, talk to on a daily basis really, and spend a lot of time. I think the greatest thing from my experience at Northwestern, were definitely the relationships that I formed there. I think the friendships are long lasting, lifelong and genuine. And the best part about the Northwestern alumni network, is that people really are out there to help each other. And I think whether it's a more recent alum or somebody that's more seasoned, or that's been out of school for a longer period of time, I think the ability to leverage the network and leverage the relationships and the friendships, I think is one of the best things ever. So yeah, not just the reunion, but again, on an ongoing basis, having that connectivity with the school and the university is very important to me. Dora: Is there any other resources you remember taking advantage of at school? Shiven: Yeah, so I think there's a lot of resources at the school, the career network, I think the student clubs are great as well, to network into different companies. The relationships that the co-op program that I wasn't a part of, but a lot of friends were, is another great opportunity. And I think, just the number of organizations, I was in the Greek system, so I had joined a fraternity there and a lot of the relationships I had from there continue to last for years post Northwestern. So I had a really good experience there. I was involved with cultural groups and affinity groups, the South Asian Student Association. And was involved with some of the dances and the performances and the festivals that we celebrated. So I think that that diversity is also super important with so many people from so many different backgrounds. That's what makes Northwestern really unique. Dora: Yeah, absolutely. And going back to your career, were you thinking about doing a career or jobs in finance when you first came to Northwestern? Or how was that process of choosing what career? Shiven: Yeah, no, I came in thinking like a lot of the Asian and Indian parents want their kids to be doctors. So I came in being told that I should be a doctor. And unfortunately, after about a year and a half and struggling through organic chemistry, I realized that it wasn't my calling to do medicine. And to the disappointment of making that phone call, I'll never forget to my parents, they were very disappointed that I decided not to go. And I got a very long lecture about why my career and my life is going the wrong direction. And they thought I was just goofing around the whole time during Northwestern, which is partially true, but not fully. I ended up with Northwestern really realizing that math was my calling in life, and I like the business side and how using mathematics and data to solve business problems, I thought it was what I wanted to do. And so over the course of a couple of years really by my junior year I thought I wanted to do something more in financial services and where I can do something that I'm more passionate about. So yeah, I feel like it was the right decision and I feel good about where we are. Dora: Yeah, thank you for sharing that. Is there any particular skills or habits do you think is important for your career? Shiven: Yeah, I think the most important characteristic one can have, and my advice is to be flexible in a company and be versatile. Not just do something that this is your immediate job, but offer perspectives, offer out of the box thinking. And I think that the other piece is be a team player. There should be no job that's too menial. Whatever you're told to do, view it as a service to your company and try to do the best, not for yourself, but for the broader and the greater organization. Be a culture champion, make it a positive experience, help other people out. I think it's super important. I think the other piece is as a leader, is care about your people, really care about the individual, care about their development and make it an environment where people want to work. They're not just there to collect a paycheck, but they're having a fun time there and really making an impact and really fulfilling the mission of what that company is. So I think it's go for what you're interested in rather than trying to check boxes. Dora: Yeah. And another question I have, is that during your academic or professional journey, is there anything that you regret or wish you could do differently? Shiven: Yeah, I think what I would have said, is I would have been more honest with myself in what I really wanted, what my passions were. And I think the other piece of it, is be who you are, even who you spend time with. And I would say, early on in my college career I was trying to like fit in as opposed to being myself, both with my family at home and trying to be a doctor. And also with the people I associated with, I was trying to, adhere to what I thought what people liked. And then as you get older you're like, "You know what? You are who you are, be yourself, be a good human being, but don't try to be somebody you're not and be true to yourself." Dora: Yeah. And also I feel like as a college student sometimes we'll meet some obstacles in school and also in recruiting and stuff. So is there any advice you can give the students to keep them motivated? Shiven: Yeah, I think my biggest advice is I think there's no substitute for hard work. And whether that's in recruiting, whether that's in your schoolwork, whether that's in as you look for a job or decide on a career path in general, I think you got to spend the time, right? So for example, if you're looking for a job, people aren't going to reach out to you, and there's so many qualified individuals, so how do you differentiate yourself? One, is you make an effort. You go to these career fairs but also start to figure out who's in your network? Who's at Northwestern? Have introductory coffees together and try to learn from them and seek help. And you may reach out to a hundred people and only one or two people respond, but it's one or two more than you would've had if you didn't make any effort. And if you look at like how people get to where they are, a lot of it is really based on the people you know and the people that have helped you out. As a society we help each other out, but you have to seek that help. And so don't be afraid to ask for help and not do it all on your own, but get guidance of those that have done it in the past. Dora: And I think you've already touched a little bit about this, but is there any specific tips for networking for students in college or after graduation? Shiven: Yeah, I think it's important to be part of the student organizations that are connected to the field of study that you want to do or the career that you want to pursue. And also, I think using job networks like LinkedIn and the Northwestern alumni network, there are thousands of alum all over the world, tens of thousands of alum. It's just a question of finding them, right? And so I think using those resources, going through databases and reaching out, and just asking like, "I'm a Northwestern student seeking advice," you will get responses. And it's not going to be a hundred percent as I said, but find and make a point each week to meet at least two new people. That I would say, would be a goal. Have conversations with two new people each week in your field of study. Dora: And just for students who are interested in financial services or finance, do you have any general advice for the students to do in school or in recruiting? Shiven: Yeah, for finance in general, I think a lot of the skills with a liberal arts background are transferable. You don't need to have been in an undergraduate in business school to be successful. I think it's the way of thinking. Take classes that involve critical thinking, that involve data and numbers and analytics. So I think statistics, science courses are very helpful, math courses, computer science. The other thing in finance is that there are two ways to go about it. You're going to go into finance right out of undergrad, or you work in a company, like let's say, you're interested in science and you go work at a biotech company. Or you're interested in art or whatever it may be, or you're an engineer, develop skills that are problem solving skills and analytical. Then you can go back, get your MBA and then do more of a finance specialty. So there's a couple of paths to go on that. Dora: And I know a lot of students, they didn't know what to do for their career when they were in college. So do you think it's important for them to decide what to do before graduation? Or do you think it's okay for them to just navigate and figure it out through their journey in Northwestern? Shiven: I think it is important to have some idea prior to graduating in the first couple of years. I think it's important to explore, keep your options open. But by junior year, like having a path of where you want to go I think is important and having a focus, because you want to hit the ground running out of college. And I think the more you wait to figure that out, the bigger issues that you'll have. And use the time by speaking to others, that have been in different fields and getting a feel for what people do. Go to different companies, go to company visits, go to career fairs and that's how you learn and talk to people. But I think it is important to figure it out before you graduate. Dora: Perfect. Thank you so much for speaking with us today. I think that is all the questions I have. It was really wonderful getting to know you. And thank you again for joining us today. Shiven: Yeah, absolutely. It's a pleasure to be on here and I'm happy to speak to other individuals that have questions on their career. And as I said, use the network and use the opportunity that you have at Northwestern in a positive way. Dora: And thank you for listening to this special episode of Weinberg in the World podcast. We hope you have a great weekend, and go Cats.  

Life can be A LOT like driving on an interstate highway. It's important to stay in your lane, only glance backwards if you're planning to make a change…and always watch out for David Beckham because he might swerve bend that corner woah! So, when it was officially announced in September 2021 that Prenetics (NASDAQ: PRE), a diagnostic and genetic testing company based in Hong Kong, was going public through a SPAC merger…I fully admit not even spending one iota of energy on the financial news headline. But I initially crossed paths with Prenetics last March when the company reached out to me regarding an upcoming strategic realignment that would focus on the U.S. consumer health market. And while I didn't sign an NDA…I'll keep the full extent of what I wrongfully assumed would be brief friendly surface-level introduction conversation confidential. Though, two major focuses of my strategic commentary did turn into public knowledge…David Beckham becoming a strategic investor of Prenetics (and co-founding a supplement brand called IM8 Health) and the acquisition of Europa Sports Partners. So, with more cash on the balance sheet (from selling a share of its Insighta joint venture to Tencent) and leadership recently confirming that going forward Prenetics would concentrate fully on the consumer health businesses it wholly owns and are scaling aggressively…my latest first principles thinking content will equally focus in-depth on the Europa Sports Partners and IM8 Health deal activity.

The space business landscape is changing. Companies like SpaceX and Blue Origin are moving at breakneck speed toward goals Americans have dreamed of since the 1960s. At the same time, a whole host of smaller startups are arriving on the scene, ready to tackle everything from asteroid mining to next-gen satellites to improved lunar missions.Today on Faster, Please — The Podcast, I'm talking with Matt Weinzierl about what research developments and market breakthroughs are allowing these companies to thrive.Weinzierl is the senior associate dean and chair of the MBA program at Harvard Business School. He is also a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. Weinzierl is the co-author of a new book with Brendan Rosseau, Space to Grow: Unlocking the Final Economic Frontier.In This Episode* Decentralizing space (1:54)* Blue Origin vs. SpaceX (4:50)* Lowering launch costs (9:24)* Expanding space entrepreneurship (14:42)* Space sector sustainability (20:06)* The role of Artemis (22:45)* Challenges to success (25:28)Below is a lightly edited transcript of our conversation. Decentralizing space (1:54). . . we had this amazing success in the '60s with the Apollo mission . . but it was obviously a very government-led, centralized program and that got us in the mode of thinking that's how you did space.You're telling a story about space transitioning from government-led to market-driven, but I wonder if you could just explain that point because it's not a story about privatization, it's a story about decentralization, correct?It really is, I think the most important thing for listeners to grab onto. In fact, I teach a course at Harvard Business School on this topic, and I've been teaching it now for a few years, and I say to my students, “What's the reason we're here? Why are we talking about space at HBS?” and it's precisely about what you just asked.So maybe the catchiest way to phrase this for folks, there was one of the early folks at SpaceX, Jim Cantrell, he was one of the earliest employees. He has this amazing quote from the early 2000s where he says, “The Great American Space Enterprise, which defeated Communism in defense of Capitalism, was and is operating on a Soviet economic model.” And he was basically speaking to the fact that we had this amazing success in the '60s with the Apollo mission and going to the moon and it truly was an amazing achievement, but it was obviously a very government-led, centralized program and that got us in the mode of thinking that's how you did space. And so for the next 50 years, basically we did space in that way run from the center, not really using market forces.What changed in various ways was that in the early 2000s we decided that model had kind of run its course and the weaknesses were too big and so it was time to bring market forces in. And that doesn't mean that we were getting rid of the government role in space. Just like you said, the government will always play a vital role in space for various reasons, national security among them, but it is decentralizing it in a way to bring the power of the market to bear.Maybe the low point — and that low point, that crisis, maybe created an opportunity — was the end of the Space Shuttle program. Was that an important inflection point?It's definitely one that I think most people in the sector look to as being . . . there's the expression “never waste a crisis,” and I think that that's essentially what happened. The Shuttle was an amazing engineering achievement, nobody really doubts that, and what NASA was trying to do with it and with their contractors was incredibly hard. So it's easy to kind of get too negative on that era, but it is also true that the Shuttle never really performed the way people hoped, it never flew as often, it was much more costly, and then in 2003 there was the second Shuttle tragedy.When that happened, I think everybody felt like, "This just isn't the future." So we need something else, and the Shuttle program was put on a cancellation path by the end of that decade. That really did force this reckoning with the fact that the American space sector, which had put men on the moon and brought them back safely in 1969, launching all sorts of dreams about space colonies and hotels, now, 40 years later, it was going to be unable to even put a person into orbit on its own rockets. We were going to be renting rockets from the Russians. That was really a moment of soul searching, I guess is one way you think about it in the sector.Blue Origin vs. SpaceX (4:50)I guess the big lesson . . . is that competition really does matter in space just like in any other business.I think naturally we would lead into talking about SpaceX, which we certainly will do, but the main competitor, Blue Origin, the Jeff Bezos company, which seems to be moving forward, but it's definitely seemed to have adopted a very different kind of strategy. It seems to me different than the SpaceX strategy, which really is kind of a “move fast, break things, build them back up and try to launch again” while Blue Origin is far more methodical. Am I right in that, is that eventually going to work?Blue Origin is a fascinating company. In fact, we actually opened the book — the book is a series, basically, of stories that we tell about companies, and people, and government programs, sprinkled in with some economics because we can't resist. We're trying to structure it for folks, but we start with the story of Blue Origin because it really is fascinating. It illustrates some really fundamental aspects of the sector these days.To your specific question, we can talk more about Blue in many of its aspects. The motto of Blue from its beginning has been this Latin phrase, gradatim ferociter or, “step-by-step, ferociously,” and Bezos in the earliest days, they even have a tortoise on their company shield, so to speak, to signal this tortoise and the hair metaphor or fable. From the earliest days the idea was, “Look, we're going to just methodically work our way up to these grand visions of building infrastructure for space,” eventually in the service of having, as they always said, millions of people living and working in space.Now there's various ways to interpret the intervening 20 years that we've had, or 25 now since they were founded. One interpretation says, well, that's a nice story, but in fact they made some decisions that caused them to move more slowly than even they would've wanted to. So they didn't continue working as closely with NASA as, say, for instance SpaceX did. They relied really almost exclusively on funding from Bezos himself issuing a lot of other contracts they could have gotten, and that sort of reduced the amount of external discipline and market competition that they were facing. And then they made some other steps along the way, and so now they're trying to reignite and move faster, and they did launch New Glenn, their orbital rocket, recently. So they're back in the game and they're coming back. That's one story.Another story is, well yes, they've made decisions that at the time didn't seem to move as fast as they wanted, but they made those decisions intentionally. This is a strategy we will see pay off pretty well in the long run. I think that the jury is very much still out, but I guess the big lesson for your listeners and for me and hopefully for others in the sector, is that competition really does matter in space just like in any other business. To the extent that Blue didn't move as fast because they didn't face as much competition, that's an interesting lesson for the private sector. And to the extent that now they're in the game nipping at the heels of SpaceX, that's good for everybody, even for SpaceX, I think, to have them in the game.Do you think they're nipping at the heels?Well, yeah, I was just thinking as I said that, that might have been a little optimistic. It really does depend how you look at it. SpaceX is remarkably dominant in the commercial space sector, there's no question there. They launch 100 times a year plus and they are . . . the latest statistic I have in 2023, they launched more than 80 percent of all the mass launched off the surface of Earth, so they run more than half the satellites that are operational in space. They are incredibly dominant such that concerns about monopoly are quite present in the sector these days. We can talk about that.I think “nipping at the heels” might be a little generous, although there are areas in which SpaceX still does have real competition. The national security launch sector, ULA (United Launch Alliance) is still the majority launcher of national security missions and Blue is looking to also get into the national security launch market. With Amazon's satellite constellation, Kuiper, starting to come into the launch cadence over the next couple of years, they will have demand for lots of launch outside of SpaceX and that will start to increase the frequency with which Blue Origin and ULA also launch. So I think there is reason to believe that people in the sector will have more options, even for the heavy-lift launch vehicles.Lowering launch costs (9:24)[SpaceX] brought the cost of getting a kilogram of mass into orbit down by 90 percent in less than, really 10 or 15 years, which had been a stagnant number for going on four or five decades.People in Silicon Valley like talking about disruption and disruptors. It's hard to think of a company that is more deserving, or A CEO more deserving than Elon Musk and SpaceX. Tell me how disruptive that company has been to how we think about space and the economic potential of space.We open our chapter in the book on SpaceX by saying we believe it'll go down as one of the most important companies in the history of humanity, and I really do believe that. I don't think you have to be a space enthusiast, necessarily, to believe it. The simplest way to summarize that is that they brought the cost of getting a kilogram of mass into orbit down by 90 percent in less than, really 10 or 15 years, which had been a stagnant number for going on four or five decades. It had hovered around — depending on the data point you look at — around $30,000 a kilogram to low earth orbit, and once SpaceX got Falcon 9 flying, it was down to $3,000. That's just an amazing reduction.What's also amazing about it is they didn't stop there. As soon as they had that, they decided that one of the ways to make the business model work was to reinvent satellite internet. So in a sector that had just over a decade ago only 1000 operational satellites up in space, now we have 10,000, 6,000 plus of which are SpaceX's Starlink, just an incredibly fast-growing transformational technology in orbit.And then they went on to disrupt their own disruption by creating a rocket called Starship, which is just absolutely massive in a way that's hard to even imagine, and that, if it fulfills the promise that I think everyone hopes it will, will bring launch costs down, if you can believe it, by another 90 percent, so a total of 99 percent down to, say, $300 a kilogram. Now you may not have to pass those cost savings on to the customers because they don't have a lot of competition, but it's just amazingWhat's possible with those launch costs in that vicinity? Sometimes, when I try to describe it, I'm like, well, imagine all your 1960s space dreams and what was the missing ingredient? The missing ingredient was the economics and those launch costs. Now plug in those launch costs and lots of crazy things that seem science-fictional may become science-factual. Maybe give me just a sense of what's possible.Well first tell me, Jim, which of the '60s space dreams are you most excited about?It's hard for me, it's like which of my seven kids do I love more? I love the idea of people living in space, of there being industry in space. I like the idea of there being space-based solar power, lunar mining, asteroid mining, the whole kit and caboodle.You've gone through the list. I think we're all excited about those things. And just in case it's not obvious to your listeners, the reason I think you asked that question is that, of course, the launch cost is the gateway to doing anything in space. That's why everyone in the industry makes such a big deal out of it. Once you have that, it seems like the possibilities for business cases really do expand.Now, of course, we have to be careful. It's easy to get overhyped. It's still very expensive to do all the things you just mentioned in space, even if you can get there cheaply. Once you put humans in the mix, humans are very hard to keep alive in space. Space is a very dangerous place for lots of reasons. Even when there aren't humans in space, operating in space, even autonomously, is obviously quite hard, whether it's asteroid mining or other things. It's not as though, all of a sudden, all of our biggest dreams are immediately going to be realized. I do think that part of what's so exciting, part of the reason we wrote the book, is that there is a new renaissance of enthusiasm of startups building a bit on the SpaceX model of having a big dream, being really cost-conscious as you build it, moving fast and experimenting and iterating, who are going after some of these dreams you mentioned..So whether it's an asteroid mining company — actually, in my course later this week, we're having Matt Gialich, who's the CEO of AstroForge, and they're trying to reboot the asteroid mining industry. He's coming in to talk to our students. Or whether it's lunar mining, we have Rob Meyerson who ran Blue Origin for more than a decade, now he's started up a company that's going to mine Helium 3 on the moon; or whether you're talking about commercial space stations, which could eventually house tourists, manufacturing, R&D, a whole new push to bring the cost savings from the launch sector into the destinations sector, which we really haven't had.We've had the International Space Station for 20 plus years, but it wasn't really designed for commercial activity from the start and costs are pretty high. So there is this amazing flowering, and we'll see. I guess I would say that, in the short run, if you're trying to build a business in space, it's still mostly about satellites. It's still mostly about data to and from space. But as we look out further, we all hope that those bigger dreams are becoming more of a reality.Expanding space entrepreneurship (14:42)The laws of supply and demand do not depend on gravity.To me, it is such an exciting story and the story of these companies, they're just great stories to me. They're still, I think, pretty unknown. SpaceX, if you read the books that have been published, very harrowing, the whole thing could have collapsed quite easily. Still today, when the media covers — I think they're finally getting better —that anytime there'd be a SpaceX rocket blow up, they're like, “Oh, that's it! Musk doesn't know what he's doing!” But actually, that's the business, is to iterate, launch again, if it blows up, figure out what went wrong, use the data, fix it, try again. It's taken a long time.To the extent people or the media think about it, maybe 90 percent of the thought is about SpaceX, a little bit about Blue Origin, but, as you mentioned, there is this, no pun intended, constellation of other companies which have grown up, which have somewhat been enabled by the launch costs. Which one? Give me one of those that you think people should know about.There's so many actually, very much to your point. We wrote the book partly to give folks inside the industry a view they might not have had, which is, I'm an economist. We thought there was room to just show people how an economist thinks through this amazing change that's happening.Economics is not earthbound! It extends above the surface of the planet!The laws of supply and demand do not depend on gravity. We've learned that. But we also wrote the book for a couple other groups of people. One, people who are kind of on the margins of space, so their business isn't necessarily involved in space, but once they know all the activity that's happening, including the companies you're hinting at there, they might think, “Wait a minute, maybe my business, or I personally, could actually use some of the new capabilities in space to drive my mission forward to have an impact through my organization or myself.” And then of course the broader population of people who are just excited and want to learn more about what's going on and read some great stories.But I'll give you two companies, maybe three because I can't help myself. One is Firefly, which just landed successfully on the moon . . . 24 hours ago maybe? What a great story. It's now the second lander that's successfully landed, this one fully successfully after Intuitive Machines was a little bit tipped over, but that's a great example of how this model that includes more of a role for the commercial sector succeeds not all the time — the first lunar lander in the program that was supporting these didn't quite succeed — but try, try again. That's the beauty of markets, they find a way often and you can't exactly predict how they're going to work out. But that was a huge success story and so I'm very excited about what that means for our activity on the moon.Another really fascinating company is called K2. A lot of your listeners who follow space will have heard of it. It's two brothers who basically realized that, with the drop in launch costs being promised by Starship, the premium on building lightweight small satellites is kind of going away. We can go back to building big satellites again and maybe we don't need to always make the sacrifices that engineers have had to make to bring the mass down. So they're building much bigger satellites and that can potentially really increase the capabilities even still at low cost. So that's really exciting.Finally, I'll just mention Varda, which is a really fun and exciting startup that is doing manufacturing in automated capsules right now of pharmaceutical ingredients. What I love about them, very much to your point about these startups that are just flowering because of lower launch costs, they're not positioning themselves really as a space company. They're positioning themselves as a manufacturing company that happens to use microgravity to do it cheaper. So you don't have to be a space enthusiast to want your supply chain to be cheaper and they're part of that.Do you feel like we have a better idea of why there should be commercial space stations, or again, is that still in the entrepreneurial process of figuring it out? Once they're up there, business cases will emerge?I was just having a conversation about that this morning, actually, with some folks in the sector because there is a wide range of views about that. It is, as you were sort of implying, a bit of a chicken-and-the-egg problem, it's hard to know until you have a space station what you might do with it, what business cases might result. On the other hand, it's hard to invest in a space station if you don't know what the business case is for doing it. So it is a bit tricky.I tend to actually be slightly on the optimistic end of the spectrum, perhaps just because, as an economist, I think you are trained to know that the market can't be predicted and that at some level that is the beauty of the market. If we drive down costs, there's a ton of smart entrepreneurs out there who I think will be looking very hard to find value that they can create for people, and I'm still optimistic we'll be surprised.If I had to make the other side of the case, I would say that we've been dreaming about using microgravity for many decades, the ISS has been trying, and there hasn't been a killer app quite found yet. So it is very true that there are reasons to be skeptical despite my optimism.Space sector sustainability (20:06)Space does face a sort of structural problem with investing. The venture capital industry is not really built for the time horizons and the level of fundamental uncertainty that we're talking about with space.It's also a sector that's gone through a lot of booms and busts. That certainly has been the case with the idea of asteroid mining among other things. What do you see as the sustainability? I sort of remember Musk talking about there was this kind of “open window to space,” and I don't know what he thought opened that window, maybe it was low interest rates? What is the sustainability of the financial case for this entire sector going forward?It is true that the low interest rate environment of the early 2020s was really supportive to space in a way that. Again, opinions vary on whether it was so hot that it ended up actually hurting the sector by creating too much hype, and then some people lost their shirts, and so there was some bad taste in the mouth there. On the other hand, it got a lot of cash to a lot of companies that are trying to make really hard things happen. Space does face a sort of structural problem with investing. The venture capital industry is not really built for the time horizons and the level of fundamental uncertainty that we're talking about with space. We don't really know what the market is yet. We don't really know how long it's going to take to develop. So that's I think why you see some of these more exotic financing models in space, whether it's the billionaires or the so-called SPAC boom of the early 2020s, which was an alternative way for some space companies to go public and raise a big pile of cash. So I think people are trying to solve for how to get over what might be an uncomfortably long time before the kind of sustainable model that you're talking about is realized.Now, skeptics will say, “Well, maybe that's just because there is no sustainable model. We're hoping and hoping, but it's going to take 500 years.” I'm a little more optimistic than that for reasons we've talked about, but I think one part we haven't really mentioned, or at least not gone into that yet, which is reassuring to investors that I talked to and increasingly maybe an important piece of the puzzle, is the demand from the public sector, which remains quite robust, especially from the national security side. A lot of startups these days, even when capital markets are a bit tighter, they can rely on some relatively stable financing from the national security side, and I think that will always be there in space. There will always be a demand for robust, innovative technologies and capabilities in space that will help sustain the sector even through tough times.The role of Artemis (22:45)Artemis is a really good example of the US space enterprise, broadly speaking, trying to find its way into this new era, given all the political and other constraints that are, of course, going to impinge on a giant government program. I can imagine a scenario where most of this book is about NASA, and Artemis, and what comes after Artemis, and you devote one chapter to the weird kind of private-sector startups, but actually it's just the opposite. The story here is about what's going on with the private sector working with NASA and Artemis seems like this weird kind of throwback to old Apollo-style way of doing things. Is Artemis an important technology for the future of space or is it really the last gasp of an old model?It's a very timely question because obviously with all the change going on in Washington and especially with Elon's role —Certainly you always hear rumors that they'll cancel it. I don't know if that's going to happen, but I certainly see speculations pop-up in the Wall Street Journal or the Financial Times from time to time.Exactly, and you probably see debates in Congress where you see some Congress-people resistant to canceling some contracts and debates about the space launch system, the SLS rocket, which I think nobody denies is sort of an older model of how we're going to get to space. On the other hand, it's an incredibly powerful rocket that can actually get us to the moon right now.There's a lot of debate going on right now. The way I think about it is that Artemis is a really good example of the US space enterprise, broadly speaking, trying to find its way into this new era, given all the political and other constraints that are, of course, going to impinge on a giant government program. It's a mix of the old and the new. It's got some pieces like SLS or Gateway, which is a sort of station orbiting the moon to provide a platform for various activities that feel very much like the model from the 1980s: Shuttle and International Space Station.Then it's got pieces that feel very much like the more modern commercial space era with the commercial lunar payload services clips contracts that we were briefly talking about before, and with some of the other pieces that are — whether it's the lander that's also using commercial contracts, whether it's those pieces that are trying to bring in the new. How will it all shake out? My guess is that we are moving, I think inexorably, towards the model that really does tap into the best of the private sector, as well as of the public, and so I think we'll move gradually towards a more commercial approach, even to achieving the sort of public goods missions on the moon — but it'll take a little bit of time because people are naturally risk averse.Challenges to success (25:28)We're going to have some setbacks, some things aren't going to go well with this new model. There's going to be, I'm sure, some calls for pulling back on the commercial side of things, and I think that would be a real lost opportunity. . .How do we not screw this up? How do we not end up undermining this momentum? If you want to tell me what we can do, that's great, but I'm also worried about us making a mistake?There are threats to our ability to do this successfully. I'll just name two which are top of mind. One is space debris. That comes up in virtually every conversation I have. Especially with the increasing number of satellites, increasing number of actors in space, you do have to worry that we might lose control of that environment. Again, I am on the relatively more optimistic end of the spectrum for reasons we explain in the book, and I think the bottom line there is: The stakes are pretty high for everybody who's operating up there to not screw that part up, so I hope we'll get past it, but some people are quite worried.The second, honestly, is national security. Space has always been a beacon, we hope, of transcending our geopolitical rivalries, not just extending them up there. We're in a difficult time, so I think there is some risk that space will not remain as peaceful as it has — and that could very much short-circuit the kind of growth that we're talking about. Sadly, that would be very ironic because the economic opportunities that we have up there to create benefit for everybody on Earth and are part of what hopefully would bring people together across borders up in space. It's one of those places where we can cooperate for the common good.How could we screw this up? I think it's not always going to be smooth sailing. We're going to have some setbacks, some things aren't going to go well with this new model. There's going to be, I'm sure, some calls for pulling back on the commercial side of things, and I think that would be a real lost opportunity. 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Good morning from Pharma and Biotech daily: the podcast that gives you only what's important to hear in Pharma e Biotech world.Lilly has entered a $1.6 billion deal in the molecular glue space, following the steps of other big pharma players like Novo Nordisk, Pfizer, and Novartis. On the other hand, the FDA, NIH, and CDC are experiencing chaos with canceled meetings and postponed discussions since Donald Trump's return as U.S. president, without a clear reason. In other news, Cassava's stock is on the rise after licensing seizure rights for simufilam, while BridgeBio Oncology is going public through a SPAC deal. Meanwhile, Vertex has decided to sever a partnership for liver gene therapies. Trilink is offering mRNA designs for reliable performance, and Eisai is planning to cut 7% of its US workforce.The role of mRNA in bridging the innovation gap in rare diseases is being discussed, highlighting the importance of industry and AI in fighting misinformation and empowering patients.Thank you for tuning in to Pharma and Biotech daily.

In today's episode, Shawn O'Malley (@Shawn_OMalley_) breaks down Blue Owl Capital (ticker: OWL), an emerging giant in the world of alternative asset management that specializes in private credit. Blue Owl has quickly grown its assets under management to over $230 billion and is one of the few SPACs from 2020 to work out, yet Shawn explores whether the company is a good investment at current prices. In today's episode, you'll learn how Blue Owl was born out of several mergers, how the private credit legend Doug Ostrover has built an extremely high-quality asset-management business with 91% permanent capital, why private asset classes have become so popular in recent years and whether that growth is sustainable, plus so much more! Prefer to watch? Click here to watch this episode on YouTube. IN THIS EPISODE, YOU'LL LEARN 00:00 - Intro 05:11 - How Blue Owl was born out of a merger with Dyal Capital and a SPAC. 05:11 - What the business model for an alternative asset manager looks like. 11:49 - Why alternative investing has ballooned in recent years and whether that growth is sustainable. 29:49 - Why Blue Owl's permanent capital base is so attractive. 36:23 - How Blue Owl has continued to grow its assets under management through acquisitions. 59:04 - How to untangle Blue Owl's convoluted corporate structure. 01:03:42 - Why financial services businesses are especially opaque and hard-to-value. 01:08:17 - Whether Shawn adds Blue Owl to The Intrinsic Value Portfolio. And much, much more! *Disclaimer: Slight timestamp discrepancies may occur due to podcast platform differences. BOOKS AND RESOURCES Join the exclusive TIP Mastermind Community to engage in meaningful stock investing discussions with Kyle and the other community members. Get smarter about valuing businesses in just a few minutes each week through our newsletter, The Intrinsic Value Newsletter. The Financial Times' article on Michael Rees of Dyal Capital. Capital Allocators podcast with Douglas Ostrover. Chris Panagiotu was my financial-advisory scuttlebutt contact for Blue Owl — checkout his podcast on financial planning. Ohio State study on private credit returns. See here on how to attend the 2025 Berkshire Hathaway shareholder's meeting and meet-ups with The Investor's Podcast Network Check out the books mentioned in the podcast here. Enjoy ad-free episodes when you subscribe to our Premium Feed. NEW TO THE SHOW? Follow our official social media accounts: X (Twitter) | LinkedIn | Instagram | Facebook | TikTok. Browse through all our episodes (complete with transcripts) here. Try Shawn's favorite tool for picking stock winners and managing our portfolios: TIP Finance. Enjoy exclusive perks from our favorite Apps and Services. Learn how to better start, manage, and grow your business with the best business podcasts. SPONSORS Support our free podcast by supporting our sponsors: Netsuite Shopify TurboTax Public Airbnb Connect with Shawn: Twitter | LinkedIn | Email HELP US OUT! Help us reach new listeners by leaving us a rating and review on Spotify! It takes less than 30 seconds and really helps our show grow, which allows us to bring on even better guests for you all! Thank you – we really appreciate it!  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm

Dan Preston is the co-founder and CEO of Stand, a brand-new startup property insurer providing homeowners insurance for climate-exposed properties. They're launching with a go-to-market focus on higher-end properties in California—homes that are otherwise unable to obtain affordable rates or any coverage at all due to wildfire risk. Stand claims that their differentiation, as Dan will explain in depth, comes from how they assess fire risk at the individual property level and help homeowners take proactive steps to mitigate those risks as part of the underwriting process.Dan is a seasoned entrepreneur with a win under his belt in InsurTech. He was previously the CEO of Metromile, which went public on the NASDAQ in 2020 via a SPAC merger and was later acquired by NextGen insurance company Lemonade in 2022.Stand recently raised a $30 million Series A, co-led by Inspired Capital and Lowercarbon, and came out of stealth at the end of 2024 to begin underwriting properties.Insurance risk is being priced and managed in ways that no longer match today's realities, and we loved hearing from Dan about how Stand is tackling the challenge.In this episode, we cover: [3:49] Dan's background in computer science and machine learning[7:00] The catalyst for starting Stand[9:22] How insurance companies typically evaluate risk[11:05] Challenges in measuring wildfire risk[17:32] Managing fire-prone communities and the importance of collective resilience[20:53] The role of private firefighters in insurance[22:08] Stand's mission and focus on climate-exposed properties[26:53] Progress since launch and early traction[27:39] Stand's product, technology, and risk modeling approach[33:18] Why legacy insurers have struggled to adapt to wildfire risk[38:35] What "perils" mean in insurance and why they matter[41:47] Stand's $30M Series A funding and future plansEpisode recorded on Feb 11, 2025 (Published on Feb 20, 2025) Enjoyed this episode? Please leave us a review! Share feedback or suggest future topics and guests at info@mcj.vc.Connect with MCJ:Cody Simms on LinkedInVisit mcj.vcSubscribe to the MCJ Newsletter*Editing and post-production work for this episode was provided by The Podcast Consultant

he latest Fed Meeting Minutes are out with a bit of insight; Trump's economic policies appear to be deflationary, as consumer strength is weakening; WalMart and Costco are tempering their forward guidance in anticipation. Palantir CEO is selling LOTS of shares as the Defense Dept. is being pushed by DOGE to cut spending. Market pullbacks may offer investors' opportunity; markets continue to do well, but there's a dichotomy between weighted indexes and those with less concentration of Mag-7 stocks. Money flows are still positive, with a surge into the survivors of the SPAC craze phase: More speculative mood. And then there's the "Alien ETF..." Can the Fed stop QT while debt ceiling is under consideration; the the Fed isn't saying about driving liquidity by pausing QT. Cane's vs KFC (we're now identifying generational preferences for fried chicken??) Is the Fed handcuffing itself with the stickiness of inflation vs rising yields? The Fed is setting its own trap with no two-way street on interest rates. Why the Fed needs to keep its mouth shut! The US dollar is the only lawful money in the United States. While some think Bitcoin can supplant the dollar, they fail to acknowledge that it has significant flaws, which we believe are critical to understanding why Bitcoin should not be lawful money. Lance and Michael discuss Bitcoin vs US Dollar, Cryptocurrency and Fiat Currency, and the concept of Bitcoin as Legal Tender, plus the future of Bitcoin and USD, and Digital Currency vs Traditional Money. Why Bitcoin will not replace the Dollar; the supply of money is important; the issue of value volatility: Bitcoin pricing is not dependable. To have a dynamic economy, a dynamic currency is required; Dollars still make the world go round. Currency must correlate with markets. SEG-1: Deflationary Trump Policies & Weakening Consumers SEG-2: Money Surges into SPAC Veterans SEG-3a: Cane's vs KFC SEG-3b: Is the Fed Handcuffing Itself? SEG-4: Why Bitcoin Will Not Replace the Dollar Hosted by RIA Advisors Chief Investment Strategist Lance Roberts, CIO, w Portfolio Manager Michael Lebowitz, CFA Produced by Brent Clanton, Executive Producer ------- REGISTER FOR OUR NEXT CANDID COFFEE (3/29/25) HERE: https://streamyard.com/watch/Gy68mipYram2 ------- Watch today's full show video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M-v7Z4cEX1E&list=PLVT8LcWPeAugpcGzM8hHyEP11lE87RYPe&index=1&t=3s ------- Articles mentioned in this report: "Why Bitcoin Will Not Replace The Dollar" https://realinvestmentadvice.com/resources/blog/why-bitcoin-will-not-replace-the-dollar/ "Retail Exuberance Sets Market Up For A Correction" https://realinvestmentadvice.com/resources/blog/retail-exuberance-sets-market-up-for-a-correction/ ------- The latest installment of our new feature, Before the Bell, "Weighted Indexes Drive Markets Once Again," is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_9YgTKhf0IU&list=PLwNgo56zE4RAbkqxgdj-8GOvjZTp9_Zlz&index=1 ------- Our previous show is here: "What You Should Do with a Severance Package," https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9l4vQ5lspQU&list=PLVT8LcWPeAugpcGzM8hHyEP11lE87RYPe&index=1&t=3s ------- Get more info & commentary: https://realinvestmentadvice.com/newsletter/ -------- SUBSCRIBE to The Real Investment Show here: http://www.youtube.com/c/TheRealInvestmentShow -------- Visit our Site: https://www.realinvestmentadvice.com Contact Us: 1-855-RIA-PLAN -------- Subscribe to SimpleVisor: https://www.simplevisor.com/register-new -------- Connect with us on social: https://twitter.com/RealInvAdvice https://twitter.com/LanceRoberts https://www.facebook.com/RealInvestmentAdvice/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/realinvestmentadvice/ #WeightedIndexes #Mag_7 #NASDAQ #Russell2000 #SmallCap #LargeCap #EmergingMarkets #InternationalStocks #AllTimeHighs #BitcoinVsDollar #CryptoDebate #BitcoinFuture #DigitalCurrency #FiatVsCrypto #MarketMomentum #RelativeStrenth #PriceCompression #MACDBuySignal #InvestingTrends #InvestingAdvice #Money #Investing

he latest Fed Meeting Minutes are out with a bit of insight; Trump's economic policies appear to be deflationary, as consumer strength is weakening; WalMart and Costco are tempering their forward guidance in anticipation. Palantir CEO is selling LOTS of shares as the Defense Dept. is being pushed by DOGE to cut spending. Market pullbacks may offer investors' opportunity; markets continue to do well, but there's a dichotomy between weighted indexes and those with less concentration of Mag-7 stocks. Money flows are still positive, with a surge into the survivors of the SPAC craze phase: More speculative mood. And then there's the "Alien ETF..."  Can the Fed stop QT while debt ceiling is under consideration; the the Fed isn't saying about driving liquidity by pausing QT. Cane's vs KFC (we're now identifying generational preferences for fried chicken??) Is the Fed handcuffing itself with the stickiness of inflation vs rising yields? The Fed is setting its own trap with no two-way street on interest rates. Why the Fed needs to keep its mouth shut! The US dollar is the only lawful money in the United States. While some think Bitcoin can supplant the dollar, they fail to acknowledge that it has significant flaws, which we believe are critical to understanding why Bitcoin should not be lawful money. Lance and Michael discuss Bitcoin vs US Dollar, Cryptocurrency and Fiat Currency, and the concept of Bitcoin as Legal Tender, plus the future of Bitcoin and USD, and Digital Currency vs Traditional Money. Why Bitcoin will not replace the Dollar; the supply of money is important; the issue of value volatility: Bitcoin pricing is not dependable. To have a dynamic economy, a dynamic currency is required; Dollars still make the world go round. Currency must correlate with markets. SEG-1: Deflationary Trump Policies & Weakening Consumers SEG-2: Money Surges into SPAC Veterans SEG-3a: Cane's vs KFC SEG-3b: Is the Fed Handcuffing Itself? SEG-4: Why Bitcoin Will Not Replace the Dollar Hosted by RIA Advisors Chief Investment Strategist Lance Roberts, CIO, w Portfolio Manager Michael Lebowitz, CFA Produced by Brent Clanton, Executive Producer ------- REGISTER FOR OUR NEXT CANDID COFFEE (3/29/25) HERE: https://streamyard.com/watch/Gy68mipYram2 ------- Watch today's full show video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M-v7Z4cEX1E&list=PLVT8LcWPeAugpcGzM8hHyEP11lE87RYPe&index=1&t=3s ------- Articles mentioned in this report: "Why Bitcoin Will Not Replace The Dollar" https://realinvestmentadvice.com/resources/blog/why-bitcoin-will-not-replace-the-dollar/ "Retail Exuberance Sets Market Up For A Correction" https://realinvestmentadvice.com/resources/blog/retail-exuberance-sets-market-up-for-a-correction/ ------- The latest installment of our new feature, Before the Bell, "Weighted Indexes Drive Markets Once Again," is here:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_9YgTKhf0IU&list=PLwNgo56zE4RAbkqxgdj-8GOvjZTp9_Zlz&index=1 ------- Our previous show is here: "What You Should Do with a Severance Package," https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9l4vQ5lspQU&list=PLVT8LcWPeAugpcGzM8hHyEP11lE87RYPe&index=1&t=3s ------- Get more info & commentary:  https://realinvestmentadvice.com/newsletter/ -------- SUBSCRIBE to The Real Investment Show here: http://www.youtube.com/c/TheRealInvestmentShow -------- Visit our Site: https://www.realinvestmentadvice.com Contact Us: 1-855-RIA-PLAN -------- Subscribe to SimpleVisor: https://www.simplevisor.com/register-new -------- Connect with us on social: https://twitter.com/RealInvAdvice https://twitter.com/LanceRoberts https://www.facebook.com/RealInvestmentAdvice/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/realinvestmentadvice/ #WeightedIndexes #Mag_7 #NASDAQ #Russell2000 #SmallCap #LargeCap #EmergingMarkets #InternationalStocks #AllTimeHighs #BitcoinVsDollar #CryptoDebate #BitcoinFuture #DigitalCurrency #FiatVsCrypto #MarketMomentum #RelativeStrenth #PriceCompression #MACDBuySignal #InvestingTrends  #InvestingAdvice #Money #Investing

This Day in Legal History: Executive Order 9066On February 19, 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, authorizing the forced relocation and internment of Japanese Americans during World War II. Issued in the wake of Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor, the order empowered the military to designate "exclusion zones" from which individuals could be removed. Although the order did not explicitly mention Japanese Americans, it led to the incarceration of over 120,000 people of Japanese descent, two-thirds of whom were U.S. citizens. Families were uprooted from their homes and businesses, sent to remote camps under harsh conditions, and held without due process. The Supreme Court upheld the internment in Korematsu v. United States (1944), ruling that national security concerns justified the action. Decades later, the decision was widely condemned, and in 1988, President Ronald Reagan signed the Civil Liberties Act, formally apologizing and granting reparations to surviving internees. The internment remains a stark example of how fear and prejudice can lead to grave violations of constitutional rights.The Department of Government Efficiency (DGE), spearheaded by Elon Musk, claims to have saved $55 billion in federal spending, but publicly available data only supports about $8.6 billion in verified savings. A major accounting error inflated a single contract cancellation from $8 million to $8 billion, significantly distorting the numbers. Despite promising "maximum transparency," DGE operates outside traditional oversight, raising concerns about its accountability. Musk, whose companies receive billions in federal contracts, is supposedly self-policing conflicts of interest. Meanwhile, a federal judge has allowed DGE to continue slashing jobs and contracts, handing Trump a legal win. The administration touts these efforts as transformative, with Trump and Musk claiming they'll eventually cut $1 trillion in waste. However, with major entitlement programs off-limits and nearly half of discretionary spending tied to defense, the math is fuzzy at best. Who knew the efficiency agency run by the guy who wildly guessed about Twitter bots might struggle with basic accounting?DOGE Says It's Saved $55 Billion, Itemized Data Show Far LessBradley Weinsheimer, the Justice Department's top ethics official, resigned after being reassigned by Trump administration officials to a new working group on sanctuary cities. A 34-year DOJ veteran, Weinsheimer opted for deferred resignation rather than accept the move, joining a wave of career officials who have left amid concerns over the politicization of the department. His ethics duties were transferred to two political appointees—one of whom helped defend Trump in his New York hush-money case, and the other a 2021 law school graduate. Critics, including former U.S. Attorney Joyce Vance, argue this shift undermines the DOJ's independence. The Trump administration has aggressively reshaped the department, firing or reassigning officials and dropping criminal cases against Trump under the rationale that sitting presidents shouldn't be prosecuted. The Justice Department, now led by Attorney General Pam Bondi—another former Trump defense lawyer—has also launched a “weaponization working group” to scrutinize past investigations into Trump. The White House, for its part, insists the DOJ was previously weaponized against Trump and is now being restored.Senior Justice Department ethics official resigns over sidelining by Trump appointees, source says | ReutersA federal judge is set to hear arguments on whether to dismiss corruption charges against New York Mayor Eric Adams, following a controversial request from Trump administration prosecutors. The Justice Department, under orders from Acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove—a former Trump defense lawyer—asked to drop the case, claiming Adams is needed to help enforce the president's immigration policies. The move has sparked outrage, with several prosecutors, including the lead attorney, resigning in protest. Critics argue the dismissal is politically motivated, especially after reports that Adams' team suggested the mayor would support Trump's policies if the charges disappeared. The DOJ insists the decision isn't about the case's merits, but Adams' political future. The charges, filed under Biden's administration, accused Adams of accepting bribes from Turkish nationals, which he denies. The dismissal would be *without prejudice*, meaning the case could be reopened after the November mayoral election—something critics see as a pressure tactic. With Adams' political future in question and New York Democrats calling for his resignation, the legal and political stakes are high.Judge to weigh Trump administration bid to drop NY mayor Eric Adams' case | ReutersElectric-truck maker Nikola has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, citing cash shortages and difficulties securing funding. The company, which once promised to revolutionize the EV industry, struggled with leadership instability, weak sales, and a plummeting stock price. Like other pandemic-era EV startups such as Fisker and Lordstown Motors, Nikola found itself unable to sustain its capital-intensive operations as high interest rates and low demand dried up investor support. The company plans to sell off most or all of its assets while maintaining limited truck and hydrogen-fueling operations through March. Nikola, which went public in 2020 via a SPAC deal, has cycled through four CEOs in four years, with industry veteran Stephen Girsky currently at the helm. Despite ramping up production of hydrogen-powered trucks in 2024, the company bled money, losing hundreds of thousands of dollars per vehicle. Fleet operators' reluctance to invest in EV infrastructure further compounded its struggles. The bankruptcy marks the end of a turbulent journey for a firm that once positioned itself as Tesla's trucking rival.Struggling e-truck maker Nikola files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection | Reuters This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.minimumcomp.com/subscribe

In this special follow-up edition of the SPACInsider Podcast, we check back in with Dimitre Genov, Ed Kovary, and Nick Skibo, who last joined us at the end of Q3 2024, to assess the state of the SPAC market in 2025 and the key dynamics shaping the landscape. Our panel brings together perspectives from across the SPAC ecosystem—banking, investing, and advisory—to provide a well-rounded view of the latest market shifts. Joining us are: Ed Kovary, Head of SPAC Capital Markets at BTIG Nick Skibo, Managing Partner at Gritstone Asset Management Dimitre Genov, Managing Director at Brookline Capital Markets, advising SPAC sponsors on IPOs and de-SPAC transactions Together, they break down early indicators of SPAC activity for the year ahead, discuss trends such as warrants versus rights, overfunding, and transaction deadlines, and analyze how the new administration's regulatory changes, particularly at the SEC, could impact dealmakers. Tune in for an in-depth discussion on the 2025 SPAC market.  

Ian Charles and Doc O'Connor are the Co-Founders and Managing Partners of Arctos Sports Partners, a private equity firm dedicated to buying minority stakes in professional sports franchises. From its founding just two years ago, Arctos quickly has become the market leader in the space, raising a $2.1 billion first-time fund and a SPAC alongside Executive-in-Residence Theo Epstein, and buying stakes in MLB teams including the Boston Red Sox, the Golden State Warriors and Sacramento Kings in the NBA, and a compliment of other sports assets. Our conversation covers their backgrounds and the formation of Arctos, the investment opportunity in sports franchises, and the underlying business and ownership structure. We then turn to the unique characteristics look of the asset, investment process, and growth strategy.   Full disclosure, I am a personal investor in Arctos' fund and am a fan of their strategy and team, pun intended. I hope you'll enjoy this conversation with Doc O'Connor and Ian Charles as much as I did. Learn More Follow Ted on Twitter at @tseides or LinkedIn Subscribe to the mailing list Access Transcript with Premium Membership[

Stocks are on the rebound ahead of Alphabet (GOOGL) and AMD Inc. (AMD) earnings. Nasdaq's Christopher Dearborn discusses what to expect from these earnings and how Friday's non-farm payroll numbers could move the market. He also looks at what could be impacted by tariffs. Finally, he evaluates January's IPO activity. "We aren't going to see a SPAC attack like 2021," he says, but "SPACs are back." ======== Schwab Network ======== Empowering every investor and trader, every market day. Subscribe to the Market Minute newsletter - https://schwabnetwork.com/subscribe Download the iOS app - https://apps.apple.com/us/app/schwab-network/id1460719185 Download the Amazon Fire Tv App - https://www.amazon.com/TD-Ameritrade-Network/dp/B07KRD76C7 Watch on Sling - https://watch.sling.com/1/asset/191928615bd8d47686f94682aefaa007/watch Watch on Vizio - https://www.vizio.com/en/watchfreeplus-explore Watch on DistroTV - https://www.distro.tv/live/schwab-network/ Follow us on X – https://twitter.com/schwabnetwork Follow us on Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/schwabnetwork Follow us on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/company/schwab-network/ About Schwab Network - https://schwabnetwork.com/about

In this episode of The Business Brew, host Bill Brewster engages in a comprehensive discussion with George Livadas about the complexities and current state of the market. Livadas, known for his candid tweets and insightful views, covers topics ranging from market fluctuations in 2024, reminiscent of the 2021 SPAC bubble, to challenges and opportunities in European stocks and the S&P 500's relentless performance. They delve into George's investment philosophy, focusing on both large and small cap stocks, the impact of global flows on stock valuations, and the nuanced approach required in shorting and hedging. Additionally, they discuss the operational aspects of running a fund, including transitioning from separate accounts to a unified fund structure, and reflect on the broader implications of AI in investment research.    00:00 Welcome to the Business Brew  00:03 Introducing George Livadas  01:06 Market Reflections and SPAC Bubble  06:56 European Market Insights  18:20 Shorting Strategies and Market Sentiment  21:42 Challenges in the Staples Sector  24:57 Running the Firm: Changes and Challenges  27:14 Navigating Market Ups and Downs  27:40 Client Expectations and Realities  28:39 Challenges in Fundraising and Fee Structures  29:44 The Fund of Funds Debate  31:51 AI in Financial Research  35:15 Investment Strategies and Market Trends  39:48 Reflections on COVID and Market Resilience  43:38 Portfolio Management Insights  46:05 Closing Thoughts and Personal Reflections 

Dive into serial entrepreneur Matt Liotta's experience navigating mergers, acquisitions and public offerings with multiple companies. Liotta, the co-founder of Volato, a fractional jet company he took public through a SPAC, chats with Tom Singh of Merrill Lynch about the strategic decisions behind scaling Volato, as well as the lesson's he's learned about structuring deals, adapting business models, and maintaining innovation in a competitive market.  

AI assistance is finding its way into an increasing number of corners of the market, and the industrial supply chain is an area that could use help the most. This week,  we speak with Ed Nabrotzky, CEO of industrial technology firm Dot Ai. Dot Ai announced a $130 million combination with ShoulderUp Technology Acquisition Corp. (OTC:SUAC) in March 2024. Ed explains how Dot Ai has given clients enhanced vision for their warehouse management through the use of both devices and AI software tools that keep products moving on time even when the human workers miss something. He also tells us why he expects Dot Ai's pairing of a SPAC listing and a freshly announced strategic partnership will lead it to its growth goals. How will the upcoming international trade fights impact everyday shippers? And, what's up next around the corner in the technology in this space?  

Alex Kantrowitz of Big Technology weighs in on what Microsoft and Meta's reported job cuts and hiring freeze means about the broader landscape for Big Tech.  Plus, the CEO of AI chip startup Blaize discusses the decision to go public through a SPAC merger.  And, Gabelli Funds Co-CIO Chris Marangi highlights one financial name that offers an alternative entry point into the sector.

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Hot Ones, the wildly popular YouTube interview show where celebrities tackle spicy chicken wings, has a new home. BuzzFeed recently sold the production company behind the hit series, First We Feast, to a group of investors led by an affiliate of George Soros's fund. Skip Montreux and Samantha Vega examine the financial pressures that led BuzzFeed to sell Hot Ones. They explore BuzzFeed's rise as a digital media pioneer, its decision to go public through a SPAC, and the acquisition of Complex Networks in 2021. They also explain how these moves impacted BuzzFeed's finances and led to the eventual sale of First We Feast. Their conversation is a great learning resource if you want to build your English listening comprehension skills and expand your business vocabulary. Key points of their discussion include: Learn the differences between a SPAC and an IPO, and why BuzzFeed opted for a SPAC in 2021. A breakdown of BuzzFeed's $300 million purchase of Complex Networks. How selling Hot Ones has helped BuzzFeed reduce its debt and pivot toward new revenue streams. Do you like what you hear? Become a D2B Member today for to access to our -- NEW!!!-- interactive audio scripts, PDF Audio Script Library, Bonus Vocabulary episodes, and D2B Member-only episodes. Visit d2benglish.com/membership for more information. Follow Down to Business English on Apple podcasts, rate the show, and leave a comment. Contact Skip, Dez, and Samantha at downtobusinessenglish@gmail.com Follow Skip & Dez Skip Montreux on Linkedin Skip Montreux on Instagram Skip Montreux on Twitter Skip Montreux on Facebook Dez Morgan on Twitter RSS Feed

Andrew is joined by Jonathan Salama, the CEO and co-founder of Transfix, a logistics technology company. He discusses Transfix's origins, starting as a freight brokerage business that he and his co-founder Drew built from the ground up. They focused on automating key functions like pricing, scheduling, and carrier management using machine learning models. When the pandemic hit, Transfix's technology proved invaluable in navigating the volatility. However, Transfix later had to pivot away from being a full-service broker when plans for a SPAC deal fell through. Salama then took over as CEO and refocused the company on its pricing automation technology, which he believes is highly differentiated and can be licensed to other brokers and shippers. Salama emphasizes the importance of building a strong team and doing right by people as key lessons from his 10 years in the freight industry. He remains optimistic about Transfix's future, believing the company can continue to make a positive impact by helping carriers and the broader supply chain through innovative technology solutions.***Episode brought to you by Rapido Solutions Group. I had the pleasure of working with Danny Frisco and Roberto Icaza at Coyote, as well as being a client of theirs more recently at MoLo. Their team does a great job supplying nearshore talent to brokers, carriers, and technology providers to handle any role necessary, be it customer or carrier support, back office, or tech services.***

Matt and Nic are back with another week of news and deals. In this episode: French Hill wins the nomination to chair the House Financial Services Committee Riot Platforms, a bitcoin mining company, announced the intention to raise $500 million via a convertible note offering. The proceeds will be used to acquire additional bitcoins, and for general corporate purposes. MicroStrategy acquired another 21,550 bitcoin for roughly $2.1 billion. Circle and Binance announced a partnership with the goal of expanding the reach of Circle's USDC stablecoin across Binance's trading, saving, and payments platforms. Additionally, Binance plans to adopt USDC as part of the company's corporate treasury. Coincheck, the second largest crypto exchange in Japan, went public via SPAC, joining Coinbase as the only other crypto exchange listed on Nasdaq. The total stablecoin market cap eclipsed $200 billion this week, a record high following a 13% increase in supply in the past month. Ripple's RLUSD stablecoin gained approval from New York's Department of Financial Services, a key step in the company's plan to launch the tokenized dollar by year-end. Google announced a new quantum computing chip, though the specs are still many orders of magnitude away from threatening the encryption levels of Bitcoin and other crypto protocols. Sponsor notes:  Coin Metrics State of the Network: Where in the World is Crypto Trading? Exploring the Kimchi premium, regional exchange activity, and crypto seasonality

Edward Lee is the chef/owner of 610 Magnolia in Louisville, Kentucky; and culinary director of Succotash in National Harbor, Maryland, and Penn Quarter, Washington, DC. He earned an Emmy nomination for his role in the PBS series “The Mind of a Chef.”The acclaimed restauranteur is also the author of “Smoke & Pickles,” “Buttermilk Graffiti,” and “Bourbon Land.” He participated in a CulinaryArts@SPAC event in October based around his “Bourbon Land” book - and for this event, the conversation was facilitated by a former editor at The New York Times, Tiina Loite.

Bakkt launched in 2018 and was supposed to be the great crypto institutional hope. After a few years of doing not much, it went public via SPAC in 2021. It's share price has subsequently fallen 96%. And yet it's now up huge on news that the company is looking to be acquired by Trump Media Group. Enjoying this content? SUBSCRIBE to the Podcast: https://pod.link/1438693620 Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/nathanielwhittemorecrypto Subscribe to the newsletter: https://breakdown.beehiiv.com/ Join the discussion: https://discord.gg/VrKRrfKCz8 Follow on Twitter: NLW: https://twitter.com/nlw Breakdown: https://twitter.com/BreakdownNLW