Podcasts about spv

Produced by Foundersuite (for startups: www.foundersuite.com) and Fundingstack (for VCs: www.fundingstack.com), "How I Raised It" goes behind the scenes with startup founders and investors who have raised capital. This episode is with with Nik Talreja, CEO of Sydecar.io, a platform that helps investors and founders set up a “Special Purpose Vehicle” or SPV. In this episode we go deep into SPVs… what are they, why you should care, etc. We get into how to set up an SPV to build a track record as an investor, how to use one to create an Opportunity Fund, the difference between an SPV and a Syndicate, the use case for Founders, and much more. How I Raised It is produced by Foundersuite, makers of software to raise capital and manage investor relations. Foundersuite's customers have raised over $21 Billion since 2016. If you are a startup, create a free account at www.foundersuite.com. If you are a VC, venture studio or investment banker, check out our new platform, www.fundingstack.com

Title:  How Survive When Real Estate Deals Fail with Ruben Kanya Summary: In this conversation, Seth Bradley, a securities attorney and real estate investor, discusses the complexities of capital raising, the importance of experimentation in finding one's niche, and the critical role of networking and trust in the investment landscape. He shares insights from his journey in real estate and tech, emphasizing the need for grit and public speaking skills to succeed in capital raising. The discussion also highlights the challenges of the first capital raise and the lessons learned along the way. In this conversation, the speakers delve into the multifaceted benefits of hosting a podcast, emphasizing the importance of listening and connection. They explore the intricacies of capital raising in real estate, discussing the significance of grit, networking, and leveraging other people's money. The dialogue also covers compliance with securities laws, compensation structures in syndication, and the emerging trend of fund to fund structures. Tribevest is introduced as a solution for simplifying fund management and ensuring compliance in capital raising efforts. Links to listen and subscribe: https://podcasts.apple.com/ph/podcast/raising-capital-the-right-way-compliance-funds-and/id1341895972?i=1000688593916 Links to watch and subscribe: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UyF9Z72m2R0 Bullet Point Highlights: You need a license to raise capital legally. Experimenting with different models helps identify what works for you. Building authority and trust is essential in capital raising. Networking with high net worth individuals is crucial. The first capital raise is often the hardest. Grit and determination are key to success in entrepreneurship. Public speaking skills can enhance your ability to communicate effectively. Learning from clients can provide valuable insights for your own journey. You can leverage your existing skills to add value in capital raises. Building a strong network can facilitate easier capital raising. Having a podcast enhances listening skills and fosters connections. Capital raising requires grit, a strong network, and resources. Leveraging other people's money accelerates business growth. Compliance with securities laws is crucial in capital raising. Compensation structures in syndication vary based on deal size and type. Fund to fund structures are becoming more prevalent in real estate. Effective communication is key to successful networking. Tribevest simplifies the process of raising capital compliantly. Understanding the legalities of capital raising is essential for success. Building a community can expedite personal and professional growth. Transcript: Ruben Kanya (00:00.142) whole idea here is you're actually not allowed to raise capital without a license. So just like being a doctor or a dentist or an attorney, you have to have a license to be able to raise capital and it's called a broker dealer or potentially an RIA, registered investment advisor. So if you're not one of those people, if you don't have a license, you need to have an exemption from having that license. if it's your, this is speaking in generalities, but if it's your own deal, if it's your own fund,   If it's your own syndication, if you're the one buying the property, that's an exemption. You're exempted. You can raise capital for your own deal and that's okay. And that's kind of the co-GP concept that we talk about sometimes. I actually don't like to say co-GP because to me it's a fallacy. There's no such thing as a co-GP. You're either a GP and an active partner.   Who's this? you're an entrepreneur? you're a real estate investor? you're trying to learn from those who did it? Well, come into the lab then. Put your white coat on, gloves on, notepad, and let's go, Joe.   Experiment nation this episode was a really fun one with Seth Bradley who is a fun manager Invest in entrepreneurs. He's an attorney he as a startup founders of software as a service and Really what I loved about What he's built is   Everything that he's built, it's vertically integrated, which I love, but he really embodies the principles of experimenting. Right. And what I mean by that is he has tried multiple models in real estate, which allowed him to get exposure, which I think is really important when I talk about having a well-rounded experiment in your lab, LabAK being your life, so that you can at least identify   (Seth Bradley) (02:10.529) what you like, what you don't like, what gives you return on energy, what drains you. I think those are all important things for us to then be able to niche down. A lot of times we talk about niching down, but we haven't even gotten a taste of what's on the menu to even understand what it is that we want to niche down in. And so part of what I created here at Experimentation in the lab is to bring you   folks who can present the menu of the different options that there is in not only real estate, but in business and even career to then give you that exposure so that you can then get a taste even from this show and then implement it yourself and maybe try one or two or three experiments or four or five. How many it takes for you to feel like this is the thing. This is the thing that I'm going to hold on to and grasp to and go all in on. Right. And that's what we did.   And keep in mind that life has seasons. A lot of us can do something and it could be four seasons. Your season could be five years, 10 years, 15, but I do believe in the compound effect. his journey, Seth's journey, he was able to get his first duplex, then quads, then small multifamilies and big multifamily units. And the next thing you know, he's doing $120 million a deal just in 2022 alone, right? In one year.   But with that, one thing I wanted to highlight, so one thing is the experiment, different exposures, AKA building blocks towards the very thing that he's doing now. But the other thing is being able to get a free, or I should say, get a paid internship. And that's through servicing your clients, learning from them, and then taking a page from their book. He was an attorney that was putting down together his SEC deals of syndications,   capital raising, and then he learned from his clients because he had full transparency. Sometimes, often we're in a position where the proof of concept is right in front of us, but we don't grab it by the horns. We just see it for what it is, just clocking and clocking out. No matter what job you have, there's an opportunity for you to actually take lessons, systems, SOPs, structure, any skillset to take it to the next level for your own endeavors.   (Seth Bradley) (04:38.252) And what I mean by that is I was a realtor and I was a realtor for the investor. understood how investors, underwrote their deals. And that was my win for me to hone my craft in real estate, underwriting deals, pulling comps, walking properties, understanding value at all. That was when I was the realtor for the investor. You can still look it up on bigger pockets. You can still see my page. That's what I was doing. I was helping investors invest until I then became an investor myself.   And in this case, he was an ICC attorney providing these, you know, going through the process of doing syndications, fund to fund, et cetera. And then he learned and he said, not only do I have a practice that does it, but I can also be on the other side of that transaction. So don't you ever forget the importance of being on the other side of the transaction in whatever service that you offer, even if it's just call it.   You work in hospitality at a restaurant to make ends meet. There's a system, there's a SOP, there's a checklist. There's something in there that is a proof of concept that you can then take and implement somewhere in your business. And the universe will tell you its secrets if you listen. The clues are all around us. Last but not least, I love our conversation around being an authority, building a brand.   Essentially, that's what capital raising is and he talked about three pillars. I don't want to talk about he said money Right is one heart of the center trust in your network, right? Your network is you gotta have a big network He talks about having a platform like this where I think everybody should have a podcast because you get the interview you get to learn the skills of communication listening, etc but most importantly you foster relationship while on the air and then   It builds trust to whoever's listening. I'm sure that if you're listening right now and you and I wanted to go into a deal together, there's some form of trust. If this is not your, your first episode. So there's that, right? We talked about having a meetup, restarting our meetups. That's key. Connecting people, they trust in you. Being an authoritative figure, trust. They can't flow you if they don't know you. So stop being cute and stop hiding and put yourself out there. Right? Money. Money follows all of the above network and trust.   (Seth Bradley) (07:00.408) people who have money in your network will make it easier than those who are in your network who are broke. So surround yourself with people who have money, not just because they have money, but of course it can help you tremendously if you're trying to raise capital. And there's something that goes about saying with people who have money, it's not that they're better or anything, but there is a level of opulence and abundance.   And I think there should be a good balance. But certainly if you're trying to raise money with people who don't have money and you're in a circle, people don't know how many doesn't mean to say that you can't uplift them when you have an opportunity, but it's going to be hard to raise capital from people who don't have capital. Right. So that's one thing to keep in mind. Money trust network and being an authority. You can build an authority from home in the lab, in a studio, in person.   And you don't always have to be an expert in something else. Sometimes you can actually have authority within your own circle. If you're a dentist and you're trying to raise capital with other dentists, they trust you. You have authority maybe in your current marketplace, you're a manager of some kind or you're a lead or you're just someone that people really trust. You have that authority. You have trust already with like-minded people in your circle. So this was a great one. He brought a lot of core values home. And that's what I love about   the show. It's every time you listen or anytime you interview someone who's had done some amazing leaps and experiments in their own lab, there's always some consistent clues that kind of bring to the surface and maybe it just, I'm aware of them, but if not, my goal is to extract that and make them aware for you. So I trust that you're going to get a lot from this episode without further ado, Seth Bradley in the lab, y'all.   Experimentation, what's going on? Your host Ruben here. Today I have the pleasure of connecting with a gentleman that we connected with, had some mutual connections. And I was like, I didn't want to let the serendipity go to waste because I saw there was a mutual beneficial component to the lab, as I always say. And I always think you're as good as your tools, you're as good as your resources. And so I'm really happy to have the gentleman here step into the lab with us to give us insight. And I also love the   (Seth Bradley) (09:21.39) I'll call it a vertical integration I think and maybe Seth will keep me honest here, but without further ado I want to welcome Seth Bradley. How's it my man? Welcome to the lab brother   Going great, man. Ruben, really appreciate you having me on. Thanks for having me in the lab.   Absolutely, man. I should so listen if I'm curious so Seth because you know, we we start to talk a little bit and I was a car We're getting to the weeds of things. I want to make sure I hit this record button, but I'm just a curious guy and I'm so curious that if I'm at a real estate conference and you and I sit next to each other and I say hey I'm Ruben Seth. Nice to meet you. You know, what do you do for a living? What do you lead with because you have a very interesting background? So I want to we're gonna reverse engineer, but I'm so curious as to   at the time that we're recording this, what do you lead with if you don't know what my interests are, you don't know where I'm coming from, I could be an investor, I could be interested in putting my money to work, what do you lead with? I'm just so curious.   I love that question, man, because sometimes I have a hard time answering it. It's an easy question to answer for most people, but for me, I have to think about it for a second. But typically I'll lead with I'm a securities attorney, specifically a real estate securities attorney. So if you're raising capital for real estate from passive investors, I'm your guy. can help you put together your fund or your syndication compliantly and secondarily, or, you know, one B I'll call it a tech founder. So involved in a few tech startups as well.   (Seth Bradley) (10:48.238) That's awesome. Then that opens up the window because I see her tech founder and then I securities attorney. Is that that accurate?   Yep, nailed it.   securities attorney. would you do you happen to do you still do I mean, of course, you've been involved in raising capital yourself, which is what I want to lead with next. But are you actively investing? And if you are, what is the model? Is it more investing in the startup? Or is it more investing in actual capitals? I should say social capital relationships, or even you know what, maybe it's some form of real estate, what is your current I guess, investing   season for lack of better words.   Yeah, it's all across the board, man. mean, everything that you mentioned, I mean, just quickly, I started in real estate in 2013. House hacked into a duplex did kind of the bigger pockets podcast. Listen to that. Red Rich Dad, Poor Dad, you know, the typical journey you take and house hacked into a duplex and started buying bigger and bigger properties got to the point where, you know, I wanted to get into syndications and funds and start raising capital. So I started actually investing passively into real estate first and I got my feet wet.   Ruben Kanya (12:01.55) figured out what that investor journey looked like. And then I started raising capital myself from my own syndications where potentially I could be just a capital partner or also an operator. So I raised a good amount of capital from 2019 to 2023, I would say, before the interest rates started to spike. And then we slowed down a bit, but we still own a good amount of that real estate and just put it in perspective. We bought about $120 million with the real estate in 2022 alone. And now I'm kind of   involved with a handful of tech startups where I'm also in that same capacity where I'm raising capital or helping the CEO raise capital for seed rounds for these startups.   Okay, very interesting. So I'm glad let's go to the very beginning because you talked about bigger pockets with shout out to bigger pockets, right? Because that's or did you say bigger pockets? I did hear you say that. Okay, cool. had a mutual kind of, know, I was planning my seeds. I think that they did an amazing job, of course, like minded investors together. 2013 get a duplex. I'm sure one thing I'm curious about and you know, someone else might be listening is, you know, what   point now every everyone's situation is different with that said, but at what point did you start to think, okay, it's time to bring in some outside capital and, I'm going to lead with you. It seems that you strike me as a guy who does things strategically. enlighten me a little bit as to get the duplex. Was there another lever that was pulled to get the next property before you start to raise capital? Or is that right away, right into, okay, now it's time to raise capital. Cause   duplex going to take me so far. Tell me about that journey.   Ruben Kanya (13:43.732) No, I mean, that journey was, you know, a lot of different types of things. mean, I've wholesaled, I've fixed and flipped single family properties. We were doing that in Cleveland for a while. Then we kind of moved on to multifamily, you know, smaller multifamilies up to four units, which is still residential, but then up to, you know, like 16 units, those sorts of things. Then we started getting to where, you know, capital starts getting constrained, your own capital, or if you're doing like a JV, starts getting constrained. But I was fortunate enough that my legal practice, which also started in 2013,   was highly related to what I was doing. So as a real estate attorney, my real estate clients were raising capital for their real estate deals. So then I got into securities law. So I saw how they were raising capital. Then I started helping them raise capital from the legal side. And then I started raising, and then I realized that, hey, if we want to go bigger, I've got to be more like my clients who are buying, you know, 50, $100 million properties. How do we do that? Well, like they do it. They need to raise capital from either   passive investors or from, larger investors like family offices and places like that. So I knew that that was the pathway. So I was fortunate enough to kind of have that perspective shown to me by my clients and they kind of showed me the blueprint. Hey, this is how you need to do it. Now, a lot of other attorneys see that same blueprint and they don't really have that entrepreneurial mindset. So they're kind of just like that service oriented, Hey, let's do what I'm doing. And I'm just going to help. But I have an entrepreneurial mindset. I I'm like,   I want to do that. I want to buy that property. I want to run that business. I want to scale it. like anything else, though, I still had a little bit of reservation, I would say. So I decided to invest passively first just to get my feet wet, just to see what that investor experience was like. And then once I did that a few times, I really got into the active side and dove right in.   Oh man, I love so many elements of that. Let's unpack the experiment phase, right? Because that's what I truly believe in. I'm curious to what your thoughts are on this, right? Before I even preface by saying this, I think, and this is just a thought, could be wrong. I'm experimenting life as it is. But when you ask someone, hey, what do you want to do for a living? Right? It's like, well, I don't know. I haven't been exposed to enough.   (Seth Bradley) (16:03.116) Right. But then when you start experimenting with a lot of different things, then you can niche down because you've been exposed to like this that I don't like, et cetera. And there's a second leg to that, but I want to touch on that for a second because you said you did wholesale fixing flips, then you need small multifamily. What do you think you were able to gain from that? My personally, when I see that, I see, well, you were able you were able to get insight, but   Again, maybe you see things differently. Maybe it's like you needed to do those things and you thought it was true. And then you were led down one path and led to another. What do you take from that? Were you experimenting or was it more or less of the natural progression of events and what you thought was going to be your end all be all ended up progressing into a new ideal. Tell me about that experience.   Yeah, I mean, I think it was an experiment. It was me trying. I knew I wanted to be in real estate. I love real estate. I've always been drawn to it. It's just been an interesting thing for me and interesting subject. I remember when I was in undergrad and I couldn't afford to buy any kind of real estate or didn't have a job at all. And I was trying to figure out, well, man, how can I buy like these townhouses that I'm living in and rent those out? Like, I remember just being interested from the get go. So I knew I wanted to be in it, but it was certainly an experiment to see.   how to break into the market, how to scale a business. Because once you got into a duplex and your house hacked and bought a few other single family properties, it was like, okay, well, we can continue to do this, but I'm always looking again to scale. And to do that, a lot of times you do need to bring in other people's money to be able to fund that scale. But not always. mean, I think it would be a better pathway, honestly, if you can scale without other people's money, because then you can own 100 % of it. But a lot more difficult to do. So if you want to...   you want to grow with scale fast, typically it's with other people's money. And again, luckily I was already in a profession that gave me that experience to be able to see that pathway and be able to execute on   (Seth Bradley) (18:02.35) Now tell me that's a great insight or at least a transition point there, Seth, because we, know, in our professions, we spend a lot of time, but not a lot of folks spend the time to have the lens of an entrepreneur to say, hey, maybe I can actually take a page from their book. Right. Because I think it's interesting that it's we all are entrepreneurs. Right. So we go into business ourselves to run away from maybe possibly corporate. Some people.   And then we build our own companies. We install systems, we invest in resources. And then it's like, we turn into the thing that we were maybe running away from, but there's a lesson that we get to build it our way and have maybe learned lessons from these big corporations. In your end, it reminds me a little bit of me because I again, certainly not an attorney by any means. And I won't compare being a realtor to an attorney, but you are servicing clients and you get to at least,   at least get nuggets from their journey and then say, Hey, why don't, why don't I take a page from their book? Can you talk to us about that? Because I think honestly, it's an unkept almost secret and not even talked about enough where it's like, Hey, you're taking this opportunity right now to get to understand the playbook, see how they've done it, learn from their mistakes, right? Right. Through service and while getting paid. And then you're like, okay, now I'm going to do it for me. So   Do you see it that way as well? was it kind of, know, or did you strategically go into it thinking that you do that? Or it was kind of like, you know what? This is kind of cool. Let me try it myself.   Yeah, I mean, and Ruben, hats off to you, man, because a lot of realtors and brokers, they're around real estate every single day. That is literally their business. They have access to deals before other people. They get to see things that other people don't get to see. They get to see the transactions. They get to see how they change hands. And as you know, most of them don't invest in real estate. like, you even own your own house? Do you own any investment properties in...   Ruben Kanya (20:11.918) 90 % of them don't, right? Unless it's, well, maybe their own house, but that's probably it. They don't invest. And it's crazy to think about that when they're around that all the time. And it's the same thing with attorneys, right? Like, know, they're, whether there's somebody like me, there's real estate or securities, and they have clients that are, that are buying large properties and raising capital, or it's, you know, some other practice like and A where they're combining companies and building companies and things like that.   I think that there's a certain entrepreneurial DNA that's in some of us and it's not in others. And that's okay. Like some people thrive in an office atmosphere or thrive in a W-2 type of atmosphere. And a lot of times I don't even like to disrupt that. Like people, you know, are comfortable there. They like the steady paycheck and that's okay. And I think the vast majority of people do want that and they do like that. They like the predictability of it. But some of us out there, like me and you, I believe are, you know, we just,   We're not a fit for that. Like we need to build. I think that's the key is, is the build, right? Cause you were talking about, you know, we start putting all the systems and the processes and the things into place to ultimately end up in the, the same machine that we didn't want to work for. But I don't think that's the piece that's important. The piece is important is that that climb the build, we want to build like we were builders. love to build.   Yeah. Have you ever had a conversation, with maybe your associates on? I don't know if this is a hypocritical question, because I don't know if I could answer this. But I'm curious, have you had a conversation with another attorney? Like, hey, you see this all the time. Have ever thought of doing it yourself? What's the mindset behind? Have you had that conversation? And have you had around those? Yeah, just curious.   Yeah, I definitely, I definitely have. think, you know, at least specifically with the attorney industry or with that profession, we are, we're trained to look at risk. We're trained to evaluate liability. We are trained to be conservative in nature. and that is totally different than when you're an entrepreneur and you're out there building a business and you're, don't know what tomorrow is going to bring. And there's going to be a problem that pops up today that you didn't expect.   Ruben Kanya (22:30.01) And you don't know if you're going to be able to pay payroll and all these different things that come up as an entrepreneur, as a business builder, that's totally a different mindset than it is that attorneys are trained for. So I think that's definitely a separation. like, you know, I have a lot of investors that are attorneys. That was, that's who my investor base is. Typically it's other attorneys. A lot of other capital raisers don't go after attorneys because they are paying the ass. We ask a lot of questions. Like I said, we are risk averse. Like, you know, we're not the ideal.   person or people to raise from.   I'm gonna predict my money isn't really the case.   with a cold on the page. 137 second paragraph line four. What does that mean? Why is that? And, know, that's the kind of stuff you have to deal with. But, you know, they do make a good amount of money. So there's a, you know, there's a push, there's a give take there. But, you know, I think that that's, I have identified that with conversations with my investors and obviously my prior colleagues. I mean, that in itself is, is a big difference.   It's a big difference. We're just as attorneys, we're just trained to find and look at risk and think about all the bad things that can happen. And man, when you're building a business, when you're growing out on your own and you say, I'm done with my W-2, I don't want that paycheck anymore. That's a lot of risk, right? Or at least it's a lot of risk to a person that thinks that way. I actually don't think that way. I think it's more risky to be have one income stream and be a W-2, but that's certainly not the way that they typically look at it.   (Seth Bradley) (24:02.306) Yeah, no, it's interesting what you're saying. But I'm also curious though, that if they are also investing, because it sounds like you've also worked with some associates, or at least your investors have come from the same cloth, it sounds like they might be, instead of again, raising the capital like you are, high risk, high leverage, they're willing to put their money to work. Do you find that   And I guess maybe that's it. Do you find that that kind of archetype is finding that to be of a less riskier approach versus flipping versus doing it themselves? Or do you find that it's more of time constraint thing? it's like, listen, I got the money. You mentioned it. I have a high net worth. I'm an accredited investor. Let me just do it with someone who's an expert. What have you seen since you've been on both sides, and especially as a fundraiser?   Yeah, I think it's that investor profile. You know, these are folks that make a lot of money from their W-2. They have no time on their hands because their W-2 is so demanding. then any time they have outside of that, it's got to be spent with family. So they really just don't have any time, but they do have capital. So it's just that investor profile that you're dealing with with attorneys and some of the similar, you know, with doctors and dentists and engineers and people like that. Same thing. You know, they're highly paid professionals.   You know, they went to school for a long time. They make a lot of money, but they don't have any time. And unless they really want to venture out and say, okay, I want to raise capital or, or, I don't know, you have to figure out a way to carve out more time because they certainly don't have it. I know when I worked in big law firms and I'm trying to bill 2000 hours a year, I don't have time to, you know, invest actively. In fact, I actually got fired from my big law job, my last one, because of that, because I'm raising capital and doing real estate deals.   and starting businesses and guess what? You don't have time to do that if you're working at a demanding job, whether that's as an attorney or Dr. Dennis, whoever that might be. So I think it just comes down to that profile and do you have time? Do you have capital? And then whatever one you have a surplus of, that's probably where you're going to fit into the asset. So you can invest if you have capital and no time.   Ruben Kanya (26:26.126) You need to find something a little bit more passive and that comes through like funds and syndications and things like that.   All right. So that's very helpful and I think very interesting because you've seen both sides. You not only were on the other side, but you've also been the capital raiser and then you've also yourself invested passively. Tell me about the first deal that if you recall, at least the like kind deal when you raised capital, who did you go to?   Did you start with your client base? Did you start with friends and family? And then maybe we can even get into the granularity. I know there's different non-accredited, accredited 506V versus 506C. There's a lot of different kind of foundational pillars. But talk to us about what your first deal was like, if you recall some of the numbers and what kind of asset type and then who you actually pulled in. So people can start thinking of actually what's possible when we talk about capital.   you know, in fundraising, we think of it as this big thing, but people like you and me can actually start initiating these kinds of transactions. Talk to us about your first one.   Yeah, man, I mean, don't remember the actual specifics, but it was like 100 because there's around 150 unit multifamily something like that was your first That was the first raise it was the first raise but I was brought I I wasn't the primary operating partner I brought in as a capital raiser that sort of thing and also providing some legal services as well. Um, but I was   (Seth Bradley) (27:48.078) That was your first race.   (Seth Bradley) (28:01.422) Hold on. That's interesting. Now you kind of you're kind of double. Is that is that how you got your general partner essentially? Were you a general partner on that? Or were you tell us about that? Because from what I understand, you can correct me if I'm wrong here. You're the expert. You can bring in different subject matter expertise to the table to value your I guess your position and a capital raise. Maybe one is investor relations, one, et cetera. Did you from what I understand, bacon?   some of your services and as a GP or is that, what did you?   Yeah, for sure. Yeah. I was a general partner on that deal, baking in some of my legal services as well. Started leveraging my skillset that's super valuable. Obviously, it's applicable to these capital raises. I can help you raise capital and also be the securities attorney and also potentially the real estate attorney as well on the deal. So lots of different ways that I can get in there and provide value to the active partnership.   But yeah, I I was tasked with raising, you know, half a million dollars. I didn't hit it. I hit way under. I think I might've raised like a couple hundred thousand dollars. And I was pretty happy that I even hit that because it's the first time. I'm, and I'll tell you what, man, like capital raising is hard. Like I think that, you know, you see all these masterminds out there and these coaching programs and things and they're teaching how to raise capital and some are great. And I'm actually in a couple of them. but they are, you know, they, have to sell you on that. easy, right? They have to sell you on, Hey,   I'll give you the systems, the processes and boom, you're going to be able to raise a million dollars easily. It's not that easy. unless you already have a built in network of high net worth individuals, that's where you'll find success. Or maybe you have a platform like yours where you can access a lot of people that you already have a relationship with and you'll like, and trust you that love what you're doing. And they're like, man, if he's investing in this, it must be good. So that those people, like you, and then also people that are.   Ruben Kanya (29:59.426) we tend to see a lot of doctors and dentists that are very successful right out of the gate. Cause guess what? They work with other doctors and dentists who already trust them, who have money, who already trust them. So they do great. and then others, like me are probably somewhere in the middle, right? We we've got a base of investors that are like attorneys, which seem like they'd be great because they have money, but guess what? They're a pain in the ass. So there's, there's a little bit of give take there. and then you have other folks who,   you know, maybe they're a school teacher or something like that where their colleagues maybe don't have a ton of money to invest and they have to follow just like, you know, follow the processes, the systems and the marketing funnels and those things and rely really heavily on that. And typically it doesn't go that well. It doesn't on the first one. You've really got to be scrappy. Like you've got to get in there. You've got to literally make a list of a hundred people that you know, that might want to invest right.   type it up, go systematically through that list, and you've gotta break out of your shell and not be afraid to just reach out to these people, no shame, get your pitch together and just do it. And it feels awkward and you don't wanna do it and you feel like a salesperson, but you've gotta do it. You've gotta break through those reservations and make it happen because that first raise is a bear. You've gotta just be.   You've got to be scrappy and you've got to do whatever it takes and 10x whatever you think is going to take.   Experiment nation, you've heard me talk about how multiple investors across the nation are landing these lucrative midterm rental insurance contracts by making these small tweaks on the branding and marketing side, especially if you're an existing short-term rental operator, there is a quick and easy shift that you can make with the ride guide in place. And because we've launched a two-day bootcamp,   (Seth Bradley) (31:59.278) that not everyone could attend in real time, I've put together a recording where you can get all the materials and all the guides to focus on rebranding either your short term rental business or your current midterm rental business so that you can actually have the insurance companies reach out to you. And then day two is if you want to actually play offense, how you can reach out to them by listing on the right platforms, et cetera.   If you're looking to get this MTR bootcamp so that you can start optimizing and you can start receiving these lucrative contracts that again, provide less headaches, less turnovers, unlike the Airbnb space, you can start receiving inquiries today by having the right guide in place. So please go to experimentrealestate.com for slash MTR bootcamp or click the link in the bio to make sure you get your hands on the   and midterm rental insurance bootcamp to fast track your way into landing these lucrative insurance contracts the exact same ways multiple investors have taken advantage of this unknown and untapped niche within the midterm rental umbrella. Wow, so I'm a systems guy and as you're speaking, I'm taking notes here guys. I heard three key pillars and feel free to add to them because I wanna hear.   kind of the downfall of some of what folks are coaching. I heard one is money, number two is trust, and number three is network. And I like how you highlighted those because I hear, well, if you have a network and you can get access and you have a large pool, then there's probably people who are gonna have money in there. Then if you have what I'm hearing is authority, trust, AKA I'm a doctor, you're a doctor, we speak the same language. And by the way, guess what? Third pillar, we all have money.   So that's kind of like the sweet, sounds like that's the sweet spot. MTN money trust and network. What did I miss?   Ruben Kanya (34:03.89) You nailed it, man. That's it. That's kind of the big level, the high level things that you need. I mean, you need that authority or you need to be able to show that you know what you're doing, that you know what you talk about and what you're talking about, that sort of thing. And then obviously that network, you either have to develop that through your W-2 that you already have or however it might be, or maybe you have a platform, right? Like maybe you have a platform like a podcast or an investor group.   or an in-person meetup. We don't do those as much as we used to before COVID, but that used to be a huge thing. Like I were on a real estate meetup in San Diego County or something like that. And it goes, that used to go really, really well for people to be able to raise capital. So yeah, you gotta have that platform. Network. I know, right, Networking lunch.   You should bring that back. There's something about because there's something about this, right? This is cool. Like, what a time to be alive where you and I can connect in the flesh. But I want to echo what you just said. Because I'm kind of speaking to myself as a reminder, Ruben, you got to get these meetups going again. We used to do a meetup in New York and Atlanta.   And just the relationships that happen in the room and you're being the super connector is so powerful. I wouldn't get cute and just, you know, this is great that you and I can connect while you're in San Diego and I'm here in Boston, but it's not, or it's and, I think we should, I think we should bring it back. Cause I could tell it may a super charismatic dude, great energy. you know, obviously you're authoritative figure and I feel like, I think, it will only service more.   never seen.   (Seth Bradley) (35:41.87) to have these in there's something about in person. So yeah, I'm just I'm preaching to the choir, but I'm also like, hey, accountability, I'm gonna check up on you. gotta do the same.   You gotta appreciate it. Tell me sure man. And it's great. Like when we meet on something like this and we have some interactions on social media and then we get on each other's podcast, you know, get to know each other. And then when you meet in person, you're like, this is awesome. You already feel like you know the person. So technology is a great and right. Another and yeah.   Yeah, don't sleep on that fit that in person. We need more of that if anything. And people are, you know what, people I think are actually searching for it with all this technology. So good reminder for the both of us and whoever who's listening. I want to touch on something that you said, Seth. You mentioned, because I like learning from those who either have failed or made mistakes because can expedite our learning process. So you said,   First deal typically, uh first one doesn't go well, uh, it's a bear but then you also mentioned that uh, you know Some some mastermind programs, right and there's a lot out there good and bad and some are better than others. Uh, some of them, you know I see I guess uh, maybe Don't um, I should say, um, maybe they fall a little short   of helping you get to your first link. What's missing? What's the missing link? We talk about money, trust and network, but like if I wanted to nail it the first time the right way without, and I wanted to learn from someone like you from, your mistakes or from someone else's mistakes or from, know, those masterminds that are just falling short, what is a, is, is it a foundational or at least insight or lesson learn or thing I should keep top of mind in addition to the money, trust and network that would maybe put me in a   (Seth Bradley) (37:40.024) position not to have the first one be so challenging.   Yeah, I mean, to be honest with you, I think it's going to be challenging no matter what. I mean, I think what I was going to say is actually grit, right? You have to have grit. So I think it kind of it's a counterbalance here where you have a mastermind or coaching program or a class or something like that that you're selling to somebody. And the only way somebody is going to buy it is if you say, hey, buy this or come join me in this group and   I'll make it easy for you to do what you want to do. Like that's the selling point. You have to say that it's going to be easy to get them to pay you to do it. But the problem is once they're in, you realize it's not easy. So, you know,   People sell the promise, not the process.   That's right. That's right. So, you know, I think maybe I don't know if there's any way around that. Like you certainly can't sell it is going to be hard and be like, Hey, well, if you buy my $20,000 program, you're probably not going to make it. So you can, if you want, you know, it's just not, it's not going to work. So I don't know if that's going to change, but I would say maybe once you get into that program, then you preach that, look, I can give you the systems, I can give you the processes. I can even teach you the compliance and I can hook you up with all my different, you know, my network and   Ruben Kanya (38:59.21) hook you up with my securities attorney and my CPA and my funnel builder and those sorts of things. But at the end of the day, really emphasize that it's going to be work. You have to not only implement the systems, but you're going to have to scrap. Just like building any business, capital raising is a hard business and you're going to have to do things that are going to make you uncomfortable. And if you don't go all in, you're not going to make it. That's all there is. It's just like any business.   or even a piece of a business. So me and my wife own a few gyms together and like sometimes we'll implement like you know, a promotion or something. Right. And if we half asset, it doesn't work. It just doesn't. It simply does not work. You have to have full buy-in. You have to believe in it yourself and you have to get your teammates and your employees to believe in it or they won't or they won't grow in the same direction as you. You've got to be all in just like with any business or it's not going to work.   love that. That's a good one. The belief system is certainly a big one. And I'm sure it comes off across, especially in this space of capital raising, you people want to know that, do you believe in what you're saying, right? Just as much as you believe in yourself. That's interesting. So   Tactically, was talking to this gentleman yesterday at the gym, speaking of the gym, a young guy, a hustler, you know, making some good money. And we were kind of talking about, you know, journey, you know, part of the journey is, you know, acquiring skill sets and honing your and sharpening the axe, for lack of a better word. And so I'm curious, you know,   And I'm going to stick to my pillager because that's a reference point for me. But if I'm thinking of, what is one skill? Not saying for this is the end all be all by any means, just curses. If I was to focus and truly get really, really good at one skill and, can she not just achieve mastery in it? Is it fostering relationships, remembering Seth's birthday, what he does? Is it being able to really get   (Seth Bradley) (41:17.998) great at communication and putting together a pitch deck, just to get a little bit more granular of like, what skillsets should I be thinking of, of honing, flexing that muscle and or which skill sets would actually give me an advantage in this space to really double down on? What would you say to that?   I'll just lean on what I personally did. And I think that that's public speaking. So it's a lot, it's something that people hate, right? Like most people hate it. There's a small percentage of people that love it. Not very many. Most people say it's their biggest fear. Certainly my biggest fear was public speaking. so I had to overcome that. I realized that in order to be the person that I wanted to be, I needed to overcome that fear. I needed to get good at what I was not good at. And that was certainly it. And I'll tell you what.   doing what we're doing now helped me. So I launched a podcast. It helps a lot. You get used to talking, you get used to conversating with people and you being the center of attention and focusing your thoughts and putting them into the words that you want to say. And it, it really helped. And I think that that goes from the top down. So even if you, you know, public speaking, you're thinking about, you know, being on stage and giving a presentation, that sort of thing.   Just gonna say.   Ruben Kanya (42:34.914) but it trickles down all the way to networking conversations, to having a phone call with an investor. Like it just improves your conversation skills and your communication skills that you have, whether you're on stage, whether you're on a podcast or whether you're on a phone call or a face-to-face meeting with an investor, it trickles all the way down.   I love this conversation so much and Seth, you have your own podcast as well. Why don't you plug it in for a second.   Sure, it's called the Passive Income Attorney podcast, but I will say that I'm rebranding to Raise the Bar Radio. Obviously a homage to raising capital and being an attorney.   Right. No, the reason I bring that is I couldn't, I just want to echo that, that, everything is, is, is a, is a building block, right? I think what's fascinating about having your own show, right? Seth is, you know, that when someone is talking, traditionally, or if you're not well trained, you're already thinking the next thing to say, not really hearing the person. This skillset right here, but we're doing, which I love so much, you know, forces you to be a better listener.   You know be able to collect information Digest it analyze it and then respond to it. I've always said I think having a show a podcast is one of the ultimate hacks because of the the the There's just so many multiple benefits associated with it. I'm curious. Do you see it that way too? Or is it just me?   Ruben Kanya (44:06.798) just 100 % man 100 % you heard me man like that it's a game changer I mean there's that's to me the number one thing but also you you just get to make connections too right like you get to have guests that you have to have a reason to have somebody on your show that maybe you wouldn't get to talk to for whatever reason or and you get to cross paths with people and you get to say you get to share this experience like we're always gonna have this experience I know when I meet up with people in real life   maybe five years later, like at a networking event, I'm like, my gosh, you remember we were I was on your podcast four years ago or whatever. And it's just like, you know, it's like we're high school buddies or something. you know,   You know, that's so funny you say that Seth, because I was at a conference and I've seen this dude and it had been so long. He's awesome. And I blanked on his name and I was like, but I like, hadn't seen me yet. So I just went to my episode, scrolled them like that's right. Cause I couldn't put it together. I'm like, why am I playing on it? And we hit it off. went to lunch together. Like it was just awesome. But it's to your point, it's, it's sharing an experience one.   It's learning how to communicate, learning how to listen, and then being able to... That's why I actually like being on this side more, because I get to ask you questions. It's having a master class. I'm learning so much right now, and then I get to share with my audience. It's like, Roman, that was just a great interview. like, dude, I self-interest. I selfishly was just as hyped. I'm so glad you got value out of it. So that's awesome, Seth. Let me ask you. So, know, biggest...   You talked about the capital raising, challenging, having grit, needing grit, having a network, having money, having relationships. On the other side of this is, ah, this isn't for me. Do you have a message for those folks who are saying, you know, if you're an advocating for it and obviously you have a service around it, you've done it yourself. Sure. It's not for everybody.   (Seth Bradley) (46:14.178) Right, but for someone out there who's not thinking this right like I think I was in a meetup There was a gentleman out like 300 something units like single-family homes. I think I think you did it the old-fashioned way old gentleman I'm like, yeah, I'm like damn. what is it? What message you have to like share as far as I? Like pulling on levers, right? That's why a lot of us get into real estate levers being anyone resources capital social capital, etc Can you?   Just give us your take on this lever and the power it has. And if someone's not thinking of this, the power it can have. I you mentioned 120 million in 2022. Like help us understand and grasp that for someone who's thinking still like, oh, I'm going to just refinance. I'm going to flip this home and I'm going to OPM. How important is that?   It's so important. Like I said, it's scale, right? It's scale and speed. And that applies to any business that you're trying to scale. It's speed. Like, can you get there on your own or maybe finding one partner at a time? A lot of times that's where you start. Like if you're fixing and flipping homes, you get to a max and you're like, I'm going to bring in, you know, Joe Shimo or my brother-in-law and they're going to fund this one deal. And you're doing one house at a time, or maybe you're doing two houses and you're doing three, but that takes time.   I mean, it just takes a lot of time to get there. So you're just going to be going like this. Maybe you're going to keep improving and then you're going to have one bad deal and it'll be chopped back down a little bit and they're to keep going. But with other people's money, you go like this, like that you get vertical and you can get, and you can just get economies of scale. can, again, just go with speed and that's what matters in business. Now, maybe that's not for everyone. I do get that. Like, I think if you would have asked me a few years ago, I would have said, this is the only way.   Like this is the only way you have to do it. I don't know if it's necessarily for everyone, but if you do want to get to that next level and you want to get there fast, like you want to achieve it soon, then other people's money is where it's at. Like you have to use it like gasoline on a fire.   (Seth Bradley) (48:21.678) Tell us about the, I recently heard Alex Formozzi say this, and I think he was talking about how people need to realize that a piece of a watermelon is always gonna be greater than a large grass, like grapes or something like that. I was like, oh, that's a very interesting analogy. Can you break down maybe just for us who are not familiar with the split?   when you're raising capital and you have other people's money in play and you know a lot of people talk about assets under management here and there millions here and there but help us understand like what's what's the what's the ratio you helped a lot of clients if someone's a GP on a hundred million dollar deal or a ten million dollar deal how much are they actually taking home right like how much do I make because you know you see a lot even on social like   I think that's very interesting for us because you know, we got into the space and we're super lean, but at the same time our margins are ridiculous and it's not about how many doors someone how much profit we make per each, you know, property with all these insurance companies who are paying us like five X what you would traditionally pay. So it's never been about a door contest for us, but that's very prevalent in the industry. Like, we got assets on a management, you know, 20 million here, 120 million. But how much would one.   for someone who's listening, or maybe you're not thinking, said pour gasoline on it, how much am I actually taking home, let's say on a $100 million raise, or on a 20 million, 10 million? What's the good ratio? Like what am I making? And then what's the upside of that? And why is it beneficial for me to really pay attention to this? Especially if I am for profit and money driven, and I understand the opportunity that might be at stake here.   For sure, man. And you're kind of opening up a can of worms, right? So we'll see where we take this. the general idea here is you're actually not allowed to raise capital without a license. So just like being a doctor or a dentist or an attorney, you have to have a license to be able to raise capital. And it's called a broker dealer or potentially an RIA, a registered investment advisor. So if you're not one of those people, if you don't have a license, you need to have an exemption from having   Ruben Kanya (50:41.814) that license. Now, if it's your, this is speaking in generalities, but if it's your own deal, if it's your own fund, if it's your own syndication, if you're the one buying the property, that's an exemption. You're exempted. You can raise capital for your own deal and that's okay. And that's kind of the co-GP concept that we talk about sometimes. I actually don't like to say co-GP because to me it's a fallacy. There's no such thing as a co-GP. You're either a GP and an active partner.   or you're not. And what's a co GP. So we call co GPS or the way that the industry tends to frame them as kind of these small capital raisers, right, these small capital raisers that come in and raise a little bit of capital, and they don't participate in the deal in any other way. So they don't provide any services, they don't do any of   I got got I got rich friends Right you call me you say Ruben. Can you code GP this? know you can probably bring us an extra 50 million to the table Co GP or you're saying is actually not kosher   It depends. So it all depends on how you structure that deal. So if you're bringing a large amount of capital and you're only bringing capital, what you're going to want to do is negotiate managerial or voting rights within that legal entity that you're partnering with. So maybe they're the operating partner and you're the capital partner. And that's okay. So long as you as the capital partner have some sort of like meaningful voting and managerial rights. So that's kind of what private equity does, right? They come in, they raise capital.   And that's all they do is provide capital. But guess what? In those legal documents, if something goes wrong, let's say with the property or whatever the asset is, they have takeover rights. They can come in and manage the property and take over the asset management if they want to. Those rights are baked into the legal documentation. And that's what makes it okay, because they are an active partner because they have those managerial and or voting rights. But when you come in as a, let's say a smaller partner, and all you're doing is bringing in capital,   Ruben Kanya (52:41.1) and you're not doing anything else. So you haven't negotiated any meaningful rights to make decisions or to manage. you don't actually manage the asset. You don't actually attend the meetings. You don't do anything except, here's my 500,000 bucks from my investors. And then you walk away. That's actually not legal. And a lot of people call that the Code GP model. But actually, you're either an active partner in the deal or you're not.   Would it change Seth if I, it sounds like what you're saying is I'm bringing 500K and then I'm just leaving. I'm just like, here you go. Here's, I'm just hooking you up. Would that change if I put my own money into the deal? Now I'm an LP or no, there's more complicated.   Now you're, yeah, now you're an LP because it's your money. So you're just an investor.   Right. you're saying I could, yeah. So you're saying the difference between the example you just gave is the fact that that person never had money in, they just brought money in. That's none of their own money. And then they didn't do anything. You're saying that's a red flag for lack of better words, if they don't have the proper, I guess, voting rights, manager rights, et cetera. Is that an accurate recap?   Yeah, I can use my own capital. I can put my own half a million dollars into somebody's deal and be a passive investor. And that's okay. I'm not raising capital. That's my capital. But if I said, okay, here's $250,000 from my mom and $50,000 from Rubin and another $100,000 from this person and that person. And I put it in a LLC or I just bring them into the deal. Then that is raising capital. You're raising capital from other people. And that's, that's the difference there.   (Seth Bradley) (54:14.254) Yeah, so it's almost like you could be stacking, you know, people are a bunch of people are recruiting for the fund, but those folks are not on there as investors. It's aggregated funds, essentially, which could create a problem, right? Is that what you're saying? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Very interesting. I never even thought of that case study. Yeah.   Yeah, I didn't even ask your question though, which was how much money can you make? Right? So typically, typically, and again, we're putting securities laws aside here. We're just talking about kind of industry norms, we'll call it. Maybe 30 % or so is put aside for the capital raising. So 30 % of the GP. let's say there's a syndication where you do a 70 30 split, 70 % goes to the investors, 30 % goes to the general partners. Well,   If you bring in, let's say, 100 % of the equity, you bring in all of it, then you'll probably be allocated about 30 % of the general partnership. So 30 % of the 30 % in that example. So you get 9 % of the deal.   What did you mean by 100 % of the equity amount following?   So if you had to raise, let's say you're closing on a $10 million property and you need to raise $4 million to close it, or let's say the down payment plus capital improvements, something like that, and you bring in the full $4 million, you brought in 100 % of the equity needed to close the deal.   Ruben Kanya (55:38.574) Yep. And then overall, so and then what has happened now? So what's going on now or what's happened over the last couple of years is that there have been some very well-known syndicators in the space get investigated by the SEC and people have said, all right, well, now we need to figure out a different way to raise capital, compliantly. Right. And the answer is actually always been out there, but it's had some difficulties and that's a fund to fund. So   people out there, they've heard of a fund to fund. This is more a more prominent way, a more compliant way to raise capital nowadays. But I'll tell you what, comparing it to the CoGP model, it's more complicated. It costs more money and it's just a lot more work for you as the capital aggregator or the fundraiser. So people have avoided it because they've just done the CoGP model because it's easier. But now that the CoGP model isn't as available, people are still doing it, but people are kind of shying away from it because of the   the investigations that went on. Fund to Fund has become a lot more prominent and you have companies like Tribe Best who I'm chief legal officer for, full disclosure. We put together a Fund to Fund product where we make it cheaper, easier, more compliant, and you can just do it very easily and within five business days because we do everything for you. So instead of you having to find a securities attorney and a CPA, open a business banking account, file your LLC,   Walk your investors through the signing ceremony and get them to wire your funds. We call that herding the cats. Do all these things and put your cap table together, do your distributions, all those things that you'd normally have to do. Tribe Best does. And we do it for a very low price in comparison to what I would charge you if you came to me as a law client.   Interesting so I like how you just covered the foundation there. Let's go back to the 10 million dollar example, right? Yeah, you put in equity is you said so this is me saying Equity to close is 4 million. And so I'm bringing in 4 million just so I'm clear is do I have and this is my assumption that a Lot of syndicators are also raising the capital for that 4 million. Is that not correct?   Ruben Kanya (57:55.032) Typically, yes.   Okay, so then you're saying, just want to make sure I understand all the different use cases. So I could be 4 million and then the Delta, I can either traditional lending and or have my investors cover the Delta, which would be the 6 million. Is that accurate?   Yeah, I mean you can find however you need to fill in that the debt the equity stack Well wouldn't be the equity stack the full capital stack. Yeah   Typical though, it more typical that if I'm the GP to $10 million asset that I'm actually going to raise, I don't know, $3.5 million and put 500K on my own money? Is that more typical than I'm...   I would say that is typical. Yep. That is more typical. would say prime example idea, $10 million property, get a $6 million, maybe a little bit more, $6, $7 million loan. And then you raise three or $4 million, whether that's from passive investors or whether that's your own capital that you put in, or maybe you bring in fund to fund investors.   (Seth Bradley) (59:02.478) Okay, so that's where I wanted to ask the question, fund to fund. Tell me how that's different than the, bring in 3.5, I bring in 500K to the table, I raised 3.5, now I have a $4 million down payment, we borrow $6 million on debt. Tell me how the fund to fund is different than that approach.   Sure. So that deal that you just described, we like to call that when we're talking it with respect to fund to funds, the target deal. So that's the target deal. Like that's the entity and the structure that's buying the asset. So they're buying this $10 million asset. We're actually at the fund to fund level, one level down from there. So we create our own legal structure, our own LLC, and you have your own manager, a fund manager who brings in their own passive investors and they put them in that fund to fund legal entity.   And then the fund of fund legal entity actually invests into the target deal. So they come into the target deal as basically a big passive investor. let's say they aggregate a half a million dollars where typically, you know, the average investor might be $50,000. So these are bigger investors. It's just one big investor to the lead sponsor or the target deal, but it's really, yeah, it's really another fund is what it is. So it's a fund of a fund or a fund of a syndication.   That is so interesting. so you're saying that is becoming more prevalent. You fund a fund. I mean, I would imagine that's where not to get so far off topic, but that's where a lot of big companies who are deploying their excess capital or investing in. I I guess it's in multiple portfolios, right? Investing, right? mean, there's commercial, there's insurance. I mean, there's so many different things you can invest your money into.   Yes.   (Seth Bradley) (01:00:46.656) Is that all fun to fun families essentially?   For sure. For sure. Yeah. You know, you can call it a fund. There's different kinds of fund to funds. Fund funds aren't new. They've just been deployed in a different way recently or more prominently or more often, which is this kind of this I'll call it. We like to call it an SPV fund to fund single purpose vehicle fund to fund. Now other people will call it that same thing and mean something different, but the way that we mean it is that we create this fund to fund entity.   And it's a single purpose vehicle, meaning it's created only to invest in one deal. So that $10 million multifamily deal, we create a fund of an SPV fund of fund only to invest in that one

Title: The Hidden Cost of "Family & Friends" Capital and How to Avoid It with Chris Salerno Summary: The video features a compelling discussion between host Chris CNO and Seth, an experienced SEC attorney with a diverse background that includes starting as a nightclub promoter and ultimately becoming a successful attorney specializing in securities law. The conversation dives into Seth's personal journey, detailing how his upbringing in West Virginia shaped his perspective on success, risk-taking, and accountability. He describes the importance of working hard and not making excuses, emphasizing that anyone can succeed regardless of the challenges they face in life. The two also touch on the realities of the current economic climate in the U.S., specifically in California, the significant changes in real estate investing due to securities regulations, and how entrepreneurs should approach risk in their business endeavors. The dialogue seamlessly transitions to discussing their shared experiences in fitness, a matter that Seth and his wife have prioritized through their ownership of Burn Boot Camp franchises while navigating the challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic. As they conclude their conversation, they reflect on the shifting dynamics of real estate and the importance of investor communication and education during economically unpredictable times. Links to listen and subscribe: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/fund-it-scale-it-close-it-unlocking-real-estate-success/id1760606484?i=1000680833837 Links to watch and subscribe: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iR8RiGLlZMA&t=2732s Bullet Point Highlights: Seth's Early Journey: Seth was adopted from South Korea and raised in rural West Virginia, leading to his realization of hard work and accountability. Nightlife Promotions: Before becoming an attorney, Seth thrived as a nightclub promoter in Los Angeles, reinforcing his skills in sales and networking. Law School Transition: After dropping out of medical school, Seth shifted focus from medicine to business and law, finding success in both fields. Importance of SEC Compliance: The conversation highlights common mistakes investors make regarding securities regulations and emphasizes how crucial proper legal guidance is in real estate. Pandemic Pivot: Seth and his wife managed to keep their fitness business afloat during COVID-19 by pivoting to online workouts, showcasing resilience and adaptability. Investor Communication: Both host and guest stress the significance of maintaining clear and consistent communication with investors, particularly in a volatile economic climate. Future of Real Estate: Discussion around California's real estate laws, particularly the push for accessory dwelling units (ADUs), presents new opportunities for investment. Transcript: it's something there you can make an excuse about and that's the issue about today's society is that everyone wants excuses we mentally uh wired to have negativity in our life I actually started promoting for nightclubs you were a promoter I was a promoter for nightclub life is The Hunger Games business is The Hunger Games the space that you and I are in private Equity it's the Hunger Games my knowledge number one thing SEC really gets you on as misrepresentation welcome to the crystalo show your goto for real estate   business health Health and Family Insight I'm Chris CNO CEO of QC Capital each episode we explore the latest trends and expert advice from industry leaders whether you're an investor entrepreneur or seeking balance this show provides an inspiration you need join us in elevate your game on the Chris alno show welcome to the chriso show I'm your host Chris alno very excited to have a friend of mine we've known each other for what five six years now think so man time flies uh when you're having fun uh Seth on here SEC   attorney doing a bunch of things excited to have him on here a wealth of knowledge Seth thanks so much for joining us dude appreciate you having me on appreciate you reaching out and uh inviting me over for the show most definitely and I'm glad it happened when it did because you're in town you're you're you live out in the beautiful I would say you guys have great weather and great In-N-Out Burger your tax and politics suck but California which is beautiful weather out there you happen to be in Charlotte for Fitness which   we'll touch on here in a second um but I'm glad we were able to make this work absolutely man yeah good timing really good so let's let's give everyone a little background about yourself all the way from you know childhood you know talk to us about that sure man yeah and I think it helps build the story U I'm adopted so I was born in South Korea and adopted a 3 months old and then by two wonderful people in West Virginia rural West Virginia that's different so you know I'm the only Asian in inal West   Virginia yeah so I went to high school with like 18800 kids country country Moon shiners yes for sure for sure good people I love West Virginia love it I love Snowshoe Snowshoe is really good great underrated best best on the East Co or best close to North Carolina I would say unless you get way up North but yeah North Carolina you know anything close snow Sho is where it's at yeah yeah I love it but uh yeah man grew up in Royal West Virginia so wasn't really exposed to entrepreneurship or owning real estate or anything like that   my parents are both Blue Collar uh my dad was a is a coal miner was a Miner is retired now my mom is a grade school teacher so you know I didn't come from are they still in West Virginia yes they are okay they're frequent trips back there you go there you go yeah so wasn't exposed to that stuff so it was all about kind of getting the best job that you could possibly get right talk talk to us about that mentality you were young what age did you come over to us three months three oh three months month   so you didn't even spend time in in South Korea you don't even know of not at all are you curious now you know with you being adopted anything anything about you know where you came from anything like that actually not man you know I I I think a lot of uh adoptees struggle with that yeah um I actually joined a Facebook group one time like with Korean adops and there's like thousands of them in there and I was thinking I'm going to gain some insight from this and but it was like No And it was a lot of uh you know to be blunt a   lot of whining in my mind a lot of crying right I'm about accountability and just going out there and getting it done and you know it's just about you know a lot of I say this all the time you are you can't control the cards you are dealt you can only control how you deal them sure you know you unfor you know unfortunately you it's a great thing it's not unfortunate it's fortunately you were adopted at three months you couldn't control that you couldn't control being born in South Korea and being adopted but you have to   control the cards you were dealt and you've done a phenomenal job you're a badass attorney you know phenomenal job with the cards you were dealt um but I can definitely see being in those type of groups you're going to get a lot of whining and moaning yeah I mean I I think it's you know it's a couple it's it's a couple things right I mean some people have a reason to to quote unquote whine and mo right you know they're they're dealt a bad hand but again like you said you've got to you've got to   play the cards you're dealt right and do the best you can with it and I think that if you are adopted it's easy to go and blame it on that it's it's an easy crutch to lean it's an excuse it's it's something there you can make an excuse about and and and that's the issue about today's society is that everyone wants excuses where mentally uh wired to have negativity in our life and so they're going to make an excuse oh I'm not successful because of this because of this that's a lie you are highly   successful and attorney a beautiful wife doing great things in business and in the real estate industry so you are proof that you can get it done you just have to work hard yeah you just have to work hard you can't blame shift I like to call it you can't blame it on you know the cards you were dealt or you know the things that uh may have happened to you or the situations you're in you've got to just move forward and do the best that you can so dad was a coal miner y mom was a a school teacher what made you want to say hey I'm G to   go into law school and be an attorney yeah it it was a little bit uh a little bit more of a story behind that first of all I went into uh medicine so I wanted to be a doctor all right um well I wouldn't say I wanted to be a doctor it was more like what's the best job that I can get with the mindset that I had my mindset was you know W2 worker type of mindset right like not entrepreneurial not don't take risk and it was and I you know academically it was pretty easy for me so it was just okay what's the best   job you can get is probably being a doctor right like that's kind of the highest calling um and I actually went to med school for a year and a half really yeah and then I dropped out halfway through my second year I literally just got up in the middle of class walked out and said I've I've had it I oh my goodness so I went Premed biology yeah I went Premed biology chemistry and biology whoop my butt so I said okay I'm going to business entrepreneurship switch business entrepreneurship and I said maybe it   wasn't chemistry and biology it was just College in general so I dropped out of college um but you so you got to med school and you're like okay I'm done with this Y and then what yep um honestly that was a turning point in my life I didn't know what I wanted to do right like I committed a a large portion of my life to you know schooling schooling taking the MCAT getting into med school finishing that's not easy either Med school's hard very hard very hard but I've always had an interest in business and real estate just kind of in   the background like I just always had an interest in it um didn't really know how to act on it at the time um so I actually just started enrolling in business classes like immediately just and ended up getting a minor in business for the rest of that year so I I in undergrad classes um and then I started up my MBA actually the following year so got my MBA and then I decided to take it the next step and go ahead and get my law degree because I was still in that same mindset it was like you know this   isn't enough I didn't really know anything about starting a business or anything like that and I just felt like I hadn't done enough so I went ahead and went to went to law school and at that point I did decide I was like look I'm going to I'm going to finish this whether it's the right thing or not um and I was very successful at it I finished towards the top of my class dedicated you know the time and effort it needed um and did really well so love that love that and so getting in what made you want to move out to California   number one on a win man so dropped out of med school kind of took those business classes just trying to figure out what I wanted to to do next on the other side of the world I'm in West Virginia still at this point yeah in West Virginia trying to figure it out and I just knew I needed to get out of there I needed to see more I needed to get out of West Virginia you know it was it was a tough conversation to have right like all my family and friends are there um you know I just dropped out of medical school so now they're like what   the hell is this kid doing you know what I mean like dropping out of med school but they've always been supportive always been supportive always been supportive they never like pushed me into medicine or anything like that and then when I dropped out you know they're still staying supportive but I'm sure in the background they're thinking what the hell are you doing uhoh yeah and then I just decided to up and leave and move to Los Angeles out of nowhere unbelievable unbelievable so you moved out to Los   Angeles yep how was that well I partied for a little bit yeah for a little bit they they know how to party out yeah for a little bit I didn't know what I was going to do I was enrolled um getting my NBA at the time uh mostly online um at Arizona State um so I kept the education going but at the same time I'm in La I'm in a new city I actually started promoting for nightclubs you were a promoter I was a promoter for nightclub for a little over a year in Los Angeles um before I decided hey I got to get my   [ __ ] together well I mean you'll definitely meet a lot of women doing that for sure you get paid basically per head on how many women you bring in the club oh yeah you've got a bottle or two waiting for you every single night y it's actually a pretty nice little lifestyle for somebody in their 20s oh yeah most I I believe it if you want you know if you want to get some experience get out there it's best you can meet a lot of women too yeah and it's a good like uh it's kind of a sales experience   be honest with you you're just for you're like hey I'm getting paid $10 ahead to bring beautiful women to this club I got to go out there and just talk to everybody literally just going out there talking hey you got this come to this club tonight we've got bottles all this kind of stuff and you know wow unbelievable unbelievable so from there you were like okay I got to get my [ __ ] together yeah had to get my [ __ ] together obviously you know I'm still getting educated in back getting my NBA   still kind of keeping the education going oh yeah um but I decided hey I'm going to go to law school so started applying to law schools um ended up getting accepted to a number of ones and I I narrowed it down to USD in San Diego because I wanted to stay in Southern California because I loved it um but I knew I didn't want to be in La so got out of La went down to San Diego because I had visited there a couple times and I just loved it it's just more of a laid-back attitude people were a lot more genuine just a place that I could   see s down at compared to La it's just you know it it it's kind of doggy dog there most oh it is it's a hunger life is The Hunger Games business is The Hunger Games the space that you are you and I are in private Equity it's the Hunger Games yeah you know and and you have to have that mentality you have to be able to survive yeah at the end of the day so from there you're like okay law school it is yep and then you get into law school well in law school or but even prior to that there's so many   different levels of law you can practice yeah what made you you know pick SEC and prior to that did you have any other interest in different type of law yeah I mean generally speaking I want I knew I wanted to get into transactional law I didn't want to be a litigator that's for sure um I was interested in business interested in doing deals those sorts of things so I started out actually at a at a pretty big Law Firm step tone Johnson and ended up doing both real estate and corporate I think that's when we first   met it might have been yeah yeah when when you were cuz they were out what in San Diego or no actually I moved back to West Virginia for that job oh did you okay maybe maybe you maybe you were just finishing there when we met yeah well actually I think we met when I was in probably when I was in Charlotte because I moved to Charlotte for another big Law Firm I think so but anyways yeah so I started kind of more general transactional practice with real estate and corporate and then as I kind of got   more mature and more experienced I started focusing more on the security side nice nice do you you enjoy security side for sure for sure the security side is it it feels a lot more sophisticated um I like the people that I work with in that field a little bit more um but I still have a passion for Real Estate like I still love real estate so even though I'm a Securities attorney it's largely focused on real estate yeah so let's talk about that you know for those individuals that may not know what a   security is most will know what a security is let's talk about that and let's talk about you know the the day-to-day what does a Security attorneys really look like sure sure I mean the easy way to put it for a security because because people kind of miss understand it but if you have passive investors involved at all anywhere anywhere any even if it's one you probably even if it's an LLC yeah you're probably dealing with a security and you're dealing with the SEC regulations and you need a Securities   attorney to advise you because there are lots of things to navigate that you're probably not aware of and that your real estate attorney probably doesn't have the knowledge or know how to to deal with mostely and I see that mistake being made quite a bit oh yeah no I I see that on social media all the time for sure all the time on social media and it comes down to even with words you say like you have to be very very careful you're not misleading whatsoever what do you find uh the most common maybe mistake syndicators or fund   managers do in the syndication world yeah I mean I think the most common mistake is just not even realizing that they're under the Securities regime right like they're just like oh well I'm just raising some you know I'm getting some investors from family friends and they think because it's family and friends maybe that it's okay but it's not it doesn't it doesn't matter who they are it doesn't matter if it's your your family or friends or you know stranger off the streets you're dealing with Securities yeah and that and you   have to deal with those Securities regulations to come along with it so I I think just not knowing yeah that or maybe kind of turning a blind cheek to it is is more like it I think people nowadays have a pretty good idea of because it is kind of out there now right everyone's on social media they're all talking about it the biggest thing too is is you don't want to not know and you don't want to turn that cheek because um something to know is that SEC has unlimited money and they will milk you dry so you might as well spend the   money ahead of time find you a good SEC attorney like Seth you know to make sure that they don't milk you dry because they will milk you dry and they'll throw you in a little white little 4x6 cell and it's not going to be fun if you didn't know they can print money yeah so so if you're you're going up against someone who can print money and you necessarily can't print like they can print exactly you know so you got to be careful and that's not to mention the state Commissioners too so you've got the SEC to deal with as   well as the state Securities commissioner which people don't people don't realize that there's a federal and a state level too and and it's super important to understand what state you're doing business in and what state your investors are coming from and and super important to understand at a state and federal level yeah yeah and it's a you know and if something happens it's a full-blown investigation I mean it's just like a subpoena or you maybe you will get subpoenaed uh but they're asking for everything you they're asking   for texts they're asking for emails asking for phone logs they're asking and give it give it to them like don't even because if you don't they're going to get it they're going to find it yeah I mean they're just going to subpoena you on it and the judge is going to make you do it or they'll throw you in jail so no matter what give it to them and then address every single situation you know or issue that they bring up that I I think it's it's super important we just talked about this on the other podcast   is be transparent yeah you know be transparent because if not they're again they have unlimited Capital absolutely you know they're going to come and get you no matter what and and if and if being transparent makes you nervous then maybe think about the way you're doing business right oh yeah I mean you should be able to be transparent and and just like I said on the other podcast big investor that we had or a big investor that we interviewed on the other podcast and I said you know during 2023 as you   know uh interest rates spiked you know little bit yeah just a little bit and a lot of syndicators were not transparent a lot of them went ghost a lot of them were let like screw this I'm done and we double down we went from monthly communication to bi-weekly communication which is a lot more on our team but we did it to overc communicate we didn't have to cuz our SEC doc said just once a month we could have just stick it once a month but we decided to double down yeah and and that right there overc   communicating saying hey this is what's going on it's out of our control but this is what we're doing to make sure we can control this you know I think is super important when you're a syndicator fund manager you name it when you're dealing and having investors involved 100% man 100% And you you are able to control the narrative that way too right like if the the past investors is sitting there and they're reading the headlines and they're seeing the interest rate Spike and they're hearing about multifam going down the tubes and   all this stuff and that's not necessarily true not all those things are true it could be Market specific deal specific those things but if you're not in constant communication with them letting them know hey this is what's going on with this deal maybe this deal is going great maybe this one's not going as well well here's what we're doing to fix it it it goes a long ways 100% their trust you're going to have an upset investor you know you are if you have you know 20 50 100 investors one's going to be upset and if you ever got   audited you can all you can go back and say look at all of our communication right like read through all of our communication we were transparent about everything they're going to look back and be like okay it's this a pissed off investor yeah you for sure for sure and it's super like communication is the biggest uh I think thing that is lost in% capital and also you know being being transparent with the communication because number one from my knowledge number one thing SEC really gets you on is misrepresentation absolutely you know   and if you're not being transparent on it with everything on there boom it it will be a very ugly day for you for sure be transparent you know obviously the things that you leave out as well like if there are key material things that you're leaving out and then you've you've disclosed all these things let's say down the line to the SEC or State commissioner like what in the world this doesn't sound like you're representing this deal like it really was at this time and maybe they're going back and   looking at your records looking your financial statements and seeing how that deal was going it wasn't going great it was going terrible Y and you're saying that everything is great well um that's not being transparent right you know you're not communicating that with the investors right yeah no I think that's super important H you know what have you seen you know over 2023 dealing with you know Securities talking with other fund managers things like that what have you seen you know during last year with   interest rate hikes man it it there was a little bit of blood in streets right you know a lot of these deals um that had shortterm loans that had um you know the the variable loan rates um struggled yeah a lot of people that caps they didn't get rate Caps or the or the cap expired yeah or their cap expired and they didn't have enough money in reserves to buy an extension on the cap you know and and that was huge that was huge thinkk one of our deals uh had 202 for or excuse me uh 2024 expiration and   we bought uh end or beginning of 2023 end of 2022 rate cap to Extended 2025 and I'm so glad we did it yeah you know it was perfect timing because that same rate cap would have been a million and we only spent like 400,000 yeah yeah for sure yeah so you're seeing a little bit of blood in the streets um you know I think right now what's happening banks are allowing for some uh leniency with their loans they don't they don't want to have the property absolutely and it looks it looks terrible if they do have   the property on their balance sheet plus I think they the this go around cuz oh0 wait the first thing they said is we're going to foreclose on everyone we're taking everyone's property then they realize well [ __ ] I got a ton of property and no one wants to buy it yeah you know so I think they've learned their lesson and now they are like okay we don't want to forclosed because no one's going to buy it and if they do buy it we're still going to take a huge loss so let's go ahead and see what we can do   to work things out you know if the property's really really not bad let's see what we can do to work things out because it will rebound it's coming back back around yeah but I do think you know we're kicking the can down the road they're giving extensions those sorts of things and we're all banking that the interest rates are going to go down at some point right so we're hoping for that um I think that they will I think we're going to see one before the election yeah it I think we're going to see a quarter point before the election   I think I think some politics have gotten into drone Pal's head no way yeah I know right no way couldn't I I think they I think they had a nice little cigar dinner or something and and I think they got in his head so I think you'll see one before the election of this year I agree I agree yeah you know it's it's going to be a wild election too not wanting to dive deep into politics but it's definitely going to be a wild one uh talk to us about you know the the California lifestyle what are you what are you doing right now you you   also your wife beautiful wife has a great business you guys are running that's why you're here in Charlotte talk to us a little bit about that and why you guys got into that too yeah so we uh started uh we bought two burn boot camp franchises so uh my wife luckily runs those helped her get them off the ground and now she's crushing it so letting her run with those and uh they're going really really well um lifestyle in California you can't beat it man I mean San Diego is unbelievable oh it's beautiful down there the weather   everything kind of like how you said earlier in the show I mean if you if you can afford to live there one because it is really expensive oh I know and if you can deal with the politics then there's no better place in the United States for sure really there's not you know I just wish they had better politics over there um but yeah the weather out there is so beautiful you really can't beat it you can't beat it you know let's talk about health because you guys own those burn boot camps they're huge in Charlotte um   their headquarters here in Charlotte that's where it was founded um and tell us a little bit about what burn boot camp is and then also I'm going to want you to touch on like how are you optimizing your health to to be the phenomenal husband that you are to operate you know businesses and getting involved in real estate talk to us about that sure man yeah burn boot camp it's a boutique Fitness franchise um you know it's it's Boot Camp style workouts workouts the same um it's incredible and and it's focused on women it's focused   on empowering inspiring so if you're a single man you should go absolutely absolutely I will say I've been taking up hot yoga lately Hot Yoga is good and for those single men out there go to hot yoga just saying there we go yeah Gym's not a bad place to pick up women yeah plus the great thing too is that there's no filters you can't have filters at the gym and more than likely they're not going there with makeup on so it's it's a good place to filter out women you want there you go a little different than the apps right yeah I   know so so it's geared more towards women it is geared towards more towards women um but it I work out there every day I mean that's where I work out now like that's that's what I do I love the total body workouts I love the total body workouts you go in like an orange theory you go in one hour boom you're done you're going about your day exactly hour in and out of there and for guys like us that have a million things to do like it's unbeatable and I want somebody telling me what to do I was just going   to say that I don't want and I I work out by myself now and it's so much easier showing up tell me to shut up go do this do that get it done boom okay I'm all about my day you know tell me what to do right just tell me what to do I I will I will tell you I've been to the gym and there's been times I've had business on my mind that I'm like wait okay so I'm at the gym what do I need to do like you're sitting like a 24-hour fitness or or yeah something like I work out at lifetime I live right behind it   and I walk in there sometimes because of my long days and I'm like [ __ ] what do I want to do today like I because my mind is business business business it's so much easier showing up having someone said hey we got all these set workouts you're going to knock these out and be done they make they make you focus on the workout at that point instead of you know business or whatever listen to a podcast or something what got you guys interested in opening up one of those I hope you're enjoying today's episode   just a quick reminder to make sure you never miss an episode stay connected with us by following us on social media platforms Instagram Twitter threads Tik Tok at Chris saloor and don't forget to subscribe to YouTube to catch the video versions of our episode you'll get exclusive content behindth scenes footage and much more head over to YouTube chrisoro now and hit the Subscribe button stay tuned because we've got more great content coming right after this actually cuz my wife worked out at one   here in Charlotte really so she was working out at one she was working out at one here in Charlotte and then we moved back to the West Coast cuz I took a job here in Charlotte for a little bit then we moved back to the West Coast and I was look looking to start a business I was looking for something recession resistant outside of real estates I was already investing in real estate but looking for a business outside of real estate I looked at liquor stores I looked at laundromats um and then she   turned me on to burn boot camp which is not recession resistance let's put it that way but at the same time they're really good salesman look like a great business model turned out to be awesome although oh most definitely yeah circumstances weren't great we opened two weeks before Co hit oo but talk to us about that you know opening a and we all know California they they lock down like oh yeah they lock down you can't even go get your mail out of your house um talk to us about that opening up a   business right before covid and being in California where you know they were basically Nazis out there yeah for sure I mean we opened up two weeks in um and we didn't have any paying members because we were all on uh they were all on like a free membership TR one yeah so then we had to shut it down we had to move inside we had to move outside we did online workouts every single day uh pivoted yeah we pivoted we did whatever we had to do to keep the lights on wow um so literally our lead trainer and   business partner was in our apartment leading online workouts and me and my wife Alison are in the background like like a yeah like a music workout video Yeah in the backgound but it did keep us in shape during Co cuz we worked out every single day because we had to make those videos you had to yeah but it was I mean it was ridiculous out in California man they shut down the beaches they shut down the water you weren't allowed to be in in the ocean what you weren't allowed to be in the ocean cuz they said it got transmitted   through the water at one point so are you serious so they kicked the Surfers out of the water and you kick the Surfers out of the water in San Diego you're you got some pissed off people you got a big problem but there are like all these you know Instagram videos the cops chasing Surfers down the beach and the guy just dropping his surfboard and running it was it transmitted through the water yeah insane but that's new heard that inside outside online inside outside eventually we we blacked out our   windows so you couldn't see in it because we got we got actually attacked by U an Instagram person that ended up going viral because he said hey you're the reason that we're the the disease is spreading because of businesses like yours and they filmed us from the outside into the windows and it went viral no way and it went viral and then finally we we ended up blacking out the windows and just stayed open cuz there's at that point it was like either Do Your Own Thing yeah and stay open oh yeah or   we're going out of business yeah you got to shut shop and this is a venture you just opened up no one knew Co is coming and all a sudden Co boom co comes and wow so you bled out the windows and you said hey we're just going to do it it's like a Speak Easy now yeah you guys want to work out we called it that at one point really speak easy easy workout like underground workouts underground haircuts there all kinds of that stuff going on it was insane that's W if you just have to think about that that's   just wild yeah like you know just for your basic necessities to stay in shape and things like that turns out if you got sunshine and you worked out you were a little bit more immune to the disease oh really yeah interesting interesting wow and you weren't locked in doors and you weren't allowed to work out yeah well problems wow I think we can go on a rabbit hole about that damn I'm not a big fan of I will say I do think there's another one going to be coming you know I think there's another pandemic that   will be coming um because of what happened with the first one so let's see uh let's just see what happens let's see if we handle it better this time uh we shall see it depends on whose's President I I think that's that's true yeah um definitely depends on them so you guys now you know past covid everyone's now out and about in California everything's been lifted and now those are up and running are those are the only ones really on the west coast right or um I think there are let's see two four five I think there's   six in California right now six now yeah cuz like you said it was based in Charlotte mainly east coast yeah yeah I think there's about 400 locations open now very cool um actually I think they're approaching 500 locations now yeah um so it's expanding pretty quickly at this point you know Fitness franchises have have rebounded completely from Co at this point oh my God yeah I think I think the fitness industry and I'm seeing it more and more people are taking it a lot more serious yeah they're they're watching what they   eat and I I said this multiple times with my son he's four and a half uh he watches what um or I make sure whatever I give him I watch very closely goldfish now and if you look and I swear this is brand new if you look at any ingredients now it says bio oh what is what's it say bio biograde or bio bio bioengineered food so it says it's been bioengineered the food that's been in there yeah so if you look go next time you go to the grocery store look at the ingredients and now it says it in bold you can pick up some gold Vision it says   bioengineered chemicals hm in the food interesting it's wild even her Pedialite had it said bioengineered chemicals now I swear that just popped up you know in one of these crazy bills cuz I've never ever seen it say bioengineered food on there uh and I steer very far away from it I'm big on those factors Factor meals now okay I have you heard of those I have y so I get those now once a week it's like 141 bucks uh lunch and dinner CU I don't eat breakfast so lunch and dinner 141 bucks and I'm thinking in my   head well if you and I went out to dinner it'd be about a 100 bucks right now so I get uh 14 meals per week lunch and dinner for 141 bucks I'm like I can't beat that yeah like that's good I throw them in the microwave 2 minutes boom done yeah we do pre-made meals all the time but we switch like we've done Factor before bur boot Camp's actually coming out with some in the fall we we got the test drive and they're actually pretty delicious cuz yeah we're pretty picky about these types of meals you   have to be but they're actually really good are they so they're coming out they're coming out with their own branding yep oo that'll be exciting and that is that's not just for boot camp people that's for everyone yeah you can just get on the app and order them this fall I believe really oh I'm going to have to switch it up and try man they're good but especially with pring these days it makes sense plus how busy you and I are yeah I mean so are you meal prepping or are you using these type of things my wife does some meal prepping   on Sunday got to love her yeah that's basically it every once in a while I volunteer to grill out but man it's it's it's a Time suck right like it to feed yourself at home like it sounds even going out you know for a lunch meeting it's like two hours like I have to block two hours off on my day for a lunch meeting yeah yeah I mean trying to cook an individual meal every single night let alone like lunch as well and even and then you got to clean all that Tak in just takes so much time we we don't   have time for it no I I I don't either that's why I start a factor where I throw it in 2 minutes boom I eat it and I'm done and I'm like well I threw it away boom no cleaning done I love it I love it so you guys are doing great things with the bur boot camp out there what do you what are you seeing uh let's go back to the real estate market what are you seeing in the near future I know we talk about interest rates lowering you know what are you seeing what are you doing right now in the real estate   market as well yeah um currently a fund manager for $20 million fund it's an Adu Fund in California so we're doing basically in California just like everything else difficult to do anything right like the government's got their handed and everything oh my God so very difficult to get any kind of construction done off the ground it's mind bogling we're buying a car wash and Cape car right now and it's finished yeah well they came out for the co they don't like the garage doors and so now we have to order new or the the seller   we're buying it from the seller seller has to now order new garage doors it won't be here till end of October and I'm like like seriously the garage doors will only be down between 9:00 at night and and 7 in the morning like it's middle the night no one's going to even look at them yeah like and you want these fancy garage like come on really yeah you know so and I can't imagine out in California yeah and if you get the coastal commission involved it takes literally years and years to do any so   anyways the reason I brought that up is because the adus accessory dwelling units they actually have a bill in California that they past and they basically just FastTrack those types of developments so if you want to add they they view it as a a solution to housing so the lack of housing yeah um so they let you build on uh turn your single family property into a duplex or even build duplex on the on the property if you have a big enough lot um so you can turn one units into four and rent the back out or rent them all out yep   exactly so it's a it's a quick way to get the construction approved get it done I don't know how long this wind is going to be open so you guys taking advantage so we're taking advantage of it right now love that love that and is your main focus down there in that San Diego Market um it's actually Riverside County okay yeah where and where I'm Riverside county is is East just East adjacent of Los Angeles County okay right so a little cheaper housing so it makes a little bit more sense when you get closer to the coast it stops making   a lot of sense you got to go for some more creative Place cheaper like 5 million probably yeah yeah yeah just a little $5 million 5 million um but but cheaper housing there so you guys are finding opportunity now is that bill all for California where you can for all California and then the local um you know counties and municipalities can kind of change that and you they can't make it any more restrictive but they can make it even less restrictive okay good and so are you uh are you guys doing long-term rentals there are you   doing short-term like airbnbs um semi longterm right so we're putting in a 10-year fund so you know we're getting we're buying the property we're renovating it putting ad used on the properties and then renting them for a few years and then unloading them towards the back end of the the fund I love love that and with these you're all buying them in the same area yeah yeah Riverside County generally I mean it's you know spread across how are you guys finding good deals in this market you know it's so hard multif family no you   name it any any type of real estate there's always a huge disc connect between a seller and a buyer how are you guys finding good deals right now uh my business partners man like I you know I'm handling legal I'm working with some Capital I'm I'm advising on on raising Capital those sorts of things um but my business partners are real estate brokers and they' been doing uh this type of thing identifying properties that are perfect for adus um for a number of years at this point so they're they're the main source they they get   first look I love I love that how how is it finding you know great business partners you know it's just like a marriage you you got to test it out you got to see how it is because a Business Partnership is like a marriage how is it you know and how did you guys link up yeah um networking event so I met I met these bus business partners actually at a wealth without Wall Street event that I was speaking at nice yeah yeah so I met them hit it off with them I think the first I've been in Good and Bad   Business Partnership relationships yeah I I think you you have to go through bad ones you do because if if you don't go through bad ones you don't know what what can happen to you and I would rather go through bad ones early on to make sure that when if we went into business we have the right contract the right verbage all of that in place because at the end of the day again just like if you would get married you're signing a contract to your wife you know in most circumstances I highly recommend   sign a prup I'm not a big fan I don't believe in marriage uh but a Business Partnership is a marriage yeah you know it is it is and building off of that like you have to like the person I think that you're going into oh 100% you have to hang out with them like you you have to be very cold cordial you know talk you guys have to like the same things if you just like a relationship if you guys don't like the same things if you don't like if one party likes working out the other one doesn't other one doesn't eat   healthy the other one eats healthy like it's just not going to work out it's not not not a long-term Business Partnership right like it can't just be transaction maybe shortterm really quick turnaround time but if it's going to be a long-term Business Partnership you got to like that person you generally like him you're like hey I I like this dude I'll go have a beer with him this is great this is I'll travel with him my business partner we travel around the world together we hang out together we go to   the same events together we like the same things you know it's it's amazing that's super important part because I think communication back to communication is huge right like and if you don't like that person it's going to feel forced and awkward and kind of going over a hump to try to communicate with them and that's the key you got to stay transparent you got to communicate because again if you have that separation you're not communicating you're not transparent who knows what the other person is doing at that point   oh agreed agreed most definitely I mean my business partner we talk about 20 20 25 times a day yeah and it's and most of it's business but other thing is personal hey how's the family doing how the kids doing you know anything going on blah blah blah but it's super important to also let your business partner know what's going on with you personally I think that's I think that's important as well because if if you're going through you know knock on wood you know something with your marriage I need   to know that I feel you know even if it's getting a little rough I need you to say hey you know my marriage is getting a little rough because I need to know okay if you're not here at business 100% I'm going to step up 120% to make sure that we're still good you know I think that's important AB for sure for sure and we do that even with like our team so with bur boot camp with some other businesses that we have we have leadership meetings and we make sure that everyone sh kind of personal things   what's going on keeping that transparent relationship up because it's it's important it affects um your personal life affects your business life as much as you don't wanted to most definitely no you're spot on there so I always say not all not all chefs not all chefs should own the restaurant not all attorneys should own their own practice you know what has really helped you to really own your own business and and you know go through the trial and errors and things like that to you know survive Co   to to run a successful you know Law Firm things like that yeah I mean I think one of the key things for entrepreneurs and people starting businesses you got to be a little bit crazy right you got to be a little bit crazy you got to be willing to take risks right you got to assess risks and and take them you can't be afraid to to just go out there and take action and do it um I think that attorneys on the other hand are trained not to take risks right they are trained to assess the risks but they're really   leaning to risk averse risers really leaning towards no whereas an entrepreneur is leaning towards yes yes so I think that I strike a really good balance between those two that's good um and I think that's what allows me to be an attorney at heart but then you know also be an entrepreneur and take risks and I think that's what my business partners appreciate as well I love that um I figure out how can we do it rather than can we do it right like that most attorneys will be like well we can't do it because of this or I advise   you not to do it because of that I will say look we can do it here's how yep right and here are the risks oh most definitely now you as the business partner if you're my partner we need to decide is it worth it or not yeah right cuz there's there's always risk involved so do you want to take no matter what you do there is risk you just have to make sure you take the calculated risk that's right you know and sometimes you may think it's calculated at that point in the moment and it turns out to not be   right so you have to have the ability to Pivot very quickly like you guys did with Co you have to have that ability to handle that stress and handle that pressure so you can power through for sure absolutely yeah no I love that where do you see you you think you know where do you see yourself uh you know growing uh triest you know where where do you see yourself with that and on to the Future yeah so I joined tribe vest of July of last year nice so it's been about um been about one year and we have   really developed um you know this this fund of Fund in a box right like you've probably heard about how the market is really shifting from the cgp model right to fun of funds because the is kind of you know they kind of started investigating people and you know these folks that had these cgps that were just raising capital and not doing anything else which everyone knows you're not supposed to do but everybody does it anyways yep um started looking for another solution and the fund the funds model has always been it is the solution   it's always been the solution it's not a new thing it's just a more you just people didn't know of it at the time at a high level yeah and and honestly it it's more complicated it's more expensive it's more expensive and there's just you know a lot more things to go into it so people just took the easy route did theot quote CP rout and and it you know I guess I'll say that it worked up until this point right like I guess you could say you got away with it or what have you um but the market is is   is Shifting or has shifted to the co or to the fun everything is fun to funs now that's all I'm seeing is fund to funds models training programs you know and fund to funds things like that you know it's definitely questionable I think as an investor I would ask if if I'm talking to a sponsor hey are you the lead sponsor or you a fun of funds because in in my eyes you're paying double fees you know to get into those opportunities don't get me wrong people need to make money people are giving you   great opportunities to invest and build your Capital um but there's definitely questions I feel like definitely needs to be involved yeah I mean there's always questions right I mean even when everyone was using the CP model it's like well who's actually the operating partner who's the lead sponsor who's actually going to execute the business plan after we closing this property and I think a lot of cgps were kind of masquerading as the operating partner like hey this is my deal I found the property I'm going to be doing this   executing this business plan in reality there's a lead sponsor who found the deal who's signing the loan documents who's going to execute the business plan and sometimes there passive investors don't even know they don't even know and and fund manager like you said kind of same it's the same thing right the fund manager should not be representing that they're the operating partner Som or anything like that um I know at tribe vest we we really emphasize that because the the vehicle that we use is an SPV   fund of fund where the the fund of fund is designed only to invest in one specific deal so we're not it's not a discretionary fund where you can do whatever we can do whereever whatever you want invest you know multiple deals or anything it is one deal so you're really just serving as a conduit uh to invest in a Target deal so it's very clear to the pive investors very spe specific if you invest in this fund of fund all your capital is going into this deal and we disclose those deal documents as well so those offering   documents are an exhibit to the fund of fund offering documents most definitely no I think that's super important and we have a fund that we've put together for car washes and before we really truly launch the fund we have we have those deals locked under and we're like look these are the deals we may add some more deals but these are the specific deals that we are buying and that the capital is going into yeah yep yeah for I think that's super important so you guys are really taking advantage of this   opportunity out in California um you see it definitely growing you know with your guys's portfolio out there oh for sure for sure I mean the fun to funds model we we've made it affordable right so the the problems with it were that it's complicated it's expensive those are the two B two biggest things you've got to get your if you're a fund manager who used to be a cgp depending on the lead sponsor to do everything for you now you've got to do all those things yeah accounting you know all bookkeeping all   of that you got to open a business banking account you got to form your LLC you've got to find a Securities attorney you've got to find a CPA you've got to manage your investors you got to find a platform all those things that the lead sponsor usually does yeah and then you're going to have to pay depending on the attorney you know anywhere from 15 to 30,000 absolutely uh you know on average some are even 50,000 from what I hear but normally the head attorney who's running the whole syndication will   have a deal where you can do a fund of funds at a cheaper amount but it's going to cost maybe 15 20,000 for you as a fund manager to open up your own fund right and you know that some CPS former CPS can't really raise Capital right like they own a deal and they say hey I can raise a million bucks easy and then they come up with 100,000 bucks or zero yeah right so if you do that with a fund of funds well now you an attorney 15,000 bucks or 25,000 bucks and you didn't raise any Capital you're screwed that's   a lot of money out of your pocket when you weren't able to get paid on that deal yep um but what we've done at triest is combined all all those things together love that we you with triest it's a fun to fun in a box it's basically done for you kind of a done for you program you know you you get your k1s we open your business banking account we form your LLC we do your offering documents we on board your investors so we send out electronic signatures of the offering documents quote unquote hurting the cats right   getting getting them to wire their funds basically taking the place of an investor relation which I will tell you I love our investors that will sign and wire right then and there but we do have those sum that will sign and then the wire is like pulling teeth and it comes to a point where I'm like look like I feel like I'm stepping my boundaries by keep asking you hey why are your Capital we need you know it's very difficult sometimes yeah it is it is and I can feel for him a little bit especially the first time   around ,000 bucks you're like whoa this is crazy wiring to a stranger or somebody you might have just had a couple of contacts you know we we advertise heavily on social media we only accept accredited investors as a 506c so we can advertise we advertise heavily on social media um I don't actually to be honest with you I don't think I've ever done a 506b that's awesome that's a great that's place to play I always6 coun people to do five sixc and only accept credit investors that's going to keep you safe yeah 100% you know and   it's it's a lot easier um but yeah you know I think it's it's super important to go that route and even with those new investors I definitely understand you know 50 200 300 you know 500,000 is a lot of capital from someone you you met on social media that's why you ask the right questions that's why you get references you understand the business model business strategy and at the end of the day though you have to take a risk you have to take a risk and a leite got the trigger and just do it yep got   to take action I love that you guys are doing that all inone I think that's huge yeah yeah and going back to to pricing man you the last Law Firm that I worked at huge Law Firm top three law firm in the world we charged $75,000 you bullsh out of the gate for a set of s now this was at the lead sponsor level but a lead sponsor documents and that's just for the initial drafts and then it's charged per hour no way yeah get started just to get started people don't realize how expensive creting a fund is it's   expensive yeah yeah and then some people you know there are you know these Boutique firms I mean even my Boutique firm we do it at a much lower cost and people are like whoa that's so expensive because they just haven't seen it I'm like you have no idea how expensive it actually can be oh I know do you do you see yourself uh going into any other practice of law oh I don't think so secur is where it's at man I mean I've I'm a fund manager I've syndicated deals myself as a lead sponsor you know I've   worked as a Securities attorney now for a number of years so it's it's kind of where my interest and my legal practice have kind of combined how do how do you keep up with your energy and your mindset your your your high energy your great mindset how do you keep up with that and cultivate that man I think you know we kind of touched on it before but we didn't quite get around to it it a lot of it is just trying to take care of yourself staying healthy man getting sleep that's super important right I   think a lot of entrepreneurs run themselves into the ground and they don't sleep man I don't care what time I get to bed I'm sleeping 7 hours so I I set my alarm clock for 7 hours after I really you do that after I lay down interesting I'm complete opposite oh yeah uh no matter what time I go to bed I wake up at 6:00 a.m. no matter what time uh Stephanie can tell you I'll send her emails at 3:00 4 a.m. in the morning you might get 2 hours might get 10 hours yep no never 10 no never o never over   seven okay I can't get over seven hours yeah I if I get over seven hours I feel joggy I feel like I've slept I've wasted my day um even on Saturdays and Sundays I will wake up boom and you know if whoever's in the my girl who's in the bed I'm in in my office at the home working you know at 6:00 a.m. on a Saturday that's how I'm wired if we get home at 1:00 from an evening you know out with friends which I rarely do 6:00 a.m. I'm up ready to go that's awesome man that's awesome and I think what helps you know I don't drink yeah don't   drink alcohol I don't care to um you know I drink water I drink too much lattes yeah uh but uh but yeah don't drank alcohol and I think that's helped tremendously sure not being in my system yeah that there's a huge movement now right towards not drinking my what's this new there's this new uh drink everyone's getting it's uh it's not it's we all know a virgin drink meaning no alcohol but a mocktail oh yeah every I'm hearing this everywhere everyone's just saying they're getting mocktails cuz they don't want to drink it there's like   mocktail bars there are I think there's some in Charlotte that are mocktail bars and they don't serve any alcohol at all um and I think a lot of people again I don't know if it was Co or whatever but a lot of people are very conscious with their health they're watching what they eat even you know with go again going to these grocery stores next time you go to the grocery store look at that this is bio-engineered chemicals you know a lot of people are watching that in what they're putting into their system for   sure for sure people are much more aware of it I mean I I'm a drinker I do drink which is fine yeah but I do I you know I did dry January and honestly you can just you can tell I mean you're poisoning your body with alcohol I think at this point everybody understands that they realize that and they choose either to do it or not but is poison to your body I mean that's what at the end of the day it is and for me personally I don't I don't care to wake up feeling you know joggy or anything like that I   care to wake up feeling great you know thriving and ready to go but alcohol does do that alcohol will do that to you and you'll definitely see the the weight I mean my lattes I see my lattes at my lower stomach and I'm like I got to do more ABS got to eat healthier got to drink the black coffee man I do so I drink the black coffee but when I'm out and about I'll stop and get a latte I I don't know I love I just love these lattes yeah I drink a ton of coffee so but mostly black coffee at home I I'll   make black coffee 100% at home black coffee but if I'm out and about traveling or something like that I'm like got to give me a latte yeah for sure but yeah man I mean it's it's staying healthy you got to keep yourself healthy to be able to perform mentally yeah you have to you have to these days especially with all this bioengineered you know chemicals all this type of food out there that is just unhealthy for you you have to really watch what you eat for sure for sure you got to get that work out in I mean if I'm not working if   I don't work out for like 2 days in a row I'm going I'm going like stir crazy oh I am too I am too I work out every single day and even if I can't get a full like hard workout in I'm like okay I'm going to walk around the block like I'm going to and I and I now have a tread meal under my desk where I'm like I'm going to at least walk one mile because I know I can't get a full workout in at the gym today so I'm at least going to walk one mile because I I have to keep my body doing something for sure there's something about it it just   clears your mind out right like it just it gives you Clarity by working out when when you don't work out for a couple of days man it's just like fog just I just feel foggy it no 100% you don't feel sharp I'm a big I'm a big fan of the sauna and the steam room yeah I love a nice sauna in the steam room I I do it before I work out and after I work out and I can stay in there for 30 minutes each like I love it in there um but I I think you know adopting that I'm looking into that red light therapy I don't know   if you've looked into it I've heard of it I've seen it but I haven't done a ton of research on it yet I've done some research on it I'm doing more on it though I don't know enough to be dangerous but I'm it's definitely everything I'm reading is very highly beneficial you get that like built into the sauna right I've SE if you get the home Sona too see I'm I'm bougie I work on a lifetime uh they don't have it there um but uh hopefully they do soon um but yeah you can get one of those home saas that also have the red light   therapy in it yeah yeah yeah I think I think that's huge um from what I've done with research is very beneficial for your body there you go let me know let me know what you what you find out I will I'll definitely let you know on that so I love what you guys are doing out in La you know really maximizing what that current law is out there do you see yourself you know you guys possibly getting into the multif family space of large multif family because I know that's what when you and I first met we   we were doing that all that you see yourself going back into that route sure man I mean when the market makes sense and I'm not saying it doesn't make sense but I I don't have a fully build out team right that that's able to find and identify great deals and that takes that takes a lot takes time effort all that exactly so I don't have that fully built out team but when it makes sense to partner with somebody that does have that team and I like the deal certainly certainly no I I don't I don't blame you   I think right now there's still a huge disconnect um I will have to agree with Grant cordone on this is that um I watched a video and he said um right now it's going to be very difficult to put push rents which I've said before and I agree with uh he's given a timeline about 2026 and then uh from there he feels that rents are going to Skyrocket substanti I you know right now it's going be very difficult push R you're not going to be able to for a good couple years so how are you undering you know back in the   day right after covid with the c rate compression everyone's underwriting four five 7% rent growth you know every single year and it's like you can't do that now and that's when I I saw the really the writing on the wall um and then from there you know if if that it's going to be like that for the next couple years till 2026 you know after that is it going to spike or is it not you know there's going to be a lot of Supply coming on the market how how what's it going to look like you know it's unpredictable man it's tough   anybody that tells you that they know the answer they they don't know they might be taking a good guess but they don't know they don't know I think you're going to see a lot of people switch asset classes like we did you know we're in the car War sector we're going to stay in the car War sector um you know will we get into Hospitality or retail here in Charlotte I mean I'd be dumb not to get into retail here in Charlotte or Hospitality we all know Charlotte's booming um it's a wild City so you getting our hands on great   property great real estate it may make sense yeah you you got to stay Nimble you got to stay Nimble you you can't just uh you can't just stay in one vertical one industry one asset type just because that's you know what you've done in the past corre that might not make sense right now today's market I think we saw a lot of sponsors in 2023 get into that

Title: The Hidden Cost of "Family & Friends" Capital and How to Avoid It with Chris Salerno Summary: The video features a compelling discussion between host Chris CNO and Seth, an experienced SEC attorney with a diverse background that includes starting as a nightclub promoter and ultimately becoming a successful attorney specializing in securities law. The conversation dives into Seth's personal journey, detailing how his upbringing in West Virginia shaped his perspective on success, risk-taking, and accountability. He describes the importance of working hard and not making excuses, emphasizing that anyone can succeed regardless of the challenges they face in life. The two also touch on the realities of the current economic climate in the U.S., specifically in California, the significant changes in real estate investing due to securities regulations, and how entrepreneurs should approach risk in their business endeavors. The dialogue seamlessly transitions to discussing their shared experiences in fitness, a matter that Seth and his wife have prioritized through their ownership of Burn Boot Camp franchises while navigating the challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic. As they conclude their conversation, they reflect on the shifting dynamics of real estate and the importance of investor communication and education during economically unpredictable times. Links to listen and subscribe: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/fund-it-scale-it-close-it-unlocking-real-estate-success/id1760606484?i=1000680833837 Links to watch and subscribe: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iR8RiGLlZMA&t=2732s Bullet Point Highlights: Seth's Early Journey: Seth was adopted from South Korea and raised in rural West Virginia, leading to his realization of hard work and accountability. Nightlife Promotions: Before becoming an attorney, Seth thrived as a nightclub promoter in Los Angeles, reinforcing his skills in sales and networking. Law School Transition: After dropping out of medical school, Seth shifted focus from medicine to business and law, finding success in both fields. Importance of SEC Compliance: The conversation highlights common mistakes investors make regarding securities regulations and emphasizes how crucial proper legal guidance is in real estate. Pandemic Pivot: Seth and his wife managed to keep their fitness business afloat during COVID-19 by pivoting to online workouts, showcasing resilience and adaptability. Investor Communication: Both host and guest stress the significance of maintaining clear and consistent communication with investors, particularly in a volatile economic climate. Future of Real Estate: Discussion around California's real estate laws, particularly the push for accessory dwelling units (ADUs), presents new opportunities for investment. Transcript: it's something there you can make an excuse about and that's the issue about today's society is that everyone wants excuses we mentally uh wired to have negativity in our life I actually started promoting for nightclubs you were a promoter I was a promoter for nightclub life is The Hunger Games business is The Hunger Games the space that you and I are in private Equity it's the Hunger Games my knowledge number one thing SEC really gets you on as misrepresentation welcome to the crystalo show your goto for real estate   business health Health and Family Insight I'm Chris CNO CEO of QC Capital each episode we explore the latest trends and expert advice from industry leaders whether you're an investor entrepreneur or seeking balance this show provides an inspiration you need join us in elevate your game on the Chris alno show welcome to the chriso show I'm your host Chris alno very excited to have a friend of mine we've known each other for what five six years now think so man time flies uh when you're having fun uh Seth on here SEC   attorney doing a bunch of things excited to have him on here a wealth of knowledge Seth thanks so much for joining us dude appreciate you having me on appreciate you reaching out and uh inviting me over for the show most definitely and I'm glad it happened when it did because you're in town you're you're you live out in the beautiful I would say you guys have great weather and great In-N-Out Burger your tax and politics suck but California which is beautiful weather out there you happen to be in Charlotte for Fitness which   we'll touch on here in a second um but I'm glad we were able to make this work absolutely man yeah good timing really good so let's let's give everyone a little background about yourself all the way from you know childhood you know talk to us about that sure man yeah and I think it helps build the story U I'm adopted so I was born in South Korea and adopted a 3 months old and then by two wonderful people in West Virginia rural West Virginia that's different so you know I'm the only Asian in inal West   Virginia yeah so I went to high school with like 18800 kids country country Moon shiners yes for sure for sure good people I love West Virginia love it I love Snowshoe Snowshoe is really good great underrated best best on the East Co or best close to North Carolina I would say unless you get way up North but yeah North Carolina you know anything close snow Sho is where it's at yeah yeah I love it but uh yeah man grew up in Royal West Virginia so wasn't really exposed to entrepreneurship or owning real estate or anything like that   my parents are both Blue Collar uh my dad was a is a coal miner was a Miner is retired now my mom is a grade school teacher so you know I didn't come from are they still in West Virginia yes they are okay they're frequent trips back there you go there you go yeah so wasn't exposed to that stuff so it was all about kind of getting the best job that you could possibly get right talk talk to us about that mentality you were young what age did you come over to us three months three oh three months month   so you didn't even spend time in in South Korea you don't even know of not at all are you curious now you know with you being adopted anything anything about you know where you came from anything like that actually not man you know I I I think a lot of uh adoptees struggle with that yeah um I actually joined a Facebook group one time like with Korean adops and there's like thousands of them in there and I was thinking I'm going to gain some insight from this and but it was like No And it was a lot of uh you know to be blunt a   lot of whining in my mind a lot of crying right I'm about accountability and just going out there and getting it done and you know it's just about you know a lot of I say this all the time you are you can't control the cards you are dealt you can only control how you deal them sure you know you unfor you know unfortunately you it's a great thing it's not unfortunate it's fortunately you were adopted at three months you couldn't control that you couldn't control being born in South Korea and being adopted but you have to   control the cards you were dealt and you've done a phenomenal job you're a badass attorney you know phenomenal job with the cards you were dealt um but I can definitely see being in those type of groups you're going to get a lot of whining and moaning yeah I mean I I think it's you know it's a couple it's it's a couple things right I mean some people have a reason to to quote unquote whine and mo right you know they're they're dealt a bad hand but again like you said you've got to you've got to   play the cards you're dealt right and do the best you can with it and I think that if you are adopted it's easy to go and blame it on that it's it's an easy crutch to lean it's an excuse it's it's something there you can make an excuse about and and and that's the issue about today's society is that everyone wants excuses where mentally uh wired to have negativity in our life and so they're going to make an excuse oh I'm not successful because of this because of this that's a lie you are highly   successful and attorney a beautiful wife doing great things in business and in the real estate industry so you are proof that you can get it done you just have to work hard yeah you just have to work hard you can't blame shift I like to call it you can't blame it on you know the cards you were dealt or you know the things that uh may have happened to you or the situations you're in you've got to just move forward and do the best that you can so dad was a coal miner y mom was a a school teacher what made you want to say hey I'm G to   go into law school and be an attorney yeah it it was a little bit uh a little bit more of a story behind that first of all I went into uh medicine so I wanted to be a doctor all right um well I wouldn't say I wanted to be a doctor it was more like what's the best job that I can get with the mindset that I had my mindset was you know W2 worker type of mindset right like not entrepreneurial not don't take risk and it was and I you know academically it was pretty easy for me so it was just okay what's the best   job you can get is probably being a doctor right like that's kind of the highest calling um and I actually went to med school for a year and a half really yeah and then I dropped out halfway through my second year I literally just got up in the middle of class walked out and said I've I've had it I oh my goodness so I went Premed biology yeah I went Premed biology chemistry and biology whoop my butt so I said okay I'm going to business entrepreneurship switch business entrepreneurship and I said maybe it   wasn't chemistry and biology it was just College in general so I dropped out of college um but you so you got to med school and you're like okay I'm done with this Y and then what yep um honestly that was a turning point in my life I didn't know what I wanted to do right like I committed a a large portion of my life to you know schooling schooling taking the MCAT getting into med school finishing that's not easy either Med school's hard very hard very hard but I've always had an interest in business and real estate just kind of in   the background like I just always had an interest in it um didn't really know how to act on it at the time um so I actually just started enrolling in business classes like immediately just and ended up getting a minor in business for the rest of that year so I I in undergrad classes um and then I started up my MBA actually the following year so got my MBA and then I decided to take it the next step and go ahead and get my law degree because I was still in that same mindset it was like you know this   isn't enough I didn't really know anything about starting a business or anything like that and I just felt like I hadn't done enough so I went ahead and went to went to law school and at that point I did decide I was like look I'm going to I'm going to finish this whether it's the right thing or not um and I was very successful at it I finished towards the top of my class dedicated you know the time and effort it needed um and did really well so love that love that and so getting in what made you want to move out to California   number one on a win man so dropped out of med school kind of took those business classes just trying to figure out what I wanted to to do next on the other side of the world I'm in West Virginia still at this point yeah in West Virginia trying to figure it out and I just knew I needed to get out of there I needed to see more I needed to get out of West Virginia you know it was it was a tough conversation to have right like all my family and friends are there um you know I just dropped out of medical school so now they're like what   the hell is this kid doing you know what I mean like dropping out of med school but they've always been supportive always been supportive always been supportive they never like pushed me into medicine or anything like that and then when I dropped out you know they're still staying supportive but I'm sure in the background they're thinking what the hell are you doing uhoh yeah and then I just decided to up and leave and move to Los Angeles out of nowhere unbelievable unbelievable so you moved out to Los   Angeles yep how was that well I partied for a little bit yeah for a little bit they they know how to party out yeah for a little bit I didn't know what I was going to do I was enrolled um getting my NBA at the time uh mostly online um at Arizona State um so I kept the education going but at the same time I'm in La I'm in a new city I actually started promoting for nightclubs you were a promoter I was a promoter for nightclub for a little over a year in Los Angeles um before I decided hey I got to get my   [ __ ] together well I mean you'll definitely meet a lot of women doing that for sure you get paid basically per head on how many women you bring in the club oh yeah you've got a bottle or two waiting for you every single night y it's actually a pretty nice little lifestyle for somebody in their 20s oh yeah most I I believe it if you want you know if you want to get some experience get out there it's best you can meet a lot of women too yeah and it's a good like uh it's kind of a sales experience   be honest with you you're just for you're like hey I'm getting paid $10 ahead to bring beautiful women to this club I got to go out there and just talk to everybody literally just going out there talking hey you got this come to this club tonight we've got bottles all this kind of stuff and you know wow unbelievable unbelievable so from there you were like okay I got to get my [ __ ] together yeah had to get my [ __ ] together obviously you know I'm still getting educated in back getting my NBA   still kind of keeping the education going oh yeah um but I decided hey I'm going to go to law school so started applying to law schools um ended up getting accepted to a number of ones and I I narrowed it down to USD in San Diego because I wanted to stay in Southern California because I loved it um but I knew I didn't want to be in La so got out of La went down to San Diego because I had visited there a couple times and I just loved it it's just more of a laid-back attitude people were a lot more genuine just a place that I could   see s down at compared to La it's just you know it it it's kind of doggy dog there most oh it is it's a hunger life is The Hunger Games business is The Hunger Games the space that you are you and I are in private Equity it's the Hunger Games yeah you know and and you have to have that mentality you have to be able to survive yeah at the end of the day so from there you're like okay law school it is yep and then you get into law school well in law school or but even prior to that there's so many   different levels of law you can practice yeah what made you you know pick SEC and prior to that did you have any other interest in different type of law yeah I mean generally speaking I want I knew I wanted to get into transactional law I didn't want to be a litigator that's for sure um I was interested in business interested in doing deals those sorts of things so I started out actually at a at a pretty big Law Firm step tone Johnson and ended up doing both real estate and corporate I think that's when we first   met it might have been yeah yeah when when you were cuz they were out what in San Diego or no actually I moved back to West Virginia for that job oh did you okay maybe maybe you maybe you were just finishing there when we met yeah well actually I think we met when I was in probably when I was in Charlotte because I moved to Charlotte for another big Law Firm I think so but anyways yeah so I started kind of more general transactional practice with real estate and corporate and then as I kind of got   more mature and more experienced I started focusing more on the security side nice nice do you you enjoy security side for sure for sure the security side is it it feels a lot more sophisticated um I like the people that I work with in that field a little bit more um but I still have a passion for Real Estate like I still love real estate so even though I'm a Securities attorney it's largely focused on real estate yeah so let's talk about that you know for those individuals that may not know what a   security is most will know what a security is let's talk about that and let's talk about you know the the day-to-day what does a Security attorneys really look like sure sure I mean the easy way to put it for a security because because people kind of miss understand it but if you have passive investors involved at all anywhere anywhere any even if it's one you probably even if it's an LLC yeah you're probably dealing with a security and you're dealing with the SEC regulations and you need a Securities   attorney to advise you because there are lots of things to navigate that you're probably not aware of and that your real estate attorney probably doesn't have the knowledge or know how to to deal with mostely and I see that mistake being made quite a bit oh yeah no I I see that on social media all the time for sure all the time on social media and it comes down to even with words you say like you have to be very very careful you're not misleading whatsoever what do you find uh the most common maybe mistake syndicators or fund   managers do in the syndication world yeah I mean I think the most common mistake is just not even realizing that they're under the Securities regime right like they're just like oh well I'm just raising some you know I'm getting some investors from family friends and they think because it's family and friends maybe that it's okay but it's not it doesn't it doesn't matter who they are it doesn't matter if it's your your family or friends or you know stranger off the streets you're dealing with Securities yeah and that and you   have to deal with those Securities regulations to come along with it so I I think just not knowing yeah that or maybe kind of turning a blind cheek to it is is more like it I think people nowadays have a pretty good idea of because it is kind of out there now right everyone's on social media they're all talking about it the biggest thing too is is you don't want to not know and you don't want to turn that cheek because um something to know is that SEC has unlimited money and they will milk you dry so you might as well spend the   money ahead of time find you a good SEC attorney like Seth you know to make sure that they don't milk you dry because they will milk you dry and they'll throw you in a little white little 4x6 cell and it's not going to be fun if you didn't know they can print money yeah so so if you're you're going up against someone who can print money and you necessarily can't print like they can print exactly you know so you got to be careful and that's not to mention the state Commissioners too so you've got the SEC to deal with as   well as the state Securities commissioner which people don't people don't realize that there's a federal and a state level too and and it's super important to understand what state you're doing business in and what state your investors are coming from and and super important to understand at a state and federal level yeah yeah and it's a you know and if something happens it's a full-blown investigation I mean it's just like a subpoena or you maybe you will get subpoenaed uh but they're asking for everything you they're asking   for texts they're asking for emails asking for phone logs they're asking and give it give it to them like don't even because if you don't they're going to get it they're going to find it yeah I mean they're just going to subpoena you on it and the judge is going to make you do it or they'll throw you in jail so no matter what give it to them and then address every single situation you know or issue that they bring up that I I think it's it's super important we just talked about this on the other podcast   is be transparent yeah you know be transparent because if not they're again they have unlimited Capital absolutely you know they're going to come and get you no matter what and and if and if being transparent makes you nervous then maybe think about the way you're doing business right oh yeah I mean you should be able to be transparent and and just like I said on the other podcast big investor that we had or a big investor that we interviewed on the other podcast and I said you know during 2023 as you   know uh interest rates spiked you know little bit yeah just a little bit and a lot of syndicators were not transparent a lot of them went ghost a lot of them were let like screw this I'm done and we double down we went from monthly communication to bi-weekly communication which is a lot more on our team but we did it to overc communicate we didn't have to cuz our SEC doc said just once a month we could have just stick it once a month but we decided to double down yeah and and that right there overc   communicating saying hey this is what's going on it's out of our control but this is what we're doing to make sure we can control this you know I think is super important when you're a syndicator fund manager you name it when you're dealing and having investors involved 100% man 100% And you you are able to control the narrative that way too right like if the the past investors is sitting there and they're reading the headlines and they're seeing the interest rate Spike and they're hearing about multifam going down the tubes and   all this stuff and that's not necessarily true not all those things are true it could be Market specific deal specific those things but if you're not in constant communication with them letting them know hey this is what's going on with this deal maybe this deal is going great maybe this one's not going as well well here's what we're doing to fix it it it goes a long ways 100% their trust you're going to have an upset investor you know you are if you have you know 20 50 100 investors one's going to be upset and if you ever got   audited you can all you can go back and say look at all of our communication right like read through all of our communication we were transparent about everything they're going to look back and be like okay it's this a pissed off investor yeah you for sure for sure and it's super like communication is the biggest uh I think thing that is lost in% capital and also you know being being transparent with the communication because number one from my knowledge number one thing SEC really gets you on is misrepresentation absolutely you know   and if you're not being transparent on it with everything on there boom it it will be a very ugly day for you for sure be transparent you know obviously the things that you leave out as well like if there are key material things that you're leaving out and then you've you've disclosed all these things let's say down the line to the SEC or State commissioner like what in the world this doesn't sound like you're representing this deal like it really was at this time and maybe they're going back and   looking at your records looking your financial statements and seeing how that deal was going it wasn't going great it was going terrible Y and you're saying that everything is great well um that's not being transparent right you know you're not communicating that with the investors right yeah no I think that's super important H you know what have you seen you know over 2023 dealing with you know Securities talking with other fund managers things like that what have you seen you know during last year with   interest rate hikes man it it there was a little bit of blood in streets right you know a lot of these deals um that had shortterm loans that had um you know the the variable loan rates um struggled yeah a lot of people that caps they didn't get rate Caps or the or the cap expired yeah or their cap expired and they didn't have enough money in reserves to buy an extension on the cap you know and and that was huge that was huge thinkk one of our deals uh had 202 for or excuse me uh 2024 expiration and   we bought uh end or beginning of 2023 end of 2022 rate cap to Extended 2025 and I'm so glad we did it yeah you know it was perfect timing because that same rate cap would have been a million and we only spent like 400,000 yeah yeah for sure yeah so you're seeing a little bit of blood in the streets um you know I think right now what's happening banks are allowing for some uh leniency with their loans they don't they don't want to have the property absolutely and it looks it looks terrible if they do have   the property on their balance sheet plus I think they the this go around cuz oh0 wait the first thing they said is we're going to foreclose on everyone we're taking everyone's property then they realize well [ __ ] I got a ton of property and no one wants to buy it yeah you know so I think they've learned their lesson and now they are like okay we don't want to forclosed because no one's going to buy it and if they do buy it we're still going to take a huge loss so let's go ahead and see what we can do   to work things out you know if the property's really really not bad let's see what we can do to work things out because it will rebound it's coming back back around yeah but I do think you know we're kicking the can down the road they're giving extensions those sorts of things and we're all banking that the interest rates are going to go down at some point right so we're hoping for that um I think that they will I think we're going to see one before the election yeah it I think we're going to see a quarter point before the election   I think I think some politics have gotten into drone Pal's head no way yeah I know right no way couldn't I I think they I think they had a nice little cigar dinner or something and and I think they got in his head so I think you'll see one before the election of this year I agree I agree yeah you know it's it's going to be a wild election too not wanting to dive deep into politics but it's definitely going to be a wild one uh talk to us about you know the the California lifestyle what are you what are you doing right now you you   also your wife beautiful wife has a great business you guys are running that's why you're here in Charlotte talk to us a little bit about that and why you guys got into that too yeah so we uh started uh we bought two burn boot camp franchises so uh my wife luckily runs those helped her get them off the ground and now she's crushing it so letting her run with those and uh they're going really really well um lifestyle in California you can't beat it man I mean San Diego is unbelievable oh it's beautiful down there the weather   everything kind of like how you said earlier in the show I mean if you if you can afford to live there one because it is really expensive oh I know and if you can deal with the politics then there's no better place in the United States for sure really there's not you know I just wish they had better politics over there um but yeah the weather out there is so beautiful you really can't beat it you can't beat it you know let's talk about health because you guys own those burn boot camps they're huge in Charlotte um   their headquarters here in Charlotte that's where it was founded um and tell us a little bit about what burn boot camp is and then also I'm going to want you to touch on like how are you optimizing your health to to be the phenomenal husband that you are to operate you know businesses and getting involved in real estate talk to us about that sure man yeah burn boot camp it's a boutique Fitness franchise um you know it's it's Boot Camp style workouts workouts the same um it's incredible and and it's focused on women it's focused   on empowering inspiring so if you're a single man you should go absolutely absolutely I will say I've been taking up hot yoga lately Hot Yoga is good and for those single men out there go to hot yoga just saying there we go yeah Gym's not a bad place to pick up women yeah plus the great thing too is that there's no filters you can't have filters at the gym and more than likely they're not going there with makeup on so it's it's a good place to filter out women you want there you go a little different than the apps right yeah I   know so so it's geared more towards women it is geared towards more towards women um but it I work out there every day I mean that's where I work out now like that's that's what I do I love the total body workouts I love the total body workouts you go in like an orange theory you go in one hour boom you're done you're going about your day exactly hour in and out of there and for guys like us that have a million things to do like it's unbeatable and I want somebody telling me what to do I was just going   to say that I don't want and I I work out by myself now and it's so much easier showing up tell me to shut up go do this do that get it done boom okay I'm all about my day you know tell me what to do right just tell me what to do I I will I will tell you I've been to the gym and there's been times I've had business on my mind that I'm like wait okay so I'm at the gym what do I need to do like you're sitting like a 24-hour fitness or or yeah something like I work out at lifetime I live right behind it   and I walk in there sometimes because of my long days and I'm like [ __ ] what do I want to do today like I because my mind is business business business it's so much easier showing up having someone said hey we got all these set workouts you're going to knock these out and be done they make they make you focus on the workout at that point instead of you know business or whatever listen to a podcast or something what got you guys interested in opening up one of those I hope you're enjoying today's episode   just a quick reminder to make sure you never miss an episode stay connected with us by following us on social media platforms Instagram Twitter threads Tik Tok at Chris saloor and don't forget to subscribe to YouTube to catch the video versions of our episode you'll get exclusive content behindth scenes footage and much more head over to YouTube chrisoro now and hit the Subscribe button stay tuned because we've got more great content coming right after this actually cuz my wife worked out at one   here in Charlotte really so she was working out at one she was working out at one here in Charlotte and then we moved back to the West Coast cuz I took a job here in Charlotte for a little bit then we moved back to the West Coast and I was look looking to start a business I was looking for something recession resistant outside of real estates I was already investing in real estate but looking for a business outside of real estate I looked at liquor stores I looked at laundromats um and then she   turned me on to burn boot camp which is not recession resistance let's put it that way but at the same time they're really good salesman look like a great business model turned out to be awesome although oh most definitely yeah circumstances weren't great we opened two weeks before Co hit oo but talk to us about that you know opening a and we all know California they they lock down like oh yeah they lock down you can't even go get your mail out of your house um talk to us about that opening up a   business right before covid and being in California where you know they were basically Nazis out there yeah for sure I mean we opened up two weeks in um and we didn't have any paying members because we were all on uh they were all on like a free membership TR one yeah so then we had to shut it down we had to move inside we had to move outside we did online workouts every single day uh pivoted yeah we pivoted we did whatever we had to do to keep the lights on wow um so literally our lead trainer and   business partner was in our apartment leading online workouts and me and my wife Alison are in the background like like a yeah like a music workout video Yeah in the backgound but it did keep us in shape during Co cuz we worked out every single day because we had to make those videos you had to yeah but it was I mean it was ridiculous out in California man they shut down the beaches they shut down the water you weren't allowed to be in in the ocean what you weren't allowed to be in the ocean cuz they said it got transmitted   through the water at one point so are you serious so they kicked the Surfers out of the water and you kick the Surfers out of the water in San Diego you're you got some pissed off people you got a big problem but there are like all these you know Instagram videos the cops chasing Surfers down the beach and the guy just dropping his surfboard and running it was it transmitted through the water yeah insane but that's new heard that inside outside online inside outside eventually we we blacked out our   windows so you couldn't see in it because we got we got actually attacked by U an Instagram person that ended up going viral because he said hey you're the reason that we're the the disease is spreading because of businesses like yours and they filmed us from the outside into the windows and it went viral no way and it went viral and then finally we we ended up blacking out the windows and just stayed open cuz there's at that point it was like either Do Your Own Thing yeah and stay open oh yeah or   we're going out of business yeah you got to shut shop and this is a venture you just opened up no one knew Co is coming and all a sudden Co boom co comes and wow so you bled out the windows and you said hey we're just going to do it it's like a Speak Easy now yeah you guys want to work out we called it that at one point really speak easy easy workout like underground workouts underground haircuts there all kinds of that stuff going on it was insane that's W if you just have to think about that that's   just wild yeah like you know just for your basic necessities to stay in shape and things like that turns out if you got sunshine and you worked out you were a little bit more immune to the disease oh really yeah interesting interesting wow and you weren't locked in doors and you weren't allowed to work out yeah well problems wow I think we can go on a rabbit hole about that damn I'm not a big fan of I will say I do think there's another one going to be coming you know I think there's another pandemic that   will be coming um because of what happened with the first one so let's see uh let's just see what happens let's see if we handle it better this time uh we shall see it depends on whose's President I I think that's that's true yeah um definitely depends on them so you guys now you know past covid everyone's now out and about in California everything's been lifted and now those are up and running are those are the only ones really on the west coast right or um I think there are let's see two four five I think there's   six in California right now six now yeah cuz like you said it was based in Charlotte mainly east coast yeah yeah I think there's about 400 locations open now very cool um actually I think they're approaching 500 locations now yeah um so it's expanding pretty quickly at this point you know Fitness franchises have have rebounded completely from Co at this point oh my God yeah I think I think the fitness industry and I'm seeing it more and more people are taking it a lot more serious yeah they're they're watching what they   eat and I I said this multiple times with my son he's four and a half uh he watches what um or I make sure whatever I give him I watch very closely goldfish now and if you look and I swear this is brand new if you look at any ingredients now it says bio oh what is what's it say bio biograde or bio bio bioengineered food so it says it's been bioengineered the food that's been in there yeah so if you look go next time you go to the grocery store look at the ingredients and now it says it in bold you can pick up some gold Vision it says   bioengineered chemicals hm in the food interesting it's wild even her Pedialite had it said bioengineered chemicals now I swear that just popped up you know in one of these crazy bills cuz I've never ever seen it say bioengineered food on there uh and I steer very far away from it I'm big on those factors Factor meals now okay I have you heard of those I have y so I get those now once a week it's like 141 bucks uh lunch and dinner CU I don't eat breakfast so lunch and dinner 141 bucks and I'm thinking in my   head well if you and I went out to dinner it'd be about a 100 bucks right now so I get uh 14 meals per week lunch and dinner for 141 bucks I'm like I can't beat that yeah like that's good I throw them in the microwave 2 minutes boom done yeah we do pre-made meals all the time but we switch like we've done Factor before bur boot Camp's actually coming out with some in the fall we we got the test drive and they're actually pretty delicious cuz yeah we're pretty picky about these types of meals you   have to be but they're actually really good are they so they're coming out they're coming out with their own branding yep oo that'll be exciting and that is that's not just for boot camp people that's for everyone yeah you can just get on the app and order them this fall I believe really oh I'm going to have to switch it up and try man they're good but especially with pring these days it makes sense plus how busy you and I are yeah I mean so are you meal prepping or are you using these type of things my wife does some meal prepping   on Sunday got to love her yeah that's basically it every once in a while I volunteer to grill out but man it's it's it's a Time suck right like it to feed yourself at home like it sounds even going out you know for a lunch meeting it's like two hours like I have to block two hours off on my day for a lunch meeting yeah yeah I mean trying to cook an individual meal every single night let alone like lunch as well and even and then you got to clean all that Tak in just takes so much time we we don't   have time for it no I I I don't either that's why I start a factor where I throw it in 2 minutes boom I eat it and I'm done and I'm like well I threw it away boom no cleaning done I love it I love it so you guys are doing great things with the bur boot camp out there what do you what are you seeing uh let's go back to the real estate market what are you seeing in the near future I know we talk about interest rates lowering you know what are you seeing what are you doing right now in the real estate   market as well yeah um currently a fund manager for $20 million fund it's an Adu Fund in California so we're doing basically in California just like everything else difficult to do anything right like the government's got their handed and everything oh my God so very difficult to get any kind of construction done off the ground it's mind bogling we're buying a car wash and Cape car right now and it's finished yeah well they came out for the co they don't like the garage doors and so now we have to order new or the the seller   we're buying it from the seller seller has to now order new garage doors it won't be here till end of October and I'm like like seriously the garage doors will only be down between 9:00 at night and and 7 in the morning like it's middle the night no one's going to even look at them yeah like and you want these fancy garage like come on really yeah you know so and I can't imagine out in California yeah and if you get the coastal commission involved it takes literally years and years to do any so   anyways the reason I brought that up is because the adus accessory dwelling units they actually have a bill in California that they past and they basically just FastTrack those types of developments so if you want to add they they view it as a a solution to housing so the lack of housing yeah um so they let you build on uh turn your single family property into a duplex or even build duplex on the on the property if you have a big enough lot um so you can turn one units into four and rent the back out or rent them all out yep   exactly so it's a it's a quick way to get the construction approved get it done I don't know how long this wind is going to be open so you guys taking advantage so we're taking advantage of it right now love that love that and is your main focus down there in that San Diego Market um it's actually Riverside County okay yeah where and where I'm Riverside county is is East just East adjacent of Los Angeles County okay right so a little cheaper housing so it makes a little bit more sense when you get closer to the coast it stops making   a lot of sense you got to go for some more creative Place cheaper like 5 million probably yeah yeah yeah just a little $5 million 5 million um but but cheaper housing there so you guys are finding opportunity now is that bill all for California where you can for all California and then the local um you know counties and municipalities can kind of change that and you they can't make it any more restrictive but they can make it even less restrictive okay good and so are you uh are you guys doing long-term rentals there are you   doing short-term like airbnbs um semi longterm right so we're putting in a 10-year fund so you know we're getting we're buying the property we're renovating it putting ad used on the properties and then renting them for a few years and then unloading them towards the back end of the the fund I love love that and with these you're all buying them in the same area yeah yeah Riverside County generally I mean it's you know spread across how are you guys finding good deals in this market you know it's so hard multif family no you   name it any any type of real estate there's always a huge disc connect between a seller and a buyer how are you guys finding good deals right now uh my business partners man like I you know I'm handling legal I'm working with some Capital I'm I'm advising on on raising Capital those sorts of things um but my business partners are real estate brokers and they' been doing uh this type of thing identifying properties that are perfect for adus um for a number of years at this point so they're they're the main source they they get   first look I love I love that how how is it finding you know great business partners you know it's just like a marriage you you got to test it out you got to see how it is because a Business Partnership is like a marriage how is it you know and how did you guys link up yeah um networking event so I met I met these bus business partners actually at a wealth without Wall Street event that I was speaking at nice yeah yeah so I met them hit it off with them I think the first I've been in Good and Bad   Business Partnership relationships yeah I I think you you have to go through bad ones you do because if if you don't go through bad ones you don't know what what can happen to you and I would rather go through bad ones early on to make sure that when if we went into business we have the right contract the right verbage all of that in place because at the end of the day again just like if you would get married you're signing a contract to your wife you know in most circumstances I highly recommend   sign a prup I'm not a big fan I don't believe in marriage uh but a Business Partnership is a marriage yeah you know it is it is and building off of that like you have to like the person I think that you're going into oh 100% you have to hang out with them like you you have to be very cold cordial you know talk you guys have to like the same things if you just like a relationship if you guys don't like the same things if you don't like if one party likes working out the other one doesn't other one doesn't eat   healthy the other one eats healthy like it's just not going to work out it's not not not a long-term Business Partnership right like it can't just be transaction maybe shortterm really quick turnaround time but if it's going to be a long-term Business Partnership you got to like that person you generally like him you're like hey I I like this dude I'll go have a beer with him this is great this is I'll travel with him my business partner we travel around the world together we hang out together we go to   the same events together we like the same things you know it's it's amazing that's super important part because I think communication back to communication is huge right like and if you don't like that person it's going to feel forced and awkward and kind of going over a hump to try to communicate with them and that's the key you got to stay transparent you got to communicate because again if you have that separation you're not communicating you're not transparent who knows what the other person is doing at that point   oh agreed agreed most definitely I mean my business partner we talk about 20 20 25 times a day yeah and it's and most of it's business but other thing is personal hey how's the family doing how the kids doing you know anything going on blah blah blah but it's super important to also let your business partner know what's going on with you personally I think that's I think that's important as well because if if you're going through you know knock on wood you know something with your marriage I need   to know that I feel you know even if it's getting a little rough I need you to say hey you know my marriage is getting a little rough because I need to know okay if you're not here at business 100% I'm going to step up 120% to make sure that we're still good you know I think that's important AB for sure for sure and we do that even with like our team so with bur boot camp with some other businesses that we have we have leadership meetings and we make sure that everyone sh kind of personal things   what's going on keeping that transparent relationship up because it's it's important it affects um your personal life affects your business life as much as you don't wanted to most definitely no you're spot on there so I always say not all not all chefs not all chefs should own the restaurant not all attorneys should own their own practice you know what has really helped you to really own your own business and and you know go through the trial and errors and things like that to you know survive Co   to to run a successful you know Law Firm things like that yeah I mean I think one of the key things for entrepreneurs and people starting businesses you got to be a little bit crazy right you got to be a little bit crazy you got to be willing to take risks right you got to assess risks and and take them you can't be afraid to to just go out there and take action and do it um I think that attorneys on the other hand are trained not to take risks right they are trained to assess the risks but they're really   leaning to risk averse risers really leaning towards no whereas an entrepreneur is leaning towards yes yes so I think that I strike a really good balance between those two that's good um and I think that's what allows me to be an attorney at heart but then you know also be an entrepreneur and take risks and I think that's what my business partners appreciate as well I love that um I figure out how can we do it rather than can we do it right like that most attorneys will be like well we can't do it because of this or I advise   you not to do it because of that I will say look we can do it here's how yep right and here are the risks oh most definitely now you as the business partner if you're my partner we need to decide is it worth it or not yeah right cuz there's there's always risk involved so do you want to take no matter what you do there is risk you just have to make sure you take the calculated risk that's right you know and sometimes you may think it's calculated at that point in the moment and it turns out to not be   right so you have to have the ability to Pivot very quickly like you guys did with Co you have to have that ability to handle that stress and handle that pressure so you can power through for sure absolutely yeah no I love that where do you see you you think you know where do you see yourself uh you know growing uh triest you know where where do you see yourself with that and on to the Future yeah so I joined tribe vest of July of last year nice so it's been about um been about one year and we have   really developed um you know this this fund of Fund in a box right like you've probably heard about how the market is really shifting from the cgp model right to fun of funds because the is kind of you know they kind of started investigating people and you know these folks that had these cgps that were just raising capital and not doing anything else which everyone knows you're not supposed to do but everybody does it anyways yep um started looking for another solution and the fund the funds model has always been it is the solution   it's always been the solution it's not a new thing it's just a more you just people didn't know of it at the time at a high level yeah and and honestly it it's more complicated it's more expensive it's more expensive and there's just you know a lot more things to go into it so people just took the easy route did theot quote CP rout and and it you know I guess I'll say that it worked up until this point right like I guess you could say you got away with it or what have you um but the market is is   is Shifting or has shifted to the co or to the fun everything is fun to funs now that's all I'm seeing is fund to funds models training programs you know and fund to funds things like that you know it's definitely questionable I think as an investor I would ask if if I'm talking to a sponsor hey are you the lead sponsor or you a fun of funds because in in my eyes you're paying double fees you know to get into those opportunities don't get me wrong people need to make money people are giving you   great opportunities to invest and build your Capital um but there's definitely questions I feel like definitely needs to be involved yeah I mean there's always questions right I mean even when everyone was using the CP model it's like well who's actually the operating partner who's the lead sponsor who's actually going to execute the business plan after we closing this property and I think a lot of cgps were kind of masquerading as the operating partner like hey this is my deal I found the property I'm going to be doing this   executing this business plan in reality there's a lead sponsor who found the deal who's signing the loan documents who's going to execute the business plan and sometimes there passive investors don't even know they don't even know and and fund manager like you said kind of same it's the same thing right the fund manager should not be representing that they're the operating partner Som or anything like that um I know at tribe vest we we really emphasize that because the the vehicle that we use is an SPV   fund of fund where the the fund of fund is designed only to invest in one specific deal so we're not it's not a discretionary fund where you can do whatever we can do whereever whatever you want invest you know multiple deals or anything it is one deal so you're really just serving as a conduit uh to invest in a Target deal so it's very clear to the pive investors very spe specific if you invest in this fund of fund all your capital is going into this deal and we disclose those deal documents as well so those offering   documents are an exhibit to the fund of fund offering documents most definitely no I think that's super important and we have a fund that we've put together for car washes and before we really truly launch the fund we have we have those deals locked under and we're like look these are the deals we may add some more deals but these are the specific deals that we are buying and that the capital is going into yeah yep yeah for I think that's super important so you guys are really taking advantage of this   opportunity out in California um you see it definitely growing you know with your guys's portfolio out there oh for sure for sure I mean the fun to funds model we we've made it affordable right so the the problems with it were that it's complicated it's expensive those are the two B two biggest things you've got to get your if you're a fund manager who used to be a cgp depending on the lead sponsor to do everything for you now you've got to do all those things yeah accounting you know all bookkeeping all   of that you got to open a business banking account you got to form your LLC you've got to find a Securities attorney you've got to find a CPA you've got to manage your investors you got to find a platform all those things that the lead sponsor usually does yeah and then you're going to have to pay depending on the attorney you know anywhere from 15 to 30,000 absolutely uh you know on average some are even 50,000 from what I hear but normally the head attorney who's running the whole syndication will   have a deal where you can do a fund of funds at a cheaper amount but it's going to cost maybe 15 20,000 for you as a fund manager to open up your own fund right and you know that some CPS former CPS can't really raise Capital right like they own a deal and they say hey I can raise a million bucks easy and then they come up with 100,000 bucks or zero yeah right so if you do that with a fund of funds well now you an attorney 15,000 bucks or 25,000 bucks and you didn't raise any Capital you're screwed that's   a lot of money out of your pocket when you weren't able to get paid on that deal yep um but what we've done at triest is combined all all those things together love that we you with triest it's a fun to fun in a box it's basically done for you kind of a done for you program you know you you get your k1s we open your business banking account we form your LLC we do your offering documents we on board your investors so we send out electronic signatures of the offering documents quote unquote hurting the cats right   getting getting them to wire their funds basically taking the place of an investor relation which I will tell you I love our investors that will sign and wire right then and there but we do have those sum that will sign and then the wire is like pulling teeth and it comes to a point where I'm like look like I feel like I'm stepping my boundaries by keep asking you hey why are your Capital we need you know it's very difficult sometimes yeah it is it is and I can feel for him a little bit especially the first time   around ,000 bucks you're like whoa this is crazy wiring to a stranger or somebody you might have just had a couple of contacts you know we we advertise heavily on social media we only accept accredited investors as a 506c so we can advertise we advertise heavily on social media um I don't actually to be honest with you I don't think I've ever done a 506b that's awesome that's a great that's place to play I always6 coun people to do five sixc and only accept credit investors that's going to keep you safe yeah 100% you know and   it's it's a lot easier um but yeah you know I think it's it's super important to go that route and even with those new investors I definitely understand you know 50 200 300 you know 500,000 is a lot of capital from someone you you met on social media that's why you ask the right questions that's why you get references you understand the business model business strategy and at the end of the day though you have to take a risk you have to take a risk and a leite got the trigger and just do it yep got   to take action I love that you guys are doing that all inone I think that's huge yeah yeah and going back to to pricing man you the last Law Firm that I worked at huge Law Firm top three law firm in the world we charged $75,000 you bullsh out of the gate for a set of s now this was at the lead sponsor level but a lead sponsor documents and that's just for the initial drafts and then it's charged per hour no way yeah get started just to get started people don't realize how expensive creting a fund is it's   expensive yeah yeah and then some people you know there are you know these Boutique firms I mean even my Boutique firm we do it at a much lower cost and people are like whoa that's so expensive because they just haven't seen it I'm like you have no idea how expensive it actually can be oh I know do you do you see yourself uh going into any other practice of law oh I don't think so secur is where it's at man I mean I've I'm a fund manager I've syndicated deals myself as a lead sponsor you know I've   worked as a Securities attorney now for a number of years so it's it's kind of where my interest and my legal practice have kind of combined how do how do you keep up with your energy and your mindset your your your high energy your great mindset how do you keep up with that and cultivate that man I think you know we kind of touched on it before but we didn't quite get around to it it a lot of it is just trying to take care of yourself staying healthy man getting sleep that's super important right I   think a lot of entrepreneurs run themselves into the ground and they don't sleep man I don't care what time I get to bed I'm sleeping 7 hours so I I set my alarm clock for 7 hours after I really you do that after I lay down interesting I'm complete opposite oh yeah uh no matter what time I go to bed I wake up at 6:00 a.m. no matter what time uh Stephanie can tell you I'll send her emails at 3:00 4 a.m. in the morning you might get 2 hours might get 10 hours yep no never 10 no never o never over   seven okay I can't get over seven hours yeah I if I get over seven hours I feel joggy I feel like I've slept I've wasted my day um even on Saturdays and Sundays I will wake up boom and you know if whoever's in the my girl who's in the bed I'm in in my office at the home working you know at 6:00 a.m. on a Saturday that's how I'm wired if we get home at 1:00 from an evening you know out with friends which I rarely do 6:00 a.m. I'm up ready to go that's awesome man that's awesome and I think what helps you know I don't drink yeah don't   drink alcohol I don't care to um you know I drink water I drink too much lattes yeah uh but uh but yeah don't drank alcohol and I think that's helped tremendously sure not being in my system yeah that there's a huge movement now right towards not drinking my what's this new there's this new uh drink everyone's getting it's uh it's not it's we all know a virgin drink meaning no alcohol but a mocktail oh yeah every I'm hearing this everywhere everyone's just saying they're getting mocktails cuz they don't want to drink it there's like   mocktail bars there are I think there's some in Charlotte that are mocktail bars and they don't serve any alcohol at all um and I think a lot of people again I don't know if it was Co or whatever but a lot of people are very conscious with their health they're watching what they eat even you know with go again going to these grocery stores next time you go to the grocery store look at that this is bio-engineered chemicals you know a lot of people are watching that in what they're putting into their system for   sure for sure people are much more aware of it I mean I I'm a drinker I do drink which is fine yeah but I do I you know I did dry January and honestly you can just you can tell I mean you're poisoning your body with alcohol I think at this point everybody understands that they realize that and they choose either to do it or not but is poison to your body I mean that's what at the end of the day it is and for me personally I don't I don't care to wake up feeling you know joggy or anything like that I   care to wake up feeling great you know thriving and ready to go but alcohol does do that alcohol will do that to you and you'll definitely see the the weight I mean my lattes I see my lattes at my lower stomach and I'm like I got to do more ABS got to eat healthier got to drink the black coffee man I do so I drink the black coffee but when I'm out and about I'll stop and get a latte I I don't know I love I just love these lattes yeah I drink a ton of coffee so but mostly black coffee at home I I'll   make black coffee 100% at home black coffee but if I'm out and about traveling or something like that I'm like got to give me a latte yeah for sure but yeah man I mean it's it's staying healthy you got to keep yourself healthy to be able to perform mentally yeah you have to you have to these days especially with all this bioengineered you know chemicals all this type of food out there that is just unhealthy for you you have to really watch what you eat for sure for sure you got to get that work out in I mean if I'm not working if   I don't work out for like 2 days in a row I'm going I'm going like stir crazy oh I am too I am too I work out every single day and even if I can't get a full like hard workout in I'm like okay I'm going to walk around the block like I'm going to and I and I now have a tread meal under my desk where I'm like I'm going to at least walk one mile because I know I can't get a full workout in at the gym today so I'm at least going to walk one mile because I I have to keep my body doing something for sure there's something about it it just   clears your mind out right like it just it gives you Clarity by working out when when you don't work out for a couple of days man it's just like fog just I just feel foggy it no 100% you don't feel sharp I'm a big I'm a big fan of the sauna and the steam room yeah I love a nice sauna in the steam room I I do it before I work out and after I work out and I can stay in there for 30 minutes each like I love it in there um but I I think you know adopting that I'm looking into that red light therapy I don't know   if you've looked into it I've heard of it I've seen it but I haven't done a ton of research on it yet I've done some research on it I'm doing more on it though I don't know enough to be dangerous but I'm it's definitely everything I'm reading is very highly beneficial you get that like built into the sauna right I've SE if you get the home Sona too see I'm I'm bougie I work on a lifetime uh they don't have it there um but uh hopefully they do soon um but yeah you can get one of those home saas that also have the red light   therapy in it yeah yeah yeah I think I think that's huge um from what I've done with research is very beneficial for your body there you go let me know let me know what you what you find out I will I'll definitely let you know on that so I love what you guys are doing out in La you know really maximizing what that current law is out there do you see yourself you know you guys possibly getting into the multif family space of large multif family because I know that's what when you and I first met we   we were doing that all that you see yourself going back into that route sure man I mean when the market makes sense and I'm not saying it doesn't make sense but I I don't have a fully build out team right that that's able to find and identify great deals and that takes that takes a lot takes time effort all that exactly so I don't have that fully built out team but when it makes sense to partner with somebody that does have that team and I like the deal certainly certainly no I I don't I don't blame you   I think right now there's still a huge disconnect um I will have to agree with Grant cordone on this is that um I watched a video and he said um right now it's going to be very difficult to put push rents which I've said before and I agree with uh he's given a timeline about 2026 and then uh from there he feels that rents are going to Skyrocket substanti I you know right now it's going be very difficult push R you're not going to be able to for a good couple years so how are you undering you know back in the   day right after covid with the c rate compression everyone's underwriting four five 7% rent growth you know every single year and it's like you can't do that now and that's when I I saw the really the writing on the wall um and then from there you know if if that it's going to be like that for the next couple years till 2026 you know after that is it going to spike or is it not you know there's going to be a lot of Supply coming on the market how how what's it going to look like you know it's unpredictable man it's tough   anybody that tells you that they know the answer they they don't know they might be taking a good guess but they don't know they don't know I think you're going to see a lot of people switch asset classes like we did you know we're in the car War sector we're going to stay in the car War sector um you know will we get into Hospitality or retail here in Charlotte I mean I'd be dumb not to get into retail here in Charlotte or Hospitality we all know Charlotte's booming um it's a wild City so you getting our hands on great   property great real estate it may make sense yeah you you got to stay Nimble you got to stay Nimble you you can't just uh you can't just stay in one vertical one industry one asset type just because that's you know what you've done in the past corre that might not make sense right now today's market I think we saw a lot of sponsors in 2023 get into that

Le sujet :Il a investi personnellement près d'1 million d'euros au total dans plus de 60 startups depuis 2015. Aujourd'hui, il nous dit tout, sans filtre. Ses coups gagnants, mais aussi ses erreurs, ses loupés. Il nous livre ses secrets et ce qu'il ferait différemment aujourd'hui. Damien Morin est CEO de Mobile Club et business angel aguerri est l'invité de Matthieu Stefani. Il partage ses meilleures pratiques pour investir en startup (et ses coups de gueule) : Les meilleurs et les pires investissements de DamienLes 3 critères incontournables pour bien investirClub deals, plateformes et SPV : faut-il y aller ?Investir en nom propre vs investir via une holdingComment trouver des startups early stage ?Avantages :Bonne nouvelle ! Avec le code Do It Club, bénéficiez d'une réduction de 50 € de réduction sur une location d'iPhone sur le site de Mobile Club.Ils citent les références suivantes :L'épisode de GDIY avec Damien MorinL'épisode de GDIY avec Jean de La RochebrochardL'épisode de GDIY avec Octave Klaba (OVH)L'épisode de GDIY avec Pierre Kosciusko-MorizetThe FamilyAntoine MartinMy VariationAinsi que d'anciens épisodes de La Martingale :#120 - Investir dans une levée de fonds en Seed#150 - La société holding : est-ce que ça me concerne ?#199 - Investir aux côtés des meilleurs business angels grâce au SPVOn vous souhaite une très bonne écoute ! C'est par ici si vous préférez Apple Podcasts, ou ici si vous préférez Spotify.Et pour recevoir toutes les actus et des recommandations exclusives, abonnez-vous à la newsletter, c'est par ici.La Martingale est un podcast du label Orso Media.Merci à notre partenaire Sapians de soutenir le podcast.Réalisez votre bilan patrimonial et recentrez vos possibilités d'investissement avec Sapians en suivant ce lien.Hébergé par Audiomeans. Visitez audiomeans.fr/politique-de-confidentialite pour plus d'informations.

Title: The Truth About Capital Raising That Your Attorney Won't Tell You with Devin Robinson Summary: In this episode of the “Funds on Fire” podcast, host Devin Robinson interviews Seth Bradley, a seasoned SEC attorney and a friend. Both share insights into the world of capital rasing, investment funds, and legal compliance. Robinson highlights the rapid learning curve and opportunities within the fund management landscape. He discusses his background in raising millions for real estate ventures and transitions into the value of complying with SEC regulations when raising capital. The conversation sheds light on common misconceptions surrounding securities law, stressing the importance of education and understanding regulations related to passive investments. Bradley offers practical advice on starting investment funds, the advantages of teaming up with experienced SEC attorneys, and the evolving trends in alternative investments, particularly in light of recent market changes. He emphasizes the necessity for diversity in investment management and the need for entrepreneurs from all backgrounds to have access to the financial education that empowers them to raise capital and scale their business ventures effectively. Links to watch and subscribe: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-w_w6WAUVw Bullet Point Highlights: Capital Raising Insights: Devin Robinson shares his journey in successfully raising millions for investment projects. Legal Compliance Importance: Seth Bradley emphasizes the significance of understanding SEC regulations to avoid legal troubles in fund management. Fund Management Strategies: Discussion on navigating funds, from 506(b) to 506© offerings, providing clarity on compliance requirements. Education Gaps: The necessity for education in the finance and investment space is underscored, highlighting the lack of resources for aspiring fund managers. Diversity in Investment: Recognition of the disparity in investment opportunities for minorities and the importance of fostering diversity in fund management. Trends in Capital Raising: A shift towards fund-of-funds structures and other innovative investment vehicles as alternatives to traditional capital raising models. Confidence Building: Advice encouraging newcomers in investment to be confident and educated, asserting their place in the industry. Transcript: raised tens of millions of dollars myself as well as um you know we purchased just in 2022 Alone um I was a GP on over $120 Million worth of commercial assets we don't want to say anything that might get us into trouble you know I'm I'm an entrepreneur first so I'm out there to to educate it started going down you started seeing some people get in trouble but all along the way on that rise up he's suing anybody because they've been getting their returns and they've been everybody's been crushing it and even if   you're a terrible operator you've still been crushing it because the market saved you and nobody's getting sued so it's all good until it's not welcome to funds on fire the podcast that ignites The Passion of investment funds in capital raising here we turn the complexities of fund management into clear actionable steps that drive results I've invested into diverse real estate across the United States and managed thriving funds and I'm committed to transforming lives through the vehicle of investment funds and helping   others to do the same join me as we document the Journey of scaling businesses raising capital and impacting tens of thousands of people around the world my name is Devin Robinson and welcome to funds on fire on this episode of the podcast I actually interview Seth Bradley who is an SEC attorney and has become a really good friend of mine so him and I met a couple years back at raay Fest and which is we're part of a mastermind for Capital raising and fun launching and then both of us as we've become friends   as we did this podcast interview gosh a couple of months ago and then now I've launched the podcast and even since then this is pretty cool him and I have actually started a partnership on um on helping people to launch uh manage scale and raise capital for investment funds and it's something really cool so you'll hear more about that later but it's really cool that it started uh with this podcast we both are very like-minded people we both have very similar goals and desires especially when it comes to   Capital raising and the access to information with when it comes to that and for other people to be able to learn how to um honestly be able to launch and scale an investment fund and there are so many people that have the ability to do it have the um the skills and the knowledge to do it but don't have the opportunity to do it or honestly just think it's too hard to do and so I'm so excited because partnering with somebody like Seth is incredible he's a guy who has helped hundreds of people to launch   and manage their funds or would just really launch their funds he has raised hundreds of millions of dollars and invested into hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars worth of real estate himself and so to be able to partner with him on something like this is really really awesome so I'm excited for that as we talked through his journey talk through all the things as we go through his progression from just being a real estate attorney to then an SEC attorney that goes and helps people to launch and manage funds his involvement   in that some of the things he's doing and honestly it's going to be a really good conversation for you all to hear how to stay compliant how to make sure that you guys are raising Capital appropriately how to make sure that you guys aren't going to get in trouble with the SEC because of how you guys are raising Capital so excited for this really pumped for this episode just thought I'd give you a little preface before we dive in you are going to want to listen to this cuz he is awesome and I'm excited so thank you so much enjoy   the episode all right what's up and welcome to this episode of funds on fire I I love this uh because today we have a friend of mine Seth Seth we go back I don't know like at this point I feel like it's like two years now or a year and a half what we met at Ray's Fest a while ago and I'll tell you I was super impressed by this dude because we met we met at a bar we were like at this event we had guess us that's right that's exactly right we were at this event for Ray Fest and like I'd gone downstairs he was   chilling I was chilling we started talking and I was like I like this dude because one he's not like the typical like white dude that's here he's all tatted up he's really cool and then I realized he's by far the smartest in the room and I was like yo Seth is the man so Seth I would love for people to tell or for you to tell people like who you are and what you do I've enjoyed keeping up with you over the years content you're putting out is incredible and so if you haven't give this man a follow   ESP if you want to stay compliant with funds and the legal aspect of it cuz he's doing some really awesome stuff and I love how just like fit you and your Wi-Fi that's pretty cool too so I respect that too so Seth like tell people who you are where you're from what do you do cuz I think it's going to be important for people to know you all right man Deon I appreciate that intro brother yeah it was it was great meeting you back in the day now we've kind of followed each other on social media and   kept in contact and loved it love it man love it but I'm I'm a Securities attorney so anytime you're raising capital from passive investors you can get me involved I've got I've got the pedigree I worked in big law for seven years before starting my own Boutique Law Firm I think what people like the most about working with me is that I actually come from the business side as well so I'm a syndicator and a fund manager myself so um you know I've raised tens of millions of dollars myself as well as um you know we   purchased just in 2022 Alone um I was a GP on over $120 Million worth of commercial assets so you know I come from not just the legal side but also the business side and I look at every single deal like you know whether I'm you know actually an equity holder or I am just the vendor as the Securities attorney I look at the deal like hey how are we going to get this thing done right a lot of attorneys kind of get in the way um I don't want to get in the way I I will tell you what the risks are what your liabilities are what you might   be opening yourself up to what the gray areas are but at the end of the day you're the business person and you're the entrepreneur so you make the decisions based on the information that I give you so I'm I'm there to help you you get the deal done that's cool man cuz like I know man there's a lot of misconceptions about funds and so one I can tell you I really appreciate I really appreciate you because I have had some not so great SEC attorneys that I was not a big fan of then I've had some good ones and so I'm thankful for it and   so when it comes to that uh we're going to we're going to talk about compliance because that's super important but we'll also talk about uh because I I I guess so I'm in another Mastermind I think I was going to bring this up a little bit later but I'll bring it up now and I want to talk about the importance of finding a good attorney because like I I'm in a different Mastermind and it's more of an operators based Mastermind like how to a lot of single family things and I I talk to people and I'm like and because I'm   going to set the groundwork for this podcast but I talk to people and they're like oh yeah I've got some friends they've let me borrow some of their money and I'm just using that money and I'm like oh hold on uh what do you mean and so I talked to like I mean I can't tell you the last po I was there two months ago three people told me this said three people and so they were like they were like yeah so I have an LLC and they wire the money into my LLC account it's like three or four friends they   wire this money into my LLC account and then I use it and I give them a return and I'm like you need to call an attorney right now because you are literally violating Securities Law like you you you are and they're like wait wait wait okay but but what if what if they they say we we sign up you know a promisory note they put it in here and I'm like security and then they're like okay but what if that the the the people hold it an escrow our attorney is holding an escrow I'm like security and so like just to even like set the   groundwork what is like what what is a security and and and what do you see most often when people come to you and they're looking for an attorney and they're like hey I'm doing this is this legal and you're like no that's not legal but what do you see like what is the security and what is the misconception or the mistake that you see a lot of people make when they come to you yeah I mean you just said it so the number one problem or the the biggest problem I see every single day is just the lack of knowledge like   people just don't know and there's there's maybe a fine line there between not knowing and not caring enough to know right exactly you're like I know I'm doing something here and I don't care to look into it a little bit further to figure it out but that's but that's really what it comes down to is just not having the knowledge because you think like you know I'm just going to you know me and this guy are going to partner he's going to give me all this money and they're not going to do anything and they're going to they're   going to expect a return on their investment and all that kind of stuff and it's all good but it's not you're getting yourself into into issues you know to define a security in a in layman's terms I like to just say look if you've got a passive investor involved in your deal and they're expecting a return on their money and on the actions that you're taking as the active participant then that's a security and that that's it like if if you have a passive investor meaning they're not you know making decisions   they're not managing they're not helping you out on the active side that's a passive investor and you're probably dealing with the security right and this is what I think separates like syndication from the fund right so like if you have a syndication and then you have somebody who is brings the capital typically they're making some of the decisions which makes them a little bit more active so then it's not in that sense of violating that Securities laws if it's just either like one person or even a couple a group that's actually   making decisions on that and I guess that's not the main differentiator between a syndication and and a fund but I think that's where people get confused is the passive part of things that's right that's right it's the passive part of it right like you have people that come in whether it's a syndication or a fund if if they have um some sort of managerial rights or meaningful voting rights because you'll see if you if you invest passively in a deal and you read through the PPM and the operating   agreement you'll see that you really don't have any rights to make any sort of decisions there might be some convoluted way that you might be able to get the manager out if a b c d and f happens but probably not so you'll see that you're really passive right and if you're passive then that's a security that you're dealing with you're investing into security cool that's cool and I appreciate us understanding that groundwork because I want people to listen to this I want people in my Mastermind to listen to this I want   people to just hear and understand that more often times like more than you think there are people clearly violating SEC like security law and so I just want to make sure that people are compliant and this is like you mentioned it earlier and I think that's really important is just the lack of Education side of things and you and I talk about that we talked about this before this of like really there's only like two main Educators in this space that are doing this and unless you know those two you   run the risk of not really being honestly educated enough to run a fund unless you have the self-education side of these and so I love like what you're doing and the content you're putting out especially from a Securities attorney aspect to be able to help that what what have you seen has been like the main sources of Education because even just like outside of what I do outside of what you do uh are there other sources of Education since you've been in this space longer than me that people can go to to gain more   information about what it looks like to raise a fund or uh or even start looking in that direction yeah dude it's tough out there right like you just you just said it and I I'll just name him I mean Hunter Thompson has some really good content that he puts out love Hunter super intelligent guy great stuff it's about raising Capital 4 real estate specifically which is great for the for your audience um and then Bridger Pennington of course um his is a little bit not necessarily real estate related   more in the private Equity space but also real estate sometimes and those are really the only two guys that are putting out content um typically before them you're really getting your education from your securities attorney that you engage with you know that can you know they're going to give you legal advice they're not going to give you kind of like you know they they'll review your marketing materials and things like that to tell you hey this is compliant this is not maybe this is what you should do this is what you shouldn't   do but there's not really anything comprehensive out there where you put the whole package together when you're really trying to start a capital raising business other than those two guys right now so you know there's a lot of room in that space for people to to step in and do it and and also you know Securities attorneys if you look I mean there's only a few of us putting out any kind of content cuz you know as an attorney most most of us are pretty conservative we don't want to put ourselves out there we   don't want to say anything that might get us into trouble you know I'm I'm an entrepreneur first so I'm out there to to educate and that's what I was going to ask so for you man just like a little bit about your journey because like it's not every day that you meet a a Securities attorney now granted we are at a fund event so then like of course you're going to run into a Securities attorney but like honestly you you I feel like and this is kind of cool I feel like me and you don't fit the molds   of our role like for like we're tatted like you know like you know I'm saying we're tatted we're a little bit more laid-back I got I think I posted this the other day I graduated college with a 2.3 GPA like I I just am not very qualified of what you would put the normal qual qualifications of a fund manager would be but for you like for you how did you get started and like what Drew you to Securities Law cuz it's a very specific Niche to be in for sure yeah and I really got started in real estate law so I was always drawn to real   estate I just knew it was a great investment I've just like intrinsically loved real estate I don't know what it was like even when I was in undergrad I was like man it would be so great to own these tow houses that I'm living in like things like that I've just always been attracted to it and investing in it so I started investing in it myself I started out doing real estate transactional law oh cool from that from that perspective and then I realized that you know raising Capital was a little bit more   sophisticated I I like that aspect better and I started gravitating towards that and got into Securities Law and and again at the same time as I was doing that I was also starting to Syndicate my own deal so um pretty interesting that I got kind of the legal side got the business side going at the same time so it gave me really good perspective that's cool so you talked about your journey a little bit I love like diving into that Journey because you you said that you you were in on some of your own   deals so you started as real estate attorney chop that like started doing that were you like a closing attorney yeah yeah okay so like a closing attorney uh and then started did you get to a point where you're like yo I see all this money that people are making I kind of want to do that is that how it like switched into you becoming an active investor into real estate uh yeah somewhat man I mean I took kind of the traditional route of real estate investing I read Rich Dad Poor Dad I started listening to Big Pockets the   purple Bible you know it man what it is um yeah did all that and house hacked into a duplex I mean that was my first property started fixing and flipping a few few property still own some single family those sorts of things um and then you're San Diego right I'm in San Diego yeah but I'm originally from West Virginia West Virginia West by God Virginia that's right all right I mean like I feel like if you I feel like if you're from there you would say something like that that does make sense that does make that's the say that's   what we say West by God Virginia no I don't know anything about V West Virginia but now but now I do so now do you own some of your properties in in very two very different markets West Virginia or San Diego is that like where you own them or are you in other markets they're all over the place so like we invested I lived in Charlotte for a little bit like you know so own a couple properties there own a property in West Virginia that duplex that I was telling you about cuz I moved there for a job really you know California is   tough like to make anything cash flow there's some Adu opportunities right now for that but really just own the house that I live in then I have a condo that I rent out up in Orange County and that's about it but the other ones are all kind of all over the place like we invested in Cleveland for a little bit as well oh yeah some multi family stuff in Cleveland that that was kind of in the single family phase but as far as like the multif family the retail a lot of that was like in the midwest um in   the in the um in the sun sun Bel area so all over the place and we did like industrial we did retail we did multif family um all all sorts of stuff man on the commercial side and it's good to know that background for you like not that background but like you had the ability to understand and how to structure some of those deals um and so I'd love to I'd love to talk about the structure of funds a little bit because this is sure I'm going to as the question that I think like everybody wants to ask an SEC attorney about the   difference between a 506b and a 506c and then what constitutes like having that pre-existing relationship right because like if you have a 506b or a 506c there's certain stipulations but those are the two most common right like 90% of funds are 506 BS or 506 C's and so and if I'm wrong just just let me know but I believe that's like the statistic and and with those what constitutes the differences and then the pre-existing relationship part is one that a lot of people have questions about for sure man   yeah you're spot on so far I mean 506b I like to Remember by buddy so it's typically going to be a buddy right like yeah you have to have so the rule isn't that you have to have a pre-existing substantive relationship the rule is you're not allowed to solicit or advertise that's the rule and the way that you show that is by having a pre-existing substantive relationship with those investors so that that's a little bit of a Nuance there the rule is really you can't or advertised you can't go on Facebook and talk about it you   can't take out Google ads and and put it out there you can't even talk about it really to strangers and invite them into your deals you have to have that pre-existing substantive relationship because otherwise think about it well how would they know about your deal if you didn't right like that's that's kind of the the mindset there so yeah be but the the advantage there of course is that you're allowed to bring in 35 non-accredited investors so that's why people go with the 506b route number one   you can bring in a limited number of non-accredited investors uh number two there's there's less requirements for you as the uh fund manager or the syndicator the capital raiser on proving if they're accredited or not because they just self-certify so those are really the two big reasons you would choose a 506b versus a 506c which you can remember that by community so it's a bigger pool of people all right it's 506c for Community those folks when you have that exemption then you can go out there to your community you can solicit   you can advertise you can put it on Facebook you can put it out there in your m mind you go speak on stage and say hey guys come invest in my deal you can do whatever you want really it gives you the freedom to operate and not feel like oh am I doing something wrong but obviously the big thing there is accredited investors only so if you choose that 6C exemption you're only allowed to bring in accredited investors and they're all you're also going to have to take reasonable steps to verify that and that's typically through uh a   third party vendor or through that Investor's attorney or uh CPA that's going to write them a letter that says that they're qualified yeah which typically and you and not typically but like this is why you see even older more established funds go with a B because it's easier to just bring them in so they don't have to do all that stuff yeah what you see is they'll do a 506b but they won't allow uh non accredited investors in so it'll be 506b but only allow accredited investors so that they don't have to they don't they can   self-certify yeah which is makes it just a whole lot easier of paperwork standpoint so then uh that's which is really really interesting so for for me and I'm actually I'm going to just dive in a little bit deeper because there's so much gray here and like you can it's fine if you don't bring any like Clarity to the situation but there's so much gray here because I hear people that are like all right now when you meet that person add it to your calendar that you met that person and then you could talk   to them three weeks later and then like then you could pitch your fun to them and then like then now you're showing the SEC that it's a a pre-existing relationship and then it's like well where the heck is the line if there isn't even a line and then it's like then then what do they what is the expect me to do you know like if somebody introduces me to somebody how the heck do I make sure that I'm compliant in that in that relationship that we have if I know that they even come into the relationship interested in   what I'm doing I want to take a quick second to talk to you guys about something that could completely change the game for you if you're serious about launching and scaling an investment fund if you've ever wanted to start a real estate fund private Equity Fund or syndication but didn't know where to start this is for you fund Founders is giving you free access to foundations 101 a step-by-step course designed to help you to structure your fund the right way so you stay SEC compliant raise Capital like a pro even if you   don't have a network yet scale your fund without constantly chasing investors and avoid costly legal mistakes that can shut you down this is the exact road map successful fund managers use to launch manage and raise capital for their funds without wasting time or money and the best part it's completely free go to funds onf fire.com back/ Founders or click the links in the notes to get instant access to the fund Foundation 101 course don't miss this if you're serious about raising capital and growing your fund this is where you   start again that's funds onf fire.com Founders or click the link in the notes now let's get back to the show yeah uh pre-existing uh actually just means pre-existing the offering so pre-existing your syndication pre-existing your fund so that makes it a little bit difficult when you've got let's say an evergreen fund right it's like well you got that offering open forever right so you can't even bring anybody in after you've opened it um that you don't already know but there is a there is a kind of a loophole I'll   call it it's not really a loophole it's it's actually a regulation but you can actually convert um a 506b to a 506c now you didn't used to be able to do that but I think that pass um maybe like two or three years ago where you can convert the 506b to the 506c now you can't go back after that but once you make that conversion you know get all your 506b investors in if you want to fill that 35 non accredited pool and then convert it to a see you can do that and then you can go out you can solc it you can   advertise you can talk about it you can bring in strangers yeah now that's really interesting too well and I do know that I think you just have to close subscription for like 24 hours right or something like that and then you can open back up you really just have yeah there's not really a Time requirement you'll hear something you you'll hear where there's like a cooling off period and they'll say 30 days 60 days but it really just comes down to closing that first offering because it's separate   that 506 B exemption offering and then opening that new C offering and just to be safe because again we're dealing with Securities it's always gray maybe give it that 30 days to cool off and then open up that 506c and then you're good to go and you have to refile like a form D and everything like that you do okay you do okay cool I wonder if you're your blue skies you can use the same documents but You' need a new form D yeah okay cool all right very interesting so that's cool to know too so I use a platform and I think we've   talked about it briefly called aester and I'm a big fan because it's a customizable fund they actually don't I think because of the nature of the customizable fund they actually said that I can't close down my be and open back up as a c just by nature of that type of fund and I thought that was really interesting and I know you and I have talked about potentially chopping up like what the heck is the I I think I sent you the stuff for it I can't remember but uh yeah I think so yeah talking about that customizable fund   because it sounds like um you know there's different fund models there's um there are the reg d506 B and C's there's reg CF reg A's and then you also run into like syndications and then you have fun of funds right and so it sounds like and for you you've kind of done all of them I think oh yeah but right now you're really focused on one major one right is that what you like so the fund that you currently operate and you're running uh I'd love to hear a little bit more about that yeah for sure so just to   comment on the the aester fund you know it's it's a kind of a new product right the customizable fund it's pretty new it hasn't really been tested on the legal side quite yet it's pretty complicated right like complicated from well what it spits out is simple right they say Hey you create this Evergreen fund and then you get you know each investor only gets 1 K1 even though they might be invested across a bunch of deals things like that which is great um but you lose that flexibility so I don't know the the   intricacies of it but you know you can imagine you've got this this customizable fund that's invested in let's say 10 different other deals or whatever and some of them it's acting as a fun of fund some of them it's acting as u a lead sponsor or all these different things so trying to convert that to a 506b from a or 506b to a 506c I can see where you can run into some complications there it might not be possible yeah and I think so because the structure sorry the structure of it they tell me what makes it customizable is   the fact that like our investors can log in and I don't actually like I have an overarching PPM they log in and they choose the their investment that they want to I'm not telling them the investment that they have to like invest into they read the deal disclosures and decide decide that that's what they want where they want to allocate their money to which allows for for the customizability of this type of model so I think like that's where converting it to a c would be yeah what you're saying for sure y that's that's kind of the   defining I guess piece of that customizable fund is that investor actually gets to pick and choose within your fund that you created where they invest um and that actually I can see where that why they do that I mean it's a it's a great concept but also that keeps you from actually making any decisions as the fund manager so that keeps you out of some certain regulations I'm like hey this is what we offer yep you can look at the deal disclosures and decide on where you want but like they could and this is like one   of the things that they like is I can say oh you could you could essentially diversify your portfolio within one fund because you could choose this one this one this one this one but you choose how much you want to go into there so that's that is a very interesting model and so that's really cool um or like yeah the investor chooses it yep the investor chooses it and yeah and and I'll you know that contrast to what you're alluding to which is an SPV fund of fund so that's what we do over at tribe vest   in full disclosure I'm Chief legal officer and a and a shareholder of tribe vest um so I'm a little bit biased and aester is you know we don't like to call him a competitor honestly they do fund of funds and we do fund of funds is like the overarching product but it's completely different you know one situation which why I brought it up it's the only reason why I brought it up because I'm excited to dive into tribe vest and what you guys offer um because this is not a pitch for tribe vest and like I didn't even know about I did know   I've heard of trivest but didn't even know you were a part of it before this podcast but I love hearing what you're a part of and that's why I want to dive into that a little bit because I think it's cool yeah and I like it it it might be a good to kind of lay it out right you've got these customizable fun of funds out there avor is really the only one offering them there's a couple other uh groups out there that are going to be offering them soon you can actually go to a Securities attorney and they can   put it together for you as well um and yeah and then you've got the SPV fun of fund again you can go through triest or you can SPV just for clarity special right special purpose vehicle or single purpose vehicle kind of either either one really applies then you've got your typical discretionary fund which you would go directly to a Securities attorney and that's where you're actually making some decisions you're saying okay I'm going to raise 10 million bucks and I'm going to invest in Deal one two three four five six seven   eight um and you're kind of making those decisions and there's a lot of rules and regulations that you've got to abide by to be able to do that without a license but anyways back to the SPV the single-purpose vehicle instead of a customizable fund where you know the investor is making the decision and you as the fund manager in you know you make all these different things Avail all these different Investments available the SPV is designed as a single purpose vehicle to invest in one single deal so   if there's a Target deal let's say a 200 unit multif family property in San Antonio um we're going to spin up an SPV for you to invest as a passive investor into that Target deal and that's it it's super simple it's super contained it's not complicated it it just keeps everything compartmentalized both from an asset protection standpoint and from visibility right you're going to know as the fund manager and as the investor exactly what you're investing in what you're how you're going to get paid what   your projective returns are and it doesn't really get mudded by other Investments and this is what I CU I've talked to other SEC attorneys and they've talked about it's funny they've talked about how rare what I've done so I've like maxed out my 506b on a my first fund being a blind fund and they were like that's super rare because you're saying hey just trust me but what you guys are saying what you're doing is saying hey this is the specific and that makes it a lot easier to raise Capital because like you said ton more   transparency they know what they're investing into and so for people starting out that's probably the route that they want to start with is something where they can bring transparency and then the investors that they're coming in know exactly what they're investing into that's right de yeah what you did Devon was incredible like it's really difficult to do most people don't start there they can't start there they don't have the ability to um to be able to build that up that level of trust and track record prior to   you launching the fund that's why you're able to do it but most people can't do it most people have to get their first few in the door by showing the investors hey this is the exact deal that you're going to invest in and you're getting you're going to be a part of and they can do their own due diligence and underwriting and those sorts of things and they're say oh yes I believe in that property or that deal and I also believe in you as the the fund manager or the syndicator and it's easier to raise   Capital that way as opposed to a blind pool fund where it's like hey just give me your money and we're going to invest in something that looks like this and yeah exactly exactly so I actually I want to dive into more into tribe vests cuz like so where does the benefit come in because like somebody can just go and get with an SEC attorney and create their own SPV and and kind of go that route but where's the benefit of somebody coming in and working with tribe vest like why I mean honestly like I please I like tell me like why have   you invested into it why do you believe in it so much and then yeah tell me a little bit more about it man yeah because it it just makes everything super simple and super contained and we handle everything so if you go to an SEC attorney like myself I'm going to come in and I'm going to I'm going to draft your offering documents I'm going to file your exemptions do your blue sky filings and that's it and I I'm going to wipe my hands of it and I'll say you know good luck you know more than that I'll help you out of yeah exactly I'm   going to charge you a lot of money I'm going to charge you at least 25k right Tri vest includes everything that you could possibly imagine so all these different parts that you would have to put together as a capital aggregator TR vest handles so that includes not just the offering documents the legal stuff the filing of the exemptions and the blue sky filings but we're going to file for your entity we're going to get your EIN we're going to be your registered agent we are going to uh onboard your   investors so we're going to act like an like an investor relations person on your team so all you do is send us your list of investors and we start reaching out we send them the docs we walk them through how to sign and get them through the signing ceremony we hound them or we call it hurting the cats to get them to actually fund the deal cuz sometimes people get cold feet so bug the hell out of them yep bug the hell out of them until they make that wire we do all that we do the uh the accounting in your k1s   we configure your cap table very cool we do your distributions we open your business banking account we do uh everything on the back end uh we've got the investor dashboard or investor portal that you can use which alone is you know you're going to pay $500 a month at minimum for that by itself so it it's incredible and we do it at an incredible price and I mean we're not we're very transparent about that it's $5,000 upfront and then $2,000 a year annually and that comes with docs and everything that comes with docks and   everything there's just you can't be beat I mean it literally can't be beat and the other thing is the speed so as soon as you sign the greenl docks which is basically just like hey you agree to the services that we're going to provide we will have you raising capital in five business days no way man that's really cool that's fantastic if you come to to me if you come to me as a security attorney I've got that hat on you know we're not doing in 5 days I'll tell you that now how much education do you help   with because I tell people all the time like here's the questions you should have beforehand because your SEC like your attorney will be the most expensive education you have ever paid for if you don't have that information beforehand so like what what type of because they'll charge you like if you don't know if you want a 506b or 506 C you don't know if you if you want your waterfall this way if you want this and you're just asking questions they're going to charge you by the hour to ask those questions and so for you like how   much help do you guys help for people who are like I've never started a fund I'm really looking forward to starting this but I don't know where to go what does that look like for you guys yeah I mean for tribe vest we're putting together some modules actually right now we're going to roll them out literally before the end of the year which will be fantastic because we're going to share that with with the world you're going to be able to self-educate on what is a fun to fund how does that look like in the   fundraising ecosystem like you know what is a preferred return what is the profits what kind of fees can you charge all kind of the nuts and bolts that you need to know we're going to have that out there so soon enough that'll be available to the public and that'll be a huge value ad and huge help for us as well because we don't have to educate one-on-one anymore as a Securities attorney I I will advise on people I mean I'm I'm happy I'm I'm more of a mentor and a coach when it comes to that sort of stuff and I'll I'll be like look   attorney hat off right now I'm going to tell you this and here's kind of your gray area and that sort of thing so you know I I I think I get into those sorts of things a little bit more than most attorneys will um but if you go to like a a large Law Firm or even a regional Law Firm they're they're going to charge you per hour and that's going to be anywhere between you know $400 to $1,500 an hour yeah there's no doubt there's there's no doubt so and this is really interesting because one of the questions   that I had just going into this um and not even knowing about uh the not even knowing about tribe vest and and all of that is what have you seen as far as like trends that you're seeing in the industry right now because Trends seem to be changing one just even I I'm a disruptor you're it seems like you're a disruptor of Industries and we're trying to disrupt this huge investment fund industry um but it seems like there's being like there's different type of offerings there different structures there's different   things that people are doing what are some of the trends that you're seeing that people are kind of pressing against or starting in as far as funds as a whole you seeing that being the case of being become more common yeah I mean so like biggest picture right is trying to get these types of alternative Investments to the masses because most wealthy people even rich people whatever you want to call them that have some Expendable income that want to invest the only thing they know are 401ks stock market mutual funds   and those sorts of things and they we just need to get that out there and I think you're seeing a trend towards that I think bringing in more people that want to raise capital and start a capital raising business is how you do it right because they've already got their built-in networks and then those networks know other people and and it kind of spiderwebs out from there so that's that's kind of the biggest picture trend is just trying to see well we're seeing you know alternative investments just become more available   to the masses second you're seeing the industry go away from the CP model which I like to say the cgp model is dead and you're seeing people turn to the fun of funds route yeah because the cgp model has just been abused if you do it the right way if you're actually an active partner and you're actually participating in the meetings and and decid on Asset Management typee decisions then all good that's how it's supposed to be but when you're just raising capital and not doing anything else that's when the CP model gets   abused and it's not just oh well you shouldn't do that it's illegal it's plain and simple illegal so that was like the conversation I'm telling you when um I was having the conversation with that guy at my at my Mastermind and he was like we're doing this and I go like stop and he's like haa and I go no no it's illegal and he's like oh haha and I'm like no no like prison illegal and they I feel like just people don't understand the severity because they feel like what's wrong with it it's not that bad and it's like no no it's   illegal yeah and you know that this is just what happens right like you just kind of everybody just pushes boundaries pushes boundaries and you know fortunately or unfortunately however you want to look at it the industry's been fantastic for a long time right the real estate industry's went up since the the crash in 2009 2008 all the way until really covid and that was just a blip and then it took off again and then B basically up until last year 2023 is when you started seeing it kind of take   a nose dive a little bit because of interest rates and not because of the actual state of the market but the interest rates but either way it started going down you started seeing some people get in trouble but all along the way on that rise up all the investors have been happy he's suing anybody because they've been getting their returns and they've been everybody's been crushing it and even if you're a terrible operator you've still been crushing it because the market saved you and nobody's getting sued so it's all   good until it's not and then you've seen in yeah and then you see in 2023 you see you know potential foreclosures and workouts and you know Capital calls things like that investors aren't happy and we're in America and people are like yo how can I get my money back well you try to sue somebody and that's when you start seeing some of these things where the cgp model was abused or people weren't raising Capital the right way or they didn't f exemptions all those sorts of legal things that nobody really   worried about because everything was great start coming up and you're you're seeing that now so you're seeing that shift away from the CP model to the fund of funds model because the fund of funds model is compliant obviously if you do it the right way but it's more compliant and it's always been the answer but at the end of the day it's expensive it's more complicated you've got more attorneys you've got a whole separate offering all these different things that you have to take into account and people   were like I'm not doing that but now we're kind of forced into having to do that and that's where you know tribe vest and aester and some other folks are coming in and having coming up with solutions for that yeah that's really cool um because one one more thing I'm really curious on that you've seen because I feel like there is a fairly irreg irregulate asset you know coming into a very regulated um like structure right so one the things I'm talking about is like the rise of crypto in these crypto funds and these blockchains   based funds have you seen that start to affect like the legal landscape of funds and the formation that people have of that and the way that people are thinking through that and even how the SEC is starting to figure that out and uh and stuff like that have you seen like an emergence of more of those blockchainbased funds I have yeah and not just like strictly you know blockchain and and crypto but also just spin-offs of that right like you saw tokenized real estate was a big thing for a little while it's kind of turned   down a little bit but that was huge that was like I was crazy that you could be like I'm tokenizing my my bathroom and when I sell it you get like that much of the footage and the appreciation it's like what that's crazy yeah so it's kind of cooled out a little bit you know I don't I honestly don't follow that that closely just because I know that it just changes so fast and especially now that we've got the new Administration in here you're probably going to see a lot more loosening of that which would be good   for us but yeah I mean you know you're going to see that right like CU we are just on the the precipice of just crazy technological advancements from tokenized Real Estate to you know crypto to AI like all this stuff is going to like this landscape 5 years from now is is going to be unrecognizable yeah that's it's it really will just because of the way that contract law is going to go from the from the from um from I guess blockchain based like because like you'll see that where the blockchain will take a lot of   those uh a lot of that aspect and change it and flip it on its head so it's going to be super interesting to see how that goes man I want to respect honor your time I appreciate you being on I guess one thing I guess one more question that I have before we kind of go into the exit if there's somebody that's thinking about starting a fund because what you were saying earlier really there's only two main people if I'm fully transparent I want to be able to be uh the voice of funds for minorities and women in this   country because like all those other they all the white dudes they could have all the other white dudes that's fine with me but there's a lot there's a there's a huge disparity I heard uh don peees once say and this has changed my my my thought my process like my mindset ever since he says in the history of America there has been $94 trillion to come in through private equity and real estate in the history of American and history of America 8.3% of that had no sorry 1.7% of that have gone to minorities and women that means 98.3% of   that has gone to white men and so there's this massive disparity between access to education like you're saying access to Capital Access to I think there there's this quote that says the world equally distributes talent but doesn't equally distribute opportunity and so there's this huge disparity of opportunity of people that look like me and look like you and look like women around this country that I would love to make sure we're the voice for and so for people who don't have a lot of that education one what's a big piece of   advice that you would give them and when they're starting to think about starting a fund because I think like if I'm full of transparency most of the people I talked to and I told you I saved from prison there were black dudes they're just trying to do the right thing but don't have the education to do the right thing and so for for that like what what's a big piece of advice you would give people that are thinking like I think I want to start a fund um what should I look out for how expensive does   it matter because we've talked about a better solution for how expensive it can be but what's the thing that they should be looking out for yeah I mean you know right off the bat like be confident and don't be intimidated because I think some people yep in those groups that you described might feel a little discouraged because of that because you walk into a room that is maybe all fund managers or all capital risers or you know those types of people and you're like who I don't look like everybody   else so maybe I don't belong here or maybe your confidence goes from here to to hear and you're like and then and then you come off that way right like you've got to you got to step into that room with confidence and a lot of a lot of that comes down to self-education right like it comes from education and it's out there now I mean we mentioned that there's only a few really good sources but you can still piece it together I mean you can find anything on YouTube University just to at least get the you know being able to talk to talk   and walk the walk and and feel confident doing that so just get educated to start get that Baseline and then get out there and just be be confident like I said don't be intimidated don't feel like you don't belong because we got to get folks out there that are that are doing it from from those groups yep that's right man well I appreciate it Seth where can people find you where can people hire you where can people join what you're doing um because I think that they should I'm a big believer in you and   what you're doing and I'm excited for for all those things appreciate it man I usually update all my Links at Seth Paul bradley.com so you can find everything there I'm all over social media so all my handles are Seth Bradley Esq cool man I appreciate you thankful for your time thankful for your friendship I really look forward to uh to Growing growing together man it's fun to see other people that like we're about the same age I don't know you look like you're in your 20s but you're you're not I know   that but like uh but like like for us to just rise together on this man and so I'm thankful for this journey that we're on together and I appreciate you being here today love it brother appreciate you yes sir talk to you later man wow I hope you enjoyed that I have a quick favor if you've been enjoying the show there's one simple way you can support us and it's by hitting that follow button or that subscribe button on the app app you're listening to I want to level this podcast up in every single   way possible bringing you more value incredible content and guests and new strategies Following the show and leaving a quick review goes a really long way in helping us to grow and continue to deliver top tier content it's the only free thing I'll ever ask you to do and it makes a bigger impact than I can possibly put into words so thank you for being a part of this journey and I'll definitely catch you on the next episode to great success and greater impact peace Links from the Show and Guest Info and Links: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-w_w6WAUVw https://www.instagram.com/p/DHbcSjGT7Jn/ https://tinyurl.com/FFfoundations-YT https://pfcapital.us/ Seth Bradley's Links: https://x.com/sethbradleyesq https://www.youtube.com/@sethbradleyesq www.facebook.com/sethbradleyesq https://www.threads.com/@sethbradleyesq https://www.instagram.com/sethbradleyesq/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/sethbradleyesq/ https://passiveincomeattorney.com/seth-bradley/ https://www.biggerpockets.com/users/sethbradleyesq https://medium.com/@sethbradleyesq https://www.tiktok.com/@sethbradleyesq?lang=en Devin Robinson's Links: https://www.instagram.com/devin.robinson1/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/devin-robinson-997ba040/ https://www.facebook.com/drob737/ https://x.com/devinrobinson37 https://www.threads.com/@devin.robinson1 https://www.tiktok.com/@devin.robinson1  

Title: The Truth About Capital Raising That Your Attorney Won't Tell You with Devin Robinson Summary: In this episode of the “Funds on Fire” podcast, host Devin Robinson interviews Seth Bradley, a seasoned SEC attorney and a friend. Both share insights into the world of capital rasing, investment funds, and legal compliance. Robinson highlights the rapid learning curve and opportunities within the fund management landscape. He discusses his background in raising millions for real estate ventures and transitions into the value of complying with SEC regulations when raising capital. The conversation sheds light on common misconceptions surrounding securities law, stressing the importance of education and understanding regulations related to passive investments. Bradley offers practical advice on starting investment funds, the advantages of teaming up with experienced SEC attorneys, and the evolving trends in alternative investments, particularly in light of recent market changes. He emphasizes the necessity for diversity in investment management and the need for entrepreneurs from all backgrounds to have access to the financial education that empowers them to raise capital and scale their business ventures effectively. Links to watch and subscribe: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-w_w6WAUVw Bullet Point Highlights: Capital Raising Insights: Devin Robinson shares his journey in successfully raising millions for investment projects. Legal Compliance Importance: Seth Bradley emphasizes the significance of understanding SEC regulations to avoid legal troubles in fund management. Fund Management Strategies: Discussion on navigating funds, from 506(b) to 506© offerings, providing clarity on compliance requirements. Education Gaps: The necessity for education in the finance and investment space is underscored, highlighting the lack of resources for aspiring fund managers. Diversity in Investment: Recognition of the disparity in investment opportunities for minorities and the importance of fostering diversity in fund management. Trends in Capital Raising: A shift towards fund-of-funds structures and other innovative investment vehicles as alternatives to traditional capital raising models. Confidence Building: Advice encouraging newcomers in investment to be confident and educated, asserting their place in the industry. Transcript: raised tens of millions of dollars myself as well as um you know we purchased just in 2022 Alone um I was a GP on over $120 Million worth of commercial assets we don't want to say anything that might get us into trouble you know I'm I'm an entrepreneur first so I'm out there to to educate it started going down you started seeing some people get in trouble but all along the way on that rise up he's suing anybody because they've been getting their returns and they've been everybody's been crushing it and even if   you're a terrible operator you've still been crushing it because the market saved you and nobody's getting sued so it's all good until it's not welcome to funds on fire the podcast that ignites The Passion of investment funds in capital raising here we turn the complexities of fund management into clear actionable steps that drive results I've invested into diverse real estate across the United States and managed thriving funds and I'm committed to transforming lives through the vehicle of investment funds and helping   others to do the same join me as we document the Journey of scaling businesses raising capital and impacting tens of thousands of people around the world my name is Devin Robinson and welcome to funds on fire on this episode of the podcast I actually interview Seth Bradley who is an SEC attorney and has become a really good friend of mine so him and I met a couple years back at raay Fest and which is we're part of a mastermind for Capital raising and fun launching and then both of us as we've become friends   as we did this podcast interview gosh a couple of months ago and then now I've launched the podcast and even since then this is pretty cool him and I have actually started a partnership on um on helping people to launch uh manage scale and raise capital for investment funds and it's something really cool so you'll hear more about that later but it's really cool that it started uh with this podcast we both are very like-minded people we both have very similar goals and desires especially when it comes to   Capital raising and the access to information with when it comes to that and for other people to be able to learn how to um honestly be able to launch and scale an investment fund and there are so many people that have the ability to do it have the um the skills and the knowledge to do it but don't have the opportunity to do it or honestly just think it's too hard to do and so I'm so excited because partnering with somebody like Seth is incredible he's a guy who has helped hundreds of people to launch   and manage their funds or would just really launch their funds he has raised hundreds of millions of dollars and invested into hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars worth of real estate himself and so to be able to partner with him on something like this is really really awesome so I'm excited for that as we talked through his journey talk through all the things as we go through his progression from just being a real estate attorney to then an SEC attorney that goes and helps people to launch and manage funds his involvement   in that some of the things he's doing and honestly it's going to be a really good conversation for you all to hear how to stay compliant how to make sure that you guys are raising Capital appropriately how to make sure that you guys aren't going to get in trouble with the SEC because of how you guys are raising Capital so excited for this really pumped for this episode just thought I'd give you a little preface before we dive in you are going to want to listen to this cuz he is awesome and I'm excited so thank you so much enjoy   the episode all right what's up and welcome to this episode of funds on fire I I love this uh because today we have a friend of mine Seth Seth we go back I don't know like at this point I feel like it's like two years now or a year and a half what we met at Ray's Fest a while ago and I'll tell you I was super impressed by this dude because we met we met at a bar we were like at this event we had guess us that's right that's exactly right we were at this event for Ray Fest and like I'd gone downstairs he was   chilling I was chilling we started talking and I was like I like this dude because one he's not like the typical like white dude that's here he's all tatted up he's really cool and then I realized he's by far the smartest in the room and I was like yo Seth is the man so Seth I would love for people to tell or for you to tell people like who you are and what you do I've enjoyed keeping up with you over the years content you're putting out is incredible and so if you haven't give this man a follow   ESP if you want to stay compliant with funds and the legal aspect of it cuz he's doing some really awesome stuff and I love how just like fit you and your Wi-Fi that's pretty cool too so I respect that too so Seth like tell people who you are where you're from what do you do cuz I think it's going to be important for people to know you all right man Deon I appreciate that intro brother yeah it was it was great meeting you back in the day now we've kind of followed each other on social media and   kept in contact and loved it love it man love it but I'm I'm a Securities attorney so anytime you're raising capital from passive investors you can get me involved I've got I've got the pedigree I worked in big law for seven years before starting my own Boutique Law Firm I think what people like the most about working with me is that I actually come from the business side as well so I'm a syndicator and a fund manager myself so um you know I've raised tens of millions of dollars myself as well as um you know we   purchased just in 2022 Alone um I was a GP on over $120 Million worth of commercial assets so you know I come from not just the legal side but also the business side and I look at every single deal like you know whether I'm you know actually an equity holder or I am just the vendor as the Securities attorney I look at the deal like hey how are we going to get this thing done right a lot of attorneys kind of get in the way um I don't want to get in the way I I will tell you what the risks are what your liabilities are what you might   be opening yourself up to what the gray areas are but at the end of the day you're the business person and you're the entrepreneur so you make the decisions based on the information that I give you so I'm I'm there to help you you get the deal done that's cool man cuz like I know man there's a lot of misconceptions about funds and so one I can tell you I really appreciate I really appreciate you because I have had some not so great SEC attorneys that I was not a big fan of then I've had some good ones and so I'm thankful for it and   so when it comes to that uh we're going to we're going to talk about compliance because that's super important but we'll also talk about uh because I I I guess so I'm in another Mastermind I think I was going to bring this up a little bit later but I'll bring it up now and I want to talk about the importance of finding a good attorney because like I I'm in a different Mastermind and it's more of an operators based Mastermind like how to a lot of single family things and I I talk to people and I'm like and because I'm   going to set the groundwork for this podcast but I talk to people and they're like oh yeah I've got some friends they've let me borrow some of their money and I'm just using that money and I'm like oh hold on uh what do you mean and so I talked to like I mean I can't tell you the last po I was there two months ago three people told me this said three people and so they were like they were like yeah so I have an LLC and they wire the money into my LLC account it's like three or four friends they   wire this money into my LLC account and then I use it and I give them a return and I'm like you need to call an attorney right now because you are literally violating Securities Law like you you you are and they're like wait wait wait okay but but what if what if they they say we we sign up you know a promisory note they put it in here and I'm like security and then they're like okay but what if that the the the people hold it an escrow our attorney is holding an escrow I'm like security and so like just to even like set the   groundwork what is like what what is a security and and and what do you see most often when people come to you and they're looking for an attorney and they're like hey I'm doing this is this legal and you're like no that's not legal but what do you see like what is the security and what is the misconception or the mistake that you see a lot of people make when they come to you yeah I mean you just said it so the number one problem or the the biggest problem I see every single day is just the lack of knowledge like   people just don't know and there's there's maybe a fine line there between not knowing and not caring enough to know right exactly you're like I know I'm doing something here and I don't care to look into it a little bit further to figure it out but that's but that's really what it comes down to is just not having the knowledge because you think like you know I'm just going to you know me and this guy are going to partner he's going to give me all this money and they're not going to do anything and they're going to they're   going to expect a return on their investment and all that kind of stuff and it's all good but it's not you're getting yourself into into issues you know to define a security in a in layman's terms I like to just say look if you've got a passive investor involved in your deal and they're expecting a return on their money and on the actions that you're taking as the active participant then that's a security and that that's it like if if you have a passive investor meaning they're not you know making decisions   they're not managing they're not helping you out on the active side that's a passive investor and you're probably dealing with the security right and this is what I think separates like syndication from the fund right so like if you have a syndication and then you have somebody who is brings the capital typically they're making some of the decisions which makes them a little bit more active so then it's not in that sense of violating that Securities laws if it's just either like one person or even a couple a group that's actually   making decisions on that and I guess that's not the main differentiator between a syndication and and a fund but I think that's where people get confused is the passive part of things that's right that's right it's the passive part of it right like you have people that come in whether it's a syndication or a fund if if they have um some sort of managerial rights or meaningful voting rights because you'll see if you if you invest passively in a deal and you read through the PPM and the operating   agreement you'll see that you really don't have any rights to make any sort of decisions there might be some convoluted way that you might be able to get the manager out if a b c d and f happens but probably not so you'll see that you're really passive right and if you're passive then that's a security that you're dealing with you're investing into security cool that's cool and I appreciate us understanding that groundwork because I want people to listen to this I want people in my Mastermind to listen to this I want   people to just hear and understand that more often times like more than you think there are people clearly violating SEC like security law and so I just want to make sure that people are compliant and this is like you mentioned it earlier and I think that's really important is just the lack of Education side of things and you and I talk about that we talked about this before this of like really there's only like two main Educators in this space that are doing this and unless you know those two you   run the risk of not really being honestly educated enough to run a fund unless you have the self-education side of these and so I love like what you're doing and the content you're putting out especially from a Securities attorney aspect to be able to help that what what have you seen has been like the main sources of Education because even just like outside of what I do outside of what you do uh are there other sources of Education since you've been in this space longer than me that people can go to to gain more   information about what it looks like to raise a fund or uh or even start looking in that direction yeah dude it's tough out there right like you just you just said it and I I'll just name him I mean Hunter Thompson has some really good content that he puts out love Hunter super intelligent guy great stuff it's about raising Capital 4 real estate specifically which is great for the for your audience um and then Bridger Pennington of course um his is a little bit not necessarily real estate related   more in the private Equity space but also real estate sometimes and those are really the only two guys that are putting out content um typically before them you're really getting your education from your securities attorney that you engage with you know that can you know they're going to give you legal advice they're not going to give you kind of like you know they they'll review your marketing materials and things like that to tell you hey this is compliant this is not maybe this is what you should do this is what you shouldn't   do but there's not really anything comprehensive out there where you put the whole package together when you're really trying to start a capital raising business other than those two guys right now so you know there's a lot of room in that space for people to to step in and do it and and also you know Securities attorneys if you look I mean there's only a few of us putting out any kind of content cuz you know as an attorney most most of us are pretty conservative we don't want to put ourselves out there we   don't want to say anything that might get us into trouble you know I'm I'm an entrepreneur first so I'm out there to to educate and that's what I was going to ask so for you man just like a little bit about your journey because like it's not every day that you meet a a Securities attorney now granted we are at a fund event so then like of course you're going to run into a Securities attorney but like honestly you you I feel like and this is kind of cool I feel like me and you don't fit the molds   of our role like for like we're tatted like you know like you know I'm saying we're tatted we're a little bit more laid-back I got I think I posted this the other day I graduated college with a 2.3 GPA like I I just am not very qualified of what you would put the normal qual qualifications of a fund manager would be but for you like for you how did you get started and like what Drew you to Securities Law cuz it's a very specific Niche to be in for sure yeah and I really got started in real estate law so I was always drawn to real   estate I just knew it was a great investment I've just like intrinsically loved real estate I don't know what it was like even when I was in undergrad I was like man it would be so great to own these tow houses that I'm living in like things like that I've just always been attracted to it and investing in it so I started investing in it myself I started out doing real estate transactional law oh cool from that from that perspective and then I realized that you know raising Capital was a little bit more   sophisticated I I like that aspect better and I started gravitating towards that and got into Securities Law and and again at the same time as I was doing that I was also starting to Syndicate my own deal so um pretty interesting that I got kind of the legal side got the business side going at the same time so it gave me really good perspective that's cool so you talked about your journey a little bit I love like diving into that Journey because you you said that you you were in on some of your own   deals so you started as real estate attorney chop that like started doing that were you like a closing attorney yeah yeah okay so like a closing attorney uh and then started did you get to a point where you're like yo I see all this money that people are making I kind of want to do that is that how it like switched into you becoming an active investor into real estate uh yeah somewhat man I mean I took kind of the traditional route of real estate investing I read Rich Dad Poor Dad I started listening to Big Pockets the   purple Bible you know it man what it is um yeah did all that and house hacked into a duplex I mean that was my first property started fixing and flipping a few few property still own some single family those sorts of things um and then you're San Diego right I'm in San Diego yeah but I'm originally from West Virginia West Virginia West by God Virginia that's right all right I mean like I feel like if you I feel like if you're from there you would say something like that that does make sense that does make that's the say that's   what we say West by God Virginia no I don't know anything about V West Virginia but now but now I do so now do you own some of your properties in in very two very different markets West Virginia or San Diego is that like where you own them or are you in other markets they're all over the place so like we invested I lived in Charlotte for a little bit like you know so own a couple properties there own a property in West Virginia that duplex that I was telling you about cuz I moved there for a job really you know California is   tough like to make anything cash flow there's some Adu opportunities right now for that but really just own the house that I live in then I have a condo that I rent out up in Orange County and that's about it but the other ones are all kind of all over the place like we invested in Cleveland for a little bit as well oh yeah some multi family stuff in Cleveland that that was kind of in the single family phase but as far as like the multif family the retail a lot of that was like in the midwest um in   the in the um in the sun sun Bel area so all over the place and we did like industrial we did retail we did multif family um all all sorts of stuff man on the commercial side and it's good to know that background for you like not that background but like you had the ability to understand and how to structure some of those deals um and so I'd love to I'd love to talk about the structure of funds a little bit because this is sure I'm going to as the question that I think like everybody wants to ask an SEC attorney about the   difference between a 506b and a 506c and then what constitutes like having that pre-existing relationship right because like if you have a 506b or a 506c there's certain stipulations but those are the two most common right like 90% of funds are 506 BS or 506 C's and so and if I'm wrong just just let me know but I believe that's like the statistic and and with those what constitutes the differences and then the pre-existing relationship part is one that a lot of people have questions about for sure man   yeah you're spot on so far I mean 506b I like to Remember by buddy so it's typically going to be a buddy right like yeah you have to have so the rule isn't that you have to have a pre-existing substantive relationship the rule is you're not allowed to solicit or advertise that's the rule and the way that you show that is by having a pre-existing substantive relationship with those investors so that that's a little bit of a Nuance there the rule is really you can't or advertised you can't go on Facebook and talk about it you   can't take out Google ads and and put it out there you can't even talk about it really to strangers and invite them into your deals you have to have that pre-existing substantive relationship because otherwise think about it well how would they know about your deal if you didn't right like that's that's kind of the the mindset there so yeah be but the the advantage there of course is that you're allowed to bring in 35 non-accredited investors so that's why people go with the 506b route number one   you can bring in a limited number of non-accredited investors uh number two there's there's less requirements for you as the uh fund manager or the syndicator the capital raiser on proving if they're accredited or not because they just self-certify so those are really the two big reasons you would choose a 506b versus a 506c which you can remember that by community so it's a bigger pool of people all right it's 506c for Community those folks when you have that exemption then you can go out there to your community you can solicit   you can advertise you can put it on Facebook you can put it out there in your m mind you go speak on stage and say hey guys come invest in my deal you can do whatever you want really it gives you the freedom to operate and not feel like oh am I doing something wrong but obviously the big thing there is accredited investors only so if you choose that 6C exemption you're only allowed to bring in accredited investors and they're all you're also going to have to take reasonable steps to verify that and that's typically through uh a   third party vendor or through that Investor's attorney or uh CPA that's going to write them a letter that says that they're qualified yeah which typically and you and not typically but like this is why you see even older more established funds go with a B because it's easier to just bring them in so they don't have to do all that stuff yeah what you see is they'll do a 506b but they won't allow uh non accredited investors in so it'll be 506b but only allow accredited investors so that they don't have to they don't they can   self-certify yeah which is makes it just a whole lot easier of paperwork standpoint so then uh that's which is really really interesting so for for me and I'm actually I'm going to just dive in a little bit deeper because there's so much gray here and like you can it's fine if you don't bring any like Clarity to the situation but there's so much gray here because I hear people that are like all right now when you meet that person add it to your calendar that you met that person and then you could talk   to them three weeks later and then like then you could pitch your fun to them and then like then now you're showing the SEC that it's a a pre-existing relationship and then it's like well where the heck is the line if there isn't even a line and then it's like then then what do they what is the expect me to do you know like if somebody introduces me to somebody how the heck do I make sure that I'm compliant in that in that relationship that we have if I know that they even come into the relationship interested in   what I'm doing I want to take a quick second to talk to you guys about something that could completely change the game for you if you're serious about launching and scaling an investment fund if you've ever wanted to start a real estate fund private Equity Fund or syndication but didn't know where to start this is for you fund Founders is giving you free access to foundations 101 a step-by-step course designed to help you to structure your fund the right way so you stay SEC compliant raise Capital like a pro even if you   don't have a network yet scale your fund without constantly chasing investors and avoid costly legal mistakes that can shut you down this is the exact road map successful fund managers use to launch manage and raise capital for their funds without wasting time or money and the best part it's completely free go to funds onf fire.com back/ Founders or click the links in the notes to get instant access to the fund Foundation 101 course don't miss this if you're serious about raising capital and growing your fund this is where you   start again that's funds onf fire.com Founders or click the link in the notes now let's get back to the show yeah uh pre-existing uh actually just means pre-existing the offering so pre-existing your syndication pre-existing your fund so that makes it a little bit difficult when you've got let's say an evergreen fund right it's like well you got that offering open forever right so you can't even bring anybody in after you've opened it um that you don't already know but there is a there is a kind of a loophole I'll   call it it's not really a loophole it's it's actually a regulation but you can actually convert um a 506b to a 506c now you didn't used to be able to do that but I think that pass um maybe like two or three years ago where you can convert the 506b to the 506c now you can't go back after that but once you make that conversion you know get all your 506b investors in if you want to fill that 35 non accredited pool and then convert it to a see you can do that and then you can go out you can solc it you can   advertise you can talk about it you can bring in strangers yeah now that's really interesting too well and I do know that I think you just have to close subscription for like 24 hours right or something like that and then you can open back up you really just have yeah there's not really a Time requirement you'll hear something you you'll hear where there's like a cooling off period and they'll say 30 days 60 days but it really just comes down to closing that first offering because it's separate   that 506 B exemption offering and then opening that new C offering and just to be safe because again we're dealing with Securities it's always gray maybe give it that 30 days to cool off and then open up that 506c and then you're good to go and you have to refile like a form D and everything like that you do okay you do okay cool I wonder if you're your blue skies you can use the same documents but You' need a new form D yeah okay cool all right very interesting so that's cool to know too so I use a platform and I think we've   talked about it briefly called aester and I'm a big fan because it's a customizable fund they actually don't I think because of the nature of the customizable fund they actually said that I can't close down my be and open back up as a c just by nature of that type of fund and I thought that was really interesting and I know you and I have talked about potentially chopping up like what the heck is the I I think I sent you the stuff for it I can't remember but uh yeah I think so yeah talking about that customizable fund   because it sounds like um you know there's different fund models there's um there are the reg d506 B and C's there's reg CF reg A's and then you also run into like syndications and then you have fun of funds right and so it sounds like and for you you've kind of done all of them I think oh yeah but right now you're really focused on one major one right is that what you like so the fund that you currently operate and you're running uh I'd love to hear a little bit more about that yeah for sure so just to   comment on the the aester fund you know it's it's a kind of a new product right the customizable fund it's pretty new it hasn't really been tested on the legal side quite yet it's pretty complicated right like complicated from well what it spits out is simple right they say Hey you create this Evergreen fund and then you get you know each investor only gets 1 K1 even though they might be invested across a bunch of deals things like that which is great um but you lose that flexibility so I don't know the the   intricacies of it but you know you can imagine you've got this this customizable fund that's invested in let's say 10 different other deals or whatever and some of them it's acting as a fun of fund some of them it's acting as u a lead sponsor or all these different things so trying to convert that to a 506b from a or 506b to a 506c I can see where you can run into some complications there it might not be possible yeah and I think so because the structure sorry the structure of it they tell me what makes it customizable is   the fact that like our investors can log in and I don't actually like I have an overarching PPM they log in and they choose the their investment that they want to I'm not telling them the investment that they have to like invest into they read the deal disclosures and decide decide that that's what they want where they want to allocate their money to which allows for for the customizability of this type of model so I think like that's where converting it to a c would be yeah what you're saying for sure y that's that's kind of the   defining I guess piece of that customizable fund is that investor actually gets to pick and choose within your fund that you created where they invest um and that actually I can see where that why they do that I mean it's a it's a great concept but also that keeps you from actually making any decisions as the fund manager so that keeps you out of some certain regulations I'm like hey this is what we offer yep you can look at the deal disclosures and decide on where you want but like they could and this is like one   of the things that they like is I can say oh you could you could essentially diversify your portfolio within one fund because you could choose this one this one this one this one but you choose how much you want to go into there so that's that is a very interesting model and so that's really cool um or like yeah the investor chooses it yep the investor chooses it and yeah and and I'll you know that contrast to what you're alluding to which is an SPV fund of fund so that's what we do over at tribe vest   in full disclosure I'm Chief legal officer and a and a shareholder of tribe vest um so I'm a little bit biased and aester is you know we don't like to call him a competitor honestly they do fund of funds and we do fund of funds is like the overarching product but it's completely different you know one situation which why I brought it up it's the only reason why I brought it up because I'm excited to dive into tribe vest and what you guys offer um because this is not a pitch for tribe vest and like I didn't even know about I did know   I've heard of trivest but didn't even know you were a part of it before this podcast but I love hearing what you're a part of and that's why I want to dive into that a little bit because I think it's cool yeah and I like it it it might be a good to kind of lay it out right you've got these customizable fun of funds out there avor is really the only one offering them there's a couple other uh groups out there that are going to be offering them soon you can actually go to a Securities attorney and they can   put it together for you as well um and yeah and then you've got the SPV fun of fund again you can go through triest or you can SPV just for clarity special right special purpose vehicle or single purpose vehicle kind of either either one really applies then you've got your typical discretionary fund which you would go directly to a Securities attorney and that's where you're actually making some decisions you're saying okay I'm going to raise 10 million bucks and I'm going to invest in Deal one two three four five six seven   eight um and you're kind of making those decisions and there's a lot of rules and regulations that you've got to abide by to be able to do that without a license but anyways back to the SPV the single-purpose vehicle instead of a customizable fund where you know the investor is making the decision and you as the fund manager in you know you make all these different things Avail all these different Investments available the SPV is designed as a single purpose vehicle to invest in one single deal so   if there's a Target deal let's say a 200 unit multif family property in San Antonio um we're going to spin up an SPV for you to invest as a passive investor into that Target deal and that's it it's super simple it's super contained it's not complicated it it just keeps everything compartmentalized both from an asset protection standpoint and from visibility right you're going to know as the fund manager and as the investor exactly what you're investing in what you're how you're going to get paid what   your projective returns are and it doesn't really get mudded by other Investments and this is what I CU I've talked to other SEC attorneys and they've talked about it's funny they've talked about how rare what I've done so I've like maxed out my 506b on a my first fund being a blind fund and they were like that's super rare because you're saying hey just trust me but what you guys are saying what you're doing is saying hey this is the specific and that makes it a lot easier to raise Capital because like you said ton more   transparency they know what they're investing into and so for people starting out that's probably the route that they want to start with is something where they can bring transparency and then the investors that they're coming in know exactly what they're investing into that's right de yeah what you did Devon was incredible like it's really difficult to do most people don't start there they can't start there they don't have the ability to um to be able to build that up that level of trust and track record prior to   you launching the fund that's why you're able to do it but most people can't do it most people have to get their first few in the door by showing the investors hey this is the exact deal that you're going to invest in and you're getting you're going to be a part of and they can do their own due diligence and underwriting and those sorts of things and they're say oh yes I believe in that property or that deal and I also believe in you as the the fund manager or the syndicator and it's easier to raise   Capital that way as opposed to a blind pool fund where it's like hey just give me your money and we're going to invest in something that looks like this and yeah exactly exactly so I actually I want to dive into more into tribe vests cuz like so where does the benefit come in because like somebody can just go and get with an SEC attorney and create their own SPV and and kind of go that route but where's the benefit of somebody coming in and working with tribe vest like why I mean honestly like I please I like tell me like why have   you invested into it why do you believe in it so much and then yeah tell me a little bit more about it man yeah because it it just makes everything super simple and super contained and we handle everything so if you go to an SEC attorney like myself I'm going to come in and I'm going to I'm going to draft your offering documents I'm going to file your exemptions do your blue sky filings and that's it and I I'm going to wipe my hands of it and I'll say you know good luck you know more than that I'll help you out of yeah exactly I'm   going to charge you a lot of money I'm going to charge you at least 25k right Tri vest includes everything that you could possibly imagine so all these different parts that you would have to put together as a capital aggregator TR vest handles so that includes not just the offering documents the legal stuff the filing of the exemptions and the blue sky filings but we're going to file for your entity we're going to get your EIN we're going to be your registered agent we are going to uh onboard your   investors so we're going to act like an like an investor relations person on your team so all you do is send us your list of investors and we start reaching out we send them the docs we walk them through how to sign and get them through the signing ceremony we hound them or we call it hurting the cats to get them to actually fund the deal cuz sometimes people get cold feet so bug the hell out of them yep bug the hell out of them until they make that wire we do all that we do the uh the accounting in your k1s   we configure your cap table very cool we do your distributions we open your business banking account we do uh everything on the back end uh we've got the investor dashboard or investor portal that you can use which alone is you know you're going to pay $500 a month at minimum for that by itself so it it's incredible and we do it at an incredible price and I mean we're not we're very transparent about that it's $5,000 upfront and then $2,000 a year annually and that comes with docs and everything that comes with docks and   everything there's just you can't be beat I mean it literally can't be beat and the other thing is the speed so as soon as you sign the greenl docks which is basically just like hey you agree to the services that we're going to provide we will have you raising capital in five business days no way man that's really cool that's fantastic if you come to to me if you come to me as a security attorney I've got that hat on you know we're not doing in 5 days I'll tell you that now how much education do you help   with because I tell people all the time like here's the questions you should have beforehand because your SEC like your attorney will be the most expensive education you have ever paid for if you don't have that information beforehand so like what what type of because they'll charge you like if you don't know if you want a 506b or 506 C you don't know if you if you want your waterfall this way if you want this and you're just asking questions they're going to charge you by the hour to ask those questions and so for you like how   much help do you guys help for people who are like I've never started a fund I'm really looking forward to starting this but I don't know where to go what does that look like for you guys yeah I mean for tribe vest we're putting together some modules actually right now we're going to roll them out literally before the end of the year which will be fantastic because we're going to share that with with the world you're going to be able to self-educate on what is a fun to fund how does that look like in the   fundraising ecosystem like you know what is a preferred return what is the profits what kind of fees can you charge all kind of the nuts and bolts that you need to know we're going to have that out there so soon enough that'll be available to the public and that'll be a huge value ad and huge help for us as well because we don't have to educate one-on-one anymore as a Securities attorney I I will advise on people I mean I'm I'm happy I'm I'm more of a mentor and a coach when it comes to that sort of stuff and I'll I'll be like look   attorney hat off right now I'm going to tell you this and here's kind of your gray area and that sort of thing so you know I I I think I get into those sorts of things a little bit more than most attorneys will um but if you go to like a a large Law Firm or even a regional Law Firm they're they're going to charge you per hour and that's going to be anywhere between you know $400 to $1,500 an hour yeah there's no doubt there's there's no doubt so and this is really interesting because one of the questions   that I had just going into this um and not even knowing about uh the not even knowing about tribe vest and and all of that is what have you seen as far as like trends that you're seeing in the industry right now because Trends seem to be changing one just even I I'm a disruptor you're it seems like you're a disruptor of Industries and we're trying to disrupt this huge investment fund industry um but it seems like there's being like there's different type of offerings there different structures there's different   things that people are doing what are some of the trends that you're seeing that people are kind of pressing against or starting in as far as funds as a whole you seeing that being the case of being become more common yeah I mean so like biggest picture right is trying to get these types of alternative Investments to the masses because most wealthy people even rich people whatever you want to call them that have some Expendable income that want to invest the only thing they know are 401ks stock market mutual funds   and those sorts of things and they we just need to get that out there and I think you're seeing a trend towards that I think bringing in more people that want to raise capital and start a capital raising business is how you do it right because they've already got their built-in networks and then those networks know other people and and it kind of spiderwebs out from there so that's that's kind of the biggest picture trend is just trying to see well we're seeing you know alternative investments just become more available   to the masses second you're seeing the industry go away from the CP model which I like to say the cgp model is dead and you're seeing people turn to the fun of funds route yeah because the cgp model has just been abused if you do it the right way if you're actually an active partner and you're actually participating in the meetings and and decid on Asset Management typee decisions then all good that's how it's supposed to be but when you're just raising capital and not doing anything else that's when the CP model gets   abused and it's not just oh well you shouldn't do that it's illegal it's plain and simple illegal so that was like the conversation I'm telling you when um I was having the conversation with that guy at my at my Mastermind and he was like we're doing this and I go like stop and he's like haa and I go no no it's illegal and he's like oh haha and I'm like no no like prison illegal and they I feel like just people don't understand the severity because they feel like what's wrong with it it's not that bad and it's like no no it's   illegal yeah and you know that this is just what happens right like you just kind of everybody just pushes boundaries pushes boundaries and you know fortunately or unfortunately however you want to look at it the industry's been fantastic for a long time right the real estate industry's went up since the the crash in 2009 2008 all the way until really covid and that was just a blip and then it took off again and then B basically up until last year 2023 is when you started seeing it kind of take   a nose dive a little bit because of interest rates and not because of the actual state of the market but the interest rates but either way it started going down you started seeing some people get in trouble but all along the way on that rise up all the investors have been happy he's suing anybody because they've been getting their returns and they've been everybody's been crushing it and even if you're a terrible operator you've still been crushing it because the market saved you and nobody's getting sued so it's all   good until it's not and then you've seen in yeah and then you see in 2023 you see you know potential foreclosures and workouts and you know Capital calls things like that investors aren't happy and we're in America and people are like yo how can I get my money back well you try to sue somebody and that's when you start seeing some of these things where the cgp model was abused or people weren't raising Capital the right way or they didn't f exemptions all those sorts of legal things that nobody really   worried about because everything was great start coming up and you're you're seeing that now so you're seeing that shift away from the CP model to the fund of funds model because the fund of funds model is compliant obviously if you do it the right way but it's more compliant and it's always been the answer but at the end of the day it's expensive it's more complicated you've got more attorneys you've got a whole separate offering all these different things that you have to take into account and people   were like I'm not doing that but now we're kind of forced into having to do that and that's where you know tribe vest and aester and some other folks are coming in and having coming up with solutions for that yeah that's really cool um because one one more thing I'm really curious on that you've seen because I feel like there is a fairly irreg irregulate asset you know coming into a very regulated um like structure right so one the things I'm talking about is like the rise of crypto in these crypto funds and these blockchains   based funds have you seen that start to affect like the legal landscape of funds and the formation that people have of that and the way that people are thinking through that and even how the SEC is starting to figure that out and uh and stuff like that have you seen like an emergence of more of those blockchainbased funds I have yeah and not just like strictly you know blockchain and and crypto but also just spin-offs of that right like you saw tokenized real estate was a big thing for a little while it's kind of turned   down a little bit but that was huge that was like I was crazy that you could be like I'm tokenizing my my bathroom and when I sell it you get like that much of the footage and the appreciation it's like what that's crazy yeah so it's kind of cooled out a little bit you know I don't I honestly don't follow that that closely just because I know that it just changes so fast and especially now that we've got the new Administration in here you're probably going to see a lot more loosening of that which would be good   for us but yeah I mean you know you're going to see that right like CU we are just on the the precipice of just crazy technological advancements from tokenized Real Estate to you know crypto to AI like all this stuff is going to like this landscape 5 years from now is is going to be unrecognizable yeah that's it's it really will just because of the way that contract law is going to go from the from the from um from I guess blockchain based like because like you'll see that where the blockchain will take a lot of   those uh a lot of that aspect and change it and flip it on its head so it's going to be super interesting to see how that goes man I want to respect honor your time I appreciate you being on I guess one thing I guess one more question that I have before we kind of go into the exit if there's somebody that's thinking about starting a fund because what you were saying earlier really there's only two main people if I'm fully transparent I want to be able to be uh the voice of funds for minorities and women in this   country because like all those other they all the white dudes they could have all the other white dudes that's fine with me but there's a lot there's a there's a huge disparity I heard uh don peees once say and this has changed my my my thought my process like my mindset ever since he says in the history of America there has been $94 trillion to come in through private equity and real estate in the history of American and history of America 8.3% of that had no sorry 1.7% of that have gone to minorities and women that means 98.3% of   that has gone to white men and so there's this massive disparity between access to education like you're saying access to Capital Access to I think there there's this quote that says the world equally distributes talent but doesn't equally distribute opportunity and so there's this huge disparity of opportunity of people that look like me and look like you and look like women around this country that I would love to make sure we're the voice for and so for people who don't have a lot of that education one what's a big piece of   advice that you would give them and when they're starting to think about starting a fund because I think like if I'm full of transparency most of the people I talked to and I told you I saved from prison there were black dudes they're just trying to do the right thing but don't have the education to do the right thing and so for for that like what what's a big piece of advice you would give people that are thinking like I think I want to start a fund um what should I look out for how expensive does   it matter because we've talked about a better solution for how expensive it can be but what's the thing that they should be looking out for yeah I mean you know right off the bat like be confident and don't be intimidated because I think some people yep in those groups that you described might feel a little discouraged because of that because you walk into a room that is maybe all fund managers or all capital risers or you know those types of people and you're like who I don't look like everybody   else so maybe I don't belong here or maybe your confidence goes from here to to hear and you're like and then and then you come off that way right like you've got to you got to step into that room with confidence and a lot of a lot of that comes down to self-education right like it comes from education and it's out there now I mean we mentioned that there's only a few really good sources but you can still piece it together I mean you can find anything on YouTube University just to at least get the you know being able to talk to talk   and walk the walk and and feel confident doing that so just get educated to start get that Baseline and then get out there and just be be confident like I said don't be intimidated don't feel like you don't belong because we got to get folks out there that are that are doing it from from those groups yep that's right man well I appreciate it Seth where can people find you where can people hire you where can people join what you're doing um because I think that they should I'm a big believer in you and   what you're doing and I'm excited for for all those things appreciate it man I usually update all my Links at Seth Paul bradley.com so you can find everything there I'm all over social media so all my handles are Seth Bradley Esq cool man I appreciate you thankful for your time thankful for your friendship I really look forward to uh to Growing growing together man it's fun to see other people that like we're about the same age I don't know you look like you're in your 20s but you're you're not I know   that but like uh but like like for us to just rise together on this man and so I'm thankful for this journey that we're on together and I appreciate you being here today love it brother appreciate you yes sir talk to you later man wow I hope you enjoyed that I have a quick favor if you've been enjoying the show there's one simple way you can support us and it's by hitting that follow button or that subscribe button on the app app you're listening to I want to level this podcast up in every single   way possible bringing you more value incredible content and guests and new strategies Following the show and leaving a quick review goes a really long way in helping us to grow and continue to deliver top tier content it's the only free thing I'll ever ask you to do and it makes a bigger impact than I can possibly put into words so thank you for being a part of this journey and I'll definitely catch you on the next episode to great success and greater impact peace Links from the Show and Guest Info and Links: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-w_w6WAUVw https://www.instagram.com/p/DHbcSjGT7Jn/ https://tinyurl.com/FFfoundations-YT https://pfcapital.us/ Seth Bradley's Links: https://x.com/sethbradleyesq https://www.youtube.com/@sethbradleyesq www.facebook.com/sethbradleyesq https://www.threads.com/@sethbradleyesq https://www.instagram.com/sethbradleyesq/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/sethbradleyesq/ https://passiveincomeattorney.com/seth-bradley/ https://www.biggerpockets.com/users/sethbradleyesq https://medium.com/@sethbradleyesq https://www.tiktok.com/@sethbradleyesq?lang=en Devin Robinson's Links: https://www.instagram.com/devin.robinson1/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/devin-robinson-997ba040/ https://www.facebook.com/drob737/ https://x.com/devinrobinson37 https://www.threads.com/@devin.robinson1 https://www.tiktok.com/@devin.robinson1  

Web3 is global, but where you set up your company matters. One growing hotspot is Panama.Panama doesn't have specific crypto laws yet, so Web3 projects don't need special licenses. It's unregulated, but still legal. Plus, there's 0% corporate tax on foreign income, making it a great place for innovation.To break it all down, I'm joined by Edgar Young, Partner at Pacifica Legal, a firm that's helped over 270 Web3 companies incorporate in Panama.✅ OUR RESOURCES

In this episode, Craig McGrouther is joined by Dasha Beardsley, Director of Investor Relations at Lone Star Capital, and Brandon Claisse from Tribevest, to walk through exactly how fund managers and capital allocators can raise capital alongside Lone Star through our fund-to-fund program.This episode is specifically for capital allocators and fund managers looking to raise $500K+ for our deals. We walk through the entire process from initial deal notification to fund creation in just 5-7 business days, including entity formation, bank accounts, offering docs, and ongoing administration costs. Dasha shares what marketing materials and support Lone Star provides, while Brandon details TriVest's streamlined "SPV in a box" solution that handles all the back-office work so you can focus on raising capital. Plus, congratulations to Dasha on completing her new book "Maximizing Wealth Through Syndicated 1031 Exchanges" available at maximizing1031.com!Learn more about Lone Star Capital at www.lscre.comApply to attend the LSC Summit 2025: www.lscsummit.com Get a FREE copy of the Passive Investor Guide:https://www.lscre.com/content/passive-investor-guide Subscribe to our newsletter and receive our FREE underwriting model package:https://www.lscre.com/resource/fof-underwriting-toolkit Follow Rob Beardsley:https://www.linkedin.com/in/rob-beardsley/ Read Rob's articles:https://www.lscre.com/blog

Dopo 14 mesi di esercizio pieno e tre di sconti al 60%, il presidente Zaia ha illustrato il bilancio in positivo della superstrada a pagamento che attraversa ai piedi delle prealpi la regione. Ma per le opposizioni "resta il macigno del buco a bilancio”

On this episode of Unlimited Capital, Chris Lopez and Richard McGirr break down why they chose the fund-to-funds model for their first major capital raise—and why it's a powerful starting point for aspiring syndicators. They share how they scaled quickly without years of operational experience by leveraging experienced operators, reducing risk, and maintaining compliance through a special purpose vehicle (SPV) structure. They also discuss their first deal: a 34-unit value-add multifamily property in Denver, how they structured compensation fairly, and the importance of property walks in converting investors. The episode closes with actionable tips for aspiring capital raisers and operators alike. Get a 4-week trial, free postage, and a digital scale at ⁠https://www.stamps.com/cre⁠. Thanks to Stamps.com for sponsoring the show! Post your job for free at https://www.linkedin.com/BRE. Terms and conditions apply. Join the Best Ever Community  The Best Ever Community is live and growing - and we want serious commercial real estate investors like you inside. It's free to join, but you must apply and meet the criteria.  Connect with top operators, LPs, GPs, and more, get real insights, and be part of a curated network built to help you grow. Apply now at ⁠www.bestevercommunity.com⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Over the years, in the property and investment world, the industries have come up with some savvy and strange acronyms to describe what we do and how we do it and for many of us this is a second language.   However, for some of you, it will be completely baffling so if you want to know the difference between net and gross yield, how LTV works with BTL or PRS and how your FRI works in your SPV to avoid CGT then this podcast is for you!   Know your numbers means learning these metrics and you'll finally be able to understand what we're all talking about!   Success and failure are both very predictable.   I hope you enjoy. This isn't a theory. It's a proven Blueprint.

The World's #1 Personal Development Book Podcast!  In today's episode, we have the pleasure to interview Jake Claver, author of Wealth in Numbers: How to Syndicate Private Investment Deals for Passive Income and Financial Freedom.Jake is a distinguished leader in the family office space, a keynote speaker, and a performance expert. As Managing Director of Digital Ascension Group, he serves high-net-worth and ultra-high-net-worth families with customized investment strategies. He also leads Syndicately, a cutting-edge SPV investment management platform helping others syndicate private deals with clarity and compliance.Jake's expertise spans traditional finance, DeFi, blockchain technology, and wealth preservation. He's helped reimagine dozens of family offices, building investment vehicles that are digitally savvy, AI-enhanced, and authentically anti-fragile. With multiple certifications and over a decade of experience, Jake is a recognized voice in both finance and Web3 innovation.In this episode, you'll learn how syndications and SPVs really work, why this investment vehicle is becoming more accessible to everyday investors, and how to leverage your network to create long-term wealth. Jake also shares what it means to build anti-fragile portfolios, how to delegate and scale with purpose, and why digital mentorship through books has shaped his entrepreneurial mindset.We hope you enjoy this incredible conversation with Jake Claver.To Learn more about Jake and buy his book follow the links below:The Book: https://a.co/d/8t1YM6NWebsite: https://www.jakeclaver.com/https://www.syndicately.com/https://www.digitalwealthpartners.net/https://www.digitalfamilyoffice.io/Chapters: 1:58 – The Story Behind Jake and His Book 4:44 – Why Alternative Deal Types Matter in Investing 7:07 – Building a Great Team & Scalable Systems 8:21 – Learning to Delegate & Embracing Imperfection 9:50 – Taking a Small Piece of a Big Pie 11:02 – Mentorship: Learning from Experience & Books 16:13 – What Is an SPV? Structuring Alternative Deals 19:33 – Building Business Relationships Online 21:32 – Alternative Investments & Finding Jake's Book 23:31 – Your Network Is Your Net Worth 25:36 – Book Rec: “Buy Back Your Time” & Audiobooks 26:23 – The Power of Consistent Social Media Presence________________________________________________Join the world's largest non-fiction Book community!https://www.instagram.com/bookthinkers/The purpose of this podcast is to connect you, the listener, with new books, new mentors, and new resources that will help you achieve more and live better. Each and every episode will feature one of the world's top authors so that you know each and every time you tune-in, there is something valuable to learn. If you have any recommendations for guests, please DM them to us on Instagram. (www.instagram.com/bookthinkers)If you enjoyed this show, please consider leaving a review. It takes less than 60-seconds of your time, and really makes a difference when I am trying to land new guests. For more BookThinkers content, check out our Instagram or our website. Thank you for your time!

How did one fund manager raise $7.5M+ from strangers on LinkedIn—without paid ads or a prior network? In this episode discover how Nishant Sondhi, founder of Sondi Capital Group, built a thriving Fund of Funds business in just 15 months—by mastering LinkedIn. Nishant shares exactly how he leveraged outbound strategy, consistent content creation, and powerful storytelling to attract high-level W2 investors working at Fortune 500 firms. You'll hear his step-by-step approach to investor outreach, his Fund of Funds fee structure philosophy, and how he structures deals to deliver better-than-direct returns to LPs. This conversation is a masterclass in capital raising for fund managers ready to grow without gatekeepers. Top 5 Key Takeaways:LinkedIn Mastery: Nishant raised over $7.5M exclusively from LinkedIn using both inbound content and outbound messaging—no ads, no cold calls.Investor Avatar Targeting: His ideal LP? W2 professionals at Fortune 500 companies in tech, finance, and consulting—especially immigrants who share his story.Content Strategy Framework: He posts 5x a week, balancing personal storytelling (top-of-funnel), real estate education (middle), and case studies (bottom).Outbound Sequences That Convert: Nishant walks through his low-pressure, relationship-first messaging strategy that gets results without automation tools.Fund Economics that Win Trust: He ensures LPs always receive better returns through his SPV than going direct, while transparently earning his fee through smart arbitrage.About Tim MaiTim Mai is a real estate investor, fund manager, mentor, and founder of HERO Mastermind for REI coaches.He has helped many real estate investors and coaches become millionaires. Tim continues to help busy professionals earn income and build wealth through passive investing.He is also a creative marketer and promoter with incredible knowledge and experience, which he freely shares. He has lifted himself from the aftermath of war, achieving technical expertise in computers, followed by investment success in real estate, management skills, and a lofty position among real estate educators and internet marketers.Tim is an industry leader who has acquired and exited well over $50 million worth of real estate and is currently an investor in over 2700 units of multifamily apartments.Connect with TimWebsite: Capital Raising PartyFacebook: Tim Mai | Capital Raising Nation Instagram: @timmaicomTwitter: @timmaiLinkedIn: Tim MaiYouTube: Tim Mai

What do tiddlywinks, a quarter trick, and a failed Palantir deal have in common? They all show up in Andrew Ackerman's one-of-a-kind path from founder to family office director, accelerator operator, and venture capitalist to now SPV syndicate lead and author.  Andrew pulls no punches on what most startups get wrong — from pitch decks that waste space to market slides that make investors roll their eyes. He shares lessons learned from backing 70+ startups on how to actually stand out in a noisy fundraising environment, why EdTech broke his heart, and how day drinking helped him write The Entrepreneur's Odyssey — a startup guide founders might actually finish.Also in this episode:- His “accidental” real estate empire- EdTech's big COVID moment (and what came after)- The one thing every founder should know about market sizing- And yes, Andrew answers the Fidelity Five Questions.If you've ever wondered what VCs really think when they see your deck — this one's for you!Episode links: www.AndrewBAckerman.comEntrepreneur's OdysseyEpisode timestamps:00:00 DWAVC Episode: Andrew Ackerman03:28 Guest Introduction and Background05:25 March Madness Predictions07:42 Andrew's Origin Story16:18 Parenting in the Digital Age30:27 Andrew's Unique Skills31:01 Discussing the New Book31:52 Inspiration Behind the Book32:15 Writing Process and Challenges37:23 Character Development40:37 Market Sizing and Go-to-Market Strategies44:14 Importance of Value Proposition01:13:52 Fundraising Insights01:15:27 Navigating VC Funding Strategies01:17:19 Challenges for Non-Ivy League Founders01:20:09 Importance of Warm Intros01:22:33 Accessing Capital Outside Major Hubs01:24:37 The Role of Location in Startup Success01:27:09 Influence of Science Fiction on Entrepreneurship01:29:56 The Rise of PropTech01:41:28 Fidelity Five Questions

Cet épisode a été enregistré dans le cadre du Podcasthon, l'événement caritatif qui mobilise la grande famille des podcasteurs avec plus de 1 650 participants engagés. Rendez-vous sur podcasthon.org pour en savoir plus sur cette superbe initiative.Le sujet :Le private equity est en pleine expansion. Comment expliquer la démocratisation des investissements dans le non coté ? Cette croissance présente-t-elle des risques, ou ouvre-t-elle, au contraire, de nouvelles opportunités à explorer ?L'invité du jour :Xavier Anthonioz est un pionnier du private equity. Il a cofondé la société de gestion 123 Investment Managers et a déployé près d'1,5 milliard d'euros dans plus de 200 entreprises.Au micro de Matthieu Stefani, Xavier décrypte les clés de la croissance du private equity en France :Le private equity, expliqué simplementLes raisons de la croissance du private equityPerformance, coûts, ticket d'entrée : les chiffres clésLes erreurs à éviter avant d'investirLe fonds d'investissement Invincible étéAvantages :Bonne nouvelle ! Nous avons obtenu pour vous 50 € offerts pour votre premier investissement chez Lendosphère. Rendez-vous ici, avec le code GREENMARTINGALE.Ils citent les références suivantes :Le PodcasthonLe fonds Invincible étéLes épisodes #62 et #181 de GDIY, avec Olivier GoyOctoberL'épisode #396 de GDIY avec Gérard SaillantAinsi que d'anciens épisodes de La Martingale :#183 - Soutenir la transition énergétique grâce au crowdfunding#199 - Investir aux côtés des meilleurs business angels grâce au SPVMerci à notre partenaire Louve Invest : Louve Invest vous propose jusqu'à 3,5 % de cashback sur les frais de souscription sur les SCPI éligibles (jusqu'à 350 € pour 10 000 € investis !)Cliquez sur ce lien pour bénéficier des offres avec cashback boosté :)Retrouvez leur dernière étude sur le classement 2025 des SCPI: la synthèse ou l'étude complète.On vous souhaite une très bonne écoute ! C'est par ici si vous préférez Apple Podcasts, ou ici si vous préférez Spotify.Et pour recevoir toutes les actus et des recommandations exclusives, abonnez-vous à la newsletter, c'est par ici.La Martingale est un podcast du label Orso Media.Distribué par Audiomeans. Visitez audiomeans.fr/politique-de-confidentialite pour plus d'informations.

This week we conclude our foray into the Night Demon / Cirith Ungol European run in September 2024. We pick up the tale with two off days following the successful London show. The guys explain why playing a series of one-offs can be logistically challenging and exhausting. You will hear how the Roskilde, Denmark show was a triumph for both bands, featuring great performances, a state-of-the-art venue, hospitable promoter and cool crowd. They then talk about going to Hamburg the following day for the Deaf Forever 10-year anniversary bash. Along the way, you may find a few Easter eggs about Night Demon's plans for 2025 and future podcast episodes, so stay alert.Become a subscriber today at nightdemon.net/subscriber. This week, subscribers have access to the bonus content below:Streaming Audio: Full show - Roskilde, DK - September 19, 2024 Listen at nightdemon.net/podcast or anywhere you listen to podcasts! Follow us on Instagram Like us on Facebook

Send us a text01:19 - CoreWeave Prepares for $35B IPO After 737% Revenue Growth  04:00 - Stripe Hits $91.5B Valuation in Tender Offer  05:12 - OpenAI Raises $40B at $300B Valuation, Partners with SoftBank  07:59 - X Seeks $44B Valuation for New Fundraising Round  09:01 - Thinking Machines Eyes $9B Valuation With $1B Raise  09:34 - MrBeast Targets $5B Valuation for Media Business  10:19 - Shein Plans London IPO at $50B Valuation Despite Profit Drop  11:05 - SpaceX's Starlink Becomes Nigeria's No. 2 ISP  14:23 - Unitree Robotics Gains Traction in Global Markets  16:12 - ByteDance Valued at $400B After Internal Buyback  18:37 - Ramp Hits $13B Valuation After Secondary Sale  19:40 - Safe Superintelligence Hits $30B Valuation With $2B Raise  20:50 - Plaid Plans $6B Secondary Share Sale  21:31 - Scale AI Secures Major US Military Contract  22:47 - Epirus Raises $250M to Scale Counter-Drone Tech  23:54 - Klarna Plans $15B IPO on NYSE in April  24:56 - Discord Plans 2025 IPO, Valued at $5.6B  THANK YOU TO OUR RIA/IBD PARTNERS*: AG Dillon closed 6 pre-IPO stocks funds on Mar 7, 2025. We're making investments into Anduril, OpenAI, xAI, Groq, Figure AI, and a space economy company in this recently closed offering and raised a record $30 million with 33 RIAs/IBDs participating. A great result and a special thank you to our RIA/IBD partners. AG Dillon assets under management now stand at $93 million in just under two years since closing our first fund. If you're a financial advisor and would like to use our single stock funds to build bespoke pre-IPO stock portfolios please drop us an email. You select pre-IPO stock company exposures and weight allocation to each pre-IPO stock to express your unique investment thesis. Our funds are available for purchase at Charles Schwab, Fidelity, and directly at AG Dillon Funds. $2,500 minimum investment. Email aaron.dillon@agdillon.com to invest.* NOTE: AG Dillon ("AGD") is not affiliated with any pre-IPO company. Some pre-IPO companies may require company approval for purchases (aka transfers). AGD has not been pre-approved by any pre-IPO company to purchase their stock. AGD purchases pre-IPO stocks in the secondary market and may gain exposure by directly purchasing the stock (on the company's capitalization table) and/or through a third-party fund (aka special purpose vehicle, or SPV).

Le sujet :Les communautés d'investissement, les plateformes de crowdfunding et les clubs deals gagnent en popularité. Mais quels en sont les atouts et les écueils à connaître avant de se lancer ?L'invité du jour :Evan Testa est le CEO de Roundtable, une plateforme ayant réalisé plus de 600 investissements en 2024.Au micro de Matthieu Stefani, Evan nous éclaire sur les communautés d'investissement :Quels sont les deux principaux types de communautés ?La différence entre une communauté privée et publiqueLes deals accessibles via ces groupementsLes erreurs à éviter absolumentComment bien choisir ?Qu'est-ce qu'un SPV ?Quels sont les frais ?Avantages :Bonne nouvelle ! Les auditeurs de La Martingale peuvent bénéficier d'une remise de 10 % sur les frais de leur premier deal chez Roundtable en écrivant à lamartingale@roundtable.eu.Ils citent les références suivantes :Le livre Skin in the Game (Sauver sa peau)Le carried interestAinsi que d'anciens épisodes de La Martingale :#199 - Investir aux côtés des meilleurs business angels grâce au SPVMerci à notre partenaire Louve Invest : Louve Invest vous propose jusqu'à 3,5 % de cashback sur les frais de souscription sur les SCPI éligibles (jusqu'à 350 € pour 10 000 € investis !)Cliquez sur ce lien pour bénéficier des offres avec cashback boosté :)Retrouvez leur dernière étude sur le classement 2025 des SCPI: la synthèse ou l'étude complète.On vous souhaite une très bonne écoute ! C'est par ici si vous préférez Apple Podcasts, ou ici si vous préférez Spotify.Et pour recevoir toutes les actus et des recommandations exclusives, abonnez-vous à la newsletter, c'est par ici.La Martingale est un podcast du label Orso Media.

In recent years, Bitcoin has undergone a major culture shift which promotes stagnation, complacency & simping to politicians over maximizing the utility of the money. Eric Voskuil & John Carvalho join the show to remind everyone what the mission really is. State of Bitcoin - [00:01:17] Bitcoin Maximalism - [00:01:32] Bitcoin as a Ponzi Scheme - [00:02:27] Transaction Fees - [00:04:57] History of Bitcoin Tokens (Omni, Counterparty, Mastercoin) Definition of Tokens - [00:08:01] Custodial Problems with Tokens - [00:09:12] Bitcoin and Fiat Money - [00:11:09] Why Bitcoiners Talk About Money - [00:15:49] Stateless Money - [00:17:44] Austrian Economics and Bitcoin - [00:21:01] Monetary Inflation vs. Price Inflation - [00:26:01] Cantillon Effect - [00:29:00] Dollar Inflation and Gold - [00:33:59] Misunderstandings in the Bitcoin Community - [00:41:42] Bitcoin Semantics - [00:43:21] Bitcoin Divisibility - [01:00:13] Bitcoin Deflation - [01:03:41] Maxi Price and One Coin Assumption - [01:07:43] Competition Between Monies - [01:13:42] Scaling Bitcoin - [01:22:41] Bitcoin for the Unbanked - [01:26:14] Maximizing Throughput - [01:36:11] Right to Fork - [01:45:45] Running Old Bitcoin Versions - [01:51:35] Bitcoin as Money vs. Credit - [01:56:26] Settlement in Bitcoin - [02:07:45] Peer-to-Peer Credit Systems - [02:14:47] Fractional Reserve Banking - [02:26:32] Bitkit Wallet and Spending vs. Saving - [02:36:13] Block size increases and Bitcoin adoption - [03:00:00] Scaling Bitcoin and transaction validation - [03:01:00] Bitcoin overflowing into Litecoin and quantum resistance - [03:02:00] Pruning historical data and exchange price - [03:03:00] Lightning system complexity and Bitcoin's value proposition - [03:05:00] Bitcoin as an investment and speculation - [03:07:00] Optimizing Bitcoin throughput and developer motivations - [03:09:00] Scaling Bitcoin and speculation - [03:11:00] Shitcoins, scams, and Bitcoin's security model - [03:13:00] Litecoin's extension blocks and Mimblewimble - [03:15:00] Bitcoin's security and the legitimacy of altcoins - [03:17:00] Shitcoins and Bitcoin's essential aspects - [03:19:00] Majority hash power censorship and attacks - [03:21:00] Bitcoin speculation and market dynamics - [03:23:00] Michael Saylor's Bitcoin strategy and MicroStrategy's history - [03:26:00] Saylor's Bitcoin investment and market manipulation - [03:29:00] Saylor's stock sales and Bitcoin's future - [03:31:00] Blockstream's accomplishments and the Chia project - [03:33:00] Blockstream's influence and SegWit - [03:35:00] Adam Back's influence and Blockstream's hype - [03:37:00] Bitcoin Core's power and the need for competition - [03:39:00] Initial block download performance and Bitcoin Core's architecture - [03:41:00] UTXO store and Bitcoin Core's performance - [03:43:00] Parallelism in Bitcoin Core and assumed UTXO - [03:45:00] Initial block download time and Bitcoin Core's scalability - [03:47:00] Monoculture in Bitcoin development and IBD performance - [03:49:00] UTXO cache and shutdown time - [03:51:00] Trust assumptions in Bitcoin Core and UTXO commitments - [03:53:00] Bitcoin Core's halting problem and theoretical download limits - [03:55:00] Sponsorships: Sideshift, LayerTwo Labs, Ciurea - [03:57:00] Drivechains and ZK rollups - [04:02:00] ZK rollups and liquidity on Ethereum - [04:04:00] Drivechains and altcoins - [04:06:00] Scaling Bitcoin and cultural taboos - [04:08:00] Engineer-driven change and Monero's approach - [04:10:00] Confidential transactionsL Zano & DarkFi - [04:12:00] Fungibility and Bitcoin's metadata - [04:14:00] Privacy, metadata, and state surveillance - [04:16:00] Privacy, taint, and Bitcoin mixing - [04:18:00] Bitcoin mixing and plausible deniability - [04:20:00] Mining and company registration - [04:22:00] Block reward and hash power - [04:24:00] Privacy and mixing - [04:26:00] Privacy in the Bitcoin whitepaper and zero-knowledge proofs - [04:28:00] Dark Wallet and John Dillon - [04:30:00] Dark Wallet and Li Bitcoin - [04:32:00] Amir Taaki's projects and software development - [04:34:00] Dark Wallet funding and developer costs - [04:36:00] Libbitcoin's code size and developer salaries - [04:38:00] John Dillon and Greg Maxwell - [04:40:00] Opportunistic encryption and BIPs 151/152 - [04:42:00] Dandelion and privacy - [04:44:00] BIP 37 and Bloom filters - [04:46:00] Consensus cleanup and the Time Warp bug - [04:48:00] Merkle tree malleability and 64-byte transactions - [04:50:00] 64-byte transactions and SPV wallets - [04:52:00] Coinbase transactions and malleability - [04:54:00] Invalid block hashes and DoS vectors - [04:56:00] Core bug and ban list overflow - [04:58:00] Storing hashes of invalid blocks - [05:00:00] DoS vectors and invalid blocks - [05:02:00] Malleated Merkle trees and 64-byte transactions - [05:04:00] 64-byte transactions and Merkle tree malleability - [05:06:00] Null points and malleated blocks - [05:08:00] Redundant checks and the inflation soft fork - [05:10:00] Op code separator and code complexity - [05:12:00] Transaction order in a block - [05:14:00] Forward references in blocks - [05:16:00] Coinbase transaction rules - [05:18:00] Time Warp bug and Litecoin support - [05:20:00] Quadratic op roll bug - [05:22:00] Stack implementation and op roll - [05:24:00] Templatized stack and op roll optimization - [05:26:00] Non-standard transactions and direct submission to miners - [05:28:00] Mempool policy and DoS - [05:30:00] Monoculture and competing implementations - [05:32:00] Consensus cleanup and Berkeley DB - [05:34:00] Code vs. consensus - [05:36:00] Bitcoin Knots and Luke-jr - [05:38:00] 300 kilobyte node and Luke-jr's views - [05:40:00] Bitcoin Knots and performance - [05:42:00] Bitcoin Knots and censorship - [05:44:00] Censorship and miner incentives - [05:46:00] Censorship and hash power - [05:48:00] Soft forks and censorship - [05:50:00] Ordinals and covenants - [05:52:00] RBF and zero-confirmation transactions - [05:54:00] Double spending and merchant risk - [05:56:00] First-seen mempool policy and RBF - [05:58:00] Low-value transactions and RBF - [06:00:00] Computational cost of actions - [06:00:15] Building infrastructure and system disruption - [06:00:20] Threat actors and economic disruption - [06:00:26] Double spending detection and system control - [06:00:29] Safety and manageability of zero comp transactions - [06:00:41] Security of zero comp transactions - [06:00:51] RBF (Replace-by-fee) and its relevance - [06:01:06] Bitcoin's mempool and transaction handling - [06:01:25] Mempool overflow and resource management - [06:02:08] Transaction storage and mining - [06:02:45] Miners' incentives and fee maximization - [06:03:07] Mempool policy and DOS protection - [06:03:41] Transaction validation and block context - [06:04:11] Fee limits and DOS protection - [06:05:13] Transaction sets, graph processing, and fee maximization - [06:06:24] Mining empty blocks and hash rate - [06:07:34] Replace-by-fee (RBF) and its purpose - [06:08:07] Infrastructure and RBF - [06:09:14] Transaction pool and conflict resolution - [06:09:44] Disk space, fees, and DOS protection - [06:11:06] Fee rates and DOS protection - [06:12:22] Opt-in RBF and mempool full RBF - [06:13:45] Intent flagging in transactions - [06:14:45] Miners obeying user intent and system value - [06:17:06] Socialized gain and individual expense - [06:18:17] Service reliability and profitability - [06:19:06] First-seen mempool policy - [06:19:37] Mempool policy and implementation - [06:20:06] User perspective on transaction priority - [06:21:14] Mempool conflicts and double spending - [06:22:10] CPFP (Child Pays for Parent) - [06:22:24] Mempool management and fee rates - [06:24:30] Mempool complexity and Peter Wuille's work - [06:25:54] Memory and disk resource management - [06:27:37] First-seen policy and miner profitability - [06:29:25] Miners' preference for first-seen - [06:30:04] Computational cost and fee optimization - [06:31:10] Security, Cypherpunk mentality, and the state - [06:35:25] Bitcoin's security model and censorship resistance - [06:41:02] State censorship and fee increases - [06:43:00] State's incentive to censor - [06:46:15] Lightning Network and regulation - [06:48:41] NGU (Number Go Up) and deference to the state - [06:51:10] Reasons for discussing Bitcoin's security model - [06:53:25] Bitcoin's potential subversion and resilience - [06:55:50] Lightning Network subsidies and scaling - [06:57:36] Mining protocols and security - [07:02:02] Braidpool and centralized mining - [07:04:44] Compact blocks and latency reduction - [07:07:23] Orphan rates and mining centralization - [07:08:16] Privacy and threat environments - [07:08:40] Social graphs, reputation, and identity - [07:10:23] Social scalability and Bitcoin - [07:12:36] Individual empowerment and anonymity - [07:16:48] Trust in society and the role of the state - [07:18:01] Payment methods and trust - [07:20:15] Credit reporting agencies and regulation - [07:22:17] Hardware wallets and self-custody - [07:23:46] Security vulnerabilities in Ledger - [07:27:14] Disclosure of secrets on Ledger devices - [07:36:27] Compromised machines and hardware wallets - [07:42:00] Methods for transferring signed transactions - [07:48:25] Threat scenarios and hardware wallet security - [07:50:47] Hardware wallet usage and personal comfort - [07:56:40] Coldcard wallets and user experience - [08:02:23] Security issues in the VX project - [08:03:25] Seed generation and hardware randomness - [08:12:05] Mastering Bitcoin and random number generation - [08:17:41]

“Repay that tax refund into the trust!”___P was a Unit TeeCo incorporated by D1. D3 (whose sole dir and s/holder was D1) was the sole unitholder. D2 was D1's spouse: [1] - [3]D1 incorporated P to buy a valuable piece of land (“Property”). P borrowed the funds from Lender for that: [4]After completion, D1 caused P to lodge a BAS. The resultant refund of ~$2.6m was paid to P: [5]P sued seeking repayment: [8], [10]The Ds said $1.1m of it was a “Success/Performance Fee” for D1 and $1.5m was a “Management/Performance Fee” for D1: [13]D1 was an experienced property developer whose usual practice was to incorporate SPVs (similarly to P) to exploit development opportunities: [14] - [16]Typically, as with P, the SPVs would have no funds of their own and would get third party finance: [17]Sometimes, as with P, D1 would not create a new bank account for a new SPV and would instead use D1's own: [16], [36]In around 2022 D1 identified the Property and began speaking to the Lender: [22] - [24]A loan agreement followed and in 2023 the purchase of the Property for ~$30m completed: [25] - [30], [61]After completion the Lender realised any profit calculations were absent GST tax refunds: [59]In October 2023 the ~$2.6m GST refund was paid into D1's account (remembering P did not have its own account): [64]Shortly after, $9m (which included the ~$2.6m) was transferred from D1's account to the D1/D2 joint account: [66], [67]These funds were then applied to buy a $22m Bronte property in D2's name: [69] - [71]The Lender chased D1 in relation to the GST refund position. D1 was evasive; at time dishonestly so: [72] - [83]The Lender appointed receiver managers demanding repayment of the BAS Refund to P. D1 did not comply: [87]The parties agreed D1 held the BAS Refund on trust for P: [89]D1 said the BAS Refund was then paid to D1 as fees “determined” by D1 as sole dir of P; but not pursuant to any written or oral agreement: [93]There was no evidence of an invoice, agreement, accounting entry etc. describing a fee to be paid to D1. Nor was there evidence for two types of fee: [97] - [100]There was written contemporaneous evidence against D1's case seeing D1: (i) declaring there were no related party transactions [112] and failing to declare the purported fees in the relevant BAS: [114]The only evidence supporting the Ds' view was D1's affidavit. D1's credibility was damaged by D1's dishonesty in dealing with Lender regarding the BAS Refund: [115] - [118]The Ds failed to establish a basis for fees, those transfers therefore being a breach of trust and of DDs: [119], [120], [155]Separate claims against D2 and D3 were not successful: [145], [148]The question of costs had complexity (P's success against D1, and failure against D2 and D3) and was saved for another day: [156], [157]___If you have made it this far please consider following James d'Apice, Coffee and a Case Note, and my firm Gravamen on your favourite platform!www.gravamen.com.au

Send us a textFUNDS CLOSING MAR 7*: AG Dillon is closing six (6) pre-IPO stocks funds on Mar 7, 2025. Anduril, OpenAI, xAI, Groq, Figure AI, and a space economy company. Use these single stock funds to build bespoke pre-IPO stock portfolios. You select pre-IPO stock company exposures and weight allocation to each pre-IPO stock to express your unique investment thesis. Available for purchase at Charles Schwab, Fidelity, and directly at AG Dillon Funds. $2,500 minimum investment. Financial advisors only. Email aaron.dillon@agdillon.com to invest.00:00 - Intro00:55 - Deel Valued at $12.6B After $300M Secondary Sale  01:51 - Winklevoss's Gemini Crypto Exchange Eyes IPO  02:31 - Neuralink Expands Human Trials, Valued at $8.7B  03:49 - OpenAI Secures $40B Investment at $300B Valuation  05:03 - Thinking Machines Lab Seeks $100M, Recruits OpenAI Veterans  06:03 - Stripe Acquires Bridge for $1.1B, Strengthening Stablecoin Play  07:22 - Figure AI Drops OpenAI Partnership, Pursues Proprietary Models  08:29 - Groq To Deliver 2M AI Chips In 2025, Challenging Nvidia  * AG Dillon ("AGD") is not affiliated with any pre-IPO company. Some pre-IPO companies may require company approval for purchases (aka transfers). AGD has not been pre-approved by any pre-IPO company to purchase their stock. AGD purchases pre-IPO stocks in the secondary market and may gain exposure by directly purchasing the stock (on the company's capitalization table) and/or through a third-party fund (aka special purpose vehicle, or SPV).

Send us a textNEW FUND ANNOUNCEMENT*: The AG Dillon Anduril Pre-IPO Stock Fund is now accepting investors. Anduril Industries is a defense technology company that specializes in building advanced artificial intelligence (AI) and autonomous systems for military and national security purposes. Financial advisors only. Email aaron.dillon@agdillon.com to invest or request fund materials. Note important disclosures at the end of this post.00:00 - Intro00:31 - Anduril Plans $100M Tender at $14B Valuation01:33 - Rokt Valued at $3.5B After Secondary Share Sale02:25 - Harvey Doubles Valuation to $3B with $300M Round03:18 - Shield AI Partners with Palantir, Targets $5B Valuation04:15 - OpenAI Partners with Axios for Local Journalism Expansion05:31 - Revolut's Founder Sells $400M Stake, Valued at $41B06:34 - Blue Origin Enters Commercial Launch Market07:41 - eToro Prepares for US IPO at $5B ValuationSubscribe to AG Dillon Pre-IPO Stock Research at agdillon.com/subscribe;- Wednesday = secondary market valuations, revenue multiples, performance, index fact sheets- Saturdays = pre-IPO news and insights, webinar replays* NOTE: AG Dillon ("AGD") is not affiliated with Anduril. Anduril may require company approval for purchases (aka transfers). AGD has not been pre-approved by Anduril to purchase their stock. AGD purchases pre-IPO stocks in the secondary market and may gain exposure by directly purchasing the stock (on the company's capitalization table) and/or through a third-party fund (aka special purpose vehicle, or SPV).

Have you ever wondered how to simplify raising millions for real estate investments while ensuring better returns for all parties involved?   In this episode, Angel sits down with Melanie McDaniel, founder of Freestyle Capital Group and a private equity real estate fund manager. Melanie demystifies the concept of single-purpose entities (SPEs) or single-purpose vehicles (SPVs), explaining their transformative potential for capital raisers, operators, and investors. She shares actionable insights on structuring deals to attract significant investments, the mechanics behind SPVs, and their benefits to real estate syndications.     [00:01 - 03:00] What Are SPVs? Introduction to single-purpose entities and their purpose Differences between SPVs and direct syndications How SPVs create flexibility for investors   [03:01 - 06:17] Structuring Your SPV Importance of aligning SPV terms with investor needs SPVs versus funds of funds in real estate deals Key compliance and legal considerations   [06:18 - 09:36] Benefits of Working with SPVs for Operators Why operators should understand SPV structures Creating attractive terms to bring in larger investments Building long-term relationships with SPV fund managers   [09:37 - 12:16] Share Classes and Arbitrage Explained Leveraging different share classes to attract SPVs How arbitrage works for fund managers Real-life scenarios demonstrating profitability   [12:17 - 16:13] Scaling with SPVs: The Long-Term View How SPVs open doors to larger, more lucrative deals The role of sophisticated investors in scaling operations Best practices for building partnerships with SPVs     Key Quotes   “We get one life to live. Don't wait to do the things you love—do it now.” – Melanie McDaniel   “If you can build in terms of attracting SPVs, you'll unlock larger checks and long-term partnerships.” – Melanie McDaniel   Connect with Melanie:   LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/melaniemcdanielinvest/     Visit sponsorcloud.io/contact today and unlock $2,000 of free services exclusively for REI Rocks community members! Get automated syndication and investor relationship management tools to save time and money. Mention your part of the REI Rocks community for exclusive offers. Help make affordable, low-cost education summits possible. Check out Sponsor Cloud today!   LEAVE A REVIEW + help someone who wants to explode their business growth by sharing this episode.   Are you confused about where to start? Join our community and learn more about real estate investing.    Head over to our Facebook Page, YouTube channel, or website  https://www.theacademypresents.com/jointhesummit36848306.

Send us a textNEW FUND ANNOUNCEMENT*: The AG Dillon Anduril Pre-IPO Stock Fund is now accepting investors. Anduril Industries is a defense technology company that specializes in building advanced artificial intelligence (AI) and autonomous systems for military and national security purposes. Financial advisors only. Email aaron.dillon@agdillon.com to invest or request fund materials. Note important disclosures at the end of this post.Subscribe to AG Dillon Pre-IPO Stock Research at agdillon.com/subscribe;- Wednesday = secondary market valuations, revenue multiples, performance, index fact sheets- Saturdays = pre-IPO news and insights, webinar replays00:00 - Intro00:07 - Anthropic Targets $60B Valuation with $2B Raise01:33 - Whatnot Hits $4.97B Valuation with $265M Raise02:31 - xAI Reaches $83B Valuation, Launches iOS App for Grok03:55 - SandboxAQ Raises $300M at $5.6B Valuation05:03 - Wiz Prepares for IPO, Valued at $20.5B06:10 - Cohere Launches North, Valued at $5.4B07:38 - Epirus in Talks for $1B Valuation Amid Defense Focus08:38 - Hippocratic AI Raises $141M, Valued at $1.64B09:27 - Pre-IPO Stock Market Weekly Performance10:18 - Pre-IPO Stock Vintage Index Weekly Performance* NOTE: AG Dillon ("AGD") is not affiliated with Anduril. Anduril may require company approval for purchases (aka transfers). AGD has not been pre-approved by Anduril to purchase their stock. AGD purchases pre-IPO stocks in the secondary market and may gain exposure by directly purchasing the stock (on the company's capitalization table) and/or through a third-party fund (aka special purpose vehicle, or SPV).

Send us a text00:00 - Intro00:08 - ServiceTitan Surges to $8.9B After Strong Nasdaq IPO01:12 - Snyk Hits $9.4B Valuation with $300M ARR02:10 - OpenAI Rolls Out Real-Time Video Analysis for ChatGPT02:56 - Fleet Space Doubles Valuation to $525M03:37 - Runway Projects $265M Revenue in 202404:12 - Crusoe Raises $600M, Valued at $2.8B04:55 - Google and Samsung Enter XR Market with Mixed-Reality Headset06:31 - Pre-IPO Stock Market Weekly Performance07:16 - Pre-IPO Stock Vintage Index Weekly PerformanceNEW FUND ANNOUNCEMENT*: The AG Dillon Anduril Pre-IPO Stock Fund is now accepting investors. Anduril Industries is a defense technology company that specializes in building advanced artificial intelligence (AI) and autonomous systems for military and national security purposes. Financial advisors only. Email aaron.dillon@agdillon.com to invest or request fund materials. Note important disclosures at the end of this post.Subscribe to AG Dillon Pre-IPO Stock Research at agdillon.com/subscribe;- Wednesday = secondary market valuations, revenue multiples, performance, index fact sheets- Saturdays = pre-IPO news and insights, webinar replays* NOTE: AG Dillon ("AGD") is not affiliated with Anduril. Anduril may require company approval for purchases (aka transfers). AGD has not been pre-approved by Anduril to purchase their stock. AGD purchases pre-IPO stocks in the secondary market and may gain exposure by directly purchasing the stock (on the company's capitalization table) and/or through a third-party fund (aka special purpose vehicle, or SPV).

Send us a text00:00 - Intro00:06 - TikTok Faces US Ban Order, ByteDance Valued at $300B02:09 - SpaceX Hits $350B Valuation, Surpasses Private Market Records03:09 - Anduril Partners with OpenAI for AI-Powered Defense Tech04:17 - OpenAI Launches ChatGPT Pro at $200/Month05:12 - Databricks Finalizes $61B Valuation in Latest Round05:31 - CoreWeave Prepares for IPO at $35B Valuation06:15 - eToro Explores US IPO at $8.7B Valuation07:14 - Fidelity Increases Valuation of X by 32%08:02 - Revolut Strengthens Board for UK Banking License Bid09:00 - Pre-IPO Stock Market Weekly Performance09:44 - Pre-IPO Stock Vintage Index Weekly PerformanceSubscribe to AG Dillon Pre-IPO Stock Research at agdillon.com/subscribe;- Wednesday = secondary market valuations, revenue multiples, performance, index fact sheets- Saturdays = pre-IPO news and insights, webinar replaysNEW FUND ANNOUNCEMENT: The AG Dillon Anduril Pre-IPO Stock Fund is now accepting investors. Anduril Industries is a defense technology company that specializes in building advanced artificial intelligence (AI) and autonomous systems for military and national security purposes. Financial advisors only. Email aaron.dillon@agdillon.com to invest or request fund materials. Note important disclosures at the end of this post.* NOTE: AG Dillon ("AGD") is not affiliated with Anduril. Anduril may require company approval for purchases (aka transfers). AGD has not been pre-approved by Anduril to purchase their stock. AGD purchases pre-IPO stocks in the secondary market and may gain exposure by directly purchasing the stock (on the company's capitalization table) and/or through a third-party fund (aka special purpose vehicle, or SPV).

Send us a textNEW FUND ANNOUNCEMENT: The AG Dillon Anduril Pre-IPO Stock Fund is now accepting investors. Anduril Industries is a defense technology company that specializes in building advanced artificial intelligence (AI) and autonomous systems for military and national security purposes. Financial advisors only. Email aaron.dillon@agdillon.com to invest or request fund materials. Note important disclosures at the end of this post.Subscribe to AG Dillon Pre-IPO Stock Research at agdillon.com/subscribe;- Wednesday = secondary market valuations, revenue multiples, performance, index fact sheets- Saturdays = pre-IPO news and insights, webinar replays00:00 - Intro01:02 - SpaceX Hits $250B Valuation Amid Starlink Expansion01:51 - xAI Raises $5B, Valuation Doubles to $50B02:52 - Databricks Targets $61B Valuation with New Tender Offer04:01 - ByteDance Hits $300B Valuation Amid Employee Buybacks05:00 - Anthropic Secures $4B from Amazon, Valued at $40B06:33 - ServiceTitan Files for IPO with $614M Revenue07:46 - Stripe Conducts Buyback at $70B Valuation08:21 - 1Password Prepares for IPO at $6.8B Valuation09:07 - Pre-IPO Stock Market Weekly Performance10:00 - Pre-IPO Stock Vintage Index Weekly Performance* NOTE: AG Dillon ("AGD") is not affiliated with Anduril. Anduril may require company approval for purchases (aka transfers). AGD has not been pre-approved by Anduril to purchase their stock. AGD purchases pre-IPO stocks in the secondary market and may gain exposure by directly purchasing the stock (on the company's capitalization table) and/or through a third-party fund (aka special purpose vehicle, or SPV).

Send us a textNEW FUND ANNOUNCEMENT: The AG Dillon Anduril Pre-IPO Stock Fund is now accepting investors. Anduril Industries is a defense technology company that specializes in building advanced artificial intelligence (AI) and autonomous systems for military and national security purposes. Financial advisors only. Email aaron.dillon@agdillon.com to invest or request fund materials. Note important disclosures at the end of this post.Subscribe to AG Dillon Pre-IPO Stock Research at agdillon.com/subscribe;- Wednesday = secondary market valuations, revenue multiples, performance, index fact sheets- Saturdays = pre-IPO news and insights, webinar replays00:00 - Intro00:53 - Klarna Confidentially Files for US IPO01:41 - Pony.ai Targets $4.5B Valuation with Nasdaq IPO02:35 - CoreWeave Completes $650M Share Sale, Prepares for IPO03:25 - Databricks in Talks for $1B Investment, Valued at $55B04:26 - Synthesia Raises $150M, Doubling Valuation to $2.1B05:24 - OpenAI to Launch "Operator" AI Agent in January06:18 - Nvidia Unveils Jetson Thor for Humanoid Robots by 202507:17 - X Hires New CFO Amid $13B Debt Struggles08:13 - Pre-IPO Stock Market Weekly Performance08:59 - Pre-IPO Stock Vintage Index Weekly Performance* NOTE: AG Dillon ("AGD") is not affiliated with Anduril. Anduril may require company approval for purchases (aka transfers). AGD has not been pre-approved by Anduril to purchase their stock. AGD purchases pre-IPO stocks in the secondary market and may gain exposure by directly purchasing the stock (on the company's capitalization table) and/or through a third-party fund (aka special purpose vehicle, or SPV).

Send us a text00:00 - Intro00:57 - Perplexity AI Nears $9B Valuation with $500M Funding Round01:57 - Vuori Plans $825M Secondary Share Sale at $5.5B Valuation02:39 - CoreWeave Hires Bankers for 2025 IPO03:36 - Anthropic Partners with Palantir, Expands in Defense Sector05:00 - Mistral Launches AI Moderation API, Valued at $6B06:05 - ByteDance Faces Canadian Order to Shut Down TikTok Offices07:25 - SpaceX Targets Sixth Starship Flight for November 1808:38 - Pre-IPO Stock Market Weekly Performance09:22 - Pre-IPO Stock Vintage Index Weekly PerformanceNEW FUND ANNOUNCEMENT: The AG Dillon Anduril Pre-IPO Stock Fund is now accepting investors. Anduril Industries is a defense technology company that specializes in building advanced artificial intelligence (AI) and autonomous systems for military and national security purposes. Financial advisors only. Email aaron.dillon@agdillon.com to invest or request fund materials. Note important disclosures at the end of this post.Subscribe to AG Dillon Pre-IPO Stock Research at agdillon.com/subscribe;- Wednesday = secondary market valuations, revenue multiples, performance, index fact sheets- Saturdays = pre-IPO news and insights, webinar replays* NOTE: AG Dillon ("AGD") is not affiliated with Anduril. Anduril may require company approval for purchases (aka transfers). AGD has not been pre-approved by Anduril to purchase their stock. AGD purchases pre-IPO stocks in the secondary market and may gain exposure by directly purchasing the stock (on the company's capitalization table) and/or through a third-party fund (aka special purpose vehicle, or SPV).

Viðmælandi þáttarins er Sigríður Hrefna Hrafnkelsdóttir, forstjóri sælgætisgerðarinnar Nóa Siríus. Sælgætisgerðin var stofnað árið 1920 og framleiðir og selur súkkulaði og sælgæti en árið 2021 var fyrirtækið selt til norska matvæla samsteypunnar Orkla.  Sigríður Hrefna er fædd árið 1977 og ólst upp í Breiðholtinu í Reykjavík. Hún gekk í Menntaskólann við Reykjavík og lauk síðan embættisprófi í lögfræði frá lagadeild Háskóla Íslands og MBA gráðu frá Copenhagen Business School í Danmörku. Sigríður hefur gengt ýmsum störfum í atvinnulífinu, m.a. var hún framkvæmdastjóri einstaklingssviðs Íslandsbanka þar sem vann m.a. við að byggja upp stafræna vegerð bankans. Áður var hún framkvæmdastjóri smásölusviðs Olís, forstöðumaður hjá Arion, framkvæmdastjóri hjá Straumi og hjá SPV sparisjóði og þar áður framkvæmdastjóri Atlas Ejendomme. Sigríður Hrefna hefur setið í stjórn ýmissa fyrirtæki t.d. hjá Reginn, Áltaki, Next, Ígló og Indó, Whistle, Landsbréfum og formaður stjórnar Emessís, SMI ehf, Sjónlags hf., Björg investment fund, Billetlugen, Creatrix og í fjárfestingaráði Arev N1 og Thule vísissjóðs. Þátturinn er kostaður af KPMG og Sólar.

Are you buying businesses or just renting a career? Fee Gentry is a pro at buying businesses for little or no cash, setting them up to operate on their own, and netting consistent profits. Fee is our guest on our show today. She's going to challenge you to be more than just an operator. She's going to teach you to be an owner.Fee explains how to evaluate a business for purchase. She breaks down terms you need to know, including EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization), SDE (seller's discretionary earnings), and SPV (special purpose vehicle).Fee also gives us the 10,000-foot view. She explains the difference between an operator mindset and an owner mindset. She points out that truly wealthy people haven't just built their businesses, but they have acquired others. Don't miss this episode if you're serious about building wealth for yourself, your family, and your community.Resources:Learn more at The Color of MoneyLearn more at FeeGentry.comListen to Fee's “Roots and Riches” podcastBecome a real estate agent HEREConnect with Our HostsEmerick Peace:Instagram: @theemerickpeaceFacebook: facebook.com/emerickpeaceDaniel Dixon:Instagram: @dixonsolditFacebook: facebook.com/realdanieldixonLinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/dixonsolditYouTube: @dixongroupcompaniesJulia Lashay:Instagram: @iamjulialashayFacebook: facebook.com/growwithjuliaLinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/julialashay/YouTube: @JuliaLashayBo MenkitiInstagram: @themenkitigroupFacebook: facebook.com/obiora.menkitiLinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/bomenkiti/Produced by NOVA MediaThis podcast is for general informational purposes only. The guest's views, thoughts, and opinions represent those of the guest and not KWRI and its affiliates and should not be construed as financial, economic, legal, tax, or other advice. This podcast is provided without any warranty, or guarantee of its accuracy, completeness, timeliness, or results from using the information.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Discover how Perry Zheng transformed his entrepreneurial journey from managing seven single-family properties to leading syndications that generated over 30% annualized returns for investors, while building a groundbreaking software platform that's revolutionizing how general partners and limited partners connect. With candid insights into the current challenges of capital raising, Perry reveals his strategic approach to attracting investors, leveraging technology through Cashflow Portal and Palace Investing, and navigating the complex landscape of fund management offering listeners a master class in building scalable, investor-centric real estate investment businesses.Key Takeaways to listen for:Invest in Technology for Streamlined Operations: Perry highlights the importance of using technology like Cashflow Portal for syndications. This software centralizes crucial aspects of capital raising, investor relations, and compliance, reducing the manual load and providing a seamless experience for investors.Understand Fund Structures Before Scaling: Perry discusses the difference between SPV and customizable funds, advising new fund managers to start with an SPV for cost efficiency. For long-term growth, a customizable fund offers scalability, though it requires more setup and regulatory management.Investor Experience is Key to Retention: From transparent communication during the syndication process to timely K1s and user-friendly portals, Perry emphasizes that a professional, well-supported investor experience is vital for trust and retention.Leverage Fund Admin Software to Cut Costs and Save Time: Fund administration can be resource-intensive, but selecting the right admin platform helps manage complex tasks, such as compliance and reporting, with less friction, especially as assets under management grow.Marketing in a Competitive Landscape Requires Strategic Ad Spending: Perry notes that, although raising capital has become more challenging, targeted advertising, combined with brand awareness efforts, can help build investor lists effectively even with modest budgets.About Tim MaiTim Mai is a real estate investor, fund manager, mentor, and founder of HERO Mastermind for REI coaches.He has helped many real estate investors and coaches become millionaires. Tim continues to help busy professionals earn income and build wealth through passive investing.He is also a creative marketer and promoter with incredible knowledge and experience, which he freely shares. He has lifted himself from the aftermath of war, achieving technical expertise in computers, followed by investment success in real estate, management skills, and a lofty position among real estate educators and internet marketers.Tim is an industry leader who has acquired and exited well over $50 million worth of real estate and is currently an investor in over 2700 units of multifamily apartments.Connect with TimWebsite: Capital Raising PartyFacebook: Tim Mai | Capital Raising Nation Instagram: @timmaicomTwitter: @timmaiLinkedIn: Tim MaiYouTube: Tim Mai

Send us a textNEW FUND ANNOUNCEMENT: The AG Dillon Anduril Pre-IPO Stock Fund is now accepting investors. Anduril Industries is a defense technology company that specializes in building advanced artificial intelligence (AI) and autonomous systems for military and national security purposes. Financial advisors only. Email aaron.dillon@agdillon.com to invest or request fund materials. Note important disclosures at the end of this post.Subscribe to AG Dillon Pre-IPO Stock Research at agdillon.com/subscribe;- Wednesday = secondary market valuations, revenue multiples, performance, index fact sheets- Saturdays = pre-IPO news and insights, webinar replays00:00 - Intro01:01 - Starlink's Explosive Growth in Africa02:10 - Anthropic Launches AI Tool "Computer Use" for Developers03:46 - Klarna Prepares for IPO, Removes Board Member04:44 - Anduril Boosted by US AI Defense Directive05:55 - Infinitus Raises $51.5M, Now Valued Over $600M07:00 - Agility Robotics Raises $150M, Valued at $1B07:52 - Notion Introduces Integrated Email Client, Notion Mail09:12 - Pre-IPO Stock Market Weekly Performance09:55 - Pre-IPO Stock Vintage Index Weekly Performance* NOTE: AG Dillon ("AGD") is not affiliated with Anduril. Anduril may require company approval for purchases (aka transfers). AGD has not been pre-approved by Anduril to purchase their stock. AGD purchases pre-IPO stocks in the secondary market and may gain exposure by directly purchasing the stock (on the company's capitalization table) and/or through a third-party fund (aka special purpose vehicle, or SPV).

In this episode, David Skok, founder and CEO of The Logic, discusses his journey from traditional journalism to leading a digital-first news outlet. He reflects on his time at The Boston Globe, where he helped the publication transition to a digital subscription model. This experience laid the foundation for his decision to launch The Logic, focusing on Canada's innovation economy and providing high-quality, in-depth reporting.David explains how Clayton Christensen's theory of disruptive innovation influenced his approach to digital media. He saw an opportunity to address gaps in Canadian tech and business coverage, and launched The Logic in 2018. He highlights the challenges of building a digital publication in a space dominated by legacy media and how his publication has carved out its niche by focusing on critical, analytical journalism.The discussion also covers the impact of Bill C-18 on the media landscape in Canada, with David offering insights into how it aims to level the playing field between big tech platforms and smaller news organizations. He also touches on the role of The Logic Summit, an annual event that brings together leaders in tech and business, as part of his broader mission to foster a stronger innovation ecosystem in Canada.And John Ruffolo of Maverix Private Equity joins Matt Cohen to discuss the latest tech and venture capital news.About David Skok:David Skok is the founder and CEO of The Logic, a business news publication focused on Canada's innovation economy, with five bureaus across the country. Backed by the Financial Times, The Logic has become a prominent source of in-depth business journalism under his leadership.With over 25 years of experience, David previously held senior roles at The Toronto Star and The Boston Globe, where he led digital strategy and helped grow BostonGlobe.com's digital subscriptions by 40%. He also co-created Globalnews.ca, one of Canada's leading digital news platforms.David holds a Nieman Fellowship from Harvard University and a Bachelor's degree in journalism from Ryerson University. He also serves on the board of the Online News Association and advisory boards for several journalism institutions.In this episode, we discuss:News Rundown with John Ruffolo:* (01:31) Elon Musk's epic week * (02:00) Discussion on the rise of reusable rocket systems and the implications for space exploration* (03:26) Information Venture Partners (IVP), a Toronto-based venture capital firm, decides not to raise its fourth venture fund, citing market conditions and personal circumstances* (05:00) The trend of venture funds consolidating and shifting towards more niche or special purpose vehicle (SPV) investments is explored* (09:00) Geoffrey Hinton, known as the "AI godfather," wins the 2024 Nobel Prize in Physics for his contributions to AI* (12:00) Shopify President Harley Finkelstein's controversial comments about the lack of ambition in the Canadian tech sector, and the push for more risk-taking in AI development* (14:50) John Ruffolo responds, emphasizing the need for better access to capital and support for Canadian entrepreneurs, rather than a lack of ambition being the primary issue* (19:00) Matt and John discuss the large investments being made in U.S. data center developments and AI infrastructure, noting the contrast with Canada's lack of similar projects* (23:00) A story about Anguilla's earnings from the ".ai" domain surge, and how it now accounts for 20% of the island's government revenueInterview with David Skok:* (24:53) David Skok discusses his early years in journalism and how his experiences shaped his career* (27:21) His experiences at The Boston Globe, leading its transition to a subscription-based model and the lessons learned from that time* (31:00) The evolution of digital content consumption and how consumers' preferences for news have changed* (33:36) Clayton Christensen's disruptive innovation theory on David's decision to start The Logic, and his approach to navigating the shifting media landscape.* (41:55) The founding of The Logic, initial challenges, and the importance of building a subscription-based media outlet* (45:00) The competitive nature of the Canadian media landscape and the challenges of securing talent and resources for a startup media company* (49:13) David explains The Logic Summit, how it serves as a platform for bringing together Canada's innovation and business leaders, and its growing significance* (51:58) The implications of Bill C-18 and how it affects relationships between media outlets and tech platforms like Google and Meta* [56:43] The rise of generative AI, the challenges of copyright for news organizations, and the impact on journalistic integrity* [59:00] David outlines The Logic's approach to using AI and how they manage its integration with journalistic standards.Fast Favorites:* Favorite podcast: Pivot by Kara Swisher and Scott Galloway* Favorite newsletter or blog: Stratechery by Ben Thompson* Favorite tech gadget: His iPhone* Favorite new trend: Generative AI* Favorite book: The Innovator's Dilemma by Clayton Christensen* Favorite CEO to watch: Marc Benioff from SalesforceFollow Matt Cohen and Tank Talks here!Podcast production support provided by Agentbee.ai This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit tanktalks.substack.com

Send us a textNEW FUND ANNOUNCEMENT: The AG Dillon Anduril Pre-IPO Stock Fund is now accepting investors. Anduril Industries is a defense technology company that specializes in building advanced artificial intelligence (AI) and autonomous systems for military and national security purposes. Financial advisors only. Email aaron.dillon@agdillon.com to invest or request fund materials. Note important disclosures at the end of this post.Subscribe to AG Dillon Pre-IPO Stock Research at agdillon.com/subscribe;- Wednesday = secondary market valuations, revenue multiples, performance, index fact sheets- Saturdays = pre-IPO news and insights, webinar replays00:58 | SpaceX Achieves Milestones with Starship Test- Caught Super Heavy booster mid-air; landed the rocket in the ocean- Starship needs 10 refueling flights for moon missions; demo projected by 2025- Aims for multiple daily Starship flights to reduce costs, boost Starlink deployment- Payload capacity 5x that of Falcon 9; increases incremental revenue- Secondary market valuation: $226B (+7.4% vs Jul 2024)01:55 | Science Corp Targets Brain-Computer Interface Market- Founded by Neuralink co-founder Max Hodak- Affordable tech: Axon probes ($500), SciFi units ($1,000) – 10% of traditional costs- Nexus software manages terabytes of data for brain research- Running clinical trials for ocular implants; plans for human applications- Raised $186M; no public valuation announced03:09 | Stripe Eyes Acquisition of Bridge Amid Stablecoin Focus- Acquiring fintech Bridge to enter $170B stablecoin market- Bridge has raised $58M, including $40M Series A led by Sequoia- Follows Stripe's USDC crypto payments resumption after six years- Secondary market valuation: $83B (+18% vs Jul 2024)04:05 | Databricks Partners with Amazon for AI Chip Cost Reduction- Five-year deal to use Amazon Trainium AI chips, reducing costs by 40%- Expanded collaboration on AWS, generating $1B+ in revenue- Aims to save companies up to $950,000 monthly on AI model development- Secondary market valuation: $43.8B (+1% vs Nov 2023)05:16 | Klarna Integrates with Apple Pay for Flexible Payments- Integration in the US and UK; expansion to Canada planned- Offers installment payments for $35-$2,000 purchases with 0% APR financing options- "Apple from Klarna" storefront launched for U.S. customers- Secondary market valuation: $10.3B (+54% vs Jul 2022)06:17 | Shein Adds Bankers to London IPO07:11 | Hugging Face Expands as AI Developer Platform Grows- 5M AI developer community- 1M public and 1M private models- 300,000 public apps and numerous private spaces for enterprise use- 200,000 data sets for model customization- Decentralized team, largest office in Paris; freemium model for enterprise users- Secondary market valuation: $4.5B (+1% vs Aug 2023)08:20 | OpenAI Tests ChatGPT Windows App with Enhanced Features09:15 | X Updates Privacy Policy to Monetize User Data10:28 | Pre-IPO Stock Market Weekly Performance- agdillon.com/subscribe to receive weekly pdf report in your inbox11:13 | Pre-IPO Stock Vintage Index Weekly Performance- agdillon.com/subscribe to receive weekly pdf report in your inbox* NOTE: AG Dillon ("AGD") is not affiliated with Anduril. Anduril may require company approval for purchases (aka transfers). AGD has not been pre-approved by Anduril to purchase their stock. AGD purchases pre-IPO stocks in the secondary market and may gain exposure by directly purchasing the stock (on the company's capitalization table) and/or through a third-party fund (aka special purpose vehicle, or SPV).

“This is ancient knowledge and cutting-edge technology brought together into a product that is helping thousands of people all over the world,” says Anna Gudmundson, the CEO and co-founder of Sensate. She sits down with Alex Raymond in this episode to explore how Sensate is transforming stress management with its innovative technology. Sensate's device combines sound and infrasonic therapy to help users regulate stress and anxiety, and Anna breaks down how it works on a physiological level, particularly its role in improving vagal nerve tone—a key factor in managing stress and enhancing overall well-being.   Anna also talks about her current fundraising strategy, highlighting Sensate's crowdfunding campaign on WeFunder. What makes crowdfunding such a powerful tool? It isn't just about raising capital; it's about building a community of engaged users and investors who are truly passionate about Sensate's mission. By opening up investment opportunities to everyday people, Sensate is creating a supportive ecosystem that democratizes access to the company's growth. Anna's approach blends traditional venture capital with crowdfunding, showing how a diverse investor base can be built while driving the company forward.   Anna reflects on her personal journey as a leader and the unique challenges of running a wellness startup. How can stress management be woven into the fabric of a company's culture? Anna shares her strategy of fostering mindfulness and resilience within her team, ensuring that Sensate's core mission is reflected not only in their product but also in their workplace.    Quotes “I think stress is part of life, but many of us have a bit too much of it. So, it's really important to have a way to self-regulate.” (04:56 | Anna Gudmundson)  “The reason this is really helping so many people is that they are feeling calm and relieved. They actually enjoy the experience, which makes it accessible even when people are feeling quite wound up. I think that's a really important part because then we begin to self-care, taking out our Sensate and using it when we need it. It's so important in life to be able to self-regulate during stressful moments.” (05:58 | Anna Gudmundson) “We are accepting money from VCs. We have several VCs that are already in, but we have also tried to allow our customers to invest as well. So our customers, practitioners, partners, and people who really care about the product are able to invest via the SPV on WeFunder under exactly the same terms. That's important, and it is very much part of our ethos.” (14:32 | Anna Gudmundson)  “The nice thing about adding crowdfunding is that it democratizes around. Typically, at this stage, when we're at an $18 million valuation, it's usually larger investors who are able to participate. But this allows smaller investors to come in and really diversifies the cap table.” (15:02 | Anna Gudmundson)    Links Connect with Anna Gudmundson: Website: https://www.getsensate.com/ Website: https://wefunder.com/sensate   Connect with Alex Raymond: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/afraymond/ Website: https://amplifyam.com/   HiveCast.fm is a proud sponsor of The Conscious Entrepreneur Podcast. Podcast production and show notes provided by HiveCast.fm

Produced by Foundersuite (for startups: www.foundersuite.com) and Fundingstack (for VCs: www.fundingstack.com), "How I Raised It" goes behind the scenes with startup founders and investors who have raised capital. This episode is with Lloyd Danzig of Sharp Alpha Advisors, a venture capital firm specializing in sports, gaming, and entertainment -- basically, any business where winning is a key component. Learn more at https://sharpalphaadvisors.com. In this episode, we discuss his 6-step process for raising a VC fund, the difference between raising Fund I and Fund II, why he believes incentives govern all, how to set up an SPV to incentivize LPs, how his target LP group has changed over time, and more. The Company most recently raised a $25 Million Fund II backed by a variety of US financial institutions, pro sports team owners, public companies, family offices, venture capitalists and funds of funds, among others. How I Raised It is produced by Foundersuite, makers of software to raise capital and manage investor relations. Foundersuite's customers have raised over $17 Billion since 2016. If you are a startup, create a free account at www.foundersuite.com. If you are a VC or investment banker, check out our new platform, www.fundingstack.com

This Week in Startups is brought to you by… LinkedIn Ads. To redeem a $100 LinkedIn ad credit and launch your first campaign, go to https://www.linkedin.com/thisweekinstartups Runway. Looking to up-level your financial planning Runway is the modern and intuitive way to model, plan, and align your business for everyone on your team. Sign up at ⁠https://www.Runway.com/TWIST to get your first 3 months free. Beehiiv. Power your newsletters with AI tools, referral programs, and ad network features—all in one platform. Get 30 days free and 20% off your first 3 months at ⁠https://www.Beehiiv.com/TWIST * Todays show: Meghan Reynolds takes the stage at Liquidity Summit 2024 to discuss the intricacies of raising capital and pitching to VCs. Meghan dives into many topics including the importance of relationships (3:07), fund size rationalization (20:36), market sentiment (25:55), and other crucial aspects of successful fundraising! * Timestamps: (0:00) Meghan Reynolds takes the stage at Liquidity Summit 2024 (3:07) Meghan Reynolds' talk “Relationship Advice: Of the LP / GP Sort” (9:43) LinkedIn Ads - Get a $100 LinkedIn ad credit at http://www.linkedin.com/thisweekinstartups (10:59) Client service in investor relations and fundraising strategies (15:07) The complexity factor in raising capital (19:19) Runway - Sign up at https://runway.com/twist to get your first 3 months free. (20:36) Rationalizing fund size, securing re-ups, and worst pitching practices (25:55) Market sentiment and single deal SPV dynamics (29:34) Beehiiv - Get 30 days free and 20% off your first 3 months at https://www.beehiiv.com/twist (31:02) VC allocations, private credit, and market dynamics * Subscribe to the TWiST newsletter: https://www.ticker.thisweekinstartups.com * Subscribe to This Week in Startups on Apple: https://rb.gy/v19fcp * Check out Altimeter: https://www.altimeter.com * Follow Meghan X: https://x.com/MeghanKReynolds LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/meghankreynolds * Follow Jason: X: https://twitter.com/Jason LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasoncalacanis * Thank you to our partners: (9:43) LinkedIn Ads - Get a $100 LinkedIn ad credit at http://www.linkedin.com/thisweekinstartups (19:19) Runway - Sign up at https://runway.com/twist to get your first 3 months free. (29:34) Beehiiv - Get 30 days free and 20% off your first 3 months at https://www.beehiiv.com/twist * Great 2023 interviews: Steve Huffman, Brian Chesky, Aaron Levie, Sophia Amoruso, Reid Hoffman, Frank Slootman, Billy McFarland * Check out Jason's suite of newsletters: https://substack.com/@calacanis * Follow TWiST: Substack: https://twistartups.substack.com Twitter: https://twitter.com/TWiStartups YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/thisweekin Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thisweekinstartups TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@thisweekinstartups * Subscribe to the Founder University Podcast: https://www.founder.university/podcast

Disclaimer: We recorded this episode ~1.5 months ago, timing for the FastHTML release. It then got bottlenecked by Llama3.1, Winds of AI Winter, and SAM2 episodes, so we're a little late. Since then FastHTML was released, swyx is building an app in it for AINews, and Anthropic has also released their prompt caching API. Remember when Dylan Patel of SemiAnalysis coined the GPU Rich vs GPU Poor war? (if not, see our pod with him). The idea was that if you're GPU poor you shouldn't waste your time trying to solve GPU rich problems (i.e. pre-training large models) and are better off working on fine-tuning, optimized inference, etc. Jeremy Howard (see our “End of Finetuning” episode to catchup on his background) and Eric Ries founded Answer.AI to do exactly that: “Practical AI R&D”, which is very in-line with the GPU poor needs. For example, one of their first releases was a system based on FSDP + QLoRA that let anyone train a 70B model on two NVIDIA 4090s. Since then, they have come out with a long list of super useful projects (in no particular order, and non-exhaustive):* FSDP QDoRA: this is just as memory efficient and scalable as FSDP/QLoRA, and critically is also as accurate for continued pre-training as full weight training.* Cold Compress: a KV cache compression toolkit that lets you scale sequence length without impacting speed.* colbert-small: state of the art retriever at only 33M params* JaColBERTv2.5: a new state-of-the-art retrievers on all Japanese benchmarks.* gpu.cpp: portable GPU compute for C++ with WebGPU.* Claudette: a better Anthropic API SDK. They also recently released FastHTML, a new way to create modern interactive web apps. Jeremy recently released a 1 hour “Getting started” tutorial on YouTube; while this isn't AI related per se, but it's close to home for any AI Engineer who are looking to iterate quickly on new products: In this episode we broke down 1) how they recruit 2) how they organize what to research 3) and how the community comes together. At the end, Jeremy gave us a sneak peek at something new that he's working on that he calls dialogue engineering: So I've created a new approach. It's not called prompt engineering. I'm creating a system for doing dialogue engineering. It's currently called AI magic. I'm doing most of my work in this system and it's making me much more productive than I was before I used it.He explains it a bit more ~44:53 in the pod, but we'll just have to wait for the public release to figure out exactly what he means.Timestamps* [00:00:00] Intro by Suno AI* [00:03:02] Continuous Pre-Training is Here* [00:06:07] Schedule-Free Optimizers and Learning Rate Schedules* [00:07:08] Governance and Structural Issues within OpenAI and Other AI Labs* [00:13:01] How Answer.ai works* [00:23:40] How to Recruit Productive Researchers* [00:27:45] Building a new BERT* [00:31:57] FSDP, QLoRA, and QDoRA: Innovations in Fine-Tuning Large Models* [00:36:36] Research and Development on Model Inference Optimization* [00:39:49] FastHTML for Web Application Development* [00:46:53] AI Magic & Dialogue Engineering* [00:52:19] AI wishlist & predictionsShow Notes* Jeremy Howard* Previously on Latent Space: The End of Finetuning, NeurIPS Startups* Answer.ai* Fast.ai* FastHTML* answerai-colbert-small-v1* gpu.cpp* Eric Ries* Aaron DeFazio* Yi Tai* Less Wright* Benjamin Warner* Benjamin Clavié* Jono Whitaker* Austin Huang* Eric Gilliam* Tim Dettmers* Colin Raffel* Sebastian Raschka* Carson Gross* Simon Willison* Sepp Hochreiter* Llama3.1 episode* Snowflake Arctic* Ranger Optimizer* Gemma.cpp* HTMX* UL2* BERT* DeBERTa* Efficient finetuning of Llama 3 with FSDP QDoRA* xLSTMTranscriptAlessio [00:00:00]: Hey everyone, welcome to the Latent Space podcast. This is Alessio, partner and CTO-in-Residence at Decibel Partners, and I'm joined by my co-host Swyx, founder of Smol AI.Swyx [00:00:14]: And today we're back with Jeremy Howard, I think your third appearance on Latent Space. Welcome.Jeremy [00:00:19]: Wait, third? Second?Swyx [00:00:21]: Well, I grabbed you at NeurIPS.Jeremy [00:00:23]: I see.Swyx [00:00:24]: Very fun, standing outside street episode.Jeremy [00:00:27]: I never heard that, by the way. You've got to send me a link. I've got to hear what it sounded like.Swyx [00:00:30]: Yeah. Yeah, it's a NeurIPS podcast.Alessio [00:00:32]: I think the two episodes are six hours, so there's plenty to listen, we'll make sure to send it over.Swyx [00:00:37]: Yeah, we're trying this thing where at the major ML conferences, we, you know, do a little audio tour of, give people a sense of what it's like. But the last time you were on, you declared the end of fine tuning. I hope that I sort of editorialized the title a little bit, and I know you were slightly uncomfortable with it, but you just own it anyway. I think you're very good at the hot takes. And we were just discussing in our pre-show that it's really happening, that the continued pre-training is really happening.Jeremy [00:01:02]: Yeah, absolutely. I think people are starting to understand that treating the three ULM FIT steps of like pre-training, you know, and then the kind of like what people now call instruction tuning, and then, I don't know if we've got a general term for this, DPO, RLHFE step, you know, or the task training, they're not actually as separate as we originally suggested they were in our paper, and when you treat it more as a continuum, and that you make sure that you have, you know, more of kind of the original data set incorporated into the later stages, and that, you know, we've also seen with LLAMA3, this idea that those later stages can be done for a lot longer. These are all of the things I was kind of trying to describe there. It wasn't the end of fine tuning, but more that we should treat it as a continuum, and we should have much higher expectations of how much you can do with an already trained model. You can really add a lot of behavior to it, you can change its behavior, you can do a lot. So a lot of our research has been around trying to figure out how to modify the model by a larger amount rather than starting from random weights, because I get very offended at the idea of starting from random weights.Swyx [00:02:14]: Yeah, I saw that in ICLR in Vienna, there was an outstanding paper about starting transformers from data-driven piers. I don't know if you saw that one, they called it sort of never trained from scratch, and I think it was kind of rebelling against like the sort of random initialization.Jeremy [00:02:28]: Yeah, I've, you know, that's been our kind of continuous message since we started Fast AI, is if you're training for random weights, you better have a really good reason, you know, because it seems so unlikely to me that nobody has ever trained on data that has any similarity whatsoever to the general class of data you're working with, and that's the only situation in which I think starting from random weights makes sense.Swyx [00:02:51]: The other trends since our last pod that I would point people to is I'm seeing a rise in multi-phase pre-training. So Snowflake released a large model called Snowflake Arctic, where they detailed three phases of training where they had like a different mixture of like, there was like 75% web in the first instance, and then they reduced the percentage of the web text by 10% each time and increased the amount of code in each phase. And I feel like multi-phase is being called out in papers more. I feel like it's always been a thing, like changing data mix is not something new, but calling it a distinct phase is new, and I wonder if there's something that you're seeingJeremy [00:03:32]: on your end. Well, so they're getting there, right? So the point at which they're doing proper continued pre-training is the point at which that becomes a continuum rather than a phase. So the only difference with what I was describing last time is to say like, oh, there's a function or whatever, which is happening every batch. It's not a huge difference. You know, I always used to get offended when people had learning rates that like jumped. And so one of the things I started doing early on in Fast.ai was to say to people like, no, you should actually have your learning rate schedule should be a function, not a list of numbers. So now I'm trying to give the same idea about training mix.Swyx [00:04:07]: There's been pretty public work from Meta on schedule-free optimizers. I don't know if you've been following Aaron DeFazio and what he's doing, just because you mentioned learning rate schedules, you know, what if you didn't have a schedule?Jeremy [00:04:18]: I don't care very much, honestly. I don't think that schedule-free optimizer is that exciting. It's fine. We've had non-scheduled optimizers for ages, like Less Wright, who's now at Meta, who was part of the Fast.ai community there, created something called the Ranger optimizer. I actually like having more hyperparameters. You know, as soon as you say schedule-free, then like, well, now I don't get to choose. And there isn't really a mathematically correct way of, like, I actually try to schedule more parameters rather than less. So like, I like scheduling my epsilon in my atom, for example. I schedule all the things. But then the other thing we always did with the Fast.ai library was make it so you don't have to set any schedules. So Fast.ai always supported, like, you didn't even have to pass a learning rate. Like, it would always just try to have good defaults and do the right thing. But to me, I like to have more parameters I can play with if I want to, but you don't have to.Alessio [00:05:08]: And then the more less technical side, I guess, of your issue, I guess, with the market was some of the large research labs taking all this innovation kind of behind closed doors and whether or not that's good, which it isn't. And now we could maybe make it more available to people. And then a month after we released the episode, there was the whole Sam Altman drama and like all the OpenAI governance issues. And maybe people started to think more, okay, what happens if some of these kind of labs, you know, start to break from within, so to speak? And the alignment of the humans is probably going to fall before the alignment of the models. So I'm curious, like, if you have any new thoughts and maybe we can also tie in some of the way that we've been building Answer as like a public benefit corp and some of those aspects.Jeremy [00:05:51]: Sure. So, yeah, I mean, it was kind of uncomfortable because two days before Altman got fired, I did a small public video interview in which I said, I'm quite sure that OpenAI's current governance structure can't continue and that it was definitely going to fall apart. And then it fell apart two days later and a bunch of people were like, what did you know, Jeremy?Alessio [00:06:13]: What did Jeremy see?Jeremy [00:06:15]: I didn't see anything. It's just obviously true. Yeah. So my friend Eric Ries and I spoke a lot before that about, you know, Eric's, I think probably most people would agree, the top expert in the world on startup and AI governance. And you know, we could both clearly see that this didn't make sense to have like a so-called non-profit where then there are people working at a company, a commercial company that's owned by or controlled nominally by the non-profit, where the people in the company are being given the equivalent of stock options, like everybody there was working there with expecting to make money largely from their equity. So the idea that then a board could exercise control by saying like, oh, we're worried about safety issues and so we're going to do something that decreases the profit of the company, when every stakeholder in the company, their remuneration pretty much is tied to their profit, it obviously couldn't work. So I mean, that was a huge oversight there by someone. I guess part of the problem is that the kind of people who work at non-profits and in this case the board, you know, who are kind of academics and, you know, people who are kind of true believers. I think it's hard for them to realize that 99.999% of the world is driven very heavily by money, especially huge amounts of money. So yeah, Eric and I had been talking for a long time before that about what could be done differently, because also companies are sociopathic by design and so the alignment problem as it relates to companies has not been solved. Like, companies become huge, they devour their founders, they devour their communities and they do things where even the CEOs, you know, often of big companies tell me like, I wish our company didn't do that thing. You know, I know that if I didn't do it, then I would just get fired and the board would put in somebody else and the board knows if they don't do it, then their shareholders can sue them because they're not maximizing profitability or whatever. So what Eric's spent a lot of time doing is trying to think about how do we make companies less sociopathic, you know, how to, or more, you know, maybe a better way to think of it is like, how do we make it so that the founders of companies can ensure that their companies continue to actually do the things they want them to do? You know, when we started a company, hey, we very explicitly decided we got to start a company, not a academic lab, not a nonprofit, you know, we created a Delaware Seacorp, you know, the most company kind of company. But when we did so, we told everybody, you know, including our first investors, which was you Alessio. They sound great. We are going to run this company on the basis of maximizing long-term value. And in fact, so when we did our second round, which was an angel round, we had everybody invest through a long-term SPV, which we set up where everybody had to agree to vote in line with long-term value principles. So like never enough just to say to people, okay, we're trying to create long-term value here for society as well as for ourselves and everybody's like, oh, yeah, yeah, I totally agree with that. But when it comes to like, okay, well, here's a specific decision we have to make, which will not maximize short-term value, people suddenly change their mind. So you know, it has to be written into the legal documents of everybody so that no question that that's the way the company has to be managed. So then you mentioned the PBC aspect, Public Benefit Corporation, which I never quite understood previously. And turns out it's incredibly simple, like it took, you know, like one paragraph added to our corporate documents to become a PBC. It was cheap, it was easy, but it's got this huge benefit, which is if you're not a public benefit corporation, then somebody can come along and offer to buy you with a stated description of like turning your company into the thing you most hate, right? And if they offer you more than the market value of your company and you don't accept it, then you are not necessarily meeting the kind of your fiduciary responsibilities. So the way like Eric always described it to me is like, if Philip Morris came along and said that you've got great technology for marketing cigarettes to children, so we're going to pivot your company to do that entirely, and we're going to pay you 50% more than the market value, you're going to have to say yes. If you have a PBC, then you are more than welcome to say no, if that offer is not in line with your stated public benefit. So our stated public benefit is to maximize the benefit to society through using AI. So given that more children smoking doesn't do that, then we can say like, no, we're not selling to you.Alessio [00:11:01]: I was looking back at some of our emails. You sent me an email on November 13th about talking and then on the 14th, I sent you an email working together to free AI was the subject line. And then that was kind of the start of the C round. And then two days later, someone got fired. So you know, you were having these thoughts even before we had like a public example of like why some of the current structures didn't work. So yeah, you were very ahead of the curve, so to speak. You know, people can read your awesome introduction blog and answer and the idea of having a R&D lab versus our lab and then a D lab somewhere else. I think to me, the most interesting thing has been hiring and some of the awesome people that you've been bringing on that maybe don't fit the central casting of Silicon Valley, so to speak. Like sometimes I got it like playing baseball cards, you know, people are like, oh, what teams was this person on, where did they work versus focusing on ability. So I would love for you to give a shout out to some of the awesome folks that you have on the team.Jeremy [00:11:58]: So, you know, there's like a graphic going around describing like the people at XAI, you know, Elon Musk thing. And like they are all connected to like multiple of Stanford, Meta, DeepMind, OpenAI, Berkeley, Oxford. Look, these are all great institutions and they have good people. And I'm definitely not at all against that, but damn, there's so many other people. And one of the things I found really interesting is almost any time I see something which I think like this is really high quality work and it's something I don't think would have been built if that person hadn't built the thing right now, I nearly always reach out to them and ask to chat. And I tend to dig in to find out like, okay, you know, why did you do that thing? Everybody else has done this other thing, your thing's much better, but it's not what other people are working on. And like 80% of the time, I find out the person has a really unusual background. So like often they'll have like, either they like came from poverty and didn't get an opportunity to go to a good school or had dyslexia and, you know, got kicked out of school in year 11, or they had a health issue that meant they couldn't go to university or something happened in their past and they ended up out of the mainstream. And then they kind of succeeded anyway. Those are the people that throughout my career, I've tended to kind of accidentally hire more of, but it's not exactly accidentally. It's like when I see somebody who's done, two people who have done extremely well, one of them did extremely well in exactly the normal way from the background entirely pointing in that direction and they achieved all the hurdles to get there. And like, okay, that's quite impressive, you know, but another person who did just as well, despite lots of constraints and doing things in really unusual ways and came up with different approaches. That's normally the person I'm likely to find useful to work with because they're often like risk-takers, they're often creative, they're often extremely tenacious, they're often very open-minded. So that's the kind of folks I tend to find myself hiring. So now at Answer.ai, it's a group of people that are strong enough that nearly every one of them has independently come to me in the past few weeks and told me that they have imposter syndrome and they're not convinced that they're good enough to be here. And I kind of heard it at the point where I was like, okay, I don't think it's possible that all of you are so far behind your peers that you shouldn't get to be here. But I think part of the problem is as an R&D lab, the great developers look at the great researchers and they're like, wow, these big-brained, crazy research people with all their math and s**t, they're too cool for me, oh my God. And then the researchers look at the developers and they're like, oh, they're killing it, making all this stuff with all these people using it and talking on Twitter about how great it is. I think they're both a bit intimidated by each other, you know. And so I have to kind of remind them like, okay, there are lots of things in this world where you suck compared to lots of other people in this company, but also vice versa, you know, for all things. And the reason you came here is because you wanted to learn about those other things from those other people and have an opportunity to like bring them all together into a single unit. You know, it's not reasonable to expect you're going to be better at everything than everybody else. I guess the other part of it is for nearly all of the people in the company, to be honest, they have nearly always been better than everybody else at nearly everything they're doing nearly everywhere they've been. So it's kind of weird to be in this situation now where it's like, gee, I can clearly see that I suck at this thing that I'm meant to be able to do compared to these other people where I'm like the worst in the company at this thing for some things. So I think that's a healthy place to be, you know, as long as you keep reminding each other about that's actually why we're here. And like, it's all a bit of an experiment, like we don't have any managers. We don't have any hierarchy from that point of view. So for example, I'm not a manager, which means I don't get to tell people what to do or how to do it or when to do it. Yeah, it's been a bit of an experiment to see how that would work out. And it's been great. So for instance, Ben Clavier, who you might have come across, he's the author of Ragatouille, he's the author of Rerankers, super strong information retrieval guy. And a few weeks ago, you know, this additional channel appeared on Discord, on our private Discord called Bert24. And these people started appearing, as in our collab sections, we have a collab section for like collaborating with outsiders. And these people started appearing, there are all these names that I recognize, like Bert24, and they're all talking about like the next generation of Bert. And I start following along, it's like, okay, Ben decided that I think, quite rightly, we need a new Bert. Because everybody, like so many people are still using Bert, and it's still the best at so many things, but it actually doesn't take advantage of lots of best practices. And so he just went out and found basically everybody who's created better Berts in the last four or five years, brought them all together, suddenly there's this huge collaboration going on. So yeah, I didn't tell him to do that. He didn't ask my permission to do that. And then, like, Benjamin Warner dived in, and he's like, oh, I created a whole transformers from scratch implementation designed to be maximally hackable. He originally did it largely as a teaching exercise to show other people, but he was like, I could, you know, use that to create a really hackable BERT implementation. In fact, he didn't say that. He said, I just did do that, you know, and I created a repo, and then everybody's like starts using it. They're like, oh my god, this is amazing. I can now implement all these other BERT things. And it's not just answer AI guys there, you know, there's lots of folks, you know, who have like contributed new data set mixes and blah, blah, blah. So, I mean, I can help in the same way that other people can help. So like, then Ben Clavier reached out to me at one point and said, can you help me, like, what have you learned over time about how to manage intimidatingly capable and large groups of people who you're nominally meant to be leading? And so, you know, I like to try to help, but I don't direct. Another great example was Kerem, who, after our FSTP QLORA work, decided quite correctly that it didn't really make sense to use LoRa in today's world. You want to use the normalized version, which is called Dora. Like two or three weeks after we did FSTP QLORA, he just popped up and said, okay, I've just converted the whole thing to Dora, and I've also created these VLLM extensions, and I've got all these benchmarks, and, you know, now I've got training of quantized models with adapters that are as fast as LoRa, and as actually better than, weirdly, fine tuning. Just like, okay, that's great, you know. And yeah, so the things we've done to try to help make these things happen as well is we don't have any required meetings, you know, but we do have a meeting for each pair of major time zones that everybody's invited to, and, you know, people see their colleagues doing stuff that looks really cool and say, like, oh, how can I help, you know, or how can I learn or whatever. So another example is Austin, who, you know, amazing background. He ran AI at Fidelity, he ran AI at Pfizer, he ran browsing and retrieval for Google's DeepMind stuff, created Jemma.cpp, and he's been working on a new system to make it easier to do web GPU programming, because, again, he quite correctly identified, yeah, so I said to him, like, okay, I want to learn about that. Not an area that I have much expertise in, so, you know, he's going to show me what he's working on and teach me a bit about it, and hopefully I can help contribute. I think one of the key things that's happened in all of these is everybody understands what Eric Gilliam, who wrote the second blog post in our series, the R&D historian, describes as a large yard with narrow fences. Everybody has total flexibility to do what they want. We all understand kind of roughly why we're here, you know, we agree with the premises around, like, everything's too expensive, everything's too complicated, people are building too many vanity foundation models rather than taking better advantage of fine-tuning, like, there's this kind of general, like, sense of we're all on the same wavelength about, you know, all the ways in which current research is fucked up, and, you know, all the ways in which we're worried about centralization. We all care a lot about not just research for the point of citations, but research that actually wouldn't have happened otherwise, and actually is going to lead to real-world outcomes. And so, yeah, with this kind of, like, shared vision, people understand, like, you know, so when I say, like, oh, well, you know, tell me, Ben, about BERT 24, what's that about? And he's like, you know, like, oh, well, you know, you can see from an accessibility point of view, or you can see from a kind of a actual practical impact point of view, there's far too much focus on decoder-only models, and, you know, like, BERT's used in all of these different places and industry, and so I can see, like, in terms of our basic principles, what we're trying to achieve, this seems like something important. And so I think that's, like, a really helpful that we have that kind of shared perspective, you know?Alessio [00:21:14]: Yeah. And before we maybe talk about some of the specific research, when you're, like, reaching out to people, interviewing them, what are some of the traits, like, how do these things come out, you know, usually? Is it working on side projects that you, you know, you're already familiar with? Is there anything, like, in the interview process that, like, helps you screen for people that are less pragmatic and more research-driven versus some of these folks that are just gonna do it, you know? They're not waiting for, like, the perfect process.Jeremy [00:21:40]: Everybody who comes through the recruiting is interviewed by everybody in the company. You know, our goal is 12 people, so it's not an unreasonable amount. So the other thing to say is everybody so far who's come into the recruiting pipeline, everybody bar one, has been hired. So which is to say our original curation has been good. And that's actually pretty easy, because nearly everybody who's come in through the recruiting pipeline are people I know pretty well. So Jono Whitaker and I, you know, he worked on the stable diffusion course we did. He's outrageously creative and talented, and he's super, like, enthusiastic tinkerer, just likes making things. Benjamin was one of the strongest parts of the fast.ai community, which is now the alumni. It's, like, hundreds of thousands of people. And you know, again, like, they're not people who a normal interview process would pick up, right? So Benjamin doesn't have any qualifications in math or computer science. Jono was living in Zimbabwe, you know, he was working on, like, helping some African startups, you know, but not FAANG kind of credentials. But yeah, I mean, when you actually see people doing real work and they stand out above, you know, we've got lots of Stanford graduates and open AI people and whatever in our alumni community as well. You know, when you stand out above all of those people anyway, obviously you've got something going for you. You know, Austin, him and I worked together on the masks study we did in the proceeding at the National Academy of Science. You know, we had worked together, and again, that was a group of, like, basically the 18 or 19 top experts in the world on public health and epidemiology and research design and so forth. And Austin, you know, one of the strongest people in that collaboration. So yeah, you know, like, I've been lucky enough to have had opportunities to work with some people who are great and, you know, I'm a very open-minded person, so I kind of am always happy to try working with pretty much anybody and some people stand out. You know, there have been some exceptions, people I haven't previously known, like Ben Clavier, actually, I didn't know before. But you know, with him, you just read his code, and I'm like, oh, that's really well-written code. And like, it's not written exactly the same way as everybody else's code, and it's not written to do exactly the same thing as everybody else's code. So yeah, and then when I chatted to him, it's just like, I don't know, I felt like we'd known each other for years, like we just were on the same wavelength, but I could pretty much tell that was going to happen just by reading his code. I think you express a lot in the code you choose to write and how you choose to write it, I guess. You know, or another example, a guy named Vic, who was previously the CEO of DataQuest, and like, in that case, you know, he's created a really successful startup. He won the first, basically, Kaggle NLP competition, which was automatic essay grading. He's got the current state-of-the-art OCR system, Surya. Again, he's just a guy who obviously just builds stuff, you know, he doesn't ask for permission, he doesn't need any, like, external resources. Actually, Karim's another great example of this, I mean, I already knew Karim very well because he was my best ever master's student, but it wasn't a surprise to me then when he then went off to create the world's state-of-the-art language model in Turkish on his own, in his spare time, with no budget, from scratch. This is not fine-tuning or whatever, he, like, went back to Common Crawl and did everything. Yeah, it's kind of, I don't know what I'd describe that process as, but it's not at all based on credentials.Swyx [00:25:17]: Assemble based on talent, yeah. We wanted to dive in a little bit more on, you know, turning from the people side of things into the technical bets that you're making. Just a little bit more on Bert. I was actually, we just did an interview with Yi Tay from Reka, I don't know if you're familiar with his work, but also another encoder-decoder bet, and one of his arguments was actually people kind of over-index on the decoder-only GPT-3 type paradigm. I wonder if you have thoughts there that is maybe non-consensus as well. Yeah, no, absolutely.Jeremy [00:25:45]: So I think it's a great example. So one of the people we're collaborating with a little bit with BERT24 is Colin Raffle, who is the guy behind, yeah, most of that stuff, you know, between that and UL2, there's a lot of really interesting work. And so one of the things I've been encouraging the BERT group to do, Colin has as well, is to consider using a T5 pre-trained encoder backbone as a thing you fine-tune, which I think would be really cool. You know, Colin was also saying actually just use encoder-decoder as your Bert, you know, why don't you like use that as a baseline, which I also think is a good idea. Yeah, look.Swyx [00:26:25]: What technical arguments are people under-weighting?Jeremy [00:26:27]: I mean, Colin would be able to describe this much better than I can, but I'll give my slightly non-expert attempt. Look, I mean, think about like diffusion models, right? Like in stable diffusion, like we use things like UNet. You have this kind of downward path and then in the upward path you have the cross connections, which it's not a tension, but it's like a similar idea, right? You're inputting the original encoding path into your decoding path. It's critical to make it work, right? Because otherwise in the decoding part, the model has to do so much kind of from scratch. So like if you're doing translation, like that's a classic kind of encoder-decoder example. If it's decoder only, you never get the opportunity to find the right, you know, feature engineering, the right feature encoding for the original sentence. And it kind of means then on every token that you generate, you have to recreate the whole thing, you know? So if you have an encoder, it's basically saying like, okay, this is your opportunity model to create a really useful feature representation for your input information. So I think there's really strong arguments for encoder-decoder models anywhere that there is this kind of like context or source thing. And then why encoder only? Well, because so much of the time what we actually care about is a classification, you know? It's like an output. It's like generating an arbitrary length sequence of tokens. So anytime you're not generating an arbitrary length sequence of tokens, decoder models don't seem to make much sense. Now the interesting thing is, you see on like Kaggle competitions, that decoder models still are at least competitive with things like Deberta v3. They have to be way bigger to be competitive with things like Deberta v3. And the only reason they are competitive is because people have put a lot more time and money and effort into training the decoder only ones, you know? There isn't a recent Deberta. There isn't a recent Bert. Yeah, it's a whole part of the world that people have slept on a little bit. And this is just what happens. This is how trends happen rather than like, to me, everybody should be like, oh, let's look at the thing that has shown signs of being useful in the past, but nobody really followed up with properly. That's the more interesting path, you know, where people tend to be like, oh, I need to get citations. So what's everybody else doing? Can I make it 0.1% better, you know, or 0.1% faster? That's what everybody tends to do. Yeah. So I think it's like, Itay's work commercially now is interesting because here's like a whole, here's a whole model that's been trained in a different way. So there's probably a whole lot of tasks it's probably better at than GPT and Gemini and Claude. So that should be a good commercial opportunity for them if they can figure out what those tasks are.Swyx [00:29:07]: Well, if rumors are to be believed, and he didn't comment on this, but, you know, Snowflake may figure out the commercialization for them. So we'll see.Jeremy [00:29:14]: Good.Alessio [00:29:16]: Let's talk about FSDP, Qlora, Qdora, and all of that awesome stuff. One of the things we talked about last time, some of these models are meant to run on systems that nobody can really own, no single person. And then you were like, well, what if you could fine tune a 70B model on like a 4090? And I was like, no, that sounds great, Jeremy, but like, can we actually do it? And then obviously you all figured it out. Can you maybe tell us some of the worst stories behind that, like the idea behind FSDP, which is kind of taking sharded data, parallel computation, and then Qlora, which is do not touch all the weights, just go quantize some of the model, and then within the quantized model only do certain layers instead of doing everything.Jeremy [00:29:57]: Well, do the adapters. Yeah.Alessio [00:29:59]: Yeah. Yeah. Do the adapters. Yeah. I will leave the floor to you. I think before you published it, nobody thought this was like a short term thing that we're just going to have. And now it's like, oh, obviously you can do it, but it's not that easy.Jeremy [00:30:12]: Yeah. I mean, to be honest, it was extremely unpleasant work to do. It's like not at all enjoyable. I kind of did version 0.1 of it myself before we had launched the company, or at least the kind of like the pieces. They're all pieces that are difficult to work with, right? So for the quantization, you know, I chatted to Tim Detmers quite a bit and, you know, he very much encouraged me by saying like, yeah, it's possible. He actually thought it'd be easy. It probably would be easy for him, but I'm not Tim Detmers. And, you know, so he wrote bits and bytes, which is his quantization library. You know, he wrote that for a paper. He didn't write that to be production like code. It's now like everybody's using it, at least the CUDA bits. So like, it's not particularly well structured. There's lots of code paths that never get used. There's multiple versions of the same thing. You have to try to figure it out. So trying to get my head around that was hard. And you know, because the interesting bits are all written in CUDA, it's hard to like to step through it and see what's happening. And then, you know, FSTP is this very complicated library and PyTorch, which not particularly well documented. So the only really, really way to understand it properly is again, just read the code and step through the code. And then like bits and bytes doesn't really work in practice unless it's used with PEF, the HuggingFace library and PEF doesn't really work in practice unless you use it with other things. And there's a lot of coupling in the HuggingFace ecosystem where like none of it works separately. You have to use it all together, which I don't love. So yeah, trying to just get a minimal example that I can play with was really hard. And so I ended up having to rewrite a lot of it myself to kind of create this like minimal script. One thing that helped a lot was Medec had this LlamaRecipes repo that came out just a little bit before I started working on that. And like they had a kind of role model example of like, here's how to train FSTP, LoRa, didn't work with QLoRa on Llama. A lot of the stuff I discovered, the interesting stuff would be put together by Les Wright, who's, he was actually the guy in the Fast.ai community I mentioned who created the Ranger Optimizer. So he's doing a lot of great stuff at Meta now. So yeah, I kind of, that helped get some minimum stuff going and then it was great once Benjamin and Jono joined full time. And so we basically hacked at that together and then Kerim joined like a month later or something. And it was like, gee, it was just a lot of like fiddly detailed engineering on like barely documented bits of obscure internals. So my focus was to see if it kind of could work and I kind of got a bit of a proof of concept working and then the rest of the guys actually did all the work to make it work properly. And, you know, every time we thought we had something, you know, we needed to have good benchmarks, right? So we'd like, it's very easy to convince yourself you've done the work when you haven't, you know, so then we'd actually try lots of things and be like, oh, and these like really important cases, the memory use is higher, you know, or it's actually slower. And we'd go in and we just find like all these things that were nothing to do with our library that just didn't work properly. And nobody had noticed they hadn't worked properly because nobody had really benchmarked it properly. So we ended up, you know, trying to fix a whole lot of different things. And even as we did so, new regressions were appearing in like transformers and stuff that Benjamin then had to go away and figure out like, oh, how come flash attention doesn't work in this version of transformers anymore with this set of models and like, oh, it turns out they accidentally changed this thing, so it doesn't work. You know, there's just, there's not a lot of really good performance type evals going on in the open source ecosystem. So there's an extraordinary amount of like things where people say like, oh, we built this thing and it has this result. And when you actually check it, so yeah, there's a shitload of war stories from getting that thing to work. And it did require a particularly like tenacious group of people and a group of people who don't mind doing a whole lot of kind of like really janitorial work, to be honest, to get the details right, to check them. Yeah.Alessio [00:34:09]: We had a trade out on the podcast and we talked about how a lot of it is like systems work to make some of these things work. It's not just like beautiful, pure math that you do on a blackboard. It's like, how do you get into the nitty gritty?Jeremy [00:34:22]: I mean, flash attention is a great example of that. Like it's, it basically is just like, oh, let's just take the attention and just do the tiled version of it, which sounds simple enough, you know, but then implementing that is challenging at lots of levels.Alessio [00:34:36]: Yeah. What about inference? You know, obviously you've done all this amazing work on fine tuning. Do you have any research you've been doing on the inference side, how to make local inference really fast on these models too?Jeremy [00:34:47]: We're doing quite a bit on that at the moment. We haven't released too much there yet. But one of the things I've been trying to do is also just to help other people. And one of the nice things that's happened is that a couple of folks at Meta, including Mark Seraphim, have done a nice job of creating this CUDA mode community of people working on like CUDA kernels or learning about that. And I tried to help get that going well as well and did some lessons to help people get into it. So there's a lot going on in both inference and fine tuning performance. And a lot of it's actually happening kind of related to that. So PyTorch team have created this Torch AO project on quantization. And so there's a big overlap now between kind of the FastAI and AnswerAI and CUDA mode communities of people working on stuff for both inference and fine tuning. But we're getting close now. You know, our goal is that nobody should be merging models, nobody should be downloading merged models, everybody should be using basically quantized plus adapters for almost everything and just downloading the adapters. And that should be much faster. So that's kind of the place we're trying to get to. It's difficult, you know, because like Karim's been doing a lot of work with VLM, for example. These inference engines are pretty complex bits of code. They have a whole lot of custom kernel stuff going on as well, as do the quantization libraries. So we've been working on, we're also quite a bit of collaborating with the folks who do HQQ, which is a really great quantization library and works super well. So yeah, there's a lot of other people outside AnswerAI that we're working with a lot who are really helping on all this performance optimization stuff, open source.Swyx [00:36:27]: Just to follow up on merging models, I picked up there that you said nobody should be merging models. That's interesting because obviously a lot of people are experimenting with this and finding interesting results. I would say in defense of merging models, you can do it without data. That's probably the only thing that's going for it.Jeremy [00:36:45]: To explain, it's not that you shouldn't merge models. You shouldn't be distributing a merged model. You should distribute a merged adapter 99% of the time. And actually often one of the best things happening in the model merging world is actually that often merging adapters works better anyway. The point is, Sean, that once you've got your new model, if you distribute it as an adapter that sits on top of a quantized model that somebody's already downloaded, then it's a much smaller download for them. And also the inference should be much faster because you're not having to transfer FB16 weights from HPM memory at all or ever load them off disk. You know, all the main weights are quantized and the only floating point weights are in the adapters. So that should make both inference and fine tuning faster. Okay, perfect.Swyx [00:37:33]: We're moving on a little bit to the rest of the fast universe. I would have thought that, you know, once you started Answer.ai, that the sort of fast universe would be kind of on hold. And then today you just dropped Fastlight and it looks like, you know, there's more activity going on in sort of Fastland.Jeremy [00:37:49]: Yeah. So Fastland and Answerland are not really distinct things. Answerland is kind of like the Fastland grown up and funded. They both have the same mission, which is to maximize the societal benefit of AI broadly. We want to create thousands of commercially successful products at Answer.ai. And we want to do that with like 12 people. So that means we need a pretty efficient stack, you know, like quite a few orders of magnitude more efficient, not just for creation, but for deployment and maintenance than anything that currently exists. People often forget about the D part of our R&D firm. So we've got to be extremely good at creating, deploying and maintaining applications, not just models. Much to my horror, the story around creating web applications is much worse now than it was 10 or 15 years ago in terms of, if I say to a data scientist, here's how to create and deploy a web application, you know, either you have to learn JavaScript or TypeScript and about all the complex libraries like React and stuff, and all the complex like details around security and web protocol stuff around how you then talk to a backend and then all the details about creating the backend. You know, if that's your job and, you know, you have specialists who work in just one of those areas, it is possible for that to all work. But compared to like, oh, write a PHP script and put it in the home directory that you get when you sign up to this shell provider, which is what it was like in the nineties, you know, here are those 25 lines of code and you're done and now you can pass that URL around to all your friends, or put this, you know, .pl file inside the CGI bin directory that you got when you signed up to this web host. So yeah, the thing I've been mainly working on the last few weeks is fixing all that. And I think I fixed it. I don't know if this is an announcement, but I tell you guys, so yeah, there's this thing called fastHTML, which basically lets you create a complete web application in a single Python file. Unlike excellent projects like Streamlit and Gradio, you're not working on top of a highly abstracted thing. That's got nothing to do with web foundations. You're working with web foundations directly, but you're able to do it by using pure Python. There's no template, there's no ginger, there's no separate like CSS and JavaScript files. It looks and behaves like a modern SPA web application. And you can create components for like daisy UI, or bootstrap, or shoelace, or whatever fancy JavaScript and or CSS tailwind etc library you like, but you can write it all in Python. You can pip install somebody else's set of components and use them entirely from Python. You can develop and prototype it all in a Jupyter notebook if you want to. It all displays correctly, so you can like interactively do that. And then you mentioned Fastlight, so specifically now if you're using SQLite in particular, it's like ridiculously easy to have that persistence, and all of your handlers will be passed database ready objects automatically, that you can just call dot delete dot update dot insert on. Yeah, you get session, you get security, you get all that. So again, like with most everything I do, it's very little code. It's mainly tying together really cool stuff that other people have written. You don't have to use it, but a lot of the best stuff comes from its incorporation of HTMX, which to me is basically the thing that changes your browser to make it work the way it always should have. So it just does four small things, but those four small things are the things that are basically unnecessary constraints that HTML should never have had, so it removes the constraints. It sits on top of Starlet, which is a very nice kind of lower level platform for building these kind of web applications. The actual interface matches as closely as possible to FastAPI, which is a really nice system for creating the kind of classic JavaScript type applications. And Sebastian, who wrote FastAPI, has been kind enough to help me think through some of these design decisions, and so forth. I mean, everybody involved has been super helpful. Actually, I chatted to Carson, who created HTMX, you know, so about it. Some of the folks involved in Django, like everybody in the community I've spoken to definitely realizes there's a big gap to be filled around, like, highly scalable, web foundation-based, pure Python framework with a minimum of fuss. So yeah, I'm getting a lot of support and trying to make sure that FastHTML works well for people.Swyx [00:42:38]: I would say, when I heard about this, I texted Alexio. I think this is going to be pretty huge. People consider Streamlit and Gradio to be the state of the art, but I think there's so much to improve, and having what you call web foundations and web fundamentals at the core of it, I think, would be really helpful.Jeremy [00:42:54]: I mean, it's based on 25 years of thinking and work for me. So like, FastML was built on a system much like this one, but that was of hell. And so I spent, you know, 10 years working on that. We had millions of people using that every day, really pushing it hard. And I really always enjoyed working in that. Yeah. So, you know, and obviously lots of other people have done like great stuff, and particularly HTMX. So I've been thinking about like, yeah, how do I pull together the best of the web framework I created for FastML with HTMX? There's also things like PicoCSS, which is the CSS system, which by default, FastHTML comes with. Although, as I say, you can pip install anything you want to, but it makes it like super easy to, you know, so we try to make it so that just out of the box, you don't have any choices to make. Yeah. You can make choices, but for most people, you just, you know, it's like the PHP in your home directory thing. You just start typing and just by default, you'll get something which looks and feels, you know, pretty okay. And if you want to then write a version of Gradio or Streamlit on top of that, you totally can. And then the nice thing is if you then write it in kind of the Gradio equivalent, which will be, you know, I imagine we'll create some kind of pip installable thing for that. Once you've outgrown, or if you outgrow that, it's not like, okay, throw that all away and start again. And this like whole separate language that it's like this kind of smooth, gentle path that you can take step-by-step because it's all just standard web foundations all the way, you know.Swyx [00:44:29]: Just to wrap up the sort of open source work that you're doing, you're aiming to create thousands of projects with a very, very small team. I haven't heard you mention once AI agents or AI developer tooling or AI code maintenance. I know you're very productive, but you know, what is the role of AI in your own work?Jeremy [00:44:47]: So I'm making something. I'm not sure how much I want to say just yet.Swyx [00:44:52]: Give us a nibble.Jeremy [00:44:53]: All right. I'll give you the key thing. So I've created a new approach. It's not called prompt engineering. It's called dialogue engineering. But I'm creating a system for doing dialogue engineering. It's currently called AI magic. I'm doing most of my work in this system and it's making me much more productive than I was before I used it. So I always just build stuff for myself and hope that it'll be useful for somebody else. Think about chat GPT with code interpreter, right? The basic UX is the same as a 1970s teletype, right? So if you wrote APL on a teletype in the 1970s, you typed onto a thing, your words appeared at the bottom of a sheet of paper and you'd like hit enter and it would scroll up. And then the answer from APL would be printed out, scroll up, and then you would type the next thing. And like, which is also the way, for example, a shell works like bash or ZSH or whatever. It's not terrible, you know, like we all get a lot done in these like very, very basic teletype style REPL environments, but I've never felt like it's optimal and everybody else has just copied chat GPT. So it's also the way BART and Gemini work. It's also the way the Claude web app works. And then you add code interpreter. And the most you can do is to like plead with chat GPT to write the kind of code I want. It's pretty good for very, very, very beginner users who like can't code at all, like by default now the code's even hidden away, so you never even have to see it ever happened. But for somebody who's like wanting to learn to code or who already knows a bit of code or whatever, it's, it seems really not ideal. So okay, that's one end of the spectrum. The other end of the spectrum, which is where Sean's work comes in, is, oh, you want to do more than chat GPT? No worries. Here is Visual Studio Code. I run it. There's an empty screen with a flashing cursor. Okay, start coding, you know, and it's like, okay, you can use systems like Sean's or like cursor or whatever to be like, okay, Apple K in cursors, like a creative form that blah, blah, blah. But in the end, it's like a convenience over the top of this incredibly complicated system that full-time sophisticated software engineers have designed over the past few decades in a totally different environment as a way to build software, you know. And so we're trying to like shoehorn in AI into that. And it's not easy to do. And I think there are like much better ways of thinking about the craft of software development in a language model world to be much more interactive, you know. So the thing that I'm building is neither of those things. It's something between the two. And it's built around this idea of crafting a dialogue, you know, where the outcome of the dialogue is the artifacts that you want, whether it be a piece of analysis or whether it be a Python library or whether it be a technical blog post or whatever. So as part of building that, I've created something called Claudette, which is a library for Claude. I've created something called Cosette, which is a library for OpenAI. They're libraries which are designed to make those APIs much more usable, much easier to use, much more concise. And then I've written AI magic on top of those. And that's been an interesting exercise because I did Claudette first, and I was looking at what Simon Willison did with his fantastic LLM library. And his library is designed around like, let's make something that supports all the LLM inference engines and commercial providers. I thought, okay, what if I did something different, which is like make something that's as Claude friendly as possible and forget everything else. So that's what Claudette was. So for example, one of the really nice things in Claude is prefill. So by telling the assistant that this is what your response started with, there's a lot of powerful things you can take advantage of. So yeah, I created Claudette to be as Claude friendly as possible. And then after I did that, and then particularly with GPT 4.0 coming out, I kind of thought, okay, now let's create something that's as OpenAI friendly as possible. And then I tried to look to see, well, where are the similarities and where are the differences? And now can I make them compatible in places where it makes sense for them to be compatible without losing out on the things that make each one special for what they are. So yeah, those are some of the things I've been working on in that space. And I'm thinking we might launch AI magic via a course called how to solve it with code. The name is based on the classic Polya book, if you know how to solve it, which is, you know, one of the classic math books of all time, where we're basically going to try to show people how to solve challenging problems that they didn't think they could solve without doing a full computer science course, by taking advantage of a bit of AI and a bit of like practical skills, as particularly for this like whole generation of people who are learning to code with and because of ChatGPT. Like I love it, I know a lot of people who didn't really know how to code, but they've created things because they use ChatGPT, but they don't really know how to maintain them or fix them or add things to them that ChatGPT can't do, because they don't really know how to code. And so this course will be designed to show you how you can like either become a developer who can like supercharge their capabilities by using language models, or become a language model first developer who can supercharge their capabilities by understanding a bit about process and fundamentals.Alessio [00:50:19]: Nice. That's a great spoiler. You know, I guess the fourth time you're going to be on learning space, we're going to talk about AI magic. Jeremy, before we wrap, this was just a great run through everything. What are the things that when you next come on the podcast in nine, 12 months, we're going to be like, man, Jeremy was like really ahead of it. Like, is there anything that you see in the space that maybe people are not talking enough? You know, what's the next company that's going to fall, like have drama internally, anything in your mind?Jeremy [00:50:47]: You know, hopefully we'll be talking a lot about fast HTML and hopefully the international community that at that point has come up around that. And also about AI magic and about dialogue engineering. Hopefully dialogue engineering catches on because I think it's the right way to think about a lot of this stuff. What else? Just trying to think about all on the research side. Yeah. I think, you know, I mean, we've talked about a lot of it. Like I think encoder decoder architectures, encoder only architectures, hopefully we'll be talking about like the whole re-interest in BERT that BERT 24 stimulated.Swyx [00:51:17]: There's a safe space model that came out today that might be interesting for this general discussion. One thing that stood out to me with Cartesia's blog posts was that they were talking about real time ingestion, billions and trillions of tokens, and keeping that context, obviously in the state space that they have.Jeremy [00:51:34]: Yeah.Swyx [00:51:35]: I'm wondering what your thoughts are because you've been entirely transformers the whole time.Jeremy [00:51:38]: Yeah. No. So obviously my background is RNNs and LSTMs. Of course. And I'm still a believer in the idea that state is something you can update, you know? So obviously Sepp Hochreiter came up, came out with xLSTM recently. Oh my God. Okay. Another whole thing we haven't talked about, just somewhat related. I've been going crazy for like a long time about like, why can I not pay anybody to save my KV cash? I just ingested the Great Gatsby or the documentation for Starlet or whatever, you know, I'm sending it as my prompt context. Why are you redoing it every time? So Gemini is about to finally come out with KV caching, and this is something that Austin actually in Gemma.cpp had had on his roadmap for years, well not years, months, long time. The idea that the KV cache is like a thing that, it's a third thing, right? So there's RAG, you know, there's in-context learning, you know, and prompt engineering, and there's KV cache creation. I think it creates like a whole new class almost of applications or as techniques where, you know, for me, for example, I very often work with really new libraries or I've created my own library that I'm now writing with rather than on. So I want all the docs in my new library to be there all the time. So I want to upload them once, and then we have a whole discussion about building this application using FastHTML. Well nobody's got FastHTML in their language model yet, I don't want to send all the FastHTML docs across every time. So one of the things I'm looking at doing in AI Magic actually is taking advantage of some of these ideas so that you can have the documentation of the libraries you're working on be kind of always available. Something over the next 12 months people will be spending time thinking about is how to like, where to use RAG, where to use fine-tuning, where to use KV cache storage, you know. And how to use state, because in state models and XLSTM, again, state is something you update. So how do we combine the best of all of these worlds?Alessio [00:53:46]: And Jeremy, I know before you talked about how some of the autoregressive models are not maybe a great fit for agents. Any other thoughts on like JEPA, diffusion for text, any interesting thing that you've seen pop up?Jeremy [00:53:58]: In the same way that we probably ought to have state that you can update, i.e. XLSTM and state models, in the same way that a lot of things probably should have an encoder, JEPA and diffusion both seem like the right conceptual mapping for a lot of things we probably want to do. So the idea of like, there should be a piece of the generative pipeline, which is like thinking about the answer and coming up with a sketch of what the answer looks like before you start outputting tokens. That's where it kind of feels like diffusion ought to fit, you know. And diffusion is, because it's not autoregressive, it's like, let's try to like gradually de-blur the picture of how to solve this. So this is also where dialogue engineering fits in, by the way. So with dialogue engineering, one of the reasons it's working so well for me is I use it to kind of like craft the thought process before I generate the code, you know. So yeah, there's a lot of different pieces here and I don't know how they'll all kind of exactly fit together. I don't know if JEPA is going to actually end up working in the text world. I don't know if diffusion will end up working in the text world, but they seem to be like trying to solve a class of problem which is currently unsolved.Alessio [00:55:13]: Awesome, Jeremy. This was great, as usual. Thanks again for coming back on the pod and thank you all for listening. Yeah, that was fantastic. Get full access to Latent Space at www.latent.space/subscribe

The show opens with Jason “Mayhem” Miller sitting in to do the news. They talk about real vs. fake honey products before discovering Jason actually promotes a manuka honey brand. They also discuss “White Women for Kamala” and the trend of people masquerading as experts. Then, Jason reads the news including stories about Jimmy Kimmel & John Mulaney declining offers to host the Oscars, a prison guard getting arrested for having sex with an inmate & filming it, OnlyFans models using AI bots to chat with their fans, and scientists discovering that sugar gel may regrow hair for balding men. Next, actor Eric Roberts returns to the show, with his wife Eliza by his side, to talk about his new film “Lumina” and his book “Runaway Train: Or, The Story of My Life So Far.” They also discuss his extensive résumé and his early start in the New York acting scene. Next, they talk about Eric's current relationship with his sister Julia & his daughter Emma. Finally, financial advisor Will Roundtree makes his first ACS appearance. He talks about how his self-taught knowledge of money took him from living in his car to being a millionaire. He also explains the typical struggles for small businesses & how to avoid them, and how to use SPVs (special purpose vehicles) to invest in real estate. For more with Eric Roberts: ● Pre-order his book: Runaway Train: Or, The Story of My Life So Far ● INSTAGRAM: @ericrobertsactor For more with Will Roundtree: ● PODCAST: Full-Time CEO ● TWITTER/INSTAGRAM: @MrWillRoundtree ● YouTube: https://youtube.com/c/willroundtree Thank you for supporting our sponsors: ● http://OReillyAuto.com/Adam

Happy Tuesday! We're back with two more listener questions!  (0:43) Paul currently has three buy-to-let properties and intends to grow his portfolio to ten in the future. Each property is currently held in a separate SPV, and he's trying to decide if he should continue putting his new properties in their own SPVs or combine them all into one. Aware of the pros and cons of each method, Paul seeks advice from Rob & Rob on what to do. What will they suggest?  (5:09) Lee's been searching for the best deal for his mortgage renewal and wonders if he should stick with the advice of one mortgage broker or talk to a few to get a better range of options.  Enjoy the show?  Leave us a review on Apple Podcasts - it really helps others find us!  Sign up for our free weekly newsletter, Property Pulse  Send us your question by calling us on 013 808 00035 and leaving a message with your name and question (normal UK call rates apply) or click here to leave a recording via your computer instead.  Find out more about Property Hub Invest  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Welcome to this week's Episode of Equity Monday. We're kicking off the week with a deep dive from this weekend into the demise of electric vehicle startup Fisker at the hands of its founders' whims. Fisker, which was founded by famed vehicle designer Henrik Fisker, is on the brink of bankruptcy after only having delivered a few thousand electric Ocean SUVs. Then, Rebecca Bellan talked about X's new rules to allow adult content (as long as it's "consensually produced," whatever that means), and why that's problematic for the safety of other users -- namely women, who are most often the targets of sexually explicit trolling and harassment. We also touched on Trump's TikTok debut, which came in the wake of the former president's felony conviction. To wrap up, Bellan also discussed a story that TechCrunch published over the weekend looking into the new trend of smaller, lesser-known investors getting shares of hot private AI companies like Anthropic, X.ai and Perplexity by using special purpose vehicles, or SPVs. The result has been a Wild West, high risk, buyer-beware situation, with SPV terms varying wildly. Haje closed out the show with another Pitch Deck Teardown, this time looking into the Angel pitch deck for RAW Dating App. RAW just raised a $3 million friends and family round to shake up the dating scene by shedding fake, TikTok-ified, heavily filtered photos and replacing them with a more genuine, unvarnished experience. Credits: Equity is produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.

Max Boonen is the founder of PV01 — a platform that allows issuers to access capital and for investors to purchase debt using blockchain. In this episode, Boonen discusses the challenges of accessing debt capital markets and the potential of tokenization in the crypto space, including the paradigm shift from provider-based markets to token-based markets in DeFi. PV01 uses a special purpose vehicle (SPV) to buy one bond and issue a token that represents the bond. This token is both a representation of a bond and a bond itself.

Aujourd'hui nous allons parler de "The Family". Cet incubateur de startups qui était le centre névralgique de la tech française dans les années 2010. Alice Zagury, une de ses cofondatrices, a d'ailleurs été ma 24ème invitée sur GDIY en 2018. En décembre 2023, Oussama Ammar, l'un des cofondateurs de The Family a été condamné aux îles Caïmans pour détournement de fonds et blanchiment d'argent. Il devra verser plus de 7 millions d'euros à l'incubateur. Il est important de préciser qu'Oussama Ammar a décidé de ne pas faire appel de cette condamnation, il s'est en revanche constitué devant les tribunaux français et britanniques où d'autres procédures sont en cours d'instruction. Avec The Family, Oussama Ammar et Alice Zagury sont des figures publiques de la tech française. Leur troisième associé Nicolas Colin est historiquement beaucoup plus discret. C'est mon invité sur GDIY aujourd'hui. Il ne s'est jamais exprimé publiquement sur l'affaire et le combat judiciaire qui dure depuis 2022, dans lequel Alice et Nicolas accusent Oussama de détournement de fonds et blanchiment d'argent. Les autres protagonistes s'étant déjà largement livrés dans divers médias en ligne, j'ai voulu aller chercher celui qui s'exprimait le moins pour avoir une autre version des dessous de cette histoire, qui secoue largement la tech française depuis plusieurs années. “Soit Nicolas et Alice savaient, soit ils sont complètement naïfs” Une phrase que l'on m'a beaucoup fait remonter à la préparation de cet épisode. Ne connaissant pas Nicolas, j'ai eu besoin de comprendre qui il était pour pouvoir me faire ma propre opinion. Mais surtout au travers de cet épisode spécial, j'ai voulu vous proposer de découvrir Nicolas Colin, afin de vous laisser vous faire la vôtre, avant de rentrer pleinement dans les détails les plus précis de cette affaire : La promesse faite par The Family de pouvoir investir dans SpaceX, Airbnb et Stripe L'argent récolté mais jamais investi et les 160 investisseurs concernés Le fonctionnement d'un blanchiment d'argent : prélavage, essorage, lessivage Le point de bascule : comment la vérité a éclaté Où sont allés les 3,4 millions concernés par l'action en justice aux Caïmans Comprendre la structure juridique de The Family Les mécanismes d'une fraude Gérer un portefeuille en extinction Si vous souhaitez aller directement au but, je vous propose un épisode divisé en trois grandes parties : De 00:00:00 à 00:49:30 : Le parcours de Nicolas Colin De 00:49:30 à 01:34:50 : La genèse et la structure de The Family De 01:34:50 à 03:15:47 : L'affaire Matt. TIMELINE: 00:00:00 : Moneyball 00:07:57 : Les premières heures d'internet vues depuis les écoles Télécom 00:26:18: La réalité derrière l'ENA 00:38:53 : Un inspecteur des finances face à la renaissance de l'économie numérique 00:49:34 : La genèse de The Family 01:07:50 : The Family à Londres et son fonctionnement 01:27:11 : La structure de The Family et SPV 01:34:57 : La pomme de la discorde jusqu'aux Caïmans 01:52:41 : Les détournements de fonds d'Oussama 02:00:57 : Les réactions en interne 02:17:49 Le pot aux roses 02:48:13 : Péripéties légales et morale de l'histoire 03:05:52 : Gérer un portefeuille en extinction Avec Nicolas nous avons cité d'anciens épisodes de GDIY : #24 - Alice Zagury #181 - Olivier Goy Avec Nicolas, nous avons parlé de : Moneyball (Le Stratège), film de Bennett Miller Moneyball in Consulting Services (article de Nicolas) European Straits, la newsletter de Nicolas A Founder's Handbook for Lobbying the Government The Family Courrier International Karaté Kid TechCrunch OVNI Y Combinator (VC) Inventing Anna The Tinder Swindler Seymour Papert, mathématicien et professeur au MIT Marie-Amélie Le Fur, athlète handisport et présidente du comité Paralympique Nicolas vous recommande de lire : L'Age de la multitude: Entreprendre et gouverner après la révolution numérique de Nicolas Colin et Henri Verdier Doing Capitalism in the Innovation Economy Vous pouvez contacter Nicolas Colin par mail nicolas@jointhefamily.co ou sur LinkedIn et vous abonner à sa newsletter European Straits. La musique du générique vous plaît ? C'est à Morgan Prudhomme que je la dois ! Contactez-le sur : https://studio-module.com. Vous souhaitez sponsoriser Génération Do It Yourself ou nous proposer un partenariat ? Contactez mon label Orso Media via ce formulaire.

Landon Ainge is one the most active investors in the Venture Capital space in Utah, but invests throughout the country. Landon has navigated diverse industries and company life cycles where his experience and breadth of knowledge surprises anyone meeting him for the first time. He is the Chairman of TribeAngels & Initiator.co. Initiator supports business owners on the lending side. TribeAngels is a community of individual and family office investors that seek to learn what is changing in the private markets. Landon was a co-founder Gabb Wireless that helps introduce technology to kids in a healthy way. Landon is the co-founder and chairman of Initiator.co which helps businesses navigate the lending solutions for free by giving them access to the private credit markets. He also is the Founder of Utah's Premier Accredited investor network (TribeAngels). Landon is known as an SPV expert - he completed 45 SPV's investments in his first four years of investing in Venture Capital and currently advises and manages over 95 SPV's. If you have any questions on structuring or managing SPV's don't hesitate to reach out. He is transitioning to the fund model because of his demonstrated experience investing.  Before entering the Venture Capital space or entrepreneurship - Landon managed the mobile application and mobile commerce of Overstock.com (now Bed Bath & Beyond) where he launched augmented reality and won the retail app of the year. Landon also worked in corporate development where he completed over 14 M&A transactions totaling $550M in acquisitions and post-acquisition integrations for private operating companies in the logistics space.Out of college Landon started at Goldman Sachs where he helped to implement the compliance with the new Finra 2111 regulations within the bank. Mix in his obsession with Basketball and his experience as a Scout for the Atlanta Hawks and you start to see the breadth previously mentioned.  Business is Landon's rubik's cube - it's what he seems to do for fun.

In this Topical Tuesday's episode, I spoke with Paul Shannon who is a seasoned real estate operator, who has acquired and renovated over 150 residential units and he's also an experienced limited partner, who has passively invested in a diverse spectrum of real estate assets. More recently, he's used this experience to launch InvestWise Collective, which offers a customizable "a la carte" approach to residential and commercial debt and equity deals. Be sure to tune in if you're interested in learning about: The thought process behind his move from the hands-on operations of heavy value-add multifamily, to capital raising through fund structure His "go to" techniques to raise capital The differences between a customizable fund and a single asset SPV, and whether a customizable fund is more difficult to administer Regulatory considerations pertaining to customizable funds How he's planning to use customizable funds to invest in deals in 2024 To your success, Tyler Lyons Resources mentioned in the episode: Paul Shannon LinkedIn Invest Wise Website Leftfield Investors Website Interested in investing with Asym Capital? Check out our webinar.   Please note that investing in private placement securities entails a high degree of risk, including illiquidity of the investment and loss of principal. Please refer to the subscription agreement for a discussion of risk factors. Tired of scrambling for capital?  Check out our new FREE webinar -  How to Ensure You Never Scramble for Capital Again (The 3 Capital-Raising Secrets). Click Here to register.   CFC Podcast Facebook Group

Tarja recognizes that energy in Finland is a hot space. She's launched a marketplace connecting 100 apartment complex owners with 100 providers of energy services like solar and heat. Shes raising a $15m fund to then back these projects that go through her marketplace. Will she get the $15m SPV closed and change the course of energy efficiency before 2025?