Today on the Alt Goes Mainstream podcast we have a guest who helps us bridge the gap between the past, the present, and the future.Ethan Kurzweil, a Partner at Bessemer Venture Partners, who is leading BVP’s crypto efforts and the BessemerDAO, comes onto the show to help us make sense of the evolution from the Web2 to Web2.5 to Web3 world.Ethan and I had a fascinating discussion. We talked about: The evolution of venture capital and private markets. Bessemer’s thesis on Web3.Why Bessemer decided to start a DAO and how they are innovating on portfolio services by building out a community. How Web3 gives people the primitives to fulfill on the premise of decentralization and ownership.Bessemer is a storied venture fund that got its start back in 1975 after spinning out of Bessemer Trust. Fast forward to today, they are one of the best technology investors on the planet investing into industry defining companies like Shopify, Twilio, PagerDuty, DocuSign, LinkedIn, Twitch, Yelp, Wix, Sorare, and many more.Ethan brings a fascinating perspective to the world of Web3 and consumerization of private markets investing given that he spent the early days of his career at early metaverse company Linden Lab, the creator of Second Life, and working for Dow Jones, where he managed the turnaround of the international editions of the Wall Street Journal.Ethan then went on to join Bessemer, where he’s a Partner investing into developer platforms, data infrastructure, digital consumer applications, and consumer facing crypto. He’s invested in the likes of PagerDuty, Intercom, Twitch, LaunchDarkly and crypto companies like Sorare, TRM Labs, and Fold.Thanks Ethan for coming on the Alt Goes Mainstream podcast.

Today on the Alt Goes Mainstream podcast we have a fascinating conversation about how soccer is a compelling alternative investment. We talk with Justin Papadakis, the COO & Chief Real Estate Officer of the United Soccer League. The USL is the largest and one of the fastest growing professional soccer organizations in the United States. Justin and I had a fascinating conversation about how sports and investing are emerging in large part because of the collision of culture and finance.We discussed:How soccer is such an underrated investment opportunity.How the USL has seen a rise in team valuations from the hundreds of thousands to some teams valued in the $60-70M range — with a big opportunity to increase revenues through various revenue streams that include media, player transfers, sports betting, stadium related revenue, real estate related revenue.How the intersection of sports and real estate factors into the investment thesis for sports teams.How the transition to OTT media can positively impact sports league and team revenue.How more more professional investors and funds are now becoming involved and investing into sports teams and what this means for the development of sports as an investable asset class.How women’s soccer is a sleeping giant and what the USL is doing to help make it an investable opportunity.How democratizing access to sports ownership through crowdfunding and DAOs — and the power of community — can play a role in the sports investment landscape in the future.In his current role, Justin oversees numerous departments that are critical to the league’s success, including expansion, stadium development, digital media, emerging technology, finance, and human resources.Justin combines a real estate background, having worked six years at a REIT, with his soccer playing and sports management experience as he navigates building a league that is expanding in leaps and bounds. He holds a JD from Cleveland Marshall College of Law and earned a dual degree in public policy and economics from Duke University, where he also served as a goalkeeper on the Blue Devils soccer team.Thanks Justin for coming on the Alt Goes Mainstream podcast to talk about how the beautiful game is continuing to grow thanks to the world of investing.

Today, we have a guest on Alt Goes Mainstream who lives at the intersection of culture and finance as sports is increasingly becoming an investable asset class.Angel City FC Co-Founder & President Julie Uhrman and I had a fascinating conversation about how sports and investing are merging together – and how that’s informed how she’s building Angel City FC.Julie and team have been innovative in the way that they’ve engaged fans, players, and investors. We discuss: How ACFC has used entertainment to have an impact.How athletes are building their own platforms on and off the field - and what that means for player, fans, and teams.How new types of investors — both professional funds and celebrities — are leveraging their platforms for impact to help sports teams build a differentiated brand and business.How ACFC is taking lessons learned from innovations in technology, community-building, and Web3 to engage fans and create new revenues for sports clubs.How mission and capital can co-exist together as sports becomes a compelling alternative investment.Julie is a serial entrepreneur and force of nature who is bringing her deep expertise in gaming, media, and entertainment to build our her most ambitious project yet – Angel City FC, the expansion professional women’s soccer team in her native Los Angeles.And build is what she and the team have done.In a mere two years, Julie and team have built one of the most recognizable and successful brands in women’s football — without yet having a team on the field.They’ve done an incredible job of creating purpose driven content and engaging fans across various social media channels.They’ve secured a top tier front of kit sponsor in DoorDash and have achieved record season ticket sales in the NWSL.They’ve built a true fan community to the point where ACFC has passed the "tattoo test" – some fans have gotten inked!And they’ve brought on a diverse, talented group of investors whose life and work aligns with Angel City’s mission as the club looks to make a positive impact in the community and on women’s soccer.It’s no surprise that Julie has been able to build up ACFC in such a short time.She was most recently the President of Media for PEI, where she oversaw the company’s media offerings across all verticals. Prior to PEI, she served as the EVP & GM of Over-The-Top Ventures for Lionsgate, building and managing the company’s multiple streaming franchises. She also founded and was CEO of OUYA, a pioneering Android-based game console for the living room which raised a record-breaking $8.6M in crowdfunded capital on Kickstarter and VC funding from Kleiner Perkins and Alibaba before selling to Razer in 2015.She’s deservedly been given a number of awards for her work, including being named to the 100 Most Creative People in Business by Fast Company and one of the most Creative 50 by Ad Age.Thanks Julie for coming on the AGM podcast to share the story of your pioneering work at Angel City FC. We look forward to watching ACFC continue to grow on and off the pitch.

“Our aim is to create the biggest entertainment brand in the world, starting with sports … we are building a cult brand around NFT collectibles and we are bringing usage value for them in the fantasy game and the physical world.” - Nicolas Julia, Sorare.Today on the Alt Goes Mainstream podcast we have a fascinating discussion about the intersection of culture and finance with Nicolas Julia, the Co-Founder & CEO of Sorare.Nicolas founded Sorare to build the next entertainment giant. His NFT platform, Sorare, is enabling people to own their game and live at the intersection of work and play – they can play fantasy soccer and trade digital collectibles – and, at times, earn money while doing so.We covered a number of topics, including:The merging of culture and finance.How Sorare is building a next generation entertainment brand across multiple sports and geographies.How NFTs are integral in on-ramping the next 100M-1B users to crypto.What it means for investors / users to own their in-game assets — and how it changes how they make decisions playing games and investing into NFTs.How Sorare is building the critical market infrastructure across the lifecycle of a trade for NFTs.How sports leagues view NFTs as a new revenue stream and fan engagement tool.The game within the game — who players are playing games within the game of football.How the beautiful game — soccer cards — and NFTs are a sleeping giant in the US.How women’s sports can benefit from the world of NFTs and how bringing on an Advisor like world-class tennis star Serena Williams can help achieve that.Nicolas has built Sorare into an astronomical success in a short period of time. He grew a team smaller than a starting 11 on a football pitch to hundreds of millions in sales and a record-breaking $680M Series B led by SoftBank in September 2021 that followed a $50M Series A led by Benchmark in January 2021 as NFTs boomed last year.Sorare was an integral part of the NFT market growth as they enabled people to play fantasy soccer and collect / trade NFTs of professional soccer players. They are building a critical piece of market infrastructure for the NFT and sports world by leveraging crypto rails to enable an incredible consumer experience revolving around sports and collectibles.Thanks Nicolas for coming on the Alt Goes Mainstream podcast. It was a pleasure to have you help us understand the future of entertainment, NFTs, and sports and how everyone can own their game.

“What I’ve come to realize is that investing literally shapes the world that we have. It is effectively at the highest of levels, allocating resources, whether financial or human capital, to things and teams that build the future that we all live in. Investing builds the world.” - Ian Lee, Syndicate.Today we discuss the topic of a revolutionary new construct – DAOs – and how it can change investing for the better.Today’s guest is Ian Lee, the Co-Founder of Syndicate.Ian combines a background in financial services with a prescient view on the future with what he's building at Syndicate.We discuss: How Syndicate is doing to investing what YouTube did to film and media.How Web3 enables community ownership where Web2 didn’t and how investing will become more community driven.How DAOs are a social financial technology coordinating social and financial capital seamlessly and natively on the internet.How DAOs are unlocking participation from all sorts of communities who historically haven’t had access to investing.Why Crypto Covens is one of his favorite NFT projects because it’s changing the face of investing. And how we are in the middle of a multi generational shift of decentralizing and democratizing - and how Syndicate’s Web3 Investment Clubs enable that to happen.Ian has been a serial founder, he's worked in the Office of the Global Chief Innovation Officer at Deloitte, he's run the Lab Network and Acceleration Fund at Citi Ventures and was Head of Bitcoin & Blockchain at Citi before co-founding IDEO's CoLab Venture fund, where he led their crypto efforts and made over 80 investments in the crypto space.Most recently, he's founded a ground-breaking company, Syndicate, which is a decentralized investing protocol and social network that is creating the infrastructure for DAOs to run efficiently and effectively. Syndicate is creating the infrastructure and mechanisms for much more efficient, digitally native human coordination.DAOs have similar properties as corporations, but they are significantly faster and cheaper to set up and run because code governs the decisions and actions taken.It's hard to put into a short paragraph how profound the creation of Syndicate could be for the formation and governance of organizations and Ian's background lends itself incredibly well to both understanding how things worked in a Web2 (and financial services) world and how they can work better in a Web3 world.Ian and I had a fascinating conversation about his desire to make investing more inclusive and impactful – and how DAO structures can enable that.Thanks Ian for coming on the Alt Goes Mainstream podcast. It was a pleasure to have you help us peer into the future of investing. 

Today on the Alt Goes Mainstream podcast we have Web3’s wizard with words. Jarrod Dicker, Partner at TCG, where he focuses on crypto investments that are enabling the consumerization of crypto.Jarrod is an expert at the intersection of crypto / NFTs and the media world. He was both an entrepreneur and investor in the media world prior to joining TCG.We had a fascinating discussion about the transition to the Web3 world.We covered:Whether or not everyone is now an investor and everything is now investable.How social credentialism and the idea of time as an investment – is key to Web3.We ended the podcast with some of Jarrod’s famed Web2 // Web3 tweets because he truly is a wizard with words and is a translator for the world of Web3.There are few people in the crypto space whose content I enjoy reading than Jarrod's. His Tweets and writing (on Mirror.xyz, where he's an investor) are incredibly prescient and speaks to his knowledge of the crypto space.He joined TCG, the famed consumer investor (Twitter, Barstool, Crunchyroll, Hodinkee, Headspace, Dapper Labs), to invest into companies and protocols that create the onramps for consumers to the cryptoeconomy.They've invested in the likes of Zed Run and Dapper and Jarrod's thought leadership and experience in the media and content worlds should help them continue to access the best.Prior to TCG Crypto, he was the CEO of Po.et, a decentralized media tech company, where he was a pioneer in bringing blockchain to the media and advertising space. He formerly led innovation at The Washington Post, where he was responsible for building out their research, experimentation, and development team and running all of their innovation / commercialization efforts as VP of Commercial.He also held similar roles at RebelMouse, Time, and HuffPo. Jarrod is one of the most thoughtful thinkers on how Web3 will change content, content creation, and creators relationships with their community.I’m excited to see how he builds out TCG and the types of investments they make into the infrastructure building out Web3 so that crypto truly goes mainstream.Thanks Jarrod for coming on the Alt Goes Mainstream podcast. 

Today, we have a unique episode on Alt Goes Mainstream. We have our first episode with a founder and their lead investor from their Series B. We have the founder of leading alts fund investment platform, Moonfare, and their Series B lead investor, Fidelity International Strategic Ventures, on the podcast to talk about why both of them believe in the future of retail distribution in alts and the anatomy of their deal.Steffen Pauls, the founder of Moonfare, has had an illustrious career in the private equity world. Prior to founding Moonfare in 2016, Steffen was a MD at KKR where he was responsible for the firm’s coverage of the German market. Prior to joining KKR, he was the CEO of firstfive AG. He also served on the Advisory Board of Versatel, Serbia Broadband, and Hertha BSC.Alokik Advani, who runs Fidelity International Strategic Ventures, is an expert in the financial market structure. He’s been right in the middle of investing in many of the core technology solutions that have powered market structure evolutions across equities, fixed income, commodities, and now alternative assets. At Fidelity, Alokik invests into category defining FinTech companies. They’ve made a number of FinTech investments that have helped shape the alts space, including DriveWealth, Moonfare, Capdesk, PrimaryBid, and others. Prior to Fidelity, Alokik was a Managing Director at Goldman Sachs, where he invested out of the Principal Strategic Investments team into many companies that have shaped market structure evolutions across asset classes.It was fascinating to have the perspective from both founder and investor on the evolution of the world of alts. We discussed how investor demand has evolved from institutional investor to the retail and private wealth communities. Steffen and Alokik provided fascinating views on how the alts market structure has changed and how Moonfare and Fidelity are helping to shape the market.Thanks Steffen and Alokik for coming on the Alt Goes Mainstream podcast.

Today we have a guest who is an expert from both the traditional financial services world and the crypto world, which has equipped him with the ability to bridge the two worlds and build onramps into the crypteconomy.Tom Jessop, who heads Fidelity Digital Assets, is an expert in market structure, capital markets, and crypto.There are few who have seen as much as him when it comes to the evolution of market structure.He’s an OG FinTech investor, investing into FinTech before it even had that moniker.He has a knack for finding trends before they are big. He did it with FinTech – and more recently he’s been on the forefront of another major trend: crypto.He’s the President of Fidelity Digital Assets, where he’s responsible for helping one of the world’s largest asset managers build out a full-service enterprise-grade platform for digital assets.Fidelity has long been a pioneer amongst financial institutions in crypto. They started R&D efforts on crypto in 2014, started mining bitcoin in 2015, and tested their first wallet and storage solution with employees in 2016.With over $11 trillion in client assets under administration and over 2.4 million trades processed per day, Fidelity’s participation in the cryptoeconomy is critical to onramp large financial institutions and wealth managers into the space. Tom leads a team that is in large part responsible for making this happen.He was previously the Head of Corporate Business Development at Fidelity, where he was responsible for identifying and executing strategic opportunities.Tom joined Fidelity from Chain, a leading provider of enterprise blockchain solutions to global financial institutions.Tom previously had an illustrious career at Goldman Sachs, which culminated with a role as Global Head of Technology Business Development, where he was responsible for investing in and partnering with early-stage tech companies across blockchain, AI, and cybersecurity. Tom was also a founding member and senior leader at Goldman’s Principal Strategic Investments team, investing in the likes of Circle Financial, Kensho, Digital Reasoning, and DataFox.Tom and I had a fascinating conversation about how we can take experiences from the evolution in traditional market structure and apply those learnings to crypto market structure and DeFi.Tom is such a smart, thoughtful, savvy investor and company builder. And he’s an even better person who treats everyone incredibly well.Thanks Tom for coming on the Alt Goes Mainstream podcast.

Today we have a guest who is transforming the private debt markets.Nelson Chu is the Founder & CEO of Percent (formerly known as Cadence), a leading digital securitization and investment platform for private credit.Nelson has built a marketplace to revolutionize private credit by leveraging technology and data to enable efficient price discovery and funding for originators so they can lower their cost of capital. The business has started to take off in the past year, with Percent recently completing their largest securitization ever - $144 million for FAT Brands – and raising a $12.5M Series A led by White Star and B Capital. To date, Percent has issued over $400 million in private credit transactions.Nelson has the Wall Street background to understand the private credit world and the startup background to understand how to build companies.Prior to founding Percent, he founded Lumenary, a strategy consulting firm that specialized in helping companies build products and raise capital for growth. He worked at BlackRock in their Fixed Income Portfolio Management’s Strategy Group and in the Global Wealth and Investment Management Division at Bank of America.Nelson is also an active startup advisor and angel investor, investing into companies like BlockFi, Cadre, Care/of, Clover Health, dv01, Tala, and Uala. Nelson and I had a fascinating conversation about the future of debt capital markets and how Percent is changing the game for originators and investors as they leverage technology and data to bring transparency and speed to the market.

Today we have a founder who is creating a modern insurance provider for the collectibles industry that was made for collectors, by collectors.Calvin Bradley is the Founder of WAX, a digital insurance company for collectors to protect the value of their collections by making collecting safer, easier, and more community-oriented.Calvin and I had a fascinating conversation about how the modern world of collectibles requires a modern, digital insurance solution, how NFTs factors into the world of collectibles, and what the future looks like for WAX.Insurance is a major challenge in the collectibles space. It is often hard to properly appraise valuable items on a real-time basis as there has yet to be real-time data in many collectibles markets. WAX is building a modern insurance provider, for collectors, by collectors. Founded by a team that has deep experience owning collectibles, they have created a mobile app to enable users to take pictures of their collectibles and have them protected. And, as more collectibles purchases move online, WAX is working with retailers point of sale systems to offer insurance at time of purchase.Calvin has quite a fascinating background to launch WAX. Calvin was a former Olympic level Modern Pentathlete from South Africa before teaming up with David Nichols, the former Global President of K-Swiss to launch WAX. Calvin also co-founded Blockchain for Change in 2016.They have since launched a product that is built for the digital age of insurance and for the collectibles world.Thanks Calvin for coming on the AGM podcast. We hope you enjoy the episode.

Today on the Alt Goes Mainstream podcast we have a guest who may be young in age, but has already done more and lived through more than many people twice his age.Anthony Zhang recently turned 26 but has already successfully built and sold two companies, secured funding from Mark Cuban, and received a Thiel Fellowship grant before starting Vinovest, his third company, which is making it easier to access fine wine as an investment product.He also has an admirable and awe-inspiring personal story, working hard to come back from a devastating accident that left him paralyzed from the neck down. He was in the middle of running his second company, EnvoyNow, when this accident happened and, despite the tremendous adversity he faced, was able to continue to build the business and achieve a successful sale.Anthony recently founded Vinovest, a platform that has been described as the Robinhood of wine investing. He’s built an investment platform that is unlocking wine investing to the masses. We had a fascinating conversation. We talked about: Anthony’s background as an entrepreneur.Some of the lessons learned from starting 3 companies by the ripe old age of 26.How fine wine can be a compelling investment during periods of volatility.How to identify an investment-grade wineSome of his favorite wines (that he drinks and invests into!).Wine as an investment has been largely inaccessible to the individual investor due to high account minimums, a lack of wine expertise, concerns about fraud, and the excessive costs associated with storing and insuring wine. Vinovest is abstracting away many of these issues with their automated investment platform that helps investors invest into fine wine as an asset class.Thanks Anthony for coming on the AGM podcast. We hope you enjoy this episode.

Today on the Alt Goes Mainstream podcast we have one of the OGs of the crowdfunding space on to talk about how he’s built platforms that have evolved in tandem with the alts ecosystem.Slava Rubin is the founder of both Indiegogo, one of the first crowdfunding platforms, and Vincent, a platform that is making discovery and alternative investments easier for investors. He is also the founder of humbition, an early-stage investment firm.We had a fascinating conversation about the evolution of the alts space – from the early days of equity crowdfunding to now wading through all the different options of investment platforms in the alts space today. We talk about:The evolution of the alts space.The alts portfolio of the future.The need for an aggregator – and how once other industries, like travel, had an aggregator, the space took off.Slava founded Indiegogo in 2006. He grew Indiegogo from an idea to over 500,000 campaigns and more than $1 billion distributed around the world. While at Indiegogo, Slava represented the crowdfunding industry at the White House during the signing of the JOBS Act and helped navigate bringing equity crowdfunding to the American public.Slava also pioneered security tokens in the US. He created a way to sell fractionalized ownership of the St. Regis hotel in Aspen, Colorado using blockchain technology.Slava’s latest work in the alts space is to bring transparency, discovery, and diligence to investors. He’s founded Vincent, which he’s likened to Kayak for alternatives, to enable investors to easily search, discover, and invest into all sorts of alternative assets.Thanks Slava for coming on the Alt Goes Mainstream podcast. We hope you enjoy.

Today we have a special episode of Alt Goes Mainstream – the co-founders of Rally on to discuss how people can now invest into defining cultural moments and assets that are aligned with their passions.Chris Bruno and Rob Petrozzo grew up together – and they have combined their respective talents to form what has become one of the symbols for the financialization of all sorts of assets.Rally, which started as a platform to enable investors to invest into shares of classic cars that would be unattainable to many investors, has become a multi-asset investment platform that allows individual investors to invest into all sorts of exotic, rare assets at low minimums.Chris, Rob, and I had a fascinating conversation about how Rally built and evolved their concept from classic cars to all sorts of rare, grail assets. We discuss:How they got into collectibles themselves.How they’ve waded through complex regulatory structures to figure out how to offer these assets to the masses.How they grew up together and have now built a company that aligns with their passions.And how on earth they were able to IPO a triceratops skull and IPO a rookie card of the United States (hint: the Declaration of Independence).Chris, Rob, and team have created a leading fractional investing platform for the alternatives space. They recently raised a $30 million round led by Accel, who invested in GOAT, to help propel their marketplace further.Rally has already achieved an active, engaged, and passionate userbase of over 200,000 investors who have invested in everything from Pele rookie cards to classic cars to dinosaur heads to, soon, the Declaration of Independence, or a rookie card of the United States of America as Rally investor and Upfront Ventures Partner Greg Bettinelli has called it.Chris, the Co-Founder and President, comes from the VC and startup worlds. He was an Associate at Village Ventures before co-founding two companies, Health Guru Media and Spotter. He’s a classic car enthusiast, which ignited his interest in unlocking the asset class to individual investors.Rob, the Co-Founder and Chief Product Officer, has been the creative inspiration behind Rally.He has brought his background as the in-house lead designer and creative consultant for Sony BMG, where he worked on the likes of Kanye West’s GOOD music imprint, and as the creative director for a few startups to bring Rally’s brand to life in person and in the digital world. Rally has also done some really interesting things with their brand, opening up a showroom to their investors, creating and offering stock certificates to their investors, and creating exclusive merch drops (including the limited edition Michael Jordan rookie card sweatshirt that I wore for today’s podcast). Thanks Chris and Rob for coming on the AGM podcast. We hope you enjoy today’s episode.

Today, we have an expert in lending and capital markets on the Alt Goes Mainstream podcast to discuss how his company, Pipe, is building a new asset class.Michal Cieplinski is the Chief Business Officer for Pipe, a fast growing fintech company. Pipe has seen a rapid rise over the past year. They are one of the fastest fintech companies to reach a $2 billion valuation – and it’s in large part because investors see the potential to build a platform that unlocks recurring revenue as an investable asset class for the world’s largest institutional investors.Michal deeply understands the inner workings of credit and lending on both the borrower and lender side from his experiences helping to build Fundbox, LendingClub, and now Pipe.Pipe was born from the idea that entrepreneurs and companies should be able to grow their businesses on their terms – without taking debt or dilution. This was a fascinating discussion with someone who has seen the evolution of a number of lending platforms. Michal and I discussed:Lessons learned from building marketplace fintech businesses.How Pipe is empowering founders to adopt a trader mentality by unlocking recurring revenue as an asset class. How Pipe is creating an efficient way for companies to turn their predictable revenue streams into a way to access capital without sacrificing dilution.How Pipe is building out both the buy side and sell side of their marketplace.How Pipe handles churn on SaaS contracts of their sell side borrowers.How he thinks about the evolution of Pipe as a platform in terms of the types of assets you would "pipe" and how any sort of recurring revenue stream - like ISPs, streaming services, even PE / VC fund management fees could be "piped."Thanks Michal for coming on the AGM podcast. We hope you enjoy.

Today, we have our first LatAm guest on the AGM podcast. And it was a special one.Bitso, LatAm’s leading crypto exchange, is fresh off of raising a $250M round led by Tiger Global months after raising a $62M round led by QED and Kaszek - and has been minted as one of LatAm’s newest unicorns.We had Bitso’s co-founder and CEO Daniel Vogel on to talk about what it has been like to build a leading FinTech company in the region and provide access to investments and financial services.This was such a fun conversation. We could have gone on for hours. Daniel is such a compelling and fascinating storyteller. We discussed a number of things including:How Daniel has dedicated his life to unlocking monetary freedom for people through crypto.How a talk with his friend, a janitor at his company in Silicon Valley, opened his eyes to the need for real applications of crypto to help people send money cross-border.The origins of Bitso and how Bitso was a pioneer of an online brokerage account in Mexico.How Bitso has become the on-ramp for financial services for many consumers across LatAm.The meaning behind Bitso’s slogan #makecryptouseful.The power of stablecoins and how it’s enabling people in countries with inflation and currency fluctuations to save money.How Bitso balances being a centralized company in a decentralized world.How religion and community play a unique role in crypto.Daniel is an early crypto pioneer and a thought leader in the space. He became intrigued by the idea of bitcoin well before many other people had heard of it and really thought of crypto as a way to unlock monetary freedom and access to financial services for the underserved.After founding the Bitcoin Club at Harvard in 2013 while he was doing his MBA, Daniel founded Bitso with co-founders Pablo Gonzalez and Ben Peters soon after he left Harvard Square. In Bitso, Daniel and his co-founders Pablo and Ben have created the on-ramp for financial services to many consumers in Mexico and across LatAm.As Daniel said in a recent TechCrunch interview, the growth of the crypto ecosystem in LatAm has been nothing short of remarkable. It took Bitso six years to get their first 1 million clients. And over the course of 2020, Bitso has surpassed the 2 million client mark. They have also doubled their assets on the platform. And their transaction volume during the first quarter of 2021 exceeded transaction volume for all of 2020.It is clear that Daniel has a passion for building out the cryptoeconomy and for making a difference in people’s lives, so much so that Bitso has made their tagline #makecryptouseful.Thanks Daniel for coming on the AGM podcast. We hope you enjoy this episode.

Today on the Alt Goes Mainstream podcast we have a domain expert in the world of VC – and someone who has been a visionary when it has come to one of the biggest movements in VC over the past 8 years: emerging managers.Samir Kaji, the Founder & CEO of Allocate, is a well-respected industry leader in the VC world. He has spent over 20 years partnering with VCs at First Republic Bank and Silicon Valley Bank, where he led the Venture Capital and Private Equity banking efforts. At First Republic, he built out the infrastructure and client base that served the VC and PE community. He’s evaluated over 800 VC fund managers and worked with thousands of LPs at First Republic.Samir and I had a fascinating conversation about the evolution of venture capital and what's to come for the industry. He’s seen a lot in his career in Silicon Valley that has spanned multiple market cycles. He shared his perspective on:The challenges that GPs and LPs face during fundraising.Why the structural inefficiencies of allocating to funds - and perceived risks with emerging managers - led so many LPs to miss out on the Fund I’s of now legendary emerging managers Lowercase Capital, K9, and Initialized Capital.The case for emerging managers in a venture portfolio and why emerging managers are the future of venture capital.The trend of non-institutional capital coming into the venture world.How LPs will be able to better discover and allocate to fund managers in the future.In his time in Silicon Valley, he’s become an unquestioned thought leader in the world of VC, particularly in the emerging manager space. He has consistently written seminal thought pieces and instructional guides on the topic – and now talks about the space with his podcast, Venture Unlocked.His experiences working with many of the top VC funds and LPs globally has culminated in a journey that he’s now starting by founding Allocate.He has observed a number of inefficiencies with emerging managers when it comes to firm building and capital raising. He’s seen many emerging managers struggle with fundraising due to the difficulties finding the right LPs. He’s seen the challenges that LPs have with being able to locate and allocate to new emerging managers, many of whom have gone on to outperform benchmarks and become the next generation of brand name firms.He believes that the ecosystem is ready for a decentralized, democratized, and diverse ecosystem of fund managers. And Allocate is the connective tissue that will solve these challenges for both GPs and LPs alike. Thanks Samir for coming on the Alt Goes Mainstream podcast to share your wisdom about the world of venture. 

Today we have a guest who is bringing farmland investing to the masses. After working for one of Canada’s largest pension plans, Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan, and running Operations and as the CFO at a platform for buying and selling produce, Artem Milinchuk founded FarmTogether to bring an asset that has largely been the domain of institutional investors to individuals. Artem and I had a fascinating conversation. We discussed: How farmland deserves a place in all investors’ portfolios – in large part due to its features as a hedge against inflation and a passive income generating investment.How to underwrite a farmland asset.How he one day envisions the ability to invest into farmland embedded directly into one’s brokerage account.He also made a great case for how we can eat our way into supporting farmland investments, like hazelnut farms, which happen to be some of the types of farms that Artem likes to invest into.FarmTogether is a technology-enabled farmland investment platform that provides investors with direct access to US farmland as an asset class. They have developed an end-to-end investment platform that allows investors to review carefully vetted farmland investments and invest in properties.Artem has over 10 years of finance experience in food, agriculture, and farmland. Prior to founding FarmTogether, Artem was the first employee and CFO / VP of Operations at Full Harvest Technologies, a post-Series A b2b platform for buying and selling produce.In addition to working at Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan, he also worked at Sprott Resource Holdings, E&Y, and PwC. Thanks Artem for coming on the Alt Goes Mainstream podcast. I hope you enjoy the conversation with Artem.

Today we have one of the pioneers of the European tech ecosystem on to discuss how the European early-stage VC landscape has changed since its early days – and how their fund, Passion Capital, has unlocked access to investors with their latest fundraise.Eileen Burbidge, a Founding Partner of Passion Capital, and I had a fascinating conversation about all things VC, opening up access to the asset class to individual investors, what it means for the future of venture capital, and Eileen’s love of Arsenal and why she’s not a fan of the European Super League.Eileen has built a reputation as the go-to VC for seed stage companies in the UK and Europe – and for good reason.Her aptly named fund, Passion Capital, has built a name for itself as one of the top early-stage funds in the UK because of her passion for rolling up her sleeves, much like she did in her days as an operator at Skype, Apple, Yahoo!, and Sun Microsystems.I won’t forget when we met last year at her office – she had just stepped out of non-stop meetings with one of her growth-stage companies, where she was helping them figure out team and talent questions.Not every seed stage VC has the ability to stay involved as their companies grow nor does this type of work, but that’s what separates Passion from the pack.Eileen is just as much at home in her office, which doubles as a co-working space for Passion portfolio companies, as she is in 10 Downing Street, where she has been named the UK Treasury’s Special Envoy for FinTech, has been appointed by the Chancellor as the Chair of Tech Nation, and was awarded an MBE in the 2015 Queen’s Birthday Honors for her services to businesses.So maybe it’s no surprise why she’s been described as “The Queen of British VCs” by Fortune Magazine.She’s certainly backed many of the British startup royalty at early-stage, being a Seed investor in Monzo Bank, where she still serves on the board, Tide Bank, GoCardless, Digital Shadows, Marshmallow, Butternut Box, and a number of others.Eileen has also had an illustrious career as an operator, working for Apple, Yahoo, and Sun Microsystems in the early days of the internet before moving to London in 2004 to become one of Skype’s earliest employees and Head of Product. She then founded Passion in 2011 as one of the first Seed funds in London, serving a critical market need for the entrepreneurial ecosystem in London. She’s now trailblazing once again by being one of the first funds to open up their LP base to the crowd, where they have partnered with Seedrs to allow individuals to invest into Passion’s latest fund.She’s also an independent non-executive board director at Dixons Carphone, a 10B pound revenue electrical and telecoms retailer and on the Transformation & Innovation Advisory Board at UniCredit.Thanks Eileen for being a pioneer in the European VC ecosystem and bringing innovative structures in venture capital to LPs.I hope you enjoy.

Today we have a special guest who is one of the foremost leaders in the alternatives industry.Bill Kelly is the CEO of the Chartered Alternative Investment Analyst Association (CAIA), the leading global educational and professional credentialing body dedicated to delivering greater knowledge and alignment for investors in the alternative investments space.Bill and I had a fascinating conversation. His thoughtful and eloquent views on the evolution of the alternatives space led us to talk about:How the Retirement Promise has impacted consumers and investors and what it means for alternative investments.The importance of being a fiduciary.How CAIA consistently evolves their educational program to cover emerging trends like crypto and DeFi.How partnerships with leading investment platforms in the alts space like iCapital help to move the industry forward.Bill brings an operator’s perspective to CAIA. Prior to joining CAIA in 2014, Bill was the CEO of Boston Partners and one of seven founding partners of the predecessor firm, Boston Partners Asset Management, which was sold to $215 billion global asset manager Robeco in 2002. He then led Robeco’s US operations as CEO.Bill’s illustrious career in institutional asset management spans over 30 years, where he’s been in CEO, COO, and CFO roles across a number of firms. He is also currently the Chairman and Lead Independent Director for the Boston Partners Trust Company, which has over $2 billion in AUM. Bill has been an independent board member at Salient Partners, a $16 billion investment advisory firm, and an Independent Trustee at Bank of America’s $50 billion mutual fund complex business. He’s also an Advisory Board Member of the Certified Investment Fund Director Institute, which strives to bring the highest levels of professionalism and governance to independent fund directors around the world.Bill is a lifelong learner and a tireless advocate for shareholder protection and investor education, which led him to his current role at CAIA, which he has helped grow the membership to over 11,000 members and 31 chapters across 95 countries.CAIA serves a critical role in the alternative investments industry – they educate industry stakeholders and fiduciaries on the most current knowledge and best practices across the evolving landscape of alts. They have a sophisticated credentialing and thought leadership program that equips everyone from fund managers to distributors of alternative investment products to individuals who want to learn about alts with the tools they need to understand the industry as CAIA looks to consistently raise the standards across the industry.Thanks Bill for sharing such important and interesting thoughts on the alts space and for providing critical education to the space through CAIA.I hope you enjoy.

Today, we have a special guest who is changing the mechanics of private company stock ownership and investing for the better for employees, companies, and investors alike.Kelly Rodriques is the CEO of Forge, the leading private company stock exchange and investment platform.On today’s podcast, Kelly and I discuss:How private markets are the new public markets.How companies like Forge are unlocking a huge wealth management opportunity hidden in plain sight.How Forge is creating new accredited investors directly on their platform thanks to secondary market liquidity - and what that means for the alts space.How the private markets can innovate with structured products like index funds that provide diversified exposure to blue-chip private company stocks. How and why strategics like Deutsche Borse and BNP Paribas see Forge as critical to the private markets ecosystem.Kelly has helped build out the private market investment ecosystem at scale for Forge, bringing together a trading business, a private markets exchange with data, and managed liquidity solutions for late-stage private companies. Kelly and Forge also acquired and operate IRA Services, a self-directed IRA custodian with over $13 billion in assets across 1.5 million accounts.Forge has transacted on over $10 billion in deal volume and counts many of the top private companies as customers. They’ve also received meaningful investment from strategic investors like Deutsche Borse, BNP Paribas, TD Ameritrade, and Munich Re.Kelly has a great background to be building Forge. He combines a background as a successful serial entrepreneur with multiple exits, the deep marketing acumen, and the expertise from leading one of the largest self-directed IRA businesses, Pensco, to a successful sale. Prior to joining Forge as CEO, Kelly was the CEO of Pensco, one of the nation’s leading alternative asset custodians, which had over $16 billion of assets under custody and was sold to Opus Bank for $104 million in 2017. Kelly was also a founding investor of mFoundry, the leading provider of mobile banking services, which was acquired by FIS in 2013. He also built Totality, which he sold to Verizon in 2006, and has run an early-stage FinTech VC fund, Operative Capital, that has made 26 early-stage FinTech investments.Thank you Kelly for providing such an insightful and fascinating look into the transformation happening in the private company stock market space. Your passion for innovating in private markets is palpable and such a welcome addition to the industry.I hope you enjoy.

We had a special live episode of Alt Goes Mainstream this past Wednesday on $COIN Day to celebrate a landmark moment in the crypto industry that has, in many respects, signified the mainstreaming of crypto - the Coinbase IPO.Adam Draper, the Co-Founder & MD at Boost VC, was one of the first investors in Coinbase’s Seed round in 2012. He joined the Alt Goes Mainstream podcast to discuss what he saw in Brian Armstrong, Coinbase’s Co-Founder, when he decided to invest in their Seed round, what excites him about the future of crypto, and why he looks for founders who are rational people doing very irrational things.Adam is also learning how to play the guitar, so we were lucky enough to hear the exclusive release of a special new song that he created just for this podcast. Adam’s attempt to play the guitar and sing was quite admirable, but I think I can safely say that he should stick to investing as his career choice.Adam is one of the most thoughtful, energetic, and vibrant people you’ll meet. This episode was signature Adam - unfiltered and unedited - which is much of what makes him so unique, interesting, and able to “see the ball” (as Adam calls it) with generational founders and ideas. It was a lot of fun to talk about Coinbase, crypto, and life with Adam on such a special day for him and the crypto industry.If you want to see the live video (you won’t want to miss seeing Adam play guitar!) of the podcast, you can view it here on this Twitter link or here on this YouTube link.I hope you enjoy.

Today on the Alt Goes Mainstream podcast we have Matt Hougan, the Chief Investment Officer of Bitwise Asset Management and one of the leaders in the crypto industry. On today's podcast, we talk about:* Matt's views on crypto.* How Bitwise is bringing crypto to the wealth advisory community.* How crypto's evolution is similar to that of the ETF market.* How community has played such a big role in making crypto go mainstream.Matt has had an illustrious career at the forefront of major industry shifts in financial services. He's been a pioneer in the creation of not just one, but two major asset classes and financial products. First ETFs, and more recently, crypto. Matt is the CIO of Bitwise Asset Management, one of the leading crypto-asset investment platforms with over $1 billion of AUM. Under Matt's leadership, Bitwise has pioneered the first crypto index fund and is the leading provider of rules-based exposure to the crypto space.Matt and his team have brought institutional quality frameworks and learnings from the development of other industries within financial services, like ETFs, to bear as they help institutionalize crypto and work with many RIAs, family offices, and institutional investors. Matt led the development of the index that underlies the Bitwise 10 Crypto Index Fund.He's also been an educator and evangelist for the crypto space to more traditional investors and he couldn't have a better background to do this. He's able to share stories about how the ETF space evolved into an institutional investment product with over $4 trillion flowing into the asset class. He was the CEO of ETF.com, initially starting as a freelance writer, and working his way up to CEO. As CEO, he helped build ETF.com into the information provider for the industry and helped guide the sale of ETF.com in three separate, highly successful transactions. He also helped create the world's first ETF ratings and analytics service which now powers FactSet's ETF ratings.He also co-authored the CFA Institute's monograph on ETFs and appeared three times as a member of the Barron's ETF Round Table. In 2016, ETF.com was acquired by Informa, where Matt joined their team to extend Insight ETF's position as the largest ETF conference in the world. He's been a pioneer in both the ETF and crypto worlds and sees the exciting opportunity in all different alt asset classes.It's always fun to talk with Matt. He's such a thoughtful and intellectual guy who can live in both worlds of traditional finance and crypto.I hope you enjoy.

Today, we have a special guest from an industry leader in the wealth management space. Ed Swenson is one of the most successful entrepreneurs in the wealth management space. Ed is the Co-Founder and COO of Dynasty Financial Partners, a leading RIA technology services platform.Ed and I had a really interesting discussion about the future of the wealth management industry – and how alts will play a role in the evolution of the space. We discussed:How and why the wealth management industry is changing.How Dynasty is a champion of entrepreneurs in the wealth management space.The democratization of access and advice in wealth management.How and why wealth managers should have alternative investments in their portfolio.How VCs will soon realize that the RIA space will be a great source of LP capital for them.How advisors allocating to “alt alts” (like crypto, sports cards, collectibles, art) should be “on the table.”Ed co-founded and is the COO Dynasty Financial Partners, a leading RIA technology services platform that enables wealth advisors to become entrepreneurs and run their own businesses using Dynasty’s platform and infrastructure across technology, operations, diligence, access to investments, and M&A capabilities.Ed and his Co-Founder Shirl have grown Dynasty to over $50 billion in aggregate AUM across almost 50 advisor teams. Dynasty is a leader in the fast-growing RIA space. They uniquely understand the needs of advisor teams who break away from wirehouses like UBS and Merrill Lynch and they’ve built out a tech stack and platform that is state of the art. Ed spearheads their technology approach by partnering with best-in-class fintech companies in various aspects of wealth management to build a tech platform that advisors love.Ed also recently co-founded the Envestnet Advisor Services Exchange by Dynasty, a platform that enables Envestnet clients to access the value-added services that Dynasty offers. Ed comes from a wealth management background, so he’s in a unique position to understand the needs of independent advisors. Prior to Dynasty, he led the distribution network communications for Smith Barney’s Multiple Discipline Accounts division and was a Portfolio Manager for the Legg Mason Partners Large Cap Growth Fund. I hope you enjoy.

Today, we have a guest who's democratizing access to private investing. Ken Nguyen is the co-founder and CEO of Republic, a multi-asset investment platform for private markets. Ken is a pioneer in the private markets investing world and a serial operator who knows how to build businesses. He's helped grow Republic to hundreds of millions of dollars in gross transaction volume over the past three years after Republic spun out of AngelList. After Ken was an instrumental part of building the investment and regulatory infrastructure at AngelList, as their General Counsel, Ken founded Republic to create a leading equity crowdfunding platform for both nonaccredited and accredited investors. While their incredible progress on the retail crowdfunding side is remarkable, Republic's platform and vision is so much more than simply a retail crowdfunding platform. They also have an accredited investor platform and they enable investors to invest into everything from real estate to e-sports and gaming financing to small businesses. Republic has done the hard things first. They built the investment infrastructure for private markets. And they combine that with a Robinhood-like investing experience for private markets, for both retail and high net worth investors alike. They've also been innovative in how they engage consumers by creating a Republic Note, a security token that has created network effects on their platform for users.It's been really fun to watch this team execute at a blistering pace from the time that they started out with the idea of enabling investors to invest in startups at twenty dollar minimums, to building out a comprehensive private markets investment platform. Ken has been instrumental in that success with his infectious energy tireless work ethic and drive to create democratized access to investing for people around the world.This was such a fascinating conversation. We talked about Ken’s drive for starting an investment platform that could enable everyone to participate in wealth creation in private markets, how investing and owning equity is part of the American Dream, how Republic has unlocked access to private markets for all investors, “Lean back vs lean forward” framework applied to investing (h/t Rishi Garg of Mayfield Fund for the “lean back vs lean forward” framework), and how community is such a big driver of Republic’s growth and success as a business.I hope you enjoy.TranscriptNote: This Transcript was created by an AI software package. It is not an exact translation of every word in the podcast.Michael: [00:02:30] Ken, welcome to the Alt Goes Mainstream podcast. Ken: Michael, thank you so much for having me. It's such a pleasure to be here. Michael: Oh, it's great to see you. I love that background of New York. Ken: I am in New York. So, art mimics real life or the other way around. THE FOUNDERS STORYMichael: [00:02:46] Well, you've had a busy year, so congrats on everything. But before getting into Republic and all the things that you're doing, I'd love to hear your story. I mean, you've had such an incredible story of how you've gotten to Republic. So what is that story? Ken: [00:03:01] Yeah. Thank you, Michael. I definitely have a bit of an unusual founder story.My family immigrated from Vietnam to the Bay Area in California. And so growing up in the late nineties, early 2000’s, you hear these stories of companies going IPO and tech and Google and Facebook. But just because you were smack in the middle of Silicon Valley, it doesn't mean that I or my family had anything to do with it.We definitely weren't accredited, but that fascination early on, I think, ended up, staying with me. I ended up going to law school. Started out as a litigation attorney in New York and went into finance. And along the way, I think the story, the headline news that caught my attention the most was always tech companies. You know, you hear more and more of Facebook and then Airbnb. I had the opportunity to go back to the Bay Area and academia. I spent two years as a Teaching Fellow at Stanford and studying corporate governance. But Stanford happens to be also a tech hub. And so more and more, the different stages in my life just inserted me more and closer into the tech ecosystem and then I had an opportunity to join AngelList when they first launched their first syndication product. So I joined. I think the first non-engineer hired as the General Counsel back in 2013, 2014. Part of that work led to a change in the law, which is regulation crowdfunding in 2016. And I'm sure we're going to go into it. But in short, between the Great Depression in the 1930s, all the way to 2016, you had to be a millionaire to invest privately. In 2016, all of that changed. It's like opening up the flood gates. And that's when the team and I set out to found and launch Republic. DEMOCRATIZING ACCESS TO INVESTINGMichael: [00:05:04] That's fascinating. And it seems like you really have a variety of experiences. Everything from the kind of legal and regulatory side to working in startups, to working in private companies. Was there really a specific moment in your life that has driven you to make it your mission to democratize access to investing? Ken: [00:05:25] I think there were three moments. Thinking back, probably the first moment was when my oldest brother who was 15 years older than I am and was already very established by the time I graduated college and he was an accredited investor – the first one in the family to be accredited.And he was like, Hey Ken, do you know how I can invest in this company called Facebook. And I was probably one of the earlier users, one of the earliest users of Facebook. And I'm like, great question. I'm an Associate at a law firm and I have no idea how you can do that. I asked around - no one knew how. Right in the middle of New York City, every law firm partner is a multi-millionaire and they're like, yeah, this is Silicon Valley stuff.So I think that piqued my curiosity, but also I had a desire to be like, Hey, I want to be in. I use this product. I really like it. And wanting me as a stakeholder to be a shareholder. So, I would say that that was the first moment.The second one was when, after two years of spending my time at AngelList, I realized that the accredited only model could only go so far. AngelList did open up the venture ecosystem to a lot more people, but you still have to be in the know, have to be accredited. And, I think that moment when AngelList shifted their attention to focus more on upstream institutional family offices, that's when I was like, wait, there is this law that's going to be effective very soon. And this is exactly what I, as a teenager growing up in Silicon Valley, wish that it was the case that I could get in. So, I think those two moments, rather than three in combination, probably culminated in the idea and the passion for retail investing. Michael: [00:07:31] Well, you're bringing up a really interesting point, right. And it's been during a time where value creation in private markets has far outpaced value creation in public markets. And yet, so many people really up until the...