How VCX Put Anthropic & OpenAI Into Public Markets

[00:00] I have been around venture and tech for 20 plus years. I don't believe the story that venture people somehow invest in Facebook and they're the genius. No, the person who created the business is the genius. If I invested in Amazon or Meta today, no one would think I'm a genius. But mostly the person who built the business, 99%, is the business builder. Maybe 100%. Well, the fund went public at about a $700 million valuation. We had about 100,000 investors in the fund when it went public. So we were very broadly held. [00:30] public 100,000 investors. Last time I checked, it was trading at $6.5 billion. It's up like nine and a half times since we went public three days ago. The weighted average growth rate of public tech companies last year was 25% a year. The weighted average growth rate for our portfolio for VCX was 193%. That's crazy. 10 years from now, every single person in America will have 5% of their portfolio in public capital. It'll be totally normal. It'll be like an ETF. It'll be just this thing that's standard. The public markets will be a huge source of funding for [01:00] companies. [01:02] *outro music* [01:12] Ben, welcome to sorcery. [01:14] Thanks for having me. Well, thanks for joining the Sorcery Club. You're now one of the names behind Sorcery and backing us. So thank you so much. [01:23] Today we're going to talk about VCX. [01:25] the latest of Fundrise's [01:28] financial innovations. I want to get into the origin story, but also like congratulations, you just recently listed and it's going phenomenally well. So we'll go through all that, the growth, we'll talk about the VC market, we'll talk about the infrastructure, how things have changed, what might happen in the future, the companies that you have access to, and everything else. Maybe some hot takes. But to start, how did we get here and why now?

[01:58] Before VCX, before the Fundraising Innovation Fund, we democratized investing in real estate. [02:04] And I remember going to my board and saying, we want to expand from real estate into tech. [02:09] and to marketize investing into tech. [02:11] And the board said to me, [02:13] That's a horrible idea. [02:15] Should not do that. You guys aren't VC people. You guys don't know how to get access to the best companies. And I was like, well, the board's against it. It must be a good idea. [02:28] Why? [02:30] I don't know. It just seems to be like my experience is when like the consensus view of, [02:36] is that something's bad. [02:38] and we have conviction, we don't get conviction, we only get conviction probably once a year on something. [02:43] Maybe not even, maybe once every two years, we get conviction on something. And when we get conviction, it's like, it's magic. It feels so good. So we had conviction. We were like, no, we got to democratize. [02:53] investing in the tech, it was 2022 and [02:57] I've raised money from venture funds. I've been around venture and tech for 20 plus years. I was like, no, no, no, no. Like don't believe me. [03:06] the story that venture people like somehow they invest in Facebook or [03:11] And they're the genius. [03:13] Like, no, the person who created the business is the genius. Like, you know, you invested. Like, if I invested in, like... [03:21] Amazon or, or meta today. No one think I'm a genius. [03:26] But for some reason, if I invest in them in their series B or C, somehow...

[03:31] That makes me like special, but mostly the person who built a business 99% is the business builder. [03:38] Maybe 100%. So anyways, I was skeptic of that, that, [03:42] venture with some magic. [03:44] industry I couldn't do. And we were just lucky when we launched VCX. We launched our Fundraise Innovation Fund. It was bottom of the market. [03:52] And all the venture funds were really shell-shocked from the collapse of the stock market. [03:58] They were like, I mean, it was such a negative sentiment that venture funds were actually dumping money. [04:04] their shares. Yeah, I remember this. And one of the things that happens, this happens in all sectors. Actually, one of the great things about being in real estate and credit [04:12] public markets, private markets, is you actually see a lot more [04:17] And so you see a lot of these patterns and you actually see things move. [04:20] from private to public and from tech to real estate and back and forth. And so, um, and so when, when things go bad, um, [04:29] You have to sell your good things first. Well, they're selling because they want DPI so they can offset any potential extra losses. It's the thing that happens in real estate. You have to sell your best assets. [04:42] or private credit, like Blue Owl sold some assets recently. And everybody's like, oh, that was probably their best asset. So in 2023, people were selling their best assets or they were [04:51] Stepping up the rounds, they couldn't actually fund the whole round. Like investors were dropping out. That's how we got into Andrel is that like one of the investors stepped up and then like one of their LPs back just dropped out.

[05:07] like dropped out because they were freaked out. So we were lucky and we had conviction. We had conviction about the companies and conviction about the timing and conviction about the concept of, you know, like we have to democratize access to private companies. It was important and AI has made it like absolutely existential. It's become like, [05:25] I think democratic ownership is... [05:28] is the solution to how we deal with ai the idea that everyone wants to get like [05:34] universal basic income [05:36] I think that's a horrible idea. [05:38] But universal basic ownership is, [05:42] I feel like that is... [05:43] magic. [05:44] It's like instead of people like saying, okay, the American dreams own a home. [05:49] American dreams are own like [05:51] the means of production, which is AI. [05:54] Tell me some of the numbers. Well, the fund went public at about a $700 million valuation. [06:00] We had about 100,000 investors in the fund when it went public. So it was very broadly held. [06:06] And that was something new. It created a lot of interesting challenges when we won public because it normally funds [06:13] Normally companies don't go public with 100,000 investors. I think last time I checked, it was trading at six and a half billion. [06:20] So it's up like nine and a half times since we went public three days ago. [06:25] And so what does that mean? I mean, it's a basket, it's a closed end fund, maybe first define a closed end fund, how this works and then how that shift actually like that delta and increase in value. [06:37] affects or doesn't affect the portfolio. Yeah, I mean the big idea was

[06:42] and has been for us for the last 15 years is to democratize private markets. And so the, the, [06:48] The last few years, AI has become... [06:51] potentially like the... [06:54] the end of technology in a way, like we're at the knee of the exponential. And so the need to democratize access to these companies, investing in these AI companies was more important than ever. And so we created what was [07:09] the first public venture fund. So it's a venture fund like any other venture fund. Typically, venture funds are closed-end funds. [07:15] This fund was registered with the SEC so that anyone can invest in it. [07:19] And so we have a fundraise has this platform where you can show up and invest it at $10 minimum. So it's $10 to get in to the fund. And, um, [07:31] you know, [07:32] 100,000 people invested into it. And as we raised into it, we deployed. So you're raising and deploying. And a closed-ended fund means that [07:40] When, when, um, [07:42] as opposed to an open-ended fund. A closed-ended fund is when it's closed, essentially... [07:48] When you're buying it in the public markets, shares in the fund is trading rather than shares in the inside of the underlying asset portfolio. [07:56] So let me just get a little technical for a minute. So ETFs, which normally have people invest in funds now, [08:05] When you're investing in ETF, you're actually [08:08] the ETF is buying more or redeeming out of the underlying companies. So the actual...

[08:15] Shares inside the ETF will trade. The closed-ended fund, it's like any other venture fund, and people are buying and selling the actual fund itself in the public markets. So that was – it was a novelty because everyone told us that closed-end funds will trade at a discount. Like, that's what – [08:34] In the history of closed-end funds, 99% traded discounts. That's how normal closed-end funds work. And I thought, well, this is different. This is not like a normal closed-end fund. It's something new. [08:46] And I think it would trade at a premium. Wasn't allowed to exactly say that. [08:50] But definitely every single expert [08:54] told me that I was wrong. [08:57] And so far, mostly they've been admitting that they were not right about how it would play out. [09:04] And so what risk does it pose to the investors if it trades up? Well, I mean, so our investors, so you have 100,000 investors, some of them have been selling and making a good multiple. You know, I mean, some of them made... [09:19] Some people have said that they paid for their wedding. That was life-changing money. If you have somebody invest $10,000 and they make $100,000, that's pretty good. The fund actually had really good performance before we listed. [09:35] I think it was up 65% in the last 12 months. So you sort of like have a 9x on a... [09:42] on almost a doubling. So a lot of everyday people made a decent amount of money. And that was because the companies in the fund were raising out higher valuations. Right. I mean, the way a normal fund works, a venture fund, just to try to connect the venture with the public listing, is you invest in private companies. Those companies you typically market their last round valuation. So like, for example...

[10:09] We invested in... [10:12] Databricks, resident Databricks. Databricks, every time they raised a new round, they raised a number of series rounds like we would market the last round. [10:20] And so that's where when I say the fund was at almost a $700 million valuation, that's basically made up of all of those private round valuations. But the reason I thought it would trade at a premium is that if you wanted to get shares in these companies, normally you'd be paying a higher fee, typically paying 2%. [10:43] asset management fee plus 20% of the profits, two in 20. And also you're having to pay a lot of brokers and middlemen. So the idea that you can get shares in arguably the best private companies in the world without paying any carried interest is, [10:59] and doing it in a liquid wrapper, I thought was going to make it essentially a lot [11:04] better than buying it in the private markets. And so far that's been the case. [11:10] All VCX holdings include Anthropic. These numbers are as of 2, 15, 26. And so Anthropic, this is allocation of the total fund. So Anthropic is 20% of the fund. Databricks is about 17. OpenAI is about 10. Andrel's 6.9. Ramp 5.1. SpaceX 5%. Epic Games 3.5. Flock Safety 3%.

[11:40] Vanta is 1.9, Canva is 1.8, Loyal is 1.5, Service Titan 1.4, and so on and so on and so on. But with these [11:51] companies, how did you get allocation into them? And what is like, I just like, this is just such an interesting vehicle. And I don't think anybody like actually grasped like outside of maybe the hundred thousand that have invested into it. But outside of this, like, I don't hear my family talking about getting access to this. Although my dad's always like, how do I get access to Androil or SpaceX? And I'm like, well, I can tell you now, but before it wasn't something that was [12:21] you get access to these companies and how do they allow you to then list them? [12:26] Well, so the fund is listed, not the companies. And, and so when the, [12:32] like a lot of venture projects, [12:34] There's a lot of luck to it and a lot of timing. [12:37] And so back when we launched in 2022, you know, that was Vantage Raising their Series B. Actually, I got introduced to them from the Acquired guys. [12:47] That's how I got into Vanta. And back in then, like back in 2022, the stock market collapsed. It was late 22, maybe early 23. Stock market collapsed. Sentiment about tech and private tech was very negative. And so when we invested in... [13:03] anthropic and andrel in sort of what was that like? [13:07] middle of 2023, it was so out of favor.

[13:12] some of the companies you named, and I'm not supposed to say which ones we bought from distressed funds. [13:20] who were having to sell in [13:23] early to mid-2023. So there was like this downturn. I mean, Silicon Valley Bank blew up in April. And so... [13:33] Again, there's a lot of luck and some opportunistic hustle on our part, but it was just not what people thought was the smart move. And then a lot of times... [13:44] At that moment, a lot of vultures came out, a lot of like fangs came out and people were trying to take advantage of the situation. [13:52] And my whole view was that I'd rather be like a good long-term partner. I'm not trying to like chisel anybody. And so we ended up. [14:00] being the best bidder, the best investor. And so that's how we got our kind of our foothold in originally. And then there's just a momentum around it because you go to the company and [14:11] And you say, we're a venture fund just like any other venture fund. [14:14] And they would be a little bit confused because they'd never seen anything like it. Like, oh, you have 100,000 investors. What does that mean for me? Like, I think I went and visited Stripe six times. [14:26] They were just like, I don't know. I'm not sure about this. So there's this learning process where you're doing something. I always find this. Every time I've done something new, people start out saying it's crazy. [14:38] And then after a while they say it's novel. Right now we're in the novel period. And then eventually they say it's obvious.

[14:44] So right now we're novel in a couple of years from now, it'll be obvious and everyone will be doing this. [14:49] Yeah. Some people have done this. Robin Hood went out with their fund, their vehicle. Destiny went out maybe like... [14:57] a year or two ago destiny didn't go so well can you explain why destiny didn't go well they were trading up massively it was uh a risk to their nav and it was a little bit of a controversy but could you share more about that you know i'm not inside destiny i actually think it did go well i mean there was some drama around it because they had i think i think the there was some drama with some of their portfolio companies but ultimately i think it it it traded well [15:27] And they raised money at a premium. So I don't know all the details of Destiny, but I think actually all things considered for what it was, I mean, it's done pretty well. Robin Hood has done less well, but it's so new. [15:42] Like it went out three weeks ago. They raised, I mean, arguably it was successful in the sense they raised a lot of money into the IPO. When, you know, we've been working on this for now three or four years. [15:53] And Robin Hood came out like a, you know, [15:56] a month ago [15:58] And actually, I thought it was fabulous because the biggest... [16:02] concern we had was that the portfolio companies would, would like, would not know what to make of it. You know, having, having a public fund, having, having so many investors and Robin Hood normalized it. Like,

[16:14] Databricks and all of their portfolio companies have run a ramp, you know, I've been endorsing it. So they, what they did for us was, was make it, [16:24] Like, [16:25] acceptable among the tech industry, mostly. This happens in tech a lot. Like I think of this as being, the most important thing is that you're trying to create the category, trying to create the pie. It's not a competition among like, [16:40] the few of us that are currently doing it, it's about, okay, how big is the public markets? Trillions. How big are the private markets? Trillions. How big are our funds? Like, [16:49] billions. [16:51] I think that it's about creating like a multi hundred billion dollar category where you get [16:56] millions of people investing into private tech companies and build this bridge between the two sides of the market. [17:02] Let's talk about [17:04] the extreme bifurcation of the access to value accretion right now. So all of the value [17:14] is being made in the private markets. A16Z, Sequoia, KOTU, they've all said this. Those are some of the biggest venture funds in the industry. And [17:27] A16 even put out a piece, "Private Markets Are the New High-Growth Public Markets." I spoke to Alex Emmerman, who's a general partner there, about this a bit. OpenAI just raised $110 billion round. I think that amounted to about a third of all funding in the private markets for tech in 2025. So what is going on in the private markets and why is it not reaching the public markets?

[17:51] I guess... [17:52] converting into the public markets? I think that the old playbook is falling apart and that everybody keeps wondering when it's going to go back to normal and normal being the way it used to be. And I think it may not ever. And the old playbook was that you'd fund a company in the private markets, they'd raise a few rounds. If they're successful, they go public. [18:13] And maybe that happened three to five years into the company's business. And then the venture fund would exit and recycle the capital. And that's how the markets used to work. I just don't think that's how the market's going to work in the future. [18:29] The private markets are now tens of trillions. [18:32] And I built a company, you know, we have 2 million customers. I have a couple hundred people at the company. We have lots of software. Like I know what it's like being in the private markets and I know something what it's like to be in the public markets and just better in the private markets. Like if you're a company, if you're a tech company, you're trying to build some cutting edge software and you're taking a lot of risk. The public markets are just risk. [18:55] They're just burden. They're just complexity. You don't need it if you can raise money in the private markets. And so companies don't go public until they're really mature or if ever. So if you look at like if it takes like a company 10 to 15 years before they go public, that 10 years of growth or high growth doesn't happen in the public markets anymore. So if you look at our portfolio, just to go apples to apples. [19:19] So QQQ, which is like an index of public tech, the weighted average growth rate of public tech companies last year was 25% a year.

[19:30] And the weighted average growth rate for our portfolio, for VCX, was 193%. - That's crazy. - So there's way more growth. [19:39] the companies you're younger, and maybe they're riskier. [19:42] And so it's like there's this dynamic where now normal people are no longer accessing a whole kind of company, a whole kind of like phase of growth. And everybody knows it's a problem. Everybody's tried different ways to solve it. And I just think that... [19:58] like this is the solution, this structure we're helping create, a publicly traded venture capital fund, I'm calling it PVC. I think that is how it's going to happen. I think that like 10 years from now, every single person in America will have 5% of their portfolio in like public venture capital. It'll be totally normal. It'll be like an ETF. It'll be just this thing that's standard. And the public capital, so the public markets will be a huge source of funding for private tech [20:28] We were talking about this earlier, but there was an extreme difference between how much capital was raised in private markets last year versus public markets. I think it was like a 10x difference. [20:39] It's all weighted. [20:40] Right. I mean, the thing about public markets is they're primarily trading secondary, right? They're not really, the public markets are actually 99% of the money in public markets are secondary, not primary. [20:52] And the private market used to be like almost 100% primary. Like you funded company to build something, build a building, build, you know, a tech company. And so like, I actually like when I first started Fundrise 15 years ago, like the idea of a secondary versus primary, the idea that you're actually funding like real things in real life is so far from how normal people invest. Normal people are literally when they're investing in public markets, like they're not building anything.

[21:21] And so I think that like that, that idea that you can, [21:27] Like, [21:27] that millions of people could actually fund and build like actual things by funding the private markets. I think that's like a huge knock on benefit of what we're trying to do here. [21:38] Do you think the IPO window is open? [21:42] No. I mean, we're in war with Iran. [21:46] Is that why you delayed your IPO? We delayed it a couple of times. I was worried about the war with Iran. I mean, it's, it's, it's, um, I think that it could really disrupt the markets. I mean, right now the market's not sure. I expect that, um, [22:00] There's going to be a shock to the economy and the markets will go through a period of volatility. And in the meantime, companies that are private are just going to keep going. [22:09] chugging along, making progress, and they just don't have to deal with as much volatility as the public markets make you. [22:16] That and there is a little bit of a SaaSpocalypse going on. I just interviewed Thomas LaFont of KOTU. They manage around $70 billion and $30 billion of that is in the private market. So they're split between. But I asked him because SaaS companies, they used to trade at a premium. There was a whole premium for SaaS companies. But if you look, they're all down like a lot. [22:38] I wouldn't say all down, but there's some that are significantly down. And sometimes it has to do with the new Claude release. But what are you seeing with these SaaS companies and how are they vulnerable? This is the challenge being public is that what public market wants is like a, they call durable revenue stream that's growing at a high rate. And so they thought SaaS was essentially like...

[23:05] like a bond, like in terms of super low risk with a really high growth rate and they were priced high growth, low risk. And then the market overnight repriced that to high risk, low growth. [23:17] and they just got devastated and... [23:20] This is the problem with public markets is that they just swing. So I'm sure... [23:27] that they're going to swing back to some extent. [23:29] Just like, I mean, if you remember this, late last year, everyone in public markets thought that the AI boom was a bubble and the data centers were going to be like overbuilt and... [23:43] I think if any of the AI companies had been public, they would have been getting... [23:47] Decimated? [23:49] And now, essentially, Anthropix, recent releases with Claude and then Codex and stuff has proven that was totally wrong. So that volatility, that short-term sentiment, it's just such a negative to building a business. [24:03] I mean, not to make our pitch, but what you want is have access to public markets without the volatility. And so this bridge that we're creating with these other companies is how you can bring the investors in to democratize ownership, but not expose your business to the volatility and just headache of public markets. Sorcery is brought to you by Brex, the financial stack trusted by more than 30,000 companies, including one in three venture-backed startups in the U.S. [24:33] Nearly 40% of startups fail because they run out of cash. Rex is literally built to help founders avoid that. Unlike traditional banks that let your money sit idle, chipping away at it with fees, Rex is designed to help you spend smarter and move faster. Their all-in-one solution combines checking, treasury, and FDIC protection into one powerful account. You can send and receive money globally at lightning speeds, get 20 times the standard FDIC coverage through their partner banks,

[25:03] yield from day one with same day and even same hour liquidity. Access your funds anytime. Companies like Scale AI, DoorDash, Service Titan, HIMSS, Anthropic, Flexport, Robinhood, and Plaid trust and use Brex. Start today at brex.com slash sorcery. That's B-R-E-X dot com slash sorcery. Turing is training the next generation of AI with tasks that require real expertise [25:33] Companies like NVIDIA, Anthropic, Salesforce, and Gemini partner with Turing. Turing builds realistic reinforcement learning environments and data systems based on real operational traces, the kind of infrastructure Frontier Labs need to train superintelligence. Visit Turing.com slash S-O-U-R-C-E-R-Y. So it's still very early in VCX's life. So what happens when it's hit with extreme volatility? What happens if it trades below? [26:03] I did this with real estate with the first democratized investing in real estate. Did it with private credit or asset-backed lending. And now I did it with venture. And so I've been doing it for 15 years. So I have a pretty good idea of how this plays out. And the thing about this type of investment structure is that it's cyclical. And that the reality is all investment structures are cyclical. [26:28] But I think this type of structure is more cyclical or pro-cyclical than an endowment might be.

[26:34] And so, you know, right now we're trading in this massive premium. It's an endorsement of the model. There's probably some period where it's positive. And then I'm not going to be surprised that at some point the cycle turns negative. It could be because of a shock, an oil shock from some people. [26:52] mysterious war. Let me take that back. Anyways, it could be from an oil shock. It could be from anything. But anyways, and so like, you know, I saw it in 2001. I saw it in 2008. I saw it in 2020. I saw it in 2022. I mean, it happens over and over again that things trade up and things trade down. And so what's going to happen with VCX is that we'll see both. And the benefit is that when [27:22] into these private companies. [27:23] And when we're trading in a discount, it's not the company's problem. [27:28] Like it's, we're like an insulator. [27:30] And I just think that that's the company is focused on building their business. [27:35] And we need to focus on democratizing access. [27:38] Going back into the portfolio, how did you structure out allocation into the different categories and companies? And to your point, when you have more capital to deploy into them, which companies are you going to continue to top up? [27:51] Yeah, I mean, it's evolved... [27:53] Because the market's changed so much in the last three years. Like my dream is to have the biggest... [27:59] Thank you. [28:00] best companies say, okay, I want to democratize ownership. I think that's important. I think democratized ownership is critical to successful AI. Implementation of AI is concentrated ownership.

[28:12] I think it will actually be undermined, like it's successfully undermined by politics. So we have to democratize ownership. [28:18] But to do that by exposing the company in public markets, I think, has a lot of risk. So if they would endorse, if I could get like... [28:28] some of these big AI labs to endorse this concept, whether it's us or someone else, hopefully us too, then I would try to deploy. Like I would want to put billions into Anthropic, OpenAI, the next, you know, the next wave of companies. I mean, these companies... [28:46] I think that like our investors are, you know, we have 2 million customers at Fundrise. Most of them had never heard of Anthropic until like three weeks ago. Really? For sure. What? Yes. No, there's no question. Like it was not a household name the way Chad GPT was. And so like when we were introducing it to people and rolling it out, like they had never heard of this company. [29:07] Did the Pentagon drama help? That helped spread, you know, like it's like all things like, um, [29:14] There's no such thing as bad press. [29:17] So, I mean, I'm making, it's kind of a bald pitch. Like, you know, like... [29:24] Like our job is to be the bridge. Our job is to be the low cost, you know, structure that, that democratizes access. I think it's, I think it's going to happen. I think that like the fact that we're trading at this wild premium is endorsement that there's demand there, that, that the model works. And now we just need to like connect the, you know, the circuits and get the capital flowing to these companies so they can go and just build like the next model. Yeah.

[29:51] So did the 100,000 investors and the IPO come from your $2 million? [29:57] 2 million customer, yeah. Customer base? Yes. Really? And then so how are you thinking of expanding that outwards? [30:04] Well, everybody now is asking me about launching VCX2. And I'm like, it's only been three days. [30:10] What's VCX2 going to be? I don't know. Literally, I didn't even... I was just... I finally got this... It's like when you... You know, I actually have... My wife and I had a baby. [30:21] our third son. [30:23] And literally, [30:25] The nurse said to my wife, [30:28] When are you going to have the next one? Like literally like within minutes of having the first baby. And she was like, I'm going to kill you. So people ask me a VCX too. I kind of feel that way. Oh my God, this was so hard. Don't ask me about that yet. But I, I think the model of taking, you know, of, of raising in a non-traded vehicle, you know, where essentially in practice, like a public, like a private vehicle, where raising from, from people, you're investing, it's marked like a venture fund. [30:58] to publicly traded. I think that playbook we just followed, we've raised from our customer base and then take it public. I think that's a great playbook because it gives you some flexibility about when you want to go to market. [31:12] And then we have, we currently have VCX1, which would allow us to raise more money. And so, you know, it's simple. It's just so simple. You just want to get the best companies into the hands of most people. When I was meeting with Carly at your very cool property on West Adams in LA, and when I was talking to you beforehand, she and you were both talking about how you got allocation

[31:41] and ways to do strategic things. So can you walk through some of the ways that you're strategically a value add, actually like a value add investor? [31:50] Before I speak specifically about the value add, [31:54] The best value add is no value add. My opinion is that you want long term passive capital [32:01] which is what the best capital is. Second best is that then you add value. So we have 2 million customers. We actually did some data enrichment. So now we know a lot about the customers. [32:14] And so we've done a bunch of partnerships. The one that was most successful was Ramp. We actually only went to half our customers. We went out to a million customers. And Ramp... [32:27] It was sort of perfect because it was sort of well-known, but hadn't really hit the public awareness about a year ago. And we said, look, we invested in Ramp. [32:37] One of the ways we underwrite companies is we use the companies at Fundrise. And so like literally every one of our team members has a RAM card and there's like, oh my God, so much better. It's so much better than Amex. It's like... [32:52] crazy and we just went out to our customers and said we use this product we're not getting paid to say this we're invested in this company [32:59] genuinely is the best product. And I think we were the most successful ramp partnership ever. [33:05] No way. Hundreds and hundreds of, of, of, um, customers. And so, um, [33:10] Like,

[33:12] For certain companies where they're just not household names... [33:16] We can really bring... [33:18] thousands of customers. I mean, we can bring thousands of customers and like that can be really meaningful for a company that's, that's like high growth. [33:26] Wow. I have a credit card company to tell you about. Have you heard of Brex? I think they just get sold. I don't think they fit our model. They got acquired by Capital One. Yeah. Well, let me tell you about the next company I want to do this with. No, another one we're about to do this with is that Fundrise has millions of customers. [33:56] - Oh yeah, you were telling me about intercom. - And I'm like, I wanna roll out intercom to all of our [34:05] all of our customers because AI customer service is such a no brainer. It was awesome for us. Our team loves it. Anyways, and so one of the things that like, just some people ask me like, how did you know to invest in these companies? Because it's not like it was a total accident. [34:20] is I got access recently to two companies. Somebody... [34:24] offered me like, well, I'll say it. So basically I got recently looked at Replit and Deal. [34:34] And, you know, [34:35] By the way, we love Deal. [34:38] We love deals. [34:40] But the thing is that we at the company don't use either of those products today. Okay.

[34:45] And so I just couldn't get to ground on whether or not we should invest. Like when we've, whether it's intercom or ramp, [34:52] or Anthropic, like we use the product in the software we build. We use the product like, like we, I've actually had our HR team. I was like, we should go look at Rippling and deal and all these companies and figure out which one we like best. That's how we'll decide. [35:07] It'll be a huge part of how we decide what to invest in. Because if our-- [35:13] I mean, sometimes we've gone to companies and said like, we love your product. We invest in this. And no, it's not like all of them said yes. [35:22] But that's just a way to diligence the product because otherwise I just don't know if it's going to be a good product. [35:28] The guy knew Anthropic was a world-class product because our team was using it on all the AI products we were building. And it was just for us... [35:40] Like, it just made it so much easier to know where to put the capital. [35:45] So when you're investing into these companies, how much are you investing or how much were you investing and how much you said you want to invest up to billions into them in the future, potentially. So like, how does that scale and what was the initial entry size? Yeah, I mean, this is the whole challenge, like building a business, right? Is it? [36:02] everything works much better at scale. When our fund was $100 million, you show up. We invested, I think, $5 million in Vanta. And now we want to write $50, $100 million checks. So it's like scale definitely makes it easier because companies will pay attention to you when you're talking about $50, $100 million, $200 million. And they just like, most great companies aren't going to, I think, I remember which company it was, so they weren't going to get out of bed

[36:29] for like less than 20 million. [36:31] Might have been Kalshi. [36:35] Sounds like Tariq. Yeah. Anyways, the point is like, [36:38] Um, [36:39] The bigger we get, the easier it is to access, the more credible we are, the more it helps investors, the more we lower our fees, the more we get great companies. So it's a virtuous cycle. [36:51] And it's a combination of [36:54] executing well and having hopefully a good reputation of being a good partner. [36:58] Yeah. [36:59] What's the most underrated company in the portfolio? [37:02] - Loyal. - Really? - Oh yeah. - Why? - Oh my God. So Loyal, you know, so I'll just say Loyal. So Loyal, so I met Celine a year ago. [37:13] And she was like, hey, Celine, we got to invest in your company. And we have 2 million customers. When you roll out Loyal, we're going to be able to roll it out. So Loyal is the first company. [37:25] longevity drug. I had a dog actually that just recently died. And it was 16 years old. And the loyal pill essentially would help dogs live like three to five years longer, I think, like years longer, healthier. So it extends life. A life extending drug. [37:45] Right. I mean, it sounds like magic. And I when I heard about it and I met Celine, I was in like a session with her. [37:54] I was like, this is like a blockbuster drug. This is going to be the most successful drug in history.

[37:59] And then she's going to go and create the next thing. She's going to create like longevity for humans, I think too. She's special. And so we invested in their last round. [38:09] And I think we're going to roll it out to like, they want to be a consumer brand. So I think we're going to roll it out to our 2 million customers. And I'm sure we have hundreds of thousands of dog owners. We probably have tens of thousands of vets as veterinarians, as customers too. [38:22] I actually will know I can say these are the because we've enriched our data as we know which of our [38:27] investors are veterinarians and then we can create a targeted campaign for Celine to like actually reach out to them so we have like an investor network we had this concept trying to create this concept I'm trying to make fetch happen here so there's like we call it network investing there's social network so we have network investing where basically the network of investors is a value add and [38:51] And so like with loyal, I think loyal is, um, [38:54] It's just going to be like, [38:57] a blockbuster. And it's a really good example of like democratizing ownership. [39:02] I have a couple more questions on the fun structure and everything. But for VCX... [39:08] like specifically how many people are on the team [39:12] on the team depends what you mean like how did you did you create a team for this like how did this yeah happen like i mean mostly the the so like i think a lot of this is what i think is true but you actually i never hear that many people talk about it is that a lot of times a company is a company within a company and there's like almost like layers of the onion or like we come to like the nuclear center and everybody wants to be in the room but i'm like the nuclear center is

[39:42] Thank you. [39:42] It's very high pressure. So there's a core team who've been working with building Fundrise together for 15 years. [39:52] And wherever we sort of point the eye of Sauron, that's what gets the heat. And so it was me and some of my co-founders and some of the software product developers who really went and attacked VCX over the last couple of years. And we hired some people. [40:12] that this is something that some sort of theory out there that you can like delegate, hire smart people and delegate to them and expect success. That's not my experience. [40:20] If you want something done, you get like the maniacs. [40:23] who know how to do things. It's the core, core founding team and just have them go do the next thing. So we just keep doing the next thing and it's... [40:33] So painful. [40:34] What have been your biggest lessons in... [40:40] Mm-hmm. [40:40] like, I guess, [40:41] trying all these different projects out? Oh man, pain, pain, suffering. I mean, that's what, that's like definitely the magic, whatever's the most painful thing. That's the answer. Whatever the most like brutal, unfun thing is, that's what you got to do. So it's like so much of success is just your willingness and ability to take on [41:02] misery. Now that's like, people are like, what does that mean in practice? This is like when things are hot, like right now tech's hot, you have to lean back. [41:10] And when, and that like people give you so much grief for that. And then when things are really cold,

[41:17] People even like, you know, one of the worst parts of our model is we have a lot of people. [41:22] a lot of investors and they give you a lot of grief and all things are hot. They give you a grief. Things are cold. They give you a lot of grief. And, um, [41:32] I think that's why like a lot of sociopaths are successful. They just aren't affected by it. [41:37] But if you are not a sociopath, [41:40] it's good to have some insulation. [41:42] And unfortunately, like I haven't I don't think I've done a great job insulating myself from people like setting it like we get death threats. We invested in a data center. [41:52] We invested in this world-class, I mean, I can't say what the tenant is, but it's a top AI lab. We're helping fund. One of our funds is we have real estate, we have tech, we have credit. Is it TerraFab? [42:06] No, no, no. That's a fun one. I haven't seen that one. But anyways, and you know, some people apparently don't like data centers and they were sending us death threats. Wow. We had somebody actually tried. I mean, we have the world filled with crazy people. We had somebody try to invest and they signed the subscription agreements in blood. What? Mm hmm. [42:28] What? Yes, that person was not [42:31] all right in there. We've, I mean, you just do the thing about democratizing investing is you get [42:36] You really democratize it. You really get all types. And, yeah, I mean, I have, like, people reaching out to me. I mean, I have CEOs and C-suite people who are, like,

[42:47] you know, the biggest companies in the world. And I have like, you know, Uber drivers, which is awesome, but it can be it can be painful. So how do you communicate with all of them? [42:57] AI now. That's the thing. That's what I'm telling you. We used to have 20 people on the team. We built a whole platform for this. This is Intercom. This is Fin, yeah. But we used to have 20 people. We used to have to hire one person for every 30,000 new investors. Mm-hmm. [43:10] And now we don't. [43:12] That's why I'm such a big fan. Yeah. But, you know, we've been doing this for 15 years. I mean, 15 years ago, there wasn't even a term for it. No one's ever heard of the idea. When I went to the SEC, they thought it was hilarious. Like, they just thought it was cute. [43:28] Oh, yeah. Hey, I'll tell you the founding story. This is like... So, in 20... [43:33] 11, I went out trying to do this because like the 2008 financial crisis was such a terrible experience for me. Like all my capital partners went bankrupt. And it was like, it was like, it was to me like it was a loss of innocence. If you ever read any literature, talk about loss of innocence. I lost all my innocence in 2008 financial crisis. And I set out to try to build like an alternative model where people can invest in like real things. [43:58] And so I went to [redacted address] to like democratize investing. And I got introduced to the, I think is that it's the number one law firm in New York, [44:08] Went to their office on the top of the Condé Nast building. And I met with the head of their securities practice, the head of their real estate practice. This was May 2011. And I go in. It's like the conference room has this sunset. And these guys are sitting there and I'm pitching them on how we have to democratize access. The system's broken. And they look at me at the end of my impassioned speech and they're,

[44:33] And the guy says to me, [44:35] Thank you. [44:36] Why would you bother with a little guy? [44:40] I was like, what? He's like, why would you bother with a little guy? [44:44] I was like, [44:45] Not what I was expecting him to say. [44:48] I was like, because they're getting screwed. [44:51] He's like, "What's your opinion?" [44:52] Anyways, so like, so like the idea of democratizing access was like really like a strange, it was so, it was just a strange notion. And now, you know, whatever, 15 years later, it's like, it's no longer as, as weird as it was. Now it's like, oh, this is like maybe the future retail has become such a dominant part of capital markets. [45:13] it's so important to public markets. I think it's going to become important to private markets too. On your point of pain and misery, Mark Andreessen just went like mega viral talking about how he's not introspective and he thinks the greats of history, they're not introspective. They just focus on building. Are you introspective? I think I am. I don't know what he's talking about. I saw that. I saw that tweet. I mean, it's just like he's good at like, [45:40] like takes. I mean, God knows what people were over the history. Like, um, [45:46] Yeah. So, no, I mean, like, I don't even know where that, what that comment comes from. I feel like you ever read anything like by Napoleon, he was clearly introspective and like, I don't know that, but it's, but being, this is the problem, like, like, [46:00] I had a mentor who used to say the agony and ecstasy of empathy.

[46:04] because basically if you're empathetic, you just get all the joy and all the pain of feeling other people's emotions. Mm-hmm. [46:10] And so, yeah, it sucks. It sucks being pathetic. But like, I think you're [46:14] better off... [46:17] than not having it, right? I mean, I don't know. I guess it's... [46:21] I mean, it hasn't, if I, do you believe he's not introspective? Is that a thing? [46:26] I don't know. I think at a certain point you kind of have to put on the blockers. [46:30] Thank you. [46:31] But what if you can't? How does that work? How do you put on blockers? [46:36] just don't listen to everyone or everything. [46:39] or feel everything. [46:41] Yeah, I don't think that's an option. I think that like most people, you are how you are, you are who you are. I think it's like you can you can like create coping mechanisms. The worst part of building a business is the stress. [46:54] Because so many crazy things happen. So much, like, it's so hard. It's miserable. It's miserable. But... [47:01] You know, I mean, it's like like all things like you wouldn't have done it if you'd known. [47:07] But then when you get there, what else are you going to do? You keep going. Yeah. Well, speaking of Marc Andreessen, A16Z has now shifted into this mega firm. They're not really a fund anymore. I don't think they even go by that. Sequoia doesn't go by fund. General Catalyst also says they're a firm, they're a company. Thrive mentions that they're a company. They operate like a company. Do you think these mega funds are going to go public? What do you

[47:37] um, [47:38] A16Z, $80 billion? I think they're around that. $80 billion. They're the biggest. And the next biggest is like Sequoia. I don't know. What are they? $50 billion or something? I think Sequoia, General Catalyst, and A16Z are between like $60 to $80 billion. [47:52] Yeah, it's so funny because like, [47:55] Black Rock Slate. [47:56] 15 trillion? [47:58] yeah like you know these companies are not actually that big compared to both markets [48:03] Thank you. [48:04] And, um, [48:06] And so I feel like this is, have you ever heard the saying, ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny? No. [48:12] So ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny means that the nature of something is dictated by its structure. So phylogeny means structure, ontogeny, ontological means the nature of something. And so the nature of these partnerships is eventually they want to monetize. And the best way to monetize is to go public. This happened in all the investment banks. They've all went public. [48:37] And so... [48:39] Yeah, I mean, they'll... [48:40] Most of them will eventually go public. [48:43] And then they'll end up looking and acting like... [48:46] Thank you. [48:47] all the other public companies that are, you know, Goldman Sachs and, and, and BlackRock and Blackstone. And so, um, [48:54] It's just like the, it's just the arc of all financial industry. So I think they do go public and, um, [49:04] you know, that'll be like the final chapter for their businesses.

[49:34] You type in an idea like AI-powered supply chain companies with positive free cash flow, or defense tech companies growing revenue over 25% year over year. Publix AI then dispatches a swarm of agents that scan every single US stock, evaluates them, and instantly builds a custom index around your thesis. What really stands out is how clearly it explains why each stock is included. And before you invest, you can even backtest your idea against the S&P 500, so you're making decisions with real context, not just guessing. [50:04] assets, Public lets you invest in stocks, bonds, options, crypto, all in one place. They'll even give you an uncapped 1% match when you transfer your investments over from another platform. If you want to build a portfolio that actually reflects your thesis, visit public.com slash sorcery, paid for by Public Investing. Full disclosures in the description. [50:23] Founders ship faster on Deel. Set up payroll for any country in minutes, hire anyone anywhere, and get visas handled fast so you stay focused on scaling. Deel takes care of onboarding, HR, IT, ER, benefits, and compliance so your team can grow without borders. It's why more than 37,000 fast-growing companies trust Deel to move fast. Visit deel.com slash sorcery. That's deel.com slash s-o-u-r-c-e-r-y. [50:51] What's the biggest vulnerability for the VC industry? I mean, we've gone through several waves and there was the Tiger crossover wave, then there's the Middle East LP capital wave. Like there's a lot of different components that are keeping it alive. And so what happens next and what's the biggest vulnerability?

[51:10] Short term, long term. Both. Oh, my God. That's a hard question. I mean, short term. Right. Like it's it feels like there's going to be a shock from the war in Iran. [51:22] I feel like that shock could be... [51:24] We've got to affect capital flows into, into, um, [51:28] venture. I mean, a lot of the marginal dollar has been from the Middle East over the last three or four years. [51:34] I was actually tweeting at Mark Suster about this. He thought that they'd want to invest more as a result of what they were in Iran. [51:40] I think they'll want to invest less because I think they're going to be trying to like deal with domestic issues. So I think that there's a possibility that we see a downturn. [51:51] coming out of this that could shock venture industry. And that shock is the kind of, there was that shock in 2022 where you have all these unicorns and they all sort of like, it happened in real estate too. In real estate, they call it extended pretend. [52:07] where you sort of kick the can on the problem. And if there's a downturn, [52:14] then I think that will cause a final like, okay, let's deal with these companies that [52:20] aren't, aren't like going to go public. Same thing with the real estate sector, same with a lot of, a lot of the, the market. So I think that, that, [52:29] reckoning could happen in the short term. In the long term, I think it's all but AI. [52:35] And how AI affects venture industry is anyone's guess, but it probably affects everything. [52:40] And venture is not going to be like some exception. There was this crazy pitch book stat that I told you beforehand. It was like 40% of unicorns have not raised capital in three plus years. That's a lot of zombies. Yeah. I don't think zombie is the nicest way to describe it. I had this podcast I did. I do a little podcast. I called it the great deleveraging.

[53:04] But we went through 15 years of zero interest rate environment, came out of that environment, and then we went through a transition period, which I think we'll look back and see 23, 24, 25 transition period. This happened also in the 80s. If you look, the SNL crisis was one of the worst savings and loan crisis in the 80s, and it happened. [53:27] 1987 was Black Monday, but the crisis didn't happen until 1992, the recession from it. [53:34] There was this long lag because everybody tries to like... [53:37] delay hoping that it'll get better. And so I think that is what's something like that's coming. It always happens. It's sort of inevitable. And, um, [53:48] And I think that [53:49] will cause some like, [53:51] You know, a lot of companies probably merge. [53:54] Um, [53:55] I mean, it's just going to be sort of like a sorting out. And that's like a healthy, painful process. [54:02] part of the process. Do you think a real downturn is coming though? Like we've seen through the last at least like five years since COVID, like we've had these crazy volatile micro downturns and the market just correct itself. Like we just like turn on the switches, we do some things, click the buttons and like it's back to normal. Like, do you think it's possible to keep on doing that? We do, by the way, have over 37 trillion in deficit. So there's a lot of debt piling up alongside that, [54:32] Will it actually ever break or will we always bolster the system?

[54:36] Yeah, like, I don't know. I mean, it's it's it's kind of crazy to me because I've been through a bunch that we keep it. We're able to the last 15 years, we're able to, like, keep dodging the bullet. [54:47] Like we're like the Matrix or something. So what? Well, yeah. So like, you know, those types of things are contingent. So you could tell you could you could I like to do scenario planning so you could see a scenario where there's a shock, there's political dysfunction. And as a result, there's no bailout. [55:05] Right. So mostly what's happened is the government's been able to bail, bailed out Silicon Valley bank. They bailed out, you know, it, you know, during the COVID there's, there's, there's like, [55:15] on an ability for the government and the Federal Reserve to compensate for this. And essentially, the governments ended up taking on these deficits to have absorbed the losses, privatized gains and publicized... [55:32] losses of the hedge or subsidizing them. [55:37] And so, I mean, it's contingent on politics. And it's, you know, it's hard for me to imagine that like the political system will rally together to solve a crisis now. But maybe it'll rise to the occasion. What do you think the biggest questions are that no one's asking right now? No one's asking? [55:58] Thank you. [55:59] I mean, it's funny. So I'm going to give you one slight dodge. Mm-hmm. [56:05] But...

[56:07] Mostly, no one was asking what happens, what does success look like for AI? [56:12] outside of outside of Silicon Valley everyone was asking what would failure look like what would a bubble look like [56:18] And even now, like there's no vision for how AI actually ends up being socially constructive. [56:26] Like, how does it work? Like, what does winning look like? Not as what is what is like being able to lose their job and others on it? There's unemployment and there's UBI, universal based income. Everyone is focused on what goes wrong. [56:39] And no one, I really don't think if I've heard anybody articulate a vision for what [56:45] what is what is like an outcome that's good [56:49] And I feel like no one's really been able to articulate that question. Like, okay, how do we end up with a win-win here? [56:57] Like, [56:58] I literally haven't heard anybody say that. So that's my, I guess my, my best answer. [57:02] That's a really good answer. [57:04] Okay. All right. We've made it up on the spot. Good. Well, well done. As we wrap up, let me see. Are there any... [57:12] topics we didn't cover that you want to cover? [57:15] I mean, the big question, right, for our venture fund and everybody is, you know, how far do I go? [57:22] Because I think that the question of VCX, question of democratizing venture today, is a derivative of, is AI going to go to the limit? Does it go to infinity, right? Does it basically replace most white-collar jobs? Does it create this abundant society? And if it does...

[57:43] Who owns it, how is ownership distributed rather than how is income distributed, I think ends up being existential to society. [57:51] And, you know, [57:53] People I know in these companies think that we're going the limit here. If that's true and we haven't figured out how to [58:02] spread the success. I think we have like serious problems. [58:07] And I think that that question about like, you know, what we invest in is all downstream of like, is there an application layer? [58:16] You know, at the end of the day, we built, I built part, we built a real estate AI vertical product called Real AI. And we're constantly trying to work out like, okay, where's our moat data? Data is the moat. [58:29] you know no expertise is the moat like it's it's it's very difficult to build in this environment we talked about this before but you asked me what percentage of white-collar jobs will be there and i think it was like five or ten years five years i think i said five years five years how many jobs are displaced by ai or something like that what do you think what do i think [58:51] Um, [58:52] I think more than 20% [58:55] but less than 50. So like let's say 20 to 35 years, 20 to 30% of jobs, um, [59:01] are [59:03] Not just displaced, but also suppressed. Mm-hmm. [59:07] So you don't make that marginal higher and that adds up to tens of millions of jobs. [59:13] How has it changed in your organization? You've said you've created your own products and that kind of thing. Yeah. I mean, for us, for sure. We were 350 people. Now we're 200 people.

[59:22] I mean, every month we can do more with less people. [59:25] I think we're at the cutting edge of every department, product development, [59:30] you know, real estate analysis, accounting. I mean, processes, these processes are so much, you're not just like cheaper, way better. [59:38] I mean, it's like... [59:41] Thank you. [59:41] What is an abundance vision for AI? I just don't think I've heard one. [59:47] Very optimistic. [59:49] Well, I didn't give you an answer. I just said it's a question. [59:54] So our presenting sponsor is Brex, and they're all about performance, spending smarter, moving faster. For you, how do you measure success? I think it's a combination of great returns and broad ownership. [1:00:06] So can we get... [1:00:09] a million investors into VCAC. How far can we broaden ownership and how much, and if we have these big, you know, these, the best tech companies saying like, of course we always have an allocation for the people. [1:00:22] like then I know we've won. Are they saying that yet? I don't want to say which company, but it was a defense tech company. And they were like way more open-minded. They were like, they went from like, [1:00:32] Very skeptical, they're very open-minded over the last 24 months. [1:00:37] I can't say which company it was, but I've watched people... [1:00:42] like go from being skeptical to being like constructive about it. [1:00:47] You know, it takes more independent-minded people to lead. [1:00:51] change and I'm seeing it. I'm seeing it. It's really been gratifying. As we wrap up, what are you most looking forward to in the next year for VCX? Oh man, I would love to write, if we could write a massive check into one of these rounds,

[1:01:10] One of our advisors was the CFO of Schwab. [1:01:15] Thank you. [1:01:15] And he asked me like last week after VCX went public, he said, you know, you invested in like nine of these top tech companies. Was it luck? [1:01:26] I was like, nine? [1:01:29] So people still wonder, like, you know, like, you're only as good as your next hit. Mm-hmm. [1:01:34] And so I think we need to like, [1:01:35] We need to write some big checks into these great companies and validate the model. Because these crossover ideas, they could fail because it's a bubble and you invest poorly. All you have to do is do a bad job and the whole thing goes down in flames. But if we can validate it, then I think that it would become normalized. It becomes so normalized that it becomes not an innovation. It becomes invisible. [1:02:05] how you succeed in technology where technology is no longer considered technology. [1:02:09] And so this is a financial technology innovation. And if we do it right, it just becomes [1:02:15] totally standard like trading. Trading is a technological innovation. People don't think of it as technology, mutual funds, passive investing. [1:02:26] money markets, all these things are, are, are, were, were like these cutting edge ideas. You probably heard this thing that the arc of financial history bends towards democracy. You know, when you introduce technology, it lowers costs and act drives more access, broadens access. So I think that's exactly what's happening here.

[1:02:45] It's totally true to the historical pattern, but we have to like, [1:02:49] deliver. So how do you manage the capital and with deployments and allocation? Like everybody, we know the companies we want to invest in. [1:02:57] And it's just like persuading them. [1:03:00] that this is a good idea. [1:03:02] That's why I'm on this show. Yeah. [1:03:05] Okay, so then I guess for the skeptics, so we can... [1:03:09] be inclusive here. [1:03:11] What are the biggest skeptic questions that you get? I mean, I think the first one is more a misunderstanding. They're like... [1:03:20] They think it's like an SPV or they're afraid it has too many people on their cap table. They don't think of it as like... [1:03:28] It's to the company, to the private company. It's like a venture fund. [1:03:32] A venture fund has lots of investors. You don't know about them. It's not your problem. You're just dealing with the principal at the fund. So I think that there's first the skeptics are confused by the model because it seems so novel to have so many people. And then the next one, I mean, they're always skeptical about. [1:03:49] you know. [1:03:51] They want, I mean, everybody's funny. They want a name brand. Oh, Sequoia, A16Z, like... [1:03:57] And I'm like, well, I see C&Z didn't even exist like 2007. Like they're new. Like they became this, I mean, they're the dominant player. And it's so recent. I think that like there's a graduation in terms of credibility. [1:04:13] And the skeptics are just skeptical that, you know,

[1:04:16] Do you go to Wharton? Do you have an MBA? I hate that stuff, but people want it. Anything else? Any hot takes? [1:04:23] Hot takes? [1:04:24] Thank you. [1:04:25] I mean, it's... [1:04:26] Almost always feel like it's the most volatile time in history. [1:04:31] But it does feel like... [1:04:34] I mean, I actually grew up in the 90s. Man, the 90s was great. [1:04:39] Like it's just the world moving faster and faster every year. [1:04:44] And I think that ultimately means the stakes are higher, because the technology amplifies us all. [1:04:51] And like nothing's inevitable, right? We have to rise to the occasion. [1:04:55] rest of rise to like you know to the to be essentially transcend our interests and do us right for like [1:05:01] for society. And that's a lot. That's a lot to ask of [1:05:06] political leadership, our technology leaders, like, but I... [1:05:12] I hear people criticizing the AI companies [1:05:16] I think I look back in history. I was like, we know we we could be a lot worse off. I've seen I mean, we're lucky to have the leadership we do. [1:05:24] And I'm like, I'm really hopeful we pull this thing off because it's like, there's a lot of deficits. Well, Ben, it was a pleasure to have you on. Thank you so much for sharing all of your knowledge from... [1:05:37] real estate to credit to now VC and public markets. It was like such a, such a pleasure. And thank you for letting me ask so many peppered questions. Yeah, you didn't prep me at all for this.

[1:05:52] Okay. Thanks for having me.