Smart Humans with Slava Rubin

Congressman Patrick McHenry is serving his ninth term as the representative for North Carolina's 10th Congressional District since starting in 2005. He has become a leader on crowdfunding, capital formation, and other forms of disruptive finance. In the 116th Congress, Congressman McHenry was elected as the Republican Leader of the House Financial Services Committee. Additionally, Congressman McHenry authored the primary legislation to legalize equity-based crowdfunding in the United States. The crowdfunding language he first authored in 2011 was eventually included in the JOBS Act which President Obama signed into law in April 2012.

Scott Lynn is a serial entrepreneur and passionate art collector.  He is the Founder and CEO of Masterworks.io, a platform making it possible to invest in multimillion-dollar works from artists like Banksy, Kaws, Basquiat, and more. In 2021 the platform reached unicorn status. In 2014, Scott founded Payability, a digital lending provider. Scott has been an active collector of contemporary art for more than fifteen years and has built an internationally-recognized collection of Abstract Expressionism that has included works by Clyfford Still, Barnett Newman, Mark Rothko, Willem de Kooning, and more. In addition to Masterworks, Scott serves on the board of v2 ventures, Payability, and the Brooklyn Rail.

Sahil Lavingia is a founder, investor, and author. He is founder & CEO of Gumroad which exists to help every creative earn a living selling the stuff they make directly to their audience. He used the new equity crowdfunding rules in 2021 for Gumroad to be the first ever company to raise $5m from the crowd. He also founded SHL Capital, which invests more than $15 million a year in early-stage startups. Previously, he was Pinterest employee No. 2. In his spare time he wrote a book, “The Minimalist Entrepreneur: How Great Founders Do More with Less.”

Nat Turner is currently CEO of Collectors Holdings after taking CLCT private from the Nasdaq for nearly $1 Billion. The holding company is focused on the collectibles industry - including PSA (trading card grading), PCGS (coin grading), Wata Games (video game grading), and Goldin Auctions. Before Collectors Holdings, Nat built and exited two companies - Flatiron Health, a technology company focused on the oncology industry, was acquired by Roche for $1.9 Billion in 2018. Invite Media, an advertising technology company based in NYC, was acquired by Google in 2010. An active angel investor since 2010, Nat has invested in over 250 startups, including BarkBox, Cedar, Clover Health, Color Genomics, Oscar, and Plaid.

Mary-Catherine Lader is Chief Operating Officer of Uniswap Labs, the top DeFi platform by marketcap. She previously was a Managing Director at BlackRock, and Chief Operating Officer of the firm’s Digital Wealth business and head of its climate tech business, Aladdin Sustainability. BlackRock has nearly $10 Trillion in assets under management, serving retail and institutional investors across the world. She began her career as an investment analyst with Goldman Sachs’ Special Situations Group and served on the staff of the World Economic Forum’s Davos gatherings for a decade.

Joe Lonsdale is the managing partner at 8VC, a US-based venture capital firm which manages $5 billion in committed capital. He was an early institutional investor in many notable companies including Wish, Oculus (acq.Facebook), Guardant Health (NASDAQ: GH), Oscar (NYSE: OSCR), Illumio, Anduril,, Flexport, Joby Aviation, and Orca Bio. Joe has been on the Forbes 100 Midas List since 2016 and was the youngest member included in 2016 and 2017. Before focusing on institutional investing, Joe co-founded Palantir (NASDAQ: PLTR) a global software company known for its work in defense and other industries. After Palantir, he founded and remains as Chairman of both Addepar, which has over $2.5 trillion managed on its wealth management technology platform, and OpenGov, which provides software for over 2,000 municipalities and state agencies. More recently, he is also a co-founder of Affinity, Epirus, Esper, Swiftscale Bio, Resilience Bio. Joe began his career as an early executive at Clarium Capital and also worked with PayPal while he attended Stanford.