Alt Goes Mainstream: The Latest on Alternative Investments, WealthTech, & Private Markets

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...

Today we have a guest who is building the infrastructure for a new asset class – sports cards.Leore Avidar is a visionary founder who is building a ground-breaking company, Alt, which is backed by Alexis Ohanian and Seven Seven Six, as well as First Round Capital, Addition, SV Angel, Box Group, and Kevin Durant’s Thirty Five Ventures.Alt is on its way to changing how we think about investing. This was such a fun conversation. We talked about:How Leore’s experience and excitement for building infrastructure has dovetailed with his passion and love for sports and collecting cards.How he’s building the future of the sports card market with Alt by creating the tools and infrastructure enable people to value, trade, and store their investmentsHow cards can be a tool to connect different generations through financial literacy.How culture can become a financial asset. Alt is the culmination of his experiences working on Wall Street as a trader to working on the API economy at Amazon Web Services to making direct mail programmable at Lob. He's building the infrastructure - much like Coinbase has done in crypto - for the world of alternative investments and specifically trading cards. As we've seen the development of market structure in other asset classes like public equities, fixed income, crypto, etc, it will only be a matter of time before we have a similar evolution in the alternatives and collectibles spaces and Leore is right at the forefront of this curve. Card collecting and investing is on a tear - 2020 and early into 2021 saw sales of sports cards at public auction reach all-time highs. Leore has built out an incredible team and vision to build the platform at the epicenter of this market - and he's also built out a fund, Alt Fund, to invest into top cards.He's leveraging his deep background in the space, having invested in sports cards for 5 years and generated returns that best many hedge fund and VC managers over the same time period. And most of all, he's a company builder who combines the best of a visionary founder who sees markets before they develop with the ability to execute and ship product. He's also the founder and CEO of Lob, a highly successful Y Combinator-backed company.Today’s podcast felt like we were peering into the future of what financial markets will look like. Thanks Leore for giving a glimpse of what’s to come.I hope you enjoy.

I’m thrilled to kick off the Alt Goes Mainstream podcast with a special guest - one of the leaders in the alts industry, Lawrence Calcano of iCapital Network.Lawrence has built iCapital into one of the category defining companies in the alts space. They have democratized access to high quality alternative investment products for the wealth management industry.Lawrence and the iCapital team have built the de facto operating system for the wealth management community to invest in and access leading institutional quality alternative investment fund managers. They’ve grown to almost $70 billion of AUM across 740 funds and 125,000 underlying accounts in less than 7 years.In the past year alone, iCapital grew their platform assets by over $20 billion and raised $162 million from top growth and strategic investors including Ping An, BlackRock, Blackstone, Goldman Sachs, Hamilton Lane, and WestCap.Lawrence has had an an illustrious career as a banker and operator. Prior to iCapital, he was a Partner and Co-Head of the Global Tech Banking Group at Goldman Sachs, where he spent over 17 years advising tech companies on many landmark M&A deals and IPOs. He was named to the Forbes Midas List of influential people in venture capital for 5 out of 6 years from 2001-2006.And now his second act as an entrepreneur at iCapital may top his first act as a Partner at Goldman.I hope you enjoy.

Welcome to Alt Goes Mainstream!