FULL TRANSCRIPT

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Slava Rubin (00:00)

In this episode of Smart Humans, we talk with Christine Healey, who's founder and CEO of HEALEY PRE-IPO. We talk about the world of pre-IPO companies and how you could get access before they go public. Which ones should you get into? How do you get in at the right prices? Who's there to help you? What are the trends that are happening? And for example, can you get into OpenAI, Anduril, Stripe, SpaceX, Anthropic? How do you make that happen? And how do you do that in this market? Is it the right time to get in today?

Enjoy this conversation.

Slava Rubin (01:04)

Hello and welcome to the latest episode of Smart Humans. I'm excited for today's guest. We are gonna be talking about the world of pre-IPO and how you can get into private companies. With us today is founder and CEO of HEALEY PRE-IPO, Christine. Welcome to the show.

Christine Healey (01:21)

Slava, thanks for having me.

Slava Rubin (01:23)

Absolutely. We're really excited to talk about this topic. You know, it's such a hot market for pre IPO companies. You have a lot of knowledge and a lot of access, but let's start where we always start, which is Christine, how did you get into this world? Take us all the way back. Was it from grade school, high school, college? You know, how do you get into the world of alternative investments from the beginning?

Christine Healey (01:45)

used to going all the way back. Well, my family was involved in finance, so I always viewed that as a possibility. I was always into business. I was that kid doing a lemonade stand on the street, even though I grew up in London and that was highly peculiar over there to do a lemonade stand on the street. But I was always entrepreneurial and enjoyed business and had an eye on finance from a really young age. So originally I went into investment banking.

both in New York and San Francisco and decided it wasn't quite a fit for me and I wanted to explore tech. So I left investment banking in 2018 looking for some sort of startup I could join that actually had an intelligent business model, actually had an interesting mission. So I stumbled upon what at the time was Equidate, which became Forge. And at the time they were talking about

building a stock market for private companies. At the time that was Airbnb, that was Lyft, that was Uber, and that was Pinterest. And a light bulb went off and I thought, now that's a company that makes sense. So I joined as employee number, I think 23, and saw all different sides of the business from operations to the business development and the strategic work and just fell in love with.

Slava Rubin (02:55)

Amazing.

Christine Healey (03:04)

⁓ everything pre IPO. So I was with, I was with Forge up till they were around 300, 350 employees. I worked in both San Francisco and Hong Kong and just grew up in that business starting as an Associate and landing as a Senior Director by 2021 or so. So that was ⁓ really a fantastic experience and I've been in love with private markets ever since.

Slava Rubin (03:28)

So for those that don't know, Forge is, I believe they're public, it's the public company now that focuses on exactly that, which is getting access to pre-IPO companies, is that right?

Christine Healey (03:38)

Exactly, and they're really building an ecosystem at this point around private markets with everything from custody to data and tangential services relating to private markets

Slava Rubin (03:48)

Awesome, so you're at Forge until, did you say like 2021? And what happens from there?

Christine Healey (03:51)

End of 21, yep.

So end of 21, I was approached by one of the original founders of Forge to join his new startup, which was Destiny. So Destiny had a mission of democratizing even further by creating a fund that would be traded on the New York Stock Exchange that anyone can invest in from their regular brokerage account. So that was.

really, really fascinating, a whole new play on scale. And I joined as Portfolio Manager and Head of Private Markets and did that for several years until end of 24.

Slava Rubin (04:26)

And why did you decide, so we'll talk about what you do today explicitly in a few minutes, but why did you decide to go entrepreneurial? You seem to be at these awesome other companies. Obviously, they're attracting you as incredible talent. Why go entrepreneurial?

Christine Healey (04:40)

I think when you have the entrepreneurial itch, eventually you feel the urge to scratch it, it keeps coming up. And so I really wanted to build something of my own and work independently. And really wanted to go back to working directly with clients versus being in the buy side seat where you're not necessarily working with individual clients in the same way as being a broker and helping individuals get access.

Slava Rubin (05:05)

Amazing, So like I mentioned, we'll talk about your company in just a second, but I do want to hear how you like to invest your net worth. So the classic investment is 60 % into the public markets, 40 % into bonds, 0 % into private markets, a la pre IPO. I'm guessing you have some pre IPO exposure since that is what you do.

So what's your mix? How do you think about the 60-40-0? What will your percentages be in terms of public markets, bonds, and then into alternatives?

Christine Healey (05:37)

Yeah, it depends how you define the mix, right? Because on top of what you actually put your discretionary money into, you also have, in my opinion, where you're spending your time as an employee or a contributor in the economy, right? So you also have maybe equity that you're building in the companies that you work for. And that I think should be considered as part of your portfolio, where you actually spending your energy and your time. So in my case, I worked at multiple

private companies in the industry, Forge now public. So that's a portion of my portfolio, both in terms of just how I allocate my time, but also in terms of having actual employee shares in these companies that I haven't yet sold, for the most part anyway. In terms of alternative investments, especially if you weigh in these private companies, it really becomes the vast majority of my net worth. mean, just.

Probably like 80 to 90 percent I would say.

Slava Rubin (06:32)

Is most of that in the fact that you're running your own company so that equity or is it also all these other one-off investments?

Christine Healey (06:38)

one-off investments as well as the employee shares that I hold in multiple

Slava Rubin (06:44)

that's amazing. So you're pretty high on the alternative number, which is pretty remarkable. So inside that 80%, ⁓ how much of that is anything beyond equity, private shares, like pre-IPO private shares? Is there any crypto in there? Is there any real estate beyond your primary home? Is there private credit, art, or collectibles, or is it all the pre-IPO stuff?

Christine Healey (07:07)

not real estate, not art, not anything too funky in terms of the alts. When it comes to the mix between employee stock and other alternative investments, it's probably around 50-50. So that 50 % invested in other companies is things like seed stage investments in companies that are related to pre-IPO. So there's a lot of companies popping up that have specific services like data.

for the pre-IPO industry. So I like to invest in what I know, even when it comes to alts And so companies that are trying to do something within pre-IPO is where I feel I have a great understanding of their prospects, their competitive moats et cetera. So that's where I like to play in some of these early stage companies building up ⁓ private markets. There's also exceptional companies that don't have to do with pre-IPO that I really love.

So there's a company called Zbiotics, which is a company making engineered probiotics that do things like turn sugar into fiber in your gut and do things like break down. Exactly. It started with the engineered probiotic that breaks down acetaldehyde. So I can tell you that saved me many, many times on those boat trips out in Hong Kong with all my friends. And it's, it's a product I really believe in. So there's edge cases like that, that don't have to do with private markets.

Slava Rubin (08:11)

That's the anti-hangover drink, right?

Christine Healey (08:29)

but I really prefer to invest in companies whose product or business model I know well.

Slava Rubin (08:34)

Awesome, Warren Buffett knows Coca-Cola, you know private markets. Awesome. So in terms of like crypto, you didn't mention, is that something you have some exposure to or you stay away?

Christine Healey (08:45)

Yeah, I've dabbled in crypto in the past starting in 2017 and just seen it, see it go up, see it go down, see it plateau for multiple years. At a certain point, I ended up selling at about net neutral profit wise, because it was just so boring for a long time. Definitely wish I held, but I think my approach to something like crypto these days is, I think it's more interesting to invest in some of the plumbing around.

crypto and some of these other more volatile assets. So Coinbase is very expensive these days, but as a parallel, I wish I had, you know, in the early days invested in something like Coinbase. So even though the individual assets are very risky, I have a piece of the plumbing and I'm really investing in, I'm investing with the view of the whole industry growing versus being tied to the ups and downs of one asset specifically.

Slava Rubin (09:36)

Yeah, I think it's a great point of view. A lot of people struggle to figure out how to navigate crypto, but Coinbase is in the public market. So a much easier user experience, much more straightforward and very much just a secular bet on is there going to be growth or not. So a very interesting way to get that exposure. Awesome. So thank you for sharing all the perspective on your own investments. Let's talk about the market, which there's a lot going on, right? So

You have, as we talked today, rumor now that there's going to be Fed rate cuts. There's a little bit hotter inflation today in the report. You have jobs are pretty steady. The market in terms of the stock market is practically all time highs. You have some of the mag seven that are just ripping. You had Bitcoin hit an all time high yesterday. You have ETH on fire. You have a lot of the private market companies. You have like

Open AI off to the races, Anthropic off to the races, SpaceX off to the races, other companies. So open-ended question. What do you think of where we're at today in terms of the economy and the market? It's very open-ended. We'd love to have you take it wherever you want.

Christine Healey (10:47)

Yeah, I think we'll dive into the private market dynamics a bit more probably later. But in general in the market, I think it's a really exciting time. I think there's a lot of opportunity. I think there's also a lot of chaos and new phenomena differing from what we've seen in the past. So you see, for example, the rise of these mega tender rounds and companies delaying IPO by utilizing these tenders as a form of liquidity.

And that's really leading to IPO's happening at a much, much later stage of many companies life cycle than ever before in the past. know, companies like Reddit, which were almost 20 when they IPO'd. That's unbelievable. Yeah.

Slava Rubin (11:25)

⁓ I mean, Figma

just IPO'd at 20 and ripped to 60 before coming back down to 41.

Christine Healey (11:32)

Sure, sure, sure. mean, Reddit, I mean, in terms of years from inception, almost a 20 year old company, is pretty wild for any other period in history. So you also see, in my opinion, the rise of the rise of the retail investor. So you see a lot more everyday people being dissatisfied with vanilla investing options and trying to get involved for better or for worse, trying to pick individual stocks or trying to be active traders, which

Slava Rubin (11:36)

sure, Fair enough, yeah, yeah.

Christine Healey (11:59)

is really interesting. think it's great that people are feeling more empowered and involved in learning about finance and learning about investments. But of course, the flip side is it can be a wild world out there and there's also room for exploitation and real risks to individual investors. So it's really interesting. I think it's very volatile time. IPOs have been very volatile.

You see spectacular failures or moderate failures and you see spectacular wins on the public market. But the thing is, you know, investors that invested pre IPO still have to make it through a six month lockup. So it doesn't always matter if you're up a hundred percent, you know, on the first day, you've got to make it all the way through to when you can actually move the shares around and actually sell. the volatility has been really epic in my opinion. And yeah.

Slava Rubin (12:47)

Yeah,

so with six months down the road or 12 months down the road, even better, one year from now, let's say we're talking again at a macro level, I'm gonna give you lightning round some questions. Do you think we have a ⁓ recession in the US in the next 12 months?

Christine Healey (13:02)

I wouldn't be surprised, but I'm very much not a public markets expert, so I wouldn't purport to be.

Slava Rubin (13:08)

Okay, so not surprised. How about like rate cuts? So there's rumors that there's gonna be rate cuts. do you think we're, do you have any points of view on rate cuts in the next 12 months?

Christine Healey (13:19)

Also wouldn't speculate, I would personally lean towards, we probably would see some rate cuts, but rate cuts, bonds, anything in that world is something that I'm not an expert in. I don't like to invest in things like bonds. For me, there's just not enough growth in there. So it's not where I personally play. So I'm about as educated on rate cuts as the average investor.

Slava Rubin (13:40)

All right, okay, last prediction here in the public market. So if you had to put a percentage growth on the public markets, like at an aggregate from today, a year out, do you think we're at 0 % growth, negative 10 plus 15? What do you think happens 12 months from now? If you were investing a dollar today, just into the S&P or the QQQ or into the Dow sort of thing.

Christine Healey (14:03)

I think that the great thing about the overall market is it's historically shown really impressive growth and it's just a matter of holding out really. despite the ups and downs overall, something like the S &P 500 has returned pretty staggering returns on average over time.

So I think it'll be up and down, but I think there's probably a good chance that it'll be net positive from today, looking a year or two in the future.

Slava Rubin (14:21)

So.

⁓ like the average yearly growth like seven or eight percent or like in the last couple years where we've hit 20 % or you have any conviction there?

Christine Healey (14:39)

guess somewhere in between but not with much conviction.

Slava Rubin (14:41)

Okay, great. So thanks for that. terms of actually HEALEY PRE-IPO, give us exactly what is it that you're doing with clients? How are you working with them to navigate the world of Pre-IPO?

Christine Healey (14:53)

So in terms of the private markets in general, the industry has been growing like crazy and there's still a ton of white space, meaning the number of people that actually realize they can invest in pre-IPO companies is so small relative to the proportion of the population that can qualify or that are accredited or that would be interested. So there's a slew of companies popping up trying to compete in the pre-IPO space and you see a lot of

big, highly funded companies, buying to be the next $10 billion company centralizing the pre IPO markets. So companies like Forge, companies like Hive, know, Equity Zen, and really a number of others that are trying to be a one stop shop for pre IPO, trying to cover 300, 400 or more private companies and really competing for scale and to be the winner in the category.

What I see as my insight and my approach is that it's really the classic debate between large company and small company. We all intuitively know what a small business brings culturally and for customer service relative to being, being client of one of the larger companies that might have hundreds of thousands of clients. So it's a pretty intuitive comparison. So what I'm trying to be is a boutique small business within private markets

where I can leverage my years and years of experience and expertise as a pre IPO portfolio manager, as a pre IPO broker, both in the U S and internationally. But with that small business approach where people work with me one-on-one, every client works with me. I handle every single transaction that comes to my company. And you get a personal approach, a concierge style approach to finding the investment that you want in the pre IPO market versus being.

part of a highly scaled business where you're one of 100,000 or more clients.

Slava Rubin (16:52)

And just so people understand, the companies that you're typically working on are the hot companies. So is it like the SpaceX, Stripe, Anthropic, OpenAI, Anduril et cetera, or feel free to add in whichever companies or edit as you like.

Christine Healey (17:06)

Yeah, exactly. I'm much more specialized than a lot of the larger businesses. A lot of the larger businesses boast that they cover 300, 400 companies. I think that's not the best, most efficient way to spend my time. I would prefer to be an expert in the markets of a smaller number of companies that are most relevant to most investors today. So the vast majority of the investor interest is really concentrated in

a number of those companies you mentioned from SpaceX, OpenAI, Anduril, Anthropic, ScaleAI, et cetera. So I play in a smaller number of names and I try and just compete actively in those markets and find better terms for my clients hopefully than they can get elsewhere.

Slava Rubin (17:47)

Awesome. So what are the recent trends that you're seeing? What's hot and what's not, in terms of industries and companies.

Christine Healey (17:54)

Definitely hyper concentration is one of the biggest trends. So I think there's different ways to manage risk in the market. One of those trends is diversification. So you're seeing the rise of more broad-based funds like destiny or like ARK Ventures, where you can invest in the whole asset class or a proxy for the whole asset class in some cases. Alternatively, you're seeing some clients manage risk by saying, I just want to invest in the companies where I have highest conviction.

and forget the rest. So that's where you get extraordinary volumes and things like SpaceX and Stripe and OpenAI. So that's, think, a huge trend. The second trend is broadening access. So you see more firms trying to democratize access by having tech solutions that enable smaller check sizes and even regulatory pushes to expand accreditation.

requirements and so on to bring more people into the loop for private deals. In terms of the actual investments, AI has really exploded in the past couple of years where you see an extraordinary amount of demand for OpenAI, Anthropic, Scale AI, as well as companies that are applications of AI and so on. So AI has really, really taken over, but you also see

some of the legacy marquee active names like SpaceX continuing to be very active or Stripe as well. And it's just, it's been very interesting to see.

Slava Rubin (19:26)

What are the areas that are kind of losing momentum or the verticals that are kind of cool or cold?

Christine Healey (19:32)

Really any company that's outside of the top 15, 20 names is much harder to transact in. So if you're a seller of a company that isn't one of those hot 10, 15, 20 names, it can be hard to sell. And sometimes people think, well, there's a price for everything. I'll just, I'll just lower the price. But in the world of pre IPO, there isn't a price for everything. And if there's just no buyers in a certain market, it puts you in a very tricky position as a seller.

And sometimes the best thing you can do is just wait until there's more company milestones or more press or the company hires a CFO in a move to prepare to go public or some other milestones that might invigorate the secondary market and bring more activity. Sometimes if it's a dead market, it just continues to be that until there's a new catalyst.

Yeah. And for buyers though, if you're a buyer and you have a very specific thesis on a company outside of the top 20, that can be a very powerful position to be in because you have much more leverage with these sellers. You can sometimes get good discounts if there aren't a lot of competing buyers. So it can be very interesting if you genuinely have a view or you've underwritten a company outside of the, you know, the core 20. But you also have to consider

if you needed liquidity down the road, how easy would it be to sell if it's a less active market for that company? So there's all different profiles of liquidity, of growth, of financial metric visibility, and all different things, just depending on the type of investor you are as an institution or as an individual.

Slava Rubin (21:09)

It seems as if the public markets are quite warming up to IPOs. We've had CoreWeave, ⁓ Circle, and now Figma and others. How is that dynamic impacting your pre-IPO activity?

Christine Healey (21:24)

Strong IPOs tend to be positive for pre-IPO activity in general, at least how we've seen it historically. So when companies are closer to IPO, there's often a huge uptick in activity right before the IPO or increasingly as companies approach IPO. And when you see IPOs do relatively well, that also invigorates demand, really.

Definitely positive, but I personally believe that a lot of potential IPOs will be delayed by this alternative option of mega, mega tender rounds. So you see companies like Stripe, see companies like SpaceX that are modeling staying private much longer than they maybe necessarily need to because they want to keep control. They want to grow privately. They want to focus on their mission.

And, you know, these are companies that are very much in vogue in some cases, not companies that couldn't go public or wouldn't have demand on the public markets. So I think more and more companies will do that when they could actually IPO if they wanted to. And I'm expecting that to cannibalize a lot of the IPO pipeline.

Slava Rubin (22:34)

super interesting. Figma as an example, it could be any company, but Figma as an example, there's people that kind of knew it was gonna go public soon-ish. So there's an opportunity to jump in in the private markets. Obviously there's some illiquidity, some fees, some user experience challenges there, or you can try to get in right at the IPO and a little easier, potentially the higher price obviously.

What are you hearing or seeing as people try to navigate the should I guide it in before it goes public, meaning right before it goes public, not the week before, but right before it goes public versus wait till it goes public. Any lessons there?

Christine Healey (23:11)

think it's such an interesting question. There's arguments for and against. So if you invest when the company's already public, you're not gonna be subject to the six month lockup period that most early investors who invested while the company was private are subject to. The lockup period can be a real killer for returns. You know, have companies.

Slava Rubin (23:31)

lockup period meaning

that people are not allowed to sell their shares until after six months after the IPO happens.

Christine Healey (23:37)

Yeah, I'll give you an example. I had a small fortune of Forge employee shares that was looking real pretty for a while in the first few months that Forge was a public company that has now lost probably over 95 % of its value and had lost the bulk of its value by the end of the lockup period where I actually got my shares. Yep.

Slava Rubin (23:54)

wow, in that six months, in that six

months, they lost the majority of that value.

Christine Healey (23:58)

Yes,

and that's not uncommon. Forge has been probably more volatile than many stocks, but it's not an uncommon story that value collapses after a six-month lockup. So the lockup can be a real killer even to IPOs that initially look like they've done really well. So that's maybe a consideration if you invest privately that you're likely subject to a six-month lockup post-IPO. If you invest while the company is public, you

that's less likely to be a consideration. But there's also the consideration that these companies oftentimes are going public very, very late in their life cycle. They might already be in some cases, hundreds of billions of dollar valuation companies. And in many cases, the vast majority of their growth has already occurred. The vast majority of wealth creation to investors has already occurred and mostly accrued to

be already hyper wealthy or the venture capitalist. So if you are exclusively investing on the public markets, you are really limiting yourself to, in some cases, a tiny portion of growth left in these companies journeys. So that's really part of the mission behind ⁓ growing access to private companies, because frankly, it shouldn't just be people that are already rich or people that are professional venture capital investors.

that get to financially reap the rewards of some of the biggest tech innovations of our generation. And so that's really why myself and others are feeling strongly about getting more people involved earlier. So if you're able to invest, let's say around or two before an IPO, often your entry price is low enough that even if the public listing is quite volatile,

You have a financial buffer and if the IPO ultimately does okay, you might still do very well because of your cheaper entry price. Or if the IPO does fantastically, your gains could be, you know, multiplied in some cases, if you had a much earlier entry price. So that's really the power. And in some cases, the public volatility mitigation strategy around investing around or two before

IPO. But to your question, the period immediately before IPO, often there's a run up in prices, and the prices like explode sometimes in the weeks or months before the actual listing. So I don't always like to see investors getting in right right IPO, because that could be where there's much higher pricing and

it's anyone's guess whether you're actually getting an attractive entry price if you're in that last phase right before the IPO.

Slava Rubin (26:43)

Combine that with the lockup, might be a bad combination.

So.

We did actually a really interesting session, totally separate from this conversation, where you and I actually broke down the entire glossary and tried to educate the listener as to all the different things you need to think about as to how you can get into a pre-IPO company. We're not gonna renew that here, but it's just a little commercial for folks. If they wanna learn more about all the details as to how to get into pre-IPO and wanna get educated, they could go onto the research section of WithVincent.

find that discussion between Christine and I, and we talk, think, for an hour into gory details about all the things you need to think about. But for the sake of this conversation, I want to keep it high level. For the listeners, let's say I'm a customer, I want to get into some Anduril What's the minimum I need to invest to be able to work with you to get into Anduril? Is it 1K, 5K, 10K, 100K, a million? How many zeros?

Christine Healey (27:39)

Baseline minimums tend to be around $100,000 for these single asset transactions, occasionally lower to 50K and occasionally higher to 200K, 500K, even a million, depending on the particular transaction and the particular seller. But generally you should expect 100K plus.

Slava Rubin (27:56)

So I'm looking for some Anduril in this example. I'm gonna put in the minimum of 100K. So I say, Christine, help me find 100K of Anduril. What then happens?

Christine Healey (28:06)

So I go to my network of sometimes the company itself, sometimes other brokers that I know or other platforms. And a lot of the times it's private individuals, it's family offices, secondaries funds, VCs, just this huge private network that I've built up in the past seven or eight years. And I look for your perfect seller ideally or for...

⁓ several sellers in a best case scenario and we can compare offers. So my job as a broker is to source you investments that you're looking for, as well as to help you contextualize pricing and understand the structures and details at play, as well as to help you negotiate with that seller and try and optimize things like fees or other terms for the actual investment.

Slava Rubin (28:57)

Yeah, so there's a lot of conversation about direct on a cap table, first layer SPV, second layer SPV. Again, go to that other session to learn about all of that. And in that situation, you find that 100K of Anduril or you find that person to sell it. I plan on buying it. How does the transaction go down and who gets what fees and what's the total cost for all of that?

Christine Healey (29:16)

100K level, in all likelihood, you're investing into a Special Purpose Vehicle, basically a fund that's pooling investors together for that deal. So you should definitely expect that structure. Now, there's different terms for different ⁓ SPVs and different managers. So you want to pay attention to whether your investment is coming at zero management fee and zero carried interest, or whether there might be additional fees attached, like a carried interest charge, which eats into your

profits when you eventually exit. So I always recommend people go through their docs in a lot of detail, look for those terms and anything you don't understand, don't just skim over it. Ask the questions or ask your broker and understand what you're committing to. So you're going to look out for management fees, you're going to look out for carried interest, you're going to look out for any fees for delivery of shares upon an exit.

You're gonna look for how that manager thinks about liquidity if you maybe wanted to sell your position Three years down the road while the company is still private and how they how they approach that sale Ideally making sure that they wouldn't charge you any kind of additional fee if you did make that sale down the road And other things so you really want to understand all the different scenarios and think think ahead

to make sure there aren't any fee kickers coming to get you in future and to negotiate anything that you need to negotiate upfront to keep your optionality.

Slava Rubin (30:40)

Awesome, and then how do you charge as part of your service?

Christine Healey (30:43)

I typically charge a 5 % broker fee, which sometimes scales based on size. And that's a one time upfront charge.

Slava Rubin (30:51)

Awesome. Great. So this has been super helpful. Is there anything else we should know about the pre-IPO markets right now from your perspective?

Christine Healey (31:03)

The pre IPO markets right now are extremely, extremely chaotic, extremely fragmented. And there's a lot of excitement from more and more people about investing in pre IPO, but it's probably harder than ever and more intimidating than ever, especially to an individual investor who might not work in these markets every day, or maybe they're a surgeon or they work at Google and they, they understand the companies they want. Maybe they want SpaceX really badly.

but they are seeing offers that maybe seem shady or unreliable, or they take an offer at face value that ends up falling apart and wasting their time. And it's a really, really challenging environment for a lot of potential buyers right now. So I think you get what you pay for in a sense, and there's a mix of brokers and services right now of varying quality.

And it's really important to do your homework also on the broker or service that you hire, make sure you trust them, make sure they answer questions in a way that you can understand. And they give you that level of service that you deserve because there's a whole range of quality out there. And I see clients every day that have had...

months of time wasting or they've wired for a transaction and then it falls through and they've had their money refunded and it can be very, very, very frustrating. So make sure you're getting the right guidance and the right partner in terms of a broker to help you move forward.

Slava Rubin (32:33)

Great, turning the page, you obviously know a lot about a lot in this space. What is it that you're reading? What is it that you're watching? What is it that you're listening to? What makes Christine Christine?

Christine Healey (32:43)

I am so nerdy when it comes to private markets and I haven't found enough great books and podcasts and things out there other than of course I love the podcasts that we're doing with Vincent and I think it's important to un-gatekeep as I say some of the real day-to-day tips concerning private markets.

So I don't see a lot of that ready for me to read or for me to consume. And so what I try and do, for example, my LinkedIn or my email distribution is to not just talk about why private markets are cool, but how current trends are affecting negotiations. For example, what leverage to buyers and sellers have at a given point in time, or what do the structures actually look like for different companies? So.

I don't see that material out there and that's partly why I'm trying to create it and to work with partners like Vincent to get more tangible insights out there for people to learn more about the industry. But I did want to say what I personally do love to read and consume is actually health and wellness, which you may not love as an investment tip, but I feel very, very strongly that health and wealth are intertwined.

Slava Rubin (33:50)

We like all the tips. We like all the tips.

Christine Healey (33:56)

The biggest cause of bankruptcy in the US is medical bills, or if you're managing a chronic condition that can sometimes cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. And so I really believe in as much as you can, taking care of your mental health, taking care of your physical health. And that's really the best way to, ensure your financial longevity to, to make self-aware and thoughtful investment decisions across the board and not just be swept up in fads or

⁓ you know, irrational behavior, which we're sometimes seeing these days. And so I love reading self-help books, health books, wellness.

Slava Rubin (34:32)

Any particular book you want to mention?

Christine Healey (34:34)

There's a book, I think it's called, Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers. There's a more philosophical and psychological book, which I think is called, The Courage to Be Disliked, and a few others like that. And it all focuses on challenging your current habits and looking at how you can optimize your life and ultimately be self-empowered in choosing the type of life that you want.

Slava Rubin (34:39)

wow.

I love it. We like always getting unique suggestions. That's great. And now the final section where we always put our guests on the spot, the three years out picks, one in the public markets and one in the private markets. We'd love to hear what your picks are and why, obviously for our listeners and for you, this is not investment advice. This is purely educational and for entertainment, but we'd love to hear Christine.

What is your public pick and why and what is your private pick and why?

Christine Healey (35:25)

For public market investing, I'm very vanilla. So there's a statistic that only 10 % or so of hedge fund managers that professionally invest in public markets can actually beat an S&P 500 tracking ETF. So especially as a private markets person, not a public markets person, I don't think...

I don't think most people have any business trying to pick individual stocks or timing the markets. So public markets wise, I love investing in VOO, relatively low cost S&P tracking ETF. And that's where I put my money when it comes to more vanilla stuff. In terms of private markets, this is not an endorsement for other people, but where I personally would love to put my money, I have SpaceX on my list, Neuralink and Anduril.

So Anduril and SpaceX are companies that have historically shown quite dramatic growth, which I like. SpaceX is a company that has quite unusual growth visibility historically, where they have these tenders every six to 12 months that historically have marked the stock at escalating higher prices ⁓ semi-regularly, which is kind of a weird.

a weird quirk of SpaceX in particular, which I like, and Neuralink, which is a little bit earlier on, but I think could be a really interesting growth story. So that's personally a few stocks where I would love to personally invest when I get the chance.

Slava Rubin (36:53)

So SpaceX and Neuralink are both Elon Musk. And then Anduril is a little bit of a younger company, but obviously quite trendy. Awesome. So this is super helpful. we've covered a lot of ground starting from being a lemonade stand owner in London, which as you said, which was quite unique to going into investment banking, getting into the world of alternatives and pre IPO with Forge and then Destiny, becoming an expert in the space.

You shared with us about your view on investing. You definitely like to focus on the stuff that you know, which is pre IPO, whether it's your own stock or whether it's into other companies. You told us about Zbiotics, which was cool. It's interesting you didn't mention KoiBase as your public pick, but it sounds like that might be one of your public picks as well. You have a lot of good background as to what's happening in the market, whether it's concentration focus, democratization of access, and also the trend about these massive tender offers. I think that's something everybody's going to hear more and more about.

Obviously we talked about the best companies that people should look out for, know, SpaceX, Scale, Anthropic, Anduril, Stripe, OpenAI, and really you cover all of these, which is so awesome. I really thought it was very interesting that you combine health and wellness with the idea of, you know, financial health and your physical health. The illustration of the books is awesome, which is why Zebra's...

Don't get ulcers. I think people might start actually reading that one based on you. And then The Courage to be Disliked I love the title. And you gave us your two picks, which is awesome. VOO, which is pretty conservative, but that'll make sense based on how you said you like to invest. And then you gave us a trifecta of private picks. SpaceX, Neuralink, and Anduril. Christine, thank you very much.

Christine Healey (38:31)

Thank you so much, Slava

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