FULL TRANSCRIPT
Slava Rubin (00:00)
In this episode of Smart Humans, we have my colleague Eric Cantor as guest host as we talk to co-founder and CEO of Wefunder, Nick Tommarello. We discuss how the SEC is getting more permissive and inclusive with everyday investors, the power of community venture rounds, and of course the comparison of the Roman Empire to today's macro. We talk about that and a lot more.
Eric (00:49)
All right, welcome back to the Smart Humans podcast where we talk about private markets and the people who lead them. We're really happy to be here with Nicholas Tommarello, the CEO and co-founder of Wefunder. My name is Eric Cantor. I'm a guest host for Slava Rubin who was traveling today and we're going to get in deep with Nick and find out what makes him tick. So Nick, welcome to the show. Why don't you start by telling us what got you here? You're running one of the most notable companies in the venture capital space, something that a lot of investors have heard about.
Where did it all start for you? How did you get into startups and venture capital and all this other fun stuff we talk about here on Smart Humans?
Nick (01:26)
Yeah, it's been a very, very long journey. I've always been a founder, never had a real job.
Most of my friends have been also founders historically. And I was always a little bit frustrated that back then, since I was not an accredited investor, I was basically legally barred from investing in them. And it never really made much sense to me that I can go to Las Vegas and gamble, but I can't actually make a rational bet on something I believed in. Or most companies that I really wanted to invest in weren't yet public, and all that growth was happening in the private markets.
Then back in 2011, 2012, when Congress was debating reforming these laws to allow on-and-accredit investors to invest, that's kind of when I got involved. It was more just for me, it was more like a lobbying effort back then. I didn't quite foresee that I would go start a company. But that part surprisingly happened pretty fast and easy within six months of starting this effort, Congress passed the Jobs Act.
and then I decided to start at Wefunder and it's been an incredibly long journey since then.
Eric (02:36)
Can I say why that was so important to you? I you're a founder, sitting there in San Francisco, your friends are founders. What made investing in their companies the most important thing for you to spend, I don't know what it's been, 10 years, 15 years now on?
Nick (02:50)
Yeah, it's interesting. It's like there's like this pay it forward culture, I think, in tech and in startups that don't exist quite as prominently in other industries. And I just knew that there have been angel investors that back me very early on that I kind of owe a lot of my personal growth and journey towards. And it's kind of nice to play that role. then the next generation is up and coming.
And I think like a lot of my motivation with Wefunder kind of changed over time. think initially it was about, you know, democratization. Like it's kind of like, I thought like ridiculous that basically the wealthy had a government protected monopoly on investing in the highest growth companies. And now I think what drives me is I see Wefunder as creating, you know, potentially millions of new angel investors. They might not invest a hundred thousand dollars, but they put a thousand dollars into the things they believe in.
And I think one of the more powerful inflections in a person's life is when people believe in them and then back it up by actually investing. And if I can like turbocharge that across the rest of the country outside of Silicon Valley or New York or Boston, I think that'd be a pretty good use of my life.
Eric (04:06)
So you talk about the jobs act, I think was created in the like 2012 range and maybe became usable in 2016 and that opened up Reg CF, Reg A, possibly depending how you interpret it led to certain things like ICOs, crypto, et cetera. So here we are, you know, 15 years, 14 years later, 13 years later from the jobs act being originated and thought of. Do you think that it's, was it a success? it accomplish what it was meant to? Did you feel that it's?
reached its potential or is it still kind of a work in progress?
Nick (04:38)
I definitely don't think it's reached its potential. I don't even think it really even started to reach its potential until 2021, which is when the SEC issued kind of the first batch of reforms. From 2012, 2016, it wasn't out yet. From 2016 through 2020, the regulations were quite bad. And there are exceptions, but in general, it was kind of hard to convince the highest growth companies to comply with all these very burdensome regulations.
Eric (04:46)
you
Nick (05:08)
Then in 2021, the SEC reformed these rules. And since then, we've managed to get some very good companies like Mercury Bank or Replet, Substack. And I think now there is a few extra reforms the SEC could do. But I also think it takes time to change the branding of equity crowdfunding, which is like a long...
jargon word that no one really wants to like community around. Like I think what could be prestigious for a company isn't that they were on a week under doing equity crowdfunding, but they actually had thousands of their earliest adopters, their customers actually believe in the product so much they wanted to invest.
And I would hope over time it would be more the conventional wisdom where it should be a market prestige that along the way, of course, raise venture capital, go raise a billion dollars for IMSA-Coia, but reserve a small part of your round for your earliest customers.
Eric (06:09)
So we want to talk about the community rounds for sure. think I want to triple click into what makes, what inspires you, what makes you tick. lot of the questions we got from our investors and partners was around that. So let's do that and then we'll talk more about the products that you see coming on the horizon. So what about your investment approach? In terms of the private market categories, we're talking a lot about startups and friends, which is early stage venture. What other categories do you think are interesting personally to be investing in and which ones do you avoid? I'm talking about private markets like...
Nick (06:38)
Yeah.
Eric (06:38)
real estate, private credit, art, collectibles, crypto. What do you think's interesting on that menu?
Nick (06:44)
Yeah, I think my approach is very different than most people. I don't really consider myself like an investor. When I have invested in the past, what I actually really care about is being the first check in, like as early as possible, when there's like nothing.
Eric (06:51)
Mm-hmm.
Nick (07:02)
And then when you do that, for me, it's really all about the human being you're backing. Like what is their drive? What is their grit? What is their resilience? Like how are going to power through and run through walls to make this thing they really care about happen? And I don't really particularly care what that thing actually is. So I'm more about betting on people than betting on industries. Of course, industries like, know, AI is amazing and there's going to be so much innovation there in the next 10 years, but I'm still mostly about the people.
Eric (07:30)
So I had to parlay that into like your own asset allocation, again, just percentage wise, would it be correct to say you're like way overloaded into early stage startups? ⁓
Nick (07:41)
Yeah, I
mean, an odd position is kind of a very ironic where one thing that led me to, you know, try to lobby to get these laws passed is because I wanted to invest personally back then I was not accredited. The ironic part is, that since I actually am the owner of the Wefunder platform, I'm actually not able to invest in any company on Wefunder or that could be Wefunder in the future. So most of my assets are actually like in the public markets.
I have done limited investing in the private markets, but it kind of like is hard for me to actually do that.
Eric (08:15)
Interesting. That is ironic. So you're like kind of a 70 30 stock bonds guy, basically, even though you
Nick (08:20)
I actually have like 100 %
stocks. My portfolio is very like heavily loaded in tech companies.
Eric (08:24)
Got it. Okay, so you have some high octaves.
So let's say investor like me who's interested in startups, doesn't work formally in venture capital or anything and says, hey, Nick, I want to build an allocation into venture capital. Like, what would you advise me on either both asset allocation, like what percent if I told you, right now I'm 70-30, I want to start building some venture experience. I think there's a lot of future ideas that need to get funded. I think there's outsized returns. How should I think about
creating that exposure and is it more of a like I pick the stocks versus like an index approach? Like what would you counsel me on that?
Nick (09:09)
Yeah, I counsel most people to start slowly and assume that any investment they make, they potentially lose their entire investment. And even if it works, to think of it more like a lottery ticket where 10 years from now, perhaps you'll be able to get some liquidity.
I would probably, it depends on the person's goals. I would probably pick a few companies on my own to get some practice about how to evaluate the industry, the founder, et cetera. I would probably also invest in some funds, either on Wefunder or AngelList, where potentially people with more experience picking companies in a certain vertical or industry and see what they pick and why they pick the companies. Wefunder itself has these things we call ⁓
Orange Funds where we get mostly like YC alumni to make investments in like each batch of YC companies. They kind of say why they made the investment. So it's a good way to get exposure to a bunch of YC companies and not do all that work of doing the due diligence talking to founders for each single one. I think it really depends on
Eric (09:55)
Really?
So I write one check and I get like
10 or 20 companies to just finish Y Combinator. that?
Nick (10:11)
Exactly. One check, you put in
$5,000 and you got like, you know, probably 30 companies in the latest YC batch and then why that person invested in them.
Eric (10:17)
That's cool.
So I can do some stock picking and some indexing. And what do you think? If I told you, I get to like a 2 % allocation, does that sound reasonable ⁓ over the next year or two?
Nick (10:23)
Exactly, yeah.
It depends on the controls. If
they can wait a very long time, like 10 years or more, to get the potential return, and then they can afford a complete loss of the investment, that sounds reasonable.
Eric (10:43)
Got it. So, let's talk about the broader, yeah, go ahead.
Nick (10:44)
I think one of the problems with the industry
is that what I just described actually investing in funds right now is only available effectively to accredited investors in the way that we do it. And one of the reforms that we hope the SEC will make or Congress will make in a few years is bringing that to retail investors cost effectively. ⁓
Eric (11:04)
So in other words, the
YC funds are Reg D, they're not Reg CF. Got it. Okay, yeah, that is problematic.
Nick (11:08)
Exactly. Exactly. And there are things like sweater ventures that give some access
to like to retail investors using an interval of fund structure. I personally believe that being able to charge carried interests and to share that carried interests with the people picking the companies gets much better deal flow and much better, obviously, portfolio companies to invest in. Exactly. ⁓
Eric (11:30)
Yeah, you're more aligned with the manager. Although now we're hearing
noise about taking it or carrying it in the tax loophole again. Every four years I think we hear about that.
Nick (11:37)
⁓ yeah,
you still make money on the same alignment. You pay a little more in taxes.
Eric (11:43)
Totally.
So let's talk about the broader market right now. I mean, it's been an interesting year, to say the least. What are the trends and where do you see this market going? And what does it mean? What are the different scenarios you're foreseeing here, whether it's inflation or geopolitics or any other factors that you think are going to hit markets in the next 18 months? What's happening? And what's your thesis on how that hits the crowdfunding, Reg CF type of
of offering.
Nick (12:12)
I'm relatively kind of generic and abstract on my predictions. I believe we're entering a really powerful growth cycle. Like I actually have a lot of faith in innovation in America.
Eric (12:17)
Mm-hmm.
Nick (12:26)
I think we've barely scratched the surface of how AI is going to transform our economy and increase productivity. I would hope that we can bet on something like fusion happening in robotics. So I actually think good times are ahead. I think some people are concerned by the volatility of the current administration. It's kind of hard to predict what's going to happen with tariffs, for instance.
But I even think with that, like if there's huge swings because people can't predict what Trump is going to do, that's relatively short term. And I don't think he's going to like walk the economy off the cliff. So I think long term, like I think I have a lot of faith in America and in future GDP growth. And then we look at crowdfunding specifically. I think we're just in the very, very early days.
I don't really think of the world as like, this is crowdfunding. I really think of the world as like, what is the population of founders that get to do really interesting things that can create wealth for society? And what percent of those founders can be convinced to let retail investors invest? I think even with current laws with no reforms over time, that would continue to grow. And I have some faith that the SEC has made it kind of a priority the next few years during this administration to have another batch of reforms.
instance perhaps letting retail investors invest in funds that could charge us even more.
Eric (13:46)
And so you talk to this community investing, like it's probably a time to talk about some of the products you're excited about. So what do you mean by the community rounds and where does that fit in with everything else coming out of the pipe?
Nick (13:58)
Yeah, I think where Wefunder has like the best product market fit, where we offer the most value to both investors and to founders is when a slightly later stage company that actually has a passionate community. And it could be a brewery that has lots of passionate brewery customers. could be a soccer team or it be some stack, but it's like they've built something. It is valuable. The people who use it, it solves their problem.
Eric (14:04)
Mm-hmm.
Nick (14:25)
And then the experience is this company like Substack sends one email out and they can raise $10 million like in a day because the people are really excited to invest. And then like the thesis here is that of course companies should raise from venture capital. We don't really compete with venture capital.
All we're saying is that after a VC invests in your company, just reserve a small allocation, let's say $5 million a year, so that your customers can invest alongside on the same terms. And I think over time, that will become more and more conventional wisdom, especially as we get more and more reforms to make it even easier.
Eric (14:55)
Thanks.
Who's saying the best matches for Wefunder's offerings now are companies that are maybe not started up six months ago, but companies that are a little further along, maybe raised a series ABC and want to bring in their customers as investors, ambassadors, and do that through equity. Is that what I'm hearing? That's what the community rounds are.
Nick (15:22)
Yeah, today, as
we exist right now, this time period, that is the best value we offer. And of course we have, you know, people trying to raise $50,000 for their coffee shop and they go to their local town and knock on doors and eventually get 50 grand. And that happens a lot and that works and that's valuable. know, fundraising isn't easy for founders. We're not like a silver bullet in that case. It's just like a platform that can make it a little easier to transact the investments, but you still are going to do the work of like knocking on doors.
in that case. I would hope sometime the next year or two, Wefunder would have a much better way of either indexing, so you could invest in a fund where fund managers deploy your money as a retail investor, or there's a way to a little bit like angel of syndicates, follow more sophisticated investors and when they invest they say why they invested, you can decide whether or not to invest alongside them.
So we're hopeful, especially with the SEC, the current administration, that we'll get some clarity that will enable us to do those things the next year or two.
Eric (16:26)
What are some of the companies that have done this community raise? You talked about Substack. I think I saw was Beehiiv one of the raises that went through. What are a couple more companies that our listeners have heard of that have gone that approach and what do you think motivated them to do that and to do it with you guys?
Nick (16:35)
yeah, we have your student.
Yeah, for those classic companies, let's say Arrived, Beehive, Substack, Replet, Mercury, most of those have like a billion dollar or more valuation. They've raised like a hundred million dollars or more.
They don't really need the money. They're not really going to Wefunder because like, I want $5 million. For that kind of founder or company, it's really about like, is the right thing to do to allow their earliest adopters and supporters to invest alongside them. For Substack, their writers being owners is valuable to them. They are a network that depends on writers keeping writing on Substack. And so if the writers also are shareholders,
the more likely to have more brand loyalty. So in this case, it's like good customer service, good for the brand, good marketing, the right thing to do to align incentives with their earliest adopters. So you can divide our customers into two categories. Don't need the money, that one, or need the money, in which case they just want money as fast as possible. And there's like a subset of companies that
Eric (17:26)
Mm-hmm.
Nick (17:50)
can use Wefunder to raise a little bit from their customers, which helps them raise more from professional investors than those professional investors could get more Wefunder investors. They just go back and forth and eventually like finish off their round.
Eric (17:57)
you.
And so those companies like what, they have options on where they could raise, right? Like, because there's other crowdfunding portals that have come up since the jobs act. So what made WeFund are the best choice for them?
Nick (18:20)
I think it largely comes from our values and what we actually care about. It's a bit of a contradiction in some aspects. I think for us, we really understood at a very gut level what it would take to do to convince good companies to want to raise out of eFunder.
And the absolute single best thing we can do for investors is to make sure that we have higher quality investments on the platform. We really didn't come at this from like a finance background or even really making money like desire. Like for me it's like, what can I do to convince really high quality companies to either open up the rounds to retail investors or what can I do to help companies get off the ground in the first place?
So more specifically, that made us do things that are a little bit irrational. Like we spend a lot of money and did a lot of work and did four years of lobbying to bring SPVs to crowdfunding. The way it works on most Reg D worlds like AngelList is that all the investors invest into a fund and then the fund makes more investment into the company. This is really important because good founders with other options don't want like a thousand direct...
They just want one investor with one person that can basically vote on any of their major actions that they do. We're the only platform that does that. We spent four years convincing the SEC to allow it, and then when they allowed it, we're the only one that did the work to enable this to actually happen.
Eric (19:52)
Right. And what about, I mean, not just the community rounds, but all the deals that you've done, what are a few of the like best performing ones? And looking back, did you think those would be the best performing ones when the funds got raised or were they surprises?
Nick (20:07)
Yeah, in the REG CF world, the best performing one is probably Mercury Bank, which I think has gone from one billion to three billion. In the overall world, it's mostly in regulation D. The biggest return an investor got was someone, do you remember Zenefits back in the day?
Eric (20:13)
Maybe.
yeah.
Nick (20:30)
It was on Wefunder at a $10 million valuation. And then it was like, I forget, like $5 billion like a year later. And now it's zero, but investors sold out at the top. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I remember one investor put in five grand and made $1.5 million like a year later and he sold. ⁓ And that's like a lesson in a couple of ways. Like one, like...
Eric (20:41)
I hope they got I hope they sold yeah
Wow, good for them.
Nick (20:58)
With venture, as you know, it's all about the power law. A power law company has like, know, a fucking astounding like thousand X returns. It's kind of crazy, but those are incredibly rare. There's like maybe like, you know, 10 of those that happen a year. And that kind of drives all the returns. I think the other lesson here though is that like, beware of hype.
Eric (21:15)
you
Nick (21:19)
Things that appear very flashy and that go up very, very fast often come crashing back down to earth. What really matters is building a long-term, sustainable business.
Eric (21:28)
Do you remember Zenefits raising on your platform? you think anything was special about this business or is just another another customer coming through and then a year or two later you were like, whoa.
Nick (21:36)
No, it ⁓ was
the first one we did and they were in our YC batch. So it's like, it's basically Parker doing us a favor. So we're in YC with Parker, like, Parker, can you please let us invest?
Eric (21:44)
Wow, that's tremendous. First time's a charm.
I mean, they say that the earlier the success you have in venture, the better you're going to do. So that's a pretty good early success, at least for that period of time. So you talked about the later stage. I mean, you talk about getting into, say, Mercury at a billion dollar valuation. So what we've found lately is a lot of our investors are thinking about these later stage deals because they want to hold stock that's going to IPO at some point. And these pre IPO deals, as they're being called, are, you know, legitimately on a two to three year path.
Nick (21:56)
Yeah.
Eric (22:18)
hopefully to IPOing, whereas a lot of the early stage stuff is, you know, even in the best case, like 10 to 12 years out historically. So what are your thoughts on late stage? Is that an asset class you're going to dabble in? Is Wefunder, do you agree that's what a lot of people are thinking about?
Nick (22:30)
Yeah.
I have kind of a split brain here where mostly I'm talking about the regulation crowdfunding world when I talk to you. But we actually do have a regulation D business if you're an accredited investor. And in the last year, we've invested in XAI and OpenAI and Anduril and like, you know, pretty good companies that are later stage. And there's obviously intense investor demand for those companies. We don't really talk about that much because it's a little bit of brand confusion.
Eric (23:02)
Mm-hmm.
Nick (23:02)
we find directly
in most people's minds is about community rounds for retail investors. But we're hoping that sometime with some more reforms, we can bring that asset class to retail investors.
Eric (23:14)
You know, was gonna ask me a lot of our people say, I'm not even an accredited investor. I wanna be in SpaceX. I wanna be in the big company. is there a path for me there?
Nick (23:19)
Yeah, tough luck.
⁓ investing in Google. I think Google owns SpaceX, but there isn't really a, as far as I know, at least a very good path for a retail investor to get any access to those companies directly.
Eric (23:37)
I mean, you laugh at
the Google thing, but you're right. There are ways, like indirect ways to do it, right? So there's the Cathie Wood fund, but there's the Destiny product that holds a bunch of companies. know, Fundrise has a product you mentioned, Sweater Ventures. There's more and more of these like interval funds packaged to be traded and anybody can buy shares at $20, $50, like reasonable prices versus the 250K minimum you're going to see if you go to try to trade at some platform. And that's if they let you in at that level.
Nick (23:41)
Yeah, Yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
Exactly.
Eric (24:04)
But I do think you're gonna see more of that would welcome you guys from where you sit You know participating that because I do think a lot of investors are very very interested And there's a question of the products allowing and of course the company's allowing it because SpaceX is also not crazy about 20 dollar shares of their product trading around So yeah
Nick (24:14)
Yeah. ⁓
Yeah.
I mean, game, the way the game works with the accredited world is that you invest in SPV, which invests in SpaceX or invest in another SPV that invests in SpaceX all without really the knowledge of the company. It's kind of a messy world out there.
Eric (24:43)
It is. It's definitely a wild west and we're trying to help people figure out how to navigate it. But we know they want to, right? So rather educate and engage them on it, doing it the right way versus just keep the wild west super wild. And it does seem like these private markets are going to become more mainstreamed, more available to the everyday investor. So any deals we're talking, whether it's early stage, late stage, middle stage community, how should I diligence a deal if I see it on Wefunder or do I
Nick (25:02)
Definitely.
Eric (25:13)
Should I assume your analysts have already like kicked the tires on this thing? It's the question of if I like the founder or is there some research I'm supposed to go do on platform, off platform? How should I decide if this is the right deal for me if I'm picking five or 10 of these?
Nick (25:27)
My general advice is to invest in things you really understand already.
or things that you just really believe the world needs. Like, you know, we've invested in crazy things like, you know, a fusion reactor or a cure for cancer in dogs. And obviously there's our moon shots that are very, very hard to actually accomplish, but it was like, okay, three MIT scientists trying to cure cancer in dogs. There's like some, you know, a report I can read, but I don't really understand it, but like, I want to invest, you know, 500 bucks because I like my dog and these guys seem smart. If you kind of use
Eric (25:32)
you
Nick (26:01)
your brain that way where it's like I wouldn't call it a donation but it's like a lottery ticket it's a small amount of money you just want the fulfillments of actually being a part of this journey that's like one category of investments
If you're really focused on like, want to make a financial return and do everything possible to maximize my odds of a financial return, I think you should really feel the problem yourself and like look at their product and see if it seems to be very well executed compared to the competitors. So like look at the vision of how these founders intend to scale it over time. Often things seem small and they start, but obviously over time they go get much bigger.
expand to other verticals or get more distribution channels. This is a little bit nuanced, but I would look to see who else has invested in the company.
It depends like a little bit on like, you know, the industry, if they're in tech or not, if they are a tech company that is solving an important problem and is growing and there are no professional investors at all, it might still be okay. Maybe there's a good reason for that, but I would like ask yourself, why is that? see if can convince yourself there's a good reason.
And vice versa, if Andreesen Horowitz was invested, that's a good sign. It doesn't mean it's a good investment though. It just means that at least one professional has looked at this and thought it was a good investment. And you can use your own judgment to see if you think that this actually solves your problem.
Eric (27:32)
Got it. Changing gears a little bit as we wrap up. I would love to just know a little more about the Nick thought process. So you're running a business that's in a mature stage, still in a highly evolving and fast moving ⁓ area. How do you actually spend your time? Where do you focus your energies?
Nick (27:49)
I wish it was
a fast moving. To answer your question directly, I spend my time, whatever I think is the most important thing to do at that time period. In the past, it's been recruiting. In the past, I've been a frontline engineer to make some big product improvements very, very fast. Right now...
I think there'll be an inflection point in the next year or two where we will get more reforms that will allow us to offer better products. So a lot of my time is trying to figure out what that path is and then talking with people in the SEC and in Congress to see if I can get some reforms to support that path.
I think Wefunder as a business is like stable. It's growing, it's profitable, but it's not growing really, really fast. So it's kind of like, you know, the calm before the storm, a little bit of peace time. We can think about how to the next year or two figure out what that next huge, like, you know, three X or four X year over year growth point is and how do we get there?
Eric (28:39)
Thank
makes sense and it is the is the interaction the SEC and all the government agencies change with administration or is it kind of you're more dealing with technocrats than politicians and it's basically the same
Nick (28:58)
would say the vibe has definitely shifted between administrations. think the general ethos of the last administration is to be very, very skeptical of any kind of fintech or finance. Generally relatively skeptical of anything that gives more access to retail investors. A little bit of, in my view, paternalism there. And I think the current administration is much more supportive of the concept of Weave Under in the first place and giving
more access to a wider range of folks to invest in good investment opportunities. Like one thing I'm pretty sure will happen in the next few years, like no guarantees, I don't have any information, but I would be very, very surprised if the SEC doesn't come out with a more common sense test to become an accredited investor. Right now you're a 65 or a 37, you get sponsored by a broker dealer.
Eric (29:47)
Yeah, the savvy test.
Nick (29:52)
But I can imagine a test that maybe you study for a few days on and then you don't need to be a broker dealer to actually go take the test. And so you can maybe come to Wefunder, make a few small investments in regulation crowdfunding, and then decide you want access to more regulation D deals. Even though you're not a millionaire, you still can have this mechanism to get access to those deals. If that's all we get, I think that would still help quite a lot. And I think we'll get more than that.
Eric (30:20)
That'd be cool. So if I want to think like Nick, I mean, you seem like a really thoughtful guy who's got a lot of knowledge across different domains. What do you go to for investment insights, books, pods, news? What sources of content or media are you consuming?
Nick (30:37)
I mean, these days, I'm more reading about ancient history than like modern day politics or investment theses. So like right now, I don't have a very good answer for this question.
Eric (30:47)
that's a good answer, that's original answer. What kind of history are you studying and how does that, what lessons does that have?
Nick (30:52)
Well, you know, I kind of
hate that it's a meme right now, but you know...
I guess more unique, I actually like the Eastern Roman Empire after Rome fell and like, you know, the 500s, Constantinople for another thousand years still existed. So I kind of geek out on that era right now.
Eric (30:59)
Hehehe.
And is this like preparation for what's to come with the American Empire? Is this just your own enjoyment?
Nick (31:19)
It's my own curiosity,
though. think one book that I read a lot that I like is The Storm Before the Storm, which goes into how the Roman Republic fell. And you can see a lot of similarities with
Both sides are very, very passionate. Both sides think the ends justify the means. And so both sides, bit by bit, chip away at the norms and traditions until at the end of the day, there's just violence. And I don't think America's gonna go that way. I actually think we have a much stronger institution. think our founders studied the Republic very deeply and kind of built a system to try to take into account what brought them down. But you can still see like a culture
the ends justify the means is just not good.
Eric (32:04)
Interesting. So the last question that we ask all our guests, and I know you're not a, I know you're a regulated FINRA financial institution. I know you're not a private market investor on your own. We ask all our guests, what's one investment that's public, one investment that's private that three years from now you think is going to look really interesting that somebody could consider today and why.
Nick (32:30)
I like Anduril ⁓ a lot.
It's kind of depressing in a way, but I think history has returned. I don't think America can any afford to ignore our defense. I think it's a big problem that we actually can't truly manufacture enough volume or mass of potentially drones to maintain the current status quo of relative peace and prosperity. And I can imagine Anduril taking up
a SpaceX like approach to defense manufacturing. I think it'd be very, very important to our country. ⁓ And public, I don't know. I think I just have the standard portfolio of people in tech, know, have, you know, SpaceX. I actually think.
I mean, Elon has a history, sorry, sorry, sorry, Tesla. Elon has a history, course, over promising on the timelines, but he seems to eventually get there. And I would like to buy the vision of myself buying a $20,000 Optimus robot in the next five years. Maybe it'll take 10 years, but I think that itself will be incredibly transformational.
Eric (33:28)
Hmm.
amazing. Thanks for that. So Nick, we've heard a lot from you today. We heard about starting as investing in your friends, getting you fired up about startups and SF. We heard Trump's drama in short term, talk through community round investing, what kind of opportunities that's going to open up for retail to get to later stage, more established startups. You told our listeners to invest in things they know. We heard about the continuing evolution of the SEC. You mentioned your fascination with the Roman Empire and some of the parallels it may or may not be giving us.
and of course your confidence in the continued surging of defense and automotive tech as themes. Love this interview, learned a ton. Wishing you luck and hope to get you back on here and see how a lot of this plays out.
Nick (34:27)
Thank very much. This is actually is much more fun and enjoyable than I thought it would be.
Eric (34:30)
Glad to hear it. Thanks, Nick. Talk to you soon.
