FULL TRANSCRIPT
Slava Rubin (00:00)
In this episode of Smart Humans, we talk with Noel Moldvai and discuss the world of pre-IPO. He's the CEO and founder of Augment, the marketplace that allows you to trade pre-IPO stock. We discuss what verticals are interesting, like defense, AI, and what is less interesting. What's going to happen in the economy? Which companies should you be investing in? You probably all know about SpaceX, but what are the other companies that could be interesting to get into today?
Slava Rubin (00:54)
Hello and welcome to the latest episode of Smart Humans. I am super excited for today's guest. We have Noel Moldvai who's the CEO and co-founder of Augment. I'm particularly excited because he's an expert in all things pre-IPO companies and IPOs. And that's what everybody's already talking about right now with the start of the year in 2026. So Noel, welcome to the show.
Noel Moldvai (01:15)
Thanks for having me, Slava.
Slava Rubin (01:16)
Absolutely. So let's get started where we always get started, which is how did you even get into this world? Take us back as far as you'd like. Childhood, birth, know, high school, college, first jobs. Where does this all come from?
Noel Moldvai (01:29)
Oh man. All right. I'll start at birth. Was born in the former Yugoslavia. When I was four or five, war started to happen over there. We moved over to Canada. Toronto area was there for about six years. And right before the dot com bust,
we, my dad got a job in, in the Bay Silicon Valley in California. So we moved over there. and I was in the Bay for about 20 years, East Bay went to school there, lived in San Francisco, worked in the peninsula and Silicon Valley. then COVID times, just like a lot of people made the move over to, to Austin. And we've been here for, you know,
about four years and, loving it. Yeah. So, this is around 2018. So, I'm a product guy. I'm not a finance guy. I've really only been in the financial services space since we really started Augment out of necessity.
Slava Rubin (02:22)
How did you start thinking that, is it a tech angle that you're interested in or was it the pre-IPO companies that you're interested in? How did that happen?
Noel Moldvai (02:47)
and, I was at a company called, called Rubrik was one of the first, employees there is back in, call it late 2014, early 2015. was there for about six years. and I started hearing about, you know, people being able to get liquidity for their shares. Cause Rubrik at the time was a super high. ⁓ growth company, you know, not compared to some of these, the AI companies today, you know, Anthropic
Started 2021 four years later. It's a 350 billion dollar company. It's not that type of trajectory, but but high nonetheless and you know started seeing Messages in my LinkedIn from these IP pre IPO brokers that were like, hey, do you want to sell some Rubrik shares? And I never really gave it much thought Then I left Rubrik in 2020. I wanted to do another startup in data security, which is kind of
forking off from my, my Rubrik journey. And, at the same time that I left my job, I moved in with my, my girlfriend, then wife and in a pretty nice place in San Francisco and COVID hit. And, you know, the people that I was going to start this company with were a little bit older. They didn't want to take the risk. So I was just like hanging out here with a bunch of expenses and no job and.
I was like, okay, well, I don't, I don't want to go back to a corporate job. How about I go and just build a bunch of stuff that I didn't have time to before. And was doing that for a little bit. and then was like, well, I also want to buy a house. I want to get engagement, engagement, running. I want to get married. All those things cost money. ⁓ I started Rubrik in my early twenties, you know, startup. So I was getting paid below.
you know, I would get paid at a, at a big company like Google, which I was at before and, , realized that 95 % of my net worth was in this supposedly illiquid Rubrik stock and, , was trying to do a secondary transaction. I was like really optimizing for price. So didn't have a full-time job at the time. I was probably spending 20 hours a week on this. , and eventually I got a deal done. , , you know, I probably talked to 40 different people.
⁓ during that time constantly emailing back and forth. And, you know, we ended up paying one of these independent brokers that were not on one of the big platforms at the time, like Sharespost or Forge or Equity Zen, a bunch of money. And I thought there was a better way to do things because at the end of the day, really all these brokers were doing were selling their networks. And I think technology would lend itself well to solving that problem.
Where we are today is very different than what we initially set out to solve. But that was really the story. So this was circa 2020, 2021, and ended up meeting my co-founder, Adam, who's one of the first real brokers in this space on the capital market side and doing pre-IPO trading of Facebook back in 2011, 2012.
And we vibed. I ended up talking to a bunch of people in the space. He was like one of the crazy ones that was willing to give up all this short-term cash that you could get from being a connector in that space. And a lot of things happened between 2020 when we really started to have this idea in 2022, which is when we started the company. But started the company to try to make secondary markets better.
Slava Rubin (06:12)
So as part of your net worth, you have so much tied in this quote, illiquid Rubrik stock. And fast forward to today, you have your net worth, whatever that is. We always love to hear how these smart people, you leading these companies think about their own net worth. So the traditional allocation is 60 % into public stocks, 40 % into bonds, 0 % into alternative investments. High level, what do you think your mix is between
Noel Moldvai (06:18)
. .
Slava Rubin (06:42)
stocks, bonds, and
anything alternatives, which are 100 % mix.
Noel Moldvai (06:48)
Well, I would say, you know, that I had that night. I won't. Okay, so, so alt alt that aren't that aren't Augment. Well, I think, you know, I mentioned before, like 95 % of my net worth was in was in this Rubik's stock Rubik's appreciated quite a bit since then.
Slava Rubin (06:51)
Don't count your own personal shares right now in your own company as part of that because that's an unfair. ⁓
Noel Moldvai (07:11)
And I've also trimmed my position a bunch, but I'm probably say 60 % Rubrik still. In terms of public equities, if you include the Rubrik, it's probably around 70%. ALTS, I'm probably 10, 15 % in ALTS. that includes, Rubrik is public now, yeah. They IPO'd 2024.
Slava Rubin (07:28)
Right. Rubrik is public now or still private?
Great, so that's great for everybody to know. So that means you're now public position, including how much is all of your net worth with all of public equities, including Rubrik.
Noel Moldvai (07:46)
All public, what percentage of it? It's 70%. 70%, yep. Probably, yeah, probably about 10%.
Slava Rubin (07:49)
of the 100%, 70%. And then bonds, anything?
And
does that mean the rest is 20 % alternatives?
Noel Moldvai (08:01)
Yeah, somewhere around there. There's probably a lot of things lumped in there and some could be considered investments, some couldn't be.
Slava Rubin (08:03)
around. So of that 20 % alternatives, let's zoom that out to be 100%. That's 100 % alternatives. What's your mix of 100 % alternatives? How much of that is pre IPO stock? much of that is crypto? How much of that is baseball cards? How much of that is whatever you like to do?
was high level percentages.
Noel Moldvai (08:29)
I would say I'm probably about 10 15 % crypto a very large proportion of that are Investments I've made on Augment actually the last couple of years. So I'm definitely dog-fooding my own my own product and those have Yeah, this is mostly Bitcoin and ETH and you know a little bit of doge but
Slava Rubin (08:42)
When you say crypto, you mean into crypto companies or you mean crypto tokens?
Okay.
Nice, of course, perfect.
Noel Moldvai (08:56)
So a lot of stuff in Augment, I have also invested directly into startups, things that my friends have started and ⁓ also an LP in a few different funds.
Slava Rubin (09:07)
Got it, so you're like, of that 100 % of alternatives, you're like 15 % crypto and a whole lot of pre-IPO, whether it's straight into the companies, through some secondaries, or into an LP position. So no real estate or private credit, yield oriented, you're like high risk guy, huh?
Noel Moldvai (09:19)
Yep,
Yeah, I've, you know, I, after I cashed out a little bit of Rubrik in 2021, I also put some amount of cash into art in Masterworks. I'm the type of investor that I invest and I don't really look. I'll...
Slava Rubin (09:35)
okay.
Noel Moldvai (09:42)
You know, I'll look at my portfolio as a whole, like on something like a Monarch, you know, an all-in-one finance app in case anything really changes. But, but I tend to invest and not look. And so even my publics you know, that's like it's Rubrik and then the rest of it is probably all QQQ.
Slava Rubin (10:00)
All right, well you have a little bit of hedging there. So that's good. I
like the buy and hold strategy. I'm a big fan. Everybody has their own perspective. It's amazing how every one of our guests is so unique with how they think about their positions. Well, let's move on to the economy, which is, you you have a really interesting perspective because you're talking about all these pre-IPOs, other than IPO, what's happening in the market, all this. You know, I want to give you a very open-ended question. You can take it wherever you want. What's Noel's perspective on where we're at with
Noel Moldvai (10:07)
⁓ Thank
Slava Rubin (10:30)
market and the economy. know, take it wherever you'd like.
Noel Moldvai (10:34)
I again, I think I'm not investor type. Pretty much what I focus on is the things that are important to me, which is Augment. And so I'm focused on building out the company. I take the kind of middle default view that I think everything over the long term appreciates. And so
That's where ⁓ I'll allocate my cash. I don't think too deeply about those things. I do think that AI is different than all the other upswings that we've had in the past. And so you'll see in my personal portfolio, especially in the privates where there's a lot of upside to be had, I invest pretty heavily there. So I think AI is gonna change a lot of things. I think there's some
big bets being made in Quantum, which work would be pretty crazy. I think energy is gonna be a big sector as well with nuclear and the things that are gonna be required to power all this AI. But I think economy-wise, think interest rates are probably gonna end up dropping. I think we're gonna be going bull for the next.
call it 12 months after that. I think it'll still be up and to the right, but very slow. So I'm buying and holding. I'm pretty bullish on 26. Generically bullish.
Slava Rubin (11:43)
So you're pretty bullish on 26.
Beyond just like the areas that you work in which is this pre-op you're market you think the economy in the market me the stock market overall You're generically bullish. Is that right? Nice, so let's try to pin that down a little bit. So you mentioned this already You said the race will come
down. So we like to do this lightning round type approach. So rates a year from today You know up down Flat and you already said down by how much your prediction?
Noel Moldvai (12:15)
I think they'll probably be one or two more drops. 50 basic points probably. Flat. Are you gonna bring me on a year from now and be like, were wrong on all this stuff? I'll only come back if I was right.
Slava Rubin (12:20)
So is that 25 or 50 basis points?
Cool. And then inflation, you think up, down, flat, year from now.
And then...
I'm happy to do that if you'd like to return.
That sounds perfectly fair. You the listeners like to hear people like yours opinions. So inflation, you think is going to be flat. And then what do think about unemployment, especially with AI? There's a lot of narrative there.
Noel Moldvai (12:42)
You
Yeah, I mean, you know, on the AI thing, think it's, you know, there's the fear aspect of people's jobs being replaced. the short term, think maybe unemployment is going to go up. I mean, we don't hire, we don't really hire junior engineers anymore. know, AI is, yeah, all of the coding tools that are there, I think a senior engineer can do that themselves. And
Slava Rubin (13:10)
Because of the quad or?
Noel Moldvai (13:18)
You know, there's within our own team, we have this two pizza rule where if your team that's working on something specific is larger than the amount of people required to eat two pizzas, it's too big. So we got to split it up. And I think AI will keep those teams small while increasing productivity. So I think there is truth to that fear in the short term, but I think long term people are going to find other things to do.
Slava Rubin (13:43)
I love the two pizza rule. I've heard that in many different versions. think Tony Shae, when he was building Zappos, always said that you should have teams in two pizza sizes as well. Otherwise it's too big of an effort. So unemployment, you think a year from now is up? I'm not trying to lead a witness there. I'm just seeing where you're.
Noel Moldvai (13:58)
Slightly sure.
Yeah, let's let's say up.
Slava Rubin (14:03)
Which is interesting. Unemployment is up. So rates are down, inflation is flat, unemployment is up, and where is the stock market a year from now? Up, down, or flat?
Noel Moldvai (14:14)
I think we're gonna be up a little bit. Yeah. I'll go eight to 12.
Slava Rubin (14:17)
What's up a little bit? Try to give me like zero to five, five to 10, 15, or is it, you know, because for two years in a row we had over 20 % and then last year we hit another 16%. For three years in a row it's kind of nuts. So I know you're saying it's a bullish 26, so what do you think that could look like for the overall stock market?
Nice, so kind of consistent or a little bit more than that, Traditional like 10 % for the last 20 years basically. Awesome. So you created Augment, you gave us a little bit of that color before, but for anybody who doesn't know exactly what Augment does, can you just give us the basics? How old is Augment? How big is it? Can you give us a sense of what it's doing?
Noel Moldvai (14:41)
Yeah. Yep.
Yeah, so Augment is the Robin Hood for the private markets I'll separate this into what the what the vision is and where we are today, but the the vision really here is that Private markets and pre IPO typically have been very difficult to access and so we're trying to solve three things. We're trying to solve the
transparency issues like what are you buying and what price are you buying these things at compared to other options. Access, it's like how do you actually access these things. And then liquidity. Typically when you're buying, you know.
private companies you're buying and you're holding until there's liquidity event, which increasingly is longer and longer. 10, 12, SpaceX has been private for 20, 25 years now. And so those are the three main things that we're trying to solve. Augment has underwent an evolution, I would say, since we first started the company. Started the company in 2022 to really solve my problem of
How do I? sell some of these shares and When we first started the company You know it took us 18 months to get our broker dealer license We were an alternative trading. are an alternative alternative trading system register with the SEC as well And are soon to be a registered investment advisor But when we first started the company we essentially wanted to be a connector of people buying and selling
Slava Rubin (16:05)
Rubrik
Noel Moldvai (16:29)
and then automating that execution of the transaction. And so that was behaving more as a, I would say, intermediary that's connecting two parties and helping them through with the transaction. But when you're doing that in pre-IPO, the fundamental problem is that the time it takes to execute the transactions is 30 to 60 days, because you have to go through the company.
and the company typically has a right of first refusal. And so the vision of being the Robin Hood for private markets, I think is not, hey, I'm gonna hit this button and I'm gonna wait two months and then maybe I'll get these shares or not. what we wanna do is be able to have an app, very simple, deposit cash in your account, instead of seeing public companies, you see private companies.
you know, a few clicks, you own the shares, and then, you know, once you have some gains or you have some liquidity needs, you can click, click and sell as well. And so, our main focus here is how does the user, how does the buyer get into these private companies and actually be able to execute on some of those transactions.
Slava Rubin (17:40)
Great, and then do you have like North Star numbers that you guys talk about in terms customers or transactions or dollars through or anything that you like to discuss?
Noel Moldvai (17:49)
Yeah, and this number is probably particular to all our models, so I'll explain, but we just crossed $750 million in AUM. We are not an active fund manager, which that would imply, but that just means that in our vehicles, we have $750 million worth of assets. So our strategy and the way that we do things is kind of two pronged.
One is we identify securities externally to us. These are shares in the hottest private companies and companies that people have demand for. We purchase those securities and bring them into our ecosystem, which is called the collective. And then we enable those shares within the ecosystem to trade freely. And so that ecosystem right now,
Slava Rubin (18:32)
inside the cluster.
Noel Moldvai (18:33)
Inside the collective exactly and so that's how you really get around, you know all of this Exactly exactly Totally And sure
Slava Rubin (18:38)
having to wait three to six months or once to two months. And that's how get around the ropher. Amazing. So on behalf of the listeners, I'm the client here. So I'm gonna ask some really basic, simple questions. So let's say I want some stock. I'm gonna pick Anduril, is that okay? Or is that not a good one? We're gonna avoid Anduril Let's just make a SpaceX to make it more straightforward. So
I want some SpaceX. Everybody wants some SpaceX. It's the hot company.
So can I get SpaceX on Augment? Okay, great. So do I have to be an accredited investor? Okay, so I have to be an accredited investor and what's the minimum?
Noel Moldvai (19:07)
You can You do ⁓ So minimums range depending on the offering but sometimes sometimes under five grand
Slava Rubin (19:22)
I want some SpaceX.
Okay, so should we call it five grand just to be consistent or is it one grand? Yeah, five grand minimum. Great, but that's a good entry point. So I can take five grand, I can get into SpaceX and I think it's trading at, trading's not the right word. It was last valued at $800 billion. Do you have any sense, without trying to put you on the spot here, but am I able to get it at a hundred billion dollar or is it gonna be like a trillion?
Noel Moldvai (19:31)
You can call it five grand.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah. You can get it around 850, I'll say that. Yep. Yep. Yep.
Slava Rubin (20:00)
Okay, around 850, and then are there fees that I pay to you or who am I paying? Like if I wanna put in $5,000 right now on this call, on this conversation into
SpaceX, how much money do I actually need to give up to get that $5,000 of SpaceX?
Noel Moldvai (20:16)
Mm-hmm.
So our average transaction fee is 5%. ⁓ Our model is a little bit unique in that if you wanted to get access to these companies through a different means, a different platform, or your friend that has access that set up an SPV or a syndicate, they'll typically charge you a management fee, either upfront or yearly.
Slava Rubin (20:25)
Okay.
Noel Moldvai (20:41)
and they'll charge you a carried interest. Typically in this space, call it like 10 to 20%. And our model's a little bit different. Our model is we do not charge management fees and we typically do not charge carry. And so the only fee that you're paying is the fee, the upfront fee to get access, which even at 5 % is typically lower than an upfront management fee.
Slava Rubin (21:08)
That's amazing, I just wanna
make sure that's heard and understood. So if I'm getting this 5K of SpaceX, I don't have to pay a management fee and I don't have to pay a carry on top of that. And the price is quote unquote only 850 versus the 800 because a lot of people are marketing up to 880 or higher.
Noel Moldvai (21:18)
Correct. Yep.
Yeah, yeah the the even if you're buying in at a higher price in a zero zero vehicle Exactly, even if you're buying it at a higher price, I mean venture is Typically like a you know, this is either gonna work and it's gonna explode or it's not gonna work And if you believe if you believe in your butt you're bought into that
Slava Rubin (21:34)
Zero zero means zero management fees, zero carry.
Noel Moldvai (21:50)
then typically a zero zero, the longterm, if you're up two X, you're going to pay a lot less ⁓ money when you exit, when you're in a zero zero versus a two 20, even at a lower price. ⁓ Exactly. And if you're looking for, know, 20, 30 % gain, maybe a two and 20 is better for you.
Slava Rubin (22:00)
Right, because paying that upfront 5 % is way lower than how much you're gonna lose later when you 5X or 10X your investment, right? Because that two and 20 or that one and 20 or whatever is really gonna eat into it.
Okay, so I can put in 5K, I need to be accredited. There's typically no manager and fee, typically no carrier, which is pretty amazing. What else do need to know as a customer? I want some SpaceX in the next, when can I get it? Like is it official, it's gonna be mine? Because is it in your collective, so it's automatically mine? Is that, I don't have to worry that I'm actually gonna get it?
Noel Moldvai (22:40)
There's two ways that you can invest, maybe actually three. The first way is that we're under contract with the seller and therefore there is some execution risk, but by the time we've listed it on the platform, we're pretty far along in that process. And so in that case, we have had instances where we've had to return money to investors.
Most of the time, we will actually warehouse the shares. So the shares are already within the vehicle. And as soon as we receive your cash, the transaction closes. So if you're buying into a warehouse vehicle and ⁓ you send us the cash for your investment, you can close same day, within 10 minutes. the third, yeah, I think it's something that hasn't really been done at scale in the market before. And the third way is,
Slava Rubin (23:16)
That's awesome.
Noel Moldvai (23:24)
If someone wants to get out of their position from one of our vehicles, you can buy directly from them. And I think you're going to see some product announcements for us in the next ⁓ couple of months where this becomes very, very easy to do. Easy enough that you could put it on an app. Wink, wink.
Slava Rubin (23:41)
Nice, for anybody who's listening only, he actually wins. So, amazing, I love that. Me as the customer right
now, is there anything else I need to know or to consider as part of doing the SpaceX transaction?
Noel Moldvai (23:53)
I think maybe two more things. One is typically people in this market that are investing, once you buy, you have to hold until there's some liquidity event. With us, we're actually productizing that liquidity. So there are some regulatory waiting periods between the time that you buy and when you can sell. But you can actually
directly sell on our platform as well with the same ease that you buy. ⁓
Slava Rubin (24:20)
Because one of the complications, right, just for the listener, is typically
every time there's a transaction, you have to go through the company, meaning the actual original company, let's call it SpaceX, to go through that right of first refusal. And really what you guys are doing, I believe, with the collective or with the smart approach is you're actually removing that step by keeping inside your own, for simplicity's sake, structure, right? So as soon as it's in your structure, you could all share with each other
Noel Moldvai (24:25)
Yep. Yep.
Slava Rubin (24:46)
without having to go ask dad whether or you're allowed to share, know, SpaceX is dad in this metaphor, right?
Noel Moldvai (24:52)
Exactly,
And probably two other things that you want to consider. The first one is price. What price are you actually getting in at? We've partnered with a company called CapLight, which aggregates all of the orders in the ecosystem, executed trades, and comes up with a pretty nice pricing model for where
They estimate a lot of these private shares will clear. So consider what price you're actually getting in on. If you're talking about SpaceX, you're talking about Anduril, there's some like SPVs and other investments out there that are putting on crazy, crazy fees. But what's surprising that people pay those because they want access to those companies. And they think that there is a ton of...
of upside even still even at a know 800 billion or trillion dollar valuation But you know if you have the option of getting into something cheaper Why not and so we we try to be cognizant of that when we're putting offerings up on the platform The second piece here is what is the structure of what you're And there's there's a couple of different ways that you can view this
If you're buying shares in your friends company and you're directly on the cap table, there's really not a risk, a lot of risk that your, if there were an exit that you're not gonna get your ⁓ cash back given granted if you know the, the share class and the liquidity stack is above board.
But if you're buying into an SPV, you have to be really reliant on who the manager is. And so there's a big element of trust here. We've done a lot of these transactions. have almost a thousand trades just in the last, and we've launched this thing 18 months ago since our pivot. And so there's a heavy amount of trust that you have to put into the fund manager. And recently there's been this
proliferation of stacked SPVs, which can factors into both of those two things I mentioned, price and trust. So this is like an SPV buying into an SPV, buying into an SPV that sits on the cap table. Very scary ⁓ and very expensive. So two things there, right? It's like you're stacking fees. So even if you have a one in 10 in each SPV, you're gonna end up paying that
Slava Rubin (27:01)
Absolutely.
Massively scary. Nevertheless, so expensive.
Noel Moldvai (27:21)
on top of everything else. And so they stack together. So you're going to end up paying a 3 and 30. But the bigger piece here, in my opinion, is the trust aspect. Your fund manager at the third layer will probably know who the second layer fund manager is. But it's not necessary that they know who the first layer fund manager is or whether they have the shares. And so it's really.
Slava Rubin (27:42)
And this might all
be dependent on some forward and God bless. We're in trouble.
Noel Moldvai (27:45)
Yeah,
it's like do they actually own the shares or is it a you know a forward contract with the underlying seller? There's a lot of questions there and a lot of diligence that that you have to do and so we when we when we buy shares off of off of fund managers we look for You know being in the market for a real long time being reputable and ⁓ Regulatory is also pretty important if there are I are IA that's
great because they get audited every year. And so that's why we're taking this step to do that as well. you
Slava Rubin (28:15)
Great, let's talk companies and industries just because again, everybody's talking about 2026 is gonna be an exciting year for IPOs. There's definitely some
obvious names, there's SpaceX, Anthropic, OpenAI.
But I'll continue to lead the witness. What are the industries first that you think are very exciting for 26? And more interesting as that, equally as interesting, is what are the industries you would avoid for this?
Noel Moldvai (28:45)
Interesting.
Why don't you think OpenAI is not going to IPO in 26, by the way? Yep.
Slava Rubin (28:51)
Oh, I think they have too much governance issues and I think their governance issues are going to be too challenging for it to be a very clean IPO. So I think they're going to have to navigate that both on their own and with Elon because of, you know,
I think Elon really has their, his thumb over them when it comes to a lawsuit potentially, and it's very hard to go public with a lawsuit. So I think that is just going to be a mess. I do think Anthropic will go IPO because I think Anthropic is just, just so focused and clean and easy.
Noel Moldvai (29:07)
Yeah. you
Slava Rubin (29:20)
on so many levels. So that's why I think Anthropic will IPO this year, but OpenAI will not. I don't think Stripe will IPO this year either, even though they're a great candidate, but that's my opinion. Then again, I'm supposed to be the question asker, not the answerer, but you can ask whatever questions you like.
Noel Moldvai (29:31)
Interesting.
Okay. Well, I think, I think AI is clearly is the, the, the most in demand industry right now on Augment. We publish a list of 20 companies every quarter. We actually just came out with, with our report.
for Q4 of 25 today. And so we call it the Power 20, it's the top 20 companies that are in demand, have traded, know, biggest valuations. So in that, you have all the big, you know, foundational LLMs. So this is Anthropic, this is OpenAI, it's XAI. And you have a lot of
vertical AI company as well. is like cursor, Perplexity. so AI really, really dominates, today. And then the other big theme, is defense. So this is like Anduril it's, it's, shield.
And so I think those are the two big industries that are dominating right now. Ooh, that's tough. I would say something to be cognizant of is the really big bets.
Slava Rubin (30:38)
What are the two industries you would avoid for this year?
Noel Moldvai (30:48)
and like the lottery tickets. So I think the lottery tickets would be, is probably Quantum. I'm very bullish on Quantum in the long term. But they've been saying that Quantum's only 10, 20 years away for the last many years. So who knows what's gonna happen there.
That's the only one that comes to mind. think a lot of the other big companies have real chances of doing well. .
Slava Rubin (31:13)
So
what will be the...
three companies you're super excited about, not, you know, this isn't investment advice, this isn't your own pick that we're gonna talk about later, but rather just from your lens of seeing all the information and deal flow, what are the three companies that you know, you're most excited about? Is it the obvious SpaceX, Anthropic, like Androel, or is there nothing else to talk about there, or should we just say that?
Noel Moldvai (31:37)
I think the foundational model LLMs are interesting. They're all interesting. I think anthropics interesting. An area that actually had this idea back in 2017, prediction markets.
I think prediction market is going to be super interesting. There's a big, there's a lot of conversation happening right now. And like, is insider trading actually good because it actually gets you to the truth. ⁓ albeit, you know, who, who profits off of that. so I think Kalshi and polymarket had made a lot of big moves in the last year, two years. so I'm pretty excited about, about those two.
Slava Rubin (32:06)
Right.
Do you think they're doubling up this year?
Noel Moldvai (32:20)
I think so. Yeah, they're both around 12 right now. I think they're gonna go to over 20 for sure. Personal opinion.
Slava Rubin (32:22)
We're both going from like, let's call it 10, 11 to over 20.
super interesting.
No, no, of course, of course. This is why people listen. They want to hear some opinions. This is just conversation.
Noel Moldvai (32:40)
I mean,
they could be bigger than the stock market, right? The stock market has something underlying it, but here you can make directional bets on things very specifically without having to go through a bunch of different trades to get to an estimated outcome. It's true. Yeah, and that's really what's driving them today. So I think that's the big risk.
Slava Rubin (32:45)
Well, of course.
or to be cynical for a second, or they could just be a little bit bigger than the sports betting market, which isn't so big. It's big. ⁓
Right, and that's very competitive, not exactly high margin. But I can see it both ways. I prediction markets are very interesting. What's an overlooked area, because I wouldn't call prediction markets overlooked. I think it's nice that you're bringing it up and it's cool to hear your perspective on it. What would be an overlooked company or market that you'd be like, ⁓ I think people are missing this?
Noel Moldvai (33:29)
I like to invest in things that I use.
And I think Rippling and like HR software in general actually is probably gonna be Something pretty big they're coming out with a lot of interesting stuff. We're moving a lot of things over to Rippling that traditionally we would have outsourced So that's just what I'm seeing from the inside. I think that is super boring industry HR software ⁓ That's Rippling and Deel yeah, and even like, you know 401k administrators, you know human interest
Slava Rubin (33:49)
Yeah, so that's Rippling and Deel right?
Noel Moldvai (33:58)
is what we use. think the products can get super complicated, but it's like ⁓ a sales force. Eventually you have lock-in and it's really difficult to lead those platforms once you're in them. you
Slava Rubin (34:09)
Awesome. Super interesting. ⁓ What
is it that you have the CEO spot, you have over a thousand transactions, over $750 million of AUM that's gone through. What is it that you see that you can share with us that most people who don't have all that information don't see about where we're headed for 2026?
Noel Moldvai (34:20)
⁓
I think people in the private markets are adopting a much more active trading behavioral pattern rather than a buy and hold. I mean, it's why we've moved up our roadmap to tackle some of the things that we've talked about. Traditionally,
The private markets trade a lot less than the public markets and maybe that's a feature I think you can argue not a bug But in the private markets, you know, you have a five trillion dollar market cap call it, you know Sorry, fifty trillion dollar market cap. I call it about two hundred trillion dollars trades So you have a 4X tone of turnover in the private markets quite the opposite. So you have a five trillion dollar market cap ish Maybe a little bit more since all of these is big
big up rounds that have happened, but only about one or two percentage points of that trades every year. This is about 150 billion bucks. What we've seen empirically within the Augment platform is something that's 10x that trades. And so what we think is that people actually do want to trade these things. They just don't have the infrastructure to do it. And so we're trying to build that infrastructure.
You you could get to a point where, you know, 50, 100 % of these things turn over within our vehicles. And I think that's interesting. And another piece here is that the institutions are actually buying and selling as well. It's not just these retail traders that are, you know, on their phones trying to buy stuff. It's typically a little bit under a year, I would say.
Slava Rubin (35:57)
What's the typical duration on that? Is that a day, a week, a month, a quarter, a year?
Noel Moldvai (36:07)
and, there have been some instances and some of our offerings where it's actually, it's been a hundred percent traded, throughout the year. and over, over a hundred percent even maybe. So, and that's, that's institutions. We haven't really, we haven't really productized this for retail. So you imagine if retail comes in, I think that's, that number is going to go up.
Slava Rubin (36:26)
That's an incredible insight. Like I didn't see that answer coming. That's exactly the sort of thing I was looking for. But just to repeat for people, the public markets is approximately $50 trillion of value traded about 4X. So 200 trillion for the year. But the private market is $5 trillion of value and only traded about $150 billion. So there's just so much room for growth there, right? Because even if you get to, as you said, 50%, not even 4X, right? One half.
Noel Moldvai (36:45)
Yep. Ha
Slava Rubin (36:55)
you can get up to two and a half trillion, which is way more than it is today, which is fascinating. That's really interesting insight. So you're obviously a smart guy. We all wanna be like you. What is it that you're listening to, reading, watching? What makes Noel know? What
Noel Moldvai (36:59)
ha ha.
Slava Rubin (37:13)
is making you calm? What is making you smart? What is making you informed? What's the content that you're digesting?
Noel Moldvai (37:21)
Well, what makes me calm is I try to do ice baths regularly. ⁓ That really chills me out. went on a adventure with Wim Hof, who is the original ice man in Poland. back, this was right when COVID started, so like March of 2020. ⁓
Slava Rubin (37:26)
Nice.
Amazing.
Noel Moldvai (37:40)
So that keeps me calm. I think the company keeps me chaotic and my kids keep me chaotic. But in terms of information diet, I try to stay up with what's going on in our market. this is know, Sacra which is good, great partners of ours. I read a lot of them. You know, kind of the traditional outlets, TechCrunch, Wall Street Journal, The Information, Money Stuff.
by Matt Levine at Bloomberg. I started reading that probably just about a month ago. Yeah, funny guy. for like very, very quick insights on culture every day, I Pirate Wires, which is hilarious. ⁓ And yeah, I try to listen to some podcasts every once in a while, like Joe Rogan.
Slava Rubin (38:11)
I he's great.
Nice.
Noel Moldvai (38:30)
is probably the big one.
Slava Rubin (38:32)
Perfect. And then our final question, we always put everybody on the spot. We call it three years out. What's one public markets pick and what's one non-public markets pick that we do get to keep receipts and three years out we get to say, that guy was right or that guy was wrong. what's your, tell us your pick and why, which is what's your public markets pick first?
Noel Moldvai (38:36)
God. man.
Public markets pick.
Slava Rubin (38:56)
This is obviously not investment advice. This is all for entertainment and just for the sake of having a good discussion.
Noel Moldvai (39:02)
Yes, about AI picks and shovels, think. if I had to choose one, probably Nvidia. I guess, I guess, $5 trillion. $10 trillion, first $10 trillion company.
Slava Rubin (39:08)
Okay, Nvidia at approximately $5 trillion.
I mean, let's call it between four and five, right? Cause it's hovering and three years out, it's going be what?
And why is that? Why are you doing that?
Noel Moldvai (39:26)
I think well, I think and again, this is probably not something that I would do but if I had to if I had to choose one company I think I'm probably overweight in a QQQ but But I think there's gonna be I think AI is gonna take over the world and I think three years is probably about the right time that we're gonna see a lot of change a lot of these companies and they're gonna figure out ways to use AI and they need something to power it and and
Nvidia seems to be making a lot of deals recently. So there's gonna be a lot of capital flowing in there. The other one, maybe a little bit selfishly, my wife works at Google, so probably Alphabet also. Gemini is so good, way better than everything else, at least right now. But that'll probably change in two weeks, who knows? A lot of distribution.
Slava Rubin (40:00)
I mean, they've been on a run.
And they have so much distribution, right? Just
so many touches of the customer. I mean, they've had a crazy 2025. They were left for dead for a second with OpenAI taking over the world, but that might not happen. So it's interesting where it's all headed.
Noel Moldvai (40:21)
Yeah.
thing about, I think, Google and Gemini is, there are some private companies that try to take them on on the search realm is like Perplexity. And, you know, Perplexity is doing a lot of other interesting things now with vertical.
you know, really focusing on certain verticals like finance and sports. But the question is like, can Gemini just kill that? I think that was the big fear, Ha ha.
Slava Rubin (40:45)
And then how about in the world that you know so well, which is private markets, know, what's one company or you could avoid your vertical completely and give me some other
idea, but what would be one non-public markets pick? It be across pre-IPO, crypto, real estate, private credit, art, whatever you want.
Noel Moldvai (40:59)
⁓
I think I love Elon Musk and so something in his realm. I didn't say Tesla for the public markets, but I think XAI is gonna be interesting. I think they're gonna be a real competitor and all this stuff kind of like think it was one. have like Tesla, you have SpaceX, is really Starlink and then you have the big AI bets.
And I think all of those are gonna work together and be greater than the sum of the parts. And so I would say XAI.
Slava Rubin (41:32)
Okay, so you're along the Elon empire, but you specifically enter through XAI, is that right? Okay, super interesting. Well, Noel we just covered a ton of content from, let's see here. You started in Yugoslavia. I'm actually from Belarus, so I appreciate that. And right away, you know, I became a product guy with Rubrik, made too much money on illiquid stock and had to figure out what to do with it. And then was able to turn that into Augment Today.
Noel Moldvai (41:36)
I think so,
Slava Rubin (41:58)
You share with us your net worth the way you share in terms of really a lot into public markets,
but only because of Rubrik and then some into the bonds, but you're about 20 % alts. Alts is a bunch of crypto, but mostly into those private companies, whether it's direct or into LPs and a little bit of art through Masterworks You mentioned there are some interesting things happening, whether it's Quantum energy, nuclear, where we're all headed.
And you gave us lots of fun predictions about 2026 rates coming down, maybe 50 basis points, inflation staying flat or employment going up in the stock market, plus minus let's call it 10%, plus minus 2%. I love your two pizzas idea. Everybody should take a listen on that and really focus on how to execute. You really built Augment to become the Robinhood for privates, which is awesome. And you're already at $750 million of AUM and more. You talked about how I can get into SpaceX. It's a 5K minimum. You should be accredited.
but such low fees, a really great entry point, meaning just a one time 5%, no fees or carry, which is huge. You have this structure, which is the collective, how you're able to go around the rovers or keep that away from us and be able to transact sooner. We talked about what was hot, which was obviously AI. You were concerned a little bit about Quantum. You gave us lots of good companies to look at, whether it's Anthropic, XAI, Anduril or Shield, Cursor, Perplexity et cetera. And then really that interesting thing about
the trading volume about how much there's so much opportunity in private to get more trading volume of only five trillion that there exists, but 150 billion is traded, which is way different than public markets. So huge opportunities still to be had in this market. You gave us a couple of secret picks, which was Rippling or Deel in the HR, also prediction markets might double. None of this is investment advice. You gave us lots of good information on the information diets. And of course we pinned you down on Nvidia and Elon Empire XAI recovered a lot. Thanks, Noel.
Noel Moldvai (43:50)
Wow, what a summary. Thanks, Slava. Pleasure to be here.
