Sourcery

“The big idea was and has been for us for the last 15 years is to democratize private markets. And so the last few years, AI has become potentially like the end of technology in a way. Like we're at the knee of the exponential. And so the need to democratize access to these companies, investing in these AI companies was more important than ever. And so we created what was the first public venture fund.”

“Ten years from now, every single person in America will have 5% of their portfolio in public capital. It will be totally normal. It will be like an ETF. It will be just this thing that's standard. The public market will be a huge source of funding for private tech companies. The weighted average growth rate of public tech companies last year was 25%. The weighted average growth rate for our portfolio for VCX was 193%.”

“I think democratic ownership is the solution to how we deal with AI. The idea that everyone wants to get like universal basic income, I think that's a horrible idea. But universal basic ownership, I feel like that is magic. It's like instead of people saying, okay, the American dreams own a home, the American dreams own like the means of production, which is AI.”

“A closed ended fund means that when, as opposed to open ended fund, a closed end fund is when it's closed, essentially, when you're buying it in the public markets, the fund is shares in the fund is trading rather than shares in the inside of the underlying asset portfolio. So the actual shares inside the ETF will trade. The closed ended fund, it's like any other venture fund and people are buying and selling the actual fund itself in the public markets.”

“We were lucky when we launched VCX, we launched our Fundrise Innovation Fund. It was bottom of the market. And all the venture funds were really shell shocked from the collapse of the stock market. They were like, I mean, it was such a negative sentiment that venture funds were actually dumping their shares. Some of the companies you named, we bought from distressed funds who were having to sell in early to mid 2023.”

“We call it network investing. There's social networks. So we have network investing, where basically the network of investors is a value add. And so like with Loyal, I think Loyal is just gonna be like a blockbuster. And it's a really good example of like democratizing ownership. We can roll it out to our 2 million customers. I'm sure we have hundreds of thousands of dog owners. We probably have tens of thousands of vets as customers too.”

“I think more than 20 percent, but less than 50. So like let's say five years, 20 to 30 percent of jobs are not just displaced, but also suppressed. So you don't make that marginal higher, and that adds up to tens of millions of jobs. For us, for sure. We were 350 people, now we're 200 people. I think we're at the cutting edge of every department, product development, real estate analysis, accounting.”

“Most of the independent firms have spun out of banks. Banks themselves don't train people to be professional investors. These people are trained to be service providers. They're trained to be responsive, helpful. But actual investment acumen, when you're at a large bank, sits in a separate group. You're rewarded as a wealth manager by how much you grow your book of business.”

“I'll see someone with their very, very first liquidity. They take it, and instead of doing something a little bit safe, in case there's a rainy day, they turn around, and you go put in a bunch of very early stage startups. You just sort of sit there, and you're like, listen, if you're going to do venture, at least try to do it in a systematic way. Do not take 80% of what you just got, and hand it to your three friends.”

“The large asset management firms, you know, of hedge funds, PE shops—those guys, their biggest clients are non-profits. So their pensions, endowments, foundations, or wealth funds—all these people don't pay tax. So they are not at all focused on the taxable element. And if you're an individual, you're paying, especially in this state, you're paying 50 plus percent tax. So the easiest alpha to get is a tax alpha.”

“If you're trying to build a multi-asset class portfolio, you're going to need to hire a bunch of these professional investors. I don't know, you need five, six, seven of them across different asset classes. How are you going to do that and pay these people if your balance sheet isn't very big? I mean billions. Otherwise, the compensation you're paying to this team is eating up whatever benefit you might be getting.”

“If you look at the different asset classes and the dispersion of returns—the worst manager to the best manager—venture is the biggest dispersion of all the asset classes. And so, to your point, that means that who you pick is super important. If you pick the bottom half, well, that's a problem. You should have just avoided the illiquidity, avoided the fees, and just bought QQQ or something.”

“SpaceX is rumored and reported, too, to have merely a $2 trillion IPO incoming. It'll be an interesting test of the markets, if they can sort of—I mean, that would be the largest IPO ever, for the markets to digest that. It'll be really interesting to watch. And I think there's a lot of other very large startups waiting in the wings who will be watching this super carefully.”

“When banks and law and all these laws were built in the 20s, 30s, 40s, all there was was real assets. People weren't—there were no internet companies, they were buying buildings and factories. So the tax code is very beneficial to real assets. And you can therefore get a solid teens return on a tax-adjusted basis out of real assets and real estate.”

“Volatility is not the enemy. A lot of people fret—volatility, I'm scared. But if you have a deep balance sheet and you've kept your portfolio at least somewhat liquid, volatility is a huge opportunity. It's like a fat pitch. You get assets that go on sale. Stock markets every four or five years have a 40% drawdown. That is a blue light sale.”