Financial Advisors Are Cooked – Public Co-CEO on the Great Wealth Transfer

[00:00] Before we live in this oasis where no one has to work anymore, I think it's going to get really dark. Elon is going to own all the robots and the power disparity that's going to happen there is going to be so massive. The wealth disparity that's already extreme in the US is going to become even more extreme. You said millions of users, billions of assets, billions of trading volume and revenue doubling every year. So is that... That is accurate. So you're trying to take on Charles Schwab. [00:30] and run it. 85% of that money will be inherited by the top quarter, the top 25%. And so that's literally where the money is at in our space. The best performing generated asset on the platform right now is defense and weapons manufacturers, one that is like up 350% in the last month. So we just lost agents for investing. If we look at what a financial advisor does for you, one is grunt work, second is advice, the third is emotional support. So we've launched, that does number one now. I think it's ridiculous how quickly this is moving. Financial advisors [01:00] Bye. [01:10] Life, welcome to Sorcery. Thank you. [01:14] Well, we're here at the New York Stock Exchange in the library and we have your beautiful logo up. Yes, in the wrong blue still, but okay. It's the wrong blue. It's not serious enough. It's not serious enough, exactly. We need a serious blue. And it needs to be dark and, you know.

[01:30] it's a little serious and classic and so yeah [01:34] So why is that your tagline? [01:37] But serious and classic? No. [01:41] Public, serious and classic. I don't know if that's a good tagline. Do you mean investing for those who take it seriously? Mm-hmm. [01:47] If you look at especially our space and I call it like new brokers and so on, you've seen that I think that first generation of those companies has been very heavily focused on speculation. And that was like very deep into options trading, you know, about very deep prediction markets or, you know, companies. [02:04] They're all like, for example, things that started only in crypto, you know, and so on. And I think it's created a generation where essentially all the new modern platforms all were, you know, [02:16] not that serious in the end it's not nothing like these are not the places where you would build your wealth for your long term where you put your life savings into or the money you inherit from your parents or whatever it might be um and the incumbents were still that and i think even if you see it's like when the first mobile broker just came up and you look at like schwab you know schwab hasn't actually been disrupted yet really because that company actually you know still doubled in the last five years and so [02:38] So when we kind of look at the market, we were like, hey, let's build something that is actually for people to put the life savings in where they can, you know, that they can trust with that money and therefore make sure that we are also being positioned as seen as a serious financial service. Because also if you look at things like the great wealth transfer, it's like 85% of that money will be inherited by the top quarter or the top 25%. And so that's literally where the money is at in our space.

[03:04] And so I think also to be successful here, you have to build something that people can look at and think of it as like, this is a serious financial service that I can trust with my life savings. And so therefore, from a pure positioning perspective. [03:17] That's what we put up. So you're trying to take on Charles Schwab. [03:20] Yeah, actually, if you look at where people ACAD accounts from, [03:25] where they consolidate brokerage accounts from for us. It's Schwab, Fidelity, E-Trade, Vanguard, and then Merrill and Robinhood. [03:34] Oh, wow. So we are much more competing with the incumbents than we are competing with the other new brokers. That's crazy. You kind of compete everywhere, of course, in some regard, but... [03:45] So most recently, you have been going viral on and off with these new product launches. Can you talk about the recent product launch? So we just launched agents for investing. [03:58] And what that helps you do is to essentially automate any type of workflow in your brokerage account. There could be a trading strategy, there can be money movements, there can be alerts you want to set up to some regard. And it really moves the way you... [04:14] even just like interact with the platform away from just like clicking buttons to just expressing intent. And how we think about it is that it kind of helps people to really kind of move up in the sophistication. You know, like one example we always make is there's a lot of people who have a decent understanding of that you could generate some income using covered calls on your portfolio.

[04:36] and that's like high level what they understand but now to actually go find the right contracts see what the income potential would be etc that's where it starts to break down and so people just like start freezing because now they have to educate themselves and it's gonna be really hard with agents you can literally just be like okay look at my portfolio um show me if i could do you know five grand a month income potential on it um let me select let me see what's there and then it scans a portfolio shows you um you know opportunities for for cover calls and income [05:06] And then you can just like [05:08] activated and it runs as a workflow. [05:10] And so it really kind of helps people kind of move out that sophistication and just like basically automate anything in that portfolio. [05:17] And you can buy the dip. And you can buy the dip automatically. Automatically. Systematically. So are those videos real or are they AI? [05:28] Therial. [05:28] They are? Where do you record them? Because it's like this nice blue world. Yeah, totally. They look like Apple launch videos or something. Oh, thank you. Fantastic. Awesome. It's on the line of being AI or not. You don't know how much our brand team will love that you said that. Really? Yes, yes, yes. But it's true because it goes back to if you want to be a serious financial service, there's also a thing of like we look at ourselves as we're building a premium product. Yeah.

[05:58] very important and I think specifically in our space there's a lot of also just like dodgy players and you know like platforms were designed it's not really a thing and so on like especially if you go the deeper you go into active trading like [06:11] you know, the wackiest and things start to look. [06:13] and so it's very important to us that the design stuff is at a very high quality level and so we very much appreciate that comment. [06:22] No, it's like a [06:24] big cold [06:25] Studio and Bushwick. [06:28] It's just out in Bushwick. It's just out in Bushwick. So the company is... [06:33] base here in new york correct you're not [06:37] from here. You're from Germany. I'm from Germany. Just became American three weeks ago. Congratulations. Thank you very much. Wow. Can you recite the Pledge of Allegiance? Of course. No, that's so exciting. And so your co CEO, Janik, he's Danish, Danish. [06:55] And we have an office in Copenhagen because of that too. - Okay. - So. - Where are your offices globally? [07:00] New York headquarters and then Copenhagen, a lot of our backend engineering sits there with like co-CTOs and so one of them is there as well. He's Danish obviously so we build like a team around him over there. [07:11] And then we have a few remotes. We have a little bit of a CX hub in Raleigh where we used to have an office, but then people just want to work from home and whatnot, so we gave that up at some point. But we still have a lot of people in the Raleigh-Durham area that do CX because you have to be licensed and so on. There's a lot of licensed talent down there.

[07:29] And why did you both go after the co-CEO route? [07:34] It organically happened from the beginning, first off. In Europe, it's not an unusual thing. It's very normal. If I look at a company in Germany, for example, it's very normal to have multiple chefs who are multiple managing directors, CEOs, and whatnot. It's a really unusual thing. I feel like in the US, it's more this thing of people want to have this one throat to choke and the way the corporate structures are set up. It's just like you have a bot, and the bot appoints a CEO, essentially, [08:04] down and then you know if the ceo doesn't uh you know perform then bought replace the ceo and it's like the kind of like how how it's run here um so i think people just fall back to like well this is how it's done right so why is this weird why is this not but i don't think it's actually that that unusual i think the biggest thing is um i think first it helps really for more balanced decision making [08:25] There's a great little podcast actually about Excel with the Excel founders. [08:30] um where they made that same argument because they also were like a duo that started excel the vc firm and they made this argument of like balanced decision making where i'm like i'm gonna steal that um but uh because there's a very truth of like you're always like we're all human to some regard we'll all have a time where we go to the office and we'll feel anxiety or we'll be in a bad mood or whatever and so on and it helps to have someone else who experiences

[09:00] this [09:01] same experience of how they experience things in the company and around the business, and so on. And so I feel like that is actually a very valuable thing. [09:09] how do you divide responsibilities like what are your core traits versus yeah so the company is that way kind of we have our own reports you know and so janik has the cto's reporting to him and therefore engineering and then he's like the deepest and like product design i would say and like product enemy and then um and then i essentially have like everything else and i would say like i'm the deepest in like growth that's that's [09:33] I want to go through the evolution of public over time. [09:38] Weird. [09:39] very clearly and you've [09:41] very much embrace this in an AI world. So what was it like early on? And did you think you were going to expand this much out more? [09:49] outside of the existing categories you were going after? Like, where do you feel like there was extra opportunity to, like, grab? Yeah, I mean, so when we started, Public was... [10:01] like the first like you know investing app with like a social feed [10:05] And I think a lot of people still know us as like, oh, you're the social investing app, right? And stuff. But now social is dead because it was basically cannibalized from AI. [10:14] Seriously. But that's kind of where it started. And we had this thing of like, okay... [10:19] we like we knew in order to build something serious we had to first of expanded to more asset classes and so we kind of spent the first four years just building all the different asset classes fractionalizing all those building this like internal you know system which was like you know we call the holding system it's like a ledger that enables real-time money movements between all asset classes if you sell bitcoin you can buy a t-bill with it you know the second after and consolidated performance reporting where you have one chart that's right all the asset classes

[10:49] your Morgan account, you will not see the chart because of that. Um, and so like all this kind of stuff, um, [10:55] And that was the first step. The second was, why do you open the app? [11:03] I think brokerage had become a little bit just a tool to execute trades. And that's, I think, through, you know, back in the day, you would call your broker. Then it went to like, you know, you log into your computer and you execute trades yourself. And then it went to mobile and it became like simplified, simplified, simplified, simplified. And then cost down, cost down, cost down, cost down. And with that, it basically became just this tool where you go to execute trades. [11:28] And so we were, again, back in the sense of, like, okay, now, if you're that premium product, you're not just a tool to execute trades, you know, you obviously provide more value there. And I think what is now happening specifically is that because of AI, you can actually move much more back to this, like, more full-service layer there. Where, like, back in the day when you called your broker, your broker would maybe even give you a ring himself and be, like, proactive and be, yo, you know, maybe you should check out this company. I've seen this and this, you know, and all these things. [11:58] And that all went away when people started clicking the button themselves. [12:01] And I think we're kind of going back to that now where an investing app can actually invest in platform can be much more full service and AI can kind of enable that. And so I think we kind of went through that arc a little bit. And for us specifically, while we kind of went through that. [12:16] And obviously, as you build the company, things always change. But I think the biggest turning point for us was in 2022,

[12:24] essentially right after everyone [12:26] realized money isn't free anymore and came back from the high you know from like the total zup world and you know and like uh you know everyone was just able to to to raise whatever and we see we're just asking about how many accounts have you acquired no matter the quality of how much money you make on them you know and so and kind of when everyone came kind of down from that high and everyone was kind of looking back in their business i was like okay like let's like rejigger this because we clearly just came from a ridiculous phase um so in 2022 we essentially looked at [12:56] Thank you. [12:57] had this internal, um, uh, [13:00] like this internal background called like mantra which we called level up and level up was essentially like okay let's make sure that we truly focus on the top quartile the top 25 percent because you know if in the us sadly if you're in the sub 75 percent you live page to page you crack out a credit card you do not have money to compound the markets you just don't that's also why you see the people who [13:24] have who acquire those and build products for those and you know consumer fintech you have to monetize those through loan speculation or interchange or something and we were like okay but we as a financial service company we're going to monetize assets and that you can only do if you actually monetize if you have people and service people who have assets and so in the us that means if you have more than a hundred grand that means you have money left over at the end of the month to actually put into the market so you have the ability to compound in the first place

[13:54] Thank you. [13:54] the roadmap, [13:56] um really you know is focused on the things that these people need the way our customer service you know talks and so on you know it's more in that world there will be design the way the app looks right we kind of went from something that looked more cash appy of like big bold numbers and very very simple you know to a little bit denser ui you know it's okay to have a table you can scroll sometimes you know like maybe some more numbers are good sometimes because it gives you more context and people actually need that information you know deep caring deeply about [14:26] management in the first place and so on. [14:29] And so that kind of took us through, you know, the next few years. And then we kind of looked, we looked at the team was like, it's likely going to take two years for all this stuff to really show results. And then I would say within the next 12 to 18 months, we saw like how cohorts just kept stepping up and stepping up and stepping up. And I think since then, [14:48] every single cohort we acquire is better than last. And it's because I think we're still on this thing where we're still adding products to it that, [14:56] draw sophistication up and therefore, you know, kind of serve that audience better. And that's where AI is in a position to do, full service model, yada, yada. [15:05] I think I asked you and I was wondering what your numbers were. And you said millions of users, billions of assets, billions of trading volume and revenue doubling every year. [15:15] So is that... [15:17] That is accurate. That is accurate. That is accurate. As much numbers as you're going to get out of me. And so, but I'm curious because, okay, so when you started the company, it was like right before COVID. COVID hits, like there's Wall Street bets, like trading volume explodes for retail traders. And then we have a slump and the IPO window kind of shut. And then how did those macro cycles affect the business? And how do you...

[15:42] create defensibility against that? [15:46] So two sides. First off, in our business, we always talk about how we cannot predict the markets. If we could, we should start a head fund. And so therefore we just got to build... [15:54] a product that can kind of [15:56] you know be successful through all market cycles and in our space if rates are low people are more risk on you see more active trading your trading revenues will go up your options trading will go up these kinds of things your crypto will go up you know um when rates are high people are more risk off and you will see more money being made in interest and in you know [16:26] And so you kind of want to have these two sides of the business so that whatever the market cycle is, you monetize your assets. And then, yes, your monetization rate on assets might fluctuate a little bit with the cycles, but shouldn't be much. And that is what the model should be. Now, if you look at companies in our space who are just very heavily on the trading side, you know, [16:47] It's obviously harder for them because if you're, if, you know, [16:50] call it 90% of your revenues come from trading fees or something, you will obviously have a very volatile business. And so we look at it as like, okay, by also being multi-asset, you take volatility out of the business because whatever market cycle you're in, you will always monetize the assets. And so for us, mission zero is just, [17:07] have people bring assets on the platform. And then once the assets on the platform, we'll monetize them in some way. And because we're also building for portfolio builders, so people that actually just compound wealth over time,

[17:18] We essentially have no churn. Like our lifetimes are like 25 years plus. [17:23] to literally [17:24] Like that line is just straight at some point. [17:26] and just completely flattens out. And so for us, again, that means as assets are so sticky, [17:34] um it's just like just bring assets on we'll monetize them in some way um and let's make sure that you know users are happy and they have all the ways to bring more money in and and so on that's also why like whenever you launch a new asset class and your account type or whatever all numbers go up um just because you can you know you can consolidate more more of your funds you can there's more things to invest into you know maybe trust it more with more money sooner etc [17:58] Could you share all of the offerings that you have? [18:02] Okay, so we look at it, by the way, we have literally this little chart in our pitch deck. Like there's four kind of pieces, which is asset classes, account types, products, and platforms. And so asset class is pretty straight. [18:15] stocks, ETFs, crypto options, treasuries, corporate bonds. [18:22] Um, [18:24] And then other things coming. [18:26] Then you have account types. So right now that's your regular brokerage account, margin accounts you can take as part of that. IRAs, we're doing trust accounts soon, one of the most requested features actually. It's also how the great wealth transfer happens before people pass away, right? And then... [18:46] What was I trust accounts, entity accounts. So like you might be someone who has, you know, entity wants to put some money away, small business, you might have an Airbnb business on the side or whatever it might be. Or again, like you might inherit business from your parents, even before they pass and stuff like that. So entity accounts are very important.

[19:02] So things like that. And then... [19:04] We have platforms, essentially... [19:06] The app gains means for us like mobile, web, API, and now agentic, which we see as a platform, platform shift. And then you essentially have products. And products is like when we build unique product around asset classes. [19:22] um, generated assets. [19:24] is an asset class that we've essentially sort of say invented where it's like it's an AR product where you can just prompt be like give me companies that are founder led more grow more than 30 percent um have no debt and are us-based um and then the AI goes out finds you those asset classes finds you those those those companies that like fit that criteria gives you a back test as you against S&P 500 returns drawdowns etc and then you can invest into that and it sits in your [19:54] That is a product that we have created that kind of feels like an asset class, but it's actually more of a product that sits on top of all the engine, all the asset class that we've built, right? Similar, we have like a treasury letter product where you can like, you know, go in and really easy to just like, [20:07] deposit money create a little treasury letter and then you invest it in u.s treasuries to put some cash away for example but again that is a product that we've built that sits on top of all the you could also just go and like figure out yourself and find this one bond you want to buy and stuff but you could do that too um and so that's how we think about it and then [20:26] For us, like any of these things is essentially growth. Like we can launch a new asset class, but it's also if you combine these things, right? So you have a new account type and now you want to have generated assets in that account type. And so it's something you start to like, when you connect all these pieces as well, it's also an opportunity for growth.

[20:43] And so. [20:44] I have a couple of questions about this, but like, has that, and I guess has the reflection on that and the understanding of the business strategy within all these different connected pieces, has that just kind of naturally evolved or were you thinking about different levers to pull as you grow? Like, how did you think about constructing all of this? So we have a few high level principles in terms of just building stuff. Like one we always talk about is, um, [21:13] Um, [21:14] It's... [21:15] simplicity, not simplistic, and so the sense of that [21:19] You want to have a simple experience that has a lot of product depth to it, so it can't feel complicated and so on. It can't feel like a tax form and you log into your shop account or something. But it still needs to be simple enough that you can understand it and use it and whatnot. But it can't be simplified because if it's simplified, that means you're taking... [21:39] product depth away in order to simplify it. And that's what you've seen a lot of consumer fintech do. But that takes sophistication away and so on. And also just like control and so on. So like that's like one of the pieces, just from like a high level principle perspective. [21:54] And then generally speaking, I would say, yeah, as you build the company, you learn things. I would say... [21:59] Most cases I would argue like if you find founders, it will tell you that they had the perfect vision from day one. I think that's bullshit in most cases and that you learn over time and things change. I think our story of level up for us is a good one where, you know, when we launched the company, we were much more in this mindset of like democratization, public for everyone, you know, no, no, no. Then we were as we then built through it and kind of made our learnings and we're like, you know what, we're going to focus on.

[22:23] the top quartile, that's who we should be building for, that's where the opportunity is. [22:27] But you learn these things as you go. [22:29] And I think you will stay true to certain goals you have as a business. [22:35] And I think that is important. I never have like a North star of what you're building, like fast, like the, you know, investing in those, I take it seriously and things like that. Um, [22:42] But of course things change as you build. Hopefully with all these IPOs coming up, you can get those trust accounts out soon. [22:50] Why is it trusted constant IPOs? What's your thinking there? All these employees are going to need to start putting their money in many places. Yeah, that's true. Usually you put in a trust. Yeah. So on the generated assets... [23:01] part. [23:01] Were there any surprises of adoption and how people really took that? Like, what is the craziest thing or maybe the most popular generated asset that's been created? [23:15] I think what's interesting is like, obviously, you could create pretty much anything with it. And so I think when people think about it, they first always go thematic. [23:24] And you've seen that some of the, like, biggest, most performant ones are, like, thematic ones. Like, you know, right before we started this recording, we were talking about... [23:35] The... [23:36] I think the best performing generated asset on the platform right now is defense and... [23:41] weapons manufacturers one that is like up 350% in the last month or something. I wonder why. Who knew? That's so weird. Strange. But I think the

[23:56] What we find interesting, what we see a lot of people doing is also a little bit of this remixing of existing indices. [24:04] And so give me... [24:06] you know, the NASDAQ 100, but truly take out anything that's not tech. Yeah. You know, like stuff like that. Like if you look at like the top 10 holdings, I think like, for example, Costco's in there, you know? And so on. So like, take that out, like things like that. And so it's like remixing of existing things, I think is something that we see a lot of people do. And then obviously, like there's some like people who just do funny stuff, you know, like we have a commercial out where it's like, you know, I went found out of the marathon runners, you know? And so on, like everyone, everyone always brings up the site. They're like, I've got alpha. Yeah, exactly. [24:36] on running CEOs. They're going to outperform. There's a famous tweet and viral [24:42] some time ago, not on the assets, but on this concept of founders who lift, like the debt lift index. [24:52] So there are these like fun examples as well, of course. But I think what we see people do where they put real money behind is a little bit more on the like remixing or the thematic stuff. Sorcery is brought to you by Brex, the financial stack trusted by more than 30,000 companies, including one in three venture backed startups in the US. Nearly 40 percent of startups bail because they run out of cash. Brex is literally built to help founders avoid that.

[25:22] fees, Brex's designs help you spend smarter and move faster. Their all-in-one solution combines checking, treasury, and FDIC protection into one powerful account. You can send and receive money globally at lightning speeds, get 20 times the standard FDIC coverage through their partner banks, and even high yield from day one. With same day and even same hour liquidity, access your funds [25:52] Turing is training the next generation of AI with tasks that require real expertise and real world judgment. That's why companies like NVIDIA, Anthropic, Salesforce, and Gemini partner with Turing. [26:22] I know you focus on the higher end of... [26:36] people, customers. So within the higher wealth class, what are the age demographics of your users? Are you finding that newer generations are coming up and being more [26:50] active? How is this dispersed across? I mean average age in public is 38 so call it like mid-millennial

[26:57] kind of thing, I would call it. Um... [27:01] Thank you. [27:02] Thank you. [27:04] Yeah, I'd... [27:07] say that... [27:10] Thank you. [27:12] I wouldn't say there's too many surprises. I think the main thing that's really out there is that we see that people are, this generation is self-directed first. [27:21] And I think it's because they grew up with financial literacy way earlier in their lives through social media, niche communities and whatnot. I always make this example of like, there's like dividend investing communities out there. They have millions of users and stuff. And I'm like, how much can you talk about dividend investing? It's like, I guess a lot, but, you know, it's like, what? [27:42] like social media because of just like how you know information like just like is so much more accessible it gave people financial literacy way earlier in their lives and i think because of financial accounts being much more accessible nowadays lower minimums things like faster kyc right like you can create an account immediately because it's automatic you don't have to fax and a form to some banker that like takes a week to you know process it and like all these things and crypto of course right as an asset class that was born retail and born fractional as well [28:12] all these things throughout the last decade plus, I think have created a generation that is way more financial literate. And therefore they have... [28:21] way more, you know, trust in their capabilities as investors. [28:26] Because you recognize, like, it's just investing. It's not rocket science. And, and, um...

[28:31] And I think that's why they're much more self-directed first. And so, um, [28:36] This is one... [28:38] a Wall Street Journal article or something where the headline is something of, thank you for the golf invite, but I will manage my money myself. It's about wealthy millennials and financial advisors and such. And I think you're going to see a lot of that. And so when you talk about the great wealth transfer, most of those assets are with financial advisors, likely. And so when those assets are being transferred, it's not just a transfer of wealth, it's also a potential transfer of relationships in that moment. [29:08] And then at that point, you have, you know... [29:11] XYZ person [29:12] who is now inheriting all this money, and they sit there with... [29:16] uh stereotypical name it's called uh charles you know charles i don't know why who the heck came up yeah charles and then you know charles will sit there at the dinner table you know and they'll sit there well like you know thank you very much for everything you've done you know for my parents but uh what is your thinking about uh you know a glp1 strategy and the guy will be like glp what and he'll be like yeah maybe i'll take some of [29:46] especially as like, [29:47] you know financial like there's less people becoming financial advisors now yeah new generations the average age of financial advisor goes up by you know a year every year i think the average age is actually roughly 60 or so already you know and so um you gotta have the situation suddenly where the the the age gap between advisors and the people that they should advise suddenly massive plus a generation that grew up with more financial literacy access to ai etc etc

[30:17] heavily disrupted um [30:20] Do you think... [30:21] more people should be suspect of financial advisors like i just i think i i just spoke with michelle del buono who is uh the cio of a16 perennial a16z perennial i always drop the z for some reason i don't know why but you just gotta shorten the acronym step by step more it's still too long all right it's not at some point it's just it's just it's just gonna be a i know yeah [30:51] We were talking about wealth managers and just this class in general, working with these more institutional funds, they are... [31:04] They're not professional investors. They're investment professionals. They don't actually know how to invest. They just know how to make you feel you're comfortable with them. [31:15] putting your money places. I don't know if, you know, we could say they're really investors and investing, but it's more of a customer service game that we've all, not we've all, but I would say that the mass... [31:27] the majority of people think you just should automatically buy into versus maybe question, is this actually performing or not? I know for a fact that one of my accounts that is like a family account, it's not moving, but you know, it's, and I'm just calling her out right now. It's, you know, a financial advisor and we should trust a financial advisor. And I'm like, well, you know what? I've seen this account. It's been around for years. It's not moving. And the market is. So why is that? Do you have any hot takes on this and how people just automatically assume

[31:57] that they're professional and they will grow your wealth? And what questions should you be asking them? [32:02] I always wanted to make a little website that is essentially is your advisor screwingyou.com, where you punch in your portfolio which firm they're with or whatever. And then it tells you, number one, all the lower fee alternatives of all the stuff you're invested in. Plus, if they sold you their own products that they make some kickback on or the fees way larger and whatnot. [32:25] I think you should do it. You should totally do that. That should be your next... I know. That would go viral. There you go. You know, I'm spilling the viral ideas on this podcast. That would be great, Legion. You know? You know? Totally. [32:36] Totally screwed up already. But yeah, I mean, it's like, so when we look at financial advisors and we have obviously, you know, we are more of a self-directed platform. We have more like managed-ish products step by step, like even generated assets is sort of managed just like textiles, harvesting, building, stuff like that, but it's managed from technology. It's not managed by a human, right? And so if we look at what a financial advisor does for you, we break down these three things, where it's like, no more than it's grunt work, [33:04] So like doing the actual textiles harvesting, setting up, you know, some strategy for you, etc. Second is advice, which is basically opinions on the back of... [33:15] news and data and reports and such. And the third is emotional support. [33:20] Who do I call when everything is red and I'm freaking out? And... [33:26] AI, if you look at, like, agents what we've launched, that does number one now.

[33:31] And so two and three is going to be replaced as well. It's just a matter of time. And I actually think that three is even easier to replace than two likely. Because three is just the emotional support, which in most cases, I think, is just a sense of giving people good support. [33:47] context around what is happening and um [33:51] and therefore calling them off a ledge or whatever. And I think that emotional support piece is likely actually easier to replace, I think. And we're talking about this concept of should you be able to test drive different personalities of some AI advisor, of how do they talk to you, what is the style that you react to or not, and so on. I think there's a lot of interesting stuff there. But I would argue that we humans are actually... [34:21] simpler than we maybe sometimes, you know, want to admit. And that, you know, considering you have people having full relationships with AI already now, that I think that part is actually... [34:34] easy to replicate and then i think the middle part is actually the hardest because um advice which is just you know again opinions on the back of data is just so subjective if we would put five financial advisors in this room right now and we would one by one ask them about what's a great you know investing strategy or stock tip or whatever they would like to tell you all something different and we would make our decision based off who's most likable or something you know and

[35:04] again, maybe it's just about giving people more data, therefore making these things actually more, like, less subjective because it's more driven by, you know, actual historical results and, like, the data around that and so on, which then builds trust, you know, versus just someone's opinion at that moment, you know? But I think that is actually, I would say, like, [35:23] the genuinely the hardest piece right um because again if anyone can truly predict what the markets are going to do you know please listen to me but um because i want to give them all my money so um so yeah who knows but i think yeah so i think financial advisors will have a really really really hard time moving forward it's gonna be tough [35:45] As the platform becomes more agentic, are you worried at all about any risks and vulnerabilities there? Are you thinking about insurance? How are you thinking about... [35:54] the backstop. Yeah. The way we look at agents right now is we essentially separate the reasoning from the execution. [36:05] Um... [36:06] which means you [36:09] spar with the AI to figure out what the workflow should be. What's the strategy? What's, what's a trading strategy you want to, you want to come up with? Um, it helps you build that trading strategy. It's, [36:21] literally writes the code to do that in the public account. But once you approve it, [36:27] it is a deterministic model where that can't deviate. And so therefore it has no... [36:33] that has no hallucinations, you know exactly it's going to do what it told it to do, and so on. And we think that is very important, number one, obviously just for the safety of the user, but also for people who just build trust with these systems. I don't think people are ready to...

[36:51] give their money to open claw and say make me money now please you know like i think we're far away from that [36:57] And, you know, there's a reason why everyone wants to have a little Mac mini because they want to have these things operate in a, you know, isolated environment that is away from their own data, away from their own money, etc. So I think we're actually far away from that. [37:27] and so on because it ends up running deterministically. We talked about this a little bit beforehand and hinted at it. So you definitely are going hardcore on AI and agentic systems. [37:41] The rest of the market is going hardcore on prediction markets and everything else under the sun. So the theme of becoming the financial super app is somehow now the goalpost for fintech. I'm curious why that's... [37:56] now the gold star or the north star. I mean, I think we were definitely in a fintech cold spell for a while. So I don't know if this new thing is like, let's go after the growth, but it's causing a lot of confusion for new customers. And I know you want to be a pop, like these companies want to be a platform for everything. So with you being so focused, how do you think about every company, every fintech becoming a financial super app? And then,

[38:24] At that point, how do you differentiate? I think when you build fintech in the US, and I think it's unique to the US in that regard, because the wealth disparity in the US is so big, you have to pick who you're designing for. And if you're designing for the sub-75%, [38:41] who are people that live paycheck to paycheck, credit card to credit card, you're building for mass America, for middle America, for most people out there, you will make different design choices and you have to monetize differently. If you're looking at the top 25% where people actually have the means to compound their wealth and put money away every month, you make very different design choices. [39:11] but [39:12] putting money away that is a sentence that people will say you know and so your checking account lives separately from the from the actual kind of you know center of your financial life really these are like a little bit like two separate pieces in the bottom 75 your checking account is likely the center of your financial life and so as if you build for that you want to connect as much as possible to that checking account because when money comes in chances are that money has to [39:42] few days later because they have to pay rent and put food on the table and whatever because they live paycheck to paycheck and so you have to and it sounds very horrible now but like you know if you're building for mass america you kind of you know and you want to monetize them you also have to monetize with speculation um loans or

[40:00] Swiping cards, aka interchange. [40:03] Because those are the only ways of how you can make money on these people because you're not going to monetize their assets because there are no assets. And so what that means is that what you see down there, you see, you know, [40:12] Predatory... [40:13] you know, uh, uh, you know, loans basically for, you know, [40:17] uh paid like paycheck loans what they call again i'm blanking come on you know what i don't know payday loans there you go sorry like like payday loans for example you know um you will see uh credit cards you know you will see uh speculation which in most cases is in a crypto or in our prediction markets you know that like fits to that audience or sports betting to be even more straight in most cases right yeah that's because that's how you monetize these people right so when money comes into your checking account [40:46] What happens is, [40:48] Yeah, like, if you want to bet on the Steelers, you know, you want to be very close to the checking account because there's only so much time this person can bet on the Steelers, right? And so you got to shrink that time from... [41:00] your paycheck to speculation as quickly as possible because, you know, that's how you monetize the stuff now. And that is the sad thing. [41:08] truth i think for these like mass america uh consumer fintech platforms that you will end up having to play that game because that's how you make money there you know and so i don't condemn necessarily the founders to do it and whatnot it's just like it's it's it's the market you're in and you have to monetize you have to build a business and so you will see what you make money on like i get it as a founder entirely you know but if you build for mass america you're

[41:33] You'll end up doing that. [41:34] which also means you'll end up doing some predatory shit. [41:38] Now, in the top quartile, it's about monetizing assets. And so you will make different design choices. And so we always say, like, we're not going to build the money super app. We're rather going to be the investing super app, for lack of better wording, because our types of customers, that is where their financial lives really are centered around. And so we much more care about launching another asset class or another account type of trust accounts or whatever, [42:04] because that is how we're going to drive our gross profit per user up, you know, versus in the, you know, [42:11] mass america tier where you live paycheck to paycheck or even crack out a credit card um [42:15] you know you will have to monetize to more of these like you know impulse things or loans and so on and so it's just a very different game you play and if you just make very different design choices and so i think that's why everyone's going into this money super app because if you build for mass america you have to just like put it all together because you need to shrink the time from paycheck to whatever you do with this money if it's entertainment finance or whatever but you have to shrink that time so [42:39] But even seeing... [42:41] the billions and billions and billions of volume on prediction markets do you not you don't have any fomo no i think prediction markets um or event contracts but i said um are a very powerful tool we're going to go into that some part ourselves but i think right now um [42:59] the use of events contracts or the use cases are being stretched.

[43:04] And I personally think it's a little bit short-sighted for the industry because I think it's a very powerful tool and... [43:09] Personally, I'm a big believer, for example, in security space prediction markets. So think of like you are an investor in Tesla. You have an incredible hand on their energy business. How many kilowatts of energy storage have they chipped last quarter, for example? You want to place a trade on that. You can use an events contract to do that. And so you will like... [43:30] dissect out the piece that piece of the business and you can make a trade on that not being influenced that they potentially didn't hit their model y shipping numbers last quarter you know um and so like you can move you can make moves like that which i think can be very powerful specifically in the fully more sophisticated credit crowd and like those that's the kind of stuff we're very excited about and we're going to get into now using it to essentially do sports betting you know i would argue it's kind of you know stretching the use case or betting on dancing [44:00] so on and so we look at it as like if it's if it actually you know helps in your portfolio management [44:06] and around your assets and hedging and all these things, then it's something that can likely be a powerful tool that we're also going to get into. I do think, though, by... [44:14] You know, um... [44:17] going into all this wacky stuff with prediction markets, I think it actually... [44:21] hurts the long-term probability like they like like the long-term you know success of that entire industry because um you're just kind of like destroying his reputation a little bit to some regards and um and where the actual opportunity sits you know like if you would look at the security space you know contracts and so on my hunch would be that the volumes around that in the long term will be dramatically higher than what the market of sports betting is in the us

[44:51] institutional volume into that and all these things. And so... [44:55] I think there's a lot of nuance there. [44:57] Nuance doesn't play well on Twitter maybe, but I think that nuance is very important. [45:04] Do you think it's realistic to say that everything is... [45:07] going to become tradable and at what point? You talk about the divide and where you want to stick to. If it's a bell curve, right? You want to stick to the higher class. [45:16] assets, if everything becomes tradable and [45:21] It's running 24/7. [45:23] How does that impact the market? And do you think that's going to just undermine everything in general? Or is there going to be a real shakeout where it's, nope, we're all just, we just trust the higher end market versus all the gobbledygook that's being done on the sides? Generally speaking, I think that more things are tradable. Again, there's a nuanced thing around what is actually tradable. Is this stuff that is related to building wealth? [45:53] Thank you. [45:53] fun. And yeah, I mean there's tokenization, there's stable coins now and like... Yeah and like with tokenization again like I think there's a sense of that like you have to separate the technology [46:05] of a token being a wrapper for something and the blockchain being just a piece of technology that you can use to trade something. And the... [46:16] you know, [46:18] like the actual value that it provides for like a better winning, right? Like if I, but when I hear people say things like, oh, you know, if you tokenize stocks, like they can trade 24 seven. Yeah, I'll be like,

[46:29] Thank you. [46:31] that doesn't make any sense because just by wrapping it into a token doesn't mean it's ready for seven like come on like also like don't pretend like you don't know that like you know it's like it's just a fucking wrapper you know let's be straight you know and so there is is this aspect of like hey like you can have 24-7 markets already but it's not a question of if it's a token or not it's a question of liquidity right so like if you look at the overnight market which is blue something something i forgot the name of it right now which is like [47:01] makes it possible to trade after eight to you know like throughout throughout the night in the like 24 5 trading venues right and that's the one that grubonaut uses and you know we will use this and we will likely be on that at some point too [47:12] And so that has already been solved, but it took some time because they needed to build liquidity. [47:21] for that market. That is really... [47:24] what the issue is the issue is liquidity piece it's not if there's a wrapper of a token you know just because you're wrapping a token doesn't mean you have infinite liquidity suddenly you can do 24 7 trading like no you know and so um there's always a little bit of hype around just like organization and so on now the one thing that i could see is that okay can we create [47:45] Or can we use... [47:48] tokens and blockchain as a [47:50] kind of unified technology that we all agree with going to be the wrapper for all alternative assets so that you can do... [47:58] You know, [47:59] real estate and, you know, art and royalties and whatever else you might want to, you know, actually make tradable of like real assets, that you put it all essentially on like the same exchange. Why? Because? Because you need liquidity. Yeah.

[48:11] That's the issue. But if you could put it all into the same wrapper, into the same blockchain, and it becomes like this one exchange, and then all brokers tap into, not one broker just doing its own, the other broker does its own itself, but therefore bringing all the liquidity together, then I think you could... [48:29] actually use that technology to create... [48:34] you know, like a real alternative trading market because we all agreed then, okay, we're going to now use this in order to make these assets tradable. Like, I can see those things. [48:45] But again, it's a technology. It's not [48:48] magically creating liquidity and therefore magically creating things like that. [48:51] VCX by Fundrise, the public ticker for private tech, allowing investors of all sizes to invest in venture capital. View the portfolio at GetVCX.com. That's GetVCX.com. Some of you may not have heard this yet, but our sponsor Public just launched something called Generated Assets, and it brings AI into investing in a way I've honestly never seen before. Here's how it works. You type in an idea like AI-powered supply chain companies [49:21] or defense tech companies growing revenue over 25% year over year. Publix AI then dispatches a swarm of agents that scan every single US stock, evaluates them, and instantly builds a custom index around your thesis. What really stands out is how clearly it explains why each stock is included. And before you invest, you can even backtest your idea against the S&P 500, so you're making decisions with real context, not just guessing. And beyond generated assets, Publix lets you invest in stocks, bonds, options, crypto,

[49:51] place. They'll even give you an uncapped 1% match when you transfer your investments over from another platform. If you want to build a portfolio that actually reflects your thesis, visit public.com slash sorcery. [50:02] Paid for by Public Investing. Full disclosures in the description. [50:06] Enterprise AI runs on Merge, the AI infra platform for integrations, agent tooling, and model orchestration, so your teams ship product, not plumbing. Mistral, Dropbox, and Drada already trust Merge in production. Start building at Merge.dev. [50:22] Founders scale faster on Deal. Set up payroll for any country in minutes, hire anyone anywhere, get visas handled fast, and get back to building. Visit deal.com slash sorcery. That's D-E-E-L dot com slash sorcery. [50:37] So private markets have been seeing all of the value. All the growth is accruing in OpenAI, Anthropics, SpaceX. [50:47] been [50:48] pretty good for a while, but they did [50:50] go from 300 billion like only a year ago to now going to IPO for nearly two trillion dollars it's [50:57] pretty crazy so given that and all those trends i've talked to a couple investors and different founders about this on the podcast but how do you think about giving [51:07] the public and democratizing access to these private companies. We are seeing closed end funds go public, whether it's VCX, Robinhood Ventures, Destiny was public before. But how do you think about all the value being locked up in private markets and how do you, if you do, want to access that for your users?

[51:29] It is bad, right? Like we used to have way more public companies that we have now in the US. And but it's it's it is a symptom of great liquidity in the public, within the private markets. And [51:42] There's a lot of founders who will not... [51:45] necessarily want to be a public company founder and want to be on the hamster wheel of quarterly earnings reports and all that kind of stuff um [51:52] And so it is an obvious effect of that. Now, there is a sense of that the public markets have figured something out that the private markets just don't have, you know, and it's by design, you know, where the public markets have... [52:11] very clear regulation about financial disclosures on how companies report. There's very clear things of that. If someone does something sketchy, [52:20] it there's a agency that will enforce it etc like there's all these things that are done to protect the regular investor um [52:30] And those things just don't one-to-one exist like that in the private markets. And that's why you have things like accreditation laws. Now, accreditation laws... [52:38] Like, are they perfect? No, they're not. You know? Um... [52:42] but... [52:45] Again, I think there needs to be, I think it's much more of a regulatory problem. [52:50] I would argue that it is again like a technological problem. I don't think the answer is just to tokenize it and just give it to people. [52:56] You know? Also, the...

[52:59] probably a trailer closed-end funds, you know, it's like... [53:02] it's one way to [53:05] regulatory-wise, like, you're able to do it. [53:08] But then still, what happens there is you just take a tiny piece of these companies and put it on float. And so you've seen that with... [53:15] you know, VCX and stuff, where you have a tiny little bit of float and suddenly that thing just like pumps up like crazy in value. And suddenly the underlying valuation of Anthropic in there is like $100 trillion or something because this thing went up, you know, and then these things become very quickly just a game of speculation versus actual real value behind it. And then you will have always some real-time investors who, you know... [53:40] will not have the abilities to like really understand it properly and whatnot and will get burned on these things, you know, and then you can go full super libertarian and be like, well, that's their issue then. [53:50] um or you can be a little bit more like well you know as a society are we here and we should protect us also a little bit you know and i will i will be more a little bit on the former where i think like um because it keeps markets healthy um i think some [54:05] sensible regulation um around things like financial disclosures and so on that then you know uh [54:13] make more affordable investors like some sensible regulation around um [54:18] you know, what is tradable and how, you know, do you trade the whole float or not, etc. [54:22] I think is good, not just because it protects investors, but because it keeps the markets going. [54:28] you know, healthy and trustworthy. You know, the more sketchy shit happens in the markets, the less people will trust it and the worse the markets become. Like the US stock market is the major leagues in the world by a massive margin for a reason, because we have rule of law,

[54:45] because, uh, [54:47] you know, the... [54:48] there's liquidity, you know, and so on. I just looked at this thing the other day of like, look at the Australian stock market and the top 200 companies actually have liquidity and [54:58] The other, you know, close to 2,000 don't at all. And so, like, that's how the stock market looks everywhere else. But the US is fucking amazing. You know, like, these markets are incredible. [55:12] And... [55:13] And so I think that is... [55:15] And so I think a big part of that is because of the way they have been constructed over the last 100 years. [55:23] And I think that there's a lot of regulatory things that need to happen to kind of bridge the gap between the private markets that have very little of that and the public markets that have it all figured out. And so... [55:36] We haven't found the instrument yet. [55:39] to really open up [55:42] you know, like private companies to retail investors. [55:46] And so if close and fun is the best thing we got going so far, [55:49] okay, there's some exposure there that people can take advantage of, but I still think it's a very flawed instrument. Even seeing... [55:58] And talking with Ben Miller, who's the CEO of Fundrise, who took VCX public, they traded up nearly 15x, which was really crazy, obviously. I asked him about this off camera and on camera, but like, how do you think about, are you at all thinking about that? How does that impact you? And his response was, well, these companies, there's just been so much pent up demand for a while.

[56:28] those tech stocks, they went up majorly and then they kind of stabilized. Some of them went real down. But they've been trading a little bit more steadily now in terms of how this bleeds into the greater venture capital ecosystem. Because if companies are not going public and they are saying private, you have to look at secondaries and all these other options to get liquidity and DPI within those funds. And then there's also the other route of [56:55] Okay, these funds, these mega funds, whether it's A16Z, General Catalyst, etc., they're ballooning to $80 billion, $90 billion in assets under management. [57:06] do those funds go public? And it was funny because I tweeted about... [57:11] with the VCX [57:12] podcast is a 16z do you think they have a chance do you think they're going to go public and their uh their head of investor relations quote tweeted and it was like we just raised 18 percent of venture capital last year why would we go public we clearly have enough money which i thought was pretty funny um but in terms of that and then going back into the ipo market so the [57:34] Do you think... [57:37] With the upcoming IPOs, there is going to be a steady tech surgence back into the markets. What [57:46] Let's say let's do two scenarios here. If [57:50] SpaceX goes public at $2 trillion and it trades well. [57:53] and it stays in the market like that will that actually create an opening for other companies or is

[57:58] purely an anomaly event, and two, it's a [58:02] If that does not go well, [58:04] what happened you can't time the markets i also asked someone this but how do you think about those scenarios and the impact [58:09] of private companies going public. [58:13] I think we should have more public companies... [58:16] I think more companies should try to go public. [58:20] And I would actually even argue that... [58:25] if we'd had more companies going public, [58:28] Um... [58:30] you would... [58:31] also less need to make these arguments that you just made where you're basically just putting all your, you know, you're hanging all your hope on like one IPO that is happening once in a while. [58:42] um and i think we just every company is unique i truly believe that and um i think the markets are smart enough to figure that out and um [58:54] And in that, I think just like rip the bandaid and more companies should go public. It's good for the markets. It's good for retail investor access. It's likely, you know... [59:06] for those companies too in some regard. How do you think about that? [59:12] You're co-CO. [59:14] of a high growth company. [59:16] Hmm. [59:17] I mean, for us, I think we, I mean, not saying that we're going to go public anytime soon or anything, right? But like for us. We already are public. You know, public is a company. Yes, exactly. But I think for us specifically, we would likely be a good public company because we are literally in the space. Like the amount of times being asked by our own customers if they can invest into public happens every single day. And even for Robinhood, I think one of the best things I've ever done is to become public.

[59:47] And I think that today that is a very powerful thing. If you have a lot of retail investors rooting for you. If you look at the companies that are trading at the highest revenue multiples, they're all companies that are like story stocks with a high revenue. [1:00:05] the retail ownership. [1:00:08] You know, and... [1:00:09] Um, [1:00:10] And so I think that is a very powerful thing. And then I think the sense is that as a founder, you will have to be as a personality, someone [1:00:20] who [1:00:22] uh wants to go out there and market your company like you want to look at an earnings call not be something you're dreading but you want to look at an earnings call with something where you'd be like this is going to be my event you know and i can't wait for this day like every call you're going to be like fuck yes i can't wait to go on this call and show these people you know like that has to be your energy going in because you will be a marketer as a founder ceo if you're [1:00:52] you actually might be able to [1:00:54] you know, scale your multiple up in the public markets compared to the private markets. But you've got to be someone who really... [1:01:00] wants that and gets energy out of it. [1:01:02] Speaking of energy, in terms of you in your role, co-CEO, founder of Public, Sorcery is sponsored by Brex and they're all about performance. And so as you think about performance for yourself... [1:01:16] As co-CEO, who are...

[1:01:19] I think performance really has to do with who you surround yourself with or who you admire, who you are mentored by. Who are some of those people for you and how do you keep yourself motivated? [1:01:30] So Janneke and I have a little bit of a circle of like other founder friends and a few of those are [1:01:37] further along in their journey than we are. [1:01:39] and so on and i think that is always first it's great just for advice and so on to have other founder friends are like in similar situations similar size companies and all that kind of stuff or even further along than you are because i think that's immensely important and helpful but there's also a sense where like [1:01:56] you know. [1:01:57] I don't know, you're sitting on your buddy's private jet, and you're like, "Fuck! There's always another level!" And so there is always this, like, man, and so you always get, like, exposed to, like, your friends' successes, you know? On the one side, you're obviously rooting for them, and you're happy for them, but on the other side, you're also always a competitive being, and you're like, "Okay, gotta work harder! Gotta work harder!" Yeah. So you've raised 400 million to date. [1:02:26] What are your big plans for what's coming next? [1:02:28] I mean, right now we are obviously very deep in just building out what we've called as like a Gentic brokerage, right? Like we think that's the most exciting platform shift that is out there. As cliche as this talk track sounds right now as any other podcast, I guess. There's nothing cliche about this. [1:02:48] But it's true, and I believe in it. Like, man, the stuff that we've seen, even just internally around, you know, AI, we have, like, this one agent called Cody, which is, like, basically, like, a front-end engineer that we have that can literally turn a Jira ticket into perfect code that just, you know, sets for an engineer to review and merge. And, like, it's autonomously just working off tickets 24-7, for example. Like, stuff like that is just insane.

[1:03:18] So fun. [1:03:19] It's so fun because everything can be challenged, everything you can look at and be like, you know, we always had the saying, even before, you know, the AI stuff, we always had this little saying of like, you know, if someone tells you that this house is done, that's probably a better way to do it. [1:03:34] And... [1:03:35] That's so much more true now. And, you know, even like our CFO is like super excited because every little thing that's in her team can suddenly be, you know, automated and be optimized. And like everyone becomes a little bit of a tech tinkerer and starts to learn a little bit of code to some regard, just, you know, by accident, essentially by playing with these tools. And so it's just, it's such an exciting time. [1:04:02] And so right now we're going to keep pulling on that string because I think there's a lot to be built. [1:04:08] As we close out, what's the one question you think people should be asking that they're not? [1:04:14] Oh, you want to go dark for one second? Yeah. Okay. [1:04:17] as excited as I am about the AI stuff, [1:04:21] Man, I can sadly see... [1:04:24] a near-term future that before we live in this oasis where no one has to work anymore and whatnot that like some people talk about, you know. [1:04:32] where everything is just done for us and working is optional and dah, dah, dah, dah, dah. Before we ever get there, I think it's going to get really dark. And it's going to get really dark because you're going to, I think what's going to happen is that... [1:04:46] The... [1:04:46] people that have access to the tools, that can use them, that own the tools, you know, like Elon is going to own all the robots, you know, and I think the power...

[1:05:00] disparity that's going to happen there is going to be so massive and i think the first order effect of that is going to be that the wealth disparity that's already extreme in the us is going to become even more extreme and one of the first effects of that is just going to be that we're going to live in a less safe society where in your new york fancy apartment where you have your doorman it's not going to be a doorman it's going to be an armed security guard and it's new york is going [1:05:30] I think, I think, sadly, because just that... [1:05:37] Yes. [1:05:37] I feel every day and I truly believe how powerful... [1:05:42] this shift is and how powerful these tools are and how quickly it's moving it's ridiculous how quickly this is moving and it's going to get to a point where yes i believe there's going to be a a decent amount of job loss and the reality is is that we're currently living in a [1:06:01] society slash in a political system that... [1:06:07] is a capitalistic system in the end. And so, you know, Elon will have no... [1:06:13] incentive to... [1:06:15] gift his robots to everyone you know like it doesn't he doesn't need to you know like and and so at some point there will need to be some sort of wealth redistribution and doesn't that mean it's money that can be resources which might come in the form of robots or whatever you know

[1:06:36] But something like that would need to happen at some point if you don't want, you know, [1:06:43] to live in a society where the pitchforks are in every corner and whatnot. Because I think that is... [1:06:49] that that would happen otherwise. [1:06:52] So it sounds like wealth taxes or UBI? [1:06:55] I mean, I would more say UBI. [1:07:01] I already pay more taxes in the U.S. than I would pay in Germany. Just for just saying, like when anyone like makes this comment of like taxes in the U.S. are low compared to Europe and blah, blah, blah. That is not true. Do your homework. Definitely not true. That is not true. In New York City, I pay more taxes than I would in Germany. That's crazy. So, yeah. [1:07:24] But yeah, UBI, I think UBI is generally a good concept. [1:07:31] Um... [1:07:33] It's generally a good concept. And I'd always argue that it's not just the ability for you to pay for your living, but it's also having purpose in society. And I think that... [1:07:51] That purpose, I think, is maybe sometimes even more important than just giving everyone money. And so I think it's not just about creating UBI. It's also about what can we create that continuously gives people purpose. At the end of the day, you will not just join the gang because you need money. You will also join the gang because it gives you purpose.

[1:08:13] If you're joining gangs. If you're joining gangs. But like I'm saying, so if you don't want everyone to join the gang, you will also have to, as a government and society, have to think about how to create purpose. [1:08:33] that's a positive way to end this look at that we could cut the gang part out it's fine okay hey if people are gonna be in gangs there's many different types there's good ones too i think of course of course of course like thank you so much this was so much fun thank you a lot [1:08:53] Hey, it's Molly. If you enjoy our interviews, check out our newsletter, Sorcery.vc, where we deliver a once a week top deals and tech headlines email and also go deeper on our podcast interviews. Subscribe to Sorcery today and don't forget to subscribe to the podcast on YouTube, Spotify, Apple or wherever you listen. Link in description to sign up.