FULL TRANSCRIPT
Slava (00:00)
In this episode of Smart Humans, we talk with Andrew Luong, the founder and CEO of Doorvest, the platform which allows you to buy, own, and sell investment properties. He teaches us what is a tough home when it comes to managing a rental home out to the market. He discusses his point of view on the economy and interest rates, as well as the impact it will have on housing. And finally, he provides some very interesting predictions for three years out and the investments he would make.
Slava (00:58)
Hello and welcome to the latest episode of Smart Humans. Very excited today for our latest guest. We have Andrew Luong, the CEO and founder of Doorvest. Welcome.
Andrew (Doorvest) (01:09)
Slava, what's up man? Good to be here with you. Been following your work for some time.
Slava (01:13)
Amazing. So we always like to start in the same place. How did it all begin? How do you even get into alternative investments at all?
Andrew (Doorvest) (01:22)
Yeah, man, I'll go back a little bit further than maybe the typical person, grew up during the last recession. I'm an only child. My parents, as with many Americans, faced some financial hardship. My parents in particular had a house foreclosed on. Obviously it was a rough experience going through that, being a young kid, seeing the financial pressure and kind of what that did to
our family dynamics. But anyways, that left a lot.
Slava (01:55)
Where was that house that it was foreclosed on?
Andrew (Doorvest) (01:59)
Yeah, grew up in San Jose, California. So just just south of San Francisco where I live today. Yeah, so anyway, was just a tough experience being an only child being a young kid and kind of watching how the lack of financial security put our family unit in jeopardy. So fast forward some years ended up in startup land.
primarily because I was an awful student, but don't tell the people that hired me back in the day. Ended up in startup land and ended up working in sales and BD. My first gig actually was at Misfit some years ago. And I think you know my old CEO, Sunny, but started to get a job, amass some savings and started thinking about how to put the capital to work and kind of
get the money to work for itself, and then dabbled with a number of different investments, including real estate.
Slava (03:03)
I love the Indiegogo shout out. Misfit was one of the first amazing campaigns ever on Indiegogo. So that's awesome. So you start putting some money together. You start investing into some different ideas. How do you go from Misfit to Doorvest? How many years is in between that?
Andrew (Doorvest) (03:19)
Yeah. So Misfit was, I'd say 2012, 2013. my, the, the time has all jumbled up, but, a little bit over a decade ago, was when I was at Misfit. and then as I had a job, had some savings, I started thinking about, passive income, financial security, how to get the money to work for itself. and landed, on, on real estate, and so in 2014.
ended up buying my first investment home. It was a three bedroom, one bath in Sacramento, California, cheapest three bedroom in the entire city. And that kind of just snowballed. So bought one, did okay, turned that into two, did well. And then all of a sudden I ended up owning a little bit over 10, sort of nights and weekends. Along the way, coworkers and friends kept asking me for,
just tips on how to get started. And there was never really a platform or an easy way for me to point them to. And that's ultimately kind of what became the genesis of Doorvest.
Slava (04:29)
So were you like posting these homes on Airbnb for like renting out for the days and weekends?
Andrew (Doorvest) (04:35)
Mainly actually long-term rentals. So yeah, you'd laugh in hindsight, but the first home that I bought was a $96,000 home, three bedroom, bath in Sacramento, California. It was a very tough home. I wouldn't have suggested that to my younger self, but hey, it did fine. And it was mainly long-term residents. so found the home, figured out the financials.
got a resident in place and then stabilized the home and sort of went on and added more homes that are made.
Slava (05:08)
And I guess we'll get more into it with door vests, but what makes it a tough home? I don't even know what that phrase means.
Andrew (Doorvest) (05:14)
yeah, where do you live by the way,
Slava (05:17)
yeah, so I'm a New Yorker. I live in the burbs now, outside of New York City.
Andrew (Doorvest) (05:19)
I see. Yeah, yeah. So I think many of us are privileged that we live in sort of these high concentration urban areas. I live in San Francisco, you're in New York, but as you sort of get out into much of America, there's varying neighborhood qualities and varying types of homes. And so, as I mentioned earlier, I bought the cheapest home in Sacramento at the time. It was in a tough neighborhood every time.
The resident moved out. We'd get break-ins. One time I thought my home was vacant. I rolled up to check up on it. I opened the front door and there was a lady cooking and she screamed at me to get out of her house. Turns out she was a squatter and it was actually my house. hopefully that kind of what tough homes were like.
Slava (06:06)
my gosh. That's wild.
All right, tough home, totally get it, totally get it now. So clearly you know a thing about a thing when it comes to real estate investing. How about in terms of the rest of your personal investments? How do you think about the various alternative asset classes with your personal net worth? Are you putting money into crypto or are you putting money into pre IPO venture? And obviously you have your own company, that's stuff. Are you putting money into real estate and private credit, which we obviously know where.
you're at with real estate or art or collectibles. What are your thoughts on all these different asset classes?
Andrew (Doorvest) (06:48)
Yeah, I'd my general investing philosophy is find things that I believe in for the long term and try to buy and hold on effectively forever. And so around that principle, there's a little bit of crypto somewhere along the way. There's various private company, early stage startups that usually friends or people that I've bumped into for whatever reason, believe in them, believe in their concepts.
I have this running joke that I'm usually the smallest angel investor on any cap table that you'd find me. I just sneak in with what I call broke angel check. So a number of various companies that I've become friends with over time or have bumped into for whatever reason. Obviously, a good chunk of my personal portfolio is real estate, primarily single family rentals that
kind of built a platform or built a portfolio either prior to Doorvest and also during the course of Doorvest via Doorvest And then the rest is just boring stuff.
Slava (07:58)
Got it, so you're not into art or collectibles or those type of scarce assets?
Andrew (Doorvest) (08:04)
Not for now, maybe one of these days. I'd probably say from an alts specifically, mainly early stage private companies.
Slava (08:16)
Got it, got it. And then how much are you in the public markets beyond just let's call it like retirement stuff? Do you like to try to be in there as well or are you trying to put more of it just into this private stuff?
Andrew (Doorvest) (08:28)
Yeah, mainly private stuff. From time to time, I'll do public market stuff, usually to test my own thesis. So sometimes there's a point of view on where I think the world might be going. Maybe it's, obviously, think probably news of the day is like the, the robo taxis, which I do believe in very much. And I think it'll be the future. And so sometimes there there's themes around that and investing in the public markets in that regard.
It's usually a way for me to keep myself accountable and challenge my thinking. if I make money, I guess I was right. And if I lose money, I was probably wrong.
Slava (09:06)
So did you just make or change an investment based on the new news from Tesla related to the Robo taxis, robots, et cetera? Are you long Tesla now versus short or are you long Uber versus short or are you long GM today? What's the play?
Andrew (Doorvest) (09:20)
Yeah.
Yeah, extra long Tesla. I guess I've been long Tesla for some time. I think watching the way that Elon thinks about the world and is very just honest about where he wants to take things. And then on top of that, adding his will to make things happen. think I'm very extra long Tesla. what's your perspective?
Slava (09:51)
I'm long Tesla as well. I actually found it interesting that it had a 6 % drop this morning. I don't really trade. I don't have abilities to trade. I'm a buy and hold sort of guy. So I've been long Tesla for a while and I would, you know, look for a 6 % drop to just, you know, come in on a lower average cost.
Andrew (Doorvest) (09:57)
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, same.
Yeah, I mean, that was me this morning at the gym, actually.
Slava (10:15)
I would recommend buying Tesla, taking a nap for a decade, and then seeing how it looks.
Andrew (Doorvest) (10:21)
I think you would be very successful.
Slava (10:23)
So let's shift to the market. A very high level question. Take it wherever you'd like. You have exposure through Doorvest to a lot of investors. You see real estate. You understand money flows. What do you think of today's economy? What do you think of today's stock market? What do you think of today's labor market? What do you think about this pre-election situation? I just ask you so many high level questions. Answer anything you'd like, however you'd like.
Andrew (Doorvest) (10:47)
Yeah, you gave me the full menu of items to select from. You know, it's a very interesting perspective. if I were to go back, so we got off the ground and we as a company got off of the ground in roughly early 2020 or so. I've been in real estate since 2014, give or take.
I used to think investing was more rational than I've come to believe now, based on what we've seen through our customers in particular and sort of how much sentiment drives behavior. To one of your questions, I think consumer sentiment is in a really poor spot. And I think what that leads to is, or,
Actually, some of the drivers is obvious, right? Like people are getting laid off left and right. People are afraid of getting laid off. People are getting squeezed by inflation, et cetera. And so that's one thing that drives sentiment, but also their perspective is that things are bad. And I think from what I, what we've seen firsthand is that that just means that people are
less inclined to invest, less inclined to spend their money on things because they just don't feel good. yeah, overall, my sense is that...
Broad sentiment is quite poor right now.
Slava (12:30)
How do you square that circle with the fact that as we record today, the stock market, the public markets are pretty high, pretty close to all time highs. How do those two things jive for you?
Andrew (Doorvest) (12:36)
Yeah.
Yeah, my opinion is that I think stock market is driven by a number of very big names that are doing well and have consistent and good earnings and continue to gain market share while the vast majority of the market is not doing well. So if you look at like small and mid cap stocks, basically everything that went public in the last handful of years, everyone, I wouldn't say not everyone, but quite a few people are getting.
getting their butts kicked. And so I do think that the stock market is doing well. And it's driven by a number of big names versus sort of broad base confidence, which I don't think is there. And when I talk about sentiment in general, I think I'm talking about the average American and how they feel. And I think if you were to pick up five people off the streets of New York and ask them, do they feel better now or?
three years ago financially, I'd imagine four out of five would say worse.
Slava (13:47)
Gotcha. So as it relates to that, the Fed recently dropped rates, 50 basis points, little bit of a surprise, maybe not a big surprise. And then there's signal that we're potentially going to see another 200 basis points, if not more by the end of next year. What do you think before we get into the Doorvest implications, what do you think about the macro related to rates and coming down?
Should they stay? What's that say? What do think of the economy into 25?
Andrew (Doorvest) (14:18)
Yeah.
You know, I wouldn't have minded a 25 basis point cut instead of the 50. it might sound weird because I'm in real estate and obviously we're, well, I'm in real estate and early stage, private startups. so both of which are relatively rate sensitive. I think ultimately from like a pure fed standpoint, what we hope doesn't happen is a stop start, right? Like just a gradual glide down.
I think would be helpful for at least my personal net worth if we're taking that perspective.
It's starting to look like the Fed has engineered this soft landing where we're bringing inflation down. Sure, we've had a couple of years of a lot of pain across the market, but we're bringing inflation down. Jobs are relatively okay. And there's some GDP still there.
Hopefully they've engineered it right, but it does seem like they're on the right track.
Slava (15:18)
All right, sounds good. Let's dive into Doorvest. Obviously you've been around now for several years, maybe not everybody has heard of you. So can you just start, what is Doorvest?
Andrew (Doorvest) (15:28)
Yeah, so Doorvest came from my own personal experiences, getting into real estate investing, sort of the old fashioned DIY way and along the way having a bunch of friends and coworkers asking me for tips on how to get started and never being able to get started because it was just too freaking hard and too risky And so Doorvest is an
online way for everyone to buy, own, and sell investment homes. So how we go about doing that is we'll start with the consumer and what they're looking for. So how much capital did you have allocated towards real estate? What sort of returns or yields were you optimizing for? And what's your general risk profile? We'll then go do the heavy lifting. So we'll go find the home. We'll bring it back to you. We'll ask you if you like it or not.
If you say no, that's fine. We'll pass. We'll ask for some feedback and then we'll keep going until we find a home that you like. Once you say you're in, we'll buy it, renovate it, lease and begin management. So you as an investor, you as a consumer, you get the fully stabilized investment home. You'll buy it from us. We get a cut of that transaction and then we'll manage it ongoing. So 70 % of our customers are first time homeowners. So folks that
have a good job, have some savings, for whatever reason have not purchased a home ever. And about 20 % have purchased a subsequent home, so begun to build out their portfolio. We're here to help people buy their first investment home and then partner with them as they build out their real estate portfolio.
Slava (17:06)
Sorry, just to understand something you said. So 70 % don't even have their own home and this is the first home that they're ever buying is with you as an investment home or they have their own home and your home is the first investment home that they bought.
Andrew (Doorvest) (17:19)
Yeah, the former. So they don't have a primary residence and they happen to be buying their first ever home that happens to be an investment home with us.
Slava (17:31)
Interesting. So these people are like maybe living in an apartment building. They feel like they have some cash. They're trying to figure out how to invest it. They don't want to deal with this nonsense themselves. So they're like, let's go to Doorvest buy it through Doorvest, Doorvest that manages it all for them. Is that right?
Andrew (Doorvest) (17:46)
Yeah about that like for whatever reason maybe financially I think it's better to buy instead of I don't know buying one million dollar home They'll buy three or four 300k investment homes with Doorvest also Maybe they want the the the freedom and the flexibility to be anywhere at any time And then for whatever reason they're they're not excited to work with squatters and break-ins and stuff And so they decide to let us do that that hard work
Slava (18:14)
Interesting. So you're selling full properties and then the management of it. Is that right?
Andrew (Doorvest) (18:19)
Yeah, exactly. So the core business model is a one to one primarily. So usually you're buying a three bedroom, two bath, two car garage, call it 200 to $300,000. And then we'll manage it on the back end. And then the various other sort of like financial products along the way, but that's our core business.
Slava (18:38)
amazing. And just to get a sense of scale, can you speak to like kind of the the metrics you like to talk about how many homes or dollar value or return, whatever you'd like to talk about? Investors?
Andrew (Doorvest) (18:51)
Yeah, yeah, so we were at about four just shy of 450 homes that are management at this point and total total asset value is probably around 130 million or so, give or take.
Slava (19:07)
Amazing. And how many investors is that high level?
Andrew (Doorvest) (19:10)
Yeah, roughly 300 investors. So you could see a number of folks own several homes. And we hope to grow the homes in our management base over time from existing customers.
Slava (19:29)
Amazing. So why is it better for me, the potential investor, to go through the whole home approach versus like the fractional share approach or set a different way? Why did you, Andrew, create it as a whole home approach versus the fractional share approach?
Andrew (Doorvest) (19:46)
Yeah, I suppose there's...
Our focus, well, actually there's three reasons. There's one, a business reason, but that's third on the list. And I'll probably leave that one for now, unless you're interested. I think there's both a financial benefit, also a psychological piece that gets our consumers excited. So the financial side, I think is relatively straightforward. Consumers are geared with a
government-backed 30-year fixed mortgage. Oftentimes that means that you get really low mortgage rates, cost of capital, et cetera. And then you're also geared with a ton of tax advantages to owning real estate directly, which you don't get from owning a share, a fractional share of a home, what you don't get from owning a share of a REIT, et cetera. And so there's the financial benefit of it. And then by the way, like,
related to the cheap cost of capital, you also get lots of leverage, right? Like the typical homeowner that's buying a home is probably putting 25 % down, so they're getting four to one leverage. There's not many other assets in the world where a retail investor could get that much leverage. Certainly not in fractional. So that's kind of the financial one. The second piece that I've come to
appreciate more as time goes on is just a psychological piece. An interesting learning for us early on was the concept of owning an investment home didn't require that much education. I thought going into this business that we'd have to educate folks on why we think owning an investment home is such a good investment and here are all the numbers over time, et cetera. But the reality was
people get it, you know, like you get what, you get what a house is, you get what bedrooms are, you get how much this thing is worth, how much your monthly payment is, which is a function of the mortgage rate. You get how much this thing rents for, and then maybe you buffer a couple of things along the way, just, just to be a little bit extra safe. Like that part people get, and they also get that, when their parents bought their first home 30 years ago,
and still live in that home today. And now they made, I don't know, a million bucks on the home. They get that homes typically appreciate and value over time. So that part people get. And then also there's a related to that. There's sort of this pride of ownership that we see from our customers. So folks get really excited to buy the first home and then build out a portfolio. And then.
There's some business reasons as to why we did the whole ownership piece, but I could get into that if that's interesting for you.
Slava (22:41)
Yeah, that's awesome. So let's say I'm the client and I get the best salesperson here since you're
Andrew (Doorvest) (22:46)
I would love for you to be the client. that's my number one goal after this podcast.
Slava (22:51)
All right, perfect. So let's talk about it here right for our listeners. So if I wanted to invest, the way it works is I say, I'm interested. Now, do you tell me what markets I get to choose from or do you present the houses to me or do I have to find the house and work with you on that?
Andrew (Doorvest) (23:07)
Yeah. So let's say you were interested, you have the capital, you have the motivation, you think we're, we're a cool platform and you like the people you're talking to. then, then we'll start looking for homes. so we'll learn more about your objectives and then we'll start looking for a home or we'll start looking at markets and homes that we believe meet your criteria. so that is an
Slava (23:31)
Is this anywhere in America or you have some target markets that you like?
Andrew (Doorvest) (23:35)
We have target markets and then we gradually add to it over time. So right now we're active in Texas, Georgia, Ohio, Oklahoma and Florida. So let's say Slava, had, actually let's say you had 200K you were looking to deploy with us in real estate. Then we'll figure out.
Slava (23:56)
Okay.
Andrew (Doorvest) (24:00)
Were you looking to get some leverage and buy multiple homes or do you kind of just want to set it forget it, take the 200k, buy one home and then never really have to think about it again and just don't make cash flow? And then...
Slava (24:13)
Well, what do you suggest?
Andrew (Doorvest) (24:14)
what are you, are your investment objectives shorter term? As in, am I trying to buy it almost like a bond and then start generating a lot of income today? Or is it a little bit more longterm focused?
Slava (24:30)
Let's say that I'm thinking of it as a cash-flowing instrument.
Andrew (Doorvest) (24:34)
Okay. If you have a lot of liquidity and you want cashflow today, today cashflow, then yeah, I think we go look for a whole home, no leverage. And then you can generate X dollars in rental income per month. And then from there, if we're purely focused on cashflow today, and you're willing to go into a home that's a little bit older, a market that probably isn't growing as quickly as others.
But we're optimizing purely for cash flow. Maybe let's go into like a Cleveland, Ohio or so we could buy you a hundred eighty hundred ninety home K home that'll spit off call it 1500 or so in cash flow a month because you're buying it all cash
Slava (25:21)
Okay, so we buy the $180,000 home in Cleveland. Do you make any money on that?
Andrew (Doorvest) (25:27)
Yeah, we do. So we make somewhere between five and 10%, depending on the home and how much work that we put into the home. That's kind of on the transactional side. As you buy the home, we'll make some markup on the home and it's home dependent. And then we'll make some management fees ongoing.
Slava (25:49)
Got it, so we'll say the home cost 180, it's marked up 10%, so it's 190, you know, 198. So I paid 198, I'm hoping that I'll get 1,500 a month coming back. You find the tenant?
Andrew (Doorvest) (26:05)
Yes, by the time that you take possession of the home, by the time you close and take title, there will be a resident in place. So you'll be generating rental income from day one.
Slava (26:16)
Amazing and the 1500 you're taking a fee on that as well
Andrew (Doorvest) (26:20)
Yeah, so we charged 10 % of that, so 150 bucks or so a month. If you pay upfront, i.e. an annual plan, we'll give you a 20 % discount, and then you'll pay roughly 8 % instead.
Slava (26:38)
Got it. And is that kind of the way I should think about the fees? It's marked up on the sale and then the VIG on the monthly.
Andrew (Doorvest) (26:47)
Exactly. Yeah. From like a pure business standpoint, what we're hoping to do and how we've designed the incentives of this business is hopefully you buy this home where you buy a home from us. You have a good experience. We stay close with you as you build up some confidence in the asset, you build up some confidence in us. And then whenever you're ready, maybe you get a liquidity event. Maybe you save up a little bit more capital. Maybe you had the capital stored.
on the side just to see how the first one goes. Hopefully, you begin to build out your real estate portfolio with us and come back and buy more.
Slava (27:25)
Amazing. So what if the tenant ends up leaving or is not paying? Who deals with that? You or me?
Andrew (Doorvest) (27:33)
us, unfortunately. So we, and I say unfortunately, because obviously we hope that the resident doesn't leave soon. We hope that they stay for a long time and we get a moderate rental increase year over year. But whenever, whenever they leave and of course, over the course of tenancy, they will, we'll, we'll, we'll help facilitate that. We'll get the home ready for the next resident. We'll go do the marketing so that we would bring someone on.
quick, et cetera.
Slava (28:05)
So if there's a lag and there's a three months of non-payment, are you covering that for me or is we just eat that together?
Andrew (Doorvest) (28:13)
We eat it together. We do have a premium property management product where we'll cover up to a percentage of it. But I'd say the typical consumer sets the money aside for rainy days such as that a vacancy period.
Slava (28:34)
And if there's like an issue with the toilet, am I getting called or are you getting called or is there anything, who does what?
Andrew (Doorvest) (28:41)
I'm buying you a plane ticket to fix it. No, our team gets the calls and then we have our network of folks that do the work and we'll facilitate all of that and then obviously charge you at the end of it.
Slava (28:59)
Amazing. So beyond me having to, you know, pay for the home, sign up for the agreement. Is this like a passive experience for me or or not?
Andrew (Doorvest) (29:10)
I'd say it's more, much more passive than if you were to do it yourself. I'd say there's improvements for us to make it even more passive. And that's kind of where I'm excited about the premium plan where we can cover things and make decisions on your behalf. From time to time, if something bigger happens, for instance, I don't know.
Resident moves out. There's some work that needs to be done for it to be ready. We'd go source the bid. We'd bring it back to you. We'd walk you through it. You have to ask us some questions and then ultimately approve, et cetera. So there's moments along the way where we require your involvement, but in general, we'll do the work and we'll try to tee it up for you.
Slava (29:54)
Got it.
What's the premium? Is that just a higher percentage of the monthly?
Andrew (Doorvest) (30:02)
Yeah, exactly. So on the premium, instead of the 8 % annual, it's a 16 % annual. We'll cover some of your rents in case of vacancy or delinquencies. We'll give you some maintenance credits so the toilet breaks, we'll pay for ourselves and we don't have to involve you, et cetera.
Slava (30:25)
And are there competitors to your space, meaning at your scale as opposed to one offs?
Andrew (Doorvest) (30:29)
Yeah.
There's definitely a lot of sort of mom and pop turnkey providers. So folks that maybe there's a broker that helps you find a home and then they place a resident for you, et cetera. I'd say historically, Roofstock was, I wouldn't say super competitive, but there was definitely some overlap. Roofstock is now since, and that's where a lot of their DNA was from, was very focused on institutional.
Slava (30:35)
Right.
Andrew (Doorvest) (30:59)
funds to the folks that were doing tens of thousands of homes versus someone that was buying their first and hopefully building out a small portfolio for themselves.
Slava (31:09)
Got it, and how are you different? Is it basically on the client now, on the institutional versus the individual?
Andrew (Doorvest) (31:14)
Yeah, and the product offerings, like their product offering is more, it's more of a brokerage model where they're helping you find a block of 20 homes, helping you underwrite that and helping you transact on that. For us, we're doing a lot of the heavy lifting, a lot of the white glove and really focused on one home at a time. And so I'd say the client base for sure, but also the how the product offerings are.
decide.
Slava (31:45)
Amazing. Super interesting. Is there anything else you want to cover as it relates to Doorvest that our listeners should know that's unique about you guys as they think about this way of investing?
Andrew (Doorvest) (31:55)
No, think we covered it all there. Really, we're focused on making it as passive as possible for people to buy, and sell investment homes online, really leveraging our platform to give the retail investor institutional scale.
Slava (32:15)
Yeah, it's super interesting because a lot of people always hear that real estate investing is a place to, you should really be able to park your money for the appreciation and the distributions. But part of the pain is the pain, right? And if you guys are the ones dealing with the pain, then you still get the appreciation and the distributions. It's potentially a great combination, right? Obviously you, of course, of course you charge for that, but that has to be factored in as the potential outcome.
Andrew (Doorvest) (32:22)
Right.
Ha
Right. Yeah. I mean, it comes at a cost obviously, but yeah. Yep.
Right. Yeah. So the goal is to try to minimize the volatility, right? Like both financial volatility, because we leverage our platform, we leverage our institutional scale, et cetera, so that a retail investor that doesn't know what they're doing is able to leverage that. So minimize some of that volatility. But also, I don't use the word pain lightly mean, real estate is very real. We talked earlier about
from time to time there's vacancies and there's squatters and there's break-ins and toilets break and all of that stuff. That's just like, many people just don't like it. they cringe hearing about it. like let us take care of that so you can focus on your podcast or your startup or whatever else you want to be spending your time doing.
Slava (33:38)
So I'm going to switch gears here to many of our listeners try to be as smart and as knowledgeable as our guests. So we always love to know like, what are you learning from? Meaning what are you reading? What are you watching? What are you listening to? So give us some examples of Andrew content.
Andrew (Doorvest) (33:57)
Yeah. You know...
I really enjoy listening to biographies and long form podcasts of folks that I think are interesting thinkers.
Slava (34:12)
What's an example or two that you like?
Andrew (Doorvest) (34:15)
Yeah, I've always really liked like the Tim Ferriss podcast and the various guests that he has on. Lex Friedman's a little bit newer, but he also does these really long form. You really get to deep dive into someone's brain. And it almost feels like you're flying the wall in like a living room conversation or so. So I like to do that quite a bit, a little bit more than sort of like
the news headlines and whatnot, just really going deep into someone's mind. Usually it's people that I admire and look up to. Other times it's just various people that are accomplished and there's nuggets in these conversations.
Slava (35:00)
Nice. How about things that you're reading on the regular daily, weekly, monthly that informs you to be smart?
Andrew (Doorvest) (35:07)
yeah, well I'm on X a little bit too much, but that kind of gives me an aggregation of like the latest drama and the latest headlines. So on a daily basis, probably that. And then hopefully when I have a little bit more time, deep dive into people's brains.
Slava (35:27)
All right, perfect. And our final thing that we always love to cover is three years out, the investments that you believe that when we have you back that you're gonna be like, my gosh, look at this. So give us one public investment and why, and give us one private investment and why.
Andrew (Doorvest) (35:43)
Cool. I'll start with the private.
Probably a platform that you're familiar with or you've bumped into, but WeFunder is a platform that we at Doorvest have worked with several times and a number of other companies that I know have been on. WeFunder is effectively a crowdfunding platform for startups. sorry, equity crowdfunding platform for startups. And you've seen a number of companies go through, raise a bunch of money.
from retail investors that are often their user or customer base. I think that's something that, granted there are regulatory challenges that slow things down. I do think that with a three to five year time horizon, we'll see more companies do that and more individuals invest on that.
and then I think that'll transition well to the public one, which is, I think we started the conversation talking a little bit about Tesla and I think we're both swooning about, the robot taxi and kind of what's ahead in the future and going super long. you think about some of the early electric car slash Tesla users and fans and what have they had an opportunity to.
buy their first Tesla and buy shares of Tesla as a private company. Obviously, they would have done very freaking well, but also would have given Tesla a chance to have a different cap table of a very supportive audience. And so, WeFundr and Tesla are two names that I'm super excited about today.
Slava (37:37)
Amazing. Great. Thank you for being so clear. We don't always get that clarity of opinion. So we've covered quite a few things.
Andrew (Doorvest) (37:45)
I had to think about it. I had to think about it bit.
Slava (37:48)
We've covered quite a few things from starting with the beginning in San Jose and the foreclosed home that helped get you on your way. And to being a misfit with an amazing Indiegogo campaign and then all the way to then starting Doorvest, starting with that $96,000 tough home, which here I know what a tough home is now. You like to buy and hold forever, which is a great perspective. Launching Doorvest in 2020, having a perspective on
You know, the stock market might not be all telling as to where the economy is at. And then here we are, 450 homes later, $130 million of assets and tons of investors. It's amazing of what you've accomplished here. You now are offering homes potentially in Texas, Georgia, Ohio, Oklahoma. You and I had a great banter about me potentially becoming a customer. So we'll look into that. And you really set an interesting line was the retail investor having, you know, institutional capabilities.
which is awesome. And you gave us two amazing picks. WeFunder in private and Tesla in public. Andrew, thank you very much.
Andrew (Doorvest) (38:53)
Thanks, man. This was fun.
