FULL TRANSCRIPT
slava (00:02.953)
Hello and welcome to another episode of Smart Humans. I'm excited for today's guest. We have Darren Marble, CEO and founder of issuance. Welcome Darren to the show.
dm (00:15.565)
Thanks Slava, it's great to be here. How you doing?
slava (00:18.537)
Great, so we tend to start in the beginning, which is how did you even get into this? How did you get into alternative investments?
dm (00:27.279)
You know, it's ironic is that I started my career marketing Kickstarter and Indiegogo campaigns. I should say Indiegogo and Kickstarter campaigns. Maybe 10, 15 years ago, I had a marketing agency called Crowdfund X and I recognize that the common denominator to rewards based crowdfunding success was often a brilliant marketing campaign, compelling video campaign page, you know, great visual story told top to bottom. And we saw that the average
entrepreneur or creator was struggling to tell their story in an exciting way. So we created a marketing agency. We marketed over a hundred Indiegogo and Kickstarter campaigns. And that led to a deal which we signed in 2015 for an automotive startup called Elio Motors, which became the first regulation A or reg A plus financing in the United States. In other words, that was an equity crowdfunding campaign.
So we transitioned from telling stories for creators and rewards -based crowd funders to founders of companies selling securities in 2015.
slava (01:39.241)
So you literally went from doing marketing for marketing sake, but now you're supporting actual equity raises. Is that right?
dm (01:49.198)
That's correct. So we took the marketing agency from rewards -based crowdfunding to equity crowdfunding. And then in 2018, I co -founded issuance, which is a FinTech company and got into the technology side of the business as a processing engine of investments for securities. So I've kind of seen my share of the marketing and the technology and just very passionate about alternative investments, online capital raising, both helping companies raise capital for their businesses.
And of course, exposing some of these exciting opportunities to retail investors globally.
slava (02:24.105)
What was the opportunity that you saw? Why start a company? Meaning there were other companies that were doing similar or different things in the space. Why start a whole new company?
dm (02:35.888)
Um, you know, that's a really good question. When I met my co -founder, Nick Allen in New York in 2018, uh, we were still in the marketing agency business and Nick would ask me this question over and over. He said, why do you always market deals to other platforms? Um, platforms like start engine, we funder Republic, uh, seed invest at the time. And my answer was that I wasn't a tech guy. I didn't have a platform. I was a marketing expert. We understood how to tell stories, create awareness, raise capital online.
And Nick said, I think I can build a better platform than all of these guys. And, you know, if you're going to market deals, you should market them to your own platform. And so that was the impetus for us to co -found issuance and create our own software and our own platform effectively for these campaigns instead of driving traffic to third party platforms.
slava (03:26.921)
Amazing, so we'll dive more into issuance in just a second, but first let's learn a little bit more about you. So what do you like to invest into? So are you investing much into alts? And if yes, which alts categories do you like to invest into?
dm (03:43.121)
You know, I saw that question Slava and it's, excuse me, it's an interesting one because my experience as an investor in alts is limited yet I have invested in alts. I've invested in startups. I've invested in a SPACs and a handful of pre IPO deals that, you know, listed to a Canadian exchange or over the counter. And it's, it's tough. I think investing in alts is, is, um,
It's challenging. There's so many opportunities out there. And what I realized in the last, let's say a year and a half is that I was actually much more comfortable investing in myself. And so in the last year or so, I've probably invested a quarter million dollars of my own capital into my own companies. And, you know, as an investor, you are constantly evaluating people, right? You're in the people business. You're betting on the jockey, not the horse.
Businesses change, founders pivot, markets change. And so you're looking for a resilient individual. And it's always hard to meet somebody on a Zoom or even in person, even over many months and really know who that person is at the core. But I know who I am. I know my own strengths and weaknesses. And then so I've chosen to bet on myself largely. I'll put capital into my own companies in the last few years. But I have certainly invested in startups.
I like revenue generating businesses. I like companies that have products or services and industries. I inherently understand. I like companies that have EBITDA or profit. And I tend to avoid things that I think are higher risk, more speculative. I don't invest in NFTs or any cryptocurrency or tokens, even though that market is fairly hot right now. I see a lot of people talking about that market, meme coins, tokens. I think that's definitely, you know, casino play. So.
I like to put my money into my own businesses and the companies that have real businesses, real revenues and EBITDA that I can understand.
slava (05:49.609)
all make sense. So you like betting on yourself, investing into businesses that make sense, or hopefully have EBITDA and revenue generating. You're avoiding the crypto and the meme coins. How about like real estate or private credit or yield oriented products?
dm (06:05.299)
Haven't invested in those categories yet, but definitely starting to kind of learn more about that space and looking at platforms like Yieldstreet that are full of interesting credit opportunities. But historically, just startups, a couple stacks, and again, my own companies.
slava (06:23.721)
All right, well, obviously your own companies are all to right there on themselves and plenty of risk. So exactly. So shifting gears, what do you think about the market? What do you think about the economy? What do you think of where we are today? And I know that's just like a very open -ended question, but our audience loves to hear just, you know, the guests just kind of say whatever they'd like about the market.
dm (06:28.85)
Fact.
dm (06:54.482)
Yeah, look, here's what I think is the headline. The headline is private is the new public. And I think there's never been a more exciting time to invest in alts to invest in privately held companies in particular than right now. You know, what's fascinating is that there have been fewer and fewer IPOs in the last few years. The fact that Reddit got out and had an IPO is almost incredible because they seem to be a lone ranger.
And I think it's been challenging for founders to raise capital in this market because venture investors who have deployed billions of dollars over the last several years have not been able to return that capital to LPs given the lack of activity in public markets. More and more companies are staying private now than ever before. Fewer companies are going public. And yet there are opportunities to generate returns and wealth.
to create wealth in private markets. So I think that there's never been a more exciting time for retail or accredited investors to be active in private markets. I think, you know, investing in public equities is challenging. Trying to invest in companies that have recently gone public, Uber, Airbnb, DoorDash, Coinbase, Reddit, you know, with these multi -billion dollar valuations.
It's a really tricky place for a retail investor to be. Trying to see a company go from a four billion market cap to an eight billion market cap, it's not easy. So I think that private markets investing is exciting. I do think that dollars are starting to flow again very, very slowly. But if I were a retail investor, I'd be looking into private markets more than anything right now. I think that's where...
there's really exciting opportunities.
slava (08:52.105)
And you mentioned that dollars are starting to flow again. Do you feel like this is the beginning of significant more flow? Is this choppy waters? How does the interest rate talk affect these things? Are we expecting the IPO window to open up and make things more fluid? What's your high level take on all this?
dm (09:12.051)
Yeah, I think that the IPO window may open up. It hasn't yet. I think there are a number of companies on the sideline thinking about going public, but are very cautious. I think investors are ultimately very cautious as well right now. And I think they could remain cautious for the next three or four quarters. But I do think that we are seeing...
institutional investors slowly begin to open up the purse strings, loosen the purse strings, and dipping their toes into venture markets. Exceptions, of course, would be AI, any kind of hot category or sector, I think, is we still see deals get done in very short timeframes. Those are exceptions. I think...
There just have not been a lot of IPOs lately. Again, I think Reddit was an exception and a lot of the small cap micro cap kind of investment banks, they are still licking their wounds from deals they've done in the last one, two years where their investors have lost money in a lot of their deals over the last couple of years. So I just think it's a tough market. And
I think it's opening up very slowly, but we'll see what happens over the next three to four quarters.
slava (10:40.329)
All right, great. So that's a good opportunity to transition to issuance itself. So for the sake of the audience, can you give us some perspective on the size, the scope, the numbers, you know, number of investors, number of deals, number of companies, transaction volume? How should people think about issuance as it relates to them listening?
dm (10:59.893)
Yep, we're a fintech company. We have a platform for online capital raising and we support numerous exempt offering types, Reg CF, where companies can raise up to 5 million, Reg A +, where they can raise up to 75 million. We have a hundred active clients at issuance across those different capital raising tools. We've processed about a quarter billion dollars of investment across dozens of offerings over the last two and a half, three years.
And we're growing. We have a small 12 person team, LA and New York. We tend to focus on series A type businesses. We compete with platforms that go to the absolute earliest stages, the highest risk, most of liquid assets in the market. And we try to really focus on companies that we would invest in ourselves as principals. Again, revenue generating businesses, companies that have operational history, companies that are venture backed. We love...
real companies that have real institutional capital behind them, but they also have a community or a customer base or fan base. And they believe in the idea of allowing their communities to invest and become owners in these businesses, potentially pre IPO. That's what's most exciting to us. So, you know, we've had this company for a couple of years and it's growing every month.
slava (12:21.321)
Nice. So can the listener go to issuance and they would find companies that they would want to invest into on the platform?
dm (12:28.886)
You know, not today. If you go to issuance .com, the platform today is really catering towards companies raising capital. So our model is different than our peers in that we have a white label solution, which means we are not sending emails to our 125 ,000 investors who have transacted and bought securities in our clients' deals over the past few years. We're generally signing companies that have their own community. They need a processing engine to raise millions of dollars from their customers at scale.
and they will create their own landing page, their own domain. And when an investor clicks invest now, then that's where our engine is being used to process, you know, the subscriptions in real time. So it's different than a marketplace. You know, I always looked at some of our peers platforms that have great businesses, might even be very successful companies in their own right, but they just list deals, you know, three pay, you know, three deals here, three deals here, then page two, three, four. I never thought that was a great way to.
market securities. So we have a more individualized approach where customers can drive their communities to a landing page that exclusively features their brand. And especially for companies Slava that have big communities, they tend not to want to co mingle their brand with 100 other companies that might be good businesses, but have nothing to do with their business, right?
So if you've got a $50 million a year business and half a million customers, why would you bring those customers to a platform where they can invest in 10 other companies or a hundred other companies? In a better world, you would take those customers to your own domain and you would just put an invest now button on your own site so that your customers and the traffic you get to your own website can opt in and invest in your company. And so that's what we've enabled. It's more of a white label model.
slava (14:23.689)
Awesome, so from your earlier vintages of those companies, can you give like a case study or two of maybe like a Reg CF or a Reg A plus of where it worked out with your software and then maybe it then turned out to be a good result for the backers?
dm (14:41.175)
Absolutely. I mean, our biggest client today at issuance is a company called Aptera Motors. This is a solar automotive startup based in San Diego, and they developed a prototype for a three -wheeled car with a solar panel on top. So their tagline is powered by the sun. They have nearly 50 ,000 reservation holders, people that have put down $100 to get a ticket in line if and when they produce these vehicles. So that's a massive community of people that have also become investors.
Interestingly, when given the opportunity to invest, the average reservation holder that put down a hundred dollar reservation buys $5 ,000 worth of stock. This company, Aptera Motors, has raised $90 million from almost 17 ,000 individual investors over a roughly two year period across multiple offerings, different price per share, pre -money valuation, et cetera, on issuance. So.
$90 million. That's what's possible. Now, this company Slava is also an anomaly. Most companies don't have a three -wheeled car powered by the sun, sexy product, big vision, plays well from a visual storytelling perspective. But that's one of the companies we're working with. This company is eyeing public markets. They're looking to get public in the next 12 to 18 months. And I think they will be successful in taking themselves public in that timeframe.
slava (16:07.529)
Amazing. So for example, like that first round, if you recall, do you remember what like the valuation was that the first round investors got into through the issuance platform?
dm (16:17.432)
Yeah, I think they got in roughly a hundred million pre -money and the company is raising capital at a seven hundred and fifty million pre -money valuation today. So, you know, those investors have achieved a markup. But as you and I know, that markup is meaningless until there is some kind of liquidity event. And I don't think there's going to be any secondary opportunity here. I think it's going to be a go public that that is the exit for these investors in that area.
slava (16:45.833)
super interesting. Any other case study like that that you have to share because it's a great story.
dm (16:52.346)
Um, man, I mean, there's been a couple, um, you know, look, there's a deal we weren't involved in, but I think it's an interesting one for the industry, uh, called Soliton. It's a tattoo removal company and they had done a round on Republic raised a few million dollars in a reg CF. And then they ended up getting public to NASDAQ. Uh, maybe the New York stock exchange and we're ultimately.
taken out by a pharmaceutical company called AbVie, which was also a New York stock exchange listed company. That's kind of the, a really great case study because there were several hundred, maybe several thousand investors that came into that company when it was private under the Reg CF securities exemption. They had a chance to exit their position for a profit when the company first went public and they,
I had a chance to exit again, or if they didn't sell at an even better, uh, better return when the company was acquired by this, uh, biotech or pharmaceutical company, that that's kind of the dream path for retail investor is buying into a privately held company, uh, under reg CF or reg A plus when it's private and then seen that exit, you know, 18 months, 24 months later. So I like talking about that business, um, was a fairly easy to understand company in terms of its product.
had an institutional management team and then some great sponsors behind it that understood capital markets, had the gumption and credibility to take it public through a traditional S1 IPO and deliver returns to retail investors who invested in the Reg CF.
slava (18:30.089)
So three wheeled cars powered by the sun or tattoo removal. You have very good examples. It's very interesting.
dm (18:39.004)
Well, listen, those are the highlights. I think those are interesting companies. And, you know, I would say not every deal we do is a startup that hits kind of like the moonshot return. But those are companies that I think are interesting for retail investors. They are exciting. There's often, you know, a strong alignment between the founders of those businesses and then the community from a vision, mission, values perspective. And,
You know, they're, they're exciting opportunities for investors to be a part of because they're often customers and customers make for the best investors really hard to market a capital raise for private company that has no customer base and try to pitch somebody on, you know, here's my company. You've never heard of it. And then ask them for an investment. That's almost impossible. You know, that's why the company Slava that have success in our industry are almost always companies that have a built in community.
They're simply allowing their customers, fans and followers to become investors. So, you know, if I'm a customer of a company and I get an email that now tells me about the investment opportunity at minimum, I might click through and learn about it because there's, I have an intimacy. I have customer familiarity with that brand. I'm, I might be delighted with their product or service, but if you serve me an ad on Instagram and I've never heard of your business and you're trying to get me to buy in for a thousand bucks, it's really a long shot.
slava (20:06.441)
So let's say I'm listening to this podcast and I have a company, I'm not sure if I should be doing something with issuance or with any platform or if I should be doing this at all, right? So what are your thoughts or your recipe for how you should think about, you know what, I think I'm the right candidate for a Reg CF or a Reg A +, how would you talk to that company owner?
dm (20:29.468)
Yeah, look, I would say a company that has a customer base is always going to be an interesting candidate. Then the question is, who are those customers? Are they businesses? Are they consumers? These are retail oriented campaigns. The Jobs Act exemptions allow everyday Americans to invest in startups. So better fits would be B2C companies, companies that have hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands of consumers as customers.
Big email lists, a lot of the capital in this industry is raised still through email marketing. Clicking through on an email, hitting a landing page, learning about the investment, investing in a company.
dm (21:18.542)
raising. So, you know, listen, we tend to be very transparent. We get a lot of inquiries from companies that are not good fits to raise capital online. And we'll tell that feedback to the founder and say, you know what, this is going to be a hard way for you to raise capital. Your risk of failure is high. Even if you have a marketing budget, there's no formula slava that says invest 100 ,000 into a paid media campaign and get 500 ,000 back. This doesn't exist.
Sometimes you're lucky to put a hundred thousand dollar budget in and get the hundred thousand dollars back So we're generally looking for companies that have a customer base
slava (21:57.097)
That's super helpful. And how about on the opposite side, which is the investor who is sitting on their couch or traveling right now and listening, how should they think about whether or not investing into one of these opportunities, how would you guide them?
dm (22:12.495)
Yeah, look, I think it's a good idea for companies or for investors to invest in things they understand. Doesn't mean you have to be an expert, but if you're a customer of a company, you probably understand the business because you have their product or you subscribe to their service. And if you get value, that's a good starting point. I also think it's important for retail investors to diversify. Now that you can invest in startups, don't put all your eggs in one basket. Maybe you put...
$200 into 20 companies over a year. That's what a lot of professional angel investors do. I know angel investors that cut a 25K check every week all year long or a 50K check every week or 10, 100K checks or $10 million checks. So, investing in startups is hard, it's high risk. Professional investors lose nine out of 10 times. It's not easy and you are going to likely...
Make a lot of bad investments in order to find the one that's going to return your capital or return the fund, so to speak. So I think it's important to spread out investments over time into companies that you understand and do your research. Look at the financials. Click into the form C, click into the form 1A offering circular. Is this company generating revenue? What were their revenues for the past two years? Are the revenues increasing or decreasing? Is the company profitable?
Are they making money or are they losing money? What's their burn? Investors have these tools at their disposal through the disclosures that are part of this industry, which is what I love about our industry. It's the disclosure -based capital race. Everyone has the same set of facts and data and information from which to review and make an investment. But it's very important that investors look at the financials of these businesses to understand the health of the company before pulling the trigger.
slava (24:08.616)
Super helpful. And then I know that you have a show called Going Public, right? How is Going Public connected to issuance?
dm (24:19.566)
So Going Public Slava is a show like Shark Tank where viewers can invest in featured startups while they watch. It's really a groundbreaking series. We follow the stories of founders on their capital raising journeys. We put them through challenges. So you get to see who the founder is at the core when they're out of their comfort zone. And at any point during any episode, viewers around the world can click to invest and buy shares. The series is being distributed by Dow Jones.
Dow Jones owns Market Watch. They own the Wall Street Journal. They own Barron's. We are on the heels of releasing season two of the Going Public series on Market Watch in early May. And we're profiling the stories of three companies over five episodes where the founders and their stories are told throughout the season, throughout the five episodes. Issuance is the platform of record for the Going Public series. That just means that companies that sign up to have their stories produced in the show,
have a contract with issuance so that the show is interactive and as you're watching you can invest in real time and buy shares if they're offering shares in about 40 seconds. Check out using Apple Pay, Google Pay, credit card, debit card, ACHY or cash app. So issuance is the technology company that makes the going public series interactive.
slava (25:37.481)
super fun. So this is going to launch in May and how long will this be live for that I couldn't invest into one of these companies?
dm (25:45.166)
The deals will be live for a minimum of 90 days. And you know, we've got a big vision here. Our vision is for this show to replace Shark Tank and to be bigger than Shark Tank. I think Shark Tank has made investing mainstream. It's made startups mainstream. It's made stars of people like Kevin O 'Leary and Damon John who were successful entrepreneurs or investors, but now they're, they're kind of global stars. I think that show has had its run. Um,
Shark Tank has been on so long that a lot of us know people who've been on the show at this point. Like that's how big and mainstream it is. And it is inevitable that there will be a show that allows the viewers at home to invest. And we've been working on this for seven years. It's almost a deep tech business. There's, you know, maybe 10 different components we had to put together to bring this series to life. And at the end of the day,
The viewers don't care about our journey or struggle. They just want to be entertained. They want to be exposed to exciting investment opportunities. And if they see something they like, they want to be able to invest with a click and check out seamlessly. That's what we've delivered. So we're very excited for the world to see season two of going public on MarketWatch in early May. And Baron Davis, who's a two time NBA All -Star, is the host of the series. You'll see Floyd Mayweather, the legendary boxer who hosted a challenge.
with the founders of season two at his gym in Las Vegas. It's a very good mix of business and entertainment. It's probably a bit more entertainment, maybe 60 % entertainment and 40 % business this time around.
slava (27:21.704)
Awesome. So you said it's season two. So was there season one an opportunity to invest in the companies as well?
dm (27:27.118)
There was season one went out two years ago on entrepreneur .com. They were our distribution partner for the show. We had four privately held companies that we featured all series a businesses. The featured companies raised about $15 million from a mix of retail and institutional investors. The companies today are all still around their private companies and three out of four companies in season one have since doubled their revenues.
Companies going from five to 10 million, 10 to 20 million, and one company, Hammett, has gone from 30 to nearly $45 million in revenue since being featured in season one of the show.
slava (28:07.081)
Sorry, what do they do?
dm (28:08.558)
Hammett is a luxury woman's handbag company based in Los Angeles.
slava (28:13.801)
Whoa. So replace Shark Tank, I like it.
dm (28:18.606)
It has to happen, right? And it's funny Slava because this concept of a show like Shark Tank where viewers can invest is probably one of the most common ideas in our industry. It's one of the most commonly pitched ideas in Hollywood and it has been for 10 or 15 years. And when the idea was first pitched to me by my business partner, Todd Goldberg, I turned them down because I had heard this pitch myself dozens of times.
And the reason it hasn't existed until now is because it is technically near impossible to execute. It would be like saying, I want to build a rocket and let's go to Mars. And that's an idea that anybody understands and anybody can visualize. But how complicated is it? You know, you've got one person, Elon Musk, who's probably going to do that in the next, you know, five to 10 years.
Um, but that's, you know, not to say we're building a rocket and going to Mars by putting the show out there, but it doesn't exist. It hasn't existed until now. And there's been a lot of people, very smart people that have attempted this thought about it, had connections, capital production capabilities, and we've been very patient in putting the groundwork together. Um, so we're, we're excited. I think we've got, uh, a very exciting show on our hands. And I think at the end of the day, there will be one massively mainstream show.
That is the interactive investing series. We believe it will be going public and there will be a lot of knockoffs that are not, you know, that show just like shark tank is the format. They are the most mainstream show, but there are dozens of others of shows that look and feel like shark tank that are not shark tank, but there's a panel of judges. There's some kind of pitch. And so that's what I think ends up happening here is there's going to be one massive, massive winner in this space. And we think it will be us.
slava (30:19.305)
I like the vision and passion. Switching gears, so listeners wanna know more like you. So what do you listen to? What do you watch? What do you read? Give us some of the things that make Darren Darren.
dm (30:22.158)
Thank you.
dm (30:35.598)
I'm a big user of Twitter. I consume a lot of information and content on Twitter or X Because we have a distribution deal with Dow Jones I have a free subscription to the Wall Street Journal that comes to my doorstep every day So a little bit old -school, but I do read the Wall Street Journal. I think it's a phenomenal source of valuable information about markets Business the economy and kind of you know global happenings around the world
You know, I listened to a handful of podcasts. I listened to the all in podcasts. Um, I think people love or hate that podcast lava. Like people either think the besties are the smartest guys or, or, you know, the most mediocre guys, but I'm, I'm a fan. I think they're all very, very sharp. Um, don't necessarily agree with all of them, but, uh, I do listen to that podcast at the gym and, um, you know, I, I try to maintain a handful of very strategic relationships, people that are in the know.
on Wall Street and capital markets, successful investors, successful entrepreneurs, people that are smarter than me, much more successful, and keep tabs on them. What do they think's happening? What are they doing? What are they investing in? Learning from others, mimicking people that are more successful, I think is a great strategy in life.
slava (31:54.153)
Great, so to bring it home, we have our question that we always like to ask, which is, what is one investment you would recommend today that three years from now is going to be a winner? So the more specific you could be, the better. So not just like a broad industry or an asset class, but what's something our listeners can actually copy and replicate what you're saying is to invest in the thing you're about to say. So what would you say is that?
dm (32:21.75)
Listen, I'm going to give you somewhat of a non -answer here, but I'm going to tie it back to kind of how we opened this call, which is, you know, I've invested a quarter million dollars in my own companies and especially for founders. And I know you've got a mix of founders and investors that listen to the podcast, but I think as a founder, it's important to bet on yourself. It's so easy to go out and ask people for money. And a lot of founders have this misconception that, you know, I'll go.
race capital, million dollars here and million dollars there. There's a reason that Elon Musk is the richest or second richest person on the planet. He's invested in his own companies over and over and over again. He's taken proceeds from PayPal and invested into SpaceX and Tesla. Sure, he has investors. Sure, there's people that have made a lot of money investing in his companies along the way, but he also owns more of those businesses than a lot of founders at the, you know, kind of their...
Where they're at in their life cycle because he's put his own capital in I encourage founders to put their money where their mouth is invest in yourself Put put money into your own round if you're raising at a 20 million dollar pre money valuation Go put five thousand ten thousand a hundred thousand dollars of your own capital into your own round That's the biggest proof point to the market to the investors that you believe in what you're doing Very easy to go ask people for money to take a bet on you bet on yourself go into a call with the next investor and say
We're raising X amount of dollars and I've put my co -founder and I have put in Y amount. We have invested into our own business. We're not just pitching you this deal. We've invested. So again, not to disappoint and talk about a particular asset or dealer company. But I just think the idea of founders putting their own money into their own businesses is often overlooked and I highly recommend it. And I don't care if you got a thousand bucks, put something in.
of your own capital. I think it's a great proof point.
slava (34:18.057)
All right, so three years from now, the big return is going to be going public slash issuance. Is that the right answer?
dm (34:25.272)
That's the only answer. Absolutely. And, and you know, listen, maybe, you know, if you're a retail investor, like be cautious of all this, the AI hype, I know there's going to be big winners Slava in the AI market and there already are big winners, but I do feel like we might be in the early stages, if not already in somewhat of a bubble.
slava (34:27.977)
Alright.
dm (34:52.024)
And there's a lot of FOMO, a lot of hype around these deals. Companies going from a billion to two billion dollar valuations in a matter of weeks. That's a red flag. That's definitely a gamble. And most of these companies, Slava, they're not generating revenue. They don't necessarily have a strategy to generate revenue. There are one or two exceptions to this rule. I would just caution investors kind of falling into this cycle of hype around.
AI. If you're a gambler, you're a VC, maybe that's your play or MO, but I would just caution the average retail investor or credit investor of getting sucked into that. I think it's dangerous.
slava (35:35.657)
All right, Darren, well, thank you for the conversation. We covered a lot of ground. I'm just taking a look here at my notes. So we started from the beginning where marketing Indiegogo campaigns and then moved into equity crowdfunding, whether it was investing into startups or some SPACs, you've definitely dipped your toe into the water. I like your phrase, private is the new public. And there's...
Definitely an opportunity to go after the companies while they're still in the private mode. Obviously with issuance, you have already done over $250 million and have lots of investors, like 125 ,000 investors that have used the technology. You gave us some great case studies, whether it's the three -wheeled car with Abtera or the tattoo removal with Soliton. It's awesome to be able to raise your valuation from 100 to 750 or potentially get bought out with Abbe.
which is super cool. If you're a company and you're thinking about it, you should probably be consumer -based, have fans and followers and be able to market. And if you're an investor, you should probably think about, you know, do you understand the business? Do you understand the financials? And probably diversify and spread out your investments. And I gotta say, you may have one of the quotes of my entire podcast, which is the plan is to replace Shark Tank. I love it. Love the vision.
But you already have season one under your belt with some great examples and case studies and winning companies and season two is about to come out. You're a big fan of Twitter, still OG with Wall Street Journal and you love to invest into yourself and beware the hype. Thank you very much, Darren.
dm (37:16.153)
Thank you, Slava. Appreciate it.
