TRANSCRIPT
slava (00:02.58)
Hello and welcome to another episode of Smart Humans. I'm very excited for today's guest. We have Mike Collins, founder and CEO of Alumni Ventures at his organization that have actually already invested into over a thousand companies and deployed over $1.1 billion. And we're gonna be able to learn all about that. Mike, welcome to the show.
mike_collins (00:25.07)
Thanks for having me.
slava (00:26.876)
So we always start with the same first question, which is how did you even get into alternative investments?
mike_collins (00:35.202)
It was a bit of coincidence and luck. I was a, in 1986, I was a college senior up at Dartmouth and was about ready to go to business school, which in hindsight was a stupid decision. But I had gotten in to the business school up in Hanover and was planning to go. And I got a call from one of my professors who said,
mike_collins (01:05.386)
looking to hire kind of a young analyst and I think you'd be great for it. And I, you know, I responded like what's venture capital? You know, I had no idea. And, but you know, the more I asked about it, learned about it, it sounded exciting and interesting and, you know, one thing led to another and I, yeah, started at a...
a firm called T.A. Associates in Boston in 1986, and really have spent my entire career in kind of the entrepreneurial venture capital ecosystem, and can't imagine doing anything else. I just love it.
slava (01:51.584)
So you've been in the venture space literally since 1986 straight, is that correct?
mike_collins (01:56.714)
Yeah, I mean, not straight. I mean, I've been one of those that has hopped between being a CEO and a founder and, and being an investor. And I actually think that that's been a, not only interesting, but a real benefit. I think being a good investor makes you a better founder and executive. And I think knowing
what it's like to be, you know, operating a business and grinding it out on a day-to-day basis makes you a better investor. So you know, it's one of the things that I just love about the past eight years at Alumni Ventures is I really am getting to wear both hats. You know, we are, we're a fintech startup, you know, that's eight years into our story. And obviously we're venture capitalists. So.
I get to... I have a good gig. I like it.
slava (03:01.608)
Yeah, love the balance between investing and operating. Can we learn a little bit more about some of that operating before alumni? So what gave you the itch to start something or to go work somewhere? And can you give some of those examples or what that was like?
mike_collins (03:16.05)
Yeah, no, I mean, it's, you know, it's one of those things where it's a different skill set, right? An investor is really thinking at the highest level of, you know, evaluation of a market opportunity and dynamics and strategy and things like that. And, and operating a business is, you know, a lot of execution. You know, it's 90%. You know,
just making a lot of good decisions, trying to get the majority of them right and fixing the ones that you get wrong very quickly. So, I've started a number of businesses in a variety of industries ranging from marketing to...
mike_collins (04:06.242)
consumer products to toys to, you know, venture capital startups. So, you know, it's been, it's been an eclectic journey and I've picked up stuff really all along the way. And really it kind of generated the story of this company, Alumni Ventures, because whenever I was not in the business,
I really struggled with this asset class. Venture capital, probably as most of your listeners know, is a power law business that you need access to the good deals, you need a large portfolio, you need to diversify. That was really hard even though I was from the business as an individual. That's really what I set out to do in 2014.
mike_collins (05:05.458)
a way for individuals to have access to a smart, simple venture capital portfolio. And so, you know, it's been kind of a, you know, a real growth story since then. You know, our first fund and, you know, was with Dartmouth alums, Green D1, you know, was, you know, $800,000. And, you know, now we, you know, raise and invest three, $400 million a year.
So, you know, we've come a long way. But I think it just shows to Slava the interest people have now in having a more diverse portfolio, a broader getting into a variety of asset classes, diversifying, buying quality. Anyway, I think that's been the exciting part of what we're doing.
slava (06:06.396)
You mentioned the power law dynamics of the business. So just for our listeners, if you could just expand a little bit more on that. What exactly does that mean in terms of having to go after numbers and such?
mike_collins (06:15.479)
Yeah.
mike_collins (06:20.586)
Yeah, no, venture capital is a hits business. So a typical portfolio, a typical fund at alumni ventures is 20 to 30 individual investments. And what you find is that in this asset class, you know, it's a small minority of deals that really drive returns. So, you know, the rule of thumb is you'll have out of 30 companies, you'll have
or three investments that will hopefully return the whole fund. And then you'll have another handful, a half dozen or so, that will provide good returns. And then you'll have a high mortality rate where you'll either lose your whole investment or part of it. So it's just an asset class where it's really not a good strategy to do kind of one-off deals. Which is frankly what...
You know, most people do, you know, again, the venture capital, you know, probably has 99% of the population doesn't have a venture portfolio at all. Or if they have one, you know, it's a couple of random deals that they happen to, you know, their cousin shows them or their accountant sends along and, you know, that, that has problems.
You know, you're just not having the diversification, not having an adequately sized portfolio. That's what makes it risky. But our strategy is large portfolios. We co-invest alongside, you know, name brand, top tier venture firms like Andreessen and Benchmark, Sequoia, Lightspeed, those kinds of firms. And if you're able to put together a portfolio of those kinds of deals, that's...
That's just smart asset allocation at this point.
slava (08:22.048)
Great. Let's jump in a little bit into your personal investment approach outside of alumni. So there's lots of assets out there in the alt world. Obviously, you're deep in the alt space specifically with this asset class, which is venture. How do you feel about the other asset classes? Let's say, you know, real estate, private credit, crypto, art, collectibles.
mike_collins (08:51.23)
Yes. I mean, the short answer is, you're the short answer. Yes. I'm in all of them personally. And I think. Yeah.
slava (08:53.52)
So does that mean you are actually in all of them?
Awesome. What kind of percentage, sorry, really quick, what kind of percentage of your net worth would you say that you're deploying into ALT outside of what's happening with alumni?
mike_collins (09:13.226)
Yeah, so if you looked at my pie chart, it'd be kind of a third in equities, a third in alts and a third in, you know, kind of fixed income cash, those kinds of things. So, you know, our family takes a look at it, I think, in a very long term perspective, which I think is, you know, being a smart investor is frankly not a lot of magic. You know, it is.
But really hard because human nature doesn't lend itself to being a good investor. So one, we are very committed to kind of thinking long term and not trying to kind of time markets or just really deciding what is our allocation among these large buckets, equities, venture capital, private equity, real estate, crypto.
cash and collectibles. That's really how my family office divides the world. And we try to buy quality assets and we try to buy them in kind of an automatic way. So I think the power of compounding and the discipline of kind of consistent investing is really the key to it. And you know, it's...
that should be the approach. And so again, obviously, I think with public equities, it's a much more evolved, sophisticated, easy to do, right? You can kind of set up an, you know, out of your payroll, kind of an auto deduction to buy ETFs, and you can do that with crypto now. And, you know, I think people are really well served by just kind of setting and forgetting it.
And that can be really hard to do, but I think that's really the way to go. And we're trying to bring that same kind of approach to venture capital, which is we, you know, we try to work with our customers every year to say, what's a smart allocation for you. Um, you know, venture capital is a long-term asset class. I mean, we're investing in the most dynamic value creating part of the economy.
mike_collins (11:40.558)
But it takes time to build great businesses. And so I think that's, it's consistent with having a long-term perspective of thinking about venture capital that way. And you listen, you look at the smart money, you look at the endowments, you know, people running Yale's money are really smart. They have a very large allocation to venture capital and private equity.
because they have a long-term perspective and they understand that it's illiquid, but the rewards and returns over years and decades, you're really rewarded for that kind of discipline.
slava (12:24.24)
Yeah, I think Yale has like one of the highest percentages to alts. I think over 35% when I last read.
mike_collins (12:32.938)
Yeah, and I think all the colleges are, you know, it varies, but they're all, they all have a fairly large allocation. I mean, it is. And I'll just give you Slava too, a little just perspective, which is, you know, when I started out in the business, you know, you would have companies, you know, the apples of the world go public and they'd go public at a, you know, $500 million valuation of.
$700 million valuation. And so you could buy at the IPO or, you know, shortly thereafter, and, you know, really have a tremendous upside. You know, you kind of jump ahead to 2022, you know, and in this era, companies are staying private so much longer. And they're kind of building a lot of value.
in the private market. And so they're going public at a $20 billion valuation. And so as an individual, if I'm saying, you know what, I'm not gonna play from zero to $20 billion and I'm gonna hop in then, you know, in kind of in a pretty efficient marketplace that has, you know, worldwide flows of capital and analysts following companies, it's a pretty efficient market. And so I think it's...
It's really hard to exclusively focus on that as your investment thesis at this point. I'm a big believer in alternative investments and diversification within those. Again, beyond the diversification among the different buckets, I think it's really important to diversify within the buckets. A lot of people just...
have a big investment in real estate through their own home, which is great. And people are very thoughtful about it, and maintain it, and do research. But you really are not diversified in real estate by just your house. So I think it's important for people to talk about money as a family, talk about goals, and really think beyond this quarter, this month.
mike_collins (14:57.986)
this year kind of thing and really, really have a longterm plan for building financial security.
slava (15:05.62)
And when you talk about diversification within asset class, totally love hearing that. But then also before you mentioned, you're across all these different assets. So how do you think about investing when it comes to like crypto or collectibles? Are you and your team deploying it yourself? Are you looking for managers? Can you give a little color there and any examples?
mike_collins (15:26.41)
Yeah, so our venture capital firm has a crypto blockchain team and fund. So again, I have enormous confidence in their ability, not just to invest in. Tokens, you know, the Ethereum's and all Garand's and, and Bitcoin, but there's really very, very interesting companies using that kind of underlying technology to build exciting new businesses.
And we're just really in the first inning of that story. And, you know, people have heard about it and it, you know, goes up and down. But again, from the perspective of a long time period as an investor, this is very reminiscent to me of other things like the internet or the advent of the personal computer or the smartphone, you know, these things start small, they compound over time.
But it really takes 10, 20 years for them really to make an impact. And, you know, at the beginning, everybody thinks it's crazy. It's hyped. It's whatever. And then 20 years later, like, of course the smartphone is a transformative part of our life, you know, but that's looking backwards. You know, and when Steve jobs introduced the iPhone, you know, it was, you know, Microsoft was going to.
you know, knock it out of the water, and it's a gadget, and it's overpriced. So these things take time to kind of work through. And I think we're seeing, we're gonna see that with a lot of different categories. And we're seeing that in life sciences, we're seeing that in, you know, blockchain. Again, when I started out in the business, there was innovation and entrepreneurship being done in...
software and hardware and a few sectors. And now we're almost in the golden age, I think of innovation, where you take almost every sector of the economy from food to energy to transportation. And there are really smart, talented people innovating. Not everything's gonna work out, not every business is gonna be successful, but it's really, really exciting to see that.
mike_collins (17:49.034)
not only the capital, but the human capital going into, you know, interesting new businesses. It's just, you have to live with a little bit of patience and you have to live with, you know, the fact is, you know, some of these things make it and some don't, and some are before their time, and some have the timing just right. It's just the way it works.
slava (18:11.952)
Um, but outside of alumni and potentially investing into companies that are your personal money, how are you putting it into crypto or collectibles and any examples there again, outside of the
mike_collins (18:24.955)
Yeah, so example like real estate, you know, obviously I buy REITs. I also own property. I also invest in some, I think disruptive, you know, property tech, real estate tech companies. So, you know, again, I think very much of, you know, it's not just owning assets, but again, I think real estate is a nice compliment.
to equities, tangible assets that appreciate and value, property, land, those things. Again, if you're diversifying across geographies, different types of property, I think that's again a really good way to go as far as balancing out those things. So yeah, I do a lot of it myself or through my family office.
in the area of real estate, in the area of crypto. From a collectible standpoint, again, I think some of the collectibles is also a reflection of personal interests, whether you're into commodities or whether you're into art or whether you're into music. I think if you can lever a personal interest with...
slava (19:51.569)
Absolutely.
mike_collins (19:52.555)
a consistent.
mike_collins (19:57.138)
disciplined approach to it. So again, we have as a family and interested in emerging artists. So what we also invest in art, again, not something that you want to flip your day trade. You buy a talented emerging young artist and you also get to enjoy that asset. Now, you know, it's, it's arguably
slava (20:06.1)
That's great.
slava (20:24.132)
And are you doing that yourself or is that going through a manager?
mike_collins (20:27.402)
No, we do that ourselves through our own family office. So I'm.
slava (20:30.792)
Got it. And what does that mean to invest into an artist? Like how can, for the listeners, like what will be the process there to execute on that if they had the opportunity?
mike_collins (20:39.991)
Yeah, so what you have to do is you have to follow the art market and you have to develop a set of artists that you really like. Again, I always have my venture capital hat on, so I'm looking for the next generation of talented young artists and develop a portfolio of their work. And
do the research and again, some of it's subjective and taste. But there's indicators with art about, you can see signals of people that are starting to get shows and followings and representation. And again, very much like a lot of my investing philosophy is kind of buy and hold, very much think about things from a long-term perspective.
slava (21:37.412)
switching gears, what do you think of today's market? It's a very open-ended question, but really just not for a specific asset class or for your organization, but rather the market in general. What's the might take on it?
mike_collins (21:51.638)
I think people spend way too much time looking at it day to day, is my take. And again, this comes with the benefit of a lot of years of seeing ebbs and flows and highs and lows and the coming Armageddon. So I've lived through 1987 and 2000 and 2008.
mike_collins (22:20.866)
great companies build and thrive. And so, you know, I only check on my personal portfolio once a quarter. I don't have like a stock app on my phone. I mean, and listen, I'm in meetings, I'm in board meetings and every time there's a break, you know, half the people are whipping out their phone and checking the price of Bitcoin or their stock portfolio. Like...
I guess looking for some kind of like dopamine hitch or something. But it's like, you know, I think, um, I don't think that's the way to do it. I think, you know, um, buy great companies, buy ETFs, invest in good managers, buy quality assets. Um, and then, you know, check them once a quarter, a couple of times a year, rebalance if necessary. But, um,
Yeah, I mean, I think there's, you know, to answer your question more directly, we've had, you know, over the last decade, tremendous growth in the value of companies and equities and, you know, we were probably overdue for a bit of a correction. And I think, you know, that that's fairly healthy part of capitalism. And that's really a healthy part of, you know, building companies. It's
You know, it's a heck of a lot easier to negotiate a lease now. It's a heck of a lot easier to hire people than it was, you know, nine months ago. And, you know, there was a, there was an overdue correction. We obviously have a lot of inflation. Um, I think that'll, you know, be under control in another year or two. And again, I think you can waste a lot of energy, I think kind of.
thinking about it, dwelling on it, looking at it, and day trading. And I am in the camp, and I know other people are in difference, which is, I just think life is too short to be doing that stuff. And I'd rather focus on finding great teams, and helping build businesses, helping build our own business. That's where I put my energy. So it's kind of, perhaps it's the lazy man's approach to investing, but I think it's, you know, I didn't invent it.
mike_collins (24:47.882)
I mean, I think if you really look at the sages of investing, they'll all tell you the same stuff.
slava (24:57.788)
All right, so we won't dwell on it. So we'll move to the next topic, which is learning about alumni more. So, um,
You say you started, I believe, with Dartmouth One, you mentioned, $800,000. And now, obviously, you're over a billion dollars of investments. And typically, when you hear these types of larger numbers, you talk about large institutions that have given the capital to the managers to deploy this. But you've really gone a different approach with individuals. Can you give some color on how that's evolved and how that's different than the status quo?
mike_collins (25:37.047)
Yeah, the venture industry developed in the 1960s, 1970s, and it was really designed for institutions. So, it was structured in a way that endowments and pension funds were the real providers of capital. And it was really an important asset class, creates huge amounts of value, but has really been very difficult for an individual.
to put together a portfolio. And that's really what we've set out to do. So, you know, we offer portfolios to accredited investors that are diversified by sector, by stage, by lead investor, by geography. And we do it for a pretty low minimum of, you know, 10 or $25,000. And our strategy is to be a really strong co-investor.
So we don't lead the rounds, the companies we invest in. So we're co-investing alongside these name brand venture capital firms. And we get into these deals because we've turned what, you know, is unique about us, which is our network of, you know, almost 9,000 investors and a community of hundreds of thousands of people, not as a bug, but that's a feature.
because that incredible network of people, not only provide capital that we invest, but they're also tremendously helpful in supporting our portfolio companies. So, requests comes in saying, gee, I need a new board member and I'm looking for somebody with expertise in selling to professional sports franchises. We have a...
tremendous Rolodex that we can kind of make introductions. And we've developed at Alumni Ventures, a whole team that focuses on servicing our portfolio companies by activating the network. So again, when I started the business, everybody goes, oh, you know.
mike_collins (27:57.598)
It's a crazy idea. Why would you want to raise money in 25, $50,000 chunks from thousands of people where you could just go do an endowment. They write you a $20 million check. And listen, I don't poo that strategy, but you know, we took a different tact and we said, you know what networks can be really powerful and communities are really powerful. And as an entrepreneur myself,
You know, I wanted my co-investors to be helping me with introductions and helping me, um, recruit people and helping me, um, gain access to a potential new customer. And so, you know, our network really allows us, I think, to fight above our weight when it comes to delivering value to our portfolio companies. And so, yeah, we've taken this retail approach.
Um, and you know, that's our uniqueness and that's our competitive advantage. And that's the value that we can add, um, to our portfolio companies. And in the process, I just, I think it's really just a great thing that the more people that have venture, um, in their portfolios, I think it's, I think that's just a good thing. It's good diversification. Um, you know,
Again, I think it's an enormous part of where value is created in our modern economy. If you look at all the top companies today, they're all were originally venture-backed businesses. Whether that's Moderna or Apple or Amazon or Uber or Airbnb, these are all venture companies. I think it's a good thing. We try to be an on-ramp.
to this important asset class. So we invest a lot in education. We require all of our investors not to just do onesie deals. They have to buy into a portfolio. So we think we're doing it the right way.
slava (30:09.124)
You mentioned the 9,000 investors, which is awesome. How important do you think the university infrastructure and building off of that alumni network, how important do you think that has been to your growth?
mike_collins (30:24.21)
Yeah, I mean, I think it's really a nice thing when investors who are just coming into a new asset class get to do it with people that they have a connection with. And, you know, in our society, you know, where you go to school is an important formative part of your life and you tend to bond with those people, right? And so the fact is, is
You know, I started this with my alma mater and alumni, fellow alumni, and I think we just all felt better about, you know, we can do better in this asset class together than any of us could do on our own. Right. That's kind of the bottom line of it. And the fact that, you know, we have this common bond of being Dartmouth alums, um, just, just helps the process. It reduces friction. There's a, there's.
a commonality, there's a there's conversation starters, you know, people that go to Dartmouth self select, they're, you know, happy to be in the middle of the New Hampshire winners, you know, so there's a bunch of stuff to bond over. And then, you know, the ability to also invest then in fellow Dartmouth alums is a reward. And now, you know, we have grown and now we have alumni funds at, you know, Harvard and Stanford and MIT and you know,
25 other top schools and we're adding three or four every quarter. But we also then, you know, a couple of years ago, we were just getting a lot of people saying, Hey, you know, I love what you do. I want a smart, simple venture portfolio myself, but I didn't go to one of these schools. So we developed some products that are really just open to any accredited investors. So, um, you get kind of the value of these networks, even
you know, if you didn't go to college or you didn't go to one of the schools where we have alumni. And what we find is people kind of start out with their alumni fund and then, you know, they evolve and they want to build their portfolio. So they, you know, say, hey, I'd like part of your blockchain fund or I'd like to, you know, I've got $100,000 for this asset class this year.
mike_collins (32:47.606)
I'm going to put 25% into my alumni fund. I'm going to put 25% into your seed fund. I'm going to put 25% into impact fund because I care about investing. And I'm going to save a little bit of money to do individual investments. So again, trying to create an analog to what people can do with public equities. They can buy ETFs, but they can supplement that in kind of vertical markets or different kind of risk reward profiles. So.
Um, yeah, the alumni connection has just been a accelerant, I think, to people, um, not only feeling comfortable with the asset class, but it just makes it more interesting and fun because we do a fair number of kind of get-togethers and meetups with entrepreneurs. And, you know, one of the, one of the nice things about, you know, being a venture investor is it's just, it's just a heck of a lot more fun because you always get to learn about a new technology. You get to.
you get to meet these amazing entrepreneurs and follow their stories.
slava (33:52.5)
Great. So in the media this year, there's been some coverage about a settlement between alumni ventures and the SEC regarding fees. This really brings up the topic of what it's like to try to work with individual investors as opposed to institutions. You're kind of like putting yourself right in the middle of that. So can you speak to some of the challenges of trying to educate folks about fees and navigating these new asset classes?
mike_collins (34:08.023)
Yeah.
mike_collins (34:20.594)
Yeah, so, you know, almost every business that disrupts a new business at some point has got to work through things with regulators, right? And so, because, you know, frankly, regulators are used to kind of one kind of business. And so, you know, whether you're Airbnb or, you know, Uber, it's part of the growing up process. And so we had a very constructive kind of dialogue with the SEC.
Um, about disclosures and about, you know, sharing things were super transparent. And, you know, I think we're, we're pleased that we kind of, you know, tidied some things up and put it behind us. And again, kind of. Back to running the business, but I think it's, I think it's just part of what every company has to go to is I think there's some education that entrepreneurial startups have to do with.
with regulators who don't understand a new business model. So we knew it was inevitable that dealing with retail individual investors that we were going to have to kind of educate them and work through some things with them. And we got to the point where we were successful enough that we had to address it, and we did.
slava (35:44.188)
Great. And am I right to say that you're based in New Hampshire?
mike_collins (35:48.426)
Yeah, so we have our corporate headquarters in Southern New Hampshire here. We're about an hour north of Boston. But we also have, yeah, we also have offices though in Boston, in New York, Chicago, Austin and Menlo, right?
slava (35:55.332)
And the reason I, sorry really quick.
Okay.
The reason I ask is because maybe it ruins my question is, you know, you typically think of VCs as kind of coastal, right? In New York, in the Valley, and as part of that, that's kind of how they will say they get their access. So I was going to ask, what's it like to, you know, build your organization out of, you know, New Hampshire and not physically be present? But again, maybe my question is already ruined. Go for it.
mike_collins (36:27.074)
Well, no, it's a good question, but it's our back office is here in New Hampshire. And, but our, our investing teams are really in venture hubs because it, you know, it is important to be where the venture ecosystems are. So we're in all the major venture hubs in the United States. I will say that though is evolving. I think a lot in the last three years. That.
mike_collins (36:57.03)
One, venture capital is becoming much more international and that there are just tremendous companies now coming out of South America and Israel and Europe and different spots in the far East. There's venture capital is expanded from Boston and Silicon Valley to the world really. I also think that
It's much more of a network based system now. It used to be people meeting for coffee in Palo Alto. And now, you know, deals are getting done over Zoom. Because I think it's one of the outcomes of COVID is, you know, venture capital is much more, much less tied to geography, I think, than it has ever been in its history.
slava (37:52.788)
That's great. You get access to so many different deals, so you see a lot of trends. What do you see as three trends to look out for the coming two, three years?
mike_collins (38:07.562)
Yeah, I think we're going to continue to see a lot of things in life sciences. I think there is tremendous work being done with the genome and data and kind of two pillars in there. So I'm really excited for the potential for health impacts that are, you know, going to be happening over the coming years. I think artificial intelligence is going to, again, kind of
seep into every part of our life. I think we're starting to see that in kind of very realistic ways. Sometimes visible, sometimes invisible, but I think it's gonna lead to a lot of really great experiences and better outcomes for people in their lives. I think the other thing is just this...
this movement toward kind of networks, I think is just again, continuing to be a very profound part of our world. I think we're living in a connected world. I think the ability for groups of people to come together, to do good, to solve problems, I'm really excited about some things going on in networks. So I think those three are ones I'd really hang my hat on.
slava (39:29.232)
Is it?
slava (39:35.132)
In regards to networks, do you have like an example of one that exists today that you would say, yeah, more like this sort of thing, but in different spaces?
mike_collins (39:44.138)
Yeah, I mean, I think we're a really good example of that ourselves, frankly. I think, again, you look at the traditional venture capital firm, you know, it was a, it was five partners and an Irish setter in Palo Alto. And, you know, now we have a network of employees kind of around the world. We have a network of, um, customers and investors who are worldwide. We, you know, we do three or four investments a week.
And these are companies located all over the world in every sector of the economy. So I just think, I think, I think, you know, I'll, I'll sell my own book here is I think we're really a perfect example of that kind of stuff.
slava (40:29.84)
So as our listeners try to you know become more like you can you share with them what you like to read or watch? or listen to any Content, you know whether it's daily weekly etc. That is your go-to for information etc
mike_collins (40:44.562)
Yeah, I mean, I think a couple of tips that I would give, again, I think everybody's got to, you know, find their own way. But a couple of things that I think are maybe a little unusual about my approach is I'm very much one of these very early morning people. So I'm usually in the office by five and don't have anything until eight. So I have this section of the day that is really focused on kind of concentrated focus, deep work.
And that is proven to be, you know, over the last 10 years, a really productive habit for me and, you know, just to find a block of time where you're uninterrupted and not doing meetings or getting calls or again, checking your, you know, portfolio price, I think is really important. I'm also, you know, a huge fan of, um, uh, audible, you know, so I listen, you know,
you know, 40 to 60 books a year. And I'm doing that during a commute. I'm during that, doing that when I exercise, I'm doing that, you know, walking the dog, just any chance I get, I pop in my headphones and I'm listening to, to audio books. I do think this.
slava (42:03.917)
Any one book, any one book you would recommend.
mike_collins (42:07.138)
Well, I'll just mention it because I just put it down, which is The Power Law, actually, is a great book that kind of covers the history of venture capital. So it just came out, I think, earlier this year and it was recommended by several entrepreneurs. And, you know, I thought I was pretty up to speed on a lot of these things. And after writing...
After reading the book or listening to the book, I found that it was about, you know, I know maybe 20% of it. So I thought the power law is one I definitely put on the recommended reading list for those interested in venture capital for sure.
slava (42:47.52)
Great.
slava (42:54.516)
Do you have any examples of the things you're doing between 5 a.m. and 8 a.m. when you're kind of more focused?
mike_collins (43:00.234)
Yeah, what I'll often do is I'll be thinking about longer term projects. So if we're looking to improve a part of our business or if there's a sector that, you know, we want to understand better, I'll be doing reading during that time. I'll be doing, I'll be drafting white papers. I'll be, I'll be.
reacting to people's work that is submitted to me as CEO. We have about 150 employees now, so I get reports on how things are progressing, or a portfolio company is thinking of going public. So I'm very organized for the day. So again, Amazon always had this approach of these kind of five, six page memos that were read by the team before they did the meeting.
I don't even like to waste that. I want the six page memo the night before so I can read it during deep work so we can start the meeting at 8.01 and everybody's read the same thing and we can start the discussion. So a little riff on Jeff Bezos approach there, but so I'll be reading and so I can hit the meetings with the ground running.
slava (44:19.936)
Perfect. So we like to finish with an investment. So a suggestion as tangible and as real as possible, which is with a three year out time horizon, what would be one suggestion you would have of something to invest into? It could be in any asset class, the more real and the more opportunity that the listeners can go take action on it, the better, but not a requirement. So Mike, what will be your one suggested investment? And obviously this is not investment advice.
mike_collins (44:48.082)
Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, if you want to, if you want a simple investment, go by ETF for the S&P 500.
Sounds boring. And I don't know if he's going to go, but I'm going to. Yeah. I absolutely do.
slava (45:01.496)
But with three years out, you think that's a good one?
Okay, got it. We haven't heard that one before, so that's good. All right, Mike, well, thank you so much. It's been a great discussion. I'm just kind of looking at some of my notes here. We covered a lot of topics. We started out by, you know, you mentioning that you had the balance of operating or an investing experience, which is a great duopoly there. The fact that, you know, you're well diversified, one third into equities, one third into alts, one third into fixed income and cash.
You love the power of compounding and consistency, which I couldn't agree with more. We shouldn't just diversify within an asset class, sorry, across asset classes, but also within asset classes. People spend too much time thinking about the day to day and the potential doomsday that's coming. So all of that's been awesome. The alumni network is a powerful tool and a great entry point for folks, which I think is really part of your secret sauce. New innovations always need to navigate regulations as they scale, which is a really interesting takeaway. You gave us three trends to look out for.
data, AI and networks and we mentioned the power laws of book and the S&P 500 as your investment for three years out. Thank you so much Mike.
mike_collins (46:13.403)
It was great. It was fun. Thanks.
