TRANSCRIPT
Slava (00:02.777)
Hello and welcome to the latest episode of Smart Humans. I'm very excited for today's guest. We have an entrepreneur who will help you get liquidity into the secondary market, trying to get all those hot pre -IPO companies before they IPO. Sim Desai is founder and CEO of Hiive. Welcome to the show.
Sim Desai (00:20.654)
Thank you very much Slava, it's great to be here.
Slava (00:23.353)
All right, so we always like to get started from the beginning, which is how did you even get into alternative investments? How did you end up landing at Hiive and starting it?
Sim Desai (00:32.846)
Well, the history is a long and sordid one, but you know, I'll just say that I wanted to get into the world of private markets, landed a job around the summer of 2008 coming from a legal background and landed a job at a boutique kind of brokerage firm in the space. A week after I sort of fortuitously got that job, Lehman went bankrupt.
And so it was quite a journey from there. But I spent the next 15 years working in what we call the secondary market for private equity, essentially, which is the secondary market versus the primary just means when you're doing a secondary trade, it is you're buying from an existing investor as opposed to investing
directly with the company. So instead of giving cash to the company, you're giving cash to another investor who's selling you their stake. I started in funds, private equity funds, and then eventually the opportunity to make markets in pre -IPO stock exploded onto the scene in the mid -20 teens after Facebook went public, and the rest is history.
Slava (01:57.176)
Amazing. So you were at a company for 15 years after the 2008 crash?
Sim Desai (02:01.838)
Yeah, do I have any cash did you say?
Slava (02:04.377)
No, no, after the 2008 crash, you were at one company for 15 years, is that right?
Sim Desai (02:06.702)
after -
Yeah, yeah, yeah. 14 to be exact. And then, yeah, then now it's now been about three years working on Hiive or two years.
Slava (02:18.489)
Amazing, so typically people that have that sort of loyalty 14 years at one company aren't always entrepreneurial. So how do you balance those two things? Why do you think you're so loyal at one place and then you have that entrepreneurial DNA as well?
Sim Desai (02:31.118)
Totally, so you know, I always throughout the years obviously had a great career in finance and but always had this itch and always admired entrepreneurs and I always knew that sort of one of the great challenges in life and in the professional world was to start your own business and the world of startups, you know, I was surrounded by the world startups, it just seemed so exciting and kind of was there was a big opportunity, I felt there was a big opportunity
right in front of me to create sort of a kind of a place where, you know, investors could access these private market investments more easily. And so jumped in and went after it.
Slava (03:13.369)
Amazing. So clearly you're jumping in with your own personal net worth into the world of entrepreneurship. So you obviously have some stock there. Are you also investing into the pre IPO or what do you think of these different alternative assets that are out there, whether it's art or collectibles, crypto, real estate, private credit? What do you think about this versus public markets?
Sim Desai (03:40.014)
Yeah, for sure. So, you know, believe it or not, I'm personally a pretty conservative investor. I've also actually put a lot of my means behind Hiive itself. So I'm quite heavily invested in Hiive. So you could say I'm very invested in startups, but I'm invested in Hiive in terms of, you know, so, and aside from that, I'm kind of spending a lot of my investments in the public market, things like diversified funds and whatnot. I have over the years done some
Real estate investing, you know, real estate is one of those asset classes that seems to always generate great kind of risk adjusted returns over time and stable investment. And so yeah, to the extent that had been more of an alternative investor, it's been, that's where it's been.
Slava (04:26.201)
And when you've been doing real estate, is that just you finding an opportunity yourself or through a buddy or are you going through one of the platforms through a managed fund or how do you like to get into real estate?
Sim Desai (04:37.006)
Mostly more like residential real estate, you know do things like buying properties pre -construction things like that Did that for many years not really active there too much anymore? But yeah improving improving improving residential properties from time to time You know and the like
Slava (04:54.617)
And when you're going into the diversified funds in the public markets, is that by vertical or is that the QQQs or the S &Ps or how do you like to invest into the public markets?
Sim Desai (05:05.87)
Yeah, typically through the large cap ETFs, that's typically where I'm investing. Kind of plain, jaded, boring.
Slava (05:16.601)
Well, plain Jane boring, but the big cap ETFs right now are probably doing pretty well since AI is giving a nice tailwind to all these mega caps, right?
Sim Desai (05:26.446)
Totally, totally.
Slava (05:28.697)
So how do you think about crypto? It seems like you're pretty conservative. It seems like you might be anti crypto. Is that correct? Or do I have you pegged wrong?
Sim Desai (05:40.462)
I'm not anti -crypto. I do have a bit of crypto exposure myself. I'll say that it's one of these things where you kind of have to just say, look, to me from where I sit, I'm not a technical person. My CTO who is like one of the smartest people I know is actually very anti -crypto. And so it's a tough thing when...
really brilliant people can disagree on whether there's even fundamental value in an asset class. But I think it's hard to ignore crypto these days. And, you know, my view is that you probably, you know, I don't think it's unwise to have some exposure there. Just given that it seems like crypto as an asset class, while you don't know which what is going to be necessarily a winner at this currency or that or this platform or that, you know, overall as an asset class, it does feel like it's here to stay.
Slava (06:36.729)
And then what about the art or collectibles? Is that something that you're getting any exposure to? Is it more that you just go to a gallery every now and then and like to drink some wine?
Sim Desai (06:46.99)
I've dabbled a little bit in art, not necessarily the investment grade kind of stuff, but definitely I think art is really exciting as a class. I think probably people are gonna wanna really become educated in art. My understanding about investing in art, my very little understanding about investing in art is that you probably wanna invest in sort of very established
artists and you probably don't want to think about art as an investment unless you know you're buying into something that's that's quite established as an artist and has a real kind of track record behind it
Slava (07:29.913)
You know, I think it's funny, you said you were playing Jane, but then all of a sudden you scratch at this itch and you all of a sudden you have some real estate investments, you have the exposure to mega cap tech and you know, dabble a little bit in crypto and a tiny bit of art. I mean, I don't know, you all of a sudden sound like a diversified alt investor. So moving on to the market, what do you think? This is an open ended question. Take it where you will. You have a great perspective with your data and exposure to Hiive. What do you think of the market?
Sim Desai (07:46.638)
Yeah.
Slava (07:56.537)
What do you think of the stock market, the economy, employment? Open -ended question. Obviously, you could talk about it for a long time. Take it wherever you'd like.
Sim Desai (08:04.462)
Yeah, for sure. I mean, look, if you talk about the world of startups that I'm in, and even the broader stock market, obviously we've seen a period of continuing sort of, or a rebound in sort of the euphoria around in the stock market to some extent in the last year or so. It seems like a lot of that has been driven by the excitement around AI. I think in the...
the elephant in the room is obviously continued, really high cost of capital. And we see the impact of that in the market for startups that we operate sort of every day. While the public market has really taken off, the world of startups is a story of kind of a lot of winners and losers.
You know, the big winners these days tend to be AI and to some extent crypto has been, has blockchain technologies have really kind of come back to some extent. But a lot of the other startups, you know, someone used the term SaaSpocalypse the other day, which, you know, because a lot of the SaaS startups are having a really struggling. I think generally speaking in a higher cost of capital environment, you know, the market might be back, but
but the cost of capital is still high and that's still holding back a lot of venture -backed companies. And on our platform, we actually see a lot of venture -backed companies still trading at very material discounts to where they last raised and valuations are still somewhat depressed because of these companies that don't generate huge revenues or material profitability, are still struggling in this kind of, in this current environment.
Slava (09:54.969)
It's interesting. A couple of years ago or a few years ago, SAS could do no wrong. Right. So you're saying that those higher valuations are just harder to justify now. And they're doing a little bit, having a little bit more challenge to raise more capital. I guess they don't have, if they don't have the AI love or the AI halo.
Sim Desai (10:17.262)
Yeah, I think SaaS companies are suffering sort of like a triple whammy. First of all, some of the biggest customers of SaaS companies are other startups. And other startups have been hurting right now. So that's a headwind on growth for SaaS companies. Second, most SaaS companies, while they may be growing quickly and they may have material revenues, are often not profitable. I mean, there are companies from
from the Zerp era who are multi -billion dollar companies who to this day are still burning cash. And that's just a no -no in today's high cost of funds environment. Who wants to, when you can earn 5 % on cash, who wants to put money into something that's valued at 10 times revenue and burning cash? So that hurts. I think that there's also a lot of uncertainty around the impact of AI on the existing
startup landscape, there's a lot of speculation that AI -driven startups are going to just displace a lot of the incumbents and or disrupt them, disrupt the disruptors. So I think that the SaaS space as an asset class has some headwinds, but that's not to say that there aren't some issuers in SaaS that are still doing well.
Slava (11:46.617)
And you've mentioned the cause of capital a few times now. So that obviously it relates to the Fed and the Fed rate. What's your perspective on what's happening this year and then 25? You know, the expectation at the moment is maybe one rate cut. That's kind of what the Fed has signaled, but some people are saying it's still gonna be zero or two. What's Sim's point of view?
Sim Desai (12:08.11)
Yeah, you know, I don't have too much of a perspective on that. You know, it's one of these things that's pretty impossible to predict. Obviously, inflation seems to continue to be a little bit sticky. So I would not be surprised if, you know, we continue to be surprised, negatively surprised by the Fed's inability to just cut rates quickly.
Slava (12:34.777)
I guess is that your way of saying that maybe it's gonna stay high for a while.
Sim Desai (12:40.11)
You know, again, impossible to predict, but it wouldn't surprise me if we were hired for longer.
Slava (12:45.977)
Sure. And this is a perfect opportunity to transition to Hiive, the platform. Obviously you're doing great business. Many people know about it, but not every listener has heard of it. So can you just start by telling us what is Hiive? Why did you start it? And who is it for?
Sim Desai (13:01.806)
Yeah, so Hiive is a marketplace for the trading of private security, so companies that are not public. Specifically, it's venture -backed companies. And then in terms of the companies that are on the platform, generally speaking, these are companies that are valued, let's say, at least $400 or $500 million at their last funding round.
And the reason for having that kind of valuation threshold is you need to be of a certain size and have a certain number of investors before the company can really become tradable. So for a company to really be tradable on a platform like ours, there does need to be a good number of investors and typically, and a high quality of investors. And typically that's what you're seeing with these higher valuation startups.
Slava (13:51.993)
Great, so how does it work? So let's say I wanna use it. So do I just, do I have to be accredited or is it for retail? What's my minimum investment? Do I have to pick my own stocks? Can I get into a fund? Do you do it for me? How does it work?
Sim Desai (14:08.142)
Yeah, so you do have to be accredited to use Hiive. The cool thing about Hiive is it is actually self -serve. People can come on, sign up for Hiive, and immediately start interacting with the marketplace themselves. They can buy stock directly. You need to be accredited to access the platforms. You have to be either an institutional investor or an accredited investor. And there's also a minimum investment threshold.
of 25 ,000 US for a single investment. So there are some ways for more retail or smaller accredited investors to get access to the startup market. Those channels sometimes interface with Hiive, but if you want to come on Hiive directly, you pretty much have to be ready to make a minimum 25 ,000 US investment for a single company exposure.
Slava (15:05.529)
And when you say the four or 500 million valuation minimum, but you go all the way up to massive, right? So I believe, you know, SpaceX is plus minus 200 billion these days. They would be potentially on your platform. Is that right?
Sim Desai (15:20.078)
That's right, yeah, so we, the companies that anywhere from that 500 million threshold all the way up to, you know, 100 billion plus are on the platform. Some of the most actively traded companies are those companies that are valued, let's say, in the 5 billion plus range. My colleague was telling me the other day that something like 70 % of DecaCorns, which are companies that are valued at 10 billion plus.
have traded on Hiive already. So yeah, that's kind of where a lot of the action is, is in these really large cap companies.
Slava (15:57.593)
That's awesome. 70 % of the DecaCorns have traded on Hiive. That's cool. How do the companies connect with you? Meaning, like, how is it that, you know, Carta or Stripe or whoever it is ends up having their shareholders sell on Hiive? Or how does that work?
Sim Desai (16:17.934)
Yeah, so because we are a registered broker dealer, we actually don't need to get, like we don't need to have a formal arrangement with the company, what we call the issuer, in order to trade their stock. We can actually quote a market for their stock and then buyers and sellers can come and match on our platform. So a lot of companies are just very passive in the process. They're not actively involved. We match a trade on the platform.
The one thing that's unique about private market investing that your listeners should know is that when you agree to buy stock from a seller, that's not the end of the trade. At that point, what happens is we submit that potential transaction to the company for approval. So the bylaws of private companies, unlike public companies where the stock can just trade freely, the bylaws of private companies require
the company itself or the company's board typically to approve the transaction before it can close. So the sequence of events is I'm an investor, I come to the platform, I see a stock I like, you know, rippling or cracking or cerebris or something like that. And I put a bid out for the stock, a seller accepts my bid, the platform then matches the transaction between the two parties and the two parties basically sign like effectively a trade confirmation or
what we call a notice, a share transfer notice. And the reason it's called a notice is because we take that document, which is like a letter of intent between the two parties, and we take that to the company to approve the transaction. So most of the time the companies approve the transaction, but there is a very significant percentage of companies who don't approve private market transactions. Even the companies who do allow trading, active trading in their stock, may...
block, may reject a particular transaction for a reason. Maybe they don't, if they don't believe, they don't find the buyer attractive or they're not interested in having that buyer on their cap table or in their shareholder base, they could block it. But yeah, so that's the step. And then once the company approves the transaction, then you can close the transaction and we manage that closing process for the buyer and seller as well.
Slava (18:39.577)
Thank you for all of that background. You mentioned that sometimes the company might block a transaction. What are the main reasons that a company will block a transaction? I've heard of that before, so why would that happen?
Sim Desai (18:49.742)
So some companies, I would say probably 30 or 40 % of these startups, these highly valued startups have a policy where they actually prohibit all what you might call open market trades or ad hoc trades on a platform like Hiive. And so those companies are blocking trades. We're generally not submitting to those companies once we know that they're.
not allowing transfers. So we may submit transfers, trades to those companies and then they decide that they're not allowing trades and then we don't continue to bring them trades. In terms of the other majority of companies, let's say 60 or 70 % of companies who do allow active trading of their stock, most of the time they're actually allowing the trades to go through. There can be certain cases where they don't allow a trade. For example,
you know, the buyer is a foreign entity, you know, from a foreign jurisdiction that's maybe not friendly to the US. And the, you know, the company has concerns about, you know, security related risks or other types of risks around their information that, where they don't want that buyer to be on their, be a shareholder. Sometimes the company might say, they may deem the transaction to be too small,
They don't wanna be adding a new investor to their cap table for a small transaction. So generally speaking, or for example, another case could be if they're concerned that the investor is either a competitor or is invested in competitors and therefore they don't want to allow the trade. Some companies have policies around the nature of the seller. So some companies allow...
current employees to sell but not former employees. Some allow former employees but not current. There's a kind of a range of policies when it comes to sellers. Usually companies want to see sellers at least have fully vested stock before they start selling something. But companies have a view on sort of when's the right time for a seller to be allowed to sell as well. And that view tends to differ quite a bit.
Slava (21:05.017)
Sounds like quite a decision tree and workflow there, awesome. So you said that you've been around for about three years. Do you have, or you've been working on it for three years, do you have a sense for what are some of the metrics, high level, meaning like how many buyers, how many sellers, how much transaction volume, et cetera?
Sim Desai (21:23.758)
Yeah, so we're growing really fast. We launched in, so we started building the platform in early 2021. We launched in 2022, May of 2022 with the beta launch. And things have been going kind of gangbusters ever since. We've now reached the point where we are doing about 100 million in closed transaction volume every month.
In 2024, we should exceed 1 billion, we should well exceed 1 billion in transaction volume. So yeah, we're very pleased with the rate of growth of the marketplace. It's growing at two or 300 % right now.
Slava (22:07.001)
That's incredible. And then how does fees work? Is that from the seller's side, the buyer's side, both? What are the fees? How does that work?
Sim Desai (22:16.174)
Yeah, so the seller, the only fee that you pay on Hiive is a commission. It's usually paid by the seller. And the seller pays at the conclusion of the transaction. So once the transaction closes, we get paid and the seller gets their net proceeds on the transaction. And then, so they're the only party that typically pays on our transactions. We also have programs where if a company's actually working formally with us on a, what we call a
kind of a managed market program where we're actually engaged by the company to manage their market. We reduce fees for the company still doesn't pay us anything in that context, but we reduce fees for sellers by of that company by 50 % in that context of a more kind of active arrangement with the company. Our fee also includes the entire transaction completion process, including transaction settlement. So it's all inclusive.
Slava (23:13.657)
So if it's not discounted, what's the normal fee for the seller side?
Sim Desai (23:17.102)
Depending on the size of the transaction, it's going to range anywhere from as low as 1 % for a very large transaction, let's say in the tens of millions, all the way up to 5 % for a transaction that's as small as 50 ,000 or 100 ,000. And then there's also a min fee on top of that of $3 ,000.
Slava (23:40.089)
Got it, got it. Okay, great. So you obviously have incredible visibility into all these trades saying that you have over $100 million a month now. Where are the trends right now?
Sim Desai (23:52.046)
Yeah, so, you know, as I mentioned before, a lot of the excitement that we're seeing is clearly in the AI space. Within AI, you have the LLMs, the Large Language Model companies. You know, a couple examples of companies that are private in that space today are would be names like Anthropic and OpenAI. You also have chip makers.
So names that are private right now in the chip space, well, obviously everyone knows that Nvidia is a chip maker. But names that are private in the chip space would include Cerebris Systems, which is incredibly hot stock that has risen something like four or 500 % over the last year. You got another name called Grok. So these are a couple of AI chip upstarts that are really hot.
You also see, so any company that sort of is sort of the building the infrastructure of AI is either on the hardware side or the software side is going to be pretty hot. You've got, as I mentioned also, the blockchain technologies companies have been very strong. Names like Ripple, Chainalysis, Kraken,
and others in the blockchain space have been doing really well. Generally speaking, what tends to make a company very hot or desirable in our marketplace is A, are they in a space that's really hyped up at the moment, like those two spaces I mentioned, but also is there some expectation or anticipation of an IPO
Because people want to get in pre -IPO, the private market is a liquid, that means valuations are a bit lower compared to once the company goes public, everyone's chasing that kind of post -IPO pop. So that tends to be another driver of interest in companies.
Slava (26:03.097)
So are most people when they're getting into these, let's say Cerebris, are they getting into Cerebris because they want to trade it on a higher price a month from now or a year from now? Or are they looking to buy it, like you said, in advance of the IPO and then just ride it into the public markets up to three trillion like Nvidia?
Sim Desai (26:23.406)
Yeah, so we don't encourage people to buy in order to trade, like in order to sort of flip or resell in a short period of time. It's not the intention of kind of, you know, US securities laws for people to sort of be trading. Companies also don't like that. So companies are not going to be viewed that favorably. Also, you know, under US securities laws, you generally have to hold depending, you know, there's a lot of minutiae in this, but.
Generally speaking, you actually have to hold the stock for six months before you can sell it. So people who are getting in pre -IPO, generally speaking, are anticipating holding at least until the company goes public and it gets through its lockup period. Now that's not to say that people won't resell before the company goes public. It does happen. Some companies, a company may be eight years old, a highly valued multi -billion dollar company,
and not be planning on going public for many more years. And so in that context, it can be, it's quite conceivable that somebody could resell their stock after, let's say, a couple years.
Slava (27:35.609)
And you mentioned the hot companies, the Anthropix, OpenAI, Cerebris, Grox, et cetera. They might not be the ones that are going to IPO tomorrow, right? They're just kind of hot. Do you have a sense of based on the action, what the IPO roadmap looks like? I'm not saying that you can predict it, but obviously people were getting excited about Reddit as more action was going there and then Reddit IPO.
Etc, etc. It feels like maybe Databricks is one of those, but you're the expert. So what feels like the roadmap for IPOs in the next 12 months?
Sim Desai (28:12.526)
So, you know, there's a number of companies that have mentioned intentions to go public. I think that, you know, getting back to this conversation about rates and whatnot, you know, right now, it's really about the public market and its sort of appetite for IPOs of these startups. The public market is looking for profitability. They are not, the public market has limited appetite for
smaller companies that don't generate profits, but you know, I think that as rates come down we should see a significant uptake in IPOs and there's a number of companies that have mentioned an intention to go public or either rumored to be going public in the next year to two years or have actually announced plans to go public in the coming year to two years.
That's where you'll obviously see a lot of attention in our market.
Slava (29:14.745)
Can you name a few of those?
Sim Desai (29:17.262)
Yeah, so some examples of companies that have announced, we talked about Cerebris before. They've mentioned publicly an interest in going public. Klarna, Neo4j, a couple companies in Europe. Circle, another company that's in the blockchain space. Service Titan, which is a SaaS company that were SaaS.
quasi SaaS marketplace, services marketplace type business. So maybe not quite SaaS and some others. So those are some names that have kind of openly announced some of the names that are kind of rumored to be going public. Cohesity, another name in the crypto blockchain space, Data Miner, Liquid Death, which is actually a drink company and then Huntress. So these are just some examples of names that
people are more actively pursuing in our market because of expectations around an IPO.
Slava (30:21.049)
And are all of these companies that you just mentioned, these A10 companies, do you have sellers as well?
Sim Desai (30:28.942)
Generally speaking, there are, I can't say for sure on every single one of those names, but by and large, there are both sides of the market on the platform for these names. So these companies are trading better. What happens when there's a lot of interest in a company is the price gets bid up. And so that attracts sellers. So hot companies definitely are gonna have sellers because they're interested by,
the stronger market price.
Slava (31:00.537)
Amazing. I love all the details on the specific companies. Obviously you like live and breathe this stuff. So right now today you mentioned I would have to go pick my company. So Cohesity, Cerebris, et cetera. Do you have a vision or any expectation to try to call it a basket or an index of pre -IPO companies that I can maybe give you a hundred grand and you just give me a basket so I could get diversification?
Sim Desai (31:24.27)
Yeah, so we actually have something very exciting coming up on that front. This is kind of the first sort of public mention of this. So, you know, a little exclusive for you. We are about to launch the first directly derived private market index. So we have, we're creating an index of 50 securities called the Hiive 50. These are the 50 most actively traded
unicorns in the private market and we're going to create it's an equal weight index so basically what we're going to do is we're going to take the top 50 companies of most 50 most liquid companies weight them equally and then set an index value and have have that watch that index value appreciate over time or change over time that we you know we're calling it the first directly derived index because it's
The index values the values the input values in the index come directly from trading the activity on our platform So no other inputs no public market inputs no algorithms beyond simply taking You know an average of of the of the 50 most liquid securities on the platform So that's the first step and then that's launching in about two weeks from now or two weeks from the date of this recording But that is the first step in
in getting towards that future stage of what you're talking about, which is diversified funds. We do believe that in the long run, there will be opportunities for investors to get diversified funds, and it's something that we'll probably will work on in the next couple of years. I think that the trend, especially for smaller individual investors, is gonna be towards getting access to this asset class through funds.
whether that's a private, purely a private fund created by Hiive or other providers, or it's some other way of accessing through the public market, right? Some closed -ended listed fund that holds private stock. I think that the trend is gonna be towards smaller investors accessing the private market that way, because the companies are not keen on having sort of thousands of individual investors directly holding stock.
Slava (33:47.353)
Amazing. So I love getting a scoop, an exclusive scoop, nevertheless. So the Hiive 50, just to clarify, is an index where it's equally weighted. It's not something I'm able to invest into, but it's showing me how the Hiive 50 are performing week by week, month by month. Is that right?
Sim Desai (34:03.726)
That's right, so it's gonna be a barometer of the market. It's meant to be a very high quality barometer of the market. It's gonna tell you how the market as a whole is moving from day to day. We're actually, I think it updates hourly based on live trading data. So it's gonna tell you where the market's going and then it's gonna give you opportunities, for example, then to start comparing the performance of an individual stock with the performance of the market as a whole.
start thinking about things like market timing and so on, how well has the market done in the last two years? Is it now a good time to sell because the market's up or is it not a good time to sell because the market's down? These types of things are going to, the Hiive 50s going to help to guide these types of decisions.
Slava (34:55.033)
you're creating like your own S &P 500, right? So you're gonna have to eventually trade in new stocks are gonna come in and out and just that's gonna promote them.
Sim Desai (35:04.814)
Yeah, so yeah, it'll be interesting to see the phenomenon. You know, like I say that one thing I like to say to naysayers around the private market is that liquidity begets liquidity, which means that when things are liquid, that attracts even more liquidity. And I think that, you know, the 50 top stocks in the market are gonna be the 50 most liquid stocks. Investors like things that are liquid. And so I think that
You're probably going to see a phenomenon of the rich getting richer so to speak in the sense that you'll probably see investors flock to these 50 top securities.
Slava (35:47.545)
Super interesting. All right, changing gears here. A lot of us wanna be a smartest Sim, and we wanna know what you're reading, what you're watching, what you're listening to. So what is it that you can share that makes you you? What do you like to do on a daily, weekly, monthly basis that you're reading, watching, or listening to?
Sim Desai (36:03.566)
Yeah, look, honestly, I don't read too many books these days, but I will say, you know, I wish I had time for more reading, but I will say that, you know, investors who want to be in the know and be thinking about like having their own thesis for private market investing, especially, should be following some of the top media sources for news on the private market. So for example,
The information is a great source of news around startups. TechCrunch, the New York Times has and the Wall Street Journal both have pretty active tech reporting. If you want to get into tech reporting, be on top of the latest expected IPOs, rumored IPOs, all that kind of stuff, I highly recommend checking out TechCrunch .com.
those types of media sources to be super informed and then you can go and action those insights on a place like Hiive.
Slava (37:06.137)
I love it. And the last question, which we always ask is what's one prediction of one investment that you would be looking at today that three years from now you think would be doing well, the more specific it could be, the better. And we prefer alternative assets, but it could be a public market investment. So we'd love to hear what you think.
Sim Desai (37:27.054)
Yeah, I mean, look, again, like I said, I'm pretty agnostic around investing, but I will say that if you look at the companies that it seems like the market is anticipating rising over the next year, if you look at our platform, there'd be names like OpenAI, Databricks, Cerebris, SpaceX, Kraken, Ripple, XAI.
ThoughtSpot, Anthropic, I mean these are the names that you know investors are flocking to right now. So if I was going to say like you know I want to try to find an investment that is going to do well in the coming years, I'd probably be looking at those types of names and really look at the most actively traded stocks on a platform like Hiive and those are the ones where you can imagine other investors are looking for them and help to guide the way.
Slava (38:24.121)
Love it. We asked for one, you gave us six. More data to work with. All right, Sam, it's been a great conversation. We covered a lot from the market crash of 2008. You working for 14 years at one place and then decided to become an entrepreneur. You say you're really conservative, but you dabble across a bunch of different assets. You're talking about how AI is driving a lot of the inflation into the prices right now. There's been a little bit of a SaaS apocalypse.
Sim Desai (38:26.51)
Yeah.
Slava (38:52.057)
which you were the first person to tell me that one, I like that. Hiive's been around now and growing really rapidly. For any company that has over $400 or $500 million of valuation, you do need to be accredited and invest over $25 ,000. But if you're a DecaCorn, over 70 % of you have already been using Hiive, which is incredible. $100 million a month in transaction volumes, you're gonna probably cross a billion this year, which is huge.
You told us some of the big names that people are looking at, whether it's the Anthropics, the OpenAI, the Cerebris, the Grox, the Ripples, the Kraken, et cetera. And the IPO is there's a huge roadmap. So people will just have to listen to hear all those names. We even got a scoop with the Hiive 50, the equal weighted index. I'm super excited about it. Liquidity begets liquidity, which is a great quote and gave us lots of information, lots of predictions for the future. Thank you, Sim.
Sim Desai (39:40.27)
Absolutely. Thanks for having me.
