FULL TRANSCRIPT
Eric (00:00)
In this episode of Smart Humans, we talk with Slava Rubin. That's right. Upon popular request, we're turning the microphone around and making the interviewer answer the interview questions, Slava founded Indiegogo, the original crowdfunding company. He's a general partner at Humbition, a seed stage venture fund, and he's a founder here at Vincent. He's also the regular host of this podcast,
We'll talk about Slava's inspiration to get involved with alternative assets, what drives his startup investing and founding, how he stays informed, how he stays productive and fit, and his views on today's markets. It's a high energy conversation with Slava, so stick around.
Eric (01:06)
Welcome to another episode of Smart Humans. I'm guest host today, Eric Cantor, and my guest here is Slava Rubin. Welcome, Slava.
Slava (01:17)
Well, thanks for having me. Excited to be on the show.
Eric (01:20)
Turn on the mic around and I've been looking forward to this for a while. So let's start with alternative investments. This is an alt investing podcast. How did you get into alternative investments?
Slava (01:30)
Yeah, so it actually all started when I was a kid. I opened up a pack of 89 hoops, which is a basketball card box. And I opened up a rookie card for David Robinson from the San Antonio Spurs. That actually was the most valuable card in that entire set. And it was one the first packs I ever bought in my entire life. So I think I bought it for about a dollar and right away got this like $30 card immediately. And I was absolutely hooked.
You know, I used to look at the paper and see these stock prices when I was younger and wish that I can invest in these different companies, but I was too young. So for me, being able to buy and sell trading cards was my way of getting into alternative investments. And then from there, you know, I guess it's a long story, but I become an entrepreneur, invest in different things and really get excited by all these alternative assets.
Eric (02:22)
So David Robinson got you into alts. I'll try not to be too upset about that because if I remember David Robinson beat my Knicks when I was a kid in a pretty rough final series, but we go on. So private markets, alternative assets, what excites you about the aspect of not being public? Why are you bullish on these asset classes in particular?
Slava (02:46)
I mean, public markets have a lot of value to them. Being able to invest in the New York Stock Exchange or the NASDAQ, obviously there's liquidity, massive volume. There's a lot of transparency. There's some incredible companies there. Also some more volatile companies. I think there's a lot of great value to investing into public markets, but they're also massively efficient. And what I mean by that is there's so much money chasing after the returns, huge hedge funds, people with tons of money. This is what they do for a day job.
it's very difficult to find any alpha or finding differentiation of something you might know that they don't. And I find in the private markets across these alternative assets, it's a little bit more opaque, less information, less money chasing after all these opportunities. And yes, you might lose your money, but I think there's more opportunity to have upside. So it's a little bit more exciting to be able to use the knowledge you have, the people you know, to try to invest into these things.
Eric (03:38)
Got it. Let's get personal. How do you do that for yourself? How does your personal asset allocation reflect, know, privates and publics and all that stuff?
Slava (03:47)
As much as I love alternative investments, I don't think people should model after my approach. I am heavy into alternative assets. I skew very high percentage-wise into the portfolio into alternatives. If you include, for example, my personal equity into my various startups, it's really a majority alternative assets, which for most people would be shocking. The numbers are probably...
way too high for any financial planner to endorse. But yeah, I'm a fan of all the various asset classes. That said, I'm not as good personally of being a yield investor, specifically private credit or real estate. While there's a lot of value there, I really prefer more the higher alpha, multiplying the potential returns. You put in 1X, you potentially lose 1X, or if you get gains, it could potentially be a 10X, 50X, or 100X.
So I really skew with my private investments into private companies, early stage venture. I also like crypto and I like collectibles. Art is something I appreciate, but not really something I'm able to be such a good investor into.
Eric (05:00)
I mean, I guess as the spokesman for alternative assets, you would probably want to be pretty nicely allocated into alternative assets. Can give us a little more breakdown on the math on the big asset classes in your own investing there in terms of crypto, pre-IPO, venture? I think you mentioned collectibles. mean, are those 5 % of your net worth 50?
Slava (05:20)
Yeah. In aggregate, they are easily over 50%. They're probably closer to, I don't know, two thirds of my net worth. And a lot of that is going to be in private company investments as well as my fund. So these days I'm running a venture fund called Humbition where we invest into early stage companies.
So between the fund and my early stage investments, as well as my own companies, that is definitely a majority of it is in that equity. I'm definitely investing into crypto. love BTC specifically, but also the L1s. I'm a fan of trying to diversify into the L1s. So the Ethereum, the Solanas, et cetera.
And it's good to be diversified there because I think they keep on evolving, but the idea of needing more compute will continue to evolve. And yeah, I do have some nice chunky collectibles investments as well. But yeah, I would say overall I'm over committed into ALTS. But as you say, as a spokesperson for ALTS, probably am dogfooding quite well.
Eric (06:33)
What's your favorite collectible that you
Slava (06:35)
So when I was a kid, I used to think that the contemporary stuff was garbage. And this is going back to the eighties and nineties because there was too much volume of it. So I used to like trade, here's a nick for you. I used to trade Larry Johnson, rookie cards in bulk to try to make money on the spread. And then the profits that I would make, I would invest into like an Oscar Robertson rookie card or a Mickey Mantle rookie card, things like that.
So even back then, I was trying to keep my money for the old school stuff, for the long-term investments, the buy and hold. I like to hold in decades as opposed to days or weeks. But yeah, the Larry Johnson's, was definitely not decades. I was trying to just trade arbitrage and some knowledge there.
Eric (07:22)
You got any mantles still? That's a good one.
Slava (07:25)
I do, do. None of the incredible mantles, but yeah, definitely a fan.
Eric (07:33)
put a pin in that I want to come back to your startup investing and all that later but let's jump into just macro where do you see the economy the market the labor market we're about to have an election what's your kind of Slava Rubin analysis of today's market
Slava (07:50)
I think the market is doing quite well. The Fed has done a surprisingly good job of getting us to a soft landing, or some people are using the phrase no landing. I think jobs are holding up while inflation has come down significantly. So it's almost like Goldilocks. I do think there's turbulence because of the election, but that's very normal every four years.
Personally, I think that 25 could be a good year from an economy perspective. I think a lot of that has been pulled forward in the stock market. So 24 returns have been massive, obviously led by a lot of the bigger cap names. Will the actual stock returns in public markets for 25 be as strong? I'm not as bullish on that, but I think the economy will be strong. So long-term, I think it's going to be a very constructive investment environment.
And I do think IPOs have the potential to open up in 25. Net, net, I'm optimistic.
Eric (08:52)
How do you reconcile the stock market where it is today with consumer sentiment?
Slava (08:56)
You know, the interest rates are coming down, starting to come down recently. Really, there was already that.
there was the signal that that was gonna happen in late 23 in December and already we're starting to see that pull forward. The prediction is that we'll see another 200 basis points of drop on the Fed funds rate in 25. So I think a lot of that again is getting pulled forward. You're also seeing AI proliferate into the mega cap names where sales are going up, but more importantly, potentially costs are coming down on some expense side.
So again, I think we're seeing some huge returns in the public markets, but maybe not everybody day to day is seeing this as part of buying milk or bread with their inflation prices. So not all consumers are as happy as the stock market is showing, but I think in general, it's pretty good. Jobs are pretty tight, like I mentioned, and inflation is coming down. So I don't think sentiment is that bad. And I think it's pretty decent right now.
Eric (09:54)
much your time do you spend thinking about this macro level stuff the economy the market where things are going versus just doing the day-to-day work
Slava (10:02)
I keep track of the macro for the sake of being able to run the podcast and have good conversations and yeah, yeah, you might've heard of it. So, but yeah, I don't trade. So there's no macro event unless it's a black swan type thing. There's no macro event that I'm just trading week by week against. I'm really more buy and hold, like I mentioned, for a decade at a time.
And, but it is very important to know what's going on. And in case there is black swans or things that you need to make a move on, i.e. when COVID first started, et cetera, it's important to keep an eye on all that. And it also is just helps to be informed.
Eric (10:43)
sense. So what do you do every day then? Let's talk about you.
Slava (10:47)
I mean, my day job is I run a fund, which is Humbition, and I'm exec chairman with some businesses, specifically, obviously Vincent here, where we do these smart humans podcasts, where we're getting access to all the people out there to alternative investments and getting them educated with what's available. So, you know, that's my main thing was working with startups and investing into startups.
Eric (11:14)
Can you talk a little more about the fund? I mean, just terms of fund size, how many funds are you on, the geographic, sector focus, thesis, et cetera?
Slava (11:25)
Yeah, so it's called HUMBITION, which stands for Humble and Ambition put together. So far we have one fund and it was a $28 million fund. We're looking to close our second soon, which we're excited about, but we focus on deep tech. So hardcore technology companies, robotics, AI, web three. We also love health tech. My partner is Cyrus Misumi who builds ZockDock. So we have great access there as well.
We invest very early stage, pre-seed and seed. We love being there right at inception or at a very young stage for the company. And we try to mentor and help as much as possible to our entrepreneurs. You know, our belief is that any one entrepreneur has an opportunity to change the world. So, you know, we try to stack the odds and help as many entrepreneurs as possible. and I actually started angel investing in parallel, but separately about 13 years ago. And we've had some really great results with that early vintage with over 15X.
So we've really been leaning into that as a focus.
Eric (12:25)
And when you're looking at these startups, there's lots of companies, There's, mean, Deep Tech, AI, there's a million companies. So like, what are you singularly looking for if you're investing at a stage where there's really not gonna be a lot of product revenue? What do you look for in these companies you invest in?
Slava (12:41)
I mean, usually when we get involved, there's no product. There's no revenue. Sometimes there could be some early product and maybe there's early revenue, but usually neither exists at all. It's more just a twinkle in their eye. And for us, it's really three things, which is one team. We're all about the jockeys, you know, finding the right entrepreneurs to back. Number two, dream. You know, are you going after a big opportunity and do you have an idea of what the right better mousetrap or the better product is to go after that market?
And number three is access, which is why is it that we're seeing this deal? Why is it that we're getting this opportunity? Does it feel like we're the 15th organization looking at it and just getting to turn it down again or say yes, or do we have some unique access to this opportunity that makes it differentiated? So again, this goes back to that point about the public markets. It's really hard to have differentiated access to a public market investment. mean, sometimes I would even call it insider access.
But in a private investment, you wanna have some of that insider access where you feel like you have proprietary information that no one else knows that you can move on before others. that's kind of, the recipe is those three things that we're looking for.
Eric (13:52)
Tell me about the Slavurubin production function. A lot of people want to emulate some of the things you've accomplished. What does your day look like? Tell me when you wake up, how do you energize, do you eat any food? What's your routine if you have one?
Slava (14:07)
Let's see my routine. I wake up usually between six and seven, not because I wish I was waking up then, but my body's been trained to wake up then because my kids, I have a nine, six and two year old. I do not eat until later in the day. I'm an intermittent faster. This is not something that's been trendy for me more recently. I've actually been doing it for well over 20 years.
When I was younger, I just figured out that food does not jive with me and my brain being optimized. So I try to keep, keep all the brain cells, you know, activated as much as possible until later a day. I usually eat between like three and eight. you know, I just try to process as much information as possible, whether it's going through emails, talking to lots of people in person, obviously reading, what's happening on.
in the world through Google, through Twitter, X, et cetera, through my various news outlets, channels, newsletters. And I do actually like to also listen to, on CNBC there's a show called the Fast Money Show. There's one later in the day at five, but there's one Fast Money halftime show. I like the halftime show a little bit better. I don't listen to it real time typically. I'm usually just.
listening to a recording of it. And it's a great way to just very quickly get a synopsis of what's going on in the world through a lens of the market. And also just these various folks giving their opinions about that. But yeah, I like to, you know, be home for dinner if possible, and try to be there with my kids. But otherwise, just getting to talk with LPs, talk with entrepreneurs, and just, you know,
learning a lot and getting a lot of information. I'm just always curious and trying to find new amazing things.
Eric (16:02)
So what drives you? a lot of people want to know, a lot of people are asking, what drove you to start Indiegogo and to create this private market company investing fund, to start Vincent? You've got other companies too. What is it that makes you get up and do this?
Slava (16:19)
I love entrepreneurs. I do think there's a continuous thread through most of the things I've been doing, which is supporting, empowering, or working with entrepreneurs. Indiegogo did that, helping to pass the Jobs Act did that, Angel Investing did that, know, Humbition does that. And then when I get to work with other amazing operators, whether it's with Hedera or Nillion or Vincent,
It's awesome to be able to use a little bit of my gray hairs or white hairs, as they say, a little bit of my experience to leverage that with incredible teams. I love zero to one. I love knowing that there used to be air and then reality was changed. know, too many people walk around in my opinion, around the world thinking that everything's taken for granted. The fact that the lawnmower exists, the fact that the iPhone exists, the fact that the grass is the way it is.
You know, these things all happen because somebody decided to change that and have an impact. So I think today is a great opportunity to do that for tomorrow. So I love finding those zero to one opportunities and working with other passionate people that want to navigate that. So that's what is the catalyst for me. And it has to be done with people that you want to work with. It has to be done on problems that you want to solve. so, you know, there's problems out there that others solve that, you know, is not for me and vice versa.
So it's really about being passionate, excited about the dent in the world that you're trying to make and knowing that it's gonna take a long time to accomplish that as opposed to just the idea of flipping a company or an investment in two years and trying to make a few million bucks, which is a good idea and totally worthy if that's what somebody's interested in, but it's not what drives me.
Eric (17:58)
That was a great answer, appreciate that. Just double click on one thing you said, just because I think our audience would find it interesting. You mentioned the Jobs Act. Can you just talk a little more about what that is, why it's important, is it important, did it work, what was your role in it, and just kind of tell the story of the Jobs Act in a brief.
Slava (18:15)
Yeah, so we created Indiegogo actually in 2008, originally came up with the idea in 2006. We actually right away, Indiegogo is a crowdfunding platform. We helped to create the crowdfunding industry and specifically donations and reward based crowdfunding. The idea of equity crowdfunding, which exists today, did not exist back then. And people would always ask, hey, I'd love to invest into these Indiegogo companies, into these Indiegogo campaigns. So finally in 2011, there was actually a campaign on Indiegogo to raise money to petition Congress to be able to pass equity crowdfunding.
which is quite a meta concept. And that was funded, there was a petition and in 2012, the Jobs Act was signed. Obviously it wasn't just because of the Indiegogo campaign, but there was momentum to try to stimulate more entrepreneurship and increase money flows after the recession of 2008, which really contracted a risk appetite and willingness to share investment capital across different asset classes. So the Jobs Act was signed, it was meant to...
do a few things, including create more of a IPO ramp between Reg A plus and being able to not have to disclose all your information for IPOs, cetera. But also one of the things was it passed equity crowdfunding, which allowed for small investments from under credit investors to go into these smaller companies. And it was a $1 million cap back then it's been expanded to a $5 million cap. There's definitely been some exciting momentum that's happened there.
to be able to have the retail investor, the non-accredited, to be able to invest in these opportunities. It's still been very small compared to the massive opportunities of the New York Stock Exchange, NASDAQ, et cetera. But I do think there's momentum there and I'm excited as to where it's headed. I do think investing should be massively democratized. It shouldn't just be for the rich. You shouldn't have to be accredited. You don't need a driver's license to go to Vegas and gamble. You shouldn't have to, you know,
have to pass some certain thresholds to be able to invest in the companies you want to. So I think that there's still a lot of work to be done to improve it and to get more scale. But if you close your eyes, take a nap for 20 years, I think it'll be very, very exciting as to where retail investing is at in 2045.
Eric (20:28)
You mentioned fast money What else if I want to learn and know what you know and learn what you learn? What else should I be reading listening to? watching
Slava (20:38)
I'm horrible at reading. I mean, I'm capable of reading. I like newsletters and then also just reading Twitter X just for a of information and trying to triangulate all that information. But actual books, would say that, I haven't read that many more recently. One that I would promote that I suggest is called Outlive, which kind of speaks to how to have a better...
life, a healthier life for longer, as opposed to just age, how to age well. It's from an author, Dr. Attia, who's become pretty popular more recently. So I read that recently. I suggest that for anybody that wants to try to live better. But outside of that, it's just triangulating a lot of information and really just trying to stay connected to a lot of awesome people. So whether it's in person or virtually,
staying connected, having chats to just really smart, curious people and trying to learn from them. And often you'll learn more by listening than by talking, which is why I love the podcast. get to learn so much from all the guests and trying just to, one of my favorite things is being introduced to somebody they recommend that I should be introduced to. So that's a way to expand my circles and to, you know, dive into newer territory and to learn new things, which is always where
I guess the new things happen for me.
Eric (22:02)
Thanks. So looking ahead, let's talk about investments. I'm gonna ask you to give me two investments. Let's start with a public company. Investment you believe that in, I don't know, two or three years will be one that you're happy you made today.
Slava (22:16)
So I don't typically think in two to three years. That's not really my mental model. I really more think in, like I said, decade plus. That said, I think it's all a sequence. You know, go to three years first and then it becomes a decade. So directionally, it's still the same response, but it's hard to time the market sometimes knowing what's going to happen as it relates to the macro or any idiosyncratic things related to the company.
So I'll give you two ideas that probably both are not the most regularly thought of. So obviously it's easy to pick, let's call it one of the mega cap names, whether it's Microsoft, Amazon, et cetera. But I'll give the listeners two maybe that they don't think of as often. So one would be CrowdStrike. So CrowdStrike, you know, right now is,
closer to like a $75 billion market cap company. I've been investing in them for a little while. I'm underwriting it for being a potential trillion dollar opportunity. I think from a secular perspective, cybersecurity is a massive opportunity. CrowdStrike is one of the bigger names in that market. I do think that as AI only becomes better, cybersecurity and the potential of our hacks will only become a bigger issue.
and more and more money will need to go against defending our assets. So I do think that the market will continue to grow. And I do think there's an opportunity for there to be a trillion dollar player there alongside the other mega cap names. So I was saying that public markets, it's crowd striped for me. And they were that organization that just a few months ago had a significant hiccup where there was that supposed hack, but then it was really just bad deployment, et cetera, et cetera.
I actually think that was a massive opportunity to buy at a discount. It actually went down to high 100s, low 200s, which clearly today pricing more around 300 shows as a significant opportunity. So I would say a few years from now, I'm still quite bullish as to where that company's headed. Another one that probably most have not even heard of, which actually I'm involved with is a company called Watsco, which is an HVAC
distribution companies, so heating, ventilation, and air conditioning. You can really think about it as air conditioners. They distribute and their customer is the service provider, the person who goes out and helps to put in the air conditioner to your home or fix it. So this is a massive opportunity. And as people continue to want to electrify and lower their carbon footprint, many don't know that their HVAC systems are actually eating up a lot of their carbon footprint is right there in their home.
And so they're doing a great job. Again, I'm connected for several years with the board, but I think again, three years from now, I'm still quite bullish as to where that company's headed.
Eric (25:14)
Great. Big market for HVAC, that's for sure. And growing. What about on the private side? Are there private investments you think are interesting? Keeping in mind that access isn't always as easy as going out and buying a public ticker.
Slava (25:27)
Yeah, I think some of my private investment suggestions are going to be a little bit more boring. So I'm a huge fan of SpaceX as an investment opportunity. think Elon, whatever you think of him as an individual is an incredible, incredible entrepreneur. Space is literally the next frontier and a lot of Greenfield in terms of market opportunity. SpaceX is already doing billions of revenue and there's just so many opportunities to monetize.
so I'm a huge fan of that company. You know, I've actually been personally invested for a while. think, you know, these days it's worth around $200 billion. I think again, you know, I think that's on a pretty aggressive path towards a trillion dollar opportunity. So I'm very bullish if people can find SpaceX shares. I'm also a fan of Bitcoin. I think that crypto in general is, you know, 98 % schlock, and you need to avoid the schlock.
But in the 90s, that was true for most websites and web companies as well, but there was Amazon and other opportunities there. So I think BTC will be that 1%. It'll be able to survive and try to become the digital gold or at least the digital gold market cap. So I'm bullish for two to three years out what Bitcoin could be priced at. I also think just getting a diversified basket of L1s could be smart as well.
Ethereum, Solana, et cetera.
Eric (26:56)
Awesome. So just tapping into your podcast experience here for a second. Last question I want to ask you is if I was a better podcast guest host, what question should I have asked that I didn't ask you?
Slava (27:08)
I mean, I think your questions were good. The only thing you could have done is instead of staying on script, you could just like dig in a little bit more into the actual responses and try to, you know, scratch the itch.
Eric (27:20)
Awesome. This has been an amazing, energizing conversation with Slava Rubin. We talked about your origins as a David Robinson collector. No offense taken. Your confidence in today's macro. The way that you invest in startups looking for jockeys and looking for differentiated access.
The content sources you like including fast money on CNBC and just having chats with smart people your public investment recommendations Crowd strike a little edgy high-tech sexy Watts go old line and boring good Recos and then of course SpaceX on the leading us into the next frontier of space and The 98 % of crypto being schlock, but the og still being something you like with Bitcoin
And that is a wrap. We had a great conversation. Appreciate your time and we'll see you next time on Smart Humans. Thank you, Slava Rubin.
Slava (28:10)
Thank you.
