02:07:10 · Micky Malka, John Coogan
[02:07:10] S8: From that moment. And you gotta be a special leader and a special team to go through that turf and come back out of it. And now they're hitting their cylinders, but they got their story right. So you can see it in the Brian Armstrongs, in the Nikolay Storonsky, in the Vlad Tenevs, in the David Vales. They have that now. They went through that, and they're on the other side, and they're all between 38 and 40 to one. So they got the best decade of their life coming coming their way. [02:07:40] S1: Yeah. What does that mean for competition at the early stage? It feels like it's it was really it was in in in retrospect it seems like a no brainer to back disruptive technologies in this huge market finance. But now you have if you're starting a company that's gonna carve out a little slice of, oh, Robinhood's not touching this yet or Coinbase isn't touching this yet. It's like, well, those companies are incredibly well capitalized and they're run by founders who are not about to retire anytime soon. Seems kind of dangerous. So where are you seeing pockets of opportunity in the early stage? What are you seeing in the next generation of founders that might actually go and be able to carve out enough of a slice to grow into a generational company?
02:07:40 · John Coogan, Micky Malka, Jordi Hays
[02:07:40] S1: Yeah. What does that mean for competition at the early stage? It feels like it's it was really it was in in in retrospect it seems like a no brainer to back disruptive technologies in this huge market finance. But now you have if you're starting a company that's gonna carve out a little slice of, oh, Robinhood's not touching this yet or Coinbase isn't touching this yet. It's like, well, those companies are incredibly well capitalized and they're run by founders who are not about to retire anytime soon. Seems kind of dangerous. So where are you seeing pockets of opportunity in the early stage? What are you seeing in the next generation of founders that might actually go and be able to carve out enough of a slice to grow into a generational company? [02:08:23] S8: Yeah. I think what's coming for or the I'm more excited for what's coming this next decade than the last decade, if you ask me. The last decade was just a setup for this decade. And there will be a bunch of new teams and companies. And we have been spending time with the young generation, like kids who are between founders who are between 19 and 25 [02:08:44] S1: Yeah. [02:08:44] S8: And or 19 and 27, call it. Their brains are just faster. Their ways of thinking about how to build products is just different. They are they they spend the best years the the year of COVID learning [02:08:59] S0: Mhmm.
02:08:59 · Jordi Hays, Micky Malka
[02:08:59] S0: Mhmm. [02:09:00] S8: And learning how to think really fast. And I've been blown away on how quick they are understanding and how quick they are to build. So we have these thesis that we've we've been we've been we wrote. It took us almost a year to write, which we call it token factories. Mhmm. And it's this world where forget about crypto rails or or fintech or AI. All of these things are blending. If before it was fintech here and AI and crypto here, and we said that they blended, now we have financial services with crypto rails with AIs. And the thing between all of them is that they're all tokens. Everything is a token. Mhmm. So we we call it the token factory token revolution era. And tokenizing information, tokenizing money, and tokenizing power. And how those three things combine, it's where we're seeing some of the best entrepreneurs working. So that's what got us really excited. So we found a bunch of small young teams who are building what we call now token factories, companies that are building either access tokens that give you abilities to connect anywhere they want in the world to do anything. There's expert tokens. These are companies that are generating knowledge or expert information that is solely unique, that is gonna change the way you manage wealth management, wealth advisory, the way you manage insurance product, insurance agents. And then you have what we call asset tokens. Mhmm. And stablecoins is the first of the asset tokens outside of Bitcoin. It's the first of the of the true asset tokens.
02:10:37 · John Coogan, Micky Malka, Casey Neistat
[02:10:37] S1: Talk to me about real estate. I feel like that's the that was something in the at the peak of the crypto boom 2022. We were starting to hear about mortgages on chain, physical assets on chain. We're now starting to see stocks get on chain and and obviously US dollars which are much more tangible than artworks for example. But it feels like most of this generation's entrepreneurs probably learned a hard lesson during the global financial crisis of like the risks of over financialization in the real estate markets. But maybe like how do you see things developing or or or real estate assets playing out generally over the next decade? [02:11:19] S8: So I I I think you you John, you said something that was really important. If you look this wall behind me Yeah. Artists always tell you where the future is going before we get there. [02:11:29] S6: Sure.
02:11:29 · Casey Neistat, Micky Malka, John Coogan
[02:11:29] S6: Sure. [02:11:30] S8: And NFTs was a and it wasn't about just about the beauty of the art and the tokenization and the provenance and the transferability and the democratic. It was the first asset that was truly put on chain. That you trusted, that you knew there was only one of each, that you knew who had it, and you knew when it was minted, And you could finance, you can lend against it, you can pledge it, you can do whatever. So guess what? Artists did their job. They showed us where the world was going. So to me, I'm very grateful because that's how we learn what was going on. And then we found companies like Figure, who's tokenized most of the mortgages that you got HELOCs right now. They're the biggest HELOC tokenizer in America. Then you had the Circle and the Tethers tokenizing dollars, and there's, like, 10 more coming behind them. Yeah. Then now you have Robinhood tokenizing stocks. So I think the problem with mortgages is that they don't move that much. Out of all the financial assets, they probably transfer themselves 10 times in a in your lifetime, maybe five. Maybe you buy a home, you have it for so it's not the lowest hanging fruit need of a tokenized asset, even though it's a great asset to tokenize. Mhmm. But I think we're gonna get there because right now, the SEC and the all the regulators have put the real rules in place to seek tokenization. And the best organizations, you're not gonna see. You're not gonna realize their tokens. [02:12:55] S1: Mhmm. Yeah.
02:12:55 · John Coogan, Micky Malka, Jordi Hays, Alex Hawkinson
[02:12:55] S1: Mhmm. Yeah. [02:12:56] S8: But suddenly, you're gonna be able to click make two clicks and get a mortgage against us. Mhmm. And you're gonna be able to do one more click and swap to another mortgage issuer and not miss a beep on your payments [02:13:07] S1: Mhmm. [02:13:08] S8: Or or in your servicing. Those that's what the consumer is going to see. That's what the consumer is gonna see with Robinhood, tokenized stocks. You don't you're gonna have the same UX experience and just trade stocks anywhere in the world, not knowing that they're tokenized. And that's that's where we get super excited. Because we're just at the beginning of that ecosystem, which is probably like growing up again in the nineteen seventies when you're about to electronic create electronic payment transfers. [02:13:39] S0: How how have you thought about the investability of stablecoins as a category when it feels like a feature for so many of the companies that you've already backed? I know you I know you guys did Privy, which recently sold to Stripe. But Yes. [02:13:55] S1: That bet that bet Bridge. Yeah. He's in both. [02:13:58] S0: What what was the other one? Bridge. Bridge. Oh, there you [02:14:00] S2: go. Oh, yeah. [02:14:02] S1: I love it.