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Hi, everyone, Welcome to the Bloomberg Business Week Weekend Podcast and a very happy fourth of July. Well just about one week ago, we were live in Southampton, Long Island at the Uncharted Community Summit. It's an annual gathering of over five hundred members of the entrepreneurial community, and over the next two hours we will bring you some of our favorite conversations from that event. We'll hear from voices on artificial intelligence. In fact, I felt like everybody had
a view when it came to AI. We talked capital markets and women's health. Plus we sit down with a shark. First up, though, we caught up with one of the co founders of the event, I've Uncharted and the man whose backyard we were literally broadcasting from. He is Michael Loebe, founder and CEO of lob dot NYC, who started off by telling us why this event is so important.
If you were to take a look at the background, you would see, you know, six hundred people talking to six hundred other people. It's quite the event. And what we really want to do is foster relationships between investors and companies, between companies and companies, and between you know, CEOs looking for talent and talent looking for CEOs. So I think I think a good time is being had by all.
You know, an event like this. You've been doing this for a few years and started during the pandemic, started a lot smaller. How do you and I heard you say, and your partner say this too, Noah, that he is running into people say, yeah, they raised money as a result of being here. They found a co founder here, they found employees here. How do you measure the success of an event such as this in the days, weeks and months following it?
Right? I wish we could because I should have a big on all that.
Yet you don't know it for a long time.
So you know, I got to tell you we do solicit testimonials of exactly the things that you're talking about. We have quite a few of people saying, you know, I met my founder there about two years ago. Uh no, and I get an invitation and it was shrouded in mystery, and it was three women who had us go to an event downtown and they brought us up on stage. Everybody started a collap And what that was is these
were three women never met before. They were all, you know, elite athletes, and they decided there should be a fund supporting elite athletes that they had a different point of view, a different sense of how to compete, and they all got along very very well. And that thesis led to a fifty million dollar fund. So it's that type of thing that you know, really propels us.
Well, talk to us about you know capital, How much is out there for startups?
Wow? You know it's funny things go in cycles. As you know, this is not an up cycle for capital formation. Last numbers I looked at and they're a little bit stale, but you know, down sixty or seventy percent. Certainly the secondary market, if that's any indication at all, does illustrate that, you know, there's a lot of ill liquidity looking to get liquid, not nearly as frothy as it used to be was IPOs, even though that's starting to unlock a
little bit. So no, it's it is hard and the money does gravitate these days to AI, so you need, you know, if you have.
So when there is an idea, when there is a startup, that's where it goes.
It goes there, right. And what folks don't I think, really realize or appreciate is the forces at play in venture and venture funding and venture capital, which is I sometimes call it a beauty contest, and that is because there's one breakout winner in a category and then all the LPs are asking their gps, you know, what is your AI strategy? And if the answer is you know, we think it's a little over sold. We think it's
a little bit you know, frothy. Whereas there's going to be a couple of winners and a lot of losers, weird taking a wait and see attitude. The answer is bye bye, I'm bringing my money to that fund that made that investment, so a lot of pressure for them to jump in. And it's in those situations that you know, not so good deals are made. Right.
So yeah, does it you know, in terms of cycles, does it feel like this AI cycle is different than previous tech hype cycles. And the reason I ask and look, nobody wants to hear or utter the phrase this time is different. But it If you look out at the private markets right now, you've got skyhag evaluations. I think many would argue for open AI right, for anthropic, for perplexity. You have meta platforms coming in and dropping billions of dollars to buy forty nine percent of an AI company
that barely existed. You have founders being poached. We're talking one hundred million dollar signing bonuses. Yeah, force an individual to go to a large company.
Right. So I'm I look at my mailbox every day. I'm looking for one hundred million dollar check hasn't come in yet. Right to me, it feels different. Now, what does it feel like? I've been around for long enough, so I'm something of the elder statement here, statesman here, I've been around long enough that I've seen a few cycles. This feels like the late nineties and the late nineties was the advent of the internet, right, and it feels
this profound now. You know, people can say, well, you know, if we look back two or three years, it was NFT and that was a false positive, and before that it was blockchain, which was sort of a false positive. And before that it was cannabis, and before that it was bitcoin. But this one feels real, and this adds the possibility of disrupting entire industries. I had breakfast, by the way, with a friend. He has a unicorn business
is worth almost two billion dollars. He has two hundred and seventy people, and he said, Michael, by year end, it's one hundred and twenty.
That's Michael Loebe, founder and CEO of Lobe dot NYC, and got to say a very very gracious host. We turned out to his Uncharted Community Summit colleague and co founder, Noah Friedman. He's the CEO of the organization, and he told us why this event is also so special.
The most important thing in the truth of what I charge is all about is what's happening right now, which
is people just mingling and met to each other. What we really care about here and what gets me excited as an entrepreneur is environment when I can kind of go up to anybody, shake their hand and say hello, and trust that they're going to be friendly knight and more important, someone who I can build with so I like to think that's what happened behind me, and I'll get the verdict from you guys and everyone else afterwards. If we did our jobs.
What's being built right now in the startup ecosystem.
Look, everything with the word AI in it is getting a ton of attention. I think there's a lot of big we talked about this show. I think there's a lot of businesses that don't have the word AI in m that are still remarkable companies that are getting a shockingly low amount of attention. And so you have this bar bell happening. I particularly am kind of on both sides of it. Right My find invests in alcohol and consumer device, which is, you know there's some AI, but
that's pretty antithetical. And on the other side, I'm personally investing in trying to start companies in the AI space as well. Most of the people here, I can guarantee you if you ask them what's on your mind or now as a founder, AI is going to be obvious, and it's a natural. It's a natural thing to say, and I think that's top of mind for a lot of founders right now.
When everybody's saying that, I think this is something do we talk about it with Michael or I'm trying to think We've had so many good conversations here this idea that there's just so much coming at us with an AI connection. But ultimately the dust is going to settle. There's going to be some really big winners and losers. How do you, as an investor who's also looking at these opportunities or an entrepreneur trying to start something up, how do you figure out which way to go?
It's a great question. Look, I think that there's an unbelievable power law that's playing out here. I've said this a lot, and I'm going to continue to say it.
I think that despite the fact that there is about to be so much money made in AI, an unbelievable title wave of innovation and opportunity, there's a lot of people who are going to get absolutely smoked, right, And the reason for that is that there's a lot of people who, out of necessity, based on funds that have raised money from LPs that are expecting them deploy, aren't trying to rush into arounds for businesses with basically a deck and an idea at fifty million dollars pre money
valuations or sometimes even higher. Sometimes that will work, often it will not. And so I think that you have an interesting dynamic now where founders have a ton of power if they're willing to build an AI and I think that that plays nicely to the founder. So as an investor, as an entrepreneur, I'm thinking about how I can create leverage out of myself, use AI tools to get more out of Noah, more out of a small team,
and create unbelievable levels of efficiency. But I think, like entrepreneurship as a whole, AI really is going to expose people. It's a aritocracy. If you are good enough to figure out how to use AI, there's an unbelievable opportunity at hand right now.
There's been a lot of talk of AI today, talk about.
Booze, let's do it.
I'm into it. I'm curious about the where you see opportunity right now because we're seeing a real rise in non alcoholic beers, non alcoholic drinks. I mean, it's not weird to go and order a mocktail anymore. It used to be something that like kids did at bar and bought mitzvahs, but like that's actually happening in bars around New York City. What are the other vices and vice type categories that you're investing in, because it seems like there's this really movement away from vice.
So I'll tell you right now.
I have a potentially controversial opinion that the notion of betting against alcohol is a bad idea. I think alcohol, for a long time has proven that is remarkably resilient. This is not the first time and it won't be the last time that we hear headlines indicate that no
one's drinking anymore. It is just not true. If you take the actual trajectory of alcohol consumption and sales over the last fifty years, it basically was a straight line north every single year, where the only thing we knew is that it was going to be higher next year
than it was a previous year. In COVID, it's spiked like crazy every but he started drinking like fish, and everything went to the moon until all the manufacturers made more, the distributors bought more, the retailers ordered work as consumers were buying more, and then lockdown's ended and people said, you know what, I should get healthy, I should try longevity. I should focus on saunas and optimizing my sleep. I think that's a moment in time. I believe in the
longevity space. But we've had a slight dip in all time high which has created this compression in the market where it's creating all these headlines under the indication that people are not drinking more. It's really just a reset. And if you actually look at the sales in twenty twenty four and twenty twenty five, they're higher than they
were in twenty nineteen. So my personal hypothesis, and we're investing accordingly, is that yes, non OUC is real, it's interesting, but who's is and will continue to be a deeply important part of the American and global psyche economy and so many other things. I also think at the same time, nicotine pouches super super interesting, huge opportunity there. We're investing THHC beverages, huge opportunity there. So look, consumers and humans at the most fundamental level, put the market to side.
They need escapism, they need social connectivity, they need connection. And until there's other commercially reasonable and available things like alcohol and nicotine and THHCH that can solve for it, there's gonna be a lot of money to be made in those spaces, all.
Right, but something like non alcoholic beer, I mean substantial growth some reports indicating and you're like four hundred and fifteen percent increase from twenty eighteen to twenty twenty four in retail sales. And mind you, it's coming from maybe a smaller bottom. But having said that, are you not playing in that space?
We haven't yet. I think if I had to guess in my in my funds, I think we'll make a couple a couple bets in the space. I just think I think it behaves distinctly differently than traditional alcohol and vice. I think there is a market for it. My personal bet is that we are probably near the top. I do think any beer is going to continue to grow. I think NA beer is probably the best use case for it. I think NA cocktails are a little bit tougher. NA wine's a little bit tougher. I don't quite get it.
On the nicotine pouches. Yeah, you know, I've heard of some of the sort of direct consumer startups like Lucy's for example.
We're investors.
How do you compete with Zen?
Though?
I mean we're talking Philip Morris International, We're talrying about.
We're talking about billions and billions of dollars. Yeah, Zen is the ten thousand pound grill in the room. They have more money than they know what to do with the reality and this goes into a fundamental thesis I have consumers are inherently promiscuous. I think they're excited to try new things. When you have a market that is and is going to continue to be as big as nicotine pouches are, there just has to be room for more. And so my thesis in bed is that, yes, Philip
Morris has crushed it. Unbelievable acquisition was in and they're doing a great job. By definition, all the other big tobacco players and even I'm willing to bet that a lot of the booze companies as well are going to say, you know what, this is a huge market that behaves similarly to alcoholm Anyways, we need to play there.
Thanks to Uncharted's Noa Friedman and Michael Lobe, coming up on Bloomberg Business Week more of our favorite conversations from the Uncharted Community Summit that was held just recently in Southampton, Long Island. It's an annual event up next as serial entrepreneur involved in the early days of the changing fintech landscape. You know, such things as PayPal and into It. Bill Harris is coming up next. This is Bloomberg.
You're listening to the Bloomberg Business Weekdaily podcast. Catch us live weekday afternoons from two to five pm Eastern. Listen on Apple CarPlay and Android Auto with the Bloomberg Business app, or watch us live on YouTube.
This is a special holiday edition of Bloomberg BusinessWeek, featuring some of our favorite conversations from the Uncharted Community Summit held recently in Southampton, Long Island. And I got to say this. Next guest needs no introduction.
Okay, you promised. We talked to a serial entrepreneur who has a ton of experience in the fintech space. I want to bring in Bill Harris. He's a longtime fintech executive. He's founded or led several personal finance companies, think from companies such as into It, PayPal as well. He was the founding CEO there. He ran TurboTax, he founded personal Capital, you remember just a few years ago that was bought
by Empower. Right, so he knows a thing or two about yeah, how people are using these apps these days, all right, now.
That the event is underway. I'm just curious anybody you've talked to, any interesting conversations that you've had so far?
Well, sure, you know.
The most interesting fella here is, of course Michael Lobe, and I've known him actually for now.
I talked to him just a moment ago. Forty years wow, forty years ago.
We worked together in the magazine industry, which of course is no longer, but.
In a subscription business, right that Time Warner bought.
That's right.
But first we worked together at Time Ink and then he left to go build the subscription business that he sold back to Time Inc.
Kind of fascinating. I just can we just go there for a minute. Media, the changes that we have seen in content production where you get it, I don't know who'd have thought. I mean, I used to do subscriptions, right in terms of magazines and various newspapers. We don't do that anymore. Where do you think it's all going?
Well, it's you know, finance and media are the two industries most profoundly changed by digital technology. Yeah, because they are all just figments of our imagination, and you can create them with no assets, just your mind. And so you know what happened though, is that media. The tsunami of digitization hit media fast, and old media came crumbling down, and new media obviously has just done nothing but the
upward tilt. It has not yet happened, generally speaking, in financials and services, and you still have the same fifty year old, one hundred year old, one hundred and fifty year old firms that dominate, and so that industry is now ripe for digitization.
A lot of folks are working to digitize that industry. You've been working in that for decades at this point. But it's a very lucrative industry. It's also very sticky when it comes to the way people manage their assets. They don't want to move advisors, they don't want to move firms. They I think, especially high net worth individuals, still feel like they want somebody to talk to and that service comes with fees eighty basis points, one hundred
and twenty basis points. Those fees eat into returns. This is something that you've been working on for years. You did it at Personal Capital, Yes, what are you doing now at Evergreen Wealth?
We're doing two things. We're doing wealth management.
Wealth management for people who have let's say investable assets of a million to five and these are people who don't get the kind of white glove service that people
who have ten twenty one hundred million dollars do. And so what they need is somebody who can take the tax and investment principles that the people who have more money utilize because they have tax attorneys and all the rest, and then look for someone who can use technology to make that scalable and in fact precision engineering to make
it even better than traditional wealth managers deliver. If we do that, we can give them better pre tax return and then better after tax return, because that's the thing that everyone forgets.
Can everybody benefit by this?
Yes, absolutely, everyone who has sufficient resources that the tax impact is meaningful. And so a couple of one hundred thousand dollars to a couple of million dollars, yes, you should absolutely be managing your investment portfolio in a tex aware way.
You're the founding CEO of PayPal. We talk a lot about the PayPal mafia. Those folks we've spoken to Read Hoffman, David Sachs. These guys really don't need any introduction. Elon Musk, of course, is among them to what extent are these folks still in your universe right now?
Well, for the most part, we've gone separate ways. Even many of the people within within the so called mafia. I've moved from Silicon Valley to Miami, so I have sort of a new set of people.
That I'm working at.
Them have too somehow, Yes, that's right.
And some of them have moved back to San Francisco too. There maybe Texas some of them as well. Yeah, okay, so on that and sort of on payments. Yes, I thought of you the other day because the crypto firm Kraken Yes, is launching this competitor to to Venmo into the cash app, essentially using the blockchain to transfer money. And I'm wondering how you look at that as somebody who really pioneered technology for sending money over the internet.
Is the blockchain? Is crypto really going to disrupt that?
I think the blockchain is very good for some purposes. I don't have much use for cryptocurrency, because we have plenty of currencies that are very good, but the blockchain can do a heck of a lot, particularly on international money movement, because we're looking at Swift, you know, which takes at least a day, sometimes multiple days to get significant money moved from America to Singapore.
And with the right crypto networks, you can do it like that, that easy, sure, and that fast.
So that sounds like Western Union gets disrupted in a situation like that. That's what it sounds like to me.
Not quite, because Western Union. Western Union is all about the last mile, and Western Union is doing lots of little payments and for most in most of the world, it's actually agents, physical agents who are who are taking the money and giving out the money.
So that's a very different thing.
But if you're doing bank to bank payments or business to business plans.
The big guys, the big guys.
Yeah, So does it happen eventually?
Oh yes, yeah, yeah. There is no reason whatsoever in this day and age it should take multiple days to get money from here to there.
Amen.
But and we were doing twenty five years ago. We were moving money instantly, skittering it around the world at PayPal.
It's not that hard.
So are there going to be big players in it?
I don't know. I don't follow, I don't follow what's happening.
You know, Ripple took a stab at it for a while but I haven't heard anything about that in a while, So I don't.
Know what you know. Just got about thirty seconds here. I mean, AIS have obviously the trend that everybody talks about in terms of its impact. Is there anything else though outside of AI? Or is it really just about artificial and eence which is not a new thing, but it's certainly on a different level too.
Yeah.
So I'll just say quickly, in what I'm doing Evergreen Wealth, we're doing two things. First of all, we're using AI to revolutionize how financial advice can be delivered. But the other important thing we're doing is bringing tax considerations into investment management, because.
It's not what you earn, it's what you keep that counts.
That's former PayPal CEO Bill Harris speaking with us at Michael Loebe's annual Unsharted Summit. Another guest we heard from at the event Allie McCartney. She is Managing director of Private Wealth Management at UBS, and she started off by telling us why she comes to this event.
So UBS and I traffic at the intersection in liquidity events and in individuals, and so what does that mean? That's entrepreneurship and so one of the beautiful things about this event and about our partnership with it is. Michael Lobe opened by saying, this is a celebration of entrepreneurs and entrepreneurialism. Right, and so if you go through all of the things things that are happening in our world today, all of the trends, deglobalization being a big one, right right.
Where does wealth come from in this country? It's intellectual property. It is six million businesses founded last year. It is being at these events and having funders and founders meet, providing very valuable networking opportunities, and for us to be able to be supportive of that community full stop is really the bread and butter of what we do at ubs.
Does it give you new opportunities to bring new money into your firm or is it more like, okay, when I'm allocating my client's assets. Yeah, I'm thinking about these alternatives because I talked about these types of businesses with people at this conference.
So yes, and yes, I would say there are three things it does. It is certainly, you know, a prospecting, right rich environment in terms of there are people here who obviously we know the numbers of the success of startups and franchises of these people are going to be the next unicorns, right, So there's that. The second is it allows me to learn about AI or why the founder of Tesla, you know, founded Tesla and what he's
thinking about now. And then the third thing is it allows me to find new opportunities for myself and my clients to be outside of this environment, both educated and proximant to the new trends that are driving sort of where the puck is and how we'll invest for sure.
You know, it's funny you see the founder of Tesla, because Elon Musk was not actually the founder, was he?
He?
So it was very funny because the first panel was someone who's just been seven months in the White House. Yeah, and so Elon Musk was a topic of conversation there. And then the next man after was the founder of Tesla, who I thought, who very elegantly decided not to answer that question.
You know what's funny too, is and I think about wealth management. You do have, I'm assuming as clients a lot of folks that are founders, and whether they're looking to sell their company and find a deal, or maybe you have other clients who have money they want to put to work. And they want to have a piece of a company. A lot of that is what goes on, right.
Oh, a lot of that is what goes on. So I think like, if you think about the path of a founder of an entrepreneur, right, you have an idea, there's something disruptive, there's some challenge or problem you're trying
to solve in the world. And you know, we were learning today that most people sell fund that by using credit cards, personal assets and their four to one K, right, they make less than one hundred thousand dollars for years and years and years, and they are just so embedded in their company and the mission and the branding that they're not thinking about the tax consequences, whether they can
take advantage of qualified solled business stock. Could the business be stuck in a marriage in court and decided by the state of California or Florida if they don't have a pre nut so all of the So what we do is we say, look, if you are extremely successful, you're going to get to a liquidity point where some lawyer or some general counsel or Anderson Tax is going to say, have you talked about the planning and this? And at that point you can maybe add a couple
percent of value. But if you can find these people as they are stuck in what I call the valley of death, sort of that middle part of building a business, and you can get an hour with them, just to say, there are a couple things we can do from an investment perspective, an entity perspective, and a tax perspective that if you are as successful as you think you are, you can protect yourself and investors and you can make your net much bigger than what it would be otherwise.
As you know, entrepreneurs are not focused on this stuff.
We now no, no, no.
So if they haven't taken advantage of something like the QSBS, yeah, and if they didn't set up the business that way initially can get can they change it to actually get that benefit?
It becomes increasingly difficult as you take and capital, you have more LPs, et cetera. But there are many many ways to do it. And I think most people know
about that ten million dollar headline number. So I've seen many many times that protected Our goal is to try to be in front of entrepreneurs and support them, but to try to get them either to think about which is really challenging or get them to sort of open up themselves to allowing someone to act on their behalf even when they're not there yet.
That's Ali McCartney, Managing Director, Private Wealth Management at EBS.
Still ahead on.
Bloomberg Business Week. More from our visit to Michael Lobe's Unsharted conference in the Hamptons. Up next to check on the health and activity of capital markets with someone who knows a lot about it has a front row seat. He has the vice chair of the New York Stock Exchange. That's next. This is Bloomberg.
This is the Bloomberg Business Week Daily Podcast. Listen live each weekday starting at two pm Eastern on Applecar and Android Auto with the Bloomberg Business App. You can also listen live on Amazon Alexa from our flagship New York station, Just Say Alexa played Bloomberg eleven thirty.
This is a special holiday edition of Bloomberg Business Week, featuring some of our favorite conversations from the Uncharted Community Summit. It was held recently in Michael Lobe's backyard in the Hamptons. At the summit was Michael Harris. He has his finger on the pulse of what is going on when it comes to publicly held companies, old issues and new issues that have come to market, such as IPOs. He's vice chairman and global head of Markets at the New York Stock Exchange.
Last time we spoke with you was at another event equally beautiful, by the way, equally beautiful downtime exactly.
That was.
That was back in early March. A lot has happened. Yeah, since then, we've kind of had a round trip when it comes to equity markets. There were some concerns a few weeks after we spoke about companies pulling their IPOs as a result of what was happening with trade. Those IPOs they ended up happening in May and June. How would you describe the environment right now?
I mean, I think, you know, the round trip that you described is exactly the way to think about it. You know, we've seen a complete one hundred and eighty degree turn in terms of sentiment, in terms of where the market backdrop is, and it's playing out in the IPO market on a couple different factors. On one hand, we're seeing the subscription levels in terms of interest on IPOs are through the roof. So these deals that are coming to the marketplace are multiple times over subscribed interest
from a wide range of investors. The second part of it is when they do come to the market, the actual pricing outcomes are oftentimes very much in the favor of the issuers. And then the third part of it is the performance, which you mentioned just now, the performance on day one, the follow through in the aftermarket, all the way through the offer to today's performance has been absolutely phenomenal. So that really keeps the cycle in terms of investor interest continuing to go. And so what we're
seeing that play out is really in our backlock. So we see a very active summer, we see an active September, and we think it's going to be a very active twenty twenty five right forward.
What does that backlog look like? You say active, I mean how backed up is it and how eager are these that are back ready to go?
Yeah, Well, you know, for the first part, you're seeing, on one hand, a lot of companies that were delaying their IPOs because of some of the tensions that happened in the beginning part of the year. So some of them have taken a step back and they were kind of waiting to see. On one hand, just what happened from a geopolitical standpoint, how things are playing out in terms of just the tensions that we're in the air.
And also they're waiting to see from the investor community what the reception was going to be for some of the more recent crop of IPOs. So we've gotten those results. Those results have been in many cases much better than they thought they would be, and so they're now ready to push forward. The other part of it is what we're seeing now is a much more diverse array of
companies that are going public. You know, when you and I talked, we were talking about who would be the most likely companies to go public, and they would be likely the more defensive names. Now we're seeing that start to broaden out, so or our pipeline and looks more diverse than it was back in March. It looks awester for larger companies that are also going to be coming So really, in all respects, it tends to be a very healthy outcome.
How has that pipeline diversity shifted in recent years? I remember when I spent three four years working from the floor of the New York Stock Exchange as a reporter, and there was a period in twenty seventeen twenty eighteen, no joke, no exaggeration. Almost every other day there was a Chinese company going public in the United States. These were companies we had never heard of. There were companies that we haven't heard from since. I mean, it was
really really wild times. Then there was this crackdown on a lot of these companies that were listed from China in the US. Yeah, has that business completely dried up for you? I mean she and has filed confidentially to listen to.
IDEO in k We saw that today, Yeah, yeah, yeah, you know, it's interesting. There's still a class of companies that are for the most part microcap in nature, a lot of them domiciled in China that are still coming public. That's a class of companies that quite frankly, we have the New York Stock Exchange really don't really look to Some of our competitors tend to focus on that market.
And we've seen a number of articles, whether it's from the Wall Street Journal, Financial Times or others, that have really pointed to some of the problems that have become as a result of that. So that's not something really focus on. But we are still seeing some of those companies come to the public markets. But I think there's some challenges with that, and there's going to probably continue to be challenges with that going forward.
Still out of China, some are they choosing to list in other areas of the world.
Yeah, you know, it depends a little bit on market cap, it depends on the sector. I think what you are seeing is a bit of a preference for many companies just for liquidity. So the US market still continues to be a place where they would like to list, but for larger names, the home markets continue to be also very attractive, you know, Cattle being a great example of that. Early in the year, shean looking to the Hongkong relative
to London. So, depending on the name, depending on the sector, depending on the specifics of those companies, home markets can also be a very viable alternative.
To Michael.
In some of the cases with the IPOs, we've really seen quite a pop on that first day of trading, right.
That's a good sign.
You know, we want to see that as certainly a company that's going public wants to see that. But it always begs the question, were they too conservative in you know, the numbers that they put out there. I am curious, what are the conversations that you're hearing from those folks, and those companies that are looking to go public, are they would they rather be a little conservative going in and making sure that that's a good first day of trading.
Yeah.
You know, I think when you talk to people in the world of IPOs, whether they're bankers or lawyers, you know, it's often talked about being more of an art than a science, and I think there is a little bit of truth to that. Yeah, there's a balancing act that always has to happen, and also companies that are investors rather they're going to be supporting the company from a liquidity perspective, and there's a balance of the two in
the aftermarket. And the reality is, until you actually get to that stage where you're in the pricing room and you're actually confronting with management in terms of what the dynamics look like, it's sometimes tough to tell. And so I think the underwriters do a great job of being able to offer what those trade offs are going to be to management teams. Ultimately, the management teams are the
ones that have to make those really tough decisions. But I always think about it in terms of the IPO process Ultimately it's a day one event, and really what management teams, what their stakeholders need to focus on is really trying to set up a company for success over the long term and not focus on necessarily the day one performance. Obviously you want a great pricing outcome, but really you're managing this company for the long haul. It's not really just for the day one IPO event.
Can you give us an update on the New York Stock Exchange Texas launch this year? We talked about it back in March.
Yeah, yeah, we have, you know, multiple companies that are now listed there. We have a pretty fairly healthy pipeline of companies that are going to be going listing on the exchange over the next several months. We are very close to signing a lease in Dallas. It's really continuing to take on momentum, and so we really are excited about it.
Do you think it's perhaps a hedge in New York City losing its place when it comes to capital markets? And I ask this kind of came into sharp relief this week with I think a lot of people would argue with what happened in the Democratic primary for the mayoral election. We certainly have a lot of outspoken billionaires who've talked about concerns when it comes to capital markets here in New York in the position of New York City as being the epicenter of Wall Street.
Yeah, I mean for Texas, the way that we've thought about it is when we look at our own listed community and we look at the number of companies in terms of where they're domiciled, Texas really stands out tends to be the area where we have the most number of companies from a really diverse range.
Of sectors that are represented.
And so when we kind of really thought about it from the perspective of what Governor Abbott's doing to try to make sure that the ecosystem of companies within Texas is vibrant, and you know, it intersects with a lot of what we're trying to do in terms of getting a great environment for our own listed community, it really
made sense. So we think about this more from the long term perspective of offering the best environment for our listed community, less in terms of like a short term strategy in terms of what might be happening in the New York ecosystem. We still are big believers that New York continues to be a great place for capital raising and also for companies to be domiciled.
But longer term than does that mean, does it expand the model?
It's hard to know, you know, really just focused on kind of where we see the greatest opportunity for our community right now. But we're always forward thinking in terms of really trying to see where the greatest opportunity results for our community.
That's Michael Harris, Vice Chairman and Global head of Markets at the New York Stock Exchange. We also caught up with a shark at the Uncharted Community Summit on Long Island. Damon John is the founder and CEO of Fubu, and of course he's also a shark on ABC's reality show Shark Tank. We spoke about how hard it is to start a brand.
It is not easy.
Is it getting any easier or is it harder? And I feel like it's an environment where anybody can almost have a brand.
I do think it's getting harder. I think because you have to find this niche audience. But not only do you have to create the brand itself for your product or services, but you as a CEO and a founder have.
To be a brand as well.
What does that mean?
Well, that means that people would not only want to know why they're investing in the brand or the product or buying it. What story does that brand or product have as well as founders?
Who are you?
You know?
I always say on Shark Tank that you know, none of us are original. I mean, there's a million real estate agents, there's only one Barbara Corkan. A lot of people own sports teams, Mark Cuban clothing line, you.
Know what I mean?
People we had created personal brands, and then our brands now walk into the room before we do when we want to raise capital, when we want to make decisions, when we want to defend the fact that somebody is saying negative about our brand and our company and affecting our payroll and our amazing staff that works for us.
Do you think you could create Fubu today?
Absolutely, one hundred percent.
But today's it's a completely different environment.
Today's Fubu would be a different right, There's no there's not new to have four young African American men designing for their own markets.
So what would food will be today?
I would probably do more of the avon uh you know type of thing where I would have one male, one female in a college and a high school. They would get probably about a one thousand dollars worth of fooble on credit for about three hundred dollars, probably underwritten by hopefully somebody great. And the more they sell, they would get more digital curriculums and various other things and very much of an Avon model. So I would have hopefully two million sales reps around the world.
It's so interesting that you say that, because the retail environment has completely changed. It's done. It's done, Yeah, completely done.
You know, I've been to fifty six trade shows this year. You know, I speak at a lot of shows, and the traffic besides the franchise show and maybe the medical tech show, it is one third of the traffic at these shows. Because these retailers are now dying. They're not walking the door. You know, who's walking in. It's a bunch of kids or people. Influencers, could be grand influencers who are now doing live selling, whether on Amazon or TikTok or whatnot.
And that's what's happening live selling. That's something that I think is very familiar to people in China, but not necessarily familiar to many people in the US at least yet explain exactly what that is.
Well, I'm selling as you go, and I'll give you example. There's an app call Whatnot, right, and people have twenty second auctions for one little device or let's say a piece of makeup, right, sell for about twelve dollars right now. They can do this three separate times in one minute, right, so they make a profit about four dollars every time they sell it. So now all of a sudden, twelve dollars a minute. You times app and now they have friends coming on everything. You times app by sixteen hours
a day. And that's what's happening because then when people buy it, now you know who the client is and the customer you can sell it to them again. Remember but there's only three ways to ever deal with the customer. Acquire a new one, upsell a current one, or make one buy more frequently. That's why you want to supicize everybody's fries, and now you know who they are, they can upsell them or buy more frequently.
That's Damon John, founder and CEO of fu Bou and of course one of the sharks on ABC's Shark Tank. And that wraps up our first hour of this special holiday edition of Bloomberg Business Week from Bloomberg Radio. Coming up in the next sixty minutes. More from our visit to the Uncharted Community Summit held recently in Southampton. We'll talk about investing in women's health issues with Jessica Kamada,
She's founder and managing partner at Swizzle Ventures. Plus more from our hosts Michael Loeb and Noah Friedman, who come back to discuss investing principles in the VC world. This is Bloomberg BusinessWeek. I'm Carol Masser along with Tim Steneviec.
Stay with us.
Today's top stories and global business headlines are coming up right now.
If you are listening to the Bloomberg Business Weekdaily podcast, catch us live weekday afternoons from two to five pm Eastern. Listen on Apple, Our Play and Android Auto with the Bloomberg Business Act, or watch us live on YouTube.
Welcome to a special holiday weekend edition of Bloomberg Business Week and happy fourth of July. We continue with our recent live broadcast from Southampton, Long Island. We were at the annual Uncharted Community Summit, an annual gathering of more than five hundred members of the startup community, and over the next sixty minutes, we continue to bring some of our favorite chats from the event. We'll hear from someone that runs an incubator for disruption in the tech sector
and another investor targeting women's health specifically. First of this hour, though, I was joined by Bloomberg' Paul Sweeney to get some background on the event that you've been hearing about and hearing conversations from in the last hour. Event hosts Michael Loebe, founder and CEO of Lobe dot NYC. You heard about him in the last hour, and also Noah Friedman, CEO of Uncharted. They both joined us for a bit of a roundtable on the initial idea behind Uncharted.
So what the intention is is that Noah and I started building Uncharted about four years ago, was in the teeth of COVID when nobody was getting together with anybody else, and we started having dinners at my house in the city and was very popular. And what the thesis is is that entrepreneurs need as much support as they can get, including emotional support, and the best way to do that is put entrepreneurs in a room with other entrepreneurs and
they are as a class. They drive the economy, drive jobs, drive wealth, and yet there I think underappreciated, and as a serial entrepreneur myself, and actually one or two things worked, I'm you know, very empathetic and just with all the miles on the tires, I am kind of a senior statesman by definition. Right, this is a young guy's game. I say that I have the privilege of working with people half my agent, twice as smart. I used to say that. Now it's three times as smart and one
third of my age. But that was the intention. And it's grown to a tribe of maybe twenty five hundred entrepreneurs, of which about a third of them show up to this, So we will have about eight hundred today.
No, come on in on this. You're the CEO of Uncharted too, right, and so we're seeing things being set up. There's going to be a lot of great conversations and speakers going on. Tell us what it's been grown into and what kind of conversations are going to be happening later on.
The common thread of everything that we've done it Uncharted since the first dinner on May twenty, twenty twenty one, and I'll never forget.
It was it just you two by the way us.
To at dinner. Yeah, it was just us too.
We just sat and talked for four hours and here you were going.
No, not about it. We also held ounce.
We did all dance the whole time.
Yeah, it's very romantic.
Now.
We had about twenty entrepreneurs around the table, kind of eight of each of our friends and then a couple others.
If you will look, the common thread of every single event we've done, whether it's our dinners or the past three summits or the breakfast we've done, has always been trying to create safe spaces for real entrepreneurs, founders, exceptional participants in the entrepreneuri community, as we say, to truly drop their guard, drop their hair, and trust that they're in an environment where they can speak openly and honestly. Any entrepreneur or anyone who's building and really doing it,
the real ones. Hopefully this will resonate when they hear it. It is really hard. It's very hard to build businesses. It's really hard to play this game at the high level. And I think if we can offer a rare environment where people can feel like they are amongst their true peers, or they can really drop their guard and connect with people in a place where no matter who you go talk to, they're all going to be exceptional. It's special.
And so we've really tried to guard the energy. We've really tried to keep the sanctity of the fact that if you come to an uncharted event, you're going to meet someone amazing. And that's really been the common thread.
I just want to say, it's a reminder of that, like Google, Apple, all of these companies that are now you know, the biggest market caps that are out there and that we talk about and you know all the time. I mean, they all started as an idea an entrepreneur. And that's the point, yea.
And if you look at kind of success rates and everything else, if you're an entrepreneur, if you really knew all that stuff, why would you do this? Because the failure rate is incredibly high, hours are incredibly long, the pay you know, is dreadful until it's not until you
have a big score. But the number of big scores is very very small, and there's so many forces and so many you know, so many exogenous things that are you know, anti entrepreneur that we wanted to have a sanctuary here that other entrepreneurs can meet other entrepreneurs, and Noah, you're fond of saying that. Not a week or two goes by where we don't get a phone call saying I met my co founder here two years ago.
No Who's What are the areas that are most interested entrepreneurs today? Is it technology? Is healthcare? Are there certain industries that are getting most of the attention.
Look, I think the obvious buzzword that you can't go too far in any of the new cycles to that hearing is AI. And I think that unlike other cycles that have come and went and entered the zeitgeist and left, this one feels very real. I can tell you that amongst all my friends, whether they're in CpG, health tech, pure AI, deep tech, what have you tech, and all of them are thinking explicitly about how AI is going to impact their business if they're not already, and how
they're going to get into it. So I think we're certainly going to talk about that a lot. I think it's top of mind for a lot of people. The movement is real. I think that the implications and repercussions are unclear how it's going to land right now, but everybody's thinking about it, and they should be when.
I think it's unclear, but it's going to be brought, it's going to be broad, it's going to be brought. And you mentioned cycles. I've been around for a few. This reminds me of the late nineties where the Internet happened and we had a lot of full starts two three years ago. Everybody was talking about NFTs before that, blockchain before that, cannabis before that, you know, something else.
But this feels like another eruption. This feels like another advent of the Internet, one that we haven't had absolu earlier.
Yeah, on the same level, no doubt about or even.
More I think on the same level.
Yeah.
I mean, you know, it's hard to project and predict, but I had breakfast with a heroic entrepreneur a couple of days ago. He has built a business now worth one point eight billion dollars, and over breakfast, he says, I have two hundred and seventy people by year end, it's gonna be one twenty. Yeah, okay, interesting.
I would add to that if I'm may, sorry, I think that there's this interesting tension with AI right now where I think Michael's right and I would even argue that this might I didn't live through the late nineties period of seeing it at least.
All right, thanks for having me, guys, If you don't.
I think that letting your hair down seven thing. I mean, why do you work with having? It's crazy?
Everyone asked me that. But I think there's an inherent tension where I actually think it could be more disruptive. And at the same time, I do think that there's a lot of people who are betting big dollars than AI that are going to get wiped out because I think there's gonna be an absolute power law dynamic here where small select group of companies at the top end aggregate a ton of power and resource. I also think it's going to be a Barbell warre on the bottom end.
You know, I've invested personally in companies that have two or three people on the team and have rocketed millions in arr because they're able to get ten x productivity if it's a killer founder. So I think there's a Barbell thing happening right now where the killer founders who actually know how to leverage resources are going to crush it, as are the big businesses.
Well.
Because of that and what AI can do genera of AI and so on. I mean, does it give entrepreneurs even more opportunities to start up? We talked about that after the pandemic. Basically create a website and you can go and then maybe that's simplifying things, but does AI kind of have a multiplier effect to on entrepreneurial activities?
Without a doubt, I think that's the opportunity. I think that's right. And if you just look at what has happened over the years, you know, it used to be that if you build a business, a brand new business in the Internet, you need it. You needed hundreds of people, right, and now that's really compressed to just a few. But to Noah's point, there's going to be winners and there's going to be a lot of losers, and that's very hard to predict.
Michael, talk to us about monetization. I'm not seeing a lot of IPOs. I'm not seeing a lot of m and A. How great entrepreneurs monetize the value they've created.
That's a that's a great question. I would I would say that everything you just mentioned is part of a cycle, and we're just in that type of cycle where everything is a little bit bollock. Stop uh and but you know it's it's we're going to be on the other side of that, and there's going to be some great companies built, and there's going to be some great flameouts, a lot of people are going to lose a lot of money, and then there's going to be a few
that are going to be extraordinarily successful. But to your point, we can build it now with instead of three hundred people, three and there's been predictions that there's going to be a unicorn with all of three people. Serious, Yeah, I believe that.
Okay, that kind of makes sense. And we've started to see IPOs actually in general come to market and it's a much more favorable market. I got to ask you, I think we'd be remiss of the macro that's going on and different policies in the world being upended in geopolitics. What does that do for the entrepreneur. Entrepreneur who's trying to you know, we know can be lean and mean in the beginning when it comes to a startup. What about some of these macro issues, What would be more helpful to them?
What kind of environment, well, anything that helps with capital formation, anything that kind of reduces regulation. I was hopeful that this administration would attack some of that stuff and maybe not terrorists. But anyway, it's still early. It's still early. We're here now. They are very active and very proactive, and I'm just hopeful that what you really want to give is entrepreneurs just charter. I mean, let them do
their thing as much as you can. And our hope is by the way that this environment, believe it or not, will put a dent in that world, right, that they will find support here in many different ways.
Well, I always think it's kind of amazing how much time we spend and obviously this is our world, right, the publicly held markets, right, this is what we track, you know, all the movements. But we talk constantly about the importance of small business and startups in terms of the backbone, and I just think it kind of gets lost a little bit.
Yeah. I do think though, that you're going to see AI up end just about every industry. And I think those big companies are going to find themselves woefully behind and they're going to have no choice but to make some acquisitions.
Well said, no, what capital is it out there for entrepreneurs today?
It is?
But I think that you're seeing an interesting dynamic with the vcs in private equity that they're chasing a lot of trends almost blindly. You know the fact that right now there are really good businesses that don't have the word AI that are struggling to raise money, whereas there's other businesses that have a deck and pre seed and barely an idea and or raising money at fifty million dollar pre money valuations. I think is indicative of what's going on.
Yeah, we saw venture raise. It's been really difficult.
It's been very difficult unless you're a credentialed AI founder have a good idea in the AI space, because there's a lot of VC funds chasing chasing ideas, and I think some of them will work, but the unfortunate realities, I think a lot of them are going to get absolutely smoked because they can't all work, especially not at fifty million dollar pre So to answer your question directly, sure there's capital out there, I wish there was more.
I wish there was more going to more ideas that were based just on meritocracy and their actual traction versus the notion that they have AI in it. As bullish as I am on AI and investing in a personally to be abundantly clear, but it's an interesting moment right now, very interesting.
I will only add that that is not too much different than what we've always seen. True, there's always been the bright, shiny object, and the investors feel like they got to follow that.
Did you really start working for you in high school?
That's fantastic, Gotta start them young.
Yeah, talk about that off air, exactly right.
Michael Lope, thank you so much, Founder CEO of Lobe dot NYC. And Noah Freedman, CEO of Uncharted. Thank you, gentlemen for being having a great conference today. I'll have a lot of great ideas circled about and a lot of great deals.
Thanks for having me.
Thanks to Michael Lobe, founder and CEO of Lobe dot NYC and Noah Friedman, CEO of Uncharted. Coming up on Bloomberg Business Week more from our visit to the Uncharted conference in the Hampton's held recently in Southampton. Paul Sweeney stays with me as we learn about AI's potential to replace human workers. It's a conversation and narrative that is gaining a lot of momentum that's coming up next.
This is Bloomberg.
This is the Bloomberg Business Week Daily Podcast. Listen live each weekday starting at two pm Eastern on Applecarplay and the Android Auto with the Bloomberg Business App. You can also listen live on Amazon Alexa from our flagship New York station, Just Say Alexa played Bloomberg eleven thirty.
We're back here on this special holiday edition of Bloomberg Business Week, featuring some of our favorite conversations from the Uncharted Community Summit. It was held recently in Southampton in Michael Loebes's backyard. What we keep hearing from tech leaders, including those at some of the big ones. We're talking about Microsoft and Alphabet, how they talk about AI's potential
and likelihood to replace human workers. Salesforce among the latest, noting its internal AI use has allowed it to hire fewer people. Kind of makes you say, uh, oh, Well. Someone who knows a lot about our changing workforce is Cheryl Grice. She is senior partner at the consulting giant EY. She's also global executive sponsor for the EY Entrepreneurial Winning Women's Global Program.
She joined me and.
Paul Sweeney to talk about her first visit well, this is your first one and you have clients and you deal with them. Tell us what you are hoping to get out of this, What are the conversations you're looking to have.
Well, for us, we want to help our entrepreneurs really establish better community, better connections, and access access to capital in particular, so events like this go a long way to helping them get scaled in a way that they can't do by themselves. And this is like one event that brings it all together in such an amazing way.
How do you bring capital and entrepreneurial ideas and talent together?
How does that happen?
How do you bring it together?
Events like this have private investors, private equity, venture capital, bankers, etc. That are looking to find people that fit their mold for what they want to invest in. And so this is one stop shopping for hundreds of entrepreneurs to come in and find access like that. And these companies are here for that.
Do you know what I never understand, Cheryl? We always talk about the world being a wash in capital. You know, everybody's starting private credit funds, There's plenty of money out there, but why is it so tough for smaller business, for startups? What is it that makes it so tough.
I think you have to break down the startup in the population a little bit. I mean we often say in the statistics one bucket. It's not one bucket. Statistics haven't changed. For example, only two percent of the world's venture capital goes to females.
Wow.
So so when you can find an event like this and you can give them that kind of access where they can actually be ready, Like we do a lot of work at EY to get them ready for those conversations so that they can ask for the capital in a way that the VC wants to provide that capital, or a private equity or a bank or a private investor. There's a lot of work that goes into that, and not all of the same populations. A lot of the
populations are overlooked. They don't get that same kind of coaching and council to be able to find that capital, to be able.
To ask for it in a way that they'll get it.
Kara and I were just talking with Noah Freeman, the CEO of and Charted, and he was saying, Wall, if you don't have AI.
In your name, it's tough to attract capital.
It's almost like the late nineties, if you didn't have a dot com at the end of your company's names, it's tough to raise capital.
How do you How are you guys seeing that part of the business.
Well, it's not just it's so funny through there's such an evolution. You know, in the two thousands, it was the Internet and e commerce, and then you go to two thousand and seven and to two thousand and nine, and it's all about social media and what are you doing where everything is transactive from the palm of your hand? And now it's AI. AI's been around for a long time, but it's AI. Where how are you using agents and
agentic and so forth? To us, digital is a growth engine, but inclusiveness is also a growth engine.
So it's not just about digital, it's about the.
Communities that you're getting to be able to bring digital to life.
So it's relevant.
Well, that's really fascinating. You know, when you talk about women, you talk about minorities. And I'm going to go back to women for a moment because I remember a few years ago, and maybe this was coming off the pandemic, Bloomberg putting out a story that even female venture capitalists weren't really you know, more prone to maybe support female entrepreneurs.
So again, how do we is is it an education Like I understand what you're saying about, like educating entrepreneurs so that when they have to talk to the folks that have the money, like it's the right conversation. But how do we really finally move some of that, whether it's for minorities, for women, really move the needle on that, because those are pockets of consumers and areas that can provide a lot of economic momentum, a lot of business.
To me, there are three gaps at uy. We always say there's three gaps.
There's do they have the community necessary so that they can stick together in their growth agenda and find like minded people that have been there before so that they can learn from those people. Then and there's the capital that we've already talked about. And then there's the connections. A lot of the connections are how do you educate yourself and get the right level of insights so that you can talk to a capital provider.
Many people don't have that education.
So for us, programs like the ones that we have, like on Chartered have they're intended to help them get those connections and the insights necessary to get access to those things. Vcs don't necessarily go after the underserved or overlooked populations because they just don't know how to communicate yet with the capital providers.
Our job is to help them.
What is the real opportunity for you today? What do you think is going to you're hoping to get together today?
I want to meet thirty more entrepreneurs that I haven't met and help them with their journeys. My goal is to get them the things that they need so that we're not on the sidelines. We're very much in the mix with them to get them to the next level.
Thirty seconds A success story.
A success story, we watched a female entrepreneur who was one of our winning Women back in twenty fifteen create an adult beverage company as a school teacher and sell it for undisclosed amount. But we're guessing it's over a billion wow in the last year.
So that's that's Cheryl grice Ey, Senior Partner for Global Client Services, Bloomberg's Paul Sweeney sticking around for our next conversation, and that was with Brett Markinson. He is founder and CEO of the in Event Capital Group. His company's website notes that he launched his firm as an incubator and platform for launching businesses that leverage disruptive technology to innovate
old ways of doing things. We started by asking Brett what he is hearing from attendees of the Uncharted Community Summit.
Everybody's talking their bod to the Bloomberg Business Weekdaily podcast, Catch us Lived at.
Watch us live on.
YouTube, And I just kind of personally enjoy the origin stories. So I try to spend as much time as I can understanding how people got to where they are by way of where they came.
All Right, it's like a gift when someone says that, because I want to talk about your origin story a little bit. Media folks were kind of obsessed with media caning us back to the nineties. You were selling non linear digital editing base tollies. No, but it's like all these things shape us. I remember doing, you know, paper prompters. I'm going to age myself. It's very different nowadays. So tell us about what that was like and how it does shape your perspective as you see things change.
Sure.
Well, first of all, like any early stage business, it was brutal I think what made this challenging was whenever you're too far in front of something, it's very difficult selling vision to the visionless, and people have a lot invested in the way they're doing things and the way things were. In the case of nonlinear editing, I think what made that's so difficult was the editor was very comfortable in the basement by himself with no oversight and not having too much of the producer in over his
kind of shoulder telling him how to do things. And the nonlinear editing system just changed the landscape entirely because now the producer was able to kind of be involved in the editing process and brought the guy upstairs, surrounded him with a whole bunch of people, and the efficiencies that it brought were incredible and the impact indelible. But to a lot of editors it really changed the way they thought about what they did and how they did it.
So getting it to take took some time, but like anything wants to damn cracked, it just became a floodgate.
Is internet or AI right, Like it's kind of the same story.
Hey, bred, you're on a panel today talking about exits. Yes, I haven't seen a lot of IPOs in the last few years. I haven't seen a lot of M and A in the last five years. How did guys like you and the folks here. They've got an idea, they get it funded, they get it off the ground, and now they're thinking about an exit, a monetization event. Where are we today in that environment?
Well, when I start at the very early stage, a little north of the napkin, I like to call it. And for companies like that, it oftentimes doesn't make a lot of news in terms of acquisitions, but there's plenty of that stuff happening. In a lot of cases. They're accu hiers that you hear about. So in the end, it really comes down to a couple of very key things.
Building a great product, validating it with solid product market fit, finding and understanding those customers and getting those customers to accept your product and tell other customers. And once you get that flywheel moving, it's kind of a snowball rolling down a hill and it kind of takes on a momentum of its own. And if you reach that capacity for your business where you are growing and need help,
capital finds you. And as capital is hunting for you, so are other larger businesses that want access to your customers and want access to what you're doing. So at the very early stage of things, it's not too difficult to be able to find exit opportunities. It just depends on whether or not you're able to find product market fit and demonstrate that.
How often, though, is it for an entrepreneur bread, is it just tough for them to let go after they've started a company and they realize it's time for them to either sell merged, I mean, in order to take it to the next level, Like, how difficult and how often does that happen where it's just time that they need somebody else?
Now, that's it's an interesting question, but I think the answer is emotional. Yeah, And I think people with high eqs are capable of seeing that they're in over their head or to get to the next level, they need competence beyond their capability or skill set, and for some they just can't see the forest through the trees, and it becomes a very emotional thing. You know, you have a whole persona and identity that has been formed around
this thing that you brought to life. You know, I oftentimes think about startups is giving birth to a child in the ICU.
Wow.
Thanks check it is.
You know your kids in good hands. All the appropriate people are there on a twenty four to seven basis, but it's still touch and go.
That's Brett Markinson, founder and CEO of in Event Capital Group. Still ahead on Bloomberg Business Week. More from our visit to Michael Loeb's Uncharted conference recently in Southampton. We'll hear about investing in women's health and how Washington policy might be impacting all of that. That's coming up next. This is Bloomberg.
You're listening to the Bloomberg Business Weekdaily Podcast. Catch us live weekday afternoons from two to five pm Eastern. Listen on Apple CarPlay and Android Auto with the Bloomberg Business app, or watch us live on YouTube.
We'll back here on our special holiday edition of Bloomberg Business Week, continuing to highlight some of our favorite conversations from the Uncharted Community Summit, which was held recently in Southampton, in fact, in Michael Loeb's backyard. Returned out to Jessica Kamada. She's founder managing partner at Swizzle Ventures, a new venture capital firm that's raised a fund to focus on women's
health caregiving, and financial health. We started by asking her what she looks for in a company before deciding to invest.
We're looking at really the course of a woman's lifetime and investing in companies that advance women's health and wealth through.
Pivotal life stages.
We see three sectors as really billing the gaps for women over those three over those life stages, so healthcare, physical health care, caregiving responsibilities on the elder side, and early childcare, and then financial health.
I want to say good, good, good, because especially when you get just down to medical health and health care, it's just so behind even R and D, and it's just amazing. Even I don't want to do a blanket statement about professionals in the field, but I just hear over and over again women who go in and it's just things are ignored said, it's not anything, and things that turn out to be things. So how do we, like, how can you, through VC venture and investing kind of change some of that?
Yeah.
Absolutely.
I think it's a little known fact that we only have thirty four years of women's health research. We were only included in clinical trials since nineteen ninety three on NIHU manity, it's insane. So when we go into the doctor's office, it actually it's actually just lack of education
on MD's front. I mean, they only get four hours of menopause training in their entire you know, eight years of training, So some of it is not actually their fault, but the research just has to catch up and the education of the system has to catch up.
So it's a.
Shocking Can I just ask you them, is that research being hurt by what's been going on in the government and cuts.
The We are like very much looking at the cuts, yeah, because I think if they're they did initially say that they were going to cut a longitudinal study that has been going on for thirty years. They reinstated that until at least January twenty twenty six, so we're now watching that and if they cut it, then you know, we're going to lose thirty years of launchitudel data that we've been collecting over you know, with women over the course of their lifetime.
So we are looking at that from a research perspective.
But I think what's amazing and where tech comes into play is that these tech companies, especially with AI, are now creating their own data sets to help empower these researchers.
So how would it change your opportunities as a venture capitalist if those cuts were to happen, And if we do see a pullback in funding from Washington, we've already seen a pullback in funding at least to university to research. We talk to a lot of venture capitalists in the biotech space about this. Does that make your job more difficult because there will be fewer founders out there chasing opportunities or does it shut opportunities shut opportunities off for you?
I think one main, one major concern in the research in biotech world and also VCS is just a brain drain like these. You know, the tech companies are built on the research that has been created over the last thirty years or so. Now that we have AI, they can finally do something with that data, create personalized care plans, et cetera. But if the underlying data is not there and that doesn't progress, then it's a lot harder to build on top of it.
And.
Funding research is not really in the VC model, So we can only fund the companies that are built on top of that research, and we have to rely on federal funding on other rants, on philanthropy to fund the actual research that's underline. So my concern is that if we're funding companies that are going to be great ten years from now, then like what do I fund ten years from now? If that if that research doesn't continue at the clip it is today.
We're tied with Jessica Kamada, founder and managing partner at Swizzle Ventures. You initially said it's divided into kind of three buckets, right, you chalked about healthcare, you talk about caregiving and check financial health. Where are you finding the most kind of entrepreneurs doing things? Is it equal? Are there certain buckets that are you know, people that are starting different companies? What do you find it.
We've funded twenty portfolio companies in this current fund and they're pretty split evenly among the three sectors. I would say that in the caregiving sector, we're finding the most opportunities in eldercare right now.
Just because of the population progression play.
I feel like with everything, it's a huge play's and it's also something that is just undoubted. It's a bipartisan issue. No one is gonna, you know, say, like argue that the population is not aging, right, So it's something that everyone agrees on and knows that the healthcare system will be overwhelmed if we do not do something about it.
But that's very employee intensive, that's very human intensive. And there's been a lot of commentary about the immigrant labor that actually does a lot of the caregiving of elders in the United States and potentially how that will be affected. Can this be solved with technology? I mean what it's same with child like with with with caregiving for children, like you need people to do that. How do you how do you take a venture capitalist approach to this stuff?
Yeah, part of it is trying to fix the system and finding business models that are aligning all the incentives at play, because a lot of it is just like incentives, right, And the issue with human caregivers is that it's a ruthless job. There's a lot of high turnover in it. For example, one company that's here Ruby, well they enable family caregivers to get paid through Medicare benefits that already exist. So it's really about helping people navigate the system that's.
So tricky and gate kept to figure out.
But those dollars are there, they just can't They just need help accessing them. And they work with the basically staffing agencies, the home healthcare agencies that.
Do that work.
How easy is it for you to get capital and create funds? She laughs?
It was not as challenging as I had expected. However, this was the first environment that I have raised a fund in versus being in marketing in market in twenty twenty one when I have heard that dollars were falling from this guy. So one of the things about my thesis is that it's very relatable. Every single human has struggled through a personal pivotal life.
Stage, be a man or woman, right, And.
I think that relatability has helped me to for investors to understand what I'm trying to build.
But even women specifically, like is there always it's it's a little trickier, right, when it's it's a little trick these issues, I feel like it's a.
Little trickier until you dig in to say, to explain the economic opportunity, I mean, investing in women's health is a one trillion dollar market, three hundred and twenty billion in the US alone, So when you really uncover the numbers behind the opportunity, it's far larger than people expect. And that people typically what I lead with. Yeah, and from a help and from a wealth perspective when we think about the great wealth transfer already in play.
Yeah, go ahead.
Well I don't mean to sound glib, but if you were to sort of look at the categories that might be the least challenging to disrupt through venture capital and through funding companies, it wouldn't be these categories. I mean, these are these are categories that are ripe with regulation. Yes,
there are categories that aren't necessary. It's not like you're creating an app, you know, there are sometimes you are human capital intensive though, like this is this is a really challenging space I think is that is am I am I wrong about that? Like I know, but like all venture capital stuff, thanks Carol, but like you know,
all all all that, this is really tough stuff. But it's like you see the way money is flowing for like AI agents and like companies that are built on chat GPT, that that seems to be the path of least resistance right now.
So I was at a consumer AI summit and a lot of the companies were creating like shop like connecting you to the right clothes, and like things that are really fun, and there does need to be fun in consumer AI does need to be fun to use, but it also needs to be helping, like very foundational human things, and it can do that as well. Like sometimes I think in these categories it doesn't actually need to be flashy.
It just needs to solve a problem. Like for instance, we have some companies that are not that high tech. It's you know, a mental health company where they're just providing access to mental health professionals after you have a baby, which is a leading cause of maternal death. And it's like it's not that hard or a concept, and it doesn't really require AI. It's just filling a need that
didn't exist before. And there are so many more of those in women's health and these categories because they've been so overlooked and underinvested in. So yes, we have fancy AI companies like investment platforms directed at gen z.
Or like hormone hormonal monitors.
That you can you at home, but some of them are not as high tech and they don't need to be.
What would surprise somebody about investing in this space. I know you talked about the economics, which I thought was really kind of telling some of the numbers right, because when people see I'm sure hear that, they're like, oh, I get it right, this is a really untap marketplace.
Why aren't we doing more?
But I'm just curious, as you've been like talking to entrepreneurs thinking about you know, initiatives specifically that fall into you know, women's fields.
I think people are surprised at how much deal flow there actually is and how many people are building in these spaces.
Because they're building for themselves.
Typically, they're building because they see a need of their own in their own life that was un through one of these pivotal life stages, right, and they don't see anyone else tackling it, and so they go forward themselves.
It's funny.
That's what Bill Harris said formally of PayPal, and he said his current investment firm, it was something he wanted, he needed, and that's what he created, Like makes most sense for entrepreneurs to be doing that. That's Jessica Kamad, a founder and managing partner at Swizzle Venture. As you can hear all of our conversations from the event, just head to Bloomberg dot com or check out our podcast feed, and that wraps up the Weekend edition, a special holiday
weekend edition of Bloomberg Business Week from Bloomberg Radio. Thank you so much for joining us. Be sure to tune into Bloomberg BusinessWeek Daily Monday through Friday starting at two pm Wall Street Time on Bloomberg Television, Bloomberg Radio, and on Series XM Channel one twenty one. You can listen to us on Applecarplay and Android Auto. It's free in
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