Diesel. That is well accomplished but in a way it just was sort of following your passion. But I sort of was thinking like that's all great to be a DJ, but it's a pretty saturated market. And that takes the whole, it's a whole like commitment if I want to take it And, you know, lo and behold, you know, I met this guy in in Ibiza in 02/2012, who's my current business partner today. This this gentleman gentleman named Richie Houghton.
Welcome to The Investor, a podcast where I, Joel Palafinkel, your host, dives deep into the minds of the world's most influential institutional investors. In each episode, we sit down with an investor to hear about their journeys and how global markets are driving capital allocation. So join us on this journey as we explore these insights. Live, so it looks like we're live. So hey, let's just kick this off. So we're live here with Rishi Patel from plus eight Equity.
I got to know him a couple months ago and just really blown away by just kind of the sector that you're investing in and the community that you've been involved in. I think I opened up to you a few months ago, like it's kind of what I wanted to do when I grew up, you know, kind of be in the music industry. So like to live vicariously through other people and hopefully, you know, be involved in that community at some point.
But let's go deep man, let's talk about your background for the community. Some of the people on the line are emerging fund managers or entrepreneurs, people looking to break into VC so we can just kind of freestyle it and kind of have fun with this conversation. But know, you and I went really deep on our stories in person, but I think it's good to hear your story of how you broke into VC and also got involved with plus eight equity and then also kind of the music ecosystem.
So let's start there. Let's start where you went to school. You know a little bit about your family and your knowledge of the private markets and then kind of how that career evolved. I think you spent some time in banking as well. So let's kind of go unpack that as well. You bet. Yeah, thanks for having me on. Such a pleasure and hello to everyone else who's on the line.
To be fair, as I think about my career, it really starts with a passion and it certainly predates even where I went to school. It goes back to my adolescent years. I've always had a passion for music and creativity. I remember from the early days, I was a guy who was really into going to concerts, finding the next record that was signed to an independent record label and things of that nature. It just so happens that I was pretty good at math.
So that sort of guided me, you know, as I grew up when it came time to apply for colleges. Of course, coming from an Indian background, you get a lot of pressure, you know, to med school, apply to med school, apply to med school. I'm sure you've heard story. Well, quick, let me stop you there. So tell me the first concert that you saw. I can tell you mine too. But the first concert that you went to as an adolescent, concert was it? Who was playing? Yeah, it was Stabbing Westward.
I was probably 14. Okay. It was at the electric factory in Philadelphia. I will tell you that I was a really skinny kid and I got my ass kicked in the mosh pit. I think I lost my right shoe that evening and I'll never forget it. But man, what a rush that was. And it really sort of was eye opening with regards to live music, the community around live music and that connection between artists and fans. That really was the first experience that resonated with me.
Yeah, mine was Blink one hundred eighty two. Nice. Back in like, I think the early 2000s, right? So yeah, that's kind of that was our prime as well. So that was my first one. Yeah, that's awesome. And Dana, growing up in Philadelphia, you know, we had some great bands that were coming through. And that was in high school. I ended up going to school at Penn, which was in Philadelphia.
So even in college, I got that great opportunity to connect with artists, connect with club culture, connect with people in the music scene, mostly as a consumer. And to be honest, I never thought for one second I'd be working in the music industry in any capacity at that point But it was really just expressing my passion and connecting with the community at that point. I'll say one more thing. Would say I resonate with you, right? So I think I told you I opened up to you over a couple drinks.
Like I was in a punk rock band, like in high school, and my grades started going down. So my mom like kind of embarrassed me, she kind of like yelled at yelled me in front of like the people that I was playing in the band with and they're like Joel's not allowed to play music anymore until he gets his grades up. Yeah, that for me was kind of a little bit of a stigma to kind of be a good boy and become an engineer and get a good job. But it's kind of still lingered with me behind the scenes.
I'm like, man, maybe this is the time now to come full circle and get back in touch in the music industry and see how all these things stitch together. But it's interesting to see how that stigma has been involved. We got people of Indian descent now crushing it in Hollywood and in music. I haven't seen too many people in the music sector. I've seen like a lot of Indian rappers, but you probably know a little more about that with you being in the industry.
I've seen a lot of Indian rappers kind of make it from New York. And then obviously we're all over TV. We're in comedy now. So I mean, I'm definitely happy to kind of see that huge evolution because that wasn't the case when I was in high school. It's kind of like looked down upon. It's like, oh, what's wrong with you? Like you're doing things too risky, you know?
Yeah, you should just be you should just stick to like going to like you said, right, going to med school or getting a job in IT or being an accountant or something. Yeah, no, I resonate with those comments very much so.
And, you know, it's sort of in the purview of the societal pressures, the family pressures, the expectations and sometimes I take a step back and I sort of connect with people across the board who are working various jobs and I just see how unhappy they are but I see this creative side to them and sometimes I talk to them and I ask them like, have you ever thought about what could have been?
And unequivocally, it's again and again, yeah, I did think about going to the music industry, but for whatever reason, society, family, I had to sort of steer into a direction that wasn't necessarily my passion, but hey, it brought the bread home. And I can understand and certainly connect with that.
But for me, my way of rebelling was to not go to med school and do something more business oriented because I wanted to steer out of that and I was sort of thinking as I left high school, what's going give me the most opportunity, the most flexibility without really pigeonholing me. And so that was business. So I ended up heading to Penn's business school at Wharton and it gave me a lot of flexibility. Finance, business, it's so amorphous, it could be applied to any industry.
And it just so happens, as I said, I was pretty good at math. My parents are like, after my senior year, go get a job. You're not coming home, we paid a lot for your education, make it worthwhile and I did end up joining a bank called Morgan Stanley on the investment banking side and I moved out west to Midland Park, California. I was based right in Silicon Valley and you know, I was there for a couple of years doing technology mergers and acquisitions. That was a hell of an experience.
And I was there about two years and I got promoted and you know, I moved to New York when I was 22, which was really eye opening for me. It was my first foray living in a city of that caliber with that level of intensity. What were some of the biggest observations you noticed in the culture, like moving from the West Coast to the East Coast.
I would say probably just a lot more hustle and like I would say like I think both places are very competitive, but I think the vibe is much more of a hustle on the East Coast versus like on the West Coast. But I haven't lived in the West Coast, so that's just me assuming. It is a little bit of that. Know, what I will say is, you know, a place like Menlo Park is really siloed around tech culture. Yeah. Everything lives and breathes technology. Everybody sort of dresses the same.
Everyone's got the Patagonia vest sort of thing. I mean, it was really, really a fascinating social experiment in a sense. Look, a lot of smart people, Stanford was just down the road, tons of guys from Cal Berkeley. To be honest, I did come across a lot of folks coming from East Coast schools. So it sort of, was a little lonely when I moved out there because it wasn't like a huge Penn contingent or sort of Northeast school contingent.
And a lot of my friends, you know, if they left school, you know, they moved to New York, you know, and a couple of guys went to LA, But I was sort of the lone wolf in the Bay Area holding it down. So it was challenging for me, but I sort of rose to that challenge. But I will tell you, when I did move to New York, I was so utterly grateful. I was really excited. And that energy as you said, you know, truly a hustle town. And tell me, so what were you working in M and A in New York?
Did you just transfer offices or what were you doing when you moved to New York? It was all tech M and A. So, you know, our technology practice, again, focused on, you know, hardware, software, comm equipment, you know, Internet companies was based in Silicon Valley just given the volume of deals. The group had set out there, but they split the coverage geographically. So I moved out to New York. I was still doing basically the same thing, covering a different set of clients.
And just for the audience, you know, these transactions, it's usually, is it usually like a direct deal and it's kind of like a late stage tech company and then you guys are the investment bankers, so you guys will take a fee for, raising that maybe series D round. That kind of how it It was most of the deals that we were doing were IPOs.
So even later than what you've described, were sort of taking companies that were series D really at the earliest, but a lot of Series E, Series F, we had a big venture backed funds were involved, whether it be battery ventures or otherwise taking them public and listing them on the NASDAQ, which was the primary conduit placement for tech companies.
If it was a really big IPO, like the first deal that our team was involved in was the Google IPO, they went well beyond the NASDAQ and they listed directly on the New York Stock Exchange because it was such mega billion market cap company.
So that was one element, but because I really was focused on mergers and acquisitions, a lot of what I was doing was doing sell sides, a lot of private company sell sides, VC backed companies that were looking for liquidity and looking for a strategic buyer because they just didn't have the scale or the revenue growth or whatever financial characteristics to go public. And so we were looking for a buyer for a number of them, you know, a lot of buy sides.
And I'll tell you a lot of leveraged buyouts. And when I started banking in 02/2004, it was the first sort of era of the tech LBO and this was sort of fascinating. Was really interesting insight because banks and creditors started getting more comfortable lending against cash flow.
The SaaS business model started becoming a thing and that's really where it started is around that time frame like, yeah, you know what, maybe you can lend against recurring revenue subscription cash flow streams and so people were thinking much more progressively about transactions at the time. It was a very, very interesting time to be in tech around that Yeah, mean, that's essentially what pipe is right now. Right? And then there's a handful of other companies that are doing that.
And, know, the parallel is really the collateralized debt obligations, right? Because people were selling and packaging securities based on cash flow for mortgages. But because of the whole surge in tech companies building predictable revenue, it's easy to think of that as, hopefully as predictable as a mortgage, but even better because, hopefully revenues are three X ing or two X ing every year.
So it's not only a recurring stable predictable revenue for the most part, know hopefully if it's after like series A, but it's also appreciating over time, which usually doesn't appreciate at that scale monthly for real estate, right? So it's kind of an interesting parallel.
No and you know and I live subprime you know I live that sort of boom and bust and I'll tell you was a weird time because at one point on one hand I was really concerned but I was also you know call it four or five years in so I didn't have a family. Was a single guy living in New York and feel like if stuff really hit the fan, I knew that I can call my mom and it was gonna be fine. Just go home to Philly, right? Just go home to Philadelphia.
So it was a different sort of set of circumstances for me personally but I will tell you it was a scary time for a lot of the partners. And I remember explicitly walking down Madison Avenue, and it was right after the Bear Stearns acquisition was announced and 383 Madison was literally covered in $2 bills as a big FU to James Cain, the CEO, because he had sold what was one of the legacy companies of Wall Street for $2 a share to JP Morgan. I mean, it was such a wild time to be on Wall Street.
It was a really, really fascinating time. But it was even like Morgan Stanley, our bank was not immune to it. Our share price went from $45 to 35 to 25 to 10, around $10, was like, you know what, maybe I need to look for another job. Yeah. I ended up interviewing with a couple of shops that were focused on restructuring, which is sort of the other side of the coin. When you're an M and A banker. I ended up getting an offer with Moelis and Company and Perilla.
And just given the culture of Perilla being a lot of ex Goldman Sachs and ex Morgan Stanley bankers, I ended up joining them and I was sort of doing almost exclusively restructuring assignments for a couple years thereafter. Yeah, mean, remember that time. I mean, at that time, I'd say, you know, even before the recession, you know, I'd say 02/2007, it was really cool to be an investment banker, like people prided themselves.
I lived in the city in my early 20s and then I went to grad school, but I remember living in the city like, you know, in my early 20s and people were just so proud of working like one hundred hour work weeks. They just thought it was just the coolest thing and they got car service to go home and all those people got burned out and they all left the banking industry because they were like look wow you know like now it's all about experience.
I think also after the recession I think they had all these sharing economy startups and people were all about you know the experience not owning but you know saving our money, experiencing things. So I felt a lot of people were more conscious about work life balance.
Mental health was a big thing, but you know a lot of those people switch gears and as you see now right in the tech ecosystem, I mean it's changing a little now towards the employer, but I would say probably like eighteen months ago, you know the whole great resignation piece, you know the employees did have more leverage because they could be a little more picky and didn't want to settle for like a bad work environment.
I think it's changing a little now with all the layoffs, so it's kind of interesting to see that dynamic. I remember just kind of that change of priority for people that were working in the industry to also have work life balance. That was a huge element to it, but that was also combined with the fact that because of things like TARP funding and government funding supporting the banks, they had changed the entire compensation structure of the financial services industry.
Being a banker was no longer as lucrative. The CEO comps got cut, the banker pay got cut. And at some point, we were like, well, what am I working one hundred and twenty hour weeks or am I getting paid the same? So they started to look elsewhere.
And that's really what changed the game, I think, a lot of ways to bring a lot of folks who were highly educated, highly motivated, super ambitious to start looking into more entrepreneurial type applications, I. E. Startups or doing something that was actually making impact or what have you. So very interesting sort of dynamic there with labor markets around that time. Yeah, okay. So then you did restructuring for some time, you kind of found your footing in that career.
Seems like it wasn't too much of a disruption because you knew a lot of those people from past roles and colleagues. Tell me about that and then tell me kind of what happened after that. Yeah, I mean, I would say, you know, by the time you're sort of in banking five or six years working crazy hours, you know, at some point you start hitting a plateau with the learning curve, right?
I mean, once you do $5.06, $7.08, $910,000,000,000 worth of deals that every deal is, yes, nuanced in its ultimate manifestation, they're nuanced in the way they actually take hold. But at the end of the day, the core principles of the finance and the modeling and the way you engage with clients is basically the same. To be honest, around year five or six, I started to get bored and I was like, there's got to be something bigger than this.
I was invited at this, this is when I was at Parella in 02/2009, I got a call from friend of mine who said, hey, what are you doing this weekend? I was like, I don't even know what I'm having for lunch today. Like, I have no idea what I'm doing this weekend. And she said, you know, have you ever been to Berlin? I have not been to Berlin. And she told me the name of a music venue called Burkheim Panorama Bar, which is sort of the Mecca of electronic music. And I had never heard of it.
So after lunch, I don't know, I went on Yahoo or something or whatever search engine was relevant then. And I sort of searched it and I was like, wow, this is some sort of unbelievable venue for live music. So in short, she invited me to come, she was going to handle my guest list because apparently it's very difficult to get in and I flew to Berlin for the weekend. And that was the ultimate game changer for me in terms of reconnecting with the purity of live music.
Now we spoke about earlier that same sensation I had, that first concert I went to when I was 14 in Philadelphia, I literally felt that sensation all over again, call it twelve years later and it sort of reminded me of the youthfulness of being a child and the creativity that I used to have and I just thought, well, what happened to me? And I just sort of followed suit.
You know, I started traveling for music more and more over the next couple of years And over the course of my travels, I just started connecting in a very authentic and sincere manner with folks from the music industry. Because I was just so curious. You just you just kind of took vacation? No, no, not, not none of the above. I would fly to Europe for the weekend. I would only go for I mean, it was pretty brutal, but I was a young kid, and I could handle it.
So, I mean, I would do I would do Europe twice a month for a couple of years just for the weekend. And I didn't mention anything to work because they don't need to know what I'm doing over the weekend. It's your own time. It's my own time. But I was damn right. I was in the office Monday when you needed me, albeit I was exhausted, but you know, I was there.
Yeah. But that was really the big catalyst for me, you know, going to Berlin and then just being reinspired about music in a live music setting. And that sort of started to alter the course of my career in a pretty significant way. So walk us through kind of what was going on in your head. Yeah, you get to go to Europe, you're checking out a lot of cool concerts, but you still got this really great job in New York, right?
So tell me kind of like, and maybe you haven't done this that often publicly live in front of everybody, but like what was going on in your head? Because you're like, okay, cool, I like music, and I'm going to Europe because I love music, right? But like what else was going on? Were you thinking, hey, I think I should do something in the music space?
Like tell me how that kind of evolved like and how long that took to kind of like finally It years and honestly it wasn't it wasn't something I could do myself. Because I started traveling a lot for music, this was like 02/2009, thousand and nine, ten, eleven, twelve and my travels got more and more intense as to where I went. I mean, I was going to Japan for the weekend. Mean, I was doing some unbelievable stuff, stuff that maybe no man has ever done.
In either case, at some point, a couple years into it, I'm like, this is really cool. I love this industry. I love the community. Clearly this culture is very well suited for me. Maybe there's a way to work in this industry. And then I started questioning like, okay, if I did work in the industry of music entertainment, in what capacity would I do it? Know, am I going to quit my lucrative banking job to be a DJ, you know, to be an artist manager, to be a label manager?
You know, the first thing that crossed my mind is that my mom's gonna flip. Yeah, she's gonna freak out. She's gonna think that I totally went AWOL and I have lost my mind. So that was the first consideration. So it took me a couple of years to really figure out you know, what would make sense for me to do. Yeah, what was the low hanging fruit? Was it events? Was it like being a The low hanging fruit in terms of a new opportunity for me?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, the low hanging fruit to kind of think about how you can transition because you mentioned a few things, right? You said like possibly doing events, being, you know, being an actual creator and like learning how to compose or something or so like what were like the first maybe low hanging fruit was literally just to start learning to DJ. Oh, okay. And I'll tell you around that time, I bought turntables on eBay.
I got a great deal and I just when I was home, was on YouTube every day after work, learning myself how to play. Then I started doing gigs around New York City. So I sort of had this like other side to me, would work really, really hard during the day. And I would be a creator performing in a live performance setting around different venues in New York City. You know, I'm grateful to be a performance, you know, perform at some of the top venues in New York.
Yeah. But you look at maybe David Solomon pretty much, right? Yeah, that is well accomplished. But you know, in way it just was sort of following your passion. But I sort of was thinking like, that's all great to be a DJ, but it's a pretty saturated market. And that takes a whole, it's a whole like commitment if I want to take it And, you know, lo and behold, you know, I met this guy in in Ibiza in 02/2012, who's my current business partner today. This this gentleman named Richie Houghton.
And, you know, he really blew my mind because he's one of the progress most progressively minded technologists in the music industry. And he's been involved in some of the leading sort of technology companies. He's been involved in some of the the leading sort of, you know, thought you know, thoughtfulness on where the music industry should go as it's shaped increasingly by the integration of technology and influenced by technology.
And, you know, I started touring with him a couple of times here and there, and we became really, really good friends. And it wasn't until October of twenty thirteen where he introduced me to his first business partner that dates back to the first time they started a record label out of Detroit when techno first started. And it was a gentleman named John Aquaviva. Both are Canadian and both came out of Ontario.
And they sort of connected around the time that, you know, there was a new musical movement coming out of Detroit called Techno. And they started a label called Plus Eight Records. Name sound familiar? You know, Our Front is named after Plus Eight. And the name plus eight is derived from the Technic 1,200 turntables. So when you would change the playback of the record, you could you can move it from minus eight to plus eight to change the pitch on the record.
So when you played something at plus eight, it made pushing the parameters to the limit playing a record as fast as it could. So it was about the evolution of music through technology. That was the theme. And that's what embodied Plus eight as a record label. And, you know, they had a lot of success in the 90s.
And, when I met John in October of 'thirteen, I was blown away about the fact that he started doing angel investing at that sort of cusp of that change of the music industry from analog to digital. So when that paradigm shift from analog to digital happened, you had to really throw away the economics of the traditional music industry and reinvent your business with digital revenue streams.
And the techno guys, surprise being the most progressively minded about technology, embraced the technology. They embraced the future. And, you know, when I met him, you know, he started telling me about all the investments they were doing at the time when that century went into the digital world. And there were two notable ones that he was responsible for. So the first one was a technology called Final Scratch.
So if you ever see the laptop in the DJ booth, that was discovered by my partner to get DJs comfortable playing digital files. And this was around the era of iTunes. Now the challenge for our community is like, that's cool that you can play digital files. But where do you get the music? Because we're not playing Miley Cyrus or Buena Mars. We're playing esoteric records coming from independent music labels from Romania, from New York, from London, from Paris.
And so they founded and invested in a company called Beatport out of Denver. And Beatport's still one of the most, you know, foundational platforms for bringing together the community around around new music for for electronic music. And so, you know, they had invested that in 02/2004. John had sat on the board, and they grew that to about 50 or 60,000,000 in sales. They had an offer from a then public company called SFX. They sold the business and they were liquid.
It was right around the time that I met John. When he approached me, it's like, look, we've been investing in the space for entertainment tech for the last ten to fifteen years. We had a huge exit and we'd like to keep supporting our industry and investing in it. Now, the big problem that we have is building syndicates of investors is challenging because music people are not very reliable. You know, they're often pretty flaky and they do things on a very ad hoc manner.
And I'm scratching my head as a Wall Street guy, it's like this is so stupid. Why don't you guys just start a committed fund that's completely focused on deploying capital in entertainment tech of which music technology should be a pillar? And he responded, I have no idea how to do that. And at which point I responded, step into my office, let's talk. And the rest is kind of history.
That was really the first conversation that we had around the idea of bringing Plus8 Records into the new paradigm as an investment fund to support creators in the entertainment space? Yeah, so I had Andrew Jarusz from XPV Ventures. He works for Kevin Hart. He also manages heartbeat venture. He was telling me a little bit about just kind of how the entertainment ecosystem is and how they think about investing, And you've also built some deep connections in the music space.
Obviously, some of the big names that you and I have mentioned. I'm not sure if we're allowed to mention them, but you know some of those well known artists. They're also building their own firms and deploying capital. So tell me how they're thinking about their career, right? Is there an identity crisis where they don't want to be musicians for the rest of their life and they also want to kind of have other baskets where they also become investors and they also want to invest in tech.
Guess maybe just from a high level, maybe just tell me kind of like where their thought process is in terms of how they wanna evolve their it's a couple of things and that's a really good question. You know, there seems to have been a trend in the last couple of years of high profile celebrity types, whether you're a musician or an actor or an athlete to get more involved in the investment game.
I think part of it is an identity crisis, as you sort of eloquently put specific to, you know, what I interpret that is, you know, I can't do this forever. You know, I've got sort of my, you know, call it fifteen years of fame or whatever it might be. But, know, when I'm older, I need something that I can fall back on. Right? Sort of like an athlete. Yeah. I think that's an element to it.
But I think a bigger element to it, to be honest, Joel, is that a lot of these guys are freaking out because everyone else is doing it. Especially, you know, if you sort of get an insight into the way like LA culture works, it's very much that like, oh, that musicians, they started a fund, how come I don't have a fund? You know, I need to get involved. It's a little bit of a It's a little bit of a FOMO is an understatement. I think it's a very much a FOMO. That's a very big part of it.
Yeah. So I think that's been an impetus for a lot of people in the entertainment issue to come, you know, full circle on the investment. Now challenge here, Joel, is that their artist managers haven't a clue how to do it. They are professionals that know how to manage an artist. Includes building his brand. That includes setting up the tours and working with the eighties. Various projects around new album releases, whether it be brand partnerships, etcetera, etcetera. They don't have a clue.
Throw him 10 startups and you say, hey, which one should I invest in? They don't have a clue. They're not qualified for that. Guys aren't HBS grads. And so we started What I've seen with like Serena Ventures and some of these other athletes and celebrities, I think they've retained talent, like maybe someone who used to be a GP at a fund or someone that worked in private equity. And that person, and I think that's what happened with some of the people I've spoken to.
So they just find the talent to kind of help to deploy capital and then the musicians and the artists obviously they have the brand to kind of back that. Yes, that's very much what's happening. We're seeing that more with the big athletes than bigger musicians. You're not seeing like Metallica do this. You're not really seeing like Aerosmith. You're not really seeing some of the bigger hip hop guys do this.
Some of them are, but, you know, like a Kevin Durant, you know, he's got his own got his own fun, you know, Serena, know, also it helps that she's married to Alexis Ohanian, and he's a tech entrepreneur, he understands the investment game. So with the athletes, it's much more panning out and unfolding in that manner. But I would say on the music side, it's still kind of nascent. It's happening here and here at an ad hoc basis.
And we kind of saw, well, there's a niche here for plus eight to start bringing together some of these A list of guys, both on the DJ side or pop music side. And again, I want to be respectful of their names. So I'm not going to publicly disclose them on this call.
But like, they sort of said, like, you guys are doing this twenty fourseven, your whole job is to evaluate the ecosystem of deal flow, we want in, you know, and if there's a deal that, you know, you really like, you know, would you tell us about it? Like, yeah, absolutely. We'd love to get you involved.
Do you want to do it, you know, outside of the fund, you know, it's, We give those, our own LPs almost like a right of first refusal to get into the deals with us, and we support So we carved out a really unique business model that we just hadn't seen before in the entertainment space at that time. And it's worked out really, really well, you know, now that we're sort of nine years deep. Yeah, know that's really and I think there's two options, right?
So there's options for people to get an index of deals through just kind of investing in your fund, you know, as an LP and the benefits of that is number one, the education, the community of other like minded LPs. So I think those are the benefits of being an LP, right? Just meeting other people that you didn't know that do definitely have a level of sophistication. And then also, you know, optionality to also usually as a perk, there's optionality to co invest.
And then I think if you can, you can also, I think strategically for fund managers, they can spin off many SPVs just to get some interest and get some activity going with some people that are not LPs yet. I feel like SPVs are almost a lead gen to kind of get that interest and help people understand the industry, understand your investing style, and also know about these different types of opportunities. It's kind of a win win.
And then I think another model which I've seen is some people may just want to white label their brand and just have like a fund as a service. Know, they don't have the time or expertise. You said, their manager has never managed money. Know, they can get, they can get, you know, 10,000 people in a room for a concert, but they haven't deployed capital.
So, know, having somebody be their fund as a service, I think it'd be really cool, especially if it's a fund that is in that industry and really knows the sector and then also has a network of all the other musicians and like minded LPs. Yep. Yep. Absolutely spot on. I think all of those various models are coming to fruition at people's comfort level. Right? And at people's sort of, you know, ability to allocate time and resources to whatever model and also people's capabilities.
So it's a couple of pieces to that. And I think what something that people overlook is the investment game isn't just deploying the capital. The majority of my time is, okay, now that I've sent the check, now what? How do I manage this asset and how do I ultimately get a return on it? So I spent so much of my time at board meetings, opening up the network for our portfolio companies, helping to broker partnerships, helping them to connect with prospective investors.
And now that we're sort of in a phase where we're getting a lot of strategic interest, helping to broker the sale or liquidity event for these companies, right? That's a whole process. And let me tell you, that's such a advantage that you have. I mean, you essentially can like literally take somebody to exit, I mean, through probably your past contacts, then just your knowledge of that, the mechanics that.
Because a lot of times VCs probably, especially emerging managers, they've never gone down that road. You've done that time and time again in your past life. I feel like that's a huge asset that you have, like personally. It's a massive asset that we have because we have all the M and A capabilities in house. Not only do we have it in house, we know who all the buyers are in our space because we're on first name basis with the presidents and CEOs of the top companies out there.
So, it's sort of like, it's a really, really elegant model that we sort of stumbled upon through sort of trial and error, but it's worked really, really well for us. And I think it's worth mentioning that, you know, in the last couple of years, as the music industry has become more than music and started to intersect with gaming, putting Travis Scott into Fortnite, intersect with health and wellness, music's become much more than music.
And so we've slowly expanded the scope of our fund to encapsulate these other opportunities. And now we're sort of looking at music tech, gaming, creator economy, consumer tech, and then more recently very aggressively at web three applications into entertainment. All this stuff is sort of fair game for us, even though the DNA and the foundation of what we started with was music tech, music has become more than music and we to embrace that and we continue to do so.
Yeah, like my initial thoughts on music tech, I mean, was a company that I looked at like maybe three, four years ago and what it would do is it would digitally remaster music automatically, where normally you'd have to send it to somebody to kind of remaster music, but it would use some AI. So maybe just in the pure music industry sector, can you talk about just some innovations? Then, know, we the previous guest that just came on, you know, we started going deep on GPT-three, right?
So now there's a whole generative AI. I mean, so couple things I would say is you know the music mastery was really interesting. But now what's crazy is you know there's technology out there where if somebody you know I do have hours and hours of content. So if somebody were to synthesize all of my audio for probably maybe I don't know twenty hours worth, you could probably take any song and like have me rap to it without me there.
There was a guy, I don't know you know Sam Parr, but he's like a redheaded Caucasian guy. He runs the podcast, My First Millionaire. And there was a Biggie Small song that like had him rap to the Biggie song, but it was completely AI. So like it took hours and hours of listening to his audio. I think at some point there's going to be songs that are completely generated like through AI.
And I think, and I don't know if you're like really bullish on that, but just in the generative AI space, I think you can I think you can, like, compose songs and then also, like, have people be on features and, like, be guest rappers when they never actually did rap? Yeah. Yeah. Look. I I think the the foundational comment behind everything you just said was and is how do you democratize the creator with tools to to make to elevate his abilities. Right?
How do you make it so you know, I just create a song. I don't have the financial means to pay someone 300 to $3,000 to get it mastered, but is there an AI solution that is able to do it? Yes, there is. In fact, we're investing one out of Montreal called Lander, which are sort of the number one name of the game sort of technology platform around AI mastering, but also creator tools for musicians. To your comment, what are some of the stuff that we're involved in around purely music?
Some of our first investments were this, then the market was sort of at that stage before it's sort of diving into this intersection and convergence of music and gaming and so forth. But at that point, when we had launched our fund, we are investing in companies like Slice, which is at a series D now and Landr, which is a leader in the market. I mean, these are the leading tools that creators are using generated huge amounts of revenue right now in a way that we never thought possible.
Democratizing the creator, you know, doing things on a, you know, call it call it a subscription basis to provide samples or tools to allow people to create music. So it's really, really exciting. Further to your comment about AI music, I absolutely think very much so that that's the direction things are headed. There's a lot of interesting platforms that are helping musicians in interesting ways.
They're sort of AI generating melodies, AI generating beats, and you can put in some human input that allow you to sort of make it customized to suit your own creative abilities or your creative direction rather. So it's a very, very exciting time. But again, that's very much siloed into the creator for music. It's not a massive, massive market, which is why we did a few handful investments.
But we've looked more broadly about how music, you know, AI is touching like health and wellness, for example, or, you know, how music is touching the automotive sector. We're trying to think much bigger picture about music applications into the broader global ecosystem. Yeah, and then I would say like just as a music fan, something that I've been really excited to see is more ad hoc music. So I don't know if you know Marc Rebier, I think he's in Texas.
He pretty much just does everything in prop. Like he'll come in, he'll create a melody and then loop it, and then he'll create a and then he sings and raps on top of it. But every single performance is completely unique. And I started seeing Ed Sheeran do this too. So Ed Sheeran, a lot of his songs, he'll actually, he's done some cool stuff with loops. So he'll actually create a beat and it's like a loop. And then on top of that loop, he'll do like a guitar strum.
And then that's kind of like the chorus. So I've been seeing a lot of cool stuff like that just now as live content is more spontaneous and like ad hoc versus kind of like playing your typical album that you've had. So I don't know if you've I don't know if you've seen that a lot, but like I've started to see that a lot with like just live live content, but I know if that's kind of a trend or if that's just more of just a one off with like some musicians doing that. I think it is a trend.
I think in the context of live performance, the new generation of music gets much more adept to start using software and hardware in the context of their live performances. So yes, they still use the guitar and they have a drummer and all of these other things, but they're using also Ableton, they're also using some sort of hardware that has a controller around the digital audio workstation.
So it starts to get more sophisticated and elegant and bending the parameters and extending the parameters of what you traditionally thought possible. So it's a very, very exciting time, I think, for musicians, not just in the studio, but on stage as well. Yeah, no, I totally agree. Well, I know we got ten minutes left. So, you know, if anybody in the audience has questions, we can try to tackle those.
And, know, in the meantime, maybe you can just share as we wrap up, maybe just share kind of a life lesson. I mean, you've shared so many. And it looks like we got one or two questions in here. But maybe just a life lesson that you've learned from a mentor. You've met so many amazing people that have influenced your life, but just kind of looking back, what's kind of a life lesson? I think one of them is really just not ignoring what gets you excited and you know that feeling that you get.
So that passion, But like what else? What else is maybe a life lesson? So that's definitely at the top. Number two, stay humble is a big one. And number three, one of the guiding principles for me have been get really good at something, put in your 20,000, 30,000, 50,000, and then apply it to something you love, if you can. And that way, you are the ninja in your market. And, you know, for me, it happened almost serendipitously, right?
You know, getting really good at finance, having a lot of transaction appearance, but I was like, man, I can apply it to music. I just didn't know how at the time, but I figured that out. Yeah. You know, and I was tenacious about it. And here I am. Yeah, no, I totally agree. I think to break into VC, you know, there's so many parallel roles that support a fund. Like, if you're good at accounting, you can do some fund admin for VC. If you're good at sales, you could do fundraising.
So you know, you may not directly be in an investing role in the beginning, but you can use some of those superpowers to kind of at least be in industry. And then you you may just be one seat away from someone who is on the investing team and you never know. Maybe there's someone that just departed the firm and there is an open head count and you can just kind of take, you know, because you've known the industry and the company so well, that's kind of an easy way to jump in.
So, yeah, and I'll tell you, there is a trend right now for funds to get more sector specific and get more specialized because, you know, they're the ones that can defend their value proposition. The jack of all trades, the major behemoth mega funds, that is so competitive, that's not even a space I'd even want to get into right? Because there's so much capital and it's utterly saturated, but in our space, there's not that many guys that can do what we do.
We know our space so well, we know all the guys in it and we were sort of the first guys doing it in our space. And it lo and behold, what was originally a niche market sort of blew up. And so we're pretty well positioned, you know, moving into the next couple of years. It's a very, very exciting time. That's amazing. And I guess we had one more question, then I guess we can wrap up. So Mason, you had a question on entrepreneurship through acquisition? Yeah. Hi, Rishi.
Hey. It was an amazing discussion. Thanks for sharing your experience. My pleasure. Came from the startup background. I'm part of the VC fellowship program at Southern Capital, so I'm kind of building my way into the PEVC world. I was just curious, what are your knowing things that you know today, what are the three tips that you have for some emerging entrepreneurs that they're trying to become entrepreneur through acquisition as opposed to like building startups?
Yeah, I mean, you know, that's a good question. You know, I would say number one, know your space. Network like crazy. And then I would say surround yourself by a great team that you will learn from. And it is sort of broad, but those are principles that have really guided me through my career in any capacity. So I wish you the best of luck and always here if you want to reach out to me, if you want to chat offline, I'm happy to give sort of my two cents on that more deeper level. Absolutely.
I'll reach out to you on LinkedIn. Absolutely. Yeah, feel free anytime. Cool. Well, Rishi, thank you so much for your time. Really appreciate it and all that you do and excited to hear you know the journey that you had. Think we definitely went a lot deeper than our discussion, but hope to catch up soon. Thanks for coming out. A couple of weeks ago, and I'll have to come out to Miami soon. You bet. If anyone's in South Florida, give me a shout. I would love to grab a coffee.
Thank you for the time, Joe. I had a great time.