00:00I do want to talk about we were kind of talking about this course with the SpaceX IPO and all
00:03these other gigantic IPOs that are coming to market and the idea that these are relatively
00:07mature companies. Yep. And the idea of like whether all of the real gains or, you know,
00:12not forever, but certainly some of the bigger gains have already sort of been made in the
00:17private space. And that, of course, has a lot of folks kind of wondering, OK, am I missing out on
00:23something? I don't I mean, I know you run a platform to help people get into that private
00:27space. But does it matter? I mean, I know I mean, SpaceX is SpaceX. Either you believe in its long
00:31term story or not. Has value been lost by the fact that so much of that value was created in
00:37the
00:37private space? I think it's different. Right. I mean, I think ultimately from the days of E-Trade, you saw
00:42companies going to going public much earlier. There was a real focus on trying to be able to access the
00:48public markets on the thesis that, you know, was a cheaper form of capital. I think a lot of that
00:53has
00:53gone by the wayside. And many companies are choosing to remain private indefinitely or certainly
00:58much more mature, which is exactly what you're describing. And so a lot of the wealth creation
01:03occurs even during that private phase. But ultimately, I think you're right. SpaceX and others,
01:09it doesn't matter. Anthropic, any of them open AI. I think at the end of the day, if you have
01:14a solid
01:15business model and you continue to execute, my experience in running a public company was the stock
01:19eventually takes care of itself. Well, I'm curious, too, about that thing. In the private space,
01:24certainly in the older day, I'm sure it's changed a lot. But the idea was that most of the investors
01:28in those in those spaces were investing at the earlier stages. And thus, you were taking on bigger
01:34risk. But if you hit big, you really hit big. As you see more individual investors come into this
01:40space here, what is kind of the breakdown of what they're looking at? Are they looking at the mature
01:46private companies or are they looking more towards companies that are a little bit younger?
01:50You know, I think honestly, our job at least is to try to give choice. Right. And so the idea
01:56would
01:57simply be you can look at a more mature company. So somebody who's pre IPO, to your point, there could
02:03be quite large. And therefore, they've had a run up in value already through a series of series A, B,
02:08C,
02:08D, E, F, whatever it may be. And then our job is also to find really interesting opportunities in
02:14private markets that may stay private indefinitely. Right. So it could be in private credit. It could
02:19be in private real estate. It could be any host of asset classes that ultimately I think the real goal
02:26is to
02:26try to help an investor very much like we did at E-Trade in the public markets. Here it's in
02:31the private
02:31markets. How do you build a truly diversified portfolio? Let's talk about choice when it comes to, you know, means
02:37of
02:37access to private shares, because especially in the run up to SpaceX's IPO, you saw this proliferation,
02:44this real uptick in interest when it came to SPV, special purpose vehicles. But I mean, you think
02:50about SPVs, there's a lot of legitimate questions there about layered fees, about how much exposure
02:56they actually have. So how are you navigating some of that? Because it does get very murky.
03:01Yeah, I agree completely. I mean, I think really the fundamental issue is that access to those,
03:09listen, all the way back to the days when I was running E-Trade, access to many of those stocks
03:13is really been reserved for institutions and the various wealthiest individuals. And so people who
03:19want to be able to access it often can't get it. And so now what is happening is the creation
03:24of the
03:25SPVs in a way in which it can give you access. Is it the ideal choice? I don't know.
03:31You know, I think to be played out, I think there is something to be said for an SPV that's
03:36created
03:37and it has slices of different private companies that are going to go public in a way in which you
03:43can maybe perhaps create a more diversified portfolio or diversified offering.
03:48And when it comes to, you know, to a diversified portfolio, I wonder, you know, how you should
03:52approach thinking about including privates. Does it make sense, you know, where you look at a
03:57portfolio and you say, OK, I have a private portion and I have a public portion or,
04:00you know, does it make more sense to be like, I have an equity portion, some of it is private,
04:05some of it is public, same goes for fixed income. Yeah, I think you're asking the right question.
04:10I suspect that what you will see in time, I've always believed this, is a convergence of the two
04:15where you end up either on one single platform or through technology can connect so you have a
04:22holistic view of your ownership, right? Like you see, this is my portfolio. Within it,
04:27here's what's public, here's what's private, here's what's in equity, here's what's in fixed income.
04:32And how do I create a truly balanced portfolio doing that?
04:35I just saw we're in conversation right now with Mitch Kaplan, the CEO over at Willow Wealth. I do
04:40just want to bring to the attention of our viewers. We are awaiting that pricing on SK Hynix and it
04:44does
04:44look like we have it. The shares now being offered at $149 each, roughly in line with what Bloomberg
04:51reporters had reported out in the run up to this. We'll get back to that story in just a second
04:57as
04:57that continues to cross the wire. And Mitch, I do want to go back to this idea of the transition
05:01of
05:01private companies into public markets and the issue of regulation and whether the regulatory
05:08environment is going to be supportive and not just of private into public, but also what you're talking
05:12about too, the idea that you do have this private space that may stay private and the access of
05:17individual investors and whether you think that the regulatory environment here in the U.S., is it
05:22supportive of that now? And if so, will it continue to be? Yeah, I feel there's a real level of
05:27support. I think that ultimately from a regulatory perspective, they want to see consumers have
05:32choice. They want to see consumers have access. Right. And so the issue for me when I made the initial
05:40investment in our family office into Willow, it was really because I believed it was creating that level of
05:46access that had occurred when we were building E-Trade. Right. It was the idea of could you make
05:51available to retail consumers, albeit accredited and qualified purchasers, but that's who we serve,
05:58but make available to them options that just didn't exist in the broader market. And so I do think
06:04that the regulators see the value in that. And the best way to protect is obviously through education.
06:10And that accredited investor status, I wonder, you know, whether you think that that is still the
06:16gold standard, that should be the bar, because you think about this push to really open up private
06:21markets down the wealth spectrum into retail. You know, it just seems like the tide is shifting a
06:26little bit. I agree. And I think that often when you talk about whether it's a qualified purchaser or
06:31accredited investor, what you're really, I think, trying to navigate is, do they have enough wealth
06:38to be able to endure a loss, right? Because private markets, there's risk associated with them,
06:43just like there is in public markets. And so that doesn't mean that they have the psychographic
06:49profiling in a way that they're really sophisticated, right? So you have lots of investors who would
06:55qualify as accredited or qualified purchasers, but yet really need to be educated in the space and really
07:01be able to use technology in a way to guide them to make better choices.
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