This week we look back at some of the highlights of past interviews with some of the biggest Venture Capitalist that have been on the show
SC Moatti is a technology visionary and investor.
She is the founding partner of Mighty Capital, a Silicon Valley venture capital firm, and Products That Count, one of the largest and certainly the most influential network of product managers in the world.
Ravi Belani
He is the Managing Director of the Alchemist Accelerator which is a venture-backed initiative focused on accelerating startups whose revenue comes from enterprises (not consumers). The accelerator backs teams with distinctive technical founders. He is also a Lecturer, Fenwick & West Educator of Entrepreneurship at Stanford University where for the past 8 years he co-teaches The Spirit of Entrepreneurship, an undergrad/grad survey course on entrepreneurship
Nick Moran is the General Partner at New Stack Ventures. Prior to New Stack, Nick worked for Danaher (NYSE: DHR). After a few years in M&A, Nick led breakthrough innovation, developing one of the most successful products in the company’s history — an IoT solution w/ a novel method for testing compounds in drinking water. In addition to investing, Nick founded the 1st Venture Capital podcast, The Full Ratchet.
Aman Johar, Proteum Capital
Over the last 12 years, Aman has worked with a variety of startups and has been on both sides of the entrepreneur-investor table. With a background in strategy, operations, and deal-making, Aman focusses on blockchain applications and the supporting ecosystem including expertise in the business and regulatory implications of tokenizing assets. He is a strategic advisor to executives and boards on creating new business models for fintech, media and entertainment, and identity management to name a few recent engagements. Currently, Aman is a mentor at the Singularity University and a board member at KeraCel, a solid-state battery company. Previously, Aman co-founded Applied Protein which was acquired by Pivot Pharma. He holds a B.Tech in Electrical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, BAHU and an MBA from the Tepper School of Business at Carnegie Mellon where he was named a Swartz Fellow for entrepreneurship. In his spare time, Aman enjoys teaching photography to his kids.
Shawn Flynn 0:00
On this week’s episode of the Silicon Valley podcast, we go back to some past episodes where we interviewed some startup founders, and found out some of the tips and tricks and suggestions that they have out there to help other entrepreneurs. Now, right now, we’re doing this, we’re having a couple of throwback episodes for this next month. But behind the scenes, we’re redoing the website, we’re redoing a lot of things, and we’re gonna have some big announcements coming forward. So get prepared to hear some amazing news moving forward. All right, now, let’s start the show. Enjoy.
Announcer 0:32
Welcome to the Silicon Valley podcast with your host, Shawn Flynn, who interviews famous entrepreneurs, venture capitalists and leaders in tech, learn their secrets and see tomorrow’s world today.
Shawn Flynn 0:50
You mentioned that one third of the unicorn companies are invested in by top 10 venture capitalists’ funds, I believe, what advantages does an investment from all these top 10 funds give that one third versus two thirds that that don’t get it?
Ravi Belani 1:07
Yeah, good question. And I should clarify, the stat I believe is that if you look at the top returning investments, it doesn’t necessarily mean that those are investments became unicorns, it’s just the companies that the investments that returned the most capital as on a per investment basis, because you could have a company that doesn’t become a unicorn, that’s a huge multiple if you if the investor investors at a relatively low valuation, and then you can have unicorn investments that are like fancy names, but that ultimately don’t return a lot of capital. Because the investors invest at such a high valuation. This stat was that 35% of the highest returning investments are only done, the top funds and 65% are missing. The advantages, I think there’s a lot of variance across with different VC funds do. The first thing that I should say is, is that I don’t view venture capital in general, as a monolithic industry. I think the analogy is more that’s like a bunch of little mafias, because each of these brands, at the end of the day is usually rarely more than five core real general partners that are really involved with the real economics of the fund. And they have their own philosophies and their own ways that they deliver value, a good fund will be providing a lot more than capital. And usually what they talk about is that a good fund will be providing a network that you’ll be able to help support and build the company in terms of talent, and customers, and key strategic engagements and an individual partner that can serve as a proxy coach or coach and a confidant for the CEO, and CIO. And different firms will lay their services and values out in different ways. In my experience, the biggest value for venture capital funds, traditionally there are going to be exceptions to this is for hiring and for fundraising. And by that what I mean is, is that in our experience of alchemists when it comes to customers, very few customers actually know the names of a lot of funds in Silicon Valley, they might know some of the funds like I think Andreessen Horowitz has a good brand and, and some of the others, but many very prominent funds, many mainstream customers or even customers that are in your domain will have no idea who those who those people are, where I think there is value is, is that when you’re raising your next round, if you’re doing well, if your company is breaking out, no investors gonna care who your previous institutional investor was, they just gonna want to jump in and invest in you. And so it’s not going to be necessary or needed. And likewise, if things are going incredibly badly, but if you’re in purgatory, and if things are sort of flat, and then the having a brand name, VC can be very helpful to have other investors that will just trust the face of that brand name, VC and follow on because of that VCs track record. So I think that’s one traditional way that where most VCs that have a good brand can add value. And the second way is the branding itself can help attract talent, it’s not that the VCs will necessarily find the engineers or whoever that you need to hire. But being able to have the branding, can give confidence for engineers to join the firm. And so I think those are the two, I think, VCs are gonna pound their chests and say that they add value in a lot of different ways. But in my experience, those are ultimately the two things that I think most value that actually accrues to founders, in terms of what actually happens. Having said that, there are VCs that have done a phenomenal job of actually building real support operating systems for their portfolio companies. And I think that is funds like Andreessen Horowitz, first round capital, few others, where they have whole teams that are there to help in more dedicated ways do business development and sales and, and talent acquisition. You know, I think when you’re fundraising, what you’re getting from a VC is money, governance and support or Money Making the cash that they’re putting in governance because they’re usually going to be serving on your board. So they’re going to be having a governance function. And then they’ll be having advice and support, you don’t need all three of those things to come from the same source, you could have your money be raised by people that are going to give you the best valuation or terms or that understand your space, you could have independent board members that you can bring on to provide the governance function, and you can hire independent advisors or firms to help support you. And that might be better than trying to give up a lot of economics just to one VC, if the VC is not terribly great. If you do have a VC that has a great track record than that, they will more than pay for that for themselves. And usually, the biggest way that they come into play is not through day to day work. But through your strategic transactions. When it comes to acquisitions or getting acquired, when it comes to your next round of fundraising, the VC can play a very critical role or hiring a key hire, the VC can step in very strategically and add value, the one thing that I do want to impart is, the real way to know if a VC is going to be valuable is not to look at the VCs, or an accelerator. So this also applies to alchemist is not to listen to what I say, or what the event of the VC GP says or to look at their site. But it’s to call up other founders that have been funded by that entity. And to have them give you honest feedback on their experience with that founder. And if you are thinking about getting a check from a VC, make sure to ask for them to give you references for ideally founders where things worked out financially, and founders where things did not work out financially. And call those founders out. And ask those founders for references to the names of other founders that the VCs didn’t give you. And try to make sure that you get a real snapshot of how that VC is, even if that VC is terrific. You want to get that feedback in terms of advice on how to manage your board. And any advice that the founders have, who are already a year more ahead of you on how they would advise you to have the relationship with the VC and also how to take advantage of the VC so that they’re good calls to do regardless, even if you know you’re going to take the check from the funder, the accelerator.
Shawn Flynn 7:08
You’re also an advisor for many companies, when you’re an advisor, what does that relationship look like? Are you given that same advice you just gave right now to them? What does that look like?
Ravi Belani 7:18
As an accelerator, it’s a weird role between being a VC and an advisor, because I am not on your board. But in many ways, I can be more trusted than a board member because you don’t have to worry about me firing you, I’m just going to be there to give you advice. I want to give general advice when it comes to advisors. So people that if you are looking to bring on advisors in general, my advice is, is that we find that there’s very little correlation between how much you get out of an advisor and how much equity you give them. What is correlated is whether or not they have invested in the company. So if an advisor invests in the company, they will, in our experience be much more helpful. And also, if you’re very structured in creating a plan with that advisor on what they’re going to work on. So what we advise our alchemists companies, when it comes to advisors to do is, if you see somebody who wants to help out, ask them, Hey, what do you think you can do for me? And if you want, you can say, Hey, here’s my top needs right now. What do you think you can do for me have the advisor tell you what they can do. And then put milestones, specific deliverables against the things that they say they can do. So if they say, Hey, I can help introduce you to customers, or I can help refine your fundraising pitch deck or I can help you find talent and then put numbers against that say, Okay, I want to get 10 customer intros are I want to have like my pitch deck be revised until I start to get second meetings, or things like that, and then decide how much equity you need to give the advisor. And honestly, it’s the least that you need to get away with. And we can talk about numbers if that’s necessary. But we don’t want you to set up an advisor or engagement, which is a long time engagement like two years or four years because of that engagement is not working out. And it’s very difficult for you as the founder to call the advisor up and cut the arrangement, it’s easier if you just have a shorter term arrangement, like three months or six months, and then you can just renew it if things are working out. So scale down the equity to the least that you need to give and then have half of the equity vest over time as a good faith gesture, and have the other half be earned based upon having that advisor earn specific milestones or deliverables. And that way, if they don’t execute, you only are giving a path of the equity and there’s also a natural structured plan that you’ve put in place about what exactly you’re using that advisor for. Generally, if you’re on a board of a post series seed series, a company on the board will probably give you 2% of total equity of the company or around 10% of your option pool to be allocated to advisors. If you’re a pre funding, I would say assume that you have 4% of equity that you can distribute to advisors and that’s assuming the advisors are working for two years. So just going to be working with you for a year. Assuming of 2% of equity that you need to distribute across all of your advisors, and then put these plans in place where half of it vests over time and half of its based upon milestones. So that’s like just tactical advice I
Shawn Flynn 10:12
SC when you’re looking at a company, what do you like to see in a company, or for to be maybe part of your portfolio one day?
SC Moatti 10:20
Yeah, it’s actually pretty simple. We’re looking for a company that has already found product market fit. So they are in that second stage of growth that I was describing earlier. And they have a very, very strong leadership team. For us, the team is super important. And a clear go to market strategy. Now that’s at the high level. So if you’re an entrepreneur, you read a company you already have, say, like 610 customers, they are happy, and you’re looking to go from kind of good to great, you want to accelerate your growth, we’re perfect fit for you. And we’ll add a lot of value through those 300,000 product managers, whether it’s for the purpose of selling or hiring, or some other things. Now, at a more detailed level, right? When we go into our diligence, this is how we go about it, we look at what I call the entrepreneur dream story. And it goes like this, we are a unique team, like tell us what makes your team unique. solving a big and hard problem. Big and hard, as in, show us the numbers, but also make us feel the problem emotionally, like why is it so painful? solving a big and hard problem with a sustainably differentiated solution? What do I mean by sustainably differentiated Well, when you start to get traction with your product, your big competitors and your small competitors are both going to copy exactly what you’re doing, how do you still win in a situation like this, and we monetize our solution fairly. Like again, there’s this idea of fairness, if you are fair to your customers, you will keep them if not like you will have trouble and churn. So we monetize it fairly. And as a result of that we have very promising financials. But to get there, we need money. And that’s, you know, your asked to us. But we plan to return that money and much more in a reasonable timeframe. So that entrepreneur story is very simple story, right is very, again, simplified. But you get the idea, right? It answers some of the key questions that we as investors are looking for in in any company, if you’re able to articulate that story to us, and then we’re becoming really interested in the opportunity. And we’ll do a due diligence. Due diligence process is meant to understand whether we can have a long term relationship with you, we’ll have multiple touch points, we’ll ask you some questions about your product and interaction, your team, your financials, is a fit with us how you see us working together, and then we’ll talk to your other investors to some customers, some of your employees will do a site visit. And this really is meant for us to understand like when we work with that team. And then once we have conviction that this is a great business, a great team at large, not just the CEO, but also like I said, investors, customers employees, and then we’ll be very interested to come to the table and negotiate a great deal for us and for you.
Shawn Flynn 13:18
So what really excites you about the future the next few years in tech in the valley?
SC Moatti 13:24
Yeah, that’s a really interesting question. Because the way I think about it is in terms of platforms of data. So right now, we’re still building pretty much everything that makes it out makes it through on top of the mobile data, body of data. So I define it as everything that’s outside of us. But right now, what we’re seeing is there’s a ton of great innovation built on top of the genomic body of data. And I use genomics very loosely, it’s basically everything inside of us. So think of it as is our genome, but also like our dental footprint or eyesight, or fingerprints, anything that is inside of us. And if you apply the technologies that have been developed on top of the mobile body of data, to the genomic body of data, you get some incredible innovations. We have some in our portfolio, like fabric genomics, whose co-founder is the founder of Illumina and a few others. And so that’s something that I see you know, really emerge now. And then the third body of data, which I think is super early, but it’s very promising is the blockchain body of data. And this body of data is going to capture, I believe, every information about companies’ contract financing, so it’s a business body of data. And if you think about it, like you were asking me earlier, like, oh funds have these constraints about like their lengths and their setup and IPO and Windows, and this is just really market inefficiencies well if you are going to put all Shares all the equity of every company on a blockchain and you say, hey, rather than go public, like why don’t you buy a little piece of my equity here on this blockchain? Basically, what you do is you eliminate all of that friction, you eliminate the IPO process, you eliminate the m&a process, you eliminate the constraints of like fun liquidity, what have you, you basically are able to buy small pieces of every company on the planet, pretty much anytime, right? And so that’s going to take a long time to build. It’s really not ready for primetime. But I think it’s a very exciting opportunity for the next whatever. And years or so
Shawn Flynn 15:41
Now say someone is actually able to raise their fund, what happens if, you know, maybe they just don’t have the access to the best deal flow? I mean, on one, maybe they don’t have that huge network just yet compared to some of the more established players out there. How does a new venture capitalist get access to these tier one top companies?
Nick Moran 15:59
Well, it’s really tough, right? You need to bring something to the table of significant value aside from capital, right? So before I mentioned, like these funds that have hyper expertise, so let’s say there’s a fun that has a lot of expertise around mobility, and AI. So think like, you know, smart driving technology, if there’s a fund that’s specifically designed for smart driving and mobility technology, and let’s say they don’t have deal flow, and they don’t have sourcing to those opportunities, they can call on a bunch of larger venture firms, like I mentioned before the sequoias and decliners and the excels of the world, in the US and say, Hey, you know, we are great experts in this segment, we have LPs at large automotive, we understand mobility better than anyone else. If you are investing in a mobility deal, let us know. And we can chip in, and we’ll help in ways that nobody else can. So that’s one way that like, some very specialized venture funds can get into good deals at some of the bigger firms, just because they’re bringing something to the table, right? something significant to the table. The same goes for other types of specialties, right, like so there could be a fun that has functional expertise, like let’s say hiring, let’s say there’s a fun that’s just got really good networks in the developer community, and really good networks in the engineering community, and really good networks in the growth, like sales and marketing talent, community. And if there’s a fun, that’s just like, excellent, I just talked to one in New York, actually. But if they’re really excellent on the talent side of things, that’s a huge challenge for founders. And so that’s a way that, you know, that fun can provide a very specific type of expertise and help and could warrant, you know, getting access to deals that otherwise they shouldn’t be in. And that’s what I look for. I mean, at New stack, we lead the majority of our deals, meaning, you know, we price them, we put together the deals and negotiate with the entrepreneurs. And then we have to find other VCs and other angels to jump in with us to complete the rest of the like the entire round. And we’re looking for value added partners, we’re looking for VCs that bring something tangible to the table. We’re looking for VCs, where I can call the portfolio companies and startup founders, and they sing the praises, they’re like these guys or gals are the best, because they do X, Y, and Z, you know, really specific value. And so that’s a really good way to get in is if you develop partnerships with other investors out there, and you can articulate here is our value add, that’s a good way to get into deals.
Shawn Flynn 18:42
Now let’s talk about your fun just for a moment. News tagged ventures, you’re based in Chicago, and not here in Silicon Valley, what are some of the advantages that you might have? Or maybe disadvantages to location or for your fun?
Nick Moran 18:56
Well, I mean, the disadvantages are probably clear, the majority of the action is happening in the Bay Area in New York City to some degree, and we’re not there. The advantages, of course, are that there’s very few people like us, between the coasts, I believe we are the only firm that will lead IoT deals at seed stage between the coasts. So that another way of looking at that is we have a proprietary channel of deal flow in that category. Like if you’re an IoT company raising a seed deal, and you’re not in San Francisco or New York City, you don’t have very many places to go. So there’s a very high percentage likelihood that your startup ends up in my inbox, right, your pitch deck ends up with us, and we can engage with you. So yeah, being in an underserved market has a ton of advantages. We can corner a lot of deal flow, we get to steal a huge proportion of it. We are very differentiated in the Midwest, and we’ve got the show. We’ve got the syndicate, we’ve got a compelling funds, and if I was in the Bay Area, I would try be just another guy. But in Chicago, we can be unique and special. That’s a huge advantage. And then valuations are better, right? We might not have the talent that has the same level of experience as folks in the Bay Area. But we certainly have talent that has the same level of capability, we get the good fortune of investing at lower valuations. So we can get more ownership and we can get better multiples on our money. The most recent multiple report MMIC, some multiple on invested capital, the multiples are better for the Midwest than they are for the coasts. So investors get higher multiples on their invested capital, if you were to index everything that was done. So index, all the deals that were done in the Great Lakes region, versus the West Coast versus East Coast, the highest multiples in the country are in the middle of the country. And a huge part of that is being able to get in at really competitive valuations. Because prices. It’s not like we’re beating these entrepreneurs up and you know, getting a screaming Good deal. It’s just, they can’t get funding from the coastal firms. And everything on the coast is overpriced, because there’s so much competition, you know, when 10 to 20 VCs are fighting to get into a deal, that pushes up the valuation. And the terms are really high. And so the multiples the, you know, the IRR on, on those investments goes down. We don’t have as much competition in the Midwest. So it’s a huge advantage.
Shawn Flynn 21:24
Speaking of multiples, I’ve heard from venture capitalists in the past that one of the roles of a VC is to help their portfolio companies, the companies they’ve invested in, raise their next round of funding or make the introductions or that are encouraged or help out any way they can. Do you agree or disagree with this? And why or why not?
Nick Moran 21:43
Yeah, 100%. I mean, not every firm helps. And honestly, every firm says they’re gonna help. And then there’s a lot out there that just don’t do much. They might have, you know, their core, four or five firms, they love to work with it series A, let’s say, and they’ll try and get you in front of them. But there’s a lot of VCs that over promise and under deliver. When it comes to fundraising. You know, that’s kind of what we consider our superpower when we work with, with founders. So we put together the strategy we call the NRP, the next round plan, it’s a really intentional and proactive approach to what VCs are we targeting, what valuation do we think we can raise that based on our traction? What VCs have a thesis that syncs up with the type of business we’re doing. So back in the mobility example, you know, if you’ve got a startup that’s doing mobility, and AI, and let’s say there’s some software as a service Incorporated, let’s say there’s location based services, let’s figure out all those categorical descriptors that apply to the startup. And let’s find all the VCs that identify themselves and their thesis as being focused on those areas. So we put together this whole plan and this whole spreadsheet that says, you know, here are the VCs that are in range for you for the next round. And we always aspire to do at least 10 x more qualified introductions than any other investor. So we make a we end up making a lot of introductions. And so far, you know, that’s been really fruitful for us in our portfolio company. So yeah, everyone promises it, some do a really good job with it. So I’m just kind of invest in are much more passive than they probably should be. So to go back to
Shawn Flynn 23:22
the managing partners have a fun, I mean, entrepreneurs, startups, there’s a high failure rate. I mean, some say nine out of 10, fail, say higher, some say lower, but it’s pretty astonishing. Is that similar with venture capitalists? What’s the kind of the career life of most of these VC firms?
Nick Moran 23:40
That’s a good question. I don’t know the stats on the exact failure rate, but it’s pretty high. Yeah, I can say anecdotally. So I run this breakfast in Chicago. It’s an informal quarterly breakfast for founding partners of VC firms. And there’s like 29 of us in Chicago, we get together once a quarter and kind of chat about deals and stuff. And I would say amongst that group, less than half of people that raise the fund, one will raise the fund to probably right around half or less than half that raise the fund to will raise a fund three, it’s sobering, right? When I look around the table, and people start disappearing, and they get out of the business, because they’re, you know, unable to raise subsequent funds. It happens, it happens at a high rate, you know, venture, there are fewer investors in venture capital than there are professional athletes in the Big Four. Right? So this is one of the hardest industries ever to get into as a professional. And so it attracts some of the smartest people, smartest and most ambitious people out there. But even that being the case, there’s 50% plus and people that do this for a living that just the returns are not good, right? The top ortel so the top 25% of VCs really drives all the returns for the asset class. So there’s a lot of people that just haven’t cracked this nut. It’s not because they’re not smart. It’s just this is a complicated model. Very no problem. And a lot of venture capitalists fail at it. And it’s actually it’s not the skill set that one kind of acquires in being a VC is not like super translatable to a lot of other jobs. So, yeah, you’ll see a lot of people kind of doing a variety of things after being a VC, they might go found another company, or they get involved on the service provider sides. But it’s tough.
Shawn Flynn 25:26
So much, we’ve had a couple of past guests, some abator mob won their episodes, episode, I think, 12 and eight, when they talked about the unbanked and blockchain, kind of being a solution for this problem. So right now, there’s 2 billion people without bank accounts in the world and this problem that they’re trying to solve, as they’re solving this, are they missing anything? What’s the whole landscape of this problem.
Amar Johar 25:55
So providing financial services to the unbanked population of the world is a noble goal for sure, the problems of the unbanked people are enormous. And the lack of capital and access to credit keeps people from participating in the economic activity and from realizing their true potential as well. But the problem is that there’s a lot of rent seeking that goes on in this area, right. And that’s a problem that can be solved by blockchain. But even if you use blockchain, it’s just a tool, you still have to bring in the elements of incentives that will bring people into the network, that is a harder problem to solve. The problem is that the market conditions are tough. And there are very few people who are actually doing it. The market and the ground realities are very different. There’s no internet connectivity, there’s lack of access to just the infrastructure that makes it possible. So yes, you can provide a digital experience to the unbanked people. But if they don’t have access to smartphones in the first place, how do you do it? Are these smartphones are actually dumbed down so much that there is no security layer on it? How do you do it? That’s the issue there. But on the flip side, I think when you look at it from take a step back, and you look at the entire world, yes, there are 2 billion unbanked people, but then there are 5 billion bank people as well. And they have the same problems to access to capital is a problem. And there is a lot of rent seeking behavior that goes on with big banks. Now imagine sending $100 over the Philippines. And on the receiving side, you only get $70. That’s a 30% rent that you pay every time can that problem be solved. I think those are opportunities where the world is headed towards in terms of solving, when you think about it, ripple is starting to make some dents in that space. And then there’s a whole movement behind decentralized finance. So if you look at it today, there’s probably over a billion dollars $1 billion locked in smart contracts, and that are placed as collateral, or loans and complex derivative instruments and things like that. So I think that that is going to have a huge impact in bringing financial services efficient financial services without rent seeking behavior, even to the bank populations of the world. And if some of that trickles down, or to the unbanked population, I think that’s where you would really start to turn the wheel of fortune, are those at the bottom of the pyramid so as to say,
Shawn Flynn 28:35
someone, let’s pivot away from the unbanked and I’m curious about the SEC, I’ve just done a little research on initial exchange offerings. Can you talk about kind of what the SEC is kind of their opinion of this year, and you know, this, and that whole arena right now.
Amar Johar 28:53
So if you look at it from the US regulatory perspective, it is the same scam as an Ico was from I think the SEC has made it pretty clear that an IU is no different than an Ico and it certainly should not be. I think what happened here is that there was just a little bit of a vertical consolidation. Previously, the issuers they were minting their own tokens, and they were paying a lot of money to these exchanges to list them. Now in the issuance dried up, these exchanges, were looking to still expand on their business models. And what they started to do was have this notion that well, we’ll mint the tokens for all the issuers, and then we’ll just listed on our exchange going forward as well. Now what the incentive for the exchanges was that they would buy these tokens at very, very low prices from the companies that were supposedly the issuers and then we’re the sole lead for on the exchange. There is a huge profit margin that so I think the SEC does not take a good view on Bose pump and dump. of schemes. Right? So I think I use are exactly in the same line as ICL.
Shawn Flynn 30:07
Do you agree with all the past decisions that the SEC has made in this
Amar Johar 30:12
area? Well, I’m not in the business of regulating the trillion dollars worth of the securities market. So I like to stay in my lane. But having said that, I understand well, where the SEC is coming from. And it is basically this, that the tokens are securities, and you should bring the security laws into play when you’re trying to regulate them. Now, this is a little bit of a different take here is that? Well, the SEC also said that aetherium, the token is decentralized enough that it’s not a security. So now what’s really happened is you’ve kind of created this catch 22 kind of his classic situation where the intro entrepreneurs who are starting to launch a non-security token, they can only launch it, if it is decentralized enough, so that the SEC doesn’t think that it’s a security. But then when you’re launching it, you don’t have the decentralized network. So the moment when you launch it, it is almost a security. So I don’t know how to navigate that. It’s a very peculiar problem that we are trying to grapple with here.
Announcer 31:26
Thank you for listening to the Silicon Valley podcast. To access our resources, visit us at the Silicon Valley podcast calm and follow our host on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn at Shawn Flynn SV. This show is for entertainment purposes only. Before making any decisions, consult a professional.
