How Investor Reviews Are Reshaping Trust in Private Markets

Josh Wilson: Hey everybody. Welcome to the Investor Relations podcast. Man. This is such a fun conversation that's gonna happen because pat sits between the world of like Yelp, if you remember that back in the day, like when it was hot and heavy. But he does it for gps, general partners, and he gives an idea on, the ratings and reviews of.

Gps. So Pat, welcome to Show Man. Did I get that right? 

Pat Zingarella: Yeah. Thanks. Thanks. I'm I'm excited for it. Yeah. Thank you. 

Josh Wilson: Cool, man. All right, so I let the cat outta the bag a little bit on, you know what it is you do. Let's go a little bit deeper. What is it that you're building? 

Pat Zingarella: Yeah, totally. So the Yelp for private real estate is pretty much the best way to describe it.

And so what we've built is a directory of gps. And LPs that provide proof that they've invested with those gps can write reviews on them. So if you think about the value prop to either side for the limited partner or the investor seeking, places to place money, it's a place for them, a centralized location for them to find.

GPS based on their own investment preferences. They can go in input filters, create a short list of gps that match those investment preferences, and then read reviews from other investors that they know are real experiences because those investors had to provide proof that before that review can be published on the other side.

For the gps, the value prop is, it's a way for them. Raise more capital by being transparent. They can leverage the voice of their investor to help build trust with new investors. And ultimately that leads to more capital being raised in a faster timeline. 

Josh Wilson: Man as a, as a group looking to invest capital, being able to see other, other LPs views on these different funds is really exciting.

But I've got some concerns, right? Like the world of private equity in funds, the model isn't always a huge win or, a home run. Sometimes there's market shifts that have nothing to do with the, the GP themselves, the general partners themselves. Yeah. So how do we prevent just a downturn in the market or just a failed project, which happens?

How do we prevent that from just getting, one star reviews and then this person Yeah. Goes outta business. 

Pat Zingarella: Yeah, totally. In all fairness, you can't if you really think about it that, that market shift doesn't invalidate the experience of that investor. And what we have seen in those scenarios is investors are not dumb.

They can. Most of the time differentiate between a bad operator and a bad opportunity or a market influenced outcome. And those come out pretty well in reviews. But those reviews still have a place and they have the ability to share those. The GPS can also respond, right? That's a main function of the site is if a review gets on there, positive or negative, a GP can get in there and claim their profile for free.

And they have the ability to contextualize the review. And that's important. And believe it or not, that feature was actually requested more by the LP than the GP to defend themselves or whatever. The LPs wanted to see how people are responding to feedback and they want I would say additional context to, to reviews.

Yeah. But yeah. 

Josh Wilson: Yeah I, when I look at like Google reviews or Google my business reviews, like I look at that and like someone will go into a, a restaurant and. If they have to wait too long because it's that good, that popular. Yeah. They could leave a bad review. So it's like something that's good happening in the world.

Like the restaurant's doing so good. Yeah. That they have a line and then someone gives a bad review, gives a one star review, which ultimately like hurts the business. Totally. So how, yeah. You take a look at, when a review comes in, you take a look at, are they a. An actual investor, you look for proof.

Yeah. How do you look for that proof and then are there reviews where you're just like, dude, come on, really? You don't like the color white on their website versus red on their website? Does that even matter if they're good, GP or not? 

Pat Zingarella: Yeah. So yeah, so what we do is in terms of the verification, we, part of the review workflow is the LP goes in, they choose the investor they're going to write a review on. They write their review, and then before that review is published, they have to upload some sort of proof that they invested with the gp. And that could be anything from the most common ones we get are LPs logged into their investor portal, right?

They take a screenshot, I see the GPS name, I see the name that's on their profile. I see the fact that they've been in active position. At some point in time it gets uploaded. I moderate it. If something's off. I reject it, I'll reach out to the lp. Pr I'm extremely diligent with these documents. It's the foundation of the site in terms of the actual review.

We simply make sure it aligns to our community guidelines and then it gets published, right? That's what it is. As long as it doesn't violate our community guidelines it does get published. The way to think about that is when you're comparing it to a restaurant, completely different type of persona, right?

You've got people who are pissed because their cheeseburger was underdone for 15 bucks. But you also, in INR scenario, we've got investors making six figure investments, right? So the likelihood of a small detail like that. Derailing an entire company pretty low. That doesn't say I'm not saying there aren't emotional LPs that at some point will give them a one star in communication because they didn't respond to an email after 30 seconds.

But when you look at it holistically, right? If that restaurant is getting an endless amount of reviews like that. It's something to analyze, right? If the GP is getting an endless amount of reviews like that, it's something to analyze. If it's a one-off review and the other 50 reviews are great, something to take into consideration.

And it's easily distinguishable, right? When you actually look at the a, a GPS profile. And you look at a rating or you look at a list of reviews, it's really important to look and go through as many as you possibly can and not just take a single review at face value. That's what I would provide, to most people, there are trends in reviews.

For example, there are some gps on our website that got stellar reviews from. 2023 to 2024 and there was like a hard line in the sand at the end of 2024, and then they picked up Q2 of 25. And they've been pretty brutal since then. Overall the rating is pretty good, but what does the trend of the reviews tell you?

Maybe at, there was a certain point where deals started going south and those early reviews may have front run those situations, so you gotta really look at everything as at a whole. 

Josh Wilson: Yeah, man. How did you come up with this idea? Because to me, this idea is, it's a great idea, 

Pat Zingarella: thanks. 

Josh Wilson: But being the founder and the runner of this puts you in the bullseye, puts you in the cross hair for sure.

So walk us through the ID ideation of it, and then how did you one day go? All right. I got the balls. Let's do it. That's, 

Pat Zingarella: yeah. It is and to provide additional color and context to that kind of being in the bullseye side of things we didn't build this because we wanted to be the GP Reaper.

I built this because I was looking to understand how to better differentiate between GPS and understand more, of what's out there that I couldn't find. And so like my journey here was really three roads converging into one. My corporate job before I got into this industry was working at a company called Gartner.

And they had a subsidiary where there were a few software review companies and I was really exposed to software reviews just based on that industry. Also Gartner. At our core, we were an objective. Research and advisory company, right? We had to be a neutral player between buyers and sellers of technology.

And so when I left Gartner, I ended up meeting a commercial real estate investor who was like quickly rising in the ranks of notoriety media. I met him in masterminds became the guy's first employee, and it turns out he was committing a ton of fraud right on the surface and in, in the public eye.

He was the guy. He was every, he was the one to follow. But in the background wasn't really what it appeared to be. When I left that, I started doing some sales consulting and was selling a credited investor lead gen in the industry. And so I would talk to five 10 gps all within the same asset class within a week.

And I really had no ability to differentiate between any of them. And then, selfishly I was looking to become an LP myself, and I would go to try and find. A database where all of these GPS existed so I could figure out who's best for me and I couldn't find it. And then I would try to look for a database of deals where everything existed and I couldn't find it.

And then I was trying to educate myself on, how, what do I ask these guys? How do I underwrite 'em? Blah, blah, blah. And it seemed that every single piece of educational material was written by a gp. And I was like, it's not really an objective resource. And so those three. Roads led to let's build invest clearly.

So when you think about it, it wasn't necessarily did we enter this with the expectation that there will be a time where I am under fire, right? A hundred percent. Yeah. Did we go into this saying like, Hey, litigation is a certainty. A hundred percent. Was I excited about that? No, but I knew that there was a major value add outside of maybe this.

This scenario of, Hey I'm definitely gonna come under fire. But it's gonna create a lot of value for both parties on the social proof side of things, on the evaluation side of things, that it's, it weighs a lot more on the value than the fear of being sued. Does that make sense?

Josh Wilson: Oh, for sure. For sure. So you were going through the process, Hey, I'm gonna be an LP myself. Let's go invest in asset class real estate, right? Yeah. And you're like, okay man, where do we even go? So there's some fund to funds, and I've even seen some of the funds on your website with good reviews and Yeah.

And you're like, okay, maybe I talk with them, or maybe I go direct. And you know what? There's a lot of people, if you look on LinkedIn with air quote. Real estate syndicator or multifamily investor or something like, there's a lot, yeah. Investing passively in real estate, right? So there's a lot of people it would take forever to do that proper due diligence.

So then you go to your friends, Hey, who do you know? Birds of feather and then, so this is like. Creating that. Go to your friends kind of model where people could go, they could look at it in one place. Why did you choose, actually, man, pause here for a second, pat. 

Pat Zingarella: Yeah.

Josh Wilson: I gotta connect the dots and why are we talking about this on the Investor relations podcast?

So let me just talk to the audience for a second. Sure. We're talking about this on the investor relations podcast because investor relations or communications with investors, especially if you're like a fund, let's just say you're a real estate fund. You looked at your, invest clearly page and you're like, oh man, I got a ding.

I forgot every, I forgot to call that guy back. My bad. Right Now, your investor relations, like how do we make that better? How do we improve ourselves? How do we improve our communications to other people? So what I wanted to do is, bring Pat on the show to talk about some of the tools that investor relations communities and funds can use to monitor.

They're social cred, but also to maybe improve some things or man, if you're getting great reviews, heck yeah. Talk to the world about that. It's a third party validation, unbiased so that was a little shout out for you, a little plug for you, but I needed to connect that, I think, for the audience of like, why are we even listening to that?

Pat Zingarella: I could dive a little more into that as well. If you want please. In in, in terms of the investor relations world. 

Josh Wilson: Yep. 

Pat Zingarella: I think the hardest thing. Again it's not unknown that it's much more difficult to raise capital now than it was a couple years ago. It's as simple as that.

And when I talk to gps and especially people in ir, it's not a lead flow challenge right now. Leads are still paid. It's still coming in at the clip as it was a couple years ago. The challenges is they're not converting, they're not converting at the same velocity at the same clip they were previously.

So when you think about cost of capital and where to spend your time and money, as someone in ir, this is really the only tool to help you after you talk to them, right? And what we're we need to do? These investors are scared. They are comparing you to every experience they've had in the past. They're comparing you to every single click bait.

The world is ending news article that's on there. So trust is the differentiator right now, and that's what we've built for the IR team because LPs investors are. Begging for differentiation, right? They're coming in as a skeptic. They're doing a lot more due diligence before they get on the phone with you at the company level versus just the deal level.

And so when you think about the tool for the IR team, it's all about trust, transparency, credibility, and really helping them, bridge that gap sooner than they had in the past. And that's my, that's my pitch there. 

Josh Wilson: I like it. No that's really cool. Why did you choose real estate?

Why 'cause there's PE groups that do business acquisitions. Totally. Like why'd you choose real estate? 

Pat Zingarella: Yeah. Honestly, two, two main things. And invest clearly as a business, I would say we're running down, like the bowling pin strategy. We're starting in real estate and then we're gonna expand across alts.

We started with real estate 'cause that's just what we knew. And at scale, I think we saw real estate being the asset class that capitalized on rule, on 5 0 6 C the most when it comes to being able to advertise and things like that. Mainly it was just what we knew. It was the world we lived in and I do get a lot of requests to have.

Other funds added to the site. Other companies from PE to VC to hedge fund, and we will get there in the near future. 

Josh Wilson: Cool. 

Pat Zingarella: Yeah.

Josh Wilson: So what's the business model of Invest Clearlake? How do you guys make money? 

Pat Zingarella: Great question. Let me start by telling you how we don't make money. 'cause that's almost more important than how we make money.

Yeah. 

Josh Wilson: I'll give you 25 bucks for a great review. You 

Pat Zingarella: know, like that. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. That, yeah, that's bad. So the way we don't we don't, we aren't registered with any regulatory agency, so we have, you can't invest on the site. We have no part of the deal. So we are a completely neutral platform between LPs and gps.

We don't sell LP contact information. Either. The reason why it's so important that I say that before we make money is to people really understand how objective we are in this. Because if we violated any of those, we would lose the trust of the lp. No one would use the site. The whole business would collapse.

The way we make money, we've modeled off of every other review site that's ever existed. It's simply by profile upgrades. And so the way this works is we add. GPS to the site, whether they know about us, like us, hate us, doesn't really matter. We source from public information. If they're raising money they go on the site.

And again, LPs that provide proof, they can write reviews on them. GPS can claim their profiles for free. Say, Hey, this is my company. Let me respond to the reviews. Let me, update some of the information Pat wasn't able to find publicly. That's free. We offer profile upgrades. Is how we monetize it.

What that is think of two things, engagement and visibility. Engagement. There's more tools and things on their profile. They can embed their calendar. They can have links to their investor portal like deal room, join their webinars, join links, they have downloadable documents. People will put OMS on there.

People will put pitch decks. The people will put recordings of videos of their webinars or whatever it may be. All things where you think about investors are landing on my page. What do I want 'em to see? What should they engage with so we can capture them? The second piece of it is visibility.

We have recommendation algorithms on all of the profiles. 

Essentially, Hey, here's a GP with a similar asset class. Here's what people also viewed when you upgrade. Those get removed from your profile, and then you get prioritized placement as long as the asset class and the ratings match on other profiles.

Josh Wilson: So prioritize, placement and recommendations. How do you steer away from any type of regulatory? Hey, I went to the page and it like. I'm a retail investor and it encouraged me to go this route. Like how do you work through those kind of thoughts? 

Pat Zingarella: Yeah. Good question. So when I earlier said we're not registered with any regulatory agency, I was referring to the SEC, like we're not a broker dealer or anything like that, but we absolutely have to abide by regulatory agencies guidelines in terms of the FTC and things like that.

So that's all disclosed in our FAQs and we're getting more clear and things like that. So yeah we, we certainly have to. Have to do that, but like the algorithms are weighted as well, so it's like you are not just gonna see. A random GP on a multi, like you won't see an oil and gas GP on a multifamily sponsor like website.

It aligns to your preferences, your algorithms and things like that. But yeah we, 100% have to abide by the ftc for sure. 

Josh Wilson: Yeah. Now, let's just say I, I start a fund. Then the fun, just life happens. Let's just say I'm in investing in Pet Rocks and the Pet rock boom has busted and my, the LPs are like, dude, we should not have invested with, pet Rocks.

I'm like, yeah, I know. We tried, we all liked it, and Pet Rocks are no longer cool. I look at my invest clearly and I'm like, man, I got. 20 negative reviews, attached to my name, attached to that fund, number one, right? And everybody knew it was speculatory. Everybody knew it was risky, right?

So what are some of the things that I could do as a GP to maybe improve upon that or to fix that or to maybe reconcile with those 20 negative reviews. 

Pat Zingarella: Yeah, totally. I would say so. So the big things with reviews are the reviews are on the company and not the individual's deals. Yeah. That's the biggest thing to remember.

And if you think about it those reviews will go up, will stay up. They're not invalidated simply because you took a chance on an asset class. You have no experience. And the purpose of the reviews is actually to highlight those, right? Like maybe this gpci made the decision to raise money and operate an asset class they don't have familiar with.

And it went under, right? That needs to be on there. If I was the gp, the first thing I suggest is respond to all the reviews, right? That is the number one action. Discuss it, right? If you have LPs that have had great experiences if that one scenario does not represent how your company like operates as a whole, you don't feel like that's the real experience of investing with you across every other deal.

Maybe one deal went bad and you've got 88 exits. That went well. Request reviews from the investors that were part of those 88 deals, right? There's nothing wrong with requesting reviews, right? There's nothing out of compliance with requesting reviews. What you mentioned earlier about Hey, I'll give you 25 bucks for a good review.

That's outta compliance, right? That's not, that's a big no-no, but no. If you say, Hey, look, this deal went bad. The majority of the reviews on this deal are negative. I would love to have my investors. They discuss their experience and these other deals that they were in. Yeah. Go request reviews from that.

Josh Wilson: Got it. Okay. So that's interesting. Yeah. Guys, ladies and gentlemen, I'm not selling pet Rocks. I do not have a fund at this moment. Yeah. So I just wanna be clear, I'm running scenarios because I know that there's someone in the audience and they're going like what about this? And what about that?

Talk to us about some of the community guidelines there are for, protection on both sides of the coin. 

Pat Zingarella: Yeah, they're standard, right? They're standard community guidelines that you would expect to see in every other user generated content. Mainly you can't say anything like crazy, like y it is mainly about I don't know, how do I phrase this?

Don't curse, don't threaten, don't dox anyone. Don't do this. That's the main thing. Is this an, is this appropriate to put in public, this is a 

Josh Wilson: business platform. 

Pat Zingarella: Yeah. E exactly. Without giving detailed line by line specification, but you're swearing that everything in here is honest and true, right?

You're not you are claiming you are not defaming someone. This is a real experience. I don't validate that, right? I can't, it's impossible for me to validate that, like during the moderation process. But the big thing is okay you're not coming on here and using insane language, like you're not coming on here and thing, things like that.

Standard community guns. I'm rambling now, but you know that's really what they are. Yeah. 

Josh Wilson: Sure. Okay, so let's just say, I guess in terms of public defamation of character. Yeah. Yeah. So if you go and state facts, so let's just say I'm an LP and I'm going in and I'm stating the facts.

We did this happened. He or she said he, that's hard to say. He or she said blank and then did blank. So I'm not saying they're a liar. I'm not saying this. I'm just stating the facts and just say, based on my opinion, I don't trust this situation. I'm out. Yep. When could it get dangerous for someone to actually give a negative review?

Do you ever think of the maybe defamation of character or like you guys were under an NDA or any type of that? Did you guys have any of those scenarios pop up? 

Pat Zingarella: Yeah, totally. The biggest thing and this is a very technical question and I wanna be very clear, I'm not an attorney.

Like we've got people, we've got people for this. The biggest thing to remember is there is a big difference between defamation and free speech, right? I don't know how much deeper I should get into that based on the legal side of things, but Yeah could there be a defamatory situation on the site?

For sure. I can. I'm not, an attorney where I can advise an l an a GP when to pursue legal action. But if you feel like something is defamatory on the site, yeah, I would consult an attorney for sure. Yeah. Can I validate that as the CEO of the company? I don't know if it is or it is not.

I would say most of the negative reviews we get on the site, someone reaches out to me and says, Hey, this is misrepresentation, it's false. And I highly I highly, I don't, I believe how every single negative review could be false. It doesn't work like that. But I, I do tell people, I say, Hey, look we can't arbitrate in this, we can't take sides in this.

I, I validated that this was an investor they posted. I don't know if what you're saying is true. I don't know what they're saying was true. If you do feel like this is defamatory, there would be a legal recourse and I would consult an attorney. That's as far as we can really go. And it's the same concept and the same I would say what's the word I'm thinking of? It's the same process that every other user generated content site from Reddit to Facebook, to Twitter, to ev, everything else follows that policy. 

Josh Wilson: Yeah. And I look at things and I go, is this worth the squeeze? Because I could see when things are going great.

I could see man, this is such a good idea. Yelp did very well, especially getting started and like everybody started to follow the Yelp model and like when I go to Amazon to buy something, dude, I'm looking for four stars and up Yeah. I'm looking for late, or even looking at freelancers or anything, so I think it's such a good idea.

Pat and I haven't seen it done. I just think, holy moly, this is such a good idea that. Like you gotta grab the tiger by the tail, but man, you're gonna be in the middle of GP and lp. So what are you looking forward to as you build this out and grow and scale this thing that it's worth doing that?

And I know that's a tough question. I just wanna ask it though.

Pat Zingarella: Yeah, no, look the, it is all worth doing it, right? Yeah. Like the whole purpose of this site is to create a safer passive investment ecosystem, right? That's as simple as that. And I'll tell you why we started this.

And really it hasn't changed. Like my goal is, okay, I want investors to have an actual like. Real resource where they can understand what it's like to invest with a company. Not an influenced one, not a paid, oh not, I don't mean not a paid one, but not like a, oh, hey, when I get on a reference call I know it's cherry picked, or when I when I'm reading things, I know it's been influenced by. Whatever. I want LPs to have a place where they can go and they know these are real experiences. And I also want GPS to have a place to differentiate from the noise. When I started invest, clearly I was doing a lot of customer development interviews, right?

And I would hear stories of people who are. Spending an insane amount of money on ads and this. Yeah. And they're controlling the narrative and those are the ones that are potentially in trouble now. And then I would have conversations with gps that are what I would call digitally disadvantaged, but have out outperforming projections for years and no one's ever heard of them.

And I wanna give them a voice as well. And I think it's really difficult right now to differentiate as a gp. Is having a resource. As a gp, that is an objective third party to help you separate yourself from the noise is really important right now. And that's it. So when you think about what is worth it's all worth it, right?

Like we are, I've got GPS reaching out to me, telling me they're picking up massive investors that they never would've otherwise simply by using the voice of their investor. I've got LPs telling me stories that they check the site before every investment they make. So it's all.

It's all, and there's always gonna be challenges, right? There's always gonna be challenges. But I do think the value far outweighs the value we're delivering on. And the things I'm hearing far outweighs the challenges. 

Josh Wilson: Yeah, I think it's cool, man, when it comes to different levels of investors.

Let's talk about that for a second. 

Pat Zingarella: Yeah.

Josh Wilson: There's the crowdfund, anybody can invest for as little as $10 or whatever. 

Pat Zingarella: Yep. 

Josh Wilson: All the way up to institutional investors where it's, there, there's many different stages. So there's crowdfunding, then there's the Reg Ds. Then there's, there's a bunch of different investment types that people can build out.

The sophistication levels are probably. According to the SEC, they are, there's there's different levels of sophistication, right? Accredited investor, non-accredited, maybe retail, maybe even, an 18-year-old guy who, invest 10 bucks in a real estate thing and it didn't work out on a crowd fund.

Yeah. 

Pat Zingarella: Yeah.

Josh Wilson: Do you guys have like milestones or amounts that it needs to cross the plate before they can put on your. Your platform on the side. 

Pat Zingarella: Yeah, no, think about it, right? It is like that GP decided to accept money from that individual. That individual has a voice, right? So it's not really us because if you think about it, if the GP is raising a thousand dollars minimum.

Based on our Reg A or CF or whatever it may be. Yeah. But we limit it. There are other people that are going to invest that amount. I wanna hear their experience. So like as long as they've invested with that GP and have the experience with the gp they can share that experience. If they don't.

Want feedback from that? I would say I don't really wanna call it a low sophistication level, but that's kinda like an unfair thing to say. But if they don't, if they if they wanted a minimum of investment in order for review to be written and they shouldn't be accepting capital at that level.

You know what I mean? So it's I would put that more on on the gp, right? Is yeah. Does that make sense? 

Josh Wilson: Yeah, absolutely. And I'm not saying it's unsophisticated either. I'm just saying that's the classification that the SEC Yeah. Totally determines. Yeah. They call 'em an unsophisticated investor.

I, because they don't have a net worth of whatever. Yeah. They could be an MBA student, they could have their PhD Totally. They could be a rocket science, stock rocket scientist. But if they don't have a certain net worth, then they're not considered a a sophisticated investor. So I. I just wanted to ask that question because that could be an unfair bias, from your perspective, trying to create really honest reviews if, people don't, didn't understand the risk of when they invested.

But great point, that's on the gp, if you're taking money, it's your responsibility through the crowd, CE, F or Reg A to really educate them that this is an investment. Could go bad. Could go great. 

Pat Zingarella: Yeah.

Josh Wilson: This is, oh man. Such good man. I really like this Pat. As you're building this out, we might see it go into different asset classes.

Do you think this will ever be like a wide shareholder base for like public companies or maybe the public market?

Pat Zingarella: I don't know. I don't think we would get into the public simply because it is that right? That, that I feel like that exists. It is a lot easier to get access to information in the public markets than it is in the private markets. And so for sure, I never wanna say no. But when I think about investing in funds and the access to information and like transparency, I really see the lack being around the private industries versus the public, right?

Like we, what we're trying to do and what we've realized is people flood into the private markets because they have access to information. I'm not saying the average person is listening to earnings calls, right? That rarely happens. But like the accessibility and the audits and all of that is there.

Yeah, I don't think so. Josh. I think right now our main goal is bringing transparency into the private markets. We start with real estate. We expand into all other. Private industries, but I don't know if we'll ever breach that public. But I, never say never, right? I'm not for 

Josh Wilson: sure.

Pat Zingarella: I'm not sure. 

Josh Wilson: Yeah. I think the market, the private market's definitely big enough for this. And especially like from real estate to maybe one day, hedge funds to VC funds, to other type of, opportunities, investments, crypto, fill in the blank, whatever. So like you're onto something good, man.

You're onto something really good, pat. And I'm thankful for that. When it comes to investor relations, what strategies have you seen people use this? Material to actually go after bigger investors and bigger opportunities. 

Pat Zingarella: Yeah, totally. The foundation of the site is let the platform work for you, right?

And so as someone in IR collecting reviews. Drives visibility on our site. And so there's really a two-pronged way of thinking about that, using the site to attract new investors, right? Get your reviews out there, get your profile updated so when people are searching, you're showing up in there and again, people are reading your reviews and as a byproduct they're reaching out to you.

But secondarily. I wanna go back to what I talked about earlier in ir, where trust is hard. Credibility is hard right now. Differentiation is hard. So the great l, the great gps that are using this and having a lot of success is thinking about it in terms of new investors, but also thinking about it and conversion.

Is. Get reviews and then send them to every new investor you're talking to, right? You don't know if I am who I say I am. You don't know if I'll do what? I'll say I'll do. Go look at the 10 objective reviews that we have on Invest Clearly, right? Our investors went through multiple steps to endorse us.

They're real because they had to provide proof, right? That helps you not have to tap. Reference calls on the shoulder every single time you talk to somebody. But it also helps with that conversion rate. And again, if you think about across industries, there's been research that con like reviews, leveraging reviews in sales cycles will increase conversion by 3%.

And so if you can do that rather than going out and spending X more dollars on lead and can convert three more that were either weren't gonna convert or maybe went cold or whatever it may be, think about that formula in your mind in terms of. Closing more capital that way. 

Josh Wilson: So how many reviews have been pushed through the system so far?

Pat Zingarella: Yep. I think we're we're just over 500 reviews right now. We've got about 15 G hundred GPS listed on the site. And then last year in terms of visitors, we had 41,000 unique visitors, mainly in the back half of the year. 'cause that's when we really started growing and that actually acquitted to over 160,000 page views, which is really interesting.

And this year, I would say is our year to scale, right? And yeah. Sorry, I kept going there for you. 

Josh Wilson: No, that, that's actually good. So so that means 41,000 uniques, 160,000 page views. So maybe someone goes there and they're bumping around four different pages. 

Pat Zingarella: Exactly.

Yep. They are, they're shopping, they can come in for one reason. Really one or two reasons, right? The only reason to use this site is if you're looking for you, you have a specific GP in mind, you wanna evaluate. And so what they're doing is they're either coming on to look at that one specific gp or they are going in and they're searching maybe by asset class, and they're clicking around and looking for stuff like that.

Josh Wilson: Super cool man. Yeah. Thank you, pat. We'll have you come back on later on as you guys, get through this year in terms of, the scale and opportunities. That's really impressive. 1500 GPS on the site, 500 reviews. LPs out there, go take a look as at these things and I would love to hear your thoughts on this.

And how does that influence your decisions to deploy capital for the GPS out there? Go claim your, you're free. What do you say? How do you say it to them? 

Pat Zingarella: Yeah. Yeah. Claim, claim your free profile. Yeah. 

Josh Wilson: Claim your free profile. Cool. And Pat, where could people go to do that? 

Pat Zingarella: Yes, absolutely. So it's invest clearly.com.

If you wanna reach out to me directly I'm here to help anybody and everybody. I try to take every call. I possibly can pat@investclearly.com, com and or you can follow me on LinkedIn. I'm Paal Zella on LinkedIn. 

Josh Wilson: Say that last name again 'cause I, 

Pat Zingarella: Yeah. Pasqua. Zarella, 

Josh Wilson: yeah. Cool.

What we'll do is we'll put his contact information in the show notes. Ladies and gentlemen, as always, reach out to our guests, say thanks for being on the show. If you want to have a conversation around the topic of investor relations, especially around private equity and venture capital, we're running a series right now and we would seriously.

Like to hear your thoughts, head over to the investor relations podcast.com, fill out a form and then we'll get you on the show till then, we'll talk to you all on the next episode. Cheers everyone.