How RIAs Are Reshaping the Investor Base for Pre-IPO Companies with Jeff Ransdell

Joshua Wilson: 0:00

Hey, good day everybody. Welcome to the Investor Relations Podcast. If you're enjoying these episodes about investor relations, I encourage you to head over to the investorrelationspodcast.com, fill out a form, subscribe, just get in touch with us. Tell us what topics you wanna talk about. Is it AI? Is it, you know, private to public? Is it, you know, dealing with investor relations on a retail level or institutional level? Whatever you wanna know about, let me know so I can tap into the network and bring that information back to you. Here's what we've been hearing a lot from you, is what's going on in the world of venture capital, specifically in raising capital. So I'm having a conversation with an old friend, Jeff, who runs Fuel Venture Capital, and we wanna talk about what's going on in the world of venture capital, but specifically in that raising capital. So Jeff, welcome back to the show, man.

Jeff Ransdell: 0:53

Hey, it's great to see you, Joshua. Congratulations on everything that's going on in your world.

Joshua Wilson: 0:57

Yeah, man. I appreciate it. You know more than anyone what it's like to build stuff, to invest in things, and to watch them grow. It's a lot of work. So give us an update. Uh, we interviewed you about four years ago on The Deal podcast, but give us an update on what's going on in your world for the last four years. I'm seeing a lot of investments into AI and some cool technology. So give me an update, Jeff.

Jeff Ransdell: 1:21

Yeah. Well, you know, f- four years, I mean, the world is moving so fast. So much has happened in just four years. But the last time we talked, we... At that time, we just had our main flagship fund and a co-investment vehicle.

Joshua Wilson: 1:34

Mm-hmm.

Jeff Ransdell: 1:34

Uh, today we have a total of six funds. We have, um, we have f- four venture funds, and then we have two new series which we just launched which are not venture funds, but more, um, pre-exit, uh, portfolios. The largest tech company is on the face of the planet. Uh, very short duration, three to five years. Um, you know, IRR, uh, you know, baseline is 25% IRR with a top line of 61%. We're really, really proud of that, and we're doing it in a really different way. It's something that we have worked on in the background for about three years, and we just launched it to the public after perfecting everything. But, uh, basically what we're doing, Joshua, just real quickly, and this isn't about Fuel or me, but you know, right now in San Francisco about$33 billion of value gets lost every single year because employees don't have the capital to exercise their options, and so they go unexercised, and nobody's out there helping them. And so what Fuel Venture Capital is doing is we're providing, you know, the top 1% of employees in San Francisco with the ability to exercise their options, and then we negotiate- with them, uh, a deal where we get an equity kicker and we get a percentage of what we're financing. And that way we give, you know, private clients access to companies they would never get access to before-fore at, you know, the ability... You know, one of the great things I think that Fuel's doing is democratizing access. You know, you don't have to have$20 million to come into our funds. Um, you know, our main focus is financial advisors and financial advisors having asset allocation portfolio construction conversations with their clients. And where, you know, the, the innovation economy makes sense, we're allocated in that, in that, in that discussion.

Joshua Wilson: 3:18

Man, I think that's brilliant. Right? I could, I could envision this. You know, you're, you, you join a startup, let's just say Facebook back in the day, and you have an option to buy equity at what you're... You know, when you started. But it gets to the point where you, you know, you've been delaying your income for so long and you don't have the ability to exercise your option, so it's gonna go void. It's gonna be worthless unless you can find access to capital. You've already tapped your friends and family for raising the capital. You've already gone through this path, and you're just watching a very valuable potential asset just disappear. Is that what I'm hearing?

Jeff Ransdell: 3:54

Yeah, you're hearing, and it's even deeper than that, Joshua. So if you think about it, the psychology of what happens is, you know, you're at XYZ startup company in San Francisco. You've been there a year. The company really appreciates what you're doing, and they give you, let's say 10,000 shares of the company at $20. But your thing is, it's illiquid, number one, and number two, you're not even convinced... You know, you don't really know if the company's going to be here long term. So you wait because you don't have to do anything today. You kick it down the street. You know, fast-forward four years, the company's now worth $100 a share. And, you know, there's no secrets in the lunchroom, and you start hearing that, you know, the CEO, the C-suite's thinking of taking the company public, or maybe there's someone who's going to acquire the company. And you say, "Oh my gosh, you know, I, I have, I have 10,000 shares. It's worth$100 a share now. That's significant money," and you start digging into it. The problem is you never really understood the components of it. Because now if you exercise... If you can come up with the 200,000, right?$20 strike price, 10,000 shares, $200,000 notional, but now you've gotta pay ordinary income tax on the spread between 120, which is $80 times 10,000 shares. So the tax liability of waiting becomes even more than the actual- Mm-hmm ... the actual cost basis of the shares themselves. And then what we do is we sit down, really from a financial planning perspective, going back to my old days of wealth management, and we have conversations with these employees about what the future looks like. Do you understand that literally in, in the next 18 to 36 months you're gonna become a multimillionaire if we can do a deal together? Okay. And so we're helping a lot of employees. You know, here's the problem that I have with all of it. These companies, if you think about it, when they go public... Let's... SpaceX You know, 1.75 trillion. But mathematically speaking, and I don't know the exact number with SpaceX, but, you know, if mathematically it applies to SpaceX as it does the, the vertical, 70% of those employees didn't exercise their options 'cause they couldn't. So what that means is the people who are actually building these companies are not participating in the wealth generation, which I think is horrendous. And so our mission is to help those employees, and it also, you know, feeds back into the wealth management channel- Mm-hmm ... because we have to have partnerships and we... You know, we're, we're helping these people significantly, so they look at us like, you know, what else can we do for them? And, and helping them with their future wealth is a big deal, and we partner up within our, our, our, our partner firms. We a- we align, uh, the employee with financial advisors and, and it's a great, it's a great cycle.

Joshua Wilson: 6:27

Yeah. Man, super cool. And if I scroll through, and I encourage people who are listening in to, to scroll through your LinkedIn, right?'Cause you could see, and, you know, we don't have to go through the companies here, but you've invested in a lot of companies and you've shared investor in this, investor in this, investor in this, and I think it's, it's important for people to kind of see it. And, um, and you've done a really great job at building out your, your LinkedIn t- as a, as a inspiration to other people in the, in the game. But also, "Hey, here's what I'm up to," right?

Jeff Ransdell: 6:55

Yeah.

Joshua Wilson: 6:55

Um, now you've spent... I'm, I'm, I'm reading through my notes. You've spent two decades at Merrill Lynch overseeing about 130 billion in client assets. How do you go from wealth advisor doing that work into venture capital? That seems like a total different, like, training, a total different game, a total different risk mindset. How did you make that shift?

Jeff Ransdell: 7:17

Yeah. I, I get that question all the time, Joshua, and it's, it's, it's a fair question. Um, so when, when, when I was in the public markets, I also had a private market portfolio. So I was really fortunate. I, I invested in some of the most iconic companies that you can think of today. Mm-hmm. Um, and, and so I started to really, you know, looking at my private returns and my public returns and understanding the market. I am a student of the game. Uh, I spend a tremendous amount of time, you know, reading and, and, and trying to understand what's going on. I think if you ask anybody who knew me back at Merrill Lynch, they would probably say I was one of those guys that tended to, you know, get on his horse and ride out into the future and then come back and tell everybody, you know, what we needed to do in order to be successful. And, you know, I was seeing the public markets shrinking. I mean, Joshua, the... You know, from the last 26 years, just going back to 2000, the public market's 50% smaller than it was in 2000.

Joshua Wilson: 8:13

For sure.

Jeff Ransdell: 8:14

And the reason for that is because companies are, are staying private much longer than they ever did before. And I really expected that to become, um, more prevalent. You know, the, the public markets, the wealth management channel was really built off of liquidity, public markets, et cetera. Mm-hmm. But now what was happening was this, this massive shift to the private sector and- I, I, you know, information has been democratized because of this iPhone, which came out in 2007, and that's when I really realized, you know, what's gonna happen is private clients who are dealing with wealth management firms are gonna have more information in the palm of their hands oftentimes than the actual advisors that are advising them, because the advisors are doing what they should be doing, which is portfolio construction, you know, portfolio reviews, et cetera. They don't have time to sit in front of their iPhone all damn day. And, you know, these clients are going to expect and demand to have access to, to, you know, the, the institutions of the world, the, the endowments, the, you know, the colleges, the insurance companies. And then the ultra, ultra high net worth individuals have ha- have had access and they've, they've dominated. They've really gotten, you know, some incredible res- re- results. But the average private client has not been given access, and I felt like that was a massive need. It would become more prevalent. And so I left Merrill to build a very institutional firm that was aligned to serve advisors' clients and, and provide them a very fiduciary, very institutional approach to investing in the innovation economy in the way that they're used to doing so at the really big firms on Wall Street.

Joshua Wilson: 9:52

Man, that's cool. What... So I usually... You know, when I... I've interviewed about 2,300 people, and what I, what I hear is when someone takes the leap to go do something, it's either the pain is so bad where I'm at that I gotta take the step, because maybe they got fired, laid off, had a, another kid and they had to make more money, whatever the case may be. Making a leap from where you are to something new, innovation, that's- that's the world of in- innovation and, and venture, is, is scary. What I'm hearing, though, as seeing into being a, a visionary yourself, you're looking at it and you're going, "Oh my gosh, if I stay here, it might not affect me today, tomorrow, but very soon it's gonna affect me. It's better that I go now, a- and, you know, like, make, pull that ripcord and go now than wait to see how this shakes out later on." Is that... Am I hearing that right?

Jeff Ransdell: 10:45

Yeah, you nailed it. I mean, you know, I think I'm one of those people who, you know, I'm, I'm just different. You know? I, I'm wired differently. I-

Joshua Wilson: 10:53

Yeah

Jeff Ransdell: 10:54

I, I wanna help people. Uh, I, I tend to be able to see things that other people can't see, and I have an ability to articulate what I see to people and, and, and they then become, you know, kind of a, a follower of that. And I really believed that what I was doing at the latter... at, at the tail end of my career, you know, I, I just wasn't, I wasn't really making an effect. I wasn't making a positive impact on people. Yeah. And I knew what was coming. And so for me, it was like, this is the time. I was tired of looking the man in the mirror in disgust every morning. And it's like you have to have the courage- Um, you know, you, I had an incredible career at Merrill Lynch. I cannot even begin to explain, you know, how valuable that time for me was. What I learned, um, is I could never even put a dollar amount on it. And so I wanted to take those learnings and bridge it into something that I knew I could be very helpful to, you know, what I had been, what I had made a commitment to my adult life, which is serving clients and investors. And, and, and we're doing that, and I'm really proud of that. We're, we're doing it in a very differentiated way. Um, I think that, that that's gonna continue to grow as we continue to provide investors access to things, you know, again, in a very institutional way that they're used to seeing in the old public market.

Joshua Wilson: 12:17

Yeah. Yeah, super cool. Well, let's dive in now. With your background in wealth management, moved over to VC, you know both of those industries, both of those, how they function, their business model. And what you found is that there's this opportunity to, to kind of go back to the wealth advisors, the RIAs, the registered, you know, uh, independent advisors, right? And to have conversations with them about the opportunities that you're seeing. When did that spark? Rather than just going after country club money or high net worth individuals, when did you go, "You know what? I think we need to help with the portfolio allocations and the structuring. We need to have more conversations with RIAs." What sparked that conversation in your brain?

Jeff Ransdell: 13:02

Yeah. I built the firm specifically to serve wealth advisors. So when I, when I f- when I built Fuel, I, I really thought right out of the gate I was going to have, you know, thousands of, of financial advisors that would reach out to me and say, "Hey, you know, I need your help," right?"Things are changing. Um, I, I need your help to educate myself, to understand what's going on so that I can ultimately, you know, educate and help my clients." But Joshua, that did not happen in 2017. You know, the, the industry was just not ready yet, right? Um, you know, you got a lot of people who have really large books of business that are serving, you know, amazing families. And at that particular time, I don't think there was, you know, the, the demand from the client was, was large enough to get the, the average financial advisor to say, "Hey, I need to, to start thinking differently." And so that was really frustrating for me. So when you asked me, you know, when did that trigger, what was... The trigger was before I even left Merrill Lynch, to be very, very transparent. Mm-hmm. So, um, you know, I had to quickly realize I have to go directly to the consumer. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Um, which, which we did, you know? We're, I mean, we're knocking on the door of, you know, close to $1 billion in AUM, and, and most all of that has, is, you know, family offices or individuals who have bypassed their financial advisor- To come to us, which I think is c- horrendous, and I wanna change that because it shouldn't be that way. I don't want that. I want a financial advisor between me and the ultimate client because the financial advisor's looking at the, the investor's, you know, portfolio in totality, and it's not just about the investments. It's about the real estate. It's about the family. It's about, you know, a lot of different things other than just the innovation economy, which is really all I focus on today. So we're, we're working really hard on those relationships. Um, I think it's really a large part about education.

Joshua Wilson: 14:58

Yeah. I... Oh, I agree with you. That's why we, we do, you know, we run four media programs now. We're buying and building more. We're building out the network because we believe in the world of AI, AI, you and I have discussed this, we think, this is my hypothesis, is before people ask God now, they're asking AI, right?"Hey, God, what should I do?" in my prayer time or whatever. They're going straight to AI seeking, you know, seeking what AI thinks, and whoever programmed that or whatever, I'm not even gonna go into the, the, the, the conversation about what AI is or what it could do in the future. I'm just saying that with the power of that, I think what human, human advice will be more valuable because people won't know what's real and what to trust. This is my opinion, and that's why I'm going all in with podcasting, interviews, panel discussions, in-person meetings, because I think people are gonna get so embar- uh, bombarded with that. Just my hypothesis. But I love what you're saying, and here's what I also heard is people who have come to you and invested directly. I just had a conversation with someone who made their first venture investment, and they're so excited, but they did it direct. Now, you're saying, "I... That's great. I would prefer that they have a conversation with their, uh, financial advisor, and we work on this together essentially as a team to have that middle person there." Why that approach?'Cause a lot of people would say,"No, come straight to me. I don't have to pay a vig. I don't have to do this or whatever," right? Why do you prefer that? It's interesting.

Jeff Ransdell: 16:28

I think it's in, I think it's in the best interest of the investor, which at the end of the day, you know, again, core Merrill Lynch leadership development is servant leadership. It's serving other people. It's putting others in front of your own interests, and I just believe that a financial advisor that has been working with a family for 10, 15, 20 years, maybe even longer, right, could be multi-generational, they understand that family. They understand what's going on. more than I do. I am a, I am a specific provider of access. I wanna be the best provider of that access that I can possibly be. I wanna be the best partner to the financial advisor, and ultimately, I want the client to look at us as being a value-added portion of their portfolio. So I think having a, a great relationship, a trusted relationship with the advisor in between the client only is in the best interest of the client, which is why I want that. Are we gonna do a good job with the financial advisor bypassed? Of course we will, but it still does not mean that that's the right way to go about it. I... You know, you, you said something a few minutes ago w- with, with AI. I articulate it a bit differently, but it's the same story. I think human authenticity is going to have significant value because of all the things that you got done saying, right? People are going to want to have a sit-down conversation with someone like yourself, someone like me, that has core values, that, that is authentic. You know, we're not machines. Mm. And, and really have real strong conversations. I think that financial advisors, um, are, are, are not going to be replaced by AI. Mm. I think that some will be, and I think that those who get it and, and are forcing themselves to grow intellectually and understand that the world is different will have 10 times the amount of, of, of relationships and ultimately assets under management. They're gonna have much smaller human teams. Yeah. Right? They're not gonna have 15, 20 human beings running around. They're gonna have four or five core humans, and the rest are going to be AI agents running analytics, background, you know, all those different types of things. And that's... Again, if I ride my horse into the future four or five years, that's what things look like, and that's really what I'm trying to get my message out to as many people as I can that, that, you know, listen, I served you guys for 21 years. That's all I know, and I wanna keep doing it. And, and I actually feel I have significant value for them and ultimately their clients.

Joshua Wilson: 18:57

Yeah. Well, let's talk about RIAs from, you know, from their perspective. What do you think is their biggest misconception they have about venture capital as an asset class?

Jeff Ransdell: 19:08

I think that, again, a lot of it is lack of education. Okay. And so their ultimate, uh, go-to, because they've never really had the access, is, well, i- you know, it's this, this, uh, risky asset class that has really long duration. And what they're really missing there is that it's, it's, it's not anymore. You know, innovation's not taking place, Joshua, in the public markets. It hasn't for years. Innovation takes place in the private market, and then the public market is simply a liquidity event for myself and my peers. The bottom line, uh, uh, the, the, here's a great analogy that I like to use with people. I've- we're on a roadshow right now for our newest, um, Innovation 100 fund. So I'm, I'm literally in different cities almost every other day. And just two nights ago, um, someone asked me this question and I said,"Listen, here's the best way to think about it. In 1997, this little tiny company called Amazon went public. By the way, it was the laughing stock of Wall Street for about seven years."

Joshua Wilson: 20:05

Mm-hmm.

Jeff Ransdell: 20:07

When it went public, it had top-line revenue of $30 million, and it had been private for 30 years, which means innovation and multi-generational wealth, if you invested in Amazon, has been incredible.

Joshua Wilson: 20:19

Right.

Jeff Ransdell: 20:20

But name me another company that has done that since then. You know, you fast-forward to today-

Joshua Wilson: 20:26

Yeah

Jeff Ransdell: 20:26

you know, we're supposed to see SpaceX go public in June at 1.75 trillion, not 30 million. Right. 1.75 trillion, and it's been private for 24 years. So all I'm saying is that the mass majority of wealth that was created for SpaceX was in the private sector, and it's gonna take a while for SpaceX to create wealth in the public sector. So all I'm trying to say is that the private markets are not a, a substitute for the public market. It's a combination of the two coming together and, and having the right portfolio construction for the right time horizons, the right risk tolerances for the client. And if you're doing that as an advisor, you're viewed in a very different light than if you come to the table and all you're doing is talking about what you've been talking about for 30 f- for 15, 20, 30 years, which is the same thing that your competitor is talking about as well.

Joshua Wilson: 21:21

Yeah. So when, when we talk about multi-generational family wealth, right? This is, this is what I'm learning, right? First generation creates it, then we have, you know, preservation and maybe growth. Third generation, let's not blow it, right? Yeah. So when, when we're having conversations with, you know, an RIA, uh, depending on what stage of family generation they're working with is their charter, right? So let me, let me ask this question. When it comes to working with a venture capital group, right, for the RIA specifically, what kind of conversation should they be having with the different maybe generation when it comes to venture capital as a potential asset class? Did, did I, did I state that-

Jeff Ransdell: 22:07

Yeah clearly? I, you know, listen, I, I, I think that the conversation, um... You know, my, my chief investment officer, who's a former long-short hedge fund manager, I think has done a- an incredible job of, of really thinking about portfolio construction. And, and her belief is that the innovation economy deserves a 7 to 10% allocation in the, in the construction. And I don't care, you know, if, if you are in capital preservation or not because, Joshua, the, the problem is... And, and actually I had a conversation like this with a very, very, very large- family office just two weeks ago. You know, the, the notion that you're just going to invest in traditional securities, and you're just gonna have all this money, you know, for, for generations to come, I think that that has some, some holes in it because things are changing so fast. You know- Mm ... you've talked about AI. You know, a lot of people, I think, make the mistake to think that AI is just another technological cycle that we're gonna go through, similar to when, you know, the internet came out, and we said it was gonna, you know, take everybody's job. This is very different, right? This is a meta moment, and I believe that everybody should have a foot in the water regardless of how much wealth you have. If you have a ton of wealth and you're trying to preserve it, and you don't have a foot in the water for innovation, my humble opinion, you'll have less wealth in five years to 10 years than you do today.

Joshua Wilson: 23:31

Hm. Yeah. Interesting. When it, when it comes to, you know, venture capital, one of the things that I'm hearing is, you know, like, take a look at the private markets, right? The, the private market versus public market. When it comes to liquidity in the business model of a venture group, it's, you know, we're gonna invest in 10 businesses. One's gonna really take off, two might be okay, but that one, that unicorn takes off and maybe goes, you know, more funding rounds, a little bit of liquidity, or an IPO, right? We- if you're... If VCs should focus more on the private market, how does that liquidity happen, or what are your thoughts on that?

Jeff Ransdell: 24:13

Well, I think that the private market and liquidity is, is, is, is fast iterating as well, right? Okay. Um, I think that there... I think the secondary markets are becoming much more mature than they ever were before. Um, you know, y- you've got a lot of different options now as, as a venture capitalist to look for liquidity. Um, but you're right. You know, traditional venture capital, traditional private equity is a 10-year duration. With Fuel Venture Capital, again, because I come from the public market, we're trying to fix that by saying, f- first of all, by prospectus, we're not allowed to reinvest any liquidity events nor retain them. So when we have a liquidity event, we have, we have to kick it out to the investor. So that, that alters duration significantly. And then the second thing is, is having a firm which is focused on venture capital because I do think that, that owning, you know, these, these young companies and curating these companies in the early stages can create significant v- upside return. But then also, on the other side, have, you know, more late, late stage 18 to 36 month horizons, right? With a tail of five years. And really focus and provide investors access to those companies that we believe, as an active manager, are going to exit in one way, shape, or form. Doesn't necessarily mean it's gonna be an IPO, but there's going to be an exit in that company in the next- 18 to 36 months. That product, that strategy, the Innovation 100, was, was specifically created for retail investors through wealth channels.

Joshua Wilson: 25:48

Mm.

Jeff Ransdell: 25:48

Because it's perfectly positioned for someone who ha- has never really had access to this. You know, I, I don't think that just investing in a company that, um, is at a series A round, you know, and has$5 million in, in, in, in revenue, and someone like my team has to, has to curate that over four or five years is necessarily the right investment. So we have also iterated, we have also understood that, you know what? We have a responsibility because we, where we came from, and we know what we're doing, and know how to, how to construct these things. We can solve a lot of problems together.

Joshua Wilson: 26:22

Yeah. Interesting. Um, I've, I've got a few questions, but I think that this one will, will hit, hit well. When it comes to RIAs, almost, like, evolving into what I see many institutional allocators. Like, when you, when you look at RIAs not just as a, a source for capital, but also a source for wisdom and a source of, um, advice for the, the client itself, almost like a, as a part of the team, like, what, what value add do you think that the RIAs can bring to the table of venture capital?

Jeff Ransdell: 26:57

Well, I think it's massive. I think that, that, that, that RIAs and, and wealth managers control significance, significant amount of wealth, right?

Joshua Wilson: 27:07

Yeah.

Jeff Ransdell: 27:07

And what people don't really understand is, and, and this is one of our mantras, right? It's, it's, it's founder-focused and investor-driven, and they have to, to live at the exact same time in, in everybody on my team's mind. And what I mean by that is you can have the smartest people in the world, right? You can have Elon Musk running around saying, "I wanna go to Mars." You can say, "I wanna build electric cars. I wanna do this. I wanna do that. You know, I wanna put, I wanna put computer chips in people's heads." But if not for the investor, innovation does not exist. So when you ask me, you know, how does the RIA play a role in the future of innovation, I think that the RIAs and the wealth managers and their clients actually, you know, over the next three, four, five years, will be the leader of driving innovation. Because they want the access, they've never had the access, and, you know, firms like mine, um, who are focused on, on, on them, where the firms were built for them, are going to provide them with that access. And so you're gonna have this tremendous wave of private client wealth going into innovation really for the first time. I mean, it's happening now, Joshua. It is happening now. I mean, we have a number of, of phenomenal advisors we, we refer to as private, you know, our, our partner firms, but that's gonna continue to grow.

Joshua Wilson: 28:30

Yeah. Very cool. Well, Jeff, uh, for, for groups that are interested in connecting with you, what's a good place to start out that conversation?

Jeff Ransdell: 28:39

Yeah, I think the best way to start out with that conversation is, um, probably through email, so jeff@fuelventurecapital.com. Cool. Um, you know, our website. But, but, you know, come direct- Or, you know, I would say, you know, you can, you can connect with me on LinkedIn, but the problem that I get with, with DMs and I probably have 5,000 messages in my It's just impossible to stay on top of it all, so, you know, probably email's the best way to do it.

Joshua Wilson: 29:06

Cool. And we'll put that, uh, people will be able to take a look at your profile and, and, uh, connect with you. But during this interview, there's probably a question about venture capital or the world of RIA or wealth management that I should have asked you, that you're wishing someone asked you that I didn't. What is that question?

Jeff Ransdell: 29:26

I think, I think the biggest question that advisors have to be asking themselves is, you know, what's happening right now, Josh, when you know this. There are a ton of ... Every single Friday, there are groups around the United States that are unplugging from the old school wire house Wall Street firms that I grew up at. Mm-hmm. And they're going to independent channels. And, and I have some really dear friends that I think are, are, have created some of the greatest, you know, breakaway, you know, firms that exist, that are really, really amazing. And I, I think what advisors have to be asking themselves is, you know, "How much longer do I wanna be in this business? You know, if I have my son in this business or if I really care about the young people on my team, are they best positioned where they are right now?" And if you can't answer with 100% certainty of that, then you need, you owe it to yourself to kind of be looking around, because you have to have access to people like me if you wanna be competitive in the future. I- if you ... Let's just say it differently. If you truly want to serve your clients and provide them with what they deserve to have and what they demand to have, then you have to have the ability to have access to boutique firms like, like, like Fuel Venture Capital. Can't just be the Blackstones and the BlackRocks that are billion dollar funds and super dilutive and There's nothing wrong with those firms. They're amazing. I have tremendous respect for all of them. But you also have to have, you know, some, some, some Puritans, right? Some Puritans that are actually boots on the ground and, and, and, and, and managing these portfolios and building these relationships and, you know, finding out what, you know, the next, um, you know, what the s- what is the next big play, you know? You have the Magnificent Seven. Well, let me tell you something. In the private sector right now, there's, there's hundreds of those companies, and they're just waiting to, to go into the public markets. Do you have access to them or do you not? And if you don't, what does that mean? Mm-hmm. And that kind of goes back to what I was saying before about capital preservation. If you're missing out on all that- I mean, how is your, you know, how is your capital? I mean, how, how safe is it? Are you going backwards? Well, you, you kind of are, aren't you? And that's all I'm trying to say. I think we've reached a point right now, um, and it's only gonna move faster, Joshua. That's, that's the thing that scares me the most. 99% of the population factually has no idea what's really going on. And if they did, things would be very different, and you know that as well as I do. So I think everybody has to force themselves to get uncomfortable every damn day. Mm-hmm. Are you educating yourself on AI? Do you understand what's going on? Are you leveraging it? Are you doing your readings every day? Are you, are you forcing yourself to get smarter? Because in this world, int- intelligence is abundant now.

Joshua Wilson: 32:14

Mm-hmm. Man, so cool. Jeff, so glad, uh, to have you back on the show. Always a pleasure. Um, for ladies and gentlemen listening in to this podcast, I always wanna encourage you to reach out to our guests, say thanks for being on the show, sh- for sharing their time, energy, and effort with you, our guests. Follow them on LinkedIn, and then connect with them directly if you would like to learn more. We'll put their website and their contact information below. And if you have, um, if you have some thoughts on investor relations when working with RIAs or institutions or family offices, I would love to hear your thoughts. Head over to theinvestorrelationspodcast.com, fill out a quick form, and let's get that conversation started. Till then, we'll talk to you all on the next episode. Cheers, guys