In short
Highlights from the Uncharted Community Summit (Michael Loeb’s Hamptons backyard) plus broader investing and markets discussion. Main themes: AI-driven startup capital and venture dynamics; capital markets/IPO momentum; wealth management digitization and tax-aware investing; consumer “vice” categories (alcohol, nicotine pouches, THC); brand-building and live commerce.
Guests (backgrounds)
- Michael Loeb, founder/CEO of Loeb.nyc; co-founder of Uncharted; long-time investor/entrepreneur.
- Noah Friedman, co-founder/CEO of Uncharted; investor/entrepreneur.
- Bill Harris, serial fintech executive; founding CEO of PayPal; ran TurboTax; founded Personal Capital (acquired by Empower); now at Evergreen Wealth.
- Allie McCartney, Managing Director, Private Wealth Management at UBS; wealth planning focused on founders/liquidity events.
- Michael Harris, vice chairman and global head of markets at the New York Stock Exchange.
- Damon John, founder/CEO of FUBU; Shark Tank “shark”; entrepreneur/brand builder.
Key claims + notable examples
- Venture capital is pressured like a “beauty contest,” and AI draws most money; non-AI companies may be overlooked.
- Loeb compares the current AI cycle to the late 1990s internet; notes $100M signing bonuses and big AI acquisitions (e.g., Meta buying 49% of an AI company).
- Friedman argues AI will expose a meritocracy; founders can use AI leverage to outperform.
- Vice investing: Loeb says betting against alcohol is “a bad idea”; 2024–25 alcohol sales higher than 2019; non-alc is real but may be near its peak; nicotine pouches and THC beverages are “huge opportunities” (Zyn dominates).
- Bill Harris: blockchain helps international bank-to-bank speed vs SWIFT; he doesn’t use crypto for currency.
- Allie McCartney: founders often miss tax planning (e.g., QSBS) until liquidity; UBS supports entrepreneurs during the “valley of death.”
- Michael Harris (NYSE): IPO sentiment flipped; deals are oversubscribed, pricing favors issuers, and aftermarket performance has been “phenomenal”; TXSE Texas is gaining momentum with listings and a Dallas lease.
- Damon John: brand-building is harder because niche audiences matter and founders must be the brand; live selling (Whatnot 20-second auctions) is reshaping retail.
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Chapters
Tap a time to open that second in VORecap of the Uncharted Community Summit
1:59 to 2:35
Overview of the Uncharted Community Summit and its significance.
“Welcome to the Bloomberg Business Week Weekend Podcast and a very happy 4th of July.”
Insights from Michael Loeb
2:40 to 3:37
Michael Loeb discusses the importance of community and events.
“who started off by telling us why this event is so important.”
Capital Markets and Funding Trends
3:37 to 6:15
A deep dive into current capital market trends and challenges.
“I wish we could because I should have a big on all that.”
AI Hype Cycle Discussion
6:17 to 8:00
Exploring whether the current AI wave is different from past tech cycles.
“You have meta platforms coming in and dropping billions of dollars to buy 49 % of an AI company that barely existed.”
Investing in Alcohol and Vice Markets
8:00 to 11:05
Discussion on the resilience of alcohol and investing in vice categories.
“We turn now to his Uncharted Community Summit colleague and co-founder Noah Friedman.”
Market Trends in Non-Alcoholic Beverages
11:09 to 12:33
Insights into the rise of non-alcoholic drinks and market dynamics.
“Everybody started drinking like fish and everything went to the moon.”
Bill Harris: Fintech Insights
16:14 to 16:42
Engage with Bill Harris's insights on changes in fintech and media.
“Catch us live weekday afternoons from 2 to 5 p.m.”
The Future of Financial Services
16:42 to 19:09
Explore the impact of digital technology on financial services.
“He's founded or led several personal finance companies.”
Evergreen Wealth Management
19:09 to 20:39
Learn about Evergreen Wealth and its approach to wealth management.
“And that service comes with fees, 80 basis points, 120 basis points.”
Blockchain and Payments
20:39 to 22:48
Discuss the potential of blockchain to disrupt traditional payment systems.
“These guys really don't need any introduction.”
Show all 36 chapters
AI's Role in Financial Advice
22:48 to 23:40
Discover how AI is transforming the delivery of financial advice.
“We were moving money instantly, skittering it around the world at PayPal.”
Allie McCartney on Entrepreneurship
23:40 to 28:00
Gain insights from Allie McCartney on wealth management and entrepreneurship.
“That's former PayPal CEO Bill Harris speaking with us at Michael Loeb's annual Uncharted Summit.”
Exploring QSBS for Entrepreneurs
28:00 to 28:58
Learn about the Qualified Small Business Stock (QSBS) benefits for entrepreneurs.
“As you know, Oh, entrepreneurs are not focused on this stuff when you're starting a company.”
Exploring QSBS for Entrepreneurs
29:10 to 29:45
Learn about the Qualified Small Business Stock (QSBS) benefits for entrepreneurs.
“ChatGPT Work is a new way of working in ChatGPT that can take action across your apps and files, stay with a project for hours if needed, and turn a goal into finished work.”
Insights from the Uncharted Community Summit
31:47 to 40:40
Gain insights from Michael Harris on the current IPO landscape and market trends.
“Find an independent agent at CINFIN.com.”
Damon John's Views on Brand Creation
40:40 to 42:02
Damon John discusses the challenges of starting a brand in today's market.
“We also caught up with a shark at the Uncharted Community Summit on Long Island.”
The Evolution of FUBU in Today's Market
42:02 to 44:20
Explore how the retail landscape has changed and what FUBU would look like today.
“But today's FUBU— It's a completely different environment.”
Live Selling: A New Retail Frontier
44:22 to 45:27
Learn about the rise of live selling and its impact on retail dynamics.
“We'll talk about investing in women's health issues with Jessica Kamada.”
Live Selling: A New Retail Frontier
45:34 to 46:29
Learn about the rise of live selling and its impact on retail dynamics.
“It's time to plan ahead and make sure your brand is showing up in ways that can have an impact.”
Welcome to the Holiday Edition of Bloomberg Businessweek
47:35 to 48:26
Introduction to the special holiday episode and the Uncharted Community Summit.
“Catch us live weekday afternoons from 2 to 5 p.m.”
The Birth and Growth of Uncharted
48:27 to 50:26
Discover the founding principles and evolution of the Uncharted community.
“And also Noah Friedman, CEO of Uncharted.”
Creating Safe Spaces for Entrepreneurs
50:27 to 53:15
Understand the importance of safe spaces for entrepreneurs to connect and share.
“No, we had about 20 entrepreneurs around the table, kind of eight of each of our friends and then a couple others, if you will.”
The Role of AI in Entrepreneurship
53:16 to 56:00
Discuss how AI is reshaping entrepreneurial opportunities and challenges.
“And we had a lot of false starts two, three years ago.”
Entrepreneurs in a Changing Landscape
56:00 to 58:20
Discussing the challenges and opportunities for entrepreneurs amid macroeconomic changes.
“and there's going to be some great companies built, and there's going to be some great flame-outs.”
The Role of Capital in Startups
58:20 to 59:16
Analyzing the current state of capital availability for startups, especially in the AI space.
“So to answer your question directly, sure, there's capital out there.”
The Role of Capital in Startups
59:33 to 1:00:22
Analyzing the current state of capital availability for startups, especially in the AI space.
“Paul Sweeney stays with me as we learn about AI's potential to replace human workers.”
The Role of Capital in Startups
1:00:29 to 1:01:24
Analyzing the current state of capital availability for startups, especially in the AI space.
“4imprint have promotional products that work as hard as you do.”
AI's Impact on Workforce Dynamics
1:01:24 to 1:08:26
Exploring how AI is changing workforce dynamics and the implications for businesses.
“But sometimes what matters most is being ready for what you never saw coming.”
The Evolution of Business Funding
1:08:26 to 1:10:02
Discussing the challenges of securing funding for startups and the changing landscape for entrepreneurs.
“We watched a female entrepreneur who was one of our winning women back in 2015 create an adult beverage company as a school teacher and sell it for an undisclosed amount, but we're guessing it's over a billion.”
Challenges of Early Stage Businesses
1:10:02 to 1:13:46
Learn about the difficulties entrepreneurs face in selling innovative ideas.
“Well, first of all, like any early stage business, it was brutal.”
Looking Ahead to Women's Health Investing
1:13:46 to 1:14:01
Discover insights on investing in women's health and implications of policy.
“That's Brett Markinson, founder and CEO of Innovent Capital Group.”
Looking Ahead to Women's Health Investing
1:14:03 to 1:14:42
Discover insights on investing in women's health and implications of policy.
“Some people treat ChatGPT like some kind of smart search engine, and some use it to get work done.”
Looking Ahead to Women's Health Investing
1:14:49 to 1:15:43
Discover insights on investing in women's health and implications of policy.
“4imprint have promotional products that work as hard as you do.”
Investing in Women's Health: Data Gaps and Opportunities
1:15:43 to 1:21:11
Explore the gaps in women's health research and how venture capital can address them.
“If you listen to financial news, you know a lot of time is spent thinking about what's next.”
Economic Opportunities in Women's Health
1:21:11 to 1:24:02
Understand the economic potential and challenges of investing in women's health.
“to be great 10 years from now, then like what do I fund 10 years from now if that research doesn't continue at the clip it is today?”
Investing in Women's Health: Opportunities and Challenges
1:24:02 to 1:28:10
Explore the economic potential and complexities of investing in women's health.
“Every single human has struggled through a personal, a pivotal life stage, be it a man or a woman.”
Transcript
Automatic transcript. May contain errors.0:00Bloomberg Businessweek Daily is brought to you by HPE, bringing you the self-driving network, a network that's self-optimizing, self-healing, and self-protecting, and only continues to get smarter. Learn more at hpe.com slash networking.
0:14Carol Massar:Some people treat ChatGPT like some kind of smart search engine, and some use it to get work done. ChatGPT Work is a new way of working in ChatGPT that can take action across your apps and files, stay with a project for hours if needed, and turn a goal into finished work. It's designed to help you move from a chaotic starting point to a reviewable first version. So all the source materials, briefs, and scattered information that you have to grind through to turn into something useful can just become something useful. Put ChatGPT to work on your most ambitious ideas and projects. Get started at ChatGPT.com by selecting Work Mode, available on Plus and Pro plans.
0:56Carol Massar:Healthcare doesn't always work great. If you've ever waited on a refill or couldn't schedule an appointment, you get it. That's the kind of stuff Optum is changing. They're using data and technology to integrate patient care, pharmacy, and everything else. So healthcare is connected, not complicated. What's that look like? Cheaper prescriptions that are easier to get and care that looks at the whole person. How you need it. Optum is helping make healthcare work as one for everyone. Learn more at business.optum.com. Bloomberg Audio Studios. Podcasts. Radio. News. This is Bloomberg Business Week Daily.
1:37Reporting from the magazine that helps global leaders stay ahead with insight on the people, companies, and trends shaping today's complex economy. Plus, global business, finance, and tech news as it happens. The Bloomberg Business Week Daily Podcast with Carol Masser and Tim Stenevek on Bloomberg Radio.
1:58Carol Massar:Hi, everyone. Welcome to the Bloomberg Business Week Weekend Podcast and a very happy 4th of July. Well, just about one week ago, we were live in Southampton, Long Island at the Uncharted Community Summit. It's an annual gathering of over 500 members of the entrepreneurial community. And over the next two hours, we will bring you some of our favorite conversations from that event. We'll hear from voices on artificial intelligence. In fact, it felt like everybody had a view when it came to AI. We also talked capital markets and women's health. Plus, we sit down with a shark. First up, though, we caught up with one of the co-founders of the event of Uncharted and the man whose backyard we were literally broadcasting from.
2:39Carol Massar:He is Michael Loeb, founder and CEO of Loeb.nyc, who started off by telling us why this event is so important. If you were to take a look in the background, you would see, you know, 600 people talking to 600 other people. It's quite the event. And what we really want to do is foster relationships between investors and companies, between companies and companies, and between CEOs looking for talent and talent looking for CEOs. So I think a good time is being had by all. You know, an event like this, you've been doing this for a few years. It started during the pandemic. It started a lot smaller.
3:21And I heard you say, and your partner say this too, Noah, that he's running into people constantly, you say. Yeah. They raised money as a result of being here. They found a co-founder here. They found employees here. How do you measure the success of an event such as this in the days, weeks, and months following it? Right. I wish we could because I should have a big on all that. Don't you think of it?
3:41Carol Massar:You've known Noah for a long time. Right. So, you know, I've got to tell you, we do solicit testimonials of exactly the things that you're talking about. We have quite a few of people saying, you know, I met my founder there about two years ago. Noah and I get an invitation, and it was shrouded in mystery. And it was three women who had us go to an event downtown, and they brought us up on stage. Everybody started to clap. And what that was is these were three women, never met before. They were all, you know, elite athletes. and they decided there should be a fund supporting elite athletes, that they had a different point of view, a different sense of how to compete, and they all got along very, very well.
4:30And that thesis led to a$50 million fund. So it's that type of thing that really propels us.
4:37Carol Massar:Well, talk to us about capital. How much is out there for startups? Wow. You know, it's funny. Things go in cycles, as you know. So this is not an up cycle for capital formation. Last numbers I looked at, and they're a little bit stale, but down 60 % or 70%. Certainly the secondary market, if that's any indication at all, does illustrate that there's a lot of illiquidity looking to get liquid. Not nearly as frothy as it used to be was IPOs, even though that's starting to unlock a little bit. So no, it is hard, and the money does gravitate these days to AI. So when there is an idea, when there is a startup, that's where it goes.
5:23It goes there, right. And what folks don't, I think, really realize or appreciate is the forces at play in venture, and venture funding and venture capital, which is, I sometimes call it a beauty contest, and that is because there's one breakout winner in a category, and then all the LPs are asking their GPs, you know, what is your AI strategy? And if the answer is, you know, we think it's a little oversold, we think it's a little bit frothy, where there's going to be a couple of winners and a lot of losers, we're taking a wait-and-see attitude, the answer is bye-bye, I'm bringing my money to that fund that made that investment.
6:06So, a lot of pressure for them to jump in, and it's in those situations that not so good deals are made. Right. So, yeah. In terms of cycles, does it feel like this AI cycle is different than previous tech hype cycles? And the reason I ask, and look, nobody wants to hear or utter the phrase, this time is different, but if you look out at the private markets right now, you've got sky-high valuations, I think many would argue, for open AI, right? For anthropic, for perplexity. You have meta platforms coming in and dropping billions of dollars to buy 49 % of an AI company that barely existed. You have founders being poached.
6:44We're talking$100 million signing bonuses. For an individual to go to a large company. Right. So I look at my mailbox every day. I'm looking for my$100 million check. Hasn't come in yet. To me, it feels different. Now, what does it feel like? I've been around for long enough. so I'm something of the elder statesman here. I've been around long enough that I've seen a few cycles. This feels like the late 90s, and the late 90s was the advent of the Internet.
7:16Carol Massar:Right. And it feels this profound. Now, you know, people would say, well, you know, if we look back two or three years, it was NFTs, and that was a false positive. And before that, it was blockchain, which was sort of a false positive. And before that, it was cannabis. and before that it was Bitcoin. But this one feels real and this has the possibility of disrupting entire industries. I had breakfast, by the way, with a friend. He has a unicorn. Business is worth almost$2 billion. He has 270 people. And he said, Michael, by year end, it's 120. That's Michael Loeb, founder and CEO of Loeb.nyc and gotta say, a very, very gracious host.
8:00Carol Massar:We turn now to his Uncharted Community Summit colleague and co-founder Noah Friedman. He's the CEO of the organization, and he told us why this event is also so special. The most important thing and the truth of what Uncharted is all about is what's happening right now, which is people just mingling and meeting each other. What we really care about here and what gets me excited as an entrepreneur is environment when I can kind of go up to anybody, shake their hand, say hello, and trust that they're going to be friendly, nice, and more important than someone who I can build with. So I like to think that's what's happening behind me, and I'll get the verdict from you guys and everyone else afterwards if we did our jobs.
8:34What's being built right now in the startup ecosystem? Look, everything with the word AI in it is getting a ton of attention. I think there's a lot of – we talked about this earlier. I think there's a lot of businesses that don't have the word AI in them that are still remarkable companies that are getting a shockingly low amount of attention. And so you have this barbell happening. I particularly am kind of on both sides of it, right? My fund invests in alcohol and consumer vice, which is – there's some AI, but that's pretty antithetical. And on the other side, I'm personally investing and trying to start companies in the AI space as well.
9:01Most of the people here, I can guarantee you, if you ask them what's on your mind right now as a founder, AI is going to be obvious, and it's a natural thing to say. And I think that's top of mind for a lot of founders right now.
9:12Carol Massar:When everybody's saying that, I think this is something, did we talk about it with Michael, or I'm trying to think, we've had so many good conversations here, this idea that there's just so much coming at us with an AI connection, that ultimately the dust is going to settle. There's going to be some really big winners and losers. How do you as an investor who's also looking at these opportunities or an entrepreneur trying to start something up, how do you figure out which way to go? It's a great question. Look, I think that there's an unbelievable power law that's playing out here. I've said this a lot, and I'm going to continue to say it.
9:38I think that despite the fact that there is about to be so much money made in AI, an unbelievable tidal wave of innovation and opportunity, there's a lot of people who are going to get absolutely smoked. And the reason for that is that there's a lot of people who, out of necessity, based on funds that have raised money from LPs that are expected to deploy, are trying to rush into rounds for businesses with basically a deck and an idea at$50 million pre-money valuations or sometimes even higher. Sometimes that will work. Often it will not. And so I think that you have an interesting dynamic now where founders have a ton of power if they're willing to build an AI.
10:09And I think that that plays nicely to the founder. So as an investor, as an entrepreneur, I'm thinking about how I can create leverage out of myself, use AI tools to get more out of NOAA, more out of a small team and create unbelievable levels of efficiency. But I think like entrepreneurship as a whole, AI really is going to expose people. It's a meritocracy. If you are good enough to figure out how to use AI, there's an unbelievable opportunity at hand right now. There's been a lot of talk of AI today. Of course. I want to talk about booze. Let's do it. I'm into it. I'm curious about where you see opportunity right now because we're seeing a real rise in non-alcoholic beers, non-alcoholic drinks.
10:43I mean, it's not weird to go and order a mocktail anymore. It used to be something that kids did at bar and bat mitzvahs, but that's actually happening in bars around New York City. What are the other vices and vice-type categories that you're investing in? Because it seems like there's this really movement away from vice. So I'll tell you right now, I have a potentially controversial opinion that the notion of betting against alcohol is a bad idea. I think alcohol for a long time has proven that it's remarkably resilient. This is not the first time and it won't be the last time that we hear headlines indicate that no one's drinking anymore.
11:13It is just not true. If you take the actual trajectory of alcohol consumption and sales over the last 50 years, it basically was a straight line north every single year, where the only thing we knew is that it was going to be higher next year than it was the previous year. In COVID, it spiked like crazy. Everybody started drinking like fish and everything went to the moon. And so all the manufacturers made more. The distributors bought more. The retailers ordered more because consumers were buying more. And then lockdowns ended and people said, you know what? I should get healthy. I should try longevity.
11:39I should focus on saunas and optimizing my sleep. I think that's a moment in time. I believe in the longevity space, but we've had a slight dip in all time high, which has created this compression in the market where it's creating all these headlines under the indication that people are not drinking more. It's really just a reset. And if you actually look at the sales in 2024 and 2025, they're higher than they were in 2019. So my personal hypothesis, and we're investing accordingly, is that, yes, non-alc is real. It's interesting. But booze is and will continue to be a deeply important part of the American and global psyche, economy, and so many other things.
12:10I also think at the same time, nicotine pouches, super, super interesting, huge opportunity there. We're investing THC beverages, huge opportunity there. So, look, consumers and humans at the most fundamental level put the markets aside. They need escapism. They need social connectivity. They need connection. And until there's other commercially reasonable and available things like alcohol and nicotine and THG that can solve for it, there's going to be a lot of money to be made in those spaces.
12:33Carol Massar:All right. But something like non-alcoholic beer, I mean, substantial growth. Some reports indicating a nearly 415 percent increase from 2018 to 2024 in retail sales. And mind you, it's coming from maybe a smaller bottom. But having said that, are you not playing in that space, the non-alcoholic space? We haven't yet. I think if I had to guess in my funds, I think we'll make a couple bets in the space. I just think it behaves distinctly differently than traditional alcohol and vice. I think there is a market for it. My personal bet is that we are probably near the top. I do think any beer is going to continue to grow.
13:04I think any beer is probably the best use case for it. I think any cocktails are a little bit tougher. Any wine is a little bit tougher. I don't quite get it. On the nicotine pouches, I've heard of some of the direct consumer startups like the Lucy's, for example. We're investors. How do you compete with Zinn, though? I mean, we're talking Philip Morris International. We're talking about billions and billions of dollars. Yeah, Zinn is the 10 ,000-pound gorilla in the room. They have more money than they know what to do with. The reality is, and this goes into a fundamental thesis I have, consumers are inherently promiscuous.
13:30I think they are excited to try new things. When you have a market that is and is going to continue to be as big as nicotine pouches are, there just has to be room for more. And so my thesis in bed is that, yes, Philip Morris has crushed it. Unbelievable acquisition with Zinn. They're doing a great job. by definition, all the other big tobacco players, and even I'm willing to bet that a lot of the booze companies as well are going to say, you know what, this is a huge market that behaves similarly to alcohol in many ways. We need to play there.
13:55Carol Massar:Thanks to Uncharted's Noah Friedman and Michael Loeb. Coming up on Bloomberg Businessweek, more of our favorite conversations from the Uncharted Community Summit that was held just recently in Southampton, Long Island. It's an annual event. Up next, a serial entrepreneur involved in the early days of the changing fintech landscape. You know, such things as PayPal and Intuit. Bill Harris is coming up next. This is Bloomberg. Bloomberg Business Week Daily is brought to you by HPE, bringing you the self-driving network, a network that's self-optimizing, self-healing, and self-protecting, and only continues to get smarter.
14:33Learn more at hpe.com slash networking.
14:36Carol Massar:Some people treat ChatGPT like some kind of smart search engine, and some use it to get work done. ChatGPT Work is a new way of working in ChatGPT that can take action across your apps and files, stay with a project for hours if needed, and turn a goal into finished work. It's designed to help you move from a chaotic starting point to a reviewable first version. So all the source materials, briefs, and scattered information that you have to grind through to turn into something useful can just become something useful. Put ChatGPT to work on your most ambitious ideas and projects. Get started at ChatGPT.com by selecting Work Mode, available on Plus and Pro plans.
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16:00Whether you're gearing up for fall events or simply planning ahead for the season, 4imprint can help your brand show up, stay useful, and make connections that last. Explore the possibilities at 4imprint.com. 4imprint. For certain. You're listening to the Bloomberg Business Week Daily Podcast. Catch us live weekday afternoons from 2 to 5 p.m. Eastern. Listen on Apple CarPlay and Android Auto with the Bloomberg Business app. Or watch us live on YouTube.
16:28Carol Massar:This is a special holiday edition of Bloomberg Businessweek, featuring some of our favorite conversations from the Uncharted Community Summit held recently in Southampton, Long Island. And I got to say, this next guest needs no introduction. Okay, you promised we'd talk to a serial entrepreneur who has a ton of experience in the fintech space. I want to bring in Bill Harris. He's a longtime fintech executive. He's founded or led several personal finance companies. Think from companies such as Intuit, PayPal as well. He was the founding CEO there. He ran TurboTax. He founded Personal Capital. Well, you remember just a few years ago, that was bought by Empower.
17:01Right. So who knows a thing or two about how people are using these apps these days?
17:07Carol Massar:All right. Now that the event is underway, I'm just curious, anybody you've talked to, any interesting conversations that you've had so far? Well, sure. You know, the most interesting fellow here is, of course, Michael Loeb. And I've known him actually for now. I talked to him just a moment ago. Forty years. Wow. Forty years ago, we worked together in the magazine industry, which, of course, is no longer. You did a subscription business, right, that Time Warner bought. That's right. But first we worked together at Time Inc., and then he left to go build the subscription business that he sold back to Time Inc.
17:42Carol Massar:Kind of fascinating. Can we just go there for a minute? Sure. Media, the changes that we have seen in content, production, where you get it. I don't know. Who would have thought? I mean, I used to do subscriptions, right, in terms of magazines and various newspapers. We don't do that anymore. Where do you think it's all going? Well, it's, you know, finance and media are the two industries most profoundly changed by digital technology. Yeah. Because they are all just figments of our imagination. And you can create them with no assets, just your mind. And so what happened, though, is that media, the tsunami of digitization hit media fast, and old media came crumbling down, and new media, obviously, has just done nothing but the upward tilt.
18:32It has not yet happened, generally speaking, in financial services. And you still have the same 50-year-old, 100-year-old, 150-year-old firms that dominate. And so that industry is now ripe for digitization. A lot of folks are working to digitize that industry. You've been working in that for decades at this point. But it's a very lucrative industry. It's also very sticky when it comes to the way people manage their assets. They don't want to move advisors. They don't want to move firms. I think especially high net worth individuals still feel like they want somebody to talk to. And that service comes with fees, 80 basis points, 120 basis points.
19:13Those fees eat into returns. This is something that you've been working on for years. You did it at Personal Capital. What are you doing now at Evergreen Wealth? We're doing two things. We're doing wealth management, wealth management for people who have, let's say, investable assets of a million to five. And these are people who don't get the kind of white glove service that people who have 10, 20, 100 million dollars do. And so what they need is somebody who can take the tax and investment principles that the people who have more money utilize because they have tax attorneys and all the rest, and then look for someone who can use technology to make that scalable.
19:54and, in fact, precision engineering to make it even better than traditional wealth managers deliver. If we do that, we can give them better pre-tax return and then better after-tax return because that's the thing that everyone forgets.
20:08Carol Massar:Can everybody benefit by this? Yes, absolutely. Everyone who has sufficient resources that the tax impact is meaningful. And so a couple of hundred thousand dollars to a couple of million dollars, yes, you should absolutely be managing your investment portfolio in a tax-aware way. You're the founding CEO of PayPal. We talk a lot about the PayPal mafia, those folks. We've spoken to Reid Hoffman, David Sachs. These guys really don't need any introduction. Elon Musk, of course, is among them. To what extent are these folks still in your universe right now? Well, for the most part, we've gone separate ways.
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20:48even many of the people within the so-called mafia. I've moved from Silicon Valley to Miami, so I have sort of a new set of people that I'm working with. Some of them have, too. Some have, yes, that's right. And some of them have moved back to San Francisco, too. Maybe Texas, some of them as well. Okay, so on that and sort of on payments, I thought of you the other day because the crypto firm Kraken is launching this competitor to Venmo and to the cash app, essentially using the blockchain to transfer money. And I'm wondering how you look at that. As somebody who really pioneered technology for sending money over the internet, is the blockchain, is crypto really going to disrupt that?
21:34I think the blockchain is very good for some purposes. I don't have much use for cryptocurrency, because we have plenty of currencies that are very good. But the blockchain can do a heck of a lot, particularly on international money movement, because we're looking at SWIFT, which takes at least a day, sometimes multiple days, to get significant money moved from America to Singapore. And with the right crypto networks, you can do it like that. That easy? Sure. And that fast. So it sounds like Western Union gets disrupted in a situation like that. That's what it sounds like to me. Not quite, because Western Union is all about the last mile.
22:17And Western Union is doing lots of little payments. And in most of the world, it's actually agents, physical agents, who are taking the money and giving out the money. So that's a very different thing. But if you're doing bank-to-bank payments or business-to-business payments. So the big guys. The big guys.
22:34Carol Massar:Yeah. So does it happen eventually? Oh, yes. Yeah. Yeah. There is no reason whatsoever in this day and age it should take multiple days to get money from here to there. Amen. But, I mean. We were doing 25 years ago. Yeah. We were moving money instantly, skittering it around the world at PayPal. It's not that hard. So are there going to be big players in it? I don't know. I don't follow. I'm just curious. I don't follow what's happening. Ripple took a stab at it for a while. But I haven't heard anything about that in a while. So I don't know. What, you know, just got about 30 seconds here. I mean, AI is obviously the trend that everybody talks about in terms of its impact.
23:14Carol Massar:Is there anything else, though, outside of AI? Or is it really just about artificial intelligence? Which is not a new thing, but it's certainly on a different level today. So I'll just say quickly, in what I'm doing, Evergreen Wealth, we're doing two things. First of all, we're using AI to revolutionize how financial advice can be delivered. But the other important thing we're doing is bringing tax considerations into investment management because it's not what you earn. It's what you keep that counts. That's former PayPal CEO Bill Harris speaking with us at Michael Loeb's annual Uncharted Summit.
23:45Carol Massar:Another guest we heard from at the event, Allie McCartney. She is Managing Director, Private Wealth Management at UBS. And she started off by telling us why she comes to this event. So UBS and I traffic at the intersection in liquidity events and in individuals. And so what does that mean? That's entrepreneurship. And so one of the beautiful things about this event and about our partnership with it is Michael Loeb opened by saying this is a celebration of entrepreneurs and entrepreneurialism, right? And so if you go through all of the things that are happening in our world today, all of the trends, deglobalization being a big one, right?
24:24Where does wealth come from? in this country, it's intellectual property. It is six million businesses founded last year. It is being at these events and having funders and founders meet, providing very valuable networking opportunities. And for us to be able to be supportive of that community full stop is really the bread and butter of what we do at UBS. Does it give you new opportunities to bring new money into your firm? Or is it more like, okay, when I'm allocating my client's assets, I'm thinking about these alternatives because I talked about these types of businesses with people at this conference.
25:05So yes and yes, I would say there are three things it does. It is certainly a prospecting rich environment in terms of there are people here who obviously we know the numbers of the success of startups and franchises, but some of these people are going to be the next unicorns, right? So there's that. The second is it allows me to learn about AI or why the founder of Tesla, you know, founded Tesla and what he's thinking about now. And then the third thing is it allows me to find new opportunities for myself and my clients to be outside of this environment, both educated and proximate to the new trends that are driving sort of where the puck is and how we'll invest for sure.
25:49Carol Massar:You know, it's funny you see the founder of Tesla because Elon Musk was not actually the founder, was he? So it was very funny because the first panel was someone who's just been seven months in the White House. And so Elon Musk was the topic of conversation there. And then the next man after was the founder of Tesla, who very elegantly decided not to answer that question. You know, what's funny too is, and I think about wealth management, you do have, I'm assuming as clients, a lot of folks that are founders and whether they're looking to sell their company, find a deal, or maybe you have other clients who have money they want to put to work and they want to have a piece of a company.
26:31Carol Massar:A lot of that is what goes on, right? Oh, a lot of that is what goes on. So I think like, if you think about the path of a founder, of an entrepreneur, right? You have an idea, there's something disruptive, there's some challenge or problem you're trying to solve in the world. And, you know, we were learning today that most people self-fund that by using credit cards, personal assets, and their 401k, right? They make less than$100 ,000 for years and years and years. And they are just so embedded in their company and the mission and the branding that they're not thinking about the tax consequences, whether they can take advantage of qualified, sold business stock.
27:07Could the business be stuck in a marriage in court and decided by the state of California or Florida if they don't have a prenup. So what we do is we say, look, if you are extremely successful, you're going to get to a liquidity point where some lawyer or some general counsel or Anderson Tax is going to say, have you talked about the planning and the this? And at that point, you can maybe add a couple percent of value. But if you can find these people as they're stuck in what I call the valley of death, sort of that middle part of building a business, and you can get an hour with them just to say there are a couple things we can do from an investment perspective, an entity perspective, and a tax perspective, that if you are as successful as you think you are, you can protect yourself and investors and you can make your net much bigger than what it would be otherwise.
28:02As you know, Oh, entrepreneurs are not focused on this stuff when you're starting a company. So if they haven't taken advantage of something like the QSBS, but if they didn't set up the business that way initially, can they change it to actually get that benefit? It becomes increasingly difficult as you take in capital, you have more LPs, et cetera. But there are many, many ways to do it. And I think most people know about that$10 million headline number. So I've seen many, many times that protected. Our goal is to try to be in front of entrepreneurs and support them, but to try to get them either to think about, which is really challenging, or get them to sort of open up themselves to allowing someone to act on their behalf, even when they're not there yet.
28:48Carol Massar:That's Allie McCartney, Managing Director, Private Wealth Management at UBS. Still ahead on Bloomberg Businessweek, more from our visit to Michael Loeb's Uncharted Conference in the Hamptons. Up next, to check on the health and activity of capital markets with someone who knows a lot about it, has a front row seat. He is the vice chair of the New York Stock Exchange. That's next. This is Bloomberg. Some people treat ChatGPT like some kind of smart search engine, and some use it to get work done. ChatGPT Work is a new way of working in ChatGPT that can take action across your apps and files, stay with a project for hours if needed, and turn a goal into finished work.
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32:14Carol Massar:Some of our favorite conversations from the Uncharted Community Summit. It was held recently in Michael Loeb's backyard in the Hamptons. At the summit was Michael Harris. He has his finger on the pulse of what is going on when it comes to publicly held companies, old issues and new issues that have come to market, such as IPOs. He's vice chairman and global head of markets at the New York Stock Exchange. Last time we spoke with you was at another event. Equally is beautiful, by the way. Equally is beautiful. Downtown New York. Exactly. That was back in early March. A lot has happened since then.
32:47We've kind of had a round trip when it comes to equity markets. There were some concerns a few weeks after we spoke about companies pulling their IPOs as a result of what was happening with trade. Those IPOs, they ended up happening in May and June. How would you describe the environment right now? I mean, I think the round trip that you described is exactly the way to think about it. We've seen a complete 180-degree turn in terms of sentiment, in terms of where the market backdrop is. And it's playing out in the IPO market on a couple different factors. On one hand, we're seeing the subscription levels in terms of interest on IPOs are through the roof.
33:25So these deals that are coming to the marketplace are multiple times oversubscribed interest from a wide range of investors. The second part of it is when they do come to the market, the actual pricing outcomes are oftentimes very much in the favor of the issuers. And then the third part of it is the performance, which you mentioned just now. The performance on day one, the follow-through in the aftermarket all the way through the offer to today's performance has been absolutely phenomenal. So that really keeps the cycle in terms of investor interest continuing to go.
33:56Carol Massar:Right. And so what we're seeing that play out is really in our backlog. So we see a very active summer. We see an active September. And we think it's going to be a very active 2025 going forward. What does that backlog look like? You say active. I mean, how backed up is it and how eager are these that are backed up ready to go? Yeah, well, you know, for the first part, you're seeing on one hand a lot of companies that were delaying their IPOs because of some of the tensions that happened in the beginning part of the year. So some of them have taken a step back and they were kind of waiting to see on one hand just what happened from a geopolitical standpoint, how things were playing out in terms of just the tensions that were in the air.
34:31And also they're waiting to see from the investor community what the reception was going to be for some of the more recent crop of IPOs. So we've gotten those results. Those results have been, in many cases, much better than they thought they would be. And so they're now ready to push forward. The other part of it is what we're seeing now is a much more diverse array of companies that are going public. You know, when you and I talked, we were talking about who would be the most likely companies to go public, and they would be likely the more defensive names. Now we're seeing that start to broaden out.
34:59So our pipeline looks more diverse than it was back in March. It looks also for larger companies that are also going to be coming. So really, in all respects, it tends to be a very healthy outcome. How has that pipeline diversity shifted in recent years? I remember when I spent three, four years working from the floor of the New York Stock Exchange as a reporter. And there was a period in 2017, 2018, no joke, no exaggeration, almost every other day, there was a Chinese company going public in the United States. These were companies we had never heard of. There were companies that we haven't heard from since.
35:37I mean, it was really, really wild times. Then there was this crackdown on a lot of these companies that were listed from China in the U.S. Yeah. Has that business completely dried up for you? I mean, Xi 'an has filed confidentially to IPO in Hong Kong. We saw that today. Yeah. You know, it's interesting. There's still a class of companies that are, for the most part, micro-cap in nature. a lot of them domiciled in China that are still coming public. That's a class of companies that, quite frankly, we at the New York Stock Exchange really don't really look to. Some of our competitors tend to focus on that market, and we've seen a number of articles, whether it's from the Wall Street Journal or Financial Times or others, that have really pointed to some of the problems that have become as a result of that.
36:21So that's not something we really focus on, but we are still seeing some of those companies come to the public markets. But I think there's some challenges with that, and there's going to probably continue to be challenges with that going forward. But still out of China? Some. Are they choosing to list in other areas of the world? Yeah, you know, it depends a little bit on market cap. It depends on the sector. I think what you are seeing is a bit of a preference for many companies just for liquidity. So the U.S. market still continues to be a place where they would like to list. But for larger names, the home markets continue to be also very attractive.
36:56You know, cattle being a great example of that early in the year. Xi 'an looking to Hong Kong relative to London. So depending on the name, depending on the sector, depending on the specifics of those companies, home markets can also be a very viable alternative, too.
37:08Carol Massar:Michael, in some of the cases with the IPOs, we've really seen quite a pop in that first day of trading, right? That's a good sign, you know, we want to see that. It's certainly a company that's going public wants to see that. But it always begs the question, were they too conservative in, you know, the numbers that they put out there? I am curious, what are the conversations that you're hearing from those folks in those companies that are looking to go public? Would they rather be a little conservative going in and making sure that that's a good first day of trading? Yeah. You know, I think when you talk to people in the world of IPOs, whether they're bankers or lawyers, you know, it's often talked about being more of an art than a science.
37:42And I think there is a little bit of truth to that. Yeah. There's a bouncing act that always has to happen. And also companies that are investors, rather, they're going to be supporting the company from a liquidity perspective. And there's a balance of the two in the aftermarket. And the reality is until you actually get to that stage where you're in the pricing room and you're actually confronting with management in terms of what the dynamics look like, it's sometimes tough to tell. And so I think the underwriters do a great job of being able to offer what those tradeoffs are going to be to management teams.
38:12Ultimately, the management teams are the ones that have to make those really tough decisions. But I always think about it in terms of the IPO process. Ultimately, it's a day one event. And really what management teams, what their stakeholders need to focus on is really trying to set up a company for success over the long term and not focus on necessarily the day one performance. Obviously, you want a great pricing outcome, but really you're managing this company for the long haul. It's not really just for the day one IPO event. Can you give us an update on the New York Stock Exchange Texas launched this year?
38:42We talked about it back in March. Yeah, we have multiple companies that are now listed there. We have a fairly healthy pipeline of companies that are going to be listing on the exchange over the next several months. We are very close to signing a lease in Dallas. It's really continuing to take on momentum, and so we really are excited about it. Do you think it's perhaps a hedge in New York City losing its place when it comes to capital markets? And I ask this kind of came into sharp relief this week with I think a lot of people would argue with what happened in the Democratic primary for the mayoral election.
39:19We certainly have a lot of outspoken billionaires who've talked about concerns when it comes to capital markets here in New York and the position of New York City as being the epicenter of Wall Street. Yeah, I mean, for Texas, the way that we've thought about it is when we look at our own listed community and we look at the number of companies in terms of where they're domiciled, Texas really stands out. It tends to be the area where we have the most number of companies from a really diverse range of sectors that are represented. And so when we kind of really thought about it from the perspective of what Governor Abbott's doing to try to make sure that the ecosystem of companies within Texas is vibrant and intersects with a lot of what we're trying to do in terms of getting a great environment for our own listed community, it really made sense.
40:08So we think about this more from the long-term perspective of offering the best environment for our listed community, less in terms of like a short-term strategy in terms of what might be happening in the New York ecosystem. We still are big believers that New York continues to be a great place for capital raising and also for companies to be domiciled.
40:24Carol Massar:But longer term then, does that mean, does it expand the model? It's hard to know. You know, it's really just focused on kind of where we see the greatest opportunity for our community right now. But we're always forward thinking in terms of really trying to see where the greatest opportunity results for our community. That's Michael Harris, vice chairman and global head of markets at the New York Stock Exchange. We also caught up with a shark at the Uncharted Community Summit on Long Island. Damon John is the founder and CEO of FUBU. And of course, he's also a shark on ABC's reality show, Shark Tank.
40:55Carol Massar:We spoke about how hard it is to start a brand. It is not easy. Is it getting any easier or is it harder? I feel like it's an environment where anybody can almost have a brand. I do think it's getting harder. I think because you have to find this niche audience. But not only do you have to create the brand itself for your product or services, but you as a CEO and a founder have to be a brand as well. What does that mean? Well, that means that people would not only want to know why they're investing in the brand or the product or buying it. What story does that brand or product have? As well as founders, who are you?
41:29You know, I always say on Shark Tank that, you know, none of us are original. I mean, there's a million real estate agents. There's only one Barbara Corcoran. A lot of people own sports teams. Mark Cuban, clothing line. You know what I mean, people? We had created personal brands, and then our brands now walk into the room before we do when we want to raise capital, when we want to make decisions, when we want to defend the fact that somebody's saying negative about our brand and our company and affecting our payroll and our amazing staff that works for us. Do you think you could create FUBU today?
42:03Absolutely. 100%. But today's FUBU— It's a completely different environment. Today's FUBU would be different, right? There's no, it's not new to have four young African-American men designing for their own markets. So what would FUBU be today? I would probably do more of the Avon, you know, type of thing where I would have one male, one female in a college and a high school. They would get probably about$1 ,000 worth of FUBU on credit for about$300, probably underwritten by hopefully somebody great. And the more they sell, they would get more digital curriculums and various other things and very much of an Avon model.
42:37So I would have, hopefully, 2 million sales reps around the world. It's so interesting that you say that because the retail environment has completely changed. It's done. It's done. Yeah. Completely done. You know, I've been to 56 trade shows this year. You know, I speak at a lot of shows. And the traffic besides the franchise show and maybe the medical tech show, it is one-third of the traffic at these shows. Because these retailers are now dying. They're not walking in the door. You know who's walking in? It's a bunch of kids or people, influencers, could be grandfluencers, who are now doing live selling, whether on Amazon or TikTok or whatnot.
43:14And that's what's happening. Live selling. That's something that I think is very familiar to people in China, but not necessarily familiar to many people in the U.S., at least yet. Explain exactly what that is. Well, live selling is, you know, and I'll give you an example. There's an app called Whatnot, right? And people have 20-second auctions for one little device or let's say a piece of makeup. Sell for about$12. Now, they can do this three separate times in one minute. So they make a profit of about$4 every time they sell it. So now all of a sudden,$12 a minute. You times that because now they have friends coming on everything.
43:50You times that by 16 hours a day. And that's what's happening because then when people buy it, now you know who the client is and the customer. You can sell it to them again. Remember, there's only three ways to ever deal with a customer. Acquire a new one, upsell a current one, or make one buy more frequently. That's why you want to supersize everybody's fries. And now you know who they are. They can upsell them or buy more frequently.
44:10Carol Massar:That's Damon John, founder and CEO of FUBU, and of course one of the sharks on ABC's Shark Tank. And that wraps up our first hour of this special holiday edition of Bloomberg Business Week from Bloomberg Radio. Coming up in the next 60 minutes, more from our visit to the Uncharted Community Summit held recently in Southampton. We'll talk about investing in women's health issues with Jessica Kamada. She's founder and managing partner at Swizzle Ventures. Plus more from our hosts, Michael Loeb and Noah Friedman, who come back to discuss investing principles in the VC world. This is Bloomberg Businessweek.
44:43Carol Massar:I'm Carol Masser along with Tim Stenevek. Stay with us. Today's top stories and global business headlines are coming up right now. Some people treat ChatGPT like some kind of smart search engine, and some use it to get work done. ChatGPT Work is a new way of working in ChatGPT that can take action across your apps and files, stay with a project for hours if needed, and turn a goal into finished work. It's designed to help you move from a chaotic starting point to a reviewable first version. So all the source materials, briefs, and scattered information that you have to grind through to turn into something useful can just become something useful.
45:23Carol Massar:Put ChatGPT to work on your most ambitious ideas and projects. Get started at ChatGPT.com by selecting Work Mode, available on Plus and Pro plans. It's time to plan ahead and make sure your brand is showing up in ways that can have an impact. That's where 4imprint comes in. 4imprint have promotional products that work as hard as you do. Durable, useful, and designed to make a lasting impression. Think quality apparel your team will wear again and again, including popular and exclusive brands. Drinkware that's enjoyed again and again. Bags, notebooks, tools, and tech items that don't just look good, but actually get used.
46:01With thousands of customizable options, 4imprint makes it easy to find what fits your brand and your budget. You'll get expert help, free samples, and their 360-degree guarantee means you can be 4imprint certain your order shows up just right, right on time. Whether you're gearing up for fall events or simply planning ahead for the season, 4imprint can help your brand show up, stay useful, and make connections that last. Explore the possibilities at 4imprint.com. 4imprint. 4certain. If you listen to financial news, you know a lot of time is spent thinking about what's next. The next opportunity.
46:35The next investment. The next move. But sometimes what matters most is being ready for what you never saw coming. A storm damages a second home. A pipe bursts above a collection you spent decades building. An unexpected loss puts a growing business on pause. Those are the days no one sees coming. But for more than 75 years, Cincinnati Insurance has been ready when they do. With deep expertise, coverage for businesses, homes, valuables, and more, Cincinnati Insurance works with independent agents who take the time to understand what matters to you. Together, they help protect more than what you own.
47:11They help protect what you're building toward. And when a bad day does come, Cincinnati Insurance has real people there to help make things right. Because planning for the future isn't only about knowing what's next, it's about making sure you're ready for what you can't predict. Let Cincinnati Insurance make your bad day better. Find an independent agent at CINFIN.com. You're listening to the Bloomberg Business Week Daily Podcast. Catch us live weekday afternoons from 2 to 5 p.m. Eastern. Listen on Apple CarPlay and Android Auto with the Bloomberg Business app. Or watch us live on YouTube.
47:48Carol Massar:Welcome to a special holiday weekend edition of Bloomberg Business Week and happy 4th of July. We continue with our recent live broadcast from Southampton, Long Island. We were at the annual Uncharted Community Summit, an annual gathering of more than 500 members of the startup community. And over the next 60 minutes, we continue to bring some of our favorite chats from the event. We'll hear from someone that runs an incubator for disruption in the tech sector and another investor targeting women's health specifically. First up this hour, though, I was joined by Bloomberg's Paul Sweeney to get some background on the event that you've been hearing about and hearing conversations from in the last hour.
48:26Carol Massar:Event host Michael Loeb, founder and CEO of loeb.nyc. You heard about him in the last hour. And also Noah Friedman, CEO of Uncharted. They both joined us for a bit of a roundtable on the initial idea behind Uncharted. So what the intention is, is that Noah and I started building Uncharted about four years ago. It was in the teeth of COVID when nobody was getting together with anybody else. And we started having dinners at my house in the city. and was very popular. And what the thesis is, is that entrepreneurs need as much support as they can get, including emotional support. And the best way to do that is put entrepreneurs in a room with other entrepreneurs.
49:11And they are, as a class, they drive the economy, drive jobs, drive wealth, and yet they're, I think, underappreciated. And as a serial entrepreneur myself, and actually one or two things worked, I'm, you know, very empathetic. And just with all the miles on the tires, I am kind of a senior statesman by definition, right? This is a young guy's game. I say that I have the privilege of working with people half my age and twice as smart. I used to say that. Now it's three times as smart and one-third my age. But that was the intention, and it's grown to a tribe of maybe 2 ,500 entrepreneurs, of which about a third of them show up to this.
49:57So we will have about 800 today.
49:59Carol Massar:Noah, come on in on this. You're the CEO of Uncharted too, right? And so we're seeing things being set up. There's going to be a lot of great conversations and speakers going on. Tell us what it's been grown into and what kind of conversations are going to be happening later on. The common thread of everything that we've done at Uncharted since the first dinner on May 20, 2021, and I'll never forget it. Was it just you two, by the way? Just us two at dinner? Yeah, it was just us two. We just sat and talked for four hours and here we go. No, we also held hands. We did hold hands the whole time.
50:26Yeah, it was very romantic. No, we had about 20 entrepreneurs around the table, kind of eight of each of our friends and then a couple others, if you will. Look, the common thread of every single event we've done, whether it's our dinners or the past three summits or the breakfast we've done, has always been trying to create safe spaces for real entrepreneurs, founders, exceptional participants in the entrepreneurial community, as we say. to truly drop their guard, drop their hair, and trust that they're in an environment where they can speak openly and honestly. Any entrepreneur or anyone who's building and really doing it, the real ones, hopefully this will resonate when they hear it, it is really hard.
51:00It's very hard to build businesses. It's really hard to play this game at the high level. And I think if we can offer a rare environment where people can feel like they are amongst their true peers or they can really drop their guard and connect with people in a place where no matter who you go talk to, they're all going to be exceptional, it's special. And so we've really tried to guard the energy. We've really tried to keep the sanctity of the fact that if you come to an uncharted event, you're going to meet someone amazing. And that's really been the common thread.
51:23Carol Massar:I just want to say, it's a reminder that like Google, Apple, all of these companies that are now, you know, the biggest market caps that are out there and that we talk about, you know, all the time. I mean, they all started as an idea, an entrepreneur. And that's the point. Yeah, 100%. And if you look at kind of success rates and everything else, if you're an entrepreneur, if you really knew all that stuff, why would you do this? Yeah. Because the failure rate is incredibly high. Hours are incredibly long. The pay, you know, is dreadful until it's not until you have a big score. But the number of big scores is very, very small.
51:58And there's so many forces and so many, you know, so many exogenous things that are, you know, anti entrepreneur that we wanted to have a sanctuary here that other entrepreneurs can meet other entrepreneurs. and, Noah, you're fond of saying that not a week or two goes by where we don't get a phone call saying, I met my co-founder here two years ago. Yep. That's pretty cool. Yeah. Noah, what are the areas that are of most interest to entrepreneurs today? Is it technology? Is it health care? Are there certain industries that are getting most of the attention? Look, I think the obvious buzzword that you can't go too far in any of the news cycles of the hearing is AI.
52:35And I think that unlike other cycles that have come and went and entered the zeitgeist and left, This one feels very real. I can tell you that amongst all my friends, whether they're in CPG, health tech, pure AI, deep tech, what have you tech, all of them are thinking explicitly about how AI is going to impact their business if they're not already in it, how they're going to get into it. So I think we're certainly going to talk about that a lot. I think it's top of mind for a lot of people. The movement is real. I think that the implications and repercussions are unclear how it's going to land right now, but everybody's thinking about it, and they should be.
53:05But I think it's unclear, but it's going to be broad. It's going to be broad. It's going to be broad. And you mentioned cycles. I've been around for a few. This reminds me of the late 90s where the Internet happened. And we had a lot of false starts two, three years ago. Everybody was talking about NFTs before that blockchain, before that cannabis, before that, you know, something else. But this feels like another eruption. This feels like another advent of the Internet, one that we haven't had in three years.
53:36Carol Massar:On the same level, no doubt about it, or even more. I think on the same level. I mean, it's hard to project and predict. But I had breakfast with a heroic entrepreneur a couple of days ago. He has built a business now worth$1.8 billion. And over breakfast, he says, I have 270 people by year end. It's going to be 120. Yeah. Okay. Interesting. I would add to that, if I may. Sorry. I think that there's this interesting tension with AI right now where I think Michael's right. and I would even argue that this might – I didn't live through the late 90s period of seeing it at least. Okay, you're done.
54:11All right, let me see. Thanks for having me, guys. You're done. That and the letting your hair down type of thing. I mean, you know, did he look at me? Why do you work with him? I know. It's crazy. Everyone asks me that. But I think there's an inherent tension where I actually think it could be more disruptive. And at the same time, I do think that there's a lot of people who are betting big dollars on AI that are going to get wiped out because I think there's going to be an absolute power law dynamic here where a small select group of companies at the top end aggregate a ton of power and resource.
54:38I also think it's going to be a barbell wall on the bottom end. I've invested personally in companies that have like two or three people on the team and have rocketed to millions in ARR because they're able to get 10x productivity if it's a killer founder. So I think there's a barbell thing happening right now where the killer founders who actually know how to leverage resources are going to crush it, as are the big businesses.
54:56Carol Massar:Well, because of that and what AI can do, generative AI and so on, I mean, does it give entrepreneurs even more opportunities to start up? We talked about that after the pandemic. Basically, create a website and you can go. And maybe that's simplifying things. But does AI kind of have a multiplier effect, too, on entrepreneurial activities? Without a doubt. I think that's right. I think that's right. And if you just look at what has happened over the years, you know, it used to be that if you built a business, a brand-new business in the Internet, you needed hundreds of people. Right. And now that's really compressed to just a few.
55:30But to Noah's point, there's going to be winners and there's going to be a lot of losers. And it's very hard to predict. Michael, talk to us about monetization. I'm not seeing a lot of IPOs. I'm not seeing a lot of M &A. How do these great entrepreneurs monetize the value they've created? That's a great question. I would say that everything you just mentioned is part of a cycle, and we're just in that type of cycle where everything is a little bit bollocksed up. But, you know, we're going to be on the other side of that, and there's going to be some great companies built, and there's going to be some great flame-outs.
56:06A lot of people are going to lose a lot of money, and then there's going to be a few that are going to be extraordinarily successful. But to your point, we can build it now with instead of 300 people, three. And there's been predictions that there's going to be a unicorn with all of three people. Seriously? Yeah. I buy that.
56:23Carol Massar:Okay. That kind of makes sense. And we've started to see IPOs actually in general come to market, and it's a much more favorable market. I've got to ask you, I think we'd be remiss, of the macro that's going on and different policies in the world being upended and geopolitics. politics. What does that do for the entrepreneur who's trying to, you know, we know it can be lean and mean in the beginning when it comes to a startup. What about some of these macro issues? What would be more helpful to them? What kind of environment? Well, anything that helps with capital formation, anything that kind of reduces regulation.
56:57I was hopeful that this administration would attack some of that stuff and maybe not tariffs. But anyway, it's still early. It's still Clearly. We're here now. They are very active and very proactive. And I'm just hopeful that what you really want to give is entrepreneurs just charter. I mean, let them do their thing as much as you can. And our hope is, by the way, that this environment, believe it or not, will put a dent in that world, right? That they will find support here in many different ways.
57:25Carol Massar:Well, I always think it's kind of amazing how much time we spend. And obviously, this is our world, right? The publicly held markets, right? This is what we track, you know, all the movements. but we talk constantly about the importance of small business and startups in terms of the backbone. And I just think it kind of gets lost a little bit. Yeah, I do think, though, that you're going to see AI upend just about every industry. And I think those big companies are going to find themselves woefully behind, and they're going to have no choice but to make some acquisitions. Well said. You know what?
57:54Capital, is it out there for entrepreneurs today? It is, but I think that you're seeing an interesting dynamic with the VCs and private equity that they're chasing a lot of trends almost blindly. You know, the fact that right now there are really good businesses that don't have the word AI that are struggling to raise money, whereas there's other businesses that have a deck and pre-seed and barely an idea and are raising money at$50 million pre-money valuations, I think is indicative of what's going on.
58:15Carol Massar:Yeah, we saw venture raise. It's been really difficult. It's been very difficult unless you're a credentialed AI founder and have a good idea in the AI space, because there's a lot of VC funds chasing ideas, and I think some of them will work, but the unfortunate reality is I think a lot of them are going to get absolutely smoked, because they can't all work, especially not at a$50 million pre. So to answer your question directly, sure, there's capital out there. I wish there was more. I wish there was more going to more ideas that were based just on meritocracy and their actual traction versus the notion that they have AI.
58:42And as bullish as I am on AI and investing in it personally, to be abundantly clear. But it's an interesting moment right now. Very interesting. I will only add that that is not too much different than what we've always seen. True. there's always been the bright, shiny object, and the investors feel like they've got to follow that.
58:59Carol Massar:Did he really start working for you in high school? Kind of. Jesus, fantastic. Got to start him young. Yeah, got to start him young. We'll talk about that off air. Exactly right. Michael Loeb, thank you so much. Michael Loeb, founder, CEO of loeb.nyc. And Noah Friedman, CEO of Uncharted. Thank you, gentlemen, for being and having a great conference today. I hope a lot of great ideas are circled about and a lot of great deals. Thanks for having us. Our thanks to Michael Loeb, founder and CEO of Loeb.nyc, and Noah Friedman, CEO of Uncharted. Coming up on Bloomberg Businessweek, more from our visit to the Uncharted conference in the Hamptons, held recently in Southampton.
59:33Carol Massar:Paul Sweeney stays with me as we learn about AI's potential to replace human workers. It's a conversation and narrative that is gaining a lot of momentum. That's coming up next. This is Bloomberg. Some people treat ChatGPT like some kind of smart search engine, and some use it to get work done. ChatGPT Work is a new way of working in ChatGPT that can take action across your apps and files, stay with a project for hours if needed, and turn a goal into finished work. It's designed to help you move from a chaotic starting point to a reviewable first version. So all the source materials, briefs, and scattered information that you have to grind through to turn into something useful can just become something useful.
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1:02:54Carol Massar:Chartered Community Summit. It was held recently in Southampton in Michael Loeb's backyard. What we keep hearing from tech leaders, including those at some of the big ones, we're talking about Microsoft and Alphabet, how they talk about AI's potential and likelihood to replace human workers. Salesforce, among the latest, noting its internal AI use has allowed it to hire fewer people. Kind of makes you say, uh-oh. Well, someone who knows a lot about our changing workforce is Cheryl Grice. She is senior partner at the consulting giant EY. She's also global executive sponsor for the EY Entrepreneurial Winning Women's Global Program.
1:03:29Carol Massar:She joined me and Paul Sweeney to talk about her first visit. Well, this is your first one and you have clients and you deal with them. Tell us what you are hoping to get out of this. What are the conversations you're looking to have? Well, for us, we want to help our entrepreneurs really establish better community, better connections, and access. Access to capital in particular. So events like this go a long way to helping them get scaled in a way that they can't do by themselves. This is like one event that brings it all together in such an amazing way. How do you bring capital and entrepreneurial ideas and talent together?
1:04:07How does that happen? How do you bring it together? Events like this have private investors, private equity, venture capital, bankers, etc. that are looking to find people that fit their mold for what they want to invest in. And so this is one-stop shopping for hundreds of entrepreneurs to come in and find access like that. And these companies are here for that.
1:04:32Carol Massar:You know what I never understand, Cheryl? We always talk about the world being a wash in capital. You know, everybody's starting private credit funds. There's plenty of money out there. But why is it so tough for smaller business, for startups? What is it that makes it so tough? I think you have to break down the startup and the population a little bit. I mean, we often say, and the statistics... It's not one bucket, is what you're saying. It's not one bucket. Statistics haven't changed. For example, only 2 % of the world's venture capital goes to females. Wow. So when you can find an event like this and you can give them that kind of access where they can actually be ready.
1:05:07We do a lot of work at EY to get them ready for those conversations so that they can ask for the capital in a way that the VC wants to provide that capital or a private equity or a bank or a private investor. There's a lot of work that goes into that and not all of the same populations. A lot of the populations are overlooked. They don't get that same kind of coaching and counsel to be able to find that capital, to be able to ask for it in a way that they'll get it. And Carol and I were just talking with Noah Freeman, the CEO of Uncharted. He was saying, boy, if you don't have AI in your name, it's tough to attract capital.
1:05:45It's almost like the late 90s. If you didn't have a dot-com at the end of your company's name, it's tough to raise capital. How are you guys seeing that part of the business? Well, it's not just – it's so funny. There's such an evolution. In the 2000s, it was the Internet and e-commerce. And then you go to 2007 and 2009, and it's all about social media and what are you doing, where everything is transacted from the palm of your hand. And now it's AI. AI has been around for a long time, but it's AI where how are you using agents and agentic and so forth. To us, digital is a growth engine, but inclusiveness is also a growth engine.
1:06:19So it's not just about digital. It's about the communities that you're getting to to be able to bring digital to life. So it's relevant.
1:06:26Carol Massar:Well, that's really fascinating. You know, when you talk about women, you talk about minorities. And I want to go back to women for a moment, because I remember a few years ago, and maybe this was coming off the pandemic, Bloomberg putting out a story that even female venture capitalists weren't really more prone to maybe support female entrepreneurs. So, again, how do we – is it an education – like, I understand what you're saying about, like, educating entrepreneurs so that when they have to talk to the folks that have the money, like, it's the right conversation. But how do we really finally move some of that, whether it's for minorities, for women, really move the needle on that?
1:07:02Carol Massar:Because those are pockets of consumers and areas that can provide a lot of economic momentum, a lot of business. To me, there are three gaps. At EY, we always say there's three gaps. There's do they have the community necessary so that they can stick together in their growth agenda and find like-minded people that have been there before so that they can learn from those people. Then there's the capital that we've already talked about, and then there's the connections. Yeah. A lot of the connections are how do you educate yourself and get the right level of insight so that you can talk to a capital provider.
1:07:37Many people don't have that education. So for us, programs like the ones that we have, like Unchartered have, they're intended to help them get those connections and the insights necessary to get access to those things. VCs don't necessarily go after the underserved or overlooked populations because they just don't know how to communicate yet with the capital providers. Our job is to help them. What is the real opportunity for you today? What do you think you're hoping to get together today? I want to meet 30 more entrepreneurs that I haven't met and help them with their journeys. My goal is to get them the things that they need so that we're not on the sidelines.
1:08:19we're very much in the mix with them to get them to the next level. 30 seconds, a success story. A success story. We watched a female entrepreneur who was one of our winning women back in 2015 create an adult beverage company as a school teacher and sell it for an undisclosed amount, but we're guessing it's over a billion. Wow. In the last year. That's a success story.
1:08:42Carol Massar:That's Cheryl Grice, EY Senior Partner for Global Client Services. Bloomberg's Paul Sweeney is sticking around for our next conversation. And that was with Brett Markinson. He is founder and CEO of the Innovent Capital Group. His company's website notes that he launched his firm as an incubator and platform for launching businesses that leverage disruptive technology to innovate old ways of doing things. We started by asking Brett what he is hearing from attendees of the Uncharted Community Summit. Everybody's talking their book. You're listening to the Bloomberg Business Week Daily Podcast. Catch us live weekday afternoons from 2 to 5 p.m.
1:09:17Eastern. Getting to know people, learn a little bit about the authenticity connected to how they came about on YouTube. And I just kind of personally enjoy the origin stories. So I try to spend as much time as I can understanding how people got to where they are by way of where they came.
1:09:33Carol Massar:All right. It's like a gift when someone says that because I want to talk about your origin story a little bit. Media folks, we're kind of obsessed with media. Take us back to the 90s. You were selling nonlinear digital editing bays to Hollywood. in the 1990s. No, but it's like all these things shape us. I remember doing, you know, paper prompters. I'm going to age myself. It's very different nowadays. So tell us about what that was like and how it does shape your perspective as you see things change. Sure. Well, first of all, like any early stage business, it was brutal. I think what made this challenging was whenever you're too far in front of something, it's very difficult selling vision to the vision list and people have a lot invested in the way they're doing things and the way things were in the case of nonlinear editing i think what made that so difficult was the editor was very comfortable in the basement yeah by himself with no oversight and not having too much of the producer in over his kind of shoulder telling him how to do things and the nonlinear editing system just changed the landscape entirely because now the producer was able to kind of be involved in the editing process and brought the guy upstairs, surrounded him with a whole bunch of people.
1:10:49And the efficiencies that it brought were incredible and the impact indelible. But to a lot of editors, it really changed the way they thought about what they did and how they did it. So getting it to take took some time. But like anything, once the dam cracked, it just became a floodgate.
1:11:09Carol Massar:Be it internet or AI, right? Like it's kind of the same story. Hey, Brett, you're on a panel today talking about exits. Yes. I haven't seen a lot of IPOs in the last few years. I haven't seen a lot of M &A in the last five years. How do guys like you and the folks here, they've got an idea, they get it funded, they get it off the ground, and now they're thinking about an exit, a monetization event. Where are we today in that environment? Well, when I start at the very early stage, a little north of the napkin, I like to call it. And for companies like that, it oftentimes doesn't make a lot of news in terms of acquisitions, but there's plenty of that stuff happening.
1:11:46In a lot of cases, they're AccuHires that you hear about. So in the end, it really comes down to a couple of very key things. Building a great product, validating it with solid product market fit, finding and understanding those customers, and getting those customers to accept your product and tell other customers. And once you get that flywheel moving, it's kind of a snowball rolling down a hill, and it kind of takes on a momentum of its own. And if you reach that capacity for your business where you are growing and need help, capital finds you, and as capital is hunting for you, so are other larger businesses that want access to your customers and want access to what you're doing.
1:12:32So at the very early stage of things, it's not too difficult to be able to find exit opportunities. It just depends on whether or not you're able to find product market fit and demonstrate that.
1:12:43Carol Massar:How often, though, is it for an entrepreneur, Brett, is it just tough for them to let go after they've started a company and they realize it's time for them to either sell, merge? I mean, in order to take it to the next level, how difficult and how often does that happen where it's just time that they need somebody else? It's an interesting question, but I think the answer is emotional. And I think people with high EQs are capable of seeing that they're in over their head or to get to the next level. They need competence beyond their capability or skill set. And for some, they just can't see the forest through the trees.
1:13:18And it becomes a very emotional thing. You know, you have a whole persona and identity that has been formed around this thing that you brought to life. You know, I oftentimes think about startups as giving birth to a child in the ICU. Yeah, that's tricky. And it is, you know, your kid's in good hands. All the appropriate people are there on a 24-7 basis, but it's still touch and go.
1:13:46Carol Massar:That's Brett Markinson, founder and CEO of Innovent Capital Group. Still ahead on Bloomberg Businessweek, more from our visit to Michael Loeb's Uncharted Conference recently in Southampton. We'll hear about investing in women's health and how Washington policy might be impacting all of that. That's coming up next. This is Bloomberg.
1:14:06Carol Massar:Some people treat ChatGPT like some kind of smart search engine, and some use it to get work done. ChatGPT Work is a new way of working in ChatGPT that can take action across your apps and files, stay with a project for hours if needed, and turn a goal into finished work. It's designed to help you move from a chaotic starting point to a reviewable first version. So all the source materials, briefs, and scattered information that you have to grind through to turn into something useful can just become something useful. Put ChatGPT to work on your most ambitious ideas and projects. Get started at ChatGPT.com by selecting Work Mode, available on Plus and Pro plans.
1:14:48It's time to plan ahead and make sure your brand is showing up in ways that can have an impact. That's where 4imprint comes in. 4imprint have promotional products that work as hard as you do. Durable, useful, and designed to make a lasting impression. Think quality apparel your team will wear again and again, including popular and exclusive brands. Drinkware that's enjoyed again and again. Bags, notebooks, tools, and tech items that don't just look good, but actually get used. With thousands of customizable options, 4imprint makes it easy to find what fits your brand and your budget. You'll get expert help, free samples, and their 360-degree guarantee means you can be 4imprint certain your order shows up just right, right on time.
1:15:30Whether you're gearing up for fall events or simply planning ahead for the season, 4imprint can help your brand show up, stay useful, and make connections that last. Explore the possibilities at 4imprint.com. 4imprint. 4certain. If you listen to financial news, you know a lot of time is spent thinking about what's next. The next opportunity. The next investment. The next move. But sometimes what matters most is being ready for what you never saw coming. A storm damages a second home. A pipe bursts above a collection you spent decades building. An unexpected loss puts a growing business on pause.
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1:16:41Let Cincinnati insurance make your bad day better. Find an independent agent at CINFIN.com. You're listening to the Bloomberg Business Week Daily Podcast. Catch us live weekday afternoons from 2 to 5 p.m. Eastern. Listen on Apple CarPlay and Android Auto with the Bloomberg Business app. Or watch us live on YouTube.
1:17:03Carol Massar:We're back here on our special holiday edition of Bloomberg Business Week, continuing to highlight some of our favorite conversations from the Uncharted Community Summit, which was held recently in Southampton, in fact, in Michael Loeb's backyard. We turn now to Jessica Kamada. She's founder and managing partner at Swizzle Ventures, a new venture capital firm that's raised a fund to focus on women's health, caregiving, and financial health. We started by asking her what she looks for in a company before deciding to invest. We're looking at really the course of a woman's lifetime and investing in companies that advance women's health and wealth through pivotal life stages.
1:17:41We see three sectors as really filling the gaps for women over those life stages. So health care, physical health care, caregiving responsibilities on the elder side and early child care, and then financial health.
1:17:58Carol Massar:I want to say good, good, good. Because especially when you get just down to medical health and health care, it's just so behind, even R &D. And it's just amazing even, I don't want to do a blanket statement about professionals in the field, but I just hear over and over again women who go in and it's just things are ignored, said it's not anything, and things that turn out to be things. So how can you, through VC, venture, and investing, kind of change some of that? Yeah, absolutely. I think it's a little known fact that we only have 34 years of women's health research. We were only included in clinical trials since 1993 when NIH mandated that.
1:18:37It's insane. So when we go into the doctor's office, it's actually just lack of education on MDs front. I mean, they only get four hours of menopause training in their entire eight years of training. So some of it is not actually their fault, but the research just has to catch up and the education of the system has to catch up. That's just shocking to me.
1:19:02Carol Massar:Can I just ask you, is that research being hurt by what's been going on in the government and cuts? We are very much looking at the cuts. Yeah. Because I think if they're, they did initially say that they were going to cut a longitudinal study that has been going on for 30 years. they reinstated that until at least January, 2026. So we're now watching that. And if they cut it, then, you know, we're going to lose 30 years of longitudinal data that we've been collecting over, you know, with women over the course of their lifetime. So we are looking at that from a research perspective. But I think what's amazing in where tech comes into play is that These tech companies, especially with AI, are now creating their own data sets to help empower these researchers.
1:19:54So how would it change your opportunities as a venture capitalist if those cuts were to happen? And if we do see a pullback in funding from Washington, we've already seen a pullback in funding, at least to universities, to research. We talked to a lot of venture capitalists in the biotech space about this. Does that make your job more difficult because there will be fewer founders out there chasing opportunities? Or does it shut opportunities off for you? I think one major concern in the research and biotech world and also VCs is just a brain drain.
1:20:33The tech companies are built on the research that has been created over the last 30 years or so. Now that we have AI, they can finally do something with that data, create personalized care plans, et cetera. But if the underlying data is not there and that doesn't progress, then it's a lot harder to build on top of it. And funding research is not really in the VC model. So we can only fund the companies that are built on top of that research. research and we have to rely on federal funding, on other grants, on philanthropy to fund the actual research that's underlying. So my concern is that if we're funding companies that are going to be great 10 years from now, then like what do I fund 10 years from now if that research doesn't continue at the clip it is today?
1:21:22Carol Massar:We're talking with Jessica Kamada, founder and managing partner at Swizzle Ventures. You initially said it's divided into kind of three buckets, right? You You talked about caregiving and financial health. Where are you finding the most kind of entrepreneurs doing things? Is it equal? Are there certain buckets that are, you know, people that are starting different companies? What are you finding? We've funded 20 portfolio companies in this current fund, and they're pretty split evenly among the three sectors. I would say that in the caregiving sector, we're finding the most opportunities in elder care right now just because of the population.
1:21:59progression. It's a big play, I feel like, with everything. It's a huge play. And it's also something that is just undoubted. It's a bipartisan issue. No one is going to argue that the population is not aging. So it's something that everyone agrees on and knows that the healthcare system will be overwhelmed if we do not do something about it. But that's very employee intensive. That's very human intensive. And there's been a lot of commentary about the immigrant labor that actually does a lot of the caregiving of elders in the United States and potentially how that will be affected. Can this be solved with technology?
1:22:38I mean, same with caregiving for children. You need people to do that. How do you take a venture capitalist approach to this stuff? Yeah. Part of it is trying to fix the system and finding business models that are aligning all the incentives at play. Because a lot of it is just like incentives, right? And the issue with human caregivers is that it's a ruthless job. There's a lot of high turnover in it. For example, one company that's here, Ruby Well, they enable family caregivers to get paid through Medicare benefits that already exist. So it's really about helping people navigate the system that's so tricky and gatekept to figure out, but those dollars are there.
1:23:25They just need help accessing them. And they work with the basically staffing agencies, the home healthcare agencies that do that work.
1:23:34Carol Massar:How easy is it for you to get capital and create funds? She laughs. It was not as challenging as I had expected. However, this was the first environment that I have raised a fund in versus being in marketing in market in 2021, when I have heard that dollars were falling from the sky. Um, so one of the things about my thesis is that it's very relatable. Every single human has struggled through a personal, a pivotal life stage, be it a man or a woman. Right. Um, and I think that relatability has helped me to, for investors to understand what I'm trying to build. But even women specifically, like, is there always, it's, it's a little trickier, right?
1:24:19Carol Massar:When it's, it's a little tricky issues. I feel like it's a little trickier until you dig in to say, to explain the economic opportunity. I mean, investing in women's health is a$1 trillion market. Um, 320 billion in the U S alone. So when you really uncover the numbers behind the opportunity, it's far larger than people expect. And that's typically what I lead with. And from a wealth perspective, when we think about the great wealth transfer already in play, yeah, go ahead. Well, I don't mean to sound glib, but if you were to sort of look at the categories that might be the least challenging to disrupt through venture capital and through funding companies, it wouldn't be these categories.
1:25:12I mean, these are categories that are ripe with regulation. Yes. They're categories that aren't necessary. It's not like you're creating an app. Sometimes you are. Human capital intensive, though. This is a really challenging space, I think. Am I wrong about that? See, man's planning to ask. No, you're not. But all venture capital stuff. Thanks, Carol. But this is really tough stuff. But you see the way money is flowing for AI agents and companies that are built on chat GPT, that seems to be the path of least resistance right now. So I was at a consumer AI summit, and a lot of the companies were creating, connecting you to the right clothes and things that are really fun.
1:26:00And there does need to be fun in consumer. AI does need to be fun to use, but it also needs to be helping very foundational human things. and it can do that as well. Like sometimes I think in these categories, it doesn't actually need to be flashy. It just needs to solve a problem. Like for instance, we have some companies that are not that high tech. It's a maternal mental health company where they're just providing access to mental health professionals after you have a baby, which is a leading cause of maternal death. And it's like it's not that hard of a concept, and it doesn't really require AI.
1:26:44It's just filling a need that didn't exist before. And there are so many more of those in women's health and these categories because they've been so overlooked and underinvested in. So, yes, we have fancy AI companies like investment platforms directed at Gen Z or like hormonal monitors that you can do at home. but some of them are not as high tech and they don't need to be.
1:27:12Carol Massar:What would surprise somebody about investing in this space? I know you talked about the economics, which I thought was really kind of telling some of the numbers, right? Because when people see, I'm sure hear that, they're like, oh, I get it, right? This is a really untapped marketplace. Why aren't we doing more? But I'm just curious, as you've been talking to entrepreneurs, thinking about initiatives specifically that fall into women's fields. I think people are surprised at how much deal flow there actually is and how many people are building in these spaces because they're building for themselves.
1:27:46Typically, they're building because they see a need in their own life that was unmet through one of these pivotal life stages. Right. And they don't see anyone else tackling it. And so they go for it themselves.
1:27:57Carol Massar:It's funny. That's what Bill Harris said formerly of PayPal. And he said his current investment firm, it was something he wanted, he needed, and that's what he created. It makes the most sense for entrepreneurs to be doing that. That's Jessica Kamada, founder and managing partner at Swizzle Ventures. You can hear all of our conversations from the event. Just head to Bloomberg.com or check out our podcast feed. And that wraps up the weekend edition, a special holiday weekend edition of Bloomberg Business Week from Bloomberg Radio. Thank you so much for joining us. Be sure to tune in to Bloomberg Business Week daily, Monday through Friday, starting at 2 p.m.
1:28:27Carol Massar:Wall Street time on Bloomberg Television, Bloomberg Radio, and on SiriusXM channel 121. You can listen to us on Apple CarPlay and Android Auto. It's free in the Apple App Store or on Google Play. You can also watch our daily broadcast on YouTube. Just search Bloomberg Podcasts or simulcast on Bloomberg Originals, available at Bloomberg.com slash originals, and streaming platforms including Roku, Amazon Fire TV, Samsung TV Plus, and more. Find our Bloomberg Business Week daily podcast at Bloomberg.com, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts. and the latest edition of the magazine available on newsstands now at Bloomberg.com and always on the Bloomberg Terminal.
1:29:03Carol Massar:I'm Carol Masser, along with Tim Stenevek. Have a good and safe weekend, a happy holiday weekend, and do stay with us. Today's top stories and global business headlines are coming up right now. This is the Bloomberg Business Week Daily Podcast, available on Apple, Spotify, and anywhere else you get your podcasts. Listen live weekday afternoons from 2 to 5 p.m. Eastern on Bloomberg.com, the iHeartRadio app, TuneIn, and the Bloomberg Business app. You can also watch us live every weekday on YouTube and always on the Bloomberg Terminal.
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From the publisher
Featuring some of our favorite conversations from our visit to Michael Loeb's estate in Southhampton Long Island for the Uncharted Community Summit.
Hosted by Carol Massar and Tim Stenovec
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