513. Opening Late-Stage Venture to Everyone, Beating 10-Year Lockups, Why Logos Don't Equal Alpha, and Building Power Law as a Public VC Fund (Ben Black)

0:00This episode is brought to you by Ramp, the spend management platform we use here at TFR. They're offering listeners$150 just to take a demo. We've never had an offer quite like this. Claim your$150 before this offer is gone at our partner link, ramp.com slash partners slash TFR. Now on to the episode. Welcome to the podcast about venture capital, where investors and founders alike can learn how VCs make decisions and reach conviction. Your host is Nick Moran, and this is The Full Ratchet.

0:40Ben Black joins us today from San Francisco. He's the co-founder and managing director of Acadian Ventures and chief investment officer of PowerLaw Corp., a fund investing across AI, next generation software, aerospace and defense, and consumer technology. Before PowerLaw, Ben spent 16 years in institutional secondaries. He's backed companies including SpaceX, OpenAI, Stripe, Databricks, and Perplexity, among others. Ben, welcome to the show. Hey, thanks for having me, Nick. Really, really great to be here. Good to see you again. You're doing something brand new, and it's different. Whole new adventure.

1:20A whole new adventure. And it's an adventure for us because it's sort of a shift on the traditional approach to venture. We've been hosting the show for 12 years and love breaking down new models, new investment structures, pressure testing them, and of course, educating the audience. So thanks for doing this. Power Law is new. I've been following the announcements in the recent debut. Help me and help the listeners understand the basics. You know, what is the simplest way possible you can explain what Power Law is? Sure. Power Law is a publicly listed closed-end fund trading on the NASDAQ that contains a portfolio of 15 to 20 late-stage private companies.

2:08that any investor around the globe can buy through a regular brokerage account at the click of a button. Daily liquidity, no minimums, no K1s. So it's got a portfolio of companies like SpaceX, OpenAI, CalSheet, DealStripe, Databricks, and others that we just mentioned. And the idea is very simple. The whole world wants access to late-stage private companies, and there needs to be more ways to give them that access. And we're trying to be the first venture capital fund to provide that access through this highly regulated public vehicle that is designed to hold long-term illiquid assets. And so we're off the whole new venture.

2:54That's the future for Acadia. And we're all in Unparla. And that's what we're doing going forward. Awesome. So was SpaceX in the fund when it went public? Yeah. Yeah. SpaceX was actually our largest position. So they got that one right there. And that's a really interesting sort of question around, like, what are these public vehicles supposed to give exposure to? Because, of course, once a company goes public, people can buy it directly. So the value of having it in a closed-end fund kind of goes down in a way. And so we're really focused on giving investors access to the run-up. You know, SpaceX ran up from$200 billion to$2 trillion pretty damn fast.

3:37And the public investors all missed out on that. And so our goal is to get that exposure earlier in the company's life cycle. So does that suggest that you'll sell it down as it goes through these different tranches of liquidity on the lockup? Of course, you know, it's totally fine to have public equities inside of a publicly traded closed-down fund. There are many of them that just are public equities, and that's fine. and we'll face the same decisions that all investors make, all private market investors make, which is sort of like how do we handle it once it's public and trading out? But we still see that eventually at the right time we'll sell that position and either distribute the cash or recycle it back in the fund, depending on where we're at.

4:27So that works. I mean, really, if done right, the closing fund will operate a lot like a like your investor in a VC fund and we face the same decisions about when to distribute when to sell once a company is public but we see that the point of the vehicle is to give exposure to that price appreciate and perhaps while companies are private so we don't want the fund to become too much of public equities because it really kind of it that dilutes the purpose of the vehicle um so we won't hold on to it forever we'll exit at some point. And we have a lot of discretion about how we do that. Right. The value here is access, right?

5:04Because the nav is going to drift from the market price, but the inherent value you're providing to investors is access to, I mean, retail investors can get access to a lot of logos that they're interested in that they otherwise couldn't. Right. And do it in a really simple way. I mean, if you're a small investor today, hey, think about the choices that you have if you want to get access to private market investments. You know, you can try to sort out the crazy ecosystem of SPVs that are out there and become an LP in one of those. And, you know, many of those are run really well, and many of those are not run really well, as we all know.

5:45You can go into a VC fund, but the best VC funds retail investors can't get access to. So, of course, that's not really a vehicle. So, you know, for really anyone, this is just a new way to get exposure and, you know, one we think has a valuable place in the ecosystem going forward. So you mentioned SPVs. Does PowerLaw hold directs SPVs and forward contracts? Yeah, well, I mean, it's important to remember our history, right? Like we have been investing as a secondary fund for the last 16 years. We've done over 850 secondaries. You know, SPVs are one way to create exposure, you know, and when you're a secondary fund, that is sort of the key, you know, the key sort of talent is what are all the pathways to exposure, right?

6:33So we have a whole team that's been doing this for a really long time. And so, like, sometimes we do SPVs, we go direct. Many times we go direct just in primaries. It's like old-fashioned. Sometimes we do SPVs that we control, some other ones that we don't. And there's a lot of technical reasons for why SBVs in the right hands can be really useful. When you're a publicly listed closed-end fund, you have to maintain certain diversification requirements in order to get sort of single-level taxation. And SBVs can be a great tool in the right hands to manage some of those complexities of being a public vehicle around what percentages of each company we hold.

7:15Interesting. They're a really useful tool. It's not, you know, like SPVs have gotten sort of a bad name out there, but they're just another vehicle. And these professionals to be able to manage them and people who've been doing it, like understanding it. We've run 20 something of our own SPVs over time at a pretty big scale. Like you need professionals to be able to navigate that world. It's not a world that I recommend retail investors go try to navigate on their own. So why do this, right? You've had a lot of success at Acadian running traditional secondaries funds, as you mentioned. Of course, one frame here is that you're providing a service, you're providing access to retails, but what's in it for you?

7:59Why would you do this? Well, so it's an interesting story of evolution. We've always here at Acadian believed in innovating to create benefits for our investors and be innovative. Sometimes as industry where we support innovation, but VCs aren't particularly innovative themselves around their own business. So, like, think about this. We were one of the first firms that dove in and helped create the secondary market, you know, when people were, like, loved it or hated it and said they were going to destroy venture. And, like, we said, no, this is a really important part of the infrastructure. And, you know, and here, and then we've seen what's happening there.

8:35You know, we went and created one of the sort of largest, the original GPLP conference, Race Global, because we wanted there to be a place to bring GPs and LPs together. And that became its own kind of big ecosystem. So when, with that background in mind, right, when we went out to do Fund 7, we looked at the world and said, the world is choking on 10-year liquid funds. You know, and do we really need another one? so we started looking around saying like, how can we build something that has kind of liquidity built into the system? Like all investors are exhausted with how long it takes for VC, for VC investments to get liquid.

9:18Um, and, and when we found the closed end fund, we said that this is kind of amazing. We can give, you know, we raise money privately. And that's our sort of, we call them seed investors. We deploy the capital private because we want to bring a completed portfolio, or substantially complete a portfolio public because you don't really want to take just a pile of cash public, right? And we realized that what this gave people was the opportunity as an LP to choose your own adventure. If you wanted three years of exposure, you could have that. If you wanted five years of exposure, you could have that.

9:53And we thought that this, as a wrapper, like closed-end funds are designed to hold long-term illiquid assets. So there are people who use closed-down funds for tons of things. There's one that does uranium, all right? Like, it's just a big pile of uranium. And then people can get invested in that. And we thought this is perfect for venture assets because of the time duration that we're all facing. Like, the 10-year liquid fund is kind of a lie. Like, does anyone believe that any of the VC funds that they're in are going to be wrapped up after 10 years? I got one for 2012. I still got two things in it.

10:32I'm with you. Extensions, continuation vehicles. I mean, they're long cycle vehicles. Part of that can be a feature instead of a bug, but certainly for LPs that want liquidity, it's often considered very difficult to wait. Well, people, for example, like one of the knocks on closed end funds is they can trade at a discount to NAV, right? So because the price of the fund and the price per share and goes up and down. It trades independently the valuation of the underlying assets. So people are like, well, Ben, what if your vehicle trades below NAV? And my answer is, do you know what really trades below NAV?

11:13A VC fund in year seven or eight. That's 50 % off of NAV if you want to get out. That's a good point. So that's your bar that you're comparing it against. Yeah. I mean, GP, LP, trying to sell a stake, you know, on a fund is not going to get 100 % of NAV. No, you got to go to a bunch of sharks like me who are going to be like, 50 % off NAV, take it or leave it. So, Ben, what happens with early stage venture? You run Raise Global, probably the most respected conference connecting GPs and LPs. There's definitely an early stage focus at the conference. Yeah, absolutely. And we need early stage funds.

11:54Absolutely. There's companies being founded and your vehicle isn't going to replace formation capital. So what happens with VC and how do we square the circle here with the long hold? Well, there's been a lot of writing out there. Obviously, I've written about the fact that the venture capital business is sort of fundamentally different than it used to be. Right. And right now we have, you know, the vast majority of capital goes into a small group of firms. And then you have like a long tail of 3000 plus funds that are out there doing seed and early stage. And, you know, there's a lot of concern over what's happening to those managers because we've been through like the most difficult five year craziness in venture.

12:41And there's been a massive amount of creative destruction in early stage. And the single-stage VCs have been under tremendous pressure with their own models. I can just tell you that I just got done this morning selecting the top 100 GPs that are going to be invited to raise this year. All right. Just today. and I am so excited about what I'm seeing because we're now seeing it from the sort of ashes of 23 and 24, just a tremendous amount of innovative new teams that are coming into the industry. There's always gonna be this beautiful sort of entrepreneurial spirit at early stage where I think a tremendous amount of capital is gonna be made of returns if you compare your choices that are a mega fund, because that's kind of where it is now, right?

13:35So I am actually, after reading these 100 decks, super bullish again. If you asked me that last year, I would have been much less bullish. And two years ago, I was in the depth of a Great Depression about what was happening, because so many funds were just, they had such a hard time navigating COVID to collapse, collapse and that just destroyed a whole bunch of funds. Well, what's emerging from the ashes is super exciting. And I think that's the world we're going to see. You're going to see a whole group of small specialist funds that know, that build ecosystems, that have competitive differentiation.

14:17And there are a lot of new names. And those are going to, of course, feed the mega funds. And in fact, one of the things I tell managers today that is different from before is that you, one of the things that young managers need to do is the sort of seed stage and even series areas is make sure that they're really building deep connections with the mega funds because that's their downstream customer. A hundred percent. And that has to be like an anchor in their business. And I look for this in funds that I look at and we have our own small fund of funds ourselves. And so I want to see managers who have that connectivity to the mega funds because that's the beast you're feeding, right?

14:59And so, but the returns I'm seeing from the funds this year are amazing. And so, yeah, the ILPs are going to be shocked by what they see when they come to raise. I mean, the tailwind of AI is like nothing. It's insane, yeah. And now we've got, you know, new super cycles starting with the application layer. And, you know, there's a lift across the board in startups, which is very exciting. And hopefully many of them get to, to that stage where, where you can enter. So, so another question on that. So let's say you want to put an additional position into the pot, into the fund. How does that work?

15:40Where does the cash come from, you know, to take on a new late stage position and a, I don't know, a database? Well, so it's important. I would think about the actual underlying vehicle, right? Like we have the holding company that holds these assets. But it's run a lot like a VC. It's very similar to a VC fund. We have cash. The difference is we don't call capital. We raise all the capital up front. So right now we have over$100 million of cash that we can deploy into new opportunities. And so we've found the ability. One thing that is, I think, underrated is we can exit positions in the secondary market, too.

16:19So we've already had some exits. And then, of course, that cash gives us the ability to redeploy into new names. Now, there are two parts of closed-end funds that are really underappreciated in terms of raising capital. One is there's a whole industry that will lend, that will put debt on a closed-end fund, which is non-dilutive capital. That's one. The second is that you can do what's called an at-the-market offering, where you actually can go out and sell shares at the market and be a certain percentage of your float. and newly issued shares that also put cash into the business, into the fund for new investments.

16:55And, of course, when we have exits, then we have capital that we can redeploy from that as well. So with those two caveats, if you compare a VC fund to a closed-end fund, we have the ability to raise more capital in a much more interesting way than a VC fund does, which is something that people, as I discovered when I started looking at it, I was like, this is amazing. What's the debt ratio that you can do? You can go up to 33 % of your NAV. So we have about, you know, roughly, you know, I think current NAV is announced as 662. So we could theoretically put$200 million of debt. I'm not saying we are.

17:39We're a public company. This is not a forward-looking statement, but, like, that is an option. Okay. And it functions different than, like, your CCL, The repayment period and interest rates, is this like an asset-backed? Yeah, it's an asset-backed loan. It has an interest rate that's going to be, I would say these days, it would be somewhere like 8%. If you're deploying that into things that are generating 25%, 30%, you're going to be in great shape. But that's just one option. So, Ben, costs in the category tend to run higher than a typical closed-end fund, partly because you're holding private shares through SPVs and there's that layer.

18:21Break down the cost structure for us. You know, where does the money go and what's the case? Yeah. What's the all-in cost? Yeah. So, I mean, the all-in fees on our vehicle in the first year were about 3.6%. There are some, yeah, that is, you know, certainly an issue. Like compare that to a VC fund that's 2 and 20 because we don't have carry. Like keep that in mind, right? Right. So that's a really good point. And it's important to know, like all in anyone investing in the private markets, it's a relatively high fee. You know, it's an expensive project to create exposure in the private markets.

18:56There are some other expenses here that are that are specific to close down funds like regulatory, compliance, legal. It cost us millions of dollars to do that, to make the vehicle public. and also just for example, our audit. For 16 years, I did private funds, right? When I did my first public company audit, it's unbelievable the level of detail they go into. It is an order of magnitude more intense and an order of magnitude more expensive. Welcome to the publicly traded fun. Right, right. And so, you know, so at the end of the day, like, you know, all of our performance is net of fees and expenses.

19:48So, like, people are going to have to judge it based on the performance of the funds. We got to show them that we can earn, that the private assets are generating good enough returns to cover the sort of, you know, expensive part of running this business. Do you think that fee load comes down over time? Yeah, I do. I do think it comes down over time. Because we get leverage. A lot of these are fixed, right? So, you know, as the example, we're going to have an annual, you know, whatever we pay for lawyers, like the first year is the worst, right? That fee comes down. Yeah. You know, when you think about your audit, that fee probably is the same, roughly the same, but your NAV is going up.

20:27So as NAV grows, fees go down. And that's why people who have done really small closed-end funds, their fee ratios are kind of insane because it's just so expensive. And you're going to need – one of the reasons why we went to a bigger portfolio was because we wanted that fee to be a less of a percentage of the fund. So, Ben, how do you balance demand for logos and the right logos, right? Last week I was in the Bay Area chatting with one of the founders of DCVC and Lux, and we were having this discussion about what LPs want and what they need. And sometimes those diverge, right? LPs may want what's hot or the trending logo.

21:18And if you just invest in what's hot in venture, you're probably going to do pretty poorly because you've got to be a little ahead. So how do you balance putting the anthropics into power law and then also putting some stuff in there that they may not know what it is? It might be obscure, but it's something that you believe will have tremendous appreciation. And that's a great question. And it is like as chief investment officer, this is something that I struggle with like all the time. Because, you know, there is two sides to this business. Like you have to create retail demand for your, for your companies.

21:58Um, and so the way I look at it is it's a portfolio. Um, you know, so I'll give you, I'll give you some specific examples about the portfolio. Uh, you know, like a company like deal, like I'm a huge fan of deal long-term. Like I just think it's a really great business. I think it's very immune from AI. Um, it's been profitable for a long time. And I, I think it has absolutely no retail appeal. Like nobody knows what deal is. No one will understand like why the deal is a great business. And I'm like, I want this portfolio because I think it's just a great business. And, and, you know, I, I think it has a really bright future ahead of it.

22:36Um, and you balance that out with logos, you know, to some extent, like, you know, I mean, it's not something like Stripe, which is in a portfolio, like his unbelievable asset, like I can argue with you about the prices, you know, where is it? You know, how fast will Nav go? I don't know. but it's a long-term compounder too that I know has a ton of retail appeal. And so, you know, on a case, you're trying to create a portfolio that can generate, look, our job number one is NAV appreciation, right? Like, you know, if our portfolio just keeps growing, the NAV keeps growing, like, that's all good things happening.

23:11I'm not going to put a name in there just because it's retail hot if I don't believe that there's NAV appreciation in front of it. Um, uh, but I, but if I'm given to like, hey, when we created a portfolio, there was like 10 obvious names. Right. And, and then after that hit either was a great business that, you know, that I thought this is just great business. I want the portfolio, or it was something I thought retail would really like. Um, but that still would be a good, a good investment. Um, so it does get more, um, that is a more complicated sort of decision-making process. that kind of has to have a balance.

23:51And that's what I'm about is have a balance. So right now, Calci is like the hottest name on the planet going on, I think, just recently. And it's in the portfolio, but I think it is both. Like that is great to have in the portfolio, and it's great to, I think, retail investors love it too. So that's an easy one. And then on the supply side, You know, if NAV drifts apart from share price significantly, let's say share prices is much higher. I mean, is that a good reason to issue more supply? You know, issue more shares? Well, so we can issue more shares because that's what the closed-end fund is, right?

24:34So I'm not sure I totally get your question. I'll say that, like. I thought you said at the top that you could. You could expand the number of shares trading for PowerLaw and raise money that way? Oh, okay. We could raise additional capital. So if we do debt, you don't issue new shares. If you do an ATM, you do issue new shares, and that's dilutive. But the ATM is sort of inherently, you only do an ATM when you're trading above NAV. So each sale of stock into the public markets is actually accretive to NAV because you're heaviest. NAV is 20 and you're selling shares at 30. $10 is added to your NAV.

25:21That was my question. Yeah. And so there's a good case for that. But you can't do ATMs if you're trading below NAV. Yeah. Okay. I know. This is like very – it's a nerdy new world. No, I mean, I think I get the mechanics. I'm just trying to think about the demand side, the supply side, the traps, and the opportunities. If you can raise more capital and price is much higher than NAV and the money goes into the book, so it's all accretive, that's a good position to be in if that delta is healthy. Yeah, and there is one thing that people don't appreciate about the NAV that is really important is that there is a structural reason why closed-end funds will trade above NAV.

26:09And that is when a new round is announced, let's say Databricks does a new round, it'll be out there in the world. Like when Databricks raises a round at whatever price, it's got a new price. The market knows it's a new price. Well, we can't take the mark until the whole round is actually closed and the certificate is filed at Delaware. Oh, interesting. And that might take three to four months. And then it's got to get, then we need another month. We do monthly NAVs and we're the only, I think one of the only, maybe one other one. Most closed-end funds don't do monthly NAVs. But we really want to give this like very sort of up-to-date version of what the NAV is.

26:51So every month we do the entire company financials every month. So we can give investors a new NAV to shorten that amount of time between these announced rounds and when investors get a new NAV. But that's what will happen with CalShield at$40 billion. We got it marked at$22, right? But it may be six months before that shows up in our NAV. Are you still managing expenses with outdated apps and spreadsheets? If so, it's time for Ramp, the leading U.S. spend management platform covering corporate cards, travel, AP, and more. All built to save time and extend runway. We use Ramp at TFR and it's been a game changer.

27:35As our preferred partner, they're offering listeners$150 just to take a demo. No need to sign up. Head to ramp.com slash partners slash TFR to claim your$150 before the offer expires. Now back to the interview. And are you only marking up at, or sorry, are you only changing nav with new marks? Or will you look at comps? Will you look at, you know, just the progress of the business? You know, if the margin profile is expanding and the revenue is growing at, in some of these cases, you know, 10x plus per year for an AI business, just to hold it at the old mark is sort of undervalued. Well, we're a public company, and there are really strict rules around how valuations are done.

28:25It's very similar. Here's the same kind of type of valuation process that a mutual fund like T. Rowe or Fidelity uses. All those marks are then signed off on by our auditor, right? Not every month, because that would be impossible, but biannually. And that process, they're very strict on this. So we don't just mark based on like secondary market prices or momentum or anything like that. If it's a financing event or it's a negotiated company tender, that will create a new mark. There might be some situations where the nav gets really old. At that point, we have to sort of use a more comp-based analysis.

29:08But in these companies, they're raising money so fast, like the last round or a tender is really what's driving nav. So there's this concept in venture called planned exigence, which is like when you sell a product and when the customer has success, they leave the platform. So like the classic example is a dating app. Like if you're doing dating right, like you should be graduating people onto, you know, a monogamous relationship and they should leave whatever your platform is. Right. That sort of rhymed with and reminded me of something with PowerLaw, but more on the product side versus customers.

29:49So a good outcome for you would be a portfolio company going public above your mark. It's also the moment where, you know, the scarcity values competed away. I mean, you have access other people don't have. And once it's public, they've got it. So once the big three are all public here, you know, what's PowerLog going to own and how do you keep the portfolio fresh, you know, with the next generation of scarce assets? No, I think it's a great, and look, believe me right now, that's like the topic number one for us is to deploy in the next set of companies that are, we are, I think are great businesses that will be the hot ones of next year, right?

30:26And we're thinking that ahead. And, you know, when I look at a company like Fast Data, I think it's a great example of that. Like, you know, nobody knows fast data. Like, so for people who don't know, it's basically the data storage software that the foundation models all sit on top of, and they have a huge market share. So when money is spent on models, on tokens, basically fast data gets a piece. You know, because Anthropic OpenAI and SpaceX are taking all of the air, you know, there's going to be a process of discovery next year, right, and the year after. And I think there's a lot of like, especially in AI, there's just a lot of incredible companies that will, will be the next generation.

31:12Um, and so I'm, I'm pretty confident that like, that I I'm actually looking forward to the day where we don't, aren't just talking about the proper company in SpaceX, because I, I, you know, when I think about it is not, not in the portfolio, but just another example, like applied intuition, unbelievable company. You know, retail doesn't know it. Nobody knows it outside of venture capital. Like just a really interesting, you know, asset that will be a great, great, great public company one day. And in my opinion. And, you know, I think that those stories will be told in the press and they will they will be the next companies that people are talking about.

31:51and and ben power law here isn't the first listed vehicle for private tech um aside from just being a better picker you know what are you doing differently than some of the predecessors some of them have gotten kind of beaten up in the media you know for premiums layered structures marks i'm curious you know aside from just manager discretion on companies are there other things that you're doing. Yeah. Well, yeah, we're the first venture capital firm that's done a public closed-end fund. Everyone else, they're not venture capital firms, right? I believe that managing a portfolio through decades should be run by people who have done that because there's going to be good times and there's going to be bad times.

32:39And that kind of experience is, I think, really important to bring to this asset class. And that's our goal. like i want to have i'm creating a platform for long-term investors not day traders um my customer is very different and our goals are very different um and so like i think that we will hopefully find our community out there and it's just really you know i've only been public for a month um but our i think that the intent and being an institutional you know uh leader in the asset class and really bringing some maturity to the asset class like for example like how we created a float that was very generous to create a lot of floats so that retail investors would have an opportunity to buy in at reasonable prices.

33:27And that completely differentiates ourselves from some of the other people that are out there. We don't want to be a meme stock. We want an RIA to be like, hey, look, this thing trades at a reasonable valuation with an incredible portfolio and and like i i can just put this into a brokerage account right and um and i think that expands like you know we're in the early days like i feel like i'm the early days of secondaries like we are it's the wild west time i was in the wild west of secondaries and like we're just learning with this new asset class like how to make it professional and that's our goal do you have a sense for the percentage of holders of power law that are institutional versus retail?

34:12I do not. Rumor has it that there's something called, I'm learning through this all the time, but we get a 13F, but it doesn't come for a period of time. And I know that we will have this building at the shareholder base, but I don't have it yet. So I have no idea. I mean, in terms of the public investors, obviously the private investors I know. So part of the big bet here is that the pre-IPO access shifts from institutions and insiders to a much broader pool. And, you know, in general, the less sophisticated buyers are the ones most likely to pay a premium. So what sort of guardrails, you know, have you put in place, you know, that sit and govern sort of responsibility for the funds and limit, you know, regulation and exposure to the regulators?

35:05Well, so I mean, you know, I think the regulators are learning as we go, you know, they took a lot of education. The process with the SEC took a long time because they go within the SEC. I don't think that there's a lot of understanding of these vehicles. And so it just sort of depends where you are in the SEC. But like any stock, it should always be bought on the fundamentals. And, you know, everyone should look at what the NAV is, what the premium NAV is, but most importantly, like what's the quality of the portfolio as a whole. And a big part of our, you know, the hardest part about closed end funds is how we can educate investors about the portfolio.

35:54Because, for example, in leading up to our direct listing, we were in the quiet period where we couldn't say anything, right? And then around direct listing, there's all these rules about like, you can't say anything because you can't promote your listing. Well, I know because we were chatting many months ago and then we delayed this recording to today. Right. And so, you know, we are really right now working through content, a whole content marketing effort around how to best educate retail investors about what's in the portfolio in a way that is compliant. We have to comply with two sets of laws, the Advisors Act and the 1940 Act.

36:42Okay. So every piece of content we create has to be put through this lens of compliance where the rules are uncertain. They're difficult to apply. Um, and they weren't written for venture. And so, um, we're working really hard to educate the market and the world about how to think about closed end funds. Um, and we're in the early days of that, but it's one of my personal missions. um you know and that's what and that's our that's our a big part of our job for the next year is educating the world about these vehicles and how to look at them and how to understand them and how to make reasonable choices about them um but you know that's that's just a job to be done currently you have 15 logos in the fund is that right i think it's about 20 20 yeah it depends I think about 18 as of 530, but we just did our 630 numbers.

37:40So there'll be some more. Is that the right number, or do you expect that to potentially double in the coming years? Power Law was always intended to be kind of a flagship, you know, sort of best of the best kind of product. Like, you know, and, you know, I think that, like, I'm a big believer in concentration in venture. I think venture, you buy for alpha. If you want to get massive diversification, you do an index. And I don't think an index of venture is as exciting as a concentrated portfolio. And so we'll always be pretty concentrated. Like it's going to vary. There's a whole bunch of reasons why it may go as low as 15, as high as 25.

38:21But I don't see it going outside of that. what did we miss on acadian power law raise global anything else you want to share with with listeners uh no i would just i would say this that that you know people under like you know people really sometimes don't get my motivation for doing this and you know i guess i did mention it but like it really is you know i think that people in venture we sit here in our little bubble. And there's a whole world of people out there that are really tired of 10-year liquid funds. And I can think I can actually really embrace those people and bring them into venture by giving them a different wrapper, especially international investors.

39:07When I go out and I talk to international investors who many times haven't been treated very well by venture capitalists, feel very burned. I feel like they kind of get their money and get kind of used and get taken for fees and expenses. And when I talk about, hey, look, this is a public structure with public company accounting, public company reporting, an independent board that can fire us every two years, with KPMG doing public company audits, they really do get excited by that as well as the built-in feature of an off-ramp whenever you want. And so I think people just take away that view.

39:42That's the most important sort of view of trying it out there. Good stuff. Ben, if we could feature anyone here on the show, who do you think we should interview and what topic would you like to hear them speak about? Man, I would say get, if you can get Ira Aaron Price on your podcast, that he would be my number one choice by far. Um, for people that don't know, cause Ira has like a very little public profile. Um, Ira is the first investor in Tesla, first investor in space, like early, very early in SpaceX. He's on the board of Tesla. Um, Ira is the, he runs DVL investors, which has done incredibly well in the impact space, which is also amazing.

40:18Ira is also just an incredible guy, and he's incredibly brilliant in how he thinks about venture. And he doesn't really care about his public persona very much, and I think he's one of the most underrated. He's not out there fighting Twitter battles with people. He's just out there building great businesses with the best entrepreneurs and has an extraordinary person to listen and sit and talk with. Ben, give, uh, give the listeners a book article or video that you'd recommend. You know, I, I would say that, uh, the, uh, one, I say that one book, there's a book, I can't remember the title of it right now, but like right now I'm spending a lot of time reading the Stoics.

41:03Yeah. You know, like basically like, just like reading the Stoic, the Stoic philosophy. Um, one of my, it's really hard being this entrepreneurial, you know, when you're in your fifties. And I think that like, you know, when you're doing these things that are very, I, I'm being very public for the first time, like I've kept a really low profile and now I have to be public. Right. Um, when you're doing, when you're building in public and you're having a lot of criticism and you're having a lot of day-to-day fights with, you know, secs or vendors or whatever, it's really good to have the stoic mindset, um, And sort of remind yourself of what the Stoics say every day.

41:42So I'd say go deep in Stoic philosophy. Love it. Ben, do you have any habits or behaviors that are a secret weapon?

41:53I would say that the one habit that I have is I try to go to... I don't love going to tech events. I'm super selective. Even though you host one of the biggest ones? One of the reasons I created it was because I was tired of running to everyone else's events. So I am a huge believer in when I spend my time at events, I do a lot of thinking about what I'm going to go to and why and who's going to be there and making sure that there's going to be a real intimate opportunity to meet people I don't know that are very much outside of my world and listening to people that are outside of my world. And we're in a bubble.

42:37You know what I mean? Like one of the best things I've done is because of raise, like we did raise LATAM. And then I got to know all of these Latin American fund entrepreneurs, you know, I mean, like early stage VCs, a bunch of VCs from Latin America. Spending time with people outside the valley who are building ecosystems elsewhere will give you a sense of perspective that I think people here really need. And so like get out of the bubble. make sure that you do not live your life in the bubble and get out of it and get to other parts of the world you know go to slush like amazing spot for like tons of people from all over the world that's where we met up yeah yeah that's right so like i mean highly recommended why get you need to get out of the bubble because if you're just in the echo chamber it really is going to constrict your thinking and i think that listening to to people from all around the world is a huge benefit.

43:31Good stuff. And then finally here, Ben, what is the best way for listeners to connect with you and follow along with your efforts? You know, believe it or not, I would say just reach out to me on LinkedIn. I'm really pretty good about and pretty open about connecting with people on LinkedIn. What's the current share price of PowerLaw? It is not trading today, thankfully, so I am not going to answer that question. Okay. No, I'm just kidding. It was like$15.30 or something like that yesterday, but today I'm thankful about the days the market's closed. All right. Well, Ben can't sell it, but I can.

44:02Pick up a share of PowerLaw if you want access to late stage great venture investments. Make sure you read the prospectus before you do it and understand all the risks. All the T's and C's. Well, Ben, this is a blast, man. Thanks for doing it. Congrats on the success and the debut. And we'll see you again soon. Thanks a lot. Appreciate it.

44:27all right that'll wrap up today's interview if you enjoyed the episode or a previous one let the guests know about it share your thoughts on social or shoot them an email let them know what particularly resonated with you i can't tell you how much i appreciate that some of the smartest folks in venture are willing to take the time and share their insights with us if you feel the same a compliment goes a long way. Okay, that's a wrap for today. Until next time, remember to overprepare, choose carefully, and invest confidently. Thanks so much for listening.