Financial Advisors Are Cooked – Public Co-CEO on the Great Wealth Transfer

Leif Abraham, Co-CEO of Public, joins Molly at the New York Stock Exchange for one of the more fun financial discussions on how Public is building the next-generation investing platform “for those who take it seriously." Public represents the first modern alternative to Schwab, Fidelity, and Vanguard — platforms built on decades-old infrastructure that haven't kept pace with today's investors or technology. The results speak for themselves: millions of users, billions in assets under management, billions in trading volume, and revenue doubling annually as they continue to capture market share. Public's differentiators include: AI agents that automate complex investment strategies "Generated Assets" AI-powered custom indices Comprehensive multi-asset trading across stocks, ETFs, crypto, options, treasuries, bonds Focus on sophisticated investors with real assets to compound Leif and I explore how their AI-generated defense index hit 350% returns in one month (big surprise, lol), the future of financial advisors in an AI world, and why their co-CEO structure works better than solo leadership. Leif explains why they focus on the top 25% instead of chasing mass market speculation, plus his thoughts on AI, wealth inequality, and what it means for society. For investors seeking a serious platform that combines traditional financial services with cutting-edge technology, this conversation offers valuable insights into where the industry is heading. Leif Abraham: https://x.com/leifthunder Molly O’Shea: https://x.com/MollySOShea Sourcery: ⁠https://x.com/sourceryy 𝐄𝐏𝐈𝐒𝐎𝐃𝐄 𝐋𝐈𝐍𝐊𝐒 YouTube : https://youtu.be/NF-VKevrIzg 𝐒𝐏𝐎𝐍𝐒𝐎𝐑𝐒 • Brex https://brex.com/sourcery—The modern finance platform, combining the world’s smartest corporate card with integrated expense management, banking, bill pay, & travel. https://brex.com/sourcery • Turing https://turing.com/sourcery—Turing accelerates superintelligence by helping frontier AI labs improve model capabilities and enabling enterprises to deploy end-to-end AI systems inside mission-critical workflows. Visit:turing.com/sourcery http://turing.com/sourcery•VCX https://fundrise.com/vcx—VCX is the public ticker for private tech, allowing investors of all sizes to invest in venture capital. View The Portfolio athttp://GetVCX.com http://getvcx.com • Deel https://www.deel.com/sourcery—Deel is the global people platform that helps startups hire, manage, pay, and equip anyone, anywhere. Trusted by more than 35,000 fast-growing companies, Deel is the people platform that just works, so teams can scale without the chaos. Visit: https://www.deel.com/sourcery • Public http://public.com/sourcery–Investing platform Public just launched Generated Assets https://public.com/generated-asset, which lets you turn any idea into an investable index with AI. With Generated Assets, you can build, backtest, refine, and invest in any thesis with AI. Gone are the days of one-size-fits-all ETFs. https://public.com/sourcery https://public.com/sourcery • Merge https://merge.dev—The leading provider of customer-facing integrations and agentic tools for frontier LLMs, Fortune 500 organizations, and B2B SaaS companies. Visit https://merge.dev Follow Sourcery for the latest updates! https://www.sourcery.vc/ Disclosure Paid Endorsement. Brokerage services by Open to the Public Investing Inc, member FINRA & SIPC. Advisory services by Public Advisors LLC, SEC-registered adviser. Crypto trading provided by Zero Hash LLC, licensed by the NYSDFS. Generated Assets is an interactive analysis tool by Public Advisors. Output is for informational purposes only and is not an investment recommendation or advice. See disclosures at public.com/disclosures/ga http://public.com/disclosures/ga. Matched funds must remain in your account for at least 5 years. Match rate and other terms are subject to change at any time.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Before we live in this oasis where no one has to work anymore, I think it's gonna get really dark. Elon is gonna own all the robots and the power disparity that's gonna happen there is gonna be so massive. The wealth disparity that's already extreme in the US is gonna become even more extreme.

• 0:15Molly O'Shea?

  You said millions of users, billions of assets, billions of trading volume and revenue doubling every year. So is that...

• 0:21Speaker 00

  That is accurate.

• 0:22Molly O'Shea?

  So you're trying to take on Charles Schwab?

• 0:23Speaker 00

  Yeah, if you look at where people consolidate brokerage accounts from, it's Schwab, Fidelity, E-Trade, Vanguard, Merrill and Robinhood. Eighty-five percent of that money will be inherited by the top quarter, the top twenty-five percent. And so that's literally where the money is at in our space. Best performing generator asset on the platform right now is defense and weapons manufacturers. One that is like up three hundred and fifty percent in the last month. So we just launched agents for investing. If we look at what a financial advisor does for you, the first is grunt work, second is advice, the third is emotional support, that's what we've launched. That does number one now. I think it's ridiculous how quickly this is moving. Financial advisors will have a really, really, really hard time on this.

• 1:10Molly O'Shea?

  Life, welcome to sorcery.

• 1:12Speaker 00

  Thank you.

• 1:15Molly O'Shea?

  Well, we're here at the New York Stock Exchange in the library and we have your beautiful logo up.

• 1:21Speaker 00

  Yes, in the wrong blue still, but okay.

• 1:23Molly O'Shea?

  The wrong blue. It's not serious enough.

• 1:25Speaker 00

  It's not serious enough, exactly.

• 1:26Molly O'Shea?

  We need a serious blue.

• 1:28Speaker 00

  It needs to be dark and, you know, it needs to feel serious and classic and, ah, so, yeah.

• 1:34Molly O'Shea?

  So why is that your tagline?

• 1:37Speaker 00

  But serious and classic? No.

• 1:41Speaker 00

  Public, serious and classic. That's a good tagline. Do you mean investing for those to take it seriously? If you look at especially our space and like call it like new brokers and so on, you've seen that, I think, that first generation of those companies has been very heavily focused in speculation. And I was like very deep into options trading, you know, about very deep prediction markets or, you know, they're all like, for example, things that started only in crypto, you know, and so on. And I think it's created... A generation where essentially all the new modern platforms all were, you know, not that serious in the end. It's not nothing like, these are not the places where you would build your wealth for your long term, where you put your life savings into, or the money you inherit from your parents, or whatever it might be.

• 2:24Speaker 00

  Um, and the incumbents were still that. And I think even if you see it's like when the first model broker just came up and you look at like Schwab, you know, Schwab hasn't actually been disrupted yet really, because that company actually, you know, still doubled in the last five years. And so, um, so when we kind of look at the market, we were like, hey, let's build something that is actually for people to put their life savings in where they can, you know, that they can trust with that money. And therefore make sure that we are also being positioned as seen as a serious financial service. Because also if you look at things like the Great Wealth Transfer, it's like eighty-five percent of that money will be inherited by the top quartile, by the top twenty-five percent. And so that's literally where the money is at now, space. And so I think also to be successful here,

• 3:08Speaker 00

  you have to build something that people can look at and think of it as like, this is a serious financial service that I can trust with my life savings. And so therefore from a people positioning perspective, that's what we put out.

• 3:18Molly O'Shea?

  So you're trying to take on Charles Schwab?

• 3:20Speaker 00

  Yeah, actually, if you look at where people A-CAD accounts from, you know, where they like consolidate brokerage accounts from for us, it's Schwab, Fidelity, E-Trade, Vanguard, and then Merrill and Robinhood.

• 3:34Molly O'Shea?

  Oh, wow.

• 3:35Speaker 00

  So, so we are, we are much more competing with incumbents, and we are competing with the, with the other new brokers.

• 3:41Molly O'Shea?

  That's crazy.

• 3:41Speaker 00

  You kind of compete everywhere, of course, in some regard, but.

• 3:46Molly O'Shea?

  So, most recently, you have been going viral on and off with these new product launches. Can you talk about the recent product launch?

• 3:55Speaker 00

  So we just launched agents for investing. Um, and what that helps you do is to essentially automate any type of workflow in your brokerage account. There could be a trading strategy, there can be money movements, there can be alerts you want to set up to some regard. And it really moves the way you even just like interact with the platform away from just like clicking buttons to just expressing intent. And how we think about it is that it kind of helps people to really kind of move up in the sophistication. You know, like one example we always make is, there's a lot of people who have a decent understanding of that you could generate some income using covered calls on your portfolio.

• 4:36Speaker 00

  And that's like high level what they understand, but now to actually go find the right contracts, see what the income potential would be, et cetera, that's where it starts to break down. And so people just like start freezing because now they have to educate themselves and it's gonna be really hard. Um, with agents, it could literally just be like, okay, look at my portfolio. Um, show me if I could do, you know, five grand a month in income potential on it. Um, let me select, let me see what's there. And then it scans the portfolio, shows you, um, you know, opportunities for, for, for cover calls and income potential behind it. And then you can just like activate it and then it runs as a workflow. And so it really kind of helps people kind of move out of that sophistication and just like basically automate anything in that portfolio.

• 5:17Molly O'Shea?

  And you can buy the dip.

• 5:18Speaker 00

  And you can buy the dip automatically.

• 5:20Molly O'Shea?

  Automatically.

• 5:21Speaker 00

  Systematically.

• 5:22Molly O'Shea?

  So aren't those videos real or are they AI?

• 5:28Speaker 00

  They're real.

• 5:28Molly O'Shea?

  They are?

• 5:29Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 5:29Molly O'Shea?

  Where do you record them?

• 5:31Speaker 00

  Because it's like this like nice blue world.

• 5:34Molly O'Shea?

  Totally. They, they look like Apple launch videos or like something and it's all, it's on the line of being AI or not.

• 5:41Speaker 00

  You don't know how much, uh, uh, our brand team will love that you said that.

• 5:46Molly O'Shea?

  Really?

• 5:46Speaker 00

  Yes, yes, yes. Um, but, but it's true because it goes back to if you want to be a serious financial service, there's also a thing of like, we look at ourselves as we're building a premium product.

• 5:54Molly O'Shea?

  Yeah.

• 5:55Speaker 00

  And as part of that, like product quality and design and all these things are just very, very important. And I think specifically in our space, there's a lot of also just like dodgy players and you know, like platforms were designed as not really a thing and so on. Like especially if you go, the deeper you go into active trading, like, you know, the wackier some things start to look. Um, so it's very important to us. I like the design stuff is, is, uh, uh, like it's at a very high quality level. And so we very much appreciate that comment. Um, no, it's like a big cold studio in Bushwick.

• 6:29Molly O'Shea?

  It's just out in Bushwick.

• 6:30Speaker 00

  It's just out in Bushwick.

• 6:32Molly O'Shea?

  So the company is based here in New York.

• 6:34Speaker 00

  Correct.

• 6:35Molly O'Shea?

  You're not from here. You're from Germany.

• 6:38Speaker 00

  I'm from Germany. Just became American three weeks ago.

• 6:41Molly O'Shea?

  Congratulations.

• 6:42Speaker 00

  Thank you very much.

• 6:43Molly O'Shea?

  Wow.

• 6:43Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 6:44Molly O'Shea?

  Can you recite the Pledge of Allegiance?

• 6:46Speaker 00

  Of course.

• 6:47Molly O'Shea?

  No, I'm just kidding.

• 6:50Molly O'Shea?

  No, that's so exciting. And so your co-CEO, Yannick, he's

• 6:54Speaker 00

  Danish.

• 6:54Molly O'Shea?

  Danish.

• 6:55Speaker 00

  And we have an office in Copenhagen because of that too.

• 6:57Molly O'Shea?

  Okay.

• 6:58Speaker 00

  So.

• 6:58Molly O'Shea?

  Where are your offices globally?

• 7:00Speaker 00

  New York, headquarters, and then Copenhagen. A lot of our backend engineering that sits there. We have like co-CTOs and so one of them is there as well. Um, he's Danish, obviously, so we build like a team around him over there. Um, and then we have a few remotes. Like, we have a little bit of like a CX hub in Raleigh where we used to have an office, but then um, people just want to work from home and whatnot, so we gave that up at some point. But we still have like a lot of people in that Raleigh Durham area um, that do CX, because you have to be licensed and so on. There's a lot of licensed talent down there.

• 7:30Molly O'Shea?

  And why did you both go after the co-CEO route?

• 7:35Speaker 00

  It organically happened from the beginning, first off. Um, in Europe, it's not as like a, like a unusual thing. Like, it's very normal. Like, if I would look at a company in Germany, for example, it's very normal to have like multiple chefs who are like multiple like managing directors, CEOs and whatnot. Um, it's a really unusual thing. I feel like in the US, it's more this thing of people want to have this like one throat to choke and you know, the way the corporate structures are set up, it's just like you have a board and the board, you know, uh, appoints a CEO essentially and you know, and that's kind of how it flows down and then you know, if the CEO doesn't, uh, uh, you know, perform, then the board replaces the CEO and it's like the kind of like how, how it's run here. Um, so I think people just fall back to like, well, that's just how it's done, right? So why is this weird? Why is this not?

• 8:18Speaker 00

  But I don't think it's actually that, that unusual. I think the biggest thing is, um, I think first it helps really for more balanced decision-making. Um, there's a great little podcast actually on, um, about Excel with the Excel founders. Um, where they make that same argument because they also were like a duo that started Excel, the VC firm. And they made this argument of like balanced decision-making, where I'm like, I'm gonna steal that.

• 8:42Speaker 00

  But uh because there's a very truth of like you're always like we're all human to some regard. We'll all have a time where we go to the office and we'll feel anxiety or we'll be in a bad mood or whatever and so on. And it helps to have someone else who experiences everything the same way you do. Same incentive structure, same goals, same experience of how they experience things in the, you know, in the company and around the business. Um and so on. And so I feel like that is actually a very valuable thing.

• 9:09Molly O'Shea?

  How do you divide responsibilities? Like, what are your core traits versus?

• 9:13Speaker 00

  Yeah, so the company is that way. Kind of we have our own reports, you know? And so Yannick has the CTOs reporting to him and therefore engineering. And then he's like the deepest in like product design, I would say, and like product generally. And then um uh and then I essentially have like everything else. And I would say like I'm the deepest in like growth. That was that's.

• 9:33Molly O'Shea?

  I want to go through the evolution of public over time. We're very clearly and you've very much embraced this in an AI world. So what was it like early on? And did you think you were going to expand this much out? Outside of the existing categories you were going after? Like, where do you feel like there was extra opportunity to to like grab?

• 9:56Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean, so when we started, public was like the first like, you know, investing app with like a social feed. And I think a lot of people still know us as like, oh, you're the social investing app, right? And stuff. But now but now social is dead because it was basically cannibalized from AI. Um, seriously, but um but like that's kind of where it started and we had this like thing of like, okay. We like we knew in order to build something serious, we had to first of expand into more asset classes. And so we kind of spent the first four years just building all the different asset classes, fractionalizing all those. Building this like internal, you know, system, which was like, you know, we call the holding system is like a ledger that enables real time money movements between asset classes.

• 10:40Speaker 00

  If you sell Bitcoin, you can buy a T bill with the, you know, the second after and consolidated performance reporting where you have one chart. Despite all the asset classes, which actually quite hard. That's why if you open your JP Morgan account, you will not see the chart. Because of that, um, and so like all this kind of stuff, um, and, um, and that was like the, the, the, the kind of first stuff. The second was just like, why do you open the app? And, um, I think brokerage had become a little bit just a, um, a tool to execute trades. And that's, I think, through, you know, back in the day, you would call your broker. Then it went to like, you know, you log into your computer and you execute trades yourself. And then it went to mobile and it became like simplified, simplified, simplified, simplified. And then cost down, cost down, cost down, cost down.

• 11:24Speaker 00

  And with that, it basically became just this tool where you go to execute trades. And so we were again back in the sense of like, okay, now if you're that premium product, you're not just a tool to execute trades. You know, you obviously provide more value there. And I think what is now happening specifically is that because of AI, you can actually move much more back to this like more full service layer there. Or like back in the day, when you called your broker, your broker would maybe even give you a ring himself and be like proactive and be, yo, you know, maybe you should, you know, check out this company or I've seen this and this, you know, and all these things. Um, and that all went away when people start clicking the button themselves. Um, and I think we're kind of going back to that now where an investing app can actually invest in platform can be much more full service and AI can kind of enable that.

• 12:09Speaker 00

  And so I think we kind of went through that arc a little bit. And for us specifically, while we kind of went through that, and obviously like as you built the company, things always change. But I think the biggest turning point for us was like in 2022, um, essentially right after everyone realized money isn't free anymore and came back from the high. You're talking about Zerp and when billions of unicorns. And you know, and like, uh, uh, you know, everyone was just able to, to, to raise whatever. And we see for just asking about how many accounts have you acquired? No matter the quality of how much money I make on them, you know? And so, and kind of when everyone came kind of down from that high and everyone was kind of looking back in their business. I was like, okay, like, let's like rejigger this because we clearly just came from a ridiculous phase.

• 12:53Speaker 00

  Um, so in 2022, we essentially looked at everything and we had this internal, um, uh,

• 13:01Speaker 00

  Like this internal, that kind of called like mantra, like a better one, which we called Level Up. And Level Up was essentially be like, okay, let's make sure that we truly focus on the top quartile, the top twenty five percent. Because, you know, if in the US, sadly, if you're in the sub seventy five percent, you live paycheck to paycheck, a credit card to credit card, you do not have money to compound the markets, you just don't. And that's also why you see the people who have, who acquire those and build products for those in, you know, consumer fintech. You have to monetize those through loan speculation or interchange or something. And we were like, okay, but we are a financial service company, we're gonna monetize assets. And that you can only do if you actually monetize, if you have people and service people who have assets.

• 13:42Speaker 00

  And so in the US, that means if you have more than a hundred grand, that means you have money left over at the end of the month to actually put into the market. So you have the ability to compound in the first place. And so it's like, okay, let's focus on that and then make sure that the roadmap really, you know, is focused on the things that these people need. The way our customer service, you know, talks and so on, you know, it's more in that world. There would be design, there would be app looks, right? We kind of went from something that looked more cash appy of like big, bold numbers and very, very simple, you know, to a little bit denser UI, you know, it's okay to have a table that you can scroll sometimes, you know, like maybe some more numbers are good sometimes because it gives you more context and people actually need that information. You know, deep caring deeply about things like your tax lots and tax management in the first place and so on.

• 14:28Speaker 00

  And, um, and so that kind of took us through, you know, the next few years. And then we kind of looked, we looked at the team and was like, it's like likely going to take two years for all this stuff to really show results. And I would say within the next twelve to eighteen months, we saw like how cohorts just kept stepping up and stepping up and stepping up. And I think since then, every single cohort we acquire is better than the last. And it's because we're, I think, we're still on this thing where we're still adding products to the drive sophistication up. And therefore, you know, um, kind of serve that audience better. And that's where AI is a neatly positioned to do, full service model, yada, yada.

• 15:05Molly O'Shea?

  I think I asked you and I was wondering what your numbers were and you said millions of users, billions of assets, billions of trading volume and revenue doubling every year. So is that?

• 15:17Speaker 00

  That is accurate.

• 15:19Speaker 00

  That's accurate, as much numbers as you're gonna get out of me.

• 15:22Molly O'Shea?

  And so, but I'm curious because, okay, so when you started the company, it was like right before covid. Covid hits, like, there's Wall Street bets, like, trading volume explodes for retail traders. And then we have a slump and the IPO window kind of shut. And then, how did those macro cycles affect the business? And how do you create defensibility against that?

• 15:45Speaker 00

  Um, so two sides. First off, in our business, we always talk about how we cannot predict the markets. If we could, we should start a head fund. And so therefore, we just gotta build a product that can kind of, you know, be successful through all market cycles. And in our space, if rates are low, people are more risk on. You see more active trading, your trading revenues will go up, your options trading will go up, these kinds of things. Your crypto will go up, you know? Um, when rates are high, people are more risk off. And you'll see more money being made in interest and in, you know, bonds, products, and so on.

• 16:27Speaker 00

  And so you kind of want to have these two sides of the business so that whatever the market cycle is, you know, you monetize your assets. And then, yes, your monetization rate on assets, you know, might fluctuate a little bit with the cycles, but shouldn't be much. And that is what the model should be. Now, if you look at companies in our space who are just very heavily on the trading side, you know, it's obviously harder for them because if you're, if, you know, call it 90% of your revenues come from uh, trading fees or something, you will obviously have a very volatile business. And so we look at it as like, okay, by also being multi-asset, you take volatility out of the business because whatever market cycle you're in, you will always monetize the assets. And so for us, Mission Zero is just have people bring assets on the platform. And then, once the assets on the platform, we'll monetize them in some way.

• 17:13Speaker 00

  And because we're also building for, portfolio builders are people that actually just compound wealth over time. We essentially have no churn. Like, our lifetimes are like 25 years plus. They're literally, like, that that line is just straight at some point and just completely flattens out. And, um, and so for us, you know, again, that means as assets are so sticky, um, it's just like, just bring assets on, monetize them in some way. Um, and let's just make sure that, you know, users are happy and they have all the ways to bring more money in and so on. That's also why, like, whenever we're launching a asset class and your account type or whatever. All numbers go up. Um, just because you can, you know, you can consolidate more, more of your funds, you can, there's more things to invest into. You know, maybe trust it more with more money sooner, et cetera.

• 17:58Molly O'Shea?

  Could you share all of the offerings that you have?

• 18:02Speaker 00

  Okay, so we look at it, by the way, we have literally this little chart in our, in our pitch deck.

• 18:07Molly O'Shea?

  Mm hmm.

• 18:07Speaker 00

  Like there's four kind of pieces, which is asset classes, account types, products and platforms.

• 18:13Molly O'Shea?

  Mm hmm.

• 18:13Speaker 00

  And so asset class is pretty straight. Stocks, ETFs, crypto, options, um, treasuries, corporate bonds. Um. And then other things coming. Then you have account types. So right now that's your regular brokerage account. Margin accounts you can take as part of that, um, IRAs, we're doing trust accounts soon, one of the most requested features actually. Um, so also how the great wealth transfer happens before people pass away, right?

• 18:42Molly O'Shea?

  Yeah.

• 18:43Speaker 00

  Um, and then, um. What was that trust accounts, um, entity accounts. So like you might be someone who has, you know, entity wants to put some money away, small business, you might have an Airbnb business on the side or whatever it might be. Or again, like you might inherit business from your parents even before they pass and stuff like that. So entity accounts are very important. So things like that. And then, um, we have platforms, essentially the key means for us like mobile, web, API, and now a Gentic, which we see as a platform, platform shift. Um, and then you essentially have products and products is like when we build unique product around asset classes. And so, um, generated assets is an asset class that we've essentially sort of say invented.

• 19:27Speaker 00

  Where it's like, it's an AI product where you can just prompt, be like, give me companies that are founder led more, grow more than thirty percent. Um, have no debt and are US based. Um, and then the AI goes out, finds you those asset classes, uh, finds you those, those, those companies that like fits, fit the criteria. Gives you a back test, S and P five, against S and P five hundreds, returns, drawdowns, et cetera. And then you can invest into that and it sits in your portfolio, just like your ETF of, you know, SPY would and stuff. But again, that is a product that we have created that kind of feels like an asset. But it's actually more of a product that sits on top of all the engine, all the asset class that we've built, right? Similar, we have like a treasury letter product where you can like, you know, go in and really easy to just like deposit money,

• 20:09Speaker 00

  create a little treasury letter, and then you invest it in US treasuries to put some cash away, for example. But again, that is a product that we've built that sits on top of all the asset class. You could also just go and like, figure out yourself and find this one bond you wanna buy and stuff, right? You could do that too. Um, and so that's how we think about it. And then for us, like, any of these things is essentially growth. Like, we can launch a new asset class, but it's also if you combine these things, right? So you have a new account type, and now you wanna have generated assets in that account type. And so it's suddenly to start to like, when you connect all these pieces as well, it's also an opportunity for growth. And so.

• 20:44Molly O'Shea?

  I have a couple of questions about this, but like, has that, and I guess, has the reflection on that and the understanding of the business strategy within all these different connected pieces? Has that just kind of naturally evolved? Or were you thinking about different levers to pull as you grow? Like, how did you think about constructing all of this?

• 21:06Speaker 00

  So, we have a few high-level principles in terms of just building stuff. Like, one we always talk about is, um, um, it's simplicity, not simplistic. And so like the sense of that, you wanna have a simple experience that has a lot of product depth to it. So it can't feel complicated and so on, can't feel like a tax form when you log into your shop account or something. But, um, it's, uh, uh, so it needs to be simple enough that you can understand it and use it and whatnot, but it can't be simplified. Because if it's simplified, um, that means you're taking, uh, um, product depth away in order to simplify it. And that's what you've seen a lot of consumer fintech do, but that takes sophistication away and so on. And also just like control and so on.

• 21:49Speaker 00

  So like, that's like one of the pieces, just from like a high-level principle perspective. And then Jenny's picking, I would say like, yeah, I mean, as you build the company, you learn things. I would say. Most cases, I would argue, like if you find founders who will tell you that they had the perfect vision from day one, I think that's bullshit in most cases. And that you learn over time and things change. I think our, the story of Level Up for us is a good one. Where, you know, when we launched the company, we were much more in this mindset of like democratization, public for everyone, you know, na na na. Um, than we were as we then built through, then kind of made our learnings and were like, you know what, we're going to focus on the top quartile, that's who we should be building for, that's what the opportunity is. Um, but you learn these things as you go.

• 22:29Speaker 00

  And um, I think you will stay true to certain goals you have as a business. And I think that is important. I never have like a north star of what you're building, like for us, like the, you know, investing those are taken seriously, things like that. Um, but of course, things change as you build.

• 22:45Molly O'Shea?

  Well, hopefully with all these IPOs coming up, you can get those trust accounts out soon.

• 22:50Speaker 00

  Why the trust accounts and IPOs? What's your thinking there?

• 22:52Molly O'Shea?

  All these employees are gonna need to start putting their money in many places.

• 22:56Speaker 00

  Yeah, that's true.

• 22:57Molly O'Shea?

  Usually you put it in a trust.

• 22:58Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 22:58Molly O'Shea?

  So on the generated assets part, were there any surprises of adoption and how people really took that? Like, what is the craziest thing or maybe the most popular generated asset that's been created?

• 23:15Speaker 00

  I think it's interesting is like, obviously you could create pretty much anything with it. And so I think when people think about it, they first always go thematic. And you've seen that some of the like biggest, most performant ones are like thematic ones. Like, you know, right before we started the recording, we were talking about um, the, I think the best performing generated asset on the platform right now is uh, defense and weapons manufacturers, um, one that is like up three hundred and fifty percent in the last month.

• 23:45Molly O'Shea?

  Wild.

• 23:46Speaker 00

  Or something, you know?

• 23:47Molly O'Shea?

  I wonder why?

• 23:48Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, who would do?

• 23:50Molly O'Shea?

  That's so weird.

• 23:51Speaker 00

  Yeah, strange. Um, um, and so on, but I think the, um, what is, what, what we find interesting, what we see a lot of people doing is also a little bit this like remixing of existing indices. And so give me, you know, the Nasdaq one hundred, but truly take out anything that's not tech.

• 24:10Molly O'Shea?

  Yeah.

• 24:11Speaker 00

  You know, like stuff like that. Like if you look at like the top ten holdings, I think like for example Costco's in there, you know? And so, and so like, take that out, like, things like that. And so it's like remixing of existing things, I think, is something that that we see a lot of people do. And then obviously, like, there's some, like, people who just do funny stuff, you know? Like, we have a commercial out where it's like, you know, I want founders that are marathon runners. You know, and so on, like, everyone, everyone always brings up this like-

• 24:33Molly O'Shea?

  They're like, I've got alpha. It's just the marathon running CEOs, they're gonna outperform.

• 24:38Speaker 00

  There's this, there's this, there's this famous, this like, kind of tweet that went viral some time ago, uh, not in general, but like, on this concept of, like, you know, founders who lift, you know, like-

• 24:48Molly O'Shea?

  Oh, yeah.

• 24:48Speaker 00

  Like, the debt, uh, uh, the debt lift in, uh, index. So, like, there are these, like, fun examples as well, of course, but I think what we see people do where they put real money behind is a little bit more on the, like, remixing or the, uh, thematic stuff.

• 25:02Molly O'Shea?

  Sorcery is brought to you by Brex, the financial stack trusted by more than thirty thousand companies, including one in three venture-backed startups in the US. Nearly forty percent of startups fail because they run out of cash. Brex is literally built to help founders avoid that. Unlike traditional banks that let your money sit idle, chipping away at it with fees, Brex's designs help you spend smarter and move faster. Their all-in-one solution combines checking, treasury, and FDIC protection into one powerful account. You can send and receive money globally at lightning speeds, get twenty times the standard FDIC coverage through their partner banks, and even high yield from day one. With same-day and even same-hour liquidity, access your funds anytime.

• 25:48Molly O'Shea?

  Companies like Scale AI, DoorDash, ServiceTitan, Hims, Anthropic, Flexport, Robinhood, and Plaid. Trust and use Brex. Start today at brex.com/sorcery. That's B-R-E-X dot com slash sorcery. Turing is training the next generation of AI with tasks that require real expertise and real-world judgment. That's why companies like Nvidia, Anthropic, Salesforce, and Gemini partner with Turing. Turing builds realistic reinforcement learning environments and data systems based on real operational traces, the kind of infrastructure frontier labs need to train superintelligence. Visit turing.com/sorcery.

• 26:32Molly O'Shea?

  I know you focus on the higher end of people, customers. So, within the higher wealth class, what are the age demographics of your users? Are you finding that newer generations are coming up and being more active? How is this dispersed across?

• 26:53Speaker 00

  I mean, average age on public is thirty-eight, so call it like mid-millennial kinda thing, I would call it.

• 27:04Speaker 00

  Yeah, I'd say that...

• 27:12Speaker 00

  I wouldn't say there's too many surprises. I think the main thing that's really out there is that we see that people are... This generation is self-directed first.

• 27:22Speaker 00

  And I think it's because they grew up with financial literacy way earlier in their lives. Through social media, niche communities and whatnot. I always make this example of like, there's like dividend investing communities out there. They have millions of users and stuff. And I'm like, how much can you talk about dividend investing? It's like, I guess a lot, but, you know, it's like, what?

• 27:40Speaker 00

  But I think like, you know, so I think because of things like social media, because of just like how, you know, information like, just like is so much more accessible. It gave people financial literacy way earlier in their lives. And I think because of financial accounts being much more accessible nowadays, lower minimums, things like faster KYC, right? Like, you can create an account immediately because it's automatic. You don't have to fax in a form to some banker that like, takes a week to, you know, process it. And like, all these things, and crypto of course, right? As an asset class that was born retail and born fractional as well. All these things throughout the last, you know, decade plus, I think have created a generation that is way more financially literate.

• 28:18Speaker 00

  And therefore, they have way more, you know, trust in their capabilities as investors. Because they recognize like, it's just investing, it's not rocket science. And, and...

• 28:32Speaker 00

  And I think that's why they're much more self-directed first. And so this is one thing like a Wall Street Journal article or something where like the headline is like something of like, thank you for the golf invite, but I will manage my money myself. You know, and it's like, you know, about like, you know, wealthy millennials and financial advisors and such. And I think you're gonna see a lot of that. And so when you talk about the great wealth transfer, um, most of those assets are with financial advisors likely. And, and so when those assets being transferred is not just a transfer of wealth, it's also a potential transfer of relationships in that moment. And then at that point, you have, you know, X Y Z person who's now inheriting all this money and they sit there with

• 29:16Speaker 00

  a stereotypical name, it's called a Charles, you know?

• 29:21Molly O'Shea?

  Charles?

• 29:21Speaker 00

  I don't know why, who that guy came up, yeah.

• 29:23Molly O'Shea?

  Who could be Charles?

• 29:24Speaker 00

  Who could be Charles? And then, you know, Charles will sit there at the dinner table, you know, and they'll sit there, well, like, you know, thank you very much for everything you've done, you know, for my parents, but what is your thinking about, you know, GLP one strategy? And the guy will be like, GLP what? And he'll be like,

• 29:41Molly O'Shea?

  Yeah.

• 29:41Speaker 00

  Maybe I'll take some of this money and manage it myself, you know? And I think you're gonna see a lot of that, right? Especially as like, you know, financial, like, there's less people becoming financial advisors now.

• 29:50Molly O'Shea?

  Yeah.

• 29:51Speaker 00

  New generations, the average age of financial advisor goes up by, you know, a year every year. I think the average age is actually roughly sixty or so uh, already, you know? And so um, you're gonna have the situation suddenly where the, the, the age gap between advisors and the people that they should advise is suddenly massive. Plus a generation that grew up with more financial literacy, access to AI, et cetera, et cetera. And so I feel like that is gonna be, um, the industry is gonna be heavily disrupted.

• 30:20Molly O'Shea?

  Do you think more people should be suspect of financial advisors? Like, I just, I think, I, I just spoke with Michelle Del Bueno, who is uh, the CIO of A16 Perennial. A16 Z Perennial, I always drop the Z for some reason, I don't know why. But

• 30:38Speaker 00

  You just gotta shorten the acronym, step by step more.

• 30:41Molly O'Shea?

  It's too, it's still too long.

• 30:42Speaker 00

  Hey, at some, at some point, it's just, it's just, it's just gonna be A.

• 30:45Molly O'Shea?

  I know.

• 30:46Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's just gonna be A.

• 30:48Molly O'Shea?

  But I was talking to him about this because we were talking about RIAs, we were talking about uh wealth managers and uh just this class in general um working with these more institutional funds, they are they're not professional investors, they're investment professionals. They don't actually know how to invest. They just know how to make you feel you're comfortable with them putting your money places. I don't know if, you know, we could say they're really investors and investing, but it's more of a customer service game that we've all, not we've all, but I would say that the mass

• 31:27Molly O'Shea?

  majority of people think you just should automatically buy into versus maybe question, is this actually performing or not? I know for a fact that one of my accounts that is like a family account, it's not moving. But you know, it's, and I'm just calling her out right now, it's, you know, a financial advisor and we should trust a financial advisor. And I'm like, well, you know what? I've seen this account. It's been around for years. It's not moving and the market is. So why is that? Do you have any hot takes on this and how people just automatically assume because someone's a financial advisor that they're a professional and they will grow your wealth? And what questions should you be asking them?

• 32:02Speaker 00

  I always wanted to make a little website that is essentially is your, is your advisor screwing you dot com? Where you punch on your portfolio, which firm they're with or whatever, and then it tells you, number one, all the lower fee alternatives of all the stuff you're invested in. Plus, if they sold you their own products that they make some kickback on or the fee is way larger and whatnot.

• 32:25Molly O'Shea?

  I think you should do it.

• 32:26Speaker 00

  We should totally do that.

• 32:27Molly O'Shea?

  That should be your next, that would go viral.

• 32:29Speaker 00

  There you go. Yeah, I'm spilling, spilling the viral ideas on this podcast.

• 32:32Molly O'Shea?

  That would be great, Regen.

• 32:34Speaker 00

  You know?

• 32:34Molly O'Shea?

  You know?

• 32:35Speaker 00

  Totally. Totally screwed up already. But yeah, I mean, it's like, so when we look at financial advisors and we have obviously, you know, we are, we are, we are more of a self-directed platform. Um, we have more like managed-ish products step by step, like even generated assets is sort of managed, just like Texas harvesting builder and stuff like that. But it's managed from technology. It's not managed by a human, right? Um, and so if we look at what, what a financial advisor does for you, we break down these, these three things where it's like, number one is grunt work. So like doing the actual textile harvesting, setting up, you know, some strategy for you, et cetera. Second is advice, which is basically opinions on the back of news and data and reports and such. And the third is emotional support.

• 33:20Speaker 00

  Who do I call when everything is red and I'm freaking out? And AI, if you look at like agents who we've launched, that does number one now. And so two and three is going to be replaced as well. It's just a matter of time. And I actually think that three is even easier to replace than two likely. Because three is just the emotional support, which in most cases, I think is just a sense of giving people good uh context around what is happening. And um you know, and therefore, you know, kind of calling them of a ledge or whatever. Um, and I think that emotional support piece is likely actually easier to to uh it's actually easier to replace, I think.

• 34:05Speaker 00

  And we're talking about this concept of like, should you be able to like test drive different personalities of an, you know, of like some AI advisor of like, how do they talk to you like? You know, like, what is the style that that you react to or not, you know, and so on. I think there's a lot of interesting stuff there. But I would argue that we humans are actually simpler than we maybe sometimes, you know, at want to admit. And that, you know, considering you have people having full relationships with AIs already now.

• 34:30Molly O'Shea?

  Yeah.

• 34:31Speaker 00

  That that I think that part is actually easy to replicate. And then I think the middle part is actually the hardest because um advice, which is just, you know, again, opinions on the back of data. It's just so subjective. If we would put five financial advisor in this room right now and we would one by one ask them about what's a great, you know, investing strategy or stock tip or whatever, they would likely tell you all something different. And we would make our decision based off who's most likable. Or something, you know, and so I think that is the maybe the the hardest, you know, to replace. But then again, maybe it's just about giving people more data, therefore making these things actually more like less subjective.

• 35:11Speaker 00

  Because it's more driven by, you know, actual historical results and like the data around that and so on, which then builds trust, you know, versus just someone's opinion in that moment, you know. Um, but I think that is actually, I would say like the generally the hardest piece, right? Um, because again, if anyone can truly predict what the markets are going to do, you know, please, and choose them to me. But um, because I want to give them all my money.

• 35:37Speaker 00

  So, um, so yeah, who knows, but I think, yeah, so I think financial advisors will have a really, really, really hard time moving forward. It's gonna be tough.

• 35:45Molly O'Shea?

  As the platform becomes more agentic, are you worried at all about any risks and vulnerabilities there? Are you thinking about insurance? How are you thinking about the backstop?

• 35:55Speaker 00

  Yeah, the way we look at agents right now is we essentially separate the reasoning from the execution.

• 36:06Speaker 00

  Which means you spar with the AI to figure out what the workflow should be. But what's the strategy? What's what's the trading strategy you want to you want to come up with?

• 36:18Speaker 00

  It helps you build that trading strategy. It's literally writes the code to do that in the public account. But once you prove it, it is a deterministic model where that can't deviate. And so therefore it has no, um, it has no hallucinations. You know exactly it's going to do what it told it to do and so on. And we think that is very important, number one, obviously just for the safety of the user, but also for people to just build trust with these systems. I don't think people are ready to give their money to Open Claw and say, make me money now, please. You know, like I I think we're far away from that. And you know, there's a reason why everyone wants to have a little Mac mini,

• 37:01Speaker 00

  because they want to have these things operate in a, you know, isolated environment that is away from their own data, away from their own money, et cetera. So I think we're actually far away from that. And, and so this, the separation is how we've approached it. And that takes it from this like, oh, agents futuristic concept you can't trust, to something that can work today with serious, for serious potential, you know, strategies with real money behind it and so on, because it ends up running deterministically.

• 37:32Molly O'Shea?

  We talked about this a little bit beforehand and hinted at it, but so you definitely are going hardcore on AI and agentic systems. The rest of the market is going hardcore on prediction markets and everything else under the sun. So the theme of becoming the financial super app is somehow now the goalpost for fintech. I'm curious why that's now the gold star or the North Star. I mean, I think we were, we were definitely in a fintech cold spell for a while. So I don't know if this new thing is like, let's go after the growth. But it's causing a lot of confusion for new customers. And I know you want to be a pop, like these companies want to be a platform for everything.

• 38:15Molly O'Shea?

  So with you being so focused, how do you think about every company, every fintech becoming a financial super app? And then at that point, how do you differentiate?

• 38:27Speaker 00

  I think when you build fintech in the US, and I think it's unique to the US in that regard, because the wealth disparity in the US is so big, you have to pick who you're designing for. And if you're designing for the sub 75%, who are people that live paycheck to paycheck, credit card to credit card, you're building for mass America, for middle America, for most people out there, you will make different design choices and you have to monetize differently. Um. If you're looking at the top twenty five percent where people actually have the means to compound their wealth and put money away every every month. Uh. You make very different design choices. And so in the top. Um. Your financial life is centered around your your assets, your investment account.

• 39:09Speaker 00

  And every month you will think about putting money away. That is a sentence that people will say, you know. And so your checking account lives lives separately from the from the actual kind of, you know, center of your financial life, really. These are like a little bit like two separate pieces. In the bottom seventy five percent, your checking account is likely the center of your financial life. And so if if you build for that, you wanna connect as much as possible to that checking account. Because when money comes in, chances are that money has to leave a few days later because they have to pay rent and put food on the table and whatever. Because they're paid to paycheck. And so you have to, and this sounds very horrible now, but like, you know, if you're building for mass America.

• 39:53Speaker 00

  You kinda, you know, and you wanna monetize them, you also have to monetize with speculation. Um. Loans or swiping cards, AKA interchange. Because those are the only ways of how you can make money on these people, because you're not gonna monetize their assets, because there are no assets. And so what that means is that what you see down there, you see, you know, predatory, you know, uh, uh, you know, loans, basically. For, you know, uh, paid like paycheck loans, what they call again, I'm blanking. Come on, you know what I mean?

• 40:22Molly O'Shea?

  I don't know.

• 40:23Speaker 00

  Uh, payday loans, there you go, sorry.

• 40:25Molly O'Shea?

  Payday loans.

• 40:25Speaker 00

  Like like payday loans, for example, you know, um, you will see uh, uh, credit cards, you know. You will see speculation, which in most cases is in crypto or in our prediction markets. You know, that like fits to that audience or sports betting to be even more straighter in most cases, right?

• 40:41Molly O'Shea?

  Yeah.

• 40:42Speaker 00

  Because that's how you monetize these people, right? So when money comes into your checking account. What happens is, yeah, like, if you wanna bet on the Steelers, you know, you wanna be very close to the checking account because there's only so much, so much time this person can bet on the Steelers. Right? And so you gotta shrink that time from your paycheck to speculation as quickly as possible. Because, you know, that's how you monetize the stuff now. And that is the sad truth, I think, for these like mass America uh uh consumer fintech platforms. That you will end up having to play that game because that's how you make money there. You know, and so I don't condemn necessarily the founders to do it and whatnot, it's just like, it's, it's

• 41:23Speaker 00

  it's the market you're in and you have to monetize, you have to build a business, and so you will see what you make money on, like, I get it as a founder entirely, you know? But if you build for mass America, you'll end up doing that. Right? Which also means you'll end up doing some predatory shit. Um, now in the top quartile, it's about mon- it's about monetizing assets, and so you will make different design choices. You know, and so we always say like, we're not gonna build the money super app, you know, we're rather gonna be the investing super app, for lack of better wording. Um, because our types of customers, you know, that is where their financial lives really are centered around. And so we much more care about launching another asset class or another account type of trust accounts or whatever, you know? Because that is how we're gonna drive our gross profit per user up.

• 42:08Speaker 00

  You know, versus in the, you know, mass America tier where you live paycheck to paycheck or even credit card. Um, you know, you will have to monetize through more of these like, you know, impulse things or loans and so on. And so it's just a very different game you play and if you just make very different design choices. And so I think that's why everyone's going into this money super app, because if you build for mass America, you have to just like put it all together. Because you need to shrink the time from paycheck to whatever you do with this money, if it's entertainment, finance or whatever. But you have to shrink that time, so.

• 42:39Molly O'Shea?

  But even seeing the billions and billions and billions of volume on prediction markets, do you not, you don't have any FOMO?

• 42:48Speaker 00

  No, I think prediction markets um or event contracts, but I said, um, are a very powerful tool, we're gonna go into that somewhat ourselves. But I think right now, um, the use of events contracts or the use cases are being stretched.

• 43:04Speaker 00

  And I personally think it's a little bit short sighted for the industry because I think it's a very powerful tool. And personally, I'm like, I'm a big believer, for example, like security space prediction markets. So, you know, think of like, you are an investor in Tesla. You have an incredible hand on their energy business. How many kilowatts of energy storage have they chipped last quarter, for example? You want to place a trade on that, you can use an events contract to do that. And so you will like dissect out that piece of the business and you can make a trade on that. Not being influenced that they potentially didn't hit their Model Y shipping numbers last quarter. You know?

• 43:41Molly O'Shea?

  Yeah.

• 43:41Speaker 00

  And so like you can move, you can make moves like that, which I think can be very powerful, specifically in the for the more sophisticated category crowd. And like those, that's the kind of stuff we're very excited about and we're gonna get into. Now, using it to essentially do sports betting, you know, I would argue it's kind of, you know, stretching the use case of betting on Dancing with the Stars or whatever it might be, you know? And so, and so we look at it as like, if it's, if it actually, you know, helps in your portfolio management and around your assets and hedging and all these things. Then it's something that can likely be a powerful tool that we're also gonna get into. I do think though, by, you know, going into all this wacky stuff with prediction markets.

• 44:20Speaker 00

  I think it actually hurts the long term, probably like the long term, you know, success of that entire industry. Because you're just kind of like destroying his reputation a little bit to some regard. And, and where the actual opportunity sits, you know? Like if you would look at the security space, you know, contracts and so on. My hunch would be that the volumes around that in the long term will be dramatically higher than what the market of sports betting is in the US.

• 44:48Molly O'Shea?

  Yeah.

• 44:49Speaker 00

  Like, of course, like, because you will also move institutional volume into that and all these things, you know? And so I think there's a lot of nuance there, you know? Nuance doesn't play well on Twitter maybe, but, but, you know, it's, but I think that nuance is very important.

• 45:04Molly O'Shea?

  Do you think it's realistic to say that everything is gonna become tradable? And at what point? You talk about the divide and where you want to stick to, if it's a bell curve, right? You want to stick to the higher class assets. If everything becomes tradable and it's running 24/7.

• 45:23Molly O'Shea?

  How does that impact the market? And do you think that's gonna just undermine everything in general? Or is there gonna be a real shakeout where it's nope? We're all, we're all just, we just trust the higher end market versus all the gobbledygook that's being done on the sides?

• 45:39Speaker 00

  Generally speaking, I think that thing, that's, that's more things are tradable. Again, this nuanced thing around what is actually tradable? Is this, is this like, is this stuff that is like related to building wealth? Or is it just fun? And

• 45:55Molly O'Shea?

  Yeah, I mean, there's tokenization, there are stablecoins now and

• 45:59Speaker 00

  Yeah, and like with tokenization, again, like, I think there's a sense of that, like, you have to separate the technology of a token being a wrapper for something and the blockchain being just a piece of technology that you can use to trade something. And, um, um, the, you know, like the actual value that it provides, like a butter wedding, right? Like if I, but when I hear people say things like, oh, you know, if you tokenize stocks, like they can trade 24/7.

• 46:27Molly O'Shea?

  Yeah.

• 46:28Speaker 00

  I'll be like,

• 46:31Speaker 00

  that, that doesn't make any sense because just by wrapping it into a token doesn't mean it's trading for seven. Like, come on, like, also, like, don't pretend like you don't know that. Like, you know, it's like, it's just a fucking wrapper, you know? Let's be straight, you know? And so there is, is this, this aspect of like, hey, like you can have 24/7 markets already, but it's not a question of if it's a token or not, it's a question of liquidity. Right? So like, if you look at the overnight market, which is blue, something, something, I forgot the name of it right now, which is like, it's like the, the biggest venue that essentially, you know, uh, makes it possible to trade after eight to, you know, like throughout, throughout the night in the like 24/5 trading venues, right? And that's the one that Grobnet uses and, you know, people use this and we will likely be on that at some point too. And, um,

• 47:15Speaker 00

  And so like that has already been like they have been solved, but it took some time because they needed to build liquidity for that market. That is really what the issue is. The issue is liquidity piece is not if there's a wrapper of a token. You know, just because you're wrapping a token doesn't mean you have infinite liquidity. Suddenly you can do 24 seven trading like no, you know? And so there's obvious a little bit of hype around just like organization and so on. Now, the one thing that I could see is that, okay, can we create or can we use tokens in blockchain as a kind of unified technology that we all agree with going to be the wrapper for all alternative

• 47:55Speaker 00

  assets so that you can do, you know, real estate and, you know, art and royalties and whatever else you might want to, you know, actually make tradable of like real assets, that you put it all essentially on like the same exchange. Why? Because because you need liquidity. That's the issue, right? But if you could put it all into the same into the same wrapper, into the same, you know, blockchain and it becomes like this one exchange, then all brokers tap into not one broker just doing its own, the other broker does its own to itself, but like therefore, you know, bringing all the credit together, then I think you could actually use that technology to create, you know, like, like, like a real alternatives trading market because

• 48:37Speaker 00

  you because you all agreed then, okay, we're going to now use this in order to make these assets tradable. Like I can see those things.

• 48:46Speaker 00

  But again, it's a technology. It's not magically creating liquidity and therefore magically creating things like that.

• 48:51Molly O'Shea?

  V C X by Fundrise, the public ticker for private tech, allowing investors of all sizes to invest in venture capital. View the portfolio at get v c x dot com. That's get v c x dot com. Some of you may not have heard this yet, but our sponsor Public just launched something called generated assets and it brings A I into investing in a way I've honestly never seen before. Here's how it works. You type in an idea like A I powered supply chain companies with positive free cash flow or defense tech companies growing revenue over 25% year over year. Public's A I then dispatches a swarm of agents that scan every single U S stock, evaluates them and instantly builds a custom index around your thesis.

• 49:34Molly O'Shea?

  What really stands out is how clearly it explains why each stock is included. And before you invest, you can even backtest your idea against the S and P 500. So you're making decisions with real context, not just guessing. And beyond generated assets, public lets you invest in stocks, bonds, options, crypto, all in one place. They'll even give you an uncapped 1% match when you transfer your investments over from another platform. If you want to build a portfolio that actually reflects your thesis, visit public.com/sorcery. Paid for by Public Investing. Full disclosures in the description. Enterprise AI runs on Merge, the AI infra platform for integrations, agent tooling, and model orchestration, so your teams ship product, not plumbing. Mistral, Dropbox, and Drata already trust Merge in production.

• 50:19Molly O'Shea?

  Start building at merge.dev. Founders scale faster on Deal. Set up payroll for any country in minutes, hire anyone, anywhere, get visas handled fast, and get back to building. Visit deal.com/sorcery. That's D E E L dot com slash sorcery. So, private markets have been seeing all of the value. All the growth is accruing in OpenAI, Anthropic, SpaceX has been pretty good for a while, but they did go from 300 billion like only a year ago to now IPO for nearly $2 trillion. It's pretty crazy. So, given that and all those trends, I've talked to a couple investors and different

• 51:01Molly O'Shea?

  founders about this on the podcast, but how do you think about giving the public and democratizing access to these private companies? We are seeing closed-end funds go public, whether it's VCX, Robinhood Ventures, Destiny was public before. But how do you think about all the value being locked up in private markets? And how do you, if you do, want to access that for your users?

• 51:27Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean, it is bad, right? Like, we used to have way more public companies than we have now in the US. And, but it is a symptom of great liquidity in the, within the private markets. And... You know, there's a lot of founders who will who will not necessarily want to be a public company founder and want to be on the hamster wheel of quarterly earnings reports and all that kind of stuff.

• 51:53Speaker 00

  And so it is it is an obvious, it's an obvious effect of of that. Now, um, there is a sense of that the public markets have figured something out that the private markets just don't have, you know? Um, and it's by design, you know, where the public markets have very clear regulation of one financial disclosures on how pub companies report. There's very clear things of that if someone, you know, does something sketchy, it there's a agency that will enforce it, et cetera. Like, there's all these things that are done to protect the regular investor.

• 52:30Speaker 00

  And those things just don't one to one exist like that in the private markets. And that's where you have things like accreditation laws. Now, accreditation laws, like, are they perfect? No, they're not, you know?

• 52:43Speaker 00

  But again, I think there needs to be, I think the the it's much more of a regulatory problem. I would argue than it is again, like a technological problem. I don't think the answer is just to tokenize it and just give it to people, you know? Also, they probably traded closed end funds, you know, it's like, it's it's one way to regulatory wise, like you're able to do it. But then still, what happens there is you just take a tiny piece of these companies and put it on float. And so you've seen that with, you know, V C X and stuff, um, where you have a tiny little bit of float. And suddenly that thing just like pumps up like crazy in value.

• 53:23Speaker 00

  And suddenly the underlying valuation of Anthropic in there is like a hundred trillion dollars or something because this thing went up, you know? And then these things become very quickly just a game of speculation versus actual real value behind it. And then you will have always some real time investors who. You know, will not have the abilities to like really understand it properly and whatnot and will get burned on these things, you know. And then you can go full super libertarian and be like, well, that's their issue then. Um, or you can be a little bit more like, well, you know, as a society, are we here and should protect this also a little bit, you know? And I will, I will be more a little bit on the former, where I think like, um, because it keeps markets healthy.

• 54:02Speaker 00

  Um, I think some sensible regulation um around things like financial disclosures and so on, that then, you know, uh, make more informed investors, like some sensible regulation around, um, you know, what is tradable and how, you know, do you trade the whole float or not, et cetera. Uh, I think is good, not just because it protects investors, but because it keeps the markets, you know, healthy and trustworthy. You know, the more sketchy shit happens in the markets, the less people will trust it and the, the worse the markets become. Like the, the US stock market is the major leagues in the world by a massive margin for a reason.

• 54:43Speaker 00

  Because we have rule of law, because, uh, you know, the, there's liquidity, you know, and so on. I just looked at this thing the other day of like, look at the Australian stock market and the top twelve, two hundred companies actually have liquidity. And the other, you know, closer to two thousand don't at all. And so like, that's how the stock market looks everywhere else, but the US is fucking amazing, you know, like these markets are incredible. And, um, and so I think that is, and, and, and, and so I think a big part of that is because of the way that they have been constructed over the last hundred years.

• 55:22Speaker 00

  Um, and I think that there's a lot of, uh, uh, you know, like regulatory things that need to happen to, to kind of bridge the gap between the private markets that have very little of that and the public markets that have it all figured out. And so I, we haven't found the instrument yet to, to really open up, you know, like private companies to, to retail investors. Um, and so if close and fund is the best thing we got going so far. Okay, there's some exposure there that people can can take advantage of, but still think it's a very flawed instrument.

• 55:56Molly O'Shea?

  Even seeing and talking with Ben Miller, who's the CEO of Fundrise, who took V C X public, they they traded up nearly fifteen X, which was really crazy, obviously. I I asked him about this off camera and on camera, but like, how do you think about? Are you at all thinking about that? How does that impact you? And his response was, well, these companies, there's just been so much pent up demand for a while. So with any of these, you know, like when we saw the IPO window reopening, like all of those tech stocks, they went up majorly and then they kind of stabilized. Some of them went real down, but they've been trading a little bit more steadily now.

• 56:38Molly O'Shea?

  In terms of how this bleeds into the greater venture capital ecosystem, because if companies are not going public and they are saying private, you have to look at secondaries and all these other options to get liquidity and D P I within those funds. And then there's also the other route of, okay, these funds, these mega funds, whether it's A sixteen Z, general catalyst, etc., they're ballooning to eighty billion, ninety billion, and assets under management. Do those funds go public? And it was funny because I tweeted about with the V C X podcast, is A sixteen Z? Do you think they have a chance? Do you think they're going to go public? And their their head of investor relations quote tweeted, and it was like,

• 57:22Molly O'Shea?

  we just raised eighteen percent of venture capital last year. Why would we go public? We clearly have enough money, which I thought was pretty funny. But in terms of that, and then going back into the IPO market. So do you think with the upcoming IPOs, there is gonna be a steady tech resurgence back into the markets? What do you think happens if, let's say, let's do two scenarios here. If SpaceX goes public at two trillion dollars and it trades well, and it stays in the market like that, will that actually create an opening for other companies? Or is that purely an anomaly event? And two, if that does not go well, what happens? You can't time the markets.

• 58:05Molly O'Shea?

  I also asked someone this, but how do you think about those scenarios and the impact of private companies going public?

• 58:13Speaker 00

  Um, I think we should have more public companies. I think more companies should try to go public. Um, and I would actually even argue that, um, if we'd had more companies going public, um, you would also less need to make these arguments that you just made where you're basically just putting all your, you know, you're hanging all your hope on like one IPO that is happening once in a while. Um, and I think we just, every company is unique. I truly believe that. And, um, I think the markets are smart enough to figure that out. And, um,

• 58:54Speaker 00

  and, and in that, I think just like rip the Band-Aid and more companies should go public. It's good for the markets. It's good for retail investor access. It's likely, you know, likely good for those companies too, in some regard, you know?

• 59:09Molly O'Shea?

  How do you think about that?

• 59:12Molly O'Shea?

  You're co-CEO of a high-growth company.

• 59:17Speaker 00

  I mean, for us, I think we, I mean, not saying that we're going to go public anytime soon or anything, right? But like for-

• 59:22Molly O'Shea?

  You already are public.

• 59:23Speaker 00

  You know, well, public is a company. Yes, exactly. But, um, um, I think for us specifically, we would likely be a good public company to because, um, we are literally in the space. Like the, the amount of times being asked by our own customers, if they can invest into public, happens every single day. And, um, even for Robinhood, I think one of the best things I've ever done is to become public. Because you suddenly can build a retail base of followers that own your stock, that will root for you. And I think that today, that is a very powerful thing. If you have a lot of retail investors rooting for you. If you look at the companies that are trading at the highest revenue multiples, they're all companies that are like story stocks with a high, um, retail ownership. Um, you know, and-

• 1:00:10Speaker 00

  And so I think that is a that is a very powerful thing. And then I think the the the the sense is that as a founder, you will have to be as a personality, someone who uh wants to go out there and market your company. Like you wanna look at an earnings call and not be something you're dreading, but you wanna look at an earnings call with something where you'd be like, this is gonna be my event, you know? And I can't wait for this day. Like every quarter, you're gonna be like, fuck, yes, I can't wait to go on this call and show these people. You know, like that has to be your energy going in because you will be a marketer as a founder, CEO, if you're running a public company. And so if you get joy out of that, I think you actually might be able to,

• 1:00:54Speaker 00

  you know, scale your multiple up in the public markets compared to the private markets. But you've gotta be someone who really, you know, wants that and gets energy out of it.

• 1:01:02Molly O'Shea?

  Speaking of energy, um in terms of you in your role, co-CEO, founder of Public, Sorcery is sponsored by Brex and they're all about performance. And so as you think about performance for yourself as co-CEO, who are, I think performance really has to do with who you surround yourself with or who you admire, who you are mentored by. Who are some of those people for you and how do you keep yourself motivated?

• 1:01:30Speaker 00

  So Yannick and I have a little bit of a circle of like other founder friends and a few of those are further along in their journey than we are and so on. And I think that is always, first it's great just for advice and so on, to have other founder friends that like in similar situations, similar sized companies and all that kind of stuff, or even further along than you are. Um, because I think that's immensely important and helpful. But there's also a sense where like, you know, I don't know, you're sitting on your buddy's private jet and you're like, fuck, there's always another level. And so there is always this like, man, and so you would get, if you always get like uh uh exposed to like your friends' successes, you know? Um, on the one side, you're obviously rooting for them and you're happy for them.

• 1:02:14Speaker 00

  But on the other side, you're also always a competitive being and you're like, ah, okay, gotta work harder, gotta work harder. Yeah.

• 1:02:23Molly O'Shea?

  So you've raised four hundred million to date. What are your big plans for what's coming next?

• 1:02:28Speaker 00

  I mean, right now, we are obviously very deep in just building out what we've called as like a Gentake brokerage, right? Like, we think that's, uh, that is the most exciting platform shift that is out there. As cliche as this talk track sounds right now as any other podcast, I guess. But.

• 1:02:45Molly O'Shea?

  There's nothing cliche about this.

• 1:02:47Speaker 00

  But, but it's true and I believe in it. Like, man, the, the stuff that we've seen even just internally around, you know, AI. We have like this, this one agent called Cody, which is like basically like a front-end engineer that we have that can literally turn a Jira ticket into perfect code that just, it's, you know, sets for, uh, for, for an engineer to review and merge. And like, it's autonomously just working off tickets 24/7, for example. Like, stuff like that is just insane. And so this time right now is so fun. It's so fun because everything can be challenged. Everything you can look at and be like, you know? We always had the saying, even, even before, you know, the AI stuff, we always had this little saying of like,

• 1:03:30Speaker 00

  you know, if someone tells you that this house done, there's probably a better way to do it. And, um, that's so much more true now. And, you know, even like our CFO is like super excited because every little thing that's in her team can suddenly be, you know, automated and be optimized. And, uh, and like everyone becomes a little bit of a tech tinkerer and starts to learn a little bit of code to some regard. Just, you know, by accident, essentially by playing with these tools. And, and so it's just, it's such an exciting time. And so right now we're gonna keep pulling on that string because I think there's a lot to be built.

• 1:04:08Molly O'Shea?

  As we close out, what's the one question you think people should be asking that they're not?

• 1:04:14Speaker 00

  Oh, you want to go dark for one second?

• 1:04:16Molly O'Shea?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:16Speaker 00

  Okay. Um, as excited as I am about the AI stuff, man, I can sadly see a near-term future that before we live in this oasis where no one has to, where, where no one has to work anymore and whatnot. That like some people talk about, you know? Where everything is just done for us and working is optional and da, da, da, da, da. Before we ever get there, I think it's gonna get really dark. And it's gonna get really dark because you're gonna, I think what's gonna happen is that. The people that have access to the tools, that can use them, that own the tools, you know? Like Elon is gonna own all the robots, you know?

• 1:04:57Speaker 00

  And I think the power disparity that's gonna happen there is gonna be so massive. And I think the first order effect of that is going to be that the wealth disparity that's already extreme in the US is gonna become even more extreme. And one of the first effects of that is just gonna be that we're gonna live in a less safe society. Where in your New York fancy apartment, where you have your doorman, it's not gonna be a doorman, it's gonna be an armed security guard. And it's, New York is gonna feel more like Sao Paulo than it does like New York right now. I think, I think, I think, that's a good talk, but I think, you know, I sadly, because just that,

• 1:05:37Speaker 00

  yes, I, I feel every day, and I truly believe how powerful this shift is, and how powerful these tools are, and how quickly it's moving, it's ridiculous how quickly this is moving. And it's going to get to a point where, yes, I believe there's going to be a decent amount of job loss. And the reality is, is that we're currently living in a society slash, in a, you know, political system that is a capitalistic system in the end. And so, you know, Elon will have no incentive to gift his robots to everyone, you know, like, he doesn't need to, you know, like, and

• 1:06:22Speaker 00

  and so at some point, there will need to be some sort of wealth redistribution. And doesn't that mean it's money that can be resources which might come in the form of robots or whatever, you know? But something like that will need to happen at some point, um, if you don't want, you know, to live in a society where the pitchforks are in every corner and whatnot, because I think that is... That that that would happen otherwise.

• 1:06:52Molly O'Shea?

  So it sounds like wealth taxes or UBI?

• 1:06:55Speaker 00

  I mean, I would more say UBI.

• 1:07:01Speaker 00

  I I already pay more taxes in the US than I would pay in in in Germany. Just just for just saying like when when anyone like makes this comment of like taxes in the US are low compared to Europe and bar and bar and bar. That is not true.

• 1:07:15Molly O'Shea?

  It's definitely not true.

• 1:07:17Speaker 00

  That is not true. In New York City, I pay more taxes than I would in Germany.

• 1:07:22Molly O'Shea?

  That's crazy.

• 1:07:26Speaker 00

  But yeah, UBI, I think it's a I I think UBI is generally a good concept.

• 1:07:33Speaker 00

  It's generally a good concept. And I'd always argue that it's not just the ability for you to pay for your living, but it's also having purpose in society. And I think that,

• 1:07:51Speaker 00

  you know, that purpose, I think, is is is maybe sometimes even more important than just giving everyone money. And so I think it's not just about creating UBI, it's also about what can we can we create that continuously gives people purpose. Like, at the end of the day, like, you will not just join the gang because you need money, you will also join the gang because it gives you purpose.

• 1:08:13Molly O'Shea?

  If you're joining gangs.

• 1:08:14Speaker 00

  If you're joining gangs.

• 1:08:18Speaker 00

  But like I'm saying, like, you know, there is, you know, and so if you so if you don't want to everyone to join the gang, you will have to like you will you will also have to, as a as a government, as a society, you have to think about how to how to create purpose.

• 1:08:33Molly O'Shea?

  That's a positive way to end this.

• 1:08:35Speaker 00

  Look at that. We could cut the gang part out, it's fine.

• 1:08:40Molly O'Shea?

  Hey, if people are gonna be in gangs, they're gonna be in gangs. There's many different types. There's good ones too, I think.

• 1:08:47Speaker 00

  Of course, of course, of course.

• 1:08:50Molly O'Shea?

  Like, thank you so much. This was so much fun.

• 1:08:52Speaker 00

  Thanks, thank you.

• 1:08:52Molly O'Shea?

  Learned a lot.