Alon Goren, Co-Founder of Crypto Invest Summit: The Early VC days of Crypto

Alon Goren is the Co-Founder of Crypto Invest Summit and Founding Partner at Goren Home Ventures. In this conversation, Alon and Anthony Pompliano discuss the upcoming CIS Conference in LA, how Alon got into Bitcoin and crypto, and what it was like to talk with Tim Draper during the early days of cryptocurrencies. ---- Totle is a rare blockchain investment opportunity, one that offers a live product, active customers, an established revenue model. Totle solves three significant problems with blockchain asset exchange: 1) Security 2) Complexity and 3) Pricing. Over $4 trillion of blockchain assets were exchanged in 2018 and growth is forecast for at least the next 10 years. Totle’s sophisticated platform powers the blockchain economy with safe, simple decentralized asset exchanges at the best price for traders, wallets, businesses and other financial apps. Totle’s B2C Web App and B2B API are live and serving customers today. Visit totle.com/pomp for more info. ----- If you enjoyed this conversation, share it with your colleagues & friends, rate, review, and subscribe. This podcast is presented by BlockWorks Group. For exclusive content and events that provide insights into the crypto and blockchain space, visit them at: https://www.blockworksgroup.io

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

• 0:01Anthony Pompliano?

  What's up everyone, this is Anthony Pompliano. Most of you know me as Pomp. You're listening to Off the Chain, simply the best podcast in crypto. Let's kick this thing off.

• 0:13Speaker 01

  Alon Goran is a co-founder of Crypto Invest Summit and founding partner at Goran Home Ventures. In this conversation, we discuss the upcoming CIS conference in LA, how Alon got into Bitcoin and crypto, and what it was like to talk with Tim Draper during the early days of cryptocurrencies. I really enjoyed this conversation, and I hope you do as well.

• 0:34Anthony Pompliano?

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• 1:09Speaker 01

  Anthony Pompliano is a partner at Morgan Creek Digital. All opinions expressed by Pomp or his guests on this podcast are solely their opinions and do not reflect the opinions of Morgan Creek Digital or Morgan Creek Capital Management. You should not treat any opinion expressed by Pomp as a specific inducement to make a particular investment or follow a particular strategy, but only as an expression of his opinion. This podcast is for informational purposes only.

• 1:36Anthony Pompliano?

  Bang, bang. Alright guys, I've got Alon here. Thank you very much for coming on, sir.

• 1:42Speaker 02

  Thank you for having me. Really excited to be here.

• 1:45Anthony Pompliano?

  You throw one of the largest conferences in all of crypto, and it is coming up. Maybe tell us a little bit about life before CIS and some of the stuff you're doing now. What's your background?

• 1:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, so, yeah, depending on how far back we want to go, I've pretty much been a techie since junior high age, looking over my brother's shoulder who's an engineer, and...

• 2:11Speaker 02

  And so got into got into into building cool products from back then. We built AOL add-ons for people who wanted to do do do all sorts of cool stuff even back then. And then and then it sort of progressed from there. Got my first job outside of our family business was was at the Systems Architecture Group at Countrywide, actually. So that was the first time I worked for like a a a bank or or some kind of financial institution outside of being a teller for for for, you know, short stints of time in college. And and then, you know, very quickly jumped out of there because I I wasn't into it.

• 2:56Speaker 02

  And joined MySpace, actually. So that was where it it got real for me and where I felt like we're we're in sort of the the modern age of of, you know, social and internet and and what we're what we're all about today.

• 3:12Anthony Pompliano?

  What what was it like working at MySpace?

• 3:16Speaker 02

  It was it was crazy. So I had I for me, it was like kind of this double weird thing. So these this group that I I sort of knew sort of tangentially, they were based in New York, launched a company called K-Solo, which was the first internet karaoke company. And they were acquired by MySpace, and I was their first employee when they moved from New York to LA. So my first day at the office was their first day at the office, and it was MySpace's first day at a brand-new office also. So they they had just been acquired not long before by Fox. And so it was just chaos, man. Like, half the people weren't really working.

• 3:57Speaker 02

  Half the people felt like they were like rock stars because at the time it was the most trafficked website on the internet. And it was it it was it was wild. I mean, it was the the first early beginning stages of sort of nerds on the internet and weird niche kind of people being able to have the kind of distribution that they have today and go from, you know, being total unknown, local scene kind of.

• 4:25Speaker 02

  Groups to being, you know, the most popular people in the world. And so it was, it was, it was fun to be in that office. It was, it was fun to, to see things go. But I was, you know, managing, uh, support and product and stuff for MySpace Karaoke, which was its own weird thing.

• 4:45Anthony Pompliano?

  That's amazing. And so what'd you do after that?

• 4:48Speaker 02

  Um, so I actually, while I was there, I came up with an idea for a company called Invested In. Um, and basically the, it stemmed out of, it actually, it stemmed out of what, what, you know, in hindsight is, is part of why we're here today. Um, so at the time, uh, when, uh, I was at MySpace, there was this really, uh, this, this really crazy thing that happened. Remember the game Farmville? It was, uh, it was like the, the, one of the first sort of social, you know, uh, super casual games that, that were happening, uh, uh, on, uh, that was happening, uh, at the time.

• 5:31Speaker 02

  And what happened was in Farmville, you could, you know, basically move faster or grow your crops better, do something if you paid actual, you know, money to buy a tractor or to buy goods in the game. And that year, Farmville sold more digital tractors, uh, more digital John Deere tractors than John Deere sold real tractors in real life. And it was, it was like mind blowing. It was, it was literally a vanity metric, right? They're using real money to buy these digital goods in a way that we know is pretty normal today, but back then was mind blowing. Um, and so we looked at that and when we thought, how could we use that same social

• 6:15Speaker 02

  technology that helps spread a game like this and let people buy things on the internet, um, to help people raise money online? And that's how we ended up, uh, building Invested In.

• 6:27Anthony Pompliano?

  Got it. What was the biggest lesson you learned in building the company?

• 6:30Speaker 02

  Well, so the idea for Invested In came from there, but I actually didn't jump in to it being my full-time job till a few years later. And in the meantime, I got a job at IMDb, the Internet Movie Database, which was really awesome also. And they're owned by Amazon, which is super cool. But the biggest lesson, actually, you know, at the very beginnings, at least, you know, as we're going through it, was that I was only like halfway in and not going full-time in. I didn't realize I was making all these friends with all these different investors. People seemed so interested. And then, right at the finish line, it would drop off. And only a little bit later did I kind of realize the

• 7:12Speaker 02

  main reason was that I wasn't all in. And all these guys were seeing me kind of building this cool company. And we even had, you know, revenue. We were doing cool things. We're, you know, launching up on stage at different conferences and doing all this stuff. And what I realized is nobody's going to invest in your company if you're not willing to jump in and do it yourself.

• 7:34Anthony Pompliano?

  And so as you're doing this, when do you eventually first discover crypto, right? Like, what's the first time that you come across Bitcoin or some sort of cryptocurrency or blockchain-related project?

• 7:46Speaker 02

  So, you know, Invested In being sort of, you know, fintech and us being into the cutting-edge kind of stuff, we did see it early on. We didn't really play with it much. So it's really funny. You had the podcast with Adam Draper the other day, and I was actually watching it live on Twitter, getting all sorts of flashbacks. Because when we were first doing Invested In, we met Tim, his dad. And he came into our office, or he came into the accelerator we were part of, Amplify in LA, which is a really awesome startup accelerator based in Venice. And we're

• 8:31Speaker 02

  sitting in the office, and Tim comes in the office, and one of the partners points at me. And he goes, Tim's gonna talk to you, but not yet because you talk too much.

• 8:41Speaker 02

  And I go, okay. And the whole thing was Tim's got 10 minutes. He can't hang out, but he wants to say hi to all the companies and get a quick overview. Cause he's an investor in Amplify, so technically he's an investor in you guys. So, you know, he's gonna come talk to you last because I know you guys both talk too much. And we were, I went, okay, cool. And he goes around, meets all the companies and then he comes to us and he asks me what we're doing. I tell him how we're, we're basically built a technology platform to help people raise money online. Um, we use, you know, social media and this and that, whatever. And it's sort of first generation crowdfunding stuff. And he goes, that's really interesting. And he pulls up a chair and sits down and ended up sitting for like an hour.

• 9:21Speaker 02

  Um, literally the next morning I got a call from Adam and uh, he hadn't announced yet that, that he was leaving Expert Financial. Um, but uh, he, he was, you know, thinking about it or I think it was official, but it wasn't really done yet. And he uh, he calls us up, he comes down to the office, talks about how he wants to launch Boost Funder. And uh, the rest of the story is really uh, on Adam and it's in uh, on your, on your podcast. But that in dealing with, with Adam and Tim, we went from kind of learning and knowing about Bitcoin to, to really learning a lot more. And then sometime around 2012, I just posted it online because I wanted to show uh, Charlie Lee.

• 10:05Speaker 02

  Because uh, you're gonna be interviewing him at uh, CIS for, for the podcast and live up on stage. Um, I uh, at sometime around 2012, we actually bought some uh, some, some super high powered graphics cards. Uh, some box fans, some motherboards and things like that. And actually built a Litecoin mining rig. It was intended to be a Bitcoin one, I think, but uh, we just couldn't mine enough. Even in 2012, we didn't have the power to do it.

• 10:34Anthony Pompliano?

  All right, and so what was the thought process behind building this Litecoin mining rig?

• 10:40Speaker 02

  So really, it had nothing to do with our business. We were building crowdfunding platforms, right? So we were just really into it. It seemed super cool. And we heard about people building mining rigs and doing things like that. And we were very heavy on the engineering side in our office. We were literally like seven dudes in a mop closet in Santa Monica. I shouldn't say dudes, because half the team were female. But there were seven people in this tiny little office in Santa Monica. I didn't even have a desk anymore. I converted the little table we made for the little kitchenette into my desk. And I hovered over everyone like some weird general.

• 11:21Speaker 02

  And we just kept reading articles about Bitcoin and everything. And we did so much stuff on the micropayments side. We had to build technology to allow splitting payments and doing things like that. Because when we launched, adaptive payments didn't even exist. So adaptive payments are like where you Stripe and you charge somebody on your website and 5% goes into one person's bank account, 95% goes in the other. That didn't exist when we launched this site. So we had to actually create our own sort of digital banking system within our platform. So we were just super into this stuff and thought this could fix that in the future.

• 12:02Speaker 02

  And we just, for fun, we just, all these engineers in our office, and I was super into it, we just went, you know what, let's do this. So my partner and I, with our own money, because we felt like it was not really related enough to the company, we bought some hardware. And as a team-building exercise, just for fun, we built it, we figured it out. It superheated our office and made it crazy hot. So we were blasting the AC. And the first power bill that came after it, our landlord handed to us. And we were confused because we never paid the power bill before for the building, because it was just part of the rent.

• 12:45Speaker 02

  And the power bill for the building was more expensive than our rent for our office. And so we had to shut it down.

• 12:53Anthony Pompliano?

  Amazing. And so I guess as you're doing this, like you're really just doing it as a kind of a side hobby, right? You're not thinking that, hey, this could be something in the future. You're just doing it more for fun.

• 13:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, it was, it was 1,000% a fun thing, you know, we thought maybe there's some future, you know, in our minds, a million years away, where this kind of stuff could help us with our platform and with crowdfunding and online investing and stuff like that. But we didn't really, you know, take it that seriously back then. We knew that it existed. We knew Adam and Tim Draper were doing really epic things and we technically were still involved with Boost in a very tiny way, even after Boost Funder was, was, was, was taken down.

• 13:44Speaker 02

  And, and so we were just really into it. So we, it was more of a just fun, let's check it out, let's play with it. And then honestly, I didn't really touch it very much until probably like 2016. So, you know, a few years went by where I really didn't do anything other than follow it. I even, all that, all the Litecoin that I mined at that time, my, my half of it, my partner had half and I had half or something like that. And all of it, you know, is, is gone on, on my previous laptop. That, that had been formatted like four times since then.

• 14:19Anthony Pompliano?

  That's, that's incredible. And so I guess, so how do you go from crypto as a hobby, let's call it, to, you know, being almost exclusively focused on it and spending the majority of your time in the industry?

• 14:34Speaker 02

  Yeah. So, so invested in, sort of started to run its course. My partner had left at some point. I was sort of took over as a CTO. I'm not a good CTO. You know, I, I decided not to go to school for computer science because all my friends who did were being begged to quit school to work more hours at their companies. So I thought, nobody gives a crap about that. So I'm going to go to school for business. So I, I'm not as technical as I probably would be at this point, from where I was, you know, in high school to where I am today, kind of stunted. So, so I'm not a great CTO and I took on that role and had to manage technology and the company slowly kind of died because there wasn't a hustler out there selling. And

• 15:21Speaker 02

  Part of, you know, towards the end of that company, I was going to all these crowdfunding conferences and there was a bunch, you know, in Vegas, in Florida, all over the States every few months and they all sucked. They were, they were cool in a way because I got to hang out with a bunch of my friends and have a beer with them, but they were all the service providers and all of the, the lawyers and stuff like that. And, and so, you know, I joked with one of my friends at the bar after I spoke at the conference, that, you know, if I wanted to grab a beer with him, we should have just met in Santa Monica because, because he lived there. So we decided to, to start a conference together, like literally just a spur of the moment, decided, you know what, let's start a conference that is focused

• 16:05Speaker 02

  on bringing the actual investors and the actual companies raising money to the room. Because I used to get mad at my clients because I'm, I'm basically like launching their technology, I'm teaching them how to market it and what to do. And then they're at this conference hanging out with a bunch of other service providers and not hanging out with the people who are actually going to use their platform. So, so we built like sort of the first mainstream crowdfunding conference called Crowd Invest Summit. And of course, you know, within a couple of years of doing that, the conversation slowly started shifting towards ICOs and crypto and all that because that's, you know, sort of the

• 16:46Speaker 02

  first time crowdfunding really hit in a way where, where there was significant money coming through. And we decided at a certain point that I wasn't doing invested in, my partner was still doing automated marketing stuff for, for, for, for fundraising online. But we were sort of going into crypto full-time. And since we were going into crypto full-time and the industry was talking about it so much, we just said, screw this, let's rebrand the conference to Crypto Invest Summit. And that was a couple of years ago and we've just been, been focused on that ever since.

• 17:25Anthony Pompliano?

  Got it. And so let's talk a little bit about kind of the event space in crypto. Because I think in the most people's first understanding, kind of the mass consumer, if you will, was 2017 with all the ICO mania. But maybe give us a lay of the land in terms of there was a world before the ICO mania. And then talk us through what you saw in 2017's bull run and where we are today.

• 17:49Speaker 02

  Sure. So before 2017, the conference space was a lot of these more private events, a lot of these intimate group gatherings, private things that nobody really knew about. There was, I think BTC Miami existed, if I remember correctly. And that one was one that slowly grew. But there wasn't any of these sort of blowout, big blockbuster conferences like there are today. And even now, I mean, we talk about CIS being one of the biggest conferences in the space. It's still, if you look at other industries, if you look at like Collision Conference or like TechCrunch Disrupt and these big startup conferences, right?

• 18:32Speaker 02

  Like, those are big conferences. Even ours, in the big scheme of things, we're not there yet, right? But yeah, so early in the 2017 days, it was, or before 2017, it was these intimate gatherings, it was these smaller events. It was a lot of the cool kids' club of early adopters and misfits and nerds. And in 2017, of course, as money flowed in and people were printing money, they were, things really, really took off. And some of these conferences got huge.

• 19:15Speaker 02

  And there was this flash in the pan of end of 2017 conferences, especially beginning of...

• 19:22Speaker 02

  2018 conferences where all the conference organizers and all these people kind of, well, not the, the, the early ones, the early ones kind of came, uh, grew and are still around, uh, you know, similar to our trajectory, but there was this, this time between, you know, mid 2017 to early 2018 where anybody could just announce they're launching a conference and they would make money and people would come because it was the, you know, one of the biggest things that were being talked about everywhere. Um, and, uh, what happened at the end of, uh, 2018, at the end of last year was that all of these conferences and even, you know, some of the beginning of this year, all these conferences became like

• 20:04Speaker 02

  a former shell of themselves. So these people weren't actually very good at, at throwing conferences. They were just, uh, right time, right place kind of situation and, and capitalized on it. And so we do have this kind of world where, uh, at the moment with conferences, nobody really trusts any conferences because they all think they're going to suck because they went to one last year, uh, that was, or like one in 2017 that was awesome. And then they went to the same one a year later and it sucked. And, uh, and all the conference organizers kind of assumed it would just work the same way. So a lot of people got burned. There, there is not, it, it's just a different, different vibe in general. So

• 20:47Speaker 02

  what, what you'll learn is that the people who've kind of stuck it out and can consistently show quality, um, they're, they're still around and they're still doing fine. It's not an easy, you know, world to live in at all, you know, crypto in general right now. I know people that, uh, that, um, you know, have been building for the space are struggling to raise money and all the service providers and conferences are, are, are, you know, it's, it's much harder to, uh, to put on a quality conference is harder to close deals. But, um, you know, thing, things are consistently growing. The quality is getting consistently better. And, uh, I think that we're seeing that with our conference as well. The quality

• 21:29Speaker 02

  is, is getting so much better. We've got incredible, uh, partners this time around. We've got like, you know, between Fincross and eToro and Salt and Total and Onera. Like we've got some great companies kind of leading the charge at the conference. And I think as a, as a whole. Industry in general, I feel that it's growing and quality is getting better regardless of if you know, some of the conferences are a former shell in themselves.

• 21:59Anthony Pompliano?

  For sure. And so I'm coming to speak at CIS this year. Maybe give us a little overview kind of as to what your guys' goals are, how you set it up, what people can expect as they come.

• 22:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, so the thing that makes CIS kind of different from the rest, there's sort of a bunch of things. We never, you know, we never did it as a like hardcore money grab kind of thing. Our business was, we never wanted the conference to be our full-time job. So, you know, the ticket prices have always been reasonable. We always have given university students free tickets to the events, military people free tickets to the events, scholarships to inclusion and diversity type of organizations. But we've always wanted to fill the room with the right people and the people who this industry is meant to

• 22:48Speaker 02

  help the most. And so from that standpoint, you know, we never had to, we never focused on like, you know, really optimizing every, you know, piece of, every square foot of the convention center to be sold. So we took what's literally like a third of our expo floor area and we give it to media partners. So like, you know, all of the, you know, Ken, Bozak's and Crypto Stash and Crypto Cafe and Security Token Academy and all of the media in this industry, we give a booth to, to record video, to, to record podcasts

• 23:31Speaker 02

  and to amplify everything that's going on in this industry and hopefully, you know, create more and more adoption. We, we reach out to mainstream media. So every year CNN and CNBC and Bloomberg and Fox come to the conference. And then, so the first thing you see when you walk in is just media booths. So you see video cameras and podcasts and all these cool things being recorded. And then we have a whole expo floor that has all of the companies that are like the sponsors and stuff for the event are on the expo floor, just like you would see at most conferences. In the middle of the expo floor, we actually... Built a stage and there's plexiglass walls around that stage and the seating for

• 24:13Speaker 02

  it and that's called the expo stage and that's actually where we're gonna have a Litecoin Builders Track where PomP's gonna do a couple of the podcasts and then there's a separate area that's a big main stage. It has about a thousand seats in the room with the big stage and that's where you're gonna be interviewing Charlie Lee and doing a live version of your podcast on that stage too. So it's gonna be really, really cool. We kind of have optimized it every time around. If you, if, you know, people that have come consistently, you know, to the conference kind of see it improve time by time by time. And so we constantly optimize to make it awesome. But, you know, if you can, if you

• 24:55Speaker 02

  guys can make it, come. I'm gonna create a free code. Should we throw out the free code here in this thing or should we do it at the beginning?

• 25:04Anthony Pompliano?

  No, let's do the free code right now. I love free codes.

• 25:07Speaker 02

  Okay, so let's say the first 25 people to use the code POMPVIP. So P-O-M-P-V-I-P, well, you'll get a free ticket to come to the show and come see it. For whoever can't make it though, we will get, take all of the content from all of the stages at the event and we end up making it free at the end of the day too. So we'll share that also. So, you know, if you're, if you're in another country, if traveling, you know, it doesn't make sense, then don't do it. But for the rest of you, if you can make it, come to,

• 25:45Speaker 02

  the website is CIS.LA. The code is POMPVIP. First 25 people will get free tickets and then afterwards I'll make it massively discounted if you use POMPVIP. So, so, so check it out.

• 26:01Anthony Pompliano?

  See what happens, guys. You listen to the podcast, you get free stuff. Easy. Couple laughs, some free stuff, it's all good. Alright, so let's go through, maybe give us an overview of some of the people who are coming to speak and kind of what you're most excited about at the conference. I'm gonna put you on the spot. What's the one talk or presentation you're most excited about?

• 26:21Speaker 02

  Well, obviously, I'm most excited for...

• 26:26Speaker 02

  I was gonna make a joke and then say something that wasn't your session with Charlie Lee.

• 26:34Speaker 02

  You can't say my session. Aside, obviously, aside from the obvious, the Charlie Lee, you know, off the chain podcast live recording with Pomp, I'm actually super excited to hear David Blesnak interview Alex Mashinsky. I think that's gonna be really, really cool. I'm really excited for, you know, we have, we have the head of Amazon's blockchain group speaking. We have, we have a lot of really cool ones. Ami Ben David, who, you know, full disclosure, I'm working on a project called

• 27:15Speaker 02

  Onera with him, but he's going to do a presentation called Long the Bankers, which I know your followers and you will probably love. So that will be...

• 27:28Speaker 02

  What was that? So ridiculous. Oh, clearly he's trolling you, right? So, but, but it's, it will be, it'll be fun, but, you know, and I don't know, I think that it's not exactly, you know, the title. It's a bit of, a bit of clickbait, but we'll, you know, it'll be really fun. And there's, there's so many, so many good sessions this time around. Obviously, there's so much hype and so much going on around security tokens. So there's a few sessions revolving around that, which is fun for us for a few reasons. One, all of the crowdfunding rules and laws I was forced to know, powering all of those

• 28:13Speaker 02

  websites over the years and doing all that is now kind of coming to fruition in this space. And we, we decided to do a separate one day conference a day before this CIS called Security Token Summit. So, so for that reason, it's kind of, it's super exciting for us. But like, we also, it's exciting because one of our first sponsors... The first year we rebranded to Crypto Invest Summit, so it wasn't, you know, Crowd Invest Summit and Crypto Talk and all this stuff mixed together, was actually Securitize and Spice. And they hadn't even launched yet at the time. And now we're, you know, a couple of years past that, and they've done some really, really epic things. So kind of following up on this industry that,

• 28:58Speaker 02

  that, you know, when all the ICO craze was going on, people thought we're insane for talking security tokens. Now, after the aftermath and what's going on, it's a lot more interesting and there's a lot of cool things going on.

• 29:13Anthony Pompliano?

  And so, what are you guys gonna do the rest of this year? So you guys do CIS? And then kind of just tell us your plans for 2019 more generally.

• 29:22Speaker 02

  So, so we actually, you know, tentatively, we plan on doing another CIS in September, actually. The idea was that we do, we were originally going to do one event a year and then pop up a second one, like in New York or Chicago. You know, we kept deciding, like bouncing around ideas and doing different things. And then we just kind of realized, like, we own LA. I've been a local LA startup person for my whole life. The only other thing I do now, besides what we're calling Goren Home Group, which is just me and Joseph, my partner that we do the summits with,

• 30:03Speaker 02

  is this thing called 805 Startups, which is, really, I passed on to a friend of mine to run because I don't have time for it. But it's the largest LA-based, it's one of the largest, you know, networking groups for investors and startups in the country, let alone Southern California. So we built that out. And so we have a really strong foothold with the traditional VC world in LA. So we just went, you know what, instead of trying to go, hey, we should do a London event, we should do a New York event, we should do a Chicago event, we should do something else. We just went, screw this, events should not be our full-time jobs. Let's build a team around the event and let's just do two a year in LA and, you know.

• 30:44Speaker 02

  Knock it off with these ideas of doing conferences everywhere else. And so what we're really doing is using, the reason why I mentioned Goren Holm Group, and technically we have Goren Holm Ventures, which is just Joseph and I's personal stuff. We're using the conference as a platform to build a portfolio of really exciting companies in this space and then using the platform then to add as much value as humanly possible to that portfolio. So like I mentioned earlier, I think I mentioned earlier, I'm an investor in Total. And David Blesnik, I think, has been on your show, and he's one of my favorite startup

• 31:28Speaker 02

  CEOs I've ever met. So we invested in Total. And of course, the following conference, Total was the title sponsor of the conference. David was onstage interviewing Steve Wozniak at the conference. And we throw as much weight as we can behind the companies that we support. So this is sort of an epic platform for us to do that. To get 6,000 people to come to a conference, you have to have a much larger email list. So our email list is knocking on the door of around 150,000 people. So we've built this marketing machine around the conference, and we never wanted the conference to be our full-time job.

• 32:08Speaker 02

  We always, we actually, we planned on raising a fund, and really, the conference took so much of our time. In hindsight, it was one of the greatest things that happened, because we would have raised the fund right before all of the chaos of last year. And so in hindsight, it was great, but we've done well with building a small portfolio so far of cool companies we like. And we want to do a lot more of that and a lot less of the logistics for the conference. And so we have a team around us now doing the conference, and we're focused on that.

• 32:48Anthony Pompliano?

  Got it. That makes a ton of sense. All right. Where can, where can people find CIS? What website? What social media accounts?

• 32:57Speaker 02

  Yeah. So, so, you know, follow me on Twitter and on LinkedIn. All I do is, is promote the stuff right now. It'll be nice to be after the conference if you follow me and you'll get a lot less of that and more of my thoughts. But it's @AlongGoren, but, but, and AlongGoren on LinkedIn. And then there's the conference itself. Go to CIS.la. That's a URL for CIS. If you'd like to join us for Security Token Summit, it's SecurityTokenSummit.com. That one, we don't give away any free tickets for because it's more intimate. It's at the

• 33:40Speaker 02

  Ritz Carlton and we'll probably fill, fill the room to capacity. But if you use the same Pomp VIP code, I'll go onto that one and, and create a massively discounted ticket for, for your followers too. If you're into, into the security token side. And then of course, yes, stay tuned. I'll, we'll, we'll, we'll share all sorts of stuff and you'll get to follow Pomp. Of course, you already do, but stay tuned. We'll announce who else he's going to interview on the expo stage at the conference also.

• 34:12Anthony Pompliano?

  Don't tell them big secrets.

• 34:14Speaker 02

  Big secrets. Big secret pizza party.

• 34:18Anthony Pompliano?

  All right, sir. Listen, thank you so much. I'm excited to, to see you in LA. Hopefully we can get lots of other folks to, to get there, meet up for a little bit and we will, we'll see how it goes in a week here or so.

• 34:31Speaker 02

  Sounds good. Yes. See you all in a week. Thank you so much for having me, man. So to be here. Appreciate it.

• 34:38Anthony Pompliano?

  Another word from our sponsors at Total. They're kind of like Kayak, which helps you find the best flights. But Total helps you find liquidity by aggregating decentralized exchanges and optimally routing trades for execution. Remember, that's totle.com/pomp. T-O-T-L-E.com/pomp. Go check it out.

• 34:58Anthony Pompliano?

  Let me know what you think. Tweet at me, I'll drop you some fire emojis. totle.com/pomp. Hey everyone, Pomp here. If you liked this episode of Off the Chain and want to help us take crypto to the top of the apple, Spotify and other podcast charts, please do us a favor and rate, review and subscribe. To review, simply go to the Off the Chain homepage, scroll down until you see the five blank stars. Taking 15 seconds to fill those stars in and leave a quick review goes a long way in helping us take the entire crypto ecosystem to the top of the charts. I appreciate you listening and see you next time on Off the Chain.