Pod Insights The Pomp Podcast #832 The Sports Card Investing Boom w/ Dan Fleyshman About this episode Dan Fleysham is an entrepreneur and investor. He is the Founder of Elevator Studios, and the youngest founder to ever take a company public. He also owns a card shop in LA called "Cards and Coffee" I spoke with Dan while in Los Angeles for Super Bowl Weekend. In this conversation, we discuss technology investing and the sports card industry. ======================= BlockFi provides financial products for crypto investors. Those products include BlockFi Wallet, no fee Trading, crypto collateralized Loans and the World's First Crypto Rewards Credit Card. To get $75 back on the first swipe of your BlockFi Rewards Credit Card, sign up today at http://www.blockfi.com/Pompcc ======================= Choice is a new self-directed IRA product that I'm really excited about. If you are listening to this, you are likely part of the 7.1 million bitcoin owners who have retirement accounts with dollars in them, but not bitcoin. I was in that situation too. Now you can actually buy real Bitcoin in your retirement account. I'm talking about owning your private keys and using tax-advantaged dollars to do it too. Absolute game changer. https://www.retirewithchoice.com/pomp ======================= Imagine coinmarketcap - decentralized. 3X in valuation is 15 billion dollars from the current price. Cryptotoday.com starts at zero, at fair launch on 7th of March. No VC. No pre-sale. Team tokens locked. For the people, by the people. For decentralized crypto. Visit cryptotoday.com and read the whitepaper for the details.
Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:02 Anthony Pompliano? What's up everyone, this is Anthony Pompliano. Most of you know me as Pomp. You're listening to the Pomp Podcast, simply the best podcast out there. Now let's kick this thing off. Dan Fleishman is a serial entrepreneur and investor. He's the founder of Elevator Studios. He was the youngest founder to ever take a company public, and he also has a card shop in LA called Cards and Coffee. I really enjoyed this conversation with Dan because we spent all the time talking about technology investing and sports cards. He's an expert in this area and I learned a ton from him. I hope that you enjoy this episode, but before we get into it, I want to quickly talk about our sponsors. This episode is brought to you by BlockFi. BlockFi provides financial advice for crypto investors. Those products include the BlockFi Wallet, a US dollar loan collateralized by
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3:43 Anthony Pompliano? All right, let's get in this episode. I hope you guys enjoy this one.
3:46 Speaker 01 Anthony Pompliano runs Pomp Investments. All views of him and the guests on his podcast are solely their opinions and do not reflect the opinions of Pomp Investments. You should not treat any opinion expressed by Pomp or his guests as a specific inducement to make a particular investment or follow a particular strategy, but only as an expression of his personal opinion. This podcast is for informational purposes only.
4:09 Anthony Pompliano? All right, guys, we're out here in Los Angeles with SoFi for the Super Bowl. I have my friend Dan here. How are you, man?
4:14 Speaker 02 Just happy to be here.
4:15 Anthony Pompliano? Awesome. Let's just talk about sports cards. You, I think, I don't know, maybe two years ago, were like, hey, you should pay attention to this. I didn't because I'm an idiot. But you've done a bunch of sports cards, you've got a shop now. But to me, what's so interesting is like the NFT boom has happened, but sports cards are still going as strong as ever. And is this just like a shift in demographics and like society where people now don't necessarily want to buy stocks? And they may want to buy some of these other assets. So like, what's going on there?
4:45 Speaker 02 Yes, the sports cards are an alternative asset. The NFT market kind of took off in the midst of when the sports cards were like 2019, 20. NFT was 2020, 2021, and now carrying 2022, the explosion. And so some of the sports card people started buying into NFTs. You saw Logan Paul, Steve Aoki, Gary Vee, all these characters that were obsessed with sports cards or Pokemon. Also start getting into NFTs and then going deep down the NFT rabbit hole. And so it's just another alternative asset, whether your people are buying sports cards, Pokemon, Magic the Gathering, or NFTs, it's just another way for people to showcase what do they like to invest into? When most of us, whether it's millennials or guys our age, we don't want to just invest into the stock market. We're investing in the stock market also, right?
5:28 Speaker 02 This is not an alternative. This is just an also, not an either or.
5:31 Anthony Pompliano? All right. So let's talk about with the sports cards. I saw you post at some point like, hey, I'm starting a sports card shop. That's a pretty cool idea, but how big could that be? Right? Immediately I started, what's the addressable market, this whole nine yards? And then we started talking and then you were like, oh yeah, we did a little bit of revenue. And then it was like a little bit more revenue and then more and then more. And I was like, wait a minute, this is growing pretty fast. Like, how big is this store? Like, how many people are actually coming into the store? And then you explained to me this idea of like live breaking. And it's actually more e-commerce than it is physical store. So explain like how the business model works for live breaking.
6:05 Speaker 02 So we have a store in LA, a store in Salt Lake City, we're buying one in San Diego. And then we're going to buy 51, 100% of other stores across the country. The stores are like a flag in the ground. So people can come on there, bring their kids, bring their cards, buy stuff, etc. But you're right, it's five to one sales online versus in person at the store. Also, we're in the middle of a situation where the streets in LA aren't that busy and same with LA. That's going to get reopened and hopefully that will change to three to one or four to one. But online, we're the only ones. Live breaking, which is opening packs of cards and boxes 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
6:38 Anthony Pompliano? So how does it work? So you, let's say that you and I were doing the live breaking. We basically just grab a random pack or random box?
6:45 Speaker 02 So people choose. So let's say someone's watching. So Roger wants to buy a pack, right? And we say, okay, great. This pack is $200. There's some packs are 20 bucks, some packs are 200, some packs are thousands. This pack's 200 bucks. Roger can decide if he wants to pay all 200 or Jennifer, Jessica, Jenny and Robert, they can all pitch in 50 bucks each and now they can split the 200 dollars.
7:05 Anthony Pompliano? Ah, got it. So there's almost like a gamification component to it and also like a dopamine hit as to uh, what's in the pack as you're watching.
7:13 Speaker 02 And now, the reason that people have us open up is because they're like, why don't you just buy the pack or the box and send it to my house?
7:17 Anthony Pompliano? Yep.
7:18 Speaker 02 A lot of people are not experts. They don't know what they're looking for, so they'll be opening it and they might hit a really good card and have no idea that they hit this rare card.
7:25 Anthony Pompliano? Got it, got it.
7:25 Speaker 02 It's happened to a lot of people. Also, it's like going to a bar. Everyone in their group chat's talking. We're on whatnot, we're on Twitch, we're on Instagram, Facebook and YouTube, all live simultaneously, alright? 24 hours a day. And so people can go there and like, you know what? I want to buy UFC or I want to buy into NASCAR or football or baseball, basketball, etc. And instead of spending 50 bucks, 100 bucks or 500 bucks, they could spend a smaller amount and split it with other people.
7:49 Anthony Pompliano? Got it. And so, once you open the pack live, you guys keep the pack? Do you send it to them? Like, what's the operations after?
7:57 Speaker 02 So we ship all same day. So because we're, again, we're the only ones that are 24 hours because it's crazy to do. The second that we open it, it gets to the shipping station. It has your name, address, phone number, date, everything on there, Instagram name, everything, when you bought it. And then we are packing up and shipping it same day.
8:13 Anthony Pompliano? Got it.
8:13 Speaker 02 And then it goes to your house. Now, if you want to get it graded at PSA, we'll take it for you. We'll literally drive it over there for you to drop it off. So if you hit a big card, we'll take care of it for you if you want, or we'll send it to you and you can make your own decision.
8:24 Anthony Pompliano? What's the biggest card that you guys have opened on one of this for like somebody else?
8:28 Speaker 02 Uh, we hit an $80,000 card and the pack was only like 60 bucks.
8:31 Anthony Pompliano? Wow.
8:32 Speaker 02 That was a big one because we hit like the ultimate, ultimate card.
8:34 Anthony Pompliano? Yep.
8:36 Speaker 02 Recently, we hit another card that was around $60,000. That was a more expensive box. That was like a 2,000 dollar box. But yeah, there's been some big hits.
8:42 Anthony Pompliano? Yeah. And then what do you think about like NFTs? Obviously, you guys have a really good sense of this idea of scarcity, uh, kind of, um, the dopamine hit of like opening these packs, whatever. It seems like there's similarities to NFTs. What's your thoughts there?
8:54 Speaker 02 So it's the supply and demand factor, right? The difference with NFTs is the supply can become larger if someone does multiple drops. If someone's just gonna do one drop and there's only gonna be 10,000 or 1,000 or 5,000, I love that. That type of supply and demand is great if someone has big demand. Like if Gary Vee, we know, has huge demand and his V friends only have 10,400, we know, is Gary Vee gonna keep growing, growing, growing? Is Logan Paul or Steve Aoki or whoever's doing NFT, are they gonna keep growing, growing? That to me is interesting, that their demand is gonna go up and the supply is gonna stay finite or small. In sports cards, I know there's 2,200 LeBron James PSA 10s. I know there's 346 of the Michael Jordan, number 57 PSA 10. Like I know the numbers of the certain cards. Over the course of time, does Michael Jordan get more famous?
9:39 Speaker 02 Does LeBron James get more famous? Does Serena Williams, Andre Agassi, all these characters, do they get more famous? And does their supply stay the same? Yes. And so that's what's interesting to me, is that the supply will stay the same, but the demand will keep rising.
9:51 Anthony Pompliano? Yeah. It's crazy when you start to actually think about how much the similarities rely on not only what the original kind of primary sale or the original drop, but also you're essentially betting on the future of a digital artist or on an athlete, etc. And so there's some very crossover with like venture capital type investing where you've gotta understand where's this going, not just where it is today.
10:12 Speaker 02 Yeah. I care about the personal brand. Are they gonna still care about this? Or are they just gonna do another drop in three months, another drop in four months, another drop in three months? Then it's hard. It's just like NBA Top Shot. I love the concept of NBA Top Shot, but like if LeBron James is gonna dunk 44 times this week, who's gonna care about the dunk on March 17th on a random game? They all care about the final championship game, they'll care about the playoff game, but are you really gonna care about the random March 17th dunk on the second quarter? Not so much. So I love the concept of things like NBA Top Shot, but I wish the supply was smaller and it was focused on highlights, not just every...
10:45 Anthony Pompliano? What else are you investing in outside of sports cards or NFTs?
10:48 Speaker 02 So I'm angel investing a lot. I started my syndicate a lot. Last week we raised $6.3 million in seven days for a chicken company. The three weeks before that, $6 million for cauliflower foods, a healthy pizza, $3 million for Icon Meals, and UFC invested. Like I'm firing away, like two to four deals a month now.
11:07 Anthony Pompliano? Wow.
11:08 Speaker 02 But small, like all two to six million, two to six million kind of range of what we're raising through our group. And we're looking at companies that are doing two to 20 million in revenue. So I'm trying to catch them early that I can help them. The chicken company was bigger because they're doing 48 million, but most part, two to 20 million. And it's just... I love angel investing. I'm obsessed with it. Now I finally have the model to be able to execute quickly where I can fund a company within a week.
11:30 Anthony Pompliano? And then lastly, I want to talk about Everbowl. Obviously, they just announced that they're going to be moving towards this Bitcoin standard, paying employees in Bitcoin, etc. I've talked to the team there and I'm very impressed by them. I know you were an early investor and I've kind of watched as they've grown across the country. What's going on there?
11:46 Speaker 02 So Everbowl is acai bowl chain. The founder, Jeff Fenster, he's always watched you and what you've done and he started hearing about restaurants and corporations. And when you started saying that more companies are going to start holding Bitcoin on their balance, on their sheet, he got interested. He's like, how much should I hold? You know, we have X amount of dollars now. We just got this funding. Drew Brees just invested and we got all these new chains. Like, he started thinking about it. And I liked watching his stop process and the way he listened. And then recently is when he finally decided, hey, we can use our gift cards with crypto. We could pay our employees with crypto. People could purchase with crypto. Like, this becomes interesting for us. One, the marketing of it, of like getting a new audience to be able to want to go buy acai bowls and have some fun, be able to finally use Bitcoin at their locations.
12:29 Speaker 02 But two, it's important. It is the future. It's up to us to decide how fast we get to the future.
12:35 Anthony Pompliano? Yep.
12:35 Speaker 02 And so by more and more brands like this saying, hey, we're going to do this now, and literally everybody that hit me up about it when the press release went out, I said that one thing and one thing only. Our goal is to inspire more restaurants to do the same thing.
12:46 Anthony Pompliano? Yeah.
12:46 Speaker 02 That's it.
12:47 Anthony Pompliano? It seems like that's what they're doing, right?
12:48 Speaker 02 Yep.
12:49 Anthony Pompliano? Awesome. Where can we send people to find you on the internet?
12:51 Speaker 02 So my name is just @DanFlaschmann and for you guys listening, you should do the same thing. One screen name, one bio, one photo across all platforms. Don't mix it up. Because we're in an ADD society. So if you're wearing that black hoodie, wear the same black hoodie in every single bio photo.
13:05 Anthony Pompliano? Are you ever going to change your photo?
13:08 Speaker 02 I don't think so. I almost changed it to a board ape. I almost did it.
13:11 Anthony Pompliano? Nah, I see. Okay. I'm against changing the profile photos to the apes because it loses your identity. It loses your kind of recognition, etc. Like, I get why people are doing it, but just make it like that with a banner image or something, but making it the actual profile picture I'm against in terms of like, you lose a lot of the value of the same photo.
13:32 Speaker 02 I say about board apes in particular. Nothing like that can be replicated because I run a social media agency. I couldn't go give Dave Chappelle or Eminem $5 million to put Coca-Cola or American Airlines as their logo, as their bio photo for a week, let alone permanent like they've been doing. It's mind boggling from a brand culture perspective, what happened with Bored Ape. It's fascinating to me.
13:53 Anthony Pompliano? Yeah. You own one? You gonna buy one?
13:54 Speaker 02 Well, I bought 50% of multiple of them. So I have friends that buy it for me. My nephew has that big NFT fund and my friends have big NFTs. And so I'll buy 50% with them and let the experts do it.
14:05 Anthony Pompliano? I like it. Awesome, man. Thank you so much for doing this.
14:07 Speaker 02 Absolutely. Thanks for having me.
14:09 Anthony Pompliano? Thanks so much for listening to today's episode. I really hope you guys enjoyed this one. Make sure you subscribe on Apple, Spotify, or your favorite podcast player. And if you're looking to try to transition to get a new job in the Bitcoin or crypto industry, we've got you covered. Head over to pompscryptocourse.com. We've developed a curriculum with the top teams across the industry. It's a three-week intensive training program with over 50 events packed into that three-week time period. Go to pompscryptocourse.com to learn more and I'll meet you guys for the next episode.
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