Investing Billions - 
E237: The $150 Trillion Revolution in Private Markets

Episode Date: November 7, 2025

How do you democratize access to private markets and what happens when everyone can invest like a VC? In this episode, I sit down with Kendrick Nguyen, Co-Founder and CEO of Republic, the global platform that’s opened up private investing to over 3 million people across 150 countries, facilitating more than $2.6+ billion in transactions. We unpack how tokenization, fractionalization, and regulatory innovation are reshaping private markets. Kendrick explains how Republic is bridging the gap between institutions and retail investors, what tokenized SpaceX and OpenAI shares mean for the future of liquidity, and why the next evolution of finance is about participation—not speculation.

Today we're talking about the new finance economy that sits at the intersection of retail and private markets. Today, my guest is Kendrick Wynn, founder and CEO of Republic, which has facilitated over $2.6 billion via transactions and over 3 million community members across 150 countries. Kendrick, welcome to a podcast. Thank you so much for having me, David. Our listeners have been hearing about tokenizations for many years. What are the practical benefits to tokenizations in the private markets? I look at tokenization and particularly blockchain as an infrastructure that's going to on ramp the next generation of financial markets.

What do I mean by that? Automation, factualization, and efficiency. How do you get more people to transact, invest, trade, own, buy, and sell in a speedier? cheaper and on a cross-border basis at scale. So let me use the internet as an example. The internet is an infrastructure that took commerce towards e-commerce. What did it do? Made it a lot more cheaper, faster on a cross-border basis for people to buy things.

Tokenization is the same rail when it comes to investing, trading, and transacting in the capital markets. So it solves this issue of access, liquidity. How do you know that that's a big pain point? And what makes you think that this is important and this is an order of magnitude improvement on the market today? David, it is a pain point when I'm an immigrant. And last one of five, all of my siblings, are either physicians or very established professionals.

None of them ever invested in private equity. none of them know what a saffed or even a convertible note is. Like the level of retail public participation in the markets, public and private, is shockingly low even in the wealthiest country in the world, that is the United States of America. So there's no doubt that retail capital at large and the desire of people wanting to own and invest more we already are seeing that trend with the next generation.

There's a lot of technical and legal barriers, and they've been taken down one by one, and I think 2025 in the few years forward would be a transformational phase for that next version of capital markets, 2.0 or 3.0. So another way, we live in this bubble, me, you, our listeners, where everybody knows You have private equity here, venture capital, they know how to access it, they know who to call.

It's not necessarily because they're higher IQ than, say, doctors or lawyers. It's because they're well-verson it, they have the access, maybe they meet the minimums. tokenization allows similarly intelligent people to learn and be able to access these private assets that they previously have not had. David, the fact that we're sitting here at the New York Stock Exchange, definitely we're in a bubble. But even very sophisticated individuals works like liquidity or yield. These terms are like second nature for people in this building. Just one or two blocks from here, I would be shocked if more than 50% of people on the street

can give you a definition of liquidity. That's how low financial sophistication is. And indeed, by getting people in, enabling them to participate at a small amount is the best way to increase and improve financial know-how. Me and my business partner, Curtis, we tried to test our own understanding of the market and people's understanding. And we recently learned that some small percentage of people not only know who the Treasury Secretary is, but know that there's even such a position. Something like 20% of the population actually know that there is a Treasury Secretary. And I think even the question of whose devised president is a shocking percentage of Americans who don't know or can answer that question. But yes, I do think that when we talk about tokenization and the transformation of capital markets, there is a social good element to it, which is how do you lower the wealth disparity?

and I think the easiest, the most obvious one is to fix financial lack of or lack of financial sophistication. And that is by enabling more people to get in. There's a longer conversation on how to do so in a sensible way. But access or accessibility, that is exactly what tokenization promises to deliver. There's a famous pension fund study that showed that 90% of a return in portfolio was based on the asset allocation. So just being in private equity, just having exposure to venture capital predicted 90% of the returns. When it comes to tokenizations and private markets,

what's the gateway drug? What's the product that you believe will lead to retail's adoption of this investment instrument? There are two answers to your question. one is what I believe would drive adoption and the second one is what I think is actually good for mass adoption. I think things that resonate with people because they are, you know, hype because these are brands

or companies that people understand, it grabs people's attention at a time whereby someone's attention, I think on average, he's seven or eight seconds. So names like Taylor Swift, Drake, The Patriots, SpaceX, TikTok, these are things that people are like, wow, I get to invest and own it, is going to get their attention, and I think that's going to drive adoption. Do I necessarily think that that's the best product for someone who's brand new?

No, I think products that are consistent in yield, that is how much, what percentage of return that investment is going to yield with low volatility on an ongoing basis and with liquidity, that's best. And I think both of them are now beginning as of 2025 are being introduced to the retail public here in the U.S. That's the paradox. Probably the best instrument for the retail investor might be a fund-to-fund of venture capital funds.

Maybe they get exposure to 10,000 underlying portfolio companies, but they want that SpaceX. They want that open AI. And we've seen that. Robin Hood just did SpaceX and Open AI tokens. Tell me about that. And what was Republic's role in that? Yes. I think in the news in June, there was a big announcement on Robin Hood giving away a Robin Hood token that represents SpaceX and another token that represented Open AI. And they basically gave it away. They didn't sell it. They didn't do it in. the U.S. They only gave it away to new Robin Hood users in Europe. So that effort did exceptionally well for Robin Hood in terms of the reflection on how well the stock performed that particular day. Our role as a technical partner, I can't go too in-depth into it, but we did work with our partner in structuring that effort for them in Europe in June of 20, 25 this year. And I was watching the stock that day. Tell me about what happened to the stock. I think the stock jumped something like 13% and managed to sustain with some volatility,

but it wasn't just a peak and then it went back down. I think the stock now continues to rise in that framework. And I think the prediction or the estimation is that The public, the market, looked at that token giveaway as a reflection on Robin Hood's willingness to embrace tokenization and penetrate the world of private equity, which is an expansion from what Robin Hood has been known for, public equity, public stock. So I think that it speaks to both market expectation and how much. how they embrace all of these major financial companies foray in TORs, tokenization for retail access of things that previously had been completely out of reach.

The market's pricing in potential doubling of Robin Hood's business. The reason I say that is endowments, arguably the best investors in the world, some of them, the most elite ones will have up to 50% of their assets in private. 50% in publics, some do 60% in publics, 40% in privates, but Robin Hood essentially show their willingness to potentially double their market size and the tam of their business overnight. And the monetization, the revenue for private equities, always much higher for public. To give an example, say, Robin Hood enabling people to trade public equity.

Even if you were to tokenize it and charge a fee, obviously is free on Robin Hood. if you allow tokenize public equity and you permit Europeans to trade it, the fees that are chargeable on that are bound to be somewhat limiting. What would be the fees when in Q1 of 2026 did Robin Hood enable retail public to trade and buy Robin Hood Spaceax tokens? Obviously, people are going to be willing to pay much more to access something that they will not be able to find anywhere else. That's the allure of private equity. On the one hand is the demand from the public. And on the other hand, because of that lack of demand and accessibility, the revenue potential for the first movers in the sector.

How do these mirror tokens work? Maybe you could break down. How are you able to give investors exposure to open AI and SpaceX? Technically, someone can go on a betting market like Polymarket and simply bet on when SpaceX is going to go public. You don't actually need to own any shares of SpaceX in order for you to enter into a bet with me. That function is not even a financial product and that will be governed by the CFTC.

Now, a forward contract whereby I'm paying for something that you currently own and hold on to it and then you're going to deliver that to me later on in the future time when the value is higher and I reap the benefit. That's also very commonly done. A forward contract can be naked that is, just because we enter into a forward contract, it doesn't necessarily mean that you, David,

has to hold on to the asset underneath. And so taking the step further and navigating within the regulatory environment, you allow for an issuer like Robin Hood that is not SpaceX to have a financial product that enable them to deliver to buyers an IOU. Essentially, if Curtis or you purchase or receive a Robin Hood mere token for OpenAI, it simply means that when Open AI goes public,

you're going to go to Robin Hood, and they're going to deliver for you the market value of OpenAI share at the time. And that's regulated by the FTC? No, no. Which regulatory framework applies depends on how you structure the product and how you describe it in the scenario that I had just described in our view, it is squarely of securities and investment contract, and that should be governed by the SEC.

You've also partnered with one of our previous guests, co-CEO of Hamilton Lane, Eric Hirsch, and Hamilton Lane, if they haven't passed a trillion dollars, are going to pass it shortly. what's your partnership with Hamilton Lane and how does this tokenization apply to private equity firms? Hamilton Lane is probably the firm that I most respect when it comes to asset managers. He stay very low key. But the track record, how low volatility is, the fact that they are NASDAQ listed firms for a couple decades now. But what people don't realize is that a firm like that and with, within their organization, they are as forward, advanced in ideating and embracing new technology

as a Silicon Valley startup. So they have been thinking about how they can apply tokenization to make their funds, multi-manager funds, more accessible to the general public. That is, how do you tokenize a infrastructure fund of Hamilton Lane and over a sudden be able to take in investors well below the standard $5 million minimum investment. And that's exactly what we work with them for a year, a year and a half to execute on it earlier this year. There's a regulatory restructuring. It's about building out new vendors and, you know, from fund admin to custodians.

It's about leveraging the republic interface to deal with small checks. but at a greater volume that a firm like Hamilton Lane is familiar with. So it's a multifaceted effort. But yes, these things like building a whole new hotel. It takes time. It's still not yet a commoditized service. And it really is only for partners who are very, you know, all in on the future of retailization accessibility.

It's interesting because you look at somebody like Hamilton Lane that has roughly a trillion dollars in assets and you think, why do they care about tokenization? Is it they're trying to get some PR or some good press? And then you take a step back. I had the CEO of I Capital Lawrence Calcano. And he estimates $150 trillion with a T, 150 times the size of Hamilton Lane in retail going into private equity and private markets in the next five to 10 years. So Hamilton Lane, though today, maybe it doesn't have a big impact on their business over the next five to ten years. It could potentially double triple 10x that business through retail. A hundred percent. David, let me use an analogy. Uber. When Uber first launched, the year that they went to market, the entire term, the addressable market of all taxi companies in the world was somewhere in the range of 30 to 50 billion dollars. That company, enabling more people to use something that everyone knew about, but not everyone used a taxi, is such that a single company now, some 15 years later, its valuation is five times what used to be the total size of an entire global market.

you're going to see that at a magnitude order larger, when it comes to financial products, whether it's venture funds, whether it's a multi-manager funds, and yes, including the Hamilton Lane, the Black Rock, the Apollo of the world. And headline news, you see the CEOs of these companies, or at least not chasing, but embracing it, executing on that is still work in progress for many of us, you know, at the forefront of doing this. Just a double click on that. I know several of the investors that either passed or invested in Uber. Of course, the most famous one, Jason Galcannis, invested 25,000 into Uber and returned, I think, $100 million for Sequoia. I know other investors that will remain nameless that did not

invest. And the reason they didn't invest, not because there weren't great investors. It's because Uber and their deck was going around saying they were going to capture something like 50% of the market share of taxis, and they were sitting around saying, how could they disrupt this incumbent industry with 100 years? How could they get 50% market share? Lo and behold, they were wrong, but to the outside. By an order of magnitude of 10x, they ended up being five times larger than an entire industry. Why? Because bringing down the cost, bringing down the friction, actually increased the total addressable market, the size of the market. And you're arguing that that might happen in private equity

where it might be $150 trillion right now institutionally, roughly the same as retail. But that's people that are putting in $5, $10, $20 million. And if you bring that down and if you create liquidity in it, that might actually increase the size of town. I think the $100 bills underneath mattresses across the world from Ecuador to Malaysia to Vietnam where I was born, even though I grew up in the U.S. That kind of retail capital globally that earns almost zero yield when productively redeployed into the capital markets, yes, you're going to see a more transformative shift to the capital markets as it exists today than commerce in the early.

90s before the internet and the world that we're living in today. And it's not just Uber, David, there is no question. I wonder if anyone would disagree with this statement that all of us in 2025 buy many, many more things on a regular basis compared to our parents and our grandparents, just because it's that much more accessible in the very much in the same way that I think the word of capital market investing and owning things, the inaccessibility is comparable to commerce. Back in the 60s and the 50s, you bought things that were available to you

in your village and the Wales and now you buy things produced globally. Yes, that should be enough to shock-proof in the most optimistic way the next generation. Me and you met before you started a republic, When you were at Angelis, I remember we were whiteboarding the idea for Republic. What was your thesis then?

How has that evolved since growing the business? For those who know Angelis know well that one of the things they do was to bring accredited capital into venture capital through syndications. But that model we're limiting in two ways. You've got to be an accredited investors. And really, it only focused on early stage venture investors. meaning two things, very, very high risk if you look at any one investment and very, very illiquid. But the regulatory framework underneath for us at Republic from day one is like, how do you bring private, inaccessible opportunities to the general public? Because I really think

that someone like Jake Paul or Beyonce, can you imagine how? they can change venture capital as it exists today, if they, every time they make a $1,000 investment in an early stage company, they also have a framework to allow all of their fans to put in up to $20 or $50 each. Imagine the size in total investment volume, the number of deals that they can broadly diversify and the kind of leveling up in people's experience with venture that they would do to hundreds of millions of fans, I would dare say that in five to ten years, I have to make a bet that the Jake Pauls of the world will be the new Sequoia and A16Z in a way, no different than Uber and Lyft.

compared to yellow caps in New York Valley, in New York City. Today they can coexist, but there'll be a massive evolution that is to come. So you know Jake Paul's a friend, so if Jake Paul came to a public and said, I want to partner with you guys, how would he leverage this crowd? Like, give me the blocking and tackling of how that would actually operationalize into investment. Very specifically, logistically, leveraging a platform, like Republic. It's like a turnkey thing for him. We set up a profile and we take care of the legal structuring so that a million fans each putting in $10, which is $10 million, can whenever

Jake recommend and say that I invest in Company A, Company A sets up a campaign with Republic and all of a sudden, all of his fans through, you know, TikTok and Instagram and email list, can go to that link and there's a single $10 million investment in the aggregate that goes into the company. And so Jake essentially is leading a $10 million investment into an early stage company. and he can do that a thousand times because he's leveraging a very large community base and each person is only putting in 10, 20 bucks. So they are able, capable of doing so rinse and repeat in a way that no venture fund is equipped very few

to deploy a billion dollars in a year or two. We were talking before this podcast started about our mutual friend Naval. And this is like a Navalism, which is what are the things that scale brand and reputation? So take into the extreme if Jake Paul starts representing or investing to companies that go to zero or that are not credible, his brand reputation will go down, his followers will stop listening to him. But if the opposite, if he gets access to the open AIs, the SpaceX's, his actually reputation could increase. So it's going to each deal kind of increases. And then these influencers could actually start to monetize their kind of.

credibility with their fan base. 100%. But, David, I want to introduce the concept called return on experience as well. We all know the ROI return on investment. When someone puts in $1,000 or more, certainly $10, certainly $50, that getting a return and profitability on that

is 100% of their consideration. When someone is making a $10 investment into a company or into an artist that they love, even a hundred percent return, of five-ax return, that is not a material financial return. It is the ability to do it to begin with. And thereby the newness, the novelty in human, in investor psychology, when you have someone like Jake with a hundred million fans, and a million of them,

investing $10 into three different companies, even if they lose all three, $30, just the experience learning, be able to go to an event, be able to go on a podcast or a stream that's exclusive to investor, that is already the experience the process of learning. And David, can you think of any more effective way at scale, to get young Americans to learn a financial concept than getting one of the celebrity they love and that by making an investment they learn for the first time what a saft is, what a convertible no is, what revenue sharing is.

So I would dare say that at smaller amount, return ROI is less important than ROE, and because of that, the ability to broadly diversify and bring the rest of the population on board will give the first movers, the first celebrities mover, an extremely advantageous position, and they may very well be the next Uber of, you know, share writing. It's so interesting because investing like poker cannot be played with play money. Yes, you could open up an account and try to simulate, but you need to use real money. psychologically we can't learn to do something like investing without real money

and oftentimes when somebody has a big liquidity event they sell their company for a hundred million dollars they come to me and they ask me for my advice I tell I tell them some principles but I also say make some very small investments make your mistakes with small chip stacks and as you gain experience really over 10 years ideally but at least over three to five years then start increasing the size of your bets a lot of people do the exact opposite they have $20 million in the bank they're like oh man I'm like

I can't have it in a treasury I need to go and spend it and they make the worst possible investments with a lot of money I would suggest the exact opposite which is put take that $20 million dollars put in a diversified liquid portfolio and start

making very small bets in order to learn your mistakes on a small chip stack I agree entirely and better yet if it is feasible to make investments with $5, $10, $20, people should do it now. High school kids.

David, I went to East Palo Alto High School. That is definitely not wealthy on the wrong side of the highway. And our high school got like donation from, you know, HP of like old laptops and computers or whatever. That's how you, you know, you get less economically advantage high school kids to be more familiar with math and sciences. Can you imagine giving inner city high school children $50 each? You got to make 10 investments and you got to write a paragraph and decide why you deploy

$5 into this company. It may very well be out of 100 kids, 20. It was like, whoa, I actually kind of like accounting and concept. Well, I didn't know this is how you made. make money. And out of those 20, maybe five would go on to become accountants and financial analysts that otherwise they would never be. So I do think that the ability, going back to your question at the beginning on tokenization accessibility, that add a small enough of an amount that you can get people in to participate, similar to commerce, there is no better way to change the sophistication,

learning know-how of the public at large. You imagine, instead of getting a credit card and be able to buy anything, you've got to wait until you're accredited to go to an Amazon and purchase things. How limiting what would that be? But that is currently the construct of securities law, and I think that's changing very fast. We're in the capital of the world when it comes to finance. We're literally in the New York Stock Exchange.

And being in New York City, we see politically a lot of younger people have started to go towards the socialist side. And you could criticize that and you could say why that's wrong, why that hasn't worked for the last 100 experiments. But if you were a little bit more self-critical at a society and looked at what's driving that, you would see that this inability to participate in the economy. You look at Gen Z where their parents were able to have a normal job, and to have a house in the suburbs, their retirement went up, their house went up. And that American dream has fundamentally been lost on the Gen Z. And that's why so many of them have turned to socialism.

One way to counteract that, Brad Gersner populized this idea of giving every person born $1,000 in order to invest in stock market, to make sure that more people participate. In this, the tokenization could be another path in order to make sure that individuals feel like they're part of the economy and part of the future. And instead of learning to, instead of having a negative affiliation with AI and driving electricity costs and all that, they could actually be on the cap table of these companies. It's a powerful thing. On this show, we talk a lot about smart investments, how the best ones aren't just about short-term gains, but about long-term value. Turns out, that applies to what you wear too. That's why I like

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Upgrade your wardrobe at josejeans.com and use code invest for 20% off your first purchase. That's J-O-E-S-J-E-A-N-S.com. Code invest for 20% off your first purchase. Agree. And David, I think for us, right, to be able to buy a home that is the ultimate American dream, that's like, you know, American middle class. You go, you work hard, you go and buy a home. Much less buying a home for your parents.

I think that he's, just like you said, completely out of reach for 90% or so. Certainly, you live in New York or California. But now to be able to deploy a couple hundred dollars into a factional interest of a luxury building in Midtown Manhattan, even though you live in, you know, North Carolina, in Oregon, and be able to get some rent, a functional component of a rent coming out of it. This is something that wasn't feasible 10 years ago. And I think just like you said is another example of making the American dream of owning real estate and home feasible through factionalization and accessibility.

And real estate, you know, less liquid than public equity. But I'm actually very, very optimistic about the trend overall towards, you know, the young generation embracing and actually trying from crypto to trading on robinode to things like faction of real estate. I think the arc of history typically poised towards capitalism. It's such an underrated thing being excited about your investments. My mom calls me, she'll watch a podcast with Travis Kalanick or Alex Karp and she'll say, do I buy Uber? Do I buy Palantir? My answer is always yes. Because if you believe in the mostly efficient, I believe the public markets are mostly efficient. Investing anything is good. Taking to extreme, you could invest in just companies with the letter K. My name's Kendrick. I'm just going to invest in all K listed. And you're going to have some variability, but you might actually have performed the index. So this has, having excitement and having tangibility on what you're investing in is so underrated and people will look down and say, well, that's like serious investors don't need that. And yet the number one mistake you can make as an investor far and above is not investing in the first place. If you had

invested in the worst possible day and sold it in the worst possible day 10 years later, you'd still be up and you'd be up sizably. So this idea of the biggest mistake being non-investing is something that we don't really hear about because all the people talking about investing are already invested. David, and I agree, and can I touch on a little bit of a social component of investing as well?

Can you imagine if the next company that goes public here at the New York Stock Exchange, that there are 2 million people in New York and around the world who may already own like a small bit, it may be five bucks, maybe $2,000, And now, because the company has gone public, that becomes $2 or $3 or whatever it may be. It's not going to change. It doesn't even buy them like a burger and McDonald's these days.

But you feel like the headline news is relevant to you. You read the watchy journal, whatever, it's on Financial Times. And I think much of it about this retail participation at scale, Uber, for example, when it went public, They try to give equity to all of the users in advance. They should have used us because, you know, the SEC didn't allow them to go through with it on their own. And I think so much of it is about that feeling that you're more connected to things and stories and companies that are clearly changing the world around you.

And where we are today, which is vastly more excited than before, is that it's not just about that return. Yes, it is about that potential return, but it's really about, hey, I too can do this. The fact that I don't, but if I want to, technically I can go and try and buy a Lamborghini, but knowing that I can do it even if I don't makes a big difference to my happiness

and my sense of well-being. To tie this in, I've been reading a lot of Nietzsche and his philosophies, he has this whole concept of slave and master psychology, which is, are you part of the wealth creation or are you a victim of the wealth creation? And this is something that if you look at the arc of history has really determined significant historical events, most famously the French Revolution, but also things like World War I, World War II. And again, getting more people on the boat and feeling like they have equity in the future, future, even if it is fraction, I think is really powerful. I want to go to crowdfunding. When it came out

with the Jobs Act, it came out with a lot of fanfare, then there was some adoption, then there was an increase to $5 million. Where's crowdfunding today when it comes to startups? And what do you think could take it to next order effect? David, I want to clarify the word crowdfunding to begin with because this is a somewhat of a misunderstood term. Kickstarter is crowdfunding. GoFundMe is also crowdfunding. What is basically platforms that allow people to donate and just buy things. But when it comes to allowing the general public, the crowd, to invest in private companies, the hurdle has always been a regulatory impossibility. And then it became a regulatory barrier. that's very difficult to go over.

And then in recent years, the barrier has come down a little bit more. And now this is the first year that the barrier is low enough that it can be as cheap as like $5,000 for if we were to launch a restaurant that we can allow our customer to come in and put money in.

But it's a very new thing. We're talking about a matter of a couple of years. Yes, it's been technically legal for 10 years, but the first five years, all of the additional requirements and restriction was so limiting that it wasn't real, real. Now it has become real, and that's why you're seeing this proliferation of companies that are looking to do token sale, factionalization, our effort to do a tokenized version of Biden's, you know, equity or, basic equity is crowdfunding. I think what will change the narrative and drive adoption is when

there's liquidity. After you invest in something, how can you sell it faster if you want to than having to wait for the company? That's so interesting. So you're saying a bunch of people put money into crowdfunding to startups. As we know, it could take up to 14 years for startups to exit, even institutionally backed startups. They haven't seen that money come back. They, they haven't become believers through liquidity, which is important psychological aspect. And when they go into the later stage, something like an open AI SpaceX, you mentioned bite dance, you're going to see that feedback loop accelerate. And you're going to see people making money, people losing money, almost, I dare

use the sports gaming analogy. But one of the reasons sports gaming spreads is because everybody goes around talking about the money that they may and not the money that they lose yet i've never met anyone that that lost money in Vegas the difference here is with a space x or with an open ai or startups in general is historically over the last 60 years the expected value is positive i think the mean return is somewhere in the mid mid to high teens pretty good return on average once you get exposure to thousands of startups so here you you need this kind of memetic instrument to spread in the market about people actually making money and taking out money that they made in order for this to prove.

100%. Can you imagine if all of a sudden you can no longer sell Bitcoin, Eith, any crypto, what would that do to adoption or participation in the crypto market? Right now, we have the reverse issues, which is if you make a small investment into a private asset, doesn't matter if it's a YC, you know, Series A company or a Hamilton-Land fund interest, they isn't a place in exchange a liquid active market that you can go and sell them because you want to buy a Honda Civic, a bike, whatever it is that you want to do. That option right now is not yet available.

We have a company that's going to build and roll that out at scale. So that problem is being solved actively. And I think 2026 is when you're going to see that secondary trading capability in a robust, seamless way, get paired with primary possibility of the past 10 years, and that's the proverbial rubber meeting the road by our estimation. One of the most underestimated aspects of republic is that you yourself are a trained lawyer, Stanford lawyer,

and you're dealing in a highly regulated space. How much of an advantage is that as you're creating these new financial instruments? I do think building in fintech, a big part of it is legal, engineering. We all know that when this technology, there's, you know, technical engineering, coding and all of that. There's capital market engineering, which is what, I mean, you being obviously a pioneer of that from at Weisburg Capital in 10x and B4. And then there's regulatory engineering because you're moving at the forefront of one of the most regulated industry, the ability to take risk sensibly and move faster, well, that is much of a

mold in terms of competitive landscape. And so I would say the advantage of that is the equivalent of would you invest in a tech company that relies on a DAF shop rather than having his own CTO and CPO and engineering team, I would ask the same question if you assess a fintech company using an outside law firms, especially the big law firms, is the equivalent of using a dev shop to build deep tech AI, the next LLM. What do you think a big law firm is going to provide in legal advice? The most conservative advice not taking risk at the forefront, which often areas, they are not, the departments of a large law firm are typically not active or involved in.

And just to double click on why that is, first of all, law firms are extremely conservative. Second of all, they get paid hourly. They rarely, if ever, take equity. So they don't have incentive. If there's a 50% chance, the SEC is going to find you in 50% chance, it goes up 100x. They're not going to do that. Correct. Their clients, to be able to afford $2,000 an hours at the Bank of America, the Chapie Morgan,

the apparel or the Hamilton Lanes. The larger the firm, the larger the revenue, the lower risk one can take naturally. That is uniformly applicable even for the robin hood and the coin basis of the world. So if a law firm only deals with that type of a client, meaning the risk assessment is always on the, take very little risk and protect the existing infrastructure,

that is literally the opposite of what one needs to do. do to move speedily into innovate in Fintat, which is you've got to push the boundaries. In fact, you've got to even encourage regulators and policymakers to change the law that exists today because it is not the status quo you're trying to gain a market share of. It is expanding in new frontiers. You're on the cutting edge of regulation in these products. How much of your job is collaborating and being a good partner to the different regulatory agencies

and what are the best practices there? I think some of the biggest or mistaken assumptions that Fintac founders, young Fintac founders make is that they assume regulators are there to make their life miserable and so it's easier

to just avoid it all together and oftentimes that may mean that you take too much risk or take, you know, regulators as a policymaker's just from a different background. They want the same thing as entrepreneurs do, which is, hey, we do want society to be more educated, to be wealthier. They just come from a different background, so know how to do the dance, assume that everyone is in good faith and have that dynamic information or show. sharing. And yes, sometimes your decision, your approach will be different than, you know,

than an ecstasy examiner. And sometimes there are conflicts. You've got to pick a fight. But I do think that probably the best advice I can give is if on the founding team, on the management team, there isn't someone who is very well-versed with regulatory maneuvering in relations, at least get one or two advisors who clearly have done. in Asia, and have that person, you know, guides you and the team in dealing with external counsel would be my advice. Speaking of knowing when to push the boundaries, you release the OpenAI and SpaceX token without talking to Sam Altman, Elon, and team.

Tell me about that story and how that play out. Yes, it's pretty somewhat known now that the Washington, or publish an article about Republic rolling out a SpaceX token that mimics the performance of SpaceX, and it allows anyone retail, non-accredited, and accredited globally to buy it, the SpaceX team definitely was not happy with it, and I don't blame them. And can you imagine, the news is out there that anyone can buy your stock on a tokenized basic and has nothing to do with you, that obviously would be jarring, to say the least. So we've had a few conversations with the SpaceX team and their counsel and our council.

But the advantage of being a fairly experienced corporate and securities attorneys that what we have built is well within the existing legal construct. and we are not beholden, nor have we violated any rights or obligation with SpaceX. Give an example. The betting market on the outcome of the election certainly bet on President Trump and former President Biden. As far as I know, President Trump never gave polymarket or calcium or any of these platforms the ability or the permission to do that.

we live in a fair and free country and events of public interest, well, there's a clear framework to do that. So the hope and the plan on outside is that in due time, we're going to get the collaboration to support, the partnership of Open AI Spaceax and the likes, so that they can set pricing, they can set tradability timing, and that they don't have to worry about a non-US non-regulated entity

rolling out the exact same product mimicking SpaceX and Open AI in a foreign market that would give them even fewer options to Navier. I'm a small SpaceX holder and I totally get the companies trying to go to Mars.

They have enough problems on their table. That being said, I think even in the short term it could create a headache in the long term, again, aligning more people with that mission, it's one of the hidden strengths of Bitcoin is as more people own Bitcoin within the government, if you're trying to tell me that that doesn't influence the Trump administration's pro-Bitcoin policy, then you're crazy.

People around Trump had Bitcoin, and whether consciously or subconsciously, they started to influence him in that direction. Same thing happens with any security. And I think the more people we could get to be investors in SpaceX, I think that's going to be very positive for the company. And it aligns with Elon's thesis and view of the world. He's always been a huge advocate of running the community of X, for example,

being involved in making decisions. I think the thing that has precluded or prevented founders of mature companies like Sam and Elon from going public. from taking a company public is a very onerous disclosure and compliance requirements of a public company in dealing with it. I think the demure product that we roll out is, A, not the only, I'm sure there will be many derivatives to come, is a solution to that, which is how do you enable fans in the community

to feel like they have an upside, a stake in the story, without having to deal with very archaic investor rights that perhaps a venture capitalist like yourself would and should have in voting in all of the things that you would have and someone who has a $20 interest in SpaceX and feeling really good about supporting the company would not care and can be, the two can be separated.

But David, a firm like SpaceX, you know, a substantial percentage of their revenue comes from federal contract. Government contract is one of the most, if not demos, loved American company. I think it's a very good thing that there's such a tremendous retail interest in it. And I hope in due time the exact team will see that this may very well be the answer to Elon's long-term vision of community. ownership. And you have one of the most remarkable life stories. You came from Vietnam as an immigrant. You mentioned East Palo Alto High School. It's a difficult high school. You went on to go Stanford to start Republic. What life experiences define you? And how are you able to overcome these obstacles? Thank you, David. It's always sounds better on paper than in reality. I got to say,

the older I get, the more I appreciate my parents being immigrants and moving to a different country as adults. And so, like, having that experience on my, like, worst days, just like you, it's very, it's much easier for me, and I imagine for you as well, to imagine, like, hey, my parents' worst days, or my worst day is nothing like what, you know, my parents who my love have gone. through. And so it's very easy to like reorient your perspective and just put on a smile and

get on with it. And so whether you call it resilience or whether you call it positivity, I think it needs a frame of reference. And having that frame of reference, I think it's so incredibly valuable if you live and work in a dynamic environment with a lot of surprises and sometimes surprises don't go your way. So I am very grateful for that bid. I think at some point, 50% of Silicon Valley venture-backed startups were either first or second generation immigrants. And I thought a lot about why that is, because it's not even that immigrants are much

smaller part of the ecosystem and they end up being successful. It's that they also have more things to overcome. So all things being equal, they should actually be underrepresented. and takes me back. So I, my family also, I was first generation, we were refugees from Russia, came here with $600. So the U.S. government gave $150 for me, my sister, my two parents. Wow. And I went to private school and I saw this disparity.

I went on scholarship. I saw this disparity between the private school and my family. I would go back to a very tough neighborhood as well. And I remember specifically in eighth grade, I had this party on my place. with my classmates. And I remember we were barbecuing. And I think we had run out of hamburger buns. We had just had hot duck buns.

And none of the other kids would actually eat a hamburger on a hot dog bun. Because they thought it was outrageous. And at that moment, I realized, holy shit, I'm going to run circles around these guys. If they are so fragile that they cannot put a piece of hamburger into a specific shape of a bread, I'm going to just dominate. And since then, I've been empowered to really accomplish many things. There's an amazing story.

And I think it exemplifies in so many ways that if you're a little bit more nimble about a world and not looking at things so rigidly, that I think it just makes things easier and more innovative. And, David, I'm very, very curious. Out of the hundreds of investments you have made, what do you think is the value of the so-called spark of ingenuity versus luck and resilience in a team or a company. Like, are you betting on an idea that no one has thought of before or plays more value in that compared to the ability to just, you know, just go for long enough and achieving a certain goal? I've invested in many different stages of the life cycle.

I think my alpha is at the early stage. I have both my MBA, my master's psychology, and I'm very good at picking people out, seeing people's potential. In most other stages, it ends up being a liability. If you're investing in Series C, Series D startups, and you're doing it based on the founder, like pivoting and improving, it's liability.

At the pre-seed, it's almost definitionally the alpha. So sometimes you're investing before there's even a concept. So that's where I like to play. That's the most exciting personally. In terms of founder versus product, I completely believe in backing the founders. And I have found the founders have iterated into success much more so than the company somehow iterating the founder. And I don't think that's even possible. So I'm a big founder guy.

I know it's a philosophical question in Silicon Valley. But I think at the early stage, you got a back. founder. And now that you're in the fund investing in manager or focusing on manager's side of things, has that changed? I think it has changed. I think you have to look at a lot of different factors. We're oftentimes betting on whether that fund manager can raise one or two more funds. So you have to look at the partnership where everybody stands. Sometimes when you're on your fund three, fund four, people try to stray. They have midlife crises. They buy their for all. their second home.

So I think it's more of a science than an art, but there is still an art aspect. Incredible. I think for me, anyhow, because I do make personal investment, and obviously Republic is an investment platform. I think the hard to define, but like this metric of like happiness,

I do think has outsized alpha because you're happier, you naturally a little bit more resilient. If you're more resilient, you last longer. and if you last longer, then eventually the right things would just come along. And so much of quote-unquote success in life is good timing that you happen to be there when a good opportunity land in front of you and you see it and capture it. And so somewhere along the way that one leads to another.

Absolutely. So every 10 years as investor in the venture ecosystem, you're going to have that one year. sometimes it's three to nine months of these crazy returns and you could do one of two things you could try to predict those three nine months but basically nobody on planet earth even sequoia and they can't do that and the second thing is you could just be alive and that point which sounds simple but it's extremely difficult because that means you have to survive for 10 years on average so the best way to get these shots on goals to get this capture this asymmetry is to make sure you do the blocking, tackling, and the boring stuff,

make sure you do what you say you're going to do, you have the right team, you enjoy doing, it's one thing to suffer for 10 years, it's another thing if you love it. And I think that's an underthought of, an underestimated part of investing, of building anything, the compounding. Compounding that results from resiliency.

100% in agreement through and through. Kendrick, what is one piece of advice if you could go back before you went to Stanford and when you were going from a difficult childhood to really building your career, what's one piece of timeless advice you wish you could tell you the younger Kendrick that would have either accelerated your career or helped you avoid mistakes? I would say most certainly don't overthink, don't worry so much, things are going to be just fine.

And in extrapolation out of that, I think one of the more, at least, for me anyway, looking back, fear or anxiety is the main limiting factor. And I think, strangely enough, reading up on a number of religions, the notion of don't fear I think permeates all throughout, and especially whether by being an immigrant, whether you're, you know, just born in the United States, clearly already have won the lottery of life. And life is going to be just fine. So I think having not overthinking, not worrying so much and just, you know, do your best and just trust and keep going forward. I'm doing a much better job at that now than certainly before

and hopefully we'll do better yet. Well, Kendrick, I know you know that's a lot of people don't know. We're best friends. Thanks so much for jumping on. Thanks to New York Stock Exchange, Wired and the Cube for hosting us and looking forward to seeing you very soon. Thank you, brother.

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