The Wolf Of All Streets - Venture Capital and Funding The Future Of Crypto with Alon Goren, Founding Partner of DraperGorenHolm

Episode Date: February 11, 2021

Deep in the punk rock scene as a kid, Alon Goren learned that raising money was the difference between putting out new music or failing as a band. It was his ability to raise money for his MySpace rock band that led Alon into the crypto startup scene, where he became a venture capitalist turning ideas into successful businesses. Now funding over 20 companies, DraperGorenHolm has become one of crypto’s greatest actualizers for brands, ideas, and concepts at early stages in the crypto scene. Scott Melker and Alon Goren further discuss punk rock, working for Myspace, social fundraising platforms, blockchain and booze, the rate of failure for startups, the spray and pray investment technique, inside the venture capital world, founding DraperGorenHolm, strong and weak hands, doubling down on winners, averaging up as an investor, accredited investor laws and more. ---- MAKERSPLACE MakersPlace is the go-to premium marketplace for purchasing rare digital artworks from the world’s top creators (Ie. José Delbo, Trevor Jones, Pak, SSX3LAU, Shu Lea Cheang). New artworks are dropped twice a week, where they typically sell out within seconds of release and have been reselling several months later, upwards of 10x. Subscribe for exclusive drop notifications at makersplace.com/thewolf ---- MATCHA Matcha is the easiest way to trade in DeFi. Matcha enables traders to seamlessly swap tokens using 20+ aggregated liquidity sources that deliver better prices than going to a centralized exchange or Uniswap. Connect your wallet and start today at matcha.xyz/wolf ---- LEGACY OF DEAD This episode was brought to you by Bitcasino. The worlds leading Bitcoin-led online casino and crypto-centric gaming destination. Wager your way into a world of opportunity, with the ultimate Fun, Fast and Fair crypto-casino experience. Deposit, wager, and withdraw in real-time with a host of top cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), LiteCoin (LTC), Tether (USDT), TRON (TRX), Ripple (XRP), and more! Use the promo link Bitcasino.io/Scott, to unlock your 200 FREE SPINS in the Legacy of Dead Promotion.

What's up, everybody? I'm Scott Melker, and this is the Wolf of All Streets podcast. The crypto space exploded in 2020 and has seen remarkable follow through this year, and we've only made it through the first month. Beyond just the explosion of DeFi and Bitcoin, startups like Lunar Crush, CoinSquad, and LA Blockchain Summit have added a new dimension to the space and are all ideas that blossomed in an entrepreneur's head. A large reason why these startups and many others have succeeded is because venture studios like Draper Gorin Home have supported and assisted them from the beginning. Today's guest, Alon Gorin, is a founding partner of Draper Gorin Home, partnering up with legendary investor Tim Draper to energize the crypto

startup scene. I can't wait to find out the ins and outs of crypto and blockchain startups and what it takes to build a successful crypto company from the ground. Alon, thank you so much for being here. Thank you so much for having me. This is awesome. I'm so stoked to be here. As am I. So before we get into the questions, once again, you're listening to the Wolf of Wall Street's podcast, where twice a week I talk to your favorite personalities from the worlds of Bitcoin, finance, trading, art, music, sports, and politics. This show is powered by BlockWorks Group, a media company with over 20 podcasts in their network. You can check them out at blockworksgroup.io. And if you like the podcast, follow me on Twitter. You should check out my

website and join my newsletter. You can do both of those things at thewolfofallstreets.io. Now to get to what's important. I couldn't help but notice that one of your specialties on LinkedIn was punk rock. Can you tell me a bit more about this specialty? It was, it was actually kind of funny. So I added that to LinkedIn so many years ago. And I remember somebody, I had, I overheard somebody once tell me that somebody else was Instagram famous. It was like right when Instagram launched like, oh, she's Instagram famous. Oh, that guy, he's Instagram famous. And so as a joke, I created an Instagram and on it, I put LinkedIn famous. That was my bio. But, you know, I was a punk rocker growing up. I still consider myself a punk rocker, you know, from a really, really young

age. I was sort of obsessed with like reading the lyrics books of albums so you know when when I got uh my first cd player or whatever and people were giving me these cds and I'm reading the lyrics and they all kind of sucked it was kind of just really disappointing you know like all the bands you hear on the radio and uh my brother um at some point when he was in high school and he's four years older than me or this brother's four years older than me uh got me a bad religion album like he somehow found out about bad religion and i started reading the lyrics and then realized that the dudes who they're much older than me grew up you know 15 minutes away from where i was growing

up in the valley here in southern californ it like, it like completely flipped something in my head. And I started collecting all these albums. And then you would open up the lyrics books. And you'd see flyers from the previous shows. And so you'd start seeing the names of the other bands. And I'd be like, ooh, Ill Repute, like, that sounds like a cool band or Bad Brains. That sounds like a cool brand I better go go to the record store buy their albums and so I started getting obsessed with it and over time it sort of became became you know almost a way of life right so I uh I joke that you know I was a teenager I was in punk bands I had my own little independent record label you know I'm wearing a Nardcore shirt today because Nardcore is for a community from Oxnard California and and they go by Nardcore you know i'm wearing a nardcore shirt today this nardcore is for a community from oxnard california and and they go by nardcore you know oxnard hardcore and these bands now are you know

a bunch of us older people and maybe even older and but they're still out there they're still making music and you know to me i joke that the, the blockchain stuff and what we do is really a different medium with the same message, right? We were screaming about power to the peaceful and open borders and being inclusive and things like that. And all I've ever done in technology and all the things that I've either invested in

or built myself all had the same exact ethos, had the same exact ideas, right? So I'm still considering myself a punker, even though I wish I made music or goofed around more with it. And I also read that your first foray really into business or to some degree was a website that you built with music in mind, correct? Yeah, actually. So I'm trying, yeah. So the first, so, you know, as a teenager, I had my own record label and I would actually, I would, I would just, I was just talking to somebody about this because they were talking about NFT creation and how, you know, creating music NFTs could be a new distribution model and this and that.

And I explained that the model wasn't that different, what they were discussing, but what we did as teenagers. We couldn't afford to print 1,000 CDs. But at a certain point, I'm trying to think of the years, around 2000, I graduated high school, I think 2001. So around 2000, CDs and manufacturing became so cheap that you could print a thousand CDs. I remember like you could do limited runs and spend a few bucks per CD, but if you printed at least a thousand, you could get them for a dollar or less fully in the package with the label, like, like the professional ones you bought at the stores. So what we did was we would throw punk rock shows at different places. Sometimes we have a library at a warehouse that wherever they'd let us skate park and we'd collect

the money at the door and we'd basically like put it in an, in an envelope. And once we reached a thousand dollars, we would put out a CD with that thousand dollars. And we'd pretty much give away the CD for free. We didn't care that people paid for it. We just wanted to cover the cost because the more people found out about it, the cool for us, that was the whole point, right? Like we weren't doing, nobody did it to make money. They were like, I have this political message in my song. I want to get out there, you know, this hardcore song. So I did that. But what happened was I was growing up and starting to get real jobs. And I got a job at MySpace, you know, while I was still going to college. So I went, switched college to part-time, went full-time into working at MySpace.

And you remember MySpace, right? Like it was a moment in time. It was the most trafficked website on the internet. I still recently, I just tweeted within the last week that MySpace was by far the greatest social platform that ever existed and it ain't even close. I totally agree with it. And in hindsight, there's some cool lessons learned too with like sort of the rise and fall of it. But it was the first time we all had sort of personalities on the internet, like that were not private, right? Like we would instant message

each other before that some of us were nerdy enough to have our own websites or something like that. But like for 99% of our friends and family, it was the first time you had like a, you know, a flag planted on the internet. It was like, this is me. You got to choose what music played when you came into our room, you know?

You got to choose what it looked like. You know, you could have an attitude. Top eight. You'd have your top eight right you could you know throw throw your friends up there or what bands you liked or what you know whatever so it was so cool and what was crazy at the time there were things like um there was a thing called open social at myspace i was actually part of a small group that became myspace music later because i worked for an internet karaoke company that was acquired by open social at MySpace. I was actually part of a small group that became MySpace Music later because I worked for an internet karaoke company that was acquired by MySpace.

It was really, really hilarious. But we saw how distribution can happen on the internet all of a sudden, right? I had a band that had 17,000 fans that if I had a show in the Val in the United States maybe 100 people came but on my space we had 17,000 we had fans I remember we had enough fans in uh in uh the Philippines that we're thinking like we almost like we were thinking about creating a fundraiser to fly to the Philippines to have a show a random punk band of kids band of kids from Thousand Oaks, California could get fans in another country, right? And in our own communities we were the misfits and weirdos and there'd be maybe 10 people at our high school that was into us, but if you went around the world all of a sudden you had distribution, you had this

interesting stuff and because money wasn't the driver right for us at least we were I was looking around and going like well there are these now these new mechanisms like I remember there was a PayPal would had just launched there was a thing called chip in that you could put on your website and it was like one of those thermometer things and every time you have keep track of it and I remember looking at these things and going like if if my goal is just to you know let's say make a thousand cds and send them to our fans and I can record for free at my friend's house if I just buy him some pizza you know I could uh I could um send these like media mail in the United States I don't know you you probably remember this sending records and things

like that if you sent a book or a record in the mail there was a discounted rate it was like two dollars or something so I remember we did the math and we're like well if a cd cost us less than a dollar all in and the media mail to ship the cd cost us two dollars if we raise three dollars per cd so three thousand dollars total we could release a new album and so we're like how come there's no way to basically set your own parameters and say I want to raise three thousand dollars if I hit this goal boom we're gonna flip a switch we're gonna we're gonna uh we're gonna release this album we're gonna send a thousand copies to the thousand people who supported us and so for only three dollars a fan and we have 17,000 of them we can can, we can release a new album. And we launched a platform

and we called it a social fundraising platform because the word crowdfunding didn't exist yet. Right. And this was in 2008. So, you know, Kickstarter and all those things didn't launch till probably like 2011 or so, maybe 2010. I'm trying to remember the timing. So, you know, like, so we did this. And what's interesting is that sort of became the first version in my head of why I wish there was some kind of blockchain or crypto payments or things like that, because one of our biggest pain points over time, you know, I wanted startups to raise money this way. I found out it was illegal because of public solicitation, because I thought, you know, how about we sell our shares to our company? That's why it was called invested in. We thought like people would invest in companies in their own communities and things

like that. And we thought bands would be able to almost sell shares, right? Like, like imagine if we said those people that paid the $3,000 originally each got like royalties or something like that. Like those were ideas we had that were way too ahead of their times because of securities laws, not because there wasn't the technology to do it. So we, we felt the need for blockchain in 2013. We like built a mining rig in our office. Real, we decided that it wasn't going to work for micro payments and, and it was like, you know, never going to get mainstream adoption. So we stopped. One of our early clients was Adam Draper, Tim Draper's son, when he launched a thing called BoostFunder, which is now Boost, his accelerator. So through that, we learned a lot about Bitcoin also. And then, you know, it all, all of those things sort of parlayed into what, what we're doing today.

You know, it, we saw the huge need. It's incredible story. It echoes so much of my younger days. I'm a few years older than you. I'm 44 and I graduated high school in 95, but you know, I used to, it was the same sort of evolution. We used to press mixed CDs. I was kind of a rap dude and I was a DJ. So I would press mix CDs and I would walk around in the streets of New York city and sell them. For me, it was about profit, you know, going to stores and try to hustle. Will you take 10 of these? Will you take 10 of these? But yeah, I had sort of the same experience. It was, so there was, there was the profitable part too. Like, cause that's what I wanted to do for a living because I worked in my dad's shop like when before I got those jobs I worked in my dad's shop that rebuilt auto parts

right so I remember thinking like I would go to deliver parts to a place in Ventura in Ventura California there's like this uh you know in in the independent uh music space there's this legendary place called Salzer's and they were selling records. So you would pop into Salzer's with like, I'd have 10 ill repute CDs, 10 California redemption CDs, 10 of our compilation CDs. And I try to work some deal or let them sell them on consignment because I, in my head, I was like, if I could sell a few of these every single, you know, week or every day, I wouldn't have to keep, you know, delivering 50 bucks a week, man. Awesome.

Yeah, exactly. And I'm blowing. Yeah, it was it was mind blowing. It's fun to look back on those days and be like, man, I wish you know, I could live off of that kind of money again. That was back in the day when you used to like take 20 bucks out of an ATM to get you through the week. Those days have clearly ended. But, you know,. So obviously having all of that experience has led you to where you are today. What I'm really curious about is to have you walk me through the process. I know that you probably, I'm going to assume, get hundreds of presentations, hundreds of pitches on your desk in any given week or month. How do you sort through them? How do you decide who you're going to take a meeting with? And what's the process look like from there to actual investment?

It's a story that many people don't tell, but it really is the story of how some of these companies go from just an idea to an actual success. 1,000%. So there's a few things that I sort of look for, but I guess if we're going process-wise, for us, it's weird. Some people send us their deck through the contact form of our website and Adam on our team looks at them and goes, Hey, here's one that looks really interesting. And, and a lot of the time, if we're being totally honest, those don't get the love that they deserve because we're so busy

and, and we're such a small team. We're sort of like a startup if you look at the way VCs normally work. We're like the startup of investors because we just do things differently. But the ones that come in, we still look at them. Adam looks at them. I wish we looked at them more and we're keeping you know changing our our processes and we were actually doing like these weekly calls now where we go through all the ones that were submitted so we're giving them more and more love so always that's an option you can always email any investor your deck and things like that um but you know the the space is crazy and we're crazy busy but the you, you know, the, most of the best, you know, introductions lead to those things. Right. So if, if Scott, if you, you know, meet some company and you send it my way, I'm going to go, Oh, I like Scott. I, you know, did his podcast. I'm, I talked

to him on Twitter or whatever. I'm going to, I'm going to take a look and take it a little bit more seriously. Right. And then Tim sends me something, for example, that went, hey, these are two guys, they seem really, really interesting. It's a little early for us, but you guys do these kinds of things. Like, what do you think? Of course, I'm going to look at it. So introductions are always the best thing. And for me, what's really, really cool, it's sort of COVID has almost helped startups in this way, if you take advantage of it, but in general, the best thing you can do as a startup is just participate in the communities and things like that. There's some investors, you know, fly under the radar. They don't show up. It's really, really hard, but, but we don't, we, we hang out. We're a part of the community. I build stuff. I'm, I'm out there,

Joseph, similarly in different ways. And then Adam on our team as well, doing the blockchain and booze events every week. And we're, we're out there, Joseph similarly in different ways, and then Adam on our team as well, doing the blockchain and booze events every week. And we're out there. And it's not hard to hang out with us and find us and corner me at one of the networking tables at the blockchain and booze events, virtually, right? Like every single week. And people have done it. And we've actually now

invested in companies and people that we met over quarantine because we do the blockchain and events. So, you know, for me, the best way for an entrepreneur to make it happen is to try to find us, try to network with us. And if you don't, you know, hit us directly, you're hanging out with our portfolio companies, with other people, you might hang out with scott and say hey scott do you know along and and ask him for an intro right like there's there's and those are the ones we take the most seriously mostly too because it's it's it basically checks the first box of our due diligence anyway because for us our first you know most of the time 99.9 of the time the first box of our due diligence anyway, because for us, our first, you know, most of the time, 99.9% of the time, the first time we write a check to a company or do something with a company,

it's a really small one. And it's through our venture studio. And the terms look kind of similar to like a tech stars or Y Combinator. But when you're investing at that crazy early stage, when it's two two people three people and an idea the people are the only thing you really can vet like i can vet that you guys can get shit done i can see a cool looking deck i can see a first version of the product but if we're being realistic we know the product today is very different than what it might look like a month from now than what it might look like a year from now and really I don't care like I really don't give a crap what the product looks like on day one I care much much more about the the people right so you mentioned Lunar Crush right off the bat I got their stickers up here and

I was like obviously a huge huge fan fan boy of theirs and and an investor in there so full disclosure whatever but I fell in love with these dudes like a year before we ever made a deal with them or did anything you know they reach they're they're the type of guys that participate in the community they ask people how they can help them and they sort of give first you know and and you start to meet these guys and I remember saying something like uh hey you guys want to they hadn't even quit their day jobs yet and but they were doing lunar crush and I liked what it was and I knew it was too early, because you can't really invest in a company when they still have a day job. And so I just told them, I think I gave them a free

booth at the at the at CIS at the LA blockchain site. And I just, you know, we've done that a couple times with companies. And then we kind of get to see behind the curtain, we see how they interact. You see how they work with the public. You see how they work with their team. You see how they treat their co-founders, their employees and things like that. You see how they take advantage of opportunities when they get up on stage and do things like that. And and, you know, it's it's the people. Right. So and there's been the opposite scenario, too where I like meet somebody like, oh, they're interesting. Let's give them booth at the summit or let's watch them when they sponsor the summer, they participate in some way. And then you're like, oh, that guy's kind of an asshole. Like I

never, and when you're a startup guy, when you're a startup person, like, or an investor, you're basically like marrying this group or like, you know, partnering with them and you're going to be working with them for five years, for 10 years, as years as long as it takes right so do you want to be stuck in a room like and we have this conversation like we we use we we have like these two conversations every time we do a deal internally the first one is like how are we going to help this company like add value and stuff like that and then the next one is you know like every once in a while if the person like if we're like a little unsure or something like that, we go like, would you be comfortable being locked in a room with this person for the next 10 years? And if you wouldn't be, it's not worth doing. Right. So, so, you know, look, there's plenty of stories of like people running big companies who are abrasive, who aren't the easiest people to

work for, who are, you know, notorious, right? And maybe we might miss some of those having that conversation. But in general, they're, you know, they have to be at least, you know, civil, right? I was raised by Israelis. So I don't, I argue with people I agree with the most, right? So, so I'm okay with that kind of thing. But at the end of the day, you want to be able to like hug the person and be like, we're still brothers, right? We're still, we're still family, right? You know, so, so that's, that's the, you know, that's for me, the most important thing is the person. So when we go through the process of meeting companies that apply to us or that we get an introduction for, you know, we do of our portfolio companies, that's actually a great way for us to meet them. Because a lot of times it means that our portfolio company is using them as a service provider or partnering with them or something like that.

And that's great validation. But if not, we'll ask our portfolio companies. Like, you know, Total introduced us to Rivet. So Total does DEX aggregation. They needed to run their own nodes. They started using Rivet because Rivet provides node infrastructure for Ethereum companies. And they said Rivet saved us thousands of dollars a month and made our product so much better. You guys should consider investing in them. That was huge, right? So then when we were talking to Rivet

and we like fell in love with their team and, know beth and greg and austin are awesome uh i started asking our other portfolio companies i went like do you run your own node or do you use one of the other services which one do you use have you tried rivet and we do that kind of due diligence but that due diligence is very meaningful like it shows that they're onto something and that they're attacking something but the hanging out with those people in the meantime and negotiating with them a little bit and dealing with them, you get to learn who they are. And that's for us the most important part of the process. It's official. The digital art market is going mainstream. It's been exploding this past year with over 10 million in sales in December alone, and it's just getting started. There's no better time than now to diversify

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all the time with BitCasino. Right. Moving along. So you somewhat have gatekeepers who are people you trust. So that the first, the first to get, get past the first boss, so to speak, is that someone you trust tells you, Hey, talk to these guys. But after that, it just becomes who you can tolerate. Yeah. It's, it's, it's, it's a bit of, you know, who, who we, you know, become friends with, right. It's like we're building out this early stage sort of clubhouse, like this crew. And we know at that crazy early stage, when it's so early, like there is this thing.

And maybe I got lucky in that my last company went through an accelerator program and I kind of saw all the people in the room. And that's where I met Tim Draper. And, you know, I saw the people in the room and a that's where I met Tim Draper. And, you know, I saw the people in the room and a lot of the companies ultimately failed years later, but then I saw what they did next. And some of them had successful next companies. Some of them, when they failed, they joined the other companies as their CTOs, as their co-founders, as their employees,

whatever. And so what I learned is that having that clubhouse of people because at that early stage lots of companies will fail you know like we haven't had one yet because we're early in the blockchain space we've been doing this just a few years but I expect some to fail but I know for example that if any certain ones of them fail I would beg to try and get them on the other people's team or to build another thing with them or to invest in them again, because they're just great people that you want to work with. So I know, for example, that a company that just recently talked to us would be an amazing partner for one of our portfolio companies and putting them together could do something even better. Right. So to me, it's like surrounding yourself with these super early in the space,

smart people. And I just know good things are going to come, are going to come from that. It's really interesting that you say that maybe it's because you're early, but you haven't really had any fail because I think that the public perception of VC is that it's almost like you're putting a number, you're putting a few dollars on every number on the roulette wheel and hoping that you don't get cleared out and enough of them hit. But there's that perception that like, I'm going to invest in 20 companies, 19 are going to disappear. One of them is going to be 100 times my investment and that's how I'm successful as a venture capitalist. But it doesn't sound like that's the case with you. Well, so there's sort of a few sides to it.

So like, I'm not the best, like I wasn't a good student. So it's weird. Like the VC world has a lot of people who went to Stanford, went to Harvard Business School, then did this. And there's like that path of like,

this is what it takes to be a VC, which is sort of flipped upside down at this point. And it's very different than it ever was before. But that's how the traditional world look I'm not that guy but I also am the guy that reads reports from people who are those people and I really trust it and believe it and understand it so I as crazy as some things may seem or maybe even feel you know Joseph and I talk about this all the time we'll post things in it's more transparent now that a lot more people are taking advantage of social media and LinkedIn and Twitter

and Reddit and all these things. But we used to make these posts on Twitter or on LinkedIn and people would be like, this is kind of a goofy thing. Like I've never seen an investor talk like that publicly or whatever. But it always behind the scenes has a really specific reason that we did something like that, right? Like we might make some announcement or something knowing that something

else happened behind the scenes or that we're looking to hire somebody that would respond to this well, or we're looking to find a company in this space or to do something, right? So, you know, I look at the data that, so as goofy as it might seem that we're building this clubhouse and this and that, and we kind of on Twitter, I will let my freak flag fly and I'll argue politics and I'll do things that other people maybe wouldn't want to do in this world. There's a reason for that, right? Like we're a part of the community and I am a part of that community. And then when we do our conference, I'll sometimes wear a suit and I'll be that guy because I need to raise money. People don't realize, but investors also are constantly raising money for their funds. So I have to play a different role in that side. where was I getting at? Sort of this idea of early stage startups and most of them failing and stuff like that. What you learn is that one, there is a really, really high failure rate,

the earlier you get into the startup space. But if you look at the data, that's really, really actually interesting. And again, the crypto people should understand this better than anyone, you know, joking about weak hands versus strong hands and stuff like that. You know, the early stage startup model can look like, and for some people is spray and pray, right? Like that mentality, right? And I had an early stage investor, just as an example, who was an ex Goldman Sachs guy. And he was like a mathematician, freaky genius guy. And he called me one day and it was clearly like a humble brag

kind of call. Like he called me out of nowhere and I go, Hey man, how's it going? And he goes, he goes, great. I'm now fully diversified. And I was like, what? And I could tell he was like digging, right? Like, so I was like, what does that mean? And he goes, I made my 42nd startup investment. And this is an individual angel investor guy. And I'm doing, I'm starting to do the math in my head. I'm like, how much did he invest in our company? Cause he's like invest that much. I'm like, holy crap, that's a lot of freaking money.

And so I'm thinking about it and he goes, he goes, so when I was at Goldman Sachs, we did data on angel investors. And we learned that if the average angel investor invests in 42 companies, they'll break even. And I was like, that's terrible. I think he goes, I think I'm smarter than the average angel investor, but we'll see. And that's that was like his his weird, humble call. And then he asked me how the startup was doing and this and that. He's one of the first early investors in Robinhood. So I know he's done good. Having a bad day. Not that anyone knows when we're talking, but it's full GameStop AMC movie theaters today. So yes. Yeah. I was seeing that this morning before coming on. It looks

they're having an interesting day for sure. So crazy. So anyway, if you look at the data, right, diversifying and having a huge startup portfolio helps. But what you learn is if you look at early stage venture capital, and there's ones that do better and there's ones that do worse, but early stage venture capital as a category, if you're getting so super nerdy into the data, is the highest performing venture capital category. Late, it's also the riskiest. So there are some funds that do horribly and lose money because, you know, they just missed out.

And there's some funds that do incredibly well that make up for it. The people who get in on the Ubers, the people who get in on the Airbnbs and things like that. But as a category, early stage venture capital is the highest performing category. Then a subcategory of that that performs the best is B2B actually, which is really interesting because we only hear about the Facebooks, the Airbnbs, the Ubers, the consumer facing stuff, but behind the scenes, every single, we talk about FinTech and financial technology because of crypto and Bitcoin and everything,

behind the scenes, it'll be the service provider that settles transactions for NASDAQ, right? And you've never even heard of them, but they're worth $20 billion or whatever, right? And they, you know, so those companies, you know, have performed at least in the last 10 years or so the best. So, but if you look at the companies and drill down,

so now we're getting into the nerdy, you know, paying attention to data part of it. And this is, this now, because for the first time ever applies to us too, as crypto traders, as investors, because we can participate more and more in, in the arena we haven't been allowed to participate in.ios. The bigger portfolio, the more likely they were one of the ones that were the top decile, top quartile, whatever performing funds. So bigger portfolio is better. It doesn't mean you just throw money at every single deal. That's kind of stupid. But the bigger portfolio, the better. And then most of the value came, obviously, the earlier you are, the bigger chunk you

can get of a company, the valuation is lower. But a majority of the value created was in the opportunities for them to double down on the winning companies. So when a company failed, it failed. no harm, no foul in their eyes, you know, obviously, they want them to succeed. But if it doesn't, and the people are good, they have another person to invest in again later. And if they failed, and the people were bad, you know, they won't talk to them again. But when the companies do well, when you know, the Airbnb goes to raise their next round of funding, they have the option to lead that round of funding

or to participate in it. And they keep doubling down as it goes. And each time they double down, there's less and less risk as well. So- Averaging up. Yes, you're averaging up. You're dollar cost averaging, right?

So that's what's interesting about those funds is that ability. So for us, we have our venture studio. Right now we have 20 portfolio companies in it and we're still always looking for more. And now we're sort of in the process of still raising it and doing some things like that. But we have our fund and our fund is there

to catch some of the companies we might've missed at that super early stage, but mostly is there to double some of the companies we might have missed at that super early stage but mostly is there to double down on our companies when when they're winning and when they're doing well and if the other companies don't get to that stage it's fine because they'll probably start something new they'll probably join some of our other companies we'll figure it out but you know it it like i said you it is weird in a way that none have sort of failed yet but again we're early stage um and uh and it's also you know um uh i think that we we're not the like tech stars y combinator where it really is just an idea i think that the crypto space at least up until now maybe

now it'll change with all this hype and stuff. People had to prove it way harder to raise money than they did in other stages. It's the same reason why minority led startups and women led startups perform better on average than others, because there is biases. People hated blockchain or Bitcoin. People, you know, I won't use the word hate, but are biased towards women and minorities, whether they are conscious about it or not. And so they have to overcome much bigger hurdles to get to the same stage that maybe somebody else that's not in the space or somebody, a couple of white dudes or whatever it is, get to. And so they, I think they're strong, they have a stronger foundation. So when we make our first bet on average, that those companies have a stronger foundation than maybe the average other

startup. Like it's just this last year for the first time had VCs call me up and be like, Hey, what deals are you in? And things like that. A year ago, they would like be like, Oh, you're still doing that blockchain thing. That's cute. You know, like, so yeah, first they laugh. Exactly. What's interesting to me, I guess it seems surprising that you say, you know, 42 is mathematically the number, but I guess when you really drill in and think about it, that's a passive investment, right? You're just throwing your money out there, betting on a whole bunch of horses and hoping for the best. If you're taking active investment, I would imagine that it's much less because if you're a talented person and you know how to grow a company and you're investing something that you're going to then spend your time on, I would

imagine that dramatically increases the chances of success and you don't need to be at 42 just to break even. I agree wholeheartedly. And there's, there's like these different ways of looking at it. I thought that seemed insane as well, but I admit, but then I took a step back and I sort of thought about angel groups, right? And angel groups of 10 years ago are different than they were today. Today, they're much more sophisticated. There's more information and, and they're more organized in different ways. But angel groups of 10 plus years ago, when I started previous companies, they were just really unsophisticated. You go in the room to pitch to them, and it would be, you know, this is sort of,

you know, talk about GameStop, right? Like the difference in information and being able to crowdsource things. But you'd go into a room of angel investors, one back in the day, and still today for the most part, but on some deals can be different. They could only accredited investors could participate, right? So it means you had to be a millionaire or you had to make a certain amount of money every year to participate. And what, because of that reason, if when you went into an angel investor sort of group,

half of the angel investors were not there to see the companies. They were there to sell shit to the other members. So half the room was a waste of time to begin with. They were accountants and lawyers and service providers that were trying to sell to the people who had money in the room. So, so instantly that was, that was a waste. Then the other half of the room were wealthy, generally older people, because, you know, like none of us starting our careers

were millionaires. Right. So, so I'm still not one. So, but you know, there's, there's, there's, you know, you're in this room and you're selling to people and you're trying to sell innovation, right. You're trying to sell, we were trying to sell, you know, financial innovation. We're trying to sell a whole new system, but the old system is what made these people rich. And then on top of that, the people who are watching you are a lot of times they can afford to invest, but they could also be accountants or lawyers or doctors. The largest actual profession, at least 10 years ago, when I was doing, gathering this data and stuff like that, the largest profession of accredited investors

were doctors. So I'm trying to sell financial technology to a room full of doctors who have no clue what I'm talking about. They're smart people, but they don't know what I'm talking about. And sometimes there wouldn't be a person in the room that could shepherd them through a deal or talk to them. So they, these groups, you know, and these people remember when they make an angel investment on average, the check size would be like 25, 50 K. And, but when they invested in a real real estate fund or something like that, they would invest half a million dollars or a million dollars. So for them, this was a bit of gambling money too. So they had really high failure rates in these angel groups back then, less so now because people are much more sophisticated. There's all sorts of other

things. But so that's, that's a part of, of that whole sort of crazy realm. But, but, but, you know, I think that, that what you're saying about the value add person, right? Like if you came on the board of a company, you have all of this expertise in distribution, in media, in crypto, and in blockchain, and all these things that you know well, and you would be a value add to them. And I would even argue that guys like you and other people in our industry and a lot of individual angel investors, what they would bring to the table would be worth a lot more than the check that they write. And in a way, that's how we start with all of our companies. Because I know that when we write the first 25 to 50K check to a company, the amount of money is not going to get them as far as what we

can add value. Like I mentioned before that we them as far as what we can add value. Like I mentioned before that we have that conversation of how can we add value? We've had conversations with, you know, somebody building, you know, something in the medical space, right? That's on the blockchain. It's something related to blockchain, but we had the conversation of like, we have no freaking clue how we're going to help this company. Our database of people in the blockchain space aren't going to be using this company. Our investor network we have might be interesting, but can add some value, but we're not tied

into the medical community. And then at the end of the day, I can't sit with them and have a product session and whiteboard it or write down what I think and do it. Because I have no freaking clue anything about this industry. Right. And, and so we end up not doing the deal, but we like the person, but we can't help or add value. And that's how we start with our conversation. And by the way, if somebody takes, it's like tech stars or Y Combinator, if you don't believe that Y Combinator is going to, you know, add a lot of value, you'd be stupid to take their

small check for that large piece of equity. And it would be the same thing with us. If we sit down together and you're like, hey, Alon's cool, but he doesn't add any value to us or anything, you'd be dumb to take our terms because our first terms are, we own a significant chunk of the company. But if you sit down with us and, you know, we're Lunar Crush and we know that we have access to the community and we do certain things and we work together really well and you think, you know what, we're bringing on like a new co-founder, then you do the deal together. It's a mutual thing. So with angel investors, it's kind of the same way because there are some angel investors who had a ton of value. But what I would say is I keep,

I've done this before. Like there's these you've heard this before for sure, but investors will say something like startups need to be really, really careful in which investors they choose to invest in their company. And that's a luxury that like 1% of startups have. It's just the money, man. Being the teenage entrepreneur you and somebody offering you like $25,000 and be like, you know, I'm not sure this is the right fit. Yeah.

You bend over backwards, do whatever the fuck it takes to get that 25 K. So, so, you know, it's, there's, there's, there's two sides to everything. And I've had the best experiences with some investors and I've had the worst experiences with some investors, but you really don't know until you do it unless you have a lot of time with that person in advance. But again, that's a luxury only few companies have and get. So you touched on the old angel investor groups and that everybody had to be accredited. So you sort of had this, I mean, it was guaranteed what kind of room you were going to be walking into just as a result of their income.

What do you make of accreditation laws and the fact that largely angel investing, venture capital, hedge funds, all these things are only accessible to wealthier people and are not accessible? You even touched on earlier, you said, hey, we have these ideas, but securities law didn't really allow it. You can't crowdfund equity in a company at that time. Why? That's a great question. So, so, you know, so I built a following in the crowdfunding space. And a lot of people actually didn't like me in the crowdfunding space, because I go on stage and basically say that accredited investor rules are screwed. Like they're just terrible. And there's two sort of approaches in that industry at the time. There are people who are like, you know, hey, we've got to work with the governments. We've got to do what we can. And we've got to be nice to them because if we're aggressive and mean to them, we're not going to

get anything done, which is probably true, right? Like if you want to work with somebody, but like fundamentally accredited investor rules are un-american like the idea of being an american and being land of the free and being able to do whatever we want and be able to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps it's it like is mind-blowing and offensive right and these new sort of and then they do these weird things that are even in my opinion more offensive like first they went okay we want to protect investors so even like so the general idea the general idea was maybe it with good intention right we want to protect investment maybe like you know because it was done in the 40s and 50s in the in a time when we don't want the little guy to make a bad investment and lose

all of their money because it's all they could afford, all they have in the world. And their idea, it came from the idea of somebody selling like fake railroad stock or maybe even real railroad stock. But like for a railroad that wasn't going to do anything like in a bar, you know, you're smoking a cigar, having a whiskey like, hey, bro, you know, Scott, you want to invest in my railroad? And then you invest and there is no railroad, right? Welcome to the internet. Exactly. But the thing that that's crazy is, is you can't regulate fraud, right? Like if, if somebody wants to defraud somebody, they don't give a shit what the regulation is. So, so you're not protecting anyone from anything by creating, you know, hindering regulation. You're only slowing down innovation. But the thing that's, that's crazy

about it now at this point, they went, okay, you're right. There are people who should be able to participate in early stage deals and in things because they're sophisticated enough to understand. So we'll create, like, how about we create a test, which is fucking crazy because it's like saying like, oh, if you're not wealthy enough, you might not be smart enough. So we're going to give you this test. It's like saying like, oh, if you're not rich, you're stupid. So pass this test to prove you're not stupid and then we'll let you participate.

Like, so apart. So I think that's insane. I've sort of come around on this idea that if they got rid of the laws that had to do with how much wealth you have, but you gave everybody across the board, even the rich people that same test, I'd be okay with it. But like the fact that like, it seems really dumb, like we could go to the to a car dealership and make very little money and buy a car we shouldn't buy, like we can, we're allowed to make irresponsible decisions, right? We can, we can go to Vegas and just completely wreck ourselves, right? Like we can do all that.

And there isn't like a test, like when you walk through the casino, that can you afford to lose this money? Of course there isn't. And when we go to a car dealership, like I could go buy a Honda Civic and have $100 a month payment, or I could go buy a Maserati

and get a $1,500 a month payment. And nobody is stopping me from other than maybe my credit score and that dealership, but I guarantee you, they'll find a way to get you out the door. You know, if you want, if you want any, yeah, they'll just give you a more predatory loan, right? Which apparently it's, it's totally legal for a company to give you a predatory loan that you can never pay back. And for you to literally be given a payment that doesn't pay off principal of loan that you can never pay back. And for you to literally be given a payment that doesn't pay off principal of your car

and only pays off interest, if you're not to understand. But God forbid, I invest in my best friend's idea. Yeah. My last job before MySpace was at Countrywide. And this was pre-financial crisis, right before it. And they had an employee. There was an employee whose job it was

to sell loans to the other employees at Countrywide. And at the time, my wife and I were dating, we were like, you know, get it, they were serious. And I was like, looking at maybe to buy a condo or something. And housing prices at that time were inflated, too, if you remember. And I remember them telling me I was making like maybe nine dollars an hour or something I was low man on the total I was as an assistant to somebody in the systems architecture group so I was like an assistant to the computer nerd group so I was like in my element but like still the lowest on the total you could be and they were trying to convince me somebody was making like nine bucks an hour not even full time that I'd be able to

you know you know we could do this zero interest mortgage. You could totally, and, and you're right. Your girlfriend works too. She'll be pitching into the thing. We can write that into the application. You'll get a loan. And I was like, I was looking at the math going like, this is stupid. You know, this is like 90% of my paycheck to pay the monthly bill on a 0% interest. That's going to get paying. You're actually not paying for anything, but interest, right? It makes no sense, right? Like none of this, none of this stuff, or not zero interest, but, but interest only, right? Interest only. Yeah. I knew what you meant.

So, you know, it made no sense, right. But they can, they're allowed to do that. Makes sense if the number only goes up, which it had in real estate for, you know, hundreds of years effectively, you know you know, but if you right now without that would have been the worst. Yeah, even still right now, if you said, hey, everyone, I'm raising money for my company, like, like we can make up a company. We have a company called bearish stickers. We're launching it right now. Anybody watching this come invest in my company uh if if i don't follow certain rules which are would be really hard to do if you went direct to me without going to republic or some platforms and yeah i'm breaking securities laws yeah right now

and a lot of our friends in the crypto space might be breaking securities laws may or may not be depending on the way they do their thing too but they're not defrauding anyone they're not lying to anyone they're not doing anything wrong in that sense, right? And it's offensive and crazy to think like, even banking the way it started was a community sort of effort. People pooled their money together, gave it to someone and then they distributed the profits

and how communities got together. So for our community to not be able to do something for a member, my neighbor to start his own landscaping business and not be able to raise money from his friends and family in the neighborhood. It's crazy and offensive, right? Like, you can think of it from a small business perspective, but you can also think of it from a large business perspective. And so, you know, that's the craziness of these rules and laws. And I'm very, very outspokenly against any kind of accreditation rules and laws.

I think they've gotten in the way. And even in the crypto spaces, for me, the first time I've seen people actually put their money where their mouth is. And I talked to Americans who are like in Singapore and other places were like, I can't launch my company in the United States, I'm scared to be physically in the United States when I do this, because I know what's going to

happen. Like it's, it's, we're, we're going to, you know, start to see the crazy effects of this, if we don't get our act together. That said, one positive thing, I don't know if you've followed this in the crowdfunding space, but reg CF, the lowest level of crowdfunding, it's the regulation crowdfunding, just upped their limits to $5 million. So companies using it can raise up to $5 million. So I have a feeling over the next couple of years, we'll see some cool companies raising on Republic and some of the other campaigns, other platforms from actual members of their community and people

putting in 50 bucks, 100 bucks versus, you know, the angels. Yeah. And what's amazing is that it's, I mean, it's not uniquely American. There are rules like this in other places, but largely the rest of the world is able to participate in these projects, especially in crypto. And it's just us that can't. And then you even drill in worse. It's like, maybe there's something I can do because I'm in Florida, but if you're in New York, no way. Yeah. Yeah. No, my cousin who's in New York was like, hey, I went to go buy this

token. And they said, because I'm in New York, I can't buy it, you know, and it's, it's, it's so it's so weird. The whole the whole thing is, is is so, you know, it's just so so backwards, right. And when I say the thing about it being un-American, it's not because it's only unique to America, but it's like, it's un-American to the American dream that we grew up with. My parents are immigrants, they came here from another country on their honeymoon, basically, and never left. And, and they started their own businesses. And that's how I was raised. And it was, you know, it's a, you know, tough, right. But that's sort of the whole, that's the story of America, right? Like every politician, both sides of the aisle, talk about the American dream, talk about all this stuff. But, you know, if we look historically, at least for the last hundred years or so, banks and the regulations and the regulators of those banks and those large financial institutions have actually created a bigger, I don't know, not bigger, but have perpetuated the inequalities, right? Like it was crazy offensive. I don't know, not bigger, but have perpetuated the inequalities, right? Like,

it was crazy offensive. I don't know if you saw the thing, maybe it was a month ago or so, when the, I'm forgetting off the top of my head. So but but research this people, if you're listening, you know, a few of the politicians said that these stable coins and these groups need to be regulated, because essentially, yeah, yes, exactly. And they're doing banking-like transactions and bank charters are there to protect minorities. They're there to protect the innocent and they need to get their own bank charter. Banks are the biggest group who have held down minorities. Crypto is racist is basically what they said. Stable coins are a form of racism. What? Aren't we supposed to be, I mean, isn't it literally the opposite? Isn't that what we're here for? Freedom for people who are unbanked and don't have the same options and are held down by the legacy systems? It was so absurd. So absurd. so crazy absurd exactly it's like and and you know it's it's just like I actually um I'm about

to do this uh I did a thing um Rodney Sampson one of our um one of our uh um venture partners at our fund I met him many years ago got super lucky in meeting him in the crowdfunding space I actually met him the same day I met Joseph my partner we. We spoke on a panel together at South By, and we were talking crowdfunding. And he actually invited me to a conference he did called Kingonomics. And he wrote a book called Kingonomics Applying Dr. Martin Luther King's Teachings to Economics, basically. And Martin Luther King actually wrote a bunch of economic essays and papers and things like that, talking about how the economic disparities

are perpetuating a lot of these inequalities. And so, you know, I actually am buying, I did a giveaway on Twitter where I'm buying 20 copies of his book and giving them to people who did it. But what's crazy interesting about all that stuff is is you know just the years and years and years and and i was ignorant to this i didn't fully understand it until more recently of that redlining of all those things that are happening

in the banking institutions and and we thought of it as, you know, borderless stuff, like people in other countries. Like when I talked about Bitcoin in 2015, I talked about how I was going to change the world for other countries. I didn't even buy any at the time because in my mind, it was just another form of money. And just like I wouldn't buy, you know, I don't need to hold the euros because I need to transact in Europe. But I talked about how I's going to change the world for these other countries and marginal differences.

But the more I learned and understood our current system in the United States and the more this politics is bubbling up the way it is now, regardless of which side you believe in, I think most people believe it's a major shit show and they're all offended and upset right now. Our own system needs to be completely

rearranged and the financial system is really what runs it. The largest contributors to all political campaigns on both sides of the aisle are financial institutions. And of inequality gap, whether you believe in which way it needs to be fixed, you recognize that it exists and it exists because of these legacy issues and they need to completely be revamped. I agree, that had to be the fastest hour of conversation in my mind that I've ever had. Sorry, I just had to, I realized my phone charger came, came on the, or my laptop. No, my, yeah, my laptop popped out. So I was like,

oh shit, I'm running out of battery. That was fast. Yes, I know we're up against it though, but I still want to go, I want to ask you, you know, in your position with how incredible the back end of 2020 was, and I guess how miserable the beginning front end of 2020 was, but, you know, for crypto, what are you most excited about for the rest of this year? You know what, for me, I'm excited about all these products being built, you know, like I'm a huge fan and nerd for DeFi and what's going on there but you know like what's really neat is that it's still a drop in the bucket so like these you know everybody's talking right now about like Polkadot and things like that because their market caps you know skyrocket and and things like that but even groups and we recently made an investment in that space

you know full disclosure but like even like groups that are sort of sleepers for the last couple of years, like Tezos, are all of a sudden building DeFi communities. And you can see the value in them because of the growth in Ethereum and the gas fees and the reason why there maybe needs to be some different platforms. And I'm not a maximalist in any particular platform. I think that all of them have the ability to basically do one of two things, right? Either banks are going to go out of business because of them, or they're going to have to compete because of them. But no matter what, the people win. And so this year, I'm excited for the maturity of some of these things because even $100 billion locked in DeFi is significant, but it's a drop in the bucket compared to the legacy financial systems.

In the United States, we have $7 trillion in alternatives a year, right? So if you think about that compared to DeFi, they're laughing at us. Like, we're cheering Iran going, holy shit, it's happening. And they're like, this is nothing, right? But, you know, first they laugh, right? Like I think you joked before. It's coming for them. And I think that the products being built are just getting better and better and better and more usable. And I think that Bitcoin doing what it's doing is driving so many more eyeballs, driving so much more usable. And I think that Bitcoin doing what it's doing is driving so many more eyeballs, driving so much more engagement. But because of the politics, because of all of the stuff that's been sucking up the media lately, they're still not talking about it that much. So, you know,

speaking of Lunar Crush that we mentioned before, if you look at the social data for any cryptocurrency or Bitcoin in general, they're still talking about it less on average today than even a year ago. Even around the time of the last hack. So what's crazy about that is when the media catches up, maybe when some of this politics news dies down or when something happens, everyone is talking about it. And at this point, they've heard about it for years and they're more comfortable with the idea and they go well i guess we were wrong about not participating before or whatever that is so and behind the scenes i see our portfolio company so on the defi side everyone just hits the ground running boom boom boom on the more regulated side the

people who were sort of being more methodical trying to work with the banks or work within the current rails of the system and things like that but use blockchain to streamline and make it more democratized or whatever they've been hitting the pavement for like two three four years and all of a sudden I'm seeing the bank participation and stuff like that and and that's going to be really exciting to see like what happens when security tokens actually are a thing, like when digital securities are a thing, you know, the head of NASDAQ said within 10 years, they expect all of their stocks and securities to be digitized, tokenized and digitized. Right. So, so what happens when,

when that occurs, right? Like when, when it really makes it super easy for us to invest in that startup that's in another country or vice versa. And I think all of those things are going to really, really start to play out this year. And so I'm just super stoked on all of it. And I think that, you know, every time there's this big rush, a lot of goofballs come around a lot of uh people come in thinking they could just print money out of thin air scammers and and pains in the asses and that's not fun but in those people there's there's sort of bandwagoners who who who learn and become true believers or those people go away very quickly because this is a smart industry we don't really

you know there are people that get scammed and I've been one of them, but for the most part, we're a crowdsourced group of like, I don't even count myself in that, but we're a crowdsourced group of like the smartest people in the world, right? Like you sit in a room at a blockchain conference and it's just like mind blowing, right?

So more people participating that, more people supporting that, I think is only going to just exponentially drive everything, whether it means crypto prices go up, which, you know, personally, that's wonderful. Not, you know, no secret that a whole Bitcoin and stuff like that. But from a Draper Gorham Holmes portfolio company perspective, smart people from other industries coming in and starting companies in this space and using this technology, only good for all of us. And so I'm just so stoked on this inflection point. I think it's happening now. I know we've been kind of saying that for years internally, but look around, it's happening. Yeah, it's happening. Thank you, global economic system for proving us right. I mean, it's pretty glaring at this point

that at least a part of part of the theory that we've had for so many years was, was correct. So where can everybody find you follow you after this interview? At Alon Goren on Twitter. If you're a company, go to the Draper Go On Home website, we actually on the Draper Go On Home website, we just added a bunch of things. But the most important kind of cool thing to me for the community is the events page. Because we do our one giant event every year, LA Blockchain Summit.

And our biggest one in person had about 5,000 people at it at the LA Convention Center. But this last year, we had over 40,000 live streams of the conference when it was when we had to do a virtual one. And Adam just shared with me yesterday. And so we posted all over the place that we just hit over 150,000 streams of the conference. So the fact that it's virtual is really epic. And I think that there's you know podcasts like yours there's events like ours and all these things are just free content for for everyone to learn about the space and uh i think there's no excuses at this point like everyone should participate and learn

and so you know go check out those events all of our events have always been and always will be free and you know we might make the uh-person events, if there's restrictions and things like that, start to cost money. But we, at this point, we basically made the conscious decision that, one, we always give certain groups free tickets. So if college students, all of the HBCUs that Rodney is a part of, get free tickets and things like that. But now, live streaming globally, always every one of our events will be free. So share it, participate. And, you know, for us, that's the biggest sort of gift and most

important thing we can give is, you know, getting more people into this industry. So check that out. And, and thank you so much for having me, man. This is fun. I've been a fan, you know, following you on Twitter and getting your newsletter and, and watching these, these podcasts with other people. So thank you. I really, really appreciate it. I didn't even know that you were in the newsletter. So, you know, news to me, news to me. So very, very cool. And I really appreciate it. I didn't even know that you were in the newsletter. So, you know, news to me, news to me. So very, very cool. And I really appreciate it. We'll have to follow this up later in the end of the year

and see how 2021 actually went. Sounds good, man. I'm happy to do it anytime, round two. Maybe, you know what? I've been doing a live stream every Friday morning with one of our portfolio company CEOs every time. I said I wanted to like once a month or so squeeze in a random person that's not a portfolio company CEO. Maybe we'll reverse it the other way and I'll ask you some questions.

Definitely not a portfolio company CEO. So if that's the only qualification, I'm in.