This Week in Startups - Twitter ideas, Elizabeth Holmes trial update, universal USB-C + Ellevest's Sallie Krawcheck | E1578

Episode Date: October 5, 2022

J+M start the show by suggesting some Twitter product ideas (1:59), before ripping through a lightning round of news. (16:26) Then, Molly welcomes Ellevest CEO and Co-Founder Sallie Krawcheck to kick ...off another season of The Next Unicorns! (31:09) (0:00) J+M tee up today's topics! (1:59) Jason suggests some Twitter product ideas (14:48) LinkedIn Marketing -  Get a $100 LinkedIn ad credit at LinkedIn.com/nextunicorn (16:26) News lightning round: Elizabeth Holmes has sentencing postponed due to incident with a key witness, Europe votes in favor of universal USB-C charging (28:55) OpenPhone - Get an extra 20% off any plan for your first 6 months at https://openphone.com/twist  (31:09) Ellevest CEO Sallie Krawcheck joins Molly to discuss her women-focused investing platform (39:06) Helpware - Go to https://helpware.com/TWIST to get $1000 off your first invoice (40:31) Ellevest total assets, launch story, COVID's harsher impact on women (51:39) Sallie's background on Wall Street, turning haters into customers (1:00:13) Sallie shares thoughts on the current macro environment Check out Ellevest: https://www.ellevest.com FOLLOW Sallie: https://twitter.com/salliekrawcheck FOLLOW Jason: https://linktr.ee/calacanis FOLLOW Molly: https://twitter.com/mollywood Ellevest State of Women’s Financial Wellness in 2022: https://s3.amazonaws.com/production.assets.ellevest.com/documents/Ellevest-The-State-of-Womens-Financial-Wellness-in-2022.pdf

Transcript
Discussion (0)
Starting point is 00:00:00 Hey, everybody. It is a Wednesday. Wednesday. We're just ignoring. We're just having fun to it. It's a fun Wednesday. We have a fun Wednesday. Well, you know, I'd like to talk about some of my ideas. I have some ideas for Twitter. So some people have, I don't know, they've seen some of my communications around my ideas. You know, I'm an idea guy, a product guy. I think of ideas. And I wanted to unpack one of my ideas for the DM product and how Twitter might be more useful for marketers and brands and celebrities and content creators.
Starting point is 00:00:34 Revenue, revenue, revenue. And then we got a curveball in the Elizabeth Holmes trial. We're going to talk about Europe voting in favor of universal USBC. And now we're going to start. Might respond. Yes. And then I have one of my gadget picks thrown in there as well as a bonus. And then we start the next Unicorn series is our series,
Starting point is 00:00:54 where we interview people we think we'll be creating potentially the next great Unicorn Company, a company worth over a billion dollars, and we have our first one in our latest 2022 series. It's going to be a great show. Stick with us. This week in Startups is brought to you by LinkedIn Marketing. To redeem a free $100 LinkedIn ad credit and launch your first campaign, go to LinkedIn.com slash Next Unicorn. Openphone. As a startup founder, a lot of mistakes are easy to roll back, but using your personal cell phone number as your company number isn't one of them. Open Phone makes it easy to get business phone numbers for you and your team, right on top of your existing devices. Visit openphone.com slash twist to get 20% off your first six months.
Starting point is 00:01:43 And HelpWare helps you outsource the tasks that slow your team down. From data entry to world-class customer support, Helpware can help make you Bionic. Go to helpware.com slash twist to get $1,000 off your first invoice. All right, it is Wednesday. It is Wednesday, am I correct, Molly? Is it? It is. It is.
Starting point is 00:02:06 Hang in there, boss. I know, you're living every day twice right now. It's like that week in the world. I don't know what it's about, but like yesterday was not acceptable as a day. Today is off to a middling start. And I'm not alone. Like, everybody was feeling the same way. It's just a, I am used to.
Starting point is 00:02:23 to podcasting, you know, I'm involved in podcasting for a long time. I've never had a day, or, you know, like a two or three day period where my entire podcast feed is me. And, you know, like, you had a weird... Of, like, everybody commenting on my text
Starting point is 00:02:40 messages, uh, yeah, it was very weird, like two or three days. I was like, I don't want to skip this episode. It's boring. You're like, I don't like this show. God, this is podcasting is boring. You're like, I just want to read the recaps. I don't want to feel like me with all the Game of Thrones programs. Like, I don't want to have to engage here.
Starting point is 00:02:55 The good news is you don't have to. The bad news is, there it is every day. Twitter break, like I said, let's take this week on. Twitter break. Actually, no, I have a lot of ideas for Twitter. Suddenly, I am feeling a lot of idea juices flowing. I just want to talk about one idea I have here at the top of the show. Okay.
Starting point is 00:03:14 There are people who, you know, you sign up and you follow an account, right? So do you, some people have a rule. I don't follow any businesses on Twitter. Other people are like, I love United. Like, that's my jam or I'm into Amman hotels. And, you know, I just really love this brand. So I love when they tweet something, right? Yeah.
Starting point is 00:03:36 Do you have any brands like that that you have like an affinity tour as you can't get enough of? I don't follow any brands on Twitter. I don't think. I may be like, I think I probably started following Verizon once because I had to DMM to yell at them about my service. You know, like if they're still there, it's not on purpose. So one of the big use cases for Twitter. is to complain to brands, right? So brands have a Twitter account,
Starting point is 00:03:59 and they are somewhat, what's the word, like reticent to even have it? It's like annoying. It's like a customer support channel. In some cases, they're like, oh, my God, I have to deal with these people complaining on Twitter all the time about my brand. And they do it publicly.
Starting point is 00:04:14 Oh, my God, you know, like, if you're an airline, Delta is the worst airline ever. United's the worst airline ever. Like whoever's late that day is the worst airline in history. Okay. let's put that aside. That's how a lot of brands experience Twitter.
Starting point is 00:04:25 But then there's a small number of brands who see it as like, oh, this is an incredible way to build a community. It's just, it's hard to get there, right? So here's an idea for you. DM is probably the most underutilized feature of Twitter. It kind of sucks, right? You can't search it very well. There's no quick keys.
Starting point is 00:04:44 It doesn't work like a modern day messaging app. If you were to look at Twitter DMs versus say, I message, which is not a super advanced messaging platform, versus signal in WhatsApp. Where would you put that on the DM scale? I mean, DM is like proto. It's like the, it's like the cave man of messaging. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:05:03 It's like a 10-year-old app. It looks like a 10-year-old app. Okay. So here's an idea for you. What if that was a modern texting app that could do a lot of modern things? And then people who have very large followings could do modern things.
Starting point is 00:05:18 Like, I don't know, reach their fans or reach their fans. or reach their customers. So it's opt-in now, but you don't have the ability, like an email list, to contact everybody who follows you. If you were a brand,
Starting point is 00:05:35 and you paid for this, you had a professional account, imagine if this week in startups could. No, we don't know, we have 30, 40, 50,000 followers on our account. Imagine if we were going to be in New York. And if we had a professional account, they said, hey, you got 30,000,
Starting point is 00:05:51 followers, let's say 50,000 followers, whatever it is. You pay 500 bucks a month for that account, and you can DM all your folks in France for when Molly's, you know, doing a fireside chat or a keynote there. Or, you know, J-Cow's going to be raising launch fund for, and there's a webinar and you could carve out your followers who are, I don't know, like accredited investors or in tech or who are capital allocators, LPs, whatever it is, high net worth individuals. all that data kind of exists, right? Or I could say, take my list of this week in startups, folks,
Starting point is 00:06:26 and then anybody who's following pitch book in the Wall Street Journal, give me them. Imagine slicing that list, right? So you've got the overlap. Give me everybody who follows Molly and Marketplace, or Molly, you know, a former place you worked. Now imagine you could DM those, right? How much would that be worth to brands?
Starting point is 00:06:47 Yeah, I mean, a lot, because you have basically disintermediated the collection and the newsletter subscription tool that they already pay for. Like they're already paying for MailChimp, say, or they want to do an invite and they have to pay a bunch for paperless post. And you disintermediate all of that and you say that's already available through this channel where people are already following you.
Starting point is 00:07:11 You've built a community. You have a following. They have opted into these communications that are more than just a tweet from you. So you enable like a richer communication suite and people should pay at least as much as they pay for MailChimp. Which people, you know, the average company probably spends 50. Right. Companies spend, you know, a couple of thousand dollars a month on MailChimp.
Starting point is 00:07:29 An average customer on MailChimp probably spends $25 to $100,000 for a corporate account. So now, imagine the DMs were just nicely displayed. Here's DMs from corporate entities. Here's DMs from everything else. So even those corporate ones would be separated. So if you didn't want to deal with them right now, you just want to deal with your friends' DMs and, you know, whatever, you don't have to. So, you know, me, somebody who loves specific brands like anchor or whatever.
Starting point is 00:07:53 I would love to be able to get... I mean, I follow some brands on Instagram, and I was just thinking to myself, like, honestly, if Frank and Eileen was like, girl, we're having a huge sale, but I didn't see it because the algorithm is already manipulating the posts, you know? And then I wouldn't have to be stressed about that.
Starting point is 00:08:08 It would just be like, I got a DM about it. Okay, so what's the name of this brand? Frank and Eileen. So if Frank and Iline tweeted, imagine they tweeted one day, we're having our follower sale. So, yeah, Black Friday has a sale. We have our follower Friday sales.
Starting point is 00:08:23 If you follow our account every Friday, we put out three items just to our followers and check your DMs. Now, your brand would pay $25,000 a year to be on $50,000 a year, be on Twitter. Incredible revenue stream. And you could charge, you know, you could limit the number of tweets. You know, you can keep it from getting spammy, let's say. Yeah, absolutely.
Starting point is 00:08:44 And you limit it to. And the consumer can opt it, you know, I mean, we have 100% either opted in or out. Like, it's not abusive. It's not like you. Correct. It's not like you sneakily got my phone number. So you get, you know, with the 10% off and now you're texting me like, now imagine you're Justin Bieber.
Starting point is 00:08:59 You've heard of him? Beber. I've heard of the other one. Just kidding. Yes. All right. Now you imagine you're Justin Bieber. You don't even use Twitter.
Starting point is 00:09:07 It's like, whatever. I got TikTok. Now imagine he's going on tour around the world. Someone like him probably sells everything out. Who cares? But let's say he just wants to know who his super fans are. So he could say, anybody who's been following my. count for greater than five years, and has retweeted me more than five times, and has liked me,
Starting point is 00:09:26 retweeted or liked me more than 25 times. And he skims the cream of the million people around the world who have been following him for more than five years, have liked and retweeted his stuff. In other words, he knows his superfans. He says to the superfans, hey, I'm going on tour. If you want to buy the superfan tickets, they're here. So imagine Gaga, I just saw Gaga, right? She's going to sell out, whatever. Um, my lord, can you imagine? Imagine the power of being able to reach just the most important of your followers. This does not exist in media today. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:09:59 Now, some people might hear this, you know, if I didn't explain it in my voice, like if I were to write this in fragments of sentences at one in the morning, because I had a great idea, you might not understand the thoughtfulness of this idea. But if I explain it like I'm explaining it now, does it seem like a thoughtful, considered potential idea you might want to test? If you were running something like Twitter. Mm-hmm. If you leave us to become the CEO of Twitter, you better make me partner. I'm just, you know what? I'm just like, I'm not going to be the CEO of Twitter.
Starting point is 00:10:31 I'm just planting that flag. I'm just, this is me with my flag. Double and I'm planting emojis. Do not want the job joking, joking, joking. That's a great idea. That's what the love. But anyway, there's just one idea. You know, but I say that only to clarify.
Starting point is 00:10:50 And it's a brand. engagement, like, it's a legit revenue stream. It's great. I mean, Facebook had something called, like, custom audiences, right? You upload your email list and it kind of tries to find people. This would be like a better version of that. And if you think of Twitter as a platform for elite influential people, it has a smaller audience. So how do you take that audience and allow that smaller audience to be super valuable? Yeah. It's a really super valuable audience. So give people the tools, who are brands to understand their follower account. Now, if you were a journalist,
Starting point is 00:11:23 let's say you were a journalist, you had a substack. You could say, like, can I know, upload your email list of your substack? So you're Casey, Casey from Platformer. What's his last name?
Starting point is 00:11:37 Newton. Newton, thank you. Every time. You know, or, you know. We got Matt Damon here today, but we got to go. So, you know, you got Casey Newton. Can you imagine if Casey Newton could put his list in there
Starting point is 00:11:46 and say, here are all of Casey Newton's, so he could make a sub list on Twitter of these are Casey Newton's substack subscribers and he can DM just them or now imagine I just gave you the DM which is like a direct mail kind of thing if you take the DM direct message and you say direct mail now
Starting point is 00:12:03 imagine he could tweet to only those folks right exactly I was going to say potentially you don't even need don't let Casey or you or me hear this but if your Twitter you don't even need to pass email addresses No, you don't.
Starting point is 00:12:19 No, no, of course not. Right. Like, that's the easiest thing. You're just like, I've got the messaging platform taking care of. Yes. I'll own this for you. Yeah. Great.
Starting point is 00:12:30 But it could be either be in your DMs waiting for you or, you know, that brand we talked about that does like the follower Fridays. They could pay to put that tweet just for the people who follow them, just for people who followed them for over three years, just for people who liked it over 25 times. It could be in their feed. And it could be prioritized in their feed as they, you know, priority tweet. So if you pay $50,000 a year as a brand, it should be a priority tweet. So, you know, you don't want to spam level.
Starting point is 00:12:56 But if people do opt into it and you could slice and dice your follower list and really understand who they are, right? Okay, give me my top. Give me the 10% most active in my list. Now, there are tools to do this, third party tools that you can buy. But, you know, in a cat or mouse game kind of get turned on and off. But boy, this would be amazing. You know, so anyway.
Starting point is 00:13:18 So in-house that, by the way, in-house the tools. Everybody wants the analytics here. Exactly. You don't even have to like, you don't even have to build out a feature as fully thought out and fully fleshed as you have just delivered. If you just gave brands analytics, they would pay more. I mean, they have very light analytics now. Very light. I mean, how much would you pay to know who unfollowed you?
Starting point is 00:13:41 Right. Totally. They don't tell you that. Or, you know, could be interesting. Like LinkedIn will tell you who visited your profile. That I found a little creepy, I'll be honest. But knowing who's unfollowing you and following you, there are people who are in the professional circles,
Starting point is 00:13:54 like who use Twitter professionally, have tools for that. Third-party tools, they pay tens of thousands of dollars a year just to know who's unfollowing me or who should I engage with next. There's like tools for, hey, these are really important people who follow you that you're not engaging with. Like, do you know, there's probably 100 people who follow the show who are super important that we don't even know following the show or how often they're engaging with. it and they would tell you like hey you might want to engage with these customers more okay that's it
Starting point is 00:14:20 just an idea i thought i would unpack an idea since people were talking about my ideas that's one of the ideas and that was one of the ideas that if i fully flesh it out you might think differently about it so if you are the press who've been asking me to comment you can take this clip and you can hear me explain an idea in its full fullness richness of the idea and maybe it's a terrible idea it may it's a great idea i would test it if i own twitter i would test that idea i like it Hey, everybody. I'm here with my pal, Tom Eschbacher. He is the senior sales manager at LinkedIn Marketing Solutions. And today, we're going to talk about marketing for startups. And LinkedIn
Starting point is 00:14:59 did a great new internal report called Today in Startup Marketing. Welcome to the program. Tom. Thanks, Jason. We've been talking about ICP, ideal customer profile. This is a critical concept for all founders to understand how can LinkedIn help with a startup figuring out who is their ideal customer. It's hard to know, especially for companies who are really getting started. And one of the great ways that LinkedIn is able to help is by providing you additional insight on who's visiting your website from all channels, organic, paid, search, what have you. Our website demographics feature looks at the professional attributes. And I'm talking about the job function, job seniority, company industry, company size, even company name to help you hone in on the audiences that are most
Starting point is 00:15:45 engaged with your site. We can look at this down to the particular page so you can get product level insights. And what you're going to do is take that, share it back with your sales and product team, and add that to the anecdotes that they are bringing to provide a really holistic view of what an ICP can and should look like. Fantastic. We think your B2B marketing on LinkedIn ads and get a $100 credit on your next campaign. I kid you not, a hundee coming to you in free advertising and marketing.
Starting point is 00:16:13 and go to LinkedIn.com slash next unicorn to get $100 off. Again, LinkedIn.com slash next unicorn for $100 off. Of course, terms and conditions do apply because they're giving you a hundy. What else is in the news? Elsewhere. And we're going to be, we're going to lightning around some news today. Elizabeth Holmes did get at least a postponement of her sentencing date as a result of that witness that we talked about. the allegedly distraught Adam Rosendorf,
Starting point is 00:16:47 who had been the former Theranos Lab Director, the one who we talked about, he showed up at her house, and his shirt was up. That was me knocking. I was looking at the notes, and I was like, did someone come to your door? Elizabeth, Elizabeth, I didn't mean it.
Starting point is 00:17:02 I never meant to hurt you. I just told them what happened, but I didn't know they'd use it against me like that, and I'm so sorry, and we're all here for you, and we believe in the mission. And then Elizabeth Holmes apparently didn't, not come to the door herself, but then turned around, called her lawyers and was like, get me a new trial.
Starting point is 00:17:18 She should have. I'm not saying she's not guilty, but, oh, my lord, you know, if you have this incredible gift, I mean, this is mana from the legal gods, a key witness decides to go AWOL, decides to lose his mind and go to the guilty party and show up on their doorstep after calling him on the phone. This person's having a manic episode now. I could see people, people have manic episodes, right? people have a it's either a manic episode
Starting point is 00:17:47 or a crisis of conscience or it could be both so I mean what do you think the chances are that he was manipulated as a witness and she deserves a new trial it's not zero
Starting point is 00:17:58 I don't know I would say I guess isn't every witness manipulated on some level like what he said was I just told them the truth and then if you know
Starting point is 00:18:11 and then the lawyer made it sound really bad okay a what lawyers do i have no idea they framed it right like if he stood on the trial or if he stood on the stand and said whatever i can't remember what he said but it was something along the lines of like yeah everybody wanted to make this work everybody felt a lot of pressure to make it work it would be very easy to take that if you were the prosecuting lawyer with a preponderance of other evidence sure and say this and this environment existed, he might also have felt phenomenally guilty after the fact and after
Starting point is 00:18:52 she was convicted because what he meant when he sat on that, you know, because she created an extremely cult-like environment. Yeah. So of course, he sat on the stand. He said, yeah, we all felt a lot of pressure to me. Anybody who works for you, right, which sit on the sand and be like, we all feel a lot of pressure to perform. Yeah. To the best of our abilities and slightly beyond because that's the expectation at our firm. Yeah. If you, if you were on the verge of being convicted for something,
Starting point is 00:19:18 then a lawyer could make that sound really terrible. And then we would all feel really bad because we'd be like, wait, wait, we signed up for that. Like, we cared. Whatever. Right.
Starting point is 00:19:26 And if I was doing 10 million dollars and take it to Vegas and double it playing blackjack and then came back. I was like, we have more money to invest. This is like, I worked hard. I had a system. And black jack.
Starting point is 00:19:37 All our investments turned out to be not real companies or, he gave us more. He doubled the amount we could invest by playing blackjack. Yeah, I mean, I think at the time, at the time I said, this is another life that she ruined. And I still stand by that. I mean, I think this poor guy is unbelievably distraught. Who knows what kind of mental health issues he's having as a result of all that he went through.
Starting point is 00:20:00 It's a lot of pressure. And he went to her house and was like, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to like take you down. He never opted to be in the public eye to this degree, to be under this scrutiny. So I think it's 85% chance. It's exactly what you're saying. And, you know, his claim that they painted everybody in a bad light, it's like, I think you all painted yourself in a pretty bad light based on like fudging the results of blood tests. So we're going to monitor it.
Starting point is 00:20:36 What lawyers do in a case, right, is take all the evidence that they can prove. Yep. Then they take the witnesses who testified to the exact thing that they experienced. And then the lawyers tell a story about that. But that story is backed up by the evidence and the witnesses and all of that. Am I saying lawyers never do a bad thing? No. Prosecutors do sketchy stuff all the time.
Starting point is 00:20:58 But I would imagine that this could be a short hearing, I guess, would be my guess. I feel that would be. Like it doesn't sound like she's getting a new trial. She might be getting a new hearing. Just to, you know, to discuss this one incident. I think that's what's happening here. I don't totally see this. Watch it.
Starting point is 00:21:15 Yeah, we're keeping an eye on it, though. But our sentencing's coming between November and January. So new hearing scheduled for October 17. So they're moving quickly to make sure that she's held accountable, I guess. Or what else is in the news? Good news that we didn't even get to from yesterday because yesterday was such a bonkers situation. But this, but we wanted to make sure we talked about it because this is incredible. The European Parliament has voted in favor of enforcing.
Starting point is 00:21:41 USBC as the common freaking charging port across most devices by the end of 2024 and laptops by the end of 2026. Take that Apple. Normally, I'm not for overreaching. I'm usually for the free market figuring things out. Until such time as like... Apple? Well, you know, if we're doing something that's really in the, not in the best interest of the environment,
Starting point is 00:22:10 I think a society can say, you know what, we're not going to have these plastic bags anymore because there's other options and it's killing turtles and dolphins and it's just not sustainable. Or, you know, plastic straws, you know, single-use plastic straws or, you know, whatever it is. We're just going to have some basic regulation around keeping the planet and making things slightly more sustainable.
Starting point is 00:22:38 So, you know, you have to have a car with a, a certain emission standard. So I put this under like emission standards. Like you wouldn't want people to have a truck in today's day and age without, you know, a muffler or a carburet, whatever the, you know,
Starting point is 00:22:51 cleaning elements are in a car in a bottom car today. And you wouldn't want cars that get five miles to the gallon, right? You'd just be wasteful. You don't want things polluting. I put this under the polluting. If you look at this under a polluting framing, we're polluting the environment by making twice as many chargers for each human. Yes.
Starting point is 00:23:09 everybody carry, anybody in the iOS ecosystem, the 30 to 50% depending on which country you live, has to carry lightning cables buy lightning cables every year or two when they wear out, they break inevitably. And just like putting them in the phone. Like, why are we putting,
Starting point is 00:23:26 we should also take out of this giving people free charging cables. They should always be separate from the device. You should have to, I'm dead serious about this. This is another crazy idea. and it maybe seems overreaching. But why do we include a trusset is actually what I think.
Starting point is 00:23:45 Because somebody is always going to buy a phone for the first time. And if you make them pay extra for the cable, I think that's a little regressive. But if they don't have to buy the cable from you and the cables now cost $3, how, you know, like the reality is it might not be regressive because they're only $3. Like a USBC cable is like $2 or $3.
Starting point is 00:24:02 So it's kind of like buying. Well, then you have to, you have to assume and potentially mandate. that Apple doesn't create some special version of a USB cable, which honestly, I mean, if they did.
Starting point is 00:24:17 I mean, right now it's to the point where, like, you can't buy, like I bought an external USB to lightning cable to use in my car so that I could enable carplay that way. And I don't know, 10% of the time,
Starting point is 00:24:29 it's like, oh, it doesn't work because it's not an Apple cable. Yeah. They'll find a way. Yeah. Actually, there was a really funny tweet. Okay. To that effect.
Starting point is 00:24:38 Can I pull this up? Sure. That my brother sent me from an angry IT guy on Twitter. Okay. And he said, okay, Apple will do one of three things. One, just put a lightning to USB dongle in the box. A dongle, not a cable. Okay.
Starting point is 00:24:53 That's an option. Two, Apple could remove the port altogether and go wireless only. Or three, Apple could claim they invented USBC in 2024. All of these three things are things that Apple would 100% do. They're definitely doing number three. No, I'm definitely doing no. The dongle idea is the antithesis of what Steve Jobs would want because it's ugly aesthetically. Yes.
Starting point is 00:25:17 However, it is what I've chosen to do. So I tweeted this the other day. It's what we have to do. Yes. I have been looking for these. And I find them once in a while, like on the Alibaba or eBay. But they're from like some Cheyenne or Akihabra, you know, unknown manufacturer like this one. But they never work.
Starting point is 00:25:37 And they don't do data. well, but what you're seeing here is a USBC female to male lightning connector. So you can put this little adapter, is the word, on the tip of your USBC, and now you have a lightning cable. So at bedside, you know, in my room, in the guest bedroom, I have put one of these there. I tie these to the end of the cable. I have a guest over, and they, you know, my parents come, and they got a lightning cable, they got an iPad. they can just change the dongle, right?
Starting point is 00:26:09 So I think these costs like $2 each. You buy them in like two packs for four or five bucks. Amazing. And you don't have to buy cables. They come with a little wrapper that you put at the end. So you can kind of start this process now of never buying a lightning cable again.
Starting point is 00:26:24 Of course, data. I don't think these things work for data consistently. Apple may break them, but for charging they work consistently. And that's all that you have to worry about. And then the quay charging standard, I think quay is how you pronounce it is just so awesome as well.
Starting point is 00:26:39 Yeah, the QI. Yeah, the wireless charging. Key or key, qui? I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. But I don't know. But I,
Starting point is 00:26:46 that is why, like, even though number two, by the way, all three of these are joke suggestions. We should clarify from a hilarious, angry IT guy. However, it would not shock me if Apple is like, okay, we're just taking out the port. It would not surprise me at all,
Starting point is 00:27:01 and it will be a freaking nightmare because, for example, car play still only work. You know, you wouldn't be able to charge externally. Like, it just is. Yeah, they're not going to do that. Yeah. I wouldn't. I wouldn't.
Starting point is 00:27:13 I don't have that faith, let me say. I mean, they did remove almost all buttons. To usability, exactly. They are like, if they have to choose between making that phone thinner, like thinner and thinner like Kate Moss and putting in a USBC, they will 100% make these stupid things wireless only. Nothing tastes as good. Mark my words.
Starting point is 00:27:36 Nothing tastes as good as being thin feels, just so we're clear here. A moment on the lips, a lifetime on the hips. I mean, I literally, with Kate Moss on this, having less some weight, and I'm just trying to get in shape for ski season. I play tennis again yesterday. Man, that just kicks your, that's hurting my body a little bit, but I like it. Like it. Four days in a row I've been working out.
Starting point is 00:27:59 I'm just, I'm working out every day now. I feel great. It's great. It's great. Awesome. Yeah, getting a little healthy. Maybe just replace thin with healthy. And then nobody will ever yell at you.
Starting point is 00:28:07 Toss. No, I'm into thin. I want to be, I want to be shelt. If you're fat, like I was, I went to the doctor and I was like my BMI broke 30, I was maybe 33 at the peak. I mean, that's just obesity. It's fat. You know, like I think, I'm not saying I'm pro fat shaming, but I wish people had fat shaming.
Starting point is 00:28:26 When I, we pull up, I can't even pull up clips of my own podcast because I'm just, it's too hard to look at. There was only, there was that, there was one the other day where I was like, wow. you got healthy bro yeah it's all doable people it's all doable people it's just have to you know the thing is you can't just want to be then
Starting point is 00:28:44 yeah you have to decide to be then yeah well don't you make the decision it's different okay it's freaking work yeah yeah on the program today is Darina Kulia she is the founder of Open Phone welcome to the show
Starting point is 00:29:00 Darina thank you so much Jason great to be here you know I've read the ads a couple times here it seems like you're charging too little for this product. It's 10 bucks a month per number. How are you able to do this so affordably? $120 a year, $150 a year per person is nothing. So we're a very self-served product, which is why many of our competitors offer much more expensive tiers is that they rely on like a customer
Starting point is 00:29:23 success rep or someone help you out to set things up. We are very self-served. Now, we do have customer success managers who are amazing. A lot of our customers are founders and startups. they like things to just work without instructions without. Yeah, they'll read the manual. They'll watch the videos. They don't want to talk to a human. They just want to set it up and go. And you made the product so simple.
Starting point is 00:29:44 Absolutely. That's where the cost savings comes. You don't have to have a sales team going out there selling it. And you know, the other big thing is that the way we also grow and I think it, you know, the way we get a lot of customers is that we have very strong word of mouth and people like tell others about us. And I mean, all of that contributes. Our business model kind of makes sense.
Starting point is 00:30:01 It makes sense for us to be able to offer it at a, very good price. All right, everybody, here's your CTA, the old call to action. Twist listeners, 20% off any plan for your first six months. Just sign up at openphone.com slash twist. And if you got an existing number, no problem. They'll put it right over. Openphone.com slash twist. O-P-E-H-O-P-H-O-N-E dot com slash twist today for 20% off. That's all the news for today because we have a super great interview next. Yes. We're doing the first interview in 2022's a edition of the next unicorns. I'm super excited. I get to talk to Sally Krochak, Wall Street legend about this women-focused investing app, Elevest. I've been wanting to talk to her for a while,
Starting point is 00:30:46 and then this is like the perfect opportunity to sort of interrogate this idea of like, why just women? Is that a big enough market? Does that make you an ex-unicorn? It's on its way so far. Yeah, we go. And if you have suggestions for the next unicorns, companies you think that are destined to become worth a billion dollars, which means they probably have a hundred million and revenue at some point. You know what to do. Producers at this week in Startups.com. Enjoy the interview. Our first guest this season, I could not be more excited on this season of The Next Unicorns is Sally Krochek, co-founder and CEO of Elavest.
Starting point is 00:31:17 Thank you so much for being here. I really appreciate it. My pleasure. I very happy to be. So I'm going to ask you about some of your history in the financial industry, but I want to start with the important thing, which is the app. Tell us about Elavest and what you've been building. Yeah. So, Elavest is the only wealth tech that was built for women, and it was built by women as well. And so when you look at the world of wealth tech, fintech, financial services, wealth management, all of the financial fintech, they typically were built centered on men and men's needs. Not that anybody meant to, but in a world in which 98% of mutual fund dollars are managed by men and 86% of financial advisors are men and the majority of. of senior tech folks or men, they tend to build things for themselves. And we recognize that women don't invest as much as men do. It's a huge deal, given that women's number one source of
Starting point is 00:32:17 stress is money, given the fact that the gender wealth gap, how much money women have in relation to how much men have, is 30, 32 cents. For a black woman, it's a penny. So this is a huge macro issue, micro issue. And when we looked, we didn't see a lot of folks working to solve it. And so pulled together a team, 80% plus women, 50% plus people of color and said, you know, okay, maybe it's women's fault. Maybe when everybody told us that their risk averse, et cetera, is true. But let's build something centered on women. And so Alibati helps women invest and take care of their money from that first investing dollar through to private wealth management, doing it by having built some something that meets her needs goals based. So not about outperforming the market, but achieving
Starting point is 00:33:07 her goals, a heavy emphasis on impact investing and heavy emphasis as well in making the app that works best for her. And what we found that gender differences can be. Tell me a little bit more about that. Because it's, you know, when I think about how seat belts or airbags are clearly designed for men, right? That's just, I get it. That's a height. it could kill us. When I think about the research in the medical industry being centered on men, all of that makes perfect sense to me. They have no idea that COVID makes our periods weird, for example.
Starting point is 00:33:42 Right. But it's less obvious. Money is just obvious. Right. Exactly. It sort of feels like, well, if you just invest, it'll all be the same product. Of course. Except, Molly, that women, you know, as we're thinking about preparing for retirement,
Starting point is 00:33:57 which can be the biggest investment, you know, the biggest goal in investment. goal anyone has. It makes a difference if you say live longer, if say you earn less, if your salary peaks sooner, if you take more career breaks. And that's what happens with women, that we have less money along the way and therefore less money to invest, but we're living longer. Some 80% of women die single. And so my big aha for L of S is when I realized the retirement crisis, if we have a shortfall in the assets that are needed for retirement is actually a woman's crisis. So that's number one. Yeah, the living longer was a huge unlock. Just as a side note, I know that and my friends and I joke about it all the time about creating like a women's commune because they die first.
Starting point is 00:34:46 But I hadn't really internalize it so much as a financial issue. That's a, you know, it's a financial issue. And here's the, here's the part of it too. You know, you can get loans to go to college. Not a lot of folks want to give you a loan because you ran out of money and you're old. that doesn't happen. And so you do need that commune with your golden girl friends if that happens. So we'll be left with that. But we found there other pretty significant differences between men and women. One of which is that women tend to be focused on their goals. And so so much of what the apps that have majority men downloads are about trading and Bitcoin and, you know, the fun of it and the process of it and watching CNBC. and talking about it with their friends and all that stuff. Women are like, not every woman, but women like, you know,
Starting point is 00:35:38 I sort of think of it, you know, in the 50s, in the 60s, in the 70s, dad would fix the car and fiddle around with the car and rework the engine and loved all the stuff that made the car go. Mom wants to get in the car and get there. And so what we found with women is, I don't care about not only the thousands of women we spoke to, exactly one, told us her goal in investing was to outperform the market. And by the way, only a handful even said, I just want more money. Well, we heard Molly again and again, I want to retire well. I want to buy a house. I want to have a kid. I want to start a business. And so what L of us
Starting point is 00:36:18 does is not just invest, although we do that, but it's how much house can you afford? How much house can you forward in five years. If you invest with us, you know, and you want a home in, you know, my hometown of Charleston, South Carolina, this is how much you're going to need over what period of time. And that's what we invest towards. And then, Molly, I could give you a thousand other differences. If you ask a gentleman his risk tolerance and he's not sure, he will make an educated guess and keep on motoring through the sign-on process, you ask a woman. And she says, that seems like a pretty important question. And I'm not sure. I'm going to law. out, I'm going to go see if I can go figure this out. In the old day, she would have bought a book.
Starting point is 00:37:01 Now, I'll look at the internet. But life takes over. And so she doesn't come back or she doesn't come back for some period of time. So how do you solve that problem? So what we found is the gender differences weren't the ones that Wall Street tradition he tells us that she's risk averse, right? Wall Street's risk averse. How do you know? Well, she's not buying what we're selling. L of us was the first, and said, maybe what you're selling is not what you want to buy, okay? And so we found other gender differences and the biggest of which is, you know, this issue of just different financial circumstances and how do you help solve for that? So how do you help solve for that?
Starting point is 00:37:38 What happens in the app once I complete my sign-up process, which I started before our interview, what will I be able to do? High degree of personalization. So, you know, using the power of technology to be. build investment portfolios that are completely bespoke to you. And so your retirement portfolio will be different from your buy a house portfolio, will be different from your start of business portfolio, it will be different from my start of business portfolio. And the differences are based on gender, but it also takes into account your age, your level of
Starting point is 00:38:15 education, what industry you're in. So you get a unique salary curve for yourself. And then we really customize those portfolios. Another big one for us is women are very interested in investing for positive impact. Women seem to recognize implicitly, intuitively, that everything they do with their money has an impact. Even if you don't know it, you have an impact. And so women tell us, let's let's reveal that. What is my impact? Am I investing for a better climate? Am I investing in other women. And so having that for the 50% plus of women who are looking to make a positive impact with their money is another difference. But it's all about using technology to provide that highly personalized investment portfolio and experience for her. How many times have you been
Starting point is 00:39:08 slowed down by time consuming tasks like data entry or scheduling meetings? Well, just imagine how productive you could be if you dropped all that back office stuff. And then you just focused on the growth of your startup, on your product, on hiring great people. Right. You've got to got really important things, your team, your product, and your customers to focus on. Those are the three most important things in startups. Your schedule, oh God, data entry. That's stuff you got to get done. It's blocking and tackling. Well, Helpware is people as a service. And it's going to make your team bionic. It's going to augment your team. Let's just go to helpware.com slash twist to sign up and get $1,000 off right now.
Starting point is 00:39:41 So go do that while I read the set. Basically, Helper helps outsource tasks that slow your team down. Again, mundane stuff, data entry, data normalization, you know all this important stuff. complex tasks like customer support and even AI operations, right? You're tagging stuff in AI, you're trying to clean up a data set, waiting to you hear about who uses Helpware. DoorDash, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and more. Imagine if all your top performers wasted zero time on back office tasks and they were all just focused on growing the business. Get back more time and be more efficient, save money, and focus your management team and your team on driving the business forward. It's all possible with Helpware. Go to Helpware.com.com to get $1,000,000.
Starting point is 00:40:21 dollars off your first invoice. That's right, H-E-L-P-W-A-R-E-R-E-D-C-C-T-R-E-R-E-R-E-R-E-R-E-T-T-R-E-R-E-R-E-R-E-T-L-E-E-L-E-W-E-T-L-E-E-L-E-L-E-W-E. Tell me about the launch. So, L-O-S-E-E-E-S-E-E-E-E-W-E-E-E-E-W-E-E-E-E-W-E-E-E-W-E-E-W-E-E-W-E. So we're about 1.5-5 billion of assets under management today. By the way, we launched in 2016, we should add the day before the election because, of course, we thought, oh, woman president, here we go. And didn't fully recognize at the time, we knew Alabest was needed. But given the economic and financial impact that women have taken negative impact in the years since, we're needed even more. I think what we're doing, particularly because we are the only one doing it, you know, is needed even more. So we're at one $1.5 billion of assets under management. These are about record levels, which given that the market
Starting point is 00:41:26 this year is down, you know, depends on the day and the hour, 25%, 30%, etc. And we've continued to grow. And we've seen positive net flows every week. I think is shocked up as pretty good. Yeah. And then, you know, here you launched into this particular election. We are only starting to reap the consequences in some ways in terms of policy and Roe v. Wade and things like that. And then a pandemic happened that disproportionately impacted working women. I mean, how are you feeling about your timing? Okay, about my timing, I feel an enormous amount of responsibility. Because, as you said, you know, the pandemic disproportionately impacted women.
Starting point is 00:42:16 negatively. More women lost their jobs than men. Women got fewer promotions. Women who were fortunate enough, Molly, to work in the home were promoted, or from the home were promoted at lower rates than men were. So it's been tough for women all around. And then as women were recovering and getting back into the workforce, were hit by inflation, which hurts everyone and hurts women more. Why does it hurt women more? Because if you have less money, it hurts you more, right? You have more of the spending, which is non-discretionary. And then Roe v. Wade. The repeal of Roe v. Wade is a negative economic issue for women. And so we recently put together the L-Avest Women's Financial Health Index that shows it's as bad as it's been for the past five years, that the forces
Starting point is 00:43:04 that are buffeting women are as tough as they've been. The slight good news is women are making the right moves. They continue to, they're not pulling money out of their retirement accounts. They continue with their recurring deposits. They're instead cutting their spending. They're making the right moves, but the world has really moved against them. And the responsibility I feel is that the gender investing gap cost women hundreds of thousands, some women, millions of dollars over the course of their lives. These are life-changing numbers. And, you know, our responsibility, my responsibility, I feel, given the career I've had to try to help these women invest and build that wealth is a pretty heavy weight. Yeah. We have some other numbers from that study, and for those listening, we will have it linked
Starting point is 00:43:48 on the website so you can take a look as well. I want to ask you about this sort of from the, you know, this is the next unicorn series. And so I want to ask you about this from the investor perspective, which is, of course, this question of Tam, who, who, what slice of women is this for? There are certainly many women who will say in some cases rightly and in some cases wrongly, the last thing I have time to spend any time on is investing. I do not have enough money to be investing. So that's already a tough one, right? How do you overcome that mentality to help women, but also to increase your user base?
Starting point is 00:44:36 Sure. So you're hitting on something pretty important. women are saying, I don't have the time. You're in the midst of signing up for Elavis. You'll finish as soon as we complete this. You will say, Sally, I did that in 10 minutes if you scoot on through, 15 minutes if you're slow. Molly, historically, that is the highest return 15 minutes of your life. Maybe that 15 minutes when you met your partner, like is the most transformative 15 minutes.
Starting point is 00:45:07 But when you think about what has driven the creation of wealth in this country, it's been real estate, right? And it's been investing. And who didn't have 15 minutes? But where we've been socialized, and this is really an important part of Elabeston, you know, becoming a unicorn and changing the country. We as women have been socialized that we're not, this is not for us. We're not good at math. We're risk averse. We're not good at investing. We outsource it to the man in our lives. He's been socialized that he's very good at this. When you look at the media that's directed towards us as women around money, the vast majority, like 90% plus of it is negative. And of that, 75% tells us we're spendthrifts. And so we've internalized. This isn't for me. By the way, for men, 75% of the articles and media directed to them on money is about growing money and expansionary. But for us, it's don't buy the latte. And I mean, my gosh, pumpkin spice latte season, you know, is an attack on women. Right.
Starting point is 00:46:15 Just, ooh, ooh, gross. Yeah. You'll never retire. And it's all because of the lattes. There we go. There we go. There we go. It's such coded language.
Starting point is 00:46:25 It's such, you know, meanness. It's actually just mean, right? I can't have my friggin latte and enjoy it in peace. You're telling me, I'm a spendthrift and I can't retire and all this stuff. And so as women, we internalize this. In fact, it's even worse than that. You know, we're taught that being bad with money is feminine and sort of cute. And so we get trapped into the, okay, let me outsource the money to him if we're in a relationship.
Starting point is 00:46:51 But when it comes back to us, 74% of us have a negative surprise. And so I just want to scream from the rooftops. It's 15 minutes, for Christ's sake, you know. And by the way, I then want to go into everybody's home and put a clock on their wall that shows them how much money they're losing every day by not investing in Molly. You know, by the time, you know, it compounds and through the course of your life, if you were making, say, 85K invested, you know, a double digit percent of it, as the experts say to, you could later in your life be losing 100 or 200 bucks a day by not investing.
Starting point is 00:47:24 You know, and if that fell out of your purse, you'd be fixing your purse, you know, right away. But somehow we're taught it's going to be hard and it's not for me. So part of what we are working to overcome is, and part of the reason that we have such a big community and are so heavy on the content and the financial education is, you know, having to change that mindset from this isn't for me and I don't have time to this is 100% for me. And I'm going to find 15 friggin minutes. How about finding the $15? How about like at what threshold? You know, because the second part of that question is the women who say, are you? kidding me, I do not have enough money to be investing. There is a sense that investing itself is
Starting point is 00:48:09 unattainable for- Sure. So a couple things. One of which is we have no investing minimum. And we have none because they're exclusionary. And I would just so much rather have, you know, a young gal who's still paying over a student loan debts, you know, begin to invest even a few bucks, right, out of every paycheck. One percent of every paycheck, two percent, work your way up to 5%, 10%, yes, pay off the credit card debt first, get the emergency fund first, invest in the 401k with the match first. But when you get yourself onto that slightly more stable ground, just a bit out of every paycheck, because that dollar in the 20s is investing in the 20s is worth so much more than in the 30s or 40s. And to help women get there, we have an enormous amount of content,
Starting point is 00:48:58 worksheets, workshops, you know, that many of which are free and available everywhere to help women sort of navigate. How do you get the raise? It's different, Molly, asking for a raise as a woman than a man and very different as a woman of color than a white man. And how can we provide those resources to help folks so that, you know, the Tam is as large as it can be, you know, where it makes sense for women, which of course is tens of millions of women. And how do you make money? Is it just a subscription or are there other revenue generating features? Yeah, no. One of the things I took away from my days on Wall Street is any company that I build, Molly, I don't want to have hidden fees. I just don't. You can make a lot of money from hidden fees. You can make a lot of money
Starting point is 00:49:48 from, you know, charging quietly or secretly or, you know, taking a bit out of every trade. But we wanted to be very straightforward. And so for the digital side, as people are newer towards and are investing online only, there's a subscription fee that we charge. We then will also provide certified financial planners for which there's an additional fee, if that makes sense at her next stage. And then even full-time financial advisors who charge as the industry does basis points on assets who are dedicated teams. So again, we try to be sort of college to crypt and provide the same solution along the way, but with different very transparent pricing. Gotcha.
Starting point is 00:50:33 So do you think that there is a universe where you would ever create financial products like investment vehicles? I mean, that you were more transparent maybe than the rest of the industry about? Yeah. Well, right now we use outside money managers for ETFs, for, you know, in our private wealth offering for a number of privates. What I'm pleased to tell you is that, again, in an industry where 98% of mutual fund dollars are managed by men, even though the research says women earn higher risk-adjusted returns than men do, that for our outside managers on our private wealth side, it's 80 plus percent women. You know, we really believe diversity is a competitive advantage.
Starting point is 00:51:16 We really believe there's money to be made by investing in women. we really believe nothing bad happens when women have more money. And so through our entire ecosystem, we really try to live that out. Got it. But no plans for an L of SDF or a divested. Not at this stage. Yeah. Good.
Starting point is 00:51:35 We love focus. And then tell me a little bit about, I don't know how many, how familiar people are with your history, but tell me about the moment that kind of brought you here, being fired from city group and and determining at some point. Yeah. I've done all these other things and you're like being fired from city group. What I wonder is we all let me let me tiptoe into this a little more gently. We all have we all stoured out as sweet summer children in our career with no awareness of how
Starting point is 00:52:11 being a woman is impacting our progress. And I think then we get to an age. or a level at work where we start to notice that it is. And I am sure that you had started to notice that before that happened. And then I wonder the extent to which you went, this is 100 per. I have had that moment in my career where I was like, wow, as much as I don't want it to be true, this is 100% about me being a woman. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:52:42 Yeah. Yeah. Well, particularly when you look around and you realize you're the only woman in the room. So I had the, you know, I've had this wild and really unbelievable career where I went from investment banker to research analyst to running Sanford Bernstein to running Smith Barney to being CFO of City to running Merrill. And along the way, as you noted, I got fired from City. Well, actually, Molly, I got fired from Bank of America too. So I've, I, or reorged as it was. And many times was the only woman in the room and found myself.
Starting point is 00:53:16 even though the business was performing, you'd find yourself not called on, you know, the CEO not looking at you. And I've had a number of CEOs and I've had some that were like, go, go, go, go, go. And others who were like, you're too much. Sally, you're just too much. I had one CEO tell me you're literally tell me you're working too hard. You're intimidating the others. And I thought, wow. What? You know, we're coming out of the financial crisis. And I'm working too hard and I'm intimidated. What? So there were ups and downs.
Starting point is 00:53:52 What I take away from all of it is that I've had the privilege. And I mean that both I'm privileged and I've had the good fortune to have roles and responsibilities and see things that no one else has had. Women are men. I've been in more different jobs around the industry. When I was invited, when I was reorded out of running Merrill, you know, I had the opportunity to go back to big Wall Street firms. Some people said to me, why don't you start something for women? And I just had a visceral negative reaction to it.
Starting point is 00:54:30 Well, I'm not junior varsity. I'm in the varsity. You know, I've been on the varsity team. Don't, don't tell me to go do that. And then one morning I recognized, you know, sort of had this lightning bolt of an insight that the retirement savings crisis, as we were talking about early. as a woman's crisis. And all of a sudden, I said, you know, I can't be a product of this background. I see this problem. I see nobody trying to solve it in any kind of meaningful way. Yes, there's some marketing, you know, initiatives and some go-girl newsletters. But I have the ability to put
Starting point is 00:55:05 together the team, raise the money, you know, put together the financial team, the tech team, the marketing team, the community. Do I want to? Not really, actually. I really don't. But when I looked around and said, who else could do this, it couldn't find anybody. And there were a couple that were starting in the time, but they were really marketing initiatives. And so I thought, well, you know, I've experienced public failure before and that's the likely outcome of this. So let me, let me go for it. And, you know, we've certainly made it farther than anyone else has. I resonate so hard with that. not junior varsity feeling because, you know, I won like an award that's back here and was like, okay, well, next time I want to win the award that everybody competes for, you know, not the
Starting point is 00:55:54 women's radio award. But I wonder, and I will confess to initially having had that response to Elavest also. And what is the store that as you talk to me, it's very obvious why, in fact, this is the exact product that I need and God love my financial advisor. I'm going to scoot on over to this in some ways. But what do you tell those women? Like, how do you convince the ones who don't want to acknowledge the difference or the lag even? This is where being around doing a great job for their friends, delivering value to them when they hate follow us on Instagram or hate follow me on LinkedIn and then they realize, you know what? I'm learning and I've got some ahas and they're saying some really interesting things. And by the way,
Starting point is 00:56:44 I write our Monday newsletter and we'll call a spade a spade. We, you know, we will talk about the striking down of Roe v. Wade and the financial and economic implications for women. We'll go on a rant. But I think part of it is being here and being successful, so to back up when we launched Molly, and we were four women by women, you know, we had a healthy double digit percent of the responses on, you know, wherever we were advertising the time, Facebook is sort of a middle finger from women. And it was, as you're saying, I don't need your, very interesting, I don't need your dumb down, you know, patronizing, you know, junior varsity, big pen for women, cost more, is pink offering. And what happened is that there was some number, the majority of
Starting point is 00:57:38 I'm like, that's intriguing. Let me go in and look. And what we saw happen is some women would go into the product, see what we're doing, sort of pop back out and say, actually, this is more sophisticated. This makes sense. Oh, my gosh, their chief investment officer, Dr. Sylvia Kwan, has a PhD in computer science, applied math and engineering economic systems and decades in the industry. Like, this is the real thing, right?
Starting point is 00:58:02 But what was so interesting, Molly, is not one single solitary woman said, It's for women, it must be better. Not one. And that is how we're socialized, right? And that is what corporate America has done for us by through the, here's the big pen for women. And, you know, here's the, you know, it's all going to cost more and do less. But that's part of, dare I say, the patriarchy. Right? Where we've learned as women to think that four women is inferior. Yeah, that hurts. That's deep. Yeah. Yeah. I actually got the version of the,
Starting point is 00:58:45 you're too much speech from a woman boss. We do it to each other, yeah. Hurt people, hurt people. Right? She's been through that. I felt that in part of my career. When I was CFO of Citigroup and the only woman at the table, I'm like, come on, other ladies, work harder.
Starting point is 00:59:05 Just work harder. Not recognizing that, yeah, I worked hard. But it was also a series of serendipitous events that, you know, one of which is I didn't ever have to deal with Harvey Weinstein, right? I didn't ever have to deal with Charlie Rose. Like, I didn't have these, you know, I had great bosses up until I didn't. But on my climb, I had great bosses who, you know, pushed me along. In fact, I was with a dear friend of mine who's a very successful venture capitalist last week, woman. And we talked about how for each of us it was interesting that we both had quite a bit old.
Starting point is 00:59:40 older male mentors and who were not, didn't feel threatened, helped us along the way, and that that may have been a point of difference with our equally hardworking friends who didn't make it as far. Interesting. I want to ask you a totally different question given, it's funny because when we evaluate companies here and I'm thinking about who to invest in, obviously team is a huge part of that. And so I was going to say that you and your team are a huge part of why you would have trust in this product. And I would be remiss if I let you go without, given your long history in finance, talking about the macro situation and where we are now, which I have a couple of times recently referred to as a big sale at the stock store.
Starting point is 01:00:27 But, you know, what can you tell us about what you would be doing with your money as a 25 year old in this environment? I'd be investing a little bit out of every paycheck. and I would have some degree of competence that in my older age, whether that's next year or 10 years or 20 years or 30 years, I'll look back at this time and say, oh, those dollars worked hard for me. I would do this based on history, Molly, which is that put aside today's downturn, today's recession or market volatility. But up until a year ago, we had recovered from every. every single bare market in history, in every single recession in history. Now, that doesn't mean we're going to recover from this one. But if history is any guide, which it typically is, you know, the United States of America and the world push towards growth. And that tends to
Starting point is 01:01:20 pay off. It's a, you know, these, these are scary moments. The volatility makes everybody nervous. You know, we're sitting here and they've just been, you know, rumors about Credit Suisse and whether they can afford to fund themselves. You know, that makes me want to vomit because I'm back in 0708 immediately. And, you know, that's a sign of real panic. But we made it through 0708 as well. And so I think for, I would not be trading through this. I would not try to pick individual stocks just because the stock at the company you work at was super high and now a super low does not mean it's going to be super high again. It does not mean it. You know, when I worked at City, the stock peaked at 54, it went below one. And for everybody who thinks, well, it's going to come back,
Starting point is 01:02:07 there was a 10-for-one reverse stock split, and it is now trading the equivalent of $4.37. You see it as $43. But the people who held on it city waiting for it to bounce back into the 50s, it never, ever did. So I would not anchor in the old prices, you know, with regards to individual stocks. Right. So you, but you would take a little bit from every paycheck and put it in an index. I am. Not only would I am. Yeah. And I would for sure. But the diversification is the name of the game. Yeah. Having a correctly diverse, the correct asset allocation and diversifying. And then being with a company like Elibus that will rebalance for you. Rebalancing is this gift, which is, you know, you set your allocation. You're thoughtful about it. And when the moves off the allocation, say, stop. you want it to be 60%, and now they're 30, because they've gone down so much, it sort of forces you to go against every fiber of your being that's screaming, I'm scared, and rebalance into
Starting point is 01:03:10 the asset class that it has been reduced. I also have to ask you about crypto, not just because it's been such an interesting, let's say, financial story, but because it's an asset class that has been and continues to be primarily marketed toward men. Oh, for sure. Sure. Oh, for sure. Well, it's also an asset class that hasn't yet worked out the way it was supposed to. It was supposed to be a diversifier. It's actually been an accelerant. I just think you've got to be careful with crypto because it's not the concept of crypto is such a strong one. Which cryptocurrency comes to the forefront is a little more clear with the performance of some of them. But, you know, you know, you could have perfectly foreseen the growth of the auto industry or the railroad industry and just made the wrong bets. You know, you bet on Susie's auto company as opposed to Ford. And so, you know, you want to within it diversify, but recognize that it's, it's so far been an accelerant. What do you mean when you say an accelerant? Do you mean it's just been something like...
Starting point is 01:04:21 It's increased volatility. It's increased volatility. The whole concept was it's going to reduce volatility. It's a type of asset, you know, it's going to be therefore added to your portfolio and it's made the losses worse. Right. And Bitcoin specifically at least has generally traded in lockstep with the broader market. It's clear that institutional's are buying that along with whatever other basket. Yeah, like we needed another equity, right? Right. Fascinating. I feel like I could talk to you all day. I don't want to take advantage of our time together. Sally Krochek is the co-founder and CEO of my new financial manager, Elavest. And we hope. A unicorn.
Starting point is 01:04:59 Thank you. Thanks for having me. Okay, thanks for tuning in everybody tomorrow. Lon Harris is back. And we'll have some great ask Jason questions and more. So make sure you've watched Andor. That's not and or. Andor, the show, one word.
Starting point is 01:05:12 And catch up on House of Dragons and we'll see you all tomorrow. Bye bye. You got a lot of homework people. See you then.

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