#61 Steven Maarbani - CEO of VentureCrowd

In this episode, I interview Steven Maarbani - CEO of VentureCrowd. VentureCrowd is Australia’s leading digital crowd funding investment platform for alternative assets. Steven has helped grow the platform to crowdfund over $310 million for projects.

Throughout the episode, Steven talks about the importance of trusting your own intuition and the dangers on taking too long to make important decisions. Furthermore, Steven talks about the investment scene in Australia and where he believes it will grow to in the next 5-10 years.

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Transcript

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The biggest learning curve to be across either underperformance or lack of alignment, particularly in your senior team, really, fast. if somebody was underperforming, I always thought it was my fault. I always thought I haven't spent enough time with them. I haven't coached them well enough. I haven't given them the benefit of my experience. I need to invest more time in this particular person. Sometimes that's true, but a lot of the time really talented self starters, you actually see them shine in those scenarios. As partners that I used to work with a lot used to say to me, you know, anyone can do their job and their job is easy. True stars shine when it gets difficult. I'm much more acutely aware of those red flags and I know from experience that removing the wrong people really quickly is really, really, really important. Welcome to the Dion Guagliardo Podcast, where I interview business people who run or have sold businesses worth a few million dollars all the way through to billions of dollars. While most of my time is spent to managing investment portfolios for people after they've had a successful exit. I've always been fascinated by the entire process and hearing the insights that successful entrepreneurs and business people have learned along their. At Fortress Family Office, we're an investment portfolio manager and we manage portfolios for high net worth families. If you'd like to know more about not only the way we approach investment markets by our philosophy on life and business, feel free to subscribe to my weekly insights note. Go to www.fortressfamilyoffice.com and hit subscribe. In this episode, I interview Stephen Marbani, CEO of VentureCrowd. VentureCrowd is Australia's leading digital crowdfunding investment platform for alternative assets. Stephen has helped grow the platform to crowdfund over 300 million for projects throughout Australia. In this episode, Stephen talks about the importance of trusting your intuition and the dangers of taking too long to make important decisions. Further, Stephen talks about the investment scene in Australia, from a venture capital perspective and across other areas and where he believes it will grow in the next five, 10 years. If you enjoy the show, feel free to leave a five star review and share with your family and friends. Steven, welcome to the show. Thanks for joining us. It's a pleasure. Thanks for having me. Do you want to just give us a little bit of background into, firstly, what VentureCrowd does? Yeah. So, VentureCrowd is a digital investment platform for alternative assets. And what that means is, we make available investment opportunities in venture capital property and managed funds to a broad range of investors from retail through to wholesale through to corporate institutional and family office. and we do it on a digital platform, in the same way that. So many other industries have digitized and made the consumer experience more efficient. The same thing will and needs to happen in the private capital markets. when did you start the business firstly? geez, it was probably eight years or so ago now. Yeah, okay. And so you've got that starting point is when people starting to look at that sort of crowdfunding is becoming more and more prevalent, What's the biggest challenge in terms of getting people to Take it up because you're looking this is a two sided marketplace effectively, isn't it? Yeah, it is. I think the biggest challenge has come from financial services incumbents. and oddly, the resistance to the idea that the financial services space, and in particular the investment management space. Has come from, cohorts, who spend their days investing in innovation. So the irony of that is. probably obvious to everybody, but, that's been the biggest challenge. And I think there's a bit of a difference in, financial services and the investment management space to the way perhaps some of the other, industries that have digitized have rolled out. and I think that. Is ultimately problematic for founders. It's problematic for investors and it doesn't serve the interests of commercialization more generally. but if I look at the two side of marketplace, the actual, the key stakeholders, if you like, there's no resistance there, on the one side. Founders are looking, founders know that the private capital markets are pretty inefficient, right? There's lots of really important stakeholders in that process, angel groups and VCs and family offices and all sorts of different things. Each of them will have their own mandates. Each of them will have their own operating processes. Each of them will have different investment communities. Those investment communities will have Different preferences towards, sectors and stages and sizes and all of those things. And all of that is completely understandable, but it's very difficult to navigate if you're a founder. what we've seen over the last few years, where the private capital markets were very much in retreat the effect of that inefficiency on the commercialization of innovation. It can be, for some businesses fatal, but it need not be. On the other side of the equation, the supply side, it's always been clear to me and I think lots of other people that, those groups I just described do not make up the entirety of the available capital for commercialization of innovation. It's just not the case. It's simply the case that. The rest of the market who wishes to participate has both the capacity and the willingness to invest in innovation, don't have the means through which to do it. So if you want to be an angel investor, you know, you're looking at writing minimum, 20, 25. Grand tickets becoming part of an Angel Investment group doing due diligence, going through that whole process. on the other hand you are a, for example, as I was a, a partner at pwc, you don't wanna do any of that stuff, but you're super interested in where ventures is going and you just wanna drop 10 grand into something someone else's curated. There's no real way for you to do that. if you're a retail investor, there's definitely no way for you to do that. but with the emergence of equity crowdfunding. The beginning of the digitization of the the investment markets began, now it was easy to discard that as a blip in the radar and, it was easy to discard that as dumb money. It was easy to discard that as the place where bad deals go to die. But really, when we look at it, what happened was. it was the beginning of the digitization of the venture capital sector and since then that the volume of capital that ran through that process grew and grew and grew and grew and grew to a point where last year, hundreds of millions of dollars would been deployed digitally. globally, and that number continues to rise since the introduction of equity crowdfunding in the UK at the moment, over 30 percent of all VC invested is done digitally through digital platforms and over the course of going from, moms and dads investing 50 bucks into a brewery or a t shirt company, what's happened is it has become more and more sophisticated and now we see, deals that are founders that are working on cancer treatment and, wave energy, producing electricity and all sorts of highly complex and, deep tech, as well as Well known consumer brands and e commerce businesses and those kinds of businesses that are a little bit easier to, to understand, but it's no longer the case that, equity crowdfunding is the place where you got to put 50 bucks into a brewery. It is now a place where anybody can have access to the same kinds of deals that you and I have always had access to. And by doing that, it does a couple of things. The first is. It allows a much broader and more diverse group of people to form a view about the kinds of businesses that are likely to achieve mass market adoption. And we can come back to that if but it also simply increases the pool of capital available for commercialization. And all of those things are very positive, right? I guess the democratization diversification of investment decision making, that whole idea that, the more people that participate in forming a view about a company raising capital, it's going to tell you something about it's likely mass market adoption. Logically. an investment committee of five, no matter how sophisticated, is going to be simply trying to work out whether this is a company that's going to fly on a mass level. Whilst when that same concept idea company is available to the masses to make a decision on, you're going to get a more accurate view. And I think what's happening now, since the introduction of equity crowdfunding and what it's become is that those kinds of campaigns. are now being, and will continue, I think, to be used by more sophisticated investors down the line as a proof point. because if you can, raise from the crowd in a way that demonstrates. mass market adoption of your idea, that is an important way to test something that an investment committee would otherwise need to roll the dice on. So So what's the typical sort of deal that goes through crowdfunding these days? Yeah, well, we're working on, a company called Ingenic at the moment. it's a piece of, it's a, cancer treatment using nanotechnology. where they can inject, nanocells with certain treatments and they go into the bloodstream and they target specific cancers. it's just been fast tracked for FDA approval in the U. S. It's pretty extraordinary in terms of the results that it's been having with late stage cancer patients where there are no other options. you know, it's currently valued at 170 million and it's on track to a listing a Nasdaq listing next year. that company came to us. when it was struggling for cash, right? There were no investors, sophisticated investors weren't prepared to, to back it for, for whatever reason. and the crowd just embraced that story. They embraced two ex CSIRO scientists and the research behind it. we went to the market with a million dollar tranche. we closed that at about three or four weeks. we extended it to two, we closed that, we went to three, we closed that, we went all the way to five, and the board told us to turn it off, right? that funding created a lifeline for a business which, may prove in the next 12 months to, You know, save millions of lives. so, you know, that's, that's an example. And I use that one intentionally because it's, you know, treating cancer. yeah, yeah. yeah. Well, it's game changing stuff. Where would, where do you go, what's a comparable, what is being used now other than that? Is that something where they, is it, it's more of a spec company that it's on the ASX or that sort of stuff? Or need to go do more 20 mil raise to go on the ASX? yeah, they haven't quite, they haven't listed yet. we're doing a small bridge round for them at the moment, and then they'll go to a 20, 20 million round to finish the clinical trials in the US next year, and then I'll do a proper listing. but yeah, there's a number of sort of large corporate finance houses that are circling now off the back of the last 12 months. That's worth of results. And, lots of people are keen to pick up that company and to navigate it through to the pre IPO and IPO process. But certainly that wasn't the case 18 months ago we got involved. I just think that's a good of, where digital. Uh, venture capital has gone. And, is it 90% venture capital these days or is expanded into other, you mentioned property and that sort of stuff is what are the other scope for the potential for the platform? So when we first started, I co founded this business with artesian venture partners. and it was, it really was, it does feel like a million years ago now, because I remember lots of people just saying, this is crazy stuff. this isn't going to work. one shouldn't be allowing, investors to in alternative assets. Right. And. What we found was that, not only was there high demand from, from founders, but there was high demand from investors that wanted to be able to participate in a really simple, seamless digital way. once we'd done that, what we worked out is that we can syndicate capital into an alternative asset. But if you can do that, you can then. syndicate capital digitally into a property development project, into equity, into debt, into pref equity, into mezzanine debt, to first mortgage finance, into managed funds. and the view that we always took was where retail crowdfunding started is not a significant enough problem to really change the investment landscape. It's not significant enough for investors, right? they don't just want to put 50 bucks into a brewery. They want a digital Platform through which they can make investments in all sorts of alternative assets. And those alternative asset categories will continue to grow, right? So we went from VC to a view that this should be a multi asset platform. Cause that's the only way it's going to really make a difference on a global and then moved into property and property development. And now we have a series of managed funds and fixed income products as well. Is there a level of curation to the deals that you bring on? how do you manage that process and from a due diligence perspective, is there, do you need to do that? Yeah, it's a really good question, right? So ultimately, we're a technology platform, but in the early days, and I still consider us in the early days, there's a credibility piece, which is super important. And when that our brand is built on, right? So the idea of just. letting any company just raise on the platform was never something we were going to do until we were comfortable that, as you point out, there was a level of, handholding, due diligence, curation, lead investment, whatever that validates the terms of around in a way that we could get comfortable then, being the facilitator through to the mass investor market. So what we've done so far is We've typically required, the investments that we launch publicly to have a lead investor and we simply follow the economic terms of that lead investors, due diligence and round. We do precursory due diligence on, the people, the company, those kinds of things to ensure that, People aren't raising money off the back of shells and silly things like that. but we don't form a view on, we do form a view on, sectors. So we quite like, and we'll only do purpose driven investments. And that means the companies that we deal with on a venture level addresses one or more of the United Nations sustainable development goals. and then we have sectors that we are big fans of, like, you know, health tech and food tech is a big thing for us. we're fans of climate and renewable and obviously, Medicine biotech seems to be a theme with, with our investors. And so we tend to find ourselves attracting those kinds of deals, but other than that, we're sector agnostic. we don't run a typical due diligence process. We simply say to the market, this deal is being led by X and you have the opportunity to participate on exactly the same economic terms as that lead investor. Now, as we grow in the next phase. phase. and that's, this is what we're leaning into over the next sort of quarter is the ability to make the platform and the investment technology that we built, which allows you to go from deal awareness all the way through to deal execution and portfolio management without ever having to speak to anybody available to founders to run their own rounds, but that'll be done privately. It'll SAS model, If we haven't had any oversight over it, it's not going to appear on the VentureCrowd website, but the technology that enables that process can be, and will be very shortly by February, made available to founders to run their own rounds. So everything from their own private syndicates to, you know, the friends and family rounds, all of that will be able to be facilitated using VentureCrowd technology, privately, to whoever wants it. can probably be perceived as a bit of a gray area because ultimately you guys are not a broker bringing deals to people. and it is a technology platform where there's people on this side who bring the deals, people are matching up with people on this side who want to invest in them and so on and so forth. that's the key point, right? Because When deals inevitably fall over, it's not a VentureCrowd deal. as much as it's you guys are the marketplace or the platform upon which they sit. Yeah, I mean, I think that's a really good point. I think bottom line, these are alternative assets, right? So, to the extent they form part of an investment portfolio, they should form maybe 15 or 20 percent of your investment portfolio. They're high risk, high return Assets to become involved in and that's something that I think is important for everybody to lean right into right once that information is understood by investors, it's then a matter for themselves as to what they want to back, but with, going in eyes wide open, There will be certainly deals that fall over. There will be others that do great things and we've seen that. So, our investors invested in a company called J Ride a few years back that we were in for 18 months. we exited as part of the, ASX listing at 107 percent IRR. We also backed, 4D Medical, which was 4DX at the time, which is a lung, a respiratory lung diagnostic. also 18 months, 297 percent IRR. So our last two exits have been incredibly strong. and so that balance of, risk and return is one for investors to, to assess. themselves, I think, in the context of their own risk appetite and portfolio. All we do is we say, you would never have had access to this before, but now you do, right? And I think that's a good thing on both sides of that twin sided marketplace. What's the biggest challenge being so far? I think the challenge is the perception of, equity crowdfunding as this funding source of last resort. and I think challenge from. incumbents who form a view that, if a company has gone through an equity crowdfunding round, its cap table is going to be, horribly messy and therefore you don't want to get involved. that has not actually been the experience. Either in Australia or on a global level, but that is a challenge from a perception, perception perspective, you know, if you look at the more mature digital venture capital markets, the UK I mentioned before is a very good example where, companies will. Use digital capital raising equity crowdfunding as one of many tools in their capital strategy. And that's very normal. And you'll see the crowd right run through Crowdcube or Cedars or one of those platforms sitting right alongside major VC firms and family offices. So I think that's the future. and. it'll just, it'll take a while. I think for Is Australia, is Australia behind the rest of the world in this area, Stu? 100%, 100%. And if you look at where the UK is now, we're absolutely heading in that direction as much as incumbents might want to. Kick and scream their way through that. That's exactly where we're going in my view. And so in five years time, the digital capital raising market in Australia will be a significant part of the capital pool. And if the UK is anything to go by, it's not competitive with traditional forms of, venture funding. It is a creative too. Right. So I just can't see any world where that's not a good thing for all stakeholders. Who are the incumbents when you talk about incumbents? Is it existing VC funds or influential angel investors or something else? No, well, I think, these are all my mates too, right? So I've, I've said, I set up many of these funds and we have these very healthy debates all the time, but, there's still a view from VC funds and perhaps some angel groups, not all, but some angel groups that, venture capital in particular is the realm of, highly experienced and sophisticated venture capital investors. And I think. That's a lot of bullshit and we all know that because there are so many examples, so many examples of exceptional deal flow that was simply ignored or rejected or denied by very sophisticated VC investors. that's not a criticism of my colleagues and my peers simply to say. The idea that all good deals will be funded is horribly arrogant, right? And so what we should instead, I think, be saying. Honestly is, the private capital markets are growing and that's a good thing and we welcome that more participants doing more things in more ways, because that is ultimately in the best interest of the commercialization of innovation. That's all I care about. I don't actually care whether, particular VC firm is concerned about whether digitization is a problem for their portfolio. I don't think it is. I don't think it ever will be. I think the only thing it is, is good for their portfolio, but I, my only interest is the founder, right? So, I mean, and I was a part of PwC, I ran the venture capital practice there for many years, set up a bunch of VC funds, all that stuff. I was on the management committee of Sydney owners, blah, blah, blah. So I saw the pain of incredibly hardworking, high value, adding. Contributors to society, entrepreneurs and founders, and this major blocker that they constantly came up against, which is. Raising the capital necessary to take it to the next level. That's always been a problem and it needs a solution and that solution isn't one more VC fund. That's part of it. Yes, but the digitization of the venture capital market, is a much more scalable and significant solution to part of that problem. It's part of the issue here in Australia how small the market is in relative terms compared to the UK or the US. you know, and it's much more of a, everybody knows everybody in Australian VC, more so than other bigger populations, I guess. Yeah, no, I think it's always been the case, right? I'm happily. over the last sort of 10 years, the Australian venture capital sector has grown significantly, And it's matured a lot and, we're doing a lot more deals in a lot more, sectors across, more stages. So all of that's very, very welcome, but certainly it's still to drop in the ocean compared to global markets. And I mean, when I was at PwC. Quite often founders would say we're not, we're not even raising in Australia. I would talk to them about their capital strategy and they'd say we're not interested in raising in Australia. We're just going to go straight to the Asian market or we can go straight to the US or whatever. I don't think that's the case anymore. I think we've got some really strong and important players. Lots of good boutique firms that might be smaller but with a more targeted sector focus. All of that's really great. But If you were to simply ask the question, does the supply of capital available for the commercialization of innovation equal the demand, you would say, definitely not. And if that's the case, then, how might that change over time? Because, you know, whatever it is, necessity is the mother of invention, right? So. Yeah. what about the stock market November 2021, when sort of the tap got turned off there and a lot of the tech stocks in the U S especially, but everywhere, started to get hammered a bit. How did that impact the business? The last three years have been our strongest three years ever. We've literally had capital volumes, increased 100 percent year on year. We did 6 million worth of revenue last year. Last year we did sort of 53 million worth of capital across a variety of projects. That's last year, right? That's like the, one of the hardest venture capital years I've seen in a long, long time. where, founders were screaming, we continue to have. Supply through the platform into these deals. and because We're not just a retail crowdfunding platform. we're not limited to the kinds of financial products we can offer. So if for example, ordinary equity a priced valuation round doesn't make sense at a particular point in time, and last year it did not, Cause everybody was hammering valuations. Then we can play with any other kind of instrument that makes sense. We can can issue like convertible notes or something like that, or whatever it might be. All of that. I mean, there's an example of a company that we worked with a very, very good company that when we started working with another 2. 5 million dollars worth of revenue last year, they hit 25 million. They're now in the UK and Europe and all this sort of stuff. So really solid business, generating a lot of revenue, good gross margins, building nicely, all that stuff, couldn't raise equity last year. We got to about a million bucks and just stopped and they needed a lot more than that to see them through. So we pivoted preference notes and raised over 5 million bucks in the course of three months. That saved them right and not because they're a bad business, but because all businesses is go through peaks and troughs, but the market simply said, well, we're not touching anything for a while and that's the end of it. when I look at the kind of contribution that the crowd can make through digital platforms like ours, I'm really proud of that. What, over the last sort of eight years or so, what's the biggest learning curve that you've had, as a leader building the business? the biggest learning curve to be across either underperformance or lack of alignment, particularly in your senior team, really, fast. there was a period where, in my early days if somebody was underperforming, I always thought it was my fault. I always thought I haven't spent enough time with them. I haven't coached them well enough. I haven't given them the benefit of my experience. I need to invest more time in this particular person. Sometimes that's true, but a lot of the time really talented self starters. you actually see them shine in those scenarios, as partners that I used to work with a lot used to say to me, you know, anyone can do their job and their job is easy. True stars shine when it gets difficult. I'm much more acutely aware of those red flags. and I know from experience that, removing The wrong people really quickly is really, really, really important. because I sort of profile on the, spectrum, it is introvert than an extrovert, I found that really hard. have those kinds of conversations and let people go. But now I think to myself, we just simply can't carry under performers and won't because it's not fair to everybody else who's really doing great work and working super hard. If I could go back and do it again, I think the CEO of Levi's said exactly the same thing when he stepped down recently, I should have let the wrong people go a lot sooner. they can really hold back the delivery of the strategy. particularly when they're good salespeople, it makes it even harder because they can convince you that there's lots of good reasons for underperformance and you can waste 12 months. not work, not getting to the point where you have to say, look, this is not working. You need to step aside, Yeah. No, that's, that's fair enough. What's the best advice you've been given along the way? trust my intuition. Have you got an example where that came to the fore? yeah, lot, of examples. with a lot of the people examples I just gave you, kind of knew that they weren't the right fit, Yeah. Okay. but I just, I struggled with making that decision and, I would meet with them and then be convinced that there were good reasons for these concerns and that I should just let that go or, up with some other plan to help support them to do the next thing. And then you'd just waste another three to six months. Now I kind of know got a bit more of a, comfort level with my own view. And sometimes, I have said to the team, this is not negotiable. We've had lots of conversations about it. If you're not on board, that's up to you, but this is what the business is going to be doing. And it's absolutely not negotiable. So now is the time for alignment. so. Make whatever decisions you want to make, but this is the direction the business is going in and that's the end of it. five years ago, I'd never would have done that because I would have second guessed every part of that decision, is it the right decision? Do I need everybody's buy in? Will they still like me now? All I think about is. High performance team building means you've got to make some tough calls and that means you've got to lead from the front and not everybody's going to like those decisions and that's okay. You got a law background, right? Yeah, How does that help or hinder in terms of being a leader? it completely helps. Right. Because, we were trained to, very analytically consider the facts. Before forming a view or taking a position. So if you're giving a piece of legal advice, for example, right? you need to consider the law. You need to consider the case law. Then you need to consider all of the facts of the matter and then determine what is the strength of the position, So now when I think about even things like expansion into Singapore, we do the same thing. It's, what are the data telling us? What do we know about the market? Is there demand for our product? If there's questions around that, do we need to dig deeper into that? What is the legislative framework? Where are the risks involved in all of that before forming a view and forming a position? And the other thing about the law, which really, really helped me is that it's all about the written word and the spoken word. So learning to communicate really, really clearly is kind of how you're trained. And in a business like this, where we're talking about the digitization of the investment markets, you know, how tech. Technology is going to influence the growth of venture capital and property funding and funds management. And then how, example, blockchain web three tokenization is getting impacted. That's a really complex set of discussions to have. So for the benefit of the team, for the benefit of shareholders, for the benefit of other corporate partners, being able to articulate that really simply has been a real. help. I'm thankful to all those people that, trained me to do that. Were you always entrepreneurial though? were you always going to end up being in in business? totally. had a great time at PwC. It was a great place to work. I was supported by some wonderful people and I learned a lot. but you know, that was the wrong fit for me. I was never going to be a lawyer in a major firm for a long time. the moment. That, know, this is when you hand over the advice and the client takes it from there. And all I really wanted to do is take it from there with them. It's like, we've just done all this work for you and given you this strategy and this piece of advice and make these recommendations. But gee, I'd love to just step into your office for a moment and help you execute. Do you know what I mean? You know, you're an entrepreneur when you want to get on with it. it. That's right. Yeah. what about people in business that you. Admire or respect and look up to along the way. Got any examples of people like that? Yeah, I'm very, very fortunate to have lots of really good, strong mentors around me. Certainly, you know, I had partners at PwC who I looked up to and taught me the benefit of, the kind of esteem that you can build for yourself off the back of delivering really good product that far transcends. Things like titles and, promotions and, the salary that you earn. And I think that's been a really important thing to take with me. they're not high profile people who you'd know, but certainly for me, they were absolutely. Critical to my development and now at VentureCrowd, I'm really lucky to have some really exceptional entrepreneurs who've gone and built and sold massive technology companies, you know, on my speed dial, you know, that come to me and they're going, well, I really like what you're doing and I'd love to be involved. And I'm like, Jesus, I can't believe I'm even talking to you. You know what I mean? Are there any examples of people that have come through over the years when you first met them as a founder, you sort of thought this guy or this girl, they're going all the way. There's lots, I really rate the Nexta founders, the guys who created the naturally sugar free sweetener formula. you know, I met them when they were kids really, like they were in their twenties. they were co founders and co CEOs. They had a very clear vision before I think the FMCG market was aware of it. And I just thought it was really impressive to be able to have that kind of foresight so early. And that foresight was simply that sugar would need to be replaced across food and beverage categories around the world and. No one in the major FMCG markets, was taking that seriously because either it was too hard, or they just simply didn't want to until they absolutely have to. So they spent years sort of building a naturally sugar free sweetener formula, no artificials, no sugar, and patented that, then built that into a series of drinks, and now it's going to go into, you know, cake products and, you know, table sweeteners, and it'll be sold to, multinational groups. And, these guys were just kids the point that I think the key to all of that was, this unrelenting vision nothing could stop them. Right? No matter what happened, no matter what hurdle, that level of resilience was through the roof. First of all, foresight and vision was very clear and there was a clear market need for it. But then the resilience was exceptional. And I think when you meet people like that, they're the kind of people you want to back. whatever happens on their journey, and there will be hurdles, you want to know that they're going to be able to navigate through that when it's really tough. Is it resilience or is it determination or is that the same thing? thing? Oh, no, they're different things. That's a good question. it's definitely a bit of both, those two things are nuanced and they are different. And you do need both. And then you need, you know, I think you need mindfulness practice. You need to understand how you wind down. You need to understand how to stop the chatter in your mind. You need to find tools that allow you to manage, those really challenging problems that, for a lot of people, It just ruins them, right? I just can't get past it. But for entrepreneurs and I'm one of them, right? You've got to get up every morning and say, okay, I've got five major fires I've got to put out today. How do I do that? And get through to the next bit, which is the growth bit, which is the bit that's with the team, which is the bit that's, the fun part. But every day there's five fires you've got to put out. You have to have the tools to keep your energy levels up to push through that. What about business books? what are your favorites? the first business book that, was given to me once, and I don't know whether this is telling or not, , the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. Classic? it's a classic. it's one that I got a lot out of. And now whenever somebody, passes promotion in our business, I give them a copy because I, I, I got a lot out of that. And, I always like to, to recommend that to, people who may not have come across it. I spent a lot of time on, a mindfulness app called waking up as well. And that helps me to, it's not business specific, but in many ways it should be. this whole conversation about mental wellness and how you manage the challenges of being an entrepreneur, how you manage teams and all that can be benefited by some level of mindfulness practice. And I've got a long way to go cause I'm a, I'm an intense character who's just always on the go. But so there's a lot to do for me to be able to calm my mind. But certainly I've benefited a lot from, from that, to leaning into that kind of education. Yeah. No, that's interesting. What about, what's next in the five, 10 years or more ahead? this is the best job I've ever had, you know, for all of its challenges and there are lots of them, I love the work we're doing here. I can look at the work we're doing with the team and say, in genic, for example, as an example, you know, we were able to put 5 million bus into a company that's potentially curing cancer. That is very powerful. Like my why and the why for the team is very, very clear. And everybody who's in our business, is motivated by that same North star and that's incredibly powerful. So what we want to do now is take that to the next level by doing two things. One, expanding into Southeast Asia. Right. So expanding our pool of investors as well as the diversity of our deal flow across the region, and then be able to demonstrate that VentureCrowd is an Asia packed platform, not just a platform that can operate in Australia. From there, we'll look at the UK towards the end of next year. And at some point, we want to be able to say, this is a global platform with global deal flow and global and a global investor base and use our same matching technology to Match, for example, a founder in Sydney with an investor in, Dubai, So that's where that's going. that's geographic expansion. The second major piece of expansion for us is the next phase of our technology platform. So we've already digitized the investment process from beginning to end on a web 2 platform. we are currently working on phase 2 of that and that will include. The ability for founders to have, digital cap tables that are recorded on the blockchain, the ability to tokenize their securities and the ability for, anyone who holds those digital securities to trade them on a blockchain enabled secondary trading platform. We're aiming to be there by, you know, the end of 2024. Once we get to that point, that last bit around. liquidity into the private capital markets once we have a, alive and working solution to that, we think that will then also fuel, the volume of investment going into these kinds of deals because one of the key hurdles for people when they invest in venture capital is understanding if and when they're going to be able to exit. So being able to provide is a big part of that. And for me, I, my intention is to continue to lead this business until I. No longer add value and look, that might be soon, right? It might outgrow me very quickly, but for now, I want to steer the ship in that direction. That's great. Steve, thanks very much for your time. It's been really interesting. It's a pleasure. Thank you for having me. Thank you. Thanks for listening to this episode. I hope you enjoyed the show. If you did, we would really appreciate if you would leave a five star review and share with family and friends. Thanks.