ACORNS founder who built a billion-dollar app

Welcome to the show, Walter. I'm really excited to have you here. You've founded an investment banking firm, an IPO platform, exited a couple of times, raised funds so many times. You've built a micro-investing app called Acorns, which is one of the most popular ventures of yours. Raised around five more than five hundred million dollars just for acorns. One of the things I realized about Spolio Ventures is that you try to democratize access to capital. In the beginning, you were investing in helping companies, but then you went to the other side of the table, which is helping people invest without having the savoir-faire or the knowledge to invest. So without further ado, let's get into it.

Okay. Yes. You know, my very first company was actually called Capital Data Bank, and it was a company I put together because I knew a lot of people were looking for money, and I knew some people that had money, and it was before any venture capital books or formal venture capital industry. And so I just tried to put together a little computer program. It was even before personal computers. So I rented time on a PDP-1170, a DEC computer, and just put this little thing together. And that's kind of how I got into investment banking, was just trying to match investors with young people that had ideas. And I was in my early 20s at the time.

Okay. So that was even before the first investment banking firm that you founded.

Yes. Yeah. I didn't go to college, so I had to just try to come up with some scrappy ideas to figure out a way to make some money. And it just seemed like a good way is to be able to do something where I could work with a lot of money people and sort of learn that industry. And so yeah, I did that and that's what sort of evolved into a real investment banking firm just a few years later.

Well, one of the most interesting things about you is you're a school of hard knocks guy.

Right. It's cheaper. Why pay for college when you can learn so much, especially nowadays? You don't need to go to college. There's just vast amounts of information and opportunities out there. You can just go do something, make money now.

It's a met—

Yeah. And I understand. And sometimes you want the social joy of, you know, going to college and things like that, but it's not necessary. I mean, if somebody feels strongly about their dreams, I really encourage them, just go for it.

I absolutely agree. I would actually like to begin with fundraising because that's one of your specialties. You've raised capital several times across 5+ companies and more. When do you realize that you're ready to raise capital and ask VCs to invest in your business as against bootstrapping? Because a lot of people think right away, I would like to get a VC to fund my business. When do you know that you should actually seek investment?

Yeah, I'm not so sure it's an either-or question as much as it is You have this idea, you know, it's going to take money to implement it at scale to get bigger, but you don't have the money yet. So what can you do right now to help that idea mature? You know, you can create a nice business plan. You can talk to some of the potential vendors that you need to create your product. You can talk to some some sources where that you need to distribute your product. And it's amazing how much you can do just kind of talking to people and making deals and kind of get some traction, even though your first product might just be put together with, you know, string and bubble gum, you know, but at least you, you, uh, Right. are moving forward on the idea. You know, they, everything around us, this pen, this microphone, and this chair, it all comes from an idea at first. Then somebody puts energy into that thing and then it manifests. And so I think we need to really be clear about our ideas and put energy into them before we go ask for somebody else's support. stored up energy, which is money.

Hmm. You just do what you can do at a given moment with whatever resources you have. I love that you mentioned tap into your network, speak to people and see how you could probably ask them to help you distribute it, et cetera.

Yes, yes, yes. Now with an app, you know, there's obviously standard methods of distribution nowadays, but There's many other products, you know, that can be created with different distribution channels.

I read about, um, Acorns actually, that one of the companies that you were introduced through Common VC was a catalyst in also allowing you to distribute.

When we first, uh, invented Acorns, um, I had had a few other companies and kind of was interested in micro-investing because you could just see the whole trend was everything was getting smaller and cheaper and easier and faster. And the phone, the mobile phone had just come along. You know, Apple's phone was out just a few years and you could realize more and more people were doing things with apps, but I didn't understand that world as well as my son did, who was just graduating from college at the time. And he was always showing me, oh, Dad, look at this cool app, you know, and all these apps were coming out. And so, yeah, I worked with him to, I would sort of say, well, this is how the investment banking side works, how the backend brokerage would work. And then he says, okay, this is how we're going to design it in the app and, you know, you want the button over here and not over there. And he really had a good intuition for UI/UX sort of thing. And yeah, so we teamed up to make that first one work. And then, yeah, there's just so many different pieces you have to do. If you conceive of how much work there is at the beginning, you probably won't even go forward. So I go into every business a little bit naive. Not knowing everything that has to be done, but they tend to work out.

So the company that I was mentioning was Plaid. Sorry that I missed it when I was asking the questions. Plaid that helped you solve the exact problem that you had back in the days, which was being able to connect with more than 500 banks across the US. And the reason why I thought about this example is because you were mentioning networks and how that can help you in the initial days.

Yes. Yes.

And how that company helped with the distribution with regards to having faster partnerships with banks as against going one by one to each of the bank across the US.

Absolutely. It's so key. At first, we didn't even know, you know, how we would use the phone to get in the middle of the transaction. We were looking at, you know, sort of infrared technology at first, which would've never worked really well. And then we found sort of a crude way to scrape the transaction from the customer's bank information. And as we were sort of implementing that, then Plaid came along.

Of course.

And Plaid was this startup in San Francisco. We're south of there. And so we were up there talking to some people and they said, oh, have you heard of Plaid? And I said, well, no, not yet. And so they introduced us and we went right to their office. It was like 6 guys at the time. And we said, hey, this is what we want to do. And they said, yeah, that's what we can help you with. And so it was a great marriage right from the very beginning and it scaled fast.

Yeah, that's what I was thinking, that when it's a new business, as we were just talking about, it's just try to tap into people who can help you distribute and scale. How much credit would you attribute to this kind of network leverage for a go-to-market strategy for any tech company?

Great point. A lot, a lot. And, you know, sometimes you don't even know that those networks are out there, those potential partners are out there, and you just start talking to people and explaining what you want to do and what your problem is. And one person leads to another and, and it's, it's almost magical the way that solutions come out of the ether, you know, the, the technology to do what we wanted to do at Acorns in the very beginning wasn't there until after we had started. So that's kind of how magical it is.

It was the NFC technology, no?

Yes. When I referred to Infrared, that's, we were thinking we could do this with NFC, you know, just swipe it by the register and that didn't really exist at the time. And so, yeah, that's why we had to do the Plaid route.

But that's an excellent example in my opinion, because a lot of people fixate on the idea, this is what would be the best thing to do. And then there's a thin line of difference between perfection and being more practical in the time being to be able to get your product out there and get it validated, as you, as you mentioned.

Yes. Yes.

Yeah.

And you run into all these venture capital firms at first, you know, when you're talking to people and, you know, you, you need to raise a little bit of money to make this thing really take off and And you see a lot of them don't have the vision. And so they pass and they pass and they pass and they pass. But each time you tweak your product a little bit, you make a little more progress with your team, with, you know, just the, you just get tighter on everything. And so finally you run into a venture capital firm and you've answered like all the problems and it's easier for them to see the vision. Then they say yes, and you get a check and you're off to the races.

Right. You've raised several funds several times back in the days. What were the patterns you observed? What are the things that rings a bell for a VC, for them to think you're the right person for me to invest in? Obviously you have an MVP, a minimal viable product that you can show them, but other than that, what do they seek for? Since you've raised so many times, I think this is something you would know a lot about.

There's many, many different types of funds now, and they specialize in different stages. Some of them, you know, want to do only initial ideas like that, the seed stage, of course, and many are growth-focused and they want to only invest in companies that have some traction. So I think you just get on ChatGPT or Claude or whatever and then figure out what firms are best for your stage of company, your type of company. So then when you contact them, you can really have some deep conversations right away. And so that's all much easier than it was when I was doing it. When I started, there was so little information. It was wealthy families and a few partnerships here and there.

More closed.

Yeah, it was a closed industry. Fortunately, I was not too far from San Francisco and I ran into some of those early firms. Actually, Sequoia, one of our first customers at my little investment banking firm, this Capital Data Bank I mentioned. And I would send out a newsletter once a month. Hey, these are the deals I'm seeing. Let me know if you're interested in any of these companies. Remember, I was just trying to match them up like a dating service. And, and they called me up and they said, hey, Walter, we're getting your newsletter. You're seeing actually some cool companies down there in Orange County. How about instead of this corny newsletter thing, you just send them to us and we'll look at them and we'll pay you some money for that? I said, oh, that'd be nice. And so anyway, they said, I said, well, I need like $9,000 a month just to make it. And my overhead work. This was like the 1970s. And they said, well, we can maybe give you $3,000 a month. And I said, okay, well, help me get 2 other firms that'll also pay $3,000. And then instead of sending out my newsletter, I'll just show all the deals I see to you 3 guys. And so that's kind of how we started. And it's how I got to know some of the venture firms early on. was just showing them deals and then sitting in on meetings and listening. And over a period of time, you kind of realize, you know, they're really looking for, you know, great management, or at least maybe the— it's young people that have a, just a good idea and haven't managed a company, but they're enthusiastic and they really believe in their idea. And that's good enough to get started. And of course, then they're looking for a cool product and then a big enough market where you could grow that company. So those are the 3 things that they focus on primarily. And, um, and then you, then you get into tons of detail, you know, exactly how are you going to distribute and reach those markets? And, and these are all important issues.

While you're saying, sorry, I have so many questions, but one of the things I'm wondering, because I've also had Several episodes with venture capitalists, PE firms, and sometimes they mention that they would be more— for every VC firm it's different, but sometimes they mention that for us, if we already see a proof of concept, not from you, the person who's asking, but out there in the world, it's more likely that we'd invest because we see the ideas working. So back in the days, With Acorns, you had Robinhood, as you were mentioning in one of your podcasts. What did you tell them in terms of this idea would really work?

Yeah, so Robinhood actually came right after us. We were in the market first. And then we took 2 different paths. We took just passive money management. So we weren't encouraging people to trade. And trading's fun, but people don't do as well. Most people, you know, tend to lose money trading.

They don't.

And so we just said, hey, invest a little bit. And we were a behavioral company and Robinhood took the trading route. And actually Robinhood ended up much larger because even though people don't do as well trading, people love to trade. It's a big market and there's more money in it. But we've ended up with millions of customers and $15 billion under management at Acorns. So it's worked out well. But to your point, pitching it at the very beginning, micro-investing didn't exist, but I could point to the market and say, listen, a long time ago you just had these great big firms and they charged $50 a trade and it was really slow. And so you could only do fairly large amounts of money to make it economical for everybody. And that was people like Merrill Lynch and these big old companies, Smith Barney. And then along came Schwab and E-Trade and companies like this, and you could do smaller trades. It got faster. The commission got lower from 25 to 15 to 10. And finally, They were getting close to zero. And I said, you know, it's going to be zero across the board pretty soon. I was just extrapolating the trend of what I saw in the marketplace. And the trades are going to get smaller and smaller, and it'll be so easy to do electronically, you know, on a phone that microinvesting will be real. Don't worry about it. And so people kind of thought about that and they said, yeah, you're probably right. You know, you can get a lot more people to invest if they only need a tiny of money and they can do it on their phone. And sure enough, it worked out.

Wow. And by then, did you already have a solid user base when the time when you were pitching the idea to VCs?

No, we didn't. For our first VCs, you know, we had to raise a round of capital just to get all our licenses and things because It takes, you know, in the US, it, at the time it took like a year and a half to go through that whole process to get your broker dealer and be approved by FINRA and the SEC. And, and so we had, you know, we just sold them on the vision and that's still what people do nowadays, right? You just sell them on the vision.

Yeah.

So yeah, that's what we had to do for our first round. And it wasn't too much capital, you know, a couple million dollars and a lot of family and friends invested too. You know, once we, we just take in money as we received it and just get going. You know, a lot of people think, oh, I've got to, I can't start until I raise this total of $2 million, whatever the number is. And And really you can, especially if you're starting with family and friends, you just, just take in the money and start using it to, to build what you can.

That's a solid point. And I'm not sure why people don't think about it enough. They do think about bootstrapping, but not so much family and friends. Yeah. Your immediate circle, they'll be more than willing to help you if, as you mentioned, conditions applied, you have a strong conviction. And you can sell the idea to them.

Yes. Yeah. They'll often say, I don't really understand what you're doing, but I like you. I like your energy. I like your enthusiasm about it. So, you know, here's 50 grand, here's 100 grand, whatever it is. And, and yeah, so that's why it's important to, you know, build these networks when you're young before you really start. So you have, friends and family that believe in you, and that just makes it easier to raise money.

One of the things you mentioned is when you start a business, it's good to start with your own money, as you mentioned, friends, family, or yourself, um, as, as against directly going to the VCs and asking them for roots. Is this something you still think is, is Is the way it should be and why?

Yeah, I think for most companies it can be that. And let's face it, most people, probably most of your listeners right now, they don't know a lot of VCs. They don't have the trust of a lot of VCs, but they will know people and friends of their parents maybe, that have money and it's just easier to get those first few dollars so you can make your prototypes, so you can, you know, do some travel and go talk to people about your ideas and get some proto customers. And yeah, just raise a little bit of money and then the VCs will come if the idea is really coming together.

You know, what we are talking about sounds something very easy to hear, but I think it's, it's, it's very important because it's the stepping point for any business. If you can manage to do that, at least one of the constraints is out of your mind. My community is, is a lot about, as I was mentioning to you, aspiring entrepreneurs or people at early stages. And I've personally heard from a lot of them saying this. Oh, but I need a VC to invest in me, or I don't have enough money to invest in my business, or even think about it.

That's an excuse. That's an excuse.

That's an excuse. Yeah, exactly. And I can really connect it with the points that you made about conviction. If you have strong conviction, then you can convince others, and that's just the first step to your journey, your business escapades.

Absolutely. Yeah. You know, I, it's important to, uh, To have a strong belief in yourself, which kind of takes us, you know, you got to have a little bit of philosophy, know why you're on the planet. You know, we're all these just children of God. We've come here on Earth. We're born in these bodies because it's the only way you can survive on this planet. And we go on these adventures. And yeah, I think more people just have to really go for it. And I think it's helpful to read a lot of books on positive thinking and, you know, and people that have been successful. And then that inspires you when you realize all these people, everything around you was started by somebody. And the greatest stories are those that started with nothing. And you know, it all started with nothing originally, so why not you?

I totally agree.

Yeah. Yeah.

It's, it's just, this is something that I often think about is a lot of times we are just, we just have limited beliefs. And I often think about this quote, which somebody mentioned, which is Alexander the Great conquered the world when he was just 16 or 17 years old. He conquered the world. So you, Mr., Mrs., whoever you are, Miss, what's your dream and why do you think you can't achieve that? A teenager could literally conquer the entire world at his whim because he had that conviction. So everything boils down to, uh, if you first know yourself well in terms of what is your purpose, what do you really want to do, Have that conviction, sell the dream, and then follow through. I think follow through is also very important because a lot of people just drop the moment they are in that valley of despair. You know, every business has that valley of despair where you don't see the results and you lose your patience and you give up. I believe you've, you must have had that as well in your journey.

Sure. That's, it's all part of sailing. You know, you're gonna run into some storms along the way. And, um, you know, the first few storms you run into, it can often be scary because you haven't gone through them before, but you learn things and, um, and you can take on bigger and bigger storms of life, uh, you know, the better you get at it. I think that's why it's important to read stories about other people that have gone through difficult times, just so you can reinforce your own mind that, oh yeah, hundreds, thousands, millions of people have overcome huge problems to create things. And I really like the story of Walt Disney, you know, because I live here in Orange County, California, and he started—

What?

Yeah, he started in my backyard and he was just a kid.

Is it?

Yeah, yeah.

Oh, tell us about it.

Yeah. Well, I mean, he, uh, he was originally in the Midwest and he was, uh, a kid that didn't like traditional jobs. So he just, you know, drew a lot and he made a lot of cartoons and he got pretty good at it. And he didn't, uh, He didn't have too much traction. And then finally he, you know, started to get it together a little bit and creating tiny little, just comic books and then little films and things. Because it was just when television and the movies were coming along. It's actually before television. There were just movies. And, and he went bankrupt 3 times along the way. And, and he did crazy things like when he developed Snow White, you know, it was crazy because it was a 2-hour cartoon, which nobody really thought about. He had to draw each cell by hand back then.

Yeah.

And, uh, you know, he spent an enormous amount of money on it. And people said it would never ever pay off. And of course, it, uh, it took a long time to pay off, but it also led to Disneyland and Disney World and all this, these ideas of making movies out of things and characters. And, you know, it created the entertainment industry. So, yeah.

It's beautiful. I watched the documentary on Walt Disney, the The points that you mentioned about him drawing Snow White, it was crazy how the way he evolved with everything. It started with designing with your own hand, and then how he tried to work on the animation bits. And it's true. I mean, the way he sold his dreams. Today, governments are building roads leading to Disneyland. So it's crazy. It's the other way around.

Yeah, it's wonderful. So anyway, there's thousands and thousands of stories out there like that. And I think an entrepreneur, you know, it's tough. And so you just keep reading these stories, positive thinking, and it gets into your mind that different ways you can overcome things and you're inspired. Oh, he tried that. I think I'll do something similar, but in my industry. And that's the real capital, right? Yeah, don't go get other people's stored-up energy until you really use your own energy to craft out your business.

Very different set of questions for you, but the way this conversation is leading, I'm just going to ask questions that come to my mind while I'm speaking with you. One of the things I would like to ask you is about entrepreneurship. Do you think it takes a specific personality type to become a successful entrepreneur? And if so, what are the traits that you think are essential to be a successful entrepreneur?

I think anybody can, you know, start a product or create a service that helps other people. And so we can all do it on some scale. To do it on a larger and larger scale to where it really is economical to take in outside money and eventually go public or something like this, then it takes a really strong person. And so you might encourage people to start at a small scale, And then prove your ability to run a lemonade stand or create a little small business if you have doubts about your ability to do a larger thing. And then as you get successes, you'll feel good. But I, yeah, I guess some people are just, don't want to do it. And so, But they're very good, loyal people that can help create an enterprise and they might be better off to partner with somebody. So you get a, if you find somebody that has a really great vision and you want to build a company, but you don't think that you can do it, then partner with that person and bring your skills to help that person. I mean, every, Every great entrepreneur or leader, you know, needs somebody there alongside them. Even Steve Jobs needed Wozniak, you know, to actually build the thing. Jobs was just a salesman at first, right? With any, he could talk great and he had a fantastic vision, but he didn't actually build the computers. And so, yeah, we all need partners to get going.

And I know that you co-founded Acorns with your son, but for your other ventures, did you co-found them or were you solo?

So whether or not you call my partners co-founders, I always had people that helped that were important And so Capital Data Bank, I had a friend named Dave Carlson and he came in early and helped me out. You know, I had just started a few months earlier, but I wasn't very good at the whole accounting side and the computer side. So he helped me on that and that became Cruttenen and Company, which became Cruttenen Roth, now Roth Capital. And so I stayed there till we were, you know, maybe $50 million in revenue and doing really well. And so there are a lot of people that played roles, although, yeah, I was the guy that started it and then did e-offering after that. So this E-Trade was around, they wanted more customers. They were interested in IPOs. I had an idea, oh, we could do IPOs online because, you know, internet was just coming along then. And I pitched them and that blew up really quick. And yeah, I started it, but 2 or 3 guys joined me within 30 days and that, so we could grow faster. And then within, you know, 9 months we were 100 people.

Wow.

And, uh, we got to like $100 million in sales. So that one worked out really good.

And did you already know people from E-Trade from before, or was it—

I did. I didn't know. I, um, it took me a little bit of a while to figure out how to get into the CEO. I knew somebody that knew somebody that knew knew him. So.

This reminds me of a book that I was reading, which is called How to Get Lucky. And this book is about, um, what luck really means. In this book, this author argues that you can actually increase the probability of getting lucky, not getting lucky, but the probability of getting lucky by exposing yourself out there. So the more you expose yourself out there, the higher the probability of you getting lucky.

Without a doubt.

And so I wonder what you think about it.

I completely agree. And I, you know, I think that we make our own luck to a large degree and we, the more The more we do things to make ourselves worthy recipients of good fortune, the more likely we are to attract that good fortune. You actually become more magnetic the more you meditate, the more you help other people.

you have to have a cause, which is an interesting, uh, take because when it comes to business, a lot of people chase money. I know. That's just the way people think, that a business is about money. So, which is important, but then it becomes less of a goal that you were trying to achieve in terms of helping others or anything that you want to do on planet Earth and becomes more about chasing numbers. What do you think about it?

I think if you have a really good idea, you're super enthusiastic about it, you're doing everything in your heart and soul to help that thing succeed, then money chases you. Uh, you don't have to chase money.

Yeah. 100% agree with that because a lot of times you think this idea is not scalable, but how would it work? But if you love something, you can make it work. And new business models come up from time to time because of this reason. Somebody didn't give up, it worked, and now it's a new business model, or at least a business which is known. I think Walt Disney is a good example again over here because back in the days, I don't think people would have been able to imagine that this could be at such a grand scale in the next decade or so?

Nobody was thinking about it. He was a dreamer. Yeah.

Yeah.

Walt Disney. Yeah. No, great entrepreneurs. You just love them because they think of these wild things and then they go for them. They actually go for them. It's like Elon Musk, you know, when he started his rocket company, he, You know, all the conventional wisdom was only governments build rockets, you know, private companies don't build rockets. And, but he, he was intent on it and he, he looked into how he could buy his first few rockets, you know, from Russia, old missiles. And so, yeah, just nothing was going to stop him. And it was really from a childhood dream, you know. this idea of creating the future. And same thing drove his ideas about electric cars and now supercomputers. It's amazing.

One of the things I'd like to talk to you about is building wealth, since we are on the subject of money. To make a business successful, I read it somewhere that in the formula, and it's obviously Very obvious is that it should have 2 elements to it in the formula, in the wealth formula, scale and magnitude. If you really want to make a lot of money from the business, you either need a lot of scale, or if, if it's not at the greater scale, you need to have the price value higher to compensate for it. And if you have both elements, it's great. So it's there's a higher price, but also at a larger scale.

So to gross $1 million, you can sell 1 million things for $1, you could sell 1 thing for $1 million, or any combination in between. I think that's just kind of, that's the math, but it's, but I don't want to scare people away from pursuing their dreams. So I don't think they need to think about that so much as just go for what you think will make the world a better place. Build that product you really want to see exist in the world that you, you know, you can't get any sleep until you create that thing because you're so passionate about it. Just go do that. And then— The scale will figure itself out. I really believe that. Yeah, don't worry about the other stuff.

It makes sense. Yeah, it makes sense because this is more about getting into the numbers, which is great eventually, but to begin with, perhaps look at it this way. How much value can you create for millions of people? Don't fixate on a number, but just the value, the value you could create for people out there. And just do the deed.

Yeah. Yeah. And sometimes you're not even aware of how much value it is at first. You're just so passionate about something. You just, like Elon and his rockets or Walt Disney and his cartoons, you know, it's, it's hard for them to equate how this would actually help people at first, but they just believe that's something they wanted to do and they wanted to see exist in the world. that they pulled out all the stops to make it happen.

Yeah, you make sense.

Bingo, that ends up creating value and other people end up needing it or wanting it.

One of the things I'd like to ask you about, which I mentioned earlier in the episode, is leverage, a term that is used a lot. What is leverage for you in business? You already mentioned a couple of them, one of them being the power of network and distribution. What else?

Right. So was it, I guess they teach us in history that Archimedes talked about the lever, right? And if you have a lever long enough, You can lift the world because it's such a powerful tool. And so yes, we all want levers to help our businesses. And you're right, there's many types. The financial industry talks about money or debt as a leverage So you can control more money with less equity. But just having a lot of people like you, not being phony to get likes or influence, but just being such a good person that people want you as their friend, that's leverage number one. It opens doors for you. So just Start by becoming a really good person. That's a great lever. Next is really study the area that you're interested in, no matter how wacky it may seem. Read every book you can on it and just play with ChatGPT and Claude and the different AI engines and figure out, you can have long conversations about your idea nowadays. Even without anybody else to talk to. So yeah, yeah, make yourself a good person. You'll get a lot of friends, really study your subject. Friends get to know that you really know that subject. And then that's going to create future opportunities. You know, hey, what's his name really knows that topic. Let's pull him into this company because he can do that for us or whatever. I'd say those are more important levers than debt. And yeah, everything can be a lever. I've been playing with an idea on many of the AI engines. I just love precession, this 3rd motion of the Earth according to Copernicus. And I think it's a little misunderstood in the world. What is it? Okay, it's, you know, the Earth has 3 motions. It spins on its axis, and that's the reason we see everything rise in the east and set in the west, not because the sun and the planets and the stars go around us every day, but because we're spinning the other way. And so that's one. 2 is the Earth revolves around the Sun. It orbits the Sun, and that's why you see the Sun rise in a different constellation of the zodiac every month. Over 12 months, you get back to the beginning. And so those first 2 motions of the Earth explain what we observe all around us, and so ancient astronomers were very interested in this. And then, but to explain why the stars actually shift a little bit each year, like 50 arcseconds per year, even though you're standing on the equinox. It's the exact same day and you're looking out at the stars, but the sun's moving through the stars a little bit. It's where it rises. That's precession. And most people say it's because the Earth's axis wobbles. And there might be a little bit of that. I'm sure there is. But most of it is because the entire solar system moves. And so I've been working on this for like 20 years, and I'm very convinced the traditional reasons are wrong, and it has wide implications for getting it right. And so, yeah, I think you just go study the things you love, and then somehow, some way, It turns into a business opportunity.

An idea, a project. And that reminds me, you have your own institute, right, around the subject?

Yes.

To deep dive.

It's called the Binary Research Institute. Yeah, it's led me to believe that the solar system is moving through space. It would only be curving through space at that rate if there's another large mass that's influencing our sun. And so, yeah, we believe that Um, there's another star there. And so I'm, we don't, I wrote this book called Lost Star: Myth and Time. I think there's a little—

That's the book?

Cover of it back there.

Yeah.

But yeah, it has the ideas on it. So I, it's not something I make money on. It's just something I love. And who knows what it turns into someday.

So.

Life's a long time.

You know, I think universe is a huge mystery and taking one aspect of it and trying to research is beautiful.

I love it. Yeah.

Yeah.

The ancient cultures, you know, around the world believe that history has these cycles in it. And we can explain the cycle of day and night pretty easy because the Earth spins on its axis. We can explain the cycle of the seasons, the yearly cycle, pretty easy because the Earth revolves around the Sun. But we can't explain the rise and fall of civilization over long periods of time.

Yeah, that's beautiful.

So we call it myth and folklore, but it's a myth and folklore common to like every ancient culture. And so I think it really has a basis in fact. And that fact is our solar system goes around something and that creates another cycle, but it's such a long-term cycle. We almost lose sight of it.

I actually, uh, I didn't, didn't get a chance to watch it, but I saw that you talk about yogas. I'm actually an Indian, so I've grown up hearing these terms, the different yogas, and it's pretty amazing to see someone who's researching about it. But very true, we really believe in it in our culture.

Yes, yeah, no, India has perhaps the most detail on the cycle of the ages, the yugas, than any other country because you've preserved your ancient knowledge really well in that country. The Greeks had some simple ways to understand it. You know, the Indians, they break one yuga cycle into the Kali Yuga, the darkest, then the द्वापारं, the Treta and the Satya Yuga, the you know the highest age. And whereas the Greeks call it the iron, bronze, silver, and golden age, so it's it's a little easier to understand. And yeah, and it's it's it's been obfuscated throughout history, you know because we went through the Dark Ages, and so a lot of this knowledge was lost or turned upside down, or in India they They made these huge long cycles because they didn't quite understand it during the Dark Ages. But I believe, you know, one yuga is one orbit of our solar system. And when we're really far from this star, we're in the Dark Ages. And as we get closer, we're in the sunny times, you know, the higher ages. And so it works just like the day or the year, but it's over a long—

Cycle.

longer period of time. And that's important to know for your entrepreneur listeners, you know, those that want to start a little business and scale up, because it would have been really hard during the Dark Ages or, you know, and we're coming out of a difficult time. There's a lot of light shining through right now. And it's manifesting as technology. We can see that pretty easily. You know, the ideas that people think of nowadays, they just weren't thinking of 50 or 100 years ago. And it's so much easier to communicate and connect with people with all the tools nowadays. And so it's a fantastic time to start a company because I really think we're in a bull market for like the next, you know, 9,000 years or so. And then you hit the golden age and maybe Things are different after a few thousand years after that. But it's really, really a good time, especially the next 100 years.

I think that's a perfect way to end the podcast. The message is beautiful. I really didn't think about it. And I really want to bring this angle to the podcast, the spiritual angle to it, because I think a part of you is, is this. A huge part of you is this, because when I look up for your name, I see so many sources wherein you talk about the universe, um, the cycles, the ages. So I'm, I'm really grateful that you could connect the two and share a beautiful message.

Thanks for having me on the show. I really, really, uh, enjoyed it.

It was a pleasure, Walter.